The eventual plan of the copyright cartels is this: First, continually lobby Congress for longer and longer copyright protections. That way, nothing ever falls out of copyright.
As time goes on, the cartels will buy up all the copyrighted content they can, from individual content producers. Not all content producers will be willing to sell to the cartels, but many will.
As the amount of copyrighted material piles up, it'll be harder and harder to produce something which doesn't resemble other copyrighted material, most of which will be owned by the cartels.
So the cartels will sue (or threaten to sue) the individual content producers for violating their copyrights -- and the deal they'll offer is either to buy the content for a pittance (and drop the lawsuit), or to take it all in the lawsuit (which they will have little trouble winning, most of the time).
The end result is that the cartels will control almost all copyrightable content. The only material they don't control will be the content that's been produced so recently that they haven't had time to sue the creator yet.
I don't know what the status of the RIAA is, but in many European countries, there is a single organization tasked with finding and prosecuting copyright violations. In other words, competition is prohibited by law. If the same is true of the RIAA, I don't see how they can be accused of anticompetitive practices.
The RIAA is a private industry-run organization that looks out for the interests of its member companies. It's not an arm of the government. (At least, not officially; it has a great amount of political power due to what is euphemistically calling "lobbying," that is to say, bribery and threats.)
Anyone in the U.S. can file a copyright infringement lawsuit about material they own the copyright to.
The problem is that most people aren't going to spend five or six hundred dollars just to stick it to the man. There are very few people who would have a use for a PS3 that had no games or accessories.
That's along the same lines of "We shouldn't have done atomic research because it can be used to kill people." Most technology can be used for good or bad, you can't really get pissed at those that make it if people use it for bad.
As an example of good DRM usage, suppose I decide to use streaming media to do technology briefs within my company. I keep employees up to date on progress on new projects via a media stream, rather than staff meeting. However this is all confidential stuff, it's works in development and for it to get out would be harmful. Well, DRM allows me to control that and make sure someone doesn't just save the file on their laptop and walk it over to a competitor.
The problem with this analogy is that DRM has no positive uses. In your situation, what you've got is a false sense of security, because no DRM is unbreakable, and you're sitting there thinking you're safe when that someone downloaded a crack for the DRM scheme you're using, saved the media stream unencrypted, and walked it over to a competitor.
The only people DRM ever even theoretically benefits are content producers, except 1) the people who legitimately buy their products are not pirates and are only inconvenienced by DRM; 2) actual pirates have no problem breaking DRM.
That's what we call service, you job isn't to make money, but to give you client the best service.
And why should they try to give their client the best service?
To make money. Service personnel don't exist just to make your life better, they're there because they can earn money doing it. Giving good service certainly helps make money, but don't delude yourself about their ultimate goal.
The NYT has spent decades and millions of dollars building their reputation and get listed next to other, less-known papers. It serves to dillute their name and reputation.
No more than having the NYT sitting next to the Des Moines Register at a newsstand.
In my view the problem with vi as a universal editor is that the rules for leaving insert mode are *not* universal. Under OpenBSD 2.6, almost any use of the arrow keys breaks you out of insert mode. Other versions of vi will leave you in insert mode within some nearby region of the inserted text region, but break you out if you move further away.
What the hell are you talking about? I've been using vim for seven years now, and I've never even heard of that behavior, let alone had it happen. The only way I know of to leave insert mode is to hit ESC.
Are you talking about some old, weird legacy version of vi from ye olden days?
a similar argument could be made for the physical media used for the distribution.
I'm not talking about the media; I'm talking about the information.
To remove the media from the argument, imagine that I buy one Windows XP CD, and 20 licenses. Using non-Microsoft software, I duplicate the XP CD to a CD-R, put the original in a safe place, and install a copy of XP on each of 20 different computers.
Clearly the CD-R was not created or prepared by Microsoft; yet my actions there are entirely legal. The media is thus irrelevant; what matters is the information.
The problem with using such analogies is that they ignore the critical difference between the duplication of information (which has a cost so low that it can be all but ignored) versus the cost of duplicating a physical item (nontrivial in virtually all cases).
The most common such analogy is the idea that getting a free copy of a copyrighted work is equivalent to stealing, because you're getting something without paying for it. It is a flawed and ultimately inapplicable analogy because it ignores the fact that a critical feature of "stealing" is that you deprive the owner of the original object, and this does not happen with copyright infringement. Yes, copyright infringement is still illegal, but it is manifestly not the same thing as stealing. This is why we have separate bodies of law for larceny and copyright infringement.
In this case, Microsoft is trying to map the concept of genuinity from physical objects (a genuine copy of "Harry Potter and the Infringement Lawsuit") onto information (a bit-for-bit copy of Windows XP). This analogy does not work, because it ignores that "counterfeit" and "genuine" copies of Windows XP are indistinguishable.
This is completely irrelevant to the context, which quite specifically refers to "genuine" being used when referring to a copy being sold. And in that context, I agree that it's perfectly reasonable to call an unauthorized copy "non-genuine".
But why do so? "Unauthorized" covers it already. So does "unlicensed". Why start trying to use "non-genuine," which has unavoidable connotations of non-identical near-duplication? "Unauthorized" and "unlicensed" are perfectly accurate, but "non-genuine" implies that the software itself is not the genuine article. It IS the genuine article, by definition, being a perfect copy of either the original or an authorized copy, and thus mathematically indistinguishable from what you would call a "genuine copy".
If you want to go off on a tangent and discuss the meaning of "genuine" in all kinds of other contexts to make your point, then you're committing the action Microsoft is being accused of here: Framing the debate by redefining a word in a nonsensical way.
I never did any such thing. What I'm doing is examining whether any of the current usages of the word "genuine" can apply in any of the contexts in which Windows XP might be duplicated. And it turns out, they don't. Microsoft has thus introduced a new usage, one which I (and others) object to. I object to it for three reasons:
1. It omits fundamental criteria under which "genuine" and "counterfeit" historically apply. In other words, the usage is too far removed from current usages to be useful. Yes, I know language changes, but this is a bad way to change it. 2. We already have two perfectly good (and far more accurate) terms for what they call "genuine": "authorized" and, even better, "licensed". 3. They're doing it to satisfy their own interests, not out of any real desire to improve the language. Yes, this matters. It's also imposition of language by fiat, not by organic growth, and that's generally harmful to languages.
and it's a hell of a lot easier than calling the service "Windows Copy Produced In Accordance With The Prevailing Copyright Laws In This Jurisdiction Advantage" (WCPIAWTPCLITJA for short. Trips off the tongue huh?).
Your assertion that Microsoft is even partly justified in using the term "Genuine Copy" because the only alternative is a much longer term, is obliterated by the fact that there's already a term that means what they're using "Genuine Copy" to mean: "Licensed Copy," which is exactly one letter longer. WCPIAWTPCLITJA, indeed.
On a slight side track, I really do despise these language conservatives. The meaning of words changes over time, and if enough people understand a word to mean something, then that is what it means. The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary (I believe the equivalent reference work for you chaps in the Colonies is Websters) do not decide what a word means, they report what it means. Witness "google" becoming a verb.
No shit! You mean English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive? Get the fuck outta town! That never would have occurred to us ign'ant, lowly Yanks.
We know language changes; the problem is that we don't like what Microsoft is trying to do to the language, and we aim to stop it by convincing other people to not follow their usage. That's allowed, too. There are plenty of changes to English that I approve of; this isn't one of them. You asserting that we should just let anyone who wants to make a change have their way is, frankly, ludicrous.
I'm not making any moral arguments. I'm just making the case that Microsoft's use of the term "genuine" is perfectly acceptable.
You're not making it very well. Actually, I've read a bunch of your posts, and you haven't yet presented any actual evidence that it's meaningful to use the word "genuine" in an information-theory context.:) Mostly, you (like Microsoft) seem to be assuming that genuinity equivalent to legality, which is absurd.
Here's an example I posted to someone else:
I hand you two identical CD-Rs. Each contains a bit-for-bit identical copy of Windows XP. One of the copies was made as a backup for a legally purchased copy of XP, for which I have a license; the other, I burned from an ISO downloaded off the Internet. The CD-Rs came from the same spindle, are unlabelled, and I had my wife swap them around a few times while my back was turned so that I no longer know which is which. (She didn't know in the first place, so we can assume the information is lost.)
Which one is genuine and which one is counterfeit?
Counterfeiting is in the process. The resulting product may be physically IDENTICAL to the original on which it is based, but that doesn't make it any less counterfeit.
The problem with this statement is that this usage of "counterfeit" contains the implicit assumption that the resultant forgery is not physically identical, down to the atom or quantum state -- there are going to be differences, no matter how slight, between the "genuine" and "counterfeit" article.
Take the example of stolen money plates, paper, and inks for $100 bills. If I steal those and print them up in my basement, do you really think a proper forensic setup wouldn't be able to tell that one set of bills was printed legitimately at the Mint, and another set was printed somewhere else? The exact molecular content of the atmosphere, the humidity levels, even the amount of light the bills are exposed to during printing... The density banding in the ink would be different if it dried at different rates in slightly warmer or more humid air, etc. Obviously a clerk at the supermarket isn't going to be able to tell, but the information exists and can be detected.
But two copies of Windows? There is no way, even theoretically, to distinguish them. 100% of the information is preserved in a copy; hence, the terms "genuine" and "counterfeit" are silly and meaningless.
Note that we're distinguishing between counterfeit media and a counterfeit "copy". The CDs you buy from a street vendor in Greenwich Village are (almost certainly) counterfeit media; but the data on them is 100% identical to what you find on a legal copy of Windows XP purchased at CompUSA.
Please keep in mind that we're not discussing whether a copy is licensed or legal; just whether the term "genuine" has any meaning to an information-complete copy. (It doesn't.)
Genuinity is not ezpressable in information theory.
Then why do you keep using the phrase "genuine copy"? I do not think it means what you think it means.
If you have two identical bills with the same serial number, so indistinguishable that not even the best experts can tell them apart, one of them is still a counterfeit (or the mint made an error). It does not matter whether it's a casual glance, a detailed study, copying it atom by atom or even replicating the very quantum state (would be a nice trick tho). What makes a Picasso genuine is entirely external to the object - it relies solely on whether it was made by said painter or not.
And if the two copies are quantum-indistinguishable, how do you tell which is the genuine and which the counterfeit?
Here's an example using the actual topic at hand (software, not Picassos -- when will you people learn to stop using physical-object metaphors in information-duplication discussions?): I hand you two identical CD-Rs. Each contains a bit-for-bit identical copy of Windows XP. One of the copies was made as a backup for a legally purchased copy of XP; the other, I burned from an ISO downloaded off the Internet. The CD-Rs came from the same spindle, are unlabelled, and I had my wife swap them around a few times while my back was turned so that I no longer know which is which.
Which one is genuine and which one is counterfeit?
Because with every genuine copy you also get a license, and so your license is the proof it is genuine.
That would make it a licensed copy. Why do we need to misuse the word "genuine" instead?
I think most of your confusion comes from mixing genuine software and genuine copy.
The confusion comes from Microsoft's insistence on using the term "genuine copy" when we already have a term for that: "licensed copy". "Genuine copy" is semantic gibberish. <Morbo>LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!</Morbo>
If you pass it off as a genuine copy, then it is a textbook case of counterfeit copy.
*whistle* Conflating counterfeited physical media with unlicensed software copy! Five-yard penalty!
If you install from a counterfeited disc (or downloaded copy), the copy of Windows on your computer is also counterfeit. Why is this so hard for you to understand???
The problem is that you (and Microsoft) are defining "counterfeit copy" as "one that was not installed legally." We already have a term for that: "illegal copy." "Counterfeit copy" literally has no semantic meaning for indistinguishable, bit-for-bit copies of data. It's gibberish.
WGA is able to determine whether a genuine copy of Windows was used, without checking the hologram. Again, what matters is that a copy of Windows was made with fraudulent intent.
Ah, so WGA is able to determine the intent of the person who installed it? Psychic software! Amazing.
I used to have a pirated copy of Windows 2000 on one of my boxen, and WGA thought it was legit. And I know of at least one person at my office who has Windows XP -- an entirely legit copy, purchased by the company -- that WGA thinks is not legit. This only proves that WGA is not perfect, of course, but... what good is it, exactly, if even IT can't tell the difference between a "genuine" and a "counterfeit" copy?
Slashdot Mirror
*snerk* I know, I know. Hey, I always figured they were after complete control of everything, I just hadn't figured out the exact mechanism yet :)
That I've been here a long time ;)
I figured this out the other day.
The eventual plan of the copyright cartels is this: First, continually lobby Congress for longer and longer copyright protections. That way, nothing ever falls out of copyright.
As time goes on, the cartels will buy up all the copyrighted content they can, from individual content producers. Not all content producers will be willing to sell to the cartels, but many will.
As the amount of copyrighted material piles up, it'll be harder and harder to produce something which doesn't resemble other copyrighted material, most of which will be owned by the cartels.
So the cartels will sue (or threaten to sue) the individual content producers for violating their copyrights -- and the deal they'll offer is either to buy the content for a pittance (and drop the lawsuit), or to take it all in the lawsuit (which they will have little trouble winning, most of the time).
The end result is that the cartels will control almost all copyrightable content. The only material they don't control will be the content that's been produced so recently that they haven't had time to sue the creator yet.
The RIAA is a private industry-run organization that looks out for the interests of its member companies. It's not an arm of the government. (At least, not officially; it has a great amount of political power due to what is euphemistically calling "lobbying," that is to say, bribery and threats.)
Anyone in the U.S. can file a copyright infringement lawsuit about material they own the copyright to.
"Very few" != "no one".
That ends today's language lesson.
I did, and addressed your suggestion when I said, allllllll the way in the second sentence of my post:
The problem is that most people aren't going to spend five or six hundred dollars just to stick it to the man. There are very few people who would have a use for a PS3 that had no games or accessories.
The problem with this analogy is that DRM has no positive uses. In your situation, what you've got is a false sense of security, because no DRM is unbreakable, and you're sitting there thinking you're safe when that someone downloaded a crack for the DRM scheme you're using, saved the media stream unencrypted, and walked it over to a competitor.
The only people DRM ever even theoretically benefits are content producers, except 1) the people who legitimately buy their products are not pirates and are only inconvenienced by DRM; 2) actual pirates have no problem breaking DRM.
And why should they try to give their client the best service?
To make money. Service personnel don't exist just to make your life better, they're there because they can earn money doing it. Giving good service certainly helps make money, but don't delude yourself about their ultimate goal.
Oh, I can beat that, easily.
My wife's cousin's brother's name is Michael Slaughter.
He's a doctor.
He used to be in the army. His rank?
Major.
No more than having the NYT sitting next to the Des Moines Register at a newsstand.
It's a bug, not a feature.
Unfortunately, the planet in question is Eris.
What the hell are you talking about? I've been using vim for seven years now, and I've never even heard of that behavior, let alone had it happen. The only way I know of to leave insert mode is to hit ESC.
Are you talking about some old, weird legacy version of vi from ye olden days?
Yeah, that makes me want to continue this conversation. Sod off.
Actually, no, I'm entirely clear on the distinction. Microsoft are the ones (deliberately) causing the confusion.
I'm not talking about the media; I'm talking about the information.
To remove the media from the argument, imagine that I buy one Windows XP CD, and 20 licenses. Using non-Microsoft software, I duplicate the XP CD to a CD-R, put the original in a safe place, and install a copy of XP on each of 20 different computers.
Clearly the CD-R was not created or prepared by Microsoft; yet my actions there are entirely legal. The media is thus irrelevant; what matters is the information.
The problem with using such analogies is that they ignore the critical difference between the duplication of information (which has a cost so low that it can be all but ignored) versus the cost of duplicating a physical item (nontrivial in virtually all cases).
The most common such analogy is the idea that getting a free copy of a copyrighted work is equivalent to stealing, because you're getting something without paying for it. It is a flawed and ultimately inapplicable analogy because it ignores the fact that a critical feature of "stealing" is that you deprive the owner of the original object, and this does not happen with copyright infringement. Yes, copyright infringement is still illegal, but it is manifestly not the same thing as stealing. This is why we have separate bodies of law for larceny and copyright infringement.
In this case, Microsoft is trying to map the concept of genuinity from physical objects (a genuine copy of "Harry Potter and the Infringement Lawsuit") onto information (a bit-for-bit copy of Windows XP). This analogy does not work, because it ignores that "counterfeit" and "genuine" copies of Windows XP are indistinguishable.
But why do so? "Unauthorized" covers it already. So does "unlicensed". Why start trying to use "non-genuine," which has unavoidable connotations of non-identical near-duplication? "Unauthorized" and "unlicensed" are perfectly accurate, but "non-genuine" implies that the software itself is not the genuine article. It IS the genuine article, by definition, being a perfect copy of either the original or an authorized copy, and thus mathematically indistinguishable from what you would call a "genuine copy".
I never did any such thing. What I'm doing is examining whether any of the current usages of the word "genuine" can apply in any of the contexts in which Windows XP might be duplicated. And it turns out, they don't. Microsoft has thus introduced a new usage, one which I (and others) object to. I object to it for three reasons:
1. It omits fundamental criteria under which "genuine" and "counterfeit" historically apply. In other words, the usage is too far removed from current usages to be useful. Yes, I know language changes, but this is a bad way to change it.
2. We already have two perfectly good (and far more accurate) terms for what they call "genuine": "authorized" and, even better, "licensed".
3. They're doing it to satisfy their own interests, not out of any real desire to improve the language. Yes, this matters. It's also imposition of language by fiat, not by organic growth, and that's generally harmful to languages.
Your assertion that Microsoft is even partly justified in using the term "Genuine Copy" because the only alternative is a much longer term, is obliterated by the fact that there's already a term that means what they're using "Genuine Copy" to mean: "Licensed Copy," which is exactly one letter longer. WCPIAWTPCLITJA, indeed.
No shit! You mean English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive? Get the fuck outta town! That never would have occurred to us ign'ant, lowly Yanks.
We know language changes; the problem is that we don't like what Microsoft is trying to do to the language, and we aim to stop it by convincing other people to not follow their usage. That's allowed, too. There are plenty of changes to English that I approve of; this isn't one of them. You asserting that we should just let anyone who wants to make a change have their way is, frankly, ludicrous.
You're not making it very well. Actually, I've read a bunch of your posts, and you haven't yet presented any actual evidence that it's meaningful to use the word "genuine" in an information-theory context.
Here's an example I posted to someone else:
I hand you two identical CD-Rs. Each contains a bit-for-bit identical copy of Windows XP. One of the copies was made as a backup for a legally purchased copy of XP, for which I have a license; the other, I burned from an ISO downloaded off the Internet. The CD-Rs came from the same spindle, are unlabelled, and I had my wife swap them around a few times while my back was turned so that I no longer know which is which. (She didn't know in the first place, so we can assume the information is lost.)
Which one is genuine and which one is counterfeit?
The problem with this statement is that this usage of "counterfeit" contains the implicit assumption that the resultant forgery is not physically identical, down to the atom or quantum state -- there are going to be differences, no matter how slight, between the "genuine" and "counterfeit" article.
Take the example of stolen money plates, paper, and inks for $100 bills. If I steal those and print them up in my basement, do you really think a proper forensic setup wouldn't be able to tell that one set of bills was printed legitimately at the Mint, and another set was printed somewhere else? The exact molecular content of the atmosphere, the humidity levels, even the amount of light the bills are exposed to during printing... The density banding in the ink would be different if it dried at different rates in slightly warmer or more humid air, etc. Obviously a clerk at the supermarket isn't going to be able to tell, but the information exists and can be detected.
But two copies of Windows? There is no way, even theoretically, to distinguish them. 100% of the information is preserved in a copy; hence, the terms "genuine" and "counterfeit" are silly and meaningless.
Note that we're distinguishing between counterfeit media and a counterfeit "copy". The CDs you buy from a street vendor in Greenwich Village are (almost certainly) counterfeit media; but the data on them is 100% identical to what you find on a legal copy of Windows XP purchased at CompUSA.
Please keep in mind that we're not discussing whether a copy is licensed or legal; just whether the term "genuine" has any meaning to an information-complete copy. (It doesn't.)
Then why do you keep using the phrase "genuine copy"? I do not think it means what you think it means.
And if the two copies are quantum-indistinguishable, how do you tell which is the genuine and which the counterfeit?
Here's an example using the actual topic at hand (software, not Picassos -- when will you people learn to stop using physical-object metaphors in information-duplication discussions?): I hand you two identical CD-Rs. Each contains a bit-for-bit identical copy of Windows XP. One of the copies was made as a backup for a legally purchased copy of XP; the other, I burned from an ISO downloaded off the Internet. The CD-Rs came from the same spindle, are unlabelled, and I had my wife swap them around a few times while my back was turned so that I no longer know which is which.
Which one is genuine and which one is counterfeit?
That would make it a licensed copy. Why do we need to misuse the word "genuine" instead?
The confusion comes from Microsoft's insistence on using the term "genuine copy" when we already have a term for that: "licensed copy". "Genuine copy" is semantic gibberish. <Morbo>LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!</Morbo>
*whistle* Conflating counterfeited physical media with unlicensed software copy! Five-yard penalty!
The problem is that you (and Microsoft) are defining "counterfeit copy" as "one that was not installed legally." We already have a term for that: "illegal copy." "Counterfeit copy" literally has no semantic meaning for indistinguishable, bit-for-bit copies of data. It's gibberish.
Ah, so WGA is able to determine the intent of the person who installed it? Psychic software! Amazing.
I used to have a pirated copy of Windows 2000 on one of my boxen, and WGA thought it was legit. And I know of at least one person at my office who has Windows XP -- an entirely legit copy, purchased by the company -- that WGA thinks is not legit. This only proves that WGA is not perfect, of course, but... what good is it, exactly, if even IT can't tell the difference between a "genuine" and a "counterfeit" copy?