A couple of errors here. Neutrons are what causes surrounding material to become radioactive, not "high energy states".
You can bombard material with as much energy as you want... heat, light, x-rays, and it won't become radioactive. Such material may be damaged by the energy... that is, heat, light, and x-rays can break ordinary chemical bonds, but it won't make the material radioactive.
But when you carry out a reaction that gives off neutrons, such as in a breeder reactor, then the surrounding material will be bombarded with those neutrons. This is what causes the reactor itself to become radioactive. The reactor itself absorbs neutrons, and the otherwise-normal atoms that make up the surrounding material are changed into unstable isotopes, and break down. The result is that nearly anything that is bombarded with neutrons will itself become radioactive.
The "holy grail" of fusion would be to construct a reactor that fuses hydrogen into helium. This reaction does not give off neutrons, and would not turn the reactor radioactive. This is the theoretical promise of fusion. An ideal fusion reactor would use pure hydrogen as fuel, and emit pure, ordinary helium as a byproduct, along with energy.
Turns out that no one has been able to make a fusion reactor work with ordinary hydrogen, but it is possible to "cheat", and create a fusion reaction using deuterium or tritium. These are hydrogen atoms with either one or two extra neutrons. It's much easier to fuse deuterium then it is to fuse hydrogen, and even easier to fuse tritium, but the downside is that you get neutrons as a side-effect, so the reactor itself becomes radioactive... the same problem as in a fission reactor.
Even this is better then a fission reactor though, because the major waste product of a fission reactor is the used fuel rods. A "dirty" fusion reactor would not generate used fuel rods, but would still become a large, radioactive building over time.
As far as the massive heat released by fusion, this isn't an issue because a fusion reactor works on a tiny, tiny amount of hydrogen at any time.
A fusion reactor is basically a vacuum chamber, with a small amount of hydrogen floating around inside. The vacuum chamber is surrounded by an arrangement of electromagnets. When the electromagnets are turned on, the hydrogen is forced into an extremely thin ring. This is called magnetic compression. In theory, if the magnetic field can be made strong enough, the hydrogen atoms will be compressed together so tightly that they will fuse.
The only way to raise the hydrogen to fusion temperatures is to use a vanishingly small amount of hydrogen at any given time. This makes a fusion reactor safe against meltdown.
When a fission reactor overheats and malfunctions, the core -- all the fuel -- can melt together. When this happens, the nuclear reaction continues, uncontrolled, and the result is Three Mile Island.
If a fusion reactor were to become overheated, and malfunction, it would simply break down and stop. If you were to try and explode a fusion reactor by dumping a lot of hydrogen into a running reactor, the excess hydrogen would quickly absorb the reaction heat, and the reaction would stop. If you were to try and overheat a fusion reactor, you would burst the vacuum chamber, air would rush in, and quench the reaction. In short, a fusion reactor is meltdown-proof, and explosion-proof.
However, the practical problems of building a fusion reactor were discovered in the 50s and have never been surmounted. The biggest problem is that you can compress the hydrogen into a thin ring, but the ring quickly becomes unstable and flies apart. No one has been able to solve the problem of keeping the fusion reaction going once it has started, hence no fusion reactors.
Fusion reactors do NOT have the dangers you describe, however.
In order for there to be an infringement on claim 1, there must be: a plurality of user processes, one process per user accessing the server system;
This does not appear to apply to Apache, because Apache uses a single process to handle multiple requests by different users.
Does anyone know enough about the internal workings of IIS to know if it allocates one process per user, or request? If so, then this patent claim may only be infringed on by sites using Microsoft software.
Claim 2 appears to be infringed on by all web servers that use user logons for any purpose, including slashdot, and that store any user preferences locally.
If so, then the rest of the claims are irrelevant, because it appears impossible to construct a useful web server without infringing claim 2.
No, you now have one year to file for a patent on your idea. If you don't, someone else can. If no one else files within one year, your idea will safely be in the public domain.
The key issue to me is control over the Application Programming Interface, and the ability to create and sustain middleware.
I think that the judge understands this. and I'm hoping that he chooses the correct remedy:
(1) Microsoft should be forced to openly publish all of its APIs.
(2) They should be prohibited from utilizing any API that has not been completely disclosed.
(3) They should be forced to provide correction, clarification and explanation, when the behavior of any API differs from the published specification, or is unclear or appears to be in error.
(4) They should be forced to disclose all new APIs as they are created, to facilitate third parties' efforts to make their software compatable with Microsoft software. Microsoft should NOT be forced to reveal its source code.
This would be bad for the open source movement, because:
(1) It would open free software authors, especially the WINE authors, to charges of copyright infringement. Right now they are in the very powerful position of having NEVER SEEN Microsoft's code, so they have NO cause to claim copyright infringement or misappropriation of trade secrets. In short, they would lose their "clean room".
(2) Programming compatability efforts should always stem from published APIs, rather then Microsoft's buggy code.
Source code alone is NOT an acceptable substitute for published APIs. Just forcing Microsoft to reveal its source code would NOT stop Microsoft from continually shuffling bugs around in order to break competing software. Just being able to see the source code doesn't matter if each OSR release of Windows deliberately breaks your code. You'll still go bankrupt because Microsoft software would continue to work from release to release, while your code would break with each OSR version, and you'll never be able to keep up.
Breaking up Microsoft would not benefit consumers the way that the breakup of Standard Oil benefited customers.
Breaking up an oil company creates a number of different companies, each of which produce an identical, standard product. These companies must then compete on the basis of customer service, product quality, and product pricing.
Microsoft cannot be successfully separated this way.
There are two different scenarios for a breakup of Microsoft:
1) Breakup along product/service lines. The result is several companies with very close ties that are not in competition with each other. Multiple monopolies instead of a single monopoly. This does not benefit consumers.
2) Breakup into several competing companies, each of which obtains the right to all existing Microsoft software. The result would be the fragmentation of all Microsoft programs. Eventually, one of these "baby bill" companies would come out the winner, while the rest of the Microsoft spinoffs wither away and die, and we are left back at square one.
Then the measure is unconstitutional. Fair use is a constitutional issue, and has been interpreted by the courts. Congress has no right to assign the power to issue a binding interpretation of constitutional matters to the Librarian of Congress.
I believe that the prohibition on circumventing copy protection will eventually be found unconstitutional.
However, there appears to be a lot of confusion as to what legal ground we are standing on, and I'd like to start a discussion to shake that out. What legal principles make the creation, distribution, and use of DVD decryption programs legal, and under what circumstances.
Some ideas from a non-lawyer (meself):
First off, programs such as DeCSS and livid cannot be created or distributed for the purpose of unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works. Regardless of what you think about copyright law, and freedom, no court is ever going to sign off on the use of DVD decryption programs for this purpose; it's a counterproductive and losing argument.
However, there are certain legal uses of copyrighted material which become impossible without the utilization of DVD decryption programs.
Let's try this:
DVD decryption and viewing programs are created and distributed to facilitate legal, fair use of copyrighted material, and for the private, legal display of copyrighted material.
FAIR USE:
Section 107 of the United States Copyright Code specifically recognizes the right to extract sections of copyrighted materials for such purposes as criticism, comment, and news reporting.
DVD decryption programs are, by definition, the only method available to the public of accessing a true, accurate, undegraded copy of copyrighted material distributed in the DVD format, for the purposes of legal manipulation of this material for protected free speech activity, including fair use.
In addition, Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright code permits libraries and archives to reproduce copyrighted works in their entirety, for certain purposes. DVD decryption programs are the only method of making a true and accurate copy of such material for this legal purpose.
These rights are recognized in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which contains the following language, with regards to the unauthorized circumvention of copy protection:
OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED: Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.
Therefore, the creation, distribution, and use of DVD decryption software for these legal purposes should, in theory, still be legal.
PRIVATE DISPLAY:
The legal owner of a physical copy of a copyrighted work has the right to view their copy. DVD decryption programs are distributed for the purpose of legal, private viewing of DVD programming.
COMPUTER SOFTWARE:
Section 117 of copyright law:
... it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine, and that it used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that such archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
The contents of a DVD disk consist entirely of computer instructions and data, and therefore should be considered as a computer program for this purpose.
In short, the acquisition and use of a DVD decryption tool is the sole existing method for persons to exercise their rights under copyright law to make a legal backup copy of their DVD software, and to exercise their right to use it in certain computer environments.
Well, first off, you're probably right not to switch over immediately for anything mission-critical. Every new program has bugs that need to be discovered and fixed, and this will be no exception.
I don't agree that journaling FS's are a buzzword, or a fad, though. When they work, they work extremely well -- and invisibly. A good example of a solid, robust journalled filesystem operating system is IBM's AIX. AIX uses the journalled filesystem for everything, including the root partition, and based on my many years experience with these machines, system crashes simply don't break the filesystem.
However, journaling filesystems aren't the end-all. There's still a significant feature set missing from unix filesystems... and that's the concept of work units with commit/rollback.
It works like this... you want to make a bunch of changes to a bunch of files, all at once. However, if the system were to crash while you were in the middle of making these changes, your data files would be in an indeterminate state.
If you had a filesystem with work units, you would start by making a system call to open a work unit, then make your changes. When you are finished, you either make a commit system call, or a rollback call. If the commit ends with a success return code, then all of the changes are guaranteed to be made. If an error occurs in the commit, or you make a rollback call, all of the changes in that work unit are backed off. If the system crashes before you make a commit/rollback, all of your changes are backed off when the system reboots. This gives you fine-grain control over how data changes are made to files in your filesystem. Once you've tried it, you'll never want to go back.
This is a standard database programming technique, but moving the functionality into the operating system gives you a huge programming capability. It lets you write programs with database-grade data integrity as a matter of course, without requiring that you program against a database API.
I was skeptical as to the value of commit/rollback for ordinary filesystem programming, until IBM included them in it's then-new SFS filesystem on VM. Now I consider it one of those great things that will probably take years for the rest of the world to discover and implement.
Nope. The reason that VHS tapes cost around $100.00 when they come out is because they are selling primarily to video stores. A video store is willing to pay $100.00 for a tape, because they are going to rent it out over and over. A few months later, when the video stores are no longer buying copies, the studios lower the price to a level that appeals to individual consumers. It works. Lots of people will rent a movie when it comes out, then buy a copy six months later when the price drops down.
You'll notice that some trashy blockbuster movies are being initially priced at sell-through prices. It's all a matter of the studios maximizing their income. If they think that no one is going to care about "Godzilla" six months from now, then it's in their best interests to sell as many copies as they can now. It's just marketing.
Security through obscurity is more like hiding a copy of your front door key under the little gnome statue in your rock garden, then hoping that no one thinks to look there. Of course, that's the first place a professional thief is going to look.
Simply speaking, copy protection schemes just don't work. If you allow access to the data to anyone for any reason, someone is going to find a crack for it. I don't care how good your copy protection scheme is.
There's one exception to this, and that's if the company goes out of business before anyone has the time or interest to hack their copy protection. i.e. DIVX.
What -- they are going to stop pressing DVDs, (which are much cheaper then VHS cassettes to produce, bring in higher profits, and can only be stored on a recordable medium that costs more then the prerecorded DVD), and continue manufacturing VHS cassettes, which are bulky, more expensive to produce and ship to market, and are easily copyable onto a blank medium that costs 1/3 to 1/5 the cost of the prerecorded tape?
They're just mad because they were promised by the technical people that this encryption system was SO perfect that it would make it impossible for anyone to ever copy any part of a DVD. The pesky problem of "fair use" wouldn't be an issue, because fair use would have become technically impossible.
Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world doesn't seem to share their vision of the future of recordable media.
Yeah, well here in the U.S. when our children go to school, our teachers turn their classes over to the drug police, so the children can learn bigotry toward drug users and how to turn their parents in to the police. We call it D.A.R.E.
If I were doing it I wouldn't have it on wheels. I'd have it buried about wing level, with hedges and flower gardens around the perimeter. Low profile. But that's just me:) I like his ambition. One man, one wacky idea.
One way to hack this system would be to bring a tank of compressed air. Aim the valve at the temperature sensor and give it a blast. Whoosh! Instant sub-freezing air. Watch the price drop from $1.00 to $0.50. Now buy your drink.
Reminds me of when a close friend was living in a rent-controlled apartment in Washington DC -- with heat included.
Their apartment was freezing cold. They could never get enough heat. The landlord said that the thermostat was correctly set to the minimum required temperature, and there was nothing he would do.
Eventually, she wound up calling a city tenant-landlord bureau. After a few minutes of conversation, the person on the other end asked here this:
"Look at the thermostat"
"ok..."
"Is there a lightbulb near the thermostat?"
"Yes. There's a light about a foot above it... Ohhhhh... that dirty little...
"Try unscrewing the bulb."
For the rest of the winter, they simply hung bags of ice over the thermostat, and enjoyed the tropical climate.
First off, I just want to say that this is the most reasonable lawyer-letter I have ever seen. No threats. No references to "treble damages."
They explained the issue in non-threatening, plain english, and requested -- not demanded -- that the site be changed.
Such civil behavior should be commended! Especially in this day and age.
What is at issue here is the 1996 Federal Trademark Anti-Dilution Law -- the sort of law that makes lawyers' eyes dance with visions of long trials and big paychecks. It's a very vague law.
This law provides special protection to "famous" trademarks -- and the definition of "famous" is left to be battled over in court.
In summary, you are perfectly free to start a company to manufacture "Apple Golf Balls" without infringing on Apple Computer's trademark, because, basically, Apple's holds the trademark for the word "apple" in computer products/services, but they never manufactured golf balls. That's why "Clue Computing" can coexist with Hasbro's "Clue" game. Clue Computing trades in computer products/services, while Hasbro trades in board games. Trademark ordinarily refers to the combination of a mark, and a specific trade.
Under the new law, this does not apply to "famous" trademarks. So, you could not start marketing "Kodak Golf Balls", because the court would rule that since the trademark "Kodak" is so deeply associated with the Kodak film company, the word "Kodak" on other products, such as golf balls, would create market confusion. If you saw "Kodak Golf Balls" in a store, you would probably think, "When did Kodak start manufacturing golf balls?"
What IDG is claiming is that their "... for dummies" trademark is now so famous that anything in the world with "... for dummies" will cause market confusion with their line of books, etc.
Whether this is true or not would be a matter for the courts to decide. However...
One provision of the 1996 law states that in order for use of a famous trademark to be dilutive, the defendant must make commercial use of the mark. I don't think that IDG would be able to prove this, because I don't think that it happened.
They were under the mistaken impression that the "... for dummies" title was the name of a chat room. If this was the case, then they MIGHT have a case, if they could show that the person who created the chat room was attempting to draw in readers, by using the public association between the "... for dummies" trademark with the idea of a tutorial book aimed at beginners, and was providing a tutorial work on Sendmail.
However, this was a simple message in a message thread, where the author idly wishes for a "Sendmail for dummies" book, that does not exist. There's no commercial use of the mark. The author of the article wasn't using the mark to draw in readers, or to sell products.
So I think that IDG isn't justified in pursuing the matter.
If they break binary compatability with the Linux world, then they are going to be cutting themselves off from all of the applications that people want that are only available in binary form (Netscape, for instance)
If they break source compilable compatability, then they're going to have an operating system with either no applications, or they are going to have to start modifying applications themselves, and they will NEVER keep up with the rest of the world.
Either way, eventually, customers are going to become frustrated when new versions of Linux applications become available, but they can't use them because their hacked up Linux kernel won't support them.
Here's my "trailblazing" analogy.
Think of the evolution of Linux as trailblazing a new road.
In the front lines, there are people off, hacking through the brush, trying different paths. Some paths are better then others. Some people wander off on obscure paths and are never heard from again. Others find good, safe, productive paths and bring back maps and suggest that the main road run that way.
In the second line, group leaders such as Torvalds and Cox look at the trailblazers' work and decide where to lay the main road.
In the third line, millions of users follow along, driving on the nicely paved road.
They don't HAVE to drive on the big, paved road -- There's always trails that lead off the main road, but those roads have more potholes, and usually aren't maintained very well, and they're lonely roads, and if you went that way you might run out of gas and become stranded.
But there's nothing to stop someone from building a new, parallel road, and making it enticing enough that it renders the old road obsolete, much as the interstate highway system destroyed the commercial viability of old roads like Route 66.
But considering that much of the attraction of Linux is in the culture, and the freedom from propriatary code forking, I don't see this happening in the near future.
Go read the legal papers on clue.com, and the legislation.
The legislation does NOT merely ban registering a domain name for the sole perpose of reselling it to the trademark owner. It bans registering a domain name if the owner has a "bad faith intent to profit from that trademark"
That is exactly what Hasbro was accusing clue.com of doing.
Hasbro accused Clue Computing of deliberately using their web site to trade on and dilute the value of their "Clue" game trademark.
From the lawsuit:
14. CCI's commercial use of the Internet domain name "clue.com" in connection with its Internet site has caused and will continue to cause dilution of the distinctive quality of the CLUE mark.
Obviously they weren't. They weren't providing an online "Clue" game, which is the purpose that Hasbro was trying to steal the name for. They were providing a web site for their computer consulting business.
That didn't stop them from being sued, and it didn't stop Hasbro from falsely accusing them of trying to profit on the "Clue" board game trademark.
Based on your comment, I don't think that you have any understanding of how dangerous and misguided this legislation is.
Were this case to be tried under this new legislation, the owner of clue.com would be in serious jeopardy.
If Hasbro were suing under this new legislation, in order to secure a conviction, and a $100,000 fine, Hasbro would merely have to convince the court that clue.com was somehow, in any aspect whatsoever, acting in "bad faith", and also convince the court that the web site diluted the value of the trademark.
Fortunately, the court made the correct decision. However, had the court made an incorrect decision, clue.com would have been assigned to Hasbro. That would have been bad, but under this new law, clue.com would have been assigned to Hasbro, and Clue Computing would have been likely forced into bankruptcy with a fine from $1,000 to $100,000.
One of the other trademarks Hasbro registered was "battleship.com". Let's say that you were a military warship buff, and long ago registered "battleship.com" as a site to display your collected pictures and information about warships. Along comes Hasbro in 1999, and brings a lawsuit against you. Are you going to fight it on general principles? How about if the fine is $100,000.00.
Yeah, and when they threaten to take you to court, and you find out that if they win, you could be fined $100,000.00, you are going to be MUCH less likely to stand by your principles.
In short, this bill puts a huge weapon in the hands of big corporations to intimidate the little guys and force them to give up their domain names.
Would the guy who successfully won the battle over "clue.com" have done so if the stakes were so high?
Slashdot Mirror
Song titles are NOT copyrightable. Well established by case law.
Apparently Republic claims copyright on the music. See:
Article 1
Article 2
A couple of errors here. Neutrons are what causes surrounding material to become radioactive, not "high energy states".
... heat, light, x-rays, and it won't become radioactive. Such material may be damaged by the energy ... that is, heat, light, and x-rays can break ordinary chemical bonds, but it won't make the material radioactive.
... the same problem as in a fission reactor.
You can bombard material with as much energy as you want
But when you carry out a reaction that gives off neutrons, such as in a breeder reactor, then the surrounding material will be bombarded with those neutrons. This is what causes the reactor itself to become radioactive. The reactor itself absorbs neutrons, and the otherwise-normal atoms that make up the surrounding material are changed into unstable isotopes, and break down. The result is that nearly anything that is bombarded with neutrons will itself become radioactive.
The "holy grail" of fusion would be to construct a reactor that fuses hydrogen into helium. This reaction does not give off neutrons, and would not turn the reactor radioactive. This is the theoretical promise of fusion. An ideal fusion reactor would use pure hydrogen as fuel, and emit pure, ordinary helium as a byproduct, along with energy.
Turns out that no one has been able to make a fusion reactor work with ordinary hydrogen, but it is possible to "cheat", and create a fusion reaction using deuterium or tritium. These are hydrogen atoms with either one or two extra neutrons. It's much easier to fuse deuterium then it is to fuse hydrogen, and even easier to fuse tritium, but the downside is that you get neutrons as a side-effect, so the reactor itself becomes radioactive
Even this is better then a fission reactor though, because the major waste product of a fission reactor is the used fuel rods. A "dirty" fusion reactor would not generate used fuel rods, but would still become a large, radioactive building over time.
As far as the massive heat released by fusion, this isn't an issue because a fusion reactor works on a tiny, tiny amount of hydrogen at any time.
A fusion reactor is basically a vacuum chamber, with a small amount of hydrogen floating around inside. The vacuum chamber is surrounded by an arrangement of electromagnets. When the electromagnets are turned on, the hydrogen is forced into an extremely thin ring. This is called magnetic compression. In theory, if the magnetic field can be made strong enough, the hydrogen atoms will be compressed together so tightly that they will fuse.
The only way to raise the hydrogen to fusion temperatures is to use a vanishingly small amount of hydrogen at any given time. This makes a fusion reactor safe against meltdown.
When a fission reactor overheats and malfunctions, the core -- all the fuel -- can melt together. When this happens, the nuclear reaction continues, uncontrolled, and the result is Three Mile Island.
If a fusion reactor were to become overheated, and malfunction, it would simply break down and stop.
If you were to try and explode a fusion reactor by dumping a lot of hydrogen into a running reactor, the excess hydrogen would quickly absorb the reaction heat, and the reaction would stop. If you were to try and overheat a fusion reactor, you would burst the vacuum chamber, air would rush in, and quench the reaction. In short, a fusion reactor is meltdown-proof, and explosion-proof.
However, the practical problems of building a fusion reactor were discovered in the 50s and have never been surmounted. The biggest problem is that you can compress the hydrogen into a thin ring, but the ring quickly becomes unstable and flies apart. No one has been able to solve the problem of keeping the fusion reaction going once it has started, hence no fusion reactors.
Fusion reactors do NOT have the dangers you describe, however.
"Your Rights Online" should be red ... 'cause by the time I'm finished reading one of those articles I'm usually seeing red anyway.
In order for there to be an infringement on claim 1, there must be:
a plurality of user processes, one process per user accessing the server system;
This does not appear to apply to Apache, because Apache uses a single process to handle multiple requests by different users.
Does anyone know enough about the internal workings of IIS to know if it allocates one process per user, or request? If so, then this patent claim may only be infringed on by sites using Microsoft software.
Claim 2 appears to be infringed on by all web servers that use user logons for any purpose, including slashdot, and that store any user preferences locally.
If so, then the rest of the claims are irrelevant, because it appears impossible to construct a useful web server without infringing claim 2.
No, you now have one year to file for a patent on your idea. If you don't, someone else can. If no one else files within one year, your idea will safely be in the public domain.
- John
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was, hmm ... I'll bet I can find an enigma machine on eBay.
Yep!
The key issue to me is control over the Application Programming Interface, and the ability to create and sustain middleware.
I think that the judge understands this. and I'm hoping that he chooses the correct remedy:
(1) Microsoft should be forced to openly publish all of its APIs.
(2) They should be prohibited from utilizing any API that has not been completely disclosed.
(3) They should be forced to provide correction, clarification and explanation, when the behavior of any API differs from the published specification, or is unclear or appears to be in error.
(4) They should be forced to disclose all new APIs as they are created, to facilitate third parties' efforts to make their software compatable with Microsoft software.
Microsoft should NOT be forced to reveal its source code.
This would be bad for the open source movement, because:
(1) It would open free software authors, especially the WINE authors, to charges of copyright infringement. Right now they are in the very powerful position of having NEVER SEEN Microsoft's code, so they have NO cause to claim copyright infringement or misappropriation of trade secrets. In short, they would lose their "clean room".
(2) Programming compatability efforts should always stem from published APIs, rather then Microsoft's buggy code.
Source code alone is NOT an acceptable substitute for published APIs. Just forcing Microsoft to reveal its source code would NOT stop Microsoft from continually shuffling bugs around in order to break competing software. Just being able to see the source code doesn't matter if each OSR release of Windows deliberately breaks your code. You'll still go bankrupt because Microsoft software would continue to work from release to release, while your code would break with each OSR version, and you'll never be able to keep up.
Breaking up Microsoft would not benefit consumers the way that the breakup of Standard Oil benefited customers.
Breaking up an oil company creates a number of different companies, each of which produce an identical, standard product. These companies must then compete on the basis of customer service, product quality, and product pricing.
Microsoft cannot be successfully separated this way.
There are two different scenarios for a breakup of Microsoft:
1) Breakup along product/service lines. The result is several companies with very close ties that are not in competition with each other. Multiple monopolies instead of a single monopoly. This does not benefit consumers.
2) Breakup into several competing companies, each of which obtains the right to all existing Microsoft software. The result would be the fragmentation of all Microsoft programs. Eventually, one of these "baby bill" companies would come out the winner, while the rest of the Microsoft spinoffs wither away and die, and we are left back at square one.
Then the measure is unconstitutional. Fair use is a constitutional issue, and has been interpreted by the courts. Congress has no right to assign the power to issue a binding interpretation of constitutional matters to the Librarian of Congress.
I believe that the prohibition on circumventing copy protection will eventually be found unconstitutional.
However, there appears to be a lot of confusion as to what legal ground we are standing on, and I'd like to start a discussion to shake that out. What legal principles make the creation, distribution, and use of DVD decryption programs legal, and under what circumstances.
Some ideas from a non-lawyer (meself):
First off, programs such as DeCSS and livid cannot be created or distributed for the purpose of unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works. Regardless of what you think about copyright law, and freedom, no court is ever going to sign off on the use of DVD decryption programs for this purpose; it's a counterproductive and losing argument.
However, there are certain legal uses of copyrighted material which become impossible without the utilization of DVD decryption programs.
Let's try this:
DVD decryption and viewing programs are created and distributed to facilitate legal, fair use of copyrighted material, and for the private, legal display of copyrighted material.
FAIR USE:
Section 107 of the United States Copyright Code specifically recognizes the right to extract sections of copyrighted materials for such purposes as criticism, comment, and news reporting.
DVD decryption programs are, by definition, the only method available to the public of accessing a true, accurate, undegraded copy of copyrighted material distributed in the DVD format, for the purposes of legal manipulation of this material for protected free speech activity, including fair use.
In addition, Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright code permits libraries and archives to reproduce copyrighted works in their entirety, for certain purposes. DVD decryption programs are the only method of making a true and accurate copy of such material for this legal purpose.
These rights are recognized in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which contains the following language, with regards to the unauthorized circumvention of copy protection:
OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED: Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.
Therefore, the creation, distribution, and use of DVD decryption software for these legal purposes should, in theory, still be legal.
PRIVATE DISPLAY:
The legal owner of a physical copy of a copyrighted work has the right to view their copy.
DVD decryption programs are distributed for the purpose of legal, private viewing of DVD programming.
COMPUTER SOFTWARE:
Section 117 of copyright law:
... it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine, and that it used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that such archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
The contents of a DVD disk consist entirely of computer instructions and data, and therefore should be considered as a computer program for this purpose.
In short, the acquisition and use of a DVD decryption tool is the sole existing method for persons to exercise their rights under copyright law to make a legal backup copy of their DVD software, and to exercise their right to use it in certain computer environments.
Comments?
They don't call 'em the west coast mafia for nothing.
Well, first off, you're probably right not to switch over immediately for anything mission-critical. Every new program has bugs that need to be discovered and fixed, and this will be no exception.
... and that's the concept of work units with commit/rollback.
... you want to make a bunch of changes to a bunch of files, all at once. However, if the system were to crash while you were in the middle of making these changes, your data files would be in an indeterminate state.
I don't agree that journaling FS's are a buzzword, or a fad, though. When they work, they work extremely well -- and invisibly. A good example of a solid, robust journalled filesystem operating system is IBM's AIX. AIX uses the journalled filesystem for everything, including the root partition, and based on my many years experience with these machines, system crashes simply don't break the filesystem.
However, journaling filesystems aren't the end-all. There's still a significant feature set missing from unix filesystems
It works like this
If you had a filesystem with work units, you would start by making a system call to open a work unit, then make your changes. When you are finished, you either make a commit system call, or a rollback call. If the commit ends with a success return code, then all of the changes are guaranteed to be made. If an error occurs in the commit, or you make a rollback call, all of the changes in that work unit are backed off. If the system crashes before you make a commit/rollback, all of your changes are backed off when the system reboots. This gives you fine-grain control over how data changes are made to files in your filesystem. Once you've tried it, you'll never want to go back.
This is a standard database programming technique, but moving the functionality into the operating system gives you a huge programming capability. It lets you write programs with database-grade data integrity as a matter of course, without requiring that you program against a database API.
I was skeptical as to the value of commit/rollback for ordinary filesystem programming, until IBM included them in it's then-new SFS filesystem on VM. Now I consider it one of those great things that will probably take years for the rest of the world to discover and implement.
- John
Nope. The reason that VHS tapes cost around $100.00 when they come out is because they are selling primarily to video stores. A video store is willing to pay $100.00 for a tape, because they are going to rent it out over and over. A few months later, when the video stores are no longer buying copies, the studios lower the price to a level that appeals to individual consumers. It works. Lots of people will rent a movie when it comes out, then buy a copy six months later when the price drops down.
You'll notice that some trashy blockbuster movies are being initially priced at sell-through prices. It's all a matter of the studios maximizing their income. If they think that no one is going to care about "Godzilla" six months from now, then it's in their best interests to sell as many copies as they can now. It's just marketing.
What if someone made a robot that could feed on larger things? Mice? Cats? HUMANS?
Such a robot would require an advanced neural network for its intelligence. I wonder if a cluster of slug brains would work.
Now THAT would rock!
er ... "Beoslug"
Security through obscurity is more like hiding a copy of your front door key under the little gnome statue in your rock garden, then hoping that no one thinks to look there. Of course, that's the first place a professional thief is going to look.
Simply speaking, copy protection schemes just don't work. If you allow access to the data to anyone for any reason, someone is going to find a crack for it. I don't care how good your copy protection scheme is.
There's one exception to this, and that's if the company goes out of business before anyone has the time or interest to hack their copy protection. i.e. DIVX.
What -- they are going to stop pressing DVDs, (which are much cheaper then VHS cassettes to produce, bring in higher profits, and can only be stored on a recordable medium that costs more then the prerecorded DVD), and continue manufacturing VHS cassettes, which are bulky, more expensive to produce and ship to market, and are easily copyable onto a blank medium that costs 1/3 to 1/5 the cost of the prerecorded tape?
They're just mad because they were promised by the technical people that this encryption system was SO perfect that it would make it impossible for anyone to ever copy any part of a DVD. The pesky problem of "fair use" wouldn't be an issue, because fair use would have become technically impossible.
Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world doesn't seem to share their vision of the future of recordable media.
Yeah, well here in the U.S. when our children go to school, our teachers turn their classes over to the drug police, so the children can learn bigotry toward drug users and how to turn their parents in to the police. We call it D.A.R.E.
If I were doing it I wouldn't have it on wheels. I'd have it buried about wing level, with hedges and flower gardens around the perimeter. Low profile. But that's just me :) I like his ambition. One man, one wacky idea.
One way to hack this system would be to bring a tank of compressed air. Aim the valve at the temperature sensor and give it a blast. Whoosh! Instant sub-freezing air. Watch the price drop from $1.00 to $0.50. Now buy your drink.
..."
... Ohhhhh ... that dirty little ...
... ripoffs go both ways.
Reminds me of when a close friend was living in a rent-controlled apartment in Washington DC -- with heat included.
Their apartment was freezing cold. They could never get enough heat. The landlord said that the thermostat was correctly set to the minimum required temperature, and there was nothing he would do.
Eventually, she wound up calling a city tenant-landlord bureau. After a few minutes of conversation, the person on the other end asked here this:
"Look at the thermostat"
"ok
"Is there a lightbulb near the thermostat?"
"Yes. There's a light about a foot above it
"Try unscrewing the bulb."
For the rest of the winter, they simply hung bags of ice over the thermostat, and enjoyed the tropical climate.
Hey
- John
First off, I just want to say that this is the most reasonable lawyer-letter I have ever seen. No threats. No references to "treble damages."
...
t ters-9904.html
They explained the issue in non-threatening, plain english, and requested -- not demanded -- that the site be changed.
Such civil behavior should be commended! Especially in this day and age.
What is at issue here is the 1996 Federal Trademark Anti-Dilution Law -- the sort of law that makes lawyers' eyes dance with visions of long trials and big paychecks. It's a very vague law.
This law provides special protection to "famous" trademarks -- and the definition of "famous" is left to be battled over in court.
In summary, you are perfectly free to start a company to manufacture "Apple Golf Balls" without infringing on Apple Computer's trademark, because, basically, Apple's holds the trademark for the word "apple" in computer products/services, but they never manufactured golf balls. That's why "Clue Computing" can coexist with Hasbro's "Clue" game. Clue Computing trades in computer products/services, while Hasbro trades in board games. Trademark ordinarily refers to the combination of a mark, and a specific trade.
Under the new law, this does not apply to "famous" trademarks. So, you could not start marketing "Kodak Golf Balls", because the court would rule that since the trademark "Kodak" is so deeply associated with the Kodak film company, the word "Kodak" on other products, such as golf balls, would create market confusion. If you saw "Kodak Golf Balls" in a store, you would probably think, "When did Kodak start manufacturing golf balls?"
What IDG is claiming is that their "... for dummies" trademark is now so famous that anything in the world with "... for dummies" will cause market confusion with their line of books, etc.
Whether this is true or not would be a matter for the courts to decide. However
One provision of the 1996 law states that in order for use of a famous trademark to be dilutive, the defendant must make commercial use of the mark. I don't think that IDG would be able to prove this, because I don't think that it happened.
They were under the mistaken impression that the "... for dummies" title was the name of a chat room. If this was the case, then they MIGHT have a case, if they could show that the person who created the chat room was attempting to draw in readers, by using the public association between the "... for dummies" trademark with the idea of a tutorial book aimed at beginners, and was providing a tutorial work on Sendmail.
However, this was a simple message in a message thread, where the author idly wishes for a "Sendmail for dummies" book, that does not exist. There's no commercial use of the mark. The author of the article wasn't using the mark to draw in readers, or to sell products.
So I think that IDG isn't justified in pursuing the matter.
Reference:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/ma
If they break binary compatability with the Linux world, then they are going to be cutting themselves off from all of the applications that people want that are only available in binary form (Netscape, for instance)
If they break source compilable compatability, then they're going to have an operating system with either no applications, or they are going to have to start modifying applications themselves, and they will NEVER keep up with the rest of the world.
Either way, eventually, customers are going to become frustrated when new versions of Linux applications become available, but they can't use them because their hacked up Linux kernel won't support them.
Here's my "trailblazing" analogy.
Think of the evolution of Linux as trailblazing a new road.
In the front lines, there are people off, hacking through the brush, trying different paths. Some paths are better then others. Some people wander off on obscure paths and are never heard from again. Others find good, safe, productive paths and bring back maps and suggest that the main road run that way.
In the second line, group leaders such as Torvalds and Cox look at the trailblazers' work and decide where to lay the main road.
In the third line, millions of users follow along, driving on the nicely paved road.
They don't HAVE to drive on the big, paved road --
There's always trails that lead off the main road, but those roads have more potholes, and usually aren't maintained very well, and they're lonely roads, and if you went that way you might run out of gas and become stranded.
But there's nothing to stop someone from building a new, parallel road, and making it enticing enough that it renders the old road obsolete, much as the interstate highway system destroyed the commercial viability of old roads like Route 66.
But considering that much of the attraction of Linux is in the culture, and the freedom from propriatary code forking, I don't see this happening in the near future.
Go read the legal papers on clue.com, and the legislation.
The legislation does NOT merely ban registering a domain name for the sole perpose of reselling it to the trademark owner. It bans registering a domain name if the owner has a "bad faith intent to profit from that trademark"
That is exactly what Hasbro was accusing clue.com of doing.
Hasbro accused Clue Computing of deliberately using their web site to trade on and dilute the value of their "Clue" game trademark.
From the lawsuit:
14. CCI's commercial use of the Internet domain name "clue.com" in connection with its Internet site has caused and will continue to cause dilution of the distinctive quality of the CLUE mark.
Obviously they weren't. They weren't providing an online "Clue" game, which is the purpose that Hasbro was trying to steal the name for. They were providing a web site for their computer consulting business.
That didn't stop them from being sued, and it didn't stop Hasbro from falsely accusing them of trying to profit on the "Clue" board game trademark.
Based on your comment, I don't think that you have any understanding of how dangerous and misguided this legislation is.
Were this case to be tried under this new legislation, the owner of clue.com would be in serious jeopardy.
If Hasbro were suing under this new legislation, in order to secure a conviction, and a $100,000 fine, Hasbro would merely have to convince the court that clue.com was somehow, in any aspect whatsoever, acting in "bad faith", and also convince the court that the web site diluted the value of the trademark.
Fortunately, the court made the correct decision. However, had the court made an incorrect decision, clue.com would have been assigned to Hasbro. That would have been bad, but under this new law, clue.com would have been assigned to Hasbro, and Clue Computing would have been likely forced into bankruptcy with a fine from $1,000 to $100,000.
One of the other trademarks Hasbro registered was "battleship.com". Let's say that you were a military warship buff, and long ago registered "battleship.com" as a site to display your collected pictures and information about warships. Along comes Hasbro in 1999, and brings a lawsuit against you. Are you going to fight it on general principles? How about if the fine is $100,000.00.
- John
Yeah, and when they threaten to take you to court, and you find out that if they win, you could be fined $100,000.00, you are going to be MUCH less likely to stand by your principles.
In short, this bill puts a huge weapon in the hands of big corporations to intimidate the little guys and force them to give up their domain names.
Would the guy who successfully won the battle over "clue.com" have done so if the stakes were so high?