most home routers don't appear to support such a VPN setup out of the box, and most end users don't want to sit down for hours reading up on network security principles
A fair point indeed - I guess I was just proposing a solution to the problem, based on my own considerations about wanting to enable guest/visitor Internet access, but not wanting everyone on the LAN, and that it was not necessarily a solution which would be feasible/desirable for everyone.
Another solution might be Apple's Airport Extreme, which I believe will broadcast a guest Wi-Fi network, which doesn't touch the LAN side.
Then what's the polite way to tell house guests why you're not letting them check their Facebook?
This may make no sense whatsoever, but, could you have your wireless access point sitting between your modem and your network - i.e. so that someone accessing the Wi-Fi network does not have access to the internal network. If you want to access something on the network via Wi-Fi, you VPN back into it - everyone gets to access Facebook etc., but not content on your LAN.
If you need, restrict access to the admin interface of the WAP to only IP addreses in the range assigned to the VPN, or else from the IP address of a machine on the LAN, and then bounce through that machine?
The stock counter to that is that published credentials, such as passwords and the like, have little or no legitimate use other than to defraud people who do business with the rightful owner of the credentials.
However, none of that information (passwords, social security number etc.) is likely to be within the scope of a copyright regime, and so, from a copyright point of view, is unlikely to be restricted. As such, someone publishing someone else's bank account number is unlikely to be infringing the copyright of either customer, or of the bank?
What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.
With AdBlock, the end result is much the same.
Is AdBlock sufficiently prevalent that ad-based funding is decreasingly viable? Is an advert annoying no matter what site it might be on, or are there many AdBlock users who disable blocking on sites which they want to support through that site's chosen revenue model?
I really did like Time Machine for ease of use, but I will find something for Linux, or create my own based around rsync.
Having had problems sorting a Time Machine replacement out under Linux, I installed FreeNAS on a spare box - just add and configure the drives, select the option to run a Time Machine server, and you're away - I was very impressed with the ease of use.
limiting your search to copyright laws may not be the best way to find them.
I appreciate where you are coming from - but you are looking for a right which "trumps" the restrictions of copyright, to enable someone who is neither an owner, nor a licensor, to make use of a work restricted by copyright in a manner which (but for this right?) requires permission. I'm not aware of *any* provision of English law which confers such a right, or else grants permission.
I could be wrong, of course, although the above is the best of my knowledge after 8 or so years of studying, and, subsequently, practising, geeky law. However, I'm always pleased to learn something new:)
you're a private citizen, then I believe you retain some rights over images and descriptions of yoursel
That may be the case under US law - as I say, I'm no expert in that side of things - but not under English copyright law. There's no reservation of rights of the subject (but there are moral rights of the author!), nor a fair dealing exception which covers this as such.
Is it really infringement if you're republishing an article about yourself? Are the laws clear on this issue? I only ask because I find that to be very odd.
Most lawyers will probably tell you that "clear" means that you have roughly a 51% chance of success, as opposed to a 99-100% chance of success, really.
Copyright protects the expression, not the subject matter, of a work. As such, the mere fact that an article is about you does not give you ownership of the article under copyright law - similarly, if I photograph you walking down the street, the photograph is mine, not yours. (Absent an agreement or relationship to the contrary.)
If you do not own the copyright in the article, and want to perform an act restricted by copyright, then, you'd either need a licence to use it, or else have a particular fair use defence (US) or fair dealing exception (European).
If you host a copy of the article yourself, you've performed an act restricted by copyright by virtue of uploading it to your webserver, and likely other acts too.
Is it "fair use" to host / redistribute an article about yourself? I'm not a US lawyer, so couldn't express any form of valid opinion on this, but, my understanding is, since fair use is a defence, you'd need to cough up for litigation first. In Europe, it would depend on which state you were in - under English law, the "fair dealing" sections would not permit this, absent, perhaps, a very short period of time after initial publication of the article, for "news reporting" - but that's tenuous at best, t omy mind.
(Just my thoughts, not legal advice, no warranties, don't run as root etc.)
I wonder how much weight an ip address carries in court nowadays
It is likely to be the identifier for Copyright Infringement Reports submitted by Copyright Owners to Internet Service Providers, under the Initial Obligations Code for the Digital Economy Act.
(Capitals used, as these are the "defined terms" in the DEA itself)
I would add to your list the petition for judicial review, which BT and TalkTalk have brought jointly to the High Court.
In my understanding of the situation, the basis of BT's decision is that BT does not consider that the DEA got a fair hearing in Parliament, as a result of being pushed through the wash-up procedure; BT feels that the House of Commons did not have the opportunity of giving the bill, as it was, adequate scrutiny, despite the attentions of the House of Lords.
BT took external legal advice, as to whether BT might face a challenge by users affected by the provisions of the Act, as to whether law was compatible with EU law, and considers that, on the basis of the advice received, that there is a distinct lack of clarity as to whether the DEA regime is compatible with EU law. On this basis, BT and TalkTalk want to seek judicial clarification.
There are four main strands to their petition:
a.) lack of clarity as to whether law is proportionate – in particular, whether a proper impact assessment of the bill was done. To my mind, this could be a separate challenge on a proportionality basis alone, or else a reference to Art. 1(3)a of the Framework Directive;
b.) that BT considers that the DEA does not respect the privacy of its users, and that it is not compatible with ePrivacy directive;
c.) that the DEA may imperil the liability of intermediaries, such that it is incompatible with the eCommerce directive; and
d.) that the Government did not follow due process, by failing to notify in accordance with the Technical Standards directive.
(Based on public comments by a senior manager of BT, at an event I attended last week.)
At the very least, the word "pirate" should be avoided because that is the MAFIAA's loaded word of choice for painting file sharers as dangerous criminals
Whilst I agree with the substance of your comment, that "pirate" is an inappropriate descriptor, used to gain emotive advantage, the term has been used in this context for far longer than just this round of the "copyright wars".
For a great history of the term "piracy", and on copyright infringement generally, I'd recommend Adrian Johns' excellent book, "Piracy". For a look at the use of emotive language in the "copyright wars", I'd recommend Bill Party's "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars".
ISPs receive a safe harbor status provided they actually respond to DMCA takedown notices
To my mind, it would depend on whether the "Pirate ISP" simply handled traffic (i.e. was an access provider), or whether it provided hosting services too.
s.512 of the DMCA, and Art.14 of the eCommerce directive (European) offers protection for hosts (in Europe, the provision of services which "consist of the storage of information"), provided that the ISP takes steps to remove infringing material upon becoming aware of them. However, the corresponding protection for traffic carriage, Art.12, has no such requirement - as long as the IAP does not select the receiver of the transmission, initiate the transmission, or modify the content of the transmission, it is not liable for the traffic which it carries.
That being said, I would not be surprised to see an application of the Sharman Networks / Grokster reasoning, that there is a difference between being a mere conduit, over which parties transmit and receive information, where these acts are infringement of copyright, and promoting / encouraging copyright infringement (using these words loosely).
Amending stuff after people bought it is worse than having a dense legal paper upfront. What if people don't agree with your amendments? Should you be allowed to force them? I don't think you should, they already bought it and you agreed to offer them the product with that policy.
A fair point - I attempted to address it indirectly above, when talking about the distinction between contractual terms, and notices.
A modification to a contractual term should not be forced upon a user, or slid into a page which a user is "deemed" to accept by virtue of continuing to use the service, in ignorance of the modifications, most likely.
However, a privacy policy is not a contractual document, to my mind - it is a notice to the user how the user's personal information etc. will be handled as a result of the user's use of the service in question. As a user, I want to know what is going to happen to my personal information, what will be recorded etc. - I can accept that some processing (to look at the data protection side of privacy) might be necessary for the purposes of providing me with whatever service I am receiving, but, anything more than that, and I'd like to know. But that's a notice, not a contractual term, and, as the service evolves, I want to know what the changes are - if I am given a massive document upfront, giving me all possible permutations, some of which are implemented and some of which are not, I have no idea of what is happening to my personal information.
Personally, I think that such things must be relevant, which includes being updated where necessary.
Where it becomes a little stickier is where a customer is receiving a service for which he has paid, and yet the changes to a notice (e.g. the way in which the company will handle the customer's personal information) are not to a customer's liking - the privacy policy, albeit a non-contractual document, is likely to the form the basis of a purchasing decision (if the customer has read it, and can understand it, of course). As a non-contractual document, changes to a privacy policy are unlikely to give rise to a right of termination of the service, for example; one would need to look at the service contract to determine whether the change breached any of the obligations on the service provider.
The "old" situation worked quite well in an offline world, where, once someone had obtained a piece of software (let's say, OpenOffice.org) they could choose to refuse an updates, and not upgrade to the next version if it was not to their liking. However, with online services, which can be modified without the user ever knowing, and certainly without their control, the relationship becomes more of a rolling one - unless things are very clearly delineated into virtual bundles, whereby a particular system will operate in a fixed way for [x] years. If I were to sign up to, say, Google Docs, I would expect the service to be developed and advanced - which would likely necessitate changes to the privacy policy and the like.
Clarity (or simplicity) leaves too much room for loopholes that are not in the corporation's favor.
That's a commonly-held view, for sure. Perhaps I am the only lawyer who believes otherwise - but I don't think so. In terms of a very simple example, I'm pleased to have stripped down a set of terms and conditions for registration for our developer portal to a few bullet points, rather than pages of text - to my mind, the increase is risk is very low, and the business agreed.
(Under English law, a lack of clarity is construed against the party seeking to rely on the lack of clarity - a rule known as "contra proferentem".)
True enough, but Apple is in a market that is rapidly evolving and what is "absolutely necessary" is far from settled.
Sure- I work for a company which, whilst different, is in a very similar environment. I'd rather amend and update a policy / document, as needed, with the aim of maximising clarity and relevance for any given time, than bundling everything in upfront, on the basis that it might, one day, be relevant - I don't think a consumer / user benefits from this approach.
It a litigious society, how exactly do you propose that Apple (or any company) protects themselves?
Longer documents, or documents using longer words, are not necessarily any more protective or beneficial to a company than shorter documents - I'd rather have a clearer document, which a consumer can understand, than pages of documentation which a customer is unlikely to read. One also needs to be mindful of the difference between notifications to a customer, and contractual terms - confusing the two can make documents unnecessarily complex.
Similarly, "privacy by design" appeals to me - make things obvious from within the interfaces used by the customer, to give the customer control over their data, privacy etc. - if it is obvious from within an application what is happening, with default settings minimising unintended data sharing etc., the need for long privacy policies is reduced.
It depends on context, and on the risk profile which a company is willing to adopt, but, as a lawyer myself (for a company, rather than for a law firm), I am in favour of reducing documentation put before consumers (and suppliers, for that matter) to that which is absolutely necessary in a given situation.
Perhaps I am now misinformed but as I understand it liability for content never exists unless some censorship takes place on a network. Therefore it would seem to me that the very last thing one would ever want to do is look at any form of content flowing through a network.
From a point of view of a network provider, I'd suggest that it is not necessarily "censorship", but rather "knowledge" or, in effect, the exercise of editorial control (which may or may not be considered "censorship") - in the US, it's s230, Communcations Deceny Act and s512, DMCA; in Europe it's Arts. 12-14, eCommerce directive (as implemented locally (e.g. the UK's implementing regulations, rather than the directive itself)).
Under the European regime, a network provider is not liable for the content which it carries (art. 12) or hosts (art. 14), subject to certain limitations:
Art. 12 (carriage / "mere conduit"):
The service being provided "consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network"; and
the service provider:
does not initiate the transmission;
does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission."
Art. 14 (hosting)
The service "consists of the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service"; and
(a) the provider does not have actual knowledge of illegal activity or information and, as regards claims for damages, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent; or
(b) the provider, upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information. (This is generally implemented as a notice and takedown procedure - it need not be external facing, but, once notice is received within an organisation (be it as a result of third party notification, or someone moderating a forum etc.), the host is obliged to remove the content, or else face being liable for its distribution / publication etc.
In Europe, at least, it's not a particularly effective system, to my mind, since (a) it encourages hosts to take stuff down without any form of validity / proportionality check (i.e. it enables abuse, and the ensuring "chilling effects" - a host is incentivised to act on a notice from a rightsholder, even if the use of the work in question is fair dealing etc., rather than run the risk - and costs - of ligitation), and (b) some jurisdictions are interpreting it very narrowly (for example, the Tiscali case in France, held that, by virtue of operating a website design tool, the hosting service offered by Tiscali did not "consist of the storage of information", but rather more, and so Tiscali was unable to benefit from the directive's protection), rather than giving effect to the intent of the directive, which was to promote the existence of information society services.
Yes, those are examples of copyright infringement claims brought against those who fail to comply with licence requirements. However, those links do not support your position that GNU GPL 3.0 includes an obligation to maintain code, as your original post comments, but rather reflect that the code is licensed, rather than freely usable works in the public domain, and that, to use the code, one must comply with the licence requirements.
Cisco could have complied with the licensing terms, using either of the options above, without a need to provide access to source code after distribution of the binary / embedded product. However, if Cisco chose to make use of the "written offer" (s6(b) GNU GPL 3.0, s3(b) GNU GPL 2.0) route, and did not accompany distribution with source, then, yes, it has an obligation to make it available after the point of distribution. But, since this mechanism is optional, it is not a requirement - maintenance of code is only a requirement if one chooses to release binaries in this particular manner.
(There are obligations other than just source distribution, but, not the point of the discussion here - referenced just for completeness)
maintain the updates and the original code for x amount of years
I'm not aware that either licence requires you to do either of these things - under GNU GPL v3, the licence for the code, you have a number of options if you wish to distribute the covered code in binary form (article 6, GNU GPL 3.0) on a commercial basis, including:
distribute the binary on a physical medium, accompanied by the source code on a fixed medium; and
distribute the binary online, and offering equivalent access to the source code (i.e. just hosting both the source and the binary)
In neither case are you required to host / distribute the source code at any point after you cease to distribute the binary.
Similarly, in terms of "maintenance", your code can be as buggy as you wish - there is no obligation maintain, release new versions, merge patch submissions etc., unless you wish to do so.
(IAAL, doing quite a lot of open source work, but this is not legal advice:))
(To reply to myself, there is plenty of debate stretching back hundreds of years, as to whether common law copyright exists / ever existed, whether copyright arises from a natural right, whether it was overtaken by positive law etc. - I don't want to misrepresent my position as being the only one held academically, nor that it is a settled position for me - but it is where I am at the moment.)
It disturbs me just how easily you talk about taking somebody's rights away
As above, we see things very differently - you see a right in your written work. I don't see that such a right exists - that there is, or should be, such a thing as a common law copyright. As such, I don't see it as taking rights away from you, but simply not awarding you rights which you would not naturally have, or awarding them on a different basis, or with different content etc. Copyright is a gift, or reward, or incentive, depending on how it is construed, but, however it is construed, it is a creature of positive law.
If there were a natural right, the framers of the US constitution would not have needed to grant Congress powers to award limited monopolies, because such monopolies would already exist at law.
By awarding a right for creation, the public domain is deprived - so, in order for society to want to grant such a right, there has to be a compelling reason to do so, and I sometimes struggle to see that reason. The "creativity requires copyright" argument belies hundreds of years of history, having arisen relatively recently. Plenty of creativity existed prior to the establishment of authorial copyright.
Perhaps copyright, as such, has a valid existence, independent of its terms etc. Perhaps it does not. But, for everyone's distress that they are "losing rights", others see that, by granting them to you, society is giving away something to you, and this requires a balancing act - copyright is a societal choice, not a natural right, and, if it is to be imposed on society, it must be effective, and not overbearing.
As I say - we simply see things differently. Currently, your view is prevailing:) Disagreement or not, thanks for a positive and interesting discussion.
You are talking about dropping a book into the public domain once the sales are no longer enough to keep it in print, and in order to do that, you have to strip all rights the author has to their own book away. So, if the author wants to try again, they can't - the book is in the public domain, and they no longer have any say in the matter.
No, you are not putting words into my mouth - that was exactly what I was proposing in the post above.
The fact it is in the public domain does not stop the author from republishing it at all, since not everyone wants to download a copy, or use a print-on-demand facility, but it does mean that those who want it, but cannot get it through normal sales channels, since it is no longer available, can do so.
all rights the author has to their own book away.
I think this is probably the crux of the difference in our views - I struggle with the notion that the law should grant a property right, enabling ownership, of something intangible like a story, or contents of a book. The physical book, yes; the content, no. Perhaps some form of right over what someone produces is a necessity, perhaps it is not - I've yet to see sufficient evidence to be persuaded either way on this, but I do not consider there to be an intrisic (i.e. non-positive law) right, such as ownership, afforded to the developer of an intangible.
is that really the highest and best use of anyone's time?
Is too much in the public domain really a problem? Even if it is, it is a bad problem (i.e. a menace), which should be prevented, or one which simply requires additional creativity in terms of searchability, indexing etc., to separate the wheat from the chaff (i.e. a challenge). Both menaces and challenges are problems, but perhaps necessitate different responses.
That some works which some find less desirable / useful today does not, to my mind, form the basis of a good argument that "most things should fade into obscurity".
Slashdot Mirror
most home routers don't appear to support such a VPN setup out of the box, and most end users don't want to sit down for hours reading up on network security principles
A fair point indeed - I guess I was just proposing a solution to the problem, based on my own considerations about wanting to enable guest/visitor Internet access, but not wanting everyone on the LAN, and that it was not necessarily a solution which would be feasible/desirable for everyone.
Another solution might be Apple's Airport Extreme, which I believe will broadcast a guest Wi-Fi network, which doesn't touch the LAN side.
Then what's the polite way to tell house guests why you're not letting them check their Facebook?
This may make no sense whatsoever, but, could you have your wireless access point sitting between your modem and your network - i.e. so that someone accessing the Wi-Fi network does not have access to the internal network. If you want to access something on the network via Wi-Fi, you VPN back into it - everyone gets to access Facebook etc., but not content on your LAN.
If you need, restrict access to the admin interface of the WAP to only IP addreses in the range assigned to the VPN, or else from the IP address of a machine on the LAN, and then bounce through that machine?
The stock counter to that is that published credentials, such as passwords and the like, have little or no legitimate use other than to defraud people who do business with the rightful owner of the credentials.
However, none of that information (passwords, social security number etc.) is likely to be within the scope of a copyright regime, and so, from a copyright point of view, is unlikely to be restricted. As such, someone publishing someone else's bank account number is unlikely to be infringing the copyright of either customer, or of the bank?
Information shouldn't be kept private
What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.
With AdBlock, the end result is much the same.
Is AdBlock sufficiently prevalent that ad-based funding is decreasingly viable? Is an advert annoying no matter what site it might be on, or are there many AdBlock users who disable blocking on sites which they want to support through that site's chosen revenue model?
I really did like Time Machine for ease of use, but I will find something for Linux, or create my own based around rsync.
Having had problems sorting a Time Machine replacement out under Linux, I installed FreeNAS on a spare box - just add and configure the drives, select the option to run a Time Machine server, and you're away - I was very impressed with the ease of use.
limiting your search to copyright laws may not be the best way to find them.
I appreciate where you are coming from - but you are looking for a right which "trumps" the restrictions of copyright, to enable someone who is neither an owner, nor a licensor, to make use of a work restricted by copyright in a manner which (but for this right?) requires permission. I'm not aware of *any* provision of English law which confers such a right, or else grants permission.
I could be wrong, of course, although the above is the best of my knowledge after 8 or so years of studying, and, subsequently, practising, geeky law. However, I'm always pleased to learn something new :)
you're a private citizen, then I believe you retain some rights over images and descriptions of yoursel
That may be the case under US law - as I say, I'm no expert in that side of things - but not under English copyright law. There's no reservation of rights of the subject (but there are moral rights of the author!), nor a fair dealing exception which covers this as such.
Is it really infringement if you're republishing an article about yourself? Are the laws clear on this issue? I only ask because I find that to be very odd.
Most lawyers will probably tell you that "clear" means that you have roughly a 51% chance of success, as opposed to a 99-100% chance of success, really.
Copyright protects the expression, not the subject matter, of a work. As such, the mere fact that an article is about you does not give you ownership of the article under copyright law - similarly, if I photograph you walking down the street, the photograph is mine, not yours. (Absent an agreement or relationship to the contrary.)
If you do not own the copyright in the article, and want to perform an act restricted by copyright, then, you'd either need a licence to use it, or else have a particular fair use defence (US) or fair dealing exception (European).
If you host a copy of the article yourself, you've performed an act restricted by copyright by virtue of uploading it to your webserver, and likely other acts too.
Is it "fair use" to host / redistribute an article about yourself? I'm not a US lawyer, so couldn't express any form of valid opinion on this, but, my understanding is, since fair use is a defence, you'd need to cough up for litigation first. In Europe, it would depend on which state you were in - under English law, the "fair dealing" sections would not permit this, absent, perhaps, a very short period of time after initial publication of the article, for "news reporting" - but that's tenuous at best, t omy mind.
(Just my thoughts, not legal advice, no warranties, don't run as root etc.)
I wonder how much weight an ip address carries in court nowadays
It is likely to be the identifier for Copyright Infringement Reports submitted by Copyright Owners to Internet Service Providers, under the Initial Obligations Code for the Digital Economy Act.
(Capitals used, as these are the "defined terms" in the DEA itself)
I'd recommend Bill Party's "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars".
Sorry, Bill - that would be "Patry", and not "Party".
so there are a few chinks of light in the sky.
I would add to your list the petition for judicial review, which BT and TalkTalk have brought jointly to the High Court.
In my understanding of the situation, the basis of BT's decision is that BT does not consider that the DEA got a fair hearing in Parliament, as a result of being pushed through the wash-up procedure; BT feels that the House of Commons did not have the opportunity of giving the bill, as it was, adequate scrutiny, despite the attentions of the House of Lords.
BT took external legal advice, as to whether BT might face a challenge by users affected by the provisions of the Act, as to whether law was compatible with EU law, and considers that, on the basis of the advice received, that there is a distinct lack of clarity as to whether the DEA regime is compatible with EU law. On this basis, BT and TalkTalk want to seek judicial clarification.
There are four main strands to their petition:
(Based on public comments by a senior manager of BT, at an event I attended last week.)
At the very least, the word "pirate" should be avoided because that is the MAFIAA's loaded word of choice for painting file sharers as dangerous criminals
Whilst I agree with the substance of your comment, that "pirate" is an inappropriate descriptor, used to gain emotive advantage, the term has been used in this context for far longer than just this round of the "copyright wars".
For a great history of the term "piracy", and on copyright infringement generally, I'd recommend Adrian Johns' excellent book, "Piracy". For a look at the use of emotive language in the "copyright wars", I'd recommend Bill Party's "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars".
ISPs receive a safe harbor status provided they actually respond to DMCA takedown notices
To my mind, it would depend on whether the "Pirate ISP" simply handled traffic (i.e. was an access provider), or whether it provided hosting services too.
s.512 of the DMCA, and Art.14 of the eCommerce directive (European) offers protection for hosts (in Europe, the provision of services which "consist of the storage of information"), provided that the ISP takes steps to remove infringing material upon becoming aware of them. However, the corresponding protection for traffic carriage, Art.12, has no such requirement - as long as the IAP does not select the receiver of the transmission, initiate the transmission, or modify the content of the transmission, it is not liable for the traffic which it carries.
That being said, I would not be surprised to see an application of the Sharman Networks / Grokster reasoning, that there is a difference between being a mere conduit, over which parties transmit and receive information, where these acts are infringement of copyright, and promoting / encouraging copyright infringement (using these words loosely).
Amending stuff after people bought it is worse than having a dense legal paper upfront. What if people don't agree with your amendments? Should you be allowed to force them? I don't think you should, they already bought it and you agreed to offer them the product with that policy.
A fair point - I attempted to address it indirectly above, when talking about the distinction between contractual terms, and notices.
A modification to a contractual term should not be forced upon a user, or slid into a page which a user is "deemed" to accept by virtue of continuing to use the service, in ignorance of the modifications, most likely.
However, a privacy policy is not a contractual document, to my mind - it is a notice to the user how the user's personal information etc. will be handled as a result of the user's use of the service in question. As a user, I want to know what is going to happen to my personal information, what will be recorded etc. - I can accept that some processing (to look at the data protection side of privacy) might be necessary for the purposes of providing me with whatever service I am receiving, but, anything more than that, and I'd like to know. But that's a notice, not a contractual term, and, as the service evolves, I want to know what the changes are - if I am given a massive document upfront, giving me all possible permutations, some of which are implemented and some of which are not, I have no idea of what is happening to my personal information.
Personally, I think that such things must be relevant, which includes being updated where necessary.
Where it becomes a little stickier is where a customer is receiving a service for which he has paid, and yet the changes to a notice (e.g. the way in which the company will handle the customer's personal information) are not to a customer's liking - the privacy policy, albeit a non-contractual document, is likely to the form the basis of a purchasing decision (if the customer has read it, and can understand it, of course). As a non-contractual document, changes to a privacy policy are unlikely to give rise to a right of termination of the service, for example; one would need to look at the service contract to determine whether the change breached any of the obligations on the service provider.
The "old" situation worked quite well in an offline world, where, once someone had obtained a piece of software (let's say, OpenOffice.org) they could choose to refuse an updates, and not upgrade to the next version if it was not to their liking. However, with online services, which can be modified without the user ever knowing, and certainly without their control, the relationship becomes more of a rolling one - unless things are very clearly delineated into virtual bundles, whereby a particular system will operate in a fixed way for [x] years. If I were to sign up to, say, Google Docs, I would expect the service to be developed and advanced - which would likely necessitate changes to the privacy policy and the like.
Clarity (or simplicity) leaves too much room for loopholes that are not in the corporation's favor.
That's a commonly-held view, for sure. Perhaps I am the only lawyer who believes otherwise - but I don't think so. In terms of a very simple example, I'm pleased to have stripped down a set of terms and conditions for registration for our developer portal to a few bullet points, rather than pages of text - to my mind, the increase is risk is very low, and the business agreed.
(Under English law, a lack of clarity is construed against the party seeking to rely on the lack of clarity - a rule known as "contra proferentem".)
True enough, but Apple is in a market that is rapidly evolving and what is "absolutely necessary" is far from settled.
Sure- I work for a company which, whilst different, is in a very similar environment. I'd rather amend and update a policy / document, as needed, with the aim of maximising clarity and relevance for any given time, than bundling everything in upfront, on the basis that it might, one day, be relevant - I don't think a consumer / user benefits from this approach.
It a litigious society, how exactly do you propose that Apple (or any company) protects themselves?
Longer documents, or documents using longer words, are not necessarily any more protective or beneficial to a company than shorter documents - I'd rather have a clearer document, which a consumer can understand, than pages of documentation which a customer is unlikely to read. One also needs to be mindful of the difference between notifications to a customer, and contractual terms - confusing the two can make documents unnecessarily complex.
Similarly, "privacy by design" appeals to me - make things obvious from within the interfaces used by the customer, to give the customer control over their data, privacy etc. - if it is obvious from within an application what is happening, with default settings minimising unintended data sharing etc., the need for long privacy policies is reduced.
It depends on context, and on the risk profile which a company is willing to adopt, but, as a lawyer myself (for a company, rather than for a law firm), I am in favour of reducing documentation put before consumers (and suppliers, for that matter) to that which is absolutely necessary in a given situation.
Perhaps I am now misinformed but as I understand it liability for content never exists unless some censorship takes place on a network. Therefore it would seem to me that the very last thing one would ever want to do is look at any form of content flowing through a network.
From a point of view of a network provider, I'd suggest that it is not necessarily "censorship", but rather "knowledge" or, in effect, the exercise of editorial control (which may or may not be considered "censorship") - in the US, it's s230, Communcations Deceny Act and s512, DMCA; in Europe it's Arts. 12-14, eCommerce directive (as implemented locally (e.g. the UK's implementing regulations, rather than the directive itself)).
Under the European regime, a network provider is not liable for the content which it carries (art. 12) or hosts (art. 14), subject to certain limitations:
In Europe, at least, it's not a particularly effective system, to my mind, since (a) it encourages hosts to take stuff down without any form of validity / proportionality check (i.e. it enables abuse, and the ensuring "chilling effects" - a host is incentivised to act on a notice from a rightsholder, even if the use of the work in question is fair dealing etc., rather than run the risk - and costs - of ligitation), and (b) some jurisdictions are interpreting it very narrowly (for example, the Tiscali case in France, held that, by virtue of operating a website design tool, the hosting service offered by Tiscali did not "consist of the storage of information", but rather more, and so Tiscali was unable to benefit from the directive's protection), rather than giving effect to the intent of the directive, which was to promote the existence of information society services.
Yes, those are examples of copyright infringement claims brought against those who fail to comply with licence requirements. However, those links do not support your position that GNU GPL 3.0 includes an obligation to maintain code, as your original post comments, but rather reflect that the code is licensed, rather than freely usable works in the public domain, and that, to use the code, one must comply with the licence requirements.
Cisco could have complied with the licensing terms, using either of the options above, without a need to provide access to source code after distribution of the binary / embedded product. However, if Cisco chose to make use of the "written offer" (s6(b) GNU GPL 3.0, s3(b) GNU GPL 2.0) route, and did not accompany distribution with source, then, yes, it has an obligation to make it available after the point of distribution. But, since this mechanism is optional, it is not a requirement - maintenance of code is only a requirement if one chooses to release binaries in this particular manner.
(There are obligations other than just source distribution, but, not the point of the discussion here - referenced just for completeness)
maintain the updates and the original code for x amount of years
I'm not aware that either licence requires you to do either of these things - under GNU GPL v3, the licence for the code, you have a number of options if you wish to distribute the covered code in binary form (article 6, GNU GPL 3.0) on a commercial basis, including:
In neither case are you required to host / distribute the source code at any point after you cease to distribute the binary.
Similarly, in terms of "maintenance", your code can be as buggy as you wish - there is no obligation maintain, release new versions, merge patch submissions etc., unless you wish to do so.
(IAAL, doing quite a lot of open source work, but this is not legal advice :))
(To reply to myself, there is plenty of debate stretching back hundreds of years, as to whether common law copyright exists / ever existed, whether copyright arises from a natural right, whether it was overtaken by positive law etc. - I don't want to misrepresent my position as being the only one held academically, nor that it is a settled position for me - but it is where I am at the moment.)
It disturbs me just how easily you talk about taking somebody's rights away
As above, we see things very differently - you see a right in your written work. I don't see that such a right exists - that there is, or should be, such a thing as a common law copyright. As such, I don't see it as taking rights away from you, but simply not awarding you rights which you would not naturally have, or awarding them on a different basis, or with different content etc. Copyright is a gift, or reward, or incentive, depending on how it is construed, but, however it is construed, it is a creature of positive law.
If there were a natural right, the framers of the US constitution would not have needed to grant Congress powers to award limited monopolies, because such monopolies would already exist at law.
By awarding a right for creation, the public domain is deprived - so, in order for society to want to grant such a right, there has to be a compelling reason to do so, and I sometimes struggle to see that reason. The "creativity requires copyright" argument belies hundreds of years of history, having arisen relatively recently. Plenty of creativity existed prior to the establishment of authorial copyright.
Perhaps copyright, as such, has a valid existence, independent of its terms etc. Perhaps it does not. But, for everyone's distress that they are "losing rights", others see that, by granting them to you, society is giving away something to you, and this requires a balancing act - copyright is a societal choice, not a natural right, and, if it is to be imposed on society, it must be effective, and not overbearing.
As I say - we simply see things differently. Currently, your view is prevailing :) Disagreement or not, thanks for a positive and interesting discussion.
You are talking about dropping a book into the public domain once the sales are no longer enough to keep it in print, and in order to do that, you have to strip all rights the author has to their own book away. So, if the author wants to try again, they can't - the book is in the public domain, and they no longer have any say in the matter.
No, you are not putting words into my mouth - that was exactly what I was proposing in the post above.
The fact it is in the public domain does not stop the author from republishing it at all, since not everyone wants to download a copy, or use a print-on-demand facility, but it does mean that those who want it, but cannot get it through normal sales channels, since it is no longer available, can do so.
all rights the author has to their own book away.
I think this is probably the crux of the difference in our views - I struggle with the notion that the law should grant a property right, enabling ownership, of something intangible like a story, or contents of a book. The physical book, yes; the content, no. Perhaps some form of right over what someone produces is a necessity, perhaps it is not - I've yet to see sufficient evidence to be persuaded either way on this, but I do not consider there to be an intrisic (i.e. non-positive law) right, such as ownership, afforded to the developer of an intangible.
is that really the highest and best use of anyone's time?
Is too much in the public domain really a problem? Even if it is, it is a bad problem (i.e. a menace), which should be prevented, or one which simply requires additional creativity in terms of searchability, indexing etc., to separate the wheat from the chaff (i.e. a challenge). Both menaces and challenges are problems, but perhaps necessitate different responses.
That some works which some find less desirable / useful today does not, to my mind, form the basis of a good argument that "most things should fade into obscurity".