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The "Hague Convention" aims to make this kind of situation the norm. Signing countries agree to enforce foreign judgements. This is law made for the benefit of lawyers and lawyers only.

Free speech? Let's hear what Afghanistan has to say about that. Better start shutting down those servers.
Reverse engineering allowed where you live? Not in the US. Prepare to go to jail.
Software patents are not threatening open source development in your country? Guess what, US patent law now reaches out to you, too.

This is serious. More information is here:
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html

The "Hague Convention", should we fail to stop it, will generally make it mandatory that countries enforce foreign judgements. Don't be too proud of your freedom. Many people wouldn't like your "DMCA" and the US view on software patents introduced into their countries' effective law through the backdoor. More information is here:
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html

Theoretically, your assertion about contracts is valid. The legal term "contract" means "meeting of the minds."

However, in the case of mass-market, boilerplate shrinkwrapped EULAs, there really isn't any meeting of the minds. If I download or purchase software as a consumer, I don't sit across the table from the software publisher's lawyers and hammer out a mutually agreeable resolution. EULAs are considered "contracts of adhesion" -- meaning they're unilateral, take-it-or-leave-it "agreements".

Before shooting your mouth off about "communists", why don't you take a look at a few software EULAs (I've put up a few here).

sincerely,
vergil
Vergil Bushnell

Here's a little summary of the VirtualDub/ Microsoft patent dispute with links to more comprehensive articles.

Sincerely,
vergil
Vergil Bushnell

UCITA is another example. It's no surprise Microsoft fields lobbyists to tout the virtues of UCITA - a law that permits software publishers to sidestep fundamental warranties (like the implied warranty of merchantability, which simply means that a purchased product should act as it is supposed to) and disclaim liability for damages caused by software sold containing known defects.

Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

Last session there was a bill, the Artists' Contribution to American Heritage Act, that would have allowed the picture painting scenario you describe, see Sen. Leahy's letter. It seems likely that it would have applied to software but its not clear how it would be applied to Open Source software because it is unclear how to appraise Open Source software. See the thread on the Union for the Public Domain's mailing list.

In the discussion, according to RMS companies (not individuals) can already claim a credit for donations of proprietary software to FSF (which would presumably "free" it) or other such organization, but that he was not aware of any such situation where that had occured. It would surprise me if no companies would take advantage of this as companies like IBM are donating copyrights on code to FSF. I believe that patches to GCC must have copyright assigned to FSF.

The bill didn't pass, it will probably be reintroduced this session.

Of course, any discussion of taxes and free software would be incomplete w/o mentioning the Hacker Tax Credit.

One in nine South Africans have AIDS. South africa has a budget of no more than $50 per person alotted for healthcare. $20,000 per person per year was the going rate.

It's so true what they say in commercials about how Glaxo is working towards saving lives! I'm so glad I live in a society where 'people matter'.

This treaty is called the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters.

The Hague Convention involves some 47+ member nations, including the U.S., EU and China. The object of the convention is twofold:

1. To make foreign judgements recognizable,

and 2. To make foreign judgements enforceable.

This is extremely significant to the techie community, and anyone concerned with the application of law over the internet. Remember the Godfrey v. Dolenga and related cases, where a British physicist sued foreign nationals under the UK's draconian libel laws (where the burden of proof is, paradoxically, on the defendent to prove his innocence)? Godfrey obtained several favorable verdicts against citizens in the US and Canada, but was (at the time) unable to have those verdicts enforced.

Under the Hague Convention, Godfrey might have been able to not only secure favorable verdicts in the UK, but able to enforce those verdicts on others not ordinarily subject to UK libel law.

That's just one example. The Hague Convention does have one loophole (a fundamental public policy exemption) that nations could use to escape the enforcement of onerous verdicts. Libel cases may be an extreme example.

However, factor in Intellectual Property -- such as the precendence laid down in Germany concerning ISPs and Copyright. The Hague Convention would make it much, much easier to corporations to take advantage of disparities between the intellectual property regimes of different nations, secure favorable verdicts by picking and choosing courts to their advantage, and then enforcing such verdicts in other nations.

Imagine what will happen if the Hague Convention is passed (it's in draft-stage negotiations now) and free-software developers in EU countries which don't currently recognize software/business method patents are suddenly liable for patent infringement due to crappy US-PTO issued patents.

I think it is time that the geek community sat up and started paying attention to international legal developments such as the Hague Convention -- the corporations and industry associations (RIAA, MPAA) sure are. If you want to see what they have to say, check these comments recently submitted to the USPTO about the intellectual property aspects of the Hague Convention.

Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

When UCITA came to my home state, Maryland, I was informed by several consumer/library advocates that lobbyists from Microsoft and AOL were in attendence and vocally in favor of UCITA.

Here is some pro-UCITA propaganda its proponents have put up:

The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)'s UCITA brief; and here are the SIIA's members.

And my all-time favorite, the Business Software Alliance's Why Software Professionals Should Support [UCITA] (And What Will Happen If They Don't.

The BSA consists of Adobe, Apple, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intel ... and, of course, Microsoft. Here is a list of member companies.

Additionally, if you want a good "Who's-Who" on UCITA, check out the comments filed at the Federal Trade Commission's recent conference on High-Tech Warranties.

If you're interested, here is a site I threw up concerning UCITA and EULAs. I wrote a letter to Maryland governor Glendening opposing UCITA, and here's the nebulous reply I got back.

Sincerely,

Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

When UCITA came to my home state, Maryland, I was informed by several consumer/library advocates that lobbyists from Microsoft and AOL were in attendence and vocally in favor of UCITA.

Here is some pro-UCITA propaganda its proponents have put up:

The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)'s UCITA brief; and here are the SIIA's members.

And my all-time favorite, the Business Software Alliance's Why Software Professionals Should Support [UCITA] (And What Will Happen If They Don't.

The BSA consists of Adobe, Apple, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intel ... and, of course, Microsoft. Here is a list of member companies.

Additionally, if you want a good "Who's-Who" on UCITA, check out the comments filed at the Federal Trade Commission's recent conference on High-Tech Warranties.

If you're interested, here is a site I threw up concerning UCITA and EULAs. I wrote a letter to Maryland governor Glendening opposing UCITA, and here's the nebulous reply I got back.

Sincerely,

Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

When UCITA came to my home state, Maryland, I was informed by several consumer/library advocates that lobbyists from Microsoft and AOL were in attendence and vocally in favor of UCITA.

Here is some pro-UCITA propaganda its proponents have put up:

The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)'s UCITA brief; and here are the SIIA's members.

And my all-time favorite, the Business Software Alliance's Why Software Professionals Should Support [UCITA] (And What Will Happen If They Don't.

The BSA consists of Adobe, Apple, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intel ... and, of course, Microsoft. Here is a list of member companies.

Additionally, if you want a good "Who's-Who" on UCITA, check out the comments filed at the Federal Trade Commission's recent conference on High-Tech Warranties.

If you're interested, here is a site I threw up concerning UCITA and EULAs. I wrote a letter to Maryland governor Glendening opposing UCITA, and here's the nebulous reply I got back.

Sincerely,

Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

Consider a corporation that produces an AIDS cure, patents it, and sells it for oo-gobs of money which would make it difficult for those from poorer countries to get a hold of it. Now imagine that somehow you were able to figure out a way that people with the right materials could create the cure on their own without as much cost.

Those of you who are shocked, shocked that an American would even consider such a thing should at least be aware that compulsory licensing is not a new idea. For example, under certain circumstances, someone who invents new medical technology but refuses to license it "to a responsible applicant under reasonable terms" can be compelled to do so by law.

Less tangentially, copyright holders in nondramatic musical works--like, songwriters--are already subject to compulsory licensing in the United States. If you write a song, you get to decide who makes the first recording of it. But once there's a legitimate recording distributed in the US, anyone else can license your song at a rate mandated by law.

See also Bob Kohn's A Primer on the Law of Webcasting and Digital Music Delivery , and, if you're hard core, Title 17 of the US Code. (Compulsory licensing of musical works is covered in chapter 1, section 115.)

The answer is potentially.
I'll try to answer this question in two parts.

1. First off, the US PTO has been soundly criticized for granting patents on software and business methods. While the rest of the world guffaws at the US PTO, the US government has been quietly attempting to "harmonize" patent examining procedures abroad.

For instance, on October 24, 2000, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) drafted a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Jordan concerning IP protection. Here is provision #5 of the MoU:

"Jordan shall take all steps necessary to clarify that the exclusion from patent protection of 'mathematical methods' in Article 4(B) of Jordan's Patent Law does not include such 'methods' as business methods or computer-related inventions."

In other words, the US government is attempting to export its penchant for granting lousy patents to other nations.

2. Second, consider an international convention is currently being negotiated between representatives of 47 nations. The Hague Conference on Private International Law's "Proposed Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters" -- or "Hague Convention" is an attempt to render legal judgements between nations enforceable. If the Hague Convention is ratified by member nations, the following scenario may occur:

Multinational Corporation X (native to Britain) patents a fundamental web standard in the United States, where such patents are allowed. X sues its competitors (who reside in nations that do not tend to grant such patents) in a U.S. court, and under the Hague Convention, is able to make the judgement enforceable in other countries -- even if those other countries do not allow patents on web standards. Imagine what the Hague Convention might do to increase the liability of international Free-Software developers.

The U.S. PTO recently solicited comments from the public about the Hague Convention and its effect on patents and intellectual property. You can read the comments here. My organization also has a page on the Hague Convention here.

I hope that helps answer your question about the enforcement of U.S. patents abroad. Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

Jamie Love and the U.S. Consumer Project on Technology have done an outstanding job at http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html in keeping us informed about the Hague Conference on Private International Law. This page includes a reference to one mailing list on the subject, but you can also follow the news on another more general mailing list at http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/upd-di scuss .

Although it is true that /. readers are unusually well-informed on related issues, this Economist leader does make the important point that the U.S. government has deliberately sought to keep this accord secret from public discussion. Its quiet adoption might well mean an end-run around some freedoms on the Internet that many of us, including libertarians as well as liberals, technology experts as well as common consumers, ought to treasure and debate more openly.

Slashdot is infringing on the colorblindness patent. See the story on MS being sued for racism. So when we can expect the problems? Better yet, when can we expect the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters to be passed so we can start rounding up the colorblind world wide?!

I wouldn't be surprised, esp. since it appears that pagecreators fails to date their EULAs, and feels that is the user's responsibility to look for changed contractual provisions.

If anyone has the full text of the pagecreators EULA that contains the clause attempting to constrain negative reviews, please post it or email it to me. I'm collecting egregious EULAs/ TOS's for a page on UCITA.

Thanks.
Sincerely, Vergil
Vergil Bushnell

This convention will have very profound impact on the 'net (and ecommerce in particular), as jurisdictional matters on the 'net are such a tossup. For more info see the Consumer Project on Technology's page on the Hague Convention.

This convention will have very profound impact on the 'net (and ecommerce in particular), as jurisdictional matters on the 'net are such a tossup. For more info see the Consumer Project on Technology's page on the Hague Convention.

Perhaps. However, look at the issue of penalizing expression from the flip side of the coin.

The article appropriately invoked the specter of the AOL-Time Warner merger. In the case of AOL/TW, a single corporate conglomerate will control 1. A considerable array of content and 2. a significant percentage of the U.S. cable infrastructure.

If the FCC/FTC fails to ensure that AOL/TW opens up its pipeline to competing ISP's, the corporation would be in a unique position to selectively discriminate against competing ISP's and content providers.

To better illustrate this the consequences of Closed Access, consider a well-known white paper from Cisco released in 1999 called Controlling Your Network - A Must for Cable Operators.

The Cisco paper includes such gems as this:

Committed access rate (CAR) is an edge-focused QoS mechanism provided by selected Cisco IOS-based network devices. The controlled-access rate capabilities of CAR allow you to specify the user access speed of any given packet by allocating the bandwidth it receives, depending on its IP address, application, precedence, port, or even Media Access Control (MAC) address. For example, if a "push" information service that delivers frequent broadcasts to its subscribers is seen as causing a high amount of undesirable network traffic, you can direct CAR to limit subscriber-access speed to this service. You could restrict the incoming push broadcasts as well as subscribers' outgoing access to the push information site to discourage its use. At the same time, you could promote and offer your own or partner's services with full-speed features to encourage adoption of your services, while increasing network efficiency.

In other words, a cable operator using Cisco's equipment will be able to selectively discriminate what content a consumer can view, slow down content originating from a competing content provider -- in the words of many Open Access proponents, transforming the "information superhighway" into a "digital toll-road."

Even if the ruling mentioned in this post is correct, I believe that the alternative to mandating open access will result in more significant penalties to free expression.

Sincerely,
Vergil

I'm concerned, however, that present and future domain name disputes may be wrongly construed as "typo-squatting," regardless of the intention of the alleged offender. Although the term "typo-squatting" is appropriate in this case -- as the defendant capitalized on common mispellings -- I can see the potential for such a term to devolve into another jingo easily manipulated to trivialize the interests of small website operators regardless of legitimate intent/ fair use; another catchphrase to be leveraged by corporations intent on ammassing valuable domain real-estate.

My concern is magnified by the potential for disparate bargaining power among the parties in such a dispute -- i.e. fan site vs. multinational media conglomerate.

Anyone interested in perusing a compendium of past domain name disputes might want to check out the Consumer Project on Technology's (CPT) page on Selected Domain Name Disputes. This site describes in detail (and links to) relevant decisions made by the arbitrator.

I'm currently on leave from CPT, and will return in several weeks.

Sincerely,
Vergil

I'm concerned, however, that present and future domain name disputes may be wrongly construed as "typo-squatting," regardless of the intention of the alleged offender. Although the term "typo-squatting" is appropriate in this case -- as the defendant capitalized on common mispellings -- I can see the potential for such a term to devolve into another jingo easily manipulated to trivialize the interests of small website operators regardless of legitimate intent/ fair use; another catchphrase to be leveraged by corporations intent on ammassing valuable domain real-estate.

My concern is magnified by the potential for disparate bargaining power among the parties in such a dispute -- i.e. fan site vs. multinational media conglomerate.

Anyone interested in perusing a compendium of past domain name disputes might want to check out the Consumer Project on Technology's (CPT) page on Selected Domain Name Disputes. This site describes in detail (and links to) relevant decisions made by the arbitrator.

I'm currently on leave from CPT, and will return in several weeks.

Sincerely,
Vergil

This and other "expressions of interest" can be viewed on ICANN's website.

Additionally, CPT maintains a website about new tldn's.

- Vergil

Currently, it is difficult for American citizens to obtain copies of publicly funded federal contracts without resorting to the Freedom of Information Act -- a tedious and often inefficient process.

At the start of this campaign (May 1999), we asked two associates attempt to obtain 81 federal contracts that had been listed in the Washington Post by contacting the firms and government agencies involved. They were unable to obtain a copy of a single contract.

We feel that the placing of government contracts on the Internet will shed some much-needed light on the impenetrable, byzantine process of government contracting and restore an element of accountability to the federal government.

Our correspondence with President Clinton and the Office of Management and Budget to date on this topic can be seen on our Government Contracts on the Internet page.

Sincerely,
Vergil Bushnell

Currently, it is difficult for American citizens to obtain copies of publicly funded federal contracts without resorting to the Freedom of Information Act -- a tedious and often inefficient process.

At the start of this campaign (May 1999), we asked two associates attempt to obtain 81 federal contracts that had been listed in the Washington Post by contacting the firms and government agencies involved. They were unable to obtain a copy of a single contract.

We feel that the placing of government contracts on the Internet will shed some much-needed light on the impenetrable, byzantine process of government contracting and restore an element of accountability to the federal government.

Our correspondence with President Clinton and the Office of Management and Budget to date on this topic can be seen on our Government Contracts on the Internet page.

Sincerely,
Vergil Bushnell

The idea of intellectual property evolved as a legal concept to protect the creative efforts of individuals.

The legal justification of the copyright clause is not to protect the creative efforts of individuals. The justification, and purpose of the copyright clause is to provide incentive for creative individuals to produce, not to protect their work. A very crucial difference of philosophy.

Copyright law provides for many different uses which might be incompatable with maximizing the "protection of creative efforts" of an individual, if that were the purpose of copyright law.

For instance, you have the fair use provisions.

Also, there is a Constitutional mandate that copyrights expire. Terms of copyright must be limited.

As another example, you have the right to record and publish your own performances of other people's songs, once they have been initially published, even if they don't want you to. In this case, you would pay a fixed fee. See this reference for more information on how compulsory mechanical licensing works, especially the link to 17 USC Sec 115. The purpose of compulsory mechanical licensing was originally to break up the player-piano-roll monopoly, which isn't much of an issue anymore. These days, it's what allows your band to include a Bob Dylan cover on your album, for instance, even if Bob Dylan happens to hate your band.

The MPAA and RIAA are heavily promoting propaganda that misrepresents the nature and purpose of copyright law. Please don't take their explanations of things at face value.

Check out his Consumer Project on Technology. Includes his opinions on tons of geek issues: patents, privacy, linux, antitrust, etc, and letters and editorials he's written demonstrating them.

CPT's letter to ICANN asking to create new Internet Top Level Domains is available at http://www.cptech.org/ecom/icann/tlds-march1-2000. html This letter contains explanations of each proposed TLD. Sincerely, Vergil Bushnell Consumer Project on Technology

Not true. This is a widespread misconception. This is no more or less legal than taking a GPLed source file, deleting the original copyright notice and inserting a BSD copyright notice.

Here's a quote from US copyright law:

103 (b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.

But wait, there's more. Consider this:

506 (c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice.--Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.

Here's Jamie Love, who seems to be the main person from Ralph Nader's organisation driving discussion of Microsoft, announcing that he's created The Unofficial and unauthorized: Brett Glass is unhappy with the GNU General Public License (GPL) page. The discussion that follows is enlightening. To my knowledge, Brett never *did* create his own page representing his arguments.
--

At this point, it's up to the 50 states to individually ratify the UCITA into state law. So write your state legislator. Snail-mail counts most, short letters with useful arguments are easier for staffers to handle. Basically, (I think) you want to have 'em amend or strike UCC Article 2B. The remote-deactivation provisions will be the most odious and easiest to fight. You can even cite the fact that it will be bad for the commercial software indistry 'cos it'll pressure s/w-dependent businesses to switch to free and homegrown s/w just so they don't have to fear pissing off their s/w vendor.

To find your state legislator: Project Vote-Smart or the Democracy Network.