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The DMCA Vs. Small Developers
bumppo writes "Matt Warner, a Mac developer and IT guy, writes about his experience trying to use the DMCA against a much larger software company that unilaterally lifted his TV tuner/converter app and bundled it with their hardware product, even hawking it on the side of the box. He explains why he didn't get very far, and sees plausible implications for the GPL." One lesson here seems to be that though registration of copyrighted materials may not be necessary for them to be given legal protection, it goes a long way toward preventing such usurpation. (Note that the FSF is careful to copyright the code it releases under the GPL.) And DMCA or not, shareware and other non-retail software has been incorporated into collections without permission quite a bit before.
Steve Jobs, quit posting AC!
You lost the window war a long time ago, get over it (At least you still have ID4).
But installing software isn't an infringement of copyright because doing so is "an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine" and the installed software "is used in no other manner"
Software licenses are an industry-wide lie. They have absolutely no legal right to control how you use a copyrighted work, once you have paid for it.
Contact US
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If you create something, and then give it away, why get upset when someone else gives it away too? They're not selling this guy's software, it seems that they're selling a USB video camera. The only thing this guy asked was for a postcard or $10 donation. He got his product distributed to a bunch of people for free, and hopefully some of them sent him postcards or cash. If not, then it's the end user's problem, not the mean old corporation's. The company had no more responsibility than any ISP who may host his software on an FTP site. They only provided the CD.
IANAL, but perhaps someone who IAL will say whether something like this will work.
In your license agreement, state the following: "By distributing this software outside the terms of this license agreement, you agree to pay the author a license fee of $1 billion per copy. Failure to pay within 90 days will result in a late fee of $1 million per day."
Will this work? If not, why not? OK maybe $1 billion is excessive. Is there any amount which will stick (or at least attract lawyers to take the case?)
Second, he failed to register his copyright.
Third, the GPL is a *license*. The L in GPL. It's a license on top of a copyrighted work. From the gnu site: "We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software."http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
FSF does register their copyrighted works, as noted.
So this story has implications with respect to GPL..um...how? The only conclusion I can logically reach is that he coulda, shoulda released it under the GPL so as to protect himself from this.
The Copyright Office page explains why it is advantageous to register the copyright, even though the work is copyrighted without that step being taken, precisely so you *can* sue, if needed. Anyone who skips this step of registration appears to be not well enough informed. (Another good reason to release under the GPL. . . They have expertise you probably lack. Or at least consult a lawyer. Or at least get the US Copyright Office's booklet on protecting your intellectual property.)
Here's their explanation on the US Copyright Office website:
"In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. Even though registration is not a requirement for protection, the copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration. Among these advantages are the following:
"Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.
"Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. S. origin.
"If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
"If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
"Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U. S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies. For additional information, request Publication No. 563 "How to Protect Your Intellectual Property Right," from: U.S. Customs Service, P.O. Box 7404, Washington, D.C. 20044. See the U.S. Customs Service Website at www.customs.gov for online publications. " http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ1.html
Bottom line: ill-informed attacks on the GPL are ill-informed. Slashdot seems to go out of their way to post such stuff. Maybe it's time to read and think more precisely. Consult your attorney before you wax poetic about the beauties of releasing under your own concepts of what constitutes enough protection. Otherwise, you risk being the proverbial lamb to the slaughter. I wish I had a dollar for every post on this forum about how the GPL "limits" freedom. And it does. It is designed precisely to limit the freedom of people or entities who desire to rip other people off.
This reminds me of something that happened to me one time. I had made a nice bit of software ( my lawyers I can't be epxlicit about it) that you've probably heard about. Lo and behold, one day a friend asked me about the Xxxx package in a certain operating system out of Washington, and how much it looked like mine.
Well, I checked out the operating system, and it was nearly a clone. I called my lawyer, showed him the two apps side by side, and he agreed. We were on teh next plance to Seattle.
Amazingly enough, this corporate software giant agreed to meet with us. We were ushered into a quiet, comfortable conference room to meet with an IP lawyer.
Soon enough, the IP lawyer came in. Our jaws dropped to the floor, she could have been on Ally McBeal. She was a tall, long legged redhead with a skirt that couldn't be much shorter. She sat next to us, arranged her skirt to pointlessly try to cover herself, leaned forward, her ripe breasts straining to get out of her dress blouse, and quietly asked "How can I help you two?"
This reminds me. When I was very young, I rememer kids who would say what they wanted to be when they grew up. You'd get "fireman" "policeman" nurse, president, and occasionaly some kid would want to be a bird or some other non-human creature. I always thought that was kind of funny.
I guess the joke was on us all though. Because we all grew up to be something less than free. Votes that don't matter because "counting" errors and politicos who don't do what they promise, and the laws that impact our lives can be bought and sold like condoms out of a vending machine.
And of course, those very same laws are interpreted broadly, depending on who is to be judged by them.
Oh yeah I'm cynnical. I'm generation X. And this country is turning into a fucking shithole.
He didn't say anything about reading the source *before* running it -- that was all you. Source auditing may be extremely rare, but bug fixing, custom features and source-as-documentation use aren't. Furthermore, many folks work with relatively obscure platforms (I support users on several PPC varieties, StrongARM, and about four other major platforms) *need* the source or they flat out can't run the software.
Either you can find a lawyer who will take your case on contigency, or you can sell the rights to your software to someone who'll do it just for the potential revnue from the law suit.
Nobody likes either of those parties, but sometimes they perform a vital societal function.
sigs are a waste of space
Even worse is the "insightful" score this article managed to get. Go figure, eh?
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Common sense doesn't often rule in the courtroom. High powered lawyers do. If you feel otherwise, you are fooling yourself.
-Derek
IMHO, you'll get a better reaction through firm (but polite) disaproval than you will from roasting their mail server.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(In fact, more than a few products now carry notices to the effect that sneezing within 500 miles of the wrapper constitutes agreement to the EULA, even if it's sealed inside a titanium case at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(Besides, under certain cases, tying two products is also illegal. Microsoft got caught on that one, and only escaped by convincing the appeals court that a web browser is really an Operating System in disguise.)
Lastly, the purchasers of the manure might complain about toxic contamination.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This means that the CD-ROM may actually fall under all sorts of "fair use" and reasonableness clauses. If it did, that wasn't the guy's fault, it was yours for not understanding the relevent law.
Second, the GPL does not rely on copyright. Truly "GNU" GPL programs have to be registered, the source must comply with certain licence message requirements, etc, to ensure that the GPL is definitely in place.
Third, EULA's are not legally enforcable in most of the US. (Virginia and Maryland being the two exceptions.) To rely on an EULA for protection is, frankly, naive. (The only reason large companies can ue EULAs is that 500 lb gorillas can do pretty much what they like.)
Last, I would be more sympathetic, except that the post looked very much like a "poor me, victim of this big meanie". Now, the small-time developer can be very much a victim, but this doesn't look like a case of that, to me. It sounds like an honest mistake by a small-time company that got blown WAAAY out of proportion by a greedy developer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is that "American" as in nationality, or as in currently residing on US soil. How does registration apply to the case of a US citizen creating a copyrightable work in, say, Germany? What about non-US citizens creating copyrightable works within the US?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Oh, come on. It's not theft, it's using code without permission from the original author. Those are two very different things.
It would have been nice if they had credited the original author, but that's all there is to it. He hasn't actually lost anything.
What should happen is not that small players should get the power to take on big companies, it's the other way around: big companies (or anyone else, for that matter) should not be able to obtain government-enforced monopolies under the "intellectual property" misnomen.
Somewhere down the line it boils down to trust, but it's much easier trusting something you at least have the possibility of verifying.
Would you sign a contract in a language you don't understand, or prefer one writter in your native language?
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Actually, it was the Russians we have to thank - you guys only came in *after* the Nazis had stopped trying to invade Britain.
I'm sorry, moderate the parent down. Only Americans need to register their works in order to bring suit. Both Americans and foreign nationals need to register to be eligible for attorney's fees and statutory damages.
This is proof that there needs to be a copyright FAQ, when even the copyright students screw it up.
Yes, a copyright FAQ for Slashdot is an excellent idea.
Another point that is relevant to this discussion is that only American programmers need to register their code with the Copyright Office to get statutory damages and attorney's fees. Foreign nationals don't have to do this because of the United States international copyright treaty obligations. Anyone who is interested can look directly at the provision in the legal source, the U.S. copyright law, 17 U.S.C. section 412.
You are misinformed. Copyright is the only reason that the GPL is meaningful. Copyright grants the holder sole authority over how his work may be distributed. Most people stick with a standard "you can't distribute it" stance on works for which they hold the copyright. GPL, OTOH, grants license for distribution to anyone willing to accept certain constraints (source must be available, no further restrictions, etc.). Without copyright, the GPL has no force because a non-copyrighted work can be freely distributed under any terms the distributor may choose.
The further requirements you mention for "Truly 'GNU' GPL programs" do not negate copyright by any means - the registration requirement you mention is that the software's copyright must be registered. A further requirement which you didn't mention is that ownership of the copyright must be transferred to the GNU Foundation. This seems to me a fairly stong indication that GPL does indeed rely on copyright.
(IANAL, TINLA. If I have made any substantial errors, anyone who knows more about this than I do is invited to correct me.)
At http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms (or something of that sort), there are a bunch of forms for different types of materials to be copyrighted. But there isn't one for computer source code.
Anyone?
What if you change the code by just a variable name? If you have to get a new copyright on every cvsupdate you make...
You are correct, to the extent that new major versions require a separate copyright filing. See "Copyright Registration for Computer Programs" at http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ61.pdf:
To obtain the full benefits of registration, each separately published version of a given computer program must be separately registered, provided each contains a sufficient amount of new or revised authorship to sustain a claim to copyright.
So syntactical changes and bugfixes wouldn't apply. And updating a CVS tree may not exactly be "publication", which the actual copyright form defines as "if copies have been distributed to the public", as long as the tree is intended for private purposes -- which can include developers and maybe even beta testers (aka the freshmeat community). But you should definately do your own research, since the issue of what constitutes public distribution is not as clearly cut...
----
I'm not stoned, I just chugged a pack of fUN dIP!
No.
Try reading the GPL before spreading misinformation.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
sales@ariston.com bounces.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
Correction: The DMCA is a law that was enacted to protect the copyrights of rich businesses on the Internet. It was not meant to protect the labors of smaller developers and those who actually created the Internet. This country no longer belongs to the common man, but to corporations with enough money to buy and sell you a thousand times over. Your government apologizes for any inconvenience.
How much it would cost for the people to have some rights, too?
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
So you weren't referring to the DMCA? If you weren't, then your post was truly offtopic. I mean, the title of the article was DMCA.
But if you manage to convince anyone that your one line about buying laws in response to an article that is specifically about the DMCA was insightful, hey, more power to you.
Hey, I guess I could just post something about how shareware software sucks, and that would be just as insightful since the article is about shareware.
Only if the VCD watermarked copy wasn't also copyrighted. Or are you talking about less-than-legal copies?
I was thinking too much like a programmer, I guess :)
You're probably right, but there is also the matter of the judge. The judge might instruct the jury to ignore the fact that 1.0 was registered if the product in question is 1.5, and if the opposition can persuade the judge that they're different enough. Usually (from what I understand) the jury will do what the judge tells them, in situations like this.
what did you expect? When you buy a law you make sure it can't be used against you.
This is insightful? Praise God for meta-moderation.
Read the article. This isn't even about the DMCA. It's about the fact that going to court costs money. It's about the fact that the average American doesn't have that money to spend.
This guy could EASILY have won a court battle assuming he had equal resources with which to hire attorneys. The problem was not in the law, but in the legal system itself.
But upon reading the article, you notice that the guy never took the matter to court. This isn't an issue where the DMCA failed a small developer. Rather this is an issue where the US court system failed the individual. The DMCA certainly doesn't gaurantee financial resources to sue, nor does it gaurantee that someone will settle out of court when they are faced with it. In fact, the DMCA really doesn't merit mention in this article, because the injustice has nothing to do with the DMCA or even copyright law in general--it has to do with the fact that large corporations will always have the money to win lawsuits because the little guy can't cough up $20k to take the issue to court.
Ok, as has been said in the comments already, the problem was that this guy didn't have enough money to fight the big badguy.
A question that hasn't come up, however, is in regards to the DMCA provision for filing copyrights on your software.
Indeed, it looks as though this guy could have made quite a pretty penny on his software if he'd just filed for a copyright on it originally. But then, the real question is, how often do you have to do this? For example, going over to freshmeat will show you that a GREAT deal of very good software is in beta or lower stages. Do you have to get a copyright on this? What if you change the code by just a variable name? Small changes could end up costly due to the copyright filing charges.
This means that the copyright system in general is anti-free software. If you have to get a new copyright on every cvsupdate you make, there is no way any individual working out of his or her garage could manage this. Sure, you may file copyright on version 1.0, but when you release 1.2 (which adds few new features), suddenly that version is not copyrighted?
I'm asking if this is the case because I truly don't know, but from my limited understanding of copyright law, derivative works aren't included (at least, in filed copyrights).
This means that the GPL and Open Source models will always be behind closed source, proprietary software.
Sucks, doesn't it?
Could a solution be to copyright the major versions, and then to provide diffs to update them to minor versions? This way a company might steal the diffs, but without the original software+source code, they'd be largely worthless, and you'd still have a leg to stand on in court, not to mention the possibility of puntitive damages.
I'm pretty sure all that's practically necessary is that you put all your work onto a CD / floppy, post it to yourself by registered delivery and leave the envelope unopened. You can even lodge it with a bank if you're feeling paranoid. But then if you need to prove you wrote it first, you've got a sealed package with a stamp from the Post Office which you can open in court, and this is cross-checkable with the PO's records.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
You are right, when you BSD your code you leave anyone do anything to it. That's why the FSF created the GNU GPL.
--
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete Dutra
DBA, SysAdmin
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
> Second, the GPL does not rely on copyright.
I don't think that is the case. If there wasn't copyright law, everything would effectively be public domain and the GNU GPL would have no effect whatsoever.
--
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete Dutra
DBA, SysAdmin
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
It kind of injures me because his code isn't GPL'd, but he kind of uses it as some fighting call.
--
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete Dutra
DBA, SysAdmin
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
License terms on version 1.0:
"Matt's Hack TV, Version 1.0 Portions of application ©1998 Matt Warner Portions ©1992 by Apple
Computer, Inc. 'Email-me' ware: drop me a short note to let me know if you find this application useful. The application
is free and is not to be sold. There are no guarantees nor warranties regarding this software."
So Ariston sold it, even if it was in a bundle.
--
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete Dutra
DBA, SysAdmin
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Hey guy, didn't you get the memo? Everything should be free! So, if it's not free it will be stolen, and all objections to the theft will be met with total disregard for property rights and snide remarks from every beer swilling college going mama's boy! Yeah baby! How dare anyone expect to protect his/her software, and article! THE NERVE!
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
First one, gives standard phone system "annot connect". The second (Boston) number rings to a guy answering "Foreign Currency Exchange" and he notified me that he felt the company was out of business. He's going to be less coridal after the 1000th Slashdotter gives him a call looking for Ariston.
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
> Another point that is relevant to this discussion is that only American programmers need to register their code with the Copyright Office to get statutory damages and attorney's fees. Foreign nationals don't have to do this because of the United States international copyright treaty obligations.
Always nice to know our government is looking after us. Land of the free, home of the brave, foreigners have more rights than you do.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> It's only $30 to file a copyright deposit with the Library of Congress. And once you do that, the clock starts running on willful infringement and statutory damages.
What should you do if you have an OSS project and follow the "release early, release often" paradigm?
I have a GPL'd project that is out in pre-release form, though nowhere near ready for actual use. If I register it now, would I also need to re-register it every time I let a new version out?
Patents may be an issue as well; I am incorporating some novel features into the project, and I'd hate to have some jerk go out and patent them after seeing my demo.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Summary: The DMCA provides for either statutory or actual damages. If you don't have a registered copyright, the courts currently say you can only claim actual damages.
His stuff wasn't registered, and the company won't negotiate, so his only option is to go to court. And as it wasn't a registered copyright, he can only sue for actual damages, which could cost a bundle, and is harder to prove. And he can't afford it.
So what he's really saying, unless I misunderstand, is that the DMCA doesn't protect the little guy because you still have to go to court, and lawyers cost money....... I don't really see how that's failure.. that's, unfortunately, how law works.
The implication for GPL is more obvious: How do you prove actual damages on GPL or other open-type license code? Who actually can claim the 'lost profits'?
What he says, remember, is that you can't claim statutory damages (which gpl violators would be liable for) unless the copyright was registered.
Copyright covers only the embodiment of an idea, not the idea itself,
Copyright covers the EXPRESSION of the idea.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
This guy should not worry about it. I think they're still living last year...
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
The author didn't release it under the GPL.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
So you think they put it in the box, never having even booted up the program. Nobody in the company had ever SEEN the app on the screen, right? I think that's silly. Are there other users of the program who didn't comply with the license? Sure! But they at least had the decency to refrain from reselling it.
So you don't equate slimy, underhanded behaviour with Wrong? I didn't say it was illegal, but how can you say that they weren't taking advantage of the author? How can you argue that taking advantage of people is not Wrong?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Did the company send the writer an email telling them how they liked the program? No. Therefore, they were breaking the terms of the license.
The way the suit at the company dodged around the issue, trying to argue that the program wasn't very good, so they shouldn't compensate the author, is pretty damn slimy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If I invent a widget, and give it to people out of the goodness of my heart, and some schlock takes my widget and starts selling it for profit, that's Wrong. Somebody is taking advantage of my good nature. How can you possibly think this is justified?
The author doesn't want to make a buck, he wants to protect his work from being exploited.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Theft is when you deprive the original owner of their property. Check a dictionary.
The law is irrelevant to this. Theft involves depriving the original owner of the PROPERTY, not of a potential to make money, or of sole ownership.
That being said, what was done is against the law. Yes. You should be able to sue, but I agree, you'd never win against someone bigger.
But use the correct terminology. Piracy means theft and murder at sea. Theft means depriving of property. Redefining those terms to mean something completely different doesn't make it so...
Slashdot as ubiquitous scratch pad. I hate to say it, but I'd give that +1 for insightful. :)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Um, that can pretty much be said of any law, though... or any aspect of society.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
That's OK, /.'s massive productivity drain on the world's information technology industry will never be offset by people doing something useful with /.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Thank heavens for the insightful person who modded this post down as overrated. Unfortunately, due to the idiosyncracies of the karma system I derive a net -1 karma from this post.
ObNotBitchingAboutSlashCode: DMCA is not the only law ever bought. I didn't mention it. I meant laws in general.
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--
E_NOSIG
The title of the article was indeed DMCA. However, the article was only tangentially about the DMCA, and mostly about how justice in the USA has been replaced with trial by financial combat.
So, yes, -1 Offtopic for my post, but -1 Troll for the article.
--
--
E_NOSIG
what did you expect? When you buy a law you make sure it can't be used against you.
--
--
E_NOSIG
The definitive resource for copyright is http://www.loc.gov/copyright/.
They have a FAQ and the forms.
The problem is, that according to his site, version 1.0 is free, and version 2.0 is shareware.
This means that Ariston can FREELY redistribute it on their CDs, as long as the end users abide by the license terms.
License terms he gave on version 1.0:
"Matt's Hack TV, Version 1.0 Portions of application ©1998 Matt Warner Portions ©1992 by Apple
Computer, Inc. 'Email-me' ware: drop me a short note to let me know if you find this application useful. The application
is free and is not to be sold. There are no guarantees nor warranties regarding this software."
License terms he gave on version 2.0:
"Matt's Hack TV, Version 2.0, October 1998 Portions of application ©1998 Matt Warner Contact Info:
or Portions ©1992 by Apple Computer, Inc. $10 Shareware. There are no
guarantees nor warranties regarding this software.
What it does: Matt's Hack TV allows you to take advantage of your Power Macintosh AV input and output ports to convert,
in real time, NTSC to PAL, NTSC to SECAM, PAL to SECAM, or whatever combination. What you need is two video devices (two
VCRs, for example) which understand the appropriate video standard and your Macintosh will do the rest. I've only been
able to test the PAL NTSC aspect, but I don't expect there to be any problems with SECAM functionality.
One user has setup his Power Macintosh to his satellite system so that he can watch PAL broadcasts on his NTSC TV, in
real time!
I can't speak as to the quality of the Analog converters (DAC) used in the Power Macintosh, but I suspect that it does
not match the quality found in professional or dedicated systems. But hey, if you already own a Power Macintosh, it's
practically free (excepting the cost of the PAL VCR or camcorder).
Related Info: How do I setup my Power Macintosh for video standard conversions? The first step is to make sure that you
have RCA or S-VHS plugs connected to the ports at the back of your machine. Then, you must restart so that the Macintosh
goes into a dual-screen mode. You might notice that your main screen doesn't have as many colors available to it since
part of the video RAM is being used to drive the virtual monitor for the video-out port. If you either connect the input
video to the output port or have a VCR plugged in and turned on, you should be able to see what's displayed on the
virtual monitor (and goes to the video-out port). You should at least see your desktop pattern. Launch Matt's Hack TV
and set the input type to PAL, even though your virtual monitor is likely set to NTSC. Move all windows out of sight and
open the Monitors & Sound Control Panel. Move the main window out of the way (window-shade it even) and you'll be able
to see a second window that sets the characteristics of the virtual monitor, including bit depth and resolution. To
access the monitor, you'll have to move your mouse off your main screen and onto the virtual screen. For PAL output,
choose one of the PAL settings. For NTSC or SECAM, choose the appropriate setting.
Where to buy PAL equipment: I bought a PAL-system VCR through the mail from B&H Photo and Video in New York (I'm on the
west coast of the USA). Their web site is http://www.bhphoto.com. They also sell professional equipment and had
reasonable prices, so I felt pretty comfortable buying from them. And no, I am in no way affiliated with them (wouldn't
that be nice!).
Hey! My color picker stopped working! Actually, it's a problem with the color picker itself. The color picker
automatically chooses the deepest-pixel-depth monitor, which (if you have the problem) is the virtual monitor.
Unplugging the video-out jack and rebooting will restore expected behavior.
Background: I wrote this software to use in conjunction with a PAL-system VCR to which I transfer home video in
originally shot in NTSC. This way I can send video to friends overseas. I looked around for an application which
performed a similar task, but couldn't find one. So I wrote my own, based on sample code found at Apple's QuickTime
site, written by Gary Woodcock and called Hack TV.
With version 2.0 I added menubar hiding (thanks to sample code from David Hayward at Apple DTS), preferences file
support (thanks to Jim Luther, Apple DTS Emeritus), and clipping support.
Change History March 1999. Minor change to fix compatibility issues with third-party digitizing cards, such as the iREZ
Capsure for PowerBooks.
October 1998. Added Appearance Manager features (now required). Added a proper preferences file. Added clipping feature.
Changed background blackout functionality for better reliability. Added Òhide menubar option.Ó Squashed,
created, then squashed innumerable bugs. Now $10 shareware.
March 1998. Released as version 1.0.1. Changes to documentation.
March 1998. Released as version 1.0.0 First release.
Esoterica Anyone desiring to donate Mamiya medium-format camera equipment or SGI computer equipment/software to my
cause, be sure to contact me!
So, why the $10 charge? That's a tough question. The short answer is that we (my family and I) need the money and it
takes time to develop software.
The long answer: When I wrote the first version, I made it free, as my own meager contribution back into the world
society that is the Internet.
The Internet was founded on sharing information and ideas. In fact, arguably some of the best software out there is
free. Unix is a prime example of this. Perhaps, in my case, this is just an instance of not being very proficient at
programming, so it takes a lot of time away from other tasks. The bottom line is that while it genuinely pains me to
charge for software, the pain is inconsequential when compared to that felt when I see my monthly stack of bills. So
please understand. And please pay =:-)
"
Conclusion? He just fancied some cash and decided to try his luck. He lost. Awww... too bad.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The corporations have money, and he doesn't. Thus, they can buy the lawyers, judges, etc. that they need, and he can't.
;-)
Last time I checked, blatantly trying to buy a judge was illegal
Seriously, I had a conversation with a lawyer friend over dinner the other night, and the talked turned to campaign finance reform.
He: Whether or not McCain-Feingold is the right solution , something has to be done, because of the public perception that the system is corrupt.
Me: Is it?
He: Is it what?
Me: Is the system corrupt?
He: Well... yes.
Your post makes me think, that as corrupt as people think politics is, they think of law as a kind of wild west where the rich get to hire the fastest guns.
Maybe its true. But if it is, there are still quite a few Shanes left. The lawyers I know still have a strong sense of idealism.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Where the company pretty much claimed that the software provided was LICENSED and that it would be SUPPORTED by the companies that made it. So NO, I don't think it's likely he got cards OR money but I'll bet he got a few support calls! Sounds like a net loss to me, no?!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I just tried to take a look at
l es /copyright.shtml
http://www.warnertechnology.com/Computers/Artic
and of course, the server isn't responding. Since slashdot seems to be immune from the "slashdot effect", how about whenever a story is posted, keep a copy of the referred-to page(s) on slashdot somewhere, say for a couple of days?
If you create something, and then give it away, why get upset when someone else gives it away too?
Except that he licenced the software, the company concerned broke the licence. Supposedly the DMCA gives an author the right to control distribution in anyway they see fit.
If this author cannot do that why should DVD region coding have any standing.
Someone managed to convince a judge that because the only way to use a piece of software was to load it into a computer, this was making a new copy, and could only be done by permission of the copyright holder.
By the same language you'd need a "book reading licence" (And pay double if you looked at the page with both eyes...).
However, if you paid for the software without signing a licensing agreement, then you simply cannot be bound by a licensing agreement after the fact.
Unless legislation is passed to ammend all contract law to allow this.
Once you've purchased a legally made copy of a copyrighted work, you have the right to resell it, or give it away, or pretty much do anything with it you like, except make more copies (or perform the work in public, for certain works.)
One of the problems with the DMCA (and the WIPO treaty on which it is based) is that it circumvents this by giving the copyright holder control of distribution including resale.
Of course, the US is one of the few countries where you actually have to file for copyright. In the UK it is yours by right - no filing required.
The confusion is from the wording that registering copyright, in the US, gains "additional rights". In other words there are some rights which are automatic, just that the "additional rights" tend to be needed in cases of infringement.
I think you misunderstood what they meant by "large developers." They were clearly referring to width and not height. So I wonder: as a skinny, tall developer, what are my rights?
</TONGUEINCHEEK>
Copyrights vest automatically upon the creation of a work, true. However, you cannot sue until you have registered the work, though you can register after an infringement to sue for the infringement. Finally, you can't get an award of fees or statutory damages unless you have registered the work.
The latter is everything in a low-budget case against a monied defendant. Everything.
The cost of registration is virtually nil once you know what you are doing. Learn what you are doing, and then do it often. It will give you power, and then you won't have to whine when someone beats up on you.
Yes, it costs a bit to file an action -- but not nearly as much as it costs to defend against a bad claim. This gives you a great hand at the settlement poker table. This makes it possible to win, even against a megacorp.
strike "bad claim" -- insert "sound claim"
The DMCA was far less relevant to this matter than the rest of Title 17 -- the Copyright Act itself. The problem here was that this guy just didn't do what he should have done to protect his work. Unless the asset was highly valuable after the fact, he is quite correct: it makes little sense to pursue a copyright action for an unregistered work. The problem wasn't that the laws failed him -- he just didn't take advantage of the laws.
As an IP attorney and computer lawyer, we \beat up on big companies for individuals and small companies all the time. And, from time to time, vice-versa. We also defend the little guy against an abusive big guy on the same terms. True, a monied litigant has advantages throughout America's courts -- this is hardly an issue unique to the Copyright Act. But the copyright Act is actually unique in that it is, by design, set up to provide powerful relief to underdogs with statutory damages that can include an award of attorney fees.
The idea is to have a strong case, and to be able to take good advantage of the remedies available to you under law.
This author did not.
One of the key mistakes he made, and this was huge, was to fail to register his valuable code, not with the "Patent Office" as he suggested, but rather with the Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress. It costs so little, and the massive differences it makes in a litigation scenario are huge.
Although its best to consult with a competent legal counselor the first time, most copyrights can be self-registered at nominal cost. Most of what you need to know can be found at: the Copyright Office web site.
Registering a work prior to infringement entitles you to statutory damages, possible statutory punitive remedies and a likely award of attorney fees in a suitable case. What a difference this can make for the defendant when factoring the consequences of an action. The hammer of an award of attorney fees and damages determined by a jury (not necessarily related to the actual damages at all), shakes the concience of a large corporation where it matters -- at the level of the bean counters. Suddenly, it makes no good sense to rattle sabres: it becomes a losing proposition.
Similarly, a wise defendant can use the Copyright law provisions to her advantage, particularly by exploiting the offer of judgment provisions of the local rules.
The laws cut both ways, and of course a monied litigant will often have advantages under EVERY LAW ON THE BOOKS. But it is no surprise that the Copyright Act offered this guy little relief -- he had a bad case.
Yep, tried
sales@..
sales_boston@...
both bounce back! how? DO you think their mail servers are overloaded?
And do fellow geeks think, this sort of 'attack' or attention works? I for one believe in voting with my dollar. If I don't like a company policy, I write them and tell why they won't be getting my money. Even though I get to do this very few times, it works surprisingly well.
Is there any other proven method to get companies attention on matters like this?
LInuxLover
So which one is right?
War is necrophilia.
When asked to justify why you want to donwload copyrighted works from napster you should use the exact same excuse all big corporations use when faced with similar questions. Simply say "because it costs too much to comply with the law".
When big business wants to pollute they say "it costs too much to clean up our emissions" and get Dubya to back off of the clean air laws.
When business does nto want to provide a safe environment for their emplyees they say "it costs too much" to actually buy egnomic keyboards or chairs for their emplyees and gets Dubya to turn back OSHA standards.
When big business does not like an increase in minimum wage they say "it costs too much" to pay people a living wage and get politicians to vote against it.
Please let you politician know that "it costs too much" to pay for every single song you want to listen to they seem to be in a mood to listen.
War is necrophilia.
I believe that the original developer has to be credited. If there were truly no restrictions we wouldn't refer to the BSD LICENSE. We just call such software "public domain".
oh yeah! let's make our point like intelligent, rational people by slashdotting the hell out of their servers! that'll let them know that we...wait, umm, we what?
and "Operation Slashdotted"? do you still play with GI Joes?
sean
Last time I checked, blatantly trying to buy a judge was illegal ;-)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
Yeah but it would give MS Windows the correct kind of smell.
Heh...Stink-wrapped software.
Either we callit piracy and theft, or we call it infringement.
If they can call it piracy and theft, then we should too.
Though I'd be happier if everyone called it what it is: copyright infringement.
Excuse my language, but that's a bunch of shit. When was the last time anyone here audited something before they ran? What it comes down to, unless you have hundreds of hours in your day, you'll have to trust someone: either on the integrity of the binary, or of the source.
-bugg
Their web page now reads:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Cannot open user default database ''. Using master database instead.
/includes/connection.inc, line 4
Pretty sweet server they've got there.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Their 800 number is slashdotted. oh well.
Great. Now the guy has had his software and his article redistributed without his permission.
He said it is not to be sold. This is very common for freeware and shareware. Although users are allowed to DL the stuff for free, authors don't want companies putting their software on a CD then selling the CD as 'shareware 2001' or whatever and making money off them. Here, it is clear that the software was being touted as a competitive feature of the hardware being sold. Thus the company was gaining financial benefit from the software and violates the 'not to be sold' portion of his licence.
---
Actually i'm sure you'd be faced with a lawsuit from disney, say associating thier name with dildos or some such thing. And in the case, i can't blame you.
The point is that MS and other developers copywrite their code. So if anyone one of them say 'you cannot bundle this', you have to observe that.
As far as using GPL'd code goes, i guess a similar anology would be taking someone else's new way to slice bagels and incorporating that into your bagel slicing product.
Now i'm expecting people to say 'all you gpl freaks want all software free anyway, so why are you worried?' First off, i'm sure not everyone that uses the gpl is against copyrights. Second, while some may want all software for free, they might be using the gpl b/c for now it isn't, so they are trying to play by the rules they are currently working in.
Doubtful, since spam is sent by one individual or company. Having alot of people send one thing is not spam, its the public voicing thier opinion.
(This isn't meant to be a troll. I promise!)
Ok, so what's the big deal? Here we are, whining because somebody doesn't get copyright protection for their work, somebody finds their work distributed in a way not allowed by the license. (Not that this is right.)
Whatever happened to all of those people who were crying to mommy because Napster was in trouble for wholesale distribution of copyrighted material in violation of the licenses on the albums?
Apparently, we like to have our cake and eat it too. We want to be able to download copyrighted materials from Napster, yet can't stand it when somebody uses our IP against our license.
Please, our arguments would be a little bit stronger if we picked one side or the other. I'm not saying Napster should be shut down, I'm not saying the RIAA isn't a bunch of jerks, and I'm not saying it isn't wrong to take someone's code and distribute it against their license agreement. I'm just saying that if we want to claim that information wants to be free, we'd better follow through and apply that belief in all areas, not just where convenient. If we want people to respect our license agreements (like GPL and FreeBSD's), we should make more of an effort to do a little bit of respecting ourselves.
(I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry! Rant mode turning off.)
-- There are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count, and those who can't.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
What!? The post you are replying to IS a qestion if the company violated the license.
The software was shareware. It is totally normal for shareware to be distributed this way.
The article makes no point that I can find to the contrary. No doubt that money makes a difference in copyright cases, but I don't see how that is relevent here.
It really seems like this guy either a) didn't understand the implications of how he licensed this thing or b) thought it was all cool until he decided the rules should suddenly be different for someone with the means to pay.
Don't get me wrong. I am totally on the side of the little guy. And I'm not saying the little guy didn't get the shaft here. But, I see nothing to make me believe that he did.
-Peter
"There is no number '1.'"
His license specifically stated what sorts of uses it could be put to, and Ariston's use was a violation of that license.
I don't see anything to support this statement in the article. Maybe I missed it. I didn't see the license in the article. I didn't see anything to indicate that the license restriced distribution, only use. And the only restriction on use was that the user (not the distributor) email him.
Please let me know if I am mistaken on any of these points.
-Peter
"There is no number '1.'"
I'm not sure how I became the defender of this company but . . .
I don't think that they had to. They weren't using it.
No doubt that these guys were slimy about it. That isn't my point, the point was about Right and Wrong.
-Peter
"There is no number '1.'"
So you don't equate slimy, underhanded behaviour with Wrong?
.
Absolutely not. There is a huge sea of behavior that, in my book, falls into the categories of slimy, unpleasant, crooked, unfair, and nasty which don't make it to capitol Wrong.
Napster comes to mind . .
"There is no number '1.'"
I disagree that it is capitol Wrong to do this. It isn't very neighborly, but in the absence of the "owner" licensing otherwise I don't see how you can argue that it is Wrong.
Is the BSD license "Wrong?"
Anyway, I don't think it is at all clear that his software was being sold for a profit anyway.
It seems like it might be Wrong for the author to give his software away, then suddenly say "oh, everyone EXCEPT for Mr. Corporation's customers can use this software for free. Mr. Corporation has to pay me."
I'm not actually saying that this is true, but I think this argument has more legs than saying, in effect, that the BSD license is morally reprehensible.
-Peter
"There is no number '1.'"
Okay, he did not give any details on his license, but he calls it "email me ware." So if that companies customers actually use the software and fail to email him they would be in violation.
I though this sort of distribution was the whole point of shareware.
I am all for the little guy, but it seems like this guy wants to change the rules in the middle of the game to make a buck.
-Peter
"There is no number '1.'"
Here's your chance -- they've got no money and you've got no money!!!!
:)
It'll be a *lot* cheaper to hit 'em where it hurts!
If you register the source, then if someone tried to patent your ideas you could show them the registered copyright containing those ideas. Which would pretty much blow any patent application out of the water.
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
The problem is not that a large company abused an individual (though they certainly did). The problem is that this individual didn't understand the laws he was trying to take advantage of.
You don't need to spend thousands on a lawyer for that either. My father (a CS professor) figured it out in 1983 when he sold software. He did a little research and found out he needed to file the software in order to have full protection under the law. No lawyer involved.
I'm sorry but I think this is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
SQLTeam.com - For SQL Server developers and Administrators
In fact the riaa argues that the temporary buffer copy made of streaming media means that not only are you experiencing a public performance but the you also are getting a copy. They don't seem to care that its not a copy you can use or access in any way (unless you use a technology specifically made to circumvent access controls on copyrighted material - which is banned by the DMCA). They want to be compensated for you getting this 'use' out of their work. I expect that soon they will start arguing that when you hear a singer sing a song that they hold the copyright to that the 'copy' stored in your brain is their rightful property too.
ignore these other comments. you did buy something. you DO have the right of first sale (or first giveaway). only of the physical thing you bought, and without having installed the software on it.
copyright only affects copies. period.
and the right to make you agree to eula's comes from copyright law (since you're copying to your hard drive - a flimsy ass reason in the first place).
the copyright affects the data on the cds. but you DO own the physical copy of the software outright. you can smash the cds, stick them in bags of manure, set fire to them, whatever you want. you did buy something. not much.... just the cds, but the property (versus copyright) laws that apply to purchasing actual physical goods apply here, there is absolutely no copyright issue.
any of you who don't see this are being rather obtuse and voluntarily ceding rights to software makers that they can't possibly have. over-geekified i think. please spend some time in the real world where 'things' are actually 'bought'.
First, the guy failed to GPL his work.
;-)
:-)
He couldn't have GPL'ed his program because its based on work copywrited by Apple, specifically, Apple's Hack TV sample code, and he gives Apple credit for it. Am I to understand you didn't actually *gasps* follow the link?
Third, the GPL is a *license
He did provided a license (of sorts) on his download page that licensed anyone to use the software freely but prohibited anyone from selling it. The baddy in this case was caught selling it.
So this story has implications with respect to GPL..um...how? The only conclusion I can logically reach is that he coulda, shoulda released it under the GPL so as to protect himself from this.
As already noted, theres no way he could've placed his work under the GPL. And I think his main point was that it pretty much doesn't matter what license you provide with your software if you can't back it up with enforcement (i.e. [a, some] lawyer(s))
And I think I know someone who is cranky and needs a nap.
Would this even be an issue for software under the BSD license? My understanding is that the whole point behind the BSD license is that companies can take your code and repackage it any way they want. I don't think the GPL lets companies do that.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Would you like these rounded up to 7', or to an even 10'?
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
---
Oh, come on. It's not theft, it's using code without permission from the original author.
Then I guess it's ok for people to burn whatever music CD's or DVD's they like. After all, it's not theft, it's making a copy without permission. Besides, those companies didn't actually lose any money.
Sounds pretty ridiculous doesn't it?
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Don't just send it to sales@ariston.com. Send it to:
sales@ariston.com
sales_boston@ariston.com
support@ariston.com
webmaster@ariston.com
postmaster@ariston.com
etc...
Let your message be heard.
All the numbers except the fax # appear to be slashdotted. As the original poster said, please voice your support. Since the phone lines are down, fax 'em.
Actually, it wasn't my copyright that was in violation, it was the other guy's copyright. He negotiated with Intel for quite some time. He lives in England. The logistics of a lawsuit would have been a nightmare, not to mention, Intel could drag on a lawsuit until the guy was broke and in debt up to his ears.
It's not that he didn't try. There's just no way to take on a big company unless you're talking about tens of thousands of dollars+ and you can find a lawyer who will take it on contingency. It's a very unlikely proposition.
According to copyright law, you don't have to have a registered copyright to protect your work (this was pre-DMCA days). You shouldn't have to, either. It's stupid. If you can prove that you're the original author, which would have been simple in this guy's case, you're completely protected. My book came out more than a year before their software. My book credited him as author. I would think that's evidence enough that he was the original author. Not to mention I had had his code for at least 6 months before the book came out, so that's roughly a year and a half before Intel produced the software.
As for the other reply which said "It's not theft." Actually, it is. Theft is a crime of property. They made money off of something that belonged to someone else. That's theft. If you write a book and someone else takes your manuscript and goes and sells it to a publisher under their name, without your permission, what is that? That's theft. They stole your manuscript and made money off of your original work. It's against the law. You can't defend it. Software is no different. It's an original work and unless you expressly give someone the right to go out and sell it without paying you, it's against the law for them to do so.
In a book I wrote years ago, I included code for, basically, extracting information about Windows VxDs from the binaries. I got this code from another developer who had placed copyright restrictions on the code. I included those restrictions along with the book and credited him for the code.
A few years later, Intel released a product for profiling software. In that software, they used the code from my book without my permission, nor the permission of the original author, who clearly stated that the code could not be used in for-profit software.
Being a small developer, and not having a registered copyright, there was nothing he could do. He certainly couldn't afford to take on the likes of Intel.
It's sad that companies with such large budgets and such talented programmers, have to resort to theft of code. And companies complain about piracy and intellectual property rights. They're a bunch of hypocrites and theives themselves.
-Legion
Having read the author's description of events carefully, it is clear to me that there are no issues in this case that would fall under the provisions of the DMCA. I think he included the DMCA in the title as a red herring, to distract readers from the fact that he failed to spend the $20 or so dollars it would have taken to register his copyright. At the end of his article, he answers the question, "what does this have to do with the DMCA?" His answer, and I take the liberty of paraphrasing here, was that the DMCA was just another law that failed to protect him. First, the DMCA was not meant to deal with situations like this (and I am speaking of each of the five titles). Second, the DMCA is completely irrelevant. He invokes the "that company is a bad guy and the DMCA failed me" mantra is misleading. He mights as well have said, "the voter registration laws failed to help me protect my copyrighted material!--we should all be outraged!" Get real. Learn about the issues. Don't rely on buzzwords. Don't spout off on substantive issues if you're not willing to be fair in your treatment of them. WBS
No... you're thinking like a programmer. It's not a true/false boolean flag. :-)
The law is about positions. What is our position, what is their position. The more evidence you have to sway a jury, the stronger your position can be, and the more demanding you can be.
Registration of your 1.0 source would definitely help in a legal battle even if you had progressed to 1.5, because at least you can show the exact date when 1.0 was registered, and show that 70% of the code is the same, plus a changelog to show the additions. A certification from a government entity is one of those things that pushes your position forward. I wouldn't worry about whether the exact version you are working on now is registered. After all, in terms of what we're talking about, your goal is to convince a group of 12 reasonable people that you have the natural copyright privilege to version 1.5 of this source - a government document showing where you were at version 1.0 is a great element to put on the timeline to strengthen your claim.
If nothing else, it would certainly prove what the license terms were at 1.0 if that was part of your filed materials, and most juries will understand that the license is not likely to change between 1.0 and 1.5.
Please note, IANAL.
When George W. Bush was using a Tom Petty song in his campiagn. I think the song was Won't Back Down. Anyways, Tom Petty found out about this and asked Bush to stop using the song. Petty said that using this song implied that Tom Petty supported W. Not wanting any negative publicity from this, Bush pulled the plug on the song. Bush said that a the song wasn't meant to infer anything of that sorts. I don't think he could understand why Tom Petty didn't support him.
No, acutally, it sounds like a pretty accurate assessment of the situation. Ideas are not property.
The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
-- Excerpt from Article 1 Section 8 of the Constution Of the United States of America.
The above statment is where congress gets its power to make copyright and patent law. Notice, it does not say anything about property. It says that Congress can grant an exclusive right to one's invention for a limited time To promote the progress of science and useful arts. So if a copyright or patent, or law thereabout, hurts the sciences and useful arts more than it helps them, it is unconstutional.
Copyrights and patents are not about compensation, except compensation as a motivation to create. Ideas are not property, they never have been, and they only will be through bastardization of IP law's original intents.
Any violation of IP laws is simply a violation of the "Author or Inventor's" limited time exclusive right. It is not stealing, it is simply copyright/patent violation, regardless of if the "Author or Inventor" is the RIAA, or J Random Hacker.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''The page for the registrar of copyrights is here.
I think the fee is about $30, which is pretty cheap for insurance if you are engaged in serious commercial activity that would inspire you to hire a lawyer later.
I can go to comp USA and buy 500 copies of MS Windows and shove one into every 500lb bag of manure I sell.
Please don't do that. The manure industry has a bad enough reputation as it is.
Yeah but it would give MS Windows the correct kind of smell.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
If derivative works weren't protected, then all those VCD copies of movies with watermarks added would be perfectly legal, because they weren't exact duplicates, they were derived works.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Yeah, I know, confusing terms. "Watermarking" as used by the MPAA means bits that are impossible to copy. "Watermarking" as used by the warez sorts means those little icons people stick in the corners of the movies they rip so you know who made them. I was referring to the latter.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
IANAL, but all derivative works of a copyright are protected, correct? So just copyrighting one version ought to give you some protection for all subsequent versions as well, as long as some code remains the same.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
There are also criminal penalties. From the DOJ cybercrime web site:
See 17 U.S.C. 506(a)(2); 18 U.S.C. 2319(a), (c)(1). The maximum punishment for this crime is 3 years imprisonment and $250,000. See infra Section III.D at page 71.
Another element, if proven, enhances the maximum penalty: That the defendant acted "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." If it is proven, the statutory maximum prison sentence can rise to 5 years. See 17 U.S.C. 506(a)(1); 18 U.S.C. 2319(a), (b)(1). See also infra Section III.B.5 at page 60 (discussing commercial purposes element). Moreover, a commercial motivation case will usually have better jury appeal than a case without commercial motivation. Indeed, if commercial motivation is not alleged, defendants may be more inclined to raise the affirmative defense of fair use, codified at 17 U.S.C. 107, since fair use defenses are more plausible when defendants do not profit financially by their acts of infringement. For a discussion of "fair use," see infra Section III.C.3 at page 71.
So talk to the local U.S. Attorney's Office.
OK, that's it. No more on-topic posts for me. Now I know where the real karma lies.
Is to find a bigger bully. Sell the IP to the companies largest competitor and let them go after them.
Seems though, that larger companies seem to think they're doing you a huge favor by redistributing your work, so they feel justified in doing so.
Recently, I recieved an email from a larger font firm (who shall remain nameless), who said that they were planning on including a number of the fonts I've designed on a CDROM that they would be distributing. They further went on to say that if I wanted them removed, I had to email them by this-and-such-a-date... In short, the email said, "Well, we're using your shit unless you tell us we can't." No please, no thank you. Nothing.
At the time, I wanted more exposure for my site, so I let them go ahead with it, so long as the CD included all my usual files. I'm still pretty irked about their attitude, though...
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
blog |
This might explain a lot. The site has been taken out, so I can't read the details, but I kept wondering why this case wasn't taken on contingency if it was so great. If you have a really good case, you can often get a lawyer who will take the chance for a chunk of the proceeds.
But just because you have a good case doesn't mean you have a good change to get money! If the company is on the way out, you would only be getting in line to fight over the leftovers.
This also means, of course, that there is no longer anyone distributing his intellectual property, right?
Let Ariston Know... or not. Seems this /. story has resulted in a nice little DoS on the Ariston site. That's what I call Poetic Justice. Now, to get this article re-run once a week or so.
cat
Mr. Warner, have you tried contacting EFF to see if they can represent you? Or perhaps they could get you in contact with someone who could?
S.
If you would have read the linked page then you would see that he did contact the head of the company and tried talking to him. The head of ariston basically blew him off.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
I can go to comp USA and buy 500 copies of MS Windows and shove one into every 500lb bag of manure I sell. Or bundle Disney videos with Dildo collections. So long as I paid for the product, why do I need permission from its maker to bundle it with something else? Someone explain this to me.
Because you are then making a profit off of somebody else's work. The original author is rightfully going to want a cut of that profit, or else won't want *you* to make money off of *their* work at all.
---
The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The corporations have money, and he doesn't. Thus, they can buy the lawyers, judges, etc. that they need, and he can't. They know this, so they (the corps) aren't afraid of him.
Sad, but true. This is what our legal system is nowadays.
---
The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Then maybe he should have hosted it on a server that can actually handle the traffic.
DMCA, like other copyright laws, provides no real protection for a small developer.
Overview
Imagine you've put your best efforts into developing software. The law says that you automatically own the copyright on your original works, so when a company starts distributing your work in violation of whatever license you've chosen, you probably expect copyright legislation like the DMCA to protect you. Unless you've had a lawyer involved since the beginning of development, you'd better think again. This raises questions about the viability of open source licenses such as GPL which hinge on a copyright to ensure that software projects aren't hijacked.
This is the story of a small, naïve developer who didn't file the copyright on his software and ended up being abused by Ariston Technologies, in Huntington Beach, California. My hope is that others can learn from this situation.
Summary
Ariston Technologies clearly violated copyright laws by distributing for profit a proprietary work without knowledge or permission of the copyright holder. Copyright laws such as the DMCA provide for collection of either statutory or actual damages. Current interpretation by the courts precludes collection of statutory damages unless the copyright was actually filed with the Patent Office before the violation. In the case of shareware or open source software, proving damages is exceptionally difficult. However, even in cases where the copyright has been filed, most copyright lawyers do not work on a contingency basis, and so will not bother with a case involving shareware or open source software unless the potential dollar amount is significant. The alternative is for the individual to pay for prosecution out of pocket, which can quickly exceed US$20,000, for an award that may not be even half that. So even in cases where copyright laws have clearly been violated, the net effect is that they are unable to protect the small developer.
Background
In 1998, I developed a small piece of software, Matt's Hack TV, to fill a particular need. The resulting version 1.0 binary was distributed as "email me ware," which required that users merely email me what they thought of the software. Included in the terms of release was a note that the software was not to be sold. It was not GPLed, but it was free. In 1999, I added functionality and revised the terms to include a $10 shareware fee. It was released as version 2.0.
In early 2000, I discovered that Ariston Technologies was distributing version 1.0 of the software on a CDROM sold with their iSEE-I USB product. The software was also used as advertising on the packaging material (see images to the right), and was featured at the top of the CDROM once opened. The CDROM was not provided as a public service nor was it available to the general public, even though this violated the usage terms of the first, free version. The last page of their manual included wording that stated that all software was furnished under license and that I (being the manufacturer) was effectively providing support for my stolen software, both of which were totally false.
When I first contacted Ariston, I saw the possibility of a business deal, with the potential for a wider distribution base. Unfortunately, when confronted about this matter, Mr. Lazarous Bontour, the president of Ariston Technologies, first feigned surprise and later, he significantly downplayed the situation by claiming that distribution was very limited and that the software had only been used for "tech support." Perhaps sensing impending legal problems, Mr. Bontour never seriously discussed forming a business arrangement, so money didn't enter the equation. At the end, his tone changed to insults with claims that the software "wasn't worth" it, and that they were pulling the software from their "latest" CDROM revision, even though the disk info shows the then-current version had been created in January 2000. At this point I knew I was out of my league, so I contacted an attorney to negotiate a settlement.
Several months were consumed with collecting the evidence, providing it to the attorney, and several rounds of attempted negotiation with Ariston. In the end, Ariston stonewalled the process and refused to negotiate. At this point, the only option was federal court, a costly proposition, with the daunting task of proving damages, since statutory damages are available only to software for which a copyright was actually filed before the infringement.
Pursuing the case further is apparently futile as of this writing. My only consolations are that others might benefit from my story and the hope that Ariston will either eventually get what's coming to them or change their unprincipled business practices.
Reference Materials
[ snipped quote from GPL to avoid lame lameness filter ]
Gee, mission accomplished. Now I can't read the article. Idiot.
--
--
#nohup cat
Homer Simpson quotes that apply here:
That'll teach you to share!
Trying is the first step to failure. So never try, Lisa.
I hope you all remember this the next time you want to make something the public may want to buy...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What registration gives you is extra protections, such as the ability to collect statuatory damages up to $100,000 if the infringement is judged to be willful.
This is the crux of the matter - GPL software by it's freely distributable nature would make proving damages almost impossible when we have Judges like Kaplan who don't grasp free software. So in the real world, GPL is only meaningful if the copyright is registered.
My question: On what grounds does the judge decide what the damages are? In the example given by the article, $100,000 would be excessive given the limited distribution and low price of the CD, yet if the judge tries to decide by estimating monetary damages, GPL is screwed again. Is the value of the damages set by the amount that would create a suitable slap on the wrist? What factors decide the damages when registered copyright is breached?
A search engine doesn't hype a program then charge you $$$ for the link to it. They're not really as analogous as you seem to think.
If a 3rd party distributes the password along with the program, then they are circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under [the DCMA]
decide to take it to the source.
Because their SQL server is a page in the story of "The Little Server that Died," this info is provided below from Their Contact Page.
Why not give them at the corporate office a call? When you call you might hear a nasal kinda "assistant" -- I figure that if she writes down all the complaints and passes even 1/5 of them on, then notice would filter its way to the top some time.
Come on -- takes a moment of your time.
Contact US
Corporate Office:
800-326-5294
Local: 714-846-7676
Fax: 714-846-3546
Web Address
http://www.ariston.com
E-mail Sales
sales@ariston.com
"This might explain a lot. The site has been taken out, so I can't read the details, but I kept wondering why this case wasn't taken on contingency if it was so great. If you have a really good case, you can often get a lawyer who will take the chance for a chunk of the proceeds."
Unfortunately the weak part of the case was that the amount of damages was difficult to prove. Without proceeds to take a chunk out of, you just aren't going to get a lawyer to take the case on a contigency basis.
The lesson you were supposed to get out of this was to register your copyright so that you can at least be eligible for statutory damages. If you are pursuing someone who's infringing your free software, statutory damages might be the only ones you can prove.
Please don't do that. The manure industry has a bad enough reputation as it is.
If I publish a book that's a compilation of articles, it requires but one copyright registration. So where would we be if a service was set up where anything under appropriate license (say, GNU) could be uploaded to a site from which it would be (in compressed form) added to a DVD compilation-of-the-month (or so) that would be duly registered with the Feds under an "all rights revert to the authors of the individual packages" arrangement? After all, if I copyright a book or magazine - which will in some instances contain such an assignment to the original authors - and you steal a single article from it, you're guilty. And this means it wouldn't take 100s of folks submitting registration to the feds (and the fees that involves) but only one small organization with the ability to collect the stuff and burn the DVD (it would also I think be necessary to actually offer the DVD for sale in order to secure the copyright - so that it's actually published - but hey, that could be a useful thing to have or subscribe to for some).
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Because you are then making a profit off of somebody else's work.
That would be how retail works. A store buys a product from a manufacturer or distributer, doubles the price, and resells it to individual consumers. If I "go to comp USA and buy 500 copies of MS Windows and shove one into every 500lb bag of manure I sell," then CompUSA is simply the distributor, as long as I have a resellers license. As far as I know, a resellers license doesn't specify what I am allowed to resell.
-Dorsey
-Dorsey
If you can't beat them, exploit them. *Then* beat them... -Milk & Cheese
so if my cd-rom works under windows they want me to give them a copy of windows too?
A better title might have been "The DCMA vs. Large Businesses" or "The DCMA sucks for Small Developers."
In this instance, someone tried to use the DCMA against a large corporate entity and found it didn't provide him with the resources he needed to protect his work.
The important thing to note here is that the DCMA works best for those with lots of cash, whichever side of the fence they're on.
I really hate it when a site gets /.ed, but in this case it sounds like they deserve it. Of course, only the DB was /.ed, the site still remains.
That is a good idea. However one legal entity would probably have to hold the copyright. This means you would have to sign over your copyright. To some extent I think this is what the FSF does: they encourage people to sign over their copyright so they can handle legal details. If you like the GPL, signing over copyright to the FSF seems like it might have some potential (but, alas, largely untested in court) advantages.
Regarding another person's response to your post (about whether multiple programs in a compilation can be registered at once): I'm not sure I see a problem. The quoted sections seem not to be targeted toward compilations, but people do manage to defend compilations under copyright law. The trick in complying with these rules seems to be deciding what printed media to provide. An energetic organization could provide 25+25 pages for each program in the compilation. (It's a lot, but not completely out of the question if you're not doing it by yourself on one printer). Copyright would be formally established and stealing a single program from a registered copyrighted compilation in which the same organization held copyright on each program could never be justified as fair use.
Hmmm... On the other hand, I have a Windows '98 "compilation" CD. I wonder if MS printed out the required pages from each program.
Let's get real, and stop panicing over irrelevent issues. First, if you declare your software public domain, you have reliquished your copyright. Secondly, there was no violation of the use policy, which is not binding in any case. The distributor could well argue that they were not in fact charging for the software, but for the media on which the software is contained, much the same as most of your linux distributions.
You're confusing patent protection with copyright. Disclosure is part of the patent bargain but it is not part of the copyright bargain. There is no reason for it to be.
In the case of copyright, the item to be copyrighted should be so unique that the only way one might realistically infringe is to actually copy from the source. In this case the onus would reasonably fall upon the copier to license the material.
In the case of patent protection, the idea to be patented could easily be conceived by a great many persons independently. So disclosure is the only hope that one would have that any new idea one thinks of and wants to use isn't already patented. (Disclosure is also supposed to benefit society, theoretically.) (And yes, I know that "ideas" aren't patentable, only implementations. We all know that's a load of crap in practice, however.)
Copyrights are about stopping people from using other people's works. Patents are about stopping everyone from using an idea, no matter who originated it, irrespective of whether any plagiarism might have been involved.
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Sure it's informative: by negating the misinformation in its parent (and, as a bonus, reminding people that the way to get a clue is RTFM or in this case RTFL). Learning by negative examples eh.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
To be specific, most companies and patent lawyers have years of experience in circumventing copyrights. The large companies routinely use two attacks to destroy the copyright. First, they throw money at it and hope the developer is too poor to fight. Second, they assume that small developers do not keep good documentation.
There is not much that can be done about the money. Lawyers must be hired; expert witnesses paid; bonds must be negotiated. In a more cynical world, congressmen and judges must be bought.
There are things that developers can do for documentation. For instance, in olden times developers snail mailed themselves copies of their designs. The postmark dates a design until the seal is broken. On a more sophisticated level, laboratory notebooks can be kept that have approval space and perforated copies. (Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I say this only as an example of why we would expect the DMCA to be ineffective and how I have seen people deal with it in the past.) Look at it this way. If I published a book remarkably similar to the "Confederacy of Dunces" a few years before Toole's mother allegedly 'found' the manuscript, who would own the copyright?
I suppose this would be a neat trick to look at 50 pages of Windows source. Not that you'd want to, but the possibility is there. And if you can't get those 50 pages, start giving out copies of the latest Windows release.
"What registration gives you is extra protections, such as the ability to collect statuatory damages up to $100,000 if the infringement is judged to be willful."\
--
Registration does more than this. It gives you
the sole protection you are likely to get under
the law as a matter of practical jurisprudence.
Any other forms of proof of copyright are not
well-regarded in courts of law.
C//
"Yes, legally in the US, you just need to put it to a CD (floppies last about 4-5 years, CDs 20 years, mag tape 100 years) and mail it to yourself postmarked by registered mail."
--
You are propagating a dangerous myth which can
only harm those who attempt to protect themselves
in this ridiculous fashion. Using "mail it to
yourself" as a copyright protection strategy has
major pitfalls. REGISTER YOUR COPYRIGHT.
C//
If you'd actually read my post, you'd see I /. is copyrighted, even
:)
said you really should register your copyright.
Legally, your post on
if not registered.
--
Sure. What I was trying to point out, however,
was that the statement "legally, your post is
copyrighted," while as a matter of written law
may be true, isn't PRAGMATICALLY true as a
matter of actionable jurisprudence. Which is to
say, all apparent written issues of law aside,
if you want to be protected by the law -- AT ALL
-- get a registered copyright.
What I'm trying to say here is that it pays to
pretend that actual registration is the ONLY
route to obtaining a copyright. This is the case,
because the registration is the only reliable
means of obtaining legal protection once you get
to court, and when playing with the big boys, your
chance of winning in court -- not whether you are
right or wrong -- is all that matters.
C//
p.s. sorry if I offended; this is a hot button of
mine if you can't tell.
Make em think twice about running windows on the server side. Make em realize that we aren't going to take it. Give 'em hell!
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Yes, legally in the US, you just need to put it to a CD (floppies last about 4-5 years, CDs 20 years, mag tape 100 years) and mail it to yourself postmarked by registered mail.
But if you want full protection, by being registered in library searches, you need to send it to your national archives.
I used to produce various software, RPGs, and magazines in Canada - I would always print out the source code and register it in both the National Library (can't recall the name) in Canada and the US Library of Congress.
But I only did that for full version releases. The bug fix versions I would just save to disk. And keep the disk.
And all my code had a copyright declaration on the splash screen (or boot), DOS -? call, and embedded in the main screen Help About.
Even my freeware was copyrighted and registered.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
(Note that the FSF is careful to copyright the code it releases under the GPL.)
What he really means is that the FSF is careful to register copyrighted code. Any copyrightable material is copyrighted by YOU as soon as YOU "fix" it on a "medium."
What registration gives you is extra protections, such as the ability to collect statuatory damages up to $100,000 if the infringement is judged to be willful. (If you don't register, you can only collect actual damages, which are very difficult to assess.) You can may also collect attorney's fees.
Hope this clears that up. We really need a copyright FAQ on Slashdot.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Sadly, enforcement comprises a good percentage of the law. If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't be so concerned with the 'precidents' that certain court cases set.
The simple fact of the matter is that unless small and GPL developers start suing and winning court cases, Large developers (Microsoft, as well as this other guy) can do anything they want to with GPL code without fear of reprisal.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This type of Corporate theft is sadly too common; a former employer (www.marlborough-stirling.com) of mine lifted Gnu Basic & Rtf Parser. They where well aware that it was Licenced & Copyright Software, (I told them) yet they used to sell it for 50,000ukp shot as a print engine toolkit.
Unless they sold off their "copyrighted" CD to the highest bidder in their liquidation.
Another provision of most "shareware" is that the only charge for it can be reasonable costs of distribution and media. By bundling this software with their hardware, and by touting this software on the box, one can reasonably assume that part of the price of the hardware was going to fund the software. Also, most shareware prevents inclusion on compilation CD's without permission from author.
And, of course, shareware isn't a licensing term, it's more of a generic category. Different shareware can have wildly different licenses.
So, if I cut the bottom of the CD case out and open it that way, am I not agreeing to their license? For the "click Yes to accept" type of licenses, what if I use the TAB keys and the space bar to select "Yes" instead of clicking?
It will also say if you don't like that you should return the software for a full refund (though I suspect the store will charge a restocking fee or some bullshit)
Bwahahaha!!! Just try to return opened software anywhere. They won't charge you a restocking fee, they just won't accept it as a return.
Who the hell needs closing tags anyways, damnit!?!
The term "shareware" implies, as I stated, that it is not to be sold or included in a distribution without the author's permission.
Not that I give a rat's ass about Warner, but he is on the right side here. As for implications for the GPL or other free software, no I don't really see this as having an effect. About the only thing that could be relevant here is that a) if you don't register your copyright, then you're screwed; and b) if you don't have money to fight it out in a court of law, then you could very well be screwed anyways.
- it is not required to register
- at your choice you can collect the profit the infringing party has made instead of actual damages (interesting for open source)
- copyright infringement is a felony that can get you in jail for at most three years
Disclaimer: IANAL, consult a lawyer if need arisesWhat are you doing here? Reading Slashdot some more! Go back to your cryogenic chamber!
Seems though, that larger companies seem to think they're doing you a huge favor by redistributing your work, so they feel justified in doing so.
Just like how software pirates usually think they're doing big companies a favor by distributing their work! ; -)
I've got a solution:
Start the crusade to get DMCA declared unconsitutional so that all the shit that law gives us will be invalid and we can write a FAIR law with our favorite Republican from Virginia!
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
No I am not. The original English copyright act on which the US one is based established four copyright libraries to which publishers had to send a copy of each work. The US followed the same model and that is why the library of Congress is so large.
Copyright covers only the embodiment of an idea, not the idea itself, but the bargain element is still there. There is a social interest in maintaining a repository of all published knowledge.
When the scientologists got kicked out of court in the Netherlands in their case against Karin Spaink it was because they had failed to register the work. The court decided that sending the first and last pages alone did not meet the requirements of Dutch law.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This guy failed to register the copyright and is now complaining that he can't afford to take the case to court - tough.
If the guy had registered the copyright the risk of statutory damages would have forced the infringer to negotiate a settlement.
Don't forget that one half of the copyright bargain is disclosure, in return for giving the library of Congress a copy of the work to archive the copyright owner gets enhanced legal redress. No disclosure, well sort the mess out yourself.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I asume the infringement is in failing to release modified GPL code or code that includes GPL under the GPL.
Or, to pursue another point, would a precedent not be helpful in this case, and what we're really facing here a breakdown of the American Legal system? i.e., you only get the 'justice' that you pay for, one way or another? In that case, we need to look into making the law affordable again, and that's a totally different project...
In any case, I am curious as to how to make the /. effect work for good, by helping get donations for worthy projects, setting up new organizations, undertaking projects for the purpose of defending our rights, or even creating lobby groups for the rights and freedoms of individuals, etc... If anyone knows a good discussion group/ discussion format for said topic, please notify me. Replies to my posts are usually read, and usually responded to if not AC, and I try to check my email box regularly. Be sure to change the address, as detailed in my .sig. Thank you.
-----
IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
-----
-----
IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
-----
email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
This brings up the unsettling possibility of /. actually being used for something useful. It makes me shudder.
This sig may be reproduced by anyone for any reason.
Corporate Office: 800-326-5294
Local: 714-846-7676
Fax: 714-846-3546
sales@ariston.com
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Because if you walk into CompUSSR and spend $5000 to purchase shrink-wrapped copies of Windows, you are paying the creator (Microsoft) for their product/works (Lousy OS). In this case, no compensation was offered to Warner. That's what makes it wrong (and technically illegal).
--
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
The seal says if you break the seal you are assumed to have agreed to the licence.
It will also say if you don't like that you should return the software for a full refund (though I suspect the store will charge a restocking fee or some bullshit)
You don't have to sign something to be bound by it. You can act in a way that is evidence of acceptance of conditions.
If you people would just do as you're told, everything would be OK.
Doesn't the GPL say "you can use this as long as you give credit for it" and didn't this company put a credit to the software on the side of their box? Okay, so they fullfilled their portion of the GPL license agreement. You're out of luck.
This is why many, many developers prefer to work for closed-source companies... because their work is closed and copyrighted so others can not use it off the cuff as this was.
Sorry, you're out of luck. Maybe you should have used the Mozilla license on your software. =)
it really is the same company. They closed thier doors, and re-opened under another name the same day to dodge taxes.
-EvilMonkeyNinja
a.k.a. Joseph Nicholas Yarbrough
Security Grunt by Day
Programmer by Night
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
The implications of this for the GPL are exactly nil. As far as I can tell, Warner was at best unclear about what his license terms were, and probably actually just didn't understand what he was doing when he put out his software as "shareware".
Even if this were actually a case of copyright violation, the GPL isn't there to recover damages. It isn't even there as a hidden trap to force unwary companies to reveal their source code. It's there to keep the software in question open, and it seems to work reasonably well at that.
to have people redistribute it for you: you want them to make it available on FTP sites and on CD-ROMs. It's the end-users that are responsible for licensing the software. Ariston's inclusion of shareware with some piece of hardware might technically violate the license or it might not, but as long as they didn't deactivate the "shareware screen", it's not a blatant and outrageous violation of shareware terms. If Warner didn't want this sort of thing to happen, he shouldn't call his software "shareware". This kind of fuzzy, borderline case has no implications for the GPL or its enforcement.
I spoke to the admin contact listed in WhoIs and was told that Ariston is no more.
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
The 'customer service' number actually worked, but was reassigned to another company. The guy on the other end of the line told me that I "had the right number, but that company went out of business".
I also spoke to the admin contact listed in WhoIs and was also told that Ariston is no more.
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
The 'customer service number actually worked, but was reassigned to another company. The guy on the other end of the line told me that I "had the right number, but that company went out of business".
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
I suddenly feel sorry for those who have incorporated File -> Open into their GUI dialogs for operating various programs ... wouldn't that seem to instigate that, if this is indeed taken too far, one would be required to replace the aforementioned feature with File -> Open(tm)? Ah, but alas, I suppose Elmer's won't be able to push OpenGLue advertising campaigns for elementary schools now ...
He who has no