This has nothing to do with the 9th Circuit Court. This is strictly a contract issue. Can you enforce a contract that gets signed after money has already exchanged hands? That's it.
More like: Can you enforce a contract that isn't signed at all and which isn't even read until the "deal" is done.
I suspect that this will bring a lot of fence sitters over to the side of the pirates. I haven't purchased software in something like 10 years. Join us and boycott commercial software. Only use free software. Isn't Autodesk worried about shooting themselves in the foot? All of their software is currently available for free from torrent trackers and p2p networks. The only reason to actually buy it is to support them. But why would anyone want to support a company that just wants to bend you over and rape you. My guess is this move will somewhat decrease their profits from casual/individual users by encouraging piracy, but may increase their profits with large companies who can no longer sell their software.
I have thousands of books, CDs, vinyl, and none of them have a EULA that prohibits me from selling any of it at all.
That's only because publishers didn't think they could get away with using one. They can always add a retroactive EULA to your books, CDs, and records any time they want. But you say that you never saw or agreed to any EULA? That's right. Neither did the buyer of the Autodesk Software. The box was unopened.
High end software packages often charge a separate fee for a support contract. If you don't sign up for the support contract you don't get any patches. So it is not only game cartridges. Software is not a service and patches do not alter that fact.
Again, given that the software in question works more as an ongoing service (patches, etc) rather than a single interaction (a game cartridge?) its not unreasonable to accept the licensing idea.
Patching is strictly voluntary on the part of the publisher. They don't have to ever release any patches. Patching is itself a service. Just because some publishers, but by no means all, offer patches for free does not somehow attach its service-ness to the software product. If software is a service then everything that exists is a service. This court decision seems to imply that I could market software with a EULA on the back of the box which says, "By holding this box, you agree to purchase it for a price of $5000". Even if they don't look at the back they still have to pay for it. Of course, you may need an armed security guard and a video camera at every store to enforce it.
Agreed. If a country with greater freedom than the US were to invade, bomb the whitehouse and the pentagon, assassinate every last congressman and senator, destroy most of our police force, and cripple our military, my poodle would not hold any grudge against the invaders as long as it seemed clear that they at least made some effort to avoid collateral damage and that their intent was to set us free and not to enslave us. My poodle and I would both realize that there would be some loss of innocent civilian life, but that the greater good would result in the long run. My treasonous poodle might even become an informer and help "the enemy" with intelligence information even at the risk of being shot as a traitor. The real traitors are the politicians who are turning our once great country into a police state. If I lived in a country like Iraq or Afghanistan I would be quite happy to be invaded by a nation whose genuine intent was to destroy my government with as few civilian casualties as possible. I just don't see how that could be a bad thing. Of course, I wouldn't see it as their responsibility to do so, but I would definitely be grateful for the bombs falling on my city as long as I truly believed they were there to rescue us and not destroy us. Think of how the German Jews felt about their "attackers" during the invasion of their country. Whether you view the invasion as an attack or as a liberation depends a lot on your political views I guess. The Taliban and Saddam Hussein's government were both pretty bad by any definition. Of course that doesn't explain why we are still over there.
Even during times of economic prosperity in the U.S. MILLIONS of people starve, go without medical care, education, because that's how our capitalist value system works. It's a human atrocity.
Citations please? Someone has been watching too much Fidel Castro or something.
Moderation is pretty random here. It doesn't really mean anything. There are a large number of people who did appreciate your post, including myself. I think you do have a valid point, but freedom of information is something that we are supposed to be proud of in the US. The military themselves should have owned up to the events of the collateral damage video in the first place instead of lying about it. They should have apologized and taken public disciplinary action against the soldiers themselves. We have to try to remember that we are supposed to be the good guys even if sometimes that can be a heavy burden and make life more dangerous for our soldiers. I mean, we didn't have to use ground forces at all. We could have just nuked Iraq and Afganistan off the map with ICBMs. Hell we could have just taken out the entire middle east. We would have had zero casualties (on our side) if we had done that. Of course, we might later be attacked by the rest of the world as happened to Germany in WWII, but in the current conflicts it would have been game over. We didn't do that because it would be wrong (and a diplomatic and PR disaster and a bad precedent to set). I think there has to be some transparency even if it does make life more difficult and dangerous for our military. It would be one thing if the military were willing to see the other side of the argument, but that is just not the case. When you are just trying not to get killed while achieving your objective it can be pretty easy to lose sight of why we are over there in the first place, but it is most definitely not to kill innocent civilians or reporters. I wish I could remember why we are still over there.
Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land
Wrong. Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are nearly useless as weapons. They are actually too powerful to be very useful. And they would render whatever land you wanted to acquire uninhabitable for a very long time. What's the point of land where no humans can live for a hundred years or so. I don't really see them even as much of a deterrent because no modern nation is going to be stupid enough to actually use them. For weapons that have only ever been used a couple of times when they were first invented (more as beta testing than anything else) I don't really see why so many people are impressed by them. They really aren't all that great. UAVs and robot soldiers OTOH really are strategically important. The idea is to kill as many enemy soldiers as you can without endangering your own soldiers and while avoiding as many civilian casualties as possible. Whoever has the greatest number of remote controlled, bullet resistant, and well armed robot soldiers will have the advantage in future wars. And the nice thing is no humans really have to die until all the robots from at least one of the sides have been destroyed. The US is a military badass not only due to the sheer amount of money spent, but also due to technology. Technology is make or break in a real war against any kind of serious adversary (Afganistan and Iraq were pushovers precisely because they were lacking in military tech). Afghani soldiers actually are pretty badass, but they don't have the technology to compete. If the other side is using arrows we want to be using firearms. If the other side is using firearms we want to be using bulletproof robots with particle beam weapons and xray or gamma ray lasers etc. Even without superior technology you need to have better manufacturing than the other side. It takes more than soldiers to win a war. It takes a whole lot of guns and bullets too.
Adobe Reader 5, 6, or 7. I have been using version 5 or 6 for many years. Only recently have I bothered installing 7. From the looks of things I will avoid installing 8 or 9 for as long as possible.
Methinks your humor detector is malfunctioning. It may need to be replaced. I haven't noticed anyone taking it very seriously. Of course there are some optimists who believe we will have HAL 9000, flying cars, a space elevator, fusion, and intersteller spacecraft in the next few years. Usually these are not older people. The scifi promises of amazing tech just around the corner have been broken too often. I have given up on the idea of any kind of truly revolutionary tech within my lifetime.
It's kind of sad that you felt the need to name HAL in the quote. It kind of ruins the effect. Any slashdotter who hasn't seen 2001 needs to turn in their geek card right now.
It's not only Linux ISOs that use decentralized tracking. It's used pretty much everywhere now. There have been plenty of times when TPB was down. I can usually find the same torrent at tracker indexes that include TPB torrents. They'd really have to simultaneously go after every tracking site that hosts the particular films they are interested in. Although that wouldn't help them with the private trackers and there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of those. And then there is emule etc. The ultimate game of whack-a-mole. Information wants to be free.
In other news, I've decided I'm going to start shooting out the tires of cars that I witness passing on the right.
You do realize that the left lane is supposed to be the passing lane. That means if you want to drive like a little old lady you are supposed to do it in the right lane. I wish we could shoot out the tires of every person who deems it his god given right to drive at half the speed limit in the left lane, just chugging along while creating massive and dangerous traffic problems behind him. Actually, to be honest, I wouldn't aim for the tires. Slow drivers need to be taken out of the gene pool. Particularly the ones who always insist on being in the left lane all the time as if deliberately trying to create a traffic jam.
but piracy is using a product without paying for it.
Information wants to be free. If you don't like that law of nature then keep your creative works to yourself please. Do us all a favor. Most of it sucks anyway. Once information has been released into the wild it's like air or sunshine: free for the taking. You can always claim you have some kind of "right" to it though. You might get some donations if people believe you. But don't try to make the world into some kind of jail cell just so you can get paid to have fun. Most of us work shit jobs and don't have the luxury of writing a book or a song or making a movie so we don't have to do any real work. What's that about the worlds smallest violin? Go get a real job or stfu and be glad that creative work pays at all.
That's exactly right. Copyright infringement is not stealing. OTOH some people would say that holding a copyright is itself a form of legalized theft. It is certainly not any kind of natural right. You can't own information. There is no property here. There is just an arbitrary gift from the public to the copyright holder allowing them to have an artificial monopoly over their work for a specific period of time. There is an easy way to avoid copyright infringement. Don't release your fucking work in the first place if you are so sensitive. Believe me. No one will care. The alternative is to live in a police state. Sorry I'd rather never read another book or watch another film than live in a full on police state, which is what we are headed for. So please keep your precious creative work to yourself if that's your price. It's not worth it.
And when millions of downloaders decide to DDOS Aiplex Software you will have no problem with that either. Remember Make Love Not Spam? All we need is a nice screensaver like that and we can DDOS Aiplex right of the internet. The copyright infringers outnumber the copyright holders by millions to one. I'm not sure if what they want is an all out war. DDOS attacks aren't going to solve anyone's problems. All they will do is shut down the internet for everyone. Of course there are some corporations that would love to see that happen.
Do you REALLY think that's just a coincidence? Come on. Even I knew [slashdot.org] this was coming. Or maybe you think I'm just psychic.
Or maybe you are the one who was behind this. You had the cash lying around. You happen to know a couple of attractive but always money-hungry Swedish chicks, at least one of whom you know kind of dislikes men. And you thought it would be fun and get you a few extra mod points. Mod points are always an excellent motive for character assassination. No matter what the explanation I have to say that it would be *more* likely than the idea that Assange himself decided this would be an excellent time to become a serial rapist. Seeing how he was now "famous" and all. A real celebrity. After all that's the first thing everyone does when they become famous. They go on a raping spree.
Slashdot doesn't represent the opinions of the general public in any way (remember the Free Sklyarov campaign?). It never has. For one thing there are a much, much larger percentage of libertarians at slashdot than anywhere else I have ever seen. Also slashdot was never US-centric, just geek-centric. European and Asian geeks qualify just as well. The only requirement is that you can speak English. Only a subset of Americans are gullible enough to believe everything their government tells them. The rest of us believe they are just a bunch of flawed humans, like the rest of us. Who don't always solve messy problems in a away that makes everyone happy. I have little doubt that the US government is somehow behind the rape accusations. The coincidence would be just too bizarre and convenient otherwise. If Assange is killed in the next couple of weeks in a freak accident and there are even witnesses and ironclad proof that it really was just an amazing accident, guess what I'm going to believe?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I regard the timing of Assange's very first felony and act of violence coming just weeks before he been planning to release damaging information that the US Military had reason to believe would result directly or indirectly in the deaths of American soldiers and just after the US gave him an ultimatum which he ignored, to be rather suspicious to say the least. Life just doesn't work that way. The coincidence is just too extraordinary. Is it possible? Yes. Do I believe it? Hell, no.
Unless they think they are going to be dead not long after they finish singing like a canary. It's even worse than testifying against a major organized crime figure. And even dumber. Would you cross the CIA and think you are just going to keep on keeping on afterwards? You would be as good as dead. It would only be a matter of time. Also, the CIA could have offered these women hundreds of thousands of dollars for this whole thing. No one else (who cares) can afford to match that kind of offer. It also seems pretty naive to assume that the US government are just going to sit back and wait for Assange and Wikileaks to get even more soldiers and informants killed. They aren't going to let it get that far. Call me a psychic, but Assange will be neutralized in some way before that happens. If he were to die in a traffic accident this week would you think that it was just a traffic accident? Wouldn't it be the "simplest" hypothesis? I've got news for you. The US government takes this shit seriously. It is not a game to them. They will do whatever they have to to maintain "national security". They warned Assange and he didn't listen. While I think he is a bit of a baddass hero for standing up to the greatest military force in this solar system, he does lack a sense of self-preservation. You might even call his behavior suicidal.
Slashdot Mirror
This has nothing to do with the 9th Circuit Court. This is strictly a contract issue. Can you enforce a contract that gets signed after money has already exchanged hands? That's it.
More like: Can you enforce a contract that isn't signed at all and which isn't even read until the "deal" is done.
I suspect that this will bring a lot of fence sitters over to the side of the pirates. I haven't purchased software in something like 10 years. Join us and boycott commercial software. Only use free software. Isn't Autodesk worried about shooting themselves in the foot? All of their software is currently available for free from torrent trackers and p2p networks. The only reason to actually buy it is to support them. But why would anyone want to support a company that just wants to bend you over and rape you. My guess is this move will somewhat decrease their profits from casual/individual users by encouraging piracy, but may increase their profits with large companies who can no longer sell their software.
You do realize the one thing the government is afraid of is it's people taking to the streets to voice their unapproval?
That worked so well for the war protestors in both the US and the UK.
It's not socialism. It's fascism.
But they haven't been doing that so far.
I have thousands of books, CDs, vinyl, and none of them have a EULA that prohibits me from selling any of it at all.
That's only because publishers didn't think they could get away with using one. They can always add a retroactive EULA to your books, CDs, and records any time they want. But you say that you never saw or agreed to any EULA? That's right. Neither did the buyer of the Autodesk Software. The box was unopened.
High end software packages often charge a separate fee for a support contract. If you don't sign up for the support contract you don't get any patches. So it is not only game cartridges. Software is not a service and patches do not alter that fact.
Again, given that the software in question works more as an ongoing service (patches, etc) rather than a single interaction (a game cartridge?) its not unreasonable to accept the licensing idea.
Patching is strictly voluntary on the part of the publisher. They don't have to ever release any patches. Patching is itself a service. Just because some publishers, but by no means all, offer patches for free does not somehow attach its service-ness to the software product. If software is a service then everything that exists is a service. This court decision seems to imply that I could market software with a EULA on the back of the box which says, "By holding this box, you agree to purchase it for a price of $5000". Even if they don't look at the back they still have to pay for it. Of course, you may need an armed security guard and a video camera at every store to enforce it.
Agreed. If a country with greater freedom than the US were to invade, bomb the whitehouse and the pentagon, assassinate every last congressman and senator, destroy most of our police force, and cripple our military, my poodle would not hold any grudge against the invaders as long as it seemed clear that they at least made some effort to avoid collateral damage and that their intent was to set us free and not to enslave us. My poodle and I would both realize that there would be some loss of innocent civilian life, but that the greater good would result in the long run. My treasonous poodle might even become an informer and help "the enemy" with intelligence information even at the risk of being shot as a traitor. The real traitors are the politicians who are turning our once great country into a police state. If I lived in a country like Iraq or Afghanistan I would be quite happy to be invaded by a nation whose genuine intent was to destroy my government with as few civilian casualties as possible. I just don't see how that could be a bad thing. Of course, I wouldn't see it as their responsibility to do so, but I would definitely be grateful for the bombs falling on my city as long as I truly believed they were there to rescue us and not destroy us. Think of how the German Jews felt about their "attackers" during the invasion of their country. Whether you view the invasion as an attack or as a liberation depends a lot on your political views I guess. The Taliban and Saddam Hussein's government were both pretty bad by any definition. Of course that doesn't explain why we are still over there.
Even during times of economic prosperity in the U.S. MILLIONS of people starve, go without medical care, education, because that's how our capitalist value system works. It's a human atrocity.
Citations please? Someone has been watching too much Fidel Castro or something.
Moderation is pretty random here. It doesn't really mean anything. There are a large number of people who did appreciate your post, including myself. I think you do have a valid point, but freedom of information is something that we are supposed to be proud of in the US. The military themselves should have owned up to the events of the collateral damage video in the first place instead of lying about it. They should have apologized and taken public disciplinary action against the soldiers themselves. We have to try to remember that we are supposed to be the good guys even if sometimes that can be a heavy burden and make life more dangerous for our soldiers. I mean, we didn't have to use ground forces at all. We could have just nuked Iraq and Afganistan off the map with ICBMs. Hell we could have just taken out the entire middle east. We would have had zero casualties (on our side) if we had done that. Of course, we might later be attacked by the rest of the world as happened to Germany in WWII, but in the current conflicts it would have been game over. We didn't do that because it would be wrong (and a diplomatic and PR disaster and a bad precedent to set). I think there has to be some transparency even if it does make life more difficult and dangerous for our military. It would be one thing if the military were willing to see the other side of the argument, but that is just not the case. When you are just trying not to get killed while achieving your objective it can be pretty easy to lose sight of why we are over there in the first place, but it is most definitely not to kill innocent civilians or reporters. I wish I could remember why we are still over there.
government denials would be seen as an attempt at a coverup
But not by you I bet.
Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land
Wrong. Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are nearly useless as weapons. They are actually too powerful to be very useful. And they would render whatever land you wanted to acquire uninhabitable for a very long time. What's the point of land where no humans can live for a hundred years or so. I don't really see them even as much of a deterrent because no modern nation is going to be stupid enough to actually use them. For weapons that have only ever been used a couple of times when they were first invented (more as beta testing than anything else) I don't really see why so many people are impressed by them. They really aren't all that great. UAVs and robot soldiers OTOH really are strategically important. The idea is to kill as many enemy soldiers as you can without endangering your own soldiers and while avoiding as many civilian casualties as possible. Whoever has the greatest number of remote controlled, bullet resistant, and well armed robot soldiers will have the advantage in future wars. And the nice thing is no humans really have to die until all the robots from at least one of the sides have been destroyed. The US is a military badass not only due to the sheer amount of money spent, but also due to technology. Technology is make or break in a real war against any kind of serious adversary (Afganistan and Iraq were pushovers precisely because they were lacking in military tech). Afghani soldiers actually are pretty badass, but they don't have the technology to compete. If the other side is using arrows we want to be using firearms. If the other side is using firearms we want to be using bulletproof robots with particle beam weapons and xray or gamma ray lasers etc. Even without superior technology you need to have better manufacturing than the other side. It takes more than soldiers to win a war. It takes a whole lot of guns and bullets too.
what alternatives? no, seriously?
Adobe Reader 5, 6, or 7. I have been using version 5 or 6 for many years. Only recently have I bothered installing 7. From the looks of things I will avoid installing 8 or 9 for as long as possible.
You gotta admit. She did have a point.
Methinks your humor detector is malfunctioning. It may need to be replaced. I haven't noticed anyone taking it very seriously. Of course there are some optimists who believe we will have HAL 9000, flying cars, a space elevator, fusion, and intersteller spacecraft in the next few years. Usually these are not older people. The scifi promises of amazing tech just around the corner have been broken too often. I have given up on the idea of any kind of truly revolutionary tech within my lifetime.
It's kind of sad that you felt the need to name HAL in the quote. It kind of ruins the effect. Any slashdotter who hasn't seen 2001 needs to turn in their geek card right now.
It's not only Linux ISOs that use decentralized tracking. It's used pretty much everywhere now. There have been plenty of times when TPB was down. I can usually find the same torrent at tracker indexes that include TPB torrents. They'd really have to simultaneously go after every tracking site that hosts the particular films they are interested in. Although that wouldn't help them with the private trackers and there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of those. And then there is emule etc. The ultimate game of whack-a-mole. Information wants to be free.
In other news, I've decided I'm going to start shooting out the tires of cars that I witness passing on the right.
You do realize that the left lane is supposed to be the passing lane. That means if you want to drive like a little old lady you are supposed to do it in the right lane. I wish we could shoot out the tires of every person who deems it his god given right to drive at half the speed limit in the left lane, just chugging along while creating massive and dangerous traffic problems behind him. Actually, to be honest, I wouldn't aim for the tires. Slow drivers need to be taken out of the gene pool. Particularly the ones who always insist on being in the left lane all the time as if deliberately trying to create a traffic jam.
but piracy is using a product without paying for it.
Information wants to be free. If you don't like that law of nature then keep your creative works to yourself please. Do us all a favor. Most of it sucks anyway. Once information has been released into the wild it's like air or sunshine: free for the taking. You can always claim you have some kind of "right" to it though. You might get some donations if people believe you. But don't try to make the world into some kind of jail cell just so you can get paid to have fun. Most of us work shit jobs and don't have the luxury of writing a book or a song or making a movie so we don't have to do any real work. What's that about the worlds smallest violin? Go get a real job or stfu and be glad that creative work pays at all.
That's exactly right. Copyright infringement is not stealing. OTOH some people would say that holding a copyright is itself a form of legalized theft. It is certainly not any kind of natural right. You can't own information. There is no property here. There is just an arbitrary gift from the public to the copyright holder allowing them to have an artificial monopoly over their work for a specific period of time. There is an easy way to avoid copyright infringement. Don't release your fucking work in the first place if you are so sensitive. Believe me. No one will care. The alternative is to live in a police state. Sorry I'd rather never read another book or watch another film than live in a full on police state, which is what we are headed for. So please keep your precious creative work to yourself if that's your price. It's not worth it.
And when millions of downloaders decide to DDOS Aiplex Software you will have no problem with that either. Remember Make Love Not Spam? All we need is a nice screensaver like that and we can DDOS Aiplex right of the internet. The copyright infringers outnumber the copyright holders by millions to one. I'm not sure if what they want is an all out war. DDOS attacks aren't going to solve anyone's problems. All they will do is shut down the internet for everyone. Of course there are some corporations that would love to see that happen.
Do you REALLY think that's just a coincidence? Come on. Even I knew [slashdot.org] this was coming. Or maybe you think I'm just psychic.
Or maybe you are the one who was behind this. You had the cash lying around. You happen to know a couple of attractive but always money-hungry Swedish chicks, at least one of whom you know kind of dislikes men. And you thought it would be fun and get you a few extra mod points. Mod points are always an excellent motive for character assassination. No matter what the explanation I have to say that it would be *more* likely than the idea that Assange himself decided this would be an excellent time to become a serial rapist. Seeing how he was now "famous" and all. A real celebrity. After all that's the first thing everyone does when they become famous. They go on a raping spree.
Slashdot doesn't represent the opinions of the general public in any way (remember the Free Sklyarov campaign?). It never has. For one thing there are a much, much larger percentage of libertarians at slashdot than anywhere else I have ever seen. Also slashdot was never US-centric, just geek-centric. European and Asian geeks qualify just as well. The only requirement is that you can speak English. Only a subset of Americans are gullible enough to believe everything their government tells them. The rest of us believe they are just a bunch of flawed humans, like the rest of us. Who don't always solve messy problems in a away that makes everyone happy. I have little doubt that the US government is somehow behind the rape accusations. The coincidence would be just too bizarre and convenient otherwise. If Assange is killed in the next couple of weeks in a freak accident and there are even witnesses and ironclad proof that it really was just an amazing accident, guess what I'm going to believe?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I regard the timing of Assange's very first felony and act of violence coming just weeks before he been planning to release damaging information that the US Military had reason to believe would result directly or indirectly in the deaths of American soldiers and just after the US gave him an ultimatum which he ignored, to be rather suspicious to say the least. Life just doesn't work that way. The coincidence is just too extraordinary. Is it possible? Yes. Do I believe it? Hell, no.
Unless they think they are going to be dead not long after they finish singing like a canary. It's even worse than testifying against a major organized crime figure. And even dumber. Would you cross the CIA and think you are just going to keep on keeping on afterwards? You would be as good as dead. It would only be a matter of time. Also, the CIA could have offered these women hundreds of thousands of dollars for this whole thing. No one else (who cares) can afford to match that kind of offer. It also seems pretty naive to assume that the US government are just going to sit back and wait for Assange and Wikileaks to get even more soldiers and informants killed. They aren't going to let it get that far. Call me a psychic, but Assange will be neutralized in some way before that happens. If he were to die in a traffic accident this week would you think that it was just a traffic accident? Wouldn't it be the "simplest" hypothesis? I've got news for you. The US government takes this shit seriously. It is not a game to them. They will do whatever they have to to maintain "national security". They warned Assange and he didn't listen. While I think he is a bit of a baddass hero for standing up to the greatest military force in this solar system, he does lack a sense of self-preservation. You might even call his behavior suicidal.