I think what highlights it even more is that one of the dissenting judge's arguments was "this system is totally ridiculous, therefore, even if is legal it can only mean that Aereo is trying to game copyright law by using it --- therefore I rule Aereo shouldn't do that".
> Yes, it is super scary when you break the law and the law catches up with you.
One wonders why, somehow, the law chose to "catch up" with Aaron, rather than 1000's of jaywalkers. It couldn't be because he had a "manifesto", could it?
You should look up the logical fallacy called "false dichotomy", the whole point of all/most of the arguments you are ignoring is that "breaking the law" is not a binary thing. If the legal system is designed to dish out results which look even approximately just, the punishments need to be in line with the crimes. Care to actually address this argument, rather than infinitely repeating "he was guilty"?
> "injustice" would be if he got away with breaking laws passed by our society
"got away"? Could you define that? Please explain what you personally think the proper penalty should be for what he did? Or is it true that you have no individual opinion, and you actually believe that in all cases, whatever "people in authority" say should be done, should actually be done? I vaguely remember a famous psychological experiment....
> Prosecutors can threaten all sorts of stuff, that doesnt make it A) reality or B) illegal.
Correct. It makes it C) super scary.
You think a trial is some kind of mathematical equation which somehow always spits out justice? You got the wrong branch of mathematics --- it's much, much, more like sampling a random distribution (I'm sure you'll find more than one trial lawyer who will gladly call it --- off the record -- "a crap shoot").
The whole idea that so many things should be crimes that the justice system couldn't possibly function properly if every accused held out for a trial is kind of twisted. And so is the system of blackmail into plea bargaining which currently reigns in the US.
The requirement of attribution in some copyright licenses would seem to me to be a poor defense against the "other kinds of law" (that's how I interpret your reply). I am not a lawyer, however... perhaps you actually know something about this that I don't?
Based on what I've seen posted here versus the various legal blogs I read (and my own personal experience about my own attitudes), it seems to me that technical people tend to concentrate upon the technical side of law (that side which deals with technicalities of interpretation of the legal code), while ignoring that law has both a technical side and a "people" side.
You are confusing two different types of law, here. The copyright licensing is not connected to the kind of attack you are proposing, because you could just as easily attribute a totally made-up paper to the same scientist.
This sounds great! When are the governments of the world going to enforce this with the two most dangerous drugs (based on total worldwide economic damage): nicotine and alcohol?
Oh, and will the same apply to overeating/binge eating? What about extreme sports? When this idea is extrapolated to the limit, there will be no freedom left --- every moment of the day, you will do exactly what the government believes will be most the most healthy activity for you --- anything else will be illegal (I find it unlikely that it could get that far without society crumbling long before that point, however).
> Seems to me to be a perfect balance between high enough to deter people and low enough not to bankrupt people
Seems to me to be a perfect balance between the punishment and the price/inconvenience of using an offshore VPN... but that was probably just coincidence because of the small number of infringements which were claimed.
Aaron Swartz wasn't a Unibomber. Having a "manifesto" does not necessarily mean you are a menace to society (or even to government), it only means you are a menace to the status quo. Government, unfortunately, cannot tell the difference; more and more, it seems that government views its mission as preserving the status quo rather than improving (or empowering people to improve) it.
> The head of French telecoms operator Orange said
Yes, let's just go and believe everything this CEO says. After all, such important people never lie, right?
If I were Google, I'd prefer to pull the plug on all of France rather than agreeing to push the first rock which would be almost certain to start a landslide that even I wouldn't survive...
I cannot know, since your solution doesn't exactly give enough specifics. Why did you even bother to specify the OEM vendor?
I'm kind of curious, however. How does the Canon GUI scanning tool know which of the, say, 30 scanners on the LAN are the 3 scanners which happen to be within walking distance from your computer?
> If you're unaware that this box exists, I have to wonder why anyone reading this > should bother taking your words seriously.
I see those words, also, but I don't think his possible ignorance of their existence justifies an ad hominem attack on his argument. It would have sufficed to point out that that part of his own argument was itself an ad hominem attack (or maybe a "Tu quoque", sorry, it's late and I'm tired).
I anyway never see Slashdot ads because of my use of NoScript, so I've made a point of buying a subscription now and then...
Interesting. I never thought that the CUPS admin interface was very daunting. All very "in the browser" GUI-ish.
Getting networked scanning working under Linux (saned) isn't for the command-line challenged. But considering that Microsoft doesn't even provide a competing standard for networked scanners, the situation under Windows cannot be any better.
> There are no benefits whatsoever to using spaces, only downsides.
I envy you your utopia, where everyone indents using tabs in a semantic way only (and all editors work that way, also). Where I work, twelve different people edit the same code, all with different editors (and often from different OS platforms). Once (semantic) tabs get mixed with (visual) spaces, your argument falls apart --- in that case, it is would be infinitely better if everyone would use spaces.
Another drawback with using tabs semantically, is that some indentation schemes have varying amounts of indentation depending on the programming construct being indented (Ellemtel comes to mind) --- in other words, the ordinary way tabs are interpreted in most editors cannot reproduce this indentation scheme visually.
And spam still exists because there exist a small minority of people who are simultaneously capable of using computers but not capable enough to learn what spam is and how to avoid it. So what? Because of the small minority of such people, Android is broken? The exact same people could have had their "technical friends" show them how to jailbreak iOS, etc....
Sorry - you missed the point which is that a copyright is a time limited monopoly which gives the owner of the copyright control over that monopoly. It's a business thing, and as such they have control over how they want to make money from the monopoly - or how they want to run the business opportunity into the ground.
I didn't miss the point, it just wasn't interesting to me (being obvious).
You, however, don't seem to have understood my post.
Some painters/photographers may indeed choose to go the route of handing their stuff out for free/cheap to get high popularity
No I wasn't talking about that, because your post didn't --- your example, if I understood it correctly, explicitly stated that the person hanging the print on his wall was doing so in an unauthorized manner. (My assumption is that the vast, vast majority of people who would do this aren't going to pay for authentic originals, or even limited edition prints, even if, somehow, infringement became impossible.)
... limited prints...
Limited prints are still authenticated and collectibles. The person hanging the infringing copy on his wall, unless he's bragging about it being original, is still making the artist's limited prints, of the same work or other future works, more valuable.
An artist would have to work for quite some time...
Most artists never manage to make a living solely (or even largely) from their art. I was talking about the small minority which do.
Your counter example sounds good, until you start talking with professional artists (painters --- photographers seem to have a different business model) and realize that they mainly make money from people who are only interested in having original/authentic works (partially as an investment). Since the value of a widely-copied original work is only increased by the copying/popularity (assuming the copier for personal use is copying rather than forging), your example is actually totally wrong (for paintings).
Even the traditional media cartels acknowledge that a broader music industry exists, in fact, they publish reports about it:
Another way of looking at the music industry is through the numbers that the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) publishes on what it calls “the broader music industry.” In 2005, the IFPI estimated the global music industry to be worth $132 billion -- which included revenues from music in radio advertising, recorded music sales, musical instrument sales, live performance revenues and portable digital music player sales (among a few other income categories). By 2010, the IFPI estimated the market to be worth $168 billion, but it had also changed how it categorized some of the revenues and added categories such as audio home systems, music-related video game sales and music revenues from TV advertising (in addition to a few other categories).
Don't you just love how any study that supports your theory is correct, and any study that fights against it is somehow done incorrectly?
I've seen plenty of poor scientific studies which support my theories, or otherwise posit results which I would very, very, much want to be true. It is possible to use one's intellect to minimize the instinctive biases which lurk in the human condition. By the way, good scientists are known to recant and retract old research results when they figure out that they are either wrong or, at least, not reproducible. This may be one of the reasons why there are so few scientists in politics --- when a politician admits he was wrong, it hurts his reputation; to a large extent, it is the opposite in science.
Nothing against you personally, it's very common among all people. Confirmation bias. You and I could argue exact opposite things, yet cite the exact same facts - we'll just interpret them differently.
Which is why reproducibility and predictive power are how scientific results are confirmed correct --- not by pure argumentation.
I'm still waiting for the anti-GMO people to produce a well-run, reproducible research study which confirms their beliefs.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what highlights it even more is that one of the dissenting judge's arguments was "this system is totally ridiculous, therefore, even if is legal it can only mean that Aereo is trying to game copyright law by using it --- therefore I rule Aereo shouldn't do that".
> Yes, it is super scary when you break the law and the law catches up with you.
One wonders why, somehow, the law chose to "catch up" with Aaron, rather than 1000's of jaywalkers. It couldn't be because he had a "manifesto", could it?
You should look up the logical fallacy called "false dichotomy", the whole point of all/most of the arguments you are ignoring is that "breaking the law" is not a binary thing. If the legal system is designed to dish out results which look even approximately just, the punishments need to be in line with the crimes. Care to actually address this argument, rather than infinitely repeating "he was guilty"?
> "injustice" would be if he got away with breaking laws passed by our society
"got away"? Could you define that? Please explain what you personally think the proper penalty should be for what he did? Or is it true that you have no individual opinion, and you actually believe that in all cases, whatever "people in authority" say should be done, should actually be done? I vaguely remember a famous psychological experiment....
> Prosecutors can threaten all sorts of stuff, that doesnt make it A) reality or B) illegal.
Correct. It makes it C) super scary.
You think a trial is some kind of mathematical equation which somehow always spits out justice? You got the wrong branch of mathematics --- it's much, much, more like sampling a random distribution (I'm sure you'll find more than one trial lawyer who will gladly call it --- off the record -- "a crap shoot").
The whole idea that so many things should be crimes that the justice system couldn't possibly function properly if every accused held out for a trial is kind of twisted. And so is the system of blackmail into plea bargaining which currently reigns in the US.
No, I'd more likely think tortious interference, since the damage being done is to the academic reputation.
The requirement of attribution in some copyright licenses would seem to me to be a poor defense against the "other kinds of law" (that's how I interpret your reply). I am not a lawyer, however... perhaps you actually know something about this that I don't?
Based on what I've seen posted here versus the various legal blogs I read (and my own personal experience about my own attitudes), it seems to me that technical people tend to concentrate upon the technical side of law (that side which deals with technicalities of interpretation of the legal code), while ignoring that law has both a technical side and a "people" side.
You are confusing two different types of law, here. The copyright licensing is not connected to the kind of attack you are proposing, because you could just as easily attribute a totally made-up paper to the same scientist.
This sounds great! When are the governments of the world going to enforce this with the two most dangerous drugs (based on total worldwide economic damage): nicotine and alcohol?
Oh, and will the same apply to overeating/binge eating? What about extreme sports? When this idea is extrapolated to the limit, there will be no freedom left --- every moment of the day, you will do exactly what the government believes will be most the most healthy activity for you --- anything else will be illegal (I find it unlikely that it could get that far without society crumbling long before that point, however).
> Seems to me to be a perfect balance between high enough to deter people and low enough not to bankrupt people
Seems to me to be a perfect balance between the punishment and the price/inconvenience of using an offshore VPN ... but that was probably just coincidence because of the small number of infringements which were claimed.
Aaron Swartz wasn't a Unibomber. Having a "manifesto" does not necessarily mean you are a menace to society (or even to government), it only means you are a menace to the status quo. Government, unfortunately, cannot tell the difference; more and more, it seems that government views its mission as preserving the status quo rather than improving (or empowering people to improve) it.
> The head of French telecoms operator Orange said
Yes, let's just go and believe everything this CEO says. After all, such important people never lie, right?
If I were Google, I'd prefer to pull the plug on all of France rather than agreeing to push the first rock which would be almost certain to start a landslide that even I wouldn't survive...
> What exactly is hard about that?
I cannot know, since your solution doesn't exactly give enough specifics. Why did you even bother to specify the OEM vendor?
I'm kind of curious, however. How does the Canon GUI scanning tool know which of the, say, 30 scanners on the LAN are the 3 scanners which happen to be within walking distance from your computer?
Might want to try Greasemonkey + Moderatrix .... works for me!
Or, as the AC said, you can use NoScript to block JS.
> If you're unaware that this box exists, I have to wonder why anyone reading this
> should bother taking your words seriously.
I see those words, also, but I don't think his possible ignorance of their existence justifies an ad hominem attack on his argument. It would have sufficed to point out that that part of his own argument was itself an ad hominem attack (or maybe a "Tu quoque", sorry, it's late and I'm tired).
I anyway never see Slashdot ads because of my use of NoScript, so I've made a point of buying a subscription now and then...
> until you get to things like adding printers
Interesting. I never thought that the CUPS admin interface was very daunting. All very "in the browser" GUI-ish.
Getting networked scanning working under Linux (saned) isn't for the command-line challenged. But considering that Microsoft doesn't even provide a competing standard for networked scanners, the situation under Windows cannot be any better.
> Of the rockets fired at Israel they only managed to shoot down about half.
This is a "feature", not a bug. The targeting calculation take into consideration the landing point of the rocket.
> There are no benefits whatsoever to using spaces, only downsides.
I envy you your utopia, where everyone indents using tabs in a semantic way only (and all editors work that way, also). Where I work, twelve different people edit the same code, all with different editors (and often from different OS platforms). Once (semantic) tabs get mixed with (visual) spaces, your argument falls apart --- in that case, it is would be infinitely better if everyone would use spaces.
Another drawback with using tabs semantically, is that some indentation schemes have varying amounts of indentation depending on the programming construct being indented (Ellemtel comes to mind) --- in other words, the ordinary way tabs are interpreted in most editors cannot reproduce this indentation scheme visually.
Did someone check the "Hemingway" radio box on that random post generator?
Damn. I was hoping he might solve the problem of human mortality for me.
And spam still exists because there exist a small minority of people who are simultaneously capable of using computers but not capable enough to learn what spam is and how to avoid it. So what? Because of the small minority of such people, Android is broken? The exact same people could have had their "technical friends" show them how to jailbreak iOS, etc....
We seem to be arguing past each other.
I didn't miss the point, it just wasn't interesting to me (being obvious).
You, however, don't seem to have understood my post.
No I wasn't talking about that, because your post didn't --- your example, if I understood it correctly, explicitly stated that the person hanging the print on his wall was doing so in an unauthorized manner. (My assumption is that the vast, vast majority of people who would do this aren't going to pay for authentic originals, or even limited edition prints, even if, somehow, infringement became impossible.)
Limited prints are still authenticated and collectibles. The person hanging the infringing copy on his wall, unless he's bragging about it being original, is still making the artist's limited prints, of the same work or other future works, more valuable.
Most artists never manage to make a living solely (or even largely) from their art. I was talking about the small minority which do.
> If they wanted to be complete and utter assholes about
> it, they could charge 10 cents per license
Won't happen. We're talking people who believe 4.5 seconds of The Simpsons running on a small television screen in the background of a documentary is worth $10K.
Your counter example sounds good, until you start talking with professional artists (painters --- photographers seem to have a different business model) and realize that they mainly make money from people who are only interested in having original/authentic works (partially as an investment). Since the value of a widely-copied original work is only increased by the copying/popularity (assuming the copier for personal use is copying rather than forging), your example is actually totally wrong (for paintings).
Even the traditional media cartels acknowledge that a broader music industry exists, in fact, they publish reports about it:
From the Sky is Rising report (page 26).
This is the Underpants-Gnomes fiscal theory:
1. Lower taxes
2. ?
3. Reduce the national debt!
Since we geeks all love our Underpants Gnomes memes, does that mean we all have to vote for Romney?
I've seen plenty of poor scientific studies which support my theories, or otherwise posit results which I would very, very, much want to be true. It is possible to use one's intellect to minimize the instinctive biases which lurk in the human condition. By the way, good scientists are known to recant and retract old research results when they figure out that they are either wrong or, at least, not reproducible. This may be one of the reasons why there are so few scientists in politics --- when a politician admits he was wrong, it hurts his reputation; to a large extent, it is the opposite in science.
Which is why reproducibility and predictive power are how scientific results are confirmed correct --- not by pure argumentation.
I'm still waiting for the anti-GMO people to produce a well-run, reproducible research study which confirms their beliefs.