I use XDoclets a LOT. I mean A LOT. It does some really cool stuff for us, from dealing with MBean interfaces to just about anything else that you can think of.
It's also very tightly integrated with ant and maven, the two build tools that are used in just about every project I'm involved in.
are almost pointless, a 56k connection is bad enough without it being shared across several computers.
Almost, but they still have their uses.
I was the IT Manager for Lilith Fair, and when we sent the tour buses out on the road, 2 of them were dedicated accounting buses with LANs, printers, etc. We couldn't be guaranteed any kind of broadband connection at our stops, but we WERE guaranteed just about as many POTS lines as we could handle.
We set up two similar devices, one on each bus, and they were very simple for the non-technical accountants to use. It should also be mentioned that each device had 2 56k modems in it, and they attempted to do some sort of load-balancing or connection "stickiness" to take advantage of the dual connections.
They were perfect for sending and receiving emails, and even remote-faxing. We also used the same connection to synch up a couple of Oracle databases.
We quite liked them. (They weren't the same devices mentioned, but quite similar).
As a long-time Oracle user, developer, and DBA, I can say that I think you are misguided in this attempt.
In essence, in a few (relatively) short lines of code you are attempting to replace that which Oracle has spent many years developing and proving in thousands of installations.
Your "lack of faith" (for lack of a better term) of Oracle's transactional capabilities, in my opinion, is misguided. As well, your implementation has integrity and performance concerns. (Mind you, if you're doing small, uncomplicated apps, it might not be that big of a deal, but if you're using Oracle, then I'm assuming that it IS an issue).
Your implementation will not have the capabilities or features of Oracle's implementation (distribution, fault-tolerance, high availability, performance, etc.), is open to potential data corruption due to failure, and it will take much longer to develop the application. You say you work hard on the implementation, but I'm thinking that you're working TOO hard.
Also, transactions and rollbacks are a great tool if/when used appropriately.
And is there a particular reason why IBM couldn't apply their work towards gcc? So much for the whole open-source, contribute-to-the-community philosophy.
Maybe because, oh, they didn't want to? Just because a company participates in Open Source projects doesn't mean that they have to participate ONLY in OS projects. In this case, they built a chip, then they built a compiler for that chip, and have freely distributed it. I, for one, think that's pretty nice of them. After all, there's NOTHING stopping you from using GCC instead of the new compiler. Your choice. Just like THEY made a choice. See how that works?
I'm personally rather tired of companies which consider "contributing to the open-source community" to be "lets send in drivers for our proprietary hardware which only we will ever need." That's NOT contributing to the community, that's getting your foot into the kernel.
If I have an older (or newer) IBM box that I've picked up, and I want to run some Open Source operating system on it, like Linux, I'm DAMN HAPPY that IBM contributed the stuff to the kernel that lets it run on the piece of hardware that I want it to. That is a GOOD THING(TM) in my opinion, as they have provided me with ANOTHER CHOICE. It means that they more than likely didn't have to guess how to do the drivers for it, and it's more than likely in their vested interest to keep it up to date.
Sure, it may help them make money on hardware purchases, etc., but this is beside the point.
Where is it written that people are only allowed to make contributions if they can't or don't make money off of it? At the end of the day, the community benefits from the submission, and they benefit from some sales. This is another GOOD THING(TM) because maybe it will help to show other companies that there is a reason to contribute other than trying to build up the karma points.
But hey, what do I know... I only live in the real world.
It was pretty interesting around our office today. You see, the "powers that be" have long been Microsoft zealots, and me (the head techie) brought in OSX about 8 months ago as a company standard.
There was much belly-aching and complaining, but soon everyone was having fun with their PowerBooks and G4 towers.
Today, with the MS worm spreading like crazy, everyone was almost laughing out loud. The MS worm actually caused a euphoric aura in our office because everyone was laughing at all the other offices that were running MS, who had to deal with worms and such.
It was quite interesting to hear the office generally realize that it's been a LONG time since they'd run into any problems with email infections or hacked boxes.
If it's because, like some people postulate, that OSX has such a minority marketshare, then I hope it stays that way! We're kind of enjoying the benefits.
On a side note, I find it interesting that all of the TV/newspaper media I've seen have been referring to it now as specifically a Windows worm, as opposed to just a generic computer virus or problem. I think it was the special note to "Billy" rebuking him for his lousy software that did it.
Reminds me of a project I worked on where we had a contractor doing some Oracle stuff, and he erroneously spelled "password" with an extra "s", as in "passsword".
*sigh*
The entire length of the project (just over a year) we were constantly having to re-learn how to spell password (there was a lot of security in the site). We finally managed to do so by the end of the project. Well, now that it's over, I'm _STILL_ trying to un-re-learn how to spell it!
To this day, it amazes me how much grief one little "s" can cause.
Sure, Oracle probably has more "technical" staff than Geico, but I'd bet it also has more non-technical staff than Geico.
Having spent a lot of time at the Oracle head offices in Redwood Shores, I can tell you that the "technical" staff are hugely outnumbered by the non-technical, and in a switch like this, it's not like the techies are going do drop everything and help or train the non-techies.
I'd imagine that, if anything, Oracle would be in a better position to come up with that "last mile" to help Linux easily replace Windows on the desktop, and probably have a better internal training system to deal with the switchover.
I also wouldn't be surprised if they used their own switchover as some sort of case study marketing to show the world how it went for them. After all, they are becoming HUGE linux fans, and I haven't heard much "Oracle on Sun" rumblings coming from them lately, but everywhere I look it's "Oracle on Linux".
Don't make the assumption that everybody at Oracle is a code writer... there are LOTS, and I mean LOTS, of non-technical people working there. Just because it's a software company doesn't mean that every, or even most, employees are technical. And, most of them were initially running Windows.
Hell, Larry himself will be running Linux instead of Windows, as that's no different than all the marketing people, product managers, doc writers, etc., that are not "technical".
That's about as much of a non-technical workforce as you can get in modern business, even though they may have technical components.
It's not like the coders are going to drop everything and teach people how it all works.
I don't doubt that at all, but now the issue was their benefit in sniper rifles, in particular those made out of Gauss guns. And I think my point still holds, that subsonic is not your typical method of choice for sniper rifles
Hmmm... some people/snipers would beg to differ with you.
You may wish to check out these titles for some interesting concepts/tidbits:
I found an interesting discussion over on gigalaw that goes something like this:
> Copyright infringement is not theft by any reasonable definition of the > word theft.
I disagree. One can define theft as taking an item that one is not legally entitled to. I think that is a reasonable definition of theft, and copyright infringement typically meets this defintion. The most common argument against calling copyright "theft" is that nothing is taken from the owner. Of course, that is also not true. The owner's IP is taken without their permission. Another argument is that the owner is not prevented from using the IP. Again, that is not totally true. Infringement typically reduces the value of the owner's IP (because unauthorized copies dilute the marketplace), and thus the owner has lost something. Often, anauthorized uses are inferior in quality, hurting the owners reputation. The fact that the owner has an infinite supply of the IP is not relevant to the issue, IMHO.
Some interesting points to ponder.
As well, the quality of the pics seems to be good enough to read the contents of a page. I just tried it with my phone, and it made a good copy that I could read.
I also believe that the act of going into a business that sells copyrighted material, and illegally copying that material into a digital format, and then leaving with those illegal copies, could be reasonalbly described (by the layperson) as "Digital Shoplifting".
When it comes to legal terms, most people don't even know the technical difference between theft, stealing, and larceny. I think this term is a reasonable one for a newspaper to use, as it conveys the actions taking place.
Semantics aside, if you take something without paying for it (assuming the creator/owner of that thing intended for you to pay for it), regardless of whether or not it is a physical object or a digital copy, or if it doesn't seem to adversely affect the owner, it is still wrong, and I call it stealing.
Just because you can't afford it, and the "original" still exists, doesn't make it acceptable, or justifiable. It also doesn't mean that you SHOULD be able to benefit from it.
If you can't afford to pay for it, WHY should you get to have it? It goes back to that over-inflated sense of self-entitlement that I was referring to earlier.
As to the electricity example, sure, that's a little far fetched. How about cable? If you steal cable, it (usually) doesn't affect the quality of the "original", so does that mean you're copying it, and you should be allowed to because it's not a physical object? I'd say "no", because it's a service, and it's still theft.
Maybe selling a magazine is more of a sale of a "service" as opposed to a sale of a physical object... it just happens that the service is in part contained within the object in the form of created or compiled works. Regardless of the status of the object, the service of compiling and arranging information, and then transferring the knowledge/information compiled within that magazine has been performed.
I've always assumed that browsing magazines was intended to allow the potential purchaser to peruse the content so that they could get a feel for the content and quality, not to read it in its entirety or copy it. Maybe we'll see the browsing of magazines eliminated due to what seems to me to be a "breach of trust".
I still think that if you take something that you haven't paid for, that is theft. That includes making a digital copy of something that you haven't purchased.
Now, if you've purchased something, like a CD or DVD, I fully believe that you can make as many copies as you want, for your own personal use. But once again, it was paid for.
I'd say that they had not stolen it (because it wasn't for sale), and that copyright infringement would depend on the use of the copy. After all, 99% of the libraries that I've seen have photocopiers right there for you to copy articles. At the end of the day, it depend on whether you followed the wishes of the owner of the copyright. If the guy said "use it as you wish", then feel free. If they say "use it, but be sure to give us credit for the work", and you don't give them credit, then it's wrong.
To me, it's like having one store give away free soft drinks, and the one beside it charging for them. You can't apply the rules of one to the other, and expect to take a Coke for free from the store that's charging for them. You have to play by the rules of the store, whether explicit or reasonably implied. (Barring the extreme cases where the rules are illegal, like you have to kill the guy in front of you in order to purchase the new Neal Stephenson book).
Might be a little generalistic, but that's the way I see it.
It's interesting... a quick Google for copyright rules for libraries found this URL that states:
2. Periodicals (magazines, journals) owned by the library - Photocopies of articles from journal issues located in the library may be placed on Reserve for 1 semester as a preservation measure. Multiple copies may be made in a ratio of 1 copy per 10 students. Further use beyond 1 semester requires written copyright permission, masthead permission, or purchased reprints. The document granting copyright permission must accompany items and remain in Reserves.
3. Periodicals (magazines, journals) owned by the instructor - Instructors may place their personal copies of periodicals on Reserve. The library assumes no liability for items that are lost or damaged.
4. Periodicals (magazines, journals) not owned by the library - The document granting copyright permission or a copy of the masthead permission from the original source of a journal photocopy, must accompany the item and remain on file in Reserves.
Now, this is a specific case for a particular school (in this case the California Maritime Academy), but you can see that they have strict rules for copying and use of material. I'm assuming that most other libraries do as well. Not knowing much about the inner workings of libraries, it may well be that they agree to some special copyright because they ARE a library. I seem to remember that some libraries didn't carry some magazines that I wanted because they couldn't get the appropriate copyright agreement from the owners.
Now, I don't believe that they should all be thrown in jail, but it is wrong, and they should be punished in some way, shape, or form.
In the case of copyright infringement, depending on the use that was made of the copy, they should be charged a fine, and maybe they should write out what they "stole" 1,000 times by hand and send it to the owner of the copyright? If they reproduced or mass distributed the work for profit, then yeah, fine them and lock them up.
If they "steal" the content for personal use, then they should be fined the cost of the magazine plus some arbitrary value to disuade others from doing it.
I view these issues as being divided up into 3 main categories, from minor to major levels of offense:
1) personal use copying 2) mass sharing, not for profit 3) mass sharing, for profit
Right beneath the point where I said "this isn't directed at you, it's just a rant", I _DID_ rant at a lot of the other posts that I've seen on this topic, where people feel that the guy's doing nothing wrong, and that anything that can be made digital should be shared for free. It wasn't AT ALL directed at him, and my sincere apologies if it sounded like it was... that wasn't my intention.
I was just trying to state my position that I believe that the guy who takes pictures of a magazine on a rack in a store that sells magazines, instead of paying for it, _IS_ stealing, and that I more or less agreed with the term of "digital shoplifting" in this case. I'm not saying that copyright infringement didn't occur, but I think it was a secondary offense. (Nobody says it has to be one or the other, it could be both stealing and copyright infringement). After all, the guy's walking into a store that's in the business of selling magazines, he's making digital copies of magazines, and is walking out without paying for them. I would consider that to be more of a crime against the shopkeeper than against the copyright holder.
I didn't say he was wrong, or that he said it WAS legal, I just said that I disagreed with his thought that it should be called copyright infringement.
I also do believe that it IS stealing... and that something doesn't HAVE to be a physical object in order for it to be stolen. For instance, electricity can be "stolen" for grow-ops. That's not copyright infringement, nor is it really considered a physical object. (At least if it IS considered a physical object, then at the same level the bits/bytes that make up a digital picture could be considered a physical object as well).
If we took it one step further, and a black marketer walked into a CD store with a CD copying device, popped open a CD off the rack, copied it, put the CD back, and walked out, I would consider that to be stealing/shoplifting as well.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a lawyer, I'm just letting you know my impression on the situation.
If the guy copied the material, without having purchased it first, or took it home and photocopied it for all his friends, I don't care what you call it, it's still illegal.
And rightly so.
You can call it copyright infringement, which is probably the correct terminology, but "digitial shoplifting" is a pretty reasonable description of what he's doing, in my opinion. Because he's not copying something that he's purchased for his own use, he's STEALING it for his own use.
The magazine is there to be bought. If he goes in, and gets the "service" of the magazine without paying for it, then that is wrong.
(next bit not directed at you, just a generic rant)
I'm really getting sick and tired of people with an overinflated sense of entitlement. "Everything should be free!" Well, welcome to the real world... it just doesn't work that way, nor should it.
Now, if the people that "liberate digital content" gave back as well as they take, I'd probably not be that pissy over it... but the odds of that are EXTEMELY low. For that matter, I've found that most of the people that create things that are generally prone to "copyright infringement" are the first ones to pay for other people's works, while the ones that STEAL it are angst-ridden drama queens with that overinflated sense of self-entitlement.
"But it's too expensive, and they're charging too much for it!". Then don't buy it! You don't NEED it, and it's not a human right for you to have it, so show some moral backbone and don't steal it.
Really makes you wonder about the state of family values these days...
No shit... some guy pops one of these guys, and I end up on the jury? NOT GUILTY.
I just wish there was LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE legislation so that no commercial or non-profit organization is allowed to call, by default, unless they can prove that the end user has opted in.
Oh, you say we've opted in? Well, that opt-in expires every 3 months, at which time they have to opt people back in. That's the way the opt-out stuff works now, at least in Canada.
They want to discuss the case in court? Then they have to record EVERY call they make for future reference. If their LUDs show they called the number, and they're missing any recordings of the calls in their records, then they lose by default. "But that's expensive, and complex, and costs us money!" Well NOOOO SHIT, and TOUGH LUCK.
As to the auditing, "keep them honest" part of this process? Make them pay for it... part of the cost of doing the marketing.
I'm sick and tired of corps/politicians/orgs claiming it is their RIGHT to call me and bug me, and them making ME jump through hoops to try and stop it.
If that's their right, it should be MY right to beat the crap out of them. Seems fair to me.
I know lots of people that have their own web site, but it's running off of their own, broadband connected, at-home servers, where the server is their only machine... they're NOT running off of another web-host, they ARE the web-host.
For instance, by best friend has a new G4 tower at home, and that's what he does all of his email and browsing with, and all of his pics from his digital camera are on it, etc., and it also is his web site for his own domain.
Someone remotely trashing his stuff would have just the same effect as someone coming in and stealing the box... it would be gone.
Now, I've tried to convince him that he has to make backups, either burned to CD or somewhere else, but he hasn't done that.
That's what I meant by "personal site" maintainers...
Slashdot Mirror
yeah... I've never seen a UID break 700k before.... wow...
I mean VMS has only advanced two major versions in ten years.
Yeah... then all the maintainers went off and started Debian.
I use XDoclets a LOT. I mean A LOT. It does some really cool stuff for us, from dealing with MBean interfaces to just about anything else that you can think of.
It's also very tightly integrated with ant and maven, the two build tools that are used in just about every project I'm involved in.
You can find out more about it here.
are almost pointless, a 56k connection is bad enough without it being shared across several computers.
Almost, but they still have their uses.
I was the IT Manager for Lilith Fair, and when we sent the tour buses out on the road, 2 of them were dedicated accounting buses with LANs, printers, etc. We couldn't be guaranteed any kind of broadband connection at our stops, but we WERE guaranteed just about as many POTS lines as we could handle.
We set up two similar devices, one on each bus, and they were very simple for the non-technical accountants to use. It should also be mentioned that each device had 2 56k modems in it, and they attempted to do some sort of load-balancing or connection "stickiness" to take advantage of the dual connections.
They were perfect for sending and receiving emails, and even remote-faxing. We also used the same connection to synch up a couple of Oracle databases.
We quite liked them. (They weren't the same devices mentioned, but quite similar).
My favourite was the spoon factory... who knew that spoons were made that way?
Ok, that's just hilarious.
;)
Never thought you'd see your super-hero moniker or your stylin' grooming habits mentioned in a story, did ya?
Dude-
As a long-time Oracle user, developer, and DBA, I can say that I think you are misguided in this attempt.
In essence, in a few (relatively) short lines of code you are attempting to replace that which Oracle has spent many years developing and proving in thousands of installations.
Your "lack of faith" (for lack of a better term) of Oracle's transactional capabilities, in my opinion, is misguided. As well, your implementation has integrity and performance concerns. (Mind you, if you're doing small, uncomplicated apps, it might not be that big of a deal, but if you're using Oracle, then I'm assuming that it IS an issue).
Your implementation will not have the capabilities or features of Oracle's implementation (distribution, fault-tolerance, high availability, performance, etc.), is open to potential data corruption due to failure, and it will take much longer to develop the application. You say you work hard on the implementation, but I'm thinking that you're working TOO hard.
Also, transactions and rollbacks are a great tool if/when used appropriately.
And is there a particular reason why IBM couldn't apply their work towards gcc? So much for the whole open-source, contribute-to-the-community philosophy.
Maybe because, oh, they didn't want to? Just because a company participates in Open Source projects doesn't mean that they have to participate ONLY in OS projects. In this case, they built a chip, then they built a compiler for that chip, and have freely distributed it. I, for one, think that's pretty nice of them. After all, there's NOTHING stopping you from using GCC instead of the new compiler. Your choice. Just like THEY made a choice. See how that works?
I'm personally rather tired of companies which consider "contributing to the open-source community" to be "lets send in drivers for our proprietary hardware which only we will ever need." That's NOT contributing to the community, that's getting your foot into the kernel.
If I have an older (or newer) IBM box that I've picked up, and I want to run some Open Source operating system on it, like Linux, I'm DAMN HAPPY that IBM contributed the stuff to the kernel that lets it run on the piece of hardware that I want it to. That is a GOOD THING(TM) in my opinion, as they have provided me with ANOTHER CHOICE. It means that they more than likely didn't have to guess how to do the drivers for it, and it's more than likely in their vested interest to keep it up to date.
Sure, it may help them make money on hardware purchases, etc., but this is beside the point.
Where is it written that people are only allowed to make contributions if they can't or don't make money off of it? At the end of the day, the community benefits from the submission, and they benefit from some sales. This is another GOOD THING(TM) because maybe it will help to show other companies that there is a reason to contribute other than trying to build up the karma points.
But hey, what do I know... I only live in the real world.
Ahhh.... to have the proper resources to be pro-active rather than re-active...
I can dream, can't I?
8. "man man"
On top of that, have you ever worked on an XServe? It's a DREAM to deal with!
The thing is incredible, the way that it comes apart, and the ease with which you can change components is sooooo nice.
If I had to deal with upgrading/swapping components as part of my job, I'd LOVE to have a rack of XServes.
Not saying that other boxes aren't as easy/nice, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
It was pretty interesting around our office today. You see, the "powers that be" have long been Microsoft zealots, and me (the head techie) brought in OSX about 8 months ago as a company standard.
There was much belly-aching and complaining, but soon everyone was having fun with their PowerBooks and G4 towers.
Today, with the MS worm spreading like crazy, everyone was almost laughing out loud. The MS worm actually caused a euphoric aura in our office because everyone was laughing at all the other offices that were running MS, who had to deal with worms and such.
It was quite interesting to hear the office generally realize that it's been a LONG time since they'd run into any problems with email infections or hacked boxes.
If it's because, like some people postulate, that OSX has such a minority marketshare, then I hope it stays that way! We're kind of enjoying the benefits.
On a side note, I find it interesting that all of the TV/newspaper media I've seen have been referring to it now as specifically a Windows worm, as opposed to just a generic computer virus or problem. I think it was the special note to "Billy" rebuking him for his lousy software that did it.
I was just thinking the same thing...
"Who runs Microsoft Town!?" "Master Blaster!"
Reminds me of a project I worked on where we had a contractor doing some Oracle stuff, and he erroneously spelled "password" with an extra "s", as in "passsword".
*sigh*
The entire length of the project (just over a year) we were constantly having to re-learn how to spell password (there was a lot of security in the site). We finally managed to do so by the end of the project. Well, now that it's over, I'm _STILL_ trying to un-re-learn how to spell it!
To this day, it amazes me how much grief one little "s" can cause.
Sure, Oracle probably has more "technical" staff than Geico, but I'd bet it also has more non-technical staff than Geico.
Having spent a lot of time at the Oracle head offices in Redwood Shores, I can tell you that the "technical" staff are hugely outnumbered by the non-technical, and in a switch like this, it's not like the techies are going do drop everything and help or train the non-techies.
I'd imagine that, if anything, Oracle would be in a better position to come up with that "last mile" to help Linux easily replace Windows on the desktop, and probably have a better internal training system to deal with the switchover.
I also wouldn't be surprised if they used their own switchover as some sort of case study marketing to show the world how it went for them. After all, they are becoming HUGE linux fans, and I haven't heard much "Oracle on Sun" rumblings coming from them lately, but everywhere I look it's "Oracle on Linux".
Dude-
Don't make the assumption that everybody at Oracle is a code writer... there are LOTS, and I mean LOTS, of non-technical people working there. Just because it's a software company doesn't mean that every, or even most, employees are technical. And, most of them were initially running Windows.
Hell, Larry himself will be running Linux instead of Windows, as that's no different than all the marketing people, product managers, doc writers, etc., that are not "technical".
That's about as much of a non-technical workforce as you can get in modern business, even though they may have technical components.
It's not like the coders are going to drop everything and teach people how it all works.
I don't doubt that at all, but now the issue was their benefit in sniper rifles, in particular those made out of Gauss guns. And I think my point still holds, that subsonic is not your typical method of choice for sniper rifles
Hmmm... some people/snipers would beg to differ with you.
You may wish to check out these titles for some interesting concepts/tidbits:
The Ultimate Sniper"
or
US Army Special Operations Target Interdiction Course"
They are very interesting reads.
I wonder if they're REALLY afraid of people coming up with their own BIOS and games for the HW, without having to license any of the MS software?
Some interesting points to ponder.
As well, the quality of the pics seems to be good enough to read the contents of a page. I just tried it with my phone, and it made a good copy that I could read.
I also believe that the act of going into a business that sells copyrighted material, and illegally copying that material into a digital format, and then leaving with those illegal copies, could be reasonalbly described (by the layperson) as "Digital Shoplifting".
When it comes to legal terms, most people don't even know the technical difference between theft, stealing, and larceny. I think this term is a reasonable one for a newspaper to use, as it conveys the actions taking place.
Semantics aside, if you take something without paying for it (assuming the creator/owner of that thing intended for you to pay for it), regardless of whether or not it is a physical object or a digital copy, or if it doesn't seem to adversely affect the owner, it is still wrong, and I call it stealing.
Just because you can't afford it, and the "original" still exists, doesn't make it acceptable, or justifiable. It also doesn't mean that you SHOULD be able to benefit from it.
If you can't afford to pay for it, WHY should you get to have it? It goes back to that over-inflated sense of self-entitlement that I was referring to earlier.
As to the electricity example, sure, that's a little far fetched. How about cable? If you steal cable, it (usually) doesn't affect the quality of the "original", so does that mean you're copying it, and you should be allowed to because it's not a physical object? I'd say "no", because it's a service, and it's still theft.
Maybe selling a magazine is more of a sale of a "service" as opposed to a sale of a physical object... it just happens that the service is in part contained within the object in the form of created or compiled works. Regardless of the status of the object, the service of compiling and arranging information, and then transferring the knowledge/information compiled within that magazine has been performed.
I've always assumed that browsing magazines was intended to allow the potential purchaser to peruse the content so that they could get a feel for the content and quality, not to read it in its entirety or copy it. Maybe we'll see the browsing of magazines eliminated due to what seems to me to be a "breach of trust".
I still think that if you take something that you haven't paid for, that is theft. That includes making a digital copy of something that you haven't purchased.
Now, if you've purchased something, like a CD or DVD, I fully believe that you can make as many copies as you want, for your own personal use. But once again, it was paid for.
To me, it's like having one store give away free soft drinks, and the one beside it charging for them. You can't apply the rules of one to the other, and expect to take a Coke for free from the store that's charging for them. You have to play by the rules of the store, whether explicit or reasonably implied. (Barring the extreme cases where the rules are illegal, like you have to kill the guy in front of you in order to purchase the new Neal Stephenson book).
Might be a little generalistic, but that's the way I see it.
It's interesting... a quick Google for copyright rules for libraries found this URL that states:
Now, this is a specific case for a particular school (in this case the California Maritime Academy), but you can see that they have strict rules for copying and use of material. I'm assuming that most other libraries do as well. Not knowing much about the inner workings of libraries, it may well be that they agree to some special copyright because they ARE a library. I seem to remember that some libraries didn't carry some magazines that I wanted because they couldn't get the appropriate copyright agreement from the owners.
Here's another example.
Now, I don't believe that they should all be thrown in jail, but it is wrong, and they should be punished in some way, shape, or form.
In the case of copyright infringement, depending on the use that was made of the copy, they should be charged a fine, and maybe they should write out what they "stole" 1,000 times by hand and send it to the owner of the copyright? If they reproduced or mass distributed the work for profit, then yeah, fine them and lock them up.
If they "steal" the content for personal use, then they should be fined the cost of the magazine plus some arbitrary value to disuade others from doing it.
I view these issues as being divided up into 3 main categories, from minor to major levels of offense:
1) personal use copying
2) mass sharing, not for profit
3) mass sharing, for profit
Each case should be looked at in perspective.
Dude-
Right beneath the point where I said "this isn't directed at you, it's just a rant", I _DID_ rant at a lot of the other posts that I've seen on this topic, where people feel that the guy's doing nothing wrong, and that anything that can be made digital should be shared for free. It wasn't AT ALL directed at him, and my sincere apologies if it sounded like it was... that wasn't my intention.
I was just trying to state my position that I believe that the guy who takes pictures of a magazine on a rack in a store that sells magazines, instead of paying for it, _IS_ stealing, and that I more or less agreed with the term of "digital shoplifting" in this case. I'm not saying that copyright infringement didn't occur, but I think it was a secondary offense. (Nobody says it has to be one or the other, it could be both stealing and copyright infringement). After all, the guy's walking into a store that's in the business of selling magazines, he's making digital copies of magazines, and is walking out without paying for them. I would consider that to be more of a crime against the shopkeeper than against the copyright holder.
I didn't say he was wrong, or that he said it WAS legal, I just said that I disagreed with his thought that it should be called copyright infringement.
I also do believe that it IS stealing... and that something doesn't HAVE to be a physical object in order for it to be stolen. For instance, electricity can be "stolen" for grow-ops. That's not copyright infringement, nor is it really considered a physical object. (At least if it IS considered a physical object, then at the same level the bits/bytes that make up a digital picture could be considered a physical object as well).
If we took it one step further, and a black marketer walked into a CD store with a CD copying device, popped open a CD off the rack, copied it, put the CD back, and walked out, I would consider that to be stealing/shoplifting as well.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a lawyer, I'm just letting you know my impression on the situation.
If the guy copied the material, without having purchased it first, or took it home and photocopied it for all his friends, I don't care what you call it, it's still illegal.
...end rant...
And rightly so.
You can call it copyright infringement, which is probably the correct terminology, but "digitial shoplifting" is a pretty reasonable description of what he's doing, in my opinion. Because he's not copying something that he's purchased for his own use, he's STEALING it for his own use.
The magazine is there to be bought. If he goes in, and gets the "service" of the magazine without paying for it, then that is wrong.
(next bit not directed at you, just a generic rant)
I'm really getting sick and tired of people with an overinflated sense of entitlement. "Everything should be free!" Well, welcome to the real world... it just doesn't work that way, nor should it.
Now, if the people that "liberate digital content" gave back as well as they take, I'd probably not be that pissy over it... but the odds of that are EXTEMELY low. For that matter, I've found that most of the people that create things that are generally prone to "copyright infringement" are the first ones to pay for other people's works, while the ones that STEAL it are angst-ridden drama queens with that overinflated sense of self-entitlement.
"But it's too expensive, and they're charging too much for it!". Then don't buy it! You don't NEED it, and it's not a human right for you to have it, so show some moral backbone and don't steal it.
Really makes you wonder about the state of family values these days...
*sigh*
No shit... some guy pops one of these guys, and I end up on the jury? NOT GUILTY.
I just wish there was LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE legislation so that no commercial or non-profit organization is allowed to call, by default, unless they can prove that the end user has opted in.
Oh, you say we've opted in? Well, that opt-in expires every 3 months, at which time they have to opt people back in. That's the way the opt-out stuff works now, at least in Canada.
They want to discuss the case in court? Then they have to record EVERY call they make for future reference. If their LUDs show they called the number, and they're missing any recordings of the calls in their records, then they lose by default. "But that's expensive, and complex, and costs us money!" Well NOOOO SHIT, and TOUGH LUCK.
As to the auditing, "keep them honest" part of this process? Make them pay for it... part of the cost of doing the marketing.
I'm sick and tired of corps/politicians/orgs claiming it is their RIGHT to call me and bug me, and them making ME jump through hoops to try and stop it.
If that's their right, it should be MY right to beat the crap out of them. Seems fair to me.
I know lots of people that have their own web site, but it's running off of their own, broadband connected, at-home servers, where the server is their only machine... they're NOT running off of another web-host, they ARE the web-host.
For instance, by best friend has a new G4 tower at home, and that's what he does all of his email and browsing with, and all of his pics from his digital camera are on it, etc., and it also is his web site for his own domain.
Someone remotely trashing his stuff would have just the same effect as someone coming in and stealing the box... it would be gone.
Now, I've tried to convince him that he has to make backups, either burned to CD or somewhere else, but he hasn't done that.
That's what I meant by "personal site" maintainers...