I can't believe no one seems to have done this before, but on the Openlaw list someone finally looked up the origins of 'piracy' in the OED. Evidently it's been used in the same sense as it is today since the 1700's.
So go figure - copying stuff was called piracy by people who lived in an age with the 'arr matey' sorts of pirates too.
Re:What the real question is...
on
The First Mouse
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· Score: 1
You mean 'interpolatrix'
Re:And 40 years later... Mice still don't work rig
on
The First Mouse
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· Score: 1
The Apple, MS and Logitech optical mice are ALL using the same technology developed by HP (which may have wound up in the Aligent spin off, who knows)
He's talking about optical mice that had to use special mousepads with a grid of lines. The new crop of optical mice can be used on nearly any surface. I don't think there are any new ones, but there are lots of used computer parts floating around. I saw a box full of the pads a week ago here in Seattle. Try local used computer stores.
There already are programs that do this, but DeCSS does not infringe on the copyright of the DVDCCA or the MPAA members, nor are any of the keys sufficiently original to qualify for protection in and of themselves.
The case against DeCSS is predicated on the stupid idea of contributory infringement; that is, DeCSS is illegal even though it's an original work and deserving of copyright protection, because it _can_ be used to infringe on other copyrighted works (even though there's no proof of this being done by anyone other than the MPAA and it's agents, a point that they conceeded in court)
We still have this, though it's frequently under attack by copyright holders. Fanfiction has taken over this niche in modern society; using a plot or a setting or a cast of characters that are well known to all (eg the characters of Star Wars) totally new stories are created.
Personally, I read a lot of fanfic based on Japanese anime. While there's the standard 90% of crap, many of the fics are not only written in serial as is suggested for successful net books, but are better than their source materials. And many writers borrow from each other's interpretations of the common sources in fact. And yet, despite this thriving community, and the rather large number of good stuff it generates, it's all illegal. Where the justice is in that, I don't know. There surely must be more of a place for derivative works than there is now, I feel.
Frankly, I've got to agree with you here. As a society, we have created copyrights out of whole cloth (no Virginia, you aren't just entitled to them) to promote the further advancement of the arts and sciences.
So why should software be copyrightable if the part that permits the most significant advancement (the source) is kept under lock and key? They don't even need to supply it to users directly - just being required to deposit a copy with the Library of Congress in order to register the copyright would be enough to make me happy.
We already require this for patents; software is an amalgamation of a creative written work (copyright) and a functional device (patent) so why not require it? It's not as though it would be hard to find out who was copying the source code for non protected purposes (Fair use would of course apply)
Copyrights are not a natural right; they simply do not exist without being legislated into effect. Furthermore, if you actually examine what it means for something to be owned, what it means for something to be property, you'll find that music is not owned and cannot be property.
Additionally, we don't have to have copyrights at all; the Congress doesn't HAVE to permit them, they just have the ability to do so (within three fundemental constraints). So yeah, you could reform copyright law out of existance and legally permit the copying of valuable music without paying the creator or his agents.
I'm not against copyrights per se, but the current crop of copyrights are IMHO unconstitutional. After all, the only authority that exists in this country to copyright things derives from the constitution. BUT the same clause limits just how expansive copyright laws can be. I think we've exceeded those limits, and I'm pissed off about it. (and just in case you're wondering, I _am_ an artist. And because I know about my line of work, I know that copyrights are usually more harmful to art than useful.)
I can see that you've looked at this issue a bit. Now dig deeper and you'll see that many of the 'truths' that the RIAA et al espouse are merely their points of view. While they've had success in buying laws, that doesn't make the laws consitutional, and certainly doesn't make them just. And all unjust laws must be fought tooth and nail, don't you agree?
A movie. A documentary about DeCSS, with some percentage of profits going to the various legal defenses. And which could include a number of different copies; source, executables, a subtitle track, flashing it on the screen, all the keys in the keybook (not just Xing).
I'd buy a copy. Hell, I'd probably give 'em out as Christmas presents.
Maybe someone can get ahold of Michael Moore... it sounds like it would be up his alley.
It is 100% impossible to steal information. The oft-used phrase 'intellectual property' is an oxymoron. That which is intellectual is not and cannot be property. That's just how the world works; blame God if you like.
This isn't to say that I think that copyright laws (which govern the ACT of copying, and then only in certain circumstances, and which do not claim that theft ever occurs) are useless. But are our current laws constitutional? I think not. Are they just? Again, I think not. We do NOT have copyright laws to protect copyright holders. If you doubt this, I suggest that you pay close attention to the exact wording of the Copyright Clause of the Constitution. Rather, we have copyright laws to ensure that the greatest amount of useful material enters the public domain, which is the natural home of information. While it may accomplish this through the creation of temporary limited monopolies on the act of copying (though not of use - never of use) that is the means, and not the ways.
You complain that the people supporting the widespread dissemniation of DeCSS and the striking down of the laws that are employed to attack it are trying (perhaps unsuccessfully) to skulk like bank robbers. I disagree. What good is their law if we _all_ defy it? If not only the people who use forums like Slashdot do, but if we explain, in calm and rational language to five ordinary people what's going on? And if we ask them to pass along a copy of the source code? Laws and government exist solely on a foundation of consent by those governed by them. Should we, en masse, withdraw that support, the laws topple like a house of cards.
This was the lesson that was revealed, at the cost of much pain, during the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1960s. And let me point out that there were no end of Jim Crow laws in the South that were broken, repeatedly, by the Integrationists. It was ILLEGAL for blacks to sit at lunch counters. It was ILLEGAL for whites and blacks to marry each other. But these laws were unjust, and when this was revealed to everyone, the laws were rapidly overturned. Injustice only lasts so long as people are willing to tolerate it.
I suggest that the people here print out a few copies of the DeCSS source, and hand them out to friends, or even just people that you happen to meet. Explain that a few sheets of paper are illegal, even though all that they are are part of the set of instructions that let computers play movies. Ask them to keep the copies; if possible to further distribute them. And to realize that the laws are not around for the convenience of the movie studios, but to improve our society. Is it really improved if harmless computer programs cannot be created and dissemninated?
Personally, I plan to do just this during the coming week. Let them come after me if they like. I've done nothing wrong. Perhaps it's illegal, but that doesn't make it wrong. Who else is willing to put their money where their mouth is? DeCSS is definately on the net. Now let's get it on the streets. (And of course, a documentary movie that included the DeCSS source would be very humorous to see... especially if distributed on unencrypted DVDs. I'd _definately_ buy one.;)
As only a couple other people have pointed out, this really doesn't change much.
IANAL but...
You can't copyright the rules to a game; thus, anyone can make a game in which a user-controlled sprite runs through a maze, eliminating neutral sprites which it overlaps, and pursued by hostile sprites. Rules can be patented, but they never were, and I think that it would be too late to decide to do so twenty years after the things were released.
Additionally, you can't copyright the name - that's a trademark issue. And the trademark on some of these games is probably pretty worn out by now; who can really tell the difference between anything in the gigantic Space Invaders genre? It's a generic term now, like kleenex or xerox.
Finally, there's no legal precedent that was set; the companies settled because they didn't want to persue a lawsuit. But I think they'd've had a strong chance of winning if they had.
And that's very nice, but until we have monitors that work with subtractive color, patone isn't going to solve this problem. Pantones describe the colors of INK. While it's useful for computers to display a close approximation (it is of course, totally off the wall impossible for them to display the _precise_ match) Pantones really only need to be seperated properly. Of course, this is a gigantic pain in the ass for today's breed of lazy designers who are used to having computers that display color, so it's mostly done automatically now.
Anyone here old enough to remember pre-Mac computerized layout? I've worked on a Barco Mini-PDP - not all that much fun, but great in it's day. it was still in use as of '99;)
IANAL, but no, curiously. While you can't back up music for the sake of having a backup, you can space-shift it in order to use it with other devices (e.g. taping a CD to listen to it in a car that only has a casette player; ripping a CD to use on an mpeg player)
So while you probably can't make a backup set of CDs (although I wouldn't worry about it - one of the important things that has to be looked at is how you've harmed the copyright holder. In the case of backups, probably not at all) you can rip stuff to mpeg players... as long as you're really gonna listen to it.
Funny old world, huh?
Of course, while pirates make a lot of misleading statements, it's also well known that groups like the RIAA and MPAA make their own fair share of misleading statements. You want something more clear? Don't trust any of 'em - read the decisions of the relevant court cases.
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusiveRight to their respective Writings and Discoveries
So if Congress passed a law that says that RE is illegal, it can be overturned if it's shown that that law does not promote the progress of Science or the Useful Arts or if the RE prohibition were not for a limited time. And it would be pretty easy to show both of those things, and get such a law overturned.
So yes Virginia, there is a bit in the Constitution explicitly about copyright. How else could they ever have that power? If it wasn't in there then copyrights would be done on a state by state basis, or not at all. Haven't you ever read the Constitution?
Additionally, the 9th Circuit Federal Court has ruled that code is speech and is protected under the first amendment. It'll probably hold up if/when it gets to the Supremes. Curiously enough, Judge Kaplan had a similar insight IIRC when deciding the 2600 case. But IMHO he's biased, explaining why he still managed to find for the MPAA.
If you read the decision of the landmark Sony v Universal case, the Supremes were quite aware that people were archiving tapes as well as timeshifting. This too is protected by the Constitution. Or more accurately, it's unconstitutional to prohibit it.
Now we just need to call in the FTC to kick the asses of companies like Sony that will never sell useful equipment because they also (now) own a lot of content.
Ho ho ho, the Constitution is the solitary source of the Congress's power to pass copyright laws. And it IIRC three important limitations built into it.
Given the most similar case before (Sony v. Universal) I would expect the Supremes to continue to rule against copyright holders. It doesn't matter if it's digital or not. And even if the Congress passed a law that supported the copyright holders, it would likely be struck down as unconstitutional. Fair use was created by the judiciary straight out of the Constitution. It'd be quite a feat to see it legislated away.
Oh, I'm sure that they knew that it would happen. But they thought that they would win. And in fact, it was a very close thing for a while. I was just saying that they had _some_ justification as opposed to, for instance, Germany attacking France through Belguim. Or Germany attacking France through Belguim *again*.
Besides, when someone really wants a war, it's not hard to start one. A lot of Northerners wanted a war to force the Southerners to manumit the slaves. (which had really become a catch all for a lot of other things too, but we'll leave that alone for now) And while a fair number of Southerners were bright enough to want to avoid it, the Carolinians dragged 'em into it.
Could've been worse. There was the War of Jenkin's Ear. And there was a border skirmish between US and British forces on San Juan Island that was sparked by a pig.
That may be, but the CSA was formed in Feburary 1861, and the attack on Fort Sumter didn't happen until April. While the South Carolinians (always the craziest of the southerners - I say this as a Floridian;) may have had some fun shooting at the fort, they did basically consider it to be their property after the secession. Why would they want to leave US troops there?
1) IIRC the clean room implementation merely requires that you don't already know what you're trying to develop. So if someone talked to Symbol, read through the specs, etc. anything THEY developed would be tainted. OTOH, if they carefully made a spec which a third person tried to match, it would be okay.
Well, the people who got the scanner to work AFAIK did so from scratch. They kept peeking and poking at it and eventually got it to work (guided by a basic knowledge of barcode scanners in general)
So I think that this qualifies as a legal RE. After all, they're not REing the hardware; just the protocol.
2) It's trademarks that have to be defended. Copyrights and patents can be undefended and their ownership is NEVER in doubt. Witness the big hoopla over Unisys coming out of nowhere in regards to GIF; they let it alone for years, but that doesn't harm their case.
IANAL, but legally anyone can make identical, competing products - not based on their specs per se, but based on REs of their specs. Where do you think your BIOS came from? IBM?
You bet! Barcodes were designed to do this, because you couldn't guarantee that a checkout clerk at a grocery store (the original intended audience for the things) was going to accurately position a can of beans every time. The original answer was a bullseye shaped code. Quickly, someone (DEC?) managed to get rectangular codes working with a sizable margin for error, and that's what caught on. A few places, eg UPS use newer codes that employ a grid of pixels; theirs even has a bullseye in the middle.
Grocery stores have fairly reliable units actually, employing a collection of mirrors and a rapidly spinning prism.
But barcodes just care about being swept over the code; they can't tell what orientation they're in. And most barcodes have checksums arranged so that if you read them in backwards it's no trouble at all to reverse them.
I suspect that the five years of development dealt with the server that these things try to access by default, and the silly looking plastic case. Barcodes are not a difficult technology.
And of course, back when the Apple II was Apple's bread and butter (well until '86 at least) MS threatened to pull their BASIC that Apple had licensed unless they gave something up... possibly the original Windows 1.0 UI agreement, though I don't recall offhand.
What amazes me is that Apple would keep letting MS do this so often.
Oh come now. While I too was initially worried at the even more simplified character designs in Batman they actually work _really_ well. Except for the Riddler, but he's a pain to write. Plot-wise they're as good as ever. Need I remind you of "Over the Edge?"
Reboot OTOH didn't appeal to me at all, until I saw the last few episodes of the 2nd season. That, and the third season are really quite good. No, it's not American (lord knows that ABC kept screwing it up) but I don't think that the quality is in doubt.
However, while I'm a huge anime fan, I really can't stand DBZ. It's awful. Too bad that Fox screwed up Escaflowne (at least from what I've heard)
Actually, having attended a lecture he gave where he answered this very question, let me make a correction:
What he _really_ intended was that users would have a chording keyboard, a regular keyboard and a mouse, in roughly that order. So when you need to type a lot, your hands are in front of you, and you're typing on the regular board. Should you need to mouse, you move one hand onto the mouse, and the OTHER hand onto the chording keyboard. after all, you might need to do a little typing (which is impractical on a regular keyboard with one hand) or hold down meta keys or something.
I suspect that he probably likes keyboards with pointing devices built into them (like erasers) or with convenient trackballs/trackpads just beneath the space key.
IANAL but IIRC obviousness is a perfectly acceptable reason to refuse a patent. Only novel things are supposed to deserve patents. That's why they go through the trouble of getting patent examiners who know something about their fields. Sadly, they've been a little late in getting lots of programmers into the USPTO - thus the glut of stupid crap.
I don't think that it's necessarily a good idea to be upset just because someone's hypocritical. I would advocate instead, that you also take into consideration _what they do_.
The FSF is attempting to create an environment which is like what they believe would happen if software were uncopyrightable. Their idea is AFAIK that if there were no copyrights for software there would be no incentive to close source. Partially because customers would like the source code very much, partially because it's easier to improve and repair software if the source is open, and mostly because the binaries could be copied anyway.
This wouldn't really work if they simply placed their software in the public domain, or had a BSD-style license. Then there would be no constant renewal of OSS. The GPL provides for the constant addition to the pool of OSS, which is both a blessing and for some (like you) a curse.
So while they may be hypocritical in that they're doing something that if their dreams came to pass would be utterly irrelevant, it does have a noble goal. If their beliefs and actions were consistant with each other, it might make them look better, but it wouldn't actually help sustain the OSS community.
Of course, I don't think that they're saying that they have no right to license software. Rather, they'd prefer that the rules were such that there was no need or possibility for anyone to do so. But if it is permissable, the GPL is a lot better than most.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe no one seems to have done this before, but on the Openlaw list someone finally looked up the origins of 'piracy' in the OED. Evidently it's been used in the same sense as it is today since the 1700's.
So go figure - copying stuff was called piracy by people who lived in an age with the 'arr matey' sorts of pirates too.
You mean 'interpolatrix'
The Apple, MS and Logitech optical mice are ALL using the same technology developed by HP (which may have wound up in the Aligent spin off, who knows)
He's talking about optical mice that had to use special mousepads with a grid of lines. The new crop of optical mice can be used on nearly any surface. I don't think there are any new ones, but there are lots of used computer parts floating around. I saw a box full of the pads a week ago here in Seattle. Try local used computer stores.
There already are programs that do this, but DeCSS does not infringe on the copyright of the DVDCCA or the MPAA members, nor are any of the keys sufficiently original to qualify for protection in and of themselves.
The case against DeCSS is predicated on the stupid idea of contributory infringement; that is, DeCSS is illegal even though it's an original work and deserving of copyright protection, because it _can_ be used to infringe on other copyrighted works (even though there's no proof of this being done by anyone other than the MPAA and it's agents, a point that they conceeded in court)
We still have this, though it's frequently under attack by copyright holders. Fanfiction has taken over this niche in modern society; using a plot or a setting or a cast of characters that are well known to all (eg the characters of Star Wars) totally new stories are created.
Personally, I read a lot of fanfic based on Japanese anime. While there's the standard 90% of crap, many of the fics are not only written in serial as is suggested for successful net books, but are better than their source materials. And many writers borrow from each other's interpretations of the common sources in fact. And yet, despite this thriving community, and the rather large number of good stuff it generates, it's all illegal. Where the justice is in that, I don't know. There surely must be more of a place for derivative works than there is now, I feel.
Frankly, I've got to agree with you here. As a society, we have created copyrights out of whole cloth (no Virginia, you aren't just entitled to them) to promote the further advancement of the arts and sciences.
So why should software be copyrightable if the part that permits the most significant advancement (the source) is kept under lock and key? They don't even need to supply it to users directly - just being required to deposit a copy with the Library of Congress in order to register the copyright would be enough to make me happy.
We already require this for patents; software is an amalgamation of a creative written work (copyright) and a functional device (patent) so why not require it? It's not as though it would be hard to find out who was copying the source code for non protected purposes (Fair use would of course apply)
Copyrights are not a natural right; they simply do not exist without being legislated into effect. Furthermore, if you actually examine what it means for something to be owned, what it means for something to be property, you'll find that music is not owned and cannot be property.
Additionally, we don't have to have copyrights at all; the Congress doesn't HAVE to permit them, they just have the ability to do so (within three fundemental constraints). So yeah, you could reform copyright law out of existance and legally permit the copying of valuable music without paying the creator or his agents.
I'm not against copyrights per se, but the current crop of copyrights are IMHO unconstitutional. After all, the only authority that exists in this country to copyright things derives from the constitution. BUT the same clause limits just how expansive copyright laws can be. I think we've exceeded those limits, and I'm pissed off about it. (and just in case you're wondering, I _am_ an artist. And because I know about my line of work, I know that copyrights are usually more harmful to art than useful.)
I can see that you've looked at this issue a bit. Now dig deeper and you'll see that many of the 'truths' that the RIAA et al espouse are merely their points of view. While they've had success in buying laws, that doesn't make the laws consitutional, and certainly doesn't make them just. And all unjust laws must be fought tooth and nail, don't you agree?
Oh, that's easy.
A movie. A documentary about DeCSS, with some percentage of profits going to the various legal defenses. And which could include a number of different copies; source, executables, a subtitle track, flashing it on the screen, all the keys in the keybook (not just Xing).
I'd buy a copy. Hell, I'd probably give 'em out as Christmas presents.
Maybe someone can get ahold of Michael Moore... it sounds like it would be up his alley.
It is 100% impossible to steal information. The oft-used phrase 'intellectual property' is an oxymoron. That which is intellectual is not and cannot be property. That's just how the world works; blame God if you like.
;)
This isn't to say that I think that copyright laws (which govern the ACT of copying, and then only in certain circumstances, and which do not claim that theft ever occurs) are useless. But are our current laws constitutional? I think not. Are they just? Again, I think not. We do NOT have copyright laws to protect copyright holders. If you doubt this, I suggest that you pay close attention to the exact wording of the Copyright Clause of the Constitution. Rather, we have copyright laws to ensure that the greatest amount of useful material enters the public domain, which is the natural home of information. While it may accomplish this through the creation of temporary limited monopolies on the act of copying (though not of use - never of use) that is the means, and not the ways.
You complain that the people supporting the widespread dissemniation of DeCSS and the striking down of the laws that are employed to attack it are trying (perhaps unsuccessfully) to skulk like bank robbers. I disagree. What good is their law if we _all_ defy it? If not only the people who use forums like Slashdot do, but if we explain, in calm and rational language to five ordinary people what's going on? And if we ask them to pass along a copy of the source code? Laws and government exist solely on a foundation of consent by those governed by them. Should we, en masse, withdraw that support, the laws topple like a house of cards.
This was the lesson that was revealed, at the cost of much pain, during the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1960s. And let me point out that there were no end of Jim Crow laws in the South that were broken, repeatedly, by the Integrationists. It was ILLEGAL for blacks to sit at lunch counters. It was ILLEGAL for whites and blacks to marry each other. But these laws were unjust, and when this was revealed to everyone, the laws were rapidly overturned. Injustice only lasts so long as people are willing to tolerate it.
I suggest that the people here print out a few copies of the DeCSS source, and hand them out to friends, or even just people that you happen to meet. Explain that a few sheets of paper are illegal, even though all that they are are part of the set of instructions that let computers play movies. Ask them to keep the copies; if possible to further distribute them. And to realize that the laws are not around for the convenience of the movie studios, but to improve our society. Is it really improved if harmless computer programs cannot be created and dissemninated?
Personally, I plan to do just this during the coming week. Let them come after me if they like. I've done nothing wrong. Perhaps it's illegal, but that doesn't make it wrong. Who else is willing to put their money where their mouth is? DeCSS is definately on the net. Now let's get it on the streets. (And of course, a documentary movie that included the DeCSS source would be very humorous to see... especially if distributed on unencrypted DVDs. I'd _definately_ buy one.
As only a couple other people have pointed out, this really doesn't change much.
IANAL but...
You can't copyright the rules to a game; thus, anyone can make a game in which a user-controlled sprite runs through a maze, eliminating neutral sprites which it overlaps, and pursued by hostile sprites. Rules can be patented, but they never were, and I think that it would be too late to decide to do so twenty years after the things were released.
Additionally, you can't copyright the name - that's a trademark issue. And the trademark on some of these games is probably pretty worn out by now; who can really tell the difference between anything in the gigantic Space Invaders genre? It's a generic term now, like kleenex or xerox.
Finally, there's no legal precedent that was set; the companies settled because they didn't want to persue a lawsuit. But I think they'd've had a strong chance of winning if they had.
And that's very nice, but until we have monitors that work with subtractive color, patone isn't going to solve this problem. Pantones describe the colors of INK. While it's useful for computers to display a close approximation (it is of course, totally off the wall impossible for them to display the _precise_ match) Pantones really only need to be seperated properly. Of course, this is a gigantic pain in the ass for today's breed of lazy designers who are used to having computers that display color, so it's mostly done automatically now.
Anyone here old enough to remember pre-Mac computerized layout? I've worked on a Barco Mini-PDP - not all that much fun, but great in it's day. it was still in use as of '99;)
IANAL, but no, curiously. While you can't back up music for the sake of having a backup, you can space-shift it in order to use it with other devices (e.g. taping a CD to listen to it in a car that only has a casette player; ripping a CD to use on an mpeg player)
So while you probably can't make a backup set of CDs (although I wouldn't worry about it - one of the important things that has to be looked at is how you've harmed the copyright holder. In the case of backups, probably not at all) you can rip stuff to mpeg players... as long as you're really gonna listen to it.
Funny old world, huh?
Of course, while pirates make a lot of misleading statements, it's also well known that groups like the RIAA and MPAA make their own fair share of misleading statements. You want something more clear? Don't trust any of 'em - read the decisions of the relevant court cases.
Constitution of the United States of America
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusiveRight to their respective Writings and Discoveries
So if Congress passed a law that says that RE is illegal, it can be overturned if it's shown that that law does not promote the progress of Science or the Useful Arts or if the RE prohibition were not for a limited time. And it would be pretty easy to show both of those things, and get such a law overturned.
So yes Virginia, there is a bit in the Constitution explicitly about copyright. How else could they ever have that power? If it wasn't in there then copyrights would be done on a state by state basis, or not at all. Haven't you ever read the Constitution?
Additionally, the 9th Circuit Federal Court has ruled that code is speech and is protected under the first amendment. It'll probably hold up if/when it gets to the Supremes. Curiously enough, Judge Kaplan had a similar insight IIRC when deciding the 2600 case. But IMHO he's biased, explaining why he still managed to find for the MPAA.
If you read the decision of the landmark Sony v Universal case, the Supremes were quite aware that people were archiving tapes as well as timeshifting. This too is protected by the Constitution. Or more accurately, it's unconstitutional to prohibit it.
Now we just need to call in the FTC to kick the asses of companies like Sony that will never sell useful equipment because they also (now) own a lot of content.
Ho ho ho, the Constitution is the solitary source of the Congress's power to pass copyright laws. And it IIRC three important limitations built into it.
Given the most similar case before (Sony v. Universal) I would expect the Supremes to continue to rule against copyright holders. It doesn't matter if it's digital or not. And even if the Congress passed a law that supported the copyright holders, it would likely be struck down as unconstitutional. Fair use was created by the judiciary straight out of the Constitution. It'd be quite a feat to see it legislated away.
Oh, I'm sure that they knew that it would happen. But they thought that they would win. And in fact, it was a very close thing for a while. I was just saying that they had _some_ justification as opposed to, for instance, Germany attacking France through Belguim. Or Germany attacking France through Belguim *again*.
Besides, when someone really wants a war, it's not hard to start one. A lot of Northerners wanted a war to force the Southerners to manumit the slaves. (which had really become a catch all for a lot of other things too, but we'll leave that alone for now) And while a fair number of Southerners were bright enough to want to avoid it, the Carolinians dragged 'em into it.
Could've been worse. There was the War of Jenkin's Ear. And there was a border skirmish between US and British forces on San Juan Island that was sparked by a pig.
That may be, but the CSA was formed in Feburary 1861, and the attack on Fort Sumter didn't happen until April. While the South Carolinians (always the craziest of the southerners - I say this as a Floridian ;) may have had some fun shooting at the fort, they did basically consider it to be their property after the secession. Why would they want to leave US troops there?
1) IIRC the clean room implementation merely requires that you don't already know what you're trying to develop. So if someone talked to Symbol, read through the specs, etc. anything THEY developed would be tainted. OTOH, if they carefully made a spec which a third person tried to match, it would be okay.
Well, the people who got the scanner to work AFAIK did so from scratch. They kept peeking and poking at it and eventually got it to work (guided by a basic knowledge of barcode scanners in general)
So I think that this qualifies as a legal RE. After all, they're not REing the hardware; just the protocol.
2) It's trademarks that have to be defended. Copyrights and patents can be undefended and their ownership is NEVER in doubt. Witness the big hoopla over Unisys coming out of nowhere in regards to GIF; they let it alone for years, but that doesn't harm their case.
IANAL, but legally anyone can make identical, competing products - not based on their specs per se, but based on REs of their specs. Where do you think your BIOS came from? IBM?
You bet! Barcodes were designed to do this, because you couldn't guarantee that a checkout clerk at a grocery store (the original intended audience for the things) was going to accurately position a can of beans every time. The original answer was a bullseye shaped code. Quickly, someone (DEC?) managed to get rectangular codes working with a sizable margin for error, and that's what caught on. A few places, eg UPS use newer codes that employ a grid of pixels; theirs even has a bullseye in the middle.
Grocery stores have fairly reliable units actually, employing a collection of mirrors and a rapidly spinning prism.
But barcodes just care about being swept over the code; they can't tell what orientation they're in. And most barcodes have checksums arranged so that if you read them in backwards it's no trouble at all to reverse them.
I suspect that the five years of development dealt with the server that these things try to access by default, and the silly looking plastic case. Barcodes are not a difficult technology.
And of course, back when the Apple II was Apple's bread and butter (well until '86 at least) MS threatened to pull their BASIC that Apple had licensed unless they gave something up... possibly the original Windows 1.0 UI agreement, though I don't recall offhand.
What amazes me is that Apple would keep letting MS do this so often.
Oh come now. While I too was initially worried at the even more simplified character designs in Batman they actually work _really_ well. Except for the Riddler, but he's a pain to write. Plot-wise they're as good as ever. Need I remind you of "Over the Edge?"
Reboot OTOH didn't appeal to me at all, until I saw the last few episodes of the 2nd season. That, and the third season are really quite good. No, it's not American (lord knows that ABC kept screwing it up) but I don't think that the quality is in doubt.
However, while I'm a huge anime fan, I really can't stand DBZ. It's awful. Too bad that Fox screwed up Escaflowne (at least from what I've heard)
Actually, having attended a lecture he gave where he answered this very question, let me make a correction:
What he _really_ intended was that users would have a chording keyboard, a regular keyboard and a mouse, in roughly that order. So when you need to type a lot, your hands are in front of you, and you're typing on the regular board. Should you need to mouse, you move one hand onto the mouse, and the OTHER hand onto the chording keyboard. after all, you might need to do a little typing (which is impractical on a regular keyboard with one hand) or hold down meta keys or something.
I suspect that he probably likes keyboards with pointing devices built into them (like erasers) or with convenient trackballs/trackpads just beneath the space key.
IANAL but IIRC obviousness is a perfectly acceptable reason to refuse a patent. Only novel things are supposed to deserve patents. That's why they go through the trouble of getting patent examiners who know something about their fields. Sadly, they've been a little late in getting lots of programmers into the USPTO - thus the glut of stupid crap.
a TPS-9900 at 3MHz.
I don't think that it's necessarily a good idea to be upset just because someone's hypocritical. I would advocate instead, that you also take into consideration _what they do_.
The FSF is attempting to create an environment which is like what they believe would happen if software were uncopyrightable. Their idea is AFAIK that if there were no copyrights for software there would be no incentive to close source. Partially because customers would like the source code very much, partially because it's easier to improve and repair software if the source is open, and mostly because the binaries could be copied anyway.
This wouldn't really work if they simply placed their software in the public domain, or had a BSD-style license. Then there would be no constant renewal of OSS. The GPL provides for the constant addition to the pool of OSS, which is both a blessing and for some (like you) a curse.
So while they may be hypocritical in that they're doing something that if their dreams came to pass would be utterly irrelevant, it does have a noble goal. If their beliefs and actions were consistant with each other, it might make them look better, but it wouldn't actually help sustain the OSS community.
Of course, I don't think that they're saying that they have no right to license software. Rather, they'd prefer that the rules were such that there was no need or possibility for anyone to do so. But if it is permissable, the GPL is a lot better than most.