Apple could fix this easily. The iTunes client could send a public key to the store when purchasing a song, and the server would encrypt the song using that key. The client could then decrypt the song using its private key, and then apply the DRM.
There are two problems. One the client is under the control of the user. Thus whatever DRM it might apply here is the user's choice, not Apple's. Two to be of any practical use what so ever the client has to be capable of outputting un-encrypted content.
It wont catch on, the whole point people in britain are downloading TV shows (Especially from the US) is because they have to wait months if not a year before the shows appear over here in the UK, and then it might only be aied on sky or a straight to DVD release leaving everyone with "basic" TV another year to wait before it airs, the point of downloading TV shows already over here is pointless.
This has been changing because the US is now not always the first to get programmes. e.g. "Battlestar Galactica" shown in it's entirity on Sky 1 before any US broadcasts. Together with "Dr Who" which might well be available on DVD (possibly even R1 DVD depending how things work in Canada) before any US broadcast.
Extensions for IE such as Avant and Maxthon can do pretty much everything that firefox can do (tabs, popup blocking, gestures), so don't get too comfortable with catching up based on a few features missing in the de facto standard.
Will they enable IE to run on all the platforms Firefox supports?
However, when you're sentenced to do community service, you have to work for free. You can't, at the end of the day, hand over a bill for services rendered.
You could do. But you couldn't force anyone to pay it. Most likely this would be a "foot shooting" exercise.
Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.
The point is that this is ment to be both a punishment for Microsoft breaking the law and an attempt to rectify the damage.
By looking at the article it seems as though Microsoft wants to charge people royalties who create a competing product when those people have looked at Microsoft's secret API. This seems reasonable - why should someone be able to sell a competing product that does the same thing as a domain controller of global catalog server after they've been able to look at Microsoft's secret APIs?
The article compares this with "Community Service" which is unpaid work a court orders a convict to undertake. If the convict dosn't do this then the court will impose an alternative sentence. Effectivly Microsoft are trying to get paid for their "community service". Which effectivly adds "contempt of court" to their list of wrong doings.
Don't be so confident that human stupidity is going away anytime soon. Bible-thumping fundies will just be replaced by some other group of ignorant buffoons, who would rather believe any kind of comfortable fantasy rather than an uncomfortable truth.
The problem comes when these people (or those leading them) have real political power. Thus being an actual danger to everyone else as opposed to being "nutters" who can be ignored.
Why do so many governments show so much patience with a company already convicted of a crime?
Actually one convicted more than once.
Judges and governments alike should yell "ENOUGH ALREADY!" and enforce the laws to the limit.
It's the difference between how the law treats "corporate people" and "real people". When it comes to the former there appears to be no concept of "bail" or "remanded in custody".
First off, this is NOT meant as flamebait, but, Microsoft is an AMERICAN company. Why should it give one whit what the EU finds, thinks, or wants?
Because if Microsoft wants to do business anywhere they need to obey the law.
If I were Bill Gates, I would simply pull all of my product out of Europe and laugh at them.
It's rather hard to "pull out" a product which has no physical existance.
Due to the market penetration of Windows, the EU would come crawling back, begging for Windows marketing to be reinstated.
Except that Microsoft can't remove all copies of Windows form the EU. They can't stop those copies being copiable. It's also virtually certain that there are plenty of people within the EU who could disable any "copy protection" within a short period of time and/or work out ways to have support requests come from somewhere other than the EU.
My basic point is that, as an American, why should we give a flying flip what the EU wants?!
Similarly why should the rest of the planet care much about what the US happens to think or want.
That the EU has the right to demand 5% of GLOBAL revenue, rather than European revenue, especially as the agreement they reached isn't even applicable outside of Europe.
Because they can apply all sorts of what ammounts to legal "money laundering" to mimimise "European Revenue". e.g. converting all income from Europe into US Dollers as soon as they possibly can.
Question for our US cousins, will this 5% be taken out of Microsoft before or after they pay US tazes?
No doubt Microsoft use whatever tricks they can to avoid paying taxes anywhere they possibly can.
And how does it feel to be subsidising European justice?
If the money collected in fines ends up being used to buy goods or services from the US it may well result in more tax revenue to the US Government.
While I'm not a big fan of M$, I think they can pretty much just get their way. They could just say "Drop the lawsuit, or we stop all supporting and licensing activities in the EU effective tomorrow."
Which might get the reply "All your assets, within the EU, are frozen as of now. All your software is now public domain."
Microsoft seems to be pretending that they are dealing with a customer, not a goverment.
Probably because they are used to dealing with government in the US.
This kind of tactic will shoot them in the foot because they are ignoring the sovereignty of the EU. The EU won't put up with it since it will dilute their power.
Assuming Microsoft cannot bribe their way around it.
$5 million a day? Big deal. Remember in the People vs Larry Flynt how the court fined him $10,000 a day until he complied with their request. $5 million a day is something like 1.8 billion a year.
One thing to remember is that the fine is most likely in Euros. If current trends continue it will end up costing Microsoft rather more.
Don't kid yourself, this really is a small fine for a company the size of Microsoft. For all companies, small fines are just the cost of doing business. They'll just raise the price of some of the products elsewhere to cover the loss in profit.
This is especially a problem with fining a monopoly. Since with their monopoly intact the only level of fines which would be an issue are those large enough to cause immediate cash flow problems.
I think the phenomenon of artists and musicians being paid huge amounts of money for their work is relatively new. I also don't believe writing and recording an album is a full-time job. I have enough friends who are musicians to understand that there are FAR more people who work full-time jobs and yet manage to make great music, record it, and even play out quite often than there are musicians who record an album, make millions and sit around being fed grapes all day.
There are also a group who try and fail to "make it big". Even amongst the people who are "sucessful" plenty appear to wind up bankrupt, insane or in an early grave.
It's possible that Oil is only a minor part of the issue. Considering that it would have been much cheaper for the US Government to have just bought oil on the open market.
Um, no, you don't comprehend the experiment. The body, upon receiving the placebo saline, acts as if it's getting the morphine unless the placebo contains a morphine inhibitor. One conclusion: the body is generating actual morphine on its own.
Actually the body produces chemicals called endorphines. Which are mimicked by certain alkaloids. The idea of alkaloids from the plant's POV is to discourage being eaten. but being cultivated is a prefectly fine symbiotic alternative.
If there's any Australians who still think Free Trade with the US is a good thing, just ask their largest trading partner how free trade has helped with softwood lumber, hogs, wheat, or anything else for that matter.
It might be simpler to say that if the US is involved "Free Trade" means something else...
It seems that American grammar is very different from British grammar.
American "English" is rather different from other forms of English. Thus it wouldn't be that suprising were it to use a non standard grammar as well as non standard spellings.
I know of a Department of Defense and I know of a Ministry of Defence, but what the hell is a "Ministry of Defense"?
Right next to the "World Trade Centre":) The results of idiot "journalists" (or more likely their software) not understanding that the spelling of proper nouns should not be "corrected".
This is good. I wrote in a previous comment that I thought the GPL had no teeth, if the FSF where the only people looking into GPL violations, because they don't really do a Hell of a lot about violators (sorry, it's a fact), and most FOSS developers don't have the resources to seek a legal solution against violators.
What has this got to do with the GPL. If a copyright holder does not have the resources to go after infringers then what licence they apply to their work(s) is irrelevent.
Now that's a common problem that I don't dispute - but it's partly caused by the fact that with so many new patent applications the examiners are pretty much snowed under.
By itself this would simply make the patenting process go more slowly. With the added "risk" of a patent being denied because of "prior art" which came into existance after an application was made, but before it was looked at. Failing to examine applications properly (including passing questionable applications) most certainly is a shortcomming of patent offices not doing their jobs.
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There is nothing flawed about DRM.
No the concept of DRM is fundermentally flawed.
Apple could fix this easily. The iTunes client could send a public key to the store when purchasing a song, and the server would encrypt the song using that key. The client could then decrypt the song using its private key, and then apply the DRM.
There are two problems. One the client is under the control of the user. Thus whatever DRM it might apply here is the user's choice, not Apple's. Two to be of any practical use what so ever the client has to be capable of outputting un-encrypted content.
It wont catch on, the whole point people in britain are downloading TV shows (Especially from the US) is because they have to wait months if not a year before the shows appear over here in the UK, and then it might only be aied on sky or a straight to DVD release leaving everyone with "basic" TV another year to wait before it airs, the point of downloading TV shows already over here is pointless.
This has been changing because the US is now not always the first to get programmes. e.g. "Battlestar Galactica" shown in it's entirity on Sky 1 before any US broadcasts. Together with "Dr Who" which might well be available on DVD (possibly even R1 DVD depending how things work in Canada) before any US broadcast.
Extensions for IE such as Avant and Maxthon can do pretty much everything that firefox can do (tabs, popup blocking, gestures), so don't get too comfortable with catching up based on a few features missing in the de facto standard.
Will they enable IE to run on all the platforms Firefox supports?
We're heading for a country where everyone is a potential suspect, eventually.
It's unlikely to be everyone, only the "plebs". Those who are considered "patricians", both real people and corporates, tend to be exampt...
However, when you're sentenced to do community service, you have to work for free. You can't, at the end of the day, hand over a bill for services rendered.
You could do. But you couldn't force anyone to pay it. Most likely this would be a "foot shooting" exercise.
Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.
The point is that this is ment to be both a punishment for Microsoft breaking the law and an attempt to rectify the damage.
By looking at the article it seems as though Microsoft wants to charge people royalties who create a competing product when those people have looked at Microsoft's secret API. This seems reasonable - why should someone be able to sell a competing product that does the same thing as a domain controller of global catalog server after they've been able to look at Microsoft's secret APIs?
The article compares this with "Community Service" which is unpaid work a court orders a convict to undertake. If the convict dosn't do this then the court will impose an alternative sentence.
Effectivly Microsoft are trying to get paid for their "community service". Which effectivly adds "contempt of court" to their list of wrong doings.
Don't be so confident that human stupidity is going away anytime soon. Bible-thumping fundies will just be replaced by some other group of ignorant buffoons, who would rather believe any kind of comfortable fantasy rather than an uncomfortable truth.
The problem comes when these people (or those leading them) have real political power. Thus being an actual danger to everyone else as opposed to being "nutters" who can be ignored.
Why do so many governments show so much patience with a company already convicted of a crime?
Actually one convicted more than once.
Judges and governments alike should yell "ENOUGH ALREADY!" and enforce the laws to the limit.
It's the difference between how the law treats "corporate people" and "real people". When it comes to the former there appears to be no concept of "bail" or "remanded in custody".
First off, this is NOT meant as flamebait, but, Microsoft is an AMERICAN company. Why should it give one whit what the EU finds, thinks, or wants?
Because if Microsoft wants to do business anywhere they need to obey the law.
If I were Bill Gates, I would simply pull all of my product out of Europe and laugh at them.
It's rather hard to "pull out" a product which has no physical existance.
Due to the market penetration of Windows, the EU would come crawling back, begging for Windows marketing to be reinstated.
Except that Microsoft can't remove all copies of Windows form the EU. They can't stop those copies being copiable. It's also virtually certain that there are plenty of people within the EU who could disable any "copy protection" within a short period of time and/or work out ways to have support requests come from somewhere other than the EU.
My basic point is that, as an American, why should we give a flying flip what the EU wants?!
Similarly why should the rest of the planet care much about what the US happens to think or want.
That the EU has the right to demand 5% of GLOBAL revenue, rather than European revenue, especially as the agreement they reached isn't even applicable outside of Europe.
Because they can apply all sorts of what ammounts to legal "money laundering" to mimimise "European Revenue". e.g. converting all income from Europe into US Dollers as soon as they possibly can.
Question for our US cousins, will this 5% be taken out of Microsoft before or after they pay US tazes?
No doubt Microsoft use whatever tricks they can to avoid paying taxes anywhere they possibly can.
And how does it feel to be subsidising European justice?
If the money collected in fines ends up being used to buy goods or services from the US it may well result in more tax revenue to the US Government.
While I'm not a big fan of M$, I think they can pretty much just get their way. They could just say "Drop the lawsuit, or we stop all supporting and licensing activities in the EU effective tomorrow."
Which might get the reply "All your assets, within the EU, are frozen as of now. All your software is now public domain."
Microsoft seems to be pretending that they are dealing with a customer, not a goverment.
Probably because they are used to dealing with government in the US.
This kind of tactic will shoot them in the foot because they are ignoring the sovereignty of the EU. The EU won't put up with it since it will dilute their power.
Assuming Microsoft cannot bribe their way around it.
$5 million a day? Big deal. Remember in the People vs Larry Flynt how the court fined him $10,000 a day until he complied with their request. $5 million a day is something like 1.8 billion a year.
One thing to remember is that the fine is most likely in Euros. If current trends continue it will end up costing Microsoft rather more.
Don't kid yourself, this really is a small fine for a company the size of Microsoft. For all companies, small fines are just the cost of doing business. They'll just raise the price of some of the products elsewhere to cover the loss in profit.
This is especially a problem with fining a monopoly. Since with their monopoly intact the only level of fines which would be an issue are those large enough to cause immediate cash flow problems.
I think the phenomenon of artists and musicians being paid huge amounts of money for their work is relatively new. I also don't believe writing and recording an album is a full-time job. I have enough friends who are musicians to understand that there are FAR more people who work full-time jobs and yet manage to make great music, record it, and even play out quite often than there are musicians who record an album, make millions and sit around being fed grapes all day.
There are also a group who try and fail to "make it big". Even amongst the people who are "sucessful" plenty appear to wind up bankrupt, insane or in an early grave.
US in Iraq: Oil, Fame, Revenge, Legacy
It's possible that Oil is only a minor part of the issue. Considering that it would have been much cheaper for the US Government to have just bought oil on the open market.
Um, no, you don't comprehend the experiment. The body, upon receiving the placebo saline, acts as if it's getting the morphine unless the placebo contains a morphine inhibitor. One conclusion: the body is generating actual morphine on its own.
Actually the body produces chemicals called endorphines. Which are mimicked by certain alkaloids.
The idea of alkaloids from the plant's POV is to discourage being eaten. but being cultivated is a prefectly fine symbiotic alternative.
And the worst part is, we're addicted to it now in Canada. So much of our trade is directly between us and the U.S. that we've become dependent on it,
There is also the factor of Canada and the US having a large land border.
If there's any Australians who still think Free Trade with the US is a good thing, just ask their largest trading partner how free trade has helped with softwood lumber, hogs, wheat, or anything else for that matter.
It might be simpler to say that if the US is involved "Free Trade" means something else...
Don't people usually have problems with water during disasters? If you place contaminated water into the structure are you going to have problems?
Depends what the water is contaminated with. Salt is more likely to affect cement than bacteria.
It seems that American grammar is very different from British grammar.
American "English" is rather different from other forms of English. Thus it wouldn't be that suprising were it to use a non standard grammar as well as non standard spellings.
I know of a Department of Defense and I know of a Ministry of Defence, but what the hell is a "Ministry of Defense"?
:) The results of idiot "journalists" (or more likely their software) not understanding that the spelling of proper nouns should not be "corrected".
Right next to the "World Trade Centre"
This is good. I wrote in a previous comment that I thought the GPL had no teeth, if the FSF where the only people looking into GPL violations, because they don't really do a Hell of a lot about violators (sorry, it's a fact), and most FOSS developers don't have the resources to seek a legal solution against violators.
What has this got to do with the GPL. If a copyright holder does not have the resources to go after infringers then what licence they apply to their work(s) is irrelevent.
Now that's a common problem that I don't dispute - but it's partly caused by the fact that with so many new patent applications the examiners are pretty much snowed under.
By itself this would simply make the patenting process go more slowly. With the added "risk" of a patent being denied because of "prior art" which came into existance after an application was made, but before it was looked at.
Failing to examine applications properly (including passing questionable applications) most certainly is a shortcomming of patent offices not doing their jobs.
It took a good couple of seconds to work out that the Boy Scouts Association of America was unlikely to have armed marshalls
:)
It means "Business Software Alliance". Though "Birmingham Small Arms" might also fit