Granted, it's a bit more embarassing when the guy down the street reads your love letter to Celine Dion, but why not balk when it's Earthlink, the FBI, or anybody freakin' else.
Because the simple fact of the matter is, what you don't know can't hurt you. If Billy Bob the FBI agent reads all about my affairs with that English teacher, no harm is done. But if Suzie Q next door to me reads about it, and tells her mom, who tells my wife, then I'm in some deep shit.
And where exactly is that decryption key stored? If it's something volatile, you're in big trouble if it gets accidently erased (or the person dies in a big fire). Otherwise, just get the key after disabling the fingerprint mechanism. Unless the fingerprint itself is the key (in which case it can be copied), I don't think you can come up with a non-self-destructing system which would not be subject to physical attack.
I guess as long as they are laws directed toward unfair business practices, and are only civil (not criminal), it's not so bad. Once you engage in interstate commerce you agree to some extent to follow the particular rules our government has set up. As long as whatever expenses they have catching and prosecuting this guy are ultimately paid for by the fines, I guess it's a win-win-lose (us-them-him) situation.
If there were no email then there would be probably be an offline messaging feature of instant messaging. With access control lists built into most instant messaging providers, we'd have no spam. Sounds good to me.
Agreed, but how exactly does this constitute as fraud? I can understand if he is lying about a product which he is selling, but trapping people in with javascript which they shouldn't have on in the first place isn't fraud, and IMHO shouldn't be illegal.
Looking at the bottom right hand corner of my browser I see a little green check and the words "Trusted sites". What that means is that slashdot.org is allowed to use javascript on my browser. Annakurnikova.com will not be added to that list, of course.
"Commercial advantage" is pretty broad, and can include something as simple as *enabling* the use of copyrighted material without permission, even if you personally do not make commercial use of that material. Just ask Dmitri Skylarov.
I think you'd have a pretty tough time convincing a jury of that. I'm certainly not convinced. Another point to be made is that the DMCA is not enforcible as interstate commerce when there is no commerce taking place. The government would then have to rely on the copyright clause, and fair use would almost certainly kick in.
What Sklyarov (!) allegedly did was not even remotely similar. He was allegedly engaging in international commerce for profit. That is a much different situation, from a constitutional standpoint, from a legal (DMCA) standpoint, and from a standpoint of juror sympathy.
Describing such a device is not a felony. Even if that description could be considered trafficking (which I doubt it could), it was not done "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain".
I want a respiration fuel cell. Feed it sugar, water, and oxygen, and out pops carbon dioxide, energy, and crap - literally. If we humans can do it, why can't computers, damnit?
the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
Bill Gates makes $666,000. Literal meaning: Bill Gates makes a lot of money. Expressed meaning: Bill Gates is satan. Definitely a different meaning, and somewhat opposite, in fact.
Um... would there EVER be any confusion between "Apple Computer" and "Apple Records"? They obviously had no intention of producing competing products, so it's questionable whether there was any trademark dilution anyway.
Trademark dilution does not require confusion or competition. Read any of my links which I've given to the Federal Dilution Trademark Act, or look it up on google, if you don't believe me.
I think you confuse the issue here a bit. It is not about Apple computers not being allowed to make music, it is about the Apple computer logo not appearing on records, making music buyers think it is an Apple Record product. Apple don't want to compet against Apple to say it simple.
I'm not sure where you're getting that inference from, but it's not really something I can argue against. I have no idea what Apple Corps. wants or wanted, and I don't think the settlement was ever made public. I do know that Apple Computer was found guilty of breaking the settlement, and AFAIK they never put their logo on a record. I also know that their lawyer was afraid to put a xylophone sound as a Mac system sound, hence sosumi.
Anyway, it is hard to get the original sound of Abbey studio that made Beatles and Pink Floyd famous on your Apple computer, even though the sound is now digital and therefore "better" in some meaning of the word.
Are records even made any more? I guess they are since they would be useful for live DJ's, at the least. What are the records made from? I guess I'm not familiar enough with the way records were made in the 80s to say, but I would think a highest quality setting WAV would get all the information in a record, and then you could add filters if you wanted it to have the artifacts and "warmth" of an actual record. If you did want to actually "burn" a record though, I don't know how you'd go about doing that without losing quality. So I guess the Mac could only be realistically used for a recording studio for bands who want to go straight to CD and/or cassette (including DAT or whatever they use for masters).
Apple settled that trademark dispute. They paid Apple Records lots of cash. This is all well and good.
They paid Apple Records lots of cash only because they broke the original agreement, and went into the music industry. They wouldn't have had that "lots of cash" back in 1981, when they were originally sued, and with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, it doesn't matter if you are in competition or not.
They lost their "look and feel" case, but Microsoft had not bit-for-bit copied any of their artwork. Using identical key-commands is one thing. Using someone else's bitmaps is another.
They lost their "look and feel" case because they sued over copyright infringement, not trademark infringement. Trademark infringement at the time of that case was based on "a likelihood of confusion". No one was going to confuse a Mac for Windows, they were clearly told what they were buying when they bought it, so the trademark law (at the time) did not apply. Also, trademark infringement cannot apply to functional aspects, such as key-commands would likely be considered. Functional aspects are the sole domain of patent law, and patent law is subjected to many more restrictions (for instance the limited time provision).
All of this changed in 1996. I suggest you read the Federal Dilution Trademark Law and see for yourself. I've linked it elsewhere or you can search on Google. This country made it 220 years without that stupid law. Anyone who argues it's necessary is seriously deluding themselves.
Actually, as fare as I know, Apple Corp (that was founded by the Beatles in 1968) sued Apple Computer.
I'm almost positive that Apple Records was fully owned by Apple Corps, Ltd. See here for more information. But yeah, it would be the Corp which did the actual suing.
The case ended in a settlement where Apple Computer payed something between $25 million - $30 million and had to agree to stay out of the music business.
According to a number of sites I've read, including this one, the original settlement, for "an undisclosed amount" (probably very small), had the stipulation that Apple Computer could not be used for music purposes. In 1989 Apple Corps sued Apple Computer for breaching that contract. That was settled for somewhere in the $30 million range. If the Federal Trademark Dilution Act had been in effect in 1981 (sorry, not 1984), Apple Computer would have been in a much more precarious legal situation, and would likely not have been able to reach a settlement (I doubt they had $30 million at that time).
AFAIK, Apple Computer is no longer barred from going into the music industry. They certainly breached their original settlement by this point, it's quite easy to use the Macintosh as a low budget recording studio, probably with about as much quality as the Beatles had back in 1981.
The Federal Trademark Dilution Act became effective in January of 1996. Apple lost it's "look and feel" case before that, I believe it was 1995.
Of course, had The Federal Trademark Dilution Act been in effect in 1984, Apple probably wouldn't be called Apple any more, since they would have lost the trademark dispute against Apple Records.
Because theu did this retroactively. They let microsoft get away with several GUI rip offs for a couple of years, and then when apple went to the courts when they thought microsoft had gone too far, it was already too late to do anything about that.
The Federal Trademark Dilution Act didn't become effective until January 16, 1996. Until then it was legal to steal just about any GUI as long as it didn't cause a likelihood of confusion or deception. When the god-awful Dilution Act was passed, all of that changed.
See here, among other places (search for "selective incorporation" and/or "Fourteenth Amendment" for more). States are not required to follow the second ammendment, nor the seventh, nor the fifth ammendment right to a grand jury. The first amendment and most of the bill of rights is incorporated, but only because of the fourteenth amendment. Before the fourteenth amendment, states could make laws abridging free speech. It is still unclear whether or not local governments can make laws abridging free speech, and the whole thing rests on the current interpretation of the supreme court (which wasn't always the same, as has been repeatedly disputed by minority opinions).
IANAL, but I still guarantee you you are allowed to resell software under the first sale doctrine, as far as federal law is concerned. The problem is that contracts are generally governed by state law, and if an EULA is deemed to be a binding contract, you can still be sued under breach of contract (not copyright law). There are many many caveats though, not the least of which is that states cannot make their own copyright law, because the federal government has the exclusive right to make copyright law. If the states decide to try to enforce this is will be a long and hard battle. If the federal government tries to enforce it it'll be an open and shut case, and Microsoft will lose.
UCITA like DMCA is illegal and anti-constitutional because they don't respect jurisditions and other base constitutions laws (like 1st ammendment and more)...
UCITA is state law. The constitution has very very few restrictions upon state law. The first ammendment is completely irrelevant anyway, because no state government is restraining free speech (you'd want to base it on the 14th ammendment, anyway, since the 1st ammendment does not apply to states, only to congress, except through the 14th ammendment's partial incorporation).
In a way, of course, a lease is like a license to use the car and, I suppose, the lessor could put that language in the contract, but the buying public wouldn't accept it.
They most certainly do. What car lease do you know which is transferrable? Car leases are almost always non-transferrable. They don't tell you to throw it in the trash, because not only can you not sell it, you have to keep it and make sure nothing bad happens to it. At the very most, on an open ended lease, you can return the car in perfect condition and stop paying your lease payments.
No one would own (or lease) a car if the contract said, "You must not sell this car, in the event this car is no longer used, send it to the nearest junkyard.", so why is this true for software?
No one would own (or lease) a car if contract said, "You must not make modifications to this car and sell it unless you give the instructions on how to make those modifications to the new owner". Or if it said "You cannot add a stereo system to this car, thus creating a derivitive work, unless you release that stereo system under the GPL".
So why is it that the GPL tries to do this for software?
Slashdot Mirror
Granted, it's a bit more embarassing when the guy down the street reads your love letter to Celine Dion, but why not balk when it's Earthlink, the FBI, or anybody freakin' else.
Because the simple fact of the matter is, what you don't know can't hurt you. If Billy Bob the FBI agent reads all about my affairs with that English teacher, no harm is done. But if Suzie Q next door to me reads about it, and tells her mom, who tells my wife, then I'm in some deep shit.
decrypt files stored on the hard disk
And where exactly is that decryption key stored? If it's something volatile, you're in big trouble if it gets accidently erased (or the person dies in a big fire). Otherwise, just get the key after disabling the fingerprint mechanism. Unless the fingerprint itself is the key (in which case it can be copied), I don't think you can come up with a non-self-destructing system which would not be subject to physical attack.
yeah, except that ICQ SUCKS
I guess as long as they are laws directed toward unfair business practices, and are only civil (not criminal), it's not so bad. Once you engage in interstate commerce you agree to some extent to follow the particular rules our government has set up. As long as whatever expenses they have catching and prosecuting this guy are ultimately paid for by the fines, I guess it's a win-win-lose (us-them-him) situation.
If there were no email then there would be probably be an offline messaging feature of instant messaging. With access control lists built into most instant messaging providers, we'd have no spam. Sounds good to me.
Agreed, but how exactly does this constitute as fraud? I can understand if he is lying about a product which he is selling, but trapping people in with javascript which they shouldn't have on in the first place isn't fraud, and IMHO shouldn't be illegal.
Looking at the bottom right hand corner of my browser I see a little green check and the words "Trusted sites". What that means is that slashdot.org is allowed to use javascript on my browser. Annakurnikova.com will not be added to that list, of course.
"Commercial advantage" is pretty broad, and can include something as simple as *enabling* the use of copyrighted material without permission, even if you personally do not make commercial use of that material. Just ask Dmitri Skylarov.
I think you'd have a pretty tough time convincing a jury of that. I'm certainly not convinced. Another point to be made is that the DMCA is not enforcible as interstate commerce when there is no commerce taking place. The government would then have to rely on the copyright clause, and fair use would almost certainly kick in.
What Sklyarov (!) allegedly did was not even remotely similar. He was allegedly engaging in international commerce for profit. That is a much different situation, from a constitutional standpoint, from a legal (DMCA) standpoint, and from a standpoint of juror sympathy.
Describing such a device is not a felony. Even if that description could be considered trafficking (which I doubt it could), it was not done "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain".
Just for the record, you do realize that you're now a felon under the DMCA, right?
Just for the record, you're wrong.
I want a respiration fuel cell. Feed it sugar, water, and oxygen, and out pops carbon dioxide, energy, and crap - literally. If we humans can do it, why can't computers, damnit?
Think about it for a second. Burning Hydrogen = 2 H2 + O2 -> 2HOH + energy. 2HOH + energy -> 2 H2 + 02.
the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
Bill Gates makes $666,000. Literal meaning: Bill Gates makes a lot of money. Expressed meaning: Bill Gates is satan. Definitely a different meaning, and somewhat opposite, in fact.
Um... would there EVER be any confusion between "Apple Computer" and "Apple Records"? They obviously had no intention of producing competing products, so it's questionable whether there was any trademark dilution anyway.
Trademark dilution does not require confusion or competition. Read any of my links which I've given to the Federal Dilution Trademark Act, or look it up on google, if you don't believe me.
I think you confuse the issue here a bit. It is not about Apple computers not being allowed to make music, it is about the Apple computer logo not appearing on records, making music buyers think it is an Apple Record product. Apple don't want to compet against Apple to say it simple.
I'm not sure where you're getting that inference from, but it's not really something I can argue against. I have no idea what Apple Corps. wants or wanted, and I don't think the settlement was ever made public. I do know that Apple Computer was found guilty of breaking the settlement, and AFAIK they never put their logo on a record. I also know that their lawyer was afraid to put a xylophone sound as a Mac system sound, hence sosumi.
Anyway, it is hard to get the original sound of Abbey studio that made Beatles and Pink Floyd famous on your Apple computer, even though the sound is now digital and therefore "better" in some meaning of the word.
Are records even made any more? I guess they are since they would be useful for live DJ's, at the least. What are the records made from? I guess I'm not familiar enough with the way records were made in the 80s to say, but I would think a highest quality setting WAV would get all the information in a record, and then you could add filters if you wanted it to have the artifacts and "warmth" of an actual record. If you did want to actually "burn" a record though, I don't know how you'd go about doing that without losing quality. So I guess the Mac could only be realistically used for a recording studio for bands who want to go straight to CD and/or cassette (including DAT or whatever they use for masters).
Apple settled that trademark dispute. They paid Apple Records lots of cash. This is all well and good.
They paid Apple Records lots of cash only because they broke the original agreement, and went into the music industry. They wouldn't have had that "lots of cash" back in 1981, when they were originally sued, and with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, it doesn't matter if you are in competition or not.
They lost their "look and feel" case, but Microsoft had not bit-for-bit copied any of their artwork. Using identical key-commands is one thing. Using someone else's bitmaps is another.
They lost their "look and feel" case because they sued over copyright infringement, not trademark infringement. Trademark infringement at the time of that case was based on "a likelihood of confusion". No one was going to confuse a Mac for Windows, they were clearly told what they were buying when they bought it, so the trademark law (at the time) did not apply. Also, trademark infringement cannot apply to functional aspects, such as key-commands would likely be considered. Functional aspects are the sole domain of patent law, and patent law is subjected to many more restrictions (for instance the limited time provision).
All of this changed in 1996. I suggest you read the Federal Dilution Trademark Law and see for yourself. I've linked it elsewhere or you can search on Google. This country made it 220 years without that stupid law. Anyone who argues it's necessary is seriously deluding themselves.
Actually, as fare as I know, Apple Corp (that was founded by the Beatles in 1968) sued Apple Computer.
I'm almost positive that Apple Records was fully owned by Apple Corps, Ltd. See here for more information. But yeah, it would be the Corp which did the actual suing.
The case ended in a settlement where Apple Computer payed something between $25 million - $30 million and had to agree to stay out of the music business.
According to a number of sites I've read, including this one, the original settlement, for "an undisclosed amount" (probably very small), had the stipulation that Apple Computer could not be used for music purposes. In 1989 Apple Corps sued Apple Computer for breaching that contract. That was settled for somewhere in the $30 million range. If the Federal Trademark Dilution Act had been in effect in 1981 (sorry, not 1984), Apple Computer would have been in a much more precarious legal situation, and would likely not have been able to reach a settlement (I doubt they had $30 million at that time).
AFAIK, Apple Computer is no longer barred from going into the music industry. They certainly breached their original settlement by this point, it's quite easy to use the Macintosh as a low budget recording studio, probably with about as much quality as the Beatles had back in 1981.
Used to be true, but it's not true any more. Like I said, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, which was passed in 1996, changed all that.
The Federal Trademark Dilution Act became effective in January of 1996. Apple lost it's "look and feel" case before that, I believe it was 1995.
Of course, had The Federal Trademark Dilution Act been in effect in 1984, Apple probably wouldn't be called Apple any more, since they would have lost the trademark dispute against Apple Records.
Because theu did this retroactively. They let microsoft get away with several GUI rip offs for a couple of years, and then when apple went to the courts when they thought microsoft had gone too far, it was already too late to do anything about that.
The Federal Trademark Dilution Act didn't become effective until January 16, 1996. Until then it was legal to steal just about any GUI as long as it didn't cause a likelihood of confusion or deception. When the god-awful Dilution Act was passed, all of that changed.
which is why I said except through the 14th ammendment's partial incorporation
See here, among other places (search for "selective incorporation" and/or "Fourteenth Amendment" for more). States are not required to follow the second ammendment, nor the seventh, nor the fifth ammendment right to a grand jury. The first amendment and most of the bill of rights is incorporated, but only because of the fourteenth amendment. Before the fourteenth amendment, states could make laws abridging free speech. It is still unclear whether or not local governments can make laws abridging free speech, and the whole thing rests on the current interpretation of the supreme court (which wasn't always the same, as has been repeatedly disputed by minority opinions).
This, I believe, is the applicable US law.
IANAL, but I still guarantee you you are allowed to resell software under the first sale doctrine, as far as federal law is concerned. The problem is that contracts are generally governed by state law, and if an EULA is deemed to be a binding contract, you can still be sued under breach of contract (not copyright law). There are many many caveats though, not the least of which is that states cannot make their own copyright law, because the federal government has the exclusive right to make copyright law. If the states decide to try to enforce this is will be a long and hard battle. If the federal government tries to enforce it it'll be an open and shut case, and Microsoft will lose.
UCITA like DMCA is illegal and anti-constitutional because they don't respect jurisditions and other base constitutions laws (like 1st ammendment and more)...
UCITA is state law. The constitution has very very few restrictions upon state law. The first ammendment is completely irrelevant anyway, because no state government is restraining free speech (you'd want to base it on the 14th ammendment, anyway, since the 1st ammendment does not apply to states, only to congress, except through the 14th ammendment's partial incorporation).
In a way, of course, a lease is like a license to use the car and, I suppose, the lessor could put that language in the contract, but the buying public wouldn't accept it.
They most certainly do. What car lease do you know which is transferrable? Car leases are almost always non-transferrable. They don't tell you to throw it in the trash, because not only can you not sell it, you have to keep it and make sure nothing bad happens to it. At the very most, on an open ended lease, you can return the car in perfect condition and stop paying your lease payments.
No one would own (or lease) a car if the contract said, "You must not sell this car, in the event this car is no longer used, send it to the nearest junkyard.", so why is this true for software?
No one would own (or lease) a car if contract said, "You must not make modifications to this car and sell it unless you give the instructions on how to make those modifications to the new owner". Or if it said "You cannot add a stereo system to this car, thus creating a derivitive work, unless you release that stereo system under the GPL".
So why is it that the GPL tries to do this for software?