The basic facts in the article are right: Gillman opted-in to GroupLotto's list to receive stuff, then some time later opted out. A day after he had opted-out, a received an email from Sprint, an GroupLotto "partner". Gillman sued.
Sprint moved for summary judgment on four grounds: 1. Sprint itself did not send the email 2. The email was sent unitentionally 3. Gillman had consented to receive the email 4. Gillman had a preexisting relationship with Audiogalaxy that made the email not "unsolicited."
The court decided as follows: 1. The law defines the spammer as either the sender, or the one who causes email to be sent. So Sprint is still a spammer.
2. This argument calls for a factual judgment, so it isn't appropriate to rule on as a matter of law. Sprint basically said that it was GroupLotto's fault that it was sent -- Sprint only wanted to send to opted-in people. Thus the sending was unintentional. However, there are several issues about what the different parties obligations are, so this claim was rejected.
3. Sprints third argument was also not suitable for summary judgment. Sprint argued that at the time Sprint contracted with GroupLotto to send the email, Gillman was opted-in, and had therefore consented to receive the spam. This argument was partially based on a "two-to-three day" unsubscription time that Sprint claimed was standard -- Gillman could not have expected that he had opted-out until several days had passed. However, there was no such temporal disclaimer from GroupLotto, and it was granted that Gillman had unsubscribed by the time the email was actually sent. This issue of fact was unsuitable for summary judgment. Therefore, it is explicitly undecided if the fact that the email was "in the pipeline" when Gillman opted-out makes it spam or not.
4. For this argument, Sprint argued that Gillman had a preexisting business relationship that made the spam not "unsolicited." Unfortunately, they were right. The Utah law reads as follows:
"commercial email is not 'unsolicited' if the sender has a preexisting business or personal relationship with the sender."
The law makes no provision for discontinuing a business relationship. Thus, you have a "preexisting business relationship" with *anyone* you have ever done business with under the Utah law.
The judge noted that this is probably not what the legislature meant, but still, she was constrained to follow what they actually passed into law, not what she thought they meant.
There were a few other problems with the case, but that one flaw was enough to grant summary judgment.
I administer several domains through Verio, and we recently got similarly deceptive mail from Interland.
The problem is, this is not just registration that Interland is fighting for. They want to parlay controlling the registration into stealing the customers. If they control the registration (and by default, the DNS, from their scamming form) you have a "legitimate" business relationship with them and they can spam you to their hearts content with deals and "upgrade incentives."
All right, I am not a Berlin developer, but I have been interested in this project for quite a while, and I have read through most of the stuff on their website.
I see a lot of things being thrown around, without any real understanding (although anyone from the Berlin project is welcome to smack me around). Here are some clarifications:
OpenGL.
Why use OpenGL? Well, according to the FAQ, it is because it is a stable API that already does a bunch of what they want. But that is missing the point -- Berlin is not OpneGL-only. OpenGL is one of the several available toolkits used by the server to render the app. In fact, the most advanced toolkit currently bundled with Berlin doesn't use OpenGL at all.
Toolkits.
People here are talking about QT, GTK, etc. The purpose of these toolkits is
to make X programming less painful. OK, in the future, there could be some sort of Xtoolkit->Berlin wrapper that would 'port' over applications with a recompile. But an important but unheralded aspect of Berlin is that it is designed to present a consistent programming interface that is not painful to work with.
to give consistent looknfeel to apps. Berlin would do this at the server level. Berlin uses a single consistent set of widgets (a 'toolkit') to render the entire screen. That is why they talk about universal theming -- it would be like in installing GTK and then having the ability to switch all your applications to use GTK on the fly. Want QT? Install QT. Flip a switch. Now all you apps render with QT.
to integrate with a desktop. Berlin doesn't deal with this, but it could be easily extended.
Corba.
Berlin uses corba. Yes. Corba can be slow. Yes. But the trick is to see how they are using corba. For local operation, the call to the orb can be highly optimized... Just a couple of pointer jumps. (This is not much different than with X, where it uses TCP/IP to communicate with internally, even on a standalone machine). For remote operation, the corba orb shouldn't be the bottleneck the network should. But using corba gives the option to redirect displays, just like X.
The difference is that, whereas X sends thousands (or millions!) of directions over the wire saying 'Paint pixel(x,y) green', Berlin says something like 'Put a button a this point in the screen graph' (where the screen graph is part of the Berlin prgramming model). The server has enough smarts to draw and position the button itself. Hence, Berlin has the possibility of being faster than X, even with Corba, because it has to give fewer commands to the server.. sometimes many orders of magnitude fewer commands.
Well, that is all I can think of for now. But I think Berlin is one of the coolest projects in a long while, and has the ability to transform Linux just like Aqua/Quartz did for BSD.
Good point, but the question is not whether social services and mass transit are analogous, but rather if social services and music are analogous. I think that if anything, the social work analogy is closer to napster than the subway analogy that RXC was pushing
Please note that I am not defending the functioning of the current system, be it primarily American or not. I am sick and tired of knee-jerk responses in the geek community. The ire in this situation should be directed at the originators of these laws, not the corporations, who, for all their power+money, are frequently mindless automatons when it comes to legal issues.
Of course you are right, tho, concerning the value increases in intellectual properties given increased circulation -- at least in the case of already-established properties. It is harder to make the same argument when the trademark in question is new.
There are lots of comments -- and there will be lots more -- talking about how guinness sucks and they'll never drink another. The problem is that you are all confusing the actions of a person with the actions of a corporation.
If a person did this, maybe then they would be guilty of a serious lack of humor. But businesses aren't people! They have to act in certain ways because they are required to by law.
If Guinness isn't anal about the use of the word "Guinness" with reference to beer, they will lose their trademark and it will be gone! Arguably, if they allow these Joe Schmoe domains, then every two-bit brewer in the world will be able to put "Guinness" on their beer too -- killing off one of the better-known brand names in beer.
Corporations must act to protect the interests of their owners! If you or I had this problem, we could forgive and forget. A corporation cannot! The directors of a business must do all they can to protect its assets and profit flows or they will be sued for a breach of feduciary duty.
Yes, free speech and all that. Parody, etc. But even if it isn't cool, it is perfectly understandable that the Guinness corp wouldn't want these domains out there.
Stop bellyaching about Guinness. This is merely a sympton of a more generally screwed up system.
The (problem?) is that a Microsoft vulnerability isn't news, unless a *lot* of people get hurt by it (e.g., Melissa). Not to put down Microsoft, but it is fairly common knowledge, even among the ZDnet readership, that Microsoft products frequently ship with their pants down ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H with their security features disabled. So, where this is just more of the same, it's not news.
On the other hand, open source folks usually like to crow about the security of their systems. Consequently, a security hole (even one like this, where the vulnerability is due to incompetent administration) is news.
Here is the difference: KDE2 will be supporting GTK *pixmap* themes -- in which all the widgets are predrawn pixmaps which are cached in memory.
KDE2 native themes are (IIRC) coded themes. (Blackbox does the same thing -- in fact, I think that some of the code was shared between BB and KDE2) These themes don't draw the window and then overlay the necessary elements with pixmaps, they just draw the window themed in the first place.
Enlightenment's theme engine is the most similar to KDE2's -- and it would probably provide similar performance.
But then again, IANAKD (I am not a KDE developer).
Oh come on! What do you think ORBit does in Gnome? Face it, for an *integrated* desktop environment, you have got to have some sort of process that coordinates things. You can make it ugly, you can make it elegant, but you have got to have it there. I frankly see no difference between the DCOPServer and ORBit (except the fact that one does Corba and the other uses libICE). I challenge you to come up with *any* software scheme that has many interoperating parts that does not have something that does not fulfill this task.
The placement of the window buttons is completely configurable. Change it to the left side if you don't like where it is. Check out the kcontrol sectin on window decorations.
I'd advise you to pull your head out of the sand and start studying something meaningful.
So far, I have only seen you tear down other fields of endeavor -- to the English Lit guy, you recommended science or engineering; to me, you recommend . . . something else?
If you are not a troll -- or even if you are (and one of the most successful ever, judging by the length of this thread)-- define yourself. What is a "real education?"
Just as one would expect, Faraday's "work" has since been shown to be utterly fraudulent. He was a con artist, who preyed on the emotionalistic generosity of academic liberals to cheat his way into a fake career as a so-called "scientist". None of his "discoveries" even lasted out his lifetime.
Hmmm... I distinctly recall studying Faraday's theories last year -- in most ways quite current. (especially his theoretical work on field lines.) While I don't agree with your other points, this is just out-and-out false.
>>copyright law is designed to give the knowledge back to the people, after a given amount of time.
>In some respects, copyright laws is obsolete. It was written at a time when knowledge could not be transmitted or without a physical medium of storage, which had some cost. It didn't matter if you weren't paying an extra 5% for royalties to the author, because the majority of the price was the cost of reproduction and the medium itself. This has changed, and copyright law will have to change to recognize the fact that information can now be transmitted without any wealth being created. If advertising could be irremovably inserted into Project Gutenberg etexts, or if they could be distributed only on a "pay per view" basis, the endeavor would begin to do some good in the world and I'd withdraw my objections.
You are operating under the assumption that copyright is essentially a publisher's right, like the stationer's rights before the statute of Anne. While this is somewhat true in the U.K. (see the earliest interpretations of the Statute of Anne -- Donaldson, I think?), the U.S. Constitution only protects authors. The only reason publishers have any say at all is because of copyright assignment by the author or the works-for-hire doctrine. In short, the previous poster had a more correct interpretation -- copyright in the United States designed to protect the author.
Furthermore, your argument about the creation of wealth is flawed. First, (even though so die-hard economists might disagree), there is wealth created through the gutenberg project. This wealth is created in at least three ways:
Ease of access is an economic good. While these texts are already officially in the public domain, making them easier to access enhances their worth. e.g., Lexis-Nexis is a legal search service. While the information is otherwise available, putting it all online and making it searchable earns Lexis big bucks. Besides, who's to say that the Gutenberg etexts couldn't be used as a loss-leader for a business selling specialized reading hardware?
The expansion of the public domain and the encouragement of new authors. Because new authors have greater access to these public domain works, they are more able to use them in fashioning original works. This results in a larger number of workers available.
The creation of a more literate populace. Increasing the availability of these texts makes it more likely that they will be read, resulting in a more literate -- and thus more productive -- populace.
Second, (despite the propaganda the other way) intellectual property law was *never* designed to guarantee profits to the publisher or even the author. It was designed to provide exclusivity in the marketplace for a limited period of time. After that, it was meant to enter into the public domain permanently. I can say with confidence that copyright law in its current incarnation is in many ways diametrically opposed to the original intent of the founding fathers.
Slashdot Mirror
The basic facts in the article are right: Gillman opted-in to GroupLotto's list to receive stuff, then some time later opted out. A day after he had opted-out, a received an email from Sprint, an GroupLotto "partner". Gillman sued.
Sprint moved for summary judgment on four grounds:
1. Sprint itself did not send the email
2. The email was sent unitentionally
3. Gillman had consented to receive the email
4. Gillman had a preexisting relationship with Audiogalaxy that made the email not "unsolicited."
The court decided as follows:
1. The law defines the spammer as either the sender, or the one who causes email to be sent. So Sprint is still a spammer.
2. This argument calls for a factual judgment, so it isn't appropriate to rule on as a matter of law.
Sprint basically said that it was GroupLotto's fault that it was sent -- Sprint only wanted to send to opted-in people. Thus the sending was unintentional. However, there are several issues about what the different parties obligations are, so this claim was rejected.
3. Sprints third argument was also not suitable for summary judgment. Sprint argued that at the time Sprint contracted with GroupLotto to send the email, Gillman was opted-in, and had therefore consented to receive the spam. This argument was partially based on a "two-to-three day" unsubscription time that Sprint claimed was standard -- Gillman could not have expected that he had opted-out until several days had passed. However, there was no such temporal disclaimer from GroupLotto, and it was granted that Gillman had unsubscribed by the time the email was actually sent. This issue of fact was unsuitable for summary judgment. Therefore, it is explicitly undecided if the fact that the email was "in the pipeline" when Gillman opted-out makes it spam or not.
4. For this argument, Sprint argued that Gillman had a preexisting business relationship that made the spam not "unsolicited." Unfortunately, they were right. The Utah law reads as follows:
"commercial email is not 'unsolicited' if the sender has a preexisting business or personal relationship with the sender."
The law makes no provision for discontinuing a business relationship. Thus, you have a "preexisting business relationship" with *anyone* you have ever done business with under the Utah law.
The judge noted that this is probably not what the legislature meant, but still, she was constrained to follow what they actually passed into law, not what she thought they meant.
There were a few other problems with the case, but that one flaw was enough to grant summary judgment.
Thats all.
Hmmm. Flash + Cookie = Charcoal?
I administer several domains through Verio, and we recently got similarly deceptive mail from Interland.
The problem is, this is not just registration that Interland is fighting for. They want to parlay controlling the registration into stealing the customers. If they control the registration (and by default, the DNS, from their scamming form) you have a "legitimate" business relationship with them and they can spam you to their hearts content with deals and "upgrade incentives."
Interland sucks.
I see a lot of things being thrown around, without any real understanding (although anyone from the Berlin project is welcome to smack me around). Here are some clarifications:
- OpenGL.
- Toolkits.
- to make X programming less painful. OK, in the future, there could be some sort of Xtoolkit->Berlin wrapper that would 'port' over applications with a recompile. But an important but unheralded aspect of Berlin is that it is designed to present a consistent programming interface that is not painful to work with.
- to give consistent looknfeel to apps. Berlin would do this at the server level. Berlin uses a single consistent set of widgets (a 'toolkit') to render the entire screen. That is why they talk about universal theming -- it would be like in installing GTK and then having the ability to switch all your applications to use GTK on the fly. Want QT? Install QT. Flip a switch. Now all you apps render with QT.
- to integrate with a desktop. Berlin doesn't deal with this, but it could be easily extended.
- Corba.
.. sometimes many orders of magnitude fewer commands.
Well, that is all I can think of for now. But I think Berlin is one of the coolest projects in a long while, and has the ability to transform Linux just like Aqua/Quartz did for BSD.Why use OpenGL? Well, according to the FAQ, it is because it is a stable API that already does a bunch of what they want. But that is missing the point -- Berlin is not OpneGL-only. OpenGL is one of the several available toolkits used by the server to render the app. In fact, the most advanced toolkit currently bundled with Berlin doesn't use OpenGL at all.
People here are talking about QT, GTK, etc. The purpose of these toolkits is
Berlin uses corba. Yes. Corba can be slow. Yes. But the trick is to see how they are using corba. For local operation, the call to the orb can be highly optimized... Just a couple of pointer jumps. (This is not much different than with X, where it uses TCP/IP to communicate with internally, even on a standalone machine). For remote operation, the corba orb shouldn't be the bottleneck the network should. But using corba gives the option to redirect displays, just like X.
The difference is that, whereas X sends thousands (or millions!) of directions over the wire saying 'Paint pixel(x,y) green', Berlin says something like 'Put a button a this point in the screen graph' (where the screen graph is part of the Berlin prgramming model). The server has enough smarts to draw and position the button itself. Hence, Berlin has the possibility of being faster than X, even with Corba, because it has to give fewer commands to the server
If a person did this, maybe then they would be guilty of a serious lack of humor. But businesses aren't people! They have to act in certain ways because they are required to by law.
- If Guinness isn't anal about the use of the word "Guinness" with reference to beer, they will lose their trademark and it will be gone! Arguably, if they allow these Joe Schmoe domains, then every two-bit brewer in the world will be able to put "Guinness" on their beer too -- killing off one of the better-known brand names in beer.
- Corporations must act to protect the interests of their owners! If you or I had this problem, we could forgive and forget. A corporation cannot! The directors of a business must do all they can to protect its assets and profit flows or they will be sued for a breach of feduciary duty.
- Yes, free speech and all that. Parody, etc. But even if it isn't cool, it is perfectly understandable that the Guinness corp wouldn't want these domains out there.
Stop bellyaching about Guinness. This is merely a sympton of a more generally screwed up system.On the other hand, open source folks usually like to crow about the security of their systems. Consequently, a security hole (even one like this, where the vulnerability is due to incompetent administration) is news.
KDE2 native themes are (IIRC) coded themes. (Blackbox does the same thing -- in fact, I think that some of the code was shared between BB and KDE2) These themes don't draw the window and then overlay the necessary elements with pixmaps, they just draw the window themed in the first place.
Enlightenment's theme engine is the most similar to KDE2's -- and it would probably provide similar performance.
But then again, IANAKD (I am not a KDE developer).
So far, I have only seen you tear down other fields of endeavor -- to the English Lit guy, you recommended science or engineering; to me, you recommend . . . something else?
If you are not a troll -- or even if you are (and one of the most successful ever, judging by the length of this thread)-- define yourself. What is a "real education?"
False.
Books exist because authors write them.
Books are distributed because publishers publish them.
And, evidently, because a guy who likes to eat mayonnaise puts them up on his web site.
But all the publishers in the world, electronic or not, free or not, wouldn't create a damn bit of wealth without the original creative effort.
Hmmm... I distinctly recall studying Faraday's theories last year -- in most ways quite current. (especially his theoretical work on field lines.) While I don't agree with your other points, this is just out-and-out false.
Did I mention that I'm also an EE?
Ah, well...
>In some respects, copyright laws is obsolete. It was written at a time when knowledge could not be transmitted or without a physical medium of storage, which had some cost. It didn't matter if you weren't paying an extra 5% for royalties to the author, because the majority of the price was the cost of reproduction and the medium itself. This has changed, and copyright law will have to change to recognize the fact that information can now be transmitted without any wealth being created. If advertising could be irremovably inserted into Project Gutenberg etexts, or if they could be distributed only on a "pay per view" basis, the endeavor would begin to do some good in the world and I'd withdraw my objections.
You are operating under the assumption that copyright is essentially a publisher's right, like the stationer's rights before the statute of Anne. While this is somewhat true in the U.K. (see the earliest interpretations of the Statute of Anne -- Donaldson, I think?), the U.S. Constitution only protects authors. The only reason publishers have any say at all is because of copyright assignment by the author or the works-for-hire doctrine. In short, the previous poster had a more correct interpretation -- copyright in the United States designed to protect the author.
Furthermore, your argument about the creation of wealth is flawed. First, (even though so die-hard economists might disagree), there is wealth created through the gutenberg project. This wealth is created in at least three ways:
Second, (despite the propaganda the other way) intellectual property law was *never* designed to guarantee profits to the publisher or even the author. It was designed to provide exclusivity in the marketplace for a limited period of time. After that, it was meant to enter into the public domain permanently. I can say with confidence that copyright law in its current incarnation is in many ways diametrically opposed to the original intent of the founding fathers.
BTW, IANAL, but I am going to law school...