I am SO tired of the "virtual universe" metaphor. It's pure and utter garbage.
As far as there being "infinite space": If we in fact assume that bandwidth and disk space are unlimited, then, yes, we have infinite space. But that assumption is absurd. Bandwidth and disk space will ALWAYS be limited. The limits will grow, but, applying Hofstadter's Law, we will always be bumping into them. There's also isn't enough room in the universe to store an infinite number of disk drives.
This is kinda like saying that the amount of information in the universe is infinite. Well, it might be, but the amount of knowable information is necessarily finite, because there's only so much space to store it in, and so much time to find it.
The namespace issue is nothing new: we've long recognized that there is value in easily remembered names, that easily-remembered names are limited, and names acquire meaning through use. This is why we have trademark law, which is hundreds of years old.
This article illustrates once again the ease with which cyberpundits spew bullcrap under the guise of "virtual reality" and "The New Frontier of the Internet". The Internet is interesting and important, but it is NOT a "New Frontier", just a new paint job on the old one.
For all you people who think you can evade this 10% restriction by imbedding the code in a gigabyte of garbage, may I point out 31 C.F.R. 560.203?
Also, shipping the goods from the United States to some other country, with the understanding that individuals in that country will then ship them to Iran, is also illegal. See U.S. v. Ehsan, 163 F.3d 855 (4th Cir. 1998).
This might also be a situation where a contract can be implied by the mere act of visiting the web page.
You certainly don't have to sign anything to make a contract; sometimes, you don't even have to say anything..
And how is this different from copyright law as it exists today?
Not much at all. I think that was the point: eliminating copyright will result in IP creators using contract instead, which will have the effect of driving up both prices and liability for consumers. Not a good result!
Say I see a cool logo on Joe Blow's web page. If I decide to put it on my web page, I can be nailed for copyright violation.
But if copyright law didn't exist it would be different. I could not be nailed for taking the image because I never signed a contract or in any other way promised I wouldn't take the image.
So what happens is every web page is front-ended by a screen that says "WARNING: THIS AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS. READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING. By viewing this site, you agree not to copy, use, or otherwise do anything other than view the text and images herein. The text and images herein are being made available to you only in consideration of your agreement to the foregoing terms. Please click I AGREE if you agree to these terms." Boom, instant contract.
This might also be a situation where a contract can be implied by the mere act of visiting the web page. You certainly don't have to sign anything to make a contract; sometimes, you don't even have to say anything..
The reason why they can do this is that buying a copy of a piece of software is useless without a license to use it. The copyright law currently considers "using" computer software to be an exclusive right of the copyright owner (although with the DMCA I'm not entirely sure this is still true; I'll have to check). So, in order to do anything more with that CD you've just bought than use it as a coaster or a frisbee, you need a license. And that's where the contract terms come in: they offer you a license and promise not to revoke it in exchange for (a) cash and (b) your promise not to do various things, like claim that there's a warranty on the software.
Want do get rid of this? Get the law to hold that the right to use software is not an exclusive right of the owner, the same way that privately reading a book isn't.
Right now, if you infringe a copyright, you are subject to damages in tort, which (since infringement is generally an intentional tort) consists of all damages to the copyright holder which flow from your infringing activities. The law also allows statutory and punitive damages, as well as an award for fees and costs.
Suppose, however, in the absence of copyright, you sold your book to Joe Infringer with a restrictive contract that mirrors the current statutory rights of copyright law, and Joe Infringer breaches the contractual duty. You can sue him for your "expectation interest" in the contract: what you stood to gain by Joe's compliance with the contract terms. You cannot get any sort of punitive damages; Anglo-American law does not punish contract-breachers. The recovery will probably be less than what is currently available under the current statutory copyright law, and might be a lot less if the court elected to refuse to allow expectation interest and only gave reliance interest (which it might, because expectation interest is going to be highly speculative, and people will probably flinch at buying a book if the book purchase contract specified liquidated damages in the six figures for breach).
There is, however, a far more difficult problem: a legal concept called privity. When I sell you a thing, and place restrictions on your use of it, I am creating a contract with you. We are in privity of contract, and are mutually bound to abide by that contract. Now, suppose you then later sell that thing to someone else. Is the person you sell it to bound by our original contract? The answer, under contract law, is no; he and I are not in privity of contract. The answer under property law is more complex: If the original contract forms what is called a covenant than he and I may be in privity of estate, and the covenant might run to him. However, covenants are generally only applied to interests in real property; I am not aware of any application of covenants to personal (or intangible) property (although I haven't looked very hard).
Suppose, to get around this sticky problem, I put in a clause that you can't sell the book at all. This is called a restriction on alienation. For real property, the courts generally do not allow restrictions on alienation; if the court does the same in personal property, then you can't do this either. However, some restrictions on alienation are permissible, and a restriction that requires that you bind your buyer to the same contract terms that I bound you to might be permissible. Only a court can answer that question (this is all common law doctrine). Even so, in the case where you do transfer the book without meeting my conditions, we still have a problem with remedy; can I have the court rescind your sale, or do I merely get damages? Can I get an injunction against the your third-party purchaser to prevent him from making copies, even though he has no duty to not do so? What if he's already made copies? I could probably sue YOU for that, even if I can't sue him....
Another problem would deal with theft; if someone steals your copy and then makes copies en masse, who do I sue? You? Was it your fault that it was stolen? Do I sue you and let you bring in the thief as a third-party defendant on a derivative liability theory?
What about if you merely lose the book, or abandon it? Would you like to be potentially liable to a publisher for millions of dollars of damages because you left your copy of Virtual Light on the bus by accident? Hell, anyone who buys a book will have to buy "bookowner's insurance" too.
Of course, we'd end up passing legislation to prevent these problems. And that legislation would probably end up looking a whole hell of a lot like copyright law. Fancy that.
"Seems to me that since no one really 'owns' the linux kernel... it can't be regulated by nationality laws."
You asked to be corrected if you're wrong.:) You are. All of the code (or at least very nearly all of it) is owned by someone; otherwise, there could be no enforceable copyright on it. We all seem to agree that Linux is in fact copyrighted and licensed under the terms of the GPL, so obviously someone (possibly many someones) owns it.
Now, exactly who owns it, I don't know. Not an easy question to answer at all.
The other question that I have about this 10% American code restriction is whether they consider the citizenship of the original author, or the citizenship of the current copyright owner, or what. I'm not sufficiently motivated to actually go find this regulation, but I'm willing to bet it's whichever makes for the larger percentage.:)
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I am SO tired of the "virtual universe" metaphor. It's pure and utter garbage.
As far as there being "infinite space": If we in fact assume that bandwidth and disk space are unlimited, then, yes, we have infinite space. But that assumption is absurd. Bandwidth and disk space will ALWAYS be limited. The limits will grow, but, applying Hofstadter's Law, we will always be bumping into them. There's also isn't enough room in the universe to store an infinite number of disk drives.
This is kinda like saying that the amount of information in the universe is infinite. Well, it might be, but the amount of knowable information is necessarily finite, because there's only so much space to store it in, and so much time to find it.
The namespace issue is nothing new: we've long recognized that there is value in easily remembered names, that easily-remembered names are limited, and names acquire meaning through use. This is why we have trademark law, which is hundreds of years old.
This article illustrates once again the ease with which cyberpundits spew bullcrap under the guise of "virtual reality" and "The New Frontier of the Internet". The Internet is interesting and important, but it is NOT a "New Frontier", just a new paint job on the old one.
For all you people who think you can evade this 10% restriction by imbedding the code in a gigabyte of garbage, may I point out 31 C.F.R. 560.203?
Also, shipping the goods from the United States to some other country, with the understanding that individuals in that country will then ship them to Iran, is also illegal. See U.S. v. Ehsan, 163 F.3d 855 (4th Cir. 1998).
Not much at all. I think that was the point: eliminating copyright will result in IP creators using contract instead, which will have the effect of driving up both prices and liability for consumers. Not a good result!
So what happens is every web page is front-ended by a screen that says "WARNING: THIS AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS. READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING. By viewing this site, you agree not to copy, use, or otherwise do anything other than view the text and images herein. The text and images herein are being made available to you only in consideration of your agreement to the foregoing terms. Please click I AGREE if you agree to these terms." Boom, instant contract.
This might also be a situation where a contract can be implied by the mere act of visiting the web page. You certainly don't have to sign anything to make a contract; sometimes, you don't even have to say anything..
Want do get rid of this? Get the law to hold that the right to use software is not an exclusive right of the owner, the same way that privately reading a book isn't.
Suppose, however, in the absence of copyright, you sold your book to Joe Infringer with a restrictive contract that mirrors the current statutory rights of copyright law, and Joe Infringer breaches the contractual duty. You can sue him for your "expectation interest" in the contract: what you stood to gain by Joe's compliance with the contract terms. You cannot get any sort of punitive damages; Anglo-American law does not punish contract-breachers. The recovery will probably be less than what is currently available under the current statutory copyright law, and might be a lot less if the court elected to refuse to allow expectation interest and only gave reliance interest (which it might, because expectation interest is going to be highly speculative, and people will probably flinch at buying a book if the book purchase contract specified liquidated damages in the six figures for breach).
There is, however, a far more difficult problem: a legal concept called privity. When I sell you a thing, and place restrictions on your use of it, I am creating a contract with you. We are in privity of contract, and are mutually bound to abide by that contract. Now, suppose you then later sell that thing to someone else. Is the person you sell it to bound by our original contract? The answer, under contract law, is no; he and I are not in privity of contract. The answer under property law is more complex: If the original contract forms what is called a covenant than he and I may be in privity of estate, and the covenant might run to him. However, covenants are generally only applied to interests in real property; I am not aware of any application of covenants to personal (or intangible) property (although I haven't looked very hard).
Suppose, to get around this sticky problem, I put in a clause that you can't sell the book at all. This is called a restriction on alienation. For real property, the courts generally do not allow restrictions on alienation; if the court does the same in personal property, then you can't do this either. However, some restrictions on alienation are permissible, and a restriction that requires that you bind your buyer to the same contract terms that I bound you to might be permissible. Only a court can answer that question (this is all common law doctrine). Even so, in the case where you do transfer the book without meeting my conditions, we still have a problem with remedy; can I have the court rescind your sale, or do I merely get damages? Can I get an injunction against the your third-party purchaser to prevent him from making copies, even though he has no duty to not do so? What if he's already made copies? I could probably sue YOU for that, even if I can't sue him....
Another problem would deal with theft; if someone steals your copy and then makes copies en masse, who do I sue? You? Was it your fault that it was stolen? Do I sue you and let you bring in the thief as a third-party defendant on a derivative liability theory?
What about if you merely lose the book, or abandon it? Would you like to be potentially liable to a publisher for millions of dollars of damages because you left your copy of Virtual Light on the bus by accident? Hell, anyone who buys a book will have to buy "bookowner's insurance" too.
Of course, we'd end up passing legislation to prevent these problems. And that legislation would probably end up looking a whole hell of a lot like copyright law. Fancy that.
You asked to be corrected if you're wrong. :) You are. All of the code (or at least very nearly all of it) is owned by someone; otherwise, there could be no enforceable copyright on it. We all seem to agree that Linux is in fact copyrighted and licensed under the terms of the GPL, so obviously someone (possibly many someones) owns it.
Now, exactly who owns it, I don't know. Not an easy question to answer at all.
The other question that I have about this 10% American code restriction is whether they consider the citizenship of the original author, or the citizenship of the current copyright owner, or what. I'm not sufficiently motivated to actually go find this regulation, but I'm willing to bet it's whichever makes for the larger percentage. :)