Just like stopping people from breaking into homes and walking away with VCR's or stopping people from hiring hookers, or buying drugs, or jaywalking...
It requires watching for infringement and punishing that infringement when it occurs. Anything less would be uncivilized.
If you're worried about the feds knocking your door down for piracy, you probably won't be advertising your warez FTP server on IRC channels... Further, if you're worried about getting hit with a $2000 fine, you probably won't be surfing usenet for the latest game releases...
It means that the DVD-CCA must change their rules to allow for fair use, or else it *might* be legal for people to write unauthorized DVD players. Of course how many volunteer porgrammers are going to write something on the chance that it *might* be legal, and they *might not* have to go to jail (like Mr. Sklyarov) for writing it?
Bottom line. The DMCA creates a patent like system of control over copy protection mechanisms that is totally unbalanced. From what I can tell this BALANCE act won't go anywhere near actually fixing the root cause of the problem. Basically the DMCA is a bad law that throws out 200 years of copyright history in this country alone. It needs a lot more than mere tweaking...
What am I going to do? I've done all the talking and writing I can stand, I'm going to continue to be a good citizen and exercise my freedom to think until someone tries to take it away.
Well... The people who are spose to control access don't always have it to give. Going through something other than the front door has been rare to say the least.
It's not that I sit around thinking about ways of breaking systems and then ignore those vulnerabilities... Quite the opposite, I spend a fair amount of time thinking up scenarios and then addressing them. Howver, since the customer's pay for my time, I only address concerns they are interested in pursuing. Sure I can spin better security, and I do, but that doesn't always put the ball in the pocket.
The larger issue is, every time I've legitimately needed into a system there has been a way. With or without back-doors, the developers who write a system are often the best equiped to get in.
I concur that if the intent was to purposely make the system more accessible there's a problem. I just didn't feel the article made the particulars clear enough that I can simply pass judgement without knowing the facts... Basically it would be interesting to hear the other side of the story.
How many software applications have you written and delivered to a customer for actual money?
Assuming the number is more than one. Given the slightest access to the box the app is hosted on (read ability to update the software), how many do you really think you'd have trouble getting access to if you really wanted it? By and large I could get into waay more systems than I want to think about without even really trying that hard.
So, was this an unethical H4X0R putting in a back door, a shoddy design and development process, or just a bright kid that knows how to take advantage of the knowledge he(she?) has? We'll probably never know.
If these are going to include non-trivial information gathering and reporting in every object in the system, they are going to cause this "scattered code" no matter what kind of refactoring you use.
it's a great tool until you get some inexperienced programmer who just knows how to program functionally, and thus doesn't use the advantages of aspect oriented programming
I suppose this is in contrast to an AOP or OOP programmer who can't write procedural code to save their lives? (And hence write applications with unpredictable behavior and terrible performance)
Every programmer needs a certain level of knowledge and expertise. Some do a better job than others at making sure they aquire this before "doing something stupid". Just as some working environments are more conducive than others to being able to avoid "doing something stupid". It's the lack of documentation and proper training as often as individual programmers that are at fault in these situations. All programmers in critical roles need to realize their training and leadership responsibilities as well as their technical ones...
It would sure be nice if the bigotry could be left out of these discussions. Becoming an excellent functional, AOP, or OOP programmer even in lack of other skills is a non-trivial task. Excellence in any area is valuable, just as a strong foundation in all areas is important.
This is a difference that can only be determined by going in and looking at the code that *actually controls your application*. Wherever it may reside.
Especially in a world of runtime AOP, it's not possible for you to really have a reliable answer.
Does this also imply that in certain situations it is not possible to have reliable behaviour?
I guess I'm just a cynic when it comes to *good* practices...
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -Lord Dark Helmet.
info, the program, is just one (default) info file viewer.
Yes, but it isn't the tool that sucks, it's the whole idea behind it. Basically that of some self-appointed alpha geek deciding to replace a perfectly adequate and effective documentation tool (and heirarchy) just because they can.
Nerd ego is probably one of the major reasons I'm not running Linux right now... I gave up on the 26th "possible error in configuration" issue during my last Debian install (Woody) and haven't run Linux seriously since.
Because our software products are the sum total of what we have created, and selling them to customers for dollars is how we make our living. The model has worked effectively for 20 years in this company. There's also the fact we work on sensitive systems, and our customers might not feel safe knowing "anyone" had access to the source for their systems... By and large our customers can get access to source when and if they really want or need it, but many of the important algorithms are non-obvious and well hidden. I actually spend much of my time working on re-use of 3rdparty code, and getting more of our basic tools to be shared or shareable with the outside world, but it's a very slow process.
A phrase springs to mind: "I'm only fair minded before and after combat." Basically as a creator of IP I will do whatever I can to secure my livilyhood doing what I love (and presumably am good at). However, as I look at the larger picture I often think some major changes are in order. Some of these may not even be good for my livelihood, but I trust myself enough to know that I can and will adapt to whatever climate is created. I have also seen in the battle of business that some producers will reach far beyond what is good for anyone in attempting to establish an income. "Too much profit" is not in a business person's vocabulary.
The problem isn't intellectual property per se. It's what that term has come to mean and how it is applied.
If you're speaking of a large climate change in IP law that has occured other than the DMCA (which is less than 5 years old), I'm not sure what you mean. EULA's are still invalid in this country. Even copy protection measures have very little real "teeth" in them. The DMCA stops "above board" distribution of circumvention measures, and provides take-down provisions, but those do very little as far as actually stemming the free flow of information on the internet. The only real possibilties for control in the DMCA seem to stem from hardware-solutions, which Microsoft is persuing.
Basically it's a two-pronged crises. On one hand, copyright is threatened because anyone with an internet connection can share anything they want with 40,000 of their closest friends. On the other, copyright is threatened because businesses are abusing it as a tool for censorship in order to obtain political and economic leverage. There are obvious solutions to both of these very seperate problems, unfortuneatly regulators seem to think one will outweigh the other. It's like adding sugar then salt to balance each other out, but add too much of both and the pie will still be ruined.
The US existed for a number of years without any intellectual property law. Many came here to escape it.
Before the founding of the USA, we may not have had IP laws in the americas, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist at all. We were really more a pocket of infringement in the larger picture. Kind of like internet file sharing and warez today.
As to Jefferson changing his mind, I think he finally decided copyright could be an important and poweful balance of interests, but I hardly believe he'd be happy with the version pushed by large corporations and the US government today.
I am no fan of the DMCA, but the current economic slump is due to the outrageous excesses of the late 90's, the dot-com boom and Y2K spending.
That and associated foolishness is certainly a large part of it, but keep in mind the rules of conduct were changing throughout the dot com boom. The DMCA was passed in 1998, came into partial effect in 2000, and full effect in 2002. People had been wasting money on "silly computer and internet things" for years, yet it was less than a year after the DMCA went into full effect that we see a major downturn in the market. To simply assume the two are unrelated seems foolish at this point. Watching how and where the market recovers will (hopefully) shed great light on the effects of the DMCA on the market.
Basically, I see copyright as this delicate balance where investment, profits and consumer freedom were all exploding during the dot-com boom. Who knows what tipping the IP balance with the DMCA may have done to the whole process. Count me as one nerd who spent many days reading and worrying about cases at law instead of inventing new and fascinating dohickeys.
I love open source, and contribute to open source, but face it, if you want rapid development, you need either highly motivated developers (which there is not an endless supply of), or you need to pay people.
I fully agree. Open source is one avenue of development, but that doesn't make professional development any less important. Developers need to eat too, and if they can eat by doing what they love and are good at, so much the better.
The problem I see in much of these protectionist ideas is that somewhere between selling one copy of a piece of software used by millions of people and charging rent for every single access to a piece of software used by millions of people there is a happy middle ground. Creating new copyright and other IP law should be about choosing the point where everyone benefits the most, not the point that maximizes control for producers, or multiple points where certain individual corporations can maximize their profits over the next term.
So, should Unreal be open source? Probably not, but it may also be a bad investment at 10 million dollars. Somewhere between "10 million" and "nights while working at Mickey D's" there is a useful compromise...
Bottom line: Where intellectual property is a delicate balance between the interests of producer and consumer I'm all for it. Where intellectual property becomes a kudgel for controlling market entry I'd rather see it abolished entirely. That's coming from someone who currently makes their living creating works of IP. If it can't be done right, toss the baby out with the bathwater because he can and will grow up to be a monster no one can live with.
You're experience is limited. You would perhaps have a different point of view if your experience was with companies who deal in trade secrets rather than patents and copyrights.
Actually, I program for a small company with no legal team to speak of. We still use a lot of trade secret practices to keep our products safe since we can't be sure of winning a major copyright lawsuit. Heck, even Microsoft is small enough they seem to think trade secret is still important.
Such was the world *before* the invention of intellectual property. And it sucked.
This may be another problem with terms, or it may be a deeper misunderstanding. Last I checked copyright and patent law predate the government of the country I live and work in (USA). Ya, life certainly sucked in large part before Gutenberg invented the printing press, but I don't think it had much to do with intellectual property law.
The true limiter of my experience, and seemingly everyone else's, is anything that would show what kind of results could be expected under a system where intellectual property law truly didn't exist. The warez scene and internet file sharing might give some glimpses, but the pie as a whole remains very uncertain. We all have our guesses, but they are merely guesses.
It gives you a *right* to possession, rather than merely removing legal restrictions to possession.
The GPL also mentions fees for source code and similar items. In essence the right is not to the source itself, but to a reasonably cheap and effective method of obtaining source. I have to admit to some confusion in use of the term "right". This "right to source" is at best a synthetic right and not on the same playing field with inalienable rights. I'd taken your earlier statement about rights to imply the latter.
I think you've ignored my larger point, which is that under IP laws there are many restrictions both inherent and in practice that limit the ability to obtain source code. Stallman himself has mentioned on many occasions that he feels without those restrictions, this synthetic right to source created by the GPL would not be necessary. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with his thoughts on the matter.
I draw most of my experience of what "life without IP" would be like from watching file sharing on the internet and the warez scene. No where in either of those do I see GPL code being distributed in modified form without source code... What would be the point? (aside from distributing the odd virus or trojan horse)
C) People who use computers regularly share nearly everything they use because they can, and it's convenient. Many corporations writing software more closely guard trade-secret information and create more copy protection schemes 99% of which are either cracked and ignored or fail because they are inconvenient. Many corporations and movie studios go out of business because they can't live with the idea of an unpayed for line of code executing, or an unpaid for movie being watched. Others rise up and succeed because they focus on what is important, making use of new technology (including sharing) to meet customer wants and needs, rather than over-inflating their bottom line with outdated laws.
Incidentally, scenerio C seems to be exactly what was happening on the internet prior to the passing of the DMCA and similar moves by congress. Is the economic crash we are now suffering merely a coincidence? Perhaps it is also the fallout of some really heinous intellectual property legislation?
Even though if there were no intellectual property code could not be copyrighted it could still be treated as a trade secret.
Yes, but if you throw out intellectual property entirely, you also throw out trade secret law.
Combine this with the facts:
- binary only distributions can be done freely
- all copyright protection schemes are inherently crackable if the customer is not "trustable"
- many developers work on a code-base yet it only takes one to spill a trade secret. You're left with a seriously uphill battle for anyone trying to proprietize anything.
It ain't GPL, but there are certainly similarities...
I think you must have an inverted boolean somewhere in your logic.
is that with no concept of intellectual property you would have *no* rights to obtain source code
Actually, without the concept of intellectual property you would have nothing standing in the way of your rights to obtain source code. Perhaps, you might not have the "ability" to obtain source code, since there would be nothing *forcing* distributors to make source available. Of course, there would also be nothing *stopping* distributors from making source available. This makes it seem likely any openly published source would remain available, but not all source would be published openly. Keep in mind, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to embrace and extend something that can't be controlled for profit.
The only thing that would kill the GPL is if copyright were restricted to allow for charge distribution with no alternative licensing. Even if the current End User License insanity were thrown out, this doesn't seem very likely. The precedent in copyright the GPL uses, which is to only put requirements on redistribution, was laid down long ago.
One could of course argue that Popper's observation is but another kind of truth
That it is me boyo, deduction (which Poper used to come to his conclusions about science and theories) is a whole different way of reasoning.
As an example: 2 + 2 = 4, can be arrived at by deduction completely apart from any external stimulus. My desk is made of wood, can only be arrived at by induction, or at least by some method relying on input to the senses.
My personal thoughts are that yes, Poper's ideas are just another form of "truth" whatever that means, but that deduction is far more fundamental than induction...
Nice to know someone else feels how I do... Of course, I bailed on college to get a job in the "real world" rather than going to graduate school, guess I was tired of waiting too.
Course, life in the USA is just plain soft and easy. Being born poor in Beijing or Baghdad would be a *real* challenge.
Na, look at their track record. Given the reigns they'd decide to lock up anything anti-microsoft or dangerous to their profits and not a lot else. I believe that's why exercising this kind of control is often called "censorship".
Sorry, you don't own anything anymore, you license it.
Wow, you're most likely saying that in sarcasm mode, but be very careful. Too many people already think that is so, and that it is OK with them. The fact of the matter is, I own a whole lot of things, especially things I've purchased. Don't make me prove it.
the "in-the-know" crowd
Heh, my wife likes to call that the "jumping to conclusion" crowd. She says thats how i get my exercise.
they will fork over their cash because as far as they are concerned, it isn't a big deal
Well ya, as long as all that EULA paperwork is just meaningless toilet wipe (which it currently is) why should they care? You just watch a "passive consumer" bring home a brand new Britney Spears CD that they can't play on their favorite CD player.
The DMCA truly is a bad law, and should be repealed. It doesn't enforce EULA's but it does enforce honerous copy protection measures, and creates an eternal sort of patent like protection, without any meaningful checks or balances. Anything nasty Microsoft manages to do with Palladium will just underscore how bad the DMCA is.
it's not Microsoft's technology that I fear. I live and work with it every day. I understand it (and them) more every day because of it. Maybe I don't spread around some of the information I can aquire by delving deeply into their software, but rest assured 50,000 of my closest friends and I know many of those secrets and wouldn't hesitate to share them if and when it became necessary, consequences be damned.
The greatest threat from Palladium (and other technologies under the DMCA) will come from subtility. If the mechanisms can be put in place while no one is watching, then the lockdown will be fast and furious.
Our responsibilities as the technically literate are to make sure that viable alternatives to foolish schemes remain viable. They include not letting one company crush the spirit and bottle the power of an industry. They also include making sure the government doesn't tie our hands so far behind our backs that we can't tie our own digital shoes.
Don't like Palladium? Use something else. Nothing else exists? Build (or help build) an alternative. Make the alternative better than the original and... Well you get the idea.
In the case of software, you didn't buy anything except the right to use something with a whole lota strings attached.
Heh, I'd like to see you tell that to a judge when I bring the vendor into court for misleading me. Where were the giant warning labels on the box telling about the strings. Further, if it's an actual contract, where was I given a chance to read it *before* being bound to it?!!
You're flat wrong about what happens in a store. In fact, the basic rules of buying and selling have remained fairly consistent throughout history and predate this country by well over 2000 years. As for abstract goods, ever since books (let alone phonorecords) came about people have been "buying" and "owning" their very own copies of works that have very little that is physical about them. Just because what I "bought" is abstract, doesn't mean I don't own it. If I don't actually *own* something after a transaction, then the very word "buy" is misleading.
The fact EULA's are not enforced is the only reason people don't raise a giant stink about them. Every time someone attempts to enforce an EULA you can see the smelliness begin to rise.
I was making the point that it's not in Sony/Dell/HP/Compaq/Toshiba/Fujitsu's interests to bother stocking non-Windows laptops.
No kidding! I wouldn't want to tangle with Microsoft's legal department either!!
As to the debate about people not wanting "naked" or "linux" PC's... There's enough that want them to make it worth the while, just look at the fancy shmancy "setup your own computer" website Dell has. How hard do you think it would be to slip in an option for "no windows thank you" under operating system? (they used to list NT and 2k under something just like that for an extra $100 or some such)
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Just like stopping people from breaking into homes and walking away with VCR's or stopping people from hiring hookers, or buying drugs, or jaywalking...
It requires watching for infringement and punishing that infringement when it occurs. Anything less would be uncivilized.
If you're worried about the feds knocking your door down for piracy, you probably won't be advertising your warez FTP server on IRC channels... Further, if you're worried about getting hit with a $2000 fine, you probably won't be surfing usenet for the latest game releases...
It means that the DVD-CCA must change their rules to allow for fair use, or else it *might* be legal for people to write unauthorized DVD players. Of course how many volunteer porgrammers are going to write something on the chance that it *might* be legal, and they *might not* have to go to jail (like Mr. Sklyarov) for writing it?
Bottom line. The DMCA creates a patent like system of control over copy protection mechanisms that is totally unbalanced. From what I can tell this BALANCE act won't go anywhere near actually fixing the root cause of the problem. Basically the DMCA is a bad law that throws out 200 years of copyright history in this country alone. It needs a lot more than mere tweaking...
What am I going to do? I've done all the talking and writing I can stand, I'm going to continue to be a good citizen and exercise my freedom to think until someone tries to take it away.
Well... The people who are spose to control access don't always have it to give. Going through something other than the front door has been rare to say the least.
It's not that I sit around thinking about ways of breaking systems and then ignore those vulnerabilities... Quite the opposite, I spend a fair amount of time thinking up scenarios and then addressing them. Howver, since the customer's pay for my time, I only address concerns they are interested in pursuing. Sure I can spin better security, and I do, but that doesn't always put the ball in the pocket.
The larger issue is, every time I've legitimately needed into a system there has been a way. With or without back-doors, the developers who write a system are often the best equiped to get in.
At the very least, he's put in a back door
I concur that if the intent was to purposely make the system more accessible there's a problem. I just didn't feel the article made the particulars clear enough that I can simply pass judgement without knowing the facts... Basically it would be interesting to hear the other side of the story.
How many software applications have you written and delivered to a customer for actual money?
Assuming the number is more than one. Given the slightest access to the box the app is hosted on (read ability to update the software), how many do you really think you'd have trouble getting access to if you really wanted it? By and large I could get into waay more systems than I want to think about without even really trying that hard.
So, was this an unethical H4X0R putting in a back door, a shoddy design and development process, or just a bright kid that knows how to take advantage of the knowledge he(she?) has? We'll probably never know.
Ya, tracing and debugging.
If these are going to include non-trivial information gathering and reporting in every object in the system, they are going to cause this "scattered code" no matter what kind of refactoring you use.
it's a great tool until you get some inexperienced programmer who just knows how to program functionally, and thus doesn't use the advantages of aspect oriented programming
I suppose this is in contrast to an AOP or OOP programmer who can't write procedural code to save their lives? (And hence write applications with unpredictable behavior and terrible performance)
Every programmer needs a certain level of knowledge and expertise. Some do a better job than others at making sure they aquire this before "doing something stupid". Just as some working environments are more conducive than others to being able to avoid "doing something stupid". It's the lack of documentation and proper training as often as individual programmers that are at fault in these situations. All programmers in critical roles need to realize their training and leadership responsibilities as well as their technical ones...
It would sure be nice if the bigotry could be left out of these discussions. Becoming an excellent functional, AOP, or OOP programmer even in lack of other skills is a non-trivial task. Excellence in any area is valuable, just as a strong foundation in all areas is important.
This is a difference that can only be determined by going in and looking at the code that *actually controls your application*. Wherever it may reside.
Especially in a world of runtime AOP, it's not possible for you to really have a reliable answer.
Does this also imply that in certain situations it is not possible to have reliable behaviour?
I guess I'm just a cynic when it comes to *good* practices...
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
-Lord Dark Helmet.
info, the program, is just one (default) info file viewer.
Yes, but it isn't the tool that sucks, it's the whole idea behind it. Basically that of some self-appointed alpha geek deciding to replace a perfectly adequate and effective documentation tool (and heirarchy) just because they can.
Nerd ego is probably one of the major reasons I'm not running Linux right now... I gave up on the 26th "possible error in configuration" issue during my last Debian install (Woody) and haven't run Linux seriously since.
C) Allowed back up copies of game discs to be played. Oh wait, this is the same feature that allows piracy isn't it... but it still has a valid use!
Why keep them [our products] "safe" at all?
Because our software products are the sum total of what we have created, and selling them to customers for dollars is how we make our living. The model has worked effectively for 20 years in this company. There's also the fact we work on sensitive systems, and our customers might not feel safe knowing "anyone" had access to the source for their systems... By and large our customers can get access to source when and if they really want or need it, but many of the important algorithms are non-obvious and well hidden. I actually spend much of my time working on re-use of 3rdparty code, and getting more of our basic tools to be shared or shareable with the outside world, but it's a very slow process.
A phrase springs to mind: "I'm only fair minded before and after combat." Basically as a creator of IP I will do whatever I can to secure my livilyhood doing what I love (and presumably am good at). However, as I look at the larger picture I often think some major changes are in order. Some of these may not even be good for my livelihood, but I trust myself enough to know that I can and will adapt to whatever climate is created. I have also seen in the battle of business that some producers will reach far beyond what is good for anyone in attempting to establish an income. "Too much profit" is not in a business person's vocabulary.
The problem isn't intellectual property per se. It's what that term has come to mean and how it is applied.
If you're speaking of a large climate change in IP law that has occured other than the DMCA (which is less than 5 years old), I'm not sure what you mean. EULA's are still invalid in this country. Even copy protection measures have very little real "teeth" in them. The DMCA stops "above board" distribution of circumvention measures, and provides take-down provisions, but those do very little as far as actually stemming the free flow of information on the internet. The only real possibilties for control in the DMCA seem to stem from hardware-solutions, which Microsoft is persuing.
Basically it's a two-pronged crises. On one hand, copyright is threatened because anyone with an internet connection can share anything they want with 40,000 of their closest friends. On the other, copyright is threatened because businesses are abusing it as a tool for censorship in order to obtain political and economic leverage. There are obvious solutions to both of these very seperate problems, unfortuneatly regulators seem to think one will outweigh the other. It's like adding sugar then salt to balance each other out, but add too much of both and the pie will still be ruined.
The US existed for a number of years without any intellectual property law. Many came here to escape it.
Before the founding of the USA, we may not have had IP laws in the americas, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist at all. We were really more a pocket of infringement in the larger picture. Kind of like internet file sharing and warez today.
As to Jefferson changing his mind, I think he finally decided copyright could be an important and poweful balance of interests, but I hardly believe he'd be happy with the version pushed by large corporations and the US government today.
I am no fan of the DMCA, but the current economic slump is due to the outrageous excesses of the late 90's, the dot-com boom and Y2K spending.
That and associated foolishness is certainly a large part of it, but keep in mind the rules of conduct were changing throughout the dot com boom. The DMCA was passed in 1998, came into partial effect in 2000, and full effect in 2002. People had been wasting money on "silly computer and internet things" for years, yet it was less than a year after the DMCA went into full effect that we see a major downturn in the market. To simply assume the two are unrelated seems foolish at this point. Watching how and where the market recovers will (hopefully) shed great light on the effects of the DMCA on the market.
Basically, I see copyright as this delicate balance where investment, profits and consumer freedom were all exploding during the dot-com boom. Who knows what tipping the IP balance with the DMCA may have done to the whole process. Count me as one nerd who spent many days reading and worrying about cases at law instead of inventing new and fascinating dohickeys.
I love open source, and contribute to open source, but face it, if you want rapid development, you need either highly motivated developers (which there is not an endless supply of), or you need to pay people.
I fully agree. Open source is one avenue of development, but that doesn't make professional development any less important. Developers need to eat too, and if they can eat by doing what they love and are good at, so much the better.
The problem I see in much of these protectionist ideas is that somewhere between selling one copy of a piece of software used by millions of people and charging rent for every single access to a piece of software used by millions of people there is a happy middle ground. Creating new copyright and other IP law should be about choosing the point where everyone benefits the most, not the point that maximizes control for producers, or multiple points where certain individual corporations can maximize their profits over the next term.
So, should Unreal be open source? Probably not, but it may also be a bad investment at 10 million dollars. Somewhere between "10 million" and "nights while working at Mickey D's" there is a useful compromise...
Bottom line: Where intellectual property is a delicate balance between the interests of producer and consumer I'm all for it. Where intellectual property becomes a kudgel for controlling market entry I'd rather see it abolished entirely. That's coming from someone who currently makes their living creating works of IP. If it can't be done right, toss the baby out with the bathwater because he can and will grow up to be a monster no one can live with.
You're experience is limited. You would perhaps have a different point of view if your experience was with companies who deal in trade secrets rather than patents and copyrights.
Actually, I program for a small company with no legal team to speak of. We still use a lot of trade secret practices to keep our products safe since we can't be sure of winning a major copyright lawsuit. Heck, even Microsoft is small enough they seem to think trade secret is still important.
Such was the world *before* the invention of intellectual property. And it sucked.
This may be another problem with terms, or it may be a deeper misunderstanding. Last I checked copyright and patent law predate the government of the country I live and work in (USA). Ya, life certainly sucked in large part before Gutenberg invented the printing press, but I don't think it had much to do with intellectual property law.
The true limiter of my experience, and seemingly everyone else's, is anything that would show what kind of results could be expected under a system where intellectual property law truly didn't exist. The warez scene and internet file sharing might give some glimpses, but the pie as a whole remains very uncertain. We all have our guesses, but they are merely guesses.
It gives you a *right* to possession, rather than merely removing legal restrictions to possession.
The GPL also mentions fees for source code and similar items. In essence the right is not to the source itself, but to a reasonably cheap and effective method of obtaining source. I have to admit to some confusion in use of the term "right". This "right to source" is at best a synthetic right and not on the same playing field with inalienable rights. I'd taken your earlier statement about rights to imply the latter.
I think you've ignored my larger point, which is that under IP laws there are many restrictions both inherent and in practice that limit the ability to obtain source code. Stallman himself has mentioned on many occasions that he feels without those restrictions, this synthetic right to source created by the GPL would not be necessary. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with his thoughts on the matter.
I draw most of my experience of what "life without IP" would be like from watching file sharing on the internet and the warez scene. No where in either of those do I see GPL code being distributed in modified form without source code... What would be the point? (aside from distributing the odd virus or trojan horse)
I think you forget a scenario:
C) People who use computers regularly share nearly everything they use because they can, and it's convenient. Many corporations writing software more closely guard trade-secret information and create more copy protection schemes 99% of which are either cracked and ignored or fail because they are inconvenient. Many corporations and movie studios go out of business because they can't live with the idea of an unpayed for line of code executing, or an unpaid for movie being watched. Others rise up and succeed because they focus on what is important, making use of new technology (including sharing) to meet customer wants and needs, rather than over-inflating their bottom line with outdated laws.
Incidentally, scenerio C seems to be exactly what was happening on the internet prior to the passing of the DMCA and similar moves by congress. Is the economic crash we are now suffering merely a coincidence? Perhaps it is also the fallout of some really heinous intellectual property legislation?
Even though if there were no intellectual property code could not be copyrighted it could still be treated as a trade secret.
Yes, but if you throw out intellectual property entirely, you also throw out trade secret law.
Combine this with the facts:
- binary only distributions can be done freely
- all copyright protection schemes are inherently crackable if the customer is not "trustable"
- many developers work on a code-base yet it only takes one to spill a trade secret.
You're left with a seriously uphill battle for anyone trying to proprietize anything.
It ain't GPL, but there are certainly similarities...
I think you must have an inverted boolean somewhere in your logic.
is that with no concept of intellectual property you would have *no* rights to obtain source code
Actually, without the concept of intellectual property you would have nothing standing in the way of your rights to obtain source code. Perhaps, you might not have the "ability" to obtain source code, since there would be nothing *forcing* distributors to make source available. Of course, there would also be nothing *stopping* distributors from making source available. This makes it seem likely any openly published source would remain available, but not all source would be published openly. Keep in mind, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to embrace and extend something that can't be controlled for profit.
The only thing that would kill the GPL is if copyright were restricted to allow for charge distribution with no alternative licensing. Even if the current End User License insanity were thrown out, this doesn't seem very likely. The precedent in copyright the GPL uses, which is to only put requirements on redistribution, was laid down long ago.
One could of course argue that Popper's observation is but another kind of truth
That it is me boyo, deduction (which Poper used to come to his conclusions about science and theories) is a whole different way of reasoning.
As an example:
2 + 2 = 4, can be arrived at by deduction completely apart from any external stimulus.
My desk is made of wood, can only be arrived at by induction, or at least by some method relying on input to the senses.
My personal thoughts are that yes, Poper's ideas are just another form of "truth" whatever that means, but that deduction is far more fundamental than induction...
Nice to know someone else feels how I do... Of course, I bailed on college to get a job in the "real world" rather than going to graduate school, guess I was tired of waiting too.
Course, life in the USA is just plain soft and easy. Being born poor in Beijing or Baghdad would be a *real* challenge.
Na, look at their track record. Given the reigns they'd decide to lock up anything anti-microsoft or dangerous to their profits and not a lot else. I believe that's why exercising this kind of control is often called "censorship".
Sorry, you don't own anything anymore, you license it.
Wow, you're most likely saying that in sarcasm mode, but be very careful. Too many people already think that is so, and that it is OK with them. The fact of the matter is, I own a whole lot of things, especially things I've purchased. Don't make me prove it.
the "in-the-know" crowd
Heh, my wife likes to call that the "jumping to conclusion" crowd. She says thats how i get my exercise.
they will fork over their cash because as far as they are concerned, it isn't a big deal
Well ya, as long as all that EULA paperwork is just meaningless toilet wipe (which it currently is) why should they care? You just watch a "passive consumer" bring home a brand new Britney Spears CD that they can't play on their favorite CD player.
The DMCA truly is a bad law, and should be repealed. It doesn't enforce EULA's but it does enforce honerous copy protection measures, and creates an eternal sort of patent like protection, without any meaningful checks or balances. Anything nasty Microsoft manages to do with Palladium will just underscore how bad the DMCA is.
it's not Microsoft's technology that I fear. I live and work with it every day. I understand it (and them) more every day because of it. Maybe I don't spread around some of the information I can aquire by delving deeply into their software, but rest assured 50,000 of my closest friends and I know many of those secrets and wouldn't hesitate to share them if and when it became necessary, consequences be damned.
The greatest threat from Palladium (and other technologies under the DMCA) will come from subtility. If the mechanisms can be put in place while no one is watching, then the lockdown will be fast and furious.
Our responsibilities as the technically literate are to make sure that viable alternatives to foolish schemes remain viable. They include not letting one company crush the spirit and bottle the power of an industry. They also include making sure the government doesn't tie our hands so far behind our backs that we can't tie our own digital shoes.
Don't like Palladium? Use something else. Nothing else exists? Build (or help build) an alternative. Make the alternative better than the original and... Well you get the idea.
In the case of software, you didn't buy anything except the right to use something with a whole lota strings attached.
Heh, I'd like to see you tell that to a judge when I bring the vendor into court for misleading me. Where were the giant warning labels on the box telling about the strings. Further, if it's an actual contract, where was I given a chance to read it *before* being bound to it?!!
You're flat wrong about what happens in a store. In fact, the basic rules of buying and selling have remained fairly consistent throughout history and predate this country by well over 2000 years. As for abstract goods, ever since books (let alone phonorecords) came about people have been "buying" and "owning" their very own copies of works that have very little that is physical about them. Just because what I "bought" is abstract, doesn't mean I don't own it. If I don't actually *own* something after a transaction, then the very word "buy" is misleading.
The fact EULA's are not enforced is the only reason people don't raise a giant stink about them. Every time someone attempts to enforce an EULA you can see the smelliness begin to rise.
Then use sheet of music. Because music, like software, is a copyrighted good rather than a physical good (at least partially).
Are you saying I can't buy sheet music? That I only "license" sheet music? That's a pretty major sea change from hundreds of years of history.
I was making the point that it's not in Sony/Dell/HP/Compaq/Toshiba/Fujitsu's interests to bother stocking non-Windows laptops.
No kidding! I wouldn't want to tangle with Microsoft's legal department either!!
As to the debate about people not wanting "naked" or "linux" PC's... There's enough that want them to make it worth the while, just look at the fancy shmancy "setup your own computer" website Dell has. How hard do you think it would be to slip in an option for "no windows thank you" under operating system? (they used to list NT and 2k under something just like that for an extra $100 or some such)