It can not be as general as "all websites have common carrier status," like all phone companies and all package carriers receive, because there are plenty of legitimate web business models that work on the opposite presumption. For example, this is more or less the case with true.com. Their whole thing is that they are trying to check people's identities to prevent jerking around with fake identities on dating sites.
The issues related to dating sites include teenagers claiming to be older than they are as well undesirable clients such as adulterers and prostitutes. This is a different set of issues than those which apply to the likes of MySpace...
You're right of course, but...... Amazon should know better. There are certain risks involved in running an internet shop, once of which is software error giving your product away for free. There are risks involved a traditional shop for that matter, like customers and staff walking out of your shop without paying for merchandise.
Traditional shops are not immune to special offers being exploitable, even ending up with seriously negative pricing (including such things as more loyalty card points that the goods are worth). The difference is that someone tends to notice when the first customer does this, especially if they buy the shop's entire stock of something.
Actually it depends a lot on the local laws. The advertised price could be what is known as an "invtation to treat". In other words the starting point for haggling over the price. Even where there are laws which give status to the price they tend to be along the lines that the seller may not increase the price.
For example, if some shite cashier decides to knock 10% off all the merchandise without permission, does that make it alright to purchase?
Answer: no. It's theft and you're buying stolen property.
If you were charged with theft in such a case any half decent lawyer would point out that you had no way to tell that the cashier did not have the authority to reduce the price. The only problem would be if you knew the cashier, in which case you might end up charged with "conspiracy to defraud" or something similar.
I would think it likely that Fox and other networks still use this method to distribute episodes to their local affiliates, and that this is how the uploader managed to obtain the episode before it was officially aired. Not having a C-Band satellite dish anymore, however, I can't verify this theory. Anybody out there actually still have a C-Band satellite dish? That's actually hooked up and usable?
The method here is that of a broadcast. The exact details of that, including the frequency used and any encryption which might be added, matter rather less than that signal is being sent to a sizable part of the Earth's surface. Which includes quite a bit which is outside of the US.
Media is often distributed to certain individuals before it is aired on TV or released in theaters, as the case may be.
Distribution of media does not even need to be involved. One way to distribute TV to many terrestrial stations is via DBS. One thing fairly unique to the US is to have this broadcast take place several days before the intended "airdate" (as opposed to a few milliseconds...)
IANAL (obviously) but what laws are being broken here besides copyright infringement?
The details matter a lot here. e.g. if the origin was a broadcast intended for US TV stations picked up by a Canadian (in Canada) then it is possible that no laws have been broken. It's rather hard for a broadcast intended for all of the Continental US not to cover parts of Canada (Canadian laws on "overspill broadcasts" being quite clear) as well as parts of the sea considered international waters (even more so if Alaska is intended to be included). Thus the applicable copyright law would be that of a ship's flag, indeed this could be a real "pirate video".
This case is also different because the person put them on YouTube BEFORE they aired, so this is a bit more serious than just uploading the video.
It might be serious if the person involved was a Fox insider. If this happened in the USA then it's more likely that the material was simply broadcast prior to the "airdate". It can happen in the US (but generally not in the rest of the world) that TV "Networks" broadcast content several days before with the intention that TV stations record this.
I run as a non-admin all the time, and most programs that give me problems want to write to %ProgramFiles% or the HKLM section of the registry. If it's a program that I care about, I'll spend a minute with Process Monitor to figure out what's going on. I'll grant that 98% of end users could not do this, not because it's hard, but because they don't know about the tool.
This is more a developer failure in not documenting where the program (really should be the program installer) is trying to write files or registry keys. Altering the permissions on a folder or registry key is far less of a hack than turning most of the security on the machine off. N.B. It's still a hack since a program really shouldn't need to be writing to its location folder or to HKLM. About the only kind of situations where doing so makes sense are administrator rather than user tasks.
But most programs require admin priveliges to run.
This may be true in terms of how these applications are currently written but it certainly isn't true that most programs require admin privs to perform any of the tasks they perport to perform. Even when a program might requires privs for some of it's tasks there is no good reason for insisting that elevated privs are granted to the user in general (as opposed to the program itself) or that parts of the program requiring elevated privs are somehow partitioned from the rest of the program. This is just a matter of good software engineering, which really has nothing to do with the specifics of the platform involved.
You know, if any *nix software required the user to be root to run, we would string the developers up alongside the guy who thought Clippy would be a good idea.
Presumably you mean "any *nix software which claimed to be some kind of ordinary user application". You'd probably also want to ensure that the software itself was wiped from the face of the planet, since if the "developer" dosn't know about the setuid permission bit it's rather unlikely that they they know enough to write software which has any chance of being bug free...
Microsoft is so busy catering to the third party developers in order to maintain their lock-in, that they forgot how to put their foot down on truly important software engineering issues, like security. Locking down XP to an almost *nix-like state can be done. There are read/write/execute permissions available on every directory, drive letter, and registry key, and Windows supports the "home directory sandbox" model.
In theory XP's permissions system is more capable than that on unix type systems. Since every permission is an ACL (including deny options, thus you could say "Any user in accounts except for Anne and Bob can do this..) In practice it appears even Microsoft have problems securing Windows properly.
So why doesn't the brand name drug just lower the price to the pharmacies? They usually can't because their manufacturing costs are higher because they have the quality control issues that generics generally don't. This is not to say generics don't care about quality control, but there are large differences.
Except there will be the same regulator regulating both generic and brand name drugs. A generic which is dangerous (or simply dosn't work) is likely to attract the attention anywhere pharmacutical drugs are effectivly regulated in the first place. Also pharmacists tend to be considered responsible professional people, thus they would carry part of the blame for any harm done to people.
Some patents are needed, period.
Pharmacutical drugs existed long before any kind of patents existed though.
How does the individual inventor find protection with a patent? Can the individual inventor afford to fight a multinational corporation if they "steal" his ideas?
If someone tries they are likely to find themselves as defendent in counterclaims for infringing patents held by the "big corp(s)".
If you create something and I have more money and more legal power than you, how would you fight me? Chances are, you won't.
If you have any sense you won't in a way which you are bound to lose. Any more gurilla militia is going to line up to get shot by a regular army...
Most if not all phones are created by large multi-national corporations who can deal with patent lawsuits, but mostly deal with cross-licensing deals upon potential violations. This works out fine as MAD among those companies, but the small-time inventor has no such legal team or portfolio. Oddly, though he's the one patents help the most, he might also be the one to suffer the most, depending on the situation. One thing is for sure, if a small inventor can bring an idea to market in 5 years, without any IP protection, a big multi-national can take that idea, re-implement it and get it manufactured in Asia in time for Christmas. This isn't encouraging. Sorry, I don't have a solution to offer, just pointing out some of the pitfalls.
In such a senario the inventor having a few patents isn't much use. The big corps can easily just ignore such a person, even accuse them of violating some of their own patents. Entry into the "MAD club" requires having a sizable number of patents. Patents are not nuclear weapons where having a even small number can make you a credible threat to the "big boys".
now, if in some future decade, scientists make a genetic sequence that has no similarity to anything in mother nature anywhere that is useful, i'd say they can patent that.... i said NO similiarity.
Thing is that such a patent would effectivly be a "software patent". With the added complication that biological systems tend to have self replication as a "standard feature".
ip law is important for rewarding creators and innovators. not researchers of what already exists.
In many cases the desired end is to ensure that these people share their knowlage with the rest of humanity. This "reward" being a means to that end.
No; all parts of the Constitution are considered to have basically equal weight, in terms of forming a document which itself is the supreme law of the land. It's not just the First Amendment that's law, it's all of the Constitution, which includes parts giving Congress the authorization to implement copyright and patents.The term "ammendment" has the meaning of altering a document. An ammendment consists of a set of instructions to edit a document (if there are no explicit instructions in the text of the ammendment then "append" is implied.)
While this may be literally contradictory, it just means that when viewed as a whole, the First Amendment right isn't unlimited, but constrained by other parts of the document.
Actually only a later ammendment constrain an earlier one. There is a context of (relative) time and order applicable here. I wonder how the original poster would interpret Ammendment 21...
It simply states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..." No law means NO law.
One thing to note is that this prohibition is defined not by the text, title or even intent of the law. So much as how it is or (could be) applied. AFAIK this remains absolute, since no later ammendment provides for an exception. Which is highly relevent to the SlashDot "hot topic" of The DMCA.
If a foreign government wanted to, say, eliminate their dependancy on foreign software, they could nullify MS's copyright and patents, etc, but MS would lobby the US government and the US government would threaten sanctions, and unfavourable tariffs and treaties, etc, to keep this "rogue state" in line.
Assuming that said country had an economic relationship (other than "intellectual property") with the US more valuable to it than the US. Something more likely to be the case with Canada than Russia...
Also, localisation is critical to success among people in rural areas. They're just plain old users, they don't care about getting an IT job, they just want to send an email. But if everything's in English, that makes it really hard. There is no way in heck that Microsoft will ever localise Outlook or Windows to the local language, but doing so with GNOME and Firefox is a simple matter of updating some text files.
It can even matter if the local language is English. Windows (and many Windows programs) tends to have "US English" as the only option. In most places where English is used (not always as a primary language) this equates to "full of spelling mistakes". Thus systems which allow both standard and US spellings (even a mixture, as is the case in Canada) are likely to be seen as better. If Microsoft can't even get things right for a major language it dosn't bode well for any minor langauge (IIRC there have been issues with Microsoft software and other European languages.
At least they're talking about talking, before bombing; the problem is that if you make a threat to bomb someone, you have to be prepared to carry it out.
You'd also better be prepared so whoever you threaten to both put their own military on high alert and seriously consider that they make any kind of "pre-emptive strike" they are capable of if it even looks like you are going to carry out your threat. Hence you really don't want to threaten anyone who can either actually attack you or sucessfully defend themselves against your attack.
The "All pirated spftware contain virus" is BSA propaganda.
IIRC there have been cases of "legitimate" software containing viruses. Thus it's possible that any pirated version originating from the same source. The ultimate irony would be if the "pirate" version had been cleaned in such a situation...
Ensure you make your attack from a country you'd like the US to bomb. Alternatively there's the following "won't bomb" list: China (PRC),France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russian Federation, UK.
One of the biggest leveling factors here is that the majority of people (>90%) have never touched a computer in their lives, so status quo just doesn't come into it. Experience shows us that new users here take to Linux just as readily as to Windows.
Possibly even something local will be easier to sell than something foreign.
Slashdot Mirror
Running full credit and background checks for all myspace Users is Impractical,
At least without charging a large membership fee.
It can not be as general as "all websites have common carrier status," like all phone companies and all package carriers receive, because there are plenty of legitimate web business models that work on the opposite presumption. For example, this is more or less the case with true.com. Their whole thing is that they are trying to check people's identities to prevent jerking around with fake identities on dating sites.
The issues related to dating sites include teenagers claiming to be older than they are as well undesirable clients such as adulterers and prostitutes. This is a different set of issues than those which apply to the likes of MySpace...
You're right of course, but... ... Amazon should know better. There are certain risks involved in running an internet shop, once of which is software error giving your product away for free. There are risks involved a traditional shop for that matter, like customers and staff walking out of your shop without paying for merchandise.
Traditional shops are not immune to special offers being exploitable, even ending up with seriously negative pricing (including such things as more loyalty card points that the goods are worth). The difference is that someone tends to notice when the first customer does this, especially if they buy the shop's entire stock of something.
You have to pay what the advertised price is.
Actually it depends a lot on the local laws. The advertised price could be what is known as an "invtation to treat". In other words the starting point for haggling over the price. Even where there are laws which give status to the price they tend to be along the lines that the seller may not increase the price.
For example, if some shite cashier decides to knock 10% off all the merchandise without permission, does that make it alright to purchase? Answer: no. It's theft and you're buying stolen property.
If you were charged with theft in such a case any half decent lawyer would point out that you had no way to tell that the cashier did not have the authority to reduce the price. The only problem would be if you knew the cashier, in which case you might end up charged with "conspiracy to defraud" or something similar.
Actually no, it should be "he's so far up Bush's ass he can see Tony Blair's feet".
Wonder how much it would cost to send both of them one way to the Bush Ranch?
I would think it likely that Fox and other networks still use this method to distribute episodes to their local affiliates, and that this is how the uploader managed to obtain the episode before it was officially aired. Not having a C-Band satellite dish anymore, however, I can't verify this theory. Anybody out there actually still have a C-Band satellite dish? That's actually hooked up and usable?
The method here is that of a broadcast. The exact details of that, including the frequency used and any encryption which might be added, matter rather less than that signal is being sent to a sizable part of the Earth's surface. Which includes quite a bit which is outside of the US.
Media is often distributed to certain individuals before it is aired on TV or released in theaters, as the case may be.
Distribution of media does not even need to be involved. One way to distribute TV to many terrestrial stations is via DBS. One thing fairly unique to the US is to have this broadcast take place several days before the intended "airdate" (as opposed to a few milliseconds...)
IANAL (obviously) but what laws are being broken here besides copyright infringement?
The details matter a lot here. e.g. if the origin was a broadcast intended for US TV stations picked up by a Canadian (in Canada) then it is possible that no laws have been broken.
It's rather hard for a broadcast intended for all of the Continental US not to cover parts of Canada (Canadian laws on "overspill broadcasts" being quite clear) as well as parts of the sea considered international waters (even more so if Alaska is intended to be included). Thus the applicable copyright law would be that of a ship's flag, indeed this could be a real "pirate video".
This case is also different because the person put them on YouTube BEFORE they aired, so this is a bit more serious than just uploading the video.
It might be serious if the person involved was a Fox insider. If this happened in the USA then it's more likely that the material was simply broadcast prior to the "airdate". It can happen in the US (but generally not in the rest of the world) that TV "Networks" broadcast content several days before with the intention that TV stations record this.
I run as a non-admin all the time, and most programs that give me problems want to write to %ProgramFiles% or the HKLM section of the registry. If it's a program that I care about, I'll spend a minute with Process Monitor to figure out what's going on. I'll grant that 98% of end users could not do this, not because it's hard, but because they don't know about the tool.
This is more a developer failure in not documenting where the program (really should be the program installer) is trying to write files or registry keys.
Altering the permissions on a folder or registry key is far less of a hack than turning most of the security on the machine off. N.B. It's still a hack since a program really shouldn't need to be writing to its location folder or to HKLM. About the only kind of situations where doing so makes sense are administrator rather than user tasks.
But most programs require admin priveliges to run.
This may be true in terms of how these applications are currently written but it certainly isn't true that most programs require admin privs to perform any of the tasks they perport to perform. Even when a program might requires privs for some of it's tasks there is no good reason for insisting that elevated privs are granted to the user in general (as opposed to the program itself) or that parts of the program requiring elevated privs are somehow partitioned from the rest of the program.
This is just a matter of good software engineering, which really has nothing to do with the specifics of the platform involved.
You know, if any *nix software required the user to be root to run, we would string the developers up alongside the guy who thought Clippy would be a good idea.
Presumably you mean "any *nix software which claimed to be some kind of ordinary user application".
You'd probably also want to ensure that the software itself was wiped from the face of the planet, since if the "developer" dosn't know about the setuid permission bit it's rather unlikely that they they know enough to write software which has any chance of being bug free...
Microsoft is so busy catering to the third party developers in order to maintain their lock-in, that they forgot how to put their foot down on truly important software engineering issues, like security. Locking down XP to an almost *nix-like state can be done. There are read/write/execute permissions available on every directory, drive letter, and registry key, and Windows supports the "home directory sandbox" model.
In theory XP's permissions system is more capable than that on unix type systems. Since every permission is an ACL (including deny options, thus you could say "Any user in accounts except for Anne and Bob can do this..) In practice it appears even Microsoft have problems securing Windows properly.
So why doesn't the brand name drug just lower the price to the pharmacies? They usually can't because their manufacturing costs are higher because they have the quality control issues that generics generally don't. This is not to say generics don't care about quality control, but there are large differences.
Except there will be the same regulator regulating both generic and brand name drugs. A generic which is dangerous (or simply dosn't work) is likely to attract the attention anywhere pharmacutical drugs are effectivly regulated in the first place. Also pharmacists tend to be considered responsible professional people, thus they would carry part of the blame for any harm done to people.
Some patents are needed, period.
Pharmacutical drugs existed long before any kind of patents existed though.
How does the individual inventor find protection with a patent? Can the individual inventor afford to fight a multinational corporation if they "steal" his ideas?
If someone tries they are likely to find themselves as defendent in counterclaims for infringing patents held by the "big corp(s)".
If you create something and I have more money and more legal power than you, how would you fight me? Chances are, you won't.
If you have any sense you won't in a way which you are bound to lose. Any more gurilla militia is going to line up to get shot by a regular army...
Most if not all phones are created by large multi-national corporations who can deal with patent lawsuits, but mostly deal with cross-licensing deals upon potential violations. This works out fine as MAD among those companies, but the small-time inventor has no such legal team or portfolio. Oddly, though he's the one patents help the most, he might also be the one to suffer the most, depending on the situation. One thing is for sure, if a small inventor can bring an idea to market in 5 years, without any IP protection, a big multi-national can take that idea, re-implement it and get it manufactured in Asia in time for Christmas. This isn't encouraging. Sorry, I don't have a solution to offer, just pointing out some of the pitfalls.
In such a senario the inventor having a few patents isn't much use. The big corps can easily just ignore such a person, even accuse them of violating some of their own patents. Entry into the "MAD club" requires having a sizable number of patents. Patents are not nuclear weapons where having a even small number can make you a credible threat to the "big boys".
now, if in some future decade, scientists make a genetic sequence that has no similarity to anything in mother nature anywhere that is useful, i'd say they can patent that.... i said NO similiarity.
Thing is that such a patent would effectivly be a "software patent". With the added complication that biological systems tend to have self replication as a "standard feature".
ip law is important for rewarding creators and innovators. not researchers of what already exists.
In many cases the desired end is to ensure that these people share their knowlage with the rest of humanity. This "reward" being a means to that end.
I said that "by a magic way, no Microsoft product could be pirated", which implies uncrackable software.
Or it may mean that MS DRM would be cracked even quicker, unless everyone who could do magic was utterly loyal to Microsoft...
No; all parts of the Constitution are considered to have basically equal weight, in terms of forming a document which itself is the supreme law of the land. It's not just the First Amendment that's law, it's all of the Constitution, which includes parts giving Congress the authorization to implement copyright and patents.The term "ammendment" has the meaning of altering a document. An ammendment consists of a set of instructions to edit a document (if there are no explicit instructions in the text of the ammendment then "append" is implied.)
While this may be literally contradictory, it just means that when viewed as a whole, the First Amendment right isn't unlimited, but constrained by other parts of the document.
Actually only a later ammendment constrain an earlier one. There is a context of (relative) time and order applicable here.
I wonder how the original poster would interpret Ammendment 21...
It simply states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..." No law means NO law.
One thing to note is that this prohibition is defined not by the text, title or even intent of the law. So much as how it is or (could be) applied. AFAIK this remains absolute, since no later ammendment provides for an exception. Which is highly relevent to the SlashDot "hot topic" of The DMCA.
If a foreign government wanted to, say, eliminate their dependancy on foreign software, they could nullify MS's copyright and patents, etc, but MS would lobby the US government and the US government would threaten sanctions, and unfavourable tariffs and treaties, etc, to keep this "rogue state" in line.
Assuming that said country had an economic relationship (other than "intellectual property") with the US more valuable to it than the US. Something more likely to be the case with Canada than Russia...
Also, localisation is critical to success among people in rural areas. They're just plain old users, they don't care about getting an IT job, they just want to send an email. But if everything's in English, that makes it really hard. There is no way in heck that Microsoft will ever localise Outlook or Windows to the local language, but doing so with GNOME and Firefox is a simple matter of updating some text files.
It can even matter if the local language is English. Windows (and many Windows programs) tends to have "US English" as the only option. In most places where English is used (not always as a primary language) this equates to "full of spelling mistakes". Thus systems which allow both standard and US spellings (even a mixture, as is the case in Canada) are likely to be seen as better. If Microsoft can't even get things right for a major language it dosn't bode well for any minor langauge (IIRC there have been issues with Microsoft software and other European languages.
At least they're talking about talking, before bombing; the problem is that if you make a threat to bomb someone, you have to be prepared to carry it out.
You'd also better be prepared so whoever you threaten to both put their own military on high alert and seriously consider that they make any kind of "pre-emptive strike" they are capable of if it even looks like you are going to carry out your threat.
Hence you really don't want to threaten anyone who can either actually attack you or sucessfully defend themselves against your attack.
The "All pirated spftware contain virus" is BSA propaganda.
IIRC there have been cases of "legitimate" software containing viruses. Thus it's possible that any pirated version originating from the same source. The ultimate irony would be if the "pirate" version had been cleaned in such a situation...
Ensure you make your attack from a country you'd like the US to bomb. Alternatively there's the following "won't bomb" list: China (PRC),France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russian Federation, UK.
One of the biggest leveling factors here is that the majority of people (>90%) have never touched a computer in their lives, so status quo just doesn't come into it. Experience shows us that new users here take to Linux just as readily as to Windows.
Possibly even something local will be easier to sell than something foreign.