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Now, how serious the theft is...?
Well, just a matter of fact, that is not correct. If it weren't, commercial ad makers wouldn't have to worry about referencing popular works (without in parody or otherwise) in their ads. Why don't you have an ad for a building and loan using some clip from It's A Wonderful Life? It's just copying, and a small bit of it, at that.
January 21, 2013: the day BTF discovered the intellectual property debate.* Congratulations and welcome to the internet!
*Although I swear we went through all of this when Andy admitted to nefariously recording TCM movies onto DVR.
I don't get this. That's exactly what it means. What "indices of ownership" are we talking about here? Obviously I can't mug you and take your copy of the book just because the copyright has expired, but if I can legitimately gain access to the book I can copy it.
I think the PACER case is a cleaner example of this argument. Do you think Swartz stole something when he downloaded the files from PACER and published them? What did he steal?
So it's not theft if I am driving and using a car that I was no authorized to use?
I don't think caselaw is very well-developed on that subject at all. In my field, art history, there is a lot of discussion revolving around copyright of images. If someone photographs the Mona Lisa and puts it in a textbook, is that image itself copyrighted? The law isn't settled on the matter. There was a court case in Iowa that found that such a copy of a non-copyrighted work was not itself copyrightable, but that holding isn't binding nationally. It's a major issue. Even within the Fair Use harbor, there's a question of what qualifies as Fair Use.
P.S. every art historian I know has a personal collection of images scanned from books for use in their classes. Prior to digital images, it was personal slide collections.
As someone who has struggled with depression for pretty much my whole life, I understand how it works, but I don't think the government is really at all culpable for Swartz's suicide. I think suggesting that level of vulnerability and creating an obligation for special treatment is really demeaning.
When I look at another 40-50 years of living with this condition, I understand why someone would be willing to commit suicide, especially with the prospect of any sort of extended prison sentence. There are times when the world is a completely bleak, hopeless place, and the best that can be done is distraction. I don't defend Swartz's decision, which caused his friends and family incredible pain, and also took from us one our strongest fighters in the trenches for electronic freedom. I do understand it. As for blame, we haven't figured out this disease, and society's attitudes toward depression certainly make it harder for people to get the treatment they need.
I have very serious problems with a system that threatens anyone with an outrageously long sentence, grossly disproportional to the crime committed, in an effort to compel a guilty plea. I have serious problems with a law worded broadly enough to place downloading and sharing copyrighted material in the same category as wire fraud.
If they're clinically depressed, you shouldn't threaten them with sixty times as much jail time as you actually intend for them to serve, because they're pretty much axiomatically going to take it the wrong way, and it might be enough to make them kill themselves.
I really think that is really insulting to Swartz. He was a very bright guy. He wasn't naive as to how heavy-handed the government could be, and what it would do, in the interests of stopping "undesirable communication." Jump to around 15m in.
If anything, he was all too aware of what could happen. I don't believe for one minute that the prosecution would have gone easy on Aaron Swartz in trial. I don't think they would have suggested one day less than the maximum permissible sentence. And I think people in government would have loved to see this upstart kid, a major force in the shattering of SOPA, and a powerful force for electronic freedom in general, pay dearly for his hubris in challenging their power.
Because the copyright hasn't expired? If someone uses a clip of It's a wonderful life in an ad, they won't be prosecuted for theft. They might be sued by Paramount for copyright infringement.
The photograph has to add something creative to the work that is being photographed. A "faithful reproduction" of someone else's work doesn't qualify for a new copyright: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
That is kind of a sort of blurry line though.
If you could create an identical copy of a car by running a perl script, such that one could use the car without taking it, then you could have an analogous situation.
You wouldn't download a car, would you?
PS: I agree with Ray from the previous page. I don't think second term inaugurals are a big deal.
Part of allowing intellectual property creators to profit from that creation is allowing them to transfer/license those rights. The academic journals and universities selling those rights to JSTOR doesn't release the articles into the public domain, and disliking JSTOR's business model doesn't negate the rights they've acquired.
In short, depression is fundamentally the inability to experience pleasure and psychological comfort in the way that a healthy person experiences pleasure and psychological comfort. It is biologically distinct from the "depression" that healthy people feel: people who suffer from depression have a different biochemistry; they have different sleep patterns; they respond differently in a neurological sense to stress.
On a personal note, that video was very difficult to watch: anhedonia, guilt, psycho-motor retardation, insomnia, and a highly-activated stress response; this is my life. It's been over five years since I had a brutal experience coming off of Effexor; tomorrow, I pick up a new SNRI (Pristiq). Over the past fifteen years, I have tried around fifteen or twenty different drugs with little to no effect. I have considered electroshock therapy, but I cannot afford to lose my memory; my job depends on my ability to connect individual student problems to the database of solutions in my brain.
Damn right I would download a car! With 3D printers, we're getting closer to copying actual manufacturing goods, and that's only a good thing.
I am really sorry to hear that. My aunt has suffered depression for most of her life and it has been horrible to watch. There have been several times when the meds just don't work. Best of luck.
Well, you're conflating letting people die of illness with shooting them in the face. If a guy on Medicare needs a heart transplant but dies before a suitable donor is found, we wouldn't say the government killed him.
But also, you're not accurately stating my position. As I've outlined here before, I'm just fine with a safety net that provides food/shelter/clothing, etc. to anyone who needs it. I differentiate medical care for a number of reasons that would require a longer post that I don't have time for right now. Stupid people are much more deserving of pity than scorn; low intelligence is a massive disadvantage in our society and it's not their fault they lack it. Ideally, we'd construct a society that would find a place for low intelligence people to do something reasonably productive, but that ship appears to have sailed, so the best remaining option is to put them on the dole and try to manage the social pathologies that result from low intellgence people with nothing to do.
Okay. I don't think it will serve the general discussion to get bogged down in definitional minutia. An unauthorized use or taking is a species of theft. In fact, many states list "unauthorized taking and use" in the category under theft headings. Let's try not to be so hypertechnical, especially when it comes to making distinctions based on names. It's an axiom law that what you call something--the heading--is not the law.
What matters in law to an effective degree is not what you call something but what the elements of definition for the proscribed act are. If two things have the same definition, it doesn't if for some other purpose they are called something different. For instances, many white collar theft crimes are not called "theft"; they're called embezzlement or misappropriation or something. That's still theft. It's still stealing.
An unauthorized taking or using is the same as theft except with an unauthorized taking there is no intention to deprive the owner permanently of his property. Joy-riding as opposed to stealing an automobile, for instance. But, in both instances there was an intentional taking of someone else's property without their okay.
Yes, we did, and it was treated for the most part as a joke, as it probably should in those instances. JOLLY was not downloading all that stuff and then releasing it to the world to the musical accompaniment of "Born Free."
We think a lot of crimes are trivial and deserving of nothing much more than snickers and sneers. With Swartz this may be one. It doesn't seem like it's trivial to me, reading the underlying facts giving rise to the violation, but I open to opposite argument on this. (And by the way, "stealing" was exactly how the US attorney characterized what he did.
Don't begin by asking what he stole? Ask what he took? What did he take? Was it illegal for him to take the thing he took?
And Feist v. Rural! Didn't look it up, I just enjoy reading Supreme Court decisions for some strange reason.
Yes, I think we're all aware that if the glove don't fit, you must acquit.
Some, not all, arguably not the paradigmatic activists. Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington. This is a discussion that has been ongoing, and while the case for alliance over division has only definitively triumphed recently, the movement for such alliances is nothing new.
In fact it's been quite a long while since any major civil rights organizations showed any hostility to gay rights.
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Because the copyright hasn't expired? If someone uses a clip of It's a wonderful life in an ad, they won't be prosecuted for theft. They might be sued by Paramount for copyright infringement.
The irony there is that it hasn't been that long since you could walk into any video store and buy half a dozen different public domain versions of It's A Wonderful Life for anywhere from about $5.00 to $10.00 depending on the disk quality. They may have been bootlegs, but if they were, it sure took them a hell of a long time before they disappeared from those stores.
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On my non-football website I sell poster-sized reproductions of covers from the old Masses magazine. The artwork is by many noted American artists of the early 20th century---John Sloan, George Bellows, Art Young, Stuart Davis, etc., and if I reproduced just the artwork by itself, the estates of those artists could come after me. But as long as I reproduce the entire cover with The Masses masthead and the accompanying text, it's all in the public domain, since the copyrights on the magazine itself pre-dated 1923 and the magazine went out of business by 1917. I've sold these reproductions to museums that never could find the original copies of the magazine, which are Rare with a capital "R".
Why do museums want magazine covers?
Naming is good for making distinctions, and distinctions serve real purposes, but unauthorized taking and use is of the same essence as theft. They are of the same family—with the same progenitor. Siblings if you like. It's giving it a name so as to designate it as a lesser offense--but of the same exact type of illegal behavior.
Theft and Unauthorized Use
And from my state:
This is the ticker from Fox during the ceremony today.
Ok, was it?
P.S. Technically, by quoting my post you're infringing my copyright (and vice versa, of course). This whole website is a nest of thieves.
Why was that illegal?
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I too have problems with these things. I have not argued otherwise in this thread.
You're saying it's unproductive to quibble about semantics, but the semantics question is part of what people like* Swartz try to call into question-- that is, treating physical property and intellectual property in the same terms.
Using a photograph of Mickey Mouse without Disney's permission does not permanently deprive Disney of anything.
*I don't know enough about Swartz to say that this was his specific philosophy, but for others in the copyleft movement, they insist on specifically not categorizing unauthorized use as theft. The Grey Album was unauthorized use, going to Best Buy and taking copies of the White Album and the Black Album is theft.
As for theft: What did I take and how did I deprive you of anything and was it without your consent (or vice versa, of course)? The agreement we signed with our host might have something to do with this.
I too have problems with these things. I have not argued otherwise in this thread.
Who has?
There is an argument that stealing requires that one deny the rightful owner of possession; there's no taking, because the original owner still has it.
I'm not sure how I feel about the issue, honestly. I think there is an advantage to protecting intellectual property in incentifying creation, but I also am a strong proponent of free exchange of information. It's pretty clear to me that the life of copyright is particularly outrageous; I'm not so sure that copyright shouldn't exist at all.
"It's the law" is, of course, not an argument that it is at all compelling.
Why do museums want magazine covers?
For exhibitions of various Ashcan school artists in cases where they can't find the original magazines themselves. John Sloan was the art editor of The Masses, and he used that position to promote socially conscious examples of the sort of work that these artists could produce. The cover art and the inside illustrations and cartoons of The Masses have been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions and at least one major scholarly work. For its unique combination of notable writing and art, it's usually considered the leading "little magazine" of the 20th century. It was shut down by the Wilson Administration in 1917 for articles urging draft resistance, and several of its editors art artists were tried (and acquitted) for sedition.
But how does copyright prevent free exchange of information? Once a book or film or music is published, all the informational content is free and available. The ideas, techniques, etc. are available to anyone who wants to buy a copy, or go to the library.
The only thing that's not freely exchanged is the actual specific form of the work. The words on the page, the scenes, the arrangement.
You're completely free to publish a book about a boy wizard at a wizard academy, you just can't take JK Rowlings words.
I don't think that's actually the case, though in any event I'm only interested in reproducing the magazine covers as a whole, as the artwork standing alone would be lacking in historical context.
Yep. You automatically possess a copyright in anything you create and fix in a medium. Writing counts as creating and publishing on the internet counts as fixing in a medium. The copyright is infringed by the act of copying. Therefore, when you wrote "Do we have copyrights to this stuff? How was our copyrights infringed?" you got a copyright in that written material, and I, through the act of copying it to quote it, infringed that copyright. Were you to sue me, I would have a couple of possible affirmative defenses: fair use, implied license, etc.
My point is simply that copyright infringement is a technical thing and it can be very different morally than stealing (It can also be fairly similar - i.e. mass downloading of copyrighted music or movies).
Taking the PACER case: What Swartz "took" (he did not deprive PACER of them) were legal cases that have no copyright. I guess if you think he stole something it has be PACER's ability to control access to those cases.
I see. They can't find the original artwork?
BTW, Woodrow Wilson was among the worst, if not the worst President ever. Racist, fascist, engaged us in a completely unecessary war. There's literally nothing to like about him.
This theory eliminates entirely any market based incentive for the creation of art. It also undermines any argument anyone might make for drug patents. After all, if I hack Astra-Zeneca's systems, download their formulas and put a knock-off on the market at half price, I haven't actually *taken* anything from them by this definition. They still have their work.
Modern US copyright law is stupid. This is uniquely due to Disney and the Disney lobby in DC. Rational copyright is fundamental to intellectual endeavor, unless you're willing to exit the realm of economic incentives for creative work entirely. (That is to say, punt market theory out the window.)
Free information is only important in certain use cases. Free information about the government and its actions are critical to keeping a check and balance on government behavior. Free information about research history into the last kings of Scotland? Not so much. There is no value on free information per se. Information is a dumb object in the world. The only argument for free access is a use case of actual humans in actual reality.
Perhaps. But nobody is really harmed by not being able to buy a knock-off Mickey Mouse hat.
I'm pretty sure if the artwork was still copyrighted the owners could block you from reproducing the magazine cover as well because it would be derivative of the original artwork.
Yep. Copyright is a good idea (it sure beats the patronage system), but the law as it currently stands is meant to benefit the distributors of creative works far more than the creators and that's stupid. The ancillary laws (the DMCA and parts of the CFAA) are even worse.
Blue-Haired Lawyer: Principal Skinner, "The Happiest Place on Earth" is a registered Disneyland copyright.
Principal Skinner: Oh now, gentlemen, it's just a small school carnival.
Blue-Haired Lawyer: And it's heading for a great big lawsuit. You made a big mistake, Skinner.
Principal Skinner: Well, so did you. You got an ex-Green Beret mad.
[he finger-thrusts the first goon in the Adam's Apple, then kicks the lawyer in the chest; they both go down groaning; as the second goon runs away, Skinner picks up the lawyer's briefcase and flings it into the air; in the distance, it knocks down the goon]
Principal Skinner: Copyright expired.
Couldn't find a video clip.
Disney has used claims over unauthorized use to suppress public discourse about its products and its brand. And when a small publisher gets letter from Dinsey's lawyers, they tend to err on the side of caution. Now, of course, it's Disney's right to be overzealous in protecting their brand. But let's not pretend that it's anything other than a naked power grab. There's no ethical high ground on Disney's part.
The linked Simpsons clip is certainly an unauthorized use. Shame on you Tripon for linking to it!
It's not definitional minutia. It's highly appropriate when the question is whether theft requires actual taking. There's a very blurry line between unauthorized use and theft, and the overwhelming majority of our laws against theft, and the principles behind them, were based on an assumption that taking specifically meant depriving another of one's rightful property. (Common law theft required the unauthorized taking, keeping, or use of another's property with the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the property or its use.)
John owns a DVD copy of Titanic that has some sort of copy protection software. He wants to watch the movie on his tablet, which doesn't have a DVD player. He uses a program to bypass the copy protection, make a non-physical copy, and transfer it to his tablet via his home network. John has just committed an unauthorized use violation; is he guilty of theft?
Bill makes an archival copy of a DVD he owns, which has no copy protection software installed. He watches the DVD in one room while his son watches the archival copy in another room. Is he guilty of theft? How about if he lends the DVD to someone else while still maintaining possession of the archival copy without watching it? How about if he watches the archival copy while it is loaned out?
Ed pays for unlimited data on his smartphone. His carrier charges thirty dollars per month in addition to activate the ability to turn his phone into a tether, allowing him to use the phone's network for his laptop. He chooses not to purchase this service, instead using a free application that uses the USB connection between phone and laptop to piggyback the network. Has he committed theft?
Frank is across the street from a coffee shop that offers free wifi to their customers, but the signal is strong enough that he can pick it up with his tablet. He uses that signal to browse the web. Is he stealing?
Mark has a legitimately owned copy of a computer program, but the DVD has a giant scratch that makes it impossible to read. The company that he purchased it from no longer distributes the software; he downloads a copy from an abandonware site. This is pretty clearly a copyright violation; has he committed theft? Is it theft when the company DOES still distribute the software and wants him to pay $10 for a replacement copy?
What if it's an e-book?
But that's because there's ONE car. What if I pointed my future tech 3d xerox / printing machine at your car and made an exact duplicate of it and drove it away?
COKES around... now I know why I read to the end of the page first... usually.
I wasn't saying you did. I was generally agreeing with you that Swartz's depression is an irrelevant consideration in terms of criticizing the government, and didn't create some additional duty (or blameworthiness for his suicide).
Hell, Disney went toe to toe against the Atlanta baseball franchise, which has been in existence in Atlanta since 1966 and in existence in other forms for 100 years, over "infringement" of their copyright claim to merchandise from the movie "Brave."
A theater producer who didn't pay royalties on producing a George S. Kaufman play tried to excuse himself by saying "After all, it's only a small, insignificant theater."
Kaufman responded: "Then you'll only go to a small, insignificant jail."
Not infringement. In fact you've created your own copyrighted work.
Also not infringement. Although, if the ebook has DRM protection and you have to circumvent it in order to reorder the words, you have probably committed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) violation.
When I say "free," I mean "free," not "obtainable." If you can't access the information without paying for it, it's the opposite of free.
The only thing that's not freely exchanged is the actual specific form of the work. The words on the page, the scenes, the arrangement.
You're completely free to publish a book about a boy wizard at a wizard academy, you just can't take JK Rowlings words.
Even now, you might be able to, if you add or change enough. Set one of her books to music, and that might be enough. But what you're calling the "only thing" is a pretty big thing. You're limiting the spread of information, in that particular form, in favor of the owner's right to exclusivity. I don't think it's a trivial tradeoff.
A lot of music is derivative, and the line between copying and transformation isn't very clear. There's a really cover-friendly system in place, where you can cover a song and pay the license owner a pretty small fee (I think it's around nine cents per song per unit sold), so it isn't as much of an issue as it could be. Assuming I understand the statutory licensing law properly, if you want to record an album of fifteen covers of previously released songs and sell it, you can basically send a letter of notification to the rights-holders and there's nothing they can do to stop you (unless you don't pay them).
Most intellectual property doesn't have that same statutory scheme.
It isn't necessary that law always be compelling; sometimes it's enough if it is only able to compel.
Generally speaking, how's that working out on the copyright front? I don't see a lot of ability to compel.
I'm pretty sure if the artwork was still copyrighted the owners could block you from reproducing the magazine cover as well because it would be derivative of the original artwork.
Not true. If you're interested, the whole question of the copyright status of the artwork in The Masses is dealt with in the book that's appropriately enough titled Art For The Masses (by Rebecca Zurier, Temple Univ. Press, 1988). There's a clear distinction between the covers and the artwork itself, when the covers themselves have gone out of copyright as The Masses covers did long ago. Don't forget that in most cases of magazine illustrations, the artists were hired on a piecework basis, and the entire contents of the magazine were retained by the publishers, barring any special arrangement with the artist.
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Disney has used claims over unauthorized use to suppress public discourse about its products and its brand. And when a small publisher gets letter from Dinsey's lawyers, they tend to err on the side of caution. Now, of course, it's Disney's right to be overzealous in protecting their brand. But let's not pretend that it's anything other than a naked power grab. There's no ethical high ground on Disney's part.
AFAIC the only positive contributions Walt ####### Disney ever made to American culture were (a) hiring Carl Barks; and (b) this. The rest is all just a bunch of crap and pablum, no matter how technically dazzling.
It's also probably safe to assume that there are many of us self-identified liberals who'd like to see that godawful show sent back across the ocean, if for no other reason than the fact that our wives have often forced us to miss key sporting events in order that they might watch it. They should just let us keep Fawlty Towers and the BBC World News and stick the rest of it all in a sack.
I love George S. Kaufman stories.
Drug patents (and patents themselves) are a pretty interesting carve-out, and worthy of their own serious discussion. I think they're sort of necessary because of how expensive it is to develop and produce drugs and push them through trials. You probably wouldn't need to hack anything; if Astra-Zeneca has a patent, it's part of the public record. You just can't use it. Forget selling a knock-off at half-price; you can't even make it or use it yourself without the permission of the patent-holder. The other thing about patents is that they only last for a fairly narrow window. For drugs, because of the long trials, there's usually less than a ten-year window of exclusive sale.
But there's a price (in principle) for this very strong protection; you don't get to keep secrets. Other companies don't need to spend nearly as much energy reverse-engineering stuff and can develop new technology more quickly and effectively.
Modern US copyright law is stupid. This is uniquely due to Disney and the Disney lobby in DC. Rational copyright is fundamental to intellectual endeavor, unless you're willing to exit the realm of economic incentives for creative work entirely. (That is to say, punt market theory out the window.)
14 years was pretty reasonable, I think.
Free information is only important in certain use cases. Free information about the government and its actions are critical to keeping a check and balance on government behavior. Free information about research history into the last kings of Scotland? Not so much. There is no value on free information per se. Information is a dumb object in the world. The only argument for free access is a use case of actual humans in actual reality.
If there's no value in free distribution of information per se, then why not have copyright last indefinitely? Why should Hamlet ever enter the public domain rather than generate continual revenue for Shakespeare's descendants?
Information is really only of value to humanity if shared. I think that is itself a reason to presume that free exchange is a good thing.
Protecting their brand, usurping someone else's brand, whatevah.
Of course. What fraction of words do I have to change? What if I purposefully misspell all the words so that they are phonetically identical?
Also, both Kimba the White Lion, and the Lion King is clearly based on Hamlet.
I am not super clear on the IP status of repurposing compounds that are already in use. I know this is done to extend drug patents, BUT I can't say that it's true for a generic compound.
Maybe you can prevent marketing a competing product that violates the utility in your new patent on an old molecule (say, Asprin as an anti-depressant) BUT you couldn't prevent off-label prescription.
Just this past week, they had a pitch for a Vodka with Hemp infused that actually got invested.
Wha? Material that's in the public domain can absolutely be copied without repercussions. That's what public domain means.
The danger with copying a Penguin edition from front to back is that you might copy copyrighted material generated and owned by Penguin that's present alongside the non-copyrighted material, like a foreword or footnotes. But the rest? You can copy that.
In practice, the general distinction within the US is that photographic 2D representations of public domain 2D works (paintings, etc.) are OK to copy, though if there's a frame, you need to crop that out of your copy. A non-photographic representation of the work (a caricature of the Mona Lisa, etc.) is not OK to copy, since it is itself a separate creative work.
2D representations of public domain 3D works (sculptures, etc.) are not OK to copy, because the choices of lighting and angle and things like that within the 2D representation are themselves creative elements. You can create your own 2D representation of the 3D work, though, as long as the 3D work is itself in the public domain.
Yep. Ask classical musicians & classical ensembles. They'd be dead otherwise.
That might be true if Disney had only extended the copyright on Disney works. But because they lobbied to have the term extended for all of the works created by other people during that same time span, they're holding literally millions of other works out of the public domain for the sake of one mouse.
Want to adapt Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" for the stage at your local community theater? #### you - it wasn't published until 1924! Want to use Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" in your independent film? #### you - it wasn't published until 1926! Want to make a DVD copy of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer" and mail it to your grandfather? #### you - it wasn't published until 1927! And so forth...
The Melville one is particularly ludicrous, in that he died in 1891. His mouldering bones don't need the money generated by his work. His children's children died long ago. Yet the copyright endures.
Eh. Not exactly brilliant =/= godawful. It's well made and has good acting. Hell, any audience not enjoying Maggie Smith deserves the blame for that, not the show.
While the politics of Downton Abbey (the politics of Julian Fellowes) are hardly liberal, they're hardly liberal in the English sense as well. His high Toryism infuses the show with esteem not for the wealthy, but for the nobility. There was no purer Fellowes/Downton villain than season two's Richard Carlisle, a dirty nouveau riche with no appreciation for the ways things should be - a man, for god's sake, with a job.
I don't like it or agree that it should be that way, but from what I can tell (as I said in another post I've been through a lot of these discussions) in practical terms Morty is basically correct.
(and all of the clever arguments that you read in threads like this cut no ice if it actually goes to trial)
EDIT: I'm pretty much on the same page as CB on depression. It's a serious issue in my life, but I can't see it meriting special treatment by the prosecution.
And I too am not fond of overcharging as a negotiating ploy.
Edit after the refresh:
That's descriptive rather than normative-- Morty's collapsing the two. As I understand it, part of the civil disobedience people engage in around these issues is an attempt to call attention to the obsolescence of those interpretations, and their fundamental incongruence with digital modes of distribution, where every act of circulation involves making a copy.
There are some debates that honestly scare me, this is one of them, unauthorized use/copying of stuff that someone else has the copyright to is theft/stealing (in both the statutory and biblical sense), I don't think that reasonable people can disagree on that, and yet we have otherwise reasonable people here disagreeing.
There was no such thing as copyright when the Bible was written, nor for many millennia afterward.
It's not an idle interest to me. In real life I'm a Unix sysadmin and worked for years in image processing. There are all sorts of intellectual property issues in the field.
EDIT: In particular software patents that should never have been granted because of prior art. Do you change the way you do things because of a patent that should never have been granted? (answer: yes. PITA, but unless you plan on going the legal route ... And that's neither cheap nor certain to work)
Of note this morning, apparently Fox and Glee think it's okay to take people's work without asking too. Just so long as it's an "internet nobody."
Because BTF OTP threads never rehash old ground when the debates become topical again.
I think the series has hit the Moonlighting/Cheers problem. They mistook the side bits for the main part, and once they drained the romantic tension between the leads, the side stuff isn't good enough to carry the show, no matter how well the bits are written. ("Let's not make a meal out of this," was a great line in episode three, but there's no emotional weight even in a situation like that.)
Nothing makes me leave faster than endless unresolved romantic tension - that is so, so boring. Maybe I'm unique. That's honestly not the problem with season 3, it's that there's no real overarching theme, IMO.
If a show is stringing out an "unrequited love" story endlessly, it means the target audience of that show is either 1) tweens or 2) women. More often, tween girls.
I assume you mean will they/won't they #### like "Rachel and Ross" and "Buffy and Angel," etc. I'm sure romantic storylines can work on TV, but more often than not, once a writing crew realize that the "tension" of the "chase" is drawing the tweenie girl's eyeballs, that's going to be the next three seasons worth of "drama" for that show.
I thought that the second season far exceeded the first. There are still way too many side plots and stuff, but I thought the development of Edith as a character was very interesting (if a bit out of keeping with her character from the first season).
The Mary/Matthew storyline is incredibly silly. It's far from the central tension of the story. The central tension of the story is how will Downton survive? Mary/Matthew are just a hook to grab people with easily. I roll my eyes anytime there is fake tension with Mary/Matthew. It's so obvious that they end up together that any tension between them is silly and transitory.
Haven't watched all of season 3, so can't comment.
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