And the next refinement would be remote activation of the detonator. Only to be used a severe emergency. Such as if someone was about to commit a terrorist act. That would be the official line about it. But now Big Brother could just kill troublemakers. "Oops, must've been a malfunction" is what they'd say.
Even better, an implant which could induce cardiac arrest electrically (electrically induced ventricular fibrillation). Very easy to do. Very hard to prove that is what killed someone.
The old look and feel lawsuits were copyright based. They failed. I believe the justification for that is that user interfaces are functional and not expressive or something along those lines.
However patent lawsuits based on look and feel are a separate issue. A UI can be considered a process for communicating with the user (processes are patentable) or as a design (possibly a design patent could be used).
And there is a third option. If the UI is distinctive in form instead of in function, it could get protection as "trade dress". This is related to trademark law - if something is distinctive as belonging to a company - like the colored cases of iMacs or the specially shaped Coke bottles (*) it can be protected as trade dress. This concept could be extended to UIs that look like those of the company claiming infringement.
The article says that idea is dying, but it possibly could still be used by a litigious company to harass a competitor.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seemed patently (no pun intended) obvious that at least theoretically the concept of trade dress could be applied to a UI, even before I heard of any such attempt.
(*) The Coke bottle is a great example of trade dress. It is still so familiar even to this day that they decided to put a huge Coke bottle replica on the Las Vegas strip as part of the Coca-Cola store. Everyone recognizes the shape instantly as belonging to Coca-Cola - that is what trade dress is all about.
They might still listen to the letters. They may, in some cases, actually realize that a person willing to write a letter may be much more willing to vote for or against them due to their position compared to the majority of people polled.
What people feel about an issue, isn't the issue. What they will change their vote based on is.
As for lobbying and election money, if we stop voting for the politician who manages to bombard us with the most ads, and vote on the issues, we will help fix things. They want money, but if they lose the election because we actually care that they voted to hurt us, it's all over for them. Their gravy train derails right then and there.
We may not be able to change things with our votes, but we may. Let's hope we can, it beats totalitarianism and revolution both hands down.
The post (troll) you are replying to has been ripped, word for word, off the RIAA website. It is their cost of a CD article at http://www.riaa.org/MD-US-7.cfm. Don't even bother trying to debate it, it is a canned "speech".
Perhaps I should inform RIAA of this copyright infringement.;)
RIAA probably does have some representation by smaller members and maybe even some big independents that once were exploited by a record company and now, that they are in charge of their own company, want to make sure others don't have to go through what they did (i.e. getting screwed).
Also, companies and organizations like RIAA which represent them do not do what is inherently evil because it is evil. They do evil, or they do good, depending on what is profitable and on what those controlling them want. Changing times, changing pressures, and changing markets lead to changing positions and eventually changing laws.
What happens ultimately remains to see.
Be happy with our victories, work to recover from our defeats, and keep fighting on.
Not blameless, but not criminal in the moral sense, even if so in the legal sense. Naive, yes. Hard headed, yes. Morally corrupt to the point where a felony conviction is warranted, no. He would have been in far less trouble if he beat you or I up in most states.
You are not wrong about that people should understand the legalities first. But the fact remains, most people going into a situation where they lose their rights to their own creations are not expecting it, would have no reason to expect it, aren't even thinking about it, and haven't even been informed about it.
We need to inform people. And the justice, oops I meant legal system, needs to be more fair, both in severity of punishment, and in deciding what is legal and illegal. Also it seemed he got much worse treatment than many IP violators would. A felony? Heck, even a misdemeanor trial would be highly unusual. In almost every case it wouldn't even by tried criminally at all. It would be a civil case.
IP law handles infringement, etc and is mostly civil. It seems that he was charged with grand theft by taking his own lab notes since they were property of the university.
That sounds wrong as a matter of law (lawyers care to comment?). The IP of the notes themselves could be corporate/university property and could be considered "stolen" (infringed), but the physical property wouldn't be. So grand theft, which is a crime involving physical property, wouldn't even come into play.
In closing, he wasn't blameless, but he isn't a monster, thus he was a victim of severe injustice for being so throughly hosed, being put on a chain gang (see the above article) and in with hardened criminals is brutal treatment (especially for a "geek") and put him at risk of being beat up, or raped, it constituted a violation of the 8th Amendment ("cruel and unusual punishment"), people are woefully uninformed about legal issues which can affect them severely, and we need to let people know how to avoid injustice and how to fight injustices such as the above. The governor of Florida wanted to pardon him because of the injustice of the whole situation.
P.S. Almost all of us were naive to legal issues at some time in our lives. Even after we started getting into technology and potentially being at risk. Remember that. Remember that with bad luck, we could have been one of the ones suffering a bad fate, potentially for the rest of our lives. He may be have been very different than us the way we are now when it comes to legal street smarts, but he is not different than the way most of us were.
Remember the story about Richard Stallman and why he left the MIT Media Lab?
It was because companies were making the university's research into closed-source, proprietary software of which redistribution was forbidden.
Which was quite contrary to the goals of a university, and open research. Which is happening (again, on a larger scale) now.
What do we do?
Do what Stallman did. Work to feed ourselves, yes, but only participate in open research in the universities. Walk away from a bad situation. Don't end up like the guy in Florida (*) who was imprisoned and put on an chain-gang (!) for "stealing" his own work. (which some company claimed rights to). Most of us here are NOT poor, we have choices.
Freedom and a Pentium II, or slavery and a quad Pentium III, it is quite distressing how many of us will take the second option.
(*) He is Petr Taborsky, more info can be found here:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/INST/jun97/student.ht ml. According to that article, he is now a convicted felon. I.E. he has lost some legal rights under law for the rest of his life. Keep that in mind for those of you that think the intellectual property law isn't dangerous.
Here is a case where some company was assessed $3.8M in damages against it for reverse-engineering in violation of a shrink wrap licenses (there were other damages for copyright and patent infringement, but these aren't relevant to this issue).
And those that have unavoidable risk factors get denied employment, get denied insurance, or pay exorbinant premiums. They would basically be unable to have any decent standard of living.
Interesting. Now when I want what amount to patent protection that lasts FOREVER all I need to do is this.
1. Treat the invention as secret.
2. Make it appear it has been illegally leaked.
3. Make sure it gets all over the Internet.
Tada. Infinite life protection of the idea. Like a patent which never expires. It will forever be illegal for anyone else to ever use it.
Okay, but that's fraudulent, since I'd be leaking it. But it would really be a win-win situation for some company which had its trade secret exposed. They'd get the infinite protection and it would be legal.
Green lights are slightly bluish. Red lights are slightly orangish. This is so color blind people can tell the difference. Also, in the US, red is on top/left, green is on the bottom/right. Again, it helps those that have trouble with color perception, but it also helps everyone (consistency and also if you've just had the sun in your eyes even "normal" people can have a problem telling the difference) Although I have seen some green lights that were almost pure green or even a bit yellowish. But those are the exception.
Audio CDs do not have a mechanism that "effectively" controls access to a work, etc. At least not in the sense of CSS. I am not a lawyer, but I think the RIAA would be hard pressed to say it is. Especially since anything that could be seen as protection (e.g. the lack of framing data to make it easy for a reader or ripper to resynch) was never intended as such, and any "protection" "benefits" are unintentional. Anyone know why there is no framing data btw?
P.S. You want to watch DVDs while you drive?!? That is dangerous in the extreme. Watch the d*mn road!
Content NOT drying up from lack of protection
on
NYT On DeCSS Case
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· Score: 1
I don't understand. There were no channels? What d o you receive if you are subscribed? A test pattern, a blank screen or snow? Or was there some content (what)?
Any reason for the lack of content? I doubt it is due to copy protection issues (if they say so, there is probably another reason - but they are going to take advantage of a bad situation by using it to gain political pull for DMCA type restrictions)
It is never (or extremely rarely) that companies choose to not release content due to lack of protections. A company will take large profits (using copy protection) over smaller profits (no copy protection - this is assuming copy protection actually protects profits, which is debateable), I concede that. However a company will take smaller profits over no profits (which is all they get if they refuse to release any product). The economics work both ways. A company will try to get copy protection in any system they can, but failing that, they will still release content.
The gov't buying the false argument that without DMCA protection there will be a drying up of content is just plain sad. Either they are really stupid or really well paid off (gov't is corrupt, but corruption of this magnitude is NOT cheap to buy)
If you are using a 30GB drive to hold pirated DVDs you'll run out of space really quick. Maybe you can have 4 movies at a time or so?
You should consider getting a 1 terabyte drive array.
On that note, since that what it takes to really take advantage of DVD piracy, does the MPAA have anything to worry about? Someone not buying at most a few hundred dollars in DVDs but instead having to buy a $50,000 drive array?
Never mind legality or morality, people won't do that because of simple economics. So the MPAA doesn't really have to worry.
However, despite [the] social benefit from what is the world's growing global network, there are still places where the boon that is Internet communcation is frowned upon, even dangerous.
You'll get to add the USA to that list soon, if it doesn't already qualify.
For example, most Galants have built in protection against going fast enough to harm the engine or accelerating fast enough to cause physical harm to the drivers
Umm, I don't think any car could even possibly have fast enough acceleration (even with all governors, etc overridden) to physically harm a driver with G-forces. The car, yes, that could get hurt. But medically can you be injured by G-forces? Yes, but the threshold is way up there. From zero to 100 MPH flat will not hurt you. You car ripping itself apart or you crashing into a tree subsequent to that will.
Yes I admit this is nitpicking.
Does anyone know of a car that could even go from 0 to 55 MPH in 2 seconds? Anything even close to that? I've been on an amusement park ride that did that. Pretty cool. So that has to be a medically safe acceleration. Now imagine the (huge) power output needed to make a car do that. Imagine the likelyhood the tires won't just slip in the attempt (probably zero).
It's not like they're putting governors on their cars to limit their speed.
Umm, yes they do. The engine will stop producing power (it stops getting gas) once it hits the max speed (often the highest number on the speedometer). You'll slow down until it cuts back in again (you'll still be going at an ungodly speed).
How would thermal damage occur if the chip shuts down before the point at that damage occurs? If the shutdown stops the gates from switching state (state switches and the time in between states create more heat in CMOS based chips than time spent statically in a '1' or '0' state) the heat dissipation goes down drastically. Most of the chip is now clocked and running at 0 MHz.
Am I missing something though?
P.S. I have heard electromigration damage can also occur. This is a separate issue, and thermal shutdown won't save you. Supposedly at the higher speeds (and voltages which go with it usually) the metal atoms can get knocked out of place by electrons and cause breaks and short-circuits in the internal connections.
Slashdot Mirror
No pacemakers in MRI machines!
They have all sorts of nice forms and signs to let you know that is a BIG no-no.
Extremely strong magnetic fields and electronic devices do not go well together.
Even better, an implant which could induce cardiac arrest electrically (electrically induced ventricular fibrillation). Very easy to do. Very hard to prove that is what killed someone.
An MRI would be a good way to get rid of any "bugs".
Ever notice all the warnings near them about how electronic devices, etc need to be kept FAR away?
Such treaties could be seen as not made "under the Authority of the United States" and hence invalid.
However patent lawsuits based on look and feel are a separate issue. A UI can be considered a process for communicating with the user (processes are patentable) or as a design (possibly a design patent could be used).
And there is a third option. If the UI is distinctive in form instead of in function, it could get protection as "trade dress". This is related to trademark law - if something is distinctive as belonging to a company - like the colored cases of iMacs or the specially shaped Coke bottles (*) it can be protected as trade dress. This concept could be extended to UIs that look like those of the company claiming infringement.
There is an informative article about trade dress protection for UIs at http://www.fenwick.com/pub/trade_dress_for_user_in terface.htm
The article says that idea is dying, but it possibly could still be used by a litigious company to harass a competitor.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seemed patently (no pun intended) obvious that at least theoretically the concept of trade dress could be applied to a UI, even before I heard of any such attempt.
(*) The Coke bottle is a great example of trade dress. It is still so familiar even to this day that they decided to put a huge Coke bottle replica on the Las Vegas strip as part of the Coca-Cola store. Everyone recognizes the shape instantly as belonging to Coca-Cola - that is what trade dress is all about.
What people feel about an issue, isn't the issue. What they will change their vote based on is.
As for lobbying and election money, if we stop voting for the politician who manages to bombard us with the most ads, and vote on the issues, we will help fix things. They want money, but if they lose the election because we actually care that they voted to hurt us, it's all over for them. Their gravy train derails right then and there.
We may not be able to change things with our votes, but we may. Let's hope we can, it beats totalitarianism and revolution both hands down.
Perhaps I should inform RIAA of this copyright infringement. ;)
Also, companies and organizations like RIAA which represent them do not do what is inherently evil because it is evil. They do evil, or they do good, depending on what is profitable and on what those controlling them want. Changing times, changing pressures, and changing markets lead to changing positions and eventually changing laws.
What happens ultimately remains to see.
Be happy with our victories, work to recover from our defeats, and keep fighting on.
You are not wrong about that people should understand the legalities first. But the fact remains, most people going into a situation where they lose their rights to their own creations are not expecting it, would have no reason to expect it, aren't even thinking about it, and haven't even been informed about it.
We need to inform people. And the justice, oops I meant legal system, needs to be more fair, both in severity of punishment, and in deciding what is legal and illegal. Also it seemed he got much worse treatment than many IP violators would. A felony? Heck, even a misdemeanor trial would be highly unusual. In almost every case it wouldn't even by tried criminally at all. It would be a civil case.
IP law handles infringement, etc and is mostly civil. It seems that he was charged with grand theft by taking his own lab notes since they were property of the university.
See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1997/dom/970210/ science.intellectual.html
That sounds wrong as a matter of law (lawyers care to comment?). The IP of the notes themselves could be corporate/university property and could be considered "stolen" (infringed), but the physical property wouldn't be. So grand theft, which is a crime involving physical property, wouldn't even come into play.
In closing, he wasn't blameless, but he isn't a monster, thus he was a victim of severe injustice for being so throughly hosed, being put on a chain gang (see the above article) and in with hardened criminals is brutal treatment (especially for a "geek") and put him at risk of being beat up, or raped, it constituted a violation of the 8th Amendment ("cruel and unusual punishment"), people are woefully uninformed about legal issues which can affect them severely, and we need to let people know how to avoid injustice and how to fight injustices such as the above. The governor of Florida wanted to pardon him because of the injustice of the whole situation.
P.S. Almost all of us were naive to legal issues at some time in our lives. Even after we started getting into technology and potentially being at risk. Remember that. Remember that with bad luck, we could have been one of the ones suffering a bad fate, potentially for the rest of our lives. He may be have been very different than us the way we are now when it comes to legal street smarts, but he is not different than the way most of us were.
Heck, at one time even I trusted the government!
It was because companies were making the university's research into closed-source, proprietary software of which redistribution was forbidden.
Which was quite contrary to the goals of a university, and open research. Which is happening (again, on a larger scale) now.
What do we do?
Do what Stallman did. Work to feed ourselves, yes, but only participate in open research in the universities. Walk away from a bad situation. Don't end up like the guy in Florida (*) who was imprisoned and put on an chain-gang (!) for "stealing" his own work. (which some company claimed rights to). Most of us here are NOT poor, we have choices.
Freedom and a Pentium II, or slavery and a quad Pentium III, it is quite distressing how many of us will take the second option.
(*) He is Petr Taborsky, more info can be found here: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/INST/jun97/student.ht ml. According to that article, he is now a convicted felon. I.E. he has lost some legal rights under law for the rest of his life. Keep that in mind for those of you that think the intellectual property law isn't dangerous.
http://www.bannerwitcoff.com/press/00-06-08.htm
That's just plain evil.
Interesting. Now when I want what amount to patent protection that lasts FOREVER all I need to do is this.
1. Treat the invention as secret.
2. Make it appear it has been illegally leaked.
3. Make sure it gets all over the Internet.
Tada. Infinite life protection of the idea. Like a patent which never expires. It will forever be illegal for anyone else to ever use it.
Okay, but that's fraudulent, since I'd be leaking it. But it would really be a win-win situation for some company which had its trade secret exposed. They'd get the infinite protection and it would be legal.
Green lights are slightly bluish. Red lights are slightly orangish. This is so color blind people can tell the difference. Also, in the US, red is on top/left, green is on the bottom/right. Again, it helps those that have trouble with color perception, but it also helps everyone (consistency and also if you've just had the sun in your eyes even "normal" people can have a problem telling the difference) Although I have seen some green lights that were almost pure green or even a bit yellowish. But those are the exception.
And He only cares if it runs on Linux. :)
Argh, what frustration. Let me guess, are you a Windows programmer? :-)
P.S. You want to watch DVDs while you drive?!? That is dangerous in the extreme. Watch the d*mn road!
Any reason for the lack of content? I doubt it is due to copy protection issues (if they say so, there is probably another reason - but they are going to take advantage of a bad situation by using it to gain political pull for DMCA type restrictions)
It is never (or extremely rarely) that companies choose to not release content due to lack of protections. A company will take large profits (using copy protection) over smaller profits (no copy protection - this is assuming copy protection actually protects profits, which is debateable), I concede that. However a company will take smaller profits over no profits (which is all they get if they refuse to release any product). The economics work both ways. A company will try to get copy protection in any system they can, but failing that, they will still release content.
The gov't buying the false argument that without DMCA protection there will be a drying up of content is just plain sad. Either they are really stupid or really well paid off (gov't is corrupt, but corruption of this magnitude is NOT cheap to buy)
You should consider getting a 1 terabyte drive array.
On that note, since that what it takes to really take advantage of DVD piracy, does the MPAA have anything to worry about? Someone not buying at most a few hundred dollars in DVDs but instead having to buy a $50,000 drive array?
Never mind legality or morality, people won't do that because of simple economics. So the MPAA doesn't really have to worry.
Accidental?
Are you sure?
You'll get to add the USA to that list soon, if it doesn't already qualify.
Sorry for the typo. From 0 to 100 MPH in 1 sec flat is what I meant.
Umm, I don't think any car could even possibly have fast enough acceleration (even with all governors, etc overridden) to physically harm a driver with G-forces. The car, yes, that could get hurt. But medically can you be injured by G-forces? Yes, but the threshold is way up there. From zero to 100 MPH flat will not hurt you. You car ripping itself apart or you crashing into a tree subsequent to that will.
Yes I admit this is nitpicking.
Does anyone know of a car that could even go from 0 to 55 MPH in 2 seconds? Anything even close to that? I've been on an amusement park ride that did that. Pretty cool. So that has to be a medically safe acceleration. Now imagine the (huge) power output needed to make a car do that. Imagine the likelyhood the tires won't just slip in the attempt (probably zero).
Umm, yes they do. The engine will stop producing power (it stops getting gas) once it hits the max speed (often the highest number on the speedometer). You'll slow down until it cuts back in again (you'll still be going at an ungodly speed).
Am I missing something though?
P.S. I have heard electromigration damage can also occur. This is a separate issue, and thermal shutdown won't save you. Supposedly at the higher speeds (and voltages which go with it usually) the metal atoms can get knocked out of place by electrons and cause breaks and short-circuits in the internal connections.