>Yes and no. For example, copyright law has both >civil and criminal components. Any copyright >owner is entitled to bring civil action.
Yes, but you do that through some sort of court (or court like) procedure, no? Or is for example USA that different? After all, we are talking about breaking a law here, not some sort of contractual issue. On top of that, a user is (possibly) breaking it, not the ISP who they have contacted.
>Any US (or Japanese or Lichtensteinian) company >is perfectly free to hire an Aussie law firm and >proceed through the Australian courts. >Australia is a signatory to the Berne convention >and is obligated to enforce copyrights.
Yes but they should do it according to Australian laws, not US laws as appearantly they were trying.
Also, isn't it up to the authoroties (courts, police, whatever) to decide if some illegal activity has been done? That should be the proper way to handle such things in my opinion. Neither the US company, the Australian ISP or any lawyer hired can decide if illegal activity has been conducted (although they may make well educated guesses and opinions). So why should anyone (ISP) act until it was decide illegal activity was done. What if the user for example actually shared a decoy file with nonsens in it?
Do they actually download every file they find they believe they (or rather one they act of behalf on) hold the copyright to and then check it out? What if the file in question was for example a decoy with just random nonsens in it? What if they download something and it turns out someone ELSE hold the copyright on. Do they report themseves? (Assuming they operate were it is illegal to download and not just share.)
What I found interesting is that they were quoting US laws of various sorts in their mail. Shouldn't they have been quoting some Australian laws instead? The US laws are quite uninteresting for the both the ISP and the actual user.
Actually it would be the sharing that is illegal in most countries. Sharing it, is the distribution part of it which you are not allowed to do under most (all?) countries copyright laws. Just as selling it is the illegal part and not nessecarilly buying (although both can be illegal of ocurse).
If you take Sweden as an example, it is actually legal to download but not to share (although a change in law is on the way to make the download illegal too).
The problem with trademarks are that they are divided into different categories. Thus the same name can be used as a trademark by many different companies/persons. So who get the domain name?
With domain names such as.com and other non country specific ones it gets also more complicated because trademarks are also specific to countries or groups of coutreis (although some are registered in basically all).
The article never managed to mentioned that it is only 1/4th in size. After all it is the equivalency of 4 normal DVD writers and yet the same size. Talk about size efficienzy!
Re:There's no point to this article...
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 1
If I am not mistaken, you can take a country to the "EU court". You can't take a civil case there, right?
People in individual countries still "only" has to follow theor own laws, but one can take the country to the court for not having the rigth laws so to speak. Perhaps anyone can elighten us on this.
Re:Try Catching the REAL criminals
on
eBay Beats DMCA
·
· Score: 1
>Making unauthorised copies of a copyrighted work
>is illegal.
True. One need to know what is authorized and not though, for example by the law.
>It's almost impossible to catch and prosecute
>people who make copies of CDs for their friends,
>and other such illegal acts.
That would depend on which country one happens to live in, in Sweden for example it is not illegal (thus authorized) to make copies of music for example to close friends and family, it is part of the "fair use". The same govern most other copyrighted material types, computer software being an exception though.
I think (but am not sure) the same holds true for other countries in Europe too.
>Actually, you do. Check out photo.net for more
>details, but this is a really huge concern for a
>lot of photographers. Basically, if I (as a
>photographer) produce an image with a
>recognizable person in it, I am required to have
>a model release form before I can use the image
>professionally. If I don't cover my donkey with
>the right paperwork, you (as the recognizable
>person in my image) can sue me.
That must be a USA (or whatever couintry you live in) specific law, it would not work the same way in all countries.
>Its pretty fucking obvious that AOL is sucking up
>every copyrighted work they can, presumably to
>have copies of everything of value that
>passes by AIM. Their EULA allows them unlimited
>copyright to anything that passes by their
>systems, even if it is hosted on a third party
>system that doesn't agree to their EULA.
Only the copyright holder can give rights away, thus someone that does NOT hold copyright can't give it away. No matter what their EULA says, only if the one holding the copyright agrees to give AOL the copyright would they get it, someone else can't do that. SO if you have copyright on some pictures and I don't, AOL can't get copyright by ME sending the pictures over their AIM (or whatever the way is for them to get it). It doesn't matter what agreements I make with AOL, they will not get the copyright to the pictures as long as YOU don't make the agreement.
The links on the page is not really changed at all. To others it will still be the same it always been. But, assuming I install a program and set it up to change every link to Linux to go to MS on web pages I visit, what is the problem? I am using a program on my computer that format or display a page in a way I want. It is not affecting anyone else. It is not much more different from me buying a book from you and then every time I see the word Linux in the text, I take a big black pen replacing it with MS (I personally don't have anything agaist Linux, I just continued on your example). What is the problem? If I want my program to add links to pages I look at, why should I not be able to do that?
What about changing the text colour? I have setings in my browser that do that. I can have it display fonts different ones than the web page tell if I want, I can have it turn of pictures and so on. This is not any different at all.
What if I decide to only read every other word on your page, should I not be allowed to do that? What if I decide to stop reading after a few lines of text since I don't like the page or since I belive it uses bad language or whatever. What if I instead of the above install and use a program that do it for me instead, why should I not be able to do, read text and view pictures and so on on my computer the way I want it?
Of course, if such programs are installed without the owner of the computer knwoing about, THEN it is bad, but probably more so for the one that got it installed than web page owners.
>If I have a webpage dedicated to 'Save the
>Whales', and TopText decides to go and change
>every mention of the word whale or ivory or
>blubber or whatever and point them to fisherman
>sites which will sell you whale ivory, whale oil,
>or whale skin comforters, would that be ok
>with you? This is what we're talking about here.
Ehh, if I installed a program on my computer, that made such changes, yes, it woudl be fine with me.
We are not talking about someone sneaking in such changes without me knowing, it is after all a program that I (or who ever does it) can chose to install. True, there are some things about it that may not be that good, but then, from the text it is not easy to tell exactly how it works. As long as it is documented properly and I (the one installing it) can control it and can in some way check what it do, then, fine, why wouldn't it be?
If it just instals telling me it will work like a dictionary and without my knowledge it changes webpages, of course it would not be fine. But that would still be me worried as a user of the program.
>The original intent of the webpage was changed
>without prior consent of the copyright holder of
>that content, i.e. the author of it. We're not
>talking about making some sort of "dictionary
>portal" available from within the browser, we're
>talking about changing the intent.
NO, the content was not changed, it was just I (assuming agin I had such a program), that decided I wanted to read it in a specific way, for example geting all sorts of links (strange or not) for various words. I can do that if I want, just as if I read a book, I can add all sort of notes and such about words (I can write all sort of nasty things each time the word "home" appears for example, or ask someone else to do that for me).
From the text, it seemed more like it added links and such though, not really changed the text arround, although if I surfing arround the net wanted to have a program do that, fine, why should I not? I have never seen anyone complain about the smurfalizer for example, it actually DO change the content of pages you supply to it for viewing.
So basically this is about the reader deciding to change or add links to a page HE is reading. It is not affecting anyone else at all. It would be like me repainting my car (never heared anyone (especially not the car manufacturer) comming screaming that "it is not the intent of the manufacturer that the car should be lime and have nasty words painted on the doors".
The problem is, what is the "correct" and unmodified way to display the page? If I turn off the pictures from showing in my browser, would that be "illegal" according to you? Of course it can't be. What if a browser does nto support a feature you have, is it then "illegal"? Take a typical page and view it in Netscape and then IE, there will be differences.
And finally, most important of all, it is after all the viewer that decided to install and use the program that added some links according to the settings he chose in his browser/add-on, why should he not be able to do that? Netx you will tell me I am not allowed to change the window size of the browser viewing your pages. Or that I am not allowed to lookup a word on your page in a dictionary (or even better, perhasp use some prgram that can do that automaticaly for me).
What I would really like though, add/os (or preferably a seting in the browser directly), to prevent pop up windows and such to appear at all, THAT would be a great feature, wonder why no browser implements such featrues (well, none that I have tried).
>I have to disagree. Diablo 2 has been out for
>quite some time and only in recent times did we
>see any significant work being done on boosting
>the realms with many realms not getting much of a
>boost until just before the expansion was
>released. That's why we had so many people from
>Asia and Europe playing on USEast and USWest -
>the performance was so awful on Asia and Europe
>realms that they just came here.
This is not true, all realms have had both quite huge increases in servers and in bandwidth.
>The D2 games are a prime example of Blizzard
>rushing.
I agree, both the game and the expansion were in my opinion rushed and would have needed several more months of work on.
One have to mae a destinction though, Diablo is done by Blizzard North while the other games are done at the "main" Blizzard. Sure, same company and such, but there IS a difference, they don't even are located in the same place.
>In D2 we had Barbarians' weapon mastery counting
>twice,
Never heared of that one, it was factored in as an over all damage bonus though and not applied just to the weapon damage as it should have been, in addition it had a hidden critical hit feature. It is now working as it should and the critical hit is mentioned in the skill description (althuogh toned down some).
>bonuses not counting on
>bows and Corpse Explosion for the Nercomancer
>scaling up with monster HP (which would be nice
>now:P ). Fend was completely awful
>(and still is since it attacks at only range 1
>even with a 5 range weapon), duel wielding for
>Barbarians didn't do a damn thing for
>Whirlwind....
>the list goes on.
It didn't count for many skills. I agree, there were many bugs and problems that took an awefull lot of time to get fixed. I suspect many were just pushed until the expansion for fixing as they really had an enormous ammount of problems and bugs to work on.
>THIS is Blizzard quality? Then they rushed the
>expansion out to meet their deadling of
>first-half-2001 and, as soon as you went to play
>on the reamlms, were welcomed to 1.07 and 1.08.
The expansion shiped as 1.07, the 1.08 was ont he realms, it was not only for the expansion but also (unfortunately in my opinion) applied most of the game changes of the expansion to the normal game.
One central issue here seems to be the "if he travells to USA". Appearantly, although the law of course only apply to USA, apperantly, if you publish something on the internet, it would (by USA, or states there or whatever) be considered to have been done in USA (as well as in every country in the world I presume), and thus, when you get there, you get cought.
Now, this of course means that if more countries adopt similar laws and applies the laws in similar ways, soon, anything you do on the net will make you a criminal in a bunch of countries even if it is perfectly legal in your own country, and each time, you get more and more restricted in how you can travell in the world. I would't be surprised if it would be extended to non copyrigth issues in the future.
But why stop there? What would happen if you publish it in some newspaper or magazine? Perhaps one that happens to be sold in news stands all over the world? Even though legal in the country of origin, you suddenly can't go to other countries where it would be illegal. Soon one wouldn't be able to do anything of fear that one day you may want to travell to a country where that specific action is illegal, and due to various curcumstances, what you presented (or perhaps even told, people may retell it in that country, yeah stretching it here, but you get the idea) coule be reached, seen, heared or whatever in that country.
Imagine the example someone metioned in anpther thread, about porn being illeal in Soudi Arabia, imagine you releasing some magazine with porn, it happens that it is sold arround the world, and some copies end up in Saudi Arabie, next time you go there for whatever reason, whack, arresetd as you arrive and punished (whatever the punishment may be, I have no idea, but I bet it is probably not nice).
Soon people would be unable to travell anywhere. I certainly hope we never get there but the trend is obvious and scary.
Ehh, you confuse two things, owning a book (that is owning a physical property called book) and having the copyright to what is printed in the book. That is two very different things. You own the book (if you bought it), it is yours to do with whatever you want (well almost whatever). You can read it, trhow it in the trash bin, burn it up, tear out the pages, give it to someone, well, juast about anything. You can NOT make copies of it and start selling it though since you don't have the copyright of it. Two very different things.
Heh, the problem is that one can patent an algorithm to start with. Not sure how worldwide that is though, perhaps one can patent algorithms in most countries. For example actual program code is not possible to patent on amy countries. Oh well.
I suppose there are some specifications as to how to record on CD, the manufacturers of equipment to play CD probably follow those specifications. If this system would create a CD that does not follow those specifications it is a "malfunctioning" CD, otherwise (if there is no other problems with it) it would probably be OK, but then it should not be able to harm the equipment in the first place and the whole issue is finnished as it was wrong:)
>You don't have the right just because you assume.
>Legally you don't have the right to copy a CD
>unless they explicitly give you permission, as
>often done on computer CDs.
That would probably depend on the exact copyright of each country. For example, Swedish copyright laws has restrictions (in that you are not allowed to make copies) on the copyright, meaning it does not apply to copies of personal use (personal here includes not only your slef but also family and close friends). You need no such permission since the laws says copyright does not prevent it.
Thus (if your countries laws doesn't forbid you) such use of the music CD you bought that cause damage to your equipment would not depend on if you played the original CD, or "played" it through anything that made a copy for example. It is just one way to use the product. The copyright law does not say that music Cds are only allowed to be played on a player that can't copy it and so on.
The right for such use (copy for "priavte" use I mentioned above) by the way is not possible to remove by contract or something like that.
As for the original poster, if you make no special agreement when buying something, what the law says applies, that is, in this case copyright law and applicable laws dealing with selling products to consumers would tell you what applies, what rights one have, what is not allowed and such. The law may also, for example, say that some things are NOT allowed to be contracted. Again, according to Swedish laws, you are not allowed to shorten the warranty time the stated in the law (you are allowed to make it longer though). Typically what you find in the so called EULA are weither just restating what the copyright laws (and other laws) says or things that you can't really change or agree upon at all. Then there is a msaller part that actually IS allowed to make contract about.
The DMCA is a USA only thing (possibly other countries have something similar, most don't though). Many countries alow copying for personal use (and personal may include for example family and close friends, it does for example in Sweden), thus there is nothing wrong with making a copy, except that in this case, it may harm your equipment. That is no different than if the original CD harmed it.
Slashdot Mirror
>Yes and no. For example, copyright law has both
>civil and criminal components. Any copyright
>owner is entitled to bring civil action.
Yes, but you do that through some sort of court (or court like) procedure, no? Or is for example USA that different? After all, we are talking about breaking a law here, not some sort of contractual issue. On top of that, a user is (possibly) breaking it, not the ISP who they have contacted.
>Any US (or Japanese or Lichtensteinian) company
>is perfectly free to hire an Aussie law firm and
>proceed through the Australian courts.
>Australia is a signatory to the Berne convention
>and is obligated to enforce copyrights.
Yes but they should do it according to Australian laws, not US laws as appearantly they were trying.
Also, isn't it up to the authoroties (courts, police, whatever) to decide if some illegal activity has been done? That should be the proper way to handle such things in my opinion. Neither the US company, the Australian ISP or any lawyer hired can decide if illegal activity has been conducted (although they may make well educated guesses and opinions). So why should anyone (ISP) act until it was decide illegal activity was done. What if the user for example actually shared a decoy file with nonsens in it?
Do they actually download every file they find they believe they (or rather one they act of behalf on) hold the copyright to and then check it out? What if the file in question was for example a decoy with just random nonsens in it? What if they download something and it turns out someone ELSE hold the copyright on. Do they report themseves? (Assuming they operate were it is illegal to download and not just share.)
What I found interesting is that they were quoting US laws of various sorts in their mail. Shouldn't they have been quoting some Australian laws instead? The US laws are quite uninteresting for the both the ISP and the actual user.
Actually it would be the sharing that is illegal in most countries. Sharing it, is the distribution part of it which you are not allowed to do under most (all?) countries copyright laws. Just as selling it is the illegal part and not nessecarilly buying (although both can be illegal of ocurse).
If you take Sweden as an example, it is actually legal to download but not to share (although a change in law is on the way to make the download illegal too).
Ehhh, laws (normally) doesn't turn action illegal retroiactively. Only things done AFTER a law is introduced is affected by it.
The problem with trademarks are that they are divided into different categories. Thus the same name can be used as a trademark by many different companies/persons. So who get the domain name?
.com and other non country specific ones it gets also more complicated because trademarks are also specific to countries or groups of coutreis (although some are registered in basically all).
With domain names such as
And what country did he live in again? Not US it appears.
I thought he lived in the UK, not US so why would an american law matter?
The article never managed to mentioned that it is only 1/4th in size. After all it is the equivalency of 4 normal DVD writers and yet the same size. Talk about size efficienzy!
If I am not mistaken, you can take a country to the "EU court". You can't take a civil case there, right?
People in individual countries still "only" has to follow theor own laws, but one can take the country to the court for not having the rigth laws so to speak. Perhaps anyone can elighten us on this.
>Making unauthorised copies of a copyrighted work
>is illegal.
True. One need to know what is authorized and not though, for example by the law.
>It's almost impossible to catch and prosecute
>people who make copies of CDs for their friends,
>and other such illegal acts.
That would depend on which country one happens to live in, in Sweden for example it is not illegal (thus authorized) to make copies of music for example to close friends and family, it is part of the "fair use". The same govern most other copyrighted material types, computer software being an exception though.
I think (but am not sure) the same holds true for other countries in Europe too.
>Actually, you do. Check out photo.net for more
>details, but this is a really huge concern for a
>lot of photographers. Basically, if I (as a
>photographer) produce an image with a
>recognizable person in it, I am required to have
>a model release form before I can use the image
>professionally. If I don't cover my donkey with
>the right paperwork, you (as the recognizable
>person in my image) can sue me.
That must be a USA (or whatever couintry you live in) specific law, it would not work the same way in all countries.
>Its pretty fucking obvious that AOL is sucking up
>every copyrighted work they can, presumably to
>have copies of everything of value that
>passes by AIM. Their EULA allows them unlimited
>copyright to anything that passes by their
>systems, even if it is hosted on a third party
>system that doesn't agree to their EULA.
Only the copyright holder can give rights away, thus someone that does NOT hold copyright can't give it away. No matter what their EULA says, only if the one holding the copyright agrees to give AOL the copyright would they get it, someone else can't do that. SO if you have copyright on some pictures and I don't, AOL can't get copyright by ME sending the pictures over their AIM (or whatever the way is for them to get it). It doesn't matter what agreements I make with AOL, they will not get the copyright to the pictures as long as YOU don't make the agreement.
>They can't announce the name of a song
>before playing it. They can't play two songs by
>the same artist in a row.
Does the DMCA law stats that? If so it must be one of the most strange things I have seen a law say.
The links on the page is not really changed at all. To others it will still be the same it always been. But, assuming I install a program and set it up to change every link to Linux to go to MS on web pages I visit, what is the problem? I am using a program on my computer that format or display a page in a way I want. It is not affecting anyone else. It is not much more different from me buying a book from you and then every time I see the word Linux in the text, I take a big black pen replacing it with MS (I personally don't have anything agaist Linux, I just continued on your example). What is the problem? If I want my program to add links to pages I look at, why should I not be able to do that?
What about changing the text colour? I have setings in my browser that do that. I can have it display fonts different ones than the web page tell if I want, I can have it turn of pictures and so on. This is not any different at all.
What if I decide to only read every other word on your page, should I not be allowed to do that? What if I decide to stop reading after a few lines of text since I don't like the page or since I belive it uses bad language or whatever. What if I instead of the above install and use a program that do it for me instead, why should I not be able to do, read text and view pictures and so on on my computer the way I want it?
Of course, if such programs are installed without the owner of the computer knwoing about, THEN it is bad, but probably more so for the one that got it installed than web page owners.
>If I have a webpage dedicated to 'Save the
>Whales', and TopText decides to go and change
>every mention of the word whale or ivory or
>blubber or whatever and point them to fisherman
>sites which will sell you whale ivory, whale oil,
>or whale skin comforters, would that be ok
>with you? This is what we're talking about here.
Ehh, if I installed a program on my computer, that made such changes, yes, it woudl be fine with me.
We are not talking about someone sneaking in such changes without me knowing, it is after all a program that I (or who ever does it) can chose to install. True, there are some things about it that may not be that good, but then, from the text it is not easy to tell exactly how it works. As long as it is documented properly and I (the one installing it) can control it and can in some way check what it do, then, fine, why wouldn't it be?
If it just instals telling me it will work like a dictionary and without my knowledge it changes webpages, of course it would not be fine. But that would still be me worried as a user of the program.
>The original intent of the webpage was changed
>without prior consent of the copyright holder of
>that content, i.e. the author of it. We're not
>talking about making some sort of "dictionary
>portal" available from within the browser, we're
>talking about changing the intent.
NO, the content was not changed, it was just I (assuming agin I had such a program), that decided I wanted to read it in a specific way, for example geting all sorts of links (strange or not) for various words. I can do that if I want, just as if I read a book, I can add all sort of notes and such about words (I can write all sort of nasty things each time the word "home" appears for example, or ask someone else to do that for me).
From the text, it seemed more like it added links and such though, not really changed the text arround, although if I surfing arround the net wanted to have a program do that, fine, why should I not? I have never seen anyone complain about the smurfalizer for example, it actually DO change the content of pages you supply to it for viewing.
So basically this is about the reader deciding to change or add links to a page HE is reading. It is not affecting anyone else at all. It would be like me repainting my car (never heared anyone (especially not the car manufacturer) comming screaming that "it is not the intent of the manufacturer that the car should be lime and have nasty words painted on the doors".
The problem is, what is the "correct" and unmodified way to display the page? If I turn off the pictures from showing in my browser, would that be "illegal" according to you? Of course it can't be. What if a browser does nto support a feature you have, is it then "illegal"? Take a typical page and view it in Netscape and then IE, there will be differences.
And finally, most important of all, it is after all the viewer that decided to install and use the program that added some links according to the settings he chose in his browser/add-on, why should he not be able to do that? Netx you will tell me I am not allowed to change the window size of the browser viewing your pages. Or that I am not allowed to lookup a word on your page in a dictionary (or even better, perhasp use some prgram that can do that automaticaly for me).
What I would really like though, add/os (or preferably a seting in the browser directly), to prevent pop up windows and such to appear at all, THAT would be a great feature, wonder why no browser implements such featrues (well, none that I have tried).
>I have to disagree. Diablo 2 has been out for
:P ). Fend was completely awful
>quite some time and only in recent times did we
>see any significant work being done on boosting
>the realms with many realms not getting much of a
>boost until just before the expansion was
>released. That's why we had so many people from
>Asia and Europe playing on USEast and USWest -
>the performance was so awful on Asia and Europe
>realms that they just came here.
This is not true, all realms have had both quite huge increases in servers and in bandwidth.
>The D2 games are a prime example of Blizzard
>rushing.
I agree, both the game and the expansion were in my opinion rushed and would have needed several more months of work on.
One have to mae a destinction though, Diablo is done by Blizzard North while the other games are done at the "main" Blizzard. Sure, same company and such, but there IS a difference, they don't even are located in the same place.
>In D2 we had Barbarians' weapon mastery counting
>twice,
Never heared of that one, it was factored in as an over all damage bonus though and not applied just to the weapon damage as it should have been, in addition it had a hidden critical hit feature. It is now working as it should and the critical hit is mentioned in the skill description (althuogh toned down some).
>bonuses not counting on
>bows and Corpse Explosion for the Nercomancer
>scaling up with monster HP (which would be nice
>now
>(and still is since it attacks at only range 1
>even with a 5 range weapon), duel wielding for
>Barbarians didn't do a damn thing for
>Whirlwind....
>the list goes on.
It didn't count for many skills. I agree, there were many bugs and problems that took an awefull lot of time to get fixed. I suspect many were just pushed until the expansion for fixing as they really had an enormous ammount of problems and bugs to work on.
>THIS is Blizzard quality? Then they rushed the
>expansion out to meet their deadling of
>first-half-2001 and, as soon as you went to play
>on the reamlms, were welcomed to 1.07 and 1.08.
The expansion shiped as 1.07, the 1.08 was ont he realms, it was not only for the expansion but also (unfortunately in my opinion) applied most of the game changes of the expansion to the normal game.
One central issue here seems to be the "if he travells to USA". Appearantly, although the law of course only apply to USA, apperantly, if you publish something on the internet, it would (by USA, or states there or whatever) be considered to have been done in USA (as well as in every country in the world I presume), and thus, when you get there, you get cought.
Now, this of course means that if more countries adopt similar laws and applies the laws in similar ways, soon, anything you do on the net will make you a criminal in a bunch of countries even if it is perfectly legal in your own country, and each time, you get more and more restricted in how you can travell in the world. I would't be surprised if it would be extended to non copyrigth issues in the future.
But why stop there? What would happen if you publish it in some newspaper or magazine? Perhaps one that happens to be sold in news stands all over the world? Even though legal in the country of origin, you suddenly can't go to other countries where it would be illegal. Soon one wouldn't be able to do anything of fear that one day you may want to travell to a country where that specific action is illegal, and due to various curcumstances, what you presented (or perhaps even told, people may retell it in that country, yeah stretching it here, but you get the idea) coule be reached, seen, heared or whatever in that country.
Imagine the example someone metioned in anpther thread, about porn being illeal in Soudi Arabia, imagine you releasing some magazine with porn, it happens that it is sold arround the world, and some copies end up in Saudi Arabie, next time you go there for whatever reason, whack, arresetd as you arrive and punished (whatever the punishment may be, I have no idea, but I bet it is probably not nice).
Soon people would be unable to travell anywhere. I certainly hope we never get there but the trend is obvious and scary.
Ehh, you confuse two things, owning a book (that is owning a physical property called book) and having the copyright to what is printed in the book. That is two very different things. You own the book (if you bought it), it is yours to do with whatever you want (well almost whatever). You can read it, trhow it in the trash bin, burn it up, tear out the pages, give it to someone, well, juast about anything. You can NOT make copies of it and start selling it though since you don't have the copyright of it. Two very different things.
Heh, the problem is that one can patent an algorithm to start with. Not sure how worldwide that is though, perhaps one can patent algorithms in most countries. For example actual program code is not possible to patent on amy countries. Oh well.
I suppose there are some specifications as to how to record on CD, the manufacturers of equipment to play CD probably follow those specifications. If this system would create a CD that does not follow those specifications it is a "malfunctioning" CD, otherwise (if there is no other problems with it) it would probably be OK, but then it should not be able to harm the equipment in the first place and the whole issue is finnished as it was wrong :)
>You don't have the right just because you assume.
>Legally you don't have the right to copy a CD
>unless they explicitly give you permission, as
>often done on computer CDs.
That would probably depend on the exact copyright of each country. For example, Swedish copyright laws has restrictions (in that you are not allowed to make copies) on the copyright, meaning it does not apply to copies of personal use (personal here includes not only your slef but also family and close friends). You need no such permission since the laws says copyright does not prevent it.
Thus (if your countries laws doesn't forbid you) such use of the music CD you bought that cause damage to your equipment would not depend on if you played the original CD, or "played" it through anything that made a copy for example. It is just one way to use the product. The copyright law does not say that music Cds are only allowed to be played on a player that can't copy it and so on.
The right for such use (copy for "priavte" use I mentioned above) by the way is not possible to remove by contract or something like that.
As for the original poster, if you make no special agreement when buying something, what the law says applies, that is, in this case copyright law and applicable laws dealing with selling products to consumers would tell you what applies, what rights one have, what is not allowed and such. The law may also, for example, say that some things are NOT allowed to be contracted. Again, according to Swedish laws, you are not allowed to shorten the warranty time the stated in the law (you are allowed to make it longer though). Typically what you find in the so called EULA are weither just restating what the copyright laws (and other laws) says or things that you can't really change or agree upon at all. Then there is a msaller part that actually IS allowed to make contract about.
The DMCA is a USA only thing (possibly other countries have something similar, most don't though). Many countries alow copying for personal use (and personal may include for example family and close friends, it does for example in Sweden), thus there is nothing wrong with making a copy, except that in this case, it may harm your equipment. That is no different than if the original CD harmed it.