Sorry, there's no prior restraint. Absolutely nothing is stopping those guys from having a website to express their views.
Sorry...What???
Taking away the domain name that points to the website is very much stopping those guys from having a website to express their views. How is it not?
Sure, they can get another domain name (and pay the costs associated with that request) or they could figure out another way to get the word out to their users what their IP address is...but taking the domain name away will do precisely what you say it doesn't...stop those guys from having a website to express their views.
And you don't understand what prior restraint means. This is very much prior restraint (as in, these guys have to decide next time if their freedom of speech is somehow going to be taken the wrong way and their domain name is going to be taken from them, and thus they should not say what they want to say in order to keep their domain name from being taken.)
I don't want to infest this thread with stuff about my own work
DH, we all want to hear about your book. Just wish Mike would add some sort of profile page (beyond that which lists your past comments) where people can write on your wall and discuss stuff like this.
Of course, he might have to clear a couple patents first...
Since IP law is so broadly defined, it's very easy for someone to accidentally infringe.
What is even funnier is when software companies are found copying from GPL and other open-source licensed software while claiming that others are pirating their software (i.e. Goldman Sachs, where at least one expert testified that Goldman Sachs code contained open source code, and yet they turned around and prosecuted Sergey Aleynikov for stealing their code.)
Other companies have been in the news in the past for similar transgressions, including several hardware vendors who used GPL licensed code in their hardware without following the license and who put restrictions on the distribution of the code contrary to the GPL.
Its only tired if you are a copyright maximalist. For the rest of us, it is a valid and significant argument which has yet to be addressed by the copyright maximalists. For the rest of us, we should be able to use (on a personal level) the media we purchased in any way we can except distribute it to others (thereby breaking the spirit of copyright law.) However, if we buy a CD, and we want to put it on our own iPod, we should be able to do so without violating the spirit of the law. If I put it on your iPod, then the artist should be able to sue me for violating their copyright. But if I buy it as a CD, I should be able to put it on my iPod for my own personal use. The fact that copyright maximalists believe I should pay for each and every copy I have for personal use is taking the law to its literal conclusion (and violates the spirit of the law.)
But physical things have restrictions.
Personally, I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. But if that is the case, why are some copyright maximalists using copyright to protect distribution of physical items such as Dinosaur bones or watches?
With physical items, there is also an associated cost of replication of the physical items, where digital items do not have such a cost. However, I think if you watch this game long enough, eventually copyright maximalists will find a reason for someone to sue over taking a picture of a physical item and sending that through email...I hope I am wrong on this, but given the way things are beginning to spin with copyright maximalists on physical items, it is only a matter of time before we start seeing lawsuits for "copying" a physical item by taking a picture of it and sending it through email.
Saying intellectual property isn't real property is the same as saying a person's thoughts aren't their own, that they're everyone's.
Dude, grow up.
Intellectual property isn't real property. It isn't even defined that way in the Law. If it was, then I could break into your mind and steal your intellectual property from you. I cannot, because even if I could tap into your mind and copy it, you'd still have it. In order to be real property, and in order for me to steal it from you, I'd have to deprive you of that property.
And to dispel your believe that your thoughts are your own, ever heard of hive mind? I can say, with almost 100% certainty, that there isn't a single thought in your head that is entirely original and hasn't been thought by someone else before, and I welcome you to challenge me on that.
They collected THOUSANDS OF BOOKS only to have it all destroyed by Catholic extremists.
Actually, Julius Caesar burned down the library and he was an immoral pagan. The Catholics burned down a daughter library of the Great Library of Alexandria in 391, but there is questions as to who really destroyed the books. The current list of suspects includes the Catholics and the Muslims.
The funny thing is that despite the destruction of the Libraries, first by Julius Caesar, then by the Catholics, and then by the Muslims (though there is question as to whether the Muslims actually destroyed anything,) many of the books themselves weren't burned, and part of the reason why we keep finding books from the Library of Alexandria is that the library itself was destroyed but the books ended being scattered by the destroyers.
I was a big fan of emusic, and stayed with them for the last three years. But I just cancelled my account. A month and a half ago, if you had asked me if I'd ever leave emusic, I'd laugh at you. But in one fell swoop, policy changes at emusic made me decide that digital is both over-rated and will never overtake CD sales.
The problem? emusic now does not allow you to download music again. Once their software says you downloaded a file, then in order to redownload it, you have to pay again.
emusic's software, which runs in a separate java window, is not known for its robustness, and quite often it will crash if you look at it funny. And files sometimes are corrupted during download, and other times the software will download a portion of the file, then something will go wrong and it will sit for twenty minutes before crashing. As a result, almost every time I downloaded music, I'd have to go back and redownload music which was corrupted or missing. But now, even though their software apparently knows whether something went wrong during the download or not, and makes the music available for redownload, it doesn't work. Out of the songs I was allocated this month, one CD crashed during download and I got 4 of 8 songs, and two other CDs had corrupted files. When I went to redownload them, only 3 songs on the CD that crashed were available, the other songs said I downloaded them properly. I complained, and essentially was ignored by emusic. I re-purchased the corrupted songs (paying twice for them,) and then cancelled the service. (For the record, I have never had problems with iTunes, but I am sure others do.)
Now I go to CDBaby and buy the CDs, since I get a piece of plastic I can use as a backup (for the record, I backed up all the songs I downloaded from emusic to CD,) and if something goes wrong, I can return the plastic to the vendor to get a new one (so long as the problem wasn't caused by me.)
Digital music sales is a fad, since it would work well if it wasn't for companies screwing themselves. emusic seemed to have a good system until they let RIAA dictate their policies to them in order to get more mainstream music (which I had very little interest in, since I was there mostly for the indie stuff to begin with.)
Considering I was originally with mp3.com before they got sued out of existence, and moved to emusic after they folded due to problems with the RIAA (not for their music sales, but because they got too reasonable and the RIAA didn't like it,) I wonder how long before emusic cannot break their stuff fast enough for the music industry and the RIAA sues them out of business. As far as I am concerned, the music industry still seems to want anything other than plastic to disappear...and they want plastic locked down so people cannot use it in ways the RIAA doesn't see fit for them to use it.
And the MPAA needs to be reminded that when you treat your customers like criminals,very soon you have no customers.
The way I see it, the MPAA doesn't consider you a customer. They would much rather have you as a tax-payer...paying them regardless to whether you consume their content, but they still want you to pay for their content. They push for compulsive licensing for students, but they still want students to pay for the content. Thus, it won't matter how many customers they have, they still have everyone's money.
And I figure that even if things don't go their way and they loose too many customers, it is just because we are all criminals who are "stealing" their products instead of (what is the truth,) us getting fed up with them and moving on to better things.
Re: Re: Re: Since when do you peer review a discovery?
That's not a record - that's standard operating procedure.
And that isn't even new...for those of us who remember Dorpus (may he live forever,) he was maintaining this standard operating procedure religiously 5 years ago or so (and for all we know, he may still be here.)
DMCA does not outlaw possession of flash card readers or memory cards.
Companies may chose to indiscriminately threaten to sue all persons who buy flash card readers from a particular vendor because they may feel that those who are using those flash card readers are using them to pirate (i.e. DirectTV suing all those folks who bought smart card readers) unless they pay some $3,000 extortion fee, but that can happen whether or not the DMCA existed.
I am sure that if the DMCA never came into being, they would still be doing what they are doing regardless. Unfortunately, these companies don't believe in goodwill or honest dealings, and eventually the tides will turn and they will find themselves in the same happy place that xSCO currently lives in....Just wish it would happen sooner so that the rest of us can move on with our lives.
Sure, corporations make the laws, but then we should stop pushing the myth of "a democratic republic of, for, and by the people".
That is what kills me most about this current legal situation. Corporations should not have rights, and should not be able to make laws. Until Corporations can serve in the military, vote, sit on a Jury, and get sentenced to prison for their crimes and sit on death row for murder, they aren't persons and should not be "people."
People within a corporation can vote a certain way, and though it should be illegal, corporations may require their employees to vote a particular way...but corporations should not be allowed to pay bribes to politicians, buy laws, or have any rights or privileges afforded to humans.
Grow up. You are a troll. Until you have some meaningful to contribute to the discussion, you will continue to receive this treatment.
It is called moderation, and it is not "censorship". Censorship would be if Mike deleted the post and gave no way for anyone to recover it. This is not at all what happened. Several people here decided that your post wasn't worth looking at and clicked the "report" button. When the number of clicks reached some maximum, your post was hidden, but the instructions to unhide it were presented to all users. This option should really only be used to hide spamvertisements, and not hide speech, but just like every other moderation system out there, people don't always use the system for its intention.
Whether or not moderation is stifling freedom of speech (it isn't actually preventing you from speaking your mind, but it is preventing others from seeing your speech if they have javascript on.) For those of us who care, we tend to click on the "un-hide" posts anyway...remember that hive-mind moderation can be undone, censorship cannot.
And grouping all of us into the category of "scumbags that would defend ripping off musicians" and using this as an example of hypocrisy is a real stretch...I do not defend ripping off musicians or any other artist, and I buy or download legally any music I have, and I find that many of the folks here think the same way. Just because we don't agree with RIAA/MPAA's business practices and disagree with the ridiculous aspects of the current copyright system doesn't mean that we all encourage, or even condone or defend ripping off musicians.
I was not aware one could steal goods, physical or virtual, and simply provide it to another party, and that qualifies as passing it to the public domain.
Not a good analogy at all. Nobody is suggesting that stealing something and passing it through another party means passing it to the public domain.
Anything produced by the US Government (until recently, when they started giving it to contractors,) is by its very nature, public domain. Your tax dollars paid for its creation, so you should have every benefit of its use.
Nobody, Government or otherwise, can claim copyright on works produced by the US Government. However, if the US Government hires a third-party to produce the work, then the jury is still out on whether the work is public domain or not.
But what you seem to miss is the reason they don't last is that eventually government's LEGALIZE such things.
Either that or the people rise up and push legalization of said activity on referendums, such as Prop. 19 in California. Sure, that one failed, but with a rather large population of voters for legalization of Marijuana, how long before a similar referendum passes? I suspect that a similar referendum may be on the horizon to legalize personal, non-commercial use of copyright works (like what exists in Canada) in the distant future if not the near future.
If anyone is not up to that, if they are not up to running a business, they should get out of business. You don't go whining for some kind of socialism for corporations, wanting to be spoon-fed their business model and spoon-fed their profits.
Hey, it worked for the banking and automotive industries.
I totally agree with you, but in this day and age, with "companies too big to fail," it seems like government is there to make businesses profitable, even when they are stupid about it (case-in-point: AIG.)
On the post: Owners Of Hiphop Blogs Seized By Homeland Security Still Haven't Been Told Why
Re: Re: Re:
Sorry...What???
Taking away the domain name that points to the website is very much stopping those guys from having a website to express their views. How is it not?
Sure, they can get another domain name (and pay the costs associated with that request) or they could figure out another way to get the word out to their users what their IP address is...but taking the domain name away will do precisely what you say it doesn't...stop those guys from having a website to express their views.
And you don't understand what prior restraint means. This is very much prior restraint (as in, these guys have to decide next time if their freedom of speech is somehow going to be taken the wrong way and their domain name is going to be taken from them, and thus they should not say what they want to say in order to keep their domain name from being taken.)
On the post: Author Slams 'Piracy,' Then Admits To A Huge 'Pirated' Music Collection And Counterfeit Purses
Re: Re: Re: Re: Irish Jig
DH, we all want to hear about your book. Just wish Mike would add some sort of profile page (beyond that which lists your past comments) where people can write on your wall and discuss stuff like this.
Of course, he might have to clear a couple patents first...
On the post: Author Slams 'Piracy,' Then Admits To A Huge 'Pirated' Music Collection And Counterfeit Purses
Re: Re: Re: Re:
What is even funnier is when software companies are found copying from GPL and other open-source licensed software while claiming that others are pirating their software (i.e. Goldman Sachs, where at least one expert testified that Goldman Sachs code contained open source code, and yet they turned around and prosecuted Sergey Aleynikov for stealing their code.)
Other companies have been in the news in the past for similar transgressions, including several hardware vendors who used GPL licensed code in their hardware without following the license and who put restrictions on the distribution of the code contrary to the GPL.
On the post: Is The US Response To Wikileaks Really About Overhyping Online Threats To Pass New Laws?
Re: Re: Re:
Woosh.
On the post: How Copyright Takes Away Rights From Consumers
Re:
Its only tired if you are a copyright maximalist. For the rest of us, it is a valid and significant argument which has yet to be addressed by the copyright maximalists. For the rest of us, we should be able to use (on a personal level) the media we purchased in any way we can except distribute it to others (thereby breaking the spirit of copyright law.) However, if we buy a CD, and we want to put it on our own iPod, we should be able to do so without violating the spirit of the law. If I put it on your iPod, then the artist should be able to sue me for violating their copyright. But if I buy it as a CD, I should be able to put it on my iPod for my own personal use. The fact that copyright maximalists believe I should pay for each and every copy I have for personal use is taking the law to its literal conclusion (and violates the spirit of the law.)
But physical things have restrictions.
Personally, I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. But if that is the case, why are some copyright maximalists using copyright to protect distribution of physical items such as Dinosaur bones or watches?
With physical items, there is also an associated cost of replication of the physical items, where digital items do not have such a cost. However, I think if you watch this game long enough, eventually copyright maximalists will find a reason for someone to sue over taking a picture of a physical item and sending that through email...I hope I am wrong on this, but given the way things are beginning to spin with copyright maximalists on physical items, it is only a matter of time before we start seeing lawsuits for "copying" a physical item by taking a picture of it and sending it through email.
On the post: How Copyright Takes Away Rights From Consumers
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Alexandrians Were Immoral Pagans
Wikipedia (despite the academic feelings otherwise) is your friend.
On the post: How Copyright Takes Away Rights From Consumers
Re:
Dude, grow up.
Intellectual property isn't real property. It isn't even defined that way in the Law. If it was, then I could break into your mind and steal your intellectual property from you. I cannot, because even if I could tap into your mind and copy it, you'd still have it. In order to be real property, and in order for me to steal it from you, I'd have to deprive you of that property.
And to dispel your believe that your thoughts are your own, ever heard of hive mind? I can say, with almost 100% certainty, that there isn't a single thought in your head that is entirely original and hasn't been thought by someone else before, and I welcome you to challenge me on that.
On the post: How Copyright Takes Away Rights From Consumers
Re: Re: The Alexandrians Were Immoral Pagans
Actually, Julius Caesar burned down the library and he was an immoral pagan. The Catholics burned down a daughter library of the Great Library of Alexandria in 391, but there is questions as to who really destroyed the books. The current list of suspects includes the Catholics and the Muslims.
The funny thing is that despite the destruction of the Libraries, first by Julius Caesar, then by the Catholics, and then by the Muslims (though there is question as to whether the Muslims actually destroyed anything,) many of the books themselves weren't burned, and part of the reason why we keep finding books from the Library of Alexandria is that the library itself was destroyed but the books ended being scattered by the destroyers.
On the post: How Copyright Takes Away Rights From Consumers
Re: The Alexandrians Were Immoral Pagans
Oh, there you go...now atheism sounds like a real good idea. Where do I sign up to be an immoral pagan?
On the post: Oh Look, Digital Downloads Aren't Saving The Music Industry
Re: Re:
I'll check them out, thanks.
On the post: Oh Look, Digital Downloads Aren't Saving The Music Industry
The problem? emusic now does not allow you to download music again. Once their software says you downloaded a file, then in order to redownload it, you have to pay again.
emusic's software, which runs in a separate java window, is not known for its robustness, and quite often it will crash if you look at it funny. And files sometimes are corrupted during download, and other times the software will download a portion of the file, then something will go wrong and it will sit for twenty minutes before crashing. As a result, almost every time I downloaded music, I'd have to go back and redownload music which was corrupted or missing. But now, even though their software apparently knows whether something went wrong during the download or not, and makes the music available for redownload, it doesn't work. Out of the songs I was allocated this month, one CD crashed during download and I got 4 of 8 songs, and two other CDs had corrupted files. When I went to redownload them, only 3 songs on the CD that crashed were available, the other songs said I downloaded them properly. I complained, and essentially was ignored by emusic. I re-purchased the corrupted songs (paying twice for them,) and then cancelled the service. (For the record, I have never had problems with iTunes, but I am sure others do.)
Now I go to CDBaby and buy the CDs, since I get a piece of plastic I can use as a backup (for the record, I backed up all the songs I downloaded from emusic to CD,) and if something goes wrong, I can return the plastic to the vendor to get a new one (so long as the problem wasn't caused by me.)
Digital music sales is a fad, since it would work well if it wasn't for companies screwing themselves. emusic seemed to have a good system until they let RIAA dictate their policies to them in order to get more mainstream music (which I had very little interest in, since I was there mostly for the indie stuff to begin with.)
Considering I was originally with mp3.com before they got sued out of existence, and moved to emusic after they folded due to problems with the RIAA (not for their music sales, but because they got too reasonable and the RIAA didn't like it,) I wonder how long before emusic cannot break their stuff fast enough for the music industry and the RIAA sues them out of business. As far as I am concerned, the music industry still seems to want anything other than plastic to disappear...and they want plastic locked down so people cannot use it in ways the RIAA doesn't see fit for them to use it.
On the post: Abbott Labs VP Suggests Having Mob Beat Up Columnist Who Exposed Shady Dealings
Re: Re: Re:
Heh, you sir, owe me a new monitor. My current one has coffee all over it! If only it were true.
On the post: MPAA Reminding Universities They Need To Crack Down On File Sharing -- Leaves Out How It Lied To Get The Law Passed
Re:
The way I see it, the MPAA doesn't consider you a customer. They would much rather have you as a tax-payer...paying them regardless to whether you consume their content, but they still want you to pay for their content. They push for compulsive licensing for students, but they still want students to pay for the content. Thus, it won't matter how many customers they have, they still have everyone's money.
And I figure that even if things don't go their way and they loose too many customers, it is just because we are all criminals who are "stealing" their products instead of (what is the truth,) us getting fed up with them and moving on to better things.
On the post: DailyDirt: Is Mixing Science And Journalism A Bad Recipe?
Re: Re: Re: Since when do you peer review a discovery?
And that isn't even new...for those of us who remember Dorpus (may he live forever,) he was maintaining this standard operating procedure religiously 5 years ago or so (and for all we know, he may still be here.)
Darryl is Dorpus for the new generation.
On the post: Ubisoft's New DRM: Vuvuzelas
Re: Re: Re: Easy?
DMCA does not outlaw possession of flash card readers or memory cards.
Companies may chose to indiscriminately threaten to sue all persons who buy flash card readers from a particular vendor because they may feel that those who are using those flash card readers are using them to pirate (i.e. DirectTV suing all those folks who bought smart card readers) unless they pay some $3,000 extortion fee, but that can happen whether or not the DMCA existed.
I am sure that if the DMCA never came into being, they would still be doing what they are doing regardless. Unfortunately, these companies don't believe in goodwill or honest dealings, and eventually the tides will turn and they will find themselves in the same happy place that xSCO currently lives in....Just wish it would happen sooner so that the rest of us can move on with our lives.
On the post: Leaked State Department Cable Shows 'Behind The Scenes' US Embassy Involvement In Swedish Copyright Issues
Re: Re:
That is what kills me most about this current legal situation. Corporations should not have rights, and should not be able to make laws. Until Corporations can serve in the military, vote, sit on a Jury, and get sentenced to prison for their crimes and sit on death row for murder, they aren't persons and should not be "people."
People within a corporation can vote a certain way, and though it should be illegal, corporations may require their employees to vote a particular way...but corporations should not be allowed to pay bribes to politicians, buy laws, or have any rights or privileges afforded to humans.
On the post: Embracing New Opportunities Is Being Defeatist?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Grow up. You are a troll. Until you have some meaningful to contribute to the discussion, you will continue to receive this treatment.
It is called moderation, and it is not "censorship". Censorship would be if Mike deleted the post and gave no way for anyone to recover it. This is not at all what happened. Several people here decided that your post wasn't worth looking at and clicked the "report" button. When the number of clicks reached some maximum, your post was hidden, but the instructions to unhide it were presented to all users. This option should really only be used to hide spamvertisements, and not hide speech, but just like every other moderation system out there, people don't always use the system for its intention.
Whether or not moderation is stifling freedom of speech (it isn't actually preventing you from speaking your mind, but it is preventing others from seeing your speech if they have javascript on.) For those of us who care, we tend to click on the "un-hide" posts anyway...remember that hive-mind moderation can be undone, censorship cannot.
And grouping all of us into the category of "scumbags that would defend ripping off musicians" and using this as an example of hypocrisy is a real stretch...I do not defend ripping off musicians or any other artist, and I buy or download legally any music I have, and I find that many of the folks here think the same way. Just because we don't agree with RIAA/MPAA's business practices and disagree with the ridiculous aspects of the current copyright system doesn't mean that we all encourage, or even condone or defend ripping off musicians.
On the post: Amazon Bows To US Censorship Pressure: Refuses To Host Wikileaks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Censorship" of Wikileaks???
Not a good analogy at all. Nobody is suggesting that stealing something and passing it through another party means passing it to the public domain.
Anything produced by the US Government (until recently, when they started giving it to contractors,) is by its very nature, public domain. Your tax dollars paid for its creation, so you should have every benefit of its use.
Nobody, Government or otherwise, can claim copyright on works produced by the US Government. However, if the US Government hires a third-party to produce the work, then the jury is still out on whether the work is public domain or not.
On the post: PC Mag Responds To Legacy Recording Industry's 'Complaint' Letter
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Either that or the people rise up and push legalization of said activity on referendums, such as Prop. 19 in California. Sure, that one failed, but with a rather large population of voters for legalization of Marijuana, how long before a similar referendum passes? I suspect that a similar referendum may be on the horizon to legalize personal, non-commercial use of copyright works (like what exists in Canada) in the distant future if not the near future.
On the post: PC Mag Responds To Legacy Recording Industry's 'Complaint' Letter
Re: Re:
Hey, it worked for the banking and automotive industries.
I totally agree with you, but in this day and age, with "companies too big to fail," it seems like government is there to make businesses profitable, even when they are stupid about it (case-in-point: AIG.)
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