The EULA applies to software, if at all. The computer hardware is plainly sold. Assuming the EULA is enforcible, it may prohibit installing the OS on a different computer. But nothing can prevent me from whiping it out from this one. EULAs often restrict when and how you may copy or use software, presumably drawing their power from the copyright law. No EULA can prevent you from outright *destroying* your copy of the software, because that has nothing to do with the author's exclusive rights.
It's actually simpler than that. Don't accept mail for relay from anybody (outside your domain) -- no need to check whether the sender is itself an open relay. That way, relay-testing mail doesn't trigger a new relay test.
Heh, we have names like that, too. Except that it seems like whoever gave the names in our case didn't actually read the books. Aragon [sic], Thoren [sic]...
I don't understand why everyone is so worked up about citizenship. Citizenship plays absolutely no role in the DMCA. One of the ways to violate the DMCA is to import a circumvention device into the US. A person downloading a "circumvention device" to a hard disk in the US from a foreign site would be "importing" it, regardless of whether that person is a US citizen, a green card holder, a tourist, or just a foreign resident who telnets into a computer in the US. (Naturally, in the last case, the person would be much less likely to get prosecuted for practical reasons, but not in the second and third.) And on the other hand, a US citizen who is -- either temporarily or permanently -- outside the US, and downloads a "circumvention device," isn't violating the DMCA any more than a non-US citizen.
I think the criterion isn't whether one was good at math and accellerated early, but more one's attentiveness to details. Some people just care more than others about getting things such as spelling right. I was good at math, but my spelling in English, which is my third language, is better than that of most native speakers.
MacroHard quoted (a)(2) instead of (b)(1), which is identical save for the numbering. The drafters
deliberately took the effort to create two different prohibitions against circumvention devices. Or they
were stupid. Or both.
1201(a) creates a prohibition against circumvention, and devices that circumvent, access controls. (a)(3) defines circumvention of access controls.
1201(b) creates a prohibition against devices that circumvent measures that "protect a right of a copyright owner," or, simplistically speaking, devices that circumvent copy-protection mechanisms, like Macrovision. (b)(2) defines circumvention of copy-protection (etc.) mechanisms.
I did not refer to 1201(b) because it seemed obvious that JD's encryption/decryption scenario didn't even purport to circumvent copy protection.
That is correct. 1201(a)(2)(B) and (b)(1)(B) don't say the device must circumvent access controls,
only that it must not do anything else that's commercially significant. If you create your useless device
you will be violating the letter of the law.
Well, let's say there was a law that said, "No person shall manufacture a device that has no use other than to kill people." You are right that technically speaking, "... including a device that has no use whatsoever" would be a valid interpretation. However, you will hopefully agree that no court would interpret it that way, as the legislative intent clearly is, "a device whose only use is to kill people."
It doesn't say anything about circumventing copyright, just circumventing access controls. It doesn't matter if you
intend the device to be legally used on your own materials, it still circumvents an access control mechanism.
The DMCA defines "circumvention" as decrypting or otherwise gaining access to a copyrighted work without the authority of the copyright holder. Within the meaning of the DMCA, it is simply impossible to circumvent an access control mechanism on your own work.
If you create this device to access your own works it will have no commercial use, let alone outside of circumventing
access controls.
This is why DeCSS would have been squashed under any circumstances. It has no commercial purpose, the players
that will use it are free. It also has no other use, it exists to view DVDs, like a DVD player abvously does.
You make it sound as though I will be violating the DMCA even if I create a device that does nothing at all (it, too, will have no commercial purpose, let alone outside of circumventing access controls). If a device doesn't have any commercially significant uses at all, it's in the clear. The device only becomes illegal if it does have commercially significant uses, but all those uses are the circumvention of access controls.
"Commercially significant" is not the same as "commercial." It means "of significance to commerce." Even if DeCSS's use to view DVDs is not
commercial, it is still commercially significant: it affects the market for DVD players (by creating competition), the market for DVDs (by supporting new platforms), and the movie studios' business model (by ignoring region coding and other stuff).
DeCSS wasn't "squashed" because it had no commercially significant uses (if that were the case, the movie studios wouldn't even have a reason to care about it), but because it was alleged that its only commercially significant uses (viewing and copying of DVDs) constitute circumvention within the meaning of the DMCA.
To clarify, I don't think myself that the DMCA is a good law, just that this particular example isn't very appropriate.
Perhaps you will change your mind after you have read the relevant paragraphs of the DMCA. "Purpose" in this case is not the intent, it's what the product can be used for. Nevertheless, intent does figure very prominently in the other alternatives.
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the
public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology,
product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of
circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls
access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use
other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively
controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert
with that person with that person's knowledge for use in
circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls
access to a work protected under this title.
Do you mean that using the package would violate 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1) (prohibition against circumvention), or that creating the package would violate 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2) (prohibition against circumvention devices)?
In the first case, you wouldn't be circumventing, because you would have "the authority of the copyright holder" (yourself).
In the second case, in order to violate the DMCA, your package would have to have circumvention (i.e., unauthorized decryption) as its only commercially significant purpose, which does not sound likely, based on your scenario.
4. It has already been decided by the US courts that digital recordings and computer programs are forms
of free speech, as talked about in the first ammendment. If you were to digitally record your own spoken
words, using a program you had written, and played them back, also using a program you had written,
you would be performing an illegal act, even though every single thing you did was protected.
Well, I think the question was about being able to prove your physical location, not to have automatic tracking of physical location. (Compare: sites can verify your e-mail address by sending you a message and having you acknowledge its receipt, but they don't know your e-mail address unless you tell them.)
He said he was an *immigrant*. That's not temporary.
Sure, one gets voting rights with citizenship, but getting the citizenship can take ten years, and you still have to "put up" in the meanwhile.
Slashdot Mirror
There are no such laws. There just aren't laws forbidding it.
Advertising IS protected speech, just less protected.
There's no injunction yet, it's only a complaint.
A cease and desist letter, not a lawsuit.
Actually, yes. Many of these scams are from Ghana, Benin, or South Africa, although Nigeria has a clear first.
This would also mean that I cannot test a programming school assignment on my system. I somehow doubt this is going to happen.
The majority?? It's only the most massive stars that become black holes.
I don't see anything good about the first four.
The EULA applies to software, if at all. The computer hardware is plainly sold. Assuming the EULA is enforcible, it may prohibit installing the OS on a different computer. But nothing can prevent me from whiping it out from this one.
EULAs often restrict when and how you may copy or use software, presumably drawing their power from the copyright law. No EULA can prevent you from outright *destroying* your copy of the software, because that has nothing to do with the author's exclusive rights.
It's actually simpler than that.
Don't accept mail for relay from anybody (outside your domain) --
no need to check whether the sender is itself an open relay.
That way, relay-testing mail doesn't trigger a new relay test.
Heh, we have names like that, too. Except that it seems like whoever gave the names in our case didn't actually read the books. Aragon [sic], Thoren [sic]...
I don't understand why everyone is so worked up about citizenship. Citizenship plays absolutely no role in the DMCA. One of the ways to violate the DMCA is to import a circumvention device into the US. A person downloading a "circumvention device" to a hard disk in the US from a foreign site would be "importing" it, regardless of whether that person is a US citizen, a green card holder, a tourist, or just a foreign resident who telnets into a computer in the US. (Naturally, in the last case, the person would be much less likely to get prosecuted for practical reasons, but not in the second and third.) And on the other hand, a US citizen who is -- either temporarily or permanently -- outside the US, and downloads a "circumvention device," isn't violating the DMCA any more than a non-US citizen.
Just do a web search on "Rodona Garst"
I think the criterion isn't whether one was good at math and accellerated early, but more one's attentiveness to details. Some people just care more than others about getting things such as spelling right. I was good at math, but my spelling in English, which is my third language, is better than that of most native speakers.
1201(a) creates a prohibition against circumvention, and devices that circumvent, access controls. (a)(3) defines circumvention of access controls.
1201(b) creates a prohibition against devices that circumvent measures that "protect a right of a copyright owner," or, simplistically speaking, devices that circumvent copy-protection mechanisms, like Macrovision. (b)(2) defines circumvention of copy-protection (etc.) mechanisms.
I did not refer to 1201(b) because it seemed obvious that JD's encryption/decryption scenario didn't even purport to circumvent copy protection.
That is correct. 1201(a)(2)(B) and (b)(1)(B) don't say the device must circumvent access controls, only that it must not do anything else that's commercially significant. If you create your useless device you will be violating the letter of the law.
Well, let's say there was a law that said, "No person shall manufacture a device that has no use other than to kill people." You are right that technically speaking, "... including a device that has no use whatsoever" would be a valid interpretation. However, you will hopefully agree that no court would interpret it that way, as the legislative intent clearly is, "a device whose only use is to kill people."
The DMCA defines "circumvention" as decrypting or otherwise gaining access to a copyrighted work without the authority of the copyright holder. Within the meaning of the DMCA, it is simply impossible to circumvent an access control mechanism on your own work.
If you create this device to access your own works it will have no commercial use, let alone outside of circumventing access controls.
This is why DeCSS would have been squashed under any circumstances. It has no commercial purpose, the players that will use it are free. It also has no other use, it exists to view DVDs, like a DVD player abvously does.
You make it sound as though I will be violating the DMCA even if I create a device that does nothing at all (it, too, will have no commercial purpose, let alone outside of circumventing access controls). If a device doesn't have any commercially significant uses at all, it's in the clear. The device only becomes illegal if it does have commercially significant uses, but all those uses are the circumvention of access controls.
"Commercially significant" is not the same as "commercial." It means "of significance to commerce." Even if DeCSS's use to view DVDs is not commercial, it is still commercially significant: it affects the market for DVD players (by creating competition), the market for DVDs (by supporting new platforms), and the movie studios' business model (by ignoring region coding and other stuff).
DeCSS wasn't "squashed" because it had no commercially significant uses (if that were the case, the movie studios wouldn't even have a reason to care about it), but because it was alleged that its only commercially significant uses (viewing and copying of DVDs) constitute circumvention within the meaning of the DMCA.
To clarify, I don't think myself that the DMCA is a good law, just that this particular example isn't very appropriate.
And what paragraph of what law would make it explicitly illegal?
In the first case, you wouldn't be circumventing, because you would have "the authority of the copyright holder" (yourself).
In the second case, in order to violate the DMCA, your package would have to have circumvention (i.e., unauthorized decryption) as its only commercially significant purpose, which does not sound likely, based on your scenario.
Why do you think this would be illegal?
Well, I think the question was about being able to prove your physical location, not to have automatic tracking of physical location. (Compare: sites can verify your e-mail address by sending you a message and having you acknowledge its receipt, but they don't know your e-mail address unless you tell them.)
Hmmm... Get a clue. Those are "other offenses that *warrant* suspension," not the other offenses for which *that student* was suspended.
He said he was an *immigrant*. That's not temporary. Sure, one gets voting rights with citizenship, but getting the citizenship can take ten years, and you still have to "put up" in the meanwhile.
1. The opposite to positional is tactical, not creative. There are many creative positional players, probably no less than creative tactical players.
2. Computers are weaker in positional play. They are stronger in tactical play.
Tax returns aren't anonymous.