Re: "C Unleashed" OCR PDF on RapidShare, MegaUpload, P2P, etc.

[Guest]

An electronic version of something (a song, a book, a movie) is
nothing more than a number. Numbers are infinite. A single number can
be interpreted in infinite ways. You want me to not have the number
because a single interprentation of it was your work. Then you dare to
call me a thief for your own inability to realize this? If you're
already aware, then what is your excuse?

This is pure sophistry.
the money in your bank account is "just a number". Could I have your
bank account number and pin?

 

[Kenny McCormack]

What a dumb comment.

If those several posters have expressed anything, it's that your
opinions concerning topicality have no greater weight than their
opinions. Expressing the view that POSIX C and other dialects
of C are on-topic is a far cry from "anything goes".

Indeed. Quite.

But note also that, in fact, "anything" does "go" here.
What doesn't "go" is things that are just a smidge off the mark - i.e.,
real world C. And pity on the man who uses the "s-word" in public.

But clearly, the regs think that software patents, dirty underwear,
apartment troubles, copyright issues, and the differences between UK and
US spelling, etc - these are all OK to discuss here. Oh, and
Shakespeare. He's always an on-topic thing to discuss.

P.S. I think I did just now realize what the "3rd on-topic item" is.
This is the list of things that CLC does know about:
1) (How not to) prototype main()
2) (Not) casting the return value of malloc()
3) (Not) using gets()

 

[vippstar]

Taking this reductionist bullshit further:

Bullshit? You and Martin Ambuhl haste to insult the person you reply
to. You did not explain why it's bullshit. It is not. I was trying to
make a point that intellectual property can't be enforced.

Your life is nothing more than some chemical reactions, putting a stop to which
carries no more moral significance than snuffing out a candle.

Irrelevant. Do you realize, while being a 'reductionist' I also stayed
relevant to what was being discussed, while you did not?

Thanks for playing intellectual.

You have said nothing relevant to what was being discussed. Therefore,
I don't know exactly how to reply to you. Maybe that's what you do;
you reply in such manner that the other person has nothing to reply
back. You add some insults, and you call it a day.

You appear to care more for your usenet persona than you care for the
argument at hand. Ambuhl too; that's why you'll insult others.
I *DON'T* care about your rights when you don't respect mine. The law
of intellectual property can't be properly enforced. It is only
abused, and that was the reason it was created in the first place.

 

[vippstar]

This is pure sophistry.
the money in your bank account is "just a number". Could I have your
bank account number and pin?

Let's assume my account number is 42, would you like me to call you a
thief because that number appears somewhere in your code? In essence,
it's the same thing; Using the bank to get my money with my
information is the 'interprentation' of the number. Ie how you'll use
this number. I wouldn't you to interpret the number as such. I would
not care if you had used that number differently. What does that mean?
It means I can't sue you because you used the number 42 somewhere. It
means I can't sue you because you had some number in your hard drive.
It means intellectual property can't be properly enforced, which was
the point I was trying to raise.

Intellectual property is only being abused.

 

[Joachim Schmitz]

Mark McIntyre wrote:
[snip]

I believe we can agree that you own the right to permit copies of
your work. Indeed you can sell that right, and selling is by
definition the transfer of ownership in exchange for something.

I hope we can therefore concur that the granting of a right to make
a copy is your property. Depriving you of those rights is depriving
you of your property, and clearly its being done on a permanent
basis. QED.

Where is Keith (and others) pointing out that this is off-topic?

No need, as apparently you happily take that place

There is no mention of theft or rights or anything else from this
thread in any of the C standards documents.

Therefore, this thread should be killed.

Be my guest.

 

[Richard]

An electronic version of something (a song, a book, a movie) is
nothing more than a number. Numbers are infinite. A single number can
be interpreted in infinite ways. You want me to not have the number
because a single interprentation of it was your work. Then you dare to
call me a thief for your own inability to realize this? If you're
already aware, then what is your excuse?

So you're a pirate and thief eh?

I guess you can use your infinite random sequence "theory" to excuse
some of your coding errors but it wont wash with anyone who knows
instantly what you are trying to cover up.

 

[Richard]

Anyone who really lived by creating anything would know that
is nothing but the excuse of a thief: "I have a right to steal what you have
created, and don't call my theft what it is."

Don't be silly. Stealing involves taking something such that the
original owner doesn't have it any more. The concept simply doesn't
apply to digital works. You're thinking of `copyright infringement',
which is an entirely different beast.

People usually describe copyright (or patent) infringement as `theft' or
`stealing' as part of an emotional argument intended to sway the woolly-
thinking.

-- [mdw], programmer and musician

Are you crazy?

You think someone infiltrating a vault and photocopying research papers
is NOT stealing????????????????????????

 

[Joachim Schmitz]

Mark McIntyre wrote:
[snip]

I believe we can agree that you own the right to permit copies of
your work. Indeed you can sell that right, and selling is by
definition the transfer of ownership in exchange for something.

I hope we can therefore concur that the granting of a right to make
a copy is your property. Depriving you of those rights is depriving
you of your property, and clearly its being done on a permanent
basis. QED.

Where is Keith (and others) pointing out that this is off-topic?

There is no mention of theft or rights or anything else from this
thread in any of the C standards documents.

And this is just wrong (taken from n1256.pdf):
Bibliography

1. ‘‘The C Reference Manual’’ by Dennis M. Ritchie, a version of which was

published in The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis

M. Ritchie, Prentice-Hall, Inc., (1978). Copyright owned by AT&T.



Sure, this isn't in any of the normative parts ...

Also I believe the standards document itself is copyrighted.

 

[stijnvandongen]

You can trivially find one for yourself, but to save you having to
bother, here's one:

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Property+(ownership+right)

Personal property is something you own, and which doesn't fall under
"real property".

I believe we can agree that you own the right to permit copies of your
work.  Indeed you can sell that right, and selling is by definition the
transfer of ownership in exchange for something.

I hope we can therefore concur that the granting of a right to make a
copy is your property. Depriving you of those rights is depriving you of
your property, and clearly its being done on a permanent basis. QED.

I looked at the link above and found no basis for your claims. I
looked
a bit further at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property

and again found no basis for your peculiar use of the words 'property'
and
'theft' in this precise context. Where you write "A person's rights
in a thing are property." it simply sounds unlike anything I have ever
heard in law, but a lot like what the RIAA and MPAA would have you
believe.
How to deal with copying information in this age is a difficult
matter, and
not furthered by stamping it as theft of property.

Stijn

 

[Bartc]

An electronic version of something (a song, a book, a movie) is
nothing more than a number. Numbers are infinite. A single number can
be interpreted in infinite ways. You want me to not have the number
because a single interprentation of it was your work. Then you dare to
call me a thief for your own inability to realize this? If you're
already aware, then what is your excuse?

Naughty images are also just a bunch a numbers. Try telling the police that
though...

If possessing a particular set of numbers can be illegal, that's not that
different from the copyright issue.

 

[Mark Wooding]

Are you crazy?

You think someone infiltrating a vault and photocopying research papers
is NOT stealing????????????????????????

Definitely, yes: I think that someone doing that is not stealing. No
matter how much punctuation you add.

Trespass, copyright infringement, possibly criminal damage depending on
how he or she penetrated the vault in question, all these, and more
maybe; but not theft.

Still, the discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere useful, so I'll
leave it here. Followups to poster.

-- [mdw]

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

Definitely, yes: I think that someone doing that is not stealing. No
matter how much punctuation you add.

Trespass, copyright infringement, possibly criminal damage depending on
how he or she penetrated the vault in question, all these, and more
maybe; but not theft.

So it's basically a question of semantics: what the words mean.

Because the notions of tresspass, copyright infringment, et cetera have ties to
economics. I.e. helping yourself to the fruits of someone's labor without
consent. That's the general concept, under which you have a detailed taxonomy,
like: fraud, breach of contract, armed robbery, shoplifting, copyright
infringment, etc. Okay, so copyright infringment is distinct from shoplifting,
and shoplifting is distinct from armed robbery, which is distinct from
securities fraud, etc.

 

[Richard]

Definitely, yes: I think that someone doing that is not stealing. No
matter how much punctuation you add.

I think you are excusing your own infringements.

Trespass, copyright infringement, possibly criminal damage depending on
how he or she penetrated the vault in question, all these, and more
maybe; but not theft.

Still, the discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere useful, so I'll
leave it here. Followups to poster.

You're playing silly word games. Nothing more. Nothing less. My example
above is most certainly stealing which ever way you want to try and
mealy mouth your way out of it.

Those place COST money, time and materials to develop. You stealing the
end product is just that. Stealing.

-- [mdw]

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

I think you are excusing your own infringements.

You are now trolling ad hominem. Defending ``copyright infringnment is not
stealing'' does not imply that one is guilty of copyright infringment. The
claim ``copyright infringment is not stealing'' does not even imply ``copyright
infringment is not wrong''.

But yes, in general, it does seem that some people who do in fact infringe
experience a cognitive dissonance: the uncomfortable sensation from being
unable to reconcile their self-image as an honest, moral individual against
their actions. Often, the answer to this dilemma is to declare that copying
is not wrong. The reasoning is like this: ``I'm a good person'', and so ``what
I do is good'', and thus ``Copying is something I do, so it's good'', and
``stealing is bad'', and ``good can't be bad'' so ``copying is not stealing''.

It would be much more sane to just admit that it's stealing and then do it
anyway, as an aggressive, unrestrained expression of an impulse to do as one
pleases.

To be immoral is much better than to be immoral /and/ insane.

If you can't handle doing something wrong without bullshitting yourself that
it's actually not wrong in order to overcome your emotional discomfort, then
maybe you're a weakling who is not fit for wrongdoing.

And actually people know this, and use it to bullshit themselves more, in a
continuation of that argument. ``Not only am I a good person who does nothing
wrong, I am a weakling who is not even fit for wrongdoing. So what I'm doing
cannot possibly be wrongdoing. A wrongdoer wouldn't even have these moral
thoughts, only someone good like me. A bad person wouldn't go through
the trouble of thinking deeply like this to prove that their actions are
right.''

Haha.

 

[Richard]

You are now trolling ad hominem. Defending ``copyright infringnment
is not

No. I think it is theft. It is theft.

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

No. I think it is theft. It is theft.

But ``think'' isn't what you're doing when you accuse someone who disagrees
with your definition of being a thief.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Let me call everyone's attention to the existence of misc.int-property.

I suggest that the odds of anything being resolved here in clc are
remote.

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

You're classically mistaken. You have the right to decide who has a copy
of your work. By making a copy without asking you, the copier has
deprived you the right to decide. Your right to decide has been
permanently removed in the case of the copy in question.

If copies of the work are offered for sale, then an unauthorized copy deprives
the seller of compensation, which is implicit in an exchange that involves the
seller's consent.

It's not the work that is being stolen, but the right to compensation. This
right to compensation is a derivative leveraged instrument, for which the
copyrighted work only serves as a kind of underlying fundamental asset. (The
leverage you get is limited, in practice, by how many copies you can sell while
that work is interesting to the market, and ultimately by statutes that limit
the period of copyright).

People who copy the work without authorization are not depriving the copyright
holder of the fundamental asset itself, but they are interfering with its
value, as well as with the value of the leveraged instruments derived from it.

In securities trading, criminals can manipulate the market so as to deprive the
investor of the value in some asset, or derived instruments, even though the
number of shares held by the investor do not change.

Using leveraged instruments, you can earn money (or lose money) over assets
that you don't actually hold. Someone could manipulate the value of those
assets or those leveraged instruments so that you are more likely to lose.

Stealing is not always about the underlying asset.

 

[Richard]

But ``think'' isn't what you're doing when you accuse someone who disagrees
with your definition of being a thief.

Well, we could play the holier than thou "demand an apology" games, but
its not going to happen. In my experience those that "defend" stealing
of other peoples research do so because its something they routinely
do. Of course they should not be offended by my statement since in their
mind it is NOT stealing.

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

Well, we could play the holier than thou "demand an apology" games, but
its not going to happen. In my experience those that "defend" stealing
of other peoples research do so because its something they routinely
do.

In my experience, accusing other people in the debate of something doesn't lead
to a credible argument against their points.

Anyway, in this case seems to me that Mr. Wooding distinguishes copyright
infringment as an offense that he classifies differently from stealing.

``Not stealing'', by itself, has a broad interpretation. Helping a little old
lady cross the street is ``not stealing''. Beating someone up is ``not
stealing'' either.

Of course they should not be offended by my statement since in their
mind it is NOT stealing.

But you didn't accuse him of stealing; you accused him of infringement:
``I think you are excusing your own infringements.''

He may well be offended by that statement, without having to believe that
infringement is stealing.

Anyway, I didn't say anything about offense; I addressed myself only to the
logical invalidity of your ad-hominem argument. I.e. ``Mark W. is making
wrong statements about copyright infringement because he engages in it.'' is
not /offensive/ to /me/; it just looks like a dumb mode of argument which I do
not accept.