Would you agree to this "tax", if the proceeds went to you?
Go to my site and sign up for an account. There's no charge to sign-up, but you will need to leave a deposit. Sorry, Cash only, we can't accept Credit Cards yet (or ever!).
I'll add your mail server to my list of approved servers. You'll also get a list of all the approved servers, so that you can whitelist them and blacklist everyone else, if you so choose.
For every email you receiive from a server on my approved list, I'll credit your account a small fee. Just submit your mail logs. Of course, you get nothing from me for mail from an unapproved server.
For every email you send to a server on my approved list, I'll charge your account the same small fee I'll be paying to the recipient. Sending to a server not on my list costs you nothing, but you have to get past their blacklisting yourself.
You'll have to maintain a minimum positive account balance, but you can cash out the excess at any time. Interest from the aggregate account balances is used to support the billing service.
I think I'd be happy to accept any amount of SPAM provided my bank account gets a boost every time I push DELETE. But then again, most SPAMMERS would never get past the "...leave a deposit..." step. Heck, I might even READ the SPAM coming from the ones that do.
The downside, of course, is that you'll have to install a special version of sendmail which authenticates (cryptographically) the sending server. That, and mailing lists will now likely need to charge a small subscriber fee.
Works just fine for me. Of course, the text browser has to be tied into a graphical imager (like Gimp) to display the one small image, but it was surprisingly intuitive.
I'll bet I could create a system which could pass such a test, but still compromise votes in the field.
I might perhaps provide a different interpretation between the hours of 8:00 am and 7:30 pm on election day than at any other time.
Maybe I'd trigger the compromised code only when the time between each vote was greater than 2 minutes, figuring that the people running the "accuracy" test would feed the votes as fast as the machine would take them.
If a system...lets you screw up, the designers screwed up.
It's my vote, what if I want to screw up?
Don't laugh. Some people might consider it a failure worth correcting if a ballot has no candidate selected, other people consider this a valid vote; or perhaps a form of protest.
The problem of getting voters to verify their ballot is valid (and accurately represents their voting preference) as well as getting the voter to care enough to visit the polling station in the first place, are not vulnerabilities restricted to the DRE voting machines and must be addressed seperately.
The receipt can contain a human readable printout of results, as well as a barcode machine-scannable printout of results.
Bad move. What if the "human readable" part names one candidate and the "barcode machine-scannable" part indicates the other? How many people can read Code39 or UPC?
It's easy enough to create a ballot which is both human and machine readable.
...recounts can be done by scanning the barcodes, and failing that, by the human readable printouts.
There's the rub; re-reading bad barcodes would not expose the fact that they're bad. You'd never get to the "...failing that..." clause.
What's the difference between this and a mechanical solution which punches cards?
HR2239 only requites that there be a voter-verified paper trail. A system where the voter preference is indicated by a mechanical punch through the ballot would probably qualify. but there are caveats;
The punched ballot would have to have the name of the candidate printed on the ballot next to the punch. Many punch card systems today do not do this.
To maintain the audit trail properties of a system where the punch card did not indicate the candidate would require that the candidate_name-to-hole_punch_location translator used (the card puncher itself) be submitted along with the ballot, which obviously wouldn't work.
an issue with this is that the printers break down, so you might have a vote with no matching receipt.
Not if the receipt is the vote. Make the voter put the (human readable) printed receipt into the ballot box. That way, any failure mode you can come up with involving failed printers, compromised software, duplicate printed ballots, software that prints the wrong candidates name on the ballot, etc is already covered. If the ballot doesn't look "right" to the voter, it goes into the trash and he starts over.
One of the things to remember when we read stories about the latest in the VOIP technology is that there is a fundamental difference between the land-line service (telephony) Ma Bell offered and most of us grew up with and the newer (voice-over-I.P. or voice-over-anything for that matter) service places like Vonage offer. And the difference has nothing to do with how the information is carried.
Telephony tends to be a regulated environment, with the network provider controlling everything up to the service edge. This regulation both ensures call quality and provides a means whereby taxes can be imposed. It also forms a framework which keeps innovation out of the environment and puts start-ups (like the CLECS) at a disadvantage. In a telephony environment, all of the services are provided network-side of the line card. You can put any color Princess Phone(TM) on your line, or strap-on a feature-limited answering machine (or even a modem) but there's very little in the way of phone network features (call forwarding, 3-way, etc) you can "roll for yourself" in the telephony environment.
Telephony is taxed (Universal Service Fund) and consequently also rolled-out nationwide to everyone, which makes it a platform. It's uncommon to hear of anyone who can't get (land-line) phone service if they want it since the LEC's have to provide it.
And with Telephone, there's the assumption that each person on the network can be tied back to an individual subscriber line. This makes it possible for things like 911 service to work in a fairly supportable fashion.
Contrast this with voice services like the VOIP Vonage offers. Currently, it is regarded as an information service (making it unlike Telephony) and therefore not encumbered by the Universal Service Fund tax. But that also means it's not available everywhere (it can't be considered a universal platform for applications). Plus, it would be possible for a Vonage subscriber to build a custom client which provides services Vonage can't (or doesn't want to) offer, like conference calling and such. If they lose control of the service edge (very likely, IMHO, because the endpoint box is in the home) they may well find that Vonage becomes the preferred hangout for VOIP-based telemarketers (who better than they can make the best use of call-anywhere-for-nothing flat rate pricing) or perhaps the next generation SPAMBlaster with.MP3 extensions.
For people who only need voice services, Vonage is worth looking into. For people who need the other aspects which are more telephony-related, a land line is more appropriate.
Cell phones offer us a good example of a technology which started out as a "voice" service but is becoming more like a telephony servicce. It used to be that a cell phone connection offered only limited availability (with drop outs in no-service areas) and that the voice quality was less than acceptable at times. Now the coverage is increasing, voice quality better and even things like 911 are supported. But this came at the expense of USF tax, closed terminals (Are there any answering machines for cell-phone subscribers?) and increasing prices.
There's another kind of VOIP we hear about; Network owners like Sprint and MCI are replacing parts of their network core with VOIP infrastructure. For the portion of their network which exists solely within the service edge, you'll never see it, so don't worry about it. If they allow access to their VOIP infrastructure from beyond their service edge (unimaginable, but let's run with it for a moment anyway) they'll likely see the same problems with VOIP-spammers and VOIPhreakers which could bring Vonage down. It could get rather messy.
If the punch card machines had provided a human-readable printout that the voter could read...
If by "human-readable printout" you mean that the punch cards themselves had larger punchout holes, and the candidate names printed right on the card next to the holes, I guess that would have worked. But that would have required new punch card ballot machines anyway.
Remember, punch cards themselves are human readable. You can see whether hole A21 was punched or not; but that doesn't help if it's not clear who a punch in A21 will be counted as a vote for.
If by "human-readable printout" you mean a second sheet of paper interpreting the punchcard, then you're on the right track, but you missed the target. This just underscores how easy it is to get this stuff wrong.
They could have added a seperate machine to the Florida punch-card voting system to re-read the punch card back to the voter. This would not only have caught the cases where a "Candidate A" voter accidentally selected "Candidate B", but also caught those "hanging chad" cases where the voters' intent was ambiguous.
But such a system is still vulnerable to compromise.
If it was built in collusion with the ballot preparer (the machine which punches the punch cards) it could wait for someone to vote "Candidate A", "incorrectly" mark the ballot for "Candidate B', then "incorrectly" interpret the "Candidate B" ballot as a ballot for "Candidate A". The voter would assume his "Candidate A" vote would count as a vote for "Candidate A", but the final vote tally (and any subsequent recounts) would show it as a vote for "Candidate B".
Even if the two systems could not collude, the punch card verifier could be built with a bias toward one candidate over the other. It could, for example, be very strict about ballots for "Candidate A", only confirming them as valid if the the ballot were very clearly and unambiguously marked, thus ensuring that virtually all of the votes for "Candidate A" would be valid and counted in the final tally. By contrast, a vote for "Candidate B" would be interpreted very liberally, accepting ballots for "Candidate B" wich will eventually (during tabulation or recount) be thrown-out as ambiguous.
This is tricky stuff, hard to get right, best if done as simple as possible.
SCO would simply reply in kind, forcing the takedown of every U.S. site for downloading Linux...
Ah, but you have to spoecify exactly which files you believe infringe your copyrights, something SCO is completely unwilling to do.
SCO would not succeed requesting a takedown of rh90.iso but if they go after lance.c in anyone's distro, we at least know where to look.
Besides, at least one of SCO's position is that these Linux files belong in the public domain, so anyone should have the opportunity to publish at will. Now I wouldn't put it past them to shoot one of their own arguments in the foot with a braindead act like asking IBM to takedown their Linux files, but I think trying to have a DMCA takedown issued for every mirror of every kernel file is too much work for them; it's just not their style. SCO is playing a strategy based on only having to win one battle, and only having to fight in the court room (their home turf). Personally, I think the real world frightens them.
But they ARE doing it. That's the whole point of this Slashdot story. They're doing it illegally.
Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying. It is neither a Copyright nor GPL violation to claim to be offering downloads when your server is flat on it's back and offering nothing. Just like you can't be convicted of murder if you can't shoot straight enough to hit your target. THe DDOS'ing or slashdotting of their server works against the Free Software community in this way.
According to the story, SCO is adding restrictions to what you can do with the software once downloaded.
It sounds like neither of us has been able to read the actual SCO license terms.
If SCO distributes GPL'd software under more restrictive terms, their terms are unenforceable. Offering terms you cannot enforce is not illegal. (is it?) You and I can still re-distribute the GPL'd software we get from SCO (assuming we abide by the GPL, etc) regardless of what restrictions SCO claims. They may have also lost their license to redistribute, but that doesn't affect our license to redistribute, because our license comes from "the original licensor". To be honest, I don't really care how much SCO screws up their own business; my concern is to ensure the rights of the Free Software community are not being trampeled.
As I said, I haven't read their license requirements myself so I don't claim to know what the terms of the restriction are. But even if their stated terms are more restrictive than GPL, I don't know if you could pull their GPL license until they try to "impose" those terms; as long as they still also offer the sources and continue to meet all their GPL requirements, I can't complain.
Remember, we're dealing with some well-oiled lawyers here.
Can an incorrectly configured (read: wide open) FTP server be cited as a form of "download this, no charge" compliance under these circumstances?
What does that have to do with anything? If your trying to insinuate that SCO has been unknowingly distrbuting Linux the last 6 months you need professional help. Of course you're pobably just trolling anyway.
Dock me one point for humor. I was trying to say it would be just our luch to have SCO misconfigure their server such that any decent cracker could still download sources from them, and they'd cite that as their "See, here's how you get the sources, free, just like we're required to offer..." defense in court. But it's never funny if you have to explain it.
And no, I wasn't trolling, but I'm not going to deny I may need professional help.
First, if SCO is unable to distribute Linux, it's hard to make the case they are and therefore must stop. I'm gonna echo ESR here, DDOS'ing SCO is counterproductive to the Free Software community and should be stopped if at all possible.
And second, I'm not sure it's in the best interest of the Free Software community to prevent some small-time distributor like SCO from offering their Distro. I haven't read their license requirements myself (see above) but the GPL does not prevent anyone from offering a warranty/service agreement for a charge so long as they also offer the sources for free.
Can an incorrectly configured (read: wide open) FTP server be cited as a form of "download this, no charge" compliance under these circumstances?
Why not set up a project with the goal of a massive SCO shorting...
You can't buy a stock unless you can find someone to sell it. Shorting is a bit more complicated than that; you can't short a stock unless you can first find someone who will loan it to you, and second find someone else willing to buy it from you. If there is no stock available to short, you can go no further. If you borrow stock for shorting, and are unable to find anyone to buy what you've borrowed, you're stuck with it.
Anyone knows what happens if I offer a share for shorting, buy it back at a lower price, then offer it for shorting again? (lather, rinse, repeat?)
If I release code that says "You may use it if you give me your first born." and then that is found illegal/unenforcable, do I get to try a to retroactively apply a new license or have I released something which has no enforcable license?
If the contract said in effect "You may (cash my Adoption Fee check) if you give me your first born." and it was ruled unenforcable for me to demand your first born. I don't believe you would stll be entitled to cash my check anyway. I'd be even more surprised if your inability to deliver the goods stood as grounds for you to cash the check anyway.
SCO's behavior seems to be that of an organization which either fails to understand the terms of the GPL license it has agreed to (and fails to understand the necessity of understanding now) or that of an organization which is trying hard to maintain the facade that it does not (or cannot) understand the terms of the license. Maybe they honestly misunderstood what they thought they were getting when they signed-onto the GPL and don't want to admit that in court for fear of the dereliction-of-duty backlash from the investors. Or perhaps they really are hoping to cash in on a strategy of "Your Honor, the GPL couldn't possibly mean what it actually says, so lets just presume the thousands of contributors actually meant to dump their contributions into the public domain instead."
But they won't bother, because after that loss...[t]here won't be anybody left worth sueing, or any money to be gained from it.
There may be one thing of value left inside SCO; their claim to own the UNIX(tm) sources. FSF could settle out of court for assignment of any claim SCO has ("...or may have...") over the UNIX sources, re-license all of that under GPL and end the discussions once and for all. That might be worth settling for, or forking over the $2.03 for 51% of the SCO shares after this is settled.
Wouldn't it be possible to send their upstream provider a DMCA takedown request, alleging illegal distribution of copyrighted works?
I don't think someone representing the Free Software Foundation would have any problem convincing anyone that at least some of the files in their distro are (c) by the FSF.
Of course, SCO, with their current state of mind, could simply strip-off all the (improper, from their point of view anyway) copyright attributions and continue distributing.;-)
I'd like to see some "compatible" Mach-3 cartridges....
Different realm. Mach-3 cartridges are protected under Patent Law, Lexmark was using Copyright Law. The upshot is that Mach-3 cartridges are still protected, but for a maximum of 15 years. Lexmark was hoping to lock-out competitors essentially forever.
Those robots consumed Many millions in system capacity.
In FY 2004, the U.S. Government is expecting to take in 1.8 trillion dollars (or so.) Divide the number of dollars you paid in taxes last year by this number, and you'll have an approximation of the portion of the total government expenditures you funded yourself.
Now think about the cost of covering all the bandwidth required by all search engines which would be blocked by this robots.txt file. Multiply it by the "your portion" calculated above to find out what your share of that project would cost you in higher taxes.
I'd be very surprised if anyone on Slashdot would even pay a penny.
That's where the end-to-end, dumb network, smart edge nature of the Internet shines!!
Where is this end-to-end, dumb network, smart edge Internet you keep talking about? I'd love to sign up for it!
All we have here is a firewalled-off, port-25-disabled, procmail-filtered, web-cached, site-blocked, DMCA-silenced, IE-requiring, download-rate-limited Internet which is becomming less and less useful by the day.
Giving the recording away is distribution and has never been explicitly protected. In fact, it has been explicitly outlawed.
I'll agree it has not been explicitly protected, but I disagree that it has been explicitly outlawed. The Home Recording Act "allows" someone to make an analog copy of a recording, and to give that copy to a friend. It explicitly disallows the copyright holder from suing someone for infringment when they engage in these actions. This is a safe harbor above and beyond fair use.
My point was that no matter what you are downloading rather than recording (movies, software, music, or tv shows) it is all the same and is treated the same.
And my point was that Copyright law (in the US) does not treat these as the same. There are specific provisions of Copyright law (the Home Recording Act is a good example) which protect some actions which might otherwise appear to be obvious infriingment and make infringment of some actions which might otherwise be thought to be protected. Audio is protected differently than video, or sheet music, or computer programs, or performances (dance, theater, etc). Even some who make their living as intellectual property lawyers have a difficult time understanding what is protected and what is infringment.
You can record these things when they are broadcast to you;...
Under most circumstances. There are exceptions.
... if you buy a copy you can make archival copies,...
Under most circumstances. There are exceptions.
... but you cannot distrbute them to others...
The term "distrbute" can be used in a general sense (any act of delivery) and a specific commercial sense (to deliver to market). Distribution in a commercial sense is pretty clearly off-limits.
... and you cannot obtain them legally through unauthorized distribution.
Clearly, one cannot legally offer them through an "unauthorized distribution" but the law is not so clear about whether an act of "obtaining" an unauthorized copy is actionable. Are you really certain that every book on your bookshelf was published with proper authorization? If Stephen King gets into a contract row with his publisher, can he come after you for having an unauthorized copy of one of his novels, or is his right of action limited to the publisher? The courts have already ruled on this with respect to printed material, but a ruling concerning digital audio could well be different.
If it were decided to make exceptions for any of these forms of IP, all would have to fall under the same rules.
Says who? It makes sense to me; I'm a big fan of common sense. But there's no "law" which says the rules established by our lawmakers have to be rational, must treat all media (or even all people) equally. And with respect to Copyright law, much of the law was prectically written by the copyright holders themselves.
I'd suggest those who are interested pick up a copy of Jessica Littman's Digital Copyright for a good introduction to the quirks of modern copyright law.
Slashdot Mirror
not?
I think I'd be happy to accept any amount of SPAM provided my bank account gets a boost every time I push DELETE. But then again, most SPAMMERS would never get past the "...leave a deposit..." step. Heck, I might even READ the SPAM coming from the ones that do.
The downside, of course, is that you'll have to install a special version of sendmail which authenticates (cryptographically) the sending server. That, and mailing lists will now likely need to charge a small subscriber fee.
Go grab your CompSci101 book and review the difference between "copy by value" and "copy by reference".
Works just fine for me. Of course, the text browser has to be tied into a graphical imager (like Gimp) to display the one small image, but it was surprisingly intuitive.
I'll bet I could create a system which could pass such a test, but still compromise votes in the field.
I might perhaps provide a different interpretation between the hours of 8:00 am and 7:30 pm on election day than at any other time.
Maybe I'd trigger the compromised code only when the time between each vote was greater than 2 minutes, figuring that the people running the "accuracy" test would feed the votes as fast as the machine would take them.
It's my vote, what if I want to screw up?
Don't laugh. Some people might consider it a failure worth correcting if a ballot has no candidate selected, other people consider this a valid vote; or perhaps a form of protest.
You can make it foolproof...
It's deceptively hard. Your system is vulnerable in a number of ways.
What happens if the box runs out of ink, or the paper jams, or I fail to insert it all the way, or pull it out as the paper is printing...
What if I insert the paper a second time? What about a power-failure during the printout?
Why introduce the complexity of a printer when the simplicity of a felt-tip marker would work just as well?
The problem of getting voters to verify their ballot is valid (and accurately represents their voting preference) as well as getting the voter to care enough to visit the polling station in the first place, are not vulnerabilities restricted to the DRE voting machines and must be addressed seperately.
Bad move. What if the "human readable" part names one candidate and the "barcode machine-scannable" part indicates the other? How many people can read Code39 or UPC?
It's easy enough to create a ballot which is both human and machine readable.
There's the rub; re-reading bad barcodes would not expose the fact that they're bad. You'd never get to the "...failing that..." clause.
HR2239 only requites that there be a voter-verified paper trail. A system where the voter preference is indicated by a mechanical punch through the ballot would probably qualify. but there are caveats;
The punched ballot would have to have the name of the candidate printed on the ballot next to the punch. Many punch card systems today do not do this.
To maintain the audit trail properties of a system where the punch card did not indicate the candidate would require that the candidate_name-to-hole_punch_location translator used (the card puncher itself) be submitted along with the ballot, which obviously wouldn't work.
Not if the receipt is the vote. Make the voter put the (human readable) printed receipt into the ballot box. That way, any failure mode you can come up with involving failed printers, compromised software, duplicate printed ballots, software that prints the wrong candidates name on the ballot, etc is already covered. If the ballot doesn't look "right" to the voter, it goes into the trash and he starts over.
Telephony tends to be a regulated environment, with the network provider controlling everything up to the service edge. This regulation both ensures call quality and provides a means whereby taxes can be imposed. It also forms a framework which keeps innovation out of the environment and puts start-ups (like the CLECS) at a disadvantage. In a telephony environment, all of the services are provided network-side of the line card. You can put any color Princess Phone(TM) on your line, or strap-on a feature-limited answering machine (or even a modem) but there's very little in the way of phone network features (call forwarding, 3-way, etc) you can "roll for yourself" in the telephony environment.
Telephony is taxed (Universal Service Fund) and consequently also rolled-out nationwide to everyone, which makes it a platform. It's uncommon to hear of anyone who can't get (land-line) phone service if they want it since the LEC's have to provide it.
And with Telephone, there's the assumption that each person on the network can be tied back to an individual subscriber line. This makes it possible for things like 911 service to work in a fairly supportable fashion.
Contrast this with voice services like the VOIP Vonage offers. Currently, it is regarded as an information service (making it unlike Telephony) and therefore not encumbered by the Universal Service Fund tax. But that also means it's not available everywhere (it can't be considered a universal platform for applications). Plus, it would be possible for a Vonage subscriber to build a custom client which provides services Vonage can't (or doesn't want to) offer, like conference calling and such. If they lose control of the service edge (very likely, IMHO, because the endpoint box is in the home) they may well find that Vonage becomes the preferred hangout for VOIP-based telemarketers (who better than they can make the best use of call-anywhere-for-nothing flat rate pricing) or perhaps the next generation SPAMBlaster with .MP3 extensions.
For people who only need voice services, Vonage is worth looking into. For people who need the other aspects which are more telephony-related, a land line is more appropriate.
Cell phones offer us a good example of a technology which started out as a "voice" service but is becoming more like a telephony servicce. It used to be that a cell phone connection offered only limited availability (with drop outs in no-service areas) and that the voice quality was less than acceptable at times. Now the coverage is increasing, voice quality better and even things like 911 are supported. But this came at the expense of USF tax, closed terminals (Are there any answering machines for cell-phone subscribers?) and increasing prices.
There's another kind of VOIP we hear about; Network owners like Sprint and MCI are replacing parts of their network core with VOIP infrastructure. For the portion of their network which exists solely within the service edge, you'll never see it, so don't worry about it. If they allow access to their VOIP infrastructure from beyond their service edge (unimaginable, but let's run with it for a moment anyway) they'll likely see the same problems with VOIP-spammers and VOIPhreakers which could bring Vonage down. It could get rather messy.
If by "human-readable printout" you mean that the punch cards themselves had larger punchout holes, and the candidate names printed right on the card next to the holes, I guess that would have worked. But that would have required new punch card ballot machines anyway.
Remember, punch cards themselves are human readable. You can see whether hole A21 was punched or not; but that doesn't help if it's not clear who a punch in A21 will be counted as a vote for.
If by "human-readable printout" you mean a second sheet of paper interpreting the punchcard, then you're on the right track, but you missed the target. This just underscores how easy it is to get this stuff wrong.
They could have added a seperate machine to the Florida punch-card voting system to re-read the punch card back to the voter. This would not only have caught the cases where a "Candidate A" voter accidentally selected "Candidate B", but also caught those "hanging chad" cases where the voters' intent was ambiguous.
But such a system is still vulnerable to compromise.
If it was built in collusion with the ballot preparer (the machine which punches the punch cards) it could wait for someone to vote "Candidate A", "incorrectly" mark the ballot for "Candidate B', then "incorrectly" interpret the "Candidate B" ballot as a ballot for "Candidate A". The voter would assume his "Candidate A" vote would count as a vote for "Candidate A", but the final vote tally (and any subsequent recounts) would show it as a vote for "Candidate B".
Even if the two systems could not collude, the punch card verifier could be built with a bias toward one candidate over the other. It could, for example, be very strict about ballots for "Candidate A", only confirming them as valid if the the ballot were very clearly and unambiguously marked, thus ensuring that virtually all of the votes for "Candidate A" would be valid and counted in the final tally. By contrast, a vote for "Candidate B" would be interpreted very liberally, accepting ballots for "Candidate B" wich will eventually (during tabulation or recount) be thrown-out as ambiguous.
This is tricky stuff, hard to get right, best if done as simple as possible.
Ah, but you have to spoecify exactly which files you believe infringe your copyrights, something SCO is completely unwilling to do.
SCO would not succeed requesting a takedown of rh90.iso but if they go after lance.c in anyone's distro, we at least know where to look.
Besides, at least one of SCO's position is that these Linux files belong in the public domain, so anyone should have the opportunity to publish at will. Now I wouldn't put it past them to shoot one of their own arguments in the foot with a braindead act like asking IBM to takedown their Linux files, but I think trying to have a DMCA takedown issued for every mirror of every kernel file is too much work for them; it's just not their style. SCO is playing a strategy based on only having to win one battle, and only having to fight in the court room (their home turf). Personally, I think the real world frightens them.
Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying. It is neither a Copyright nor GPL violation to claim to be offering downloads when your server is flat on it's back and offering nothing. Just like you can't be convicted of murder if you can't shoot straight enough to hit your target. THe DDOS'ing or slashdotting of their server works against the Free Software community in this way.
It sounds like neither of us has been able to read the actual SCO license terms.
If SCO distributes GPL'd software under more restrictive terms, their terms are unenforceable. Offering terms you cannot enforce is not illegal. (is it?) You and I can still re-distribute the GPL'd software we get from SCO (assuming we abide by the GPL, etc) regardless of what restrictions SCO claims. They may have also lost their license to redistribute, but that doesn't affect our license to redistribute, because our license comes from "the original licensor". To be honest, I don't really care how much SCO screws up their own business; my concern is to ensure the rights of the Free Software community are not being trampeled.
As I said, I haven't read their license requirements myself so I don't claim to know what the terms of the restriction are. But even if their stated terms are more restrictive than GPL, I don't know if you could pull their GPL license until they try to "impose" those terms; as long as they still also offer the sources and continue to meet all their GPL requirements, I can't complain. Remember, we're dealing with some well-oiled lawyers here.
Dock me one point for humor. I was trying to say it would be just our luch to have SCO misconfigure their server such that any decent cracker could still download sources from them, and they'd cite that as their "See, here's how you get the sources, free, just like we're required to offer..." defense in court. But it's never funny if you have to explain it.
And no, I wasn't trolling, but I'm not going to deny I may need professional help.
I'd probably pay even more for that than I'd pay for a similar copy of the SCO UNIX sources. And I wouldn't even care about the license terms...
First, if SCO is unable to distribute Linux, it's hard to make the case they are and therefore must stop. I'm gonna echo ESR here, DDOS'ing SCO is counterproductive to the Free Software community and should be stopped if at all possible.
And second, I'm not sure it's in the best interest of the Free Software community to prevent some small-time distributor like SCO from offering their Distro. I haven't read their license requirements myself (see above) but the GPL does not prevent anyone from offering a warranty/service agreement for a charge so long as they also offer the sources for free.
Can an incorrectly configured (read: wide open) FTP server be cited as a form of "download this, no charge" compliance under these circumstances?
You can't buy a stock unless you can find someone to sell it. Shorting is a bit more complicated than that; you can't short a stock unless you can first find someone who will loan it to you, and second find someone else willing to buy it from you. If there is no stock available to short, you can go no further. If you borrow stock for shorting, and are unable to find anyone to buy what you've borrowed, you're stuck with it.
Anyone knows what happens if I offer a share for shorting, buy it back at a lower price, then offer it for shorting again? (lather, rinse, repeat?)
If the contract said in effect "You may (cash my Adoption Fee check) if you give me your first born." and it was ruled unenforcable for me to demand your first born. I don't believe you would stll be entitled to cash my check anyway. I'd be even more surprised if your inability to deliver the goods stood as grounds for you to cash the check anyway.
SCO's behavior seems to be that of an organization which either fails to understand the terms of the GPL license it has agreed to (and fails to understand the necessity of understanding now) or that of an organization which is trying hard to maintain the facade that it does not (or cannot) understand the terms of the license. Maybe they honestly misunderstood what they thought they were getting when they signed-onto the GPL and don't want to admit that in court for fear of the dereliction-of-duty backlash from the investors. Or perhaps they really are hoping to cash in on a strategy of "Your Honor, the GPL couldn't possibly mean what it actually says, so lets just presume the thousands of contributors actually meant to dump their contributions into the public domain instead."
There may be one thing of value left inside SCO; their claim to own the UNIX(tm) sources. FSF could settle out of court for assignment of any claim SCO has ("...or may have...") over the UNIX sources, re-license all of that under GPL and end the discussions once and for all. That might be worth settling for, or forking over the $2.03 for 51% of the SCO shares after this is settled.
I don't think someone representing the Free Software Foundation would have any problem convincing anyone that at least some of the files in their distro are (c) by the FSF.
Of course, SCO, with their current state of mind, could simply strip-off all the (improper, from their point of view anyway) copyright attributions and continue distributing. ;-)
Different realm. Mach-3 cartridges are protected under Patent Law, Lexmark was using Copyright Law. The upshot is that Mach-3 cartridges are still protected, but for a maximum of 15 years. Lexmark was hoping to lock-out competitors essentially forever.
In FY 2004, the U.S. Government is expecting to take in 1.8 trillion dollars (or so.) Divide the number of dollars you paid in taxes last year by this number, and you'll have an approximation of the portion of the total government expenditures you funded yourself.
Now think about the cost of covering all the bandwidth required by all search engines which would be blocked by this robots.txt file. Multiply it by the "your portion" calculated above to find out what your share of that project would cost you in higher taxes.
I'd be very surprised if anyone on Slashdot would even pay a penny.
Where is this end-to-end, dumb network, smart edge Internet you keep talking about? I'd love to sign up for it!
All we have here is a firewalled-off, port-25-disabled, procmail-filtered, web-cached, site-blocked, DMCA-silenced, IE-requiring, download-rate-limited Internet which is becomming less and less useful by the day.
I'll agree it has not been explicitly protected, but I disagree that it has been explicitly outlawed. The Home Recording Act "allows" someone to make an analog copy of a recording, and to give that copy to a friend. It explicitly disallows the copyright holder from suing someone for infringment when they engage in these actions. This is a safe harbor above and beyond fair use.
And my point was that Copyright law (in the US) does not treat these as the same. There are specific provisions of Copyright law (the Home Recording Act is a good example) which protect some actions which might otherwise appear to be obvious infriingment and make infringment of some actions which might otherwise be thought to be protected. Audio is protected differently than video, or sheet music, or computer programs, or performances (dance, theater, etc). Even some who make their living as intellectual property lawyers have a difficult time understanding what is protected and what is infringment.
Under most circumstances. There are exceptions.
Under most circumstances. There are exceptions.
The term "distrbute" can be used in a general sense (any act of delivery) and a specific commercial sense (to deliver to market). Distribution in a commercial sense is pretty clearly off-limits.
Clearly, one cannot legally offer them through an "unauthorized distribution" but the law is not so clear about whether an act of "obtaining" an unauthorized copy is actionable. Are you really certain that every book on your bookshelf was published with proper authorization? If Stephen King gets into a contract row with his publisher, can he come after you for having an unauthorized copy of one of his novels, or is his right of action limited to the publisher? The courts have already ruled on this with respect to printed material, but a ruling concerning digital audio could well be different.
Says who? It makes sense to me; I'm a big fan of common sense. But there's no "law" which says the rules established by our lawmakers have to be rational, must treat all media (or even all people) equally. And with respect to Copyright law, much of the law was prectically written by the copyright holders themselves.
I'd suggest those who are interested pick up a copy of Jessica Littman's Digital Copyright for a good introduction to the quirks of modern copyright law.