I don't. It's still copyright infringement (versus the copyright holder). Consider this counter-example: A store has a 20% discount coupon, which they give to you upon entering the store. You take yours, carry it out, pass it on to a friend, who then redeems it. Is this "theft"?
Your hypothetical store is not selling a product. It's selling a service -- the warehousing and downloadability of the MP3. Your taking the MP3 and file-sharing it doesn't stop that store from providing the same service to someone else that they did to you. They still have the MP3s and the hardware.
Of course, they won't be able to stay in business. When you share the files, you undercut their business model. Too fratzing bad! They don't have some "right" to make money any way they choose. Their desire to sell a service one way doesn't create in me any obligation to conform. If they pick a dumb model, they starve. If the technology changes and they can't, they starve. That's the way it's supposed to work.
Or, more succintly: No one weeps for the buggy-whip makers.
By copying the movie rather than buying it, you are depriving the copyright owner of income.
Thankfully, "denial of income" is not a bona fide crime. If I review a movie and pan it, convincing some people not to see it, am I guilty of "denial of income"? Copyright law is not overly concerned with income -- that's why the usual "I was only copying for non-profit use" defense is bogus.
Infringement is a crime. It is not theft, as it does not deny use of the item in question to the legitimate holder of copyright.
Fair enough. But they haven't released the license you'll need to agree to in order to see the source. This means that they could rig it so that looking at the code automatically prohibits you from working on an Open Source alternative.
Leveraging your power to artificially raise entry barriers for competitors is not legal. It's called "monopoly" and there exist these things called "anti-trust laws" to prevent it. It'd sure be nice if Microsoft were convicted of violating the anti-trust laws...
Oh, wait. They were. So perhaps it's not unreasonable to be suspicious of their motives.
"Until we see it, until we actually look at the code, until we go through the whole process and see how the whole system will work, we won't know what it's like."
Is Microsoft going to let us look at the code, to "get under the hood"? It certainly doesn't sound like their usual practice, much less the oritentatiion of Palladium. And if we can't examine the code, if the architecture is kept secret "for security", then how can we tell what's allowed and what's not -- what will be able to run and what will be under Microsoft's thumb -- without buying into the whole system?
Anytime you focus that much control through one agency, you're asking for trouble. Funneling it through a for-profit company is double the risk.
Further, you're still going to run into problems with copyright, even if it's not run by such an insane agency but instead decided on a per-case basis by the courts.
Well, first of all, the issue is not copyright; it's trademark. Second, it's not clear that domain names should ever have been considered part of trademark law at all. They straddle the fence between address and advertisement. In a corporate-focused world, of course, people assumed the "advertisement" bit. But really they're just an abstraction layer of addresses.
You realize ".tm" would only be meaningful to people who use the English word "Trademark" don't you?
You realize that ".com", ".mil", ".org", ".net", and ".gov" derive from the English words "commercial", "military", "organization", "network", and "government"? And thus would "only be meaningful" to people who use English? I guess that Internet thingy will never take off until this linguistic imperialism is overthrown.
English is spoken by more people on the planet than any other language. (Before the flames: Not necessarily as a first language.) It is the language which politics, coincidence, and synchronicity has placed at the base of the Internet. I don't see why an English word is a priori wrong, and I certainly don't understand what you imagine to use in place of it.
On the other hand, the Vatican just had all its ATM machines reworded into Latin, so...
boxen/bok'sn/ pl.n. [very common; by analogy with VAXen] Fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen', used to describe commodity Unix hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.
So depending on your geek level, the plural of "box" is "boxen".:)
'The steam engine... probably transformed American law, but the "law of the steam engine" never existed.'
Er, no. Actually, the steam engine necessitated a lot of new laws. Mineral right laws were updated because previously-unminable lands became workable. The locomotive, a descendant of the steam engine, created the railraod, which launched corporations into their stratospheric rise and indeed gave birth to the entire body of law called "corporate law". There's a special law for retirees of the rail system (separate from Social Security) and indeed there are labor laws entirely devoted to the rail industry. (In fact a major complaint of airlines is that they have been saddled, by extension, with these older laws.)
So the analogy fails, because there is a "law of the steam engine". As technology evolves, the law must evolve with it. Whole new crimes spring into existence and old crimes assume an efficiency and scope unimagined before.
Should the principles be extended into the new realm? Of course. But answer me this: What best "fits" the discussion forums on, say, nytimes.com? Newspaper article? Broadcast? Editorial? Conversation in the public square? Conversation in a private home? The forum is clearly like each of these yet is none of them. And those areas each have quite different rules on what can said, what can be actionable, etc. So how can you say that this new mechanism, which "looks like" many old mechanisms at once, should follow the old rules? Which old rules?
Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"
on
Free as in Books?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
Why is this any different?
Because it's voluntary.
Because it's non-intrusive.
Because it's opt-in.
Because it's not done by the government.
Because it's not done by a corporation whose only god is the bottom line.
Because it's non-exhaustive: you can ignore the books, pick one up and read it without tracking it, etc.
The threats to human freedom are real and urgent. But they're not omnipresent... sometimes, data can be a good thing. And I'd much rather see volunteer-driven, indivudal-centric projects like this than a mandated, national, bureaucratic effort like a national ID.
Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"
on
Free as in Books?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
Why not try introducing literature to the KIDS AT SCHOOL instead?
Yes, because the absolute best message we can present to kids is "Reading is only meaningful when digested in a suitable, prepackaged form", followed by "Literature has no room for spontaneity" and of course the all-time favorite, "There's no way that reading could be fun, something you do on your own time."
Yessiree, that's sure to spike the interest of kids in reading...
Of course, the sane answer is, Why can't we do both? Teach literature in school and make it available to everyone?
This program may be in violation of the DMCA if it doesn't incorporate copy controls.
I don't believe that DMCA mandates copy controls. It punishes things that circumvent existing controls but does not require new ones. He might be clear under DMCA.
It's less clear what would happen under CBDTPA (or, as I like to call it, PHHHFT:) ).
But blockquoth the Microsoft page referenced (emphasis added):
This article describes how to uninstall Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6.0 and return to your previous version of Internet Explorer... Microsoft has made it possible for OEMs, administrators, and users to remove user access to Internet Explorer while leaving the Internet Explorer code intact and fully functional to ensure the functionality of programs and operating system functions that rely on it
To me, this says, the IE stuff is integral to the system but if there's a security hole -- too bad! Either agree to our new EULA or leave your system vulernable.
Microsoft, if it enforces this too quickly, could find itself propelling exactly the sort of software-liability laws it would hate to see.
If you dont run it (remove it even) how can it be a security risk? Common sense?
What if the next security patch for IE 6 has the same language? You can't uninstall IE 6, as far as I know... it has its grubby little fingers everywhere. MS certainly claims it can't be removed. So how do I run a secure box if the security patches include onerous EULA terms?
Oh, wait, I know the answer for that one: Don't run Windows.:)
Apparently, the chemistry teacher during the early 80's (long gone) had been all too happy to take donated chemicals from the community. The buisnesses saw it as a wonderful opportunity to dispose of the very dangerous chemicals they they didn't want to pay to dispose of.
Just to second this, I'm a high school physics teacher. Our chem guy will routinely accept "donations" of noxious, terrible stuff from companies. Of course, coming with no documentation (MSDS) and sometimes even in unlabelled glassware, the stuff is actually quite useless from a pedagogical viewpoint. Then, after it sits in our stockroom for a few years, we have to pay to dispose of it anyway. Meanwhile, the company not only avoided disposal costs... they get to write off the chemicals as a charitable "donation" to the school!
If O'Reilly really wonders why all open source vendors disappeared,
I don't think he is wondering this. Indeed, he'd probably agree with you: Because the software is freely distributable, it's not "monetizable".
But his real question is, "If all the open source vendors have disappeared, why hasn't open source itself disappeared?" And his answer is a good one: Because it gets support from businesses whose model is not selling the software but using it.
The advantages of a rigidly stardardized interface are often completely ignored, but they're what allow most people to sit down at any computer and start typing.
No, there is a happy medium between all-configurable and none. Indeed, I believe the best option is a well-designed UI with complete configurability available to those who want it. Or more pithily: "Can be completely reconfigured but by default, doesn't need to be."
But, wait, you say. What happens when somone else sits down at my unique desktop? Don't we lose the advantage given by standardization? Well, nobody should be sitting at my desktop. Let them log in as them, and let the UI be completey user-dependent for its state. So I can muck it up as much as I want without interfering with your ability to use the defaults.
I really and truly haven't seen any OS that gives each user a unique configuration. Maybe I've missed it.
Complaining about being yelled at or fired for wasting the company's money and time is like complaining about having to say the pledge of alliegence when your public education is paid for by the government.
Well, apparently, you can win by complaining about the Pledge of Allegiance. :)
And I'm no slash-and-burn libertarian, but isn't public education paid for by, well, the public? It might be provided by the government but it's paid for through taxes... ie., by you and me.
We are not allowed to browse for personal reasons, or listen to music, period.
These are not the same thing. The first consumes bandwidth and -- perhaps more importantly -- attention. The second does not. I'm a teacher at a boarding school and we just went the other way: After decades of prohibition, students are allowed to listen to music during Study Hall (on earphones, of course). Rather than the predicted precipitous drop in performance, we've actually seen real (albeit weak) improvement.
If you don't like their licensing terms, don't buy their product.
There are limitations on what a license can legitimately restrict. "Cannot be resold to black people" would probably be struck down in court. One can make the argument -- and make it well -- that when Microsoft sold you the box, the operative "license" is exactly the same as when Sears sells you a screwdriver. There is a common law understanding of what purchasing means, and although corps are trying to obscure that, it remains.
Microsoft's business model is to lose money on the console and make it up on the games. With this mod chip, people could buy the console, and never purchase a game, costing Microsoft millions of dollars. That is how it is damaging to Microsoft.
So, once again, the home consumer is being punished for a company choosing a stupid business model... How long until this is written into law?
And a bit off-topic, but apparently unlike a lot of people here, I'm glad that the FBI continues to investigate non-terror related crimes. That's what they're there for.
There is a growing impetus to split counter-terrorism off from the FBI, a la MI5 for the Brits. I don't know if it's a good idea but at least it recognizes that counter-terrorism and law enforcement -- while not orthogonal -- aren't congruent, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Your hypothetical store is not selling a product. It's selling a service -- the warehousing and downloadability of the MP3. Your taking the MP3 and file-sharing it doesn't stop that store from providing the same service to someone else that they did to you. They still have the MP3s and the hardware.
Of course, they won't be able to stay in business. When you share the files, you undercut their business model. Too fratzing bad! They don't have some "right" to make money any way they choose. Their desire to sell a service one way doesn't create in me any obligation to conform. If they pick a dumb model, they starve. If the technology changes and they can't, they starve. That's the way it's supposed to work.
Or, more succintly: No one weeps for the buggy-whip makers.
Infringement is a crime. It is not theft, as it does not deny use of the item in question to the legitimate holder of copyright.
Fair enough. But they haven't released the license you'll need to agree to in order to see the source. This means that they could rig it so that looking at the code automatically prohibits you from working on an Open Source alternative.
Oh, wait. They were. So perhaps it's not unreasonable to be suspicious of their motives.
Anytime you focus that much control through one agency, you're asking for trouble. Funneling it through a for-profit company is double the risk.
English is spoken by more people on the planet than any other language. (Before the flames: Not necessarily as a first language.) It is the language which politics, coincidence, and synchronicity has placed at the base of the Internet. I don't see why an English word is a priori wrong, and I certainly don't understand what you imagine to use in place of it.
On the other hand, the Vatican just had all its ATM machines reworded into Latin, so...
Well, according to The New Hacker's Dictionary, we have
So depending on your geek level, the plural of "box" is "boxen".
Er, no. Actually, the steam engine necessitated a lot of new laws. Mineral right laws were updated because previously-unminable lands became workable. The locomotive, a descendant of the steam engine, created the railraod, which launched corporations into their stratospheric rise and indeed gave birth to the entire body of law called "corporate law". There's a special law for retirees of the rail system (separate from Social Security) and indeed there are labor laws entirely devoted to the rail industry. (In fact a major complaint of airlines is that they have been saddled, by extension, with these older laws.)
So the analogy fails, because there is a "law of the steam engine". As technology evolves, the law must evolve with it. Whole new crimes spring into existence and old crimes assume an efficiency and scope unimagined before.
Should the principles be extended into the new realm? Of course. But answer me this: What best "fits" the discussion forums on, say, nytimes.com? Newspaper article? Broadcast? Editorial? Conversation in the public square? Conversation in a private home? The forum is clearly like each of these yet is none of them. And those areas each have quite different rules on what can said, what can be actionable, etc. So how can you say that this new mechanism, which "looks like" many old mechanisms at once, should follow the old rules? Which old rules?
Because it's voluntary.
Because it's non-intrusive.
Because it's opt-in.
Because it's not done by the government.
Because it's not done by a corporation whose only god is the bottom line.
Because it's non-exhaustive: you can ignore the books, pick one up and read it without tracking it, etc.
The threats to human freedom are real and urgent. But they're not omnipresent... sometimes, data can be a good thing. And I'd much rather see volunteer-driven, indivudal-centric projects like this than a mandated, national, bureaucratic effort like a national ID.
Yes, because the absolute best message we can present to kids is "Reading is only meaningful when digested in a suitable, prepackaged form", followed by "Literature has no room for spontaneity" and of course the all-time favorite, "There's no way that reading could be fun, something you do on your own time."
Yessiree, that's sure to spike the interest of kids in reading...
Of course, the sane answer is, Why can't we do both? Teach literature in school and make it available to everyone?
I don't believe that DMCA mandates copy controls. It punishes things that circumvent existing controls but does not require new ones. He might be clear under DMCA.
It's less clear what would happen under CBDTPA (or, as I like to call it, PHHHFT
But blockquoth the Microsoft page referenced (emphasis added):
To me, this says, the IE stuff is integral to the system but if there's a security hole -- too bad! Either agree to our new EULA or leave your system vulernable.
Microsoft, if it enforces this too quickly, could find itself propelling exactly the sort of software-liability laws it would hate to see.
What if the next security patch for IE 6 has the same language? You can't uninstall IE 6, as far as I know... it has its grubby little fingers everywhere. MS certainly claims it can't be removed. So how do I run a secure box if the security patches include onerous EULA terms?
Oh, wait, I know the answer for that one: Don't run Windows.
Just to second this, I'm a high school physics teacher. Our chem guy will routinely accept "donations" of noxious, terrible stuff from companies. Of course, coming with no documentation (MSDS) and sometimes even in unlabelled glassware, the stuff is actually quite useless from a pedagogical viewpoint. Then, after it sits in our stockroom for a few years, we have to pay to dispose of it anyway. Meanwhile, the company not only avoided disposal costs
I don't think he is wondering this. Indeed, he'd probably agree with you: Because the software is freely distributable, it's not "monetizable".
But his real question is, "If all the open source vendors have disappeared, why hasn't open source itself disappeared?" And his answer is a good one: Because it gets support from businesses whose model is not selling the software but using it.
No, there is a happy medium between all-configurable and none. Indeed, I believe the best option is a well-designed UI with complete configurability available to those who want it. Or more pithily: "Can be completely reconfigured but by default, doesn't need to be."
But, wait, you say. What happens when somone else sits down at my unique desktop? Don't we lose the advantage given by standardization? Well, nobody should be sitting at my desktop. Let them log in as them, and let the UI be completey user-dependent for its state. So I can muck it up as much as I want without interfering with your ability to use the defaults.
I really and truly haven't seen any OS that gives each user a unique configuration. Maybe I've missed it.
Well, apparently, you can win by complaining about the Pledge of Allegiance.
And I'm no slash-and-burn libertarian, but isn't public education paid for by, well, the public ? It might be provided by the government but it's paid for through taxes... ie., by you and me.
These are not the same thing. The first consumes bandwidth and -- perhaps more importantly -- attention. The second does not. I'm a teacher at a boarding school and we just went the other way: After decades of prohibition, students are allowed to listen to music during Study Hall (on earphones, of course). Rather than the predicted precipitous drop in performance, we've actually seen real (albeit weak) improvement.
There are limitations on what a license can legitimately restrict. "Cannot be resold to black people" would probably be struck down in court. One can make the argument -- and make it well -- that when Microsoft sold you the box, the operative "license" is exactly the same as when Sears sells you a screwdriver. There is a common law understanding of what purchasing means, and although corps are trying to obscure that, it remains.
So, once again, the home consumer is being punished for a company choosing a stupid business model... How long until this is written into law?
Nah, just like always... they're only cracker friedly.
There is a growing impetus to split counter-terrorism off from the FBI, a la MI5 for the Brits. I don't know if it's a good idea but at least it recognizes that counter-terrorism and law enforcement -- while not orthogonal -- aren't congruent, either.