Yes, I was talking about actual damage, which would usually be minimal in the case of GPL code.
But what I was specifically asking for were what range of statutory damages may be placed against a defendent in this situation. Even if one were to have let it sit for awhile.
You haven't been here long, there are people that insist on using the work USian for Americans.
Unfortunately for them, there is already a well used de facto unambiguous term for some from the United States. The word is "American".
Like it or not. Same way English is a de facto language of international commerce and communication. That's just the way things happen, and while I understand people who use "USian", and who insist on using it, I disagree with them suggesting to others to do otherwise. If you're strong in your conviction, your mere use of the word "USian" will attract people to the reason why you're using it, and when they agree with you, they may switch over to using it, also.
Until then, you're just trying to be a Politically Correct bastard, which no one here on Slashdot really cares to listen to.
I got a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemein as I was leaving Germany, and it had an article about how to deal with Americans in a business sítuation. I mentioned that Americans are really into small talk, and will spend a significant amount of time upon first meeting you taking time to engage in small talk, and to not think them rude, or disinterested, or just blabbering. It's just the way Americans are.
It was kind of interesting reading about "Americans" from the perspective of a different culture.
Well, the same thing is happening with second hand smoke, and happened with recycling.
Now, everyone is convinced that recycling is the best thing we can do (even though many recycling methods waste more energy than they save. Recycling rarely saves energy, it saves simply landfill space. Though metals are easily recyclable, which is why they PAY you for it... when they start paying you to collect paper, plastics and glass, I'll jump on the recycling bandwagon...)
And worse, everyone is starting to blindly believe that second hand smoke causes a significant increase in cancer. (Which it hasn't been proven to do; the one source we had that gave such a strong opinion was thrown out by a federal court because they used evidentiary selection, and the other source that hasn't been thrown out presents a weak argument: showing 0 (zero) correlation between childhood exposure and lung cancer, and a statistically insignificant increase for adults. From 10 in a million, to 12.5 in a million... Let's all run out, stamp out those cigarettes and save those 744 people a year!!! You know, I'm certain more people die from poking themselves in the eye than this... And last I remember, my statistic on this was actually HIGHER than it actually really is... damn that fuzzy memory)
The media often presents oneside of the argument, and gets people so believing it (mostly because the media fall into the same feedback loop, and believe it themselves) that it causes a serious danger. We essentially waste approximately $8 billion a year on recycling, countless useless hours dictating to people that they can't smoke in public, because we don't like it, and now, we're spending small fortunes to propagandize the nation into believing that violent video games train our children to kill...
The most sensible code of practice to fulfil the requirements is to distribute the source side-by-side with the binary.
I'd say the most sensible code of practice would be to dynamically link against the library, and have the user install the linked to library seperately. You could do this as simply as directing them to the library on the internet. I've found that this holds true in most situations for F/OSS software. Kind of a policy of "you can get the library easier than it would be for me to comply with the terms of the license for redistribution."
I still just don't see the necessity of the person using the library to be forced to redistribute the unmodified version of the source code if they use it. It makes sense for modified source code of the LGPL library, but in cases where that source code is unmodified, and it's dynamically linked, so that the only thing they have to do to update that library is copy over a newer DLL / make install with a newer version of the library...
It just seems overly encumbering if they're just using the code.
The copyright holder can sue for statutory or actual damages caused by the copyright infringement simply because Sony distributed a copyrighted work that didn't belong to them.
And what is the range of that amount? Although, likely Sony would settle first rather than admit in court that they infringed on someone else's copyrights.
But persume that it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had infringed on the person's code. (That the code is there, and it is actively executed, and not used as a fingerprint) And assume also that for all effective matters there were no actual damages beyond the non-release of code.
If you win the court case, the only thing they have to do is apologize, and comply with the (L)GPL. Potentially, you get them to pay your lawyer fees, too. Considering you would have made a $0 profit on the software before the litigation, and this was the only way to solve the issue. Therefore, your profit went below $0, and their infringement in this case is the direct cause of this loss of money.
Who cares about getting the $$$, this is supposed to be about getting people to do the right thing.
So, if there is a legal problem with Windows XP, then we should nail Dell, Gateway, and HP to the wall too, huh?
Yes, except one thing. Microsoft offers indemnification for every user. This is like the actual thief telling the police that the fence wasn't at fault, and he'll take all punishment that the fence, and all others would otherwise have received.
This is the reason why SCO is trying to push to make people get a license of Linux through them. Because if they win the case, then you *ARE* liable for that copyright infringement, whether you knew about it or not. The mere use of the product gets you screwed.
The problem is that you *are* responsible for copyright infringement on code that you receive. It's the same thing as with stolen goods.
To draw a more potent example (because it's known that the code in this case is active, and not possibly "just a fingerprint"), it is entirely plausible that Geico would be liable for the programs they received from MXS. And they're just a customer using the stoftware! They're not even involved in the development. Another example is that every linux user would potentially be liable if Linux were to be found to contain code that SCO owns the copyright for. (Thus, the reason for indemnification, etc)
Basically, the issue here would be that Sony did not take due dilligence to ensure that the code provided to them were unencumbered. And you better believe that F4I will attempt to show that they *did* notify Sony of any encumberances, at which point Sony would be screwed, and F4I would be fine, because they complied with the (L)GPL, and Sony failed to redistribute properly.
Ignorance has never been an excuse of receiving stolen goods, or receiving infringing copyrighted material.
In this case, Sony would be working much like a fence. They would take the directly stolen code (and thus not at fault for the actual theft) and then they would peddle it out (accessory, plus some more extra stuff, like selling stolen goods.) So if anything, Sony is at least equally guilty of any infringement that F4I did on their behalf.... IANAL, but this is what the law says.
Hey, Family Guy had a funny Pope scene where the Pope was Italian.
Plus, I heard that Germans had though of Ratzinger as more Italian than German, because he had been living there for so long. Of course, now that he's Pope Benedictus XVI, they're all over that "The Pope is German" thing.
It's easy, but you need a custom INF, you set everything up to swap it out during the next reboot.
Then, 10 minutes later when they reboot their computer because of some crash, they pick up the fix.
All during their normal productivity cycle.:)
That's mostly a joke, but the thing that really annoys me is that if you have a process sitting with a directory as it's CWD, then you can't move or delete that directory. You can't believe how many headaches that causes me. Hey, I have an idea, let's be like a POSIX system, where the directory doesn't get deleted until I'm out of it, and this is all done behind the scenes, so that you can delete this stupid directory while I'm still in it, and get on with your work, and when I get back, I'm just like "Ooops, this directory disappeared..."
Ok, point one, you said: "You also have to let people request it by mail charging only a minimal fee." Which means that it's not an "either... or", situation, but an "and" situation. (also == and) In your response you make it clear that it's "either... or". You don't *have* to provide for the ability for someone to mail in and receive a copy, as long as you gave them the source code in the beginning.
You have a point mostly, but there's a bit of a loophole: Section 6d)
d) If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, offer equivalent access to copy the above specified materials from the same place.
Feasibly, if you said "newer versions of the library can be found at __url__, and so can the source code." then you could claim that you're off the hook, and if people really push you, just hand out the source code on email request basis.
You have to make-sure-it-stays-there. And thats not enough. You also have to let people request it by mail charging only a minimal fee.
These are DISJUNCTIVE positions. You only need to do one, not all of them.
Saying "we have used unmodified versions of the LGPL library XY, and that you can obtain them from the website of the project which was at __url__ as of __date__"
*IS* sufficient. The automatic requirement to redistribute the LGPLed code is not included anywhere in the LGPL code. Were it, it would say that you must redistribute the source code for the LGPL project if you release binaries.
This is not the case. If you haven't made any changes to the LGPL code, then there is no reason to redistribute the source code, and there is no REQUIREMENT either.
Moreover, the gcc runtime libraries (the only part of gcc which ends up in gcc compiled code, and therefore could affect the licensing) all have special exceptions to the GPL, so that they don't cause the programs they are linked to to be covered by the GPL.
The GNU Lib C library has no exceptions to the GPL, because it's covered under the LGPL.
The LGPL requires one to give notice that it links against the LGPL library/program, and one of two conditions must be met: if the LGPL library/program is linked dynamically, then not much need be done. You just have to make sure that they can swap the library for a newer version.
If the LGPL is statically linked, then you must give at least the object files to your program so that people can relink your program against a newer version of the library/program.
Also, if no changes were made at all to the source code, then no release of source code is required, it's sufficient to say "we didn't modify the source code at all, and you can get the source code at..." and you know this would be true, because you're allowed to relink a newer/older version of the library to that program, and if it breaks, then you can start attempting to prove that they did change something.
But all of this doesn't change the fact that the GNU C Library is covered under the LGPL and not the GPL. The GNU group would never release something under the GPL with an exception for allowing to link against it without becoming GPL, because that's the purpose of the LGPL.
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Saying "we're due for one" makes you a nice sucker for Las Vegas. You are never "due" for a hit. You had the same odds last time as you do this time. If you roll two dice 200 times without getting snake eyes, you are not "due" for them. You still have the same 1 in 36 odds as you did last roll.
This is only true as long as every roll is independent. Eventually you will become "due" a win if the object is to reach a sum of 36 on rolls of a 6-sided die.
A good example would be an earthquake or a volcanic erruption. The chances steadily increase until an earthquake or erruption is immenent.
Of course the chances of an pandemic decimating, or polydecimating the population is certainly not that dependent from one year to the next. So, it's not like an earthquake or a volcanic erruption.
I'd say the this is reverse gambler's fallacy. The blank assumption that all random occurances are independent and there for you can never be "due" a payout.
A good gambling example of this dependence would be quarter/penny/coin shelf things, where you put money in, and an automated pusher pushes them into more coins and then eventually those coins fall, and one wins whatever falls out. In this case, it's not gambler's fallacy to assume that they a machine is "due" a payout, because they do become due eventually. You're significantly more likely to get a payout from a well played machine than from a freshly paid-out machine.
Re:Seriously : you *can* eat chicken meat.
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, as I found out reading more about it.
Thanks for being pedantic though, I don't want to spread disinformation myself in trying to correct people.
Just for the record, "*virii" would be the plural of a fictional word "*virius" which doesn't exist.
"I just got my flu shots, something I've never felt the need before."
The sad thing is that this flu shot won't help you against the avian flu that's the problem.:( So if it does start rampaging through the world, there won't be a vaccine for it, unless it decides to be nice enough to wait a few years.
Re:Seriously : you *can* eat chicken meat.
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
(which is caused by [very rare] self-replicating proteins, not virii)
Just because this sort of thing should be known. Short answer: virii means "men", not the plural of Latin "virus" which is a collective noun, and thus has no plural.
Well, I didn't take issue with the proposition that it could be instantaneous. I agree, that's entirely possible. We've yet to be able to measure the speed of gravity (as far as I'm aware.)
But the notion that a gravitational force would remain if its mass just up and disappeared is the silly idea. There's no need for anything to tell space-time to undistort and return to normal... that's its natural state. So, even were something to just disappear, its gravitational force would disappear, either: a.) instantantly or b.) at some point in the future, but definitely it wouldn't remain forever.
The notion that the "there would be nothing to tell the gravity to stop" would require a nature of gravity that is different from the two prevalent ideas of gravity at this time:
Either that gravity is a simple property of matter, and not a communicated force through gravitons, and thus the removal of an object would result in instantaneous loss of gravity.
Or gravity is a fundamental force like Strong, weak, and electromagnetic force, and is imparted through particles, that must then actually make a travel from imparting mass and receiving mass, in which the loss of gravity would happen at some speed less than the speed of light.
Some other thought evidence for this theory, is the fact that now that the Sun's mass is gone, what force would then take over time (8 minutes in this case) to cause the space-time continuum to go back to "flat" instead of warped?
This is likely one of the first conjectures that people had about light, when they thought it traveled at an instananeous speed. (Such thought existed at one point in time, when the only concrete variablized experiments were here on earth with instruments insufficient for measuring the non-instantaneous travel of light.)
The persumption would be "how could the Sun still be sending us light, if it were gone?"
Well, we know the answer now. The photons that the Sun had transmitted are still traveling towards earth. The same answer would be made of gravity itself. The gravitons that the Sun had transmitted are still traveling towards the earth, and they are in fact what are causing what we interpret as the space time dent.
With that thought, I now think that if that the gravitational effect of the Sun on the Earth would/could take much longer than the speed of light if not forever. You could picture this as a dent in a car. Space is now dented by the Sun.
This is a silly notion. The sun leaves a moving dent as it travels around the center of the galaxy, and as that travels, etc, etc, etc. The sun most assuredly does not leave a permanent dent in space, and to hypothesis that it does would require a heliocentric universe.
The reason why electromagnetics propogates through vacuums is because the photon is the particle itself that transmits the electromagnetic force. This "vacuum" still has massless photons traveling through it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I was talking about actual damage, which would usually be minimal in the case of GPL code.
But what I was specifically asking for were what range of statutory damages may be placed against a defendent in this situation. Even if one were to have let it sit for awhile.
You haven't been here long, there are people that insist on using the work USian for Americans.
Unfortunately for them, there is already a well used de facto unambiguous term for some from the United States. The word is "American".
Like it or not. Same way English is a de facto language of international commerce and communication. That's just the way things happen, and while I understand people who use "USian", and who insist on using it, I disagree with them suggesting to others to do otherwise. If you're strong in your conviction, your mere use of the word "USian" will attract people to the reason why you're using it, and when they agree with you, they may switch over to using it, also.
Until then, you're just trying to be a Politically Correct bastard, which no one here on Slashdot really cares to listen to.
I got a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemein as I was leaving Germany, and it had an article about how to deal with Americans in a business sítuation. I mentioned that Americans are really into small talk, and will spend a significant amount of time upon first meeting you taking time to engage in small talk, and to not think them rude, or disinterested, or just blabbering. It's just the way Americans are.
It was kind of interesting reading about "Americans" from the perspective of a different culture.
Well, the same thing is happening with second hand smoke, and happened with recycling.
Now, everyone is convinced that recycling is the best thing we can do (even though many recycling methods waste more energy than they save. Recycling rarely saves energy, it saves simply landfill space. Though metals are easily recyclable, which is why they PAY you for it... when they start paying you to collect paper, plastics and glass, I'll jump on the recycling bandwagon...)
And worse, everyone is starting to blindly believe that second hand smoke causes a significant increase in cancer. (Which it hasn't been proven to do; the one source we had that gave such a strong opinion was thrown out by a federal court because they used evidentiary selection, and the other source that hasn't been thrown out presents a weak argument: showing 0 (zero) correlation between childhood exposure and lung cancer, and a statistically insignificant increase for adults. From 10 in a million, to 12.5 in a million... Let's all run out, stamp out those cigarettes and save those 744 people a year!!! You know, I'm certain more people die from poking themselves in the eye than this... And last I remember, my statistic on this was actually HIGHER than it actually really is... damn that fuzzy memory)
The media often presents oneside of the argument, and gets people so believing it (mostly because the media fall into the same feedback loop, and believe it themselves) that it causes a serious danger. We essentially waste approximately $8 billion a year on recycling, countless useless hours dictating to people that they can't smoke in public, because we don't like it, and now, we're spending small fortunes to propagandize the nation into believing that violent video games train our children to kill...
Awesome... thanks...
The most sensible code of practice to fulfil the requirements is to distribute the source side-by-side with the binary.
I'd say the most sensible code of practice would be to dynamically link against the library, and have the user install the linked to library seperately. You could do this as simply as directing them to the library on the internet. I've found that this holds true in most situations for F/OSS software. Kind of a policy of "you can get the library easier than it would be for me to comply with the terms of the license for redistribution."
I still just don't see the necessity of the person using the library to be forced to redistribute the unmodified version of the source code if they use it. It makes sense for modified source code of the LGPL library, but in cases where that source code is unmodified, and it's dynamically linked, so that the only thing they have to do to update that library is copy over a newer DLL / make install with a newer version of the library...
It just seems overly encumbering if they're just using the code.
The copyright holder can sue for statutory or actual damages caused by the copyright infringement simply because Sony distributed a copyrighted work that didn't belong to them.
And what is the range of that amount? Although, likely Sony would settle first rather than admit in court that they infringed on someone else's copyrights.
But persume that it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had infringed on the person's code. (That the code is there, and it is actively executed, and not used as a fingerprint) And assume also that for all effective matters there were no actual damages beyond the non-release of code.
What kind of statutory damages could be received?
So, make them offer a refund to everyone who bought the CD, and replace it free of charge with a non-DRM version.
That's what car companies do when their vehicles blow up on the street.
There's something else to sue for besides money.
It's called compliance.
If you win the court case, the only thing they have to do is apologize, and comply with the (L)GPL. Potentially, you get them to pay your lawyer fees, too. Considering you would have made a $0 profit on the software before the litigation, and this was the only way to solve the issue. Therefore, your profit went below $0, and their infringement in this case is the direct cause of this loss of money.
Who cares about getting the $$$, this is supposed to be about getting people to do the right thing.
So, if there is a legal problem with Windows XP, then we should nail Dell, Gateway, and HP to the wall too, huh?
Yes, except one thing. Microsoft offers indemnification for every user. This is like the actual thief telling the police that the fence wasn't at fault, and he'll take all punishment that the fence, and all others would otherwise have received.
This is the reason why SCO is trying to push to make people get a license of Linux through them. Because if they win the case, then you *ARE* liable for that copyright infringement, whether you knew about it or not. The mere use of the product gets you screwed.
The problem is that you *are* responsible for copyright infringement on code that you receive. It's the same thing as with stolen goods.
... IANAL, but this is what the law says.
To draw a more potent example (because it's known that the code in this case is active, and not possibly "just a fingerprint"), it is entirely plausible that Geico would be liable for the programs they received from MXS. And they're just a customer using the stoftware! They're not even involved in the development. Another example is that every linux user would potentially be liable if Linux were to be found to contain code that SCO owns the copyright for. (Thus, the reason for indemnification, etc)
Basically, the issue here would be that Sony did not take due dilligence to ensure that the code provided to them were unencumbered. And you better believe that F4I will attempt to show that they *did* notify Sony of any encumberances, at which point Sony would be screwed, and F4I would be fine, because they complied with the (L)GPL, and Sony failed to redistribute properly.
Ignorance has never been an excuse of receiving stolen goods, or receiving infringing copyrighted material.
In this case, Sony would be working much like a fence. They would take the directly stolen code (and thus not at fault for the actual theft) and then they would peddle it out (accessory, plus some more extra stuff, like selling stolen goods.) So if anything, Sony is at least equally guilty of any infringement that F4I did on their behalf.
Hey, Family Guy had a funny Pope scene where the Pope was Italian.
Plus, I heard that Germans had though of Ratzinger as more Italian than German, because he had been living there for so long. Of course, now that he's Pope Benedictus XVI, they're all over that "The Pope is German" thing.
"Hey, ifa Goda doesn'ta exista, then, hey! I-uh lookina pretty stupida ina this hata, eh?" //editors note: Oh wait, the Pope's German now...
It's easy, but you need a custom INF, you set everything up to swap it out during the next reboot.
:)
Then, 10 minutes later when they reboot their computer because of some crash, they pick up the fix.
All during their normal productivity cycle.
That's mostly a joke, but the thing that really annoys me is that if you have a process sitting with a directory as it's CWD, then you can't move or delete that directory. You can't believe how many headaches that causes me. Hey, I have an idea, let's be like a POSIX system, where the directory doesn't get deleted until I'm out of it, and this is all done behind the scenes, so that you can delete this stupid directory while I'm still in it, and get on with your work, and when I get back, I'm just like "Ooops, this directory disappeared..."
You have a point mostly, but there's a bit of a loophole: Section 6d)
Feasibly, if you said "newer versions of the library can be found at __url__, and so can the source code." then you could claim that you're off the hook, and if people really push you, just hand out the source code on email request basis.
Awesome thanks.
Ah, that would be a different matter.
I can't find anything online specifically about what license it is covered by, but I'm willing to admit that I'm likely wrong here.
You have to make-sure-it-stays-there. And thats not enough.
You also have to let people request it by mail charging only a minimal fee.
These are DISJUNCTIVE positions. You only need to do one, not all of them.
Saying "we have used unmodified versions of the LGPL library XY, and that you can obtain them from the website of the project which was at __url__ as of __date__"
*IS* sufficient. The automatic requirement to redistribute the LGPLed code is not included anywhere in the LGPL code. Were it, it would say that you must redistribute the source code for the LGPL project if you release binaries.
This is not the case. If you haven't made any changes to the LGPL code, then there is no reason to redistribute the source code, and there is no REQUIREMENT either.
Moreover, the gcc runtime libraries (the only part of gcc which ends up in gcc compiled code, and therefore could affect the licensing) all have special exceptions to the GPL, so that they don't cause the programs they are linked to to be covered by the GPL.
The GNU Lib C library has no exceptions to the GPL, because it's covered under the LGPL.
The LGPL requires one to give notice that it links against the LGPL library/program, and one of two conditions must be met: if the LGPL library/program is linked dynamically, then not much need be done. You just have to make sure that they can swap the library for a newer version.
If the LGPL is statically linked, then you must give at least the object files to your program so that people can relink your program against a newer version of the library/program.
Also, if no changes were made at all to the source code, then no release of source code is required, it's sufficient to say "we didn't modify the source code at all, and you can get the source code at..." and you know this would be true, because you're allowed to relink a newer/older version of the library to that program, and if it breaks, then you can start attempting to prove that they did change something.
But all of this doesn't change the fact that the GNU C Library is covered under the LGPL and not the GPL. The GNU group would never release something under the GPL with an exception for allowing to link against it without becoming GPL, because that's the purpose of the LGPL.
Saying "we're due for one" makes you a nice sucker for Las Vegas. You are never "due" for a hit. You had the same odds last time as you do this time. If you roll two dice 200 times without getting snake eyes, you are not "due" for them. You still have the same 1 in 36 odds as you did last roll.
This is only true as long as every roll is independent. Eventually you will become "due" a win if the object is to reach a sum of 36 on rolls of a 6-sided die.
A good example would be an earthquake or a volcanic erruption. The chances steadily increase until an earthquake or erruption is immenent.
Of course the chances of an pandemic decimating, or polydecimating the population is certainly not that dependent from one year to the next. So, it's not like an earthquake or a volcanic erruption.
I'd say the this is reverse gambler's fallacy. The blank assumption that all random occurances are independent and there for you can never be "due" a payout.
A good gambling example of this dependence would be quarter/penny/coin shelf things, where you put money in, and an automated pusher pushes them into more coins and then eventually those coins fall, and one wins whatever falls out. In this case, it's not gambler's fallacy to assume that they a machine is "due" a payout, because they do become due eventually. You're significantly more likely to get a payout from a well played machine than from a freshly paid-out machine.
Yeah, as I found out reading more about it.
Thanks for being pedantic though, I don't want to spread disinformation myself in trying to correct people.
Just for the record, "*virii" would be the plural of a fictional word "*virius" which doesn't exist.
"I just got my flu shots, something I've never felt the need before."
:( So if it does start rampaging through the world, there won't be a vaccine for it, unless it decides to be nice enough to wait a few years.
The sad thing is that this flu shot won't help you against the avian flu that's the problem.
(which is caused by [very rare] self-replicating proteins, not virii)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
Just because this sort of thing should be known. Short answer: virii means "men", not the plural of Latin "virus" which is a collective noun, and thus has no plural.
Well, I didn't take issue with the proposition that it could be instantaneous. I agree, that's entirely possible. We've yet to be able to measure the speed of gravity (as far as I'm aware.)
But the notion that a gravitational force would remain if its mass just up and disappeared is the silly idea. There's no need for anything to tell space-time to undistort and return to normal... that's its natural state. So, even were something to just disappear, its gravitational force would disappear, either: a.) instantantly or b.) at some point in the future, but definitely it wouldn't remain forever.
The notion that the "there would be nothing to tell the gravity to stop" would require a nature of gravity that is different from the two prevalent ideas of gravity at this time:
Either that gravity is a simple property of matter, and not a communicated force through gravitons, and thus the removal of an object would result in instantaneous loss of gravity.
Or gravity is a fundamental force like Strong, weak, and electromagnetic force, and is imparted through particles, that must then actually make a travel from imparting mass and receiving mass, in which the loss of gravity would happen at some speed less than the speed of light.
Some other thought evidence for this theory, is the fact that now that the Sun's mass is gone, what force would then take over time (8 minutes in this case) to cause the space-time continuum to go back to "flat" instead of warped?
This is likely one of the first conjectures that people had about light, when they thought it traveled at an instananeous speed. (Such thought existed at one point in time, when the only concrete variablized experiments were here on earth with instruments insufficient for measuring the non-instantaneous travel of light.)
The persumption would be "how could the Sun still be sending us light, if it were gone?"
Well, we know the answer now. The photons that the Sun had transmitted are still traveling towards earth. The same answer would be made of gravity itself. The gravitons that the Sun had transmitted are still traveling towards the earth, and they are in fact what are causing what we interpret as the space time dent.
With that thought, I now think that if that the gravitational effect of the Sun on the Earth would/could take much longer than the speed of light if not forever. You could picture this as a dent in a car. Space is now dented by the Sun.
This is a silly notion. The sun leaves a moving dent as it travels around the center of the galaxy, and as that travels, etc, etc, etc. The sun most assuredly does not leave a permanent dent in space, and to hypothesis that it does would require a heliocentric universe.
Hmm. To me, electromagnetics propagates properly and without hesitation through vacuum.
What was it that you wanted to prove ?
That electromagnetic force is transmitted by particles, namely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photons/
The reason why electromagnetics propogates through vacuums is because the photon is the particle itself that transmits the electromagnetic force. This "vacuum" still has massless photons traveling through it.