Just in case you missed it, here is the complaint. I draw your attention to the first paragraph of the Introduction:
'This is an action for trademark and copyright infringement against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla and their company, RJ Softwares, for creating and publicly displaying an online game that copies the essential and original elements of Hasbro's venerable and famous SCRABBLE crossword board game and for promoting and profiting from it in the commerce of the United States under the confusingly similar "Scrabulous" name.'
Perhaps your comment
Scrabble was clonable the first day it was released. You just had to use a different name and color the board differently. This whole thing you're on about is completely mis-aimed.
would be more appropriate if directed at the folks at Hasbro.
I take no issue, by the way, with their trademark claim. I believe society benefits if we have assurance we are doing business with the party we think we are doing business with. If Hasbro thinks the name Scrabulous is too similar to Scrabble - and I agree that it is - they are absolutely right to take action on the trademark claim.
However, I stand by my previously stated opinion with regard to never-ending copyrights.
Because this is not a copyright issue, there is no sixty year timeframe involved.
I'm just going by what the various articles have said. Like this one, which says "News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement." Or this one, which says "Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users." Or this one, which says "Hasbro, the Rhode Island company that owns the trademark to the 60-year-old board game, Scrabble, on which Scrabulous is closely based, has also asked Facebook to remove the game under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act..."
But, hey, some random stranger on Slasdot assures me this has nothing to do with copyright, so I guess I'll just go with that.
As a game designer, I would like to remind you that in the eyes of the law, for a very good reason, game designs are not art.
As an intelligent human being who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real world, I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art. Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation. I've even taken some pretty artistic dumps in my day.
Spend less time worrying about what should or should not be, and more time understanding the situation correctly.
Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on, and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.
There is nothing broken about this. At all. This is, in fact, exactly as it should be. Otherwise, all someone would have to do to duplicate my game would be to change the title.
The part that is broken about it is the sixty years. Copyright should be a limited monopoly to give people an incentive to continue to make creative works, not an unending monopoly - enforced by the taxpayer - that enables people to stop creating and simply milk the same idea in perpetuity.
I think that after sixty years - in fact, after far less than sixty years - the originator of the work has had ample opportunity to be compensated for their "innovation," and should give something back to the public who paid to enforce their monopoly. That means letting the work enter the Public Domain.
I also feel that art is as much the act of appreciation as it is the act of creation. The latest Christina Aguilera CD wouldn't be worth anything to anyone if not for the fact that her fans want to hear it. Patrons give art relevance, and play a role at least as important in the creative process as the person who is generally credited as the "artist."
Once a work of art has been around long enough to become part of our collective culture, it should belong to no one.
But wait, are you saying that if a cop doesn't show up to fight a ticket and you win by default, that judgement can be used as a precedent in a future case? I find that hard to beleive.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll experiment with the mirrors.
I generally use easyurpmi and try to select mirror sites that are close, but it could be I am selecting repositories that are not sending the necessary info. I've also used club repositories. I don't know. I can't recall getting that kind of info regardless of the mirror I was using since installing Spring 2008.
Adam, on the subject of packaging, can you tell me if there are any plans to re-introduce some of the functionality that has been removed from the Mandriva package management/update utility in the last couple of releases?
You get a list of packages that have updates available, pre-checked for your convenience, but no info on their size.
Selecting Update starts the downloads. A dialog box pops up - stealing focus, btw - and shows the total size of the file currently being downloaded as well as the progress, but it doesn't tell you how many more files remain to be downloaded, their size or how far along you are in the whole procedure. No problem, I'll just look at that list and see how many files follow the one currently being downloaded. That'll give me some idea. Bit if the list is too long to fit the screen, you can't scroll down because the download dialog has focus.
Later, when packages are being installed, they do tell you 1/20, 2/20 etc. But it just seems klunky.
I've been using Mandrake/Mandriva for years, and I clearly remember their package manager/update utility used to show you the size of all packages selected, how far it had progressed on the packaged currently being installed and the overall progress. As it is now, it only shows you a progress bar indicating how far along you are on the current package but nothing on your overall progress.
Why have they made this regressive change?
I apologize for throwing this at you on Slashdot, AdamWill, but judging from the other comments in this thread, it appears that you are somehow associated with Mandriva. Can you offer any insight in to why this change has been made, and whether there are any plans to return some of the functionality that we used to enjoy?
Would you extend this to physical items? Should anyone just be able to make and market knock-offs of vintage cars, for example, cause Ford is no longer offering them?
How about my own photography, or music. If I don't publish it, would I lose control of it?
I think maybe shorter copyright terms, which could be extended for a fee (perhaps based on the amount of revenue the work in question generated during the first term), and the option to let the work retired in to the Public Domain while it is still relevant if it's not worth the bother of maintaining or marketing it.
I'm a big fan of the four software freedoms, too, but I don't agree with enshrining them in law. Freedom should be a choice.
Maybe they should be allowed to put riders in my rental contract saying I can't campaign for my local green party, or post signs in the yard detailing exactly why supply side economics is flawed?
How long do you think that would fly in court.
I don't think that's a very good analogy.
A better one would be your landlord putting a rider in your rental agreement that says you can not paint the walls, change any fixtures or smoke in the residence, all of which are perfectly reasonable and well within your landlord's right to stipulate. Local city bylaws may also prohibit your yard sign, along with clothes lines, barking dogs and junky old cars in the driveway that don't run.
This quote from the April 28 Wired article supports what you're saying:
The turning point in the trial came when Reiser took the stand in his own defense March 3.
In his 11 days of testimony, Reiser offered lengthy and verbose explanations for every piece of circumstantial evidence. But Reiser's version of events often drew disbelieving head shakes from jurors -- and occasional smirks from the trial judge.
It seems his own actions resulted in the correct verdict.
whatever the article title (usually written by a copy editor, not by the journalist who wrote the article) says, the actual article itself (written by the journalist who did the research) says nothing of the sort
Not in so many words.
But it does say
Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program
the ruling is likely to have little real consequence other than embarrassing Congress for failing to have the courage to stand up to defend the laws it itself passed
Instead of holding hearings and sending subpoenas, Congress is set to largely legalize dragnet surveillance being set up inside American telecom infrastructure
They will also likely give retroactive amnesty to telecom companies that agreed to illegal and sweeping surveillance requests
So thanks to Congress's pending meddling with the courts in capitulation to the President...
When the Senate votes Tuesday, they are voting to keep Judge Walker from examining whether the nation's largest telecoms massively violated federal privacy laws by helping the government spy on Americans
The planned July 8 vote is whether or not Americans can get justice for a violation of federal law, or whether some of the nation's largest companies -- and by extension, the nation's highest elected officials -- are above the law
The article is basically stating that the judge's ruling does not matter, because the Senate is going to disregard his ruling and "give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program." Again, disagree with the article if you like, but the Wired and Slashdot headlines -while not Pulitzer material by any stretch - were not "spin-doctoring." The headlines and the Slashdot summary told me pretty much exactly what I could expect from the article.
Also, A further clarification was made by Soulskill that the Senate's actions are only relevant to this particular case, which should have cleared up any confusion created by the headline.
nb: If someone with mod points chooses to take me to task for my brusque tone, I'm willing to take the bad karma.
I was using "article" in a generic sense. jeiler had complained that "In what I am given to understand is a grand, old Slashdot tradition, the article summary (and title of the summary) bear little, if any, resemblance to the "fine" article."
Did you write a comment to him pointing out that it was a blog, not an article?
And just because Wired does something dumb doesn't mean Slashdot does too.
jeiler was complaining that the summary misrepresented the article, and when I point out that it does not, you respond by saying "if Wired jumped off a bridge does that mean Slashdot has to?" If we are talking about summaries doing an adequate job of telling the potential reader what the article - sorry, blog - is about, then yes.
It's the difference between journalism and hey-let's-give-our-friends-cushy-jobs-that-require-almost-no-work.
Where did you get the idea Slashdot is supposed to be journalism? It is a place where geeks post links to journalism on other sites and other geeks post comments on the linked articles, usually after no more than a quick glance at the summary. Other than user journals, which - like other news "articles" - can be posted as stories on Slashdot, I don't think anyone around these parts has attempted journalism since Jon Katz left.
Shame on Soulskill and Palegray for this false-faced spin-doctoring
Someone else has already pointed out that the Slashdot headline was virtually identical to the one Wired put above the article. I'll add that a significant portion of the summary is a direct quote from the article (that's what those quotation marks signify).
The statement "The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed regarding wiretapping, and seems more interesting in silencing opposing viewpoints" is supported by this part of the article:
As Threat Level pointed out last night, the ruling is likely to have little real consequence other than embarrassing Congress for failing to have the courage to stand up to defend the laws it itself passed.
If you have issues with the Wired article, post a comment on Wired taking them to task. The Slashdot summary does a decent enough job of "summarizing" the article. Palegray.net and Soulskill have nothing to be "ashamed" of.
Unless you're saying that traffic shaping is actually illegal
No, I'm basically saying that the average person can not gain access to the Internet without agreeing to these types of terms, and ISPs can put anything they want in these agreements. So it's somewhat disingenuous to say to them "too bad you agreed to the terms" when there is no alternative. They all have these types of terms.
As far as traffic shaping goes, I simply do not trust for profit businesses like ISP to not consider their commercial interests when determining how that traffic gets shaped, and for that reason I think we need to regulate these industries to ensure "shaping" does not become "throttle traffic from any source that either competes with us or has not paid our extortion."
If my ISP wants to put a limit on the amount of bandwidth I use either monthly or the throughput of data coming in to my router at any given time, fine. Let's agree on a number and agree on a price and you apply this equally to all of your customers.
The nature and source of my data is none of their business.
You're talking about terms and conditions that the law wouldn't permit and thus could never be enforced
Ah, but you're still agreeing to them, even if they "could never be enforced." And who says they couldn't be? If you were engaged in a civil suite with them and they pointed to your signature on the waiver and said "you agreed we were not responsible no matter what." Would the judge agree with them?
This isn't just 'someone' though, it's an ISP, whose terms and conditions that you agreed to likely include provisions for ensuring a better quality of service for the typical customer.
Yeah, well, all ISPs have terms and conditions like that that you have to agree to. Pretty well all commercial software has EULAs you have to agree to granting them powers far beyond what is allowed for under the law. Take part in any charity fund raising event and you have to sign a waiver that says they are not responsible for anything that happens to you even if they are directly responsible for injuries you sustain. Same with tickets to any sporting event, concert or whatever. On the back of it something to the effect that by using this ticket you agree that they are not responsible for anything.
You and others who use the "you agreed to the terms when you signed up for the service" seem to be arguing that if a corporation deems it we must agree to it. What network neutrality legislation would do is prevent ISPs from colluding with each other to ensure no one can gain access to the Internet without first agreeing to have their traffic throttled at the whim of their ISP.
I'm not sure, but this O'Reilly guide to setting up a PPP connection in Win95 sounds a lot like what you describe. At the bottom of the page there is a graphic of the Connection Terminal Window, where you enter your username and password.
I recall using a dialer that the isp provided, but I'm pretty sure I had to set up tcp/ip manually (for Win 3.11 at any rate).
At that era, I also connected a couple of times to a BBS with Telix:)
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. I have fond memories of Telix, too, but have to admit I thought Procomm Plus was the cat's you-know-what.
I've thought about recreating old setups in a vm, but unfortunately I didn't save much of my old software and I didn't do much to record what we did to get things working. I really took things for granted. I'm more diligent about documenting things now, but still waste too much time on Google searching for solutions to problems I solved a while ago but never documented;)
So was I, in fact I believe I first connected directly to the Internet with Windows for Worgroups 3.11. But you had to run an add-on client to initiate a tcp/ip connection. Did your pre-release version of Win95 have built-in, native support for tcp/ip? I honestly don't remember.
Before that, my earliest experiences with the Internet were via a local BBS. You would connect to them with something like Procomm Plus then establish a dial-up connection to the Internet with one of their modems. You could browse "the web" - such as it was - with lynx, and download files to a big, common directory using ftp. It was a lot of fun trawling through the files in the common directory looking at what everyone else had downloaded.
Slashdot Mirror
Just in case you missed it, here is the complaint. I draw your attention to the first paragraph of the Introduction:
'This is an action for trademark and copyright infringement against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla and their company, RJ Softwares, for creating and publicly displaying an online game that copies the essential and original elements of Hasbro's venerable and famous SCRABBLE crossword board game and for promoting and profiting from it in the commerce of the United States under the confusingly similar "Scrabulous" name.'
Perhaps your comment
would be more appropriate if directed at the folks at Hasbro.
I take no issue, by the way, with their trademark claim. I believe society benefits if we have assurance we are doing business with the party we think we are doing business with. If Hasbro thinks the name Scrabulous is too similar to Scrabble - and I agree that it is - they are absolutely right to take action on the trademark claim.
However, I stand by my previously stated opinion with regard to never-ending copyrights.
I'm just going by what the various articles have said. Like this one, which says "News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement." Or this one, which says "Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users." Or this one, which says "Hasbro, the Rhode Island company that owns the trademark to the 60-year-old board game, Scrabble, on which Scrabulous is closely based, has also asked Facebook to remove the game under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..."
But, hey, some random stranger on Slasdot assures me this has nothing to do with copyright, so I guess I'll just go with that.
As an intelligent human being who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real world, I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art. Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation. I've even taken some pretty artistic dumps in my day.
Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on, and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.
The part that is broken about it is the sixty years. Copyright should be a limited monopoly to give people an incentive to continue to make creative works, not an unending monopoly - enforced by the taxpayer - that enables people to stop creating and simply milk the same idea in perpetuity.
I think that after sixty years - in fact, after far less than sixty years - the originator of the work has had ample opportunity to be compensated for their "innovation," and should give something back to the public who paid to enforce their monopoly. That means letting the work enter the Public Domain.
I also feel that art is as much the act of appreciation as it is the act of creation. The latest Christina Aguilera CD wouldn't be worth anything to anyone if not for the fact that her fans want to hear it. Patrons give art relevance, and play a role at least as important in the creative process as the person who is generally credited as the "artist."
Once a work of art has been around long enough to become part of our collective culture, it should belong to no one.
If we're going to be pedantic about 'tree,' I'll point out that they grow in soil, or sod. Not dirt.
There are a few in the rainforest I live in.
Ever hear of hydroponics?
But wait, are you saying that if a cop doesn't show up to fight a ticket and you win by default, that judgement can be used as a precedent in a future case? I find that hard to beleive.
Replace middle with corporate and I think you'll be on the right tack.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll experiment with the mirrors.
I generally use easyurpmi and try to select mirror sites that are close, but it could be I am selecting repositories that are not sending the necessary info. I've also used club repositories. I don't know. I can't recall getting that kind of info regardless of the mirror I was using since installing Spring 2008.
Adam, on the subject of packaging, can you tell me if there are any plans to re-introduce some of the functionality that has been removed from the Mandriva package management/update utility in the last couple of releases?
I wrote about this last October:
I've been using Mandrake/Mandriva for years, and I clearly remember their package manager/update utility used to show you the size of all packages selected, how far it had progressed on the packaged currently being installed and the overall progress. As it is now, it only shows you a progress bar indicating how far along you are on the current package but nothing on your overall progress.
Why have they made this regressive change?
I apologize for throwing this at you on Slashdot, AdamWill, but judging from the other comments in this thread, it appears that you are somehow associated with Mandriva. Can you offer any insight in to why this change has been made, and whether there are any plans to return some of the functionality that we used to enjoy?
Would you extend this to physical items? Should anyone just be able to make and market knock-offs of vintage cars, for example, cause Ford is no longer offering them?
How about my own photography, or music. If I don't publish it, would I lose control of it?
I think maybe shorter copyright terms, which could be extended for a fee (perhaps based on the amount of revenue the work in question generated during the first term), and the option to let the work retired in to the Public Domain while it is still relevant if it's not worth the bother of maintaining or marketing it.
I'm a big fan of the four software freedoms, too, but I don't agree with enshrining them in law. Freedom should be a choice.
where's-the-dept. dept.?
Thank you, no, but if Oregon, Washington and Alaska wish to become provinces we'll consider it.
I don't think that's a very good analogy.
A better one would be your landlord putting a rider in your rental agreement that says you can not paint the walls, change any fixtures or smoke in the residence, all of which are perfectly reasonable and well within your landlord's right to stipulate. Local city bylaws may also prohibit your yard sign, along with clothes lines, barking dogs and junky old cars in the driveway that don't run.
This quote from the April 28 Wired article supports what you're saying:
It seems his own actions resulted in the correct verdict.
Not in so many words.
But it does say
The article is basically stating that the judge's ruling does not matter, because the Senate is going to disregard his ruling and "give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program." Again, disagree with the article if you like, but the Wired and Slashdot headlines -while not Pulitzer material by any stretch - were not "spin-doctoring." The headlines and the Slashdot summary told me pretty much exactly what I could expect from the article.
Also, A further clarification was made by Soulskill that the Senate's actions are only relevant to this particular case, which should have cleared up any confusion created by the headline.
+3 Insightful.
Whatever floats your boat.
I was using "article" in a generic sense. jeiler had complained that "In what I am given to understand is a grand, old Slashdot tradition, the article summary (and title of the summary) bear little, if any, resemblance to the "fine" article."
Did you write a comment to him pointing out that it was a blog, not an article?
jeiler was complaining that the summary misrepresented the article, and when I point out that it does not, you respond by saying "if Wired jumped off a bridge does that mean Slashdot has to?" If we are talking about summaries doing an adequate job of telling the potential reader what the article - sorry, blog - is about, then yes.
Where did you get the idea Slashdot is supposed to be journalism? It is a place where geeks post links to journalism on other sites and other geeks post comments on the linked articles, usually after no more than a quick glance at the summary. Other than user journals, which - like other news "articles" - can be posted as stories on Slashdot, I don't think anyone around these parts has attempted journalism since Jon Katz left.
Someone else has already pointed out that the Slashdot headline was virtually identical to the one Wired put above the article. I'll add that a significant portion of the summary is a direct quote from the article (that's what those quotation marks signify).
The statement "The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed regarding wiretapping, and seems more interesting in silencing opposing viewpoints" is supported by this part of the article:
If you have issues with the Wired article, post a comment on Wired taking them to task. The Slashdot summary does a decent enough job of "summarizing" the article. Palegray.net and Soulskill have nothing to be "ashamed" of.
Yeah, take pride the next time you need to fly and are told at the airport you can't cause you're on the watch list.
No, I'm basically saying that the average person can not gain access to the Internet without agreeing to these types of terms, and ISPs can put anything they want in these agreements. So it's somewhat disingenuous to say to them "too bad you agreed to the terms" when there is no alternative. They all have these types of terms.
As far as traffic shaping goes, I simply do not trust for profit businesses like ISP to not consider their commercial interests when determining how that traffic gets shaped, and for that reason I think we need to regulate these industries to ensure "shaping" does not become "throttle traffic from any source that either competes with us or has not paid our extortion."
If my ISP wants to put a limit on the amount of bandwidth I use either monthly or the throughput of data coming in to my router at any given time, fine. Let's agree on a number and agree on a price and you apply this equally to all of your customers.
The nature and source of my data is none of their business.
Ah, but you're still agreeing to them, even if they "could never be enforced." And who says they couldn't be? If you were engaged in a civil suite with them and they pointed to your signature on the waiver and said "you agreed we were not responsible no matter what." Would the judge agree with them?
Yeah, well, all ISPs have terms and conditions like that that you have to agree to. Pretty well all commercial software has EULAs you have to agree to granting them powers far beyond what is allowed for under the law. Take part in any charity fund raising event and you have to sign a waiver that says they are not responsible for anything that happens to you even if they are directly responsible for injuries you sustain. Same with tickets to any sporting event, concert or whatever. On the back of it something to the effect that by using this ticket you agree that they are not responsible for anything.
You and others who use the "you agreed to the terms when you signed up for the service" seem to be arguing that if a corporation deems it we must agree to it. What network neutrality legislation would do is prevent ISPs from colluding with each other to ensure no one can gain access to the Internet without first agreeing to have their traffic throttled at the whim of their ISP.
So are females in most places.
I'm not sure, but this O'Reilly guide to setting up a PPP connection in Win95 sounds a lot like what you describe. At the bottom of the page there is a graphic of the Connection Terminal Window, where you enter your username and password.
I recall using a dialer that the isp provided, but I'm pretty sure I had to set up tcp/ip manually (for Win 3.11 at any rate).
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. I have fond memories of Telix, too, but have to admit I thought Procomm Plus was the cat's you-know-what.
I've thought about recreating old setups in a vm, but unfortunately I didn't save much of my old software and I didn't do much to record what we did to get things working. I really took things for granted. I'm more diligent about documenting things now, but still waste too much time on Google searching for solutions to problems I solved a while ago but never documented ;)
Have fun with qemu.
So was I, in fact I believe I first connected directly to the Internet with Windows for Worgroups 3.11. But you had to run an add-on client to initiate a tcp/ip connection. Did your pre-release version of Win95 have built-in, native support for tcp/ip? I honestly don't remember.
Before that, my earliest experiences with the Internet were via a local BBS. You would connect to them with something like Procomm Plus then establish a dial-up connection to the Internet with one of their modems. You could browse "the web" - such as it was - with lynx, and download files to a big, common directory using ftp. It was a lot of fun trawling through the files in the common directory looking at what everyone else had downloaded.
Me too. I used to be able to do the second side of Class Clown word-for-word.
"I used to be Irish Catholic, now I'm an American. You know, you grow."
"Sister Mary Discipline with the steal ruler. You'd fall two years behind in penmanship."
And my favorite bit from the album about Muhammad Ali:
"He had kind of a strange job: beating people up ... The government wanted him to change jobs. The government wanted him to kill people.
Muhammad said 'no, that's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up, but I don't wanna kill them.'
So the government said 'well, if you won't kill 'em, we won't let you beat them up. Bwah hah ha ...'"
And 'tits' doesn't even belong on the list!