On point one, if I understand it correctly, the new law will be retroactive, so Mitnick is a terrorist and consequently the USA harbours at least one terrorist.
And to the the second point: according to Those convicted of providing "advice or assistance" to cyber crooks, or harboring or concealing a computer intruder would of course include everone that is infected by a worm or just not being uptodate with the neccessary patches.
And what you did forget, what about those that know about some exploits? If they tell about it, someone could use the information to break into some systems, if they don't tell, they make it easier for those that know and want to do something bad, and thus also assisting the cyber crooks
Really scary, we must hope for the sake of all computer users worldwide that this law will not be passed in this form, or else nearly everone with a computer will be guilty oneway or another.
The DMCA is the root of the evil here. If Adobe had not started it, some other big corporation would have soon. Getting the protest focused against the DMCA is more important than fighting Adobe.
Remember that Nokia got really big in the cellphone business. They don't sell many phones directly to the consumers, instead they sell them to phonecompanies, which then sell them to the enduser for a fraction of the price. The enduser has to sign a contract to use their services for a minimum time, like 6 months or a year.
They can do the same with the OST, maybe with cabletv and internet providers instead of phonecompanies, but in these days they are basically the same corporations.
A quote: Forslaget indebærer, at der kun gives adgang til kopiering af tekst, musik og billeder m.v. i digital form til personlig brug f.eks. med henblik på optagelse af
radio- og tv-udsendelser til tidsforskudt brug, kopiering af en musik-cd til bilen, til sommerhuset eller til en walkman, kopiering til en opsamlings-cd og kopiering til en pc med henblik på elektronisk afvikling inden for husstanden. Derimod vil det ikke være tilladt at fremstille digitale eksemplarer, der bruges uden for den enkelte husstand, f.eks. kopiering til bekendte og skolekammerater. Det vil heller ikke være tilladt for køberen af et digitalt leveret musikværk at videresende musikværket via e-mail til venner og bekendte. Kopiering til personlig brug omfatter endvidere ikke kopiering som led i arbejde eller
undervisning.
A rough translation: The proposal implies that it only will be allowed to make copies of text, music and pictures and so forth, in digital form for personal use, for example the recording of radio- and tv-broadcasts for timeshifting, copying af music-cd's for the car, holidayresidence or for a walkman, copying of sample-cd's for use in the household. It will not be allowed to make digital copies, that will be used outside of the individual household, f.ex. copying for friends and schoolmates. It will further not be allowed for the buyer of a digital musicproduct to give away copies to to friends or aqaintances via email. Further copying for personal use does not imply copying related to work or studies.
So I don't see how this can legalize Napster, it will only decriminalize the downloading, but the users are not allowed to share their collection with the work, and isn't that the purpose of Napster?
But at least it will be legal to use a Browser in Denmark now, because the existing law prohibits all digital copying, and as you all know, a browser allways makes digital copies, one in the RAM-cache and one on the disk-cache. That was an oversight in the old law, and it was never uphold.
However, if someone sees the piece of code that I wrote, and decided they liked it, they can't use it unless they place their code under the GPL. I wrote the patch, and probably wouldn't object to this, but they can't simply because of a licencing irregularity.
Nothing stops you from releasing it under a dual license, if you do not mind that somebody takes your patch and uses it in a closed source project.
Of course the patch has to be useful in itself whithout the code the patch is against. And you should propably not assign the copyright to the project or the FSF. I do not think that you can dual license it when you do not hold the copyright anymore.
I like the idea of explaining everything to the user, instead of hiding the complexity.
There should be nontrivial questions after each step performed, so that the next step only will be started if the user has sufficient knowledge about the subject. And to make things harder, there should be a large enough pool of questions, so that after a wrong answer, you would get a different question:-)
And when the install is finally finished, it should be possiply to print out a fine diploma, whith the users name, the systems specifications, and the time it took to complete the install
MODIFICATION OF THESE TERMS OF USE
Microsoft reserves the right to change the terms, conditions, and notices under which the Passport Web Site and services are offered. You are responsible for regularly reviewing
these terms and conditions. Continued use of the Passport Web Site or services after any such changes shall constitute your consent to such changes.
So they basically can change anything they want, because they know that nearly noone will read the agreement again at a later time. That is really smart. Make a contract with someone under the condition that you can change anything, without telling the other party directly. And when they dont check for changes themself, they automatically consent to the changes.
That will help against harddisk crashes. But what if don't need the data anymore for the moment, but maybe again next year. Or what if a user made a mistake and modified some data in a not so fortunate way and you need the files, like the where a week ago?
Under these circumstances tape-backups a quite handy.
Slashdot Mirror
Very insightfull post I must say.
On point one, if I understand it correctly, the new law will be retroactive, so Mitnick is a terrorist and consequently the USA harbours at least one terrorist.
And to the the second point: according to Those convicted of providing "advice or assistance" to cyber crooks, or harboring or concealing a computer intruder would of course include everone that is infected by a worm or just not being uptodate with the neccessary patches.
And what you did forget, what about those that know about some exploits? If they tell about it, someone could use the information to break into some systems, if they don't tell, they make it easier for those that know and want to do something bad, and thus also assisting the cyber crooks
Really scary, we must hope for the sake of all computer users worldwide that this law will not be passed in this form, or else nearly everone with a computer will be guilty oneway or another.
The DMCA is the root of the evil here. If Adobe had not started it, some other big corporation would have soon. Getting the protest focused against the DMCA is more important than fighting Adobe.
Remember that Nokia got really big in the cellphone business. They don't sell many phones directly to the consumers, instead they sell them to phonecompanies, which then sell them to the enduser for a fraction of the price. The enduser has to sign a contract to use their services for a minimum time, like 6 months or a year.
They can do the same with the OST, maybe with cabletv and internet providers instead of phonecompanies, but in these days they are basically the same corporations.
You can read the lawproposal online at Forslag til lov om ændring af ophavsretsloven., it will help you if you understand danish, because there are no translations.
A quote: Forslaget indebærer, at der kun gives adgang til kopiering af tekst, musik og billeder m.v. i digital form til personlig brug f.eks. med henblik på optagelse af radio- og tv-udsendelser til tidsforskudt brug, kopiering af en musik-cd til bilen, til sommerhuset eller til en walkman, kopiering til en opsamlings-cd og kopiering til en pc med henblik på elektronisk afvikling inden for husstanden. Derimod vil det ikke være tilladt at fremstille digitale eksemplarer, der bruges uden for den enkelte husstand, f.eks. kopiering til bekendte og skolekammerater. Det vil heller ikke være tilladt for køberen af et digitalt leveret musikværk at videresende musikværket via e-mail til venner og bekendte. Kopiering til personlig brug omfatter endvidere ikke kopiering som led i arbejde eller undervisning.
A rough translation: The proposal implies that it only will be allowed to make copies of text, music and pictures and so forth, in digital form for personal use, for example the recording of radio- and tv-broadcasts for timeshifting, copying af music-cd's for the car, holidayresidence or for a walkman, copying of sample-cd's for use in the household. It will not be allowed to make digital copies, that will be used outside of the individual household, f.ex. copying for friends and schoolmates. It will further not be allowed for the buyer of a digital musicproduct to give away copies to to friends or aqaintances via email. Further copying for personal use does not imply copying related to work or studies.
So I don't see how this can legalize Napster, it will only decriminalize the downloading, but the users are not allowed to share their collection with the work, and isn't that the purpose of Napster?But at least it will be legal to use a Browser in Denmark now, because the existing law prohibits all digital copying, and as you all know, a browser allways makes digital copies, one in the RAM-cache and one on the disk-cache. That was an oversight in the old law, and it was never uphold.
Nothing stops you from releasing it under a dual license, if you do not mind that somebody takes your patch and uses it in a closed source project.
Of course the patch has to be useful in itself whithout the code the patch is against. And you should propably not assign the copyright to the project or the FSF. I do not think that you can dual license it when you do not hold the copyright anymore.There should be nontrivial questions after each step performed, so that the next step only will be started if the user has sufficient knowledge about the subject. And to make things harder, there should be a large enough pool of questions, so that after a wrong answer, you would get a different question :-)
And when the install is finally finished, it should be possiply to print out a fine diploma, whith the users name, the systems specifications, and the time it took to complete the install
So they basically can change anything they want, because they know that nearly noone will read the agreement again at a later time.
That is really smart. Make a contract with someone under the condition that you can change anything, without telling the other party directly. And when they dont check for changes themself, they automatically consent to the changes.
That will help against harddisk crashes. But what if don't need the data anymore for the moment, but maybe again next year. Or what if a user made a mistake and modified some data in a not so fortunate way and you need the files, like the where a week ago?
Under these circumstances tape-backups a quite handy.