So wait, the fact that a juge is against drugs biases him against you having or not having drugs how exactly ?
Suppose you're on trial for doing something that's related to the sale of drugs but might not actually be a crime: for example, telling people which parts of town have all the dealers. Or putting up a public bulletin board which anyone can use to post any sort of information, but in practice is mostly used to post the phone numbers of drug dealers.
If the judge is an anti-drug crusader, he's more likely to (mis)interpret the law in order to declare your behavior illegal, because he wants to stop the sale of drugs, even though you might not actually have broken any laws.
And spreading copyrighted material does harm to the creator's ability to get paid for their work - which in turn, leads to harming society because it is poorer for the loss of creative works when creators go elsewhere.
That's not really harm: no one is actually made poorer, they just might find it a little harder to sell something at their preferred price.
I think it's a dangerous precedent to expand our definition of "harm" to include such things. After all, it isn't only pirates who "do harm to the creator's ability to get paid for their work". Competing products also do that: if I spend $10 on a ticket to Terminator: Salvation -- or a CD, or a pizza -- that's $10 I can't spend on a ticket to Up. Reviewers do it as well: if Roger Ebert writes a negative review of Up, I'm less likely to buy a ticket. If we apply this definition fairly, we'll have to outlaw a lot more than just unauthorized copying.
There's been a lot of discussion about whether filesharing harms creators (I think it does), but I see a lot of pirates arguing that selling pirated goods harms the creator while filesharing does not. Since you agree with selling pirated goods, how do you justify harming the creator by selling pirated material with the idea of not harming someone through the release of information?
As I wrote above, I don't believe that's the sort of "harm" the law ought to be concerned with. It's competition, and like any other competition, it makes things tougher for the competitors -- but the end result is a more efficient market. If I can sell DVDs of The Little Mermaid and offer my customers a better deal than Disney can, then I deserve to take over Disney's share of that market.
Further, you do admit that the release of certain information can be a violation of privacy, plagarism, etc. What you are doing to make those judgments is treating "electrons on your piece of metal" as more than just bits - you are treating it as "information".
No... like I said, I contend that I have the right to write any pattern of bits onto my hard drive, period. If I possess information, I have the right to write it down in any form I choose.
Spreading information, in some cases, is worth preventing. It's inherently dangerous for, say, Osama bin Laden to have our nuclear launch codes. But it's equally dangerous no matter who spreads that information, because the codes are the same no matter where he learns them.
Likewise, your private medical information only belongs in the hands of you and your doctors. It's a violation of your privacy for someone else to have it, no matter where they get it. (Privacy violation is a little different from nuclear launch codes, though, because we presume that you -- the subject of that private information -- are in the best position to know what information is harmful. If you release the information to the public, that's evidence that you've determined that the information isn't really harmful at all.)
The problem with plagiarism, as I said before, is that it's a false representation. If you have a page of someone else's writing with your name written at the top, sharing that page might or might not constitute plagiarism, depending on the context. The violation isn't in creating or sharing the page, but in deceiving a third party.
In some sense, you can think of copyrighted material as being under a kind of loose NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
I think that's a stretch. It's not an "agreement" at all: there's quite a difference between forming a business relationship with someone and holding them to the terms of a contract you've gotten them to sign, and holding someone else with whom you have no relationship to the terms of a contract they've never read or agreed to.
It's also not "non-disclosure", because you aren't trying to keep anything secret: see below.
My argument, then, was about whether or not a thing needed to be 100% the product of our own mind/labor in order to have certain special rights over it. My answer is "no", and then I illustrated with physical property that that particular line of argument doesn't hold up.
Agreed.
That may be, but where did this "ownership" come from in the first place? If I wanted to get all hippy, I could say that the universe belongs to all of us. Any attempts of a farmer to claim he *owns* seeds, soil, or water are really a 'theft' from humanity and the earth's creatures.
Hippy or not, those are all physical things and they can only be in one place at a time. There are other ways we could decide who will possess that seed at any given time -- maybe it could belong to a different person every day, or every minute -- but we can't escape the fact that someone must have exclusive possession of it at any given time.
When you describe this as "rearranging bits" you're actually generalizing the situation and depriving bits of meaning. Once you've done that, you can make a variety of arguments that are true in general, but may be false in more specific cases.
Fair enough. Let me clarify.
I contend that I do have the right to rearrange bits on my hard drive into any pattern -- period. In general, and in all specific cases. (Although I might voluntarily give up that right if, say, I'm running a hosting service and I make a promise to my customers.)
It's my hard drive, my magnetic particles, and as long as what I'm doing is confined to my own property, no one has the right to declare any particular sequence of 1s and 0s verboten. I see no meaningful difference between that and forbidding me to write certain things in a notebook, or think certain thoughts in my mind.
I also contend that I have the right to share any facts I know, about my property or otherwise, except in cases where serious harm to another person would result from the spread of those facts (and sometimes even then). "Serious harm" would include bodily harm (sharing nuclear launch codes) and severe invasions of privacy (sharing medical info).
It would not, however, include making it more difficult for someone else to sell access to those same facts to the same people: that's not an actual harm, and in any case if it's OK for him to spread those facts, they can't be inherently dangerous.
For example: I could describe stabbing someone as "rearranging molecules". Then, once I've made that generalization, I can say, "Are we going to make laws against rearranging molecules?"
And I would respond, "Yes, we are. It should sometimes be illegal to rearrange molecules."
Should it ever be illegal to rearrange bits stored on one's own property? I'm having a hard time imagining any case where it should.
Similarly, you could describe child pornography as "just a bunch of bits on my hard drive", then argue that sequences of bits should not be illegal.
You certainly could. Bits don't hurt children; child molesters do.
Or, I could counterfeit money, and call it "just a sequence of ink and paper".
Indeed, you should be allowed to print your own ink onto your own paper in whatever pattern you like. The problem comes when you try to trick someone else into accepting it as money.
Or, I could download a book, replace the authors's name with my own, and then say that I'm only changing bits on my own device, and then pass it to others while claiming "I have the right to share facts about a chunk of metal I own" - and what's wrong with that?
Nothing's wrong with that. If you can do it without giving the false impression (implicitly or explicitly) that you wrote the book, more power to you.
If you print out a page of someone else's book, write your name at the top, and show that paper t
I was also speaking about paying for a product, which is what you've been whining about until you found yourself cornered.
Come on, I've seen you do better than that. You've refuted yourself simply by repeating the quote: "I'm not going to write anyone a check for $40 million to create an image editor for my PC".
In English, "to create" is a verb, not a noun: an action, not a thing. Paying someone to create an image editor is paying for a service, not a product. As, again, was clear from context: "paid for writing code", talk of "labor" and "time", etc.
You are not providing $40 of labor and services to them individually; you are providing $40M of labor and services to them and a million of their peers collectively as a single entity. They are not individually obligated to you for $40, because you can't create divided shares in an entity that cannot exist.
As the person performing the labor, that's hardly my concern. I have a binding agreement to do work in exchange for money; that's what matters. If I do the work and the money shows up, I don't care who paid which part of it. If the money doesn't show up, I sue, and the particulars of that lawsuit are something for my lawyer to worry about.
I don't think I'm out of line here: you've made far less attempt to educate yourself on the details of programming than I have on law, for instance, but that certainly never stopped you from speaking about it.
If you feel the need to celebrate a small victory on this legal point, go right ahead. As long as we agree that some arrangement exists whereby one million people can contract to pay me $40 million total to perform a service, and whereby I'll have legal recourse if they don't come through, I don't really care what you call it.
You can't pretend your context was anything other than individual obligation and a rejection of a lump sum payment.
No need to pretend: it's right there in black and white. I said I didn't need $40 million from you; I never said I didn't want $40 million at all, and I expressed no opinion whatsoever on the number of checks it should be spread across.
It's hardly emotional.
Well, you do seem to have pulled yourself together since that last post. Kudos.
You're the one who dug up something two years old in a weak, ignorant, and misguided attempt to smear and distract from your astoundingly poor assertions earlier in the thread.
Actually, as you may recall, it was an attempt to demonstrate that you're in no position to call out anyone else's "comic level of ignorance". That's all.
But you press on, not because you have a point or because you know what you're talking about, but because you're a spiteful fool, and yes, at this point, your utter lack of credibility qualifies you for no respect or courtesy.
"At this point"? As if you've ever shown respect or courtesy? Funny.
Luckily for you, I have no problem showing respect or courtesy even to someone who lacks any shred of credibility. My goal is merely to put your present statements in context so that others may evaluate them more critically, not to insult or humiliate you. And at that goal, I think I've succeeded, so I'm finished if you are.
You would need that $40M check from me--whether it was me as a wealthy individual or me as a class of one million investors.
When you wrote "I'm not going to write anyone a check for $40 million to create an image editor for my PC. I'll pay $40, though, and so will a million of my friends", you were speaking as an individual, not as a class of one million people. Classes of one million people do not have friends, nor do they post on Slashdot; individuals do. Nice try, though.
For the record, I would be happy to accept a $40 million check funded by one million people each contributing $40. That's not what I was rejecting, which is clear from context.
No, the proposal you meant to advance was ONE $40M contract with ONE party, a collective party of one million.
Funny how my meaning is so obvious now, even though you couldn't grasp it at the time.
[...] you're just that rabid.
...says the guy who has resorted to lying and name calling. Uh-huh.
Honestly, take a deep breath and read your post again. Then think about which one of us is "rabid" or in a "blind rage". I realize copyright is (was?) the source of your livelihood; maybe I should give you a break if this is such an emotional issue for you.
The existence of piracy / ignoring of copyright, on the other hand, eliminates my ability to negotiate at all. It's like walking into a store and telling a shopkeeper that he can either set prices I accept or I'll simply take the item.
Not really. It's more like walking into a store and telling a shopkeeper that he can either set prices you accept, or you'll get an identical item from the cheaper shop next door. When you go next door, the first shopkeeper doesn't become any poorer; he just doesn't gain your business.
Piracy doesn't eliminate your ability to negotiate, it provides competition. You're offering copies of a file for $X, they're offering copies of the same file for $0. That's a competition you won't win, because the cost of providing those copies is approximately $0.
What the pirates can't compete with is your work as a creator. They can beat you at making copies, but you'll stomp them at making original works. So let them take the copying business, and make your living by charging for creating originals.
Piracy / no copyright, then, eliminates the creator's ability to negotiate at all, and gives the consumer complete and total control over the transaction - no matter how unreasonable they want to be.
No, the transaction is still controlled by both supply and demand. People are only able to get files for free because other people are willing to distribute those files for free. And they're willing to do that because the cost of copying a file is negligible.
People are not, however, nearly as willing to create new works for free, and that's where you come in as a professional creator.
Once you bring in "value added", suddenly cars and crops become legitimate property. The same goes for the digital world.
Not quite.
A car is legitimate property because it can only be in one place at a time. If I take your car, you don't have it anymore. As the owner of a car, you have the right to hang onto that car until you voluntarily give it up, so if I want it, I'll have to pay you (or convince you some other way).
Information doesn't work that way. You can keep your copy of a song, program, etc. and use it however you like even while someone else is distributing copies: their use can't possibly conflict with your use. It makes no sense to apply the concept of ownership to something like that; it's unnecessary at best, and dangerous at worst.
You're right about creating things in a vacuum, though. A farmer owns his crops not because he designed them from scratch at the molecular level -- he didn't -- but because they grew out of seeds, soil, fertilizer, and water that all belonged to him already. Likewise, a car company owns the cars they make because those cars were made from steel and other materials the company already owned, and a car buyer owns his car because he got it in a voluntary exchange: the money he paid for the car was compensation for the car maker's loss of that car.
Along the same lines, if I learn some information (say, someone sends it to me over the internet) and use it to rearrange bits on my hard drive, the hard drive still belongs to me. If I then want to describe that pattern of bits to someone else (say, send it to them over the internet), I believe I'm entitled to do so: surely I have the right to share facts about a chunk of metal I own, right?
Without intellectual property, I end up spending years working on stuff and essentially giving it away to the world
Only if you choose to. No one's forcing you to do any work that you aren't being paid for. If you choose to do that, hoping to get paid later by selling copies, and then it doesn't pan out because people get copies elsewhere, that's as much your fault as it is theirs.
Why am I not entitled to a small amount of protection in the marketplace, so that I can earn a living from my hard work?
Because no one else needs "protection" in order to earn a living from their hard work. You can learn to make a living without it just like they do.
True, but they are providing a public performance- and are actually benefitting from the music indirectly, through increased sales. And if you think that's not true, see how long you can keep a bar full of people happy with no music and no TV. I can say as a former bartender, it's not going to be very long.
The law doesn't require you to get permission whenever you benefit from music indirectly. It does require you to get permission for a public performance, in some cases but not others. Some businesses are exempt, depending on what kind of business, how large it is, and how many speakers are installed.
I realize that I was wrong when I equated a boom box on the beach with a business playing the radio, but the situation isn't as simple as he made it out to be either. Many business are required to get a license to play the radio, and all businesses must get a license to play recorded music.
It's the fact that you explicitly rejected the overall service contract (the interpretation that makes sense) in order to pose a nonsensical one that is at issue.
Again, this is a distortion of what was actually said. I really don't know why you're persisting at this, when anyone can read the original thread and see how it really went. You have balls, I'll give you that, but in an era when the truth is only a click away, I'm afraid balls aren't enough.
You wrote, "I'm not going to write anyone a check for $40 million to create an image editor for my PC. I'll pay $40, though, and so will a million of my friends", I responded, "it isn't necessary to charge individuals the full price. I don't need $40 million from you, it'll work just as well to collect $40 from you and a million other people", and the discussion of contracting for programming labor proceeded from there. What I rejected was the prospect of charging one person $40 million, in favor of charging one million people $40 each.
There's a sensible interpretation of that, and a nonsensical interpretation. You chose the nonsensical one, in keeping with your pattern of intellectual dishonesty.
Again, you insisted on having one million contracts.
Nope. This isn't just a strawman, it's an outright lie: you're not merely arguing against points I never raised, hoping that readers won't notice the switch; you're explicitly attributing statements to me that I never made. Again, this tactic has no chance of success when the original thread is preserved for all to see.
Your loss is compounded at each turn, and it's obvious that you have absolutely nothing to gain by returning here time after time to troll.
I wouldn't gain anything by trolling, that's true. But I do gain something by exposing your dishonesty, and so does every other Slashdotter.
It's quite plain what you said, and it had nothing to do with contracting for labor.
Again, the original text is right there for everyone to see. You're not doing yourself any favors by lying when the evidence of your lie is so readily available.
The point you failed to grasp two years ago is that you can't enter into one million, $40 contracts unless you are providing one million discrete things, be they products or services, chairs or mowed lawns. What you'd actually be doing in that situation is not entering into one million, $40 contracts, but rather ONE $40 million contract to provide ONE complete product to one million users, and the Offeree would comprise a class party comprised of those one million people.
And if some of those million people refused to pay? They'd be in violation of the contract, yes?
BTW, you misspelled "ONE complete service".
You can contract with a collective entity of individuals, who are all taking a share in the total cost--but you rejected the latter approach in favor of the fallacious former.
Actually, I didn't. What I wrote was "as long as I have a binding agreement with everyone who promises to pay". If there's one interpretation that makes sense, and another that does not, it's hardly my fault when you choose the one that doesn't make sense. Nor is it a sign that you're participating with honesty and good faith.
You didn't frame your hypothetical correctly.
Even if that were the case, knowing my intent then as you did now, you could've corrected it and posed a reasonable counterargument. "You can't have a million contracts; you can have one big contract, but here's why that won't work..."
But instead, you chose to put your foot in your mouth by claiming a contract for programming services couldn't be enforced because there was no controllable product.
In fact, you didn't even mention this supposed fault at the time, you just steamed ahead with that "you can't sue someone for depriving you of your time" load. You seem to have made this quibble up just now to excuse your nonsensical response back then. That's a retcon.
You came back two years later on an unrelated matter and distorted the exchange in a sad attempt at an ad hominem
I was just pointing out that you're in no position to talk about anyone else's "comic levels of ignorance". Maybe I was wrong, maybe the mr_matticus of two years ago has left and been replaced by someone a little more credible... but so far that doesn't appear to be the case.
Moreover, how would you even prove your performance of $40 of labor for that person?
1. Their signature is on a contract for me to perform the labor. 2. I performed the labor. 3. Proof!
As soon as the project were completed, everyone in the world would have the right of access, whether they contributed or not. You'd have no power to demand payment; you can't contract to sell what isn't legal to sell.
See, here you go again. We both know the contract is for labor, and I thought we both agreed labor is legal to sell, but apparently you've changed your mind yet again. (Could it be that I'm just so persuasive that I caused your beliefs to wrap around to the other end of the spectrum?)
There's just no way to save your foolish exercise in selective quotes, straw mans, and false attribution
And yet you keep trying to save your own false attributions. Hmm.
The thread stands on its own; anyone can go back and see exactly what was said and by whom. Frankly, I think I might've been doing you a favor by not quoting the other bits of your posts.
You said that you could contractually obligate a million individuals to pay $40 for an image editor, a product.
Perhaps that was how you misinterpreted it, but that isn't what I said.
In context, with phrasing throughout the thread like "A programmer gets paid every time he writes code", "you've demanded that someone foot the bill (up front) for the entire cost of your services", and "your labor is utterly worthless" -- not to mention my harping on the idea that musicians and programmers should be paid for their labor, and the direct comparison in that very sentence with auto mechanics who charge for their labor -- it would've been impossible for you, in good faith, to interpret the contract bit as referring to products rather than labor.
You can continue to distort and lie and grind your ax
Yes, try to paint me as the one who's been distorting and lying. Maybe you'll manage to fool someone one of these days. Good luck with that.:)
As a patent attorney, I can tell you it doesn't do a lick of good to explain anything here. Seriously, Slashdotters are so anti-IP it's like screaming into the wind for all the good it does.
Even people who disagree with the law can still understand it. "Know thy enemy" and all that.
A contract for labor is breached when the labor goes without reimbursement, not when the clock ticks by.
So you've come around? When I said previously that a contract for programming labor could be enforced against someone who refused to pay for the labor, you said the person who performed the labor would have "nothing to latch onto in a dispute". Glad to see you've realized the error in that.
A software product is a product. It was not labor without production.
Oh dear, here you go again. I suppose you think mowing lawns isn't labor without production either because it results in a "mown lawn product"? I guess if all you know is products, it must be hard to wrap your mind around the concept of hiring someone to perform a service, like writing code or cutting grass -- but trust me, it's quite common.
Notice how you still can't return to the topic?
The topic of businesses being required to pay a license fee for playing music in public, even from radio or TV in many cases? I thought we were in agreement on that.
I'm not disputing your legal cites. Apparently a person playing music on the beach with his own boom box is, in fact, in a different legal class than the businesses that are required to pay when they play the radio. My mistake.
I still encourage people to read your invariable resort to trolling and distortion.
I also encourage people to scour my posts for any hint of such things. And when they can't find it, I encourage them to read the rest of the thread I linked to -- the quotes I pulled aren't even close to the most ignorant or nonsensical things you said there.
In a world where BILLIONS of consumers can rate and review the efficacy and truthfulness of products on the web, government regulation of healing tonics is worthless.
Tell that to the people who lost their sense of smell by using Zicam.
Meat packing? Do you really think government regulations has made food safer, or market forces?
Government regulation.
Market forces can't go into a food processing plant and see what's going into the vats. Health inspectors can. Market forces can cut off your future profits, but they can't put you in jail or take away the fortunes you've already earned by turning your employees into sausage.
Investment banking is a world regulated by government's manipulation of their near-worthless fiat currency. I don't blame the banks, I blame the people in charge of creating the fluff-money most people think has value over their lifetimes.
As opposed to, say, gold, which is a fluff-metal most people think has value over their lifetimes. The only difference is the gold supply is controlled unpredictably by mining companies, natural deposits, and industrial use, rather than regulators who control the supply intentionally to achieve policy goals.
Actually, all that extra context does is further illustrate your ignorance. Employers already look to hire the cheapest programmers they can, often from overseas. Copyright has nothing to do with outsourcing: a lack of copyright wouldn't make it any easier to hire cheap overseas programming labor, and certainly wouldn't make it any easier to write software that replaced human programmers.
And where does that say that no contract in no circumstance could ever exist for labor as a service? It doesn't.
Actually, it does, right between the opening quote mark and the closing quote mark. I'm sure you'll see it if you try reading the quote with your eyes open.
In fact, you went on to say, "Time itself isn't worth anything; you can't sue someone for being deprived of time" -- that, of course, would mean that a contract for labor is invalid. Which it isn't.
The discussion there posed a question involving a contract for a product, viz. a motion picture.
Actually, no, it didn't. It involved a contract for labor, specifically for writing software. But since you've got an eye for context, you knew that already, right?
It was not a general discussion about the law of contracts or labor without production.
It was a discussion about a specific kind of labor without production.
The intellectual dishonesty is plainly evident.
I'll say!
I'm truly tickled that you are so desperate as to resort to flamboyant context games and misstatements to distort and distract from the topic you've all but forgotten. The readers haven't.
Well, one thing the readers will definitely never forget is how you've repeatedly embarrassed yourself.:)
The reason why third party regulators didn't step in before the FDA is because people back before The Jungle was published were blissfully ignorant. [...]
For the investment firms, most Americans didn't really care how they were investing. Rather than doing research they decided to hire someone to put their money in a bunch of stocks that they didn't pick out. Thats what carelessness gets you.
So, we should just resign ourselves to endless cycles of "get screwed, pay a little more attention, wait for third-party rating firms to spring up, put your trust in a third party rating firm that seems OK (not that you can tell, because you're not an expert on the subject, which is why you need them in the first place), pray they don't become corrupt, eventually become complacent, get screwed again"?
I, for one, would rather have an organization with a government mandate that's transparent and accountable to the people, not a smorgasbord of private organizations where I'll have no idea which ones to trust and where none of them are really accountable to anyone.
Managed funds serve a vital purpose: it's unreasonable to expect everyone to hand-pick every component of their portfolio, and most of them would do a terrible job anyway, because they aren't professional investors. Likewise, it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be an expert on medicine, auto repair, or any other service they're considering. If you lack the knowledge to be a doctor, you probably also lack the knowledge to recognize whether a doctor knows what he's doing, as well as the knowledge to recognize whether the third party telling you that a doctor knows what he's doing actually knows what they're doing.
"Without IP, your company [...] would pay smarter and cheaper programmers in places with lower standards of living to do that work for it. They would have no obligation to you as an employee if they had no IP interests to protect. [...] What would you do if the companies, realizing that programmers still wanted to be paid for the time it took for them to write software, decided to develop software that wrote other software?" --mr_matticus
"Impossible" to contract for labor without a salable product?
"You stipulate that you want to be paid for your time--but you see, your time is only worthwhile if a controllable product is produced. If you can't control the product, you've got nothing to latch onto in a dispute." --mr_matticus
Nonsense and fine examples of your intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, I agree they were nonsense. But, since you wrote them, they can hardly be examples of my anything.
Ok, if the healing tonics say that they work and they don't you can sue them for fraud. If the meat packing industries claim they are safe to eat (or insinuate it due to advertising or product placement) and they aren't you can sue them for fraud. If the investments aren't as secure as their ratings say they are, you can sue them for fraud. Eventually, businesses will regulate themselves [...]
That's easy to say, but in practice it hasn't worked that way. It took the establishment of the FDA and SEC to actually make food and investments safer, and even now it still isn't perfect (witness the recent banking fiasco).
Think about how much more third-party regulators would do for things that might actually cause illness.
It's nice to imagine things like that, but again, if it's as simple as you make it sound, why haven't third party regulators actually sprung up and done anything? No one stopped third party food and drug regulators from coming into existence before the FDA, so where were they? Where were the independent securities rating agencies during the recent banking fiasco? They were in the pockets of the very institutions they were supposed to be rating.
The only way to have a truly free government is to have a government that protects only against force and fraud.
If so, then people who ask for a "truly free government" should be careful what they wish for.
That way you have freedom to do whatever you want to while being safe because of the government.
Well, no, not quite. A ban on force and fraud is, itself, a restriction on your freedom: you aren't free to do whatever you want if what you want involves force or fraud. It's a perfectly justified restriction, but it's still a restriction.
More importantly, a government that only protects against force and fraud is a government that doesn't regulate industry. We've seen where that leads, from healing tonics to meat packing to investment banking. There's plenty of deception and destruction that doesn't quite fall under the umbrella of "force and fraud".
Ah, so in surrender you turn to straw men and fallacious ad hominems.
Nah, no strawmen or fallacies there, just your own statements preserved for public amusement. I will admit it's an ad hominem, but that's hardly inappropriate in response to your own. You want to talk about comic ignorance, well, now yours is on display.
Neither of your propositions are supported by the content of those links. Sensationalism, distortion, and distraction are just not viable responses.
Heh. Apparently denial is a viable response to embarrassing facts though, huh? "Move along, people! Nothing to see here!"
The square footage requirements are for 110(5)(B) use, which are entities not using a single receiving apparatus of the kind commonly used in private homes. These are bars, restaurants, gas stations, etc. with multi-room, multi-speaker setups, walls of televisions and so on. They are subject to size and equipment limitations if they are claiming the free exemption.
Yes, that's what I said: businesses are, in some cases, required to pay for a license to play music for their customers, even when they're only playing the radio. Thanks for confirming it.
At this point, your displays of ignorance have reached comic levels.
Wow. That's quite a statement, coming from someone who thinks the existence of copyright is the only reason software companies haven't developed "software that wrote other software" and made human programmers obsolete, and that it's impossible to contract someone to perform labor unless that labor results in a salable product.
8. I'm interested in playing music in my restaurant or other business. I know that I need permission for live performances. Do I need permission if I am using only CD's, records, tapes, radio or TV?
Yes, you will need permission to play records or tapes in your establishment.
Perhaps I was mistaken and should've referred to recordings instead of the radio. The page describes exemptions, but they only apply to radio and TV broadcasts, and only to certain businesses and speaker setups: you still need a license if your business covers 3750+ sq ft and has more than 6 speakers, for instance.
How about not asserting challenges alleging an "inconsistency" without possession of the requisite knowledge to establish it?
How about not lying by omission by ignoring the licensing requirements for music recordings and the size- and speaker-count-based exceptions to the radio and TV exemptions?
No. Further transmission is retransmission, as defined in section 101 and clarified in the committee notes. "Sound waves" in the air are not transmissions; a loudspeaker is not a transmitter.
All right, then why are businesses hounded for playing the radio for their customers? Those businesses aren't making a "direct charge" to see or hear the transmission.
Please stop with the outlandish displays of ignorance.
If we're ignorant, then how about enlightening us instead of just calling names?
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So wait, the fact that a juge is against drugs biases him against you having or not having drugs how exactly ?
Suppose you're on trial for doing something that's related to the sale of drugs but might not actually be a crime: for example, telling people which parts of town have all the dealers. Or putting up a public bulletin board which anyone can use to post any sort of information, but in practice is mostly used to post the phone numbers of drug dealers.
If the judge is an anti-drug crusader, he's more likely to (mis)interpret the law in order to declare your behavior illegal, because he wants to stop the sale of drugs, even though you might not actually have broken any laws.
And spreading copyrighted material does harm to the creator's ability to get paid for their work - which in turn, leads to harming society because it is poorer for the loss of creative works when creators go elsewhere.
That's not really harm: no one is actually made poorer, they just might find it a little harder to sell something at their preferred price.
I think it's a dangerous precedent to expand our definition of "harm" to include such things. After all, it isn't only pirates who "do harm to the creator's ability to get paid for their work". Competing products also do that: if I spend $10 on a ticket to Terminator: Salvation -- or a CD, or a pizza -- that's $10 I can't spend on a ticket to Up. Reviewers do it as well: if Roger Ebert writes a negative review of Up, I'm less likely to buy a ticket. If we apply this definition fairly, we'll have to outlaw a lot more than just unauthorized copying.
There's been a lot of discussion about whether filesharing harms creators (I think it does), but I see a lot of pirates arguing that selling pirated goods harms the creator while filesharing does not. Since you agree with selling pirated goods, how do you justify harming the creator by selling pirated material with the idea of not harming someone through the release of information?
As I wrote above, I don't believe that's the sort of "harm" the law ought to be concerned with. It's competition, and like any other competition, it makes things tougher for the competitors -- but the end result is a more efficient market. If I can sell DVDs of The Little Mermaid and offer my customers a better deal than Disney can, then I deserve to take over Disney's share of that market.
Further, you do admit that the release of certain information can be a violation of privacy, plagarism, etc. What you are doing to make those judgments is treating "electrons on your piece of metal" as more than just bits - you are treating it as "information".
No... like I said, I contend that I have the right to write any pattern of bits onto my hard drive, period. If I possess information, I have the right to write it down in any form I choose.
Spreading information, in some cases, is worth preventing. It's inherently dangerous for, say, Osama bin Laden to have our nuclear launch codes. But it's equally dangerous no matter who spreads that information, because the codes are the same no matter where he learns them.
Likewise, your private medical information only belongs in the hands of you and your doctors. It's a violation of your privacy for someone else to have it, no matter where they get it. (Privacy violation is a little different from nuclear launch codes, though, because we presume that you -- the subject of that private information -- are in the best position to know what information is harmful. If you release the information to the public, that's evidence that you've determined that the information isn't really harmful at all.)
The problem with plagiarism, as I said before, is that it's a false representation. If you have a page of someone else's writing with your name written at the top, sharing that page might or might not constitute plagiarism, depending on the context. The violation isn't in creating or sharing the page, but in deceiving a third party.
In some sense, you can think of copyrighted material as being under a kind of loose NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
I think that's a stretch. It's not an "agreement" at all: there's quite a difference between forming a business relationship with someone and holding them to the terms of a contract you've gotten them to sign, and holding someone else with whom you have no relationship to the terms of a contract they've never read or agreed to.
It's also not "non-disclosure", because you aren't trying to keep anything secret: see below.
The reason t
My argument, then, was about whether or not a thing needed to be 100% the product of our own mind/labor in order to have certain special rights over it. My answer is "no", and then I illustrated with physical property that that particular line of argument doesn't hold up.
Agreed.
That may be, but where did this "ownership" come from in the first place? If I wanted to get all hippy, I could say that the universe belongs to all of us. Any attempts of a farmer to claim he *owns* seeds, soil, or water are really a 'theft' from humanity and the earth's creatures.
Hippy or not, those are all physical things and they can only be in one place at a time. There are other ways we could decide who will possess that seed at any given time -- maybe it could belong to a different person every day, or every minute -- but we can't escape the fact that someone must have exclusive possession of it at any given time.
When you describe this as "rearranging bits" you're actually generalizing the situation and depriving bits of meaning. Once you've done that, you can make a variety of arguments that are true in general, but may be false in more specific cases.
Fair enough. Let me clarify.
I contend that I do have the right to rearrange bits on my hard drive into any pattern -- period. In general, and in all specific cases. (Although I might voluntarily give up that right if, say, I'm running a hosting service and I make a promise to my customers.)
It's my hard drive, my magnetic particles, and as long as what I'm doing is confined to my own property, no one has the right to declare any particular sequence of 1s and 0s verboten. I see no meaningful difference between that and forbidding me to write certain things in a notebook, or think certain thoughts in my mind.
I also contend that I have the right to share any facts I know, about my property or otherwise, except in cases where serious harm to another person would result from the spread of those facts (and sometimes even then). "Serious harm" would include bodily harm (sharing nuclear launch codes) and severe invasions of privacy (sharing medical info).
It would not, however, include making it more difficult for someone else to sell access to those same facts to the same people: that's not an actual harm, and in any case if it's OK for him to spread those facts, they can't be inherently dangerous.
For example: I could describe stabbing someone as "rearranging molecules". Then, once I've made that generalization, I can say, "Are we going to make laws against rearranging molecules?"
And I would respond, "Yes, we are. It should sometimes be illegal to rearrange molecules."
Should it ever be illegal to rearrange bits stored on one's own property? I'm having a hard time imagining any case where it should.
Similarly, you could describe child pornography as "just a bunch of bits on my hard drive", then argue that sequences of bits should not be illegal.
You certainly could. Bits don't hurt children; child molesters do.
Or, I could counterfeit money, and call it "just a sequence of ink and paper".
Indeed, you should be allowed to print your own ink onto your own paper in whatever pattern you like. The problem comes when you try to trick someone else into accepting it as money.
Or, I could download a book, replace the authors's name with my own, and then say that I'm only changing bits on my own device, and then pass it to others while claiming "I have the right to share facts about a chunk of metal I own" - and what's wrong with that?
Nothing's wrong with that. If you can do it without giving the false impression (implicitly or explicitly) that you wrote the book, more power to you.
If you print out a page of someone else's book, write your name at the top, and show that paper t
I was also speaking about paying for a product, which is what you've been whining about until you found yourself cornered.
Come on, I've seen you do better than that. You've refuted yourself simply by repeating the quote: "I'm not going to write anyone a check for $40 million to create an image editor for my PC".
In English, "to create" is a verb, not a noun: an action, not a thing. Paying someone to create an image editor is paying for a service, not a product. As, again, was clear from context: "paid for writing code", talk of "labor" and "time", etc.
You are not providing $40 of labor and services to them individually; you are providing $40M of labor and services to them and a million of their peers collectively as a single entity. They are not individually obligated to you for $40, because you can't create divided shares in an entity that cannot exist.
As the person performing the labor, that's hardly my concern. I have a binding agreement to do work in exchange for money; that's what matters. If I do the work and the money shows up, I don't care who paid which part of it. If the money doesn't show up, I sue, and the particulars of that lawsuit are something for my lawyer to worry about.
I don't think I'm out of line here: you've made far less attempt to educate yourself on the details of programming than I have on law, for instance, but that certainly never stopped you from speaking about it.
If you feel the need to celebrate a small victory on this legal point, go right ahead. As long as we agree that some arrangement exists whereby one million people can contract to pay me $40 million total to perform a service, and whereby I'll have legal recourse if they don't come through, I don't really care what you call it.
You can't pretend your context was anything other than individual obligation and a rejection of a lump sum payment.
No need to pretend: it's right there in black and white. I said I didn't need $40 million from you; I never said I didn't want $40 million at all, and I expressed no opinion whatsoever on the number of checks it should be spread across.
It's hardly emotional.
Well, you do seem to have pulled yourself together since that last post. Kudos.
You're the one who dug up something two years old in a weak, ignorant, and misguided attempt to smear and distract from your astoundingly poor assertions earlier in the thread.
Actually, as you may recall, it was an attempt to demonstrate that you're in no position to call out anyone else's "comic level of ignorance". That's all.
But you press on, not because you have a point or because you know what you're talking about, but because you're a spiteful fool, and yes, at this point, your utter lack of credibility qualifies you for no respect or courtesy.
"At this point"? As if you've ever shown respect or courtesy? Funny.
Luckily for you, I have no problem showing respect or courtesy even to someone who lacks any shred of credibility. My goal is merely to put your present statements in context so that others may evaluate them more critically, not to insult or humiliate you. And at that goal, I think I've succeeded, so I'm finished if you are.
You would need that $40M check from me--whether it was me as a wealthy individual or me as a class of one million investors.
When you wrote "I'm not going to write anyone a check for $40 million to create an image editor for my PC. I'll pay $40, though, and so will a million of my friends", you were speaking as an individual, not as a class of one million people. Classes of one million people do not have friends, nor do they post on Slashdot; individuals do. Nice try, though.
For the record, I would be happy to accept a $40 million check funded by one million people each contributing $40. That's not what I was rejecting, which is clear from context.
No, the proposal you meant to advance was ONE $40M contract with ONE party, a collective party of one million.
Funny how my meaning is so obvious now, even though you couldn't grasp it at the time.
[...] you're just that rabid.
...says the guy who has resorted to lying and name calling. Uh-huh.
Honestly, take a deep breath and read your post again. Then think about which one of us is "rabid" or in a "blind rage". I realize copyright is (was?) the source of your livelihood; maybe I should give you a break if this is such an emotional issue for you.
The existence of piracy / ignoring of copyright, on the other hand, eliminates my ability to negotiate at all. It's like walking into a store and telling a shopkeeper that he can either set prices I accept or I'll simply take the item.
Not really. It's more like walking into a store and telling a shopkeeper that he can either set prices you accept, or you'll get an identical item from the cheaper shop next door. When you go next door, the first shopkeeper doesn't become any poorer; he just doesn't gain your business.
Piracy doesn't eliminate your ability to negotiate, it provides competition. You're offering copies of a file for $X, they're offering copies of the same file for $0. That's a competition you won't win, because the cost of providing those copies is approximately $0.
What the pirates can't compete with is your work as a creator. They can beat you at making copies, but you'll stomp them at making original works. So let them take the copying business, and make your living by charging for creating originals.
Piracy / no copyright, then, eliminates the creator's ability to negotiate at all, and gives the consumer complete and total control over the transaction - no matter how unreasonable they want to be.
No, the transaction is still controlled by both supply and demand. People are only able to get files for free because other people are willing to distribute those files for free. And they're willing to do that because the cost of copying a file is negligible.
People are not, however, nearly as willing to create new works for free, and that's where you come in as a professional creator.
Once you bring in "value added", suddenly cars and crops become legitimate property. The same goes for the digital world.
Not quite.
A car is legitimate property because it can only be in one place at a time. If I take your car, you don't have it anymore. As the owner of a car, you have the right to hang onto that car until you voluntarily give it up, so if I want it, I'll have to pay you (or convince you some other way).
Information doesn't work that way. You can keep your copy of a song, program, etc. and use it however you like even while someone else is distributing copies: their use can't possibly conflict with your use. It makes no sense to apply the concept of ownership to something like that; it's unnecessary at best, and dangerous at worst.
You're right about creating things in a vacuum, though. A farmer owns his crops not because he designed them from scratch at the molecular level -- he didn't -- but because they grew out of seeds, soil, fertilizer, and water that all belonged to him already. Likewise, a car company owns the cars they make because those cars were made from steel and other materials the company already owned, and a car buyer owns his car because he got it in a voluntary exchange: the money he paid for the car was compensation for the car maker's loss of that car.
Along the same lines, if I learn some information (say, someone sends it to me over the internet) and use it to rearrange bits on my hard drive, the hard drive still belongs to me. If I then want to describe that pattern of bits to someone else (say, send it to them over the internet), I believe I'm entitled to do so: surely I have the right to share facts about a chunk of metal I own, right?
Without intellectual property, I end up spending years working on stuff and essentially giving it away to the world
Only if you choose to. No one's forcing you to do any work that you aren't being paid for. If you choose to do that, hoping to get paid later by selling copies, and then it doesn't pan out because people get copies elsewhere, that's as much your fault as it is theirs.
Why am I not entitled to a small amount of protection in the marketplace, so that I can earn a living from my hard work?
Because no one else needs "protection" in order to earn a living from their hard work. You can learn to make a living without it just like they do.
True, but they are providing a public performance- and are actually benefitting from the music indirectly, through increased sales. And if you think that's not true, see how long you can keep a bar full of people happy with no music and no TV. I can say as a former bartender, it's not going to be very long.
The law doesn't require you to get permission whenever you benefit from music indirectly. It does require you to get permission for a public performance, in some cases but not others. Some businesses are exempt, depending on what kind of business, how large it is, and how many speakers are installed.
I realize that I was wrong when I equated a boom box on the beach with a business playing the radio, but the situation isn't as simple as he made it out to be either. Many business are required to get a license to play the radio, and all businesses must get a license to play recorded music.
It's the fact that you explicitly rejected the overall service contract (the interpretation that makes sense) in order to pose a nonsensical one that is at issue.
Again, this is a distortion of what was actually said. I really don't know why you're persisting at this, when anyone can read the original thread and see how it really went. You have balls, I'll give you that, but in an era when the truth is only a click away, I'm afraid balls aren't enough.
You wrote, "I'm not going to write anyone a check for $40 million to create an image editor for my PC. I'll pay $40, though, and so will a million of my friends", I responded, "it isn't necessary to charge individuals the full price. I don't need $40 million from you, it'll work just as well to collect $40 from you and a million other people", and the discussion of contracting for programming labor proceeded from there. What I rejected was the prospect of charging one person $40 million, in favor of charging one million people $40 each.
There's a sensible interpretation of that, and a nonsensical interpretation. You chose the nonsensical one, in keeping with your pattern of intellectual dishonesty.
Again, you insisted on having one million contracts.
Nope. This isn't just a strawman, it's an outright lie: you're not merely arguing against points I never raised, hoping that readers won't notice the switch; you're explicitly attributing statements to me that I never made. Again, this tactic has no chance of success when the original thread is preserved for all to see.
Your loss is compounded at each turn, and it's obvious that you have absolutely nothing to gain by returning here time after time to troll.
I wouldn't gain anything by trolling, that's true. But I do gain something by exposing your dishonesty, and so does every other Slashdotter.
they're perfectly happy to approve apps which pull down arbitrary and equally unapproved content from the web.
Except for RSS readers that might load stories containing profanity.
It's quite plain what you said, and it had nothing to do with contracting for labor.
Again, the original text is right there for everyone to see. You're not doing yourself any favors by lying when the evidence of your lie is so readily available.
The point you failed to grasp two years ago is that you can't enter into one million, $40 contracts unless you are providing one million discrete things, be they products or services, chairs or mowed lawns. What you'd actually be doing in that situation is not entering into one million, $40 contracts, but rather ONE $40 million contract to provide ONE complete product to one million users, and the Offeree would comprise a class party comprised of those one million people.
And if some of those million people refused to pay? They'd be in violation of the contract, yes?
BTW, you misspelled "ONE complete service".
You can contract with a collective entity of individuals, who are all taking a share in the total cost--but you rejected the latter approach in favor of the fallacious former.
Actually, I didn't. What I wrote was "as long as I have a binding agreement with everyone who promises to pay". If there's one interpretation that makes sense, and another that does not, it's hardly my fault when you choose the one that doesn't make sense. Nor is it a sign that you're participating with honesty and good faith.
You didn't frame your hypothetical correctly.
Even if that were the case, knowing my intent then as you did now, you could've corrected it and posed a reasonable counterargument. "You can't have a million contracts; you can have one big contract, but here's why that won't work..."
But instead, you chose to put your foot in your mouth by claiming a contract for programming services couldn't be enforced because there was no controllable product.
In fact, you didn't even mention this supposed fault at the time, you just steamed ahead with that "you can't sue someone for depriving you of your time" load. You seem to have made this quibble up just now to excuse your nonsensical response back then. That's a retcon.
You came back two years later on an unrelated matter and distorted the exchange in a sad attempt at an ad hominem
I was just pointing out that you're in no position to talk about anyone else's "comic levels of ignorance". Maybe I was wrong, maybe the mr_matticus of two years ago has left and been replaced by someone a little more credible... but so far that doesn't appear to be the case.
Moreover, how would you even prove your performance of $40 of labor for that person?
1. Their signature is on a contract for me to perform the labor.
2. I performed the labor.
3. Proof!
As soon as the project were completed, everyone in the world would have the right of access, whether they contributed or not. You'd have no power to demand payment; you can't contract to sell what isn't legal to sell.
See, here you go again. We both know the contract is for labor, and I thought we both agreed labor is legal to sell, but apparently you've changed your mind yet again. (Could it be that I'm just so persuasive that I caused your beliefs to wrap around to the other end of the spectrum?)
There's just no way to save your foolish exercise in selective quotes, straw mans, and false attribution
And yet you keep trying to save your own false attributions. Hmm.
The thread stands on its own; anyone can go back and see exactly what was said and by whom. Frankly, I think I might've been doing you a favor by not quoting the other bits of your posts.
You said that you could contractually obligate a million individuals to pay $40 for an image editor, a product.
Perhaps that was how you misinterpreted it, but that isn't what I said.
In context, with phrasing throughout the thread like "A programmer gets paid every time he writes code", "you've demanded that someone foot the bill (up front) for the entire cost of your services", and "your labor is utterly worthless" -- not to mention my harping on the idea that musicians and programmers should be paid for their labor, and the direct comparison in that very sentence with auto mechanics who charge for their labor -- it would've been impossible for you, in good faith, to interpret the contract bit as referring to products rather than labor.
You can continue to distort and lie and grind your ax
Yes, try to paint me as the one who's been distorting and lying. Maybe you'll manage to fool someone one of these days. Good luck with that. :)
As a patent attorney, I can tell you it doesn't do a lick of good to explain anything here. Seriously, Slashdotters are so anti-IP it's like screaming into the wind for all the good it does.
Even people who disagree with the law can still understand it. "Know thy enemy" and all that.
A contract for labor is breached when the labor goes without reimbursement, not when the clock ticks by.
So you've come around? When I said previously that a contract for programming labor could be enforced against someone who refused to pay for the labor, you said the person who performed the labor would have "nothing to latch onto in a dispute". Glad to see you've realized the error in that.
A software product is a product. It was not labor without production.
Oh dear, here you go again. I suppose you think mowing lawns isn't labor without production either because it results in a "mown lawn product"? I guess if all you know is products, it must be hard to wrap your mind around the concept of hiring someone to perform a service, like writing code or cutting grass -- but trust me, it's quite common.
Notice how you still can't return to the topic?
The topic of businesses being required to pay a license fee for playing music in public, even from radio or TV in many cases? I thought we were in agreement on that.
I'm not disputing your legal cites. Apparently a person playing music on the beach with his own boom box is, in fact, in a different legal class than the businesses that are required to pay when they play the radio. My mistake.
I still encourage people to read your invariable resort to trolling and distortion.
I also encourage people to scour my posts for any hint of such things. And when they can't find it, I encourage them to read the rest of the thread I linked to -- the quotes I pulled aren't even close to the most ignorant or nonsensical things you said there.
In a world where BILLIONS of consumers can rate and review the efficacy and truthfulness of products on the web, government regulation of healing tonics is worthless.
Tell that to the people who lost their sense of smell by using Zicam.
Meat packing? Do you really think government regulations has made food safer, or market forces?
Government regulation.
Market forces can't go into a food processing plant and see what's going into the vats. Health inspectors can. Market forces can cut off your future profits, but they can't put you in jail or take away the fortunes you've already earned by turning your employees into sausage.
Investment banking is a world regulated by government's manipulation of their near-worthless fiat currency. I don't blame the banks, I blame the people in charge of creating the fluff-money most people think has value over their lifetimes.
As opposed to, say, gold, which is a fluff-metal most people think has value over their lifetimes. The only difference is the gold supply is controlled unpredictably by mining companies, natural deposits, and industrial use, rather than regulators who control the supply intentionally to achieve policy goals.
The context is clear in your omissions [...]
Actually, all that extra context does is further illustrate your ignorance. Employers already look to hire the cheapest programmers they can, often from overseas. Copyright has nothing to do with outsourcing: a lack of copyright wouldn't make it any easier to hire cheap overseas programming labor, and certainly wouldn't make it any easier to write software that replaced human programmers.
And where does that say that no contract in no circumstance could ever exist for labor as a service? It doesn't.
Actually, it does, right between the opening quote mark and the closing quote mark. I'm sure you'll see it if you try reading the quote with your eyes open.
In fact, you went on to say, "Time itself isn't worth anything; you can't sue someone for being deprived of time" -- that, of course, would mean that a contract for labor is invalid. Which it isn't.
The discussion there posed a question involving a contract for a product, viz. a motion picture.
Actually, no, it didn't. It involved a contract for labor, specifically for writing software. But since you've got an eye for context, you knew that already, right?
It was not a general discussion about the law of contracts or labor without production.
It was a discussion about a specific kind of labor without production.
The intellectual dishonesty is plainly evident.
I'll say!
I'm truly tickled that you are so desperate as to resort to flamboyant context games and misstatements to distort and distract from the topic you've all but forgotten. The readers haven't.
Well, one thing the readers will definitely never forget is how you've repeatedly embarrassed yourself. :)
The reason why third party regulators didn't step in before the FDA is because people back before The Jungle was published were blissfully ignorant. [...]
For the investment firms, most Americans didn't really care how they were investing. Rather than doing research they decided to hire someone to put their money in a bunch of stocks that they didn't pick out. Thats what carelessness gets you.
So, we should just resign ourselves to endless cycles of "get screwed, pay a little more attention, wait for third-party rating firms to spring up, put your trust in a third party rating firm that seems OK (not that you can tell, because you're not an expert on the subject, which is why you need them in the first place), pray they don't become corrupt, eventually become complacent, get screwed again"?
I, for one, would rather have an organization with a government mandate that's transparent and accountable to the people, not a smorgasbord of private organizations where I'll have no idea which ones to trust and where none of them are really accountable to anyone.
Managed funds serve a vital purpose: it's unreasonable to expect everyone to hand-pick every component of their portfolio, and most of them would do a terrible job anyway, because they aren't professional investors. Likewise, it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be an expert on medicine, auto repair, or any other service they're considering. If you lack the knowledge to be a doctor, you probably also lack the knowledge to recognize whether a doctor knows what he's doing, as well as the knowledge to recognize whether the third party telling you that a doctor knows what he's doing actually knows what they're doing.
Programmers wouldn't exist without copyright?
"Without IP, your company [...] would pay smarter and cheaper programmers in places with lower standards of living to do that work for it. They would have no obligation to you as an employee if they had no IP interests to protect. [...] What would you do if the companies, realizing that programmers still wanted to be paid for the time it took for them to write software, decided to develop software that wrote other software?" --mr_matticus
"Impossible" to contract for labor without a salable product?
"You stipulate that you want to be paid for your time--but you see, your time is only worthwhile if a controllable product is produced. If you can't control the product, you've got nothing to latch onto in a dispute." --mr_matticus
Nonsense and fine examples of your intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, I agree they were nonsense. But, since you wrote them, they can hardly be examples of my anything.
Ok, if the healing tonics say that they work and they don't you can sue them for fraud. If the meat packing industries claim they are safe to eat (or insinuate it due to advertising or product placement) and they aren't you can sue them for fraud. If the investments aren't as secure as their ratings say they are, you can sue them for fraud. Eventually, businesses will regulate themselves [...]
That's easy to say, but in practice it hasn't worked that way. It took the establishment of the FDA and SEC to actually make food and investments safer, and even now it still isn't perfect (witness the recent banking fiasco).
Think about how much more third-party regulators would do for things that might actually cause illness.
It's nice to imagine things like that, but again, if it's as simple as you make it sound, why haven't third party regulators actually sprung up and done anything? No one stopped third party food and drug regulators from coming into existence before the FDA, so where were they? Where were the independent securities rating agencies during the recent banking fiasco? They were in the pockets of the very institutions they were supposed to be rating.
The only way to have a truly free government is to have a government that protects only against force and fraud.
If so, then people who ask for a "truly free government" should be careful what they wish for.
That way you have freedom to do whatever you want to while being safe because of the government.
Well, no, not quite. A ban on force and fraud is, itself, a restriction on your freedom: you aren't free to do whatever you want if what you want involves force or fraud. It's a perfectly justified restriction, but it's still a restriction.
More importantly, a government that only protects against force and fraud is a government that doesn't regulate industry. We've seen where that leads, from healing tonics to meat packing to investment banking. There's plenty of deception and destruction that doesn't quite fall under the umbrella of "force and fraud".
Ah, so in surrender you turn to straw men and fallacious ad hominems.
Nah, no strawmen or fallacies there, just your own statements preserved for public amusement. I will admit it's an ad hominem, but that's hardly inappropriate in response to your own. You want to talk about comic ignorance, well, now yours is on display.
Neither of your propositions are supported by the content of those links. Sensationalism, distortion, and distraction are just not viable responses.
Heh. Apparently denial is a viable response to embarrassing facts though, huh? "Move along, people! Nothing to see here!"
The square footage requirements are for 110(5)(B) use, which are entities not using a single receiving apparatus of the kind commonly used in private homes. These are bars, restaurants, gas stations, etc. with multi-room, multi-speaker setups, walls of televisions and so on. They are subject to size and equipment limitations if they are claiming the free exemption.
Yes, that's what I said: businesses are, in some cases, required to pay for a license to play music for their customers, even when they're only playing the radio. Thanks for confirming it.
At this point, your displays of ignorance have reached comic levels.
Wow. That's quite a statement, coming from someone who thinks the existence of copyright is the only reason software companies haven't developed "software that wrote other software" and made human programmers obsolete, and that it's impossible to contract someone to perform labor unless that labor results in a salable product.
Which businesses? "Hounded" in what way? By whom? Where have they been denied their exemption under the law?
From ASCAP:
8. I'm interested in playing music in my restaurant or other business. I know that I need permission for live performances. Do I need permission if I am using only CD's, records, tapes, radio or TV?
Yes, you will need permission to play records or tapes in your establishment.
Perhaps I was mistaken and should've referred to recordings instead of the radio. The page describes exemptions, but they only apply to radio and TV broadcasts, and only to certain businesses and speaker setups: you still need a license if your business covers 3750+ sq ft and has more than 6 speakers, for instance.
How about not asserting challenges alleging an "inconsistency" without possession of the requisite knowledge to establish it?
How about not lying by omission by ignoring the licensing requirements for music recordings and the size- and speaker-count-based exceptions to the radio and TV exemptions?
No. Further transmission is retransmission, as defined in section 101 and clarified in the committee notes. "Sound waves" in the air are not transmissions; a loudspeaker is not a transmitter.
All right, then why are businesses hounded for playing the radio for their customers? Those businesses aren't making a "direct charge" to see or hear the transmission.
Please stop with the outlandish displays of ignorance.
If we're ignorant, then how about enlightening us instead of just calling names?