Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 11:48am
Re: Re: Post office
Not to mention those running the main routing nodes in and out of countries it passes through... those owning any physical infrastructure such as fibre or satallites that the ISP's lease.. etc etc. They should all be flensed!
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 9:56am
Re: Re:
I figure that we are buying an average of two disks every month for the servers alone.
So. yeah. These levies aren't punishing pirates (I figure that pirates aren't buying one disk every month).
Yeah, bit of a no-brainer that if you think about it:
1TB of disk space will store.. what?.. somewhere around 200 films in decent hi-def encoding? Drop to standard def and it's in the thousands.
On the other hand, if you actually create multi-media for a living you can easily get through multiple TB on a single project if you store your raw and working footage in, say, broadcast quality hi-def.
Given the ease of use and ubiquitousness and low cost of basic multimedia editing tools (hell you can create on your smartphone now out of the box), a rapidly rising percentage of "normal" people who don't work in multi-media are playing with this stuff and filling up disks with it too. Even my 10-year-old loves creating his own animations.
So we are in a situation where a bunch of asshats are demanding a bigger ransom despite an increasingly smaller percentage of the basis for the ransom being used for "infringing". Even if one thought it was a reasonable thing to tax media in the first place, surely anyone could see this a nothing more than the money-grab and attempt to hamper competition that it is?
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 9:37am
Re: Copyright Industry
and compensate them for what they believe are lost sales.
You forgot to include still expecting to have the ability to sue for a gazillion pounds/euros without having to offer proof for any discovered instances of "lost sales" that this alledgedly covers.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 6:08am
Re: It's not the medium that matters
Which is exactly what Mr Moody is pointing out - that Ms. Merkel seems to see a difference between print and online media despite both often containing the same words and therefore having the same "reading worth" as you say.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Nov 2012 @ 2:57pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm glad you agree that Mike is at his "most childish" when I confront him on the most basic point.
Ah, no. I think you missed my point here and I'd rather you didn't put words in my mouth.
It reminds me as nothing so much as watching 2 primary school children in a playground. It goes something like this:
The one kid, an arrogant little snotling usually, decides to wind up the other and just randomly starts calling him names often because of some past slight, real or imagined. The other, perhaps a little less outright obnoxious, ignores the first because "that's how you deal with pests". Not content, the first continues the name calling to get a reaction, perhaps escalating to calling into question the parentage and general ancestry of the other if precocious enough to have learned the words by now. Now visibly wound up, the 2nd child will be struggling for control if not actually starting to retort. About now a strategic shove from the first child will escalate it into a full-blown shouting match if not an actual fight. This is usually where the teacher steps in and the whole thing decends into the most childish form of "But I didn't start it!" and "But! He said...." / "I never did! It was him that you can imagine.
Typically the first child feels they've won because, though they also got into trouble both ended up looking bad and they've managed to drag their enemy down to their own level and misery loves company. The 2nd child usually later feels annoyed with themselves because they knew better, and pissed off because they've realised that the "just ignore it" strategy only works so far when dealing with someone too obnoxious to learn.
That's exactly what it looks like from this side.
As for the rest of your post, it seems to translate as "it's not the definition that's important it's the definition" and looks like a Redbeard Rum argument to me.
If you really want my opinion on the petty argument though, I will try to oblige. Mike's responses in comments occasionally look childish to me and sometimes his attitude in them makes me want to scream. On the other hand when responding to you, which is often sadly when he is at his most childish, he rarely fails to come off a having the moral highground because almost every comment time you engage in a comment thread everything you write is dripping with disdain, spurious logic and the kind of one-upmanship and last-wording that most 4-year-olds learn to outgrow.
Mike's articles, even when I don't agree with him, usually at least get somewhere near a point worth debating in the real world. Your arguments are rarely based other than in a technically nuanced legal definition that you repeat over and over ad-nauseam, filling the comments with such pedantary that even when you may be correct you are still not "right", nor by that time do I care if you are.
You, sir, are an example of the reason there are lawyer jokes and for me do nothing but prove to me over and over that the law and especially the excercise of it has little, if anything, to do with the reality of day-to-day life. If you really are anywhere close to correct when you make such legal points, you successfully prove that the law is written to pander to money, not to have anything to do with justice or the benefit of society as a whole. If your pedantic arguments are an example of lawyers generally, you sucessfully prove that the application of the law has nothing to do with morals, legality, or anything else but being a way of keeping score between 2 sides that will twist language, meaning and especially truth past breaking point in order to "win" at any cost.
In case you missed the segue, I don't give a monkey's whether you or Mike are "right" and still less do I care what definition of "property" you or he are using. A word is a word and can carry pretty much any burden you put on it and often does in different circumstances. A word encapsulates an idea. I would love it if, just for the change of pace, you would one day engage with a debate about the idea rather than the linguistic obfuscation.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Nov 2012 @ 10:23am
Re: Re:
Like they say, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it!'.
I dunno, it doesn't exactly look entirely unbroken from here and the argument about not trusting the US with it has some weight, witness the amount of bullying of both ICANN and other countries by the US to remove stuff it doesn't like that may be completely legal in the hosting country.
On the other hand amputation with a chainsaw is almost never a terribly good solution to a broken leg, no matter how much it hurts.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Nov 2012 @ 9:34am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Do you actually think redifining the meaning of property to suite your needs will convince anyone?
No, I suspect not. I suspect that, as usual, he thinks choosing some nit-picking legal/linguistical technicality to argue endlessly, pedantically and insultingly about will distract attention from the fact that the definition of the word "property" whether linguistic or legal is entirely beside the point.
In this, by and large, he appears to be sadly correct. There's pages and pages or ranting about the legal defintion of "property" and plenty of name-calling but very little discussion about whether it is in fact logical to try and treat something intangible and infinitely copyable exactly the same as something unique and tangible and if not what the differences should be. That might be nice for a change, but I'm not holding my breath.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Nov 2012 @ 2:34am
Re: Re: Brat kid
There's no way that many dogs look that similar by coincidence.
To be fair to Disney (and ****-knows why the hell I should be), the illustrations are of fairly distinctive breeds of dog done in what is essentially a black and white line-art pencil sketch, exactly how different could they look? I make no claims of being an artist, but that style would seem to reduce the image somewhat to key distinctive features so how many ways are there to sketch a chihauhau face for example?
On the other hand, there have been many more equally silly claims for this sort of thing so if even one of those succeeded, the balance of the universe would suggest that Disney ought to lose their shirt over this. If only the universe worked like that...
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 26 Nov 2012 @ 1:34pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Second, the people calling it property aren't pretending like it's rivalrous even though it's really not.
How many times in industry arguments has a line like "Copyright infringement is the same as theft". Indeed, every film in the cinema and every DVD has a trailer with the line "You wouldn't steal a car..." or something very similar. In what way is this not directly equating a non-rivalrous good with a rivalrous one? In what way is this not pretending that a copy of a film is directly the same as a car?
Watch out for those zebra crossings, you might just get yourself run down by a copied car.
Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 26 Nov 2012 @ 1:00pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
In the end, it's the votes they want, not the cash.
You're more optimistic than I then. To me, politicians only seem to care about public opinion as far as it takes to look better in the mass media than the [arbitarily small number probably less than 3] other "people" that can raise the enormous sum of cash necessary to have any chance of beating them.
I'm not saying this can't make a difference, perhaps sometimes even a huge one, but I haven't seen anything to convince me it's a prime motivation. Human nature suggests that a politician, whether corrupt or not, is more likely to pay attention to the one loud voice with a focussed argument weighted by the force of holding the purse strings for continued survival than the diffuse, quiet and even at it's most singular, self-contradictory voice of the public.
On the post: Universal Studios Sues Over Porn Parody Of '50 Shades Of Grey'; Ignoring 50 Shade's Own History As Fan Fiction
Re: Punish those infringers
On the post: German Court Holds Internet User Responsible For Passing On Unknown, Encrypted File
Re: Re: Re: The encryption itself is the "crime", see?
On the post: German Court Holds Internet User Responsible For Passing On Unknown, Encrypted File
Re: Re: Post office
On the post: Outdated European Copyright Levy System Descends Further Into Disarray
Re: Re:
1TB of disk space will store.. what?.. somewhere around 200 films in decent hi-def encoding? Drop to standard def and it's in the thousands.
On the other hand, if you actually create multi-media for a living you can easily get through multiple TB on a single project if you store your raw and working footage in, say, broadcast quality hi-def.
Given the ease of use and ubiquitousness and low cost of basic multimedia editing tools (hell you can create on your smartphone now out of the box), a rapidly rising percentage of "normal" people who don't work in multi-media are playing with this stuff and filling up disks with it too. Even my 10-year-old loves creating his own animations.
So we are in a situation where a bunch of asshats are demanding a bigger ransom despite an increasingly smaller percentage of the basis for the ransom being used for "infringing". Even if one thought it was a reasonable thing to tax media in the first place, surely anyone could see this a nothing more than the money-grab and attempt to hamper competition that it is?
On the post: Outdated European Copyright Levy System Descends Further Into Disarray
Re: Copyright Industry
Sounds fair to me... /s
On the post: Iran's Latest Move To Stifle Dissent: Requiring ID Cards To Go Online
Cynical
On the post: German Chancellor Says Only Print Media Can Teach You 'Real' Reading
Re: It's not the medium that matters
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: The Obama Administration Briefly Considers Developing 'Explicit Rules' For Killer Drones, Abandons Process After Romney Loses Election
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
It reminds me as nothing so much as watching 2 primary school children in a playground. It goes something like this:
The one kid, an arrogant little snotling usually, decides to wind up the other and just randomly starts calling him names often because of some past slight, real or imagined. The other, perhaps a little less outright obnoxious, ignores the first because "that's how you deal with pests". Not content, the first continues the name calling to get a reaction, perhaps escalating to calling into question the parentage and general ancestry of the other if precocious enough to have learned the words by now. Now visibly wound up, the 2nd child will be struggling for control if not actually starting to retort. About now a strategic shove from the first child will escalate it into a full-blown shouting match if not an actual fight. This is usually where the teacher steps in and the whole thing decends into the most childish form of "But I didn't start it!" and "But! He said...." / "I never did! It was him that you can imagine.
Typically the first child feels they've won because, though they also got into trouble both ended up looking bad and they've managed to drag their enemy down to their own level and misery loves company. The 2nd child usually later feels annoyed with themselves because they knew better, and pissed off because they've realised that the "just ignore it" strategy only works so far when dealing with someone too obnoxious to learn.
That's exactly what it looks like from this side.
As for the rest of your post, it seems to translate as "it's not the definition that's important it's the definition" and looks like a Redbeard Rum argument to me.
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If you really want my opinion on the petty argument though, I will try to oblige. Mike's responses in comments occasionally look childish to me and sometimes his attitude in them makes me want to scream. On the other hand when responding to you, which is often sadly when he is at his most childish, he rarely fails to come off a having the moral highground because almost every comment time you engage in a comment thread everything you write is dripping with disdain, spurious logic and the kind of one-upmanship and last-wording that most 4-year-olds learn to outgrow.
Mike's articles, even when I don't agree with him, usually at least get somewhere near a point worth debating in the real world. Your arguments are rarely based other than in a technically nuanced legal definition that you repeat over and over ad-nauseam, filling the comments with such pedantary that even when you may be correct you are still not "right", nor by that time do I care if you are.
You, sir, are an example of the reason there are lawyer jokes and for me do nothing but prove to me over and over that the law and especially the excercise of it has little, if anything, to do with the reality of day-to-day life. If you really are anywhere close to correct when you make such legal points, you successfully prove that the law is written to pander to money, not to have anything to do with justice or the benefit of society as a whole. If your pedantic arguments are an example of lawyers generally, you sucessfully prove that the application of the law has nothing to do with morals, legality, or anything else but being a way of keeping score between 2 sides that will twist language, meaning and especially truth past breaking point in order to "win" at any cost.
In case you missed the segue, I don't give a monkey's whether you or Mike are "right" and still less do I care what definition of "property" you or he are using. A word is a word and can carry pretty much any burden you put on it and often does in different circumstances. A word encapsulates an idea. I would love it if, just for the change of pace, you would one day engage with a debate about the idea rather than the linguistic obfuscation.
On the post: China Hails ITU Internet Takeover By Blowing Its Favorite Trumpet: Distrusting The US
Re:
On the post: China Hails ITU Internet Takeover By Blowing Its Favorite Trumpet: Distrusting The US
Re: Re:
On the other hand amputation with a chainsaw is almost never a terribly good solution to a broken leg, no matter how much it hurts.
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Re: Re:
In this, by and large, he appears to be sadly correct. There's pages and pages or ranting about the legal defintion of "property" and plenty of name-calling but very little discussion about whether it is in fact logical to try and treat something intangible and infinitely copyable exactly the same as something unique and tangible and if not what the differences should be. That might be nice for a change, but I'm not holding my breath.
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sigh
On the post: Disney Sued For Copyright Infringement
Re: Re: Brat kid
On the other hand, there have been many more equally silly claims for this sort of thing so if even one of those succeeded, the balance of the universe would suggest that Disney ought to lose their shirt over this. If only the universe worked like that...
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Watch out for those zebra crossings, you might just get yourself run down by a copied car.
On the post: Copyright Maximalists Attempt To Downplay Significance Of RSC Report By Chanting Their Mantra: Copyright Is Property
Re: Re: Sigh
On the post: It's Time To Update Our Privacy Laws: Tell Your Elected Officials To Reform ECPA Now
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm not saying this can't make a difference, perhaps sometimes even a huge one, but I haven't seen anything to convince me it's a prime motivation. Human nature suggests that a politician, whether corrupt or not, is more likely to pay attention to the one loud voice with a focussed argument weighted by the force of holding the purse strings for continued survival than the diffuse, quiet and even at it's most singular, self-contradictory voice of the public.
On the post: Opportunistic Politicians Lean On The FBI And Twitter To Shut Down Terrorist Accounts
Re: Re: Smarter than a politician
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