Even if that law is not in effect it is still on every license on every commercial product even games that I buy. I just assumed that such laws did exist!
There have been laws against what you describe ever since compaq et al reverse engineered ibm pcs to make clones. They had some engineers reverse engineer the processor and what it did, and then write up a big manual of a new processor and what they wanted it to do.
A second set of engineers then came and made a processor based upon that which opened up the market for clones. Since that time the laws I believe have become more strict which is why you don't see any Mac clones.
Do people just assume that everyone is too nice to come out with their own G3's or whatever to compete with Apple? I can think of 9 or 10 companies who would sell them cheaper than apple does.
What I am saying is that just as no one does any reverse engineering of Apple computers in some other country and makes a computer here that uses the same software, a software maker can't either.
Why do you people act like this is so new and so bad??? Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO. Why was it a big deal to a lot of people when they open sourced quake? BECAUSE IT WAS NOT BEFORE THAT!!!!
It is not a "bad" law. I guess free software people don't know much about commercial software, but all commercial software has had license agreements you click to accept for years and years. This is how they make money.
Yeah, it would be great if everything was free except then you would have no idsoftware making fantastic games cause they have money shooting out of their arse.
Have you looked at the games just made for linux lately??? Have you played them?? They are crap. One of the reasons I still boot up 98 is for games. I'm happy as hell that they have those license agreements since it makes them money giving me a BETTER PRODUCT.
This is a law that was a long time coming I guess, and it will let the makers of good software relax that a real law is backing up their license agreement that more or less said the exact same thing. Plus a law will make the licensing for all products uniform, and let the consumer know exactly what they can and can't do.
I always followed the license agreements anyway not giving every software product I bought to friends or reverse engineering it(like I'd know how to reverse engineer.)
International copyright has protected software in similar ways the world over for years, except in countries like Romainia and the USSR where you can go to flea market like open stores with racks and racks of burned games and software, because they don't follow or enforce those laws at all.
I'm glad this is finally going to possibly be law, no more supposing what I can and can't do based upon different license agreements. Also it will only help the free software movement more, although it seems like anyone who can make games or such things goes to work for a commercial company where they actually make money.
It has always been this way, in fact the license agreement of every game or product such as Microsoft Word has always said this. It has always stated that you can't reverse engineer it and you have a one use per your own computer license.. DUH.
"INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Under UCITA, almost all software-related transactions will be licensing transactions. When a consumer buys a copy of Microsoft Word and a copy of a book about the program, the software transaction would be a license while the book transaction is a sale, even if the two items were side by side"
Uhhh yeah since like the 80's, give me a break this is OLD OLD OLD news.
"the customer bought them both from the same cashier, and the software license was not available to the customer until after she paid for the product and took it away"
Yeah it never was. I guess this is just FINALLY a law to enforce this. This sounds like a good thing for commercial software, although to make this legally binding for real I'd think at some point they will have to have the license agreement on the back of the box and the retailor will have to ask if the customer read it.
Have you people been hiding under the Linux/other nix rocks of free software? Welcome to reality.
I am on @home in nebraska on cox cable. You could not want, or have a better isp. I often get 100 k average downloads and from sites like www.mp3.com it is about 300 k a sec. My connection is fast and error free.
@home in canada is notorious however. I have heard how bad it is but you might try thinking that perhaps it is that cut corner isp in Canada, not @home as a whole.
The few times that I had trouble with my connection a person was out from Cox cable that day. The guy was very nice and did some things and replaced my cable modem. A day later when the thing was still happening he figured out from the time of night that it was happening it that it coincided with the dew coming. He went out to the box and noticed that a sleeve on the cable connection was cracked. After fixing it i have had very fast error free service for close to 2 years.
If there is a better ISP than this it must be in someone's dreams only or perhaps in heaven. Every other user of @home around Omaha, Ne, has had similar experiences that I have talked with.
Oh, and if this guy gets this thing through, I'm going to do some research and if I find that lots of spam is coming from primenet.com (his isp according to the post on deja.com that the article refers to) I'll move for a UDP against them. Two can play at his little blanket-udp-like-this-is-1978- and-the-few-hundred-people-who-might-be- spamming-are-representitive-of-100s-of-thousands- who-are-not-Udp-crap.
This really pisses me off. I notice no more spam from @home than anywhere else. Spam is simply here to stay anyway. As an @home user and frequent poster to various discussion groups I'm a bit irked to say the least. I've noticed a lot of other posters from @home in those groups also. We don't spam and we simply discuss on topic things. Before this guy gets his UDP thing done, I think someone should figure out the spam to non spam ratio of @Home usenet posts. Also, in case a lot of people don't know, @home is a cable internet provider and many of us have static ips. I have a hard time believing that @home is the originator of so much spam that it would cause someone to take action when any post i make could be traced back to me and me alone very easily, or any other @home user. I find that I hold myself even more accountable than I would otherwise because of this. If someone took the time to figure this out before jumping out and making rash decisions, I bet they'd see a huge growth in the amount of @home users which I'd warrant would account for increased spam, if there even is legitimately such an @home spam problem. I don't think the ratio would be any higher than for any other providor. N
Slashdot Mirror
There have been laws against what you describe ever since compaq et al reverse engineered ibm pcs to make clones. They had some engineers reverse engineer the processor and what it did, and then write up a big manual of a new processor and what they wanted it to do.
A second set of engineers then came and made a processor based upon that which opened up the market for clones. Since that time the laws I believe have become more strict which is why you don't see any Mac clones.
Do people just assume that everyone is too nice to come out with their own G3's or whatever to compete with Apple? I can think of 9 or 10 companies who would sell them cheaper than apple does.
What I am saying is that just as no one does any reverse engineering of Apple computers in some other country and makes a computer here that uses the same software, a software maker can't either.
Why do you people act like this is so new and so bad??? Software companies have been depending upon this for years and years. Do you think id software would have been built by doom and quake if just anyone could clone their game??? NO. Why was it a big deal to a lot of people when they open sourced quake? BECAUSE IT WAS NOT BEFORE THAT!!!!
It is not a "bad" law. I guess free software people don't know much about commercial software, but all commercial software has had license agreements you click to accept for years and years. This is how they make money.
Yeah, it would be great if everything was free except then you would have no idsoftware making fantastic games cause they have money shooting out of their arse.
Have you looked at the games just made for linux lately??? Have you played them?? They are crap. One of the reasons I still boot up 98 is for games. I'm happy as hell that they have those license agreements since it makes them money giving me a BETTER PRODUCT.
This is a law that was a long time coming I guess, and it will let the makers of good software relax that a real law is backing up their license agreement that more or less said the exact same thing. Plus a law will make the licensing for all products uniform, and let the consumer know exactly what they can and can't do.
I always followed the license agreements anyway not giving every software product I bought to friends or reverse engineering it(like I'd know how to reverse engineer.)
International copyright has protected software in similar ways the world over for years, except in countries like Romainia and the USSR where you can go to flea market like open stores with racks and racks of burned games and software, because they don't follow or enforce those laws at all.
I'm glad this is finally going to possibly be law, no more supposing what I can and can't do based upon different license agreements. Also it will only help the free software movement more, although it seems like anyone who can make games or such things goes to work for a commercial company where they actually make money.
"INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Under UCITA, almost all software-related transactions will be licensing transactions. When a consumer buys a copy of Microsoft Word and a copy of a book about the program, the software transaction would be a license while the book transaction is a sale, even if the two items were side by side"
Uhhh yeah since like the 80's, give me a break this is OLD OLD OLD news.
"the customer bought them both from the same cashier, and the software license was not available to the customer until after she paid for the product and took it away"
Yeah it never was. I guess this is just FINALLY a law to enforce this. This sounds like a good thing for commercial software, although to make this legally binding for real I'd think at some point they will have to have the license agreement on the back of the box and the retailor will have to ask if the customer read it.
Have you people been hiding under the Linux/other nix rocks of free software? Welcome to reality.
N
@home in canada is notorious however. I have heard how bad it is but you might try thinking that perhaps it is that cut corner isp in Canada, not @home as a whole.
The few times that I had trouble with my connection a person was out from Cox cable that day. The guy was very nice and did some things and replaced my cable modem. A day later when the thing was still happening he figured out from the time of night that it was happening it that it coincided with the dew coming. He went out to the box and noticed that a sleeve on the cable connection was cracked. After fixing it i have had very fast error free service for close to 2 years.
If there is a better ISP than this it must be in someone's dreams only or perhaps in heaven. Every other user of @home around Omaha, Ne, has had similar experiences that I have talked with.
Oh, and if this guy gets this thing through, I'm going to do some research and if I find that lots of spam is coming from primenet.com (his isp according to the post on deja.com that the article refers to) I'll move for a UDP against them. Two can play at his little blanket-udp-like-this-is-1978- and-the-few-hundred-people-who-might-be- spamming-are-representitive-of-100s-of-thousands- who-are-not-Udp-crap.
You just wait, Mr. I can control usenet.
N
This really pisses me off. I notice no more spam from @home than anywhere else. Spam is simply here to stay anyway. As an @home user and frequent poster to various discussion groups I'm a bit irked to say the least. I've noticed a lot of other posters from @home in those groups also. We don't spam and we simply discuss on topic things. Before this guy gets his UDP thing done, I think someone should figure out the spam to non spam ratio of @Home usenet posts. Also, in case a lot of people don't know, @home is a cable internet provider and many of us have static ips. I have a hard time believing that @home is the originator of so much spam that it would cause someone to take action when any post i make could be traced back to me and me alone very easily, or any other @home user. I find that I hold myself even more accountable than I would otherwise because of this. If someone took the time to figure this out before jumping out and making rash decisions, I bet they'd see a huge growth in the amount of @home users which I'd warrant would account for increased spam, if there even is legitimately such an @home spam problem. I don't think the ratio would be any higher than for any other providor. N