Wouldn't it be very convenient of judges could just come up with whatever conclusions they felt like, after all? "I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch today, and therefore I find for the Defendant. Action dismissed!"
Isn't this what they did in MGM v grokster?
"We know the tech sector needs a clear rule to avoid being sued into oblivion, and our previous ruling on betamax provided this, but now we received more bribes, therefore, we find for the plaintiff"
yes, the GPL becomes meaningless, but it also becomes unnecessary.
The big software houses no longer have legal protection for their source code, meaning FOSS projects can appropriate their code to integrate with their own.
FOSS projects would only benefit from the total abolition of copyright.
Your linked article reads like bad science fiction. I fail to see how anyone can, with a straight face (not to mention a clear conscience), claim to *know* what happened 300 million years ago and then try and account for some hole in the theory.
it's in the geologic record, among other observations.
then there's the synthetic super organism 100 years from now.
SWO: hi, i'm synthetic HWB: I killed my own family over a nanogram of glucose SWO: My breathren and I have eaten everything world-wide containing carbon. HWB: *GULP* SWO: MMMM, lipids HWB: *Dies horribly* Rock: disintegrates as carbon is ripped from it's atomic structure.
I see you never noticed how little your peers learned.
True, You can still score relatively well without a proper knowledge of the material at hand.
My absolute favorite demonstration of that was a final project presentation on the virtues of systematic off-shoring, which completely ignored a multi-round game scenario*.
*in a single round game of this, people respond to the structural unemployment by retraining, entering a new sector at entry level, and working their way back up, in a multi-round game, the "working their way back up" goes away, and they continue to get hit with training costs they cannot recoup.
I'm sorry, but I don't see the hypocrisy in this. If you do I think you misinterpret the root philosophy behind the reactions.
The point of the FSF and GPL is to enforce an anti-copyright/patent using copyright/patent law, under the philosophy that such laws strangle innovation.
Without the GPL and the FSF behind it, people who contributed for free and shared the code would have the project misappropriated by proprietary houses which would lock it up, then "embrace and extend".
This would discourage OSS contribution, and result in a one-way and parasitic rather than reciprocal and contributory relationship.
IF, however, copyright and patent law were severely curtailed, the GPL would not be necessary. The OSS developers would be free to distribute the proprietary house's software as their own, take their source and build on it without fear of legal reprocussions.
Projects currently under the GPL need the GPL because copyright exists, but they don't need copyright law.
Proprietary houses need copyright law, but as long as it exists they must respect the GPL.
Star wreck: in the pirkinning proved the fact that a professional grade film can be made on a shoe-string, and they apparently got enough through patronage and merchandise to do a sequel.
Then there are amv's like vandread: overdrive which show syncing and technical editing on par with and in some areas exceeding the standard hollywood houses.
They did it because they wanted to.. which.. quite frankly, is the reason why I took the second major.
You know, people who do it because they wanted to generally do a better job than people who do it for money.
If anything, restricting copyright to a fraction of it's current power would dramatically increase the quality of our media.
marginal cost of production (not total cost), and supply vs demand.
The marginal cost of production for copies is your broadband fee divided by the number of that type of content you can upload in a given month.
the supply, for all intents and purposes, is infinite.
To charge any more results in a dead weight loss to society.
In the case of the concept of copyright as it is today, the costs to society are even greater:
the entire internet would have to shut down if we had 100% enforcement. Everything is copyrighted.
People would only be able to talk about the weather and the laws, since every cultural expression is copyrighted.
The first amendment would be meaningless, and under the DMCA both the first and fourth amendment do not apply period to the internet.
For a good example of how creativity can still be rewarded today, I recommend taking a look at megatokyo.com
He built up an audience for his work over time, but once he started receiving a moderate amount of traffic to his site, he began making enough off ads to quit his day job. He uses professional grade macs and professional software suites worth several grand for his work, and is quite able to afford it, along with his continental travel for various conventions.
One's livelihood is just as valuable, if not more so, than one's property, no? If you work for the benefit of others, it's fair to expect your day's wage.
I worked myself to death on a double major in econ and cs for the betterment of whichever firm takes me. I guess they're all stealing from me since I don't have a job yet.
We quite simply do not have a good, economically sound way to pay the "creative" and "knowledge workers."
yes there is. TPB, kazaa, and many other p2p projects do well enough to sustain themselves AND have full time staff. If they can do it free, anyone can.
Further, that's just copy distribution, there's also concert/theater experience, merchandising, etc. Want a living? Work for it. Nobody else is entitled to keep receiving a paycheck for work they did 10 years ago.
It's not a "slur" against the youth of the nation, it's a very cold and descriptive legal term: music is copyrighted, and the violation thereof is "infringement." The denotations are quite clear, whereas your n-word is all about connotations.
copyright infringement (or simply infringement) is not the term used. "Theft" is the term being used, and it is all about connotations.
And, we do generally call people on anti-depressants "druggies"
The stretched truth has now snapped, entering the realm of, at best, embellishment.
Maybe the "lie" is that a system is immoral because it seems to be artificial in the cold gaze of econ-101-style supply and demand? Maybe the "lie" is that file sharing is moral? Maybe the lie is that you exist? Maybe we're all just brains in a jar.
Competition will not stomp out the arts. There is more to the economy of the arts than selling copies until your children are dead.
You wouldn't call it immoral to refuse to pay someone who stopped working after their first week, so why should a singer be any different. Subjecting "artists" to the same rules everyone else must obey is the definition of "moral".
Want money? perform live, produce and sell merchandise, sollicit donations, run a subscription service (a real one, not one enforced with DRM), place ads on a site linking free copies of your music.
P2P websites and torrent trackers provide all their services free and obviously are self-sustaining.
If they can do it, so can the people whining about file-sharing.
I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but the ubiquitous use of the word "theft" in the context of p2p file-sharing is a slur, not unlike the use of the "n word" in reference to african americans.
It is used to denigrate the practice and practicers of p2p file-sharing (more often than not no matter what the material shared is).
Is there not some basis for a suit in that?
I would imagine there must be a legal reason why more partisan news sources don't use the term "towel head" in reference to people of arabic descent or "kike" in reference to people of jewish descent.
one is morally reprehensible because it denies people property.
the other is not because only a "potential sale" is lost.
Under that level of reasoning, we should call competition theft too.
Theft is to copyright infringement what "nigger" is to african american. It's a slur designed specifically to denigrate the practice and those who engage in it.
We don't call people on anti-depressants "druggies".
Wow, I sure opened myself up to be flamed. You're right, information does want to be free - nobody can "own" it, it's just one of nature's creatures, for us all to enjoy. And speaking of logical fallacies, this is also entirely true because "299 out of every 300 people" say it is.
Way to pull things out of context, talk about irony, let's look at the part I bolded in this context.
Now let's re-examine the quote you pulled that last statement out of in its proper context:
The classification in the media of file-sharing as theft is nothing more than a deliberate "redefinition" of the word to attach a moral implication which most of my generation (299 out of every 300 people) disagree with.
morality is a construct of society. If the majority find an activity acceptable and not morally objectionable, and perform that activity regularly, it is not morally objectionable.
Another example: Back in the times of rome, capital punishment, public execution, and torture were not morally objectionable. Most people would be incensed if someone advertised that today, but parents took the kids to see people and animals mutilate one another back then.
Note: I am using that other example not to compare filesharing to gruesome torture, but to heighten the point that morality is a construct of society, not what a narrow subset of people say it is.
To most people, theft is taking what you didn't pay for. That's exactly what file sharing someone else's IP is - you have something you didn't pay for, even if nobody else "lost" it as a consequence. That's how they're "pretty close", even though the presence of intangible, non-rival goods is significant.
dirty air thieves (people who live), dastardly noise thieves (people with ears), horrific light thieves (photographers)
if you don't pay for it it's a sin, viva extremist capitalism!
You can obtain legal rights for distribution, but infringing those rights is no more an act of theft than building a business in a residential zone.
breaking the law does not equate to theft.
The classification in the media of file-sharing as theft is nothing more than a deliberate "redefinition" of the word to attach a moral implication which most of my generation (299 out of every 300 people) disagree with.
The equivalent in other issues would be if every media outlet called abortion "baby killing", or referred to the use of paper as "necrophilia" because paper is composed of the corpses of trees.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't it be very convenient of judges could just come up with whatever conclusions they felt like, after all? "I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch today, and therefore I find for the Defendant. Action dismissed!"
Isn't this what they did in MGM v grokster?
"We know the tech sector needs a clear rule to avoid being sued into oblivion, and our previous ruling on betamax provided this, but now we received more bribes, therefore, we find for the plaintiff"
yes, the GPL becomes meaningless, but it also becomes unnecessary.
The big software houses no longer have legal protection for their source code, meaning FOSS projects can appropriate their code to integrate with their own.
FOSS projects would only benefit from the total abolition of copyright.
The same cannot be said for proprietary houses.
Your linked article reads like bad science fiction. I fail to see how anyone can, with a straight face (not to mention a clear conscience), claim to *know* what happened 300 million years ago and then try and account for some hole in the theory.
it's in the geologic record, among other observations.
then there's the synthetic super organism 100 years from now.
SWO: hi, i'm synthetic
HWB: I killed my own family over a nanogram of glucose
SWO: My breathren and I have eaten everything world-wide containing carbon.
HWB: *GULP*
SWO: MMMM, lipids
HWB: *Dies horribly*
Rock: disintegrates as carbon is ripped from it's atomic structure.
I see you never noticed how little your peers learned.
True, You can still score relatively well without a proper knowledge of the material at hand.
My absolute favorite demonstration of that was a final project presentation on the virtues of systematic off-shoring, which completely ignored a multi-round game scenario*.
*in a single round game of this, people respond to the structural unemployment by retraining, entering a new sector at entry level, and working their way back up, in a multi-round game, the "working their way back up" goes away, and they continue to get hit with training costs they cannot recoup.
I'm sorry, but I don't see the hypocrisy in this. If you do I think you misinterpret the root philosophy behind the reactions.
The point of the FSF and GPL is to enforce an anti-copyright/patent using copyright/patent law, under the philosophy that such laws strangle innovation.
Without the GPL and the FSF behind it, people who contributed for free and shared the code would have the project misappropriated by proprietary houses which would lock it up, then "embrace and extend".
This would discourage OSS contribution, and result in a one-way and parasitic rather than reciprocal and contributory relationship.
IF, however, copyright and patent law were severely curtailed, the GPL would not be necessary. The OSS developers would be free to distribute the proprietary house's software as their own, take their source and build on it without fear of legal reprocussions.
Projects currently under the GPL need the GPL because copyright exists, but they don't need copyright law.
Proprietary houses need copyright law, but as long as it exists they must respect the GPL.
democrats recieved a mere 83% of what the republicans did.. that's a pretty high margin.
That site doesn't count the "soft money", the individual candidates, the "favors", etc.
I think you need to go back to school and learn what real monopolies are.
You can also read my sigged article.. maybe you can cough up some of the kool-aid you swallowed.
hershey makes chocolate, a commodity. The branding does not a monopoly make.
All monopolies in fact are "evil". They all cause a dead weight loss to society.
In this case though, google is not a monopoly, it's merely popular.
There is still space in the market for competitors, and the barriers to entry are the cost of a few web ads and some scalable hosting.
But they don't produce what they "sell", do they?
Star wreck: in the pirkinning proved the fact that a professional grade film can be made on a shoe-string, and they apparently got enough through patronage and merchandise to do a sequel.
Then there are amv's like vandread: overdrive which show syncing and technical editing on par with and in some areas exceeding the standard hollywood houses.
They did it because they wanted to.. which.. quite frankly, is the reason why I took the second major.
You know, people who do it because they wanted to generally do a better job than people who do it for money.
If anything, restricting copyright to a fraction of it's current power would dramatically increase the quality of our media.
easy: the cost of a ticket to an actual performance.
Do you think people go to the theaters because they feel a moral obligation?
Most movies are leaked to the internet in high quality screener (not cam) form before or at the moment they hit the big screen.
People still go. They want the immersive experience only a professional grade sound system and 40 ft wide screen will give them.
The Flavian Amphitheatre (aka the Coliseum) didn't just appear when someone pulled the plug on a drain and the water swirled around.
DAMNIT! Now I owe someone 20 bucks!
In economics, value is determined by two things:
marginal cost of production (not total cost), and supply vs demand.
The marginal cost of production for copies is your broadband fee divided by the number of that type of content you can upload in a given month.
the supply, for all intents and purposes, is infinite.
To charge any more results in a dead weight loss to society.
In the case of the concept of copyright as it is today, the costs to society are even greater:
the entire internet would have to shut down if we had 100% enforcement. Everything is copyrighted.
People would only be able to talk about the weather and the laws, since every cultural expression is copyrighted.
The first amendment would be meaningless, and under the DMCA both the first and fourth amendment do not apply period to the internet.
For a good example of how creativity can still be rewarded today, I recommend taking a look at megatokyo.com
He built up an audience for his work over time, but once he started receiving a moderate amount of traffic to his site, he began making enough off ads to quit his day job. He uses professional grade macs and professional software suites worth several grand for his work, and is quite able to afford it, along with his continental travel for various conventions.
One's livelihood is just as valuable, if not more so, than one's property, no? If you work for the benefit of others, it's fair to expect your day's wage.
I worked myself to death on a double major in econ and cs for the betterment of whichever firm takes me. I guess they're all stealing from me since I don't have a job yet.
We quite simply do not have a good, economically sound way to pay the "creative" and "knowledge workers."
yes there is. TPB, kazaa, and many other p2p projects do well enough to sustain themselves AND have full time staff. If they can do it free, anyone can.
Further, that's just copy distribution, there's also concert/theater experience, merchandising, etc. Want a living? Work for it. Nobody else is entitled to keep receiving a paycheck for work they did 10 years ago.
It's not a "slur" against the youth of the nation, it's a very cold and descriptive legal term: music is copyrighted, and the violation thereof is "infringement." The denotations are quite clear, whereas your n-word is all about connotations.
copyright infringement (or simply infringement) is not the term used. "Theft" is the term being used, and it is all about connotations.
And, we do generally call people on anti-depressants "druggies"
The stretched truth has now snapped, entering the realm of, at best, embellishment.
Maybe the "lie" is that a system is immoral because it seems to be artificial in the cold gaze of econ-101-style supply and demand? Maybe the "lie" is that file sharing is moral? Maybe the lie is that you exist? Maybe we're all just brains in a jar.
Competition will not stomp out the arts. There is more to the economy of the arts than selling copies until your children are dead.
You wouldn't call it immoral to refuse to pay someone who stopped working after their first week, so why should a singer be any different. Subjecting "artists" to the same rules everyone else must obey is the definition of "moral".
Want money? perform live, produce and sell merchandise, sollicit donations, run a subscription service (a real one, not one enforced with DRM), place ads on a site linking free copies of your music.
P2P websites and torrent trackers provide all their services free and obviously are self-sustaining.
If they can do it, so can the people whining about file-sharing.
I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but the ubiquitous use of the word "theft" in the context of p2p file-sharing is a slur, not unlike the use of the "n word" in reference to african americans.
It is used to denigrate the practice and practicers of p2p file-sharing (more often than not no matter what the material shared is).
Is there not some basis for a suit in that?
I would imagine there must be a legal reason why more partisan news sources don't use the term "towel head" in reference to people of arabic descent or "kike" in reference to people of jewish descent.
the mintuiae are quite relevant.
one is morally reprehensible because it denies people property.
the other is not because only a "potential sale" is lost.
Under that level of reasoning, we should call competition theft too.
Theft is to copyright infringement what "nigger" is to african american. It's a slur designed specifically to denigrate the practice and those who engage in it.
We don't call people on anti-depressants "druggies".
did those courses involve logic and critical thinking?
they aren't even required curricula in the broader based "liberal arts" institutions.
Our generation is also, generally, the first generation which actually understands the technology in question, and how our society interacts with it.
It's very easy to agree with the vilification of something you do not understand or use.
"repeat a lie long enough, and people are likely to believe it"
No, there should not be "wiggle room".
We have the concept of diction for a reason, and blurring of such terms spreads ignorance which opens the door to oppression.
Wow, I sure opened myself up to be flamed. You're right, information does want to be free - nobody can "own" it, it's just one of nature's creatures, for us all to enjoy. And speaking of logical fallacies, this is also entirely true because "299 out of every 300 people" say it is.
Way to pull things out of context, talk about irony, let's look at the part I bolded in this context.
Now let's re-examine the quote you pulled that last statement out of in its proper context:
The classification in the media of file-sharing as theft is nothing more than a deliberate "redefinition" of the word to attach a moral implication which most of my generation (299 out of every 300 people) disagree with.
morality is a construct of society. If the majority find an activity acceptable and not morally objectionable, and perform that activity regularly, it is not morally objectionable.
Another example: Back in the times of rome, capital punishment, public execution, and torture were not morally objectionable. Most people would be incensed if someone advertised that today, but parents took the kids to see people and animals mutilate one another back then.
Note: I am using that other example not to compare filesharing to gruesome torture, but to heighten the point that morality is a construct of society, not what a narrow subset of people say it is.
To most people, theft is taking what you didn't pay for. That's exactly what file sharing someone else's IP is - you have something you didn't pay for, even if nobody else "lost" it as a consequence. That's how they're "pretty close", even though the presence of intangible, non-rival goods is significant.
dirty air thieves (people who live), dastardly noise thieves (people with ears), horrific light thieves (photographers)
if you don't pay for it it's a sin, viva extremist capitalism!
You cannot "own" information.
Therefore there is no "pretty close".
You can obtain legal rights for distribution, but infringing those rights is no more an act of theft than building a business in a residential zone.
breaking the law does not equate to theft.
The classification in the media of file-sharing as theft is nothing more than a deliberate "redefinition" of the word to attach a moral implication which most of my generation (299 out of every 300 people) disagree with.
The equivalent in other issues would be if every media outlet called abortion "baby killing", or referred to the use of paper as "necrophilia" because paper is composed of the corpses of trees.
The education track would obviously include logic, just like you don't jump into algebra before learning addition.
I'm not sure critical thinking courses would help a whole lot.
why wouldn't they.
Even the worst of students still absorb about 50% of the course material.