Remove "(or licensed)" from your letter, your future comments, and your mind. This whole fight is about the restoration of rights, including the doctrine of "first sale". Once you admit to even the possibility that you're "licensing" the content the battle is over. You only have the rights the license grants you.
Note that whether a license exists or not is irrelevent. It's the nature of the transaction that determines whether it's a sale or not.
So, the people who opened the anthrax-laced letters are at fault as well?
Maybe we should hold envelope manufacturer's liable for creating a product that can be used to mail powdery substances?
Remember the "Good Times" virus hoax? It was impossible to get a virus via email at that time. Who made it possible for email to execute untrusted code?
Who's really at fault? The people who write violating code and companies that ignore security in design issues so that proper, routine use of their product exposes their customers to unnecessary and unforeseen risks. It's negligent and the consumer shout have some right to redress.
Nine states that rejected the settlement had accused Microsoft of using this provision to prohibit computer makers from enforcing their patents against the software giant.
So, you think it's a coincidence they dropped one of the nine states' biggest objections just before asking for dismissal?
Suppose a OSS GPL'ed browser was super popular 5 years ago? Then Netscape *still* couldn't make money off it since people would use the free alternative.
You missed the word illegal in the post you responded to. Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market. If there'd been an OSS GPL'ed browser available at that time, it too would have suffered the fate of Netscape because of the barrier to entry on the Windows desktop. Although it might have contributed to Netscape's failure, it wouldn't have been illegal for it to do so.
To put things in other perspective. How much money is MS loosing to GCC or media players like Winamp?
If I had to guess, I'd say nothing. At least nothing significant to Microsoft's bottom line. Since they bundle Media Player, few people will go get Winamp. Since you really need MFC support to do Windows code, most developers are going to get a compiler that easily supports MFC. It's that darned "barrier to entry" again.
By "moral right as an individual to copy for the benefit of others" are you refering to "fair use", or ar you refering to some "right to pirate regardless of the consitutional basis for copyright"? If the former, then I'm not sure this project has much at all to do with specifically addressing fair use. (Maybe it does, who knows?). I think the fair use issues of the DMCA, etc., are going to have to be tested in court. Historically, the courts have been very reasonable about ensuring peoples fair use rights. The problem is a legislature whose minds are guided by their wallets and have no clue about the impact of DRM on fair use.
If the latter, then I think your just plain wrong. Copyrights aren't evil, in and of themselves. Ridiculous extensions subverting the concept of "limited time" to mean longer than anyone lives is the problem.
What you say is true, today, because the "IP holders" are middle-men. The buy IP rights from the IP creators and sell them. Lessig is promoting a program where the real IP creators, the artists and inventors, have a chance to regain some degree of control over their work.
The idea of the Internet as a public commons is anathema to the DMCA supporters because, with a global network of free distribution, their business model is dead. In order to survive they must protect their model with legislation, or adapt. Coporations do not adapt well to change.
I'm cautiously optimistic about Lessig's program, because it could prove to be an industry self-help program that can help them adapt, reduce their reliance on legislation and strong-arm tactics, and still provide value to their customers and shareholders.
Are you (like me) just trying the "free" movie? It could be that they just use Real for that.
On an off-topic note, I have the plugin in both Netscape and Galeon and I still get the "not detected" problem. What are these sites doing to "detect" plugins, and why? Why don't they just send the damn stream and let the client worry about how to handle it.....
Reviewing the proposed final judgment against Microsoft I find a
glaring problem regarding the current state of the software industry.
There are a variety of proscribed actions against OEM's, ISV's, and
IHV's, yet what exactly constitutes a member of any of those groups,
and what information they may have access to, is apparently left to
Microsoft's discretion.
Due to Microsoft's prolonged maintenance of their monopoly power, most
corporations that would reasonably be classified in those groups have
been severely weakened. The strongest realistic competitor to
Microsoft's products today come from the world of "open source"
software.
The open source software community functions on a completely
different economic model than Microsoft's traditional competitors. They
develop and distribute software at no cost, operating instead on a model of
service and support. Absolutely key to this model is inter-operability
with Microsoft's line of operating systems. While open source based
software organizations have produced products with strong feature sets
and security, due to the open nature of their product they simply
cannot benefit from any judgment that allows Microsoft to not
disclose inter-operability information for any reason.
In particular, Section III, paragraph J. item 1, allows Microsoft to
restrict access to compatibility information that "would compromise
the security" of certain information. Microsoft would have the public
believe that security information must be secret in order to be
secure. This is patently false and has been proven in the security
community. As an example, Microsoft's IIS web server software has had
a long history of regular security breaches, despite the complete
in-availability of it's security information outside of Microsoft. In
contrast, the Apache web server, the full source code of which is
publicly available, has not had a major security breach in 4 years.
Open inspection of Microsoft's security information is key not only for
inter-operability, but for consumer protection as well.
Of greater concern is section 2(c) in the following section,
precluding those who do not "meet(s) reasonable, objective standards
established by Microsoft for certifying the authenticity and viability
of its business". Microsoft has stated clearly that it does not believe open
source software development has a role in the software industry. On
the contrary, several companies have been established on open source
software. Further, said software was in development several years
before these companies even attempted to become "viable" businesses.
Microsoft would not have acknowledged software such as sendmail,
apache, or Linux as authentic and viable business at the time of their
development. Today, Sendmail, Inc., The Apache Group, and Linux
companies such as Red Hat, Caldera, Suse, and Mandrake are in business
based on that software. Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard are
testaments to the fact that two people in a garage is a "viable
business" in this industry. I doubt if Microsoft would certify the
authenticity and viability of today's origins of tomorrow's
corporations.
I have more concerns about the other specifics of this judgment, but
the final summary is this: It provides for to much control of
interpretation and application to the convicted perpetrator itself,
Microsoft. This judgment provides little realistic relief for
traditional competitors, no relief for open source competitors, and no
hope for either home or corporate consumers wishing to extricate
themselves from Microsoft's history of oppression.
The entire software industry is poised for a drastic change in market
economics. Open source software is proving to be a disruptive
technology that offers an enormous opportunity for independent
software developers to thrive if, and only if, Microsoft is not
allowed to hold them at bay with continued anti-competitive practices.
Maybe not. If all they are doing is emulating the "command syntax or state machine" of OpenGL and the underlying implementation does not infringe upon the patent (which I have to think is the case, or SGI probably would have objected), then wouldn't this simply be a method of maintaining "compatibility"? If so, I think the anti-trust implications of trying to stomp on the compatibility layer would be fairlyl risky for MS.
government contractors... are allowed to retain their software for commercial use
This is ok too, since the result is public domain. Since it is public domain, however, others are (should be) equally free to use it commercially as well. Unlike the GPL (or any other "open source" license), you can take public domain stuff and put it in a proprietary product.
Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise
So if institutions (universities, contractors, whatever) are writing code (or any other copyrightable material) according to a contracted federal directive, then that constitutes a "work for hire" and the copyright should fall into the public domain.
(In reality, I expect ownership of the copyrights are contractually transfered to the developer, but my not-a-lawyer-mind tells me that the intent of the copyright code was to place federally developed materials in the public domain where all could make use of it.
)
Note also that "public domain" != "open source". Although the source would be "open", it would be open for inclusion in both open source and commercial products absent licensing fees for everyone. Commercial developers could take it and extend it however they feel it would best attract paying customers. Open source developers could use it for whatever reasons suits their purpose. There's no need for arguing over which license is best, because without copyright the federal government has no authority to license it at all.
The only burden this puts on university research is that if they want to license their research, they have to acquire private funding and not "contaminate" that particular project with federal funds. This is as it should be. If you don't want to share with the taxpayers, don't use their money.
If the company they give the R&D funds to can commercialize a product and get it on the GSA schedule, the government frequently considers that a job well done.
If it's open source, it doesn't need to be "commercialized" to stay available and continue to be improved. Further, if "and if you find a commercial use for this, you can have it" is effective in some way, wouldn't "if you find any use for this, you can have it" be even more effective?
It would be silly to delay the trailer until every scene was edited
Translation: "It would be silly to wait until we know what our product actually is before we start trying to pursuade people to buy it. The only thing that matters is that they buy it, not whether it works, or even does what we say it does."
Yeah. I'm ok with that. It's not like I actually need to make intelligent decisions about where to spend my money. I've got plenty to spread around for things that aren't really what they say they are.
Use it as an opportunity to explain the business hazards of.doc virii and sell them services to set all their office PC's to use RTF as a default format. Then sell them an email gateway that detects inbound.docs and reformats them into.rtf files for the protection of their assets.
Even if you don't actually sell them the service, you've given them valuable advice and underscored the fact that this type of knowledge is why they pay you.
Only put trusted directories in your path. If you use any directory that users (including you) can write to in your path, then you're vulnerable to this. Also never put relative paths (including [if not especially] '.'). An 'su' could be dropped in any random directory just waiting for you to call it when you're in that directory.
I understand that. And because the theatrical releases are staggered worldwide, of course the DVD releases must be as well. The studio execs think, hmm, we could:
convert theaters to digital,
print more films,
change the initial distribution of the limited prints we have,
release DVD's independent of global (variable) theatrical release dates,
or think of any other way...
Naah! We'll just legislate that it's illegal for our customers to use technology to get our product before we're ready to make it available to them at our own, completely arbitrary schedule.
They need to reverse the process and ask: How can we use technology to make our product more available to more people?
The industry needs to create a system that ensures people don't rip "Buffy" before it's shown in Australia or Europe or make their own DVD of the show before the episode is out on DVD.
Wrong. The industry needs to update their distribution methods to account for a global economy. Their existing methods treat Australian and European customers like an "after-thought" market. This is a complete failure to leverage digital distribution to the content providers' advantage. Why not a global simultaneous release? Because it used to require shipping large quantities over vast distances. What these companies don't seem to realize is the digital distribution they are fighting could drive their own distribution costs down and improve geographic coverage with their "authorized" product, cutting into the market for unauthorized distribution to areas that are they artificially cut out of the supply chain.
A global release completely obviates the need for region encoding. They are using technology to force the market to adhere to their current business practices rather than using it to adapt and adress consumers evolving needs. How they think they can keep this up is beyond me...
Once you start receiving Word or Excel docs that you can't open (but are expected to be able to open) from people who don't have a clue as to how to save in a format that WILL open correctly under other versions of the software, you're almost forced to go out and get the new version, whether you want to or not.
Except that under Lindows, when you can't read a newer version of an office file in your version of Word, Excel, etc., you can open it with StarOffice, OpenOffice, KOffice or whatever else you have that might (and my experience has been that it usually does) work. This breaks the forced upgrade cycle.
As for me, I'm 3+ Microsoft free years in a Fortune 100 company.
Powell is making the same case that you are: There's no compelling economic reason for consumer's to get broadband. But he goes farther, saying that the reason there's no compelling content is that content holders are unwilling to risk their "intellectual property" by making it available. IOW, if the content owners loosened their grip and made stuff available, people would get broadband so that they could access it.
I just keep remembering VHS tapes going for >$100. Nobody bought them and lot's of people copied them. As soon as they came out ~$20 people bought way more then 5x more and (home) copying virtually stopped. As soon as some daring content provider makes comes up with a novel way of making broadband content worthwhile, they'll make a fortune. What these providers need to understand is that all the consumer wants is economic and convenient entertainment. If they're willing to provide it, they'll get our business. If they're not, people will either find some other form of entertainment, or find a way to make the existing entertainment more convenient.
Re:Worse than running something as root
on
Linux Virus Alert
·
· Score: 2
Better yet:
yourself$ make install prefix=/tmp/fake-installroot
Anything that "has to be root" to install will fail, showing you clearly what it's trying to do. Everything else is "installed" in the target directory so you can see what's happening there, too.
Neither Conduit nor Lewinski distracted us. The media distracted us with reports about Conduit and Lewinski. That's a huge difference, not in the end result, which is mega-corps slipping their laws through, but in how the mega-corps are slipping their laws through. Whoever controls the news media, controls what hits, or slips under, the radar.
Any media producer who has an interest in "digital content rights" (e.g. ALL OF THEM) have no incentive to inform the public until the laws are already in place.
No Constitutional right can be removed by an act of Congress.
That must make Skylarov feel soooo much better. Me, I'd like to not have to sit in jail while waiting for my rights to be restored by a judge when they shouldn't have been taken away in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
(Note: The actual text of the Adobe V. Softman decision seems to have been remove the CA courts site. If anyone know where it is, please post a link.
Note that whether a license exists or not is irrelevent.
It's the nature of the transaction that determines whether it's a sale or not.
Maybe we should hold envelope manufacturer's liable for creating a product that can be used to mail powdery substances?
Remember the "Good Times" virus hoax? It was impossible to get a virus via email at that time. Who made it possible for email to execute untrusted code?
Who's really at fault? The people who write violating code and companies that ignore security in design issues so that proper, routine use of their product exposes their customers to unnecessary and unforeseen risks. It's negligent and the consumer shout have some right to redress.
Nine states that rejected the settlement had accused Microsoft of using this provision to prohibit computer makers from enforcing their patents against the software giant.
So, you think it's a coincidence they dropped one of the nine states' biggest objections just before asking for dismissal?
You missed the word illegal in the post you responded to. Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market. If there'd been an OSS GPL'ed browser available at that time, it too would have suffered the fate of Netscape because of the barrier to entry on the Windows desktop. Although it might have contributed to Netscape's failure, it wouldn't have been illegal for it to do so.
To put things in other perspective. How much money is MS loosing to GCC or media players like Winamp?
If I had to guess, I'd say nothing. At least nothing significant to Microsoft's bottom line. Since they bundle Media Player, few people will go get Winamp. Since you really need MFC support to do Windows code, most developers are going to get a compiler that easily supports MFC. It's that darned "barrier to entry" again.
Go read the FOF
If the latter, then I think your just plain wrong. Copyrights aren't evil, in and of themselves. Ridiculous extensions subverting the concept of "limited time" to mean longer than anyone lives is the problem.
The idea of the Internet as a public commons is anathema to the DMCA supporters because, with a global network of free distribution, their business model is dead. In order to survive they must protect their model with legislation, or adapt. Coporations do not adapt well to change.
I'm cautiously optimistic about Lessig's program, because it could prove to be an industry self-help program that can help them adapt, reduce their reliance on legislation and strong-arm tactics, and still provide value to their customers and shareholders.
Hey, I can dream can't I?
On an off-topic note, I have the plugin in both Netscape and Galeon and I still get the "not detected" problem. What are these sites doing to "detect" plugins, and why? Why don't they just send the damn stream and let the client worry about how to handle it.....
For fun, here's what I wrote
Good, but please tell me you sent it, too!
Due to Microsoft's prolonged maintenance of their monopoly power, most corporations that would reasonably be classified in those groups have been severely weakened. The strongest realistic competitor to Microsoft's products today come from the world of "open source" software.
The open source software community functions on a completely different economic model than Microsoft's traditional competitors. They develop and distribute software at no cost, operating instead on a model of service and support. Absolutely key to this model is inter-operability with Microsoft's line of operating systems. While open source based software organizations have produced products with strong feature sets and security, due to the open nature of their product they simply cannot benefit from any judgment that allows Microsoft to not disclose inter-operability information for any reason.
In particular, Section III, paragraph J. item 1, allows Microsoft to restrict access to compatibility information that "would compromise the security" of certain information. Microsoft would have the public believe that security information must be secret in order to be secure. This is patently false and has been proven in the security community. As an example, Microsoft's IIS web server software has had a long history of regular security breaches, despite the complete in-availability of it's security information outside of Microsoft. In contrast, the Apache web server, the full source code of which is publicly available, has not had a major security breach in 4 years. Open inspection of Microsoft's security information is key not only for inter-operability, but for consumer protection as well.
Of greater concern is section 2(c) in the following section, precluding those who do not "meet(s) reasonable, objective standards established by Microsoft for certifying the authenticity and viability of its business". Microsoft has stated clearly that it does not believe open source software development has a role in the software industry. On the contrary, several companies have been established on open source software. Further, said software was in development several years before these companies even attempted to become "viable" businesses. Microsoft would not have acknowledged software such as sendmail, apache, or Linux as authentic and viable business at the time of their development. Today, Sendmail, Inc., The Apache Group, and Linux companies such as Red Hat, Caldera, Suse, and Mandrake are in business based on that software. Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard are testaments to the fact that two people in a garage is a "viable business" in this industry. I doubt if Microsoft would certify the authenticity and viability of today's origins of tomorrow's corporations.
I have more concerns about the other specifics of this judgment, but the final summary is this: It provides for to much control of interpretation and application to the convicted perpetrator itself, Microsoft. This judgment provides little realistic relief for traditional competitors, no relief for open source competitors, and no hope for either home or corporate consumers wishing to extricate themselves from Microsoft's history of oppression.
The entire software industry is poised for a drastic change in market economics. Open source software is proving to be a disruptive technology that offers an enormous opportunity for independent software developers to thrive if, and only if, Microsoft is not allowed to hold them at bay with continued anti-competitive practices.
Maybe not. If all they are doing is emulating the "command syntax or state machine" of OpenGL and the underlying implementation does not infringe upon the patent (which I have to think is the case, or SGI probably would have objected), then wouldn't this simply be a method of maintaining "compatibility"? If so, I think the anti-trust implications of trying to stomp on the compatibility layer would be fairlyl risky for MS.
This is ok too, since the result is public domain. Since it is public domain, however, others are (should be) equally free to use it commercially as well. Unlike the GPL (or any other "open source" license), you can take public domain stuff and put it in a proprietary product.
See Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105*:
- Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise
So if institutions (universities, contractors, whatever) are writing code (or any other copyrightable material) according to a contracted federal directive, then that constitutes a "work for hire" and the copyright should fall into the public domain.(In reality, I expect ownership of the copyrights are contractually transfered to the developer, but my not-a-lawyer-mind tells me that the intent of the copyright code was to place federally developed materials in the public domain where all could make use of it.
) Note also that "public domain" != "open source". Although the source would be "open", it would be open for inclusion in both open source and commercial products absent licensing fees for everyone. Commercial developers could take it and extend it however they feel it would best attract paying customers. Open source developers could use it for whatever reasons suits their purpose. There's no need for arguing over which license is best, because without copyright the federal government has no authority to license it at all.
The only burden this puts on university research is that if they want to license their research, they have to acquire private funding and not "contaminate" that particular project with federal funds. This is as it should be. If you don't want to share with the taxpayers, don't use their money.
If it's open source, it doesn't need to be "commercialized" to stay available and continue to be improved. Further, if "and if you find a commercial use for this, you can have it" is effective in some way, wouldn't "if you find any use for this, you can have it" be even more effective?
Translation: "It would be silly to wait until we know what our product actually is before we start trying to pursuade people to buy it. The only thing that matters is that they buy it, not whether it works, or even does what we say it does."
Yeah. I'm ok with that. It's not like I actually need to make intelligent decisions about where to spend my money. I've got plenty to spread around for things that aren't really what they say they are.
Even if you don't actually sell them the service, you've given them valuable advice and underscored the fact that this type of knowledge is why they pay you.
Only put trusted directories in your path. If you use any directory that users (including you) can write to in your path, then you're vulnerable to this. Also never put relative paths (including [if not especially] '.'). An 'su' could be dropped in any random directory just waiting for you to call it when you're in that directory.
- convert theaters to digital,
- print more films,
- change the initial distribution of the limited prints we have,
- release DVD's independent of global (variable) theatrical release dates,
- or think of any other way...
Naah! We'll just legislate that it's illegal for our customers to use technology to get our product before we're ready to make it available to them at our own, completely arbitrary schedule.They need to reverse the process and ask: How can we use technology to make our product more available to more people?
Wrong. The industry needs to update their distribution methods to account for a global economy. Their existing methods treat Australian and European customers like an "after-thought" market. This is a complete failure to leverage digital distribution to the content providers' advantage. Why not a global simultaneous release? Because it used to require shipping large quantities over vast distances. What these companies don't seem to realize is the digital distribution they are fighting could drive their own distribution costs down and improve geographic coverage with their "authorized" product, cutting into the market for unauthorized distribution to areas that are they artificially cut out of the supply chain.
A global release completely obviates the need for region encoding. They are using technology to force the market to adhere to their current business practices rather than using it to adapt and adress consumers evolving needs. How they think they can keep this up is beyond me...
Except that under Lindows, when you can't read a newer version of an office file in your version of Word, Excel, etc., you can open it with StarOffice, OpenOffice, KOffice or whatever else you have that might (and my experience has been that it usually does) work. This breaks the forced upgrade cycle.
As for me, I'm 3+ Microsoft free years in a Fortune 100 company.
Powell is making the same case that you are: There's no compelling economic reason for consumer's to get broadband. But he goes farther, saying that the reason there's no compelling content is that content holders are unwilling to risk their "intellectual property" by making it available. IOW, if the content owners loosened their grip and made stuff available, people would get broadband so that they could access it.
I just keep remembering VHS tapes going for >$100. Nobody bought them and lot's of people copied them. As soon as they came out ~$20 people bought way more then 5x more and (home) copying virtually stopped. As soon as some daring content provider makes comes up with a novel way of making broadband content worthwhile, they'll make a fortune. What these providers need to understand is that all the consumer wants is economic and convenient entertainment. If they're willing to provide it, they'll get our business. If they're not, people will either find some other form of entertainment, or find a way to make the existing entertainment more convenient.
yourself$ make install prefix=/tmp/fake-installroot
Anything that "has to be root" to install will fail, showing you clearly what it's trying to do. Everything else is "installed" in the target directory so you can see what's happening there, too.
You're my hero!
Any media producer who has an interest in "digital content rights" (e.g. ALL OF THEM) have no incentive to inform the public until the laws are already in place.
That must make Skylarov feel soooo much better. Me, I'd like to not have to sit in jail while waiting for my rights to be restored by a judge when they shouldn't have been taken away in the first place.