Any biologists who can tell me how this is different from what happens when myostatin is blocked? We've known about that protein's regulation of muscle development since 1997.
> On the other hand if the labels have some power to force Google to pull the video without consulting the publisher
Of course they have that power. Google wouldn't dream of endangering its safe harbor under the DMCA, so unless the DMCA takedown notice is itself defective with respect to the requirements of the DMCA, they automatically honor the request. The publisher gets the right to issue a "put-it-back-up" notice, but if he does that he opens himself up (more) to being sued. Even if I knew I was in the right, I wouldn't do it --- the defense in Federal court would be too costly for me as a private citizen.
Thanks for the very interesting information. It looks like you can even buy ebooks directly without needing to buy a Kindle.
Of course, if I do go this route and buy DRM-protected Amazon ebooks, I will only do so because I can immediately break the DRM on them. I guess I'm either a smug, self-satisfied douche, or I'm just someone who doesn't trust Amazon to "take care" of my possessions for me. I guess you know which of those two possibilities I think I am <wink/>.
> A Kindle book can be read on just about any device, regardless of the DRM.
How can I read them on a Nook (without breaking the Nook's "DRM shackles" --- i.e., jailbreaking it)? Can I read them on my laptop which runs Ubuntu? How about my Onyx Boox?
Just because (this particular form of) DRM doesn't bother you either practically or philosophically or both, doesn't make someone else a "smug, self-satisfied douche" for his differing opinion.
I also skipped one of the bundles (Voxatron) because, yes, it isn't "special" anymore. I started to actually research the games to see if I am really interested enough to buy.
However, the fact that it isn't special anymore is fascinating because it indicates:
It is a viable business strategy to sell DRM-less games for "pay what you want" (even if it's only after the first sales "surge" has finished)
Providing a Linux version has (at least some) marketing value
There are a lot more quality indie games out there than I was aware of
When I look at the laws I am familiar with, which explicitly do not rely on intent, it seems to me that the problem you raise with using intent is the lesser of two evils. The two laws being: copyright infringement (you can pay less damages for "innocent infringement", but lack of intent is not a possible defense --- problematic in my eyes because only the rightsholder can know what licenses he has actually granted, nor, in many cases, is it even possible to identify the rightsholder), and possession of child pornography (which is really scary because (1) practically any digital file can indiscernibly contain child pornography which is concealed using steganography, (2) the definition of what is child pornography varies between various jurisdictions (so something perfectly legal in one country might suddenly get you arrested in another), (3) in many jurisdictions there is no clear criterion which defines what is child pornography, because some materials (usually textual in nature) may or may not be, ironically depending upon how the court rules about the intent of the creator and whether the material has artistic value or not, and (4) society is so polarized with respect to this issue that even being wrongly accused, no matter how wrongly, will totally turn your life upside-down).
IIRC, the kinds of works which can be made for hire are explicitly limited, and music is not included. Of course, the RIAA tried to push a law through Congress which changed that (always thinking of [screwing] the artist, RIAA is), and actually succeeded, but the backlash was so strong it was amended out of law within a year.
I agree with you that in terms of economic benefit to the creator, there is no practically no advantage from the currently long term (although I'd guess that 5-10 years is a bit short for some things, like movie rights).
You totally ignore the fact that on the other side of the coin, there is much more involved than people being punished for infringement. Because of the long term of copyright, creators are unable to reuse/adapt/transform/etc... material, which otherwise would have been in the public domain, to facilitate the creation of new works. This is especially important in the current era where this (technology-aided) kind of adaptation has become widespread in many fields of art (e.g., sampling / re-mix in music).
> It appears that they have cured (or at least stopped progression of) breast cancer.
"cured" is a very big word when used to describe research which hasn't even reached the human trial stage yet. The particular research which is described in that "PR-bite" would seem to be far from capable of curing all cases of breast cancer. In at least some percentage of the patients, the cancer will evolve during treatment --- for example, stop expressing the targeted antigen (or more accurately, the treatment will fail to kill a small number of cells which already had this mutation, and these cells will later develop into more tumors)?
The article itself says that the targeted antigen (Her-2 --- gads, what a bad name for a breast cancer antigen) is only expressed in "up to" 30% of the cases of breast cancer, BTW. And the treatment is only an improved method of delivering cisplatin, which certainly doesn't cure all cases of breast cancer currently (i.e., some cancers manage to evolve immunity to it).
Ebola Reston, the only known airborne variety (and considerably less fatal), is unlikely to have been captured by terrorists, but various interests are patrolling Africa seeking samples of emergent strains, including Hezbolla
And here I thought that Hezbollah was a human organization --- now you tell me it's an emergent strain of Ebola? Cute, it even rhymes!
(Next time, check the possible associations in your phrasing.)
<mind wanders> If only there could be vaccines against (other's) human aggression....
> you must distinguish the difference between conforming and non-conforming implementations of PDF before comparing
Your point is valid, however, how much of that ISO standard is, itself, "ooooh, shiny"-ness which is one of the reasons why Reader has so many more possible places of failure? Before discovering better alternatives for reading PDFs under Windows, the first thing I would do to Adobe Reader was to disable scripting support inside PDF documents.
In other words, I prefer the non-conforming, because that means that (there is a chance that) the implementers might actually be ignoring stupid things which Adobe pushed into the PDF standard which shouldn't be there.
> Civilian nuclear technology in France is not adequately secured.
Besides generating bad publicity, what exactly can most attacks do to the outside of a containment vessel? From Wikipedia:
In 1988, Sandia National Laboratories conducted a test of slamming a jet fighter into a large concrete block at 481 miles per hour (775 km/h).[13][14] The airplane left only a 2.5-inch-deep (64 mm) gouge in the concrete. Although the block was not constructed like a containment building missile shield, it was not anchored, etc., the results were considered indicative. A subsequent study by EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, concluded that commercial airliners did not pose a danger.[15]
The Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station was hit directly by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Turkey Point has two fossil fuel units and two nuclear units. Over $90 million of damage was done, largely to a water tank and to a smokestack of one of the fossil-fueled units on-site, but the containment buildings were undamaged.[16][17]
Any terrorist thinking that a containment vessel is a good target, relative to lots of other available ones, is frankly an idiot.
Thank you for pointing out that there is probably some inherent aversion (such aversion being a random variable, therefore having a distribution of values in any population) in humans against committing murder, which seems to be much less active with regard to copyright infringement. BTW, the same thing can be pointed out with respect to comparing infringement with (physical) theft --- therefore undermining arguments trying to make that equivalence.
It's not so much that I feel that my behavior is wrong, I'm fully aware that I am trying to encourage my children to develop (what are generally considered to be) good habits.
The only problem I have with it is, as someone who was encouraged as a child to develop my good habits mostly via strict discipline, the whole idea of constricting one's children to approach life exactly as their parents feel they should, is rather unappealing. (And I admit, I probably could have been a better parent without this baggage.)
I've been a big supporter of the Humble Bundles (anyone willing to give me native games for Linux gets my attention), but kind of "ran out of steam" (no pun intended) and gave the Voxatron one a pass.
At the beginning, just the marketing concept was enough to "sell" a bundle for me. But now I actually look at the games and decide if I feel that it's worth my while.
> The average school kid can't afford to buy books
As a parent, I have to say that I believe, in the case that economics enables it, that's exactly one of the things a parent is for.
(I have to admit feeling a bit like a drug dealer, however, since I instituted a "first N books fully subsidized, all books afterwards X% subsidized" strategy --- I feel it's important that a child who's old enough can get experience planning how he spends the pocket money he has).
"I did not commit theft" is a pretty nonsensical reply to "Guess what the RIAA got for Christmas?....... my bicycle!"... my post, however, is a reasonable reply to that --- although, I admit, a rather weak attempt at humor.
A "Re:...." post title does not really mean much, you really shouldn't read anything into it. All it means is it was a straight reply. Do you often have this problem with "sticky topicitis" on forums?
> Oh, bullshit. No one "drives" those people to pilfer, they *want* to pilfer and find ways.
What "people"? I was addressing a specific person in that post, and explicitly stated how he was an example of my thesis. I was not aspiring to try to explain all the possible reasons why people would want to disregard copyright law --- just him. His reason, in the scenario I gave, had nothing to do with "pilfering" (at least as I would understand your use of that term).
You, on the other hand, claim to understand why everyone "pilfers" --- whatever that exactly means in your eyes. How interesting. Have you always had this super-power?
Do you always think that disregard for copyright law is automatically associated with "pilfering"? It seems it isn't necessarily, or at least with large-scale "pilfering" (the linked study shows that many Americans think it is OK to share copyrighted works on a small scale with family or friends, but many less engage in larger-scale infringement).
> People rip off content because they want to rip off content.
Pray tell, what would you call the kind of disregard of copyright law I actually proposed in my post? Is that also "pilfering" or "ripping off"?
And as for your opinion about the content cartels having totally lost their marketing power versus small independents --- I rather think you're being naive.
> are what is driving more and more DRM and everyone loses
Wrong. Since secure DRM for books and audio is practically impossible because of the "analog hole", the thrashings of the content industry merely drive more and more people to disregard copyright law (for example, even if you cannot use the DRMed files your library supplies, you could presumably withdraw them anyway, and just download non-protected versions for use under Linux, which you would delete after you return the checked-out files to your library). Assuming that democracy actually works, eventually this will cause the reform of copyright law.
The content industry may lose income because the advance of technology has made their old business model impossible, but this is not a loss for "everyone". Many people would rejoice if the large content cartels, which constantly seek to control both the public's consumption of content and the government's law-making process, would break up into much smaller entities which are controlled better by competition between them (and have less ability to game democracy).
Slashdot Mirror
Any biologists who can tell me how this is different from what happens when myostatin is blocked? We've known about that protein's regulation of muscle development since 1997.
> On the other hand if the labels have some power to force Google to pull the video without consulting the publisher
Of course they have that power. Google wouldn't dream of endangering its safe harbor under the DMCA, so unless the DMCA takedown notice is itself defective with respect to the requirements of the DMCA, they automatically honor the request. The publisher gets the right to issue a "put-it-back-up" notice, but if he does that he opens himself up (more) to being sued. Even if I knew I was in the right, I wouldn't do it --- the defense in Federal court would be too costly for me as a private citizen.
Thanks for the very interesting information. It looks like you can even buy ebooks directly without needing to buy a Kindle.
Of course, if I do go this route and buy DRM-protected Amazon ebooks, I will only do so because I can immediately break the DRM on them. I guess I'm either a smug, self-satisfied douche, or I'm just someone who doesn't trust Amazon to "take care" of my possessions for me. I guess you know which of those two possibilities I think I am <wink/>.
> (Still waiting to see an axe...)
Lucky one. Many of us "see an axe" at least once or twice in our professional career.
Oh, you meant sticking out of a computer? Never mind.
> A Kindle book can be read on just about any device, regardless of the DRM.
How can I read them on a Nook (without breaking the Nook's "DRM shackles" --- i.e., jailbreaking it)? Can I read them on my laptop which runs Ubuntu? How about my Onyx Boox?
Just because (this particular form of) DRM doesn't bother you either practically or philosophically or both, doesn't make someone else a "smug, self-satisfied douche" for his differing opinion.
FYI, YHBT
> such a clueless shit-head that you torrent songs from Mangatunes and Jamendo
Calm down, man. Jamendo officially uses torrents for distribution of its music.
I also skipped one of the bundles (Voxatron) because, yes, it isn't "special" anymore. I started to actually research the games to see if I am really interested enough to buy.
However, the fact that it isn't special anymore is fascinating because it indicates:
When I look at the laws I am familiar with, which explicitly do not rely on intent, it seems to me that the problem you raise with using intent is the lesser of two evils. The two laws being: copyright infringement (you can pay less damages for "innocent infringement", but lack of intent is not a possible defense --- problematic in my eyes because only the rightsholder can know what licenses he has actually granted, nor, in many cases, is it even possible to identify the rightsholder), and possession of child pornography (which is really scary because (1) practically any digital file can indiscernibly contain child pornography which is concealed using steganography, (2) the definition of what is child pornography varies between various jurisdictions (so something perfectly legal in one country might suddenly get you arrested in another), (3) in many jurisdictions there is no clear criterion which defines what is child pornography, because some materials (usually textual in nature) may or may not be, ironically depending upon how the court rules about the intent of the creator and whether the material has artistic value or not, and (4) society is so polarized with respect to this issue that even being wrongly accused, no matter how wrongly, will totally turn your life upside-down).
> Why do you use it again?
If I had to guess, it's because American is too ambiguous for his pedantic mind (i.e., North? South? Central? USA?)
IIRC, the kinds of works which can be made for hire are explicitly limited, and music is not included. Of course, the RIAA tried to push a law through Congress which changed that (always thinking of [screwing] the artist, RIAA is), and actually succeeded, but the backlash was so strong it was amended out of law within a year.
I agree with you that in terms of economic benefit to the creator, there is no practically no advantage from the currently long term (although I'd guess that 5-10 years is a bit short for some things, like movie rights).
You totally ignore the fact that on the other side of the coin, there is much more involved than people being punished for infringement. Because of the long term of copyright, creators are unable to reuse/adapt/transform/etc... material, which otherwise would have been in the public domain, to facilitate the creation of new works. This is especially important in the current era where this (technology-aided) kind of adaptation has become widespread in many fields of art (e.g., sampling / re-mix in music).
> It appears that they have cured (or at least stopped progression of) breast cancer.
"cured" is a very big word when used to describe research which hasn't even reached the human trial stage yet. The particular research which is described in that "PR-bite" would seem to be far from capable of curing all cases of breast cancer. In at least some percentage of the patients, the cancer will evolve during treatment --- for example, stop expressing the targeted antigen (or more accurately, the treatment will fail to kill a small number of cells which already had this mutation, and these cells will later develop into more tumors)?
The article itself says that the targeted antigen (Her-2 --- gads, what a bad name for a breast cancer antigen) is only expressed in "up to" 30% of the cases of breast cancer, BTW. And the treatment is only an improved method of delivering cisplatin, which certainly doesn't cure all cases of breast cancer currently (i.e., some cancers manage to evolve immunity to it).
And here I thought that Hezbollah was a human organization --- now you tell me it's an emergent strain of Ebola? Cute, it even rhymes!
(Next time, check the possible associations in your phrasing.)
<mind wanders>
If only there could be vaccines against (other's) human aggression....
> you must distinguish the difference between conforming and non-conforming implementations of PDF before comparing
Your point is valid, however, how much of that ISO standard is, itself, "ooooh, shiny"-ness which is one of the reasons why Reader has so many more possible places of failure? Before discovering better alternatives for reading PDFs under Windows, the first thing I would do to Adobe Reader was to disable scripting support inside PDF documents.
In other words, I prefer the non-conforming, because that means that (there is a chance that) the implementers might actually be ignoring stupid things which Adobe pushed into the PDF standard which shouldn't be there.
> Civilian nuclear technology in France is not adequately secured.
Besides generating bad publicity, what exactly can most attacks do to the outside of a containment vessel? From Wikipedia:
Any terrorist thinking that a containment vessel is a good target, relative to lots of other available ones, is frankly an idiot.
Thank you for pointing out that there is probably some inherent aversion (such aversion being a random variable, therefore having a distribution of values in any population) in humans against committing murder, which seems to be much less active with regard to copyright infringement. BTW, the same thing can be pointed out with respect to comparing infringement with (physical) theft --- therefore undermining arguments trying to make that equivalence.
It's not so much that I feel that my behavior is wrong, I'm fully aware that I am trying to encourage my children to develop (what are generally considered to be) good habits.
The only problem I have with it is, as someone who was encouraged as a child to develop my good habits mostly via strict discipline, the whole idea of constricting one's children to approach life exactly as their parents feel they should, is rather unappealing. (And I admit, I probably could have been a better parent without this baggage.)
I've been a big supporter of the Humble Bundles (anyone willing to give me native games for Linux gets my attention), but kind of "ran out of steam" (no pun intended) and gave the Voxatron one a pass.
At the beginning, just the marketing concept was enough to "sell" a bundle for me. But now I actually look at the games and decide if I feel that it's worth my while.
> The average school kid can't afford to buy books
As a parent, I have to say that I believe, in the case that economics enables it, that's exactly one of the things a parent is for.
(I have to admit feeling a bit like a drug dealer, however, since I instituted a "first N books fully subsidized, all books afterwards X% subsidized" strategy --- I feel it's important that a child who's old enough can get experience planning how he spends the pocket money he has).
> it would also be unlikely that they were not downloading torrents containing copyrighted material
After world harmonization with Berne, that would be practically all material, so... I think you rather meant "unlicensed, copyrighted material".
Ohhhh. You didn't notice that an AC had somewhat changed the topic in the middle of the thread?
"I did not commit theft" is a pretty nonsensical reply to "Guess what the RIAA got for Christmas? ....... my bicycle!"... my post, however, is a reasonable reply to that --- although, I admit, a rather weak attempt at humor.
A "Re: ...." post title does not really mean much, you really shouldn't read anything into it. All it means is it was a straight reply. Do you often have this problem with "sticky topicitis" on forums?
> Oh, bullshit. No one "drives" those people to pilfer, they *want* to pilfer and find ways.
What "people"? I was addressing a specific person in that post, and explicitly stated how he was an example of my thesis. I was not aspiring to try to explain all the possible reasons why people would want to disregard copyright law --- just him. His reason, in the scenario I gave, had nothing to do with "pilfering" (at least as I would understand your use of that term).
You, on the other hand, claim to understand why everyone "pilfers" --- whatever that exactly means in your eyes. How interesting. Have you always had this super-power?
Do you always think that disregard for copyright law is automatically associated with "pilfering"? It seems it isn't necessarily, or at least with large-scale "pilfering" (the linked study shows that many Americans think it is OK to share copyrighted works on a small scale with family or friends, but many less engage in larger-scale infringement).
> People rip off content because they want to rip off content.
Pray tell, what would you call the kind of disregard of copyright law I actually proposed in my post? Is that also "pilfering" or "ripping off"?
And as for your opinion about the content cartels having totally lost their marketing power versus small independents --- I rather think you're being naive.
Whooosh.
My condolences, Joel, but maybe you should get yourself a real trial lawyer?
Don't sweat it, I hear that personal bankruptcy (especially at your age) isn't as bad as one might think....
> are what is driving more and more DRM and everyone loses
Wrong. Since secure DRM for books and audio is practically impossible because of the "analog hole", the thrashings of the content industry merely drive more and more people to disregard copyright law (for example, even if you cannot use the DRMed files your library supplies, you could presumably withdraw them anyway, and just download non-protected versions for use under Linux, which you would delete after you return the checked-out files to your library). Assuming that democracy actually works, eventually this will cause the reform of copyright law.
The content industry may lose income because the advance of technology has made their old business model impossible, but this is not a loss for "everyone". Many people would rejoice if the large content cartels, which constantly seek to control both the public's consumption of content and the government's law-making process, would break up into much smaller entities which are controlled better by competition between them (and have less ability to game democracy).