more likely the twitter account never crossed their minds
I certainly agree with the later far more than the former. Up until it started hurting their corporate image, they probably didn't even remember they had one. After all, she said, “I wanted to show the power of Social Media to those who refused to be educated.” Since this is an entertainment company, I suspect they were blissfully ignorant of the internet (that thing that makes them sad,) and only when someone noticed that bad things were being said, they took action.
What is interesting to me, is that had she kept her mouth shut, she could have walked away with the account, with nobody the wiser, and then hit them harder after security had showed her the door. Then they would have had to hire a lawyer and fight in court to get the account back. Not something I'd do (I'd probably have done the same thing she did, especially since future employers are watching,) but it could have hurt them a lot more than it did.
Wait, why would a company have speakers built into a printer? The hard drive bit is hard enough to understand, but speakers?
They didn't. The folks dumped their music onto the printer's hard drive, and then played the music on their computer using Microsoft Media Player. They didn't have anywhere else to put it because the servers were monitored for the material, as were their computers, but the printer wasn't monitored, so they could store the music on the printer without being caught doing so. The company never removed the media player from their computers.
I thought it was pretty inventive, and didn't see it as an issue at the time, but the company was not so happy about it. I believe they ended up revisiting the rules about ipods, since it wasn't likely they would be sued by the RIAA if they allowed ipods at work, but would have if their printers continued serving music.
Quite a high profile one is Joe Bonamassa who, last year, gave away the title song from the album Driving Towards the Daylight a month or so before the album came out.
One of my favorite artists. I have all his CDs, and have gone to quite a few of his concerts here where I live. Talk about someone who gets it...he has no problems with casual tapings, and they sell USB thumb-drives with the output from the soundboard after the concert for $20. His concerts are always full, and there are always a ton of folks waiting for thumb-drives at the end of the concert.
There are legendary news articles from a few years ago of networked printers being accused of copying movies, and of people without computers.
It actually isn't that hard to do. It was amazing to me back in 2002 how many folks had network printers up on the internet without any sort of firewalls. The paper above is really old, and needs a re-write, but it was interesting at the time that most printers had hard drives in them, and quite a few had nasty backdoors that allowed instant and unauthenticated access to those hard drives (ahem...Xerox, xerox.htm.) We had all sorts of discussions back then about using printers to serve up porn or other stuff. Turns out, a couple years later, I'd find a company that had a problem with its users uploading music to their printers because the company prevented IPODs and they could listen to their music off of the printer (which wasn't being monitored or protected.)
So, Monday, I am celebrating Whoopi Goldberg Day. I hope you will all join me.
I'm celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr day, but I prefer to dwell on the fact that if it wasn't for him, Nichelle Nichols wouldn't be the person she was. Look up the Star Talk podcast with Nichelle Nichols, and listen to her talk about her experience with MLK. Star Trek would have been an entirely different experience if she wasn't there, just as it would have been if George Takei wasn't there. I can't do justice to her story...
John was asking why someone wouldn't be able to download...
Yup. I agree with John. Streaming is just downloading very slowly (hopefully buffering is on,) displaying the results, and then deleting the results after being displayed. There is no difference between streaming and downloading, so why would you be able to stream and not download?
You gave a good reason, a full hard drive, but I was pointing out that the reason you gave might be solved by cleaning up your hard drive instead of getting a bigger drive, since it is likely causing more problems for you then being able to download a movie. Full hard drives lead to severe fragmentation and thrashing of the swap-file, which in turn lead to a slower machine.
The point is that the ones amassing a gun collection, looking to fight the government and anyone they don't like, are less inclined to defend the rights of others while supporting the 2nd Amendment over all others.
They likely don't care about anyone else's rights, period. If they are willing to stockpile weapons to fight the government, no amount of laws are going to keep them from doing so. David Koresh stockpiled weapons for what he considered to be the coming apocalypse. They are likely buying weapons directly from the black/grey market, importing them illegally, or stealing them, and the government telling folks to turn in their guns will likely have little impact on these folks. Yet I find it hard to believe that the NRA has anything to do with this activity.
The problem with your argument, however, is that labor history has shown that guns have directly helped labor and opposed union-breakers. Bought police officers and private security firms were used by the corporate bosses to end strikes and force unions to accept compromises that benefited the corporations. Things like the Battle of Blair Mountain, the Ludlow Massacre, and the Carnegie Steel Strikes have shown that labor unions have stood up, using the 2nd Amendment, to fight against corporate hired goons and strikebreakers who wished to suppress the first amendment.
During the Battle of Blair Mountain, 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition were exchanged between striking coal miners and thugs hired to break their strike. While the union eventually lost the battle, thanks to the government calling in the Army, the battle eventually strengthened the AFL-CIO and other trade unions, as well as changed the perception in the minds of the public about the use of private security forces such as the Pinkertons and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to break strikes. In both the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Ludlow Massacre, the corporate bosses hired private security forces to break the strikes, and in both cases, they used heavily armored trains to attack and massacre men, women, and children in strike camps or hired airplanes to drop bombs on strikers.
Unless you intend to disarm the government and private security forces which can be bought by corporate management, taking guns away from private citizens will likely prove worse for labor than better. And something tells me that the government isn't likely to be disarmed.
I guess this depends on your definition of Gun Nut. I've known quite a few in my lifetime: tackleberries, gun fanatics, guys who dream gun and rod and who salivate when you talk about 1911s or Colt-M4s, and who legally carry firearms on a daily basis as part of their job. I've got into disagreements and arguments with them and have never, ever felt in fear of my life even though I knew they were carrying (they may not have been, since some of them don't normally carry off-duty, and most of them don't publicize they are carrying.) Sure, there are nuts out there that have guns, and they probably should be seeing a psychiatrist, but I find it hard to believe that every gun nut is against the 1st amendment or would kill to win an argument. I don't know any.
Yes, these folks are cops, and thus have training, but there are bad cops and there have been cops who have killed someone during an argument (usually, its been themselves or another cop.) I really don't think folks who legally carry who aren't cops are any more prone to this either. I think you'll find that most people who are legally carrying are more worried about losing their right to legally carry than winning an argument at all costs. Now folks illegally carrying firearms, maybe more prone, but if they are illegally carrying a firearm...what is the law going to mean to them anyway?
Note it was a pearl script, and those make sh(ell) scripts look sane.
Perl is no worse than Lisp. I've seen really good perl scripts, and really bad bash/csh scripts. It isn't the code, it is the coder (and I tend to be mediocre at best.)
I find it hard to believe that a law professor could write a shell script. Well, I guess there could be one.
I had a project partner in my senior software development class for my CompSci degree who was an intellectual property lawyer. It was my discussions with him that formed most of my pro-open-source and anti-IP beliefs, and it wasn't because I disagreed with him. He was a damn good programmer, and a member of several open source projects. And he was a pretty good lawyer too.
I work with a psychologist who wrote our intrusion prevention system, because at the time he wrote it, there wasn't any IPSs or IDSs capable of handling the speeds and number of connections we were handling. I've worked with programmers with upper level CS degrees that couldn't hack their way out of a wet paper bag.
I never discount someone's capability based on their education, and I certainly don't value someone who tells me they are a CISSP/Microsoft Cert/Cisco Cert, etc. before I get a chance to work with them.
A full hard drive and not enough money to buy a $80 2TB platter hard drive.
You don't need a 2TB drive to buffer a movie. I'd be really surprised it you needed more than 8GB for a DVD or 36GB for an HD (BLU-RAY). If your effort is to download and store, yes, but if your hard drive is so full that you can't buffer 8GB/36GB, then your computer must be running really, really slow.
BMW did a great job of this with their short film series The Hire
I thought Ok-Go/Chevy did pretty good with their Needing/Getting Chevy Sonic commercial. Ok-Go has been doing pretty good with their sponsors lately. Produce a free blow-out music video.
Of course, Twister (Movie) was probably the best advertising for the Red Dodge Ram truck...my Grandmother (who grew up and spent all her life in the Tornado Alley) left the movie theater saying she wanted that indestructible truck.
Am I the only one that read the title and was reminded of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles?
The only constant in IP is that the lawyers get rich. Like the Ring of Mordor, sometimes IP is used for good things, but it always does very bad things to the wielder.
Here's a tutorial I wrote on the subject if you're interested.
Thanks. I seem to remember reading this before, and I believe Mike had an article on it at one time.
I was talking about fanfic, fanfilms, and everything else fan*. I agree with you that it is very risky, given today's climate, to do without the author's permission, but I disagree that this is the way it should be (for the reasons above.)
If anything, fanfic doesn't hurt the author, and in many cases it helps when done right. George Lucas isn't dumb and he knew that fanfilms such as pink five, Troopers, and I.M.P.S. didn't steal from him, but got folks interested in what he was selling. He even gave awards out each year to those fanfilms that he enjoyed. I only hope Disney, who now owns the franchise is as open to fanfilms as he was.
That would be: Money and the high-court/low-court 'justice' system. Have enough of the first, and you never have to worry about dealing with the latter.
That or a boss that believes in computer security and doesn't believe in security solely through obscurity. They could have prosecuted me for it, though I don't know what grounds they could have done so since it was "my" device (it was my employer's device, and I was authorized to test the security of the device) and I found the backdoor through honest means (protip, never use the name of your company as the url-path for your unauthenticated/unencrypted backdoor, and never try to obscure the path by adding an underscore after someone finds your backdoor. And a better protip is to not include a unauthenticated/unencrypted backdoor in the first place.)
As someone who worked for Scientology for 15 years and saw Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology
Loved your book, Mark. Thanks. Scary to see that such an organization still exists in our modern society, unfettered by laws that should prohibit them from operating. Who cares if it is a religion, forced slavery and human trafficking should not be allowed in our society. Happy to have you on the outside.
This Atlantic flap should serve as a lesson to other media outlets.
I don't have a problem with Scientology or anyone else buying air time to flog their overly expensive and worthless wares, so long as it is labelled by the publisher as an advertorial or the publisher takes the hit when the lawsuits start for failure to live up to their promises. The beauty of freedom of speech is the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot...it isn't that people can say what everyone else agrees with, but that people can make an idiot of themselves.
My problem is that they buy airtime to flog their wares, and then sue or silence those like you who speak out against them and their atrocities. Let them show their crap...those of us who know better will laugh/cry, and those who don't will hopefully use a search engine to find out more. I don't like them or what they have to say, but I'll defend their right to say it, if need be, just as I'll defend your right to show them for who they really are.
ya know hackers knew of the way that software hid itself for 4 years ...we always know and were much better now at not telling you considering the 3 billion years in prison we all would get for being nice.
Well, I would have called shenanigans on this, but considering that one company tried to have me fired for exposing their back-door, I have to find myself looking for the sad-but-true button. Why the folks at Sony that did this aren't sitting in jail, and the company isn't paying huge fines, is beyond me.
Actually, Little Wolf, it's not hard to avoid copyright problems in fiction.
It isn't hard, but why should it even be necessary. Where does "living in the world" become stealing someone elses work? Can it be done? Sure. This becomes even more shady when people are writing about fiction in this world.
If you want to do well in fiction, it's best to avoid derivative unless it can be used as a marketing tool, and in most cases that means going the public domain route. For example, lots of people will happily buy a new Sherlock Holmes novel but won't even notice a mystery about a Victorian inquiry agent based in London.
I have no intention on doing well in fiction, and quite frankly, I don't care if it immediately flops and no one reads it (I doubt that would happen.) I already have a career. I merely wish to share my love of a particular work with fans of the work.
I have no intention on making any money off my work (as are most fanfic authors.) The particular author I have written fanfic for has been dead for 50 years, there is no incentive for him to write any more. Yet he left much of his world empty, and there are many of us out here who would like to add to his world (realizing that it is his world and only his world is canon.) Yet if I even put what I've written online anonymously, I risk the publisher (who bought the rights from his estate,) coming after me, even if I don't expect any money from it.
I have my own stories too, but why should I stick with my own stories when I have as much fun living in someone elses' world. If the author is still alive, sure, it might be respectful to remain out of their world. But they've been dead for a while now and there isn't much likelihood they will be adding to it themselves any time soon.
And while those books you mentioned haven't had problems, this isn't the norm (and given that the lawyers are now going after Fifty Shades porn-derivatives, we have meta-copyright issues since Fifty Shades was a derivative and the lawyers involved weren't for the original work.)
That's why I read sites like this and TeleRead to correct all the misinformation out there.
Understood, and thanks. I think that is a noble goal that most of us try to live by.
Still, I wish there was an easier way to do all of this instead of building off an antiquated and entirely non-human approach to making sure those who create get paid for their effort. The fact that copyright is so confusing in regards to borrowing ideas, and that trying to clear things like fan-films and derivative works is harder than just posting it online anonymously and hoping that nobody figures out, is as much of a problem as people believing that they can copyright ideas.
As I said, where is the line drawn between borrowing ideas and derivative works, since a great deal of these works are based on ideas, and maybe even references to Star Wars, but aren't based on copying from the original story in any of the movies or even on any of the material from the various books of the Star Wars Universe. Take Chad Vader, obvious copying of "Darth Vader", but nothing from the original work other than concepts and ideas. Is it derivative, or is it just copying the ideas? Can they legally make money off of it? As someone who has written derivative works and had publishers or others get really upset, it seems to me that there has got to be a better way.
On the post: More Prenda Insanity: Lawyer Claims Defendant Erased Infringing Activity Using A Registry Cleaner, Citing A Single EHow Submission
Re: By that logic...
I wonder what they would make of my hard drives, formatted with JFS and not running Windows.
"Your honor, he is obviously hiding weapons of mass destruction which would harm my client's case because he installed Lenux on his computer."
On the post: If You're Laying Off Your Social Media Expert, You Might Want To Get Those Account Passwords FIRST
Re: Re:
I certainly agree with the later far more than the former. Up until it started hurting their corporate image, they probably didn't even remember they had one. After all, she said, “I wanted to show the power of Social Media to those who refused to be educated.” Since this is an entertainment company, I suspect they were blissfully ignorant of the internet (that thing that makes them sad,) and only when someone noticed that bad things were being said, they took action.
What is interesting to me, is that had she kept her mouth shut, she could have walked away with the account, with nobody the wiser, and then hit them harder after security had showed her the door. Then they would have had to hire a lawyer and fight in court to get the account back. Not something I'd do (I'd probably have done the same thing she did, especially since future employers are watching,) but it could have hurt them a lot more than it did.
On the post: Six Strikes Administrator: Loss Of Open WiFi Access At Cafes Is Acceptable Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
They didn't. The folks dumped their music onto the printer's hard drive, and then played the music on their computer using Microsoft Media Player. They didn't have anywhere else to put it because the servers were monitored for the material, as were their computers, but the printer wasn't monitored, so they could store the music on the printer without being caught doing so. The company never removed the media player from their computers.
I thought it was pretty inventive, and didn't see it as an issue at the time, but the company was not so happy about it. I believe they ended up revisiting the rules about ipods, since it wasn't likely they would be sued by the RIAA if they allowed ipods at work, but would have if their printers continued serving music.
On the post: Old EMI Email Shows They Knew That Giving Away Songs For Free Leads To More Sales
Re:
One of my favorite artists. I have all his CDs, and have gone to quite a few of his concerts here where I live. Talk about someone who gets it...he has no problems with casual tapings, and they sell USB thumb-drives with the output from the soundboard after the concert for $20. His concerts are always full, and there are always a ton of folks waiting for thumb-drives at the end of the concert.
On the post: Six Strikes Administrator: Loss Of Open WiFi Access At Cafes Is Acceptable Collateral Damage
Re: Re: Re:
It actually isn't that hard to do. It was amazing to me back in 2002 how many folks had network printers up on the internet without any sort of firewalls. The paper above is really old, and needs a re-write, but it was interesting at the time that most printers had hard drives in them, and quite a few had nasty backdoors that allowed instant and unauthenticated access to those hard drives (ahem...Xerox, xerox.htm.) We had all sorts of discussions back then about using printers to serve up porn or other stuff. Turns out, a couple years later, I'd find a company that had a problem with its users uploading music to their printers because the company prevented IPODs and they could listen to their music off of the printer (which wasn't being monitored or protected.)
On the post: Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' Video Taken Down On Internet Freedom Day
Re: Annoying
I'm celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr day, but I prefer to dwell on the fact that if it wasn't for him, Nichelle Nichols wouldn't be the person she was. Look up the Star Talk podcast with Nichelle Nichols, and listen to her talk about her experience with MLK. Star Trek would have been an entirely different experience if she wasn't there, just as it would have been if George Takei wasn't there. I can't do justice to her story...
On the post: HBO's One Attempt At A Standalone Digital Service Sucks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yup. I agree with John. Streaming is just downloading very slowly (hopefully buffering is on,) displaying the results, and then deleting the results after being displayed. There is no difference between streaming and downloading, so why would you be able to stream and not download?
You gave a good reason, a full hard drive, but I was pointing out that the reason you gave might be solved by cleaning up your hard drive instead of getting a bigger drive, since it is likely causing more problems for you then being able to download a movie. Full hard drives lead to severe fragmentation and thrashing of the swap-file, which in turn lead to a slower machine.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
They likely don't care about anyone else's rights, period. If they are willing to stockpile weapons to fight the government, no amount of laws are going to keep them from doing so. David Koresh stockpiled weapons for what he considered to be the coming apocalypse. They are likely buying weapons directly from the black/grey market, importing them illegally, or stealing them, and the government telling folks to turn in their guns will likely have little impact on these folks. Yet I find it hard to believe that the NRA has anything to do with this activity.
The problem with your argument, however, is that labor history has shown that guns have directly helped labor and opposed union-breakers. Bought police officers and private security firms were used by the corporate bosses to end strikes and force unions to accept compromises that benefited the corporations. Things like the Battle of Blair Mountain, the Ludlow Massacre, and the Carnegie Steel Strikes have shown that labor unions have stood up, using the 2nd Amendment, to fight against corporate hired goons and strikebreakers who wished to suppress the first amendment.
During the Battle of Blair Mountain, 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition were exchanged between striking coal miners and thugs hired to break their strike. While the union eventually lost the battle, thanks to the government calling in the Army, the battle eventually strengthened the AFL-CIO and other trade unions, as well as changed the perception in the minds of the public about the use of private security forces such as the Pinkertons and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to break strikes. In both the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Ludlow Massacre, the corporate bosses hired private security forces to break the strikes, and in both cases, they used heavily armored trains to attack and massacre men, women, and children in strike camps or hired airplanes to drop bombs on strikers.
Unless you intend to disarm the government and private security forces which can be bought by corporate management, taking guns away from private citizens will likely prove worse for labor than better. And something tells me that the government isn't likely to be disarmed.
On the post: NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!
Re: Re: Re: Re: This blog amazes me
I guess this depends on your definition of Gun Nut. I've known quite a few in my lifetime: tackleberries, gun fanatics, guys who dream gun and rod and who salivate when you talk about 1911s or Colt-M4s, and who legally carry firearms on a daily basis as part of their job. I've got into disagreements and arguments with them and have never, ever felt in fear of my life even though I knew they were carrying (they may not have been, since some of them don't normally carry off-duty, and most of them don't publicize they are carrying.) Sure, there are nuts out there that have guns, and they probably should be seeing a psychiatrist, but I find it hard to believe that every gun nut is against the 1st amendment or would kill to win an argument. I don't know any.
Yes, these folks are cops, and thus have training, but there are bad cops and there have been cops who have killed someone during an argument (usually, its been themselves or another cop.) I really don't think folks who legally carry who aren't cops are any more prone to this either. I think you'll find that most people who are legally carrying are more worried about losing their right to legally carry than winning an argument at all costs. Now folks illegally carrying firearms, maybe more prone, but if they are illegally carrying a firearm...what is the law going to mean to them anyway?
On the post: Law Professor James Grimmelmann Explains How He Probably Violated The Same Laws As Aaron Swartz
Re: Re:
Perl is no worse than Lisp. I've seen really good perl scripts, and really bad bash/csh scripts. It isn't the code, it is the coder (and I tend to be mediocre at best.)
On the post: Law Professor James Grimmelmann Explains How He Probably Violated The Same Laws As Aaron Swartz
Re:
I had a project partner in my senior software development class for my CompSci degree who was an intellectual property lawyer. It was my discussions with him that formed most of my pro-open-source and anti-IP beliefs, and it wasn't because I disagreed with him. He was a damn good programmer, and a member of several open source projects. And he was a pretty good lawyer too.
I work with a psychologist who wrote our intrusion prevention system, because at the time he wrote it, there wasn't any IPSs or IDSs capable of handling the speeds and number of connections we were handling. I've worked with programmers with upper level CS degrees that couldn't hack their way out of a wet paper bag.
I never discount someone's capability based on their education, and I certainly don't value someone who tells me they are a CISSP/Microsoft Cert/Cisco Cert, etc. before I get a chance to work with them.
On the post: HBO's One Attempt At A Standalone Digital Service Sucks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You don't need a 2TB drive to buffer a movie. I'd be really surprised it you needed more than 8GB for a DVD or 36GB for an HD (BLU-RAY). If your effort is to download and store, yes, but if your hard drive is so full that you can't buffer 8GB/36GB, then your computer must be running really, really slow.
On the post: Doing Sponsored Content Badly: 'Native Advertising' Isn't Native If It Sucks
Re: The Hire
I thought Ok-Go/Chevy did pretty good with their Needing/Getting Chevy Sonic commercial. Ok-Go has been doing pretty good with their sponsors lately. Produce a free blow-out music video.
Of course, Twister (Movie) was probably the best advertising for the Red Dodge Ram truck...my Grandmother (who grew up and spent all her life in the Tornado Alley) left the movie theater saying she wanted that indestructible truck.
On the post: Former Chief Judge Of Patent Court: We Need To Strengthen, Not Weaken, The Patent System Because [Reasons]
We gotta protect our phoney-baloney jobs!
The only constant in IP is that the lawyers get rich. Like the Ring of Mordor, sometimes IP is used for good things, but it always does very bad things to the wielder.
On the post: Was An Advertisement In Vogue The Inspiration For The Star Wars Opening Crawls?
Re: Re: Re: Re: What is and isn't copyrighted
Thanks. I seem to remember reading this before, and I believe Mike had an article on it at one time.
I was talking about fanfic, fanfilms, and everything else fan*. I agree with you that it is very risky, given today's climate, to do without the author's permission, but I disagree that this is the way it should be (for the reasons above.)
If anything, fanfic doesn't hurt the author, and in many cases it helps when done right. George Lucas isn't dumb and he knew that fanfilms such as pink five, Troopers, and I.M.P.S. didn't steal from him, but got folks interested in what he was selling. He even gave awards out each year to those fanfilms that he enjoyed. I only hope Disney, who now owns the franchise is as open to fanfilms as he was.
On the post: How The FBI's Desire To Wiretap Every New Technology Makes Us Less Safe
Re: Re: Re: Sony rootkit
That or a boss that believes in computer security and doesn't believe in security solely through obscurity. They could have prosecuted me for it, though I don't know what grounds they could have done so since it was "my" device (it was my employer's device, and I was authorized to test the security of the device) and I found the backdoor through honest means (protip, never use the name of your company as the url-path for your unauthenticated/unencrypted backdoor, and never try to obscure the path by adding an underscore after someone finds your backdoor. And a better protip is to not include a unauthenticated/unencrypted backdoor in the first place.)
On the post: Doing Sponsored Content Badly: 'Native Advertising' Isn't Native If It Sucks
Re: Scientology is the Al Qaeda of the Internet
Loved your book, Mark. Thanks. Scary to see that such an organization still exists in our modern society, unfettered by laws that should prohibit them from operating. Who cares if it is a religion, forced slavery and human trafficking should not be allowed in our society. Happy to have you on the outside.
This Atlantic flap should serve as a lesson to other media outlets.
I don't have a problem with Scientology or anyone else buying air time to flog their overly expensive and worthless wares, so long as it is labelled by the publisher as an advertorial or the publisher takes the hit when the lawsuits start for failure to live up to their promises. The beauty of freedom of speech is the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot...it isn't that people can say what everyone else agrees with, but that people can make an idiot of themselves.
My problem is that they buy airtime to flog their wares, and then sue or silence those like you who speak out against them and their atrocities. Let them show their crap...those of us who know better will laugh/cry, and those who don't will hopefully use a search engine to find out more. I don't like them or what they have to say, but I'll defend their right to say it, if need be, just as I'll defend your right to show them for who they really are.
Oh great...now I am an SP.
On the post: How The FBI's Desire To Wiretap Every New Technology Makes Us Less Safe
Re: Sony rootkit
Well, I would have called shenanigans on this, but considering that one company tried to have me fired for exposing their back-door, I have to find myself looking for the sad-but-true button. Why the folks at Sony that did this aren't sitting in jail, and the company isn't paying huge fines, is beyond me.
On the post: Was An Advertisement In Vogue The Inspiration For The Star Wars Opening Crawls?
Re: Re: What is and isn't copyrighted
It isn't hard, but why should it even be necessary. Where does "living in the world" become stealing someone elses work? Can it be done? Sure. This becomes even more shady when people are writing about fiction in this world.
If you want to do well in fiction, it's best to avoid derivative unless it can be used as a marketing tool, and in most cases that means going the public domain route. For example, lots of people will happily buy a new Sherlock Holmes novel but won't even notice a mystery about a Victorian inquiry agent based in London.
I have no intention on doing well in fiction, and quite frankly, I don't care if it immediately flops and no one reads it (I doubt that would happen.) I already have a career. I merely wish to share my love of a particular work with fans of the work.
I have no intention on making any money off my work (as are most fanfic authors.) The particular author I have written fanfic for has been dead for 50 years, there is no incentive for him to write any more. Yet he left much of his world empty, and there are many of us out here who would like to add to his world (realizing that it is his world and only his world is canon.) Yet if I even put what I've written online anonymously, I risk the publisher (who bought the rights from his estate,) coming after me, even if I don't expect any money from it.
I have my own stories too, but why should I stick with my own stories when I have as much fun living in someone elses' world. If the author is still alive, sure, it might be respectful to remain out of their world. But they've been dead for a while now and there isn't much likelihood they will be adding to it themselves any time soon.
And while those books you mentioned haven't had problems, this isn't the norm (and given that the lawyers are now going after Fifty Shades porn-derivatives, we have meta-copyright issues since Fifty Shades was a derivative and the lawyers involved weren't for the original work.)
On the post: Was An Advertisement In Vogue The Inspiration For The Star Wars Opening Crawls?
Re: Re: Re: What is and isn't copyrighted
Understood, and thanks. I think that is a noble goal that most of us try to live by.
Still, I wish there was an easier way to do all of this instead of building off an antiquated and entirely non-human approach to making sure those who create get paid for their effort. The fact that copyright is so confusing in regards to borrowing ideas, and that trying to clear things like fan-films and derivative works is harder than just posting it online anonymously and hoping that nobody figures out, is as much of a problem as people believing that they can copyright ideas.
As I said, where is the line drawn between borrowing ideas and derivative works, since a great deal of these works are based on ideas, and maybe even references to Star Wars, but aren't based on copying from the original story in any of the movies or even on any of the material from the various books of the Star Wars Universe. Take Chad Vader, obvious copying of "Darth Vader", but nothing from the original work other than concepts and ideas. Is it derivative, or is it just copying the ideas? Can they legally make money off of it? As someone who has written derivative works and had publishers or others get really upset, it seems to me that there has got to be a better way.
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