Re: VoIP - patented codecs - question
On Sat, 2003-02-01 at 16:30, Csillag Kristóf wrote: Maybe some of us could use G.723.1 for free (without breaking the law), after all. Perhaps it would be possible to convince MicroTelco to support a free codec? -- Fabian Fagerholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] paniq.net
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:21:26PM -0800, Terry Hancock wrote: A nice collection of arguments, but I'm really uncertain why you're posting it here. Isn't this kind of preaching to the choir? Or did I miss something so that the cluebat needs to be used on me? :-D Grep your debian-devel folder for the string MPlayer (a case-insensitive search turns up even more fun and games). -- G. Branden Robinson| You could wire up a dead rat to a Debian GNU/Linux | DIMM socket and the PC BIOS memory [EMAIL PROTECTED] | test would pass it just fine. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Ethan Benson pgp4fsLu5Yfwz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 01:20:51PM +1300, Philip Charles wrote: On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brandon's arguments are based on the reasoning of the Founding Fathers whineWhose arguments?/whine when they first put together US. Copyright was given by the government to the artist to encourage creations so that the commonwealth would benefit as the work became available without restrictions after a LIMITED time. The deal was to promote growth of science, etc... which benefit us all we'll give you (copy)rights for a limited time after which work became public domain. From the utilitarian viewpoint, I quite agree, and it seems from the above that in the USA copyright was granted for utilitarian reasons and can be changed when circumstances change. I freely admit that my reasoning is predicated on a Lockean contract theory of government. There is no such thing as a government without a set of individuals to participate in it, just like any other social organization. -- G. Branden Robinson|One man's theology is another man's Debian GNU/Linux |belly laugh. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |-- Robert Heinlein http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpeIHjEWvN95.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 02:48:04AM -0600, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote: Thanks for the thoughtful essay. Since you're pulling an RMS you might reconsider using the term intellectual property in the context of combining disparate areas of law (like patents and copyrights). You could have said modern discussions of copyright law above, for example. But this is not to take away from an interesting read. I'm familiar with the essay and am in sympathy with much that RMS has to say about the term intellectual property. I used it because the scope and thrust of my arguments were such that it didn't seem rhetorically economical to digress on the legitimacy of this admittedly popular term. Your point is well taken, however, and a good way to reinforce the transition I am advocating to get about the business of divorcing the concept of property from intangible, nonscarce, intellectual output. For even if I were to be persuasive in the argument at hand, I think only an unstable equilibrium could be achieved, and meritless notions of property would soon distort people's thinking back in the direction of the current oppressive implementation of copyright. -- G. Branden Robinson| The software said it required Debian GNU/Linux | Windows 3.1 or better, so I [EMAIL PROTECTED] | installed Linux. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgptHPTg7ebme.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:03:02AM +, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights[0], adopted by the United Nations in 1948, lists many other rights commonly thought of as natural rights or civil rights. You'll note that the terms copyright, trademark, and patent do not even appear in this document. That's no accident. However, Article 27 contains a part that could easily be interpreted as referring to copyright and patents: (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. I would be happy to see that part removed, obviously. Yes, someone else pointed that out to me in private mail; I carelessly overlooked it, and I'll admit that justifying my arguments in the context of non-U.S. law and tradition was an afterthought. I guess I should just stick my parochial viewpoint and not so hurriedly try to universalize it. :) I however, I do think this observation is not as destructive to my argument as one may at first think. The terms copyright, trademark, and patent really *DON'T* appear in the UDHR -- I wasn't wrong about that. Perhaps we need to be thinking about alternative ways to uphold the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from...scientific, literary or artistic production[s]? Surely existing copyright, trademark, and patent regimes, to say nothing of work-for-hire, paracopyright, and trade secret concepts, are not the only ways to give Article 27 force and meaning. In other words, I don't think it *necessarily* follows from Article 27 that we must have a global oligarchic hegemony of media corporations dictating to us what we shall and shall not read, watch, perceive, write, and share with our fellow human being. -- G. Branden Robinson|I just wanted to see what it looked Debian GNU/Linux |like in a spotlight. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |-- Jim Morrison http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgp7SKNtHvLPn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
You guys have been following up to both lists, when both the headers and body of the original message in this thread explicitly requested to followups to -legal only. Please stop ignoring this. On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 02:13:13PM +1100, Paul Hampson wrote: On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 09:34:13AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: That's begging the question, though. You know, I'm not totally clear on what that phrase means... Begging the question means assuming the truth of that which was to be proven. It's very frequently misused these days, especially by television newscasters in the U.S., to mean something along the lines of that demands that we scrutinize [x]. E.g., the fact that U.N. arms inspectors have found no clear evidence of active WMD programs begs the question, how can Washington expect the world to rally behind a pre-emptive strike to eliminate weapons that may not even exist? But that's incorrect usage. Properly used, begging the question takes no object. It still quite clearly applies to the Bush Administration, though. For example, their stated policy is regime change in Iraq, so they beg the question of whether Iraq does or doesn't have WMDs. They presume and assert that it does even while the question of whether it does is being discussed. The conclusions come before the premise. It's a logical fallacy that has long enjoyed much currency in religious and conservative thinking[1], which is why the U.S. Republican party takes to it like a duck to water. [1] because arguments like it's God's law and that's the way we've always done it do not afford rational scrutiny, being ungrounded, inassailable axioms -- G. Branden Robinson| You could wire up a dead rat to a Debian GNU/Linux | DIMM socket and the PC BIOS memory [EMAIL PROTECTED] | test would pass it just fine. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Ethan Benson
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
[Folloups were set to -legal only; please don't ignore that.] On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:30:38AM -0500, Bob Hilliard wrote: On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 11:16:24PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Now, then, do you think Euclid held a copyright in the _Elements_? Did the apostles of Jesus hold a copyright in the gospels? If so, when did these copyrights expire, or have they? Neither the Ancient Greeks or Romans had copyright provisions in their laws. Anyone was free to copy a work and sell the copies. In both Athens and Rome there were thriving industries based on batteries of slaves copying works for sale. The authors seemed to appreciate the exposure thus given to their ideas. Euclid lived and worked in a Greek culture, under Greek laws. The apostles lived and wrote in predominantly Greek cultures, under Roman Laws. I think you're missing my point. If copyrights are natural rights, then ancient Greeks and Romans who authored creative works had those rights irrespective of whether recognition of those rights was codified in the laws governing them. If copyrights are not natural rights, then where there is no legal codification of such a concept, none can (legally) exist. -- G. Branden Robinson| Yesterday upon the stair, Debian GNU/Linux | I met a man who wasn't there. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | He wasn't there again today, http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | I think he's from the CIA. pgpBy1qKpdQv6.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 07:41:15PM +1100, Paul Hampson wrote: At this point, I looked back at the original email, and I can't see what you're suggest copyright is, if not a right... Neither 'privelege' nor 'responsibility' seemed to appear in your email, and those are the words I immediately associate with things that are not rights I don't think they're appropriate, either. It's an incentive program, like a tax break[1] for buying large, low-mileage vehicles that increase the U.S.'s dependence on foreign petroleum and enrich the large corporations that bankroll the Bush family's political campaigns. [1] http://www.detnews.com/2002/autosinsider/0212/18/c01-38875.htm -- G. Branden Robinson| Debian GNU/Linux | If encryption is outlawed, only [EMAIL PROTECTED] | outlaws will @goH7Ok=q4fDj]Kz?. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpGLEmmxbNvD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 03:44:47PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:30:38AM -0500, Bob Hilliard wrote: Euclid lived and worked in a Greek culture, under Greek laws. The apostles lived and wrote in predominantly Greek cultures, under Roman Laws. I think you're missing my point. If copyrights are natural rights, then ancient Greeks and Romans who authored creative works had those rights irrespective of whether recognition of those rights was codified in the laws governing them. I think I can give a useful example here: the ancient Greeks and Romans also kept slaves. Doing so was acceptable according to their culture and laws, but we still think it was wrong. The difference is precisely that we consider freedom to be a natural right, while copyright is not. Richard Braakman
Re: VoIP - patented codecs - question *** New debian repository - debian-no-patents ???
2003-02-02, v keltezéssel Fabian Fagerholm ezt írta: On Sat, 2003-02-01 at 16:30, Csillag Kristóf wrote: Maybe some of us could use G.723.1 for free (without breaking the law), after all. Perhaps it would be possible to convince MicroTelco to support a free codec? Well...I will try that, but I find it highly inlikely, because there seems to be a close business relationship between Quicknet (the vendor of the 160$ card) and MicroTelco (the provider of the net-phone gateway service). Actually QuickNet seems to own MicroTelco...but I will try, anyway. * * * By now I am pretty sure that software patents simply do not exist here (Hungary). So I see no legal reason that would make it illegal for me to use G.723.1's free software implemantations - such as the one that used to be in OpenH323. I suggest setting up a new debian repository, something like debian-no-patents, for the territorries not bound by software patents. Free software packages, that might infringe some software patents in some contries, but conform the DFSG otherwise, could be uploaded here. Of course people living under laws like the DMCA could not (legally) use this repository, but there are plenty of others who could. What do you think, is this possiple? -- Csillag Kristof [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 11:37:31PM +0200, Richard Braakman wrote: I think I can give a useful example here: the ancient Greeks and Romans also kept slaves. Doing so was acceptable according to their culture and laws, but we still think it was wrong. The difference is precisely that we consider freedom to be a natural right, while copyright is not. So, a natural right is whatever is considered a right according to whatever happen to be the morals of the dominant society of the age, whereas the other type of right is whatever is considered a right (or convenient, or profitable...) according to the laws of the dominant society of the age? ;) Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] This would be a bad time to try out as a lion-tamer.
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 11:49:58AM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: So, a natural right is whatever is considered a right according to whatever happen to be the morals of the dominant society of the age, whereas the other type of right is whatever is considered a right (or convenient, or profitable...) according to the laws of the dominant society of the age? ;) No, you forgot the crucial distinction between this age and that age :-) Richard Braakman
Re: CLUEBAT: copyrights, infringement, violations, and legality
On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 11:49:58AM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: So, a natural right is whatever is considered a right according to whatever happen to be the morals of the dominant society of the age, whereas the other type of right is whatever is considered a right (or convenient, or profitable...) according to the laws of the dominant society of the age? ;) Yes. But most people refuse to realize this because they feel that the societal norms called morals possess a different (usually divine or otherwise religious) origin than the social norms called laws. More simply, a lot of people feel that morals come from God or nature, and laws come from humans. I don't personally share that opinion, but I don't have to persuade everyone else to my perspective on it to achieve success in this particular forum (copyright as a non-right). -- G. Branden Robinson|The basic test of freedom is Debian GNU/Linux |perhaps less in what we are free to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |do than in what we are free not to http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |do. -- Eric Hoffer pgporRN9LV8Sx.pgp Description: PGP signature
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