I think a modified version of a line-item veto, where the president would be able to cross out the offending lines, and then send it back to congress for them to vote on the modified version of the bill could be useful. I think it would be significantly less dangerous than having a normal line-item veto.
e-paper, or electronic paper, is a generic term for any kind of display that doesn't work by emitting light, which the pebble, the popSLATE, and ereaders like the nook or kindle do. What you are describing is e-Ink, which is a specific implementation of a non-light-emitting screen generally used in ereaders.
That being said, it does seem that popSLATE is using a screen like what is used in an ereader, and not like what is used in the pebble.
The thing is, pre Pebble, everyone understood that both terms meant something that didn't use power once an image was displayed. The Pebble is the first product I was aware of that abused the term. Everyone I spoke to thought it was the same clear display used in an ereader when it's actually just similar tech to my retired Palm III.
I don't really think it abuses the term, since it doesn't require a backlight to display things, it is technically correct to call it e-paper. I also remember the people at Pebble discussing the differences between e-Ink and e-paper when it first came out. It's not like they hid how the Pebble's display worked.
Besides, an e-Ink screen would be a horrible experience given how the display gets used in the Pebble watch.
It always seemed purposely misleading to me. Heck they don't even use the term LCD in the technical specifications... which is odd because that's what it actually is. And it did work as I had multiple friends, including several technically minded ones, who were misled by Pebble's terminology and thought it was an ereader-quality display.
Well, it's TPB. They might not have had much of a choice about what ad networks they were allowed to participate in. I mean, if you're running an ad network, you need to appear respectable to get respectable clients. In that case, running ads on a torrent site is the exact opposite of what you want to do.
Most companies are not going to want to be associated with TPB, so most ad networks are not going to want to assocaite with TPB. So, the bottom of the barrel, scummiest ad networks are going to be what it would have to use to keep the lights on.
You can actually use an unactivated copy of Windows 7 for longer by using "slmgr /rearm" in cmd (which needs to be run by right clicking cmd.exe and choosing the "run as administrator" option). You can extend the license 3 times (leading to 120 total days). It should be noted that you can apply it after the temporary licensing has expired.
I'm not sure if this applies to Windows 8 or 8.1, however.
There might be a different documentary/biopic/film, but there is currently Minecraft: The Story of Mojang[1]. It only really covers the first year, however.
I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Mojang recently (within the last year or so) started a service called Realms[1] which is exactly what you mentioned: hosted, invite only Minecraft servers. The only difference is that it's 13.99 a month, although it's cheaper if you do a longer term (3-month or 6-month). It'll let 10 players on at a time, with a 20 player white list. I'm not sure what their current implementation for Realms' backend is, but if it's not on Azure or another cloud provider, moving to Azure would probably cause a decrease in price.
I do agree about improving performance and presentation within the game though. My understanding is that there is a lot of room for improvement.
I think that having an exponentially increasing renewal fee seems like a good idea on the surface, but makes things more complicated than they should be.
In order to do that, you have to have a central authority that actually keeps track of copyrighted works, who owns the rights to it, if they've been extended, if the fees have been paid, etc. On top of that, you need to think about the broke independent author who can't afford to extend the copyright on that 5th year because they got a divorce, got in a car accident, and landed in the hospital. Or the high schooler who wrote a book for NANOWRIMO, self-publishes it, but doesn't know the first thing about copyright law or needing to continually do extensions. The copyright inevitably lapses, and some publisher finds it, likes it, and starts printing copies and selling them because it's in the public domain.
I really, honestly believe that we need to reform copyright, but I also think we need make sure that it doesn't favour people with money and people with access to intimate knowledge of copyright law. I think everyone probably has at least one copyrighted work to their name, so we should make it a goal that just about everyone should be able to understand copyright.
Most countries already have that central authority, so that's not a particularly big hurdle. Note that for most of the history of copyright in the US, it wasn't automatic, and you had to register your work. Automatic copyright for simply creating something didn't happen in the US until 1989. There's still a central authority, as registration is still required for certain additional whatnot.
Of course, "that's how it was" doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. But it's not completely disastrous.
I think most of your objections would be solved by a sort of hybrid system that I hinted at. Don't start the exponential renewal until the 20 year mark. If you haven't learned about the need for renewal by then, you clearly don't need it. Start it at a dollar, so it's a tiny barrier for anyone making any money at year 20.
By year 30 it'll be a thousand dollars, and by year 40 it'll be a million. This will start to scare off small time folks who aren't making a ton of money. Highly profitable properties will be able to afford the fees for a while longer, although year 50 will hit a billion dollars a year, and soon after it'll exceed the GDP of most countries.
So in essence, it breaks down to a 20-year period for even the worst crap, a ~30 year period for obscure but selling works, a 40 year period for properties that continue to be fairly profitable, and maybe a 50 year period for Mickey Mouse class stuff.
I think 20-30 years should be plenty to figure out how profitable something is going to be, so it shouldn't much depend on how much money people had before, but how much they can make from the work. If we consider that a proxy for how valuable the work is to society (a bad proxy to be sure, but perhaps better than nothing) then why not allow profitable works to last longer? Make some money for Uncle Sam too.
Am I right in thinking we can still do automatic copyright assignment, even with your proposed hybrid system? One could just check the registry, and if the work is not present in the registry then it can be assumed to have the 20 year lifespan.
I still think we need to make sure that we keep very good records with this registry, however. I could foresee more instances like we have with Happy Birthday if we don't do a good job of it.
Another good point is that for every book, movie, song, game, etc. that is very popular and keeps getting re-printed, re-published, re-released, or ported to new platforms, there are tens to hundreds of books that do not. Having long copyright terms makes the chances of vast swathes of works stop existing entirely, simply because of the decay of the medium that they are produced and stored on.
Agreed. Yet another related point is that strict copyright regimes can be discriminatory against, say, the visually impaired, when rights holders are neither willing to expend the effort to translate works into a more suitable format nor willing to allow others to do so.
I think that using just the fixed term would be better, just for simplicity's sake. How would it work if you have a collaborative novel? One author dies, the other continues living. What if the author goes missing? Changes their name, moves and leaves no forwarding address? How much effort do you need to put in to track down an author in order to re-print their works, or to tell if they're in the public domain?
It's much easier to just do a standard, fixed term for all copyrights.
