This ruling, while unfortunate, might well be the
best possible result at this stage. The damages are large enough so that mp3.com has every incentive to appeal and (hopefully) get as much
as possible reversed. I still think the judge's
initial ruling was as wrongheaded as possible:
my.mp3.com was a service that could only make the record companies money (I can do more with my CDs, therefore I will pay more for them and buy more of them). The only complaint the record companies could possibly have was that they were not making enough money off of my.mp3.com, and that complaint should have been laughed out of court.
At the same time, the damages are
small enough that mp3.com can survive its current
legal troubles no matter what happens (they have about $150 million socked away for legal costs and
Universal, with the largest music collection, would get the bulk of the damages in any case). And, in my opinion, the survival of mp3.com is important because they are one of the more interesting music-on-the-Internet companies. Right now, most of the artists I listen to are on mp3.com and I want mp3.com (and those artists) to grow and prosper.
I don't see how RMS reaches the conclusion that an "unforgived" GPL violation permanently ends your ability to distribute GPLed code. The only support
I could find for that in the GPL in in clause 4:
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the
Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
But a look at clause 6 provides a trivial way out:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the
Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing
compliance by third parties to this License.
i.e. each time someone gives you a new copy of the code, you get a new license. Since your rights under the new license have not been terminated, you are OK. This is where I think the KDE developers got the idea of taking out and restoring the "tainted" code, and I agree it seems absurd and unnecessary (but, OTOH, legal maneuvers often look that way).
I would also add that after years of GPLed code linked to Qt in KDE I haven't heard of any concrete (rather than hypothetical) complaint from any copyright holder that the KDE team hasn't worked out. Why do we have to assume that they are "unforgiven"? I think it is far more reasonable to assume they are "forgiven" until a specific copyright holder of a particular piece of GPLed code used by KDE says otherwise.
What part of the recording/movie industry's arguments do you think have merit? I think I've been exposed to many of their opinions and I don't think their fears are important enough to justify rewriting the intellectual property balance that was in the U.S. Constitution. What makes you think otherwise?
Personally, I think they're making a collosal business as well as public relations mistake. Improving technology is making their products more interesting and more valuable to their consumers. Instead of trying to get rich by working with that changing technology (Re: cassette and VCR) they're trying to destroy it to preserve their old ways of doing business. If they weren't trampling over our rights in the process it would almost be funny to watch them work so hard to make less money.
My point (to which you did not respond) is:
While there are valid reasons to not employ (or rent apartments to, or lend money to, or insure,
or...) convicted criminals, not all criminal convictions are created equal (and some criminal actions may even be truly just) simply accepting the unfairness of it all will lead greater injustice in the long run.
This is especially true given how pervasive background checks are becoming. Moreover, it is impossible to get background check organizations to treat each case individually because their incentive is to report as much negative information as possible (since if something goes wrong with someone they clear, they're in big trouble while if they fail to clear someone who wouldn't be a problem no one will ever know). And this chain of reasoning is independent of whatever particular unjust law is under discussion. This is a difficult problem and freely admit I don't know how to solve it, but I think the first step is to admit that it is a problem. Your "simple maxim" denies that the problem even exists.
That said, while I am not perfect and I've only just begun to understand how bad things are getting, I am doing more than buying T-shirts and breaking laws to fight the laws I consider unjust. I am registered and do vote (even in primaries), which can be very frustrating because candidates make it very difficult to figure out where they stand on issues I care about. I am an active participant in the dvd-discuss forum, where I am learning more about these issues and I hope I am doing my part to help the defense of 2600. I am also doing what I can to raise public awareness of these issues (I was part of the chain that helped expose that Time Warner's hypocrisy about linking to DeCSS and I wear my T-shirts in public as much as I can). I am "voting with my wallet" by not buying DVDs and trying to make sure that I don't get entangled with unjust license agreements for the products and services I buy and use. I haven't written to my elected representatives yet, though I plan to once I am done with a move I am in the middle of since I will be a constituent of my "new" representatives for a longer time than I was one of my "old" ones.
On the one hand, not hiring someone with a
criminal record, for a security company, is reasonable. The article
documented many ways in which such a person
would be a problematic employee (higher
insurance costs, defense clearance problems,
etc.). And, yes, there is some hypocrisy in
that because often the people they hire are
just as "risky" as the people they don't,
even if there isn't a paper trail to prove
it.
On the other hand, the response that
"If you are concerned about your future
employability, do not break the law."
displays a curious blindness. The laws
are becoming more unjust, vague and
dracionian all the time (see the DMCA,
which does have criminal provisions) and a conviction for breaking an unjust law is just as bad for your future employability as a conviction for breaking a just one. And if most people refrain from breaking even the unjust laws (because of concerns about background checks) then then those laws will never be changed and their injustice will live on.
To my shame, I paused before ordering
my DeCSS T-shirts from Copyleft because I was
worried about my future employability. I am disturbed by the omnipresence of background checks (for employment, getting an apartment, and so on...) in everyday life. I wish that each background check could be considered
individually so that unjust laws would not
have a "chilling effect", but that is probably
too much to hope for. The only thing I do know
is that if I do not keep fighting unjust laws
(and breaking them, where necessary) then the
"land of the free and home of the brave" that I
grew up believing in is dead and that is too high
a price to pay for my future comfort.
What the IOC really wanted was for the athletes
to not break news about who won their events
before the event had been shown to the world.
The ban on Internet diaries altogether is like
swatting a fly with an asteroid. The sad part
about all of this is that it is a lose-lose.
Good athlete websites would have been good for
the athletes and good for the Olympics (since
more people would be interested them after
looking at an athlete's website). And it is
not like the athletes wouldn't have accepted
a ban on reporting results given how they
easily they're accepting this ban. Instead, the
Olympics lost the promotional benefits of
athlete websites and at least one viewer.
Because, after this, I cannot, in good conscience,
watch the Olympics.
The Slashdot consensus (worthless in a court of law, I know) is that Digital Convergence doesn't have a leg to stand on. Given that, I'm wondering why you decided to take down the code. Did you talk to a lawyer first? Or does the whole mess just seem too expensive to fight?
I'm not passing judgement on your situation. I don't know your circumstances, so that would be foolish. But it seems to me that the reason why our rights are so often eroded is that we let them be eroded by not defending them vigorously. Here, these lawyers wanted the code taken down and their flimsy letter accomplished it. If they really have no legal leg to stand on (and IANAL, so I don't know), they won with threat and bluster what they couldn't win in court. By letting them get away with it this time, they will be encouraged to pull more of these stunts in the future and we will all be poorer and less free because of it. We need to find ways to (safely) stand up to empty threats and bluster in the future.
My favorite part of the "four little words" article was how Napster helped increase the artists' clout so the RIAA was forced to pay attention to them. And people say Napster does nothing to compensate the artists:)
People are already "work boycotting" the RIAA members (and I'd guess the MPAA members are next, if it hasn't started already). There was an
article in the LA Times about this in July. The gist of the article was that the record labels were finding it impossible to fill technical positions, in part because of the image created by their recent legal battles.
This is yet more evidence that Microsoft is having more trouble keeping their lies^H^H^H^H facts straight. Maybe what finally destroys Microsoft will be the ensuing battle between Legal and Marketing (the two most innovative divisions of the company).
Well, I still feel good about not liking Tom and his reviews. It is not so much that he found the bug but the fact that "I'm going to keep this as evidence and not help Intel"
and his general approach to this situation...
And his attitude shouldn't be what it is considering what he is doing
Are you really trusting enough to think that Intel didn't even consider trying to hush the problem up by making sure they had all of the problematic chips? Especially given how forthcoming they've been in the past (about the Pentium floating-point bug or the Rambus performance problems or the 820 chipset issues)?
Intel had as many 1.13 GHz chips as they wanted and I didn't see anything about Tom not being willing to share his tests (and, in fact, it was a test that Tom was the first to try - the kernel compile - that probably pushed Intel over the edge). Tom was willing to help Intel, he just wasn't willing to let Intel back him into a corner.
The second is equally untrue: for a few decades America had fairly powerful anti-trust laws, but sadly Ronald Reagan repealed most of them. And furthermore, there
are many areas where the DOJ cannot or does not intervene, because it has no jurisdiction or legal mandate.
Citation please? I know that Reagan changed the philosophy of antitrust enforcement at the DoJ (and Clinton changed it yet again), but I have never seen anything that suggests Reagan moved to have any anti-trust laws repealed. It seemes extremely unlikely because of the Democratic Congress Reagan was dealing with. They would have loved such a clear-cut big business vs. working people issue an an antitrust repeal would be.
There has also been a second, mostly unrelated, reason for a more laissez-faire drift in antitrust enforcement in recent years: a shift in the positions of the judiciary. Some of this is due to judges Reagan appointed, more is due to economic arguments that cast doubts on the effectiveness of antitrust regulation (especially because the economic counterarguments are more complex and harder to understand), and another contributing factor may be the "legal retreats" that many corporations run for federal judges (see this Salon article for more on them).
I think this is a huge blow to Intel.
Speeding up big, hairy compiles (like the Linux kernel) is one of the few reasons I could think
of for getting a 1GHz+ CPU. If it can't do that what good is it?
Don't you get the feeling that their lawyers have PR consultants whose full-time job is to figure out how to make the open-source community angry?
The only part I haven't figured out is why they would want to...
According to netcraft it is Apache 1.3.3 on BSD/OS, so at least (for the moment) their OS is closed-source. Though given BSDI's recent moves, it's anyone's guess how long that will last. For more laughs, check out the whois record for dvdcca.net. And, no, I'm not going to spoil the suprise.
There is an interesting article at Upside on this whole situation.
In my opinion, the most chilling part of this situation is found at the end of the article. LinuxWorld was the original source of the link and Upside has their editor-in-chief saying that they are considering whether or not to remove the link. Personally, I think some letters-to-the-editor at LinuxWorld are in order, since I think this reconsideration will not go over well with LinuxWorld's readership. For those who are curious, LinuxWorld is owned by IDG Communications, which (amazingly?) is not owned by an MPAA member. They do, however, partner with subsidiaries of MPAA members like CNN.
Full disclosure: I'm one of the people that got this ball rolling since I mentioned the link on discuss.userland.com where Dave Winer picked it up for Scripting News.
This book is fatally flawed because its mere existence shows that closed source will always win. This closed-source book on open-source software made it to the bookstores long before Andrew Leonard's open-source Free Software Project was even half done.
</FUD>
Seriously, though, while I expect Free For All and the Free Software Project to compared frequently they are completely different animals. Free For All is a reasonably good, relatively straightforward book about the history of open-source software. The Free Software Project is as much an experiment exploring how books might be written in the future as it is a book about the past.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Don't forget that SDMI's "Phase Two" players
will not play content that has not been appropriately signed and all "Phase One" players turn into "Phase Two" players when the appropriate signal is sent. They're trying to leverage a near-monopoly in commercial music today into a monopoly on the design of music players and then swing that back around so they can control ALL music distribution. It's actually quite clever in a sick and disgusting way.
That was a remarkably Ameri-centric response. Why is it that people think just because something is made illegal in the US it automatically affects the entire internet?
Because, in general, things made illegal in the US
eventually affect the entire Internet. The same forces at work in the US are at work in other countries (Australia is considering anti-circumvention legistation, and the Europeans are falling all over themselves to let people patent anything under the sun). They just tend to start in the US because:
1) The US political system is easier to manipulate.
2) Having a big bully of a country on your side is useful when you try to go international. The US is already talking about forbidding Internet connections to countries that don't go along with what the US wants, and considering how much Internet traffic goes through the US that is not an idle threat.
3) Many countries want to emulate the US's current economic policies because they like the results of the last decade. Having your pet regulation considered part of that package also helps to sell it internationally.
In some sense rulings like this are the canary in the mine shaft telling you your rights are in danger. If you don't want to pay attention, that is your choice, but do not assume that other people feel the same way.
The 2nd Circuit already ruled on the defense's appeal of Kaplan's denial of recusal. The appeal
was denied. IANAL, so I don't know whether the
defense gets any other chances, but I think it
is unlikely. However, the 2nd Circuit might be
empowered to conclude that Kaplan's decisions
were so bad and contradictory that the defense
deserves a new trial with a different judge.
At a minimum, Kaplan contradicted himself on
how authority to access a CSS-encrypted DVD
was to be established (a key element of circumvention):
1) During the trial, authority was a question
of law, so the defense could not present evidence
on it.
2) In Kaplan's opinion, DeCSS was not authorized
as a matter of fact (because it did not have
DVD CCA-licensed keys), but, Kaplan's earlier
ruling prevented the defense from presenting evidence on this point.
Lots of other parts of Kaplan's opinion are sloppy
as have been mentioned before, so I hope this
gets us a new trial with a different judge, but I fear we may have no remedy within the court system. If don't get a trial with a different judge, the appeals court is limited to the factual record which Kaplan gave them, which is hopelessly biased. For instance, he chooses to believe that Johansen did not create DeCSS to play DVDs on Linux (or FreeBSD), but rather to gain fame for breaking the MPAA/DVD CCA's encryption even though
there was no testimony that suggested this. We might still win because constitutional issues loom large in this case no matter what the MPAA and Kaplan say, but they're doing a very good job of tilting the playing field against us.
I will admit to having more sympathy for Microsoft's appeals battle after this. It is difficult work within the legal system knowing the current gatekeeper (your trial
judge) is hopelessly biased. The difference, of course, is that I saw no indication that Judge Jackson started the legal process biased the way Judge Kaplan did. Jackson's ruling against Microsoft was based on their behavior in his courtroom. On the other hand, read Kaplan's opinion on the preliminary injunction in January. I don't think his position has moved a millimeter since then, he's just making a more comprehensive attempt to discredit arguments against it. I think any reasonable person will admit that Kaplan decided Corley et. al. were thieves and crooks a long time ago and never had an open mind to arguments that they were not. Whether that makes a difference remains to be seen.
"K-Meleon is released under the GNU Private License."
I downloaded the source code and it appears
to be licensed under the GNU General Public
License, so I assume it is just a slip. However, it is an amusing one.
If IBM really wants to eliminate technology choke points, they'll help the EFF and lead an effort to get the DMCA repealed. The DMCA is all about letting copyright owners create new technology choke points by calling them "access controls" or "copy controls".
That being said, I don't doubt IBM's commitment to eliminating choke points that affect them (like Microsoft), I just don't think we should overestimate their commitment to openness. The important thing is that IBM is learning and growing and we can help the learn more and grow more in the future.
This is not as radical a move as it looks, and so I find your comment difficult to understand. IBM has
long been a big supporter of the Apache and the HTTP server IBM provides with WebSphere is based on it. If a company has a real distrust of things open source they shouldn't have been going near WebSphere to begin with. If IBM's blessing is what rescues the "heathen open source" then that shouldn't change if IBM open sources WebSphere.
Slashdot Mirror
This ruling, while unfortunate, might well be the best possible result at this stage. The damages are large enough so that mp3.com has every incentive to appeal and (hopefully) get as much as possible reversed. I still think the judge's initial ruling was as wrongheaded as possible: my.mp3.com was a service that could only make the record companies money (I can do more with my CDs, therefore I will pay more for them and buy more of them). The only complaint the record companies could possibly have was that they were not making enough money off of my.mp3.com, and that complaint should have been laughed out of court.
At the same time, the damages are small enough that mp3.com can survive its current legal troubles no matter what happens (they have about $150 million socked away for legal costs and Universal, with the largest music collection, would get the bulk of the damages in any case). And, in my opinion, the survival of mp3.com is important because they are one of the more interesting music-on-the-Internet companies. Right now, most of the artists I listen to are on mp3.com and I want mp3.com (and those artists) to grow and prosper.
I don't see how RMS reaches the conclusion that an "unforgived" GPL violation permanently ends your ability to distribute GPLed code. The only support I could find for that in the GPL in in clause 4:
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
But a look at clause 6 provides a trivial way out:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
i.e. each time someone gives you a new copy of the code, you get a new license. Since your rights under the new license have not been terminated, you are OK. This is where I think the KDE developers got the idea of taking out and restoring the "tainted" code, and I agree it seems absurd and unnecessary (but, OTOH, legal maneuvers often look that way).
I would also add that after years of GPLed code linked to Qt in KDE I haven't heard of any concrete (rather than hypothetical) complaint from any copyright holder that the KDE team hasn't worked out. Why do we have to assume that they are "unforgiven"? I think it is far more reasonable to assume they are "forgiven" until a specific copyright holder of a particular piece of GPLed code used by KDE says otherwise.
Here's the link that the Home Recording Rights Coalition has set up for people to send comments (in support of the HRRC) to the FCC.
What part of the recording/movie industry's arguments do you think have merit? I think I've been exposed to many of their opinions and I don't think their fears are important enough to justify rewriting the intellectual property balance that was in the U.S. Constitution. What makes you think otherwise?
Personally, I think they're making a collosal business as well as public relations mistake. Improving technology is making their products more interesting and more valuable to their consumers. Instead of trying to get rich by working with that changing technology (Re: cassette and VCR) they're trying to destroy it to preserve their old ways of doing business. If they weren't trampling over our rights in the process it would almost be funny to watch them work so hard to make less money.
I think I have made this dialogue too personal.
My point (to which you did not respond) is:
While there are valid reasons to not employ (or rent apartments to, or lend money to, or insure, or...) convicted criminals, not all criminal convictions are created equal (and some criminal actions may even be truly just) simply accepting the unfairness of it all will lead greater injustice in the long run.
This is especially true given how pervasive background checks are becoming. Moreover, it is impossible to get background check organizations to treat each case individually because their incentive is to report as much negative information as possible (since if something goes wrong with someone they clear, they're in big trouble while if they fail to clear someone who wouldn't be a problem no one will ever know). And this chain of reasoning is independent of whatever particular unjust law is under discussion. This is a difficult problem and freely admit I don't know how to solve it, but I think the first step is to admit that it is a problem. Your "simple maxim" denies that the problem even exists.
That said, while I am not perfect and I've only just begun to understand how bad things are getting, I am doing more than buying T-shirts and breaking laws to fight the laws I consider unjust. I am registered and do vote (even in primaries), which can be very frustrating because candidates make it very difficult to figure out where they stand on issues I care about. I am an active participant in the dvd-discuss forum, where I am learning more about these issues and I hope I am doing my part to help the defense of 2600. I am also doing what I can to raise public awareness of these issues (I was part of the chain that helped expose that Time Warner's hypocrisy about linking to DeCSS and I wear my T-shirts in public as much as I can). I am "voting with my wallet" by not buying DVDs and trying to make sure that I don't get entangled with unjust license agreements for the products and services I buy and use. I haven't written to my elected representatives yet, though I plan to once I am done with a move I am in the middle of since I will be a constituent of my "new" representatives for a longer time than I was one of my "old" ones.
On the one hand, not hiring someone with a criminal record, for a security company, is reasonable. The article documented many ways in which such a person would be a problematic employee (higher insurance costs, defense clearance problems, etc.). And, yes, there is some hypocrisy in that because often the people they hire are just as "risky" as the people they don't, even if there isn't a paper trail to prove it.
On the other hand, the response that "If you are concerned about your future employability, do not break the law." displays a curious blindness. The laws are becoming more unjust, vague and dracionian all the time (see the DMCA, which does have criminal provisions) and a conviction for breaking an unjust law is just as bad for your future employability as a conviction for breaking a just one. And if most people refrain from breaking even the unjust laws (because of concerns about background checks) then then those laws will never be changed and their injustice will live on.
To my shame, I paused before ordering my DeCSS T-shirts from Copyleft because I was worried about my future employability. I am disturbed by the omnipresence of background checks (for employment, getting an apartment, and so on...) in everyday life. I wish that each background check could be considered individually so that unjust laws would not have a "chilling effect", but that is probably too much to hope for. The only thing I do know is that if I do not keep fighting unjust laws (and breaking them, where necessary) then the "land of the free and home of the brave" that I grew up believing in is dead and that is too high a price to pay for my future comfort.
What the IOC really wanted was for the athletes to not break news about who won their events before the event had been shown to the world. The ban on Internet diaries altogether is like swatting a fly with an asteroid. The sad part about all of this is that it is a lose-lose. Good athlete websites would have been good for the athletes and good for the Olympics (since more people would be interested them after looking at an athlete's website). And it is not like the athletes wouldn't have accepted a ban on reporting results given how they easily they're accepting this ban. Instead, the Olympics lost the promotional benefits of athlete websites and at least one viewer. Because, after this, I cannot, in good conscience, watch the Olympics.
Microsoft was able to snowball the jury in the Bristol case, but they couldn't fool the judge.
The Slashdot consensus (worthless in a court of law, I know) is that Digital Convergence doesn't have a leg to stand on. Given that, I'm wondering why you decided to take down the code. Did you talk to a lawyer first? Or does the whole mess just seem too expensive to fight?
I'm not passing judgement on your situation. I don't know your circumstances, so that would be foolish. But it seems to me that the reason why our rights are so often eroded is that we let them be eroded by not defending them vigorously. Here, these lawyers wanted the code taken down and their flimsy letter accomplished it. If they really have no legal leg to stand on (and IANAL, so I don't know), they won with threat and bluster what they couldn't win in court. By letting them get away with it this time, they will be encouraged to pull more of these stunts in the future and we will all be poorer and less free because of it. We need to find ways to (safely) stand up to empty threats and bluster in the future.
My favorite part of the "four little words" article was how Napster helped increase the artists' clout so the RIAA was forced to pay attention to them. And people say Napster does nothing to compensate the artists :)
People are already "work boycotting" the RIAA members (and I'd guess the MPAA members are next, if it hasn't started already). There was an article in the LA Times about this in July. The gist of the article was that the record labels were finding it impossible to fill technical positions, in part because of the image created by their recent legal battles.
This is yet more evidence that Microsoft is having more trouble keeping their lies^H^H^H^H facts straight. Maybe what finally destroys Microsoft will be the ensuing battle between Legal and Marketing (the two most innovative divisions of the company).
Well, I still feel good about not liking Tom and his reviews. It is not so much that he found the bug but the fact that "I'm going to keep this as evidence and not help Intel" and his general approach to this situation...
And his attitude shouldn't be what it is considering what he is doing
Are you really trusting enough to think that Intel didn't even consider trying to hush the problem up by making sure they had all of the problematic chips? Especially given how forthcoming they've been in the past (about the Pentium floating-point bug or the Rambus performance problems or the 820 chipset issues)? Intel had as many 1.13 GHz chips as they wanted and I didn't see anything about Tom not being willing to share his tests (and, in fact, it was a test that Tom was the first to try - the kernel compile - that probably pushed Intel over the edge). Tom was willing to help Intel, he just wasn't willing to let Intel back him into a corner.
The second is equally untrue: for a few decades America had fairly powerful anti-trust laws, but sadly Ronald Reagan repealed most of them. And furthermore, there are many areas where the DOJ cannot or does not intervene, because it has no jurisdiction or legal mandate.
Citation please? I know that Reagan changed the philosophy of antitrust enforcement at the DoJ (and Clinton changed it yet again), but I have never seen anything that suggests Reagan moved to have any anti-trust laws repealed. It seemes extremely unlikely because of the Democratic Congress Reagan was dealing with. They would have loved such a clear-cut big business vs. working people issue an an antitrust repeal would be.
There has also been a second, mostly unrelated, reason for a more laissez-faire drift in antitrust enforcement in recent years: a shift in the positions of the judiciary. Some of this is due to judges Reagan appointed, more is due to economic arguments that cast doubts on the effectiveness of antitrust regulation (especially because the economic counterarguments are more complex and harder to understand), and another contributing factor may be the "legal retreats" that many corporations run for federal judges (see this Salon article for more on them).
I think this is a huge blow to Intel. Speeding up big, hairy compiles (like the Linux kernel) is one of the few reasons I could think of for getting a 1GHz+ CPU. If it can't do that what good is it?
Don't you get the feeling that their lawyers have PR consultants whose full-time job is to figure out how to make the open-source community angry? The only part I haven't figured out is why they would want to...
According to netcraft it is Apache 1.3.3 on BSD/OS, so at least (for the moment) their OS is closed-source. Though given BSDI's recent moves, it's anyone's guess how long that will last. For more laughs, check out the whois record for dvdcca.net. And, no, I'm not going to spoil the suprise.
There is an interesting article at Upside on this whole situation. In my opinion, the most chilling part of this situation is found at the end of the article. LinuxWorld was the original source of the link and Upside has their editor-in-chief saying that they are considering whether or not to remove the link. Personally, I think some letters-to-the-editor at LinuxWorld are in order, since I think this reconsideration will not go over well with LinuxWorld's readership. For those who are curious, LinuxWorld is owned by IDG Communications, which (amazingly?) is not owned by an MPAA member. They do, however, partner with subsidiaries of MPAA members like CNN.
Full disclosure: I'm one of the people that got this ball rolling since I mentioned the link on discuss.userland.com where Dave Winer picked it up for Scripting News.
This book is fatally flawed because its mere existence shows that closed source will always win. This closed-source book on open-source software made it to the bookstores long before Andrew Leonard's open-source Free Software Project was even half done.
</FUD>
Seriously, though, while I expect Free For All and the Free Software Project to compared frequently they are completely different animals. Free For All is a reasonably good, relatively straightforward book about the history of open-source software. The Free Software Project is as much an experiment exploring how books might be written in the future as it is a book about the past.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Don't forget that SDMI's "Phase Two" players will not play content that has not been appropriately signed and all "Phase One" players turn into "Phase Two" players when the appropriate signal is sent. They're trying to leverage a near-monopoly in commercial music today into a monopoly on the design of music players and then swing that back around so they can control ALL music distribution. It's actually quite clever in a sick and disgusting way.
That was a remarkably Ameri-centric response. Why is it that people think just because something is made illegal in the US it automatically affects the entire internet?
Because, in general, things made illegal in the US eventually affect the entire Internet. The same forces at work in the US are at work in other countries (Australia is considering anti-circumvention legistation, and the Europeans are falling all over themselves to let people patent anything under the sun). They just tend to start in the US because:
1) The US political system is easier to manipulate.
2) Having a big bully of a country on your side is useful when you try to go international. The US is already talking about forbidding Internet connections to countries that don't go along with what the US wants, and considering how much Internet traffic goes through the US that is not an idle threat.
3) Many countries want to emulate the US's current economic policies because they like the results of the last decade. Having your pet regulation considered part of that package also helps to sell it internationally.
In some sense rulings like this are the canary in the mine shaft telling you your rights are in danger. If you don't want to pay attention, that is your choice, but do not assume that other people feel the same way.
The 2nd Circuit already ruled on the defense's appeal of Kaplan's denial of recusal. The appeal was denied. IANAL, so I don't know whether the defense gets any other chances, but I think it is unlikely. However, the 2nd Circuit might be empowered to conclude that Kaplan's decisions were so bad and contradictory that the defense deserves a new trial with a different judge.
At a minimum, Kaplan contradicted himself on how authority to access a CSS-encrypted DVD was to be established (a key element of circumvention):
1) During the trial, authority was a question of law, so the defense could not present evidence on it.
2) In Kaplan's opinion, DeCSS was not authorized as a matter of fact (because it did not have DVD CCA-licensed keys), but, Kaplan's earlier ruling prevented the defense from presenting evidence on this point.
Lots of other parts of Kaplan's opinion are sloppy as have been mentioned before, so I hope this gets us a new trial with a different judge, but I fear we may have no remedy within the court system. If don't get a trial with a different judge, the appeals court is limited to the factual record which Kaplan gave them, which is hopelessly biased. For instance, he chooses to believe that Johansen did not create DeCSS to play DVDs on Linux (or FreeBSD), but rather to gain fame for breaking the MPAA/DVD CCA's encryption even though there was no testimony that suggested this. We might still win because constitutional issues loom large in this case no matter what the MPAA and Kaplan say, but they're doing a very good job of tilting the playing field against us.
I will admit to having more sympathy for Microsoft's appeals battle after this. It is difficult work within the legal system knowing the current gatekeeper (your trial judge) is hopelessly biased. The difference, of course, is that I saw no indication that Judge Jackson started the legal process biased the way Judge Kaplan did. Jackson's ruling against Microsoft was based on their behavior in his courtroom. On the other hand, read Kaplan's opinion on the preliminary injunction in January. I don't think his position has moved a millimeter since then, he's just making a more comprehensive attempt to discredit arguments against it. I think any reasonable person will admit that Kaplan decided Corley et. al. were thieves and crooks a long time ago and never had an open mind to arguments that they were not. Whether that makes a difference remains to be seen.
"K-Meleon is released under the GNU Private License."
I downloaded the source code and it appears to be licensed under the GNU General Public License, so I assume it is just a slip. However, it is an amusing one.
If IBM really wants to eliminate technology choke points, they'll help the EFF and lead an effort to get the DMCA repealed. The DMCA is all about letting copyright owners create new technology choke points by calling them "access controls" or "copy controls".
That being said, I don't doubt IBM's commitment to eliminating choke points that affect them (like Microsoft), I just don't think we should overestimate their commitment to openness. The important thing is that IBM is learning and growing and we can help the learn more and grow more in the future.
This is not as radical a move as it looks, and so I find your comment difficult to understand. IBM has long been a big supporter of the Apache and the HTTP server IBM provides with WebSphere is based on it. If a company has a real distrust of things open source they shouldn't have been going near WebSphere to begin with. If IBM's blessing is what rescues the "heathen open source" then that shouldn't change if IBM open sources WebSphere.