> If that's really the case, then the cover price > would reflect that, and there would be no > profits to give to charity; the cover price > would be materials + labor + shipping and > stocking costs.
That certainly doesn't follow. After all, mp3.com makes a profit (at least, mp3.com seeks to make a profit). Is it your contention that mp3.com is actually being payed for media creation rather than media delivery? UPS makes a profit when it delivers CDs from amazon -- are *they* being payed for content creation rather than delivery?
>> it doesn't hurt you a bit for someone to quote >> your work and attribute it to anonymous. > There is a distinction between a brief quote and > reproducing a long work.
I don't see one. Regardless of the length of your work, it does not hurt you for someone to reproduce it and give credit to no one.
>> It does, however, benefit the reader. > No. You've deprived the reader of vital > information needed to check your reporting, to > understand potential bias, or to follow up for > futher information. Proper attribution is vital > - didn't people learn that in high school > English?
First of all, I meant that the book being published benefits the reader. Second, it's certainly not vital to verify the source of an anecdotes, because anecdotes aren't evidence in themselves. High school English sucks, but somewhere I picked up the idea of ad hominem being a fallacy -- a statement must be considered regardless of its source. A biased source doesn't invalidate a good argument. And anecdotes can at best offer perspective and opinion -- never fact, whether a source is included or not. Even a source wouldn't allow you to verify the truth of a story. Third, the source *is* available, to anyone who has a networked computer and "grep" anyway.
> But if you reproduce something that's hundreds > of words long (either an independent piece or a > section of a longer work) you're obligated to > attribute properly.
Obligated by what? Law? Morality? Why is it obligated??
But the money payed isn't meant to go towards content-creation. After all, the content is already publically available. The buyers of the book are paying to have the publically available information delivered to them in a form convenient to them (print), in the same way that mp3.com delivers content already available to viewers in a more convenient format (streamed mp3).
I demand that you keep my name on it.
Besides the fact that the removal of credit was not really the issue on which most people objected, it doesn't hurt you a bit for someone to quote your work and attribute it to anonymous. It does, however, benefit the reader. And the names were actually removed with the intent of protecting the authors, not of falsely attributing credit to someone else.
I am shocked with the number of people here on slashdot (where I expect some degree of enlightenment) who are confusing law with morality. There are people here who say that mp3.com is just making information already available to a person available in another form, and therefore is no different than the original distribution... why do I see none of those people come out in support of this book?
Copyright law, it originally appeared, did not come out on the side of the publishers. So what? Since when does being law mean anything? Laws can be wrong -- slashdotters almost always hold that copyright law is wrong at least to some extent. Well what is the moral (not legal) justification for keeping this book out of stores?? For what moral reason should anyone ever have to ask permission to print publically available information, sell the printed copy, and give the profits to charity!??
Those of you who have objected to publication, ask yourself this: if public outcry was sufficient to stop this book from being published, would the world be better off? Would anyone's post actually be secret (rather than just obscure)? Would anyone receive more payment for the authorship of the post? The answer, I'm sure we all must agree, is no.
Yeah, but England never had a violent crime problem like the US does (even before their strict gun control, I must point out). Surely you think that guns should be *available* to police, even if they are not carried?
Well, there will always be guns available, which is why you see them in countries that don't manufacture guns at all, and furthermore the US makes and will continue to make a lot of guns for export and police use even if gun use here is outlawed, but the fact of the matter is that if guns are unavailable to citizens, criminals will not need guns. They will merely prey on the physically weak. Meanwhile, the few criminals who *do* have guns will be all the more confident.
IMHO a better solution would be this. Change the SMTP protocol to have a NOTSPAM bit. Every mail client in the world would then switch to setting the NOTSPAM bit before sending a message, and would by default automatically delete messages without the bit set. Anybody sending a spam with the NOTSPAM bit set would be guilty of fraud. People who wanted spam could recieve it. No new law would be required, not even a law demanding spammers announce that their message is spam, because we would assume be default that all messages are spam.
You're forgetting that the defining trait of spam is non-solicitation. Nobody should talk in concert halls loud enough for those who do not want to participate (i.e. everyone) to hear. Do that, and someone *will* kick you out (and rightfully so).
Horns are a special case; they're meant to be used in emergencies, when all sorts of laws can be ignored. Honk a horn as a signal of nothing and you *are* breaking the law. If everybody honked horns during emergencies, there would be no problem. If everybody spamed who had a product and an email address, email would become worthless to everyone everywhere. An emergency requiring spam? Feh.
But you don't have to theorize about it. Just look at countries where they don't sell guns. Do the criminals in those countries manufacture their own? Are the citizens being constantly victimized by well armed criminals? No to both.
Uhm, YES. Gun control, or outlaw, has never been shown to any statistical signifigance to reduce homicide or violent crime. Criminals who NEED guns can import them; those that don't will kill with knives, bludgeons, etc. Criminals being generally stronger than their victims (the criminal gets to choose his victims), substitute weapons can be expected.
Gun control (and knive control, bludgeon control, etc) is most strict and most effectively enforced in maximum security prisons, but they still have a huge murder rate (much more than the general population). Methinks murder rates are unaffected by firearm availability (but feel free to show me wrong with some study of some sort).
What countries do you want us to look at? You claim a body of evidence in support of your view but don't provide any references.. ??
The ideal is that the criminal won't bother trying (or will perhaps resort to some sort of non-violent theft), just in case you're fast enough, or you shoot him as he's running off, or someone nearby shoots him, etc. (Actually, the ideal would be that he has a job and thus no need for crime, but that's another issue). Of course, the ideal doesn't always happen. In any case, statistics show that resisting with a gun is safer than not resisting at all or resisting with anything else, and other statistics show that criminals already avoid situations where armed civilian resistence is more likely in the USA, but don't in countries with stricter gun control. For muggings specifically, I don't know if that holds out. The best defense against muggings, it seems to me, is to stay away from dark, out-of-sight places when you are alone.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence of this mystery cycle.
Look at it this way: there are two types of people who have guns. Criminals, and regular citizens. When criminals have guns, that makes crime easier. When criminals don't have guns, that makes crime harder. When citizens don't have guns, that makes crime easier. When citizens do, that makes crime harder. Because gun control reduces citizen gun ownership much more effectively than criminal gun ownership, it never results in a reduction in crime.
Tax breaks for trained citizens carrying concealed weapons. That will scare the pants off criminals. That, and an end to poverty in the country (by some means), and the amount of crime in the US will be negligible.
While telling people where to find copies of a document is, arguably, a free speech issue, posting verbatim copies of a copyrighted work clearly isn't.
If copyrights are an "inalienable" right, why are they alienated when they expire? Neither the US government, nor anyone educated on the issue, considers IP an "inalienable right", because the existence of copyright mandates the violation of the right of a person to use information and property he has come by peacefully to further his own purposes. All the consistent libertarians have opposed copyright, because the contrary position is that a person may not peacefully do what he wishes with his own physical property. The idea of non-physical property is only less absurd than the idea that non-physical property rights supercede physical property rights.
if I use my car in some way that does not maximize what you perceive to be social gain, then the government can come into my home, beat the crap out of me, and relieve me of my "illegal monopoly" on my car.
If I use my car to power a computer with a CDR with which I make copies of Windows, you have any more right to relieve me of it, or them? I think not. Make a choice: physical property rights, or "intellectual property" deserves. They are not compatible. I create Windows, I may deserve compensation, but there's probably no way for me to get it on a free market where people are only restricted from acting when they act forcefully. My IP deserves let me forcibly stop people from using information peacefully for their own benefit. They don't deserve the benefit, because even though they came by their information peacefully, they didn't work for it and I did. That's the theory behind copyright. "It's not fair!" The free market isn't fair, whine the "IP rights" apologists. It's quite amusing, coming from a self-proclaimed capitalist.
Information creation is a public work, like building roads, cleaning up pollution, etc. The government makes sure public works get done by either forcing people to do them or taxing citizens and paying people to do them. Copyright works a little differently; it grants special monopoly privilege to them. The monopoly is artificial, because it exists only at the force of a government and, like taxes, precludes peaceful use of one's own property.
> First of all, counterfeiting is a crime whether you try to pass the bills or not.
Only for expediency (if you're right). It's certainly not in line with private property rights if it is.
> Second, why is it that in your mind the beer propietor would not accept a counterfeit bill (one that he could use himself elsewhere)
If he would knowingly accept it, that would just be like him paying (in beer) someone to make him fake money. I doubt he would want that, but so what if he did? What's your point? He wouldn't be being robbed, and he wouldn't be robbing anyone else if he didn't try to fraudulently pass on the counterfeit bill.
> yet hundreds of people would be willing to pay $3 for a counterfeit copy of MS Office?
In what way are warez'd copies "counterfeit"? How can a *product* be counterfeit? The closest non-contract/money equivalent of a counterfeit I can think of is a box that says "television" on the outside but has a brick on the inside. Money and contracts are meant as documentation of a promises -- if no promise actually exists, they are worthless; unusable. MS Windows is *a product*, and it can be used. It doesn't need to be redeemed by whoever's made the promise.
> My point is that, far from being incompatible concepts, ownership of information as property has been with us a long time.
So have taxes, yet they are incompatible with private property. I'm not saying I'm against taxes, or for absolute private property... But arguing FOR taxes on the basis of private property rights is absurd. So is arguing FOR copyright on the basis of private property.
(Taxes have "been with us" for a long time too, but no matter how long they remain, they will always be, as they were in the first place, incompatible with private property.)
> I would certainly consider the money in my checking account to be my property, yet it exists only as information in bank computers.
> note: by "fascist" I mean someone who wants to maintain the illusion of private ownership, but in reality have government make all the decisions in the best interests of the people
The problem is, that's not what "fascist" means.
> Regarding the usenet law ("first person to call their opponent a nazi loses"), I didn't call him a nazi
Heh, that's really inconsequential. The principle is the same.
No, you confuse using the copy for fraud with making it. If I was honest with the beer proprietor about the source of the bill, he would never agree to the trade.
Copyright restrictions can't be compared to general property ownership, which is restricted only so far as it is used to infringe on others' property ownership, or used violently (even then, it's not the property ownership that is restricted, but rather the actions of the owner). Now there are of course exceptions to property ownership (like taxes, gun control, drug prohibition, tarrifs, etc); my point isn't that there aren't, or that there shouldn't be -- only that copyright is one of them, and should be treated as such.
Really, I agree that the post probably shouldn't have been moderated down, but you're asking for it when you throw around terms like "fascist" when they clearly do not apply. People use that word *way* too much to mean any political concept with which they disagree.
Why not? If you and I agree to do something together, and write and sign a contract saying who does what, and who gets what and so on, then later on, I decide I don't like the contract, and want the government to modify it in my favor, is this right?
You think MS has the contract with the government? Such a contract could by nature be nothing but criminal, if judged by the standards of other contracts. Two parties cannot make a contract to restrict the rights of a third party. That is called "conspiracy".
Criminal contracts such as those can legally be broken -- in fact, breaking them is mandated by law. If the Mafia agrees to run your competition out of business thus giving you an artificial monopoly much like the government does via copyright, but the Mafia doesn't do it, tough luck! Balls to you!
Copyright law does not exist "solely for social benefit". Copyright law exists "to promote science and the useful arts".
Same thing, different words. "Promot[ing] science and the useful arts" is intended only as a social benefit.
Property rights are necessary because without them people have little incentive to do anything productive. How hard would you work if your entire paycheck was taken in taxes to be used "solely for social benefit"?
EXACTLY MY POINT. Copyright is granted to provide incentive to do a public service. SO WHEN COPYRIGHT ENDS UP BEING USED TO DO A PUBLIC DISSERVICE, IT NO LONGER HAS ANY REASON TO EXIST.
Why should we provide incentive for people to do disservice? Generally we provide disincentive for people to do disservice. Indeed, that is what most consider the primary purpose of law enforcement.
How exactly is Microsoft "fucking its customers in the ass"? By making crappy products?
By intentionally making products more "crappy", in order to hurt competitors. Microsoft should only compete by making its own products better, not by making its competitors products incompatible at the sacrifice of its own products. We have no reason to provide Microsoft with incentive to make its competitors products incompatible at the sacrifice of its own products. We should provide Microsoft only with incentive to make the highest quality products it can make.
illusion of private ownership
Let me clue you in on something. Private ownership OF PROPERTY is *NOT COMPATIBLE* with "ownership" of information. If I own this MS Windows CD, and I own this PC, and I own this CDR drive, and I own these 400 CDRs -- if all of this is my own personal private property -- then I can do with it whatever I want, including copy MS Windows to the 400 CDs and sell them for $3 each over the internet. The two concepts are simply irreconcilable.
(Let's say I *don't* own the MS Windows CD, but rather it is licensed to me. I *do* own my hard drive; so instead of using a licensed CD, I merely download MS Windows from an FTP site somewhere (the connection to which I also own), thus producing a copy of MS Windows on the hard drive that I do own.)
Since MS is essentially working off a government grant, which of course must be funded by citizens (the government produces almost none of its own wealth), MS should be held accountable to the government, and to citizens. Microsoft is on the dole; it's being payed exclusively through violations of the free market, because the free market offers little incentive for public goods like creating information. As such, it has absolutely no right to complain if it's yanked off the dole and forced to fend for itself on the free market -- that is, the market without copyrights, patents, or other government subsidies and artificial monopolies secured through government force -- and if the government wants to make MS produce better work for the artificial rights it is granted, that's exactly the government's business to do. MS is still left with the option to close up shop and try the free market, where the only way to own MS Windows is to own every copy.
Anyhow, the copyright owner can't sue someone he's given permission to copy for copying. A person doesn't have to assent to anything to be given permission. If I say "people legally named Tom may copy this copyrighted slashdot post" and put a "Copyright (c) Andrew Cady" next to it, the law recognizes that as legally binding. People named Tom who copy the post are legally recognized as having been given permission, whether or not they assented to anything. Harry tries to copy it, though, and I can sue him.
From a purely selfish perspective (i.e. not considering whether the government has a right to interfere at all,) this is probably my second favorite remedy. My first choice would be splitting MS into a systems company and an applications company. I'm happy (and very surprised) that those seem to be the two options that the court is seriously considering.
First of all, I don't think we have to question whether the government has a "right" to interfere. It's already interfering with our ability to make copies of MS Windows. MS is granted by governments an artifical monopoly on the Windows distribution game solely for social benefit -- anything MS does to hurt society... let them give up copyright before they start to whine. Copyright is supposed to make an altruistic activity profitable, not make a selfish activity more profitable. There'd be no point in violating peoples' rights to peacefully make copies of MS Windows to do that.
Second, regarding the proposed solutions. I'm sure it might have benefits, but it still misses the core of the problem. MS's monopoly is in *DESKTOP OS*. They are leveraging this monopoly as we speak to promote their server OS with Kerberos as well as with applications and protocols. This is less important from most peoples' points of view, where servers are ignored unless they're down, and even then it's a clueless "my computer's broken". We at slashdot know better. Allowing MS to leverage its current desktop monopoly to get a server monopoly in the future could have horrendous impact on computing in the long-term.
Breaking up a desktop OS corp separate from the server OS corp would probably be far too difficult and expensive. Making source available under NDA or without allowing redistribution of modifications would wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. Making it available as free software is just not going to happen. What we need to do is force all MS desktop OSs to be standards-compliant whenever possible, and force all non-standard protocols and APIs (and fileformats, etc) to be open and non-obfuscated, for at least a few more years. (It'd be great to do that for *all* MS products, but they don't have a monopoly in any others, so perhaps it wouldn't be fair. Feh.) Maybe that's just about as unlikely as freeing the source... but if it or something more drastic doesn't happen, I think MS is going to continue fucking its customers in the ass for quite a while longer.
I think you miss the point. DAT is only around because of the pirate tax -- without the pirate tax, the RIAA et al would have had it criminalized outright, or killed it some other way. You seemed to think that he meant the fact that DAT equipment is taxed is good for DAT.. ??
> Does the act of redistributing the software constitute assent - and hence losing the right to a warranty? Dubious.
No, it doesn't constitute assent -- it constitutes copyright infringement. And there is no "right to warranty" in such a case. You think if I warez a copy of MS Windows I have a "right to warranty"? Ridiculous!
(Not that absurdity excludes law; thieves can sue if they injure themselves while on your property robbing you. However, in this case the law is not absurd; the legal right to a limited warranty is granted *through sale*, or explicit granting of warranty through contract.)
It's credit. It gives credit to three companies that helped the project. It's no different than seeing "3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.h tml" whenever I use my NIC.
Slashdot Mirror
> If that's really the case, then the cover price
> would reflect that, and there would be no
> profits to give to charity; the cover price
> would be materials + labor + shipping and
> stocking costs.
That certainly doesn't follow. After all, mp3.com makes a profit (at least, mp3.com seeks to make a profit). Is it your contention that mp3.com is actually being payed for media creation rather than media delivery? UPS makes a profit when it delivers CDs from amazon -- are *they* being payed for content creation rather than delivery?
>> it doesn't hurt you a bit for someone to quote
>> your work and attribute it to anonymous.
> There is a distinction between a brief quote and
> reproducing a long work.
I don't see one. Regardless of the length of your work, it does not hurt you for someone to reproduce it and give credit to no one.
>> It does, however, benefit the reader.
> No. You've deprived the reader of vital
> information needed to check your reporting, to
> understand potential bias, or to follow up for
> futher information. Proper attribution is vital
> - didn't people learn that in high school
> English?
First of all, I meant that the book being published benefits the reader. Second, it's certainly not vital to verify the source of an anecdotes, because anecdotes aren't evidence in themselves. High school English sucks, but somewhere I picked up the idea of ad hominem being a fallacy -- a statement must be considered regardless of its source. A biased source doesn't invalidate a good argument. And anecdotes can at best offer perspective and opinion -- never fact, whether a source is included or not. Even a source wouldn't allow you to verify the truth of a story. Third, the source *is* available, to anyone who has a networked computer and "grep" anyway.
> But if you reproduce something that's hundreds
> of words long (either an independent piece or a
> section of a longer work) you're obligated to
> attribute properly.
Obligated by what? Law? Morality? Why is it obligated??
I demand that you keep my name on it.
Besides the fact that the removal of credit was not really the issue on which most people objected, it doesn't hurt you a bit for someone to quote your work and attribute it to anonymous. It does, however, benefit the reader. And the names were actually removed with the intent of protecting the authors, not of falsely attributing credit to someone else.
Copyright law, it originally appeared, did not come out on the side of the publishers. So what? Since when does being law mean anything? Laws can be wrong -- slashdotters almost always hold that copyright law is wrong at least to some extent. Well what is the moral (not legal) justification for keeping this book out of stores?? For what moral reason should anyone ever have to ask permission to print publically available information, sell the printed copy, and give the profits to charity!??
Those of you who have objected to publication, ask yourself this: if public outcry was sufficient to stop this book from being published, would the world be better off? Would anyone's post actually be secret (rather than just obscure)? Would anyone receive more payment for the authorship of the post? The answer, I'm sure we all must agree, is no.
Yeah, but England never had a violent crime problem like the US does (even before their strict gun control, I must point out). Surely you think that guns should be *available* to police, even if they are not carried?
Well, there will always be guns available, which is why you see them in countries that don't manufacture guns at all, and furthermore the US makes and will continue to make a lot of guns for export and police use even if gun use here is outlawed, but the fact of the matter is that if guns are unavailable to citizens, criminals will not need guns. They will merely prey on the physically weak. Meanwhile, the few criminals who *do* have guns will be all the more confident.
Yeah. Whattaya think?
Horns are a special case; they're meant to be used in emergencies, when all sorts of laws can be ignored. Honk a horn as a signal of nothing and you *are* breaking the law. If everybody honked horns during emergencies, there would be no problem. If everybody spamed who had a product and an email address, email would become worthless to everyone everywhere. An emergency requiring spam? Feh.
Gun control (and knive control, bludgeon control, etc) is most strict and most effectively enforced in maximum security prisons, but they still have a huge murder rate (much more than the general population). Methinks murder rates are unaffected by firearm availability (but feel free to show me wrong with some study of some sort).
What countries do you want us to look at? You claim a body of evidence in support of your view but don't provide any references.. ??
The ideal is that the criminal won't bother trying (or will perhaps resort to some sort of non-violent theft), just in case you're fast enough, or you shoot him as he's running off, or someone nearby shoots him, etc. (Actually, the ideal would be that he has a job and thus no need for crime, but that's another issue). Of course, the ideal doesn't always happen. In any case, statistics show that resisting with a gun is safer than not resisting at all or resisting with anything else, and other statistics show that criminals already avoid situations where armed civilian resistence is more likely in the USA, but don't in countries with stricter gun control. For muggings specifically, I don't know if that holds out. The best defense against muggings, it seems to me, is to stay away from dark, out-of-sight places when you are alone.
Look at it this way: there are two types of people who have guns. Criminals, and regular citizens. When criminals have guns, that makes crime easier. When criminals don't have guns, that makes crime harder. When citizens don't have guns, that makes crime easier. When citizens do, that makes crime harder. Because gun control reduces citizen gun ownership much more effectively than criminal gun ownership, it never results in a reduction in crime.
Tax breaks for trained citizens carrying concealed weapons. That will scare the pants off criminals. That, and an end to poverty in the country (by some means), and the amount of crime in the US will be negligible.
gun stats and info
You haven't heard of any mass shootings on gun ranges either. Gee, maybe KILLING IS GOOD when it's in defense.
Information creation is a public work, like building roads, cleaning up pollution, etc. The government makes sure public works get done by either forcing people to do them or taxing citizens and paying people to do them. Copyright works a little differently; it grants special monopoly privilege to them. The monopoly is artificial, because it exists only at the force of a government and, like taxes, precludes peaceful use of one's own property.
Please see The Libertarian Case against Intellectual Property Rights and Ben Tucker on Copyright
> First of all, counterfeiting is a crime whether you try to pass the bills or not.
Only for expediency (if you're right). It's certainly not in line with private property rights if it is.
> Second, why is it that in your mind the beer propietor would not accept a counterfeit bill (one that he could use himself elsewhere)
If he would knowingly accept it, that would just be like him paying (in beer) someone to make him fake money. I doubt he would want that, but so what if he did? What's your point? He wouldn't be being robbed, and he wouldn't be robbing anyone else if he didn't try to fraudulently pass on the counterfeit bill.
> yet hundreds of people would be willing to pay $3 for a counterfeit copy of MS Office?
In what way are warez'd copies "counterfeit"? How can a *product* be counterfeit? The closest non-contract/money equivalent of a counterfeit I can think of is a box that says "television" on the outside but has a brick on the inside. Money and contracts are meant as documentation of a promises -- if no promise actually exists, they are worthless; unusable. MS Windows is *a product*, and it can be used. It doesn't need to be redeemed by whoever's made the promise.
> My point is that, far from being incompatible concepts, ownership of information as property has been with us a long time.
So have taxes, yet they are incompatible with private property. I'm not saying I'm against taxes, or for absolute private property... But arguing FOR taxes on the basis of private property rights is absurd. So is arguing FOR copyright on the basis of private property.
(Taxes have "been with us" for a long time too, but no matter how long they remain, they will always be, as they were in the first place, incompatible with private property.)
> I would certainly consider the money in my checking account to be my property, yet it exists only as information in bank computers.
What a clueless thing to say!
> note: by "fascist" I mean someone who wants to maintain the illusion of private ownership, but in reality have government make all the decisions in the best interests of the people
The problem is, that's not what "fascist" means.
> Regarding the usenet law ("first person to call their opponent a nazi loses"), I didn't call him a nazi
Heh, that's really inconsequential. The principle is the same.
Copyright restrictions can't be compared to general property ownership, which is restricted only so far as it is used to infringe on others' property ownership, or used violently (even then, it's not the property ownership that is restricted, but rather the actions of the owner). Now there are of course exceptions to property ownership (like taxes, gun control, drug prohibition, tarrifs, etc); my point isn't that there aren't, or that there shouldn't be -- only that copyright is one of them, and should be treated as such.
Didn't you read the post? Copyright is a charity from government (taken from citizens).
Indeed, there's even a USENET law about it...
Criminal contracts such as those can legally be broken -- in fact, breaking them is mandated by law. If the Mafia agrees to run your competition out of business thus giving you an artificial monopoly much like the government does via copyright, but the Mafia doesn't do it, tough luck! Balls to you!
Same thing, different words. "Promot[ing] science and the useful arts" is intended only as a social benefit. EXACTLY MY POINT. Copyright is granted to provide incentive to do a public service. SO WHEN COPYRIGHT ENDS UP BEING USED TO DO A PUBLIC DISSERVICE, IT NO LONGER HAS ANY REASON TO EXIST.Why should we provide incentive for people to do disservice? Generally we provide disincentive for people to do disservice. Indeed, that is what most consider the primary purpose of law enforcement.
By intentionally making products more "crappy", in order to hurt competitors. Microsoft should only compete by making its own products better, not by making its competitors products incompatible at the sacrifice of its own products. We have no reason to provide Microsoft with incentive to make its competitors products incompatible at the sacrifice of its own products. We should provide Microsoft only with incentive to make the highest quality products it can make. Let me clue you in on something. Private ownership OF PROPERTY is *NOT COMPATIBLE* with "ownership" of information. If I own this MS Windows CD, and I own this PC, and I own this CDR drive, and I own these 400 CDRs -- if all of this is my own personal private property -- then I can do with it whatever I want, including copy MS Windows to the 400 CDs and sell them for $3 each over the internet. The two concepts are simply irreconcilable.(Let's say I *don't* own the MS Windows CD, but rather it is licensed to me. I *do* own my hard drive; so instead of using a licensed CD, I merely download MS Windows from an FTP site somewhere (the connection to which I also own), thus producing a copy of MS Windows on the hard drive that I do own.)
Since MS is essentially working off a government grant, which of course must be funded by citizens (the government produces almost none of its own wealth), MS should be held accountable to the government, and to citizens. Microsoft is on the dole; it's being payed exclusively through violations of the free market, because the free market offers little incentive for public goods like creating information. As such, it has absolutely no right to complain if it's yanked off the dole and forced to fend for itself on the free market -- that is, the market without copyrights, patents, or other government subsidies and artificial monopolies secured through government force -- and if the government wants to make MS produce better work for the artificial rights it is granted, that's exactly the government's business to do. MS is still left with the option to close up shop and try the free market, where the only way to own MS Windows is to own every copy.
Holy shit, your posts start at 3? That's amazing.
Anyhow, the copyright owner can't sue someone he's given permission to copy for copying. A person doesn't have to assent to anything to be given permission. If I say "people legally named Tom may copy this copyrighted slashdot post" and put a "Copyright (c) Andrew Cady" next to it, the law recognizes that as legally binding. People named Tom who copy the post are legally recognized as having been given permission, whether or not they assented to anything. Harry tries to copy it, though, and I can sue him.
See the USENET copyright-FAQ for more info.
Second, regarding the proposed solutions. I'm sure it might have benefits, but it still misses the core of the problem. MS's monopoly is in *DESKTOP OS*. They are leveraging this monopoly as we speak to promote their server OS with Kerberos as well as with applications and protocols. This is less important from most peoples' points of view, where servers are ignored unless they're down, and even then it's a clueless "my computer's broken". We at slashdot know better. Allowing MS to leverage its current desktop monopoly to get a server monopoly in the future could have horrendous impact on computing in the long-term.
Breaking up a desktop OS corp separate from the server OS corp would probably be far too difficult and expensive. Making source available under NDA or without allowing redistribution of modifications would wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. Making it available as free software is just not going to happen. What we need to do is force all MS desktop OSs to be standards-compliant whenever possible, and force all non-standard protocols and APIs (and fileformats, etc) to be open and non-obfuscated, for at least a few more years. (It'd be great to do that for *all* MS products, but they don't have a monopoly in any others, so perhaps it wouldn't be fair. Feh.) Maybe that's just about as unlikely as freeing the source... but if it or something more drastic doesn't happen, I think MS is going to continue fucking its customers in the ass for quite a while longer.
I think you miss the point. DAT is only around because of the pirate tax -- without the pirate tax, the RIAA et al would have had it criminalized outright, or killed it some other way. You seemed to think that he meant the fact that DAT equipment is taxed is good for DAT.. ??
> Does the act of redistributing the software constitute assent - and hence losing the right to a warranty? Dubious.
No, it doesn't constitute assent -- it constitutes copyright infringement. And there is no "right to warranty" in such a case. You think if I warez a copy of MS Windows I have a "right to warranty"? Ridiculous!
(Not that absurdity excludes law; thieves can sue if they injure themselves while on your property robbing you. However, in this case the law is not absurd; the legal right to a limited warranty is granted *through sale*, or explicit granting of warranty through contract.)
It's credit. It gives credit to three companies that helped the project. It's no different than seeing "3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.h tml" whenever I use my NIC.