"To suggest that no one ever had this amazing idea of cutting a cow up this way ever before in the past 2000 years (give or take),"
I'd multiply that number by at least 10 since we figured out fire then started to hunt and cook the animal that became the domestic cow over a fire. Or maybe until we figured out how to BBQ, one of the oldest cooking methods there is.
But really, patenting the methods needed to come up with a cut of meat (fish, toadstool or whatever) is taking the "patent everything" attitude of today just a bit too far, don't you think?
Of course, there was a time when I thought you couldn't patent mathematical expressions or equations which is what software really is but apparently some court figured that if we just call it software Ohms Law isn't math any more it's Windows. Remember that. Next time you try to figure out the resistance of a DC circuit you're probably breaking someone's patent, somewhere. You don't want Ronald J. Riley on your doorstep in high dungeon about what an evil person you are do you?
We're probably breaking some obscure patent just by breathing these days.
Old Jackson Five songs sung at the top of the singers range so there's nothing left when she needs power in her voice just isn't doing it for me either.
And somehow China and Canada are painted in as if either is at the table but neither is although for different reasons. I'm not sure about the EU and Russia either.
For now I think the EU has their hands full with ACTA and deciding whether or not to flush that down the toilet on one hand and whether or not they'll need to foreclose on and repossess Greece.
As someone else has mentioned there are now bigger consumer and industrial markets than the United States so the clout the American government used to have just isn't there now.
Chile has been saying this for a while now. The demands for IP extremism coming from the United States are just too high. Perhaps even more telling is the remark that if they could get back to just the trade issues TPP would have been signed, sealed and delivered a long time ago. Again, the stumbling bloc is the American insistence on draconian IP laws and provisions.
Ohhh, so this is the guy who came up with the "prosperity gospel"! Do tell. I always wondered who was behind that little bit of heresy.
As DH knows the correct quote about money from the Bible is that "the love of money" is the root of all evil.
Two thousand years or so on it's hard to argue with that sentiment. Particularly where Osteen, and his ilk, are concerned.
On point (1) I wonder how John Osteen figured that was going to happen when it didn't for Noah, Moses, David or Solomon (both prodigious sinners who broke all 10 commandments often in serial fashion) or Jesus. Something is wrong with that theological and ego filled outlook.
(2) The Osteen's strike me as what is broadly referred to as the anti-Christ. One doesn't have to be Satan to accomplish that one simply has to be a skilled con man hiding behind Christianity or any other faith.
(3) Hiding behind pop psychology isn't theology or ministry. Feel good shit isn't Christian or Jewish or Muslim or any other major or minor faith. For further reference read, and I mean really read, the Book of Job.
(4) Saying you're a Christian doesn't mean you are one. Conning people out of their savings isn't Christian when you consider that we Christians were told that we would be known "that you love one another". That and a mess of other things. I know that wealth isn't God's blessing. That much I'm sure of. I'm not so sure that it isn't God's curse on con artists like Osteen who will, as many televangelists before him, face a day of reckoning.
In order to be a Christian means living as one, no matter how imperfectly. As for Osteen -- Jesus has things to say about his like, too. He called them hypocrites.
I'm sure that somewhere you have an accurate and complete count of those 350 articles.
Either way your troll fails to catch anything other than a minnow.
Any ruling of that length and complexity is an invitation for one or both sides to appeal what they will claim as errors in law and/or errors in the application of law. That may seem like another examples of legal nit-picking but in an important case like this it's necessary to pick out those nits.
The sad reality is that, in this case, the appeals could drag out for years unless an appellate court along the line deep sixes it all for some reason. And then it starts all over again.
The mere fact that the judge felt she needed to write a ruling of this length and complexity shows what a mess copyright has become in the United States (and elsewhere) from a simple concept that was intended to serve a public good to one that now serves various competing private and public organizations in different competing and non-compatible ways.
All rising from different periods of IP maximalism, extensions of time, competing rulings, differences in the US from State and federal conceptions of IP and, put bluntly, corruption of the original concepts of what IP law is about for the benefit of a few rather than for the public good as was intended.
Most of us don't care until something bites us in our pocketbooks or affects us personally. It's not a criticism of anyone personally or a nationality it's simply the way humans are hard wired.
The SOPA message got through because people could see how it would affect everyday life on the Web even if they didn't know a DNS server from a TCP/IP.
TPP and ACTA deal with what seems like legal esoterica. Worse, by how it's reported it seems to affect everyone else on the planet except Americans because the US Government is trying to export it's goofy IP regime on the rest of the world so it isn't changing anything at home. At least that's likely the take away from it.
Never mind that it entrenches the entertainment and publishing industries as the definers of what IP is and ought to be instead of the public good. Permanently.
Never mind that TPP makes acts of censorship easier because of who has permanent control over so called "Intellectual Property"
Never mind that the secrecy in the negotiations for both renders the legislative arm of government impotent and grants the executive all the power. Whether the system in the US Congressional one or based on that or the English Parliamentary System. As one of the affects of both is the removal of budgetary control from the legislature and leaves it to the executive in the trade area. That removes the one area of greatest control of the executive which is that it's the legislature not the executive that controls the purse strings.
People don't care because they're already alienated from the political system in most western countries. The citizenry is convinced that governments and legislatures act on behalf of the rich and powerful, the corporate good over the public good, the 1% over the 99%. The CIA isn't needed for that nor do they have the skill to pull that off.
That kind of "conspiracy" isn't required simply because it's true. The CIA is as powerless as the rest of us.
We need to get by the legal esoterica and explain what is so bad about TPP (and ACTA) in terms people can relate to as happened with SOPA.
That's one thing this protest did so well. It brought the discussion "down to earth" while ridiculing those in the bureaucracy who are bringing it about with a wonderful award.
Which means, sadly, that mainstream media won't and hasn't picked the story up.
"Its worked so well to get congresscritters to vote for horrible things, your with us or your a freaking terrorist lover."
Depends on if the terrorist looks a lot like the women who cosplay being Lara Croft. If she does then I'm a an unapologetic terrorist lover!
What we don't realize is that the MPAA is just doing this for our own good. Kinda like what we do for our children when we tell them they can't have another chocolate brownie. They're thinking of the children! In this case us!
Techdirt freetards need all the hand holding we can get you know. ;-)
In some sense of seriousness the *AA's have tried just about anything else so now they've tried their shot at censorship. It works for Iran doesn't it?
The adult film business may find more demand for their product if they told actual stories again as they did in the late 1970s and early 1980s instead of plotless two hour loops that can be condensed easily back to the 4 minute stuff guys used to go in the back of the adult book store, drop a quarter into the machine and watch.
Sex isn't a spectator sport. For adult entertainment to really work it needs story.
What I love about this protest is the humour behind it, the discipline and the good nature of the protesters all while getting their very important point across.
It was fun watching the guy who wanted to make the "please stay and mingle" announcement as the award was being announced and presented because there really wasn't an excuse for him to shove David Goodwin away without looking like a complete jackass. THAT would have made the evening news.
I love the toilet paper, it's a lovely touch and I want to know where to get some!
At least Ron Kirk and his cronies now know that people are watching them in case they were labouring under the illusion that the citizenry of the United States and other countries aren't.
Many may have but Dickens wasn't one of them. I suspect the majority of other writers in English didn't either. There's always the possibility that publishers who had operations in both England and the United States may have but it wasn't as common a practice as you say if the complaints of writers who weren't American citizens are anything to go by. All the way up to JRR Tolkein.
All I'm saying is that legal or not, and I'm aware that it was entirely legal, in today's terms the American publishing industry of the time were pirates in the opinion of rights holders who were citizens of other countries.
Secondarily that having "found religion" concerning respecting international IP in the late 1960s, if memory serves, that the United States now wants to export the extremist views of the USCofC, Hollywood, American publishers and the likes of our good buddy Ronald J. Riley to to the rest of the planet is just a touch hypocritical.
Despite the fact that Dickens made more money touring the States than he did from his copyrights on books sold in the British Empire (most of those, outside the UK itself, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand) he hated what he felt US publishers were doing to him by not remitting. (Still Dickens did illustrate some of the axioms that Mike repeats here about competition outside of the mamma's dress of IP law and make a good living at it.)
Other countries and artistic communities have long memories about things like who "pirated", even legally, in the decades before the Internet. Particularly legally. People are funny that way.
I agree that we can't fully comprehend the morals and customs of the day regarding the role of women in society though the fact that we still have to talk about it, debate things like (all other things being equal) equal pay for what they do. That's not happened yet. Or some degree of reproductive autonomy.
We haven't changed all that much it turns out.
Reading for "tone of voice" from the quote I'd say he was still in full satire mode when he said it. After all it's well known that he had no use for Congress and little more for his publishers.
Like today he could count on the majority of congress critters being so full of self-importance that they'd miss satire even if he unloaded with a full broadside of it.
Though, in an alleged discussion with Charles Dickens, he defended the practice of the US publishing industry of not respecting Dickens' copyrights. (As some hypocritical copyright maximalists posting here do as well.) Dickens, for his part, pointed out that England respected US copyright and left it at that.
Dickens went to his grave considering the US publishing industry nothing more than what the American (and other) publishing industry today would call pirates. On the other side of that equation is the reality that Dickens made a tidy sum of money touring the United States as did many other British authors of the period. More than he'd ever have made on his copyrights.
Clemens himself would make more from his tours and live appearances across North America and Europe that he'd make on his copyrights alone.
Twain was intelligent enough to know that the extension of copyright to 50 years that he'd made so much fun of was not what copyright was intended for but he'd take it if congress critters were corrupt enough to pass it. After all there were those uneducated and useless daughters of his to consider. In an era where educating girls was considered a waste because they were doomed to end up barefoot and pregnant, chained to the kitchen. And clearly cooking wasn't a marketable skill.
It's sad that Twain made the same arguments about "perpetual" copyright while satirizing them in Congressional testimony are used today to defend the notion that heirs to an author should profit on their ancestor's talent alone, if possible. No need for creativity, talent or skill for them! Just the royalty cheques, please and thank you.
Exactly. 'if you arses are going to extend copyright by 50 years why not make it perpetucal? After all it's a form of property which makes it so useful. While you're at it keep the lease-hold on the butcher shop perpetual whether or not the butcher is behind on his rent or the free-hold landowner is behind on his mortgage! Property is perpetual, you idiots!'
Charles Dickens had little use for copyright extremism in the United States. As far as he was concerned, in modern parlance, the entire American publishing industry were pirates because they didn't respect his copyrights on books which sold by the shipload in the States and which he didn't make a dime from.
We're all gonna have such an easy time of it when Win8 comes out. To protect us, of course, it will be able to stop us from installing Linux or BSD, say, so we can't dual boot something dangerous.
Like magic all our fones will suddenly run Win8 instead of those apostate systems like iOS or Android which is really Linux in disguise which didn't take the wizards at MS long to figure out. Probably because it actually worked.
Not only are there magical perfect laws to protect us which legislatures churn out like popcorn because they're so good at it there are also perfect companies out there like Microsoft and Facebook selflessly dedicated to protect us from ourselves.
On the post: Can You Patent How You Cut Your Meat?
Re: Re:
Silly AC, Trix (tm, pat applied for, copyright) are for kids!!!
(Ok, it's lame but it's the best I can do with this ridiculous situation!)
On the post: Can You Patent How You Cut Your Meat?
Re:
I'd multiply that number by at least 10 since we figured out fire then started to hunt and cook the animal that became the domestic cow over a fire. Or maybe until we figured out how to BBQ, one of the oldest cooking methods there is.
But really, patenting the methods needed to come up with a cut of meat (fish, toadstool or whatever) is taking the "patent everything" attitude of today just a bit too far, don't you think?
Of course, there was a time when I thought you couldn't patent mathematical expressions or equations which is what software really is but apparently some court figured that if we just call it software Ohms Law isn't math any more it's Windows. Remember that. Next time you try to figure out the resistance of a DC circuit you're probably breaking someone's patent, somewhere. You don't want Ronald J. Riley on your doorstep in high dungeon about what an evil person you are do you?
We're probably breaking some obscure patent just by breathing these days.
On the post: Chile Threatens To Drop Out Of TPP Negotiations Due To Ridiculous US Demands About IP
Re:
And somehow China and Canada are painted in as if either is at the table but neither is although for different reasons. I'm not sure about the EU and Russia either.
For now I think the EU has their hands full with ACTA and deciding whether or not to flush that down the toilet on one hand and whether or not they'll need to foreclose on and repossess Greece.
As someone else has mentioned there are now bigger consumer and industrial markets than the United States so the clout the American government used to have just isn't there now.
Chile has been saying this for a while now. The demands for IP extremism coming from the United States are just too high. Perhaps even more telling is the remark that if they could get back to just the trade issues TPP would have been signed, sealed and delivered a long time ago. Again, the stumbling bloc is the American insistence on draconian IP laws and provisions.
On the post: Chile Threatens To Drop Out Of TPP Negotiations Due To Ridiculous US Demands About IP
Re:
On the post: US Government Gets 10% Royalty On 'Passion Of The Christ' Prequel In Plea Deal With Mexican Drug Cartel Money Launderer
Re: Re: Re: Question:
As DH knows the correct quote about money from the Bible is that "the love of money" is the root of all evil.
Two thousand years or so on it's hard to argue with that sentiment. Particularly where Osteen, and his ilk, are concerned.
On point (1) I wonder how John Osteen figured that was going to happen when it didn't for Noah, Moses, David or Solomon (both prodigious sinners who broke all 10 commandments often in serial fashion) or Jesus. Something is wrong with that theological and ego filled outlook.
(2) The Osteen's strike me as what is broadly referred to as the anti-Christ. One doesn't have to be Satan to accomplish that one simply has to be a skilled con man hiding behind Christianity or any other faith.
(3) Hiding behind pop psychology isn't theology or ministry. Feel good shit isn't Christian or Jewish or Muslim or any other major or minor faith. For further reference read, and I mean really read, the Book of Job.
(4) Saying you're a Christian doesn't mean you are one. Conning people out of their savings isn't Christian when you consider that we Christians were told that we would be known "that you love one another". That and a mess of other things. I know that wealth isn't God's blessing. That much I'm sure of. I'm not so sure that it isn't God's curse on con artists like Osteen who will, as many televangelists before him, face a day of reckoning.
In order to be a Christian means living as one, no matter how imperfectly. As for Osteen -- Jesus has things to say about his like, too. He called them hypocrites.
On the post: US Government Gets 10% Royalty On 'Passion Of The Christ' Prequel In Plea Deal With Mexican Drug Cartel Money Launderer
Re: Question:
The other thing that occurred to me was that the US Government is now in a serious conflict of interest when it comes to IP laws.
On the post: Something Is Wrong When A Judge Needs 350 Pages To Decide If A College's Digital Archives Are Fair Use
Re:
Either way your troll fails to catch anything other than a minnow.
Any ruling of that length and complexity is an invitation for one or both sides to appeal what they will claim as errors in law and/or errors in the application of law. That may seem like another examples of legal nit-picking but in an important case like this it's necessary to pick out those nits.
The sad reality is that, in this case, the appeals could drag out for years unless an appellate court along the line deep sixes it all for some reason. And then it starts all over again.
The mere fact that the judge felt she needed to write a ruling of this length and complexity shows what a mess copyright has become in the United States (and elsewhere) from a simple concept that was intended to serve a public good to one that now serves various competing private and public organizations in different competing and non-compatible ways.
All rising from different periods of IP maximalism, extensions of time, competing rulings, differences in the US from State and federal conceptions of IP and, put bluntly, corruption of the original concepts of what IP law is about for the benefit of a few rather than for the public good as was intended.
On the post: Protestors Give USTR 'Corporate Power Tool Award'; Replace Toilet Paper In Hotel With TPP-TP
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Awesome
The SOPA message got through because people could see how it would affect everyday life on the Web even if they didn't know a DNS server from a TCP/IP.
TPP and ACTA deal with what seems like legal esoterica. Worse, by how it's reported it seems to affect everyone else on the planet except Americans because the US Government is trying to export it's goofy IP regime on the rest of the world so it isn't changing anything at home. At least that's likely the take away from it.
Never mind that it entrenches the entertainment and publishing industries as the definers of what IP is and ought to be instead of the public good. Permanently.
Never mind that TPP makes acts of censorship easier because of who has permanent control over so called "Intellectual Property"
Never mind that the secrecy in the negotiations for both renders the legislative arm of government impotent and grants the executive all the power. Whether the system in the US Congressional one or based on that or the English Parliamentary System. As one of the affects of both is the removal of budgetary control from the legislature and leaves it to the executive in the trade area. That removes the one area of greatest control of the executive which is that it's the legislature not the executive that controls the purse strings.
People don't care because they're already alienated from the political system in most western countries. The citizenry is convinced that governments and legislatures act on behalf of the rich and powerful, the corporate good over the public good, the 1% over the 99%. The CIA isn't needed for that nor do they have the skill to pull that off.
That kind of "conspiracy" isn't required simply because it's true. The CIA is as powerless as the rest of us.
We need to get by the legal esoterica and explain what is so bad about TPP (and ACTA) in terms people can relate to as happened with SOPA.
That's one thing this protest did so well. It brought the discussion "down to earth" while ridiculing those in the bureaucracy who are bringing it about with a wonderful award.
Which means, sadly, that mainstream media won't and hasn't picked the story up.
On the post: MPAA: Censorship Is Good For Consumers
Re: Re: Re:
And what does that make a triple negative? In the world of Hollywood or discussions about Hollywood we always reach the edges of reality. :-)
On the post: MPAA: Censorship Is Good For Consumers
Re:
Depends on if the terrorist looks a lot like the women who cosplay being Lara Croft. If she does then I'm a an unapologetic terrorist lover!
What we don't realize is that the MPAA is just doing this for our own good. Kinda like what we do for our children when we tell them they can't have another chocolate brownie. They're thinking of the children! In this case us!
Techdirt freetards need all the hand holding we can get you know. ;-)
In some sense of seriousness the *AA's have tried just about anything else so now they've tried their shot at censorship. It works for Iran doesn't it?
On the post: MPAA: Censorship Is Good For Consumers
Re: Adult entertainment: even more ridiculous
Sex isn't a spectator sport. For adult entertainment to really work it needs story.
On the post: MPAA: Censorship Is Good For Consumers
Re: Re:
On the post: Protestors Give USTR 'Corporate Power Tool Award'; Replace Toilet Paper In Hotel With TPP-TP
It was fun watching the guy who wanted to make the "please stay and mingle" announcement as the award was being announced and presented because there really wasn't an excuse for him to shove David Goodwin away without looking like a complete jackass. THAT would have made the evening news.
I love the toilet paper, it's a lovely touch and I want to know where to get some!
At least Ron Kirk and his cronies now know that people are watching them in case they were labouring under the illusion that the citizenry of the United States and other countries aren't.
On the post: Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It makes sense
All I'm saying is that legal or not, and I'm aware that it was entirely legal, in today's terms the American publishing industry of the time were pirates in the opinion of rights holders who were citizens of other countries.
Secondarily that having "found religion" concerning respecting international IP in the late 1960s, if memory serves, that the United States now wants to export the extremist views of the USCofC, Hollywood, American publishers and the likes of our good buddy Ronald J. Riley to to the rest of the planet is just a touch hypocritical.
Despite the fact that Dickens made more money touring the States than he did from his copyrights on books sold in the British Empire (most of those, outside the UK itself, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand) he hated what he felt US publishers were doing to him by not remitting. (Still Dickens did illustrate some of the axioms that Mike repeats here about competition outside of the mamma's dress of IP law and make a good living at it.)
Other countries and artistic communities have long memories about things like who "pirated", even legally, in the decades before the Internet. Particularly legally. People are funny that way.
On the post: Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?
Re: Re: Re:
We haven't changed all that much it turns out.
Reading for "tone of voice" from the quote I'd say he was still in full satire mode when he said it. After all it's well known that he had no use for Congress and little more for his publishers.
Like today he could count on the majority of congress critters being so full of self-importance that they'd miss satire even if he unloaded with a full broadside of it.
On the post: Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?
Re:
Dickens went to his grave considering the US publishing industry nothing more than what the American (and other) publishing industry today would call pirates. On the other side of that equation is the reality that Dickens made a tidy sum of money touring the United States as did many other British authors of the period. More than he'd ever have made on his copyrights.
Clemens himself would make more from his tours and live appearances across North America and Europe that he'd make on his copyrights alone.
Twain was intelligent enough to know that the extension of copyright to 50 years that he'd made so much fun of was not what copyright was intended for but he'd take it if congress critters were corrupt enough to pass it. After all there were those uneducated and useless daughters of his to consider. In an era where educating girls was considered a waste because they were doomed to end up barefoot and pregnant, chained to the kitchen. And clearly cooking wasn't a marketable skill.
It's sad that Twain made the same arguments about "perpetual" copyright while satirizing them in Congressional testimony are used today to defend the notion that heirs to an author should profit on their ancestor's talent alone, if possible. No need for creativity, talent or skill for them! Just the royalty cheques, please and thank you.
We've come such a long way, haven't we? ;-)
On the post: Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?
Re: Re: Re: It makes sense
Charles Dickens had little use for copyright extremism in the United States. As far as he was concerned, in modern parlance, the entire American publishing industry were pirates because they didn't respect his copyrights on books which sold by the shipload in the States and which he didn't make a dime from.
On the post: Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?
Re: Difference Between Twain and Masnick
Thanks for crawling out from under your rock the day before Mother's Day. I didn't know you actually had one of those.
(That insult is plagiarized but it sooooo useful in situations like this!)
On the post: Chelleliberty's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re: Mandelbrot Turtle Phone
On the post: Chelleliberty's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
Like magic all our fones will suddenly run Win8 instead of those apostate systems like iOS or Android which is really Linux in disguise which didn't take the wizards at MS long to figure out. Probably because it actually worked.
Not only are there magical perfect laws to protect us which legislatures churn out like popcorn because they're so good at it there are also perfect companies out there like Microsoft and Facebook selflessly dedicated to protect us from ourselves.
Here endeth the lesson. ;-)
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