>Well, it seems here, though....that all this really doesn't apply to the >Apple iPod thing, IMHO. They do not have a monopoly...You can freely buy a >number of other brands of mp3 players that will happily hook into other >online stores, or like the iPod, you can easily rip your own CD's and use >that as your listening media.
The case is not really about monopoly but about locking in consumers and preventing them form using what they buy in whatever player they find suitable. What the law is really about is that if you DO want to add DRM stuff and lock player and such things so that the consumer is prevented from playing the music were he likes due to that, then you must provide the music (in this case), in vairious formats that fullfill that possibility of the consumer.
>If Apple is in violation of a law, then let >them suffer the appropriate consequences. Which laws do you believe they >violate?
They would, if the new law came into effect, violate that law. They might allready infringe on consumer sales laws, I really have no idea. I was commenting on this statment of yours:
"You have no inherent right to anything which belongs to anyone else, nor any inherent right to decide on what terms they are allowed to provide it to you, should they so choose."
To which I just informed you on that consumer sale laws typically limit and dissallow certain terms when you sell something.
In addition, to that, after a sale is done, you no longer have ownership and thus no control any longer. If someone doesn't like that, they should stop selling and keep it for themselves.
As for rights, they tend to comes from laws to begin with.
>The most fundamental problem is that the people selling these items and >gold are not the owners of the property, nor are they representatives of >the owners of the property (such as on a stock exchange).
Nor are the "seller" claiming to be the owner or claiming that the buyer will become the owner. The sale is really about a transfer of the item within the game, which actually is perfectly allowed by the ones hosting the game. It is not a sale of any physical property which you seems to think and consfuse the issue with.
>For the virtual items/money to be taxable, even theoretically, there would >have to be a transfer of ownership from either the owner of the game to the >person with the character, or from one character to another.
Well, your income from performing tasks in the game, for example transfering an item to someone else can be taxable as income regardless of if you own the game or not or if the owner of the game is involved or not.
>Actually, the MMO EULAs I've read have stated that everything on their >server is their property. In that case, it's possible that selling virtual >gold and items to people for real world money is [criminal] fraud since >you're selling something that doesn't belong to you (and you've in theory >agreed it doesn't belong to you buy "signing" the EULA at login).
Ehh, you are completely messing up things. The sale you talk about in regard to "fraud" and so on, is the actual sale of something in that it change owner. That is not what is going on when you "sell" things in a game. WHat you do is sell a posession in the game, that is, it is a transfer of who in the game holds the item (or gold). There is no sale in the traditional meaning were the buyer becomes the owner of it which you seems to believe.
Think of you playing a game of Monopoly with some friends. The owner of the game might or might not play with you. You pay real money to one of the players for him to give you one of his streets. Are you claiming that it is fraud since none of you owned the game? Are you arguing that you now own that specific street and can take it without when the game is over? Of course not. You payed for a tranmsfer of the street in the game, just as people do with items in the game. Can the owner of the game charge you with fraud or claim you are not allowed to do so since you are not the owner of the game and bring you to court? Of course not. It could have been against the rules of the game, possibly against the house rules you used for the specific session of the game and you might be kicked from the game, but there is no issue of who "owns" the game and it is completely irellevant if you call it "buying" the street or not.
>Question...would this stop me from streaming music over RDP from my house >to work?
Depends, are you doing so under the statuory license as set out in 114(d) of tghe copyright law? Or are you doing it under some other provision? Considering that it deals with playing music in public, I doubt it covers your case although I have not read the new proposal in depth, only the article linked. The simple answer seems to be that you are not at all affected, nor is your initial statement correct.
Depends on what you mean by "bussiest". If by passangers, then yes, it is ATlanta. If you mean by "moevements", that is landings and take-offs, the it is Chicago O'Hare.
That did not in any way relate to the original question. But to continue the questions, when did the broadcasters own the TV that they content is displayed on?
In the future, subway companies will demand that passengers stop and read all ads on the platform and in the stairs. Far to often people just "run" by them without reading. We reserve the right to deny anyone travelling with us that has not first read every single ad at the station!! After all, we get paid for this advertisment and if people don't read them, we get less money! This is close to stealing when you don't read all ads!!
>Yes, said companies are allowed to change their Terms of Service in such a >way.
Not nessecarilly. Many countries have consumer sales laws (which includes serivces as well as goods) that does not allow for such "change at will terms".
> It's their sandbox.
It is their sandbox as long as they keep it for themselves, when they go out and offer it to the public, they have to play according to laws and regulations which can limit what they can and can't do.
>If you don't like their rules, no one is forcing you to use their service.
And if you don't like the laws regulating the sales of goods and serivces, don't offer them.
>4. Disagree with it. >5. Return the software in opened packaging, for a full refund. >6. If your big-name retail outlet refuses then the software vendor *must* refund it,
Why would anyone have to refund you? Remember your step 4, you did not agree to it and hence there is no contract and thus what is stated in it is of zero validity and not binding to anyone.
>I would disagree. Legally you don't own the software you've bought, only the right to lease the code >from the maker for the purpose of temporary use.
What a warped idea. Please refer to any law that states that you don't own something you buy, that is the whole concept of buying. Why do people consistantly claim that software is an exception? When you buy software, you become the owner of a copy of the software, period. Of course, you can lease something as well, that is common for example in shops were you can rent a DVD, or a car and so on. The very same thing can for sure be set up for software although I have yet to see one.
>A retail clerk doesn't sell you the right to use that software,
Just as he doesn't sell me "the right to use" the toaster he might as well sell. You don't need to buy any "right to use" at all.
>he sells you the means to access it.
No, he sells a copy of the software, at least in every single computer software shop I have ever been to or seen. I have not seen a shop were they only sell "access to the toaster" either for the record.
>When you agree to the EULA
You never agree to any EULA when purchasing software, at least I have never done so, and in the few cases were that might be so, it is never an agreement with the shop, which would be the one regulating the purchase anyway.
>you agree not only to have a disc with code on it, which is all the cleak has given you, but to be >granter their permission to use that code.
What do you mean "agree to have a disc"? You allready have a disc, you purshcased it. In addition, you don't need ANY persmission to "use the code". There is nothing in, for example copyright law forbiding you to use it, nor is such use an exclusive right of the copyright holder. It is a non copyright issue.
>And until you have agreed all you've got is a disc and nothing more.
And you can use it just like anything else, for example run it and the software on it.
>Ticketmaster doesn't sell you being at the concert, ticketmaster sells you a ticket to get in.
When did software start to be a show or performace you went to to look or listen to? You don't need to pay any entrance to any place to get software. Software is sold as physical goods normally (typically comes on a CD or DVD these days).
>Would you say that if a venue kicks you out that they've infringed on the contract that you made >with ticketmaster to see the show?
If someone kicks me out for no reason from a show I have payed for to enter, they are not fullfilling the service they sold to me and would violate consumer sales laws. Typically you don't refer to it as infringing a contract though. The same applies if you buy a toaster and it doesn't work or if you buy the service for someone to come and fix your roof and they fail to do so and so on.
Going to a concert is slightly different form biuying goods though since it is a service, although many things still apply. Hence your excerizise in discussing what applies at a concert is quite irsellevant although might be interesting in itself.
>it implies ownership, and most software is purchased under a license >agreement and there is no ownership involved.
Purchase means ownership, a transfer of it to the purchaser. hence if you purchase something (which you do in the shop for example), you have ownership. Don't be fooled into thinking something else. I am sure there are cases that does NOT involve purchase, there might be places were you rent software instead, in such a case, there is no ownership transfer. An alternative that is perhaps not used much comercially is that someone lend you the software, in such a case there is no owenrship transfer of course either.
>The shop that sells you software can't void the EULA of the software,
You got it backwards, the software company tries to void and/or affect and modify the sale contract between you and the shop, which was my point and comment, just as you say the clerk can't affect an agreement between you and the software company, neither can a software company affect the agreement between you and the shop, yet that is what almost every single EULA does in some way or another.
> In the worst case, you can tell the customer "that's not what it says, you're reading it wrong"
And what makes you think they are the ones who get to decide how to read it? I don't know about the consumer sales law were you live, but in Europea, any contract term that is vague should ALWAYS be interpreted in favor of the consumer.
>I would say probably not, because the clerk is in no way a legal party to the contract existing between >you and the software manufacturer and would logically be unable to impose legal responcibilities.
And just HOW do you propse the software company is a legal party to the contract (of purchase) between you and the shop? A typical EULA will change and or modify that purchase in various ways.
>Do you send a letter to the company after purchase saying "my use of this program is subject to >included terms and conditions?" If not, you're not talking about the same thing.
Why would you send it back? Do you send your acceptance of their proposal back? Perhaps contract law are different were you live than were I live but here a contract is an offer from one pary to another and then an acceptance of it back to the original party. Unless the one that makes the offer for a contract get an acceptance BACK to him, there is no contract.
Even without "evidence" it is not hard to guess that if more people start to pay a monthly fee to play some game, they will probably buy less other games since most people doesn't have unlimited budget for game purchases. If you allready pay half or one third of the price of some average game as subscription there is obviously less room for other new games, especially if you tend to buy less than a game every other month. In addition, you probably don't have any time left over for other games either since you allready are playing another....
>This is Bill's dream come true. They have already granted themselves this >power in their EULAs. This law gives them unambiguous rights to carry out >that EULA. So yes, they can "update" your boot loader, load your free >software with keyloggers and spyware, wipe partitions and do what ever they >want.
ANd how do you sugest that the program will figure out in which state (or which country for that matter) the computer happens to exist in at any given moment? Otherwsie it would have no idea about what law applies, now would it?
>This clause allows your anti-spyware software to scan your computer for >spyware instzalled with some other 3rd party application and remove it and >it allows it to take steps to prevent it from adding itself to your >computer in the first place.
And who decides if it is spyware and how would such programs know if you have it unknowingly or have in fact authorized it by its own EULA. In addition, nothing prevents the typical spyware to do the same as long as it has some EULA telling, perhaps it can decide that some program by Microsoft is in fact spyware since it fetches data from you and removes it and so on.
>Aside from whether or not business methods should be patentable... since >they were granted the patent, it's pretty obvious that they had come up with >a novel process which was straight-up copied.
Please tell what part of it that is novel and non obvious (to people in THAT area)? In addition, it should be something that no one has done before 2003 (or even later since that was the first patent).
>There are companies out their who are very reasonable with the conditions >they set on their Intellectual Property - yet people in the "hacking" >community continue to abuse their trust.
COuld you give any examples? What "conditions" do you refer to? Are you saying that copyright law itself is not reasonable? If not so, why would there need to be any extra conditions to make it reasonable?
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>Well, it seems here, though....that all this really doesn't apply to the
>Apple iPod thing, IMHO. They do not have a monopoly...You can freely buy a
>number of other brands of mp3 players that will happily hook into other
>online stores, or like the iPod, you can easily rip your own CD's and use
>that as your listening media.
The case is not really about monopoly but about locking in consumers and preventing them form using what they buy in whatever player they find suitable. What the law is really about is that if you DO want to add DRM stuff and lock player and such things so that the consumer is prevented from playing the music were he likes due to that, then you must provide the music (in this case), in vairious formats that fullfill that possibility of the consumer.
>If Apple is in violation of a law, then let
>them suffer the appropriate consequences. Which laws do you believe they
>violate?
They would, if the new law came into effect, violate that law. They might allready infringe on consumer sales laws, I really have no idea. I was commenting on this statment of yours:
"You have no inherent right to anything which belongs to anyone else, nor any inherent right to decide on what terms they are allowed to provide it to you, should they so choose."
To which I just informed you on that consumer sale laws typically limit and dissallow certain terms when you sell something.
In addition, to that, after a sale is done, you no longer have ownership and thus no control any longer. If someone doesn't like that, they should stop selling and keep it for themselves.
As for rights, they tend to comes from laws to begin with.
You obviously have never heared about consumer sales laws which typically DO tell what terms are allowed and what terms are not allowed.
>The most fundamental problem is that the people selling these items and
>gold are not the owners of the property, nor are they representatives of
>the owners of the property (such as on a stock exchange).
Nor are the "seller" claiming to be the owner or claiming that the buyer will become the owner. The sale is really about a transfer of the item within the game, which actually is perfectly allowed by the ones hosting the game. It is not a sale of any physical property which you seems to think and consfuse the issue with.
>For the virtual items/money to be taxable, even theoretically, there would
>have to be a transfer of ownership from either the owner of the game to the
>person with the character, or from one character to another.
Well, your income from performing tasks in the game, for example transfering an item to someone else can be taxable as income regardless of if you own the game or not or if the owner of the game is involved or not.
>Actually, the MMO EULAs I've read have stated that everything on their
>server is their property. In that case, it's possible that selling virtual
>gold and items to people for real world money is [criminal] fraud since
>you're selling something that doesn't belong to you (and you've in theory
>agreed it doesn't belong to you buy "signing" the EULA at login).
Ehh, you are completely messing up things. The sale you talk about in regard to "fraud" and so on, is the actual sale of something in that it change owner. That is not what is going on when you "sell" things in a game. WHat you do is sell a posession in the game, that is, it is a transfer of who in the game holds the item (or gold). There is no sale in the traditional meaning were the buyer becomes the owner of it which you seems to believe.
Think of you playing a game of Monopoly with some friends. The owner of the game might or might not play with you. You pay real money to one of the players for him to give you one of his streets. Are you claiming that it is fraud since none of you owned the game? Are you arguing that you now own that specific street and can take it without when the game is over? Of course not. You payed for a tranmsfer of the street in the game, just as people do with items in the game. Can the owner of the game charge you with fraud or claim you are not allowed to do so since you are not the owner of the game and bring you to court? Of course not. It could have been against the rules of the game, possibly against the house rules you used for the specific session of the game and you might be kicked from the game, but there is no issue of who "owns" the game and it is completely irellevant if you call it "buying" the street or not.
>Question...would this stop me from streaming music over RDP from my house
>to work?
Depends, are you doing so under the statuory license as set out in 114(d) of tghe copyright law? Or are you doing it under some other provision? Considering that it deals with playing music in public, I doubt it covers your case although I have not read the new proposal in depth, only the article linked. The simple answer seems to be that you are not at all affected, nor is your initial statement correct.
Depends on what you mean by "bussiest". If by passangers, then yes, it is ATlanta. If you mean by "moevements", that is landings and take-offs, the it is Chicago O'Hare.
c ontent.jsp?zn=aci&cp=1-7-46^6865_9_2__
http://www.airports.org/cda/aci/display/main/aci_
That did not in any way relate to the original question. But to continue the questions, when did the broadcasters own the TV that they content is displayed on?
In the future, subway companies will demand that passengers stop and read all ads on the platform and in the stairs. Far to often people just "run" by them without reading. We reserve the right to deny anyone travelling with us that has not first read every single ad at the station!! After all, we get paid for this advertisment and if people don't read them, we get less money! This is close to stealing when you don't read all ads!!
>Yes, said companies are allowed to change their Terms of Service in such a
>way.
Not nessecarilly. Many countries have consumer sales laws (which includes serivces as well as goods) that does not allow for such "change at will terms".
> It's their sandbox.
It is their sandbox as long as they keep it for themselves, when they go out and offer it to the public, they have to play according to laws and regulations which can limit what they can and can't do.
>If you don't like their rules, no one is forcing you to use their service.
And if you don't like the laws regulating the sales of goods and serivces, don't offer them.
>4. Disagree with it.
>5. Return the software in opened packaging, for a full refund.
>6. If your big-name retail outlet refuses then the software vendor *must* refund it,
Why would anyone have to refund you? Remember your step 4, you did not agree to it and hence there is no contract and thus what is stated in it is of zero validity and not binding to anyone.
>I would disagree. Legally you don't own the software you've bought, only the right to lease the code
>from the maker for the purpose of temporary use.
What a warped idea. Please refer to any law that states that you don't own something you buy, that is the whole concept of buying. Why do people consistantly claim that software is an exception? When you buy software, you become the owner of a copy of the software, period. Of course, you can lease something as well, that is common for example in shops were you can rent a DVD, or a car and so on. The very same thing can for sure be set up for software although I have yet to see one.
>A retail clerk doesn't sell you the right to use that software,
Just as he doesn't sell me "the right to use" the toaster he might as well sell. You don't need to buy any "right to use" at all.
>he sells you the means to access it.
No, he sells a copy of the software, at least in every single computer software shop I have ever been to or seen. I have not seen a shop were they only sell "access to the toaster" either for the record.
>When you agree to the EULA
You never agree to any EULA when purchasing software, at least I have never done so, and in the few cases were that might be so, it is never an agreement with the shop, which would be the one regulating the purchase anyway.
>you agree not only to have a disc with code on it, which is all the cleak has given you, but to be
>granter their permission to use that code.
What do you mean "agree to have a disc"? You allready have a disc, you purshcased it. In addition, you don't need ANY persmission to "use the code". There is nothing in, for example copyright law forbiding you to use it, nor is such use an exclusive right of the copyright holder. It is a non copyright issue.
>And until you have agreed all you've got is a disc and nothing more.
And you can use it just like anything else, for example run it and the software on it.
>Ticketmaster doesn't sell you being at the concert, ticketmaster sells you a ticket to get in.
When did software start to be a show or performace you went to to look or listen to? You don't need to pay any entrance to any place to get software. Software is sold as physical goods normally (typically comes on a CD or DVD these days).
>Would you say that if a venue kicks you out that they've infringed on the contract that you made
>with ticketmaster to see the show?
If someone kicks me out for no reason from a show I have payed for to enter, they are not fullfilling the service they sold to me and would violate consumer sales laws. Typically you don't refer to it as infringing a contract though. The same applies if you buy a toaster and it doesn't work or if you buy the service for someone to come and fix your roof and they fail to do so and so on.
Going to a concert is slightly different form biuying goods though since it is a service, although many things still apply. Hence your excerizise in discussing what applies at a concert is quite irsellevant although might be interesting in itself.
>it implies ownership, and most software is purchased under a license
>agreement and there is no ownership involved.
Purchase means ownership, a transfer of it to the purchaser. hence if you purchase something (which you do in the shop for example), you have ownership. Don't be fooled into thinking something else. I am sure there are cases that does NOT involve purchase, there might be places were you rent software instead, in such a case, there is no ownership transfer. An alternative that is perhaps not used much comercially is that someone lend you the software, in such a case there is no owenrship transfer of course either.
>...until software comes with some sort of normal consumer
>warranty "suitable for purpose" "works as advertised" and etc.
Check your local consumer sales law, most likely there is no exception for software, hence there allready is such a thing.
>The shop that sells you software can't void the EULA of the software,
You got it backwards, the software company tries to void and/or affect and modify the sale contract between you and the shop, which was my point and comment, just as you say the clerk can't affect an agreement between you and the software company, neither can a software company affect the agreement between you and the shop, yet that is what almost every single EULA does in some way or another.
>3. If you break the license, how do i get my money back
Problem is, in most EULA, there is NO way for them to break the contract since they promise nothing and have no responsaibilites.
> In the worst case, you can tell the customer "that's not what it says, you're reading it wrong"
And what makes you think they are the ones who get to decide how to read it? I don't know about the consumer sales law were you live, but in Europea, any contract term that is vague should ALWAYS be interpreted in favor of the consumer.
> Sales don't end at purchase, as far as contracts go.
Huh? A sale of something ends the moment you exchange money for the goods and leave the store.
>I would say probably not, because the clerk is in no way a legal party to the contract existing between
>you and the software manufacturer and would logically be unable to impose legal responcibilities.
And just HOW do you propse the software company is a legal party to the contract (of purchase) between you and the shop? A typical EULA will change and or modify that purchase in various ways.
>Do you send a letter to the company after purchase saying "my use of this program is subject to
>included terms and conditions?" If not, you're not talking about the same thing.
Why would you send it back? Do you send your acceptance of their proposal back? Perhaps contract law are different were you live than were I live but here a contract is an offer from one pary to another and then an acceptance of it back to the original party. Unless the one that makes the offer for a contract get an acceptance BACK to him, there is no contract.
Even without "evidence" it is not hard to guess that if more people start to pay a monthly fee to play some game, they will probably buy less other games since most people doesn't have unlimited budget for game purchases. If you allready pay half or one third of the price of some average game as subscription there is obviously less room for other new games, especially if you tend to buy less than a game every other month. In addition, you probably don't have any time left over for other games either since you allready are playing another....
>This is Bill's dream come true. They have already granted themselves this
>power in their EULAs. This law gives them unambiguous rights to carry out
>that EULA. So yes, they can "update" your boot loader, load your free
>software with keyloggers and spyware, wipe partitions and do what ever they
>want.
ANd how do you sugest that the program will figure out in which state (or which country for that matter) the computer happens to exist in at any given moment? Otherwsie it would have no idea about what law applies, now would it?
>This clause allows your anti-spyware software to scan your computer for
>spyware instzalled with some other 3rd party application and remove it and
>it allows it to take steps to prevent it from adding itself to your
>computer in the first place.
And who decides if it is spyware and how would such programs know if you have it unknowingly or have in fact authorized it by its own EULA. In addition, nothing prevents the typical spyware to do the same as long as it has some EULA telling, perhaps it can decide that some program by Microsoft is in fact spyware since it fetches data from you and removes it and so on.
>Aside from whether or not business methods should be patentable... since
>they were granted the patent, it's pretty obvious that they had come up with
>a novel process which was straight-up copied.
Please tell what part of it that is novel and non obvious (to people in THAT area)? In addition, it should be something that no one has done before 2003 (or even later since that was the first patent).
>There are companies out their who are very reasonable with the conditions
>they set on their Intellectual Property - yet people in the "hacking"
>community continue to abuse their trust.
COuld you give any examples? What "conditions" do you refer to? Are you saying that copyright law itself is not reasonable? If not so, why would there need to be any extra conditions to make it reasonable?