Any first year law student can tell you the following about licenses: A license in its most basic form is oral or written permission to do something. "I give you permission to do x". And while a license isn't a "contract", a license has hallmarks of a contract, and contract-like rights, so if you wrongfully revoke a license, you can still be held responsible for full range of contract-like damages, including consequential and incidental damages.
And here is the interesting part: First, if you create a license and grant me certain privileges, the license will be considered irrevocable. Furthermore, even if there isn't a grand, and you give me a license to do something, and I spend money furthering my rights under the license, the license can become irrevocable. So, in other words, if I reasonably rely on a license that says I can freely distribute software, and I spend money (or time, arguably) on the subject matter of the license, it is only fair that the license becomes irrevocable.
Whether or not the GPL uses the magic words "irrevocable" is irrelevant. The actual words of the license strongly suggest that if you attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program outside of the GPL that your rights are automatically terminated your rights under the GPL, and the people who have been using the software can continue to do so using the GPL.
Okay, I's like to explain what makes ebook readers so bad and what needs to be done to fix them. <p> Thanks to that first sentence, I read the rest of your insightful comment with a really freakin annoying Jar Jar Binks voice. <p> Thanks
PS Meesa gonna upmod yousa comment, since Isa hava mod points...
A library is what a community makes of it. If the community values a library and its services, then the collection will be robust and healthy and interesting, and the interlibrary loan system will be fantastic and broad, with access to college libraries. I have noticed that most libraries in New Jersey fit this model. If the community doesn't give a hoot, and doesn't spend tax money at a local level, like Florida, libraries are a wasteland.
Yes, there are exception to a persons "right of privacy" in regard to a "right of publicity". Most notable, are the exceptions to satire and parody. However, US courts recognize that this free speech protection must be balanced against intellectual property rights. So, there is a very strong argument that printing a book of jokes of this nature is essentially using his name and likeness purely for profit, and not satire and parody. I don't think that Chuck should be able to get the book yanked from the shelves, but he should get part of the royalties for the book.
It appears the infraction was probably closer to being for disobeying the teacher than for using Firefox.
Bullshit. On the face of the detention document it is clear that the teacher didn't believe that the child was doing the classroom assignment because he was using Firefox. The teacher told the student to close Firefox and open IE to complete the assignment.
Thus, it is clear that the teacher did not know that Firefox was a web browser, and it is clear that the teacher gave the student detention because the teacher thought he was not doing his work.
Why does this matter? Because some educators are ignorant about computers and refuse to learn anything about them. Any idiot can "google" firefox.exe and determine that it is a popular browser.
The other reason that this story invokes outrage, is that the student, who is clearly correct, is ignored by the teacher.
The "unauthorized installation" and "disobedience" issue is a red-herring. If he was disobedient or violated the schools policy, then that would have been made the focus of the detention. It was the use of Firefox and the perception that he wasn't doing the classroom assignment that garnered the detention.
According to the Author of Paint.NET, he is not closing the source code. He is still releasing the source code but not publishing the source code for the installer and "translated string resource files".
Also, the Author has thought about the GPL, but "Some have suggested that I should have used the GPL or BSD license, but that wouldn't be possible because first, I don't like GPL (let's please not start a battle about it). Second, it would restrict some of the freedoms that I do want to allow: honest incorporation of portions of Paint.NET's code into another software without licensing stipulations (for starters). Third, I don't have complete executive privilege here. Portions of Paint.NET are incorporated from elsewhere (with permission of course), or are even owned by Microsoft from way back in the day, and I cannot change those parts of the licensing without consent (or by doing a full rewrite). Nor do I want to chase everyone down to get this consent when I can achieve my goals easier by doing something else. So I have moved the resource assets to a CC license which means if you really want to rip-off Paint.NET then you have to rewrite all the text and redo all the graphics. At that point you have proven you are either not lazy, or that you have OCD, or something. By which time I've released 4.0 and you are way behind again."
I use goodreads.com - it is free and has a highly intuitive interface. In order to add a book, all you need to do is enter the title of the book or the authors last name or isbn, or import your recent buys directly from Amazon.com. You can even export your booklist to an excel document. The tagging feature is a nice alternative to a formal card catalog system for a home library. So, for example, for Isaac Asimov's Foundation, my tags are read, scifi, livingroomshelfA - you could throw in a dewey decimal number as a tag easily as well, but why bother for a small library?
SEC. 487. INSTITUTIONAL AND FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS.
(a) DISCLOSURE OF POLICIES AND SANCTIONS RELATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. --Section 485(a)(1) (20 U.S.C. 1092(a)(1)) is amended--.... "[incorporate] institutional policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement (i) including--distribution of copyrighted material, including unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, may subject the students to civil and criminal liabilities; (ii) a summary of the penalties for violation of Federal copyright laws; (iii) a description of the institution's policies with respect to unauthorized peer to-peer file sharing, including disciplinary actions that are taken against students who engage in unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials using the institution's information technology system; and (iv) a description of actions that the institution takes to prevent and detect unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on the institution's information technology system.".
---
So, basically, the way I read this, the legislation is a hat-tip to the MPAA...but it has absolutely no teeth. It requires colleges to basically hand out a pamphlet about the "evils of file-sharing" and to have some sort of INTERNAL system up to punish file sharers and an INTERNAL technological system to prevent unauthorized file sharing. Effectively, if the MPAA comes to the University saying "give us the names of the students", the college can say "we have disciplined the student internally, and it won't go on his record, and now go away, so we can finish educating our student without the interruption of a lawsuit."
Of course, this proposed bill (which hasn't even hit THOMAS yet) completely ignores the fact that the university might use peer to peer file sharing to exchange free software for classes, for students to exchange pictures of extra-curricular activities, scholarly collaboration, or use of bittorrent or file sharing technologies for medical doctors to be able to help isolated Tibetan doctors perform complicated surgeries, etc.
When you are convicted by a jury in the United States of a felony, you loose a number of rights by operation of law. You loose your right to freedom by having to go to jail, you loose your right to hold property, by having to compensate the victim and the state, and often, your right to vote. The reason why this is "ok" is because you lost these rights after "due process of law".
Escaping from jail is a serious criminal offense with serious additional penalties. There is no statute of limitation concerns because it is an ongoing crime...the statute would start to run after recapture, however.
Your comment is insightful as far as fascism is concerned, but I strongly disagree with your take on waterboarding. Waterboarding is clearly torture, which is considered a war crime, a crime against humanity, under a variety of International conventions and US law, and information extracted by torture, contrary to what you were taught in the military, often yields inaccurate information, according to the scientific and medical consensus. http://www.livescience.com/history/071019-torture-history.html for more info.
I wonder if they could put a small rocket as the payload, and blast off further into orbit...sure thats gotta be an engineering nightmare though...thoughts anyone?
Wish I had mod points to mod you down. Here is what the current Comcast TOS says:
"You agree not to use HSI for operation as an Internet service provider, a server site for ftp, telnet, rlogin, e-mail hosting, "Web hosting" or other similar applications, for any business enterprise, or as an end-point on a non-Comcast local area network or wide area network."
"run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers"
So, under these vague definitions, running yahoo messenger and video chatting would be prohibited. Sharing your new baby pictures over AIM or bittorrent is prohibited. FTP'ing into your home computer from work to grab a file you forgot is prohibited. Using webmail or publishing a website could be prohibited as well.
The fact of the matter is that they advertised this service as UNLIMITED internet. They don't advertise the fact that you can't run non-commercial servers. They do advertise that you can file share. So, basically, their written contract...which you have never signed, is full of crap, and unbinding, IMHO.
...is patently ridiculous. Congress is part of the government. How can one branch of government keep a secret from itself, unless it is claiming that Congress can't have oversight or is claiming some sort of wacky separation of powers/executive privilege. Not to mention, AT&T isn't the government, and can't assert that it has the State Secret Privilege...
I think that the malicious nature of Ballmer's comments are intended to drive away current Red Hat customers and induce them into breaking contracts, and is therefore actionable under the law. Its probably too expensive to get into an all out lawsuit about this, however, but I know I would, on principle.
Oversubscription is what makes it possible for ISPs to offer 10Mbps service under $80
Bullshit. The problem is that the US taxpayers have pumped Billions upon Billions of dollars into the internet/telephone/fiber optic infrastructure, and the telephone companies, cable companies and other large companies have wasted that money over the past 30 years, by not using the money as it was intended. Which is why it is cheaper overseas to have faster broadband than in the US.
Anyone know where the teaser clip can be found on the internet for the upcoming dragonlance movie? I hope its good, and not an embarrassment like the Dungeons & Dragons movie was.
>Conversely, the DMCA allows for criminal prosecution.
I hate that our basic education system (not just the USA, but everywhere) does not teach basic civics: Fraud is actionable criminally and civilly. The purpose of a criminal action is usually to appease the State. The purpose of a civil action is to appease an individual citizen (or company).
I imagine that utilizing the DMCA in this instance is being used as either a method to bring the subject matter into a Federal District Court's jurisdiction...or they wanted to trump up the lawsuit with more federal (rather than state) causes of actions.
I recently saw an elderly lady and a young man standing on the side walk, violently jump back from the scene of an accident between a dumptruck and a 16 wheeler. I asked them why they were reacting the way they were, and they said they were afraid the gas tank on the truck was going to explode.
I said, quite bluntly, "that only happens in movies". Then, I was challenged if I was "some sort of expert". I said no, I am not an expert, but I do have a knowledge of physics, and explosions like that only happen rarely.
Ah, legalese often confuses non-lawyers, and for good reason...its highly technical and specific.
An auction is a *type* of sale. The auction itself is merely a method of attaining a price. The contract of sale is created on the falling of the auctioneer's hammer, or similar event. If a reserve price is not reached, the goods may be sold to the highest bidder, or withdrawn. Whether or not an online 'auction' falls under the common law definition of an auction is highly dependent upon each country's law...and in this case, I believe the judge says that it does, which might be a departure from existing Australian Common Law.
The interesting thing about this case is that the Judge gave the winner the airplane. Usually, if you win a court case like this, you only get money damages unless the goods are unique or very rare. A World War II Wirraway plane, 1 of 5 left in the world, certainly qualifies for the legal remedy of "specific performance".
I've never equated $222.90 to "giving away free" before...but in comparison to $999 for the QX6850, it does seem like a steal. Especially since I can't find the QX6850 on sale anywhere yet....
Slashdot Mirror
Any first year law student can tell you the following about licenses: A license in its most basic form is oral or written permission to do something. "I give you permission to do x". And while a license isn't a "contract", a license has hallmarks of a contract, and contract-like rights, so if you wrongfully revoke a license, you can still be held responsible for full range of contract-like damages, including consequential and incidental damages.
And here is the interesting part: First, if you create a license and grant me certain privileges, the license will be considered irrevocable. Furthermore, even if there isn't a grand, and you give me a license to do something, and I spend money furthering my rights under the license, the license can become irrevocable. So, in other words, if I reasonably rely on a license that says I can freely distribute software, and I spend money (or time, arguably) on the subject matter of the license, it is only fair that the license becomes irrevocable.
Whether or not the GPL uses the magic words "irrevocable" is irrelevant. The actual words of the license strongly suggest that if you attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program outside of the GPL that your rights are automatically terminated your rights under the GPL, and the people who have been using the software can continue to do so using the GPL.
The competition is the Eee PC...not a Vaio.
I wish that the 4th Edition would allow players to play modules online together and in live groups around a table.
Okay, I's like to explain what makes ebook readers so bad and what needs to be done to fix them.
<p>
Thanks to that first sentence, I read the rest of your insightful comment with a really freakin annoying Jar Jar Binks voice.
<p>
Thanks
PS
Meesa gonna upmod yousa comment, since Isa hava mod points...
A library is what a community makes of it. If the community values a library and its services, then the collection will be robust and healthy and interesting, and the interlibrary loan system will be fantastic and broad, with access to college libraries. I have noticed that most libraries in New Jersey fit this model. If the community doesn't give a hoot, and doesn't spend tax money at a local level, like Florida, libraries are a wasteland.
The same thing that NYC horse mounted cops can do - negotiate faster than cars in city traffic and go off road.
Yes, there are exception to a persons "right of privacy" in regard to a "right of publicity". Most notable, are the exceptions to satire and parody. However, US courts recognize that this free speech protection must be balanced against intellectual property rights. So, there is a very strong argument that printing a book of jokes of this nature is essentially using his name and likeness purely for profit, and not satire and parody. I don't think that Chuck should be able to get the book yanked from the shelves, but he should get part of the royalties for the book.
It appears the infraction was probably closer to being for disobeying the teacher than for using Firefox.
Bullshit. On the face of the detention document it is clear that the teacher didn't believe that the child was doing the classroom assignment because he was using Firefox. The teacher told the student to close Firefox and open IE to complete the assignment.
Thus, it is clear that the teacher did not know that Firefox was a web browser, and it is clear that the teacher gave the student detention because the teacher thought he was not doing his work.
Why does this matter? Because some educators are ignorant about computers and refuse to learn anything about them. Any idiot can "google" firefox.exe and determine that it is a popular browser.
The other reason that this story invokes outrage, is that the student, who is clearly correct, is ignored by the teacher.
The "unauthorized installation" and "disobedience" issue is a red-herring. If he was disobedient or violated the schools policy, then that would have been made the focus of the detention. It was the use of Firefox and the perception that he wasn't doing the classroom assignment that garnered the detention.
According to the Author of Paint.NET, he is not closing the source code. He is still releasing the source code but not publishing the source code for the installer and "translated string resource files".
Also, the Author has thought about the GPL, but "Some have suggested that I should have used the GPL or BSD license, but that wouldn't be possible because first, I don't like GPL (let's please not start a battle about it). Second, it would restrict some of the freedoms that I do want to allow: honest incorporation of portions of Paint.NET's code into another software without licensing stipulations (for starters). Third, I don't have complete executive privilege here. Portions of Paint.NET are incorporated from elsewhere (with permission of course), or are even owned by Microsoft from way back in the day, and I cannot change those parts of the licensing without consent (or by doing a full rewrite). Nor do I want to chase everyone down to get this consent when I can achieve my goals easier by doing something else. So I have moved the resource assets to a CC license which means if you really want to rip-off Paint.NET then you have to rewrite all the text and redo all the graphics. At that point you have proven you are either not lazy, or that you have OCD, or something. By which time I've released 4.0 and you are way behind again."
I use goodreads.com - it is free and has a highly intuitive interface. In order to add a book, all you need to do is enter the title of the book or the authors last name or isbn, or import your recent buys directly from Amazon.com. You can even export your booklist to an excel document. The tagging feature is a nice alternative to a formal card catalog system for a home library. So, for example, for Isaac Asimov's Foundation, my tags are read, scifi, livingroomshelfA - you could throw in a dewey decimal number as a tag easily as well, but why bother for a small library?
Of course, if you RTFLegislation, it says nothing about universities having to provide alternatives.
SEC. 487. INSTITUTIONAL AND FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS.
....
(a) DISCLOSURE OF POLICIES AND SANCTIONS RELATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
--Section 485(a)(1) (20 U.S.C. 1092(a)(1)) is amended--
"[incorporate] institutional policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement
(i) including--distribution of copyrighted material, including unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, may subject the students to civil and criminal liabilities;
(ii) a summary of the penalties for violation of Federal copyright laws;
(iii) a description of the institution's policies with respect to unauthorized peer to-peer file sharing, including disciplinary
actions that are taken against students who engage in unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials using the institution's information technology system; and
(iv) a description of actions that the institution takes to prevent and detect unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on the institution's information technology system.".
---
So, basically, the way I read this, the legislation is a hat-tip to the MPAA...but it has absolutely no teeth. It requires colleges to basically hand out a pamphlet about the "evils of file-sharing" and to have some sort of INTERNAL system up to punish file sharers and an INTERNAL technological system to prevent unauthorized file sharing. Effectively, if the MPAA comes to the University saying "give us the names of the students", the college can say "we have disciplined the student internally, and it won't go on his record, and now go away, so we can finish educating our student without the interruption of a lawsuit."
Of course, this proposed bill (which hasn't even hit THOMAS yet) completely ignores the fact that the university might use peer to peer file sharing to exchange free software for classes, for students to exchange pictures of extra-curricular activities, scholarly collaboration, or use of bittorrent or file sharing technologies for medical doctors to be able to help isolated Tibetan doctors perform complicated surgeries, etc.
When you are convicted by a jury in the United States of a felony, you loose a number of rights by operation of law. You loose your right to freedom by having to go to jail, you loose your right to hold property, by having to compensate the victim and the state, and often, your right to vote. The reason why this is "ok" is because you lost these rights after "due process of law".
Escaping from jail is a serious criminal offense with serious additional penalties. There is no statute of limitation concerns because it is an ongoing crime...the statute would start to run after recapture, however.
Your comment is insightful as far as fascism is concerned, but I strongly disagree with your take on waterboarding. Waterboarding is clearly torture, which is considered a war crime, a crime against humanity, under a variety of International conventions and US law, and information extracted by torture, contrary to what you were taught in the military, often yields inaccurate information, according to the scientific and medical consensus. http://www.livescience.com/history/071019-torture-history.html for more info.
I wonder if they could put a small rocket as the payload, and blast off further into orbit...sure thats gotta be an engineering nightmare though...thoughts anyone?
Wish I had mod points to mod you down. Here is what the current Comcast TOS says:
"You agree not to use HSI for operation as an Internet service provider, a server site for ftp, telnet, rlogin, e-mail hosting, "Web hosting" or other similar applications, for any business enterprise, or as an end-point on a non-Comcast local area network or wide area network."
"run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers"
So, under these vague definitions, running yahoo messenger and video chatting would be prohibited. Sharing your new baby pictures over AIM or bittorrent is prohibited. FTP'ing into your home computer from work to grab a file you forgot is prohibited. Using webmail or publishing a website could be prohibited as well.
The fact of the matter is that they advertised this service as UNLIMITED internet. They don't advertise the fact that you can't run non-commercial servers. They do advertise that you can file share. So, basically, their written contract...which you have never signed, is full of crap, and unbinding, IMHO.
...is patently ridiculous. Congress is part of the government. How can one branch of government keep a secret from itself, unless it is claiming that Congress can't have oversight or is claiming some sort of wacky separation of powers/executive privilege. Not to mention, AT&T isn't the government, and can't assert that it has the State Secret Privilege...
I think that the malicious nature of Ballmer's comments are intended to drive away current Red Hat customers and induce them into breaking contracts, and is therefore actionable under the law. Its probably too expensive to get into an all out lawsuit about this, however, but I know I would, on principle.
Bullshit. The problem is that the US taxpayers have pumped Billions upon Billions of dollars into the internet/telephone/fiber optic infrastructure, and the telephone companies, cable companies and other large companies have wasted that money over the past 30 years, by not using the money as it was intended. Which is why it is cheaper overseas to have faster broadband than in the US.
Doesn't Linux run on Pirate Ships?
Anyone know where the teaser clip can be found on the internet for the upcoming dragonlance movie? I hope its good, and not an embarrassment like the Dungeons & Dragons movie was.
>Conversely, the DMCA allows for criminal prosecution.
I hate that our basic education system (not just the USA, but everywhere) does not teach basic civics: Fraud is actionable criminally and civilly. The purpose of a criminal action is usually to appease the State. The purpose of a civil action is to appease an individual citizen (or company).
I imagine that utilizing the DMCA in this instance is being used as either a method to bring the subject matter into a Federal District Court's jurisdiction...or they wanted to trump up the lawsuit with more federal (rather than state) causes of actions.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I recently saw an elderly lady and a young man standing on the side walk, violently jump back from the scene of an accident between a dumptruck and a 16 wheeler. I asked them why they were reacting the way they were, and they said they were afraid the gas tank on the truck was going to explode.
I said, quite bluntly, "that only happens in movies". Then, I was challenged if I was "some sort of expert". I said no, I am not an expert, but I do have a knowledge of physics, and explosions like that only happen rarely.
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
Ah, legalese often confuses non-lawyers, and for good reason...its highly technical and specific.
An auction is a *type* of sale. The auction itself is merely a method of attaining a price. The contract of sale is created on the falling of the auctioneer's hammer, or similar event. If a reserve price is not reached, the goods may be sold to the highest bidder, or withdrawn. Whether or not an online 'auction' falls under the common law definition of an auction is highly dependent upon each country's law...and in this case, I believe the judge says that it does, which might be a departure from existing Australian Common Law.
The interesting thing about this case is that the Judge gave the winner the airplane. Usually, if you win a court case like this, you only get money damages unless the goods are unique or very rare. A World War II Wirraway plane, 1 of 5 left in the world, certainly qualifies for the legal remedy of "specific performance".
I've never equated $222.90 to "giving away free" before...but in comparison to $999 for the QX6850, it does seem like a steal. Especially since I can't find the QX6850 on sale anywhere yet....