The online seller is the one taking a risk here! He's not going to pay that much. Business ideas are easy enough to come up with. If you're going to pay a huge sum up front, you might as well start selling exotic fruit or something.
And how does holding out like this benefit anyone? You get very few people willing to pay the extortionate amounts asked. If nobody pays then that's 0 x $extortionate amount. What sort of a business are they trying to run!?
You're not the sort of person they're trying to stop. What they want to do is to stop people burning a load of copies for their friends.
Honestly - I think they're doing it wrong. A certain amount of small scale piracy is pretty harmless since propagation is slow, and may have indirect benefits (friend of pirate plays the game. Decides to buy it). Bitorrent and a CD patch requires that only one person buys the game to distribute to thousands.
Yeah, but it doesn't scan that well. Digital Restrictions Mechanism has a better ring to it even if it is less accurate. RMS doesn't have the way with words that he likes to think he has.
Which should be possible. It's expensive but a lot of companies will dismantle a chip and reverse engineer it. This includes legitimate large scale chip companies.
You don't need MIDI for MIDI-like information. You can simply encode a couple of samples and a list of replay rates and lengths. Will certainly be able to play some recognisable tunes.
There was a lot of doubt from certain areas before the verdict, because any individual piece of illogical behaviour could genuinely be explained by the fact that the guy is a bit weird.
Personally, while I think that most of the individual pieces could be explained, together they just didn't add up.
Clearly she just left and got on a plane, and he obviously removed his car seat to sleep in the wet soggy car, and took books out of the library about police tracking because he took a sudden interest, and knew where his wife's body was because, uhm... he's so smart he managed to deduce it.
There is a saying - "You can't fool an honest man" - which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men.
Indeed you can. At the very least you can sell people something under false pretences. Still, it seems that the rewards are higher and the risks lower if you play on peoples' greed. If you fleece a partner in crime, they can't go to the police, and while there's a risk they may have you murdered, that's not very likely.
Not even that really. He's not antagonistic to our position, and feels that it's worth listening to. He may still believe that Universal have a valid argument, but there's not nearly enough evidence to make such a declaration just yet.
Perjury is a criminal offence. You would have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that they knowingly lied about the notice rather than simply made a mistake. Nobody will bring charges without a reasonable chance of conviction. Essentially you'd need a smoking gun here; something like a memo saying "I don't care that it's not infringement!"
I see your point, but really, Slashdot has always editorialised, and has always had a strong slant against strong IP.
That said, the opinion is a little uninformed. This isn't a ruling, so much as a judge stating that there's clearly an argument to be made that is likely to succeed.
That's fair enough. But if you have too tight a hold on the market, someone else will come in and undercut you. They may even be able to come up with a business model that you simply can't adapt to. The British printing industry changed pretty drastically after the printing unions gained too much power.
People don't like paying for stuff if they don't have to. Hope you don't like your job too much. They might not be able to support that six-figure salary for much longer.
There are VERY few open software projects that even begin to compare to their commercial equivalents.
Gcc, Git, Apache, Python, lzarc, just about any server application. Desktop apps like Word and Photoshop actually make up a pretty small amount of the software out there.
A lot of the best open source software is good enough that it doesn't have a closed source equivalent. The software that is developed by its users is typically pretty damn good. Since textbooks would be developed by their users we can expect it to be pretty much the same.
The flying pigs are actually 10 year old pigs of a perfectly normal land based variety and a Slashdot editor getting mixed up with the avian pig and common pig.
What does Vista give a business user who will typically want to run XP compatible apps? Not that many people need DirectX 10 support or support for content protected (i.e. DRM'ed) High Definition video at work. File explorer might be better but most users don't spend a lot of time doing anything remotely complicated with files - putting everything in "my Documents" usually works okay.
You can always self publish. Vanity press is big business.
Although this may not have been a vanity press thing. A friend of mine has a lot of books of {funny things from the internet} from well meaning relatives who can't think of anything to get him for birthdays and christmas. It seems there's a market for any old crap.
Indeed. There's a difference between a public space, and public property. A mall is a public space but private property because it is owned by a private company but there is a general right of access to the public. A military base is public property but not a public space because it is owned by the public (via the government) but you can't just wander in there.
So it's really just about whether there's a general invitation to the public to be there. And by extending this general invitation, the Mall owners should be aware that the place will be treated as a public space (because it is one) and people will assume the same rules apply as in a park.
If they lost their box rental monopoly, they'd simply boost service rates to make up the difference.
There's a limit to how far they can do this before they start losing customers. Otherwise they'd simply be boosting their service rates to increase profits.
charging $7 a month to rent one means they don't recoup the cost of one for over a year.
That's a fantastic deal for the cable company! Defaulters are going to be rare and they get a full return on their investment after just over a year. If the subscriber decides they don't want to continue with the service, they can give the box to someone else. If you do, after that time, everything they charge is pure profit.
Slashdot Mirror
That if there was more original text, and less direct copying from the books, this would not have infringed.
I guess the judge has actually seen the lexicon. He knows how much is original and how much is copied.
Past infringement!?
The online seller is the one taking a risk here! He's not going to pay that much. Business ideas are easy enough to come up with. If you're going to pay a huge sum up front, you might as well start selling exotic fruit or something.
And how does holding out like this benefit anyone? You get very few people willing to pay the extortionate amounts asked. If nobody pays then that's 0 x $extortionate amount. What sort of a business are they trying to run!?
You're not the sort of person they're trying to stop. What they want to do is to stop people burning a load of copies for their friends.
Honestly - I think they're doing it wrong. A certain amount of small scale piracy is pretty harmless since propagation is slow, and may have indirect benefits (friend of pirate plays the game. Decides to buy it). Bitorrent and a CD patch requires that only one person buys the game to distribute to thousands.
Yeah, but it doesn't scan that well. Digital Restrictions Mechanism has a better ring to it even if it is less accurate. RMS doesn't have the way with words that he likes to think he has.
Which should be possible. It's expensive but a lot of companies will dismantle a chip and reverse engineer it. This includes legitimate large scale chip companies.
You don't need MIDI for MIDI-like information. You can simply encode a couple of samples and a list of replay rates and lengths. Will certainly be able to play some recognisable tunes.
Uhm... presumably Samsung has worked out a way to store data on a display.
There was a lot of doubt from certain areas before the verdict, because any individual piece of illogical behaviour could genuinely be explained by the fact that the guy is a bit weird.
Personally, while I think that most of the individual pieces could be explained, together they just didn't add up.
Of course he's innocent!
Clearly she just left and got on a plane, and he obviously removed his car seat to sleep in the wet soggy car, and took books out of the library about police tracking because he took a sudden interest, and knew where his wife's body was because, uhm... he's so smart he managed to deduce it.
Denial!? I've never even been to Egypt!
There is a saying - "You can't fool an honest man" - which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men.
Indeed you can. At the very least you can sell people something under false pretences. Still, it seems that the rewards are higher and the risks lower if you play on peoples' greed. If you fleece a partner in crime, they can't go to the police, and while there's a risk they may have you murdered, that's not very likely.
Not even that really. He's not antagonistic to our position, and feels that it's worth listening to. He may still believe that Universal have a valid argument, but there's not nearly enough evidence to make such a declaration just yet.
Perjury is a criminal offence. You would have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that they knowingly lied about the notice rather than simply made a mistake. Nobody will bring charges without a reasonable chance of conviction. Essentially you'd need a smoking gun here; something like a memo saying "I don't care that it's not infringement!"
I see your point, but really, Slashdot has always editorialised, and has always had a strong slant against strong IP.
That said, the opinion is a little uninformed. This isn't a ruling, so much as a judge stating that there's clearly an argument to be made that is likely to succeed.
A programmer should be able to just tell the artist. You need to work together - not fighting!
So, what parts of Wikipedia do you consider to be fundamentally wrong?
It's certainly not perfect, but it's pretty good considering any fool can edit it.
A textbook would be a lot better. Only edits made my actual professors in a subject would get anywhere near the main branch.
That's fair enough. But if you have too tight a hold on the market, someone else will come in and undercut you. They may even be able to come up with a business model that you simply can't adapt to. The British printing industry changed pretty drastically after the printing unions gained too much power.
People don't like paying for stuff if they don't have to. Hope you don't like your job too much. They might not be able to support that six-figure salary for much longer.
There are VERY few open software projects that even begin to compare to their commercial equivalents.
Gcc, Git, Apache, Python, lzarc, just about any server application. Desktop apps like Word and Photoshop actually make up a pretty small amount of the software out there.
A lot of the best open source software is good enough that it doesn't have a closed source equivalent. The software that is developed by its users is typically pretty damn good. Since textbooks would be developed by their users we can expect it to be pretty much the same.
The flying pigs are actually 10 year old pigs of a perfectly normal land based variety and a Slashdot editor getting mixed up with the avian pig and common pig.
What does Vista give a business user who will typically want to run XP compatible apps? Not that many people need DirectX 10 support or support for content protected (i.e. DRM'ed) High Definition video at work. File explorer might be better but most users don't spend a lot of time doing anything remotely complicated with files - putting everything in "my Documents" usually works okay.
You can always self publish. Vanity press is big business.
Although this may not have been a vanity press thing. A friend of mine has a lot of books of {funny things from the internet} from well meaning relatives who can't think of anything to get him for birthdays and christmas. It seems there's a market for any old crap.
5.) Strawman arguments are perfectly valid in debates.
6.) ???
7.) Profit.
That actually makes sense. Although Taco should just scrap idle on account of him being editor, and Slashdot not being Digg.
This passive aggressive stuff is not remotely productive.
If I was in charge, I'd have fired her supervisor.
Sometimes people are stupid. You solve this by education.
Indeed. There's a difference between a public space, and public property. A mall is a public space but private property because it is owned by a private company but there is a general right of access to the public. A military base is public property but not a public space because it is owned by the public (via the government) but you can't just wander in there.
So it's really just about whether there's a general invitation to the public to be there. And by extending this general invitation, the Mall owners should be aware that the place will be treated as a public space (because it is one) and people will assume the same rules apply as in a park.
If they lost their box rental monopoly, they'd simply boost service rates to make up the difference.
There's a limit to how far they can do this before they start losing customers. Otherwise they'd simply be boosting their service rates to increase profits.
charging $7 a month to rent one means they don't recoup the cost of one for over a year.
That's a fantastic deal for the cable company! Defaulters are going to be rare and they get a full return on their investment after just over a year. If the subscriber decides they don't want to continue with the service, they can give the box to someone else. If you do, after that time, everything they charge is pure profit.