[I]f I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so? If not, what am I paying for?
You are not "paying" for anything. It's almost like a tax -- a form of socialism if you will. The people who can influence the govnerment get to influence the laws and can therefore do what ever they want. (an off topic example is Marc Rich)
You could also think of the transaction like this and I know that the politics don't realy work this way but I'm simplifying them and the net effect is the same. Company A sells DVD movies. Company B sells technology to copy DVD movies. After company B's technology hits the market the sale of DVD movies goes down and company A is upset. So company A goes to company B and says "Hey, your product is hurting our revenue. We need more money. Could you pay us for our lost revenue and just pass that expense along to your consumers?" Company B says ok and now you are paying extra to the DVD/record/whatever company to get no extra privilges. Only YOU arnt paying them. The government (acting as a middle man) is taking your money and giving it to the company.
Count the FBI among the many visitors to bonsaikitten.com who are anything but amused at the descriptions of how to use muscle relaxant, feeding tubes and Klein bottles to shape a perfect Bonsai Cat.
You think anyone at the FBI knows what a Klien bottle is?
Do you really think that if our government intercepts a message in arabic we cant read it? Do you consider spanish to be an effective method of encryption?
FBI Agent: Boss, we just intercepted this measage from Osama but it's in arabic.
FBI Supervisor: Well then there's nothing we can do. I hope it wasnt important.
It's an interesting parallel to what has happened with guns. As you think about this argument try to remain objective whatever your stance on gun control is. I bring it up for historical comparison not to start a political flamewar. The attitude of the media has been for some time now that only the government should have guns. Many people agree that citzens can't be trusted with firearms. Why should we have guns if the government is going to protect us?
What was done with the weapons of the past will now be done with the "weapons" of the future. It only makes sense to villify encryption. Without public outcry how can it be banned? The next step is to find some event that could have been prevented if terrorist X didn't have encryption. A recent office shooting prompted a slew of gun control legeslation by the Massachusettes state legeslature. Sooner of later the same thing will happen with encryption. When little Suzie gets blown up by a bomb that the FBI could have prevented if only carnivore had picked up the email and been able to decode it, then and only then will the real threat to encryption, privacy, etc. begin. If it happened with Colt it will happend with RSA. Remember that we DONT have a constitutional right to keep and bear encryption. Privacy rights advocates have a hard fight ahead of them.
(pats whiny European on the head)
There, there, now. Did that nasty Slobodan make you sad? We'll help you out - we always do. Oh? You want to have your own defense force? Isn't that cute - I suppose you can have a little something as long as you don't start getting airs about being independent from NATO or anything. Now go play...
In court, you would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that everyone knows it's not osx.
No. In a civil suit the burden is on the plaintiff not the defendant and the burden is "a preponderence of evidence" not "reasonable doubt." In court, Apple would have to prove beyond a preponderence of the evidence that a normal person would think your product was OSX. And they have to prove that a "normal person" (whatever that is) would confuse them -- not that just someone would.
Trade dress refers to packaging and display stuff. If you make something that looks like coke so that people buy it thinking it is coke, then yes Coca-Cola can and should come after you. If, however you make something that tastes like coke and sell it in a diferent package so that no one confuses it with coke then that is just fine. You can even advertise that it tastes like coke.
Likewise, if you sell software in an OSX box that isnt OSX then by all means Apple should go after you. They have a duty to their customers to ensure that when someone buys something that they think is OSX they get OSX. But in this case, they are taking something that everyone knows isn't osx and making it "taste" like osx.
I don't see how this effects seti@home. The "pulsing light detector" sounds pretty strait forward. If you see a flashing light, you found something now go analize it. With radio there is all kinds of noise so you need a lot of computer power to look for something which you want to study in greater detail, hence seti@home. With this telescope, as soon as you see anything, it is worth studying in greater detail. Think of the logs...
1:00:00 AM - no signal
1:00:01 AM - no signal
1:00:02 AM - no signal
...
Citizens do harm to one another. That is a fact of life, unfortunate but something we have to live with. Government should do no harm. It is better to let 100 criminals go free than to wrongly convict one inocent. "To declare that in the administration of criminal law, the end justifies the means...would bring terrible retribution." (Justice Brandeis)
First, Nintendo is trying to prevent strategy guides from being written about it's video games. This is a long shot but Nintendo has nothing to lose but legal fees so they figure just go for it. Since nintendo has, in the past, licensed outside firms to produce strategy guides, it is trying to claim the precedence that such guides must be licensed(See: complaint point 14). I see no such right. There is no valid copyright claim. A review or synopsis of a work is a well defined example of fair use even if the review is comercialized -- movie reviews in newspapers being a prime example.
The place where dailyradar runs into problems is in the fact that they used trade marked images to promote the guide. The credible claim that nintendo has is found on pages six and seven of the complaint. DR used a cover that was deceptivly similar to the one of the nintendo book. They used a similar logo to the nintendo book adding the words "100% Unoficial" in small type. They also claim trademark protection on character images. This is the same protection that doesnt allow me to start printing Bart Simpson shirts. Nintendo may very well win on this point. Daily Radar was using images of character's owned by Nintendo to market it's own product.
Microsoft:
judge is biased.
DOJ:
judge is not biased.
and in other news...
RIAA:
Napster is stealing.
Napster:
Napster is not stealing.
Marsha Clark:
OJ did it.
Jonny Cockren:
If the glove don't fit...
Coke:
Pepsi sucks.
Pepsi:
Coke sucks.
IV. A person is guilty of the computer crime of misuse of computer system information when:
(a) As a result of his accessing or causing to be accessed a computer system, he knowingly makes or causes to be made an unauthorized display, use, disclosure, or copy, in any form, of data residing in, communicated by, or produced by a computer system; or
(b) He knowingly or recklessly and without authorization:
(1) Alters, deletes, tampers with, damages, destroys, or takes data intended for use by a computer system, whether residing within or external to a computer system; or
(2) Intercepts or adds to data residing within a computer system; or
(c) He knowingly receives or retains data obtained in violation of subparagraph (a) or (b) of this paragraph; or
(d) He knowingly uses or discloses any data he knows or believes was obtained in violation of subparagraph (a) or (b) of this paragraph.
-------------
is it possible his downloading code from the website was making an unauthorized copy? If so people should be really concerned about copyright, fair use, etc.
simple the police have guns and are allowed to use them. If the MPAA had it's own MP-5 squad do you think they would have filed for an injunction in the DeCSS case? NO! They would have gone in, arested people, and shut the site down themselves. The police can take matters into their own hands so they can arrest first and sue later.
slander is not a crime. if you lie about someone and cause them dammage (e.g., shame in the community, etc.) you can be held liable in civil court. you cannot be arested for slander.
Sounds great. And it is great from an academic standpoint. This is the kindo of things EE profesors can write papers on but it will never show up in industry and here's why.
There is too much money already in silicon.
we saw the same thing when GaAs first came out. "GaAs has better better transport properties" they whined but nothing ever came of it b/c Si had too much of a head start.
process is harder
Si has a great property -- it rusts (so to speak). Si+O2->SiO2. SiO2 is glass and an insulator so to create an insulator on silicon all ou have to do heat it up in oxygen. Diamond is an insulator when you remove all the dopants. How do you dope deep down into the crystal and leave an undoped (insulated) layer on top for a FET.
It costs too much.
It costs nearly $5billion to set up a fab when you know what you are doing. How much do you think it will cost when there are currently no machine manufatureres or even known proceses for a new material. No one will jump on the diamond bandwagon because the risk reward prospect is really bad.
Easy. With a techno fix everything on the hard drive becomes protected by an effective copy protection device. Anyone who coppies anything on the device, finds a way to copy stuff on the device, or even tells other people how to copy stuff on the device is guilty of a federal offence. This standard makes the existing copyright laws stronger which it can then enforce through traditional means. Also, it is hard for big companies to go after small time infrengers (e.g. mp3 users) because it looks bad for them. This prevents the average person from copying protected content and allows only those evil "hackers" to do it. It's a lot easyier to sue "hackers" than conumers. And, the media industry does not appear to be limiting people the hardware industry does. This is why the media giants want this and the hardware ppl dont.
They have no legal basis for this at all. You don't sign a deal when you bid on an auction that you can never do buisness with anyone else without using ebay. Sounds to me like ebay is trying to regulate interstate commerce.
Consumer means us -- you and me. Our privacy is important to us. We need strong encryption to protect our privacy -- to protect our ideas. Your right to share your ideas is protected by the first amendment. If you want to share something you publish it. You dont encrypt it. Encryption is about the right to keep your ideas private.
Nothing she is afraid of is new. People have always been detatched from politics. Think how much peasents in England in the 1200's cared about politics. Also all of this rhetoric about inequality is BS. There is more equality now than ever before. There is more social mobility in our society than in any society to ever exist. Even by Ralph Nader's statistics, 1 in 20 families in the U.S. has a net wealth of more than $2.5 million. And civics has always been in the realm of the philosophers in society. The majority of people never have a clue about what's going on.
You know, it's really amazing how there has been NOT ONE positive post yet. No one has said what they think the canidate they like would say. Everyone just makes up ficticious answers for the canidate they dont like. Not only that every flame (err. answer) has been exactly the same.
Question about topic X
Gore: I invented X. I want to spend all of our money on X.
Bush: I like X as long as it's a Christian X or as long as X hurts minorities.
Please stop! I wish I knew enough to write a constructive answer for one of the canidates but since I don't I guess I should just write unconstructive answers for the canidates.
This is the important part. You need to wait for them to find you (you can tell them if you like) and tell you that you are violating their patent you dont do anything untill they send you as cease and disist letter. If they never do, who cares? If you realy want a fight, then repeat step 4 for more claims or keep waiting. Once the do send you the letter proceed to step 6.
Pay the lawyer from the first step a few million dollars.
File suit.
Ask the judge for a summery judgement ruling the patent invalid.
Congradulations you just used the legal system to reject an accepted patent.
I have a friend who is an IP lawyer. She says that if something is not worth a million dollars it's not worth patenting because that is the minimum cost to litigate a patent infringement case.
Slashdot Mirror
You are not "paying" for anything. It's almost like a tax -- a form of socialism if you will. The people who can influence the govnerment get to influence the laws and can therefore do what ever they want. (an off topic example is Marc Rich)
You could also think of the transaction like this and I know that the politics don't realy work this way but I'm simplifying them and the net effect is the same. Company A sells DVD movies. Company B sells technology to copy DVD movies. After company B's technology hits the market the sale of DVD movies goes down and company A is upset. So company A goes to company B and says "Hey, your product is hurting our revenue. We need more money. Could you pay us for our lost revenue and just pass that expense along to your consumers?" Company B says ok and now you are paying extra to the DVD/record/whatever company to get no extra privilges. Only YOU arnt paying them. The government (acting as a middle man) is taking your money and giving it to the company.
You think anyone at the FBI knows what a Klien bottle is?
Do you really think that if our government intercepts a message in arabic we cant read it? Do you consider spanish to be an effective method of encryption?
FBI Agent: Boss, we just intercepted this measage from Osama but it's in arabic.
FBI Supervisor: Well then there's nothing we can do. I hope it wasnt important.
It's an interesting parallel to what has happened with guns. As you think about this argument try to remain objective whatever your stance on gun control is. I bring it up for historical comparison not to start a political flamewar. The attitude of the media has been for some time now that only the government should have guns. Many people agree that citzens can't be trusted with firearms. Why should we have guns if the government is going to protect us?
What was done with the weapons of the past will now be done with the "weapons" of the future. It only makes sense to villify encryption. Without public outcry how can it be banned? The next step is to find some event that could have been prevented if terrorist X didn't have encryption. A recent office shooting prompted a slew of gun control legeslation by the Massachusettes state legeslature. Sooner of later the same thing will happen with encryption. When little Suzie gets blown up by a bomb that the FBI could have prevented if only carnivore had picked up the email and been able to decode it, then and only then will the real threat to encryption, privacy, etc. begin. If it happened with Colt it will happend with RSA. Remember that we DONT have a constitutional right to keep and bear encryption. Privacy rights advocates have a hard fight ahead of them.
(pats whiny European on the head)
There, there, now.
Did that nasty Slobodan make you sad? We'll help you out - we always do. Oh? You want to have your own defense force? Isn't that cute - I suppose you can have a little something as long as you don't start getting airs about being independent from NATO or anything. Now go play...
No. In a civil suit the burden is on the plaintiff not the defendant and the burden is "a preponderence of evidence" not "reasonable doubt." In court, Apple would have to prove beyond a preponderence of the evidence that a normal person would think your product was OSX. And they have to prove that a "normal person" (whatever that is) would confuse them -- not that just someone would.
Trade dress refers to packaging and display stuff. If you make something that looks like coke so that people buy it thinking it is coke, then yes Coca-Cola can and should come after you. If, however you make something that tastes like coke and sell it in a diferent package so that no one confuses it with coke then that is just fine. You can even advertise that it tastes like coke.
Likewise, if you sell software in an OSX box that isnt OSX then by all means Apple should go after you. They have a duty to their customers to ensure that when someone buys something that they think is OSX they get OSX. But in this case, they are taking something that everyone knows isn't osx and making it "taste" like osx.
... rather than read the whole page I went to lexis-nexis to see if despair had in fact filed any suits in U.S. District court. They hadn't.
I don't see how this effects seti@home. The "pulsing light detector" sounds pretty strait forward. If you see a flashing light, you found something now go analize it. With radio there is all kinds of noise so you need a lot of computer power to look for something which you want to study in greater detail, hence seti@home. With this telescope, as soon as you see anything, it is worth studying in greater detail. Think of the logs...
1:00:00 AM - no signal
1:00:01 AM - no signal
1:00:02 AM - no signal
...
Citizens do harm to one another. That is a fact of life, unfortunate but something we have to live with. Government should do no harm. It is better to let 100 criminals go free than to wrongly convict one inocent. "To declare that in the administration of criminal law, the end justifies the means...would bring terrible retribution." (Justice Brandeis)
I think it was Barry Goldwater who said:
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.
First, Nintendo is trying to prevent strategy guides from being written about it's video games. This is a long shot but Nintendo has nothing to lose but legal fees so they figure just go for it. Since nintendo has, in the past, licensed outside firms to produce strategy guides, it is trying to claim the precedence that such guides must be licensed(See: complaint point 14). I see no such right. There is no valid copyright claim. A review or synopsis of a work is a well defined example of fair use even if the review is comercialized -- movie reviews in newspapers being a prime example.
The place where dailyradar runs into problems is in the fact that they used trade marked images to promote the guide. The credible claim that nintendo has is found on pages six and seven of the complaint. DR used a cover that was deceptivly similar to the one of the nintendo book. They used a similar logo to the nintendo book adding the words "100% Unoficial" in small type. They also claim trademark protection on character images. This is the same protection that doesnt allow me to start printing Bart Simpson shirts. Nintendo may very well win on this point. Daily Radar was using images of character's owned by Nintendo to market it's own product.
Microsoft:
judge is biased.
DOJ:
judge is not biased.
and in other news...
RIAA:
Napster is stealing.
Napster:
Napster is not stealing.
Marsha Clark:
OJ did it.
Jonny Cockren:
If the glove don't fit...
Coke:
Pepsi sucks.
Pepsi:
Coke sucks.
Here is what he was actualy charged with:
IV. A person is guilty of the computer crime of misuse of computer system information when:
(a) As a result of his accessing or causing to be accessed a computer system, he knowingly makes or causes to be made an unauthorized display, use, disclosure, or copy, in any form, of data residing in, communicated by, or produced by a computer system; or
(b) He knowingly or recklessly and without authorization:
(1) Alters, deletes, tampers with, damages, destroys, or takes data intended for use by a computer system, whether residing within or external to a computer system; or
(2) Intercepts or adds to data residing within a computer system; or
(c) He knowingly receives or retains data obtained in violation of subparagraph (a) or (b) of this paragraph; or
(d) He knowingly uses or discloses any data he knows or believes was obtained in violation of subparagraph (a) or (b) of this paragraph.
-------------
is it possible his downloading code from the website was making an unauthorized copy? If so people should be really concerned about copyright, fair use, etc.
simple the police have guns and are allowed to use them. If the MPAA had it's own MP-5 squad do you think they would have filed for an injunction in the DeCSS case? NO! They would have gone in, arested people, and shut the site down themselves. The police can take matters into their own hands so they can arrest first and sue later.
slander is not a crime. if you lie about someone and cause them dammage (e.g., shame in the community, etc.) you can be held liable in civil court. you cannot be arested for slander.
we saw the same thing when GaAs first came out. "GaAs has better better transport properties" they whined but nothing ever came of it b/c Si had too much of a head start.
Si has a great property -- it rusts (so to speak). Si+O2->SiO2. SiO2 is glass and an insulator so to create an insulator on silicon all ou have to do heat it up in oxygen. Diamond is an insulator when you remove all the dopants. How do you dope deep down into the crystal and leave an undoped (insulated) layer on top for a FET.
It costs nearly $5billion to set up a fab when you know what you are doing. How much do you think it will cost when there are currently no machine manufatureres or even known proceses for a new material. No one will jump on the diamond bandwagon because the risk reward prospect is really bad.
Easy. With a techno fix everything on the hard drive becomes protected by an effective copy protection device. Anyone who coppies anything on the device, finds a way to copy stuff on the device, or even tells other people how to copy stuff on the device is guilty of a federal offence. This standard makes the existing copyright laws stronger which it can then enforce through traditional means. Also, it is hard for big companies to go after small time infrengers (e.g. mp3 users) because it looks bad for them. This prevents the average person from copying protected content and allows only those evil "hackers" to do it. It's a lot easyier to sue "hackers" than conumers. And, the media industry does not appear to be limiting people the hardware industry does. This is why the media giants want this and the hardware ppl dont.
They have no legal basis for this at all. You don't sign a deal when you bid on an auction that you can never do buisness with anyone else without using ebay. Sounds to me like ebay is trying to regulate interstate commerce.
All in favor say "aye"
Consumer means us -- you and me. Our privacy is important to us. We need strong encryption to protect our privacy -- to protect our ideas. Your right to share your ideas is protected by the first amendment. If you want to share something you publish it. You dont encrypt it. Encryption is about the right to keep your ideas private.
Nothing she is afraid of is new. People have always been detatched from politics. Think how much peasents in England in the 1200's cared about politics. Also all of this rhetoric about inequality is BS. There is more equality now than ever before. There is more social mobility in our society than in any society to ever exist. Even by Ralph Nader's statistics, 1 in 20 families in the U.S. has a net wealth of more than $2.5 million. And civics has always been in the realm of the philosophers in society. The majority of people never have a clue about what's going on.
Question about topic X
Gore: I invented X. I want to spend all of our money on X.
Bush: I like X as long as it's a Christian X or as long as X hurts minorities.
Please stop! I wish I knew enough to write a constructive answer for one of the canidates but since I don't I guess I should just write unconstructive answers for the canidates.
- Hire an IP lawyer
- Read the patent.
- Find the part that you find objectionable
- Violate the claim that you thing is invalid
- Sit back and wait
- Pay the lawyer from the first step a few million dollars.
- File suit.
Congradulations you just used the legal system to reject an accepted patent.This is the important part. You need to wait for them to find you (you can tell them if you like) and tell you that you are violating their patent you dont do anything untill they send you as cease and disist letter. If they never do, who cares? If you realy want a fight, then repeat step 4 for more claims or keep waiting. Once the do send you the letter proceed to step 6.
Ask the judge for a summery judgement ruling the patent invalid.
I have a friend who is an IP lawyer. She says that if something is not worth a million dollars it's not worth patenting because that is the minimum cost to litigate a patent infringement case.