It was released by the photographer. He can't grant control over all laws and the wishes of other people, just over his rights to the work. Those were waived. Other rights were not.
The photographer released Virgin from any obligations to the photographer, via the license.
If it had been for editorial use, Virgin wouldn't have needed to ask the girl. They'd just have printed the article with the documentary photo "girl uses handset foo, date x".
It was only by using the girl's photo in an advertising fashion that they had a problem. You need the model's permission for that, unlike news photography, etc.
The photographers rights are still granted by the CC, as he doesn't care what Virgin and the girl decide. He obviously can't license any illegal third-party actions and wasn't trying to.
I'm continually amazed at how people like you think this is open source related, or that open source is muddying the issue.
There's nothing more or less going on here than if I simply gave you a roll of my film and disclaimed all right related to or interest in it.
No, the photographer simply did not give permission that was not his to give.
You don't need a model release to take a picture of people where they have no expectation of privacy. He didn't need her permission, neither do you to view or distribute the work.
The catch is with advertising usage, where the ad implies the model says/uses/endorses these things. You'd need the model's permission to imply these things.
The photographer wasn't doing any of this so he didn't bother to ask. As such, the photo doesn't come with a model release form and because advertising use would require both, Virgin was at fault.
Nope, you're free to take anyone's picture in any place they have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That is, in public, maybe in their yard or house with open windows. Probably not in 'public' via very telephoto lenses and not via hidden cameras in private places.
That's very rough because there are small exceptions everywhere and you could be anywhere. But in general, you're allowed to take a photo of anything you can see, and you can distribute that as long as it's not a copyright violation. (Direct shot of something else, like a disc copy.)
Specifically, documentary use of these images such as in a newspaper, is allowed. Even if the photo includes copyrighted work, trademarked logos, etc.
Advertising is different. The words in the ad make it appear that the model is, for instance a happy denture wearer, a republican, proud to do whatever, etc. Usually you'd have to pay for these rights.
For advertising usage, and likely derogatory usage of the models (such as rude mixups, etc) would require the permission of the model to use their likeness. After all, if you're grafting someone's head onto a monster or implying that they would use your product, you're making a statement as that person and you need their permission.
So the photographer was saying that he waived his rights to prevent duplication. Nobody said the models waived their rights.
Exactly. CCing the photograph says nothing of the model rights, trademarks, potential national secrets, etc, in the picture. Just the photographers claim to his copyright.
Nor does CC say it does. It's clearly a creator's indemnification for what would otherwise be copyright infringement problems with that document.
The license allowed copying of the work. That's fine. Theoretically Virgin could have included it on a CD of CC images of people using their phones. But as soon as they used it to imply that the girl used a Virgin phone it wasn't a documentary (editorial use) photo, but was an advertising image.
If I, your photographer, shoot an image of someone and sell you all *my* rights to that image they still don't include any trademark/copyrights in the photo, rights of the subjects, etc. No photographer would say otherwise, no license would either.
You've got a poor grasp on the law. Luckily for you, you seem to have no ethics so you'll likely do fine. Ethically obligated to sue CC? To kill yourself and anyone else who feels that way, for the good of everyone else maybe...
A license to use a copyrighted work obviously doesn't allow crimes you may commit while using the work.
I don't need to license my photos "Free use available, except for illegal uses". To suggest otherwise is manifestly untruthful.
The photographer could have released the photo under the license "You're allowed to print this photo out, fold it over, and stab people to death with it!" Murder is still forbidden under separate laws, as is using someone's likeness in advertising without specific permission.
If you tried to kill someone with the photo, you'd obviously just be committing murder, not some sort of weird pre-authorized death transferance.
What I'm trying to say is that a license can't (and shouldn't) forbid illegal actions. They're illegal. You're allowed (by the license) to give it a try, but there are laws that would stop. If I hire a truck driver I don't need a specific clause saying he won't drive over people, won't rape people, won't rape children, won't rape girls or boys, etc, etc, etc... I can rely on the laws of the land.
Virgin did something plainly illegal, regardless of the license. They couldn't just take the photo out their own window and use it either, unless they got the permission of the people in it. Taking the picture would be legal, as would sharing it, as would saying "Virgin took this, buy Virgin phones".
It only becomes illegal when you imply the girl in the picture is a Virgin customer.
The constitution is a document that the people wrote to limit the powers of their creation, the USA federal government.
If the constitution says the government shall not X, the intent is for it not to do X. If the point was "Not do X to Y" it would have been spelled out.
The part that says "the government may not" is very clear. There is no part that says "... except to people we suspect of terrorism (or anything else)".
I was just giving you a bit of 'with us or against us', but with a point. There is a group tearing at the USA, trying to destroy it. That group is the one violating the constitution and telling people that it doesn't matter because of technicalities.
This behavior would be illegal if I hired one person to do it to another. There's no justification or self defense. The constitution clearly does not give the president the right to order blatantly illegal actions. Show me where it says that, notwithstanding anything in this document, these rules are for convenience only.
There was a country that would invade other countries and hang their leaders for this kind of secret-police and torture nonsense. They freed the people and were instituting democracy last I heard. They had invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq, for great justice. Maybe we could ask them to come here next? Which country was that again? They were deeply against human rights violations, that's all I remember.
The flaw of what we have isn't as much that it allows or encourages a two-party split-down-the-middle system, but that it punishes anything else. I'd like to support alternate parties, but we suffer from the wasted vote syndrome.
A degenerate form of approval is plurality, you're right. But everyone already is just voting for their one fave, anything we do seems to be better.
And as for vote counting, being Canadian, I'd like to keep the paper voting and hand counting.
That's what I mean. Condorcet is a bit better, but is it enough so to make it worth explaining ranked pairs to people, to be reliant on a computer-counted voted, etc?
If you run a shop you may demand to search me before I enter. And again at any point, to continue shopping. But that's just by threatening to take away my permission to be on your property. If I refuse all you can do is demand that I leave.
You're just hoping that I find shopping with you valuable enough to put up with it.
Once I choose to leave, you lose all power over me. The law doesn't allow you to do random searches, or even to detain me outside of very specific citizen's arrest procedures for very specific offenses. By default you're committing assault and unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, depending on how you handle it. You're shielded from prosecution in very specific cases, but that's far from you having "rights" to do these things.
Circuit City is simply not in a good position. They want to search customers, but the only thing they have to threaten is to kick the customer out - a place the customer is already going.
And not, simply having a sign saying that people will be searched isn't good enough.
It's pretty damn clear to everyone other than you that the constitution applies to the US Government, where-ever it goes. There's no exception saying that the constitution applies only on US soil, or only to an American citizen.
No matter what, the government of the USA must not exceed the specific limits set down by its people.
The constitution says no torture, etc. Thus the government must not torture. Understand?
The law against this is one *you* must enforce. Get off of your lazy ass and protest this. Your leaders are torturing and murdering in your name, performing actions so vile the country was founded on avoiding those principles, and you're picking nits to allow this?
Your government is using your tax money to do things your laws expressly forbid. If you did those things with as little sanction from your peers as they, you'd have been killed or locked up long ago.
One side in this issue are traitors. I suggest you examine your position.
You think it's reasonable that the people who check you for bombs are in a position to check your for compliance with laws?
Why should a bomb checker care what that 2kgs of white powder in bags is, or where you got the wrapped bunches of 20s? They're pretty obviously not going to blow up the airplane.
Checking for that is what Customs is for. Many (most?) of the people having problems with US air-travel regs are US citizens, traveling within with USA. They should never need to see customs.
Bomb checkers would get a lot more respect and cooperation from everyone if they weren't 'secret police' as well. If you tell them someone is acting suspicious it'll probably get them tased and arrested, totally regardless of any threat to the flight.
If the bomb checkers were legitimately there for safety, they'd care to hear about weaknesses. If you pointed out that the barrel of potential liquid explosives (bottled water, shampoo, etc) was dangerously close to themselves, they'd be horrified they missed that detail and they'd start disposing of those more regularly.
Instead, when this happens our thugs schedule this person for extra screening. As if terrorists would point out our weaknesses. They'd be noting them to exploit later.
Like with program/network security, the DMCA like the jack-booted TSA thug, is going to chill the interest of the good-guy to help.
Grading should be objective. Can the student accomplish this task? How well?
Does it matter at all if you went to school with a class of idiots or geniuses? It shouldn't. In a system with relative grades, as you support, you'd fail competent students or pass incompetent ones depending only on the luck of who they got put in a class with.
I want my doctors to pass classes because they meet standards, not because everyone else in the class was a bigger idiot. Similarly, I see no need to fail a smart medical student who does meet standards simply because everyone else in his class (note: not the world) does so slightly more.
It doesn't show that McDonald's is being very careful when they routinely serve drive-through traffic coffee hotter than the industry norm, and continued after complaints from drivers (presumably even some who checked before driving).
It seems that yours reasons could, by someone further toward libertarian, be derided as poor examples of a reason to sue.
"McDonald's, by accident of theirs with no intend to deceive served poisoned food? Note their low standards and refuse to deal with them in the future."
"A surgeon did a half-assed job? Note their low standards and refuse to deal with them in the future."
That attitude totally overlooks that often this is not practical. There are six billion people - try to figure out McDonald's corporate structure enough to figure out which ones are ultimately responsible and which are legal dupes. Even if you could, could you communicate this to your friends and family effectively? Could they trace back through the connections of everyone they dealt with to make sure other businesses weren't run by the now-identified sources of wrong-doing?
The courts were invented as a non-criminal way of dealing with things. We don't need to pass a law saying that serving coffee over 85c is illegal, just a business standard that it's beyond and the legal attitude that a business needs to take this into account with extra signage, etc. Like slippery floors.
I watch my step when I walk, but I think it's reasonable to hold someone responsible if they make a floor extra slippery without any concern for the people using it.
As for the copyright issue, the authorship of any specific word on a Wiki is rarely in question (aside from which person a given anonymous IP represents). Rather, the problem is that the wiki page quickly becomes a web of derivative work. Even if you could track down the holders of a majority (even all) of the current text, there's still the issue of the person whose first outline they expanded. That structure (part of what copyright covers) could leave an impression even after the Lorum was replaced.
I too largely dislike copyright. Not that I hate creators or anything, but I just don't think that government monopolies that restrict duplication of a work are really the best way to reward the creator and benefit society. Ditto patents.
I dislike however, how the value of anything community derived is instantly discounted. A big company wants your wiki contents? Well, sure they have a right to buy it, it's a valuable property. What, it's got pesky copyright issues? Take it anyways, it'd be hard to the figure out the real ownership because there are so many people, and what value do an individuals contributions have anyways? (As they buy a collection of individual edits.)
You speak out against cases like the hot-coffee lady (or does that mean something else since gta3sa?) as if that's an example of run-away courts. Hell, that's one of the shining moments where someone actually enacted a bit of responsibility in business expectation. Just like requiring businesses to meet certain standards before they could legally claim to do certain things. (You can serve food in your crap-shack, but not for money.)
The real disgrace in courtrooms is how companies like DirecTV can sue innocent people based on known-unreliable data and threaten to bankrupt them through court action if they don't pay huge and arbitrary amounts.
But you write off everyone, such as myself, merely because other people misinterpret some of the minor details (timing, etc).
I'm shocked at the mere existence of a kill switch, remotely or timer-driven, in any product that I buy.
You trumpet the ignorance of the deluded/.ers who are "taken in" with these "misleading" stories. (In actuality, quite accurate, if a bit scare-tacticy.) You're really the hiding the real issue under your minor nitpicks.
Your lack of comprehension of the subtleties in the McDonald's Coffee issue (many prior complaints, nobody else served HOT coffee that hot, etc) does not make me trust your legal opinions.
I'm in continual amazement at how many people, like yourself, think that because something would be very hard or unreasonable to do, you don't have to do it even though it's law.
It might be nigh-unto-impossible to identify the legal rights owner of something. That isn't legal permission to violate the copyright.
Which consumer protection laws? Federal copyright law trumps conflicting state regulations.
But the requirement to sell a product that works, for the assumed purpose (which is to be used after being bought, with no post-sale restrictions), trumps everything else.
They can't sell a product that they know can't be used, even if it would be legal to make.
Citation needed that such a burden exists in the United States.
What other purpose would there be to contract law? A contract requires both parties to be operating in good faith.
As for your idea with the cashiers, that's the point. Make it really obvious that you don't intend to sell it. I don't mean that nobody could ever license software. I mean that if you sell it, you didn't license it. That's it, one or the other, not both.
The problem is that MS and others are trying to get both sides of the bargain. They want the benefits of licensing software, with the ease of sales. Sales are easy precisely because you can't go attaching a bunch of restrictions to them without both parties agreeing to a new contract, explicitly.
So, when they don't advertise buying the software, when they honestly show people the 20+ page EULA and give them time to read it, I'll agree that they've licensed Joe Blow's copy of Windows.
That's just a rootkit you're describing, with trojaned compilers. The obvious fix is to download a Live CD that scans for rootkits.
Of course, that could be trojaned by a trojan smart enough to unpack your ISO, rebuild your compiler, and lie about the hash. So, download one Live CD and burn it onto non-rewritable media. Then download another released any time after you burned the first one. Use the first to check the hash of the second. The first can't have been trojaned to give specific results for a CD it's never seen, and your potentially trojaned system can't modify the contents of the second CD without changing the hash value.
Then, you merely need to trust the Live-CD packagers. Or at least trust that they aren't collaborating (makers of cd1 and cd2). And verify the hash sums some way other than via the potentially infected OS, or via the potentially trojaned first CD.
Slashdot Mirror
It was released by the photographer. He can't grant control over all laws and the wishes of other people, just over his rights to the work. Those were waived. Other rights were not.
Commercial work != All types of Commercial work
You still don't understand.
The photographer released Virgin from any obligations to the photographer, via the license.
If it had been for editorial use, Virgin wouldn't have needed to ask the girl. They'd just have printed the article with the documentary photo "girl uses handset foo, date x".
It was only by using the girl's photo in an advertising fashion that they had a problem. You need the model's permission for that, unlike news photography, etc.
The photographers rights are still granted by the CC, as he doesn't care what Virgin and the girl decide. He obviously can't license any illegal third-party actions and wasn't trying to.
I'm continually amazed at how people like you think this is open source related, or that open source is muddying the issue.
There's nothing more or less going on here than if I simply gave you a roll of my film and disclaimed all right related to or interest in it.
No, the photographer simply did not give permission that was not his to give.
You don't need a model release to take a picture of people where they have no expectation of privacy. He didn't need her permission, neither do you to view or distribute the work.
The catch is with advertising usage, where the ad implies the model says/uses/endorses these things. You'd need the model's permission to imply these things.
The photographer wasn't doing any of this so he didn't bother to ask. As such, the photo doesn't come with a model release form and because advertising use would require both, Virgin was at fault.
Nope, you're free to take anyone's picture in any place they have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That is, in public, maybe in their yard or house with open windows. Probably not in 'public' via very telephoto lenses and not via hidden cameras in private places.
That's very rough because there are small exceptions everywhere and you could be anywhere. But in general, you're allowed to take a photo of anything you can see, and you can distribute that as long as it's not a copyright violation. (Direct shot of something else, like a disc copy.)
Specifically, documentary use of these images such as in a newspaper, is allowed. Even if the photo includes copyrighted work, trademarked logos, etc.
Advertising is different. The words in the ad make it appear that the model is, for instance a happy denture wearer, a republican, proud to do whatever, etc. Usually you'd have to pay for these rights.
For advertising usage, and likely derogatory usage of the models (such as rude mixups, etc) would require the permission of the model to use their likeness. After all, if you're grafting someone's head onto a monster or implying that they would use your product, you're making a statement as that person and you need their permission.
So the photographer was saying that he waived his rights to prevent duplication. Nobody said the models waived their rights.
Exactly. CCing the photograph says nothing of the model rights, trademarks, potential national secrets, etc, in the picture. Just the photographers claim to his copyright.
Nor does CC say it does. It's clearly a creator's indemnification for what would otherwise be copyright infringement problems with that document.
You wanted to submit another story?
No? You thought that comment was relevant to this one?
Oh. How... terribly sad. Maybe one day we can... fix... you.
Licenses never mention unrelated illegal acts. It's not the job of a license in a newspaper to tell you not to make ransom notes from it.
What, you mean you can't blame some guy at the bus for the legal results of you misapplying his out-of-context statements on another topic?
Damn, I was sort of hoping that was an absolute defense. Well, see ya in 20.
The license allowed copying of the work. That's fine. Theoretically Virgin could have included it on a CD of CC images of people using their phones. But as soon as they used it to imply that the girl used a Virgin phone it wasn't a documentary (editorial use) photo, but was an advertising image.
If I, your photographer, shoot an image of someone and sell you all *my* rights to that image they still don't include any trademark/copyrights in the photo, rights of the subjects, etc. No photographer would say otherwise, no license would either.
You've got a poor grasp on the law. Luckily for you, you seem to have no ethics so you'll likely do fine. Ethically obligated to sue CC? To kill yourself and anyone else who feels that way, for the good of everyone else maybe...
A license to use a copyrighted work obviously doesn't allow crimes you may commit while using the work.
I don't need to license my photos "Free use available, except for illegal uses". To suggest otherwise is manifestly untruthful.
The photographer could have released the photo under the license "You're allowed to print this photo out, fold it over, and stab people to death with it!" Murder is still forbidden under separate laws, as is using someone's likeness in advertising without specific permission.
If you tried to kill someone with the photo, you'd obviously just be committing murder, not some sort of weird pre-authorized death transferance.
What I'm trying to say is that a license can't (and shouldn't) forbid illegal actions. They're illegal. You're allowed (by the license) to give it a try, but there are laws that would stop. If I hire a truck driver I don't need a specific clause saying he won't drive over people, won't rape people, won't rape children, won't rape girls or boys, etc, etc, etc... I can rely on the laws of the land.
Virgin did something plainly illegal, regardless of the license. They couldn't just take the photo out their own window and use it either, unless they got the permission of the people in it. Taking the picture would be legal, as would sharing it, as would saying "Virgin took this, buy Virgin phones".
It only becomes illegal when you imply the girl in the picture is a Virgin customer.
The constitution is a document that the people wrote to limit the powers of their creation, the USA federal government.
... except to people we suspect of terrorism (or anything else)".
If the constitution says the government shall not X, the intent is for it not to do X. If the point was "Not do X to Y" it would have been spelled out.
The part that says "the government may not" is very clear. There is no part that says "
I was just giving you a bit of 'with us or against us', but with a point. There is a group tearing at the USA, trying to destroy it. That group is the one violating the constitution and telling people that it doesn't matter because of technicalities.
This behavior would be illegal if I hired one person to do it to another. There's no justification or self defense. The constitution clearly does not give the president the right to order blatantly illegal actions. Show me where it says that, notwithstanding anything in this document, these rules are for convenience only.
There was a country that would invade other countries and hang their leaders for this kind of secret-police and torture nonsense. They freed the people and were instituting democracy last I heard. They had invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq, for great justice. Maybe we could ask them to come here next? Which country was that again? They were deeply against human rights violations, that's all I remember.
The flaw of what we have isn't as much that it allows or encourages a two-party split-down-the-middle system, but that it punishes anything else. I'd like to support alternate parties, but we suffer from the wasted vote syndrome.
A degenerate form of approval is plurality, you're right. But everyone already is just voting for their one fave, anything we do seems to be better.
And as for vote counting, being Canadian, I'd like to keep the paper voting and hand counting.
That's what I mean. Condorcet is a bit better, but is it enough so to make it worth explaining ranked pairs to people, to be reliant on a computer-counted voted, etc?
If you run a shop you may demand to search me before I enter. And again at any point, to continue shopping. But that's just by threatening to take away my permission to be on your property. If I refuse all you can do is demand that I leave.
You're just hoping that I find shopping with you valuable enough to put up with it.
Once I choose to leave, you lose all power over me. The law doesn't allow you to do random searches, or even to detain me outside of very specific citizen's arrest procedures for very specific offenses. By default you're committing assault and unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, depending on how you handle it. You're shielded from prosecution in very specific cases, but that's far from you having "rights" to do these things.
Circuit City is simply not in a good position. They want to search customers, but the only thing they have to threaten is to kick the customer out - a place the customer is already going.
And not, simply having a sign saying that people will be searched isn't good enough.
Print out the errata and include it with the book.
Do you think the Condorcet method offer enough benefits over simple Approval voting to justify the difficulty?
Approval voting is so simple you can do it casually when picking a movie or dinner, without needing to keep track of ranks, etc.
It's pretty damn clear to everyone other than you that the constitution applies to the US Government, where-ever it goes. There's no exception saying that the constitution applies only on US soil, or only to an American citizen.
No matter what, the government of the USA must not exceed the specific limits set down by its people.
The constitution says no torture, etc. Thus the government must not torture. Understand?
The law against this is one *you* must enforce. Get off of your lazy ass and protest this. Your leaders are torturing and murdering in your name, performing actions so vile the country was founded on avoiding those principles, and you're picking nits to allow this?
Your government is using your tax money to do things your laws expressly forbid. If you did those things with as little sanction from your peers as they, you'd have been killed or locked up long ago.
One side in this issue are traitors. I suggest you examine your position.
You think it's reasonable that the people who check you for bombs are in a position to check your for compliance with laws?
Why should a bomb checker care what that 2kgs of white powder in bags is, or where you got the wrapped bunches of 20s? They're pretty obviously not going to blow up the airplane.
Checking for that is what Customs is for. Many (most?) of the people having problems with US air-travel regs are US citizens, traveling within with USA. They should never need to see customs.
Bomb checkers would get a lot more respect and cooperation from everyone if they weren't 'secret police' as well. If you tell them someone is acting suspicious it'll probably get them tased and arrested, totally regardless of any threat to the flight.
If the bomb checkers were legitimately there for safety, they'd care to hear about weaknesses. If you pointed out that the barrel of potential liquid explosives (bottled water, shampoo, etc) was dangerously close to themselves, they'd be horrified they missed that detail and they'd start disposing of those more regularly.
Instead, when this happens our thugs schedule this person for extra screening. As if terrorists would point out our weaknesses. They'd be noting them to exploit later.
Like with program/network security, the DMCA like the jack-booted TSA thug, is going to chill the interest of the good-guy to help.
All because we mix customs with bomb checking.
I see. There are too many of these articles, which compels you to troll through them announcing this glut to everyone.
Thanks.
That's deluded. You're both wrong.
Grading should be objective. Can the student accomplish this task? How well?
Does it matter at all if you went to school with a class of idiots or geniuses? It shouldn't. In a system with relative grades, as you support, you'd fail competent students or pass incompetent ones depending only on the luck of who they got put in a class with.
I want my doctors to pass classes because they meet standards, not because everyone else in the class was a bigger idiot. Similarly, I see no need to fail a smart medical student who does meet standards simply because everyone else in his class (note: not the world) does so slightly more.
What does it have to do with chapters?
It doesn't show that McDonald's is being very careful when they routinely serve drive-through traffic coffee hotter than the industry norm, and continued after complaints from drivers (presumably even some who checked before driving).
It seems that yours reasons could, by someone further toward libertarian, be derided as poor examples of a reason to sue.
"McDonald's, by accident of theirs with no intend to deceive served poisoned food? Note their low standards and refuse to deal with them in the future."
"A surgeon did a half-assed job? Note their low standards and refuse to deal with them in the future."
That attitude totally overlooks that often this is not practical. There are six billion people - try to figure out McDonald's corporate structure enough to figure out which ones are ultimately responsible and which are legal dupes. Even if you could, could you communicate this to your friends and family effectively? Could they trace back through the connections of everyone they dealt with to make sure other businesses weren't run by the now-identified sources of wrong-doing?
The courts were invented as a non-criminal way of dealing with things. We don't need to pass a law saying that serving coffee over 85c is illegal, just a business standard that it's beyond and the legal attitude that a business needs to take this into account with extra signage, etc. Like slippery floors.
I watch my step when I walk, but I think it's reasonable to hold someone responsible if they make a floor extra slippery without any concern for the people using it.
As for the copyright issue, the authorship of any specific word on a Wiki is rarely in question (aside from which person a given anonymous IP represents). Rather, the problem is that the wiki page quickly becomes a web of derivative work. Even if you could track down the holders of a majority (even all) of the current text, there's still the issue of the person whose first outline they expanded. That structure (part of what copyright covers) could leave an impression even after the Lorum was replaced.
I too largely dislike copyright. Not that I hate creators or anything, but I just don't think that government monopolies that restrict duplication of a work are really the best way to reward the creator and benefit society. Ditto patents.
I dislike however, how the value of anything community derived is instantly discounted. A big company wants your wiki contents? Well, sure they have a right to buy it, it's a valuable property. What, it's got pesky copyright issues? Take it anyways, it'd be hard to the figure out the real ownership because there are so many people, and what value do an individuals contributions have anyways? (As they buy a collection of individual edits.)
You speak out against cases like the hot-coffee lady (or does that mean something else since gta3sa?) as if that's an example of run-away courts. Hell, that's one of the shining moments where someone actually enacted a bit of responsibility in business expectation. Just like requiring businesses to meet certain standards before they could legally claim to do certain things. (You can serve food in your crap-shack, but not for money.)
The real disgrace in courtrooms is how companies like DirecTV can sue innocent people based on known-unreliable data and threaten to bankrupt them through court action if they don't pay huge and arbitrary amounts.
But you write off everyone, such as myself, merely because other people misinterpret some of the minor details (timing, etc).
/.ers who are "taken in" with these "misleading" stories. (In actuality, quite accurate, if a bit scare-tacticy.) You're really the hiding the real issue under your minor nitpicks.
I'm shocked at the mere existence of a kill switch, remotely or timer-driven, in any product that I buy.
You trumpet the ignorance of the deluded
Your lack of comprehension of the subtleties in the McDonald's Coffee issue (many prior complaints, nobody else served HOT coffee that hot, etc) does not make me trust your legal opinions.
I'm in continual amazement at how many people, like yourself, think that because something would be very hard or unreasonable to do, you don't have to do it even though it's law.
It might be nigh-unto-impossible to identify the legal rights owner of something. That isn't legal permission to violate the copyright.
Which consumer protection laws? Federal copyright law trumps conflicting state regulations.
But the requirement to sell a product that works, for the assumed purpose (which is to be used after being bought, with no post-sale restrictions), trumps everything else.
They can't sell a product that they know can't be used, even if it would be legal to make.
Citation needed that such a burden exists in the United States.
What other purpose would there be to contract law? A contract requires both parties to be operating in good faith.
As for your idea with the cashiers, that's the point. Make it really obvious that you don't intend to sell it. I don't mean that nobody could ever license software. I mean that if you sell it, you didn't license it. That's it, one or the other, not both.
The problem is that MS and others are trying to get both sides of the bargain. They want the benefits of licensing software, with the ease of sales. Sales are easy precisely because you can't go attaching a bunch of restrictions to them without both parties agreeing to a new contract, explicitly.
So, when they don't advertise buying the software, when they honestly show people the 20+ page EULA and give them time to read it, I'll agree that they've licensed Joe Blow's copy of Windows.
That's just a rootkit you're describing, with trojaned compilers. The obvious fix is to download a Live CD that scans for rootkits.
Of course, that could be trojaned by a trojan smart enough to unpack your ISO, rebuild your compiler, and lie about the hash. So, download one Live CD and burn it onto non-rewritable media. Then download another released any time after you burned the first one. Use the first to check the hash of the second. The first can't have been trojaned to give specific results for a CD it's never seen, and your potentially trojaned system can't modify the contents of the second CD without changing the hash value.
Then, you merely need to trust the Live-CD packagers. Or at least trust that they aren't collaborating (makers of cd1 and cd2). And verify the hash sums some way other than via the potentially infected OS, or via the potentially trojaned first CD.