The civil liberties groups are involved because civil liberties are involved; the enabling legislation explicitly includes privacy concerns as one of the factors that must be considered in any technical scheme that the industry and law enforcement agencies come up with. The Commission, and the court cases that came out of its ruling are the proper venue for bringing up these issues.
In fact, because policy favors consolidation of cases, attaching all the parties to the case is favored by the courts and laws (that's why there are provisions in the law to do so). That way the courts don't have to hear the same facts and arguments twice.
Here's a clue for you to work with, then:
The transactions in question are taking place between third parties, using Yahoo as means of communication. Yahoo is not offering Nazi memorabilia for sale in France; it's not offering memorabilia for sale at all. Since there's no practical way of telling whether a particular bidder is in France, in order to comply with French law, Yahoo would have to ban posting of offers to sell Nazi memorabilia for everyone, anywhere.
By that logic, the most restrictive country in the world can make the rules for all the other countries. If the Supreme Dictator for Life of Glorious People's Republic of Crapistan declares that it is illegal for the people to view anything on the Internet, should all the service providers just shut down? It's the only way that they can make sure that the prohibited material doesn't cross into the national boundaries of Crapistan...
What's wrong with middlemen is that unless they add significant value to the transaction, they are parasites. If so, everyone else involved would be strictly better off if they were eliminated. If the middlemen eat 90% of the transaction costs (by no means unreasonable if you're talking about music), if the musician could deal directly with the consumer, you could quintuple the amount the musician gets, while halving the amount the consumer pays.
As to middlemen, let them find jobs where they are producing something of value, or performing a service, or even being middlemen in a transaction where they can add value (e.g. almost anything where the product can't be distributed instantly anywhere for practically nothing).
If you think our economic system is built upon shuffling money around endlessly without actually producing anything of worth, maybe you should study some economics. Think about where the money is coming from at the start of the transaction, and where it could go if it weren't being siphoned off every step of the way. People who think that adding frictional costs to transactions is a good thing ("it's food on someone's table!") are the same sort of people who think "I can't be overdrawn, I still have checks left!"
If it's only one person, or one small group of people, then how does it spread? Obviously if the whole world begins to resemble Ian Clarke's vision, then he has succeeded in persuading people to adopt his vision. That's freedom, not fascism.
Isn't it amazing how so many of these "It's the Law!" posts seem to have no idea what the law actually is, especially in regard to time limits on copyright and the broad exceptions for fair use?
Since the appeals court struck down the injunction, and in particular specifically overruled the line of reasoning that the judge was taking (that what people are doing with Napster can't fall under fair use since computers aren't audio recording devices under the law), I guess it's not so clear-cut that Napster has violated the letter of the law.
Of course T-shirts don't enjoy special protection--but they do enjoy the same protection that other modes of speech have. Which is the point: that source code is speech, and should enjoy the same protection that all other speech enjoys. Freedom of speech is not an absolute, but the rules on restraint of speech are completely different--and the burden of proof much heavier--than rules on restraint of objects such as wrenches, pliers, and the like.
The MPAA has been arguing that the source code of DeCSS is just like a pair of pliers, and should have the same (low) hurdles to the Constitutionality of banning the distribution. Up until now, the judge has been buying that argument, but now he's not so sure.
Is closing the studio really punishing the medium? I mean, if your analysis of the thinking (or lack thereof) that went into making Titan A.E. is anything like correct, the medium is probably better off without this particular studio....
I disagree. I think, the spirit of the GPL says "more power to 'em." They aren't distributing your code, so they aren't depriving anyone of the (free as in speech) right to modify your code. Anyone who wants to do more than run their application (containing the "tons" of their own labor that they've added) is perfectly free to take your code (the same starting point the hypothetical company had), and modify it.
Even in a regime with no copyright or patent laws whatsoever, you wouldn't have the right to copy data (in this case source code that they've written) that's never been published or even intended for publication. You might as well argue that you have the right to the contents of someone's diary because he quoted you in it.
What you're asking to do is against the spirit of the GPL and the Free Software movement. The point of Free Software is to make sure that you have access to the code, so that if you want to make your own private modifications, you can do so. To ensure that is the case, the GPL requires that the software not be redistributed unless interested parties can gain access to the code. As you correctly note, that means that as long as the software isn't redistributed the modifiers don't have to distribute the source to their modifications.
What you are seeking to do is to take away some of the freedom from the Free Software, by making the user redistribute the code, even if he doesn't want to, just because the output of the code is distributed. There are a lot of practical, even ethical, reasons not to redistribute your own private mods (such as unwillingness to fork the project).
Bottom line is that as long as the sofware is free, in the free-speech sense, it's going to be perfectly valid to add your own private modifications to it and still distribute the output from running the code any way you like. Anything less, and it wouldn't be free software.
IANAL, but as I understand it, even under US law, you have no right to control the terms under which an item that you sell is resold by the person who bought it from you. This is called the Doctrine of First Sale, if I remember correctly (and it's how, for instance, restrictive covenants on real estate get struck down). Software companies get around this by pretending that it's not a sale at all, but a contractual arrangement granting you the use of the software under the terms of the license.
What the German court seems to have done is declared that under German law, the legal fiction that it's not really a sale by Microsoft to the OEM isn't valid. Microsoft has sold the goods to the OEM, and loses control once the goods have entered the stream of commerce.
People should realize that copying publically available information is never theft. By copying your information (say, by hitting save page on the Slashdot comment you posted) I deprive you of nothing: the information is still there. So-called "Intellectual Property" is completely unlike real property in this regard--as Jefferson among others realized. If you take someone else's CD, you are depriving them of the use of that CD. If you copy someone's CD, you haven't harmed them at all. Property rights in information aren't a matter of any natural right the creator has to monopolize something that can be infinitely copied without diminishing; they are solely a matter of public policy considerations that hold that on the balance, society as a whole is better off if the creators are granted a limited monopoly as an incentive to create. The key concepts here are that the monopoly should be limited (e.g. "fair use" exceptions--if copying really were theft, then even copying for purposes of review or backups would be immoral), and that it should only be granted to the extent that society as a whole really does benefit. That's a pragmatic issue, not a moral one.
If you've gotten this far in your project without actually figuring out who your customers are, and what they would be willing to pay for, I'd say you're in more trouble than fiddling with the licensing will solve. Maybe it's time for you to actually go out and talk to some potential customers.
What's topical about Star Trek and Twilight Zone?
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
Given that they've been around for over thirty and forty years, respectively, I'm not sure that I see the force of the objection that references to them badly date the work for future readers....
The prospects of earning a decent living by going into any of the arts are already abysmal, yet there doesn't seem to be any shortage of aspiring actors, writers, and so forth. The idea that creative types will stop creating simply because they won't be well paid is just goofy.
Actually, the Internet opens the possibility of direct patronage by the masses, not just the wealthy. In the long run, a model where creators are supported by the fans kicking in a few bucks for the support of the artist, even though the individual works are available for free might not only be viable, but produce a better living for the rank-and-file creators than the current system where the super-stars reap almost all the rewards.
It's more like the average UI designer has the IQ of a flatworm. Despite computers making possible an almost infinitely flexible UI, UI designers still make programs (and that includes GUI desktops) that are so complex and counter-intuitive that they require training and studying a manual. A good UI would be as obvious as a hammer or filing cabinet; there's right ways and wrong ways to use a hammer, and good and bad ways to file, but anyone can make either work, and you'll never see Using Hammers for Dummies or the Complete Idiots Guide to Filing Cabinets.
No supraluminal information because the "tail" or precursor of the wave through the cesium always gets there first, having propogated at the normal value for c. It's the "bulk" of the wave that gets transmitted faster than c, by virtue of its being reconstructed using only the information in the tail--this happens far faster than the time it takes the bulk of the wave to travel (and then backpropogation erases the original, so you don't see two pulses), but the transmission of the information is normal. If you had really been trying to send a message, you could have just sent an ordinary beam of light and gotten the information there in the same amount of time. Neat, but no violation.
You know, there once was a Frenchman who said something to the effect that "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." I wonder whatever happened to that sort of Frenchman?
That's right. If RMS were really as fanatic as his critics claim, he wouldn't be willing to grant the People's Republic a pass on the terms of the GPL, citing as he does the justifiable material necessity of being a developing nation. It is certainly mature of him to be able to cast a blind eye to the fact that the Chinese government actually kills its citizens who demand freedom of speech. After all, what's a little state-sponsered murder, when there are earth-shaking issues like those bastards in the Open Source Movement stubbornly calling it Linux instead of GNU/Linux?
Much of the time, it's less expensive to throw hardware at it, not more. Moore's Law does wonders for the speed of your application, but it doesn't apply to the productivity of your programmers.
If you can get locked out of a mission critical system, and yet there is a way to fix the system, that way should be made available through a "front door" with proper, user configurable, security. There is no problem for which a secret way into your mission critical system is the proper solution.
That's the whole point of free speech. So, yes, as speech publishing the source to a virus would be protected, just as publishing a call to overthrow the US Government and establish (insert the form of government of your choice here) is. Actually unleashing a virus based on that source code would continue to be illegal, just as incitement to riot is. This is not a new problem, where source code as speech is dangerous in ways that, say, detailed instructions on building a bomb is not.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, because policy favors consolidation of cases, attaching all the parties to the case is favored by the courts and laws (that's why there are provisions in the law to do so). That way the courts don't have to hear the same facts and arguments twice.
By that logic, the most restrictive country in the world can make the rules for all the other countries. If the Supreme Dictator for Life of Glorious People's Republic of Crapistan declares that it is illegal for the people to view anything on the Internet, should all the service providers just shut down? It's the only way that they can make sure that the prohibited material doesn't cross into the national boundaries of Crapistan...
What's wrong with middlemen is that unless they add significant value to the transaction, they are parasites. If so, everyone else involved would be strictly better off if they were eliminated. If the middlemen eat 90% of the transaction costs (by no means unreasonable if you're talking about music), if the musician could deal directly with the consumer, you could quintuple the amount the musician gets, while halving the amount the consumer pays.
As to middlemen, let them find jobs where they are producing something of value, or performing a service, or even being middlemen in a transaction where they can add value (e.g. almost anything where the product can't be distributed instantly anywhere for practically nothing).
If you think our economic system is built upon shuffling money around endlessly without actually producing anything of worth, maybe you should study some economics. Think about where the money is coming from at the start of the transaction, and where it could go if it weren't being siphoned off every step of the way. People who think that adding frictional costs to transactions is a good thing ("it's food on someone's table!") are the same sort of people who think "I can't be overdrawn, I still have checks left!"
If it's only one person, or one small group of people, then how does it spread? Obviously if the whole world begins to resemble Ian Clarke's vision, then he has succeeded in persuading people to adopt his vision. That's freedom, not fascism.
Isn't it amazing how so many of these "It's the Law!" posts seem to have no idea what the law actually is, especially in regard to time limits on copyright and the broad exceptions for fair use?
Come see the violence inherent in the system! Or am I the only one who flashes on Monty Python and the Holy Grail when reading this article?
Since the appeals court struck down the injunction, and in particular specifically overruled the line of reasoning that the judge was taking (that what people are doing with Napster can't fall under fair use since computers aren't audio recording devices under the law), I guess it's not so clear-cut that Napster has violated the letter of the law.
The MPAA has been arguing that the source code of DeCSS is just like a pair of pliers, and should have the same (low) hurdles to the Constitutionality of banning the distribution. Up until now, the judge has been buying that argument, but now he's not so sure.
Is closing the studio really punishing the medium? I mean, if your analysis of the thinking (or lack thereof) that went into making Titan A.E. is anything like correct, the medium is probably better off without this particular studio....
I disagree. I think, the spirit of the GPL says "more power to 'em." They aren't distributing your code, so they aren't depriving anyone of the (free as in speech) right to modify your code. Anyone who wants to do more than run their application (containing the "tons" of their own labor that they've added) is perfectly free to take your code (the same starting point the hypothetical company had), and modify it.
Even in a regime with no copyright or patent laws whatsoever, you wouldn't have the right to copy data (in this case source code that they've written) that's never been published or even intended for publication. You might as well argue that you have the right to the contents of someone's diary because he quoted you in it.
What you're asking to do is against the spirit of the GPL and the Free Software movement. The point of Free Software is to make sure that you have access to the code, so that if you want to make your own private modifications, you can do so. To ensure that is the case, the GPL requires that the software not be redistributed unless interested parties can gain access to the code. As you correctly note, that means that as long as the software isn't redistributed the modifiers don't have to distribute the source to their modifications.
What you are seeking to do is to take away some of the freedom from the Free Software, by making the user redistribute the code, even if he doesn't want to, just because the output of the code is distributed. There are a lot of practical, even ethical, reasons not to redistribute your own private mods (such as unwillingness to fork the project).
Bottom line is that as long as the sofware is free, in the free-speech sense, it's going to be perfectly valid to add your own private modifications to it and still distribute the output from running the code any way you like. Anything less, and it wouldn't be free software.
IANAL, but as I understand it, even under US law, you have no right to control the terms under which an item that you sell is resold by the person who bought it from you. This is called the Doctrine of First Sale, if I remember correctly (and it's how, for instance, restrictive covenants on real estate get struck down). Software companies get around this by pretending that it's not a sale at all, but a contractual arrangement granting you the use of the software under the terms of the license.
What the German court seems to have done is declared that under German law, the legal fiction that it's not really a sale by Microsoft to the OEM isn't valid. Microsoft has sold the goods to the OEM, and loses control once the goods have entered the stream of commerce.
People should realize that copying publically available information is never theft. By copying your information (say, by hitting save page on the Slashdot comment you posted) I deprive you of nothing: the information is still there. So-called "Intellectual Property" is completely unlike real property in this regard--as Jefferson among others realized. If you take someone else's CD, you are depriving them of the use of that CD. If you copy someone's CD, you haven't harmed them at all. Property rights in information aren't a matter of any natural right the creator has to monopolize something that can be infinitely copied without diminishing; they are solely a matter of public policy considerations that hold that on the balance, society as a whole is better off if the creators are granted a limited monopoly as an incentive to create. The key concepts here are that the monopoly should be limited (e.g. "fair use" exceptions--if copying really were theft, then even copying for purposes of review or backups would be immoral), and that it should only be granted to the extent that society as a whole really does benefit. That's a pragmatic issue, not a moral one.
If you've gotten this far in your project without actually figuring out who your customers are, and what they would be willing to pay for, I'd say you're in more trouble than fiddling with the licensing will solve. Maybe it's time for you to actually go out and talk to some potential customers.
Given that they've been around for over thirty and forty years, respectively, I'm not sure that I see the force of the objection that references to them badly date the work for future readers....
The prospects of earning a decent living by going into any of the arts are already abysmal, yet there doesn't seem to be any shortage of aspiring actors, writers, and so forth. The idea that creative types will stop creating simply because they won't be well paid is just goofy.
Actually, the Internet opens the possibility of direct patronage by the masses, not just the wealthy. In the long run, a model where creators are supported by the fans kicking in a few bucks for the support of the artist, even though the individual works are available for free might not only be viable, but produce a better living for the rank-and-file creators than the current system where the super-stars reap almost all the rewards.
It's more like the average UI designer has the IQ of a flatworm. Despite computers making possible an almost infinitely flexible UI, UI designers still make programs (and that includes GUI desktops) that are so complex and counter-intuitive that they require training and studying a manual. A good UI would be as obvious as a hammer or filing cabinet; there's right ways and wrong ways to use a hammer, and good and bad ways to file, but anyone can make either work, and you'll never see Using Hammers for Dummies or the Complete Idiots Guide to Filing Cabinets.
No supraluminal information because the "tail" or precursor of the wave through the cesium always gets there first, having propogated at the normal value for c. It's the "bulk" of the wave that gets transmitted faster than c, by virtue of its being reconstructed using only the information in the tail--this happens far faster than the time it takes the bulk of the wave to travel (and then backpropogation erases the original, so you don't see two pulses), but the transmission of the information is normal. If you had really been trying to send a message, you could have just sent an ordinary beam of light and gotten the information there in the same amount of time. Neat, but no violation.
You know, there once was a Frenchman who said something to the effect that "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." I wonder whatever happened to that sort of Frenchman?
Statistically speaking, someone was bound to say that.
That's right. If RMS were really as fanatic as his critics claim, he wouldn't be willing to grant the People's Republic a pass on the terms of the GPL, citing as he does the justifiable material necessity of being a developing nation. It is certainly mature of him to be able to cast a blind eye to the fact that the Chinese government actually kills its citizens who demand freedom of speech. After all, what's a little state-sponsered murder, when there are earth-shaking issues like those bastards in the Open Source Movement stubbornly calling it Linux instead of GNU/Linux?
Much of the time, it's less expensive to throw hardware at it, not more. Moore's Law does wonders for the speed of your application, but it doesn't apply to the productivity of your programmers.
If you can get locked out of a mission critical system, and yet there is a way to fix the system, that way should be made available through a "front door" with proper, user configurable, security. There is no problem for which a secret way into your mission critical system is the proper solution.
That's the whole point of free speech. So, yes, as speech publishing the source to a virus would be protected, just as publishing a call to overthrow the US Government and establish (insert the form of government of your choice here) is. Actually unleashing a virus based on that source code would continue to be illegal, just as incitement to riot is. This is not a new problem, where source code as speech is dangerous in ways that, say, detailed instructions on building a bomb is not.