Hmm.. I think both of your figures are two orders of magnitude higher than reality. As an aside to the current conversation, could you link for me where those come from?
Ditto - I used the opportunity to rush out and buy packs of ciggies and condoms to stuff into my pockets. I'm guessing both are in short supply in heaven. ^^
From a comment on the article, which is probably relevant to this conversation as well:
I understand what you're saying about Mac has "no viruses", as you don't consider trojans as virii. The user had to install them. Great, no problem.
Except then you go on to say that Windows gets "thousands of new viruses every day". No, it doesn't. By the same criteria you're judging Mac to have "no viruses", there are almost no viruses that will infect Windows 7 either.
In fact, I'd be surprised if you could name a single one. It's all trojans and non-replicating 0-day exploits in installed sofware - same as Mac. (And before you claim there's no 0-day exploitable privelege holes in commonly installed Mac software, review any Pwn2Own contest).
I think you're intentionally confusing the issue rather than trying to help answer OP's question why VMs aren't suitable for running DOS games. If they did do full hardware emulation, they'd be perfectly capable of running DOS games, but they don't. While most VMs emulate *some* functions of chipsets, simply in order to boot, most rely on hypervisors which request your primary CPU to perform the instructions sanitized, within limited domain. Certainly, there are many aspects of the computer which they emulate completely, such as BIOS, but they do not (typically) emulate the various hardware components necessary to play DOS games.
You mention VMware and the SB16 - you'll notice I did already single out VMware with 16-bit sound emulation in my original post. In fact, most of the time I made sure to use terms like "generally" and "almost all", as there are always exceptions and I really didn't want to have to deal with folks coming along and pointing out the rare, single exceptions.
DosBox on the other hand, doesn't have a hypervisor. It doesn't utilize any hardware virtualization features (upcoming and branch versions, http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ excepted from this analysis), and doesn't merely perform binary translation, but emulates the functions of each processor instruction individually.
Sure, VMware has some emulation. So does VirtualBox. VirtualPC has a lot of emulation. But we call these virtualization as opposed to emulation simply for the sake of separating out both the function and the form. Trying to lump them all back together as "emulators", while accurate to varying degrees, complicates the issue unnecessarily.
Generally the two are defined as such: Virtualization - A virtual machine, isolated within memory. Most instructions are passed to the native CPU to be executed as-is, and require a matching or translatable hardware chipset (eg X86), for example - VMware or VirtualBox which run x86 software, on x86 systems, and in some cases, closely related chipsets (eg x86-64). Some hardware is emulated to varying degrees as necessary. Most graphical virtualization is passed to the native GPU to execute. Fast, as the hardware can be emulated at near native speeds.
Emulation - A top-to-bottom emulation of hardware, with no instructions passed as-is to the native CPU or GPU. Chipsets are irrelevant as instructions are not being passed to the CPU, but rather emulated in their entirety. Very slow (compared to a systems's native execution ability) as a result. Examples of this domain of emulation: VisualBoyAdvance, BSnes, Dolphin, Mame, PCSX2, DOSBOX, Qemu*
A note about Qemu: This is both a virtualizer and an emulator depending on which version you're using and what you're using it for. With kqemu, it's a virtualizer, emulating some hardware and passing the rest of the instructions to the native CPU for processing. VirtualBox contains a lot of Qemu, however as it relies on virtualisation and not emulation, kqemu (like VirtualBox) can only run instructions for systems with the same chipset as its host (in both cases, x86). Native Qemu can, however, be run as a full system emulator, and emulate multiple chipsets (ARM, SPARC-32, MIPS, etc) although naturally it suffers from the same reduced (comparative) performance that all full emulators must.
I was originally writing a reply to PsychoSlashDot as well, pointing out I still play plenty of DOS games all the time, but then I realized that he is indeed just talking about the legacy DOS hardware. Him saying "stuff" confused the issue, but what he's saying is "you've got the hardware in storage, you're not using it now, you're not ever going to use it, just throw it out." I don't think he was trying to say at all that folks don't play DOS games all the time, just that almost none still play it on old machines.
Hmm, I can't speak for your experience. VMware was around before VirtualPC.. but that's not the point!:) The present version of DosBox runs ROTT (and, almost every DOS game ever) perfectly. Certainly it's taken a while to get there. In versions 0.71-0.73 (and of course, prior), there were still a lot of titles that didn't run, but 0.74 is now near pefect for nearly every game.
No, it doesn't run at all on Mac OS X. It runs on Mac OS X *IN AN EMULATOR*.
Guess what, it runs fine on PC in an emulator as well. I missed have missed the irony (which, btw, doesn't mean what you clearly think it means. Too much Alanis, IMO).
You may have already known this and were simply suggesting Boxer as a good frontend for Mac (as per DosBox's own website, under FrontEnds: http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
In this case I apologize. I've just had this argument before for Mac supporters stating that "Boxer is a superior emulator to DosBox". >
I'd suggest perhaps it was set up wrong, or you were running a previous version of DosBox. Protected mode was only added a few versions (although, years) ago, for instance. I play both of these games with no issues on DosBox. It's also possible the abandonware version you downloaded (just guessing here, don't take offense!:)) wasn't as good as installing from original disk images.
While you can certainly install DOS on most VMs, the problem isn't the CPU being emulated, but other hardware. And even the CPU isn't being directly emulated in most VMs like VMware or VirtualBox, but rather utilising virtualization tech on your main CPU, but I digress - back to the hardware issues.
Sound in most VMs, for instance, is a virtualized AC97 or similar codec. Sure, there are some 16-bit and virtualized sound drivers (in VMware) for instance if you want to install original OS/2, but predominantly what we're talking about is a software-driven sound card as opposed to an entirely hardware based controller. If you've been around a while, you'll recall the difference between real modems and "win modems". One can be polled directly via its own interrupt/DMA (the real one), and the all the others sit on IRQ11 (not necessarily true, example) and wait for a higher-level driver to sort out what goes where.
DOS relied on "real" sound cards with addressable interrupts, etc, which simply aren't emulated in almost all VMs. DosBox does, emulating almost every function of the actual chipsets of SoundBlasters/Adlib/GUS/etc. It's exactly what real emulation is, as opposed to virtualization. VMware, VirtualPC, VirtualBox etc, provide virtualization. DosBox provides emulation. And there is a difference.:)
Likewise, CGA, EGA, VGA cards. Most virtualizers provide a VESA compatiable SVGA driver(think, an S3 Virge, or similar). DosBox actually emulates the individual functions and quirks of the different graphics adapter chipsets. CGA for instance, isn't just "4 color graphics, 16 color text". It's a very broad specification, and DosBox has to emulate how each aspect of that specification can be used, and abused, to provide the various graphical effects that programmers coaxed out of the original systems, and graphical trickery.
And most virtual machines don't support protected run-time mode, which you can look up.:) I've written enough already!
So yeah - you can run DOS on a VM. You just can't play many games on it.:)
Software doesn't have to be approved by the OSI in order to be open source. In fact, end-products are not, by definition, "approved by the OSI". Licenses are. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html
For your review, here is OSI's own definition of what Open Source means: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd. Truecrypt meets every one of these criteria. According to OSI, software which meets these criteria is open source. However, of course, it's not licensed to carry the OSI "logo" as their license hasn't been scrutinized by the OSI.
Again, trying to be helpful in my correction. Let's review. You state "Truecrypt is not open source", whereas it is open source by OSIs own definition. You state "it has not been approved by OSI", but products are never approved by OSI. OSI examines licenses, not products. So, the closest to a correct statement you could get, would be:
"Truecrypt is open source, however its license has not been approved by the OSI, therefore I choose not to use it."
Err.. TrueCrypt has always been OpenSource (http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads2), so if that's what you're basing your idea of a "better track record" off, that makes them - equal. In actual USAGE, TrueCrypt has a more extensive and better "track record". Perhaps you were thinking of DriveCrypt.
OK.. you're still not getting it. Please go and quote from the Agreement where it says ANYBODY will be fined £12m, or penalized at all, in fact. Not from THE ARTICLE. The article is what's wrong. Go and read the actual agreement. The agreement says that damages for a signifcant breach are estimated at a £12m value. It does NOT "impose a penalty of £12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling on anyone who breaches this legal gag".
Do you understand yet? The article claims that there is a clause in the agreement saying anyone who breaches it will be liable for a £12m fine. The article then mocks this, saying that such a clause in unenforceable. What you're still failing to understand is - THE AGREEMENT NEVER SAYS THAT. Actually read it, instead of continuing to quote from the article.
Not according to the Guardian what? I fail to see what you're disagreeing with in my statement. I never claimed Julian didn't try to get people to sign it.
Oh - unless you're arguing the £12,000,000 does exist.. in which case you misunderstand, and still haven't RTFPDF. I'm not claiming the confidentiality agreement doesn't exist. Of course it does. This is genuine. What I'm saying is there is no "£12,000,000 penalty". The agreement never says any staff member will be fined (although of course, all legal options are open to them).
[i]"Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag."[/i] This, and any similar statements by the author are false. The agreement never does anything of the sort, which is the basis for the entire article. Please actually read the contract before commenting any further on it.
Agreed. I noted that it opens the party up to being sued for that amount, but this is not the claim the article or summary are making. Here's some choice quotes:
Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag.
It does no such thing.
This ludicrous – and undoubtedly unenforceable
Wikileaks mocking. Of course it's unenforceable - which is why it's not in the agreement. It's like claiming "the agreement says the signee will hand over their first born child" and then claming "that's ludicrous and unenforceable!". The fact the agreement never says any such thing doesn't seem to disuade him from mocking WL over it.
The fifth recital paragraph, "E", is just as astonishing. It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached.
No it doesn't. It says the damage Wikileaks suffers may be beyond any direct loss. It says nothing about suing, or lawsuits, or legal action. And this is fairly normal in contracts. If a drug researcher hands over a formula (which company A has spent $2million researching) over to a rival firm (company B), then the direct loss to company A is $2million. However, if company B starts manufacturing and selling the drug, then the additional losses are potentially in the billions. The author is relying on people's ignorance of common law practice to try and pretend that Wikileaks is doing something extraordinary.
WikiLeaks says it can sue for both "loss of opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers" and "loss of value of the information".
Again, the agreement never says this. While it declares that other legal options remain open to it, the ONLY legal remedy offered directly in the agreement is the right to an injunction against publication.
All this legalese can only mean that WikiLeaks takes the commercial aspect of selling "its" information seriously: there would be no other reason for this document to have such precise, onerous and unusual provisions.
Again, the author is relying on ignorance of the reader to pretend these are unusal provisions. The only difference between this and most NDAs, is most don't provide a specific estimated value for damages. Provisions preventing staff members from selling company information doesn't imply at all that the company itself wants to sell that information. Merely that it doesn't want it's staff members selling it. If a person leaks a treasure trove of documentation to Wikileaks, they don't want an individual staff member stealing that information and selling it to The New York Times.
On the basis of this legal gag alone, it would be fair to take the view that WikiLeaks is nothing other a highly commercially charged enterprise, seeking to protect and maximise its earnings from selling information that has been leaked to it. If so, WikiLeaks is nothing other than a business.
And this relies on the sum-total of the previous misinformation. It too, is not true. It's funny how most other NDAs aren't referred to as "legal gags" but as NDAs. As this is.
If Sony doesn't want their signing keys released, and makes folks who work with the keys sign an NDA that says they won't sell the keys privately to a third party (and in this example, they COULD estimate how much monetary damage that would cause), does this imply that Sony themselves want to sell the keys to a third party? No. Yet that's the stretch in logic with David Green is hoping folks won't notice when he says it about Wikileaks. It's WL bashing band-wagon all the way.
Oh, it definitely is so that they can sue, both the leaker (who leaked information with known x value) and whomever is purchasing it. This is primarily to stop staff who recieve leaks from selling information to news organisations themselves, for personal gain.
The point here is that "Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag." in the linked article is not true. There are several similar claims that the agreement says Wikileaks will penalize. The entire article is making the claim that WikiLeak's NDA says it can sue staff, ergo they must not trust their staff. But it's not the case. The agreement only makes the immediate remedy of an injunction against publication (ie, to stop a newspaper who bought the information from a staff member from publishing it) with the possibility of other legal remedies outside of what's laid out in the agreement.
It's a standard NDA, with the addition of an estimated value of leaked information. Folks working in R&D departments at major corporations have similar clauses.
8. You agree and accept that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary information, the misuse or unauthorised disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage, and accordingly you concede that, without prejudice to any other rights and remedies that may be available to us in respect of Breach of this agreement, we are entitled to relief by way of injunction including any interim order available from any competent court having jurisdiction over its terms.
An injunction is not a £12,000,000 fine. It's an injunction. The injunction is the only legal remedy offered directly by the agreement. David Allen's (and New Stateman's claim) that "It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached." is completely false.
Indeed, the section E he refers to as saying that folks can be sued, never says anyone can be sued. Just that the parties agree as to what damages Wikileaks may suffer as a result of a breach. David Green simply made up the entire angle of staff being fined. Indeed, it is all bullshit. Thats why he stops 'quoting' directly, and starts saying stuff like:
The fifth recital paragraph, "E", is just as astonishing. It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached. WikiLeaks says it can sue for both "loss of opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers" and "loss of value of the information".
Well, if the agreement actually said that - he could quote it. Instead he puts his own words, and then inserts random quotations as to what folks can be "sued for". It's all a lie.
As I noted later on (http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2146120&cid=36100472) it appears New Statesman made up the entire angle that staff would be fined £12,000,000. Read the entire agreement start to finish, and the only penality implied by the confidentiality agreement for a breach is employment termination. Employment termination IS enforceable. The £12,000,000 fine never existed. All smoke and mirrors from folks trying to muddy Wikileaks.
Actually, it's just a standard confidentiality agreement. It nowhere states that anyone will be fined. The New Statesman just made that up. Sorry to disappoint. It does have a clause stating the agreed value of a significant breach, but the only penalty inferred in the agreement is employment termination.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm.. I think both of your figures are two orders of magnitude higher than reality. As an aside to the current conversation, could you link for me where those come from?
UPDATE: I didn't get raptured, but on the plus side - I now have party supplies. Ladies?
Ditto - I used the opportunity to rush out and buy packs of ciggies and condoms to stuff into my pockets. I'm guessing both are in short supply in heaven. ^^
Also..
By the way - it's not an internal document, but an anonymous employee being cited.
http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/apple-macdefender-investigation-may-16-2011.png
(click the image in the article, if this doesn't work for you).
Umm..
Sorry buddy, you were wrong on both counts. Seems like you need to read the article again, zealot.
It does not say anything about not admitting that there is a problem
You should not confirm or deny whether the customer’s Mac is infected or not.
Ummm..
From a comment on the article, which is probably relevant to this conversation as well:
I understand what you're saying about Mac has "no viruses", as you don't consider trojans as virii. The user had to install them. Great, no problem.
Except then you go on to say that Windows gets "thousands of new viruses every day". No, it doesn't. By the same criteria you're judging Mac to have "no viruses", there are almost no viruses that will infect Windows 7 either.
In fact, I'd be surprised if you could name a single one. It's all trojans and non-replicating 0-day exploits in installed sofware - same as Mac. (And before you claim there's no 0-day exploitable privelege holes in commonly installed Mac software, review any Pwn2Own contest).
I think you're intentionally confusing the issue rather than trying to help answer OP's question why VMs aren't suitable for running DOS games. If they did do full hardware emulation, they'd be perfectly capable of running DOS games, but they don't. While most VMs emulate *some* functions of chipsets, simply in order to boot, most rely on hypervisors which request your primary CPU to perform the instructions sanitized, within limited domain. Certainly, there are many aspects of the computer which they emulate completely, such as BIOS, but they do not (typically) emulate the various hardware components necessary to play DOS games.
You mention VMware and the SB16 - you'll notice I did already single out VMware with 16-bit sound emulation in my original post. In fact, most of the time I made sure to use terms like "generally" and "almost all", as there are always exceptions and I really didn't want to have to deal with folks coming along and pointing out the rare, single exceptions.
DosBox on the other hand, doesn't have a hypervisor. It doesn't utilize any hardware virtualization features (upcoming and branch versions, http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ excepted from this analysis), and doesn't merely perform binary translation, but emulates the functions of each processor instruction individually.
Sure, VMware has some emulation. So does VirtualBox. VirtualPC has a lot of emulation. But we call these virtualization as opposed to emulation simply for the sake of separating out both the function and the form. Trying to lump them all back together as "emulators", while accurate to varying degrees, complicates the issue unnecessarily.
Generally the two are defined as such:
Virtualization - A virtual machine, isolated within memory. Most instructions are passed to the native CPU to be executed as-is, and require a matching or translatable hardware chipset (eg X86), for example - VMware or VirtualBox which run x86 software, on x86 systems, and in some cases, closely related chipsets (eg x86-64). Some hardware is emulated to varying degrees as necessary. Most graphical virtualization is passed to the native GPU to execute. Fast, as the hardware can be emulated at near native speeds.
Emulation - A top-to-bottom emulation of hardware, with no instructions passed as-is to the native CPU or GPU. Chipsets are irrelevant as instructions are not being passed to the CPU, but rather emulated in their entirety. Very slow (compared to a systems's native execution ability) as a result. Examples of this domain of emulation: VisualBoyAdvance, BSnes, Dolphin, Mame, PCSX2, DOSBOX, Qemu*
A note about Qemu: This is both a virtualizer and an emulator depending on which version you're using and what you're using it for. With kqemu, it's a virtualizer, emulating some hardware and passing the rest of the instructions to the native CPU for processing. VirtualBox contains a lot of Qemu, however as it relies on virtualisation and not emulation, kqemu (like VirtualBox) can only run instructions for systems with the same chipset as its host (in both cases, x86). Native Qemu can, however, be run as a full system emulator, and emulate multiple chipsets (ARM, SPARC-32, MIPS, etc) although naturally it suffers from the same reduced (comparative) performance that all full emulators must.
DISCLAIMER: Exceptions to the rule excluded from consideration for the sake of discussion. For comparisons of specific virtualizers/emulators, here's a good page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_platform_virtual_machines
I was originally writing a reply to PsychoSlashDot as well, pointing out I still play plenty of DOS games all the time, but then I realized that he is indeed just talking about the legacy DOS hardware. Him saying "stuff" confused the issue, but what he's saying is "you've got the hardware in storage, you're not using it now, you're not ever going to use it, just throw it out." I don't think he was trying to say at all that folks don't play DOS games all the time, just that almost none still play it on old machines.
Hmm, I can't speak for your experience. VMware was around before VirtualPC.. but that's not the point! :) The present version of DosBox runs ROTT (and, almost every DOS game ever) perfectly. Certainly it's taken a while to get there. In versions 0.71-0.73 (and of course, prior), there were still a lot of titles that didn't run, but 0.74 is now near pefect for nearly every game.
No, it doesn't run at all on Mac OS X. It runs on Mac OS X *IN AN EMULATOR*.
Guess what, it runs fine on PC in an emulator as well. I missed have missed the irony (which, btw, doesn't mean what you clearly think it means. Too much Alanis, IMO).
FYI, Boxer is simply DosBox with a different frontend. Behind the pretty buttons, the entire emulation engine is DosBox 0.74: https://bitbucket.org/alunbestor/boxer/src/e21bfcb1d3a0/DOSBox/
You may have already known this and were simply suggesting Boxer as a good frontend for Mac (as per DosBox's own website, under FrontEnds: http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
In this case I apologize. I've just had this argument before for Mac supporters stating that "Boxer is a superior emulator to DosBox". >
I'd suggest perhaps it was set up wrong, or you were running a previous version of DosBox. Protected mode was only added a few versions (although, years) ago, for instance. I play both of these games with no issues on DosBox. It's also possible the abandonware version you downloaded (just guessing here, don't take offense! :)) wasn't as good as installing from original disk images.
While you can certainly install DOS on most VMs, the problem isn't the CPU being emulated, but other hardware. And even the CPU isn't being directly emulated in most VMs like VMware or VirtualBox, but rather utilising virtualization tech on your main CPU, but I digress - back to the hardware issues.
Sound in most VMs, for instance, is a virtualized AC97 or similar codec. Sure, there are some 16-bit and virtualized sound drivers (in VMware) for instance if you want to install original OS/2, but predominantly what we're talking about is a software-driven sound card as opposed to an entirely hardware based controller. If you've been around a while, you'll recall the difference between real modems and "win modems". One can be polled directly via its own interrupt/DMA (the real one), and the all the others sit on IRQ11 (not necessarily true, example) and wait for a higher-level driver to sort out what goes where.
DOS relied on "real" sound cards with addressable interrupts, etc, which simply aren't emulated in almost all VMs. DosBox does, emulating almost every function of the actual chipsets of SoundBlasters/Adlib/GUS/etc. It's exactly what real emulation is, as opposed to virtualization. VMware, VirtualPC, VirtualBox etc, provide virtualization. DosBox provides emulation. And there is a difference. :)
Likewise, CGA, EGA, VGA cards. Most virtualizers provide a VESA compatiable SVGA driver(think, an S3 Virge, or similar). DosBox actually emulates the individual functions and quirks of the different graphics adapter chipsets. CGA for instance, isn't just "4 color graphics, 16 color text". It's a very broad specification, and DosBox has to emulate how each aspect of that specification can be used, and abused, to provide the various graphical effects that programmers coaxed out of the original systems, and graphical trickery.
And most virtual machines don't support protected run-time mode, which you can look up. :) I've written enough already!
So yeah - you can run DOS on a VM. You just can't play many games on it. :)
Software doesn't have to be approved by the OSI in order to be open source. In fact, end-products are not, by definition, "approved by the OSI". Licenses are. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html
For your review, here is OSI's own definition of what Open Source means: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd. Truecrypt meets every one of these criteria. According to OSI, software which meets these criteria is open source. However, of course, it's not licensed to carry the OSI "logo" as their license hasn't been scrutinized by the OSI.
Again, trying to be helpful in my correction. Let's review. You state "Truecrypt is not open source", whereas it is open source by OSIs own definition. You state "it has not been approved by OSI", but products are never approved by OSI. OSI examines licenses, not products. So, the closest to a correct statement you could get, would be:
"Truecrypt is open source, however its license has not been approved by the OSI, therefore I choose not to use it."
Err.. TrueCrypt has always been OpenSource (http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads2), so if that's what you're basing your idea of a "better track record" off, that makes them - equal. In actual USAGE, TrueCrypt has a more extensive and better "track record". Perhaps you were thinking of DriveCrypt.
OK.. you're still not getting it. Please go and quote from the Agreement where it says ANYBODY will be fined £12m, or penalized at all, in fact. Not from THE ARTICLE. The article is what's wrong. Go and read the actual agreement. The agreement says that damages for a signifcant breach are estimated at a £12m value. It does NOT "impose a penalty of £12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling on anyone who breaches this legal gag".
Do you understand yet? The article claims that there is a clause in the agreement saying anyone who breaches it will be liable for a £12m fine. The article then mocks this, saying that such a clause in unenforceable. What you're still failing to understand is - THE AGREEMENT NEVER SAYS THAT. Actually read it, instead of continuing to quote from the article.
Not according to the Guardian what? I fail to see what you're disagreeing with in my statement. I never claimed Julian didn't try to get people to sign it.
Oh - unless you're arguing the £12,000,000 does exist.. in which case you misunderstand, and still haven't RTFPDF. I'm not claiming the confidentiality agreement doesn't exist. Of course it does. This is genuine. What I'm saying is there is no "£12,000,000 penalty". The agreement never says any staff member will be fined (although of course, all legal options are open to them).
[i]"Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag."[/i]
This, and any similar statements by the author are false. The agreement never does anything of the sort, which is the basis for the entire article. Please actually read the contract before commenting any further on it.
Apologies. Posting to clear moderation. Had some mouse lag while moderating this insightful, and managed to hit "redundant" instead. :(
Agreed. I noted that it opens the party up to being sued for that amount, but this is not the claim the article or summary are making. Here's some choice quotes:
Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag.
It does no such thing.
This ludicrous – and undoubtedly unenforceable
Wikileaks mocking. Of course it's unenforceable - which is why it's not in the agreement. It's like claiming "the agreement says the signee will hand over their first born child" and then claming "that's ludicrous and unenforceable!". The fact the agreement never says any such thing doesn't seem to disuade him from mocking WL over it.
The fifth recital paragraph, "E", is just as astonishing. It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached.
No it doesn't. It says the damage Wikileaks suffers may be beyond any direct loss. It says nothing about suing, or lawsuits, or legal action. And this is fairly normal in contracts. If a drug researcher hands over a formula (which company A has spent $2million researching) over to a rival firm (company B), then the direct loss to company A is $2million. However, if company B starts manufacturing and selling the drug, then the additional losses are potentially in the billions. The author is relying on people's ignorance of common law practice to try and pretend that Wikileaks is doing something extraordinary.
WikiLeaks says it can sue for both "loss of opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers" and "loss of value of the information".
Again, the agreement never says this. While it declares that other legal options remain open to it, the ONLY legal remedy offered directly in the agreement is the right to an injunction against publication.
All this legalese can only mean that WikiLeaks takes the commercial aspect of selling "its" information seriously: there would be no other reason for this document to have such precise, onerous and unusual provisions.
Again, the author is relying on ignorance of the reader to pretend these are unusal provisions. The only difference between this and most NDAs, is most don't provide a specific estimated value for damages. Provisions preventing staff members from selling company information doesn't imply at all that the company itself wants to sell that information. Merely that it doesn't want it's staff members selling it. If a person leaks a treasure trove of documentation to Wikileaks, they don't want an individual staff member stealing that information and selling it to The New York Times.
On the basis of this legal gag alone, it would be fair to take the view that WikiLeaks is nothing other a highly commercially charged enterprise, seeking to protect and maximise its earnings from selling information that has been leaked to it. If so, WikiLeaks is nothing other than a business.
And this relies on the sum-total of the previous misinformation. It too, is not true. It's funny how most other NDAs aren't referred to as "legal gags" but as NDAs. As this is.
If Sony doesn't want their signing keys released, and makes folks who work with the keys sign an NDA that says they won't sell the keys privately to a third party (and in this example, they COULD estimate how much monetary damage that would cause), does this imply that Sony themselves want to sell the keys to a third party? No. Yet that's the stretch in logic with David Green is hoping folks won't notice when he says it about Wikileaks. It's WL bashing band-wagon all the way.
Oh, it definitely is so that they can sue, both the leaker (who leaked information with known x value) and whomever is purchasing it. This is primarily to stop staff who recieve leaks from selling information to news organisations themselves, for personal gain.
The point here is that "Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag." in the linked article is not true. There are several similar claims that the agreement says Wikileaks will penalize. The entire article is making the claim that WikiLeak's NDA says it can sue staff, ergo they must not trust their staff. But it's not the case. The agreement only makes the immediate remedy of an injunction against publication (ie, to stop a newspaper who bought the information from a staff member from publishing it) with the possibility of other legal remedies outside of what's laid out in the agreement.
It's a standard NDA, with the addition of an estimated value of leaked information. Folks working in R&D departments at major corporations have similar clauses.
No it doesn't.
8. You agree and accept that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary information, the misuse or unauthorised disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage, and accordingly you concede that, without prejudice to any other rights and remedies that may be available to us in respect of Breach of this agreement, we are entitled to relief by way of injunction including any interim order available from any competent court having jurisdiction over its terms.
An injunction is not a £12,000,000 fine. It's an injunction. The injunction is the only legal remedy offered directly by the agreement. David Allen's (and New Stateman's claim) that "It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached." is completely false.
Indeed, the section E he refers to as saying that folks can be sued, never says anyone can be sued. Just that the parties agree as to what damages Wikileaks may suffer as a result of a breach. David Green simply made up the entire angle of staff being fined. Indeed, it is all bullshit. Thats why he stops 'quoting' directly, and starts saying stuff like:
The fifth recital paragraph, "E", is just as astonishing. It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached. WikiLeaks says it can sue for both "loss of opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers" and "loss of value of the information".
Well, if the agreement actually said that - he could quote it. Instead he puts his own words, and then inserts random quotations as to what folks can be "sued for". It's all a lie.
If it is, it's a bad one. The agreement never says anyone will be fined. New Statesman made that up.
As I noted later on (http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2146120&cid=36100472) it appears New Statesman made up the entire angle that staff would be fined £12,000,000. Read the entire agreement start to finish, and the only penality implied by the confidentiality agreement for a breach is employment termination. Employment termination IS enforceable. The £12,000,000 fine never existed. All smoke and mirrors from folks trying to muddy Wikileaks.
Actually, it's just a standard confidentiality agreement. It nowhere states that anyone will be fined. The New Statesman just made that up. Sorry to disappoint. It does have a clause stating the agreed value of a significant breach, but the only penalty inferred in the agreement is employment termination.