This raises an interesting question. Can unofficial ISOs now be distributed since YaST is no longer encumbered? I remember that vendors like Cheapbytes and other CD burning houses were not able to sell SuSE as an unoffical CD since ironically enough the license on YaST forbid anyone but SuSE for charging for the software. Now with this restriction gone couldn't vendors just master there own unoffical CD's from the FTP packages. I believe that Cheapbytes has already done this with OpenBSD since they can't use his copyrighted ISO layout.
The most annoying part of Java on Freebsd is that you are required to build the thing yourself due to all the restrictions. This wouldn't be such a problem but the Java libary gets larger all the time and gets to be a bigger chore just to install it. As I understand it this is due to licensing that only allows the Java on Freebsd developers to release patches with must be applied to the base source downloaded from Sun. If Java used a true open source license then this would no longer be a problem, because there would be no restrictions on redistribution of either modified source or binaries built from the modified version.
Please read this excellent article by Pamela Jones on Groklaw called
"Samizdat - a Noble Word with a Touching History" In fact I recommend everyone read it. It is one of the best articles on Groklaw ever.
One of the reasons that DeCSS was ruled as violating the DMCA was that the software was actually a windows program that was able to extract the contents from a DVD and save the unencrypted contents in a file on the hard drive. The MPAA argued how this would allow anybody to make copies and that the hard drive copy itself could be considered and illegal copy. The Linux port of DeCSS was basically identical and saved DVD contents to the hard drive as well. Both versions where programs that ran as standalone applications.
Now compare this to a separate piece of code called libdvdcss. This library was originally created using some code from DeCSS and some other sources, but much of the code was created from scratch using analysis papers on the CSS algorithm. I believe almost all the original code is long gone now. Now that the algorithm is no longer a trade secret, it should not be illegal to use these analysis paper and other information about CSS. Now the question is should the DMCA and the DeCSS ruling be applied to libdvdcss as well.
One thing it is not even proper to call it a program. It is a library. If you compile it or even if you receive it as a precompiled binary and install it, it is perfectly useless without another program. Another thing is that if you look at the API for libdvdcss there is nothing in the design that supports copying. Decrypted information is placed in memory and not on the hard drive. This is to allow the data to be passed on to the decoding layer in other programs or libraries. When the library is used together with a player such as Xine you still do not have a the ability to copy the DVD. The only way for libdvdcss to be used in a way that violates the DMCA is for someone to write a separate program that uses libdvdcss to write the data to disk. I think I have heard of such programs. Maybe the MPAA should use the DMCA to go after those programs instead. They are the ones the are enabling copying and not the authors of the libdvdcss library. I am sure the MPAA would argue that libdvdcss makes it too easy to write a copying program, but I think it is a silly to say any set of libraries that can be abused should be illegal.
Another thing is Lindows use of libdvdcss in there own forked version of Xine. The DVD CCA allowed Lindows to buy a license that grants them permission to play DVD in their own player. If indeed libdvdcss is a "cracking tool" under the DMCA, then the MPAA should be going after Lindows and even the DVD CCA for using the code, regardless of licenses. If not and libdvdcss can be considered legal for Lindows then it should be legal for everyone now that the trade secret issue is gone. I guess the DVD CCA is now saying that it could try to claim some patents but I didn't think that the CSS algorithm was patented.
Actually this does raise an intersing point for those working for the RIAA and acting as a security force. I wonder if these guys know what they are getting themselves into. They potentially could get shot at because after all they are going after criminals in some cases. What if there is a priracy ring that is also involved in guns and drugs? I would think that playing ATF, FBI or DEA could get them in a world of trouble. Someone might juist start shooting when a jacket with some letters on it appears. It doesn't matter what the letters are. They could also end up blowing other sting or surveillance that real law enforcement is involved in. Maybe the RIAA is not techinically breaking the law but it seems like that it is going to cause nothing but trouble.
There are differing views on citizen's arrest, as to what is allowed and what is not.
Click here for one view. This shows that is is legal to detain someone and take them to the proper authorities.
However this link indicates that taking this kind of action may expose you to lawsuits for assult, and you should just report the crime.
The problem is that with the RIAA it may have never gotten this far. They did not attempt to detain the guy or take him down to the station or even report him. They just threated him and he signed over his property. What would be more interesting to see is how the RIAA reacts if the person refuses all their requests. What would they do?
A. Report the person to the police. B. Do A. but put him in cuffs wait for the police. C. Drag the guy down to the police station.
If they just did A there would certainly be no problem, but B or C could be questionable especially if they go ahead and take away the CD's and DVD without permission. I am sure once the word gets out that they aren't real cops that they will be challenged in a hurry.
Just head over to here and get the extension. There is even a "Ref=URL" checkbox to make your browser always use the current URL as the referer string so unless websites start blocking themselves, no problem. The good news is that it was just updated to be Firebird compatible as well.
Here is a little problem with that. Red Hat, SuSe and the major distro actually *gasp* use their own products. In fact there have been informal surveys of web sites to see who actually "eats their own dog food" and most sites do. In fact here and look at the answer to the 6th question. 95% of of 600 is 570 so is SCO going to file 570 individual lawsuits. Is Red Hat going to get a bill for $398,430 dollars? Now you could say that that SCO can pick and choose who it is going to sue but I don't know that this is entirely true. If two groups or individuals A and B are both in clear violation and you choose only to sue A and not B then you do damage to your can and I believe it could even be thrown out if you can't show why A and not B. If A is the worst violator and B is small time then a judge might go along, but if a judge sees a company going after the small infringer and avoiding a suit of a clearly much larger violator then he will not be amused.
This OpenLindows sounds interesting and I would love to give it a try. I went to the site and they have some software for OpenLindows but I wasn't able to find any links or info on how to download and install OpenLindows. Does anyone else have some information on this?
That sounds the the vehicular equivalent of the Homeland Security. I assume that all this stuff is probably not paid for but rather you are simply ordered to have this work done and this MOT check back at your home to see that it is done. If not I am guessing the vehicle in question goes to the compacter that afternoon.
The problem is the code in question is available in a 1978 text.
Kernighan & Ritchie's The C Programming Language, Prentice Hall 1978!
SCO might claim it is a different version but the code looks the same. Darl would probably say "See the difference right there right there" gesturing at some whitespace or something but I don't think that will hold up. Also SCO could say that BSD code legally became proprietary when SCO added to it and so now all BSD code is proprietary. Again an argument that really doesn't make any sense.
I definitely see the third item in the list happening sometime soon especially since this code from their conference has leaked out and the is appears to be BSD code. You forgot to add that Darl and Co. will also claim that the BSD license is invalid as well and federal copyright trumps it. This will of course mean that all *BSD users will need to pay for a license as well as MacOS X users.
SCO might not try to claim that copyright is completely invalid but rather that most of the conditions in the GPL are not reasonable. They could say that since the license grants permission to copy and redistribute that is the end of it and an author cannot put conditions on these grants. Therefore GPL == BSD and when you put BSD together with proprietary code you get a proprietary product that is controlled by the owner of the proprietary code. Of course this could backfire since SCO used the GPL as well which means there code would be BSD as well.
Just write some small programs of your own and release them under the GPL. Actually I believe that Red Hat, IBM or the FSF or some combination of those will get involved the moment such a lawsuit is filed, even if we are talking about a small company that just uses linux and doesn't write GPL software.
Or here is a senario:
Press Release: XYZ Corp. sued for linux use.
Next Day Press Release: XYZ Corp. aquired by IBM
Really it is in the best interest of so many groups and companies involved in Linux that you will see people lining up to provide a defense.
Yes, I would agree that a user might be liable if the user aquired software from a reseller for a price only a fraction of that of the retail price. It is resonable to believe that the end user knew that the software was an illegal pirate copy. However, in the case of SCO and Linux the bulk of the code belongs to Linus Torvalds and other core developers and only a few portions are claimed to belong to SCO. SCO's material could be seen as inclusion of third party code. Now remeber the Stac vs. MS case. Stac won and said MS had to stop using there compression techniques. However Stac didn't go after every user of MS-DOS 6.2 for infringment. Remember when Sun won again MS on the Java licensing violation. This meant that MS no longer had a valid license. Sun didn't go after every user of IE 3.0-5.5 and say now everyone has to stop using Windows and IE or else be sued. If SCO is allowed to succeed in a suit against end-users it will send a terrible message. In fact commecial software could be in more danger in some ways. Software developers make deals to include third party components all the time. With all those included components you purchase yourself a minefield of potential lawsuits from companies you have never delt with directly. The vendor you deal with directly probably doesn't reveal which portions are third party components and who made them. The point is there is a reasonable expectation that the end user make sure to have a valid license to the product in question. However, I think that almost any reasonable person would say that it is not up to the end user to determine what all of the third party portions of that product are and investigate the validity of those licensing arrangements.
Check near the bottom of this link Sontag says that noncommercial users will not need a license. I wonder who is covered under "noncommercial" I suspect that this is to avoid a legal mess of going after thousands of individuals and groups such as universities and even government agencies. I mean the NSA has their very own distribution. Although I suspect that this noncommercial use clause does not cover code modification and redistribution.
Wrong is right A very interesting movie about polotics, terrorism and US secret operations. It was suppose to be a satirical comedy but to watch it now would be more strange or scary than anything. Also I liked Crazy People About an advertising writer played by Dudley Moore who loses it and decides "I want to level with America" He
ends up writing brutally honest ads. Who can forget "Volvo, they are boxy but good!"
Slashdot Mirror
This raises an interesting question. Can unofficial ISOs now be distributed since YaST is no longer encumbered? I remember that vendors like Cheapbytes and other CD burning houses were not able to sell SuSE as an unoffical CD since ironically enough the license on YaST forbid anyone but SuSE for charging for the software. Now with this restriction gone couldn't vendors just master there own unoffical CD's from the FTP packages. I believe that Cheapbytes has already done this with OpenBSD since they can't use his copyrighted ISO layout.
The most annoying part of Java on Freebsd is that you are required to build the thing yourself due to all the restrictions. This wouldn't be such a problem but the Java libary gets larger all the time and gets to be a bigger chore just to install it. As I understand it this is due to licensing that only allows the Java on Freebsd developers to release patches with must be applied to the base source downloaded from Sun. If Java used a true open source license then this would no longer be a problem, because there would be no restrictions on redistribution of either modified source or binaries built from the modified version.
Please read this excellent article by Pamela Jones on Groklaw called "Samizdat - a Noble Word with a Touching History" In fact I recommend everyone read it. It is one of the best articles on Groklaw ever.
One of the reasons that DeCSS was ruled as violating the DMCA was that the software was actually a windows program that was able to extract the contents from a DVD and save the unencrypted contents in a file on the hard drive. The MPAA argued how this would allow anybody to make copies and that the hard drive copy itself could be considered and illegal copy. The Linux port of DeCSS was basically identical and saved DVD contents to the hard drive as well. Both versions where programs that ran as standalone applications.
Now compare this to a separate piece of code called libdvdcss. This library was originally created using some code from DeCSS and some other sources, but much of the code was created from scratch using analysis papers on the CSS algorithm. I believe almost all the original code is long gone now. Now that the algorithm is no longer a trade secret, it should not be illegal to use these analysis paper and other information about CSS. Now the question is should the DMCA and the DeCSS ruling be applied to libdvdcss as well.
One thing it is not even proper to call it a program. It is a library. If you compile it or even if you receive it as a precompiled binary and install it, it is perfectly useless without another program. Another thing is that if you look at the API for libdvdcss there is nothing in the design that supports copying. Decrypted information is placed in memory and not on the hard drive. This is to allow the data to be passed on to the decoding layer in other programs or libraries. When the library is used together with a player such as Xine you still do not have a the ability to copy the DVD. The only way for libdvdcss to be used in a way that violates the DMCA is for someone to write a separate program that uses libdvdcss to write the data to disk. I think I have heard of such programs. Maybe the MPAA should use the DMCA to go after those programs instead. They are the ones the are enabling copying and not the authors of the libdvdcss library. I am sure the MPAA would argue that libdvdcss makes it too easy to write a copying program, but I think it is a silly to say any set of libraries that can be abused should be illegal.
Another thing is Lindows use of libdvdcss in there own forked version of Xine. The DVD CCA allowed Lindows to buy a license that grants them permission to play DVD in their own player. If indeed libdvdcss is a "cracking tool" under the DMCA, then the MPAA should be going after Lindows and even the DVD CCA for using the code, regardless of licenses. If not and libdvdcss can be considered legal for Lindows then it should be legal for everyone now that the trade secret issue is gone. I guess the DVD CCA is now saying that it could try to claim some patents but I didn't think that the CSS algorithm was patented.
Actually this does raise an intersing point for those working for the RIAA and acting as a security force. I wonder if these guys know what they are getting themselves into. They potentially could get shot at because after all they are going after criminals in some cases. What if there is a priracy ring that is also involved in guns and drugs? I would think that playing ATF, FBI or DEA could get them in a world of trouble. Someone might juist start shooting when a jacket with some letters on it appears. It doesn't matter what the letters are. They could also end up blowing other sting or surveillance that real law enforcement is involved in. Maybe the RIAA is not techinically breaking the law but it seems like that it is going to cause nothing but trouble.
There are differing views on citizen's arrest, as to what is allowed and what is not.
Click here for one view. This shows that is is legal to detain someone and take them to the proper authorities.
However this link indicates that taking this kind of action may expose you to lawsuits for assult, and you should just report the crime.
The problem is that with the RIAA it may have never gotten this far. They did not attempt to detain the guy or take him down to the station or even report him. They just threated him and he signed over his property. What would be more interesting to see is how the RIAA reacts if the person refuses all their requests. What would they do?
A. Report the person to the police.
B. Do A. but put him in cuffs wait for the police.
C. Drag the guy down to the police station.
If they just did A there would certainly be no problem, but B or C could be questionable especially if they go ahead and take away the CD's and DVD without permission. I am sure once the word gets out that they aren't real cops that they will be challenged in a hurry.
to dunk Darl, but $6.99 would definitely be worth it.
Just head over to here and get the extension. There is even a "Ref=URL" checkbox to make your browser always use the current URL as the referer string so unless websites start blocking themselves, no problem. The good news is that it was just updated to be Firebird compatible as well.
Here is a little problem with that. Red Hat, SuSe and the major distro actually *gasp* use their own products. In fact there have been informal surveys of web sites to see who actually "eats their own dog food" and most sites do. In fact here and look at the answer to the 6th question. 95% of of 600 is 570 so is SCO going to file 570 individual lawsuits. Is Red Hat going to get a bill for $398,430 dollars? Now you could say that that SCO can pick and choose who it is going to sue but I don't know that this is entirely true. If two groups or individuals A and B are both in clear violation and you choose only to sue A and not B then you do damage to your can and I believe it could even be thrown out if you can't show why A and not B. If A is the worst violator and B is small time then a judge might go along, but if a judge sees a company going after the small infringer and avoiding a suit of a clearly much larger violator then he will not be amused.
Dealer??? Cars, life insurance, drugs or all of the above.
This site seems to be working fine as well.
This OpenLindows sounds interesting and I would love to give it a try. I went to the site and they have some software for OpenLindows but I wasn't able to find any links or info on how to download and install OpenLindows. Does anyone else have some information on this?
That sounds the the vehicular equivalent of the Homeland Security. I assume that all this stuff is probably not paid for but rather you are simply ordered to have this work done and this MOT check back at your home to see that it is done. If not I am guessing the vehicle in question goes to the compacter that afternoon.
"Why does a mosquito bite your ear? And who cares. The answer is simple, call an exterminator."
In other words delete the damned thing and be done with it.
Just go to www.darlmcbride.com
The problem is the code in question is available in a 1978 text.
Kernighan & Ritchie's
The C Programming Language, Prentice Hall 1978!
SCO might claim it is a different version but the code looks the same. Darl would probably say "See the difference right there right there" gesturing at some whitespace or something but I don't think that will hold up. Also SCO could say that BSD code legally became proprietary when SCO added to it and so now all BSD code is proprietary. Again an argument that really doesn't make any sense.
I definitely see the third item in the list happening sometime soon especially since this code from their conference has leaked out and the is appears to be BSD code. You forgot to add that Darl and Co. will also claim that the BSD license is invalid as well and federal copyright trumps it. This will of course mean that all *BSD users will need to pay for a license as well as MacOS X users.
SCO might not try to claim that copyright is completely invalid but rather that most of the conditions in the GPL are not reasonable. They could say that since the license grants permission to copy and redistribute that is the end of it and an author cannot put conditions on these grants. Therefore GPL == BSD and when you put BSD together with proprietary code you get a proprietary product that is controlled by the owner of the proprietary code. Of course this could backfire since SCO used the GPL as well which means there code would be BSD as well.
Just write some small programs of your own and release them under the GPL. Actually I believe that Red Hat, IBM or the FSF or some combination of those will get involved the moment such a lawsuit is filed, even if we are talking about a small company that just uses linux and doesn't write GPL software.
Or here is a senario:
Press Release: XYZ Corp. sued for linux use.
Next Day
Press Release: XYZ Corp. aquired by IBM
Really it is in the best interest of so many groups and companies involved in Linux that you will see people lining up to provide a defense.
Yes, I would agree that a user might be liable if the user aquired software from a reseller for a price only a fraction of that of the retail price. It is resonable to believe that the end user knew that the software was an illegal pirate copy. However, in the case of SCO and Linux the bulk of the code belongs to Linus Torvalds and other core developers and only a few portions are claimed to belong to SCO. SCO's material could be seen as inclusion of third party code. Now remeber the Stac vs. MS case. Stac won and said MS had to stop using there compression techniques. However Stac didn't go after every user of MS-DOS 6.2 for infringment. Remember when Sun won again MS on the Java licensing violation. This meant that MS no longer had a valid license. Sun didn't go after every user of IE 3.0-5.5 and say now everyone has to stop using Windows and IE or else be sued. If SCO is allowed to succeed in a suit against end-users it will send a terrible message. In fact commecial software could be in more danger in some ways. Software developers make deals to include third party components all the time. With all those included components you purchase yourself a minefield of potential lawsuits from companies you have never delt with directly. The vendor you deal with directly probably doesn't reveal which portions are third party components and who made them. The point is there is a reasonable expectation that the end user make sure to have a valid license to the product in question. However, I think that almost any reasonable person would say that it is not up to the end user to determine what all of the third party portions of that product are and investigate the validity of those licensing arrangements.
Here is a link that says not only did this go to court but that SCO may be found in contempt of court for not complying.
Click
here for info on Polish legal actions
And SCO might even be found in contempt of the german court. Click here for info on the german court actions.
If the court finds against SCO they can be fined a 250000 euros for each infraction.
Check near the bottom of this link Sontag says that noncommercial users will not need a license. I wonder who is covered under "noncommercial" I suspect that this is to avoid a legal mess of going after thousands of individuals and groups such as universities and even government agencies. I mean the NSA has their very own distribution. Although I suspect that this noncommercial use clause does not cover code modification and redistribution.
Marty: This jacket doesn't fit ... fit
Jacket: Size adjusting
Wrong is right A very interesting movie about polotics, terrorism and US secret operations. It was suppose to be a satirical comedy but to watch it now would be more strange or scary than anything. Also I liked Crazy People About an advertising writer played by Dudley Moore who loses it and decides "I want to level with America" He ends up writing brutally honest ads. Who can forget "Volvo, they are boxy but good!"