Slashdot Mirror
Company Uses DMCA To Take Down Second-Hand Software
dreemteem writes "A judge Tuesday heard arguments in a dispute over software sales that could potentially have repercussions on the secondhand sale of virtually any copyrighted material. The suit was filed by Timothy Vernor, a seller on eBay, after Autodesk, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, asked eBay to remove some of its software products that Vernor had listed for sale there, and later to ban him from the site. Vernor had not illegally copied the software but was selling legitimate CDs of the products secondhand. For that reason, he argued, he was not infringing Autodesk's copyright. Autodesk countered that because it licenses the software, rather than selling it outright, a licensee does not have the right to resell its products."
Vernor absolutely has the right to resell his CD, due to a well-known section of copyright law known as first-sale doctrine. If you legally possess a copyrighted work, you can resell it, as long as a new copy is not created. I don't think this case will last very long.
Now, the DMCA would allow Autodesk to, say, validate a CD key online once only and then deny future installs on other hardware, since any attempt to get past that would be a circumvention attempt prohibited by the DMCA. But it's not Vernor's fault that Autodesk didn't do that. (Of course, just maybe they know that if they did, customers would be more reluctant to buy their software since most people don't like DRM.)
I am not a laywer.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
There's legitimate software for sale on eBay?
News to me ...
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
why we're not the leaders of innovation anymore. Seriously, these guys should stop wasting time on this nonsense and innovate already. They made their money on the sale, go make something else to make more.
What I found most refreshing about this, is that from reading TFA, the guy's (Vernor's) lawyer actually has a good grasp on this issue and was explaining it, at least to the press, using good analogies that a common person could understand.
Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I think he has a very good shot at winning this.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Beck expects the judge to rule for one party or the other, and for the loser to appeal. Early last year the judge declined a request by Autodesk to dismiss the case.
That plus the summary seems to be about all there is to know at this point.
According to this article Vernor won the case: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.ars
This is exactly why I do not purchase software.
The fact that there is no used market is one of the reasons I left PC gaming behind several years ago. I can usually buy a used copy of a console game for a fraction of the new price, and it's saved me a fortune over the years. With PC games, there basically is no buying games used. The PC software industry has been bullying sites like ebay for years. Game publishers would no doubt like to kill the used market on console games too (that's why they're salivating so much over the prospect of going to download-only games and expansions), but so far have been stymied by technological limitations and a traditionally strong used game market for consoles. Just look in any Gamestop and you'll see a huge console section (with mostly used games) and an almost non-existent PC game section.
Why should PC games be regarded as so different? There is no reason game publishers couldn't require their software be used on one computer at a time the same as a console disc. Why should they be able to use that lame "We're not selling it, we're just licensing it" argument to stop resale of the physical software discs when movie studios and console game developers can't get away with it?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here's another link to the same article, hosted at PC World (1 page printable version), just in case we need the mirror: http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,172852/printable.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BLL/is_7_25/ai_n36512592/
A judge seems to have decided it was OK... same players (vernors vs. autodesk), different set of rules - first sale doctrine, as mentioned above. Now after two years Autodesk's coming back with a case based on DMCA instead? There must be a new business/restricted IP friendly judge in office.
g=
The interesting part is this bit from TFA: "Early last year the judge declined a request by Autodesk to dismiss the case."
Autodesk didn't want this to go before a judge because they know exactly which direction it will go (hint: not in their favor). This may just be the EULA case we've all been waiting for.
This guy's the limit!
I think the penalty for filing a frivilous claim like this should be 5 Slaps. The defendant in this case, Vernor, should be permitted to slap the CEO of AutoDesk redeamable at anytime with a 1 year expiration.
>> Ding Dong!
>> Who's there?
>> I'm here to claim my prize.
>> But I'm in the middel of dinner?
>> Slap!
>> I got 4 more I'll see you next week at your kid's little league game.
As stated countless times, they sold him a copy of the software, not just a license. Their own argument falls down when one considers that they didn't have to physically sell him a cd with the license, they could have done what movie theaters do and sold him a key that lets him access the software somewhere else. Still, they gave him the physical media. With posession 9/10ths of the law, I find it highly unlikely that he would somehow not be "allowed" legally to resell items in his posession. The new licensee might not be able to activate their product, but that's not his problem. He can sell the physical media all day long and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
stuff |
It seems to me that for a number of years we've been living as though Autodesk's position is the legal one.
So is it maybe the case that if Autodesk prevails, we pretty much keep the status quo, but if Autodesk loses, we have some of our freedoms reaffirmed by the courts?
It sounds like we should be glad this is going to trial.
After all, these P2P sites don't let you download the *license*, and since that is what you're buying, there's no lost sale in P2P sharing of their software.
Make up your minds, guys.
Is it the software you're selling (so the P2P share is a lost sale) or is it the licenses (in which case this guy is in the wrong)?
One ought to be able to buy used software for the value of thrift to those who ordinarily cannot afford it. This should apply to CDs, DVDs, Video Games, MP3 files, PDF books, etc. If the original owner does not want it anymore they can sell it for a reasonable price to someone else.
Now I can see stopping an eBay sale because it was an illegal copy, but that is hard to prove as the item is not always available for inspection and the CD or DVD case may have gotten lost and replaced with a different one.
There is another way to get used software via auction in bidding on storage lockers. Legally if a person or company does not make payments on a storage locker, the storage locker place has the right to auction off their property to the highest bidder. I have friends who bid on storage lockers. Sometimes they get computer equipment and software. They gave me Visual BASIC 3.0 Pro on floppy disks, Visual BASIC 5.0 upgrade, Lotus Notes (forgot the version), Lotus Smartsuite 97, all old software just for me helping them out with the sorting of the computer stuff. Now do I own that software or is it a DMCA violation because I was not the original owner? The original owner is unknown, there was no name or address on the storage locker, and obviously they stopped payments because the computer equipment and software was very very old and useless to them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
All second hand laptops must have their licensed software removed.. nice.. will see more open source software out there
In my experience, Autodesk has an activation scheme that makes Microsoft and Adobe look downright passive. I had a client once buy a copy of AutoCAD 2008 (the full, ~$4,000 suite), and next year when he retired the original machine and we built a new one, we called Autodesk to activate it and they were like "you need a subscription", and I was like "uhm...he paid $4,000 for your software, and that's not enough, even though, had he kept his old machine, he could still use it, and the fact that he was never told about any subscription BS when he paid for it?" and they were like, "Well subscribing comes with (stupid list of benefits of no use to him)" and I was like "I don't care, I just want an activation code" and after a little more BSing back and forth, I weasled a "one time courtesy" out of them, after which I promptly imaged the machine with Acronis.
Autodesk can't lose. If they win the case, the guy can't resell, end of story. If they lose the case, then they just make a new company policy that once the software is registered (required for activation), the user must provide that same information again in order for the phone rep to provide the activation key. Even if the guy wins the case and can sell the discs (and even the license), unless the judge makes it expressly illegal for Autodesk to withhold an activation key from the second owner, they'll likely take that route to ensure the same end result.
Now, the DMCA would allow Autodesk to, say, validate a CD key online once only and then deny future installs on other hardware, since any attempt to get past that would be a circumvention attempt prohibited by the DMCA. But it's not Vernor's fault that Autodesk didn't do that. (Of course, just maybe they know that if they did, customers would be more reluctant to buy their software since most people don't like DRM.)
Unfortunately, I don't believe most consumers really appreciate the dangers of DRM yet. I'm looking forward to the day that a court case comes up where someone tries to sell on a second-hand product (software, e-book, whatever), gets told they can't because DMCA/EUCD/whatever anti-circumvention provisions are artificially blocking the sale, and then goes after the original supplier for fraud. Remember, in many jurisdictions, there is a fundamental requirement for honesty/understanding in any contract, and often there are laws specifically for one-sided cases such as where one party (the software/e-book/whatever business) had expensive lawyers write some huge long contract and a typical other party (a consumer making a purchase) could not reasonably be expected to understand all the subtle implications of the legal fine print.
Perhaps it's about time we had a balancing law that anyone selling[1] software with artificial, external barriers to use[2] must lodge a version of their software with no such barriers with some central organisation or forfeit their anti-circumvention protections entirely. The central organisation would then be free to release the unrestricted software on expiry of the copyright or in the event that a user was unable to make fair use[3] of the software and those who accepted the money/hold the rights failed to make reasonable allowance for this on request.
[1] No, you don't get to weasel out of this by claiming it's licensed, not sold. If you take money for it, consumers think it's either a sale (by default) or a rental (if there is a clear, fixed timespan attached).
[2] By "artificial, external barriers to use" I mean things like product activation and DRM schemes.
[3] Or whatever your jurisdiction calls its equivalent concept.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Accepting a story, dated today, about a story almost a year old.
There are several levels of failure here, the last of which belongs to Soulskill!
Time for a some new scout-seeking Taco???
IIRC, ownership and transfer of property was one of the [many] big talking points in the founding of America. Being a nobody and still able to actually own something, where previously only royalty could (or you could be lucky and they would grant you some, lords I'm looking at you!) was pretty nearly unheard of.
Good to see some ideas never die :)
something i don't understand
if i buy licence but not product
and this licence is time limited
why do i have to pay for maintenance ?
isn't licence a temporary right for me to use the product ?
in this case why would licence be detached from support & maintenance ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
This will happen if it hasn't already happened.
What definitely hasn't happened is the author or publisher having seen the "licensed" book being resold and brought it to court.
Once that happens all hell will break lose.
If games and software are copyrighted because they are expression of ideas, and *they* can be *licensed*;
there is nothing preventing books from getting the same "first-sale doctrine" circumventing license treatment.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
This business of denying a client his first-sale right by giving him a license rather than selling him a product has needed challenging for a very long time. Autodesk is not the only company that attempts to kill the secondhand market in this way.
This is also very popular in the comupter games world.
Think of Steam, where you have no means whatsoever of individually reselling the games you have bought.
This level of deprivation of consumer rights is injust, and should be challenged in court.
Seriously, what moron had to post this article here. Enter "Autodesk Vernor" into Google, and you will find that the case has been already decided more than a year ago, and Autodesk lost.
It's the *True* owners of the car denying you the right to drive the car, Not Ford or GM.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
From the only comment in the article: "Ron said on Wednesday, 30 September 2009 Of course no one responded to your request for comments, this was decided over a year ago http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.ars So much for breaking news."
This kind of stuff is SOP for Autodesk- whose entire business model is based on selling 'rights to use' for overpriced products.
Flints, Flames and Infernos are high end 'hardware' based compositing stations. Autodesk has been making and licensing them for quick a while- and they sell them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You might think that if you bought a flame for $200,000 dollars, you'd be set. But you aren't. Then you have yearly support fees exceeding $10,000 dollars, not to mention upgrade fees etc. If you don't pay for support for 2 years, then want to pay for the latest upgrade, you'll have to pay for the full 2 years you missed.
If you ever try and SELL that $200,000 dollar system that you've paid for in full, be prepared to pay Autodesk the $80,000 dollar transfer fee.
They're getting better. Back in the day, they used to be based on SGI Onyx's etc, where the price (200k) wasn't wildly out of line with the advanced graphics hardware.
Then in 2005 or so, they moved from SGI based (Irix?) to x86 based Linux machines- and suddenly they were selling machines that cost $10,000 dollars for over 200k; and costumers started to complain.
So now prices are slightly lower, they're starting to offer comparable alternatives (Flare) which cost less, and has less 'prestige' but will maybe delay the inevitable for them for a few years.
Posting Anonymously because Autodesk is friggin lawsuit happy.
Why not take all these items and their packaging and start mass shipping everything back to the creator since they say it can't be resold or transfered. I am all for this, let them deal with the mess, heck get a large enough crowd to do it and it would cause back ups in their warehouse. I already considered this for computer components that can't be thrown away, I'll just start sending everything back to the manufacturer so they can dispose of them since I can't.
On the day when an American is no longer able to buy a book, read it, and then resell it to somebody else, I'm moving to Russia where freedom still lives. (How delightfully ironic.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I hate activations and licensing and all the other BS limitations that corporations try to use to protect their bottom line.
So instead of trying to work with the system, I just buy the software and then pirate a version that doesn't have problems. Works great for Windows, Office, and any other large piece of software with ridiculous hoops to jump through to use the legal copy.
This was a long time ago, so don't take this as exact wording.
While in college, I used a CAD package. A portion of the license was printed on a postcard visible through the shrink-wrap, and read something along the lines of the following (emphasis mine):
"Purchase of this product signifies payment for a STUDENT LICENSE to use this software. The included manual and software installation disks REMAIN PROPERTY OF (product name), and the LICENSEE AGREES TO RETURN OR DESTROY the installation disks when the license terms expire.
Purchaser MAY RESELL this software along with the included license key provided that key has not yet been activated.
Activation of the (product name) software via the included license key constitutes agreement to these terms."
There was no room for interpretation; it was clear that I was buying a license, and not a product.
Sadly, it now seems common practice to bury such terms deep within a EULA and obfuscate them through over-wordy legalese.
A friend who sells books on eBay often sells used copies of the Jane's books (Jane's All the World's Aircraft, Jane's Fighting Ships, etc.), the annual editions of which sell new for $900+. He's listed many of these over the years, but recently out of nowhere he gets an inquisitory e-mail from Jane's, demanding that he inform them of the source from which he obtained the books, and strongly suggesting that he not list them anymore because the reduced prices he gets for resale are "diminishing the perceived value of our products." He was tempted to tell them what to stick where, but as he put it, "the next step may be legal, and right or wrong, I don't want to get into a transatlantic pissing match over this."
(So now, he sends any Jane's books he finds to me, I list them, and we split the profits. And no nastygrams from across the pond yet. Yay for me.)
A good example, though, of how even a legally misguided implied threat can intimidate someone. If my friend sold nothing but Jane's books, he'd be more inclined to fight, but he does a decent business without them, and just figures he'll avoid getting into something that he has neither the time or money to deal with.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
The hearing referred to in May 2008 was on a Motion for Dismissal or Summary Judgement by AutoCAD. The judge DENIED the motion so the case then moved on to discovery and now is at trial.
Public Citizen are representing Mr Vernor: http://www.citizen.org/litigation/forms/cases/CaseDetails.cfm?cID=437
If you read the "Order Denying Motion to Dismiss and Summary Judgment (05/21/2008)" linked on the Public Citizen site, you'll see that the Judge decided that the Plaintiff (Vernor) bought the software copy and is covered by the First Sale doctrine. The Judge left for trial the issue of whether the AutoCAD license binds Vernor or his buyers despite it containing the term "non-transferable".
Verner never installed the software, and therefore never accepted a shrink-wrapped license. What we really want is an install-remove-resell case that the defendant wins. This is a good start though. Autodesk makes Microsoft look like the best, most consumer friendly corporate citizen ever. Their software is bloated and buggy (their text editor can't keep up with a 60wpm typist on a modern 2GHz single core machine), their CS is horrific when it exists, and their licensing is draconian. They own such a large share of the market in certain industries that they just don't care.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
From the article you cite
> but Judge Richard A. Jones ruled in Vernorâ(TM)s favor and the case will proceed.
Translation: Vernor only "won" in that Autodesk didn't manage to to win its claims in summary judgment.
From Wikipedia: Date decided May 20th, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc.
"Bet you twenty dollars he makes that shot again." "No way! You're on!" *hits instant replay*
What makes you think they are a native English speaker?
but he does a decent business without them, and just figures he'll avoid getting into something that he has neither the time or money to deal with.
To quote attorney Jennifer Granick in her blogging about "Ciscogate":
>>>an inquisitory e-mail from Jane's, demanding that he inform them of the source from which he obtained the books, and strongly suggesting that he not list them anymore because the reduced prices he gets for resale are "diminishing the perceived value of our products."
>>>
Dear Janes,
No I will not tell you where I obtained my books. Nor will I tell you where I obtained my car, my computer, my PS2, my gamecube, my laptop, my television, my VCR, my bed, my refrigerator, or my house. It is NONE of your business. Furthermore I design missile launchers for a living. The next time we perform a test with live ammo, would you like me to target Janes central office? No? Well then I recommend you cease-and-desist with these legal threats.
Sincerely,
the ebay seller.
(If somebody threatens you, then it's entirely appropriate to threaten them back. It's how our adversarial legal system works.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Ah America, I remember you when the rest of the world thought you were free.
Ebay is legally required to take it down if they are served with a DMCA notice [chillingeffects.org]. However, if you file a counter-notice [chillingeffects.org], they are correspondingly legally required to put it back up unless the Copyright owner files suit against you.
All true but good luck getting eBay to put a posting back up. It would be hard to find a company that cares less about its customers (sellers and buyers) than eBay.
Of course, YMMV.
And people complain about socialism limiting freedoms...
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Um, no. Look up the first sale doctrine. A ruling against Vernor would, at best, only apply to items that require a license.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Autodesk's site has a tab to PURCHASE the product but not one for licensing. hmmm thats odd !!
Ebay is legally required to take it down if they are served with a DMCA notice. However, if you file a counter-notice, they are correspondingly legally required to put it back up unless the Copyright owner files suit against you.
Service providers operating under the DMCA safe harbor are required to hold a subscriber's counter-notice for at least two weeks before putting the disputed information back up, so that the complaining party has an opportunity to get a court order against the subscriber. Auction listings expire before then.
Because I am having a problem wrapping my mind around the US law.
The DMCA protects copyrighted works. Of course, the Autodesk software is copyrighted, but it is also licensed. Autodesk alleges that the software cannot be resold, due to licensing restrictions.
Copyright has not come into play yet.
Which I get. This may be disputed, but will falls under contract law.
Now, Autodesk enjoins EBay to remove the software, alleging a DMCA violation. Where the fuck did THAT come from? Copyright was never infringed (as far as I can see). Of course, EBay removes the software, but Autodesk must have known that this was not a Copyright infraction! Of course they hold the Copyright, but first-sale doctrine would apply.
DMCA shouldn't apply. But, hey, colour me confused. Now I understand that it would be illegal to have illegal licensing terms, but the only terms that could possibly apply (in a recent license) would be (1) The DMCA covers the Copyrighted portions (which is the case anyway, so why bother mentioning it), or (2) We allow the additional dropping of DMCA terms. In any case, any additional restrictions would be license restrictions, and not DMCA restrictions. Specifically, the removal of the first-sale doctrine would be a licensing term, and would not follow Copyright.
Which would appear to make a DMCA takedown inapplicable.
But what the fuck do I know? US law confuses me...
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
The world would become a more productive place if all the lawyers were forced to take up software development.
The problem is that content providers often want the best of both worlds. I bet if your disk becomes corrupted or unreadable, they will make you pay for another one. If they want to claim they are licensing it, they should be required to allow you to receive a working copy if yours becomes corrupted. This is rarely the case. Either it should be a license or it should be a sale, and it should only be tied to physical media if it is a sale. Try getting a free replacement download of a game or song if it becomes corrupted. So, content providers want to prevent you from selling content by saying it's licensed, but they won't replace the copy if it becomes corrupted.
This is recent, not 2008
http://www.cadcourt.com/Docket/207cv01189.aspx 65 4/7/2009 Autodesk | Notice of Change of Address
66 4/29/2009 Court |Order to Re-Note Motion
67 5/15/2009 Autodesk | Memorandum
68 5/29/2009 Vernor | Memorandum
69 9/17/2009 Court | Notice of Hearing on Motion
70 9/28/2009 Court | Motion Hearing
...and if he didn't "buy" them, then he's not "selling" them, either, just getting money in exchange for them [sic], same as Autodesk did.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Is it an auto? Is it an desk?
No, it's Superman!
I don't want to get into a transatlantic pissing match over this.
Why does it scare you more because it's transatlantic. It should scare you less. Indeed, for the company suing you, it becomes much more complicated, as they will have to retain a lawyer in your juridiction, and there is a high probability that they'll back down if you just ignore their mails. Especially if it's only e-mail.
As someone who works in a very specialized market (aerospace), I would be concerned that if Autodesk or any other developer of specialized software were not able to dictate the terms of their licensing, including licensing the individual rather than having the license apply to the copy of the media itself, then many specialized markets would fail.
Why? Because there are limited sales opportunities to support the employee base required to develop and maintain the product. CAD programs are not like a copy of "The Hunt for Red October" largely because virtually anyone can use a copy of a movie, but only a few (by comparison) can utilize a CAD program. There are even more extreme cases in aerospace and helps to explain why there are so few successful COTS software providers in aerospace. But if Vernor's claim is upheld, even those companies would fail as a large organization (like NASA) would simply need to buy a fixed number copies and then pass them from mission to mission.
Second-hand software sales in specialized markets would kill those markets. Just my two cents.
was he reselling copies he had bought or was he a reseller for autodesk and they were complaining b/c he was selling it through channels other than "direct sales"?
>>>And people complain about socialism limiting freedoms...
Yes because a corporation is still just a corporation. They have a lot of power to make your life unhappy, but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet, or jail you, or draft you to die in Arghanistan. Only government can do that, and therefore government is the greater evil.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Please see here for the ongoing docket related to this case.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
That is only part of the equation. The other part is 'x% of people who download WILL buy the product on CD'. Back in the time I still bought CD's I ended up buying more of them after it became possible to 'sample' bands using the net. If not for the possibility of downloading I would probably never have heard of the bands, let alone bought their CD's. Then came the Napster-drama followed by the ever increasing aggression of the copyright mafia. This soured me on associating with those companies and thus ended my CD buying career...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Nice, cowardice to protect money.
How is he different then the Jane's publisher?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Next, GM will only license use of its cars. You won't be allowed to resell it, although GM dealers might accept it as a trade-in if it has only been serviced by the dealer and used GM gasoline.
Well we're not looking for absolute proof, just a preponderance of evidence:
* the user is engaging in an English-language forum
* the user has a username in English
* the username is a reference to an English-speaking character popular in English-speaking countries
* the user has an English tagline
* the user uses complex English tenses ("having seen")
* the user doesn't make any other grammatical errors common in non-native speakers (such as dropping articles or mixing up plurals)
* I looked at the user's other comments, which were all in well-composed English.
The response from AC was still a troll, but there is no reason to doubt the user is a native English speaker. And with that, I mostly agree with the AC: native speakers shouldn't be making mistakes like "lose/loose", "their/they're", "who/whom", or "its/it's". We were all supposed to learn those rules in, what, second grade or something, and then go on to use them every year through 12th grade, and in life. A little social pressure in the form of mockery is a reasonable way to keep us all using the same language.
All that said, this particular user seems to have a history of reasonably good English composition in other comments, so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and say maybe this was just a mistake.
It is generally held that you cannot barter away your rights -- such as, you cannot agree to sell yourself into slavery (even if you want to).
So why are we allowed to barter away other rights? Such as those taken away by EULAs, those taken away by municipal business licenses (generally you have to agree to give up your protection against unreasonable search and seizure), etc.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
... its not license or copyright that Autodesk is trying to protect.
Autodesk sells their product (or actually a license to use their product) at a pretty high list price. However, they offer (as do their authorized resellers) volume discounts and special deals that knock a significant amount off this price. So, (I'm guessing) Vernor calls up Autodesk and orders a thousand copies, with licenses and gets The Big Discount. Then, without breaking the shrink wrap, he turns around and sells them individually. Probably at a significant discount from the list price.
Autodesk gets upset, since this sort of behavior undermines a key part of their market; selling single copies at list prices to small A&E shops who have no purchasing power. But one can't take that case to court. At the very least, it will probably get thrown out. Worse yet, it could attract the scrutiny of the antitrust enforcers, seeing as how Autodesk is effectively a monopoly in small CAD applications. So, they get a lawyer twist whatever law they can find around the circumstances and make a case out of that.
Have gnu, will travel.
(If somebody threatens you, then it's entirely appropriate to threaten them back. It's how our adversarial legal system works.)
IANAL, but I am a law student, but threatening to kill someone is not generally an appropriate response to a threat of litigation, and could be criminal if he had reason to take you seriously. Also, the situation the gp describes doesn't really constitute a threat to litigate anyway, Jane's is just asking him to stop because it doesn't like what he's doing. It's a pretty safe bet that if Jane's had any legal grounds at all it would have made an explicit threat, and the letter is all bluster, which can safely be ignored.
all they have to do is sue you
Various corporations basically (and sometimes directly) write the laws while "donating" to Congress critters. Plus, some prison corporations have bribed judges to get them to send people to prison rather than hand down lesser punishments. They also lobby extensively for stricter sentencing, which would greatly increase their profit margin.
We've fought plenty of small wars for the benefit of corporations. We overthrew the Iranian president and installed the Shah just to protect oil companies' profits. We waged small wars in South America just for the sake of a fruit company.
The government is in the pocket of corporations. You need to learns critical thinking skills and actually ask questions about what you are told.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
But the corporation can bribe buy off lobby government officials to get laws passed that favor their businesses at the expense of everyone else. In some cases, the business writes the entire bill themselves and gives it to their pet congress-critter who then introduces it as is all for a scratch behind the ear and a belly rub or two.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet, or jail you, or draft you to die in Arghanistan.
Corporations have sucked plenty of money from people's wallets, in many cases without any hope of recourse (thanks to mandatory-binding-arbitration clauses in non-negotiable contracts; read Consumerist sometime). They cannot directly jail you, because we've done away with debtor's prison, but they have pet governments to do that job for them. To date no one in the US has been drafted to die in Afghanistan, because the people won't stand for it; but funny you bring up the wars, given the overwhelming involvement of private industry in the American way of war these days... not the very war itself, but a substantial part of the way it's being carried out, are greatly to the benefit of corporations like Bechtel and KBR. Corporations do all of those things, thanks to the undue power money grants over the government. (And lest you say that it's still government doing those things, let me preemptively point out that the corps would be quite happy to do them as well, only the government stands in the way of private armies and police forces. Read up on the East India Company's rule of India if you wonder what corporations are capable of without government restraint.)
For the rest, when was the last time you got to vote for a corporation's leadership? Yeah, I thought so. Therefore the corporation is the greater evil: it cannot even in principle be restrained by the popular will.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Shoot. Meant to press "Preview" not "Submit." *slaps forehead*
"Bribe" and "Buy off" should have been crossed out. However, now that I've previewed & see that it doesn't work....
But the corporation can bribe...I mean buy off... I mean lobby government officials to get laws passed that favor their businesses at the expense of everyone else. In some cases, the business writes the entire bill themselves and gives it to their pet congress-critter who then introduces it as is all for a scratch behind the ear and a belly rub or two.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Once it actually makes sense financially to buy an ebook reader, you better start packing. I expect hardly any of the younger members of my generation (Y) will fight too hard to keep paper books around, let alone the generations that follow.
...you owe 5Â. Not sure what I mean? Read it again. 10Â please. That's what they're after. Then every time you remember it.
... What definitely hasn't happened is the author or publisher having seen the "licensed" book being resold and brought it to court.
Once that happens all hell will break lose.
If games and software are copyrighted because they are expression of ideas, and *they* can be *licensed*; there is nothing preventing books from getting the same "first-sale doctrine" circumventing license treatment.
Good try...but no. You see, books are really sold, whereas software is only licensed. Few publishers of (paper) books assert that they are only licensing a book to you when you buy it; both parties to such a sale agree that it is, indeed, a transfer of ownership of a material object, to wit, the book. When you pay money for software, you may well believe that you are buying something, but the seller says he's only giving you the right to run the software on terms specified in the EULA. And when you click the EULA, you agree to this.
Yes, I know this is crap, and no, I don't read the EULAs either—but that's how it is. That's why software publishers can prevent you from selling software you think you bought; they still own it and they don't agree to let some other guy use it. To me, it seems futile to insist that we are buying something that the "seller" only wants to rent; the owner of the property in question has a right to refuse to sell it to you. You can't force a software company to sell to you.
I think it would be more effective if we went along with the idea that software is licensed to us; all we want is that the licenses be fair. We want to apply the same reasoning as is applied in any fair contract: the interests of both parties must be respected. For example, we should be allowed to transfer the license to whomever we wish in return for money. We won't be selling the software of course—we will just be transferring the license.
I have some questions about this that I've been wondering about, so if there are any lawyers who read this stuff on /. could you tell me whether:
It should be pretty obvious what I'm wishing for: the establishment of a fundamental legal standard of fairness that must be met for a EULA to be binding. If this is feasible, then we should pursue legal challenges to the present software licensing policies in the courts.
If this line of attack is not feasible, then we will have to work on changing the law. There is no reason why software licensees can't have as much legal clout as, say gun owners. We need an electronic freedom organization modeled after the NRA. That means having a single large organization which collects lots of dues, hires lobbyists in Washington, and scares the crap out of politicians.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Homonym confusion is a common sign of dyslexia. Of course sometimes people are just sloppy, but if that's the only mistake someone makes in composition (or the other mistakes are also consistent with dyslexia), there's a good chance that's the problem. It can be treated, but most people don't realize that it's a neurological condition and have your type of response instead of recommending treatment.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
In the U.S. death threats like "I'm gonna kill you" are protected speech. The only time it's not protected is if the person has a gun and is in immediate vicinity of the target, neither of which is true in the case of an email.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet
RIAA members may disagree.
or jail you
Adobe may disagree.
or draft you to die in Arghanistan
Yet.
Only government can do that, and therefore government is the greater evil.
No, only people with bigger armament than you do can do that. It just so happens that the government controls the police forces and the military, and *they* fit the bill.
But if corporations control the government then they are ultimately the greater evil, with the government being merely the middle man between them and the armed forces. And there's a pretty good argument to be made for that being the case in modern USA.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
>>>And people complain about socialism limiting freedoms...
Yes because a corporation is still just a corporation. They have a lot of power to make your life unhappy, but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet, or jail you, or draft you to die in Arghanistan. Only government can do that, and therefore government is the greater evil.
It seems you define the evilness of an entity as the maximum amount of evil it can potentially do. Which I think is an utterly insane definition.
A saner definition of evilness of an entity would be the evil it has actually committed. With this definition, you'll find that the greatest evil belongs to some large corporations and kleptocratic governments (which are essentially governments run like profit maximizing corporations).
In the U.S. death threats like "I'm gonna kill you" are protected speech. The only time it's not protected is if the person has a gun and is in immediate vicinity of the target, neither of which is true in the case of an email.
There's no absolute right to make threats like that. As long as a reasonable person wouldn't believe the threat, you're fine, but imminence isn't strictly necessary. The distinction you're making here is the one that would be used to rule out assault based on a threat in an email, but the possibility of a threat being criminal remains.
I'm not buying your product with money. I'm only letting you pawn if off on me. Give me my money back. Term's up!
>>>And people complain about socialism limiting freedoms...
Yes because a corporation is still just a corporation. They have a lot of power to make your life unhappy, but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet, or jail you, or draft you to die in Arghanistan. Only government can do that, and therefore government is the greater evil.
Corporations certainly can suck money from your wallet or even put you in jail, they just do in indirectly by lobbying for laws which benefit them at the expense of the general populace. If you (as an individual) violate those laws you can get fined or in some cases imprisioned. The best part (for them) is that by getting the government to do their dirty work all of the well intentioned, but myopic, libertarians and conservatives are focused on the government rather than the root cause. Regarding your last point, while they can't draft you it is in the financial interests of certain corporations to wage war regularly.
The truth is that no matter the size of the government if large corporations have more political influence than the general citizenry, the corporations will use it abuse the legal system. Remember we are talking about legal actions that take place in court, which have absolutely zero to do with the presence or absence of social programs. Similarly, as long as someone in the government has the power to prosectute you under laws written for the benefit of the corporations, it doesn't matter if that government employs 2,500 people or 25,000,000. If there is a lack of police to find you and bring you to court, there are alternatives available.
Why wouldn't you eat cake if you had it? Sure, I prefer pie, but cake is good, too. Seems like such a shame to waste perfectly good cake.
Achewood offers this answer...
Bow-ties are cool.
I mean have you ever heard of a used book store?
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/used-books/search.asp?
Gosh I really hope you were being facetious with that statement.
Any hard drive with the correct software on it connected to a computer can be used to "circumvent" this or that to run pirated content for that matter, to be used as a tool. So where is the real dividing line there?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.ars
The law expressly limits your "Exclusive Rights" under copyright.
As an "Owner of a Copy" - i.e. the actual Physical Media, I am expressly authorized to make additional copies and transfer ownership of that legally obtained copy and all rights therein.
 117. Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs.
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.â" Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
(b) Lease, Sale, or Other Transfer of Additional Copy or Adaptation.â" Any exact copies prepared in accordance with the provisions of this section may be leased, sold, or otherwise transferred, along with the copy from which such copies were prepared, only as part of the lease, sale, or other transfer of all rights in the program. Adaptations so prepared may be transferred only with the authorization of the copyright owner.
Unless the court simply decides the UCC provisions saying that you can sell a contract just don't apply (Entirely possible - The courts have read the UCC in a rather smorgasboard fashion for the last few years.) I don't see that autodesk has a case.
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Actually no, you are merely begging the question. At one time book publishers did try to license, not sell, their product. That was when the courts developed the whole concept of the First Sale Doctrine... to prevent the publishers from doing that anymore.
IANAL, but here are some other facts of which you should be aware:
US courts have consistently ruled in the past that if you paid for something in a retail store, you have bought it, not licensed it, no matter what kind of product it is, or what kind of "licensing agreement" is on or in the package. Sellers of just about every product in existence have tried to license it rather than sell it before, and the courts have consistently shot them down. However, I do not believe that such a case concerning software products in particular, purchased at retail stores, has yet been heard in Federal court.
Is the agreement to accept a EULA the same thing as entering into a contract? - Maybe. It depends on the circumstances. Certainly, some license agreements are binding. But: did you "agree" to it before you laid down your money? Or was it an "agreement" that did not appear until you were installing the software? If the latter, should you be allowed to ignore it? After all, language in the agreement saying you should return the product if you don't agree is complete bullshit... the software vendors know full well that there is not a major retail store in the United States that will accept the return of software once the package is opened. The software vendors know that because they lobbied very hard to create that very situation.
Did you buy it online and agree to something before you paid? Maybe then it is binding. Is it printed on the side of a package at a retail store? Courts have ruled in the past that those agreements are not binding, for many different kinds of products.
Are there legal standards that a contract must meet in terms of fairness for both sides? - Fairness? What is fairness, and how does a court decide? If you sell your old but still good Lincoln Mark IV to the kid next door for $1, is that "fair"? Maybe, maybe not, but if it's written down it's probably binding. On the other hand, there is the concept of a "contract of adhesion": this often takes the form of a "contract" drawn up beforehand by some large company, intended to be signed by all of its customers, with no negotiation really possible (like maybe the thing you signed when you got cable TV). Since the whole concept of a "contract" is supposed to be a negotiated agreement between two parties, and not just a list of demands by one party, courts often take a biased stand against contracts of adhesion if any legal wrangling ends up taking place.
If the answer to the previous two questions is affirmative, then could a significant number of the EULAS by which software is licensed be challenged under this standard? - Certainly. *IF* But first those two questions (the first one in particular) must be answered.
My personal feeling is that "shrink-wrap" licenses ought to be rejected completely and found to be non-binding. How can something constitute a contract if it hasn't even been seen by one party before he/she has paid? That violates the whole concept of a "contract". And as we know, the demand that the product be returned if one does not agree to the EULA is crap... the stores won't take them back, and the software manufacturers and vendors know this.
As a reminder, the above is just my opinion, and I am not a lawyer. But I think my reasoning is sound.
Nothing you just said contradicts the GP at all. In every single one of your examples it's the government which acts the part of the villain. A corporation can, at most, ask the government to do something on its behalf, and perhaps offer some form of material incentive (i.e. a bribe). In every case, however, it's the government which actually violates your rights, not the corporation.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
No used sales, no 'use until you are done'... Its like a markers wetdream.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Please then explain to the me the rules for "who" and "whom". I thought I knew, but I have asked several English teachers in recent years and none was able to give me an answer that was comprehensible.
This is complete BS. If they only licensed the software to him, then why did they send him CDs? If they SOLD him copies of software on CD and a license to use it, then at the very least he has the right to sell on those physical CDs, even if they restrict the right to transfer 'ownership' of a software license in the same sale
The puppet does not control the puppetmaster.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"Who" is nominative (corresponding to the subject of a verb), "whom" is accusative and dative (corresponding to the direct or indirect object of a verb), and "whose" is genitive (corresponding to possession).
Corporations have sucked plenty of money from people's wallets, in many cases without any hope of recourse (thanks to mandatory-binding-arbitration clauses in non-negotiable contracts; read Consumerist sometime).
Of course there is recourse; you were never forced to enter into the agreement in the first place. If you choose to voluntarily accept binding arbitration then you should expect that part of the contract to be enforced. If you fail to perform due diligence by reading the contract before signing it, and refusing to sign unless you agree, then your troubles are your own doing and you have no cause for complaint.
They cannot directly jail you, because we've done away with debtor's prison, but they have pet governments to do that job for them. ... funny you bring up the wars, given the overwhelming involvement of private industry in the American way of war these days. ... Corporations do all of those things, thanks to the undue power money grants over the government.
As you said, these are things done by the government, not the corporations.
And lest you say that it's still government doing those things, let me preemptively point out that the corps would be quite happy to do them as well, only the government stands in the way of private armies and police forces.
If a "private corporation" did any of those things it would, by definition, be the government. Ergo, it would still be the government which was responsible, just not the same one. It's the pattern of behavior (aggression vs. non-aggression) which distinguishes private corporations from governments, not the specific people involved, the organizational details, or what they may choose to call themselves.
For the rest, when was the last time you got to vote for a corporation's leadership? Yeah, I thought so. Therefore the corporation is the greater evil: it cannot even in principle be restrained by the popular will.
"Popular will" has nothing to do with good or evil. When was the last time you got to vote on your neighbor's internal decorating? Yeah, I thought so. But that doesn't make your neighbor "evil", just free of your decorating tyranny. In the same way, you don't get a vote on what a corporation's shareholders do with their own property (unless you happen to be one of them, of course) any more than they get a vote on what you do with yours, but that doesn't make them "evil", just free. So long as they remain merely a corporation and not a government, or other form of criminal organization, there is no just reason to allow you to veto their choices. If they do cross that line, anyone affected by their aggression has an absolute right to veto said choices, no voting required. To paraphrase what is sometime said of (bad) logic, the popular vote is often nothing more than another way to err with confidence.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The point is, you can ignore the companies that do mandatory-binding-arbitration contracts. In effect, you have 100% power over a corporation in terms of how it affects YOU. You can't ignore the government.
Answer the question with the same phrasing. If "he" works, use "who". If "him" works, use "whom".
Who made this mess? -> He made this mess.
You called whom? -> I shot him.
It's less obvious when the word order changes in the question, but still the rule works:
Whom did you call? -> You called whom? -> You called him.
With whom did you speak? -> You spoke with whom? -> You spoke with him.
But "whom" is pretty much reserved for formal writing these days, as it sounds pretentious in casual use.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Anyone remember the recent orwellian actions of Amazon, the Kindle, and the 'its a license not a book'?
"On the day when an American is no longer able to buy a book, read it, and then resell it to somebody else, I'm moving to Russia where freedom still lives."
Freedom in America was bought with violence.
The willingness to skewer British troops with sword and bayonet, send musket ball and cannon shot into their ranks, tar and feather their officials, burn their facilities,and sink their ships is what secured America for Americans. We should remember this and savor it, for it reflects fundamental truths about man.
What freedom man has is because he is willing to kill for it, and killing for freedom is as noble as sacrifice for freedom (not to mention more effective).
Pacifism is submission (Ghandi wasn't playing against a serious opponent, any such would have killed him early) and does not work against serious people. What does is to kill and maim enough (or all) of them until victory is seized.
IMO things aren't nearly bad enough yet to require drastic measures, but no American should rule them out.
The National Anthem isn't obsolete. We were once a country of revolutionaries willing to kill for revolution. Now we are comfortable sheep. It needn't stay that way.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I know a few years ago, I had some adobe software I wanted to sell through ebay. Basically, there was no problem in doing this so long as I filled out their Transfer of Ownership documents and sent a copy to the new owner to sign and then mail to adobe.
If these guys have a similar program available, then there's really no excuse for jumping the gun on the seller.
On the other hand, they may be well within their rights to do this if they specifically deny you the ability to transfer your license to a new owner right off the bat. (Though, it would make doing business with them far less attractive, especially at the prices they charge for the software.)
8==8 Bones 8==8
we are comfortable sheep because we are comfortable. our system, for all it's flaws, makes sure that most people have quite a bit of what they want and all of what they need. people don't go out and risk life and limb due to some theoretical injustice against them, even if it is very severe and real. for example look at the relatively low frequency of slave revolts prior to the civil war, despite millions of people being kept as chattel slaves with no rights whatsoever. the trigger for revolution is not going to come from overbearing government intrusion or even squalid living conditions, but rather from a large scale sudden, severe, and perceived to be permanent change in both directions. people are easy to scare into trivial action, but it takes a whole lot all at once for people to decide to give up "ok" living in favor of killing the bastards who screwed up their previously "good" lifestyle.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I personally disagree (sort of).
I think the concept of copyright is okay because I think that people should have the right to sell copies of what they make.
What I don't think is that people should have the right to dictate that certain copies are unauthorized and some are not. Under copyright law it is illegal for me to email a song to my friend so that we can listen to it together. This is, fundamentally, crap. Sharing is a completely natural part of our society and to restrict it in the name of Big Content's profits is an action that is based solely on corporate greed.
There are other painful aspects of copyright that need fixing, however. Such as its lifespan, for one. We really do not need 100-year or more copyrights. That is totally counterproductive to copyright's original purpose.
Copyright doesn't need to be abolished; it only needs to be changed. The DMCA may have been an attempt to adapt copyright to emerging technologies, but it was a damned poor attempt.
Also, shame on whoever modded the parent troll. Regardless of whether he acknowledges that his position is crazy, it is still a valid position with valid points.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
You are obviously a young law student noob because you have more than 1 period in that paragraph, but I'm sure you'll learn how to properly run-on many sentences before you graduate.
that software and other media producers admit that they don't sell you "anything", they are in reality asking you to rent it. I think there should be a class action for fraud and misrepresentation when they try and pretend you are in reality buying anything when you are not.
Just remember to take off your shoes at the airport.
'Cause we're not just free, we're brave!
Corporations have sucked plenty of money from people's wallets
There's probably a point hiding in there, however ..
thanks to mandatory-binding-arbitration clauses in non-negotiable contracts
.. enforced by the government.
They cannot directly jail you ... but they have pet governments to do that job for them.
You just broke your own point there.
the overwhelming involvement of private industry in the American way of war these days
.. due to being hired by the federal government.
Corporations do all of those things, thanks to the undue power money grants over the government.
You're getting close to a point again ..
only the government stands in the way of private armies and police forces.
Wups, just broke your point again.
Read up on the East India Company's rule of India if you wonder what corporations are capable of without government restraint.
And again.
For the rest, when was the last time you got to vote for a corporation's leadership?
Right now, in fact. I have a request to vote on some corporate stuff due to the shares I hold. I've had several this year alone.
Thanks for playing, feel free to try again.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
The idea of copyright and initial legal endeavor has been bastardized to a point of oblivious obviousness to that of the machine (way more powerful and bigger than any military industrial complex) that commands that currency changes hands NO MATTER WHAT. This is perhaps the greatest example of how the publicly observable portions of the judiciary gearbox have failed without question in light of. As consequence, second and third tier challenges to the rule are not news nor a surprise. The bigger issue, and on another note why healthcare is secretly/sub-consciously such a touchy subject in the US, is why a pill that gives prolonged viability costs $400 dollars US to begin with. Money doesn't have to change hands ALWAYS.....and garbage software developers don't have to puruse ebay pages to sniff out self-proclaimed dues. Law is the product of tested public will and the fact that this rule (the only rule that applies to law copyright or otherwise) is broke/bent on a daily basis is the epitome of the machine (insert entity, theology, family here) versus that which is not.
Oh, the startling realization that corporations use government collusion/ownership to enforce their power in countries where the government does maintain a reasonable monopoly over the use of force. Such an overwhelming insight!
The point you're so skillfully missing is that all power, whether politically constituted or not, can be used to oppress people. That does not compute for Randroids, but power is power, whether it's in the marketplace or elsewhere.
I have a request to vote on some corporate stuff due to the shares I hold.
Right. Corporations offer a watered-down pay-to-play democracy for those rich enough. Now what about all the other people whose lives are affected by those corporations? They get some say in how government works. With megabusiness, they get none.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
You need both working together to accomplish the task of accessing the "protected" content. The circumvention tool is the *combination* of software and hardware. One or the other by themselves will *not* circumvent anything. I can hand you a disk with all the cracker software "tools" on it, and you can't do a thing with it until you run it on the computer. If it is some console cartridge thing, there's still software burned on a ROM, but it needs the computer circuitry to actually accomplish the task.
I know this is sorta pedantic, but really, you do need both.
With that said, I think the law is BS, along with most of the laws on "digital products". I lost all respect for US copyright law with that dmca and the huge copyright years extension. Now I don't personally pirate or download crap like that,but I got nothing against people who do either, or jailbreak their phones, or play games when they shouldn't be able to, stuff like that. I just don't care one way or the other. And ya, that even means the Linux kernel, I think it should have gone freely into the public domain by now, along with tons of computer software, both closed and open source, under whatever "license" they were transferred under, from a lot of places, and that you should be allowed to bend, fold, spindle and mutilate all ya want to with it after a much more reasonable "copyright" period. A lifetime or three like it is now, just way too long. Needs to be at the most maybe ten years. That's an entire decade to come up with something else to sell, should be sufficient.
Sometimes "de law" is just an ass, and is obviously just made "law" to protect a few well heeled folks at the expense of everyone else.
Someone called "couchslug" is rallying the people to arms. I'm waiting for "AngryPatriot" to come along and tell him to sit down, chill out, open a beer and watch some TV.
If you fail to perform due diligence by reading the contract before signing it, and refusing to sign unless you agree, then your troubles are your own doing and you have no cause for complaint.
This is a classic response, but I'm talking about things like cell phone contracts. Or (the big doozy) private health insurance. It winds up being a choice between giving up your rights, or going to live off grid in the mountains. Neither's a good option. The right answer is to use the power we can vote for (government) to place sensible limits on the power we can't (business).
If a "private corporation" did any of those things it would, by definition, be the government.
This is a surpassingly excellent logic, impenetrably circular. You've just said "any entity which carries out oppressive acts is a government, therefore government is the sole source of oppression." Okay.
Meanwhile, here in the Real World, I acknowledge that I have vastly inferior rights and power in the marketplace. I am no longer capable of engaging in any realistic bargain with any of the purveyors of modern progress. You can do without cable (which I do), but what about when it comes to medicines? What about when you're doing something which you're within your rights to do (like the guy selling the books in the GGP) and someone with more money can use the threat of a lawsuit to harass you into ceding your rights? What about when it builds a shopping mall across your street and destroys your property values, or starts blaring a siren at four in the morning on weekends? Money is power; and all power can be used unjustly, whether it's government power or not.
Suppose it crosses legal boundaries. Say you're a holdout who won't sell your home property to it. Say it starts a campaign of harassment, sending people to slash your tires, vandalize your house, scare your children. What will you do now? Well, that's illegal of course! But if that's your argument, you've just conceded that you need government to enforce just relations between market entities. Once you've admitted that, there's nothing left to stand on; you need the authority of a group larger than yourself in order to create parity in negotiating conditions. (Yes, I'm aware that most Libertarian philosophies accept the role of a government that protects property rights and prevents theft. They're just blinded to the other good things governments are capable of doing, when run wisely.)
When was the last time you got to vote on your neighbor's internal decorating?
Cute. When was the last time your neighbor's decorating affected your life in any way? (Although if you have a homeowner's association, you just might have some neighborhood two-bit Napoleon limiting your decorating freedom, but I digress.) Meanwhile, there are all kinds of problems that large businesses can cause for citizens, even ones who have no market interaction with the company at all.
So long as they remain merely a corporation and not a government, or other form of criminal organization, there is no just reason to allow you to veto their choices. If they do cross that line, anyone affected by their aggression has an absolute right to veto said choices, no voting required.
Wonderful! I have an absolute right to veto the choices of an institution that is infinitely more powerful than I am. The mice have the right to put a bell on the cat... eh bien? Even the biggest majority I can put together would get swept aside by these folks, exactly what happens outside the safe world of western democracy, where companies do have private armies and aren't shy about using them.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
You can attempt not to do business with them. Beyond a certain point, you will need government intervention to avoid being affected by things they do in their interactions with others. (Take the big cockeyed mess that investment banks made of the economy recently, ferinstance, or various kinds of pollution, sudden investment-capital flight from developing countries... you can come up with a ton of examples if you think about it.)
There also needs to be a middle ground between "being a slave to the all-powerful service provider" and "living alone in the mountains." I mean, you can choose to ignore part of the government by, say, forgoing a driver's license and getting everywhere by walking or biking; you can avoid doing business with some mega-corps. But you can't dodge all of either group.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
>>>There's no absolute right to make threats like that.
I wonder why it is that no one listens? First off I did NOT say it was an absolute right, which is why I mentioned the gun and imminent threat qualification. You did not need to correct me since I was not under any delusion that death threats were absolutely protected. Second if I say, "The U.S. Supreme Court declared death threats as protected speech," that's pretty much the end of discussion. And yet here you are being a tool, and claiming that death threats are illegal, in complete contradiction of the Supreme Court ruling.
(shaking head) Unbelievable. Do you think the Supreme Court rulings have no meaning???
Alright. Since you're too lazy to do the research yourself, I'll do it for you. In Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 22 L.Ed. 2d 664 (1969) the communication made by Watts was a very specific threat, made in the context of his announced refusal to report for his draft physical: "If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ". Watt's statement was held to be "political hyperbole" and not a true threat. The Court noted: "The language of the political arena ... is often vituperative, abusive and inexact. [The petitioner's] ... only offense here was "a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President." and "Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech... To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable grounds to believe that the danger is imminent."
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 22 L.Ed. 2d 664 (1969) this was further solidified, when the court formulated the following "incitement" test with respect to speech which advocates unlawful conduct: "These later decisions have fashioned the principal that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
And in United States v. Alkhabaz, (2) 104 F.3d 1492 (6th Cir. 1997): "Although it may offend our sensibilities, a communication objectively indicating a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm cannot constitute a threat unless the communication also is conveyed for the purpose of furthering some goal thorough the use of intimidation."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>>>Yes because a corporation is still just a corporation. They have a lot of power to make your life unhappy, but they still don't have the power to suck $$$ from your wallet
>>all they have to do is sue you
Sue me for what? Because I decided I didn't want to buy Comcast cable? That Comcast v. C64love case would be thrown out the very first hour. So we're back to what I originally said - a corporation like Comcast can not simply suck dollars out of my wallet like government can (which collects about $25,000 a year from my wallet).
As for your other examples, those only solidify my point about why government is a greater fear than a corporation.
If government did not exist, the corporation would have no Congress or Judges to bribe.
And finally even before corporations existed (i.e. pre-1800), governments killed or imprisoned
millions of humans. So the root evil, around which everything else revolves, is the government itself
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>(thanks to mandatory-binding-arbitration clauses in non-negotiable contracts; read Consumerist sometime)
These contracts have no validity in a court of law. Judges have ruled again-and-again-and-again that such a contract does not take-away a citizen's right to a hearing in front of judge, who will reach his own conclusion.
And as I pointed-out elsewhere, even before corporations existed (pre-1800) governments were jailing humans indefinitely, or taking their money, or sending them off to die in warfare. So even if we had a utopia with absolutely No corporations, government would still remain and still be trampling over its citizens because that's what governments do, and have done, for the last 3000+ years.
>>>corporation cannot even in principle be restrained by the popular will.
False. The popular will CAN restrain the popular will by voting. Yes, voting. I get to vote every time I buy or don't buy the product. And if I get enough people to boycott the product I have the power to bankrupt the corporation. Example: Circuit City.
Stop living in some candyland belief that government is good. History going all the way back to the Democratic Roman Republic shows that it simply isn't true. There were no corporations back then, and yet the government still jailed, taxed, and drafted/executed citizens.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>The puppet does not control the puppetmaster
If by "puppetmaster" you mean corporation, and that all evils come from the corporation(s), then how do you explain what happened under the democratic Roman republic? They had no corporations of any kind, and yet still the government jailed, killed, and sucked money from the wallets of its citizens.
By your own theory, that should not have happened. Without the corporations, the Roman citizens should have been living in a paradise where they elected their own officials, and never need fear their government. So it's clear to me the evil IS the government - always has been and always will be.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Buy more proprietary software!
I'm moving to Russia where freedom still lives.
What freedom?
FYI, copyright infringement in Russia is a criminal offense, not civil - so you get a prison term, not fines. Furthermore, as such, it doesn't require the right holder to sue you - the government itself will handle the prosecution. Case in point: Aleksandr Ponosov, accused of pirating Windows. Microsoft Russia didn't file any claims against him, and when the whole mess started, they specifically said they do not desire the case to proceed. But the prosecution went on regardless. The only reason why he didn't get convicted is because the case got enough attention for Putin to personally comment on it, which pretty much sealed the verdict.
Nothing you just said contradicts the GP at all. In every single one of your examples it's the government which acts the part of the villain. A corporation can, at most, ask the government to do something on its behalf, and perhaps offer some form of material incentive (i.e. a bribe). In every case, however, it's the government which actually violates your rights, not the corporation.
Which is why any society in which corporations are the dominant force will inevitably see a government formed by those corporations to legitimize and monopolize the use of force in their interest.
There is no such thing as anarcho-capitalism - either the "anarchy" part breaks down and devolves into oligarchy (and often descends into fascism once the masses start getting restless), or capitalism - the whole property rights system - breaks down, and you simply get anarchism as it is, a state of chaos, where you own only what you can take and hold with whatever strength you have.
Evidentally, you haven't heard...i.e. Kindle, Apple erasing ebooks, etc.?
Sorry, but soon you won't 'own' anything. Laws are rapidly being passed to simply just give the user a 'license' to use anything...much more profitable, don't you know...yep, capitalism at its best...enjoy it while you can...
Sheesh.. At least get your spelling right - it's Gandhi and not Ghandi. And Gandhi's ideal was non-cooperation with tyrannical regime and *not* pacifism.
In case you arent aware Gandhi (not Ghandi) and Washington were playing against the same opponent. Lookie here ... American beat british with musket and bayonet...american is a hero...
lookie here...half clothed asian drive out the same british...the brits were sissies...
Gandhi was not a man. He was a movement.And your civil rights chapter would have read differently but for Gandhi inspired King. If pulling the trigger could solve problems of the world then it would have been quite an easy solution.
your own guys screw you in your own courts using the laws made by your own representatives in your own legislatures, and thats freedom. Congrats.
"On the day when an American is no longer able to buy a book, read it, and then resell it to somebody else, I'm moving to Russia where freedom still lives."
Freedom in America was bought with violence.
The willingness to skewer British troops with sword and bayonet, send musket ball and cannon shot into their ranks, tar and feather their officials, burn their facilities,and sink their ships is what secured America for Americans. [...]
Um, we have a first-sale doctrine in the UK too - outside the US it's called "exhaustion of rights".
If you'd just asked about that then the wars of independence wouldn't have been necessary??!?
You seemed to have missed that.
No copy has been made.
Ergo no license needed.
What was he reselling?
When i administered small sites, we usually first bought the product as a license, then worried about the cd and serial key second.
The license and the actual software/serial key is not tied together.
We could sell those software cd's and serials (actually, we couldn't, but that's beside the point), and even though people owned them fair and square, they wouldn't be allowed to do anything without a product license receipt.
If he was selling those OEM software cd/serials as whole products, i can understand AutoDesk being pissed...
pacifism is also a lie: the pen is only mightier than the sword as far as it can inspire ten thousand more swords.
the only reason nations don't massacre people like ghandi and his followers (and granted, in some places they do) is because they don't want to deal with repercussions from the other nations they have to deal with. and really, even that boils down to the use of force in the end. if a neighbor nation decides to suspend trade with you to protest your massacres, what's to stop your nation from simply taking what it wants? only force. ultima ratio regum.
ghandi only succeeded because somewhere down the line, someone would have ended up using force to protect his message.
But "whom" is pretty much reserved for formal writing these days, as it sounds pretentious in casual use.
Don't you mean pompous, and faggy?
... either the "anarchy" part breaks down and devolves into oligarchy..., or capitalism ... breaks down..., and you simply get anarchism as it is, a state of chaos, where you own only what you can take and hold with whatever strength you have.
Which is different from the non-anarcho-capitalist system how, exactly? Democracies naturally devolve into oligarchies as well, without exactly the same application of constant vigilance required to maintain a state of non-aggressive anarchy. Under a democracy capitalism has already broken down, since by definition your (property) rights are subject to popular vote rather than absolute, and "you own only what you can take and hold with whatever strength you have"--that strength just takes the form of popularity rather than force of arms.
Libertarianism / anarcho-capitalism is definitely not a stable system; like anything worth having, acquiring and maintaining it requires constant effort. That is no reason to settle for the systemic injustice and involuntary servitude inherent in any lesser system, however.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
They had no corporations of any kind, and yet still the government jailed, killed, and sucked money from the wallets of its citizens.
Doesn't sound much like a democracy to me
> What freedom man has is because he is willing to kill for it, and killing for freedom is as noble as sacrifice for freedom (not to mention more effective).
You are making a typical mistake. While you explicitly state that "freedom in America was bought with violence" you are assuming
that that must be the case elsewhere and that is just simply not true. Take a look for example at Spain after 1977. From a dictatorship that
country has gone to a democracy and without violence. I am sure one can come up with other examples.
I get to vote every time I buy or don't buy the product. And if I get enough people to boycott the product I have the power to bankrupt the corporation. Example: Circuit City.
Wait, that was YOU?
How do we put a corporation in jail?
We don't have to. The thing that everyone seems to forget is that corporations as such don't do anything. People who work for corporations, and people who run corporations do.
Jail the person responsible - be it a director, or some other manager or drone - and the risk-free abuse will suddenly seem much less risk-free!
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
>>>Gandhi inspired King.
Actually even if Gandhi had never existed, King often cited the example of Henry David Thoreau, the first to protest government policies via passive-aggressiveness.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Alright then I'll move to Poland instead. I hear their previous communist history has made them fearful of government programs & politicians. And the income tax rate is only 15%. Sounds almost perfect.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Alright then I'll move to Poland instead. I hear their previous communist history has made them fearful of government programs & politicians. And the income tax rate is only 15%. Sounds almost perfect.
That one is a nation where 90% of population are devoutly religious (Catholic, specifically), and that affects politics quite a lot, and everyday life perhaps even more (e.g. you definitely wouldn't want to be a gay in Poland). You may like the liberal economic policies, but are you willing to endure a very moralistic society for that?
Estonia sounds more like your thing - they have very liberal policies in civil rights issues (well, unless you're Russian who settled there before the collapse of the USSR); two biggest parties in the parliament are a classic liberal party and a centre-right social liberal party; the parliament itself is multi-party (6 parties at present, with no single one above 30%). Income tax is flat-rate 21%, and historically it has only ever been lowered (it started at 26% in early 1990s). Government debt is less than 10% of the GDP (compare to the US...). The economy is also practically self-sufficient in terms of energy supply (90% is generated from fuel produced within the country).
They have military conscription, though.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.ars
It seems this is the same case, but in 2008 the judge already had a ruling on this case. Why was this computerworld article written now? It has no new info from back then.
... either the "anarchy" part breaks down and devolves into oligarchy..., or capitalism ... breaks down..., and you simply get anarchism as it is, a state of chaos, where you own only what you can take and hold with whatever strength you have.
Which is different from the non-anarcho-capitalist system how, exactly? Democracies naturally devolve into oligarchies as well, without exactly the same application of constant vigilance required to maintain a state of non-aggressive anarchy. Under a democracy capitalism has already broken down, since by definition your (property) rights are subject to popular vote rather than absolute, and "you own only what you can take and hold with whatever strength you have"--that strength just takes the form of popularity rather than force of arms.
Libertarianism / anarcho-capitalism is definitely not a stable system; like anything worth having, acquiring and maintaining it requires constant effort. That is no reason to settle for the systemic injustice and involuntary servitude inherent in any lesser system, however.
Note: I hit the wrong 'reply' button the first time. Re-posting to the correct parent comment.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
You wish. Democracies have been just as guilty of miscarriages of justice as other forms of government, even against their own citizens. See also: War on Drugs, military conscription, proliferation of taxes, et al.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Copyright is an attempt by the government to interfere in the economy by inhibiting property rights in favor of monopoly incentives granted to a favored group (authors and inventors). This a case of, if not full "socialism" (a term with unclear semantics in casual conversation), than at least a socialistically-inclined ideology.
In plain terms, the GP's example illustrates exactly how "socialism" limits freedoms.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Um... if you think that creating private property is a form of socialism, you are very confused.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Thanks to you and the other (high-scored) poster.
:0) But you have confirmed that I was right all along. Thank you.
These both pretty much match the rules I was given when I was younger. In particular, the part about being object rather than subject was what I remembered.
A few years (but not that long) ago, a woman I knew to be an English teacher told me that I had used "whom" incorrectly in conversation. So I asked her (politely and sincerely) what the proper rules were. She hemmed and hawed and eventually blurted out that it was "too complicated to explain".
I was not satisfied with that answer, and since then, when I have encountered people who were supposed to be knowledgeable about English, I would ask them the same question, and generally I would get either evasion, or an answer that was incomprehensible to me (and I had never found English to be incomprehensible before).
It did not occur to me, until the other day, to ask somebody on Slashdot.
In closing, I would like to add that while it might seem pretentious in casual use, one can say the same about many rules of language. Even so, I would rather try to conform to a set of sensible rules than allow my communication to devolve into statements such as "He stylin'."
Lawyers, being masters of the law, are, in as much as the precision of their words is necessary for the proper fulfillment of their duties, frequently required to write sentences in varying lengths, the content and precise phrasing of which depends entirely on the desired end state as well as any possible disclaimers which may be required, preferred, or otherwise desirable to ensure a maximal level of ass-covering as would be reasonably expected by their clients.
Think I'm ready to apply to law school yet?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I have this belief that our world is going in the direction of unitary control. Some would call this conspiracy theory. I call it reality. But I digress... you made the point of that which will make this shift in power possible... people will never revolt and make necessary repairs and corrections as long as they feel secure as they are. Give them a bone while you cut off a tail and listen to them purr. It's the old adage about the frog and the water: put a frog into hot water and he jumps about frenetically, screaming and trying to get out of the pot. But put him into cool water, and raise the temperature a degree at a time, slooooowly, and he will remain at peace until well cooked. That's what they are doing to us, and that's how they will win.... unless..... more of us realize what's going on! thanks for lis'nin' seekertom