I'll agree that deliberately holding back some packets is bad. But, there is a problem here: real-time services, such as VoIP and IP TV & so on rely on quality of service -- if your phone call packets arrive sufficiently delayed or out-of-order, then it sounds horrible.
There's already a pretty good technical solution for this: using the TOS/Diffserv bits in the packet header to mark what should be prioritized. The problem is that the priorities only matter if there's somebody out there who isn't prioritized.
So, VoIP providers mark their packets with the appropriate bits and the ISPs deal with it appropriately. But, if there's no gatekeeper -- i.e. no agreement between the ISP and the VoIP provider -- then what keeps every web site from doing it? And, if everybody does that, then it's useless.
You can argue "Well, you can engineer around that -- RTP [the protocol underlying most streaming media] packets are pretty easy to detect." But, if you're BellSouth or TimeWarner and doing so will help your competitors with no benefit to you, why would you do it? Wouldn't you at least want your customers to pay more for that service?
If the agreement is "Pay me money and I'll pay attention to your Diffserv bits," to me that's ok. But, if the agreement is "Pay me money or I'll hold your packets for random long lengths of time," though, that's a problem as it interferes with the subscriber's ability to use the services he/she wants.
17 U.S.C. 501 says that "Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner . . . is an infringer."
Note that it doesn't say anything about "knowingly violates." If I recall, this is a deliberate policy choice: you want every record store to make sure it's only selling reputable music.
The exclusive rights, under S. 106 are "(1) to reproduce . . . (3) to distribute copes . . . to the public by sale or other transfer. .."
If you've done those things, S. 504 allows the copyright owner to sue for statutory damages of up to $150,000 (for willful infringement) per work.
It seems to me that there are a lot of different people to sue, from the F4I who made the software to Sony music to your corner CD store. You can also ask for your attorney's fees. Lots of money to be made here.
Damages for Copyright Infringement...
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Bad Day To Be Sony
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· Score: 1
Hmmm.... So, as previously noted, the software appears to contain copyrighted LAME code.
So, minimum statutory damages for innocent infringement of $200. Estimates are that there are over 500,000 machines infected. Multiply by two copies, one for the original CD and one for the as-installed copy. By my count, Sony is liable for over $200M in damages. Not a good day, indeed. And that doesn't even include the disks they didn't sell.
Who owns the LAME copyright? Would be poetic to sue Sony for massive copyright infringement.
There's a kernel of truth in what you say, but the problem is that it turns into a 'Blame the U.S.' game.
To the extent that the attacks have the political aims you claim, they have been a complete failure, helping to bring about just the opposite of their aims: had 9/11 not happened, Afghanistan would probably still be run by the Taliban, and it's possible that we never would have invaded Iraq (since it would have had much less domestic support). The "I want to be left alone, so I'm going to punch the biggest kid in the schoolyard in the face" approach just doesn't seem to be working.
If you're correct about the motivation, then we should respond to new terrorist attacks by attacking another middle-eastern country. Eventually, the terrorists should clue in. In reality, the best way to get the US out of Iraq would be to stop setting roadside bombs, stop killing innocent Iraqis, &c -- quartering troops in a foreign country is expensive, so as soon as the gov't thinks it's safe to pull most of the troops out, it will.
In any case, going along with your view would be equivalent to allowing our foreign policy with say Germany to be dictated by what some small minority German policital party wants. The terrorists have no right to speak for the people of the Middle East.
Hardly anti-American. The examples you point to are atypical -- where do you live?? I think Verizon's service is the most prevalant of those, and is still limited to Verizon's service area.
In North Carolina, I am getting 4.7Mb down, which is pretty typical throughout the country. Go to any of the common 'speedtest' Internet sites and you'll see that 10Mb is typically off their charts.
Right now, you don't use your connection to download TV. But, there's not really that much TV out there on the 'net and it's probably easier for you to watch TV on your TV than on your computer. But, what if you can start getting half a million channels over your Internet connection? What if you could do pay-per-view of any movie or TV episode ever made? And what if you can watch it on your hi-def wide-screen TV instead of your computer?
If you do that, then what happens to: Local TV stations? Cable & Satellite Pay-per-view? Movie rental stores? Cable TV?
WRT #2, I don't think I was specific enough. Multicast really only works for live feeds -- you want to watch the superbowl, for example. If, though, you're streaming pre-recorded TV, then it's possible that my neighbor and I will both want to watch episode 14 of "Lost." He starts watching at 8:05 and I start at 8:07. Multicasting doesn't help. You actually need a local-to-the-network cache to do it right. And, that's why you need the ISP to participate.
WRT #1, I agree. But, streaming lets the content providers get revenue from it by inserting targetting advertising.
(1) Streaming TV at broadcast quality requires a lot more bandwidth than most "broadband" ISP customers current get to their homes. (2) The backend link at most "broadband" ISPs has nowhere near enough capacity to stream a TV station per-customer. A lot of people have TVs on just as background -- this doesn't really happen with your computer. As a result, the models that "broadband" ISPs use to oversell their services go out the window. (3) The two main providers of broadband Internet service in the US are cable companies and phone companies. Both of these guys are going for the so-called "triple-play" of TV, video and Internet. THey have a vested interest in doing what they can to keep TV off the Internet. This will probably just come from not providing enough bandwidth.
[#2 can be fixed, at least partially, through the judicious use of multicasting. But, that probably implies infrastructure in the ISP. They are going to expect to be compensated for this.]
I use the word "broadband" in quotes, because it's a relative word. In the US, compared to dialup, it's broadband. Compared to what folks on other continents get, it's narrow.
This is very strategic and potentially very market-disruptive.
There are any number of players trying to deliver video over the internet -- the Yahoo guy in charge of their video was quoted by the NYT as saying that we will have an unlimited number of channels in the future. The NBC Nightly news is going on-line. Major-league baseball has been streaming games all season. Every media company in the world would love the ability to sell directly to consumers without having to go through Blockbuster, DirectTV or cable pay-per-view. But, as long as the picture shows up on a computer screen and not on a TV screen, it'll be a niche market. But, if the same 36-in TV that you watched 'Lost' on ABC can be used to watch the 'Lost' you got from itunes, well, that's a different story. Tivo is perfectly positioned to allow this to happen.
One big problem with this is bandwidth. Unfortunately, the people who lose by having more TV go over the Internet are the same ones who control bandwidth. Is your cable TV company going to say "Hey. Let's take some of the bandwidth that we're using to provide high-profit pay-per-view video and use it to fatten our Internet pipes instead"? Ideally, they'd be forced to by their competitors, but the main competition to cable modems is DSL, and all the phone companies are trying to do video as well.
Are you serious? Let's see.... Go to an office supply store in San Francisco, buy some posterboard and a fat marker. Write up a sign that says "Down with Bush. Republicans are a bunch of morons." Put it on your car and drive around. See what happens.
Try the same thing in China, except have the sign say "Down with Hu Jintao. Communists are a bunch of morons." Put it on a car and drive around. See what happens.
Try having a student-led demonstration in the capitol of each country. (Anybody remember Tiananmen quare?)
Argh. Generally, government-created works are considered to be in the public domain and are not subject to copyright. Just as in trademark law, you can't put up your own website and use the FCC logo, the EPA logo or any of a number of other government logos in a way that might confuse people. Under the Necessary and Proper clause the government has the power to do exactly this sort of thing.
I suspect that the seal itself is, for copyright purposes, in the public domain in that anybody can reproduce it. But, there are limitations on its use imposed by other laws.
Here's another example: O'Reilly uses a bunch of public domanin line drawings on the covers of their books. But, they would have a valid trademark infringement claim against anybody who used the same line-drawing of a camel on the front of a competing book about Perl. The drawing is still in the public domain, but cannot be used in certain ways because of trademark law. The government seals & logos enjoy similar protection.
It's important to realize that stores and manufacturers often either (1) don't understand their responsibilities or (2) understand them, but assume that most people do not. It's sort of like that sign on the back of dump trucks that says "Not responsible for broken windshields": if they negligently don't cover their gravel load and it flies off and hits your windshield, they are probably (depending on state law) responsible for your windshield. You may have to sue them to get them to pay, but they're still responsibile. Similarly, a retailer may refuse to take the software back. (Raising an interesting issue of whether the EULA is enforceable after this.) You may have to sue them to get them to do it.
Re:Breach Of Contract Is Not A Crime
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End User License Gems
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· Score: 3, Informative
And this is why you should never take legal advice off the internet....
I'll play devil's advocate:
(1) It does need to be an exchange, but does not need to be an exchange of 'things,' unless you use that term very loosely. In exchange for your agreeing to the EULA (and maybe your money), they let you use the software. Another example: in exchange for $500, I agree to let you drive a backhoe across my yard so you can dig your swimming pool.
(2) Typically, the software box says that there use of the software is subject to an EULA, contained inside. Courts have said that as long as you know that it's there before you buy and have the right to refuse the agreement after you buy (by, say, returning the product), you have that. In extreme cases, courts have said "everybody knows that software is governed by EULAs, so you don't even need notice on the outside of the box, as long as you have some way to reject once you read the contract."
(3) I don't know where you get this from -- contracts do not have to be signed or otherwise verified. THey do need to be accepted, though. When I go into a store and buy a gallon of milk with cash, I don't sign anything. There's such a thing as "acceptance by performance," where you don't have to do say anything, just do it. For example, you drop your car off at the garage, slip the key in the mail slot with a note "Please fix the brakes unless it will cost over $500" -- the garage sees it and fixes your car. You have to pay -- they accepted your offer by doing what you asked.
(4) Contracts do NOT have to be open to negotiation. I don't know where you get this from. Buying a coke from a machine is a contract -- when was the last time you were able to negotiate with a coke machine? In any case, you actually do have this ability with EULAs -- call up the company and say "I'd like to use your software, but I don't like the EULA. How about this contract...."
In the US, while parts of EULAs may not be enforced as being against public policy, unconscionable, illegal, &c, they are otherwise generally enforced.
In order to draft from your account, the only thing anybody needs is your account number. Heck, companies are now allowed to convert your paper checks into "electronic checks" (ie computer drafts) using only the information printed on the bottom of your check. There was something on the local radio station this week (Clark Howard, consumer guy out of Atlanta) about a woman whose $1600 mortgage payment got fat-fingered as $6600 and it took her MONTHS to get her money back - and that was from a reputable place that just made a mistake. What happens when it's a crook?
Tightening up the security needed for internet transactions is not going to make any dent in the security of your bank account.
Linux support at a manufacturer is not costless. If Dell, for example, decides to sell Linux on some systems, they have to get it running, test, document, change the website to reflect it, advertise, support, duplicate CDs, create part numbers, etc.... These costs need to be allocated to the Linux machines sold -- if it costs you $1M to get to the point where you can ship Linux, and you only sell 5,000 of them, you have to increase the costs by $200 per machine just to break even.
Many of the corresponding costs for Windows are probably higher, but they are also spread across far more machines -- the end result is that even with the Windows license, the per unit cost is lower.
Phooey. If he had really supported it, he would have put up a fight to get it ratified by the Senate. Signing it was just political -- he knew it would *never* actually take effect.
In the US, Copyright law gives the author/creator a specific set of rights with regard to his works. If somebody else does one of those things, then they are infringing unless there is a defense. Fair use is one of the defenses.
If you're not doing one of those things that are reserved specifically to the copyright holder, then you are not infringing. Period.
Fair use is typically a case-by-case determination. The list you give are examples of the sorts of things that are allowed -- it is not the complete definitive list.
One of the big things that determines whether use is fair is whether it is commercial. Another one is whether it is practical to compensate the copyright holders for the use. While Google generating ad revenue acts against fair use (commercial), the fact that many of these works are out-of-print and the sheer logistical nightmare of tracking down all the rights holders is in favor of fair use. IMHO, that is. IANAL.
Well, maybe I wasn't as precise as I should have been. I meant to say that they can't claim the exclusive right to sell the work.
However, Paragraph 2(b) of the GPL says that if you're distributing a derivative work, you have to license it "at no charge to all third parties."
Now, that still doesn't give third parties a copy of the code -- it just gives them a license to use the code if they can get a copy. And, any of your customers is allowed to give them a copy.
WRT rationing, I was thinking more along the lines of what was done in the '70s, where even-numbered plates got to buy on even days and odd-numbered plates got to buy on odd days.
I suppose that if one wanted to institute a huge government program to make centralized decisions about priorities, it'd be possible, although prone to error. I don't think such a program is necessary -- basic economic theory says that easily tradeable goods go to highest-value user.
I'm not aware of the President's family being enmeshed in the oil business. I know that he personally was in the oil business, and I suspect still knows a number of people there. I'd be interested to learn more, but I don't think it exists.
Iraq wasn't contributing a large portion of the world oil before the war (remember the sanctions). Oil prices, like those of most commodities now, are most directly related to the Chinese economy. Check the prices of Steel and Copper -- we haven't done anything in the Steel-producing areas of the world, but those prices are high as well. Of course, it's easier for those industries to increase production.
I agree that OPEC does (or at least tries to do) this generally. They can't do it now because they have reached their maximum production -- they are just about at peak production and are not limiting at all. In fact, OPEC doesn't want prices this high. When the Chinese economy goes into its next recession, OPEC will discover that many people in the rest of the world have switched to smaller cars, natural gas, hybrids and other technologies that are less dependant on oil.
Being able to set prices means that OPEC has the ability to maximize either its short- or long-term profits. If they maximize short-term profits, then competitors, such as fuel-cells, nuclear power, natural gas & so on will enter the market and their long-term monopoly is gone. On the other hand, if they set prices high enough where they get a good profit but low enough that potential competitors can't make money, they can keep going forever.
The article asserts that any software worked on by a software professional is owned by his/her employer. I do not think this is true -- the OSS worked on would need to be in the realm of what he/she is employed to do. So, for example, if my job is to develop image processing software and I contribute to the GIMP, there may be a problem. But, if I contribute to a VoIP project, that's a problem.
Few people who contribute their time to an Open Source project actually start at ground zero -- they usually build on work that somebody else does. And, if they do this, then they any contribution is a derivative work -- something that they are only allowed to do with the permission of the original copyright holder. The GPL gives people the right to do this under two conditions: (1) they redistribute their changes under the GPL, or (2) they only use the changes internally.
So, let's posit that an employee has contributed to an Open Source project and the employer objects, and that it actually owns the copyright to the employee's work. What remedy does it have? It's still bound by the GPL and can't then decide to sell the work. The only thing it can do is try to withdraw the source code from the public and use anybody who still uses it for copyright infringement.
But, here it gets really interesting -- there are a number of defenses that infringers have, including apparent agency, various forms of estoppel and lack of creative authorship (more on this last later....) Because of the cost & uncertainty, the company will try to settle. But, they are missing a major carrot: licensing the infringer to use the work. After all, as soon as they allow somebody to use the code, the GPL kicks in and they have to let anybody use it.
(The lack of creative authorship basically means that if there's a bug and there are only a few ways of fixing it, you haven't actually created a 'work of authorship' in implementing one of those fixes. No creative authorship means no copyright. No copyright means no infringement.)
Oh come off it. In the current market, nobody has 'control' of prices -- they're set by the laws of supply and demand. Demand is huge right now mainly because the red Chinese economy is booming. Supply, meanwhile, can't be increased. The result is completely predictible to anybody who's taken high school economics: prices go up.
When there's any blip in supply, as there was with the hurricane, supply actually drops and prices go up again.
And, in fact, this is what you want -- if the prices were artificially set at some level, we would end up with shortages and rationing: Retirees would still be able to go out crusing on the weekends with their ration, but delivery trucks wouldn't have enough to make their rounds.
There are certainly people making a mint on this -- the cost of production has not gone up much. But, there was no way for any oil company/country to engineer this.
As for your tirade about the tax cuts.... As a percentage of the total tax relief, only a small portion went to the "millionaires" -- much more went to those w/ annual incomes under $100K/yr. Person-for-person however, millionaires got more (because they pay substantially higher taxes than the rest of us and thus benefit most from any tax cut), but there are far fewer of them.
First of all, some of the open source players have started patenting software for defensive purposes. See, e.g., http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html . Do you really want to cut these players out?
Secondly, this is going to be a big barrier to adoption both of the GPL and of software under it -- what owner of a "software patent" is going to write GPL'd code or use it? Considering the number of such companies, this change will just about condemn the GPL to the trash heap.
US Copyright law is basically just a bunch of restrictive default rules about what people can & can't do with somebody else's work. The author can change these rules, typically by granting a license for other uses. But, if the author fails to do this, then the default rules still apply.
Writing license agreements, though, is generally the purview of lawyers. Because lawyers are expensive and time-consuming, many creators do not go through the trouble, even if they do not want to retain all the default rights. As a result, earing serious liability for infringement, few people subsequently use these works.
With Creative Commons, there is no need to see a lawyer if they don't want to use the default rules -- they have a set of standard agreements already pre-packaged for the layperson to use. As a result, there's virtually no cost to letting people reuse your work.
There's another benefit -- because the agreements are standard, users only need to understand them once. There's no need to see a lawyer to explain each license agreement that comes in through the door.
Uh.... First of all, companies do not file patents -- individuals do. The rights may be signed over to a company, but it's always the inventor who files.
Second, we already have a system vaguely familiar to what you describe: patent agents/attorneys already have to demonstrate that they know what they're doing. And, they have to disclose any prior art that they know about to the USPTO. The USPTO has access to large databases of prior art, and a chunk of the examiner's role is figuring out what the prior art is. The inventor pays a fee for the application and that includes the examiner's time.
Rationing in the US will have very little effect on prices. The fact is that when I buy a gallon of gas, I'm taking from the same supply pool as my next-door-neighbor, the chinese military and truck drivers in europe.
In any event, it's just the wrong thing to do -- when prices go up, the people who use the gas will be the ones who value it the most: a man who needs the gas to go to the hospital will pay more for it than the man who needs it to go water-skiing.
I see no evidence for your assertion that high prices bankrupt gas stations, but have seen several articles that say that gas stations are doing very well.
You can't compare the WWII situation to today's: the world market was completely different than it is today. The gas rationing of the 1970s has been shown to do more harm than good -- because of the rationing, people topped off their cars whenever they got a chance, creating an enormous "rolling reserve" of gas: before, the average tank was 1/2 full; during rationing it was 3/4 full -- multiply the 2-3 gallons by 30 million cars, and that's a lot of gas.
Stations should not run out of gas if you let the market set the price for gas -- when they do, that means that the price is too low.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll agree that deliberately holding back some packets is bad. But, there is a problem here: real-time services, such as VoIP and IP TV & so on rely on quality of service -- if your phone call packets arrive sufficiently delayed or out-of-order, then it sounds horrible.
There's already a pretty good technical solution for this: using the TOS/Diffserv bits in the packet header to mark what should be prioritized. The problem is that the priorities only matter if there's somebody out there who isn't prioritized.
So, VoIP providers mark their packets with the appropriate bits and the ISPs deal with it appropriately. But, if there's no gatekeeper -- i.e. no agreement between the ISP and the VoIP provider -- then what keeps every web site from doing it? And, if everybody does that, then it's useless.
You can argue "Well, you can engineer around that -- RTP [the protocol underlying most streaming media] packets are pretty easy to detect." But, if you're BellSouth or TimeWarner and doing so will help your competitors with no benefit to you, why would you do it? Wouldn't you at least want your customers to pay more for that service?
If the agreement is "Pay me money and I'll pay attention to your Diffserv bits," to me that's ok. But, if the agreement is "Pay me money or I'll hold your packets for random long lengths of time," though, that's a problem as it interferes with the subscriber's ability to use the services he/she wants.
I don't think it works like that....
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17 U.S.C. 501 says that "Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner . . . is an infringer."
Note that it doesn't say anything about "knowingly violates." If I recall, this is a deliberate policy choice: you want every record store to make sure it's only selling reputable music.
The exclusive rights, under S. 106 are "(1) to reproduce . . . (3) to distribute copes . . . to the public by sale or other transfer. .
If you've done those things, S. 504 allows the copyright owner to sue for statutory damages of up to $150,000 (for willful infringement) per work.
It seems to me that there are a lot of different people to sue, from the F4I who made the software to Sony music to your corner CD store. You can also ask for your attorney's fees. Lots of money to be made here.
Hmmm.... So, as previously noted, the software appears to contain copyrighted LAME code.
So, minimum statutory damages for innocent infringement of $200. Estimates are that there are over 500,000 machines infected. Multiply by two copies, one for the original CD and one for the as-installed copy. By my count, Sony is liable for over $200M in damages. Not a good day, indeed. And that doesn't even include the disks they didn't sell.
Who owns the LAME copyright? Would be poetic to sue Sony for massive copyright infringement.
(IANAL.)
There's a kernel of truth in what you say, but the problem is that it turns into a 'Blame the U.S.' game.
To the extent that the attacks have the political aims you claim, they have been a complete failure, helping to bring about just the opposite of their aims: had 9/11 not happened, Afghanistan would probably still be run by the Taliban, and it's possible that we never would have invaded Iraq (since it would have had much less domestic support). The "I want to be left alone, so I'm going to punch the biggest kid in the schoolyard in the face" approach just doesn't seem to be working.
If you're correct about the motivation, then we should respond to new terrorist attacks by attacking another middle-eastern country. Eventually, the terrorists should clue in. In reality, the best way to get the US out of Iraq would be to stop setting roadside bombs, stop killing innocent Iraqis, &c -- quartering troops in a foreign country is expensive, so as soon as the gov't thinks it's safe to pull most of the troops out, it will.
In any case, going along with your view would be equivalent to allowing our foreign policy with say Germany to be dictated by what some small minority German policital party wants. The terrorists have no right to speak for the people of the Middle East.
Hardly anti-American.
The examples you point to are atypical -- where do you live?? I think Verizon's service is the most prevalant of those, and is still limited to Verizon's service area.
In North Carolina, I am getting 4.7Mb down, which is pretty typical throughout the country. Go to any of the common 'speedtest' Internet sites and you'll see that 10Mb is typically off their charts.
Right now, you don't use your connection to download TV. But, there's not really that much TV out there on the 'net and it's probably easier for you to watch TV on your TV than on your computer. But, what if you can start getting half a million channels over your Internet connection? What if you could do pay-per-view of any movie or TV episode ever made? And what if you can watch it on your hi-def wide-screen TV instead of your computer?
If you do that, then what happens to: Local TV stations? Cable & Satellite Pay-per-view? Movie rental stores? Cable TV?
WRT #2, I don't think I was specific enough. Multicast really only works for live feeds -- you want to watch the superbowl, for example. If, though, you're streaming pre-recorded TV, then it's possible that my neighbor and I will both want to watch episode 14 of "Lost." He starts watching at 8:05 and I start at 8:07. Multicasting doesn't help. You actually need a local-to-the-network cache to do it right. And, that's why you need the ISP to participate.
WRT #1, I agree. But, streaming lets the content providers get revenue from it by inserting targetting advertising.
Aahh... But you forget a few things:
(1) Streaming TV at broadcast quality requires a lot more bandwidth than most "broadband" ISP customers current get to their homes.
(2) The backend link at most "broadband" ISPs has nowhere near enough capacity to stream a TV station per-customer. A lot of people have TVs on just as background -- this doesn't really happen with your computer. As a result, the models that "broadband" ISPs use to oversell their services go out the window.
(3) The two main providers of broadband Internet service in the US are cable companies and phone companies. Both of these guys are going for the so-called "triple-play" of TV, video and Internet. THey have a vested interest in doing what they can to keep TV off the Internet. This will probably just come from not providing enough bandwidth.
[#2 can be fixed, at least partially, through the judicious use of multicasting. But, that probably implies infrastructure in the ISP. They are going to expect to be compensated for this.]
I use the word "broadband" in quotes, because it's a relative word. In the US, compared to dialup, it's broadband. Compared to what folks on other continents get, it's narrow.
This is very strategic and potentially very market-disruptive.
There are any number of players trying to deliver video over the internet -- the Yahoo guy in charge of their video was quoted by the NYT as saying that we will have an unlimited number of channels in the future. The NBC Nightly news is going on-line. Major-league baseball has been streaming games all season. Every media company in the world would love the ability to sell directly to consumers without having to go through Blockbuster, DirectTV or cable pay-per-view. But, as long as the picture shows up on a computer screen and not on a TV screen, it'll be a niche market. But, if the same 36-in TV that you watched 'Lost' on ABC can be used to watch the 'Lost' you got from itunes, well, that's a different story. Tivo is perfectly positioned to allow this to happen.
One big problem with this is bandwidth. Unfortunately, the people who lose by having more TV go over the Internet are the same ones who control bandwidth. Is your cable TV company going to say "Hey. Let's take some of the bandwidth that we're using to provide high-profit pay-per-view video and use it to fatten our Internet pipes instead"? Ideally, they'd be forced to by their competitors, but the main competition to cable modems is DSL, and all the phone companies are trying to do video as well.
Cough... Cough...
Are you serious? Let's see.... Go to an office supply store in San Francisco, buy some posterboard and a fat marker. Write up a sign that says "Down with Bush. Republicans are a bunch of morons." Put it on your car and drive around. See what happens.
Try the same thing in China, except have the sign say "Down with Hu Jintao. Communists are a bunch of morons." Put it on a car and drive around. See what happens.
Try having a student-led demonstration in the capitol of each country. (Anybody remember Tiananmen quare?)
Argh. Generally, government-created works are considered to be in the public domain and are not subject to copyright. Just as in trademark law, you can't put up your own website and use the FCC logo, the EPA logo or any of a number of other government logos in a way that might confuse people. Under the Necessary and Proper clause the government has the power to do exactly this sort of thing.
I suspect that the seal itself is, for copyright purposes, in the public domain in that anybody can reproduce it. But, there are limitations on its use imposed by other laws.
Here's another example: O'Reilly uses a bunch of public domanin line drawings on the covers of their books. But, they would have a valid trademark infringement claim against anybody who used the same line-drawing of a camel on the front of a competing book about Perl. The drawing is still in the public domain, but cannot be used in certain ways because of trademark law. The government seals & logos enjoy similar protection.
It's important to realize that stores and manufacturers often either (1) don't understand their responsibilities or (2) understand them, but assume that most people do not. It's sort of like that sign on the back of dump trucks that says "Not responsible for broken windshields": if they negligently don't cover their gravel load and it flies off and hits your windshield, they are probably (depending on state law) responsible for your windshield. You may have to sue them to get them to pay, but they're still responsibile. Similarly, a retailer may refuse to take the software back. (Raising an interesting issue of whether the EULA is enforceable after this.) You may have to sue them to get them to do it.
And this is why you should never take legal advice off the internet....
I'll play devil's advocate:
(1) It does need to be an exchange, but does not need to be an exchange of 'things,' unless you use that term very loosely. In exchange for your agreeing to the EULA (and maybe your money), they let you use the software. Another example: in exchange for $500, I agree to let you drive a backhoe across my yard so you can dig your swimming pool.
(2) Typically, the software box says that there use of the software is subject to an EULA, contained inside. Courts have said that as long as you know that it's there before you buy and have the right to refuse the agreement after you buy (by, say, returning the product), you have that. In extreme cases, courts have said "everybody knows that software is governed by EULAs, so you don't even need notice on the outside of the box, as long as you have some way to reject once you read the contract."
(3) I don't know where you get this from -- contracts do not have to be signed or otherwise verified. THey do need to be accepted, though. When I go into a store and buy a gallon of milk with cash, I don't sign anything. There's such a thing as "acceptance by performance," where you don't have to do say anything, just do it. For example, you drop your car off at the garage, slip the key in the mail slot with a note "Please fix the brakes unless it will cost over $500" -- the garage sees it and fixes your car. You have to pay -- they accepted your offer by doing what you asked.
(4) Contracts do NOT have to be open to negotiation. I don't know where you get this from. Buying a coke from a machine is a contract -- when was the last time you were able to negotiate with a coke machine? In any case, you actually do have this ability with EULAs -- call up the company and say "I'd like to use your software, but I don't like the EULA. How about this contract...."
In the US, while parts of EULAs may not be enforced as being against public policy, unconscionable, illegal, &c, they are otherwise generally enforced.
(IANAL. Don't take this as legal advice.)
While keeping the back door wide open.
In order to draft from your account, the only thing anybody needs is your account number. Heck, companies are now allowed to convert your paper checks into "electronic checks" (ie computer drafts) using only the information printed on the bottom of your check. There was something on the local radio station this week (Clark Howard, consumer guy out of Atlanta) about a woman whose $1600 mortgage payment got fat-fingered as $6600 and it took her MONTHS to get her money back - and that was from a reputable place that just made a mistake. What happens when it's a crook?
Tightening up the security needed for internet transactions is not going to make any dent in the security of your bank account.
Linux support at a manufacturer is not costless. If Dell, for example, decides to sell Linux on some systems, they have to get it running, test, document, change the website to reflect it, advertise, support, duplicate CDs, create part numbers, etc.... These costs need to be allocated to the Linux machines sold -- if it costs you $1M to get to the point where you can ship Linux, and you only sell 5,000 of them, you have to increase the costs by $200 per machine just to break even.
Many of the corresponding costs for Windows are probably higher, but they are also spread across far more machines -- the end result is that even with the Windows license, the per unit cost is lower.
Phooey. If he had really supported it, he would have put up a fight to get it ratified by the Senate. Signing it was just political -- he knew it would *never* actually take effect.
In the US, Copyright law gives the author/creator a specific set of rights with regard to his works. If somebody else does one of those things, then they are infringing unless there is a defense. Fair use is one of the defenses.
If you're not doing one of those things that are reserved specifically to the copyright holder, then you are not infringing. Period.
Fair use is typically a case-by-case determination. The list you give are examples of the sorts of things that are allowed -- it is not the complete definitive list.
One of the big things that determines whether use is fair is whether it is commercial. Another one is whether it is practical to compensate the copyright holders for the use. While Google generating ad revenue acts against fair use (commercial), the fact that many of these works are out-of-print and the sheer logistical nightmare of tracking down all the rights holders is in favor of fair use. IMHO, that is. IANAL.
Well, maybe I wasn't as precise as I should have been. I meant to say that they can't claim the exclusive right to sell the work.
However, Paragraph 2(b) of the GPL says that if you're distributing a derivative work, you have to license it "at no charge to all third parties."
Now, that still doesn't give third parties a copy of the code -- it just gives them a license to use the code if they can get a copy. And, any of your customers is allowed to give them a copy.
WRT rationing, I was thinking more along the lines of what was done in the '70s, where even-numbered plates got to buy on even days and odd-numbered plates got to buy on odd days.
I suppose that if one wanted to institute a huge government program to make centralized decisions about priorities, it'd be possible, although prone to error. I don't think such a program is necessary -- basic economic theory says that easily tradeable goods go to highest-value user.
I'm not aware of the President's family being enmeshed in the oil business. I know that he personally was in the oil business, and I suspect still knows a number of people there. I'd be interested to learn more, but I don't think it exists.
Iraq wasn't contributing a large portion of the world oil before the war (remember the sanctions). Oil prices, like those of most commodities now, are most directly related to the Chinese economy. Check the prices of Steel and Copper -- we haven't done anything in the Steel-producing areas of the world, but those prices are high as well. Of course, it's easier for those industries to increase production.
I agree that OPEC does (or at least tries to do) this generally. They can't do it now because they have reached their maximum production -- they are just about at peak production and are not limiting at all. In fact, OPEC doesn't want prices this high. When the Chinese economy goes into its next recession, OPEC will discover that many people in the rest of the world have switched to smaller cars, natural gas, hybrids and other technologies that are less dependant on oil.
Being able to set prices means that OPEC has the ability to maximize either its short- or long-term profits. If they maximize short-term profits, then competitors, such as fuel-cells, nuclear power, natural gas & so on will enter the market and their long-term monopoly is gone. On the other hand, if they set prices high enough where they get a good profit but low enough that potential competitors can't make money, they can keep going forever.
The article asserts that any software worked on by a software professional is owned by his/her employer. I do not think this is true -- the OSS worked on would need to be in the realm of what he/she is employed to do. So, for example, if my job is to develop image processing software and I contribute to the GIMP, there may be a problem. But, if I contribute to a VoIP project, that's a problem.
Few people who contribute their time to an Open Source project actually start at ground zero -- they usually build on work that somebody else does. And, if they do this, then they any contribution is a derivative work -- something that they are only allowed to do with the permission of the original copyright holder. The GPL gives people the right to do this under two conditions: (1) they redistribute their changes under the GPL, or (2) they only use the changes internally.
So, let's posit that an employee has contributed to an Open Source project and the employer objects, and that it actually owns the copyright to the employee's work. What remedy does it have? It's still bound by the GPL and can't then decide to sell the work. The only thing it can do is try to withdraw the source code from the public and use anybody who still uses it for copyright infringement.
But, here it gets really interesting -- there are a number of defenses that infringers have, including apparent agency, various forms of estoppel and lack of creative authorship (more on this last later....) Because of the cost & uncertainty, the company will try to settle. But, they are missing a major carrot: licensing the infringer to use the work. After all, as soon as they allow somebody to use the code, the GPL kicks in and they have to let anybody use it.
(The lack of creative authorship basically means that if there's a bug and there are only a few ways of fixing it, you haven't actually created a 'work of authorship' in implementing one of those fixes. No creative authorship means no copyright. No copyright means no infringement.)
This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer.
Oh come off it. In the current market, nobody has 'control' of prices -- they're set by the laws of supply and demand. Demand is huge right now mainly because the red Chinese economy is booming. Supply, meanwhile, can't be increased. The result is completely predictible to anybody who's taken high school economics: prices go up.
When there's any blip in supply, as there was with the hurricane, supply actually drops and prices go up again.
And, in fact, this is what you want -- if the prices were artificially set at some level, we would end up with shortages and rationing: Retirees would still be able to go out crusing on the weekends with their ration, but delivery trucks wouldn't have enough to make their rounds.
There are certainly people making a mint on this -- the cost of production has not gone up much. But, there was no way for any oil company/country to engineer this.
As for your tirade about the tax cuts.... As a percentage of the total tax relief, only a small portion went to the "millionaires" -- much more went to those w/ annual incomes under $100K/yr. Person-for-person however, millionaires got more (because they pay substantially higher taxes than the rest of us and thus benefit most from any tax cut), but there are far fewer of them.
First of all, some of the open source players have started patenting software for defensive purposes. See, e.g., http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html . Do you really want to cut these players out?
Secondly, this is going to be a big barrier to adoption both of the GPL and of software under it -- what owner of a "software patent" is going to write GPL'd code or use it? Considering the number of such companies, this change will just about condemn the GPL to the trash heap.
US Copyright law is basically just a bunch of restrictive default rules about what people can & can't do with somebody else's work. The author can change these rules, typically by granting a license for other uses. But, if the author fails to do this, then the default rules still apply.
Writing license agreements, though, is generally the purview of lawyers. Because lawyers are expensive and time-consuming, many creators do not go through the trouble, even if they do not want to retain all the default rights. As a result, earing serious liability for infringement, few people subsequently use these works.
With Creative Commons, there is no need to see a lawyer if they don't want to use the default rules -- they have a set of standard agreements already pre-packaged for the layperson to use. As a result, there's virtually no cost to letting people reuse your work.
There's another benefit -- because the agreements are standard, users only need to understand them once. There's no need to see a lawyer to explain each license agreement that comes in through the door.
Uh.... First of all, companies do not file patents -- individuals do. The rights may be signed over to a company, but it's always the inventor who files.
Second, we already have a system vaguely familiar to what you describe: patent agents/attorneys already have to demonstrate that they know what they're doing. And, they have to disclose any prior art that they know about to the USPTO. The USPTO has access to large databases of prior art, and a chunk of the examiner's role is figuring out what the prior art is. The inventor pays a fee for the application and that includes the examiner's time.
Third, what is an 'active' patent??
Rationing in the US will have very little effect on prices. The fact is that when I buy a gallon of gas, I'm taking from the same supply pool as my next-door-neighbor, the chinese military and truck drivers in europe.
In any event, it's just the wrong thing to do -- when prices go up, the people who use the gas will be the ones who value it the most: a man who needs the gas to go to the hospital will pay more for it than the man who needs it to go water-skiing.
I see no evidence for your assertion that high prices bankrupt gas stations, but have seen several articles that say that gas stations are doing very well.
You can't compare the WWII situation to today's: the world market was completely different than it is today. The gas rationing of the 1970s has been shown to do more harm than good -- because of the rationing, people topped off their cars whenever they got a chance, creating an enormous "rolling reserve" of gas: before, the average tank was 1/2 full; during rationing it was 3/4 full -- multiply the 2-3 gallons by 30 million cars, and that's a lot of gas.
Stations should not run out of gas if you let the market set the price for gas -- when they do, that means that the price is too low.