Quick question: does anyone know how many nuclear reactors are already sitting on the ocean floor? I'm thinking of some of the subs that have been lost by the U.S. and the Soviet Union over the past few decades.
This argument is *very* important because of the precedent that has been created. If limitations can be placed on source code because it doesn't meet some judge's idea of "Speech", then many other types of programs could be affected besides DeCSS. That being said, I hope that there will be other briefs filed that go to problems in the DCMA as well.
Please, let's not turn the power to collect sales taxes over to the federal government. The minute that happens, Congress will start putting conditions on how that money is distributed back to the states.
One of the reasons that Governor Leavitt (along with several other governors) is interested in finding a way for states to collect sales taxes on internet-based purchases is to keep this power away from the federal government.
As the amount of money involved in 'e-business' increases, it will not be ignored as a potential source of tax revenues. I'd prefer to keep this taxing power in the states rather than letting the feds get even more influence over local governments.
(BTW - saying Leavitt is 'rabid' and 'spewing fire' about this issue is overstating things a bit.)
Thanks for filling in the details here. As soon as I posted my comment, I realized that I wasn't even sure if it was the Supreme Court or one of the lower courts that made that ruling.
Oh, and one more thought. Can anything be done about the way shrink-wrap licenses (both explicit and implied) are subsuming copyright?
If I buy a book, it's mine to do with as I please, including selling it to my brother when I'm done reading it. I buy a word processor and I can only do with it what the producer deems appropriate. Can I sell it to my brother when I no longer need or use it? Not if the producer of the software says I can't in the EULA.
I buy the Beatles White album and can do what I please, including ripping it to my hard drive so I can listen to it at work where I may not have a CD player or passing the input into a plotting device to see what subliminal images are in there. But if I buy a documentary on the Beatles on DVD I can only do what the producer says I can.
I almost hate to post this since I don't remember where I read this (other than to say it was by following links from a/. article:) but I believe a case came before the Supreme Court several years ago where this was addressed. I was browsing through the Court's opinion statement and it seemed to say that it was completely up to Congress to decide upon an acceptable definition of 'limited times'. What I found even more troubling was the court letting the retroactive copyright extension slide by as well.
I really wish I could remember where I read this so I could point at it. Maybe it's time for me to wander back through some of the IP/copyright articles in the/. archives.
Maybe so, but few, if any, readers here sustain themselves from selling 'intellectual property' that was created 100 years ago. Each time Congress passes a law concerning copyright and patent rights, the balance is shifted from the public domain or intellectual commons to private/corporate interests.
It's time to get some laws changed to strengthen the free flow of ideas in the public domain. A few examples: 1)reduce the length of time for which copyrights exist; 2)strengthen fair use exceptions; 3)make it clear that reverse-engineering of copy-protection schemes is allowable.
This is a link to a joke site. After filling out the info, it shows you a picture of an ape and explains that none of this was real.
Does the study prove anything?
on
Napster Wars
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· Score: 1
From the cnet article : As part of its filing, the RIAA said it had hired the California-based Field Institute polling firm to talk to students and determine what, if any, effect Napster had on music sales. According to that study, "essentially every single Napster user sampled was engaged in some copyright infringement," the industry said in a statement. The study also claimed that 87 percent or more of the songs copied and downloaded on Napster were copyrighted.
Nearly half of Napster users "described the nature of its impact on their music purchases in a way which either explicitly indicated or suggested that Napster displaces CD sales," the Field study said.
The survey commissioned by the RIAA shows that something less than half of the students that use Napster end up buying less product from the RIAA as a result. This means that for more than half of the students using Napster, it either has no effect or a positive effect in that they buy *more* CDs. As often as we see comments posted to Slashdot about Napster use actually encouraging users to buy CDs, I would like to see the details of this study and not just the bits the RIAA wants to publicize.
I've often wondered about these liability waivers as I've been working as a software developer. My feeling is that no matter how well I build the product I'm responsible for, I would still need a fairly broad liability waiver in the license. There are too many aspects involved in running the piece of software that I would produce that are outside of my control. How can I provide a strong warranty for my customer when the OS, the compilers, the debugging tools, the 3rd party libraries I link with, etc. all may have their own set of problems with their own waivers. Any warranty that I could allow for in my license would have so many restrictions as to make it nearly useless and a nightmare to litigate.
The review on Sharky's extreme that was linked here *was* a constructive criticism of the game. It went into pretty good detail about the game's problems.
Remember, Daikatana was a high visibility project started by (at the time) one of the most influential people in PC gaming. Can you recall the "Romero is going to make you his bitch!" advertising campaign? With all the hype generated by ION Storm for this game, I'm not surprised to see reviews that don't pull any punches in reporting on the weak points of this game. "Suck it down??" You got that right.
The big question that I have is wondering if EIDOS is going to recover *any* of their investment in ION with this game. Is the negative pub from this game going to affect ION's other upcoming releases? Is someone who actually buys the game going to be so turned off that he'll never buy another ION game?
At some point within the past year they had to realize that the game simply wasn't going to work - someone should have pulled the plug on this thing over a year ago.
How much does the planet's magnetic field come into play here? I remember hearing once that the Earth's magnetic field plays a significant role in maintaining atmosphere as it deflects a portion of the solar radiation that can slowly strip an atmosphere from a planet. Is there anything to this?
Invite one company to see it demonstrated. It doesn't matter if this gives the game away, because you then offer to sell them one important thing: an offer to not go and tell all their competitors the same thing. If this idea really confers a competitive advantage, then they'll appreciate the head start and pay for it.
The problem with this is that the nature of many patents is such that it is feasible for others to reverse-engineer the invention. After spilling the beans about your great new invention to a large company, the offer to *not* tell other companies in return for a significant amount of money isn't going to get you anything. The company you're making this offer to knows that their competitors will figure it out on their own, once products containing the invention are available to the public. Paying you money to not divulge the details of the invention will more often than not be a waste of money.
From the Yahoo article: In stores near universities, SoundScan data shows that record sales have actually dropped 4 percent in the past two years. In stores near the 67 colleges that have banned Napster, citing an overload on their internal networks, sales have dropped 7 percent in two years. Let me get this right. They're saying that Napster is responsible for a decline in record sales at stores near universities, and the greatest decline is in stores near universities where Napster has been banned???
I don't know about the back-end implementation of Active Directory, but I have worked with their client side API (ADSI) and found it to be lacking. One of the problems I ran across was that it was unable to successfully read the schema information from my LDAP directory. Without access to the schema, ADSI became useless as it would then fail to provide access any of the attributes/classes that it failed to retrieve from the schema.
This is significant because if Carmack cannot establish that Slade had knowledge of the license, then I think Slade's use of the code would be subject to an implied license, not the GPL
If Slade argues that he had no knowledge of the license, then he is limited by standard copyright regulations. Modifying the posted source and freely distributing the compiled binaries is a violation of copyright law. There is no implied 'license' other than the rights granted under copyright law, such as fair use. Slade made a derivative work from JC's copyrighted work and he is prohibited by law from distributing that work. JC decided to allow such modifications to occur by distributing his work under the GPL. The only right Slade has to distribute his modified binary is granted by the GPL. If he doesn't conform to the GPL, then he should quit distributing someone else's copyrighted work.
It's quite common in the Linux community however, to distribute software in a manner which does not require the user to read anything, much less a license, to install and use it.
This doesn't change anything. In that case, the standard copyright issues come into play - the author still has the copyright on the original source which by law prevents you from redistributing it or any derivative work. Remember, the GPL is simply giving you more rights than you would have under current copyright law. JC didn't release Quake into the public domain; he is still the copyright holder and as such reserves all such rights. He simply chose to give you even more rights than copyright allows by using the GPL.
I second this question. I have my filter set to allow Katz articles to be shown, but I never read them. I'll glance through the comments posted to the article after it has been up a day or two just to see if there are any interesting threads. But I've given up on reading his articles directly as it just seems to be a regurgitation of previous discussions, along with a few plugs for his latest book.
Ok, so this brings up a question I've had about EULAs. Most EULAs that I've seen include a phrase much like this one from one of Microsoft's SDKs:
By exercising your rights to make and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, you agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA. If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, you may not use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
Isn't this the opposite of what you're saying? If I don't agree to the restrictions in the EULA, then I waive my right to use the product. As I understand it, the company is retaining all rights to the copy of the software that you have bought and is simply granting you rights to use it. This has always seemed screwy to me. Has this ever been challenged in court? Have software companies legally enforced some of the clauses found in typical EULAs?
Slashdot Mirror
Quick question: does anyone know how many nuclear reactors are already sitting on the ocean floor? I'm thinking of some of the subs that have been lost by the U.S. and the Soviet Union over the past few decades.
Also, calling an individual a 'cracker' has a much different meaning among the general population than it does among us.
Reinstitute the air marshall program (some flights will have an armed officer on board).
Arm the flight crew.
Allow flight attendants the option of carrying concealed weapons.
Allow me, with a legal concealed weapon permit, to carry my weapon on board.
Please, mod parent up! This is an excellent article.
Right... Let's start basing our scientific decisions based upon the way a Hollywood B movie works.
This argument is *very* important because of the precedent that has been created. If limitations can be placed on source code because it doesn't meet some judge's idea of "Speech", then many other types of programs could be affected besides DeCSS. That being said, I hope that there will be other briefs filed that go to problems in the DCMA as well.
You forgot to mention the Chunnel: makes it easier for the government to flee to London at the first sign of invasion.
Please, let's not turn the power to collect sales taxes over to the federal government. The minute that happens, Congress will start putting conditions on how that money is distributed back to the states.
One of the reasons that Governor Leavitt (along with several other governors) is interested in finding a way for states to collect sales taxes on internet-based purchases is to keep this power away from the federal government.
As the amount of money involved in 'e-business' increases, it will not be ignored as a potential source of tax revenues. I'd prefer to keep this taxing power in the states rather than letting the feds get even more influence over local governments.
(BTW - saying Leavitt is 'rabid' and 'spewing fire' about this issue is overstating things a bit.)
Thanks for filling in the details here. As soon as I posted my comment, I realized that I wasn't even sure if it was the Supreme Court or one of the lower courts that made that ruling.
If I buy a book, it's mine to do with as I please, including selling it to my brother when I'm done reading it. I buy a word processor and I can only do with it what the producer deems appropriate. Can I sell it to my brother when I no longer need or use it? Not if the producer of the software says I can't in the EULA.
I buy the Beatles White album and can do what I please, including ripping it to my hard drive so I can listen to it at work where I may not have a CD player or passing the input into a plotting device to see what subliminal images are in there. But if I buy a documentary on the Beatles on DVD I can only do what the producer says I can.
Something has to change.
I really wish I could remember where I read this so I could point at it. Maybe it's time for me to wander back through some of the IP/copyright articles in the /. archives.
It's time to get some laws changed to strengthen the free flow of ideas in the public domain. A few examples: 1)reduce the length of time for which copyrights exist; 2)strengthen fair use exceptions; 3)make it clear that reverse-engineering of copy-protection schemes is allowable.
This is a link to a joke site. After filling out the info, it shows you a picture of an ape and explains that none of this was real.
From the cnet article :
As part of its filing, the RIAA said it had hired the California-based Field Institute polling firm to talk to students and determine what, if any, effect Napster had on music sales. According to that study, "essentially every single Napster user sampled was engaged in some copyright infringement," the industry said in a statement. The study also claimed that 87 percent or more of the songs copied and downloaded on Napster were copyrighted.
Nearly half of Napster users "described the nature of its impact on their music purchases in a way which either explicitly indicated or suggested that Napster displaces CD sales," the Field study said.
The survey commissioned by the RIAA shows that something less than half of the students that use Napster end up buying less product from the RIAA as a result. This means that for more than half of the students using Napster, it either has no effect or a positive effect in that they buy *more* CDs. As often as we see comments posted to Slashdot about Napster use actually encouraging users to buy CDs, I would like to see the details of this study and not just the bits the RIAA wants to publicize.
I've often wondered about these liability waivers as I've been working as a software developer. My feeling is that no matter how well I build the product I'm responsible for, I would still need a fairly broad liability waiver in the license. There are too many aspects involved in running the piece of software that I would produce that are outside of my control. How can I provide a strong warranty for my customer when the OS, the compilers, the debugging tools, the 3rd party libraries I link with, etc. all may have their own set of problems with their own waivers. Any warranty that I could allow for in my license would have so many restrictions as to make it nearly useless and a nightmare to litigate.
Remember, Daikatana was a high visibility project started by (at the time) one of the most influential people in PC gaming. Can you recall the "Romero is going to make you his bitch!" advertising campaign? With all the hype generated by ION Storm for this game, I'm not surprised to see reviews that don't pull any punches in reporting on the weak points of this game. "Suck it down??" You got that right.
The big question that I have is wondering if EIDOS is going to recover *any* of their investment in ION with this game. Is the negative pub from this game going to affect ION's other upcoming releases? Is someone who actually buys the game going to be so turned off that he'll never buy another ION game?
At some point within the past year they had to realize that the game simply wasn't going to work - someone should have pulled the plug on this thing over a year ago.
How much does the planet's magnetic field come into play here? I remember hearing once that the Earth's magnetic field plays a significant role in maintaining atmosphere as it deflects a portion of the solar radiation that can slowly strip an atmosphere from a planet. Is there anything to this?
Invite one company to see it demonstrated. It doesn't matter if this gives the game away, because you then offer to sell them one important thing: an offer to not go and tell all their competitors the same thing. If this idea really confers a competitive advantage, then they'll appreciate the head start and pay for it.
The problem with this is that the nature of many patents is such that it is feasible for others to reverse-engineer the invention. After spilling the beans about your great new invention to a large company, the offer to *not* tell other companies in return for a significant amount of money isn't going to get you anything. The company you're making this offer to knows that their competitors will figure it out on their own, once products containing the invention are available to the public. Paying you money to not divulge the details of the invention will more often than not be a waste of money.
From the Yahoo article: In stores near universities, SoundScan data shows that record sales have actually dropped 4 percent in the past two years. In stores near the 67 colleges that have banned Napster, citing an overload on their internal networks, sales have dropped 7 percent in two years.
Let me get this right. They're saying that Napster is responsible for a decline in record sales at stores near universities, and the greatest decline is in stores near universities where Napster has been banned???
I don't know about the back-end implementation of Active Directory, but I have worked with their client side API (ADSI) and found it to be lacking. One of the problems I ran across was that it was unable to successfully read the schema information from my LDAP directory. Without access to the schema, ADSI became useless as it would then fail to provide access any of the attributes/classes that it failed to retrieve from the schema.
This is significant because if Carmack cannot establish that Slade had knowledge of the license, then I think Slade's use of the code would be subject to an implied license, not the GPL
If Slade argues that he had no knowledge of the license, then he is limited by standard copyright regulations. Modifying the posted source and freely distributing the compiled binaries is a violation of copyright law. There is no implied 'license' other than the rights granted under copyright law, such as fair use. Slade made a derivative work from JC's copyrighted work and he is prohibited by law from distributing that work. JC decided to allow such modifications to occur by distributing his work under the GPL. The only right Slade has to distribute his modified binary is granted by the GPL. If he doesn't conform to the GPL, then he should quit distributing someone else's copyrighted work.
It's quite common in the Linux community however, to distribute software in a manner which does not require the user to read anything, much less a license, to install and use it.
This doesn't change anything. In that case, the standard copyright issues come into play - the author still has the copyright on the original source which by law prevents you from redistributing it or any derivative work. Remember, the GPL is simply giving you more rights than you would have under current copyright law. JC didn't release Quake into the public domain; he is still the copyright holder and as such reserves all such rights. He simply chose to give you even more rights than copyright allows by using the GPL.
I second this question. I have my filter set to allow Katz articles to be shown, but I never read them. I'll glance through the comments posted to the article after it has been up a day or two just to see if there are any interesting threads. But I've given up on reading his articles directly as it just seems to be a regurgitation of previous discussions, along with a few plugs for his latest book.
I like this explanation you've given - it appeals to my common sense. Some of the restrictions listed in some EULAs have always bothered me.
Does anyone know of any case law that deals with the enforcability of the common EULA?
Ok, so this brings up a question I've had about EULAs. Most EULAs that I've seen include a phrase much like this one from one of Microsoft's SDKs:
By exercising your rights to make and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, you agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA. If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, you may not use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
Isn't this the opposite of what you're saying? If I don't agree to the restrictions in the EULA, then I waive my right to use the product. As I understand it, the company is retaining all rights to the copy of the software that you have bought and is simply granting you rights to use it. This has always seemed screwy to me. Has this ever been challenged in court? Have software companies legally enforced some of the clauses found in typical EULAs?