Are you sure about that? Simply changing the delivery mechanism does not change the fact that the book is public domain. Yes, your particular version can be copyrighted, but that does not make the actual text copywritten. It means they cannot make literal, say, photocopies, or digital copies, of the exact work. THey can extract the text and do what they want (Fair Use), especially considering that you do not hold copyright on the text itself.
Also, note that, the only part they may have control over is the click-wrap licensing on their reader software, as an e-book. IN this respect, though, the license is still bound by common law. Contracts can't have rediculous terms unrelated to what's going on. Saying 'you may not reverse engineer our software and use it for other books and publish them' is fair, but saying 'you may not read this book aloud' would most likely be unenforcable, as the text is in the public domain.
No court has the ability to prevent you from reading aloud, and they would be very hard pressed to prove damages.
I believe that simply re-printing the book does not constitute an original, copyrightable work. You cannot simply re-type something word for word or even simply change a couple things and say it's original. IT's still the text of Alice, the book is only a delivery mechanism.
THe delivery mechanism itself can be patented/copyrighted/whatever, but the text of Alice is public domain, regardless of how it's delvered or what the publshers claim.
The GPL opponents, you know, those who say the GPL is not about freedom, blah blah blah.. if something was to be truly free, put it in the public domain and let anyone do anything they want with it.
Well.. that's what Project Gutenberg did with it's books... I wonder if it's the same people who think this is wrong who whine about the GPL?
The fact is, the text of Alice is in the public domain, right? (I mean if it's not, then this argument is useless). If it IS in the public domain, nobody can lay any claim to what you can or cannot do with the material.. period. I seem to recall a ruling where it was ruled that simply slightly changing the format some media is delivered in does not suddenly make it an original work, succeptible to copyright.
I mean, if you also tend to move around every once in a while, and if your direction generally comes from your consulting firm, and not the person who hired them.. I suppose you are probably okay. It still can and does get fuzzy; i've seen exactly that situation before. The government basically says well, even though you technically pay this big consulting firm, and they pay their people, it amounts to the same thing. You are paying, based on # of people, and how long they work, to ahve them there during hours you dictate, using your equipment, for extended periods of time.
If anyone really wanted to get into it, i'd bet they could make some fuss over it.
HOw is what you do different than people who own their own consulting firm, with one employee, and work it that way? Because that definately doesn't qualify all by itself.
As the IRS documents in the US point out, the presence of a contract is not the point, the acutal work performed and how it is performed is what matters.
In the case of L0pht, they aren't releasing advisories generally about their own products like MS is, and they aren't taking them from anyone else, they are writing them themselves based on their own research. So if they want to take all the glory.. that's just fine with me.
The news item says nowhere they 'had to comply', it says they read Apple's request, and decided to comply.
No court decisions, nothing like that. They simply chose to honor Apple's request, which may seem somewhat valid, though we all would probably say 'it's a theme! it's like, parody, or homage, to apple, not 'stealing''. Still....
Good project teams = better productivity, and providing an environment where good teams quickly flourish, and bad teams quickly fall apart is the best way to ensure you have good teams.
Have a team go back to their respective cubes/offices/whatever after every meeting, and you can only judge at meetings.
Have the team in their own war-room, and you quickly know who's not a player.
But here, in Canada, and in the US, that is not necessarily enough to keep the IRS or Revenue Canada off your back, or your employers.
The mere presence of a contract, even if the contractee is operating as a corporation, does not mean they are not legally an 'employee'.
Factors like: where does direction come from. WHo dictates what must be done when. Is pay hourly or a lump sum. Do you also publicly offer services to others at the same time, or do you also do work for others. Do you work on the company's equipment on their premesis all the time, or your own at your own time.
It boils down to... if they are paying you a lump sum to deliver a product by a date, and you do so, and have little other involvement with the company, you can get by as a contractor. If you are 'on contract' but work from a company desk, on company time, reporting to some company manager.... then you're out of luck.
I am a stockholder in companies that do this. Why get enraged? The cost to vendors and other sources of services is simply part of the cost of doing business. Whether they are developing product in-house, or farming it out, or paying contractors, it's still a cost of doing business.
Why on earth would I look at simply the # of employees, versus how much product they move? I also want to see how much those employees (the company) are spending to do it! It's not illegal, and it's not even shady.
temps are legal. 'renewing' the temp contract over and over and over again, hence keeping a permanent employee without paying them the benefits due to such an employee, is what is illegal.
I belive the article deals with a slightly different thing.. hiring employees as 'temporary contractors' and then just continually extending the contract.
Remember, any 'contractor' position at a company is considered temporary.. so they could also have called this the 'permanent contractor' case.
I realize this might be hurting current contractors. I sympathize. But here is the issue:
It's actually cheaper for an employer to simply say 'all my staff are 'on contract'' and not pay benefits, deduct taxes, or anything else, and simply pay higher salaries. All other things being equal, the bookkeeping is simple. The real problem is... how is this any different than a 'permanent employee' as defined by law?
The problem isn't those who are benefitting from the situation, ie: contractors who are getting their way.. the problem is with companies saying 'well, we'll hire you as a contractor' and then just keep renewing the contract, becuase it's easier for them. In many places, it's illegal now.
Now, if I do programming on contract, and I work from home, on mostly my own equipment, pay all my own bills, etc, and simply collect a cheque for my services.. that is contract work.
If I go into their office, use their chairs, desks, computers, equipment, and office space, and work with their people all day, discussing with them, programming on the team with them, how can you say I don't fit the definition of an employee?
I am not overly versed in the details of this case, but have seen similar things in other businesses. IT's not as clear cut as it may seem, and MS is not necessarily 'evil' for doing it.
Lets' say you go to work for a temp agency. That temp agency hires you out to MS, for a LOOONG period of time. What's the problem? MS is paying the agency, you work for the agency. MS typically also pays the agency a lot more than what you yourself make.
What's the problem? I mean, I'm not debating what the court decided... but really. Is it that clear?
A similar incident here (calgary, alberta). A company hired some 'contract' workers. This was by mutual agreement; the workers and the employer both wanted it this way. I forget how it started, but in the end, the courts decided that these were, in fact, permanent employees, and not 'outside contractors'. THey sat in company desks, used company equipment, and came to and from the company every day to do their work. They ruled the company had to treat them as regular employees.
You have a problem with being a member of usenix/sage? Perhaps you might consider that salary survey results and such are a benefit of membership in usenix/sage.
It *does* cost money. Their surveys can be taken seriously; they aren't half-cocked surveys by some website. They want real results.
And if you don't like the arrangement, by all means, don't submit any data.
As the project itself is not under the umbrella of any corporation, who exactly is being sued? The visible maintainers/authors? Who says it can't just be picked up by anyone else?
Can't anyone pick up where it left off? How can you charge a piece of information with a crime?
Is this not a way in which OSS can almost circumvent the system by simply not being part of it? The software will exists as it's own entity, and simply be serviced by whoever wants to work with it.
Like I said, I'm not saying that these companies are right, or that it's justified.. this is just why it happens. It's IP. It's not like it's a warehouse full of inventory that is costing them money; in those cases, you see companies dropping old inventory cheap.
It's purely IP, and as such, costs really nothing to simply do nothing at all with. As the cost of keeping it just in case it's valuable someday is effectively zero, there is no justification for 'releasing' it into the public domain, or otherwise.
That's not to say there may be PR value... but that's the issue now, isn't it?
Because.... spending money just to 'release' it or to declar it public domain, or whatever, is ALSO wasting company assets. It's not making them money, and their efforts are focused on other things.
The shareholders could also say 'if it's deprecated, and not worth everything, why does everyone download it?'
They are public companies, mostly.
As a public company, their Intellectual Property is viewed by the investment community as an assett.
A company giving away it's assets for no monetary gain runs the risk of having it's directors in some severe class action lawsuits, for improperly managing company assets.
THAT is why public companies don't just 'give shit away because it's the right thing to do'. Because even if the Management, and the Board think it's okay... it opens a VERY REAL door for a class action lawsuit from the shareholders.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society
THat means that, if it serves the interests of democracy and justice, these rights can be changed in certain situations.
You can jail someone. That takes away several of their freedoms... but it serves society and justice.
The law this man broke is there *specifically* to ensure a fair election process. He broke it. What's the problem?
The concept that a business 'needs' this information is, frankly, bullshit.
Can such demographics help them sell more product, make them more profitable? Certainly. But understand that it is not a RIGHT. There is not a law compelling us to give companies whatever they want simply so they can make more money. NObody has an inalienable right to make money off society; you can make money off of situations, yes, as you wish.. but there is no law saying those situations have to prepetuate.
THe current ad-hoc mail system is just fine. Oh sure, it has spam, whatever.. but the good part is.. no central authority, no governing body. It's anarchy at it's best.
This is how freedoms are lost, you know. by saying 'x is being used in a way I don't approve of, we need a governing body'. Pretty soon, only those who are approved by that body can participate... etc.. etc..
What we need, really, is a new mail network (yes, network) that requires membership and performs some kind of filtering. This would be good.
ISP's are seen as responsible is it's only the ISP who can say 'you can't use our service'. THe ISP can set terms of use. If spammers want to hop providers, fine.. what the anti-spam world wants is for NO providers to allow spam, or for the ones that do to be easily identifiable.
in the real world, we don't *have* anything resembling life to debate about. Real politicians and real citizens have to generally deal with *real* problems and issues, not hpyothetical issues surrounding AI that may not develop for another 50 or 100 or more years..
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure about that? Simply changing the delivery mechanism does not change the fact that the book is public domain. Yes, your particular version can be copyrighted, but that does not make the actual text copywritten. It means they cannot make literal, say, photocopies, or digital copies, of the exact work. THey can extract the text and do what they want (Fair Use), especially considering that you do not hold copyright on the text itself.
Also, note that, the only part they may have control over is the click-wrap licensing on their reader software, as an e-book. IN this respect, though, the license is still bound by common law. Contracts can't have rediculous terms unrelated to what's going on. Saying 'you may not reverse engineer our software and use it for other books and publish them' is fair, but saying 'you may not read this book aloud' would most likely be unenforcable, as the text is in the public domain.
No court has the ability to prevent you from reading aloud, and they would be very hard pressed to prove damages.
I believe that simply re-printing the book does not constitute an original, copyrightable work. You cannot simply re-type something word for word or even simply change a couple things and say it's original. IT's still the text of Alice, the book is only a delivery mechanism.
THe delivery mechanism itself can be patented/copyrighted/whatever, but the text of Alice is public domain, regardless of how it's delvered or what the publshers claim.
The GPL opponents, you know, those who say the GPL is not about freedom, blah blah blah.. if something was to be truly free, put it in the public domain and let anyone do anything they want with it.
Well.. that's what Project Gutenberg did with it's books... I wonder if it's the same people who think this is wrong who whine about the GPL?
The fact is, the text of Alice is in the public domain, right? (I mean if it's not, then this argument is useless). If it IS in the public domain, nobody can lay any claim to what you can or cannot do with the material.. period. I seem to recall a ruling where it was ruled that simply slightly changing the format some media is delivered in does not suddenly make it an original work, succeptible to copyright.
Alice is Alice is Alice, no matter who prints it.
Even in your case, there may be a point.
I mean, if you also tend to move around every once in a while, and if your direction generally comes from your consulting firm, and not the person who hired them.. I suppose you are probably okay. It still can and does get fuzzy; i've seen exactly that situation before. The government basically says well, even though you technically pay this big consulting firm, and they pay their people, it amounts to the same thing. You are paying, based on # of people, and how long they work, to ahve them there during hours you dictate, using your equipment, for extended periods of time.
If anyone really wanted to get into it, i'd bet they could make some fuss over it.
HOw is what you do different than people who own their own consulting firm, with one employee, and work it that way? Because that definately doesn't qualify all by itself.
As the IRS documents in the US point out, the presence of a contract is not the point, the acutal work performed and how it is performed is what matters.
In the case of L0pht, they aren't releasing advisories generally about their own products like MS is, and they aren't taking them from anyone else, they are writing them themselves based on their own research. So if they want to take all the glory.. that's just fine with me.
The news item says nowhere they 'had to comply', it says they read Apple's request, and decided to comply.
No court decisions, nothing like that. They simply chose to honor Apple's request, which may seem somewhat valid, though we all would probably say 'it's a theme! it's like, parody, or homage, to apple, not 'stealing''. Still....
Good project teams = better productivity, and providing an environment where good teams quickly flourish, and bad teams quickly fall apart is the best way to ensure you have good teams.
Have a team go back to their respective cubes/offices/whatever after every meeting, and you can only judge at meetings.
Have the team in their own war-room, and you quickly know who's not a player.
But here, in Canada, and in the US, that is not necessarily enough to keep the IRS or Revenue Canada off your back, or your employers.
The mere presence of a contract, even if the contractee is operating as a corporation, does not mean they are not legally an 'employee'.
Factors like: where does direction come from. WHo dictates what must be done when. Is pay hourly or a lump sum. Do you also publicly offer services to others at the same time, or do you also do work for others. Do you work on the company's equipment on their premesis all the time, or your own at your own time.
It boils down to... if they are paying you a lump sum to deliver a product by a date, and you do so, and have little other involvement with the company, you can get by as a contractor. If you are 'on contract' but work from a company desk, on company time, reporting to some company manager.... then you're out of luck.
I am a stockholder in companies that do this. Why get enraged? The cost to vendors and other sources of services is simply part of the cost of doing business. Whether they are developing product in-house, or farming it out, or paying contractors, it's still a cost of doing business.
Why on earth would I look at simply the # of employees, versus how much product they move? I also want to see how much those employees (the company) are spending to do it! It's not illegal, and it's not even shady.
temps are legal. 'renewing' the temp contract over and over and over again, hence keeping a permanent employee without paying them the benefits due to such an employee, is what is illegal.
I belive the article deals with a slightly different thing.. hiring employees as 'temporary contractors' and then just continually extending the contract.
Remember, any 'contractor' position at a company is considered temporary.. so they could also have called this the 'permanent contractor' case.
I realize this might be hurting current contractors. I sympathize. But here is the issue:
It's actually cheaper for an employer to simply say 'all my staff are 'on contract'' and not pay benefits, deduct taxes, or anything else, and simply pay higher salaries. All other things being equal, the bookkeeping is simple. The real problem is... how is this any different than a 'permanent employee' as defined by law?
The problem isn't those who are benefitting from the situation, ie: contractors who are getting their way.. the problem is with companies saying 'well, we'll hire you as a contractor' and then just keep renewing the contract, becuase it's easier for them. In many places, it's illegal now.
Now, if I do programming on contract, and I work from home, on mostly my own equipment, pay all my own bills, etc, and simply collect a cheque for my services.. that is contract work.
If I go into their office, use their chairs, desks, computers, equipment, and office space, and work with their people all day, discussing with them, programming on the team with them, how can you say I don't fit the definition of an employee?
I am not overly versed in the details of this case, but have seen similar things in other businesses. IT's not as clear cut as it may seem, and MS is not necessarily 'evil' for doing it.
Lets' say you go to work for a temp agency. That temp agency hires you out to MS, for a LOOONG period of time. What's the problem? MS is paying the agency, you work for the agency. MS typically also pays the agency a lot more than what you yourself make.
What's the problem? I mean, I'm not debating what the court decided... but really. Is it that clear?
A similar incident here (calgary, alberta). A company hired some 'contract' workers. This was by mutual agreement; the workers and the employer both wanted it this way. I forget how it started, but in the end, the courts decided that these were, in fact, permanent employees, and not 'outside contractors'. THey sat in company desks, used company equipment, and came to and from the company every day to do their work. They ruled the company had to treat them as regular employees.
Okay. I didn't realize that (and I obviously didn't take the time to check).
I still propose though.. what about things that are purely non-corporate OSS projects? Is there not a point where there is nobody to sue?
You have a problem with being a member of usenix/sage? Perhaps you might consider that salary survey results and such are a benefit of membership in usenix/sage.
It *does* cost money. Their surveys can be taken seriously; they aren't half-cocked surveys by some website. They want real results.
And if you don't like the arrangement, by all means, don't submit any data.
As the project itself is not under the umbrella of any corporation, who exactly is being sued? The visible maintainers/authors? Who says it can't just be picked up by anyone else?
Can't anyone pick up where it left off? How can you charge a piece of information with a crime?
Is this not a way in which OSS can almost circumvent the system by simply not being part of it? The software will exists as it's own entity, and simply be serviced by whoever wants to work with it.
Because they have higher priorities.
Like I said, I'm not saying that these companies are right, or that it's justified.. this is just why it happens. It's IP. It's not like it's a warehouse full of inventory that is costing them money; in those cases, you see companies dropping old inventory cheap.
It's purely IP, and as such, costs really nothing to simply do nothing at all with. As the cost of keeping it just in case it's valuable someday is effectively zero, there is no justification for 'releasing' it into the public domain, or otherwise.
That's not to say there may be PR value... but that's the issue now, isn't it?
70% of all dna shared by most animals anyway? I mean, even between a human and say, a yeast....
is it really surprising that a puffer fish has a lot of the same genetic material?
Because.... spending money just to 'release' it or to declar it public domain, or whatever, is ALSO wasting company assets. It's not making them money, and their efforts are focused on other things.
The shareholders could also say 'if it's deprecated, and not worth everything, why does everyone download it?'
They are public companies, mostly.
As a public company, their Intellectual Property is viewed by the investment community as an assett.
A company giving away it's assets for no monetary gain runs the risk of having it's directors in some severe class action lawsuits, for improperly managing company assets.
THAT is why public companies don't just 'give shit away because it's the right thing to do'. Because even if the Management, and the Board think it's okay... it opens a VERY REAL door for a class action lawsuit from the shareholders.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society
THat means that, if it serves the interests of democracy and justice, these rights can be changed in certain situations.
You can jail someone. That takes away several of their freedoms... but it serves society and justice.
The law this man broke is there *specifically* to ensure a fair election process. He broke it. What's the problem?
The concept that a business 'needs' this information is, frankly, bullshit.
Can such demographics help them sell more product, make them more profitable? Certainly. But understand that it is not a RIGHT. There is not a law compelling us to give companies whatever they want simply so they can make more money. NObody has an inalienable right to make money off society; you can make money off of situations, yes, as you wish.. but there is no law saying those situations have to prepetuate.
THe current ad-hoc mail system is just fine. Oh sure, it has spam, whatever.. but the good part is.. no central authority, no governing body. It's anarchy at it's best.
This is how freedoms are lost, you know. by saying 'x is being used in a way I don't approve of, we need a governing body'. Pretty soon, only those who are approved by that body can participate... etc.. etc..
What we need, really, is a new mail network (yes, network) that requires membership and performs some kind of filtering. This would be good.
ISP's are seen as responsible is it's only the ISP who can say 'you can't use our service'. THe ISP can set terms of use. If spammers want to hop providers, fine.. what the anti-spam world wants is for NO providers to allow spam, or for the ones that do to be easily identifiable.
in the real world, we don't *have* anything resembling life to debate about. Real politicians and real citizens have to generally deal with *real* problems and issues, not hpyothetical issues surrounding AI that may not develop for another 50 or 100 or more years..