[NMLUG] Re: legal music downloads?

[slavik914 at mrbrklyn.com (Steve Milo)]

In the context of everything else the Constitution is designed to protect 
(individual), it is not wrong.
Authors and inventors, not corporations and businesses.
Granted, by law a corporation is considered an individual but as you see it 
explicitly states 'Authors and Inventors'.
The fact is that the focus of what that phrase means is too fixated 
on 'limited times'.  I believe it is safe to assume that fixation stems from 
corporations and their laywers abusing the system to 'protect their vested 
interest'.
The intent is to protect not only creators and inventors, but citizens of 
this country.  Thats why that document has 'All men are created equal' in its 
opening remarks.  The europeans screwed this up with their 'constitution' by 
stating 'all nations are created equal', but thats besides this point.

What modern day software company's are seeking to do, and it is more relevant 
today than it was in decades past, are trying (somewhat successfully 
unfortunatly) to put consumers (citizens) in a position where they relinquish 
their individual rights.  Essentially do what the government in the ussr and 
the germans during WW2 tried to do.

Microsoft announced its search engine can now search individual hard drives 
(how is it that within 10 years microsoft has managed to brainwash so many 
people into thinking something like this is a good thing?)
Apple is suing RealNetworks for innovating a new app that can play RN music 
instead of Apple.  This is essentially what happened in the mid 90's, all the 
innovative company's were litigated out of existence.

How does any of this have anything to do with national security?
It is right in your own backyard.  Everyone walks on eggshells due to fear of 
being litigated for innovating.  How so?  EULA's and patended software.
You cant deconstruct what you purchase to make it more secure, you have no 
clue what is going on behind the scenes of your software.  When someone comes 
along and asks you what something does, you give them a completely abstract 
answer which the person posing the question wont fully understand.  
Essentially walking around 'pretending' like you know what your talking 
about, but not really knowing what is going on. This goes back to you not 
having a clue as to what is going on in the software you are using.

This is not only the dumbing down of the end user but the dumbing down of the 
person who is supposed to know the software and hardware, the 'computer 
scientist'.  All in the name of software corporations working to garuantee a 
profit, minimize competition and essentially put the fear of the US 
Government in everyones hearts (see just about every case where a software 
corporation has been in legal trouble for the last 10 years).

All I can say to this is get with the program, if you are too lazy or dont 
know how to get around using propietary software pack it up and change your 
profession.

Steve M

On Sat, 31 Jul 2004 14:02:51 -0600, John Fleck wrote
> On Sat, 2004-07-31 at 13:29, Steve Milo wrote:
> > It appears that many of you fail to realize that copyright is designed to
> > protect the consumer.
> 
> This is simply wrong. The constitution is explicit on this point - 
> the purpose of copyright is to encourage individuals to produce intellectual
> works by giving them control over, and therefore the opportunity to
> profit from, those works: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful
> Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
> exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". It could
> be argued that the "limited times" bit has been rather abused in recent
> decades (see the Eldred case), but the intent protecting creators, 
> not consumers, is black letter law.
> 
> Cheers,
> John
> 
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