As I've said before, Copyright is an obsolete concept that no longer benefits society, and needs to be abolished entirely.
The whole concept that Piracy is somehow stealing is utterly ridiculous. The kind of bullshit only senior citizens can be hoodwinked into believing, and even that only with considerable effort.
Hollywood is a cesspool of greedy pigs who are bitching up a storm because their industry is finally being disrupted by technology -- something very long overdue.
If someone enjoys a show, or book, or movie, or other creative work, they are free to donate to the appropriate parties -- but to force such payment, specially before the content is even evaluated, is fucking insane. Why the hell has society put of with this asinine nonsense for so long? HOW THE FUCK did the copyright system even ever get started in the first place!?
When Kim Dotcom released his first album a few months ago, I choose to pay for it, only after listening to it all day and deciding that it was worth my money. This "voting with the pocketbook" is what makes the most sense. I expect that, before my lifetime is over, people will look back on this era as a dark-age. I imagine grandparents explaining to children how College Textbooks used to cost money and how people had to pay for a movie before they even saw it.
FUCK COPYRIGHT. Burn it to the fucking ground. The Copyright system is a lot like debt-collectors, it only continues to operate because people keep paying. The sooner we all stop paying for content, the quicker the system will go away.
If you value free information and open-source theology, please stop paying for content. If we all stopped paying for content tomorrow, then the debate would be over a hell of a lot quicker.
I'm sure Kurt Sutter would make plenty of money if he would collect donations from people instead of spew hatred towards Google, the single greatest company the world has ever seen. Google has done more for the world than a million Kurt Sutter's could ever do.
Ah, the RMS model of economics, "this is free but you are allowed to attempt to charge for it, so long as you tell your customers that they can have it for free. By the way I have a $1M grant from the MacArthur foundation, another $1M from the Takeda foundation, and tenure at MIT, I don't need money".
>> "I'm sure Kurt Sutter would make plenty of money if he would collect donations"
You're essentially saying that an entire industry should beg for it's money rather than be paid a fair price for it's efforts. I find that a disgusting point of view.
> As I've said before, Copyright is an obsolete concept that no longer benefits society, and needs to be abolished entirely.
Why? So big companies can steal everything?
Copyright is actually fine. If the author wants to lock it down, that is their right. Sorry.
The big issue with copyright is the term. We need to put this back to something sane like 10 or 20 years. I'd even be willing to have some form of ballooning payment in order to keep copyright over time in order to get Disney off of everybody's back (ie. first 10 years free without registration--next 10 free with registration--payment doubles every 10 years after that).
Copyright is an obsolete concept that is no longer beneficial to society, and needs to be abolished entirely.
I expect this to happen in my lifetime, and people will look back on these days as a dark-ages where information was controlled and entertainment was not on a donation-only basis.
Copyright is like debt-collectors, the system only continues to operate because people keep paying. The sooner we all stop paying for content, the quicker the system will go away.
So you're willing to do your work on a donation-only basis then? Have fun paying the rent, raising kids, getting health care, and saving for retirement.
"So you're willing to do your work on a donation-only basis then?"
I don't see why anyone wouldn't be, provided the donations were sufficient. Of course, that is unfortunately unlikely to be the case with the current setup for a number of reasons.
That's what I meant. I've done open source work on a donation-only basis before. I ended up with stuff that was used by tens of thousands of people and ended up earning the cost of a pizza and a six pack. You can't make a living in sub-Saharan Africa off that kind of economics.
There have been artists that have made money off donations before -- Trent Reznor and Radiohead come to mind -- but these are huge artists. If they release something on a donation basis and 0.00001% of people donate, they do pretty well. Only a tiny fraction of the top 1% of artists can do this.
I think we're agreed on this point. Uncoordinated donations aren't a real solution at all - that top 1% doesn't really need money to keep producing anyway (not that I begrudge them it!).
Existing approaches to Coordinated donations (KickStarter/IndieGoGo) do better than uncoordinated but not better enough.
I didn't really expect you to disagree, was just trying to clarify.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Fuck software patents... Absolutely.
Copyright... Not so much. That is actually useful. Open source and free software would not work without copyright law.
Copyright only triggers when you copy somebody else's work, I.e. a specific expression of an idea.
Patents trigger when you merely happen to have the same idea.
> Copyright... Not so much. That is actually useful. Open source and free software would not work without copyright law.
Not true at all. Copyleft licenses as currently written wouldn't work without copyright law; all-permissive licenses like MIT and BSD would become the default state. I'll happily take that trade, and several folks at the FSF and other FOSS organizations are on record saying the same.
I am not a lawyer, but even even MIT/BSD licenses only work because of copyright granting the originators the right to release under any license and restrict certain things, such as liability, usage of the originators name, etc.
The "first" NPA is 201, and from there the first assigned NXXes are 200, 202 and so on. 201-201 is unavailable. (According to the latest LERG update I have.)
>He made a dozen trips to U.S. Bank because they wouldn't give him more than $30,000 at a time.
This is illegal. Checking accounts are legally known as "Demand Deposit Accounts," and you are allowed to show up (at any time) and demand as much money as you have available, in cash, and the banks are absolutely obligated to deliver. They cannot close their doors without first paying you, even if you show up moments before closing trying to withdraw millions of dollars. (They are, however, allowed to stay open late, if needed, should an armored car delivery be required.)
From the Federal Reserve's Consumer Compliance Handbook, section II, Regulation CC ("Availability of Funds and Collection of Checks"), pp 11-12:
Some small financial institutions do not keep cash on
their premises and do not offer cash withdrawal services
to their customers. Others limit the amount of cash on
their premises, for reasons related to bonding, and as a
result reserve the right to limit the amount of cash a
customer may with draw on a given day or to require advance
notice for large cash withdrawals. Nothing in the
regulation is intended to prohibit these practices if
they are applied uniformly and are based on security,
operating, or bonding requirements and if the policy is
not dependent on the length of time the funds have been
in the customer’s account, as long as the permissible
hold has expired. However, the regulation does not
authorize such policies if they are otherwise prohibited
by statutory, regulatory, or common law.
In other words: Unless they're violating some technicality in the law (probably a state or local law), it's probably entirely legal. Probably safest to talk to an attorney before coming to any conclusions on the matter.
I dunno about the legality of this or not, but banks absolutely will refuse to give you over a certain amount in cash at any given time unless you notify them ahead of time of your withdrawal. They don't actually keep that much cash on hand. If you go to your local bank and try to take out $20k chances are they'll tell you here's $10k, come back in two days for the rest and call us ahead of time next time.
