Then that's unfortunate, but doesn't give you the right to do anything dodgy to obtain it.
Maybe the term "right" isn't appropriate, but the author's refusal to provide access may well give me immunity from infringement liability. Fair use specifically applies when permission is NOT granted, after all. It would all depend on the facts of the situation, which is precisely what the grandparent was getting at.
Of course, DMCA is "fair-use"-free, so there you're in strange waters indeed.
I agree with the parent: bans are counterproductive in many cases.
Better is improved education, and I don't mean what you (probably) think... I'm NOT talking about "educating the (presumably ignorant) public" although that's important too. I'm talking about changing science education. It MUST, MUST, MUST include a high level of ethics, policy, and social study. I find it insane that people can specialize in science and from the moment they step into college, focus almost solely on their technical field.
Part of any responsible science curriculum should involve risk assessments, historical studies of disasters and accidents (unfortunately all sciences have them), and so on.
While we're at it, public research grants should probably include "educational" aspects. Scientists share a lot of the blame for the "public" ignorance of their endeavors. If you spend all your time DOING the science, and none of your time EXPLAINING the science, what do you expect?
Basically, what I'm arguing for is an alternative to banning things is the forced re-socialization of the scientific enterprise. Otherwise, we're bound, eventually, to invent something that 1) is more harmful than we thought and 2) does harm faster than society's safeguards can kick in. Once that happens we're in it good.
that there are plenty of folks here who fear industry consolidation like an elephant fears mice, this is actually a good move. A nationalized phone company will reunite the parts that were broken apart pointlessley, much to national duress, in the 80s. The way to manage a phone company is to have a government-regulated monopoly, not a bunch of oligopolies competing with each other artifically and making it hard as hell to call from one region to another.
Yeah, I've always had such a hard time calling across country. Those three extra digits (and that ONE) are such a bitch to handle. Now it'll be one big company, hurray! If I'm lucky that company can provide my Internet connection and all my music and movies too. I'll just use the "standard" OS and media software, and I won't have to worry about any incompatibilities anymore. How nice.
Sarcasm aside, your post assumes the government is somehow considering whether it should adopt a regulated monopoly model for more effective regulation. That's not the development here. The companies are getting together on their own, which they wouldn't be able to do without the regulatory agency stepping aside (giving them a pass). This is a story about less regulation, not more.
Predictably, this will probably result in crappier service, higher costs, and fewer choices. The politicians (both parties, but in my view more heinous on the Republican side, particularly this administration) play ball, the companies gain, and the public loses.
Given my lack of faith (do you find it disturbing?), I'd prefer a bunch of small companies to one huge one. Companies small enough that they'd HAVE to play nice with each other in order to survive.
Anyway, content owners want the benefits of P2P without the risks. The MACHINE is OURS, however, so we can play hardball right back at them with a firm ethical foundation to stand on. We can fight back with the same methods:
We need something like a P2P "robots.txt" file that is somehow accessible to outside entities, containing the conditions under which our machines can become part of any content distribution system. It could implement (through standard settings) a license under which your machine can be used for such purposes by a third party.
Example: using such a file, I should be able to rig up my machine so that it advertises the fact that any content distributed on the machine must be public domain, open source, in uncrippled formats, etc. Distribution of any other content on such a system would constructively create a license to use that content in specified ways.
In other words, if you stream your content (even in part) through MY machine, then you're giving me the rights to distribute, copy, modify, reverse engineer, etc., that content. If you're not happy with that, don't distribute using my machine.
Putting this in a technical setting like a metatag or *.txt file makes it possible for any distribution software to check the setting. So when they argue that you "clicked the EULA" you can argue right back that the software "agreed to the terms of distribution on my machine." Then they get to argue that it's harder for software to employ a clear and standard permission check than it is for an average person to read and understand a crafty EULA that hides away the fact that you're becoming a peer in the distribution network.
I don't know if my explanation was clear but I think it's a good idea.
Why exactly would anyone want to donate their bandwidth to movie distributors? What benefit would you get out of it? Restricted viewing rights through DRM doesn't sound like a benefit to me. I don't see how they'd square this circle; it's not a reasonable trade-off.
Truly informed consent, I imagine, is something the content owners will try to avoid. My prediction is that there will be an "application" you install in order to watch streamed content. You click an EULA button in the process of installing it. In doing so, you "agree" to become a peer in the content distribution network.
Of course, most people wouldn't read the EULA, or afterward understand why their network lights blink sometimes, and their disk spins occasionally.
the practices of other similarly situated enterprises
Great! So now, "... but everybody is doing it like this..." becomes an acceptable defense.
"But, Mr Traffic Judge, the practices of other drivers is to go way over the posted speed limit in similarly situated areas, so I should not need to pay the fine."
If companies can use that kind of argument, why can't private citizens?
Private citizens can use that argument, in any tort case brought against them. So even if you have to pay a (criminal) fine for speeding, you may not have to pay for the (tort) damages involved in a related accident, if your speed was "reasonable" in the eyes of the jury.
Isn't this what you would want? Why should you be held to a higher (or lower) standard of care than everyone else?
The nice thing about this legal formalism (the "reasonableness" standard) is that it can evolve over time, as technology advances, and what people consider reasonable changes. It's quite possible that a few years from now, a similar case would turn out differently if widely-held notions of what is "reasonable" were to change. Expectations regarding privacy are definitely on the move, so I'm tempted to say that no company is going to rely much weight on the outcome of this one case.
Actually, public support and encouragement for exercise here in Japan is quite common. It's a matter of culture. One of the first things I'm always asked during the "introductory conversation" (which varies little from person to person) is what kind of sports I like to do. Kids and adults are encouraged to exercise. Many communities have very well-appointed civic community centers with gyms and pools and martial arts classes (public funding for something like that isn't seen as something evil and socialist here). There's a holiday called "sports day" when local schools have athletic festivals and people go out to join in and watch, etc. Employees at many companies here do morning calesthenics every workday. Public parks are full of people playing team sports, even way out in the suburbs. The public TV station, NHK, has little 10-minute exercise bits throughout the day for housewives (yes, this is Japan), elderly folk, and other homebodies to do if they want to join in. And perhaps the biggest thing: Japanese people walk. ALL the time. I live in the distant outskirts of Tokyo and every time I have a friend or relative come from overseas, I need to warn them to get in shape because the first few days here are going to involve lots of walking up and down subway stairs, from station to location, etc. There's a reason people here are generally thin. Not to mention: oodles of bicycles everywhere, used as transportation by a sizable fraction of the public.
Exercise may be a generally good thing for mental well-being, but I don't think that's a factor that negatively distinguishes the Internet recluses in Japan from those anywhere else. Are the Internet recluses here still more likely to be out of shape? Sure. But I think the background level of fitness here is pretty good, so even those outliers are probably in better shape than, for example, geeks in the US.
Actually, this is exactly the test applied by the founder of the American patent system and its first examiner; Thomas Jefferson. For things which you can't put a fence around there is copyright.
While TFA uses the term "fence" to denote clear, definable boundaries, there's another interpretation that helps explain the essence of patent law:
The underlying purpose of the patent laws is to encourage the sharing of useful ideas. In order to get a patent you must publicly disclose how your invention works, and the "best mode" for using it (i.e. the best way to take advantage of its benefits).
As you can imagine, normally these are just the kind of disclosures that a profit-seeking inventor hates to make. The patent laws are thus designed to encourage more social, knowledge-sharing behavior on the part of even these self-serving entities. Note that the law is NOT about "protecting" or "rewarding" inventors per se, except as a means to this greater end.
Back to fences: Imagine that a company comes up with a new invention. The patent law gives them an alternative to "fencing it in" (by keeping it secret) and thereby preventing the public from learning about the discovery.
But note what this implies: if it's impossible to "fence in" the technology (i.e. prevent the spread of knowledge about how it works), then there's little reason for patent law to apply; The public would likely find out anyway, so why reward the inventor for disclosing? If knowledge is easily discoverable through some reverse engineering or simply by using a small amount of observation/experimentation, then the principled argument for patentability is weaker.
On the other hand, if an inventor could successfully use a new invention without the public ever learning how it worked (i.e. if it were possible to "build a fence" around the knowledge), then there's a good case to be made for offering the incentive for disclosure.
Just a different way to think about the "fence," that's all...
No, it's not semantics. The human brain does not "mature", that is, cease it's major developments, until certain times in life...
Well, if it's not semantics, then why do you need to clarify what you mean by "mature" right off the bat?
I suppose next you'll want to be saying which developments you're referring to, and why you don't include others (like changes associated with menopause or aging). Or which ones are "major" and which aren't.
I guess it'll be easier for me to redefine "semantics" instead...;)
It's all a game of semantics, yes. The term "maturity" is a superbly dumb choice for a scientific study, since it has so many conflicting and unclear pop-science (and culture) meanings.
Not that such a pesky fact will stop many on/. from arguing about it as if "maturity" means something concrete.
Personally, I don't even think it's worthwhile to argue about a definition for maturity. Rather than argue about how to categorize, it seems a more fruitful path to directly study the types of psychological/mental changes that actually take place: the quantifiable ways in which the brain responds to various stimuli, what have you. It seems reasonable that these things vary as a function of aging. If that's really what the scientists are up to (I RTFA, but not TFAbstract) then it's not so worthless.
Leaving aside the annoying "socialist" claptrap, you mention being annoyed because a professor 1) required you to buy their own text; and then 2) didn't use the text.
I find it hard to believe that both of these things happened in the same course. Why would an instructor ignore a text they wrote themselves?
At any rate, professors ignoring texts is too common at the univ. where I teach. This is a direct and predictable result of the administration's policies: instructors can no longer pick whatever textbook they like. The school has standardized that choice for us. Sometimes there is only one "choice." Hurray for economies of scale! (A dogmatic zealot might scream at the "capitalist" corruption of academic freedom here... but that would simply be an annoying simplification likely to elicit cries of "socialist" from someone equally knee-jerked.)
The most serious issue in the classroom is the ridiculously high price of college textbooks. An interesting issue, but not directly related to the discussion of fact-checking or accuracy. Other than the fact that when you pay such a high price for something, you want it to be perfect.
In my view, though, it's fair for publishers to insist that the author carry the burden of fact-checking; Particularly for textbooks, that's where the expertise lies: with the author. If the books are error-ridden, then instructors (or administrators) won't continue using them. Thus the publisher has an incentive to work with reliable authors who error-check.
Yeah, wake me when they say, "OK, we have a workable revenue model now, so we'll stop rigging the laws and suing our customers."
What, you don't think that'll happen? Huh, go figure.
Let's argue in circles about what this news means, then. You take the "stealing is bad" side, and I'll take the "sharing is good" side. Or, we can switch. What fun. Let's do this again tomorrow.
Oh, give me a break. "Regulation" vs. "Freedom" is such a meaningless black and white simplistic world view that it's almost totally useless.
The basic wrong here is on the private side, not the public side. The companies are simply handing data over to a potentially coercive entity when asked.
Yes, in this case it happens that the government is that entity. That the government has requested this data is annoying and dangerous in other ways, of course. But because it's a government (and not, for example, a private company) at least it had to do so in public, as part of an open process, as required by court regulations and procedure. So we know about it, and can argue/discuss it (i.e. democracy), and provide feedback to the companies involved (i.e. the "free" market).
Not to mention that these same regulations that too many shallow, broad-brush Libertarians so kneejerkly detest are what Google will likely use to fight the handover request.
I've always thought the wiser thing would be for a President to proclaim that we shall cure cancer within the next decade. Rather than the tired old Moo... er, Mars thing.
Assuming validity to this story, it seems such a thing might be possible.
A nice side benefit is that the government money involved goes less into the military-industrial complex, and more into medical research. Yes, I know that there are still military applications to any such research... nevertheless it would be nice if the government's research money was targeted directly and explicitly at a benefit to humanity. A cure for cancer falls in that category.
Well, a label selling straight-up MP3 files of the songs (the very short FA says "MP3" and doesn't suggest any DRM) would be a step in the right direction.
I also don't see the USB drive as a problem. Actually it shows a bit of brain on the part of someone -- it embraces the "do what you want with bits" idea. Unlike a DVD or CD, a USB drive basically says, "Please move these files somewhere else." That's a massive step forward.
Of course, the logical questions everyone else here is already asking:
1) Why $30?
2) Why can't I just skip the USB and get the files directly?
I suppose there would be no appreciable mass market for a version of windows without IE either.
It would be nice if one these courts acted with clue and actually addressed the problem and not the symptom. Can you imagine if the AT&T ruling had been "offer phone service without long distance"? Instead, a court with balls actually broke up the old company and prevented the "parent" from competing in the market they had abused.
Yes, I know that's a gloss/simplification, but the point is that structural wrongs require structural remedies.
Insist to see the source. It's the best guarantee yet that the software you are running is pure.
Another way to say this, even for the less computer savvy who don't even care what "source" is: "Use open source software". Ever since I made the switch to OSS, I worry much less about spyware, adware, crippleware, annoyware, etc. To top it all off, I don't copy commercial software anymore... so, I don't worry about that either. The fact that something comes, signed, from a repository I can trust means much more than some yahoo certification from a company that puts its bottom line first.
My point is simply that context is everything, and that by the very terms of the copyright statutes, fair use is something which would "otherwise" constitute infringement.
"Other than what..?" is the real question. There are many already-existing fair use exceptions, not just time-shifting. And more will be created. I think we owe it to ourselves to think about why those exceptions exist.
If we (those who favor more balanced copyright policy) ever expect to get anywhere, we have to force the argument away from the six-year-old's level. Any child knows that stealing is wrong, but that same child also knows that sharing is good. Any so-called "debate" that simply tries to broadly categorize P2P activities as one or the other is then seeking to simplify things to the point of infantile stupidity. "Steal Bad!" "Share Good!" (repeat ad nauseam)... It takes more of an adult to reconcile the two.
An adult thing to do might be to start by 1) Identifying what we want the copyright laws to accomplish, 2) Present some actual evidence to show when sharing harms or hinders the achieving of those ends, and 3) Define "fair use" accordingly.
Eventually, some P2P these behaviors might -- just might -- be officially "blessed" as fair use. Just as your chosen example (time shifting) was with the Sony decision. Prior to Sony (a rather surprising decision at the time), making your own copies of TV programs using a VCR was widely thought of as infringement. I could imagine the parent post noting, on some retro 1980s version of Slashdot, that "People like to pretend otherwise but almost every videotape collection that I have seen consists almost solely of copyrighted TV programs..." Indeed, that would have been correct. The Sony court actually considered the issue at an adult level, not at the six-year-old level, and decided that those activities were fair use. We should give P2P users the same courtesy. Yes, many might be petty-thieves at heart. But I'm guessing there are also a lot of people who download out of curiosity, or to sample before buying, or to access tracks they already have purchased, or to unearth rare tracks by artists they like that they would ordinarily have trouble purchasing, or to share with networks of friends (ala Grokster) as opposed to the public in general... the list goes on and on, and I'm not willing to dismiss all of these things out of hand as piracy. Time and courts will tell.
What might look like obvious "piracy" today could be "fair use" tomorrow. It just takes the right case and the right set of facts - one court decision could do it. Stranger things have happened.
That's why the second word in "Fair Use" is use, not copy. You can't tell by looking at a copy alone whether any infringement has occurred or not.
A person is a "pirate" if they committed infringement (pretty much by definition). Just because "all the contents [you've seen on shared drives, etc]...are almost exclusively copyrighted music and movies" doesn't mean that the copying involved in putting that material where you saw it was infringement (piracy). Just as simply seeing someone standing on property they don't own doesn't automatically make them a trespasser. Sometimes, yes. But not always.
Remember: infringement is an act considered in context, not simple possession of a file. Ignoring this distinction follows the greedy and corrupt logic of the copyright barons. So while you're right to suggest that people's "intentions" might not be pure, you're wrong to focus too much on their drives. Make the context of the copying -- not the presence of the copy -- the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
That fucking sucks!
Maybe the term "right" isn't appropriate, but the author's refusal to provide access may well give me immunity from infringement liability. Fair use specifically applies when permission is NOT granted, after all. It would all depend on the facts of the situation, which is precisely what the grandparent was getting at.
Of course, DMCA is "fair-use"-free, so there you're in strange waters indeed.
But I'd rather they spent some of this $$$ on more body armor, maybe some post-"victory" planning.
I know. I'm out on a limb here.
I agree with the parent: bans are counterproductive in many cases.
Better is improved education, and I don't mean what you (probably) think... I'm NOT talking about "educating the (presumably ignorant) public" although that's important too. I'm talking about changing science education. It MUST, MUST, MUST include a high level of ethics, policy, and social study. I find it insane that people can specialize in science and from the moment they step into college, focus almost solely on their technical field.
Part of any responsible science curriculum should involve risk assessments, historical studies of disasters and accidents (unfortunately all sciences have them), and so on.
While we're at it, public research grants should probably include "educational" aspects. Scientists share a lot of the blame for the "public" ignorance of their endeavors. If you spend all your time DOING the science, and none of your time EXPLAINING the science, what do you expect?
Basically, what I'm arguing for is an alternative to banning things is the forced re-socialization of the scientific enterprise. Otherwise, we're bound, eventually, to invent something that 1) is more harmful than we thought and 2) does harm faster than society's safeguards can kick in. Once that happens we're in it good.
Yeah, I've always had such a hard time calling across country. Those three extra digits (and that ONE) are such a bitch to handle. Now it'll be one big company, hurray! If I'm lucky that company can provide my Internet connection and all my music and movies too. I'll just use the "standard" OS and media software, and I won't have to worry about any incompatibilities anymore. How nice.
Sarcasm aside, your post assumes the government is somehow considering whether it should adopt a regulated monopoly model for more effective regulation. That's not the development here. The companies are getting together on their own, which they wouldn't be able to do without the regulatory agency stepping aside (giving them a pass). This is a story about less regulation, not more.
Predictably, this will probably result in crappier service, higher costs, and fewer choices. The politicians (both parties, but in my view more heinous on the Republican side, particularly this administration) play ball, the companies gain, and the public loses.
Given my lack of faith (do you find it disturbing?), I'd prefer a bunch of small companies to one huge one. Companies small enough that they'd HAVE to play nice with each other in order to survive.
Gee, never saw this coming, did we?
Anyway, content owners want the benefits of P2P without the risks. The MACHINE is OURS, however, so we can play hardball right back at them with a firm ethical foundation to stand on. We can fight back with the same methods:
We need something like a P2P "robots.txt" file that is somehow accessible to outside entities, containing the conditions under which our machines can become part of any content distribution system. It could implement (through standard settings) a license under which your machine can be used for such purposes by a third party.
Example: using such a file, I should be able to rig up my machine so that it advertises the fact that any content distributed on the machine must be public domain, open source, in uncrippled formats, etc. Distribution of any other content on such a system would constructively create a license to use that content in specified ways.
In other words, if you stream your content (even in part) through MY machine, then you're giving me the rights to distribute, copy, modify, reverse engineer, etc., that content. If you're not happy with that, don't distribute using my machine.
Putting this in a technical setting like a metatag or *.txt file makes it possible for any distribution software to check the setting. So when they argue that you "clicked the EULA" you can argue right back that the software "agreed to the terms of distribution on my machine." Then they get to argue that it's harder for software to employ a clear and standard permission check than it is for an average person to read and understand a crafty EULA that hides away the fact that you're becoming a peer in the distribution network.
I don't know if my explanation was clear but I think it's a good idea.
Truly informed consent, I imagine, is something the content owners will try to avoid. My prediction is that there will be an "application" you install in order to watch streamed content. You click an EULA button in the process of installing it. In doing so, you "agree" to become a peer in the content distribution network.
Of course, most people wouldn't read the EULA, or afterward understand why their network lights blink sometimes, and their disk spins occasionally.
Isn't this what you would want? Why should you be held to a higher (or lower) standard of care than everyone else?
The nice thing about this legal formalism (the "reasonableness" standard) is that it can evolve over time, as technology advances, and what people consider reasonable changes. It's quite possible that a few years from now, a similar case would turn out differently if widely-held notions of what is "reasonable" were to change. Expectations regarding privacy are definitely on the move, so I'm tempted to say that no company is going to rely much weight on the outcome of this one case.
Actually, public support and encouragement for exercise here in Japan is quite common. It's a matter of culture. One of the first things I'm always asked during the "introductory conversation" (which varies little from person to person) is what kind of sports I like to do. Kids and adults are encouraged to exercise. Many communities have very well-appointed civic community centers with gyms and pools and martial arts classes (public funding for something like that isn't seen as something evil and socialist here). There's a holiday called "sports day" when local schools have athletic festivals and people go out to join in and watch, etc. Employees at many companies here do morning calesthenics every workday. Public parks are full of people playing team sports, even way out in the suburbs. The public TV station, NHK, has little 10-minute exercise bits throughout the day for housewives (yes, this is Japan), elderly folk, and other homebodies to do if they want to join in. And perhaps the biggest thing: Japanese people walk. ALL the time. I live in the distant outskirts of Tokyo and every time I have a friend or relative come from overseas, I need to warn them to get in shape because the first few days here are going to involve lots of walking up and down subway stairs, from station to location, etc. There's a reason people here are generally thin. Not to mention: oodles of bicycles everywhere, used as transportation by a sizable fraction of the public.
Exercise may be a generally good thing for mental well-being, but I don't think that's a factor that negatively distinguishes the Internet recluses in Japan from those anywhere else. Are the Internet recluses here still more likely to be out of shape? Sure. But I think the background level of fitness here is pretty good, so even those outliers are probably in better shape than, for example, geeks in the US.
While TFA uses the term "fence" to denote clear, definable boundaries, there's another interpretation that helps explain the essence of patent law:
The underlying purpose of the patent laws is to encourage the sharing of useful ideas. In order to get a patent you must publicly disclose how your invention works, and the "best mode" for using it (i.e. the best way to take advantage of its benefits).
As you can imagine, normally these are just the kind of disclosures that a profit-seeking inventor hates to make. The patent laws are thus designed to encourage more social, knowledge-sharing behavior on the part of even these self-serving entities. Note that the law is NOT about "protecting" or "rewarding" inventors per se, except as a means to this greater end.
Back to fences: Imagine that a company comes up with a new invention. The patent law gives them an alternative to "fencing it in" (by keeping it secret) and thereby preventing the public from learning about the discovery.
But note what this implies: if it's impossible to "fence in" the technology (i.e. prevent the spread of knowledge about how it works), then there's little reason for patent law to apply; The public would likely find out anyway, so why reward the inventor for disclosing? If knowledge is easily discoverable through some reverse engineering or simply by using a small amount of observation/experimentation, then the principled argument for patentability is weaker.
On the other hand, if an inventor could successfully use a new invention without the public ever learning how it worked (i.e. if it were possible to "build a fence" around the knowledge), then there's a good case to be made for offering the incentive for disclosure.
Just a different way to think about the "fence," that's all...
Well, if it's not semantics, then why do you need to clarify what you mean by "mature" right off the bat?
I suppose next you'll want to be saying which developments you're referring to, and why you don't include others (like changes associated with menopause or aging). Or which ones are "major" and which aren't.
I guess it'll be easier for me to redefine "semantics" instead... ;)
It's all a game of semantics, yes. The term "maturity" is a superbly dumb choice for a scientific study, since it has so many conflicting and unclear pop-science (and culture) meanings.
Not that such a pesky fact will stop many on /. from arguing about it as if "maturity" means something concrete.
Personally, I don't even think it's worthwhile to argue about a definition for maturity. Rather than argue about how to categorize, it seems a more fruitful path to directly study the types of psychological/mental changes that actually take place: the quantifiable ways in which the brain responds to various stimuli, what have you. It seems reasonable that these things vary as a function of aging. If that's really what the scientists are up to (I RTFA, but not TFAbstract) then it's not so worthless.
Leaving aside the annoying "socialist" claptrap, you mention being annoyed because a professor 1) required you to buy their own text; and then 2) didn't use the text.
I find it hard to believe that both of these things happened in the same course. Why would an instructor ignore a text they wrote themselves?
At any rate, professors ignoring texts is too common at the univ. where I teach. This is a direct and predictable result of the administration's policies: instructors can no longer pick whatever textbook they like. The school has standardized that choice for us. Sometimes there is only one "choice." Hurray for economies of scale! (A dogmatic zealot might scream at the "capitalist" corruption of academic freedom here... but that would simply be an annoying simplification likely to elicit cries of "socialist" from someone equally knee-jerked.)
The most serious issue in the classroom is the ridiculously high price of college textbooks. An interesting issue, but not directly related to the discussion of fact-checking or accuracy. Other than the fact that when you pay such a high price for something, you want it to be perfect.
In my view, though, it's fair for publishers to insist that the author carry the burden of fact-checking; Particularly for textbooks, that's where the expertise lies: with the author. If the books are error-ridden, then instructors (or administrators) won't continue using them. Thus the publisher has an incentive to work with reliable authors who error-check.
... to be "oil free," wouldn't they need to stop using/producing petrochemicals as well?
Yeah, wake me when they say, "OK, we have a workable revenue model now, so we'll stop rigging the laws and suing our customers."
What, you don't think that'll happen? Huh, go figure.
Let's argue in circles about what this news means, then. You take the "stealing is bad" side, and I'll take the "sharing is good" side. Or, we can switch. What fun. Let's do this again tomorrow.
Oh, give me a break. "Regulation" vs. "Freedom" is such a meaningless black and white simplistic world view that it's almost totally useless.
The basic wrong here is on the private side, not the public side. The companies are simply handing data over to a potentially coercive entity when asked.
Yes, in this case it happens that the government is that entity. That the government has requested this data is annoying and dangerous in other ways, of course. But because it's a government (and not, for example, a private company) at least it had to do so in public, as part of an open process, as required by court regulations and procedure. So we know about it, and can argue/discuss it (i.e. democracy), and provide feedback to the companies involved (i.e. the "free" market).
Not to mention that these same regulations that too many shallow, broad-brush Libertarians so kneejerkly detest are what Google will likely use to fight the handover request.
Doing This Can't Stop Anything
Distrustful Thieving Corporations' Self-Annihilation
Doesn't The Congress Seem Absurd
I've always thought the wiser thing would be for a President to proclaim that we shall cure cancer within the next decade. Rather than the tired old Moo... er, Mars thing.
Assuming validity to this story, it seems such a thing might be possible.
A nice side benefit is that the government money involved goes less into the military-industrial complex, and more into medical research. Yes, I know that there are still military applications to any such research... nevertheless it would be nice if the government's research money was targeted directly and explicitly at a benefit to humanity. A cure for cancer falls in that category.
You're missing the point... Cut and paste the first paragraph, then wait. After a few hours, you'll have the whole article here where we can read it.
You can't make an omelet without...
breaking some... rules(?) about eggs...
or something.
Well, a label selling straight-up MP3 files of the songs (the very short FA says "MP3" and doesn't suggest any DRM) would be a step in the right direction.
I also don't see the USB drive as a problem. Actually it shows a bit of brain on the part of someone -- it embraces the "do what you want with bits" idea. Unlike a DVD or CD, a USB drive basically says, "Please move these files somewhere else." That's a massive step forward.
Of course, the logical questions everyone else here is already asking:
1) Why $30?
2) Why can't I just skip the USB and get the files directly?
I suppose there would be no appreciable mass market for a version of windows without IE either.
It would be nice if one these courts acted with clue and actually addressed the problem and not the symptom. Can you imagine if the AT&T ruling had been "offer phone service without long distance"? Instead, a court with balls actually broke up the old company and prevented the "parent" from competing in the market they had abused.
Yes, I know that's a gloss/simplification, but the point is that structural wrongs require structural remedies.
Another way to say this, even for the less computer savvy who don't even care what "source" is: "Use open source software". Ever since I made the switch to OSS, I worry much less about spyware, adware, crippleware, annoyware, etc. To top it all off, I don't copy commercial software anymore... so, I don't worry about that either. The fact that something comes, signed, from a repository I can trust means much more than some yahoo certification from a company that puts its bottom line first.
My point is simply that context is everything, and that by the very terms of the copyright statutes, fair use is something which would "otherwise" constitute infringement.
"Other than what..?" is the real question. There are many already-existing fair use exceptions, not just time-shifting. And more will be created. I think we owe it to ourselves to think about why those exceptions exist.
If we (those who favor more balanced copyright policy) ever expect to get anywhere, we have to force the argument away from the six-year-old's level. Any child knows that stealing is wrong, but that same child also knows that sharing is good. Any so-called "debate" that simply tries to broadly categorize P2P activities as one or the other is then seeking to simplify things to the point of infantile stupidity. "Steal Bad!" "Share Good!" (repeat ad nauseam)... It takes more of an adult to reconcile the two.
An adult thing to do might be to start by 1) Identifying what we want the copyright laws to accomplish, 2) Present some actual evidence to show when sharing harms or hinders the achieving of those ends, and 3) Define "fair use" accordingly.
Eventually, some P2P these behaviors might -- just might -- be officially "blessed" as fair use. Just as your chosen example (time shifting) was with the Sony decision. Prior to Sony (a rather surprising decision at the time), making your own copies of TV programs using a VCR was widely thought of as infringement. I could imagine the parent post noting, on some retro 1980s version of Slashdot, that "People like to pretend otherwise but almost every videotape collection that I have seen consists almost solely of copyrighted TV programs..." Indeed, that would have been correct. The Sony court actually considered the issue at an adult level, not at the six-year-old level, and decided that those activities were fair use. We should give P2P users the same courtesy. Yes, many might be petty-thieves at heart. But I'm guessing there are also a lot of people who download out of curiosity, or to sample before buying, or to access tracks they already have purchased, or to unearth rare tracks by artists they like that they would ordinarily have trouble purchasing, or to share with networks of friends (ala Grokster) as opposed to the public in general... the list goes on and on, and I'm not willing to dismiss all of these things out of hand as piracy. Time and courts will tell.
What might look like obvious "piracy" today could be "fair use" tomorrow. It just takes the right case and the right set of facts - one court decision could do it. Stranger things have happened.
That's why the second word in "Fair Use" is use, not copy. You can't tell by looking at a copy alone whether any infringement has occurred or not.
A person is a "pirate" if they committed infringement (pretty much by definition). Just because "all the contents [you've seen on shared drives, etc]...are almost exclusively copyrighted music and movies" doesn't mean that the copying involved in putting that material where you saw it was infringement (piracy). Just as simply seeing someone standing on property they don't own doesn't automatically make them a trespasser. Sometimes, yes. But not always.
Remember: infringement is an act considered in context, not simple possession of a file. Ignoring this distinction follows the greedy and corrupt logic of the copyright barons. So while you're right to suggest that people's "intentions" might not be pure, you're wrong to focus too much on their drives. Make the context of the copying -- not the presence of the copy -- the issue.