Xenu's nukes are a lot less silly than talking snakes. And talking snakes are less silly than talking shrubbery. Oh, I mean... talking flaming shrubbery.
And that is far less absurd than some army claiming that an pure-good invisible man in the sky.... oh I'm sorry... some pure-good invisible thing in the image of man hanging out in the 'heavens'... ordered them to pillage a city and kidnap all the pre-pubescent girls and slaughter all their mothers and slaughter all their fathers and slaughter all their brothers and slaughter older sisters... and ordered them to rape those girl children... ohh I'm sorry... ordered the soldiers to take those little girls as wives.
If some army did that today, and told you that same story, that they got those orders from an all powerful all merciful all benevolent invisible voice, would you bow down and pray to that invisible voice? Or would you hang those men from the nearest tree as lying/delusional murderous pedophiles terrorizing and violating poor helpless preteen girls?
And on and on and on. The bible is somewhat less silly than the ancient Greek tales of Zeus&pals frolicking on Mount Olympus, but the bible is somewhat more silly than Scientology. Aliens inventing nukes and inventing spaceships and having some civil war under Emperor Xenu is downright reasonable in comparison.
I think you may run into problems if you try running off an image on a different drive/partition. Windows generally looks at what drive letter it is on. If you have the base install on the C drive and boot an image on the D drive all of the registry entries and other stuff are still going to point to the C drive. Trouble.
I think what you need is two identical drives, and then physically swap the connectors so that the C drive becomes D and D becomes C. Then you can still work with a single PC.
You might want to arrange something special maybe mounting the drives on a piece of wood outside of the case or something for easy access, with longer drive cables. Swapping the connections to the two drives isn't very hard. There should be a couple of people on a jury with the minimal skills to pull and insert drive cables.
It also shouldn't be too hard for most people to follow what is happening, just be sure to put clear labels on the cables and the drives. Label one cable as the C active operating system cable and the other as the D with some term indicating it is is the second inactive drive, and clearly label the two drives appropriately.
I'm not sure if you always want two drives attached and to work by swapping the cables, or maybe only attach one at a time during the demos and DRM installation, and then to boot with both attached for the comparison step. It's tough to say which is conceptually simpler for the jury. What is going on in the first two steps is simpler and clearer if you only attach one drive at a time, however then they have to follow the idea of attaching both and how that works. It might be simpler to always connect both and to swap - then there's only two hardware configurations to follow (C:clean D:DRM and C:DRM D:clean, rather than three C:clean, C:DRM, plus C: D: dualdrive).
I think the funniest part is that most of us will likely live to see the day it comes true.
There already exist 3D printers. Someone can email you any 3D model data and you can print out that actual object in plastic or metal. They are still too expensive for home use, but they exist and will be coming to the home market.
There already exist electronic circuit printers. Someone can email you a circuit design and you can print out that actual electric circuit with special conductive inks. They are still too expensive for home use, but they exist and will be coming to the home market.
I have no doubt that some day we will be able to "print" molecules right at home. Email the molecular structure, or perhaps the steps for producing it, and some little desktop unit will be able to synthesize almost any organic molecule from basic feedstock material. Download the molecule data for some medication and "print" out your pills right at home.
Ha! I've got you all beat with my recursion detector!
No one can ever beat that because the feedback from a recursion-detector detector would vaporize the device and anyone in the vicinity in a burst of gamma rays!
Last time I checked the word "effective" kinda appeared in the very text of the law. What that means legally, no one knows. Not even the courts apparently.
services such as Steam will require you to agree to the EULA before purchasing the game?
The term "EULA" has brought much confusion to the issue. It is much simpler and clearer and more accurate to use the phrase "contract offer" instead.
do you think this would this make the agreement any more legally binding?
Yes. Someone can offer you a contract, and they can decline to do business with you unless/until you agree to be bound by that contract. That has no special connection to the software business. That is just as true for someone selling tomatoes or contracting to remodel your kitchen.
If so this would seem to be fairly feasable solution as games move out of brick and mortar stores would it not?
More legally binding. However I'm still not particularly a fan of signing a contract before buying a tomato or a typical computer game. (Service contacts for access the company servers hosting an MMORPG or somesuch are far more reasonable of course).
I also still dispute the validity of the DMCA and DRM, which I believe Steam expects to rely upon. And even if the DMCA is taken as legally valid, I still dispute the desirability of that law. And while I am not familiar with Steam's current contract terms, I suspect I may have issue with the reasonableness or even conscionablility of some of those terms. I might also question Steam's expectations in the inevitable case that some people do violate that contract. And I might also question Steam's expectations of people who have not accepted that contract.
For example lets assume someone does agree to be bound by Steam's contract, and Steam sends some game download to that person's harddrive. That person then DIES. Their heir then inherits physical ownership of that computer, and by law that person inherits physical ownership of that particular copy of that game. Yes, by copyright law you are the owner of that particular copy. That person then owns that copy of the software, no contract, no EULA, just standard copyright protection, just as if the software were sold as a naked EULA-free download.
So no. Even Steam doesn't work for completely trapping the software under the EULA scheme.
Well, I guess if you really want to get insane in pushing the EULA scheme you could try adding some clause in the Steam contract giving ownership of your computer to Steam, with Steam allowing you to use your former computer as some sort of "rental". Snicker.
I don't recall the name, but there's some other company out there selling downloads of old games. No EULAs no contracts simply selling game downloads in a plain sane manner. And then simple copyright law applies. You own that copy and can general use of it just like the games I bought years ago before they came up with the notion of adding EULAs. And you could sell someone your computer which would transfer to that person ownership of that particular copy on that harddrive. And as per standard copyright law it would be copyright infringement for you to distribute new copies of that DRM-free EULA-free software.
Ahhh... here's the website Good Old Games. about us: You buy it, you keep it. DRMFREE Don't let your DRMs turn into nightmares (clever, no?). You won't find any intrusive copy protection in our games; we hate draconian DRM schemes just as much as you do, so at GOG.com you don't just buy the game, you actually own it. Once you download a game, you can install it on any PC and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need, and you can play it without an internet connection.
isn't the quality of the protection measure unimportant with regards to the DMCA?
It is one of the undefined issues with the DMCA. 'technological measure that effectively controls access to a work' is ill defined. What does or does not constitute 'circumvention' can be a bit fuzzy. 'access' can be a bit fuzzy
Most significantly having 'authority of the copyright owner' to go ahead and access the data is absolutely totally bumfuck meaningless - legally speaking.
In order for the DMCA to 'work' you must must in some way be considered to have the 'authority of the copyright owner' of or from the copyright holder to decrypt any and all DVDs on a any run of the mill hardware or software player, but for some reason never have that authority to watch that movie on Linus in the exact same way with an effectively identical DeCSS process, but there is no legal explanation anywhere for any of the who-what-when-where-how-or-why on that authority. I have tried to analyze any possible way to work it, and as far as I can see there is no viable meaning/mechanism for it that both grants all the permissions it is supposed to give you without also opening DRM-defeating back doors. In practice everyone simply assumes that it must somehow work, and simply uses an ex-post-facto approach. If someone is in court making a DMCA complaint then we just assume without analysis and without legal basis that that activity was not 'authorized' under the law, and we just assume without analysis and without legal basis that exactly everything that the DRM-faction *do* want and need to be 'authorized' somehow magically is 'authorized' under the law.
It's pretty clear what the DMCA wants to do - it wants DRM to work. So judges dodge any close analysis of these undefined incoherent issues, and just assume that anything DRM needs in order to work is approved by the law and anything that threatens DRM is simply assumed to be prohibited by the law.
No major hardware or software company is willing to press on this authorized access issue for legitimate-but-DRM-threatening features and mechanisms claiming that they are or must-be 'authorized' under any functional meaning of the law, and any independent DRM-threatening software gets squashed as presumptively 'evil hackers' making presumptively illegitimate 'piracy tools'. And of course there is never any litigation over exactly how or why you are 'authorized' under the law when you play a DRM song on your Microsoft Zune, so this entire DMCA concept of authorized access is completely undefined and unanalyzed as a legal concept.
Opps, I went on a tangent rant. Chuckle. Well the point is that the DMCA is incoherent and there is no clear legal basis and no clear legal ruling to answer your question. *I* believe a lot of this EULA stuff and DMCA/DRM stuff is broken and invalid, but there are a not of big companies and a lot of lawyers and judges that want it to work and believe that it does work. Laws should (and usually do) have solid rules and mechanisms, but in fuzzy areas you can get arbitrary and conflicting rulings as judges struggle to get the law to operate the way they think it is supposed to operate.
I believe in the area of DRM and EULAs we are getting random conflicting broken rulings as judges struggle and reach trying sincerely to do the 'right' thing - 'everyone' uses and supports this stuff and presumes that is is valid and that it works and that it is necessary. EULAs 'must' be valid, DRM 'must' work. So I believe we are getting unpredictable and broken rulings trying to protect and support these legally-broken things. Judges are particularly reluctant to make rulings with a radical impact throwing "commonly accepted practice" into chaos. There are millions of EULAs out there and thousands of companies relying upon them.
Judges have a really hard job. They often get thrown into muddy water, reaching to find any basis to make a good ruling. In legally fuzzy or legally broken areas of law the result will depend on the the particular judge. I pray that the right cases come up with the right arguments, and that the judges are willing to take the uncomfortable position ruling that people do have valid ways to avoid these EULAs that so many companies rely on.
Obviously it would not become a binding contract upon the other party, but IMO it should clearly establish that you have rejected their EULA contract offer.
As far as can see EULAs are toast in the situation you describe, and many others. You don't need any license, and you can avoid/decline it.
Seems pretty simple to me, but there are a LOT of companies, and a LOT of lawyers, and doubtless quite a few judges, that are all rather attached to the idea that EULAs are the proper and necessary way of things. Rationally EULA's are totally bogus, but realistically it's still going to be tough getting a solid favorable ruling.
My first thought is to puke. My second thought is that "click yes to continue" ranks about three levels below ROT13 as a technical protection measure.
The DMCA is a totally incoherent clusterfuck of a law. I have actually read most of the judge rulings on DMCA-circumvention cases, and I don't think any of them have managed a coherent construction of the critical issues. They apparently decided if they like or dislike what you are doing, dodge the undefined aspects, and then conjure some very creative narrow discussion with little connection to anything in the actual law an no connection to anything any of the other judges have ever ruled. If the judge views you as some naughty hacker doing something to annoy wholesome businessmen, then he rules against you. If he decides the businessmen are abusing the DMCA then he makes up some excuse to toss the case.
Some judges would likely be more than willing to hit you with the DMCA in a ROT13 case but I think.... I hope... that few would actually buy into "click YES to continue" as an effective technical protection measure. But yeah, I can definitely see some company pushing that argument. Puke puke puke.
I'm having a little difficulty following those directions. I've always considered myself a bit of a computer geek, but they were a bit complex even for me.
Ok... so far I've reflashed my BIOS.... extracted my CPU and located the prime numbered pins and alternatingly wired them to ground and +3.5Vdc then reseated the CPU... then I clipped a wire to the motherboard A20 address line and clipped the other end to my corpus callosum just like you explained...
and that's where I'm stuck. I've still got those electrolytic capacitors shoved up my nose but there are no more free terminals to attach them to on the high voltage winding of the powersupply.
I tried calling EA tech support asking if there was an easier way to remove this SecuROM crap, but they just gave me the same instructions you did.
The U.S. District Court of Kansas in Klocek v. Gateway [2000 U.S. Dist. Lexis 9896, 104 F. Supp.3d 1332 (D. Kan., June 16, 2000)] ruled that the contract of sale was complete at the time of the transaction, and that additional terms included in the package did not constitute a contract, because the customer never agreed to them when the contract of sale was completed.
There ya go.
But really the case *I* want to see is one where software installation pops up a click though EULA, the person clicks the EULA's DECLINE button, and then proceeds to complete installing and using the software anyway. It's not particularly hard for a programmer to write a utility to do that.
US law Title 17 Section 117 explicitly states that you need no license whatsoever in order to lawfully install and run software you have bought. So you have explicitly declined their EULA contract offer (which is what an EULA actually is, nothing but a contract offer), and you have perfectly lawfully installed an lawfully use the software. By declining the EULA you receive no license and receive nothing else the contract offers, but generally EULA offer nothing that you want or need.
THAT is the court case I want to see. There is absolutely no legal reason you need to accept an EULAs. You don't need it. It's just that they make it really inconvenient to install it without clicking the agree button. In the case I described they have absolutely no hook available for them to hang a claim of contract acceptance. They sold it to you, you declined the contract, and you perfectly lawfully proceeded to use the software you bought without any contract and without any license.
Actually I believe there is a valid argument that a purely local process of clicking the "accept" button on your own computer and involving no one else and doing nothing you didn't already have the right to do, that that would validly establish a contract either. However that is a far more disputable situation and it seriously has the appearance of accepting a contract. I think judges are going to have a hard time seeing past that appearance of contract and ruling against it unless there is a a clear ruling on my reject-and-install example first. Once it is clear that you *can* legitimately avoid the contract then they will be far more accepting of the legitimacy of other means of avoiding the contract, more accepting of more subtle arguments on what exactly what act does or do not indicate binding acceptance of the EULA contract offer.
I have yet to find a website with right-click, save target as, music downloads.
Welcome to the internet. There's a webite site called Google. It's really cool. You should check it out. In particular you'll find some interesting results if you type mp3 in the search box along with an artist name and/or a song name.
Feel free to ask if you have any other questions about the intartubes:)
I think the key point is here: A motion for sanctions under [] shall not be filed with or presented to the court unless, within 21 days after service of the motion (or such other period as the court may prescribe), the challenged paper, claim, defense, contention, allegation, or denial is not withdrawn or appropriately corrected.
It's a safe harbor clause for lawyers. You have to warn someone that you believe they have committed a rule 11 violation and then give them three weeks to fix it (or however long the court specifically resets the time limit to). It is only a rule 11 violation if they refuse to withdraw/correct it. I'm guessing that he has served (or soon will serve) them with such notice.
It's frustrating for us that NYCL isn't directly commenting on this issue here, but as we well know from the SCO case you're not supposed to go running around publishing legal accusations against the other side during a court case - if you a have a legal claim then you make it in court. Sometimes making such public statements is illegal, and other other times such statements are just a dumbass move that can come back and bite you in the ass in the courtroom.
The response NYCL filed directly asserts on page 18 that they "committed a most serious violation of Rule 11", so I expect we'll be hearing more about this soon. Ohhh.... I'm guessing probably the next 21 days or so:)
"There exist some happy prostitutes" does not equal "All prostitution is victimless."
Right. And:
"There exist some happy garment workers" does not equal "All garment work is victimless."
You seem to have some braindamage inability to see that actual crimes with actual victims still remain crimes after you decriminalize prostitution. Rape is still a crime. Beating someone remains a crime. Slavery/imprisonment remains a crime. Etc etc etc.
Nevada perfectly proves the entire point. Those legal prostitutes are in general far HAPPIER than your typical miserable struggling waitress. Those legal prostitutes are virtually never victims of much of anything.
"YOU are the one helping to enslave them...." Truly inspired. I congratulate you on a fine, industrial-strength troll.
Again, are you brain damaged? Legal prostitutes are almost never victims of anything, and legal prostitution greatly displaces illegal prostitution, thereby eliminating most of the crimes and victimizations you are talking about.
You're like the "abstinance-only-education" idiots. The fucktards who KNOW the facts that such programs INCREASE teen pregnancies INCREASE STDs in highschool kids, and they persist in denial of the facts and persist in the the harm they cause. They are in some holy crusade to "help" kids, and they are in fact waging a war to increase teen pregnancies and getting more kids infected with diseases.
By opposing the legal victimless prostitution you are perpetuating illegal prostitution committing a multitude of crimes against actual victims. Virtually none of the prostitutes in Nevada are slaves or crack-whores or victims of violence or AIDS or anything else.
Legalizing alcohol did not *completely* eliminate criminal alcohol enterprises, but yeah, it has been HUGELY effective in reducing associated actual criminal activity with actual victims.
Some people are somehow mentally defective in distinguishing between "I don't like X" and "I have some right to pull out a gun and imprison people who do X". If you think X is immoral, fine, then don't do X. For example the Ten Commandments say it is immoral to not honor your mother and father, however that does not give you some right to pull out a gun and kill or imprison some defiantly non-compliant person being immoral that way.
If someone commits rape against an actual victim, then yes that victim has the right to to defend themselves and even to kill that criminal in self defense. And yes, any other individual has the right to pull out a gun and even kill that criminal to defend that victim. And yes, the police can pull out a gun and potentially lethal force to defend that victim or to arrest and imprison that criminal after the fact.
Yes, victims and anyone in general public and the police have the right to pull out a gun and potentially use lethal force in cases of violence, and to do so in the case of a kidnapped enslaved runaway, or countless other actual criminal acts with actual victims.
That is not true is someone merely does something you find "immoral" - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if someone fails to honor their mother and father - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if a husband lies to his wife that he was working late when he was actually bowling with his buddies - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if someone has consensual free sex with a total stranger - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if someone has consensual paid sex with a total stranger - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them.
Just because you dislike something or find it immoral does not mean you have a right to pull out a gun and SHOOT people who decline to comply with your wishes. No actual criminal act with no actual victim.
Slashdot Mirror
Xenu's nukes are a lot less silly than talking snakes.
And talking snakes are less silly than talking shrubbery.
Oh, I mean... talking flaming shrubbery.
And that is far less absurd than some army claiming that an pure-good invisible man in the sky.... oh I'm sorry... some pure-good invisible thing in the image of man hanging out in the 'heavens'... ordered them to pillage a city and kidnap all the pre-pubescent girls and slaughter all their mothers and slaughter all their fathers and slaughter all their brothers and slaughter older sisters... and ordered them to rape those girl children... ohh I'm sorry... ordered the soldiers to take those little girls as wives.
If some army did that today, and told you that same story, that they got those orders from an all powerful all merciful all benevolent invisible voice, would you bow down and pray to that invisible voice? Or would you hang those men from the nearest tree as lying/delusional murderous pedophiles terrorizing and violating poor helpless preteen girls?
And on and on and on. The bible is somewhat less silly than the ancient Greek tales of Zeus&pals frolicking on Mount Olympus, but the bible is somewhat more silly than Scientology. Aliens inventing nukes and inventing spaceships and having some civil war under Emperor Xenu is downright reasonable in comparison.
-
I think you may run into problems if you try running off an image on a different drive/partition. Windows generally looks at what drive letter it is on. If you have the base install on the C drive and boot an image on the D drive all of the registry entries and other stuff are still going to point to the C drive. Trouble.
I think what you need is two identical drives, and then physically swap the connectors so that the C drive becomes D and D becomes C. Then you can still work with a single PC.
You might want to arrange something special maybe mounting the drives on a piece of wood outside of the case or something for easy access, with longer drive cables. Swapping the connections to the two drives isn't very hard. There should be a couple of people on a jury with the minimal skills to pull and insert drive cables.
It also shouldn't be too hard for most people to follow what is happening, just be sure to put clear labels on the cables and the drives. Label one cable as the C active operating system cable and the other as the D with some term indicating it is is the second inactive drive, and clearly label the two drives appropriately.
I'm not sure if you always want two drives attached and to work by swapping the cables, or maybe only attach one at a time during the demos and DRM installation, and then to boot with both attached for the comparison step. It's tough to say which is conceptually simpler for the jury. What is going on in the first two steps is simpler and clearer if you only attach one drive at a time, however then they have to follow the idea of attaching both and how that works. It might be simpler to always connect both and to swap - then there's only two hardware configurations to follow (C:clean D:DRM and C:DRM D:clean, rather than three C:clean, C:DRM, plus C: D: dualdrive).
-
I think the funniest part is that most of us will likely live to see the day it comes true.
There already exist 3D printers. Someone can email you any 3D model data and you can print out that actual object in plastic or metal. They are still too expensive for home use, but they exist and will be coming to the home market.
There already exist electronic circuit printers. Someone can email you a circuit design and you can print out that actual electric circuit with special conductive inks. They are still too expensive for home use, but they exist and will be coming to the home market.
I have no doubt that some day we will be able to "print" molecules right at home. Email the molecular structure, or perhaps the steps for producing it, and some little desktop unit will be able to synthesize almost any organic molecule from basic feedstock material. Download the molecule data for some medication and "print" out your pills right at home.
-
Ha! I've got you all beat with my recursion detector!
No one can ever beat that because the feedback from a recursion-detector detector would vaporize the device and anyone in the vicinity in a burst of gamma rays!
-
"Effective" doesn't factor into the law at all.
Last time I checked the word "effective" kinda appeared in the very text of the law.
What that means legally, no one knows. Not even the courts apparently.
-
services such as Steam will require you to agree to the EULA before purchasing the game?
The term "EULA" has brought much confusion to the issue. It is much simpler and clearer and more accurate to use the phrase "contract offer" instead.
do you think this would this make the agreement any more legally binding?
Yes. Someone can offer you a contract, and they can decline to do business with you unless/until you agree to be bound by that contract. That has no special connection to the software business. That is just as true for someone selling tomatoes or contracting to remodel your kitchen.
If so this would seem to be fairly feasable solution as games move out of brick and mortar stores would it not?
More legally binding. However I'm still not particularly a fan of signing a contract before buying a tomato or a typical computer game. (Service contacts for access the company servers hosting an MMORPG or somesuch are far more reasonable of course).
I also still dispute the validity of the DMCA and DRM, which I believe Steam expects to rely upon. And even if the DMCA is taken as legally valid, I still dispute the desirability of that law. And while I am not familiar with Steam's current contract terms, I suspect I may have issue with the reasonableness or even conscionablility of some of those terms. I might also question Steam's expectations in the inevitable case that some people do violate that contract. And I might also question Steam's expectations of people who have not accepted that contract.
For example lets assume someone does agree to be bound by Steam's contract, and Steam sends some game download to that person's harddrive. That person then DIES. Their heir then inherits physical ownership of that computer, and by law that person inherits physical ownership of that particular copy of that game. Yes, by copyright law you are the owner of that particular copy. That person then owns that copy of the software, no contract, no EULA, just standard copyright protection, just as if the software were sold as a naked EULA-free download.
So no. Even Steam doesn't work for completely trapping the software under the EULA scheme.
Well, I guess if you really want to get insane in pushing the EULA scheme you could try adding some clause in the Steam contract giving ownership of your computer to Steam, with Steam allowing you to use your former computer as some sort of "rental". Snicker.
I don't recall the name, but there's some other company out there selling downloads of old games. No EULAs no contracts simply selling game downloads in a plain sane manner. And then simple copyright law applies. You own that copy and can general use of it just like the games I bought years ago before they came up with the notion of adding EULAs. And you could sell someone your computer which would transfer to that person ownership of that particular copy on that harddrive. And as per standard copyright law it would be copyright infringement for you to distribute new copies of that DRM-free EULA-free software.
Ahhh... here's the website Good Old Games.
about us:
You buy it, you keep it.
DRMFREE Don't let your DRMs turn into nightmares (clever, no?). You won't find any intrusive copy protection in our games; we hate draconian DRM schemes just as much as you do, so at GOG.com you don't just buy the game, you actually own it. Once you download a game, you can install it on any PC and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need, and you can play it without an internet connection.
-
isn't the quality of the protection measure unimportant with regards to the DMCA?
It is one of the undefined issues with the DMCA.
'technological measure that effectively controls access to a work' is ill defined.
What does or does not constitute 'circumvention' can be a bit fuzzy.
'access' can be a bit fuzzy
Most significantly having 'authority of the copyright owner' to go ahead and access the data is absolutely totally bumfuck meaningless - legally speaking.
In order for the DMCA to 'work' you must must in some way be considered to have the 'authority of the copyright owner' of or from the copyright holder to decrypt any and all DVDs on a any run of the mill hardware or software player, but for some reason never have that authority to watch that movie on Linus in the exact same way with an effectively identical DeCSS process, but there is no legal explanation anywhere for any of the who-what-when-where-how-or-why on that authority. I have tried to analyze any possible way to work it, and as far as I can see there is no viable meaning/mechanism for it that both grants all the permissions it is supposed to give you without also opening DRM-defeating back doors. In practice everyone simply assumes that it must somehow work, and simply uses an ex-post-facto approach. If someone is in court making a DMCA complaint then we just assume without analysis and without legal basis that that activity was not 'authorized' under the law, and we just assume without analysis and without legal basis that exactly everything that the DRM-faction *do* want and need to be 'authorized' somehow magically is 'authorized' under the law.
It's pretty clear what the DMCA wants to do - it wants DRM to work. So judges dodge any close analysis of these undefined incoherent issues, and just assume that anything DRM needs in order to work is approved by the law and anything that threatens DRM is simply assumed to be prohibited by the law.
No major hardware or software company is willing to press on this authorized access issue for legitimate-but-DRM-threatening features and mechanisms claiming that they are or must-be 'authorized' under any functional meaning of the law, and any independent DRM-threatening software gets squashed as presumptively 'evil hackers' making presumptively illegitimate 'piracy tools'. And of course there is never any litigation over exactly how or why you are 'authorized' under the law when you play a DRM song on your Microsoft Zune, so this entire DMCA concept of authorized access is completely undefined and unanalyzed as a legal concept.
Opps, I went on a tangent rant. Chuckle. Well the point is that the DMCA is incoherent and there is no clear legal basis and no clear legal ruling to answer your question. *I* believe a lot of this EULA stuff and DMCA/DRM stuff is broken and invalid, but there are a not of big companies and a lot of lawyers and judges that want it to work and believe that it does work. Laws should (and usually do) have solid rules and mechanisms, but in fuzzy areas you can get arbitrary and conflicting rulings as judges struggle to get the law to operate the way they think it is supposed to operate.
I believe in the area of DRM and EULAs we are getting random conflicting broken rulings as judges struggle and reach trying sincerely to do the 'right' thing - 'everyone' uses and supports this stuff and presumes that is is valid and that it works and that it is necessary. EULAs 'must' be valid, DRM 'must' work. So I believe we are getting unpredictable and broken rulings trying to protect and support these legally-broken things. Judges are particularly reluctant to make rulings with a radical impact throwing "commonly accepted practice" into chaos. There are millions of EULAs out there and thousands of companies relying upon them.
Judges have a really hard job. They often get thrown into muddy water, reaching to find any basis to make a good ruling. In legally fuzzy or legally broken areas of law the result will depend on the the particular judge. I pray that the right cases come up with the right arguments, and that the judges are willing to take the uncomfortable position ruling that people do have valid ways to avoid these EULAs that so many companies rely on.
-
Obviously it would not become a binding contract upon the other party, but IMO it should clearly establish that you have rejected their EULA contract offer.
-
As far as can see EULAs are toast in the situation you describe, and many others. You don't need any license, and you can avoid/decline it.
Seems pretty simple to me, but there are a LOT of companies, and a LOT of lawyers, and doubtless quite a few judges, that are all rather attached to the idea that EULAs are the proper and necessary way of things. Rationally EULA's are totally bogus, but realistically it's still going to be tough getting a solid favorable ruling.
-
What about the DMCA?
Thoughts?
My first thought is to puke.
My second thought is that "click yes to continue" ranks about three levels below ROT13 as a technical protection measure.
The DMCA is a totally incoherent clusterfuck of a law. I have actually read most of the judge rulings on DMCA-circumvention cases, and I don't think any of them have managed a coherent construction of the critical issues. They apparently decided if they like or dislike what you are doing, dodge the undefined aspects, and then conjure some very creative narrow discussion with little connection to anything in the actual law an no connection to anything any of the other judges have ever ruled. If the judge views you as some naughty hacker doing something to annoy wholesome businessmen, then he rules against you. If he decides the businessmen are abusing the DMCA then he makes up some excuse to toss the case.
Some judges would likely be more than willing to hit you with the DMCA in a ROT13 case but I think.... I hope... that few would actually buy into "click YES to continue" as an effective technical protection measure. But yeah, I can definitely see some company pushing that argument. Puke puke puke.
-
Judges tend to have no sense of humor for that sort of approach, unfortunately.
Geee your honor... I didn't know those 20 kilos of coke were in my trunk. The cat must have accidentally knocked it into there. Hehe.
-
I'm having a little difficulty following those directions. I've always considered myself a bit of a computer geek, but they were a bit complex even for me.
Ok... so far I've reflashed my BIOS.... extracted my CPU and located the prime numbered pins and alternatingly wired them to ground and +3.5Vdc then reseated the CPU... then I clipped a wire to the motherboard A20 address line and clipped the other end to my corpus callosum just like you explained...
and that's where I'm stuck. I've still got those electrolytic capacitors shoved up my nose but there are no more free terminals to attach them to on the high voltage winding of the powersupply.
I tried calling EA tech support asking if there was an easier way to remove this SecuROM crap, but they just gave me the same instructions you did.
HELP!!!!1!1111ONE
-
Yeah, might as well give your son to EA. He was shaped like a penis-monster anyway.
-
The U.S. District Court of Kansas in Klocek v. Gateway [2000 U.S. Dist. Lexis 9896, 104 F. Supp.3d 1332 (D. Kan., June 16, 2000)] ruled that the contract of sale was complete at the time of the transaction, and that additional terms included in the package did not constitute a contract, because the customer never agreed to them when the contract of sale was completed.
There ya go.
But really the case *I* want to see is one where software installation pops up a click though EULA, the person clicks the EULA's DECLINE button, and then proceeds to complete installing and using the software anyway. It's not particularly hard for a programmer to write a utility to do that.
US law Title 17 Section 117 explicitly states that you need no license whatsoever in order to lawfully install and run software you have bought. So you have explicitly declined their EULA contract offer (which is what an EULA actually is, nothing but a contract offer), and you have perfectly lawfully installed an lawfully use the software. By declining the EULA you receive no license and receive nothing else the contract offers, but generally EULA offer nothing that you want or need.
THAT is the court case I want to see. There is absolutely no legal reason you need to accept an EULAs. You don't need it. It's just that they make it really inconvenient to install it without clicking the agree button. In the case I described they have absolutely no hook available for them to hang a claim of contract acceptance. They sold it to you, you declined the contract, and you perfectly lawfully proceeded to use the software you bought without any contract and without any license.
Actually I believe there is a valid argument that a purely local process of clicking the "accept" button on your own computer and involving no one else and doing nothing you didn't already have the right to do, that that would validly establish a contract either. However that is a far more disputable situation and it seriously has the appearance of accepting a contract. I think judges are going to have a hard time seeing past that appearance of contract and ruling against it unless there is a a clear ruling on my reject-and-install example first. Once it is clear that you *can* legitimately avoid the contract then they will be far more accepting of the legitimacy of other means of avoiding the contract, more accepting of more subtle arguments on what exactly what act does or do not indicate binding acceptance of the EULA contract offer.
-
I have yet to find a website with right-click, save target as, music downloads.
Welcome to the internet.
There's a webite site called Google.
It's really cool. You should check it out.
In particular you'll find some interesting results if you type mp3 in the search box along with an artist name and/or a song name.
Feel free to ask if you have any other questions about the intartubes :)
-
I think the key point is here:
A motion for sanctions under [] shall not be filed with or presented to the court unless, within 21 days after service of the motion (or such other period as the court may prescribe), the challenged paper, claim, defense, contention, allegation, or denial is not withdrawn or appropriately corrected.
It's a safe harbor clause for lawyers. You have to warn someone that you believe they have committed a rule 11 violation and then give them three weeks to fix it (or however long the court specifically resets the time limit to). It is only a rule 11 violation if they refuse to withdraw/correct it. I'm guessing that he has served (or soon will serve) them with such notice.
It's frustrating for us that NYCL isn't directly commenting on this issue here, but as we well know from the SCO case you're not supposed to go running around publishing legal accusations against the other side during a court case - if you a have a legal claim then you make it in court. Sometimes making such public statements is illegal, and other other times such statements are just a dumbass move that can come back and bite you in the ass in the courtroom.
The response NYCL filed directly asserts on page 18 that they "committed a most serious violation of Rule 11", so I expect we'll be hearing more about this soon. Ohhh.... I'm guessing probably the next 21 days or so :)
-
USA number 1!
USA number 1!
We produce the best douchebags in the world!
-
I bought a car ski rack from a girl who posted a for sale ad... now we're dating.
She had a great rack.
-
Pfffft! That's nothing.
A real lawyer argues the meaning of the spacing.
-
I disagree. With a prostitute you get something for your money.
No, both give you a thorough screwing for your money.
-
You're a sexist pig.
Women are born with the qualifications for prostitution.
So are men. If a woman wants to pay a man to eat her out or fuck her silly there is no actual criminal act against any actual victim.
Grin.
-
Are you brain damaged?
"There exist some happy prostitutes" does not equal "All prostitution is victimless."
Right. And:
"There exist some happy garment workers" does not equal "All garment work is victimless."
You seem to have some braindamage inability to see that actual crimes with actual victims still remain crimes after you decriminalize prostitution. Rape is still a crime. Beating someone remains a crime. Slavery/imprisonment remains a crime. Etc etc etc.
Nevada perfectly proves the entire point. Those legal prostitutes are in general far HAPPIER than your typical miserable struggling waitress. Those legal prostitutes are virtually never victims of much of anything.
"YOU are the one helping to enslave them...." Truly inspired. I congratulate you on a fine, industrial-strength troll.
Again, are you brain damaged? Legal prostitutes are almost never victims of anything, and legal prostitution greatly displaces illegal prostitution, thereby eliminating most of the crimes and victimizations you are talking about.
You're like the "abstinance-only-education" idiots. The fucktards who KNOW the facts that such programs INCREASE teen pregnancies INCREASE STDs in highschool kids, and they persist in denial of the facts and persist in the the harm they cause. They are in some holy crusade to "help" kids, and they are in fact waging a war to increase teen pregnancies and getting more kids infected with diseases.
By opposing the legal victimless prostitution you are perpetuating illegal prostitution committing a multitude of crimes against actual victims. Virtually none of the prostitutes in Nevada are slaves or crack-whores or victims of violence or AIDS or anything else.
Legalizing alcohol did not *completely* eliminate criminal alcohol enterprises, but yeah, it has been HUGELY effective in reducing associated actual criminal activity with actual victims.
Some people are somehow mentally defective in distinguishing between "I don't like X" and "I have some right to pull out a gun and imprison people who do X". If you think X is immoral, fine, then don't do X. For example the Ten Commandments say it is immoral to not honor your mother and father, however that does not give you some right to pull out a gun and kill or imprison some defiantly non-compliant person being immoral that way.
If someone commits rape against an actual victim, then yes that victim has the right to to defend themselves and even to kill that criminal in self defense. And yes, any other individual has the right to pull out a gun and even kill that criminal to defend that victim. And yes, the police can pull out a gun and potentially lethal force to defend that victim or to arrest and imprison that criminal after the fact.
Yes, victims and anyone in general public and the police have the right to pull out a gun and potentially use lethal force in cases of violence, and to do so in the case of a kidnapped enslaved runaway, or countless other actual criminal acts with actual victims.
That is not true is someone merely does something you find "immoral" - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if someone fails to honor their mother and father - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if a husband lies to his wife that he was working late when he was actually bowling with his buddies - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if someone has consensual free sex with a total stranger - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them. That is not true if someone has consensual paid sex with a total stranger - you do not have the right to pull out a gun against them.
Just because you dislike something or find it immoral does not mean you have a right to pull out a gun and SHOOT people who decline to comply with your wishes. No actual criminal act with no actual victim.
-
Come visit!
Visit and come, even!
-
the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista.
Yeah, and the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Ebola.
-
You're absolutely right.
Appoint Steven Colbert.
-