I've always found it an interesting metaphysical question if a crime can exist without the victim, or indeed anyone but the criminal, knowing about the crime.
There are paintings hanging in museums right now that are forgerys. The forger is dead, the original painting, if indeed there was one, is destroyed. Assume it was painted at roughly the right time, has the right inks, the right paper, and no wrong fingerprints in the paint, and no one will ever know it wasn't painted by the person it is purported to be painted by.
Is this painting a forgery? The obvious answer is 'yes', after all, I said it was one. But is it really?
Quantum physics says that things, in a very real sense, aren't decided to have happened one way or another until they're observed. The cat is both dead and alive until someone looks in the box.
And the painting is both a forgery and isn't, until someone finds evidence one way or another. If they don't find evidence, it is literally both. This goes for all paintings. As the date of their paiting gets farther in the past, and history gets blurrier, it's not 'recorded events' that's getting blurrier, it's actually what happened that's getting vaguer.
Now, what does this have to do with software piracy?
If someone pirates Warcraft II, and plays it for two weeks, sticks the ISO on a CD, deletes it off his hard drive, and files it...did he do that? Maybe he didn't download it, maybe he just player The Sims for two weeks, and that CD is just going to sit there until 2009, when he sticks in his DVD-ROM, see it's some old game that wouldn't play anymore, and trashes it.
People always talk about 'they only lose money if he was going to buy the game', but usually piracy only exists if he was going to buy the game. Events have to have ripples to be real. If you do something that doesn't change anything, it doesn't even exist, really, it just 'might' exist, or something with an equal lack of ripples might exist instead. Or, as QM says, both exist at the same time.
In murder the murderer usually gains something, people don't go around randomly commiting felonies for no apparent reason.
They just don't gain a life. The only place you can gain an extra life is in a video game.
And in illegal software copying the publisher can lose something, if the user would have bought a copy if they didn't have the illegal copy. they just don't lose a copy.
But, anyway, you're right, the two acts aren't theft. In theft, one person gains, and the other person loses the exact same amount. In murder, one person gains a little and one person loses more than in any theft, so it's worse than theft. (And, of course, you can't fix it afterwards, the loss is permanent.) In software 'piracy', one person gains a little and one person loses a much smaller amount. (A much smaller amount averaged out. They lose nothing for most copies and whatever amount of the purchase price would have gone toward paying for the coding of the product on ones that would have been purchased. They don't pay for packages, manufactoring, store markup, etc, so it's silly to include those in the price.)
What about something with really, really big wings, that can fly high and slow, constantly, maybe covered with solar cells on top. The thing could fly as long as it works, maybe for months or years.
While I hate to punch holes in this, you can't combine solar cell flight and slow flight, because of, duh, nighttime.;)
The sheer venom and menace you received from who, exactly? A newsgroup on the internet?
You can't 'ask' to be removed from SPEWS, or, at least, you can't ask 'SPEWS'. SPEWS, whoever they are, reads a certain newsgroup. If they see they've made a mistake, they'll correct it. They probably didn't make a mistake listing your provider, so obviously won't correct it.
But either way, you're not going to get a reply from them, or any assurance they've even read your post. You'll just get messages from random people on the group. Some of these random people are pretty good at guessing what SPEWS wants. (In fact, some of them have probably set up SPEWS in the first place, but I have no idea which ones that would be, and, if anyone knows, they aren't talking.)
And just like any newsgroup, it has crazy people on it. What's worse, it has spammers who actively attack it.
If you want prove what you claim about being attacked, groups.google.com is right over there, post a link to the thread.
Well, yeah...and how is sending spam for other people not being a spammer, again? Did I miss something here?;)
I'm glad when blacklists block 'shady' companies like this. Mailing companies either need to collect the email addresses themselves, using their own system (And by 'collect' I mean, have a sign up page/subscribe address, with confirmed opt-in.), or have some sort of confirmation of the other's list with spot verifications that they actually have confirmation emails of all 'subscribers'. And with any complaints whatsoever they should drop the customer like a hot coal, not send them the complaints so they can 'fix', aka, listwash, those addresses. They hopefully have required a large deposit for just this sort of situtation.
Using other people's lists is dangerous. I'm not going to say it shouldn't legal, or deserves an automatic listing the blacklists, but it's not something you can just do and look the other way while someone pays you to 'accidently' spam.
Abd blacklists aren't entirely punative, either. If a company is sending out spam, even 'accidentally', I want it blocked. I don't want to hear how they got 'tricked', and can't send out their 'legit' lists. I don't want to hear anything from them until they fix the complete lack of responsiblity running around at their netblock.
And, of course, if they end up in a blacklist due to their own clients lying to them, you know who they should be suing, right? Hint: Not the blacklist.;)
Most of the email is to people who have asked for them? So it's mostly opt-in?
What the hell are you smoking? It's either opt-in or it's not. The only case of someone seeing a message they didn't sign up for should be the once in a million cases where someone is assigned someone else's old email address, or a typo in some sort of forwarding.
You REALLY need to read SPEWS's homepage. They don't list spammers. They list ISPs that have spammers on them. This is their entire point, to list ISPs that have spammers on them, to force the ISP to fix their problem, and to stop themselves from getting spam until they do.
The only reason that SPEW doesn't list the entire network is that the backbone you're on is a major backbone. You're lucky because of that, SPEWS can't block the entire backbone. The backbone needs to clean up its act, however, and until they do you will remain at risk, especially if they start moving spammers around to avoid netblocks.
Anyway, I use SPEWS, and you support spammers by using companies that permit them to exist. You ae the friend of my enemy, and that makes you an enemy.
I would tell you you're not welcome on my servers until you either start putting pressure on your ISP to change backbones, or move yourself, but luckily, I probably don't have to. Thanks SPEWS.
Even if you did opt-in, it would be filterable, or to a different address. All my mailing lists dump into a few different folders, they don't make me check my email at all. If I were strange enough to subscribe to ad lists (And I'm on a few that come close.), they would have filterable From addresses also, and I wouldn't have to check my email for them, either.
Exactly. I use SPEWS, and I don't want to get mail from someone so incompetent they used to have an open relay long enough to get on said lists, and so incompetent they still can't get off them despite not having an open relay, when it's actually fairly easy to get off. (Hint: Post on Usenet a nice apology for the open relay, and ask nicely if people would remove you because you fixed it and aren't going to do it anymore. I will leave it to the reader to figure out which newsgroups.)
Having this knowledge is a prerequisite to accessing my mail server.
I find it very strange how the articles keep talking about he published, or how he's 'harrassing' the home. Like that has anything to do with his right to publish.
If he's harrassing the apartments, they should get a restraining order, and they did. All well and good.
If he's libeling residents and/or the managment, he can be sued.
But this entire concept of not being allowed to publish is just completely insane. It doesn't matter if he's paid or not, if he's a complete loon, if he's dangerous or whatever. He's still allowed to put up web pages that say whatever he wants. He can put up web pages saying they have sex with monkey in the back room, and that's not against the law.
Now, if he knowingly publishes untruths, he may get sued later for libel, but that's later, and that's a civil action, anyway. You can't be jailed for libel, and I don't even think they can technically make you remove it. (Though obviously they could keep suing you for more and more money if you refused to remove it.)
It doesn't burn less fuel than a real airplane taking advantage of the same effect.
And a real airplane has powerful enough engines that it can actually fly at real attitudes in bad weather, and not crash when a wave hits it, as one of these did.
They've basically designed a car that can't get above second gear and said 'Man, that's a lot faster than a motorscooter!'. Yeah, but how is that an advantange over a real car?
And I'm questioning how the engines can be powerful enough to provide enough lift to lift out of the water, too, but not provide enough lift to actually take off. Water has a lot of drag.
If you want to cut fuel by flying right above water, fly right above the water and cut back on the throttle, don't comes up with some silly broken airplane that that is all it can do. Sure, design an airplane to do that optimally, that's all well and good, but give it real engines. Heck, just stick an extra prop or two on there somewhere and leave them off most of the the time, then you can have engines for hovering and some extras to turn on for flying.
The only reason this makes any sense is if they're trying to not have to have an actual licensed 'pilot'. Which is...well, I'm not riding in anything that has wings without a pilot. I don't care if it doesn't get that high off the ground, the real problems with airplaces start when they're hitting the ground.
So, basically, this combines all the deficits of a hovercraft (can't handle large waves or land variations) with the deficits of an aircraft (needs a landing strip), with a few new deficits (I'm having trouble visualizing how this thing is going to turn at more than a 10 degree slope and not hit the water).
And the only thing gained is...it can go fast! Wow, just like a real airplane!
The copyright thing was just me posting after I just got up. I know the difference between trademark and copyright law, but the rest of the discussion was about copyrights, so I just typed that word.
You can use a trademark, such as Ford or Red Hat, to refer to the product or company for which it is trademarked. But if you build a replica of a Ford, *and* put a Ford logo on it, that is not going to sit well with Ford's lawyers.
If you build it with Ford parts, they don't have any complaints at all. Like I said, you can take apart a Ford and put it back together, and it's still a Ford. You can take a bunch of Fords and take them apart and put them back together randomly, and, yes, they are still Fords. And, if you have the time and money, you can puchase parts that compose a Ford and build one yourself. All these are 'Fords', and can be called such.
If you copy Red Hat Linux onto a CD, that's OK. If you pass it off to someone else with a label that says "Red Hat Linux", which implies the official support of that company, you're crossing a line. But you should be free to say something like "This contents of this CD are an exact duplicate of Red Hat Linux X.X". That however is different from the original example where the copy was actually labeled "Red Hat".
Calling something Red Hat Linux in no way implies a warranty or support.
And this is a completely idiotic discussion. Have you honestly never seen a mirror? They put redhat mirrors in a redhat/ directory. Have you never puchased 'Red Hat' from cheapbytes or some such place for a dollar a CD? Guess what, it says 'Red Hat' right there on the CD. Not 'Copy of Red Hat'.
It's not a trademark violation, ever, to call something what it is. Those CDs contain the Red Hat distribution of Linux. It is perfectly okay to call them such, and sell them as such, because that is what they are.
Yes, it is. If the trademark describes the object, it's perfectly okay. Or do you think all the 'Ford' ads in a local newspaper are copyright violations?
If it is the product being described, it is perfectly okay to call it by the trademark.
This is the second time today I've seen a comment like this.
If the software on the CD is Red Hat Linux, no, it's not trademark infringement. You can only infringe trademarks if you are misrepresenting something, it is perfectly legal to use trademarks to describe the things that are trademarked.
No, there are plenty of reason the software might not be valued at 10 dollars even though you want a copy. You might have no money (Kind of far-fetched for $10, but not tat far-fetced for Photoshop.), you might think you'd get more enjoyment out of two movies, or a good book, or whatever. (This whole 10 dollar thing is kind of surreal, BTW. I've never seen useful software less that $25.)
Hence, you may want to purchase it if it's 10 dollars, but you would if it was 2 dollars. That's the very basis of economic theory there, that people are willing to give up to a certain value for something, and not any more. This obviously varies based on the person.
Now, you are correct that the availablity of pirate software has a determination on this. So, yes, some people who would be willing to buy it are going to go with the much lower priced alternative of buying it, and, yes, this hurts sales.
However, that doesn't have any bearing on the people who would not purchase it at the store price, those people are not, in an sense, 'customers', and software companies pretending they've lost sales to them is just dishonesty.
Pay attention. No one said it wasn't illegal. They said the loses were not real loses, as the company would not have made that much money had their been no pirates, and it is not a lost sale if it would not have been purchased by that person in the first place. The defination of a lost sale is a sale that does not occur due to piracy, and thus it is only a lost sale if a sale would have occured otherwise.
A real world example: Do you know how stores talk about how much they lose to shoplifters? The amount of money the item cost them, not the amount of money the item was selling for. And it's partially for this exact reason, that a good many shoplifter wouldn't have bought the item anyway. (Most shoplifters are either teenage girls who shoplift because of hormones, professional thieves who resale the items, or just plain poor people.)
Of course, if the BSA were to use this approach, they'd have $0 loses to piracy, which is obviously incorrect. A lot of people will just copy the software instead of buying another copy, especially at some companies.
But that's not all copying, by far. I know people who could not have afforded all the software they've pirated. And who do not use 95% of it anyway. If you sprayed them with some magical anti-piracy ray, they certainly would not be running out and purchasing copies of Autocad to sit unused in a box on their computer table.
Why couldn't you call it a BMW, if it's made entirely of BMW parts? It's still a BMW if you take one completely apart and put it back together, isn't it?
And while there is obviously no warranty on it, I fail to see why you couldn't sell it.
This is, of course, ignoring road-worthiness testing and all the legal paperwork for it to be a drivable 'car', but that doesn't have anything to do with what you call it.
95/98 and cdrom.
problem: dos can read the cd. windows needs a driver for that. the driver must be installed from windows. the driver is on the cd.
I'd forgotten about that idioticy. The next time anyone talks about how easy Windows is to install I'll hand them a non-bootable CD, a blank floppy, a computer to make a bootdisk on, and tell them to install it.
What? You mean the the windows machine doesn't have any way to make a bootdisk that can read the CD in DOS? Well, that's certainly very odd behavior for such an 'easy to install' OS, isn't it?
Meanwhile, I'll spend five minutes with rawrite and have a working boot floppy, one that can actually read the CD.
Granted, this is somewhat a moot point nowadays, as every machine can boot from the CD, but it didn't used to be that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonono. EpochVII was saying that anyone who aligns themselve with the BSA is going to hell.
Hey, look, they said drug users support terrorists, they lose the debate!
There are paintings hanging in museums right now that are forgerys. The forger is dead, the original painting, if indeed there was one, is destroyed. Assume it was painted at roughly the right time, has the right inks, the right paper, and no wrong fingerprints in the paint, and no one will ever know it wasn't painted by the person it is purported to be painted by.
Is this painting a forgery? The obvious answer is 'yes', after all, I said it was one. But is it really?
Quantum physics says that things, in a very real sense, aren't decided to have happened one way or another until they're observed. The cat is both dead and alive until someone looks in the box.
And the painting is both a forgery and isn't, until someone finds evidence one way or another. If they don't find evidence, it is literally both. This goes for all paintings. As the date of their paiting gets farther in the past, and history gets blurrier, it's not 'recorded events' that's getting blurrier, it's actually what happened that's getting vaguer.
Now, what does this have to do with software piracy?
If someone pirates Warcraft II, and plays it for two weeks, sticks the ISO on a CD, deletes it off his hard drive, and files it...did he do that? Maybe he didn't download it, maybe he just player The Sims for two weeks, and that CD is just going to sit there until 2009, when he sticks in his DVD-ROM, see it's some old game that wouldn't play anymore, and trashes it.
People always talk about 'they only lose money if he was going to buy the game', but usually piracy only exists if he was going to buy the game. Events have to have ripples to be real. If you do something that doesn't change anything, it doesn't even exist, really, it just 'might' exist, or something with an equal lack of ripples might exist instead. Or, as QM says, both exist at the same time.
They just don't gain a life. The only place you can gain an extra life is in a video game.
And in illegal software copying the publisher can lose something, if the user would have bought a copy if they didn't have the illegal copy. they just don't lose a copy.
But, anyway, you're right, the two acts aren't theft. In theft, one person gains, and the other person loses the exact same amount. In murder, one person gains a little and one person loses more than in any theft, so it's worse than theft. (And, of course, you can't fix it afterwards, the loss is permanent.) In software 'piracy', one person gains a little and one person loses a much smaller amount. (A much smaller amount averaged out. They lose nothing for most copies and whatever amount of the purchase price would have gone toward paying for the coding of the product on ones that would have been purchased. They don't pay for packages, manufactoring, store markup, etc, so it's silly to include those in the price.)
While I hate to punch holes in this, you can't combine solar cell flight and slow flight, because of, duh, nighttime. ;)
You can't 'ask' to be removed from SPEWS, or, at least, you can't ask 'SPEWS'. SPEWS, whoever they are, reads a certain newsgroup. If they see they've made a mistake, they'll correct it. They probably didn't make a mistake listing your provider, so obviously won't correct it.
But either way, you're not going to get a reply from them, or any assurance they've even read your post. You'll just get messages from random people on the group. Some of these random people are pretty good at guessing what SPEWS wants. (In fact, some of them have probably set up SPEWS in the first place, but I have no idea which ones that would be, and, if anyone knows, they aren't talking.)
And just like any newsgroup, it has crazy people on it. What's worse, it has spammers who actively attack it.
If you want prove what you claim about being attacked, groups.google.com is right over there, post a link to the thread.
I'm glad when blacklists block 'shady' companies like this. Mailing companies either need to collect the email addresses themselves, using their own system (And by 'collect' I mean, have a sign up page/subscribe address, with confirmed opt-in.), or have some sort of confirmation of the other's list with spot verifications that they actually have confirmation emails of all 'subscribers'. And with any complaints whatsoever they should drop the customer like a hot coal, not send them the complaints so they can 'fix', aka, listwash, those addresses. They hopefully have required a large deposit for just this sort of situtation.
Using other people's lists is dangerous. I'm not going to say it shouldn't legal, or deserves an automatic listing the blacklists, but it's not something you can just do and look the other way while someone pays you to 'accidently' spam.
Abd blacklists aren't entirely punative, either. If a company is sending out spam, even 'accidentally', I want it blocked. I don't want to hear how they got 'tricked', and can't send out their 'legit' lists. I don't want to hear anything from them until they fix the complete lack of responsiblity running around at their netblock.
And, of course, if they end up in a blacklist due to their own clients lying to them, you know who they should be suing, right? Hint: Not the blacklist. ;)
I don't have to get email from your friends, though. ;)
What the hell are you smoking? It's either opt-in or it's not. The only case of someone seeing a message they didn't sign up for should be the once in a million cases where someone is assigned someone else's old email address, or a typo in some sort of forwarding.
The only reason that SPEW doesn't list the entire network is that the backbone you're on is a major backbone. You're lucky because of that, SPEWS can't block the entire backbone. The backbone needs to clean up its act, however, and until they do you will remain at risk, especially if they start moving spammers around to avoid netblocks.
Anyway, I use SPEWS, and you support spammers by using companies that permit them to exist. You ae the friend of my enemy, and that makes you an enemy.
I would tell you you're not welcome on my servers until you either start putting pressure on your ISP to change backbones, or move yourself, but luckily, I probably don't have to. Thanks SPEWS.
Even if you did opt-in, it would be filterable, or to a different address. All my mailing lists dump into a few different folders, they don't make me check my email at all. If I were strange enough to subscribe to ad lists (And I'm on a few that come close.), they would have filterable From addresses also, and I wouldn't have to check my email for them, either.
Having this knowledge is a prerequisite to accessing my mail server.
If he's harrassing the apartments, they should get a restraining order, and they did. All well and good.
If he's libeling residents and/or the managment, he can be sued.
But this entire concept of not being allowed to publish is just completely insane. It doesn't matter if he's paid or not, if he's a complete loon, if he's dangerous or whatever. He's still allowed to put up web pages that say whatever he wants. He can put up web pages saying they have sex with monkey in the back room, and that's not against the law.
Now, if he knowingly publishes untruths, he may get sued later for libel, but that's later, and that's a civil action, anyway. You can't be jailed for libel, and I don't even think they can technically make you remove it. (Though obviously they could keep suing you for more and more money if you refused to remove it.)
And a real airplane has powerful enough engines that it can actually fly at real attitudes in bad weather, and not crash when a wave hits it, as one of these did.
They've basically designed a car that can't get above second gear and said 'Man, that's a lot faster than a motorscooter!'. Yeah, but how is that an advantange over a real car?
And I'm questioning how the engines can be powerful enough to provide enough lift to lift out of the water, too, but not provide enough lift to actually take off. Water has a lot of drag.
If you want to cut fuel by flying right above water, fly right above the water and cut back on the throttle, don't comes up with some silly broken airplane that that is all it can do. Sure, design an airplane to do that optimally, that's all well and good, but give it real engines. Heck, just stick an extra prop or two on there somewhere and leave them off most of the the time, then you can have engines for hovering and some extras to turn on for flying.
The only reason this makes any sense is if they're trying to not have to have an actual licensed 'pilot'. Which is...well, I'm not riding in anything that has wings without a pilot. I don't care if it doesn't get that high off the ground, the real problems with airplaces start when they're hitting the ground.
Anything that's a few meters above water can land on it, assuming it floats. The real question is, can it take off from water?
And the only thing gained is...it can go fast! Wow, just like a real airplane!
You can use a trademark, such as Ford or Red Hat, to refer to the product or company for which it is trademarked. But if you build a replica of a Ford, *and* put a Ford logo on it, that is not going to sit well with Ford's lawyers.
If you build it with Ford parts, they don't have any complaints at all. Like I said, you can take apart a Ford and put it back together, and it's still a Ford. You can take a bunch of Fords and take them apart and put them back together randomly, and, yes, they are still Fords. And, if you have the time and money, you can puchase parts that compose a Ford and build one yourself. All these are 'Fords', and can be called such.
If you copy Red Hat Linux onto a CD, that's OK. If you pass it off to someone else with a label that says "Red Hat Linux", which implies the official support of that company, you're crossing a line. But you should be free to say something like "This contents of this CD are an exact duplicate of Red Hat Linux X.X". That however is different from the original example where the copy was actually labeled "Red Hat".
Calling something Red Hat Linux in no way implies a warranty or support.
And this is a completely idiotic discussion. Have you honestly never seen a mirror? They put redhat mirrors in a redhat/ directory. Have you never puchased 'Red Hat' from cheapbytes or some such place for a dollar a CD? Guess what, it says 'Red Hat' right there on the CD. Not 'Copy of Red Hat'.
It's not a trademark violation, ever, to call something what it is. Those CDs contain the Red Hat distribution of Linux. It is perfectly okay to call them such, and sell them as such, because that is what they are.
How can you shoot yourself in your foot with rope?
If it is the product being described, it is perfectly okay to call it by the trademark.
If the software on the CD is Red Hat Linux, no, it's not trademark infringement. You can only infringe trademarks if you are misrepresenting something, it is perfectly legal to use trademarks to describe the things that are trademarked.
Hence, you may want to purchase it if it's 10 dollars, but you would if it was 2 dollars. That's the very basis of economic theory there, that people are willing to give up to a certain value for something, and not any more. This obviously varies based on the person.
Now, you are correct that the availablity of pirate software has a determination on this. So, yes, some people who would be willing to buy it are going to go with the much lower priced alternative of buying it, and, yes, this hurts sales.
However, that doesn't have any bearing on the people who would not purchase it at the store price, those people are not, in an sense, 'customers', and software companies pretending they've lost sales to them is just dishonesty.
A real world example: Do you know how stores talk about how much they lose to shoplifters? The amount of money the item cost them, not the amount of money the item was selling for. And it's partially for this exact reason, that a good many shoplifter wouldn't have bought the item anyway. (Most shoplifters are either teenage girls who shoplift because of hormones, professional thieves who resale the items, or just plain poor people.)
Of course, if the BSA were to use this approach, they'd have $0 loses to piracy, which is obviously incorrect. A lot of people will just copy the software instead of buying another copy, especially at some companies.
But that's not all copying, by far. I know people who could not have afforded all the software they've pirated. And who do not use 95% of it anyway. If you sprayed them with some magical anti-piracy ray, they certainly would not be running out and purchasing copies of Autocad to sit unused in a box on their computer table.
And while there is obviously no warranty on it, I fail to see why you couldn't sell it.
This is, of course, ignoring road-worthiness testing and all the legal paperwork for it to be a drivable 'car', but that doesn't have anything to do with what you call it.
The FSF doesn't want you calling your license the GPL, of course.
problem: dos can read the cd. windows needs a driver for that. the driver must be installed from windows. the driver is on the cd.
I'd forgotten about that idioticy. The next time anyone talks about how easy Windows is to install I'll hand them a non-bootable CD, a blank floppy, a computer to make a bootdisk on, and tell them to install it.
What? You mean the the windows machine doesn't have any way to make a bootdisk that can read the CD in DOS? Well, that's certainly very odd behavior for such an 'easy to install' OS, isn't it?
Meanwhile, I'll spend five minutes with rawrite and have a working boot floppy, one that can actually read the CD.
Granted, this is somewhat a moot point nowadays, as every machine can boot from the CD, but it didn't used to be that way.