Diabetics have problem with blood sugar because they're diabetic. It doesn't matter whether they eat a hamburger or chew on some pure, organic sugar cane.
They can't properly control their blood sugar levels, and ANYTHING they eat has a drastic effect on their blood sugar if it contains carbs, starches, or sugars, period. If they're allergic to an ingredient, then the negative effects are a result of the allergy, not the consumption of fast food. If they ingested that ingredient in an organic snack, they'd have an equally strong reaction to it.
Your logic does not hold up even in the most cursory of reviews, and moreover, NO doctor would claim that a single meal, whether greasy or not, would have an "immediate negative effect" on anything. The ingredients for which fast food is rightly criticized (fat, salt, sugar) are all necessary for the normal functioning of the human body. There is no "automatic" negative effect as you describe. If you eat just fresh vegetables and fruit, drink water all day, and then go to Wendy's and pick up a hamburger and fries, you've had a healthier day than the average American and no negative physical consequences.
In order to produce the kind of negative effects that have been alleged, you'd have to eat nothing but fast food for a day or two. If you eat a healthy diet and occasionally stop for fast food, you can be (and likely are) healthy by any standard measure. The key word is "occasionally"--3 meals per week is not "occasional." Once or twice a month (or more infrequently) is occasional, and is perfectly healthy and acceptable the human body and to nutrition science.
The two-party system is a myth. If you think a Georgia Democrat is the same as a California Democrat, you've got another thing coming. Parties are run on the state level, and even within states there's a wide range of party views. The powerful "sect" within the party is displaced periodically to face changing values and priorities.
There are >10 candidates in every presidential election, and there have been, going back many years. It's a crutch of an excuse to dismiss your preferred candidate because they "don't have a chance" because the exact reason they don't have a chance is because they're dismissed. My bet is that you haven't actually taken the time to look into a preferred candidate. It isn't that much work, and if you're just going to sit on your ass and not vote anyway, then what would be the harm in casting even a random vote for a "fringe" candidate?
There are literally dozens of hopefuls in every contest. There's only one chair behind the desk, though. No matter how many choices you have in the beginning (or even at the end), it comes down to one. That there are two major contenders covered by the media should not be relevant to your search to find a candidate to agree with.
But I know how much easier it is to complain that your "two choices" are both evil and how you're just going to ignore the process. If one of the two major candidates happened to be the person in a field of 20 who you agreed with most, would you vote? My bet is no, because you haven't taken any effort to get to know ANY of the candidates.
All of your feelings are mental perceptions, and the high levels of sodium and fat do not cause a "low level malaise" in any physical sense from a single meal.
The body is more than capable of processing dips and spikes associated with food intake, because diet is naturally varied. Sodium and fat are essential to proper bodily function, and even if you ingested 100% of your daily allowance in a single meal, you'd be fine. Same with any vitamin, mineral, or protein you might consume.
You would have to eat multiple meals at McDonald's in the span of a day or two in order to cause any negative physical effects, and then you'd be in that "excessive" category I already spoke of.
You're not making any sense. Since their company held the patent, they wouldn't be "giving up" any technology. Also, since it was a new area of use, it would have generated additional profit for their company.
Furthermore, it DID happen before 2000, just not with these two particular companies in partnership. Those grills have been available from Altima and/or Solaire since at least 1996 (let alone TEC, which has a rabid fan base but uses the "bad" ceramic discussed in the article), if not longer, because I happen to remember discussing them with my neighbor, who owned a store specializing in premium appliances (Viking ranges, Sub-Zero, and the like) when shopping for my grill a decade ago.
The article doesn't even claim otherwise!
"Previously, these grills cost as much as $5000." These grills, using this exact design, existed before the patent expired--the article doesn't mention that, but if you knew anything about this, you'd know that. Not all of them contained the "hard to clean" ceramic surfacing that is still to be found on many such products.
The company which previously held the patent, furthermore, is in business with the grill companies now. If you had stopped to process what you'd read, you'd realize that this "partnership" could have occurred prior to the patent expiring, since THEY HELD THE PATENT. The patent didn't interfere with the arrival of this consumer-priced grills in the least.
The article is sensationalist crap which clearly worked on you. Nowhere does it explain how the patent expiration had anything to do with the arrival of these grills (it's because it has become trendy, and competition for dollars drove the costs down). Nowhere does it say that this glorious partnership was held off on account of the patent. The patent lapse doesn't have anything to do with the arrival of these products to the mass market, nor does it have anything to do with their low price. Support for that is nowhere to be found in TFA.
If you're going to be dense, don't expose your vulnerable reading skills.
Something tells me you haven't done much research. Those products were available throughout the 1990s. Infrared cookers in general have been around in some form since at least the 1980s.
And if you have to build up your tolerance to these chemicals (which is what you're describing), well perhaps that should tell you something about the chemicals, not the guy's diet. The human body also had to build up tolerance for lactose. Does that mean that drinking milk is unnatural? What about building up tolerance to products used in foreign cuisine? Soldiers stationed throughout the world one or two centuries ago got sick all the time from eating things they'd never encountered. You'll find that most foods today would not have been found in the diet of humans a few centuries, and certainly not a few thousand years ago, and eating them in fact would make them all ill. Now, I can eat food from anywhere in the world, because I'm fortunate to have grown up in a life of travel and good food (rarely eating most processed "snack foods" and even more rarely eating fast food), where I developed not only a tolerance, but a liking, for foods from around the world that humans historically have not had. You'd also find that most of the "chemicals" in your food are completely harmless, and many of them are practically essential the preparation of certain foods.
The number of people who die from eating contaminated or poorly prepared/preserved foods is far lower today than it ever has been. Avoiding "stuff produced with chemicals" is extremely restrictive=-more so than heart patient diets, in fact. Even most of the products at my local Whole Foods contain some form of "chemicals" that humans would not have ingested 100 years ago. Your purism doesn't make much sense, really.
The pharmaceutical industry could accomplish the same without patents. They have the financial resources to perform more like the diamond industry. Take away the patents themselves, and pharmaceutical companies would use other methods to take out competitors. They'd have no choice, since their R&D is what makes new drugs. Taking away their patents would not improve anything.
If you think that the automotive industry doesn't use patents left and right, you might want to consider TFA. This technology was created FOR the automotive industry. A little research reveals that each of the major manufacturers hold thousands of patents. The difference is that they've worked out a system where they license from each other and innovate in different areas. The fact that a given car design only lasts for a few years has not a thing to do with patents. Copycats of the sheetmetal design are not a patent issue, because the design isn't patented.
I don't eat fast food myself. I also tend to buy organic produce and pay extra for free-range chicken. I'm just saying that fast food isn't the end of the world, and neither are most of the "chemicals" present in most foods.
"Not naturally occurring in food" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Vegetarianism isn't natural. The body requires (and is designed to consume) meat for the nine amino acids the body can't produce on its own. But unless you lump vegetarianism with eating food with preservatives, you're not making a terrible amount of sense.
Many of those "chemicals" are what make modern society possible. Yes, there are products that are basically of no nutritional value, but those are extremes. Organic farming alone, though, would not be able to feed the entire population, nor would it be a good idea given the microorganisms that would inevitably result. The price alone would drive society to its breaking point in many poor areas.
There are people who can go a decade without eating meat and suffer no ill effects. Your case is merely anecdotal.
As for the diet, he claimed to eat only organic foods and strongly implied no refined sugars as well (also, they are a key evil to fast and preserved food). That is an extremely restrictive diet. Almost nothing you order in a restaurant would fit that bill, let alone the limited selection at the supermarket.
Finally, kindly blow it out your ass. Eating a hamburger one day isn't going to ruin your day or your ability to think or perform unless you have completely strayed from what's typical of a modern diet. Everything in moderation. It will also not negatively affect your overall nutrition on any scale assuming you're healthy to begin with. Show some research.
The reason why you feel like crap when eating something unusual is because you've allowed that consumption to lax and your body has adjusted to that diet. It does not follow that eating at Wendy's occasionally makes people ill. It makes YOU ill because your body is no longer accustomed to it.
Along the same vein, vegetarians are encouraged to eat meat occasionally so that the enzymes that are intended to ingest it can remain in proper balance. If you're a vegetarian and never eat meat for years on end, but then one day you can't pass on that ham sandwich, it's going to hurt. That doesn't mean that people who eat meat are living a worse life.
Likewise, if you grew up on a simple and narrow diet, say, for the sake of argument, something typical of a highland/steppe agrarian diet--grains and meat, and you suddenly ate spicy Indian food for a week, you'd probably have some digestive regrets.
I'm not saying the opposite, either--eating fast food and sugar all the time is certainly not good for you. But if you make it a habit to eat a highly restricted diet, then breaking that diet will cause you pain. Eating an appropriate diet with moderation of all kinds of foods is no less healthy and far more fun. It's okay to eat at McDonald's sometimes if you like it. It's okay to order that six-chocolate pie on your birthday. It's okay to tear into that Haagen-Daaz when your week has gone to shit. It's habitual abuse of these foods that cause problems.
You don't need a patent to maintain indefinite control of your creation. You don't need a government to enforce your control over it, either, given the resources and wealth of most companies today. Look at the diamond trade, or the pharmaceutical industry. They can take care of themselves. A Libertarian approach would not seek to limit that corporate power, since it's their right as a free person to act with whatever conduct they feel best suits their end.
I was hoping for someone to say "but Libertarians don't believe in patents at all!" because it's so hilariously untrue--they don't believe in government-granted patents, but they absolutely have no gripe about corporate strangleholds and untenable pricing for the fruits of their R&D--and going to any means necessary to protect that control. What drug-induced cloud are you living on where a piece of paper from the government is the source of corporate power? They have grown so dramatically beyond that, it's not even funny. For all its failings, government is the only thing keeping that power in check. It's a losing, uphill battle at the moment.
Take away all the laws that limit their power. Take away all the laws that grant patents. Take away government intervention in business. Corporate power would run unchecked beyond any comprehension of their current practices. Power dynamics would shift, but not back to the consumer. Corporations would restructure to best take advantage of that system; it's what they do best. Taking all the rules away would be like Christmas morning for every company not relying on intensive in-house R&D. But after the honeymoon ended, it'd be worse for everyone.
And it sounds like you're completely one-sided with your take of freedom.
People are greedy. Fact. But if companies get too greedy, the customers should shop elsewhere. It keeps itself in line. When there's collusion and cartel formation, that's why we have governments. No, they're not perfect either.
A free society means a free society. But you can't have a free society with more than one person without stepping on someone's toes. You have your freedoms, they have theirs. There's a compromise between the two, hence the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with ensuring a free society.
Well, the patent expired 7 years ago, so there goes that theory.
Patents do encourage inventors to share their ideas, but they were never meant to go into society's hands concurrent with issuing. Without a limited patent duration, you have two possible realities: either the company gets a perpetual stranglehold on that technology because government has no business limiting it (the Libertarian approach) or you have companies terrified of introducing their discovery because if cost them millions of dollars to figure it out, and cheap knockoffs for a fraction of the price would appear on the market nearly instantaneously (the "information wants to be free" approach).
Neither one is particularly beneficial for society or companies. This sounds exactly like evidence for why patents work and are an important part of the innovation cycle. It also demonstrates that companies like to hide behind patents keeping their "great products" from the market when in fact they haven't really figured out all the details (i.e. a smoke screen for their vaporware products). If it was the patent holding back innovation, this article would have been written in 2000. There have certainly been infrared products offered for sale for several years now, legally, but beyond the reach of most customers. If you think that's because of the patent and not because of the newness and narrowness of the market, though, you're kidding yourself.
Adapting a technology to a new market and new packaging costs a lot of money and involves a lot of trial and error. Any patent licensing on the method is just one small part of that.
Yeah, at first glance it sounds like a great idea for "the rest of us" to get things 15-20 years faster. But the flip side is, "what's in it for the creator/investors?" Investors deserve to get something out of the deal, too. If that's a decade or two of exclusive use to generate profits, which are in turn invested in new products (and corporate accounting blunders), so be it.
Yes, we could force companies to have profit limits, spending requirements, and compulsory licensing of their creations. We could also eliminate hunger entirely by dictating food production and distribution. It's only a matter of what you want to give up to do that. Part of living in a "free" society is understanding that there's a good and a bad side to that freedom, and you can't just pick and choose the good parts without accepting the less-than-ideal consequences.
I think the problem you're having is in assuming that I don't deal with this every day.
If you present a case before a judge and it's a prima facie infringement case, then there's no traction for a fair use argument. A prima facie infringement case is just that--conclusively infringement based on the presentation. Perhaps you're forgetting that the copyright holder has to demonstrate the infringement. If there is clear potential for fair use exemption, it's going to cross through the judge's head. Fair use is not an affirmative defense that has to be argued in the style of self-defense or insanity, for instance.
"Any use can be fair use" is patently untrue. There are four criteria spelled out for fair use in 17 USC 107. What you mean to say is that the boundaries of fair use are vague, but that is true of nearly every statute on the books as offers no meaning to the discussion.
You're also misinterpreting the mechanics of a case argued under infringement. Filing a complaint alleging infringement does not establish infringement. It establishes copying. The decision to be made is whether that copying was infringing (copyright infringement) or non-infringing (fair use, in the context of this debate). The fact that it would otherwise be infringing if not for fair use does not establish prima facie infringement. It establishes that the two are in complementary distribution. You continue to extend your argument to points not made.
The issue is this: "fair use" is not a defense for copyright infringement. They are mutually exclusive rulings on the same act. If it is copyright infringement, it is not fair use and vice versa. A prima facie case of copyright infringement would preclude the application of fair use rights, because "fair use" is not an affirmative defense. A defense would involve the commission of an illegal act, which is negated by extenuating circumstances. If the act itself is not illegal, the rebuttal is not a defense of a crime because no crime has been committed.
"Insanity" and "self defense" are defenses for murder charges. They accept that a murder has been committed, but the legal consequences are mitigated by extenuating circumstances. Fair use is not such a case, because the mere act of copying is not itself an illegal act and is a prima facie case of nothing. I am substantially pro-IP, but there is a clear semantic distinction here that you're not communicating effectively, and as evidenced by your further replies, don't fully understand.
If there is prima facie infringement, it's not fair use. You're just not getting this.
And people do not have to scramble to find anything. If they're sued for copyright infringement and believe they are engaged in a fair use exemption, they will be able to explain to their attorney what they were doing and why it should be allowed. Any good attorney dealing with IP on a regular basis will know exactly how to structure the response to the complaint if that is a legitimate fair use venue. S/he will also know where the limits are generally defined in his or her jurisdiction. If you're trying to push the envelope beyond what's already established, then you're not arguing for 'fair use' at all. You're arguing that fair use should be extended to cover additional actions because they constitute a noninfringing use with no commercial damage as a result.
Any tactic to counter an alleged tort is structured as a defensive move. That does not mean that the tactic is a defense to the tort itself (or the crime, for that matter)--it is a defense against the *allegation* of such a crime. That is my whole point.
The shorthand used to describe what's happening misleads people to believe that "fair use" is a defense they can invoke to protect themselves from unlawful acts they've committed. There is no such thing. Fair use is not a "yes, I did infringe on your copyright, but it's allowed"--it's "no, I did not infringe on your copyright because I hold fair use exemptions." It's the descriptor as a defense which goes on to mislead people in the general public. This seems highly semantic to the casual observer, but it is a critical distinction in the course of case law.
Fair use is something guiding your actions from the beginning, covering a deliberate act. It is not something you scramble to find after the fact when you get busted for downloading a decrypted copy of a film. It is not a defense against infringement; it is an exception to applicability.
You misunderstand. "Fair use" is an exception to copyright protection. It is not a means of defense against copyright infringement, which would necessarily involve the commission of copyright infringement--fair use is *noninfringing* use and therefore the two are mutually exclusive. If your act is fair use, it is not copyright infringement. People don't "generally understand what is meant" if you go by what people throw around on Slashdot. Fair use is not an excuse for committing an unlawful act. It is an exemption from the applicability of the act--it is a *possible* defense to *alleged* copyright infringement in a *limited* and *variable* number of circumstances.
There is no such thing as a prima facie defense to copyright infringement because there is no fixed definition of fair use, which you yourself point out in your own post. I also specified that format shifting is not CATEGORICALLY fair use. That does not preclude the determination of certain kinds of transfers to be covered by fair use.
It doesn't take 126,000 people. It takes half of that plus one to change the balance.
If 60,000 people (out of 6.6 billion) moved from a rural home to a city home, the rural population would drop 60,000 while the urban population gained 60,000 which would produce a difference of 120,000.
Even if your math was correct (which another poster already corrected), you'd still be looking at roughly double that amount of time.
It's called staff counsel. Companies, particularly sex toy ones (they get sued a lot), all have in-house legal teams. They get paid regardless. While there are filing costs and outside counsel costs, the expense is not tremendous. The sad and tired "$MILLIONS for a poor mother to defend herself against $VILLAIN" line is just getting old. This is a corporation that can afford to advertise its products on a scale for people to notice. They knew they were getting themselves into potentially hot water when they started the campaign. That cost is a calculated risk.
Moreover, the increased sales from the lawsuit alone could easily cover their costs.
Why should circumvention be illegal in the first place? Because if it wasn't, you wouldn't be able to encrypt your personal data (by which I mean any data or content to which you have legal ownership, which of course for the studios does include motion pictures and music albums). The incidental difficulty of keeping data under your control and exercising due diligence to protect that data are an integral part of prosecuting other types of law which come back to data in the Information Age--all of which is only protectable as it pertains to your Intellectual Property rights to it.
The problem is not the encryption, but how authorized uses are conducted. A functional system which authenticated against a central service would allow for full fair use rights to be preserved, along with the studios' rights to protect their content against piracy and illegal copying. However, the same people that hate DRM would hate the "privacy" violation (even if no personally identifying information was transmitted and despite the fact that multiple systems know that you already purchased the film). On the flip side, licensed software players could allow for exporting clips for commentary and the like, just as they allow single-frame captures. Alternatively, the encryption could be preserved easily onto archival discs for backup, but these two options would open up an easier hole for piracy. The balance of needs is complex. The easiest solution would be to keep a UPC and a certificate with a unique code in a safe place, apart from the DVD itself. If it is damaged or lost, you could provide that information and receive a new one for a nominal fee for shipping ($3 or whatever it costs since the postage hike).
Despite all the complaining that is done, movie piracy is a big enough industry without casual copying eating into sales. I'm not saying I support the studios here, but only that they are in a difficult position, even if they weren't greedy bastards. If they don't try to protect their content, they open themselves to massive piracy levels, which litigation costs would drive up the price of DVDs, further driving up piracy. They'd also have no choice but to start prosecuting casual copiers. There is a right balance to foiling copying and preserving fair use, and it will be reached eventually.
What society expects may well change in the mean time. Certainly "privacy" to the extent it is desired here on Slashdot is no longer important to much of the rest of the world, particularly young people. What is actually fair use (not the fictional fair use in many Slashdot arguments) probably won't change--but right now the only thing actually standing in the way of fair use is the fact that obtaining clips from your DVD is difficult to do in a way that is not illegal and that the software utilities that COULD be providing legitimate archival backup discs instead cross the line by simply removing the encryption entirely.
"Fair use" is not a defense to copyright infringement. If you have a fair use action, then you're not guilty of copyright infringement. The fact that you may be sued for copyright infringement when your action is indeed covered by fair use does not change anything--I can sue you right now for copyright infringement without you ever encountering anything I own the copyright to. Fair use is a *possible* defense to *alleged* copyright infringement *iff* (not a typo) it meets specific criteria, frequently embodied into a four-prong test. Format-shifting with digital content does not currently fall into "fair use" categorically, for example. "Personal backup copies" are fair use only insofar as they are used for *archival* storage as long as the original remains functional.
Moreover, "fair use" does not cover anywhere near the scope of acts that people on Slashdot seem to believe (even the Wikipedia article is misleadingly optimistic).
The United States Congress has complete authority over the District. Every single member of both Houses is accessible to its residents as a result and any of the 535 voting members can conduct constituent relations (i.e. the biggest job of an elected representative, and that which occupies the most time). Congress MAKES the DC laws, and the House is DC's biggest source of revenue.
Their representative doesn't get to vote because they're not a state and have no sovereign powers. That certainly does not mean that their representative has no power. 99% of votes are predetermined due to behind-the-scenes dealmaking, and the D.C. representative is far from powerless in those operations. S/he builds relationships and can be a single go-to guy for getting a whole block of votes.
Actually, Canada's income taxes are lower than ours, and their highest bracket is around the equivalent of $105,000 or so. What's higher is GST.
The total amount of income contributed to taxable purposes is higher in Canada (like nearly every other country in the world, and IIRC, every SINGLE other first-world country), but that money goes to accomplish more.
Taxes in the US are too low and too Byzantine. All tax codes are complicated, but it'd be a lot easier if we raised the income tax and dropped most of the others. A harmonized sales tax (national variance of +/- 1% for example) would also make life easier for travelers.
What are you talking about? Not only does D.C. have a representative (albeit non-voting), but the ENTIRE CONGRESS is responsible to the District of Columbia. They're the most represented of anyone.
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Diabetics have problem with blood sugar because they're diabetic. It doesn't matter whether they eat a hamburger or chew on some pure, organic sugar cane.
They can't properly control their blood sugar levels, and ANYTHING they eat has a drastic effect on their blood sugar if it contains carbs, starches, or sugars, period. If they're allergic to an ingredient, then the negative effects are a result of the allergy, not the consumption of fast food. If they ingested that ingredient in an organic snack, they'd have an equally strong reaction to it.
Your logic does not hold up even in the most cursory of reviews, and moreover, NO doctor would claim that a single meal, whether greasy or not, would have an "immediate negative effect" on anything. The ingredients for which fast food is rightly criticized (fat, salt, sugar) are all necessary for the normal functioning of the human body. There is no "automatic" negative effect as you describe. If you eat just fresh vegetables and fruit, drink water all day, and then go to Wendy's and pick up a hamburger and fries, you've had a healthier day than the average American and no negative physical consequences.
In order to produce the kind of negative effects that have been alleged, you'd have to eat nothing but fast food for a day or two. If you eat a healthy diet and occasionally stop for fast food, you can be (and likely are) healthy by any standard measure. The key word is "occasionally"--3 meals per week is not "occasional." Once or twice a month (or more infrequently) is occasional, and is perfectly healthy and acceptable the human body and to nutrition science.
The two-party system is a myth. If you think a Georgia Democrat is the same as a California Democrat, you've got another thing coming. Parties are run on the state level, and even within states there's a wide range of party views. The powerful "sect" within the party is displaced periodically to face changing values and priorities.
There are >10 candidates in every presidential election, and there have been, going back many years. It's a crutch of an excuse to dismiss your preferred candidate because they "don't have a chance" because the exact reason they don't have a chance is because they're dismissed. My bet is that you haven't actually taken the time to look into a preferred candidate. It isn't that much work, and if you're just going to sit on your ass and not vote anyway, then what would be the harm in casting even a random vote for a "fringe" candidate?
There are literally dozens of hopefuls in every contest. There's only one chair behind the desk, though. No matter how many choices you have in the beginning (or even at the end), it comes down to one. That there are two major contenders covered by the media should not be relevant to your search to find a candidate to agree with.
But I know how much easier it is to complain that your "two choices" are both evil and how you're just going to ignore the process. If one of the two major candidates happened to be the person in a field of 20 who you agreed with most, would you vote? My bet is no, because you haven't taken any effort to get to know ANY of the candidates.
All of your feelings are mental perceptions, and the high levels of sodium and fat do not cause a "low level malaise" in any physical sense from a single meal.
The body is more than capable of processing dips and spikes associated with food intake, because diet is naturally varied. Sodium and fat are essential to proper bodily function, and even if you ingested 100% of your daily allowance in a single meal, you'd be fine. Same with any vitamin, mineral, or protein you might consume.
You would have to eat multiple meals at McDonald's in the span of a day or two in order to cause any negative physical effects, and then you'd be in that "excessive" category I already spoke of.
You're not making any sense. Since their company held the patent, they wouldn't be "giving up" any technology. Also, since it was a new area of use, it would have generated additional profit for their company. Furthermore, it DID happen before 2000, just not with these two particular companies in partnership. Those grills have been available from Altima and/or Solaire since at least 1996 (let alone TEC, which has a rabid fan base but uses the "bad" ceramic discussed in the article), if not longer, because I happen to remember discussing them with my neighbor, who owned a store specializing in premium appliances (Viking ranges, Sub-Zero, and the like) when shopping for my grill a decade ago. The article doesn't even claim otherwise!
"Previously, these grills cost as much as $5000." These grills, using this exact design, existed before the patent expired--the article doesn't mention that, but if you knew anything about this, you'd know that. Not all of them contained the "hard to clean" ceramic surfacing that is still to be found on many such products.
The company which previously held the patent, furthermore, is in business with the grill companies now. If you had stopped to process what you'd read, you'd realize that this "partnership" could have occurred prior to the patent expiring, since THEY HELD THE PATENT. The patent didn't interfere with the arrival of this consumer-priced grills in the least.
The article is sensationalist crap which clearly worked on you. Nowhere does it explain how the patent expiration had anything to do with the arrival of these grills (it's because it has become trendy, and competition for dollars drove the costs down). Nowhere does it say that this glorious partnership was held off on account of the patent. The patent lapse doesn't have anything to do with the arrival of these products to the mass market, nor does it have anything to do with their low price. Support for that is nowhere to be found in TFA.
If you're going to be dense, don't expose your vulnerable reading skills.
Something tells me you haven't done much research. Those products were available throughout the 1990s. Infrared cookers in general have been around in some form since at least the 1980s.
The number of people who die from eating contaminated or poorly prepared/preserved foods is far lower today than it ever has been. Avoiding "stuff produced with chemicals" is extremely restrictive=-more so than heart patient diets, in fact. Even most of the products at my local Whole Foods contain some form of "chemicals" that humans would not have ingested 100 years ago. Your purism doesn't make much sense, really.
The pharmaceutical industry could accomplish the same without patents. They have the financial resources to perform more like the diamond industry. Take away the patents themselves, and pharmaceutical companies would use other methods to take out competitors. They'd have no choice, since their R&D is what makes new drugs. Taking away their patents would not improve anything.
If you think that the automotive industry doesn't use patents left and right, you might want to consider TFA. This technology was created FOR the automotive industry. A little research reveals that each of the major manufacturers hold thousands of patents. The difference is that they've worked out a system where they license from each other and innovate in different areas. The fact that a given car design only lasts for a few years has not a thing to do with patents. Copycats of the sheetmetal design are not a patent issue, because the design isn't patented.
I don't eat fast food myself. I also tend to buy organic produce and pay extra for free-range chicken. I'm just saying that fast food isn't the end of the world, and neither are most of the "chemicals" present in most foods.
"Not naturally occurring in food" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Vegetarianism isn't natural. The body requires (and is designed to consume) meat for the nine amino acids the body can't produce on its own. But unless you lump vegetarianism with eating food with preservatives, you're not making a terrible amount of sense.
Many of those "chemicals" are what make modern society possible. Yes, there are products that are basically of no nutritional value, but those are extremes. Organic farming alone, though, would not be able to feed the entire population, nor would it be a good idea given the microorganisms that would inevitably result. The price alone would drive society to its breaking point in many poor areas.
There are people who can go a decade without eating meat and suffer no ill effects. Your case is merely anecdotal.
As for the diet, he claimed to eat only organic foods and strongly implied no refined sugars as well (also, they are a key evil to fast and preserved food). That is an extremely restrictive diet. Almost nothing you order in a restaurant would fit that bill, let alone the limited selection at the supermarket.
Finally, kindly blow it out your ass. Eating a hamburger one day isn't going to ruin your day or your ability to think or perform unless you have completely strayed from what's typical of a modern diet. Everything in moderation. It will also not negatively affect your overall nutrition on any scale assuming you're healthy to begin with. Show some research.
The reason why you feel like crap when eating something unusual is because you've allowed that consumption to lax and your body has adjusted to that diet. It does not follow that eating at Wendy's occasionally makes people ill. It makes YOU ill because your body is no longer accustomed to it.
Along the same vein, vegetarians are encouraged to eat meat occasionally so that the enzymes that are intended to ingest it can remain in proper balance. If you're a vegetarian and never eat meat for years on end, but then one day you can't pass on that ham sandwich, it's going to hurt. That doesn't mean that people who eat meat are living a worse life.
Likewise, if you grew up on a simple and narrow diet, say, for the sake of argument, something typical of a highland/steppe agrarian diet--grains and meat, and you suddenly ate spicy Indian food for a week, you'd probably have some digestive regrets.
I'm not saying the opposite, either--eating fast food and sugar all the time is certainly not good for you. But if you make it a habit to eat a highly restricted diet, then breaking that diet will cause you pain. Eating an appropriate diet with moderation of all kinds of foods is no less healthy and far more fun. It's okay to eat at McDonald's sometimes if you like it. It's okay to order that six-chocolate pie on your birthday. It's okay to tear into that Haagen-Daaz when your week has gone to shit. It's habitual abuse of these foods that cause problems.
You don't need a patent to maintain indefinite control of your creation. You don't need a government to enforce your control over it, either, given the resources and wealth of most companies today. Look at the diamond trade, or the pharmaceutical industry. They can take care of themselves. A Libertarian approach would not seek to limit that corporate power, since it's their right as a free person to act with whatever conduct they feel best suits their end. I was hoping for someone to say "but Libertarians don't believe in patents at all!" because it's so hilariously untrue--they don't believe in government-granted patents, but they absolutely have no gripe about corporate strangleholds and untenable pricing for the fruits of their R&D--and going to any means necessary to protect that control. What drug-induced cloud are you living on where a piece of paper from the government is the source of corporate power? They have grown so dramatically beyond that, it's not even funny. For all its failings, government is the only thing keeping that power in check. It's a losing, uphill battle at the moment. Take away all the laws that limit their power. Take away all the laws that grant patents. Take away government intervention in business. Corporate power would run unchecked beyond any comprehension of their current practices. Power dynamics would shift, but not back to the consumer. Corporations would restructure to best take advantage of that system; it's what they do best. Taking all the rules away would be like Christmas morning for every company not relying on intensive in-house R&D. But after the honeymoon ended, it'd be worse for everyone.
And it sounds like you're completely one-sided with your take of freedom.
People are greedy. Fact. But if companies get too greedy, the customers should shop elsewhere. It keeps itself in line. When there's collusion and cartel formation, that's why we have governments. No, they're not perfect either.
A free society means a free society. But you can't have a free society with more than one person without stepping on someone's toes. You have your freedoms, they have theirs. There's a compromise between the two, hence the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with ensuring a free society.
Well, the patent expired 7 years ago, so there goes that theory.
Patents do encourage inventors to share their ideas, but they were never meant to go into society's hands concurrent with issuing. Without a limited patent duration, you have two possible realities: either the company gets a perpetual stranglehold on that technology because government has no business limiting it (the Libertarian approach) or you have companies terrified of introducing their discovery because if cost them millions of dollars to figure it out, and cheap knockoffs for a fraction of the price would appear on the market nearly instantaneously (the "information wants to be free" approach).
Neither one is particularly beneficial for society or companies. This sounds exactly like evidence for why patents work and are an important part of the innovation cycle. It also demonstrates that companies like to hide behind patents keeping their "great products" from the market when in fact they haven't really figured out all the details (i.e. a smoke screen for their vaporware products). If it was the patent holding back innovation, this article would have been written in 2000. There have certainly been infrared products offered for sale for several years now, legally, but beyond the reach of most customers. If you think that's because of the patent and not because of the newness and narrowness of the market, though, you're kidding yourself.
Adapting a technology to a new market and new packaging costs a lot of money and involves a lot of trial and error. Any patent licensing on the method is just one small part of that.
Yeah, at first glance it sounds like a great idea for "the rest of us" to get things 15-20 years faster. But the flip side is, "what's in it for the creator/investors?" Investors deserve to get something out of the deal, too. If that's a decade or two of exclusive use to generate profits, which are in turn invested in new products (and corporate accounting blunders), so be it.
Yes, we could force companies to have profit limits, spending requirements, and compulsory licensing of their creations. We could also eliminate hunger entirely by dictating food production and distribution. It's only a matter of what you want to give up to do that. Part of living in a "free" society is understanding that there's a good and a bad side to that freedom, and you can't just pick and choose the good parts without accepting the less-than-ideal consequences.
I think the problem you're having is in assuming that I don't deal with this every day.
If you present a case before a judge and it's a prima facie infringement case, then there's no traction for a fair use argument. A prima facie infringement case is just that--conclusively infringement based on the presentation. Perhaps you're forgetting that the copyright holder has to demonstrate the infringement. If there is clear potential for fair use exemption, it's going to cross through the judge's head. Fair use is not an affirmative defense that has to be argued in the style of self-defense or insanity, for instance.
"Any use can be fair use" is patently untrue. There are four criteria spelled out for fair use in 17 USC 107. What you mean to say is that the boundaries of fair use are vague, but that is true of nearly every statute on the books as offers no meaning to the discussion.
You're also misinterpreting the mechanics of a case argued under infringement. Filing a complaint alleging infringement does not establish infringement. It establishes copying. The decision to be made is whether that copying was infringing (copyright infringement) or non-infringing (fair use, in the context of this debate). The fact that it would otherwise be infringing if not for fair use does not establish prima facie infringement. It establishes that the two are in complementary distribution. You continue to extend your argument to points not made.
The issue is this: "fair use" is not a defense for copyright infringement. They are mutually exclusive rulings on the same act. If it is copyright infringement, it is not fair use and vice versa. A prima facie case of copyright infringement would preclude the application of fair use rights, because "fair use" is not an affirmative defense. A defense would involve the commission of an illegal act, which is negated by extenuating circumstances. If the act itself is not illegal, the rebuttal is not a defense of a crime because no crime has been committed.
"Insanity" and "self defense" are defenses for murder charges. They accept that a murder has been committed, but the legal consequences are mitigated by extenuating circumstances. Fair use is not such a case, because the mere act of copying is not itself an illegal act and is a prima facie case of nothing. I am substantially pro-IP, but there is a clear semantic distinction here that you're not communicating effectively, and as evidenced by your further replies, don't fully understand.
If there is prima facie infringement, it's not fair use. You're just not getting this.
And people do not have to scramble to find anything. If they're sued for copyright infringement and believe they are engaged in a fair use exemption, they will be able to explain to their attorney what they were doing and why it should be allowed. Any good attorney dealing with IP on a regular basis will know exactly how to structure the response to the complaint if that is a legitimate fair use venue. S/he will also know where the limits are generally defined in his or her jurisdiction. If you're trying to push the envelope beyond what's already established, then you're not arguing for 'fair use' at all. You're arguing that fair use should be extended to cover additional actions because they constitute a noninfringing use with no commercial damage as a result.
This rarely works.
Any tactic to counter an alleged tort is structured as a defensive move. That does not mean that the tactic is a defense to the tort itself (or the crime, for that matter)--it is a defense against the *allegation* of such a crime. That is my whole point.
The shorthand used to describe what's happening misleads people to believe that "fair use" is a defense they can invoke to protect themselves from unlawful acts they've committed. There is no such thing. Fair use is not a "yes, I did infringe on your copyright, but it's allowed"--it's "no, I did not infringe on your copyright because I hold fair use exemptions." It's the descriptor as a defense which goes on to mislead people in the general public. This seems highly semantic to the casual observer, but it is a critical distinction in the course of case law.
Fair use is something guiding your actions from the beginning, covering a deliberate act. It is not something you scramble to find after the fact when you get busted for downloading a decrypted copy of a film. It is not a defense against infringement; it is an exception to applicability.
You misunderstand. "Fair use" is an exception to copyright protection. It is not a means of defense against copyright infringement, which would necessarily involve the commission of copyright infringement--fair use is *noninfringing* use and therefore the two are mutually exclusive. If your act is fair use, it is not copyright infringement. People don't "generally understand what is meant" if you go by what people throw around on Slashdot. Fair use is not an excuse for committing an unlawful act. It is an exemption from the applicability of the act--it is a *possible* defense to *alleged* copyright infringement in a *limited* and *variable* number of circumstances.
There is no such thing as a prima facie defense to copyright infringement because there is no fixed definition of fair use, which you yourself point out in your own post. I also specified that format shifting is not CATEGORICALLY fair use. That does not preclude the determination of certain kinds of transfers to be covered by fair use.
It doesn't take 126,000 people. It takes half of that plus one to change the balance.
If 60,000 people (out of 6.6 billion) moved from a rural home to a city home, the rural population would drop 60,000 while the urban population gained 60,000 which would produce a difference of 120,000.
Even if your math was correct (which another poster already corrected), you'd still be looking at roughly double that amount of time.
It's called staff counsel. Companies, particularly sex toy ones (they get sued a lot), all have in-house legal teams. They get paid regardless. While there are filing costs and outside counsel costs, the expense is not tremendous. The sad and tired "$MILLIONS for a poor mother to defend herself against $VILLAIN" line is just getting old. This is a corporation that can afford to advertise its products on a scale for people to notice. They knew they were getting themselves into potentially hot water when they started the campaign. That cost is a calculated risk.
Moreover, the increased sales from the lawsuit alone could easily cover their costs.
The problem is not the encryption, but how authorized uses are conducted. A functional system which authenticated against a central service would allow for full fair use rights to be preserved, along with the studios' rights to protect their content against piracy and illegal copying. However, the same people that hate DRM would hate the "privacy" violation (even if no personally identifying information was transmitted and despite the fact that multiple systems know that you already purchased the film). On the flip side, licensed software players could allow for exporting clips for commentary and the like, just as they allow single-frame captures. Alternatively, the encryption could be preserved easily onto archival discs for backup, but these two options would open up an easier hole for piracy. The balance of needs is complex. The easiest solution would be to keep a UPC and a certificate with a unique code in a safe place, apart from the DVD itself. If it is damaged or lost, you could provide that information and receive a new one for a nominal fee for shipping ($3 or whatever it costs since the postage hike).
Despite all the complaining that is done, movie piracy is a big enough industry without casual copying eating into sales. I'm not saying I support the studios here, but only that they are in a difficult position, even if they weren't greedy bastards. If they don't try to protect their content, they open themselves to massive piracy levels, which litigation costs would drive up the price of DVDs, further driving up piracy. They'd also have no choice but to start prosecuting casual copiers. There is a right balance to foiling copying and preserving fair use, and it will be reached eventually.
What society expects may well change in the mean time. Certainly "privacy" to the extent it is desired here on Slashdot is no longer important to much of the rest of the world, particularly young people. What is actually fair use (not the fictional fair use in many Slashdot arguments) probably won't change--but right now the only thing actually standing in the way of fair use is the fact that obtaining clips from your DVD is difficult to do in a way that is not illegal and that the software utilities that COULD be providing legitimate archival backup discs instead cross the line by simply removing the encryption entirely.
"Fair use" is not a defense to copyright infringement. If you have a fair use action, then you're not guilty of copyright infringement. The fact that you may be sued for copyright infringement when your action is indeed covered by fair use does not change anything--I can sue you right now for copyright infringement without you ever encountering anything I own the copyright to. Fair use is a *possible* defense to *alleged* copyright infringement *iff* (not a typo) it meets specific criteria, frequently embodied into a four-prong test. Format-shifting with digital content does not currently fall into "fair use" categorically, for example. "Personal backup copies" are fair use only insofar as they are used for *archival* storage as long as the original remains functional. Moreover, "fair use" does not cover anywhere near the scope of acts that people on Slashdot seem to believe (even the Wikipedia article is misleadingly optimistic).
The United States Congress has complete authority over the District. Every single member of both Houses is accessible to its residents as a result and any of the 535 voting members can conduct constituent relations (i.e. the biggest job of an elected representative, and that which occupies the most time). Congress MAKES the DC laws, and the House is DC's biggest source of revenue.
Their representative doesn't get to vote because they're not a state and have no sovereign powers. That certainly does not mean that their representative has no power. 99% of votes are predetermined due to behind-the-scenes dealmaking, and the D.C. representative is far from powerless in those operations. S/he builds relationships and can be a single go-to guy for getting a whole block of votes.
Actually, Canada's income taxes are lower than ours, and their highest bracket is around the equivalent of $105,000 or so. What's higher is GST.
The total amount of income contributed to taxable purposes is higher in Canada (like nearly every other country in the world, and IIRC, every SINGLE other first-world country), but that money goes to accomplish more.
Taxes in the US are too low and too Byzantine. All tax codes are complicated, but it'd be a lot easier if we raised the income tax and dropped most of the others. A harmonized sales tax (national variance of +/- 1% for example) would also make life easier for travelers.
What are you talking about? Not only does D.C. have a representative (albeit non-voting), but the ENTIRE CONGRESS is responsible to the District of Columbia. They're the most represented of anyone.