1. DRM cannot be implemented to grant fair use access because the details of the law cannot be programmed into a computer. Can a computer decide that your use constitutes parody and thus greater amounts of copying are allowed? Can a computer decide whether your reverse engineering efforts are going to be used in the future to create a competitive product or not. Can they decide that such a use is allowed in your jurisdiction (US) but not in Europe?
2. DRM does more than enforce an agreement, it allows the creation of unreasonable agreements that extend beyond those anticipated by copyright law. Copyright law is supposed to present a balance of benefits for the public. Give the author a limited monopoly so that he can make money, but the public in return is supposed to get to enjoy the works the purchase including being able to exploit the limitations in the monopoly (like fair use, first sale, etc). DRM allows the copyright holder to work around all of those limitations and to then apply even more exploitive limitations.
Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for putting you in jail, but it is not the standard for getting your equipment back. If the FBI has probable cause to seize your equipment, and somehow never gets around to having a trial for you, you'll probably find it very difficult to get your equipment back, and impossible to get it back in any reasonable time frame.
I'm sympathetic with Sklyarov's position, but he was not prosecuted because of encryption research that he published in a journal, or for a speech he gave at a conference. As a doctoral candidate, perhaps he had sufficient credentials, but that only punches one of the holes in his ticket that the law requires.
Remember that the DMCA has provisions allowing exemptions for research related work. Serious papers, written by degreed and credentialed scientists and engineers, published in journals are very likely to qualify for the exemption. And that would include papers describing weaknesses in an encryption system, including the publishing of code exploiting or demonstrating those weaknesses.
If someone were to write a similar paper without those credentials, and published the paper on the web without also putting it in a journal, that person would have an uphill battle proving that his intention was research and not hacking.
Look at section 1201(g)(3) for factors showing how courts are supposed to determine whether you are a legitimate researcher or a criminal hacker.
And if we want to hear the cd again we should buy a new copy. If we are having friends and family over to the house, we should count the number of people who might hear the music and buy one copy of the cd per listener.
Your cable company has you in a very vulnerable position. If you do something that they don't like, but which isn't a violation, like using too much bandwidth surfing or downloading linux isos, they can terminate you for any one of the things they are now turning a blind eye to.
VPN usage looks like a particularly good "dump Tim Ward any time we get good and ready" hole card.
There is precedential value to the case, but it is not binding precedent, merely persuasive. So you're correct in stating the article which said the ruling was "binding" was a bit off.
Still, if the Sixth Circuit is citing the case in its opinions that's strong indication to every other judge in the Sixth Circuit that if they need to seriously follow the precedent, or risk being overturned. No judge wants that.
I think rule 11 sanctions are completely out of the question though.
It costs Microsoft money the same way refilling ink cartridges costs printer companies money. Microsoft is losing something like $150 on each X-Box it sells. Any X-Box that is used for something other than selling game cartridges cost MS money.
It's also similar to the situation where people were selling cheap internet appliances expecting to lock people into long, expensive ISP contracts. Anyone who bought one and hacked it to use as a cheap terminal was costing the company money.
Another similarly ineffective money losing endeaver was the CueCat debacle. Remember their value attempts to prevent people from hacking on hardware that they were giving away at Radio Shack?
Perhaps the real issue is whether there's any enforceable law that props up a business model that obvious gaping holes in it. Maybe the DMCA is applicable here? Are hackers bypassing any protective measures included by MS?
Contract law actually encourages breaching contracts when it is economically beneficial to the breacher. There are very rarely any punitive damages available when you sue on a contract. The innocent party simply gets whatever benefits he was owed under the contract plus whatever economic losses he suffered in dealing with the breach.
If the FBI is involved, there is something going on other than a contract action. There's probably some statute similar to the laws against stealing cable TV that's been broken.
In Australia, patents are issued without an examination. It's probably fraudulent to submit a patent on an invention when you know that the invention is not novel.
I would expect that in Australia, there is no presumption in court that such a patent is valid, while in the US, the presumption that an issued patent is valid is very high. I would also expect that someone who tried to enforce a patent on the wheel in an Australian court would regret the experience.
I think it would have been illegal if the original violations being discussed were criminal rather than civil.
The question I'd have is that without an identification of what patents were being infringed, exactly what did Sun buy for 20 million dollars? Did IBM give them a blanket license for all of their patents issued to that date?
I don't doubt that the meeting went largely the way the story is described, but I'm sure there were some more details involved that might make the whole thing sound a little last shady on IBM's part.
I think the real situation is much more complicated.
While I don't know the terms of NSA's agreement with SCC, it's possible that NSA contracted with SCC to come up with a distribution that they could distribute. If SCC asserts their patent rights then the contract isn't fulfilled. SCC probably is responsible for the resulting damages and would have to indemnify the NSA for any copyright infringement that results.
But the GPL is the gift that keeps on giving. I don't know who is reponsible for the infringement that results when people continue to circulate copies that are not directly from NSA.
I suspect that no one will care about any infringement other than that amount which can be pinned on SCC.
SCC may find that some courts aren't going to view their actions favorably if they attempt to sue users for violating their patents; particularly if it looks like they pulled some shenanigans on the NSA.
It seems like only last summer there were predictions of large increases in cdr prices. It's also true that Canada recently increased the levy on blank cdrs.
Further at least a few manufacturers have stopped making disks at all. I would expect that to put upward pressure on prices.
My own experience is that blanks cost slightly more this year than last. But then I'm not buying thousands of disks at a time.
"Doesn't this all really stem from the FSF's hijacking of the term "Free"? They lay claim to the term and then proceed to distort it to suit their political aims. It's all very disturbing."
No FSF representative claims that BSD code isn't free. The real issue is whether it is important that code derived from free code remain free. The BSD folks either don't think that's important or find the restrictions required to make that happen unacceptable. For the FSF folks that issue is a priority. But as far as high jacking the word free is concerned, free had a huge number of meanings before it was ever applied to software. I don't find the FSF's usage much of a stretch over some of those original meanings, and the FSF has been diligent to a fault to explain what they mean when they use the word.
"Why does the author keep referring to the IP community and the "GPL community" as separate things?"
Because he conducted his "research" the same way college students do their labs. You know how the things supposed to turn out, so you write the hypothesis and the conclusion and then throw in a bunch of faux data to make it come out right. Otherwise you'd have to actually go to chemistry lab. This "technique" is affectionately known as dry labbing. It's certainly academically dishonest.
There isn't any question that Ken Brown knew how his paper was going to turn out before he started writing it. He wrote his conclusions and then tried to fill in some arguments to support them. Almost anyone could have done a better job than this.
The paper is riddled with grammatical errors, incorrect statements of law, and factual mistakes.
Perhaps the paper was taken down to fix at least the grammatical errors that Mr. Brown and his organization ought to be less than proud of.
But I hope the other errors and obvious stupid comments stay in the paper.
By far the most amusing part of the paper is the description of Netscape's role in so infuriating the open source community that they flocked to Microsoft browser out of anger. Really? So Internet Explorer then runs on how many of the open source operating systems? Does Brown's version of what happened to Netscape match what the courts and the DOJ think happened?
"What I'd like explained to me is how the GPL could be considered somehow worse than other open source licenses for the purposes of national security."
The theory is explained in the paper, but it's quite lame. The idea is that if the government uses software under the GPL it will be forced to distribute code that it would rather keep secret, thus creating a security risk.
Unfortunately, some of the FUD in the paper won't be seen that way by some people. I've tried to explain the problem with security through obscurity to non computer literate people, and they don't buy it. They think the more obscure the more secure.
I highly recommend reading the paper with a highlighter and keeping track of the FUD. But try to remember that you are not the target audience. As an exercise try to imagine how you explain to a clueless person what the real errors and lies in Mr. Brown's work are.
And yet if you take a more modern look at politics you'll find that the party which racists latch onto is the Republican party even though the mainstream party members do distance themselves from them. Which party was David Duke associated with for example?
Why don't you come up with some good reasons why Blacks should have supported Nixon, Reagan, or Bush rather than their opposition?
Both the Republican party and the Democratic party are pretty far from their roots. Perhaps it's time to check out some history more recent than say the middle of last century.
As a final comment, your suggestion that Black's are only concerned with welfare and "decrepit public housing projects" probably tells me more than enough about your politics. I'm sure I'd never support a party that had you as a candidate.
At least some portion of TiVos, software is the linux covered operating system. I don't believe the GPL allows them to restrict you from modifying or reverse engineering the OS. Seems like a clear GPL violation to me.
Well there is a way. You simply change copyright law to match the way software works. That's the beauty and simplicity of the DMCA. Any access other than what the is allowed by the software is by definition illegal.
1. Unless you're paying for your dialup "by-the-byte" (does anyone still operate that way anymore?), they're not spending your money. You've already spent it. Internet is flat-fee in the vast majority of areas."
For broadband home users in the US, the days of unlimited downloads are probably numbered. Several cable modem providers have already announced plans to charge additional fees to heavy downloaders.
When I used a dialup connection, I used to get monthly reminders that I'd exceeded X number of hours per month, although no action was taken.
Not only that, but there are a number of email services that have limits on storage space, and are willing to allow you to pay for additional space.
Why do I want any of my download or storage quota taken up by spam? I am or soon will be paying by the byte to receive this stuff.
"Maybe I overestimate the share of artists the RIAA represents..."
The RIAA doesn't represent any artists. It's a trade and lobbying organization that represents five or six huge recording companies.
If they are really concerned about the artists they can counting the illegal bribe money as expenses that the artist owe.
It's not like the radio stations wouldn't play music if they weren't bribed. If all of the RIAA members stopped paying the bribes, wouldn't the problem end immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
Patents are still issued by individual countries. You have to get a patent issued by each country in which you intend to enforce the patent.
1. DRM cannot be implemented to grant fair use access because the details of the law cannot be programmed into a computer. Can a computer decide that your use constitutes parody and thus greater amounts of copying are allowed? Can a computer decide whether your reverse engineering efforts are going to be used in the future to create a competitive product or not. Can they decide that such a use is allowed in your jurisdiction (US) but not in Europe?
2. DRM does more than enforce an agreement, it allows the creation of unreasonable agreements that extend beyond those anticipated by copyright law. Copyright law is supposed to present a balance of benefits for the public. Give the author a limited monopoly so that he can make money, but the public in return is supposed to get to enjoy the works the purchase including being able to exploit the limitations in the monopoly (like fair use, first sale, etc). DRM allows the copyright holder to work around all of those limitations and to then apply even more exploitive limitations.
Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for putting you in jail, but it is not the standard for getting your equipment back. If the FBI has probable cause to seize your equipment, and somehow never gets around to having a trial for you, you'll probably find it very difficult to get your equipment back, and impossible to get it back in any reasonable time frame.
I'm sympathetic with Sklyarov's position, but he was not prosecuted because of encryption research that he published in a journal, or for a speech he gave at a conference. As a doctoral candidate, perhaps he had sufficient credentials, but that only punches one of the holes in his ticket that the law requires.
Remember that the DMCA has provisions allowing exemptions for research related work. Serious papers, written by degreed and credentialed scientists and engineers, published in journals are very likely to qualify for the exemption. And that would include papers describing weaknesses in an encryption system, including the publishing of code exploiting or demonstrating those weaknesses.
l
If someone were to write a similar paper without those credentials, and published the paper on the web without also putting it in a journal, that person would have an uphill battle proving that his intention was research and not hacking.
Look at section 1201(g)(3) for factors showing how courts are supposed to determine whether you are a legitimate researcher or a criminal hacker.
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.htm
Absolutely.
And if we want to hear the cd again we should buy a new copy. If we are having friends and family over to the house, we should count the number of people who might hear the music and buy one copy of the cd per listener.
"Seems reasonable to me."
It seems reasonable, but it may not be.
Your cable company has you in a very vulnerable position. If you do something that they don't like, but which isn't a violation, like using too much bandwidth surfing or downloading linux isos, they can terminate you for any one of the things they are now turning a blind eye to.
VPN usage looks like a particularly good "dump Tim Ward any time we get good and ready" hole card.
There is precedential value to the case, but it is not binding precedent, merely persuasive. So you're correct in stating the article which said the ruling was "binding" was a bit off.
Still, if the Sixth Circuit is citing the case in its opinions that's strong indication to every other judge in the Sixth Circuit that if they need to seriously follow the precedent, or risk being overturned. No judge wants that.
I think rule 11 sanctions are completely out of the question though.
It costs Microsoft money the same way refilling ink cartridges costs printer companies money. Microsoft is losing something like $150 on each X-Box it sells. Any X-Box that is used for something other than selling game cartridges cost MS money.
It's also similar to the situation where people were selling cheap internet appliances expecting to lock people into long, expensive ISP contracts. Anyone who bought one and hacked it to use as a cheap terminal was costing the company money.
Another similarly ineffective money losing endeaver was the CueCat debacle. Remember their value attempts to prevent people from hacking on hardware that they were giving away at Radio Shack?
Perhaps the real issue is whether there's any enforceable law that props up a business model that obvious gaping holes in it. Maybe the DMCA is applicable here? Are hackers bypassing any protective measures included by MS?
Contract law actually encourages breaching contracts when it is economically beneficial to the breacher. There are very rarely any punitive damages available when you sue on a contract. The innocent party simply gets whatever benefits he was owed under the contract plus whatever economic losses he suffered in dealing with the breach.
If the FBI is involved, there is something going on other than a contract action. There's probably some statute similar to the laws against stealing cable TV that's been broken.
In Australia, patents are issued without an examination. It's probably fraudulent to submit a patent on an invention when you know that the invention is not novel.
I would expect that in Australia, there is no presumption in court that such a patent is valid, while in the US, the presumption that an issued patent is valid is very high. I would also expect that someone who tried to enforce a patent on the wheel in an Australian court would regret the experience.
I think it would have been illegal if the original violations being discussed were criminal rather than civil.
The question I'd have is that without an identification of what patents were being infringed, exactly what did Sun buy for 20 million dollars? Did IBM give them a blanket license for all of their patents issued to that date?
I don't doubt that the meeting went largely the way the story is described, but I'm sure there were some more details involved that might make the whole thing sound a little last shady on IBM's part.
It won't work. The tax is only on drives that are built into music/movie players. There is no tax on naked hard drives.
I think the real situation is much more complicated.
While I don't know the terms of NSA's agreement with SCC, it's possible that NSA contracted with SCC to come up with a distribution that they could distribute. If SCC asserts their patent rights then the contract isn't fulfilled. SCC probably is responsible for the resulting damages and would have to indemnify the NSA for any copyright infringement that results.
But the GPL is the gift that keeps on giving. I don't know who is reponsible for the infringement that results when people continue to circulate copies that are not directly from NSA.
I suspect that no one will care about any infringement other than that amount which can be pinned on SCC.
SCC may find that some courts aren't going to view their actions favorably if they attempt to sue users for violating their patents; particularly if it looks like they pulled some shenanigans on the NSA.
It seems like only last summer there were predictions of large increases in cdr prices. It's also true that Canada recently increased the levy on blank cdrs.
Further at least a few manufacturers have stopped making disks at all. I would expect that to put upward pressure on prices.
My own experience is that blanks cost slightly more this year than last. But then I'm not buying thousands of disks at a time.
"Doesn't this all really stem from the FSF's hijacking of the term "Free"? They lay claim to the term and then proceed to distort it to suit their political aims. It's all very disturbing."
No FSF representative claims that BSD code isn't free. The real issue is whether it is important that code derived from free code remain free. The BSD folks either don't think that's important or find the restrictions required to make that happen unacceptable. For the FSF folks that issue is a priority. But as far as high jacking the word free is concerned, free had a huge number of meanings before it was ever applied to software. I don't find the FSF's usage much of a stretch over some of those original meanings, and the FSF has been diligent to a fault to explain what they mean when they use the word.
"Why does the author keep referring to the IP community and the "GPL community" as separate things?"
Because he conducted his "research" the same way college students do their labs. You know how the things supposed to turn out, so you write the hypothesis and the conclusion and then throw in a bunch of faux data to make it come out right. Otherwise you'd have to actually go to chemistry lab. This "technique" is affectionately known as dry labbing. It's certainly academically dishonest.
There isn't any question that Ken Brown knew how his paper was going to turn out before he started writing it. He wrote his conclusions and then tried to fill in some arguments to support them. Almost anyone could have done a better job than this.
"Look at this important research that proves why we need the GNU Illegal Code Act of 2003!".
I hope you're not cynically demeaning the "Patriotic Americans' Software Development and Anti-Terrorism Act."
The paper is riddled with grammatical errors, incorrect statements of law, and factual mistakes.
Perhaps the paper was taken down to fix at least the grammatical errors that Mr. Brown and his organization ought to be less than proud of.
But I hope the other errors and obvious stupid comments stay in the paper.
By far the most amusing part of the paper is the description of Netscape's role in so infuriating the open source community that they flocked to Microsoft browser out of anger. Really? So Internet Explorer then runs on how many of the open source operating systems? Does Brown's version of what happened to Netscape match what the courts and the DOJ think happened?
"What I'd like explained to me is how the GPL could be considered somehow worse than other open source licenses for the purposes of national security."
The theory is explained in the paper, but it's quite lame. The idea is that if the government uses software under the GPL it will be forced to distribute code that it would rather keep secret, thus creating a security risk.
Unfortunately, some of the FUD in the paper won't be seen that way by some people. I've tried to explain the problem with security through obscurity to non computer literate people, and they don't buy it. They think the more obscure the more secure.
I highly recommend reading the paper with a highlighter and keeping track of the FUD. But try to remember that you are not the target audience. As an exercise try to imagine how you explain to a clueless person what the real errors and lies in Mr. Brown's work are.
And yet if you take a more modern look at politics you'll find that the party which racists latch onto is the Republican party even though the mainstream party members do distance themselves from them. Which party was David Duke associated with for example?
Why don't you come up with some good reasons why Blacks should have supported Nixon, Reagan, or Bush rather than their opposition?
Both the Republican party and the Democratic party are pretty far from their roots. Perhaps it's time to check out some history more recent than say the middle of last century.
As a final comment, your suggestion that Black's are only concerned with welfare and "decrepit public housing projects" probably tells me more than enough about your politics. I'm sure I'd never support a party that had you as a candidate.
At least some portion of TiVos, software is the linux covered operating system. I don't believe the GPL allows them to restrict you from modifying or reverse engineering the OS. Seems like a clear GPL violation to me.
Well there is a way. You simply change copyright law to match the way software works. That's the beauty and simplicity of the DMCA. Any access other than what the is allowed by the software is by definition illegal.
1. Unless you're paying for your dialup "by-the-byte" (does anyone still operate that way
anymore?), they're not spending your money. You've already spent it. Internet is flat-fee in the vast majority of areas."
For broadband home users in the US, the days of unlimited downloads are probably numbered. Several cable modem providers have already announced plans to charge additional fees to heavy downloaders.
When I used a dialup connection, I used to get monthly reminders that I'd exceeded X number of hours per month, although no action was taken.
Not only that, but there are a number of email services that have limits on storage space, and are willing to allow you to pay for additional space.
Why do I want any of my download or storage quota taken up by spam? I am or soon will be paying by the byte to receive this stuff.
"Maybe I overestimate the share of artists the RIAA represents..."
The RIAA doesn't represent any artists. It's a trade and lobbying organization that represents five or six huge recording companies.
If they are really concerned about the artists they can counting the illegal bribe money as expenses that the artist owe.
It's not like the radio stations wouldn't play music if they weren't bribed. If all of the RIAA members stopped paying the bribes, wouldn't the problem end immediately.
What crap this is!!