My reading of the translation is that the original study confused Open Source licenses with the more common commercial shrink-wrap and post-purchase licenses.
It really seems to me that thee his effective conclusion is that things like Microsoft's licenses aren't binding because the consumer buys their software, takes it home, and then finds out that (s)he suddenly has this wierd license presented that binds him/her to not do all sorts of things that weren't apparent when the purchase contract was completed.
A GPL license, on the other hand, doesn't bind the normal consumer from doing anything that isn't already prohibited by law. As such the claim that the consumer was 'blind-sided' by the contract (my language here) doesn't apply.Where the GPL kicks in is only where someone tries to do stuff that Copyright law would normally prevent. As such one would have to conclude that (( unless the person is simply violating copyright law)) a person distributing GPL code must first understand enough of the contract to accept the grant of extra rights and thus also the grant of requirements that go with the extra rights.
He seems to feel that the acceptance of extra requirements for people redistributing GPL software could be framed as 'payment' for the extra rights that the GPL is allowing.
His caveat is that where you could run into trouble with the GPL is that it's written in English -- not German. Lack of a German language GPL might be a problem -- although at this point he seems to get into the question of pan-national rights that come with EU rules.... I think he concludes that there's definite wiggle room, even there, but seems to suggest that it might be a good idea to come up with versions of the GPL in languages other than English.
((actually, I think that The FSF already has translations, but it might be a good idea to at least point people to the multilingual GPL availaibility in current copyright notices.))
The discussion around
legal security in handling suitor software by two current statements
were heated up. In the distance of fewer days one on behalf of the VSI
provided study of the Goettinger of professor Gerald Spindler and an
essay Paris professor Christophe of the Caron appeared in the most
important French technical periodical for lawyer (Dalloz 2003, number
23, P. 1556). In the center thereby the study Spindlers published under
large press echo is located.
The press release of the VSI under the heading "study
occupies juridical insecurities" shortens the appraisal thereby on the
Linux critical statements. This surprises few, considers one that the
VSI essentially represents the interests of the "prop. guessing eras"
software industry. In contrast to it the appraisal is substantially
more differentiated, the Stigmatisierung of the author as an opponent
suitor software is therefore hasty. The shown legal problems are
predominantly already well-known. Spindler refuses itself only in
specifics question to the solutions, which the past bibliography
offers, predominantly carries it the concept however. Where it
deviates, its solutions are open to attack. In specifics question
misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the licenses are to be
deplored. This is to be lit up in the following one by some selected
examples to the GNU general Public License (GPL) more near. A complete
analysis of the work Spindlers is still pending. To that extent the
theses of Koglin and Schulz, at present in work, are as well as a new
edition of hunter/butcher, open SOURCE software - legal basic
conditions of the free software to be waiting.
To surprise it must first that the study seems to equate the
terms Freeware and free software (P. 18). For this is to be noticed
that as Freeware spread programs usually straight do not correspond to
the definitions of the Free software Foundation and the open SOURCE
initiative, in particular no working on right exists. The related
conceptualness is therefore unfortunate and does not correspond not to
the understanding vorherschenden among experts.
To welcome it is against the fact that the study assumes
that anyhow in the principle that also with complex
Entwicklungstrukturen of numerous authors, who also -, secondary and
successively at a software write, an action to restrain interference of
an author "for all" is possible, without the names of all co-authors
must be called (P. 26). This result is for the question of the
penetration of the licenses before court of hardly overrating
importance, corresponds however to the past level of knowledge.
Importantly and "Linux friendly" is also the estimate of the appraisal
that an ignoring of the obligations from the GPL to an omission of the
rights leads. The GPL says this in number 4; after German right is this
correct-proves as a solvent condition in accordance with 158 Abs. 2
BGB to regard (P. 31).
On the other hand it is more than misleading, if in the
appraisal in several places from a "obligation to the free passing on
the open SOURCE software" is spoken. On the one hand at all no
obligation exists to the passing on, on the contrary the GPL sets up
obligations for the case that the licensee passes voluntarily the
software on or itself obligated to the passing on. One by SE existing
publication obligation does not exist straight. On the other hand 1
paragraph 2 may be quite required a payment for the passing on of the
individual piece of duplication in accordance with number, only no
royalties may be raised. For the difficult question of the demarcation,
when a payment is to be regarded as royalty, unfortunately nothing is
this in the appraisal, is left thus to further research.
Problematic and of central importance the remarks of the
appraisal are for the question of the e
You're talking about two different rights. One is the power to speak and the other the power to listen. Both need to be protected. But you seem to imply a third right, namely the power to coerce people into listening.
No. The right to the internet is, for example, the right for me to put up a website and the right for other people to access my web site (if they want to). The right to use something is different than the right to abuse it.
If SCO KNEW that they had a winning case, the leach lawyers wouldn't be telling McBride to go to Japan, they would be telling McBride to 'sit back and watch everyone switch to Linux cuz you can then sue their asses off too!'
No. I doubt it. Any good CEO knows that waiting to win a lawsuit is like betting on the slow boat to China. Lawsuits are notoriously slow and long winded... Consider the Microsoft/DOJ case. That took a couple of years, to run it's course, with an expidited schedule and settled out of court.
The longest lawsuits are said to have outlived entire generations. -- then, of course, there's the possibility that you could lose on a technicality.
The best way to use a lawsuit is the way that most robbers use guns -- you never actually want to fire it... Just point it in the proper direction and hope that people do what you want them to.
If McBride and his band of would-be robber barons could get a $5000/year license fee from each of the 1500 people he sent those vague 'warning letters' to, that would be about $7M/year in pretty much free income. Many of those companies could probably be convinced to spend 10 times that just to avoid having to pay their lawyers to deal with SCO's continual harrasement. It wouldn't even matter if they really thought he could win.
If McBride can convince one or two of the CE consortium to pay up 'insurance money' on the Linux IP money, that could get him some momentum in pushing other fortune 1000 companies to do the same thing.
I really think he's loooking for a "first chump" on this issue. The bigger the chump the more likely that other companies will follow the FUD trail.
This story is an example of degrading "human" rights by whores in positions of political power.
What good is the right to free speech if nobody is allowed to listen to you?
This should also be considered in the context of a post-stalinist political sensitivity. Stalin considered typewriters to be weapons of revolution -- he knew that, if the people got together and realized that others had the same idea, the recognition of agreement could cause the people to refuse to act like sheep.
In North American we're spoiled. Access to basic telecommunications is so easy and ubiquituos that we consider it to be a right. The fact that we haven't had to fight for it (yet) doesn't make it any less important.
Consider this: When the Chinese censors tried to cut off access to google, we thought that something was wrong. They weren't cutting access to the net... just one of it's search engines. Similarly, many people were upset when the government effectively shut off Mitnic from access to computers (effectively including The Internet). Many of us are living like the internet is a basic right, but we just haven't declared it so.
How would you feel if, in the midst of 9/11 or some political crisis, the government managed to shut off access to the internet "to prevent panic"? I've been on the inside of political news stories, and I do not trust the news media to report political events in a completely unbiased manner. For me the question is more one of whether or not the bias is in my direction.
The right to free speech requires the right to be heard. The interned allows people to be heard by whomever wants to listen to us. In my world, the right to the Internet is a corrolary of the right to free speech. The Estonian government has simply codified this concept.
It just hit me: T2 might not only not forclose T3, it could even be viewed as a cause. Start with the premise that, as a result of T2, there are now a reasonable set of humans who understand that the building of SkyNet would cause the effective end of humanity. These people would probably fight the existence of SkyNet tooth and nail. Once skynet became self-aware, it would recognize them as enemy and try to eliminate them.
Unfortunately, trying to 'eliminate the opposition' would simply supply the anti-SkyNet people with proof of their proposition, and strengthen their argument. The result would be more and more people being strongly opposed to the continued existence of SkyNet. Eventually, SkyNet would realize that the only effective way to eliminate human opposition to it's existence would be to eliminate all humans.
Thus, we now have an all-out war
(This infinite escalation is starting to sound like the Israeli/Palistinian thing, isn't it?).
(of course, a beta version of Linux is probably more stable than a release version of Windows, but I can actually do something with Linux if/when it blows up in my face.)
You can libel a group, but the context of the denial of action was that the articles had made it clear that there were some officers that were doing nasty things... also, the complaints were justified (there was a problem). There is also a limited level of immunity for news reporting. On the other hand, when you overgeneralize and wilfully exagerate with malicious (and commercial) intent, you could still probably be found liable for libel.
I still think that, notwithstanding the Toronto Star case, it's still possible to class-action sue SCO in Canada.
....but they'd need a pretty good explanation to avoid the continuity error of Skynet evolving despite what happened in T2.
Skynet evolved in the T1 before the chip was sent back. I'm guessing that having it available back in time might have simply sped up (or otherwise modified) the timeline.
Also, by the time T2 occurs, a lot of work has already been done with the chip... Has anybody ever considered the possibility of off-site backups? Existing data might have been enough to speed/enable the process.
What T&A says to the audience is "this is meant for horny straight males - anyone else is just tolerated here."
It's not just horny straight guys who like T&A. Lesbian and Bi women would be quite happy with a bit of female flesh too -- and it doesn't even seem to stop there.
I've got one friend who used to do strip-o-grams, and she said that it tended to be women who were hotter to see her take it all of than the guys. -- go figure.
Re:802.1x is very secure here-no one is able to lo
on
Are You Using 802.1X?
·
· Score: 1
Given that "nobody can login -- not even authorized users", I'd say that the security level is pretty high.
This is an example of the axiom that there is always a tradeoff between usability and security. In this case, the security is almost infinite, thus the usability is (necessarily) roughly zero.
You provide the physical infrastructure, you also provide the front-line support.
All they have to supply is the bandwidth (damn cheap, unless your neighbour is a spammer) and some light-duty billing support (also damn cheap) and email services (also cheap). In return, they get a nice new income stream.
The 50/50 thing is that.. whatever you charge your neighbour, you get half of... eg: Let's say I pay $100/month for my 3megabit ADSL line, and I charge 4 neighbours $40/month each for the line... Covad would collect $160 from them, and credits me for $80.. Meaning that I only pay $20/month.
Of course, if I charge 6 neighbours $40/month, then I should be getting $20/month back..... would they actually be sending me a cheque, or would they pocket the difference?
It's not just sending a bit of email... It's hijacking the proxy server at a place where I worked, and spending about $800/month in bandwidth before they found out about it. Luckily all they had was a lowly ADSL line (1.5 megabit). Do that to a few thousand people and you've got more than a million dollars worth of scammed bandwidth under your collar.
That is worth sending someone to jail for. Given that we've got these sledgehammer anti-hacking laws on the books, we might as well put them to a good use.
Which reminds me: is hacking for profit considere an extraditable offence??
yeah, but some Israelis think that anybody who doesn't proclaim that shooting kids for throwing rocks is OK (er, sorry -- shooting Palestinian kids for throwing rocks) is a nazi.
As far as I'm concerned, there is a big difference between being critical when Israel does something stupid/nasty and being anti-semitic -- especially if you're just as critical of Palestinian stupidity.
I think telnet and ftp should be disabled across the world with very limited exceptions.
I use the telnet client to test connectability to various ports...
telnet somehost 25
is a nice way to make sure that the SMTP server is running.
Other than that, I agree that telnet servers should be disabled by default (RH8 and up no longer install it by default). If I have to login to a machine with telnet, the first things I do on it are install SSH and ask permission to change passwords.
FTP servers are OK if they are only used for anonymous FTP. Enabling FTP for anything else is just asking to be hacked.
About the only thing I've used RSH for in the last few years is to show Solaris students just how insecure it is (ethereal is such a nice tool).
but reconciling this ruling with anti-spam rules may be tricky since this gives spammers a defence...
It really only gives non-commercial 'spammers' a defence. Somebody else already pointed out that the courts have a wide distinction between the protections afforded to personal speech and commercial speech (e.g. ads). They classified Hamidi's comments as non-commercial speech and then allowed it on that basis.
This is also a relatively narrow ruling... it only applies to the 'trespass to chattels' issue. That is only one of a few rules that can be used to nail spammers (though an obvious one).
This rulling almost certainly would not apply to someone who hijacked my proxy server to cycle spam out to the universe. There are all sorts of reasons to recognize something like that as a distinct case. (I think you could probably also sue under conversion of property provisions, as well as things like inducing breach of contract.).
It says that "The companies estimate they could have lost $900 million" (Firstly this number is overinflated.)
The companies say (in the article) that 3million people cost them about $4Billion per year. That's about $1,300/year/person. This guy was supposedly arranging to deliver his kit to about 5000 people, so that would come to about 6.5million per year... Thay'd have to amortize that kit over about 150 years to get a $900million price tag. More likely than not, the kit would only be good for about 2 years (at most). so we're loking at a more realistic cost in the $13Million range -- still, a nasty sum to pay off, but a bit more sane.
Problem with him appealing this sentence is that an apeals court might cut the award to $13Million but have him pay off $1K/month instead of $500.
I don' think that I've contributed enough to the Linux Kernel to be able to make a meaningfull attempt at gaining standing in such a case. I would, on the other hand, be very willing to work on legal research and even help craft arguments for anuybody willing to file a suit in British Columbia (canada) against SCO.
Seattle, even.. (although I know a good bit more about the BC/Canadian legal system than I do about the Washington/American system).
No. It works for me, but it's a hidden Kuro5hin article (only got 59 points, net). I guess that only I can see it. I also have a version on my own web site.
If the case of Rowland's authors attempting to ban Tanya Grotter from being imported into Holland ever makes it in front of a judge, I sincerely hope that it gets thrown out.
Rowland can copyright Harry Potter and his friends, but she cannot and should not be allowed to copyright the idea of a child wizard That concept is, itself, much borrowed from other sources. Even the story of a child wizard in a wonky wizards school has its precedents.
What comes to mind first for me is the Rincewindd character of Robert Asprin's Diskworld series.Born the 8th son of an 8th son of an 8th son, he was destined to be a great sourceror.. Unfortunately, he doesn't believe that -- and neither do most of the people who encounter him. Nontheless, he still manages to both enable and prevent vast magical goings on in his world (depending on whether they are good or bad).
The basic concept of a Harry Potter character is not original and nobody -- even (or especially) someone who has gotten fantastically rich with it should be allowed to control expressions of that basic concept.
Slashdot Mirror
It really seems to me that thee his effective conclusion is that things like Microsoft's licenses aren't binding because the consumer buys their software, takes it home, and then finds out that (s)he suddenly has this wierd license presented that binds him/her to not do all sorts of things that weren't apparent when the purchase contract was completed.
A GPL license, on the other hand, doesn't bind the normal consumer from doing anything that isn't already prohibited by law. As such the claim that the consumer was 'blind-sided' by the contract (my language here) doesn't apply.Where the GPL kicks in is only where someone tries to do stuff that Copyright law would normally prevent. As such one would have to conclude that (( unless the person is simply violating copyright law)) a person distributing GPL code must first understand enough of the contract to accept the grant of extra rights and thus also the grant of requirements that go with the extra rights.
He seems to feel that the acceptance of extra requirements for people redistributing GPL software could be framed as 'payment' for the extra rights that the GPL is allowing.
His caveat is that where you could run into trouble with the GPL is that it's written in English -- not German. Lack of a German language GPL might be a problem -- although at this point he seems to get into the question of pan-national rights that come with EU rules.... I think he concludes that there's definite wiggle room, even there, but seems to suggest that it might be a good idea to come up with versions of the GPL in languages other than English.
((actually, I think that The FSF already has translations, but it might be a good idea to at least point people to the multilingual GPL availaibility in current copyright notices.))
Of: Dr. Axel butcher and Dr. Till hunter
The discussion around legal security in handling suitor software by two current statements were heated up. In the distance of fewer days one on behalf of the VSI provided study of the Goettinger of professor Gerald Spindler and an essay Paris professor Christophe of the Caron appeared in the most important French technical periodical for lawyer (Dalloz 2003, number 23, P. 1556). In the center thereby the study Spindlers published under large press echo is located.
The press release of the VSI under the heading "study occupies juridical insecurities" shortens the appraisal thereby on the Linux critical statements. This surprises few, considers one that the VSI essentially represents the interests of the "prop. guessing eras" software industry. In contrast to it the appraisal is substantially more differentiated, the Stigmatisierung of the author as an opponent suitor software is therefore hasty. The shown legal problems are predominantly already well-known. Spindler refuses itself only in specifics question to the solutions, which the past bibliography offers, predominantly carries it the concept however. Where it deviates, its solutions are open to attack. In specifics question misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the licenses are to be deplored. This is to be lit up in the following one by some selected examples to the GNU general Public License (GPL) more near. A complete analysis of the work Spindlers is still pending. To that extent the theses of Koglin and Schulz, at present in work, are as well as a new edition of hunter/butcher, open SOURCE software - legal basic conditions of the free software to be waiting.
To surprise it must first that the study seems to equate the terms Freeware and free software (P. 18). For this is to be noticed that as Freeware spread programs usually straight do not correspond to the definitions of the Free software Foundation and the open SOURCE initiative, in particular no working on right exists. The related conceptualness is therefore unfortunate and does not correspond not to the understanding vorherschenden among experts.
To welcome it is against the fact that the study assumes that anyhow in the principle that also with complex Entwicklungstrukturen of numerous authors, who also -, secondary and successively at a software write, an action to restrain interference of an author "for all" is possible, without the names of all co-authors must be called (P. 26). This result is for the question of the penetration of the licenses before court of hardly overrating importance, corresponds however to the past level of knowledge. Importantly and "Linux friendly" is also the estimate of the appraisal that an ignoring of the obligations from the GPL to an omission of the rights leads. The GPL says this in number 4; after German right is this correct-proves as a solvent condition in accordance with 158 Abs. 2 BGB to regard (P. 31).
On the other hand it is more than misleading, if in the appraisal in several places from a "obligation to the free passing on the open SOURCE software" is spoken. On the one hand at all no obligation exists to the passing on, on the contrary the GPL sets up obligations for the case that the licensee passes voluntarily the software on or itself obligated to the passing on. One by SE existing publication obligation does not exist straight. On the other hand 1 paragraph 2 may be quite required a payment for the passing on of the individual piece of duplication in accordance with number, only no royalties may be raised. For the difficult question of the demarcation, when a payment is to be regarded as royalty, unfortunately nothing is this in the appraisal, is left thus to further research.
Problematic and of central importance the remarks of the appraisal are for the question of the e
No. It implies the right of others to listen to whomever they want to. If they want to listen to me then they should be allowed to.
Unlike TV and Radio, the Internet (if you ignore spam (please!)) is essentially reader-driven.
No. The right to the internet is, for example, the right for me to put up a website and the right for other people to access my web site (if they want to). The right to use something is different than the right to abuse it.
No. I doubt it. Any good CEO knows that waiting to win a lawsuit is like betting on the slow boat to China. Lawsuits are notoriously slow and long winded... Consider the Microsoft/DOJ case. That took a couple of years, to run it's course, with an expidited schedule and settled out of court.
The longest lawsuits are said to have outlived entire generations. -- then, of course, there's the possibility that you could lose on a technicality.
The best way to use a lawsuit is the way that most robbers use guns -- you never actually want to fire it... Just point it in the proper direction and hope that people do what you want them to.
If McBride and his band of would-be robber barons could get a $5000/year license fee from each of the 1500 people he sent those vague 'warning letters' to, that would be about $7M/year in pretty much free income. Many of those companies could probably be convinced to spend 10 times that just to avoid having to pay their lawyers to deal with SCO's continual harrasement. It wouldn't even matter if they really thought he could win.
If McBride can convince one or two of the CE consortium to pay up 'insurance money' on the Linux IP money, that could get him some momentum in pushing other fortune 1000 companies to do the same thing.
I really think he's loooking for a "first chump" on this issue. The bigger the chump the more likely that other companies will follow the FUD trail.
I was thinking "Fscking Unsubstantiated Diatribe'
What good is the right to free speech if nobody is allowed to listen to you?
This should also be considered in the context of a post-stalinist political sensitivity. Stalin considered typewriters to be weapons of revolution -- he knew that, if the people got together and realized that others had the same idea, the recognition of agreement could cause the people to refuse to act like sheep.
In North American we're spoiled. Access to basic telecommunications is so easy and ubiquituos that we consider it to be a right. The fact that we haven't had to fight for it (yet) doesn't make it any less important.
Consider this: When the Chinese censors tried to cut off access to google, we thought that something was wrong. They weren't cutting access to the net... just one of it's search engines. Similarly, many people were upset when the government effectively shut off Mitnic from access to computers (effectively including The Internet). Many of us are living like the internet is a basic right, but we just haven't declared it so.
How would you feel if, in the midst of 9/11 or some political crisis, the government managed to shut off access to the internet "to prevent panic"? I've been on the inside of political news stories, and I do not trust the news media to report political events in a completely unbiased manner. For me the question is more one of whether or not the bias is in my direction.
The right to free speech requires the right to be heard. The interned allows people to be heard by whomever wants to listen to us. In my world, the right to the Internet is a corrolary of the right to free speech. The Estonian government has simply codified this concept.
Unfortunately, trying to 'eliminate the opposition' would simply supply the anti-SkyNet people with proof of their proposition, and strengthen their argument. The result would be more and more people being strongly opposed to the continued existence of SkyNet. Eventually, SkyNet would realize that the only effective way to eliminate human opposition to it's existence would be to eliminate all humans.
Thus, we now have an all-out war
(This infinite escalation is starting to sound like the Israeli/Palistinian thing, isn't it?).
(of course, a beta version of Linux is probably more stable than a release version of Windows, but I can actually do something with Linux if/when it blows up in my face.)
I still think that, notwithstanding the Toronto Star case, it's still possible to class-action sue SCO in Canada.
Skynet evolved in the T1 before the chip was sent back. I'm guessing that having it available back in time might have simply sped up (or otherwise modified) the timeline.
Also, by the time T2 occurs, a lot of work has already been done with the chip... Has anybody ever considered the possibility of off-site backups? Existing data might have been enough to speed/enable the process.
So is every lawmaker who ever tried to outlaw nudity.
Nuff said.
It's not just horny straight guys who like T&A. Lesbian and Bi women would be quite happy with a bit of female flesh too -- and it doesn't even seem to stop there.
I've got one friend who used to do strip-o-grams, and she said that it tended to be women who were hotter to see her take it all of than the guys. -- go figure.
This is an example of the axiom that there is always a tradeoff between usability and security. In this case, the security is almost infinite, thus the usability is (necessarily) roughly zero.
All they have to supply is the bandwidth (damn cheap, unless your neighbour is a spammer) and some light-duty billing support (also damn cheap) and email services (also cheap). In return, they get a nice new income stream.
Definite +4 insightfull!
Of course, if I charge 6 neighbours $40/month, then I should be getting $20/month back..... would they actually be sending me a cheque, or would they pocket the difference?
That is worth sending someone to jail for. Given that we've got these sledgehammer anti-hacking laws on the books, we might as well put them to a good use.
Which reminds me: is hacking for profit considere an extraditable offence??
yeah, but some Israelis think that anybody who doesn't proclaim that shooting kids for throwing rocks is OK (er, sorry -- shooting Palestinian kids for throwing rocks) is a nazi.
As far as I'm concerned, there is a big difference between being critical when Israel does something stupid/nasty and being anti-semitic -- especially if you're just as critical of Palestinian stupidity.
I use the telnet client to test connectability to various ports...
telnet somehost 25
is a nice way to make sure that the SMTP server is running.
Other than that, I agree that telnet servers should be disabled by default (RH8 and up no longer install it by default). If I have to login to a machine with telnet, the first things I do on it are install SSH and ask permission to change passwords.
FTP servers are OK if they are only used for anonymous FTP. Enabling FTP for anything else is just asking to be hacked.
About the only thing I've used RSH for in the last few years is to show Solaris students just how insecure it is (ethereal is such a nice tool).
It really only gives non-commercial 'spammers' a defence. Somebody else already pointed out that the courts have a wide distinction between the protections afforded to personal speech and commercial speech (e.g. ads). They classified Hamidi's comments as non-commercial speech and then allowed it on that basis.
This is also a relatively narrow ruling... it only applies to the 'trespass to chattels' issue. That is only one of a few rules that can be used to nail spammers (though an obvious one).
This rulling almost certainly would not apply to someone who hijacked my proxy server to cycle spam out to the universe. There are all sorts of reasons to recognize something like that as a distinct case. (I think you could probably also sue under conversion of property provisions, as well as things like inducing breach of contract.).
Damn.. I thought that I'd corrected that.
I get confused about the two because of Good Omens. (a very enjoyable book)
The companies say (in the article) that 3million people cost them about $4Billion per year. That's about $1,300/year/person. This guy was supposedly arranging to deliver his kit to about 5000 people, so that would come to about 6.5million per year... Thay'd have to amortize that kit over about 150 years to get a $900million price tag. More likely than not, the kit would only be good for about 2 years (at most). so we're loking at a more realistic cost in the $13Million range -- still, a nasty sum to pay off, but a bit more sane.
Problem with him appealing this sentence is that an apeals court might cut the award to $13Million but have him pay off $1K/month instead of $500.
Seattle, even.. (although I know a good bit more about the BC/Canadian legal system than I do about the Washington/American system).
No. It works for me, but it's a hidden Kuro5hin article (only got 59 points, net). I guess that only I can see it. I also have a version on my own web site.
Rowland can copyright Harry Potter and his friends, but she cannot and should not be allowed to copyright the idea of a child wizard That concept is, itself, much borrowed from other sources. Even the story of a child wizard in a wonky wizards school has its precedents.
What comes to mind first for me is the Rincewindd character of Robert Asprin's Diskworld series.Born the 8th son of an 8th son of an 8th son, he was destined to be a great sourceror.. Unfortunately, he doesn't believe that -- and neither do most of the people who encounter him. Nontheless, he still manages to both enable and prevent vast magical goings on in his world (depending on whether they are good or bad).
The basic concept of a Harry Potter character is not original and nobody -- even (or especially) someone who has gotten fantastically rich with it should be allowed to control expressions of that basic concept.