The real cost of being sued by Getty [Digital Cameras]

Prev: I'm so proud, I weaned someone off a P&S to a DSLR!
Next: |GG| One more nail in the optical viewfinder coffin

From: J. Clarke on 21 Oct 2009 11:47

sobriquet wrote:
> On 21 okt, 17:29, Bob Larter <bobbylar...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> sobriquet wrote:
>>> On 21 okt, 00:07, Eric Stevens <eric.stev...(a)sum.co.nz> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:03:44 -0700 (PDT), sobriquet
>>
>>>> <dohduh...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> On 20 okt, 06:19, Eric Stevens <eric.stev...(a)sum.co.nz> wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:32:17 -0700 (PDT), sobriquet
>>>>>> <dohduh...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On 19 okt, 20:24, "NotMe" <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>> [..misguided and deluded nonsense snipped..]
>>>>>>> IPR is a figment of your lively imagination.
>>>>>>> All people with any understanding of information technology and
>>>>>>> a tight budget can simply download everything
>>>>>>> for free and pay taxes in compensation for copyright
>>>>>>> infringement.
>>>>>> And how does the creator of the original work survive? Is he
>>>>>> employed by the state?
>>>>>> Eric Stevens
>>>>> The state should provide an unconditional basic income (for food,
>>>>> clothing, shelter and
>>>>> internet), so people don't feel forced to waste their time in
>>>>> exchange for money.
>>>> From where does the state get the resources for the "unconditional
>>>> basic income (for food, clothing, shelter and internet)"?
>>
>>> It's simply a matter of coming up with smart technology that can
>>> create and maintain itself.
>>
>> Gee, it's that simple?
>
> Once you have a robot that can build itself from scratch which can be
> deployed for arbitrary tasks, it becomes very simple indeed. We're not
> talking about something complicated like a robot that can improve upon
> it's own design when it builds a new copy of itself.

Fine, create such a robot.

It's amazing how simple things are when somebody else has to do the work.

From: sobriquet on 21 Oct 2009 13:02

On 21 okt, 17:47, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.use...(a)cox.net> wrote:
> sobriquet wrote:
> > On 21 okt, 17:29, Bob Larter <bobbylar...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >> sobriquet wrote:
> >>> On 21 okt, 00:07, Eric Stevens <eric.stev...(a)sum.co.nz> wrote:
> >>>> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:03:44 -0700 (PDT), sobriquet
>
> >>>> <dohduh...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>>> On 20 okt, 06:19, Eric Stevens <eric.stev...(a)sum.co.nz> wrote:
> >>>>>> On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:32:17 -0700 (PDT), sobriquet
> >>>>>> <dohduh...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>> On 19 okt, 20:24, "NotMe" <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> [..misguided and deluded nonsense snipped..]
> >>>>>>> IPR is a figment of your lively imagination.
> >>>>>>> All people with any understanding of information technology and
> >>>>>>> a tight budget can simply download everything
> >>>>>>> for free and pay taxes in compensation for copyright
> >>>>>>> infringement.
> >>>>>> And how does the creator of the original work survive? Is he
> >>>>>> employed by the state?
> >>>>>> Eric Stevens
> >>>>> The state should provide an unconditional basic income (for food,
> >>>>> clothing, shelter and
> >>>>> internet), so people don't feel forced to waste their time in
> >>>>> exchange for money.
> >>>> From where does the state get the resources for the "unconditional
> >>>> basic income (for food, clothing, shelter and internet)"?
>
> >>> It's simply a matter of coming up with smart technology that can
> >>> create and maintain itself.
>
> >> Gee, it's that simple?
>
> > Once you have a robot that can build itself from scratch which can be
> > deployed for arbitrary tasks, it becomes very simple indeed. We're not
> > talking about something complicated like a robot that can improve upon
> > it's own design when it builds a new copy of itself.
>
> Fine, create such a robot.
>
> It's amazing how simple things are when somebody else has to do the work.

Such a robot is bound to be developed sooner or later. But this
discussion concerns intellectual property and in case of intellectual
property we can already duplicate it
indefinitely free from additional costs.
A robot that can produce arbitrary things (including copies of
itself), is kind of equivalent
to a universal duplication machine that can copy physical objects.
Until such a machine is invented, physical objects are scarce and we
can use money as a universal substitute for such objects to indicate
the relative scarcity.
In case of digital information (bitstrings), we already have a
universal duplication device that can duplicate arbitrary bitstrings
and it's called a computer. A necessary consequence of this fact is
that it would be very moronic to try and associate a monetary value
with bitstrings anyway, ignoring the fundamental difference between
bitstrings and physical commodities.
This idiocy is called copyright and more generally intellectual
property (though it doesn't necessarily concern digital information).
In practice there is no intellectual property because bitstrings can
be exchanged freely and there is no practical way for the creators of
new content to remain in control of the reproduction and distribution
process. So they might as well offer their content for free and demand
from the government that they implement a fair system of taxation to
provide a financial incentive for people to create new things.
Trying to prevent people from sharing bitstrings online or suggesting
that such people are thieves or parasites is futile and
counterproductive. It's better to enjoy the power of the internet as
the ultimate source for information and culture (movies, books, music,
pictures, software, etc..). There is a lot of free stuff anyway (all
the open source and public domain stuff), so whether you respect
copyright or not, the internet is very much like a superlibrary and
community knowledge/culture/information repository for people to share
and exchange information.
In an open society, you can't expect a control-freak nanny government
to monitor all communication to ensure big corporations can make a lot
of money by exploiting their imaginary intellectual property rights.
The government is not there to ensure that corporations can make
profit. It's there to ensure that people respect each others rights
(including the right to share and exchange information and a sensible
interpretation of authorship and the privileges to which authors are
entitled in compensation for their efforts).

From: NotMe on 21 Oct 2009 14:30

From: sobriquet on 21 Oct 2009 15:10

On 21 okt, 20:30, "NotMe" <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
> "sobriquet" <snip>
>
> You can't expect someone very intelligent like Einstein to be able to
> figure out all the laws of physics from scratch if you just provide
> him with food, clothing and shelter and a lot of free time to ponder
> the nature of reality (so without access to the ideas of other
> scientists).
> {{
>
> Read Einstein's biography ... that's about how it happened. As to access to
> other's idea those were available in peer review media published and sold
> for a fee. Just so happens they were also covered by copyright.

The laws of physics aren't covered by copyright. Einstein could never
have achieved what he did if he didn't have access to the ideas and
observations from a long line of very intelligent people before him
(like Newton or Aristotle) who's discoveries ended up as common
scientific knowledge by the time Einstein went through university.

From: NotMe on 21 Oct 2009 15:59

�

2
0
0
8

a
l
l

r
i
g
h
t
s

r
e
s
e
r
v
e
d
;

n
o

p
o
r
t
i
o
n

o
f

t
h
i
s

p
o
s
t

m
a
y

b
e

u
s
e
d

a
n
y
w
h
e
r
e

e
l
s
e

o
r

a
r
c
h
i
v
e
d

w
i
t
h
o
u
t

w
r
i
t
t
e
n

p
e
r
m
i
s
s
i
o
n

X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.5579
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5843
X-Auth-Sender: U2FsdGVkX1+3W98EBmriNKRRsJI/O0kZ3bYgHapYXV9Fw3hXKVpj9A==
X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 091021-0, 10/21/2009), Outbound message
Cancel-Lock: sha1:GKrBoyKGIMdO8CETvRmODf8yaes=
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
Xref: news.netfront.net alt.www.webmaster:4883 rec.photo.digital:34825

"sobriquet" <dohduhdah(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ad99e6ed-2e03-4cbd-b99d-4cbc7bd924ff(a)f10g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...
On 21 okt, 20:30, "NotMe" <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
> "sobriquet" <snip>
>
> You can't expect someone very intelligent like Einstein to be able to
> figure out all the laws of physics from scratch if you just provide
> him with food, clothing and shelter and a lot of free time to ponder
> the nature of reality (so without access to the ideas of other
> scientists).
> {{
>
> Read Einstein's biography ... that's about how it happened. As to access
> to
> other's idea those were available in peer review media published and sold
> for a fee. Just so happens they were also covered by copyright.

The laws of physics aren't covered by copyright. Einstein could never
have achieved what he did if he didn't have access to the ideas and
observations from a long line of very intelligent people before him
(like Newton or Aristotle) who's discoveries ended up as common
scientific knowledge by the time Einstein went through university.{{

The law of physics are not but the expression of these laws is covered by
copyright.

The reality is that without copyright protection a lot of today's common
knowledge would never have become public.

Those who oppose copyright (the current law of the land) are very much
similar to those who burned the Library at Alexandra.