No more, I'm afraid. I stopped buying it as the quality of the reviews had gone way down. They still slam bad games ruthlessly... Unless its from a major publishing house. Anything Microsoft puts out the door seems to automatically get at least a 90%.
They've also, as far as I can tell, replaced the staff with that from the much dreaded PC Accelerator after that mag went belly-up.
Ummm.... Let me think.... NO! You do NOT have to agree to the GPL or BSD to use software licensed under it. You do own the copies of Free software that you posess. However, under copyright laws, you can't redistribute it. The only thing that lets you do that is the license, and to do so, you must agree to the other restrictions it slaps on.
Copyright is not ownership, copyright is just that. A monopoly on the right to make a copy.
If you're an open source programmer as you claim, it'd probably be a good idea to read some of the Free Software Foundation's pages on licensing, copyright, and the GPL, which explicitly counter all your claims in far more detail than I could go into here.
Excuse me, but that is a gross oversimplification! I'm a Linux person (I use it for almost everything on this machine), and I have no problem with paying for good software. I'm perfectly willing to pay for high-quality Linux ports of good games.
Or that the operators of a file indexing and sharing service with a couple of million users was liable for copyright infringement committed using their service.... Oh, wait. That's already been done. Nevermindthen. -RickHunter
And even that they do now, in many places. Here in Canada, for example, we have an RIAA-imposed tax on all CD-Rs that can be used to record CD audio. Of course, the implication of this is that you can loan a CD or whatever to a friend, and they can legally burn it onto a CD-R they've paid the tax on and keep the recording.
Plus, it is now becoming very hard to find subtitled anime on anything but DVDs. Or fansubs, although most fansubbing organizations won't distribute something that's been acquired by a commercial company. The upside is that anime DVD companies are a bit better than others - they use less of the nasty-DVD-powered-tricks, as they know what kind of people most anime fans are and what they want from their technology.
(Well, some anime fans just want giant mecha from their technology, but I digress.)
So, yes, there are things that are effectively only available on DVD. And this isn't even considering the eventual "well, there's 'no market' for VHS stuff anymore, so we're going to drop it or release it six months after the DVDs..." situation that's bound to spring up.
What's really scary about that, for me, is the component bit. Does that mean that any component that could be used in a "circumvention device" (following from the idea that DeCSS is illegal because it could circumvent) is illegal?
Think about what I said. The GPL is not an End-User License Agreement. EULAs are outside the scope of what copyright law allows a copyright holder to do - they rely on the fiction that you didn't really purchase a copy of the software. Their nature makes them illegal - not anything contained within them. There have been several court cases that have ruled that EULAs do not apply, so I assume the American legal system agrees with me on this.
The GPL, on the other hand, grants you rights you did not already have. It attatches a couple of limitations on those rights, but still doesn't restrict you more than you were before. You're still free to use a piece of GPLed software you've bought if you don't agree with the GPL, you just don't get any of those extra rights.
Just remember what happened when CDs were released. We were told "the price will go down as they gain acceptance and producing them gets cheaper". Now they're almost universal, and I don't see a price cut anywhere nearby, do you? The music industry seems to want to be able to force people to buy their products and only their products (want to be that, to be able to distribute properly encrypted audio, you're going to have to wade through enough red tape to make DVDs seem open?) for insane prices. One has to hope that they'll die, and die fast.
EULAs are illegal. Period. Its post-sale disclosure of terms. Its a rights-limiting contract that attempts to apply itself without a legal signature.Many of the terms are against various laws. Why do you think the software industry was/is pushing the UCITA so hard? They don't have a legal leg to stand on right now.
Why, why, why, why, why are there so many high-rated comments containing this falsity? I think someone's been reading too many EULAs again.
Yes, you DO own a copy of those games. Not just the discs they are written on. No, you cannot copy them. This is because copyright law says you can't, as you do not have the right to make a copy. Not being able to distribute a savegame file is an issue of the file being a derivative work, no that you don't own the file. However, I AM perfectly within my rights to sell a memory card or VMU to someone. After all, the data on the card is useless without the associated game. Otherwise, you start getting into the relm of intended use and the DMCA.
The other question is: are those VMU files REALLY a derivative work? After all, they are arrangements of binary data created using a game, which are meaningless without an interpreter... Is every piece of fiction I create with WordPerfect a derivative work of WordPerfect?
The ideal of a free market is to have a system that operates without government intervention, is it not? Well, when you actually step back and look at things, copyrights, patents, and trademarks are all government interventions. Put aside the concept of ownership - none of the above terms have anything to do with that. Copyrights and patents are government-instituted monopolies on goods. In the case of copyrights, its a monopoly on artistic works. In the case of patents, its a monopoly on an invention. Trademarks I believe are necessary, or at least fraud laws that have the same effect.
Memo for future reference: The free in free software does not refer to price. It refers to freedom. The theory behind the GPL is to not give people the freedom to make other people slaves. I'm perfectly free to take GNU EMACS and sell it for $20 a copy... I just have to give everyone I sell it to the same rights I was given through the GPL.
Other than that, I find your stance on the GPL (which I personally support, if you didn't guess that already) to be quite a bit better than many GPL bashers here.
Good point... However, many minors also install software on their parents computer of their own choice. The parent(s) sometimes give out money for the software, but the kids do all the actual work of installing it. And given the technical literacy of most people who would ask their kids to install software in the first place, is it really reasonable to assume that they could anticipate the terms of the EULA beforehand?
Intellectual property is NOT a right granted by the US Constitution. The constitution grants Congress the power to grant limited monopolies on works, such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks. The issue of owning these things outright never came up, and in fact was one of the things the founders of the USA wanted to avoid.
IP is a fiction, and a really nasty one. Copyright is a limited monopoly, trademarks are nothing of the sort, and patents are even more of a monopoly than copyright is.
That's the other thing. A lot of my parents' friends have their children install software for them. Many of these children are WELL below legal age, and are thus unable to agree to a contract. How does that work? Are children not allowed to install software? Do you agree to the license when you buy it, no matter who actually does the installing? (Even shakier legal ground...)
I'm afraid that's wrong... Copyright does not cover usage terms unless I sign a contract agreeing to those usage terms. I don't think that clicking on the little button marked "I Agree" constitutes a legally binding signature for something that removes rights. On the other hand, we have licenses like the GPL and BSD license that grant extra rights above and beyond those granted by copyright law... If one agrees to the extra terms laid out within the license.
Yet another thing to consider - since Microsoft is providing the software over a digital link for a subscription of whatever kind (which means you REALLY don't own your software anymore), what does that let them do? Especially in light of the DMCA and the (now seemingly mostly dead) UCITA. At the very least, it gives them most of the powers they were pushing for in the UCITA with little or no overhead.
Critical misunderstanding alert. If Apple wrote the code entirely themselves, releasing it under the GPL doesn't mean that everything they do with the code has to be GPLed. The can take their GPLed code, make some changes, compile, link with proprietary software, and never let the new source see the light of day. TrollTech does something like this with Qt.
I think I Mac's problem stems from a critical misunderstanding of the license. You only need to give these said rights to the people who you give binaries to. Yes, those other people can then redistribute your code... But that's part of the GPL's purpose, to encourage sharing.
It also lets you sell your code - look at what TrollTech now does with Qt for an example.
Think about how most people living in democratic countries now view the kinds of things that went on in the Roman Empire or Dark Ages. The people at the time probably thought it was horrible... But they also probably couldn't really talk about what, exactly, WAS horrible. It was just the Way Things Were, and they Couldn't Change It, so they just accepted it and tried to live the best they could. Then you got a lot of thinkers wondering why, exactly, all these kings and nobles had so much power... Then you had some revolutions, some different government models, and general change.
So, yes, in 100 or 500 years, people will probably look back and think we were crazy for putting up with the things we do, or not fighting back in some way that seems obvious to them, or whatever. And the same thing will probably apply to them a couple of hundred years later...
The entertainment industry isn't trying to fight "piracy" at all - they're using it as an excuse for a power grab. Currently, its perfectly legal to record Babylon-5 or the super bowl off cable with your VCR and keep the tapes around as long as you want to watch whenever you want. Of course, this puts a big dent in their profits, as anyone who does this isn't likely to buy the official videos that are almost always sold.
You can bet that, if this goes through, every single show on every station that can get away with it will have this bit set.
I'd argue the exact reverse of who should be allowed to set the bit - cable shouldn't be allowed to, as they've already gotten their money from me. Broadcast should be able to, as I'm getting reception for free.
Help me! Help me! There's just TOO much software out there for Linux! And a large amount of it is included on the CD I just bought/burned, so I don't have to hunt around for hours on the web to find what I need or pay a couple of hundred dollars for each program! Whatever shall I do?
Quite an about-face, isn't it? It seems like just yesterday "they" were complaining that there was no software available for Linux. Now there's two desktop environments, at least one of which is usually included by default, and a load of other software targeted for a wide variety of users. Even the older Red Hat distros (5.1 and 5.2) I used before I switched to Debian had nice HTML indexes with descriptions of the packages included on CD. Debian's in-dselect descriptions were very useful when deciding what to include in my first install of that.
I'll admit the defaults probably need a bit of work. Well-designed defaults should (ideally) install what's generally needed by a user new to Linux. And a good selection program should be available for people customizing their install. But complaining that there's a huge variety of useful software easily available? That's a bit much, don't you think?
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No more, I'm afraid. I stopped buying it as the quality of the reviews had gone way down. They still slam bad games ruthlessly... Unless its from a major publishing house. Anything Microsoft puts out the door seems to automatically get at least a 90%.
They've also, as far as I can tell, replaced the staff with that from the much dreaded PC Accelerator after that mag went belly-up.
-RickHunter
Ummm.... Let me think.... NO! You do NOT have to agree to the GPL or BSD to use software licensed under it. You do own the copies of Free software that you posess. However, under copyright laws, you can't redistribute it. The only thing that lets you do that is the license, and to do so, you must agree to the other restrictions it slaps on.
Copyright is not ownership, copyright is just that. A monopoly on the right to make a copy.
If you're an open source programmer as you claim, it'd probably be a good idea to read some of the Free Software Foundation's pages on licensing, copyright, and the GPL, which explicitly counter all your claims in far more detail than I could go into here.
-RickHunter
Linux people don't like to pay for software.
Excuse me, but that is a gross oversimplification! I'm a Linux person (I use it for almost everything on this machine), and I have no problem with paying for good software. I'm perfectly willing to pay for high-quality Linux ports of good games.
-RickHunter
Or that the operators of a file indexing and sharing service with a couple of million users was liable for copyright infringement committed using their service.... Oh, wait. That's already been done. Nevermindthen.
-RickHunter
And even that they do now, in many places. Here in Canada, for example, we have an RIAA-imposed tax on all CD-Rs that can be used to record CD audio. Of course, the implication of this is that you can loan a CD or whatever to a friend, and they can legally burn it onto a CD-R they've paid the tax on and keep the recording.
-RickHunter
Plus, it is now becoming very hard to find subtitled anime on anything but DVDs. Or fansubs, although most fansubbing organizations won't distribute something that's been acquired by a commercial company. The upside is that anime DVD companies are a bit better than others - they use less of the nasty-DVD-powered-tricks, as they know what kind of people most anime fans are and what they want from their technology.
(Well, some anime fans just want giant mecha from their technology, but I digress.)
So, yes, there are things that are effectively only available on DVD. And this isn't even considering the eventual "well, there's 'no market' for VHS stuff anymore, so we're going to drop it or release it six months after the DVDs..." situation that's bound to spring up.
-RickHunter
What's really scary about that, for me, is the component bit. Does that mean that any component that could be used in a "circumvention device" (following from the idea that DeCSS is illegal because it could circumvent) is illegal?
-RickHunter
Yet another poor soul deluded by the statements of the MPAA. You do own copies of copyrighted works you buy. Go ask a lawyer.
-RickHunter
Think about what I said. The GPL is not an End-User License Agreement. EULAs are outside the scope of what copyright law allows a copyright holder to do - they rely on the fiction that you didn't really purchase a copy of the software. Their nature makes them illegal - not anything contained within them. There have been several court cases that have ruled that EULAs do not apply, so I assume the American legal system agrees with me on this.
The GPL, on the other hand, grants you rights you did not already have. It attatches a couple of limitations on those rights, but still doesn't restrict you more than you were before. You're still free to use a piece of GPLed software you've bought if you don't agree with the GPL, you just don't get any of those extra rights.
-RickHunter
Just remember what happened when CDs were released. We were told "the price will go down as they gain acceptance and producing them gets cheaper". Now they're almost universal, and I don't see a price cut anywhere nearby, do you? The music industry seems to want to be able to force people to buy their products and only their products (want to be that, to be able to distribute properly encrypted audio, you're going to have to wade through enough red tape to make DVDs seem open?) for insane prices. One has to hope that they'll die, and die fast.
-RickHunter
EULAs are illegal. Period. Its post-sale disclosure of terms. Its a rights-limiting contract that attempts to apply itself without a legal signature.Many of the terms are against various laws. Why do you think the software industry was/is pushing the UCITA so hard? They don't have a legal leg to stand on right now.
-RickHunter
Why, why, why, why, why are there so many high-rated comments containing this falsity? I think someone's been reading too many EULAs again.
Yes, you DO own a copy of those games. Not just the discs they are written on. No, you cannot copy them. This is because copyright law says you can't, as you do not have the right to make a copy. Not being able to distribute a savegame file is an issue of the file being a derivative work, no that you don't own the file. However, I AM perfectly within my rights to sell a memory card or VMU to someone. After all, the data on the card is useless without the associated game. Otherwise, you start getting into the relm of intended use and the DMCA.
The other question is: are those VMU files REALLY a derivative work? After all, they are arrangements of binary data created using a game, which are meaningless without an interpreter... Is every piece of fiction I create with WordPerfect a derivative work of WordPerfect?
-RickHunter
The ideal of a free market is to have a system that operates without government intervention, is it not? Well, when you actually step back and look at things, copyrights, patents, and trademarks are all government interventions. Put aside the concept of ownership - none of the above terms have anything to do with that. Copyrights and patents are government-instituted monopolies on goods. In the case of copyrights, its a monopoly on artistic works. In the case of patents, its a monopoly on an invention. Trademarks I believe are necessary, or at least fraud laws that have the same effect.
-RickHunter
Memo for future reference: The free in free software does not refer to price. It refers to freedom. The theory behind the GPL is to not give people the freedom to make other people slaves. I'm perfectly free to take GNU EMACS and sell it for $20 a copy... I just have to give everyone I sell it to the same rights I was given through the GPL.
Other than that, I find your stance on the GPL (which I personally support, if you didn't guess that already) to be quite a bit better than many GPL bashers here.
-RickHunter
Good point... However, many minors also install software on their parents computer of their own choice. The parent(s) sometimes give out money for the software, but the kids do all the actual work of installing it. And given the technical literacy of most people who would ask their kids to install software in the first place, is it really reasonable to assume that they could anticipate the terms of the EULA beforehand?
-RickHunter
Intellectual property is NOT a right granted by the US Constitution. The constitution grants Congress the power to grant limited monopolies on works, such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks. The issue of owning these things outright never came up, and in fact was one of the things the founders of the USA wanted to avoid.
IP is a fiction, and a really nasty one. Copyright is a limited monopoly, trademarks are nothing of the sort, and patents are even more of a monopoly than copyright is.
-RickHunter
That's the other thing. A lot of my parents' friends have their children install software for them. Many of these children are WELL below legal age, and are thus unable to agree to a contract. How does that work? Are children not allowed to install software? Do you agree to the license when you buy it, no matter who actually does the installing? (Even shakier legal ground...)
-RickHunter
I'm afraid that's wrong... Copyright does not cover usage terms unless I sign a contract agreeing to those usage terms. I don't think that clicking on the little button marked "I Agree" constitutes a legally binding signature for something that removes rights. On the other hand, we have licenses like the GPL and BSD license that grant extra rights above and beyond those granted by copyright law... If one agrees to the extra terms laid out within the license.
-RickHunter
Yet another thing to consider - since Microsoft is providing the software over a digital link for a subscription of whatever kind (which means you REALLY don't own your software anymore), what does that let them do? Especially in light of the DMCA and the (now seemingly mostly dead) UCITA. At the very least, it gives them most of the powers they were pushing for in the UCITA with little or no overhead.
-RickHunter
Critical misunderstanding alert. If Apple wrote the code entirely themselves, releasing it under the GPL doesn't mean that everything they do with the code has to be GPLed. The can take their GPLed code, make some changes, compile, link with proprietary software, and never let the new source see the light of day. TrollTech does something like this with Qt.
-RickHunter
I think I Mac's problem stems from a critical misunderstanding of the license. You only need to give these said rights to the people who you give binaries to. Yes, those other people can then redistribute your code... But that's part of the GPL's purpose, to encourage sharing.
It also lets you sell your code - look at what TrollTech now does with Qt for an example.
-RickHunter
Think about how most people living in democratic countries now view the kinds of things that went on in the Roman Empire or Dark Ages. The people at the time probably thought it was horrible... But they also probably couldn't really talk about what, exactly, WAS horrible. It was just the Way Things Were, and they Couldn't Change It, so they just accepted it and tried to live the best they could. Then you got a lot of thinkers wondering why, exactly, all these kings and nobles had so much power... Then you had some revolutions, some different government models, and general change.
So, yes, in 100 or 500 years, people will probably look back and think we were crazy for putting up with the things we do, or not fighting back in some way that seems obvious to them, or whatever. And the same thing will probably apply to them a couple of hundred years later...
-RickHunter
The entertainment industry isn't trying to fight "piracy" at all - they're using it as an excuse for a power grab. Currently, its perfectly legal to record Babylon-5 or the super bowl off cable with your VCR and keep the tapes around as long as you want to watch whenever you want. Of course, this puts a big dent in their profits, as anyone who does this isn't likely to buy the official videos that are almost always sold.
You can bet that, if this goes through, every single show on every station that can get away with it will have this bit set.
I'd argue the exact reverse of who should be allowed to set the bit - cable shouldn't be allowed to, as they've already gotten their money from me. Broadcast should be able to, as I'm getting reception for free.
-RickHunter
Except that holywood's convinced Washington that digital is completely different from analog - witness the DMCA.
-RickHunter
Help me! Help me! There's just TOO much software out there for Linux! And a large amount of it is included on the CD I just bought/burned, so I don't have to hunt around for hours on the web to find what I need or pay a couple of hundred dollars for each program! Whatever shall I do?
Quite an about-face, isn't it? It seems like just yesterday "they" were complaining that there was no software available for Linux. Now there's two desktop environments, at least one of which is usually included by default, and a load of other software targeted for a wide variety of users. Even the older Red Hat distros (5.1 and 5.2) I used before I switched to Debian had nice HTML indexes with descriptions of the packages included on CD. Debian's in-dselect descriptions were very useful when deciding what to include in my first install of that.
I'll admit the defaults probably need a bit of work. Well-designed defaults should (ideally) install what's generally needed by a user new to Linux. And a good selection program should be available for people customizing their install. But complaining that there's a huge variety of useful software easily available? That's a bit much, don't you think?
-RickHunter