``They could throw out some nice, Judge-convincing BS like "We only made these files available via the 'FTP' program, which is only for highly advanced technical individuals such as corporate IT managers, for the convenience of our paying customers. It was not intended for download by unlicensed individuals, and in fact doing so constitutes hacking as per the terms of the DMCA..." And the Judge would buy it hook, line and sinker, since it rings true of the Good Ol' American style of corporate IP-speak.''
Anyone accused of a DMCA violation for downloading code from an unprotected server could find in a second a couple of ways that SCO would have been able to distribute this code to these technically advanced individuals via FTP. Software companies have been doing this for years to distribute updates and patches to clients who pay for that service. I don't think a judge would find it hard to agree that these few simple measures could have and should have been taken by SCO. I doubt seriously that the DMCA violation charge could be used by a company too incompetent to protect their FTP servers.
``I could see them saying that the kernel hackers can't recode the kernel because they have seen SCO's version and will obviously infringe on it.''
As someone has already stated, they cannot claim that a rewrite of the kernel would be tainted. They have been given a copyright for the SVR4 code which covers the expression of a concept not the concept itself. So what if someone were to rewrite the sections of the Linux kernel that SCO claims are copied from SVR4? Take two kernel programmers. One writes an spec of the functionality of the code in question. S/he hands it off to the second programmer who implements new code based on that spec. Hell, have a laywer from the FSF at the second programmer's side when it's written and stamp it with an FSF copyright notice as soon as the last semicolon is entered. Since they've been granted a copyright and not a patent, SCO cannot protest that.
Personally, I do not see how SCO can pull this off anyway. They have refused to point out where the alleged copyright violation has taken place -- making it impossible for kernel developers to make the kernel code non-infringing -- and have yet to prove that they are the authors of the code in question (what if they were just granted a copyright on code that can be demonstrated to have originated in BSD Unix?). IBM or someone else with the legal fees available ought to be able to fight this with one hand tied behind their back. A judge should find it easy to force SCO to divulge exactly what lines are in dispute and require SCO to prove that they own those lines. I can claim all day long that some code belongs to me and attempt to charge a license fee for its use. Trouble is that I'd have to prove ownership. I don't think SCO has really done that. I think this would be similar to a company pushing a patent through the process in the face of tons of prior art and then suing everyone in sight. That wouldn't be allowed to go on for long. (Or would it? This is the US legal system after all.) Getting the BSD v.ATT results opened up should go a long way to resolving this dispute. This hasn't seen minute one of real court time yet SCO's acting as though they've already beaten IBM in court. Upon losing the case, SCO would likely wind up having to refund the license fees anyway. That is, if they have any assets left.
Heck, this is pure stock pump-up and nothing more (SCOX's stock price went up today and volumes are more than double the normal.) They hadn't released any new FUD in several weeks. Guess it was time.
Hey! Who's for getting some high profile advocates to claim that SCO has pirated BSD code? If they can spread FUD, why can't the open source community? Think SCO can take on a multi-front legal defense while they're on a FUD offensive?
... but have you ever found yourself driving next to deaf folks signing while they're driving? Neither their hands or their eyes are engaged in the act of driving. But I guess it's legal. (I've encountered this a couple of times and just slow down and give myself enough space to slow down or swerve in case I need to avoid wreckage.)
Imagine the typical big city commuter trying to control their car phone, mobile fax machine, stereo, and all the other electronic toys they need while they're getting to work. This has got to be the best ever promotional tool for public transportation.
As I understand it, ``SCO'' is no longer an acronym meaning Santa Cruz Operation but a made-up word -- like ``Agilent'' and others, I guess -- that's pronounced ``skoe''. That would explain the lack of periods. I heard that they initially fought the pronunciation thing but eventually decided to quit while they were ahead. (Pity they can't see the light in this lawsuit, eh?)
``He says that there were a lot of the same jokes in the comments.''
Then I don't think it could have been sched.c. I just looked at a copy of that file and I didn't see a single comment in it that was even remotely funny. I can usually detect things that are geekily humorous but there sure didn't seem to be anything in that file that fit the bill.
So knowing how someone's software works and producing a replacement that accomplishes a task in a different way is illegal? Good grief! This has become the Bizarro World?
Perhaps it was SCO's vaunted teams of reviewers that added those comments. For the benefit of the SCO executives who wouldn't know a good piece of code if it bit 'em on the...
``So to prevent the airlines having to spend money, we have to be put at risk everytime we fly?''
Or you could ask:
``So in order to allow the wireless companies to make money, we have to place everyone in an airliner at risk?''
Just because you have ``free, any-time minutes'' doesn't mean you should be using them in situations that have been demonstrated as causing a risk to safety.
The long-time policy of the FCC has been (and I believe is still the policy) that the interferer is the one who must solve the problem. That means that the cell phone user is in the same boat as the guy down the street from you whose ham rig interferes with your being able to watch Survivor. Just as the ham operator has to control his setup so should the cell phone user.
Interference problems are never as simple as merely looking at a spectrum allocation chart and deciding that this use in this band won't interfere with the use of that band because they use different frequencies. I was involved in the development of a software package (for the FAA back in the '80s) that analyzed the effect of FM transmissions on aircraft landing systems. The main use of this was to predict when a new tramsmitter might adversly impact the ability of an aircraft to safely use the ILS signals while in the airspace in which it is supposed to be able to use those signals to follow a flight path within certain safety driven tolerances. ``Gosh!'', you say, ``FM frequencies aren't anywhere near the landing system bands.'' And you'd right. But that overlooks the problem of multiple, supposedly non-interfering, FM transmitters' signals being seen by the front end of a landing system receiver. That often generates a bunch of weird harmonics that are in the ILS band that might do $DIETY only knows what to the path that the pilot is following while on final. (There were some actual flight test data collected during this work to validate the models and the results weren't pretty, especially for GA receivers; not everyone can afford to have the high-end equipment, you know.).
In the case of cell phones, without looking at the signal and coding techniques more closely, I'd bet that the fear is that the phones will lower the S/N seen by the navigation receivers and that the receivers will not provide as high a quality position solution. (Why do you think such devices are banned during landing if not to eliminate their interference with critical systems? It's not an unjustified policy.) The use of technologies like GPS are being pushed (at least were about 10 years or so ago) as a means of reducing congestion by allowing more point-to-point flights and less need to fly the traditional corridors. This is less likely to happen if the navigation equipment takes a hit every time someone decides to call home to make sure that their SO remembered to pick up the dry cleaning. Just gives the already overworked ATC people that much more to worry about. And requires airlines to fly along corridors that are rarely the great circle path to the destination (longer flying distance leads to more fuel use which leads to higher ticket prices).
So, who knows what the effect of a bunch of cellphone transmissions is going to do to landing system receivers or even to cross-country navigation receivers? You seriously think that the cellphone companies are testing their units to see if they are interfering with devices that use other frequency bands? In depth EM compatibility testing costs real money which I doubt the cellular industry has spent. In the case of the FM transmitter study, the people who squawked the loudest were the ones who were being told that their new radio station would adversely affect landings at a local airport. There's big bucks at stake when a radio station is put up. Being told that it can't be used costs them quite a lot. I predict that any blanket banning of cellphone use on planes, or even thinking
``Additionally, once you get up really high (~32000, maybe 36000), they start seprating by 2000 or 3000 ft.''
And if get very much above those sort of altitudes, chances are that you're much more maneuverable than a typical airliner, and usually armed, so if you can't avoid the collision you could just should at the risk until it goes away.
``If everyone who lifted code (possibly believing it was "open") came forward, the community could exercise this code in a number of weeks.''
Oh, if it's really in there, I'll bet we've been ``exercizing'' any questionable code for quite a while now. And if we haven't, then it'll be easy to ``excise'' as no one's been using it and it won't be missed.
(Sorry but I couldn't pass one that up.)
Re:it never ceases to amaze me.
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 1
Thank you. That attitude grinds on me at times, too.
...they are probably seeing this list of advantages/disadvantages like this:
Advantages for me:
Save journey time of 3 hours per day (Not our problem)
Save travel expenses (Not our problem)
Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.) (Not our problem)
Be fresh and alert when I start work (Not our problem. We expect that anyway.)
Feel better at the end of the working day (Not our problem)
Be at work promptly each day (Not our problem. Can't you just leave earlier? Obviously your estimate of 90 minutes was incorrect.)
Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment (Is there something wrong with your cubicle?)
Ready access to my (large) technical library (We hired you not your technical library. Besides, don't you have a back seat or trunk in which you could keep those books?)
Advantages for my employer:
Cost savings (How?)
Office space savings (Not if I fire you and hire someone much cheaper who's in the office so I can watch over them.)
Improved productivity (Don't really care how much work per unit of time you are able to put out as long as the work gets done.)
Increased motivation (You want motivation? Be at your desk by 8:00 or you're fired. How's that for motivation?)
Advantages for society:
Reduced traffic congestion (Congestion? Hmm. I've never heard my driver complain about any congestion.)
Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution (How does this make money for the company? Besides you must have missed the memo about car-pooling. Now your commute is 2-1/2 hours... each way.)
There are a number of disadvantages and factors to consider, though none should be insurmountable. A couple might be:
Employer needs to monitor quantity and quality of work performed (And we cannot even begin to explain to you how important this is to managers.)
Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb) (That's funny. We've had excellent connectivity since the company provided those T1 lines.)
So if you're having trouble getting approval to work from home. You might be running into these attitudes.
I found that having a copy of the old roaches program is useful for remotely annoying your coworkers. Especially the ones who run an X server under Windows (they tend to have all access controls turned off by default). But if you don't have that program available, xclock or xmessage works just as well.
Yes. That is funny. SCO shows it creative side when it lifts a strategy directly from a company known throughout the computer industry for its near total lack of creativity. (Or perhaps they are just steal^H^H^H^H^Hborro^H^H^H^H^Hinnovating in the same way.)
`Kinda reminds me of a magazine cover I saw once. Had a picture of a puppy (or kitten or some such cute animal) with the caption "Buy this magazine or we shoot the dog."'
That was a National Lampoon cover. From around, oh, mid-'70s. And a classic.
``Does anyone remember a feature of Scorched Earth, when you defeat another player, and they suddenly spew forth about 2 or 3 volatile attacks before they finally perish?''
Heh. The market's dealt a severe blow to SCO so this is their volley of ``volatile attacks'', eh? Makes you wonder if there hasn't been a meeting that went something like:
D.M.: I remember a game where, if someone defeated you, you could unleash some furious attacks before you finally died. Maybe we could base our legal strategy on that.
D.B.: (rolling eyes) Yah, sure. I think we can put together something along those lines. For example -- and this is just off the top of my head -- you could do a letter campaign, heck, you could even sue Torvalds. Or you...
D.M.: YES! YES! I LOVE IT! That's EXACTLY what I want to do!
D.B.: Wait. I was just throwing out an idea or two and...
D.M.: No, you wait. Just who's payin' who around here. Let's start with the letters. Have a draft on my desk by tomorrow.
Wacky? Sure. But no more so than what we've seen in the press in the past few weeks.
``At first I was skeptical of you, then I was disgusted with you, earlier today I was laughing at you, now, Jesus H Christ man, you people are treading on some seriously thin legal ground. Are you sure you have any legal counsel??''
Are there any cases where a law firm has asked a judge for a gag order to shut up their own client? If not, Boies should be considering being the first.
``The only thing I can see on-demand being a good thing is if your computing needs are very high for a short time and then go back to normal levels. However, companies already have complete packages like this available for purchase (eg. distributed download sites, P2P computation clients).''
Use the idle computer resources that are sitting on all the employees' desks. Got a dozen people sitting in a meeting? Let their desktop systems chew on some of the extra workload that's swamping the servers. I doubt anyone would mind if the payroll processing used part of their desktop system while they're in a staff meeting or chatting on the phone:
``OK, then, welcome to the company. Come this way to your desk and we'll show you how to login on the Mosix/Beowulf/etc node in your office...''
Re:How early can you drop?
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
``In some places it's age, not grade, that determines whether or not you can decide to drop out.''
Right. He may have been a 16 year old 8th grader and finally decided to give it up.:-)
... looks a lot like Wednesday nights but for kids.
So long to real kid-oriented cartoons and hello to kid-versions of adult shows. I spent part of this past Saturday watching TV with my daughters (first graders) and what's big on the morning shows now? A kid version of Survivor. Complete with a dumbed down version of paper/scissors/rock that I supposed was intended to teach some sort of strategic thinking; educational only if one considers out-and-out guessing a kind of ``strategy''.
I wonder what the heck ever happened to real educational TV. When I was a kid there was the ``Discovery'' series (Discovery 67, Discovery 68, etc.), Mr. Wizard, etc. Later on there was another show you could catch on PBS (I think) called something like `Physical Universe' (started out as a lecture but had good illustrative CG graphics to demonstrate the principles being talked about). There was Bronoski's `Ascent of Man', Burke's `Connections', Sagan's `Cosmos', and others. True, those last few aren't exactly kid stuff but at least some kids would find that interesting and I can tell you that my two girls would have found much of them interesting. (Actually, they have seen `Connections' before and thought it was very interesting.) Somebody has already mentioned `Biil Nye the Science Guy' and `Beaker's World' which weren't bad but geared more toward the ADD afflicted to allow kids to really learn very much.
Nowadays, we have Disney hawking `Winnie the Pooh' as educational TV (OK, so they call it `illuminating television'; always good for a belly laugh) and, now, the Survivor clones. At least when I was a kid there were choices that included some educational content. It's gotten to where I think the most important thing that my kids will learn from television is how to turn it off.
``... how the sales numbers of copy-protected CDs surged because they "could not be copied" on P2P, while non copy-protected CD sales kept declining.''
Declining sales of non-protected CDs could also be the result of declining production of those types of CDs. There was already reported some evidence of this occurring recently (sales were down but so was production and new releases). Once they see that Kenny G fans (who I don't perceive to be the most technically astute; after all, they're Kenny G fans) will continue to buy defective CDs, they'll turn to the next artist that's not popular with people who understand the technical issues. Before too long they have a nice revenue stream and won't need to even create CDs that are popular with `those thieving geeks'.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone accused of a DMCA violation for downloading code from an unprotected server could find in a second a couple of ways that SCO would have been able to distribute this code to these technically advanced individuals via FTP. Software companies have been doing this for years to distribute updates and patches to clients who pay for that service. I don't think a judge would find it hard to agree that these few simple measures could have and should have been taken by SCO. I doubt seriously that the DMCA violation charge could be used by a company too incompetent to protect their FTP servers.
As someone has already stated, they cannot claim that a rewrite of the kernel would be tainted. They have been given a copyright for the SVR4 code which covers the expression of a concept not the concept itself. So what if someone were to rewrite the sections of the Linux kernel that SCO claims are copied from SVR4? Take two kernel programmers. One writes an spec of the functionality of the code in question. S/he hands it off to the second programmer who implements new code based on that spec. Hell, have a laywer from the FSF at the second programmer's side when it's written and stamp it with an FSF copyright notice as soon as the last semicolon is entered. Since they've been granted a copyright and not a patent, SCO cannot protest that.
Personally, I do not see how SCO can pull this off anyway. They have refused to point out where the alleged copyright violation has taken place -- making it impossible for kernel developers to make the kernel code non-infringing -- and have yet to prove that they are the authors of the code in question (what if they were just granted a copyright on code that can be demonstrated to have originated in BSD Unix?). IBM or someone else with the legal fees available ought to be able to fight this with one hand tied behind their back. A judge should find it easy to force SCO to divulge exactly what lines are in dispute and require SCO to prove that they own those lines. I can claim all day long that some code belongs to me and attempt to charge a license fee for its use. Trouble is that I'd have to prove ownership. I don't think SCO has really done that. I think this would be similar to a company pushing a patent through the process in the face of tons of prior art and then suing everyone in sight. That wouldn't be allowed to go on for long. (Or would it? This is the US legal system after all.) Getting the BSD v.ATT results opened up should go a long way to resolving this dispute. This hasn't seen minute one of real court time yet SCO's acting as though they've already beaten IBM in court. Upon losing the case, SCO would likely wind up having to refund the license fees anyway. That is, if they have any assets left.
Heck, this is pure stock pump-up and nothing more (SCOX's stock price went up today and volumes are more than double the normal.) They hadn't released any new FUD in several weeks. Guess it was time.
Hey! Who's for getting some high profile advocates to claim that SCO has pirated BSD code? If they can spread FUD, why can't the open source community? Think SCO can take on a multi-front legal defense while they're on a FUD offensive?
(caveat: IANAL and all that)
... but have you ever found yourself driving next to deaf folks signing while they're driving? Neither their hands or their eyes are engaged in the act of driving. But I guess it's legal. (I've encountered this a couple of times and just slow down and give myself enough space to slow down or swerve in case I need to avoid wreckage.)
Imagine the typical big city commuter trying to control their car phone, mobile fax machine, stereo, and all the other electronic toys they need while they're getting to work. This has got to be the best ever promotional tool for public transportation.
Heck... I might pay for that!
As I understand it, ``SCO'' is no longer an acronym meaning S anta C ruz O peration but a made-up word -- like ``Agilent'' and others, I guess -- that's pronounced ``skoe''. That would explain the lack of periods. I heard that they initially fought the pronunciation thing but eventually decided to quit while they were ahead. (Pity they can't see the light in this lawsuit, eh?)
Then I don't think it could have been sched.c. I just looked at a copy of that file and I didn't see a single comment in it that was even remotely funny. I can usually detect things that are geekily humorous but there sure didn't seem to be anything in that file that fit the bill.
Now the comments in sched.h? Those cracked me up.
So knowing how someone's software works and producing a replacement that accomplishes a task in a different way is illegal? Good grief! This has become the Bizarro World?
Perhaps it was SCO's vaunted teams of reviewers that added those comments. For the benefit of the SCO executives who wouldn't know a good piece of code if it bit 'em on the ...
Or you could ask:
Just because you have ``free, any-time minutes'' doesn't mean you should be using them in situations that have been demonstrated as causing a risk to safety.
The long-time policy of the FCC has been (and I believe is still the policy) that the interferer is the one who must solve the problem. That means that the cell phone user is in the same boat as the guy down the street from you whose ham rig interferes with your being able to watch Survivor. Just as the ham operator has to control his setup so should the cell phone user.
Interference problems are never as simple as merely looking at a spectrum allocation chart and deciding that this use in this band won't interfere with the use of that band because they use different frequencies. I was involved in the development of a software package (for the FAA back in the '80s) that analyzed the effect of FM transmissions on aircraft landing systems. The main use of this was to predict when a new tramsmitter might adversly impact the ability of an aircraft to safely use the ILS signals while in the airspace in which it is supposed to be able to use those signals to follow a flight path within certain safety driven tolerances. ``Gosh!'', you say, ``FM frequencies aren't anywhere near the landing system bands.'' And you'd right. But that overlooks the problem of multiple, supposedly non-interfering, FM transmitters' signals being seen by the front end of a landing system receiver. That often generates a bunch of weird harmonics that are in the ILS band that might do $DIETY only knows what to the path that the pilot is following while on final. (There were some actual flight test data collected during this work to validate the models and the results weren't pretty, especially for GA receivers; not everyone can afford to have the high-end equipment, you know.).
In the case of cell phones, without looking at the signal and coding techniques more closely, I'd bet that the fear is that the phones will lower the S/N seen by the navigation receivers and that the receivers will not provide as high a quality position solution. (Why do you think such devices are banned during landing if not to eliminate their interference with critical systems? It's not an unjustified policy.) The use of technologies like GPS are being pushed (at least were about 10 years or so ago) as a means of reducing congestion by allowing more point-to-point flights and less need to fly the traditional corridors. This is less likely to happen if the navigation equipment takes a hit every time someone decides to call home to make sure that their SO remembered to pick up the dry cleaning. Just gives the already overworked ATC people that much more to worry about. And requires airlines to fly along corridors that are rarely the great circle path to the destination (longer flying distance leads to more fuel use which leads to higher ticket prices).
So, who knows what the effect of a bunch of cellphone transmissions is going to do to landing system receivers or even to cross-country navigation receivers? You seriously think that the cellphone companies are testing their units to see if they are interfering with devices that use other frequency bands? In depth EM compatibility testing costs real money which I doubt the cellular industry has spent. In the case of the FM transmitter study, the people who squawked the loudest were the ones who were being told that their new radio station would adversely affect landings at a local airport. There's big bucks at stake when a radio station is put up. Being told that it can't be used costs them quite a lot. I predict that any blanket banning of cellphone use on planes, or even thinking
And if get very much above those sort of altitudes, chances are that you're much more maneuverable than a typical airliner, and usually armed, so if you can't avoid the collision you could just should at the risk until it goes away.
Oh, if it's really in there, I'll bet we've been ``exercizing'' any questionable code for quite a while now. And if we haven't, then it'll be easy to ``excise'' as no one's been using it and it won't be missed.
(Sorry but I couldn't pass one that up.)
Thank you. That attitude grinds on me at times, too.
...they are probably seeing this list of advantages/disadvantages like this:
Advantages for me:
Advantages for my employer:
Advantages for society:
There are a number of disadvantages and factors to consider, though none should be insurmountable. A couple might be:
So if you're having trouble getting approval to work from home. You might be running into these attitudes.
Have a nice day!
I found that having a copy of the old roaches program is useful for remotely annoying your coworkers. Especially the ones who run an X server under Windows (they tend to have all access controls turned off by default). But if you don't have that program available, xclock or xmessage works just as well.
Yes. That is funny. SCO shows it creative side when it lifts a strategy directly from a company known throughout the computer industry for its near total lack of creativity. (Or perhaps they are just steal^H^H^H^H^Hborro^H^H^H^H^Hinnovating in the same way.)
That was a National Lampoon cover. From around, oh, mid-'70s. And a classic.
Heh. The market's dealt a severe blow to SCO so this is their volley of ``volatile attacks'', eh? Makes you wonder if there hasn't been a meeting that went something like:
D.M.: I remember a game where, if someone defeated you, you could unleash some furious attacks before you finally died. Maybe we could base our legal strategy on that.
D.B.: (rolling eyes) Yah, sure. I think we can put together something along those lines. For example -- and this is just off the top of my head -- you could do a letter campaign, heck, you could even sue Torvalds. Or you...
D.M.: YES! YES! I LOVE IT! That's EXACTLY what I want to do!
D.B.: Wait. I was just throwing out an idea or two and...
D.M.: No, you wait. Just who's payin' who around here. Let's start with the letters. Have a draft on my desk by tomorrow.
Wacky? Sure. But no more so than what we've seen in the press in the past few weeks.
Well, at least not today. Who know's what they'll claim tomorrow.
Are there any cases where a law firm has asked a judge for a gag order to shut up their own client? If not, Boies should be considering being the first.
Use the idle computer resources that are sitting on all the employees' desks. Got a dozen people sitting in a meeting? Let their desktop systems chew on some of the extra workload that's swamping the servers. I doubt anyone would mind if the payroll processing used part of their desktop system while they're in a staff meeting or chatting on the phone:
Right. He may have been a 16 year old 8th grader and finally decided to give it up. :-)
... looks a lot like Wednesday nights but for kids.
So long to real kid-oriented cartoons and hello to kid-versions of adult shows. I spent part of this past Saturday watching TV with my daughters (first graders) and what's big on the morning shows now? A kid version of Survivor. Complete with a dumbed down version of paper/scissors/rock that I supposed was intended to teach some sort of strategic thinking; educational only if one considers out-and-out guessing a kind of ``strategy''.
I wonder what the heck ever happened to real educational TV. When I was a kid there was the ``Discovery'' series (Discovery 67, Discovery 68, etc.), Mr. Wizard, etc. Later on there was another show you could catch on PBS (I think) called something like `Physical Universe' (started out as a lecture but had good illustrative CG graphics to demonstrate the principles being talked about). There was Bronoski's `Ascent of Man', Burke's `Connections', Sagan's `Cosmos', and others. True, those last few aren't exactly kid stuff but at least some kids would find that interesting and I can tell you that my two girls would have found much of them interesting. (Actually, they have seen `Connections' before and thought it was very interesting.) Somebody has already mentioned `Biil Nye the Science Guy' and `Beaker's World' which weren't bad but geared more toward the ADD afflicted to allow kids to really learn very much.
Nowadays, we have Disney hawking `Winnie the Pooh' as educational TV (OK, so they call it `illuminating television'; always good for a belly laugh) and, now, the Survivor clones. At least when I was a kid there were choices that included some educational content. It's gotten to where I think the most important thing that my kids will learn from television is how to turn it off.
They'll just have to rely on NAT like the rest of us do.
Ha! I think I beat even that date. And I still might even have the card deck around. (Though I'm not sure why. :-) )
Declining sales of non-protected CDs could also be the result of declining production of those types of CDs. There was already reported some evidence of this occurring recently (sales were down but so was production and new releases). Once they see that Kenny G fans (who I don't perceive to be the most technically astute; after all, they're Kenny G fans) will continue to buy defective CDs, they'll turn to the next artist that's not popular with people who understand the technical issues. Before too long they have a nice revenue stream and won't need to even create CDs that are popular with `those thieving geeks'.