You cannot legally "threaten" someone with the specter of legal adjudication, since legal adjudication is the proper and legal civil means of resolving a dispute.
In fact, the "threat" of a lawsuit is a virtually necessary step in bringing a case, since the potential defendant must be given reasonable opportunity to settle the dispute prior to a filing.
Your credit card company cannot sue you for your bill. They have to present it to you first, then you have to fail to pay it within the specified, and reasonable, time, then they have to notify you of your failure to comply with terms and "threaten" legal action if you do not pay.
If you still do not pay, then they may sue you. Suits are not supposed to "come out of the blue."
Redress of grievance through the courts is a right, and the process is one of impartial adjudication of liability. Where is the "threat" in impartial legal judgment?
The courts want lawsuits to be threatened, because they'd rather you looked at your credit card company's lawyers and think "Oh, shit, I better just pay what I owe, huh?" instead of making every $10 debt into a court case. Even after a suit is filed the courts will do everything they can not to hear the case and get the parties to settle before trial.
Of course you and I know where the real threat lies, in the crippling expense of showing that you don't owe anything, assuming you don't, but the law cannot make that assumption, since its role is in making that determination in the first place, no?
So do you think the RIAA should just sue her and then make the threats, after she's already deep in the system and deep in debt to a lawyer?
Of course we know this person has no contractual debt up front, the supposed monies owed coming from a violation of law and not from contractual agreement. So, to date, there is no actual "debt" in the legal sense. That would only occur through adjudication and a judgement, or a future contractual agreement to acknowledge the debt, which is what is being sought.
Note that the suit filed by Dawnell Leadbetter is against Comcast, not the RIAA or the "debt collection agency" (i.e. "Law Firm." Who woulda thunk that law firms threaten law suits? It boggles the mind.)
She was ratted out. She's going after the ratter, quite possibly in hopes of getting enough money to pay the $4500 which she knows she's going to have to pay, because she knows she violated the law (which doesn't at all mean that the RIAA are not fucking bastards. Don't get me wrong on that point. See my yesterday's post on using copyright to control the distribution channel).
Comcast squealed when they were under no obligation to do so, let Comcast pay her tab.
Frankly I hope the ploy works, so that ISPs all over the land will start saying "Not without a fucking warrant you don't."
They're so interested in screwing everyone they can for a buck. ..
How does offering me goods that are worth less than a buck for less than a buck, instead of insisiting that I pay a buck for them, translate into the RIAA screwing me for a buck?
Anyone who does not understand the parent's reference owes it to themselves to look into the matter. Einstein's train thought experiment is the key to gaining a true insight into Special Relativity, particularly why it must be true if Maxwell's equation is true.
Here's the best site I've been able to find on the matter after investing nearly several seconds on Google:
This is essentially the Consumer Reports model brought to its logical conlusion on the web and in some form or other is obviously (i.e. everyone knows that)the ideal model for scientific publication. It provides for the unfettered flow of information (the very foundation of science) while still providing some measure of peer review. If the information flows freely there is no specter of wondering whose monetary interests are controling the flow (well, ok, there is, but that's a more subtle issue than the one we are addressing here. See my previous post on political finance, as well as the one I just made on using copyright to maintain a stranglehold on distribution).
In the old days we invented a crude version of this. We called it "usenet." The commercial journals did not crumble, just as Road & Track did not crumble with the publication of Consumer Reports.
Why not? Because R&T sold something the public found useful in addition to what Consumer Reports sold.
For instance, not just statistics on reliability of a particular car, or even CR's opinion of the qualtities of a particular car, but Peter Egan's and Phil Hill's opinion of a particular car. To certain people the opinion of Peter or Phil held a certain importance, because of who they were and their background.
And what the commercial journals are selling is the the opinion of their jury that a particular piece is worthy of publication in their particular journal.
If they fail to do this in a manner that provides value, they will fail, as they should. (Once again see my post on copyright for what this means to business models).
If a new technology obsoletes your business model I have some advice for you.
Shut the hell up.
Use all that time, money and energy you spend whining to find a place in the new businesses that new technologies necessarily create.
That, of course, requires a certain intelligence. I would like to think that scientific journals have an intelligent person or three hanging about the offices, despite some of the empirical evidence to the contrary.
And how do you tell if copyright is overactive? If it is killing technology. Copyright is intended to protect artistic and literary works, not scientific or technological works. The specific code of a program has been deemed to be a "literary" work, but the strictly scientific or tecnological aspects of that code are not.
This is why reverse engineering, quite legitimately, is legal. No one can claim ownership of "2+2=4" simply because they have included that equation in an otherwise legitimately copy protected document, just as words in a name cannot be protected by copyright unless they are of your own invention ("Bob's Corner Market" vs. "Exxon." Legitimate copyright ownership of a word, however, does not obviate fair use of that word, as in "Exxon sucks.").
That's why the software companies want patent protection for algorithms.
How do you tell of patents are overactive? If they limit what you are allowed to write.
The idea that entire technologies can be shut down and placed under taboo because they might be used to violate copyright is abhorent and until now the courts have viewed it that way. Please note that the copyright laws that allow you to use a Xerox machine under fair use terms were written after the appearance of said machine, because it became obvious that such laws were needed, because it was obvious the machine itself could not be banned outright on the basis of its potential for violating copyright.
New guidelines were written, and while not everyone is happy about them at least the world is allowed to continue turning instead of being ground to halt under the aegis of "intellectual property."
And if you think this is a fight over copyright infringement, per se, you aren't paying attention.
While protection from copying is certainly the foundation of the media industry that allows it to operate the house of the media industry, that is its actual business model, is based on the control of the distribution channels.
This means that if you want your own works to get distributed on an equal footing you must contract with them, on their terms, to achieve that distribution.
P2P, in one swell foop, leaves the foundation of copyright law intact (I still own legitimate protection for my own works. This is a very, very important point), but razes the house of the industry controled distribution cartel right to the ground.
The idea that the industry fight against internet trading of protected works is about keeping you from downloading Metallica songs is a public front, a dodge, a secondary issue put forward as the primary issue to distract you from seeing the primary issue.
Which is that the industry wants to make sure that if Metallica wishes to distribute their songs widely they must assign their rights to copy and distribute them to some other party.
And that other party gets the money, n'est pa?
If Metallica can record a song and instantly gain world wide distribution at little to no cost by the simple expediant of tossing it out onto a P2P network the entire music industry, as she is write, crumbles to the ground.
They control the art by controling the artist by means of controling the disemination of the art.
This is what it's all about.
Now, yes, that still leaves the question of what sort of business model might work with P2P distribution, but. ..
Copyright law isn't about protecting business models, it's about protecting copying. Get it? Copy right?
This is why the SCO claim that OSS violated the Constitution was so bizarre. Whether you sell stuff or give stuff away, or trade it for hamsters, or whatever, has nothing at all to do with the provisions of copy protection.
So, the fight here is not about your supposed "right" to downlo
Do I have the right to cast aspersions if my PC is running a genuine IBM PC BIOS?
I'm at a loss to explain the objections to reverse engineering that seem to have popped up here, even if Tridge were attempting to reverse engineer the internals of the Bitkeeper program, unless it is to insure a feeling that the great man himself can't be taking a position that isn't entirely in the right.
Stone the WINE developers!
To be fair to Linus I get the impression that he doens't really so much have any moral objections to what's going on, but rather that he's really annoyed at the timing of the thing and how much trouble it's going to cause him, and he is speaking out of his annoyance.
Which can often lead one to a bit of foot in mouth disease.
Or he finds the idea of getting involved in a "he said, she said" public mud flinging fest to be personally distasteful. It may be hard to believe here on Slashdot, but there really are people who feel that way.
He made the relevant points, that he did not use Bitkeeper at all in developing his tool and was never subject to the Bitkeeper license.
Sure, you'll go though hell with withdrawl symptons. ..
This is the fundamental symptom of addiction, not death, as it is indicative of a physical dependency.
Some addictions are quite harmless, in and of themselves, like my coffee addiction, which provides an example of the "functional addict," which a great many alcoholics are, by the way. You may well know a good many alcholics without knowing that they are alcoholics, as their behavior is quite "normal," so long as they are able to maintain a certain level of alcohol in their systems.
You have tainted the concept of addiction with morality. There is nothing innately bad, let alone evil, about addiction, nor does a complusive behavior imply a destructive behavior.
Addiction is NOT the *need* for something. It is the *inability to function without* that something.
Because without something that you have a physical need for you cannot function properly. The alcoholic, heroin junkie, etc. have a body chemistry that does not function properly without the relevant chemicals in the system. I am addicted to coffee myself.
This physical dependency is the keystone necessary phenomenon of "classicl" addiction, i.e. the correct definition.
The fact that the "classical" definition has been warped into something that can be applied to any purely psychological state, i.e. any behavior you disaprove of, only supports my thesis.
Holding your breath until you turn blue and having a panic attack if you don't get what you want is a purely psychological problem (one some used to term "being a jackass"), not a sign of addiction.
Similarly we used to call video games, dancing and sex "fun," and seeking fun to be a perfectly normal thing to do, even if one failed to show up for "work" to do it. That's why the preachers had to spout fire and brimstone, to make people afraid to have fun so they'd show up at work.
They called "fun" "sin."
Which is why we now have to look askance at anyone having fun, especially so much fun that they won't go to "work" and define them as having a "dis-ease," for having no dis-ease, like the rest of the poor schmucks going to "work."
This idea has taken such strong root that we now even look askance at people who simply enjoy their work. If it were fun, they wouldn't call it "work," right?
If you have so much fun playing video games that you loose your job, wife, personal hygene, etc, and find these loses undesirable, yeah, you should seek counseling. You have a psychological problem. The inverse of a phobia (funny how noone calls the lack of "normal" function due to fear an "addiction." Fear is what they want you to feel, so fear is ok, as long as the fear means you show up for work, insteand of playing video games. If you fail to show up for work, then you have a phobia, recongnized as a purely psychological problem.)
But you don't have an addiction. Unless you want to count fun itself as an addiction, to which I could only respond:
It's what we do. Information is always available, unless you're in a sensory deprivation tank or something, in which case you may well start hallucinating, because you aren't "addicted" to information; you require it for proper functioning.
I think some people are addicted to labling everything as an addiction.
Maybe it has something to do with our rather bizzare cultural perception that if you're enjoying yourself you must be mentally ill.
Actually, now that I think about it, given the state of our culture, they might have a point.
NASA is about rockets. This isn't the sort of stuff they do really do. They help supply data to astronomers/cosmologists/physicists who apply to them, and who, largely, are affiliated with universities and are not "kids."
Dr. Feynman at CalTech and Dr. Sagan at Cornell, for instance, who were both rather famously at odds with NASA more often than not.
"Citizens" have always handled the bulk of astronomical research.
Because more often than not NASA is the necessary enemy of astronomers. It is a government agency, run for the government's purposes, complete with a government beauracracy, and only provisionally interested in theoretical science at all.
But they own Hubble.
I might also point out that these "kids" weren't even in America. England has a university or two worth a damn that might object to being catagorized as "random", and four or five smart people in them. Germany, China, Australia, and hell (as it were), even the Vatican have quite capable cosmologists of their own.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot legally "threaten" someone with the specter of legal adjudication, since legal adjudication is the proper and legal civil means of resolving a dispute.
In fact, the "threat" of a lawsuit is a virtually necessary step in bringing a case, since the potential defendant must be given reasonable opportunity to settle the dispute prior to a filing.
Your credit card company cannot sue you for your bill. They have to present it to you first, then you have to fail to pay it within the specified, and reasonable, time, then they have to notify you of your failure to comply with terms and "threaten" legal action if you do not pay.
If you still do not pay, then they may sue you. Suits are not supposed to "come out of the blue."
Redress of grievance through the courts is a right, and the process is one of impartial adjudication of liability. Where is the "threat" in impartial legal judgment?
The courts want lawsuits to be threatened, because they'd rather you looked at your credit card company's lawyers and think "Oh, shit, I better just pay what I owe, huh?" instead of making every $10 debt into a court case. Even after a suit is filed the courts will do everything they can not to hear the case and get the parties to settle before trial.
Of course you and I know where the real threat lies, in the crippling expense of showing that you don't owe anything, assuming you don't, but the law cannot make that assumption, since its role is in making that determination in the first place, no?
So do you think the RIAA should just sue her and then make the threats, after she's already deep in the system and deep in debt to a lawyer?
Of course we know this person has no contractual debt up front, the supposed monies owed coming from a violation of law and not from contractual agreement. So, to date, there is no actual "debt" in the legal sense. That would only occur through adjudication and a judgement, or a future contractual agreement to acknowledge the debt, which is what is being sought.
Note that the suit filed by Dawnell Leadbetter is against Comcast, not the RIAA or the "debt collection agency" (i.e. "Law Firm." Who woulda thunk that law firms threaten law suits? It boggles the mind.)
She was ratted out. She's going after the ratter, quite possibly in hopes of getting enough money to pay the $4500 which she knows she's going to have to pay, because she knows she violated the law (which doesn't at all mean that the RIAA are not fucking bastards. Don't get me wrong on that point. See my yesterday's post on using copyright to control the distribution channel).
Comcast squealed when they were under no obligation to do so, let Comcast pay her tab.
Frankly I hope the ploy works, so that ISPs all over the land will start saying "Not without a fucking warrant you don't."
KFG
They're so interested in screwing everyone they can for a buck. . .
How does offering me goods that are worth less than a buck for less than a buck, instead of insisiting that I pay a buck for them, translate into the RIAA screwing me for a buck?
KFG
Taking pictures of cameras taking pictures of you is not keeping a record of your own actions.
It most certainly is if your actions are the taking of pictures of the cameras taking pictures or your actions taking picutures of them.
Get the picture?
KFG
Anyone who does not understand the parent's reference owes it to themselves to look into the matter. Einstein's train thought experiment is the key to gaining a true insight into Special Relativity, particularly why it must be true if Maxwell's equation is true.
Here's the best site I've been able to find on the matter after investing nearly several seconds on Google:
http://www.tjonard.ws/SR.html
KFG
This is essentially the Consumer Reports model brought to its logical conlusion on the web and in some form or other is obviously (i.e. everyone knows that)the ideal model for scientific publication. It provides for the unfettered flow of information (the very foundation of science) while still providing some measure of peer review. If the information flows freely there is no specter of wondering whose monetary interests are controling the flow (well, ok, there is, but that's a more subtle issue than the one we are addressing here. See my previous post on political finance, as well as the one I just made on using copyright to maintain a stranglehold on distribution).
In the old days we invented a crude version of this. We called it "usenet." The commercial journals did not crumble, just as Road & Track did not crumble with the publication of Consumer Reports.
Why not? Because R&T sold something the public found useful in addition to what Consumer Reports sold.
For instance, not just statistics on reliability of a particular car, or even CR's opinion of the qualtities of a particular car, but Peter Egan's and Phil Hill's opinion of a particular car. To certain people the opinion of Peter or Phil held a certain importance, because of who they were and their background.
And what the commercial journals are selling is the the opinion of their jury that a particular piece is worthy of publication in their particular journal.
If they fail to do this in a manner that provides value, they will fail, as they should. (Once again see my post on copyright for what this means to business models).
If a new technology obsoletes your business model I have some advice for you.
Shut the hell up.
Use all that time, money and energy you spend whining to find a place in the new businesses that new technologies necessarily create.
That, of course, requires a certain intelligence. I would like to think that scientific journals have an intelligent person or three hanging about the offices, despite some of the empirical evidence to the contrary.
KFG
Mod child funny!
KFG
Ads don't kill technology -- (overactive) copyright does.
.
And how do you tell if copyright is overactive? If it is killing technology. Copyright is intended to protect artistic and literary works, not scientific or technological works. The specific code of a program has been deemed to be a "literary" work, but the strictly scientific or tecnological aspects of that code are not.
This is why reverse engineering, quite legitimately, is legal. No one can claim ownership of "2+2=4" simply because they have included that equation in an otherwise legitimately copy protected document, just as words in a name cannot be protected by copyright unless they are of your own invention ("Bob's Corner Market" vs. "Exxon." Legitimate copyright ownership of a word, however, does not obviate fair use of that word, as in "Exxon sucks.").
That's why the software companies want patent protection for algorithms.
How do you tell of patents are overactive? If they limit what you are allowed to write.
The idea that entire technologies can be shut down and placed under taboo because they might be used to violate copyright is abhorent and until now the courts have viewed it that way. Please note that the copyright laws that allow you to use a Xerox machine under fair use terms were written after the appearance of said machine, because it became obvious that such laws were needed, because it was obvious the machine itself could not be banned outright on the basis of its potential for violating copyright.
New guidelines were written, and while not everyone is happy about them at least the world is allowed to continue turning instead of being ground to halt under the aegis of "intellectual property."
And if you think this is a fight over copyright infringement, per se, you aren't paying attention.
While protection from copying is certainly the foundation of the media industry that allows it to operate the house of the media industry, that is its actual business model, is based on the control of the distribution channels.
This means that if you want your own works to get distributed on an equal footing you must contract with them, on their terms, to achieve that distribution.
P2P, in one swell foop, leaves the foundation of copyright law intact (I still own legitimate protection for my own works. This is a very, very important point), but razes the house of the industry controled distribution cartel right to the ground.
The idea that the industry fight against internet trading of protected works is about keeping you from downloading Metallica songs is a public front, a dodge, a secondary issue put forward as the primary issue to distract you from seeing the primary issue.
Which is that the industry wants to make sure that if Metallica wishes to distribute their songs widely they must assign their rights to copy and distribute them to some other party.
And that other party gets the money, n'est pa?
If Metallica can record a song and instantly gain world wide distribution at little to no cost by the simple expediant of tossing it out onto a P2P network the entire music industry, as she is write, crumbles to the ground.
They control the art by controling the artist by means of controling the disemination of the art.
This is what it's all about.
Now, yes, that still leaves the question of what sort of business model might work with P2P distribution, but. .
Copyright law isn't about protecting business models, it's about protecting copying. Get it? Copy right?
This is why the SCO claim that OSS violated the Constitution was so bizarre. Whether you sell stuff or give stuff away, or trade it for hamsters, or whatever, has nothing at all to do with the provisions of copy protection.
So, the fight here is not about your supposed "right" to downlo
I had a hard time trying to figure out what they were trying to say at first, but the graph in fig. 2 finally made it all clear.
The paper really needed more graphics.
KFG
Do I have the right to cast aspersions if my PC is running a genuine IBM PC BIOS?
I'm at a loss to explain the objections to reverse engineering that seem to have popped up here, even if Tridge were attempting to reverse engineer the internals of the Bitkeeper program, unless it is to insure a feeling that the great man himself can't be taking a position that isn't entirely in the right.
Stone the WINE developers!
To be fair to Linus I get the impression that he doens't really so much have any moral objections to what's going on, but rather that he's really annoyed at the timing of the thing and how much trouble it's going to cause him, and he is speaking out of his annoyance.
Which can often lead one to a bit of foot in mouth disease.
Even Linus.
KFG
or Netcraft?
KFG
"I have to agree with the original poster that the article's reasons are pretty weak."
So do I. That is, in fact, the reason I felt obliged to bring up the strongest reason I know of.
KFG
So is the depths of the abyss.
She left you, huh?
KFG
Or he finds the idea of getting involved in a "he said, she said" public mud flinging fest to be personally distasteful. It may be hard to believe here on Slashdot, but there really are people who feel that way.
He made the relevant points, that he did not use Bitkeeper at all in developing his tool and was never subject to the Bitkeeper license.
KFG
Because it would be really fucking cool!
KFG
Sure, you'll go though hell with withdrawl symptons. . .
This is the fundamental symptom of addiction, not death, as it is indicative of a physical dependency.
Some addictions are quite harmless, in and of themselves, like my coffee addiction, which provides an example of the "functional addict," which a great many alcoholics are, by the way. You may well know a good many alcholics without knowing that they are alcoholics, as their behavior is quite "normal," so long as they are able to maintain a certain level of alcohol in their systems.
You have tainted the concept of addiction with morality. There is nothing innately bad, let alone evil, about addiction, nor does a complusive behavior imply a destructive behavior.
KFG
On the other hand, bankruptcy is often just a shield to protect assets.
That is function of legal bankruptcy.
KFG
I don't know.
Third Base!
KFG
No, Who's on second
KFG
Addiction is NOT the *need* for something. It is the *inability to function without* that something.
Because without something that you have a physical need for you cannot function properly. The alcoholic, heroin junkie, etc. have a body chemistry that does not function properly without the relevant chemicals in the system. I am addicted to coffee myself.
This physical dependency is the keystone necessary phenomenon of "classicl" addiction, i.e. the correct definition.
The fact that the "classical" definition has been warped into something that can be applied to any purely psychological state, i.e. any behavior you disaprove of, only supports my thesis.
Holding your breath until you turn blue and having a panic attack if you don't get what you want is a purely psychological problem (one some used to term "being a jackass"), not a sign of addiction.
Similarly we used to call video games, dancing and sex "fun," and seeking fun to be a perfectly normal thing to do, even if one failed to show up for "work" to do it. That's why the preachers had to spout fire and brimstone, to make people afraid to have fun so they'd show up at work.
They called "fun" "sin."
Which is why we now have to look askance at anyone having fun, especially so much fun that they won't go to "work" and define them as having a "dis-ease," for having no dis-ease, like the rest of the poor schmucks going to "work."
This idea has taken such strong root that we now even look askance at people who simply enjoy their work. If it were fun, they wouldn't call it "work," right?
If you have so much fun playing video games that you loose your job, wife, personal hygene, etc, and find these loses undesirable, yeah, you should seek counseling. You have a psychological problem. The inverse of a phobia (funny how noone calls the lack of "normal" function due to fear an "addiction." Fear is what they want you to feel, so fear is ok, as long as the fear means you show up for work, insteand of playing video games. If you fail to show up for work, then you have a phobia, recongnized as a purely psychological problem.)
But you don't have an addiction. Unless you want to count fun itself as an addiction, to which I could only respond:
Q.E.D.
KFG
It's what we do. Information is always available, unless you're in a sensory deprivation tank or something, in which case you may well start hallucinating, because you aren't "addicted" to information; you require it for proper functioning.
I think some people are addicted to labling everything as an addiction.
Maybe it has something to do with our rather bizzare cultural perception that if you're enjoying yourself you must be mentally ill.
Actually, now that I think about it, given the state of our culture, they might have a point.
KFG
NASA is about rockets. This isn't the sort of stuff they do really do. They help supply data to astronomers/cosmologists/physicists who apply to them, and who, largely, are affiliated with universities and are not "kids."
Dr. Feynman at CalTech and Dr. Sagan at Cornell, for instance, who were both rather famously at odds with NASA more often than not.
"Citizens" have always handled the bulk of astronomical research.
Because more often than not NASA is the necessary enemy of astronomers. It is a government agency, run for the government's purposes, complete with a government beauracracy, and only provisionally interested in theoretical science at all.
But they own Hubble.
I might also point out that these "kids" weren't even in America. England has a university or two worth a damn that might object to being catagorized as "random", and four or five smart people in them. Germany, China, Australia, and hell (as it were), even the Vatican have quite capable cosmologists of their own.
NASA isn't the center of the universe.
KFG
. . .tits on a squid.
KFG
(Now watch as someone proves me wrong.)
Yeah, they can be a PITA like that.
KFG
" What's for lunch?"
Spam.
KFG
Thanks to people who posted links and quoted bit of it, and he was, in fact, arrested 'in the act' of trying to pay his tab.
Please refer to the second part of my post.
KFG