So how 'bout when two folks get married and one of them "takes" the other's name.
When I got married, none of the forms from the county clerk said anything about "taking" my husband's name. They all said I could *change* my last name to my husband's if I wished. The colloquial usage of "take" in this sense is antiquated at best... sounds like something out of a 1950's musical. It's definitely metaphorical, and in no way reflects the legal process of changing your name after marriage.
People use the meme "Copyright infringement is STEALING!" as an argument about legality and morality, not as a convenient and cutesy colloquialism. In that context, using dictionary definitions (as well as legal ones, which seem to bounce off of these posters like Teflon) is perfectly appropriate and even necessary.
"To seize [with authority; confiscate] (the property of another) without right or permission." is what you are doing when you are illegally copying copyrighted material (movies, books, software)
No, that's what the FBI does when they raid your house and pick up your computer and walk away with your porn collection.
Confiscation is to remove something from someone else's possession. Copying material illegally does not do that.
If you obtain something without paying for it, it doesn't matter that the medium happens to allow a direct copy of it.
Your mistake is that you think "steal" means "obtain something without paying for it." It doesn't. It means removing something from someone else's possession (as more completely described, with dictionary citations, in another post of mine above). If all that was necessary to steal something was to obtain it without paying for it, we'd have a heck of a time with gift-giving, not to mention the Free Software movement.
Laws about stealing are about removal of property without consent. Laws about copyright infringement are about possession, distribution, or use of material without consent. They are not the same. Stop confusing them.
Uh, yes you can. You steal something when you don't pay for it. You steal owed payment. You steal value (by diminishing it with a copy).
Let's look at this a little closer, with help from dictionary.com:
steal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stl)
v. stole, (stl) stolen, (stln) stealing, steals v. tr.
1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
take ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tk) v. took, (tk) taken, (tkn) taking, takes v. tr.
1. To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially:
a. To capture physically; seize: take an enemy fortress.
b. To seize with authority; confiscate.
c. To kill, snare, or trap (fish or game, for example).
Illegally copying a work does not involve capturing it physically (since the physical object need never leave possession of the rightful owner), confiscating it (again, because it is not removed from the owner), or killing, snaring or trapping (because it's not a friggin' squirrel). So to steal, you have to take, and to take, you have to physically remove something from the owner.
Let's start with the fact that "stolen" IP is almost never in the possession of the "owner" when it it "stolen." Generally, someone copies it not directly from the owner, but from a legal license holder. Therefore, even if it does involve physically removing the item (and, under right of first sale, if you *do* physically remove the item from the previous owner, you are specifically *not* infringing on copyright), you did not remove it from the "owner" as defined by copyright law.
It is possible to steal a CD from your roommate, but that is not copyright infringement. It is possible to infringe on copyright by copying a CD your roommate owns, but that is not stealing. It is possible to steal the CD from your roommate and copy it and pass it out to all your friends, in which case you've both stolen and infringed, but you haven't even done them to the same person. This is why the difference is important: stealing involves possession of a physical object. Copyright infringement does not. Therefore, they have to be defined differently, and so the law makes a distinction.
To be honest I think this warning is probably overstated, since in order to prove infringement by an open-source contributor, MSFT would have to prove:
That the contributor accessed or had access to the leaked source.
That the actual contributed code contains material that is copyrighted by MSFT
No, MS doesn't have to prove anything. It's a civil matter, and they just have to come up with more (credible) evidence than you can. They also just have to convince a judge or jury which likely knows nothing about programming, so showing that several lines look pretty similar (because, duh, there's not too many ways to do it) is probably enough.
Civil cases are decided on a preponderance of evidence, NOT proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yeah, words can make a good threat... except the counter-argument in court would only need to be 2 words long... "prove it".
In a criminal case, yes... you need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt." This would be civil, where it's just a preponderance of evidence. If they can show more evidence that your code is similar to theirs than you can show that you haven't seen or copied their code, you lose.
apparently, we can't look at other peoples copywritten music without 'taining' our ability to write original music.
In the realm of natural language, there are literally thousands of ways to express similar ideas. Music is slightly more limited, but still has at least hundreds (if not thousands) of valid permutations for melodies within the same key.
A good programming language may give you as many as three or four different ways to do the same basic thing. You might wind up with a couple dozen different useful algorithms for the same function, but probably only one or two will emerge as clearly superior in speed, stability, and flexibility.
Therefore, it is far, far easier to "accidentally" duplicate code than a song. And it still happens in music... people hear a song, and then a while later subconsciously imitate it when creating their own music. They may have it come back to them in a dream and never realize that it's based on something that already exists. And copyright cases have been lost over such things.
I'm not sure exactly what the natural enemy of the penguin is, but my guess is it's something that lurks under the water and picks up a nice quick-swimming treat.
And now, here's the confirmation, from MS's own press releases.
My favorite quote: "At this time there is no known impact on customers. We will continue to monitor the situation." Translation: "No one's found that Win32 flaw we testified to Congress about yet, but we've got a betting pool on how long it will take."
IBM's legal team make Microsoft's look like first year law students. IBM's lawyers held the DoJ at bay for DECADES.
Well, yes. But that was because that's how long it took to get through a case like that, back then.
Because of that experience, federal laws have been rewritten to "fast-track" technology antitrust cases, since the development cycle is so short relative to traditional products. Microsoft can thank IBM for getting them through the DOJ in only a few years.;-)
If you look back at past slashdot stories, you'll find exactly that was done several months ago. An opensource patch was released for a windows exploid before MS could release one. Everyone raved about it that day.
The next day it was discovered the patch was very badly coded, and included a backdoor...
It wasn't a patch, it was a browser plug-in to deal with the truncated URL exploit.
First people were celebrating. Then people were saying "Wait! This is redirecting all web traffic through a proxy... it's a hack!" Then people were saying "No, wait... it's just redirecting malformed URLs that are subject to this exploit, so that it can give a specific error page and track who is trying this crap."
There were some coding errors apparently, but nothing terrible.
Or, better, get someone who can read C(++?) but can't write it to describe the functions that are implemented, what arguments they take etc. and then get the main team of coders to implement it. I'm pretty sure descriptions of code have been found to be protected speech.
I know! Let's get a team of folks working on the Windows 2000 Source Haiku!
Which is more advanced than what's in use for a lot of traffic signal control boxes. They have something like 8 bytes of memory. But they really don't have to do much... just get data about where the cars are, and turn the right lights green for the right amount of time (while not allowing the opposing lights to be green).
The reason they use such "archaic" hardware, even in brand-new boxes, is because they have to withstand ambient temperatures up to 150 degrees farenheit for long periods of the day. The boxes can't be ventilated very much without exposing them to the elements (and destructive teenagers), and it gets hot as an oven inside when the sun is hitting them all day.
I imagine all kinds of infrastructure that needs redundancy and reliability over flexibility and power would find NASA's code useful in one way or another. (Even if it's just as an example of what NOT to do.;-)
The last time it was posted, there was nothing to indicate any of the contents of the article, so everyone was commenting based on the title and, for the truly intrepid, the article's first page (of 10). This time, they posted it in such a way that you might actually be interested in reading the article!;-)
When I'm being paid by them...I'm responsible to them, to get my work done for them. But, the second I walk out of that door...the do not and should not have any say or interests in what I do in my private life.
To a point. But there are valid circumstances where it would be inappropriate to engage in certain business on your off-time:
- You are in a business which directly competes with your employer.
- You are using knowledge and/or training gained from your employer for your own profit (in most cases this would be fine, but in some it would be dicey).
- There is an inherent conflict of interest between your job and what you're doing in your off time (For example, working for an "email-based opt-in direct marketer" during the day, and volunteering on an anti-spam OS project at night).
But the fact is, employers can tailor contracts to deal with particular situations appropriate to the environment, and so can employees. It's not necessarily out of line for the employer to expect *any* protection, but the clauses often used are too broad (because it's cheaper to buy an existing contract template and stick your own company's name in, than to hire a lawyer to personally write the contract for you).
the analogy is a bit wonky - its not the creators of guns that are like virus writers, but the *users* of guns (those who use them in a public area instead of their private grounds).
For those who didn't RTFA, the kids interviewed for this article specifically don't release their viruses. They publish the code, and also send it off to antivirus companies.
It is quite analogous to manufacturing guns and making no effort to vet the buyers first. If gun manufacturers made an effort to only put their products in the hands of trained law enforcement or other folks with a really good reason to have a gun, it would be the same as these guys writing their code but only sending it to AV companies. The only barrier to distribution for firearms (that the producers put in place) is cost, which hasn't so far been terribly effective at preventing the "wrong" people from getting them.
But the right-to-bear-arms-in-a-poorly-organized-non- militia crowd will tell you that, in a world where criminals have guns, people are safer if they have easy access to guns. The virus writers interviewed make the same argument: *someone* is going to write viruses, regardless. They are simply making their own strides in this work and then making the information public, so that people can protect themselves (or buy software that incorporates protections).
I'm not sure I agree with either argument, but I'd say that the virus writers probably are less likely to lead to anyone's death.
Thanks for posting the full article! So it's a BATCH FILE generator they are getting worked up about?
Uh, he didn't post the full article, he posted the first page (1 of 10).
It's a pretty interesting article. They talk about a lot of different aspects of this particular community of virus writers. It's not what you might think of... these guys actually send their code off to antivirus companies (in addition to publishing it on their websites, but anyway).
I guess my initial reaction was fsck 'em. Fsck 'em all. However, it could be suggested that they have made corporations and governments aware of many intrinsic insecurities in certain popular operating systems which may have prevented some larger potential catastrophe.
In fact, in the article, it mentions that the guys interviewed normally send off the code to their latest creation to a batch of antivirus companies, so that new definitions can include it before some script-kiddie gets a hold of it.
Since we know there are virus writers out there who are *not* part of this community, and are writing viruses for far more nefarious purposes (see SoBig), sounds like these kids are doing us a big favor really. Maybe they'll find the vulnerability before the spammers and scammers do.
Re:What I think will be interesting is...
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 1
As opposed to Google's code, located right on Sourceforge for all to see?
Yes, there's a level of (dis)trust MS might have to overcome, but Google isn't invincible.
I didn't actually ever say or mean to imply that Google is Open Source... after all, if they were, MS wouldn't bother with creating their own code, would they?
However, the fact that we *don't* know what either code is doing means that we will be more inclined to trust the company that has the least to gain and most to lose by deceiving us... i.e. the one that we already trust more (Google).
It might be hard to get though because such a judgement would necessarily drive a wedge between MS's network services (MSN, messenger, passport, hotmail, et cetera) and their OS/application software. For example, it might mean that if MS wanted to embed their new search engine in MSN, they couldn't use it as IE's default homepage anymore. They'd have to pick between using MSN to promote the search engine and using IE to promote MSN.
I think that would be a Good Thing, but a judge could see it as a strong argument against such an injunction.
Or, an argument in favor of such an injunction...
With so many choices about which monopoly to leverage in which market, limiting MS to just *one* isn't such a burden on them, really, is it?
Re:What I think will be interesting is...
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The reaction of people like those found on Slashdot if Microsoft actually crafts a search engine that is demonstrably better than Google. Will people ignore that in favor of simple Microsoft bashing, or will they use it and acknowledge its superiority?
There's a certain element of trust that goes into something like this. MSN's new search technology could spit back more relevant and comprehensive results, but there would still be suspicion that MS was (a) using the search info in ways we wouldn't approve of, and (b) shaping the results to suit their priorities.
Since the search engine code will be proprietary, there's no way to prove otherwise, and many people will still be more inclined to use a company that they consider "safer."
Microsoft will undoubtedly make their own search engine the default when the browser loads, or will integrate it with their msn.com portal page, but even if they do this, they still have typically created pages that are slow to load and so full of stuff as to make them difficult to use. Google has always had a clean interface and massively quick load times. This helps.
But, if every Windows computer comes with IE pre-installed, with a toolbar that has a "search" box that can only point to MSN search, Google's clean interface and fast loading page isn't nearly as big an advantage.
Slashdot Mirror
So how 'bout when two folks get married and one of them "takes" the other's name.
When I got married, none of the forms from the county clerk said anything about "taking" my husband's name. They all said I could *change* my last name to my husband's if I wished. The colloquial usage of "take" in this sense is antiquated at best... sounds like something out of a 1950's musical. It's definitely metaphorical, and in no way reflects the legal process of changing your name after marriage.
People use the meme "Copyright infringement is STEALING!" as an argument about legality and morality, not as a convenient and cutesy colloquialism. In that context, using dictionary definitions (as well as legal ones, which seem to bounce off of these posters like Teflon) is perfectly appropriate and even necessary.
"To seize [with authority; confiscate] (the property of another) without right or permission." is what you are doing when you are illegally copying copyrighted material (movies, books, software)
No, that's what the FBI does when they raid your house and pick up your computer and walk away with your porn collection.
Confiscation is to remove something from someone else's possession. Copying material illegally does not do that.
If you obtain something without paying for it, it doesn't matter that the medium happens to allow a direct copy of it.
Your mistake is that you think "steal" means "obtain something without paying for it." It doesn't. It means removing something from someone else's possession (as more completely described, with dictionary citations, in another post of mine above). If all that was necessary to steal something was to obtain it without paying for it, we'd have a heck of a time with gift-giving, not to mention the Free Software movement.
Laws about stealing are about removal of property without consent. Laws about copyright infringement are about possession, distribution, or use of material without consent. They are not the same. Stop confusing them.
Let's look at this a little closer, with help from dictionary.com:Illegally copying a work does not involve capturing it physically (since the physical object need never leave possession of the rightful owner), confiscating it (again, because it is not removed from the owner), or killing, snaring or trapping (because it's not a friggin' squirrel). So to steal, you have to take, and to take, you have to physically remove something from the owner.
Let's start with the fact that "stolen" IP is almost never in the possession of the "owner" when it it "stolen." Generally, someone copies it not directly from the owner, but from a legal license holder. Therefore, even if it does involve physically removing the item (and, under right of first sale, if you *do* physically remove the item from the previous owner, you are specifically *not* infringing on copyright), you did not remove it from the "owner" as defined by copyright law.
It is possible to steal a CD from your roommate, but that is not copyright infringement. It is possible to infringe on copyright by copying a CD your roommate owns, but that is not stealing. It is possible to steal the CD from your roommate and copy it and pass it out to all your friends, in which case you've both stolen and infringed, but you haven't even done them to the same person. This is why the difference is important: stealing involves possession of a physical object. Copyright infringement does not. Therefore, they have to be defined differently, and so the law makes a distinction.
No, MS doesn't have to prove anything. It's a civil matter, and they just have to come up with more (credible) evidence than you can. They also just have to convince a judge or jury which likely knows nothing about programming, so showing that several lines look pretty similar (because, duh, there's not too many ways to do it) is probably enough.
Civil cases are decided on a preponderance of evidence, NOT proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you were a low level coder at Mainsoft, and you saw GPL'd code in Windows, how else would you get word out without risking your job?
Uh... you do it in such a way that doesn't leave Microsoft able to sue your employer into oblivion?
Yeah, words can make a good threat ... except the counter-argument in court would only need to be 2 words long ... "prove it".
In a criminal case, yes... you need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt." This would be civil, where it's just a preponderance of evidence. If they can show more evidence that your code is similar to theirs than you can show that you haven't seen or copied their code, you lose.
apparently, we can't look at other peoples copywritten music without 'taining' our ability to write original music.
In the realm of natural language, there are literally thousands of ways to express similar ideas. Music is slightly more limited, but still has at least hundreds (if not thousands) of valid permutations for melodies within the same key.
A good programming language may give you as many as three or four different ways to do the same basic thing. You might wind up with a couple dozen different useful algorithms for the same function, but probably only one or two will emerge as clearly superior in speed, stability, and flexibility.
Therefore, it is far, far easier to "accidentally" duplicate code than a song. And it still happens in music... people hear a song, and then a while later subconsciously imitate it when creating their own music. They may have it come back to them in a dream and never realize that it's based on something that already exists. And copyright cases have been lost over such things.
I'm not sure exactly what the natural enemy of the penguin is, but my guess is it's something that lurks under the water and picks up a nice quick-swimming treat.
Walruses, mostly.
And now, here's the confirmation, from MS's own press releases.
My favorite quote: "At this time there is no known impact on customers. We will continue to monitor the situation." Translation: "No one's found that Win32 flaw we testified to Congress about yet, but we've got a betting pool on how long it will take."
IBM's legal team make Microsoft's look like first year law students. IBM's lawyers held the DoJ at bay for DECADES.
;-)
Well, yes. But that was because that's how long it took to get through a case like that, back then.
Because of that experience, federal laws have been rewritten to "fast-track" technology antitrust cases, since the development cycle is so short relative to traditional products. Microsoft can thank IBM for getting them through the DOJ in only a few years.
If you look back at past slashdot stories, you'll find exactly that was done several months ago. An opensource patch was released for a windows exploid before MS could release one. Everyone raved about it that day.
The next day it was discovered the patch was very badly coded, and included a backdoor...
It wasn't a patch, it was a browser plug-in to deal with the truncated URL exploit.
First people were celebrating. Then people were saying "Wait! This is redirecting all web traffic through a proxy... it's a hack!" Then people were saying "No, wait... it's just redirecting malformed URLs that are subject to this exploit, so that it can give a specific error page and track who is trying this crap."
There were some coding errors apparently, but nothing terrible.
Or, better, get someone who can read C(++?) but can't write it to describe the functions that are implemented, what arguments they take etc. and then get the main team of coders to implement it. I'm pretty sure descriptions of code have been found to be protected speech.
I know! Let's get a team of folks working on the Windows 2000 Source Haiku!
Not necessarily. You'll never get a court to admit stolen source code as evidence.
No, but you could subpoena specific sections of the code based on what you learned from the stolen source...
What's in use on the Shuttle might be 8086's
;-)
Which is more advanced than what's in use for a lot of traffic signal control boxes. They have something like 8 bytes of memory. But they really don't have to do much... just get data about where the cars are, and turn the right lights green for the right amount of time (while not allowing the opposing lights to be green).
The reason they use such "archaic" hardware, even in brand-new boxes, is because they have to withstand ambient temperatures up to 150 degrees farenheit for long periods of the day. The boxes can't be ventilated very much without exposing them to the elements (and destructive teenagers), and it gets hot as an oven inside when the sun is hitting them all day.
I imagine all kinds of infrastructure that needs redundancy and reliability over flexibility and power would find NASA's code useful in one way or another. (Even if it's just as an example of what NOT to do.
The last time it was posted, there was nothing to indicate any of the contents of the article, so everyone was commenting based on the title and, for the truly intrepid, the article's first page (of 10). This time, they posted it in such a way that you might actually be interested in reading the article! ;-)
When I'm being paid by them...I'm responsible to them, to get my work done for them. But, the second I walk out of that door...the do not and should not have any say or interests in what I do in my private life.
To a point. But there are valid circumstances where it would be inappropriate to engage in certain business on your off-time:
- You are in a business which directly competes with your employer.
- You are using knowledge and/or training gained from your employer for your own profit (in most cases this would be fine, but in some it would be dicey).
- There is an inherent conflict of interest between your job and what you're doing in your off time (For example, working for an "email-based opt-in direct marketer" during the day, and volunteering on an anti-spam OS project at night).
But the fact is, employers can tailor contracts to deal with particular situations appropriate to the environment, and so can employees. It's not necessarily out of line for the employer to expect *any* protection, but the clauses often used are too broad (because it's cheaper to buy an existing contract template and stick your own company's name in, than to hire a lawyer to personally write the contract for you).
the analogy is a bit wonky - its not the creators of guns that are like virus writers, but the *users* of guns (those who use them in a public area instead of their private grounds).
For those who didn't RTFA, the kids interviewed for this article specifically don't release their viruses. They publish the code, and also send it off to antivirus companies.
It is quite analogous to manufacturing guns and making no effort to vet the buyers first. If gun manufacturers made an effort to only put their products in the hands of trained law enforcement or other folks with a really good reason to have a gun, it would be the same as these guys writing their code but only sending it to AV companies. The only barrier to distribution for firearms (that the producers put in place) is cost, which hasn't so far been terribly effective at preventing the "wrong" people from getting them.
But the right-to-bear-arms-in-a-poorly-organized-non- militia crowd will tell you that, in a world where criminals have guns, people are safer if they have easy access to guns. The virus writers interviewed make the same argument: *someone* is going to write viruses, regardless. They are simply making their own strides in this work and then making the information public, so that people can protect themselves (or buy software that incorporates protections).
I'm not sure I agree with either argument, but I'd say that the virus writers probably are less likely to lead to anyone's death.
Thanks for posting the full article! So it's a BATCH FILE generator they are getting worked up about?
Uh, he didn't post the full article, he posted the first page (1 of 10).
It's a pretty interesting article. They talk about a lot of different aspects of this particular community of virus writers. It's not what you might think of... these guys actually send their code off to antivirus companies (in addition to publishing it on their websites, but anyway).
I guess my initial reaction was fsck 'em. Fsck 'em all. However, it could be suggested that they have made corporations and governments aware of many intrinsic insecurities in certain popular operating systems which may have prevented some larger potential catastrophe.
In fact, in the article, it mentions that the guys interviewed normally send off the code to their latest creation to a batch of antivirus companies, so that new definitions can include it before some script-kiddie gets a hold of it.
Since we know there are virus writers out there who are *not* part of this community, and are writing viruses for far more nefarious purposes (see SoBig), sounds like these kids are doing us a big favor really. Maybe they'll find the vulnerability before the spammers and scammers do.
As opposed to Google's code, located right on Sourceforge for all to see?
Yes, there's a level of (dis)trust MS might have to overcome, but Google isn't invincible.
I didn't actually ever say or mean to imply that Google is Open Source... after all, if they were, MS wouldn't bother with creating their own code, would they?
However, the fact that we *don't* know what either code is doing means that we will be more inclined to trust the company that has the least to gain and most to lose by deceiving us... i.e. the one that we already trust more (Google).
You miss the point of "monopoly." Regardless of why a product or company has a monopoly, once it does, US law requires it to play by different rules.
If people are overwhelmingly chosing Windows when there is no price difference, that supports the notion that they have a monopoly.
It might be hard to get though because such a judgement would necessarily drive a wedge between MS's network services (MSN, messenger, passport, hotmail, et cetera) and their OS/application software. For example, it might mean that if MS wanted to embed their new search engine in MSN, they couldn't use it as IE's default homepage anymore. They'd have to pick between using MSN to promote the search engine and using IE to promote MSN.
I think that would be a Good Thing, but a judge could see it as a strong argument against such an injunction.
Or, an argument in favor of such an injunction...
With so many choices about which monopoly to leverage in which market, limiting MS to just *one* isn't such a burden on them, really, is it?
The reaction of people like those found on Slashdot if Microsoft actually crafts a search engine that is demonstrably better than Google. Will people ignore that in favor of simple Microsoft bashing, or will they use it and acknowledge its superiority?
There's a certain element of trust that goes into something like this. MSN's new search technology could spit back more relevant and comprehensive results, but there would still be suspicion that MS was (a) using the search info in ways we wouldn't approve of, and (b) shaping the results to suit their priorities.
Since the search engine code will be proprietary, there's no way to prove otherwise, and many people will still be more inclined to use a company that they consider "safer."
Microsoft will undoubtedly make their own search engine the default when the browser loads, or will integrate it with their msn.com portal page, but even if they do this, they still have typically created pages that are slow to load and so full of stuff as to make them difficult to use. Google has always had a clean interface and massively quick load times. This helps.
But, if every Windows computer comes with IE pre-installed, with a toolbar that has a "search" box that can only point to MSN search, Google's clean interface and fast loading page isn't nearly as big an advantage.