No, you can't say "Let's go kill Brian Adams, right now" but you can say "Brian Adams will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." One is an immediate incitement to an illegal act. The other is not - it's protected speech.
Hey, why are you picking on Brian Adams? He's Canadian. Canadians are nice. Eh?
As a programmer for hire, you don't get royalties on your code - recording artists do. If recording artists were doing work for hire they would get paid a salary. They don't get paid a salary, and so they aren't employees doing work for hire.
That only depends on how you work. If you are salaried (are any published artists salaried?) then no you don't own the copyright. But if you are on a contract to publish a record, then everything depends on wording of the contract. It might say that the company gets copyrights. Or exclusive rights for 35 years, after which time the artist has the rights. Or it might say that copyright belongs to the artist. If it doesn't say anything, whoever pays for the work gets the copyright.
I once worked for a small company that had a contract to develop a piece of software. The contract gave copyrights to the work to the contractor, but the company got paid for completion of the contract and commission on all sales. The contract needed to state who owns the copyright explicitly. Both sides wanted that, to avoid any unpleasant future problems. If the contract said that the company retains the copyright (as does happen with many programs that are contracted out, whoever pays for them just gets a license), then the company would be free to do with the code as they pleased.
In any case employees and employers are not in equal bargaining positions. If they were the employees would have an equal input on their employment contracts. They don't. The companies have the money, you either do what they say or you don't work.
That's a horribly flawed argument. We're talking about the employees' contracts, and they choose to not take the job! All the power is with the employees, when it comes to signing their contract. And how much the president of the record label gets paid is none of the artists' business.
The question is how did companies get that sort of power over you? The answer is that many years ago they took a weak employee to court and got a legal precedent set in their favor. Today, everybody accepts the status quo as being fair and correct; it is neither.
The companies have no power over me or over the artists. If artists sign bad contracts, it's their own fault. I would never sign a contract that said that I loose copyright to my artistic work. I might give a record label an exlusive right to publish it for a period of time, but it's my music. And I guarantee you that if I were a good enough artist, the company would go along with this (as they clearly are now anyway, I just don't understand why this is necessary in the first place).
Writing software is no different here. When Id releases new version of Quake they get somebody to publish the program for them. That doesn't mean that Id looses copyright to the program. And yes, they get paid on comission by the publishing company (money is paid to publishing company, a chunk of which is then passed along to Id).
Point is that originally the material is copyrighted and owned by the artists, until they sign the rights over to a record label. If they sign a bad contract, then they can cry all they want, it's their fault. They should have gotten a better lawyer.
If a publisher pays for creation of music, they own it. If not (purchasing rights to publish music), they don't. If either side doesn't like it, they should put the appropriate clauses in their contracts.
When I get paid to write a program, I don't get the rights to it after 35 years. Why should music industry be so different?
To be honest, I can't blame NVIDIA on this particular problem. Riva IS an NVIDIA trademark, and they're basically letting riva3d use it. But riva3d putting up a review of their competitor's product equals to them advertising their competitor's product.
If had a product review site 'voodoo3d' and posted a review of GeForce, voodoo would be unhappy as well.
Several reasons. Cost, for one. Reliability for another. Lack of usable software for people to use. Lack of need?
Also, his method of mounting the computer on your body is definitely something I wouldn't do myself (in the talk I saw he was talking about getting his stomach scorched by a CPU until he figured out he should insulate it from his body!).
I did say he's freaky. But he does do some cool stuff, and if you are able to find out about it from somebody other them himself (some of my friends took the class, and I know people who did their 4th year thesis with him), you can actually get quite amazed.
One of the people who did their thesis with him was originally supposed to design a head-mounted (as in sunglasses mounted) laser that would beam images directly into your eye. I knew that the project was severly over-ambitious, but apparently Mann has built larger versions of this that actually work!
m
-- "There are two things to do on a rainy day. The other is to play cards." - Rupert Wainwright
Simple test for wearables: Would you be caught dead wearing that getup in a public place where you might meet people who would recognise you? I have yet to see any wearables that satisfy this extremely basic criteria.
I'm from UofT (just graduated) and I've attempted one of Mann's talks. When he told us that he was wearing a computer, I was surprised, I hadn't noticed it. The display was in his sunglasses (as requested in post above). The glasses aren't the most stylish ever, but it worked and didn't look too horible.
Wherever you see Mann wearing sunglasses, he has a display set up in there. And yes, you can browse the web with his wireless 'net access.
Reason that most of the pictures show students running around with big cameras, etc on their heads is that they had to pay for these things themselves. They don't have money to build everything small and pretty. In a course like 1766, your equipment needs to work before you can do the course work (whatever it is).
Don't misunderstand me, I'm no fan of Mann. He's freaky. But his stuff does work and it's not as bad as one might think.
Okay, so source code is speech. But so are books. And magazines. And you can't simply put them online. The authors have to give you a permission to do so.
But that's not all. If I find out some trade secrets and post them online, then I can get sued by the owners of the information. Well, believe it or not, but if source code is speech, then code to DeCSS is description of the CSS algorithm, and breaks the law. It's that simple. The fact that it's been reverse engineered instead of stolen from somebody's office probably won't make much of a difference.
DeCSS battle is far from over. But this decision may show that the Court of Appeals isn't all that backwards, and maybe they'll make some more reasonable rulings regarding technology.
Yeah, but if you look at the Celeron benchmarks there, they don't make any sense either. How come the higher the quality gets, the higher the frame rate gets? I'm having doubts about these guys' ability to run a decent benchmark.
He He. They may be framing the streams, but you can get them without the ads. All you need to do is get the.smil files and edit the appropriate streams out. Problem is that.smil files given by RealPlayer don't have DNS addresses of.rm streams. Those have to be found. I found them when I tried to connect to the server and RealPlayer said: Can't access (...) file. So it's all legal for me:P
No matter what interpratation you choose the GPL is probably still good. Sure some group of people could decide to create their own private version of GPLed software without legal fault, however, they are still restricted from selling their modified code.
Technically, they can't seel it. But they can sell MEMBERSHIPS to an organization which will distribute only the binaries! Every new version gets new membership (with new membership fee), you can upgrade your memberships, etc. This technique allows for NORMAL, CLOSED SOURCE practices to take place using Open Source software! m
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't AOL own Time-Warner?
m
Hey, why are you picking on Brian Adams? He's Canadian. Canadians are nice. Eh?
m
That only depends on how you work. If you are salaried (are any published artists salaried?) then no you don't own the copyright. But if you are on a contract to publish a record, then everything depends on wording of the contract. It might say that the company gets copyrights. Or exclusive rights for 35 years, after which time the artist has the rights. Or it might say that copyright belongs to the artist. If it doesn't say anything, whoever pays for the work gets the copyright.
I once worked for a small company that had a contract to develop a piece of software. The contract gave copyrights to the work to the contractor, but the company got paid for completion of the contract and commission on all sales. The contract needed to state who owns the copyright explicitly. Both sides wanted that, to avoid any unpleasant future problems. If the contract said that the company retains the copyright (as does happen with many programs that are contracted out, whoever pays for them just gets a license), then the company would be free to do with the code as they pleased.
That's a horribly flawed argument. We're talking about the employees' contracts, and they choose to not take the job! All the power is with the employees, when it comes to signing their contract. And how much the president of the record label gets paid is none of the artists' business.
The companies have no power over me or over the artists. If artists sign bad contracts, it's their own fault. I would never sign a contract that said that I loose copyright to my artistic work. I might give a record label an exlusive right to publish it for a period of time, but it's my music. And I guarantee you that if I were a good enough artist, the company would go along with this (as they clearly are now anyway, I just don't understand why this is necessary in the first place).
Writing software is no different here. When Id releases new version of Quake they get somebody to publish the program for them. That doesn't mean that Id looses copyright to the program. And yes, they get paid on comission by the publishing company (money is paid to publishing company, a chunk of which is then passed along to Id).
Point is that originally the material is copyrighted and owned by the artists, until they sign the rights over to a record label. If they sign a bad contract, then they can cry all they want, it's their fault. They should have gotten a better lawyer.
m
If a publisher pays for creation of music, they own it. If not (purchasing rights to publish music), they don't. If either side doesn't like it, they should put the appropriate clauses in their contracts.
When I get paid to write a program, I don't get the rights to it after 35 years. Why should music industry be so different?
m
To be honest, I can't blame NVIDIA on this particular problem. Riva IS an NVIDIA trademark, and they're basically letting riva3d use it. But riva3d putting up a review of their competitor's product equals to them advertising their competitor's product.
If had a product review site 'voodoo3d' and posted a review of GeForce, voodoo would be unhappy as well.
m
Nobody is selling his sunglass displays yet, no.
Several reasons. Cost, for one. Reliability for another. Lack of usable software for people to use. Lack of need?
Also, his method of mounting the computer on your body is definitely something I wouldn't do myself (in the talk I saw he was talking about getting his stomach scorched by a CPU until he figured out he should insulate it from his body!).
I did say he's freaky. But he does do some cool stuff, and if you are able to find out about it from somebody other them himself (some of my friends took the class, and I know people who did their 4th year thesis with him), you can actually get quite amazed.
One of the people who did their thesis with him was originally supposed to design a head-mounted (as in sunglasses mounted) laser that would beam images directly into your eye. I knew that the project was severly over-ambitious, but apparently Mann has built larger versions of this that actually work!
m
--
"There are two things to do on a rainy day. The other is to play cards."
- Rupert Wainwright
Simple test for wearables: Would you be caught dead wearing that getup in a public place where you might meet people who would recognise you? I have yet to see any wearables that satisfy this extremely basic criteria.
I'm from UofT (just graduated) and I've attempted one of Mann's talks. When he told us that he was wearing a computer, I was surprised, I hadn't noticed it. The display was in his sunglasses (as requested in post above). The glasses aren't the most stylish ever, but it worked and didn't look too horible.
Check out this link
Wherever you see Mann wearing sunglasses, he has a display set up in there. And yes, you can browse the web with his wireless 'net access.
Reason that most of the pictures show students running around with big cameras, etc on their heads is that they had to pay for these things themselves. They don't have money to build everything small and pretty. In a course like 1766, your equipment needs to work before you can do the course work (whatever it is).
Don't misunderstand me, I'm no fan of Mann. He's freaky. But his stuff does work and it's not as bad as one might think.
m
Okay, so source code is speech. But so are books. And magazines. And you can't simply put them online. The authors have to give you a permission to do so.
But that's not all. If I find out some trade secrets and post them online, then I can get sued by the owners of the information. Well, believe it or not, but if source code is speech, then code to DeCSS is description of the CSS algorithm, and breaks the law. It's that simple. The fact that it's been reverse engineered instead of stolen from somebody's office probably won't make much of a difference.
DeCSS battle is far from over. But this decision may show that the Court of Appeals isn't all that backwards, and maybe they'll make some more reasonable rulings regarding technology.
m
Yeah, but if you look at the Celeron benchmarks there, they don't make any sense either. How come the higher the quality gets, the higher the frame rate gets? I'm having doubts about these guys' ability to run a decent benchmark.
m
He He. They may be framing the streams, but you can get them without the ads. All you need to do is get the .smil files and edit the appropriate streams out. Problem is that .smil files given by RealPlayer don't have DNS addresses of .rm streams. Those have to be found. I found them when I tried to connect to the server and RealPlayer said: Can't access (...) file. So it's all legal for me :P
Technically, they can't seel it. But they can sell MEMBERSHIPS to an organization which will distribute only the binaries! Every new version gets new membership (with new membership fee), you can upgrade your memberships, etc. This technique allows for NORMAL, CLOSED SOURCE practices to take place using Open Source software! m