So what's your point? That he exaggerated to prove a point? Or that he was out and out lying and you couldn't download 6000 songs for free off the Internet?
I think what he was trying to show was that there is a huge amount of pirated music available on the Internet and anybody can get it. Of course, that's not really news.
Re:You are not anal enough either. (IAAL)
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Of course, as a lawyer, you should also realize it is ten times more expensive to defend than to sue. The costs of responding to discovery, alone, can easily hit six figures. And, (personal opinion) the obviousness of the obfuscation would probably be enough to prevent dismissal. So, the real question is not "could the Company in question win a suit," because we all know that in the lottery we call Trial by Jury anyone could win on any given day. The real question is "could the Company lose." A loss in court might result in the inability to sell their product for some period of time, or damages to the extent of their sales. If the company is small enough, this could mean the end of it. Is it worth the gamble?
The law review article didn't discuss exactly how the court considered a mentor a fiduciary (ie. one who owes a fiduciary duty.) This term can have different meanings depending on the context. In the business world, a fiduciary of a trust has a somewhat different duty to the trust than a director on a company's board has to the company than an agent of the company has to the company than a shareholder does to the corporation.
For instance, directors are expected to cause a company to take risks and maximize expected return while trustees are expected to preserve capital. The two main fiduciary duties a director owes a company are, IMHO: the duty of care (exercise proper care in the management of the company) and the duty of loyalty (no self-dealing.) The first is restricted by the business judgement rule which means, generally, that decisions made with reasonable information and reasonable rationality then the director can not be liable for it, unless it violates the duty of loyalty. Note that this allows for making dumb decisions, as long as they were made with reasonable information and rationally, as strange as that sounds.
I would think this sort of test would apply in the mentor situation as well: if the mentor acts carefully and does not self-deal then he/she is okay. In this case, the mentor clearly did self-deal: he kept the student's name off the patent so he would not have to share the credit and the royalties accruing to himself. This would clearly violate the duty of loyalty in a corporate setting.
In any case, these duties will be worked out over the next many years in the courtroom. If you are worried about them, though, remember that the primary duty of a fiduciary is to do what he or she has been appointed to do as best as he or she can. An act for which a fiduciary can be held liable is one that is considered a breach of trust. So, be trustworthy and you should be fine.
I'm sick to the teeth of network executives who want to control what, when, and how I watch
And I'm sick to the teeth about: Microsoft telling me how many computers I can use the software I bought on; and Linux people telling me I have to include their stupid copyleft notice in my derivative works; and music companies telling me I can't digitize their songs and give them away for free; and drug companies charging me more for drugs than the cost of manufacture; and banks charging me interest for money I borrowed and plan to pay in full later; and publishers trying to stop my professors from photocopying their textbooks and handing them out to the class.
G**damn capitalists - don't they know that earning a living is theft?
I like the +1 for Karma. In fact, I would even go further: there are some posters whose comments I would like to see no matter what the rating. I would like to be able to add posters to a list so stories are flagged where they post and comments are automatically shown. I would pay (a little) for this functionality.
If you're interested in this topic, you may also want to check out "Feynman Lectures on Computation" (Paperback - 320 pages, July 2000
Perseus Books; ISBN: 0738202967). Less hardcore, and the semiconductor physics stuff is dated, but everyhing explained in that great Feynman way.
I think the US is constrained by its own hegemony - they can't cut off a country in a way that would cause it to fail. If France does something the US dislikes, the US threatens (and occasionally carries through with) a trade embargo, but nothing too dire. When it's Brazil or some other country where pretty much any action might be dire, the US thinks of geopolitics before capitalism.
I think this is why the US does nothing but gripe about China's defacto decriminalization of copyright violation. A trade war might hurt China, but it would set back diplomatic ties by decades.
Also, US foreign aid isn't what it used to be. In the last decade, US foreign aid has been cut in half. In countries like Brazil, the IMF is the chief source of aid.
I would also argue that this sort of legal policy will not affect US business investment in a country; probably the opposite. The strengthening of the local economy by doing away with the monopoly rents resulting from IP protection might present a nice opportunity for investors.
If the threat of the WTO is so potent, why did the US recently drop its case against Brazil? (See, for instance this article.) Is it because they are worried this meme might spread?
The only way to know what will actually happen is to watch the real-world scenario unfolding in Brazil - although it is much easier to weigh the ethics of AIDS prevention vs. IP protection than it is with, say, computer software, this next step is easy to take.
Whoops... I guess Italy *is* part of Western Europe. In place of Western Europe above, use Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, France and half-weight the UK.
What would any non-US, non-Western European country have to gain by respecting the intellectual property 'rights' of the US or Western Europe? Brazil deciding to ignore the patent on certain AIDS drugs is just the beginning of their realization that they have almost nothing to lose.
I'm surprised that Italy didn't just announce that Microsoft's copyrights were no good there.
Great. I can just see it. 5 years from now I am going to find an entire unwatched season of Six Feet Under on my DVR. Like the five year old issues of Wired that I never read. Avatars anyone? (Look, here's the 8/97 issue with the article "Linux: The Greatest OS that (n)ever was").
The critical market acceptance question: Will we be able to sell old episodes on eBay?
Well, that's the point. This sort of information has *always* been available... to people willing to pay good money for it (Lexis/Nexis is not cheap.) That means that big business has access to data you would rather keep private, but YOU don't.
I expect Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw lobby pretty hard against making this public data more accesible.
A company called Lexis/Nexis has entered, AFAIK, all court records into a huge database. Whenever my firm invests in a company we do a Lexis/Nexis search on the executives as part of our due diligence.
As is usual in these privacy debates, the stable door is open and the horse long gone. The only difference now from 4 years ago is that you had to put up some money to get the info. That means that big companies had access to the data and people didn't. Ever get a credit report on yourself? The first time I did I was astounded how much they knew about me.
The only privacy is complete privacy. If we don't want this information public, then the government shouldn't collect it (I mean, do they really need your address on file to let you vote?)
(On a side note, it actually sort of disturbs me now when I do a Google on somebody and don't get *anything*. I almost believe they don't actually exist.)
I have generated quadrillions of digits of PI. They are for sale for $1 each (just send me an email with how many you want and I will send you the string in any base you desire. I will not, however, be able to share the exact starting point of the string within pi with you.)
What I want to know is, since I believe most of the "data" being burned on CD-Rs is actually a subset of my data, how do I get my cut of any new tax?
I agree. I shouldn't have called him boneheaded - bad karma. In fact, the front-line ad execs shouldn't be worrying about the distant future (in advertising the distant future is next season) but what their clients need today. What I should have said is that the boneheaded reporter was trying to make a statistically invalid point: too few data points, asking the wrong question of the wrong person. It annoys me that reporters (even for the highest quality news outlets, like the New York Times) do this all the time: use invalid data to support their own views while pretending to be objective.
Well, it *is* second-hand knowledge: I got it from the SEC, in the companies' IPO filings. This is all publicly available info (it's amazing the amount of info that needs to be filed with the SEC, and how little scrutinized it is.) These are the major corporate investors or, in the case of controlled corporate venture funds (ie. Disney's investments were through its VC subsidiary Catalyst), their parent. It's something of a who's who of media companies. The point here is that unless an open-source box is developed, your TV is still controlled by the same old corporations.
Corporate investors in TiVo:
DIRECTV, Inc
NBC Multimedia, Inc.
Philips Corporate External Ventures
Advance/Newhouse Programming Partnership
CBS Corporation
The Walt Disney Company
Comcast Interactive Investments
Cox Communications Holdings
Discovery Communications, Inc
TV Guide Interactive, Inc.
Showtime Networks
Corporate investors in ReplayTV:
News America Incorporated
Adelphia Communications Corporation
Comcast Interactive Capital
Motorola, Inc
Sega of America Dreamcast
The Walt Disney Company
The Endeavor Agency
Liberty Media Corporation
Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics
William Morris Agency
Murdock Venture Partners
NBC Multimedia, Inc
Showtime Networks, Inc
Time Warner Inc
Tribune Company
Shaw Communications Inc
At Home Corporation
Omnicom Group Inc
Echostar
Grey
The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc
Rogers Communications
Scientific-Atlanta, Inc
Sharp Electronics Corporation
Universal Music Group, Inc
The media hears what it wants to hear. Almost all of the advertising and media holding companies put money into either TiVo or ReplayTV, usually not a ton of money, but enough to keep abreast of what was going on with them. A single bonehead account exec is hardly statistically significant.
The fact that both the advertising companies and the media companies backed the PVR makers should give you pause before you start celebrating the death of either.
This is pretty much the way business was done before MSN. AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and others would pay a bounty to PC manufacturers to put their icons conspicuously on the desktop. Back in my day it was only $30 per subscriber. Note that this is a pretty low price to pay per new subscriber - compare to an average $100 or so for direct mail.
When MSN was rolled out, Microsoft decided to pressure PC makers to not allow competitive providers. This caused us at the ISP that employed me huge heartburn; we were convinced that MSN would drive us out of business in no time flat. We negotiated with Microsoft to allow us some presence and they eventually relented, so long as we used Microsoft Explorer as our default browser. I use the word "negotiate" loosely as it was a pretty one-sided negotiation.
I think this may have even been the initial impetus for the antitrust suit as all the ISPs gave up negotiating with Netscape so as to get placement somewhere in Windows. In any case, it certainly smells like tying.
AOL seems to be exploiting Microsoft's weakness to turn back the tide. Much as I dislike both AOL and Microsoft, better to have a two party system than a one party system - even for us Independents.
Since the code was put on the internet, the crime was committed here, there and everywhere. An interesting analogy is the DeBeers diamond cartel. Since the US government decided they were a monopoly, many years ago, the DeBeers executives have not set foor in the US, for fear of being detained.
I guess this is why Microsoft doesn't just pick up and move 30 miles north.
Well... public or not, they are funded by (among others) two no-nonsense VC firms: Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital. The pressure to create shareholder value is already high.
Also, remaining private is not an option. When VCs are on board, there are three options for the company: go public, sell to another company, go out of business. The life of a VC fund is usually 10 years or less. The VC wants to sell the stock and distribute the proceeds, or have the company go public and distribute the stock before that. If the company is private, distributing the stock to fund investors is problematic. There are often contractual provisions that force the company to go public in some timeframe (ie. registration rights, redemption rights.)
With VCs involved, it was only a matter of time before Google went public or was sold. It shouldn't be a surprise, and noone can say management is selling out *now*. In the 'dude, you're a sell-out' sense of the word, they did that when Kleiner invested; in the literal selling out (their stock) sense, most likely they won't be able to do that until at least six months after the IPO.
C'mon, if Microsoft is seriously worried about free software, their PR would be better. I don't think any rational person is going to be swayed by Microsoft executives giving speeches and interviews saying "our competitors are bad." Of course they would say that. These speeches and interviews are a net positive for the Free Software community, giving them press coverage they couldn't afford to buy themselves. I would lay odds that companies like Red Hat get more customers than they lose due to these feeble Microsoft rants.
If Microsoft was really worried, it would hire a good PR firm or lobbying firm and pay some politician or academic to make a stink about Free Software and how bad it is for the American economy. IMHO that is effectively what they did with the book Winners, Losers & Microsoft: they paid a foundation who were funding some academics who wrote a book denying the possibility of software 'lock in' and deriding the idea of Microsoft being a monopolist. That book got serious mentions by leading business magazines and was undoubtedly more effective among the undecided than Gates' cries of "I am not a monopolist!"
Of course, that leaves the question: what are they really up to? Are they deliberately reinforcing Linux, like they propped up Apple, to preserve some semblance of competition? If som it could be very effective - they give up the segment of the market that is extremely cost conscious, raise their prices like a good monopoly should and say: "see, Linux has 17% share, people have a choice." Not that that is necessarily bad, just like propping up Apple was not bad for the rest of us.
The press release always comes out a few weeks before the 10Q. The Q has to be filed within 45 days of the end of the quarter (unless an extension is granted.) Their quarter ends on May 31, so the Q probably won't be available until July.
Re:Red Hat remains in red: Posts $27.6M net loss
on
Red Hat In The Black
·
· Score: 2
Actually, the problem is that they do not post *any* loss on their reported income statement. (They do have some tax loss, but unless you're the IRS, you do not get to see the tax books.) And, although doing a secondary is a pain in the ass, the amount raised is usually more than 90% of the market value. You are correct that stock options do not cost the company money, rather they cost the shareholders money.
As an aside, I have an investor friend who no longer looks at reported profit, he only looks at taxes paid and then grosses up to income. He thinks it is easier to fool the auditors than to fool the IRS.
Well, I think they are completely right in round 2 also: giving away software is not a business model. OTOH, was it supposed to be? Does Torvalds do what he does for the money? Does anyone in the OSS world? Somehow I have to believe that even the executives and VCs in companies like RH are in it partly for love.
Slashdot Mirror
So what's your point? That he exaggerated to prove a point? Or that he was out and out lying and you couldn't download 6000 songs for free off the Internet?
I think what he was trying to show was that there is a huge amount of pirated music available on the Internet and anybody can get it. Of course, that's not really news.
Of course, as a lawyer, you should also realize it is ten times more expensive to defend than to sue. The costs of responding to discovery, alone, can easily hit six figures. And, (personal opinion) the obviousness of the obfuscation would probably be enough to prevent dismissal. So, the real question is not "could the Company in question win a suit," because we all know that in the lottery we call Trial by Jury anyone could win on any given day. The real question is "could the Company lose." A loss in court might result in the inability to sell their product for some period of time, or damages to the extent of their sales. If the company is small enough, this could mean the end of it. Is it worth the gamble?
For instance, directors are expected to cause a company to take risks and maximize expected return while trustees are expected to preserve capital. The two main fiduciary duties a director owes a company are, IMHO: the duty of care (exercise proper care in the management of the company) and the duty of loyalty (no self-dealing.) The first is restricted by the business judgement rule which means, generally, that decisions made with reasonable information and reasonable rationality then the director can not be liable for it, unless it violates the duty of loyalty. Note that this allows for making dumb decisions, as long as they were made with reasonable information and rationally, as strange as that sounds.
I would think this sort of test would apply in the mentor situation as well: if the mentor acts carefully and does not self-deal then he/she is okay. In this case, the mentor clearly did self-deal: he kept the student's name off the patent so he would not have to share the credit and the royalties accruing to himself. This would clearly violate the duty of loyalty in a corporate setting.
In any case, these duties will be worked out over the next many years in the courtroom. If you are worried about them, though, remember that the primary duty of a fiduciary is to do what he or she has been appointed to do as best as he or she can. An act for which a fiduciary can be held liable is one that is considered a breach of trust. So, be trustworthy and you should be fine.
And I'm sick to the teeth about: Microsoft telling me how many computers I can use the software I bought on; and Linux people telling me I have to include their stupid copyleft notice in my derivative works; and music companies telling me I can't digitize their songs and give them away for free; and drug companies charging me more for drugs than the cost of manufacture; and banks charging me interest for money I borrowed and plan to pay in full later; and publishers trying to stop my professors from photocopying their textbooks and handing them out to the class.
G**damn capitalists - don't they know that earning a living is theft?
I like the +1 for Karma. In fact, I would even go further: there are some posters whose comments I would like to see no matter what the rating. I would like to be able to add posters to a list so stories are flagged where they post and comments are automatically shown. I would pay (a little) for this functionality.
Perseus Books; ISBN: 0738202967). Less hardcore, and the semiconductor physics stuff is dated, but everyhing explained in that great Feynman way.
I think this is why the US does nothing but gripe about China's defacto decriminalization of copyright violation. A trade war might hurt China, but it would set back diplomatic ties by decades.
Also, US foreign aid isn't what it used to be. In the last decade, US foreign aid has been cut in half. In countries like Brazil, the IMF is the chief source of aid.
I would also argue that this sort of legal policy will not affect US business investment in a country; probably the opposite. The strengthening of the local economy by doing away with the monopoly rents resulting from IP protection might present a nice opportunity for investors.
If the threat of the WTO is so potent, why did the US recently drop its case against Brazil? (See, for instance this article.) Is it because they are worried this meme might spread?
The only way to know what will actually happen is to watch the real-world scenario unfolding in Brazil - although it is much easier to weigh the ethics of AIDS prevention vs. IP protection than it is with, say, computer software, this next step is easy to take.
Whoops... I guess Italy *is* part of Western Europe. In place of Western Europe above, use Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, France and half-weight the UK.
I'm surprised that Italy didn't just announce that Microsoft's copyrights were no good there.
The critical market acceptance question: Will we be able to sell old episodes on eBay?
Well, that's the point. This sort of information has *always* been available... to people willing to pay good money for it (Lexis/Nexis is not cheap.) That means that big business has access to data you would rather keep private, but YOU don't.
I expect Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw lobby pretty hard against making this public data more accesible.
A company called Lexis/Nexis has entered, AFAIK, all court records into a huge database. Whenever my firm invests in a company we do a Lexis/Nexis search on the executives as part of our due diligence.
As is usual in these privacy debates, the stable door is open and the horse long gone. The only difference now from 4 years ago is that you had to put up some money to get the info. That means that big companies had access to the data and people didn't. Ever get a credit report on yourself? The first time I did I was astounded how much they knew about me.
The only privacy is complete privacy. If we don't want this information public, then the government shouldn't collect it (I mean, do they really need your address on file to let you vote?)
(On a side note, it actually sort of disturbs me now when I do a Google on somebody and don't get *anything*. I almost believe they don't actually exist.)
What I want to know is, since I believe most of the "data" being burned on CD-Rs is actually a subset of my data, how do I get my cut of any new tax?
I agree. I shouldn't have called him boneheaded - bad karma. In fact, the front-line ad execs shouldn't be worrying about the distant future (in advertising the distant future is next season) but what their clients need today. What I should have said is that the boneheaded reporter was trying to make a statistically invalid point: too few data points, asking the wrong question of the wrong person. It annoys me that reporters (even for the highest quality news outlets, like the New York Times) do this all the time: use invalid data to support their own views while pretending to be objective.
Corporate investors in TiVo:
DIRECTV, Inc
NBC Multimedia, Inc.
Philips Corporate External Ventures
Advance/Newhouse Programming Partnership
CBS Corporation
The Walt Disney Company
Comcast Interactive Investments
Cox Communications Holdings
Discovery Communications, Inc
TV Guide Interactive, Inc.
Showtime Networks
Corporate investors in ReplayTV:
News America Incorporated
Adelphia Communications Corporation
Comcast Interactive Capital
Motorola, Inc
Sega of America Dreamcast
The Walt Disney Company
The Endeavor Agency
Liberty Media Corporation
Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics
William Morris Agency
Murdock Venture Partners
NBC Multimedia, Inc
Showtime Networks, Inc
Time Warner Inc
Tribune Company
Shaw Communications Inc
At Home Corporation
Omnicom Group Inc
Echostar
Grey
The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc
Rogers Communications
Scientific-Atlanta, Inc
Sharp Electronics Corporation
Universal Music Group, Inc
Enjoy!
The fact that both the advertising companies and the media companies backed the PVR makers should give you pause before you start celebrating the death of either.
When MSN was rolled out, Microsoft decided to pressure PC makers to not allow competitive providers. This caused us at the ISP that employed me huge heartburn; we were convinced that MSN would drive us out of business in no time flat. We negotiated with Microsoft to allow us some presence and they eventually relented, so long as we used Microsoft Explorer as our default browser. I use the word "negotiate" loosely as it was a pretty one-sided negotiation.
I think this may have even been the initial impetus for the antitrust suit as all the ISPs gave up negotiating with Netscape so as to get placement somewhere in Windows. In any case, it certainly smells like tying.
AOL seems to be exploiting Microsoft's weakness to turn back the tide. Much as I dislike both AOL and Microsoft, better to have a two party system than a one party system - even for us Independents.
I guess this is why Microsoft doesn't just pick up and move 30 miles north.
1) Everyone ignores it
2) Everyone attacks it
3) Everyone claims it is obvious
* Blatantly plagiarized from some quantum physicist whose name I can't recall, probably Wheeler.
Also, remaining private is not an option. When VCs are on board, there are three options for the company: go public, sell to another company, go out of business. The life of a VC fund is usually 10 years or less. The VC wants to sell the stock and distribute the proceeds, or have the company go public and distribute the stock before that. If the company is private, distributing the stock to fund investors is problematic. There are often contractual provisions that force the company to go public in some timeframe (ie. registration rights, redemption rights.)
With VCs involved, it was only a matter of time before Google went public or was sold. It shouldn't be a surprise, and noone can say management is selling out *now*. In the 'dude, you're a sell-out' sense of the word, they did that when Kleiner invested; in the literal selling out (their stock) sense, most likely they won't be able to do that until at least six months after the IPO.
If Microsoft was really worried, it would hire a good PR firm or lobbying firm and pay some politician or academic to make a stink about Free Software and how bad it is for the American economy. IMHO that is effectively what they did with the book Winners, Losers & Microsoft: they paid a foundation who were funding some academics who wrote a book denying the possibility of software 'lock in' and deriding the idea of Microsoft being a monopolist. That book got serious mentions by leading business magazines and was undoubtedly more effective among the undecided than Gates' cries of "I am not a monopolist!"
Of course, that leaves the question: what are they really up to? Are they deliberately reinforcing Linux, like they propped up Apple, to preserve some semblance of competition? If som it could be very effective - they give up the segment of the market that is extremely cost conscious, raise their prices like a good monopoly should and say: "see, Linux has 17% share, people have a choice." Not that that is necessarily bad, just like propping up Apple was not bad for the rest of us.
The press release always comes out a few weeks before the 10Q. The Q has to be filed within 45 days of the end of the quarter (unless an extension is granted.) Their quarter ends on May 31, so the Q probably won't be available until July.
As an aside, I have an investor friend who no longer looks at reported profit, he only looks at taxes paid and then grosses up to income. He thinks it is easier to fool the auditors than to fool the IRS.
Well, I think they are completely right in round 2 also: giving away software is not a business model. OTOH, was it supposed to be? Does Torvalds do what he does for the money? Does anyone in the OSS world? Somehow I have to believe that even the executives and VCs in companies like RH are in it partly for love.
Is anyone working on open source gaming engines (ie. FPS engine, rol-playing engine) for Linux?