If you buy a book, you can enjoy the book as long as you like, and you can show it to other people. If the author wants to retract the book, that is impossible. You have actually paid for the privilige to have the book in your home, and to be able to use it in any way you like, except for republishing it.
When an author publishes on the Internet, it is similar to publishing in a book that is distributed to the whole world and nobody has to pay for. However, redistribution rights are not granted. And it seems to me that redistribution is exactly what the Internet Archive is doing.
How is their redistribution different than me borrowing your old out of print edition of the book? In this case the law firm could easily have tracked down an owner of the old out of print book and used it for evidence.
He never made realtive morale comparisions. He has some very relative comparisons about how an entrenced industry responded to a changing techonolgy landscape that challenged it's way of conducting business. The fact that the cotton industry involved slavery is really secondary to the point. Admittedly it is potentially a carefully chosen comparison to invoke some of the deep emotion impact of those circumstances, but I can't speak about the motives of the original speaker.
Licensing the technology costs apple money. Do you think communicating changes and supporting licenses is free? Virtually no effort is absolutely false it would cost them to maintain account management, support staff, and documentation staff. Don't kid yourself if you think all internal documentation on such things is ready for customer distribution. If apple decided their effort required was not worth the benefit that's their choice not yours nor Real's. It matters not why apple decided not to license they decided not to. Do you think it would be ok for Real to do what they did if Apple's price was to high for them?
I think your crazy if you think I wouldn't get slapped with a cease and desist if I published an unlicensed program that plays DRM real media files. Just because I want to do it (like real wants to be on an iPod) gives me a right to do it.
Having said that, since the Mac is such a small part of the overall market, we make practical decisions about what functionality and services we offer on the Mac. So far, offering a music store or the Rhapsody subscription service on the Mac hasn't made the cut.
Apple made a practical descission Real was a small player and did not want to license, and you thought it was ok to reverse engineer their product and still use it. So you think it's ok that I reverse engineer your DRM so I can use it on my Mac right!
While this could be true, Apple has not made an official statement that I know of. Some one saying they talked to some one at apple does not make policy. It is entirley possible that Apple has just concentrated all resources to get Panther out the door. No work was allowed on previous versions until it was done. It just as plausible as the radical they won't fix Jaguar. Until Apple states their official policy people shouldn't fly off the handle.
"Basically if you set aside all the "evil empire" issues surrounding Microsoft, which is hard for many of us to do myself included, I think Windows makes for a good Desktop environment and OSX and all the Linux distros that use X are in second place for the vast majority of Desktop users. Coders/programmers and other such people probably wouldn't agree but think about what your uses are for a computer compared to the average Desktop user."
There is one glaring problem with that statement. Macintosh OS X does NOT use X Windows. It has it's own display system based on Quartz. So any observations based on X windows have no relevance to OS X.
Taking down servers in several companies is a direct consequence of his action. Equate it to some one sending a small bomb that would only go off in your mailbox with no one around to be physically hurt. It blows up your mailbox so you can't get mail anymore. What's wrong with that. It was just an unsolicited mail. I think the official charge was "interfering with public communication". I have no idea what that entails. Probably similar to messing with other peoples snail mail. It did look like it had some fairly hefty penalties.
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How is their redistribution different than me borrowing your old out of print edition of the book? In this case the law firm could easily have tracked down an owner of the old out of print book and used it for evidence.
He never made realtive morale comparisions. He has some very relative comparisons about how an entrenced industry responded to a changing techonolgy landscape that challenged it's way of conducting business. The fact that the cotton industry involved slavery is really secondary to the point. Admittedly it is potentially a carefully chosen comparison to invoke some of the deep emotion impact of those circumstances, but I can't speak about the motives of the original speaker.
Licensing the technology costs apple money. Do you think communicating changes and supporting licenses is free? Virtually no effort is absolutely false it would cost them to maintain account management, support staff, and documentation staff. Don't kid yourself if you think all internal documentation on such things is ready for customer distribution. If apple decided their effort required was not worth the benefit that's their choice not yours nor Real's. It matters not why apple decided not to license they decided not to. Do you think it would be ok for Real to do what they did if Apple's price was to high for them?
I think your crazy if you think I wouldn't get slapped with a cease and desist if I published an unlicensed program that plays DRM real media files. Just because I want to do it (like real wants to be on an iPod) gives me a right to do it.
Apple made a practical descission Real was a small player and did not want to license, and you thought it was ok to reverse engineer their product and still use it. So you think it's ok that I reverse engineer your DRM so I can use it on my Mac right!
While this could be true, Apple has not made an official statement that I know of. Some one saying they talked to some one at apple does not make policy. It is entirley possible that Apple has just concentrated all resources to get Panther out the door. No work was allowed on previous versions until it was done. It just as plausible as the radical they won't fix Jaguar. Until Apple states their official policy people shouldn't fly off the handle.
"Basically if you set aside all the "evil empire" issues surrounding Microsoft, which is hard for many of us to do myself included, I think Windows makes for a good Desktop environment and OSX and all the Linux distros that use X are in second place for the vast majority of Desktop users. Coders/programmers and other such people probably wouldn't agree but think about what your uses are for a computer compared to the average Desktop user."
There is one glaring problem with that statement. Macintosh OS X does NOT use X Windows. It has it's own display system based on Quartz. So any observations based on X windows have no relevance to OS X.
Taking down servers in several companies is a direct consequence of his action. Equate it to some one sending a small bomb that would only go off in your mailbox with no one around to be physically hurt. It blows up your mailbox so you can't get mail anymore. What's wrong with that. It was just an unsolicited mail. I think the official charge was "interfering with public communication". I have no idea what that entails. Probably similar to messing with other peoples snail mail. It did look like it had some fairly hefty penalties.