DMCA makes a crime out of a contract breach
on
Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 2, Informative
The difference should be important. But only in terms of educating the
lay public about what is going on here. The point is really moot as far as Sklyarov's
case goes. Copyright protection is a matter of civil law, not criminal law. Copy
protection should be a matter of contract law and civil law because
that is what software licenses are for.
This is why the DMCA is so draconian; it has made a crime out of the violation of a
private agreement to not copy a piece of software. If the license for the software says,
"thou shalt not copy and distribute this software" and you accept the license, you have
entered into an agreement with the software manufacturer and are liable for civil damages
should you violate that agreement. Then the DMCA comes along and says that if you invent
a way to defeat built-in copy protection of a given piece of digital data you have
committed a crime. It doesn't matter what you do with your invention; just the act of
inventing it is a crime. This seems a little bit like thought-crime. So this issue
really has nothing very much to do with Copyright and has more to do with
cracking an encryption scheme -- regardless of whether or not you actually copy the
software or distribute it.
So if you want to argue the fine points of semantics, don't lose sight of the real
issue; that the mega-corp lobbies of Amerika have pushed through a bad law that
makes a crime out of a civil breach.
Applications like Gnucash are critical to make Linux appealing to the desktop user. It's a challenge, though, even for a seasoned user to upgrade to the latest applications and deal with missing dependencies and broken dependencies.
Download the latest package of Gnucash-1.6*.rpm.
Do a test install to see what else is needed.
Search for the packages that have the required libraries.
Download those packages and do a test install to see what dependencies are missing for them.
Perform a few more iterations of the download and test process until all the dependencies of the dependencies are satisfied
Try to see if the existing libraries can be updated.
End up force installing everything after doing my best to make sure nothing will break.
Keep my fingers crossed.
There is nothing wrong with having lots of shared libraries in Linux. The more, the better. Disc Space is cheap. The only thing that gets me cranked is when the latest, bleeding edge application has a dependency on an older library. So, when I upgrade to Gnucash-1.6, I have to "downgrade" to python-2.0 because gnucash wants libpython2.0.so.0.0; libpython2.1.so.0.0 just won't do the trick. Well if upgrading apps on Linux ever became simple, I would have to switch to another OS to satisfy my craving for high risk sports. At least I can have multiple versions of a shared library co-existing more or less peacefully. I can remember the version conflicts and DLL hell that I dealt with before I learned about Linux and I wouldn't ever want to go back to that.
Another endorsement for Powell's from a Stump Town geek who never worked there. Only shopped there. Where else are you going to find an extensively cataloged inventory of used books?
His employer isn't trying to steal his work, but has a definite conflict of interest problem here. In this case, since he didn't know about it in advance he hasn't done anything wrong. He should talk to a lawyer ASAP and inform his employer of the conflict.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference should be important. But only in terms of educating the lay public about what is going on here. The point is really moot as far as Sklyarov's case goes. Copyright protection is a matter of civil law, not criminal law. Copy protection should be a matter of contract law and civil law because that is what software licenses are for.
This is why the DMCA is so draconian; it has made a crime out of the violation of a private agreement to not copy a piece of software. If the license for the software says, "thou shalt not copy and distribute this software" and you accept the license, you have entered into an agreement with the software manufacturer and are liable for civil damages should you violate that agreement. Then the DMCA comes along and says that if you invent a way to defeat built-in copy protection of a given piece of digital data you have committed a crime. It doesn't matter what you do with your invention; just the act of inventing it is a crime. This seems a little bit like thought-crime. So this issue really has nothing very much to do with Copyright and has more to do with cracking an encryption scheme -- regardless of whether or not you actually copy the software or distribute it.
So if you want to argue the fine points of semantics, don't lose sight of the real issue; that the mega-corp lobbies of Amerika have pushed through a bad law that makes a crime out of a civil breach.
- Download the latest package of Gnucash-1.6*.rpm.
- Do a test install to see what else is needed.
- Search for the packages that have the required libraries.
- Download those packages and do a test install to see what dependencies are missing for them.
- Perform a few more iterations of the download and test process until all the dependencies of the dependencies are satisfied
- Try to see if the existing libraries can be updated.
- End up force installing everything after doing my best to make sure nothing will break.
- Keep my fingers crossed.
There is nothing wrong with having lots of shared libraries in Linux. The more, the better. Disc Space is cheap. The only thing that gets me cranked is when the latest, bleeding edge application has a dependency on an older library. So, when I upgrade to Gnucash-1.6, I have to "downgrade" to python-2.0 because gnucash wants libpython2.0.so.0.0; libpython2.1.so.0.0 just won't do the trick. Well if upgrading apps on Linux ever became simple, I would have to switch to another OS to satisfy my craving for high risk sports. At least I can have multiple versions of a shared library co-existing more or less peacefully. I can remember the version conflicts and DLL hell that I dealt with before I learned about Linux and I wouldn't ever want to go back to that.Just say No Amazon
His employer isn't trying to steal his work, but has a definite conflict of interest problem here. In this case, since he didn't know about it in advance he hasn't done anything wrong. He should talk to a lawyer ASAP and inform his employer of the conflict.