No, it isn't. Mind you, I own hundreds of copyrights. Two of them are registered with the US copyright Office and have ISBNs so you can see I'm not anti-copyright.
If you infringe my copyright you are NOT stealing from me.
My car was stolen in 1996, a month after I bought it. Until the police recovered it I had to walk. When I got it back it was damaged.
If you infrinege my copyright, I still hold that copyright.
If my copyrighted work is for sale and you infringe copyright when you had no intention of ever buying it, I have lost nothing. If you infringe copyright with the thought beforehand that you may buy it, chances are you WILL buy it. UNless it's crap. If it's crap and you buy it sight unseen, I've stolen from YOU.
Calling a spade a "pointy shovel" is one thing, but the GP's "copyright infringement is theift" people are calling my spade a hoe and wondering why you're having a hard time digging when I actually hand you a hoe instead of a spade.
One more thing - here in the US, there is no such thing as an illegal download. It's UPLOADING that is illegal.
Oh wait there's still two more things. Thieft is a criminal matter, copyright infringement is a civil matter.
And if you're caught, copyright infringement carrys a far greater cost to you than if you stole a CD.
Not to mention the fact that downloading is not stealing, illegal or not.
True. And in the US among other places, downloading is perfectly legal. It's uploading that's illegal. And even then it's not crimonal, it's a civil matter.
It's bad enough when you call a spade a "pointy shovel" but the "downloading is stealing" crowd are calling a spade a hoe.
Why shouldn't they be able to hire who they wish, and pay according to market just like most other industries?
The corporates have really, really brainwashed today's workers. The fact is that union shops CAN hire who they wish, and DO pay market rates. Non-union shops CAN'T hire who they wish; union people won't work for them. And non-union shops DON'T pay market rates; they pay far less than martket rates.
The then-President of (IIRC) United Airlines (I think, it's been a while, early 80s; this guy ran a non-union airline, I think it was United) famously said "any company that gets a union deserves one." I have to agree with him. If you treat your workers fairly, they won't organise.
If your employer can join an organization (say, the RIAA, the MPAA, the whatever trade organization Sun and Microsoft are members of) why can't their workers?
I'm not. he's their manager; he works for them. If an IBM employee slanders Sun like U2's manager just slandered downloaders (legal and illegal; I have friends who offer free music) then Sun would likely sue IBM for the slander.
If U2 fires this asshat I'll have renewed respect for them. They've gotten my money in the past, they won't now. If I hear a U2 song I want I'm "pirating" it.
Only a damned fool goes to war with his customers. Downloaders spend more money on music than non-downloaders.
U2 has hired a moron. I hope the dickweeds all go bankrupt.
You can go to their websites and Myspace pages and archive.org and download their stuff. Because hey, they're indie. Joe Frew's told me he wouldn't touch a major label contract with a ten foot pole; he's been offered contracts and turned them down.
The trouble is first, I don't know what the law is in Ireland but here in the US downloading is legal. It's uploading that's not legal.
And even where unauthorized downloads are illegal (how could anybody tell?), downloads authorized by the copyright holder are legal. Now, say you search your bittorrent client for "The Fog", a tune by The Station (some more friends of mine). Do you know how many tunes there are with that name?
In short, this is a stupid idea. I now no longer like U2. They can kiss my ass.
I thought at first when I saw the summary "at last, I've been vindicated." I've been saying for twenty years that programming is an art form. In fact I had a rather good naturedly heated discussion with Charles Broussard about this very subject on the Planet Crap website five or ten years ago, back when I was heavily into computer gaming.
His position was that programming wasn't art. Mine was that it is. Oddly (or not) his training is programming, while art was my major in college (You've probably seen "Steve's School of Fine Art", a humorous (hey, I try, tough room) look at art that's been on the internet as long as slashdot has).
But this is a bit disappointing, as it seems my position isn't vindicated at all. Art has been made with computers for years, these demos are just a continuation. I maintain that the code itself is art.
I also maintain that the programmer's tools (C++, etc) are akin to the artist's tools ten thousand years ago; i.e. mud and a stick. Your grandchildren will have wonderful tools.
I imagine someone wrote a treatise about the ethical implications of tanks, despite the fact that they saved lives (at least, the lives of the men in the tanks). Or machine guns when they first came out, or carbines, or muskets, or arrows.
If the enemy shoots down a robotic plane, nobody gets killed.
What of unintended deaths? Well, there is "friendly fire" and dead civilians with nonrobotic weapons, too.
How about the ethical implications of war itself? What about the moral imp[lications? After all, "ethics" is only a code of conduct agreed to by a group of people. In this case the "ethics" would be decided by the military itself, just as lawyers' ethical codes are decided by lawyers, and journalists' ethics are decided by journalists (or their publishers)
I think "ethics" is being confused with "morals" here.
-mcgrew (still no journal. Spam spam wonderful spam, I'll have spam saugsauge, eggs, and spam. With a side of spam, please.)
Jesse? Is that you?;) But no, I honestly don't know the reason. I do know that most of our drug laws were passed disingenuously. This seems just as disingenuous to me. performance enhansing drugs are supposed to give an unfair advantage, well, so does surgery. They say "Babe Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer", well he never had eye surgery to improve his vision, why shouldn't record breaking hitters who have had surgery get asterisks by their names as well? And as to Ruth, cocaine was around then, but there were no tests for it. There is no way of telling, short of digging up his corpse, if Ruth was a cokehead.
It's not really about the legality or illegality of steroid use
Of course not, steroids are perfectly legal if prescribed by a physician, just as legal as surgery. If I had a spare $7,500 I'd get an implant in my right eye, but I have to wait for a cataract to be able to afford it.
Like Tyrell symbionts, the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
For the money they're making I would think that it would be a perfectlly acceptable tradeoff. They live like kings off the field, not having the morthgae and bill worries like normal people. How many men die young in industrial accidents?
It reduces both quality and quantity of life for the retired player.
How many men are crippled in their 20s and 20s in industrial accidents? What of their quality of life?
It's a choice. Nobody made him play football. And in fact, the injuries incurred on the field reduce his quality of life after retirement too. Why are contact sports even legal if they're so worried about the players' quality of life?
...criminal cases where data was intentionally lost
You can completely and unretrievable wipe data from both paper and disk drives. With paper, shredding is no good but a single match or Bic will do the trick. Cheaper than a shredder, too. With a disk drive, just disassemble it and sand off all the oxide. Or alternatively, if you have a smelter or other really really hot mass of molten metal, you can just drop the thing in there. The smelter option works for CDs and tape as well.
Or you can bury it in the bridge abutment your construction company is building with tax dollars, right next to Jimmy Hoffa.
Oh oh, am I on my way to Gitmo now?
-mcgrew
(still no journal although the last one was updated Friday. Mod me down for this?)
No, I dodn't say "don't use the internet", I said putting something on the internet you wouldn't want seen is stupid. Taking a photo that you wouldn't want seen is stupid.
That said, I will agree that MySpace did in fact screw up and should be made to pay to those it harmed. It made an even bigger mistake than the users; those running it should have warned its users that putting stuff on the internet you wouldn't want seen is a bad idea, that it would TRY (not gurantee) to keep private stuff private but that "stuff happens".
Yes there is. The slashdot crowd consists of nerds and nerd wannabes. This crowd is comprised of a large number of individuals with disparate tastes and opinions. There are Mac fans, MS fans (even if most of them work for MS;), Linux fans, Be fans, other OS fans. There are Liberals and Conservatives and Democrats and Tories and Greens and Libertarians.
But they are all part of the same crowd. The one thing that distinguishes a member of the slashdot crowd from normal people is the fact that they read and sometimes comment on slashdot.
Maybe they'd let him drive his motorized wheelchair in the hundred meter race before he got his cyborg legs? I think when his legs got blown off that would have pretty much disqualified him from most sports.
Speaking of sports, why is it OK for a baseball player to get eye surgery to bring his vision to better than 20/20, but it's not ok for him to take steroids? Would they he ok with muscles surgically grafted onto his arms and legs?
Have you seen the latest journal? Actually, here in Springfield we do our trolling offline. I really am a geezer, I was born three months before the term "rock and roll" was coined.
when Myspace says nobody but you and your friends or nobody but you can see these pictures, they should be able to back that up.
I would agree with that, but teenagers ESPECIALLY (judging from the internet anyway) should know better than to trust a faceless, soulless corporation. Especially one run by Fox (MySpace was bought by Murdoch, right?)
While Myspace did a timely job in fixing the exploit, they are just as much at fault as the users who put private pictures there in the first place.
I'd say they were MORE at fault, and if a single one of the pictures is of a European I'd like to see Murdoch hung out to dry for it. The governments in Europe actually value privacy for the citizens, unlike the sleazy congresscritters in my once proud nation.
Slashdot Mirror
See what you get when you don't pay you@G#TG%2yv24*SA$FNO CARRIER
Oh hell, sorry I ruined your day! ;)
But you do illustrate my point.
Oops, it wasn'r 1996, it was 2006. Downmodding myself with the "no karma bonus" option"
Its theft whatever the exact legal definition
No, it isn't. Mind you, I own hundreds of copyrights. Two of them are registered with the US copyright Office and have ISBNs so you can see I'm not anti-copyright.
If you infringe my copyright you are NOT stealing from me.
My car was stolen in 1996, a month after I bought it. Until the police recovered it I had to walk. When I got it back it was damaged.
If you infrinege my copyright, I still hold that copyright.
If my copyrighted work is for sale and you infringe copyright when you had no intention of ever buying it, I have lost nothing. If you infringe copyright with the thought beforehand that you may buy it, chances are you WILL buy it. UNless it's crap. If it's crap and you buy it sight unseen, I've stolen from YOU.
Calling a spade a "pointy shovel" is one thing, but the GP's "copyright infringement is theift" people are calling my spade a hoe and wondering why you're having a hard time digging when I actually hand you a hoe instead of a spade.
One more thing - here in the US, there is no such thing as an illegal download. It's UPLOADING that is illegal.
Oh wait there's still two more things. Thieft is a criminal matter, copyright infringement is a civil matter.
And if you're caught, copyright infringement carrys a far greater cost to you than if you stole a CD.
-mcgrew
Not to mention the fact that downloading is not stealing, illegal or not.
True. And in the US among other places, downloading is perfectly legal. It's uploading that's illegal. And even then it's not crimonal, it's a civil matter.
It's bad enough when you call a spade a "pointy shovel" but the "downloading is stealing" crowd are calling a spade a hoe.
-mcgrew
(speaking of hos...
Why shouldn't they be able to hire who they wish, and pay according to market just like most other industries?
The corporates have really, really brainwashed today's workers. The fact is that union shops CAN hire who they wish, and DO pay market rates. Non-union shops CAN'T hire who they wish; union people won't work for them. And non-union shops DON'T pay market rates; they pay far less than martket rates.
The then-President of (IIRC) United Airlines (I think, it's been a while, early 80s; this guy ran a non-union airline, I think it was United) famously said "any company that gets a union deserves one." I have to agree with him. If you treat your workers fairly, they won't organise.
If your employer can join an organization (say, the RIAA, the MPAA, the whatever trade organization Sun and Microsoft are members of) why can't their workers?
Sorry Linux users! You can still buy by the track!
;)
Then I'll download elsewhere. Kazaa and Morpheus offer reasonable prices on downloads
The recording industry is run by idiots.
-mcgrew
Spam spam wonderful spam! Mod me down for comment apam!
I'm curious what U2 has to say about this
I'm not. he's their manager; he works for them. If an IBM employee slanders Sun like U2's manager just slandered downloaders (legal and illegal; I have friends who offer free music) then Sun would likely sue IBM for the slander.
If U2 fires this asshat I'll have renewed respect for them. They've gotten my money in the past, they won't now. If I hear a U2 song I want I'm "pirating" it.
Only a damned fool goes to war with his customers. Downloaders spend more money on music than non-downloaders.
U2 has hired a moron. I hope the dickweeds all go bankrupt.
Neither are flat earthers or creationists. Because it's only a lie if the person saying it knows it's not true.
When head of the MPAA a couple of decades ago Jack Valenti said "the VCR is to the movie industry what Jack The Ripper was to women".
In short, they're not liars. They're just stupid.
You can go to their websites and Myspace pages and archive.org and download their stuff. Because hey, they're indie. Joe Frew's told me he wouldn't touch a major label contract with a ten foot pole; he's been offered contracts and turned them down.
The trouble is first, I don't know what the law is in Ireland but here in the US downloading is legal. It's uploading that's not legal.
And even where unauthorized downloads are illegal (how could anybody tell?), downloads authorized by the copyright holder are legal. Now, say you search your bittorrent client for "The Fog", a tune by The Station (some more friends of mine). Do you know how many tunes there are with that name?
In short, this is a stupid idea. I now no longer like U2. They can kiss my ass.
I thought at first when I saw the summary "at last, I've been vindicated." I've been saying for twenty years that programming is an art form. In fact I had a rather good naturedly heated discussion with Charles Broussard about this very subject on the Planet Crap website five or ten years ago, back when I was heavily into computer gaming.
His position was that programming wasn't art. Mine was that it is. Oddly (or not) his training is programming, while art was my major in college (You've probably seen "Steve's School of Fine Art", a humorous (hey, I try, tough room) look at art that's been on the internet as long as slashdot has).
But this is a bit disappointing, as it seems my position isn't vindicated at all. Art has been made with computers for years, these demos are just a continuation. I maintain that the code itself is art.
I also maintain that the programmer's tools (C++, etc) are akin to the artist's tools ten thousand years ago; i.e. mud and a stick. Your grandchildren will have wonderful tools.
-mcgrew
Spam, eggs, sausage and spam. On a stick.)
I got a laugh out of it.
You not only seem to have completely missed the point, but have run screaming from it.
Or they could be a lot smarter than me and just making fun of the fact.
I imagine someone wrote a treatise about the ethical implications of tanks, despite the fact that they saved lives (at least, the lives of the men in the tanks). Or machine guns when they first came out, or carbines, or muskets, or arrows.
If the enemy shoots down a robotic plane, nobody gets killed.
What of unintended deaths? Well, there is "friendly fire" and dead civilians with nonrobotic weapons, too.
How about the ethical implications of war itself? What about the moral imp[lications? After all, "ethics" is only a code of conduct agreed to by a group of people. In this case the "ethics" would be decided by the military itself, just as lawyers' ethical codes are decided by lawyers, and journalists' ethics are decided by journalists (or their publishers)
I think "ethics" is being confused with "morals" here.
-mcgrew
(still no journal. Spam spam wonderful spam, I'll have spam saugsauge, eggs, and spam. With a side of spam, please.)
you're being obtuse because you want to juice
;) But no, I honestly don't know the reason. I do know that most of our drug laws were passed disingenuously. This seems just as disingenuous to me. performance enhansing drugs are supposed to give an unfair advantage, well, so does surgery. They say "Babe Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer", well he never had eye surgery to improve his vision, why shouldn't record breaking hitters who have had surgery get asterisks by their names as well? And as to Ruth, cocaine was around then, but there were no tests for it. There is no way of telling, short of digging up his corpse, if Ruth was a cokehead.
Jesse? Is that you?
It's not really about the legality or illegality of steroid use
Of course not, steroids are perfectly legal if prescribed by a physician, just as legal as surgery. If I had a spare $7,500 I'd get an implant in my right eye, but I have to wait for a cataract to be able to afford it.
Like Tyrell symbionts, the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
For the money they're making I would think that it would be a perfectlly acceptable tradeoff. They live like kings off the field, not having the morthgae and bill worries like normal people. How many men die young in industrial accidents?
It reduces both quality and quantity of life for the retired player.
How many men are crippled in their 20s and 20s in industrial accidents? What of their quality of life?
It's a choice. Nobody made him play football. And in fact, the injuries incurred on the field reduce his quality of life after retirement too. Why are contact sports even legal if they're so worried about the players' quality of life?
...criminal cases where data was intentionally lost
You can completely and unretrievable wipe data from both paper and disk drives. With paper, shredding is no good but a single match or Bic will do the trick. Cheaper than a shredder, too. With a disk drive, just disassemble it and sand off all the oxide. Or alternatively, if you have a smelter or other really really hot mass of molten metal, you can just drop the thing in there. The smelter option works for CDs and tape as well.
Or you can bury it in the bridge abutment your construction company is building with tax dollars, right next to Jimmy Hoffa.
Oh oh, am I on my way to Gitmo now?
-mcgrew
(still no journal although the last one was updated Friday. Mod me down for this?)
No, I dodn't say "don't use the internet", I said putting something on the internet you wouldn't want seen is stupid. Taking a photo that you wouldn't want seen is stupid.
That said, I will agree that MySpace did in fact screw up and should be made to pay to those it harmed. It made an even bigger mistake than the users; those running it should have warned its users that putting stuff on the internet you wouldn't want seen is a bad idea, that it would TRY (not gurantee) to keep private stuff private but that "stuff happens".
There is no /. crowd
Yes there is. The slashdot crowd consists of nerds and nerd wannabes. This crowd is comprised of a large number of individuals with disparate tastes and opinions. There are Mac fans, MS fans (even if most of them work for MS;), Linux fans, Be fans, other OS fans. There are Liberals and Conservatives and Democrats and Tories and Greens and Libertarians.
But they are all part of the same crowd. The one thing that distinguishes a member of the slashdot crowd from normal people is the fact that they read and sometimes comment on slashdot.
If you see a marine dancing a jig in a coffeeshop, you know who it is!
Maybe they'd let him drive his motorized wheelchair in the hundred meter race before he got his cyborg legs? I think when his legs got blown off that would have pretty much disqualified him from most sports.
Speaking of sports, why is it OK for a baseball player to get eye surgery to bring his vision to better than 20/20, but it's not ok for him to take steroids? Would they he ok with muscles surgically grafted onto his arms and legs?
Why is surgery ok but not drugs?
That's why I'm waiting to get my other eye operated on (see sig). I want one that shoots laser beams!
Yes, I'm a cyborg. Resistance is fulile and you will all be (yawn) assimilated.
I, for one, welcome our new cybernetic overl...
Hey wait a minute, I'm a cyborg! Never mind.
First off - Troll much?
Have you seen the latest journal? Actually, here in Springfield we do our trolling offline. I really am a geezer, I was born three months before the term "rock and roll" was coined.
when Myspace says nobody but you and your friends or nobody but you can see these pictures, they should be able to back that up.
I would agree with that, but teenagers ESPECIALLY (judging from the internet anyway) should know better than to trust a faceless, soulless corporation. Especially one run by Fox (MySpace was bought by Murdoch, right?)
While Myspace did a timely job in fixing the exploit, they are just as much at fault as the users who put private pictures there in the first place.
I'd say they were MORE at fault, and if a single one of the pictures is of a European I'd like to see Murdoch hung out to dry for it. The governments in Europe actually value privacy for the citizens, unlike the sleazy congresscritters in my once proud nation.
Never ever surf the internet while eating. You might run across a goatse, or worse, a mcgrew journal or comment.