Unless there are University rules that prohibit the full content of the lecture from being posted, I would encourage the professors to have the podcasts posted with no password, ideally with a Creative Commons license (by-nc seems ideal) but maybe with something more restrictive ("You may download one copy for your personal use; if you lose the copy, you can download another; you may make one backup"). I don't see any reason to restrict the content of the lectures to people enrolled in the course. They could be useful supplementary material for someone in another course, or for someone taking the course in a later year with another professor, or for a self-learner who can't afford university classes, etc. I suppose they could be source material for plagiarists (twice colleagues from other universities have told me at conferences that they heard of me through my detailed lecture notes which their students plagiarized), but plagiarists probably prefer written sources and may be too lazy to transcribe. I could imagine a concern that continuing education classes could lose money if the material was made available. But I am not sure how large a concern that is, and the increased public profile of the University if the materials actually were heavily used by outsiders might well counteract that.
There seems to be a fairly clear difference between portraying a rape in a film in order, e.g., to show the development of a character, and portraying a rape in a film in order to titillate the viewer. Of course, there will be borderline cases where we can't tell which one was intended, but there will still be fairly clear cases. And, yes, laws do, and need to, take intentions into account. (It's only attempted murder if you intended to something lethal.)
IANAL, but I don't think there is any personal-use exemption in patent law. You may get away with it (especially if you have a high fence), but you're still liable.
One does not need to wipe the OS to run Linux on a PalmOS device. In fact, in newer flash-based devices, you don't even lose your PalmOS data. See www.hackndev.com
Time limits are great for software that the user will use over and over. But they're no good for software the user only needs to use a couple of times. For instance, I once made FontCollector, a shareware PalmOS utility to convert fonts (now it's GPL). I decided that a time limit would mean that a user could simply convert all the fonts he wanted in one day, and then discard the utility. So instead I added an extra pixel dot under every 's' glyph in the trial version--good enough to see exactly how the converted fonts looked. And the registered version didn't have the extra dot and would automatically remove it from all fonts the shareware version had created.
I think the utility in the article here is also one that a user might need only once. I think few users would need it on an ongoing basis, but I can see how one might have a one-time need of it. A time limit would mean one could use it without purchasing, and the fact that it would expire wouldn't bother one.
Feature limits, though, aren't such a great idea for something that the user uses over and over. My own preference is simply to make the program so good that the user gets used to it, loves it... and then one day it expires, and then they NEED to buy it. However, interestingly, my feeling is that most PalmOS shareware sales (the market I have some feeling for) are made within a couple of hours of download, so people aren't waiting for expiry. And some even buy shareware without trying.
Wouldn't there be a security problem with executing whatever the server hands back, since then if the server is compromised, every machine connected to the server is compromised? Better would be to have each client check for a password before executing what the server hands back, though then one would need to keep track of a password for each of the clients. (I suppose whoever is in charge of each client could keep track of her own password, or one could keep a printed list at a secure location.)
So, taking into account the comments here, I think what one might do is the following. perl script, calls in during every hour, at random time (not to clobber servers; or else at a pre-assigned time). Sends `traceroute server.com`. Server responds. If first list of response matches the password hash on the laptop, call eval() with rest of response. If one needs to get additional executables onto the system, the perl script can fetch them.
There does seem to be something to this. If someone steals a COA, surely that doesn't make it illegal for me to continue using the software. Just looked at the XP Home EULA. The EULA prohibits reselling the software without the COA, but it doesn't prohibit using the software if one's COA has been lost or destroyed. So the license does not consist in the COA.
Moreover, if the COA were to confer license, one would get the ridiculous result that each copy of XP (I assume Pro has a similar EULA) automatically is licensed for two computers. For you could give away your COA and continue using your copy (the EULA doesn't prohibit giving away or selling the COA), and then the recipient could use the COA as a license for his copy.
You can get a Design Patent in the US for a font face. This lasts 14 years. Microsoft has recently been pursuing Design Patents for their typefaces, like Segoe UI (they got denied one in Europe, but granted in the US, I think).
A clearly stated EULA would allow for additional competition over terms, and hence be advantageous. Forthrightness about terms might serve a vendor well as a way of differentiating himself from competitors.
As far as I can tell, there is essentially zero competition over EULA terms for consumer software. Consumers neither know nor care about the terms.
But if the terms were clearly stated, this would create the opportunity for some vendors to surpass others. Given two otherwise equal pieces of tax software, I'd buy one that can be resold. Given two otherwise equally good word processors, I'd buy one that can be reverse engineered. Given a spreadsheet program that may be installed only on one computer and a spreadsheet program that may be installed on a desktop and a laptop (if I'm not mistaken, some Microsoft EULAs let you do that--this may be a rare instance where an EULA gives more rights than copyright law does), I would definitely prefer the latter.
All that said, I _might_ personally be a beneficiary of people not reading EULAs. As a sideline, I sell PalmOS utilities, and my EULA allows unlimited transfer between compatible devices. A lot of PalmOS software does not. I suspect that occasionally I have people who buy a new registration of the software even though they could have just beamed over their old registration to the new device. If there were a clear way to state terms, and if I weren't the only vendor doing so (which would make it look a bit weird), I could make it clearer to users in advertising (I don't believe in selling the same product over and over to the same customer). I might lose by it or conceivably gain by it.
This isn't quite as secure, but I run a VNC server together with dynDNS on this laptop, so if it gets stolen and connected to the internet, I should at least be able to login and watch what's going on if they don't reformat the drive.
I've had one great Apple experience. Bought a five-year-old Powerbook 190 on ebay. Apple at that time still had their free service for a power-cord problem. They sent me a pre-paid mailer for the 190, I sent it back, and in a three days or so had a 190 with a brand new motherboard.
I was less happy than I expected with my work 17" PowerBook G4, though. I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 for home use for about half the price, and I must confess that, apart from the weight issue, I like the Dell a lot more. The PB screen resolution is poor. Text is a bit blurry no matter which antialiasing mode I choose. (My Palm has clearer fonts using my shareware FontSmoother hack.) The DVD playback is jumpy if deinterlacing is needed, and the deinterlacing is of poor quality (come on, Apple! this is a 1.5GHz G4; I have perfectly smooth software-decoded DVD playback on my 1.4GHz Celeron desktop with a PC100 bus and an old 8mb video card). And there is no alternative DVD player software available, unlike on the PC where I can choose from half a dozen different players. (Yes, I know about VideoLAN, but it probably violates the DMCA, so it's not an option.)
Moreover, last I checked, Apple did not provide a no-fault warranty like Dell's CompleteCare (one drops laptops).
That said, I did have an awful customer support experience with Dell once, and that got me to switch to the Apple. But for my next work laptop, I'm going back.
Maybe I just don't know enough of OS X. Little things annoy me, like the fact that on the PC I can get just any menu entry with two keystrokes (alt-x y) while on the Apple I keep on having to pull up menus. (I know I can assign shortcuts, but then I have to remember the shortcuts, and it's a bother setting them up for all the commands I use.) I don't like Expose though I use it all the time--I prefer a taskbar which lists the filenames that different windows are working on.
On Windows, I can quickly pull up an explorer folder for any directory by pressing Windows-E, Alt-D, typing the directory, pressing Enter. I can then copy the pathname from the address line, and later come back to the directory by pasting it back. On the Mac I haven't found a way of doing these kinds of things that doesn't involve lots of clicking. When I try to save a file in an app like Word on the Mac, I haven't found a way to enter a pathname directly. I've just discovered that when I press / in the Word file dialog, I get a prompt for a directory, but that's not the same thing as just being able to quickly specify the full pathname. (Of course Windows' lack of tilde expansion in pathnames is a nuisance here.)
Apps seem to me to be even more poorly integrated with the CLI than on Windows: it seems like more Windows programs (e.g., text editors) accept command-line arguments that let you load in files, etc., than Mac programs, and it's hard for me to even figure out how to launch from the CLI things that are sitting in the bundle directories. I've just tried to launch Microsoft Word by going to its directory and typing "./Microsoft Word" and I'm told it can't execute the binary file. It's all slow point-and-click, select file from list, etc. Now, I'm sure some of this can be done if only one knows how. But there is something unintuitive about it. I've tried all the obvious things (or at least obvious to someone who has used DOS, Unix and Windows). I must confess that I haven't even found a way yet to get XCode to come up with a given file to be loaded being specified on the command-line.
I've had the Apple for about a year. My overall usability experience is still worse than for Windows. It may just be a matter of the heritage. OS X's UI descends from the mouse-based interfaces of MacOS which were NOT optimized for keyboard usage, while Windows has had to support migration from DOS users who were used to the comfort of being to get everything done with a bunch of keystrokes. I hated the idea of GUIs at first (whether Mac or Windows or X). I've since recognized that some
In California at least: "Petty Theft - Usually charged as a misdemeanor for first time offenses, Petty Theft is the act of stealing goods valued at less than $400. The punishments for Petty Theft can range from fines of up to $400 and/or imprisonment in County jail for up to 6 months." (http://www.shopliftingattorney.com/)
I presume it's not radically different in other states.
I've heard that DVDs are expensive in Europe, though. Maybe they cost more than $400?
Actually, plagiarism is worse than copyright infringement. If a student plagiarizes a paper in a class graded on a curve and as a result gets a higher grade (not always true!), everybody else's grade goes down. Even if the class is not graded on a curve, in a competitive post-graduation environment, the cheater is increasing his likelihood of success at the expense of everybody else's. Moreover, plagiarism involves a direct betrayal of interpersonal trust, and that makes it worse than some instances of theft.
However, plagiarists do get caught much more often than copyright infringers, so deterrent may require a higher punishment for the copyright infringer.
Whether the punishment is appropriate depends on what theory of punishment one takes. If one takes a retributive view, the punishment is unjust, since it is much higher than the harm of the crime. Note that the harm of copyright infringement is not just the financial loss, but the harm done to the state by encouraging a culture of unlawfulness. But it's clear that one download does not cause a harm equal to two years in jail. (Argument: Kidnapping someone for a period of two years causes more harm to this person than the total harm society suffers from one download.)
But if deterrence is the point, then a case can be made that crimes which it is easy to get away with should have extra high punishments, so as to make the expected value of the crime negative. If the probability of getting away is p, and one gains a value V from the crime, then the punishment must have value -W where V(1-p)-Wp V(1-p)/p. The chance of getting caught for one illegal download are, I assume, tiny, say 1/100,000. Well, then, the punishment must introduce a disvalue more than 100,000 times as great as the value of the crime (one DVD). If the DVD is $15, then a punishment greater than $1.5M is called for. Two years in jail might be roughly equivalent in disvalue tot he value of $1.5M, in the sense that it MIGHT be that most people would be willing to stay two years in jail if they were paid $1.5M for it.
That said, the punishment clearly is excessive, and so the above argument is a reductio ad absurdum of the deterrent theory considered on its own.
(Personally, I accept a combination of deterrent and retribution. Retribution sets an upper limit on what it is just to impose on a criminal. But sometimes it is uncharitable to impose the full amount, and one must impose the lower of the amounts required by deterrent and retribution.)
You're right. Illegal downloads are more like sneaking into a movie theater or stowing aboard a ship. (Not exactly like, because by sneaking into a movie theater or a ship one is increasing congestion and making the experience worse for others; by stowing aboard a ship, one is slightly increasing fuel consumption.) IANAL, but my understanding is that in the U.S. there is a distinction between "crimes of moral turpitude" and other crimes. (The main use of the distinction is that those who have committed crimes of moral turpitude are generally banned from permanent residency in the U.S., even if they have never been convincted of them.) Stowing away is not considered a crime of moral turpitude, but theft, however small the amount (I think one case involved two city bus transfers!), is.
That doesn't make sneaking into a movie theater or illegally downloading movies right. Workers are owed compensation, and in both cases one is benefiting from the work of others without compensating them.
But actually the Treo thumbboard seems to be the fastest input method for handhelds without external devices. It can yield 84wpm for a pre-practiced text, according to TextWare's Dom Perignon III competition:
Tapping on a Fitaly layout on-screen keyboard (http://www.fitaly.com/ according to the competition, is the second best method at 78 WPM. (I am guessing that the competition may be getting a disproportionate number of Fitaly users since it's sponsored by the Fitaly folks.)
The third best method in the competition is IBM's ATOMIK on-screen layout at 72 WPM (IBM no longer distributes this; I've made an improved shareware version of this method: http://www.zlthemes.com/Programs.php) .
The fourth best is MessagEase, a tap and slide on-screen method, at 67 WPM.
The highest ranking handwriting methods in the competition are Block Recognizer at 40 WPM and Graffiti at 38 WPM. So, if your input method is a handwriting-based one one, then you would have a good chance of going significantly faster with a thumbboard (or an optimized on-screen keyboard). Or with an alternate on-screen method.
Yes, a license was always required. But the MPEG LA visual license is royalty-free for less than 100,000 units, so someone who just wanted to personally use open source MPEG-4 stuff like xvid or tcpmp could just sign MPEG LA's license, compile his own copy of the code, and report to MPEG LA a sale of one unit (or few more with updates or multiple computers), and pay nothing. A nuisance (I do not know of anyone other than myself who has gone through this), of course.
[Just sent this email to AT&T's patent licensing folks. The encoders/decoders in question are xvid and tcpmp.]
Dear Sir/Madam:
I am interested in a license to your MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio, as I'd like to be able to continue to use some open source MPEG-4 encoders/decoders that I have modified for use on my family's two computers and three PDAs. I got a license from MPEG LA to do this under their no-royalties-for-less-than-100000-units terms. I am not selling or giving away the said software--this is all for personal and family use. (Though I might eventually use the encoder for educational purposes as I am also an academic, and I'd like to hear about your licensing terms for that.)
It's possible that you have no objection to someone using the technology for personal purposes. In that case, please let me know.
As a small software developer, I want to do things the right way with respect to IP, and so I want to make sure that even software that I don't ship but merely make/modify for use within the household is properly licensed.
IANAL, but I would hope, perhaps overoptimistically, that even if a court would agree with them, it would only agree in the case of intentionally making the files available. Otherwise, danger is everywhere. You mistype and do chmod 644 *.mp3 instead of chmod 600 *.mp3 and you're instantly liable.
If intentionality is not required then I wonder if someone could in turn sue Microsoft for how easy it is to accidentally turn on file sharing for all of one's hard drive (at least under some versions of Windows), thereby making one liable for massive copyright infringement.
How about storing files in a directory protected with the password "pass"?
Slashdot Mirror
Unless there are University rules that prohibit the full content of the lecture from being posted, I would encourage the professors to have the podcasts posted with no password, ideally with a Creative Commons license (by-nc seems ideal) but maybe with something more restrictive ("You may download one copy for your personal use; if you lose the copy, you can download another; you may make one backup"). I don't see any reason to restrict the content of the lectures to people enrolled in the course. They could be useful supplementary material for someone in another course, or for someone taking the course in a later year with another professor, or for a self-learner who can't afford university classes, etc. I suppose they could be source material for plagiarists (twice colleagues from other universities have told me at conferences that they heard of me through my detailed lecture notes which their students plagiarized), but plagiarists probably prefer written sources and may be too lazy to transcribe. I could imagine a concern that continuing education classes could lose money if the material was made available. But I am not sure how large a concern that is, and the increased public profile of the University if the materials actually were heavily used by outsiders might well counteract that.
There seems to be a fairly clear difference between portraying a rape in a film in order, e.g., to show the development of a character, and portraying a rape in a film in order to titillate the viewer. Of course, there will be borderline cases where we can't tell which one was intended, but there will still be fairly clear cases. And, yes, laws do, and need to, take intentions into account. (It's only attempted murder if you intended to something lethal.)
IANAL, but I don't think there is any personal-use exemption in patent law. You may get away with it (especially if you have a high fence), but you're still liable.
One does not need to wipe the OS to run Linux on a PalmOS device. In fact, in newer flash-based devices, you don't even lose your PalmOS data. See www.hackndev.com
Time limits are great for software that the user will use over and over. But they're no good for software the user only needs to use a couple of times. For instance, I once made FontCollector, a shareware PalmOS utility to convert fonts (now it's GPL). I decided that a time limit would mean that a user could simply convert all the fonts he wanted in one day, and then discard the utility. So instead I added an extra pixel dot under every 's' glyph in the trial version--good enough to see exactly how the converted fonts looked. And the registered version didn't have the extra dot and would automatically remove it from all fonts the shareware version had created.
I think the utility in the article here is also one that a user might need only once. I think few users would need it on an ongoing basis, but I can see how one might have a one-time need of it. A time limit would mean one could use it without purchasing, and the fact that it would expire wouldn't bother one.
Feature limits, though, aren't such a great idea for something that the user uses over and over. My own preference is simply to make the program so good that the user gets used to it, loves it... and then one day it expires, and then they NEED to buy it. However, interestingly, my feeling is that most PalmOS shareware sales (the market I have some feeling for) are made within a couple of hours of download, so people aren't waiting for expiry. And some even buy shareware without trying.
Wouldn't there be a security problem with executing whatever the server hands back, since then if the server is compromised, every machine connected to the server is compromised? Better would be to have each client check for a password before executing what the server hands back, though then one would need to keep track of a password for each of the clients. (I suppose whoever is in charge of each client could keep track of her own password, or one could keep a printed list at a secure location.)
So, taking into account the comments here, I think what one might do is the following. perl script, calls in during every hour, at random time (not to clobber servers; or else at a pre-assigned time). Sends `traceroute server.com`. Server responds. If first list of response matches the password hash on the laptop, call eval() with rest of response. If one needs to get additional executables onto the system, the perl script can fetch them.
There does seem to be something to this. If someone steals a COA, surely that doesn't make it illegal for me to continue using the software. Just looked at the XP Home EULA. The EULA prohibits reselling the software without the COA, but it doesn't prohibit using the software if one's COA has been lost or destroyed. So the license does not consist in the COA.
Moreover, if the COA were to confer license, one would get the ridiculous result that each copy of XP (I assume Pro has a similar EULA) automatically is licensed for two computers. For you could give away your COA and continue using your copy (the EULA doesn't prohibit giving away or selling the COA), and then the recipient could use the COA as a license for his copy.
You can get a Design Patent in the US for a font face. This lasts 14 years. Microsoft has recently been pursuing Design Patents for their typefaces, like Segoe UI (they got denied one in Europe, but granted in the US, I think).
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39118537,00.htm
Or has the law changed since 2003?
A clearly stated EULA would allow for additional competition over terms, and hence be advantageous. Forthrightness about terms might serve a vendor well as a way of differentiating himself from competitors.
As far as I can tell, there is essentially zero competition over EULA terms for consumer software. Consumers neither know nor care about the terms.
But if the terms were clearly stated, this would create the opportunity for some vendors to surpass others. Given two otherwise equal pieces of tax software, I'd buy one that can be resold. Given two otherwise equally good word processors, I'd buy one that can be reverse engineered. Given a spreadsheet program that may be installed only on one computer and a spreadsheet program that may be installed on a desktop and a laptop (if I'm not mistaken, some Microsoft EULAs let you do that--this may be a rare instance where an EULA gives more rights than copyright law does), I would definitely prefer the latter.
All that said, I _might_ personally be a beneficiary of people not reading EULAs. As a sideline, I sell PalmOS utilities, and my EULA allows unlimited transfer between compatible devices. A lot of PalmOS software does not. I suspect that occasionally I have people who buy a new registration of the software even though they could have just beamed over their old registration to the new device. If there were a clear way to state terms, and if I weren't the only vendor doing so (which would make it look a bit weird), I could make it clearer to users in advertising (I don't believe in selling the same product over and over to the same customer). I might lose by it or conceivably gain by it.
This isn't quite as secure, but I run a VNC server together with dynDNS on this laptop, so if it gets stolen and connected to the internet, I should at least be able to login and watch what's going on if they don't reformat the drive.
I've had one great Apple experience. Bought a five-year-old Powerbook 190 on ebay. Apple at that time still had their free service for a power-cord problem. They sent me a pre-paid mailer for the 190, I sent it back, and in a three days or so had a 190 with a brand new motherboard.
I was less happy than I expected with my work 17" PowerBook G4, though. I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 for home use for about half the price, and I must confess that, apart from the weight issue, I like the Dell a lot more. The PB screen resolution is poor. Text is a bit blurry no matter which antialiasing mode I choose. (My Palm has clearer fonts using my shareware FontSmoother hack.) The DVD playback is jumpy if deinterlacing is needed, and the deinterlacing is of poor quality (come on, Apple! this is a 1.5GHz G4; I have perfectly smooth software-decoded DVD playback on my 1.4GHz Celeron desktop with a PC100 bus and an old 8mb video card). And there is no alternative DVD player software available, unlike on the PC where I can choose from half a dozen different players. (Yes, I know about VideoLAN, but it probably violates the DMCA, so it's not an option.)
Moreover, last I checked, Apple did not provide a no-fault warranty like Dell's CompleteCare (one drops laptops).
That said, I did have an awful customer support experience with Dell once, and that got me to switch to the Apple. But for my next work laptop, I'm going back.
Maybe I just don't know enough of OS X. Little things annoy me, like the fact that on the PC I can get just any menu entry with two keystrokes (alt-x y) while on the Apple I keep on having to pull up menus. (I know I can assign shortcuts, but then I have to remember the shortcuts, and it's a bother setting them up for all the commands I use.) I don't like Expose though I use it all the time--I prefer a taskbar which lists the filenames that different windows are working on.
On Windows, I can quickly pull up an explorer folder for any directory by pressing Windows-E, Alt-D, typing the directory, pressing Enter. I can then copy the pathname from the address line, and later come back to the directory by pasting it back. On the Mac I haven't found a way of doing these kinds of things that doesn't involve lots of clicking. When I try to save a file in an app like Word on the Mac, I haven't found a way to enter a pathname directly. I've just discovered that when I press / in the Word file dialog, I get a prompt for a directory, but that's not the same thing as just being able to quickly specify the full pathname. (Of course Windows' lack of tilde expansion in pathnames is a nuisance here.)
Apps seem to me to be even more poorly integrated with the CLI than on Windows: it seems like more Windows programs (e.g., text editors) accept command-line arguments that let you load in files, etc., than Mac programs, and it's hard for me to even figure out how to launch from the CLI things that are sitting in the bundle directories. I've just tried to launch Microsoft Word by going to its directory and typing "./Microsoft Word" and I'm told it can't execute the binary file. It's all slow point-and-click, select file from list, etc. Now, I'm sure some of this can be done if only one knows how. But there is something unintuitive about it. I've tried all the obvious things (or at least obvious to someone who has used DOS, Unix and Windows). I must confess that I haven't even found a way yet to get XCode to come up with a given file to be loaded being specified on the command-line.
I've had the Apple for about a year. My overall usability experience is still worse than for Windows. It may just be a matter of the heritage. OS X's UI descends from the mouse-based interfaces of MacOS which were NOT optimized for keyboard usage, while Windows has had to support migration from DOS users who were used to the comfort of being to get everything done with a bunch of keystrokes. I hated the idea of GUIs at first (whether Mac or Windows or X). I've since recognized that some
In California at least: "Petty Theft - Usually charged as a misdemeanor for first time offenses, Petty Theft is the act of stealing goods valued at less than $400. The punishments for Petty Theft can range from fines of up to $400 and/or imprisonment in County jail for up to 6 months." (http://www.shopliftingattorney.com/)
I presume it's not radically different in other states.
I've heard that DVDs are expensive in Europe, though. Maybe they cost more than $400?
Actually, plagiarism is worse than copyright infringement. If a student plagiarizes a paper in a class graded on a curve and as a result gets a higher grade (not always true!), everybody else's grade goes down. Even if the class is not graded on a curve, in a competitive post-graduation environment, the cheater is increasing his likelihood of success at the expense of everybody else's. Moreover, plagiarism involves a direct betrayal of interpersonal trust, and that makes it worse than some instances of theft.
However, plagiarists do get caught much more often than copyright infringers, so deterrent may require a higher punishment for the copyright infringer.
Oops. The "where V(1-p)-Wp V(1-p)/p" is a mangled form of "where V(1-p)-Wp < 0, i.e., W>V(1-p)/p"
Whether the punishment is appropriate depends on what theory of punishment one takes. If one takes a retributive view, the punishment is unjust, since it is much higher than the harm of the crime. Note that the harm of copyright infringement is not just the financial loss, but the harm done to the state by encouraging a culture of unlawfulness. But it's clear that one download does not cause a harm equal to two years in jail. (Argument: Kidnapping someone for a period of two years causes more harm to this person than the total harm society suffers from one download.)
But if deterrence is the point, then a case can be made that crimes which it is easy to get away with should have extra high punishments, so as to make the expected value of the crime negative. If the probability of getting away is p, and one gains a value V from the crime, then the punishment must have value -W where V(1-p)-Wp V(1-p)/p. The chance of getting caught for one illegal download are, I assume, tiny, say 1/100,000. Well, then, the punishment must introduce a disvalue more than 100,000 times as great as the value of the crime (one DVD). If the DVD is $15, then a punishment greater than $1.5M is called for. Two years in jail might be roughly equivalent in disvalue tot he value of $1.5M, in the sense that it MIGHT be that most people would be willing to stay two years in jail if they were paid $1.5M for it.
That said, the punishment clearly is excessive, and so the above argument is a reductio ad absurdum of the deterrent theory considered on its own.
(Personally, I accept a combination of deterrent and retribution. Retribution sets an upper limit on what it is just to impose on a criminal. But sometimes it is uncharitable to impose the full amount, and one must impose the lower of the amounts required by deterrent and retribution.)
You're right. Illegal downloads are more like sneaking into a movie theater or stowing aboard a ship. (Not exactly like, because by sneaking into a movie theater or a ship one is increasing congestion and making the experience worse for others; by stowing aboard a ship, one is slightly increasing fuel consumption.) IANAL, but my understanding is that in the U.S. there is a distinction between "crimes of moral turpitude" and other crimes. (The main use of the distinction is that those who have committed crimes of moral turpitude are generally banned from permanent residency in the U.S., even if they have never been convincted of them.) Stowing away is not considered a crime of moral turpitude, but theft, however small the amount (I think one case involved two city bus transfers!), is.
That doesn't make sneaking into a movie theater or illegally downloading movies right. Workers are owed compensation, and in both cases one is benefiting from the work of others without compensating them.
Another commercial solution is Readerware (google it). It's java based so it's cross-platform.
I wonder if they'd accept the application if one wrote VOID over it in a thick black marker?
There are some pretty fast alternative on-screen input methods. See, for instance:
Z haiAccepted.pdf [PDF]
s onZhai2004.pdf [PDF]
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/zhai/papers/IwCvol16
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/zhai/papers/Kristens
But actually the Treo thumbboard seems to be the fastest input method for handhelds without external devices. It can yield 84wpm for a pre-practiced text, according to TextWare's Dom Perignon III competition:
m
http://www.fitaly.com/domperignon/domperignon3.ht
Tapping on a Fitaly layout on-screen keyboard (http://www.fitaly.com/ according to the competition, is the second best method at 78 WPM. (I am guessing that the competition may be getting a disproportionate number of Fitaly users since it's sponsored by the Fitaly folks.)
The third best method in the competition is IBM's ATOMIK on-screen layout at 72 WPM (IBM no longer distributes this; I've made an improved shareware version of this method: http://www.zlthemes.com/Programs.php) .
The fourth best is MessagEase, a tap and slide on-screen method, at 67 WPM.
The highest ranking handwriting methods in the competition are Block Recognizer at 40 WPM and Graffiti at 38 WPM. So, if your input method is a handwriting-based one one, then you would have a good chance of going significantly faster with a thumbboard (or an optimized on-screen keyboard). Or with an alternate on-screen method.
I don't think it's the same, because the current issue is MPEG-4 visual, while the article you have deals with audio.
Yes, a license was always required. But the MPEG LA visual license is royalty-free for less than 100,000 units, so someone who just wanted to personally use open source MPEG-4 stuff like xvid or tcpmp could just sign MPEG LA's license, compile his own copy of the code, and report to MPEG LA a sale of one unit (or few more with updates or multiple computers), and pay nothing. A nuisance (I do not know of anyone other than myself who has gone through this), of course.
[Just sent this email to AT&T's patent licensing folks. The encoders/decoders in question are xvid and tcpmp.]
...
Dear Sir/Madam:
I am interested in a license to your MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio, as I'd like to be able to continue to use some open source MPEG-4 encoders/decoders that I have modified for use on my family's two computers and three PDAs. I got a license from MPEG LA to do this under their no-royalties-for-less-than-100000-units terms. I am not selling or giving away the said software--this is all for personal and family use. (Though I might eventually use the encoder for educational purposes as I am also an academic, and I'd like to hear about your licensing terms for that.)
It's possible that you have no objection to someone using the technology for personal purposes. In that case, please let me know.
As a small software developer, I want to do things the right way with respect to IP, and so I want to make sure that even software that I don't ship but merely make/modify for use within the household is properly licensed.
Best wishes,
IANAL, but I would hope, perhaps overoptimistically, that even if a court would agree with them, it would only agree in the case of intentionally making the files available. Otherwise, danger is everywhere. You mistype and do chmod 644 *.mp3 instead of chmod 600 *.mp3 and you're instantly liable.
If intentionality is not required then I wonder if someone could in turn sue Microsoft for how easy it is to accidentally turn on file sharing for all of one's hard drive (at least under some versions of Windows), thereby making one liable for massive copyright infringement.
How about storing files in a directory protected with the password "pass"?