Actually, fair use comes from the First Amendment. The concept of fair use was judicially created, and recognized long before it was codified when the copyright laws were rewritten in 1976.
Let me explain.
Copyright places a restriction on speech -- specifically, the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech. However, the First Amendment, passed after the original Constitution, outlaws the suppression of speech. It is a general principle of law that if a new law is passed that contradicts an older law, then that new law is considered to have superceeded or struck down the old law.
So, the courts were faced with a dilemma. Either the First Amendment had outlawed the granting of copyrights, or some interpretation needed to be found that would allow the two to coexist. This led to the concept of "fair use" -- which essentially restricts copyright holders to controlling commercial use of their works. This is consistant with the doctrine that commercial speech may be less protected then expressive or non-commercial speech.
So fair use serves a very important Constitutional role -- it is the doctrine that allows copyright to coexist with the First Amendment. It is NOT merely a statutory grant.
Question: Why would you be using your computer and television at the same time.
Answer: You are probably watching a television program, and surfing the web during commercials.
Question: Why would I want to install CueTV?
Answer: After installing the CueTV software, you won't be able to use your computer during commercials,
because the software will keep interrupting what you are doing to send you to advertising sites.
The RIAA does NOT have that right - they are lying
on
RIAA to DoS Pirates?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I've read through the statute, and I think that the RIAA is attempting an enormous bluff.
It seems to me that for the RIAA to attempt to hack into someone's internet-connected computer and disable it is clearly illegal under current law:
18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C)
(a) Whoever - (5)(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
An internet-connected server would appear to be a "Protected computer" under the definition in 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(B)
(e) As used in this section - (2) the term ''protected computer'' means a computer - (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication;"
"Damage" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(8)(A):
(e) As used in this section - (8) the term ''damage'' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that - (A) causes loss aggregating at least $5,000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals;
If the RIAA really thinks that it is legal for them to hack into and disable other people's computers, then why aren't they doing it already? Answer, because they know that it's really
illegal -- if they were to do more then $5,000 in cumulative damage, they could be charged with a felony, but they're hoping that they can fool Congress into making it legal for them to attack and destroy other people's computers by claiming that they currently have that right, and that the antiterrorism bill is going to take that right away from them.
The RIAA appears to have adopted the strategy of making a completely false claim, then taking advantage of the runaway-train-antiterrorism bill to attempt to insert a brand new exemption for themselves, allowing them and only them to practice cyberterrorism under the guise of "protecting their copyrights."
If the current version of the USA Act becomes law, the RIAA believes, it could outlaw attempts by copyright holders to break into and disable pirate FTP or websites or peer-to-peer networks. Because the bill covers aggregate damage, it could bar anti-piracy efforts that cause little harm to individual users, but meet the $5,000 threshold when combined.
"We might try and block somebody," Glazier said. "If we know someone is operating a server, a pirated music facility, we could try to take measures to try and prevent them from uploading or transmitting pirated documents."
The RIAA believes that this kind of technological "self-help" against online pirates, if done carefully, is legal under current federal law.
Following the link, I cannot see ANY reason why this would be legal. The sort of "self help" they are claiming the right to do appears to be outlawed by 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(c)
(a) Whoever - (5)(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
"Protected computer" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(B)
(e) As used in this section -
(2) the term ''protected computer'' means a computer - (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication;"
"Damage" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(8)(A):
(e) As used in this section - (8) the term ''damage'' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that - (A) causes loss aggregating at least $5,000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals;
There it is. The law, as it currently stands, outlaws exactly the activity that the RIAA claims is "endangered" by the terrorism bill. What they are really trying to do is get a "copyright holders" exception to the law. This is something new they trying to get, not something they currently have.
Sure, this one is super expensive, but if you look at their web site, what's really intriguing is that they have other properties for sale that are much cheaper -- because they're in, ahem, rough condition. Probably saturated with rocket fuel and dioxins, but what the hell. You're young. You're immortal. Why not go for it!
For instance, you can pick up a 16 acre missile base in Winters, TX for $199,000. The web site mentions that the silo is "stripped of structure with app. 100' water depth. Seller eager."
Now THAT's a big hot-tub. Anyone know the diameter of one of those launch silos? Care to figure out how many gallons that comes to? You'd have the biggest hot tub in the world, if you could afford to heat it.
Another 11 acre missile base is available in Shep, TX for only $169,000, and, I love this, the missile silo is described as "used for scuba diving adventures." Woo hoo!
Still another 22 acre site is available in Creta, OK, for $133,000. Now that's almost affordable!
Even if you don't have a cool million to spend, the possibility of owning your own missile silo lies tantalizingly in reach to the eager geek... That's a lot of land, and you could easily sell some of it off and keep the silo goodies for yourself. Anyone got some money left over from the Redhat IPO? Yeah. Right.
Their idea is to use a low-pressure tank filled with water and "powerballs" -- small plastic covered spheres of sodium hydride.
When the system wants to create more hydrogen gas, it uses a mechanical cutter to cut one of the powerballs in half. The sodium hydride instantly reacts with the water in the tank, producing sodium hydroxide and hydrogen (and a fair amount of heat):
NaH + H2O --> NaOH + H2 gas
When all of the sodium hydride spheres are used up, the result is a tank full of sodium hydroxide. The tank is then returned to their factory, where the sodium hydroxide is converted back into sodium hydride, so there's no waste stream from the process.
The cool thing about this system is that the hydrogen is stored and transported in solid form -- as metal hydride spheres, so you don't have the danger of high-pressure hydrogen to work with. The hydrogen is generated as needed at low pressure.
The site hasn't been updated in a while, so I have no idea if they've successfully brought a product to market, but I thought that this was a really interesting idea, and it would probably work fairly well with these sorts of fuel cells.
I've always thought that an interesting science fiction scenario would be a future where teleportation is a day-to-day part of life, but instead of actually teleporting people to the new location, the equipment creates a new copy of the person at the new location, then destroys the old copy of the person at the original location, a minor detail of the teleportation process that is, of course, a well kept secret.
In this scenario, people happily teleport to work, vacation, the grocery store every day, never realizing that every time they step into a teleporter, "their" life comes to an agonizing end...
until one person finds out...
Any good examples of this scenario in "classic" sci-fi? I can't imagine I'm the first to think of it, but I've never actually run into it in my reading, and I haven't run into it in recent sci-fi either.
Warning: The Creative "Live-Drive" soundcards do NOT have proper SPDIF inputs.
If you don't believe me, here's how I proved it:
I used Sound Forge to create an audio clip consisting of a perfect square wave. Then I used a Turtle Beach FIJI soundcard, with true digital I/O, to record the square wave onto a DAT.
Then I used Sound Forge and the same FIJI soundcard to re-read the audio clip through the digital input.
The result was two identical files, consisting of perfect square waves.
Then I took the same DAT deck over and plugged it into the SPDIF input of a Live Drive, and used Sound Forge on that machine to read in the same square wave audio clip.
The result was not a perfect square wave. There was extensive ringing and noise all over the wave.
It turns out that the Creative hardware's SPDIF input doesn't actually make the uncorrupted digital data available. Instead, it converts the digital signal back to an analog signal, then feeds it into the analog mixer, which is then sampled back into the digital domain. The result is a relatively noisy, corrupted signal.
This is why anyone who really wants SPDIF capability should run screaming from the entire Creative line of soundcards. They simply don't perform as one would expect.
This was done as early as 1990, before the AHRA was even enacted. The various SCMS implementations were a serious problem for Grateful Dead tapers who were extremely interested in making "infinite serial digital copies", and had the full blessing of the band to do so, yet were thwarted by the unwanted SCMS on consumer DAT decks.
The circuit is essentially a Crystal Semiconductor SPDIF receiver directly coupled to a SPDIF transmitter. The transmitter chip has input pins allowing you to force any SCMS setting you like.
However, in the long run, the effect was that most of the SCMS-crippled DAT decks disappeared from the market, leaving only the "professional" SCMS-free decks, which dropped in price to about what the "consumer" decks originally were intended to sell for.
In other words, the market turned out to be self-correcting.
No, the two "licenses" are fundamentally different.
The GPL governs redistribution of GPL licensed software, not use:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
The MS license attempts to govern end-user use of MS licensed software.
... which makes the two licenses VERY different.
You are right. The correct response is to not buy the software.
For 10 years, I lived within a mile of my workplace and was able to walk to work. Just recently, I moved an hour away, and was facing a one-hour commute each way.
Instead, I started taking the train to work. Now instead of sitting stalled in traffic, hating it, I walk to the train, get on, leisurely read the paper, and play chess on my pilot if I finish the paper early.
I thought I'd hate it, but it turns out I love it, and my commute has really improved my chess game!
hmm. not a bad couple points. he probably will be beaten regularly. unless he plays it smart and makes fFriends..
... Translated... The gang members are going to beat and abuse him unless he plays it smart and joins a gang himself for protection.
Anyone who thinks that 8 months in juvi is "a slap on the wrist" has no idea what he is talking about. He's going to come out of those 8 months a changed person.
I played with forth back in the early 80s on an Apple II. It's really a remarkably powerful and efficient programming system. I was able to write programs in forth that ran at nearly the speed of the equivalent assembly language, but were much easier to read and maintain.
Two excellent books worth finding, both of which are probably long out of print:
"Starting FORTH", Leo Brody, Prentice Hall, 1981.
A very well written book aimed at the absolute beginning programmer. Brody uses cartoon drawings to illustrate the operation of the forth operators, and over the course of some 350 pages, explains not only how to program in forth, but how the language works under the covers and how to extend the compiler. Highly recommended and extremely novice-friendly.
A more technical work, Loeliger describes and explains the implementation of an almost-but-not-quite-FORTH language. The book contains (and explains) the full source code, assembly as well as high-level, for the interpreter.
It is an open question as to whether it is even possible to dedicate something to the public domain. Under copyright law, all creative works receive automatic copyright protection the instant they are recorded in a permanent form. There is no provision in copyright law to refuse or renounce a copyright. So, in effect, since the copyright laws were changed in 1976, EVERYTHING is now copyrighted.
Whether or not you choose to exercise your copyright is another matter entirely. Remember... copyright is the right to exclude others from copying. Not everyone chooses to exercise that right. If everyone automatically chose to exercise that right, the web would not exist. Every page you download has a corresponding copyright owned by someone.
Therefore saying that you are scanning for "copyrighted works" is meaningless. Everything is copyrighted, and copyright should only be enforced at the request of the copyright holder.
I suspect that there is another agenda at play here... a struggling company wants to expand to stay alive, but can't afford to upgrade its routers and switches. Why not identify the people using the most bandwidth, prove (or just claim) that they're trading MP3s or movies, and terminate their accounts. Every high-bandwidth using kid you get rid of frees up enough bandwidth for 10 or more low-bandwidth web-browsing grannies.
I've heard a wonderful Picasso story, but I don't know if it's true, or just a story.
The story goes that in the early 1970s, near the end of Picasso's life, a young couple in the United States, admirers of his work, wrote Picasso a letter. In the letter, they told him that they loved his work, but were young and couldn't afford any of his pieces. They enclosed a check for $50.00, and wrote in the letter (truthfully) that this was all they could afford, and that if Picasso had any piece that he would consider selling for this price, they would like to purchase it. If not, the letter asked that Picasso tear up the check.
The couple sent off the check, and received no reply. Then, over a year later, they received a thin airmail letter from Spain...
... containing no letter, just their uncashed check. With an unsigned drawing on the back...
Actually, the singular is correct. United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I rented Akira from Blockbuster a few years ago, and both my wife and I thought that it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. A big, confusing, muddled bore.
Later I found out that Blockbuster had removed all of the "drug-related" scenes.
The real danger isn't that the RIAA will sue the presenters in civil court... they've said they haven't.
The real danger is that the RIAA will step behind the scenes and convince the Attorney General's office to press criminal charges against Felton et al.
Then the RIAA could step back and say, 'Hey, we didn't sue. The Federal government "decided" to sue'
In reality, it just became dangerous to present any research findings on encryption. Now anyone who wants to do so has to balance their desire to advance the science of encryption against the very real possibility of being charged with a felony and facing prison time and/or the loss of their house, car, and all their possessions.
Makes me glad I didn't go into the field! I wonder whether the next generation of cryptologists and cryptographic scientists will feel the same.
The actual language of DMCA doesn't actually explicitly specify whose authorization is needed, but up to now everyone has inferred that it must be the copyright owner. IMHO, that's one of the problems with the DeCSS case: AFAIK only the MPAA companies happen to make CSS-protected DVDs, so so far, no one other than MPAA has been in a position to authorize descrambling of any CSS-protected DVD.
Actually, this is not true. Only authoring houses and software/hardware manufacturers need to be licensed to use CSS. Individual copyright owners have no license with the DVDCCA, and are not contractually restricted.
I actually sent email to the DVDCCA email address, asking them if, as a copyright holder interested in publishing a DVD, I needed to sign a license with the DVDCCA. The reply (from John Hoy!) said that no, all I needed to do was request CSS encryption when I sent my master to the authoring facility.
So, one could make a VERY strong case that any individual who has published a CSS encrypted DVD has the legal authority to authorize anyone and everyone to decrypt the DVD containing their own copyrighted material by any and all means, including DeCSS.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, fair use comes from the First Amendment. The concept of fair use was judicially created, and recognized long before it was codified when the copyright laws were rewritten in 1976.
Let me explain.
Copyright places a restriction on speech -- specifically, the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech. However, the First Amendment, passed after the original Constitution, outlaws the suppression of speech. It is a general principle of law that if a new law is passed that contradicts an older law, then that new law is considered to have superceeded or struck down the old law.
So, the courts were faced with a dilemma. Either the First Amendment had outlawed the granting of copyrights, or some interpretation needed to be found that would allow the two to coexist. This led to the concept of "fair use" -- which essentially restricts copyright holders to controlling commercial use of their works. This is consistant with the doctrine that commercial speech may be less protected then expressive or non-commercial speech.
So fair use serves a very important Constitutional role -- it is the doctrine that allows copyright to coexist with the First Amendment. It is NOT merely a statutory grant.
This looks like the perfect keyboard for Vishnu!
Here's an excerpt from the CueTV FAQ
Question: Why would you be using your computer and television at the same time.
Answer: You are probably watching a television program, and surfing the web during commercials.
Question: Why would I want to install CueTV?
Answer: After installing the CueTV software, you won't be able to use your computer during commercials,
because the software will keep interrupting what you are doing to send you to advertising sites.
I've read through the statute, and I think that the RIAA is attempting an enormous bluff.
... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
It seems to me that for the RIAA to attempt to hack into someone's internet-connected computer and disable it is clearly illegal under current law:
18 USC 1030(a)(5)(C)
(a) Whoever - (5)(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;
An internet-connected server would appear to be a "Protected computer" under the definition in 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(B)
(e) As used in this section - (2) the term ''protected computer'' means a computer - (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication;"
"Damage" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(8)(A):
(e) As used in this section - (8) the term ''damage'' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that - (A) causes loss aggregating at least $5,000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals;
If the RIAA really thinks that it is legal for them to hack into and disable other people's computers, then why aren't they doing it already? Answer, because they know that it's really
illegal -- if they were to do more then $5,000 in cumulative damage, they could be charged with a felony, but they're hoping that they can fool Congress into making it legal for them to attack and destroy other people's computers by claiming that they currently have that right, and that the antiterrorism bill is going to take that right away from them.
The RIAA appears to have adopted the strategy of making a completely false claim, then taking advantage of the runaway-train-antiterrorism bill to attempt to insert a brand new exemption for themselves, allowing them and only them to practice cyberterrorism under the guise of "protecting their copyrights."
Dirty tricks as usual.
If the current version of the USA Act becomes law, the RIAA believes, it could outlaw attempts by copyright holders to break into and disable pirate FTP or websites or peer-to-peer networks. Because the bill covers aggregate damage, it could bar anti-piracy efforts that cause little harm to individual users, but meet the $5,000 threshold when combined.
... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
"We might try and block somebody," Glazier said. "If we know someone is operating a server, a pirated music facility, we could try to take measures to try and prevent them from uploading or transmitting pirated documents."
The RIAA believes that this kind of technological "self-help" against online pirates, if done carefully, is legal under current federal law.
Following the link, I cannot see ANY reason why this would be legal. The sort of "self help" they are claiming the right to do appears to be outlawed by 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(c)
(a) Whoever - (5)(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;
"Protected computer" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(B)
(e) As used in this section -
(2) the term ''protected computer'' means a computer - (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication;"
"Damage" is defined in 18 USC 1030(e)(8)(A):
(e) As used in this section - (8) the term ''damage'' means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that - (A) causes loss aggregating at least $5,000 in value during any 1-year period to one or more individuals;
There it is. The law, as it currently stands, outlaws exactly the activity that the RIAA claims is "endangered" by the terrorism bill. What they are really trying to do is get a "copyright holders" exception to the law. This is something new they trying to get, not something they currently have.
The main link to their website is here.
... That's a lot of land, and you could easily sell some of it off and keep the silo goodies for yourself. Anyone got some money left over from the Redhat IPO? Yeah. Right.
:-)
Sure, this one is super expensive, but if you look at their web site, what's really intriguing is that they have other properties for sale that are much cheaper -- because they're in, ahem, rough condition. Probably saturated with rocket fuel and dioxins, but what the hell. You're young. You're immortal. Why not go for it!
For instance, you can pick up a 16 acre missile base in Winters, TX for $199,000. The web site mentions that the silo is "stripped of structure with app. 100' water depth. Seller eager."
Now THAT's a big hot-tub. Anyone know the diameter of one of those launch silos? Care to figure out how many gallons that comes to? You'd have the biggest hot tub in the world, if you could afford to heat it.
Another 11 acre missile base is available in Shep, TX for only $169,000, and, I love this, the missile silo is described as "used for scuba diving adventures." Woo hoo!
Still another 22 acre site is available in Creta, OK, for $133,000. Now that's almost affordable!
Even if you don't have a cool million to spend, the possibility of owning your own missile silo lies tantalizingly in reach to the eager geek
Lotsa fun to dream, isn't it
Many people are commenting about the difficulty of storing and transporting hydrogen gas. Here's a company with an interesting idea:
powerball.net
Their idea is to use a low-pressure tank filled with water and "powerballs" -- small plastic covered spheres of sodium hydride.
When the system wants to create more hydrogen gas, it uses a mechanical cutter to cut one of the powerballs in half. The sodium hydride instantly reacts with the water in the tank, producing sodium hydroxide and hydrogen (and a fair amount of heat):
NaH + H2O --> NaOH + H2 gas
When all of the sodium hydride spheres are used up, the result is a tank full of sodium hydroxide. The tank is then returned to their factory, where the sodium hydroxide is converted back into sodium hydride, so there's no waste stream from the process.
The cool thing about this system is that the hydrogen is stored and transported in solid form -- as metal hydride spheres, so you don't have the danger of high-pressure hydrogen to work with. The hydrogen is generated as needed at low pressure.
The site hasn't been updated in a while, so I have no idea if they've successfully brought a product to market, but I thought that this was a really interesting idea, and it would probably work fairly well with these sorts of fuel cells.
I've always thought that an interesting science fiction scenario would be a future where teleportation is a day-to-day part of life, but instead of actually teleporting people to the new location, the equipment creates a new copy of the person at the new location, then destroys the old copy of the person at the original location, a minor detail of the teleportation process that is, of course, a well kept secret.
...
...
In this scenario, people happily teleport to work, vacation, the grocery store every day, never realizing that every time they step into a teleporter, "their" life comes to an agonizing end
until one person finds out
Any good examples of this scenario in "classic" sci-fi? I can't imagine I'm the first to think of it, but I've never actually run into it in my reading, and I haven't run into it in recent sci-fi either.
Warning: The Creative "Live-Drive" soundcards do NOT have proper SPDIF inputs.
If you don't believe me, here's how I proved it:
I used Sound Forge to create an audio clip consisting of a perfect square wave. Then I used a Turtle Beach FIJI soundcard, with true digital I/O, to record the square wave onto a DAT.
Then I used Sound Forge and the same FIJI soundcard to re-read the audio clip through the digital input.
The result was two identical files, consisting of perfect square waves.
Then I took the same DAT deck over and plugged it into the SPDIF input of a Live Drive, and used Sound Forge on that machine to read in the same square wave audio clip.
The result was not a perfect square wave. There was extensive ringing and noise all over the wave.
It turns out that the Creative hardware's SPDIF input doesn't actually make the uncorrupted digital data available. Instead, it converts the digital signal back to an analog signal, then feeds it into the analog mixer, which is then sampled back into the digital domain. The result is a relatively noisy, corrupted signal.
This is why anyone who really wants SPDIF capability should run screaming from the entire Creative line of soundcards. They simply don't perform as one would expect.
This was done as early as 1990, before the AHRA was even enacted. The various SCMS implementations were a serious problem for Grateful Dead tapers who were extremely interested in making "infinite serial digital copies", and had the full blessing of the band to do so, yet were thwarted by the unwanted SCMS on consumer DAT decks.
The circuit is essentially a Crystal Semiconductor SPDIF receiver directly coupled to a SPDIF transmitter. The transmitter chip has input pins allowing you to force any SCMS setting you like.
However, in the long run, the effect was that most of the SCMS-crippled DAT decks disappeared from the market, leaving only the "professional" SCMS-free decks, which dropped in price to about what the "consumer" decks originally were intended to sell for.
In other words, the market turned out to be self-correcting.
Computer digital soundcards ignore the SCMS settings. Only dedicated digital audio recorders are required to respect the SCMS settings.
Unless your CD player has an SPDIF output, and your computer has a SPDIF input. Then, it's a perfect copy.
No, the two "licenses" are fundamentally different.
The GPL governs redistribution of GPL licensed software, not use:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
The MS license attempts to govern end-user use of MS licensed software.
... which makes the two licenses VERY different.
You are right. The correct response is to not buy the software.
For 10 years, I lived within a mile of my workplace and was able to walk to work. Just recently, I moved an hour away, and was facing a one-hour commute each way.
Instead, I started taking the train to work. Now instead of sitting stalled in traffic, hating it, I walk to the train, get on, leisurely read the paper, and play chess on my pilot if I finish the paper early.
I thought I'd hate it, but it turns out I love it, and my commute has really improved my chess game!
hmm. not a bad couple points. he probably will be beaten regularly. unless he plays it smart and makes fFriends..
... The gang members are going to beat and abuse him unless he plays it smart and joins a gang himself for protection.
... Translated
Anyone who thinks that 8 months in juvi is "a slap on the wrist" has no idea what he is talking about. He's going to come out of those 8 months a changed person.
... as it simultaneously creates them.
I played with forth back in the early 80s on an Apple II. It's really a remarkably powerful and efficient programming system. I was able to write programs in forth that ran at nearly the speed of the equivalent assembly language, but were much easier to read and maintain.
Two excellent books worth finding, both of which are probably long out of print:
"Starting FORTH", Leo Brody, Prentice Hall, 1981.
A very well written book aimed at the absolute beginning programmer. Brody uses cartoon drawings to illustrate the operation of the forth operators, and over the course of some 350 pages, explains not only how to program in forth, but how the language works under the covers and how to extend the compiler. Highly recommended and extremely novice-friendly.
"Threaded Interpretive Languages", R.G. Loeliger, Byte Books, 1981.
A more technical work, Loeliger describes and explains the implementation of an almost-but-not-quite-FORTH language. The book contains (and explains) the full source code, assembly as well as high-level, for the interpreter.
It is an open question as to whether it is even possible to dedicate something to the public domain. Under copyright law, all creative works receive automatic copyright protection the instant they are recorded in a permanent form. There is no provision in copyright law to refuse or renounce a copyright. So, in effect, since the copyright laws were changed in 1976, EVERYTHING is now copyrighted.
... copyright is the right to exclude others from copying. Not everyone chooses to exercise that right. If everyone automatically chose to exercise that right, the web would not exist. Every page you download has a corresponding copyright owned by someone.
... a struggling company wants to expand to stay alive, but can't afford to upgrade its routers and switches. Why not identify the people using the most bandwidth, prove (or just claim) that they're trading MP3s or movies, and terminate their accounts. Every high-bandwidth using kid you get rid of frees up enough bandwidth for 10 or more low-bandwidth web-browsing grannies.
Whether or not you choose to exercise your copyright is another matter entirely. Remember
Therefore saying that you are scanning for "copyrighted works" is meaningless. Everything is copyrighted, and copyright should only be enforced at the request of the copyright holder.
I suspect that there is another agenda at play here
It's the death-throes of a failing company.
I've heard a wonderful Picasso story, but I don't know if it's true, or just a story.
...
...
The story goes that in the early 1970s, near the end of Picasso's life, a young couple in the United States, admirers of his work, wrote Picasso a letter. In the letter, they told him that they loved his work, but were young and couldn't afford any of his pieces. They enclosed a check for $50.00, and wrote in the letter (truthfully) that this was all they could afford, and that if Picasso had any piece that he would consider selling for this price, they would like to purchase it. If not, the letter asked that Picasso tear up the check.
The couple sent off the check, and received no reply. Then, over a year later, they received a thin airmail letter from Spain
... containing no letter, just their uncashed check. With an unsigned drawing on the back
which currently resides, framed, on their wall!
I was looking for:
... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
rights instead of right
Actually, the singular is correct. United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
The Congress shall have Power
I rented Akira from Blockbuster a few years ago, and both my wife and I thought that it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. A big, confusing, muddled bore.
Later I found out that Blockbuster had removed all of the "drug-related" scenes.
The real danger isn't that the RIAA will sue the presenters in civil court ... they've said they haven't.
The real danger is that the RIAA will step behind the scenes and convince the Attorney General's office to press criminal charges against Felton et al.
Then the RIAA could step back and say, 'Hey, we didn't sue. The Federal government "decided" to sue'
In reality, it just became dangerous to present any research findings on encryption. Now anyone who wants to do so has to balance their desire to advance the science of encryption against the very real possibility of being charged with a felony and facing prison time and/or the loss of their house, car, and all their possessions.
Makes me glad I didn't go into the field! I wonder whether the next generation of cryptologists and cryptographic scientists will feel the same.
The actual language of DMCA doesn't actually explicitly specify whose authorization is needed, but up to now everyone has inferred that it must be the copyright owner. IMHO, that's one of the problems with the DeCSS case: AFAIK only the MPAA companies happen to make CSS-protected DVDs, so so far, no one other than MPAA has been in a position to authorize descrambling of any CSS-protected DVD.
Actually, this is not true. Only authoring houses and software/hardware manufacturers need to be licensed to use CSS. Individual copyright owners have no license with the DVDCCA, and are not contractually restricted.
I actually sent email to the DVDCCA email address, asking them if, as a copyright holder interested in publishing a DVD, I needed to sign a license with the DVDCCA. The reply (from John Hoy!) said that no, all I needed to do was request CSS encryption when I sent my master to the authoring facility.
So, one could make a VERY strong case that any individual who has published a CSS encrypted DVD has the legal authority to authorize anyone and everyone to decrypt the DVD containing their own copyrighted material by any and all means, including DeCSS.
Yes! Fantastic!
I think they should just shorten the name to:
killus
or alternately, rename it:
butt-head software company
in the fine Apple tradition.