169316 - A tag: span style="background-color: #66ff66;" multi-line paragraphs /span showed color only on first line

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[William Budell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

This HTML, from a Slashdot page, into which I inserted the <span style...> 
</span> tag listed around the text, displayed that color in the browser only on
the first line: "Your argument, Squarewav, holds water like a sieve. I apologize
in advance for correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling from your initial
posting." instead of over the whole text between the tags.

<TABLE>			<TR><TD BGCOLOR="#CCCCCC">
				<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000">
				<A NAME="4274724"><B>Re:Pirating software is like...</B></A> (Score:4,
Insightful)
				</FONT>
				<BR>by  <A HREF="mailto:mbarnsonNO%40SPAMsisna.com">Doc Hopper</A> (<B><FONT
SIZE="2">[e-mail]</FONT></B>) on Tuesday September 17, @02:07PM
(<A
HREF="//interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40091&amp;cid=4274724">#4274724</A>)

				<BR><FONT SIZE="-1">(<A HREF="//interviews.slashdot.org/~Doc%20Hopper/">User
#59070 Info</A> | <A HREF="http://www.mozilla.org/">http://www.mozilla.org/</A>
| Last Journal: <A
HREF="//interviews.slashdot.org/~Doc%20Hopper/journal/">Monday December 03,
@03:59PM</A>)</FONT> 
			</TD></TR>
			<TR><TD>
				<span style="background-color: #66ff66;">Your argument, Squarewav, holds
water like a sieve.  I apologize in advance for correcting grammar, punctuation,
and spelling from your initial posting.<BR> <BR> <BLOCKQUOTE>If you recorded the
Simpsons, removed the commercials, put in your own ads, and rebroadcast it, is
it theft?</BLOCKQUOTE> <BR> <BR>The answer is a resounding <B>NO</B>.  If you
rebroadcast their material, substituting your own ads, you have profited by
infringing copyright.  Motive in copyright infringment cases is very, very
important.  If you do not profit from infringement, the violation is not as
serious as if you gain profit.  Additionally, profitting from copyright
infringement leaves you liable for damages equal to or greater than the profit
you gained by infringing someone else's copyright.<br> <BR>It's not theft.  It
is copyright infringement.  They are two dramatically different things, although
the major software and media companies would have you believe otherwise.<p> <BR>
<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE>[Let's assume] you owned a furniture store and wanted to sell
Lazyboy chairs, but you didn't want to pay for them.  So you made your own
chair, that looks exactly the same, and then put a lazyboy logo on it.  [You
then] sold it for next to nothing; is [this] theft?</BLOCKQUOTE> <BR> <BR>Again,
you are incorrect.  If you produce goods similar to, or in many cases as
identical to (in any case where patent, trademark, or copyright do not apply),
someone else's and place your own trademark upon it, you have done nothing
wrong.  If, however, you place another's trademark upon it (implying that it was
produced by the other manufacturer), you are guilty of trademark infringement. 
Alternatively, if you use a patented invention and do not pay patents to the
patentor, you are liable for patent infringement claims.  Similarly, if you
duplicate a copyright work, you are not guilty of stealing from the author; you
are guilty of infringing upon his right to control copying of his work.<BR>
<BR>The only reasons one could proffer the arguments above, that I can see, is
1) simply lack of education regarding U.S. law.  I am not a lawyer, but I do
believe I have a sound understanding of laws where they affect my day-to-day
life.  There are also 2) those paid to have that viewpoint.  Hilary Rosen and
others are paid part to promote these views of copyright infringement as theft.
 To promote an alternative view disagrees with the corporate agenda, and this
disagreement would most likely eliminate their sources of income.<p> <BR>
<BR>The fundamental problem with the thinking comes about because of the nature
of what we're dealing with.  Information is trivially reproduced, even when
spoken.  I suggest you study the history of copyright, to fully understand the
nature of the laws.  Today, we have a society where such information can be
reproduced for (effectively) free.  It's my personal opinion that Copyright is a
doomed concept.  However, we have not come up with a suitable reward yet for
authorship to promote the science and arts that is not Copyright.  Until we do,
we will be stuck with this system that so obviously maps so poorly to
reality.<BR> <BR>There are certainly cases where the line between copyright
infringement and theft is very blurred.  For instance, if one breaks into a
computer system and makes copies of information that were never intended to be
made public.  One has obviously violated copyright in that case, since U.S. law
regards all authorship as copyrighted.  Is it theft?  In that case, I don't
know; just as "breaking and entering" is considered "breaking and entering"
(vandalism and trespass, if you prefer), if you don't steal anything for
entering, but instead copy important documents, you've not stolen the documents,
but made copies in violation of the wishes and reasonable expectation of the
holder. The company or individual never intended to release the information to
the public for profit (the point of copyright), the information was reasonably
expected to remain private, and consent for this action was implicitly denied.
In that regard, information violation seems more analogous to rape than theft:
one has expressly violated the wishes of the holder of the information, taken
nothing from them, but used them in a way inconsistent with their will.
Copyright infringement on released goods, however, is similar to using a hooker
for her intended purpose, but refusing to pay her. One has no implied contract,
the other does. The penalties for rape are spelled out in the law, and include
government-sanctioned prison time. The penalties for not paying your prostitute
are the same as for not paying any service person: if your bill is not paid, you
are sent to a collection agency, which then may take you to court to seek
damages. It is (often) not treated the same as theft, since the "goods" (a
service) are intangible, you have not deprived anyone of anything except time
invested (which has value, but is again intangible and cannot be stolen) and
potential profits. In some cases, particularly where the one infringed upon
believes the intent was to defraud (once again, fraud law, not theft), they may
seek criminal remedies. Most don't, though, because by so doing they are
depriving themselves of a potential customer, getting bad press, and preventing
the infringer from quickly paying the damages by depriving him/her of income.

Note that the paragraph above is entirely my opinion, and not really part of my
initial refutation. I simply think that most software companies and authors
would do well to remember that they simply sell their time for money. Their
"product" is a service, and our current model of copyright attempts to treat
information as a tangible good, which it is not. Those prepared to acknowledge
this fact (as Microsoft seems to be doing with their license renewal services)
will probably do OK as the economy transforms to take advantage of new
realities. Those who insist on treating intangible as tangible will eventually
go out of business as realists (the customers) begin to treat it as the
intangible, inherently value-less thing it is.

A few links for you to peruse:
 


    * This is far more of a rant on why copyright is bad law than the history of
copyright, but still worth a read. [http://www.wipout.net/essays/0412christy.htm]

    * A useful timeline and overview of U.S. copyright law. It's useful to note
that copyright was initially designed to prevent authors from attempting to
enforce their rights to a particular piece of work interminably. Copyright was
made to allow works to enter the public domain, not prevent them from doing so.
A very, very important distinction we'd do well to remember in this age of 100+
year copyrights. [http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html]



Fundamentally, it's a thorny issue with a whole lot of ramifications. Those who
attempt to cast copyright infringement as a black and white case of theft are
intentionally misleading you as to what is going on. It is its own legal domain
with its own remedies and penalties, entirely aside from traditional laws
regarding property theft. There is no such thing as "intellectual property":
there are patents, trademarks, and copyrights which give rights to works based
upon a well-established but sorely broken legal framework.</span><P>
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Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
Putting a tag around text to color it or the background behind the text should
color the whole region or text the tag surrounds (unless we're not using that
tag anymore, in which case I'd like to learn that).

Comment 1

[Niklas Dougherty]

HTML spec:

<!ELEMENT SPAN - - (%inline;)*         -- generic language/style container -->

But you have several block level elements within the span, such as p and
blockquote. This is illegal, why the span should be ignored.

Better is to set <td style=background-color: #66ff66"> instead of trying to
illegally span the entire section.

Comment 2

[Chris Lyon]

->INVALID (as per comment #1)