I agree completely. However, CadillacMan and hulk probably distributed more copyrighted material than most "professional counterfeiters" could have 10 years ago. The RIAA should be able to defend their copyrights. I feel that they have actually picked a pretty good way to do so. Instead of sending kids up the river they smack them down hard with a civil suit.
These Universities, by not playing along with the RIAA and turning over the names of the distributors are essentially forcing the RIAA to use the criminal court system if they want to protect their property. This tactic will probably work because the folks at the RIAA doesn't really want the bad publicity of putting filesharers in prison. Unless, of course, the students at the University become an even bigger problem. Then someone will go to prison instead of merely paying a fine.
When push comes to shove the administrators of the University know that the students in question were guilty, and if the students had been distributing electronic copies of one of their professor's textbooks you can bet that they would do something about it. Politically it has become acceptable to violate the music industry's property rights, and that's just not a good thing.
Yes, I know that the RIAA is filing a civil suit. However, they *could* file a criminal suit if they wanted to. The fact of the matter is that the distribution of copyrighted materials is a federal crime. The reason that the RIAA doesn't press criminal charges is that they aren't necessarily interested in wrecking some dumb college student's life.
As for the probable cause bit. Yes, an IP address isn't proof that someone is guilty, but it *is* more than enough "probable cause" to get a warrant to seize the computer. It certainly would be enough to get the student's actual name. If the RIAA wanted to go to the feds and turn this into a messy criminal trial the RIAA would get this information and more. In the end they would probably get a conviction as well, and laws designed to put mobsters in jail for bootlegging would put some dumb freshman in a federal penitentiary.
Funny part is, I don't even share music on the internet. I just have a certain respect for the legal system, and I don't enjoy seeing anybody shove their hand up it's ass like a sock puppet.
If the RIAA followed "the letter of the law" then filesharers would do time in prison, and would end up with felony convictions on their records (and they still would have to pay big fines to RIAA members). How exactly would that be better than working this out in the civil court system? Slice this up however you like, filesharing is a very serious crime according the laws currently on the books.
Exactly. All this does is up the ante for the kids. If the RIAA calls the Universities bluff and files criminal charges against these filesharers then the school will hand over the information needed. The only difference is that instead of simply paying a large fine the kids would also go to prison.
The Universities are just hoping that criminal charges aren't forwarded. If they are, then they will have essentially flushed these two kids' life right down the toilet.
Universities (or ISPs) can't afford not to have logs, and they probably need to keep these logs for far more than a day. Especially in cases like this where all that is really required is a name that goes along with the IP address. ISPs and Universities have to have this information to fight abuse of their networks.
That assumes, of course, that you are asked for old logs, and not just for access to new logs (before they get erased). In a criminal investigation the feds don't tell you who they are targetting until they have a warrant for your arrest. Erasing logs daily might save hulk and CadillacMan, but it won't save the next yahoo. Like I said before I would hate to be the sysadmin that would have to tell the feds that I erased evidence of what I knew was a federal crime.
Besides, I personally believe that the RIAA should be prosecuting these clowns. I would much rather see the RIAA protect their intellectual property using existing laws then try and pass laws mandating DRM or other silly measures. The last thing I want to see is for the Internet to get locked down tighter than a drum simply because some fool wanted a free copy of Brittney's latest album.
Actually, the existing laws are part of the problem. The RIAA could hand the investigations over to the feds under the existing laws that deal with the distribution of copyrighted material. However, this would land these stupid young punks in a federal penitentiary for a very long time. The existing laws are designed around busting up Mafia bootlegging operatins and the penalties are ridiculously stiff.
Instead the RIAA is handling this through the civil court system, mostly because this allows them to punish offenders without ruining their lives. Apparently they believe that sending college students to prison for the rest of their lives would be bad publicity. That doesn't change the fact that filesharing is essentially a federal crime. If the RIAA was pursuing this crime in the criminal courts then what these Universities did would be obstruction of justice at the very least.
Now the ISPs and the Universities are trying to stand behind privacy laws, but these crimes, by their very nature were done in public. Hundreds of thousands of people knew (or at least their computers knew) that these guys were sharing someone else's copyrighted material. This wasn't done in private, and there is no such thing as a right to anonymity.
I personally would be wary of doing something like that if I was the sysadmin asked to erase the logs. After all, distributing copyrighted material is a federal crime, and if the RIAA decides to ask the feds to step in destroying evidence could land you in very hot water. Sure, there are no criminal charges being pressed right now, but if criminal charges are pressed later it would be very hard for the person responsible to pretend that they didn't know that they were destroying evidence. After all, the University went to court to keep from having to turn over the names of the people involved, clearly *someone* had to know that valuable evidence existed.
If I was the sysadmin in question I wouldn't touch that issue with a barge pole.
Destroying the evidence probably wouldn't even help the students in question. Someone at the university knows who these guys are. And they will almost certainly squeal if criminal charges are put forward.
The RIAA could turn the matter over to the feds, and pursue these cases as a criminal matter. The problem with this is that the RIAA doesn't really want to send kids to prison under laws that were designed for the prosecution of Mafia bootleggers. The penalties for the illegal distribution of copyrighted works in the U.S. are ridiculously severe. You would probably be better off to commit armed robbery and get caught than to share a Gig of copyrighted material over the Internet.
I personally think that the RIAA has the right idea. They pick out the biggest offenders, build a case against them, and then shut them down in a way that is painful enough that they are likely to remember it, but not so ridiculously ham-handed that they end up in a federal pen.
The only reason that cooperating with the RIAA is even an issue is that the ISPs have a financial interest in protecting filesharers. Filesharing accounts for most of the bandwidth that gets used at most ISPs, and it also constitutes one of the major reasons that people pay for broadband. Likewise Universities are more than happy to be able to defend their students if possible. At the very least this is good publicity for these schools.
And... Universities get involved in civil matters all of the time. If you don't believe me, try your hand at plagiarism on a college campus some time. That's essentially the same crime as filesharing copyrighted works, except on a much smaller scale.
Besides, do the Universities really want to push the RIAA towards filing criminal charges? I'm sure "hulk" and "CadillacMan" would really appreciate their University's efforts if it forced the RIAA to bring in the feds. Instead of paying thousands in fines these guys would then wind up in prison under laws designed around Mafia bootleggers. The RIAA is trying to protect their copyrighted works without sending stupid kids to a federal prison. I think that the Universities should be helping the RIAA out, and not pretending that anonymity on the Internet is the same thing as privacy. It's not, and it is never going to be.
Since when do Universities or ISPs profess to protect your anonymity when you are connected to the inherently public Internet? "hulk" and "CadillacMan" weren't doing anything *private*. If they were doing something private then no one would have known that they had copyrighted material to distributed illegally. Honestly, what's more public than filesharing?
This isn't about the right to privacy, this is about the right to anonymity. What these students did was illegal, and the school has the information that the copyright owners need in order to press charges. In essence the University is witness to a crime, and it is refusing to testify. You could bet that the University would cough up names if these kids were dishing out child pornography, and if the Universities didn't give out names then you could bet that criminal charges would be filed against the University executives that made the brain-dead decision.
The RIAA almost certainly has their ducks in order to press charges against these clowns. After all, building a case against a filesharer is only as difficult as getting their IP address and a list of the files that they have available for download. Verifying that the files in question truly are your property probably would be helpful, but you've got "probable cause" either way.
The reason that everyone so far has caved when the RIAA came knocking is that the penalties for distribution of copyrighted material are very severe and the terms that the RIAA is willing to make are extraordinarily lenient. However, if the person in question was truly innocent they would be much better off in an actual court of law. Heck, they could probably get some serious damages out of the whole deal.
Digital media is one of the most important uses a lot of folks have for their computers, and Microsoft's competitors (Apple and Linux) come with a much wider set of software components than Windows does out of the box. I don't think that you have to stretch your imagination too far to imagine people purchasing a new Mac or a PC loaded with Linux instead of a new PC loaded with Longhorn. Especially if Microsoft goes out of its way to make their operating system less useful to people.
Yes, the gamers will probably be on Windows for some time to come, assuming, of course, that the next generation consoles don't finish PC gaming once and for all. However, that doesn't mean that there won't be defections.
Which basically means that Borland is doing market research for Microsoft for the next version of Visual Studio. The easiest way to find out what your customers want is to simply borrow the ideas that some of them were paying good money for in the previous version.
When VS 2005 (or whatever) comes out, what do you bet that it has most of the more popular Borland features.
It's not about the costs of a lawsuit. Adobe has several projects that rely on the DMCA to work. Take encrypted PDFs, for example, or Adobe's encrypted ebook format. When push comes to shove Adobe is heavily invested in the idea of proprietary closed formats.
There response to Nikon's use of a closed format is typical. Like Adobe's so-called secure formats Nikon's RAW format isn't really encrypted, but is instead merely obfusticated. With a little engineering Adobe could read the information they need just fine. However, doing so would weaken the DMCA, and Adobe doesn't want to do that. So instead they are putting economic pressure on Nikon. Adobe knows that quite a few of Nikon's users are going to want to edit their photos in photoshop. Adobe is using its market position to influence Nikon to change its mind.
Eventually Nikon will probably relent and give Adobe permission to open these files. Not only would this give weight to Adobe's interpretation of the DMCA, but if Nikon only gives permission to Adobe to open these files then it would give Adobe a market advantage. After all, Photoshop would be able to get the most out of Nikon's raw format and Adobe's competitors would not.
No one really considers Dmitry a blackhat, probably not even the folks at Adobe. The difference is that Adobe feels that it should be possible to make reverse engineering formats illegal, and Dmitry got in the way.
The abridged version of Les Miserables is one of the best books ever written. The unabridged version of the book, on the other hand, was horrific. Victor needed an editor so bad it hurts. At one point Jean Valjean jumps over the wall into a monastery and Victor launches into a two hundred page rant about monasteries. Jean Valjean then jumps over another wall into a nunnery, and the story gets back on track. The reason was simple, by the time that Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables he was so popular that he could bull past his editor, and he was as much a politician as a writer.
War and Peace, is something else altogether. I don't think that I have ever read a book where I despised more of the characters. Heck, I was glad every time one of them died. It's no wonder the Russian people rose up and ran all of those aristocratic losers out of the country. Even communism would be better than those guys (yes, I realize W&P is fiction).
Fah, I am going to spend $42 on the movie myself the first day. How bad could the movie be? Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay, and it's got Zaphod Beeblebrox in it (even if he apparently only has one head).
Why do you think it has taken Microsoft so long to come out with Longhorn. Microsoft had to wait for Apple and the Free Software community to come up with enough ideas worth stealing to make Longhorn worth its customers time.
Cheap imitations have a long history of dominating the market. For example, even diehard PC enthusiasts would have admitted that Windows 3.1 was a "cheap imitation" of the Mac OS. The Mac was better in almost every way than early versions of Windows (not to mention DOS), but PCs won out over Macs because they were less expensive and "good enough."
This dynamic can be seen in almost every industry. I remember when Japanese cars, for example, were "cheap imitations," and while most people don't equate Wal-Mart with quality products Wal-Mart somehow manages to sell an order of magnitude more stuff than any of its competitors. "Good enough" at a lower price is a tremendous market advantage.
As for Linux's amazing increase in quality. To demonstrate that all you need to do is install an older distribution and compare it to what is available today. In the Linux world distributions that are only one year old are practically ancient, and the difference between the distributions available in 2001 and today is immense. Properly installed and configured Linux makes a very credible desktop, and it comes complete with a much wider range of software than any OEM bundles with their PCs.
Quite frankly, anyone that hasn't observed the fact that Linux software evolves at an incredible pace simply isn't paying attention. There are lots of cases where proprietary software is still clearly better than Free Software, but in almost all of these cases the Free Software equivalent is clearly closing the gap. Not that it matters. You don't have to be as good as the competition to start stealing their marketshare. You merely have to be good enough at a lower price.
Not if the stragglers are avoiding the new version because of hardware limitations. Every time a major version of Linux comes out, the hardware requirements go up just like Windows. Linux may be one generation behind on hardware requirements, but the days of running Linux on the old machines in the closet has long since passed.
Yes, hardware continues to be an issue for Linux, but it certainly isn't the issue that it was even five years ago. I started using Linux on my desktop in 1995, and back then you basically had to go to a computer parts store with a specific list of properly supported parts, and you could basically forget installing Linux on a laptop. Nowadays you can order Linux boxes (including laptops) pre-installed from all sorts of vendors (including Walmart.com). More importantly, Linux is becoming a big enough market that hardware manufacturers *have* to care about it. This is especially true on the low end, and in third world countries (once again, that's where most of the growth in the PC industry is expected to come from over the next decade or so).
Yes, and the end user is paying for that. Or more precisely, the OEM is giving up the majority of its profits to software makers so that the computer can come pre-installed with enough software to make it usable. The funny thing about this is that a properly configured Linux computer would not only cost the OEM considerably less, but it would probably be more functional as well. This is why the extreme low end of the computer market is pretty much dominated by Linux boxes.
The funny thing about markets is that most of the growth generally occurs on the low end. "Good enough" at a lower price invariably trumps "better" but more expensive in the long run. Especially considering the fact that Linux's quality is rising at a fairly dramatic pace.
Exactly. Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows Linux will be there to pick up stragglers. This will especially be the case if Microsoft goes out of its way to put pressure on existing customers. Linux is making fairly amazing strides, and it comes at a price that can't be beat. Eventually both consumers and OEMs are going to wonder why exactly they are paying money for Windows.
Heck, the economics are all in Linux's favor. Even now the only company that makes money in the PC business is Microsoft, the hardware manufacturers basically exist at Microsoft's pleasure. This means that any new company that wants to break into the game has little choice but to use Linux. That's why when Wal-Mart wanted to undercut Dell's prices they used Linux. Even in the first world "good enough" at the lowest price tends to win in the long run, and in the third world (where most of the growth is supposed to occur over the next couple of decades) the price of Windows is a significant investment. In the long run I think that the Wal-Marts and Lenovos of the world are going to win out.
And that's the case even if Microsoft doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its customers. If Microsoft makes its DRM more intrusive to placate Hollywood, for example, then Linux will win converts. If Microsoft steps up anti-piracy tactics to combat piracy in the third world then Windows will actually become less useful to a large portion of the Windows userbase, Linux will win converts in these cases as well.
The thing to remember is that Windows has to generate obscene amounts of revenue just to survive. If everyone decides to stick with Windows XP, for example, Microsoft is just as screwed as if everyone switched to Linux. Microsoft not only has to keep the upgrade treadmill running smoothly, but they have to do it with increasing pressure from Free Software. Things are only going to get more difficult in the long run for Microsoft.
Exactly. Eolas can sue Microsoft for using its patented "browser plugin" technology and be awared half a billion dollars. That simply isn't going to happen if you sue the Mozilla Foundation.
Microsoft (and IBM) were planning on using patents to keep the riff-raff out of the software development business. After all, only the biggest and wealthiest software development firms could afford to cross license the patents that they needed to actually accomplish anything. Unfortunately this plan worked all to well. Now the small software firms are even bothering to write software. Instead they simply patent technologies that Microsoft or Big Blue are going to need in the future, wait until their IP gets wrapped up in the next release of an important software package and sue. In a very ironic twist only those software companies that are too small to be noticed by the patent vultures can safely develop software these days (and that includes basically all Free Software projects).
This is why Microsoft and IBM are starting to make noise about patent reform. These companies are finally realizing that under the present system they are very big targets.
The funny bit is that you don't need to prosecute "on the cheap." It's easy to find competent legal assistance when you are going after a cash-laden company like Microsoft. Eolas was awarded $500 million dollars for supposedly patenting web browser plugins. That decision is currently being appealed, but still that is a *lot* of money. Competent lawyers will find *you* if you have a chance at that sort of a windfall. As I said before, this is going to become the software industry of the decade. Unless, of course, Microsoft (and IBM) rethink their patent strategy and start pushing for sanity.
Microsoft is probably in the right on this subject, but unless they start lobbying for patent reform NOW, they are going to get screwed either way. I would feel sorry for Microsoft, but they have been actively pushing for the expansion of software patents, and Microsoft has been very aggressive in using patent in marketing campaigns against Free Software. Until Microsoft changes its stance on software patents I hope that these patent houses bleed MS dry.
Microsoft is currently defending itself in over 30 of these patent cases. Microsoft has huge piles of money, they talk to everyone, and they have a long history of shady dealings. Patenting a technology that Windows is likely to infringe in the future is the "new" way to make scads of money in the software business.
It's truly ironic that Microsoft paints Free Software as having patent issues. Heck, even IBM is starting to realize that patent reform is probably in its best interest.
Java purists can pretend that there are no functional differences between the various Java VMs, but systems administrators know the difference. Say what you will, but there are issues in moving between systems (even if you are using the same JVM), and there are issues in switching between the various JAVA (tm) VMs as well. This wouldn't be the case if Sun simply opened their JVM. Sun's JVM would simply get ported everywhere. Right now Sun doesn't have the resources to do the job by itself. So Sun ports to Solaris, Linux, and Windows on two platforms (Sparc and x86) and leaves it at that. Everything else is an afterthought.
As far as the popularity of Java among Free Software hackers, I think that it says quite a bit about Java's acceptance that Sun's Java Desktop contains almost no Java. Even worse, a disproportionate amount of the cool new Gnome applications are based on Mono. It is somewhat ironic that a great deal of Sun's hopes going forward revolve around Gnome and the Java desktop, and yet Sun is having such a hard time convincing Gnome hackers to use Java (tm). The Gnome hackers working for Red Hat are busy getting GCJ to the point where it can compete with Java (tm) and the Novell hackers, and a large whack of the Gnome community is busy cloning.NET. This is entirely Sun's fault. Sun chose Gnome over KDE for licensing reasons (among other things), and somewhere along the lines forgot that the folks that started Gnome care so much about Free Software that they thought that KDE's old license wasn't free enough. Free Software hackers want to like Sun, and they want to like Java, but the licensing issue is a big deal to them. Unfortunately for Sun, it absolutely needs the Free Software hackers to jump on board. There's a reason that Red Hat is winning the Linux war against SuSE and the rest, and that is that Red Hat has always been about Free Software. SuSE has always had a slicker distribution (as did Caldera before it went completely insane), but Red Hat was 100% Free Software.
As for using Sourceforge as a measure of Free Software hacker activity, well, that's more than a little flawed. There are a lot of Java programs on Sourceforge, but once you subtract out the text editors, the Java development tools, and the projects that don't even compile Mono is probably ahead. It's also important to note than none of the important Mono applications are hosted on Sourceforge. When you start talking about GUI desktop applications that people actually use Mono is *definitely* ahead.
Heck, I develop in Java for a living (web development), and yet I still don't use a single desktop Java application outside of Eclipse and it isn't pure Java.
Yes, but OpenOffice.org isn't aiming for a spot on the server (where Java is entrenched), it's trying to upset MS Office on the desktop, and that's an entirely different situation.
Say what you want, but a large percentage of the folks that are gutsy enough to be rolling out OpenOffice.org are doing so at least in part because they are Free Software advocates. In short, they are pushing OpenOffice.org for ethical reasons, and not for practical reasons. After all, a switch of that magnitude is definitely a risk. Lot's of folks are willing to take a risk on Free Software that they would not be willing to take for "inexpensive" software.
Sun is just being stupid on this front. Java has already fragmented into several mostly compatible forks. IBM has their own JVM, as does Apple, Oracle, Borland, and there are a wide range of Free Software Java-alike systems. Heck, Red Hat and the Debian team are hard at work turning GCJ into a useable (if not completely compatible) system. Already one of the most popular desktop Java applications is IBM's Eclipse, and Eclipse uses the non-pure-Java SWT toolkit instead of Swing.
Sun is losing control of Java, and the best way to reign in the various Java offshoots is to release Sun's JVM under a Free Software license. Freeing Java would completely kill all of the non-Sun Java toolkits, and it would give Sun the Free Software allies it needs to compete against Microsoft's.NET. Heck, right now Mono is doing a better job of enticing Free Software advocates than Sun is.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what OneStat has to say.
I agree completely. However, CadillacMan and hulk probably distributed more copyrighted material than most "professional counterfeiters" could have 10 years ago. The RIAA should be able to defend their copyrights. I feel that they have actually picked a pretty good way to do so. Instead of sending kids up the river they smack them down hard with a civil suit.
These Universities, by not playing along with the RIAA and turning over the names of the distributors are essentially forcing the RIAA to use the criminal court system if they want to protect their property. This tactic will probably work because the folks at the RIAA doesn't really want the bad publicity of putting filesharers in prison. Unless, of course, the students at the University become an even bigger problem. Then someone will go to prison instead of merely paying a fine.
When push comes to shove the administrators of the University know that the students in question were guilty, and if the students had been distributing electronic copies of one of their professor's textbooks you can bet that they would do something about it. Politically it has become acceptable to violate the music industry's property rights, and that's just not a good thing.
Yes, I know that the RIAA is filing a civil suit. However, they *could* file a criminal suit if they wanted to. The fact of the matter is that the distribution of copyrighted materials is a federal crime. The reason that the RIAA doesn't press criminal charges is that they aren't necessarily interested in wrecking some dumb college student's life.
As for the probable cause bit. Yes, an IP address isn't proof that someone is guilty, but it *is* more than enough "probable cause" to get a warrant to seize the computer. It certainly would be enough to get the student's actual name. If the RIAA wanted to go to the feds and turn this into a messy criminal trial the RIAA would get this information and more. In the end they would probably get a conviction as well, and laws designed to put mobsters in jail for bootlegging would put some dumb freshman in a federal penitentiary.
If the RIAA followed "the letter of the law" then filesharers would do time in prison, and would end up with felony convictions on their records (and they still would have to pay big fines to RIAA members). How exactly would that be better than working this out in the civil court system? Slice this up however you like, filesharing is a very serious crime according the laws currently on the books.
Exactly. All this does is up the ante for the kids. If the RIAA calls the Universities bluff and files criminal charges against these filesharers then the school will hand over the information needed. The only difference is that instead of simply paying a large fine the kids would also go to prison.
The Universities are just hoping that criminal charges aren't forwarded. If they are, then they will have essentially flushed these two kids' life right down the toilet.
Universities (or ISPs) can't afford not to have logs, and they probably need to keep these logs for far more than a day. Especially in cases like this where all that is really required is a name that goes along with the IP address. ISPs and Universities have to have this information to fight abuse of their networks.
That assumes, of course, that you are asked for old logs, and not just for access to new logs (before they get erased). In a criminal investigation the feds don't tell you who they are targetting until they have a warrant for your arrest. Erasing logs daily might save hulk and CadillacMan, but it won't save the next yahoo. Like I said before I would hate to be the sysadmin that would have to tell the feds that I erased evidence of what I knew was a federal crime.
Besides, I personally believe that the RIAA should be prosecuting these clowns. I would much rather see the RIAA protect their intellectual property using existing laws then try and pass laws mandating DRM or other silly measures. The last thing I want to see is for the Internet to get locked down tighter than a drum simply because some fool wanted a free copy of Brittney's latest album.
Actually, the existing laws are part of the problem. The RIAA could hand the investigations over to the feds under the existing laws that deal with the distribution of copyrighted material. However, this would land these stupid young punks in a federal penitentiary for a very long time. The existing laws are designed around busting up Mafia bootlegging operatins and the penalties are ridiculously stiff.
Instead the RIAA is handling this through the civil court system, mostly because this allows them to punish offenders without ruining their lives. Apparently they believe that sending college students to prison for the rest of their lives would be bad publicity. That doesn't change the fact that filesharing is essentially a federal crime. If the RIAA was pursuing this crime in the criminal courts then what these Universities did would be obstruction of justice at the very least.
Now the ISPs and the Universities are trying to stand behind privacy laws, but these crimes, by their very nature were done in public. Hundreds of thousands of people knew (or at least their computers knew) that these guys were sharing someone else's copyrighted material. This wasn't done in private, and there is no such thing as a right to anonymity.
I personally would be wary of doing something like that if I was the sysadmin asked to erase the logs. After all, distributing copyrighted material is a federal crime, and if the RIAA decides to ask the feds to step in destroying evidence could land you in very hot water. Sure, there are no criminal charges being pressed right now, but if criminal charges are pressed later it would be very hard for the person responsible to pretend that they didn't know that they were destroying evidence. After all, the University went to court to keep from having to turn over the names of the people involved, clearly *someone* had to know that valuable evidence existed.
If I was the sysadmin in question I wouldn't touch that issue with a barge pole.
Destroying the evidence probably wouldn't even help the students in question. Someone at the university knows who these guys are. And they will almost certainly squeal if criminal charges are put forward.
The RIAA could turn the matter over to the feds, and pursue these cases as a criminal matter. The problem with this is that the RIAA doesn't really want to send kids to prison under laws that were designed for the prosecution of Mafia bootleggers. The penalties for the illegal distribution of copyrighted works in the U.S. are ridiculously severe. You would probably be better off to commit armed robbery and get caught than to share a Gig of copyrighted material over the Internet.
I personally think that the RIAA has the right idea. They pick out the biggest offenders, build a case against them, and then shut them down in a way that is painful enough that they are likely to remember it, but not so ridiculously ham-handed that they end up in a federal pen.
The only reason that cooperating with the RIAA is even an issue is that the ISPs have a financial interest in protecting filesharers. Filesharing accounts for most of the bandwidth that gets used at most ISPs, and it also constitutes one of the major reasons that people pay for broadband. Likewise Universities are more than happy to be able to defend their students if possible. At the very least this is good publicity for these schools.
And... Universities get involved in civil matters all of the time. If you don't believe me, try your hand at plagiarism on a college campus some time. That's essentially the same crime as filesharing copyrighted works, except on a much smaller scale.
Besides, do the Universities really want to push the RIAA towards filing criminal charges? I'm sure "hulk" and "CadillacMan" would really appreciate their University's efforts if it forced the RIAA to bring in the feds. Instead of paying thousands in fines these guys would then wind up in prison under laws designed around Mafia bootleggers. The RIAA is trying to protect their copyrighted works without sending stupid kids to a federal prison. I think that the Universities should be helping the RIAA out, and not pretending that anonymity on the Internet is the same thing as privacy. It's not, and it is never going to be.
Since when do Universities or ISPs profess to protect your anonymity when you are connected to the inherently public Internet? "hulk" and "CadillacMan" weren't doing anything *private*. If they were doing something private then no one would have known that they had copyrighted material to distributed illegally. Honestly, what's more public than filesharing?
This isn't about the right to privacy, this is about the right to anonymity. What these students did was illegal, and the school has the information that the copyright owners need in order to press charges. In essence the University is witness to a crime, and it is refusing to testify. You could bet that the University would cough up names if these kids were dishing out child pornography, and if the Universities didn't give out names then you could bet that criminal charges would be filed against the University executives that made the brain-dead decision.
The RIAA almost certainly has their ducks in order to press charges against these clowns. After all, building a case against a filesharer is only as difficult as getting their IP address and a list of the files that they have available for download. Verifying that the files in question truly are your property probably would be helpful, but you've got "probable cause" either way.
The reason that everyone so far has caved when the RIAA came knocking is that the penalties for distribution of copyrighted material are very severe and the terms that the RIAA is willing to make are extraordinarily lenient. However, if the person in question was truly innocent they would be much better off in an actual court of law. Heck, they could probably get some serious damages out of the whole deal.
Digital media is one of the most important uses a lot of folks have for their computers, and Microsoft's competitors (Apple and Linux) come with a much wider set of software components than Windows does out of the box. I don't think that you have to stretch your imagination too far to imagine people purchasing a new Mac or a PC loaded with Linux instead of a new PC loaded with Longhorn. Especially if Microsoft goes out of its way to make their operating system less useful to people.
Yes, the gamers will probably be on Windows for some time to come, assuming, of course, that the next generation consoles don't finish PC gaming once and for all. However, that doesn't mean that there won't be defections.
Which basically means that Borland is doing market research for Microsoft for the next version of Visual Studio. The easiest way to find out what your customers want is to simply borrow the ideas that some of them were paying good money for in the previous version.
When VS 2005 (or whatever) comes out, what do you bet that it has most of the more popular Borland features.
It's not about the costs of a lawsuit. Adobe has several projects that rely on the DMCA to work. Take encrypted PDFs, for example, or Adobe's encrypted ebook format. When push comes to shove Adobe is heavily invested in the idea of proprietary closed formats.
There response to Nikon's use of a closed format is typical. Like Adobe's so-called secure formats Nikon's RAW format isn't really encrypted, but is instead merely obfusticated. With a little engineering Adobe could read the information they need just fine. However, doing so would weaken the DMCA, and Adobe doesn't want to do that. So instead they are putting economic pressure on Nikon. Adobe knows that quite a few of Nikon's users are going to want to edit their photos in photoshop. Adobe is using its market position to influence Nikon to change its mind.
Eventually Nikon will probably relent and give Adobe permission to open these files. Not only would this give weight to Adobe's interpretation of the DMCA, but if Nikon only gives permission to Adobe to open these files then it would give Adobe a market advantage. After all, Photoshop would be able to get the most out of Nikon's raw format and Adobe's competitors would not.
No one really considers Dmitry a blackhat, probably not even the folks at Adobe. The difference is that Adobe feels that it should be possible to make reverse engineering formats illegal, and Dmitry got in the way.
The abridged version of Les Miserables is one of the best books ever written. The unabridged version of the book, on the other hand, was horrific. Victor needed an editor so bad it hurts. At one point Jean Valjean jumps over the wall into a monastery and Victor launches into a two hundred page rant about monasteries. Jean Valjean then jumps over another wall into a nunnery, and the story gets back on track. The reason was simple, by the time that Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables he was so popular that he could bull past his editor, and he was as much a politician as a writer.
War and Peace, is something else altogether. I don't think that I have ever read a book where I despised more of the characters. Heck, I was glad every time one of them died. It's no wonder the Russian people rose up and ran all of those aristocratic losers out of the country. Even communism would be better than those guys (yes, I realize W&P is fiction).
Fah, I am going to spend $42 on the movie myself the first day. How bad could the movie be? Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay, and it's got Zaphod Beeblebrox in it (even if he apparently only has one head).
Why do you think it has taken Microsoft so long to come out with Longhorn. Microsoft had to wait for Apple and the Free Software community to come up with enough ideas worth stealing to make Longhorn worth its customers time.
Cheap imitations have a long history of dominating the market. For example, even diehard PC enthusiasts would have admitted that Windows 3.1 was a "cheap imitation" of the Mac OS. The Mac was better in almost every way than early versions of Windows (not to mention DOS), but PCs won out over Macs because they were less expensive and "good enough."
This dynamic can be seen in almost every industry. I remember when Japanese cars, for example, were "cheap imitations," and while most people don't equate Wal-Mart with quality products Wal-Mart somehow manages to sell an order of magnitude more stuff than any of its competitors. "Good enough" at a lower price is a tremendous market advantage.
As for Linux's amazing increase in quality. To demonstrate that all you need to do is install an older distribution and compare it to what is available today. In the Linux world distributions that are only one year old are practically ancient, and the difference between the distributions available in 2001 and today is immense. Properly installed and configured Linux makes a very credible desktop, and it comes complete with a much wider range of software than any OEM bundles with their PCs.
Quite frankly, anyone that hasn't observed the fact that Linux software evolves at an incredible pace simply isn't paying attention. There are lots of cases where proprietary software is still clearly better than Free Software, but in almost all of these cases the Free Software equivalent is clearly closing the gap. Not that it matters. You don't have to be as good as the competition to start stealing their marketshare. You merely have to be good enough at a lower price.
Yes, hardware continues to be an issue for Linux, but it certainly isn't the issue that it was even five years ago. I started using Linux on my desktop in 1995, and back then you basically had to go to a computer parts store with a specific list of properly supported parts, and you could basically forget installing Linux on a laptop. Nowadays you can order Linux boxes (including laptops) pre-installed from all sorts of vendors (including Walmart.com). More importantly, Linux is becoming a big enough market that hardware manufacturers *have* to care about it. This is especially true on the low end, and in third world countries (once again, that's where most of the growth in the PC industry is expected to come from over the next decade or so).
Yes, and the end user is paying for that. Or more precisely, the OEM is giving up the majority of its profits to software makers so that the computer can come pre-installed with enough software to make it usable. The funny thing about this is that a properly configured Linux computer would not only cost the OEM considerably less, but it would probably be more functional as well. This is why the extreme low end of the computer market is pretty much dominated by Linux boxes.
The funny thing about markets is that most of the growth generally occurs on the low end. "Good enough" at a lower price invariably trumps "better" but more expensive in the long run. Especially considering the fact that Linux's quality is rising at a fairly dramatic pace.
Exactly. Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows Linux will be there to pick up stragglers. This will especially be the case if Microsoft goes out of its way to put pressure on existing customers. Linux is making fairly amazing strides, and it comes at a price that can't be beat. Eventually both consumers and OEMs are going to wonder why exactly they are paying money for Windows.
Heck, the economics are all in Linux's favor. Even now the only company that makes money in the PC business is Microsoft, the hardware manufacturers basically exist at Microsoft's pleasure. This means that any new company that wants to break into the game has little choice but to use Linux. That's why when Wal-Mart wanted to undercut Dell's prices they used Linux. Even in the first world "good enough" at the lowest price tends to win in the long run, and in the third world (where most of the growth is supposed to occur over the next couple of decades) the price of Windows is a significant investment. In the long run I think that the Wal-Marts and Lenovos of the world are going to win out.
And that's the case even if Microsoft doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its customers. If Microsoft makes its DRM more intrusive to placate Hollywood, for example, then Linux will win converts. If Microsoft steps up anti-piracy tactics to combat piracy in the third world then Windows will actually become less useful to a large portion of the Windows userbase, Linux will win converts in these cases as well.
The thing to remember is that Windows has to generate obscene amounts of revenue just to survive. If everyone decides to stick with Windows XP, for example, Microsoft is just as screwed as if everyone switched to Linux. Microsoft not only has to keep the upgrade treadmill running smoothly, but they have to do it with increasing pressure from Free Software. Things are only going to get more difficult in the long run for Microsoft.
Exactly. Eolas can sue Microsoft for using its patented "browser plugin" technology and be awared half a billion dollars. That simply isn't going to happen if you sue the Mozilla Foundation.
Microsoft (and IBM) were planning on using patents to keep the riff-raff out of the software development business. After all, only the biggest and wealthiest software development firms could afford to cross license the patents that they needed to actually accomplish anything. Unfortunately this plan worked all to well. Now the small software firms are even bothering to write software. Instead they simply patent technologies that Microsoft or Big Blue are going to need in the future, wait until their IP gets wrapped up in the next release of an important software package and sue. In a very ironic twist only those software companies that are too small to be noticed by the patent vultures can safely develop software these days (and that includes basically all Free Software projects).
This is why Microsoft and IBM are starting to make noise about patent reform. These companies are finally realizing that under the present system they are very big targets.
The funny bit is that you don't need to prosecute "on the cheap." It's easy to find competent legal assistance when you are going after a cash-laden company like Microsoft. Eolas was awarded $500 million dollars for supposedly patenting web browser plugins. That decision is currently being appealed, but still that is a *lot* of money. Competent lawyers will find *you* if you have a chance at that sort of a windfall. As I said before, this is going to become the software industry of the decade. Unless, of course, Microsoft (and IBM) rethink their patent strategy and start pushing for sanity.
Microsoft is probably in the right on this subject, but unless they start lobbying for patent reform NOW, they are going to get screwed either way. I would feel sorry for Microsoft, but they have been actively pushing for the expansion of software patents, and Microsoft has been very aggressive in using patent in marketing campaigns against Free Software. Until Microsoft changes its stance on software patents I hope that these patent houses bleed MS dry.
Microsoft is currently defending itself in over 30 of these patent cases. Microsoft has huge piles of money, they talk to everyone, and they have a long history of shady dealings. Patenting a technology that Windows is likely to infringe in the future is the "new" way to make scads of money in the software business.
It's truly ironic that Microsoft paints Free Software as having patent issues. Heck, even IBM is starting to realize that patent reform is probably in its best interest.
Java purists can pretend that there are no functional differences between the various Java VMs, but systems administrators know the difference. Say what you will, but there are issues in moving between systems (even if you are using the same JVM), and there are issues in switching between the various JAVA (tm) VMs as well. This wouldn't be the case if Sun simply opened their JVM. Sun's JVM would simply get ported everywhere. Right now Sun doesn't have the resources to do the job by itself. So Sun ports to Solaris, Linux, and Windows on two platforms (Sparc and x86) and leaves it at that. Everything else is an afterthought.
As far as the popularity of Java among Free Software hackers, I think that it says quite a bit about Java's acceptance that Sun's Java Desktop contains almost no Java. Even worse, a disproportionate amount of the cool new Gnome applications are based on Mono. It is somewhat ironic that a great deal of Sun's hopes going forward revolve around Gnome and the Java desktop, and yet Sun is having such a hard time convincing Gnome hackers to use Java (tm). The Gnome hackers working for Red Hat are busy getting GCJ to the point where it can compete with Java (tm) and the Novell hackers, and a large whack of the Gnome community is busy cloning .NET. This is entirely Sun's fault. Sun chose Gnome over KDE for licensing reasons (among other things), and somewhere along the lines forgot that the folks that started Gnome care so much about Free Software that they thought that KDE's old license wasn't free enough. Free Software hackers want to like Sun, and they want to like Java, but the licensing issue is a big deal to them. Unfortunately for Sun, it absolutely needs the Free Software hackers to jump on board. There's a reason that Red Hat is winning the Linux war against SuSE and the rest, and that is that Red Hat has always been about Free Software. SuSE has always had a slicker distribution (as did Caldera before it went completely insane), but Red Hat was 100% Free Software.
As for using Sourceforge as a measure of Free Software hacker activity, well, that's more than a little flawed. There are a lot of Java programs on Sourceforge, but once you subtract out the text editors, the Java development tools, and the projects that don't even compile Mono is probably ahead. It's also important to note than none of the important Mono applications are hosted on Sourceforge. When you start talking about GUI desktop applications that people actually use Mono is *definitely* ahead.
Heck, I develop in Java for a living (web development), and yet I still don't use a single desktop Java application outside of Eclipse and it isn't pure Java.
Yes, but OpenOffice.org isn't aiming for a spot on the server (where Java is entrenched), it's trying to upset MS Office on the desktop, and that's an entirely different situation.
Say what you want, but a large percentage of the folks that are gutsy enough to be rolling out OpenOffice.org are doing so at least in part because they are Free Software advocates. In short, they are pushing OpenOffice.org for ethical reasons, and not for practical reasons. After all, a switch of that magnitude is definitely a risk. Lot's of folks are willing to take a risk on Free Software that they would not be willing to take for "inexpensive" software.
Sun is just being stupid on this front. Java has already fragmented into several mostly compatible forks. IBM has their own JVM, as does Apple, Oracle, Borland, and there are a wide range of Free Software Java-alike systems. Heck, Red Hat and the Debian team are hard at work turning GCJ into a useable (if not completely compatible) system. Already one of the most popular desktop Java applications is IBM's Eclipse, and Eclipse uses the non-pure-Java SWT toolkit instead of Swing.
Sun is losing control of Java, and the best way to reign in the various Java offshoots is to release Sun's JVM under a Free Software license. Freeing Java would completely kill all of the non-Sun Java toolkits, and it would give Sun the Free Software allies it needs to compete against Microsoft's .NET. Heck, right now Mono is doing a better job of enticing Free Software advocates than Sun is.