Your comment is off base for several reasons. First, in this case, the URL is fuckgeneralmotors.com, not fuckford.com. So ford does not have the same basis to sue in this case that the NYT would have in your hypothetical example.
If general motors were suing, that would be an analagous situation.
Second, "fuck general motors" however offensive a sentiment is apparently conceded by the plaintiff to be a form of speech, and speech has been historically defended irrespective of mere offensiveness by US courts.
Finally, if ford is allowed to set precedent with this case, it may well become illegal to redirect or possibly even link to websites without explicit permission from the website owner. Bye-bye search engines, bye-bye slashtdot, bye-bye web.
I think the comment that started all the "now it will be cheaper for independents" stuff was that the proprietary software that animators use *may* come down in price (from USD 40k) now that it runs on a USD 5k platform.
While this is speculation, it seems plausible.
MM
Re:Lets get some things straight
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 1
You can always profit from open source. You just can't close it, and you can't distribute it without source. This may set an effective upper limit on what people are willing to pay for the code. You can charge whatever you want for support, of course.
If you do want to distribute closed, binary only software for an open platform, then you just have to make sure you read all the licenses of all the code you link into your program to be sure what you plan will be legal.
You can read all these licenses on line. Check out the GPL for starters. Go to www.gnu.org.
Oh, in response to your comment, that they didn't choose linux because it is "faster, more stable, easier to work with, or produces better visuals," I think it is safe to say that they must nonetheless have decided that it was fast enough, stable enough, easy enough to work with and produced visuals that are just as good as other choices or they wouldn't have used it!
About the only part of your post that makes any sense is the part where you draw a distinction between tangible property and other. There is something fundamentally different about digitized information vs. other types of possesions. But that is almost a cliche.
The rest of your post is just pure fantasy! While you may not like working for a living, the fact is that there is still a big difference between having to pick a job to get money to support yourself (capitalism) and being detained and forced at threat of physical violence to do labor regardless of your desires to the contrary (slavery). In short, your assertion that we (living in capitalist societies) are all slaves is ridiculous.
As for the machines replacing everything and everyone, please spare me. As I have said before, not only are we not close to that happening, we are not even really moving in that direction. You are vastly overestimating the autonomy and robustness of large-scale automatic systems. Do we have cars that can drive themselves? Not yet. Change their own tires? No. Do we have autonomous oil drilling stations that can roam around planet Earth over land and sea, finding oil and drilling for it? No. Do we have AI's that can roam the web trolling in newsgroups and other forums by posting the most outrageous comments? Well, actually we do, so forget about that one.
But can computers even design other computers? Ha! not even close (I design computers so I should know.) So please stop posting this kind of drivel. If you are an AI or other type of trolling engine then I apologize to everyone for taking the bait.
Your observations are very true, and that makes the situation far more dangerous. If the DMCA were being used now to keep people from the cheap entertainment to which they have grown accustomed, there would be a truly huge public outcry and the DMCA would go down in flames.
But I feel pretty sure that what the big entertainment companies ultimately want is a pay per view licesning arrangement on all content. That is why they are fighting so hard to stop DeCSS. They want there to be no uncertainty surrounding the question of whether they have the absolute right to dictate exactly how all content is viewed. That was probably their goal all along with DMCA. And if they succeed, you can expect software licensing to follow suit. And probably textual material (e-books) as well. There are already examples of such now.
Ultimately, the digital millenium really does present a lot of questions for speach and copyright. For example, it doesn't make sense to sell someone a book or phonograph recording and then say that they can't read it or listen to it pretty much whenever they want (I mean, I know you probably can't legally broadcast the recording without compensating the artist or song author, but I am not thinking of that here). But does it make sense to do it with a DVD? Well, it may be possible to construct a set of technological and legal barriers to achieve this, and that is what this battle is all about. (In my opinion.)
When you get right down to it, it may be time to stop trying to draw analogies with content distribution mechanisms of the past and simply decide how we want the future to be. I, for one, don't want to cast my vote for a world where all content, including textual material, is served up exclusively on a pay per view basis. In fact, I believe this vision represents a dystopia wherein Richard Stallman's worst fears are realized.
It doesn't seem like this is a bogus patent, but it does seem unfair to sue a company for buying products with patent-infringing components. Unless they can prove that the defendants actually knew about the infringement.
Shouldn't Magnaquench (or whatever they're called) be suing the suppliers or their suppliers since their press-release acknowledges that they are the ones who are infringing?
My guess is that these suppliers and suppliers to these suppliers are in a country where suing is not so fashionable as it is in the US, and patents don't have the weight they have here.
Uhh, Rambus doesn't have any tangible products. They are exclusively an intellectual property company. The people they are suing are not competition but potential clients. You did read the article, right?
I feel that the provisions you have set forth are not sufficient to protect the mail. Just to be safe, we should add this provision:
All letters must be opened in a means sanctioned by the letter's author and with the author's permission. Mere possesion of an envelope does not give you the right to open it and see what's inside, even if the envelope is addressed to you and was obtained by lawful means.
First of all it is absurd to postulate that robots will replace everybody. It will be hundreds or thousands of years before we can build a bipedal robot that can, for example, catch a pop-fly, or read a quarterback well enough to intercept a football. And besides, who would want to watch robots play sports? Please don't tell me that no one will want to watch people play sports in the future.
Then there are the creative arts. Personally, I don't forsee at all a time when robots (or other automata) can write novels as good as _How Green was My Valley_ or movie scripts as funny as _Raising Arizona_. Please don't tell me books are not going to be around in the future.
And when it comes down to it, I don't really believe that robot technology will reach a point where it can maintain itself without human involvement any time soon. Think about all the steps necessary: The robots have to take care of the whole system of gathering raw materials and preparing them for power generation. They have to maintain countless levels of machines that design machines and machines that build more machines. They have to gather raw ores and such for building their shiny carapaces and their advanced electronics. Also, they have to be able to react to hurricanes and floods and fires and Earthquakes and recover from them. Not only that, but there would certainly be human insurrection. It is not that hard to build zip guns and other improvised firearms. And humans would probably find a way to re-program and sabotage the robots too. But this is just fantasy.
Not only are we not there yet, we're not even trying to go there. And please don't start talking about nanobots!
Also, all this denunciation of capitalism is fine and good, but what do you suggest we replace it with? I am not a red-baiter in any sense of the term, but the concept of every person having a right to the land sounds rather like the type of totalitarian communism which pretty much fizzled out in the USSR. The problem, as you may recall, is that when a single political party has absolute power and controls all means of production, corruption and inefficiency take over and destroy the state. And yet, without such centralized control, how would we ever convince everyone to play by the new set of rules? It may come as a surprise to you but most people are not going to be willing to turn over all of their tangible possesions and land holdings to the government (or any other entity) for the purpose of "fair" redistribution, no matter how the proposition is put to them.
"Copy protection was proven an ineffective mechanism back in the 1980's, and it's just as ineffective now, if not more so, given the much greater number of computer professionals (that you may call "hackers") than there were then.
Given that the right to make a backup copy is an established RIGHT under the Constitutional derived principle of "fair use" would it not follow that any law preventing you from circumventing copy protection to excercise that right would be Unconstitutional?"
Amen. The only question is, will the courts see it as you do, or will they side with industry and support laws that ban circumvention devices and, incidentally, intellectual curiosity when it is applied to circumvention devices and the like.
And keep in mind, just because we (well, those of us living in the U.S.) supposedly have this constitutional right to fair use doesn't mean that we will be allowed to excercise it. (Consider the second ammendment) The Supreme court can decide not to listen to an issue, and it can also wiggle out of the issue by invoking some technicality. I mean, eventually, they'll come around, but we could be out of luck for years.
But there is something about all this that I find even more troubling. I mean, personally, I don't care whether I can copy music and movies or not. In fact, I will probably never do it. I *may* stop watching movies at home, and listen only to the radio, though, if things keep going as they are now.
This is really, for me, a free speech issue. If a law says or is interpreted to mean that you can't publish something without going to jail or paying fines, then that law is restricting free speech. Perhaps this would be warranted for detailed descriptions of how to make a hydrogen bomb (there are still very few people who know how to do this, and, frankly, that is fine with me!) But what we have here is an industry claiming, falsely, no doubt, that they are in danger of going out of business or seeing huge revenue losses unless they are allowed to ban discussion about and distribution of ways to circumvent their simple, weak encryption and watermarking schemes.
And of course, the direction that this is all going is pay-per-view. If the MPAA succeeds in all these efforts, and if the DMCA means what they claim it means and is found constitutional, then some day, maybe 5 years from now, we won't be seeing cheap prices on DVD's anymore. In fact, they may very well be free, *but*, you will have to pay every time you watch. And new laws, very similar to the DMCA, will be enacted which specify stiff penalties for anyone who makes equipment that doesn't enforce this scheme or who discusses ways to defeat it. And the MPAA will point at the DMCA and say, "well, that law is constitutional, so why shouldn't these new, similar laws be constitutional. After all, we have had pay-per-view on cable for *years*. This is just a new distribution model for content."
By the way, have you checked out the new licensing scheme uSoft is pushing?
Slashdot Mirror
Your comment is off base for several reasons. First, in this case, the URL is fuckgeneralmotors.com, not fuckford.com. So ford does not have the same basis to sue in this case that the NYT would have in your hypothetical example.
If general motors were suing, that would be an analagous situation.
Second, "fuck general motors" however offensive a sentiment is apparently conceded by the plaintiff to be a form of speech, and speech has been historically defended irrespective of mere offensiveness by US courts.
Finally, if ford is allowed to set precedent with this case, it may well become illegal to redirect or possibly even link to websites without explicit permission from the website owner. Bye-bye search engines, bye-bye slashtdot, bye-bye web.
MM
I think the comment that started all the "now it will be cheaper for independents" stuff was that the proprietary software that animators use *may* come down in price (from USD 40k) now that it runs on a USD 5k platform.
While this is speculation, it seems plausible.
MM
You can always profit from open source. You just can't close it, and you can't distribute it without source. This may set an effective upper limit on what people are willing to pay for the code. You can charge whatever you want for support, of course.
If you do want to distribute closed, binary only software for an open platform, then you just have to make sure you read all the licenses of all the code you link into your program to be sure what you plan will be legal.
You can read all these licenses on line. Check out the GPL for starters. Go to www.gnu.org.
Oh, in response to your comment, that they didn't choose linux because it is "faster, more stable, easier to work with, or produces better visuals," I think it is safe to say that they must nonetheless have decided that it was fast enough, stable enough, easy enough to work with and produced visuals that are just as good as other choices or they wouldn't have used it!
regards,
MM
About the only part of your post that makes any sense is the part where you draw a distinction between tangible property and other. There is something fundamentally different about digitized information vs. other types of possesions. But that is almost a cliche.
The rest of your post is just pure fantasy! While you may not like working for a living, the fact is that there is still a big difference between having to pick a job to get money to support yourself (capitalism) and being detained and forced at threat of physical violence to do labor regardless of your desires to the contrary (slavery). In short, your assertion that we (living in capitalist societies) are all slaves is ridiculous.
As for the machines replacing everything and everyone, please spare me. As I have said before, not only are we not close to that happening, we are not even really moving in that direction. You are vastly overestimating the autonomy and robustness of large-scale automatic systems. Do we have cars that can drive themselves? Not yet. Change their own tires? No. Do we have autonomous oil drilling stations that can roam around planet Earth over land and sea, finding oil and drilling for it? No. Do we have AI's that can roam the web trolling in newsgroups and other forums by posting the most outrageous comments? Well, actually we do, so forget about that one.
But can computers even design other computers? Ha! not even close (I design computers so I should know.) So please stop posting this kind of drivel. If you are an AI or other type of trolling engine then I apologize to everyone for taking the bait.
MM
Your observations are very true, and that makes the situation far more dangerous. If the DMCA were being used now to keep people from the cheap entertainment to which they have grown accustomed, there would be a truly huge public outcry and the DMCA would go down in flames.
But I feel pretty sure that what the big entertainment companies ultimately want is a pay per view licesning arrangement on all content. That is why they are fighting so hard to stop DeCSS. They want there to be no uncertainty surrounding the question of whether they have the absolute right to dictate exactly how all content is viewed. That was probably their goal all along with DMCA. And if they succeed, you can expect software licensing to follow suit. And probably textual material (e-books) as well. There are already examples of such now.
Ultimately, the digital millenium really does present a lot of questions for speach and copyright. For example, it doesn't make sense to sell someone a book or phonograph recording and then say that they can't read it or listen to it pretty much whenever they want (I mean, I know you probably can't legally broadcast the recording without compensating the artist or song author, but I am not thinking of that here). But does it make sense to do it with a DVD? Well, it may be possible to construct a set of technological and legal barriers to achieve this, and that is what this battle is all about. (In my opinion.)
When you get right down to it, it may be time to stop trying to draw analogies with content distribution mechanisms of the past and simply decide how we want the future to be. I, for one, don't want to cast my vote for a world where all content, including textual material, is served up exclusively on a pay per view basis. In fact, I believe this vision represents a dystopia wherein Richard Stallman's worst fears are realized.
It doesn't seem like this is a bogus patent, but it does seem unfair to sue a company for buying products with patent-infringing components. Unless they can prove that the defendants actually knew about the infringement.
Shouldn't Magnaquench (or whatever they're called) be suing the suppliers or their suppliers since their press-release acknowledges that they are the ones who are infringing?
My guess is that these suppliers and suppliers to these suppliers are in a country where suing is not so fashionable as it is in the US, and patents don't have the weight they have here.
MM
Uhh, Rambus doesn't have any tangible products. They are exclusively an intellectual property company. The people they are suing are not competition but potential clients. You did read the article, right?
MM
I feel that the provisions you have set forth are not sufficient to protect the mail. Just to be safe, we should add this provision:
All letters must be opened in a means sanctioned by the letter's author and with the author's permission. Mere possesion of an envelope does not give you the right to open it and see what's inside, even if the envelope is addressed to you and was obtained by lawful means.
That ought to do it.
First of all it is absurd to postulate that robots will replace everybody. It will be hundreds or thousands of years before we can build a bipedal robot that can, for example, catch a pop-fly, or read a quarterback well enough to intercept a football. And besides, who would want to watch robots play sports? Please don't tell me that no one will want to watch people play sports in the future.
Then there are the creative arts. Personally, I don't forsee at all a time when robots (or other automata) can write novels as good as _How Green was My Valley_ or movie scripts as funny as _Raising Arizona_. Please don't tell me books are not going to be around in the future.
And when it comes down to it, I don't really believe that robot technology will reach a point where it can maintain itself without human involvement any time soon. Think about all the steps necessary: The robots have to take care of the whole system of gathering raw materials and preparing them for power generation. They have to maintain countless levels of machines that design machines and machines that build more machines. They have to gather raw ores and such for building their shiny carapaces and their advanced electronics. Also, they have to be able to react to hurricanes and floods and fires and Earthquakes and recover from them. Not only that, but there would certainly be human insurrection. It is not that hard to build zip guns and other improvised firearms. And humans would probably find a way to re-program and sabotage the robots too. But this is just fantasy.
Not only are we not there yet, we're not even trying to go there. And please don't start talking about nanobots!
Also, all this denunciation of capitalism is fine and good, but what do you suggest we replace it with? I am not a red-baiter in any sense of the term, but the concept of every person having a right to the land sounds rather like the type of totalitarian communism which pretty much fizzled out in the USSR. The problem, as you may recall, is that when a single political party has absolute power and controls all means of production, corruption and inefficiency take over and destroy the state. And yet, without such centralized control, how would we ever convince everyone to play by the new set of rules? It may come as a surprise to you but most people are not going to be willing to turn over all of their tangible possesions and land holdings to the government (or any other entity) for the purpose of "fair" redistribution, no matter how the proposition is put to them.
Just some ideas to keep in mind.
"You get the picture better if you see a real katana or realize what tested katana actually is. Kinda remindes you of the reality."
Hmm. Could you elaborate on the relevance of the katana to Chinese history? And, well, what *is* a tested Katana?
I have to admit, it is awesome to contemplate just how many Chinese people there are in the world.
"Copy protection was proven an ineffective mechanism back in the 1980's, and it's just as ineffective now, if not more so, given the much greater number of computer professionals (that you may call "hackers") than there were then.
Given that the right to make a backup copy is an established RIGHT under the Constitutional derived principle of "fair use" would it not follow that any law preventing you from circumventing copy protection to excercise that right would be Unconstitutional?"
Amen. The only question is, will the courts see it as you do, or will they side with industry and support laws that ban circumvention devices and, incidentally, intellectual curiosity when it is applied to circumvention devices and the like.
And keep in mind, just because we (well, those of us living in the U.S.) supposedly have this constitutional right to fair use doesn't mean that we will be allowed to excercise it. (Consider the second ammendment) The Supreme court can decide not to listen to an issue, and it can also wiggle out of the issue by invoking some technicality. I mean, eventually, they'll come around, but we could be out of luck for years.
But there is something about all this that I find even more troubling. I mean, personally, I don't care whether I can copy music and movies or not. In fact, I will probably never do it. I *may* stop watching movies at home, and listen only to the radio, though, if things keep going as they are now.
This is really, for me, a free speech issue. If a law says or is interpreted to mean that you can't publish something without going to jail or paying fines, then that law is restricting free speech. Perhaps this would be warranted for detailed descriptions of how to make a hydrogen bomb (there are still very few people who know how to do this, and, frankly, that is fine with me!) But what we have here is an industry claiming, falsely, no doubt, that they are in danger of going out of business or seeing huge revenue losses unless they are allowed to ban discussion about and distribution of ways to circumvent their simple, weak encryption and watermarking schemes.
And of course, the direction that this is all going is pay-per-view. If the MPAA succeeds in all these efforts, and if the DMCA means what they claim it means and is found constitutional, then some day, maybe 5 years from now, we won't be seeing cheap prices on DVD's anymore. In fact, they may very well be free, *but*, you will have to pay every time you watch. And new laws, very similar to the DMCA, will be enacted which specify stiff penalties for anyone who makes equipment that doesn't enforce this scheme or who discusses ways to defeat it. And the MPAA will point at the DMCA and say, "well, that law is constitutional, so why shouldn't these new, similar laws be constitutional. After all, we have had pay-per-view on cable for *years*. This is just a new distribution model for content."
By the way, have you checked out the new licensing scheme uSoft is pushing?