It's saying that because out-of-copyright materials are not protected by copyright, they can be re-printed for a lot less. When Amazon adds mark-ups, they can add more to out-of-copyright products and still undercut copyright protected works, making them more valuable even if there is a limited market.

So this is what the study shows: Amazon prefers to sell non-copyright works. Also, Amazon is a good indicator of availability of all works. Also, Paul J. Heald seems to have a lot more talent for weasel words like "seem to" than critical thinking.

There are piles of better ways to show the problems with copyright - this is not one of them.

-the NSA is literally threatening journalists with prosecution for espionage for doing their jobs.

That is not "freedom of the press" - that is distributing classified information. Do you know how many reporters spend time in jail for refusing to identify a source? They have freedom, but they are not immune to prosecution.

Just like Rosa Parks did, Snowden broke the law. He is going to be punished, and anyone who keeps spreading the information and is also under the jurisdiction of federal prosecution will be punished, muzzled, or whatever else they can do. Even if the information is already available on every web site on the internet - that doesn't make it legal to distribute, and it doesn't automatically declassify it.

And the NSA can threaten all they want - until someone is arrested, this means nothing. When someone is arrested, it will boil down to one simple question - did that person share classified information? Argue what you want about what should happen, but an illegal act will result in a conviction.

The only way to keep convictions from happening is to keep pressure on all branches of government - and not just from the American people, but from all of the governments who have been spied on - by NSA and GCHQ. Then maybe you will get a response like "our bad - everyone but Snowden is forgiven."

Just where exactly is the line you draw where journalists can break laws without repercussion? Disagreeing with the government? Breaking into your house for dirt? Disobeying a court order? Leaking classified information? Wiretapping and hacking into cell phones? Or is it just whether you agree or disagree with the information found needing to be public?

I'm not taking sides here - just pointing out what is true. If the law requires a minimal standard of "prejudicial to the U.S. interest" then maybe it is the law itself that is wrong.

Don't let it be lost on you that the author has an axe to grind because his first book was forfeited to the US - and has a second book documenting that forfeiture that he wants you to buy. The messenger's personal stake doesn't change facts - but it does cast doubt on anything outside of raw facts - especially this being an opinion piece.

Here is the spark for the piece, apparently:

The conservative Republican Rep. Peter King of New York recently uncorked the genie that journalists fear most, by calling for a crackdown on anyone who gives air time to Edward Snowden and like-minded leakers.

So a Republican representative, typically with a perpetual plank for expanding government overreach, called for a crackdown. Which he, not being in the Executive branch, cannot do anything about. He is asking for people who broke the law to be punished, and obviously taking the side of the Administration in doing so. What has this actually changed? Nothing. Maybe if someone in the Administration had done it instead, or publically agreed, or if there were a number of Representatives and/or Senators who did this as a block, or any number of scenarios outside of an elected official pandering to his voters, this might mean something.

Your conclusion is the most disturbing part. Mainstream MSM media do not cover important news - they publish whatever will get clicks or views. They are not "the press" - they are an information business model with journalist credentials. This has been true about nearly every bit of news of significance since the dawn of the internet, when you could know what news was not being reported.

It is not self-censorship due to threats, because the lack of reporting happened before Rep. King mouthed off. The obvious conclusion here is that newsies are letting the Guardian be the source of actual leaks, non-mainstream media report on those sources, and MSM follows up with news about the "hunt for the traitor" - which really sells to Americans. Perhaps MSM is aware that releasing confidential material is a crime, and are self-censoring because of that. I'm okay with that, because of the whole not committing a crime thing.

The obvious way around such self-censorship in the interest of self-preservation is to leak to someone outside of the US (check), preferably a friendly nation (check), with preliminary teasers in American media announcing leaks to come but no specifics (check). This would have succeeded without the internet - it's just so much faster with.

You don't love 3D. If you did you would be fascinated by Viewmaster for more than 5 minutes. You would also see the obvious catch 22 - if you love it, but you don't buy the toys to play with it, who is going to make content for it?

If you love 3D, you would realize that there are way more than "Avatar and a few cartoons" available. Lord of the rings and The Hobbit, obviously, along with "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away", "The Great Gatsby", "Prometheus" (which wasn't a great film, but if you love 3D it certainly qualified as entertainment), "Underworld: Awakening", Hugo, and yes, piles of "cartoons" or as I like to call them, the perfect format for 3D. Integrating people with FX has been troublesome for me - Avatar was hard to watch with real people and objects interspersed. I like all or nothing with CGI, because there is no boundary effect. For that reason, the typically well done Pixar movies are great 3D. They are entertaining, and they rarely pull a 3D only gag, because so many parents are going to see it in 2D with their pack of kids because of the ticket prices.

I didn't go into documentaries - Satchurated: Live in Montreal featuring Joe Satriani is an exception to the idiotic 3D concert idea, especially because of its mastering with 7.1 sound. If you truly appreciate performing arts, seeing someone who goes beyond singing adds a whole new dimension, literally, to their talent. For the same reason I would probably skip Peter Gabriel: New Blood - Live in London 3D because there is little value add in watching a singer, whose sound production is internal.

And that's just BluRay - there are lots more not on BluRay, if you really loved 3D. Not counting 2D films changed to 3D in post-production - to me those do not exist.

I have at least one 3D device, and as rarely as I use it, I'm still fascinated by it. I don't have a 3D TV because I missed out on the 3 months between where they were available, and where they came with smart, internet connected everything, which I do NOT want. But I am supporting the format. I have at least two Anaglyph movies. One documentary in Cyan/Magenta, and Coraline with an oddball Magenta/Green that really works for the movie (Trioscopic anaglyph). With the right color temperature settings, even DVD quality, on HDTV, looks great in anaglyph.

You are the reason 3D isn't taking off - if you really liked it you would be part of the niche market. That makes me think you really don't like it as much as you think you do. Which, if true, is equally a reason why you are the problem. A product that people want, but don't buy, is a very expensive flop.

And I don't see any support for "fleecing the uninformed" - what could you possibly tell me that would make me re-consider purchasing a 3D device? Or regret buying 3D tickets? I admit that watching a 3D conversion movie is going to make some people feel taken, but after Alice in Wonderland I think most people who actually care about 3d quality know to look for the "filmed in 3D" qualifier.

Finally, for computer monitors where more processing power is available, head-tracking such as the LG DX2500 can adjust the image as you move, making 3D better. Parallax barrier offers glasses-free viewing. But despite all of the new tech, it's still the same hack as the Viewmaster.

You're not talking about 3D - you're talking about a completely different technology which is impossible at the consumer level. 3D has roots back to the 1950's anaglyph, and ultimately back to the early days of stereoscopic viewing.

When the next generation hits, marketing will distinguish it from 3D by calling it something different - maybe holographic, even if it isn't a true hologram.

3D has always been a hack, but if you want it to work better someone has to invent the next generation - so get inventing.

No, the over the air rabbit ears HDTV that I don't have to pay monthly for. That is free to me, and the cost is advertising.

At this point, the consumer sees cable or satellite TV service as something you pay for - not to defray advertising costs, but to have a range of 200+ channels to choose from. You pay the man in the middle for convenience. People are not buying ad-free TV service because it does not exist outside of specific premium channels, where that's exactly what you buy - on top of the service.

GP point still stands - if you buy a service unrelated to media, you should have a right to not suffer advertising that, unless you remove your skeleton, you cannot avoid.

And you object on the triviality that cable companies found out how to milk both ends of the cow? Shame on you. Premium ad-free TV exists, it's just not what you assumed it was.

They need to focus more on addressing the root causes.

Note, you used the plural "causes". One of those causes is pure crazy - paranoia, schizophrenia, or even temporary insanity like many drugs including bath salts can instill.

There is no cure for crazy, at least not yet. And there will never be a cure for the type of temporary insanity that suddenly wells up into a blind rage like in the movie "Falling Down".

Until you reach every person on the planet who is at risk, you can't cover all of the root causes. And that requires a huge surveillance system - the kind that only exists in the show about the guy with the big computer jacked into all of the city's surveillance systems.

Focusing more will just mean money spent in a different direction.

Do you even know what you are asking for? All it takes is one rogue block of people to decide, taliban style, that they want to make a statement, and there goes your airplane. You are asking for world peace - a total solution to every angry person's reason for disagreeing with any other person in a violent manner. It would be nice, but that's not going to happen. Root causes is too vague.

Instead of having an anonymous pre-paid credit card that was purchased at a particular store but not tied to you individually, they now have an account number that identifies you as well as you can be identified.

Thanks to money laundering laws and things like Check21 where it's all done electronically, you might as well put your name on every IP packet. It would be easier to find you by your check than figure out which John Smith you are.

Pre-paid still gets processed by the issuer, so you need a processing company other than MC/Visa.

No.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is a tie among the Constitution, the Laws (aka Congress) and treaties (aka Congress). Break a federal law, and your argument goes out the window, since the supreme laws of the land include the one you broke. Of course, if you have Congress on your side, you have the advantage.

You don't, and it's very unlikely that you will.

Executive orders and such don't matter, or if they do it's because Congress made executive orders effectively have the force of law, and the Constitution is clear that executive power exists, but isn't really clear on what it is. In this case your Supreme Court may decide - but this is an unlikely scenario.

Finally, unless you have some reasonable suspicion that spying has taken place - and not that you stand a good chance of being caught in the NSA dragnet at some point, statistically speaking - you aren't even going to get to the point of a subpoena challenge.

Extremely unlikely, though not completely impossible.

That's why they wrote apps to lower availability. The anti-fragility thing is a cover invented since the last time the story hit slashdot.

Their availability is in the higher range of reasonable, as a result of making the simians more powerful. Obviously they work hard at staying within the agile metrics, no matter how much time and money it takes.

Umm, "rudeness" by definition is "practicing a different set of values."

Rudeness to me is starting anything, anything at all, with "umm" or similar.

It is a construct from modern comedies, where the speaker, and the audience, know the speaker is correct. In this forum, you have no such certainty, unless you are ignorant enough to assume you are correct in all things. Already, your attitude toward what is rude is in question, no matter your point. Keep a civil tongue in your head and it will serve you well. Fail to, and you will serve it many times over.

Forgive me if I ignore your point - if it is valid, someone will make it without the antecedant gutteral.

And you are making the opposite assumption. There is no conclusion, and it is not obvious.

All it takes is the appearance of legitimacy, and the NSA has to pursue Snowden. It can't confirm some parts and say the rest are lies, because everything so far has been at least a half-truth, even to Congress. It can't disclaim everything because some are corroborated by NSA statements. If it says nothing is true, Congress is going to start asking, then what is true?

NSA has no choice but to discredit the source, so it doesn't have to defend anything released so far. So there is no conclusion. It could be made up, and it could be completely true.

And, Snowden started this off by saying he stole stuff, and then traveled to China. That's an automatic espionage charge right there, regardless of whether anything is true.

Snowden puts the government logos on some slides, and that makes it completely true? Are you daft? No of course not, but you are not leaving any room for an open mind, to evaluate each bit of information as being *potentially* true. We will never know if these were implemented, or are just plans that were scrapped.

No one will make the government confess, and to change course will be an admission of wrongdoing. It won't take anything less than a supreme court decision to make this stop, at least in its current form. So unless you have standing to sue in some fashion, taking these at face value gains you nothing.

I am not making the claim that these *were* fabricated, or modified. I am only pointing out that your reply jumps to a conclusion, probably a sort of confirmation bias. To disregard another *possibility* because it does not match your understanding of the world is deliberate ignorance.

Jesus Christ, it's like the science idiots were right all along.

What've we left? Buggery? Geocentrism? Non man made global warming? Jesus Mary and Joseph cooked into toast?

  Have we at the least found the fecking ark?

I see your point, as you design HTML (or whatever generates the HTML server side), images, and scripts as one whole product. The page works consistently, and if something needs fixed, it could be in the page, or css, or image, or script. It is a whole as a product, as a creation, as a science or useful art.

What happens is this - a user grabs your free distribution, and bundles a zip file you can unzip and overwrite the original files with a new theme. As you said, bundling files in one zip does not make everything GPL.

Your images are not being modified, your code is not modified, and only the on-disk version of your distribution is modified. That is not a derivative work. The end result is not as you intended, and your bug fixes may break the theme. But you have no responsibility to ensure patches are compatible with third parties. And you are providing something that end users can modify, if they like, as long as they follow the license terms.

If you are drawing from a database that the users can change, your output is not always going to match what you coded. The resulting HTML contains both your contributions, and the users' content modifications. So the HTML container that gets sent to a browser, along with the dynamic content, CANNOT be considered covered by the GPL unless you only serve static HTML that the user never changes.

In other words, I can understand the "work as a whole" argument. But the license, and the law, and everything except peoples' individual philosophies say this is legit.

The FSF has a philosophy about freedom, which includes the freedom to replace CSS, JS, and images, with drop-in replacements. This is consistent. If the user can change text that gets served up, why can't they change an image which gets served up?

You are right, HTML is a container. And the zip file example is a great one, because inclusion does not make something GPL licensed just because everything else is. It could make it unclear what is covered, unless you put the extra files in a non-free section of the zip or otherwise demarcate the two. Why is HTML a special container that makes everything in it covered by the GPL, when a ZIP does not behave that way, and you explicitly coded the HTML content to be dynamic?

I don't think you understand. "don't develop code for them" is not possible when your product is a website, which uses separate files for script, images, and styling. It is not embedded, and the images can be replaced with ones that have the same name, and possibly dimensions, without changing one bit of your code.

The scripts can be replaced with others of the same name. Unless you are using inline styles, your CSS can be replaced, all without violating any copyright.

Just download this package, unzip it over your existing install, and enjoy, after paying me money.

That was my point, but I'll continue beating this horse a bit more.

This is the core of the whole issue here. Firefox can't be distributed with alterations, so you get the proprietary parts, including the name, replaced with IceWeasel. Mozilla doesn't have a legal claim other than stop using our proprietary name. For a Joomla or WordPress theme, they don't have that protection, because you have a theme *for* the website outside of the GPL protected bits, and the rest of the package is still legally GPL compliant.

You chose to develop for a platform where you don't have a choice. WordPress has chosen to restrict what people can do in places where WordPress does have control, but it's not in whether to develop a split licensed model.

If I make free software that looks terrible, and someone else pretties it up, complies with the terms of the license, and manages to sell a product, good for them.

This is really no different from the debates around proprietary blobs in open source. Some people want freedom as a matter of principle. Some people want it for simplicity, so that you know any drop-in replacement is distributable.

And of course there are those who simply don't want to keep track of who has which rights - and let's not forget those who post code with no license, thinking it is public domain.

I don't see a problem here. Especially when someone can take a free thing and add enough value to it, without writing code, that people are willing to buy a free product.

WordPress has decided to enforce their philosophy by restricting people who contribute a product that, some can argue, enhances WordPress. And restrict them from interacting with the WordPress community. That is a difficult situation, to restrict contributors because what they contribute isn't free.

If these people are only selling interoperable components, WordPress would have no teeth, and could only object in text. But the only power they have is to restrict outside interactions, which may boost popularity or use of their products.

Joomla actively welcomes outside sellers, going on the other side of the fence. I think the point is, if Joomla is apparently okay with it, why do you take the position that Joomla is wrong?