Nobody outside of the company has access to the source code, so nobody other than the company can make upgrades, changes, etc.
But wait. Isn't there a "last open source snapshot" out there from just before they closed the source? If so, then you can make upgrades. If not, then noone cared about the program much so who cares anyway? If the license was under BSD/X, then the company has done something disappointing, but perfectly legal and a good example of what the GPL is designed to prevent. I don't think the GPL is always the best option, but if you want to make sure something is always available, then you should use it and not one of the other licenses. If the Luthis license was GPL, and other people contributed code and licensed their code under the GPL, then the company is in violation of the GPL. Otherwise, the whiners are just crybabies who don't understand the rules of the game.
I have a little open source project under the X license right now. At some future date, I may decide to make it commercial, and stop development of the open source branch. So what? I can do that in either of two cases. 1. I wrote all the code. 2. The license allows me to do that. You could cry all you wanted about me being a meanie, but you wouldn't make me feel bad, even if I had done all the coding and released it under the GPL and then closed it. The only thing the licenses guarantee is that the specific version with the open license will remain open.
Because you get more power per unit of weight and volume out of burning hydrogen+oxygen, rather than storing the energy in all the chemicals in a battery. This is the reason that rockets which need a high energy/weight ratio burn hydrogen.
I have the feeling that the case is not ripe because noone was actually threatened with a lawsuit. The lawyers say things like "You may be sued under the DMCA if you do blah", but they never say, "You will be sued under the DMCA if you do blah."
To the average person, there is no difference between those two statements, but in the world of lawyerly bullshit, they play with words (cf. Bill Clinton, who needs a dictionary to find out what the meaning of the word "is" is (scuze me while I mop up some of the irony that just dripped off that last statement)) so John Ashcroft, being the government's lawyer, also has to play those games since that's how the game is played.
So, until someone actually gets the little letter in the mail saying that they ARE being sued or charged under this law, they don't have a case even though the rest of the world knows that letters saying "You really really really might probably have a good chance of being sued." are a threat.
As many people have pointed out, if someone comes to your little store and says "It would be a real shame if an accident had to happen to such a nice little store like this." they are threatening you. It's just that lawyers get away with things like that since the only way to stop them is to sue them or arrest them. Which would require other lawyers to go along with it. How likely is that? Well, let's just say that I don't think your Zamboni dealership in Hell is going to be doing much business any time soon.
The scary thing is that the same technology that lets everyone be their own publisher allows them to steal content. For that reason, I don't see this happening for a long time, if ever. (Without a revolution.)
All data can be written as bits and those bits are easy to move around and copy because we have such powerful machines and networks.
The companies that thrive on scarcity of bits will succeed in making more and more stringent laws to stop the flow of those bits until such a point as poeple rise up (as in 250 million guns).
Then, people and government will eventually realize that:
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO HAVE STRONG COPYRIGHT PROTECTION AND FREEDOM SIMULTANEOUSLY NO MATTER WHAT "TECHNOLOGY" OR "LAWS" PEOPLE TRY TO IMPLEMENT..
Understanding that this problem cannot be solved with technological means, understanding that this problem cannot be solved by throwing everyone in jail, and understanding that artists still need to be paid for what they do...
A national tax on storage media will be institituted and will be used to make sure that artists make a decent (if not extravagent) living. Sort of like what happens with tapes and CD's today, except the taxes may go up somewhat. But, the taxes will never get too high because again, 250 million guns.
Re:Nukes back on the table?
on
Bert Is Evil
·
· Score: 1
Just wait until the U.S congress finds out that they've violated copyrights!
It's worse than that...they used the Internet to steal copyrighted DIGITAL content, not just any old copyrighted thing.:) Since as we all know, when you bring digital into the picture, it changes everything....
Does "available to all implementers worldwide" include countries like Mexico who are already telling patent-holders where they can stick it?
This is the one thing I feared the most,and figured would happen sooner or later. Since it's so cheap and simple to write software that violates these patents, the rest of the world will ignore them, while the US drowns in a quagmire of lawsuits. In 50 years, the US will be behind the rest of the world (and yes I mean all kinds of "third world" countries of today).Sad.
The funny thing is, this is another one of those "big American companies fucking over the rest of the world" issues, it's just that people don't realize it yet. The difference here is that it's a lot easier to ignore because there aren't those huge startup costs like you have with manufacturing drugs or other material goods.
I guess my problem with the whole idea is this. A computer is a complicated circuit. You flip a lot of switches to make it do something interesting. You would not give a patent on flipping one switch on a machine with a simple circuit...so what's the minimum number of switches/circuits you need to have before you allow patenting.
As I said in my post...I am a math person. I see this as an induction argument in that if you cannot patent an arrangement of switches on all machines with
Basically, the argument that things get complicated so we have to let them be patented is what I call the "OH MY GOD THE NUMBERS ARE SO BIG THAT I CANT UNDERSTAND THEM SO SOMETHING MAGICAL MUST HAPPEN!!!" argument which I think is complete bullshit and has no place coming out of the mouth of anyone who wants to be a "technical" person in any sense of the word. Use of that argument means the speaker does not have the ability to think abstractly, and needs to go back to school to learn how to think more gooder.:P
Ok, I want to understand this. You apparently write software, so you understand what software and algorithms are.
Do you feel that software patents are patents on uses of machines? In other words, given a particular software patent, do you feel that it is possible to violate the patent merely by using a machine you already own..such as by typing in a certain string of bits? Do you feel that if I own a piece of property, I should be able to use it? For example, if I own a computer, should I be able to type any string of characters I want into the machine? If it happens to be hooked up to a network, I may end up writing a computer program and possibly compiling/distributing it? And if not, why shouldn't I be allowed to use my own property. Why should I have a piece of property that is perfectly capable of doing something but not be allowed to use it to do that because someone bought the right from the government to stop me from doing something with it? And I don't mean like driving my car into a crowd of people, this is the government telling me I must stop using my property because someone else bought the exclusive right to use the property for some purpose. Should I get compensation under the 5th amendment takings clause for the loss of use of my property?
Thought question: Let's assume that lamps are new and that the idea of turning on a lamp is novel and nonobvious. Would you allow someone to get a patent for turning on a lamp that already exists? This is the simplest case of a software patent. You take a machine with circuitry that already exists and by flipping some of the user-configurable switches in the machine, you make the machine do something interesting (processing electricity to make a light shine). In other words, you could get a patent on the process carried out by the lamp, and that would prevent the lampmaker or anyone else from letting people know that they can turn on the lamp. Is this a good idea? Why should someone be able to get a patent that covers a process that can be carried out in a machine that already exists, and which can be started just by flipping some switches in that machine? I don't see how this can be justified.
If software patents protect the "process" itself, without being linked to use on any machine, then isn't this just a pure idea which shouldn't be patentable anyway? When designing a algorithm (solving a math problem), you go through the same steps in figuring out what to do regardless of whether or not you write the solution down on paper, or you type it into a computer. Why should a solution to a math problem be protected somehow just because the person who solved it said that it could be used to solve a word problem (technical problem/engineering problem) and that the solution can be encoded into a machine that will do the arithmetic when real numbers are put in for variables in the algorithm. After all, that is all that computers do, they take solutions to math problems for which they have been given inputs, and they carry out the arithmetic of those solutions based on those inputs. Why should this be protected because a person says that a machine carries out the arithmetic instead of a person using a pencil and paper?
I just don't understand what sort of perspective would make it seem ok to have software patents because the only two ways I can look at software, either as pure thought, or as a use of a machine don't seem like legitimate reasons to patent something. I can understand a patent on a real machine, but taking a machine that exists and flipping some switches on it is not making a new machine in my book.
Do you have a different perspective on this? I am not swayed by arguments like "small companies need patents to survive" as part of this argument. That kind of a statement is appropriate for discussing the economic issues behind software patents without worrying about whether or not the underlying patent is pure thought or not. If you wanted to say that "regardless of whether or not these things are pure thought or not, there are economic issues..." then that's fine for that kind of an argument. However, economic arguments like that have no bearing on whether or not you are patenting pure thought or not.
At any rate, I am sorry if I am being annoying and longwinded here, it's just that based on my math background, it is obvious to me that software patents are patents on pure thought (pure mathematics) regardless of whether or not someone says that they do the math "on a machine" or "on a network" or "with pictures" or "to solve this real world engineering problem" (which I call word problems...you wrap a math problem in words to represent a real-world situation).
There's also no "right" in "copyright". If it were labeled correctly it would be called "temporary statutory copyprivilege". Fair use is a right, "copyright" is a privilege.
This is mostly off-topic, but a little related to the "let's scare the lawyers" idea.
We should start patenting legal arguments and procedures and ideas. After all, a legal argument is a series of logical steps depending on some premises that lead to a conclusion. Computer programs are a type of formal logic, so if you can patent formal logic by saying it does something useful because it's being run on a computer, why not patent formal logic by saying that it does something useful for making a legal case in court?
They are both processes that use other objects to carry them out. If I had 10 million dollars lying around, you better believe I would start trying to patent legal arguments as "processes" to show the courts just how incredibly stupid this land-grab mentality on pure ideas is getting. Heck, almost all law firms use computers to do at least a little bit of their work, so getting patents on things likea method and apparatus to write up court papers, a method and apparatus to look for rights management violations, a method and apparatus for filing court papers, a method and apparatus for recording and organizing court proceedings, a method and apparatus for organizing and finding information in legal databases, a method an apparatus for giving legal arguments using technology to present evidence, a method and apparatus for presenting legal points on a screen (a la powerpoint) as you make them to the jury, so they don't forget them, a method and apparatus for using a machine to edit your argument on the fly as you listen to the oppositions' arguments, a method and apparatus for reading your arguments (off a computer tablet as opposed to a pad of paper).
These are just a few of the obvious technical ones that come up.
Imagine if noone has ever used legal idea A to fight legal idea B. Then, why not get a patent on the process of using idea A to fight idea B? You will have to go through steps, you will be increasing the legal knowledge in the world because all other lawyers will now see that they can use this technique in other cases. Why not force them to pay you for coming up with this idea? And, even better, every time a precedent-setting case comes up, everyone go out and patent processes that use this precedent in other instances to make sure that no IP gets "lost" out into the public domain. That's the way it should be.:P
Wow, this whole thread kind of reminds me of this movie I saw a little while ago called Galaxy Quest, where there was this TV show about space, and people took it way too seriously, and debated and argued about every little inconsistency in the show to make up for their otherwise empty lives. Kind of ironic and funny when rl ends up following a movie script almost perfectly.
It's a cancer that eats up valuable IP like Pac-Man eats up those little dots. And not only that, using it makes you fat and unpopular with the ladies. Trust me, I know.:(
Thank you for finding this. didn't want to read through the whole thing. I mean imagine what happens if you fuck with the air traffic computers near an airport and start causing planes to crash into each other, or if you destroy the command and control for the military during an operation and people get killed. There are times and places where messing with computers will kill people, and even if noone died, they COULD have if you had succeeded.
There are technological measures in this Product that are designed to prevent unlicensed or illegal use of the Product. You agree that we may use those measures.
Gotta love MS talking about vague "technological measures" that you agree to let them use (on you).:) Remote shutdown/time limited use anyone?
No Rental. You may not rent, lease, lend or provide commercial hosting services to third parties with the Product.
Rofl, so you can't set up a mom-and-pop webhosting service using this, or set this up in a net cafe? Does this fuck over IT outsourcing and temporary rentals or what?
Consent to Use of Data. You agree that Microsoft and its affiliates may collect and use technical information gathered in any manner as part of the product support services provided to you, if any, related to the Product. Microsoft may use this information solely to improve our products or to provide customized services or technologies to you. Microsoft may disclose this information to others, but not in a form that personally identifies you.
Umm right. So, they will use this info to customize services, so they will have to have many details about me, but when they release this data, it will not be in a form that personally identifies me? However, given enough time and effort mining the data vs. credit card or IP address info etc..., I am fairly certain that I will be identified.
Yeah, it was RSA's fault for not smashing Phil's blatant infringement of RSA's patented, and therefore legitimate, IP space. The real lesson here is that open source software is an IP killer and needs to be stamped out.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody outside of the company has access to the source code, so nobody other than the company can make upgrades, changes, etc.
But wait. Isn't there a "last open source snapshot" out there from just before they closed the source? If so, then you can make upgrades. If not, then noone cared about the program much so who cares anyway? If the license was under BSD/X, then the company has done something disappointing, but perfectly legal and a good example of what the GPL is designed to prevent. I don't think the GPL is always the best option, but if you want to make sure something is always available, then you should use it and not one of the other licenses. If the Luthis license was GPL, and other people contributed code and licensed their code under the GPL, then the company is in violation of the GPL. Otherwise, the whiners are just crybabies who don't understand the rules of the game.
I have a little open source project under the X license right now. At some future date, I may decide to make it commercial, and stop development of the open source branch. So what? I can do that in either of two cases. 1. I wrote all the code. 2. The license allows me to do that. You could cry all you wanted about me being a meanie, but you wouldn't make me feel bad, even if I had done all the coding and released it under the GPL and then closed it. The only thing the licenses guarantee is that the specific version with the open license will remain open.
You suck. I wanted to post this. :(
What technology are you talking about? HTTP?
Microphones, (digital) VCR replacements, CD burners, movie cameras...
Because you get more power per unit of weight and volume out of burning hydrogen+oxygen, rather than storing the energy in all the chemicals in a battery. This is the reason that rockets which need a high energy/weight ratio burn hydrogen.
I have the feeling that the case is not ripe because noone was actually threatened with a lawsuit. The lawyers say things like "You may be sued under the DMCA if you do blah", but they never say, "You will be sued under the DMCA if you do blah."
To the average person, there is no difference between those two statements, but in the world of lawyerly bullshit, they play with words (cf. Bill Clinton, who needs a dictionary to find out what the meaning of the word "is" is (scuze me while I mop up some of the irony that just dripped off that last statement)) so John Ashcroft, being the government's lawyer, also has to play those games since that's how the game is played.
So, until someone actually gets the little letter in the mail saying that they ARE being sued or charged under this law, they don't have a case even though the rest of the world knows that letters saying "You really really really might probably have a good chance of being sued." are a threat.
As many people have pointed out, if someone comes to your little store and says "It would be a real shame if an accident had to happen to such a nice little store like this." they are threatening you. It's just that lawyers get away with things like that since the only way to stop them is to sue them or arrest them. Which would require other lawyers to go along with it. How likely is that? Well, let's just say that I don't think your Zamboni dealership in Hell is going to be doing much business any time soon.
necessary to protect personally identifying information;
:P
Does this mean you can fix XP so that MS can't track you and can't know who is actually using their software...?
The scary thing is that the same technology that lets everyone be their own publisher allows them to steal content. For that reason, I don't see this happening for a long time, if ever. (Without a revolution.)
All data can be written as bits and those bits are easy to move around and copy because we have such powerful machines and networks.
The companies that thrive on scarcity of bits will succeed in making more and more stringent laws to stop the flow of those bits until such a point as poeple rise up (as in 250 million guns).
Then, people and government will eventually realize that:
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO HAVE STRONG COPYRIGHT PROTECTION AND FREEDOM SIMULTANEOUSLY NO MATTER WHAT "TECHNOLOGY" OR "LAWS" PEOPLE TRY TO IMPLEMENT..
Understanding that this problem cannot be solved with technological means, understanding that this problem cannot be solved by throwing everyone in jail, and understanding that artists still need to be paid for what they do...
A national tax on storage media will be institituted and will be used to make sure that artists make a decent (if not extravagent) living. Sort of like what happens with tapes and CD's today, except the taxes may go up somewhat. But, the taxes will never get too high because again, 250 million guns.
Just wait until the U.S congress finds out that they've violated copyrights!
:) Since as we all know, when you bring digital into the picture, it changes everything....
It's worse than that...they used the Internet to steal copyrighted DIGITAL content, not just any old copyrighted thing.
Redshift Doppler effect? False coloring in the image?
That was good. I was going to scream at you until I saw the .sig.
Does "available to all implementers worldwide" include countries like Mexico who are already telling patent-holders where they can stick it?
This is the one thing I feared the most,and figured would happen sooner or later. Since it's so cheap and simple to write software that violates these patents, the rest of the world will ignore them, while the US drowns in a quagmire of lawsuits. In 50 years, the US will be behind the rest of the world (and yes I mean all kinds of "third world" countries of today).Sad.
The funny thing is, this is another one of those "big American companies fucking over the rest of the world" issues, it's just that people don't realize it yet. The difference here is that it's a lot easier to ignore because there aren't those huge startup costs like you have with manufacturing drugs or other material goods.
I guess my problem with the whole idea is this. A computer is a complicated circuit. You flip a lot of switches to make it do something interesting. You would not give a patent on flipping one switch on a machine with a simple circuit...so what's the minimum number of switches/circuits you need to have before you allow patenting.
:P
As I said in my post...I am a math person. I see this as an induction argument in that if you cannot patent an arrangement of switches on all machines with
Basically, the argument that things get complicated so we have to let them be patented is what I call the "OH MY GOD THE NUMBERS ARE SO BIG THAT I CANT UNDERSTAND THEM SO SOMETHING MAGICAL MUST HAPPEN!!!" argument which I think is complete bullshit and has no place coming out of the mouth of anyone who wants to be a "technical" person in any sense of the word. Use of that argument means the speaker does not have the ability to think abstractly, and needs to go back to school to learn how to think more gooder.
I own and make money from software patents.
Ok, I want to understand this. You apparently write software, so you understand what software and algorithms are.
Do you feel that software patents are patents on uses of machines? In other words, given a particular software patent, do you feel that it is possible to violate the patent merely by using a machine you already own..such as by typing in a certain string of bits? Do you feel that if I own a piece of property, I should be able to use it? For example, if I own a computer, should I be able to type any string of characters I want into the machine? If it happens to be hooked up to a network, I may end up writing a computer program and possibly compiling/distributing it? And if not, why shouldn't I be allowed to use my own property. Why should I have a piece of property that is perfectly capable of doing something but not be allowed to use it to do that because someone bought the right from the government to stop me from doing something with it? And I don't mean like driving my car into a crowd of people, this is the government telling me I must stop using my property because someone else bought the exclusive right to use the property for some purpose. Should I get compensation under the 5th amendment takings clause for the loss of use of my property?
Thought question: Let's assume that lamps are new and that the idea of turning on a lamp is novel and nonobvious. Would you allow someone to get a patent for turning on a lamp that already exists? This is the simplest case of a software patent. You take a machine with circuitry that already exists and by flipping some of the user-configurable switches in the machine, you make the machine do something interesting (processing electricity to make a light shine). In other words, you could get a patent on the process carried out by the lamp, and that would prevent the lampmaker or anyone else from letting people know that they can turn on the lamp. Is this a good idea? Why should someone be able to get a patent that covers a process that can be carried out in a machine that already exists, and which can be started just by flipping some switches in that machine? I don't see how this can be justified.
If software patents protect the "process" itself, without being linked to use on any machine, then isn't this just a pure idea which shouldn't be patentable anyway? When designing a algorithm (solving a math problem), you go through the same steps in figuring out what to do regardless of whether or not you write the solution down on paper, or you type it into a computer. Why should a solution to a math problem be protected somehow just because the person who solved it said that it could be used to solve a word problem (technical problem/engineering problem) and that the solution can be encoded into a machine that will do the arithmetic when real numbers are put in for variables in the algorithm. After all, that is all that computers do, they take solutions to math problems for which they have been given inputs, and they carry out the arithmetic of those solutions based on those inputs. Why should this be protected because a person says that a machine carries out the arithmetic instead of a person using a pencil and paper?
I just don't understand what sort of perspective would make it seem ok to have software patents because the only two ways I can look at software, either as pure thought, or as a use of a machine don't seem like legitimate reasons to patent something. I can understand a patent on a real machine, but taking a machine that exists and flipping some switches on it is not making a new machine in my book.
Do you have a different perspective on this? I am not swayed by arguments like "small companies need patents to survive" as part of this argument. That kind of a statement is appropriate for discussing the economic issues behind software patents without worrying about whether or not the underlying patent is pure thought or not. If you wanted to say that "regardless of whether or not these things are pure thought or not, there are economic issues..." then that's fine for that kind of an argument. However, economic arguments like that have no bearing on whether or not you are patenting pure thought or not.
At any rate, I am sorry if I am being annoying and longwinded here, it's just that based on my math background, it is obvious to me that software patents are patents on pure thought (pure mathematics) regardless of whether or not someone says that they do the math "on a machine" or "on a network" or "with pictures" or "to solve this real world engineering problem" (which I call word problems...you wrap a math problem in words to represent a real-world situation).
Umm no, he was doing this to make money, so it's ok.
There's also no "right" in "copyright". If it were labeled correctly it would be called "temporary statutory copyprivilege". Fair use is a right, "copyright" is a privilege.
This is mostly off-topic, but a little related to the "let's scare the lawyers" idea.
:P
We should start patenting legal arguments and procedures and ideas. After all, a legal argument is a series of logical steps depending on some premises that lead to a conclusion. Computer programs are a type of formal logic, so if you can patent formal logic by saying it does something useful because it's being run on a computer, why not patent formal logic by saying that it does something useful for making a legal case in court?
They are both processes that use other objects to carry them out. If I had 10 million dollars lying around, you better believe I would start trying to patent legal arguments as "processes" to show the courts just how incredibly stupid this land-grab mentality on pure ideas is getting. Heck, almost all law firms use computers to do at least a little bit of their work, so getting patents on things likea method and apparatus to write up court papers, a method and apparatus to look for rights management violations, a method and apparatus for filing court papers, a method and apparatus for recording and organizing court proceedings, a method and apparatus for organizing and finding information in legal databases, a method an apparatus for giving legal arguments using technology to present evidence, a method and apparatus for presenting legal points on a screen (a la powerpoint) as you make them to the jury, so they don't forget them, a method and apparatus for using a machine to edit your argument on the fly as you listen to the oppositions' arguments, a method and apparatus for reading your arguments (off a computer tablet as opposed to a pad of paper).
These are just a few of the obvious technical ones that come up.
Imagine if noone has ever used legal idea A to fight legal idea B. Then, why not get a patent on the process of using idea A to fight idea B? You will have to go through steps, you will be increasing the legal knowledge in the world because all other lawyers will now see that they can use this technique in other cases. Why not force them to pay you for coming up with this idea? And, even better, every time a precedent-setting case comes up, everyone go out and patent processes that use this precedent in other instances to make sure that no IP gets "lost" out into the public domain. That's the way it should be.
</rant>
Bleh.
Rofl, effectively this guy is saying that there is nothing wrong with making mp3's, but with typing chmod o+r filename.
Wow, this whole thread kind of reminds me of this movie I saw a little while ago called Galaxy Quest, where there was this TV show about space, and people took it way too seriously, and debated and argued about every little inconsistency in the show to make up for their otherwise empty lives. Kind of ironic and funny when rl ends up following a movie script almost perfectly.
Good lord, will they be running this out of the Office of Free Thought over at the Ministry of Truth?
This is not to say that this will be terrible, since I guess any sort of aggregation of information will have problems...but cmon...
It's a cancer that eats up valuable IP like Pac-Man eats up those little dots. And not only that, using it makes you fat and unpopular with the ladies. Trust me, I know. :(
Thank you for finding this. didn't want to read through the whole thing. I mean imagine what happens if you fuck with the air traffic computers near an airport and start causing planes to crash into each other, or if you destroy the command and control for the military during an operation and people get killed. There are times and places where messing with computers will kill people, and even if noone died, they COULD have if you had succeeded.
There are technological measures in this Product that are designed to prevent unlicensed or illegal use of the Product. You agree that we may use those measures.
:) Remote shutdown/time limited use anyone?
Gotta love MS talking about vague "technological measures" that you agree to let them use (on you).
No Rental. You may not rent, lease, lend or provide commercial hosting services to third parties with the Product.
Rofl, so you can't set up a mom-and-pop webhosting service using this, or set this up in a net cafe? Does this fuck over IT outsourcing and temporary rentals or what?
Consent to Use of Data. You agree that Microsoft and its affiliates may collect and use technical information gathered in any manner as part of the product support services provided to you, if any, related to the Product. Microsoft may use this information solely to improve our products or to provide customized services or technologies to you. Microsoft may disclose this information to others, but not in a form that personally identifies you.
Umm right. So, they will use this info to customize services, so they will have to have many details about me, but when they release this data, it will not be in a form that personally identifies me? However, given enough time and effort mining the data vs. credit card or IP address info etc..., I am fairly certain that I will be identified.
Yeah, it was RSA's fault for not smashing Phil's blatant infringement of RSA's patented, and therefore legitimate, IP space. The real lesson here is that open source software is an IP killer and needs to be stamped out.
Yeah so the company with 19 billion dollars in cash refuses to spend a few million to prevent everyone else from spending billions.