In my experience, there are two different kinds of such devices: (a) the kind where the remote sends the same code for on/off, but the device itself supports discrete codes and (b) the devices that really only have one code.
In type (a), the Harmony remotes can be programmed with the separate codes, even if the original remote doesn't support it (e.g. my Samsung TV has one button to cycle through all the video inputs, but the TV itself supports jumping directly to a specific input via the Harmony--not the power button as in your case, but the same idea).
In type (b), you can set the Activity for that device to leave the power state unchanged for those activities, which will prevent it from turning your TV off as it switches inputs. This will require you to hit "Devices" on the remote and manually toggle the TV on and off, which can involve a series of button presses to scroll through the functions.
I would suggest creating a separate Activity called "TV On/Off" (or whatever creative name you come up with) that does nothing but toggle the TV's power code. This way, when you get home from work, watching a movie is just two keypresses away (not quite as elegant as the one-press setup many of us enjoy, but far from the macro hell your previous remote put you through).
I'll second that. At first I thought spending $100 for a remote control was just absurd, but I realized I hadn't bought a new toy in a while, so I went for it, fully prepared to be underwhelmed.
It's incredible how much easier my life has become as a result. Even though I'm intimately aware of the ins and outs of my entertainment system, it's still tedious to have to set the right input on the TV (receiver outputs HDMI, component, and S-video for different functions [S-video is required for the on-screen display of my CD changer and receiver]), then on the receiver [even though my H/K receiver supports input naming, so I don't actually need to know what Video3 is], and then dicking around with Comcast's remote.
Now, after about an hour doing the initial software install, setup, and then some personal customizations, I just press "watch DVD" and it turns on any components that aren't already on (leaving the others alone), sets all the right inputs (and the proper video mode and aspect ratio on my TV). I replaced 6 remotes in my entertainment room.
Then I realized that I could control just about anything with an RF receiver (my iMac, my MacBook Pro, my MythTV box in the spare room, the ceiling fan in my bedroom, and even, with a little modification, a special switch I built to control the lights in my saltwater aquarium (so that the blue glow doesn't distract during a nighttime movie session).
The learning function ensures that anything using z-wave iR can be programmed, with logical operation names that even my parents can use when they visit. Guests don't have to ask how to get to the DVR or how to get the sound to work when watching TV.
With this puff-piece ad coming to a close, I will say that I think the higher-end Harmony remotes are overrated, and that the lower models are generally more than sufficient for almost anyone, including geeks (just make sure to check the remote's limit as to number of devices before purchase).
We're prevented from drilling for oil off our coasts, we can't use oil shale to produce oil, we can't drill in Alaska or the Bakken formation in North Dakota. We're being prevented from converting coal into jet fuel. Yes, thank goodness. The amount of oil contained there is a temporary stopgap at best, and it's ridiculous to tear up vast stretches of new land, with all the environmental impacts of new wells, rigs, refineries, and transport mechanisms for a self-serving, short-term "solution" that does more harm than good. Likewise, investing serious capital and R&D into squeezing oil out of shale fields is money that should be spent on oil's replacement.
It's one of the more sensible sets of restrictions our legislature has passed on businesses. Now if only we could actually impose REAL penalties for the offensive and tragic oil spills that happen all too often because of bottom-line Bob at Oil Company X.
anything to reduce the price of oil, which in turn lower the financial burden of lower income families. Anything that reduces the price of oil delays and impedes the development of a real solution. The disproportionate impact on lower income families of rising prices is unfortunate, but frankly gas prices are TOO LOW in this country--other countries make do with substantially higher prices on fuel. What we really need is something like a $5/gallon gas tax that funds alternative energy R&D with four of those dollars, and puts $1 toward a tax credit/relief fund for lower-income consumers.
No one wants to pay $9/gallon, myself included, but we will be eventually if there's nothing ready to replace it before we run out of new sources.
Our reliance on foreign energy is legislatively created. Perhaps so, but finding fault with that reliance is also nutter-inflamed. We're depending on foreign products in all kinds of sectors. It happens.
If "right" refers to the law, "the constitution is always right" is not wrong, but meaningless No, it's not meaningless, because laws can be wrong and can be struck down (as in a regulation inconsistent with statutory authority, or as in a state law that is unconstitutional). The Constitution, however, cannot be wrong, because it is the supreme law against which all others are evaluated.
If the Constitution enumerates a specific authority or power, it cannot be legally wrong.
Legality has its own perfectly good terminology, so why use terms that clash with those of morality, unless to confuse? Among those terms are 'right' and 'wrong'. But coming from someone who still can't find the wherewithal to reference the Constitution appropriately (even after having it pointed out to you), I don't think anyone is gasping from your staggering linguistic prowess, and certainly not your familiarity with legal terminology.
By me it does, unless explicit context is provided Your meaning is not accepted by the legal community. Perhaps you should be clear about your own idiosyncrasies and individualistic assumptions when veering off against a professional community.
To call privileges and permissions and agreements and protection rackets "rights" is to cloud an important issue, so I don't. On the contrary, reducing an established legal standing based on some self-righteous pedanticism clouds the issue.
Timeshifting is not a "right" under the definition you advance, so recasting your comments in such a light simply makes that little screed wholly worthless. From a fundamental rights perspective, the freedom to contract and the dominion over one's own creation would bar use inconsistent with such an exception. Any system that required limits on that power would not be based on fundamental or natural rights, since it would artificially limit the powers of the creator and owner of a work, whether you consider intellectual labor to be of value or not.
Internet files which are first downloaded and then by default shared don't typically contain any of the warnings that hard media objects like DVDs and CDs contain. And pirated books are sold with the copyright notice removed. You'd have to be a complete fool to think that makes any difference. Legally acquired downloads do indeed contain those warning and notices in their terms of use.
It's as if a "Private Property. No Trespassing." sign has been replace by an unknown individual with a sign that says "Help Yourself. All Rights Ceded." That means exactly nothing. The unknown individual has no authority to do so, and the hapless consumer is responsible for doing the appropriate research and investigation, or they have failed to exercise good faith (and due diligence, if it's a transaction).
Copyright EXPIRES. Yes, and? If it's expired, it's not generally in print anymore. If it's public domain, it will be clearly so based on your method of acquisition in almost all cases.
To know that copyright is being infringed, one has to know that something is copyrighted. You can't typically discern that on the internet Everything is copyrighted by default. No discernment is necessary.
That's an insane burden of presumed knowledge. Fortunately, it's also a fictional one, cooked up by you.
If you wish to use a specific work beyond its copyright terms, you are responsible to arranging it by contract or by obtaining a release from the copyright holder. In the pursuit of such, if you discover that the copyright has expired or that the author has granted a perpetual open license, then that task becomes simple.
Not to mention how is anybody supposed to know what the actual contents of any file really contain until they look first? So you're downloading a file, containing the name and description of a copyrighted work, from a site/service used for unlawful distribution, and you think that you can hide behind the slim possibility that the mp3 is just white noise?
Here's the rub. Factual impossibility is not a defense. It's also irrelevant, since you're positing a situation in which you'd need to place those fake files in a folder for distribution, whereby you'd not be sued since you were just "sharing" white noise.
And like any other law, it can sure as fuck be wrong. The law does not tell what is right, it tells what is legal. No. "Right and wrong" does not universally mean morality. You're the one projecting that into the discussion. Legally right and wrong are the only factors in the discussion thus far. One cannot conflate the meanings and hope to accomplish anything in the discussion except talking in circles.
Likewise, right does not mean natural right, which is the only way your hapless comments can be construed to make sense. If you insist on being pedantic, just realize that you're only screwing consumers in the process.
that doesn't mean anything except as a statement (affirmation, to use the term that's sitting right there) that the right does exist in the first place. Utterly moronic. The right to restrict others' use of your work is affirmed in the Constitution. The rights of the seller as Offeror are also fundamental. You therefore do not have the "right" (under your definition) to timeshift anything.
It has been created as an exception to the rights of someone else, establishing a legal power that does not otherwise exist. If we accept your false pedanticism (based on an idiotic post from a person not even sophisticated enough to refer to the Constitution properly), then timeshifting is a privilege that may be restrained or eliminated by simple contract, thereby allowing content producers to block your ability to do so, and leaving you no legal recourse. Accordingly, it has been conferred as a legal right by the court, such that waiver by contract is subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny.
It may be difficult for your lay brain to understand, but rights are created and destroyed by the process of law all the time where the right is otherwise nonexistent. To insist that such a right is not actually a right and merely a privilege is profoundly stupid.
the constitution would merely be wrong. The Constitution can't be wrong. It is the supreme law of the United States.
No. The totality of Title 17 is not necessary knowledge.
DVDs come with warnings and reservations. CDs, software, and books come with copyright notices. You never even need to read the Copyright Act to be responsible for knowing that you're not allowed to reproduce these works and distribute them to others. Socializing has imparted people with that basic knowledge, and what uses are allowed: commentary, quoting for criticism, mixed CDs, recording TV shows for later viewing. People are also widely aware that filesharing is not one of those uses.
A friend loaning you a CD or making a mix is not the same as using the Internet as a substitute for record stores or rental shops. The only people who would even attempt to make that argument are brazenly searching for a loophole to justify it, and then the text of the law becomes relevant.
along with having intimate knowledge of the totality of every work from start to finish which has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office In the words of Internet people, WTF?
The only problem is that the "audience" has known who Darth Vader is for about 30 years. Even people who have never seen the films know the "Luke, I am your father!" line from parodies and other pop culture sources.
It's not a secret, and once the first trilogy was out of the bag, it will never BE a secret ever again.
For people in the future who watch the films in order, they will know the truth. The implications of Obi-wan's lies in Ep. IV will strike a deeper chord with the audience, knowing the back story. The reveal in Ep. V will still have its effect on the characters and the story will still unfold. Viewers will relate to the dual impact of finding out this evil guy who has tried to kill you and your friends is your father, and the father-figure Jedi legend lied to you. These are the tradeoffs of an omniscient audience.
If Star Wars hadn't become a pop culture icon, then maybe a more ambiguous Episode III would have been called for.
And yet citizens, who have even less expertise in law than lawyers and judges, are expected to obey the law and can be punished for not doing so. No one citizen is responsible for knowing even a fraction of the law. The vast majority of law doesn't apply to the vast majority of people.
The basic citizen, with whom you seem to be so concerned, doesn't need to know the laws for reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission. They don't need to know the laws about chemical pollution. If you get involved in specific activities, you're responsible for doing those activities in a manner consistent with the law. You don't need to retain information on the proper disposal of refrigerants, because most people will never deal with it at all, and most of those who do can simply follow the instructions. There's no persistent knowledge required.
There is no functioning legal system possible such that every person could ever understand the totality of law. It's a ludicrous idea, unless you're willing to throw out courts and jurisprudence altogether. People handle themselves just fine with a basic sense of right and wrong. Exceptions really are exceptions.
There is no single citizen actually responsible for knowing and obeying more than a tiny fraction of the law that a typical lawyer should have command of. People are socialized and raised to a sufficient degree of knowledge, most of which should be expected of a citizen without needing to be codified in law in the first place. Knowing how to be a decent person gets you nine-tenths of the way there. It's sadly a fading characteristic.
That does not comport with the notions of positive and negative liberty embodied by the Constitution.
All negative defenses are based on a right that has been trumped by another right, requiring the legal system to affirmatively support, or grant, supremacy of one over the other.
Rights are not unlimited, and your oversimplistic response simply does not comport with a constitutional regime. Your definition only works where there is perfect complementation of rights, which does not exist in the real world. Were we to use it, the original embodiment of the system would remain--the right to free expression does not extend to the expressions of others, because their fundamental rights begin, ending yours.
If you're willing to reduce the defense to the status of privilege based on a falsely pedantic notion of "rights", that's fine with me. But it is an unequivocally stupid move.
Yes, that's all well and good and something to keep in mind generally, but remember that the "implicit allow" and the "citizens" here refer to the copyright holders.
Therefore, GP is correct, since the "implicity deny" is the starting point for works protected by copyright, among other areas of the law. You do need a legally granted right to act in a manner that would otherwise be against the law.
A defense to an unlawful act is indeed a "granted" right.
The problem is that the intent element is incomplete based on purely circumstantial evidence, and will not be imputed in these cases, as the reasonable person standard must be applied to a factual link that is too attenuated.
It's not that "making available" is inconclusive (it is not, because it is contained in Sec. 506), it's that a random shmoe off the street with consumer software is not automatically guilty of offering for distribution based on the fact that his computer made the files available. It is a presumption, and a strong one, but it remains a rebuttable one, and therefore in these cases it is not a conclusive standard for these kinds of defendants because a critical element is on the fence.
You overstate the difficulty of attaining sufficient proof that a person made available copyrighted works. You do not need evidence of intent or even of actual knowledge. The intent element is imputed in the use of a filesharing program, for which it is common knowledge that many scan and share materials unless disabled.
However, this is why an offer of distribution is not conclusively sufficient, since there are certain pitfalls and loopholes (some legitimate but most are disingenuous and not widely tolerated), and is precisely why I selected the language I did in my previous post.
Or, since P2P clients automatically search out music files to share, it could have been on the computer before Limewire was loaded, and then Limewire shared it automatically. That wouldn't be a downloaded file. So?
Whether it was ripped from a CD, legally downloaded, or illegally downloaded, if you're sharing it to others, you're offering it for distribution. If someone downloads it and the copyright holder or their agent, that's infringement. The issue then is being able to prove it happened (relatively easy) and then match it to a person (not so easy).
Struggling with the whole "proof" thing, the RIAA has attempted to move the bar by saying an offer to distribute is as good as actual infringement. They're arguably, though not conclusively, correct wrt criminal infringement, but not the civil cases where it has been attempted. Even if "offer to distribute" became an acceptable standard in a civil case, courts would still take issue with the mere presence in a shared folder being an "offer" of legal sufficiency.
They're not. They're using their own personal computers. Where this unfounded assumption comes from that they're issued computers or that military hardware is being used for personal purposes, I do not know.
Lake County is an entirely different market, especially if you're still calling it "SBC" way up there.
It's ISDN BRI (Business ISDN). It's a phone line. Of course it doesn't include internet access or long distance (but why on earth would you even want long distance?). You add the ISDN to your POTS line and use a data-only ISDN connection; this will bypass the daytime meter (unless terms have changed and our office is grandfathered). The billing code here won't help you at all since we're not in the same market.
in the pacbell region SBC charges $80/mo for flat rate ISDN It's $38/mo in the SF Bay Area, so I don't know what you're talking about.
It'll probably cost at least half what it costs to get a T1 (when you don't have to pay mileage) to actually get ISDN up and running. Considering that a T1 is $400/month...no.
Then what, pray tell, is the property? A slip of paper that says "The copyright of this material belongs to ___"? Intellectual Property is an incredibly insidious misnomer created by copyright lock-down enthusiasts and their lobbyists.
No, it's the set of legal rights themselves, just like any other kind of property at law. IP is not a misnomer of any sort, and it certainly was not created by lobbyists or whatever absurd conspiracy theorist you've fashioned above. The term has existed since the late 19th Century, and it is a legal term of convenience to describe the property interests in intellectual works.
Right, because I'm clearly going to download an invention
Yes, absolutely. The text of a book or a song. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here with your misguided ramblings, popular though they may be.
those who have bigger issues with materialism - so much so that they have assigned a material idea to something that in fact is immaterial. The spirit of copyright is to encourage culture to flourish, and the biggest boost culture can get is to make it accessible to all.
It's not materialism, it's the money culture. If you have problems with that, you're going to have to restructure the entire economy, but you don't get to single out one section of it for wanting to play the game. Your argument about culture flourishing is specious, as well. The enrichment of culture is the inevitable result of the sharing of a copyrighted work. It was never intended for that to be simultaneous with its creation. Future generations will reap the benefits of free access; the current generation was deliberately barred from copyrighted works specifically because it fails to offer the author, who invested great resources in creating it, and, based on the market, creating something pleasing and enjoyable. His interests were always meant to be protected, and there is absolutely zero penalty in giving him exclusive rights in it.
Patents are slightly different, which is why their duration is less, because there is a counterbalancing societal interest in them. There is no valid interest in a copyrighted work and no reason whatsoever that it should come under rapid control of the people. It's a simple, expressive work. It's theirwork.
The fact that companies get royalties from patents is most often secondary to their primary goals of selling goods to consumers.
This is completely off the mark, like the rest of the paragraph. Patents protect companies because it secures their R&D research. The tens of millions of dollars they spent bringing a product to market is protected by the patent which ensures they are the only one allowed to sell that patented product. It keeps other companies from R&D sniping, and then using their lack of investment to offer the product at a lower price, causing the first company to lose untold millions. That money not only finances the development, but also generates income to invest in future products. Copyright operates in a similar mechanism. The kind of work that is most popular and most likely to be shared costs millions of dollars (or tens of millions) to produce. Being able to control its distribution is the only thing that allows them to recoup that investment and to finance more of those horrible films and subpar albums that populate BitTorrent.
The First World isn't suddenly going to plunge into the dark ages because the artificial and replaceable idea of Intellectual Property disappears
Yes, it absolutely would. The entire office labor force is predicated on IP, as is the market economy. Everything from proprietary databases to stocks to the analytics reports rely on IP. Post-industrialization, a service-sector economy has no assets other than intellectual ones. It has nothing to do with keeping developing nations down; there's no reason the entire planet can't be a first-world nation. When it does, it
But copyright infringement will be impossible to detect where private communication is possible. Hence the use of more draconian measures to control it. Using "private" communication to conceal illegal acts is a violation of the basic trust that allows that communication to continue unfettered.
Once evidence or a reasonable allegation has been made, "private" communication becomes "monitored" communication--your cell phone or Internet connection will be used to collect evidence. It is not and never has been an absolute right. Free expression and privacy simply will not withstand scrutiny if it becomes a place for the flagrant disregard of the law and the foundational principles of the economy.
Your statement misses the point that detection should not be required because it simply should not be happening. Abuse of privacy to commit unlawful acts to the tune of billions of dollars is the fastest way to lose that privacy and/or personal use exceptions (fair use is something else entirely and not what most of you seem to think it is)--and it's not anyone's fault but the irresponsible individuals involved.
You want coherent and logical? Simple. If you've got at least half a functioning brain, it's not that complicated.
Property at law, in its simplest definition, is an exclusive right. Intellectual Property is a term of convenience, just like "Family law". The property is the copyright, the patent, the trademark, the contractual instrument, etc. Hell, it says right in the Copyright Act that information isn't owned, and spending a little time with how the law has evolved would confirm the distinction between what is and is not property.
Likewise, your real property isn't the land (because no one has the authority to give you, and you don't have the power to own, land itself). It's your legal rights to control the land, which may or may not be comprehensive, depending on what sort of title you have.
Metonymic extension by the laity is regrettable, much like your attempt at humor.
Copyright infringement only requires two consenting partners (sender and receiever) with a private communications line, the copyright holder is standing on the outside. I wouldn't give up my right to private communication over copyright, even if we could agree that copyright makes some sense The copyright holder stands on the outside because of a history of trust--a history that people in this crowd have shown good cause that it no longer makes sense. Just like "the customer is always right", modern practices by a generation of greedy kids has jeopardized the norm.
Clearly the RIAA are a bunch of jerks and asshats, and the number of false positives is unacceptable. Equally unacceptable, however, is the notion that copyright holders shouldn't have their rights any more because one particularly loud group was abusing it.
If that logic is acceptable, then it's solid logic to use for the other side in curtailing fair use and the customary turning a blind eye to certain kinds of infringement.
Just do it without crippling all my devices, block legitimate technologies like bittorrent, performing massive surveilance, creating a pseudo-police force outside the law, making million-dollar lawsuits with a substantial amount of false positives, try to keep control of use after it's sold, deny fair use and risk ruining people for life because their wi-fi was open. I agree with you, but I don't see how any particular device is "crippled", nor how lawsuits should be curtailed. The calculation of damages needs to be reassessed, as I've said many times, to reflect the kind of casual sharing not contemplated in the original penalties against piracy (which were large scale operations).
Unfortunately, there's no way to have it both ways. Attempts to maintain control are the natural result of people abusing the hands-off approach. The pendulum swung too far the other way with DRM, but it's got to come to rest somewhere in the middle. Something has to make people respect the limits on their use of others' work, whether that's digital nannying or more frequent litigation. Frankly, watermarking and authentication might be the easiest way.
I wouldn't give up my right to private communication over copyright Your right to "private" communication doesn't extend to copyrighted works. There's no conflict there.
You can't own information and to pretend anyone does is stupid. And anyone who believes (or disingenuously argues) that the 'property' in Intellectual Property is the information is dumber still, to the point of being what my neighbor from Texas calls a slack-jawed idjit.
As for the incentive argument, it's questionable. It's really not. Protections in place protect a creator's ability to choose to reap the rewards of his invention in whatever manner he sees fit, not the manner a greedy bystander with entitlement issues and an Internet-connected computer chooses.
I don't care that this is Slashdot. People need to grow up and face the simple reality that IP is the only thing that secures an information-based economy. It's a mechanism that needs to be tweaked and maintained, but it's absolutely essential to the first world staying the first world.
If you create something and go through the effort of making something that has commercial value, it's yours to control, exclusively, for the duration of the patent or your life as a copyright. Nothing that is copyrighted is needed by anyone else to advance human society. There is no penalty and no loss by giving authors lifetime control of their creative works. If they want to share it with everyone, they're free to do so. If they want to squeeze every last penny out of it, they can do that too.
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In my experience, there are two different kinds of such devices: (a) the kind where the remote sends the same code for on/off, but the device itself supports discrete codes and (b) the devices that really only have one code.
In type (a), the Harmony remotes can be programmed with the separate codes, even if the original remote doesn't support it (e.g. my Samsung TV has one button to cycle through all the video inputs, but the TV itself supports jumping directly to a specific input via the Harmony--not the power button as in your case, but the same idea).
In type (b), you can set the Activity for that device to leave the power state unchanged for those activities, which will prevent it from turning your TV off as it switches inputs. This will require you to hit "Devices" on the remote and manually toggle the TV on and off, which can involve a series of button presses to scroll through the functions.
I would suggest creating a separate Activity called "TV On/Off" (or whatever creative name you come up with) that does nothing but toggle the TV's power code. This way, when you get home from work, watching a movie is just two keypresses away (not quite as elegant as the one-press setup many of us enjoy, but far from the macro hell your previous remote put you through).
Both the TV and the aquarium are visible from the viewing area...commercial breaks if not in DVR mode are brought to us by fish :)
I'll second that. At first I thought spending $100 for a remote control was just absurd, but I realized I hadn't bought a new toy in a while, so I went for it, fully prepared to be underwhelmed.
It's incredible how much easier my life has become as a result. Even though I'm intimately aware of the ins and outs of my entertainment system, it's still tedious to have to set the right input on the TV (receiver outputs HDMI, component, and S-video for different functions [S-video is required for the on-screen display of my CD changer and receiver]), then on the receiver [even though my H/K receiver supports input naming, so I don't actually need to know what Video3 is], and then dicking around with Comcast's remote.
Now, after about an hour doing the initial software install, setup, and then some personal customizations, I just press "watch DVD" and it turns on any components that aren't already on (leaving the others alone), sets all the right inputs (and the proper video mode and aspect ratio on my TV). I replaced 6 remotes in my entertainment room.
Then I realized that I could control just about anything with an RF receiver (my iMac, my MacBook Pro, my MythTV box in the spare room, the ceiling fan in my bedroom, and even, with a little modification, a special switch I built to control the lights in my saltwater aquarium (so that the blue glow doesn't distract during a nighttime movie session).
The learning function ensures that anything using z-wave iR can be programmed, with logical operation names that even my parents can use when they visit. Guests don't have to ask how to get to the DVR or how to get the sound to work when watching TV.
With this puff-piece ad coming to a close, I will say that I think the higher-end Harmony remotes are overrated, and that the lower models are generally more than sufficient for almost anyone, including geeks (just make sure to check the remote's limit as to number of devices before purchase).
It's one of the more sensible sets of restrictions our legislature has passed on businesses. Now if only we could actually impose REAL penalties for the offensive and tragic oil spills that happen all too often because of bottom-line Bob at Oil Company X. anything to reduce the price of oil, which in turn lower the financial burden of lower income families. Anything that reduces the price of oil delays and impedes the development of a real solution. The disproportionate impact on lower income families of rising prices is unfortunate, but frankly gas prices are TOO LOW in this country--other countries make do with substantially higher prices on fuel. What we really need is something like a $5/gallon gas tax that funds alternative energy R&D with four of those dollars, and puts $1 toward a tax credit/relief fund for lower-income consumers.
No one wants to pay $9/gallon, myself included, but we will be eventually if there's nothing ready to replace it before we run out of new sources. Our reliance on foreign energy is legislatively created. Perhaps so, but finding fault with that reliance is also nutter-inflamed. We're depending on foreign products in all kinds of sectors. It happens.
If the Constitution enumerates a specific authority or power, it cannot be legally wrong. Legality has its own perfectly good terminology, so why use terms that clash with those of morality, unless to confuse? Among those terms are 'right' and 'wrong'. But coming from someone who still can't find the wherewithal to reference the Constitution appropriately (even after having it pointed out to you), I don't think anyone is gasping from your staggering linguistic prowess, and certainly not your familiarity with legal terminology.
Timeshifting is not a "right" under the definition you advance, so recasting your comments in such a light simply makes that little screed wholly worthless. From a fundamental rights perspective, the freedom to contract and the dominion over one's own creation would bar use inconsistent with such an exception. Any system that required limits on that power would not be based on fundamental or natural rights, since it would artificially limit the powers of the creator and owner of a work, whether you consider intellectual labor to be of value or not.
If you wish to use a specific work beyond its copyright terms, you are responsible to arranging it by contract or by obtaining a release from the copyright holder. In the pursuit of such, if you discover that the copyright has expired or that the author has granted a perpetual open license, then that task becomes simple. Not to mention how is anybody supposed to know what the actual contents of any file really contain until they look first? So you're downloading a file, containing the name and description of a copyrighted work, from a site/service used for unlawful distribution, and you think that you can hide behind the slim possibility that the mp3 is just white noise?
Here's the rub. Factual impossibility is not a defense. It's also irrelevant, since you're positing a situation in which you'd need to place those fake files in a folder for distribution, whereby you'd not be sued since you were just "sharing" white noise.
Likewise, right does not mean natural right, which is the only way your hapless comments can be construed to make sense. If you insist on being pedantic, just realize that you're only screwing consumers in the process.
It has been created as an exception to the rights of someone else, establishing a legal power that does not otherwise exist. If we accept your false pedanticism (based on an idiotic post from a person not even sophisticated enough to refer to the Constitution properly), then timeshifting is a privilege that may be restrained or eliminated by simple contract, thereby allowing content producers to block your ability to do so, and leaving you no legal recourse. Accordingly, it has been conferred as a legal right by the court, such that waiver by contract is subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny.
It may be difficult for your lay brain to understand, but rights are created and destroyed by the process of law all the time where the right is otherwise nonexistent. To insist that such a right is not actually a right and merely a privilege is profoundly stupid. the constitution would merely be wrong. The Constitution can't be wrong. It is the supreme law of the United States.
DVDs come with warnings and reservations. CDs, software, and books come with copyright notices. You never even need to read the Copyright Act to be responsible for knowing that you're not allowed to reproduce these works and distribute them to others. Socializing has imparted people with that basic knowledge, and what uses are allowed: commentary, quoting for criticism, mixed CDs, recording TV shows for later viewing. People are also widely aware that filesharing is not one of those uses.
A friend loaning you a CD or making a mix is not the same as using the Internet as a substitute for record stores or rental shops. The only people who would even attempt to make that argument are brazenly searching for a loophole to justify it, and then the text of the law becomes relevant. along with having intimate knowledge of the totality of every work from start to finish which has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office In the words of Internet people, WTF?
The only problem is that the "audience" has known who Darth Vader is for about 30 years. Even people who have never seen the films know the "Luke, I am your father!" line from parodies and other pop culture sources.
It's not a secret, and once the first trilogy was out of the bag, it will never BE a secret ever again.
For people in the future who watch the films in order, they will know the truth. The implications of Obi-wan's lies in Ep. IV will strike a deeper chord with the audience, knowing the back story. The reveal in Ep. V will still have its effect on the characters and the story will still unfold. Viewers will relate to the dual impact of finding out this evil guy who has tried to kill you and your friends is your father, and the father-figure Jedi legend lied to you. These are the tradeoffs of an omniscient audience.
If Star Wars hadn't become a pop culture icon, then maybe a more ambiguous Episode III would have been called for.
The basic citizen, with whom you seem to be so concerned, doesn't need to know the laws for reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission. They don't need to know the laws about chemical pollution. If you get involved in specific activities, you're responsible for doing those activities in a manner consistent with the law. You don't need to retain information on the proper disposal of refrigerants, because most people will never deal with it at all, and most of those who do can simply follow the instructions. There's no persistent knowledge required.
There is no functioning legal system possible such that every person could ever understand the totality of law. It's a ludicrous idea, unless you're willing to throw out courts and jurisprudence altogether. People handle themselves just fine with a basic sense of right and wrong. Exceptions really are exceptions.
There is no single citizen actually responsible for knowing and obeying more than a tiny fraction of the law that a typical lawyer should have command of. People are socialized and raised to a sufficient degree of knowledge, most of which should be expected of a citizen without needing to be codified in law in the first place. Knowing how to be a decent person gets you nine-tenths of the way there. It's sadly a fading characteristic.
That does not comport with the notions of positive and negative liberty embodied by the Constitution.
All negative defenses are based on a right that has been trumped by another right, requiring the legal system to affirmatively support, or grant, supremacy of one over the other.
Rights are not unlimited, and your oversimplistic response simply does not comport with a constitutional regime. Your definition only works where there is perfect complementation of rights, which does not exist in the real world. Were we to use it, the original embodiment of the system would remain--the right to free expression does not extend to the expressions of others, because their fundamental rights begin, ending yours.
If you're willing to reduce the defense to the status of privilege based on a falsely pedantic notion of "rights", that's fine with me. But it is an unequivocally stupid move.
Yes, that's all well and good and something to keep in mind generally, but remember that the "implicit allow" and the "citizens" here refer to the copyright holders.
Therefore, GP is correct, since the "implicity deny" is the starting point for works protected by copyright, among other areas of the law. You do need a legally granted right to act in a manner that would otherwise be against the law.
A defense to an unlawful act is indeed a "granted" right.
The problem is that the intent element is incomplete based on purely circumstantial evidence, and will not be imputed in these cases, as the reasonable person standard must be applied to a factual link that is too attenuated.
It's not that "making available" is inconclusive (it is not, because it is contained in Sec. 506), it's that a random shmoe off the street with consumer software is not automatically guilty of offering for distribution based on the fact that his computer made the files available. It is a presumption, and a strong one, but it remains a rebuttable one, and therefore in these cases it is not a conclusive standard for these kinds of defendants because a critical element is on the fence.
You overstate the difficulty of attaining sufficient proof that a person made available copyrighted works. You do not need evidence of intent or even of actual knowledge. The intent element is imputed in the use of a filesharing program, for which it is common knowledge that many scan and share materials unless disabled.
However, this is why an offer of distribution is not conclusively sufficient, since there are certain pitfalls and loopholes (some legitimate but most are disingenuous and not widely tolerated), and is precisely why I selected the language I did in my previous post.
Whether it was ripped from a CD, legally downloaded, or illegally downloaded, if you're sharing it to others, you're offering it for distribution. If someone downloads it and the copyright holder or their agent, that's infringement. The issue then is being able to prove it happened (relatively easy) and then match it to a person (not so easy).
Struggling with the whole "proof" thing, the RIAA has attempted to move the bar by saying an offer to distribute is as good as actual infringement. They're arguably, though not conclusively, correct wrt criminal infringement, but not the civil cases where it has been attempted. Even if "offer to distribute" became an acceptable standard in a civil case, courts would still take issue with the mere presence in a shared folder being an "offer" of legal sufficiency.
They're not. They're using their own personal computers. Where this unfounded assumption comes from that they're issued computers or that military hardware is being used for personal purposes, I do not know.
Lake County is an entirely different market, especially if you're still calling it "SBC" way up there.
It's ISDN BRI (Business ISDN). It's a phone line. Of course it doesn't include internet access or long distance (but why on earth would you even want long distance?). You add the ISDN to your POTS line and use a data-only ISDN connection; this will bypass the daytime meter (unless terms have changed and our office is grandfathered). The billing code here won't help you at all since we're not in the same market.
Then what, pray tell, is the property? A slip of paper that says "The copyright of this material belongs to ___"? Intellectual Property is an incredibly insidious misnomer created by copyright lock-down enthusiasts and their lobbyists.
No, it's the set of legal rights themselves, just like any other kind of property at law. IP is not a misnomer of any sort, and it certainly was not created by lobbyists or whatever absurd conspiracy theorist you've fashioned above. The term has existed since the late 19th Century, and it is a legal term of convenience to describe the property interests in intellectual works.
Right, because I'm clearly going to download an invention
Yes, absolutely. The text of a book or a song. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here with your misguided ramblings, popular though they may be.
those who have bigger issues with materialism - so much so that they have assigned a material idea to something that in fact is immaterial. The spirit of copyright is to encourage culture to flourish, and the biggest boost culture can get is to make it accessible to all.
It's not materialism, it's the money culture. If you have problems with that, you're going to have to restructure the entire economy, but you don't get to single out one section of it for wanting to play the game. Your argument about culture flourishing is specious, as well. The enrichment of culture is the inevitable result of the sharing of a copyrighted work. It was never intended for that to be simultaneous with its creation. Future generations will reap the benefits of free access; the current generation was deliberately barred from copyrighted works specifically because it fails to offer the author, who invested great resources in creating it, and, based on the market, creating something pleasing and enjoyable. His interests were always meant to be protected, and there is absolutely zero penalty in giving him exclusive rights in it.
Patents are slightly different, which is why their duration is less, because there is a counterbalancing societal interest in them. There is no valid interest in a copyrighted work and no reason whatsoever that it should come under rapid control of the people. It's a simple, expressive work. It's theirwork.
The fact that companies get royalties from patents is most often secondary to their primary goals of selling goods to consumers.
This is completely off the mark, like the rest of the paragraph. Patents protect companies because it secures their R&D research. The tens of millions of dollars they spent bringing a product to market is protected by the patent which ensures they are the only one allowed to sell that patented product. It keeps other companies from R&D sniping, and then using their lack of investment to offer the product at a lower price, causing the first company to lose untold millions. That money not only finances the development, but also generates income to invest in future products. Copyright operates in a similar mechanism. The kind of work that is most popular and most likely to be shared costs millions of dollars (or tens of millions) to produce. Being able to control its distribution is the only thing that allows them to recoup that investment and to finance more of those horrible films and subpar albums that populate BitTorrent.
The First World isn't suddenly going to plunge into the dark ages because the artificial and replaceable idea of Intellectual Property disappears
Yes, it absolutely would. The entire office labor force is predicated on IP, as is the market economy. Everything from proprietary databases to stocks to the analytics reports rely on IP. Post-industrialization, a service-sector economy has no assets other than intellectual ones. It has nothing to do with keeping developing nations down; there's no reason the entire planet can't be a first-world nation. When it does, it
Once evidence or a reasonable allegation has been made, "private" communication becomes "monitored" communication--your cell phone or Internet connection will be used to collect evidence. It is not and never has been an absolute right. Free expression and privacy simply will not withstand scrutiny if it becomes a place for the flagrant disregard of the law and the foundational principles of the economy.
Your statement misses the point that detection should not be required because it simply should not be happening. Abuse of privacy to commit unlawful acts to the tune of billions of dollars is the fastest way to lose that privacy and/or personal use exceptions (fair use is something else entirely and not what most of you seem to think it is)--and it's not anyone's fault but the irresponsible individuals involved.
You want coherent and logical? Simple. If you've got at least half a functioning brain, it's not that complicated.
Property at law, in its simplest definition, is an exclusive right. Intellectual Property is a term of convenience, just like "Family law". The property is the copyright, the patent, the trademark, the contractual instrument, etc. Hell, it says right in the Copyright Act that information isn't owned, and spending a little time with how the law has evolved would confirm the distinction between what is and is not property.
Likewise, your real property isn't the land (because no one has the authority to give you, and you don't have the power to own, land itself). It's your legal rights to control the land, which may or may not be comprehensive, depending on what sort of title you have.
Metonymic extension by the laity is regrettable, much like your attempt at humor.
Clearly the RIAA are a bunch of jerks and asshats, and the number of false positives is unacceptable. Equally unacceptable, however, is the notion that copyright holders shouldn't have their rights any more because one particularly loud group was abusing it.
If that logic is acceptable, then it's solid logic to use for the other side in curtailing fair use and the customary turning a blind eye to certain kinds of infringement. Just do it without crippling all my devices, block legitimate technologies like bittorrent, performing massive surveilance, creating a pseudo-police force outside the law, making million-dollar lawsuits with a substantial amount of false positives, try to keep control of use after it's sold, deny fair use and risk ruining people for life because their wi-fi was open. I agree with you, but I don't see how any particular device is "crippled", nor how lawsuits should be curtailed. The calculation of damages needs to be reassessed, as I've said many times, to reflect the kind of casual sharing not contemplated in the original penalties against piracy (which were large scale operations).
Unfortunately, there's no way to have it both ways. Attempts to maintain control are the natural result of people abusing the hands-off approach. The pendulum swung too far the other way with DRM, but it's got to come to rest somewhere in the middle. Something has to make people respect the limits on their use of others' work, whether that's digital nannying or more frequent litigation. Frankly, watermarking and authentication might be the easiest way. I wouldn't give up my right to private communication over copyright Your right to "private" communication doesn't extend to copyrighted works. There's no conflict there.
I don't care that this is Slashdot. People need to grow up and face the simple reality that IP is the only thing that secures an information-based economy. It's a mechanism that needs to be tweaked and maintained, but it's absolutely essential to the first world staying the first world.
If you create something and go through the effort of making something that has commercial value, it's yours to control, exclusively, for the duration of the patent or your life as a copyright. Nothing that is copyrighted is needed by anyone else to advance human society. There is no penalty and no loss by giving authors lifetime control of their creative works. If they want to share it with everyone, they're free to do so. If they want to squeeze every last penny out of it, they can do that too.
It's not yours. It's as simple as that.