Ask Slashdot responses are perfectly reasonable when you don't want a legal soution. A lawyer will always give the same answer, which would involve paying the lawyer a lot of money to write a legal document spelling out the rights each side has. It's a perectly reasonable solution, and would sound like the best general purpose solution to a lawyer, but not neccesarily the best overall solution for this specific problem.
What Slashdot will provide is a number of solutions to similar problems that they've tried, and if they went for a legal solution, the general overview of what the legal solution was. The OP may well choose a legal solution, and will need professional advice in exactly how to implement it, but may well find that there's a decent acceptable solution for the customer that doesn't invovle allowing them access to the source code.
1 - It's free.
2 - People share their entire collections, which may include a lot of obscure media in a number of formats and encoding types.
Since this has none of these advantages, I can't quite see why anyone would want to use this service.
What they really need is a way to track the legitimate rights holder for all files shared on a P2P network, and a means of charging for it. This may not be possible, but it's the only way you could make people pay for P2P.
but I thought that what with the divorce and general asshattery that they were skipping straight to William? Or is that just some people's wishful thinking that I picked that up from?
It's not decided yet, and won't be until the Queen dies. When that eventually happens, it will be decided whether Charles is suitable to be king. Usually this is a formality, but I understand that the House of Lords is entitled to reject the heir apparent. Not sure exactly what happens then...
True to an extent. However, it does depend on positioning. The differences between a console and a PC aren't quite as extreme as people seem to think. Perhaps the PS3 and XBox 360 are a little more unusual with their multiprocessing capabilities, but you'll still see a typical game is mostly game logic, with the platform specific stuff such as graphics easily separated and ported to different platforms. It should be quite easy to port games that are already multiplatform, such as Star Wars Lego, to a new system.
Had Nintendo not got there first, I could imagine Apple coming up with something similar to the Revolution. Something very cheap and targetted much more at the mainstream than the other contendors, with a strong emphasis on alternative "lifestyle" type games. Whether such a thing would be a success without having Nintendo's reputation backing it is uncertain, but perhaps we'll see something similar in a few years.
I can't imagine that Apple wouldn't at least consider the market if one of their staff had a concept for a games system.
How are they planning to enforce this on existing setups? Oh wait... they can't!
They can't effectively enforce existing copyright. I could make a few dozen copies of a tape and give them to friends, and nobody would be even know, let alone try to stop me.
A company has a responsibiity to the corporation. This includes the reputation of the corporation, the staff, the shareholders, potential creditors, and others. Furthermore, they are not obliged to maximise profits, but "work in the interests of the corporation". Its a reasonable opinion that turning someone in to an oppressive regime is not in the best interests of the corporation.
A licence, in this sense, is simply express permission to do something that you would not otherwise have. A fishing licence allows you to fish. A broadcasting licence gives you permission to broadcast. You do not own a licence to the content on the disc, because you do not need it. You already have the right to view it.
Oh, and also, if dozens of people assure me that what I'm doing is illegal and I could be severely punished, I'd want some fairly conclusive proof that what I was doing was legal.
Well, it's not just because of that, any more than any other sport is about moving balls around, or a movie is showing a series of photographs. That's just incidental. It takes considerable skill and dexterity to change the location of the ball, and there are a number of adversaries and collaborators conspiring to prevent or assist this from happening.
The only reason they get away with this sort of behaviour is that society tolerates it.
Here's the thing. You're part of society and so am I. It's the people who define what the moral requirements are to operate. Since they're not behaving the way I, and many others think they should, it's up to us to apply pressure to them to change their ways. If they can't act as an ethical business while operating in China, then it's their responsibility to leave. No amount of good can justify violating the basic human rights of people.
Not exactly true. They censor google.cn. There's also an uncensored chinses language version of google.com. This means that Chinese citizens have not only the same information available that they had before, but also the censored version in addition to this.
Yahoo's behaviour has led directly to the imprisonment of at several journalists. What has Microsoft done that directly results in violating someone's basic human rights, that is of particular interest to journalists?
Fair enough. Totally agree about the "advertising features". I guess I'd feel the same way as you at the extreme levels of advertising, but I don't object that to it.
But would a magazine with 100 pages of editorial and 5 pages of advertising be better than a magazine with 200 pages of editorial and 200 pages of advertising? Would a magazine with 4 pages of editorial and no advertising at all be even better?
Except you can't. Re-read the copyright disclaimer when you play a DVD. By buying it, you have paid for the right to watch it, that is all.
They can't arbitrarily change the terms after you've bought it. It's a purchase. You have all the rights you had when you bought it, which are restricted by copyright but still give you a certain amount of ownership. All they can do is grant more rights after the sale.
So... Is the purpose of the bill of rights to allow children to buy mature video games? Or perhaps to bar congress from even copmmissioning studies thatmight decide when these are harmful? Is there a good reason that this should be aprotected freee speech? Other countries have restrictions to protect minors from what is considered harmful media, without putting any restraint on, say, political commentary, or even, in most cases, artistic freedom.
Here's the thing - In most countries we have a concept of civil liability for damages caused. Also in most countries that have signed the Berne copyright convention, deliberate breach of copyright is considered to be an act that causes financial harm to the legitimate copyright holder.
Now, typically in civil liability cases, anyone who deliberately and knowingly assisted in causing harm is also liable. The pirate bay knowingly and deliberately assist in redistribution unauthorised of copyrighted works, and appears to exist solely for this purpose. This is different from search engines who, while they may occasionally link to copyrighted content, do not exist solely for this purpose. This is why search engines are legal in the US, whereas the copyright infringing torrent sites are not.
Now, we're led to believe that copyright law in Sweden is different from the US. The only precedent I have seen on this matter is a 1999 case, that ruled that linking to copyrighted information was not illegal. However, it seems quite clear that a torrent tracker is different from a link. It is a key functional component in a totally automated system. There is a clear argument that this is deliberate contributory infringment. In addition to this, Swedish copyright laws changed last year.
It may well be that torrent tracking sites are legal in Sweden. However, this doesn't appear to have any basis whatsoever, apart from The Pirate Bay's insistence that torrent tracking sites are legal. Nobody has been able to show any precedent. Many legal experts have stated that this is illegal. This is all however just a legal opinion.
Now Slashdot comments seem to universally agree that The Pirate Bay is totally legal in Sweden. They may well be right, but why do they think this is that case when it isn't in other countries?
It's quite possible that according to US law, google.com and a torrent site are very different, while Swedish law considers them to be basically the same.
Indeed it is. It's possible that swedish law considers just about anything. However, I have yet to see any evidence that swedish law is different and does permit sites such as The Pirate Bay.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot responses are perfectly reasonable when you don't want a legal soution. A lawyer will always give the same answer, which would involve paying the lawyer a lot of money to write a legal document spelling out the rights each side has. It's a perectly reasonable solution, and would sound like the best general purpose solution to a lawyer, but not neccesarily the best overall solution for this specific problem.
What Slashdot will provide is a number of solutions to similar problems that they've tried, and if they went for a legal solution, the general overview of what the legal solution was. The OP may well choose a legal solution, and will need professional advice in exactly how to implement it, but may well find that there's a decent acceptable solution for the customer that doesn't invovle allowing them access to the source code.
Of course it's defeatable. The question is, why bother defeating it when you can so easily download the music in mp3 format anyway?
As far as I can see, P2P has 2 benefits:
1 - It's free.
2 - People share their entire collections, which may include a lot of obscure media in a number of formats and encoding types.
Since this has none of these advantages, I can't quite see why anyone would want to use this service.
What they really need is a way to track the legitimate rights holder for all files shared on a P2P network, and a means of charging for it. This may not be possible, but it's the only way you could make people pay for P2P.
Yes, and he seriously affected the sales of loaves and fishes.
Well, yes, but that may be considered counterfeiting. Not really recommended.
but I thought that what with the divorce and general asshattery that they were skipping straight to William? Or is that just some people's wishful thinking that I picked that up from?
It's not decided yet, and won't be until the Queen dies. When that eventually happens, it will be decided whether Charles is suitable to be king. Usually this is a formality, but I understand that the House of Lords is entitled to reject the heir apparent. Not sure exactly what happens then...
True to an extent. However, it does depend on positioning. The differences between a console and a PC aren't quite as extreme as people seem to think. Perhaps the PS3 and XBox 360 are a little more unusual with their multiprocessing capabilities, but you'll still see a typical game is mostly game logic, with the platform specific stuff such as graphics easily separated and ported to different platforms. It should be quite easy to port games that are already multiplatform, such as Star Wars Lego, to a new system.
Had Nintendo not got there first, I could imagine Apple coming up with something similar to the Revolution. Something very cheap and targetted much more at the mainstream than the other contendors, with a strong emphasis on alternative "lifestyle" type games. Whether such a thing would be a success without having Nintendo's reputation backing it is uncertain, but perhaps we'll see something similar in a few years.
I can't imagine that Apple wouldn't at least consider the market if one of their staff had a concept for a games system.
How are they planning to enforce this on existing setups? Oh wait... they can't!
They can't effectively enforce existing copyright. I could make a few dozen copies of a tape and give them to friends, and nobody would be even know, let alone try to stop me.
Did you know that outside of Sid Miers Civilization, these concepts are not mutually exclusive?
That's not accurate.
A company has a responsibiity to the corporation. This includes the reputation of the corporation, the staff, the shareholders, potential creditors, and others. Furthermore, they are not obliged to maximise profits, but "work in the interests of the corporation". Its a reasonable opinion that turning someone in to an oppressive regime is not in the best interests of the corporation.
You need to understand what a licence is.
A licence, in this sense, is simply express permission to do something that you would not otherwise have. A fishing licence allows you to fish. A broadcasting licence gives you permission to broadcast. You do not own a licence to the content on the disc, because you do not need it. You already have the right to view it.
Oh, and also, if dozens of people assure me that what I'm doing is illegal and I could be severely punished, I'd want some fairly conclusive proof that what I was doing was legal.
Well, it's not just because of that, any more than any other sport is about moving balls around, or a movie is showing a series of photographs. That's just incidental. It takes considerable skill and dexterity to change the location of the ball, and there are a number of adversaries and collaborators conspiring to prevent or assist this from happening.
The only reason they get away with this sort of behaviour is that society tolerates it.
Here's the thing. You're part of society and so am I. It's the people who define what the moral requirements are to operate. Since they're not behaving the way I, and many others think they should, it's up to us to apply pressure to them to change their ways. If they can't act as an ethical business while operating in China, then it's their responsibility to leave. No amount of good can justify violating the basic human rights of people.
Not exactly true. They censor google.cn. There's also an uncensored chinses language version of google.com. This means that Chinese citizens have not only the same information available that they had before, but also the censored version in addition to this.
Yahoo's behaviour has led directly to the imprisonment of at several journalists. What has Microsoft done that directly results in violating someone's basic human rights, that is of particular interest to journalists?
Fair enough. Totally agree about the "advertising features". I guess I'd feel the same way as you at the extreme levels of advertising, but I don't object that to it.
But would a magazine with 100 pages of editorial and 5 pages of advertising be better than a magazine with 200 pages of editorial and 200 pages of advertising? Would a magazine with 4 pages of editorial and no advertising at all be even better?
Yes... but the other 50% is content. Does print advertising really have such substantial negative value that it outweighs the value of content?
Except you can't. Re-read the copyright disclaimer when you play a DVD. By buying it, you have paid for the right to watch it, that is all.
They can't arbitrarily change the terms after you've bought it. It's a purchase. You have all the rights you had when you bought it, which are restricted by copyright but still give you a certain amount of ownership. All they can do is grant more rights after the sale.
So... Is the purpose of the bill of rights to allow children to buy mature video games? Or perhaps to bar congress from even copmmissioning studies thatmight decide when these are harmful? Is there a good reason that this should be aprotected freee speech? Other countries have restrictions to protect minors from what is considered harmful media, without putting any restraint on, say, political commentary, or even, in most cases, artistic freedom.
Here's the thing - In most countries we have a concept of civil liability for damages caused. Also in most countries that have signed the Berne copyright convention, deliberate breach of copyright is considered to be an act that causes financial harm to the legitimate copyright holder.
Now, typically in civil liability cases, anyone who deliberately and knowingly assisted in causing harm is also liable. The pirate bay knowingly and deliberately assist in redistribution unauthorised of copyrighted works, and appears to exist solely for this purpose. This is different from search engines who, while they may occasionally link to copyrighted content, do not exist solely for this purpose. This is why search engines are legal in the US, whereas the copyright infringing torrent sites are not.
Now, we're led to believe that copyright law in Sweden is different from the US. The only precedent I have seen on this matter is a 1999 case, that ruled that linking to copyrighted information was not illegal. However, it seems quite clear that a torrent tracker is different from a link. It is a key functional component in a totally automated system. There is a clear argument that this is deliberate contributory infringment. In addition to this, Swedish copyright laws changed last year.
It may well be that torrent tracking sites are legal in Sweden. However, this doesn't appear to have any basis whatsoever, apart from The Pirate Bay's insistence that torrent tracking sites are legal. Nobody has been able to show any precedent. Many legal experts have stated that this is illegal. This is all however just a legal opinion.
Now Slashdot comments seem to universally agree that The Pirate Bay is totally legal in Sweden. They may well be right, but why do they think this is that case when it isn't in other countries?
Really, I think the important point is intent. Something that's always a lot harder to prove, but appears to be important in law.
Look. This keeps coming up. If you sell something, then you have an obligation for its quality. If you give it away you don't.
Linus Torvalds would not be held liable for bugs in the Linux Kernel.
Red Hat would be held liable for bugs if people buy their software from Red Hat.
If I was to sell Debian Linux, I would be liable for bugs in it. Debian would not.
Microsoft would be liable for bugs in Windows.
Microsoft would not be held liabble for bugs in software they give away.
If I sell you a toaster, then you should expect it to work.
If I give you a toaster, then don't.
It's quite possible that according to US law, google.com and a torrent site are very different, while Swedish law considers them to be basically the same.
Indeed it is. It's possible that swedish law considers just about anything. However, I have yet to see any evidence that swedish law is different and does permit sites such as The Pirate Bay.