Couldn't piracy also have fallen because of the sharp rise of open source software?
But, darling, open source software is piracy. At least in their view. Piracy = (# copies of software needed) - (# copies of closed source software sold).
This is the same logic that the RIAA uses with CDS. (#CDs pirated) = (#CD blanks sold).
Both RIAA and BSA begin from the fundamental belief that if consumers weren't somehow cheating, they would own 100% of the market. This is "pirated until proven innocent" -- we need some statistics that begin with the assumption that start counting from zero and count only that illegal copying that can be observed/estimated.
Re:Five seconds for the lawsuits to hit
on
P2P Meets Push
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Konspire"? Speaking of lawsuits . . . Might want to give some thought to the product name here, guys. Image, image, image.
To present this argument convincingly, you might try a graph of benchmark score (y) v. price (x). Ignore the clock speed. If what you're saying is correct, AMD should show a higher performance rating at most or all price points.
The question to answer for people is this: if they have $175 to spend on a processor, what can they get for it?
SBC's patents were filed May 17, 1996. There are several ways that something can qualify as prior art, but the most clear-cut is to find something that was public more than 1 year before the filing date. In this case, before May 17, 1995.
Mod parent up. Kazaa either has control of its users or it doesn't. Sueing RIAA would be a bad plan -- particularly because even a flood of IMs is just an annoyance.
How would we react if the rules of basketball were changed to equalize abilities between reds, blacks, whites, yellows, etc.? Pretty stupid, huh? What if we just tried to equalize the game so that short people weren't disadvantaged when playing against tall people? Or maybe had a separate league for people under 6' 0"?
Look. All advantages are, by definition, unfair. Tall people play basketball because they win more than short people. Gymnasts tend to be shorter because of balance and weight. Poor eyesight used to drive people afflicted with it from all sorts of games and careers -- we've corrected for that, and no would listen to a complaint by "naturally-sighted" people that eyeglasses are an unfair "enhancement".
Let people manipulate genes if they want to. So what? This type of "artificial" advantage is not any more unfair or unholy than any other. It's just new.
While the Microsoft questions appear to be a better way to evaluate people, the issue has never really been seriously examined. Microsoft's success would seem to make the argument pointless: Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?
Yes.
Fact: Microsoft has made a lot of money. Fact: Microsoft asks puzzle questions. Hypothesis: Asking puzzle questions caused Mircosoft to make a lot of money. Prediction: If you ask puzzle questions, you will make a lot of money.
This is a classic example of an argument that, if valid, would prove too much. If MS's success alone implies that its interview methodology is correct, then MS's success alone should also imply that every other little thing MS does is right.
"Oh no my young [Bill], you will find it is you who are mistaken...about a great, many things". - Emperor Palpatine, ROTJ
It struck me how sometimes, someone rights a hero and just nails it. This, IMHO, is why the Spiderman movie was such a success. They nailed the character. Sure, the CGI was great, but the real key for me was getting the character of Peter Parker right. Even the characters of Harry Osborn and Mary Jane Watson were full of substance. Harry's hatred of Spiderman is well set up for future films, and Peter ends the film with a bone-head, teenager move with Mary Jane. I could care less that they shifted a radio-active spider to a genetically-engineered spider or that the web spinners are now organic instead of mechanical.
My question is, for the Hulk, has there ever been such a defining moment. I will invite yells here, but for me the comic has been cheesy the few times I read it. If it carries any weight, I think of Bill Bixby in the TV show who put so much humanity into Banner. I've only read the book for about four years, so my core concept of the character is based the show and Bill Bixby. IMHO, the various writers of the book have had such wildly different visions of the character that it's hard to form a coherent picture.
For instance, the skin color changes from green to grey to savage to smart to whatever have been pretty distracting. One of the problems these changes were meant to address is that while Banner tends to grow as a character, the Hulk tends not to remember very much and does not develop much over time. So, the writers gave the Hulk a series of magical transformations to new personalities. It's only a partial fix. For the readers to identify with the Hulk, to feel like they know him, the Hulk needs to know himself. _He_ needs to remember.
Well, I'll be there for the movie. Spiderman will be a hard act to follow, but all we can do is "Read and find out."
I wish I could comment on Frank Miller's Batman, but I haven't read it (or any Batman, more's the pity). What I've heard about it is everything that you suggest -- namely, that no one can understand the character of Batman today without understanding Miller's work.
Hmmm. Fair question. Let's see. How about "I was trying to be ecumenical?" No? Maybe "My knowledge of DC is limited, else I'd have included more of them." Nah, probably because "What I wanted to say was about heroes generally, not just Marvel."
The Marvel pantheon is full of deep, fascinating characters (as well as some real stinkers). The best of the Marvel heroes revolve around some fundamental question of humanity or some basic emotion. For instance:
Spiderman = Responsibility. Stan Lee's quip, "With great power comes great responsibility" may not be as catchy as "Up, Up and Away" or "To the Batmobile, Robin", but it's a lot more inspiring when you think about it. Pete Parker received a talent by random chance, an accident, something that he had no say about. That talent has been both blessing and curse to him. That talent is what makes the stories fun to read. What Pete does with that talent is what makes them meaningful.
Hulk = Rage. Bruce David Banner is a civilized, intelligent man. The raging child inside him is anything but. The writers of this book have spent years dousing for the sources of the ever-flowing font of rage that wells up within Banner's fractured soul. His father, his mother, his wife, his father-in-law, his employers. About the only thing they haven't thrown at poor Bruce, as far as I can recall, is children. It doesn't hurt the story any that it was the work of Bruce's own intellect (the gamma experiment) that set the monster within him loose. Now, every day that Bruce wakes up amid the wreckage of some unfamiliar place, he must ask "My God, what have I done?" of his actions taken both while monster and as a man.
Iron Man = Weakness. Bright and shiny on the outside, a lifestyle of flash and sparkle. But, within, there are flaws. Billionaire playboy inventor Tony Stark has a weak heart, is an alcoholic, and has no lasting relationships. Is his entire life a hollow shell? In addition, Iron Man must also deal with the constant possibilities that the handiwork of his mind, which is also the foundation of his fortune, can be so easily turned to evil by others. Iron Man, and to some extent the Hulk as well, must address the problem presented over and over in Tolkien's works: the creations of our intellects can turn against us to work great evil because all machines, once created, have no governing wisdom of their own. Bruce Banner's science opened Pandora's Box and found the Hulk inside. Tony Stark tried to create a better world through technology and learned that technology is equally powerful as a tool of evil.
Captain America = Idealism. Steve Rogers is a man of high ideals faced with a world filled with awful circumstances. Sure, he can try to fight the bad guy, but he's only human and he often fails. What's harder to fight are the situations where the country he loves hasn't lived those ideals.
X-Men = Alienation. While individual X-men have very individual stories, the series overall explores the question of conflict between diverse groups. The homo sapiens v. homo superior conflict serves as a metaphor not only for race relations, but for relationships between parents and children as well. Each mutant must deal with the feelings of isolation and loneliness they experience while acting out their personal mythology: "nothing like this has ever happened to anyone buy me."
Green Lantern (and Dare Devil) = Fear. Courage is an act that only those who feel fear can perform. I'm not sure that either of these characters lives up to their billing as being "without fear", but they both show that it's possible to act in situations that would scare the living @&%! out of any rational person.
To sum it up, every great hero needs a fatal flaw. The flaw is how the reader relates. The flaw is how the tale teaches. Stories in comics are just as full of flash and bang as any other mythic tale, but they can also be as full of substance.
Medical Doctor Public Engineer Lawyer Certified Public Accountant Registered Nurse
Although titles like these have the skeletons of economic protectionism in their collective closets, they do serve a useful purpose. They help the customer know (a least the baseline of) what they're getting.
Would you let anyone call themselves a "doctor" and hack your body? Then why allow half-trained code-monkeys to hack your software architecture?
For a moment I thought that the Advertising Standards Board had actually helped Microsoft out. I mean, had Microsoft been allowed to proclaim that MS software is hacker-proof, it would have had the inevitable effect of encouraging every black hat hacker in the world to devote themselves entirely to attacking Microsoft.
Hence, it is silly to see him [Forbes] suggest that the Congress should declare trademarks to be eternal.
Um, trademarks _are_ eternal. You meant to be thinking of copyright.
In theory, the length of protection on intellectual property varies inversely with the strength of it. Trademarks cover a label on goods and can last forever; copyright covers an expression of an idea and can last a long time; patent allows absolute exclusion of using an invention and can last 20 years. (In practice, Disney gets what it wants.)
Example: Software. Microsoft is a trademark. To avoid infringing the trademark, you name your software something else. Windows is copyrighted. To avoid infringing Windows' copyright, you write clean-room code that performs the same task. For patented software, clean-room code won't help because a patent excludes you from writing any code that does whatever the invention does in the same way it does it.
As to changing the constitution, there is no need to actually declare copyrights eternal to slap an increasing fee or tax on them. Heck, there used to be renewal periods every 33 years where you had to go back and re-register to prevent your copyright from lapsing. Even merely going back to that scheme would be an improvement over what we don't have now.
"Windows" is a generic name. "Lindows" is a stupid name.
Stupid or not, at least Lindows is a made-up name that stands a good chance of deserving trademark protection (not that anyone is likely to try to ride Lindows coat-tails any time soon). It's not like they tried to appropriate a description word from the English language and claim rights to it or something . ..
The only thing newsworthy in today's story is that it took from December 2001 to now for Lindows to think of demanding the documents from the old Apple case.
Sue them for what? BSA sent a letter, not a lawsuit. BSA sent it privately to the univeristy, not publically. The university was not hauled into court and its public reputation was not assaulted. When the (unbelieveably dumb) mistake was pointed out, BSA (to my shock and surprize) apologized.
I don't like BSA's tactics either. As this case makes obvious, they work from the assumption that they own rights to anything that looks, sounds, or smells even vaguely like one of their clients' products. However, you can only sue someone who injures you. As with junk faxes and spam, it would take a special law to make 'sending out copyright cease-and-desist letters' into an injury you could sue on.
Nominations for Achievement in visual effects "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook (New Line) and Alex Funke
"Spider-Man" (Sony Pictures Releasing) John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara and John Frazier
"Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones" Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll and (20th Century Fox) Ben Snow
And he so truly deserves it. Episode II had some grand scenes, and Spidey was well done, but Golem's internal battle of conscience is perhaps the best acting by a cgi character to date.
Re:They just don't get it...
on
Kazaa Fights Back
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Perhaps they do "get it".
Let's suppose that they do realize their business model is doomed. What should they do in response? Answer: milk the old business model for all it is worth until it is well past dead. Simultaneously, prepare for the new one.
They're still making big-B Billions of $/year the old way. They can afford lawsuits and lobbying fees easily. Those expenses are just a cost of doing business to them. And even one more year of profits under the old model is worth having. Likely, it's a minimum of 5 years until the old model is completely dead and probably longer.
Once the old model is completely dead, and not one day before, they can take their accumulated capital and step in to become a dominant player in the new model.
Our hope, if we have one, is to design the new model in such a way that it doesn't have dominant players.
Just being a little less optimistic, my bet is that one of the following happens:
The DMCA charge fails because of the reverse engineering parts of the law. - DUH!
Their problem may be that no one is "accessing" the so-called protected work (the software in the receiver). First, the homeowner bought a license to operate the software when he bought the garage door opener. The homeowner then buys this replacement remote and presses the button. The replacement remote operates the receiver software. It doesn't copy that software. It doesn't alter it. It doesn't display it. It merely interoperates with it. (Granted, this is not quite in the way the manufacturer intended, but that's the manufacturer's problem.)
The previous poster has a good point about the reverse engineering provision (17 USC Sec 1201(f)). That part of the DMCA says "a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent . . . for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs". That seems to say that interoperating is not prohibited by the DMCA.
Another good question is whether the receiver software is a work protected by a technological measure (17 USC Sec. 1201(a)(3)(A)). After all, that software is not scrambled or encrypted. Only the signal the software processes is scrambled or encrypted. No one is trying to decode the software here.
SearchKing entered into contracts where they promised other people they could provide Google's good opinion of a web page. Then, Google refused to give SearchKing its good opinion (high pagerank). Now SearchKing is suing on the basis that Google interfered with SearchKing's right to make contracts with other people.
Yeah, right. SearchKing brought this on themselves. Their business is built on promising to manipulate and deceive Google into ranking certain pages high. The court is going to laugh these guys right out the door. SearchKing has no hope of getting this injunction, much less getting to trial.
Well said. I agree that blacklisting someone's ISP is not in the same realm as turning them out of their apartment. But, it can ruin their legitimate business, which is a serious kind of injury.
My main point was in response to the parent post that said collateral damage was the point of blacklisting. I actually approve of blacklisting generally. However, the justification for it is eliminating the spam-sender. Harming nearby innocents is something we should attempt to avoid.
As collecting bounties on spammers, I'm sure that I personnaly will never see one red cent of such a bounty. But an enterprising plaintiff's lawyer could make a bundle suing spammers. Those guys are taking down industries like asbestos, tobacco, chemicals, and handguns -- how tough can the fly-by-night spammers be?
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't piracy also have fallen because of the sharp rise of open source software?
But, darling, open source software is piracy. At least in their view. Piracy = (# copies of software needed) - (# copies of closed source software sold).
This is the same logic that the RIAA uses with CDS. (#CDs pirated) = (#CD blanks sold).
Both RIAA and BSA begin from the fundamental belief that if consumers weren't somehow cheating, they would own 100% of the market. This is "pirated until proven innocent" -- we need some statistics that begin with the assumption that start counting from zero and count only that illegal copying that can be observed/estimated.
"Konspire"? Speaking of lawsuits . . . Might want to give some thought to the product name here, guys. Image, image, image.
To present this argument convincingly, you might try a graph of benchmark score (y) v. price (x). Ignore the clock speed. If what you're saying is correct, AMD should show a higher performance rating at most or all price points.
The question to answer for people is this: if they have $175 to spend on a processor, what can they get for it?
SBC's patents were filed May 17, 1996. There are several ways that something can qualify as prior art, but the most clear-cut is to find something that was public more than 1 year before the filing date. In this case, before May 17, 1995.
Mod parent up. Kazaa either has control of its users or it doesn't. Sueing RIAA would be a bad plan -- particularly because even a flood of IMs is just an annoyance.
How would we react if the rules of basketball were changed to equalize abilities between reds, blacks, whites, yellows, etc.? Pretty stupid, huh? What if we just tried to equalize the game so that short people weren't disadvantaged when playing against tall people? Or maybe had a separate league for people under 6' 0"?
Look. All advantages are, by definition, unfair. Tall people play basketball because they win more than short people. Gymnasts tend to be shorter because of balance and weight. Poor eyesight used to drive people afflicted with it from all sorts of games and careers -- we've corrected for that, and no would listen to a complaint by "naturally-sighted" people that eyeglasses are an unfair "enhancement".
Let people manipulate genes if they want to. So what? This type of "artificial" advantage is not any more unfair or unholy than any other. It's just new.
While the Microsoft questions appear to be a better way to evaluate people, the issue has never really been seriously examined. Microsoft's success would seem to make the argument pointless: Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?
Yes.
Fact: Microsoft has made a lot of money.
Fact: Microsoft asks puzzle questions.
Hypothesis: Asking puzzle questions caused Mircosoft to make a lot of money.
Prediction: If you ask puzzle questions, you will make a lot of money.
This is a classic example of an argument that, if valid, would prove too much. If MS's success alone implies that its interview methodology is correct, then MS's success alone should also imply that every other little thing MS does is right.
"Oh no my young [Bill], you will find it is you who are mistaken...about a great, many things". - Emperor Palpatine, ROTJ
Thanks for the kind words.
It struck me how sometimes, someone rights a hero and just nails it. This, IMHO, is why the Spiderman movie was such a success. They nailed the character. Sure, the CGI was great, but the real key for me was getting the character of Peter Parker right. Even the characters of Harry Osborn and Mary Jane Watson were full of substance. Harry's hatred of Spiderman is well set up for future films, and Peter ends the film with a bone-head, teenager move with Mary Jane. I could care less that they shifted a radio-active spider to a genetically-engineered spider or that the web spinners are now organic instead of mechanical.
My question is, for the Hulk, has there ever been such a defining moment. I will invite yells here, but for me the comic has been cheesy the few times I read it. If it carries any weight, I think of Bill Bixby in the TV show who put so much humanity into Banner. I've only read the book for about four years, so my core concept of the character is based the show and Bill Bixby. IMHO, the various writers of the book have had such wildly different visions of the character that it's hard to form a coherent picture.
For instance, the skin color changes from green to grey to savage to smart to whatever have been pretty distracting. One of the problems these changes were meant to address is that while Banner tends to grow as a character, the Hulk tends not to remember very much and does not develop much over time. So, the writers gave the Hulk a series of magical transformations to new personalities. It's only a partial fix. For the readers to identify with the Hulk, to feel like they know him, the Hulk needs to know himself. _He_ needs to remember.
Well, I'll be there for the movie. Spiderman will be a hard act to follow, but all we can do is "Read and find out."
I wish I could comment on Frank Miller's Batman, but I haven't read it (or any Batman, more's the pity). What I've heard about it is everything that you suggest -- namely, that no one can understand the character of Batman today without understanding Miller's work.
Hmmm. Fair question. Let's see. How about "I was trying to be ecumenical?" No? Maybe "My knowledge of DC is limited, else I'd have included more of them." Nah, probably because "What I wanted to say was about heroes generally, not just Marvel."
The Marvel pantheon is full of deep, fascinating characters (as well as some real stinkers). The best of the Marvel heroes revolve around some fundamental question of humanity or some basic emotion. For instance:
Spiderman = Responsibility. Stan Lee's quip, "With great power comes great responsibility" may not be as catchy as "Up, Up and Away" or "To the Batmobile, Robin", but it's a lot more inspiring when you think about it. Pete Parker received a talent by random chance, an accident, something that he had no say about. That talent has been both blessing and curse to him. That talent is what makes the stories fun to read. What Pete does with that talent is what makes them meaningful.
Hulk = Rage. Bruce David Banner is a civilized, intelligent man. The raging child inside him is anything but. The writers of this book have spent years dousing for the sources of the ever-flowing font of rage that wells up within Banner's fractured soul. His father, his mother, his wife, his father-in-law, his employers. About the only thing they haven't thrown at poor Bruce, as far as I can recall, is children. It doesn't hurt the story any that it was the work of Bruce's own intellect (the gamma experiment) that set the monster within him loose. Now, every day that Bruce wakes up amid the wreckage of some unfamiliar place, he must ask "My God, what have I done?" of his actions taken both while monster and as a man.
Iron Man = Weakness. Bright and shiny on the outside, a lifestyle of flash and sparkle. But, within, there are flaws. Billionaire playboy inventor Tony Stark has a weak heart, is an alcoholic, and has no lasting relationships. Is his entire life a hollow shell? In addition, Iron Man must also deal with the constant possibilities that the handiwork of his mind, which is also the foundation of his fortune, can be so easily turned to evil by others. Iron Man, and to some extent the Hulk as well, must address the problem presented over and over in Tolkien's works: the creations of our intellects can turn against us to work great evil because all machines, once created, have no governing wisdom of their own. Bruce Banner's science opened Pandora's Box and found the Hulk inside. Tony Stark tried to create a better world through technology and learned that technology is equally powerful as a tool of evil.
Captain America = Idealism. Steve Rogers is a man of high ideals faced with a world filled with awful circumstances. Sure, he can try to fight the bad guy, but he's only human and he often fails. What's harder to fight are the situations where the country he loves hasn't lived those ideals.
X-Men = Alienation. While individual X-men have very individual stories, the series overall explores the question of conflict between diverse groups. The homo sapiens v. homo superior conflict serves as a metaphor not only for race relations, but for relationships between parents and children as well. Each mutant must deal with the feelings of isolation and loneliness they experience while acting out their personal mythology: "nothing like this has ever happened to anyone buy me."
Green Lantern (and Dare Devil) = Fear. Courage is an act that only those who feel fear can perform. I'm not sure that either of these characters lives up to their billing as being "without fear", but they both show that it's possible to act in situations that would scare the living @&%! out of any rational person.
To sum it up, every great hero needs a fatal flaw. The flaw is how the reader relates. The flaw is how the tale teaches. Stories in comics are just as full of flash and bang as any other mythic tale, but they can also be as full of substance.
'Nuff said.
Medical Doctor
Public Engineer
Lawyer
Certified Public Accountant
Registered Nurse
Although titles like these have the skeletons of economic protectionism in their collective closets, they do serve a useful purpose. They help the customer know (a least the baseline of) what they're getting.
Would you let anyone call themselves a "doctor" and hack your body? Then why allow half-trained code-monkeys to hack your software architecture?
For a moment I thought that the Advertising Standards Board had actually helped Microsoft out. I mean, had Microsoft been allowed to proclaim that MS software is hacker-proof, it would have had the inevitable effect of encouraging every black hat hacker in the world to devote themselves entirely to attacking Microsoft.
Then I remembered: they already are.
From the Ananova article, "Last month, Maguire's agents renegotiated a record £11 million deal for the sequel."
;)
£11 MM= $17 MM. No biggie, it's not like rocket science where using the wrong system of measurement makes an actual difference.
Hence, it is silly to see him [Forbes] suggest that the Congress should declare trademarks to be eternal.
Um, trademarks _are_ eternal. You meant to be thinking of copyright.
In theory, the length of protection on intellectual property varies inversely with the strength of it. Trademarks cover a label on goods and can last forever; copyright covers an expression of an idea and can last a long time; patent allows absolute exclusion of using an invention and can last 20 years. (In practice, Disney gets what it wants.)
Example: Software. Microsoft is a trademark. To avoid infringing the trademark, you name your software something else. Windows is copyrighted. To avoid infringing Windows' copyright, you write clean-room code that performs the same task. For patented software, clean-room code won't help because a patent excludes you from writing any code that does whatever the invention does in the same way it does it.
As to changing the constitution, there is no need to actually declare copyrights eternal to slap an increasing fee or tax on them. Heck, there used to be renewal periods every 33 years where you had to go back and re-register to prevent your copyright from lapsing. Even merely going back to that scheme would be an improvement over what we don't have now.
If they "had been tracking him for some time", I wonder why they waiting so long to do anything.
Could it be because they wanted to see where he would lead them?
"Windows" is a generic name. "Lindows" is a stupid name.
.
Stupid or not, at least Lindows is a made-up name that stands a good chance of deserving trademark protection (not that anyone is likely to try to ride Lindows coat-tails any time soon). It's not like they tried to appropriate a description word from the English language and claim rights to it or something . .
The only thing newsworthy in today's story is that it took from December 2001 to now for Lindows to think of demanding the documents from the old Apple case.
Sue them for what? BSA sent a letter, not a lawsuit. BSA sent it privately to the univeristy, not publically. The university was not hauled into court and its public reputation was not assaulted. When the (unbelieveably dumb) mistake was pointed out, BSA (to my shock and surprize) apologized.
I don't like BSA's tactics either. As this case makes obvious, they work from the assumption that they own rights to anything that looks, sounds, or smells even vaguely like one of their clients' products. However, you can only sue someone who injures you. As with junk faxes and spam, it would take a special law to make 'sending out copyright cease-and-desist letters' into an injury you could sue on.
Hey! Now there's an idea!
Don't forget film editing, which is what makes the battle-of-conscience scene come together.
Actually, Golem got his nomination.
Nominations for Achievement in visual effects
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook
(New Line) and Alex Funke
"Spider-Man" (Sony Pictures Releasing) John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara and John Frazier
"Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones" Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll and
(20th Century Fox) Ben Snow
And he so truly deserves it. Episode II had some grand scenes, and Spidey was well done, but Golem's internal battle of conscience is perhaps the best acting by a cgi character to date.
Perhaps they do "get it".
Let's suppose that they do realize their business model is doomed. What should they do in response? Answer: milk the old business model for all it is worth until it is well past dead. Simultaneously, prepare for the new one.
They're still making big-B Billions of $/year the old way. They can afford lawsuits and lobbying fees easily. Those expenses are just a cost of doing business to them. And even one more year of profits under the old model is worth having. Likely, it's a minimum of 5 years until the old model is completely dead and probably longer.
Once the old model is completely dead, and not one day before, they can take their accumulated capital and step in to become a dominant player in the new model.
Our hope, if we have one, is to design the new model in such a way that it doesn't have dominant players.
. . . that FSF didn't apply for this patent. And then sue the *IAA for infringement. Irony.
Before we start going off on the PTO, remember this is a published patent application, not an issued patent.
Their problem may be that no one is "accessing" the so-called protected work (the software in the receiver). First, the homeowner bought a license to operate the software when he bought the garage door opener. The homeowner then buys this replacement remote and presses the button. The replacement remote operates the receiver software. It doesn't copy that software. It doesn't alter it. It doesn't display it. It merely interoperates with it. (Granted, this is not quite in the way the manufacturer intended, but that's the manufacturer's problem.)
The previous poster has a good point about the reverse engineering provision (17 USC Sec 1201(f)). That part of the DMCA says "a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent . . . for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs". That seems to say that interoperating is not prohibited by the DMCA.
Another good question is whether the receiver software is a work protected by a technological measure (17 USC Sec. 1201(a)(3)(A)). After all, that software is not scrambled or encrypted. Only the signal the software processes is scrambled or encrypted. No one is trying to decode the software here.
SearchKing entered into contracts where they promised other people they could provide Google's good opinion of a web page. Then, Google refused to give SearchKing its good opinion (high pagerank). Now SearchKing is suing on the basis that Google interfered with SearchKing's right to make contracts with other people.
Yeah, right. SearchKing brought this on themselves. Their business is built on promising to manipulate and deceive Google into ranking certain pages high. The court is going to laugh these guys right out the door. SearchKing has no hope of getting this injunction, much less getting to trial.
Well said. I agree that blacklisting someone's ISP is not in the same realm as turning them out of their apartment. But, it can ruin their legitimate business, which is a serious kind of injury.
My main point was in response to the parent post that said collateral damage was the point of blacklisting. I actually approve of blacklisting generally. However, the justification for it is eliminating the spam-sender. Harming nearby innocents is something we should attempt to avoid.
As collecting bounties on spammers, I'm sure that I personnaly will never see one red cent of such a bounty. But an enterprising plaintiff's lawyer could make a bundle suing spammers. Those guys are taking down industries like asbestos, tobacco, chemicals, and handguns -- how tough can the fly-by-night spammers be?