You guys have it all backwards the fact that it's a $4 textbook should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the issue was not "gouging" by textbook manufacturers as some are insinuating. The price of the book was well within the purchase ability of anybody who wanted one.

If the book was $400, you guys would complain that piracy is justified because it's gouging. If it's $4 you complain it's justified because it's trifling.

In all seriousness, Back when I first went into science and engineering about 20 years ago, I thought it was because it was an ethical pursuit with basically honest and noble people.. unlike, say, finance or lawyering. I am not exaggerating nor trolling when I say that more than a decade of reading the lamest possible pseudophilosophical justification of copyright infringement in slashdot fora have well beaten that naivete out of me.

Honestly, how is this crap even slightly insightful when he starts with an absolute statement that is trivially disprovable with any number of european and antipodean examples?

Note that his claim isn't a nuanced on that gun bans don't work everywhere.. it's some a rant claim that they work precisely nowhere, which is self-evidently false.

"fucking retarded?" fucking retarded is making a claim that " gun bans have NEVER worked and will NEVER work" that is self-evidently false and acting like a blowhard in your cock-sure wrongness.

of course, i'm sure you'll now play games with what your definition of "work" is, but it doesn't matter. reasonable people know you're full of it.

somebody who cannot afford $500 on a phone should not be buying a $500 phone with effectively high interest rate payments spread over 2-3 years.

For some reason, developers are going to flock to build cheap games for this substandard performing platform. Furthermore, gamers are going to use this for some reason because...

This thing has cue:cat scale flop written all over it. We won't hear about it again after the media hype dies down, as, simply, except for people who find that they can repurpose the hardware, nobody will buy the thing.

/ just like linux on the desktop.

where exactly is your regression analysis showing those ads 'just don't work?' data please, or your comments are just so much wishful thinking / pseudo internet expertism.

/ nevertheless "+5, insightful" on slashdot, apparently :(

I follow a simple rule: as soon as somebody uses the term "fiat currency", i stop paying attention to them just like i stop paying attention to people who use terms like "libs" or "personal lord and savior."

Double Bullshit, karma-whore.

Of course, there are plenty of problems for which excel is not suitable, such as when the data sets get too large. However, for quite a few other real world problems, it is far more than adequate. Anyway, this is slashdot so note how this was sold as an "Excel error" when clearly it was an operator error.

forgive me for responding to an AC, but what an absolutely dumb response you wrote.

there are clear standards for 'fair use'. You can read about them at
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html

your "you want your stuff public" argument is bullshit. everything in a bookstore, movie theater, etc is "public." This doesn't automatically give the right for others to republish those things, in their entirety, for profit, as google does. your claim of "absolute control" is bullshit. i never claimed there should be - i specifically referenced fair use, which is the mechanism by which creators and rightsholders dont have "absolute control."

However, I contend that what google is doing is pretty much as close as you get to "absolute thievery" - total republishing for money. so, this in my view is not some trivial marginal case at the limits of fair use. in many ways, as far as the sites are concerned, its probably about as infringing as you can get.

or, if not, i'd like to hear some argument why not without the special pleading legally nonsensical "you want your stuff public?" casuistic schtick.

and what's more (to reply to my own post), google's profitability is FAR from irrelevant.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html

great. but i'm not talking about the snippets. i'm talking about the mechanism in google and elsewhere where you can see essentially complete copies of the webpages. have you even read the original article? moreover, do you think i can make such a reasoned objection (which you may or may not agree with) without knowing how search engines work?

No, there is nothing whatsoever in my post in which I claim or insinuate that slashdot is illegal. Google republishes as much as the entirety of websites for profit and without commentary.

Read this page:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html

Slashdot takes small portions of articles for the purpose of commentary, review, and education (and/or journalism). Its use generally have little to no effect upon the potential market. the amounts quoted are modest.

completely different from the google cacheing/republishing situation.

your "posted publicly" claim is bullshit. there is no theory in copyright law in which public performance, publishing, or aviailability somehow invalidate copyright. just because you hear a song on the bus doesn't mean that it's in the public domain or that you can therefore makes CDs of it and start selling it.

"Fair use" is about the recipient (a.k.a. the user, the buyer, the reseller and such terms), and other second and possibly third parties, holding some limits on therights holder's ability to enforce copyright under certain circumstances. Saying Google's actions pass "no test of fair use whatsoever" because they might be opposed by the rights holder, or even cause some objectively verifiable problems for the rights holder, is like saying 'innocent until proven guilty' should be abolished because it doesn't help the state get convictions.

There is a clear four-pronged test of what constitutes fair use in the USA. Please explain to me how google's cachng of entire websites for profit is consistent with any of these. In fact, it very much violates two of them. You've written a long paragraph based on apparently your belief that "fair use" is some abstract concept. it isn't. Read the wikipedia page or wherever you need to go to learn about Fair Use 101 and get back to me.

    If your only goal is that the copyright holder be able to act without checks and balances

I never said or insinuated anything remotely like this. Shame on you for suggesting something like this. In fact, quite the opposite--I explicitly referred to fair use, which is a "check and balance" (though that's a horrible word choice) on the use of works.

"Cacheing" in double quotes because I contend it's actually republishing, or at least that the differences between the two are negligible.

You've written a lot of legalistic sounding bullshit without actually having any real understanding of what Fair Use is, it seems.

The Berne treaty has no bearing here. I am specifically asking about the legal theory, perfesser, under which you claim it is legal for google to do what it does - republish the content of entire websites for money without the creator's permission.. inside the USA, if you prefer to keep the discussion simple.

So, you are all for copyright as long as it has no teeth whatsoever and is just some purely symbolic aetherial concept, have I got that right? Also, you effectively favor it only for large entities that can take the time to patrol.. you know.. the whole internet.

copyright without enforcement is like talking about a god or ghost who has no effect on the real world. it's a violation of occam's razor and an absurdity.

did you even read my post?

caching is not linking, for one.

for fuck's sake these idiot ACs today.

"Don't post your information publicly if you don't want search engines to find it."

Irrelevant.

"Copyright holders have always had the burden of protecting their work."

Bollocks. Try opening "hawguy's house of CD-R copy musc" on a street corner The police will shut you down without any intervention from the rightsholders as you are engaging in criminal copyright infringement.

Your "should theaters" argument here is braindead. The correct question should be "should cinemas that consistently play movies that they have no rights to to paying customers be shut down?" and the answer is clearly yes.

I've read two spectacularly poor responses to my post so far. Yours was slightly less stupid than the previous one, but I nevertheless shudder of what awaits me below.