The NET Act asserts criminality in the event of deliberate money making or valuable materials copying as opposed to simple breach of copyright. Is Congress asserting that universities are overlooking that or merely that copyright breaches are possible and not investigated?
Working on someone else's idea for nothing seems a particularly unproductive thing to do. Yes, you *might* get *some* future value (but probably not your fair share). You will almost certainly make yourself inelegible for unemployment benefits and you run the risk of getting caught up in the project without ever settling the question of proper remuneration.
Employers will be reluctant to spend money on good staff when they can already get it for free.
Why not simply develop your own idea? Maybe it'll work and maybe you'll get rich in the process. If not, what have you lost?
You still have all the benefits of practising and improving your art, maybe learning new, more marketable skills in the process.
Speaking as a member of the 'slime' that profited (I produced DOSCHK.EXE used to test PC BIOS rollovers)... I beg to differ with the description of "miniscule problem".
While it's a fairly trivial task to make the actual corrections to the programs, it most certainly was not a trivial task to:-
1) Make sure that EVERY y2k bug was identified 2) Recompile/retest/re-rollout many thousands of affected programs. 3) Persuade all suppliers/customers/trading partners to fix the systems.
In the end, the world didn't end *because* we had pulled out the stops and fixed the bugs. It's worth noting though that examples of every type of predicted failure did actually occur.
The originating article here dates from 1985 - the problem had been identified with 15 years to go. Why were non-compliant PCs still being built in 1997? Why were software houses *still* producing non-compliant code in 1995?
Reading the posts so far, I notice a lot of what I can only describe as 'sour grapes'. (see Aesop's fables)
Most of us spend drab, dreary, lives merely trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. If we had double our income we'd go on holiday more, buy a better car, move to a nicer neighbourhood, etc.
If we had ten times our income, we'd do pretty much the same, perhaps with a little empire building or nut squirrelling on the side.
If we had a thousand times our income then of course we'd be made but we'd have to start finding imaginative uses for the cash.
We could address world poverty, couldn't actually achieve very much in that area but we could make ourselves feel better by donating a couple of million each year.
Steve Fosset is in a position nowhere near good enough to fix world poverty but plenty good enough to achieve ambitions that many of us would have if only we weren't so busy merely staying alive.
He gives us something to look forward to, something to admire, something that will probably still be being commented on in a thousand years.
Don't knock it, how do you know that you wouldn't do the same thing in his shoes.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought that my [wrong] understanding was difficult enough but your version sounds even more onerous - how do you cope?
As I understand the US sales tax rules, if a customer in New Jersey buys my product, I must charge him NJ sales tax but I must charge the Californian customer California sales tax. In fact, I believe, I have to be even more local than that and work out the correct rate applicable to my customer's zip code.
In the UK, we have something similar with VAT which is charged at different rates (or not at all) depending on which country I'm selling to.
Why should the logic be any different when we're working out whose laws apply?
The physical location of internet servers is largely academic nowadays, I have no idea where google is physically located, I just know that it's the best search engine on the net so I use it.
Here in the UK electoral law is such that the methods and controls of the voting procedure are laid down in black and white in various legal instruments and the electoral returning officer (a civil servant) must certify that the election was held in full accordance with the rules.
I know little about US law but I would have thought that a similar set of conditions must apply. If so, the elections department *must* have taken steps to satisfy themselves that use of the machines would fully comply otherwise they would not be able to certify the election.
Assuming that US civil servants are upright honest citizens, we must conclude that the machines do infallibly work correctly.
Give credit where it's due. The word is "licence" if it's a noun, as in "licence plate" and "license" if it's a verb as in "I license you to use my software".
The writer, uncertain of the rule, was simply catering for either possibility.
except most of the possible solutions are privacy-invasive in one way or another.
Here in the UK, a variety of new laws have made protection of privacy paramount in almost all private and commercial transactions. Pretty well the only exceptions allowable are those that the government has allowed itself.
There are currently new rules being made which allow almost any government department, QUANGO, or local council to overrule the privacy laws for almost any reason.
When I read LOTR many years ago, when computers were hard to come by and certainly not used for frivolity such as generating fairy tales, I had no trouble whatsoever "seeing" Gollum and all the other characters just from the textual descriptions.
Does all this computing power mean we've advanced?
I routinely fail to read Microsoft EULAs on the grounds that all but the most obvious provisions of such a licence are, at least, challengable under the normal provisions of English Law. (No, I'm not a lawyer, do your own checks).
A EULA can quite reasonably restrict me from abuses such as reselling the software or copying it onto 5000 systems but, if I want to use a video viewer, only a lawyer can think that I should be obliged to give the author unrestricted rights to my machine in exchange.
We don't *know* that a government certification actually makes something secure in fact the opposite might be true - government certification makes it *less* secure.
The problem is often that any certification is deemed to be better than none and governments (civil servants) generally like things to fit into boxes they can tick
If the developer infringes a Patent, that's "illegal".
If he re-uses copyrighted code in breach of the terms of the licence, that's "illegal".
If he merely makes use of what he knows, that's not "illegal".
I quote the term "illegal" here because neither of the first two cases is actually illegal - they're actionable under civil law, usually resulting in an injunction to refrain or damages or both.
If making use of what we've learned over the years was illegal, no-one would be employable after the age of 30.
The purpose of a Patent is to allow others to use the invention, in fact, in English law, a Patent can be defeated by demonstrating that the invention was not made available for use.
The only "obstacle" preventing your medical researcher from using the best material is that he doesn't want to pay the royalties.
Royalties are the means by which the inventor gets rewarded for his contribution to "the common good".
Slashdot Mirror
The NET Act asserts criminality in the event of deliberate money making or valuable materials copying as opposed to simple breach of copyright.
Is Congress asserting that universities are overlooking that or merely that copyright breaches are possible and not investigated?
Working on someone else's idea for nothing seems a particularly unproductive thing to do. Yes, you *might* get *some* future value (but probably not your fair share). You will almost certainly make yourself inelegible for unemployment benefits and you run the risk of getting caught up in the project without ever settling the question of proper remuneration.
Employers will be reluctant to spend money on good staff when they can already get it for free.
Why not simply develop your own idea? Maybe it'll work and maybe you'll get rich in the process. If not, what have you lost?
You still have all the benefits of practising and improving your art, maybe learning new, more marketable skills in the process.
What about Linux/Slapper then?
Speaking as a member of the 'slime' that profited (I produced DOSCHK.EXE used to test PC BIOS rollovers) ... I beg to differ with the description of "miniscule problem".
While it's a fairly trivial task to make the actual corrections to the programs, it most certainly was not a trivial task to:-
1) Make sure that EVERY y2k bug was identified
2) Recompile/retest/re-rollout many thousands of affected programs.
3) Persuade all suppliers/customers/trading partners to fix the systems.
In the end, the world didn't end *because* we had pulled out the stops and fixed the bugs. It's worth noting though that examples of every type of predicted failure did actually occur.
The originating article here dates from 1985 - the problem had been identified with 15 years to go. Why were non-compliant PCs still being built in 1997? Why were software houses *still* producing non-compliant code in 1995?
Has anyone tried correlating the geographical distribution of high-density PC populations with the more intense regions of gravitational pull?
Reading the posts so far, I notice a lot of what I can only describe as 'sour grapes'. (see Aesop's fables)
Most of us spend drab, dreary, lives merely trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. If we had double our income we'd go on holiday more, buy a better car, move to a nicer neighbourhood, etc.
If we had ten times our income, we'd do pretty much the same, perhaps with a little empire building or nut squirrelling on the side.
If we had a thousand times our income then of course we'd be made but we'd have to start finding imaginative uses for the cash.
We could address world poverty, couldn't actually achieve very much in that area but we could make ourselves feel better by donating a couple of million each year.
Steve Fosset is in a position nowhere near good enough to fix world poverty but plenty good enough to achieve ambitions that many of us would have if only we weren't so busy merely staying alive.
He gives us something to look forward to, something to admire, something that will probably still be being commented on in a thousand years.
Don't knock it, how do you know that you wouldn't do the same thing in his shoes.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought that my [wrong] understanding was difficult enough but your version sounds even more onerous - how do you cope?
As I understand the US sales tax rules, if a customer in New Jersey buys my product, I must charge him NJ sales tax but I must charge the Californian customer California sales tax. In fact, I believe, I have to be even more local than that and work out the correct rate applicable to my customer's zip code.
In the UK, we have something similar with VAT which is charged at different rates (or not at all) depending on which country I'm selling to.
Why should the logic be any different when we're working out whose laws apply?
The physical location of internet servers is largely academic nowadays, I have no idea where google is physically located, I just know that it's the best search engine on the net so I use it.
Will Disney be able to sue for IP infringement if "real" crop circles look similar to the Disney ones?
Can telecommunications giants realistically keep up with the public's need for ever-growing bandwidth without going bankrupt?
So, I provide a service - demand for that service is increasing daily ...
Looks like I'll go bankrupt then!
Go figure
Here in the UK electoral law is such that the methods and controls of the voting procedure are laid down in black and white in various legal instruments and the electoral returning officer (a civil servant) must certify that the election was held in full accordance with the rules.
I know little about US law but I would have thought that a similar set of conditions must apply. If so, the elections department *must* have taken steps to satisfy themselves that use of the machines would fully comply otherwise they would not be able to certify the election.
Assuming that US civil servants are upright honest citizens, we must conclude that the machines do infallibly work correctly.
We're not british, we're British
Give credit where it's due. The word is "licence" if it's a noun, as in "licence plate" and "license" if it's a verb as in "I license you to use my software".
The writer, uncertain of the rule, was simply catering for either possibility.
except most of the possible solutions are privacy-invasive in one way or another.
Here in the UK, a variety of new laws have made protection of privacy paramount in almost all private and commercial transactions. Pretty well the only exceptions allowable are those that the government has allowed itself.
There are currently new rules being made which allow almost any government department, QUANGO, or local council to overrule the privacy laws for almost any reason.
Big Brother rules OK!
Why not just put up a sign that says "No littering"?
All those I've seen on Earth are surrounded by empty drink cans, cigarette packs, discarded condoms, etc. Maybe the effect also works in space.
When I read LOTR many years ago, when computers were hard to come by and certainly not used for frivolity such as generating fairy tales, I had no trouble whatsoever "seeing" Gollum and all the other characters just from the textual descriptions.
Does all this computing power mean we've advanced?
These guys are only 34 and 37.
They're not old enough to be teaching programming. Everybody knows you need to be at least 45 and have a grey beard!
PGP being sold out was the inspiration for the OpenPGP project which generated GPG, a perfectly good alternative to PGP.
The only real problem with GPG is the comparative lack of high quality "mere end user" facilities such as a good GUI.
Let's all dump PGP, it's served its purpose and its time is done. Put your effort into making GPG (real open source!) widely accepted and used.
I routinely fail to read Microsoft EULAs on the grounds that all but the most obvious provisions of such a licence are, at least, challengable under the normal provisions of English Law. (No, I'm not a lawyer, do your own checks).
A EULA can quite reasonably restrict me from abuses such as reselling the software or copying it onto 5000 systems but, if I want to use a video viewer, only a lawyer can think that I should be obliged to give the author unrestricted rights to my machine in exchange.
We don't *know* that a government certification actually makes something secure in fact the opposite might be true - government certification makes it *less* secure.
The problem is often that any certification is deemed to be better than none and governments (civil servants) generally like things to fit into boxes they can tick
I'm having a hard time believing that Al Qaeda is capable of anything along these lines.
I had a hard time believing the events on September 11th even whilst they were happening!
If the developer infringes a Patent, that's "illegal".
If he re-uses copyrighted code in breach of the terms of the licence, that's "illegal".
If he merely makes use of what he knows, that's not "illegal".
I quote the term "illegal" here because neither of the first two cases is actually illegal - they're actionable under civil law, usually resulting in an injunction to refrain or damages or both.
If making use of what we've learned over the years was illegal, no-one would be employable after the age of 30.
42
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The purpose of a Patent is to allow others to use the invention, in fact, in English law, a Patent can be defeated by demonstrating that the invention was not made available for use.
The only "obstacle" preventing your medical researcher from using the best material is that he doesn't want to pay the royalties.
Royalties are the means by which the inventor gets rewarded for his contribution to "the common good".