Don't use the term "intellectual property" when you're making specific arguments. See GNU's page on why. Specifically, talk about copyrights, patents, or trademarks; those three things are all that will hold up in a court.
WarCraft II is a lot of things. In one sense, it's the set of rules that define the gameplay. In this sense, FreeCraft is the same as WarCraft. But this set of rules is not copyrightable. When Xerox invented the mouse, they made a rule that when the mouse moves towards the back of the desk, the cursor goes up. But that rule is not copyrightable. Some may feel that it is patentable, but nobody is asserting there are patents on WarCraft II's code that FreeCraft violated.
I said WC2 is many things. Besides being a set of rules, it's also the code that implements those rules. That is copyrightable. Are you asserting that FreeCraft copied the WC2 code?
Also, WC2 is the code, coupled with maps, graphics, music, manual, box, etc. I'm not sure if maps are copyrightable. (Written renderings of maps are, but I don't know about the maps in the abstract sense.) Graphics and music are copyrightable. The OP talked about the copied graphics, but that was FC reading legitimately-purchased WC2 graphics. The manual, box art, and a lot of the etc. is copyrightable, but nobody is claiming that was copied.
Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy.
They also didn't copy the CODE. The code is copyrightable. The graphics are copyrightable. The music is copyrightable. The manual is copyrightable. The idea of the game, the look-and-feel, isn't.
In 1981, a little company called Sierra On-Line (a much different company in those days) wrote a game called Jawbreaker. Atari said that it captured the "magic of Pac-Man", and was therefore a violation of their copyright. Read about it. Then read about later similar suits. Learn.
Re-created... Identically....
Not textually identically (the code is different), but functionally identically. Like Linux copying Unix's functionality, AMD copying Intel's functionality, Amdahl and later Compaq copying IBM's functionality.
Re:1) Put computer in room
on
Special Ops
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· Score: 2, Funny
Y'know, we haven't heard from our MCSE since he started on this. But at least that banging noise from the NT server room died down after a few days.
Since filing a lawsuit against IBM, SCO has made public statements and accusations about IBM's Unix license and about Linux in an apparent attempt to create fear uncertainty and doubt among IBM's customers and the open source community.
There's a strange irony in seeing IBM use that phrase. The phrase 'fear, uncertainty, and doubt' and the word 'FUD' were first coined by Amdahl when IBM applied FUD tactics to the mainframe clone manufacturer.
I still have a hard time getting my head around the new IBM.
And you can only get 256 images from a 3megapixel camera (and frankly anything lower will suck for image quality).
I'd never take photos for a job at low quality, but on my vacation last week, I took a lot of 640x and 1024x pics. I'm not trying to publish National Geographic here... I just want to remember where I've been, and what it looks like. (I was in coastal California. It looks nice.) I also modulated my sizes: when I was taking a picture I thought I'd want in high quality, I'd take it in high res. And when I didn't, I didn't.
Yep, you can reclaim the images you don't like- lets make sure you know you will never want that photo...
I take pics at about a 8:1 shooting ratio. For every pic I'm going to want to print, I take about 8 shots on the average. I hear the pros get about a 36:1 ratio; they'll go through a whole roll for one shot. I generally can reclaim on the fly at about half that: after I've taken my eight or so shots, I can point at six (on the average, sometimes more or less) and say, "That is not a shot I will want." So I get about a 4:1 ratio for on-the-fly reclaimation purposes. And this is keeping shots that are so hideously underexposed you can't see anything but a dim glow of low lights. (I'm thinking of my footage of William Randolph Hearst's home theater. No flash allowed, and I didn't have a tripod. But I kept it to digitally recover the picture later. It turns out that the pic sucked, if you're wondering.) Maybe you're more conservative than I am: maybe you would get about a 2:1 reclaimation. I just have a hard time believing that you can't, before you go to bed, look at your shots that day and say "I will not use this shot" for any of them. Unless you are a lot more lucky at photos than I am.
There's a quality versus convenience tradeoff at work in the AgX vs digital discussion here. I fall towards the convenience end. I figger I'm there to enjoy the trip and learn about the local land and people, and the photos are a good thing to do while I'm at it. It sounds like you fall towards the quality end.
I don't understand the points you're making. Are you saying that digital cameras are less likely to get stolen than SLRs? I don't see the logic here.
Target sells Kodak ISO 400, 96 exposure film at $9/roll, or about $0.10/exposure for film. Processing the film runs about $2.25/roll, or about $0.02/exposure. A 256 MB CF card runs about $56.99, and holds about 1000 exposures (based on the space of the pics I took on vacation last week). That's about $0.005/exposure for CF, versus $0.12/exposure for film. If you go with 64 MB cards, so you can send them back home every 200 or so exposures, then you're still looking at about about $0.01/exposure. Now, remember that with digital, you can pick your best shots and reclaim the space, for another improvement of from 3:1 to 30:1, depending on the quality. I'd say the incremental cost of film is much higher than that of CF. (I omitted the battery costs here, since I don't have a lot of info to go on. If you use rechargables and have occasional access to power, you're fine.)
Besides, I'd rather have thin, light CF cards and a light digital camera than lots of bulky film and a heavy SLR.
Reason 1: Most free source code is crappy. When looking for C code, for instance, you'll hardly ever find any that bothers to check the return value of malloc() and other functions that might fail.
I see a lot of replies like this, and it makes me wonder. I mean, people saying this probably do check return codes. So are they I posting free code?
Re:How they manage it still has them puzzled...
on
Camouflage in Motion
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· Score: 1
No, it's a very different problem. It's only the same if there's only lateral motion; once rotation is involved, it changes drastically.
Otherwise, it'd be a neat vindication of the Bugblatter Beast.
So, I was thinking about this, and the DMCRA. Since I generally believe that the government which governs
least, governs best, I would normally favor the DMCRA over this bill. (It reigns in the scope of the DMCA, instead of outlawing DRM technologies.) But here's a thought.
The DMCA is applied as a 400 pound gorilla, or rather, a 4 000 000 pound sterling gorilla: nobody that the DMCA is used againt has the resources to do the legal fight. The DMCRA doesn't help that; you have to use your day in court to demonstrate that your use falls under the DMCRA. The 400 pound gorilla can still intimidate you into giving up.
The Brownback bill allows the FTC to stop technologies before they can be used as a threat, so the DMCRA is never an issue, and the 2600s of the world don't need to spend way too much to assert that they didn't do anything wrong.
Perhaps a compromise: the FTC can declare DRM technologies to be "overreaching". Overreaching DRM may still be sold, but DMCA protections do not apply, only traditional copyright protections. (The provisions of the DMCRA then become redundant.)
What aspect of this article makes you think you wouldn't?
The bill pretty much just means that they can't sic the DMCA on you if you break the DRM for a legit purpose. If they cripple it so that you can only listen to it once, and with one ear, and only while standing on your head, they still are allowed to. If you really wanna buy it, you still can.
Is he trying to prevent the media giants from preventing the sale of used DVDs, or is this current law?
I think that provision is mostly intended for ebooks, and maybe some of the newer music stuff. It could reasonably be applied to region coding, though.
Even under this bill, they are within their rights to make a DRM-encumbered DVD. It's just not an infringement of the circumvention provision if you crack the DRM for a legit purpose.
The usage note strongly implies that for something to qualify as irony, it should suggest "particular lessons about human vanity or folly." But the definitions of "ironic" and "irony" make no such implication.
Why should Linux users take your claim seriously? Think about if I was
the CIO of a company and I'm going to be running my business on an
operating system that has an intellectual property foundation that, by
almost everyone's admission, is built on quicksand. There is no mechanism in Linux to ensure [the legality of] that intellectual property of the source code being contributed by various people.
I am aware of no mechanism in SCO Unix to ensure the legality of
IP. It is very uncommon for a company to require documentation to
verify the legality of their code. In fact, the only company I'm
aware of that does this is the Free Software Foundation, who ownes a
plurality of the copyrights on the GNU/Linux operating system.
It is a gross exaggeration to say that "almost everyone" feels that
Linux's IP foundation is built on quicksand. You are the only one who
I have heard state such a belief, despite campaigning by other groups
with an interest in discrediting Linux.
The development process has no one that is ensuring that inappropriate code is not getting into Linux.
Please indicate the person or persons at SCO who fills this task.
All that's there is an honor system, and obviously there are a few, at least, that have broken that honor.
In traditional closed-source operating systems, the users must believe the manufacturer's statement that the OS is free of IP entanglements. The open source community, at least, provides IP holders with the means to verify IP issues. Can the same be said for closed-source OSs?
There have been multiple occassions when closed-source software has illegally adopted code from open-source software. And yet, you seem to imply that this is a problem specific to Linux's open-source model.
Your letter to 1,500 end-user companies outlining your claim was vague. What is it that you want from these companies? The one thing that we specifically want from those 1,500 companies that we directly sent those letters to is for them to not take our word on the warning that we sent... but to seek an opinion of their legal counsel as to the issues that we raised.
Your actions betray your words. You refuse to provide the user
base with the information they need to evaluate the issues. Your
complaint is vague, and provides no specifics with which the user
community could evaluate its authenticity. Does SCO recommend that
we stay away from Linux, based on vague claims? Would SCO be willing
to pay for the additional costs incurred in a transition to an
alternative, if your claim is found to be without merit?
Suppose I made the public claim that SCO had violated my copyrights, but refused to elaborate. Would you then expect all your customers to stop any new SCO-related deployments pending a resolution?
What do you see as a company's options in the face of your warning? I would suspend any new Linux-related activities until this is all sorted out. But first get that opinion of your legal counsel. If they say there is no problem and no issue, then you probably have nothing to worry about. But I doubt there is any attorney worth his salt that is going to say there is no potential of an issue here. There is a big issue.
There is also a potential that you have violated my copyright in
creating your own software; it just doesn't seem like a likely thing.
Such an action must be judged by an evalution of its merits. Since
you do not provide any information by which we could judge the merits
of your complaint, there is no reason to act on your accusation.
Should companies remove Linux from their systems? We're not making any specific recommendations at this time.
We're still getting our arms around the size of this problem. We're still identifying more and more code from Unix System V that is in Linux, and so we h
Re:This really is starting to smell like a M$ move
on
SCO vs Linux.. Continued
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I've said it before, but they told us to expect it. Remember Halloween VII?
If you don't,
Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep
2002. It was a survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most
effective, and where FUD was backfiring.
"Linux patent violations/risk of being sued" struck a chord with US
and Swedish respondents. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Americans and
82% of Swedes stated that the risk of being sued over Linux patent
violations made them feel less favorable towards Linux. This was the
only message that had a strong impact with any audience.
And later:
Messages that rely on an abstract discussion of intellectual
property rights are not effective.
The discussion of IP rights needs to be tied to concrete actions.
Yup. I read it before I posted. But just because a book is old, doesn't mean it's no good. The guy mentioned that he recently finished Snow Crash, so I figure that being recent isn't a priority.
For those who have forgotten, Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep 2002. It was a
survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most effective, and
where FUD was backfiring. From this:
Direct attacks of OSS and Linux are NOT highly effective. Messaging
that discusses possible Linux patent violations, pings the OSS
development process for lacking accountability, raises the specter
of possible security flaws, and the like are only marginally
effective in driving unfavorable opinions around OSS and Linux, and
in some cases backfire. On the other hand 'positive' OSS and Linux
messaging, i.e. access to the source code, the price, lower TCO, the
ability to freely make copies, and the like drive very favorable
opinions around OSS and Linux, both across geographies and
audiences.
"Linux patent violations/risk of being sued" struck a chord with US
and Swedish respondents. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Americans and
82% of Swedes stated that the risk of being sued over Linux patent
violations made them feel less favorable towards Linux. This was the
only message that had a strong impact with any audience.
And later:
Messages that rely on an abstract discussion of intellectual
property rights are not effective.
The discussion of IP rights needs to be tied to concrete actions.
I've been an avid FreeBSD user for years, and I remember when this same exact thing happened with AT&T vs. BSD years ago.
Both AT&T and BSD had legitimately screwed up.
and we ended up winning that suit!
No, we settled out of court.
Also, we may want to remember: while AT&T was pushing to really jack BSD with a drawn-out legal debate, as soon as Novell got ahold of the IP, they wanted to bring it to a quick resolution. I think the quote was, "We want to decide this in the marketplace, not the courts."
I don't think that SCO really has a leg to stand on. AT&T did, and was able to effectively halt BSD development for a while because of it (even though, IIRC, they didn't get the injunction they were after).
I'm not taking this lightly, but I also don't think this is going to be the big problem it was in 92.
Slashdot Mirror
warcraft II is considered intellectual property,
Don't use the term "intellectual property" when you're making specific arguments. See GNU's page on why. Specifically, talk about copyrights, patents, or trademarks; those three things are all that will hold up in a court.
WarCraft II is a lot of things. In one sense, it's the set of rules that define the gameplay. In this sense, FreeCraft is the same as WarCraft. But this set of rules is not copyrightable. When Xerox invented the mouse, they made a rule that when the mouse moves towards the back of the desk, the cursor goes up. But that rule is not copyrightable. Some may feel that it is patentable, but nobody is asserting there are patents on WarCraft II's code that FreeCraft violated.
I said WC2 is many things. Besides being a set of rules, it's also the code that implements those rules. That is copyrightable. Are you asserting that FreeCraft copied the WC2 code?
Also, WC2 is the code, coupled with maps, graphics, music, manual, box, etc. I'm not sure if maps are copyrightable. (Written renderings of maps are, but I don't know about the maps in the abstract sense.) Graphics and music are copyrightable. The OP talked about the copied graphics, but that was FC reading legitimately-purchased WC2 graphics. The manual, box art, and a lot of the etc. is copyrightable, but nobody is claiming that was copied.
Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy.
They also didn't copy the CODE. The code is copyrightable. The graphics are copyrightable. The music is copyrightable. The manual is copyrightable. The idea of the game, the look-and-feel, isn't.
In 1981, a little company called Sierra On-Line (a much different company in those days) wrote a game called Jawbreaker. Atari said that it captured the "magic of Pac-Man", and was therefore a violation of their copyright. Read about it. Then read about later similar suits. Learn.
Re-created... Identically. ...
Not textually identically (the code is different), but functionally identically. Like Linux copying Unix's functionality, AMD copying Intel's functionality, Amdahl and later Compaq copying IBM's functionality.
Y'know, we haven't heard from our MCSE since he started on this. But at least that banging noise from the NT server room died down after a few days.
There's a strange irony in seeing IBM use that phrase. The phrase 'fear, uncertainty, and doubt' and the word 'FUD' were first coined by Amdahl when IBM applied FUD tactics to the mainframe clone manufacturer.
I still have a hard time getting my head around the new IBM.
And you can only get 256 images from a 3megapixel camera (and frankly anything lower will suck for image quality).
I'd never take photos for a job at low quality, but on my vacation last week, I took a lot of 640x and 1024x pics. I'm not trying to publish National Geographic here... I just want to remember where I've been, and what it looks like. (I was in coastal California. It looks nice.) I also modulated my sizes: when I was taking a picture I thought I'd want in high quality, I'd take it in high res. And when I didn't, I didn't.
Yep, you can reclaim the images you don't like- lets make sure you know you will never want that photo...
I take pics at about a 8:1 shooting ratio. For every pic I'm going to want to print, I take about 8 shots on the average. I hear the pros get about a 36:1 ratio; they'll go through a whole roll for one shot. I generally can reclaim on the fly at about half that: after I've taken my eight or so shots, I can point at six (on the average, sometimes more or less) and say, "That is not a shot I will want." So I get about a 4:1 ratio for on-the-fly reclaimation purposes. And this is keeping shots that are so hideously underexposed you can't see anything but a dim glow of low lights. (I'm thinking of my footage of William Randolph Hearst's home theater. No flash allowed, and I didn't have a tripod. But I kept it to digitally recover the picture later. It turns out that the pic sucked, if you're wondering.) Maybe you're more conservative than I am: maybe you would get about a 2:1 reclaimation. I just have a hard time believing that you can't, before you go to bed, look at your shots that day and say "I will not use this shot" for any of them. Unless you are a lot more lucky at photos than I am.
There's a quality versus convenience tradeoff at work in the AgX vs digital discussion here. I fall towards the convenience end. I figger I'm there to enjoy the trip and learn about the local land and people, and the photos are a good thing to do while I'm at it. It sounds like you fall towards the quality end.
I don't understand the points you're making. Are you saying that digital cameras are less likely to get stolen than SLRs? I don't see the logic here.
Target sells Kodak ISO 400, 96 exposure film at $9/roll, or about $0.10/exposure for film. Processing the film runs about $2.25/roll, or about $0.02/exposure. A 256 MB CF card runs about $56.99, and holds about 1000 exposures (based on the space of the pics I took on vacation last week). That's about $0.005/exposure for CF, versus $0.12/exposure for film. If you go with 64 MB cards, so you can send them back home every 200 or so exposures, then you're still looking at about about $0.01/exposure. Now, remember that with digital, you can pick your best shots and reclaim the space, for another improvement of from 3:1 to 30:1, depending on the quality. I'd say the incremental cost of film is much higher than that of CF. (I omitted the battery costs here, since I don't have a lot of info to go on. If you use rechargables and have occasional access to power, you're fine.)
Besides, I'd rather have thin, light CF cards and a light digital camera than lots of bulky film and a heavy SLR.
Reason 1: Most free source code is crappy. When looking for C code, for instance, you'll hardly ever find any that bothers to check the return value of malloc() and other functions that might fail.
I see a lot of replies like this, and it makes me wonder. I mean, people saying this probably do check return codes. So are they I posting free code?
No, it's a very different problem. It's only the same if there's only lateral motion; once rotation is involved, it changes drastically.
Otherwise, it'd be a neat vindication of the Bugblatter Beast.
except perhaps by reading the article in Nature itself which is not available except by subscription.
I was under the impression that most college libraries carry Nature. Whether or not most of us would understand the original is another question.
The DMCA is applied as a 400 pound gorilla, or rather, a 4 000 000 pound sterling gorilla: nobody that the DMCA is used againt has the resources to do the legal fight. The DMCRA doesn't help that; you have to use your day in court to demonstrate that your use falls under the DMCRA. The 400 pound gorilla can still intimidate you into giving up.
The Brownback bill allows the FTC to stop technologies before they can be used as a threat, so the DMCRA is never an issue, and the 2600s of the world don't need to spend way too much to assert that they didn't do anything wrong.
Perhaps a compromise: the FTC can declare DRM technologies to be "overreaching". Overreaching DRM may still be sold, but DMCA protections do not apply, only traditional copyright protections. (The provisions of the DMCRA then become redundant.)
This needs some work, but may be an idea.
Oops. I was thinking of the DMCRA when I posted this.
Oops. I was thinking of the DMCRA when I posted this.
What aspect of this article makes you think you wouldn't?
The bill pretty much just means that they can't sic the DMCA on you if you break the DRM for a legit purpose. If they cripple it so that you can only listen to it once, and with one ear, and only while standing on your head, they still are allowed to. If you really wanna buy it, you still can.
Is he trying to prevent the media giants from preventing the sale of used DVDs, or is this current law?
I think that provision is mostly intended for ebooks, and maybe some of the newer music stuff. It could reasonably be applied to region coding, though.
Even under this bill, they are within their rights to make a DRM-encumbered DVD. It's just not an infringement of the circumvention provision if you crack the DRM for a legit purpose.
"And for software, because every PC is a software copying machine, since inception we have had a problem."
Yes, and every candlestick, pipe, rope, wrench, and knife is a killing machine. Reminds me of these urban legends.
So, rather than using one or two real-world datapoints, you should base your decision on no real-world datapoints?
Emacs is probably actually the program most effective at controlling (as opposed to not having) bloat.
My goodness, I just realized this about the Emacs design. Overall, Emacs-- at its core-- is a bloat manager!
Yeah, that usage note kinda bugs me.
The usage note strongly implies that for something to qualify as irony, it should suggest "particular lessons about human vanity or folly." But the definitions of "ironic" and "irony" make no such implication.
So would this incongruity qualify as irony?
I am aware of no mechanism in SCO Unix to ensure the legality of IP. It is very uncommon for a company to require documentation to verify the legality of their code. In fact, the only company I'm aware of that does this is the Free Software Foundation, who ownes a plurality of the copyrights on the GNU/Linux operating system.
It is a gross exaggeration to say that "almost everyone" feels that Linux's IP foundation is built on quicksand. You are the only one who I have heard state such a belief, despite campaigning by other groups with an interest in discrediting Linux.
Please indicate the person or persons at SCO who fills this task.
In traditional closed-source operating systems, the users must believe the manufacturer's statement that the OS is free of IP entanglements. The open source community, at least, provides IP holders with the means to verify IP issues. Can the same be said for closed-source OSs?
There have been multiple occassions when closed-source software has illegally adopted code from open-source software. And yet, you seem to imply that this is a problem specific to Linux's open-source model.
Your actions betray your words. You refuse to provide the user base with the information they need to evaluate the issues. Your complaint is vague, and provides no specifics with which the user community could evaluate its authenticity. Does SCO recommend that we stay away from Linux, based on vague claims? Would SCO be willing to pay for the additional costs incurred in a transition to an alternative, if your claim is found to be without merit?
Suppose I made the public claim that SCO had violated my copyrights, but refused to elaborate. Would you then expect all your customers to stop any new SCO-related deployments pending a resolution?
There is also a potential that you have violated my copyright in creating your own software; it just doesn't seem like a likely thing. Such an action must be judged by an evalution of its merits. Since you do not provide any information by which we could judge the merits of your complaint, there is no reason to act on your accusation.
I've said it before, but they told us to expect it. Remember Halloween VII?
If you don't, Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep 2002. It was a survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most effective, and where FUD was backfiring.
And later:
Yup. I read it before I posted. But just because a book is old, doesn't mean it's no good. The guy mentioned that he recently finished Snow Crash, so I figure that being recent isn't a priority.
I have the same trouble with my Maltron, on those rare cases I use vi. I'll flip it to QWERTY mode while I'm moving. Same goes for NetHack.
Have you tried looking at The Jargon File's bibliography?
For those who have forgotten, Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep 2002. It was a survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most effective, and where FUD was backfiring. From this:
And later:
I've been an avid FreeBSD user for years, and I remember when this same exact thing happened with AT&T vs. BSD years ago.
Both AT&T and BSD had legitimately screwed up.
and we ended up winning that suit!
No, we settled out of court.
Also, we may want to remember: while AT&T was pushing to really jack BSD with a drawn-out legal debate, as soon as Novell got ahold of the IP, they wanted to bring it to a quick resolution. I think the quote was, "We want to decide this in the marketplace, not the courts."
I don't think that SCO really has a leg to stand on. AT&T did, and was able to effectively halt BSD development for a while because of it (even though, IIRC, they didn't get the injunction they were after).
I'm not taking this lightly, but I also don't think this is going to be the big problem it was in 92.