That's precisely what it is - "stealing" cable access by offering it to people other than the account holder. It's rather like college students in dorms or off-campus housing quietly setting up home networks off one cable line, instead of doing the honest thing and letting the ISP know what they're up to.
There are plenty of ISPs offering dedicated access that can be resold. AAMOF, I don't know of a local ISP (.cleveland.oh.us) that doesn't offer such an account, and at a reasonable price. I honestly don't know how prevalent that is elsewhere, but the point is that you don't either.
Before accusing the other guy of stealing, maybe you should check your facts.
Having said that, they still got some home users worried about Code Red...
Maybe not such a bad idea though.
Based on what I heard from reliable sources, it seems that it's possible to install and run Microsoft's IIS without even knowing it. Too many applications go ahead and start it up for you without (much) notice.
If Linux distros shipped with a thousand Apache modules installed and configured, you'd probably have much of the same problems.
That's true, but the thing is, that's not the way Linux distro vendors normally operate. Because that's not the way Linux is normally used.
What we're seeing is the effect of Microsoft's long-standing policy of "don't worry, be happy." applied to installation and administration. Making the admin turn on needed services, manually, one at a time, is contrary to DWBH.
Linux was never meant to be a DWBH system. Once in a while we get a distro that tries to be DWBH (wasn't it RH6?)--but when that happens everyone ridicules it and knowledgeable admins stay away.
This is wonderful advice, so long as your morality system can be summed up as "don't get sued".
Why yes, part of my morality system is "don't get sued." It comes from the part that says "don't bounce your checks" and "don't get your house foreclosed on."
Ask your lawyer the same question about an injured person lying in the street. If you do nothing, they can't sue you right? but if try to help them, you might actually injure them and they'll sue you. Does this mean the RIGHT action is to do nothing? No. It means the legal system is fucked.
Actually, I really and truly did ask my lawyer something similar to that, in a systems support sense.
His reply amounted to this, which is blah blah not legal advice don't listen to me disclaimer yadda yadda. There are circumstances where you have a duty to say or do something. Those cases are usually pretty obvious, such as when your client, to whom you have a duty because you're their rented admin, is about to lose important data. Or when you find a stranger lying in the street. Or when you find a lost child and nobody else is around to help. Etc., etc.
In those cases you may be liable if you don't react in a responsible way.
Observing a Code Red infestation isn't one of those cases. If you just put up your shields you've done enough. If you choose to send a short, polite email to affected sites, that is probably a good thing. A phone call might be even better.
But that's another angle, similar to how self-defense is applied. If you can defend your network adequately by proper configuration and perhaps notifying or firewalling away the attacking sites, then your claim to "self-defense" (which is really not called self-defense in a legal context, more like "abatement of a nuisance" or "mitigating losses") becomes much, much weaker.
Yet again, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, don't listen to me if this is important to you, this is all just for discussion. But long story short, the stranger lying injured in the street creates a duty on your part in many circumstances. Stranger with Code Red infestation probably does not create a duty, only a liability risk if you take it upon yourself to "fix" it.
I'm sure folks will scream its illegal and it probably is - but can't a case be made for 'self defense' I mean if someone brandishes a gun at me am I not within my rights to shoot them or at least take their gun away?...
Why not apply the same logic to this, they are probing me to infect my server so why can't I probe back and disarm them?
I didn't ask my lawyer about this, because I know exactly what he would say. "catfood," he'd say, "what happens if you don't send the white-hat virus to those hosts that are probing you?" And I'd say that basically nothing bad will happen to me; I'd just get a couple hundred hosts a day knocking on my door and not getting in. And then my lawyer would say, "and what might happen if you do send the white-hat virus out?" At which point I'd say well, I guess it's remotely possible that I might break something, and the other host's manager might notice it...
And then my lawyer would say, "Don't be an idiot. You'd be exposing yourself for no benefit to yourself, right?"
Then I'd say okay, you're right, and my lawyer would send me a bill for $300.00.
I save a lot of money by asking myself, "what would Tim the Lawyer say?"
Did the rapture happen when I wasn't looking, and God took the people responsible for these computers, those left behind couldn't find the passwords anywhere? How is this possible?
How many out-of-work sysadmins do you know?
It seems that thousands of US corporations have been persuaded that paying a knowledgeable person to run the server farm is a luxury. Haven't you seen the recent Microsoft TV ads? The computers just admin themselves now! Woo hoo!
I guess not. Now there is NO JVM bundled with the OS and it's again foul play? What do you want then? bundling/integration or unbundling/not integration?
Java is not their tech. They can include whatever they please with their OS. Last time I checked, Sun isn't shipping their Solaris product with IE either.
This gets modded as "insightful"?
That's not insight. It's sophistry, and badly done at that.
If you deny that the GPL is enforcable, then you deny that every other software license based on copyright law is enforcable. Somehow I doubt that is going to happen.
Here's where it could go wrong. I am not a lawyer and I have only a decent layperson's understanding of intellectual property law. However.
I think a court could say that the obvious purpose of software licensing is to ensure the future revenue stream of the licensor. Given the observed tendency of US courts lately to consider profit something akin to a civil right, I wonder whether the court might rule that licensing terms that don't directly, monetarily benefit the copyright holder are not... um... "protected" isn't quite the word I'm after, but I think you see the point.
IOW, I'm a little concerned that a judge might rule the must-share provisions are invalid because they go against the purpose of copyright law and software licensing. (Which was RMS's point but you and I agree that this is a good thing.)
In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if a judge went a little further in ruling that "must-share" is an unreasonable restriction on the ability of the licensee to generate profits.
It's a little more likely, IMO, that a court would rule that it's not possible to have standing in an action to enforce the "must-share" clauses, because "must-share" only benefits parties who are not part of the license agreement. GPL is a little like saying "take my widget for free, but you have to do help an old lady across the street tomorrow." I may not be able to prove that I was financially damaged by the widget-user's failure to help the old lady. And the old lady wouldn't be able to recover damages either, because she wasn't a party to our agreement.
./ers have observed over the past couple of years just how much of US legislation and jurisprudence has gone over to a "must-profit" principle. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a huge stretch to imagine that "must-share" could lose in court against "must-profit".
What exactly do you mean by "more than generous enough" when talking about (say) someone's copyrights to their music or writing ? Is there some greater public function served by forcing someone to relinquish their copyrights to a song or artwork ? Does society NEED free unfettered 3rd party distribution of the latest Metallica CD (or the 3-year old Metallica CD) that badly ?
The Constitution justifies copyrights and patents only because they "promote progress." It does not recognize intellectual property as a good thing in itself.
On Constitutional grounds, you're asking the wrong question. You should be asking whether there is some greater public function being served by granting a longer term of copyright than a few years. If the answer is no, then only the shorter term of copyright is Constitutionally justified.
Remember, intellectual property is not a fundamental right like free speech or trial by jury, which exist in law because we feel we're morally entitled to them. It's a manufactured right, created because the Framers felt that granting "limited monopolies" would be useful to society. When the cost to society of IP laws exceeds their benefit, they should be changed.
Copyright law's purpose is the protection of the content owner's wishes.
Incorrect.
Copyright law's purpose is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
If the law isn't promoting progress, Congress has exceeded its purpose and the law is arguably unconstitutional.
Re:civil action via hostage-taking?
on
Adobe Backs Down
·
· Score: 1
Actually, it seems that ElcomSoft backed down even before Dmitry set foot on US soil! IIRC, Adobe send the US distributor for Elcomsoft's stuff a cease and desist letter, they ceased and desisted with the online selling of the software in the US, a while later(!) Dmitry goes to DefCon and gets arrested.
I stand corrected then.
So Adobe drops their, ah, request to prosecute Dmitry... based in part on their satisfaction that the software won't be sold in.us. Which was a done deal before Dmitry showed.
Okay, now I'm really confused. Just what the hell did they want?
I know the answer to that.
Re:civil action via hostage-taking?
on
Adobe Backs Down
·
· Score: 1
So let me get this straight--Adobe worked their connections to get a competing company's employee arrested, and now will pretend to back off now that the competitor has taken their product off the market? This is scary, and the EFF should be ashamed letting themselves be used as a figleaf this way. Sklyarov won't be released anytime soon, and this whole episode basically amounted to a hostage-taking.
Exactly.
Elcom backed down (probably rightly, because Dmitry doesn't deserve to rot in jail for his employer's actions). Adobe got everything they wanted.
Looks like EFF figured out where the parade was going and ran out in front to "lead" it.
The scripting issue is, I suspect, where it really wins. If a user
can start something with 'saferun some_app' instead of just 'some_app', it's much less of a hassle, and it's that much more likely
that a user won't do something stupid.
saferun doesn't quite solve all problems though.
The malicious code could do something even more clever, like not dropping or revealing its payload unless it can figure out that the current user has some realistic-looking number of files in its home directory. For example.
The saferun idea is useful but not totally foolproof.
I think Adobe is just making a stink here, but there will be no real consequences for the nice Russian man. The have to prove malicious intent and since his software can only be used with purchased versions of PDF for making backup files, I don't think he's done anything illegal. Of course most people on a jury won't understand any of this, so I guess he has a chance of doing some time.
Even if he's acquitted, the process itself is more than enough to punish Mr. Skylarov and deter others.
Microsoft has power because people have delegated it to them. You may not have, and thats fine. But the majority of us have....
MS has power, not because they have stolen it, or crushed it from Netscape, or stolen it from you. They have power because myself, and millions of others, have choosen to give it to them. We have made the decision, just as you have made yours.
Federal antitrust law and the ruling of an appeals court both say you're wrong.
The trolls and MS fans keep writing and talking as though antitrust law were wishful thinking on the part of the U.S. Justice Department and people who hate Microsoft. It's not. It's real legislation with specific definitions and penalties.
Whine all you want. Microsoft has been found to have a monopoly and been found guilty of abusing that monpoly.
If the company was smart, they would say "show me the warrant". Then when the cops show up with the warrant, let just the cops in, 'cause the BSA won't be listed on the warrant, only the cops.
The BSA does come with warrants, and with US Marshals to enforce the warrants.
I seem to recall (but am not sure) that the BSA's investigators have some kind of legal arrangement that lets them join in the search. Something like a discovery motion, I think.
But in any case, no, you're really not free to say no to a BSA-inspired in-person audit.
> but I'm not aware of anyone saying that "closed source is evil; no one should be allowed to keep closed-source software".
RMS says so.
But that's not a majority view even among Open Source or Free Software proponents, and it's certainly not "on the table" in the discussion we're meta-discussing.
Let's say, for example, that I write 80% of the code, from scratch, for a nifty, complex image compression library. Now let's further say
that I make (what potentially could be) the mistake of GPLing it. Other people contribute the remaining 20%, some bugfixes, some enhancements, and so forth. The project really picks up (success!),
only now Microsoft wants to try and push this compression as a new defacto format for the web (theoretically a win for everyone). To do
so, they would want to buy a non-exclusive license to use that code in their commercial webbrowser. Only, I can't necessarily do that. Some of those people who contributed the other 20% of the code may have disappeared. Legally, I can't even license the code to them and then donate the money to blatantly pro-OSS organizations (such as the FSF
and SourceForge)
Which is why your best strategy would be to ask your contributors to assign their copyrights to you as they make changes.
If they choose not to do so, that's their option. But it's also your option to refuse their contributions.
You're complaining about an artifact of copyright law, not the GPL itself.
I have Windows. I can't reverse engineer it, make derivate works, or hack new functionality into it under any circumstances without violating my license.
I also have Linux. I can do all of those things. Under the condition that I have to share my source code if and only if it's "contaminated" and I want to distribute the results.
So on one side I have "can't do it at all." On the other side I have "can do it with conditions."
Someone please explain to me why the latter is so much worse?
I found that the realtors are incredibliy hostile and will do their best to steer people away from a "for sale by owner" house. The realtors realize that their 7% commision is in great danger if buyers and sellers can find each other.
Yes. I've found them to be rude, hostile, and insulting. God forbid you should just buy a "FSBO" sign in a hardware store. The Realtors[tm] act like you're imposing on them by buying and selling your own property.
I would not be surprised if Realtors were actively trying to shut down home listing sites.
And I would join you in your lack of surprise.
The Realtors[tm] add virtually no value to the process. The only competitive advantage they have is in keeping the MLS read-only to everybody but themselves. And without being on the MLS, my experience is that no Realtor[tm] will even consider looking at the house.
Yet all they've done here is use a device to percieve the radiation emitted from a surface, very little different from taking a picture of it, or looking at it.
Technical differences are not legal differences, and vice versa.
Much bewilderment arises when hackers expect law and public policy to work deterministically, or similarly to physics.
SCOTUS is interpreting the 4th Amendment to mean (among many other things) that it's not a "search" if the cops are looking at something that any normal civilian neighbor could and would also easily be looking at. Your neighbor might ordinarily look at take a picture of your outside wall for an innocuous reason, so it's not a "search" for a cop to do the same. But it would be extraordinary for your neighbor to run a thermal image of your house, so for a cop to do one would constitute a "search."
The above paragraph is repetitive, because there have been three or four very similar explanations in this discussion. Sorry. It just seems to be not getting through to some.
The court's reasoning is not illogical. It's just that lawyers and legislators care about circumstances, motivations, and expectations in a way that engineers and hackers don't. It's one of those right-tool-for-the-job things.
These days the astro turfers outnumber the open source advocates.
And the number of posts pushing mindless pro-Linux advocacy are far outnumbered by the posts complaining about how/. is dominated by mindless pro-Linux advocacy posts.
Things like company picnics, baseball teams, and retreats and seminars are looked forward to by all [Japanese] employees. That's right. Their concept of yamato means that they put the company before themselves, and then the company takes care of them. Maybe we could learn a thing or two.
Mabye so. But companies should try showing some yamato first, as a sign of good faith.
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There are plenty of ISPs offering dedicated access that can be resold. AAMOF, I don't know of a local ISP (.cleveland.oh.us) that doesn't offer such an account, and at a reasonable price. I honestly don't know how prevalent that is elsewhere, but the point is that you don't either.
Before accusing the other guy of stealing, maybe you should check your facts.
Maybe not such a bad idea though.
Based on what I heard from reliable sources, it seems that it's possible to install and run Microsoft's IIS without even knowing it. Too many applications go ahead and start it up for you without (much) notice.
That's true, but the thing is, that's not the way Linux distro vendors normally operate. Because that's not the way Linux is normally used.
What we're seeing is the effect of Microsoft's long-standing policy of "don't worry, be happy." applied to installation and administration. Making the admin turn on needed services, manually, one at a time, is contrary to DWBH.
Linux was never meant to be a DWBH system. Once in a while we get a distro that tries to be DWBH (wasn't it RH6?)--but when that happens everyone ridicules it and knowledgeable admins stay away.
Why yes, part of my morality system is "don't get sued." It comes from the part that says "don't bounce your checks" and "don't get your house foreclosed on."
Actually, I really and truly did ask my lawyer something similar to that, in a systems support sense.
His reply amounted to this, which is blah blah not legal advice don't listen to me disclaimer yadda yadda. There are circumstances where you have a duty to say or do something. Those cases are usually pretty obvious, such as when your client, to whom you have a duty because you're their rented admin, is about to lose important data. Or when you find a stranger lying in the street. Or when you find a lost child and nobody else is around to help. Etc., etc.
In those cases you may be liable if you don't react in a responsible way.
Observing a Code Red infestation isn't one of those cases. If you just put up your shields you've done enough. If you choose to send a short, polite email to affected sites, that is probably a good thing. A phone call might be even better.
But that's another angle, similar to how self-defense is applied. If you can defend your network adequately by proper configuration and perhaps notifying or firewalling away the attacking sites, then your claim to "self-defense" (which is really not called self-defense in a legal context, more like "abatement of a nuisance" or "mitigating losses") becomes much, much weaker.
Yet again, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, don't listen to me if this is important to you, this is all just for discussion. But long story short, the stranger lying injured in the street creates a duty on your part in many circumstances. Stranger with Code Red infestation probably does not create a duty, only a liability risk if you take it upon yourself to "fix" it.
I didn't ask my lawyer about this, because I know exactly what he would say. "catfood," he'd say, "what happens if you don't send the white-hat virus to those hosts that are probing you?" And I'd say that basically nothing bad will happen to me; I'd just get a couple hundred hosts a day knocking on my door and not getting in. And then my lawyer would say, "and what might happen if you do send the white-hat virus out?" At which point I'd say well, I guess it's remotely possible that I might break something, and the other host's manager might notice it...
And then my lawyer would say, "Don't be an idiot. You'd be exposing yourself for no benefit to yourself, right?"
Then I'd say okay, you're right, and my lawyer would send me a bill for $300.00.
I save a lot of money by asking myself, "what would Tim the Lawyer say?"
Hey, is ntfs a circumvention device?
Okay, but are you really positive it won't look like one to a prosecutor?
Who modded this "insightful"?
It doesn't take a lot of insight to realize that Skylarov's passport is being held by the court. Leaving the country now would be a hell of a trick.
How many out-of-work sysadmins do you know?
It seems that thousands of US corporations have been persuaded that paying a knowledgeable person to run the server farm is a luxury. Haven't you seen the recent Microsoft TV ads? The computers just admin themselves now! Woo hoo!
This gets modded as "insightful"?
That's not insight. It's sophistry, and badly done at that.
Here's where it could go wrong. I am not a lawyer and I have only a decent layperson's understanding of intellectual property law. However.
I think a court could say that the obvious purpose of software licensing is to ensure the future revenue stream of the licensor. Given the observed tendency of US courts lately to consider profit something akin to a civil right, I wonder whether the court might rule that licensing terms that don't directly, monetarily benefit the copyright holder are not... um... "protected" isn't quite the word I'm after, but I think you see the point.
IOW, I'm a little concerned that a judge might rule the must-share provisions are invalid because they go against the purpose of copyright law and software licensing. (Which was RMS's point but you and I agree that this is a good thing.)
In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if a judge went a little further in ruling that "must-share" is an unreasonable restriction on the ability of the licensee to generate profits.
It's a little more likely, IMO, that a court would rule that it's not possible to have standing in an action to enforce the "must-share" clauses, because "must-share" only benefits parties who are not part of the license agreement. GPL is a little like saying "take my widget for free, but you have to do help an old lady across the street tomorrow." I may not be able to prove that I was financially damaged by the widget-user's failure to help the old lady. And the old lady wouldn't be able to recover damages either, because she wasn't a party to our agreement.
The Constitution justifies copyrights and patents only because they "promote progress." It does not recognize intellectual property as a good thing in itself.
On Constitutional grounds, you're asking the wrong question. You should be asking whether there is some greater public function being served by granting a longer term of copyright than a few years. If the answer is no, then only the shorter term of copyright is Constitutionally justified.
Remember, intellectual property is not a fundamental right like free speech or trial by jury, which exist in law because we feel we're morally entitled to them. It's a manufactured right, created because the Framers felt that granting "limited monopolies" would be useful to society. When the cost to society of IP laws exceeds their benefit, they should be changed.
Incorrect.
Copyright law's purpose is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
If the law isn't promoting progress, Congress has exceeded its purpose and the law is arguably unconstitutional.
I stand corrected then.
So Adobe drops their, ah, request to prosecute Dmitry... based in part on their satisfaction that the software won't be sold in .us. Which was a done deal before Dmitry showed.
Okay, now I'm really confused. Just what the hell did they want?
I know the answer to that.
Exactly.
Elcom backed down (probably rightly, because Dmitry doesn't deserve to rot in jail for his employer's actions). Adobe got everything they wanted.
Looks like EFF figured out where the parade was going and ran out in front to "lead" it.
saferun doesn't quite solve all problems though.
The malicious code could do something even more clever, like not dropping or revealing its payload unless it can figure out that the current user has some realistic-looking number of files in its home directory. For example.
The saferun idea is useful but not totally foolproof.
Even if he's acquitted, the process itself is more than enough to punish Mr. Skylarov and deter others.
Federal antitrust law and the ruling of an appeals court both say you're wrong.
The trolls and MS fans keep writing and talking as though antitrust law were wishful thinking on the part of the U.S. Justice Department and people who hate Microsoft. It's not. It's real legislation with specific definitions and penalties.
Whine all you want. Microsoft has been found to have a monopoly and been found guilty of abusing that monpoly.
The BSA does come with warrants, and with US Marshals to enforce the warrants.
I seem to recall (but am not sure) that the BSA's investigators have some kind of legal arrangement that lets them join in the search. Something like a discovery motion, I think.
But in any case, no, you're really not free to say no to a BSA-inspired in-person audit.
> but I'm not aware of anyone saying that "closed source is evil; no one should be allowed to keep closed-source software".
RMS says so.
But that's not a majority view even among Open Source or Free Software proponents, and it's certainly not "on the table" in the discussion we're meta-discussing.
Which is why your best strategy would be to ask your contributors to assign their copyrights to you as they make changes.
If they choose not to do so, that's their option. But it's also your option to refuse their contributions.
You're complaining about an artifact of copyright law, not the GPL itself.
I have Windows. I can't reverse engineer it, make derivate works, or hack new functionality into it under any circumstances without violating my license.
I also have Linux. I can do all of those things. Under the condition that I have to share my source code if and only if it's "contaminated" and I want to distribute the results.
So on one side I have "can't do it at all." On the other side I have "can do it with conditions."
Someone please explain to me why the latter is so much worse?
Yes. I've found them to be rude, hostile, and insulting. God forbid you should just buy a "FSBO" sign in a hardware store. The Realtors[tm] act like you're imposing on them by buying and selling your own property.
And I would join you in your lack of surprise.
The Realtors[tm] add virtually no value to the process. The only competitive advantage they have is in keeping the MLS read-only to everybody but themselves. And without being on the MLS, my experience is that no Realtor[tm] will even consider looking at the house.
Technical differences are not legal differences, and vice versa. Much bewilderment arises when hackers expect law and public policy to work deterministically, or similarly to physics.
SCOTUS is interpreting the 4th Amendment to mean (among many other things) that it's not a "search" if the cops are looking at something that any normal civilian neighbor could and would also easily be looking at. Your neighbor might ordinarily look at take a picture of your outside wall for an innocuous reason, so it's not a "search" for a cop to do the same. But it would be extraordinary for your neighbor to run a thermal image of your house, so for a cop to do one would constitute a "search."
The above paragraph is repetitive, because there have been three or four very similar explanations in this discussion. Sorry. It just seems to be not getting through to some.
The court's reasoning is not illogical. It's just that lawyers and legislators care about circumstances, motivations, and expectations in a way that engineers and hackers don't. It's one of those right-tool-for-the-job things.
And the number of posts pushing mindless pro-Linux advocacy are far outnumbered by the posts complaining about how /. is dominated by mindless pro-Linux advocacy posts.
Weird.
Mabye so. But companies should try showing some yamato first, as a sign of good faith.