At all levels, the system is fundamentally broken.
That's an opinion. But for a whole lot of people the system seems to be working just fine. That is, they may gripe and complain, but essentially they like things the way they are. And while we have some very serious trouble spots, by and large Americans enjoy a pretty cozy lifestyle.
What to do about it is something I haven't settled on, but I do know that just voting in a decent candidate here or there won't make a damn bit of difference. If you have a decent candidate, that is.
As long as people keep voting for Democrats and Republicans, I agree-- these two parties don't really stand for anything, except two flavors of deep compromise. And that's a big part of the problem. America is a very diverse place. You can have a hardcore atheist socialist living on the same block as a right-wing libertarian gun-nut. When you have two very distinct sides, both with small hardcore adherents, and both having much larger sympathetic constituencies, politics becomes a process of making compromises.
The problem of having decent candidates is serious. But for left-leaning types the last presidential election certainly offered an excellent alternative to the Democratic ticket. But because they're too chicken to vote their conscience, many liberals allowed themselves to be intimidated into voting for Gore when they probably would have preferred Nader. Fat lot of good it did them. Now the Green party, which is a great deal more rigid about many liberal principles, is still a minor party, and so in 2004 there will still be the Republican candidate, and the Democratic lesser-of-two-evils.
Peaceful political change takes time, because it requires thoughtfully getting the public to change its mind. Look at some touchpoint issues in America right now though. Abortion, perfect example. How do you possibly reconcile the feminist "right to choose" with the religious "right to life", except to have legal abortions and then do everything you can to keep people from getting them. Both sides are very unwavering in this dispute and any resolution is sure to disappoint all sides.
There is nothing we *can* do that will somehow cause us to wake up tomorrow in an America that is suddenly better than the one we pulled the shutters on last night. But we do have to make sure the things we can do are things we actually do. It's senseless for someone who claims to be an environmentalist to commute 60 minutes in an SUV, then blame their participation in pollution on a "car culture" and say "there's nothing I can do about it". When Election Day rolls around, we do have a responsibility to go to the polls and vote what we believe-- and for people we think we can actually trust, not vote for the lesser of two evils. Yeah, the worse guy may win. But at least you'll have tangible evidence of strong support for a less centrist viewpoint. We need that evidence to convince others that alternatives can work. Without it, we're left defending what appears to be a 1% to 6% minority opinion-- and a lot of our fellow Americans will eschew us for our small numbers, as if being popular somehow made someone right or better.
You're clueless. In the City of Minneapolis, we've recently elected a mayor whose first serious involvement, and encouragement to seek the office of Mayor was a result of his own participation in an email list found at www.e-democracy.com. We've had numerous examples of the same email list being used to help spread news when corporate media was worthless, and the Mayor continues to participate in the list (as do a few city council members and even some state level pols). All in all, I'd say you're seeing the future of democracy in a digital age in action with things like the Minneapolis politics list.
Apparently the SSSCA was defeated not by a "a few" emails, but by several thousand of them. And not all from ranting Slashbots (like me) either.
Your talk of "topple the system" is a load of horse-patootie. You're not going to topple this system. Neither do you pose it any threat. Regular Americans by and large approve of this system (they vote for it year after year), or care so little about it that they don't even vote at all. In newer democracies like South Africa, poll rates are double ours in the US, because people know they'd better vote if they care about something... that's what they'd been fighting for. If you want to change "the system" you're going to need to change Americans first, and you'll never do that by talking about "the system" like it's something that needs to be toppled.
Even my P133 does a lot of skipping if I'm doing file transfers or shelling into the mp3 server. Same problem with the web interface. But on the whole, getting a good playlist together means that with my 40gb drive that I can listen to continuous music without a repeat for something like three or four weeks.
How is that hypocrisy? That's a primary tenet of ethical journalism, the advertising department does not talk to or influence the editorial department. Now if only Slashdot would get into some of the other hallmarks of professional journalism, like spell-checking, fact-checking, etc.
Thank you for arguing this salient point, which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Amazon is not selling digital copies of the books. They are selling used copies of relatively new books, pretty much setting it up so that the used copies are in direct competition with the new copies. The re-use question in this case is an important one, since apparently authors and publishers would like to see us create more landfills than conserve paper. On the other hand, the unfortunate fact is that in the time it takes for a book to become popular the after market for used copies will quickly be flooded on the supply side. Meaning that just as new sales should be picking up, Amazon is facilitating the used sales.
The publishers and authors are understandably upset, but unforunately the way things stand the best they can do is point out how this hurts their business and hope that consumers will understand. Certainly it is counter-productive for authors themselves to link to Amazon, if Amazon's practices are demonstrably linked to less than optimal new book sales.
Of course as a consumer, my goal is to obtain the maximum book for the least buck-- and I probably don't care if the book is used in many cases. Score one for Amazon. Too bad I'm boycotting them.
I don't normally respond to AC's but this is a reasonable post, questioning my assertion that ease of use and security are orthogonal. You're right, user convenience and security is certainly a classic trade-off in real world engineering. But programming is not real world engineering. It is programming. And Microsoft changing out "ease of use" for "convenience" makes it sound as though the task of making user-friendly, yet secure applications is difficult. It is not.
As an example of something that is extremely easy to use (user friendly), but considered fairly secure, try HTTPS. It is no harder for the user to access a page served this way than pages served as plain text. Another fine example would be the integration of GnuPG into KMail. Of course, key management is not as convenient to use as no keys at all, but there is no reason the process of obtaining and implementing keys has to be difficult for the user. And in order for that process to be secure, there is no reason for it to be hard for the user.
The problem here is that Microsoft would like us to believe that the security holes found in their products are somehow the result of their having made their products "easy to use". This is simply untrue. I've been using their products heavily for five years now (I've been using other computers for about 20 years, though), and I don't find them at all easy to use. Nor do I find that the things I think of daily as possible security holes (things like macros in Word documents or scripting in my email client) have actually enhanced the usability of their products.
But sure, you have a good point. So here's my counter: the best lies are those that contain a grain of truth.
A typical Econ 101 oversimplification does not make for sound economic policy. Sorry, but while I might agree that trade is better no trade, this doesn't mean I suddenly have to support "globalism" as defined by the WTO, the FTAA, NAFTA, GATT, or whatever the fatcats are calling their cartels today.
Huh. That's exactly what they did at OpenBSD-- they stopped and reviewed all the code (am I wrong? isn't that what they did?). MS can stuff themselves with this self-serving deception. My favorite is the line where they pretend that "easy to use means easy to hack". What a load! That's the same sort of dishonesty they perpetrate with their "just reboot/reinstall to solve bug X, Y, or Z" approach. Ease of use and security are entirely orthogonal. Microsoft will say *anything* to get you to ignore problems they've helped create.
You're not removing the old QT. You're also missing a couple of key libraries: arts and libxml2, I believe. Finally, there are many packages in a standard RH7.2 w/KDE install that might depend on what this removes, so the process fails at that point. The only thing that you don't want to delete is the old libxslt library, which you can always take out and then replace after you've installed the new libxml2 library.
But other than fiddling with RPM a bit to sort out this stuff, the RPMs seemed to work pretty well on my RH7.2 system. My only complaint so far is some odd character stuff using KDE2 mail directories (messages in old folders show up in Kanji for some reason, but once I "read" them they turn normal again-- we'll see if the problem persists once I get around to doing a from-source compile).
You know. Installing KDE from source is infinitely easier than installing Gnome 1.4 from source. First the sheer number of tarballs required for a minimally functional install of KDE is at least 1/3 of Gnome. Second, the non-KDE dependencies are a breeze to find/download/install and consists primarily of QT. Finding the dependencies for GNOME is a hellish process (at least the first time you do it).
And Gnome 1.4 just ain't as good as KDE2 was (and now KDE3). Maybe Gnome 2 will be better, but I tend to think not. KDE's main selling points are applications like KMail and Konqueror. While Gnome may have Galeon available, it depends on Mozilla (a real dog to install and run). I think my attempts to get to Evolution were thwarted by the install process (but I seem to be blocking those memories for some reason).
So sure, it would be nice if KDE had a company like Ximian offering a service like Red Carpet. But that's Ximian, not GNOME. And for my money (which is $0), you can't beat the process of installing KDE from source. Besides, I love the way KDE tends to release a unified upgrade all at once, minimizing the need to worry about this process on a regular basis.
And just because I'm right for once: http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:d6Pbp7kRuzEC: www.sonystyle.com/vaio/popup/specs_rx550.pdf+&hl=e n
(1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19.2 0 -- now can I hit the damn submit button?!@#$%^&???)
Why don't you just tell the AC to stuff himself? Any idiot can view PDF using free software like xpdf. If they don't want to launch X and browse in a GUI tough on them. The PDF format is hardly a secret. Hell, google.com indexes PDFs from all over the place and will even serve them as HTML documents. I bet the one you pointed to is in their cache.
Try reading the Court's statement-- they explain everything in excruciating detail. This sort of background reading can be very informative and legal documents are not that inscrutable.
Read the statement of the Court: Thus, we conclude that the City has failed to demonstrate that its need for the Tattered Cover's customer purchase record is sufficiently compelling to outweigh the harm that would be caused to constitutional interests if the search warrant were executed. They mean first amendment interests, freedom of speech and the press. Your opinion on whether or not Tattered Cover is right is apparently superceded by the CO Supreme Court. Fortunately they seem to believe that anonymity in book purchasing underlies these free speech rights.
I understand what public performance rights are, but since bnetd is not the copyrighted work of Blizzard, the public performance thereof is hardly an infringement of Blizzard's rights in BattleNet. I guess maybe if they can show that bnetd *is* somehow an unauthorized derivation, they can also restrict this so-called public performance. Unless maybe they are going to argue the obvious absurdity that the server allows the public performance of the client software. I agree. I don't really see what chance a group of hobbyists have against a large corporate legal department.
Blizzard is alleging all kinds of things in this case, which seems to be an excellent strategy since a simple attack might lead to a simple defense. The more complex the attack the more likely the defendants will simply stipulate/surrender. By using the shotgun approach Blizzard makes it difficult to focus on a single area of "intellectual property" law. They have alleged copyright violations (re-use of code?, screen shots, public performance) and trademark infringement (the name bnetd).
In the case of trademark infringement, Blizzard's rights to the word "BattleNet" could be diluted if not jealously guarded-- trademarks are all about distinctive/reputable names, not any actual product of one's intellect. Oddly enough, this is probably their strongest claim, since reasonable adults might agree that 'bnetd' looks too much like 'BattleNet'. The former being largely an abbreviated form of the latter.
As to Blizzard's claim of copied code, I don't see how, unless someone on the bnetd team either stole code or was leaked a copy of the source (or even the executables) for BattleNet. This is a bit like me saying you copied my web site server-side software because the outputs are similar, even though you had no access to my server code. Blizzard might have a point with respect to the screenshots, except that it would more likely be that the screenshots could be used to augment the trademark argument than they are any serious copyright infringement on their own. As to public performance, I really don't get that one.
But none of these copyright claims needs to be prosecuted now for Blizzard to sue other offenders later. Copyright and patents don't work that way. At least not on paper. Does that mean Blizzard should have waited? No. Especially not on their perceived trademark problem... but why not nip this now? If other people start doing this it certainly would be an uphill battle for Blizzard simply because there will be more people to go after.
Not that I'm necessarily correct either. Even if I were a lawyer, you could easily find a different lawyer with a different opinion. In fact, you could probably find a lawyer willing to take whatever stand you paid him/her to take.;)
The only "intellectual property" right you can lose by not defending it is your trademarks, which is part of this suit but not the part you seem to be discussing. Copyright has very strong protections built in.
In fact, things like copyright seem to enjoy better protection than certain physical property rights. Example: if my neighbor starts using part of my yard, and I don't object to this quickly enough, that neighbor could potentially gain title to that part of my yard (neighbor FAQ at nolo.com). Of course, copyrights thoeretically expire at some point, so it does even out.
Addendum: even if everyone started at the cap, that would just encourage trolling. The games no fun if you have the high score, and a few Beowolf Cluster of Natalie Hot Grits Portman PT Cruiser posts would get you right down to 0 in no time.
I think someone should hack/. and give everybody 50 karma points, so there'd be no more karma whoring...
Like it's really that hard to get to 50.
Here's how I can get several points just from this story: "Thankfully I run [Mozilla|Galeon|Konqueror|Lynx] on [Linux|*BSD|Atari 800], so these [twerps|cakeholes|spammers] can go die for all I care. JavaScript is the Devil's own creation. If I wanted to download your software I'd download your software! Imminent end of usable web predicted!
Most gun-control types would be fine with a law that mandated soldering the trigger to the frame so that it could never be fired again. Therefore I strongly suggest avoiding any analogies between guns and computers when discussing this with Democrats and other real left-wingers. Rather I suggest focusing on increasing the ability for consumers to protect their own privacy and the free speech implications of DRM laws. Especially point out the negative impact that this law will have on educational institutions from nursery straight through grad school. How do you do research when all the books are locked down and you can't even copy text into a notes document for later reference?
That monopolies existed does not prove that the absence of regulation somehow encourages them. One of the biggest needs I see with attempts to regulate capital is not how to prevent good businesses from becoming monopolies, but how to prevent the potential for individual success from being tied to something beyond that individual's control-- i.e. birth, race, gender, etc. What difference does it make if there is one company or five if the only people who ever make it rich at those companies are married men who come from wealthy families of European origin?
Also, railways, telephones, even electricity did not "have" to be state regulated monopolies. There is not a single reason that you couldn't have two competing power grids, two competing rail systems, or two parallel sets of phone lines with different end points. In fact, there's no reason that two or more companies couldn't own parts of networks and arrange for transfer points from one network to the another.
Finally, I'm not a libertarian, I just don't think the evidence supports the notion that monopolies are inevitable. And WRT MS, I am strongly biased against them. I find their software to be second rate and their business practices unacceptable. Which is why I don't buy their stuff. That I have viable choices indicates to me that they are not a monopoly. The fact that most consumers are too darn lazy to seek out alternatives is a far bigger issue in my mind than this anti-trust issue.
If you can't keep up, take notes. Fraunhofer are the MP3 developers.:)
Frankly, I don't care who develops this technology, whether it's someone the RIAA or MPAA specifically hire, or whether it's existing format owners. The net effect is that it adds signal to the pro-DRM thought stream. What's annoying is that this isn't going to help at all.
They can't possibly expect watermarking to do any good since it is so easily defeated either with filter software, D-A-D re-encoding, or simply purchasing with a shill buyer (i.e. untraceable violation). It only takes one re-encoded, filtered, or shill-bought file, since P2P sharing can quickly take a single file and turn it into millions of copies.
Slashdot Mirror
At all levels, the system is fundamentally broken.
That's an opinion. But for a whole lot of people the system seems to be working just fine. That is, they may gripe and complain, but essentially they like things the way they are. And while we have some very serious trouble spots, by and large Americans enjoy a pretty cozy lifestyle.
What to do about it is something I haven't settled on, but I do know that just voting in a decent candidate here or there won't make a damn bit of difference. If you have a decent candidate, that is.
As long as people keep voting for Democrats and Republicans, I agree-- these two parties don't really stand for anything, except two flavors of deep compromise. And that's a big part of the problem. America is a very diverse place. You can have a hardcore atheist socialist living on the same block as a right-wing libertarian gun-nut. When you have two very distinct sides, both with small hardcore adherents, and both having much larger sympathetic constituencies, politics becomes a process of making compromises.
The problem of having decent candidates is serious. But for left-leaning types the last presidential election certainly offered an excellent alternative to the Democratic ticket. But because they're too chicken to vote their conscience, many liberals allowed themselves to be intimidated into voting for Gore when they probably would have preferred Nader. Fat lot of good it did them. Now the Green party, which is a great deal more rigid about many liberal principles, is still a minor party, and so in 2004 there will still be the Republican candidate, and the Democratic lesser-of-two-evils.
Peaceful political change takes time, because it requires thoughtfully getting the public to change its mind. Look at some touchpoint issues in America right now though. Abortion, perfect example. How do you possibly reconcile the feminist "right to choose" with the religious "right to life", except to have legal abortions and then do everything you can to keep people from getting them. Both sides are very unwavering in this dispute and any resolution is sure to disappoint all sides.
There is nothing we *can* do that will somehow cause us to wake up tomorrow in an America that is suddenly better than the one we pulled the shutters on last night. But we do have to make sure the things we can do are things we actually do. It's senseless for someone who claims to be an environmentalist to commute 60 minutes in an SUV, then blame their participation in pollution on a "car culture" and say "there's nothing I can do about it". When Election Day rolls around, we do have a responsibility to go to the polls and vote what we believe-- and for people we think we can actually trust, not vote for the lesser of two evils. Yeah, the worse guy may win. But at least you'll have tangible evidence of strong support for a less centrist viewpoint. We need that evidence to convince others that alternatives can work. Without it, we're left defending what appears to be a 1% to 6% minority opinion-- and a lot of our fellow Americans will eschew us for our small numbers, as if being popular somehow made someone right or better.
Oops! Sorry about that. The correct URL is www.e-democracy.org.
SSSCA and CBDPTA are essentially the same bill. But thanks for playing.
You're clueless. In the City of Minneapolis, we've recently elected a mayor whose first serious involvement, and encouragement to seek the office of Mayor was a result of his own participation in an email list found at www.e-democracy.com. We've had numerous examples of the same email list being used to help spread news when corporate media was worthless, and the Mayor continues to participate in the list (as do a few city council members and even some state level pols). All in all, I'd say you're seeing the future of democracy in a digital age in action with things like the Minneapolis politics list.
Apparently the SSSCA was defeated not by a "a few" emails, but by several thousand of them. And not all from ranting Slashbots (like me) either.
Your talk of "topple the system" is a load of horse-patootie. You're not going to topple this system. Neither do you pose it any threat. Regular Americans by and large approve of this system (they vote for it year after year), or care so little about it that they don't even vote at all. In newer democracies like South Africa, poll rates are double ours in the US, because people know they'd better vote if they care about something... that's what they'd been fighting for. If you want to change "the system" you're going to need to change Americans first, and you'll never do that by talking about "the system" like it's something that needs to be toppled.
Even my P133 does a lot of skipping if I'm doing file transfers or shelling into the mp3 server. Same problem with the web interface. But on the whole, getting a good playlist together means that with my 40gb drive that I can listen to continuous music without a repeat for something like three or four weeks.
How is that hypocrisy? That's a primary tenet of ethical journalism, the advertising department does not talk to or influence the editorial department. Now if only Slashdot would get into some of the other hallmarks of professional journalism, like spell-checking, fact-checking, etc.
Thank you for arguing this salient point, which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Amazon is not selling digital copies of the books. They are selling used copies of relatively new books, pretty much setting it up so that the used copies are in direct competition with the new copies. The re-use question in this case is an important one, since apparently authors and publishers would like to see us create more landfills than conserve paper. On the other hand, the unfortunate fact is that in the time it takes for a book to become popular the after market for used copies will quickly be flooded on the supply side. Meaning that just as new sales should be picking up, Amazon is facilitating the used sales.
The publishers and authors are understandably upset, but unforunately the way things stand the best they can do is point out how this hurts their business and hope that consumers will understand. Certainly it is counter-productive for authors themselves to link to Amazon, if Amazon's practices are demonstrably linked to less than optimal new book sales.
Of course as a consumer, my goal is to obtain the maximum book for the least buck-- and I probably don't care if the book is used in many cases. Score one for Amazon. Too bad I'm boycotting them.
I don't normally respond to AC's but this is a reasonable post, questioning my assertion that ease of use and security are orthogonal. You're right, user convenience and security is certainly a classic trade-off in real world engineering. But programming is not real world engineering. It is programming. And Microsoft changing out "ease of use" for "convenience" makes it sound as though the task of making user-friendly, yet secure applications is difficult. It is not.
As an example of something that is extremely easy to use (user friendly), but considered fairly secure, try HTTPS. It is no harder for the user to access a page served this way than pages served as plain text. Another fine example would be the integration of GnuPG into KMail. Of course, key management is not as convenient to use as no keys at all, but there is no reason the process of obtaining and implementing keys has to be difficult for the user. And in order for that process to be secure, there is no reason for it to be hard for the user.
The problem here is that Microsoft would like us to believe that the security holes found in their products are somehow the result of their having made their products "easy to use". This is simply untrue. I've been using their products heavily for five years now (I've been using other computers for about 20 years, though), and I don't find them at all easy to use. Nor do I find that the things I think of daily as possible security holes (things like macros in Word documents or scripting in my email client) have actually enhanced the usability of their products.
But sure, you have a good point. So here's my counter: the best lies are those that contain a grain of truth.
A typical Econ 101 oversimplification does not make for sound economic policy. Sorry, but while I might agree that trade is better no trade, this doesn't mean I suddenly have to support "globalism" as defined by the WTO, the FTAA, NAFTA, GATT, or whatever the fatcats are calling their cartels today.
Huh. That's exactly what they did at OpenBSD-- they stopped and reviewed all the code (am I wrong? isn't that what they did?). MS can stuff themselves with this self-serving deception. My favorite is the line where they pretend that "easy to use means easy to hack". What a load! That's the same sort of dishonesty they perpetrate with their "just reboot/reinstall to solve bug X, Y, or Z" approach. Ease of use and security are entirely orthogonal. Microsoft will say *anything* to get you to ignore problems they've helped create.
These directions probably won't work. :)
You're not removing the old QT. You're also missing a couple of key libraries: arts and libxml2, I believe. Finally, there are many packages in a standard RH7.2 w/KDE install that might depend on what this removes, so the process fails at that point. The only thing that you don't want to delete is the old libxslt library, which you can always take out and then replace after you've installed the new libxml2 library.
But other than fiddling with RPM a bit to sort out this stuff, the RPMs seemed to work pretty well on my RH7.2 system. My only complaint so far is some odd character stuff using KDE2 mail directories (messages in old folders show up in Kanji for some reason, but once I "read" them they turn normal again-- we'll see if the problem persists once I get around to doing a from-source compile).
You know. Installing KDE from source is infinitely easier than installing Gnome 1.4 from source. First the sheer number of tarballs required for a minimally functional install of KDE is at least 1/3 of Gnome. Second, the non-KDE dependencies are a breeze to find/download/install and consists primarily of QT. Finding the dependencies for GNOME is a hellish process (at least the first time you do it).
And Gnome 1.4 just ain't as good as KDE2 was (and now KDE3). Maybe Gnome 2 will be better, but I tend to think not. KDE's main selling points are applications like KMail and Konqueror. While Gnome may have Galeon available, it depends on Mozilla (a real dog to install and run). I think my attempts to get to Evolution were thwarted by the install process (but I seem to be blocking those memories for some reason).
So sure, it would be nice if KDE had a company like Ximian offering a service like Red Carpet. But that's Ximian, not GNOME. And for my money (which is $0), you can't beat the process of installing KDE from source. Besides, I love the way KDE tends to release a unified upgrade all at once, minimizing the need to worry about this process on a regular basis.
Now if only they'd throw SpamAssassin in as an included component, KMail would be the perfect mailer! :)
And just because I'm right for once: http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:d6Pbp7kRuzEC: www.sonystyle.com/vaio/popup/specs_rx550.pdf+&hl=e n
(1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19.2 0 -- now can I hit the damn submit button?!@#$%^&???)
Why don't you just tell the AC to stuff himself? Any idiot can view PDF using free software like xpdf. If they don't want to launch X and browse in a GUI tough on them. The PDF format is hardly a secret. Hell, google.com indexes PDFs from all over the place and will even serve them as HTML documents. I bet the one you pointed to is in their cache.
Try reading the Court's statement-- they explain everything in excruciating detail. This sort of background reading can be very informative and legal documents are not that inscrutable.
Read the statement of the Court: Thus, we conclude that the City has failed to demonstrate that its need for the Tattered Cover's customer purchase record is sufficiently compelling to outweigh the harm that would be caused to constitutional interests if the search warrant were executed. They mean first amendment interests, freedom of speech and the press. Your opinion on whether or not Tattered Cover is right is apparently superceded by the CO Supreme Court. Fortunately they seem to believe that anonymity in book purchasing underlies these free speech rights.
I understand what public performance rights are, but since bnetd is not the copyrighted work of Blizzard, the public performance thereof is hardly an infringement of Blizzard's rights in BattleNet. I guess maybe if they can show that bnetd *is* somehow an unauthorized derivation, they can also restrict this so-called public performance. Unless maybe they are going to argue the obvious absurdity that the server allows the public performance of the client software. I agree. I don't really see what chance a group of hobbyists have against a large corporate legal department.
Blizzard is alleging all kinds of things in this case, which seems to be an excellent strategy since a simple attack might lead to a simple defense. The more complex the attack the more likely the defendants will simply stipulate/surrender. By using the shotgun approach Blizzard makes it difficult to focus on a single area of "intellectual property" law. They have alleged copyright violations (re-use of code?, screen shots, public performance) and trademark infringement (the name bnetd).
;)
In the case of trademark infringement, Blizzard's rights to the word "BattleNet" could be diluted if not jealously guarded-- trademarks are all about distinctive/reputable names, not any actual product of one's intellect. Oddly enough, this is probably their strongest claim, since reasonable adults might agree that 'bnetd' looks too much like 'BattleNet'. The former being largely an abbreviated form of the latter.
As to Blizzard's claim of copied code, I don't see how, unless someone on the bnetd team either stole code or was leaked a copy of the source (or even the executables) for BattleNet. This is a bit like me saying you copied my web site server-side software because the outputs are similar, even though you had no access to my server code. Blizzard might have a point with respect to the screenshots, except that it would more likely be that the screenshots could be used to augment the trademark argument than they are any serious copyright infringement on their own. As to public performance, I really don't get that one.
But none of these copyright claims needs to be prosecuted now for Blizzard to sue other offenders later. Copyright and patents don't work that way. At least not on paper. Does that mean Blizzard should have waited? No. Especially not on their perceived trademark problem... but why not nip this now? If other people start doing this it certainly would be an uphill battle for Blizzard simply because there will be more people to go after.
Not that I'm necessarily correct either. Even if I were a lawyer, you could easily find a different lawyer with a different opinion. In fact, you could probably find a lawyer willing to take whatever stand you paid him/her to take.
You're 100% wrong.
The only "intellectual property" right you can lose by not defending it is your trademarks, which is part of this suit but not the part you seem to be discussing. Copyright has very strong protections built in.
In fact, things like copyright seem to enjoy better protection than certain physical property rights. Example: if my neighbor starts using part of my yard, and I don't object to this quickly enough, that neighbor could potentially gain title to that part of my yard (neighbor FAQ at nolo.com). Of course, copyrights thoeretically expire at some point, so it does even out.
Addendum: even if everyone started at the cap, that would just encourage trolling. The games no fun if you have the high score, and a few Beowolf Cluster of Natalie Hot Grits Portman PT Cruiser posts would get you right down to 0 in no time.
I think someone should hack /. and give everybody 50 karma points, so there'd be no more karma whoring...
Like it's really that hard to get to 50.
Here's how I can get several points just from this story: "Thankfully I run [Mozilla|Galeon|Konqueror|Lynx] on [Linux|*BSD|Atari 800], so these [twerps|cakeholes|spammers] can go die for all I care. JavaScript is the Devil's own creation. If I wanted to download your software I'd download your software! Imminent end of usable web predicted!
Most gun-control types would be fine with a law that mandated soldering the trigger to the frame so that it could never be fired again. Therefore I strongly suggest avoiding any analogies between guns and computers when discussing this with Democrats and other real left-wingers. Rather I suggest focusing on increasing the ability for consumers to protect their own privacy and the free speech implications of DRM laws. Especially point out the negative impact that this law will have on educational institutions from nursery straight through grad school. How do you do research when all the books are locked down and you can't even copy text into a notes document for later reference?
That monopolies existed does not prove that the absence of regulation somehow encourages them. One of the biggest needs I see with attempts to regulate capital is not how to prevent good businesses from becoming monopolies, but how to prevent the potential for individual success from being tied to something beyond that individual's control-- i.e. birth, race, gender, etc. What difference does it make if there is one company or five if the only people who ever make it rich at those companies are married men who come from wealthy families of European origin?
Also, railways, telephones, even electricity did not "have" to be state regulated monopolies. There is not a single reason that you couldn't have two competing power grids, two competing rail systems, or two parallel sets of phone lines with different end points. In fact, there's no reason that two or more companies couldn't own parts of networks and arrange for transfer points from one network to the another.
Finally, I'm not a libertarian, I just don't think the evidence supports the notion that monopolies are inevitable. And WRT MS, I am strongly biased against them. I find their software to be second rate and their business practices unacceptable. Which is why I don't buy their stuff. That I have viable choices indicates to me that they are not a monopoly. The fact that most consumers are too darn lazy to seek out alternatives is a far bigger issue in my mind than this anti-trust issue.
If you can't keep up, take notes. Fraunhofer are the MP3 developers. :)
Frankly, I don't care who develops this technology, whether it's someone the RIAA or MPAA specifically hire, or whether it's existing format owners. The net effect is that it adds signal to the pro-DRM thought stream. What's annoying is that this isn't going to help at all.
They can't possibly expect watermarking to do any good since it is so easily defeated either with filter software, D-A-D re-encoding, or simply purchasing with a shill buyer (i.e. untraceable violation). It only takes one re-encoded, filtered, or shill-bought file, since P2P sharing can quickly take a single file and turn it into millions of copies.