The power of a union is that they can threaten to go on strike and shut down production. This is a credible threat in a job that requires ongoing work, but in a system where something can be produced once and then copied and resold infinitely, what leverage does the artist have?
Fundamentally, we need to have systems and policies in place that encourage true advancements and development, and not just mimicry and copying.
No, more mimicry and copying is exactly what we need to encourage true advancements and development. Look around, look at the world around us and all the new developments you talk about, and see if you can find a single original idea anywhere. Even one will do, but good luck finding it. There have been precious few since the Industrial Revolution got going.
And before anyone tries to comment on the supposed irony of me making a comment like that on a computer on the Internet please save yourself the embarrassment and do a bit of research into the history of the computer. It's fundamentally an outgrowth of the loom (which has been around forever) mixed with boolean logic (based on ancient African traditions, believe it or not,) and its fundamental purposes are to make computation and communication--both things as old as civilization itself--easier.
"New" ideas, inventions, and creations, both technological and cultural, come almost exclusively by putting together a ton of old things in new ways. The person credited as the inventor of something new generally invented about 1% of it and got the other 99% from things other people had invented before him.
If I have seen far, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. -- generally attributed to Isaac Newton. He was quoting Bernard of Chartres, who lived 500 years before him.
Newton gave us the laws of motion. A few centuries later, Maxwell gave us the laws of electromagnetism. A few decades after Maxwell, a Swiss researcher put the two together and became the most famous scientist of all time. If he hadn't had Newton and Maxwell to build on, though, who knows if even a guy as smart as Albert Einstein would be remembered as a great genius today?
For all the talk from Snowden's critics about how he's some sort of "narcissist" (that word gets thrown around a lot), this exchange seemed to reveal quite the opposite.
No, Ed Snowden is the real deal. I think those critics have him confused with Bradley Manning; it was clear that he was an attention whore from the very beginning, and pulling a ridiculous little stunt once he had finally lost like the "oh by the way I'm really a woman now and you should all call me Chelsea and PAY MORE ATTENTION TO ME!" thing just proves it.
Ed Snowden, on the other hand, handles himself with professionalism and care, because he actually understands the issues involved. The guy's a real hero, and it's a shame there's only one of him. If we had a thousand people like him, the government wouldn't be able to dismiss the issue the way they have been.
Their clients and investors, if no on else. If I was doing business with a company that failed to report to me that they had been hacked, I would certainly count whoever did report that to me as helpful!
This rule wouldn't prevent anyone from documenting any such misconduct by voting officials. If I received a ballot like that and took a picture of it, it would not be in violation as long as I did so before marking my vote on the ballot.
As noted above, the prohibition on sharing pictures of completed ballots serves a very legitimate purpose: making it harder to buy votes by making it illegal to share proof that you cast the vote you were paid to cast.
I really like this. Make the punishment fit the crime. Either they clean it up, or they have to drink it, cook with it, bathe in it, etc like the perfectly safe water they claim it is.
The entire point of patent law is the recognition that trade secrets are inherently harmful to the progress of society. Why do we still protect them, especially when they are so frequently abused to hide harm to people?
Back when I was in college, I was very active in the StarCraft modding community. Blizzard had obfuscated their game data 7 ways from Sunday, doing some absolutely crazy things to keep people out of it, but this brilliant coder by the name of Andy Bond managed to untangle it and come up with a program to allow people to extract, modify, and patch in new data files, enabling the creation of StarCraft mods.
The whole thing violated the EULA left, right, and center. Blizzard could have sued Bond. They could probably have sued me for some of the stuff I was doing in the community. But you know what they did instead?
Instead of sending representatives to Andy Bond with a bunch of legal nastygrams... they sent representatives to him with a job offer. Today he's credited as a developer on a couple of their games.
I think a system where inmates are required to work to produce goods to help the underprivileged in society (ie: growing food to go to food banks or producing clothing to provide for people in homeless shelters), in order to receive their daily sustenance would be a much better system.
... ... I'm just a little bit stunned by that idea.
Did you seriously just say that you want to take convicted murderers and put them in charge of producing food for people?
I'm sorry, but that's sheer insanity. Clothing, maybe, but if I was running a food bank I couldn't trust anything that came from a murderer to be safe to eat!
Apparently I'm missing something. How do you get from "manufacturer does not offer a warranty in Canada" to "Newegg has no right to sell product in Canada"?
The cure for this is making laws that it doesn't take a lawyer to understand.
I've always been in favor of Jonathan Swift's solution, personally. In Gulliver's Travels, in one of the places our beleaguered protagonist ends up stranded for a while, they have a law that no law shall contain more words than the alphabet has letters.
Every other day I've got to "agree" to some type of legally binding contract to buy things, install basic software, or use basic services - and it all changes without any warning or objection I can raise.
IANAL, but it seems to me that the fundamental concept underlying EULAs was struck down by the Supreme Court, the better part of a century before the first software EULA was ever written: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbs-Merrill_Co._v._Straus
This deals directly with the whole "licensed not sold" scam on copyrighted works, and the court said "no, you can't do that." So I don't see why anyone thinks they can get away with it today.
the SOMALGET program ... recorded every phone call from the Bahamas, not for terrorism, but to be able to hand over information about illegal drugs to the DEA.
As you're fond of pointing out on here, terrorism isn't actually a serious threat to Americans. But you know what kills and ruins the lives of more Americans every single year than the 9/11 bombing? That's right, drug abuse. It's good to see these guys actually doing something constructive with their spying for once.
Perhaps if the rules that let them avoid being sued for failure to deliver the product might put an end to this sort of crap.
This sentence doesn't parse. What exactly did you mean?
I agree, though. It's time for a class-action lawsuit against Adobe for pulling a stunt like that. They flat-out lied to their customers about their software and how it works, selling it based on a lie that, if the customers had known the truth, would have caused them to not buy it. Sounds like straight-up fraud to me...
Re: Re: Re: And there you have people talk about how left wingers are naive
I also appreciate the attempt, even if I do think it is tilting at windmills,
I do not think that means what you think it means. In the original story, Don Quixote charged a windmill thinking it was a giant that was a threat to the people, when in fact it was simply a harmless (and even beneficial) piece of machinery.
What Lessig is attacking is a very real, very threatening giant.
On the post: RESPECT Act Should Be HYPOCRISY Act After How Often Labels Screwed Over Artists
Re: Artist Unions
The power of a union is that they can threaten to go on strike and shut down production. This is a credible threat in a job that requires ongoing work, but in a system where something can be produced once and then copied and resold infinitely, what leverage does the artist have?
On the post: WIPO's Development Agenda At The Crossroads: Does IP Or Development Take Priority?
Re: development to what, exactly?
No, more mimicry and copying is exactly what we need to encourage true advancements and development. Look around, look at the world around us and all the new developments you talk about, and see if you can find a single original idea anywhere. Even one will do, but good luck finding it. There have been precious few since the Industrial Revolution got going.
And before anyone tries to comment on the supposed irony of me making a comment like that on a computer on the Internet please save yourself the embarrassment and do a bit of research into the history of the computer. It's fundamentally an outgrowth of the loom (which has been around forever) mixed with boolean logic (based on ancient African traditions, believe it or not,) and its fundamental purposes are to make computation and communication--both things as old as civilization itself--easier.
"New" ideas, inventions, and creations, both technological and cultural, come almost exclusively by putting together a ton of old things in new ways. The person credited as the inventor of something new generally invented about 1% of it and got the other 99% from things other people had invented before him.
If I have seen far, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
-- generally attributed to Isaac Newton. He was quoting Bernard of Chartres, who lived 500 years before him.
Newton gave us the laws of motion. A few centuries later, Maxwell gave us the laws of electromagnetism. A few decades after Maxwell, a Swiss researcher put the two together and became the most famous scientist of all time. If he hadn't had Newton and Maxwell to build on, though, who knows if even a guy as smart as Albert Einstein would be remembered as a great genius today?
On the post: NBC Confirms That Snowden Did Try To Raise Concerns Internally Before Going To Journalists
No, Ed Snowden is the real deal. I think those critics have him confused with Bradley Manning; it was clear that he was an attention whore from the very beginning, and pulling a ridiculous little stunt once he had finally lost like the "oh by the way I'm really a woman now and you should all call me Chelsea and PAY MORE ATTENTION TO ME!" thing just proves it.
Ed Snowden, on the other hand, handles himself with professionalism and care, because he actually understands the issues involved. The guy's a real hero, and it's a shame there's only one of him. If we had a thousand people like him, the government wouldn't be able to dismiss the issue the way they have been.
On the post: Magistrate Judge Recommends That Copyright Misuse Defense Be Allowed Against Copyright Troll Malibu Media
(Did I do it right?)
On the post: White House Accidentally Reveals CIA's Top Spy In Afghanistan
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Brace for it
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
On the post: Adding Insult To Injury: Companies DOJ Says That China Hacked Now Facing Probes Over Failure To Disclose
Their clients and investors, if no on else. If I was doing business with a company that failed to report to me that they had been hacked, I would certainly count whoever did report that to me as helpful!
On the post: Proud Voters Tweeting In The UK Could Receive Jail Time And A Fine
Re: another side to this
As noted above, the prohibition on sharing pictures of completed ballots serves a very legitimate purpose: making it harder to buy votes by making it illegal to share proof that you cast the vote you were paid to cast.
On the post: Another Former NSA Lawyer Says He Wouldn't Have Listened To Concerns About The Agency's Surveillance Programs
Re:
On the post: Should Revealing Fracking's Chemicals Be A Crime?
Re: Re: The Previous Incident.
On the post: Should Revealing Fracking's Chemicals Be A Crime?
Why are trade secrets even still a thing?
On the post: Blizzard Still Twisting And Distorting Copyright To Go After Cheaters
How Blizzard has changed
Back when I was in college, I was very active in the StarCraft modding community. Blizzard had obfuscated their game data 7 ways from Sunday, doing some absolutely crazy things to keep people out of it, but this brilliant coder by the name of Andy Bond managed to untangle it and come up with a program to allow people to extract, modify, and patch in new data files, enabling the creation of StarCraft mods.
The whole thing violated the EULA left, right, and center. Blizzard could have sued Bond. They could probably have sued me for some of the stuff I was doing in the community. But you know what they did instead?
Instead of sending representatives to Andy Bond with a bunch of legal nastygrams... they sent representatives to him with a job offer. Today he's credited as a developer on a couple of their games.
On the post: Georgia To Protect Execution Pharmacists From Transparency So They Can Execute Disabled Man
Re: Re: Re: Re:
...
...
I'm just a little bit stunned by that idea.
Did you seriously just say that you want to take convicted murderers and put them in charge of producing food for people?
I'm sorry, but that's sheer insanity. Clothing, maybe, but if I was running a food bank I couldn't trust anything that came from a murderer to be safe to eat!
On the post: How Congress & The White House Are Trying To Screw You Over In Secret With The Revamped USA Freedom Act
Re:
On the post: Newegg Given The Go Ahead To Pursue 'Douche Bag' Patent Troll For Fees
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re:
I've always been in favor of Jonathan Swift's solution, personally. In Gulliver's Travels, in one of the places our beleaguered protagonist ends up stranded for a while, they have a law that no law shall contain more words than the alphabet has letters.
That seems like a good place to start.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: How do we fix it?
IANAL, but it seems to me that the fundamental concept underlying EULAs was struck down by the Supreme Court, the better part of a century before the first software EULA was ever written: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbs-Merrill_Co._v._Straus
This deals directly with the whole "licensed not sold" scam on copyrighted works, and the court said "no, you can't do that." So I don't see why anyone thinks they can get away with it today.
On the post: NSA Is Recording Every Phone Call... In The Bahamas?!?
As you're fond of pointing out on here, terrorism isn't actually a serious threat to Americans. But you know what kills and ruins the lives of more Americans every single year than the 9/11 bombing? That's right, drug abuse. It's good to see these guys actually doing something constructive with their spying for once.
On the post: Destructive DRM Strikes Again: Creative Professionals Blocked From Using Adobe Products For Days
Re:
This sentence doesn't parse. What exactly did you mean?
I agree, though. It's time for a class-action lawsuit against Adobe for pulling a stunt like that. They flat-out lied to their customers about their software and how it works, selling it based on a lie that, if the customers had known the truth, would have caused them to not buy it. Sounds like straight-up fraud to me...
On the post: Lessig's Anti-SuperPAC SuperPAC Raises First $1 Million In Just 12 Days
Re: Re: Re: And there you have people talk about how left wingers are naive
I do not think that means what you think it means. In the original story, Don Quixote charged a windmill thinking it was a giant that was a threat to the people, when in fact it was simply a harmless (and even beneficial) piece of machinery.
What Lessig is attacking is a very real, very threatening giant.
On the post: A Little Humanity Goes A Long Way: School Admins, Police Officer Ditch Policy-Limited Thinking To Make A Difference In Teens' Lives
Re:
That parses kind of strangely. I assume you mean, "I still think most cops are dedicated and honest, not abusive"?
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