what do you call an objectively true statement whose subject is an expression, and which is uttered in order to provide someone else with knowledge that they can use to reconstruct that expression? As to "objectively true statement whose subject is an expression", that does not include a word that is in the expression, because there is no objective truth to the word. What you describe isn't whose "subject is an expression", but rather a statement whose content is an expression. Regardless of what you call that statement, one "uttered to [...] reconstruct that expression" is merely a repetition of the expression. It remains an expression.
They will always be facts, no matter what happens later. No, they are words, and will merely remain words, no matter what happens. 'Apple' is a word. There is no significance or value to 'apple' that it appears in text billions of times. That's a given reality of any word.
It is the subject of a true statement as soon as someone says that statement. Again, a base definition that is inadequate. It is a worthless sophism.
Let's put this in very simple and clear terms. Go back to high school. You are asked, "what are the facts that the author uses to make his argument?" Now, if you turn around with a mere list of words and their order, have you completed the assignment in good faith or are you just being a giant pain in the ass?
However, "Billy told me that you have HIV" is a fact. Then so would be "you have HIV" under your definition. As soon as I say it, it is fact, after all. If 'you' is a fact to share, 'have' is a fact to share, and 'HIV' is a fact to share, then the sum of those facts must be a fact. 'You have HIV' is thus inevitably a fact under your base definition.
the common definition of fact which I've been using works just fine for distinguishing opinions from facts, theories, and expressions. No, it does not. A proposition cannot simultaneously be fact and opinion, or the distinction is meaningless. If each element of a statement is a fact, the entire statement must be a fact. Truth values can't magically switch.
That's funny, because earlier you admitted [slashdot.org] that facts about expressions are, indeed, facts.
Facts about expressions are indeed facts. They cease to be facts and become "facts" when their character and purpose is nothing more than the reconstruction of an expression. This is pretty clear: if the product begins as an expression, is deconstructed by sophistry to a lengthy tired of "facts", and the end result is that expression again, it's still merely the expression.
Again, what a shame it is that you lost the ability to distinguish between "related" and "identical".
Look in the mirror, there. An expression doesn't stop being an expression when you engage in this ridiculous behavior that erases the distinction. Fact and expression ARE RELATED. They are an orthogonal pair. When the facts in an expression are lost in a sea of "facts" that merely duplicate the expression, that collection doesn't cease being a cheap and pointless case.
Again, "it is fact that the law is x" does not make a legal issue a factual one. You see, it's technically a true statement, but it is tautological and a sophistry. It is an empty case.
expression is 4 words long, and you know what those 4 words are, in order, then you can put them back together.
And the end result is still nothing more than that proprietary expression. They're not facts when they're an expression. You've not culled facts when you're just superficially and deceptively changed the expression into "facts". You seem to be having trouble getting past that.
Then perhaps you could point to the proposition you feel is untrue.
That an expression is a mere collection of facts. Duh. Each word isn't a fact. It's just a word. If you're depending on the truth value of the presence of each word, you're merely describing a tautology--it's impossible for something not to be a fact in any scenario. Also patently false is that an expression ceases to be an expression when reproduced in its entirety for no purpose other than reproducing that expression.
1. There are facts about expressions. (From the definition of fact: anything can be the subject of a true statement.
Can be != is.
2. Knowing enough of those facts is sufficient to reconstruct the expression.
Words are not facts just like songs are not facts. "It is a fact that you have HIV" is not a fact simply because someone said so, I observed it, and now I'm repeating it.
3. To prevent someone from reconstructing the expression, you must prevent them from knowing the facts.
Bzzzzt! Knowing the facts is the point of making an expression. Reproducing the expression is just reproducing the expression, no matter what hollow Rube you put it through. It is not repeating fact or employing those facts to any fertile or legitimate use.
That's funny, because everyone else considers it quite adequate for fact/opinion, fact/theory, and fact/expression, at least.
Hardly. An opinion isn't fact because someone said it. The ONLY fact is that someone said it, and except through fallacious manipulation of homonyms 'fact', you can't get anywhere with it. The fact remains that someone said it, and the content of the opinion remains an opinion. This is true of the entire subsequent list of orthogonal pairs. You really just have no clue what you're saying, and can't support any of your arguments.
This discussion has run its course long ago because you are highly confused about language. It's unfortunate that you have to engage in repeated sophistry to make an empty point about a plainly illegitimate subversion of the orthogonal pairing of fact and expression. It's unfortunate that you can't shed the fallacious arguments and untrue propositions and that you have been so thoroughly defeated in your attempts to make a case. It's also unfortunate t
Your original statement wasn't, "you can reconstruct the expression if you have all the facts." Accordingly, the logical negative I corrected should read "you can't reconstruct the expression if you don't learn the facts."
The relation between them is such that for every expression, there's at least one set of facts which is sufficient to fully describe it
No, because an expression isn't a fact any more than an opinion is a fact or a value is a fact or a theory is a fact. They're orthogonal pairings. A collection of "facts" that merely reconstruct an expression aren't facts at all, because they have no value apart from the expression. It's a sophistry that is laughed out of every formal arena of debate on Earth. Go into a courtroom and argue that "it's a fact that the law is x" and therefore it's a factual question and see how long it takes for the entire room to burst into tears laughing.
When discussing a traditional orthogonal pairing, it's perfectly vacuous to state the non-fact as a fact. It's pure, unadulterated sophism. You can't escape it. There are certainly facts in expressions, but not every element is a fact, or the expression would just be a fact. This is a null distinction.
The logic there is a simple contrapositive
Ah! There you go. First, this isn't an illustration of the logic I asked for (it was your expression->fact->expression safari, and how you "logically" change expression to facts to expression again [but somehow they remain facts after being an expression again]). But I'll roll with it for a moment. Your statement is contrapositive to its negative, but that says nothing of your argument, because guess what? That's a tautology! What a wonderful example of that sophistry we've all become so used to from you. Contrapositives always match the proposition! The formal logic we're still waiting for is establishing the truth values of your proposition.
What's even more delicious is that you've completely blown contraposition, because "if you must not reconstruct..." is NOT the logical negative of "if you learn..." The logical negative is "if you don't learn the facts, you can't reconstruct the expression." Contrapositive, indeed.
It must be frustrating to try so hard and yet come up so terribly short.
Demanding to see the formal underpinnings is, however, a great way to implicitly concede the point.
If by 'concede the point' you mean, definitively illustrate that you're talking out of your ass and still can't make a valid argument, then yes, absolutely.
In other words, "a fact is only a fact when I say it is". Sure.
It's pretty clear, and it's not something I invented, but rather enjoys a rich history spanning over three centuries and including such notables as Hume, Mansfield, Bradley, Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Rawls, and countless others. An expression does not lose its distinction as an expression merely by sophistry; reporting each word, each note, or each brush stroke for the sake of duplicating the existing expression is not fact. It is, beyond all doubt, a cheap attempt at subversion of expression and cannot be defended as a reporting of fact.
Apparently "base definition" means "the common one found in the dictionary
A dictionary is a starting point, not a destination. The willful mixing of separate homonyms does not make it a suitable exercise. The "common one" is a disingenuous remark for a word with 16 definitions in the OED, which of course rarely paints a complete picture as it is; the definition of 'aspirin' is hardly complete for all but the most basic circumstances. Your definition is inadequate for any scope of argument in fact/opinion, fact/law, fact/theory, fact/value, fact/perspective, and yes, fact/expression. Your handwaving is no more effective here than to barge onto a construction site or an airport waving a piece of cloth and declaring it an apron. No one disputes the technical truth, but merely its misapplication.
You're right - even a child could stomp your ridiculous arguments into the ground.
That's just as clumsy, inelegant, devoid of cleverness, and ineffective th
You seem to think that things can't be related or linked unless they're identical Relation and linking do not make one thing something else, they relate to it and link to it.
Classic troll behavior: instead of dealing with the argument head on, you try to veer off into the bushes. I am dealing with it head on. You've posited a "logical" argument; if it is so, then clearly you can support it with formal logic. Explain the structural logic of your argument. The reason you decline to do so is because you can't, and because even if you could, you'd see it collapse as a fallacy.
Apparently "base definition" means "the common one found in the dictionary and used in everyday speech by everyone except trolls". I've put up with this farce long enough. You've yet to offer a valid argument, and there's now zero chance of that happening since you've collapsed into a fit of ad hominems and cutesy jabs. It does help to fill the space, but it doesn't help your failure to advance a valid linguistic argument, a legal argument, a semantic argument, a formalistic argument, an historical argument, an ethical argument, or an organic argument.
An expression isn't a fact. Reporting facts doesn't include "facts" of the elements of an expression for no other purpose than the subversion of that expression. You continually refer to a base definition of "fact" in a desperate and wholly unconvincing effort to make the distinction meaningless. There's no difference in your unsupportable, moronic, and utterly inutile assessment than were you to enter a child's discussion of fact and opinion, a scientific discussion of fact and theory, a moral discussion of fact and value, a legal discussion of fact and law, or indeed a linguistic discussion of fact and expression, arguing that fact subsumes the orthogonal pairing. It is a sophistry, a sophistry and a tautology bereft of significance, given by a cheap and laughably irrational man.
Nah, there's nothing glib about pointing out your logical fallacies. More distractions and punting. It's the cheap shots about mental illness and Alzheimer's, and the weak attempts to distract from a vaporous case.
You mean breaking a promise? What promise? According to your theory, I have an undeniable right to report to the world your bank account or that your nephew was recently diagnosed with HIV. I'm simply reporting facts.
suppressing the spread of expressions also requires suppressing the spread of facts. No, it doesn't. Expressions are not facts.
I've provided enough information for anyone to reconstruct the whole expression. To what end? The expression isn't a fact, so there's no fundamental reason it needs to be reconstructed. If the purpose of your 'conveying facts' is to reconstruct an expression, then it's not to convey facts. There's no significance to it apart from an elaborate, desperate, and hollow attempt to get around the distinction.
An inference isn't a fact; an opinion isn't a fact; an expression isn't a fact. An expression isn't just a sum of facts, and no rational person would take a collection of "it is a fact that the 37,435th word of the book is 'contrary'." There's no value in that "fact" unless it is couched in a greater expression, and a vacuous expression isn't work, and therefore not proprietary.
Compare it to an actual fact, like that the speed of sound at sea level is ~750mph. That's something of meaning, of value, and of significance.
most basic application of logic. Explain the formal logical structure of your argument.
You won't, you see, because every time you've been confronted with the task of making a viable argument, you fail miserably. You make glib remarks, offer vacuous definitions, or come back with an unsupportable allegation of a straw man. You've lost the linguistic argument, the legal argument, the semantic argument, the formalistic argument, the historical argument, the ethical argument, and the organic argument. Your only hope relies on what is at best a draw on a moral argument, which isn't compelling under any formal standard of debate.
An expression isn't a fact. Reporting facts doesn't include "facts" of the elements of an expression for no other purpose than the subversion of that expression. You continually refer to a base definition of "fact" in a desperate and wholly unconvincing effort to make the distinction meaningless. There's no difference in your unsupportable, moronic, and utterly inutile assessment than were you to enter a child's discussion of fact and opinion, a scientific discussion of fact and theory, a moral discussion of fact and value, a legal discussion of fact and law, or indeed a linguistic discussion of fact and expression, arguing that fact subsumes the orthogonal pairing. It is a sophistry, a sophistry and a tautology bereft of significance, given by a cheap and laughably irrational man.
If I collect funds to support my entry into a Congressional race, and then decide not to go through with that entry, I damn well better give my supporters their donations back, because I haven't spent anything on the campaign yet, because I haven't entered the campaign.
The only races candidates "drop out" of are for president, and that's because the playing field narrows. They either drop out or are voted out. That of course, isn't applicable here, because presidential candidates spend millions of dollars on the campaign before seeing dim prospects and withdrawing. If he'd formed an exploratory committee to prep for a presidential run and explicitly collected donations for that exploration, he could keep them.
But he didn't form a committee. He didn't get donations to support his exploration of a run for Congress; he got donations for his run for Congress. He didn't spend any of those funds for that purpose, and so all of that money should go back. If people want to contribute to his organization, they can opt-out of the refund, or reinvest the refund in the organization.
Certainly their litigation tactics are reprehensible at best and they've committed blunder after blunder (and there's no one who can really say they're not corrupt), but for the most part, the people they go after aren't people who shared an album, or downloaded a movie once. Their usual target is someone sharing thousands or tens of thousands of songs with quite a bit of traffic going in and out. Yeah, we hear a lot more about the little kids and grandmas who get sued, but they make for a better story than someone with 24,000 songs and tens of thousands of downloads.
It's pretty hard to say with a straight face that most of these defendants are innocently sharing a few songs with a few friends or that it doesn't have any commercial impact.
It may be hard to believe, but that distinction you personally make is also one made in legal circles. It's not generally worthwhile to "go after your customers" as it is said here, and they don't. They throw a few random ones in for whatever reason (probably just to keep people in line, like speeding enforcement), but that's the exception, not the rule. It's far more nuanced than lots of people here would ever admit, because it lessens their compelling tales. The opponents are just as greedy as the "big media" they despise. 'Fair' is somewhere in the middle, but everyone's life is more complicated because of the vocal, intolerant few who don't like the business model but somehow can't do without these things they claim have no value.
You're beating the stuffing out of that poor strawman, and at this point, there are only two likely causes of that behavior: either you're trolling or you suffer from a mental illness. More glib, cute remarks and failed distractions.
It remains true, however, that by stating enough facts, you can fully describe an expression to another person, allowing them to reproduce it for themselves. No, because a fact is not an expression. The whole of facts in an expressive work doesn't add up to a whole; an original work of expression is not so base as to be reduced in that way. Art is not fact. Personal thought is not fact. Repeating an expression doesn't make it a fact, because it would be impossible for anything not to be a fact at that point. To wit: a song is not a fact. Even you admit this. It has no objective reality to it. Its existence or non-existence doesn't change the order of the universe. You don't have a right to know what Jane thinks, or what James said to Austin. It's not appropriate on a fundamental level to repeat the expressions of others. You pretend to believe in privacy, but you don't, because I have a natural right to tell your boss your latest rant which was told to me in confidence.
a song isn't a fact ...and there we have it. Repeating any number of facts about an expression will never replace that expression except in a hollow, meaningless, desperate broadening of fact to include the universe.
a song isn't a fact
a song isn't a fact
a song isn't a fact
The 30 second trip to the mail box presumes you ordered the movie a couple days ago if not MUCH longer ago. A D/L service beats the likes of netflix hands down. Its faster, AND its not going to delay your selection for weeks on end due to supply issues. I take it you've never used Netflix.
if I can get a D/L in 2 hrs, and start watching it after 15 minutes buffering D/L is good to go. You can't, so it's not.
And see my other post about the issues with assuming that by the time the network catches up, we'll have an even fatter format on disc... A comment which entirely misses the point. Blu-ray is overkill for most families and most televisions as it is. There's no question that most homes won't be seeing anything better than 1080p in the next decade. The problem is that the download services you refer to are not Blu-ray competitors. Anyone who wants a BD film over an upconverted DVD or over what is available from their cable company's HD selections isn't going to be swayed by an equally inferior download.
Digital distribution is not a replacement for physical media, because physical media still delivers superior quality and content. Digital distribution is a perfectly reasonable replacement for last-generation content. Online distribution isn't a Blu-ray competitor, and that's the whole point. It's a DVD competitor, and a great one.
Re:Online distribution of HD - available now
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You can't stream Blu-ray quality. You just can't.
I agree that On Demand content and AppleTV rentals are here now and HD, but that's not the sentiment expressed higher in the thread. These are not replacements for BD. They are perfectly adequate replacements for DVD.
The tautological definition you're describing is a strawman you invented out of thin air so you could beat up on it, not something I've ever actually proposed or used. Bullshit. It is impossible not to express something and not have it be "fact" according to you, creating a null distinction. You can try to wriggle out of it, but it doesn't change the reality that according to your definition, nothing can be not a fact.
Similarly, a song is not a fact, even though there are plenty of facts about songs. Absolutely! And so repeating a song is not repeating a fact.
I'm not sure where the disconnect is coming from. From the absurd and empty attempt to distinguish everything as a fact, when it clearly isn't. A song isn't a fact. You said so yourself. It therefore doesn't inhibit any of your rights that you don't have unlimited access to the song.
Well, except for all those posts where I did distinguish them, including this one. If you had really distinguished them, you would have stopped making an ass of yourself long ago. Your bizarre insistence that expressions are facts is the only vehicle for continuing your vaporous and ultimately worthless argument.
An expression is not a fact. Since facts are not protected and expressions are the result of proprietary labor, there is no valid claim to the expression of another.
Re:Online distribution of HD content take too much
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Time to download too great. Compare that with going to a video store, and even today in the relative bandwidth backwater of the U.S. it's not such a big difference. How, exactly, does a 15 minute trip to the video store (or a 30 second trip to the mailbox) compare to the 12-14 hours it would take to download a full quality BD file?
Bandwidth costs. I contend that online distribution is already *much* cheaper than by disc. I doubt it. Blu-ray discs won't end up costing more than DVDs once the market hits its stride. It's not just the bandwidth costs (which I think you're lowballing anyway), but the hardware necessary to have file storage and availability to millions of customers and be able to push out the astronomical volumes of data that would be requested. In the end, the disc will be cheaper.
Compression. BD is already highly, highly compressed. There's not really any way to compress it further without giving up significant quality, at which point, it's no longer a replacement for BD.
Freedom of discs. You need a Blu-ray player in the other room to play that disc. Or you can move your player around. But the same goes for your digital media player - have two or move it around. So that's not much of a rebuttal. The benefit of discs is that they contain their own storage and don't require network access. You can watch them in places without high-speed networks, such as while traveling, on players that don't need hard drives. They are just as portable as files within their scope of use; you can bring them to a friend's house. There's also the psychological element of having the box and the disc; some people enjoy that physical connection. Discs will also have the special features, additional audio tracks, and other bonus content that downloads won't; again, some people don't care about those things, but many do.
The short answer is that by the time Blu-ray can be delivered digitally without any quality loss and without serious drawbacks in delivery time, something better than Blu-ray will be on the market. This BD replacement will outstrip our Internet connections, too. We'll be right back at physical media for the optimum quality. We're many, many years from networks that can completely outpace that.
Unfortunately not every misdeed is a property infringement, that's why we have different words for them. Indeed. Words like stealing, a word with no legal implications, cf. e.g. theft, larceny, burglary.
Yes, and for the umpteenth + 1 time, the facts I'm referring to are about expression. You just don't get it. If you broaden "fact" to be a tautology, it becomes meaningless. You posit a definition that isn't falsifiable. It's impossible for anything not to be fact, which excludes the possibility of an alternative. It's totally unworkable and utterly asinine.
There are facts about words, thoughts, and theories, but those things aren't necessarily facts themselves Then what are they?
Are you trying to redefine "sharing" to include the requirement that the thing shared must be the sharer's own creation? Sharing, in order to be permissible, like anything else, needs to be something you're entitled to share. People who choose to share their work are welcome to do so in our society. People who choose to make that decision for someone else without the authority to do so are not free to do that.
You mean like the one who said these intangible things cannot, in nature, be the subject of property? Yes. The very same ones who wholeheartedly created the patent office and remarked at how successful the system was, despite concerns that fools would use it as an opportunity to lock up knowledge. Amazingly, they were writing to distinguish fact and expression, something you've still to learn.
More glib, cute lines and still no substance. Keep working at it; maybe you'll fall sideways into something valid sooner or later.
The funny thing is that once upon a time, there WAS an iPod accessory for connecting to certain digital cameras. It didn't do very well, but I think that's because the iPod touch didn't exist.
A Bluetooth keyboard (foldable, even) and bringing back the USB connector (just cameras and flash drives would be fine given the limited resources of the Touch) would make that little machine the belle of the ball.
You lied about the meaning of "fact", remember? Where did you fabricate this?
so ignorant about the meaning of such a common everyday word For the umpteenth time, there is a clear distinction between fact and expression in this context. Ignoring it 10 times in a row won't make it go away, nor will substituting a generic definition in order to make a case that isn't falsifiable.
That's not scientific, it's not rational, it's not logical, and it's certainly neither semantically valid nor legally sound.
Also, sequences of independent adjectives are separated by commas. It's "common, everyday word." But you know, common, everyday words aren't always so: 'orbital' means quite different things in medicine, astronomy, and chemistry. But goodness, how important the word 'fact' is, since it encompasses every word ever uttered, every though ever expressed, and every theory disproved! Obviously the operative level escapes you.
Indeed, we both know it isn't about that, and yet you've just brought it up out of nowhere. How quickly you forget your own words: "...simply can't understand why anyone would choose to share something with other people." That is a bogus ad hominem meant to distract from an utterly vaporous case. The issue of choosing to share was never once on the table, nor is there anything to evidence my thoughts on the subject.
Inadequate for your dishonest argument, you mean. As we've seen time and again, you're the only one being dishonest in your approach, utterly failing to produce a sound argument in any context that doesn't rely on tautological definitions and selective manipulation to the exclusion of the contrary. You've committed nearly every classical logical fallacy on the books, and each time you come back with an absurd, cute remark to distract from your unfortunate and embarrassing failure to make a sound argument.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: I'm happy to put forth the "bankrupt" argument of Framers and philosophers in place from the time of the birth of our nation, articulated by four dozen Supreme Court justices, and solidly backed by a field of linguistic professionals, and demonstrably expressive of the collective will. But sure, go for the cheap shot because you can't wrest victory from the jaws of utter intellectual defeat. We're sleeping fine.
Nah, just catching you in a lie. Surely you're used to that by now. That would be accurate if you were able to establish a lie. But you can't.
The best you can do is disingenuously take the long-standing distinction between fact and expression which has been operative since the days of the Framers and cobble together, with limited skill and no rational basis, a definition that creates a distinction without a difference.
Fact and expression are absolutely distinguishable when dealing with the terms as used wrt intellectual works. Creating a tautological argument for the sheer sake of being a pompous ass doesn't have any credibility; be it logical, legal, or philosophical.
Moby Dick is also the book that starts out "Call me Ishmael." That's a fact and an objective reality. Denying it only proves how detached from reality you are I don't deny that that is the case. But if you extend that sentence for the next 400 pages, you're no longer reporting fact. You're coopting expression, and doing so for no legitimate purpose. Anybody can see through that, even those with such limited ability to form an effective, nuanced argument as yourself.
That must be what it's about, because a jealous, angry hoarder like you simply can't understand why anyone would choose to share something with other people. On the contrary, you're so blinded by your need to grasp at straws that you conflate a formalistic argument with my personal viewpoint, and take a protection as the exclusion of the alternative. As I've said many times, you're absolutely free to share your work as you desire. This isn't about that, though, and unless you're totally unhinged, you know that. Other people choose to share their expressions on their own terms, and they have every right to do so.
what words like "say", "speech", and "fact" mean in common use. I know very well what they mean in common use. But clearly, common use is inadequate for a specific, technical situation in a thread about semantics and formalism. The only one on his ass is you.
Once again, put up or shut up. You've already demonstrated you can't put up. Only one thing left to do.
So what bizarre definition of "wrong" are you using if (a)legality and (b) belief don't determine this for people? If "wrong" is moral, it's based purely on belief. If it's ethical, it's based on collective wisdom of society (which has repeatedly acted consistent with that individual belief. If it's simply technical, then it's plainly illegal.
"Take" still implies depriving the original owner of it. Not according to any credible theory of verb agency.
just as bad as the other meaning of the word "stealing". Don't impart your morality on a structural argument.
it's you who perhaps should be spending your energy to make copyright infringment legally a form of stealing. Well, it already is stealing. Making it "legally a form of stealing" is meaningless; 'stealing' isn't against the law. Theft is not the same as stealing.
I'm saying that copyright infringement is not theft/stealing, either legally, nor is it by definition the same thing as when "theft" is used to refer to physical products. Theft and stealing are not interchangeable, linguistically OR under the law. It is not theft. Theft is a term of art. Stealing is not; it's just a word. From someone with such a weak understanding of legality and linguistics, it's not hard to imagine why you're having such a hard time understanding that basic reality.
Flopping back and forth between two linguistically distinct words with the same orthographic representation doesn't make your argument any stronger. Are you committing the legal offense of murder(0) when performing the act of consumption, murder(1)? Of course not.
Actually, no, it's a standard definition. As Merriam-Webster puts it You're dodging the issue again. Surprise, surprise. Reporting an expression as fact is a cheap, intellectually dishonest, and lazy way to get around the functional distinction between fact and expression as it relates to the context of intellectual work.
You're not interested in an actual discussion. You're just puttering around as the bloviating gasbag you are for the sheer sake of inanity.
Let me try one: the act of painting my house blue is the labor, and so the "fact" that my house is blue is only a "fact" because of that labor. You are quite skilled at clumsily failing to maintain parallelism. The fact that your house is blue is of independent significance. Yours is the blue house. Moby Dick is the book about the ill-fated hunt for a white whale. That's a fact, too. The expression isn't an independent fact; it's not an objective reality. It's an original narrative containing fact. The elements of its plot are facts. The location of its sentences in the text are fact. The sum of the expression is not a fact having any significance to the universe. It's an expression, an original production of substance and intellect that belongs only to its creator. There is zero value and zero need for your desire to repeat it--to do so is not out of an interest to convey fact, but simply to coopt the original expression of another for your own gain (including the petulant spite of another).
Another made-up definition, eh? You should publish your own dictionary; at least that way, you'll have a source to point to the next time someone calls you out on your desperate semantic wankery. In fact I have. It's called the U.S. Reports. "Desperate semantic wankery" coming from someone who clearly has no credible background in semantics is pretty rich. Show me a semantic map. Mark out the lexemes and -roles. Back it up with a valid Fregian proposition. Put up or shut up.
Man, this fantasy world of yours is starting to sound like an interesting place. A world where "objectively" means "in my opinion"? It's a world where 'objectively' means that studies have shown people do things they would believe to be wrong given the right circumstances, and that it doesn't mean they don't think it's wrong. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is almost always an unfounded assumption.
Of course, you know that, or you wouldn't go for cute to conceal your intellectual failings.
Incorrect. At best, your sentence should read: "Copying without license is stealing". Incorrect. At best, your reply should be directed to the parent, who used the term to imply unlawful copying, which I duplicated.
The fact that you dispute my acceptance of the truncated term rather than the person who introduced it is telling.
The fact that you equate any copying (even with permission!) with stealing I don't equate it with stealing. It is stealing.
Your moral indignation or mistaken connotative objection to the term could not matter less to me. The fact that you turn a semantic, linguistic issue into a moral one simply goes to show that you can't win it on a technical front. It's just noise.
Example? All of them except the one you've got on the back burner.
To steal is to acquire without authorization or right. To take, get, or win surreptitiously. To pass off as one's own.
The only way to make it invalid is to do a pseudo-semantic dance that no linguist would tolerate, by spinning the definition around to imply the negative.
The point is that even if you do find a definition of "steal" which fits - just because a word has more than one definition doesn't make those definitions the same. The definitions don't have to be the same. As long as there is one that fits (and there is only one way to make it not fit), you can't say "but it's not stealing!"--because if it fits at least one definition of the word, it is. You don't get to cry foul on a valid word choice because you don't like it.
When people refer to copyright infringement as theft or stealing, you can bet that they intend to make the suggestion that they are the same. It's not theft; it's copyright infringement, unjust enrichment, theft of service, piracy, and/or other terms of art, depending on the scenario. It's also stealing.
Getting your panties into a knot over the moral implications of that is beside the issue entirely. Not all stealing is automatically immoral. It's always wrong in at least one way, and often wrong in several ways. You're wasting your energy trying to say it's not stealing. It is. Invest your energy in making it so that it's not the illegal kind of stealing instead of fighting stupid battles that only make you look clueless. Your making a moral argument while pretending it's a semantic one is dishonest at best.
It shouldn't be about rationalizing by splitting hairs. Handcrafting a definition of stealing so it doesn't apply, so you can then argue about it, just doesn't get you anywhere in the grand scheme of things. Nobody who has any say calls it theft, nor does anyone pretend it's some moral or fundamental matter. There are two sides, both with legitimate interests to protect. Morally equating it to theft is spin, just like morally distinguishing it is spin. The fact that it's stealing isn't a meaningful battleground.
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Let's put this in very simple and clear terms. Go back to high school. You are asked, "what are the facts that the author uses to make his argument?" Now, if you turn around with a mere list of words and their order, have you completed the assignment in good faith or are you just being a giant pain in the ass? However, "Billy told me that you have HIV" is a fact. Then so would be "you have HIV" under your definition. As soon as I say it, it is fact, after all. If 'you' is a fact to share, 'have' is a fact to share, and 'HIV' is a fact to share, then the sum of those facts must be a fact. 'You have HIV' is thus inevitably a fact under your base definition. the common definition of fact which I've been using works just fine for distinguishing opinions from facts, theories, and expressions. No, it does not. A proposition cannot simultaneously be fact and opinion, or the distinction is meaningless. If each element of a statement is a fact, the entire statement must be a fact. Truth values can't magically switch.
That's funny, because earlier you admitted [slashdot.org] that facts about expressions are, indeed, facts.
Facts about expressions are indeed facts. They cease to be facts and become "facts" when their character and purpose is nothing more than the reconstruction of an expression. This is pretty clear: if the product begins as an expression, is deconstructed by sophistry to a lengthy tired of "facts", and the end result is that expression again, it's still merely the expression.
Again, what a shame it is that you lost the ability to distinguish between "related" and "identical".
Look in the mirror, there. An expression doesn't stop being an expression when you engage in this ridiculous behavior that erases the distinction. Fact and expression ARE RELATED. They are an orthogonal pair. When the facts in an expression are lost in a sea of "facts" that merely duplicate the expression, that collection doesn't cease being a cheap and pointless case.
Again, "it is fact that the law is x" does not make a legal issue a factual one. You see, it's technically a true statement, but it is tautological and a sophistry. It is an empty case.
expression is 4 words long, and you know what those 4 words are, in order, then you can put them back together.
And the end result is still nothing more than that proprietary expression. They're not facts when they're an expression. You've not culled facts when you're just superficially and deceptively changed the expression into "facts". You seem to be having trouble getting past that.
Then perhaps you could point to the proposition you feel is untrue.
That an expression is a mere collection of facts. Duh. Each word isn't a fact. It's just a word. If you're depending on the truth value of the presence of each word, you're merely describing a tautology--it's impossible for something not to be a fact in any scenario. Also patently false is that an expression ceases to be an expression when reproduced in its entirety for no purpose other than reproducing that expression.
1. There are facts about expressions. (From the definition of fact: anything can be the subject of a true statement.
Can be != is.
2. Knowing enough of those facts is sufficient to reconstruct the expression.
Words are not facts just like songs are not facts. "It is a fact that you have HIV" is not a fact simply because someone said so, I observed it, and now I'm repeating it.
3. To prevent someone from reconstructing the expression, you must prevent them from knowing the facts.
Bzzzzt! Knowing the facts is the point of making an expression. Reproducing the expression is just reproducing the expression, no matter what hollow Rube you put it through. It is not repeating fact or employing those facts to any fertile or legitimate use.
That's funny, because everyone else considers it quite adequate for fact/opinion, fact/theory, and fact/expression, at least.
Hardly. An opinion isn't fact because someone said it. The ONLY fact is that someone said it, and except through fallacious manipulation of homonyms 'fact', you can't get anywhere with it. The fact remains that someone said it, and the content of the opinion remains an opinion. This is true of the entire subsequent list of orthogonal pairs. You really just have no clue what you're saying, and can't support any of your arguments.
This discussion has run its course long ago because you are highly confused about language. It's unfortunate that you have to engage in repeated sophistry to make an empty point about a plainly illegitimate subversion of the orthogonal pairing of fact and expression. It's unfortunate that you can't shed the fallacious arguments and untrue propositions and that you have been so thoroughly defeated in your attempts to make a case. It's also unfortunate t
My apologies, I've misread one of your lines:
Your original statement wasn't, "you can reconstruct the expression if you have all the facts." Accordingly, the logical negative I corrected should read "you can't reconstruct the expression if you don't learn the facts."
The relation between them is such that for every expression, there's at least one set of facts which is sufficient to fully describe it
No, because an expression isn't a fact any more than an opinion is a fact or a value is a fact or a theory is a fact. They're orthogonal pairings. A collection of "facts" that merely reconstruct an expression aren't facts at all, because they have no value apart from the expression. It's a sophistry that is laughed out of every formal arena of debate on Earth. Go into a courtroom and argue that "it's a fact that the law is x" and therefore it's a factual question and see how long it takes for the entire room to burst into tears laughing.
When discussing a traditional orthogonal pairing, it's perfectly vacuous to state the non-fact as a fact. It's pure, unadulterated sophism. You can't escape it. There are certainly facts in expressions, but not every element is a fact, or the expression would just be a fact. This is a null distinction.
The logic there is a simple contrapositive
Ah! There you go. First, this isn't an illustration of the logic I asked for (it was your expression->fact->expression safari, and how you "logically" change expression to facts to expression again [but somehow they remain facts after being an expression again]). But I'll roll with it for a moment. Your statement is contrapositive to its negative, but that says nothing of your argument, because guess what? That's a tautology! What a wonderful example of that sophistry we've all become so used to from you. Contrapositives always match the proposition! The formal logic we're still waiting for is establishing the truth values of your proposition.
What's even more delicious is that you've completely blown contraposition, because "if you must not reconstruct..." is NOT the logical negative of "if you learn..." The logical negative is "if you don't learn the facts, you can't reconstruct the expression." Contrapositive, indeed.
It must be frustrating to try so hard and yet come up so terribly short.
Demanding to see the formal underpinnings is, however, a great way to implicitly concede the point.
If by 'concede the point' you mean, definitively illustrate that you're talking out of your ass and still can't make a valid argument, then yes, absolutely.
In other words, "a fact is only a fact when I say it is". Sure.
It's pretty clear, and it's not something I invented, but rather enjoys a rich history spanning over three centuries and including such notables as Hume, Mansfield, Bradley, Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Rawls, and countless others. An expression does not lose its distinction as an expression merely by sophistry; reporting each word, each note, or each brush stroke for the sake of duplicating the existing expression is not fact. It is, beyond all doubt, a cheap attempt at subversion of expression and cannot be defended as a reporting of fact.
Apparently "base definition" means "the common one found in the dictionary
A dictionary is a starting point, not a destination. The willful mixing of separate homonyms does not make it a suitable exercise. The "common one" is a disingenuous remark for a word with 16 definitions in the OED, which of course rarely paints a complete picture as it is; the definition of 'aspirin' is hardly complete for all but the most basic circumstances. Your definition is inadequate for any scope of argument in fact/opinion, fact/law, fact/theory, fact/value, fact/perspective, and yes, fact/expression. Your handwaving is no more effective here than to barge onto a construction site or an airport waving a piece of cloth and declaring it an apron. No one disputes the technical truth, but merely its misapplication.
You're right - even a child could stomp your ridiculous arguments into the ground.
That's just as clumsy, inelegant, devoid of cleverness, and ineffective th
An expression isn't a fact. Reporting facts doesn't include "facts" of the elements of an expression for no other purpose than the subversion of that expression. You continually refer to a base definition of "fact" in a desperate and wholly unconvincing effort to make the distinction meaningless. There's no difference in your unsupportable, moronic, and utterly inutile assessment than were you to enter a child's discussion of fact and opinion, a scientific discussion of fact and theory, a moral discussion of fact and value, a legal discussion of fact and law, or indeed a linguistic discussion of fact and expression, arguing that fact subsumes the orthogonal pairing. It is a sophistry, a sophistry and a tautology bereft of significance, given by a cheap and laughably irrational man.
An inference isn't a fact; an opinion isn't a fact; an expression isn't a fact. An expression isn't just a sum of facts, and no rational person would take a collection of "it is a fact that the 37,435th word of the book is 'contrary'." There's no value in that "fact" unless it is couched in a greater expression, and a vacuous expression isn't work, and therefore not proprietary.
Compare it to an actual fact, like that the speed of sound at sea level is ~750mph. That's something of meaning, of value, and of significance. most basic application of logic. Explain the formal logical structure of your argument.
You won't, you see, because every time you've been confronted with the task of making a viable argument, you fail miserably. You make glib remarks, offer vacuous definitions, or come back with an unsupportable allegation of a straw man. You've lost the linguistic argument, the legal argument, the semantic argument, the formalistic argument, the historical argument, the ethical argument, and the organic argument. Your only hope relies on what is at best a draw on a moral argument, which isn't compelling under any formal standard of debate.
An expression isn't a fact. Reporting facts doesn't include "facts" of the elements of an expression for no other purpose than the subversion of that expression. You continually refer to a base definition of "fact" in a desperate and wholly unconvincing effort to make the distinction meaningless. There's no difference in your unsupportable, moronic, and utterly inutile assessment than were you to enter a child's discussion of fact and opinion, a scientific discussion of fact and theory, a moral discussion of fact and value, a legal discussion of fact and law, or indeed a linguistic discussion of fact and expression, arguing that fact subsumes the orthogonal pairing. It is a sophistry, a sophistry and a tautology bereft of significance, given by a cheap and laughably irrational man.
"Drop out" implies being in the race.
If I collect funds to support my entry into a Congressional race, and then decide not to go through with that entry, I damn well better give my supporters their donations back, because I haven't spent anything on the campaign yet, because I haven't entered the campaign.
The only races candidates "drop out" of are for president, and that's because the playing field narrows. They either drop out or are voted out. That of course, isn't applicable here, because presidential candidates spend millions of dollars on the campaign before seeing dim prospects and withdrawing. If he'd formed an exploratory committee to prep for a presidential run and explicitly collected donations for that exploration, he could keep them.
But he didn't form a committee. He didn't get donations to support his exploration of a run for Congress; he got donations for his run for Congress. He didn't spend any of those funds for that purpose, and so all of that money should go back. If people want to contribute to his organization, they can opt-out of the refund, or reinvest the refund in the organization.
Certainly their litigation tactics are reprehensible at best and they've committed blunder after blunder (and there's no one who can really say they're not corrupt), but for the most part, the people they go after aren't people who shared an album, or downloaded a movie once. Their usual target is someone sharing thousands or tens of thousands of songs with quite a bit of traffic going in and out. Yeah, we hear a lot more about the little kids and grandmas who get sued, but they make for a better story than someone with 24,000 songs and tens of thousands of downloads.
It's pretty hard to say with a straight face that most of these defendants are innocently sharing a few songs with a few friends or that it doesn't have any commercial impact.
It may be hard to believe, but that distinction you personally make is also one made in legal circles. It's not generally worthwhile to "go after your customers" as it is said here, and they don't. They throw a few random ones in for whatever reason (probably just to keep people in line, like speeding enforcement), but that's the exception, not the rule. It's far more nuanced than lots of people here would ever admit, because it lessens their compelling tales. The opponents are just as greedy as the "big media" they despise. 'Fair' is somewhere in the middle, but everyone's life is more complicated because of the vocal, intolerant few who don't like the business model but somehow can't do without these things they claim have no value.
Digital distribution is not a replacement for physical media, because physical media still delivers superior quality and content. Digital distribution is a perfectly reasonable replacement for last-generation content. Online distribution isn't a Blu-ray competitor, and that's the whole point. It's a DVD competitor, and a great one.
You can't stream Blu-ray quality. You just can't.
I agree that On Demand content and AppleTV rentals are here now and HD, but that's not the sentiment expressed higher in the thread. These are not replacements for BD. They are perfectly adequate replacements for DVD.
An expression is not a fact. Since facts are not protected and expressions are the result of proprietary labor, there is no valid claim to the expression of another.
The short answer is that by the time Blu-ray can be delivered digitally without any quality loss and without serious drawbacks in delivery time, something better than Blu-ray will be on the market. This BD replacement will outstrip our Internet connections, too. We'll be right back at physical media for the optimum quality. We're many, many years from networks that can completely outpace that.
More glib, cute lines and still no substance. Keep working at it; maybe you'll fall sideways into something valid sooner or later.
The funny thing is that once upon a time, there WAS an iPod accessory for connecting to certain digital cameras. It didn't do very well, but I think that's because the iPod touch didn't exist.
A Bluetooth keyboard (foldable, even) and bringing back the USB connector (just cameras and flash drives would be fine given the limited resources of the Touch) would make that little machine the belle of the ball.
That's not scientific, it's not rational, it's not logical, and it's certainly neither semantically valid nor legally sound.
Also, sequences of independent adjectives are separated by commas. It's "common, everyday word." But you know, common, everyday words aren't always so: 'orbital' means quite different things in medicine, astronomy, and chemistry. But goodness, how important the word 'fact' is, since it encompasses every word ever uttered, every though ever expressed, and every theory disproved! Obviously the operative level escapes you. Indeed, we both know it isn't about that, and yet you've just brought it up out of nowhere. How quickly you forget your own words: "...simply can't understand why anyone would choose to share something with other people." That is a bogus ad hominem meant to distract from an utterly vaporous case. The issue of choosing to share was never once on the table, nor is there anything to evidence my thoughts on the subject. Inadequate for your dishonest argument, you mean. As we've seen time and again, you're the only one being dishonest in your approach, utterly failing to produce a sound argument in any context that doesn't rely on tautological definitions and selective manipulation to the exclusion of the contrary. You've committed nearly every classical logical fallacy on the books, and each time you come back with an absurd, cute remark to distract from your unfortunate and embarrassing failure to make a sound argument.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: I'm happy to put forth the "bankrupt" argument of Framers and philosophers in place from the time of the birth of our nation, articulated by four dozen Supreme Court justices, and solidly backed by a field of linguistic professionals, and demonstrably expressive of the collective will. But sure, go for the cheap shot because you can't wrest victory from the jaws of utter intellectual defeat. We're sleeping fine.
What definition of wrong?
The best you can do is disingenuously take the long-standing distinction between fact and expression which has been operative since the days of the Framers and cobble together, with limited skill and no rational basis, a definition that creates a distinction without a difference.
Fact and expression are absolutely distinguishable when dealing with the terms as used wrt intellectual works. Creating a tautological argument for the sheer sake of being a pompous ass doesn't have any credibility; be it logical, legal, or philosophical. Moby Dick is also the book that starts out "Call me Ishmael." That's a fact and an objective reality. Denying it only proves how detached from reality you are I don't deny that that is the case. But if you extend that sentence for the next 400 pages, you're no longer reporting fact. You're coopting expression, and doing so for no legitimate purpose. Anybody can see through that, even those with such limited ability to form an effective, nuanced argument as yourself. That must be what it's about, because a jealous, angry hoarder like you simply can't understand why anyone would choose to share something with other people. On the contrary, you're so blinded by your need to grasp at straws that you conflate a formalistic argument with my personal viewpoint, and take a protection as the exclusion of the alternative. As I've said many times, you're absolutely free to share your work as you desire. This isn't about that, though, and unless you're totally unhinged, you know that. Other people choose to share their expressions on their own terms, and they have every right to do so. what words like "say", "speech", and "fact" mean in common use. I know very well what they mean in common use. But clearly, common use is inadequate for a specific, technical situation in a thread about semantics and formalism. The only one on his ass is you.
Once again, put up or shut up. You've already demonstrated you can't put up. Only one thing left to do.
So what bizarre definition of "wrong" are you using if (a)legality and (b) belief don't determine this for people? If "wrong" is moral, it's based purely on belief. If it's ethical, it's based on collective wisdom of society (which has repeatedly acted consistent with that individual belief. If it's simply technical, then it's plainly illegal.
Flopping back and forth between two linguistically distinct words with the same orthographic representation doesn't make your argument any stronger. Are you committing the legal offense of murder(0) when performing the act of consumption, murder(1)? Of course not.
You're not interested in an actual discussion. You're just puttering around as the bloviating gasbag you are for the sheer sake of inanity. Let me try one: the act of painting my house blue is the labor, and so the "fact" that my house is blue is only a "fact" because of that labor. You are quite skilled at clumsily failing to maintain parallelism. The fact that your house is blue is of independent significance. Yours is the blue house. Moby Dick is the book about the ill-fated hunt for a white whale. That's a fact, too. The expression isn't an independent fact; it's not an objective reality. It's an original narrative containing fact. The elements of its plot are facts. The location of its sentences in the text are fact. The sum of the expression is not a fact having any significance to the universe. It's an expression, an original production of substance and intellect that belongs only to its creator. There is zero value and zero need for your desire to repeat it--to do so is not out of an interest to convey fact, but simply to coopt the original expression of another for your own gain (including the petulant spite of another). Another made-up definition, eh? You should publish your own dictionary; at least that way, you'll have a source to point to the next time someone calls you out on your desperate semantic wankery. In fact I have. It's called the U.S. Reports. "Desperate semantic wankery" coming from someone who clearly has no credible background in semantics is pretty rich. Show me a semantic map. Mark out the lexemes and -roles. Back it up with a valid Fregian proposition. Put up or shut up.
Of course, you know that, or you wouldn't go for cute to conceal your intellectual failings.
The fact that you dispute my acceptance of the truncated term rather than the person who introduced it is telling. The fact that you equate any copying (even with permission!) with stealing I don't equate it with stealing. It is stealing.
Your moral indignation or mistaken connotative objection to the term could not matter less to me. The fact that you turn a semantic, linguistic issue into a moral one simply goes to show that you can't win it on a technical front. It's just noise.
To steal is to acquire without authorization or right. To take, get, or win surreptitiously. To pass off as one's own.
The only way to make it invalid is to do a pseudo-semantic dance that no linguist would tolerate, by spinning the definition around to imply the negative. The point is that even if you do find a definition of "steal" which fits - just because a word has more than one definition doesn't make those definitions the same. The definitions don't have to be the same. As long as there is one that fits (and there is only one way to make it not fit), you can't say "but it's not stealing!"--because if it fits at least one definition of the word, it is. You don't get to cry foul on a valid word choice because you don't like it. When people refer to copyright infringement as theft or stealing, you can bet that they intend to make the suggestion that they are the same. It's not theft; it's copyright infringement, unjust enrichment, theft of service, piracy, and/or other terms of art, depending on the scenario. It's also stealing.
Getting your panties into a knot over the moral implications of that is beside the issue entirely. Not all stealing is automatically immoral. It's always wrong in at least one way, and often wrong in several ways. You're wasting your energy trying to say it's not stealing. It is. Invest your energy in making it so that it's not the illegal kind of stealing instead of fighting stupid battles that only make you look clueless. Your making a moral argument while pretending it's a semantic one is dishonest at best.
It shouldn't be about rationalizing by splitting hairs. Handcrafting a definition of stealing so it doesn't apply, so you can then argue about it, just doesn't get you anywhere in the grand scheme of things. Nobody who has any say calls it theft, nor does anyone pretend it's some moral or fundamental matter. There are two sides, both with legitimate interests to protect. Morally equating it to theft is spin, just like morally distinguishing it is spin. The fact that it's stealing isn't a meaningful battleground.