Yeah.. brilliant observation you have there. But we aren't talking about public domain works.. we are talking about copywritten works under various licenses.
You cannot claim copyright on something you did not create.
You cannot take Alice in Wonderland and claim you hold the copyright.
Part of the problem is the language used to describe these things.. the general approximations they make only really make sense if you understand a lot more background..
On the surface this might all seem like philosophical banter... but that's just what the news prints. What is behind this is tons of chalkboards and computers full of equations that fit modern theory.
Remember, we don't HAVE a theory of everything yet... i'ts not like everything is perfect, and scientists are trying to make things up to look smart.. there is a point where our current equations don't add up, don't make sense.. and that's where these guys are working now.
superstrings, quantum gravity, etc.. these aren't whimsical sci-fi dreams.. they are where science is currently trying to figure things out.
That's not true... that's just what you learn on slashdot because everyone just reads the patent synopsis or summary or whatever (Which has no legal standing) and doesn't read the patent and all it's claims.
Whether the GPL says you have to keep copyright notices or not, stripping copyright notices without permission is already illegal under copyright law. So is fraud.
Claiming someone elses work as your own can constitute fraud. Stripping copyright notices can get you in trouble with the authors as well.
Note that I'm talking about the source here, not the output of the program itself. If the output used to have a banner that said who made it.. that does not need to be kept.
Remember, the GPL only licenses you to do some stuff.. it does not remove copyright law.
In fact, being forced to keep a list of contributors in the source of copywritten code should be just FINE, and in fact, encouraged, by everyone...
This was small claims court... not a big precedent.. and the result is not surprising.
First.. before you state "Oh, everyone else takes them back!"... With the exception of certain types of items in certain states, like cars, homes, etc... the sale of a consumer item is automatically final unless stated otherwise. I'm not talking about implied warrantees or anything like that... obviously if the thing you bought was sold under false pretense, or misrepresented, or is just plain broken, the retailer must take it back.
If, however, the device was sold properly, and functions as it was supposed to, the retailer is under no obligation to take it back. If I sell you something at the grocery store, I don't have to take a returned item just because you didn't open it.
Now, as a matter of good customer service, most large vendors DO take unopened returns... the cost to them is minimal, and it generates goodwill...
At issue here was whether apple's own policy was being violated... it's a valid question.
There is a difference between security and liberty.
This is not about absolute liberty.. it is about certain things the US constitution says the government may NOT do.
3000 people in the US in the last few years. Why do we keep quoting that like such a horrific number? It's not.
Yes, the event itself was tragic, and could possibly have been prevented.. but far more people than that die from TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS every year, or smoking, or any one of a slew of other things that far, far less money could be spent on solving with far better results, and without eroding the constitution.
video files on CSS protected DVDs are indeed encrypted, and key to decrypt them is itself encrypted (multiple times with multiple keys, each time stored in a separate entry in a table), and then stored on the dvd. A vendor uses his key (which will unlock one instance of the title key out of that table I mentioned) so his player can unlock the code to the title.
decss, DVD-Xcopy, and the like, all decrypt the dvd, they effectively REMOVE the copy protection on the CD.
If DVD players could burn the key tracks, we would see straightforward DVD copying, just like how you copy a CD. Show me this software, please.
Quake is a poor example, because it's not about security, though the client-server model parallels. THis is a case of putting processing on the client end because it's faster to do so, and the overall system is far more workable. Yes, it does mean people can cheat in certain ways.. that didn't stop the game from being a wild success.
A better example would be online gambling... if the javascript on the website or the java client or flash client are responsible for validating data, and the server just takes what it is told, you have a disaster waiting to happen. Client side validation should be done for aesthetic and usability purposes only, not security.
but if oyu are sitting in a car, and the car smashes in to something, and there is for argument's sake nothing to restrain you, you do not accelerate, you maintain your existing momentum and just keep moving at the same velocity until something slows you down.
The CAR massively accelerates (Decelerates) when it hits the tree.
Suspicion of what? A guy being somewhere is not suspicious. Just because the war on drugs has led us to believe that any rights trampling is okay because it's related to drugs or bad neighborhoods doesn't make it okay.
If we don't keep things so the police need a real reason to arrest you, where does it stop?
I'm not trying to say the police shouldn't do their job, and in your situation, it sounds reasonable.. but again.
How about "Officer, I am not here dealing drugs, I am here on private business.".
There is NO REASON for the police to be able to detain or inhibit this person's right to be in a public place, and that includes showing identification. I do not have to prove that I am innocent by showing ID and letting him look things up before he lets me go.. otherwise, where do you draw the line?
He doesn't need to confirm that I have no priors... that's just what they would LIKE to do. Whether or not I have been arrested before has no bearing on what my current actions are, or whether I am allowed to be in that place.
The cop was conducting a lawful investigation, yes, but it could have easily been left alone once he saw nothing was going on. He doesn't need to "Check for priors" in order to determine nobody was having the shit beat out of them, as the complaint said.. and if there was no fight going on, and nobody was hurt, he had no business persuing it further.
Your problem is that they shouldn't have to identify anyone.. and if the guy has a prior record, although that information may be useful to the police, it is not REQUIRED for the police to do thier job.
This officer is there to protect and serve, right?
He could have stopped at the place, been friendly, explained more clearly that someone called about an abuse situation, had a look, seen that there was no big fight, and nobody was beaten up, and then LEFT THEM ALONE.
Instead, he got hung up on why the guy would not show ID. What do you need the ID for? For the guy to PROVE he has no priors? That sounds dangerously like "Guilty until proven innocent"
I agree, police in many situations need all the information they can get.. but in this case, how did the officer serve society? He didn't, he just ruined two people's night by detaining them illegally.
You do not need a huge background history check to deal with what is going on at the moment, I'm sorry. If there are people robbing a bank, do the officers need them all to show ID before they can determine if, in fact, it is actually a robbery? Get real.
The man was not charged with anything other than failing ot show ID.. that's the point. If an anonymous phone call is probable cause.. what else is? Can the polie walk around asking everyone on the street for ID because an anonymous caller said that there was a known bad guy on the block? Where does it end?
Because the police are not our caretakes and rulers, and we are not required to show them ID just because they ask.
IT's for the same reason I am not required to show YOU id if you walk up to me and ask for it.
If you have nothing to hide, you have to worry about protecting the rights of EVERYONE in your country.
I'm not saying the police should always be given a hard time.. indeed, cooperation is good. But you see, they don't return the favor.. they could have let this farmer go on his way, after determining he wasn't beating the shit out of his daughter, end of story. Instead, though, of simply keeping a watchful eye on the locals, two people were arrested, abused, and detained illegally.
The thing is, the guy basically asserted the same rights, though not as politely.. he was indeed passive-aggressive... and agitated.
IT is true that being polite will get you further generally (as with ALL things)... but the thing is, not being polite to a cop is not a breach of the law, and you do not have less rights because of it.
Not a civil suit. The officer in no way needed to ask for identification, or make an issue out of not getting it, to assess the "anonymous call" he got.
He could have lookd in, asked if everyone was alright, and moved on. The man was somwhat angry? A bit irrational? SO WHAT? That's not a crime.. many people get that way after a family argument. The vehicle was pulled over and the guy was standing outside having a smoke, cooling off.. a perfectly rational thing to do. We aren't robots.
It's not such a stretch, and it IS a slippery slope. Sure, the police can't bust in at 2am and ask for papers... but the question remains.. how different is that form being able to randomly stop someone and ask for papers in public? What if I say "Hey that guy over there looks suspicious, officer"... and point to you. Should the officer be able to walk up to you and ask for your papers? How is your name relevant to whether you are doing something wrong or not?
The man is not a saint, and not some innocent "country bumpkin".. but that's not the point, law enforcement officers necessarily need to be held to a higher standard. I should not have to be a nice, polite, straight-and-narrow do-what-the-nice-officer tells me middle class consumer to avoid getting stopped and asked for my papers.
Hitting something does not accelerate you. You continue to move as you already were. Even if going through the windshield slowed you down, which it would, a person standing nearby, getting hit with a 150 pound sack of meat going 40mph could easily end up in a body cast, or dead.
It's more of a tragedy of the commons (similar to, not the same)
If there were one spammer, sending one piece of spam to everyone on earth a day, and getting rich off it, it would NOT be a problem.... the effect on everyone else is negligible.
If the gain to the spammer is X, the loss on his million victims is on millionth of X each.
The problem is that there are many spammers.. so though each spammer sees his effect on individual recipients as tiny, the overall problem is quite large.
Contrast to the sheep scenario in tragedy of the commons... one guy adding one extra sheep to common land being grazed at capacity already is a net benefit of one sheep to the farmer, but the corresponding negative effect to him is shared among ALL those who share the land... so he sees a net gain. The problem is that every participant would come to the same coclusion, and add mroe sheep... cancelling out the percieved gain, to the detrement of all.
Copyright law forbids removing copyright notices, but it does not require you to include additional ones.. this does.
Second, this has nothing to do with trademark. If I write "DogOS" I can license it to you under the condition that you do not call your version "DogOS".
If you wrote your OWN system from scratch, and called it DogOS, then I would have to have a trademark in order to stop you.. but I can certainly set the conditions under which I will permit youto use MY copyrighted work.
If Alan writes a driver, and puts it in the kernel under GPL.. Alan is still free to put that driver into XFree under the X license, and Alan is still free to sell that driver to Microsoft under whatever license he wants... because Alan holds the copyright.
There is no law requiring them to do "everything humanly possible to maximize shareholder value". They are, however, responsible for protecting shareholder value.. they MUST be.. and if the board is negligent and simply squanders the money, they need to have some legal responsibility, otherwise, money would simply be squandered with no reprecussions. The company could simply fire everyone, and the bosses could buy sailboats for everyone, then close up shop.
It's not the same as saying they have to squeeze every last red cent out of the employees, and run them like slaves, being as cheap as possible.
Choosing NOT to outsource to India will not likely land the directors in legal trouble.
This is one of those things.. like, peopel wonder why companies don't donate old copyrighted games to the public domain... the answer is because they have value, they cost little to keep, and giving them away would be deliberately reducing the value of the company.
If you want to crunch numbers, obvoiusly, buy a damn PC.
But I get more work done faster on an 800Mhz G3 w/ OSX than I get done witih a 3Ghz Linux box.. simply because of how things interact, and how the gui is set up, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah.. brilliant observation you have there.
But we aren't talking about public domain works.. we are talking about copywritten works under various licenses.
You cannot claim copyright on something you did not create.
You cannot take Alice in Wonderland and claim you hold the copyright.
Part of the problem is the language used to describe these things.. the general approximations they make only really make sense if you understand a lot more background..
On the surface this might all seem like philosophical banter... but that's just what the news prints. What is behind this is tons of chalkboards and computers full of equations that fit modern theory.
Remember, we don't HAVE a theory of everything yet... i'ts not like everything is perfect, and scientists are trying to make things up to look smart.. there is a point where our current equations don't add up, don't make sense.. and that's where these guys are working now.
superstrings, quantum gravity, etc.. these aren't whimsical sci-fi dreams.. they are where science is currently trying to figure things out.
That's not true... that's just what you learn on slashdot because everyone just reads the patent synopsis or summary or whatever (Which has no legal standing) and doesn't read the patent and all it's claims.
Whether the GPL says you have to keep copyright notices or not, stripping copyright notices without permission is already illegal under copyright law. So is fraud.
Claiming someone elses work as your own can constitute fraud. Stripping copyright notices can get you in trouble with the authors as well.
Note that I'm talking about the source here, not the output of the program itself. If the output used to have a banner that said who made it.. that does not need to be kept.
Remember, the GPL only licenses you to do some stuff.. it does not remove copyright law.
In fact, being forced to keep a list of contributors in the source of copywritten code should be just FINE, and in fact, encouraged, by everyone...
This was small claims court... not a big precedent.. and the result is not surprising.
.. it's a valid question.
First.. before you state "Oh, everyone else takes them back!"... With the exception of certain types of items in certain states, like cars, homes, etc... the sale of a consumer item is automatically final unless stated otherwise. I'm not talking about implied warrantees or anything like that... obviously if the thing you bought was sold under false pretense, or misrepresented, or is just plain broken, the retailer must take it back.
If, however, the device was sold properly, and functions as it was supposed to, the retailer is under no obligation to take it back. If I sell you something at the grocery store, I don't have to take a returned item just because you didn't open it.
Now, as a matter of good customer service, most large vendors DO take unopened returns... the cost to them is minimal, and it generates goodwill...
At issue here was whether apple's own policy was being violated.
It's not "largely valid". IT's absolute BS.
There are exploits in the wild for TONS of microsoft vulnerability BEFORE microsoft releases patches, often for MONTHS.
Now, certianly, many of them may not be exploited until after a patch is available.. but it's certainly not the vast majority.
That's why this article is so ludicrous..it's like holding a press release to announce that the earth is flat.
Get a 200 or 300 disc changer or something.. unless you need to stream multiple video streams at once.
As for playing "From HD".. yeah, shouldn't be a problem. At very worst, you can use image files to trick out the computer.
There is a difference between security and liberty.
This is not about absolute liberty.. it is about certain things the US constitution says the government may NOT do.
3000 people in the US in the last few years. Why do we keep quoting that like such a horrific number? It's not.
Yes, the event itself was tragic, and could possibly have been prevented.. but far more people than that die from TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS every year, or smoking, or any one of a slew of other things that far, far less money could be spent on solving with far better results, and without eroding the constitution.
That is totally wrong.
video files on CSS protected DVDs are indeed encrypted, and key to decrypt them is itself encrypted (multiple times with multiple keys, each time stored in a separate entry in a table), and then stored on the dvd. A vendor uses his key (which will unlock one instance of the title key out of that table I mentioned) so his player can unlock the code to the title.
decss, DVD-Xcopy, and the like, all decrypt the dvd, they effectively REMOVE the copy protection on the CD.
If DVD players could burn the key tracks, we would see straightforward DVD copying, just like how you copy a CD. Show me this software, please.
This is totally wrong... where did you get this?
The video on copy protected DVDs (CSS) IS encrypted.
The 321 product decrypts the dvd.
Quake is a poor example, because it's not about security, though the client-server model parallels. THis is a case of putting processing on the client end because it's faster to do so, and the overall system is far more workable. Yes, it does mean people can cheat in certain ways.. that didn't stop the game from being a wild success.
A better example would be online gambling... if the javascript on the website or the java client or flash client are responsible for validating data, and the server just takes what it is told, you have a disaster waiting to happen. Client side validation should be done for aesthetic and usability purposes only, not security.
Acceleration is change in velocity, yes...
but if oyu are sitting in a car, and the car smashes in to something, and there is for argument's sake nothing to restrain you, you do not accelerate, you maintain your existing momentum and just keep moving at the same velocity until something slows you down.
The CAR massively accelerates (Decelerates) when it hits the tree.
Suspicion of what? A guy being somewhere is not suspicious. Just because the war on drugs has led us to believe that any rights trampling is okay because it's related to drugs or bad neighborhoods doesn't make it okay.
If we don't keep things so the police need a real reason to arrest you, where does it stop?
I'm not trying to say the police shouldn't do their job, and in your situation, it sounds reasonable.. but again.
How about "Officer, I am not here dealing drugs, I am here on private business.".
There is NO REASON for the police to be able to detain or inhibit this person's right to be in a public place, and that includes showing identification. I do not have to prove that I am innocent by showing ID and letting him look things up before he lets me go.. otherwise, where do you draw the line?
He doesn't need to confirm that I have no priors... that's just what they would LIKE to do. Whether or not I have been arrested before has no bearing on what my current actions are, or whether I am allowed to be in that place.
The cop was conducting a lawful investigation, yes, but it could have easily been left alone once he saw nothing was going on. He doesn't need to "Check for priors" in order to determine nobody was having the shit beat out of them, as the complaint said.. and if there was no fight going on, and nobody was hurt, he had no business persuing it further.
Your problem is that they shouldn't have to identify anyone.. and if the guy has a prior record, although that information may be useful to the police, it is not REQUIRED for the police to do thier job.
This officer is there to protect and serve, right?
He could have stopped at the place, been friendly, explained more clearly that someone called about an abuse situation, had a look, seen that there was no big fight, and nobody was beaten up, and then LEFT THEM ALONE.
Instead, he got hung up on why the guy would not show ID. What do you need the ID for? For the guy to PROVE he has no priors? That sounds dangerously like "Guilty until proven innocent"
I agree, police in many situations need all the information they can get.. but in this case, how did the officer serve society? He didn't, he just ruined two people's night by detaining them illegally.
You do not need a huge background history check to deal with what is going on at the moment, I'm sorry. If there are people robbing a bank, do the officers need them all to show ID before they can determine if, in fact, it is actually a robbery? Get real.
The man was not charged with anything other than failing ot show ID.. that's the point. If an anonymous phone call is probable cause.. what else is? Can the polie walk around asking everyone on the street for ID because an anonymous caller said that there was a known bad guy on the block? Where does it end?
Because the police are not our caretakes and rulers, and we are not required to show them ID just because they ask.
IT's for the same reason I am not required to show YOU id if you walk up to me and ask for it.
If you have nothing to hide, you have to worry about protecting the rights of EVERYONE in your country.
I'm not saying the police should always be given a hard time.. indeed, cooperation is good. But you see, they don't return the favor.. they could have let this farmer go on his way, after determining he wasn't beating the shit out of his daughter, end of story. Instead, though, of simply keeping a watchful eye on the locals, two people were arrested, abused, and detained illegally.
Correct.
The thing is, the guy basically asserted the same rights, though not as politely.. he was indeed passive-aggressive... and agitated.
IT is true that being polite will get you further generally (as with ALL things)... but the thing is, not being polite to a cop is not a breach of the law, and you do not have less rights because of it.
Not a civil suit. The officer in no way needed to ask for identification, or make an issue out of not getting it, to assess the "anonymous call" he got.
He could have lookd in, asked if everyone was alright, and moved on. The man was somwhat angry? A bit irrational? SO WHAT? That's not a crime.. many people get that way after a family argument. The vehicle was pulled over and the guy was standing outside having a smoke, cooling off.. a perfectly rational thing to do. We aren't robots.
It's not such a stretch, and it IS a slippery slope.
Sure, the police can't bust in at 2am and ask for papers... but the question remains.. how different is that form being able to randomly stop someone and ask for papers in public? What if I say "Hey that guy over there looks suspicious, officer"... and point to you. Should the officer be able to walk up to you and ask for your papers? How is your name relevant to whether you are doing something wrong or not?
The man is not a saint, and not some innocent "country bumpkin".. but that's not the point, law enforcement officers necessarily need to be held to a higher standard. I should not have to be a nice, polite, straight-and-narrow do-what-the-nice-officer tells me middle class consumer to avoid getting stopped and asked for my papers.
Hitting something does not accelerate you. You continue to move as you already were. Even if going through the windshield slowed you down, which it would, a person standing nearby, getting hit with a 150 pound sack of meat going 40mph could easily end up in a body cast, or dead.
The difference is plain.
With domain names, there is a facility to transfer "ownership" to another party, so you can indeed buy and sell them.
WIth phone numbers, they are portable between providers, yes, but there is no facility for you to transfer ownership of your number to another person.
It's more of a tragedy of the commons (similar to, not the same)
If there were one spammer, sending one piece of spam to everyone on earth a day, and getting rich off it, it would NOT be a problem.... the effect on everyone else is negligible.
If the gain to the spammer is X, the loss on his million victims is on millionth of X each.
The problem is that there are many spammers.. so though each spammer sees his effect on individual recipients as tiny, the overall problem is quite large.
Contrast to the sheep scenario in tragedy of the commons... one guy adding one extra sheep to common land being grazed at capacity already is a net benefit of one sheep to the farmer, but the corresponding negative effect to him is shared among ALL those who share the land... so he sees a net gain. The problem is that every participant would come to the same coclusion, and add mroe sheep... cancelling out the percieved gain, to the detrement of all.
Copyright law forbids removing copyright notices, but it does not require you to include additional ones.. this does.
Second, this has nothing to do with trademark. If I write "DogOS" I can license it to you under the condition that you do not call your version "DogOS".
If you wrote your OWN system from scratch, and called it DogOS, then I would have to have a trademark in order to stop you.. but I can certainly set the conditions under which I will permit youto use MY copyrighted work.
It's more than that.
If Alan writes a driver, and puts it in the kernel under GPL.. Alan is still free to put that driver into XFree under the X license, and Alan is still free to sell that driver to Microsoft under whatever license he wants... because Alan holds the copyright.
There is no law requiring them to do "everything humanly possible to maximize shareholder value". They are, however, responsible for protecting shareholder value.. they MUST be.. and if the board is negligent and simply squanders the money, they need to have some legal responsibility, otherwise, money would simply be squandered with no reprecussions. The company could simply fire everyone, and the bosses could buy sailboats for everyone, then close up shop.
It's not the same as saying they have to squeeze every last red cent out of the employees, and run them like slaves, being as cheap as possible.
Choosing NOT to outsource to India will not likely land the directors in legal trouble.
This is one of those things.. like, peopel wonder why companies don't donate old copyrighted games to the public domain... the answer is because they have value, they cost little to keep, and giving them away would be deliberately reducing the value of the company.
The speed argument is so tired.
what matters is total speed of use...
If you want to crunch numbers, obvoiusly, buy a damn PC.
But I get more work done faster on an 800Mhz G3 w/ OSX than I get done witih a 3Ghz Linux box.. simply because of how things interact, and how the gui is set up, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Mac-on-Linux is good...
but it's essentially VMWare for PPC in principle.
There are aspects of the PPC architecture that make this kind of thing easier and perform better.