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_6dD$think they have the right to forbid everyone else from using the word "Apple", even if they have nothing to do with computers or operating systems.

Apple Communications sells broadband. What the hell do you think people will be hooking up to that, tin cans to holler into? There is a clear conflict there.

(what's next, suing McDonald's and Scotsmen for using "Mac"?

Actually, Apple had to pay off McDonald's so they could use "Mac," even though there's no connection between a computer and shitty fast food.

You want to rail against a big corporation being ridiculous with the trademarks, McDonald's is a much better choice. They were actually in a legal battle in Scotland with the centuries-old Clan McDonald over the use of the name, for pretty much anything. Now THAT is being a dick.

~Philly

Hi there Mr Knee, you're a jerk. If by some bizarre accident you click the following link, you will find out that the facts really were in her favor and McDonalds was being evil as usual.

I'm sorry but I think that's a lie.

"I find this quote amusingly relevant:"

You just wanted to try and insult me somehow.

But what you have failed to discuss is that animals have consiousness and self awareness. They feel pain and suffering and yet your solution to less suffering is to inflict more of it.

The only argument you can come up with in favour of it is that shampoo might burn.

I'm quite happy to contend that the primary motivation for pharmacuetical and cosmetic companies is not to benefit humankind but to seprarate it from it's money and that in the ruthless persuit of this goal they are likely to rush products to market that will injure and maybe kill members of the public. As some sort of barrier to this market govts. introduced mandatory animal testing. Yet the system doesn't work. They lie and cheat to get products to market and if the drugs fail in the regulated markets then they you may well find them on sale in India or Malaysia or Mexico. So the people doing the testing, for our "protection" can't even be trusted. Heck they even try to kill us.

"According to 1989 US EPA data, Hoechst Celanese was one of the leading releasers in the USA of known or suspected carcinogens."

YET animal testing is not in and of itself necessary to develop such products. A point which is conceeded and acknowledged by many eminent doctors around the world.

Maybe you missed the quotes so I'll pop one in again and see if you can ignore it once more :

"Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it."

Dr. A. Sabin, 1986, developer of the oral polio vaccine.

We don't need a solution to animal testing.
We just need to stop doing it.

While I'd never bought any of the arguments for vegetarianism before, and I have a hard time imagining giving up red meat, both of these books are written by respected journalists (one a pulitzer prize winner) and both make beef seem scary as hell. Have you analyzed the controversy over the safety of beef at all, and what's your take? Are you worried about e-coli or mad cow? Should we be?

I suppose some people might suggest using this patent against a certain other big, Borg-like corporation that ships millions of JPG-enabled browsers and photo editors, but the patent is so silly that MS's lawyers would (rightly) crush it.

just like to take you up on your point about fast food( junk food) being good for productivity, how much productivity is lost through obesity, and ill health caused by the fast food culture? I don't know the figures but i would guess that it costs western countries a lot of money.

In my opion , and that of the judges in the Mclibel case Mcdonalds aims there adverts purely at young children, ie happy meals, clowns, disney figures. By getting young children eating junk food it becomes a habit, one that would not have formed without this relentless advertising.
all this just makes me glad that the bbc has not been privatised yet.
one more rant , this a bit off topic but, it is not just the advertisers who are getting more extreme in their attempts to brainwash the public, read this and weep.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers..... Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life..... But why would I want to do a thing like that?
says it all really? chose whatever you want but make sure it is what you want , not just what you have been told you want.

In general though, the defining features are an average life expectancy, literacy, and safety above that of a certain level which I can't be bothered to search for. If you look at the figures for South Africa, especially concerning number of people living below the UN defined poverty line, you'll see that this is what most 1st World countries don't have.

It is amazing that people will abhor this kind of a test and then do far worse without even thinking about it.

Every time you buy a cheap product that was made by workers who are put in daily peril of death, you trade a dollar for one-in-a-million chance of killing a worker.

For a real eye-opener that goes far beyone fast-food, read Fast Food Nation (isbn: 0395977894). It's not an easy read, but its quite an eye-opener. A lot of reviews are linked here. Now I understand what some of the protests are about. It makes it hard to go shopping without thinking.

Just because you're right doesn't mean that you aren't going to lose in court. See the McLibel case for a demonstration of this. If someone else has enough money and you don't, then you are almost definitely going to either lose the case, or are going to end up settling out of court because you can't afford to carry on. It's nothing to do with right or wrong.

I'm not claiming that Kazaa are right, but their moving to Vanuatu proves nothing.

Sorry, you've lost me. How is it something to take pride in to not have fast food to buy, or a store with very low prices? You take pride in buying slow food, or paying high prices?

You can't spread falsehoods, but if you stick to the truth McDonald's can't legally touch you.

If only this were true. You may have already read it, but for anybody who hasn't had the chance to read McLibel it's a fascinating investigation into the inadequacies of the British legal system in defamation cases.

Basically two very poor people got sued by McDonalds. These two people said things like "McDonalds food it not nutritous" and "McDonalds beef is grown on land that was previously rainforests". Nothing to dispute there, right?

McDonalds argued that anything with nutrients is nutritous: this definition covered paper, soil, and so on. They also argued that because the forests hadn't received rainfall 365 days a year they were not rainforests.

The judge agreed with this nonsense, ignored the experts brought in by the defendants, and somehow allowed his common sense to slip far enough to rule against the two very poor people.

Telling the truth is not a legal defence. If you have enough money - as McDonalds did - then you get to write your own laws.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Moderators, please do not Not NOT mark a comment "Informative" if it makes a scientific claim without providing any hard links to back it up.

• European Chlorine industry association
• American Chlorine industry association
• an anti-Chlorine lobbying group
• Women's Environmental Network

etc, etc, etc. Don't just spout off random crap that you think you heard once.

Google means never having to say "I don't remember".

You have it competely backwards...think of all of the room currently being used for agriculture to feed livestock that could be reclaimed if more people did not eat meat.

Some counterarguments to your claim, taken from Beyond Beef:

• Seventy percent of all U.S. grain -- and one third of the world's total grain harvest -- is fed to cattle and other livestock.
• U.S. livestock -- mostly cattle -- consumes almost twice as much grain as is eaten by the entire American population
• If worldwide agricultural production were shifted from livestock feed to food grains for direct human consumption, more than a billion people could be fed -- the precise number which currently suffer from hunger and malnourishment.
• Feeding grain to livestock is an extremely wasteful method of producing protein. Feedlot cattle require nine pounds of feed to make one pound of gain. Only 11 percent of the feed goes to produce the beef itself. The rest is burned off as energy in the conversion process, used to maintain normal body functions, absorbed into parts of the cattle that are not eaten -- such as hair or bones -- or excreted.

Energy efficiency isn't normally associated with reasons for becoming a vegan, but it was one of the more influential in convincing me.

Has Microsoft taken away your right to form a militia? Has Pepsi told you what religion to practice? Has Exxon tried to force you to harbor soldiers against your will? Which basic rights have the corporations take away from you? However, I believe you'll be hard pressed to find one. Exactly what rights are looking for?

Well,I don't know about Microsoft, Pepsi, and Exxon, but McDonalds have done so. They have tried to steal the mother of all rights, Free Speech. Go to McSpotlight.org and find out about it - before McDonalds shuts them down.

Yeah, and McDonalds flavors their burgers with dead cows. It's freaky!

According to the article, here's what the suit alledges Aharonian's transgressions are:

"He shamelessly, and oftentimes profanely, attacks [the] United States government, specifically the Patent and Trademark Office, its examiners and various public officials and private citizens," the suit says. "He also purports to be an expert in patent law, though he has no specialized training in the field, has not graduated from any law school, is not admitted to practice before the Patent and Trademark Office and is not authorized to practice law."

Say What? What the hell does attacking the bumblings of the USPTO and have anything to do with patent infringement?

I've met Mr. Aharonian before at a National Academy of Science conference on Intellectual Property, and had the opportunity to read his always entertaining email missives critiquing business method patents. He may be profane at times, but (in my opinion), he is one of the most articulate and analytical opponents of a fundamentally flawed patent system that continues to churn out limited, legally sanctioned monopolies on nebulous, specious and overly-broad business method "inventions" to the detriment of the public domain and true innovation.

I haven't seen the text of the lawsuit. But if the aforementioned article is accurate, it seems that Mr. Aharonian is being targeted by a slap suit (remember the McLibel trial in Britain?). Slap suits are typically frivolous attempts to silence critics of corporate interests by dragging them through an expensive, time-consuming and tortuous labyrinth.

FYI, Here is a recent Wired Magazine article about Aharonian and business method patents.
Aharonian's website is www.bustpatents.com. You can subscribe to his newsletter -- the Internet Patent News Service from this site.

Sincerely,
Vergil

Of course, the best strategy is to always speak the truth.

Is it?

Have you heard about the McLibel case?

The truth is often irrelevant in libel allegations. If you made a statement, however factual, about a multinational corporation, and they threatened to sue you for libel if you didn't retract it, would you be prepared to spend years, and large sums of money, single handledly attempting to prove the allegations against the full force of their lawyers, and facing huge fines if you lost? Or would you just quietly give in?

And could you guarantee to be able to PROVE that everything that you said was true? In a libel case, it's up to you to prove that they are true, not for the prosecution to prove that they are false. In the McLibel case, many of the original statements made by the defendant were proved to be true (as far as the judge was concerned), and non of the others were proved to false. Yet they lost the case.

If you don't want to get sued, the best strategy is normally to not say anything bad, truthful or not, about anyone with more money than you.

"quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her
ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her
identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be
personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her
message simply because they do not like its proponent." Stevens
concluded "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a
pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of
advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of
the majority. "

The obnoxious press licensing law of England, which was also
enforced on the Colonies was due in part to the knowledge that
exposure of the names of printers, writers and distributors would
lessen the circulation of literature critical of the government. The
old seditious libel cases in England show the lengths to which
government had to go to find out who was responsible for books that
were obnoxious to the rulers. John Lilburne was whipped, pilloried
and fined for refusing to answer questions designed to get evidence
to convict him or someone else for the secret distribution of books
in England. Two Puritan Ministers, John Penry and John Udal, were
sentenced to death on charges that they were responsible for writing,
printing or publishing books.

Why does it matter? Who cares if we genetically create better (or customized) people? We choose the sex of chickens by controlling egg temperature, and we have done it for years!

hmm, chickens!=human beings*
Of course many slashdotters hold strange views of the world around them, but equating moral choices about people with agribusiness techniques for increasing commodities (chickens) is towards the more eccentric end of the scale.

This is just another step in our evolution.

I think that somewhere between me and you evolution has forked. Do not panic as the GPL allows for this, one day your offspring will be reabsorbed into the main codebase.

* I am not implying that chickens should not be accorded rights, just that they are not identical with human beings. So any chickens reading this please do not flame me (or throw any eggs).
- Derwen

If the earth could support 12 billion people in 1900 why did it only support 1 billion? You may say it was 'social and political' reasons, but I ask for you to outline how we can change our society or politics.

Population has been on a slow rise for many centuries (since the 'discovery' of agriculture). The (relatively) recent rise in the rate of increase is due to better water/ sanitation/ medicine and some other products of the industrial revolution - particularly transportation of goods to cities and mechanization of agricultural labour. As for how to change our society or politics ....

I hope you guys don't think I'm moralizing. I haven't quite decided whether North America is 'better' or worse with 300 million people or 10. Or the earth, with 6 billion now and 10 billion people in 50 (or is it 100) years.

... as you say, we will soon have 10 or 12 billion people on this planet, with far less clean water or soil available than we have now. There will be no choice but to change so we should do it the best way we can whilst we have free choice in the matter.

You can find a lot of how we might do this in this link (which i've already posted). But you might also like to consider this.
- Derwen

Picketing isn't a bad idea either. Nor is publising (perhaps on a web page, and in the local newspaper) the reasons other might want to also not go to McDonalds (or buy a particular shoe, or brekfast cerial).

Picketing isn't a bad idea either. Nor is publising (perhaps on a web page, and in the local newspaper) the reasons other might want to also not go to McDonalds (or buy a particular shoe, or brekfast cerial).

Ever heard of McLibel? McDonald's tried to silence several protestors using British libel law, which as many of you know is weighted almost entirely in the plaintiff's favor. Most of them knuckled under, but two of them went to court. The case took years, but McDonald's eventually won a judgment.

But, many of the points that the protestors had been making -- in pamphlets seen by a few hundred people -- had now been proven in a court case watched by millions. McDonald's lost big in the court of public opinion -- so big that, when the defendants refused to pay the judgment, McDonald's did not pursue the matter.

Corporations don't threaten or sue because they have a solid case -- they do it because they know most people will be scared off without a fight. They've read their Sun Tzu -- Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

BULLSHIT!

Sorry, I'm not often moved to profanity in a public context, but I simply can't find another word that properly describes this... HORSECRAP! (there, there's another)

In an email published here the Apogee mouthpiece claimed:

Now suppose Duke Nukem Forever finally gets released, and I put a reivew up on my website. The review has a "Duke Nukem Forever" logo

First off, this would be illegal, unless you had prior permission. You cannot use trademarks without the owners permission. That's why we want to give fan sites permission, otherwise they cannot legally use own logos/trademarks and such. Review sites won't be dealing with us, only fan sites.

Which (must controll language) turns out not to be the case. There are lots of situations in which use of a trademark without permission is perfectly permissible. The most obvious is 'fair denominative trademark use', which says that you're allowed to call Duke Nukem Duke Nukem wherever you want -- even if you're calling him a chump.

Geez, don't these people remember the 'Barbie World' fiasco? How about Orbison v 2 live crew? Heck, all you have to do is look at McSpotlight to see how far this reaches

They might also do well to examine the extent of the 'parody' allowance. This one's not as clear as the nominative case, but it allows just about anything when it's upheld. If they really think they can close these first ammendment gaps in the trademark law by appealing to a UCITA license, I'm sure every civil liberties lawyer in the nation stands ready to disabuse them of this notion.

Actually, maybe it's time we make this point so clear they can't overlook it. I've got their site in my cache, the GIMP on my disk, and a restless urge to parody. Come on, some of you must run ISP's. Who's got a free meg and some courage?

-- csh

The Demon precedent is actually interesting, because it says that Demon had no case because they had been served formal notice about the allegedly defamatory messages. In other words, the post had been made-- demon had been notified that it was considered libelous-- the judge decided that once they received the formal notification they were required to act on it. This is quite different than prior restraint, which seems to be happening in this instance. No libel has taken place, there's simply the threat of action should libel take place-- that's what NetBenefit is responding to.

I've got a bunch of links on the Demon case and British libel law:

• The BBC article about the Demon case
• Cyber Rights and Cyber Liberties-- a UK based site with extensive coverage of the Demon case.
• McLibel-- The infamous McDonalds case which brought British libel law to everyone else's attention.

If you take all the US trademarks, and all the Canadian trademarks, and all the Australian trademarks, and all the German trademarks etc etc etc, you'll end up with no names left over at all.

Secondly, some trademark owners take an overbroad view of their ownership. McDonalds is a classic case, who will harass anyone who uses "Mc" in any food related context, even if McDonalds does not and never has used the particular word in question, or even go against a bank for giving out beanie babies to people opening accounts.

Trademarks should not automatically convey ownership of a domain, there should be provisions for previous ownership (EG in the etoy.com case) and in the likelyhood of confusion.

One reason we should be worried is North American 1-800 telephone numbers. When the 1-888 code came out, because the 1-800 code was full, anyone with a 1-800 number was given the option of getting the matching 1-888 number as well, "to avoid confusion". The 1-800 code took 30 years to fill up, the 1-888 code took 2 years.

If you take all the US trademarks, and all the Canadian trademarks, and all the Australian trademarks, and all the German trademarks etc etc etc, you'll end up with no names left over at all.

Secondly, some trademark owners take an overbroad view of their ownership. McDonalds is a classic case, who will harass anyone who uses "Mc" in any food related context, even if McDonalds does not and never has used the particular word in question, or even go against a bank for giving out beanie babies to people opening accounts.

Trademarks should not automatically convey ownership of a domain, there should be provisions for previous ownership (EG in the etoy.com case) and in the likelyhood of confusion.

One reason we should be worried is North American 1-800 telephone numbers. When the 1-888 code came out, because the 1-800 code was full, anyone with a 1-800 number was given the option of getting the matching 1-888 number as well, "to avoid confusion". The 1-800 code took 30 years to fill up, the 1-888 code took 2 years.

The article say that companies will be prohibited from registering their own names under such a domain, but how can that be enforced?

It goes against some very basic laws that give a company the right to control what happens to its name (a la eToys).

Is it necessary? I don't know. I'm certainly sympathetic to the general idea, but I think restriciting domain squatting, multiple TLD registration, and trademark abuse would be the better solution.

Someone commented that it didn't cost the defendents much, because they defended themselves. This may be true in a monetary sense, but spending two years of your life arguing legalities against the best lawyers a multinational like McD's can afford while having no legal training yourself can certainly take its toll.
--

Based on the McLibel case, I'd rather work at Microsoft than McDonalds.

Think about what would happen if Microsoft took a cue from McDonalds. About 90% of the people that post on /. would get nice little legal notices in the mail accusing them of sladering & [verb tense of libel, I don't think libeling is right] Microsoft.

"Flame Microsoft? We'll see you in court."
Even MS hasn't stooped to McD's level yet...

"Many of the protestors in Seattle are - using new technologies like the Net - beginning to do the work of politicians, regulatory agencies, legislators and journalists. Perhaps that's the real message to the WTO and the rest of the world."

This is a valid point. The first time I personally heard the 'net advocated as a tool for social change was in a tent at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival; and it was a refreshing change; yes, computers can be used as tools to bring about social and environmental change; used properly they can be extremely effective for the purpose, despite their (current) exclusivity.

The network that brought the Seattle protests into being started as a meeting of about two dozen people in a London community centre in July 1998; from three groups; Reclaim the Streets, Greenpeace (London) (no connection to Greenpeace International) - a group better known for the McLibel trial and People's Global Action.

We didn't know where it was going, but reckoned that it would be a damn good way of opposing the MAI; to use the global nature of the 'net to provide a global counter to the WTO. We got in touch with groups like the Zapatistas and Karnataka State Farmer's Association in India; and suggested an action on June the 18th 1999; to coincide with the G8 meeting in Koln (in Germany).

As the records show, we managed to get about 43 countries onboard; and there was a good feeling about it; that we'd hit upon a good way of co-ordinating resistance to the WTO; which is why a repeat action was staged in Seattle on November the 30th.

If a popular resistance is to be mounted to the WTO, the our resistance has to be as transnational as capital.

- A London J18 activist, Debian fanatic and regular /.er

"Many of the protestors in Seattle are - using new technologies like the Net - beginning to do the work of politicians, regulatory agencies, legislators and journalists. Perhaps that's the real message to the WTO and the rest of the world."

This is a valid point. The first time I personally heard the 'net advocated as a tool for social change was in a tent at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival; and it was a refreshing change; yes, computers can be used as tools to bring about social and environmental change; used properly they can be extremely effective for the purpose, despite their (current) exclusivity.

The network that brought the Seattle protests into being started as a meeting of about two dozen people in a London community centre in July 1998; from three groups; Reclaim the Streets, Greenpeace (London) (no connection to Greenpeace International) - a group better known for the McLibel trial and People's Global Action.

We didn't know where it was going, but reckoned that it would be a damn good way of opposing the MAI; to use the global nature of the 'net to provide a global counter to the WTO. We got in touch with groups like the Zapatistas and Karnataka State Farmer's Association in India; and suggested an action on June the 18th 1999; to coincide with the G8 meeting in Koln (in Germany).

As the records show, we managed to get about 43 countries onboard; and there was a good feeling about it; that we'd hit upon a good way of co-ordinating resistance to the WTO; which is why a repeat action was staged in Seattle on November the 30th.

If a popular resistance is to be mounted to the WTO, the our resistance has to be as transnational as capital.

- A London J18 activist, Debian fanatic and regular /.er

It sounds like an urban myth, but in this case it actually happened. Here's a
news storywith links to others.
--

Not correct.

The difference is that in the US the author is in the clear unless the plaintiff can prove that the author knew the statement was false and published regardless.

In the UK the burden of proof is reversed: the author has to prove that their statement is true; moreover it is not a defence merely that they had reasonable grounds to believe it at the time.

This of course makes libel very much harder for the author to defend. But trying to prove the truth of their statements did enable the McLibel defendants to force McDonalds to disclose an enormous pile of embarrassing documents.

Other defences are fair comment on a matter of public interest, and certain other exemptions such as parliamentary privilege.

Perhaps under the (IMO ridiculous) systems of conteporary corporate law, IDG has to do things like this to protect its "brand name".

But if a company actually tried to sue someone for infringment in a case like this, they might get their fingers burned. It might not be as spectacular as McLibel, but it's heading in that direction...

Actually the Clan McDonald is having serious problems with some sort of fast food restarurant over this issue. Seems that the fast food place doesn't like having other businesses trade under the name McDolands or even use the prefix "Mc".

Actually the Clan McDonald is having serious problems with some sort of fast food restarurant over this issue. Seems that the fast food place doesn't like having other businesses trade under the name McDolands or even use the prefix "Mc".

It's an and, not an or. It's completely permissible to make true and injurious comments ("Charles Manson is a murderer") or false and non-injurious comments ("Linus Torvalds is from Denmark").

Now I ask you two questions:

1) If the law says that what I've done is illegal, should I go to jail even though what I've said has been in the publics intrest?

To be clear, under U.S. law, you don't go to jail for D/S/L; it's a tort, not a crime. (A "tort" is something you do that someone can sue you for and collect damages if they win. Sometimes the same behavior can be both a crime and a tort; for example, homicide is a crime and wrongful death is a tort. Committing D/S/L isn't a crime, however, unless you commit D/S/L as part of some other crime.)

In the corporate practices example you give, you wouldn't be held liable if your statements were true, even though they may have been injurious. Note that corporations are often reluctant to sue for defamation, etc., even when they have actually been defamed, as the lawsuit often serves to publicize the defamatory statement, and because the defendant may be able to obtain through discovery documents which would further embarrass the corporation. (I understand that this is what happened when McDonalds sued some pamphleteers in the UK under the UK's more restrictive libel laws.)

2) If the law says that this particular scenario is legal, what is the differance between it and the Xircon case?

Presumably in the Xircon case the statements are alleged to be false, as opposed to your example where the statements are true.

Also note that employees of a company have a fiduciary duty to act in the company's best interest, though subject to public policy limitations (e.g., employees are generally not bound to keep quiet if the company is burying bodies in the basement). As I understand the Xircom poster asserted he was an employee, Xircom doubtless brought a claim against him for breach of fiduciary duty as well, which also supported the issuance of the subpoena.

Now for the final wizbang point of my post. The more we limit peoples right to speak out negativley (noise) an equal amount of important (signal) speech will be lost.

I'm not sure this proposition is self-evident in the case of the "right" to make false and injurious statements. Would you care to elaborate?

A side=note: those interested in a "traditional" UK libel trial, with all sorts of bizarre twists and turns, could do worse than check out the McSpotlight site. It's a huge site, with not a lot of news for nerds on it, but it does have some clear explanations of the absolute worst-case legal situation (in terms of complication rather than possible penalties): big multinational sues "the little people" and the little people, discovering that you can't get Legal Aid (assistance with the costs for legal action) for libel and slander cases, opt to defend themselves against a barrage of lawyers -- and achieve at least a partial victory.

I should add that from ouside the US, America is seen as an incredibly litigious country. A common complaint here when reports of a particularly pathetic case turn up, is "It's getting as bad as America". It's nice to see that not everyone in the US thinks that the first recourse should be the courts. Although it's noticeable that the first reaction to a lot of MS stuff here, and to the UserFriendly tale, has been "Class action lawsuit!" (what on earth is that, anyway? It sounds - severe.) But anyway, it was reassuring to see people laughing this one - well, I was going to say laughing out of court, but maybe that's premature :)