Slashback: IP Protection, ReligiousDocument, LiPS Savings

Slashback tonight with updates and clarifications on recent Slashdot stories, including some more fuel for the Sony fire, a closer look at the Intellectual Property Protection Act, ministers jumping on the OpenDocument bandwagon, another spammer gets his due, founding members of the new LiPS board speak out and more - read on for details.

Sony leading a price-fixing cartel? Sheridan writes "Hot on the heels of the SonyBMG XCP rootkit fiasco The Times is reporting that Sony may have been charging online retailers up to 15% more for its products than high street outlets in an attempt to block online bargains from forcing prices down. Perhaps they're trying to recoup some of their losses on the rootkitted CDs, although somebody ought to let them know that most of their loss was to their reputation, which this certainly won't help."

Deconstructing the IP protection act. Brent writes "Ars Technica takes a more in-depth look at the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005 and shows that some of the original fears of the Act were overstated. The article states that the act is primarily concerned with criminal acts of infringement, namely infringement done for commercial gain or competitive advantage, and not with criminalizing the mere attempt at commonplace infringement. In short, the act is aimed at commercial piracy. The article also ends with an reasonable challenge to the US government, including the call for a referendum on consumer rights and the penalization of the use of any digital rights technology that impedes fair use."

Even the clergy are jumping into the OpenDocument fray. da6d writes "The LXer has an article about clergy joining the fray surrounding Microsoft's refusal to support OpenDocument. From the article: '[they] see Microsoft's stance as intentionally withholding support so that it can turn a technical business decision into a political fight. By refusing to support OpenDocument, Microsoft is ignoring the cross-platform document sharing needs of visually impaired users, not only in Massachusetts, but also in the other 49 states, not to mention the rest of the world. The economically disadvantaged will also suffer from the lack of Opendocument support in Microsoft Office.'"

UK spammer gets his due. delete writes "Notorious UK internet spammer Peter Francis-Macrae, who referred to himself as "weaselboy", has been convicted of fraud. The 23-year-old earned more than £1.5 million through his activities, primarily through spam mails offering the registration of unavailable domain names. Up to £425,000 of his earnings remain unrecovered."

Linux to make smartphones and high end communication devices cheaper. nitinah writes "In an interview with Phonemag, the founders of LiPS comment that mainstream adoption of Linux would make smartphone and high end communication devices more affordable than ever before. Founding members John Ostrem, lead scientist of PalmSource and Michel Gien, EVP of Jaluna also commented that Linux would also extend the economics to not just phones but applications and services."

Comments

OpenDocument

[JoeShmoe950]

I'm in massachussets, and I'm glad massachussets is attempting to make the move. What I wonder is, with the major fight surrounding it, why is there just about 0 press? My history teacher, who knows about just about any current event in massachussets hasn't even heard of it. Why is no information getting to the unnerds?

Re:OpenDocument

[geekoid]

Becasue it's not interesting to most people? Seriously.

Yuo need to explain it to them, as well as your nerd bussies. When explaining what it is start with "It's a way to save the taxpayers a bunch of money"

Re:OpenDocument

[Stevyn]

Because the unnerds don't care. Paris Hilton's phone is stolen?? Now that's news. Face it, they don't care and the media doesn't want to waste the time trying when fantasy land entertainment figures are easy to track and report on every time they crap.

Re:OpenDocument

[Niten]

I don't live in Massachusetts, but I'd guess the lack of press has a lot to do with the general public's tenuous grasp on the concept of file formats, let alone the idea of why any one format should be considered 'better' than another. Until the people's knowledge of such technical issues improves (I have faith that it must, eventually), I'm afraid that issues like this, however important they really are, will never achieve much attention in the mainstream press.

Re:OpenDocument

[SandiConoverJones]

Really, how long do you expect it to take for technical news to hit non techies? Now, right on the news, with the weather report, is the mention of a new virus, worm, phishing scam, or whatever. Most of which a /. reader has known about the vulnerability far longer than reality TV watching morons.

The media is run by English majors who brag to each other who understands math/science less than the others! Don't expect an English major to understand tech stuff. You wouldn't, perhaps, remember proper gerund useage, would you?

Re:OpenDocument

[saskboy]

Just tell them:

"Remember how when you tried to move your assignment from my computer to your computer and it didn't work because I don't have Word?"

-"Yeah?"

"Well, OpenDocument means it would have worked."

-"Oh. Cool."

Re:OpenDocument

[saskboy]

The point is, in 5 years, instead of the result you got by accident, more often than not a .odt will work either because everything will save to .odt by default, or the program will at least understand it.

As it is, even Word isn't compatible with Word. If you try to open a Word 97 file on Word 95, it won't work. If you save to .rtf in Word, it might not look the same when you open it and save it again in Open Office.

We need one standard, and it's going to be open. It's too bad that Microsoft will have to be burned over the same barrel their closed system has burned people on for over a decade now.

Re:OpenDocument

[saskboy]

"would recommend that you pirate MS Word instead."

Nearly all students have access to broadband now, and could download and take a copy of OpenOffice.org 2 home to their computers. No more piracy, and you can read the prof's power point shows, and send him Word files if they demand an assignment be emailed. No more MS piracy monkey on your back to worry about. Open Office 2 has improved a lot over Star Office from 4 years ago.

The ones who recommend piracy when a 99% compatible and legal alternative exists, probably don't realize that OpenOffice is free and almost the same as MS Office.

Re:OpenDocument

[cammoblammo]

MS Office has no useability issues

You might be right about this being an ego driven war, but let's face it, Winston Churchill was driven by ego as well as a desire to save Britain. Egotists can be right. And nobody wants to lose.

But there is one serious useability issue that seems to be at the heart of the whole debate--MS-Office doesn't support ODF. If they did, there would be no argument from anyone, and Massachusets would probably use MS quite happily.

So the question is, whose ego's causing the problem?

Re:OpenDocument

[LarsWestergren]

The media is run by English majors who brag to each other who understands math/science less than the others! Don't expect an English major to understand tech stuff.

I have met a LOT of bright English majors. Many of them, being intellectuals in general, are above the average citizen when it comes to knowledge of science and technology. Not once have I met any person boasting about being ignorant. Your comment is such a fucking troll, and this "us vs them" liberal arts bashing on Slashdot gets more and more tiring every day.

Really?

[Trogre]

The economically disadvantaged will also suffer from the lack of Opendocument support in Microsoft Office.

How would the economically disadvantaged suffer? They'll just use OpenOffice instead. 100% OD support, and zero cost.

Unless they're already pirating MS Office and hopelessly locked in.

Re:Really?

[violent.ed]

The economically disadvantaged will suffer due to the fact that an OO document wont open in the MSWord processor that their boss/future employer uses to look at resume's. thats just one example.

The rich ppl might not care to try to use a "free" software for compatibility, they pay for their own MS Office, and dont care. if the poor bastard that cant afford mS office cant write a resume that i can open in my native word processing program, i will skip over that application for someone else who's mommy can afford (or at least whos brother knows how to pirate) MS Office.

Re:Really?

[pla]

You forget these people may need to send or receive documents from the well-to-do people that are using Microsoft Office already. Communication is supposed to be a two-way street, after all.

The "economically disadvantaged" don't blow $300 to $600 on buying Office, Acrobat, Photoshop, and whatever other crap they need to view "standard" formats.

They either run Free Software, or they pirate the real thing.

When you can choose between food for the next two months, and Excel - Well, one of those wins without even a second though. And that winner doesn't start with "M" and end with "T".

Or, just in case you have no frame of reference for this - Think back to college, to eating nothing but ramen (or worse, the school's "Food" Services chow) between visits to the family. If you came across a $10 bill - Would you put it away towards your student copy of MathCad... Or buy a pizza?

UK spammer gets his due

[oliverthered]

Well, it just goes to show we don't need many if any new laws with the word computer in them.

Strange...

[TedTschopp]

As a Christian, I see more need to have an opinion on Intelligent Design than on a document standard from a company. One is a discussion on the reality of the world, the other is a stance on the choice of a company to provide a service. Christians should be more concerned about reality and than on the document standard stance of a company.

Then again I belive the above statements should also hold ture if you replace company with government or political party and document standard with morality.

More on Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anybody has posted this on Slashdot yet (excuse me if I'm wrong) but apparently Sony have decided to recall all of the XCP infected CDs and offer replacement copies. According to the article they will also make it easier to uninstall the XCP system

What losses?

[eepok]

Can we seriously STOP calling non-materialized projected profits "LOSSES"? Sony hasn't lost a single dollar on their "rootkit fiasco." At the worst, they could be making less than they expected, but they're not losing any money that was already in their pockets. Their "lost profits" are based on their predictions of how their products would sell given certain predicted factors.

Yes, this "LOSSES" arguement easily fits into the piracy problem and how the MPAA has "LOST" so much money.

Stop! Just stop falling for their vocabulary changes.

Re:What losses?

[Red Flayer]

Well, lost potential revenues are one thing, LOSSES are another. And actually, it looks like the federal government redefined "loss" in re: fraud cases, here's the proposal (1998), see Appendix A: http://www.ussc.gov/publicat/Lossdefn.pdf (pdf)

The fact of the matter is, though, that the MPAA can use LOSS when discussing these 'ghost' revenues, unless they are on their financial statements and disclosures.

They can claim they "LOST" sales. They can claim they "LOST" revenues. They can even claim that they "LOST $XXX,XXX,XXX in revenues according totheir calculations. They cannot claim they realized a financial LOSS though, unless they did.

The problem is not how they use loss -- the problem is that many people don't understand the difference between financial loss and whatever mumbo-jumbo the **AA are spewing.

Although, semantically, it would be nice if those of us in the know fdid not refer to their phantom revenues as "LOSS" though, since it is a matter of public perception.

Sony

[vodkamattvt]

Sony has been racking up the karma lately, all bad it seems. Unfortunately, with the way the content "industry" is these days, Im not sure it will get better before it gets worse. Im sure the lesson here that all the other big media monopolists learned is to be more ... discreet ... when trying to screw Joe Public. Or worse, screw Joe Public by going through Big Brother.

Re:Seems a bit unfair

[aukset]

It is my understanding that the majority of accessibility tools available are third party applications that only work with Microsoft Office. The limitations do not necessarily rest with the OpenDocument format or the available implementations of it.

One might conclude that the limitations are a symptom of Microsoft's stranglehold on office applications where accessibility tool developers have little incentive to develop their tools to interoperate. Given that OpenDocument is completely open and unencumbered, having the market-leader support ODF would create a huge incentive for those third party developers to build interoperable tools that work on any application that supports ODF. In other words, if Microsoft Office joins the rest of the industry in implementing ODF, all add-on tools and applications, including accessibility software, will have a single, standard avenue to co-operate with any office application. That would be the biggest win for accessibility issues.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent isn't a troll, mods. He may have a different opinion than you, but he did not post to start a flame war. He has the guts to say what he believes, and that doesn't deserve karma hell.

Re:Counterargument on price fixing

[SkipRosebaugh]

All of which is very nice. Except when you walk into your average music shop, you will find a shrinkwrapped LatestPopStar cd, and possibly a cardboard standup and a TV playing music videos from MTV. The customer can't open the cd and listen to it before buying, the way he can examine the quality of the Acme Wizmaster. Apples to apples, please.

.doc may suffice between nobility and commoners

[tepples]

[Poor] people may need to send or receive documents from the well-to-do people that are using Microsoft Office already.

I would imagine that documents exchanged between the nobility and the commoners aren't likely to use macros, heavy dependence on pagination quirks, or other features of .doc or .rtf that OOo 2.0 RC3 doesn't emulate properly.

Re:Counterargument on price fixing

[BrynM]

If Acme doesn't sell at discount to the brick-and-mortar stores, they will go out of business because they can't compete with the web stores, and potential customers won't have anywhere they can go to see an actual Wizmaster. (Or Acme has to set up "demonstration stores", where they demonstrate but don't necessarily sell stuff. The high-street stores save them this expense.)

Your analogy is good except for the advertising involved with music. Consider if Acme had MTV, VH1, BET, E!, Entertainment Tonight and all of the other tv outlets in addition to the godawful amount of people playing the Wiz5K on the radio plus magazines interviewing the makers of the 5K at every opportunity plus the Wiz5K 2005 North American Tour. Hell, you'd have to nearly enter a sensory dep environment to avoid the newest Wizmaster... the public is most likely already dreaming of the 6K and it hasn't even been made yet. The interviewers keep asking about it.

Gladly, nothing is quite like the modern music intdustry. The amount the big players are saturating us is quite insane already. The only reason to have hard product in the stores for the likes of Sony is to villify anything that isn't a hard product including the sales mechanism. It's their soapbox and they'll be damned if they let you insult it. The only way they'll let that soapbox be ruined is by bashing it over your head, which we are now watching them do. I hope that thing falls apart soon. The headache is killing me.