The problem is that this logic does not apply under American law. And its very possible that it might not under Norwegian, either. Though this case may be aimed at stating that it does, in which case Norway's going to be high on my list of places to move to if the current situation in North America continues deteriorating.;)
Something interesting I noticed about the timing for this case, that struck me as odd... When Jon was arrested two years ago, he was sixteen. He was, I believe, a minor under Norwegian law, and the charges were dropped. He is now eighteen, if my math is correct, and possibly older. Is this past the age of legal majority in Norway? And if so, could this be part of the motive for delaying the trial?
After all, they probably wouldn't be able to get much of a penalty against an underaged individual who wasn't even the primary coder and who has stated many times that he wishes his code to be used as part of a DVD player. However, now that he's older, they might be able to get stiffer penalties. Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.
Remember, Johansen is being made an example of. The MPAA is trying to say "screw with our monopoly and we'll do this to you". They, of course, want this example to be as effective as possible.
At the very least, everyone reading this article (especially those of you in Norway!) should support Johansen however possible. Donate money, organize protests, publicize his case. Make it a hot-button emotional issue. Make it clear that we just want to play DVDs, make it clear to people that the MPAA doesn't want them to import movies from another country and watch them before the approved-from-on-high release date, or buy at a cheaper price from the next country over.
Good luck to you, Jon! I remember being shocked back in 2000, when you got arrested on nothing more than the say-so of the DVD CCA for releasing a simple program that did nothing more than read data. I'm shocked that the MPAA's still persecuting you. I hope you can prove your innocence and strike a blow for the right to use generic computing technologies.
Oh, truly wonderful. I'd noticed this a while back, and concluded that the problem was the people passing laws. Our entire government is composed mostly of lawyers or people advised by them. What's the most probable result of this going to be? A system that insures the perpetual need for and prosperity of lawyers.
Shakespear had the right idea. Now we just need to implement it.
From what I understand, the publishing industry doesn't directly take the copyright. That'd make the expiry much shorter. They do, however, reserve pretty much all of the rights provided by copyright law. Same goes for record companies. And thanks to the consolidation of bookstores and record outlets, its hard for smaller publishing houses to start up.
Not only that, but upon actually reading it, the copyright code tries to obfuscate as much as possible the actual rights of authors and the commons. The sections specifying exceptions to basic copyright law are filled with "legal spam" about cable licenses, wireless spectrum licenses, and other sorts of licenses that have nothing at all to do with copyright. (Other than that copyrighted material is transmitted over them)
And the law prevents you from creating and enjoying a derived work in the privacy of your own home. I don't know about you, but this seems awfully draconian to me. (And could be used to argue that works inspired by other works are illegal, depending on the definition of "derived".) This seems actively contrary to the "progress of science and the useful arts".
Applying copyrights to encodings of songs (say) and compiled programs is also ludicrous. What exactly is copyrighted? The patterns of bits? (What if I've got a program that interprets them some other way?) The output? (That seems to make even less sense) Some abstract "song" or "program" that is encoding independant?
It makes a bit more sense for source code and writings, as they have an obvious and well-defined existance separate from the digital representation. But still, if I write code in a different language (say, C++ and Smalltalk) that does exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, am I violating your copyright? What about if I write a program that presents exactly the same interface and does the same operations, but does so differently internally?
We need some way of insuring that artists (writers and programmers included) recieved adequate compensation for the use of their work. But we also need to preserve the commons, and avoid crippling the power of generic computing devices in favour of preserving the way things have "always been".
Apocalypse Troll was okay (though very apropos for Slashdot;) ), but Path of the Fury was great. I agree that its better than any single Honor book, but the Honor books as a series have a scope, depth, and sweeping plot arc it just can't match.
I've got both, and they aren't that hard to find. I was merely commenting that, while they do not involve the main character of her series/setting, it'd still be good if they got included in the CD-ROM collection. Same goes for the two Cordelia Vorkosigan books.
This collection's on the top of my to-buy list right now. If they ever do this with Bujold's books, I'll be grabbing that too. Especially if they include Ethan of Athos and Falling Free and the assorted short stories she's written that never got moved into books. (I'm pretty sure there's one or two...)
For those who've been complaining about a lack of good science fiction, give Weber a try. Its very definitely space opera, but its good space opera. His grasp of the realities of space combat, despite some of the technology he invents to simplify things, is impressive.
Bujold's even better, though I've seen a lot of people complaining that "women can't write science fiction", very few of them have actually read Bujold's books. Most "hard" science fiction has very artificial-feeling characters and societies, despite its professed motive of pondering the effects of technology on people and society. (They all seem to make the same assumptions about "current trends") Bujold's actually created a high-technology society that looks and feels realistic, especially her Beta Colony and Cetaganda.
Copyright law, on its face, forbids you from making a derived work without permission of the original work's copyright holder.
WRONG! Copyright law does not forbid you from doing anything in the privacy of your own home. I can take the Episode II DVD, rip it to DivX;), replace the dialog with that from my (legally purchased) Monty Python set, and then re-encode it as Quicktime and run it backwards. There's nothing George Lucas or anyone else can do to stop me.
What is illegal is doing that and then distributing the derived works. Or selling my original copy and keeping the "derived works" - I have to destroy them or include them in the transferred property.
As for abuses of DRM law, how's this? A 16-year-old in Norway gets arrested and all electronic equipment in his parents' home siezed. Why? Because the MPAA told Norwegian law authorities that he'd written "illegal software". What had he really written? Software to decode a DVD for playback. I believe that he is now a legal adult under Norwegian law, and has since had Norwegian law authorities try to arrest him several times, under the laws for arresting an adult, for this same "infraction".
A man travelling to America to give a presentation at a technical conference is arrested. Why? He made a program to decode the encryption on Adobe's E-Books. Why? His company made software - required by Russian law - to enable the blind to read E-Books.
A technical magazine gets taken to court for having links to pages containing the "illegal software" written by that kid in Norway. And looses.
A professor doing research into audio encoding and watermarking discovers a way to break the industry's new "protection" scheme. He plans to present information about his research (which has interesting implications) at a technical conference. The industry threatens him with action under the DMCA, then "backs down". Not only do the courts decide that the industry's threat was perfectly valid, but the conference organizers refuse to let him on-stage for fear of legal action. He is unable to get his paper published, again, for fear of legal action.
An established, well-known programmer employed by an American company is afraid to set foot on American soil. Why? Because his work on a certant piece "fringe software", "widely known" to be used for "piracy" and publication of documents describing vulnerabilities in that software could get him arrested. Despite the cries of paranoia by the online community, several lawyers both in America and his home country confirm his suspicions.
Indeed, it's even possible that the lawyers made the threat fully aware the law would likely fail them but knowing as well that the threat of a DMCA action is often enough to get results...
Aren't there pretty hefty penalties for misrepresenting legislation this way?
Not only that, but it was HP's legal department that issued the threat. This department is made up of lawyers, who are presumably experts on interpreting and applying law. That these lawyers believed that the DMCA would stand up in court as a justification for these threats says a lot about the scope of said law.
Of course, its also possible that the lawyers made the thread with an impressive-sounding law, and retracted it when they noticed that the law couldn't quite be stretched to do what they thought it could.
Except that, as I was trying to say, this law changes that. Read RMS writeup on it - he explains things fairly well. This law is both a power grab by proprietary software companies and an attempt to kill Free Software. Or was, I think its mostly dead now.
This is in fact illegal. I was actually paid more than my co-workers. Also the company had to go through the expense of the H1 process, which is bureaucratic, officious and generally a pain in the arse.
Question for you: is this before or after the mandatory unpaid overtime that many H1-Bs must suffer through? Officially, the H1-B gets (say) $20 an hour, and the US citizen $15. But while both are paid for the same number of hours, the H1-B has to work half again or more as many to just keep their job and not be deported. Assuming half again as much, this means the H1-B is really getting paid $13 per hour.
Want to bet that government regulations don't properly account for unpaid overtime? (And if they do, can you point me to the section where they do?)
And this is the problem, isn't it? The quality of life is so much lower almost everywhere else that American companies have an effective monopoly in the labour market. Which means giving dirt-cheap wages for work that should, in a fair market, be costing them top dollar. Is it me, or is there something wrong with that picture?
The problem, I believe, was that there were either minimum fines, or fines based on "damage done", not "damage done x cost of software". Remember the "damage done" figures for a simple web page defacement? They're usually in the millions, if not billions. Can the gcc developers prove that their software did not cause that much damage, in court? Because that's what this law would require they do.
Actually, chaff would do a pretty good job if it were reflective and computer-controlled. The computer spots first few milliseconds of beam and automatically blasts a storm of highly reflective shards towars the source of it. Or releases a cloud of laser-diffracting material.
The key is doing so quickly, as by the time you can detect the beam, its already hit you.
They had over 500 positions open for a year and a half while they lobbied for H1B, and they never interviewed or hired a single person; in fact they were laying off. It's all a scam.
And this is the problem. Not the fact that the US is using foreign labour (I'm not a US citizen, but I do support open immegration policies) but why they are. The trick tech companies pull is to advertise for jobs with utterly ludicrous requirements (the 10+ years of Java is one example, hiring only those who exactly match the qualifications you're "looking for" is another) Then, when they can't find someone with that much experience willing to work for the dirt-poor wages they're offering, they complain to Congress about a worker shortage.
The end result? These companies lay off workers, advertise for more jobs than they're willing to fill, and get to import what is essentially foreign slave labour (don't want to work 12 hours of unpaid overtime a week? Nice having you here, good luck dealing with the goons at the airport!) to make up for the "shortage".
Now, if the immigration process was less tied to employer, then we might get somewhere. If the prospective immigrant was able to tell an abusive employer "no thanks" without affecting their current or future VISA approval process, then the immigrants would have a much better negotiating position.
You weren't around when this first came up a few years back, were you?
Let me summarize why its bad for Open Source, then. It specifies that an EULA can forcibly modify practically any aspect of contract or copyright law, and does not have to be disclosed until some arbitrary point until after the sale.
Okay, you think, all is well and good. Blatant power grab translates to more fear of closed-source software, which means more open source/free software in use. Right?
Well, the problem is that this also modifies the 'defaults' for software and what can modify those. Namely, I seem to remember that it instituted stricter liability for software. Which can only be overrided by a shrink-wrap EULA.
The GPL, BSD license, Apache License, MPL, APL, and X11 license, among numerous others, are not shrink-wrap EULAs. Totally different category of contract, in fact. Thus, there is no way for the developers of gcc to disclaim liability.
As linked by other posters, http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/ucita.html provides a very good explanation of why this law is Bad.
Low Earth orbit is a hell of a lot less expensive to get to other places from than Earth itself is. And I seem to remember that we do have at least a few rocks in the leading and trailing Lunar lagrange points, which aren't that hard to get to from Earth.
You can't use lazyness and sloppyness as an excuse for violating a licence. Whatever that licence is.
Prove to me that the license is legal and that I have agreed to it by tearing open the shrinkwrap to read the license/clicking on ok/looking at the box sideways, and I'll conceed the point.
Unfortunately, by a strict interpretation of contract law, most software licenses are illegal. Note that the GPL is not a software license - if you don't agree to it, you still get to use the software... You just can't redistribute the software or modifications of it. (IE, your rights default to those granted by copyright law.)
Materials? You're in orbit. You've got lots of big space rocks nearby that you can get to with relatively little cost. These should, theoretically, be able to give you everything you need to make a probe factory.
Besides, then there's savings #2: that you only have to carry up the probe itself. The (reusable) long-range launch equipment's already sitting there in orbit.
(Oh, look, work on Tomcat and we'll make it the reference JSP engine! Oh, now we've changed our minds!)
Sun no longer considers Tomcat to be the reference implmentation for Servlets and JSP? Well, someone should really tell the Jakarta people about that. Look, right on their Tomcat Site, they've got: "Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed by Sun under the Java Community Process." If that's not the case, they really should be told so they can change that blurb!
Re:Now THAT would be interesting...
on
.NET for Apache
·
· Score: 2
Interesting concept? No, very old concept. Apache has a high market share. Microsoft has a new technology they want to push, and an old technology which competes with Apache whose market share they feel the need to expand. Step #1: Embrace. Help out Apache, give them Microsoft support for the new technology.
#2: Extend. Slowly start adding stuff on to the new technology for the old technology only. Make vague claims about how Apache can't really support this easily, which is why the features will take five to ten months to migrate.
#3: Extinguish. Drop Apache support for the next major revision. Start slamming Apache as hard as possible in a PR war. If people want to continue to recieve benefits from their investment in the new technology, they need your old technology. End result: Two Microsoft technologies gain market share. Apache looses market share after a temporary gain.
Winner: Microsoft.
Doesn't anyone on the Apache project remember the early '90s?
Cable isn't designed for hosting. They disallow servers, too.
Care to explain to me what exactly a server is? Is it something that listens for connections to a port? Ooops, you just banned ICQ, AIM, normal FTP, and half-a-dozen other commonly-used programs. Something that sends information at the request of a remote server? You just added web browsers to the list, and a bunch of other programs. What's that about not designed for hosting? Its an internet connection. There's no "designed" about it. You provide a connection to an IP network, and programs use that connection. They may not have intended people to use it for hosting, but when their average bandwidth figures and activity estimates are based around usage on dial-up connections (namely, some web browsing and e-mail), I'm rather suspicious of their judgement and motives.
The no server clause is bull. Its used as a generic stick against people doing things they don't approve of, but which forbidding in the ToS would drive away customers.
As a note, I get service through Eastlink, one of the best damn cable companies in the world. They don't block ports, they don't limit traffic beyond the usual cap, and they don't try to justify control grabs with these flimsy arguments about bandwidth. If they can do it way out here in the middle of no-where, why can't Roadrunner do it in the middle of huge American cities?
Oh, right, I forgot. The massive file trading would cause the immediate collapse of civilization. My bad.
Cable is not the only high-speed access in your region. You ignore T1s and the like - it can cost the same to string up a T1 and sell wireless service to your neighbors (in an apartment complex, perhaps), too.
For me, it isn't. In many places in the US, it is. In many of those same places, T1 lines are prohibitively expensive. Given the con games being run by many of the "high-speed" access companies (and their media giant owners) I expect to see more apartment complexes going this route. Get a T1 for the entire complex, cap each apartment at about 1 Mbps upstream and downstream, and spread the cost through the rent of the entire complex.
There are plenty of places that will let you host MP3s, many for free, and all available from your region. It won't come straight off your computer, but that's better for you anyways.
Ah, so because there's another way to speak, it doesn't matter that they're duct-taping my mouth shut? Wonderful logic, there.
I don't know of anywhere that lets you host MP3s for free. Care to name one that lets me host at whatever bitrate I want, puts them on file-sharing networks, provides HTTP and FTP access, and lets anyone and everyone download my music for free without registering for an account? And doesn't attempt to throw in contractual restrictions on the redistribution of material they host?
Oh, right. Audiogalaxy. Look what happened to them. Isn't the "free(*) market" wonderful?
(*) The usual limits apply to free. You may not be free to compete with certant government-protected industries. You are not free to compete with the rich. You are not free to sell "disruptive" products. You are not free to wonder if you're really free. You are not free to do business without employing at least five lawyers at all times.
As other posters have pointed out, this is very probably a few users with technical problems blaming it on their ISP.
However, this entire issue is a red herring. Roadrunner, as with most cable ISPs, caps upstream and downstream bandwidth. I'm not going to be able to transfer enough over my cable connection, even if I saturate it, to make much of a difference for others nearby. Now, if everyone on my block did this, then we'd notice a problem. But at that point, demand for bandwidth has exceeded the available infrastructure, which obviously did not anticipate people actually using the bandwidth they were told they had.
As for cost, this is also a bad argument. Yes, you can buy a large pipe for some incredible sum-plus-usage-costs for "business use". You seriously think major ISPs pay the same incredible sum for bandwidth? Many have peering arrangements, and for those, more traffic is better - you get more other providers wanting to peer with you. Even if you don't, your bandwidth is so cheap that a sizable percentage of your customer base saturating their connections 24/7 probably wouldn't cost you more than $500 a month.
(To say nothing of the rediculousness of charging for bandwidth usage anyway. Bandwith isn't a non-renewable resource. Any bandwidth not used in a given time interval is wasted and unrecoverable.)
No, to see why this is happening, follow the money. Who gains by preventing citizens from having an easy avenue for sharing music and video? The media cartels. Who's hurt by preventing it? Their indie competition. Wow, what an astonishing coincidence!
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that this logic does not apply under American law. And its very possible that it might not under Norwegian, either. Though this case may be aimed at stating that it does, in which case Norway's going to be high on my list of places to move to if the current situation in North America continues deteriorating. ;)
Something interesting I noticed about the timing for this case, that struck me as odd... When Jon was arrested two years ago, he was sixteen. He was, I believe, a minor under Norwegian law, and the charges were dropped. He is now eighteen, if my math is correct, and possibly older. Is this past the age of legal majority in Norway? And if so, could this be part of the motive for delaying the trial?
After all, they probably wouldn't be able to get much of a penalty against an underaged individual who wasn't even the primary coder and who has stated many times that he wishes his code to be used as part of a DVD player. However, now that he's older, they might be able to get stiffer penalties. Or at the very least, get a black mark on his permanent record and make it much harder for him to get into a good college/university or get a good job.
Remember, Johansen is being made an example of. The MPAA is trying to say "screw with our monopoly and we'll do this to you". They, of course, want this example to be as effective as possible.
At the very least, everyone reading this article (especially those of you in Norway!) should support Johansen however possible. Donate money, organize protests, publicize his case. Make it a hot-button emotional issue. Make it clear that we just want to play DVDs, make it clear to people that the MPAA doesn't want them to import movies from another country and watch them before the approved-from-on-high release date, or buy at a cheaper price from the next country over.
Good luck to you, Jon! I remember being shocked back in 2000, when you got arrested on nothing more than the say-so of the DVD CCA for releasing a simple program that did nothing more than read data. I'm shocked that the MPAA's still persecuting you. I hope you can prove your innocence and strike a blow for the right to use generic computing technologies.
Oh, truly wonderful. I'd noticed this a while back, and concluded that the problem was the people passing laws. Our entire government is composed mostly of lawyers or people advised by them. What's the most probable result of this going to be? A system that insures the perpetual need for and prosperity of lawyers.
Shakespear had the right idea. Now we just need to implement it.
From what I understand, the publishing industry doesn't directly take the copyright. That'd make the expiry much shorter. They do, however, reserve pretty much all of the rights provided by copyright law. Same goes for record companies. And thanks to the consolidation of bookstores and record outlets, its hard for smaller publishing houses to start up.
Not only that, but upon actually reading it, the copyright code tries to obfuscate as much as possible the actual rights of authors and the commons. The sections specifying exceptions to basic copyright law are filled with "legal spam" about cable licenses, wireless spectrum licenses, and other sorts of licenses that have nothing at all to do with copyright. (Other than that copyrighted material is transmitted over them)
And the law prevents you from creating and enjoying a derived work in the privacy of your own home. I don't know about you, but this seems awfully draconian to me. (And could be used to argue that works inspired by other works are illegal, depending on the definition of "derived".) This seems actively contrary to the "progress of science and the useful arts".
Applying copyrights to encodings of songs (say) and compiled programs is also ludicrous. What exactly is copyrighted? The patterns of bits? (What if I've got a program that interprets them some other way?) The output? (That seems to make even less sense) Some abstract "song" or "program" that is encoding independant?
It makes a bit more sense for source code and writings, as they have an obvious and well-defined existance separate from the digital representation. But still, if I write code in a different language (say, C++ and Smalltalk) that does exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, am I violating your copyright? What about if I write a program that presents exactly the same interface and does the same operations, but does so differently internally?
We need some way of insuring that artists (writers and programmers included) recieved adequate compensation for the use of their work. But we also need to preserve the commons, and avoid crippling the power of generic computing devices in favour of preserving the way things have "always been".
Apocalypse Troll was okay (though very apropos for Slashdot ;) ), but Path of the Fury was great. I agree that its better than any single Honor book, but the Honor books as a series have a scope, depth, and sweeping plot arc it just can't match.
I've got both, and they aren't that hard to find. I was merely commenting that, while they do not involve the main character of her series/setting, it'd still be good if they got included in the CD-ROM collection. Same goes for the two Cordelia Vorkosigan books.
This collection's on the top of my to-buy list right now. If they ever do this with Bujold's books, I'll be grabbing that too. Especially if they include Ethan of Athos and Falling Free and the assorted short stories she's written that never got moved into books. (I'm pretty sure there's one or two...)
For those who've been complaining about a lack of good science fiction, give Weber a try. Its very definitely space opera, but its good space opera. His grasp of the realities of space combat, despite some of the technology he invents to simplify things, is impressive.
Bujold's even better, though I've seen a lot of people complaining that "women can't write science fiction", very few of them have actually read Bujold's books. Most "hard" science fiction has very artificial-feeling characters and societies, despite its professed motive of pondering the effects of technology on people and society. (They all seem to make the same assumptions about "current trends") Bujold's actually created a high-technology society that looks and feels realistic, especially her Beta Colony and Cetaganda.
Copyright law, on its face, forbids you from making a derived work without permission of the original work's copyright holder.
WRONG! Copyright law does not forbid you from doing anything in the privacy of your own home. I can take the Episode II DVD, rip it to DivX;), replace the dialog with that from my (legally purchased) Monty Python set, and then re-encode it as Quicktime and run it backwards. There's nothing George Lucas or anyone else can do to stop me.
What is illegal is doing that and then distributing the derived works. Or selling my original copy and keeping the "derived works" - I have to destroy them or include them in the transferred property.
As for abuses of DRM law, how's this? A 16-year-old in Norway gets arrested and all electronic equipment in his parents' home siezed. Why? Because the MPAA told Norwegian law authorities that he'd written "illegal software". What had he really written? Software to decode a DVD for playback. I believe that he is now a legal adult under Norwegian law, and has since had Norwegian law authorities try to arrest him several times, under the laws for arresting an adult, for this same "infraction".
A man travelling to America to give a presentation at a technical conference is arrested. Why? He made a program to decode the encryption on Adobe's E-Books. Why? His company made software - required by Russian law - to enable the blind to read E-Books.
A technical magazine gets taken to court for having links to pages containing the "illegal software" written by that kid in Norway. And looses.
A professor doing research into audio encoding and watermarking discovers a way to break the industry's new "protection" scheme. He plans to present information about his research (which has interesting implications) at a technical conference. The industry threatens him with action under the DMCA, then "backs down". Not only do the courts decide that the industry's threat was perfectly valid, but the conference organizers refuse to let him on-stage for fear of legal action. He is unable to get his paper published, again, for fear of legal action.
An established, well-known programmer employed by an American company is afraid to set foot on American soil. Why? Because his work on a certant piece "fringe software", "widely known" to be used for "piracy" and publication of documents describing vulnerabilities in that software could get him arrested. Despite the cries of paranoia by the online community, several lawyers both in America and his home country confirm his suspicions.
Indeed, it's even possible that the lawyers made the threat fully aware the law would likely fail them but knowing as well that the threat of a DMCA action is often enough to get results...
Aren't there pretty hefty penalties for misrepresenting legislation this way?
Not only that, but it was HP's legal department that issued the threat. This department is made up of lawyers, who are presumably experts on interpreting and applying law. That these lawyers believed that the DMCA would stand up in court as a justification for these threats says a lot about the scope of said law.
Of course, its also possible that the lawyers made the thread with an impressive-sounding law, and retracted it when they noticed that the law couldn't quite be stretched to do what they thought it could.
Except that, as I was trying to say, this law changes that. Read RMS writeup on it - he explains things fairly well. This law is both a power grab by proprietary software companies and an attempt to kill Free Software. Or was, I think its mostly dead now.
This is in fact illegal. I was actually paid more than my co-workers. Also the company had to go through the expense of the H1 process, which is bureaucratic, officious and generally a pain in the arse.
Question for you: is this before or after the mandatory unpaid overtime that many H1-Bs must suffer through? Officially, the H1-B gets (say) $20 an hour, and the US citizen $15. But while both are paid for the same number of hours, the H1-B has to work half again or more as many to just keep their job and not be deported. Assuming half again as much, this means the H1-B is really getting paid $13 per hour.
Want to bet that government regulations don't properly account for unpaid overtime? (And if they do, can you point me to the section where they do?)
And this is the problem, isn't it? The quality of life is so much lower almost everywhere else that American companies have an effective monopoly in the labour market. Which means giving dirt-cheap wages for work that should, in a fair market, be costing them top dollar. Is it me, or is there something wrong with that picture?
The problem, I believe, was that there were either minimum fines, or fines based on "damage done", not "damage done x cost of software". Remember the "damage done" figures for a simple web page defacement? They're usually in the millions, if not billions. Can the gcc developers prove that their software did not cause that much damage, in court? Because that's what this law would require they do.
Actually, chaff would do a pretty good job if it were reflective and computer-controlled. The computer spots first few milliseconds of beam and automatically blasts a storm of highly reflective shards towars the source of it. Or releases a cloud of laser-diffracting material.
The key is doing so quickly, as by the time you can detect the beam, its already hit you.
They had over 500 positions open for a year and a half while they lobbied for H1B, and they never interviewed or hired a single person; in fact they were laying off. It's all a scam.
And this is the problem. Not the fact that the US is using foreign labour (I'm not a US citizen, but I do support open immegration policies) but why they are. The trick tech companies pull is to advertise for jobs with utterly ludicrous requirements (the 10+ years of Java is one example, hiring only those who exactly match the qualifications you're "looking for" is another) Then, when they can't find someone with that much experience willing to work for the dirt-poor wages they're offering, they complain to Congress about a worker shortage.
The end result? These companies lay off workers, advertise for more jobs than they're willing to fill, and get to import what is essentially foreign slave labour (don't want to work 12 hours of unpaid overtime a week? Nice having you here, good luck dealing with the goons at the airport!) to make up for the "shortage".
Now, if the immigration process was less tied to employer, then we might get somewhere. If the prospective immigrant was able to tell an abusive employer "no thanks" without affecting their current or future VISA approval process, then the immigrants would have a much better negotiating position.
You weren't around when this first came up a few years back, were you?
Let me summarize why its bad for Open Source, then. It specifies that an EULA can forcibly modify practically any aspect of contract or copyright law, and does not have to be disclosed until some arbitrary point until after the sale.
Okay, you think, all is well and good. Blatant power grab translates to more fear of closed-source software, which means more open source/free software in use. Right?
Well, the problem is that this also modifies the 'defaults' for software and what can modify those. Namely, I seem to remember that it instituted stricter liability for software. Which can only be overrided by a shrink-wrap EULA.
The GPL, BSD license, Apache License, MPL, APL, and X11 license, among numerous others, are not shrink-wrap EULAs. Totally different category of contract, in fact. Thus, there is no way for the developers of gcc to disclaim liability.
As linked by other posters, http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/ucita.html provides a very good explanation of why this law is Bad.
Once you're to orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Low Earth orbit is a hell of a lot less expensive to get to other places from than Earth itself is. And I seem to remember that we do have at least a few rocks in the leading and trailing Lunar lagrange points, which aren't that hard to get to from Earth.
You can't use lazyness and sloppyness as an excuse for violating a licence. Whatever that licence is.
Prove to me that the license is legal and that I have agreed to it by tearing open the shrinkwrap to read the license/clicking on ok/looking at the box sideways, and I'll conceed the point.
Unfortunately, by a strict interpretation of contract law, most software licenses are illegal. Note that the GPL is not a software license - if you don't agree to it, you still get to use the software... You just can't redistribute the software or modifications of it. (IE, your rights default to those granted by copyright law.)
Materials? You're in orbit. You've got lots of big space rocks nearby that you can get to with relatively little cost. These should, theoretically, be able to give you everything you need to make a probe factory.
Besides, then there's savings #2: that you only have to carry up the probe itself. The (reusable) long-range launch equipment's already sitting there in orbit.
(Oh, look, work on Tomcat and we'll make it the reference JSP engine! Oh, now we've changed our minds!)
Sun no longer considers Tomcat to be the reference implmentation for Servlets and JSP? Well, someone should really tell the Jakarta people about that. Look, right on their Tomcat Site, they've got: "Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed by Sun under the Java Community Process." If that's not the case, they really should be told so they can change that blurb!
Interesting concept? No, very old concept. Apache has a high market share. Microsoft has a new technology they want to push, and an old technology which competes with Apache whose market share they feel the need to expand. Step #1: Embrace. Help out Apache, give them Microsoft support for the new technology.
#2: Extend. Slowly start adding stuff on to the new technology for the old technology only. Make vague claims about how Apache can't really support this easily, which is why the features will take five to ten months to migrate.
#3: Extinguish. Drop Apache support for the next major revision. Start slamming Apache as hard as possible in a PR war. If people want to continue to recieve benefits from their investment in the new technology, they need your old technology. End result: Two Microsoft technologies gain market share. Apache looses market share after a temporary gain.
Winner: Microsoft.
Doesn't anyone on the Apache project remember the early '90s?
Cable isn't designed for hosting. They disallow servers, too.
Care to explain to me what exactly a server is? Is it something that listens for connections to a port? Ooops, you just banned ICQ, AIM, normal FTP, and half-a-dozen other commonly-used programs. Something that sends information at the request of a remote server? You just added web browsers to the list, and a bunch of other programs. What's that about not designed for hosting? Its an internet connection. There's no "designed" about it. You provide a connection to an IP network, and programs use that connection. They may not have intended people to use it for hosting, but when their average bandwidth figures and activity estimates are based around usage on dial-up connections (namely, some web browsing and e-mail), I'm rather suspicious of their judgement and motives.
The no server clause is bull. Its used as a generic stick against people doing things they don't approve of, but which forbidding in the ToS would drive away customers.
As a note, I get service through Eastlink, one of the best damn cable companies in the world. They don't block ports, they don't limit traffic beyond the usual cap, and they don't try to justify control grabs with these flimsy arguments about bandwidth. If they can do it way out here in the middle of no-where, why can't Roadrunner do it in the middle of huge American cities?
Oh, right, I forgot. The massive file trading would cause the immediate collapse of civilization. My bad.
Cable is not the only high-speed access in your region. You ignore T1s and the like - it can cost the same to string up a T1 and sell wireless service to your neighbors (in an apartment complex, perhaps), too.
For me, it isn't. In many places in the US, it is. In many of those same places, T1 lines are prohibitively expensive. Given the con games being run by many of the "high-speed" access companies (and their media giant owners) I expect to see more apartment complexes going this route. Get a T1 for the entire complex, cap each apartment at about 1 Mbps upstream and downstream, and spread the cost through the rent of the entire complex.
There are plenty of places that will let you host MP3s, many for free, and all available from your region. It won't come straight off your computer, but that's better for you anyways.
Ah, so because there's another way to speak, it doesn't matter that they're duct-taping my mouth shut? Wonderful logic, there.
I don't know of anywhere that lets you host MP3s for free. Care to name one that lets me host at whatever bitrate I want, puts them on file-sharing networks, provides HTTP and FTP access, and lets anyone and everyone download my music for free without registering for an account? And doesn't attempt to throw in contractual restrictions on the redistribution of material they host?
Oh, right. Audiogalaxy. Look what happened to them. Isn't the "free(*) market" wonderful?
(*) The usual limits apply to free. You may not be free to compete with certant government-protected industries. You are not free to compete with the rich. You are not free to sell "disruptive" products. You are not free to wonder if you're really free. You are not free to do business without employing at least five lawyers at all times.
As other posters have pointed out, this is very probably a few users with technical problems blaming it on their ISP.
However, this entire issue is a red herring. Roadrunner, as with most cable ISPs, caps upstream and downstream bandwidth. I'm not going to be able to transfer enough over my cable connection, even if I saturate it, to make much of a difference for others nearby. Now, if everyone on my block did this, then we'd notice a problem. But at that point, demand for bandwidth has exceeded the available infrastructure, which obviously did not anticipate people actually using the bandwidth they were told they had.
As for cost, this is also a bad argument. Yes, you can buy a large pipe for some incredible sum-plus-usage-costs for "business use". You seriously think major ISPs pay the same incredible sum for bandwidth? Many have peering arrangements, and for those, more traffic is better - you get more other providers wanting to peer with you. Even if you don't, your bandwidth is so cheap that a sizable percentage of your customer base saturating their connections 24/7 probably wouldn't cost you more than $500 a month.
(To say nothing of the rediculousness of charging for bandwidth usage anyway. Bandwith isn't a non-renewable resource. Any bandwidth not used in a given time interval is wasted and unrecoverable.)
No, to see why this is happening, follow the money. Who gains by preventing citizens from having an easy avenue for sharing music and video? The media cartels. Who's hurt by preventing it? Their indie competition. Wow, what an astonishing coincidence!