Hmm.. I reinstalled Win98 about 6 weeks ago when I upgraded my system. After the first try, it kept detecting my modem at startup even though it was already installed and working. When I finally let it try to install it again, it COMPLETELY screwed up about 70% of the devices on my system. There were resource conflicts everywhere and I couldn't begin to sort them all out. So, I reinstalled again. Now it still detects my modem on startup and I have to cancel it every time.
Do you trust Microsoft, whose legal accumen has been a critical weapon since its first DOS license agreement and before, to submit any settlement terms that wouldn't have several loopholes they can rush through?
Especially if you're the DOJ. After Microsoft laughed off the consent decree last time, the DOJ will be very unlikely to try to use that tactic again. At least not without imposing a lot of safeguards. I'd hate to think the DOJ is stupid enough to trust Microsoft twice.
The previous poster was complaining about Microsoft getting sued by a bunch of people if they are found guilty. I think that's pretty much the way it should be. The current case is supposed to determine whether or not they actually broke the law, and if so, in what ways. Then, with that determined, remedies are supposed to be carried out to make sure they don't do it anymore. That's as far as the DOJ case goes. Then it will be the people who've been screwed by Microsoft's dirty tactics turn to get their pound of flesh (times 3) from the company.
This should win back some of Microsoft's ill-gotten gains which will hopefully help to restore a bit more balance to the market. If Microsoft can't easily afford to give away products and rely on monopoly profits to starve out the competition or use other dirty tactics (such as buying out an OEM's contract with a competitor so that only MS products get distributed and the competitor withers and dies along with consumer choice), they might actually have to compete.
Shouldn't the objective behind punishing them for being a monopoly
First of all, they are not going to be punished for "being a monopoly." That is not illegal. They will (hopefully) be punished for illegal maintenance of a monopoly.
be not to hurt them just to be hurting them but to "make good" to those who were damaged whatever damages they suffered?
Unfortunately, to making good to those who were harmed would be impossible. Some have estimated that Microsoft has over-charged consumers more than 10 billion dollars. Additionally, they have done irreparable harm to competition in the software industry. We can't know what could have been if Microsoft had not used their dirty tactics to kill off and prevent competition. It would likely mean that consumers would have more choice in what OS to use and the OSes would all play together a lot more nicely than they do now.
Finally, the point of the "remedies" portion of the trial is to do whatever is deemed necessary to restore competition the x86 OS market and prevent further harm to consumers through high pricing and lack of choice due to lack of competition created by Microsoft's business practices. The point is NOT to punish Microsoft for what they've done. That will likely be done through private lawsuits on the behalf of those who were harmed in the most financially quantifiable ways.
In this case it isn't strictly a backup. It's a person making the music that they've purchased available to themselves from any location where they have access to a computer and the net. It's similar to making a cassette copy of a CD to play in your car, something that courts have already ruled legal. In this case you're making a digital copy on the MP3.com server so you can listen to it at work or some other place.
I find it interesting that people (read: I am probably talking about you) believe that it is okay for libraries to "filter" (i.e., make unavailable, especially to minors) certain books and magazines, yet somehow these same libraries should be disallowed from blocking this exact same material on their computers.
I (and many others here too I've noticed) don't have a problem with libraries filtering access to certain books/magazines for children. It's usually done accurately and is appropriate given the fact that the librarians are not supposed to provide access to books/magazines that would likely be deemed innappropriate for a child. If a parent wants the child to have access to such a book, the parent can get it for the child or perhaps make a special arrangement with the library. So that isn't a real issue.
The problem with Internet filtering is that it just plain doesn't work. You say they "are not 100% effective", but it's much worse than that. There were many many sites in the various lists that were incorrectly blocked or blocked for reasons that aren't disclosed to the consumer (i.e. sites that post lists of blocked sites or criticize the software). Not to mention the fact that parents (and even the libraries) don't get to see what sites are being blocked. These companies have deceived their customers and cannot be trusted. Then there's the problem of filtering access for adults, which should not be permitted. Adults know what they're doing and should not need to be protected.
As far as the Supreme Court's decision goes, they can decide that obscenity shouldn't be allowed, but people's definitions of obscenity will probably continue to change over time, just as they always have. Hell, Baywatch would have been considered obscene 40 or 50 years ago. (I still think it's obscene, but not because of the lack of clothing:)
It's way too similar to too many other systems out there. People have been doing similar things with cookies for years. Now he decides to store people's credit card numbers along with the rest of the info that everbody stores on users and he should get a patent for that? That's ridiculous! That only leads to a system where everybody has to patent every incremental advance for fear of being sued later. Naturally, corporations end up with most of the patents, which they cross-license with other corps and the rest of us are out in the cold. Bad idea. 1-click was just a minor incremental advance over other similar systems. It was not deserving of a 20-year monopoly on the technique.
But according to him, the particular "one-click" system that they came up with *isn't* obvious and simplistic, or the way that they make it work isn't or something like that, and though I don't know whether it is or not, he apparently sincerely believes it.
What do you expect him to say? "Yeah, we pulled one over on the PTO pretty good!" B&N would nail his ass in court in two seconds if he openly admitted that he didn't think they deserved the patent.
Bezos is claiming to be a victim of the current system. He says that he believes it should be changed, but until it is, he must play by the current rules. Basically, he's saying "If I didn't patent it, someone else would, and then I'd be screwed instead of the other guy." While I can agree with this reasoning, I don't think his self-defense argument holds up when you figure in the fact that he's suing Barnes and Noble. That should've only be done if they sued him first. I'd rather not see him held up as the mascot for patent reform.
If you want a quiet, polite, wimp for a lawyer get one. But don't complain when he loses your livelihood for you, because a judge was influenced by an alpha male's victory in a domination contest.
So that's what a trial is. I wondered why it seemed liked the facts of a case don't make that much difference in the outcome. Had I known all along that it was just a contest to see who had the bigger dick (metaphorically speaking, of course), it would have made perfect sense.
I doubt I've ever met anyone quite as arrogant as you are, but then you still ride the subway, so I guess that makes it ok.
Lawyers take on the shit that other people want to get rid of. That's our role in life. It's what we do.
It's no wonder there's so many problems with the legal system. Lawyers turn it into a game unto itself instead of attempting to keep it in tune with the real world. We're talking about changing a law that doesn't make sense here. You have no more place in making the law than any of the rest of us. If we think something isn't right, then it doesn't matter if it's currently legal or illegal. We can have it changed so that it makes sense here in the real world. Once we, as a people, decide what the law should be, then lawyers get to write it down and try not to leave too many holes in it. Then all the rest of you lawyers can have your turn to try to pick holes in the law and twist its meaning to benefit your clients. That seems to be the natural order of things.
Oh, btw, just because we want to change the law, it doesn't mean we have to turn the country into England or China. It will still be America, only the patent laws will make a bit more sense. Nobody said a damn thing about anything becoming the property of the government, so quit the bs scare tactics. New laws are passed and others are changed all the time. Why not this one? If you're so concerned about the welfare of this country, then maybe you should try to figure out a way to simplify things so that we don't need so damn many lawyers. Lawyers are an overhead cost of doing business that we should seek to reduce. The more laws we have, the more lawyers we need, the more money gets diverted from producing real things to paying lawyers to keep other lawyers off your back. Vicious, stupid cycle.
s to the matter of not knowing if someone is pulling a patent on something, check that something out. It's usually marked "patent pending". Whether this is REQUIRED I do not know.
What I meant by this is that if I come up with an idea for something that seems obvious to me, and I turn it into a product, I have no way of knowing if someone has filed for a patent on the same idea. I guess this means we all have to file for patents on every single idea we come up with, no matter how obvious, lest someone else receive a patent on the idea and prohibit us from using it.
Sounds real nice if you work for the patent office. They're raking in the cash now that companies are patenting everything they can think of, just to avoid being sued. Sounds to me like the PTO has a major conflict of interest here. They're supposed to only award patents for non-trivial, non-obvious (to an expert in the appropriate field) inventions or ideas. Yet they also have to support themselves financially, which creates an incentive to either charge a lot or process a lot of patents. Since people would complain bitterly if they charged any more than they already do, they've gone with the second option. The whole patent system is now out of whack.
The problem is that nobody gets to see the patent until it's granted. Then it costs big bucks to dispute it in court. Corporations are concerned with the bottom line. If it's cheaper to just pay the royalties, that's what they'll do. Then the bad patent stays on the books and the little guys are the ones that get hurt. They can't afford to pay and they can't afford to dispute it either.
The other problem is that they keep giving patents on blatantly obvious stuff. Things that are so commonly known that nobody bothered to document them. So someone goes to the PTO and says, "Check out this great idea i've got." The examiner (during his ~8 hour search, which presumably includes the time to do the paperwork) can't find any documented use of the technique, so he awards a patent on some trivial idea.
The Amazon 1-click patent is a pretty good example of something that is obvious to someone skilled in the programming field. It was a pretty obvious use of cookies. Big deal. It doesn't deserve a patent just because nobody else had decided to implement it, or at least they didn't document it if they did. It's just too similar to too many other things out there. Are we going to hand out patents for every minor modification of an existing idea? I'm sure we will if the PTO is the only one deciding these things. That's how they make their money after all. The more patents they can crank out, the more money they make. Sounds like a pretty screwed up system, doesn't it?
50 sounds more reasonable, but I still think it's too long. I mean, it's one thing to provide incentive, but when you're talking about giving someone a monopoly on a creation, I think it should be done very carefully and not for a very long period of time. Think about it, if a band performs a song today while under contract with a record company, it will be covered by copyright until 2095. And that's assuming they don't get copyrights extended again. Is 2050 much better? I think 2020 sounds perfectly fair to the artist. They get the sole right to sell and distribute the work for 20 years. I don't see how it serves the original purpose of copyright to extend them much longer than that. It just let's corporations milk them longer.
Becuase at the time copyright law was originally devised it was not likely that the lawmakers saw that there would be any value to work manufactured in the distant past. I oppose the government taking away someone's property, intellectual or otherwise.
What do you mean "government taking away someone's property"? It wouldn't even BE property if it weren't for the government. Copyright is a privilege granted by the government, not a natural right.
As an artist, what do you think of the length of the copyright? Is 95 years too much, too little? Why? I'm trying to figure out how such a long timespan can be justified, given the original intent of copyright, so I'm looking for someone to explain it from another perspective.
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
First of all, I'm curious as to why you think Disney has "put a helluva lot of resources toward developing" its star rodent. It began with cartoons, which made money for Disney. Then came the merchandising and Movies and so forth, which made incredible amounts of money for Disney. Where exactly has Disney poured resources into developing their character? They've done nothing but exploit the recognizability of the mouse character, they haven't done anything risky.
As for whether they should be able to retain sole rights to the character for all eternity, I'm not sure about that yet. It could be a very slippery slope. If we allow them to have a perpetual copyright on their mouse character, why not their theme song? If they can retain their theme song, why not their other songs and cartoons and characters, etc? It wouldn't end.
It's a difficult situation. I'm not so pro or anti-IP that I can see it as a black and white issue. I do feel that currently the law is weighing heavily in favor of corporate IP interests at the expense of the rest of the people in this country. I think that's bad. I think that the lifespan of a copyright should be dramatically shortened. I'm talking about making them last 10-15 years rather than 95 years. Trademarks are a stickier problem. I'll agree with you on that. As for Lifesavers owning the sole right to make little hard candies with a hole in the middle, I find that hard to justify. It's just too restrictive to allow one company to own an idea like that, let alone to control it forever. The whole thing needs to be rethought. It's breaking down already and it's going to get much worse as companies keep pushing for even more broad legislation like the DMCA and UCITA.
Ok, I agree with you here and I think you've given a pretty good justification for copyrights. What I'd like to see is for someone to try to justify a copyright lasting nearly 100 years, and in some cases even longer. That's my real problem with copyrights. They aren't just creating incentives and ensuring profitability, they're creating monopolies that last longer than I will likely be alive.
Actually, it never says anything about modifying the info on the disc. It says that it modifies the information. It does this after it has been read from the disc, so the article is technically correct. I suppose I can understand someone misinterpreting what they said though. It certainly wouldn't help matters either.
what about taking it, reducing the quality and size, putting it on a CDR and selling it for $4. That's a legitimate worry of the movie people.
How is that any more of a danger than people recording DVD movies onto VHS tapes? You end up with a much inferior product. Same with recording CDs onto cassette tapes. These things can and will be done. These copies are legal to make, as long as you don't distribute them. It didn't hurt CDs. It won't hurt DVDs. The movie industry will continue to make money hand-over-fist regardless of whether you can copy DVDs onto some other media.
The only danger they've pointed out so far that seems credible is the fact that people will be able to offer decoded DVD movies for download at some point in the future when we actually have enough bandwidth to download one in some reasonable amount of time. Perhaps that will be the case a few years from now. I currently can't even get a DSL line though, and most of the people in my city are in the same situation. I think this illustrates the fact that DeCSS was not developed for the purpose of ripping and distributing DVD movies, but for the legitimate purposes of making DVDs work with Linux and other "alternative" platforms that the movie industry wouldn't give the time of day to. In which case, it should be considered a legitimate tool and not made illegal. What it comes down to is that I should have the right to make the DVD I bought legitimately work with my hardware and software. I don't care who created the DVD in the first place, I paid what they asked and I now own a copy for my own personal use and enjoyment. As long as I'm not distributing copies (which is ALREADY a crime), or facilitating public viewings (which is also a crime), they shouldn't have any right to tell me what I can or cannot do with my DVD.
This post to the Darwin Development mailing list brings up that interesting fact by indicating that MSFT may own a lot of the kernel due to all those non-compete clauses signed by MSFT developers.
From what I understand, those non-compete clauses aren't legally enforceable.
Might make a nice collector's item. Not everyone has a $5K phone. It's also something you can point to as an example of an obviously bad idea next time your boss/coworkers come up with something similarly bad.
I'm impressed that you managed to answer him in such a civil way.:) I seriously doubt I could have managed to do it. The bit about people cracking software to release it under GPL had me completely baffled since I've never heard of this happening, and even if it did happen it wouldn't make any difference legally. I figured the guy was seriously confused or perhaps mentally ill.
I'd love to see something like this work, but how do you get (and keep!) the attention of enough people for a long enough period of time to make a real difference?
Don't some states have laws that invalidate some restrictions that companies like to put in their contracts? Isn't AOL located in VA? Does VA have such laws? Would any of those laws apply in this case?
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Hmm.. I reinstalled Win98 about 6 weeks ago when I upgraded my system. After the first try, it kept detecting my modem at startup even though it was already installed and working. When I finally let it try to install it again, it COMPLETELY screwed up about 70% of the devices on my system. There were resource conflicts everywhere and I couldn't begin to sort them all out. So, I reinstalled again. Now it still detects my modem on startup and I have to cancel it every time.
Do you trust Microsoft, whose legal accumen has been a critical weapon since its first DOS license agreement and before, to submit any settlement terms that wouldn't have several loopholes they can rush through?
Especially if you're the DOJ. After Microsoft laughed off the consent decree last time, the DOJ will be very unlikely to try to use that tactic again. At least not without imposing a lot of safeguards. I'd hate to think the DOJ is stupid enough to trust Microsoft twice.
The previous poster was complaining about Microsoft getting sued by a bunch of people if they are found guilty. I think that's pretty much the way it should be. The current case is supposed to determine whether or not they actually broke the law, and if so, in what ways. Then, with that determined, remedies are supposed to be carried out to make sure they don't do it anymore. That's as far as the DOJ case goes. Then it will be the people who've been screwed by Microsoft's dirty tactics turn to get their pound of flesh (times 3) from the company.
This should win back some of Microsoft's ill-gotten gains which will hopefully help to restore a bit more balance to the market. If Microsoft can't easily afford to give away products and rely on monopoly profits to starve out the competition or use other dirty tactics (such as buying out an OEM's contract with a competitor so that only MS products get distributed and the competitor withers and dies along with consumer choice), they might actually have to compete.
Shouldn't the objective behind punishing them for being a monopoly
First of all, they are not going to be punished for "being a monopoly." That is not illegal. They will (hopefully) be punished for illegal maintenance of a monopoly.
be not to hurt them just to be hurting them but to "make good" to those who were damaged whatever damages they suffered?
Unfortunately, to making good to those who were harmed would be impossible. Some have estimated that Microsoft has over-charged consumers more than 10 billion dollars. Additionally, they have done irreparable harm to competition in the software industry. We can't know what could have been if Microsoft had not used their dirty tactics to kill off and prevent competition. It would likely mean that consumers would have more choice in what OS to use and the OSes would all play together a lot more nicely than they do now.
Finally, the point of the "remedies" portion of the trial is to do whatever is deemed necessary to restore competition the x86 OS market and prevent further harm to consumers through high pricing and lack of choice due to lack of competition created by Microsoft's business practices. The point is NOT to punish Microsoft for what they've done. That will likely be done through private lawsuits on the behalf of those who were harmed in the most financially quantifiable ways.
We should get a bunch of people together and dress up like indians. Then we go dump all the REM CDs in Boston Harbor! That'll teach 'em!
In this case it isn't strictly a backup. It's a person making the music that they've purchased available to themselves from any location where they have access to a computer and the net. It's similar to making a cassette copy of a CD to play in your car, something that courts have already ruled legal. In this case you're making a digital copy on the MP3.com server so you can listen to it at work or some other place.
I find it interesting that people (read: I am probably talking about you) believe that it is okay for libraries to "filter" (i.e., make unavailable, especially to minors) certain books and magazines, yet somehow these same libraries should be disallowed from blocking this exact same material on their computers.
I (and many others here too I've noticed) don't have a problem with libraries filtering access to certain books/magazines for children. It's usually done accurately and is appropriate given the fact that the librarians are not supposed to provide access to books/magazines that would likely be deemed innappropriate for a child. If a parent wants the child to have access to such a book, the parent can get it for the child or perhaps make a special arrangement with the library. So that isn't a real issue.
The problem with Internet filtering is that it just plain doesn't work. You say they "are not 100% effective", but it's much worse than that. There were many many sites in the various lists that were incorrectly blocked or blocked for reasons that aren't disclosed to the consumer (i.e. sites that post lists of blocked sites or criticize the software). Not to mention the fact that parents (and even the libraries) don't get to see what sites are being blocked. These companies have deceived their customers and cannot be trusted. Then there's the problem of filtering access for adults, which should not be permitted. Adults know what they're doing and should not need to be protected.
As far as the Supreme Court's decision goes, they can decide that obscenity shouldn't be allowed, but people's definitions of obscenity will probably continue to change over time, just as they always have. Hell, Baywatch would have been considered obscene 40 or 50 years ago. (I still think it's obscene, but not because of the lack of clothing :)
It's way too similar to too many other systems out there. People have been doing similar things with cookies for years. Now he decides to store people's credit card numbers along with the rest of the info that everbody stores on users and he should get a patent for that? That's ridiculous! That only leads to a system where everybody has to patent every incremental advance for fear of being sued later. Naturally, corporations end up with most of the patents, which they cross-license with other corps and the rest of us are out in the cold. Bad idea. 1-click was just a minor incremental advance over other similar systems. It was not deserving of a 20-year monopoly on the technique.
But according to him, the particular "one-click" system that they came up with *isn't* obvious and simplistic, or the way that they make it work isn't or something like that, and though I don't know whether it is or not, he apparently sincerely believes it.
What do you expect him to say? "Yeah, we pulled one over on the PTO pretty good!" B&N would nail his ass in court in two seconds if he openly admitted that he didn't think they deserved the patent.
Bezos is claiming to be a victim of the current system. He says that he believes it should be changed, but until it is, he must play by the current rules. Basically, he's saying "If I didn't patent it, someone else would, and then I'd be screwed instead of the other guy." While I can agree with this reasoning, I don't think his self-defense argument holds up when you figure in the fact that he's suing Barnes and Noble. That should've only be done if they sued him first. I'd rather not see him held up as the mascot for patent reform.
If you want a quiet, polite, wimp for a lawyer get one. But don't complain when he loses your livelihood for you, because a judge was influenced by an alpha male's victory in a domination contest.
So that's what a trial is. I wondered why it seemed liked the facts of a case don't make that much difference in the outcome. Had I known all along that it was just a contest to see who had the bigger dick (metaphorically speaking, of course), it would have made perfect sense.
I doubt I've ever met anyone quite as arrogant as you are, but then you still ride the subway, so I guess that makes it ok.
Lawyers take on the shit that other people want to get rid of. That's our role in life. It's what we do.
It's no wonder there's so many problems with the legal system. Lawyers turn it into a game unto itself instead of attempting to keep it in tune with the real world. We're talking about changing a law that doesn't make sense here. You have no more place in making the law than any of the rest of us. If we think something isn't right, then it doesn't matter if it's currently legal or illegal. We can have it changed so that it makes sense here in the real world. Once we, as a people, decide what the law should be, then lawyers get to write it down and try not to leave too many holes in it. Then all the rest of you lawyers can have your turn to try to pick holes in the law and twist its meaning to benefit your clients. That seems to be the natural order of things.
Oh, btw, just because we want to change the law, it doesn't mean we have to turn the country into England or China. It will still be America, only the patent laws will make a bit more sense. Nobody said a damn thing about anything becoming the property of the government, so quit the bs scare tactics. New laws are passed and others are changed all the time. Why not this one? If you're so concerned about the welfare of this country, then maybe you should try to figure out a way to simplify things so that we don't need so damn many lawyers. Lawyers are an overhead cost of doing business that we should seek to reduce. The more laws we have, the more lawyers we need, the more money gets diverted from producing real things to paying lawyers to keep other lawyers off your back. Vicious, stupid cycle.
s to the matter of not knowing if someone is pulling a patent on something, check that something out. It's usually marked "patent pending". Whether this is REQUIRED I do not know.
What I meant by this is that if I come up with an idea for something that seems obvious to me, and I turn it into a product, I have no way of knowing if someone has filed for a patent on the same idea. I guess this means we all have to file for patents on every single idea we come up with, no matter how obvious, lest someone else receive a patent on the idea and prohibit us from using it.
Sounds real nice if you work for the patent office. They're raking in the cash now that companies are patenting everything they can think of, just to avoid being sued. Sounds to me like the PTO has a major conflict of interest here. They're supposed to only award patents for non-trivial, non-obvious (to an expert in the appropriate field) inventions or ideas. Yet they also have to support themselves financially, which creates an incentive to either charge a lot or process a lot of patents. Since people would complain bitterly if they charged any more than they already do, they've gone with the second option. The whole patent system is now out of whack.
The problem is that nobody gets to see the patent until it's granted. Then it costs big bucks to dispute it in court. Corporations are concerned with the bottom line. If it's cheaper to just pay the royalties, that's what they'll do. Then the bad patent stays on the books and the little guys are the ones that get hurt. They can't afford to pay and they can't afford to dispute it either.
The other problem is that they keep giving patents on blatantly obvious stuff. Things that are so commonly known that nobody bothered to document them. So someone goes to the PTO and says, "Check out this great idea i've got." The examiner (during his ~8 hour search, which presumably includes the time to do the paperwork) can't find any documented use of the technique, so he awards a patent on some trivial idea.
The Amazon 1-click patent is a pretty good example of something that is obvious to someone skilled in the programming field. It was a pretty obvious use of cookies. Big deal. It doesn't deserve a patent just because nobody else had decided to implement it, or at least they didn't document it if they did. It's just too similar to too many other things out there. Are we going to hand out patents for every minor modification of an existing idea? I'm sure we will if the PTO is the only one deciding these things. That's how they make their money after all. The more patents they can crank out, the more money they make. Sounds like a pretty screwed up system, doesn't it?
50 sounds more reasonable, but I still think it's too long. I mean, it's one thing to provide incentive, but when you're talking about giving someone a monopoly on a creation, I think it should be done very carefully and not for a very long period of time. Think about it, if a band performs a song today while under contract with a record company, it will be covered by copyright until 2095. And that's assuming they don't get copyrights extended again. Is 2050 much better? I think 2020 sounds perfectly fair to the artist. They get the sole right to sell and distribute the work for 20 years. I don't see how it serves the original purpose of copyright to extend them much longer than that. It just let's corporations milk them longer.
Becuase at the time copyright law was originally devised it was not likely that the lawmakers saw that there would be any value to work manufactured in the distant past. I oppose the government taking away someone's property, intellectual or otherwise.
What do you mean "government taking away someone's property"? It wouldn't even BE property if it weren't for the government. Copyright is a privilege granted by the government, not a natural right.
As an artist, what do you think of the length of the copyright? Is 95 years too much, too little? Why? I'm trying to figure out how such a long timespan can be justified, given the original intent of copyright, so I'm looking for someone to explain it from another perspective.
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
First of all, I'm curious as to why you think Disney has "put a helluva lot of resources toward developing" its star rodent. It began with cartoons, which made money for Disney. Then came the merchandising and Movies and so forth, which made incredible amounts of money for Disney. Where exactly has Disney poured resources into developing their character? They've done nothing but exploit the recognizability of the mouse character, they haven't done anything risky.
As for whether they should be able to retain sole rights to the character for all eternity, I'm not sure about that yet. It could be a very slippery slope. If we allow them to have a perpetual copyright on their mouse character, why not their theme song? If they can retain their theme song, why not their other songs and cartoons and characters, etc? It wouldn't end.
It's a difficult situation. I'm not so pro or anti-IP that I can see it as a black and white issue. I do feel that currently the law is weighing heavily in favor of corporate IP interests at the expense of the rest of the people in this country. I think that's bad. I think that the lifespan of a copyright should be dramatically shortened. I'm talking about making them last 10-15 years rather than 95 years. Trademarks are a stickier problem. I'll agree with you on that. As for Lifesavers owning the sole right to make little hard candies with a hole in the middle, I find that hard to justify. It's just too restrictive to allow one company to own an idea like that, let alone to control it forever. The whole thing needs to be rethought. It's breaking down already and it's going to get much worse as companies keep pushing for even more broad legislation like the DMCA and UCITA.
Ok, I agree with you here and I think you've given a pretty good justification for copyrights. What I'd like to see is for someone to try to justify a copyright lasting nearly 100 years, and in some cases even longer. That's my real problem with copyrights. They aren't just creating incentives and ensuring profitability, they're creating monopolies that last longer than I will likely be alive.
Actually, it never says anything about modifying the info on the disc. It says that it modifies the information. It does this after it has been read from the disc, so the article is technically correct. I suppose I can understand someone misinterpreting what they said though. It certainly wouldn't help matters either.
what about taking it, reducing the quality and size, putting it on a CDR and selling it for $4. That's a legitimate worry of the movie people.
How is that any more of a danger than people recording DVD movies onto VHS tapes? You end up with a much inferior product. Same with recording CDs onto cassette tapes. These things can and will be done. These copies are legal to make, as long as you don't distribute them. It didn't hurt CDs. It won't hurt DVDs. The movie industry will continue to make money hand-over-fist regardless of whether you can copy DVDs onto some other media.
The only danger they've pointed out so far that seems credible is the fact that people will be able to offer decoded DVD movies for download at some point in the future when we actually have enough bandwidth to download one in some reasonable amount of time. Perhaps that will be the case a few years from now. I currently can't even get a DSL line though, and most of the people in my city are in the same situation. I think this illustrates the fact that DeCSS was not developed for the purpose of ripping and distributing DVD movies, but for the legitimate purposes of making DVDs work with Linux and other "alternative" platforms that the movie industry wouldn't give the time of day to. In which case, it should be considered a legitimate tool and not made illegal. What it comes down to is that I should have the right to make the DVD I bought legitimately work with my hardware and software. I don't care who created the DVD in the first place, I paid what they asked and I now own a copy for my own personal use and enjoyment. As long as I'm not distributing copies (which is ALREADY a crime), or facilitating public viewings (which is also a crime), they shouldn't have any right to tell me what I can or cannot do with my DVD.
This post to the Darwin Development mailing list brings up that interesting fact by indicating that MSFT may own a lot of the kernel due to all those non-compete clauses signed by MSFT developers.
From what I understand, those non-compete clauses aren't legally enforceable.
Might make a nice collector's item. Not everyone has a $5K phone. It's also something you can point to as an example of an obviously bad idea next time your boss/coworkers come up with something similarly bad.
I'm impressed that you managed to answer him in such a civil way. :) I seriously doubt I could have managed to do it. The bit about people cracking software to release it under GPL had me completely baffled since I've never heard of this happening, and even if it did happen it wouldn't make any difference legally. I figured the guy was seriously confused or perhaps mentally ill.
I'd love to see something like this work, but how do you get (and keep!) the attention of enough people for a long enough period of time to make a real difference?
Don't some states have laws that invalidate some restrictions that companies like to put in their contracts? Isn't AOL located in VA? Does VA have such laws? Would any of those laws apply in this case?