There is no provision of what would happen if the law was broken
There must be a standard approach in Argentina to enforcing regulations on government officials. I would imagine that an interested party would obtain a court order requiring the government to comply in whatever area they were challenging. If the respponsible minister didn't then comply presumably they'd be held in contempt of court. It really depends on what your normal local practice is though. I imagine that political embarrassement at being caught breaking the law would discourage violation, plus pressure from the legislature. Both of those depend on the local political climate though.
There is no provision for exceptions, and that would be necessary (some things can't be done with propietary software)
It's probably easier to begin with to require that free software alternatives are included in the options being considered whenever a choice os software is being made. It weakens the provisions an awful lot and allows for departments to continue as they are if they really want to though. Maybe in addition it could be required that reasons have to be given for any decisions to use proprietary software rather than free software. It is weaker that way, and easier to subvert, but probably more practical.
Many of the people who fear the FBI are heaviy armed and are breaking dozens of U.S. laws. Which group would you rather have storm your house?
A group of Neo Nazis who think you're cause of all the problems in the country (or world)... or
A group of well-trained, regulated professionals who are easily accountable to the U.S. DOJ, if not the court of public opinion.
I'd rather have the professionals storm my house, personally. At least I have a small chance of surviving the encounter.
I don't want either group, or anyone else storming my house thank you very much. Nor do I feel any need to make a choice. Are you seriously suggesting that anyone should have the right to storm my house provided there's a conceivable worse group who could be doing it instead?
The logs were taken in an attempt to trace the authors of the documents, much like phone records might be used.
No logs were taken at all so I've got to wonder about the reliability of your information on why the FBI wanted to take them.
The indymedia situation, on the otherhand, is almost MORE alarming, in that the court order was taken under an order of silence, and that indymedia decided to remain in operation. While to a great degree, their hands were tied, I feel they need to reconsider what steps they take to protect their sources. Remaining in operation in essence made them part of an sting operation against their posters, something I doubt they would stand for.
How? They didn't provide the FBI with the logs they requested. Since the server that the FBI wanted logs for doesn't appear to exist, however, I guess they didn't have much option.
So under the GPL I'd be able to hide my changes only if I never distributed the software.
You seem confused. If you want to distribute the unchanged software then you can do so, and nobody will know about the changes that you choose not to distribute. If you do choose to distribute the changes then, yes, other people will have them - the people you chose to give them to. This doesn't seem very dificult to understand, if you want to hide something you don't give it to the person you're hiding it from - that tends to be a bit of a giveaway.
So yes, as you say, if you want to hide a change (let's generalise, if you ever want to hide anything at all) don't give it to anyone you're trying to hide it from.
And nothing in this proposed legislation restricts trade. It sets a minimum standard, that software should be open sourced, but there is no reason to suppose that companies inside Argentina have a competitive advantage over companies outside Argentina in providing open sourced sofwtare. At present I would think the USA leads the field in this area.
As worded above (I've no idea whether it is a good translation of course) ir seems to be perfectly explicit that this must be a right not, necessarily an obligation. I can't really see how you read it differently. "guarantees the user... the following rights"
What if some country passed a law that all government institutions must migrate to NON-FREE software?? You slashdot drones would be bitching for a week. But requiring a switch to free software is a good thing??
And if they pass a law saying that spam is illegal people will cheer whereas if they pass a law saying that spam is compulsory people will complain. It's terrible, people will change their response for no other reason than that you changed the stimulus. No consistency at all.
Total freedom means you don't _have to_ do anything, however the GPL inhibits freedom and unrestricted use by saying that users of the software _must_ make modifications they make available back to the "community".
This is, of course, untrue. The only requirement is that if you do decide to give your modified binaries to anyone then you must also provide them with a copy of the source code if they request it. You are not required to make your modifications available to others, just that if you do then source must be available as well as binaries.
The way I see it, there is nothing wrong with a company choosing to charge money for the software that they spend huge amounts of time and money creating.
Which is in no way inconsistent with the proposed legislation. If the government is arranging for software to be supplied to them then under this law they would have to require that the software be provided to them open source. That doesn't mean that the company providing it couldn't charge them.
In at least some cases I imagine suppliers would charge more to provide software on these terms. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise, imagine what you'd do if you were being asked to provide software to the Argentinian government in this situation; presumably you'd either charge the same as usual or else charge more than you otherwise would if you felt that by opening the source you were compromising potential sales to other customers.
People talk a lot about freedom on Slashdot. I'm surprised how positive a reaction this is getting on Slashdot, as something that takes freedom away from people and forces them to agree with the Open Source advocating majority on Slashdot.
This is one branch of government telling another branch of government what the policy should be on software purchases. Whether it's appropriate for them to do so is a matter for constitutional lawyers in Argentina, it's got nothing to do with limiting freedom.
Try typing a few deliberate mispellings into a spell checker. Typically you get a variety of suggestions. Often the word you were trying for is not the top choice. If there was an easy way of writing a program that could guess what a mispelled word was supposed to be then it would be in use in spell checkers already. There isn't.
This is a much harder challenge. The objective is to work out what a misspelled (or more accurately I suppose, creatively spelled) word is intended to be when the people doing the misspelling are deliberately trying to evade you.
Of course, you can do it if you're willing to use the rule that any word that might conceivably be used to represent another should be banned, but then it's much easier to skip writing the program altogether and just ban all Napster use because that's the effect. "Metal" might be short for "Metallica" should we ban the use of that word? Are there any song names that couldn't conceivably be codes for something?
They obviously haven't heard of Soundex (note: there are more algorithms than just this one). It would allow them to handle a large portion of those spelling variations. Not to diss Napster, but they seem to be feigning ignorance. If they had any software developers of merit on their team, they'd be able to handle these problems easily.
No, they wouldn't. It's a case of natural selection. Like you say, the right algorithm would block a large portion of spelling variations. So which variations would automatically proliferate? Obviously the ones they couldn't block. Any software like this will have at best a short term effect. People try different variations, the ones that work are by definition the ones that people can then download and make available to others. Software is not going to adapt as fast as people.
The Napster client would put in the message, so the source you're downloading from does have the real song. You just can't get it.
Why would anyone use a client like that? If your plan relies on the software on the user's computer doing something that the user doesn't like then it's short term at best. The user just replaces the software with a version better suited to their needs from another source.
The filename thing was a game on Napster's part. They knew it wouldn't work, which is why they suggested it.
My recollection is that Napster stated from the outset that it wouldn't work. The trial judge ordered them to ban all copyrighted files, Napster said they couldn't because they had no way of identifying copyrighted files, which could be under any name. Napster appealed. The appeals court rules that the RIAA had to provide them with a list of the infringing files on the system and that then Napster would have to ban them. Napster said it wouldn't work but they'd comply with the court's order.
So far as I understand it, the fact that the court supposed that Napster could effectively ban the infringing files whilst otherwise continuing its activities was essential to the distinction they drew with the Betamax case. In the Betamax case Sony couldn't control what people did with their product, which had substantial non-infringing uses, and therefore weren't responsible for what users did with the product. In the Napster case the theory was that Napster could ban individual infringing files and was therefore responsible for doing so (you can argue the substantial non-infringing uses of course, but I think realistically they do exist even if they're not the main actual use). If they can't effectively ban individual copyright works from being traded then based on the court's reasoning it would appear they're back in the Sony position, i.e. they can continue to provide their product.
I don't have much sympathy for Napster myself, their business plan (such as it was) from the outset seemed to rely on primarily trading copyrighted works i.e. they didn't go into this with a clean conscience and they were foolish enough to put their intentions in writing. But as of now, they seem to be complying with what the court has required, and I don't think they in anyway tricked the court into it.
Fortunately for Napster, the Judge has let them off easy with a deal where they stop contributing to copyright infringement by filtering based on a list provided by the RIAA. Unfortunately for Napster, if this compromise fails, it will likely mean that they will either have to pay the fines or go out of business
This wasn't a "deal" or a "compromise" it was a ruling by a court of law. Napster is seemingly complying with that ruling, certainly the trial judge seems to think so.
While the burden of proof is on the accuser, it is the burden on everyone to obey the law or suffer the consequences. If you think the law is unjust, work to change it or peacefully protest or whatever.
It's the job of the courts to interpret the law and at present Napster appear to be obeying it. It seems to be the RIAA that find the law unjust in this instance, and I don't doubt that they will work to change it:)
Was it from the RIAA? If so I'd write back asking whether this was one of the times when they were really threatening to sue or whether this is one of their strange little jokes like the threats sent to Professor Felten that they now say they didn't mean. Maybe suggest they add smilies or something to the fake threats, to avoid confusion.
There are two separate issues. What you're thinking of are basically shrink wrap licences, though there may be a box to click on the screen saying "I agree" or whatever, these are clearly invalid under normal contract law principles and are something that UCITA is intended to validate (I've no idea why anyone would want to validate them, the idea seems insane). These don't work under normal contract laws because it's far too late for a seller to be proposing terms after you've already bought the product. It's your software and you don't need to enter into an agreement to use it (and yes, it is your software, just like if you buy a painting it's then your painting, you don't own copyright to it but you do own the item itself and can do as you please with it).
Click through licences on a web site, which is what Passport entails, are a completely different thing. In order to get the services you have to first click something to show that you agree with the terms, then the services are provided to you. This is standard offer, acceptance and consideration stuff. There is no reason to assume that these contracts are generally invalid.
Next you're going to be suggesting that we put all non-OSS in camps...
Sorry to ruin a great idea but whilst incarcerating all the proprietary software supporters might seem attractive on the surface, in practice we'd never get agreement on whether to call them Free Camps or Open Camps.
The "Boston Tea Party" was a revolt against one such market monopoly, granted to the British West Indian Company to sell tea to the colonies...
This government action prevented the Colonists from buying their tea from cheaper sources, and mandated they buy from a government suported and subsidized monopoly.
Surely you're thinking of the East India Company. They didn't strictly have a monopoly on tea, they had exemption from paying the taxes on tea, which obviously gave them an unfair advantage. People could buy tea from other sources, but the effect of the tax was that the East India Company was the cheapest source after they were given their special exemption - previously the tax had applied equally to everyone.
Iomega purposely made Zip drives so they couldn't read floppy drives. They wanted to make sure people purchased zip media, that's where they make all their money. The zip drives have a next to nothing margin.
That doesn't sound very realistic. Most people with a Zip drive will also have a floppy drive. They choose Zip media, if they do, for capacity, not because it's the only thing that'll work in their drives. If the Zip drive could read floppy disks you just wouldn't need a floppy drive any more, it wouldn't have much impact on what media people used.
In fact, this form of profiling has the potential to be less racially biased than face-to-face observation. When you get over the knee-jerk reaction and think about it, it really is preferable to the current system. The current system being basically "stop people with brown skin".
So technology is improving our lives, just not always in the ways we expect.
I think you mean "So technology is improving the lives of those people who would be stopped under the non-computer profiling but won't be under the computer profiling". Without seeing the rules they apply I've no idea whether that includes me.
There could be more people under the new system, and I don't see that being stopped on the basis of nationality, having paid in cash, and having once said your favorite color was red (made up statistical correlation to terrorist, the rules could be anything, that's half the problem) instead of race doesn't seem like an improvement to me, it's just harder to build up opposition because there is no defined group of people who know they're going to be picked on and who have a definite interest in protesting. In fact, anyone who visibly complains may be added to the list of troublemakers to be spied upon, keeping your head down is much more incentivised under this scheme.
And then there's the recent nixing of the proposed name for the new standard text editor for KDE - the original author wanted to name it Kant, until it was pointed out that many english speakers (particularly some British ones) had some issues with how that was pronounced.:)
Presumably it would be pronounced the same way as in Immanuel Kant. I've never heard anyone object to the name or consider it unsuitable for polite conversation. Okay, Kantian philosophy isn't mainstream daily conversational material in Britain but it comes up from time to time. I think the people objecting to it must have some weird hang ups.
Come to think of it, "cant" and "can't" are both prefectly acceptable words throughout the UK, at least in my experience, and I can't see why the "K" would make a difference.
What they did was get a good write up in the Dallas whatever it is newspaper. That's hardly convincing evidence that they have a great product if you have any doubts about the current state of that field of technology.
So tell me - is it a good thing for Eazel to "manage" the software on my computer - and if so, is it also a good thing for Microsoft or the FBI to do the same?
That's up to you. I'm not interested in having any of those people "manage" my software and it doesn't sound like a business with a lot of potential customers, but if they can sell it then good luck to them.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no provision of what would happen if the law was broken
There must be a standard approach in Argentina to enforcing regulations on government officials. I would imagine that an interested party would obtain a court order requiring the government to comply in whatever area they were challenging. If the respponsible minister didn't then comply presumably they'd be held in contempt of court. It really depends on what your normal local practice is though. I imagine that political embarrassement at being caught breaking the law would discourage violation, plus pressure from the legislature. Both of those depend on the local political climate though.
There is no provision for exceptions, and that would be necessary (some things can't be done with propietary software)
It's probably easier to begin with to require that free software alternatives are included in the options being considered whenever a choice os software is being made. It weakens the provisions an awful lot and allows for departments to continue as they are if they really want to though. Maybe in addition it could be required that reasons have to be given for any decisions to use proprietary software rather than free software. It is weaker that way, and easier to subvert, but probably more practical.
Many of the people who fear the FBI are heaviy armed and are breaking dozens of U.S. laws. Which group would you rather have storm your house?
A group of Neo Nazis who think you're cause of all the problems in the country (or world)... or
A group of well-trained, regulated professionals who are easily accountable to the U.S. DOJ, if not the court of public opinion.
I'd rather have the professionals storm my house, personally. At least I have a small chance of surviving the encounter.
I don't want either group, or anyone else storming my house thank you very much. Nor do I feel any need to make a choice. Are you seriously suggesting that anyone should have the right to storm my house provided there's a conceivable worse group who could be doing it instead?
The logs were taken in an attempt to trace the authors of the documents, much like phone records might be used.
No logs were taken at all so I've got to wonder about the reliability of your information on why the FBI wanted to take them.
The indymedia situation, on the otherhand, is almost MORE alarming, in that the court order was taken under an order of silence, and that indymedia decided to remain in operation. While to a great degree, their hands were tied, I feel they need to reconsider what steps they take to protect their sources. Remaining in operation in essence made them part of an sting operation against their posters, something I doubt they would stand for.
How? They didn't provide the FBI with the logs they requested. Since the server that the FBI wanted logs for doesn't appear to exist, however, I guess they didn't have much option.
So under the GPL I'd be able to hide my changes only if I never distributed the software.
You seem confused. If you want to distribute the unchanged software then you can do so, and nobody will know about the changes that you choose not to distribute. If you do choose to distribute the changes then, yes, other people will have them - the people you chose to give them to. This doesn't seem very dificult to understand, if you want to hide something you don't give it to the person you're hiding it from - that tends to be a bit of a giveaway.
So yes, as you say, if you want to hide a change (let's generalise, if you ever want to hide anything at all) don't give it to anyone you're trying to hide it from.
And nothing in this proposed legislation restricts trade. It sets a minimum standard, that software should be open sourced, but there is no reason to suppose that companies inside Argentina have a competitive advantage over companies outside Argentina in providing open sourced sofwtare. At present I would think the USA leads the field in this area.
As worded above (I've no idea whether it is a good translation of course) ir seems to be perfectly explicit that this must be a right not, necessarily an obligation. I can't really see how you read it differently. "guarantees the user... the following rights"
What if some country passed a law that all government institutions must migrate to NON-FREE software?? You slashdot drones would be bitching for a week. But requiring a switch to free software is a good thing??
And if they pass a law saying that spam is illegal people will cheer whereas if they pass a law saying that spam is compulsory people will complain. It's terrible, people will change their response for no other reason than that you changed the stimulus. No consistency at all.
Total freedom means you don't _have to_ do anything, however the GPL inhibits freedom and unrestricted use by saying that users of the software _must_ make modifications they make available back to the "community".
This is, of course, untrue. The only requirement is that if you do decide to give your modified binaries to anyone then you must also provide them with a copy of the source code if they request it. You are not required to make your modifications available to others, just that if you do then source must be available as well as binaries.
The way I see it, there is nothing wrong with a company choosing to charge money for the software that they spend huge amounts of time and money creating.
Which is in no way inconsistent with the proposed legislation. If the government is arranging for software to be supplied to them then under this law they would have to require that the software be provided to them open source. That doesn't mean that the company providing it couldn't charge them.
In at least some cases I imagine suppliers would charge more to provide software on these terms. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise, imagine what you'd do if you were being asked to provide software to the Argentinian government in this situation; presumably you'd either charge the same as usual or else charge more than you otherwise would if you felt that by opening the source you were compromising potential sales to other customers.
People talk a lot about freedom on Slashdot. I'm surprised how positive a reaction this is getting on Slashdot, as something that takes freedom away from people and forces them to agree with the Open Source advocating majority on Slashdot.
This is one branch of government telling another branch of government what the policy should be on software purchases. Whether it's appropriate for them to do so is a matter for constitutional lawyers in Argentina, it's got nothing to do with limiting freedom.
Try typing a few deliberate mispellings into a spell checker. Typically you get a variety of suggestions. Often the word you were trying for is not the top choice. If there was an easy way of writing a program that could guess what a mispelled word was supposed to be then it would be in use in spell checkers already. There isn't.
This is a much harder challenge. The objective is to work out what a misspelled (or more accurately I suppose, creatively spelled) word is intended to be when the people doing the misspelling are deliberately trying to evade you.
Of course, you can do it if you're willing to use the rule that any word that might conceivably be used to represent another should be banned, but then it's much easier to skip writing the program altogether and just ban all Napster use because that's the effect. "Metal" might be short for "Metallica" should we ban the use of that word? Are there any song names that couldn't conceivably be codes for something?
They obviously haven't heard of Soundex (note: there are more algorithms than just this one). It would allow them to handle a large portion of those spelling variations. Not to diss Napster, but they seem to be feigning ignorance. If they had any software developers of merit on their team, they'd be able to handle these problems easily.
No, they wouldn't. It's a case of natural selection. Like you say, the right algorithm would block a large portion of spelling variations. So which variations would automatically proliferate? Obviously the ones they couldn't block. Any software like this will have at best a short term effect. People try different variations, the ones that work are by definition the ones that people can then download and make available to others. Software is not going to adapt as fast as people.
The Napster client would put in the message, so the source you're downloading from does have the real song. You just can't get it.
Why would anyone use a client like that? If your plan relies on the software on the user's computer doing something that the user doesn't like then it's short term at best. The user just replaces the software with a version better suited to their needs from another source.
The filename thing was a game on Napster's part. They knew it wouldn't work, which is why they suggested it.
My recollection is that Napster stated from the outset that it wouldn't work. The trial judge ordered them to ban all copyrighted files, Napster said they couldn't because they had no way of identifying copyrighted files, which could be under any name. Napster appealed. The appeals court rules that the RIAA had to provide them with a list of the infringing files on the system and that then Napster would have to ban them. Napster said it wouldn't work but they'd comply with the court's order.
So far as I understand it, the fact that the court supposed that Napster could effectively ban the infringing files whilst otherwise continuing its activities was essential to the distinction they drew with the Betamax case. In the Betamax case Sony couldn't control what people did with their product, which had substantial non-infringing uses, and therefore weren't responsible for what users did with the product. In the Napster case the theory was that Napster could ban individual infringing files and was therefore responsible for doing so (you can argue the substantial non-infringing uses of course, but I think realistically they do exist even if they're not the main actual use). If they can't effectively ban individual copyright works from being traded then based on the court's reasoning it would appear they're back in the Sony position, i.e. they can continue to provide their product.
I don't have much sympathy for Napster myself, their business plan (such as it was) from the outset seemed to rely on primarily trading copyrighted works i.e. they didn't go into this with a clean conscience and they were foolish enough to put their intentions in writing. But as of now, they seem to be complying with what the court has required, and I don't think they in anyway tricked the court into it.
Fortunately for Napster, the Judge has let them off easy with a deal where they stop contributing to copyright infringement by filtering based on a list provided by the RIAA. Unfortunately for Napster, if this compromise fails, it will likely mean that they will either have to pay the fines or go out of business
:)
This wasn't a "deal" or a "compromise" it was a ruling by a court of law. Napster is seemingly complying with that ruling, certainly the trial judge seems to think so.
While the burden of proof is on the accuser, it is the burden on everyone to obey the law or suffer the consequences. If you think the law is unjust, work to change it or peacefully protest or whatever.
It's the job of the courts to interpret the law and at present Napster appear to be obeying it. It seems to be the RIAA that find the law unjust in this instance, and I don't doubt that they will work to change it
Was it from the RIAA? If so I'd write back asking whether this was one of the times when they were really threatening to sue or whether this is one of their strange little jokes like the threats sent to Professor Felten that they now say they didn't mean. Maybe suggest they add smilies or something to the fake threats, to avoid confusion.
There are two separate issues. What you're thinking of are basically shrink wrap licences, though there may be a box to click on the screen saying "I agree" or whatever, these are clearly invalid under normal contract law principles and are something that UCITA is intended to validate (I've no idea why anyone would want to validate them, the idea seems insane). These don't work under normal contract laws because it's far too late for a seller to be proposing terms after you've already bought the product. It's your software and you don't need to enter into an agreement to use it (and yes, it is your software, just like if you buy a painting it's then your painting, you don't own copyright to it but you do own the item itself and can do as you please with it).
Click through licences on a web site, which is what Passport entails, are a completely different thing. In order to get the services you have to first click something to show that you agree with the terms, then the services are provided to you. This is standard offer, acceptance and consideration stuff. There is no reason to assume that these contracts are generally invalid.
Next you're going to be suggesting that we put all non-OSS in camps...
Sorry to ruin a great idea but whilst incarcerating all the proprietary software supporters might seem attractive on the surface, in practice we'd never get agreement on whether to call them Free Camps or Open Camps.
The "Boston Tea Party" was a revolt against one such market monopoly, granted to the British West Indian Company to sell tea to the colonies...
:)
This government action prevented the Colonists from buying their tea from cheaper sources, and mandated they buy from a government suported and subsidized monopoly.
Surely you're thinking of the East India Company. They didn't strictly have a monopoly on tea, they had exemption from paying the taxes on tea, which obviously gave them an unfair advantage. People could buy tea from other sources, but the effect of the tax was that the East India Company was the cheapest source after they were given their special exemption - previously the tax had applied equally to everyone.
Just being picky and pedantic
Iomega purposely made Zip drives so they couldn't read floppy drives. They wanted to make sure people purchased zip media, that's where they make all their money. The zip drives have a next to nothing margin.
That doesn't sound very realistic. Most people with a Zip drive will also have a floppy drive. They choose Zip media, if they do, for capacity, not because it's the only thing that'll work in their drives. If the Zip drive could read floppy disks you just wouldn't need a floppy drive any more, it wouldn't have much impact on what media people used.
In fact, this form of profiling has the potential to be less racially biased than face-to-face observation. When you get over the knee-jerk reaction and think about it, it really is preferable to the current system. The current system being basically "stop people with brown skin".
So technology is improving our lives, just not always in the ways we expect.
I think you mean "So technology is improving the lives of those people who would be stopped under the non-computer profiling but won't be under the computer profiling". Without seeing the rules they apply I've no idea whether that includes me.
There could be more people under the new system, and I don't see that being stopped on the basis of nationality, having paid in cash, and having once said your favorite color was red (made up statistical correlation to terrorist, the rules could be anything, that's half the problem) instead of race doesn't seem like an improvement to me, it's just harder to build up opposition because there is no defined group of people who know they're going to be picked on and who have a definite interest in protesting. In fact, anyone who visibly complains may be added to the list of troublemakers to be spied upon, keeping your head down is much more incentivised under this scheme.
I really want this guy to win but sadly I dont think he can. He can't trademark something that already is owned by someone.
:)
Yes, he can. He just has to be either engaged in a different trade or else pursuing it in a different jurisdiction.
"Wallmart" isn't a trademark of Walmart anyway, though I guess they are confusingly similar
I doubt, however, that he can trademark anything as he doesn't seem to be carrying out a business.
And then there's the recent nixing of the proposed name for the new standard text editor for KDE - the original author wanted to name it Kant, until it was pointed out that many english speakers (particularly some British ones) had some issues with how that was pronounced. :)
Presumably it would be pronounced the same way as in Immanuel Kant. I've never heard anyone object to the name or consider it unsuitable for polite conversation. Okay, Kantian philosophy isn't mainstream daily conversational material in Britain but it comes up from time to time. I think the people objecting to it must have some weird hang ups.
Come to think of it, "cant" and "can't" are both prefectly acceptable words throughout the UK, at least in my experience, and I can't see why the "K" would make a difference.
Huh? They did it. What more proof do you need?
What they did was get a good write up in the Dallas whatever it is newspaper. That's hardly convincing evidence that they have a great product if you have any doubts about the current state of that field of technology.
All(tm)(tm) your(tm)(tm) trademark(tm)(tm) are(tm)(tm)...
Shouldn't that be: all your trademark (R) belong to us?
So tell me - is it a good thing for Eazel to "manage" the software on my computer - and if so, is it also a good thing for Microsoft or the FBI to do the same?
That's up to you. I'm not interested in having any of those people "manage" my software and it doesn't sound like a business with a lot of potential customers, but if they can sell it then good luck to them.