'Tis true; even Terry Brooks is only walking in the footsteps of the Master. That's why there's been nothing new under the sun in Fantasy for so long - Tolkien said it all, and there's been no one of similar genius to push the field farther. You would think Piers Anthony would be smart enough, but he seems to put an enormous amount o energy into bad puns instead:)
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I'm pretty sure that wasn't my point, but thanks anyway. I don't agree that there is an absolute need for MP3s to be available, even if music is currently hoarded in the hands of rich white guys (although some heavies in the recording industry are black too, you know). The reason that I don't think the "stolen property" think would work is because copyright law really is much different than laws governing physical property. I think you would have to have a special law about "being in possession of materials distributed in a manner infringing on copyright", and to my limited knowledge no such law exists. But this is quite the forum for me to get corrected about that:)
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Not quite. Copyright is being infringed by those who are making unauthorized MP3s available, not by those who download them. I won't even get into how copyright infringement isn't piracy (although you're correct that it's called piracy). You could make the argument that MP3 downloaders are receiving stolen property, but since copyright infringement isn't exactly stealing either, I don't think the analogy really works. AFAIK, there is no law that specifically applies to downloading the results of someone else's copyright infringement.
Although if the author then allowed those MP3s to be re-shared by Napster, he would indeed be guilty of copyright infringement.
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Although I agree with your sentiments, the antitrust case only covers Microsoft's actions in the past and is only intended to remedy those past actions. So just as Microsoft's arguments that there is competition in the industry now shouldn't affect their guilt or innocence for past monopolistic actions, any current anti-competitive actions would be grounds for a new suit but not grounds for inclusion into the ongoing trial (which is already in the appeals phase anyway, so no one can really add evidence to it at this point).
Unfortunately, the government actions against Microsoft continue to be too little, too late. It's pretty sad when the only way an OS can gain market share on Microsoft is to be available entirely for free:) Not that Linux is sad, but it's a poor state of affairs for an industry. Microsoft has destroyed the PC OS industry, they've almost destroyed the PC office software industry, and they're about to take a big chunk out of the consumer media and games industries.
In the long run, if you're not working on a truly open OS, you'll be working for Microsoft, or you won't be working. Nothing else seems to be able to stop them, and until the government actually brings some competition back to the commercial software markets, Microsoft will be able to dismantle any other commercial software company it wants piecemeal at its leisure. If that's not harmful to consumers, I don't know what is.
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Not that it was necessarily a great business plan, but they did have more of a plan than that, you know. Something about selling additional services as part of the file browser, kind of an ASP/network storage thing.
It was (as Dennis Powell pointed out the other day) a breathtaking amount of money for a file manager, though. Whew!
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The big problem is whether you can get a file type manager for excel, word, etc. files. Without support in ClearCASE for those file formats, you can't do diffs in ClearCASE, and you don't have compressed version storage. So you might as well just have a WORM file server somewhere that everybody tosses their documents onto, storing every complete version of every file.
Although, ClearCASE has gotten a lot more integrated with Windows, so it might have a type manager by now or perhaps Microsoft provides one. I can vouch that ClearCASE on Unix is very robust, powerful, and secure if you're willing to put in the administration time.
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As others have pointed out more wisely than me above, it's probably not a valid patent, since it was published under the GPL prior to any sort of patent process. Shame on the USPTO for not catching this ahead of time, though.
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I stand somewhat corrected. A version of the DB was available to people, but presumably on the grounds that they could freely make use of it. xcd was quite a while back, wasn't it? The current CDDB that GraceNote claims to have ownership of has never been publicly available for download, has it? It's not like owning the copyright to the current database automatically gives them copyright to earlier (very different) versions of the database which were distributed under considerably different terms.
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I respectfully disagree - if it's just about patents, why is GraceNote bringing the DMCA into this? The DMCA is about distributing tools that circumvent access procedures to a copyrighted work. It sounds like (in addition to patent claims) they're also making the argument that a tool using freedb could be used to also access CDDB without authorization. Which it could, of course, but the whole point of freedb is to not access the CDDB, so in a sense the copyright portion of the suit is pretty frivolous.
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You make some very good points - bravo! Hopefully the courts will see it your way:) From reading the transcript,
it sounds like the justices were looking for a way to rule very narrowly on 2600, rather than on a particular instance
of using DeCSS for fair use, so I'm not sure that they will be overturning the law on this one. Another test case
might be necessary.
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So let me get this straight: You seized control of a user-generated database, locked the users out of it, forced them to create their own truly free database, and are now suing any company smart enough to realize that supporting the free alternative is a better long-term solution than being dependent on your lame system? The mind boggles.
And how exactly is freedb a derivative of CDDB? As far as I know everything's been re-entered from scratch into it; there's never been a public copy of CDDB available to have been somehow copied by the freedb folks. I'm not even touching the issue of how CDDB's collection of user-provided track info (contributed under the reasonable assumption that CDDB wouldn't do anything this asinine (Heck, a few years back I couldn't even imagine anything this asinine)) could possibly give them status to sue over the CDDB -- that way lies much teeth grinding and throwing stuff at my coworkers.
On the bright side, I've got an idea who Microsoft can acquire the next time they need to get more arrogance in-house:)
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Hmmm, having run into the karma cap, it seems like this one comment is a good way to bleed off some more. I've lost 7 karma in a day, which has dropped me lower than I've been in a year or so (since before the cap was instituted, if anyone recalls when that was). But the discussion's been interesting.
I disagree with the troll moderation, though - it can hardly be trolling if none of the replies are visible due to having been moderated "below ground", can it?
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It's interesting that possession of the MIT Guide to Lock Picking isn't proscribed, though, since most people reading it probably aren't licensed locksmiths. DeCSS is as much the instructions for lock picking as it is a lock picking tool, and natural language translations of DeCSS are instructions only with no functional ability, just like Prof. Felten's research paper on SDMI. It's too bad that the courts and Congress haven't yet realized that not only is the line narrower and fuzzier than they think, but that in fact there really is no line, just a smooth continuum between tool and description.
After all, with a sufficiently advanced natural language parser and some goal-seeking software, a machine might be able to take Prof. Felten's paper and directly crack SDMI with it, by constructing the necessary program and then using it.
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Just to play the devil's advocate for a moment: the MPAA have no problem with you writing DeCSS for your blender, and using it to view your DVDs. They just have a problem with you distributing DeCSS for BlendOS on the Internet.
I agree with you that the effect of this use of the DMCA is to prevent fair use, because few people have the time and energy to independently reverse-engineer DeCSS, and thus there will be a considerably greater impact due to the DMCA than otherwise could be predicted from the text of the law, but the MPAA doesn't think that's their problem:) According to the letter of the law, distributing a tool (and, according to Kaplan, linking to a distributor) is illegal, although writing your own tool is not.
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The artist doesn't have to give you permission for fair use; fair use is an established part of copyright law that is considered to be a basic right of the purchaser in this case.
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Re:This reminds me of some M.C. Escher pictures
on
PanQuake
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· Score: 2
And this was flamebait how? Methinks the moderators are confused by playing too much 360-degree Quake.
Interesting thought - if you were reading/. in 360 degrees, could you theoretically see all the repeat story submissions at once, rather than only seeing the latest one, and thus know not to post a repeat? The mind boggles...
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Re:Little Known DOOM Feature
on
PanQuake
·
· Score: 1
Yes, that was such a troll. Indeed. Mr. #67691, I don't know how you look at yourself in the morning after trolling all night like that. You should be ashamed of having to put a moderator to the trouble of marking you for the troll that you are.
:)
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Re:I am Michael's raging bile duct
on
Kernel Benchmarks
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· Score: 1
I find it interesting that both Michael and Jamie McCarthy post stories on/. - you would think Michigan wouldn't be big enough for the both of them:)
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How is it trespassing for him to be on the Russian part of the territory? Maybe NASA should charge all the people of Russia with trespassing on NASA territory in Moscow, etc.?
As far as I can tell, NASA is spending my money, and Mr. Tito is spending his money. Now the Russian space agency will be spending Mr. Tito's money on stuff for the station, which is OK with me.
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However, station operations were basically shut down for that period.
Care to back that up with any facts? It sounded to me like the NASA astronauts were getting plenty of work done while Tito was up there.
One of the things about sharing is not always getting your way. NASA should quit whining about this particular use of the station by one of the partners on this shared venture, especially since Tito didn't replace any needed parts or crew deliveries. Heck, the computer outages that NASA was having the week before probably threw off the schedule more than Tito did.
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Slashdot Mirror
'Tis true; even Terry Brooks is only walking in the footsteps of the Master. That's why there's been nothing new under the sun in Fantasy for so long - Tolkien said it all, and there's been no one of similar genius to push the field farther. You would think Piers Anthony would be smart enough, but he seems to put an enormous amount o energy into bad puns instead :)
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I'm pretty sure that wasn't my point, but thanks anyway. I don't agree that there is an absolute need for MP3s to be available, even if music is currently hoarded in the hands of rich white guys (although some heavies in the recording industry are black too, you know). The reason that I don't think the "stolen property" think would work is because copyright law really is much different than laws governing physical property. I think you would have to have a special law about "being in possession of materials distributed in a manner infringing on copyright", and to my limited knowledge no such law exists. But this is quite the forum for me to get corrected about that :)
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Not quite. Copyright is being infringed by those who are making unauthorized MP3s available, not by those who download them. I won't even get into how copyright infringement isn't piracy (although you're correct that it's called piracy). You could make the argument that MP3 downloaders are receiving stolen property, but since copyright infringement isn't exactly stealing either, I don't think the analogy really works. AFAIK, there is no law that specifically applies to downloading the results of someone else's copyright infringement.
Although if the author then allowed those MP3s to be re-shared by Napster, he would indeed be guilty of copyright infringement.
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I think Yahoo was about to try "Buy Pr0n" :)
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Although I agree with your sentiments, the antitrust case only covers Microsoft's actions in the past and is only intended to remedy those past actions. So just as Microsoft's arguments that there is competition in the industry now shouldn't affect their guilt or innocence for past monopolistic actions, any current anti-competitive actions would be grounds for a new suit but not grounds for inclusion into the ongoing trial (which is already in the appeals phase anyway, so no one can really add evidence to it at this point).
Unfortunately, the government actions against Microsoft continue to be too little, too late. It's pretty sad when the only way an OS can gain market share on Microsoft is to be available entirely for free :) Not that Linux is sad, but it's a poor state of affairs for an industry. Microsoft has destroyed the PC OS industry, they've almost destroyed the PC office software industry, and they're about to take a big chunk out of the consumer media and games industries.
In the long run, if you're not working on a truly open OS, you'll be working for Microsoft, or you won't be working. Nothing else seems to be able to stop them, and until the government actually brings some competition back to the commercial software markets, Microsoft will be able to dismantle any other commercial software company it wants piecemeal at its leisure. If that's not harmful to consumers, I don't know what is.
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That may be the most cogent argument on this topic I've read - good job! Microsoft has sole control of the OS APIs.
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Not that it was necessarily a great business plan, but they did have more of a plan than that, you know. Something about selling additional services as part of the file browser, kind of an ASP/network storage thing.
It was (as Dennis Powell pointed out the other day) a breathtaking amount of money for a file manager, though. Whew!
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The big problem is whether you can get a file type manager for excel, word, etc. files. Without support in ClearCASE for those file formats, you can't do diffs in ClearCASE, and you don't have compressed version storage. So you might as well just have a WORM file server somewhere that everybody tosses their documents onto, storing every complete version of every file.
Although, ClearCASE has gotten a lot more integrated with Windows, so it might have a type manager by now or perhaps Microsoft provides one. I can vouch that ClearCASE on Unix is very robust, powerful, and secure if you're willing to put in the administration time.
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What he said goes double for me.
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As others have pointed out more wisely than me above, it's probably not a valid patent, since it was published under the GPL prior to any sort of patent process. Shame on the USPTO for not catching this ahead of time, though.
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Well, the FreeDB folks have/are doing it too. And you're right, it is pretty easy - just point your CD player, xmms, etc. at freedb.org.
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I stand somewhat corrected. A version of the DB was available to people, but presumably on the grounds that they could freely make use of it. xcd was quite a while back, wasn't it? The current CDDB that GraceNote claims to have ownership of has never been publicly available for download, has it? It's not like owning the copyright to the current database automatically gives them copyright to earlier (very different) versions of the database which were distributed under considerably different terms.
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I respectfully disagree - if it's just about patents, why is GraceNote bringing the DMCA into this? The DMCA is about distributing tools that circumvent access procedures to a copyrighted work. It sounds like (in addition to patent claims) they're also making the argument that a tool using freedb could be used to also access CDDB without authorization. Which it could, of course, but the whole point of freedb is to not access the CDDB, so in a sense the copyright portion of the suit is pretty frivolous.
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You make some very good points - bravo! Hopefully the courts will see it your way :) From reading the transcript,
it sounds like the justices were looking for a way to rule very narrowly on 2600, rather than on a particular instance
of using DeCSS for fair use, so I'm not sure that they will be overturning the law on this one. Another test case
might be necessary.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
So let me get this straight: You seized control of a user-generated database, locked the users out of it, forced them to create their own truly free database, and are now suing any company smart enough to realize that supporting the free alternative is a better long-term solution than being dependent on your lame system? The mind boggles.
And how exactly is freedb a derivative of CDDB? As far as I know everything's been re-entered from scratch into it; there's never been a public copy of CDDB available to have been somehow copied by the freedb folks. I'm not even touching the issue of how CDDB's collection of user-provided track info (contributed under the reasonable assumption that CDDB wouldn't do anything this asinine (Heck, a few years back I couldn't even imagine anything this asinine)) could possibly give them status to sue over the CDDB -- that way lies much teeth grinding and throwing stuff at my coworkers.
On the bright side, I've got an idea who Microsoft can acquire the next time they need to get more arrogance in-house :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Hmmm, having run into the karma cap, it seems like this one comment is a good way to bleed off some more. I've lost 7 karma in a day, which has dropped me lower than I've been in a year or so (since before the cap was instituted, if anyone recalls when that was). But the discussion's been interesting.
I disagree with the troll moderation, though - it can hardly be trolling if none of the replies are visible due to having been moderated "below ground", can it?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
It's interesting that possession of the MIT Guide to Lock Picking isn't proscribed, though, since most people reading it probably aren't licensed locksmiths. DeCSS is as much the instructions for lock picking as it is a lock picking tool, and natural language translations of DeCSS are instructions only with no functional ability, just like Prof. Felten's research paper on SDMI. It's too bad that the courts and Congress haven't yet realized that not only is the line narrower and fuzzier than they think, but that in fact there really is no line, just a smooth continuum between tool and description.
After all, with a sufficiently advanced natural language parser and some goal-seeking software, a machine might be able to take Prof. Felten's paper and directly crack SDMI with it, by constructing the necessary program and then using it.
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Just to play the devil's advocate for a moment: the MPAA have no problem with you writing DeCSS for your blender, and using it to view your DVDs. They just have a problem with you distributing DeCSS for BlendOS on the Internet.
I agree with you that the effect of this use of the DMCA is to prevent fair use, because few people have the time and energy to independently reverse-engineer DeCSS, and thus there will be a considerably greater impact due to the DMCA than otherwise could be predicted from the text of the law, but the MPAA doesn't think that's their problem :) According to the letter of the law, distributing a tool (and, according to Kaplan, linking to a distributor) is illegal, although writing your own tool is not.
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The artist doesn't have to give you permission for fair use; fair use is an established part of copyright law that is considered to be a basic right of the purchaser in this case.
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And this was flamebait how? Methinks the moderators are confused by playing too much 360-degree Quake.
Interesting thought - if you were reading /. in 360 degrees, could you theoretically see all the repeat story submissions at once, rather than only seeing the latest one, and thus know not to post a repeat? The mind boggles...
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Yes, that was such a troll. Indeed. Mr. #67691, I don't know how you look at yourself in the morning after trolling all night like that. You should be ashamed of having to put a moderator to the trouble of marking you for the troll that you are.
:)
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I find it interesting that both Michael and Jamie McCarthy post stories on /. - you would think Michigan wouldn't be big enough for the both of them :)
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That's OK, your spelling's good enough to be running this site :)
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How is it trespassing for him to be on the Russian part of the territory? Maybe NASA should charge all the people of Russia with trespassing on NASA territory in Moscow, etc.?
As far as I can tell, NASA is spending my money, and Mr. Tito is spending his money. Now the Russian space agency will be spending Mr. Tito's money on stuff for the station, which is OK with me.
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Care to back that up with any facts? It sounded to me like the NASA astronauts were getting plenty of work done while Tito was up there.
One of the things about sharing is not always getting your way. NASA should quit whining about this particular use of the station by one of the partners on this shared venture, especially since Tito didn't replace any needed parts or crew deliveries. Heck, the computer outages that NASA was having the week before probably threw off the schedule more than Tito did.
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