There are a lot of places which will unlock cell phones for you for $20 or less. I did this with my phone when I went to England last summer, because I didn't want to pay $1.29/minute. When I got there, I just slipped in a Vodaphone prepaid SIM and bought refills as I needed them.
No, locking shouldn't be legal in the first place, but it is possible to get around it.
In many states, refusing to pay you probably counts as "discharged." It's called "constructive discharge," and the category can also include cases where the company moves your job more than 60 miles and stuff like that.
(Sorry -- thought I was logged in. Wanted to do this under my real name, so people would see it.) ...I don't really understand why you'd use the BSD license instead of public domain.
The BSD license includes a disclaimer of liability, so an author who releases software under it has some protection from suit. An author who
releases into the public domain (arguments about whether that is possible with software aside) has no protection from suit.
(The preceding is not legal advice.)
I wasn't challenging the validity of the Google agreement, just the earlier poster's claim that all newsgroup posts are in the public domain because newsgroup charters supposedly say so. Implied license to distribute news postings is a far cry from "all your postings are belong to the public domain."
On the question of whether Google (or any other organization that happens to own a news server) could enforce the language of a newsgroup charter, I don't see it. They aren't the ones who wrote the charter, and the only agreements they have with their users are those the user "signed" to get access through them. Remember, you can't sue to enforce a contract to which you aren't a party -- so even if there is some nebulous contract there between the poster and "the Usenet community," there isn't anyone with a right to enforce it.
The law is contracts.
The law is also statutes, caselaw, administrative rules, treaties, and so on ad infinitum. Those other sources of law define what a valid contract is, which as you'll see below is the problem with your argument.
Did you read the newsgroup charter before you posted? Oops. Looks like you agreed to its terms by posting and gave up copyright on your article, eh?
I'm pretty confident that those charters aren't valid legal contracts. The law only recognizes an agreement as a valid, i.e. legally enforceable, contract if it meets certain standards. A newsgroup charter fails to meet those standards in a number of ways. There's no formal agreement on my part, not even a "Click 'I Agree' to continue" kind of thing. There's no second party (a contract has to be between multiple parties). There's no consideration (the give and take required by contract law), because I'm not getting anything in exchange for supposedly agreeing to place my material in the public domain. You could claim I'm getting access to Usenet, but since nobody owns Usenet, nobody can "give" me that access in exchange for making my work public domain. The rules for legal contracts are complex, and the charters don't make the cut.
Even if they were somehow valid contracts, there's another problem. Since most newgroup posters wouldn't even know where to find the charters, much less be aware that they affect their IP rights, the charters would fail as "contracts of adhesion" -- basically, contracts that one party didn't realize they were agreeing to.
It's the nature of the beast. When you voluntarily post to a PUBLIC forum, you are then and there decreeing your words to be in the public domain, yes? Thus, copyright no longer applies. And neither does "default" copyright apply because you physically placed your words into a PUBLIC forum. You knew what you were doing. You clearly chose to relinquish eternally all copyright to your article.
No. Work does not go into the public domain unless (1) the content wasn't copyrightable in the first place, (2) the copyright runs out, or (3) the author explicitly states that it is in the public domain. Posting to a public forum does not put your work into the public domain. It does give other people an implied license to do the kinds of things you might expect them to do with your posting -- such as quoting part of your message in a response, like this one -- but it does not make your posting public domain.
Pretty much thanks to Gygax, came very close to being sued into oblivion, eventually going out of business (pretty much after the whole Gygax fiasco they ended up folding).
Nope. If you have to pick a single reason they went out of business, it's because they tried to get into the mass market, selling books to bookstores. They produced a Gulf War sourcebook, printed huge quantities of it in response to mass distributor orders, and then took a bath when the war ended faster than expected and most of those copies came back remaindered. The Gygax thing was a minor annoyance for GDW compared to the discovery that, when you sell books to the mass market, they can come back.
Re:This ship didn't really sink
on
FASA Dies
·
· Score: 1
It's been a while, but my recollection is that Jordan Weisman founded FASA with another gamer. Around the time that they got the Star Trek license, Jordan brought in his father, Morton, who was a semi-retired(?) executive, to bring some business knowledge to the company. Now, FASA's valuable properties are being transferred out to a company founded by Jordan.
Sure looks like a transfer of assets to get out from under something, or a restructuring, not a real company failure.
The people at M-Net are pretty reasonable people, and will probably not overstate damages (unless one of their parent companies or
sponsors makes them).
Thanks for the kind words!We don't have any parent companies or corporate sponsors. M-Net is run by Arbornet, Inc, a non-profit with directors elected by the M-Net contributor base. We're a small, all-volunteer group, with virtually all of our income coming from donations by individual users. We operate on a shoestring. I don't know that any large corporations would really be willing to support us, given our extremely strong pro-free-speech stance.;-)
It would't be appropriate for me to comment on the case itself, but I wanted to clear that issue up.
Joe Saul, Executive VP, Arbornet
seldon@arbornet.org
Slashdot Mirror
How do they elect one of their own to be a counter, when they can't communicate with each other?
There are a lot of places which will unlock cell phones for you for $20 or less. I did this with my phone when I went to England last summer, because I didn't want to pay $1.29/minute. When I got there, I just slipped in a Vodaphone prepaid SIM and bought refills as I needed them.
No, locking shouldn't be legal in the first place, but it is possible to get around it.
Correct. M-Net went up under Unix in 1983. Chinet didn't go Unix until after that point, I think.
Both systems are still active, still public-access, and still run Unix -- so whichever one is oldest, it isn't SDF.
In many states, refusing to pay you probably counts as "discharged." It's called "constructive discharge," and the category can also include cases where the company moves your job more than 60 miles and stuff like that.
(Sorry -- thought I was logged in. Wanted to do this under my real name, so people would see it.) ...I don't really understand why you'd use the BSD license instead of public domain.
The BSD license includes a disclaimer of liability, so an author who releases software under it has some protection from suit. An author who
releases into the public domain (arguments about whether that is possible with software aside) has no protection from suit.
(The preceding is not legal advice.)
On the question of whether Google (or any other organization that happens to own a news server) could enforce the language of a newsgroup charter, I don't see it. They aren't the ones who wrote the charter, and the only agreements they have with their users are those the user "signed" to get access through them. Remember, you can't sue to enforce a contract to which you aren't a party -- so even if there is some nebulous contract there between the poster and "the Usenet community," there isn't anyone with a right to enforce it.
Did you read the newsgroup charter before you posted? Oops. Looks like you agreed to its terms by posting and gave up copyright on your article, eh?
I'm pretty confident that those charters aren't valid legal contracts. The law only recognizes an agreement as a valid, i.e. legally enforceable, contract if it meets certain standards. A newsgroup charter fails to meet those standards in a number of ways. There's no formal agreement on my part, not even a "Click 'I Agree' to continue" kind of thing. There's no second party (a contract has to be between multiple parties). There's no consideration (the give and take required by contract law), because I'm not getting anything in exchange for supposedly agreeing to place my material in the public domain. You could claim I'm getting access to Usenet, but since nobody owns Usenet, nobody can "give" me that access in exchange for making my work public domain. The rules for legal contracts are complex, and the charters don't make the cut.Even if they were somehow valid contracts, there's another problem. Since most newgroup posters wouldn't even know where to find the charters, much less be aware that they affect their IP rights, the charters would fail as "contracts of adhesion" -- basically, contracts that one party didn't realize they were agreeing to.
...And welcome to real life.
Welcome to the way the law actually works.He was at Michigan State University, not the University of Michigan.
Pretty much thanks to Gygax, came very close to being sued into oblivion, eventually going out of business (pretty much after the whole Gygax fiasco they ended up folding). Nope. If you have to pick a single reason they went out of business, it's because they tried to get into the mass market, selling books to bookstores. They produced a Gulf War sourcebook, printed huge quantities of it in response to mass distributor orders, and then took a bath when the war ended faster than expected and most of those copies came back remaindered. The Gygax thing was a minor annoyance for GDW compared to the discovery that, when you sell books to the mass market, they can come back.
It's been a while, but my recollection is that Jordan Weisman founded FASA with another gamer. Around the time that they got the Star Trek license, Jordan brought in his father, Morton, who was a semi-retired(?) executive, to bring some business knowledge to the company. Now, FASA's valuable properties are being transferred out to a company founded by Jordan. Sure looks like a transfer of assets to get out from under something, or a restructuring, not a real company failure.
The people at M-Net are pretty reasonable people, and will probably not overstate damages (unless one of their parent companies or sponsors makes them). Thanks for the kind words!We don't have any parent companies or corporate sponsors. M-Net is run by Arbornet, Inc, a non-profit with directors elected by the M-Net contributor base. We're a small, all-volunteer group, with virtually all of our income coming from donations by individual users. We operate on a shoestring. I don't know that any large corporations would really be willing to support us, given our extremely strong pro-free-speech stance. ;-)
It would't be appropriate for me to comment on the case itself, but I wanted to clear that issue up.
Joe Saul, Executive VP, Arbornet seldon@arbornet.org