Also, by picking on someone smaller, they have a better chance of outlasting Prodigy's money. If they can win against a smaller company, then larger companies will be more likely to license instead of go to court...so they spend a little to make a lot.
You're right, it's kind of like a bully picking on the weakest kid in class to keep all of the other kids in line when it comes time to collect the milk money.
Not that I would compare this software patent lawsuit to schoolyard bullying and extortion. That would be scandalous wouldn't it? You can take that risk and expose yourself to possible libel suits, but I won't since I know that saying that all of those Important People in Expensive Suits protecting their Valuable Intellectual Property are just like punks who pick on little kids? That would be very rude of me. So I won't say that this lawsuit is like a bully picking on the little kid in class so that the rest of the kids will give up their lunch money without a fight.
But, even if they do win, the intersection between voters and people who have made webpages is probably pretty high. If you could only get the message out to all of those people that they're Patent Violators for using this patented technology without BT's permissions, perhaps the laws would be changed. After all, patents only exist because laws let them. They could be taken away. Unlikely...but you never know.
Well, the government was willing to hold its nose and publish the oh-so-important sexual details in the Whitewater/Monica Lewinsky/Paula Jones/Law Firm Billing/Linda Tripp/Vast Right Wing Conspiracy report, so I think they'll be able to handle it now.:)
I would change all of the stupid things people write.
1. All instances of Linux become GNU/Linux
2. All instances of Microsoft become M$/Monopoly
3. I would check for all instances of "Open Source"/"Free Software" confusion and fix them.
4. And finally, the most important one. I would change all positive references to vi into references to emacs, since that's what they really meant to type.
But if there's at least one pirate out on the high seas of the dangerous Internet, the companies still have to take any and all measures necessary to stop it. They aren't greedy, they're just doing it for the children, who need to learn to respect IP.:P
It's a grey area in law, actually. While we know you can't patent a mathematical formula, you can in fact patent a specific use of a mathematical formula.
But this doesn't work. A patent is not an invention. It's something you can stop other people from making or doing. If you have a patent on a use of an algorithm, then you can stop people from using it to do something. However, if you allow "generic" or "abstract" versions of the algorithm to exist, then someone could easily use the algorithm for the purpose for which you have patented it. Therefore, you MUST stop people from creating generic algorithms. The courts will allow this, because you can say "well it COULD be used to infringe my patent..." so you stop people from implementing any form of the algorithm. Even purely abstract versions of it.
So, the reality is that people lie and when they say that they are patenting a specific use of an algorithm, and not the algorithm itself. They ARE patenting the algorithm, because their patent can be used to stop any implementation of the algorithm for any purpose, since any implementation can be used to do what is covered by the patent. They know this and they lie about it because if they had to admit that they were expecting to stop all implementations of the algorithm, they would have to admit that they were trying to get a patent on something that they can't patent. So, these patents really are patents on pure thought that stop abstract algorithms.
So, what we have are unpatentable algorithms, which require a lot of work to find. And we have "real world meaning" given to the algorithms which then gets them patented. But, in reality, the people getting the patents are liars and they understand that they're getting patents on the underlying algorithm, simply because they can argue that any implementation of the algorithm can be used to infringe the patent, so their patent can stop those generic or abstract algorithms, which means that the patent covers the generic or abstract algorithms (since the thing that is patented is what you can stop people from making or using), and so they depend on the mathematical ignorance of judges to illegally patent pure thought.
Servers are expensive. Don't underestimate the costs. If the servers are so cheap, why don't you do the world a favor and offer to pay for enough servers to handle the load from all the people who don't use AOL clients on AIM?
This is the same situation as that article a few days ago about online games and monthly subscription fees.
Re:Here's a revenue model for you
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 2
Their code is also a derivative of a program (DikuMUD) that has a license that says they can't make profits from using the code. They even deny that it's Diku code anymore...something along the lines of having changed so much of the code that it's no longer under the original license.:P It's not that hard to make money if you steal someone else's work and use it illegally.
I keep thinking it might be useful to try to get a patent on my radical method of "linear recursive XOR bit chaining" comprising a method of XORing three strings of bits: a,b,c. The first and second strings (a and b) are determined by the user. The first bit of the third string (c) is always 0. The result of the process is stored in a bit chain s. The process is carried out in the following way:
At each BitLocationIndex you check the following.
If ((a_i AND b_i) OR ((a_i OR b_i) AND c_i)
c_i+1 = 1
else
c_i+1 = 0
If ((a_i XOR b_i) XOR c_i)
then s_i = 1
else
s_i = 0
This way you can generate a process that travels from the start of a string of bits all the way to the end of a string of bits. It appears to have some useful applications in the exciting fields of bioinformatics, AI, graphics, and arithmetic.
I was thinking about this. I was going to get a patent for Environmental Verification of Incremental Licensing, or the EVIL patent.
The basic idea is that any Content Presentation Device comes equipped with environmental sensing equipment that can dynamically determine who's near enough to the Device to partake of the Content. The machine would be hooked up to a database of the sizes and shapes of every person in the world, as well as their voice fingerprint so that the machine will know who everyone is.
Basically, every few seconds, the machine updates the list of everyone nearby who is partaking of the Content. Everyone who comes near to the Content Generator will be charged their licensing fee to partake of the Content (even if they just walked by in a hallway really fast.)
Of course, everyone would have to have their Passport (or other approved account) to be able to partake of the Content. So if anyone came by who didn't have a Passport, the owner of the home and everyone currently watching would lose their rights to partake of any Content because it's clear that they were trying to give away Content to an Unapproved Person. If everyone has the ability to pay, then they get charged by the time increment, like maybe 25 cents a minute per person, although the fees may not be this reasonable.
The sad thing is that this will probably come to pass some day. Although I hate software patents, I keep thinking that it might be a good idea to get patents like this (the EVIL patent) to prevent evil companies from engaging in EVIL.
It depends on your goal. If you want 100 percent scores on the FSF Purity Test from everyone who encounters or uses any OS/FS, then you're correct.
If your goal is to give as many people as possible a taste and gentle introduction to OS/FS because you reason that "you catch more people with honey than with vinegar", then you should support this move.
I think the second approach will make for more people using OS/FS in the long run, simply because more of them will be exposed to it.
Sure, they're using a proprietary program on top of an OS/FS system, but it's better than a proprietary system on top of a proprietary OS.
The world will be a better place when nongeeks at least know about OS/FS so they can decide if they want to use it or not. Beating someone over the head doesn't work unless that person is already one of the converted.
These people who come up with these recursive lossless compression algorithms that can compress any file are stupid. They just don't see the real possibilities of such an algorithm.
If I had such an algorithm I would decompress 0 and 1 repeatedly until I generated every possible piece of content in the universe and then sue the shit out of anyone who dared to create or copy anything without my express permission!!!!! BWAHAAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!
I don't like MS business practices, but it's never good to see MS getting sued over software patents. Every time they get sued, lose or win, software patents become more entrenched. You can't legally code a nontrivial project without violating at least a few software patents, so why would you support actions that help make coding illegal for anyone outside of a giant corporation? Basically software patents are a way of blackmailing MS. Since those patents can be used to blackmail and destroy smaller projects such as OS/FS projects, I can't support those tactics used to attack MS.
So, I would ask that people never ever support MS getting sued over software patents. The only reason you're not in their position is that you aren't worth the trouble. But you could be. Remember that.
But this is Microsoft's first generation system. And, we all know how well MS does with first generation systems (version X.0) of anything they make.
The next generation of Xbox (which will exist since MS has the money to keep making these things) will be much better. In fact, it will probably be their "content box" they hope to use to control everything you see and hear.
No, seriously. The point of the RIAA is to take money from record companies to use to lobby Congress. When the RIAA lobbies Congress, they give money to Congressmen. Although they would never state this, their goal is to get the Congressmen to do what the RIAA wants. So, what we have is money going to lawmakers with the expectation of those lawmakers doing things that will give money back to the companies that originally funded the RIAA. This money isn't paid directly to the companies. Instead, laws are passed that make things illegal, or allow companies to do things that will make them money in the long run.
Essentially, the RIAA activities (and all other lobbying on behalf of corporate interests) amount to wholesale bribery. If you really want to do something about this, find out of your Congressman is going to vote for campaign finance reform, and if not, get on his/her case about it. That's how these things can be solved.
Even better...buy them, try them out, then return them. After all:
Universal told retailers that it would honor refunds on all returned discs -- even for CDs that have been opened.
Buy. Try. Return. Do this with 20 CD's. Go back the next week to see if they got any new CD's in that will actually work. If they don't, then keep trying until they release CDs that you want.
Not buying them doesn't cost the industry anything. Buying and returning will cost them a bundle.
I mean, what good is an operating system that does this?
When the SSSCA or equivalent is passed, then this will be required, and only Microsoft will have it. Or, they will force others to license it to put it into their code (and there's no doubt that they will not let Linux have it).
This makes sense. The first terrorists the US dealt with were the Barbary pirates. These people copying software are also pirates. Therefore, they're terrorists, so it's perfectly appropriate to go out and round them up and give them military tribunals.
You know that I really mean this, because if I were being sarcastic, I would be helping the terrorists, according to John Ashcroft. In fact, if this whole message were sarcasm, I might be getting close to what the Justice department considers treason in this day and age. And I wouldn't want to do that.
And please spare me the "America WAS the home of freedom" blah DCMA blah blah. That's a great example of the narrow-minded, single-issue ignorance that I'm talking about. If you think any of these minor issues are significant in the big picture of freedom, then you need to expand your views are what freedom is.
You're totally wrong. This is the big picture. Freedom doesn't get taken away in one big swoop. It gets chipped away slowly over time. Look at the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. The big picture here is that the "content" industries want total control of everything you can see and hear and create and they want you to pay every time you ever use anything.
You probably haven't heard of the story of how to make frog soup.
To boil a frog, you don't place it into boiling hot water, or else it will jump out. You put the frog into cool water, and then slowly raise the temperature so that the frog never notices that it's getting slowly burned alive. After a while, you will have frog soup.
The DMCA is the same idea. The DMCA already creates permanent copyright, because companies will never be forced to release "clean" versions of their content into the PD, and the "encrypted" or "dirty" versions cannot be cracked. Why can't they? Because the companies will use the same encryption on many things, so that even if one stops being under copyright, if you crack it to get at the underlying stuff, you also break the encryption on the other material, and that will land you in jail under the innocuous DMCA. They even understand this and talk about it being illegal to break encryption on "copyrighted materials" and other things. What else is there...hmmm things not under copyright.
The end goal here is to have total control over every piece of hardware you can come into contact with, every pipe moving things around, and every bit that moves over those pipes. Oh, they will say that it's about stopping "piracy", but the point is that you can't stop piracy unless _EVERYTHING_ is locked down. That includes compilers and computers which will have to become a thing of the past. Every time they institute one of these partial measures (like little innocent things like the DMCA), they will whine that they're still getting ripped off, and that the heat needs to be turned up a notc...errr the legalities surrounding access controls need to be strengthened. The end goal is where you have to pay for things every time you want to see or hear them.
Why will it end up like that? Because the technology needed to stop stealing is essentially the same technology needed to turn this awful "Buy once and use forever" world into a "pay-per-use" world. And don't think it won't happen.
Right now, if you want something, you can take cash to a store and buy something and use it forever. In the future, you will have to rent things...and only if they _LET_ you. If you want to buy a book, you can go to a bookstore and pick it up anonymously. Not in the future if they get their way.
So, the point is that the DMCA is not the end of the world, but the DMCA is another step along a road that will be the end of the world (or the end of freedom at least), since there will be no way to learn or get anything besides the things they want you to get. They could refuse to sell rabble-rousers copies of books on how to organize a political movement. And I'll bet you thought that you could just publish your own book on this subject and let people download it for free. How could you get around their controls? Their hardware and software will have a default of "Don't let data into this machine." If you have the proper "key" for that particular use, then you can have stuff that you can use, but no "wild" data can be allowed onto the machine. Otherwise, you could have cracked copies of things floating around and people could happily download the clean versions. Therefore, anything YOU want to publish will have to meet THEIR standards before anyone else can get and use it. What makes you think they will allow you to do that? You have the freedom of speech, but they don't have to let you transmit your crap on their systems. Remember that. Heck, they could even parse things so that this rant may disappear in the future because it was deemed to be "too subsersive". Why would your totally locked-down hardware even let you see it? It wouldn't.
There are lots of bad things that happen when access to knowledge is centralized and there is no way to get around the gatekeepers. Just remember that. It is a big issue, but these small steps are designed to fool you and lull you into thinking it's not a big deal. Look at the big picture of freedom and think how events of today may play out down the road and try to figure out what people really want, not just what they get today.
(Ok so maybe they have some hardware, but they looked like they were talking about software in the press release.)
But seriously. Do you remember back in elementary school? The way that you would have math class and do some math problems, and some of them word problems? A word problem being a math problem where the data sent into it and/or the data generated by it is given real-world meaning. Do you remember how some people couldn't "get" the word problems because they couldn't see how to make the math work with real world words wrapped around it? Do you remember how you thought it was really easy and then you went on to become a real hardcore geek? Do you remember how those people who couldn't "get" word problems weren't very good at math?
Q: What ever happened to those people who sucked at word problems?
A: They grew up and started patenting solutions to "word problems" errr no wait I mean "algorithms and processes embodied in software designed to create a technical effect". I would never want to be accused of trivializing the amazing difficult process of giving real-world meaning to math. After all, doing abstract math on a computer, even if it's really hard, isn't patentable, so the last step...making the math correspond to something in the real world, must be a really really really big and important step to take something from being unpatentable to patentable. And I would certainly hate to compare that step to being able to do a word problem. That would be rather snide, wouldn't it?
But, this is the problem. We're arguing against people who don't "get" word problems and who therefore think they're not math anymore, so it's ok to patent them. Perhaps sending all of the patent examiners, judges, VC's, patent lawyers, CEO's and everyone else involved back to elementary school to let them learn how to do word problems will settle this once and for all.
Actually, instead of a boycott of products now, we can stage a "returnfest" whereby everyone buys something once a week and then returns it. Amazing...they're giving people a way to cost them money without actually doing anything illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, by picking on someone smaller, they have a better chance of outlasting Prodigy's money. If they can win against a smaller company, then larger companies will be more likely to license instead of go to court...so they spend a little to make a lot.
You're right, it's kind of like a bully picking on the weakest kid in class to keep all of the other kids in line when it comes time to collect the milk money.
Not that I would compare this software patent lawsuit to schoolyard bullying and extortion. That would be scandalous wouldn't it? You can take that risk and expose yourself to possible libel suits, but I won't since I know that saying that all of those Important People in Expensive Suits protecting their Valuable Intellectual Property are just like punks who pick on little kids? That would be very rude of me. So I won't say that this lawsuit is like a bully picking on the little kid in class so that the rest of the kids will give up their lunch money without a fight.
But, even if they do win, the intersection between voters and people who have made webpages is probably pretty high. If you could only get the message out to all of those people that they're Patent Violators for using this patented technology without BT's permissions, perhaps the laws would be changed. After all, patents only exist because laws let them. They could be taken away. Unlikely...but you never know.
Well, the government was willing to hold its nose and publish the oh-so-important sexual details in the Whitewater/Monica Lewinsky/Paula Jones/Law Firm Billing/Linda Tripp/Vast Right Wing Conspiracy report, so I think they'll be able to handle it now. :)
I would change all of the stupid things people write.
1. All instances of Linux become GNU/Linux
2. All instances of Microsoft become M$/Monopoly
3. I would check for all instances of "Open Source"/"Free Software" confusion and fix them.
4. And finally, the most important one. I would change all positive references to vi into references to emacs, since that's what they really meant to type.
I don't want them knowing that kind of info about me. Guess no Tivo or any of that other crap for me. :(
But if there's at least one pirate out on the high seas of the dangerous Internet, the companies still have to take any and all measures necessary to stop it. They aren't greedy, they're just doing it for the children, who need to learn to respect IP. :P
It's a grey area in law, actually. While we know you can't patent a mathematical formula, you can in fact patent a specific use of a mathematical formula.
But this doesn't work. A patent is not an invention. It's something you can stop other people from making or doing. If you have a patent on a use of an algorithm, then you can stop people from using it to do something. However, if you allow "generic" or "abstract" versions of the algorithm to exist, then someone could easily use the algorithm for the purpose for which you have patented it. Therefore, you MUST stop people from creating generic algorithms. The courts will allow this, because you can say "well it COULD be used to infringe my patent..." so you stop people from implementing any form of the algorithm. Even purely abstract versions of it.
So, the reality is that people lie and when they say that they are patenting a specific use of an algorithm, and not the algorithm itself. They ARE patenting the algorithm, because their patent can be used to stop any implementation of the algorithm for any purpose, since any implementation can be used to do what is covered by the patent. They know this and they lie about it because if they had to admit that they were expecting to stop all implementations of the algorithm, they would have to admit that they were trying to get a patent on something that they can't patent. So, these patents really are patents on pure thought that stop abstract algorithms.
So, what we have are unpatentable algorithms, which require a lot of work to find. And we have "real world meaning" given to the algorithms which then gets them patented. But, in reality, the people getting the patents are liars and they understand that they're getting patents on the underlying algorithm, simply because they can argue that any implementation of the algorithm can be used to infringe the patent, so their patent can stop those generic or abstract algorithms, which means that the patent covers the generic or abstract algorithms (since the thing that is patented is what you can stop people from making or using), and so they depend on the mathematical ignorance of judges to illegally patent pure thought.
Servers are expensive. Don't underestimate the costs. If the servers are so cheap, why don't you do the world a favor and offer to pay for enough servers to handle the load from all the people who don't use AOL clients on AIM?
This is the same situation as that article a few days ago about online games and monthly subscription fees.
Their code is also a derivative of a program (DikuMUD) that has a license that says they can't make profits from using the code. They even deny that it's Diku code anymore...something along the lines of having changed so much of the code that it's no longer under the original license. :P It's not that hard to make money if you steal someone else's work and use it illegally.
I keep thinking it might be useful to try to get a patent on my radical method of "linear recursive XOR bit chaining" comprising a method of XORing three strings of bits: a,b,c. The first and second strings (a and b) are determined by the user. The first bit of the third string (c) is always 0. The result of the process is stored in a bit chain s. The process is carried out in the following way:
At each BitLocationIndex you check the following.
If ((a_i AND b_i) OR ((a_i OR b_i) AND c_i)
c_i+1 = 1
else
c_i+1 = 0
If ((a_i XOR b_i) XOR c_i)
then s_i = 1
else
s_i = 0
This way you can generate a process that travels from the start of a string of bits all the way to the end of a string of bits. It appears to have some useful applications in the exciting fields of bioinformatics, AI, graphics, and arithmetic.
Buy up dark fiber now. Start another totally separate network.
I was thinking about this. I was going to get a patent for Environmental Verification of Incremental Licensing, or the EVIL patent.
The basic idea is that any Content Presentation Device comes equipped with environmental sensing equipment that can dynamically determine who's near enough to the Device to partake of the Content. The machine would be hooked up to a database of the sizes and shapes of every person in the world, as well as their voice fingerprint so that the machine will know who everyone is.
Basically, every few seconds, the machine updates the list of everyone nearby who is partaking of the Content. Everyone who comes near to the Content Generator will be charged their licensing fee to partake of the Content (even if they just walked by in a hallway really fast.)
Of course, everyone would have to have their Passport (or other approved account) to be able to partake of the Content. So if anyone came by who didn't have a Passport, the owner of the home and everyone currently watching would lose their rights to partake of any Content because it's clear that they were trying to give away Content to an Unapproved Person. If everyone has the ability to pay, then they get charged by the time increment, like maybe 25 cents a minute per person, although the fees may not be this reasonable.
The sad thing is that this will probably come to pass some day. Although I hate software patents, I keep thinking that it might be a good idea to get patents like this (the EVIL patent) to prevent evil companies from engaging in EVIL.
It depends on your goal. If you want 100 percent scores on the FSF Purity Test from everyone who encounters or uses any OS/FS, then you're correct.
If your goal is to give as many people as possible a taste and gentle introduction to OS/FS because you reason that "you catch more people with honey than with vinegar", then you should support this move.
I think the second approach will make for more people using OS/FS in the long run, simply because more of them will be exposed to it.
Sure, they're using a proprietary program on top of an OS/FS system, but it's better than a proprietary system on top of a proprietary OS.
The world will be a better place when nongeeks at least know about OS/FS so they can decide if they want to use it or not. Beating someone over the head doesn't work unless that person is already one of the converted.
No, they'll use it as proof that everyone is a thief so that they can make Linux illegal.
These people who come up with these recursive lossless compression algorithms that can compress any file are stupid. They just don't see the real possibilities of such an algorithm.
If I had such an algorithm I would decompress 0 and 1 repeatedly until I generated every possible piece of content in the universe and then sue the shit out of anyone who dared to create or copy anything without my express permission!!!!! BWAHAAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!
I don't like MS business practices, but it's never good to see MS getting sued over software patents. Every time they get sued, lose or win, software patents become more entrenched. You can't legally code a nontrivial project without violating at least a few software patents, so why would you support actions that help make coding illegal for anyone outside of a giant corporation? Basically software patents are a way of blackmailing MS. Since those patents can be used to blackmail and destroy smaller projects such as OS/FS projects, I can't support those tactics used to attack MS.
So, I would ask that people never ever support MS getting sued over software patents. The only reason you're not in their position is that you aren't worth the trouble. But you could be. Remember that.
But this is Microsoft's first generation system. And, we all know how well MS does with first generation systems (version X.0) of anything they make.
The next generation of Xbox (which will exist since MS has the money to keep making these things) will be much better. In fact, it will probably be their "content box" they hope to use to control everything you see and hear.
I just happen to have the place in line that's the exact distance from the movie theater to my house.
No, seriously. The point of the RIAA is to take money from record companies to use to lobby Congress. When the RIAA lobbies Congress, they give money to Congressmen. Although they would never state this, their goal is to get the Congressmen to do what the RIAA wants. So, what we have is money going to lawmakers with the expectation of those lawmakers doing things that will give money back to the companies that originally funded the RIAA. This money isn't paid directly to the companies. Instead, laws are passed that make things illegal, or allow companies to do things that will make them money in the long run.
Essentially, the RIAA activities (and all other lobbying on behalf of corporate interests) amount to wholesale bribery. If you really want to do something about this, find out of your Congressman is going to vote for campaign finance reform, and if not, get on his/her case about it. That's how these things can be solved.
Even better...buy them, try them out, then return them. After all:
Universal told retailers that it would honor refunds on all returned discs -- even for CDs that have been opened.
Buy. Try. Return. Do this with 20 CD's. Go back the next week to see if they got any new CD's in that will actually work. If they don't, then keep trying until they release CDs that you want.
Not buying them doesn't cost the industry anything. Buying and returning will cost them a bundle.
I say let Microsoft have the patent to this.
I mean, what good is an operating system that does this?
When the SSSCA or equivalent is passed, then this will be required, and only Microsoft will have it. Or, they will force others to license it to put it into their code (and there's no doubt that they will not let Linux have it).
This makes sense. The first terrorists the US dealt with were the Barbary pirates. These people copying software are also pirates. Therefore, they're terrorists, so it's perfectly appropriate to go out and round them up and give them military tribunals.
You know that I really mean this, because if I were being sarcastic, I would be helping the terrorists, according to John Ashcroft. In fact, if this whole message were sarcasm, I might be getting close to what the Justice department considers treason in this day and age. And I wouldn't want to do that.
And please spare me the "America WAS the home of freedom" blah DCMA blah blah. That's a great example of the narrow-minded, single-issue ignorance that I'm talking about. If you think any of these minor issues are significant in the big picture of freedom, then you need to expand your views are what freedom is.
You're totally wrong. This is the big picture. Freedom doesn't get taken away in one big swoop. It gets chipped away slowly over time. Look at the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. The big picture here is that the "content" industries want total control of everything you can see and hear and create and they want you to pay every time you ever use anything.
You probably haven't heard of the story of how to make frog soup.
To boil a frog, you don't place it into boiling hot water, or else it will jump out. You put the frog into cool water, and then slowly raise the temperature so that the frog never notices that it's getting slowly burned alive. After a while, you will have frog soup.
The DMCA is the same idea. The DMCA already creates permanent copyright, because companies will never be forced to release "clean" versions of their content into the PD, and the "encrypted" or "dirty" versions cannot be cracked. Why can't they? Because the companies will use the same encryption on many things, so that even if one stops being under copyright, if you crack it to get at the underlying stuff, you also break the encryption on the other material, and that will land you in jail under the innocuous DMCA. They even understand this and talk about it being illegal to break encryption on "copyrighted materials" and other things. What else is there...hmmm things not under copyright.
The end goal here is to have total control over every piece of hardware you can come into contact with, every pipe moving things around, and every bit that moves over those pipes. Oh, they will say that it's about stopping "piracy", but the point is that you can't stop piracy unless _EVERYTHING_ is locked down. That includes compilers and computers which will have to become a thing of the past. Every time they institute one of these partial measures (like little innocent things like the DMCA), they will whine that they're still getting ripped off, and that the heat needs to be turned up a notc...errr the legalities surrounding access controls need to be strengthened. The end goal is where you have to pay for things every time you want to see or hear them.
Why will it end up like that? Because the technology needed to stop stealing is essentially the same technology needed to turn this awful "Buy once and use forever" world into a "pay-per-use" world. And don't think it won't happen.
Right now, if you want something, you can take cash to a store and buy something and use it forever. In the future, you will have to rent things...and only if they _LET_ you. If you want to buy a book, you can go to a bookstore and pick it up anonymously. Not in the future if they get their way.
So, the point is that the DMCA is not the end of the world, but the DMCA is another step along a road that will be the end of the world (or the end of freedom at least), since there will be no way to learn or get anything besides the things they want you to get. They could refuse to sell rabble-rousers copies of books on how to organize a political movement. And I'll bet you thought that you could just publish your own book on this subject and let people download it for free. How could you get around their controls? Their hardware and software will have a default of "Don't let data into this machine." If you have the proper "key" for that particular use, then you can have stuff that you can use, but no "wild" data can be allowed onto the machine. Otherwise, you could have cracked copies of things floating around and people could happily download the clean versions. Therefore, anything YOU want to publish will have to meet THEIR standards before anyone else can get and use it. What makes you think they will allow you to do that? You have the freedom of speech, but they don't have to let you transmit your crap on their systems. Remember that. Heck, they could even parse things so that this rant may disappear in the future because it was deemed to be "too subsersive". Why would your totally locked-down hardware even let you see it? It wouldn't.
There are lots of bad things that happen when access to knowledge is centralized and there is no way to get around the gatekeepers. Just remember that. It is a big issue, but these small steps are designed to fool you and lull you into thinking it's not a big deal. Look at the big picture of freedom and think how events of today may play out down the road and try to figure out what people really want, not just what they get today.
(Ok so maybe they have some hardware, but they looked like they were talking about software in the press release.)
But seriously. Do you remember back in elementary school? The way that you would have math class and do some math problems, and some of them word problems? A word problem being a math problem where the data sent into it and/or the data generated by it is given real-world meaning. Do you remember how some people couldn't "get" the word problems because they couldn't see how to make the math work with real world words wrapped around it? Do you remember how you thought it was really easy and then you went on to become a real hardcore geek? Do you remember how those people who couldn't "get" word problems weren't very good at math?
Q: What ever happened to those people who sucked at word problems?
A: They grew up and started patenting solutions to "word problems" errr no wait I mean "algorithms and processes embodied in software designed to create a technical effect". I would never want to be accused of trivializing the amazing difficult process of giving real-world meaning to math. After all, doing abstract math on a computer, even if it's really hard, isn't patentable, so the last step...making the math correspond to something in the real world, must be a really really really big and important step to take something from being unpatentable to patentable. And I would certainly hate to compare that step to being able to do a word problem. That would be rather snide, wouldn't it?
But, this is the problem. We're arguing against people who don't "get" word problems and who therefore think they're not math anymore, so it's ok to patent them. Perhaps sending all of the patent examiners, judges, VC's, patent lawyers, CEO's and everyone else involved back to elementary school to let them learn how to do word problems will settle this once and for all.
Simply put... there's no such thing as an absolute value.
Yes there is: #define ABS(x) ((x)<0?-(x):(x))
:P
Actually, instead of a boycott of products now, we can stage a "returnfest" whereby everyone buys something once a week and then returns it. Amazing...they're giving people a way to cost them money without actually doing anything illegal.