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Comment Re:workshop (Score 1) 229

Also Steam sells Origin games and EA games with their always on line requirement

But if there's an online requirement for those games, and you don't have a persistent internet connection you're not going to be buying those games right? Even if you buy them at Wal-Mart, you won't be able to play them.

It's not Steam's fault that EA and Origin have those always online requirements.

Comment Re:workshop (Score 1) 229

OK. My friend's daughter. She has 3-4 games on her Steam account, one gifted by her father and the others gifted by me.

Five dollars. You can deposit five dollars into her Steam wallet right now and let her buy an indie game.

She's too young for a credit card, but not too young to build things for the Steam workshop

No credit card needed.

Comment Re:Look at previous disasters (Score 1) 350

The most local radio stations in Santa Cruz are the university station which is weak and an AM station which is literally in the middle of a slough at sea level.

Now I live in Kelseyville, which has three radio stations I get clearly, but all of them are repeated and I wouldn't count on 'em.

Comment Re:Tired of this from valve (Score 1) 229

Wait, you left this anonymous comment? Because that was really fucking douchey. I assumed, since it was an anonymous comment, that comment was a reply from the same person who left this comment.

Now yeah, I did fail to put the comment together correctly — I failed to include the anonymous comment that would have made it make sense — but you failed to log in for just one comment you made in the thread.

So everything you said was factual, but it was not clear, because it wasn't clear that you said all of it.

Comment Re:Idiotic (Score 5, Informative) 591

How many prison sentences have been reversed after the last appeal was over ?

Quite a few. Like when new exculpatory evidence comes to light, like someone else confessing, or recanting the testimony that led to the conviction, or new or improved technologies can determine innocence.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, from 1973 until today, 152 people have been exonerated after being sentenced to death. Unfortunately, many of them were executed before being exonerated.
Without the death sentence, many more innocents would be alive.

Comment Extension laws extend existing copyrights (Score 1) 301

The term used to be life of author plus 50 years, and I think that was in effect when the document was written, so copyright has probably expired already.

Any extension of the copyright term that becomes law extends the copyright term of all works whose copyright still subsists as of the date the extension becomes effective. This is the approach the United States adopted in the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This U.S. law was a response to an even broader European Union law that restored copyright in works that had already entered the public domain. The EU copyright term directive had as its goal harmonizing not only the copyright term but also the set of copryighted works: if a work was under copyright in any member state, the copyright was restored in all. And at the time, Germany already had the longest copyright term of life plus 70 years.

Comment Fair use differs from country to country (Score 1) 301

Fair use differs from country to country. The Berne Convention allows limits on the scope of copyright that do "not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author" but does not require such limits. This means fair use in Germany may have a scope far smaller than that of fair use in the United States.

Comment Re:There ARE other kinds of values. Movies!=money. (Score 1) 301

Movies, like books, are primarily works of CULTURE AND ART AND STORYTELLING - and neither of those can ultimately belong to one person or a group of persons any more than the works of Shakespeare or the Bible or the Greek myths do.

That's because the Greek poets, the apostles, and William Shakespeare died more than 70 years ago. For example, translations of the Bible into modern language are still copyrighted.

Someone can own a block of wood with a Mona Lisa painted on it - but no one can own Mona Lisa no more than anyone can own the letter 'A'.

As you go on to explain, someone could own the exclusive right to make more blocks of wood with a Mona Lisa painted on it. Had current law applied then, this exclusive right would have expired at the end of 1589.

So we have laws to try to make sure that at least some people pay for what they willingly experience.

And pay for what they not-so-willingly experience. The music publishers get a cut of the revenue of grocery stores that play music, for example.

people will demand more than just a "recording of two people fucking for money".

But does that explain pseudo-amateur porn films such as 1 Night in Paris? What was Ms. Hilton really famous for before that film?

Comment Legislative extension of the copyright term (Score 1) 301

Just wait a year and then there REALLY won't be an issue.

That's what people thought in the mid-1990s until the European Union extended the copyright term by twenty years from the Berne minimum of 50 years after the end of the year in which the last surviving author dies to a longer term of 70 years after the end of the same year.

Comment Labor market doesn't accommodate all kids (Score 2) 229

We made plenty of money when we were young doing things like mowing grass and shoveling snow.

The demand for such services is limited. What steps should a child take to ensure that all the lawns on his block aren't already being mowed either by a resident or by another child on the block? And in winter, how should a child cope with the neighbor who runs a gasoline-powered snow thrower up and down the whole block for free out of 1. altruism and 2. wanting to walk to the bus stop without having to dodge cars in the street? (I am said neighbor.)

Comment Months to download a movie (Score 1) 293

DVD and Blu-ray are where fiber and cable aren't. If the only Internet providers serving you are satellite and cellular, you'll still have to drive somewhere to find a place to connect to the Internet without having to wait months for the cap on your home connection to recharge enough to download a purchased movie. Or is coverage of rural areas in Norway dramatically better than in the United States and Canada?

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