If it was illegal for US ISPs to connect to country B, but legal to connect to C, and C allowed connections to B one might be able to get around it. Unless we then made it illegal to connect to C (secondary boycott enforced by our gov't) or banned routing of certain IPs. But those willing to break the law could get around it with international phone calls with PPP running over it.
The only thing the gov't could do then is make the penalties so huge (20 year prison sentences) that people wouldn't do it. And many still would. And monitoring/finding everyone doing it is impossible, and any halfway effective attempt is extremely expensive.
Even without safe harbor a third-party may not necessarly be held liable. I am not a lawyer, but I do know there (supposedly) has to be some culpability in order to lose a lawsuit based on contributory or vicarious infringement. Losing safe harbor does not necessarily mean a loss in court.
Option 1 for sites that have a legitmate need and I trust. Option 2 for most other sites. Option 3 for those where option 2 causes access denied or for those that abuse personal info in any way.
P3P implementations can be made "smart" and work for us. Sure beats binary editing of cookies, which I've done to some websites that I didn't like the idea of tracking me.
the gpl requires that you also post the binaries and source on an http or ftp server.
No it does not. I could sell a Linux system with binaries on one CD and source on another, and charge $10,000 for it, and refuse to distribute any other way. As long as I do not prohibit redistribution I am not violating the GPL. I do NOT have to make anything available over the Internet! Red Hat does, but they do not have to. They include the source in their boxed sets, they could stop allowing people to download it from them and still be legal.
I remeber something from one of Richard Feynman's autobiographical books where some extremely devout Orthodox Jews wanted to know if there was a spark released when you flip on a light switch; this spark would constitute "work" and was therefore taboo, whereas if there was no spark it would be OK. Feynman suggested putting a capacitor across the switch to suppress the spark, I think.
I sure hope he didn't suggest that! It could not possibly work. Capacitors pass AC current, there would be current flowing even when the light is off. Surely Feynman knew this!
Don't know about the UK, but in the US, a corporation IS a person. The law distingushes what we think of persons by calling them "natural persons". Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I've heard that term a lot to mean a person that ISN'T a corporation.
Does the UK redefine person to include corporations too?
And maybe we won't be so cavalier about allowing implementation defined parts of specifications. Not just because of disclosure/reverse-engineering/legal issues, but also for general interoperability. Look at the C language and the portability problems. If we define specs more rigorously we can avoid a lot of problems.
If we don't either a situation like this Microsoft Kerberos one occurs, or people can't trust the implementation defined parts for anything, or the are interoperability problems, or someone comes along with a tighter standard anyway.
Agreed. Reverse-engineering is NOT easy, is NOT a cut-and-dried 100% scientific process (it is just as much a black art as it is a science), and does NOT always give a 100% accurate solution. You can't test (usually) every possible combination of bits and every possible state and interaction of the system. You can often sort of try to figure out how it probably was designed and confirm/deny a hypothesis of that and keep refining it. Plus you often get any implementation bugs to carry over into your implementation.
The upshot of this is that a reverse-engineered implementation may not work 100% and could not be trusted 100% (in many cases).
Violating the EULA is a _separate_ offensive. It does NOT constitute copyright infringement. You lose any license to do anything otherwise prohibited by copyright, so thus you can be exposed to a charge of infringment you otherwise might have avoided, if you do something that is an exclusive right of a copyright holder. But you still get the fair use and other defenses in copyright law. Also, violating a EULA (even after/if UCITA becomes law) does not constitute a DMCA violation.
It is possibly a contract violation, and may be cause to declare the exposing of the trade secret to be illegal. Slashdot didn't sign the EULA so they aren't liable for the contract violation (is there contributory or vicarious liability for contract law?), they could get nailed on trade secret (but did Microsoft use due care in protecting its secrets - making it illegal to spill the beans may not be enough - imagine if Coca-Cola posted its recipe on the web sith a notice saying not to read it). Maybe contributory/vicarious copyright infringement, but still protected by fair use and other defenses.
Sarcastic rant time: Of course Congress believes in free speech. Here in the good old USA you can say ANYTHING you want. Unless of course it is offensive, costs somebody money, embarrasses someone or is politically incorrect. But everything else is completely legal.
DO NOT allow them to settle in any way which causes a monetary judgement to be assessed against you. Even if they completely reimburse you for everything.
Why?
Because it is a severe negative item on your credit report, and you will get denied for almost any credit application you seek. Also you get get denied employment and insurance (or pay very high rates) for "bad credit". I am not a lawyer, go see one. They'll probably tell you the same thing.
Well with GNU Bison it was the case anything you created with it was GPL'd since it included GPL code (the Bison parser skeleton). I believe the fixed this by liberalizing the license on the parser skeleton. Now if an HTML creation tool inserts copyrighted code into the document, it very well could made the generated product fall under copyright of the tool owner. Does it? I am not sure, but it seems at least theoretically possible. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Wrong. The copyright holder can elect to have actual damages + profits of the infringer or statutory damages. In the latter case you are required to pay a certain amount of money even if there are NO damages to the copyright holder and you made NO money yourself. The law sets minimum and maximum statutory damages based on whther it is willful, repeated, etc. I believe the plaintiff can choose between actual damages + profits vs statutory damages right before the judgement is handed down, so as to allow the plaintiff the best possible outcome. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
4 big things I can't tolerate about (some) ads: 1. When they disable caching of the ad itself, or even, in some cases the ad and the page it is on. Going back to such a back with the back button and having it stay blank until it is done reloading the same exact content (with perhaps a different ad) is very annoying. It is even worse when I am using Netscape under NT and they disable the caching so throughly that if I use off-line mode it gives an error and fails to return to the page at all. Just think of the bandwidth waste caused by uncachable content. Slashdot seems to have this issue btw. 2. When the banner ad causes the page to stay blank until it is done loading. 3. Annoying animation. 4. When they crash the browser.
Having transaction support in your database should NOT slow down your select performance by any significant factor. If it does, that is due to poor programming.
Saying that updates in a transaction are slower than updates not in a transaction is comparing apples and oranges. Now, if updates outside of a transaction were slowed down significantly by adding transaction support, that would be a bad thing. It would also indicate a poor job in programming/
Even if click-thru or shrink-wrap licenses are valid doesn't mean a license which you merely read is valid. See, you need to take an intentional action (clicking or opening a package) in the first case which could (especially with UCITA) be considered like signing a contract. But merely reading a license agreement doesn't bind you. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer). Imagine if merely reading a contract bound you to it in the real world. That is too far out for even most judges to go.
That being said, if you don't agree to the license you get no rights under it. So you would be left with all the rights and restrictions granted and imposed by copyright law, including fair use, but also including not being allowed to redistribute. You likely could implement off the spec (using ideas from a copyrighted work may be fair use or not in the scope of copyright, but if it is considered a derived work, then you could be considered infringing).
As for the DMCA, if the EXE is considered a copyright protection measure, then distributing a tool to break it is illegal (could WinZIP get in trouble, probably not, it has other uses which are more important), but breaking the protection yourself is legal until October 2000.
UCITA isn't law yet. There is a moratorium on its going into effect in Virginia. Maryland is still considering it, as far as I know. It isn't law in any other state (yet). Also, even if a click-thru license is validated, that says nothing about the case where you can still use the product without agreeing. If you click Yes, you could be bound. But if you can still get it to work some other way you might be off the hook. I am not a lawyer, but I know that many times defendants get off on technicalities like this. Plus I think there are very low damages possible even if there are violations. I read UCITA, and it seems to be about breech of contract, actual damages and actual profits. No mention of statuatory and punitive damages. Consult a lawyer for real details. Compared to the DMCA, UCITA is much less dangerous (but still very dangerous none the less - but the current situation isn't very free - I think Kentucky has held shrink wrap licenses valid for years)
Why would a university appease commercial interests even if their lawyers say they are safe? Perhaps getting sued is not their only concern. Perhaps they do not want to annoy a large company, because then that would be one less potential corporate sponsor. One less entity the university could sell part of its soul for in exchange for cash, and let's face it, that is all many of these places care about.
As an aside, keep in mind that many universities will allow companies to get patents on research done by the universities, so their own students aren't allowed to use the technology.
On the other hand one can't always blame the university. This country keeps cutting funding for higher education, some places have to make up the difference any way the can to survive.
Too bad they can't release the source code legally due to various NDA's between them and other companies
Assuming that is true, do they still need to put a fascist license that says WE are not allowed to reverse engineer, use on multiple computers, etc? Do their agreements make them do that? If so they've signed some bad agreements and we shouldn't get swept into their mess. If not, then it is their decision to go above and beyond their commitments and do what almost every closed source system (unfortunately) does, which is to say it is illegal for us to use the software as we see fit
No source is bad.
Prohibitions on what we can do is even worse. Adding an extremely restrictive license agreement (*) to a piece of closed software changes it from bad to absolutely intolerable.
Just because something is for Linux does not make it good.
Linux can become just another Windows when it comes to what is really important: freedom (as in liberty, not just free of charge). Sure the core of the kernel will be open source, but all the apps, drivers, and kernel modules will be closed. All the problems of Microsoft without any of the advantages (widespread deployment). If we let that happen, WE LOSE. No two ways about it.
(*) I hate End User License Agreements. Even the name is insulting. I want the option to be more than an end user, I want the option to be a developer. But the software cartel doesn't want that.
Most of the more experienced engineers I've worked with tell me that a lot of the math and advanced theory they learned in school hasn't been used since then.
That is a bad thing. A lot of that is useful. A database administrator that doesn't make sure her/his databases are normalized is doing a grave disservice. Conversely, normalized databases are much nicer to deal with. It is not just a theoretical consideration.
Also, good programming design principles are important. It really does make a difference. But you need to know that it is important and have the skill to do things the right way. Hacking something together without any background can be cool, but I wouldn't want to run a business on something that was poorly designed because someone didn't understand the concepts that were required to know how to do it right.
I dislike the implication that many here make that those of us that sought, and obtained degrees (such as myself) wasted our time. I earned my degree and am proud of it. The stuff I learned has proved useful on the job.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing the gov't could do then is make the penalties so huge (20 year prison sentences) that people wouldn't do it. And many still would. And monitoring/finding everyone doing it is impossible, and any halfway effective attempt is extremely expensive.
Even without safe harbor a third-party may not necessarly be held liable. I am not a lawyer, but I do know there (supposedly) has to be some culpability in order to lose a lawsuit based on contributory or vicarious infringement. Losing safe harbor does not necessarily mean a loss in court.
Option 1 for sites that have a legitmate need and I trust. Option 2 for most other sites. Option 3 for those where option 2 causes access denied or for those that abuse personal info in any way.
P3P implementations can be made "smart" and work for us. Sure beats binary editing of cookies, which I've done to some websites that I didn't like the idea of tracking me.
No it does not. I could sell a Linux system with binaries on one CD and source on another, and charge $10,000 for it, and refuse to distribute any other way. As long as I do not prohibit redistribution I am not violating the GPL. I do NOT have to make anything available over the Internet! Red Hat does, but they do not have to. They include the source in their boxed sets, they could stop allowing people to download it from them and still be legal.
I sure hope he didn't suggest that! It could not possibly work. Capacitors pass AC current, there would be current flowing even when the light is off. Surely Feynman knew this!
Considering Microsoft's recent actions, I do not think it would have much effect.
Does the UK redefine person to include corporations too?
If we don't either a situation like this Microsoft Kerberos one occurs, or people can't trust the implementation defined parts for anything, or the are interoperability problems, or someone comes along with a tighter standard anyway.
The upshot of this is that a reverse-engineered implementation may not work 100% and could not be trusted 100% (in many cases).
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer
It is possibly a contract violation, and may be cause to declare the exposing of the trade secret to be illegal. Slashdot didn't sign the EULA so they aren't liable for the contract violation (is there contributory or vicarious liability for contract law?), they could get nailed on trade secret (but did Microsoft use due care in protecting its secrets - making it illegal to spill the beans may not be enough - imagine if Coca-Cola posted its recipe on the web sith a notice saying not to read it). Maybe contributory/vicarious copyright infringement, but still protected by fair use and other defenses.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Sarcastic rant time: Of course Congress believes in free speech. Here in the good old USA you can say ANYTHING you want. Unless of course it is offensive, costs somebody money, embarrasses someone or is politically incorrect. But everything else is completely legal.
Here's how to have cookies not persist beyond the end of a session when using Netscape under Windows NT.
attrib +r c:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\YourProfile\cookies.txt
(using the actual path on your machine, of course).
You can use attrib -r to undo it. Like store your slashdot cookies by having it writable when you log in, then make it read only again. Very useful.
Why?
Because it is a severe negative item on your credit report, and you will get denied for almost any credit application you seek. Also you get get denied employment and insurance (or pay very high rates) for "bad credit". I am not a lawyer, go see one. They'll probably tell you the same thing.
Well with GNU Bison it was the case anything you created with it was GPL'd since it included GPL code (the Bison parser skeleton). I believe the fixed this by liberalizing the license on the parser skeleton. Now if an HTML creation tool inserts copyrighted code into the document, it very well could made the generated product fall under copyright of the tool owner. Does it? I am not sure, but it seems at least theoretically possible. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Wrong. The copyright holder can elect to have actual damages + profits of the infringer or statutory damages. In the latter case you are required to pay a certain amount of money even if there are NO damages to the copyright holder and you made NO money yourself. The law sets minimum and maximum statutory damages based on whther it is willful, repeated, etc. I believe the plaintiff can choose between actual damages + profits vs statutory damages right before the judgement is handed down, so as to allow the plaintiff the best possible outcome. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
4 big things I can't tolerate about (some) ads: 1. When they disable caching of the ad itself, or even, in some cases the ad and the page it is on. Going back to such a back with the back button and having it stay blank until it is done reloading the same exact content (with perhaps a different ad) is very annoying. It is even worse when I am using Netscape under NT and they disable the caching so throughly that if I use off-line mode it gives an error and fails to return to the page at all. Just think of the bandwidth waste caused by uncachable content. Slashdot seems to have this issue btw. 2. When the banner ad causes the page to stay blank until it is done loading. 3. Annoying animation. 4. When they crash the browser.
Saying that updates in a transaction are slower than updates not in a transaction is comparing apples and oranges. Now, if updates outside of a transaction were slowed down significantly by adding transaction support, that would be a bad thing. It would also indicate a poor job in programming/
That being said, if you don't agree to the license you get no rights under it. So you would be left with all the rights and restrictions granted and imposed by copyright law, including fair use, but also including not being allowed to redistribute. You likely could implement off the spec (using ideas from a copyrighted work may be fair use or not in the scope of copyright, but if it is considered a derived work, then you could be considered infringing).
As for the DMCA, if the EXE is considered a copyright protection measure, then distributing a tool to break it is illegal (could WinZIP get in trouble, probably not, it has other uses which are more important), but breaking the protection yourself is legal until October 2000.
UCITA isn't law yet. There is a moratorium on its going into effect in Virginia. Maryland is still considering it, as far as I know. It isn't law in any other state (yet). Also, even if a click-thru license is validated, that says nothing about the case where you can still use the product without agreeing. If you click Yes, you could be bound. But if you can still get it to work some other way you might be off the hook. I am not a lawyer, but I know that many times defendants get off on technicalities like this. Plus I think there are very low damages possible even if there are violations. I read UCITA, and it seems to be about breech of contract, actual damages and actual profits. No mention of statuatory and punitive damages. Consult a lawyer for real details. Compared to the DMCA, UCITA is much less dangerous (but still very dangerous none the less - but the current situation isn't very free - I think Kentucky has held shrink wrap licenses valid for years)
As an aside, keep in mind that many universities will allow companies to get patents on research done by the universities, so their own students aren't allowed to use the technology.
On the other hand one can't always blame the university. This country keeps cutting funding for higher education, some places have to make up the difference any way the can to survive.
British notion?!? They ripped it off from us, the good ole USA! Home of such wonderful innovations as MS-DOS and its various upgrades, such as NT.
Assuming that is true, do they still need to put a fascist license that says WE are not allowed to reverse engineer, use on multiple computers, etc? Do their agreements make them do that? If so they've signed some bad agreements and we shouldn't get swept into their mess. If not, then it is their decision to go above and beyond their commitments and do what almost every closed source system (unfortunately) does, which is to say it is illegal for us to use the software as we see fit
No source is bad.
Prohibitions on what we can do is even worse. Adding an extremely restrictive license agreement (*) to a piece of closed software changes it from bad to absolutely intolerable.
Just because something is for Linux does not make it good.
Linux can become just another Windows when it comes to what is really important: freedom (as in liberty, not just free of charge). Sure the core of the kernel will be open source, but all the apps, drivers, and kernel modules will be closed. All the problems of Microsoft without any of the advantages (widespread deployment). If we let that happen, WE LOSE. No two ways about it.
(*) I hate End User License Agreements. Even the name is insulting. I want the option to be more than an end user, I want the option to be a developer. But the software cartel doesn't want that.
That is a bad thing. A lot of that is useful. A database administrator that doesn't make sure her/his databases are normalized is doing a grave disservice. Conversely, normalized databases are much nicer to deal with. It is not just a theoretical consideration.
Also, good programming design principles are important. It really does make a difference. But you need to know that it is important and have the skill to do things the right way. Hacking something together without any background can be cool, but I wouldn't want to run a business on something that was poorly designed because someone didn't understand the concepts that were required to know how to do it right.
I dislike the implication that many here make that those of us that sought, and obtained degrees (such as myself) wasted our time. I earned my degree and am proud of it. The stuff I learned has proved useful on the job.