A business deal is not dictated to by them... I have to AGREE to play thier game (which I don't)
Just, for the record, you don't get to dictate the business deal to them either. They can walk away from the business transaction just as freely as you can.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but living in Indiana, Illinois, California, Connecticut, and New York, I've had credit checks run for me in all those locations by: landlords, electric companies, telephone companies, wireless carriers, and cable companies, going back as far as 1992.
So I, at least, have to call bullshit on the "they never used to ask for that information" line I keep hearing, because my experience going back nearly two decades, is directly in contradiction of that.
Having signed two Sprint contracts in the last two weeks, and looking at them right in front of me, I would not make it a statement of fact, as you have, that the spending limit is printed on the contract, as it doesn't appear on either mine or my wife's at all.
At the end of the day, though, even if it were printed on the contract, it's still CREDIT, and they've got every right to demand an SSN to do a credit-check on you if they're extending you credit.
It's less about "because you are signing a contract" than it is because they are, in point of fact, extending you credit, in the form of allowing you to rack up usage charges that they will bill you for after the fact. They may not disclose what your credit limit is on that front, but believe me, behind the scenes, that number -- how far into usage charges they will let you get without payment -- has been calculated to the penny and stored in your account info.
Why do they retain this information? Like any other creditor they know that your credit situation changes, and they will periodically 're-check' your credit to see if their internal number for your credit-worthiness needs to be adjusted up or down as time goes on.
Put the tin-foil hats away, folks. Until you come up with a better system for identifying consumers to credit agencies, there's "nothing to see here."
Yes, it's lawful, because at the end of the day, the carrier is extending you a line of credit even if that amount is not disclosed (ie., the ability to rack up usage charges, roaming charges, etc., for which they will bill you later). And there isn't an SSN Disclosure Law on the books that would tell a creditor "you can't have the SSN to do a credit-check first".
I commute from "the country" into the city each day. My daily commute is about 90 miles each way.
By car this would be 90 * 2 * 5 * 52 = 46,800 mi / 25mpg = 1872gal * 2.20/gal = 4,118.40 just in gas.
Figure $400/mo. for parking in Manhattan = $4800 in parking.
Tolls, just for getting to the NYC line, would be $8.55 * 2 * 5 * 52 = $4,446.
That's NOT including the onerous wear and tear of putting about 50k miles per year on your car JUST to get back and forth to work (hope you never drive anywhere else). If we use the IRS rate for that ($0.55/mi), that's an additional $25,740 in expenses (although that seems a bit high, so let's just take ONE QUARTER of that, or $6,435)
So between gas, tolls, and parking, it would cost $13,364 to commute in via car each day, plus wear-and-tear of $6,435, for a total of $19,799.
My monthly nut to take the train in? $612/mo * 12 = $7,344. A difference of about $12,000.
The two sides would create a pact to keep separate from each other, the small minority of technology-loving people going to live on a small continent off the west coast of Africa... Said continent, of course, to have been destroyed at some future point in time by natural disaster and essentially all technology along with it. This would solve what would be an obvious dilemma and split in viewpoints of the remaining people while reasonably explaining what would've happened to their technology.
... and would explain a long-standing "Atlantis" myth.
I think the seller/rights-holder can make a good case in court that "it was on the outside of the box, you should have known, and had every opportunity to not buy it based on that."
The same argument they might make if you bought a copy of "FooGame" for xBox360 when you have a Wii. At the end of the day, that's "your own damned fault for not reading the box", and while a lot of places will accept a return/exchange, there's certainly no obligation to do so.
the consumer license on your bullets specifically forbids hunting for any reason. these bullets are licensed for target practice only.
Black-powder and hand crafted bullets/shot are an option.
your fishing gear is only licensed for catch and release
The tree didn't include a license when I broke the branch off, and the hand-crafted hook works pretty well (I actually did this as a child and I caught a couple fish, so - please - no bullshit argument about how this can't be done).
if these terms are not to your liking you are free to not purchase these products. see how that works?
Yep, and at the end of the day, maybe the world would be a bit better off if we weren't so dependent on others for our own ability to survive.
I'm ready for Z-day, are you?:-)
Again, this comes down to whether it's on the outside of the package or otherwise "pre-visible" (which is clearly enforceable) or whether it's something you can't know about until after you've purchased it (which becomes a might-bit murkier).
It's not as simple as "not violate copyright law", you can't violate ANY law, including contract law which covers the license agreement you agreed to in order to purchase the item.
If the rightsholder has told you in advance (as a condition of sale) you may not do XXX, and you go ahead and do XXX, then you are breaking your contract with the rightsholder, and I would support their putting the smackdown on you wholeheartedly.
Sometimes they're in very small print on the outside of the package. Often they're not. As I mentioned in other portions of this thread... for licenses not agreed to or disclosed/visible "in advance of the transaction", it's a whole different ball of wax where it becomes harder for the rightsholder to hold you to the agreement (but not necessarily impossible... the courts could theoretically claim that the agreement is still binding but that you have a right to a refund, for example).
That area is much "murkier" than what I've been talking about predominantly, which is "pre-disclosed" terms.
I understand what you're saying about the "inside the box" agreements. I don't mean that you should have to "proactively" use the court system, I mean that -- if you're sued for violating the inside-the-box agreement, feel free to prove that you're not guilty or that the contract there isn't enforceable (and I'd be with you on that one).
As to "copyright" vs "contact" law as the binding force, in the end, I think it becomes a hybrid of the two. Contract law is involved because, well, there's a contract involved, by way of a license agreement. Copyright law gets involved because that contract dealt with the terms under which some content would be distributed to you. Any lawsuit dealing with such a situation is very naturally going to be a mix of both.
If you give me a contract beforehand, then me bad for agreeing to it, but after I have it I'm free to ignore any paper/bytes inside the box/installer.
I've agreed with you on this point throughout my argument.
If the T&C are disclosed up-front, and you agree, then "shame on you, ya fool," you're bound by the DRM restrictions.
If the T&C are NOT disclosed up-front, then you get into vagaries of contract law as what the potential recourse is (and in this, there is a matter of great debate, see the whole discussions on shrink-wrap licenses, etc.) Depending on the situation, the "legal recourse" might be to get a refund, or you might even be able to say (depending on your local jurisdiction) that there WAS NO agreement. That half of the argument is best left for your personal attorney.
But my argument throughout this discussion has been based on T&C being disclosed prior to the distribution of content to the end-user.
The manufacturer gets to decide that if you agree to allow them do so (by entering into an agreement that has that stipulation).
As a consumer, you have the right to say "No, I won't buy products from Kellogg's because I can't use them how I see fit." But if they had such a clause in an agreement (that you accepted prior to purchase) then yes, you will have already agreed not to do so. They didn't "dictate terms" to you, you accepted them.
Yes, "COPYRIGHT", and the rights-holder determined - as part of their right to distribute - that before they would distribute the content to you, they were going to have you agree to terms and conditions.
As I mentioned elsewhere, it's a combination of copyright and contract law at play. The rights-holder is the only person who can give you the content, and they have you agree to a contact, in the form of Terms and Conditions, or a License Agreement, etc., before they will distribute that content to you.
It's not quantum physics.
Once the product has been sold to you the rights holder has nothing to say about how you use it so long as you stick to what copyright law allows you to do with it.
Not if you agreed (via a license agreement) not to use in on days that end in "Y".
No, it was not. It was sold to you as a product,
It was content, distributed to you by the rights-holder under their right to distribute (as rights-holder) after an agreement by you to terms and conditions of that distribution, namely what you could and could not do with the content after you received it.
BTW, I am a rights-holder and I have used both open and closed source licensing. As a rights-holder, why would I care if they choose to use my applications in a manner other than prescribed so long as they do not distribute the software without my permission?
Maybe you don't care. But maybe, just maybe, you do. (For instance, perhaps you're a rights-holder who wants to say "you cannot use this content to help kill people" to prevent the military from using it, or whatever).
The point is that while you or I may not necessarily care "how" someone uses it, some people DO care how people use it, and they've got the right to have you agree not to use it in a conflicting way before they give you the content.
DRM *is* based on copyright law, with a mix of contract law thrown in for good measure.
A rights-holder can say "I won't allow my content to be distributed to you unless you pay me $20." That's fairly straight-forward.
A rights-holder can ALSO say "I won't allow my content to be distributed to you unless you pay me $20 AND agree to the following Terms and Conditions...."
By entering into the contract (which permitted the content to be distributed to you in the first place) you have willingly given up some rights, such as the right to crack open the file and do whatever you want with it.
Now, as previously noted, if the contract-portion of that agreement isn't adequately addressed in advance, you may potentially have recourse under contract law, etc., but that's not necessarily carte blanche to break the DRM.
Copyright law allows the rights-holder to determine the conditions upon which they are willing to give you rights to use the content. If the rights-holder says "I'm not going to give you this content unless you give me $20," that's perfectly valid. As is "I'm not going to give you this content unless you give me $20 and agree to the following terms and conditions..."
So no, YOU fail, good sir, for not understanding the basic interactions of copyright and contract law here.
The rights-holder is the sole arbiter of the "conditions of the distribution of their content". If they want to distribute content to you which you are forbidden to use in months which end in "Y" that is their right. You're free as a consumer to say "that's horse-shit," and not purchase their content at all.
But at the end of the day, the copy of the content was given to you, after an exchange of moneys, based on an agreement (the license agreement). If you're unhappy with the license agreement you're now bound by, please feel free to read the license more closely in the future. If the license wasn't adequately provided to you prior to purchase (e.g., license agreements INSIDE software boxes, etc.) feel free to use the court system to get your money back, or to prove that those particular agreements are invalid.
But what you don't get to do is simply ignore the copyright restriction when it isn't convenient for you.
Opening up DRM'd media so that it can legally be used in more situations by someone with a valid license is not the same as rampant piracy.
As a rights-holder? Bull. Shit.
"You have the right to use content provided you do so in a manner consistent with the license provided with it."
That's the same basic principle protected in the GPL, as well as in DRM-licensing terms.
Removing DRM so that consumers have a choice over how and when to use content they have paid for is a great thing.
So, to use your argument, if I wanted to argue that I should have the RIGHT to use the Linux kernel however I see fit (including, potentially, in a closed-source application), you'd be in favor of that. Because that should be my right as a consumer of the code, to determine how I want to use it... right.... right?
Sorry, but that's not how it works. If the GPL rights-holder gets to use copyright law to dictates "terms of use" for GPL'ed content, then the DRM'ed rights-holder gets to use copyright law to dictate THEIR terms of use as well. If you don't like those terms, feel free to use something else, just as lots of people who don't like GPL license terms use BSD or even (gasp!) closed-source code.
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A business deal is not dictated to by them... I have to AGREE to play thier game (which I don't)
Just, for the record, you don't get to dictate the business deal to them either. They can walk away from the business transaction just as freely as you can.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but living in Indiana, Illinois, California, Connecticut, and New York, I've had credit checks run for me in all those locations by: landlords, electric companies, telephone companies, wireless carriers, and cable companies, going back as far as 1992.
So I, at least, have to call bullshit on the "they never used to ask for that information" line I keep hearing, because my experience going back nearly two decades, is directly in contradiction of that.
Having signed two Sprint contracts in the last two weeks, and looking at them right in front of me, I would not make it a statement of fact, as you have, that the spending limit is printed on the contract, as it doesn't appear on either mine or my wife's at all.
At the end of the day, though, even if it were printed on the contract, it's still CREDIT, and they've got every right to demand an SSN to do a credit-check on you if they're extending you credit.
If you're talking about a "pre-paid" service, where after you run out of pre-paid minutes, the phone stops working, sure, that's one thing.
But as far as I'm aware, that isn't an option for the Pre yet.
It's less about "because you are signing a contract" than it is because they are, in point of fact, extending you credit, in the form of allowing you to rack up usage charges that they will bill you for after the fact. They may not disclose what your credit limit is on that front, but believe me, behind the scenes, that number -- how far into usage charges they will let you get without payment -- has been calculated to the penny and stored in your account info.
Why do they retain this information? Like any other creditor they know that your credit situation changes, and they will periodically 're-check' your credit to see if their internal number for your credit-worthiness needs to be adjusted up or down as time goes on.
Put the tin-foil hats away, folks. Until you come up with a better system for identifying consumers to credit agencies, there's "nothing to see here."
Yes, it's lawful, because at the end of the day, the carrier is extending you a line of credit even if that amount is not disclosed (ie., the ability to rack up usage charges, roaming charges, etc., for which they will bill you later). And there isn't an SSN Disclosure Law on the books that would tell a creditor "you can't have the SSN to do a credit-check first".
By car this would be 90 * 2 * 5 * 52 = 46,800 mi / 25mpg = 1872gal * 2.20/gal = 4,118.40 just in gas.
Figure $400/mo. for parking in Manhattan = $4800 in parking.
Tolls, just for getting to the NYC line, would be $8.55 * 2 * 5 * 52 = $4,446.
That's NOT including the onerous wear and tear of putting about 50k miles per year on your car JUST to get back and forth to work (hope you never drive anywhere else). If we use the IRS rate for that ($0.55/mi), that's an additional $25,740 in expenses (although that seems a bit high, so let's just take ONE QUARTER of that, or $6,435)
So between gas, tolls, and parking, it would cost $13,364 to commute in via car each day, plus wear-and-tear of $6,435, for a total of $19,799.
My monthly nut to take the train in? $612/mo * 12 = $7,344. A difference of about $12,000.
Yes, you distributed it to RapidShare. You "sent" it to them without permission of the rightsholder.
The two sides would create a pact to keep separate from each other, the small minority of technology-loving people going to live on a small continent off the west coast of Africa... Said continent, of course, to have been destroyed at some future point in time by natural disaster and essentially all technology along with it. This would solve what would be an obvious dilemma and split in viewpoints of the remaining people while reasonably explaining what would've happened to their technology.
... and would explain a long-standing "Atlantis" myth.
I think the seller/rights-holder can make a good case in court that "it was on the outside of the box, you should have known, and had every opportunity to not buy it based on that." The same argument they might make if you bought a copy of "FooGame" for xBox360 when you have a Wii. At the end of the day, that's "your own damned fault for not reading the box", and while a lot of places will accept a return/exchange, there's certainly no obligation to do so.
the consumer license on your bullets specifically forbids hunting for any reason. these bullets are licensed for target practice only.
Black-powder and hand crafted bullets/shot are an option.
your fishing gear is only licensed for catch and release
The tree didn't include a license when I broke the branch off, and the hand-crafted hook works pretty well (I actually did this as a child and I caught a couple fish, so - please - no bullshit argument about how this can't be done).
if these terms are not to your liking you are free to not purchase these products. see how that works?
Yep, and at the end of the day, maybe the world would be a bit better off if we weren't so dependent on others for our own ability to survive. I'm ready for Z-day, are you? :-)
Again, this comes down to whether it's on the outside of the package or otherwise "pre-visible" (which is clearly enforceable) or whether it's something you can't know about until after you've purchased it (which becomes a might-bit murkier).
It's not as simple as "not violate copyright law", you can't violate ANY law, including contract law which covers the license agreement you agreed to in order to purchase the item. If the rightsholder has told you in advance (as a condition of sale) you may not do XXX, and you go ahead and do XXX, then you are breaking your contract with the rightsholder, and I would support their putting the smackdown on you wholeheartedly.
Sometimes they're in very small print on the outside of the package. Often they're not. As I mentioned in other portions of this thread... for licenses not agreed to or disclosed/visible "in advance of the transaction", it's a whole different ball of wax where it becomes harder for the rightsholder to hold you to the agreement (but not necessarily impossible... the courts could theoretically claim that the agreement is still binding but that you have a right to a refund, for example). That area is much "murkier" than what I've been talking about predominantly, which is "pre-disclosed" terms.
I will still eat. I can hunt, or fish, or raise crops.
I understand what you're saying about the "inside the box" agreements. I don't mean that you should have to "proactively" use the court system, I mean that -- if you're sued for violating the inside-the-box agreement, feel free to prove that you're not guilty or that the contract there isn't enforceable (and I'd be with you on that one). As to "copyright" vs "contact" law as the binding force, in the end, I think it becomes a hybrid of the two. Contract law is involved because, well, there's a contract involved, by way of a license agreement. Copyright law gets involved because that contract dealt with the terms under which some content would be distributed to you. Any lawsuit dealing with such a situation is very naturally going to be a mix of both.
If you give me a contract beforehand, then me bad for agreeing to it, but after I have it I'm free to ignore any paper/bytes inside the box/installer.
I've agreed with you on this point throughout my argument. If the T&C are disclosed up-front, and you agree, then "shame on you, ya fool," you're bound by the DRM restrictions. If the T&C are NOT disclosed up-front, then you get into vagaries of contract law as what the potential recourse is (and in this, there is a matter of great debate, see the whole discussions on shrink-wrap licenses, etc.) Depending on the situation, the "legal recourse" might be to get a refund, or you might even be able to say (depending on your local jurisdiction) that there WAS NO agreement. That half of the argument is best left for your personal attorney. But my argument throughout this discussion has been based on T&C being disclosed prior to the distribution of content to the end-user.
The manufacturer gets to decide that if you agree to allow them do so (by entering into an agreement that has that stipulation). As a consumer, you have the right to say "No, I won't buy products from Kellogg's because I can't use them how I see fit." But if they had such a clause in an agreement (that you accepted prior to purchase) then yes, you will have already agreed not to do so. They didn't "dictate terms" to you, you accepted them.
Yes, "COPYRIGHT", and the rights-holder determined - as part of their right to distribute - that before they would distribute the content to you, they were going to have you agree to terms and conditions. As I mentioned elsewhere, it's a combination of copyright and contract law at play. The rights-holder is the only person who can give you the content, and they have you agree to a contact, in the form of Terms and Conditions, or a License Agreement, etc., before they will distribute that content to you. It's not quantum physics.
Once the product has been sold to you the rights holder has nothing to say about how you use it so long as you stick to what copyright law allows you to do with it.
Not if you agreed (via a license agreement) not to use in on days that end in "Y".
No, it was not. It was sold to you as a product,
It was content, distributed to you by the rights-holder under their right to distribute (as rights-holder) after an agreement by you to terms and conditions of that distribution, namely what you could and could not do with the content after you received it.
BTW, I am a rights-holder and I have used both open and closed source licensing. As a rights-holder, why would I care if they choose to use my applications in a manner other than prescribed so long as they do not distribute the software without my permission?
Maybe you don't care. But maybe, just maybe, you do. (For instance, perhaps you're a rights-holder who wants to say "you cannot use this content to help kill people" to prevent the military from using it, or whatever). The point is that while you or I may not necessarily care "how" someone uses it, some people DO care how people use it, and they've got the right to have you agree not to use it in a conflicting way before they give you the content.
A rights-holder can say "I won't allow my content to be distributed to you unless you pay me $20." That's fairly straight-forward.
A rights-holder can ALSO say "I won't allow my content to be distributed to you unless you pay me $20 AND agree to the following Terms and Conditions...."
By entering into the contract (which permitted the content to be distributed to you in the first place) you have willingly given up some rights, such as the right to crack open the file and do whatever you want with it.
Now, as previously noted, if the contract-portion of that agreement isn't adequately addressed in advance, you may potentially have recourse under contract law, etc., but that's not necessarily carte blanche to break the DRM.
Copyright law allows the rights-holder to determine the conditions upon which they are willing to give you rights to use the content. If the rights-holder says "I'm not going to give you this content unless you give me $20," that's perfectly valid. As is "I'm not going to give you this content unless you give me $20 and agree to the following terms and conditions..." So no, YOU fail, good sir, for not understanding the basic interactions of copyright and contract law here.
The rights-holder is the sole arbiter of the "conditions of the distribution of their content". If they want to distribute content to you which you are forbidden to use in months which end in "Y" that is their right. You're free as a consumer to say "that's horse-shit," and not purchase their content at all. But at the end of the day, the copy of the content was given to you, after an exchange of moneys, based on an agreement (the license agreement). If you're unhappy with the license agreement you're now bound by, please feel free to read the license more closely in the future. If the license wasn't adequately provided to you prior to purchase (e.g., license agreements INSIDE software boxes, etc.) feel free to use the court system to get your money back, or to prove that those particular agreements are invalid. But what you don't get to do is simply ignore the copyright restriction when it isn't convenient for you.
Opening up DRM'd media so that it can legally be used in more situations by someone with a valid license is not the same as rampant piracy.
As a rights-holder? Bull. Shit. "You have the right to use content provided you do so in a manner consistent with the license provided with it." That's the same basic principle protected in the GPL, as well as in DRM-licensing terms.
Removing DRM so that consumers have a choice over how and when to use content they have paid for is a great thing.
So, to use your argument, if I wanted to argue that I should have the RIGHT to use the Linux kernel however I see fit (including, potentially, in a closed-source application), you'd be in favor of that. Because that should be my right as a consumer of the code, to determine how I want to use it... right.... right? Sorry, but that's not how it works. If the GPL rights-holder gets to use copyright law to dictates "terms of use" for GPL'ed content, then the DRM'ed rights-holder gets to use copyright law to dictate THEIR terms of use as well. If you don't like those terms, feel free to use something else, just as lots of people who don't like GPL license terms use BSD or even (gasp!) closed-source code.