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SCO Invokes DMCA, Names Headers, Novell Steps In
Sparky writes "We've already heard that SCO have invoked the DMCA via 'letters sent to select Fortune 1000 Linux end users.' The specifics come via a copy of the letter reprinted at LWN.net - they've decided that they own the copyright to about 65 header files contained in Linux - largely errno.h, signal.h and ioctl.h." balloonpup also notes "CNet News has reported that SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty legal fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers. Way to go, SCO!" Many readers also point out a Groklaw article indicating Novell has registered for the copyrights on multiple versions of Unix with the U.S. Copyright Office, so that "both the SCO Group and Novell have registered for UNIX System V copyrights for the same code."
This is just novells first step.
The next step will be their own series of letters to SCO reminding them of their contractual obligations to Novell.
arent the headers (especially some of those, like errno.h) published publically as ISO/ANSI C and/or UNIX Definition documents? Hence, if they look similar, it's because they're defined standards from various standards committees? Perhaps someone should point out the document name and number and page numbers.
This stuff is too complicated for me to understand. Why didn't a slashdot editor add a quirky, sarcastic, biased comment so I would know how to think?
I don't want to read all those links. Is there any way that I can make fun of Microsoft based on any of this? That would make it easier. TIA
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
"We've already heard that SCO have invoked the winged minions of hell via 'voodoo dools shaped like the CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies.' The specifics come via a photo of a doll made to look like Samuel J. Palmisano of IBM - they've decided that they own the souls of about 65 CEOs running Linux - largely IBM, HP and Ford." balloonpup also notes "CNet News has reported that SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty witchdoctor and soothsayer fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to the Prince of Darkness. Way to go, SCO!" Many readers also point out a Groklaw article indicating Novell has been praying for the souls of CEOs running Linux with the Holy Catholic Church, so that "both the SCO Group and Novell have claimed the souls of the same people."
The DMCA was created in the spirit that new forms of electronic media were not safe from potential copyright violations, and the act did what it set out to do. Yet it also did a great deal more as special interests and corporate schmoozers managed to get their paws on the bill and turn it into more of a "dominant market player protection act" than anything else. We all agree that the amount of innovation stifled using the DMCA as justification is staggering. Yet electronic media should also be protected from the loopholes the bill originally solved. Here are a few potential solutions:
1) Remove the current DMCA and amend it such that only specific uses of media are prohibited. Allow for the use of back-engineering tools with HARSH punishments for people who knowingly use them to break copyrighted material with intent to distribute. This leaves the burden of proof with a prosecutors instead of the "guilty-til-proven- innocent" tactics of the RIAA et. al.
2) Make a specific statement for "loser pays": anyone suing under using this legislation who loses the case pays for the legal costs of both parties. Settlements don't count, and this will outright favor the bigger players, but in the American climate of "legal attrition" as a business strategy I see no other effective means of trying to relieve this aspect of the DMCA problem.
3) Allow publications on computer security to be done freely and thoroughly if tied to legitimate academic or corporate entities. Hold computer manufacturers liable if one of their components has a security flaw that causes eggregious commercial/monetary damage but which could have been fixed by repair of one of these published flaws.
4) Ensure that American laws apply only to American citizens with the express wording that products purchased in other parts of the world which belong to the consumer are theirs to do with as they please. A clause allowing rightful action to take whatever steps necessary to use that product would be nice (mod chips et. al)
Pointing fingers makes us feel good, but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting? Does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to resolve this issue?
Bethanie: Whore...
Fan Whore
GO NOVELL! GO IBM! :-)
It may seem strange, but I really am feeling some sort of loyalty to these two companies. I am way more likely to use them in future than I think I would have before the whole SCO debacle. Although I'd still never ever in the coldest darkest hour in hell use netware or AIX again(blech).
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
The investors must be getting worried.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
I think I'm going to file a claim that I own a copyright to login.h ... this way, everytime anyone logs into their system I should be entitled to some roylaties ... this should work ...
Larry Gasparro is the last to cash out with nearly $500k in December - Look at the latest holdings of the insider roster
BENCH, ROBERT K.
Chief Investment Officer
8-Oct-03 214,243 Shares Left
BROUGHTON, REGINALD CHARLES
Senior Vice President
17-Sep-03 95,000 Shares left
GASPARRO, LARRY
Vice President
10-Dec-03 0 Shares Left
HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Vice President
13-Aug-03 20,494 Shares Left
OLSON, MICHAEL P
Vice President
11-Nov-03 47,330 Shares Left
WILSON, MICHAEL
Senior Vice President
14-Jul-03 0 Shares Left
WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN
Senior Vice President
15-Jul-03 0 Shares Left
Notice How little the insiders still actually own (Aside from Robert Bench)? Smells fishy to me
Poor SCO, no one takes them seriously any more. "We own Linux-- er, UNIX, um I mean, some of it, or do we Novell? And we're going to sue everybody in existence for theft-- uh, copyright violations of this code-- oops, not that code, don't look at the man behind the curtain, we mean this code over here -- what? not that code either? OK, I mean these header files -- um, you can't copyright ideas, you have to patent them, and we have plenty of patents -- we don't? Well, we'll be threaten-- um, sending letters to our partners (aren't you happy to be doing business with SCO?) telling to to keep their noses clean and line up for a nose inspection -- what, Novell just copyrighted the same stuff we claim to have copyrighted? Don't tell the judge that! Yikes! What's our stock doing now?! Quick read this press release about, um, yeah, that's it: we just got DDoSed, um, Again! Yeah, that'll work....what's that you say? How much are we paying our lawyers for this nonsense? It's contingency, people, don't worry. Contingency all the way...except for the huge fees we pay along the way...and 20% of the company...but otherwise not much -- and yes, that just wiped out any chance of profits in this quarter, but don't worry, next quarter the legal fees go up and we still don't have any licensees yet. But step right up with $699 and you can be the first on the block to say you got rooked--, uh squared yourself with the law-- um, not really the law, with our lawyers, yeah, that's it."
SCO has now asserted ownership over not just Linux, but every single C/C++ compiler out there, and every OS based on C, including the BSD variants and all the other versions of Unix out there.
SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers.
So SCO has changed from a technology company to an employment agency for lawyers? I'd be interest to see what the step was just before "Profit!"
SCO just keeps getting funnier every day. I've stopped being angry and have chalked it all up to entertainment.
The fact that they are now claiming copyrights on HEADER FILES is the ultimate testament to the weakness of their cases.
I mean, how could one re-engineer APIs without replicating headers. If Linux is in violation, than BSD must be in violation as well. They should be suing Apple.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
SCO knows that without the lawsuits they have a losing business model. If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em, and hope that 1)One of the charges stick, or 2)Somebody buys you out.
This isn't the first time that someone has tried this.
...comes great responsibility.
If SCO wants to claim ownership of things in errno.h, then I want monetary compensation for each and every segfault, since they are now SCO's responsibility, not mine!
Boy, no more having to double-check pointers in my code, whoo hoo!
There needs to be some equivalent to Godwin's Law for the DMCA. How does "Given enough time, all legal battles in the tech industry will invoke the DMCA. This generally means that all constructive arguments have ended."
Well in one of the articals they clame that there is a deal that BSD is alowed to use them but not linux. But you are still right it is BS
If the above information is correct, SCO revenue in Q1/2004 will be around 15 M$ and net loss could be >5-10 M$. It seems they don't get more money soon, they will be out of business before summer.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
In this interview from February, SCO themselves claimed the ABI code was GPLd:
MozillaQuest Magazine: Regarding binfmt_coff, abi-util, lcall7, abi-svr4, abi-sco; are any of these modules SCO IP?
Blake Stowell: No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP. This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces. We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules. The IP that we are licensing is all in the shared libraries - these libraries are needed by many OpenServer applications *in addition* to the Linux ABI.
After seeing the number posted on /., I dialed it up and listened. I have to say that, even though I know what they are doing is messed up, they put some very posive spin on thier situation, albiet that is the purpose of this conference call.
One of the first questions in the Q and A period was "If I pay the $699, do I have rights to use the source and continue to run Linux?" Darl very neatly sidestepped half the question and answered "Yes, you can continue to run the binary (emphasis mine) within the agreement."
From that, I take it that if you pay, you can run the kernel, but they won't say you can play with it.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
It should then be enough to copy the BSD comments in the beginning and replace the copyright on errno.h, signal.h, etc.
Or?
(As another user noted, errno.h et al are also parts of ANSI standards for C...)
Otherwise -- thanks, SCO -- finally I might get a kick on my backside to take the trouble to install and try OpenBSD! :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I don't know how much I really got screwed (hell, I didn't even know there was a lawsuit -- I wonder how they even found my current adddress!). The letter states it was "not practical to provide individual caculations" for the refunds. Yeah, right!
I know sure as shit that the lawyers got a hell of a lot more than two checks totalling less than a dollar!
Method of processing duck feet
Dear Santa,
My christmas wish is for the SCO stockholders to wake up and realize they're being taken for a ride. That way the rest of the world could get on with their lives without worrying about being bitten in the ankles by Daryl McBride. For Daryl, I wish a long stay in the relaxing resort for his kind of folk known as Utah State Prison. I wish for him a large roommate named Bubba.
Peace.
An ordinary Linux user.
That's right, boys and girls, the GPL is a tool for TERRORISTS and COMMUNISTS!
Every day I see SCO's stock price and I mutter to myself, "it's just not fair."
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Damn, can I use that excuse? I would have been in the black this month if I had not had to pay my bills. But seriously, this really tells a great deal of SCO's financial picture. Their money is running out. Their legal bills are mounting. This letter is nothing more than it appears: Desperation to get any last revenue that they can get.
On another note, has anybody looked at the headers that SCO has mentioned. I'm willing to bet that some of them are legacy to BSD not SCO.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
take a sip everytime the letter says "copyright"
From /usr/include/sys/ipc.h
* Copyright (c) 1988 University of Utah.
* Copyright (c) 1990, 1993
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
* (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
* All or some portions of this file are derived from material licensed
* to the University of California by American Telephone and Telegraph
* Co. or Unix System Laboratories, Inc. and are reproduced herein with
* the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
*
* This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
* the Systems Programming Group of the University of Utah Computer
* Science Department.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
The Linux code I just looked at is lacking the copyright notice like the above.
If taken from BSD or SYSV, it is a licence violation because of clause #1.
So, I hope Novell has their heart in the right place. But really, this depends on the judges. To sue over header files is so damn crazy, the real winners are obviously the people who ran off with $9 million in legal fees. What did the lawyers tell SCO that made them think this is a good investment when the case is so absurdly flimsy? That must have been a home-run sales pitch!
A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.
They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.
It's about time some limits were imposed in US courts, as in:
Then maybe the world can get back to doing business instead of letting these useless "IP companies" affect billions of dollars of purchase and deployment decisions, without fear of repercussions for their fraud.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Now isn't this funny, Novell can sue SCO former Caldera for copyright and contract breach. Caldera placed the old SYS V code under a open source license and made it available for download. So what gave Caldera the right's to do this if the code is Novell's?
Makes for Interesting Thought!
Got Code?
Same here, but I would contend that AIX really shines in huge enterprise settings, which most people have never come in contact with and do not really see the benefits of it.
Finkployd
Claiming copyright on this list of files is so nonsensical, it must be a distraction tactic.
After all, SCO have already stated that 2.2 does not infringe.
So what are we supposed to not be looking at at the moment? Oh look, the quarterly financial statement just got published. And even booking revunue on shipment rather than payment (along with other dodgy accounting practices) couldn't stop a net loss.
Something crooked is going on here. This letter is an irrelevance.
The solution is easy.
Get rid of the law.
Replace it with nothing.
Circumventing copyright protection should not be illegal. US copyright law grants the enduser the right to make a backup copy of any copyrighted material he owns. Also anyone is free to make copies of uncopyrighted material. The DMCA clearly violates established consumers rights.
What it amounts to is a law saying that it is illegal to pick locks. Well then what do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?
The DMCA does nothing to stop copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is illegal to begin with. Making it 'more' illegal isn't going to stop anyone who was going to commite the crime in the first place.
Say a thief is going to break into your home to steal your tv. Making it illegal to pick locks isnt really going to deter him. All it will lead to is poorly designed locks.
In short there is no reason to make a law to protect something that is already protected by law.
Profit for SCO's lawyers: 9 million
Earnings for SCO: -1.6 million
Watching SCO die and set a precedent for anybody who tries stupid legal things with Linux: Priceless
-----------------------
You are what you think.
Gee, my company's error.h and types.h are similar. Oh wait, every god-damn company I've ever worked for has similar .h files because this is basic, common interface shit.
Its like saying "we patented the play, pause, record and rewind buttons on our model of VCR, the rest of you fuckers with tape, CD and DVD players on the market better pay us for this inovative interface!"
I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this.
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
Thanks for clarifying, if possible
SCO Group Fourth Quarter 2003 Webcast and Conference Call
How about instead of patching the law with new special cases for electronic media, we recognize that the law is fundamentally broken and come up with coherent answers for the general case?
We've passed the point where the law can be patched back into usefulness; it's time to rethink on a more fundamental level.
After Darl and Co. had finished, but before most of the FUD could settle, was a Q and A period.
One of the most interesting questions was "Of the really large Linux users, how many have licenced from you?" The answer was "We haven't had anyone over the 5000 CPU amount buy a licence, but a couple of them are thinking about it."
Or, in other words: "No one big is buying our BS, cause they have a legal team that knows we are full of it. Or at least is willing to wait it out and see where the chips fall, rather than believing our hype."
To me, that speaks volumes about their case.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
So they're claiming they own the copyright on errno.h. This is insane. Even if there are substantial similarities between Linux's various errno.h-s and SCO's version, how many ways are there to implement errno.h? It's a bunch of friggin' macro definitions with more or less standard names and more or less standard values. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought one could only copyright original works, but what's original about a bunch of #define-s?
Marklar: marklar
On second thought, maybe that wasn't so inaccurate.
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)
By sending out these clearly fraudulent DMCA notices-- which at best claim copyright over something which is uncopyrightable, and at worst is an attempt by a third party to claim that it is illegal for people to use the materials owned by the BSD raegents under the BSD license in the manner in which the BSD raegents intended the BSD license to be used-- has SCO opened itself up to legal action?
SCO has in the past managed to sidestep most allegations of fraud by being horrendously vague. They said that they were owned money but never sent any invoices, sidestepping mail fraud. They tried to present things as if you needed an SCO license to use linux, but if you tried to talk to talk to them, they were actually selling UnixWare licenses and not in the process actually distributing linux to you, sidestepping GPL violations. However, this is entirely non-vague. It seems to me that SCO has stepped over some sort of line here and this is actionable.
I know that the DMCA does not seem to have many consequences for people who send out bad takedown notices, but surely there must be something preventing company A from finding lists of competitor B's customers and sending them takedown notices for using some portion of competitor B's product that company A does not, in fact, own.
At the least, can this be added to the lanham act/ restraint of trade/ libel or whatever countersuits that Redhat and IBM have going? What are the options from here, and what will actually happen?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/base defs/errno.h.html#tag_13_10
Do these guys have any brains at all?
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Two farmers are fighting over a cow. One grabs the cow's tail and pulls while the other farmer grabs the cow's head and pulls. This last for a long time. While all this pulling is going on, the two farmers' lawyers sit in the middle and milk it.
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
The lawsuit against IBM is still a contract dispute. Even though SCO claimed they would be adding Copyright infringement claims against IBM, they have yet to do so. My guess is they haven't made any Copyright infringement claims yet because even they are not 100% sure if they really own any of the code. And making false claims in court would kill their lawsuit.
When Caldera first obtained the old UNIX source code, they wanted to release ALL of it under an Open Source license. But they were not able to because to many other people and companies still have rights via Copyright to the code the other parties added.
The letter that SCO is sending out is just one more thing that will come back to haunt them.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
The writer above has lots of good ideas for reforming the American DMCA law, but it goes against the current American political climate for any positive changes to take place.
The trend of the Americans to start using their vast police and military internal forces to enforce the whims of corporate copyright laws will multiply the effect of the parallel trend of outsourcing their technological corporate infrastructure to the third world. They are inducing a massive shift of their technological industry to the third world, without any thought given to the long-term consequences of such a strategy.
By the time that they realize how much these two trends are reinforcing each, their positive-feedback loop of technological suicide will be too far advanced to retard or reverse.
In another generation or two, America will be the new Argentina. Or even worse off considering that they created so much global hatred toward themselves in their schitzo period (1980-2010; when their mounting arrogance and delusional-self congratuation inversely paralleled their financial global decline) that the rest of the world will have no interest in revitalizing them.
In 2004 the smart young Americans are beginning to question the alternatives to being so closely tied to this declining empire, even if they rarely publicly acknowledge their doubts. Which is probably just as well, given the jingoistic politcal climate there.
An excellent overview of this trend is found in the book "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg. They missed the revolution that technology is creating in corporate copyright, but they foresaw everything else.
"The DMCA was created in the spirit that new forms of electronic media were not safe from potential copyright violations, and the act did what it set out to do."
Except that existing copyright law already made copyright violations illegal whether on a fancy new media or not. The DMCA was never needed to begin with. Being on digital media doesn't invalidate copyright on material under the laws that have been around since 1976.
"Pointing fingers makes us feel good, but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting? Does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to resolve this issue?"
What compromise? This law never had a purpose to begin with except to enact additional restrictions on certain types of copyrighted media. Why on earth do people feel that every few years the same issues of corporate interest need to be raised again and that the people should "compromise" a little further. We compromised when we created copyright, we compromised again in 1976, they compromised DESPITE US in 2000. Exactly how far do you feel we should compromise before we draw the line and say we won't give another inch, in fact we are taking back a few we shouldn't have ever given in the first place?
If you start with harsh restrictions on a subject, then compromise, the end result is more harsh than what you had to start with EVERY time. Now you do it on the same subject every few years over and over again and you have a pattern that results in giving more and more ground until you look back and realize that there isn't anymore ground to give and their just making up new bullshit ways to screw you now.
The DMCA is unconstitutional, anti-competitive, anti-innovative, and anti-american; however, after a careful perusal, I can't find anything inherently homosexual or happy about the law. Maybe you can enlighten me.
(Score:-1, Homophobic)
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
The parent link is not correct. But This is
Linux was/is a derivative of Minix. There is no real Minix code left in Linux, but back in the 0.9x days, Linux was still evolving. You can still download Minix from here.
Now, here's the key point: although the NAMES of the various system calls, IOCTLs, error numbers and signals are part of the POSIX standard, their numeric assignments are not. The implementor is left to define them. Not all implementations define these the same way - take a look at the Linux/FreeBSD/SYSV emulation code in NetBSD to see the kinds of translations that need to be done to provide cross-platform compatibility.
Now compare the Minix include files with those of Linux and FreeBSD. You will notice very much the same error code and signal numbers. The Linux code dates from 1991 and is pre-ATT/BSDI settlement. It's likely that Tannenbaum is also in violation of AT&T's IP, and Linux has just inherited it. Of course, there's no money in SCO suing Tannenbaum.
Does this damage SCO? Not really. Is it worth US$699/seat? Definitely not. Can SCO collect damages? Probably, knowing the U.S. legal system.
Nothing ... if it's the only way, or one of a very limited ways to implement the standard, it's not copyrightable. I believe the format and switches are specified by the POSIX standard, which means you have no choice/originality involved. Do it their way or it doesn't work.
Leaving the copyright notice off, even on a one-liner, is wrong, but it's not a fatal error. Tracking down who may have stripped a 20-line notice from a 1-line header for an OS that's been around since the 1970s is not going to be an easy task, and a judge would probably say "screw this, de minimis non curat lex* applies" and tell them to shove off. (*the law does not concern itself with trifles, nothing to do with Lex Luthor)
Still, what you CAN do is research the candidates on the major 2 platforms and pick out the ones who side with Libertarian beliefs.
Sounds like what you really need is a system like Instant Runoff voting where you don't have to worry that you're "throwing your vote away" on a third party candidate. Then you (and everyone else) could vote for that Libertarian candidate without worrying about the bad guy winning.
Personally, I think the DMCA should stand. What we need to do is get the STFU passed into law so we can have headlines like:
SCO, "DMCA"; FSF, "STFU"
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
What it amounts to is a law saying that it is illegal to pick locks. Well then what do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?
Close, but not quite. A better analogy would be to make it illegal to make a hairpin, as it could be used to pick a lock. It's the instrument that the DMCA bans, not the action. The action (of breaking a lock that wasn't yours) was already illegal. Piracy has always been illegal, it just wasn't illegal to make the tools until the DMCA.
Allow for the use of back-engineering tools with HARSH punishments for people who knowingly use them to break copyrighted material with intent to distribute.
I call bullshit. only a person that is so seperated from reality would say such a thing.
PROPER punishment for illegal use. Sorry but someone violating the DMCA should get 1/10th the punishment than a mass murderer. Currently under US laws if you violate the DMCA, you will get a lighter sentence if you grab a shotgun and kill a few officers when they come to get you.
Copyright violation is a very very VERY MINOR offense and needs to be treated as such with only MONETARY damages.
sending anyone to prison for anything as silly as a stupid copyright violation is absolute stupidity.
you know this, and until this is how it is written I violently oppose any such legislation and those that support it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From:
t io n=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=7 4550
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&ac
To All Licensees, Distributors of Any Version of BSD:
As you know, certain of the Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD") source code files require that further distributions of products containing all or portions of the software, acknowledge within their advertising materials that such products contain software developed by UC Berkeley and its contributors.
Specifically, the provision reads:
" * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed by the University of
* California, Berkeley and its contributors."
Effective immediately, licensees and distributors are no longer required to include the acknowledgement within advertising materials. Accordingly, the foregoing paragraph of those BSD Unix files containing it is hereby deleted in its entirety.
William Hoskins
Director, Office of Technology Licensing
University of California, Berkeley
æeee!
I disagree.
The DMCA also makes it illegal to "pick the lock" as well, not just the creation of the tool to pick the lock. And it doesn't distinguish between locks you own and locks you don't own.
Oh, but SCO uses different errno.h files depending on the situation. I tried hard to include a fragment of the errno.h but the lameness filter totally prevented me from doing that. It complained about too many junk characters, but how can I be responsible for the junk in SCO header files? Some logic from errno.h:
"old, crufty environment" -> oldstyle/errno.h
"Xpg4v2 environment" -> xpgv2/errno.h
"Xpg4 environment" -> xpg4/errno.h
"Posix environment" -> posix/errno.h
"Pure Ansi/ISO environment" -> ansi/errno.h
"Old, Tbird compatible environment" -> ods_30_compat/errno.h
"Normal, default environment" -> just the standard errno.h file
Some of the comments, dated 94/12/04:
Portions Copyright (C) 1983-1995 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
The information in this file is provided for the exclusive use of the licensees of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Such users have the right to use, modify, and incorporate this code into other products for purposes authorized by the license agreement provided they include this notice and the associated copyright notice with any such product. The information in this file is provided "AS IS" without warranty.
Portions Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. Portions Copyright (c) 1979 - 1990 AT&T All Rights Reserved
THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. The copyright notice above does not evidence any actual or intended publication of such source code.
Here are the comments from an older version of the same file, specifically 91/06/06. I wonder why they've dropped Microsoft from the copyrights list?
UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T
Portions Copyright 1976-1990 AT&T
Portions Copyright 1980-1989 Microsoft Corporation
Portions Copyright (C) 1983-1991 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The information in this file is provided for the exclusive use of the licensees of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Such users have the right to use, modify, and incorporate this code into other products for purposes authorized by the license agreement provided they include this notice and the associated copyright notice with any such product. The information in this file is provided "AS IS" without warranty.
Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988 AT&T
All Rights Reserved
THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
The copyright notice above does not evidence any
actual or intended publication of such source code.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
Louis Black highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicnas best when he said "A Democrat sucks, a Republican blows. A democrat won't let me keep my money, but a Republican won't let me spend it on drugs and hookers, so what am I supposed to do with it?"
Smithers: Did you hear? "Loser Pays" has now become law; if we sue someone and lose, we'll have to pay their legal fees!
CEO: Perfect.
Smithers: WHAT?! Do you know what this means?
CEO: I know EXACTLY what it means. It means we'll hire the most expensive lawyers we can find. It means that no one will risk paying a million dollars in legal fees if they lose their ten grand lawsuit against us. It means when we sue people, they'll settle because the cost of losing just got higher. It means that we can rip off the customer even more! We'll have the best lawyers in the country - we're bound to win, and we'll make our victims pick up the tab! Yessss, this is EXACTLY what we wanted....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
now, the compiler-supplied errno.h in
looking at the errno.h included with kernel source, it looks like a relatively boilerplate file. just a bunch of #defines for error codes. the only way you could really infer copyright infringement is from the comments on each line that says what the error code means. however, i would think that all these are documented somewhere, so even if SCO's file is identical, it's still arguable that in both cases the comments were copied verbatim from some specification document (where copying is possibly allowed).
looking through the files listed, it seems like all of them fall under this general premise - boilerplate kernel constants and macros for very basic stuff that's really hard and silly to try to implement any other way.
blah, SCO can bite me.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Linux header: /* Operation not permitted */ /* No such file or directory */ /* No such process */ /* Interrupted system call */ /* I/O error */ /* No such device or address */ /* Arg list too long */
:p.
#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
#define ENXIO 6
#define E2BIG 7
And the POSIX standard says:
The [errno.h] header shall provide a declaration for errno and give positive values for the following symbolic constants. Their values shall be unique except as noted below.
[EPERM]
Operation not permitted.
[ENOENT]
No such file or directory.
[ESRCH]
No such process.
[EINTR]
Interrupted function.
[EIO]
I/O error.
[ENXIO]
No such device or address.
[E2BIG]
Argument list too long.
Conclusion:
This is hogwash. Complete and utter hogwash. Even the descriptions are specified in the standard. You see some minor differences (Argument vs Arg, function vs system call) but it is simply trivial. If this is the "infringing" stuff, the replacement with completely non-infringing comments would be ready in about 30 seconds directly from the standard. I can volunteer to do a cleanroom implementation without neither SCO nor BSD code
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Make an original file, program, or image, run it trough a one-time-hash using the DMCA text. Have a friend post on some site how to crack your file using the DMCA text. Would it not reuire the DMCA to be banned?
Yeah, if that DC Sniper didn't have full-auto capability, he wouldn't have been able to take down so many people. Oh, wait a minute...
You see, if I walked into a random schoolyard and started shooting, does it fundamentally matter if I'm using a single-shot muzzle-loader rifle or a modified full-auto AR-15 with a 30-round clip? I'm still a monster, right?
Sure, in practical matters, there may be more dead bodies to clean up if I had a full- (or even semi-) auto, but the fact remains that I am a disturbed person who broke the law. If all guns vanished today, if I were that disturbed, I'd simply walk into the school yard with a 3-iron and start whackin' heads on the kindergarten jungle-gym. Are you going to argue that golf club makers should make their clubs less useful for clubbing someone to death?
And I don't buy the argument that guns are specifically designed to kill/injure people. They're designed to hurl small chunks of metal, accurately, for long distances, and at very high velocities. What people choose to do with them is their own business -- until they break the law.
Yes, this is a rather morbib way to make my point, but I hate it when people still insist on blaming the instrument of crime, rather than the criminal.
Method of processing duck feet
Nope.
The corporation is its own entity. That's the whole point of a corporation - the business' liabilities are incurred by the corporation, not by its owners, so that if it fails, the owners don't lose their asses.
When you attack a corporation, you attack a business entity. The owners (shareholders) have nothing to do with it; in fact shareholders have a right to anonymity. Why do you think nobody goes to jail when Exxon destroys hundreds of miles of Alaskan coastline, but if you take your dirty oil and dump it in the storm drain and get caughty you get fined and maybe thrown in jail? It's because the shareholders aren't personally liable for the actions of the corporation. Again. That's the whole point of the corporation.
This takes a leap of one level of abstraction to get, so I can see why a lot of people don't comprehend this. Libertarians and conservatives tend to be concrete-reasoning keep-it-simple-stupid types that can't recognize a non-corporeal entity - unless it's a middle eastern diety that's been pounded into their head from birth.
Ya that'd be great, a system where voting for someone can CAUSE them to lose.
... + 100!/98! + 100!/99!
/. ) imagine the news trying to explain HOW a candidate won.
7 votes for A, B, C
6 votes for B, A, C
5 votes for C, B, A
3 votes for D, C, B
D gets dropped, then B gets dropped, and finally A wins (A:13 vs C:8).
But if the last three voters instead voted A, D, C, B then A loses BECAUSE they voted for A:
7 votes for A, B, C
6 votes for B, A, C
5 votes for C, B, A
3 votes for A, D, C, B
D gets dropped, then C gets dropped, and finally B wins (B:11 vs A:10)
In instant RunOff Voting there are the following problems:
-Raising your vote for someone can cause them to lose (Monotonicity Criterion)
-Lowering your vote for someone can cause them to win (Monotonicity Criterion)
-A one on one comparison between the winner and any other candidate should show the winner being preferred in every pair. IRV doesn't do this. (Condorcet Criterion)
-Doesn't scale at all. The possible votes are basically a factorial. Sorry if its hard to describe the formulaes. But the number of possibilites without truncation is N! with truncation its the summation of permutations. sPn (where s=1 to n-1) xPy = x!/(x-y)!
California's recall would of just not scaled with IRV. Suppose 100 candidates then the number of possible votes is 100! + 100!/2! + 100!/3! +
-It's not easy to understand by the common guy (not
For detailed explanation of these problems:
http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm
A condorcet method would be a more sound election method, because basically the voter ranks the candidates. Then the method sees which candidates are preferred by one-on-one comparisons. Joe Shmoe can understand this because when the news comes on, it just shows the comparison of the winner to every other candidate.
The DMCA does nothing to stop copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is illegal to begin with. Making it 'more' illegal isn't going to stop anyone who was going to commite the crime in the first place.
It's more to make those who are passing the laws feel they are doing their job.
Say a thief is going to break into your home to steal your tv. Making it illegal to pick locks isnt really going to deter him. All it will lead to is poorly designed locks.
It can lead to all sorts of other issues. Especially if picking locks viewed as a more serious crime than burglary.
Bill Hicks on the two-party system:
I'll show you politics in America: "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Wait, there's one guy holding up both puppets!" "Shut up! Go back to bed America. Your government is in control. Here's Love Connection, watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons!"
"Sufferin' succotash."
Posting as AC as I already modded here
I just took a look in the Mac OSX errno.h file (/usr/include/sys/errno.h) and the error definitions are all there, with the same attributed numbers as in the Linux and *BSD ones. Someone further down claimed that SCO was claiming ownership of the actual numbers, since the defined names are an ANSI/ISO standard and therefore can't be claimed.
What this means, I think, is that SCO is indeed attempting to roll open the BSD/LSI case again. I would be amazed if they were able to get away with this. I'm pretty sure a competent lawyer will be able to clam this one up in court.
Not only that but SCO is opening themselves up to truly massive claims of extortion and fraud if this is not legal, which although IANAL I really cannot see it being from their pretty wild claim in their letter. They simply claim they own these files, yet make NO mention of showing how that is so.
I am really interested as to who is going to sue SCO next.
Not quite right. While the shareholders of a corporation are not liable in case of corporate wrongdoing, its officers and board are. And they can be individually prosecuted if they were party to criminal activities, either in terms of making decisions or in terms of intentional execution. And they can go to jail as a result.
In the case of Enron, for example, Andrew Fastow is being criminally prosecuted.
However, many argue he's just a fall guy, since people that high up in a corporation often as far as they can to maintain plausible deniability. Like Ken Lay for example. But, this happens in politics, too. Say, Reagan and Iran-Contra.
Can SCO really be that incompetent?