This case isn't about copyright, it's about reigning in some politcally-connected bullies, and they're long overdue for a good spanking. Or an anti-trust investigation. But don't expect the Clinton folks to lift a finger.
I am starting to wonder who in DC would actually give a rats ass about what's going on here. Any of the current crop of viable candidates (i.e., Gore, Bush, McCain, Bradley)? Any congresscritters in particular? Anyone with any pull whatsoever?
If you own legal MP3s, either those you downloaded that were in the public domain, or those you ripped from CDs you already own... raise your hand.
Ok, now everone who raised their hand, put it down if you've downloaded any copyrighted MP3s for which you don't already own a legal copy or have some other legal right to.
There, that should reduce the class action to a much more reasonable size.
I don't agree with what the RIAA is doing, but I don't think the answer is to be hypocritical about it either. I've downloaded many MP3s for which I didn't own a legal copy. Of course I often bought the CD soon after that if I liked the songs. They don't stay on my HD very long if I don't like them. If I do like them, then I don't have much problem buying the CD (although I still think the prices are insane). Even bought a few from MP3.com from bands that I'd never heard of before visiting the site and listening to some of their MP3s.
There's a certain amount of decency you want to keep in a public institution, so that nobody is harmed.
Harmed how? The AFA never responded when people asked what harm they were trying to prevent or what research they had that backed up their claims.
Go to any college campus in the country and I assure you that viewing pornography on library computers is not allowed. I have yet to see one single student be vocal about such an issue. Are they embaressed to be vocal? I doubt it. I honetly wonder why.
As long as the net isn't being filtered through some idiotic software program that is totally insensitive to context and doesn't let you know what is being blocked or why, I doubt they have any problem to complain about. If they did start looking at porn on the computer, they could easily be removed from the library.
I don't care where that line lies, just that it does exist. So lets ban the porn from libraries. I think we'll all live without it AND none of your rights are remotely violated.
My point is that you and everybody else around have their own ideas of what constitutes porn. It doesn't matter where the line is drawn, it's going to piss some group of people off. I think it's better to just let everyone browse for themselves and be responsible for their own choices. If someone does something that violates local obcenity laws, then fine, that can be dealt with without any new software or new laws. Other than that, there shouldn't be any need for filtering. Parents should be supervising their kids in the library anyway, it's not a daycare.
Then again, I guess you can;t expect much from someone who uploads nudey pics of his 9y/o daughter everynight to usenet.
I love it when I get to read a rational, intelligent, well thought-out response.
I'm supposed to let someone who writes stuff like this, or people who share his viewpoint, decide what my kids should be allowed to see? Perhaps you think you know what porn is, but many people have a very different idea. Some would like to ban sites depicting women in bikinis or sites about homosexuality, even though they contain no nudity or explicit sexual content or imagery. I may not agree and I think it should be up to parents to decide what their children can see at the library. Remember, it's my tax dollars too. If my library doesn't have a book or magazine that I want, they can usually get it for me. I don't see any reason why we should rely on inconsistant, context-insensitive software to decide what we can see.
Perhaps parents might have to become involved. . .
God forbid that parents should actually have to take a part in raising their children and taking responsibility for teaching them about reality. Much easier to just block it all out and let them live in blissful ignorance.
If the RIAA approached you with a team of lawyers and they had a reason to think that you were not adhering to the personal/private terms of fair use, then they certainly could require you to demonstrate that you are, in fact, obeying copyright law.
If they think I'm doing something, then they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in court. I'm not required to prove myself innocent.
I agree that a motivator is necessary. The previous poster was thinking too narrowly there. The motivator doesn't need to be fear of the Russians gaining technological superiority during a time when we could have gone to war with them at any moment. It could be something much more benign, but it must be something that people will respond to. People respond to fear and patriotism, which motivated things back in the 50s. People also tend to respond positively to a challenge if they feel that there is something to be proven. If we could come up with some suitable goal, perhaps we could motivate kids and adults alike by challenging them to help us meet some goal. Just a thought.
It is possible, but not with any off-the-shelf DVD ROMS. They have the part of the disc that stores the keys written over with zeros. You couldn't duplicate a DVD onto one of those. I don't think consumer-grade DVD burner software will let you write to those portions of the disc either (although someone could probably write one that does let you do that). Real DVD pirates use commercial-grade equipment and ROMS to copy DVDs. The DMCA has no real effect on them since what they're doing was illegal before the DMCA anyway.
As near as I can tell, the reason they're freaking out is because they think we're all going to start downloading 2GB+ files from each other and watching them on our puters. I think that that is pretty farfetched at this point in time. The number of people who can actually do that is rather insignificant right now. It will certainly become possible at some point in time in the future, but I certainly don't think it can be considered to be the primary use for DeCSS, which is one reason why I think the plaintiffs have a bogus case.
If it isn't already considered a right, then it should be. Why should our government make rules that tell us that we can't do something with a product that we legitimately purchased, simply because some huge corporations want to make even more money and devise new methods to make you pay for things you don't want to buy just so you can use other things that you do want. It's legal to make a Windows game I purchased run on Linux, but it seems that doing the same with a DVD is illegal. It's about time our government started doing what's right for people, not for corporations.
If it's not a settlement, but a real court decision awarding damages for what they have done, wouldn't it establish a precedent effectively invalidating the shrink-wrap and click-through disclaimers?
That would be fine until UCITA passes and explicitly makes click-through and shrinkwrap licenses legal and binding. Better to just blow the issue up and get people to notice how the software industry is about to screw them over bigtime. Then we get UCITA knocked down and any company that pulls a stunt like this again will probably get shot down in court and set a nice precedent.
That makes a bit more sense, but I'm not sure it was even a factor with the Windows returns. Most of the people who tried to get one were rejected outright without the OEM or Microsoft even getting any information from them about when they made their purchase. UCITA will just make it harder to get a refund because you'll likely have to get a lawyer to do it.
you are entitled by law to return it for a refund.
Jeez. We have to pay for a lawyer and take a company to court every time we want to return a piece of software? That'll get extremely expensive. We've already seen that simply trying to return it doesn't work, as evidenced by the unsuccessful attempts to return Windows.
If I open a box of software, run the installation program, read the EULA that pops up and decide I don't want to agree to it, what recourse do I have? I can't return the software since it's been opened. We all saw that Microsoft refused to honor the return clause in its own EULA when people tried to return Windows. That was even before UCITA. With UCITA as law they can do it with absolute impunity. They won't even have to try to pass the buck to the OEMs.
Clickthroughs are already enforceable (there's a long line of cases on this)
Could you cite a couple? I'd love to read up on them.
the First Amendment makes it impossible to prohibit criticism of software (there's an even longer line of cases on that).
Companies wouldn't prohibit you from criticizing the software, they would just prohibit you from benchmarking the software, thus preventing you from effectively backing up your criticism with hard numbers.
As to the poster who talked about "one-way" contracts: the problem is you need a license to use software.
The real problem here is that you don't get to read the contract until after you've bought the software and opened it, at which time it becomes unreturnable. Unless they start printing the EULA on the outside of the package, customers are going to get screwed.
The only good thing I can possibly see coming out of this is that it may have the effect of encouraging consumers to swear off commercial software from companies that try to screw their customers over. Microsoft is far from alone this time in their bad business practices, although they are going to be one of the most noticeable given their marketshare and prominence.
It's not bad because people don't read the EULAs. That's their own damn fault. It's bad because they don't have to let you read it before you buy the software, and once you open the software to read the EULA, they don't have to let you return it if you don't agree to the EULA. The law would make contracts binding even though one party hasn't been given the chance to read the contract.
Yeah, but nobody currently believes that these shrinkwrap(or clickwrap) licenses are enforceable. Namely because you can't agree to something you haven't read and you can't take it back after you've opened it to read the EULA. Microsoft has already shown that they will make it nigh impossible to return the software you purchased, even though the EULA says you can do so. UCITA will make these EULAs enforceable.
No argument here. I couldn't get financial aid, so I'm going to school at night and working full time during the day. I kinda wished I was a minority when I saw how many different loans and grants were available exclusively to people of a certain race. Nothing like that if you're white though. Owell. At least my girlfriend gets some of hers paid for outright. The rest she'll hafta pay back. Glad I won't have any loans to pay back. It's just taking me a lot longer to finish.
I see your point. These all seem to apply to the reading/vocabulary portions of the test. How do minorities fair on the math and writing portions compared to others?
Perhaps the questions on the tests should be reviewed more carefully. Maybe they should have a bunch of kids who did poorly on the test come in and explain why they missed each question. Maybe that would clear up some of the problems. Either way, we deal with other people's biases every day. Until we all have the same life experiences and background, that's the way it will be. Given that everyone is biased in different ways, I'm not sure what measurement you could use and be even remotely accurate.
I disagree even more strongly with white people designing tests that don't take into account the way non-white people think - a way which, while equally effective in the real world, does not add up to success on those particular tests.
People keep saying that minorities think differently or that the questions are biased based on quirks of language or some such thing. I'm just asking for an example or two to back these statements up. Right now, as near as I can tell, the fault lies in the schools for their poor teaching, and the government for its poor support of the schools. Education should be #1 in this country, but it seems that we just don't want to make the investment.
You seem to assume that standardized tests are perfectly objective, which is not necessarily true. When a test is designed, it will invariably reflect the cultural biases of those who design it.
I still haven't figured out exactly how you can bias a standardized test. Nobody has offered an actual example yet. I've heard this claim many times in articles or on the radio, but have never heard of even a single example.
Aren't the tests based on what the students are supposed to be taught in school? If they are being taught these things in school, then shouldn't they be able to pass the tests?
It seems like if there is a problem with students passing the tests, then that problem is probably with the schools, not the tests. Are the tests unreasonably difficult or what? I'm just looking for some actual examples here.
Here's a bit of my background, just in case it gives any insight into why I can't seem to understand this. I went to public schools in Texas from 3rd grade to graduation. They weren't very good schools. The classes were too big. Discipline was spotty at best. Real teaching was eschewed in favor of the teacher writing notes on the board, copied straight from the book, which the class was supposed to copy for themselves. Why we sat around re-writing the textbook instead of just reading, discussing, and using the knowledge, I'll never understand. I still managed to pass the standardized tests (and actually did quite well on them).
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Yeah, where do these people get off thinking they should have the right to defend their home and family... sheesh.
This case isn't about copyright, it's about reigning in some politcally-connected bullies, and they're long overdue for a good spanking. Or an anti-trust investigation. But don't expect the Clinton folks to lift a finger.
I am starting to wonder who in DC would actually give a rats ass about what's going on here. Any of the current crop of viable candidates (i.e., Gore, Bush, McCain, Bradley)? Any congresscritters in particular? Anyone with any pull whatsoever?
If you own legal MP3s, either those you downloaded that were in the public domain, or those you ripped from CDs you already own... raise your hand.
Ok, now everone who raised their hand, put it down if you've downloaded any copyrighted MP3s for which you don't already own a legal copy or have some other legal right to.
There, that should reduce the class action to a much more reasonable size.
I don't agree with what the RIAA is doing, but I don't think the answer is to be hypocritical about it either. I've downloaded many MP3s for which I didn't own a legal copy. Of course I often bought the CD soon after that if I liked the songs. They don't stay on my HD very long if I don't like them. If I do like them, then I don't have much problem buying the CD (although I still think the prices are insane). Even bought a few from MP3.com from bands that I'd never heard of before visiting the site and listening to some of their MP3s.
Yeah... it would be too bad if newsrags picked up a story about Natalie Portman's fondness for hot grits.. :)
There's a certain amount of decency you want to keep in a public institution, so that nobody is harmed.
Harmed how? The AFA never responded when people asked what harm they were trying to prevent or what research they had that backed up their claims.
Go to any college campus in the country and I assure you that viewing pornography on library computers is not allowed. I have yet to see one single student be vocal about such an issue. Are they embaressed to be vocal? I doubt it. I honetly wonder why.
As long as the net isn't being filtered through some idiotic software program that is totally insensitive to context and doesn't let you know what is being blocked or why, I doubt they have any problem to complain about. If they did start looking at porn on the computer, they could easily be removed from the library.
I don't care where that line lies, just that it does exist. So lets ban the porn from libraries. I think we'll all live without it AND none of your rights are remotely violated.
My point is that you and everybody else around have their own ideas of what constitutes porn. It doesn't matter where the line is drawn, it's going to piss some group of people off. I think it's better to just let everyone browse for themselves and be responsible for their own choices. If someone does something that violates local obcenity laws, then fine, that can be dealt with without any new software or new laws. Other than that, there shouldn't be any need for filtering. Parents should be supervising their kids in the library anyway, it's not a daycare.
Then again, I guess you can;t expect much from someone who uploads nudey pics of his 9y/o daughter everynight to usenet.
I love it when I get to read a rational, intelligent, well thought-out response.
I'm supposed to let someone who writes stuff like this, or people who share his viewpoint, decide what my kids should be allowed to see? Perhaps you think you know what porn is, but many people have a very different idea. Some would like to ban sites depicting women in bikinis or sites about homosexuality, even though they contain no nudity or explicit sexual content or imagery. I may not agree and I think it should be up to parents to decide what their children can see at the library. Remember, it's my tax dollars too. If my library doesn't have a book or magazine that I want, they can usually get it for me. I don't see any reason why we should rely on inconsistant, context-insensitive software to decide what we can see.
Perhaps parents might have to become involved. . .
God forbid that parents should actually have to take a part in raising their children and taking responsibility for teaching them about reality. Much easier to just block it all out and let them live in blissful ignorance.
If the RIAA approached you with a team of lawyers and they had a reason to think that you were not adhering to the personal/private terms of fair use, then they certainly could require you to demonstrate that you are, in fact, obeying copyright law.
If they think I'm doing something, then they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in court. I'm not required to prove myself innocent.
I agree that a motivator is necessary. The previous poster was thinking too narrowly there. The motivator doesn't need to be fear of the Russians gaining technological superiority during a time when we could have gone to war with them at any moment. It could be something much more benign, but it must be something that people will respond to. People respond to fear and patriotism, which motivated things back in the 50s. People also tend to respond positively to a challenge if they feel that there is something to be proven. If we could come up with some suitable goal, perhaps we could motivate kids and adults alike by challenging them to help us meet some goal. Just a thought.
It is possible, but not with any off-the-shelf DVD ROMS. They have the part of the disc that stores the keys written over with zeros. You couldn't duplicate a DVD onto one of those. I don't think consumer-grade DVD burner software will let you write to those portions of the disc either (although someone could probably write one that does let you do that). Real DVD pirates use commercial-grade equipment and ROMS to copy DVDs. The DMCA has no real effect on them since what they're doing was illegal before the DMCA anyway.
As near as I can tell, the reason they're freaking out is because they think we're all going to start downloading 2GB+ files from each other and watching them on our puters. I think that that is pretty farfetched at this point in time. The number of people who can actually do that is rather insignificant right now. It will certainly become possible at some point in time in the future, but I certainly don't think it can be considered to be the primary use for DeCSS, which is one reason why I think the plaintiffs have a bogus case.
If it isn't already considered a right, then it should be. Why should our government make rules that tell us that we can't do something with a product that we legitimately purchased, simply because some huge corporations want to make even more money and devise new methods to make you pay for things you don't want to buy just so you can use other things that you do want. It's legal to make a Windows game I purchased run on Linux, but it seems that doing the same with a DVD is illegal. It's about time our government started doing what's right for people, not for corporations.
If it's not a settlement, but a real court decision awarding damages for what they have done, wouldn't it establish a precedent effectively invalidating the shrink-wrap and click-through disclaimers?
That would be fine until UCITA passes and explicitly makes click-through and shrinkwrap licenses legal and binding. Better to just blow the issue up and get people to notice how the software industry is about to screw them over bigtime. Then we get UCITA knocked down and any company that pulls a stunt like this again will probably get shot down in court and set a nice precedent.
That makes a bit more sense, but I'm not sure it was even a factor with the Windows returns. Most of the people who tried to get one were rejected outright without the OEM or Microsoft even getting any information from them about when they made their purchase. UCITA will just make it harder to get a refund because you'll likely have to get a lawyer to do it.
you are entitled by law to return it for a refund.
Jeez. We have to pay for a lawyer and take a company to court every time we want to return a piece of software? That'll get extremely expensive. We've already seen that simply trying to return it doesn't work, as evidenced by the unsuccessful attempts to return Windows.
Read up on network effects.
If I open a box of software, run the installation program, read the EULA that pops up and decide I don't want to agree to it, what recourse do I have? I can't return the software since it's been opened. We all saw that Microsoft refused to honor the return clause in its own EULA when people tried to return Windows. That was even before UCITA. With UCITA as law they can do it with absolute impunity. They won't even have to try to pass the buck to the OEMs.
Clickthroughs are already enforceable (there's a long line of cases on this)
Could you cite a couple? I'd love to read up on them.
the First Amendment makes it impossible to prohibit criticism of software (there's an even longer line of cases on that).
Companies wouldn't prohibit you from criticizing the software, they would just prohibit you from benchmarking the software, thus preventing you from effectively backing up your criticism with hard numbers.
As to the poster who talked about "one-way" contracts: the problem is you need a license to use software.
The real problem here is that you don't get to read the contract until after you've bought the software and opened it, at which time it becomes unreturnable. Unless they start printing the EULA on the outside of the package, customers are going to get screwed.
The only good thing I can possibly see coming out of this is that it may have the effect of encouraging consumers to swear off commercial software from companies that try to screw their customers over. Microsoft is far from alone this time in their bad business practices, although they are going to be one of the most noticeable given their marketshare and prominence.
It's not bad because people don't read the EULAs. That's their own damn fault. It's bad because they don't have to let you read it before you buy the software, and once you open the software to read the EULA, they don't have to let you return it if you don't agree to the EULA. The law would make contracts binding even though one party hasn't been given the chance to read the contract.
Yeah, but nobody currently believes that these shrinkwrap(or clickwrap) licenses are enforceable. Namely because you can't agree to something you haven't read and you can't take it back after you've opened it to read the EULA. Microsoft has already shown that they will make it nigh impossible to return the software you purchased, even though the EULA says you can do so. UCITA will make these EULAs enforceable.
No argument here. I couldn't get financial aid, so I'm going to school at night and working full time during the day. I kinda wished I was a minority when I saw how many different loans and grants were available exclusively to people of a certain race. Nothing like that if you're white though. Owell. At least my girlfriend gets some of hers paid for outright. The rest she'll hafta pay back. Glad I won't have any loans to pay back. It's just taking me a lot longer to finish.
Heh... what's a breakhead? :)
I see your point. These all seem to apply to the reading/vocabulary portions of the test. How do minorities fair on the math and writing portions compared to others?
Perhaps the questions on the tests should be reviewed more carefully. Maybe they should have a bunch of kids who did poorly on the test come in and explain why they missed each question. Maybe that would clear up some of the problems. Either way, we deal with other people's biases every day. Until we all have the same life experiences and background, that's the way it will be. Given that everyone is biased in different ways, I'm not sure what measurement you could use and be even remotely accurate.
I disagree even more strongly with white people designing tests that don't take into account the way non-white people think - a way which, while equally effective in the real world, does not add up to success on those particular tests.
People keep saying that minorities think differently or that the questions are biased based on quirks of language or some such thing. I'm just asking for an example or two to back these statements up. Right now, as near as I can tell, the fault lies in the schools for their poor teaching, and the government for its poor support of the schools. Education should be #1 in this country, but it seems that we just don't want to make the investment.
You seem to assume that standardized tests are perfectly objective, which is not necessarily true. When a test is designed, it will invariably reflect the cultural biases of those who design it.
I still haven't figured out exactly how you can bias a standardized test. Nobody has offered an actual example yet. I've heard this claim many times in articles or on the radio, but have never heard of even a single example.
Aren't the tests based on what the students are supposed to be taught in school? If they are being taught these things in school, then shouldn't they be able to pass the tests?
It seems like if there is a problem with students passing the tests, then that problem is probably with the schools, not the tests. Are the tests unreasonably difficult or what? I'm just looking for some actual examples here.
Here's a bit of my background, just in case it gives any insight into why I can't seem to understand this. I went to public schools in Texas from 3rd grade to graduation. They weren't very good schools. The classes were too big. Discipline was spotty at best. Real teaching was eschewed in favor of the teacher writing notes on the board, copied straight from the book, which the class was supposed to copy for themselves. Why we sat around re-writing the textbook instead of just reading, discussing, and using the knowledge, I'll never understand. I still managed to pass the standardized tests (and actually did quite well on them).