Yeah, I'm late--but it's a holiday weekend. :)
Posted on 12/23/2006 5:51:48 PM PST by IncPen
If I went to a book store and removed a copy of the book without paying - THAT would be stealing. I would have taken the actual physical item from the store.
Downloading is still wrong, but it is NOT theft.
Well, my dictionary says that STEAL, PILFER, PURLOIN, and FILCH are synonymous. It goes on to note, "STEAL may apply to any surreptitious taking of something and differs from the other terms by commonly applying to intangibles as well as material things."
However, let's not quibble over the meaning of the word. You and I agree that "downloading" is wrong. I am content to leave it at that.
Merry Christmas to you!
I agree with you. See Post 99.
And Jim Baen has settled the issue by actually doing the experiment. "Piracy" in actual fact acts as free advertising.
Baen's experiment is still ongoing. As I recall, Baen Books is in the business of publishing fiction, principally science fiction. It is not clear that its business model will work for other genres or media. If it does, then I am all for it. In the mean time, I will continue to publish non-fiction the traditional way.
And the copyright laws today are ludicrous. A patent only lasts for a very limited time compared to copyright. AT MOST, a copyright should be for the author's lifetime (if you want a legacy for your offspring, save and invest the money you make from the copyrighted material, and will THAT to them).
Again I agree with you. Patents and copyrights should last for a reasonably short time to encourage innovators to produce. After that, the innovations should be released to the public domain.
I specifically said that we do not know how it will be done, but...when money is involved, it will be done eventually.
Nobody knew how an airplane was going to fly 100 years before they flew.
I get a royalty of 15% on the books I write. At one time, I considered that too low; but then I figured out what it would cost me to produce, market, and distribute the books myself and decided that 15% was not too bad.
On the other hand, I already produce my books in digital format for the publisher to print. I can envision cutting out the middle man and distributing the files over the Internet directly to the customer. I could charge less and still make a larger profit. I would do that for my next book, if I could figure out a way to prevent one user from buying the book and "sharing" it with a dozen friends.
For the time being (at least until we can look at a universal ten year copyright): A work would be copyrighted by the creator for his or her life, with rights assignable for ten years to any corporate entity. Note that this would change the "work-for-hire" copyright provisions drastically (making far more content creators contractors rather than employees). At the end of any ten year period the creator could reassign the rights for another ten years (which, of course would probably mean more negotiations, contracts, and ultimately income for the creator and more competition for the corporations). Should the ten years lapse and the author be deceased, the copyright expires and the product enters the public domain.
That is a reasonable approach, one I could support.
There will always be thieves. The trick is to convince the average person to obey copyright.
That is what I am trying to do, one thread at a time.
It seems we agree in principle on what should be done. I am content to leave it at that.
Merry Christmas.
That's the dammed truth! Our remote PACS system won't even open on a non IE browser. This is more the fault of the developers of the PACS systems. They need make their systems compatible with other browsers, rather than forcing everyone to use an inherently insecure product.
And now you understand why MS is doing it
Why does MS need to support "premium media content" under Vista? Why does Vista need to be able to play HD-DVD movies? Assuming that there are people who want to be able to watch the occasional movie on their PC, why stick that into Vista rather than just having an external HD-DVD player and have the monitor makers produce HD-capable monitors with a second imput jack?
The purpose of DRM is to lock out and cripple Linux
One problem with ultra-long-term copyright protection is that it results in much being forever lost. If a particular work is only moderately popular, it may not justify a run to produce more copies of it. The result will be that, when the copyright finally runs out, it's likely that no copies of it will have survived to pass into public domain
ping
I agree 100% Mike.
I have said before and I will say again, this is my last Microsoft OS, I will simply not use Vista, period.
Cheers,
knewshound
But an airplane operates because it obeys the laws of physics. A non-"onerous" DRM requires a violation of physics (specifically entropy). The inclusion of DRM increases information costs, which can be paid in money, time (either yours or the processors, or restricted usage. Those are your only options, wishful thinking aside...
"The problem is that the hardware manufacturers will need to build their hardware in such a way for it to work with Vista. "
Yes I gathered that from the article. So stop buy the hardware too. Settle with what you already have for awhile. The hardware manufactures will the get the message and get rid of the crap too.
I know what you mean, but as a professional photographer who relies on my copyright to protect my financial interests, I felt it would have been hypocritcal for me to just "use it."
It drives me nuts to see some high school kid using my sports photos on his "myspace" without even asking permission.
I know its small potatoes to these guys, but there are a ton of honest people who want to do the right thing--if only they could tell us how.
"I have heard that Microsoft only supports two OSes at the same time with patches, currently XP and 2000, but with Vista will drop XP. Can anyone verify this?"
I see that Syntyr has already answered this in post #96. IMHO, MS won't drop support for XP until the majority of the marketplace has upgraded to Vista, even if that's beyond their planned lifecycle.
If Vista is largely rejected and/or ignored over the next 2 or 3 years (most likely due to DRM issues), then look for a major service pack or possibly a new major release to correct the perceived shortcomings.
I believe that MS suffers from 'bloatware syndrome'. - trying to dominate the market through monopolizing all phases and services. Just like big government, this leads to waste, mismanagement, poor quality, poor service or very expensive service (support), superfluous and unwanted features, inflated costs and pricing, etc.
Linux is looking better and better all the time. Mac may be the answer for some, but will probably become as bloated as MS, if not there already. Linux is the only solution that, to my knowledge, a user can configure to run mean and lean, with only the desired features.
It's sad that there are not many programmers left that use pure assembly language for their programs. It produces code that is small, extremely fast, and efficient. Steve Gibson is a long time professional developer who still uses pure assembly language for his programming. He has developed many unique utilities that can increase system security and performance. Most are freeware. I highly recommend everyone to check out his website: GRC | Gibson Research Corporation Home Page - I've been using his products for years and really like them.
Remember when you could run the old flight sim on a 286 PC-AT?
Translation: "We're angry because we can't steal copyrighted material"
Yeah, I'm late--but it's a holiday weekend. :)
Merry Christmas! I hope you get lots of gifts that only a geek would enjoy. :p
It depends on how deep the imbedded the Intellectual Property Digital Rights Management goes and who buys into it. It may mean that photographs, graphics, and even some articles will not display on Windows Vista machines.
Again, Mark, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???
There IS NO VIRTUALIZATION! Every Intel® Mac includes every piece of hardware that Windows XP or Windows Vista would make to "direct hardware calls"... the sole exception being the antiquated parallel port. Using "Bootcamp" the Mac becomes a PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista which, according to many leading PC magazine pundits, runs faster than equivalent PCs with the same hardware.
And in a dual boot environment, once MS has written apps to work exclusively with Vista, you'll have to run it on Vista compatible hardware.
The Mac is already Vista compatible.
While Disney has in the past been very militant about the use of the IP, I find this hard to believe.
Did you actually experience this or did you hear about it from a friend who knew somebody whose second cousin's ex-wife's barber's third cousin twice removed told them about it?
I work with a large singing group (150 member chorale) who produces both CDs and DVDs of their concerts. The licensing of the music produced (so long as we have the permissions of the professional musicians we hired as accompaniasts [we usually include the performance permission in their contracts and pay them extra for signing off on reproduction rights - getting permissions after-the-fact from 105 symphony musicians ain't easy!]) is handled either by BMI or ASCAP and the licensing is seldom more than $1 per CD or DVD produced. If we turn out 1000 copies, then we usually pay a license fee of between $500 and $1000 for all of the songs on the disk. We have performed Disney songs and the licensing was right in line with all other works. The Disney department could have gone directly to BMI (for this purpose, I think) and done the usual licensing that anyone else could do.
Some things are not licensable... songs from currently running Broadway musicals or those that may have been licensed exclusively to a specific artist are generally not available to anyone except the current licensee. Some, like the Beatles catalogue is retained privately.
Vermont LT, ASCAP and BMI act as a clearing houses for payments between consumers and producers of music, including composers, performers, and publishers. The only reason I can think of that prevented them from selling you a license for the music you wanted to use on your CD was that they did not have an agreement with those who produced or performed the recordings you wanted to use. Since you were going to use the actual performance recordings of some artists, the fee per CD would probably have been a bit more than the amount I mention above, but not much... Maybe $2 per CD produced.
That being said, I think there should be a limit before you are required to pay the fee... For your purposes, the use of the music as secondary to a video of the girl's Basketball performance, for under 25 copies, for distribution within a limited membership group, I think the the law should permit blanket use for the initial copies under the fair use doctrine.
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