I agree with your argument, but I can't help thinking that the British have a fairly famous legend about a thief who gave his ill-gotten gains to the poor...
It's worth noting in relation to a s 52 claim that the rules on standing (i.e. who can sue) to obtain an injunction are very liberal. Section 80 of the TPA allows literally anyone, not just those having a direct interest affected by the infringing conduct, to apply for an order restraining the infringer from doing it again. Even if the ACCC doesn't take an interest, Linux just needs one well-resourced friend in Australia in order to stop this.
Laches applies to actions in equity, e.g. injunctions, specific performance, disgorgement, equitable compensation, etc. Actions at law, such as an action for damages arising from patent infringement, are governed exclusively by the statute of limitations.
I don't really have a problem with the UN (or another international body) handling basic things like overall regulation of the DNS, routing tables, etc. The Internet needs this minimum level of governance just to function and, speaking as a non-US resident, the fact that my elected government has a seat at the UN gives me more of a say than ICANN (a creature of US law and regulation) presently does.
The bad news would be if this were used as a springboard to get into other areas of regulation (e.g. censorship). However it should be remembered that no organ of the UN has a legislative function, not even the General Assembly. International law is changed largely through treaty, and the General Assembly is only relevant for the very weak influence it has on the development of customary international law. Hence, governments will still have to sign up to any proposed regulatory framework.
This is already happening with and without the UN. In some cases it's good, e.g. when the UN drafts model uniform laws for electronic commerce, and in some cases it's bad, e.g. the Council of Europe's cyber-crime treaty. I don't think it can be avoided: trans-national regulation is probably inevitable since people want some guarantee of redress regardless of whether a wrongdoer lives in the US or Uzbekhistan (sp?) in order to conduct their dealings on the Internet with some degree of confidence. We should focus our efforts on getting a decent system in place.
If the UK system is anything like the Australian system (as I suspect it is), then it means that the lines are drawn according to a mandated legislative formula whose result can be replicated by anyone with access to the publicly available census data. It's pretty obvious whether the commission is doing its job or not, and the head of the commission can only be removed on proved illegal conduct.
Darl's take on the issue is summarized further down in the piece, where he asserts that the derivation of revenue from the distribution of intellectual works is essential to "[promoting] the progess of science and the arts" and that the GPL therefore defeats the constitutional purpose of copyright law.
It's pretty flawed, both in law and fact. McBride seems to be saying that all the efforts of US developers should go towards the revenue streams of US business, and that any effort that does not do so is dangerous and subversive. It looks like a kind of bizarre hybridization of capitalism and communism, and I would be preaching to the choir if I outlined the benefits of non-profit activity carried on in the name of the common good.
Legally, he's on pretty shaky ground. Constitutional limitations generally put fetters on the government, not on private citizens. Hence, while the First Amendment may limit the legislative power of Congress with respect to free speech, it doesn't (of itself) create an offence, tort, or other actionable wrong of limiting another's freedom of speech.
(It's my understanding that the passage of the Title 9 civil rights legislation was intended to remedy this situation, where government turned a blind eye to civil rights infringements carried on by private citizens with whom they were in agreement.)
To turn around now and claim that, somehow, Linux "sneaked up" on them while they weren't looking. That, somehow, upper management was "unaware" that they were supporting Linux is... I don't know... Hypocrisy is too mild, fraudulent is closer, deceitful, dishonest is too dry. Hmmm.
Congratulations, you hit the bullseye:). It now remains to wrap it up in appropriate legalese.
I'm in Australia, where company law is governed at the Federal level and the law of agency wrt corporate relations with company outsiders is heavily affected by statute. Here's a (very) potted summary. At common law (also uniform in Australia because of our integrated court structure) the apparent authority of an agent can only be relied upon where appropriate representations have been made by the principal, and you would be right in that an outsider's belief in the existence of authority would be irrelevant (save for the rule in Royal British Bank v Turquand (1856) 6 E & B 327, which entitles outsiders to assume, in the absence of contrary evidence, that there has been compliance with a company's constitution and internal processes).
The statutory position (Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ss 128-30) codifies the common law and allows certain "good faith" assumptions to be made, including that a person held out as an officer or agent is properly exercising the power customarily given to a person in that position. As the person giving away the code is a senior figure in SCO's open source operations it may be held, under Australian law, that the outsiders were entitled to assume that he was authorized to give away code on his corporate employer's behalf.
IANALBIAALG (but I am a law graduand; passed my exams and waiting to be given my piece of paper). Are you sure? I won't pretend to know US company law, since it's not my jurisdiction and is highly non-uniform, being state-based law, but generally the state of knowledge of the third party dealing with the company employee is more important. Even if the employee was acting ultra vires the third party is entitled to assume that the company's internal processes have been followed unless something comes to the third party's attention that should put it on notice about any irregularity.
Why is this so odd? If you sell a business, it makes sense that you should be able to pass on the debts owing to that business (which are essentially just liquidated liabilities), otherwise you might end up stuck in court pursuing debts owing to a business in which you no longer have any interest.
It's a little more unusual in the corporate context, but it's usually directors who make the call as to whether to litigate, not shareholders, and it would be an unusual case where a person went to the expense of acquiring a controlling interest in a company just to litigate on that company's behalf, particularly since creditors' interests have to be taken into account when dealing with a dying company. Such a proposition is less attractive when you consider that the new managers may be bound by a previous disclaimer, and the fact that the statute of limitations kills off old actions ona regular basis.
May I finally suggest that if you do something illegal then you aren't really in a position to complain when you get sued, regardless of the ultimate reason why you're being sued?
Re:One weakness of both articles: free always wins
on
Economics of File-Sharing
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· Score: 4, Insightful
What the articles don't explain is why consumers would be willing to move away from file-sharing toward any of the various proposed contracts.
There are a number of explanations, the most obvious being enlightened self-interest (you need to pay for music if you want more music down the track) and the acqusition of intangible secondary beneifts (you pay for a warn, fuzzy feeling of goodness and righteousness). Both aren't strong factors in the current market because of the predominant consumer sentiment against the record labels, i.e. consumers think the labels can take the loss associated with infringement or are just ripping consumers off anyway.
It's true that classical economics doesn't model this very well, but classical econimics doesn't model open source/free software process very well either, a fact that has in no way impeded the continued existence of that process.
The way it works is a named distro such as sid, woody or sarge progresses through different stages of stability: from unstable->testing->stable. So right now sid is considered "unstable", sarge is in the "testing" stage before it becoms stable, and woody is considered "stable."
Not quite. There's usually no formal distinction between the unstable and testing branches: packages migrate automagically from unstable to testing when bug activity dies down according to specifically-defined criteria. A distinction can be drawn when it's time to do a new stable release and the testing branch is "frozen"; no new packages come in from unstable unless necessary to fix bugs. At release time the current stable branch is archived, the current state of testing is copied to stable, and testing is re-opened for new packages queueing up in unstable.
As I said, I'm not sure what angle the lawyer is taking here, but my guess is that this is the usual "open source advocates are pirates" angle that we've heard so often before.
More likely the prosecution is taking the angle that believers in Open Source believe that "information should be free" and that therefore breaching the copyright laws is not immoral or wrong. I'm not saying the premise it's based on is correct, but it does go to showing that the offender is likely to re-offend, which is the primary consideration when determining whether to impose a custodial sentence.
IOW, it's only a relatively small theft from the public domain, so don't worry about it.
It's a very sneaky way of trying to make the loss look OK by giving it the value the transferee attaches to it rather than the value the transferor attaches. While the owners may be making a very small gain, the public is losing a considerable right to use old works. Considering the public is the one being asked to give up this advantage, isn't the more relevant point of view that of the public?
Putting it another way, since the interest holders are going to make such a very small gain, isn't it excessive and unreasonable for the public to make such a large sacrifice?
Firstly, as somebody else pointed out, memory will probably always be measured using base-2. The reason is fairly simple: the coupling of a hardware component's interface to its internals is roughly proportional to the component's complexity. Hard drives are sophisticated parts and addresses get passed through firmware that compensates for bad sectors, etc before being converted to a physical "on-disk" value, so it's easy for manufacturers can easily get away with supplying a "base-10" drive. Memory chips, OTOH, are simple beasts, whose address pins usually feed directly into the memory cells/sense amps, so the amount of memory on a single chip will be tightly coupled to the number of address pins on the chip.
Secondly, why does an ordinary user need to perform the conversion? Most file managers represent file/directory sizes in the most convenient scale anyway, and there are other factors that throw the calculation of space free from space consumed, e.g. allocation efficiency of the filesystem. Most "ordinary users" simply rely on what the computer tells them, and, as you say, wouldn't notice the change. Why bother changing a convention useful to programmers solely because hard drive manufacturers can't do the Right Thing?
There are 4 sides here: State, worker, Ubi, and EA...Ubi has all the cards. The valid signed contract with the workers... The state has two interests. First to uphold[or not] a legally valid contract presented by Ubi. Second, to keep workers working and not on welfare.
Firstly, the non-compete clause may not be valid, as I outlined above, in which case UbiSoft has no cause of action (in layman's terms, "a leg to stand on"). The court can sever a portion of the contract and leave the rest intact. Secondly, the state has a third interest: upholding free market principles. If UbiSoft wishes to retain its employees, it should have to do so by providing suitably favourable working conditions, just like anybody else. Given that the power balance in the labour market is usually tilted heavily in favour of the demand side, most jurisdictions have labour laws modifying the legal position in favour of the workers, not employers.
Judge may restrict employees from performing certian functions at EA. Or, enforce the Geography restriction.
Unlikely. A judge can sever a void term, but s/he can't rewrite it into something not in contemplation by the parties at the time of agreement. In relation to orders binding employees, UbiSoft may indeed have claims in IP, confidential information, etc, as I and others have outlined above, but they have to proceed on those grounds, not on the claim for breach of contract. At present, there is no allegation that the defendant ex-employees have infringed UbiSoft's IP or confidence, so there's no dispute for the court to resolve on those points.
EA clearly led them into this mess, by opening up shop across from Ubisoft. The workers are EA employees right now. This really depends on how will EA will take care of it's workers
Indeed, but EA may find itself in trouble if and when UbiSoft starts claiming that EA products contain technology or information taken by the defendants to this action. Given that EA is the 800 lb. gorilla here and probably better able to compete on wages and working conditions, it's probably in their interests to fight this one out so they can poach from the local industry with impunity in the future.
Sorry, but you can't force someone to work outside their chosen profession/occupation for a year just because they don't work for you anymore, at least not over such a large geographic area as the whole of North America. Such clauses will generally be void at common law as unreasonable covenants in restraint of trade, and will probably fall foul of the local anti-trust statute(s) as well.
The concerns you mention and the examples cited (poaching sales lists, etc) are valid, but there are separate areas of law to deal with these, e.g. the law in relation to fiduciaries and confidentiality. While it is harder to prove that your former employee is improperly using information gained during their time in your organization, the remedies available are a hell of a lot more potent, and it's kind of obvious when your rivals start taking over all your customers.
It's not when you consider that most systems report file size using the binary prefixes. The customer looking at the marketing material would expect the drive to store x GB of files (minus a little for overhead). Considering the computer industry isn't going to go metric anytime soon (memory will probably always be measured with the binary prefixes, and programmers love it for the same reason anyone who does arithmetic with the SI system loves it) HD manufacturers should stick to the agreed convention.
I'm not an expert on US criminal law at the federal level, but, generally speaking, common law jurisdictions that have codified their criminal law have enacted their codes so there is a base level of intent (i.e. deliberate, willed action) that may be modified for a given offence by making specific intent an element of the offence (e.g. "intent to kill", "intent to defraud", "intent to further the commission of an offence").
The article mentions 18 USC 1029, which creates a number of federal offences related to use and trafficking in access devices, but specifies that intent to defraud is an element of those offences so our accused should be safe there. But 18 USC 1030 is also mentioned, which makes unauthorized access of certain specified kinds of data (financial and personal records, for example) an offence without any additional level of intent, which isn't really surprising.
The US Code can be accessed through the Office of the Legislative Counsel of the US House of Representatives, which the Library of Congress has links to, as well as other search engines to access the Code. Go and have a read for yourself.
He intended no harm (as an investigative reporter might intend no harm in impersonating someone else to get a story), so the Mens Rea AKA "guilty mind" did not exist.
Methinks you don't quite understand mens rea. It simply means there has to be a basic level of intent behind the actions that constitute the elements of an offence, so if your actions are accidental, or you're insane, or you otherwise do something against or independently of your will, then you lack criminal intent and can get away. But if your actions are deliberate, regardless of the motive, then you do possess mens rea or criminal intent, and are stuffed. There are a few exceptions, such as murder, where it must be shown that you acted with the intent of causing the victim's death, or stealing, where it must be shown that you acted with the intent of permanently depriving the victim of their property, but otherwise motive is essentially irrelevant.
The media assumes that power as society's watchdog... but who's watching them?
Amen. It's amazing that the media sets itself up as another branch of government ("the Fourth Estate") without being willing to accept the restrictions and level of accountability that the other branches have. It's why I tend to be in favour of slightly stricter defamation laws that the US has in the wake of Sullivan, despite otherwise being very heavily pro free speech.
Given the viral nature of Free Food (i.e. "You are what you eat"), the consumption of this food could result in you being required to give Free Food to every person you meet (since physical proximity to another person could be interpreted as a "distribution"). I would therefore advise against the widespread commercial adoption of Free Food.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your argument, but I can't help thinking that the British have a fairly famous legend about a thief who gave his ill-gotten gains to the poor...
It's worth noting in relation to a s 52 claim that the rules on standing (i.e. who can sue) to obtain an injunction are very liberal. Section 80 of the TPA allows literally anyone, not just those having a direct interest affected by the infringing conduct, to apply for an order restraining the infringer from doing it again. Even if the ACCC doesn't take an interest, Linux just needs one well-resourced friend in Australia in order to stop this.
Your processor is only overeating because your constant carping about its performance is making it depressed, you insensitive clod.
You have authority for this?
Laches applies to actions in equity, e.g. injunctions, specific performance, disgorgement, equitable compensation, etc. Actions at law, such as an action for damages arising from patent infringement, are governed exclusively by the statute of limitations.
Since when was incitement not a crime?
I don't really have a problem with the UN (or another international body) handling basic things like overall regulation of the DNS, routing tables, etc. The Internet needs this minimum level of governance just to function and, speaking as a non-US resident, the fact that my elected government has a seat at the UN gives me more of a say than ICANN (a creature of US law and regulation) presently does.
The bad news would be if this were used as a springboard to get into other areas of regulation (e.g. censorship). However it should be remembered that no organ of the UN has a legislative function, not even the General Assembly. International law is changed largely through treaty, and the General Assembly is only relevant for the very weak influence it has on the development of customary international law. Hence, governments will still have to sign up to any proposed regulatory framework.
This is already happening with and without the UN. In some cases it's good, e.g. when the UN drafts model uniform laws for electronic commerce, and in some cases it's bad, e.g. the Council of Europe's cyber-crime treaty. I don't think it can be avoided: trans-national regulation is probably inevitable since people want some guarantee of redress regardless of whether a wrongdoer lives in the US or Uzbekhistan (sp?) in order to conduct their dealings on the Internet with some degree of confidence. We should focus our efforts on getting a decent system in place.
What does "independent" mean, really?
If the UK system is anything like the Australian system (as I suspect it is), then it means that the lines are drawn according to a mandated legislative formula whose result can be replicated by anyone with access to the publicly available census data. It's pretty obvious whether the commission is doing its job or not, and the head of the commission can only be removed on proved illegal conduct.
It's pretty flawed, both in law and fact. McBride seems to be saying that all the efforts of US developers should go towards the revenue streams of US business, and that any effort that does not do so is dangerous and subversive. It looks like a kind of bizarre hybridization of capitalism and communism, and I would be preaching to the choir if I outlined the benefits of non-profit activity carried on in the name of the common good.
Legally, he's on pretty shaky ground. Constitutional limitations generally put fetters on the government, not on private citizens. Hence, while the First Amendment may limit the legislative power of Congress with respect to free speech, it doesn't (of itself) create an offence, tort, or other actionable wrong of limiting another's freedom of speech.
(It's my understanding that the passage of the Title 9 civil rights legislation was intended to remedy this situation, where government turned a blind eye to civil rights infringements carried on by private citizens with whom they were in agreement.)
Congratulations, you hit the bullseye :). It now remains to wrap it up in appropriate legalese.
The statutory position (Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ss 128-30) codifies the common law and allows certain "good faith" assumptions to be made, including that a person held out as an officer or agent is properly exercising the power customarily given to a person in that position. As the person giving away the code is a senior figure in SCO's open source operations it may be held, under Australian law, that the outsiders were entitled to assume that he was authorized to give away code on his corporate employer's behalf.
Again I have no idea of the general US position.
IANALBIAALG (but I am a law graduand; passed my exams and waiting to be given my piece of paper). Are you sure? I won't pretend to know US company law, since it's not my jurisdiction and is highly non-uniform, being state-based law, but generally the state of knowledge of the third party dealing with the company employee is more important. Even if the employee was acting ultra vires the third party is entitled to assume that the company's internal processes have been followed unless something comes to the third party's attention that should put it on notice about any irregularity.
Why is this so odd? If you sell a business, it makes sense that you should be able to pass on the debts owing to that business (which are essentially just liquidated liabilities), otherwise you might end up stuck in court pursuing debts owing to a business in which you no longer have any interest.
It's a little more unusual in the corporate context, but it's usually directors who make the call as to whether to litigate, not shareholders, and it would be an unusual case where a person went to the expense of acquiring a controlling interest in a company just to litigate on that company's behalf, particularly since creditors' interests have to be taken into account when dealing with a dying company. Such a proposition is less attractive when you consider that the new managers may be bound by a previous disclaimer, and the fact that the statute of limitations kills off old actions ona regular basis.
May I finally suggest that if you do something illegal then you aren't really in a position to complain when you get sued, regardless of the ultimate reason why you're being sued?
There are a number of explanations, the most obvious being enlightened self-interest (you need to pay for music if you want more music down the track) and the acqusition of intangible secondary beneifts (you pay for a warn, fuzzy feeling of goodness and righteousness). Both aren't strong factors in the current market because of the predominant consumer sentiment against the record labels, i.e. consumers think the labels can take the loss associated with infringement or are just ripping consumers off anyway.
It's true that classical economics doesn't model this very well, but classical econimics doesn't model open source/free software process very well either, a fact that has in no way impeded the continued existence of that process.
Not quite. There's usually no formal distinction between the unstable and testing branches: packages migrate automagically from unstable to testing when bug activity dies down according to specifically-defined criteria. A distinction can be drawn when it's time to do a new stable release and the testing branch is "frozen"; no new packages come in from unstable unless necessary to fix bugs. At release time the current stable branch is archived, the current state of testing is copied to stable, and testing is re-opened for new packages queueing up in unstable.
BTW, my legal mumbo jumbo was written for me by someone in the law field considering the shit I had/have to deal with.
Which is just as well, considering the apparent confusion that has led you to cite US copyright law in relation to an Australian criminal proceeding.
More likely the prosecution is taking the angle that believers in Open Source believe that "information should be free" and that therefore breaching the copyright laws is not immoral or wrong. I'm not saying the premise it's based on is correct, but it does go to showing that the offender is likely to re-offend, which is the primary consideration when determining whether to impose a custodial sentence.
IOW, it's only a relatively small theft from the public domain, so don't worry about it.
It's a very sneaky way of trying to make the loss look OK by giving it the value the transferee attaches to it rather than the value the transferor attaches. While the owners may be making a very small gain, the public is losing a considerable right to use old works. Considering the public is the one being asked to give up this advantage, isn't the more relevant point of view that of the public?Putting it another way, since the interest holders are going to make such a very small gain, isn't it excessive and unreasonable for the public to make such a large sacrifice?
Firstly, as somebody else pointed out, memory will probably always be measured using base-2. The reason is fairly simple: the coupling of a hardware component's interface to its internals is roughly proportional to the component's complexity. Hard drives are sophisticated parts and addresses get passed through firmware that compensates for bad sectors, etc before being converted to a physical "on-disk" value, so it's easy for manufacturers can easily get away with supplying a "base-10" drive. Memory chips, OTOH, are simple beasts, whose address pins usually feed directly into the memory cells/sense amps, so the amount of memory on a single chip will be tightly coupled to the number of address pins on the chip.
Secondly, why does an ordinary user need to perform the conversion? Most file managers represent file/directory sizes in the most convenient scale anyway, and there are other factors that throw the calculation of space free from space consumed, e.g. allocation efficiency of the filesystem. Most "ordinary users" simply rely on what the computer tells them, and, as you say, wouldn't notice the change. Why bother changing a convention useful to programmers solely because hard drive manufacturers can't do the Right Thing?
Firstly, the non-compete clause may not be valid, as I outlined above, in which case UbiSoft has no cause of action (in layman's terms, "a leg to stand on"). The court can sever a portion of the contract and leave the rest intact. Secondly, the state has a third interest: upholding free market principles. If UbiSoft wishes to retain its employees, it should have to do so by providing suitably favourable working conditions, just like anybody else. Given that the power balance in the labour market is usually tilted heavily in favour of the demand side, most jurisdictions have labour laws modifying the legal position in favour of the workers, not employers.
Judge may restrict employees from performing certian functions at EA. Or, enforce the Geography restriction.
Unlikely. A judge can sever a void term, but s/he can't rewrite it into something not in contemplation by the parties at the time of agreement. In relation to orders binding employees, UbiSoft may indeed have claims in IP, confidential information, etc, as I and others have outlined above, but they have to proceed on those grounds, not on the claim for breach of contract. At present, there is no allegation that the defendant ex-employees have infringed UbiSoft's IP or confidence, so there's no dispute for the court to resolve on those points.
EA clearly led them into this mess, by opening up shop across from Ubisoft. The workers are EA employees right now. This really depends on how will EA will take care of it's workers
Indeed, but EA may find itself in trouble if and when UbiSoft starts claiming that EA products contain technology or information taken by the defendants to this action. Given that EA is the 800 lb. gorilla here and probably better able to compete on wages and working conditions, it's probably in their interests to fight this one out so they can poach from the local industry with impunity in the future.
Sorry, but you can't force someone to work outside their chosen profession/occupation for a year just because they don't work for you anymore, at least not over such a large geographic area as the whole of North America. Such clauses will generally be void at common law as unreasonable covenants in restraint of trade, and will probably fall foul of the local anti-trust statute(s) as well.
The concerns you mention and the examples cited (poaching sales lists, etc) are valid, but there are separate areas of law to deal with these, e.g. the law in relation to fiduciaries and confidentiality. While it is harder to prove that your former employee is improperly using information gained during their time in your organization, the remedies available are a hell of a lot more potent, and it's kind of obvious when your rivals start taking over all your customers.
It's not when you consider that most systems report file size using the binary prefixes. The customer looking at the marketing material would expect the drive to store x GB of files (minus a little for overhead). Considering the computer industry isn't going to go metric anytime soon (memory will probably always be measured with the binary prefixes, and programmers love it for the same reason anyone who does arithmetic with the SI system loves it) HD manufacturers should stick to the agreed convention.
I'm not an expert on US criminal law at the federal level, but, generally speaking, common law jurisdictions that have codified their criminal law have enacted their codes so there is a base level of intent (i.e. deliberate, willed action) that may be modified for a given offence by making specific intent an element of the offence (e.g. "intent to kill", "intent to defraud", "intent to further the commission of an offence").
The article mentions 18 USC 1029, which creates a number of federal offences related to use and trafficking in access devices, but specifies that intent to defraud is an element of those offences so our accused should be safe there. But 18 USC 1030 is also mentioned, which makes unauthorized access of certain specified kinds of data (financial and personal records, for example) an offence without any additional level of intent, which isn't really surprising.
The US Code can be accessed through the Office of the Legislative Counsel of the US House of Representatives, which the Library of Congress has links to, as well as other search engines to access the Code. Go and have a read for yourself.
Methinks you don't quite understand mens rea. It simply means there has to be a basic level of intent behind the actions that constitute the elements of an offence, so if your actions are accidental, or you're insane, or you otherwise do something against or independently of your will, then you lack criminal intent and can get away. But if your actions are deliberate, regardless of the motive, then you do possess mens rea or criminal intent, and are stuffed. There are a few exceptions, such as murder, where it must be shown that you acted with the intent of causing the victim's death, or stealing, where it must be shown that you acted with the intent of permanently depriving the victim of their property, but otherwise motive is essentially irrelevant.
Amen. It's amazing that the media sets itself up as another branch of government ("the Fourth Estate") without being willing to accept the restrictions and level of accountability that the other branches have. It's why I tend to be in favour of slightly stricter defamation laws that the US has in the wake of Sullivan, despite otherwise being very heavily pro free speech.
Given the viral nature of Free Food (i.e. "You are what you eat"), the consumption of this food could result in you being required to give Free Food to every person you meet (since physical proximity to another person could be interpreted as a "distribution"). I would therefore advise against the widespread commercial adoption of Free Food.