You are just flat-out wrong. By purchasing a piece of software, you are bound by the exact same laws that govern the purchase of a book. Unless you sign some agreement before you purchase the software that restricts you in some way, you are free to use it in any way that copyright law allows. It really doesn't matter what the EULA says.
Print it out and use it as toilet paper - at least then it would be useful for *something*.
Umm, it is perfectly acceptable and legal to change a purchase agreement before signing it. If they also sign it, your changes are then a part of the contract...
Wrong. I own a piece of software I bought in exactly the same way that I own a book that I purchased. A EULA on a piece of software is every bit as ridiculous as a EULA on a book.
Why not? If someone wanted to pay me boatloads of money for doing something that I love, you can bet I'd take it. Oh wait, I'm a programmer - I already do!:)
Ok. Put the music, television, film, software, publishing, and radio industries out of business.
All of which together don't add up to more than 1% of the GDP of the US, and not all of which will disappear. Movies, for one, would continue to be made because they will always be able to draw a crowd to a theatre for a good show.
The rest of this part of your post is based on the flawed premise that the economy would collapse without an 'entertainment industry'.
This is why all work has value, no matter how small. Time is money. Time spent on something gives it value by virtue of the value of the time spent.
And once again, I have to point out that unless someone wants whatever you are producing, it may as well be dirt. Effort expended and time spent does not automatically equal value.
The agreement is that work invested will give the product enough value that it can be sold for an amount sufficiently exceeding the value of the work to justify the original transaction or investment. This is the basic gamble of all businesses.
Yes, it is a gamble, and just because something has always made money in the past does not mean that it always will. If you see fit to spin that wheel, be my guest. Just don't expect me to be a part of your payoff.
Not any more. Not if wanting it is measured in clicks instead of dollars.
Sometimes people make bad career choices. That's a fact of life too. If you've chosen to sell canned content, you certainly picked a bad time to do it.
We cannot in good conscience use the freedom and potential of the Internet as license to shoplift every bit of value produced by people on the AGREEMENT that they will receive value in kind for their work.
What agreement? If you produce something that can be copied infinitely many times, you should make sure that you are paid before you ever release that thing.
All work has value.
No, it doesn't. Something only has value if someone wants that thing.
The sooner we get past this debate, the sooner we can have all the cool promised products.
Huh? What am I not getting now that you think I will get by blindly continuing to follow the current system?
You have no imagination. Has there ever been a period of time when there were no musicians? I doubt it. People will make music because they enjoy making music, and yes, they will continue to make money at it if they are good. The only thing they won't be able to do is sell prepackaged music as a product.
I would say that just about the entire genre of electronic music works this way. Even the largest acts barely show upon the popular radar, and yet they continue to create music. How can it be? Maybe because they get paid very well for making public appearances. Hell, last I heard, Paul Oakenfold was making at least $20,000 a night and I don't believe I've ever heard anything he's done on the radio.
It doesn't matter. I am not responsible for what the users of my programs do with those programs. Bnetd was *not* written to allow warcraft 3 beta to be played illegally. Blizzard is being a bunch of greedy fucks, and that is the only reason that they are doing this. They *will* begin charging for Battle.net access as soon as they think they have gotten rid of the free alternative.
Yeah? Well I only downloaded the bnetd source - I have never even owned a single game developed by Blizzard. I am certainly not obliged to follow any eula on any of their products.
1 (arguable assumption): The CD-Key authentication as used to authenticate players of network games on servers owned by Vivendi is a protection mechanism within the definitions bounded by the DMCA
But it isn't a protection mechanism. You can still play the games on your own PC whether or not you connect to the Battle.net servers. Their existence or non-existence is not a requirement for you to play the games that you have purchased.
People, individual people, will take the software and work on it. For-profit corporations, for the most part, will not
Most for profit corporations do not produce software, they just use it. The subset of companies that would be affected by the inability to sell GPL software is not all that large.
Software released under the GPL is just as accessable to any company as it is to an individual. There is nothing stopping them from using it in any way they like - as long as they aren't trying to take without giving.
Copyright is a piss-poor system. It has been distorted so far from its original intent (to promote progress in the arts) that we would be better off without any copyright at all.
Maybe Super Audio CD? Sounds like yet another marketing ploy for the lemmings to swallow.
"Ooh. A cd already contains more sound than any human being can posibly hear, but I'll pay twice as much for this new thing because it encodes twice as much that I can't hear!"
Well, this is contract law, so you can and do allow the "victim" to override the law when its enforcement would be ridiculous. Also, it is up to the offender to determine whether or not the benefit from breaking the letter of the contract is worth the risk.
No, this is copyright law, and Lindows has no right to distribute any of the code at all unless they agree to the terms of the GPL. It doesn't matter if they are calling it 'beta' or 'snozzberry', they still have to give the code to anyone who got a binary and asks for the code.
1) Yeah, it's a horrid pain to doubleclick that icon.
2) Classpath done in step 1. If by packets, you mean packages, you have to copy any program onto the machine on which you want it to run regardless of the language.
The sale of various theft equipment in real life is quite illegal.
This depends on what state you are in, and what the tools are. That's completely beside the point.
Imagine were the STOLEN vehicles would be serviced at? That is right, the unauthorized service centers. Sure some (or even quite a lot) of people with LEGAL vehicles might go to the unauthorized service centers, hell maybe at times it is just more convenient, but the BEST way for Ford to (help) stop the theft of vehicles is to shutdown the unauthorized service centers.
The point you are missing is that Ford has exactly zero legal right to shut down those service centers. Zilch. I am allowed to operate my competing service regardless of what kind of cars happen to drive in and Ford can whine about it all they like - at the end of the day, my shop hasn't broken a single law. Even if my shop were providing the keys to start those stolen cars, I have not stolen a single car or encouraged anyone else to do so.
This program does nothing to help spread pirate copies of games around. All it does is implement some of the same protocols as Blizzard's proprietary server.
Looking at the complaint, it seems that Blizzard is claiming that the existence of some bug in the bnetd code that is the same as a bug that was in their own BATTLE.NET code means that bnetd somehow copied their code.
Could the bug have just been the result of the same failure in design?
Once I buy their product, just as with any other piece of property that I own, I am free to do whatever I like with that product. If I want to write a replacement for their proprietary server, they have no right at all to keep me from doing so. I am not distributing their software, I am distributing *my own software* that just happens to interoperate with theirs. This is exactly the same as if I bought a Ford truck and Ford tried to tell me that I could only have it serviced at an 'authorized service center'. Well, fuck you Ford (in theory), and Fuck You Blizzard (in reality)!
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You are just flat-out wrong. By purchasing a piece of software, you are bound by the exact same laws that govern the purchase of a book. Unless you sign some agreement before you purchase the software that restricts you in some way, you are free to use it in any way that copyright law allows. It really doesn't matter what the EULA says.
Print it out and use it as toilet paper - at least then it would be useful for *something*.
Umm, it is perfectly acceptable and legal to change a purchase agreement before signing it. If they also sign it, your changes are then a part of the contract...
Does it also mean, if I strip a GPL'd piece of software of the GNU license that I don't have to abide by it either?
Go ahead. Don't accept it. What, exactly, do you think you are going to do with it without the rights that the GPL grants you?
Wrong. I own a piece of software I bought in exactly the same way that I own a book that I purchased. A EULA on a piece of software is every bit as ridiculous as a EULA on a book.
Why not? If someone wanted to pay me boatloads of money for doing something that I love, you can bet I'd take it. Oh wait, I'm a programmer - I already do! :)
Ok. Put the music, television, film, software, publishing, and radio industries out of business.
All of which together don't add up to more than 1% of the GDP of the US, and not all of which will disappear. Movies, for one, would continue to be made because they will always be able to draw a crowd to a theatre for a good show.
The rest of this part of your post is based on the flawed premise that the economy would collapse without an 'entertainment industry'.
This is why all work has value, no matter how small. Time is money. Time spent on something gives it value by virtue of the value of the time spent.
And once again, I have to point out that unless someone wants whatever you are producing, it may as well be dirt. Effort expended and time spent does not automatically equal value.
The agreement is that work invested will give the product enough value that it can be sold for an amount sufficiently exceeding the value of the work to justify the original transaction or investment. This is the basic gamble of all businesses.
Yes, it is a gamble, and just because something has always made money in the past does not mean that it always will. If you see fit to spin that wheel, be my guest. Just don't expect me to be a part of your payoff.
Not any more. Not if wanting it is measured in clicks instead of dollars.
Clicks don't cost anything.
People have to get paid. Fact of life.
Sometimes people make bad career choices. That's a fact of life too. If you've chosen to sell canned content, you certainly picked a bad time to do it.
We cannot in good conscience use the freedom and potential of the Internet as license to shoplift every bit of value produced by people on the AGREEMENT that they will receive value in kind for their work.
What agreement? If you produce something that can be copied infinitely many times, you should make sure that you are paid before you ever release that thing.
All work has value.
No, it doesn't. Something only has value if someone wants that thing.
The sooner we get past this debate, the sooner we can have all the cool promised products.
Huh? What am I not getting now that you think I will get by blindly continuing to follow the current system?
You have no imagination. Has there ever been a period of time when there were no musicians? I doubt it. People will make music because they enjoy making music, and yes, they will continue to make money at it if they are good. The only thing they won't be able to do is sell prepackaged music as a product.
I would say that just about the entire genre of electronic music works this way. Even the largest acts barely show upon the popular radar, and yet they continue to create music. How can it be? Maybe because they get paid very well for making public appearances. Hell, last I heard, Paul Oakenfold was making at least $20,000 a night and I don't believe I've ever heard anything he's done on the radio.
The music 'industry' is a fraud.
It doesn't matter. I am not responsible for what the users of my programs do with those programs. Bnetd was *not* written to allow warcraft 3 beta to be played illegally. Blizzard is being a bunch of greedy fucks, and that is the only reason that they are doing this. They *will* begin charging for Battle.net access as soon as they think they have gotten rid of the free alternative.
Yeah? Well I only downloaded the bnetd source - I have never even owned a single game developed by Blizzard. I am certainly not obliged to follow any eula on any of their products.
1 (arguable assumption): The CD-Key authentication as used to authenticate players of network games on servers owned by Vivendi is a protection mechanism within the definitions bounded by the DMCA
But it isn't a protection mechanism. You can still play the games on your own PC whether or not you connect to the Battle.net servers. Their existence or non-existence is not a requirement for you to play the games that you have purchased.
People, individual people, will take the software and work on it. For-profit corporations, for the most part, will not
Most for profit corporations do not produce software, they just use it. The subset of companies that would be affected by the inability to sell GPL software is not all that large.
Software released under the GPL is just as accessable to any company as it is to an individual. There is nothing stopping them from using it in any way they like - as long as they aren't trying to take without giving.
Copyright is a piss-poor system. It has been distorted so far from its original intent (to promote progress in the arts) that we would be better off without any copyright at all.
You cannot be serious. You are under no obligation to do *anything* with a piece of software once you've bought it.
Maybe Super Audio CD? Sounds like yet another marketing ploy for the lemmings to swallow.
"Ooh. A cd already contains more sound than any human being can posibly hear, but I'll pay twice as much for this new thing because it encodes twice as much that I can't hear!"
Well, this is contract law, so you can and do allow the "victim" to override the law when its enforcement would be ridiculous. Also, it is up to the offender to determine whether or not the benefit from breaking the letter of the contract is worth the risk.
No, this is copyright law, and Lindows has no right to distribute any of the code at all unless they agree to the terms of the GPL. It doesn't matter if they are calling it 'beta' or 'snozzberry', they still have to give the code to anyone who got a binary and asks for the code.
To summarize:
If you have the binaries you can get the source. If you don't have them, stop whining.
Of course you can always get the source off of someone who has gotten the binaries...
1) Yeah, it's a horrid pain to doubleclick that icon.
2) Classpath done in step 1. If by packets, you mean packages, you have to copy any program onto the machine on which you want it to run regardless of the language.
3) Java compiles at about the same speed as C++.
Since when is an office public space?
Nimda is hardly dead. I'm still getting an average of about 1 hit from it every 10 minutes.
The sale of various theft equipment in real life is quite illegal.
This depends on what state you are in, and what the tools are. That's completely beside the point.
Imagine were the STOLEN vehicles would be serviced at? That is right, the unauthorized service centers. Sure some (or even quite a lot) of people with LEGAL vehicles might go to the unauthorized service centers, hell maybe at times it is just more convenient, but the BEST way for Ford to (help) stop the theft of vehicles is to shutdown the unauthorized service centers.
The point you are missing is that Ford has exactly zero legal right to shut down those service centers. Zilch. I am allowed to operate my competing service regardless of what kind of cars happen to drive in and Ford can whine about it all they like - at the end of the day, my shop hasn't broken a single law. Even if my shop were providing the keys to start those stolen cars, I have not stolen a single car or encouraged anyone else to do so.
This program does nothing to help spread pirate copies of games around. All it does is implement some of the same protocols as Blizzard's proprietary server.
Looking at the complaint, it seems that Blizzard is claiming that the existence of some bug in the bnetd code that is the same as a bug that was in their own BATTLE.NET code means that bnetd somehow copied their code.
Could the bug have just been the result of the same failure in design?
Once I buy their product, just as with any other piece of property that I own, I am free to do whatever I like with that product. If I want to write a replacement for their proprietary server, they have no right at all to keep me from doing so. I am not distributing their software, I am distributing *my own software* that just happens to interoperate with theirs. This is exactly the same as if I bought a Ford truck and Ford tried to tell me that I could only have it serviced at an 'authorized service center'. Well, fuck you Ford (in theory), and Fuck You Blizzard (in reality)!