Right, but for most people (and, despite claims to the contrary, academics are "most people"), that separation isn't necessary nor beneficial. For most people, rethemable styles is enough.
TeX has its place. I'd use it to set a book, for example. But for pretty much anything else, it's going to be Word.
This is kind of funny, because I often explain Word to techies as being much more like HTML/CSS than it appears at first. Every paragraph is like a >p< tag. A style is like a CSS style. It actually makes a lot more sense when you think about it this way.
It also doesn't hurt that Office 2007 makes dealing with styles a lot easier than it used to be, and offers a lot of different automatic themes that look pretty good. So long as you use the standard styles (Heading 1, 2, 3, etc.), you can immediately re-theme a document without much effort. It's really pretty cool.
I don't know what you're talking about. At all. Unless you're looking at geocities or angelfire.
Look at most Invision Power Board (other sites have this problem, but they're the most immediately egregious. here is an example). Firefox renders it with some monospace font rather than the correct sans-serif font, and I can't for the life of me figure out why.
Doesn't do it on OS X. Doesn't do it on Windows. I don't care what the reason is, it fails at it.
From an economic/social perspective: piracy encourages piracy. While he may not be willing to purchase it, the "everybody does it effect", as well as his making more easily available the work (BitTorrent seeding, etc.), makes it easier for somebody who otherwise would purchase it to pirate it.
Also from a social perspective: where is the drive to actually create more if you know you're simply going to get fucked over for it? I'm not even talking monetarily. I'm talking socially. Piracy is disrespect: "I'm going to take this without paying because I want it but I don't think you deserve compensation for it." Why work, why spend a hell of a lot of time and money, on a project, just to be disrespected by those who want to use it? What the fuck's the point? (And please don't give me that tired "it's art, create it for the sake of creating it" nonsense; when you come up with a way for people to make full 3D games competitive with the Unreal Engine and others on their lunch breaks, without any of the previous technology being there, let me know. Some art can't be made without enough money to live off of, and patronage is dead and never coming back.)
I work in the IT field and i write code all the time and I don't get some nice 200 year "it's mine" law....
You're paid to create it, are you not? In which case your employer owns it. When I do web development of some kind, my client, my employer, is given the copyright. When I do development of products to sell myself, I retain the copyright.
Normal people work and never get a right to demand that what they create is theirs..
Because they are paid to create it. If you wish to have copyright on your creations, don't work for somebody else.
If you are seriously equating being paid to do something, and thus surrendering copyright on it, and doing it yourself and retaining the copyright, I would hope you would never work for a company I do business with: because you are incompetent.
No. The people through the government grant those "privileges" (if you'd like to call them that). If you want to be able to freely download, change the law. But that's hard, so just fire up BitTorrent.
That argument made sense...when art was capable of being created by one or few people. Take video games, for example. Do you really think that something like, say, Half-Life 2 (not passing judgement on the game's quality, though I enjoy it quite a bit) would be created by "sponsorship"? Do you honestly think such would be done?
I don't. Large-scale projects like that need a lot of funding, and only happen because the investment will be recouped. Those who love art may create what they can without money, but I'm genuinely sorry to say that, these days, that's really not that much. The patronage model is dead, and won't come back just because you abolish copyright. If I thought such were possible, I would one hundred percent agree with you. I'd rather be able to make a living doing something that might be a little out-there, because a patron or group of patrons trusts me to come up with something enjoyable and interesting, instead of having to stick to what I'm pretty sure will sell. But I don't think such an environment would ever be possible today, and as such copyright is pretty much the best we can actually do.
I'll say this: if something were to exist, something that gave a reasonable chance of actually being able to make a living off my work as I do now, while giving users the right to copy it and share it as much as they'd like? I'd be on board for that in a New York minute. There is an element of practicality necessary to generate creative works on the kind of scale a modern society wants. Unless you can come up with something better (and patronage isn't it), copyright is the best of a set of bad alternatives.
By paying for Photoshop, I earn the right to derive utility (productivity) from the software. He has not earned the right to derive utility (enjoyment) from a pirated product.
Why should he have the right to derive utility from another's work for free? You pro-piracy folks love to trot out "well, if he wasn't going to buy it anyway, who cares?"--well, turn it around. If he wasn't going to buy it, why should he gain a benefit from it? "Because it hurts no one" is a laughable excuse. Piracy encourages further piracy (the "everyone's doing it" effect), which, even if he "wasn't going to buy it anyway", may induce somebody who would have to pirate it instead. Piracy reduces the impetus to actually compensate the creators, encouraging them to create more--hell, that hurts society as a whole. The "victimless" act of piracy does hurt people, and claims to the contrary are lies.
Oh, no, you misunderstand. I have no interest in somebody having a lead injection simply because of the law. I earnestly want him to shuffle off this mortal coil because people like him directly harm me and my ability to make a livelihood, for the puerile benefit of free entertainment. To hell with 'im.:-)
I agree entirely. First sale should be protected. My products expressly allow transference of the license for money, so long as all copies and backups are either transferred as well or destroyed.
But that doesn't excuse widespread copying. Like I said upthread, there are 80 seeds for one of my products on The Pirate Bay right now. Should I take from that that customers will just screw me over despite trying to help them?:-)
I would say that they are terribly unethical if they don't offer refunds. Were I ever to change the licensing agreement in my software (which is already very permissive--about the only thing expressly banned is redistribution of copyrighted material outside of an out-and-out sale where all copies and backups must likewise be transferred to the new purchaser, or destroyed), of course I would offer a refund to anyone who disagreed with the changes. It's only right to do so.
Most of the pro-piracy sorts seem to paint all content creators with a very broad brush. I spent a few hours with my lawyer drafting up the most permissive license possible that didn't screw me over (and, in some ways, it really does screw me over--for example, there is no prohibition on reverse engineering, for example, so somebody could reverse engineer it and build a competitor relatively easily). The laws that you hate because they give power to the big guy also protect the little guy and let us actually make a living, too.
You do know that somebody pays for the rights to broadcast a song on the radio, right? That money is recouped by reaching your ears via advertising. As for Youtube--companies that don't like having their stuff up there can get it removed. Those that don't really care leave it up there. I don't have a problem with it.
You seem to be conflating me, an independent software producer, with the kind of assholes at Sony et al. That is incorrect.
But you must provide good value. We will not part with our hard earned money for a bad deal.
I agree entirely. I wouldn't release something that was a bad deal. But at the same time, I expect not to be screwed over by the customers stealing my product. That is not unfair.
If I'm going to make a legitimate purchase, I demand that the seller not cheat me. That means no tricks! No DRM, no remotely controlled off switch, no time bombs, no surveillance for marketing or any other purpose. No lock in, no trying to hook me in order to gouge me down the road, no hidden gotchas. And none of this dodging around the first sale doctrine by trying to tell me I bought a license, not a product, no long complicated EULAs full of unenforceable and untrue nonsense trying to claim that I have fewer rights than I actually do. Like, don't try to tell me I'm not allowed to reverse engineer or hack something. And most certainly no root kits!
I don't release anything with DRM, aside from a very basic keep-the-honest-people-honest code check. (I could disable it with a crack in about half an hour, and cracks exist for it. But it keeps the honest people honest.) If you lose your code (which is difficult, as it's baked into the ISO file that you download digitally) it's only about two minutes to go get a new one if you have your purchase info, maybe a few hours otherwise as I have to check the email myself. I've never once refused somebody a code for a "lost code" even if I don't think they ever bought it in the first place--doing so would be bad minutes.
There's nothing against reverse engineering or hacking in my product; in fact, it greatly encourages it by having virtually all of the code exposed via Python interfaces. You *can* reverse engineer it if you want...but you shouldn't need to, or I fucked up. You can sell it if you want, so long as you destroy all copies and backups--that's only fair to me. There is a monitoring system for perf checking and bug reporting, but it's opt-in and the checkbox is blank by default, and the software honors that.
Basically, I don't care what you do with it, so long as you don't steal it and you don't copy it for people who haven't paid for it.
Do you not understand how much contempt you show your customers when you treat them so, and not see the repercussions that will lead to?
Who the fuck are you talking about? Certainly not me. I aim to treat my customers as fairly as possible. I even expressly don't protect my own interests when I very well could. Incidentially, there are about 80 seeds for my product on The Pirate Bay right now. Clearly some of my customers are OK with fucking me over even if I try very hard not to do the same to them!:)
And, you know, there are people who don't buy or freeload either. What have you to say to that? That you don't think there's enough of those to matter?
Well, I don't think there are many of us (I'm one of them--I won't buy or steal something I don't think is worth the money) at all. Those who do have my respect.
Sorry, was tossing it off in a rush. The reason I volunteer the multiplier effect as being important is pretty simple: some industries spend more money than others. That money is then re-spent, etc. etc.
Say you buy $1000 of Company X's services. Company X spends $800 in operating expenses and banks the rest. Of that, Company X's suppliers spend $600. Their suppliers spend $400. That's a total of $2800 effective dollars spent, not just your $1000. In contrast, say Company Y spends only $500 in operating expenses out of your $1000. Their suppliers spend $300. Their suppliers spend $100. Only $1900 in effective dollars have been spent.
I'm not saying that the *AA organizations are correct in this, merely that the poster I was replying to is clueless. Money doesn't disappear, but expenditures do--by spending with Company Y and not Company X, in effect $900 of expenditures have just disappeared. Money isn't what defines our economy: it's the movement of money, the expenditures. Where it goes and how much of it goes there matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Word and TeX are two very useful tools for two very different needs.
This is true. Which is why I also own InDesign. :-P
Math is the one exception, though. Even CS journals mostly accept Word as well as TeX.
Right, but for most people (and, despite claims to the contrary, academics are "most people"), that separation isn't necessary nor beneficial. For most people, rethemable styles is enough.
TeX has its place. I'd use it to set a book, for example. But for pretty much anything else, it's going to be Word.
Aaaand I screw up the <p> tag. Go me!
This is kind of funny, because I often explain Word to techies as being much more like HTML/CSS than it appears at first. Every paragraph is like a >p< tag. A style is like a CSS style. It actually makes a lot more sense when you think about it this way.
It also doesn't hurt that Office 2007 makes dealing with styles a lot easier than it used to be, and offers a lot of different automatic themes that look pretty good. So long as you use the standard styles (Heading 1, 2, 3, etc.), you can immediately re-theme a document without much effort. It's really pretty cool.
I don't know what you're talking about. At all. Unless you're looking at geocities or angelfire.
Look at most Invision Power Board (other sites have this problem, but they're the most immediately egregious. here is an example). Firefox renders it with some monospace font rather than the correct sans-serif font, and I can't for the life of me figure out why.
Doesn't do it on OS X. Doesn't do it on Windows. I don't care what the reason is, it fails at it.
All of what you mentioned are fair use, which I entirely support. How does that have anything to do with people pirating their work?
I'd be happy with, say, five years, to be honest. I don't believe in limitless copyright.
From an economic/social perspective: piracy encourages piracy. While he may not be willing to purchase it, the "everybody does it effect", as well as his making more easily available the work (BitTorrent seeding, etc.), makes it easier for somebody who otherwise would purchase it to pirate it.
Also from a social perspective: where is the drive to actually create more if you know you're simply going to get fucked over for it? I'm not even talking monetarily. I'm talking socially. Piracy is disrespect: "I'm going to take this without paying because I want it but I don't think you deserve compensation for it." Why work, why spend a hell of a lot of time and money, on a project, just to be disrespected by those who want to use it? What the fuck's the point? (And please don't give me that tired "it's art, create it for the sake of creating it" nonsense; when you come up with a way for people to make full 3D games competitive with the Unreal Engine and others on their lunch breaks, without any of the previous technology being there, let me know. Some art can't be made without enough money to live off of, and patronage is dead and never coming back.)
I work in the IT field and i write code all the time and I don't get some nice 200 year "it's mine" law....
You're paid to create it, are you not? In which case your employer owns it. When I do web development of some kind, my client, my employer, is given the copyright. When I do development of products to sell myself, I retain the copyright.
Normal people work and never get a right to demand that what they create is theirs..
Because they are paid to create it. If you wish to have copyright on your creations, don't work for somebody else.
If you are seriously equating being paid to do something, and thus surrendering copyright on it, and doing it yourself and retaining the copyright, I would hope you would never work for a company I do business with: because you are incompetent.
No. The people through the government grant those "privileges" (if you'd like to call them that). If you want to be able to freely download, change the law. But that's hard, so just fire up BitTorrent.
That argument made sense...when art was capable of being created by one or few people. Take video games, for example. Do you really think that something like, say, Half-Life 2 (not passing judgement on the game's quality, though I enjoy it quite a bit) would be created by "sponsorship"? Do you honestly think such would be done?
I don't. Large-scale projects like that need a lot of funding, and only happen because the investment will be recouped. Those who love art may create what they can without money, but I'm genuinely sorry to say that, these days, that's really not that much. The patronage model is dead, and won't come back just because you abolish copyright. If I thought such were possible, I would one hundred percent agree with you. I'd rather be able to make a living doing something that might be a little out-there, because a patron or group of patrons trusts me to come up with something enjoyable and interesting, instead of having to stick to what I'm pretty sure will sell. But I don't think such an environment would ever be possible today, and as such copyright is pretty much the best we can actually do.
I'll say this: if something were to exist, something that gave a reasonable chance of actually being able to make a living off my work as I do now, while giving users the right to copy it and share it as much as they'd like? I'd be on board for that in a New York minute. There is an element of practicality necessary to generate creative works on the kind of scale a modern society wants. Unless you can come up with something better (and patronage isn't it), copyright is the best of a set of bad alternatives.
By paying for Photoshop, I earn the right to derive utility (productivity) from the software. He has not earned the right to derive utility (enjoyment) from a pirated product.
Why should he have the right to derive utility from another's work for free? You pro-piracy folks love to trot out "well, if he wasn't going to buy it anyway, who cares?"--well, turn it around. If he wasn't going to buy it, why should he gain a benefit from it? "Because it hurts no one" is a laughable excuse. Piracy encourages further piracy (the "everyone's doing it" effect), which, even if he "wasn't going to buy it anyway", may induce somebody who would have to pirate it instead. Piracy reduces the impetus to actually compensate the creators, encouraging them to create more--hell, that hurts society as a whole. The "victimless" act of piracy does hurt people, and claims to the contrary are lies.
Oh, no, you misunderstand. I have no interest in somebody having a lead injection simply because of the law. I earnestly want him to shuffle off this mortal coil because people like him directly harm me and my ability to make a livelihood, for the puerile benefit of free entertainment. To hell with 'im. :-)
Then make a stand. Show some spine and some principles. Do without what you didn't want to buy.
Or is that too hard for you?
I agree entirely. First sale should be protected. My products expressly allow transference of the license for money, so long as all copies and backups are either transferred as well or destroyed.
But that doesn't excuse widespread copying. Like I said upthread, there are 80 seeds for one of my products on The Pirate Bay right now. Should I take from that that customers will just screw me over despite trying to help them? :-)
I would say that they are terribly unethical if they don't offer refunds. Were I ever to change the licensing agreement in my software (which is already very permissive--about the only thing expressly banned is redistribution of copyrighted material outside of an out-and-out sale where all copies and backups must likewise be transferred to the new purchaser, or destroyed), of course I would offer a refund to anyone who disagreed with the changes. It's only right to do so.
Most of the pro-piracy sorts seem to paint all content creators with a very broad brush. I spent a few hours with my lawyer drafting up the most permissive license possible that didn't screw me over (and, in some ways, it really does screw me over--for example, there is no prohibition on reverse engineering, for example, so somebody could reverse engineer it and build a competitor relatively easily). The laws that you hate because they give power to the big guy also protect the little guy and let us actually make a living, too.
If you don't want it copied, then don't distribute it on/over a copyable medium. It's not rocket science!
So don't distribute anything at all? Cool.
You do know that somebody pays for the rights to broadcast a song on the radio, right? That money is recouped by reaching your ears via advertising. As for Youtube--companies that don't like having their stuff up there can get it removed. Those that don't really care leave it up there. I don't have a problem with it.
You seem to be conflating me, an independent software producer, with the kind of assholes at Sony et al. That is incorrect.
But you must provide good value. We will not part with our hard earned money for a bad deal.
I agree entirely. I wouldn't release something that was a bad deal. But at the same time, I expect not to be screwed over by the customers stealing my product. That is not unfair.
If I'm going to make a legitimate purchase, I demand that the seller not cheat me. That means no tricks! No DRM, no remotely controlled off switch, no time bombs, no surveillance for marketing or any other purpose. No lock in, no trying to hook me in order to gouge me down the road, no hidden gotchas. And none of this dodging around the first sale doctrine by trying to tell me I bought a license, not a product, no long complicated EULAs full of unenforceable and untrue nonsense trying to claim that I have fewer rights than I actually do. Like, don't try to tell me I'm not allowed to reverse engineer or hack something. And most certainly no root kits!
I don't release anything with DRM, aside from a very basic keep-the-honest-people-honest code check. (I could disable it with a crack in about half an hour, and cracks exist for it. But it keeps the honest people honest.) If you lose your code (which is difficult, as it's baked into the ISO file that you download digitally) it's only about two minutes to go get a new one if you have your purchase info, maybe a few hours otherwise as I have to check the email myself. I've never once refused somebody a code for a "lost code" even if I don't think they ever bought it in the first place--doing so would be bad minutes.
There's nothing against reverse engineering or hacking in my product; in fact, it greatly encourages it by having virtually all of the code exposed via Python interfaces. You *can* reverse engineer it if you want...but you shouldn't need to, or I fucked up. You can sell it if you want, so long as you destroy all copies and backups--that's only fair to me. There is a monitoring system for perf checking and bug reporting, but it's opt-in and the checkbox is blank by default, and the software honors that.
Basically, I don't care what you do with it, so long as you don't steal it and you don't copy it for people who haven't paid for it.
Do you not understand how much contempt you show your customers when you treat them so, and not see the repercussions that will lead to?
Who the fuck are you talking about? Certainly not me. I aim to treat my customers as fairly as possible. I even expressly don't protect my own interests when I very well could. Incidentially, there are about 80 seeds for my product on The Pirate Bay right now. Clearly some of my customers are OK with fucking me over even if I try very hard not to do the same to them! :)
And, you know, there are people who don't buy or freeload either. What have you to say to that? That you don't think there's enough of those to matter?
Well, I don't think there are many of us (I'm one of them--I won't buy or steal something I don't think is worth the money) at all. Those who do have my respect.
Strange, I didn't realize I was "filthy rich". Just somebody who doesn't like to see his work stolen. :)
It infringes upon the creator's rights. That, in and of itself, is a "hurt" whether you choose to rationalize that away or not.
I need less people thinking they can freeload off creative works because they rationalize that they "never would have paid for it."
If you won't pay for it, don't take it. It's not rocket science.
It has nothing to do with depriving the creator of anything. It has to do with the creator's rights to have his creations distributed on his terms.
But, naturally, the rights of a creator don't factor into it for reprobates like you. It's all just take-take-take, just because you can.
Eat a bullet.
Sorry, was tossing it off in a rush. The reason I volunteer the multiplier effect as being important is pretty simple: some industries spend more money than others. That money is then re-spent, etc. etc.
Say you buy $1000 of Company X's services. Company X spends $800 in operating expenses and banks the rest. Of that, Company X's suppliers spend $600. Their suppliers spend $400. That's a total of $2800 effective dollars spent, not just your $1000. In contrast, say Company Y spends only $500 in operating expenses out of your $1000. Their suppliers spend $300. Their suppliers spend $100. Only $1900 in effective dollars have been spent.
I'm not saying that the *AA organizations are correct in this, merely that the poster I was replying to is clueless. Money doesn't disappear, but expenditures do--by spending with Company Y and not Company X, in effect $900 of expenditures have just disappeared. Money isn't what defines our economy: it's the movement of money, the expenditures. Where it goes and how much of it goes there matters.