What the law says is that the FCC is in charge of making rules that must be followed. And now the FCC has determined that what was going on broke one of those rules.
Reading it over, what is discussed is acceptance of the License. So, it would seem that the restriction in the absence of distribution is that you must accept the License in order to have permission to modify.
As I recall, it is not acceptance of the License that creates the obligation to share source. It is distribution of the modified software that triggers that obligation.
Absolutely spot on. The reason comes first, the means after. I first learned to program because I wanted to play the computer games published in computer magazines. Since they were mostly written in BASIC for Apple and I had a PC, I had to learn how to modify them for PC. Likewise, I learned to configure my PC because I needed to get the damn games I bought to run.
GPL is not an end user license agreement though. It doesn't grant you permission to use the software, it spells out the terms under which you may distribute the software. You can ignore the terms and distribute copies or derivative works, but if you do, you're violating copyright, because following the GPL was the only method that gave you permission to do so.
You mean with the human eyeball? That would mean a pdf version of War and Peace on a floppy disk is not a copy of War and Peace. I strongly disagree with you on that point, if that's what you mean. Just because additional automated steps are needed before it is eyeball recognizable does not make it substantially different than any digital media file.
Moreover, a hard copy book would not pass your test if the person looking at it did was illiterate or did not speak the language it was written in. Not a usable test.
I would accept your your assertion if you changed it to say "if the information present is not machine decodable into a form immediately recognizable as the work in question, it is not a copy of the work".
We're not talking about ordinary "telling you how to assemble the file" as in giving instructions for how to operate the software. This is akin to numbering alphabet building blocks 1 to 26, and then giving someone a codebook that listed which number building block to use by copying down its number next in order to spell out the entire text of a book.
Such a codebook IS a copy of the book, even though you need to decode it somehow before you can understand it. Heck, letters themselves are such a code, just one that you can decode using your own brain.
No, they're not derived from copyrighted files. They are generic 128 bit number strings.
If host 1 hosted the string that meant the letter P, and host 2 hosted the string that meant letter O, then they would serve those letters upon demand. The URL would instruct someone wanting "Poo" to download once from host 1, and append a download from 2 twice to get poo. Someone wanting "pop" would be told to download from host 1, then 2, then append what 1 sent again.
All digital files of any sort can be made out of such building blocks and is why the peers are not sending each other copywritten materials.
But again, the URL host and the person using it to create a file are committing copyright infringement.
Except that they are right to a point. Passing those randomized data blocks amongst yourselves will not be copyright infringement. Instead, this system less like peer to peer and more like a simple download in its copyright liability. The assembly instructions themselves are a compressed version of the file, and the parties violating copyright are the URL hoster and the person who uses the instructions to assemble the file.
While individuals are not passing copyrighted files to each other, the copyright violation does occur. The URL with the instructions of how to assemble the file is actually an encoded version of the file. Downloading those instructions is just as much a copyright violation as downloading a digital version of the file, or a zipped archive from which the file can be extracted. So, "nobody shares any copyrighted files, and therefore nobody needs to hide away" is erroneous. Both the person offering the URL and the person accessing it need to hide if it's a work someone's going to exercise copyright over.
From the main site:
"It must be noted that up until the point of retrieval of content from the OFFSystem, storage and transfer of a so-called copyrighted file is completely legal. However, the act of re-assembling a file may be considered copyright infringment in some cases, and users should be aware of legislation regarding copyright law which applies to their jurisdiction before doing so."
I think this analysis is flawed because it assumes that the instructions to construct a file are not a file, and that only when you have the end file have you copied the work. In fact, if the instructions contain all the information of a work, they are the work, in exactly the same way that any digital representation of a work is the work. "Y'onor, I didn't copy no files, look, this is just instructions to make the files" will not fly any more than "Y'onor, this isn't a music recording, it's ones and zeros."
The necessity of "trashing" that belief hinges on the commercial aspect of the art trade.
I would feel no compulsion to go into someone's home and shatter illusions, even though personally, I'd rather have harsh facts than comfortable self-deception or willful ignorance.
But when it comes to a seller making a false representation that a good is explicitly "the actual painting by the master's hand", yeah. It's necessary to quash that, if you care that contracts are upheld.
So, now I'll do as you ask an consider your carefully crafted scenario. Since you're introducing it as essentially perfect as far as perception goes, I can't argue that my enjoyment of a copy would be diminished. So, we now have a similar situation to digital media files... and are to assume that whee, now two people have the good of it. Better, right? I evaluate that as no, for two reasons. Less importantly, the two people theoretically can encounter each other and discover they both have grandpa's chain... now the doubled good feelings turn to hard feelings as questions such as whether the other person is a thief, if not, who the heck is breaking into my home, was it ever grandpa's chain, who's toying around with me by duplicating my personal effects, etc, etc. More importantly though, is the concealment of truth. A world where people go around thinking that it doesn't matter what lies and deceptions are made, so long as you fool everyone and make them happy, sounds repellent to me. Sounds like an especially alcoholic way of thinking, to me.
I'm not arguing against the flowing stream of time and the nature of identity... I'm trying to explain to vadim t what "the big deal with it being original" is to those who do care about it. I'm more or less making the assumption he really doesn't know, for the purpose of my post.
Nice dodgery. Going back to the original topic of discussion... your issue appears to be that you lack, or have chosen to disregard and reject, a mental faculty of discernment most people have.
Going to an actual example instead of a hypothetical illustration, I have a pocketwatch chain that belonged to my grandfather. I use it for my pocket watch, and find that it reminds me of my grandfather often, which memories I find satisfying and enjoyable to contemplate, and I easily feel a sense of connection to those past times. Now, I could have a duplicate made of the chain and use that, and it would still remind me of grandpa. For that matter, I could hold the empty pop can that is in front of me and call those memories to mind. But the effect is less powerful, it just doesn't evoke the same satisfaction that my grandpa's actual pocketwatch chain does.
The whole concept of authenticity is a phenomenon of the same order. Hopefully, if you truly have not been able to understand it, this example will give enough of a direction to use your imagination to at least get a glimmer... something's going on in most people's heads that's not in yours.
On the other hand, if you actually do understand, but evaluated its value as low or nil and are now just proselytizing that view, well. There's not much point in that. Either a person feels connection in authenticity, or they don't.
I'm guessing that, if grandma's ashes embedded in glass on your mantlepiece got chipped or broken, you'd be just as happy with a recreation using someone else's ashes, as long as it looked identical. To the rest of us, it would not, and while of differing importance, it's the same underlying principle that causes us, unlike you, to assign value to the originality of what it's made of.
"How could human beings possibly handle eating asparagus grown thousands of miles away from earth?... the utensils would need to be engineered to withstand it too."
NWN2's first premium module, Mysteries of Westgate, is delayed because Atari wants a new DRM scheme on it.
NWN2's second expansion, Storm of Zehir, according to Obsidian, will likely have the same copy protection as Mask of the Betrayer.
The law is clear. If you choose to mail something to someone that they did not ask for, it becomes their property. End of discussion. Done. Sending it through the mail, unsolicted makes it a gift.
Whatever idea you had in your head that prompted you to mail it makes no difference to the law. The recepient didn't ask you for it, you sent it anyway for whatever reason. Bing bam boom, it's theirs now. It doesn't matter if they want it or not. It doesn't matter if it's cross-promotional.
There is a way to send something to someone without sending it to the world. You contact them and say "If you agree to my conditions, I will send it to you." Then, if they agree, you send it, if they don't, you can't send it anyway and bind them to your wishes. I can't emphasize how fundamentally important that is... no one can force someone else into a contract.
You might as well say that this is marks of ink on paper we are exchanging and stopping one method of delivering while not others is not limiting your freedom of speech in any way, because you would be exactly as wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, it's Inigo.
What the law says is that the FCC is in charge of making rules that must be followed. And now the FCC has determined that what was going on broke one of those rules.
Reading it over, what is discussed is acceptance of the License. So, it would seem that the restriction in the absence of distribution is that you must accept the License in order to have permission to modify.
As I recall, it is not acceptance of the License that creates the obligation to share source. It is distribution of the modified software that triggers that obligation.
Absolutely spot on. The reason comes first, the means after. I first learned to program because I wanted to play the computer games published in computer magazines. Since they were mostly written in BASIC for Apple and I had a PC, I had to learn how to modify them for PC. Likewise, I learned to configure my PC because I needed to get the damn games I bought to run.
only old people use windshields.
Pssst! Suspenders. Pass it on.
GPL is not an end user license agreement though. It doesn't grant you permission to use the software, it spells out the terms under which you may distribute the software. You can ignore the terms and distribute copies or derivative works, but if you do, you're violating copyright, because following the GPL was the only method that gave you permission to do so.
You mean with the human eyeball? That would mean a pdf version of War and Peace on a floppy disk is not a copy of War and Peace. I strongly disagree with you on that point, if that's what you mean. Just because additional automated steps are needed before it is eyeball recognizable does not make it substantially different than any digital media file.
Moreover, a hard copy book would not pass your test if the person looking at it did was illiterate or did not speak the language it was written in. Not a usable test.
I would accept your your assertion if you changed it to say "if the information present is not machine decodable into a form immediately recognizable as the work in question, it is not a copy of the work".
My point still stands.
We're not talking about ordinary "telling you how to assemble the file" as in giving instructions for how to operate the software. This is akin to numbering alphabet building blocks 1 to 26, and then giving someone a codebook that listed which number building block to use by copying down its number next in order to spell out the entire text of a book.
Such a codebook IS a copy of the book, even though you need to decode it somehow before you can understand it. Heck, letters themselves are such a code, just one that you can decode using your own brain.
No, they're not derived from copyrighted files. They are generic 128 bit number strings.
If host 1 hosted the string that meant the letter P, and host 2 hosted the string that meant letter O, then they would serve those letters upon demand. The URL would instruct someone wanting "Poo" to download once from host 1, and append a download from 2 twice to get poo. Someone wanting "pop" would be told to download from host 1, then 2, then append what 1 sent again.
All digital files of any sort can be made out of such building blocks and is why the peers are not sending each other copywritten materials.
But again, the URL host and the person using it to create a file are committing copyright infringement.
Except that they are right to a point. Passing those randomized data blocks amongst yourselves will not be copyright infringement. Instead, this system less like peer to peer and more like a simple download in its copyright liability. The assembly instructions themselves are a compressed version of the file, and the parties violating copyright are the URL hoster and the person who uses the instructions to assemble the file.
While individuals are not passing copyrighted files to each other, the copyright violation does occur. The URL with the instructions of how to assemble the file is actually an encoded version of the file. Downloading those instructions is just as much a copyright violation as downloading a digital version of the file, or a zipped archive from which the file can be extracted. So, "nobody shares any copyrighted files, and therefore nobody needs to hide away" is erroneous. Both the person offering the URL and the person accessing it need to hide if it's a work someone's going to exercise copyright over.
From the main site: "It must be noted that up until the point of retrieval of content from the OFFSystem, storage and transfer of a so-called copyrighted file is completely legal. However, the act of re-assembling a file may be considered copyright infringment in some cases, and users should be aware of legislation regarding copyright law which applies to their jurisdiction before doing so."
I think this analysis is flawed because it assumes that the instructions to construct a file are not a file, and that only when you have the end file have you copied the work. In fact, if the instructions contain all the information of a work, they are the work, in exactly the same way that any digital representation of a work is the work. "Y'onor, I didn't copy no files, look, this is just instructions to make the files" will not fly any more than "Y'onor, this isn't a music recording, it's ones and zeros."
The necessity of "trashing" that belief hinges on the commercial aspect of the art trade.
I would feel no compulsion to go into someone's home and shatter illusions, even though personally, I'd rather have harsh facts than comfortable self-deception or willful ignorance.
But when it comes to a seller making a false representation that a good is explicitly "the actual painting by the master's hand", yeah. It's necessary to quash that, if you care that contracts are upheld.
So, now I'll do as you ask an consider your carefully crafted scenario. Since you're introducing it as essentially perfect as far as perception goes, I can't argue that my enjoyment of a copy would be diminished. So, we now have a similar situation to digital media files... and are to assume that whee, now two people have the good of it. Better, right? I evaluate that as no, for two reasons. Less importantly, the two people theoretically can encounter each other and discover they both have grandpa's chain... now the doubled good feelings turn to hard feelings as questions such as whether the other person is a thief, if not, who the heck is breaking into my home, was it ever grandpa's chain, who's toying around with me by duplicating my personal effects, etc, etc. More importantly though, is the concealment of truth. A world where people go around thinking that it doesn't matter what lies and deceptions are made, so long as you fool everyone and make them happy, sounds repellent to me. Sounds like an especially alcoholic way of thinking, to me.
I'm not arguing against the flowing stream of time and the nature of identity... I'm trying to explain to vadim t what "the big deal with it being original" is to those who do care about it. I'm more or less making the assumption he really doesn't know, for the purpose of my post.
Nice dodgery. Going back to the original topic of discussion... your issue appears to be that you lack, or have chosen to disregard and reject, a mental faculty of discernment most people have.
Going to an actual example instead of a hypothetical illustration, I have a pocketwatch chain that belonged to my grandfather. I use it for my pocket watch, and find that it reminds me of my grandfather often, which memories I find satisfying and enjoyable to contemplate, and I easily feel a sense of connection to those past times. Now, I could have a duplicate made of the chain and use that, and it would still remind me of grandpa. For that matter, I could hold the empty pop can that is in front of me and call those memories to mind. But the effect is less powerful, it just doesn't evoke the same satisfaction that my grandpa's actual pocketwatch chain does.
The whole concept of authenticity is a phenomenon of the same order. Hopefully, if you truly have not been able to understand it, this example will give enough of a direction to use your imagination to at least get a glimmer... something's going on in most people's heads that's not in yours.
On the other hand, if you actually do understand, but evaluated its value as low or nil and are now just proselytizing that view, well. There's not much point in that. Either a person feels connection in authenticity, or they don't.
I'm guessing that, if grandma's ashes embedded in glass on your mantlepiece got chipped or broken, you'd be just as happy with a recreation using someone else's ashes, as long as it looked identical.
To the rest of us, it would not, and while of differing importance, it's the same underlying principle that causes us, unlike you, to assign value to the originality of what it's made of.
"How could human beings possibly handle eating asparagus grown thousands of miles away from earth?... the utensils would need to be engineered to withstand it too."
You're absolutely right. Insurance companies should insure only people who don't have healthcare costs. That way, it's all profit!
NWN2's first premium module, Mysteries of Westgate, is delayed because Atari wants a new DRM scheme on it. NWN2's second expansion, Storm of Zehir, according to Obsidian, will likely have the same copy protection as Mask of the Betrayer.
But a Golden Age only lasts ten turns!
Heck with that. At that price it better be Cat42z, and transmit 40 GLibrariesofCongress/s.
The law is clear. If you choose to mail something to someone that they did not ask for, it becomes their property. End of discussion. Done. Sending it through the mail, unsolicted makes it a gift.
Whatever idea you had in your head that prompted you to mail it makes no difference to the law. The recepient didn't ask you for it, you sent it anyway for whatever reason. Bing bam boom, it's theirs now. It doesn't matter if they want it or not. It doesn't matter if it's cross-promotional.
There is a way to send something to someone without sending it to the world. You contact them and say "If you agree to my conditions, I will send it to you." Then, if they agree, you send it, if they don't, you can't send it anyway and bind them to your wishes. I can't emphasize how fundamentally important that is... no one can force someone else into a contract.
I think you meant packet. Or
It is absolutely limiting your freedom of speech.
You might as well say that this is marks of ink on paper we are exchanging and stopping one method of delivering while not others is not limiting your freedom of speech in any way, because you would be exactly as wrong.
I stopped caring about LucasArts when they stopped making space combat simulators.