As amicus briefs are filed in support of one side or the other in a civil action there is no presumption of objectivity in them at all.
So called "Friend of the Court" briefs have a higher expectation of objectivity as they are more intended to point out parts of the law and precedence that may be obscure or unknown to the court in the action.
The judge will rule whether evidence is allowed or not based on a number of widely used criteria and as I hinted above objectivity isn't required in an amicus brief.
EMI's response to it indicates that their lawyers are more concerned that should the lawyer take the brief (testimony by another means) into account then their case is seriously weakened or lost.
The biggest problem with copyright as it now exists is that it has little or nothing to do with the people that create stories, music, sculpture, paintings, plays etc though all too often those creators fall for the lie that it has to do with them. It never has.
And human history shows that a lack of copyright won't stop them from creating.
Now I can see why creators want something like copyright to exist. It means, at least theoretically, that they'll have some control over their work (they won't, just ask The Beatles) and earn some money from it.
Fear. as Nina, says is the major motivator here.
"Creators" (an invented class if there ever was one) are afraid the the Web and Net will take away their source of income. This tends to ignore that most of them make very little from their copyright or are employed to write by others (television or movie scripts, newspaper articles or opinion, magazines, some web site, shall I go on?) in other words today's patrons who are very careful that they have the copyright not the "creator".
We can entertain ourselves with our own culture and many are starting to recover that. In my country Newfoundland celebrates it's culture and exports it (the band Great Big Sea) as do the Maritime Provinces with such exports as The Rankin Family.
There are similar movements in different parts of the United States and in other countries.
Funny, though, traditional tunes and lyrics somehow get a copyright slapped on them when the most that can be placed there is the particular arrangement not the tune or lyrics themselves because they've been in the public domain for longer than copyright has existed.
Sadly your final point contains the paradox of the myth of copyright. In the vast majority of cases as I hinted at above the "creator" doesn't hold the copyright on what they created but the big bad corporate entity that employed them does. In that very important sense copyright, which was put in place to prevent publishers from "pirating" from each other continues to work in that sense and continues to keep the vast, vast majority of "creators" on the sidelines driving cab.
"It is repeatedly said by those who decry the existence of copyright law that all authors "stand on the shoulders of giants." To that I say that the system of copyright law does likewise. It was not crafted in a vacuum. It was crafted over centuries,.."
On your first point about the giants past is true but only marginally, as I'll get to in a moment. It applies more to the things covered by patent law as it was originally intended.
Nor can you or anyone else lay claim to some ancient heritage of copyright as it simply didn't exist prior to the Statute of Anne in 1710. Three hundred years is a little bit short to claim some ancient heritage as you try to imply.
"...and in no small part by persons who had given the question of incentivizing authorship serious thought and consideration."
If you look back at the debates, background and purposes of the Statute you'll find that it wasn't about providing and incentive to authors at all but to protect publishers from one another. Yes, publishers were the "pirates" of the day.
Authorship was a very minor consideration if a consideration at all.
I'll go so far as to suggest that the kerfuffle now over copyright has far less to do with the tiny minority of writers who earn a living exclusively from their work than it is to protect the self-same publishers who are now finding it difficult to compete in a world where the Internet has come along and expanded publishing from the cozy little cartel it's been to just about anyone who takes the time and effort to put up a web site.
In fact it's the publishers (movie studios and major record labels, as well) who hold the vast majority of copyrights not the authors and stand to gain the most from further restrictions and/or extensions.
Now, and this is vitally important. Human beings are the only creatures on this planet (as far as we know) with the ability to tell stories to one another.
Among the first things we want as children is for our parents to tell us stories. We, and they, then pass those stories on to others.
One of the most highly regarded people of ancient times and in pre-history, was the storyteller. Whether around a fire outside or inside some sort of building the people of a tribe of village would gather to listen to the storyteller weave a tale.
There was no need for an incentive like copyright for the storyteller. They just did it and were held in very high regard by their fellows, sometimes becoming a religious sage or leader in the process.
In fact, this is so ingrained in us that we still hold storytellers in exceptionally high regard. Where authors, by and large, are very poor storytellers some excel at it.
Mark Twain's memory, in large part, isn't kept alive by the fiction he wrote as much as by his tours to different parts of North America and to England to tell stories. Not to read from his books. He told stories.
Similarly I'd far rather hear Margret Atwood lean back in a chair and spin a tale than the rather boring for me (and her from all reports) process of listening to her read a book. She's a hell of a good writer. She's a better story teller.
We all know storytellers. It may be the old guy down the street, it may be someone at work, it could be someone in our social group and when they start to tell their stories we gather round, often spellbound, by the story even if we've heard it, in one form or another, before. They don't need copyright to sit down and tell a story. They just do.
If authors stand on the shoulders of "giants" the shoulders they stand on are those of the storyteller whose stories they often retell with a change here and there and call it their own.
None of this is to denigrate authors or to say they shouldn't be fairly recompensed for their work. What it is to do is to knock some, if not most, of them off the pedestal post-modern society has placed them on.
As for Macauley, he didn't support copyright as much as he considered it a necessary evil which is what, economically, it is. As the quote above shows, he was prepared to tolerate that evil, which he correctly calls a tax, for a limited term only and certainly would not support the caricature we call copyright today.
We still have storytellers today. Just flip though the net and you'll find millions telling their stories and others. Damn few of them seem to be relying on copyright to do it or seem interested in making a living off it. To the hoity-toy of the arts community (a 19th Century development who have dug themselves in as post-modernists) this is all very dreary and pointless. To people like me who are interested in human history, the arts be damned, this is and will be a gold mine for historians in the future.
"It is repeatedly said by those who decry the existence of copyright law that all authors "stand on the shoulders of giants." To that I say that the system of copyright law does likewise. It was not crafted in a vacuum. It was crafted over centuries,.."
On your first point about the giants past is true but only marginally, as I'll get to in a moment. It applies more to the things covered by patent law as it was originally constructed rather to the mish-mash we have now.
Nor can you or anyone else lay claim to some ancient heritage of copyright as it simply didn't exist prior to the Statute of Anne in 1710. Three hundred years is a little bit short to claim some ancient heritage as you try to imply.
"...and in no small part by persons who had given the question of incentivizing authorship serious thought and consideration."
If you look back at the debates, background and purposes of the Statute you'll find that it wasn't about providing and incentive to authors at all but to protect publishers from one another. Yes, publishers were the "pirates" of the day.
Authorship was a very minor consideration if a consideration at all.
I'll go so far as to suggest that the kerfuffle now over copyright has far less to do with the tiny minority of writers who earn a living exclusively from their work than it is to protect the self-same publishers who are now finding it difficult to compete in a world where the Internet has come along and expanded publishing from the cozy little cartel it's been to just about anyone who takes the time and effort to put up a web site.
In fact it's the publishers (movie studios and major record labels, as well) who hold the vast majority of copyrights not the authors and stand to gain the most from further restrictions and/or extensions.
Now, and this is vitally important. Human beings are the only creatures on this planet (as far as we know) with the ability to tell stories to one another.
Among the first things we want as children is for our parents to tell us stories. We, and they, then pass those stories on to others.
One of the most highly regarded people of ancient times and in pre-history, was the storyteller. Whether around a fire outside or inside some sort of building the people of a tribe of village would gather to listen to the storyteller weave a tale.
There was no need for an incentive like copyright for the storyteller. They just did it and were held in very high regard by their fellows, sometimes becoming a religious sage or leader in the process.
In fact, this is so ingrained in us that we still hold storytellers in exceptionally high regard. Where authors, by and large, are very poor storytellers some excel at it.
Mark Twain's memory, in large part, isn't kept alive by the fiction he wrote as much as by his tours to different parts of North America and to England to tell stories. Not to read from his books. He told stories.
Similarly I'd far rather hear Margret Atwood lean back in a chair and spin a tale than the rather boring for me (and her from all reports) process of listening to her read a book. She's a hell of a good writer. She's a better story teller.
We all know storytellers. It may be the old guy down the street, it may be someone at work, it could be someone in our social group and when they start to tell their stories we gather round, often spellbound, by the story even if we've heard it, in one form or another, before. They don't need copyright to sit down and tell a story. They just do.
If authors stand on the shoulders of "giants" the shoulders they stand on are those of the storyteller whose stories they often retell with a change here and there and call it their own.
None of this is to denigrate authors or to say they shouldn't be fairly recompensed for their work. What it is to do is to knock some, if not most, of them off the pedestal post-modern society has placed them on.
As for Macauley, he didn't support copyright as much as he considered it a necessary evil which is what, economically, it is. As the quote above shows, he was prepared to tolerate that evil, which he correctly calls a tax, for a limited term only and certainly would not support the caricature we call copyright today.
We still have storytellers today. Just flip though the net and you'll find millions telling their stories and others. Damn few of them seem to be relying on copyright to do it or seem interested in making a living off it. To the hoity-toy of the arts community (a 19th Century development who have dug themselves in as post-modernists) this is all very dreary and pointless. To people like me who are interested in human history, the arts be damned, this is and will be a gold mine for historians in the future.
Actually, while planes don't seem to be much of a target these days for a while trains were the target of choice.
In the end what measures like this do is lose public support for their very existence. How long, I wonder, before the American public demands these things and anything like them be removed in their entirely from the airports as now the traveling public doesn't know who to fear more -- the statistically remote chance of a highjacking or the invasive and objectionable security attempts to prevent it.
What you're saying is a syndrome known to military historians that generals and their political masters prepare for the next war by assuming that it will be largely if not completely like the last one.
Case in point. French planners prepared for another war with Germany by assuming that it, too, would be static and came up with the Maginot Line which they proceeded to increase the fortifications and troop assignments as things heated up towards the German invasion of France. The Germans responded to that by simply going around it.
This has happened throughout history.
I should also note that after 9/11 Bin Laden's unhappy band of terrorists haven't seriously attempted another run at the United States. In part because they know that if they repeat that action they'll be caught before they can get so much as a box cutter out of their pocket and in part by a global outpouring of sympathy, empathy and support for the United States which translated into the Security Council at the UN blessing the mission in Afghanistan.
What has happened is that there have been a few attempts by incompetent loners none of which have been successful.
While it doesn't rule out another hijacking attempt I'd say that the odds of one happening soon are close to zero.
TSA is trying to prepare for the next attack by preparing for the last one in as intrusive and objectionable means possible.
Put another way this is the TSA's Maginot Line and should someone with some brains and planning skills want to run another terror attack on the United States like the Germans they'll simply go around it.
I found these funny too, which made me look at who wrote it because Mike doesn't write like that. :)
In my case it could be growing up on the best of British comedy (The Goon Show & Python) as well as the best of Canadian (This Hour Has Thirty Minutes). In both cases often self-deprecating while being very pointed.
You hit on all the main points in response to her rather unfocused blog post.
I was going to comment on this further down but as you bring the subject up......
The CBC did an interview with the former (?) head of airport security who said in no uncertain terms that the backscatter xrays are worse than useless. I think the term was fraud, I was only half listening up to that point. And that the pat down wasn't a whole lot better.
What they do do is what any well trained security person does is watch the behaviour of the person to see if they're unusually nervous or amxious, check their flight itinerary for flights and connections that simply don't make sense and a number of other subltle give aways that a person in this position does.
Yes, it's profiling in a sense but it's the same kind of profiling police detectives, customs agents and countless others in security have been doing for a long long time.
Yes, they do use standard xrays mostly at or near the airport entrances which picks up anyone with a belt made of C-4, restrict access to the working areas of the airports such as flight path aprons, baggage and any other place they identify as needed strict control of who gets where and when they do.
Anyway, in my case they can stuff they're back scatter xray (or any other xray that I know of) because I have a programmable pacemaker whose operation could be negatively impacted by too much xray exposure. For example I could have a heart attack right then and there.
They want a pat down they can do it right there as well, in front of everyone which really ought to cut down on the shenanigans or having to explain in front of people who want nothing more than to get on their plane.
And has it occurred to anyone other than this fella that "The Terrorists" (tm) have probably already figured out how to get by these silly things? That is to say the ones that really do know what they're doing?
In the meantime a backscatter xray picture is damn poor porn, if you ask me!
Micky D aside, the ad is a wonderful example of creative where the ad itself attracts attention for a host of reasons other than the actual advertiser.
Compare this ad to the current round of Gillette junk where a camera crew crashes into a dressing room cameras operating a complete lighting crew, guys changing in the background while some slack mouthed guy "interviews" people about their razor and Gillette's new one. Any change room I've been in a few of those guys would end up wearing a foot or something harder slammed into their crotch until they got the hell out of there.
Again, compare this to the creative involved with the current crop of Schick ads where something that comes into contact with the face suddenly becomes a splash of water. Never mind the couple of scenes that are sexually charged, it gets the point across creatively and without descending to the level of stupidity of the Gillette ad.
As for this woman, if the boat was beached at low tide on a public beach available for anyone to take a picture (which I'd have tried to frame the same way) of it there too bad that it got used in an ad. Any ad. It was there, in public, too bad, so sad.
And it it been in another companies ad. perhaps one she approved of, there'd have been no complaint. And just who, among the millions who saw that ad could have identified the boat until she spoke up?
It almost looks like she was looking for some free advertising by way of media who reported her claims and others for her own small business. So she got that and good on her.
Still, that she should be able to censor the media including advertising simply because she disagrees with the advertiser's products, way of conducting business is troubling given that I'm almost sure that until she kicked up the fuss I could have found that image in any stock photo collection where I bothered to look for it.
Most advertising is so bad as it is that when one comes along that's this good in terms of its creative component to get censored like this I do find it disturbing.
Of course, it's just as creative and impressive without the not all that special boat beached on the sand so perhaps the trade off hasn't been all that bad.
I terms of republishing recipes she ripped off no one because recipes aren't subject to copyright. Editorial text is but the recipe itself isn't.
Her response can be described with varying levels of stupidity, arrogance and ignorance and I'm sure she's heard them all by now as have her advertisers.
It's long past time to let go.
I'm wondering how many still angry posters here have even bothered to look at the publication in question. It's a one person operation and while it looks nice it has amateur stamped all over it. None of this excuses or justifies her response to Ms Guadio's extremely generous settlement offer.
Under the extreme pressure of getting the publication out she fired off an "apology" that was anything but and added a few lines of insults besides. Before we continue to crucify her perhaps we need to look at ourselves and the number of times we've done the same or something similar. Even stupidly in an email.
One person operation or not that was anything but the right way to deal with it.
With that I also need to say that I'm not surprised at her ignorance of copyright law. Most people that run rural and semi-rural publications like hers have very little understanding of IP laws beyond what someone tells them. Before anyone chimes in to say she "ought" to have educated herself I have to ask just how many, even, large publishers packed full of legal leeches, do given the number of contested DCMA takedowns that they have to back track on.
Keep in mind as well that these sorts of publications are an important, if not vital, way that rural and semi rural citizens keep their lives, histories and lifestyles going instead of being drowned under big city MSM crud that thinks we're culturally ignorant lumps of clay because we can't attend the opera of a regular basis or like country music too much.
It's our way of communicating our culture which is as valid and, often, as lively as that of the big city.
There's part of me that hopes she doesn't go down under this and part of me that does.
I'm hoping that she has learned a lesson here, though.
(Under the same circumstances I'd have dashed off a quick email thanking Ms Guidio for her email and offering to speak later once the edition was out to discuss the settlement offer.)
Even Murdoch must understand that. Or you'd think he would.
Then again, he's the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed Australian journalism by buying up everything in sight before he moved on the Europe and now the United States to do the same thing there.
While it's sad to see the decline and impending fall of one of the "newspapers of record" in the English speaking world perhaps it will convince it's namesake in New York to put the brakes on it's plans to hide behind a paywall. Then again, maybe not.
The Wall Street Journal gets away with it, sort of, because it has pretty much got a captive audience who aren't convinced they can get the "inside dirt" on the financial industry anywhere else.
Come to think of it, how many stories do you see since THAT paywall went up that credit the WSJ for anything?
Sometimes courts have no choice but to enforce the silliest of laws but what takes the cake on this one is that the appellate court added prosecution costs to the original fines as a "how dare you appeal this" snub. That pretty much tripled the fine. (OK, I'm not entirely accurate there so sue me!)
This kind of thing, stupid as it is, seems to follow along the path of so-called anarchists in ski masks breaking store windows, toppling over mail boxes and blocking children from running their portion of the torch run as they did for a portion of it in Victoria before the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
They come/came across as small minded naughty brats rather than someone with a real political or social agenda, taking attention away from their issues and focusing it on themselves.
In this case they've certainly managed that and have made these places more than able to play the "victim" card.
If the FBI can find two or three members of this group to trot into court and get them sentenced to any kind of jail term what these people do know is that they will play it up as martyrdom so they can attract a few other script kiddies to their cause.
As has been noted DDoS attacks are transitory at best and almost unnoticeable at worst where a site has taken half way decent security measures.
In many ways it's just better to leave them alone because all they've done is allow the sites they took down to play the "victim" card and pissed off those of us who just might, otherwise, have supported their point of view.
Just looking at the link Mike provides to the proposal reminds me how far things have come in the last two decades.
The page reminds me of what things first looked like when I got my first copies of Netscape and Motif.
Page after page of this stuff but it was so compelling. So much to poke around in, like an enormous library even if the card catalogue was non existent back then.
Discovering usenet and all the junk on there as well as jewels. All the porn and warez you could imagine! Of course downloading anything with a 14.4K modem was painful.
The discovery of IRC, still one of the best ways of actually chatting with people on the Internet in spite of more flashing, graphical and proprietary protocols.
Today we have sites that are dynamic by design thanks to tools like ASP and PHP. Static is dead or it should be.
New challenges to concepts like copyright and patents that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago as well as unforeseeable.
Information at our finger tips, a tsunami of it if I'm not careful.
In many ways it's as if the printing press, radio, telephones, telegraph and television had all happened at once instead of over a 400 year time span.
We're still trying to come to terms with all that the Intenet and http have made possible and all the changes it's brought and will bring.
Oh yeah, it's made sites like Techdirt possible so that we can discuss issues we feel are important once Mike has brought our attention to them.
Not bad for something that started out as a military exercise in the United States which started out as a military secret and now has made secrets all but impossible to keep for very long. Not a bad thing, either.
Isn't this just a bit like insisting the site lock the barn door after the cow has left and walked down main street passing out milk as she passess?
If there's one primary truism about the Internet it's that once information is out there it's out there and no amount of "being helpful" or theatening is going to make it disappear.
On the post: EMI So Scared Of EFF Amicus Brief In MP3Tunes Case, It Asks Court To Reject It
Re: You confuse lawyer tactics with real fear.
So called "Friend of the Court" briefs have a higher expectation of objectivity as they are more intended to point out parts of the law and precedence that may be obscure or unknown to the court in the action.
The judge will rule whether evidence is allowed or not based on a number of widely used criteria and as I hinted above objectivity isn't required in an amicus brief.
EMI's response to it indicates that their lawyers are more concerned that should the lawyer take the brief (testimony by another means) into account then their case is seriously weakened or lost.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And human history shows that a lack of copyright won't stop them from creating.
Now I can see why creators want something like copyright to exist. It means, at least theoretically, that they'll have some control over their work (they won't, just ask The Beatles) and earn some money from it.
Fear. as Nina, says is the major motivator here.
"Creators" (an invented class if there ever was one) are afraid the the Web and Net will take away their source of income. This tends to ignore that most of them make very little from their copyright or are employed to write by others (television or movie scripts, newspaper articles or opinion, magazines, some web site, shall I go on?) in other words today's patrons who are very careful that they have the copyright not the "creator".
We can entertain ourselves with our own culture and many are starting to recover that. In my country Newfoundland celebrates it's culture and exports it (the band Great Big Sea) as do the Maritime Provinces with such exports as The Rankin Family.
There are similar movements in different parts of the United States and in other countries.
Funny, though, traditional tunes and lyrics somehow get a copyright slapped on them when the most that can be placed there is the particular arrangement not the tune or lyrics themselves because they've been in the public domain for longer than copyright has existed.
Sadly your final point contains the paradox of the myth of copyright. In the vast majority of cases as I hinted at above the "creator" doesn't hold the copyright on what they created but the big bad corporate entity that employed them does. In that very important sense copyright, which was put in place to prevent publishers from "pirating" from each other continues to work in that sense and continues to keep the vast, vast majority of "creators" on the sidelines driving cab.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re: Re:
On your first point about the giants past is true but only marginally, as I'll get to in a moment. It applies more to the things covered by patent law as it was originally intended.
Nor can you or anyone else lay claim to some ancient heritage of copyright as it simply didn't exist prior to the Statute of Anne in 1710. Three hundred years is a little bit short to claim some ancient heritage as you try to imply.
"...and in no small part by persons who had given the question of incentivizing authorship serious thought and consideration."
If you look back at the debates, background and purposes of the Statute you'll find that it wasn't about providing and incentive to authors at all but to protect publishers from one another. Yes, publishers were the "pirates" of the day.
Authorship was a very minor consideration if a consideration at all.
I'll go so far as to suggest that the kerfuffle now over copyright has far less to do with the tiny minority of writers who earn a living exclusively from their work than it is to protect the self-same publishers who are now finding it difficult to compete in a world where the Internet has come along and expanded publishing from the cozy little cartel it's been to just about anyone who takes the time and effort to put up a web site.
In fact it's the publishers (movie studios and major record labels, as well) who hold the vast majority of copyrights not the authors and stand to gain the most from further restrictions and/or extensions.
Now, and this is vitally important. Human beings are the only creatures on this planet (as far as we know) with the ability to tell stories to one another.
Among the first things we want as children is for our parents to tell us stories. We, and they, then pass those stories on to others.
One of the most highly regarded people of ancient times and in pre-history, was the storyteller. Whether around a fire outside or inside some sort of building the people of a tribe of village would gather to listen to the storyteller weave a tale.
There was no need for an incentive like copyright for the storyteller. They just did it and were held in very high regard by their fellows, sometimes becoming a religious sage or leader in the process.
In fact, this is so ingrained in us that we still hold storytellers in exceptionally high regard. Where authors, by and large, are very poor storytellers some excel at it.
Mark Twain's memory, in large part, isn't kept alive by the fiction he wrote as much as by his tours to different parts of North America and to England to tell stories. Not to read from his books. He told stories.
Similarly I'd far rather hear Margret Atwood lean back in a chair and spin a tale than the rather boring for me (and her from all reports) process of listening to her read a book. She's a hell of a good writer. She's a better story teller.
We all know storytellers. It may be the old guy down the street, it may be someone at work, it could be someone in our social group and when they start to tell their stories we gather round, often spellbound, by the story even if we've heard it, in one form or another, before. They don't need copyright to sit down and tell a story. They just do.
If authors stand on the shoulders of "giants" the shoulders they stand on are those of the storyteller whose stories they often retell with a change here and there and call it their own.
None of this is to denigrate authors or to say they shouldn't be fairly recompensed for their work. What it is to do is to knock some, if not most, of them off the pedestal post-modern society has placed them on.
As for Macauley, he didn't support copyright as much as he considered it a necessary evil which is what, economically, it is. As the quote above shows, he was prepared to tolerate that evil, which he correctly calls a tax, for a limited term only and certainly would not support the caricature we call copyright today.
We still have storytellers today. Just flip though the net and you'll find millions telling their stories and others. Damn few of them seem to be relying on copyright to do it or seem interested in making a living off it. To the hoity-toy of the arts community (a 19th Century development who have dug themselves in as post-modernists) this is all very dreary and pointless. To people like me who are interested in human history, the arts be damned, this is and will be a gold mine for historians in the future.
In short, you're wrong on all counts.
On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?
Re:
On your first point about the giants past is true but only marginally, as I'll get to in a moment. It applies more to the things covered by patent law as it was originally constructed rather to the mish-mash we have now.
Nor can you or anyone else lay claim to some ancient heritage of copyright as it simply didn't exist prior to the Statute of Anne in 1710. Three hundred years is a little bit short to claim some ancient heritage as you try to imply.
"...and in no small part by persons who had given the question of incentivizing authorship serious thought and consideration."
If you look back at the debates, background and purposes of the Statute you'll find that it wasn't about providing and incentive to authors at all but to protect publishers from one another. Yes, publishers were the "pirates" of the day.
Authorship was a very minor consideration if a consideration at all.
I'll go so far as to suggest that the kerfuffle now over copyright has far less to do with the tiny minority of writers who earn a living exclusively from their work than it is to protect the self-same publishers who are now finding it difficult to compete in a world where the Internet has come along and expanded publishing from the cozy little cartel it's been to just about anyone who takes the time and effort to put up a web site.
In fact it's the publishers (movie studios and major record labels, as well) who hold the vast majority of copyrights not the authors and stand to gain the most from further restrictions and/or extensions.
Now, and this is vitally important. Human beings are the only creatures on this planet (as far as we know) with the ability to tell stories to one another.
Among the first things we want as children is for our parents to tell us stories. We, and they, then pass those stories on to others.
One of the most highly regarded people of ancient times and in pre-history, was the storyteller. Whether around a fire outside or inside some sort of building the people of a tribe of village would gather to listen to the storyteller weave a tale.
There was no need for an incentive like copyright for the storyteller. They just did it and were held in very high regard by their fellows, sometimes becoming a religious sage or leader in the process.
In fact, this is so ingrained in us that we still hold storytellers in exceptionally high regard. Where authors, by and large, are very poor storytellers some excel at it.
Mark Twain's memory, in large part, isn't kept alive by the fiction he wrote as much as by his tours to different parts of North America and to England to tell stories. Not to read from his books. He told stories.
Similarly I'd far rather hear Margret Atwood lean back in a chair and spin a tale than the rather boring for me (and her from all reports) process of listening to her read a book. She's a hell of a good writer. She's a better story teller.
We all know storytellers. It may be the old guy down the street, it may be someone at work, it could be someone in our social group and when they start to tell their stories we gather round, often spellbound, by the story even if we've heard it, in one form or another, before. They don't need copyright to sit down and tell a story. They just do.
If authors stand on the shoulders of "giants" the shoulders they stand on are those of the storyteller whose stories they often retell with a change here and there and call it their own.
None of this is to denigrate authors or to say they shouldn't be fairly recompensed for their work. What it is to do is to knock some, if not most, of them off the pedestal post-modern society has placed them on.
As for Macauley, he didn't support copyright as much as he considered it a necessary evil which is what, economically, it is. As the quote above shows, he was prepared to tolerate that evil, which he correctly calls a tax, for a limited term only and certainly would not support the caricature we call copyright today.
We still have storytellers today. Just flip though the net and you'll find millions telling their stories and others. Damn few of them seem to be relying on copyright to do it or seem interested in making a living off it. To the hoity-toy of the arts community (a 19th Century development who have dug themselves in as post-modernists) this is all very dreary and pointless. To people like me who are interested in human history, the arts be damned, this is and will be a gold mine for historians in the future.
In short, you're wrong on all counts.
On the post: TSA Claims You Need To Be Naked Scanned Or Groped After A Flight?
Re: Ein minuten bitte!
In the end what measures like this do is lose public support for their very existence. How long, I wonder, before the American public demands these things and anything like them be removed in their entirely from the airports as now the traveling public doesn't know who to fear more -- the statistically remote chance of a highjacking or the invasive and objectionable security attempts to prevent it.
On the post: While TSA Looks At You Naked, Child Finds Loaded Gun Magazine Left On Southwest Plane
Re: T-shirt idea
I see that it's been done. Maybe not porn but that's coming very soon.
On the post: While TSA Looks At You Naked, Child Finds Loaded Gun Magazine Left On Southwest Plane
Re: Read Books!
Case in point. French planners prepared for another war with Germany by assuming that it, too, would be static and came up with the Maginot Line which they proceeded to increase the fortifications and troop assignments as things heated up towards the German invasion of France. The Germans responded to that by simply going around it.
This has happened throughout history.
I should also note that after 9/11 Bin Laden's unhappy band of terrorists haven't seriously attempted another run at the United States. In part because they know that if they repeat that action they'll be caught before they can get so much as a box cutter out of their pocket and in part by a global outpouring of sympathy, empathy and support for the United States which translated into the Security Council at the UN blessing the mission in Afghanistan.
What has happened is that there have been a few attempts by incompetent loners none of which have been successful.
While it doesn't rule out another hijacking attempt I'd say that the odds of one happening soon are close to zero.
TSA is trying to prepare for the next attack by preparing for the last one in as intrusive and objectionable means possible.
Put another way this is the TSA's Maginot Line and should someone with some brains and planning skills want to run another terror attack on the United States like the Germans they'll simply go around it.
On the post: Don't Blame 'Piracy' For Your Own Failures To Engage
Re: Re: Two Quotes Struck Me
In my case it could be growing up on the best of British comedy (The Goon Show & Python) as well as the best of Canadian (This Hour Has Thirty Minutes). In both cases often self-deprecating while being very pointed.
You hit on all the main points in response to her rather unfocused blog post.
Good work!
You just made my morning with that one!
On the post: TSA Likely To Face Multiple Sexual Assault Charges For New Searches
Re: Israel
The CBC did an interview with the former (?) head of airport security who said in no uncertain terms that the backscatter xrays are worse than useless. I think the term was fraud, I was only half listening up to that point. And that the pat down wasn't a whole lot better.
What they do do is what any well trained security person does is watch the behaviour of the person to see if they're unusually nervous or amxious, check their flight itinerary for flights and connections that simply don't make sense and a number of other subltle give aways that a person in this position does.
Yes, it's profiling in a sense but it's the same kind of profiling police detectives, customs agents and countless others in security have been doing for a long long time.
Yes, they do use standard xrays mostly at or near the airport entrances which picks up anyone with a belt made of C-4, restrict access to the working areas of the airports such as flight path aprons, baggage and any other place they identify as needed strict control of who gets where and when they do.
Anyway, in my case they can stuff they're back scatter xray (or any other xray that I know of) because I have a programmable pacemaker whose operation could be negatively impacted by too much xray exposure. For example I could have a heart attack right then and there.
They want a pat down they can do it right there as well, in front of everyone which really ought to cut down on the shenanigans or having to explain in front of people who want nothing more than to get on their plane.
And has it occurred to anyone other than this fella that "The Terrorists" (tm) have probably already figured out how to get by these silly things? That is to say the ones that really do know what they're doing?
In the meantime a backscatter xray picture is damn poor porn, if you ask me!
On the post: UK Couple Pressure McDonalds To Remove Their Boat From TV Ad
Compare this ad to the current round of Gillette junk where a camera crew crashes into a dressing room cameras operating a complete lighting crew, guys changing in the background while some slack mouthed guy "interviews" people about their razor and Gillette's new one. Any change room I've been in a few of those guys would end up wearing a foot or something harder slammed into their crotch until they got the hell out of there.
Again, compare this to the creative involved with the current crop of Schick ads where something that comes into contact with the face suddenly becomes a splash of water. Never mind the couple of scenes that are sexually charged, it gets the point across creatively and without descending to the level of stupidity of the Gillette ad.
As for this woman, if the boat was beached at low tide on a public beach available for anyone to take a picture (which I'd have tried to frame the same way) of it there too bad that it got used in an ad. Any ad. It was there, in public, too bad, so sad.
And it it been in another companies ad. perhaps one she approved of, there'd have been no complaint. And just who, among the millions who saw that ad could have identified the boat until she spoke up?
It almost looks like she was looking for some free advertising by way of media who reported her claims and others for her own small business. So she got that and good on her.
Still, that she should be able to censor the media including advertising simply because she disagrees with the advertiser's products, way of conducting business is troubling given that I'm almost sure that until she kicked up the fuss I could have found that image in any stock photo collection where I bothered to look for it.
Most advertising is so bad as it is that when one comes along that's this good in terms of its creative component to get censored like this I do find it disturbing.
Of course, it's just as creative and impressive without the not all that special boat beached on the sand so perhaps the trade off hasn't been all that bad.
ttfn
John
On the post: Cooks Source Editor Gives First Interview; Says She'll Probably Shut Down The Magazine
Re: Re:
Her response can be described with varying levels of stupidity, arrogance and ignorance and I'm sure she's heard them all by now as have her advertisers.
It's long past time to let go.
I'm wondering how many still angry posters here have even bothered to look at the publication in question. It's a one person operation and while it looks nice it has amateur stamped all over it. None of this excuses or justifies her response to Ms Guadio's extremely generous settlement offer.
Under the extreme pressure of getting the publication out she fired off an "apology" that was anything but and added a few lines of insults besides. Before we continue to crucify her perhaps we need to look at ourselves and the number of times we've done the same or something similar. Even stupidly in an email.
One person operation or not that was anything but the right way to deal with it.
With that I also need to say that I'm not surprised at her ignorance of copyright law. Most people that run rural and semi-rural publications like hers have very little understanding of IP laws beyond what someone tells them. Before anyone chimes in to say she "ought" to have educated herself I have to ask just how many, even, large publishers packed full of legal leeches, do given the number of contested DCMA takedowns that they have to back track on.
Keep in mind as well that these sorts of publications are an important, if not vital, way that rural and semi rural citizens keep their lives, histories and lifestyles going instead of being drowned under big city MSM crud that thinks we're culturally ignorant lumps of clay because we can't attend the opera of a regular basis or like country music too much.
It's our way of communicating our culture which is as valid and, often, as lively as that of the big city.
There's part of me that hopes she doesn't go down under this and part of me that does.
I'm hoping that she has learned a lesson here, though.
(Under the same circumstances I'd have dashed off a quick email thanking Ms Guidio for her email and offering to speak later once the edition was out to discuss the settlement offer.)
Let her be now. It's over.
On the post: How Murdoch's Paywalls Meant Some News It Broke Went Unnoticed & Uncredited
It's Not News When....
Even Murdoch must understand that. Or you'd think he would.
Then again, he's the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed Australian journalism by buying up everything in sight before he moved on the Europe and now the United States to do the same thing there.
While it's sad to see the decline and impending fall of one of the "newspapers of record" in the English speaking world perhaps it will convince it's namesake in New York to put the brakes on it's plans to hide behind a paywall. Then again, maybe not.
The Wall Street Journal gets away with it, sort of, because it has pretty much got a captive audience who aren't convinced they can get the "inside dirt" on the financial industry anywhere else.
Come to think of it, how many stories do you see since THAT paywall went up that credit the WSJ for anything?
On the post: Guy Who Was Arrested & Convicted For Joke Tweet Loses Appeal
Once again proving "the law is an ass!"
On the post: FBI Apparently Investigating Anonymous' 'Operation Payback' Denial Of Service Attacks
They come/came across as small minded naughty brats rather than someone with a real political or social agenda, taking attention away from their issues and focusing it on themselves.
In this case they've certainly managed that and have made these places more than able to play the "victim" card.
If the FBI can find two or three members of this group to trot into court and get them sentenced to any kind of jail term what these people do know is that they will play it up as martyrdom so they can attract a few other script kiddies to their cause.
As has been noted DDoS attacks are transitory at best and almost unnoticeable at worst where a site has taken half way decent security measures.
In many ways it's just better to leave them alone because all they've done is allow the sites they took down to play the "victim" card and pissed off those of us who just might, otherwise, have supported their point of view.
Lose/Lose all around.
On the post: 20 Years Ago Today: The Web Was Proposed
The page reminds me of what things first looked like when I got my first copies of Netscape and Motif.
Page after page of this stuff but it was so compelling. So much to poke around in, like an enormous library even if the card catalogue was non existent back then.
Discovering usenet and all the junk on there as well as jewels. All the porn and warez you could imagine! Of course downloading anything with a 14.4K modem was painful.
The discovery of IRC, still one of the best ways of actually chatting with people on the Internet in spite of more flashing, graphical and proprietary protocols.
Today we have sites that are dynamic by design thanks to tools like ASP and PHP. Static is dead or it should be.
New challenges to concepts like copyright and patents that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago as well as unforeseeable.
Information at our finger tips, a tsunami of it if I'm not careful.
In many ways it's as if the printing press, radio, telephones, telegraph and television had all happened at once instead of over a 400 year time span.
We're still trying to come to terms with all that the Intenet and http have made possible and all the changes it's brought and will bring.
Oh yeah, it's made sites like Techdirt possible so that we can discuss issues we feel are important once Mike has brought our attention to them.
Not bad for something that started out as a military exercise in the United States which started out as a military secret and now has made secrets all but impossible to keep for very long. Not a bad thing, either.
On the post: South Korea Tries To Patent Military Uniforms To Prevent North Korean's Dressing Like Them
Re: Re: add on
On the post: Massachusetts Threatens Website For Publishing Info It Gave The Site After A FOIA Request
CYA??
If there's one primary truism about the Internet it's that once information is out there it's out there and no amount of "being helpful" or theatening is going to make it disappear.
On the post: New Speed Cameras Can Spot Multiple Offenses At Once... And Send Off A Ticket Immediately
Re: Re: Re: Don't make roads safer?
Photo radar has/had more than enough problems to get it pulled off the highways here though it has its defenders.
On the post: UK High Court Announces Judicial Review Of The Digital Economy Act
Re: Digital Economy Act, Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Bill, ACTA
:(
On the post: UK High Court Announces Judicial Review Of The Digital Economy Act
Re: Re:
Not much of a chance he'll learn anything, either, sad to say.
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