http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:
* to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (mechanical rights; including, sometimes, electronic copies: distribution rights)
* to import or export the work
* to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work)
* to perform or display the work publicly (performance rights)
* to sell or assign these rights to others
* to transmit or display by radio or video (broadcasting rights)
The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise those rights, and others are prohibited from using the work without the holders permission. Copyright is sometimes called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit certain people (e.g., readers, viewers, or listeners, and primarily publishers and would be publishers) from doing something they would otherwise be able to do, rather than permitting people (e.g., authors) to do something they would otherwise be unable to do. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law. The rights of the copyright holder also permit him/her to not use or exploit their copyright, for some or all of the term.
There is, however, a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law that is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right.[citation needed] Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that defining copyright purely as a negative right is incompatible with the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain.[weasel words]
The right to adapt a work means to transform the way in which the work is expressed. Examples include developing a stage play or film script from a novel, translating a short story, and making a new arrangement of a musical work.
The RIAA has sued and settled with innocent people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_efforts_against_file-sharing#Criticism
The RIAA has been criticized in the media after they subpoenaed Gertrude Walton, an 83-year-old grandmother who had died in December of 2004.[94] Mrs. Walton stood accused of swapping rock, pop and rap songs. The RIAA in 2003 attempted to sue Sarah Seabury Ward, a 66 year-old sculptor residing in Boston, Massachusetts. They alleged that she shared more than 2,000 songs illegally. The RIAA dropped the suit when it was discovered that she was a computer novice. The case was dismissed, but without prejudice.
In a Brooklyn case, Elektra v. Schwartz,[95] against RaeJ Schwartz, a Queens woman with Multiple Sclerosis, the RIAA's lawyers wrote to the Judge that they were in possession of a letter in which "...America Online, Inc., has confirmed that Defendant was the owner of the internet access account through which hundreds of Plaintiffsâ(TM) sound recordings were downloaded and distributed to the public without Plaintiffsâ(TM) consent.â After the defense received a copy of the letter, it turned out that the letter merely identified Ms. Schwartz as the owner of an internet access account, and said nothing at all about "downloading" or "distributing".[96]
The RIAA has also been criticized for bringing lawsuits against children, such as 12 year old Brianna LaHara in 2003.[97] The RIAA also attempted to sue Candy Chan of Michigan, for the alleged actions of her daughter, 13 year old Brittany Chan. Under the threat of a possible defendant's motion for summary judgment and attorneys fees, the RIAA withdrew the case Priority Records v. Chan.[98][99] When the court ruled in favor of the mother, dismissing the case, the RIAA proceeded to sue her child. However, prosecuting a minor is more difficult; the Michigan federal court required the RIAA to make provision for a guardian ad litem to be appointed to protect the interests of the child, and required the RIAA to be responsible for paying the guardian ad litem. The RIAA failed to submit a workable proposal, and the Court dismissed the case. The RIAA recently sued the 16-year old son of Patti Santangelo[100] and as of this writing is attempting to force a 10 year old girl in Oregon to be deposed (she would have been 7 years old at the time of the alleged infringement)[101].
The RIAA has also filed a lawsuit against a woman who has never bought, turned on, or used a personal computer for using an "online distribution system" to obtain unlicensed music files.[103] This occurred again in the Walls case; "I don't understand this", said James Walls, "How can they sue us when we don't even have a computer?".[104]
The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Larry Scantlebury, a man who had passed away. They offered the deceased man's family a period of sixty days to grieve the death before they began to depose members of Mr. Scantleburyâ(TM)s family for the suit against his estate.[105]
Huge corporations can do whatever they want. Sure Blizzard has a beef with the Glider guy... But so does Microsoft when you run a VM with Linux while your MS OS is running.
It's Occam's razor in real time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor
Intelligent Design is just a repackaging of Creation Theory... Creation Theory isn't a theory at all. Evolution Theory has been tested and retested from the morphological aspects to the genetic aspects and yet not once has a better theory been found.
Intelligent Design has not been tested. The only evidence ever presented in regard to Intelligent Design/Creation Theory is "evidence" that Evolution Theory does not withstand scrutiny, which is of course preposterous, as every scientist on the planet would love to be the one who disproves such a long standing scrutinized theory.
For example this nonsense: http://www.everystudent.com/wires/mtrushmore.html absolutely no testable evidence for anything is presented.
So while the rest of the planet, excluding of course our "enemies" the Muslim extremists in the middle east, races to be the next major scientific power in biological and molecular science, we back pedal and allow teachers to teach religious tenants. shameful really.
SOE employee tells, SOE volunteer about a customer complaining about the SOE volunteer's behavior... SOE Volunteer uses access given to SOE Volunteer to look up Customers personal information and SOE actually Telephones Customer to warn them not to be complaining about them. - http://n3rfed.blogs.com/n3rfed/2005/07/this_update_is_.html
When zoning in to the community portal players should no longer experience uncontrolled explosive diarrhea.
A small number of players were becoming comatose during the sleeper encounter, this bug should be fixed.
My IP address is changed by Comcast on a near daily basis. The updates Comcast sends to my cable modem are not readable by a plain Jane Motorola Cable modem and hence I'm forced to reboot said cable modem nearly every other day. The fees for just turning on my cable and running one line via the wall space (Rather than up the outside of my house like the fine service man wanted to do)even though I had to show the kid how to do it when I got home from work, $300.
The cable here goes out at least once every three or four days. We can be sitting watching a movie at 8pm and with a loud crash of static and blinding white snow the cable signal is lost for about five minutes. Speaking of that loud static... The sound on our cable is absolutely attrocious and our TV's volume has never been set higher, ever. We just moved to the east coast and left the midwest and compared to Charter (Which sucked) Comcast is complete shit.
First tier cable and Internet - $100 a month.
I don't P2P at all. I find P2P software to be far to insecure to run.
Doesn't this just say it all?
Issues? When a "modern" Operating System will install printer drivers that render it unable to uninstall said drivers, and unable to print, and unable to ever install another functioning printer, ever.
One has to ask, WTF?
That you'd have to play the game like I watched other game designers and myself do it in 1999 and 2000... Basically we called the boring grind finished the moment we could "buff" our avatars through each level of the game and really didn't even "test" or play the first 25-30 days of play time in the game. We just went straight to the finish of the game and played in God Mode for two years. - True Story
Just add one of these babies http://tinyurl.com/mdryu (Verizon Wireless)and presto you can play WoW at your children's graduations, weddings, sports events and at work, during sex, meals, funerals...
Warden buff. The damn thing already was checking the name and crc of every program running on your computer when Warden was running and it already read your browser history and windows keys and your email if your email was open and it read your System Registry too!
The real deal killer was when I found out the damn thing (Warden) was sending back descriptions of everything it looked at on my computer to Blizzard!
The only change is that now all that information Blizzard is gathering on you evil Blizzard customers is randomly encrypted rather than singularly encrypted.
Eventually the NSA will demand that Blizzard hand it all over and allow them to monitor you and Blizzard will let them and Blizzard customers won't care.
"The AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT clearly outperforms the GeForce 8800 GTS here. At the low end, none of our cards are playable under any option the Call of Juarez benchmark presents. While all the numbers shown here are with large shadow maps and high quality shadows, even without these features, the 2400 XT only posted about 10 fps at 1024x768. We didn't bother to test it against the rest of our cards because it just couldn't stack up."
In this day and age who wants to go from 60 FPS by upgrading down to 10 FPS on new hardware and new software?
For saying tobacco was addictive. - True Story
The AMA saying gaming isn't addictive is basically just another opinion nothing more nothing less... Unless you consider how they form their opinions. In 1964 they formed an opinion on tobacco based on the tobacco companies giving them tens of millions of dollars for research.
So any gaming companies giving the AMA monies for research? Oh that's right, funding grants are confidential.
Game designers and game employees have been pulling strings in their own games since the days of UO, Empolyees selling in game items on ebay... Anyone not remember "Bunnies of Chaos" and EQ cheating?
WoW emplyees slipping information on defeating boss monsters to their guilds early?
And my current employer is doing everything in their power to make me pay for leaving.
I've been in my current job for way more than two years and they are insisting that even though my contract said that I was free and clear after two years that I now owe them money for leaving, to the tune of 6k dollars.
I got a lawyer and he's basically telling me that the costs for fighting the situation are going to be more than they are screwing me out of.
I really don't understand their logic. Why would I stay?
For movies, CD's with rootkits and exploding laptop batteries.
Sony being highly rated is surprising but give Sony time because they obviously haven't had enough time to screw everyone, yet.
Here is the email:
My last just before their last:
I'm sorry we seem to not be communicating well. I would like a Refund and to cancel my account.
If you can not help me can you please refer me to someone who can?
Thank you,
XXXXX
Blizzard's last email:
Dear XXXX,
We apologize if you are unsatisfied with our product. If you are in North America and wish to be refunded for your purchase, please contact Vivendi Games' support at 1-800-757-7707 (Dial option 1).
Other areas: Please use this link - http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/icontact.shtml to find the game distributor nearest you.
Refunds are only available for World of Warcraft if purchased within the last 30 days.
If you have already set up an actual game account for World of Warcraft, and would like assistance with account cancellation, please call our Billing & Account Services team Monday through Friday between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm Pacific Time at 800-59-BLIZZARD (800-592-5499) or by emailing Billing@Blizzard.com. Customers in Australia should call 1-800-041-378.
Please make sure that you properly cancel any subscription on the Account, if you wish to no longer use it as outlined in the previous emails.
Sincerely,
XXXX X
Billing and Account Service Representative
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/
Than this for years.
The problem with licensing software is that eventually the customer will under the license they areee to have no rights at all.
Most online games already have the right to take your money and give you nothing in return. Many online games already do that "take your money and good-bye" on a whim. See the latest rounds of bannings from World of Warcraft as an example. I'm sure some of those people were innocent and had just forked over $175 for a six month subscription. "No refunds and no software because we can." - the future of software licensing.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:
* to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (mechanical rights; including, sometimes, electronic copies: distribution rights) * to import or export the work * to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work) * to perform or display the work publicly (performance rights) * to sell or assign these rights to others * to transmit or display by radio or video (broadcasting rights)
The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise those rights, and others are prohibited from using the work without the holders permission. Copyright is sometimes called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit certain people (e.g., readers, viewers, or listeners, and primarily publishers and would be publishers) from doing something they would otherwise be able to do, rather than permitting people (e.g., authors) to do something they would otherwise be unable to do. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law. The rights of the copyright holder also permit him/her to not use or exploit their copyright, for some or all of the term. There is, however, a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law that is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right.[citation needed] Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that defining copyright purely as a negative right is incompatible with the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain.[weasel words] The right to adapt a work means to transform the way in which the work is expressed. Examples include developing a stage play or film script from a novel, translating a short story, and making a new arrangement of a musical work.
The RIAA has sued and settled with innocent people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_efforts_against_file-sharing#Criticism The RIAA has been criticized in the media after they subpoenaed Gertrude Walton, an 83-year-old grandmother who had died in December of 2004.[94] Mrs. Walton stood accused of swapping rock, pop and rap songs. The RIAA in 2003 attempted to sue Sarah Seabury Ward, a 66 year-old sculptor residing in Boston, Massachusetts. They alleged that she shared more than 2,000 songs illegally. The RIAA dropped the suit when it was discovered that she was a computer novice. The case was dismissed, but without prejudice. In a Brooklyn case, Elektra v. Schwartz,[95] against RaeJ Schwartz, a Queens woman with Multiple Sclerosis, the RIAA's lawyers wrote to the Judge that they were in possession of a letter in which "...America Online, Inc., has confirmed that Defendant was the owner of the internet access account through which hundreds of Plaintiffsâ(TM) sound recordings were downloaded and distributed to the public without Plaintiffsâ(TM) consent.â After the defense received a copy of the letter, it turned out that the letter merely identified Ms. Schwartz as the owner of an internet access account, and said nothing at all about "downloading" or "distributing".[96] The RIAA has also been criticized for bringing lawsuits against children, such as 12 year old Brianna LaHara in 2003.[97] The RIAA also attempted to sue Candy Chan of Michigan, for the alleged actions of her daughter, 13 year old Brittany Chan. Under the threat of a possible defendant's motion for summary judgment and attorneys fees, the RIAA withdrew the case Priority Records v. Chan.[98][99] When the court ruled in favor of the mother, dismissing the case, the RIAA proceeded to sue her child. However, prosecuting a minor is more difficult; the Michigan federal court required the RIAA to make provision for a guardian ad litem to be appointed to protect the interests of the child, and required the RIAA to be responsible for paying the guardian ad litem. The RIAA failed to submit a workable proposal, and the Court dismissed the case. The RIAA recently sued the 16-year old son of Patti Santangelo[100] and as of this writing is attempting to force a 10 year old girl in Oregon to be deposed (she would have been 7 years old at the time of the alleged infringement)[101]. The RIAA has also filed a lawsuit against a woman who has never bought, turned on, or used a personal computer for using an "online distribution system" to obtain unlicensed music files.[103] This occurred again in the Walls case; "I don't understand this", said James Walls, "How can they sue us when we don't even have a computer?".[104] The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Larry Scantlebury, a man who had passed away. They offered the deceased man's family a period of sixty days to grieve the death before they began to depose members of Mr. Scantleburyâ(TM)s family for the suit against his estate.[105]
Huge corporations can do whatever they want. Sure Blizzard has a beef with the Glider guy... But so does Microsoft when you run a VM with Linux while your MS OS is running. It's Occam's razor in real time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor
Intelligent Design is just a repackaging of Creation Theory... Creation Theory isn't a theory at all. Evolution Theory has been tested and retested from the morphological aspects to the genetic aspects and yet not once has a better theory been found. Intelligent Design has not been tested. The only evidence ever presented in regard to Intelligent Design/Creation Theory is "evidence" that Evolution Theory does not withstand scrutiny, which is of course preposterous, as every scientist on the planet would love to be the one who disproves such a long standing scrutinized theory. For example this nonsense: http://www.everystudent.com/wires/mtrushmore.html absolutely no testable evidence for anything is presented. So while the rest of the planet, excluding of course our "enemies" the Muslim extremists in the middle east, races to be the next major scientific power in biological and molecular science, we back pedal and allow teachers to teach religious tenants. shameful really.
SOE employee tells, SOE volunteer about a customer complaining about the SOE volunteer's behavior... SOE Volunteer uses access given to SOE Volunteer to look up Customers personal information and SOE actually Telephones Customer to warn them not to be complaining about them. - http://n3rfed.blogs.com/n3rfed/2005/07/this_update_is_.html
As long as the RIAA continues to cry like babies when they violate laws they themselves wrote and go crazy on customers they can .sevlesmeht kcuf og
What in the Hell does your chauvinistic outlook on life have to do with the topic of overly protected children not being innovative?
When zoning in to the community portal players should no longer experience uncontrolled explosive diarrhea. A small number of players were becoming comatose during the sleeper encounter, this bug should be fixed.
My IP address is changed by Comcast on a near daily basis. The updates Comcast sends to my cable modem are not readable by a plain Jane Motorola Cable modem and hence I'm forced to reboot said cable modem nearly every other day. The fees for just turning on my cable and running one line via the wall space (Rather than up the outside of my house like the fine service man wanted to do)even though I had to show the kid how to do it when I got home from work, $300. The cable here goes out at least once every three or four days. We can be sitting watching a movie at 8pm and with a loud crash of static and blinding white snow the cable signal is lost for about five minutes. Speaking of that loud static... The sound on our cable is absolutely attrocious and our TV's volume has never been set higher, ever. We just moved to the east coast and left the midwest and compared to Charter (Which sucked) Comcast is complete shit. First tier cable and Internet - $100 a month. I don't P2P at all. I find P2P software to be far to insecure to run. Doesn't this just say it all?
There would be two working versions of Vista for the desktop, Home and Work and one for servers. Monopolies are bad.
Issues? When a "modern" Operating System will install printer drivers that render it unable to uninstall said drivers, and unable to print, and unable to ever install another functioning printer, ever. One has to ask, WTF?
That you'd have to play the game like I watched other game designers and myself do it in 1999 and 2000... Basically we called the boring grind finished the moment we could "buff" our avatars through each level of the game and really didn't even "test" or play the first 25-30 days of play time in the game. We just went straight to the finish of the game and played in God Mode for two years. - True Story
Just add one of these babies http://tinyurl.com/mdryu (Verizon Wireless)and presto you can play WoW at your children's graduations, weddings, sports events and at work, during sex, meals, funerals...
I would rather see standard time abolished and DST year round. Seriously folks,Standard time is terrible.
Of the 9.3 million how many subscribers are actually profitable?
The real deal killer was when I found out the damn thing (Warden) was sending back descriptions of everything it looked at on my computer to Blizzard!
The only change is that now all that information Blizzard is gathering on you evil Blizzard customers is randomly encrypted rather than singularly encrypted.
Eventually the NSA will demand that Blizzard hand it all over and allow them to monitor you and Blizzard will let them and Blizzard customers won't care.
"The AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT clearly outperforms the GeForce 8800 GTS here. At the low end, none of our cards are playable under any option the Call of Juarez benchmark presents. While all the numbers shown here are with large shadow maps and high quality shadows, even without these features, the 2400 XT only posted about 10 fps at 1024x768. We didn't bother to test it against the rest of our cards because it just couldn't stack up." In this day and age who wants to go from 60 FPS by upgrading down to 10 FPS on new hardware and new software?
For saying tobacco was addictive. - True Story The AMA saying gaming isn't addictive is basically just another opinion nothing more nothing less... Unless you consider how they form their opinions. In 1964 they formed an opinion on tobacco based on the tobacco companies giving them tens of millions of dollars for research. So any gaming companies giving the AMA monies for research? Oh that's right, funding grants are confidential.
Game designers and game employees have been pulling strings in their own games since the days of UO, Empolyees selling in game items on ebay...
Anyone not remember "Bunnies of Chaos" and EQ cheating?
WoW emplyees slipping information on defeating boss monsters to their guilds early?
Nothing new here, except people's shock.
And my current employer is doing everything in their power to make me pay for leaving. I've been in my current job for way more than two years and they are insisting that even though my contract said that I was free and clear after two years that I now owe them money for leaving, to the tune of 6k dollars. I got a lawyer and he's basically telling me that the costs for fighting the situation are going to be more than they are screwing me out of. I really don't understand their logic. Why would I stay?
For movies, CD's with rootkits and exploding laptop batteries. Sony being highly rated is surprising but give Sony time because they obviously haven't had enough time to screw everyone, yet.
A slow start.
Here is the email: My last just before their last: I'm sorry we seem to not be communicating well. I would like a Refund and to cancel my account. If you can not help me can you please refer me to someone who can? Thank you, XXXXX Blizzard's last email: Dear XXXX, We apologize if you are unsatisfied with our product. If you are in North America and wish to be refunded for your purchase, please contact Vivendi Games' support at 1-800-757-7707 (Dial option 1). Other areas: Please use this link - http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/icontact.shtml to find the game distributor nearest you. Refunds are only available for World of Warcraft if purchased within the last 30 days. If you have already set up an actual game account for World of Warcraft, and would like assistance with account cancellation, please call our Billing & Account Services team Monday through Friday between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm Pacific Time at 800-59-BLIZZARD (800-592-5499) or by emailing Billing@Blizzard.com. Customers in Australia should call 1-800-041-378. Please make sure that you properly cancel any subscription on the Account, if you wish to no longer use it as outlined in the previous emails. Sincerely, XXXX X Billing and Account Service Representative Blizzard Entertainment http://www.blizzard.com/
Linux users that requested refunds and wanted to cancel their accounts after their accounts were reinstated got this:
If frigging Gmail wasn't down I'd post the GD email that says basically that Blizzard doesn't do Refunds.
Than this for years. The problem with licensing software is that eventually the customer will under the license they areee to have no rights at all. Most online games already have the right to take your money and give you nothing in return. Many online games already do that "take your money and good-bye" on a whim. See the latest rounds of bannings from World of Warcraft as an example. I'm sure some of those people were innocent and had just forked over $175 for a six month subscription. "No refunds and no software because we can." - the future of software licensing.