While trademarks have a bit of merit in a sane legislation, the injured party here is the customer: he is the one who might be duped by the name. Someone who buys a Louis Vuitton knockoff knows that he's buying a knockoff and is fine with it; it is insane to allow LV to prevent that transaction on the grounds that it helps the customer. Same thing here: if someone buys a "The Oatmeal" greeting card while wrongly believing he bought a "Oatmeal Studios" one can show actual harm, instead of the alleged potential harm this suit is trying to prevent.
I love how pro-copyright morons train people to ignore the thing. Nobody is going to pay any attention to the threat of paying 5 years in federal prison for copying a book; it's just not a credible threat.
He actually did what he said... in the same sense as Dawkin's Weasel program. That one was also a "let's pretend we can do something that requires infinite resources in very little time" program.
I don't know about England, but I know for a fact that in Romania it is legal to download movies and music (and illegal to upload). I know that because I've been hit with a $7K fine by the BSA, for illegal software... but the police specifically told me they can't do anything about the movies and music I had on CDs (that I wrote myself), because they can't prove I had given them to anyone else.
Because, even assuming you're right, we would make ourselves poorer to do it. Since the future generations are by definitions going to be richer than us anyway (they have all the capital we had, plus what we and they produce), you're asking the poor to make the rich even richer. Which is dumb.
1) he invented this not because he was going to get a patent, but because he found the idea interesting. (I'm not saying that he wasn't hoping to get a patent - maybe he was - but getting a patent was not a requirement for invention, it was at most a nice-to-have bonus.)
2) Even after discovering that he can't patent the invention, he still advertises it. He didn't hide it or tried to patent it in some other country.
All this basically means that those who claims patents are necessary or we won't have new inventions anymore are full of it.
... is that you can easily prove that a program calculating the average of two numbers, a and b, by doing
result = (a + b) / 2
is correct. And then you run the program and it works, until a year later someone sets a and b to very large values, and the program crashes (or returns a negative value). That's why I prefer testing to proofs, even though I agree that proofs are theoretically better.
I was about to say the same thing. I suspect he is trying to build a case for invalidating EULAs. However, I had previously assumed that EULAs are not allowed to add more restrictions to those indicated by the law, only to lift them, so ridiculous demands in them are already invalid. (This is the case in my country, I thought it's the same in the US.) Eg, an EULA can say "you are allowed to make up to five copies and distribute them to friends"; it cannot say "you are not allowed to play this game if a friend or family is watching without paying an additional license".
Ok, ignore my previous comment, he HAS to be trolling.
[1] First, the book is freaking free.
Indeed !
[2] If the value remains high, there is no reason for the price to come down (regardless of production cost) unless they can buy THE SAME THING cheaper elsewhere.
... is sorely lacking here apparently. That's ok - as Rothbard said, economics is a specialized field, you can't expect everyone to be familiar with it.
Worse, however, is that Griff believes that Amazon sets the price of the books. I had to read his comment three times to make sure it wasn't sarcasm. He really believes it.
Amazon is not the one publishing that book. News at eleven.
Wrong
While trademarks have a bit of merit in a sane legislation, the injured party here is the customer: he is the one who might be duped by the name. Someone who buys a Louis Vuitton knockoff knows that he's buying a knockoff and is fine with it; it is insane to allow LV to prevent that transaction on the grounds that it helps the customer. Same thing here: if someone buys a "The Oatmeal" greeting card while wrongly believing he bought a "Oatmeal Studios" one can show actual harm, instead of the alleged potential harm this suit is trying to prevent.
I love this
I love how pro-copyright morons train people to ignore the thing. Nobody is going to pay any attention to the threat of paying 5 years in federal prison for copying a book; it's just not a credible threat.
(untitled comment)
"Maybe it's time the US started copying China for a change."
I hate these freetards who want to copy everything in sight.
:P
Dawkins
He actually did what he said... in the same sense as Dawkin's Weasel program. That one was also a "let's pretend we can do something that requires infinite resources in very little time" program.
Re:
The fact that there's a link to that page inside the text of the article eluded you, huh?
Re: Re:
Fucking insightful +10.
(untitled comment)
There are NO good police officers. None whatsoever. If there were, they would have arrested these pieces of shit.
(untitled comment) (as Marcel Popescu)
Citizens of the EU: your politicians just sold you out
And this is news how?
Re: Re: Book Copyright
I don't know about England, but I know for a fact that in Romania it is legal to download movies and music (and illegal to upload). I know that because I've been hit with a $7K fine by the BSA, for illegal software... but the police specifically told me they can't do anything about the movies and music I had on CDs (that I wrote myself), because they can't prove I had given them to anyone else.
Re: Words can hurt
Replace it with "if words hurt you, YOU have a mental problem. Get it addressed."
Re: Re: Re: Re: It's just a future headline
Because, even assuming you're right, we would make ourselves poorer to do it. Since the future generations are by definitions going to be richer than us anyway (they have all the capital we had, plus what we and they produce), you're asking the poor to make the rich even richer. Which is dumb.
Re:
Even more interesting, what if you later found some illegal pictures, like child porn, on that camera? Would you be eager to claim copyright then? :P
Patents are required for innovation? (as Marcel Popescu)
What I find very interesting is that:
1) he invented this not because he was going to get a patent, but because he found the idea interesting. (I'm not saying that he wasn't hoping to get a patent - maybe he was - but getting a patent was not a requirement for invention, it was at most a nice-to-have bonus.)
2) Even after discovering that he can't patent the invention, he still advertises it. He didn't hide it or tried to patent it in some other country.
All this basically means that those who claims patents are necessary or we won't have new inventions anymore are full of it.
My problem with proof of correctness... (as Marcel Popescu)
... is that you can easily prove that a program calculating the average of two numbers, a and b, by doing
result = (a + b) / 2
is correct. And then you run the program and it works, until a year later someone sets a and b to very large values, and the program crashes (or returns a negative value). That's why I prefer testing to proofs, even though I agree that proofs are theoretically better.
(untitled comment)
You need to read Konrath's latest blog, at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/05/tech-talk-and-active-ebook.html - he talks about creating some interactive books.
Re:
I was about to say the same thing. I suspect he is trying to build a case for invalidating EULAs. However, I had previously assumed that EULAs are not allowed to add more restrictions to those indicated by the law, only to lift them, so ridiculous demands in them are already invalid. (This is the case in my country, I thought it's the same in the US.) Eg, an EULA can say "you are allowed to make up to five copies and distribute them to friends"; it cannot say "you are not allowed to play this game if a friend or family is watching without paying an additional license".
Re: Charge the Author for my time
Sarcasm. Google it up.
Re: Re: Re: Is an ebook edition really less valuable than a paperback?
Ok, ignore my previous comment, he HAS to be trolling.
[1] First, the book is freaking free.
Indeed !
[2] If the value remains high, there is no reason for the price to come down (regardless of production cost) unless they can buy THE SAME THING cheaper elsewhere.
I rest my case.
Economics knowledge (as Marcel Popescu)
... is sorely lacking here apparently. That's ok - as Rothbard said, economics is a specialized field, you can't expect everyone to be familiar with it.
Worse, however, is that Griff believes that Amazon sets the price of the books. I had to read his comment three times to make sure it wasn't sarcasm. He really believes it.
Amazon is not the one publishing that book. News at eleven.