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he license of use on the older style of media was exactly the same as what they're trying to do with DRM.

You Are Wrong. You really shouldn't believe what the RIAA and MPAA any others say about copyright. They missrepresent copyright horribly. For example you presumably know that taping a TV show with a VCR is perfectly legal, right? Under your logic using a VCR would be infringment. The MPAA would certainly *LIKE* using a VCR to be infringment, but it is not. The Supreme Court explicityly stated that it was not infringment.

When you buy a book you receive no licence BECUASE UNDER COPYRIGHT YOU NEED NO LICENCE.
When you buy a CD you receive no licence BECUASE UNDER COPYRIGHT YOU NEED NO LICENCE.

Copyright law states that you only require a licence to create new copies, to distribute new copies, or to publicly display the work. read the law here. And those rights are subject to all sorts of limitations and exceptions.

There is no such thing as a "licence to own" or a "licence to read" or a "licence to play" or a "licence to listen" or a "licence to use". They do not exist. When you buy a copy you own that copy and you can read it and play it and listen to it and use it. All unrestricted by copyright law.

Selling an MP3 without any DRM at all is exactly the same as with "older media". Copying your vinyl record onto your computer or onto your iPod is perfectly legal. Copying a nonDRM MP3 you bought onto a vinyl record or onto your iPod is legal.

Pressing a hundred new copies of a vinyl record and selling them at the flee market is copyright infringment. Burning a hundred new copies of an MP3 and selling them at a flee market is copyright infringment.

don't try to kid yourself that you ever truly 'owned' the content on your older stuff, either

You are wrong. By law you are the owner of the particular copy of a song on a vinal record you bought. BY LAW it is YOUR PROPERTY. You cannot create new copies and distribute new copies and you cannot give a public performance of it, but aside for that it is your property to do with as you please.

If they wanted to, they could have gone after you for every cassette or VHS tape you ever copied.

Wrong. The law says the fair use of a copyrighted work [] is not an infringement of copyright.

That is all DRM opponents want to retain. They want to CONTINUE to be able to do NONINFRINGING things. The same things that have always been legal.

it really comes down to more of a misunderstanding about what you had then and what you're getting now

You got that right. Chuckle.

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he license of use on the older style of media was exactly the same as what they're trying to do with DRM.

You Are Wrong. You really shouldn't believe what the RIAA and MPAA any others say about copyright. They missrepresent copyright horribly. For example you presumably know that taping a TV show with a VCR is perfectly legal, right? Under your logic using a VCR would be infringment. The MPAA would certainly *LIKE* using a VCR to be infringment, but it is not. The Supreme Court explicityly stated that it was not infringment.

When you buy a book you receive no licence BECUASE UNDER COPYRIGHT YOU NEED NO LICENCE.
When you buy a CD you receive no licence BECUASE UNDER COPYRIGHT YOU NEED NO LICENCE.

Copyright law states that you only require a licence to create new copies, to distribute new copies, or to publicly display the work. read the law here. And those rights are subject to all sorts of limitations and exceptions.

There is no such thing as a "licence to own" or a "licence to read" or a "licence to play" or a "licence to listen" or a "licence to use". They do not exist. When you buy a copy you own that copy and you can read it and play it and listen to it and use it. All unrestricted by copyright law.

Selling an MP3 without any DRM at all is exactly the same as with "older media". Copying your vinyl record onto your computer or onto your iPod is perfectly legal. Copying a nonDRM MP3 you bought onto a vinyl record or onto your iPod is legal.

Pressing a hundred new copies of a vinyl record and selling them at the flee market is copyright infringment. Burning a hundred new copies of an MP3 and selling them at a flee market is copyright infringment.

don't try to kid yourself that you ever truly 'owned' the content on your older stuff, either

You are wrong. By law you are the owner of the particular copy of a song on a vinal record you bought. BY LAW it is YOUR PROPERTY. You cannot create new copies and distribute new copies and you cannot give a public performance of it, but aside for that it is your property to do with as you please.

If they wanted to, they could have gone after you for every cassette or VHS tape you ever copied.

Wrong. The law says the fair use of a copyrighted work [] is not an infringement of copyright.

That is all DRM opponents want to retain. They want to CONTINUE to be able to do NONINFRINGING things. The same things that have always been legal.

it really comes down to more of a misunderstanding about what you had then and what you're getting now

You got that right. Chuckle.

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Looks like people really doesn't understand Copyright.

You didn't pay for the song. You didn't buy the song. You payed for the right to listen to it, one the media/format provided

You really shouldn't tell people they don;t understand copyright law when you do not understand copyright law. The law does NOT say what you think it says.

There is no such thing as a "right to listent" or a "licence to listen".

Here is a link to actual copyright law. The six listed rights can really be summarized as three distinct rights. The right to create new copies, the right to distribute new copies, and the right to public display.

Those are the rights the copyright holder is granted. Those are the rights a copyright holder can licence. There is no such thing as a "right to read" or a "licence to read". Reading is unrestricted. Wen you buy a book or a CD it comes with no licence at all, because you need no licence. Not unless you are making new copies or distributing new copies or displaying/performing the work for the public.

You buy the media, and pay for the right to listen to the music (that is why you can't give copies to others).

When you buy the media you are the owner of the copies on that media. You can listen to them because playing and listening are unrestricted. You own that copy of the song and you're free to play it or do almost anything else you like with it. You can't give copies to others because creating and distributing new copies is infringment.

First sale applies to any copyrighted work, including downloads, but you cannot make use of first sale to transmit something by internet. You'd actually have to sell it on a physical harddrive or floppydisk.

First sale is a relatively weak argument on the DRM issue. The issue is that DRM claims to have some right to prohibit noninfringing activities and legally protected Fair Use. Fair Use which the Supreme Court has ruled copyright is constitutionally forbidden to even ATTEMPT to restrict.

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license

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I don't really blame you. a lot of people improperly toss that word around, and some very powerful companies actively put out a lot of missleading information about it.

A licence only exist when you are actually licencing a right to someone. Under copyright law there are 6 rights available to be licenced, though they really amount to three different rights. (1) The right to create new copies, (2) the right to distribute new copies, and (3) the right to public display. Those are the only rights the copyright holder has available to licence. If he is not granting you one or more of those rights then there is no licence.

The GPL is an excellent example of a genuine and valid licence. The GPL licences you to create and distribute certain kinds of new copies. You do not need to accept the GPL. You can decline the GPL and simply operate within copyright law. You can install and use the software, but you can't start selling new copies.

An EULA is not a licence, it is a contract offer. You are always perfectly free to decline a contract offer. In fact the last letter of EULA stands for ARGREEMENT. If you do not choose to agree to the EULA then no EULA exists and you are not bound by it. Of course if you decline the EULA then you receive nothing it offers. An EULA rarely offers you anything you need or want. If you choose to decline an EULA then you can simply operate withing copyright law. You can decline the EULA and install and run the software.

If you think you need some sort of "licence" to intall and run software then you missunderstand licences and you missunderstand the law. You can read the law right here. It says in black and white:

it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program

That means installing a "copy" of the software is not infringment. That means loading a "copy" of the software into memory is not infringment. You do not require a licence to install and run software.

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First a note: While US copyright law and Canadian copyright law are substantially equivalent, I am have only directly researched the text of US law and can only rapidly cite the text of US law. So hopefully you will not object if I proceed on a US-basis.

>There is no such think as a "licence to have". Legally there is no such thing.
Yes there is.

I'll tell you what. You quote a law saying that and then I'll gladly admit I'm a moron and asshole who doesn't know what he's talking about.

I know for a fact that you cannot do that. I've read the text of US copyright law. I understand US copyright law. I know for a fact that there is no such thing as a "right to have" in the law. I know for a fact that you do not know what you're talking about.

But heay, all you have to do is actually post the text of the law and prove me wrong.

Of course I expect you to actually attempt to read or cite the text of law. You just "know" what copyright means. So how about *I* cite the actual law to you instead...

Thats what copyright is.

What copyright *is*:
TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1 Sec. 106. - Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1)to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2)to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3)to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4)in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5)in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6)in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission

Anything not on that list IS NOT RESTRICTED BY COPYRIGHT.

To put it into plain english those six rights can really be summarized as three different rights. Copyright *is* (1) the exclusive right to create new copies (including derivatives) and (2) the exclusive right to distribute new copies, and (3) the exclusive right to any sort of public display.

Those rights are subject to all sorts of limitations and exceptions, but that isn't too relevant right now because the limitations and exceptions only serve to decrease the rights granted to the copyright holder.

If I write a song or a computer program, I have copyright of it.

Well first of all aou are going to be the physical owner of that first particular copy. Just to get that out of the way.

You own the copyright on it. That means you own the bundle of three exclusive rights for that work. Subject to various limitations and exceptions, you own (1) the right to create new copies of it, you own (2) the right distribute new copies of it and (3) you own the right to publicly display/perform it.

Period. End of copyright grant, end of rights. If it's not listed then it's not yours.

The effect of that is that people generally aren't going to be able to get their hands on a copy unless you yourself choose to engage in activities (1) (2) and/or (3), or if you choose to licence other people to engage in (1) (2) and/or (3). There is no such thing as a licence to own a book. Individual copies are owned based on the physical ownership of the media. There is no such think as a licence to read a book or play music, reading and playing are unrestricted. Only the three listed rights can be licenced.

You can choose to create a second copy of your book. If you do

A license to have it in the first place.

There is no such think as a "licence to have". Legally there is no such thing.

When you buy a CD at the store, you buy a license.

You have been taught an incorrect model of copyright. That is not how copyright works. That is not what the law says. You do not receive any licence when you buy a CD. You do not need any licence when you buy a CD.

If you want to debate copyright isssues you really need to throw out everything you think you know and learn what the law actually says from scratch. I'm no lawyer, but I have studied the subject and I have directly studied the text of US copyright law. Common knowledge on copyright is often wrong and the RIAA and others deliberately promote a VERY misleading image of the law. The law is the law and infringment is infringment, but it doesn't operate in the manner you were taught.

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Wow, about a dozen replies, and no one has given the correct answer.

what the essential difference is between someone violating the license terms on a copyrighted work released under a GPL license, and someone violating the terms under which a CD is released by (for example) Sony?

Sure, it is impossible to violate "the licence a CD is released under" because no such licence exists.

When you buy a CD you get no licence because you need no licence.

When you buy a book you get no licence because you need no licence.

Really that's what has so many people confused and why there is so much arguing over copyright issues. It's not much of a simplification to say that copyright really only restricts three things: (1) creating new copies, (2) distributing new copies, and (3) public performance. By law, those are the only three rights available for a copyright holder to licence. If he is not licencing you one or more of those three rights then he is not licencing you anything at all. Copyright does not restrict anything EXCEPT those three things. All other activities are UNRESTRICTED by copyright. You need no licence to to anything OTHER than those three things. If you want to read the law, it's right here. You'll see that law lists 6 things, I lumped together 1 and 2 under 'creating new copies', and I lumped 4 5 and 6 together as 'public performance'.

You do not need a licence to read a book, it is unrestricted.
You do not need a licence to play a song, it is unrestricted.
You do not need a licence to resell a book or CD at a used book store, it is unrestricted.

There is no such thing as a licence to read, no such thing as a licence to play music, no such thing as a licence to "use".

If you buy a book or CD you can do essentially anything you like with it for personal use in the privacy of your own home. It is not copyright infringment and you need no licence. The copyright holder sold you that copy and that copy is your property. You just can't start running off more copies and offering them to the public.

And the same it true of GPL'd software. Once you are given a copy you can do essentially anything you like with it for personal use in the privacy of your own home. You only need the GPL licence if you want to start passing out copies (or derivative copies). THAT is restricted by copyright.

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I can only talk about the situation in mathematics.

The referees are working for free anyway as do, as I understand, the academic editors. The publishing companies add to that their infrastructure and the prestigious name of the journal. The prices which they take for this are increasingly often horrendous and a source of the financial crisis of many university libraries. It takes just some dedication of a renowned scientist, a secratary, and goodwill from the community to establish an alternative of equally high quality at much lower costs. If every department would decide to take care of one journal in a field in which it is especially strong, the overall costs to the universities would be much lower.

A nice example for a journal published in this way is Geometry and Topology.

Why don't they just make it available on the net and see what happens.

In maths and physics, at least, there's already the arXiv, and a new non-commercial journal http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/ that publishes through the arXiv, and which seems to be a viable going concern as far as one can tell.

All is not perfect: recently the journal published an erroneous article, which subsequently disappeared from the arXiv (cf. this thread), which shows the risk of online publishing. Nonetheless, the principle remains: with support from a university, peer-reviewed journals, cheap to access and cheap to submit to, are already possible.

I don't know about the rest of the world; but Argentina grants it's citizens a consitutional right called "Habeas Data", which, in a nutshell, specifies that every individual owns his personal information and it can't be disclosed or abused without his consent. This includes medical records, bank accounts, work historials and so. Knowing that most modern constitutions are based on the US one, i thought something similar would be available to Americans.

It's usually paired with another consitutional right called "Habeas corpus", which ensures freedom of movement in the country and grants rights against detention without due process.

There are some accessibility rules: in particular the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. (Article on DDA and web accessibility). Royal Mail even seems to recognise this - they have a page on accessibility, which appears to use apostrophes that Lynx doesn't render (unless they just don't use apostrophes at all). They do provide for feedback, so I'll let them know how badly they fare in Lynx and Mozilla, and maybe you could too.

Claiming someone is a convicted child molestor is libel (civil, not criminal case), and I believe witness protection lists are classified. This is illegal to have, just as it is illegal to publish.

Indeed. In my constitution (Argentinian) it's a basic constitutional right called Habeas data (loosely, "you own the data"), which grants anyone privacy regarding individual personal information. This includes medical records, felony records and others, so yes, you can't just publish them on a newspaper. It's paired with the "Habeas corpus" ("you own the body") right, which basically forbids imprisioning or detention without due process.

All of this is stuff i learned from Civic Rights class in highschool.

I can't find a link for it, but i'm pretty positive the US constitution grants these rights as well.

The law reasons by analogies which, however imperfect, are still serviceable.
In time these analogies become rooted in case law and statutes, what the law defines and punishes as theft has become theft, whether you accept the accept the reasoning or not.

Copyright infringement is a felony under Title 17 of the U.S. Code.
When you can be sentenced to serve one to three years in a federal penitentiary on a first offense, with no money changing hands, your argument that copyright infringement is not stealing becomes dangerous to those who may be tempted to trust in it. Title 18: Part 1: Chapter 113: Sec. 2319

fair use, which again, the DMCA is _SUPPOSED_ to not affect

The DMCA does not alter fair use defences to copyright infringment. That is a far cry from saying the DMCA has no effect on engaging in fair use.

it logically follows directly from this that decrypting a DVD cannot be criminal

False.

the reason why decrypting a DVD isn't a violation of the DMCA is because there's no way that any law enforcement agency would ever find out

(1) Your "because" is false. Some forms of fair use are quite public.

(2) Stating that you are unlikely to be caught for a crime does not mean it is not a crime, and it does not mean you connot be imprisoned for it.

We agree that the DMCA is a horrendous law. I have just been trying to clear up the confusion that there is a fair use exemption/defense to the DMCA. There is not.

The DMCA (anti-circumvention) has NEVER actually been upheld in court. 6 years, and not a single case. Of course it is also pretty much impossible to have the DMCA struck down as invalid by a court until you actually have a conviction to appeal. With the right argument I believe the DMCA can be struck down.

do you really think that the fair use exemptions to copyright infringement were ever actually a serious concession to the consumer?

You have the incredibly common misperception that fair use is something defined and "granted" to the public by copyright law. Fair use actualy superceeds copyright law, defines limits on copyright law. Where fair use treads copyright law is swept away and invalidated.

Technically copyright law was unconstitutional as passed. It conflicted with various parts of the constituion, such as free speech (criticism, parody, etc. Normally when a law conflicts with the constitution the law is struck down as invalid. Whoever the courts bent over backwards to aviod striking down ALL of copyright law - they invented the concept of fair use. Much of fair use has been established on constitutional grounds. Copyright law was implicitly assumed to willingly in cases of fair use. Without the concept of fair use, if copyright law did not willingly flee in the face of fair use, then copyright law itself would be struck down as invalid.

Copyright law does not grant or even define fair use. The term "fair use" never even appeared in copyright law before 1976.

If you carefully read the fair use clause that was added, it lists examples of fair use, and it merely lists four factors for the courts to consider in deciding fair use. The court is free to consider any other factors it wishes (and routinely does so), and it is free to give the four listed factors zero weight if it wishes. The law does not actually define or restrict fair use in any way. Fair use is whatever the courts say it is. That is because copyright law would be stuck down as invalid but for the court's good grace in creating and expanding fair use in any way it saw fit.

If you read the fair use clause really carefully, leaggally all it really says is: the fair use of a copyrighted work, [examples] is not an infringement of copyright. [non-binding advice to the court]

If you read the congressional record, the fair use claes was explicitly intended not to expand, diminish, or alter fair use in any way. They wrote and passed the law with the explicit intent that it have no effect.

As usual, creating a law that is not supposed to change anything, that is not supposed to do anything, as usual it winds up making things worse. We'd have been better off without the fair use clause written into the law. With it there, not people have the mistaken impression that that law GRANTS and DEFINES fair use. They have the mistaken impression that you can alter or remove fair use rights merely by re-writing that law.

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I think there's already an SQLEDDI piece of software that was developed at Warwick for a PhD project.

This page looks like the place to go, but I doubt the software will be that usable. And I'm unsure of the license on it.

It also wouldn't my life that much easier at the moment. I use very few database queries in my software. Even PHP/MySQL projects use only a handful of queries. EDDI isn't directly translatable to SQL, either; SQL joins aren't natural by default, whilst EDDI's are.

In short, as nice as it would be, it would take more time than I'd save. If I ever find myself manipulating databases more regularly, though, I'll certainly think about an EDDI interpretor ;)

I'm somewhat skeptical of reports talking about the place of natural language when it comes to programming. Natural language tends to be very illogical, which is quite disadvantageous when it comes to programming.

Take SQL, which uses English words and almost makes grammatical sense, but has a very poor and inconsitant syntax. At Warwick University, the Computer Science course included a mandatory database module we had to sit through. We went through the syntax of SQL of course, but we also touched on a system called EDDI, that was created at Warwick and never really progressed past the theoretical phase.

EDDI was much easier to work with, despite being further removed from English than SQL was. For instance:

CREATE TABLE fruits (name CHAR(20), amount INT, price FLOAT);
INSERT INTO fruits VALUES ('apple', 4, 1.99);
INSERT INTO fruits VALUES ('orange', 0, 2.99);
SELECT name FROM fruits WHERE amount > 0;

And:
fruits (name CHAR(20), amount INT, price FLOAT);
fruits << ["apple", 4, 1.99], ["orange", 0, 2.99]
fruits : amount > 0 % name

Whilst SQL veterans will recognise the SQL syntax more easily than the EDDI system, the EDDI system was much easier to learn. It is more logical, and requires the student to remember less. So long as the student remembers that "%" is a projection and ":" is a selection, there's little syntax errors he or she can make. Unlike SQL, in which I rarely seem to get the syntax work first time, and I've been coding SQL for much, much, much longer than EDDI.

Of course, EDDI is impractical in real life because all databases use SQL, and EDDI is little more than a test system. But it seems to me that, in terms of syntax alone, EDDI is obviously is the superior query language.

Natural language isn't necessary always good, especially when it comes to programming languages. We do not describe mathematical formulae with English words, and it doesn't make sense that we should use natural language to talk to machines that are based in mathematics and logic.

It is, of course, desirable for programmers to make their source code understandable to others, but that doesn't imply that natural language is the way to go.

The rules in the merchant agreement state that the card must be signed - blank cards can be signed right there, but anything other than a signature invalidates the card.

A signature need not take the form of one's name though. Any mark made with the intention of agreeing to or validating a document can be considered a signature. When the person wrote the words "Check ID" on their card they are making a mark with the intention of agreeing to the terms of the card.

Here is some further reading dealing with digital signatures but touches upon what defines a signature. American Bar Association and The Journal of Information Law and Technology.

Is it worth it to try and argue what a signature is with the 800 lb gorilla that the the Credit Card company is though? Probably not... It's probably easier just to get one of those CitiBank cards with your photo on it.

>was sick of all the blatant product placement in the film... it was beyond absurd

You haven't seen "I, Robot" then? So much blatent advertising for Audi, Panasonic, and Converse!

My alma mater had loads of ADM3e terminals dotted around the computer science department. One student liked them so much that he wrote "xadm", an ADM3e-compatible X11 terminal emulator; it was a quite accurate emulation. (Sorry that I can't provide source; I google for it every so often but have never found it. I guess he never released it to the world).

-Stephen

Yes, you do. Especially as Leonardo has been dead for several centuries his feelings don't come into it.

Just because you claim that "moral rights" means that the creator(s) can restrict what you do with their stuff, it is not necessarily legally (or morally) true. Actually, I think morality has absolutely nothing to do with this. It's a made-up term so that creators can feel like they have more control that they do not have.

Yes, it's a made up term. From the French. I recommend looking at Moral Rights and Authors' Rights which explains it in detail, with special reference to differing legal traditions.

As like most of those who've followed up my post, you fail to distinguish between what you do to your own copy of a work, which no one contests, and what you "publish" so others may see that, which is what the proposed legal action is about.

1. The definition Linus mentions.
2. Sec. 1201. - Circumvention of copyright protection systems where nonprofit exceptions broken for commercial advantage or financial gain can lead to civil remedies and then the loss of exceptions.
3. Sec. 110. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays. Here financial gain excludes performances from being copyright exempt where they could otherwise be.
4. Sec. 1204. - Criminal offenses and penalties
5. which states the penalties which apply for people who break the code for commercial advantage or private
6. financial gain.
7. Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
8. which tells you that willfully breaking a copyright for commercial advantage or private
9. financial gain or by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, sends you to Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure :: Crimes :: Stolen Property :: Criminal infringement of a copyright to find out your punishment.

1. The definition Linus mentions.
2. Sec. 1201. - Circumvention of copyright protection systems where nonprofit exceptions broken for commercial advantage or financial gain can lead to civil remedies and then the loss of exceptions.
3. Sec. 110. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays. Here financial gain excludes performances from being copyright exempt where they could otherwise be.
4. Sec. 1204. - Criminal offenses and penalties
5. which states the penalties which apply for people who break the code for commercial advantage or private
6. financial gain.
7. Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
8. which tells you that willfully breaking a copyright for commercial advantage or private
9. financial gain or by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, sends you to Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure :: Crimes :: Stolen Property :: Criminal infringement of a copyright to find out your punishment.

1. The definition Linus mentions.
2. Sec. 1201. - Circumvention of copyright protection systems where nonprofit exceptions broken for commercial advantage or financial gain can lead to civil remedies and then the loss of exceptions.
3. Sec. 110. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays. Here financial gain excludes performances from being copyright exempt where they could otherwise be.
4. Sec. 1204. - Criminal offenses and penalties
5. which states the penalties which apply for people who break the code for commercial advantage or private
6. financial gain.
7. Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
8. which tells you that willfully breaking a copyright for commercial advantage or private
9. financial gain or by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, sends you to Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure :: Crimes :: Stolen Property :: Criminal infringement of a copyright to find out your punishment.

1. The definition Linus mentions.
2. Sec. 1201. - Circumvention of copyright protection systems where nonprofit exceptions broken for commercial advantage or financial gain can lead to civil remedies and then the loss of exceptions.
3. Sec. 110. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays. Here financial gain excludes performances from being copyright exempt where they could otherwise be.
4. Sec. 1204. - Criminal offenses and penalties
5. which states the penalties which apply for people who break the code for commercial advantage or private
6. financial gain.
7. Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
8. which tells you that willfully breaking a copyright for commercial advantage or private
9. financial gain or by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, sends you to Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure :: Crimes :: Stolen Property :: Criminal infringement of a copyright to find out your punishment.

1. The definition Linus mentions.
2. Sec. 1201. - Circumvention of copyright protection systems where nonprofit exceptions broken for commercial advantage or financial gain can lead to civil remedies and then the loss of exceptions.
3. Sec. 110. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Exemption of certain performances and displays. Here financial gain excludes performances from being copyright exempt where they could otherwise be.
4. Sec. 1204. - Criminal offenses and penalties
5. which states the penalties which apply for people who break the code for commercial advantage or private
6. financial gain.
7. Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
8. which tells you that willfully breaking a copyright for commercial advantage or private
9. financial gain or by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, sends you to Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure :: Crimes :: Stolen Property :: Criminal infringement of a copyright to find out your punishment.

Yes, bummer indeed. When I first saw this post I thought they had created transgenic fish with luciferase, the enzyme that makes fireflies glow. Scientists have been inserting that into all sorts of critters recently for legitimate bioassay purposes. This BBC page has a number of exambles of both flourescent (using jellyfish proteins like these fish) and truly glow-in-the-dark critters.

IANAL, but my understanding is that unauthorised copying of copyright material, when done deliberately, wilfully and commercially, is a criminal offence in the USA, with penalties including large fines and imprisonment.

This being the case, perhaps copyright-holders of parts of the Linux kernel (Linus would be an appropriate person to do this) should notify the relevant law-enforcement authorities.

According to this and this, the maximum sentence is 10 years. Don't bend over to pick up the soap, Darl!

IANAL, but my understanding is that unauthorised copying of copyright material, when done deliberately, wilfully and commercially, is a criminal offence in the USA, with penalties including large fines and imprisonment.

This being the case, perhaps copyright-holders of parts of the Linux kernel (Linus would be an appropriate person to do this) should notify the relevant law-enforcement authorities.

According to this and this, the maximum sentence is 10 years. Don't bend over to pick up the soap, Darl!

United States currency has the inscription ''In God We Trust'' in a place the Secretary decides is appropriate.

For those who don't know, the first "video game" was, in fact, a game of tic-tac-toe (naughts and crosses for some of you out there)

http://www.pong-story.com/1952.htm

If you don't have an EDSAC at home (of course you don't) you can get the emulator and the origional code A.S. Douglas wrote here:

http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/

recompile.org

The thing is, the market should be sorting this out.

When it comes to bad business practices in general, yes. But the fundamental problem here is that the law is not being applied properly. When the law itself is wrong then it is not a market issue, the law needs to be fixed. In general "free market forces" cannot fix legal problems.

There is a legal doctrine called "Right of First Sale".

US CODE COLLECTION: TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1 Sec. 109
the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.

If you buy a book you have a legally guaranteed right to sell that book. That is why used book stores are legal. The same goes for CD's, video tapes, DVD, computer games, paintings, sculptures, poetry, cassettes, EVERYTHING.

You bought one copy you have the right to have a garage sale and sell that one copy. Once the copyright holder has created and sold that copy he has made his profit and has no further claim upon that particular copy. It may be transfered freely.

The problem here is that they are playing games with the word "owner". It is intened to cover anyone who pays for the legal possession of that copy. They are claiming that you are not the owner of that copy.

There have been bills floating around congress to correct this and other related poblems by changing occurrences of "owner" to "rightful possessor". Unfortunately it hasn't gone through yet.

Another thing, as far as I can tell this "licencing scheme" isn't actually legal anyway, though I know that the courts have been treating them as legitimate. Copyright holders can ONLY licence the right to make copies, the right to distribute copies, and teh right to public performance. If they don't grant you one or more of these rights then NO LICENCE EXISTS. Nor does a contract exist unless they offer something of value and you INTENTIONALLY CHOOSE to accept that offer. You are never bound by any contract that you have not chosen to be bound by.

Once they sell you a disk or any other medium with the software on it the law already SPECIFICLY grants you the right to install and run that software. You are perfectly free to reject the licence and install/use the software anyway so long as you are willing to pass on anything else they may offer in the licence.

Anyone who rejects my argument about linces can ignore all of that and just go back to what I said earlier about the bill floating around congress to fix the law by changing occurrences of "owner" to "rightful possessor". I don't know why it hasn't passed yet. Probably meddling from the copyright lobby.

-

The thing is, the market should be sorting this out.

When it comes to bad business practices in general, yes. But the fundamental problem here is that the law is not being applied properly. When the law itself is wrong then it is not a market issue, the law needs to be fixed. In general "free market forces" cannot fix legal problems.

There is a legal doctrine called "Right of First Sale".

US CODE COLLECTION: TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1 Sec. 109
the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.

If you buy a book you have a legally guaranteed right to sell that book. That is why used book stores are legal. The same goes for CD's, video tapes, DVD, computer games, paintings, sculptures, poetry, cassettes, EVERYTHING.

You bought one copy you have the right to have a garage sale and sell that one copy. Once the copyright holder has created and sold that copy he has made his profit and has no further claim upon that particular copy. It may be transfered freely.

The problem here is that they are playing games with the word "owner". It is intened to cover anyone who pays for the legal possession of that copy. They are claiming that you are not the owner of that copy.

There have been bills floating around congress to correct this and other related poblems by changing occurrences of "owner" to "rightful possessor". Unfortunately it hasn't gone through yet.

Another thing, as far as I can tell this "licencing scheme" isn't actually legal anyway, though I know that the courts have been treating them as legitimate. Copyright holders can ONLY licence the right to make copies, the right to distribute copies, and teh right to public performance. If they don't grant you one or more of these rights then NO LICENCE EXISTS. Nor does a contract exist unless they offer something of value and you INTENTIONALLY CHOOSE to accept that offer. You are never bound by any contract that you have not chosen to be bound by.

Once they sell you a disk or any other medium with the software on it the law already SPECIFICLY grants you the right to install and run that software. You are perfectly free to reject the licence and install/use the software anyway so long as you are willing to pass on anything else they may offer in the licence.

Anyone who rejects my argument about linces can ignore all of that and just go back to what I said earlier about the bill floating around congress to fix the law by changing occurrences of "owner" to "rightful possessor". I don't know why it hasn't passed yet. Probably meddling from the copyright lobby.

-

Sure, your honour, I only OCR'd and put my entire book collection up on Kazaa so that people could search for passages before buying them from me. Same with my mp3s and DVDs, now that I think of it.

Let's look at the fair use provisions in the 1976 copyright act:

the fair use of a copyrighted work [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Purposes such as selling isn't covered, but let's read on, because as with most things written by lawyers for the benefits of lawyers, it's not that clear cut.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include :

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Well, you work it out. It's a copy of the entire work. That it's offered one piece at a time can't be a defence by itself, otherwise those fragments I upload and download to and from various people over eDonkey would be fine by same argument. The duplication is clearly of commercial nature (for Amazon's benefit), but on the other hand, it's arguably increasing the potential market for the copyrighted work.

That last one is a very, very interesting provision. If Amazon can argue that making entire copies and distributing parts of them - potentially all of them - for their profit is just increasing the market for the original work by way of advertising and promoting it, why can't I argue that for my eDonkey use?

If you think this argument is trite, have a look at www.sharereactor.com, which indexes content on eDonkey. You see the "Buy this at Amazon.com" links right there? What is eDonkey doing that's significantly different from Amazon? Are Amazon obtaining each and every rights owners' permission to perform this duplication? I doubt it, so the differences seems to be these:

It's easier to obtain all the fragments from eDonkey (but not much easier, it can take upwards of a week to completely download a large file). And sharereactor is not for profit, whereas Amazon is primarily interested in their own profit.

You work out where the morality and legality lies.

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -

(A)

is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;

As used in this subsection -

(A)

to ''circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure'' means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure; and

(B)

a technological measure ''effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title'' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title.

Just because it says "Digital" in the title doesn't mean that it's limited to that.

> You could change the expiration on the temporary cookie they give you to get perminent access. Of course, this would be illegal.

I was winding myself up to sneer, but then I realized that this would be [circumventing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [Title 17].

While we're at it, remember that "No person shall [...] offer to the public [or] provide [...] any technology [...] or part thereof that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [Title 17]."

Citizen, remain at your console while the Secret Service analyzes the case against you and decides your guilt and an appropriate punishment.

• How does this compare with BOSS?
• Is your system free software (i.e., GPL type license)?
• Can we see it?
• Can we see the code?
• If not, can you tell us how it works?

• How does this compare with BOSS?
• Is your system free software (i.e., GPL type license)?
• Can we see it?
• Can we see the code?
• If not, can you tell us how it works?

The BOSS Online Submission System is a course management tool, developed by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick.

BOSS allows students to submit assignments online securely, and contains a selection of tools to allow staff to mark assignments online and to manage their modules efficiently.

The BOSS Online Submission System is a course management tool, developed by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick.

BOSS allows students to submit assignments online securely, and contains a selection of tools to allow staff to mark assignments online and to manage their modules efficiently.

and: "Next Thursdays winning lotto numbers are:..."

I read a study recently (I tried googling for it and couldn't find it) that basically tracked lottery winners over a five year period following their wins. It said that when they first recieved their money their overall happiness jumped a great deal, as described here. It then tracked their happiness for the remaining five years.

The interesting part is that almost uniformally every single winner's happiness receded back to what it was before they won. It seems that everyone has a "base happiness" that cannot be altered by material things in the long term. I believe that everyone needs enough money for sustenance and comfort, and after that it's all vanity.

Unless using blastocysts from immunologically crippled mice, there would most likely be a recognition of non-self by murine immune cells not educated ...

Why they don't call it a "lens" is beyond me. It seems to have to components: an incoming collector area, which focuses signals on the receptor; and an outgoing dispersive area, which spreads the outbound signal to cover a broad region.

--tsw

Many people are using ogg for streaming already. IC Radio, Raw and several other UK Student Radio Stations are using it. The BBC were also using it for a while, but I think it vanished :(

I'm glad someone mentioned G&T, and not just because my PhD supervisor is one of the managing editors, and my MSc supervisor is the other one :)

If I remember correctly, the whole thing was sparked off by Rob Kirby's article on the pricing of research journals. There's an interesting article by Joan Birman in the Notices of the AMS (vol 4, no. 7, Aug 2000, pp770-774) which discusses the various issues, and includes detailed discussion of the day-to-day overheads of running a free, properly peer-refereed research journal. It's available from her web page, in PostScript form.

G&T (and its sister journal Algebraic and Geometric Topology, and the related Monograph series) isn't some low-quality vanity-press thing - it's a real, proper, peer-refereed journal with high standards. At a quick glance, I recognise the names of three Fields medallists on the editorial board, as well as some other very eminent names in the field. And yet it's being run with virtually no overheads by two university lecturers (one of whom is semi-retired) in addition to their normal departmental duties (lecturing, administration, supervising research students).

I understand that a lot of the procedure is automated, with a mixture of TeX and Perl, with copies of all articles being submitted to the arXIv.

Ah yes, I'd almost forgotten about the arXiv. A central repository for research preprints in mathematics, physics, and computer science. It's an unrefereed archive for research announcements, preliminary reports, and preprints. Papers submitted to refereed journals often take up to a couple of years to actually appear in print, so the idea is that you issue a preliminary version of your paper to faster communicate your ideas to anyone else who might be interested.

This stuff is great - it's all about collaborative research and the free and efficient sharing of ideas, and it gives me a great sense of hope for the future.

-- nicholas

Not that Geometry and Topology is the only one, but this is a very good example.

Hello Ranulf, fancy seeing you here! 05 is now called 'Corporate Numbering' by Oftel. 04 and 06 aren't being used. 01, 02, 03 are geographic. 07 is mobiles, paging and personal numbers. This URL has long long lists of codes for you to print out and tape to your wall so you know what's being charged. Here's hoping all my future Slashdot posts will be as fascinating, Rawles

Edinburgh doesn't teach computer science any more. It teaches Word Processing with How To Throw Together A Few Lines Of Code. That's brought the number of UK universities which actually teach proper computer science down from four to a rather paltry three. It's a great shame, really; without a pretty decent knowledge of computing as a science, any kind of software engineering is pretty tricky.

Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide
Flexible Parsing
Workshop on The Evaluation of Parsing Systems
Robust Parsing
Parsing Resources

Probably the last one on that list would be the most useful starting place...

it's called leinthal's paradox -- the cost is NOT O(n^2) the cost is O((n-1)!) (http://konf2.ims.ac.jp/review/sec4.html)
Djikstr a's algorithm merely simplifies the correct procedural solution by limiting the sample space (which introduces a possibility of error) -- it APPROXIMATES the solution because the exact calculation is NP-Complete... another reference: here

I'm an author. I'm against copyright. I'm in favour of authors' rights for actual humans, for the reasons set out in the US Constitution - and because it seems to me that having individual authors taking responsibility would do something positive for the quality of publishing (etc). Publishers are welcome to *license* these rights, but they stay with the author. Problem of unobtainable works pretty much solved.

Fantasy? In fact, this is the essence of the law in Europe (except UK & IE), Japan... most of the world. One effect, for example: French TV news says who was responsible for each report in a subtitle, because they have to. Authors not only have the right to license their work, but the right to be credited and the right to object if it's manipulated (in a way that damages their reputation). Those are the moral rights that just barely exist in US law.

Since this is /. I'll relate the issue to code. Sorry, authors weren't paying attention when copyright on computer code was legislated. Imagine it had been done on the same basis as books and movies in France. Every time you saw a BSOD, it'd come with the names of the people responsible. Under authors' rights the GPL (et al) would be a lot shorter and sweeter, because as you can see by now it'd be going with the grain. And MS code would be the property of the coders...

Remember, too, that the EU has just codified parts of "fair use" - if a work is protected by encryption or whatever, there must a way round that for libraries and archives, people with disabilities and a fairly long list of other uses.