Ban guns, guns kill people Ban the internet, the internet spread the virus Ban microsoft, microsoft sw spread the virus Ban computers, computers the spread the virus
Isn't this all kinda silly? Let the guy/gal who wrote this thing take the fall. Let everyone take in this lesson and learn from it. Make it a big trial, have lots of publicity, make the person pay for the rest of their life, make it a big example. This is what they now do for people who start forest fires, they bill them for the damage. I don't see how this is any different.
Although I'm only speculating, I imagine that the law firm involved sort-of figured that they were representing a "big-company" and that they would have no trouble using standard "lawyer-talk" to intimidate someone to get their way.
Ironically,/.-ers sort-of figured that they were representing a "bigger-entity" and they would have no trouble using the/. effect to intimidate someone to get their way.
Although the/.-ers got their way, if this happens often enough, you know what they will say...
"power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"
This is analogous to the investigative reporters on TV. Someone buys a ford-pinto, it blows up. No-one seems to care, so this person calls an investigative reporter, who tries to get the story which is that there is a safety problem. Big television story and the safety problem with the ford-pinto is corrected.
Now, there are 1000's of investigative reporters. Someone buys a suzuki-samarai, it tips over No-one seems to care, so this person calls and investigative reporter, who is too lazy to get the facts. Big television story, but the car doesn't tip over. So what, fake the tip-over for the camera, no-one will care right?
RULE 1: The courts can seize property you own to cover a garnishment. RULE 2: They aren't allowed to garnish things for punitive reasons.
In the case mentioned, the judge awarded court fees to the plaintif. The plaintif didn't have any other assets, so they seized the other domain names they owned. It is unclear (to me) if they could legally sell the seized names. If this is the case, they could not legally garnish them.
That's why it's academic.
Another poster mentioned that this could give license for lawyers to become squatters for domain names seized from other squatters. I don't think this is the case because it is not obvious it is legal to sell them which means they are effectively worthless.
Example: You sue me and win. Say my only possession in the world is 1 bag of medical MJ (legal in this state). You can't take it because it has no economic value (although it has street value). You aren't allowed to take it from me just to make me suffer either. You lose.
The result is that the victor owns the lease (not the building) if the lease has tangible value.
Since the victor now owns the lease, he (or she) can do whatever the lease allows (sub-let, change where the nameservers are) and the original lease holder is S-O-O-L. Effectively, the victor now owns the domain name as long a he (or she) lives up to the obligations of the original lease.
BTW, the internic doesn't own anything. There is nothing wrong with setting up your own root server and doing exactly what NIC is doing. The only problem you'll have is that nobody is pointing to your root server so you'd be selling a useless service. This is 100% analogous to the 1-800 dispute of a few years ago about portable 1-800 numbers (e.g., changing from ATT to MCI and keeping your same 1-800 number). I expect a similar solution...
Ruling that a domain name is property is academic. In practical situations (i.e., non-squatter situations), you cannot force someone to relinquish a name as a result of a garnishment court action.
For example, if your name is OJ simpson and you owe say $10M to someone as a result of a court action, and you have a 1 person company OJinc which has a domain name which is your personal property. The court can make you sell your domain name, but according to current trademark regulations, if the 1 person company OJinc is still using the name in commerce, no one could legally buy the name and use it. Current garnishment laws do not allow punitive effect for garnishment actions (you can't take something from someone to pay a debt if it has no economic value).
If, however, it was legal for someone else to use the name, they probably could have used it originally, except someone took it already. Thus the only people who need to fear this law are the squatters.
This ruling may help against squatters initially, but it opens up a whole new world of extortion. If a domain name is property, then it can be a subject of a property-lien. Suppose I squat on a domain name and I hire you to put up a web page on the domain and say I'll pay you $1M to do the web site. I don't pay you (of course) and you put a lien on the domain name. Now when the "rightful" owner of the domain comes along, he won't be able to sell the domain w/o paying off the property-lien since the property-lien takes precidence over the garnishment action. Ouch.
Somebody better rethink this ruling and say that the domain is a license, not property, or things could get really ugly.
As of the TRIPS and Paris agreements, I think all patent stuff was made the same between countries.
In the US if you didn't get anything from selling, you are covered (no economic damage). The guy who got it for free, however, might have to pay.
In the US, the user of the patent pays, intermediate parties don't pay. The reason you are protected if you don't charge for your SW is that the user didn't pay you.
Any problems you (as a seller) have are related to the UCC (uniform commercial code) and the implied T&Cs (terms and conditions). If you don't explicitly state in your sales order T&Cs that your fee doesn't include royalties for patents, you have implicitly collected royalties from your customer. If you don't forward those royalties to the patent holders, they can sue you for the money.
Example: you go to the store and buy a toaster with cash. You give them the cash, they give you the toaster. Under the law, you just completed a transaction subject to the T&Cs of the local UCC. The UCC gives both the seller and the buyer certain "standard" rights that people have come to expect. One of them is that you get to use the toaster with its intended use w/o paying Fred 2 cents royalty for using his "uniform browning toast coils" everytime you want to make toast. Under the law, you as the toaster owner can claim that you paid the royalties to the seller and Fred has to sue the seller for his 2 cents. If, however, the seller gave you the toaster for free (as in free beer) you could be liable for the 2 cents if the seller didn't pay Fred the 2 cents.
The TRIPS agreement doesn't apply to the UCC which is usually slightly different from state to state in the US, but close enough. In the EU, I don't know how the UCC implied T&Cs look like, but my guess is that on this matter they are the same.
I could be wrong though, I hear TV and Radio usage taxes are common in the EU which would imply that the local UCC T&Cs are quite different.
Somehow I doubt research and invention have speeded up. If this were actually the case, who would need those patents that people are complaining about, they would be obsolete.
Copyright, as many people mentioned, doesn't protect ideas, only the expression of ideas and derivative works. If research and invention were so fast, who would care? Just rewrite the code using the latest technique. Well maybe that code was worth something after all...;^)
I think it is precisely that the stituation today is about the same as in the past when they came up with all this stuff is the thing that most annoys people who want to change everything.
Remember 17 was chosen to be about a generation in "people" time. The founding-fathers really disliked this "pass-it-to-your-kids" stuff, but thought you should be able to take advantage of it while you were alive. If we are all living longer, shouldn't it be longer too? You should think carefully before you advocate a change in this number.
BTW, IMHO, I think 15 years is about the right number (people retire earlier these days), the WTO thinks 20 is better. 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other...
Note: I'm not saying there aren't bad patents (there certainly are). Maybe the proper response is to form an ACLU like org to fight them (that's how bad laws are fought). My guess is that the industry is too greedy to fund such an org.
2. The owners of foo and bar would have to prove that they would buy their stuff instead of downloading your free stuff. This would be pretty tough to prove if your stuff was free and they charged money (unless you were getting some stuff on the side). You are off the hook, but the people who downloaded it, well they might have some legal trouble if the foo and bar owners decided to go after them. This is just one of the reasons big corporations don't like free sw.
BTW: I didn't say they wouldn't win, they would probably win the patent suit against you. They just couldn't collect any money from you (well maybe $3 or so...). Not worth their time.
3. Tax is on earnings. Gov't doesn't set royalty rate, just taxes whatever you and the other company agree on. This is a strong incentive to agree to flat rate $1M buyouts and cross-licenses instead of micropennies. People who contribute get to share in the patent pool. People who don't contribute are left out (a perfectly capitalistic way of looking at things)...
1. Semantic arguments bore me. No sense in defining the word "property", it is an axiom which could get debated forever. Contracts are not rights, they are agreements that have termination clauses (if there are no termination clauses, it is by definition not a legal contract). Most people associate a right with a thing that has no termination clause (1st amendment, etc)... but then again, that is also a semantic definition of a "right"... why is this sounding like "point" and "line" and "parallel postulate"...
2. Fear of being sued is a common excuse for everyone who doesn't want to take a chance. Note: you cannot be liable for incorporating a patented instrument into something you make under fair use.
For example, I could write a program that violated everyone of microsoft's patents as a "test program" for a class. If I posted the source code for this "test program" on the internet, I violate no laws. I sell it to people who don't use the software, I violate no laws. Only if I sell it to Fred who has the intent of using it, then both Fred and I are liable as soon as he uses the software (if he never actually uses it, no problem).
However the action is civil and the remedys are also civil (i.e., money). Microsoft can make me stop selling it to Fred and other Fred-like people. Microsoft can collect economic damage. Microsoft cannot send me to jail. In fact, Microsoft cannot punish me in any way if I win the civil case or I stop selling and pay economic damage. Economic damage is how much money they lost because of Fred. There are strict limits on economic damage and punitive damage can only be a fraction of the economic damage.
In fact I don't even have to pay microsoft. My company can delcare bankrupcy and microsoft can get squat. There are no debtor prisons in the US. Only if you go into business against the patent holder can they really do anything to you at all. If microsoft sued me for patent infringement on SW that I was giving away, I wouldn't even hire a lawyer. I'd show up, represent myself, and move for a summary judgment so they couldn't talk the judge into something horrible.
If you are writing free SW, patents shouldn't concern you at all. Only people who want to sell ideas patented by others should be concerned. If you're out to make a buck, be careful.
People who don't know their rights are doing themselves a big dis-service. Maybe a miranda warning should be required for civil actions.
3. Patent royalty is often only granted for small parts of products. Let's say a widget sells for $1 and costs 80c to make. My inventions is worth 5% of the value of the widget. I collect 1cent in royalties. $1M bucks royaties is 100M widgets. This also illustrates how limited economic damage is in patent infringement suits.
That's why unless you are a direct competitor, most companies would rather settle and cross-license a patent than mess with the civil-legal system.
Most companies ignore patents, and try to come up with their own patents. When sued, they cross- license patents. This is usually a non-issue.
Borrowing from the SAT... Patents are to companies like...
a. praise to hackers b. pain to masochists c. suffering to sadists d. all of the above
1. If everything that could be sold is property, the football ticket which gives you the opportunity to sit in a chair is property. Interesting philosophy, things that expire after 3 hours can be considered property. I'd call that a license or a contract (in strict legal terms). In fact, they can kick you out of a football game by simply refunding your money.
2. My guess is the harm that silly SW patents do is negligible, but if you are willing to provide evidence of the contrary, I'll be happy to look at it. Most of the stuff floating on the net about "harm" is no more than urban legend. Silly patents are rarely enforced and when they are enforced only serve to push people to make more innovative products. The "real" patents are cross licensed so much that your head would spin.
As for remaking IP laws, I favor an additional tax on copyright/patent royalty income (15%-20%) range with a healthy $1M deduction. This would encourage people to cross-license patents and copyrights w/o punishing the small guys.
> It should also be noted that as many people didn't believe blacks to be fully human, they > didn't really count as population (except for the purposes of determing the number of > congressional Representatives).
Amazing how distortions can propagate. You could say the same thing about women during this point in US history. Get your facts before making generalizations. The pop-count was a very political issue at the time. Very similar to Y2K taking a statistical census or a physical count. People have many motivations both ways. Some motivations could be considered racist, some could be considered revisionist...
> In my opinion, the current intellectual "property" scheme benefits almost no-one. People > simply do not realise what freedoms are lost because they've never experienced anything else. > Since lost of intellectual freedom is not nearly as severe as the more common losses of property, > the right to own property, or of one's personal freedom to be (prison/execution), the effects are > far more subtle and it's much more difficult to get people to think outside of the box of what a > world without IP walls could be like (no offence intended towards a common protocol in use on > internets).
The world is not as B/W as you make it out. How many people own real property (that's not morgaged to the bank)? How many people own IP (that's not assigned to the company they work for)? Are not many banks and companies "public" companies?
In fact, most people make a big deal out of "property" when in fact the govt or the public pretty much own everything. It only seems bad when you are only a small part of the owning entity.
Once again, somebody has decided to spread the rumor that patents and copyrights imply property when in fact exactly the opposite is true (at least in the US).
In the US, if you apply for a patent on something, you explicitly are donating it to the public domain. Yes you read that correctly, the public domain. The catch is that the US govt (the keeper of the public domain) pays you for your largesse by granting you exclusive use of your invention for 17 years. After that time, your idea is truly in the public domain. Nobody can reclaim that idea into private property.
Students of history will recall that the patent and copyright protection was not originally in the US constitution, they were added because of a perceived flaw in the legal system (which was pretty much borrowed from england) where people could pretty much own ideas forever.
In fact the US can be proud in being one of the first modern states to engage in government sponsored industrial espionage when they stole the plans for a assembly line from a company in England around the US revolutionary times (1700s).
It was in this spirit that the original patent and copyrights idea was born. The philosophy is that everything belongs in the public domain (eventually) and short time exclusivity is the way they thought of to get people who come up with ideas compensated. Otherwise it was thought that people would keep their ideas hidden where they do nothing to advance society.
WAKE UP!!! all you people who say "only if we had a way to leave everything in the public domain while compensating people for their ideas"... WE ALREADY HAVE SUCH A SYSTEM!!!
You may argue with 17 years or 20 years (or whatever) is too long a time, but you guys are 250 years too late. Can't you admit that somebody already came up with a pretty good system? or does your youthful ignorance get in the way???
Even the hallowed GPL code will eventually fall into the public domain (copyrights expire 75 years after the authors death). After that nobody will be able to enforce the GPL/NPL/APL/XPL/etc/etc provisions... My decendents will be able to copy all the code into a private bundle and never have to distribute any source code;^)
quit whining, get off your bum and do something!
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The $299 PC
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Perhaps someone should get one of these WINMODEM manufacturers to provide a linux driver for their WINMODEM chip. With the chip specs in hand I can't believe it would be too hard to write such a beast.
Isn't that what free software is all about???
the Home Improvement analogy
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Computers and Houses
Back in the old days, if you wanted to build a house, you gathered up all the stuff yourself and built the thing. As communities formed, houses got built by enlisting the help of all your neighbors "barn-raising" style. Then mass market set in and "cookie-cutter" houses became the norm. The pendulum eventually swung back, semi-custom homes became all the rage and fix-er-upers became a booming business. Home Depot, Home Base, and Builder's Square became a booming multi-billion dollar business providing home buyers with free advice to lure people into purchasing the raw materials for houses from them. Upgrading your house became both a hobby and a national obsession.
Back in the old days, if you wanted to build a computer, you gathered up all the stuff yourself and built the thing. As communities formed, computers got built by enlisting the help of all your neighbors "plug-board" style. Then mass market set in and "cookie-cutter" computers became the norm. The pendulum eventually swung back, build-to-order computers became all the rage and upgrades and free-software became a booming business. Red Hat, Cygnus, and VA research became a booming multi-million dollar business providing computer buyers with free advice to lure people into purchasing the raw materials for computers from them... to be continued...
The main rational for bounty hunters for capturing fugitives was so they could hire people on consignment. This is no different than having your boss say to you: if you don't get this done on time, I won't pay you for your time. The only reason you would stick around is if you thought you could do it or you were stupid.
Also following this analogy, a bounty hunter doesn't have to keep the fugitive in a jail cell and feed it for the next 30 years. Similarly, a bounty coder wouldn't need to support it.
Bounty hunters are opportunists, I would expect the same for bounty coders.
Probably not the best way to get code written, but to get bug reports or copies of viruses this is probably a win.
Note there is a big flaw in this analogy. A bounty hunter knows that if he/she has the fugitive, nobody else will get the bounty. Anybody and their grandmother can write code and beat you to the punch.
Although IANAL, I used to edit a newspaper and one thing I can say about the subject, is that the "common carrier" idea is completely mis-understood by most people.
The basic idea behind a "common carrier" is to limit the liability of third parties in legal disputes. For example:
1) can't sue travel agent for booking your family on a plane if the plane crashes because a plane is a "common carrier" 2) can't sue telephone company because one person made a liable about someone else because a telephone is a "common carrier"
Notice that in case 1, the owner of the plane CAN BE SUED even though they are a "common carrier" because they are a second party not a third party. The "common carrier" defense only protects third parties in lawsuits.
However, things like newspapers and BBS are on shaky ground for this defense since they often execute "editorial control" over their content. For instance: you censored that article, why didn't you censor the hate mail that got my friend killed.
It all depends on whether people are thinking that they are reading/. or they are reading the comments of the other person as to whether or not/. is considered a third party.
For instance when you read the front page of the NY Times, you are reading the newspaper, not the author of the article. If you are reading the editorial page, you are reading the author.
ISP have tried to make themselves into CCs by posting a strict policy and deleting all material (I mean all material, no exceptions) that violate this policy. In this way, they can argue that they are not exercising editorial control, but are just implementing a written policy which all users implicitly agreed with before using their service.
WARNING: You should definitely consult a REAL LAWYER before attempting this strategy since having an incomplete policy is MOST DEFINITELY WORSE than having no policy at all!
This type of strategy is know as an attempt to create a "safe harbor" which in layman's speak is to say "everyone else does this, and nobody's complained before". In other words, it gives people the opportunity to act like a 6 year old.
As far as I know, this hasn't helped the ISP cause in Europe, but in the US, I think the feds are willing to let this go.
Suppose you have an RGB colored object which is partially transparent (eg, a balloon or colored glass) and you want to compress an image of the object and still have it's partial transparency represented in the compressed image. You need another component, thus RGBA (A is alpha).
Alpha is also used to make the background show through non-rectangular objects and to anti-alias object edges.
The reason it is called alpha is that it turns out it's useful to model transparency as a blend factor X*(A) + Y*(1-A) so that if you put multiple transparent things overlapping it looks like real life.
This is in contrast to a transparency bit to indicate if the pixel is transparent or opaque. Often this is called 1-bit alpha.
You can simulate alpha transparency by dithering the 1-bit alpha, but it just isn't the same.
From compresion 101: This is always true by what is known as the counting argument.
Suppose we have a 2:1 compressor that takes 1K images down to 512byte images. There are a total of 256^1024 possible images, and we only have 256^512 representable (assuming our compressor is perfectly efficient). That leaves about 256^1024 - 256^512 ~ 256^1024 possible images not representable which is almost the same amount you started with.
This means you pretty much have all the possible images to form your interesting class of images that kill your compression algorithm.
Compression is easy, you just have to know which images you don't care about (which unfortunatly is the hard part).
Most problems with ROC can be fixed with a compander or in the general case, histogram renormalization.
Although I personally think wavelets are a lost cause in the generic image compression arena, people have used them successfully in specific areas where the data has known characteristics which are supported by models (e.g., fingerprints, synthetic aperature sub-millimeter radar). Wavelets also have many uses in analysis.
The DCT and most wavelet transforms are perfectly able to represent any images since they are non-singular transforms. The compression artifacts are not because of the basis functions, but the quantization of the coefficients. Most quantization algorthims are naive so they produce naive results.
That's why I don't think wavelets have a chance. Wavelet people are so wound up in producing better wavelet functions, that they end up ignoring quantization and companding improvements where the DCT guys stopped playing around with the basis functions a long time ago and are years ahead in the quantization, companding, and entropy coding areas.
BTW: It is amazing how people dis algorithms using the NIH (not invented here) metric.
Since most sweepstakes require you to give them information for marketing purposes and permission to use your likeness in promotional activities if you win, if the law is interpreted the same, these sweepstakes could be considered lotteries and hence illegal.
If this is interpretation holds, this could kill most non-promotional sweepstakes in the US.
Precompiled binaries worked like a charm out of the box on solaris. The only two problems I've had with Samba were:
1. old versions of Samba couldn't do MS encryption of the passwords (which is on by default on Win98 and WinNT and can be disabled in the registry). If I had only RTFM before I started...
2. If you have a mix of WinXX and Unix and want to browse, turn off NetBEUI on the PCs. WinXX boxes like to default to NetBEUI if both it and TCP/IP are enabled which leaves TCP/IP only clients like Unix boxes in the dark.
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Ban guns, guns kill people
Ban the internet, the internet spread the virus
Ban microsoft, microsoft sw spread the virus
Ban computers, computers the spread the virus
Isn't this all kinda silly? Let the guy/gal who wrote this thing take the fall. Let everyone
take in this lesson and learn from it. Make it a big trial, have lots of publicity, make the person
pay for the rest of their life, make it a big example. This is what they now do for people
who start forest fires, they bill them for the damage. I don't see how this is any different.
I'm sure mr. mitnik has an opinion on this...
Although I'm only speculating, I imagine that the law firm involved sort-of figured that they were
/.-ers sort-of figured that they were representing a "bigger-entity" and they would have /. effect to intimidate someone to get their way.
/.-ers got their way, if this happens often enough, you know what they will say...
representing a "big-company" and that they would have no trouble using standard "lawyer-talk" to
intimidate someone to get their way.
Ironically,
no trouble using the
Although the
"power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"
This is analogous to the investigative reporters on TV. Someone buys a ford-pinto, it blows up.
No-one seems to care, so this person calls an investigative reporter, who tries to get the
story which is that there is a safety problem. Big television story and the safety problem with
the ford-pinto is corrected.
Now, there are 1000's of investigative reporters. Someone buys a suzuki-samarai, it tips over
No-one seems to care, so this person calls and investigative reporter, who is too lazy to get
the facts. Big television story, but the car doesn't tip over. So what, fake the tip-over
for the camera, no-one will care right?
RULE 1: The courts can seize property you own to cover a garnishment.
RULE 2: They aren't allowed to garnish things for punitive reasons.
In the case mentioned, the judge awarded court fees to the plaintif. The plaintif didn't have
any other assets, so they seized the other domain names they owned. It is unclear (to me) if they
could legally sell the seized names. If this is the case, they could not legally garnish them.
That's why it's academic.
Another poster mentioned that this could give license for lawyers to become squatters for
domain names seized from other squatters. I don't think this is the case because it is not obvious
it is legal to sell them which means they are effectively worthless.
Example: You sue me and win. Say my only possession in the world is 1 bag of medical MJ
(legal in this state). You can't take it because it has no economic value (although it has street
value). You aren't allowed to take it from me just to make me suffer either. You lose.
This "name" argument is older than you think...
;^)
A little computer-centric aren't we?
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The result is that the victor owns the lease (not the building) if the lease has tangible value.
Since the victor now owns the lease, he (or she) can do whatever the lease allows (sub-let, change
where the nameservers are) and the original lease holder is S-O-O-L. Effectively, the victor
now owns the domain name as long a he (or she) lives up to the obligations of the original lease.
BTW, the internic doesn't own anything. There is nothing wrong with setting up your own root server
and doing exactly what NIC is doing. The only problem you'll have is that nobody is pointing
to your root server so you'd be selling a useless service. This is 100% analogous to the 1-800
dispute of a few years ago about portable 1-800 numbers (e.g., changing from ATT to MCI and
keeping your same 1-800 number). I expect a similar solution...
Ruling that a domain name is property is academic. In practical situations (i.e., non-squatter
situations), you cannot force someone to relinquish a name as a result of a garnishment
court action.
For example, if your name is OJ simpson and you owe say $10M to someone as a result of a court
action, and you have a 1 person company OJinc which has a domain name which is
your personal property. The court can make you sell your domain name, but according to current
trademark regulations, if the 1 person company OJinc is still using the name in commerce, no one
could legally buy the name and use it. Current garnishment laws do not allow punitive effect for
garnishment actions (you can't take something from someone to pay a debt if it has no economic value).
If, however, it was legal for someone else to use the name, they probably could have used it
originally, except someone took it already. Thus the only people who need to fear this law are
the squatters.
This ruling may help against squatters initially, but it opens up a whole new world of extortion.
If a domain name is property, then it can be a subject of a property-lien. Suppose I squat on a
domain name and I hire you to put up a web page on the domain and say I'll pay you $1M to do the web
site. I don't pay you (of course) and you put a lien on the domain name. Now when the "rightful"
owner of the domain comes along, he won't be able to sell the domain w/o paying off the property-lien
since the property-lien takes precidence over the garnishment action. Ouch.
Somebody better rethink this ruling and say that the domain is a license, not property, or things
could get really ugly.
As of the TRIPS and Paris agreements, I think all patent stuff was made the same between countries.
In the US if you didn't get anything from selling, you are covered (no economic damage). The guy who
got it for free, however, might have to pay.
In the US, the user of the patent pays, intermediate parties don't pay. The reason you
are protected if you don't charge for your SW is that the user didn't pay you.
Any problems you (as a seller) have are related to the UCC (uniform commercial code) and the implied
T&Cs (terms and conditions). If you don't explicitly state in your sales order T&Cs that
your fee doesn't include royalties for patents, you have implicitly collected royalties from your
customer. If you don't forward those royalties to the patent holders, they can sue you for the money.
Example: you go to the store and buy a toaster with cash. You give them the cash, they give you
the toaster. Under the law, you just completed a transaction subject to the T&Cs of the local UCC.
The UCC gives both the seller and the buyer certain "standard" rights that people have come
to expect. One of them is that you get to use the toaster with its intended use w/o paying Fred
2 cents royalty for using his "uniform browning toast coils" everytime you want to make toast.
Under the law, you as the toaster owner can claim that you paid the royalties to the seller and Fred
has to sue the seller for his 2 cents. If, however, the seller gave you the toaster for free
(as in free beer) you could be liable for the 2 cents if the seller didn't pay Fred the 2 cents.
The TRIPS agreement doesn't apply to the UCC which is usually slightly different from state to state
in the US, but close enough. In the EU, I don't know how the UCC implied T&Cs look like, but my
guess is that on this matter they are the same.
I could be wrong though, I hear TV and Radio usage taxes are common in the EU which would imply
that the local UCC T&Cs are quite different.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If it is broke, figure out why before fixing it.
Brief and to the point. Definitely worth a read.
Somehow I doubt research and invention have speeded up. If this were actually the case, who
;^)
would need those patents that people are complaining about, they would be obsolete.
Copyright, as many people mentioned, doesn't protect ideas, only the expression of ideas and
derivative works. If research and invention were so fast, who would care? Just rewrite the
code using the latest technique. Well maybe that code was worth something after all...
I think it is precisely that the stituation today is about the same as in the past when they came up
with all this stuff is the thing that most annoys people who want to change everything.
Remember 17 was chosen to be about a generation in "people" time. The founding-fathers really
disliked this "pass-it-to-your-kids" stuff, but thought you should be able to take advantage of
it while you were alive. If we are all living longer, shouldn't it be longer too? You should
think carefully before you advocate a change in this number.
BTW, IMHO, I think 15 years is about the right number (people retire earlier these days), the
WTO thinks 20 is better. 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other...
Note: I'm not saying there aren't bad patents (there certainly are). Maybe the proper response
is to form an ACLU like org to fight them (that's how bad laws are fought). My guess is that the
industry is too greedy to fund such an org.
1. no response desired.
2. The owners of foo and bar would have to prove that they would buy their stuff instead of
downloading your free stuff. This would be pretty tough to prove if your stuff was free and they
charged money (unless you were getting some stuff on the side). You are off the hook, but the
people who downloaded it, well they might have some legal trouble if the foo and bar owners
decided to go after them. This is just one of the reasons big corporations don't like free sw.
BTW: I didn't say they wouldn't win, they would probably win the patent suit against you. They
just couldn't collect any money from you (well maybe $3 or so...). Not worth their time.
3. Tax is on earnings. Gov't doesn't set royalty rate, just taxes whatever you and the other
company agree on. This is a strong incentive to agree to flat rate $1M buyouts and cross-licenses
instead of micropennies. People who contribute get to share in the patent pool. People who don't
contribute are left out (a perfectly capitalistic way of looking at things)...
1. Semantic arguments bore me. No sense in defining the word "property", it is an axiom which
could get debated forever. Contracts are not rights, they are agreements that have termination
clauses (if there are no termination clauses, it is by definition not a legal contract). Most
people associate a right with a thing that has no termination clause (1st amendment, etc)...
but then again, that is also a semantic definition of a "right"... why is this sounding like "point"
and "line" and "parallel postulate"...
2. Fear of being sued is a common excuse for everyone who doesn't want to take a chance.
Note: you cannot be liable for incorporating a patented instrument into something you make under
fair use.
For example, I could write a program that violated everyone of microsoft's patents as a "test
program" for a class. If I posted the source code for this "test program" on the internet, I violate
no laws. I sell it to people who don't use the software, I violate no laws. Only if I sell it to
Fred who has the intent of using it, then both Fred and I are liable as soon as he uses the
software (if he never actually uses it, no problem).
However the action is civil and the remedys are also civil (i.e., money). Microsoft can make me
stop selling it to Fred and other Fred-like people. Microsoft can collect economic damage.
Microsoft cannot send me to jail. In fact, Microsoft cannot punish me in any way if I win
the civil case or I stop selling and pay economic damage. Economic damage is how much money they
lost because of Fred. There are strict limits on economic damage and punitive damage can only be
a fraction of the economic damage.
In fact I don't even have to pay microsoft. My company can delcare bankrupcy and microsoft can
get squat. There are no debtor prisons in the US. Only if you go into business against the patent
holder can they really do anything to you at all. If microsoft sued me for patent infringement on
SW that I was giving away, I wouldn't even hire a lawyer. I'd show up, represent myself, and move
for a summary judgment so they couldn't talk the judge into something horrible.
If you are writing free SW, patents shouldn't concern you at all. Only people who want to sell
ideas patented by others should be concerned. If you're out to make a buck, be careful.
People who don't know their rights are doing themselves a big dis-service. Maybe a miranda
warning should be required for civil actions.
3. Patent royalty is often only granted for small parts of products. Let's say a widget sells for
$1 and costs 80c to make. My inventions is worth 5% of the value of the widget. I collect 1cent
in royalties. $1M bucks royaties is 100M widgets. This also illustrates how limited economic
damage is in patent infringement suits.
That's why unless you are a direct competitor, most companies would rather settle and cross-license
a patent than mess with the civil-legal system.
Most companies ignore patents, and try to come up with their own patents. When sued, they cross-
license patents. This is usually a non-issue.
Borrowing from the SAT... Patents are to companies like...
a. praise to hackers
b. pain to masochists
c. suffering to sadists
d. all of the above
1. If everything that could be sold is property, the football ticket which gives you the
opportunity to sit in a chair is property. Interesting philosophy, things that expire after
3 hours can be considered property. I'd call that a license or a contract (in strict legal terms).
In fact, they can kick you out of a football game by simply refunding your money.
2. My guess is the harm that silly SW patents do is negligible, but if you are willing to
provide evidence of the contrary, I'll be happy to look at it. Most of the stuff floating on the
net about "harm" is no more than urban legend. Silly patents are rarely enforced and when they
are enforced only serve to push people to make more innovative products. The "real" patents
are cross licensed so much that your head would spin.
As for remaking IP laws, I favor an additional tax on copyright/patent royalty income (15%-20%) range
with a healthy $1M deduction. This would encourage people to cross-license patents and
copyrights w/o punishing the small guys.
> It should also be noted that as many people didn't believe blacks to be fully human, they
> didn't really count as population (except for the purposes of determing the number of
> congressional Representatives).
Amazing how distortions can propagate. You could say the same thing about women during this point
in US history. Get your facts before making generalizations. The pop-count was a very
political issue at the time. Very similar to Y2K taking a statistical census or a physical count.
People have many motivations both ways. Some motivations could be considered racist, some could
be considered revisionist...
> In my opinion, the current intellectual "property" scheme benefits almost no-one. People
> simply do not realise what freedoms are lost because they've never experienced anything else.
> Since lost of intellectual freedom is not nearly as severe as the more common losses of property,
> the right to own property, or of one's personal freedom to be (prison/execution), the effects are
> far more subtle and it's much more difficult to get people to think outside of the box of what a
> world without IP walls could be like (no offence intended towards a common protocol in use on
> internets).
The world is not as B/W as you make it out. How many people own real property (that's not morgaged
to the bank)? How many people own IP (that's not assigned to the company they work for)? Are not
many banks and companies "public" companies?
In fact, most people make a big deal out of "property" when in fact the govt or the public
pretty much own everything. It only seems bad when you are only a small part of the owning entity.
Once again, somebody has decided to spread the rumor that patents and copyrights imply property
;^)
when in fact exactly the opposite is true (at least in the US).
In the US, if you apply for a patent on something, you explicitly are donating it to the public
domain. Yes you read that correctly, the public domain. The catch is that the US govt (the keeper
of the public domain) pays you for your largesse by granting you exclusive use of your invention
for 17 years. After that time, your idea is truly in the public domain. Nobody can reclaim that
idea into private property.
Students of history will recall that the patent and copyright protection was not originally in
the US constitution, they were added because of a perceived flaw in the legal system (which was
pretty much borrowed from england) where people could pretty much own ideas forever.
In fact the US can be proud in being one of the first modern states to engage in government
sponsored industrial espionage when they stole the plans for a assembly line from a company in
England around the US revolutionary times (1700s).
It was in this spirit that the original patent and copyrights idea was born. The philosophy is that
everything belongs in the public domain (eventually) and short time exclusivity is the way
they thought of to get people who come up with ideas compensated. Otherwise it was thought that
people would keep their ideas hidden where they do nothing to advance society.
WAKE UP!!! all you people who say "only if we had a way to leave everything in the public domain
while compensating people for their ideas"... WE ALREADY HAVE SUCH A SYSTEM!!!
You may argue with 17 years or 20 years (or whatever) is too long a time, but you guys are 250
years too late. Can't you admit that somebody already came up with a pretty good system? or does
your youthful ignorance get in the way???
Even the hallowed GPL code will eventually fall into the public domain (copyrights expire 75 years
after the authors death). After that nobody will be able to enforce the GPL/NPL/APL/XPL/etc/etc
provisions... My decendents will be able to copy all the code into a private bundle and never
have to distribute any source code
Perhaps someone should get one of these WINMODEM manufacturers to provide a linux driver for their
WINMODEM chip. With the chip specs in hand I can't believe it would be too hard to write such
a beast.
Isn't that what free software is all about???
Computers and Houses
Back in the old days, if you wanted to build a house, you gathered up all the stuff yourself
and built the thing. As communities formed, houses got built by enlisting the help of all your
neighbors "barn-raising" style. Then mass market set in and "cookie-cutter" houses became the norm.
The pendulum eventually swung back, semi-custom homes became all the rage and fix-er-upers became
a booming business. Home Depot, Home Base, and Builder's Square became a booming multi-billion
dollar business providing home buyers with free advice to lure people into purchasing the raw
materials for houses from them. Upgrading your house became both a hobby and a national obsession.
Back in the old days, if you wanted to build a computer, you gathered up all the stuff yourself
and built the thing. As communities formed, computers got built by enlisting the help of all
your neighbors "plug-board" style. Then mass market set in and "cookie-cutter" computers became
the norm. The pendulum eventually swung back, build-to-order computers became all the rage and
upgrades and free-software became a booming business. Red Hat, Cygnus, and VA research became
a booming multi-million dollar business providing computer buyers with free advice to lure people
into purchasing the raw materials for computers from them... to be continued...
For us afternoon types...
The main rational for bounty hunters for capturing fugitives was so they could hire people on
consignment. This is no different than having your boss say to you: if you don't get this done
on time, I won't pay you for your time. The only reason you would stick around is if you thought
you could do it or you were stupid.
Also following this analogy, a bounty hunter doesn't have to keep the fugitive in a jail cell
and feed it for the next 30 years. Similarly, a bounty coder wouldn't need to support it.
Bounty hunters are opportunists, I would expect the same for bounty coders.
Probably not the best way to get code written, but to get bug reports or copies of viruses
this is probably a win.
Note there is a big flaw in this analogy. A bounty hunter knows that if he/she has the fugitive,
nobody else will get the bounty. Anybody and their grandmother can write code and beat you
to the punch.
Although IANAL, I used to edit a newspaper and one thing I can say about the subject, is that the
/. or they are reading the /. is considered a third party.
"common carrier" idea is completely mis-understood by most people.
The basic idea behind a "common carrier" is to limit the liability of third parties in legal
disputes. For example:
1) can't sue travel agent for booking your family on a plane if the plane crashes because a plane
is a "common carrier"
2) can't sue telephone company because one person made a liable about someone else because a
telephone is a "common carrier"
Notice that in case 1, the owner of the plane CAN BE SUED even though they are a "common carrier"
because they are a second party not a third party. The "common carrier" defense only protects third
parties in lawsuits.
However, things like newspapers and BBS are on shaky ground for this defense since they often
execute "editorial control" over their content. For instance: you censored that article, why
didn't you censor the hate mail that got my friend killed.
It all depends on whether people are thinking that they are reading
comments of the other person as to whether or not
For instance when you read the front page of the NY Times, you are reading the newspaper, not the
author of the article. If you are reading the editorial page, you are reading the author.
ISP have tried to make themselves into CCs by posting a strict policy and deleting all material
(I mean all material, no exceptions) that violate this policy. In this way, they can argue that
they are not exercising editorial control, but are just implementing a written policy which all
users implicitly agreed with before using their service.
WARNING: You should definitely consult a REAL LAWYER before attempting this strategy since
having an incomplete policy is MOST DEFINITELY WORSE than having no policy at all!
This type of strategy is know as an attempt to create a "safe harbor" which in layman's speak
is to say "everyone else does this, and nobody's complained before". In other words, it gives
people the opportunity to act like a 6 year old.
As far as I know, this hasn't helped the ISP cause in Europe, but in the US, I think the feds are
willing to let this go.
Suppose you have an RGB colored object which is partially transparent (eg, a balloon or colored
glass) and you want to compress an image of the object and still have it's partial transparency
represented in the compressed image. You need another component, thus RGBA (A is alpha).
Alpha is also used to make the background show through non-rectangular objects and to anti-alias
object edges.
The reason it is called alpha is that it turns out it's useful to model transparency as a blend
factor X*(A) + Y*(1-A) so that if you put multiple transparent things overlapping it looks like
real life.
This is in contrast to a transparency bit to indicate if the pixel is transparent or opaque.
Often this is called 1-bit alpha.
You can simulate alpha transparency by dithering the 1-bit alpha, but it just isn't the same.
From compresion 101: This is always true by what is known as the counting argument.
Suppose we have a 2:1 compressor that takes 1K images down to 512byte images. There are a
total of 256^1024 possible images, and we only have 256^512 representable (assuming our compressor
is perfectly efficient). That leaves about 256^1024 - 256^512 ~ 256^1024 possible images not representable
which is almost the same amount you started with.
This means you pretty much have all the possible images to form your interesting class of images that kill your compression algorithm.
Compression is easy, you just have to know which images you don't care about (which unfortunatly is
the hard part).
Most problems with ROC can be fixed with a compander or in the general case, histogram
renormalization.
Although I personally think wavelets are a lost cause in the generic image compression arena,
people have used them successfully in specific areas where the data has known characteristics
which are supported by models (e.g., fingerprints, synthetic aperature sub-millimeter radar).
Wavelets also have many uses in analysis.
The DCT and most wavelet transforms are perfectly able to represent any images since they are
non-singular transforms. The compression artifacts are not because of the basis
functions, but the quantization of the coefficients. Most quantization algorthims are
naive so they produce naive results.
That's why I don't think wavelets have a chance. Wavelet people are so wound up in producing better
wavelet functions, that they end up ignoring quantization and companding improvements where
the DCT guys stopped playing around with the basis functions a long time ago and are years ahead in
the quantization, companding, and entropy coding areas.
BTW: It is amazing how people dis algorithms using the NIH (not invented here) metric.
Since most sweepstakes require you to give them information for marketing purposes and permission
to use your likeness in promotional activities if you win, if the law is interpreted the same, these
sweepstakes could be considered lotteries and hence illegal.
If this is interpretation holds, this could kill most non-promotional sweepstakes in the US.
Precompiled binaries worked like a charm out of the box on solaris. The only two problems I've
had with Samba were:
1. old versions of Samba couldn't do MS encryption of the passwords (which is on by default on Win98
and WinNT and can be disabled in the registry). If I had only RTFM before I started...
2. If you have a mix of WinXX and Unix and want to browse, turn off NetBEUI on the PCs. WinXX boxes
like to default to NetBEUI if both it and TCP/IP are enabled which leaves TCP/IP only clients like
Unix boxes in the dark.