Well you say, "What confirmed ideas or reactors would there be today if not for that one unique man? Zip." So apparently you think that filling Einstein's shoes would take at least one hundred years, which is difficult to tell apart from not filling them at all.

In any case my point still stands: you can claim this but you cannot prove it any more than the other side can prove their claims.

People just don't understand evolution, that's all.

Attractiveness isn't some magical universal quality. What people find attractive is determined by evolution. We find people attractive in ways that our ancestors found them attractive. People who were wired this way survived and prospered. People who found other things attractive died out.

The only trouble is that these ancient hardwired ideals of attractiveness don't necessarily apply well in the modern world. A lot of it is tied up in health. To a very high degree, somebody who's attractive is also healthy. That pretty face or those curvy boobs held the evidence of fewer childhood diseases, of less likely or less dangerous genetic disabilities, of good nutrition, and of good ability to survive. It makes good sense to mate with somebody like that! However in the modern world it has become very easy to avoid childhood diseases and obtain good nutrition, so attractiveness and fitness have somewhat separated.

Still, even though it may not match up with what's best for us as well as it once did, it surely is far from being purely superficial.

You assert that Einstein was unique and nobody else could have filled his shoes. I can assert that Einstein was just a product of his world, and that if he hadn't come up with it, somebody else (or perhaps several somebodies) would have. I can't prove this, but then again neither can you prove yours.

Don't worry about it, the guy you're replying to is clearly just an asshole who feels vastly inferior to you and is trying to make up for it somehow.

But I have no rights beyond what simple possession allows.

That's not really correct. Yes, I'm arguing that there's no document. But I never said that there is no license because you don't get a replacement. Obviously it would be trivial to have a license which does not allow for replacement.

Anyway, my point is that your position and mine appear to be equivalent. I hold that there is no license, you hold that there's some kind of "default" license implied in the law. Same end result, and whether this ephemeral license actually exists doesn't seem very important.

The same is true of format shifting and timeshifting too. Just because it's not codified in the law doesn't mean it's not there. The law provides for fair use, the courts have decided that this is what fair use means, and here we are.

A software EULA is something that's on top of the standard transaction. It is possible, and 100% legal, to buy software without any kind of EULA. Microsoft, Blizzard, and others include an EULA because they wish to restrict your rights further than what the law provides for. They don't have to do it to make the transaction legal, as should be clear from the lack of an EULA in every music CD and movie DVD.

You're right, but that only applies to work with DRM. For non-DRM work the standard stuff still applies even with the DMCA.

And? You acquire rights to a copy of a particular piece of media via transfer of ownership. You own that copy and can use it within the limits of the law. You don't own the copyright which means that you face various restrictions, but you still own that copy.

It is not a non sequitur. The post I originally responded to asked, "Do I pay for a license for the movie/album/etc. meaning I can get a replacement copy for just the production costs of the disc if it breaks or a new format is introduced ?"

There was an implicit contract in place for these musicians too. They knew, or at least should have known, that their work would only be protected for 50 years when they made it. Now we're suddenly giving them a freebie, and why? No good reason that I can see.

In the wider picture, the purpose of copyright is to encourage creation. The theory is that people will be more willing to create works if the state helps protect their ability to profit from it. Under this theory, retroactive copyright extensions are utterly nonsensical. It would potentially make sense to extend copyright for future works, but you can't very well encourage the creation of works in the past!

A little thought shows this to be false. You have the example of a whole bunch of countries in Eastern Europe which gave up enormous amounts of power without either a war or an economic collapse to drive it.

Sounds to me like this is just a battle of semantics at this point. You're calling the implicit rights granted by copyright law a "license", and I'm calling the lack of an explicit piece of paper from the copyright holder "not a license". Same thing in the end. The fundamental fact is that your rights are based on the physical copy you have, there is no right to obtain a second copy "at cost" if your first one gets destroyed, but the law still restricts what you can do with the copy you have.

Good enough?

So where is the license? As far as I can see, all you get is some restrictions, and what you're allowed to do falls out implicitly as the inverse of those restrictions. Still no license in sight. You say a license is a grant of right. What rights are being granted? You simply own a physical object, and can do with it as you wish, as long as you obey the restrictions set forth in the law. This is not a license, any more than the fact that I'm not allowed to stab people with a kitchen knife means that it came with a license.

There's no such thing as an implicit license granted under copyright law. Where does this idea come from? It simply has no similarity with reality.

When you purchase an object which contains copyrighted content, you purchased that object. Full stop, end of story. No license is involved.

You don't need a license to use an object which contains copyrighted content. That's why there is no license in the picture. Not implicit, not explicit. You can do anything you want with that object and with that content so long as it is not forbidden by copyright. You can burn it. You can watch it 50 times in a row while eating hot dogs. You can make seven different copies, one for each day of the week. You can shift it to a different format so you can watch it elsewhere.

What you cannot do is distribute copies on a large scale or carry out a public performance of this content. Unless the copyright holder gives you permission, of course. But all the rest is simply permitted by default, because it's not forbidden. No licenses in sight.

Well, Debian is still worse, because that severely compromised a lot of systems, whereas all Nintendo's checks do is prevent people from running the software they want on hardware they own.

But still, hilarious!