There you have another chunk of scope for a legal grey area. When is a PC not a PC. How many components can I replace before it ceases to be the same machine?
Sigh. Wouldn't it be nice if in return for property like rights on data, copyright holders were obliged to transfer property like rights to the buyer without any of this licencing rubbish.
From what I understand, a contract is valid to if both parties agree to the terms. Actually signing anything, or clicking I agree isn't neccesary, but it is a useful mechanism to indicate that both parties have agreed. Asking someone else to click "I agree" would therefore still be an agreement on your part.
I don't think the law has a strong opinion on this matter just yet. I did read an opinion from a publishers association (book publishers IIRC) once that argued that since a copy will be perfect each time, it would theoretically be possible for everyone in the world to read a single copy by transferring. There are other good arguments against this though, so it will eventually come down to either a court or legislators deciding whether or not this is copyright infringement or a simple transfer of purchased goods.
Personally, I think it's a transfer. The mechanics of the situation shouldn't be important, and we will see exactly the same result as if he had mailed a CD. Plus, if it is decided that an electronic transfer is copying, it leads to more questions such as whether you or the machine owns the music. What happens if you sell the machine that contains your music?
Someday, someone with several thousand songs will call their bluff, and challenge them. Perhaps in court, they'll point out how stupid the RIAA looks demanding more money than the entire record industry is worth in damages. Perhaps.
The thing is, even if a court does rule that you owe the RIAA $100 000 000, what would happen? It's not like they could ever collect. I never expect to own that much money.
The big stopping block--so far as I can see--is having the private sector tackle big time computer vision research problems (watch out for that moose!), when the market is so questionable (people wanna drive themselves) and heavy government regulation seems certain.
It's not as big a problem as you might think. Stopping for a moose is exactly the same problem as stopping for a car, tree or pedestrian. All you have to be able to do is distinguish obstacles from road, and work out where the edges of the road are. Even then, obstacles don't need vision systems - Radar will probably work.
I saw a video about three years ago of a car that researchers tweaked that can follow lines on a curvy road and stay in a lane by itself.
I saw a video of a car that could check rear view mirrors, indicate, pull out and overtake quite some time ago. No idea what happened to that.
Anyway, they could probably produce a protype fully automated car within a few years. We don't need any major breakthroughs. Just some testing. The thing is, do people want them? Personally, I'd quite like a car that will drive me home after I've been drinking, or that I can drive somewhere, then tell to find a parking place, then call later and it comes to pick me up, but I don't think legislation will allow this.
Nice idea. They need some development and the infrastructure would need to be improved somewhat though. They're easy enough to take from one place to another, but where do you park them? And they're tricky to land as well. Airships need a fairly substantial ground crew.
Many of these are viable from a technology pooint of view. They just lack a market:
VIDEOPHONES: People want to communicate more information more quickly. I get the feeling that the image of the person you're talking to simply isn't a piece of information people need.
A MOON COLONY: Suffers from being slightly useless in itself, and only worthwhile as a means to an end. People don;t want to spend billions in setting on eof these up.
FOOD IN PILLS: This simply isn't possible. You could have something like an energy bar or a thick shake of course. I guess people like eating proper food.
CARS THAT DRIVE THEMSELVES: Technologically possible with a bit of R&D involved. I have seen a car that can drive along German autobahns, and overtake safely. The basic technology exists. Getting the things to obey all traffic rules is feasable. The thing is, where's the market? People do not want their cars to take over control. It's simply not safe for them to do say. Computers can't deal with the unexpected. I seriously doubt that legislators will allow cars to drive themselves without having someone qualified to drive behind the wheel. Since you have a driver, why bother with self driving?
JET PACKS: I guess the 20 second flight time makes them too limitted to be a lot of use
MOVING SIDEWALKS: Yeah, what is it with these? It can't cost a lot more to run and maintain than a light rail network or underground system. We only see travellators in airports.
Which raises the question on how the LZW algorithm was granted a patent in Canada (patent 1223965) as it clearly is nothing more than an algorithm.
Probably down to it being an algorithm with a practical application. I guess you can say it effectively increases the storage capability of a computer or something.
but what if some guy creates some virus that brings a Linux system down to it's knees? Who do we sue? Linus? OSDL? Or will there be a double standard?
Whoever sold it to you. i.e. Redhat, or SuSE. If you get it for free, then it's reasonable to assume that you are taking full responsibility for any bugs. The same rule will have to apply to IE and MSN, of course.
I think your issue is more about specific wording being unclear. The basic intent is good. The user only has any need or desire to see that his credit card info has been sent. Not what the credit card info is.
It would probably have been more effective for him to have written a letter of complaint to the company. Letters are usually read by someone since people who have time to write often have something worth saying.
Someone who behaves differently from 99% of the rest of the population.
Someone who didn't want to agree to a potentially binding legal contract that they had not way to get hold of for review?
Yup.
I don't know about YOU, but smart people don't go about signing contracts they haven't read. Maybe you have an exceptionally high tolerance for signing away your rights to the things you purchased, but normal people don't.
Most people assume that any contract they agree to is going to be generally reasonable. They don't read it. Yes! They're that stupid! You may read them, so do I, but a lot of people will sign anything you hand to them.
Besides, I would hope that if everything he says is true that he wouldn't be dumb enough to deal with such a lousy company anymore anyway, so I guess they can get rid of one of those "troublemakers" who doesn't want to sign unreadable contracts.
Most companies can tolerate the small percentage of people who are willing to forgoe the purchase rather than click okay. I wouldn't bother with the hassle of returning it. I'd simply click okay, knowing full well that they can't legally enforce those terms that I hadn't seen when I agreed to them. Most people do.
Breaking laws by reverse-engineering and giving them chance to sue us is exactly what we don't need here.
Breaking laws? I'm pretty certain copyright law explicitely allows reverse engineering for interoperability purposes if the copyright owner is not willing to provide the specifications.
Yes, but while it could do this, it would only be designed to do this with DVDs that are marked as not copy protected. Writing your own DVD driver allows you to ignore those bits.
Okay, it was just a glib remark,and I missed a key element that I assumed you wopuld have access to my car. The point is that assuming all cars arer equal, nobody has lost out. I have a car, you have a car.
The point being that just although both actions have the same net result, one of them is legal, the other is not. It may or may not be the same situation on the case of copyright infringement, but one should't make assumptions.
given the same CD, will result in an identical source file.
No!! That's definately not true
Okay - This suprises me. Considering that perfect data is a requirement for data CDs, I would have thought audio CDs would also be bit perfect.
Almost everyone encodes at 128kbps
This isn't true anymore either.
Okay. It's an overgeneralisation. Still, the bitrate will be one of a small number of possibilities, usually an integer multiple of 56 or 64. The multpiles of 56 are less common now as well since hardly anyone is still on ISDN.
has any of you bothered to ACTUALLY see if what you say comes true?
Umm. It's not that easy for us to test. One of my machines runs Linux, the other runs Windows. I can't get the same software for both. Plus they happen to be about 3 miles away right now since I'm at work. And I have no CD to try.
So when do you get different results? Are the rips produced from the CDs the same? If not, how do they differ?
It's possible (albeit unlikely) that this woman was the person who originally uploaded those songs to Napster, and was the original source for the pirate download sites.
Probably not a very good defence to try though. Claiming to be responsible for a vast conspiracy of glabal music piracy will not look particulalrly good for the defence.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, since it's an open-top car, how do you plan to jump through the window?
No, I think this one's okay. The doors don't open, so everyone will have to climb in.
I'm not sure it is. None of the pictures indicate that it actually ahs a roof...
There you have another chunk of scope for a legal grey area. When is a PC not a PC. How many components can I replace before it ceases to be the same machine?
Sigh. Wouldn't it be nice if in return for property like rights on data, copyright holders were obliged to transfer property like rights to the buyer without any of this licencing rubbish.
From what I understand, a contract is valid to if both parties agree to the terms. Actually signing anything, or clicking I agree isn't neccesary, but it is a useful mechanism to indicate that both parties have agreed. Asking someone else to click "I agree" would therefore still be an agreement on your part.
Or in other words, you're probably right.
I don't think the law has a strong opinion on this matter just yet. I did read an opinion from a publishers association (book publishers IIRC) once that argued that since a copy will be perfect each time, it would theoretically be possible for everyone in the world to read a single copy by transferring. There are other good arguments against this though, so it will eventually come down to either a court or legislators deciding whether or not this is copyright infringement or a simple transfer of purchased goods.
Personally, I think it's a transfer. The mechanics of the situation shouldn't be important, and we will see exactly the same result as if he had mailed a CD. Plus, if it is decided that an electronic transfer is copying, it leads to more questions such as whether you or the machine owns the music. What happens if you sell the machine that contains your music?
Third, there's only so fast you can go in an airship, top speed is maybe 70 miles an hour when you're not fighting the wind.
That's 58 miles per hour faster than my average speed through London. It's direct as well.
Someday, someone with several thousand songs will call their bluff, and challenge them. Perhaps in court, they'll point out how stupid the RIAA looks demanding more money than the entire record industry is worth in damages. Perhaps.
The thing is, even if a court does rule that you owe the RIAA $100 000 000, what would happen? It's not like they could ever collect. I never expect to own that much money.
The big stopping block--so far as I can see--is having the private sector tackle big time computer vision research problems (watch out for that moose!), when the market is so questionable (people wanna drive themselves) and heavy government regulation seems certain.
It's not as big a problem as you might think. Stopping for a moose is exactly the same problem as stopping for a car, tree or pedestrian. All you have to be able to do is distinguish obstacles from road, and work out where the edges of the road are. Even then, obstacles don't need vision systems - Radar will probably work.
I saw a video about three years ago of a car that researchers tweaked that can follow lines on a curvy road and stay in a lane by itself.
I saw a video of a car that could check rear view mirrors, indicate, pull out and overtake quite some time ago. No idea what happened to that.
Anyway, they could probably produce a protype fully automated car within a few years. We don't need any major breakthroughs. Just some testing. The thing is, do people want them? Personally, I'd quite like a car that will drive me home after I've been drinking, or that I can drive somewhere, then tell to find a parking place, then call later and it comes to pick me up, but I don't think legislation will allow this.
Lets be honest - this is getting less and less of an issue. Most people who want a linux box have broadband.
Nice idea. They need some development and the infrastructure would need to be improved somewhat though. They're easy enough to take from one place to another, but where do you park them? And they're tricky to land as well. Airships need a fairly substantial ground crew.
Many of these are viable from a technology pooint of view. They just lack a market:
VIDEOPHONES: People want to communicate more information more quickly. I get the feeling that the image of the person you're talking to simply isn't a piece of information people need.
A MOON COLONY: Suffers from being slightly useless in itself, and only worthwhile as a means to an end. People don;t want to spend billions in setting on eof these up.
FOOD IN PILLS: This simply isn't possible. You could have something like an energy bar or a thick shake of course. I guess people like eating proper food.
CARS THAT DRIVE THEMSELVES: Technologically possible with a bit of R&D involved. I have seen a car that can drive along German autobahns, and overtake safely. The basic technology exists. Getting the things to obey all traffic rules is feasable. The thing is, where's the market? People do not want their cars to take over control. It's simply not safe for them to do say. Computers can't deal with the unexpected. I seriously doubt that legislators will allow cars to drive themselves without having someone qualified to drive behind the wheel. Since you have a driver, why bother with self driving?
JET PACKS: I guess the 20 second flight time makes them too limitted to be a lot of use
MOVING SIDEWALKS: Yeah, what is it with these? It can't cost a lot more to run and maintain than a light rail network or underground system. We only see travellators in airports.
Which raises the question on how the LZW algorithm was granted a patent in Canada (patent 1223965) as it clearly is nothing more than an algorithm.
Probably down to it being an algorithm with a practical application. I guess you can say it effectively increases the storage capability of a computer or something.
and MSN
Doh. I mean MSN messenger...
but what if some guy creates some virus that brings a Linux system down to it's knees? Who do we sue? Linus? OSDL? Or will there be a double standard?
Whoever sold it to you. i.e. Redhat, or SuSE. If you get it for free, then it's reasonable to assume that you are taking full responsibility for any bugs. The same rule will have to apply to IE and MSN, of course.
I think your issue is more about specific wording being unclear. The basic intent is good. The user only has any need or desire to see that his credit card info has been sent. Not what the credit card info is.
I sort of agree.
It would probably have been more effective for him to have written a letter of complaint to the company. Letters are usually read by someone since people who have time to write often have something worth saying.
Someone like WHAT exactly?
Someone who behaves differently from 99% of the rest of the population.
Someone who didn't want to agree to a potentially binding legal contract that they had not way to get hold of for review?
Yup.
I don't know about YOU, but smart people don't go about signing contracts they haven't read. Maybe you have an exceptionally high tolerance for signing away your rights to the things you purchased, but normal people don't.
Most people assume that any contract they agree to is going to be generally reasonable. They don't read it. Yes! They're that stupid! You may read them, so do I, but a lot of people will sign anything you hand to them.
Besides, I would hope that if everything he says is true that he wouldn't be dumb enough to deal with such a lousy company anymore anyway, so I guess they can get rid of one of those "troublemakers" who doesn't want to sign unreadable contracts.
Most companies can tolerate the small percentage of people who are willing to forgoe the purchase rather than click okay. I wouldn't bother with the hassle of returning it. I'd simply click okay, knowing full well that they can't legally enforce those terms that I hadn't seen when I agreed to them. Most people do.
Is anyone genuinely that concerned about the law?
Looks more like he wanted to make the point that the agreement was invalid, and force Dell to admit it.
Breaking laws by reverse-engineering and giving them chance to sue us is exactly what we don't need here.
Breaking laws? I'm pretty certain copyright law explicitely allows reverse engineering for interoperability purposes if the copyright owner is not willing to provide the specifications.
Yes, but while it could do this, it would only be designed to do this with DVDs that are marked as not copy protected. Writing your own DVD driver allows you to ignore those bits.
Did you try a digital camera (or film for that matter)?
Okay, it was just a glib remark,and I missed a key element that I assumed you wopuld have access to my car. The point is that assuming all cars arer equal, nobody has lost out. I have a car, you have a car.
The point being that just although both actions have the same net result, one of them is legal, the other is not. It may or may not be the same situation on the case of copyright infringement, but one should't make assumptions.
given the same CD, will result in an identical source file.
No!! That's definately not true
Okay - This suprises me. Considering that perfect data is a requirement for data CDs, I would have thought audio CDs would also be bit perfect.
Almost everyone encodes at 128kbps
This isn't true anymore either.
Okay. It's an overgeneralisation. Still, the bitrate will be one of a small number of possibilities, usually an integer multiple of 56 or 64. The multpiles of 56 are less common now as well since hardly anyone is still on ISDN.
has any of you bothered to ACTUALLY see if what you say comes true?
Umm. It's not that easy for us to test. One of my machines runs Linux, the other runs Windows. I can't get the same software for both. Plus they happen to be about 3 miles away right now since I'm at work. And I have no CD to try.
So when do you get different results? Are the rips produced from the CDs the same? If not, how do they differ?
It's possible (albeit unlikely) that this woman was the person who originally uploaded those songs to Napster, and was the original source for the pirate download sites.
Probably not a very good defence to try though. Claiming to be responsible for a vast conspiracy of glabal music piracy will not look particulalrly good for the defence.