Maybe.

It's still immoral, also.

Just stop and read that again.



Wait, is there someone else in this thread that I can't see?

No, patience.

And I think that your humor bone is broken.  Mockery is a high form of wit.  The lowest form of humor is either fart sounds or lawyers.  Hard to say.

BTW, he was definately mocking you.

Ah, you are a lawyer, then.

A copyright lawyer, no less.  No wonder you refuse to listen.  It's impossible to get a educated person to see the truth when his income is dependent upon him not seeing it.

Because, apparently, you don't get it.

Or you do, and simply don't wish to hurt your head with arguments & logic you cannot refute.

You're projecting.  What business are you in, again?

And your kidding yourself if you think that they depend upon copyright to protect their data.  They might swing that stick if that is the only option, but it's a pretty small stick relatively speaking. 

Bradley Manning had direct access to that data, because he had direct access to a secure network node.  While you're asking him about how he did it, ask him how it worked out for him.

For the last time, no they can't!  I'd like to see you try to get a movie theater quality file from the Internet, or anywhere else, without paying for it.  You can't even get a movie theater quality video of B-rate horror movies from the 30's from the internet.  If they could, why wouldn't theaters in Cuba show the first run movies?  Do you think that Cuban communists give a crap about what a capitalist pig company such as Warner Brothers might do?  Do you think that 'international law' crap on the FBI warning has any real force in Cuba (or anywhere else)?  It would be hard for a hacker in China to get even a VHS quality copy of a first run movie before opening weekend.  That is because the production companies use contract law to bind the distributors to tight security rules, and punish them severely if they fail.  Which, BTW, is incrediblely rare.

She has the copyright, she is not elliblge for royalties.  The copyrights of dead artists prevent her from claiming any royalties.  She spent years of her life and more than $50K to produce the movie, and couldn't charge a dime for the finished work because the royalty payments to the holding companies that bought the copyrights to the works of dead artists would have exceeded the total cost of production by a significant margin.  Due to fair use law, she was able to release the work for free, but can never accept a dime in royalties.  How does that encourage artists to create new works?  Are holding companies contributing to the body of work?  If so, how?

It was a pretty good movie, BTW, and she takes donations in bitcoin.

You're right, they wouldn't sue the non-contracted movie theater.  They would sue the party responsible for either the movie's release, claim it against their insurance as a loss, or suck it up.

Which is pretty much what happens now.  The consequences to a movie theater if an employee were to leak the movie are pretty harsh, and only because of contract law.  I can think of only one case in the past 20 years that a first run movie was leaked to the Internet (before it's release on DVD) in any format worthy of watching, and that was due to a pre-release production version being taken home by an employee of the editing company under contract to the production company.  That editing company doesn't exist anymore, and I doubt that editor could even find work in the porn industry.  Theaters are under contract to prevent attendees from bringing in recording devices to even produce those crappy versions that sometimes appear after the opening weekend.

Here it is...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/X-Men-Origins-Wolverine-Torrent-Still-Available-108408.shtml

Wait, a DVD quality movie hits the Internet before opening weekend?  And the movie only managed to pull in $87 million for opening weekend!   However will Warner Brothers ever survive!  Oh, the humanity!

""X-Men Origins: Wolverine" reaped an estimated $87 million, scoring number one at the box office this weekend, according to audience trackers Nielsen EDI. The films totals mark the second-highest opening of the four X-Men films, behind 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand". Despite having the best weekend of any film released, the film did not meet industry projections."

http://www.ticketnews.com/news/X-Men-Origins-Wolverine-has-solid-opening-weekend-at-the-box-office05904066

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38854.msg585369#msg585369

I'm still waiting for a response, Hawker.

No, I'm talking about how courts can exist without explicit state support, and can coexist with it.  Your incomplete knowledge of history notwithstanding, there are a couple dozen other examples of the same in human history.  The history of the tweleve tribes of Israel is another well documented case.  The history of the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy is another well documented case.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Government)  Neither of these actual historical examples consisted of a government (or even a definable state) as we would define one today.

(Iroquois political and diplomatic decisions are made on the local level, and are based on assessments of community consensus. A central government that develops policy and implements it for the people at large is not the Iroquois model of government.)

Yet both had semi-formal courts with judges, appointed by no one at all, unless you consider the Book of Judges to be authoritative in understanding and recording the will of God.  They came to exist, because people had real disputes, and in the absence of a formal resolution (and considering combat is not in the best interests of either party) would agree to seek out a third party trusted by both parties.  This is what is now known as arbitration and is a major part of what courts actually do for "society" or the "free market".  There is a natural human desire for "justice", and it can be seen in children not even old enough to talk.  If you feel that you have been wronged by your sibling, what do you do first?  Do you tell mommy, hit your sibling & take back your toy, or try to argue that you have been wronged?  Surely some will do each of these things, but both running to tell mommy and arguing with your sibling are examples that humans are born with an innate sense of property right, for if we were not then every dispute over a toy would invariablely lead to a fight.  It's this sense of, shall we call it "natural law", that leads a three year old to complain that the other kid took the toy out of his hands, as there is a natural expectation that everyone else should understand the basic law as well, even if they can't express it as such.  Neither courts, nor governments, make this stuff up.  At best, they discover it and encode it into their statutes.  But statutes that don't make sense to the common man are not laws, but simply the deliberate and discriminate use of force to favor one group of citizens over another.

They can't! And that fact has zero to do with IP laws!  Take away every copyright law protecting movies, and it won't change a thing about how first run theaters operate!  Nor would it have much affect on how any other theater operates!

Not for the sake of it.  You seem to believe that because you can't imagine how such films would be paid for, that they couldn't exist.  We have repeatedly pointed out your errors of both logic and fact.  The cognative dissonance must be excrutiating.

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

Well, wikipedia isn't the end all, but it's right there in the section that you linked to, in the preamble...

"The term "common law" originally derives from the reign of Henry II of England, in the 1150s and 1160s. The "common law" was the law that emerged as "common" throughout the realm (as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex)[29] as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England. The doctrine of precedent developed during the 12th and 13th centuries,[30] as the collective judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom and precedent.[31]

And there is this...

"In 1154, Henry II became the first Plantagenet king. Among many achievements, Henry institutionalized common law by creating a unified system of law "common" to the country through incorporating and elevating local custom to the national, ending local control and peculiarities,"

Granted Henry II gets much credit for acting as a unifying force, but Common law was derived from local customary laws that developed independently of the crown, due mostly to a vacuum of judges in the preceding couple centuries.  At most, however, he established the intent to unify the law, he didn't do it.  There were judges that existed before Henry II, that had no backing whatever from the crown.  It is from these local judges that common law received it's base.

I've not the time nor inclination to educate you, so if you really would like to enlighten yourself, I suggest you start with Whatever Happened to Justice by Rich Maybury and The Path of the Law

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I agree with the conclusion if the premise is correct, but it's not.  The producers get paid because of contract law not copyright law.  The same is true for each and every one of the actors.  Not a single major production company depends upon copyright law to do anything for a first run major motion picture.  How the hell do you think that Showtime produces movies and shows that subscribers pay nothing for?  How does Hallmark produce direct-to-cable/direct-to-video tearjerkers?  How does SciFi produce hours upon hours of B-rate movies?  Not one of these producers depends upon copyright law to get paid, they damn near give it all away free.

Ah, no.  That's not my definition of educated.


You're projecting now.  Do you know how many libertarians went through a liberal phase in high school?  (I don't know anyone who went through a conservative "phase" to become anything else)  As for myself, I was a dyed in the wool Green until at least 22.  I was anti-gasoline, and tried to build an electric Doran kit car in high schoo (of course, the lead acid batteries were great for the environment!)l; I was anti-nuclear, and railed against fears and threats that I didn't understand; and I was anti-corporate, because I didn't understand economics.  Now that I understand these subjects, I know that I was full of shit as a kid.  Ask yourself, why do we try to teach math to students, but not economics?

Some of those bounties have mutually exclusive goals, so they cannot all be claimed for the same client.