The "users should have to learn" mentality is what keeps computers complicated and difficult to use.
Actually, my opinion is and always has been that assuming users are stupid and incapable of learning the most basic idioms is the real problem with computing. I mean, if we can't even expect to teach people what a "directory tree" is and means, how do we expect them to learn to organize information? Sure, google can claim you should "search instead of organize," but the fact remains there are times when searching is useful and times when indexing and organizing are useful. Knowing both is computing 101.
The trick for developers is creating minimal yet powerful knowledge-space for users to occupy and NOT CHANGING IT! (Note: this doesn't mean the back-end doesn't change, just that the controls remain familiar... and every change is designed specifically to make usage easier, and with an eye toward disruption costs.)
I mean really. The basic distribution model: 1) Download application to known location. 2) Execute application at known location.
Hasn't changed since the very first personal computers, so why is it we even need things like ActiveX? (ie: if it's worth running, it's probably worth the trouble to purposely install...)
Note: For moving around alot or organizations, replace "application" with "appliciation suite".
And food for thought: Why can't I just grab the contents of my "programs" directory and move it to a new machine?
Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.
So there you have it. Every email he got in trouble for *was* fraud because it was disguised. You could look at this as email fraud, much like we have mail fraud. If you think you can win a mail fraud case on first amendment grounds, try breaking into a post-office mail-box sometime, even if it is just to retrieve a letter you "mailed by accident". Or, more to the point, try sending 1000's of unsolicited snail-mailers with an incorrect return address. (And no, not just a P.O. Box, put other people's addresses on them and mail them out using the big blue post-office box.)
I agree. I hate SPAM as much as the next guy but it makes me nervous when non-violent, especially computer related crimes, start having hefty sentences. A good deal of the outcome of trial has to do with previous cases.
There's a lot of pretty nasty white-collar type computer crime you can commit that deserves a lot worse than 9 years in jail. So, the mere fact "computer crime" can get you in trouble, isn't by itself a bad thing, it just shows that computing is maturing (hopefully in good ways).
If a prosecutor in the future can link Joe Spammer and Tom Bittorent user somehow and Joe spammer got 9 years, what do you think Tom's chances are?
Well for starters this is why you should be up in arms over the fact that COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS BEING TURNED INTO A JAILABLE FELONY. Once upon a time this was a civil matter whose merit was hotly debated, and in my opinion it should remain a civil matter. spam endangers a whole communications infrastructure, copyright infringement merely lowers the value of an incentive to create.
As for Tom, her chances should be the same whether she uses a "K0M-PU-T4R" to do her infringing or not.
This is just silly. I'd waaay rather go to jail for 2 years than not be allowed online for the next 2 decades. Sheesh, what's the next punishment going to be? You can't read or write because you committed defamation?
It's a waste of resources to lock someone like this up.
I disagree, this is exactly the kind of person that should be locked up. He's damages society and is unrepentant about it. He belongs behind bars. Of course, I also agree with ~20 years for rape and 40 years to death for murder, but the fact one part of a system is broken doesn't mean you break another in hopes of fixing it.
I disagree with this. WalMart is a multi-billion dollar corporation who money gives them the ability to abuse the public postal service.
Thing is, while paper spam is a minor annoyance, digital spam threatens to make email completely useless for communication. You may get 2-3 commercial mailings a day, which you can track to a given address, and "return to sender" if you so desire, but try running an on-line mailbox which receives 200+ spams a day without a (potentially false-positive) spam filter.
Basically, it's one thing if Walmart sends this stuff out unsolicited, it's quite another if they misrepresent themselves and try to "hack" the snail-mail system. (This is called fraud and mail tampering and will land you in jail quicker than you can say: "I want my lawyer!")
Sure, online the rules are a bit different (opt-in or opt-out requirements and no misrepresentation of who the sender is etc) but the benefits are different too (zero cost per message sent).
That said. I think 2 years would be plenty to send a message in this case. 9 *does* seem a bit excessive for the first offender ever convicted. (I mean, if he'd committed murder would he even get put away for 9 years? Of course, in our justice system a 9 year sentence, would probably result in more like 2 actually getting served.)
You want an ISP who actually pays attention to your problems and quality issues? Pay money for it...
Not an option for me (and many others). If you're on cable in a comcast area, it's their service or no service. Believe me if I could go DSL and get a decent ISP I would. I'm "just over 3 cable miles" according to my local phone company and therefore not eligible for DSL, even though I had it at about 384k bitrate at one time from an ISP that subsequently went under. As for a T1, well the only way I could afford that is if I *became* an ISP.
As to convincing those who can make a choice... Ya, it's certainly a worthwhile endeavor, but convincing those who've never had a problem to pay more for a small ISP versus an incombent can be tough. (Of course, comcast users certainly aren't going to be in your "no problems" camp. I get multiple outages every day, and terrible packet loss at times. Several other folks I know with comcast have the same issues, particularly gamers.)
The scenario plays out like this; I try to send an email to a client, only to be informed by their ISPs email server that my IP is blocked by some blocklist or other.
Hmm... Maybe you need to get an ISP that does a better job of policing thier IP block so that this doesn't keep happening to you.
Or, given the lack of broadband choices in some places (comcast for me) perhaps we all need to start complaining more about the fact we can no longer find or get access to quality ISP's. (Not that I'd touch my ISP's emial service with a 10-foot pole mind you...)
it's rarely those who decide to use the lists that are affected by the outcome
Come again? Sounds like your customer (who chose to use the RBL, at least indirectly by choosing an ISP and deciding to use their email service) was quite affected by not receiving your emails. As to not blaming the end-user for the choice in ISP and email service... If you buy a Pinto, you get what you pay for. Same goes for AOL or comcast.
Yeah.. try that one on your boss.. "Sorry, you didn't get that extremely important email...
What?? It was *extremely important* and you didn't: a) Walk over to h[is/er] office to see if [s]he got it. b) Give h[im/er] a phone call to see if [s]he got it.
Hmm... Well, I suppose you could feign ignorance if you're not involved in technology, but if you're waging an SBL-enabled war on SPAM you should know email is no more reliable than the post-office (and probably less).
Of course, I work on fault-tolerant 24x7 systems which could cause loss of life and limb due to downtime, so I may have a different notion of "extremely important" than most folks...
The client is an idiot for making their business dependent on the reliability of public data networks and SMTP
Agreed.
they can afford to invest in hardware,...
I think redundant hardware goes a bit far. Any half-way sharp business should be able to invest in a single highly-redudant and effective IP network and use that for all communications. (Or maybe 2 networks in extreme cases...) Creating seperate networks for each type of data would be ludicrously expensive, and a huge step backwards in terms of technology use.
In this day and age, even custom software shouldn't be necessary. A simple encrypted RSS feed would be far more reliable than email for delivering this kind of information...
He's also never tried to figure out a problem when all the user can tell you is, "It won't work, I don't know what happened,"
At least the user is being honest. Learn to ask the question: "*what* isn't working.", and learn to be nice about it. (Go ahead and strangle the luser in your head if you need to... But even the BOFH doesn't generally resort to impoliteness.)
...and has no recollection of what error messages he may have seen when his machine failed...
So, if the computer knows what the problem is well enough to output an error message, is it too much to expect it to log this information somewhere that an appropriately knowledgeable party can find it later on? Designing systems without this kind of diagnostic facility (and so many other flaws in the modern wintel architecture) seems like an even bigger problem than user ignorance.
I have to disagree--I think that making the grammar checker more intelligent is a very important part of the program.
Good point. That's why if you're going to open your mouth to criticize, the least you can do is have some improvements to offer. It's easy to find things that don't work, show us how to do it better.
What was that old saying? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach,...?
To answer no and then use their stuff anyways? In this day and age? It's just plain, without a doubt, stupid. There's no question whether you'll get caught.
Then again as a self-interested web developer hired by SCO to put up these documents, and caring nothing about the company whatsoever, I suppose it'd make a sick sort of sense to do this...
Ya, and plagiarism is not copyright infringement. Heck in the US, plagiarism isn't even illegal.
In this case, plagiarism is obvious, infringement would take a court to decide. (It isn't clear whether scans of documents can be copyrighted at this time... They represent effort, but not necessarily creativity. Further, some courts are starting to be careful about allowing loopholes that might "relock" public domain works.)
So if she's mentally ill there's a 10% chance it isn't highly coincidental? Not the most encouraging numbers.
...perhaps you should allow the dead to rest instead of furthering a tin-foil hat craze...
I don't see how questioning the fact she actually killed herself can be considered overly critical of the dead. Quite the opposite. I hope (and assume) the police investigated things very closely in this case.
You can copyright the specification but not the format (That would have to be patented). The specification is just "some document" when you get down to it... Obviously a "web document" can be copied to other mediums, assuming you don't get sued or go to jail for it.
As to making "XML Extreme", I don't see what would stop someone doing it other than the fact it's a self-defeating notion. Obviously, the "XML Extreme" specification would have to reference, rather than modify or copy, the relevant portions of the XML specification. It may even have to be called something other than "XML Extreme" (say "EML"), but that's a trademark issue, nothing to do with copyright.
In fact... this whole "openness" Microsoft is granting for their.doc format sounds like a load of BS anyways. There's absolutely nothing (possibly Barring the DMCA, and a claim of "copy-protection") that makes it illegal to read a format even if it is patented. The only way to stop alternate reader implementations would be to patent the algorithm used for reading. This hardly seems possible in the case of XML *.doc formats, so it seems likely what Microsoft is "granting" in limited situations and out of the kindness of their heart, they don't have any cliam to in the first place.
Note: WRITING patented formats is a whole different ball of wax, but of course Microsoft isn't offering that as part of their grant.
And finally a disclaimer: If you you believe in the "Yankee Doodle License", that is you believe licensors can require licensees to spend their lives upside down in their underwear singing yankee doodle dandy in order to be able to use software they've legally purchesed, then you're going to disagree about the vaporious nature of Microsoft's exclusive rights in this matter. Instead, as producer, you'll consider them god-like in their legal ability to control users.
Apple is under no obligation to protect the value of the item for resale
DRM is not natural. It is an agent specifically designed to further the agenda of a particular producer in a particular market segment inside of someone else's computer. Further, that agent is legally protected from being modified, tampered with or even fixed if it is broken. If that agent causes damage or loss (like the lowering of resale value) shouldn't the party who's behalf it is acting on be held accountable?
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Agreed on some matters, but as software and other digital goods become more a part of everyday life, this won't always be an option, especially as the DMCA begins doing real damage to interoperability. (Imagine trying to avoid using Word as a secretary in 1999. Imagine trying to get your kids not to want "pop" music just because it contains DRM.)
But just because you don't like the way things are run doesn't give you a license to steal music.
Making use of a product you purchased legally without asking permission is not stealing. Sharing with your 3 closest friends is not stealing. Sharing with your 1000 closest friends is not stealing. Even infringing copyright for financial gain is not stealing (though it does divert money so is the closest).
So which one of those 4 are you complaining about when you invoke the term "stealing"? And just why is it so important that it be "technologically impossible" for end-users to copy protected works without tight supervision? I can go out and buy a crow-bar without 24-hour surveillance making sure I don't brain someone. Is protecting copyright that much more important than protecting human life?
1) First sale: You agree it's usefulness is diminished by DRM.
2) Fair use: You are incorrect, DRM can (but doesn't in all cases) make it difficult or impossible to record an excerpt. Macrovision, for example, makes it more difficult to record analog video from certain devices.
3) Archival: An archive/backup is useless unless it can function as a replacement for the original. In many cases (like playstation games) this is not possible, so the usefulness is once again degraded or destroyed.
4) Reverse Engineering: DRM is the only thing that cannot be reverse engineered under the DMCA, so everywhere DRM exists, or is claimed to exist, is a decrease in the usefulness of reverse engineering. Since reverse engineering is (currently) a requirement to restore usefulness to all of the other rights, the DMCA becomes central rather than a seperate matter.
Note: I really don't have much problem with the DRM pre-DMCA, but post DMCA it becomes nasty in almost all cases. (Perhaps if there were an openly specified DRM which allowed open source implementations it wouldn't be nasty, but I've yet to see this and it doesn't appear possible.)
I've made this point several times, but it continually seems to be missed so let me try one more time: The rights you have regarding copyrighted works are, one, limited, and two, only protect you from legal action by the copyright holders.
You forgot three: "The only reason for a consumer to pay a producer of a work." If no rights are granted by forking over cold hard cash, why bother? You can argue till you're blue in the face that consumers don't have the "right" to do what they do in practice on a daily basis, but in common law (the original source of each of these exceptions) reasonable everyday actions become the law.
Neither the record companies nor the vendors (Apple, Napster, etc.) have any obligation to make it easy or possible for you to exercise those rights.
Yes, I don't see why I'd expect a corporation to exercise duty, responsibility or conscience in their interaction with users. That'd be just silly.
Note: Don't get me wrong, I'm not Apple bashing here, iTunes actually scores pretty well on this scale. I don't seem them sueing Jon or his users (yet), it isn't too hard to make excerpts, archival is fairly easy (well, yet to be seen for the long-haul, but it looks promising). 3 out of 4 isn't nearly as bad as it could be. Of course, violation of first sale alone can be enough to sour the whole deal... (And did for booksellers in the courts at the turn of the century.)
There are a couple different ways of looking at certain copyright statutes.
In practice, even going as far as making an "illegal" copy of a work and giving it to grandma to use, while keeping your own copy isn't going to get you into trouble in any half-way sane court. Obviously, if grandma downloads it off your website, which appears to provide access to all comers, that's an entirely different matter.
At the very least, the betamax case would indicate that a certain amount of "bootleg" copying is expected to go on in a more or less "grey area".
So a couple reasons why archival is pertinent here:
1) Removing the right to back up software is certainly a consumer loss. (Nothing says you can't use the same copy protection on music as on software...)
2) Magically turning all the grey area black for the "videocassette replacement" is also a loss to consumers.
3) Savvy consumers might ask: "If archival is allowed for software, why not for other intangible/digital works as well?"
4) "copying" is not nearly as cut and dried as the **AA's would have us believe. In order to make use of a DVD or CD it is necessary to make copies of portions of the data on those media. It was the very line of argument that device manufacturers didn't have the right to make these partial copies on behalf of consumers that led to the DMCA as we know it today. From my way of thinking, if you buy something you have a right to use it. Otherwise why would you have purchased it in the first place? If that idea gets lost, why should I pay for any copyrighted work ever again? (If I'm going to get sued for buying it and using, and I'm going to get sued for using it without buying it, why bother spending the money?)
Ya, consoles are definitely interesting. I'm still not sure they go half as far as Palladium will be going however. At core an X-Box is still just a glorified PC. Contrast that with a CPU supporting hard encryption and containing a private key known only by your hardware vendor and OS manufacturer. (And not by you...)
Now, I'm not saying hardware will make hard DRM a fact of life, just that there's a whole bag of tricks that haven't seen the light of day yet.
Slashdot Mirror
The "users should have to learn" mentality is what keeps computers complicated and difficult to use.
Actually, my opinion is and always has been that assuming users are stupid and incapable of learning the most basic idioms is the real problem with computing. I mean, if we can't even expect to teach people what a "directory tree" is and means, how do we expect them to learn to organize information? Sure, google can claim you should "search instead of organize," but the fact remains there are times when searching is useful and times when indexing and organizing are useful. Knowing both is computing 101.
The trick for developers is creating minimal yet powerful knowledge-space for users to occupy and NOT CHANGING IT! (Note: this doesn't mean the back-end doesn't change, just that the controls remain familiar... and every change is designed specifically to make usage easier, and with an eye toward disruption costs.)
I mean really. The basic distribution model:
1) Download application to known location.
2) Execute application at known location.
Hasn't changed since the very first personal computers, so why is it we even need things like ActiveX? (ie: if it's worth running, it's probably worth the trouble to purposely install...)
Note: For moving around alot or organizations, replace "application" with "appliciation suite".
And food for thought: Why can't I just grab the contents of my "programs" directory and move it to a new machine?
Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.
So there you have it. Every email he got in trouble for *was* fraud because it was disguised. You could look at this as email fraud, much like we have mail fraud. If you think you can win a mail fraud case on first amendment grounds, try breaking into a post-office mail-box sometime, even if it is just to retrieve a letter you "mailed by accident". Or, more to the point, try sending 1000's of unsolicited snail-mailers with an incorrect return address. (And no, not just a P.O. Box, put other people's addresses on them and mail them out using the big blue post-office box.)
I agree. I hate SPAM as much as the next guy but it makes me nervous when non-violent, especially computer related crimes, start having hefty sentences. A good deal of the outcome of trial has to do with previous cases.
There's a lot of pretty nasty white-collar type computer crime you can commit that deserves a lot worse than 9 years in jail. So, the mere fact "computer crime" can get you in trouble, isn't by itself a bad thing, it just shows that computing is maturing (hopefully in good ways).
If a prosecutor in the future can link Joe Spammer and Tom Bittorent user somehow and Joe spammer got 9 years, what do you think Tom's chances are?
Well for starters this is why you should be up in arms over the fact that COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS BEING TURNED INTO A JAILABLE FELONY. Once upon a time this was a civil matter whose merit was hotly debated, and in my opinion it should remain a civil matter. spam endangers a whole communications infrastructure, copyright infringement merely lowers the value of an incentive to create.
As for Tom, her chances should be the same whether she uses a "K0M-PU-T4R" to do her infringing or not.
Good idea. I'll start some pyramid schemes and be sure to pay taxes on my earnings. That way I'm *helping* society.
and be barred from going online for 10-20 years
This is just silly. I'd waaay rather go to jail for 2 years than not be allowed online for the next 2 decades. Sheesh, what's the next punishment going to be? You can't read or write because you committed defamation?
It's a waste of resources to lock someone like this up.
I disagree, this is exactly the kind of person that should be locked up. He's damages society and is unrepentant about it. He belongs behind bars. Of course, I also agree with ~20 years for rape and 40 years to death for murder, but the fact one part of a system is broken doesn't mean you break another in hopes of fixing it.
I disagree with this. WalMart is a multi-billion dollar corporation who money gives them the ability to abuse the public postal service.
Thing is, while paper spam is a minor annoyance, digital spam threatens to make email completely useless for communication. You may get 2-3 commercial mailings a day, which you can track to a given address, and "return to sender" if you so desire, but try running an on-line mailbox which receives 200+ spams a day without a (potentially false-positive) spam filter.
Basically, it's one thing if Walmart sends this stuff out unsolicited, it's quite another if they misrepresent themselves and try to "hack" the snail-mail system. (This is called fraud and mail tampering and will land you in jail quicker than you can say: "I want my lawyer!")
Sure, online the rules are a bit different (opt-in or opt-out requirements and no misrepresentation of who the sender is etc) but the benefits are different too (zero cost per message sent).
That said. I think 2 years would be plenty to send a message in this case. 9 *does* seem a bit excessive for the first offender ever convicted. (I mean, if he'd committed murder would he even get put away for 9 years? Of course, in our justice system a 9 year sentence, would probably result in more like 2 actually getting served.)
You want an ISP who actually pays attention to your problems and quality issues? Pay money for it...
Not an option for me (and many others). If you're on cable in a comcast area, it's their service or no service. Believe me if I could go DSL and get a decent ISP I would. I'm "just over 3 cable miles" according to my local phone company and therefore not eligible for DSL, even though I had it at about 384k bitrate at one time from an ISP that subsequently went under. As for a T1, well the only way I could afford that is if I *became* an ISP.
As to convincing those who can make a choice... Ya, it's certainly a worthwhile endeavor, but convincing those who've never had a problem to pay more for a small ISP versus an incombent can be tough. (Of course, comcast users certainly aren't going to be in your "no problems" camp. I get multiple outages every day, and terrible packet loss at times. Several other folks I know with comcast have the same issues, particularly gamers.)
Hmm... Ya. Cause it's so friggin hard to set up a yahoo/google/hotmail etc email account and they are all soooo notorius for blocking based on RBL's.
Course... I guess I'm the real moran for even bothering to reply to this kind of AC troll.
The scenario plays out like this; I try to send an email to a client, only to be informed by their ISPs email server that my IP is blocked by some blocklist or other.
Hmm... Maybe you need to get an ISP that does a better job of policing thier IP block so that this doesn't keep happening to you.
Or, given the lack of broadband choices in some places (comcast for me) perhaps we all need to start complaining more about the fact we can no longer find or get access to quality ISP's. (Not that I'd touch my ISP's emial service with a 10-foot pole mind you...)
it's rarely those who decide to use the lists that are affected by the outcome
Come again? Sounds like your customer (who chose to use the RBL, at least indirectly by choosing an ISP and deciding to use their email service) was quite affected by not receiving your emails. As to not blaming the end-user for the choice in ISP and email service... If you buy a Pinto, you get what you pay for. Same goes for AOL or comcast.
Yeah.. try that one on your boss.. "Sorry, you didn't get that extremely important email...
What?? It was *extremely important* and you didn't:
a) Walk over to h[is/er] office to see if [s]he got it.
b) Give h[im/er] a phone call to see if [s]he got it.
Hmm... Well, I suppose you could feign ignorance if you're not involved in technology, but if you're waging an SBL-enabled war on SPAM you should know email is no more reliable than the post-office (and probably less).
Of course, I work on fault-tolerant 24x7 systems which could cause loss of life and limb due to downtime, so I may have a different notion of "extremely important" than most folks...
The client is an idiot for making their business dependent on the reliability of public data networks and SMTP
...
Agreed.
they can afford to invest in hardware,
I think redundant hardware goes a bit far. Any half-way sharp business should be able to invest in a single highly-redudant and effective IP network and use that for all communications. (Or maybe 2 networks in extreme cases...) Creating seperate networks for each type of data would be ludicrously expensive, and a huge step backwards in terms of technology use.
In this day and age, even custom software shouldn't be necessary. A simple encrypted RSS feed would be far more reliable than email for delivering this kind of information...
It's 2 megs flash and 8 megs RAM.
Also, you're going to have to power it with something... (batteries not included)
It's not the 3/4 of errors it catches which are a problem. It's the 10% of correct content it chokes on.
...trying to sound authoritative and informed.
Wow, I must have really missed the mark. I was trying to sound disgusted.
Which guy?
He's also never tried to figure out a problem when all the user can tell you is, "It won't work, I don't know what happened,"
At least the user is being honest. Learn to ask the question: "*what* isn't working.", and learn to be nice about it. (Go ahead and strangle the luser in your head if you need to... But even the BOFH doesn't generally resort to impoliteness.)
So, if the computer knows what the problem is well enough to output an error message, is it too much to expect it to log this information somewhere that an appropriately knowledgeable party can find it later on? Designing systems without this kind of diagnostic facility (and so many other flaws in the modern wintel architecture) seems like an even bigger problem than user ignorance.
I have to disagree--I think that making the grammar checker more intelligent is a very important part of the program.
...?
Good point. That's why if you're going to open your mouth to criticize, the least you can do is have some improvements to offer. It's easy to find things that don't work, show us how to do it better.
What was that old saying? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach,
Wasn't this guy *also* a professor? <shakes head>
Would you give credit to your arch-enemy?
No. That's why I wouldn't use their stuff.
To answer no and then use their stuff anyways? In this day and age? It's just plain, without a doubt, stupid. There's no question whether you'll get caught.
Then again as a self-interested web developer hired by SCO to put up these documents, and caring nothing about the company whatsoever, I suppose it'd make a sick sort of sense to do this...
Copyright infringement is not theft.
Ya, and plagiarism is not copyright infringement. Heck in the US, plagiarism isn't even illegal.
In this case, plagiarism is obvious, infringement would take a court to decide. (It isn't clear whether scans of documents can be copyrighted at this time... They represent effort, but not necessarily creativity. Further, some courts are starting to be careful about allowing loopholes that might "relock" public domain works.)
I don't see how questioning the fact she actually killed herself can be considered overly critical of the dead. Quite the opposite. I hope (and assume) the police investigated things very closely in this case.
You can copyright the specification but not the format (That would have to be patented). The specification is just "some document" when you get down to it... Obviously a "web document" can be copied to other mediums, assuming you don't get sued or go to jail for it.
.doc format sounds like a load of BS anyways. There's absolutely nothing (possibly Barring the DMCA, and a claim of "copy-protection") that makes it illegal to read a format even if it is patented. The only way to stop alternate reader implementations would be to patent the algorithm used for reading. This hardly seems possible in the case of XML *.doc formats, so it seems likely what Microsoft is "granting" in limited situations and out of the kindness of their heart, they don't have any cliam to in the first place.
As to making "XML Extreme", I don't see what would stop someone doing it other than the fact it's a self-defeating notion. Obviously, the "XML Extreme" specification would have to reference, rather than modify or copy, the relevant portions of the XML specification. It may even have to be called something other than "XML Extreme" (say "EML"), but that's a trademark issue, nothing to do with copyright.
In fact... this whole "openness" Microsoft is granting for their
Note: WRITING patented formats is a whole different ball of wax, but of course Microsoft isn't offering that as part of their grant.
And finally a disclaimer: If you you believe in the "Yankee Doodle License", that is you believe licensors can require licensees to spend their lives upside down in their underwear singing yankee doodle dandy in order to be able to use software they've legally purchesed, then you're going to disagree about the vaporious nature of Microsoft's exclusive rights in this matter. Instead, as producer, you'll consider them god-like in their legal ability to control users.
This is a danger, but would require Microsoft to convince a court that their word documents contained copy-protection that was being cirvumvented.
In any sane court this would be a hard sell, which is what worries me...
Apple is under no obligation to protect the value of the item for resale
DRM is not natural. It is an agent specifically designed to further the agenda of a particular producer in a particular market segment inside of someone else's computer. Further, that agent is legally protected from being modified, tampered with or even fixed if it is broken. If that agent causes damage or loss (like the lowering of resale value) shouldn't the party who's behalf it is acting on be held accountable?
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Agreed on some matters, but as software and other digital goods become more a part of everyday life, this won't always be an option, especially as the DMCA begins doing real damage to interoperability. (Imagine trying to avoid using Word as a secretary in 1999. Imagine trying to get your kids not to want "pop" music just because it contains DRM.)
But just because you don't like the way things are run doesn't give you a license to steal music.
Making use of a product you purchased legally without asking permission is not stealing. Sharing with your 3 closest friends is not stealing. Sharing with your 1000 closest friends is not stealing. Even infringing copyright for financial gain is not stealing (though it does divert money so is the closest).
So which one of those 4 are you complaining about when you invoke the term "stealing"? And just why is it so important that it be "technologically impossible" for end-users to copy protected works without tight supervision? I can go out and buy a crow-bar without 24-hour surveillance making sure I don't brain someone. Is protecting copyright that much more important than protecting human life?
Once again:
1) First sale: You agree it's usefulness is diminished by DRM.
2) Fair use: You are incorrect, DRM can (but doesn't in all cases) make it difficult or impossible to record an excerpt. Macrovision, for example, makes it more difficult to record analog video from certain devices.
3) Archival: An archive/backup is useless unless it can function as a replacement for the original. In many cases (like playstation games) this is not possible, so the usefulness is once again degraded or destroyed.
4) Reverse Engineering: DRM is the only thing that cannot be reverse engineered under the DMCA, so everywhere DRM exists, or is claimed to exist, is a decrease in the usefulness of reverse engineering. Since reverse engineering is (currently) a requirement to restore usefulness to all of the other rights, the DMCA becomes central rather than a seperate matter.
Note: I really don't have much problem with the DRM pre-DMCA, but post DMCA it becomes nasty in almost all cases. (Perhaps if there were an openly specified DRM which allowed open source implementations it wouldn't be nasty, but I've yet to see this and it doesn't appear possible.)
I've made this point several times, but it continually seems to be missed so let me try one more time: The rights you have regarding copyrighted works are, one, limited, and two, only protect you from legal action by the copyright holders.
You forgot three: "The only reason for a consumer to pay a producer of a work." If no rights are granted by forking over cold hard cash, why bother? You can argue till you're blue in the face that consumers don't have the "right" to do what they do in practice on a daily basis, but in common law (the original source of each of these exceptions) reasonable everyday actions become the law.
Neither the record companies nor the vendors (Apple, Napster, etc.) have any obligation to make it easy or possible for you to exercise those rights.
Yes, I don't see why I'd expect a corporation to exercise duty, responsibility or conscience in their interaction with users. That'd be just silly.
Note: Don't get me wrong, I'm not Apple bashing here, iTunes actually scores pretty well on this scale. I don't seem them sueing Jon or his users (yet), it isn't too hard to make excerpts, archival is fairly easy (well, yet to be seen for the long-haul, but it looks promising). 3 out of 4 isn't nearly as bad as it could be. Of course, violation of first sale alone can be enough to sour the whole deal... (And did for booksellers in the courts at the turn of the century.)
There are a couple different ways of looking at certain copyright statutes.
In practice, even going as far as making an "illegal" copy of a work and giving it to grandma to use, while keeping your own copy isn't going to get you into trouble in any half-way sane court. Obviously, if grandma downloads it off your website, which appears to provide access to all comers, that's an entirely different matter.
At the very least, the betamax case would indicate that a certain amount of "bootleg" copying is expected to go on in a more or less "grey area".
So a couple reasons why archival is pertinent here:
1) Removing the right to back up software is certainly a consumer loss. (Nothing says you can't use the same copy protection on music as on software...)
2) Magically turning all the grey area black for the "videocassette replacement" is also a loss to consumers.
3) Savvy consumers might ask: "If archival is allowed for software, why not for other intangible/digital works as well?"
4) "copying" is not nearly as cut and dried as the **AA's would have us believe. In order to make use of a DVD or CD it is necessary to make copies of portions of the data on those media. It was the very line of argument that device manufacturers didn't have the right to make these partial copies on behalf of consumers that led to the DMCA as we know it today. From my way of thinking, if you buy something you have a right to use it. Otherwise why would you have purchased it in the first place? If that idea gets lost, why should I pay for any copyrighted work ever again? (If I'm going to get sued for buying it and using, and I'm going to get sued for using it without buying it, why bother spending the money?)
Ya, consoles are definitely interesting. I'm still not sure they go half as far as Palladium will be going however. At core an X-Box is still just a glorified PC. Contrast that with a CPU supporting hard encryption and containing a private key known only by your hardware vendor and OS manufacturer. (And not by you...)
Now, I'm not saying hardware will make hard DRM a fact of life, just that there's a whole bag of tricks that haven't seen the light of day yet.