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Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

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Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#181

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

tremon wrote: post #100
mindslight wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original purpose was to incentivize creative works, and the desirability of that hasn't really gone away. For example, Free software would be a lot further along if there could be a lucrative business model behind it. Enforcement is just utterly at odds with physics and at this point, the idea of "owning" control of bits in someone else's possession is incompatible with a free society.

Actually, it was "to promote science and the useful arts". Not all creative works.

This (obviously biased) text has an entirely different take http://questioncopyright.org/promise

"The first copyright law was a censorship law. It was not about protecting the rights of authors, or encouraging them to produce new works. Authors' rights were in little danger in sixteenth-century England, and the recent arrival of the printing press (the world's first copying machine) was if anything energizing to writers. So energizing, in fact, that the English government grew concerned about too many works being produced, not too few. The new technology was making seditious reading material widely available for the first time, and the government urgently needed to control the flood of printed matter, censorship being as legitimate an administrative function then as building roads."

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#182

Post by marknutter »

steamer25 wrote: post #171
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men , deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" Granted by, secured by, the effect is the same unless you believe people woul…

Agreed. To expound a bit... There is a perspective/philosophy* in which humans under anarchic/natural-law are born with 100% rights. E.g., if you were washed ashore with a number of ship-wreck-mates on an otherwise uninhabited island, there'd be nothing to stop you from implementing works copyrighted in other lands. Further, there'd be nothing to stop you from violating the terms of any contract or even murdering any…

> Further, there'd be nothing to stop you from violating the terms of any contract or even murdering anyone--you'd have unlimited rights.

There being nothing to stop you doesn't mean it's not a violation of an inalienable right or that I didn't have that right to begin with. The widely held belief is that freedom from murder is a right regardless of whether or not an institution is established to protect it. I believe it follows directly from our ability for higher order abstract thought, particularly our ability to empathize with others. So in some respects, you might say that our ability to empathize is what creates inalienable rights in the first place.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#183

Post by marknutter »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #180
marknutter wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Securing rights and granting rights are two completely different things.

They are not completely different things, they are related. How can you claim to have a right without some means of keeping it?

Again, things can be different but related. An unalienable right can exist without being granted (that's the definition, in fact), and it exists whether or not something is in place to protect it. They are not mutually inclusive.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#184

Post by Grishnakh »

oneJob wrote: post #127
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VHS didn't win because of pornography, it won because it was cheaper and was actually a superior format in certain respects. Listening to music is now "buffet-style" because of iTunes, not Napster. Napster died. AC kicked DC because the latter was financially non-viable.

Re: VHS, granting that I was speaking in superlatives and that VHS might be one of one of multiple primary influences, here is a quote from an industry insider stating the same idea [1]. Re: AC/DC, DC was financially viable. You might notice that we still make use of DC, where it does much close quarter nut kicking. DC was financially uncompetitive over distance, but not because of magic finance. It was uncompetitive…

DC was not "financially viable" at all. DC was completely unworkable because you had to have a power plant on every city block! It was impossible to transmit DC power over any distance because the losses over the wire were too great. You could use a higher voltage to mitigate that, but then you have high voltage entering peoples' homes and a greater potential for fire, plus it's harder to make devices (light bulbs, household motors) which work reliably at higher voltages.

The fundamental problem with DC is that, in 190x, there's no practical way to convert it from one voltage to another. That's why AC won the "current wars", plain and simple. Stupid Edison really thought it would make sense to have a power plant on every city block, but obviously that dream went nowhere, for good reason. With AC power, you use a "transformer" to step the voltage up to much higher levels for long-distance transmission, then another transformer to step it back down at the point-of-use. Higher voltage has much lower losses because the losses, according to Ohm's Law, are P=RI^2, where P is the power loss, R is the resistance (which we'll assume to be fixed for a given length of wire), and I is the current. Since P=VI (power = voltage current), stepping up the voltage means you have proportionately lower current, for the same amount of power, and as you can see from the first equation, the losses go up with the square of the current. This is why long-distance transmission lines use scarily-high voltages (some over 1 megavolts).

These days, we have ways of converting DC to different voltages using modern electronics and transistors, but these did not exist in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was simply no way back then to make an electric generation and transmission system of any scale without the AC devices invented by Nikola Tesla.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#185

Post by tempestn »

flohofwoe wrote: post #129
rakoo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I paid for, and thus own both the software and the device that the software is running on Wrong. What defines owning is not whether you paid or not, but the type of contract you made. Moreover, you didn't pay for Windows; you paid for a license of Windows. This license specifically says what you are and what you are not allowed to do with the software, and among others, tinkering with is is not part of what you are…

Well gosh, I don't remember signing a contract, just clicked some button to make that stupid wall of text go away so I could use the software after I already paid for it. I never met a human (excluding lawyers) who actually has read through a single EULA, and I doubt most of them would be valid if actually tested in court, at least outside the US. [edit: typo]

It is pretty absurd when you go to use your Facebook app or whatever and are presented with a 73-page wall of text that you are expected to read and understand before going on to use the app. If those things are legally enforceable, then something is definitely broken.

Edit: Often it's not even at purchase. There are numerous apps that will do this every time they change their terms. And they don't show you a change list either. It's the whole 50-150 pages. No reasonable person would actually read it.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#186

Post by oneJob »

emcrazyone wrote: post #168
oneJob wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I stopped reading when I got to that line. Modern tractors are industrial production machines valued according to their output, and designed as such. These things are indeed complex, expensive, wonders of technology. Not only that, they are no longer simply tractors, they are now parts of systems.

correct, I'm presently doing work for one of the largest tractor manufacturers developing software for them. There are all kinds of technology in these things as well as on the farm itself in the form of GPS correction (called RTK) to deal with auto guidance and improving GPS accuracy. We are also building mesh networks so a tractor and a combine can be driven by one person & having the combine follow the tractor in…

Would love your take on the open-sourxe/proprietary issue, especially as it affects the farmers ability to fix or improve their own equipment, legally.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#187

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

marknutter wrote: post #183
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not completely different things, they are related. How can you claim to have a right without some means of keeping it?

Again, things can be different but related. An unalienable right can exist without being granted (that's the definition, in fact), and it exists whether or not something is in place to protect it. They are not mutually inclusive.

>An unalienable right can exist without being granted (that's the definition, in fact), and it exists whether or not something is in place to protect it.

Would you mind naming an example?

>They are not mutually inclusive.

I have a feeling that this may devolve into an argument over trivia, but I hope not.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#188

Post by wonkaWonka »

emcrazyone wrote: post #170
wonkaWonka wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you, right up until you said "Out with the old, and in with the new." You're first paragraph is spot on. But. The next step is, DIY tractors, as if they were hot rod motorcycles, since, let's be honest... Tractors are NOT high technology items. Okay, so tractors aren't as sexy as motorcyles, and gear heads don't cut their teeth on John Deer. So... just buy ordinary tractors, why not? They are basically cov…

you are so fucking clueless... Tractors have a lot of technology in them. Here is a very short list of you: RTK: Makes GPS based steering more accurate. Often a dedicated RTK transmitter is installed on the farm for the tractor to pick up and use to correct against the GPS you may be already familiar with like the one in your car or smartphone. End of Row Guidance: A piece of software that allows you to program macro…

you are so fucking clueless... Tractors hardly need any of that technology.

It really irks me to see comments like yours. You clearly don't work in this field since your comments come off as someone with all this great knowledge about how things work. Have you even bothered to research such topics as non-precision farming? These tractors collect tons of data year over year in order maximize worthless imaginary justifications for more cargo cult technology.

Grow up, learn to grasp the premise of the comments you read.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#189

Post by wonkaWonka »

oneJob wrote: post #126
nitrogen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tractors are NOT high technology items. You'd be surprised. There are far more lasers, GPS units, etc. in use at the typical farm than owned by the typical consumer.

Indeed. I stopped reading when I got to that line. Modern tractors are industrial production machines valued according to their output, and designed as such. These things are indeed complex, expensive, wonders of technology. Not only that, they are no longer simply tractors, they are now parts of systems.

I stopped reading when I got to the part where you said you stopped reading.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#190

Post by marknutter »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #187
marknutter wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, things can be different but related. An unalienable right can exist without being granted (that's the definition, in fact), and it exists whether or not something is in place to protect it. They are not mutually inclusive.

>An unalienable right can exist without being granted (that's the definition, in fact), and it exists whether or not something is in place to protect it. Would you mind naming an example? >They are not mutually inclusive. I have a feeling that this may devolve into an argument over trivia, but I hope not.

The right of freedom from murder. I will grant you that rights in-and-of themselves are abstract and somewhat arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, but they are common enough from society to society that patterns start to emerge and one can start to identify what could be considered to be a universally agreed upon inalienable right. All I'm stating is that my right to live free from murder exists whether or not someone is there to keep me from harm.

It seems that you're trying to argue that freedom from murder is a positive right, in that it necessitates that someone else provide you protection from harm. It is, however, commonly understood as a negative right because it requires inaction from others rather than action. And as such, because universal inaction would be just as good as any active protection by a government, the right of freedom from murder does not require that one exists at all. Therefore, it exists outside of societal constructs and is inalienable.

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