Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 3:08am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Takings Claims
Blame the politicians.
Oh it's definitely their fault all right, but to some extent they are also products of a system that not only allows, but also actively encourages, what amounts to corruption and bribary. Even an honest politician (assuming that's not an oxymoron) has trouble not being overly influenced by corporate special interest simply because of what it takes to be elected.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 Dec 2012 @ 2:52am
Re:
Yeah, that's what I read into it too... and I'm far from convinced that the de jure "control" of the internet by the ITU would be much worse than the de facto "control" that the US often attempts. There's an argument that says the 2 fighting over it might be better. Of course there's a much stronger argument that says they're all a bunch of ass-clowns and should stop trying to turn a communication and innovation tool into a political punchbag.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 3:29pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Takings Claims
I assign more blame to the people who put the country up for sale to the highest bigger,
I get it... people are morons. A person can be smart, but as a group by and large morons. But blaming "people" is a cop-out - you can't assign all the blame the "people" when their "choice" boils down to "someone bought by the oil industry, hollywood and pharmaceutical companies" or "someone bought by just pharmaceutical companies and hollywood". When the game is rigged it's hard to make a change that counts.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 12:15pm
Wishful thinking?
you can go to the copyright office and check to see who owns the copyright.
Oh, if only that were true! A whole decent sized chunk of the many many things wrong with copyright would vanish if only it were possible to say for certain who owns copyright on what and know when no-one owns it.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 5 Dec 2012 @ 7:19am
Re: Re:
A democracy would be nice this time.
Sadly that's pure vapourware, the alpha version crashed on boot and they never solved the issue. The compatible options for your hardware are:
Corporatocracy v2.3 or PoliceState v5.2
Have a Nice Day friend citizen
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 4 Dec 2012 @ 2:31pm
Re: Re: Re: Small potatoes?
The government is the largest employer of teachers, police, and fire fighters is the government.
True, though I was really talking about the business of governing rather than the "support staff". However, all those jobs you mention exist as a consequence of the needs of society rather than the government directly creating the job. And even if you lump that in under creating jobs, which I'll admit depends on your definition of "creating", look at the mess most of those public services are in - they tend to be beaurocracy heavy, underfunded, understaffed, inefficiently run and underperforming. So I stand by my assertation that governments in general suck at creating jobs.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 4 Dec 2012 @ 10:58am
If only...
In the end, it's fine to argue that copyright has important benefits and value -- but that's not the same thing as arguing that it's a part of free market capitalism. Because it's not.
And in the time I've been reading techdirt and occasionally poking around other pro-copyright blog, reading the linked statements from Mr Dodds et al, it's so very rare that any attempt to offer any kind of evidenced based proof of the former.
Almost every argument made for the "important benefits and value" is either argued as "because it just is, ok!" or based on some obviously false statistic like claiming it creates 1/2 the jobs in a country or generates revenue higher than the entire GDP.
And even those arguments generally amount to the lesser percentage of the "rationale" and the larger percentage is reserved for throwing around words like "moral" and "theft" and "pirate" and "boston strangler" and other hyperbole.
My gut feel says that granting some sort of limited monopoly right does have value, but the more I read on both sides of the argument the less the argument for stacks up because no-one seems able to articulate it and back it.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 4 Dec 2012 @ 10:14am
Re:
Sadly waaaay too late. The pro "deliberately totally misinterpreting anything with the smallest excuse to try and wind people up"-squad were there before you. You need to work harder to pounce on the smallest excuse for syntactic ambiguity, no matter how feeble, within seconds of posting and buff up your frothing-at-the-mouth virtiol skills to troll up to standard. I'll give you a C- for effort though.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 4 Dec 2012 @ 9:53am
Re: Small potatoes?
There is also a recent study done about how the government subsidies are not creating jobs.
I've always considered that a no-brainer. Not only do governments universally suck at creating jobs, but it's the wrong battle and it's not what governments should do anyway.
Like the content industries focussing on piracy rather than maximising sales, a government focussing on "creating jobs" instead of encouraging the economic conditions within the country so that industry creates jobs has totally the wrong end of the stick.
Sadly it's standard government practice to tackle the symptom rather than the cause because the symptom is what gets seen and they want to be seen to be "doing something".
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 4 Dec 2012 @ 9:24am
I hope that's a typo or at worst shorthand
So either it's been blocked because its association with The Pirate Bay is enough to goad the UK recording industry into unthinking action, or else it's happened by mistake.>/i> (Emphasis added)
I hope that is shorthand for "the UK recording industry filed charges of copyright infringement, which were duly investigated by the police/courts who then ordered the site to be blocked" because otherwise why isn't the scary bit that the UK recording industry have any kind of power or authority to do anything like that?
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 3 Dec 2012 @ 10:30am
Really?
but you can’t argue that you’re justified in pirating it. Admit it: you’re ripping it off, it’s morally questionable at best (and illegal), but you don’t care.
Really? "Morally questionable"? Personally I find it "morally questionable" to bribe politicians to shift the goalposts every time you come across someone providing a perfectly reasonable service then scream about how illegal it all is and how they're stealing from you...
As for "piracy", I've yet to see a TV show taken by boarding on the high seas, so let's stick to a single example of "copyright infringement" to examine the "morality" in it. This is a genuine question and if anyone thinks this hypothetical would actually be "immoral" (not "illegal", we all know that it would fall under infringement) I'd be interested in why:
Let's imagine you have a pay TV subscription that would get all the shows eventually, but due to windowed releases you don't get them for anything between 2 months and a year after first release and that this is your only legitimate option for getting the show. Incidentally this scenario, if you like that sort of thing, would remove some of the "value" from the show since lots of shows now seem to have "live" social media interaction and the like related to the weekly episode. Is it "immoral" to watch the current episode assuming your subscription is still current when it is finally shown?
Lumping everything into "immoral piracy", including all the widely stretched definitions that even paid for politicians balk at and pretending it's all the same is way more offensive IMO. Pretending there's no difference between the scenario above and selling ripped-off copies of Game of Thrones DVD around the world or anything in between is hardly what I'd call "moral".
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 1 Dec 2012 @ 2:52pm
Re: ebooks are not strictly better
You can have your pbooks in different places, such as on your nightstand, and not have to lug your reader everywhere you go.
Hmm, given a reader can weigh less than a paperback, which one counts as "lugging"? Plus, I know not everyone does, but I tend to "lug" my phone everywhere with me whether I'm planning to read or not and that works just fine for reading ebooks.
You and your friend can read two of your pbooks without needing two readers.
Except things that can display ebooks (assuming they aren't DRM locked) are pretty much ubiquitous these days - phones, tablets, ebook readers, laptops, computers etc - so increasingly the chances are your friend has an "ebook reader" on their person already so it's just a case of sending a weightless file. I'd call that a score for ebook.
You can take a pbook with you as you hike the Appalachian Trail.
And a phone that can store thousands of books as well as work for emergency contact and a solar powered charger for it weigh less than a single book...
You can use the pages of said pbook in case you run out of toilet paper on the Appalachian Trail.
That is indeed something you can't do with an ebook, but on the whole I'd prefer not to use the paper of a book anyway.... leaves might be comfier.
You can have two pbooks open at the same time and scan back and forth easily. Try that with ebooks.
Limitation of the reader not the book, plus with an ebook reader and a phone on you, yes you can, in fact you can even open the same book to 2 different pages - try that with a paper one without ripping it apart.
An author can sign a pbook.
True. On the other hand that's a "collecting" thing, not a reading thing.
You can write a note to someone inside a pbook's cover when given as a present. My grandfather wrote something nice inside a Bible he gave to my mother when she was young and that Bible is a family treasure now.
Also true, but again memories are a different thing to reading a book and there's other ways to give memories.
Some people just aren't "screen people" and they don't absorb as much content as they would with a pbook.
It's true that active screens tend to make some people's eyes tired looking at them and might reduce "content absorbtion", but applied to e-ink which produces a static "print" little if any different from a printed page, that starts to sound like a "but real books are just different" argument.
Pbooks can come in different shapes and sizes.
I can read an e-book on anything from a 4" screen on my phone to my 50" TV and project the thing to giant-size on a handy wall if I want to, and all with the same book. Another point for e-books I'd say.
Pbooks can be children's popup books.
E-books can be "enhanced reality".
Pbooks smell nicer, often.
Yes. Another collecting thing rather than a reading thing.
Cookbooks in the kitchen take a lot of abuse, get splashed, or get touched by dirty hands, and the consequences are limited to just that one pbook.
If it's that important, project the recipe onto the kitchen wall where you can read it much easier while you work and it can't get destroyed at all. If your e-book reader does happen to get destroyed in an accident, you don't lose your one copy of your favorite recipe. A backup of even a large library of e-books takes up little space.
You can hollow out the pages of a pbook to store a geologist's hammer that you will use to break out of a fictional Maine prison.
True, that's tricky with an e-book reader but you could always use the other fictional standby of baking a file inside a cake. On the other hand if you're a fictional bomber I understand the dense electrics in something like an e-book reader offer much better camouflage than paper. Besides the hammer thing only works if you've got a really big poster of Raquel Welch.
You can display your favorite pbooks on a shelf, which might stimulate conversations with your friends.
Actually almost a good point, on the other hand these days posting your library listing on a social networking site performs much the same function. Failing that I suppose you could always mention to your friends in the course of normal conversation what you happen to be reading at the time... or say how great it is that you have this new ebook reader and isn't it great that I've got the complete works of this new author I've found in it - wanna borrow them?
You can lend pbooks to friends and family members who don't have readers.
You already covered that, and again how many of them don't now or won't soon have a phone at least. And with e-books, even if you're a stickler for obeying the letter of copyright law, you don't lose your book if they forget to return it.
Are e-books better? I guess it depends it begs the question "better at what?", but if you're talking about what I'd define as the purpose of reading - i.e. visually extracting meaning from text - then yes, loads better. If you're talking about momentos, or collectables or other peripheral uses of books then no they're not, but there's tons of other things that do those jobs and there's no reason you can't still create and use paper books for that purpose. People still make swords as collectables or for sports when it's been quite a while since they were a major weapon of war...
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 1 Dec 2012 @ 9:36am
Re:
Books are better for collecting than ebooks. The rest of his argument seems to be either;
Conflating various generalised philosophical arguments or unrelated studies on sensory input directly with physical book reading.
or ;
Claiming that because the invention of printing allowed easier access to knowledge and therefore advancement and because the most convenient format to hold a bunch of printed pages together is to bind them into a book, that books themselves have some mystical power for learning. Basically the entire middle of his argument seems to be saying "Hey, look at all the stuff learned using books in the last 600 years, we've not learned nearly so much since ebooks were invented and besides most people still use paper books to learn so there."
It seems to me as rather like arguing that racing drivers today are no where near as good as those of yesteryear because they have all this new-fangled technology to help them not crash at much higher speeds. So no, while he makes some interesting philosophical arguments from one point of view, I don't think he has even one good point since all the points seem ultimately to boil down to "get orf moi lawn!"
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 1 Dec 2012 @ 8:32am
Re: Re: Basis of an argument?
Newborn sight is fixed focus at short range and they don't fully learn to track or focus on objects for several weeks, they're also initially not good at colour vision and respond better to high contrast.
When I said taste, I more meant that I'd heard the most developed nerves on a newborn are in the mouth, hence the "tasting" everything. It might make the Aristotle quote true as that might count as "touching with your mouth", but I don't think that was what Mr Piper had in mind since not many people I know suck on books...
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 1 Dec 2012 @ 5:36am
Basis of an argument?
In the linked article, Piper claims:
Aristotle regarded touch as the most elementary sense. It is how we begin to make our way in the world, to map it, measure it, and make sense of it.
I could be wrong, but AFIAK the first most developed sense is in fact taste, not touch, which is why babies put everything in their mouths to start with.
'Course, you might argue that supports his claim since paper books are generally tastier than plastic...
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 1 Dec 2012 @ 5:22am
Re: Re: We all have a little luddite in us.
But I still buy many printed books for various reasons.
Which is more or less the point and also what I think Piper is using for his argument. What I can't tell is if he's confusing the 2 or choosing to conflate them deliberately.
What you're talking about mostly there is "collecting", which is a very different thing to the actual purpose of a book. Philatelists don't buy thousands of stamps to mail letters and the reason certain toys (LEGO being a classic example) very quickly end up costing hundreds of pounds more than their sale price isn't because they are being played with.
Book collecting, whether you actually read them or not (optional), is about all the things you mention and about all the things Piper mentions - the feel and smell of the thing, the thrill of the chase in finding something rare, the style and look etc etc. Book reading on the other hand is about absorbing information from text.
I think there will always be printed books for exactly this reason - there will always be collectors - but it'll eventually be a niche market aimed specifically at collectors. The "cheap" (hah!) paperback market will inevitably die along with printed reference manuals and educational texts because the purpose of those things is met so much better by a convenient electronic format.
It happens to everything when technology improves, much the same as farriers are now a specialist skill catering to enthusiasts and sportspeople instead of being a ubiquitous and vital part of every town as they were only a few generations ago.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 1 Dec 2012 @ 4:53am
Re: Re: Re: Re: The encryption itself is the "crime", see?
Not this idiocy again. The idea that you can ban encryption or require a "license" is silly for a whole host of reasons... including this very comment. It's a sign of someone who doesn't understand what "encryption" means.
Wow, I haven't used ROT13 in soooo long... thanks for making me feel old.
On the post: Why Copyright Shouldn't Be Considered Property... And Why A Return To 1790 Copyright May Be Desirable
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Takings Claims
On the post: No Surprise Here: Congress Passes Unanimous Resolution Telling The ITU: Hands Off The Internet
Re:
On the post: Why Copyright Shouldn't Be Considered Property... And Why A Return To 1790 Copyright May Be Desirable
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Takings Claims
On the post: Why Copyright Shouldn't Be Considered Property... And Why A Return To 1790 Copyright May Be Desirable
Wishful thinking?
On the post: No Warrant, No Problem: The Government Can Still Get Your Data
Re: Re:
Corporatocracy v2.3 or PoliceState v5.2
Have a Nice Day friend citizen
On the post: $1.5 Billion In Taxpayer Funds Go Directly To Movie Studios Each Year... And Very Few Jobs Created
Re: Re: Re: Small potatoes?
On the post: Fixing Copyright: Is Copyright A Part Of Free Market Capitalism?
If only...
Almost every argument made for the "important benefits and value" is either argued as "because it just is, ok!" or based on some obviously false statistic like claiming it creates 1/2 the jobs in a country or generates revenue higher than the entire GDP.
And even those arguments generally amount to the lesser percentage of the "rationale" and the larger percentage is reserved for throwing around words like "moral" and "theft" and "pirate" and "boston strangler" and other hyperbole.
My gut feel says that granting some sort of limited monopoly right does have value, but the more I read on both sides of the argument the less the argument for stacks up because no-one seems able to articulate it and back it.
On the post: Homeless Man Who Got Free Boots From Cop Now 'Wants His Cut' Of YouTube Attention
Re:
On the post: $1.5 Billion In Taxpayer Funds Go Directly To Movie Studios Each Year... And Very Few Jobs Created
Re: Small potatoes?
Like the content industries focussing on piracy rather than maximising sales, a government focussing on "creating jobs" instead of encouraging the economic conditions within the country so that industry creates jobs has totally the wrong end of the stick.
Sadly it's standard government practice to tackle the symptom rather than the cause because the symptom is what gets seen and they want to be seen to be "doing something".
On the post: $1.5 Billion In Taxpayer Funds Go Directly To Movie Studios Each Year... And Very Few Jobs Created
Re: Re: Don't ever go near NPR again, Mike! It's taxpayer subsidized too!
On the post: The Pirate Bay's Perfectly Legal 'The Promo Bay' Blocked By UK ISPs
I hope that's a typo or at worst shorthand
On the post: News Corp. Finally Realizes Locked Up, iPad-Only News Publication Was A Dud, Shuts It Down
Re:
On the post: HBO Has A Distribution Problem, But Just 'Going Without' Does Nothing To Push Them To Solve It
Really?
As for "piracy", I've yet to see a TV show taken by boarding on the high seas, so let's stick to a single example of "copyright infringement" to examine the "morality" in it. This is a genuine question and if anyone thinks this hypothetical would actually be "immoral" (not "illegal", we all know that it would fall under infringement) I'd be interested in why:
Let's imagine you have a pay TV subscription that would get all the shows eventually, but due to windowed releases you don't get them for anything between 2 months and a year after first release and that this is your only legitimate option for getting the show. Incidentally this scenario, if you like that sort of thing, would remove some of the "value" from the show since lots of shows now seem to have "live" social media interaction and the like related to the weekly episode. Is it "immoral" to watch the current episode assuming your subscription is still current when it is finally shown?
Lumping everything into "immoral piracy", including all the widely stretched definitions that even paid for politicians balk at and pretending it's all the same is way more offensive IMO. Pretending there's no difference between the scenario above and selling ripped-off copies of Game of Thrones DVD around the world or anything in between is hardly what I'd call "moral".
On the post: Author Andrew Piper: Turning Pages Is Important, Therefore Reading Ebooks Isn't Reading
Re: ebooks are not strictly better
Hmm, given a reader can weigh less than a paperback, which one counts as "lugging"? Plus, I know not everyone does, but I tend to "lug" my phone everywhere with me whether I'm planning to read or not and that works just fine for reading ebooks.
You and your friend can read two of your pbooks without needing two readers.
Except things that can display ebooks (assuming they aren't DRM locked) are pretty much ubiquitous these days - phones, tablets, ebook readers, laptops, computers etc - so increasingly the chances are your friend has an "ebook reader" on their person already so it's just a case of sending a weightless file. I'd call that a score for ebook.
You can take a pbook with you as you hike the Appalachian Trail.
And a phone that can store thousands of books as well as work for emergency contact and a solar powered charger for it weigh less than a single book...
You can use the pages of said pbook in case you run out of toilet paper on the Appalachian Trail.
That is indeed something you can't do with an ebook, but on the whole I'd prefer not to use the paper of a book anyway.... leaves might be comfier.
You can have two pbooks open at the same time and scan back and forth easily. Try that with ebooks.
Limitation of the reader not the book, plus with an ebook reader and a phone on you, yes you can, in fact you can even open the same book to 2 different pages - try that with a paper one without ripping it apart.
An author can sign a pbook.
True. On the other hand that's a "collecting" thing, not a reading thing.
You can write a note to someone inside a pbook's cover when given as a present. My grandfather wrote something nice inside a Bible he gave to my mother when she was young and that Bible is a family treasure now.
Also true, but again memories are a different thing to reading a book and there's other ways to give memories.
Some people just aren't "screen people" and they don't absorb as much content as they would with a pbook.
It's true that active screens tend to make some people's eyes tired looking at them and might reduce "content absorbtion", but applied to e-ink which produces a static "print" little if any different from a printed page, that starts to sound like a "but real books are just different" argument.
Pbooks can come in different shapes and sizes.
I can read an e-book on anything from a 4" screen on my phone to my 50" TV and project the thing to giant-size on a handy wall if I want to, and all with the same book. Another point for e-books I'd say.
Pbooks can be children's popup books.
E-books can be "enhanced reality".
Pbooks smell nicer, often.
Yes. Another collecting thing rather than a reading thing.
Cookbooks in the kitchen take a lot of abuse, get splashed, or get touched by dirty hands, and the consequences are limited to just that one pbook.
If it's that important, project the recipe onto the kitchen wall where you can read it much easier while you work and it can't get destroyed at all. If your e-book reader does happen to get destroyed in an accident, you don't lose your one copy of your favorite recipe. A backup of even a large library of e-books takes up little space.
You can hollow out the pages of a pbook to store a geologist's hammer that you will use to break out of a fictional Maine prison.
True, that's tricky with an e-book reader but you could always use the other fictional standby of baking a file inside a cake. On the other hand if you're a fictional bomber I understand the dense electrics in something like an e-book reader offer much better camouflage than paper. Besides the hammer thing only works if you've got a really big poster of Raquel Welch.
You can display your favorite pbooks on a shelf, which might stimulate conversations with your friends.
Actually almost a good point, on the other hand these days posting your library listing on a social networking site performs much the same function. Failing that I suppose you could always mention to your friends in the course of normal conversation what you happen to be reading at the time... or say how great it is that you have this new ebook reader and isn't it great that I've got the complete works of this new author I've found in it - wanna borrow them?
You can lend pbooks to friends and family members who don't have readers.
You already covered that, and again how many of them don't now or won't soon have a phone at least. And with e-books, even if you're a stickler for obeying the letter of copyright law, you don't lose your book if they forget to return it.
Are e-books better? I guess it depends it begs the question "better at what?", but if you're talking about what I'd define as the purpose of reading - i.e. visually extracting meaning from text - then yes, loads better. If you're talking about momentos, or collectables or other peripheral uses of books then no they're not, but there's tons of other things that do those jobs and there's no reason you can't still create and use paper books for that purpose. People still make swords as collectables or for sports when it's been quite a while since they were a major weapon of war...
On the post: Author Andrew Piper: Turning Pages Is Important, Therefore Reading Ebooks Isn't Reading
Re:
Conflating various generalised philosophical arguments or unrelated studies on sensory input directly with physical book reading.
or ;
Claiming that because the invention of printing allowed easier access to knowledge and therefore advancement and because the most convenient format to hold a bunch of printed pages together is to bind them into a book, that books themselves have some mystical power for learning. Basically the entire middle of his argument seems to be saying "Hey, look at all the stuff learned using books in the last 600 years, we've not learned nearly so much since ebooks were invented and besides most people still use paper books to learn so there."
It seems to me as rather like arguing that racing drivers today are no where near as good as those of yesteryear because they have all this new-fangled technology to help them not crash at much higher speeds. So no, while he makes some interesting philosophical arguments from one point of view, I don't think he has even one good point since all the points seem ultimately to boil down to "get orf moi lawn!"
On the post: Author Andrew Piper: Turning Pages Is Important, Therefore Reading Ebooks Isn't Reading
Re: Re: Basis of an argument?
When I said taste, I more meant that I'd heard the most developed nerves on a newborn are in the mouth, hence the "tasting" everything. It might make the Aristotle quote true as that might count as "touching with your mouth", but I don't think that was what Mr Piper had in mind since not many people I know suck on books...
On the post: Author Andrew Piper: Turning Pages Is Important, Therefore Reading Ebooks Isn't Reading
Basis of an argument?
'Course, you might argue that supports his claim since paper books are generally tastier than plastic...
On the post: Author Andrew Piper: Turning Pages Is Important, Therefore Reading Ebooks Isn't Reading
Re: Re: We all have a little luddite in us.
What you're talking about mostly there is "collecting", which is a very different thing to the actual purpose of a book. Philatelists don't buy thousands of stamps to mail letters and the reason certain toys (LEGO being a classic example) very quickly end up costing hundreds of pounds more than their sale price isn't because they are being played with.
Book collecting, whether you actually read them or not (optional), is about all the things you mention and about all the things Piper mentions - the feel and smell of the thing, the thrill of the chase in finding something rare, the style and look etc etc. Book reading on the other hand is about absorbing information from text.
I think there will always be printed books for exactly this reason - there will always be collectors - but it'll eventually be a niche market aimed specifically at collectors. The "cheap" (hah!) paperback market will inevitably die along with printed reference manuals and educational texts because the purpose of those things is met so much better by a convenient electronic format.
It happens to everything when technology improves, much the same as farriers are now a specialist skill catering to enthusiasts and sportspeople instead of being a ubiquitous and vital part of every town as they were only a few generations ago.
On the post: Author Andrew Piper: Turning Pages Is Important, Therefore Reading Ebooks Isn't Reading
Re: Re:
On the post: German Court Holds Internet User Responsible For Passing On Unknown, Encrypted File
Re: Re: Re: Re: The encryption itself is the "crime", see?
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