Unfortunately, they went on to say that Linux systems had never been infected yet, which is incorrect. I've heard of a couple Linux viruses from a few years back - they just didn't spread very quickly.
There's no law against using Napster, though, whereas there are laws against marijuana and assault rifles. Napster isn't illegal and has legitimate uses; therefore a lawsuit against Napster is unjustified unless they fail to follow the law as far as booting off users who are accused of copyright violations. A lawsuit against a particular user who is distributing copyrighted materials is justified, though.
An ideal situation would be a Microsoft Management Console-like app for Linux, with a plugin architecture for wrapping various text config files.
Can this be done with Linuxconf? I'm not too familiar with how it works, but I've used it for setting up networking, etc. rather than investigating Mandrake's rc files to find out where to add the necessary info. It appears to have a plugin-oriented architecture, although I've never dealt with it much.
Microsoft describes NTFS as a "recoverable" FS...
I figured that I would get corrections about that:) I stand corrected.
I guess I would make the counterargument that the operation of a Unix system based on small, flexible text-based tools is a strength, and you don't necessarily have to have complexity as well. Granted, the current structure of/etc,/proc, and wherever the apps decide to toss their config files is all over the place, but it doesn't have to be that way.
If you're going to retool the system from the ground up to be DB/directory oriented, wouldn't it just be simpler to update the apps to use specific directories under/config for example, mount/proc under/config, and move/etc into there as well? If you don't like all of the shell scripts, you can combine and/or replace them and put them all in/config/scripts or whatever (thus separating code and configuration). Then you can still use text files (for when your fancy DB tools don't work right or don't give you the whole story) but you would have a directory of configuration information, organized more cleanly than it is today. Of course, this would require major application retooling and might make some applications non-portable to other Unices. That's probably why such an effort hasn't occurred yet - portability and familiarity between Unix-like systems adds more useability for the administrator than any amount of clean-up which breaks that familiarity. But if a cleaner configuration style is enough of an improvement, people might switch anyway.
Here we are in the year 2000 and our OS doesn't have a central, consistent, configuration database, for apps and system resources alike.
I admit that I had a knee-jerk reaction against a "registry" - sorry, it's a conditioned fear and pain response:) A central configuration system would be neat, but on the other hand you would break compatibility with a lot of existing Unix applications which expect/etc,/proc, and so forth. I guess you could set up this database in a different directory and only new apps would know about it. Better make it flat text, though - I don't think a binary registry will fly very far.
They are just now getting a journaling filesystem.
Does Windows NT ship with a JFS? I was under the impression that it didn't, although I'm sure to be corrected if I'm wrong. Linux isn't the first system to get a JFS, but it's not going to be the last either. And it may end up with two or three:)
The security model of all or nothing is a joke.
Sounds like someone's been reading the Microsoft Myths about Linux page:) Have you ever heard of groups?
There isn't even mandatory file locking for crying out loud.
Well, it isn't necessary for every file, so why should it be necessary? That sounds like overhead that an application should handle if it needs it.
I'll be the first person to admit that Linux has problems, but I don't think that they're necessarily the ones that you pointed out.
My point is that the makers of a tool aren't responsible for what users of the tool do with it. As far as I can tell, Napster has acted within the law to curtail unauthorized copying on their network when notified of it, which is what the law requires. I am unaware of any statements or actions on their part which specifically endorse piracy; maybe you could point them out? That is, actions or statements which ONLY endorse piracy rather than endorsing the use of their network by pirates and non-pirates alike as a common carrier. I'll agree with you that most of the traffic on Napster seems to be illegal, but as far as I can tell all of the responsibility for that falls on the users of Napster, not on the company itself.
MOST of the trafic on the net is not warez and porn, essentialy all the trafic on napster is illegal.
Most of the traffic down on 4th and Juniper is drug dealers and prostitutes - maybe we should just rip up and remove all of the streets in that area?
Well there is that area of intent. It doesn't take much to realize that what napster has become is exactly what they intended it to be, they knew that there was going to be lots of illegal content, and they made an open login system to make it so they can block an account but not really kick the person off...
It doesn't take much to realize that what the Internet has become is exactly what they intended it to be, they knew that there was going to be lots of illegal content, warez, and pornography, and they made an open login system through various ISPs to make it so they can block an account but not really kick the person off...
Also when ISP's find out that someone is doing something illegal they usualy shut that person down and do at least minimal policing of their own network, napster does none of this.
Actually, Napster has shut down the accounts of copyright violators when they were informed of them in the past, and I have no reason to believe that they will not shut down the accounts of the 330K+ users that were identified by NetPD once they have verified that those accounts really were being used illegally.
Remember, once you start actively policing your system, you're no longer a common carrier, and you can be in a world of hurt if you accidentally miss one tiny problem. It's far better to be a common carrier and let copyright watchdogs contact you when they find potential violations.
I don't see how breaking them up could detract at all from their virus-fighting abilities. After all, they didn't help fight this one at all even when given fair warning by Melissa, and I don't think you can really have less ability than that:)
Not to start a flamewar or anything, but I believe you already may have. Do you care to back that opinion up with any facts, or are you just hewing to your company's knee-jerk anti-GPL party line? Because if you just "agreee" because your boss told you to, then you missed the entire point of the article that we're discussing here.
Don't radio stations have to get permission to play those songs though? I'm not too familiar with the the radio industry, but I would imagine that they have some sort of arrangement with the recording industry.
I don't think so. It's only entrapment if you weren't going to do something illegal, but the undercover agents talked you into it. If you did something of your own free will but actually you were talking to a cop, you have only yourself to blame. That's what generally happens when undercover cops pose as streetwalkers, for example.
As far as I know, there is no presumption that logs of your accesses will remain private on a particular service. People already post aggregate statistics (so many.edu hits, so many from Japan, etc.) that although posting information about individual IP addresses is quite a large step, it is probably legal.
That being said, the real issue is security through legal means versus security through mathematical means. Even if it a law made it illegal to publish non-aggregate server logs with specific access information, you still really aren't safe. Anybody could be sniffing your packets between dialup042.aol.com and pr0nserver.net, whether they publish logs or not.
The situation is analogous to the whole DeCSS issue. Sure, you could just use weak encryption and depend on the law to prevent people from doing something, but there's always going to be someone out there with the tools and the desire to get around that. You can make it illegal to keep or publish access logs, but the tools exist and someone will be able to monitor your access whether you like it or not.
Not that I'm interested in helping out child pornographers here, but if, for example, you're reading this in China and searching the 'net while planning your revolution, don't depend on any laws to prevent your identity from being known. Your only real protection on the Internet is strong cryptography, in this case probably augmented with anonymous proxies in several different countries with - shall we say - recalcitrant attitudes towards cooperation with global law enforcement.
Bottom line: you are ultimately responsible for your own safety and/or anonymity, not the government.
It is then played to a non-commerical audience of one (be it to the owner via his sound system, or the Napster user (who could conceivably be the owner) via the internet), again - legitimate.
This step still makes me think of the sports bars who get in trouble for showing televised sports w/o a license from the broadcaster. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with the law or not, but I think currently playing a copyright-protected work to any audience (other than the owner of the mp3, of course) without a license for that performance is a copyright violation.
Of course, the RIAA think that even making an mp3 copy of a song on a CD that you own just for your own listening is still illegal, and I definitely part ways with them over that. So my legal opinions certainly don't have the force of any particular training besides reading articles such as this one.
It should not be the responsibility of a tool maker or tool provider to explain the laws of the land to you, as _every_ tool can be abused and put to an illegal use, so providing that the tool has a legitimate use, I think the person who abuses the tool should take responsibility for their actions and not pass the buck.
I couldn't agree more - a greater expectation of strict personal responsibility would be a Good Thing as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, the courts sometimes don't see things as black-and-white, so sometimes just putting up some sort of disclaimer does help if you're getting sued like Napster is. I don't think that that is right, but it seems to be unavoidable as long as the law is a language of people rather than machines.
Again, much agreement, other than I'm pretty sure that broadcasting/distributing copyrighted content without the authority to do so is currently interpreted as illegal. Viewing, saving to a file, and re-distributing this already-illegal content may also be illegal (like trafficking in stolen goods) but I'm not as clear on that issue. I think that Napster should have a legal defense, though, as long as they boot copyright violators off of their system when informed of them. They should qualify as a common carrier, I would like to think.
OK, how many people using Napster just happened to "accidentally" leave their drives readable? Not many, I would imagine. I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of people who set up Napster fully intended their files to be served to anyone who asked for them. That's the whole point, right? However, I don't want to jump to the assumption (as the recording industry has) that just because some or most users may have intended to distribute unauthorized mp3s, that the entire user base intends to do that.
The real issue as far as copyright law goes is distribution. Copyright law is intended to limit the parties who have the right to copy (thus "copy" "right") a particular work. So while I agree with you that those who downloaded unauthorized mp3s were probably on the wrong side of the law, I think the law would also come down on distributors of unauthorized mp3s - especially since the whole point of the service is to share your collection with others.
If you compare the Napster situation with the case of copying and distributing books (or sheet music, which happens more often than books I bet), you would find that the person doing the copying of the music and actually creating the new unauthorized copy is the person who is in trouble. In the case of Napster, making a copy is instantaneous (more or less, depending on your connection) but the copying really does occur at the server end. Copying is really done by the people who open up their drives to Napster, rather than the people who download the mp3s. So the unauthorized distribution is really being done by the servers, not the clients.
You could compare to the contrary case of a public library which provides copiers but warns that the user is responsible for copies that they make. But no comparable warning is given to users when they are downloading from another Napster user, so I think the burden of the law falls on those who serve the files. IANAL, of course.
I don't want to argue about whether the mp3s want to be free (although I don't think they do) and I don't want to argue about whether the current copyright law is wrong (although I don't think it is); I'm just pointing out that under the current copyright laws, serving mp3s that you do not have the right to distribute is probably illegal, even if accidental.
[OT] I can see why the RIAA like the word "pirated" - it's much shorter to type than "unauthorized", as I found out while composing this:)
MS puts it on their page for everyone to DL, there was no agreement that I saw that said I couldn't give it out to anyone else, it's public domain.
I think that you could make the argument that the information is now public knowledge; someone else has effectively made this argument here.
However, just because there was no license agreement doesn't mean the document is in the public domain. There's a difference between software licensing (which is contract law) and public domain (which is copyright law). Microsoft is effectively acting like a newspaper or a radio station here - they are publishing something to a lot of people, but that doesn't give their audience distribution rights as well. Try making photocopies of the New York Times and selling them for half price, and see how far you get. Or better yet, try rebroadcasting a major sporting event in your bar:)
I'd be happy to see more artists and record companies follow the traditional bounds of the law and go after those who are actually committing copyright infringement. Why? Because then they won't be using their $$$ to sue common carriers, whom I feel should be protected under the law. As far as I can tell, Napster has acted within the law thus far by removing users who have acted illegally. So if this latest action takes the heat off of Napster and puts it onto those who are really illegally copying mp3s, so much the better.
Sure it's a pain for Napster to check their logs 335000 times and boot that many users (only if they really were trading Metallica, of course), but on the other hand it's a pain for record companies to come up with the lists in the first time. I'd much rather the record companies have to do the normal amount of work to track down copyright violations (just like they would have to do for copied movies, cassette tapes, etc.) as opposed to them just suing the heck out of mp3.com, napster, Diamond, and so forth.
Note that I'm ignoring the issue of whether the current copyright law is right or not (I think it is, mostly) - that's not the issue. The issue is that I'd much rather the RIAA & co. act within our current legal framework, because when they are tempted to extend the law instead (the DMCA, for example) we tend to lose rights in order to make their jobs easier. And our overall rights to fair use and reverse engineering are more important than the rights of 335000 people to (allegedly) trade unauthorized Metallica.
I guess we'll see. I don't see the standards issue as nearly the problem in the Linux market, because it's mostly being written by techies who are interested in the correct solution, rather than the solution that a committee of IBM, Sun, and so forth are interested in. Sure, in some sense Red Hat is already the standard for the PHBs. But if the development community doesn't like where Red Hat is taking Linux, they won't develop for Red Hat, and so there is a check on that sort of behavior. Red Hat can try tough business tactics on their OEM customers, but since most of their code is free for the taking, those customers will just switch to Mandrake or some compatible distro and change the desktop to look like Red Hat's. I think most of the Linux distro companies have shown that they "get" the open-source philosophy, and the reaction to those that don't (LinuxOne) should quickly unmask those that aren't really part of the community.
So as long as standards are more-or-less being set by the developers who actually care about them, and as long as the real value of a Linux distribution consists of developer mindshare, I'm not too worried about a Microsoft-style monopoly in the Linux OS space.
Actually, I was thinking more like a Palm or an I-opener type device - powered by Internet connectivity and running on open Internet protocols. I'll be the first to admit that Linux (in its current standard form) is a sub-optimal solution for the situation I'm envisioning.
However, without Microsoft in the way, someone could have taken the world by storm with a cheap, standards-compliant mass-market computing appliance years ago and side-stepped the money and pain that a full-fledged PC has cost the 50%+ of PC buyers who don't really need one. The only reason that Linux is being considered an alternative to Microsoft for the mass-market (not counting the techheads who go for quality and versatility in an OS) is because all other attempts to get to consumers around Microsoft have failed.
I'm not complaining about Linux here - I use it and generally enjoy the experience. But the fact is that without Microsoft's current legal troubles we wouldn't be seeing the explosion of cheap and/or wireless networked devices that we are seeing today, because Microsoft makes their money in the PC market and they were happy there. I just wish we had seen the palms and the I-openers years ago, and I think we would have if not for Microsoft.
Yeah, that was the first thing I thought of, and I opened it up to look at the rollers inside. However, they were all OK. It seems like the "third roller" (the one which isn't hooked up to a sensor, and is at an angle to the other two) was loose and was skipping across the mouse pad rather than rolling when I moved the mouse in a direction perpendicular to that roller.
The best mouse that I've ever bought was a Logitech "Gaming Mouse". It's weighted and shaped differently, but it practically hovers across the mouse pad, and the buttons are so sensitive they're practically thought-operated. Highly recommended, even if you aren't a gamer.
Of course, the reason that I bought a new mouse was because my cheap Logitech 3-button developed an annoying jumpiness after only three months and became unusable in the X direction. The $15 boring-shaped 3-button mouse is NOT recommended.
Your average home users probably would have had ubiquitous, user-friendly, and cheap computing throughout their homes by now if Microsoft hadn't been restricting competition for so long. You don't need a software monopoly to provide convenient interopterability (sp?) and ease-of-use between machines for home users; open standards, real innovation, and competition would have solved those problems for us years ago. Your average home user doesn't know what they've missed, and sadly most never will.
I know, I know, if other software companies had such great ideas, why didn't they just wow a bunch of consumers and leave Microsoft in the dust? Because the Microsoft monopoly wouldn't let them. Through a series of arm-twisting deals with OEMs, malicious vaporware announcements, deliberate interopterability (there's that word again) sabotage, the sheer threat of being in the same market as Microsoft (would you go up against them?) and (when all else fails) buy-outs, competition in the PC software market has been substantially reduced and consumers robbed of choice in the process. Why do you think that the only software systems able to gain ground on Microsoft's market share in the last year have been given away for free?
But we shouldn't be running to hide behind government guns because we don't think they make a good product.
This case isn't about the quality of their products, it's about how Microsoft has acted for years to prevent other companies from selling their products which in some cases were better. The consumer likes Microsoft because they've never been exposed to anything better, because Microsoft hasn't allowed them to be.
The law of the land is that the government may take certain actions to ensure that the monopoly powers in a market (even if the monopoly was gained legally) don't act to suppress competition in that market and don't use their monopoly leverage to take over other markets.Those things are bad things, and the consumer can't always defend against them because consumers as a group aren't particularly organized and aren't always savvy to when monopoly-building is going on. That is why government action in this case is justified.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you get those zipped files I sent you? "isn't any more buggy" my ass.
Unfortunately, they went on to say that Linux systems had never been infected yet, which is incorrect. I've heard of a couple Linux viruses from a few years back - they just didn't spread very quickly.
There's no law against using Napster, though, whereas there are laws against marijuana and assault rifles. Napster isn't illegal and has legitimate uses; therefore a lawsuit against Napster is unjustified unless they fail to follow the law as far as booting off users who are accused of copyright violations. A lawsuit against a particular user who is distributing copyrighted materials is justified, though.
Can this be done with Linuxconf? I'm not too familiar with how it works, but I've used it for setting up networking, etc. rather than investigating Mandrake's rc files to find out where to add the necessary info. It appears to have a plugin-oriented architecture, although I've never dealt with it much.
I figured that I would get corrections about that :) I stand corrected.
I guess I would make the counterargument that the operation of a Unix system based on small, flexible text-based tools is a strength, and you don't necessarily have to have complexity as well. Granted, the current structure of /etc, /proc, and wherever the apps decide to toss their config files is all over the place, but it doesn't have to be that way.
If you're going to retool the system from the ground up to be DB/directory oriented, wouldn't it just be simpler to update the apps to use specific directories under /config for example, mount /proc under /config, and move /etc into there as well? If you don't like all of the shell scripts, you can combine and/or replace them and put them all in /config/scripts or whatever (thus separating code and configuration). Then you can still use text files (for when your fancy DB tools don't work right or don't give you the whole story) but you would have a directory of configuration information, organized more cleanly than it is today. Of course, this would require major application retooling and might make some applications non-portable to other Unices. That's probably why such an effort hasn't occurred yet - portability and familiarity between Unix-like systems adds more useability for the administrator than any amount of clean-up which breaks that familiarity. But if a cleaner configuration style is enough of an improvement, people might switch anyway.
I think some of these are straw men:
I admit that I had a knee-jerk reaction against a "registry" - sorry, it's a conditioned fear and pain response :) A central configuration system would be neat, but on the other hand you would break compatibility with a lot of existing Unix applications which expect /etc, /proc, and so forth. I guess you could set up this database in a different directory and only new apps would know about it. Better make it flat text, though - I don't think a binary registry will fly very far.
Does Windows NT ship with a JFS? I was under the impression that it didn't, although I'm sure to be corrected if I'm wrong. Linux isn't the first system to get a JFS, but it's not going to be the last either. And it may end up with two or three :)
Sounds like someone's been reading the Microsoft Myths about Linux page :) Have you ever heard of groups?
Well, it isn't necessary for every file, so why should it be necessary? That sounds like overhead that an application should handle if it needs it.
I'll be the first person to admit that Linux has problems, but I don't think that they're necessarily the ones that you pointed out.
My point is that the makers of a tool aren't responsible for what users of the tool do with it. As far as I can tell, Napster has acted within the law to curtail unauthorized copying on their network when notified of it, which is what the law requires. I am unaware of any statements or actions on their part which specifically endorse piracy; maybe you could point them out? That is, actions or statements which ONLY endorse piracy rather than endorsing the use of their network by pirates and non-pirates alike as a common carrier. I'll agree with you that most of the traffic on Napster seems to be illegal, but as far as I can tell all of the responsibility for that falls on the users of Napster, not on the company itself.
Most of the traffic down on 4th and Juniper is drug dealers and prostitutes - maybe we should just rip up and remove all of the streets in that area?
It doesn't take much to realize that what the Internet has become is exactly what they intended it to be, they knew that there was going to be lots of illegal content, warez, and pornography, and they made an open login system through various ISPs to make it so they can block an account but not really kick the person off...
Actually, Napster has shut down the accounts of copyright violators when they were informed of them in the past, and I have no reason to believe that they will not shut down the accounts of the 330K+ users that were identified by NetPD once they have verified that those accounts really were being used illegally.
Remember, once you start actively policing your system, you're no longer a common carrier, and you can be in a world of hurt if you accidentally miss one tiny problem. It's far better to be a common carrier and let copyright watchdogs contact you when they find potential violations.
I don't see how breaking them up could detract at all from their virus-fighting abilities. After all, they didn't help fight this one at all even when given fair warning by Melissa, and I don't think you can really have less ability than that :)
Not to start a flamewar or anything, but I believe you already may have. Do you care to back that opinion up with any facts, or are you just hewing to your company's knee-jerk anti-GPL party line? Because if you just "agreee" because your boss told you to, then you missed the entire point of the article that we're discussing here.
Don't radio stations have to get permission to play those songs though? I'm not too familiar with the the radio industry, but I would imagine that they have some sort of arrangement with the recording industry.
It took several long minutes before I recognised that "rederick" == "rhetoric". :)
This speling flame, including obligatory misspelling, is now complete. There's nothing to see here, move along.
I don't think so. It's only entrapment if you weren't going to do something illegal, but the undercover agents talked you into it. If you did something of your own free will but actually you were talking to a cop, you have only yourself to blame. That's what generally happens when undercover cops pose as streetwalkers, for example.
As far as I know, there is no presumption that logs of your accesses will remain private on a particular service. People already post aggregate statistics (so many .edu hits, so many from Japan, etc.) that although posting information about individual IP addresses is quite a large step, it is probably legal.
That being said, the real issue is security through legal means versus security through mathematical means. Even if it a law made it illegal to publish non-aggregate server logs with specific access information, you still really aren't safe. Anybody could be sniffing your packets between dialup042.aol.com and pr0nserver.net, whether they publish logs or not.
The situation is analogous to the whole DeCSS issue. Sure, you could just use weak encryption and depend on the law to prevent people from doing something, but there's always going to be someone out there with the tools and the desire to get around that. You can make it illegal to keep or publish access logs, but the tools exist and someone will be able to monitor your access whether you like it or not.
Not that I'm interested in helping out child pornographers here, but if, for example, you're reading this in China and searching the 'net while planning your revolution, don't depend on any laws to prevent your identity from being known. Your only real protection on the Internet is strong cryptography, in this case probably augmented with anonymous proxies in several different countries with - shall we say - recalcitrant attitudes towards cooperation with global law enforcement.
Bottom line: you are ultimately responsible for your own safety and/or anonymity, not the government.
Wow, some very impressive arguments!
This step still makes me think of the sports bars who get in trouble for showing televised sports w/o a license from the broadcaster. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with the law or not, but I think currently playing a copyright-protected work to any audience (other than the owner of the mp3, of course) without a license for that performance is a copyright violation.
Of course, the RIAA think that even making an mp3 copy of a song on a CD that you own just for your own listening is still illegal, and I definitely part ways with them over that. So my legal opinions certainly don't have the force of any particular training besides reading articles such as this one.
I couldn't agree more - a greater expectation of strict personal responsibility would be a Good Thing as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, the courts sometimes don't see things as black-and-white, so sometimes just putting up some sort of disclaimer does help if you're getting sued like Napster is. I don't think that that is right, but it seems to be unavoidable as long as the law is a language of people rather than machines.
Again, much agreement, other than I'm pretty sure that broadcasting/distributing copyrighted content without the authority to do so is currently interpreted as illegal. Viewing, saving to a file, and re-distributing this already-illegal content may also be illegal (like trafficking in stolen goods) but I'm not as clear on that issue. I think that Napster should have a legal defense, though, as long as they boot copyright violators off of their system when informed of them. They should qualify as a common carrier, I would like to think.
OK, how many people using Napster just happened to "accidentally" leave their drives readable? Not many, I would imagine. I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of people who set up Napster fully intended their files to be served to anyone who asked for them. That's the whole point, right? However, I don't want to jump to the assumption (as the recording industry has) that just because some or most users may have intended to distribute unauthorized mp3s, that the entire user base intends to do that.
The real issue as far as copyright law goes is distribution. Copyright law is intended to limit the parties who have the right to copy (thus "copy" "right") a particular work. So while I agree with you that those who downloaded unauthorized mp3s were probably on the wrong side of the law, I think the law would also come down on distributors of unauthorized mp3s - especially since the whole point of the service is to share your collection with others.
If you compare the Napster situation with the case of copying and distributing books (or sheet music, which happens more often than books I bet), you would find that the person doing the copying of the music and actually creating the new unauthorized copy is the person who is in trouble. In the case of Napster, making a copy is instantaneous (more or less, depending on your connection) but the copying really does occur at the server end. Copying is really done by the people who open up their drives to Napster, rather than the people who download the mp3s. So the unauthorized distribution is really being done by the servers, not the clients.
You could compare to the contrary case of a public library which provides copiers but warns that the user is responsible for copies that they make. But no comparable warning is given to users when they are downloading from another Napster user, so I think the burden of the law falls on those who serve the files. IANAL, of course.
I don't want to argue about whether the mp3s want to be free (although I don't think they do) and I don't want to argue about whether the current copyright law is wrong (although I don't think it is); I'm just pointing out that under the current copyright laws, serving mp3s that you do not have the right to distribute is probably illegal, even if accidental.
[OT] I can see why the RIAA like the word "pirated" - it's much shorter to type than "unauthorized", as I found out while composing this :)
I think that you could make the argument that the information is now public knowledge; someone else has effectively made this argument here.
However, just because there was no license agreement doesn't mean the document is in the public domain. There's a difference between software licensing (which is contract law) and public domain (which is copyright law). Microsoft is effectively acting like a newspaper or a radio station here - they are publishing something to a lot of people, but that doesn't give their audience distribution rights as well. Try making photocopies of the New York Times and selling them for half price, and see how far you get. Or better yet, try rebroadcasting a major sporting event in your bar :)
I'd be happy to see more artists and record companies follow the traditional bounds of the law and go after those who are actually committing copyright infringement. Why? Because then they won't be using their $$$ to sue common carriers, whom I feel should be protected under the law. As far as I can tell, Napster has acted within the law thus far by removing users who have acted illegally. So if this latest action takes the heat off of Napster and puts it onto those who are really illegally copying mp3s, so much the better.
Sure it's a pain for Napster to check their logs 335000 times and boot that many users (only if they really were trading Metallica, of course), but on the other hand it's a pain for record companies to come up with the lists in the first time. I'd much rather the record companies have to do the normal amount of work to track down copyright violations (just like they would have to do for copied movies, cassette tapes, etc.) as opposed to them just suing the heck out of mp3.com, napster, Diamond, and so forth.
Note that I'm ignoring the issue of whether the current copyright law is right or not (I think it is, mostly) - that's not the issue. The issue is that I'd much rather the RIAA & co. act within our current legal framework, because when they are tempted to extend the law instead (the DMCA, for example) we tend to lose rights in order to make their jobs easier. And our overall rights to fair use and reverse engineering are more important than the rights of 335000 people to (allegedly) trade unauthorized Metallica.
I guess we'll see. I don't see the standards issue as nearly the problem in the Linux market, because it's mostly being written by techies who are interested in the correct solution, rather than the solution that a committee of IBM, Sun, and so forth are interested in. Sure, in some sense Red Hat is already the standard for the PHBs. But if the development community doesn't like where Red Hat is taking Linux, they won't develop for Red Hat, and so there is a check on that sort of behavior. Red Hat can try tough business tactics on their OEM customers, but since most of their code is free for the taking, those customers will just switch to Mandrake or some compatible distro and change the desktop to look like Red Hat's. I think most of the Linux distro companies have shown that they "get" the open-source philosophy, and the reaction to those that don't (LinuxOne) should quickly unmask those that aren't really part of the community.
So as long as standards are more-or-less being set by the developers who actually care about them, and as long as the real value of a Linux distribution consists of developer mindshare, I'm not too worried about a Microsoft-style monopoly in the Linux OS space.
Actually, I was thinking more like a Palm or an I-opener type device - powered by Internet connectivity and running on open Internet protocols. I'll be the first to admit that Linux (in its current standard form) is a sub-optimal solution for the situation I'm envisioning.
However, without Microsoft in the way, someone could have taken the world by storm with a cheap, standards-compliant mass-market computing appliance years ago and side-stepped the money and pain that a full-fledged PC has cost the 50%+ of PC buyers who don't really need one. The only reason that Linux is being considered an alternative to Microsoft for the mass-market (not counting the techheads who go for quality and versatility in an OS) is because all other attempts to get to consumers around Microsoft have failed.
I'm not complaining about Linux here - I use it and generally enjoy the experience. But the fact is that without Microsoft's current legal troubles we wouldn't be seeing the explosion of cheap and/or wireless networked devices that we are seeing today, because Microsoft makes their money in the PC market and they were happy there. I just wish we had seen the palms and the I-openers years ago, and I think we would have if not for Microsoft.
Yeah, that was the first thing I thought of, and I opened it up to look at the rollers inside. However, they were all OK. It seems like the "third roller" (the one which isn't hooked up to a sensor, and is at an angle to the other two) was loose and was skipping across the mouse pad rather than rolling when I moved the mouse in a direction perpendicular to that roller.
The best mouse that I've ever bought was a Logitech "Gaming Mouse". It's weighted and shaped differently, but it practically hovers across the mouse pad, and the buttons are so sensitive they're practically thought-operated. Highly recommended, even if you aren't a gamer.
Of course, the reason that I bought a new mouse was because my cheap Logitech 3-button developed an annoying jumpiness after only three months and became unusable in the X direction. The $15 boring-shaped 3-button mouse is NOT recommended.
Your average home users probably would have had ubiquitous, user-friendly, and cheap computing throughout their homes by now if Microsoft hadn't been restricting competition for so long. You don't need a software monopoly to provide convenient interopterability (sp?) and ease-of-use between machines for home users; open standards, real innovation, and competition would have solved those problems for us years ago. Your average home user doesn't know what they've missed, and sadly most never will.
I know, I know, if other software companies had such great ideas, why didn't they just wow a bunch of consumers and leave Microsoft in the dust? Because the Microsoft monopoly wouldn't let them. Through a series of arm-twisting deals with OEMs, malicious vaporware announcements, deliberate interopterability (there's that word again) sabotage, the sheer threat of being in the same market as Microsoft (would you go up against them?) and (when all else fails) buy-outs, competition in the PC software market has been substantially reduced and consumers robbed of choice in the process. Why do you think that the only software systems able to gain ground on Microsoft's market share in the last year have been given away for free?
This case isn't about the quality of their products, it's about how Microsoft has acted for years to prevent other companies from selling their products which in some cases were better. The consumer likes Microsoft because they've never been exposed to anything better, because Microsoft hasn't allowed them to be.
The law of the land is that the government may take certain actions to ensure that the monopoly powers in a market (even if the monopoly was gained legally) don't act to suppress competition in that market and don't use their monopoly leverage to take over other markets.Those things are bad things, and the consumer can't always defend against them because consumers as a group aren't particularly organized and aren't always savvy to when monopoly-building is going on. That is why government action in this case is justified.
*shudder*
I hadn't heard of that. I guess I know not to buy SMBus or PXE NICs. I hope my ancient eepro and eexpress can't do this!