I think what we really need to do is to get rid of the assumption that Women are stereotypes.
Have you seen chickclick.com? This is beyond stereotypes - we're talking quadratypes at a minimum. This site is past parody. I had a sneaking suspicion that it may actually be a mickey-take, but it seems genuine. Celebrity hairstyles, "office supply lust", "breast worship". Argh!
I thought that the Net was supposed to promote individuality etc. If the flood of new female arrivals to the Net having a staple diet of bland and sterotyped sites such as this one then, to be honest, they might as well not bother.
The power of the net lies in a few complemetary things: you are what you produce online: sex, age, disabilities etc don't matter. You can meet (online) with people in similar situations, or with common interests , or even with similar diseases - OSS arises from this (common interests, not diseases:) ). Last, but not least, everybody is (or rather, was) equal.
Now instead of this digital meritocracy, we have porn, portals, flame wars, and (in the UK) libel suits. These were at least interesting. Now, in the next wave of colonization we will have marketing disguised as content, and content that is so bland and homogenized that it'll make MTV look intellectual.
The best comment I heard about MTV and its sibings was that they were "chewing gum for the eyes." Now we have chewing gum for our computers. Bah, humbug!
I don't get it... why is the above post offtopic? I think it's a valid point.
More that that - it is probably the thing that'll make or break the idea. Being fair and being seen to be fair is absolutely crucial - once a little acorn of mistrust is placed then the potential for acrimony is astonishing. Particularly so in the rather heated environment of open source: even without money there has been plenty of ego clashes. With recent IPOs things have become even more stressed. Now here is a new method of spreading bad feeling.
Because of the impossibility of deciding a system that everyone will agree is fair (open source can't even agree on the name for Linux, or is that GNU/Linux) then I think that this will cause more problems in the long run for the open source movement than it will solve. I'd be surprised if, within a few years of this taking off, someone isn't sueing someone else.
Don't take this a critisism of the open source movement or the people involved - this is just an observation of how any people tend to interact when money and/or fame is involved.
As for the moderator who moded down the first post - I assume that it was a reflex action of first is bad: you should post to this story and remove your moderation because "offtopic" is completely unjustified and you will get such a beating in the metamoderation that it will make grown men flinch.
I don't work for AOL or Time or Microsoft, but if i did, i'd be pissed if the government decides to take away what i worked so hard on for whatever reasons. (monopoly or not, you ARE talking about HUMANS with Respectfull JOBS and CHILDREN and FAMILIES TO FEED)
Please, spare us the platitudes. You make the government. The government makes the rules - the companies have to play by them. If they don't like the Sherman act then they can set up in a different country that doesn't have an equivalent. The companies are more than happy to have rules (copyright and patents for example) that make them money, but cry foul when other rules may threaten their revenues. Sorry guys - its a package deal.
As for the homily to the poor families of the employees of these law-breaking companies: why not defend bank robbers - after all they broke the law to make money but they have families too, dammit!
The only thing that I can see is the sun, blue sky, a few puffy clouds. In other words not idea viewing conditions. Mind you it is 10:00 am. (and yes, the story was posted after sunrise here)
Tonight out into the countryside, and I hope it doesn't get cloudy...I'm at 51.799N, 0.633 E, so I should see it. Fingers crossed. Having tried to watch the solar eclipse during a rainstorm, my luck in these things isn't too good. Still, Zimbabwae 2001 for the next one huzzah! With a free civil war thrown in for the tourists.
Demon were asked by a customer (meaning there was a contract in place between the 2 parties) to take down false information. Demon decided to ignore this request and not respond thus showing no concern for someone they provide service for.
Completely wrong - Laurence Godfrey has never been a customer of Demon internet. They did not provides services for him, and they had not contractual agreement with him.
Not quite true, the court did not find for Godfrey
The courts didn't find for Godfrey, but a precedent was established - innocent disseminiation is not a defence when put on notice. Justice Moreland ruled on this about a year ago, saying the defence was "hopeless in law".
Demon did not get sued. Demon bailed out of the case before it got sued and thus there is no internet libel precedent in the UK law yet. And UK law operates on precedents.So Demon did a good thing (TM).
Demon did get sued. In fact they got sued twice by Godfrey.
There is a libel precedent in UK law as a result of this. Demon's original defence - innocent dissemination - was thrown out by the Judge as "hopeless in law". The court has decided that, once an ISP in the UK (or rather, England and Wales) are notified of a post that a reader considers libellous, then from that point on they are considered publishers of that post. That is the legal precedent that was established by one of these cases. The post that was complained about was considered libellous by the judge - "Squalid, defamatory, and libellous to the plaintiff." were the words he used.
The second case involved a poster to demon newsgroups (amoungst other places) that Godfrey contacted Demon about, saying that in Godfrey's opinion the poster was probably going commit libel, and he wanted the account suspended (or posting rights removed). Demon refused, the poster posted something that Godfrey considered libellous, and the whole thing went to court. A precedent wasn't established here as the case was settled out of court without a ruling by a Judge of the status of the case.
This second case involved prior restraint, and this seems the type of argument that the Pink Paper is using to silence Outcast. It is not a course without risks - libel is obviously a wrong, and false (or, in E&W, unprovable) allegations of wrongdoing could be construed as libel themselves - i.e. the Pink Paper is libeling Outcast.
I don't think that Outcast suing the Pink Paper is any sort of a solution - libel actions only serve one end: enriching lawyers. However, the Pink Paper is a free paper in a small market - it depends entirely on its advertising. What must be done is contacting every advertiser in the Pink Paper with details on their actions. Make sure that its readership know. In other words destroy their credibility - no one likes a bully.
I agree - the humour isn't the story, but the reaction. Which is really funny - I have never seen so many people so upset over the Swedish Chef filter.
Tricky question, as most of the cases have been settled out of court, rather than a precedent set.
Taking the laws one at a time
DMCA: a biggie. This could have serious implications by "closing" standards. I think that, in the long run, it has overreached itself, and will be ruled unconstitutional (or at least parts of it) because effectively indefinitely extends copyright. In the short run it'll be bad.
UCITA: even worse. Every time I read about it I cannot believe it. Worse, I can't see what can stop it legally if it is enacted. The best that could be hoped for is that big business realises that it is terrible, and stops it. Unlikely.
DeCSS. A corker, as they are trying to enforce "no reverse engineering" where it is legal to reverse engineer.
Privacy - sorry guys, we're all statistics. Even if you use PGP you will be targetted as "that 1.8% of people who use PGP - try to sell them techy toys." Rights on the net - there are none. The net is a commercial entity: you have no right to free speech (no ISP is bound to have you, no company has to sell you connectivity), no right to privacy. Equally "they" have no rights either - use encryption, block banner ads, lie on surveys.
Remember - they (the denizens of the commercial net) are only in it for the money. All you can do is make behaviour that you find unacceptable unprofitable for them. The net is going to be a great social engineering experiment. We'll find out whose money talks the loudest - those that spend it or those that take it.
The end of the net as we know it? It's always the end of the net as we know it. Best we make tomorrow's net a better place.
The Quark and the Jaguar. Hmm. What an incoherent book (and I am, or at least was, a physicist). It was interesting in places, but the theme he was trying to develop didn't seem to warrant the sheer overwhelming edifice he built up. The whole book seemed fragmented - majorly disappointing.
Ian Stewart's "The Collapse of Chaos", which covered some of the same ground (the complex systems bit), was far superior. The difference I'd say was that Stewart was trying to explain, whereas Gell-Mann was trying to impress.
I was under the impression you can't sue someone for stating the truth.
This isn't strictly accurate. In certain cases the truth can be libelous (at least in the UK - the US may be different). An example is "She frequently goes to the VD clinic", when she is, in fact, a nurse at the VD clinic. Another is telling a prospective employer that someone has a spent conviction (in the UK spent convictions are convictions that, after 5 years or so, do not have to be disclosed to e.g. potential employers).
So, no - truth is not an absolute defence to libel.
Sorry, but this comment is completely wrong: quantum cryptography and quantum computing are two entirely separate areas. Quantum computing is a (possible) method of attacking conventional encryption (see Peter Shor's papers and biography for lots of info).
Quantum cryptography is (assuming quantum theory is correct) an unbreakable cryptosystem. A basic primer of Q Cypto is here. This also gives details of how to implement Q. Crypto - test of quantum encrypted links of over 1km have already been demonstated: a far cry from "you can't develop [it] until you solve some general problems".
We need an "I am not a scientist" label (like IANAL) for posts like that one.
As with all other management, NASA executives can be dumb, but I don't believe they could be that dumb.
I can easily believe it. If you work in a success driven culture that is also under financial pressure - which describes NASA pretty well - then as a manager you'd tend to view things optimistically, because if things fail then you are seen to fail too. The chain of thought of whoever is alleged to be responsible is frighteningly plausible.
First you test the rocket motor - it fails. This is bad. You have two choices: redesign the rocket motor or redesign the test. The second is quicker and cheaper. So, you have a close look at the test, and pick holes in it. You are now the devils's advocate, and it is terribly easy to find "flaws" in a test that render it "not representative" - destructive criticism is easy. So you redesign the test because you've found all these flaws in it.
Repeat until the rocket passes.
Now you have a rocket that passes the test. You believe that it will do it's job. It is here that I would disagree with the article - I cannot believe that anyone would, in effect, knowingly allow a defective rocket on the Mars PE., which is certainly what is seems to imply. I can see how culture and bureaucracy could conspire to allow it to happen unwittingly.
Yahoo (and the Slashdot story) has it wrong in that the helium is extraterristial NOT necessarily from outside the solar system. He3 is in fact found in the solar wind: the crust of the moon, for example, is thought to enriched in He3 from the solar wind.
He3 does exist on earth (and in the rest of the Solar System for that matter). What is different is the ratio of He4 to He3 on Earth and in most of the rest of the solar system. What the article should say is that
1) Helium is trapped inside Bucky-balls found in asteriod impact sites and 2) The He4 to He3 ratio is the same as the ratio in the rest of the solar system and is not the same as that on earth.
This implies that 1) Buckyballs formed in space 2) They can trap gases in them and 3) They can survive extremely violent impact.
Slashdot - please, please, please check the original sources for stories.
More problematic, IMO, is that fair use is subjective and decided by judges after the fact.
...
How in hell can you create software that is smart enough to tell if what you want to do is fair use, lets you do it if it is, and is still capable of preventing comparatively easy illegal copying?
A good point. I feel, however, that the problem is in "their" (the producer's) court. They are trying to use technical innovations to eliminate piracy. That's OK, as long as it only eliminates piracy. CSS does far more than this (including region access control which probably violates world trade treaties, but that's another thread). What it definitely does is remove some "Fair Use" rights (the right to make personal copies, for examples). The fact that it stops other activities that are not fair use is moot - the test, IMHO, should be "This system is unacceptable because it prevents any sort of fair use" rather than "This system is acceptable because it prevents some 'unfair' use".
As for parody, review and the ilk - there is already an estabilshed route within the current framework of copyright to obtain redress and restitution. If a movie company really objected your the parody of the matrix then they can do exactly what they would do if you parodied using VHS - sue. Taking the draconian step of preventing any parody ever that is based on the DVD because someone in principle could overstep the bounds of fair use is ludicrious.
Thinking through the DMCA under this sort of model two things are clear: 1) CSS definitely removes some fair use rights and 2) DeCSS restored those rights. Now DeCSS does other things, but in my view that's too bad for the movie companies: a valid defence against reverse engineering and the ilk is "does it restore fair use rights."
If they want their "technical solution" for the protection of copyright, they had better make sure that it protects everybodies' rights, including the purchasers', not just their own.
Going back to your point: some fair use may be subjective and decided after the fact, but there is lots of fair use that is objective and has been decided. The latter is being prevented by technical means, and I believe this is wrong.
I think we should have a court decision or law that states that copyrights will not be enforced by the courts when technical means, such as the DVD CSS, have been used to infringe the fair use rights of purchasers
Far, far better to have a law that states that technical means for securing copyrights must not infringe your right of fair use. Keeping your rights is much better than stripping them of theirs. The alternative is giving government the power to remove rights on a whim. They are not called rights for nothing.
However, what about something like A patent applicant must show intent to actually use the patent. For utility patents, this means marketing and selling the device, other patents work as appropriate. No intent to use, no patent.
This has the obvious problem of "how do you show intent?" - there is an entire criminal justice system based about trying to infer intent from actions. Using this in the field of patents will just be a nightmare.
It has a less obvious problem for small inventors. There are people who invent for a living. They business model is (simplisitically) 1) invent something 2) find a large company who may be interested in exclusively licencing it 3) make a deal. Under your system all the large company has to do is stall, and the patent will lapse.
A patent expires if the patent is not "used" as defined above within one year of its filing. However, an applicant can get an extension on this by showing evidence that the device could not possibly have been marketed within that time.
Again, you are getting into a legal quagmire by having to provide evidence that something couldn't be done. Proving a negative is always tricky, and when there is a lot of money at stake, well - that's just lawyer heaven.
A patent expires at a set amount of time after the patent is first "used" (as defined above). This time period is the same seventeen years for individuals, five years for corporations (three if the patent is software-related). If the patent transfers, the time period is adjusted accordingly (so if a person holds a patent for six years and sells it to a corporation, the patent immediately expires). This amount of time cannot be extended by any means.
This is just a bad idea. Patents, in most countries, are granted to individuals, and assigned to companies. If this, or anything like it is passed, then the companies will not bother with assignment. Instead "invention clauses" will say "will make the company the exclusive licencee for the sum of one dollar" as opposed to the current "will assign to the company for the sum of one dollar".
Most inventors are also "companies" and will assign their patent to their company for explotation - there are all sorts of legitimiate reasons for this: tax, separation of ideas, limiting liability, and so on.
It would be very difficult to change it so that it discriminated against big companies in the manner you wish to. I think that such discrimination would be counter-productive as it doesn't really solve the problem - patents stymying instead of promoting innovation.
THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PEROFRMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFENCTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION
looks like someone needs to use a spellchecker. Sheesh. Does this void the liscense?
IANAL, but no, it doesn't. The meaning is clear, and that is what counts. Generally, or so I've been told, unless the meaning is made ambigious or indeterminable then the intended meaning is what counts. This assumes that licences are considered a) enforcible and b) legally like contracts. This is also why lawyers don't puntuate - a badly placed comma can cause a lot of problems by making a sentence ambiguious.
Here is where MS may have shot itself in the foot. Until recently (RC1 of 2000 or thereabouts) the NT based OS was compiled across multiple processor architecture - albeit only Alpha and Intel latterly. This gave a certain degree of architecture independence to most of the code that makes up the OS (barring things like HAL (obviously) and NTFS)
Now that they have dumped the Alpha from the 2000 family, 2000 will, inevitiably, grow to be Intel 32 bit achitecture specific. So when the IA64 trundles along there will be a fearsome amount of work getting the codebase compatible. So it's going to be a bodge.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you seen chickclick.com? This is beyond stereotypes - we're talking quadratypes at a minimum. This site is past parody. I had a sneaking suspicion that it may actually be a mickey-take, but it seems genuine. Celebrity hairstyles, "office supply lust", "breast worship". Argh!
I thought that the Net was supposed to promote individuality etc. If the flood of new female arrivals to the Net having a staple diet of bland and sterotyped sites such as this one then, to be honest, they might as well not bother.
The power of the net lies in a few complemetary things: you are what you produce online: sex, age, disabilities etc don't matter. You can meet (online) with people in similar situations, or with common interests , or even with similar diseases - OSS arises from this (common interests, not diseases :) ). Last, but not least, everybody is (or rather, was) equal.
Now instead of this digital meritocracy, we have porn, portals, flame wars, and (in the UK) libel suits. These were at least interesting. Now, in the next wave of colonization we will have marketing disguised as content, and content that is so bland and homogenized that it'll make MTV look intellectual.
The best comment I heard about MTV and its sibings was that they were "chewing gum for the eyes." Now we have chewing gum for our computers. Bah, humbug!
More that that - it is probably the thing that'll make or break the idea. Being fair and being seen to be fair is absolutely crucial - once a little acorn of mistrust is placed then the potential for acrimony is astonishing. Particularly so in the rather heated environment of open source: even without money there has been plenty of ego clashes. With recent IPOs things have become even more stressed. Now here is a new method of spreading bad feeling.
Because of the impossibility of deciding a system that everyone will agree is fair (open source can't even agree on the name for Linux, or is that GNU/Linux) then I think that this will cause more problems in the long run for the open source movement than it will solve. I'd be surprised if, within a few years of this taking off, someone isn't sueing someone else.
Don't take this a critisism of the open source movement or the people involved - this is just an observation of how any people tend to interact when money and/or fame is involved.
As for the moderator who moded down the first post - I assume that it was a reflex action of first is bad: you should post to this story and remove your moderation because "offtopic" is completely unjustified and you will get such a beating in the metamoderation that it will make grown men flinch.
Please, spare us the platitudes. You make the government. The government makes the rules - the companies have to play by them. If they don't like the Sherman act then they can set up in a different country that doesn't have an equivalent. The companies are more than happy to have rules (copyright and patents for example) that make them money, but cry foul when other rules may threaten their revenues. Sorry guys - its a package deal.
As for the homily to the poor families of the employees of these law-breaking companies: why not defend bank robbers - after all they broke the law to make money but they have families too, dammit!
Tonight out into the countryside, and I hope it doesn't get cloudy...I'm at 51.799N, 0.633 E, so I should see it. Fingers crossed. Having tried to watch the solar eclipse during a rainstorm, my luck in these things isn't too good. Still, Zimbabwae 2001 for the next one huzzah! With a free civil war thrown in for the tourists.
Completely wrong - Laurence Godfrey has never been a customer of Demon internet. They did not provides services for him, and they had not contractual agreement with him.
The courts didn't find for Godfrey, but a precedent was established - innocent disseminiation is not a defence when put on notice. Justice Moreland ruled on this about a year ago, saying the defence was "hopeless in law".
Demon did get sued. In fact they got sued twice by Godfrey.
There is a libel precedent in UK law as a result of this. Demon's original defence - innocent dissemination - was thrown out by the Judge as "hopeless in law". The court has decided that, once an ISP in the UK (or rather, England and Wales) are notified of a post that a reader considers libellous, then from that point on they are considered publishers of that post. That is the legal precedent that was established by one of these cases. The post that was complained about was considered libellous by the judge - "Squalid, defamatory, and libellous to the plaintiff." were the words he used.
The second case involved a poster to demon newsgroups (amoungst other places) that Godfrey contacted Demon about, saying that in Godfrey's opinion the poster was probably going commit libel, and he wanted the account suspended (or posting rights removed). Demon refused, the poster posted something that Godfrey considered libellous, and the whole thing went to court. A precedent wasn't established here as the case was settled out of court without a ruling by a Judge of the status of the case.
This second case involved prior restraint, and this seems the type of argument that the Pink Paper is using to silence Outcast. It is not a course without risks - libel is obviously a wrong, and false (or, in E&W, unprovable) allegations of wrongdoing could be construed as libel themselves - i.e. the Pink Paper is libeling Outcast.
I don't think that Outcast suing the Pink Paper is any sort of a solution - libel actions only serve one end: enriching lawyers. However, the Pink Paper is a free paper in a small market - it depends entirely on its advertising. What must be done is contacting every advertiser in the Pink Paper with details on their actions. Make sure that its readership know. In other words destroy their credibility - no one likes a bully.
I agree - the humour isn't the story, but the reaction. Which is really funny - I have never seen so many people so upset over the Swedish Chef filter.
Virgin broadcast as well.
Taking the laws one at a time
DMCA: a biggie. This could have serious implications by "closing" standards. I think that, in the long run, it has overreached itself, and will be ruled unconstitutional (or at least parts of it) because effectively indefinitely extends copyright. In the short run it'll be bad.
UCITA: even worse. Every time I read about it I cannot believe it. Worse, I can't see what can stop it legally if it is enacted. The best that could be hoped for is that big business realises that it is terrible, and stops it. Unlikely.
DeCSS. A corker, as they are trying to enforce "no reverse engineering" where it is legal to reverse engineer.
Privacy - sorry guys, we're all statistics. Even if you use PGP you will be targetted as "that 1.8% of people who use PGP - try to sell them techy toys." Rights on the net - there are none. The net is a commercial entity: you have no right to free speech (no ISP is bound to have you, no company has to sell you connectivity), no right to privacy. Equally "they" have no rights either - use encryption, block banner ads, lie on surveys.
Remember - they (the denizens of the commercial net) are only in it for the money. All you can do is make behaviour that you find unacceptable unprofitable for them. The net is going to be a great social engineering experiment. We'll find out whose money talks the loudest - those that spend it or those that take it.
The end of the net as we know it? It's always the end of the net as we know it. Best we make tomorrow's net a better place.
Ian Stewart's "The Collapse of Chaos", which covered some of the same ground (the complex systems bit), was far superior. The difference I'd say was that Stewart was trying to explain, whereas Gell-Mann was trying to impress.
This isn't strictly accurate. In certain cases the truth can be libelous (at least in the UK - the US may be different). An example is "She frequently goes to the VD clinic", when she is, in fact, a nurse at the VD clinic. Another is telling a prospective employer that someone has a spent conviction (in the UK spent convictions are convictions that, after 5 years or so, do not have to be disclosed to e.g. potential employers).
So, no - truth is not an absolute defence to libel.
IANAL.
Yeah - most already speak Spanish.
Yeah - booting and not booting simultaneously is a bitch.
Sigh. There is no largest prime number.
Apart from that, I'm imagining your hyper-computer, and I'm seeing something a lot dumber than a centipede.
Quantum cryptography is (assuming quantum theory is correct) an unbreakable cryptosystem. A basic primer of Q Cypto is here. This also gives details of how to implement Q. Crypto - test of quantum encrypted links of over 1km have already been demonstated: a far cry from "you can't develop [it] until you solve some general problems".
We need an "I am not a scientist" label (like IANAL) for posts like that one.
I can easily believe it. If you work in a success driven culture that is also under financial pressure - which describes NASA pretty well - then as a manager you'd tend to view things optimistically, because if things fail then you are seen to fail too. The chain of thought of whoever is alleged to be responsible is frighteningly plausible.
First you test the rocket motor - it fails. This is bad. You have two choices: redesign the rocket motor or redesign the test. The second is quicker and cheaper. So, you have a close look at the test, and pick holes in it. You are now the devils's advocate, and it is terribly easy to find "flaws" in a test that render it "not representative" - destructive criticism is easy. So you redesign the test because you've found all these flaws in it.
Repeat until the rocket passes.
Now you have a rocket that passes the test. You believe that it will do it's job. It is here that I would disagree with the article - I cannot believe that anyone would, in effect, knowingly allow a defective rocket on the Mars PE., which is certainly what is seems to imply. I can see how culture and bureaucracy could conspire to allow it to happen unwittingly.
Yahoo (and the Slashdot story) has it wrong in that the helium is extraterristial NOT necessarily from outside the solar system. He3 is in fact found in the solar wind: the crust of the moon, for example, is thought to enriched in He3 from the solar wind.
He3 does exist on earth (and in the rest of the Solar System for that matter). What is different is the ratio of He4 to He3 on Earth and in most of the rest of the solar system. What the article should say is that
1) Helium is trapped inside Bucky-balls found in asteriod impact sites and 2) The He4 to He3 ratio is the same as the ratio in the rest of the solar system and is not the same as that on earth.
This implies that 1) Buckyballs formed in space 2) They can trap gases in them and 3) They can survive extremely violent impact.
Slashdot - please, please, please check the original sources for stories.
This should read "a valid defence....should be "does.....
Doh!
How in hell can you create software that is smart enough to tell if what you want to do is fair use, lets you do it if it is, and is still capable of preventing comparatively easy illegal copying?
A good point. I feel, however, that the problem is in "their" (the producer's) court. They are trying to use technical innovations to eliminate piracy. That's OK, as long as it only eliminates piracy. CSS does far more than this (including region access control which probably violates world trade treaties, but that's another thread). What it definitely does is remove some "Fair Use" rights (the right to make personal copies, for examples). The fact that it stops other activities that are not fair use is moot - the test, IMHO, should be "This system is unacceptable because it prevents any sort of fair use" rather than "This system is acceptable because it prevents some 'unfair' use".
As for parody, review and the ilk - there is already an estabilshed route within the current framework of copyright to obtain redress and restitution. If a movie company really objected your the parody of the matrix then they can do exactly what they would do if you parodied using VHS - sue. Taking the draconian step of preventing any parody ever that is based on the DVD because someone in principle could overstep the bounds of fair use is ludicrious.
Thinking through the DMCA under this sort of model two things are clear: 1) CSS definitely removes some fair use rights and 2) DeCSS restored those rights. Now DeCSS does other things, but in my view that's too bad for the movie companies: a valid defence against reverse engineering and the ilk is "does it restore fair use rights."
If they want their "technical solution" for the protection of copyright, they had better make sure that it protects everybodies' rights, including the purchasers', not just their own.
Going back to your point: some fair use may be subjective and decided after the fact, but there is lots of fair use that is objective and has been decided. The latter is being prevented by technical means, and I believe this is wrong.
Far, far better to have a law that states that technical means for securing copyrights must not infringe your right of fair use. Keeping your rights is much better than stripping them of theirs. The alternative is giving government the power to remove rights on a whim. They are not called rights for nothing.
This has the obvious problem of "how do you show intent?" - there is an entire criminal justice system based about trying to infer intent from actions. Using this in the field of patents will just be a nightmare.
It has a less obvious problem for small inventors. There are people who invent for a living. They business model is (simplisitically) 1) invent something 2) find a large company who may be interested in exclusively licencing it 3) make a deal. Under your system all the large company has to do is stall, and the patent will lapse.
Again, you are getting into a legal quagmire by having to provide evidence that something couldn't be done. Proving a negative is always tricky, and when there is a lot of money at stake, well - that's just lawyer heaven.
This is just a bad idea. Patents, in most countries, are granted to individuals, and assigned to companies. If this, or anything like it is passed, then the companies will not bother with assignment. Instead "invention clauses" will say "will make the company the exclusive licencee for the sum of one dollar" as opposed to the current "will assign to the company for the sum of one dollar".
Most inventors are also "companies" and will assign their patent to their company for explotation - there are all sorts of legitimiate reasons for this: tax, separation of ideas, limiting liability, and so on.
It would be very difficult to change it so that it discriminated against big companies in the manner you wish to. I think that such discrimination would be counter-productive as it doesn't really solve the problem - patents stymying instead of promoting innovation.
Danish English
leg = game
lege = play
Danish is notoriously complex though, so it is possible that there is the word "Lego" in the language.
looks like someone needs to use a spellchecker. Sheesh. Does this void the liscense?
IANAL, but no, it doesn't. The meaning is clear, and that is what counts. Generally, or so I've been told, unless the meaning is made ambigious or indeterminable then the intended meaning is what counts. This assumes that licences are considered a) enforcible and b) legally like contracts. This is also why lawyers don't puntuate - a badly placed comma can cause a lot of problems by making a sentence ambiguious.
Still dumb though.
Now that they have dumped the Alpha from the 2000 family, 2000 will, inevitiably, grow to be Intel 32 bit achitecture specific. So when the IA64 trundles along there will be a fearsome amount of work getting the codebase compatible. So it's going to be a bodge.