Maybe they would not have created it, but then the author to whom you are replying isn't going to be able to use it anyway. He's going to have to switch over from using that closed-source crappy piece of shit software to something that he can actually use. Also, what you seem to be saying in your example of BSD vs. GPL is that you wanted to take some code from another author and put it in your own commercial software, right? Now, if that code had been GPL'd you wouldn't have been allowed to "steal" that code for use in a closed-source commercial software product, as you did with the BSD'd code, right? However, you neglected to think about the fact that you "could" have coded the feature yourself, but apparently were too lazy to do so. Since you, apparently, are working for profit, why is it that you feel justified in taking advantage of the work of others without providing them with compensation?
To sum it all up, are you saying that you should be paid for freeloading?
Nice guys that the BSD crew are, they don't mind if you do that. But, no, it doesn't necessarily help your user to be locked out of the code they are using. The GPL insures that the code remains open and modifiable all the way down the programming food chain. The BSD license does not, and that is why the above poster ended up wasting a lot of his own valuable time. The people who closed RtX traded his time for theirs, and he got the shaft.
What the hell does the death of millions of Jews have to do with shock value?
I thought he brought it up to illustrate what unscrupulous governments accomplish when they are blindly given abolute power by their citizens. If that shocks you, then you are ignorant. Which is exactly why the point needed to be illustrated to you, in particular. He thought that it might help to make you reconsider blindly giving your power to an unscrupulous government. But, since you have apparently already made that decision, your shock was the only thing that registered. Walk on, blind man, I hope the ovens aren't too hot for you.
Stupid. That "tax refund" was actually an advance on tax cuts you would be getting next year. So, in effect, Bush bribed voters to get elected, which barely worked. Even so, the amount of money spent by the citizens on maintaining the operation of their government is no real measure of the amount of liberty we do or do not have.
That's exactly right, but does it really matter which puppet they entertain us with? The same agenda is pushed forward year after year regardless of who is in office. Only the insignificant details change.
I'd agree with you except I don't think the part about "active use" is a good idea. It's just too easy to "actively use" something again and then sue any "copyright infringers" to maintain a monopoly on something. Twenty-five years, max, period, end of story. If you haven't made your fortune yet, you don't deserve one. Any piece of culture that's been in the public eye for twenty-five years is a integral, undeniable part of the culture that belongs to everyone. It's just a common idea now. Anybody with a video reproduction plant ought to be able to print up 5 million copies of Steamboat Mickey and sell them for whatever they can get for them, including Disney. But, who's going to buy that crap?
I don't think I've ever seen such a complete case of total media brainwashing.
It's interesting to me how you distinguish "terrorism on a civilian population" from the way we attack "justified military targets". Just because these targets are justified in our eyes does not mean that we are just. To those who attacked us, that target was justified.
It seems unlikely that they hate us because we "Do unto others as we would have done unto us", as we "obviously" do, and "Turn the other cheek", as we continue to do. Wait, which Judeo/Christian values are we acting according to that they have a problem with?
No, actually many countries in the Middle East did so for EXACTLY that reason, IMHO. But the condolences that were sincere, and there were many, were for the loss of human life. Not for our country or it's symbols of greed and military aggression. Most civilized countries were wise enough not to state that distinction out loud, though.
May be, but you need an Orwell state to support a Huxley state. Huxley states are incredibly wasteful and over-consumptive, as we are in the US. So, we need to establish slave states in other parts of the world to keep our fresh supply of Nikes and cocaine. There's only room for so many fat lazy pigs at the world table. Somebody's got to starve.
Well said. Is the US acting in the best interest of the human species by bankrupting Ukraine over issues of profit margin for US corporations? I don't think so.
It would make it easier for them to track down large scale pirates, because they could trace the numbers from paper prints or CD burns back to the machines manufacturer. They can then trace that machine through it's distribution channels to the poor sucker who bought it. So, it "could" be used to track down pirates. Not that any large scale pirate is going to be stupid enough to let them track him that way. However, this could easily be used to track down the publishers of subversive literature. Also, to hunt traffickers of any kind of illicit data. If someone burns a hardcopy of something and it falls into the government's hands, then there's a built in trail back to someone involved.
I guess those examples may be a little far fetched. My lifestyle certainly isn't that interesting. My bitch, though, is that it shows that the government is taking the attitude that it must watch all of us, because they see us all as criminals. Not only do I not trust them to use their surveillance powers properly, but I'm offended that they are implying that I'm doing something wrong (or that I would if they weren't watching).
It sure as hell wouldn't be perfectly legit for anyone to do that to us. Our laws are "supposed" to be based on the will of the people in this representative government. I don't know what the Ukrainian form of government is. But, I'm sure it doesn't amount to "we do whatever we are told to do by the United States". If Switzerland told the US that we had better start killing off all of our first born children, would we do it? If they had the financial power to hurt our country's economy if we didn't, would you tell George Dubyah to go piss up a rope when he came for your kid? Would this be the "Land of the Free" if George did come for your kid?
The US needs to start acting like the "Land of the Free" and treating other nations as like we fought to be treated, as independent, autonomous states. How hard is that to understand?
If the IP-hoarders are so scared to peddle their wares in these rebellious pirate countries, then they shouldn't sell them there. Instead, they are using force to create their desired market, so that they can rape their profits on their own greedy terms. I say, "Fuck the Bastards".
This isn't about IP. It's about lock in of corporate profit and control. Intellectual property itself is a misnomer, as it is not really property. Once you realize that it is impossible for an idea to "belong" to someone, then you will see how heinous this really is. Rethink your brainwashed assumption, theft of IP is NOT theft. It is NOT property. Disney wants you to think it is, but that does not make it so. Hello. Hello. Hello.
This is not a legitimate action. This is an abuse. This is an act of war. The corporations are waging a financial war of attrition against sovereign states, in order to force them into obedience. They are protecting their "right" to profit at all cost. Think about it.
The corporations are trying to remold the way the world works in an attempt to reap profit in the most efficient way possible. Not in the way that is best for the world, but in the way that is most FINANCIALLY profitable. Human life and everything else are secondary to this one simple goal: Increase profit.
Information doesn't want anything. Information is an abstract concept. Can you own a concept? Only if you keep it to yourself. Can we as a society agree to pay you tribute because you shared your original idea with the rest of us? Sure, but we have to agree to do it. And sometimes, after we have paid and paid and paid for the same old idea, paying for it again doesn't seem like such a great idea. But we don't ever have to reward you in any way for sharing your creativity with us. If you don't like that, then keep your ideas to yourself.
The problem with that though, is that then nobody benefits from your creation or stroke of genius. So we as a society agree that we should thank you for sharing with us. And, this is good for you, because you get to share the idea and are also shown that we appreciate it. But, that's it. After a while, your idea starts to show its age. It's no longer as exciting or has attained commonplace usage. New ideas take the forefront and we spend our time and our money thanking the creators of those ideas. Your idea is old hat now. There's really no need to thank you for it anymore, because we have already spent sufficient time doing that and it's time to move on.
Does any of that sound like property to you? It shouldn't, because it's not. It's the way we progress and evolve and live as a culture. Disney would have you eternally thanking Walt for Mickey Mouse until the end of all time. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, that's not how human nature works. That would be artificial, because Mickey Mouse is just no longer that important for us. It would take a very powerful entity indeed to make us continue to waste our time and money thanking the dead-as-a-doornail-Walt for such an irrelevant and commonplace cultural fixture. But Disney's that powerful. They are MAKING us bow down.
That is my take on this whole Intellectual Property hoopla. Who cares what information wants. What do you want?
>Who gets to decide what the community is? Does it consist of people who don't contribute back modifications? If not, someone decides who that community is. That person is analogous to the medieval lord (totalitarian aristocrat) who legally owns the "village commons".
With the GPL, the author (yes, under copyright law) decides who the community is. By the terms of the GPL, that community is everyone who chooses to be a part of it. Nobody is excluded.
> The only software that the "community" owns is public domain software. Everything else is owned by the copyright holder. That may be an individual, a group such as the FSF, or a corporation such as Redhat. Since they set the rules under which I can distribute the software, they are the owners.
Wrong. Public domain software can be slightly modified and re-released in a closed-source fashion. The GPL is not necessarily perfect, but, for the most part, accomplishes what the BSD license and Public Domain software cannot.
Ownership of the code is really not the issue. Under copyright law, all code is owned by someone, and they decide who can use it and under what terms. When the owner chooses the GPL as a license, he makes a gift of his "property" to the community and as copyright holder establishes himself as the gaurdian of this gift. Red Hat or the FSF can also serve as the gaurdian. This is only an issue if the owner has made modifications to the code and wants to put that under a different license. As copyright holder they can do that, but they still cannot take back the original GPL'd code.
> An oxymoron. You can only steal what you do not own. If the commons is owned by everyone, then what is stolen is the already the thief's property. If it is owned by no one, then there is no property to steal
Wrong again. You can steal a piece, or all, of the commons. It does not belong to "nobody" it belongs to everybody. You can steal a part of a physical commons by putting up barbed wire fences around "your" piece of it and shooting anyone who climbs through the fence. The GPL merely says that you cannot put up fences on this land, even if you work long and hard to keep that piece of it beautiful.
> Speaking of greed, why are you so insistant on a license that requires all modifications come back to you? Or to put it another way, if you don't like the fact that the MIT license does not require people to give you their modifications, then you can go code them your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
I think you misunderstand. And I wasn't attacking you personally. Forgive me. I'm not insisting that anybody put their code under the GPL. It's not about the code coming back to "me". I am expressing why I would choose to put MY code under the GPL. Since I do value giving away my code so that others may benefit, I choose the GPL in order to safegaurd that gift. I choose the GPL in order to block the greed of others. The deal is that if you want to take advantage of my code, to avoid having to do the work that I already did, then you can do the same for others. If you don't think that's a fair trade, then don't take the deal.
Sure the MIT license is fine. But I wouldn't use it under most circumstances, because it would annoy me to see Microsoft, or anybody for that matter, take my code and make a fat wad of cash off of closing the source code. That would just piss me off. I guess those who choose that license are just bigger people than I. What can I say, I'm weak.
You're right, except that the idea of using copyright to entrust a work to the public domain undermines the selfish mentality that drives copyright hoarding. It does make a statement. Whether you choose to receive it or not.
When you take photographs, you are infringing on GOD(TM)'s copyright. As a servant and representative of GOD(TM), I hereby inform you that you are in violation of the copyright laws of the United States of America. Furthermore, we require that you send all of your copies of GOD(TM)'s work to us within 14 business days, or face criminal prosecution and the Wrath of GOD(TM).
GOD(TM) created this world and everything in it. If you continue to attempt reproduction of it's wonders, even with your silly low bandwidth devices, you will be prosecuted. This world is HIS! And don't you forget it!
The GPL is not based on the "current" copyright model. It is in fact based on the reality that there is a copyright model. Whether it is the copyright law of the framers or the copyright law of the modern corporation, the GPL still takes advantage of that reality to create a community trust software pool. What makes the GPL work is the fact that it does not allow anyone to steal the work of the community and sell it back to that same community at a profit. The BSD type license does allow that to happen. If every piece of GPL software was switched to a BSD license, then, slowly but surely, as individuals or profit-based enterprises made enhancements to that code, the new code will be taken from the community though it is based in large part on code written and owned by the community. As this theft of the commons occurs, it will be necessary for you to pay for closed source software to stay current with technological advances. Or you will have to write the new code yourself.
The GPL is the gaurdian of the community's software pool. The GPL is a deal. If you want to leverage someone else's work to make yours easier, then you have to allow others to leverage your work. If you don't like the deal, then you can code it your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
The paranoia level of most amateur pirates, those likely involved in this case (Professionals print CD's, etc, etc..), is very low due to the idea that nobody really cares enough to bust them. It's just not that big a deal, because not many people really get much use out of it. This attitude has been generally been pretty safe, until now. That is how these people are caught. They are intentionally led to think that nobody really gives a shit about their petty crimes, then BOOM!! they find that they have been the subject of this massively out of proportion expensive investigative effort. It's really a very strange scenario. You know that if you speed by a cop, you are pretty likely to get pulled over. But, if you drove past the same cop doing 80 in a 35 everyday and he didn't ever pull you over, you'd think he wasn't ever going too. Then one day he pulls you over and gives you 200 tickets. Would you feel stupid? Or just cruelly misled?
So maybe this whole thing was an accident? The FBI along with members of several other agencies were running this pirating ring with the help of kids from MIT who are getting government funding for research and the funding of unnamed corporate executives. Ohh yeah, and how are you going to run your shit without some computer-network admins. Anyway, they probably got popped by the BSA, who agreed to let them off the hook and spin the story by claiming the FBI and co-conspirators were trying to "bust" software pirates. And the tax dollars "spent on the investigation" can be funneled off to the BSA (Microsoft).
If fair was fair, I'd have to say Yes. However, since in the Napster case, the providers of the pirated MP3's were WAY too numerous to prosecute, that left only Napster.
And, actually, Napster, if they didn't say that, might as well have. It was obviously going to be a big use for the tech.
In this case, the govt. has the first-gen pirates and their people-based distro network to bust, so I figure they won't bother to bust themselves...
It appears to me that what happened was that they setup a site and undercover agents who were infiltrating the warez scene "advertised" it to others in the scene as a distribution point. Since these people were already pirating, it is doubtful that this would be seen as entrapment, in my opinion.
However, the fact that they became a distribution point makes them software pirates as well. It's not like buying drugs off of a dealer, where the drugs end up confiscated by the state. All of those 12,000 copyrighted programs were pirated BY the government, and they should be liable for all 100,000 individual incidents of which they most likely have detailed server logs.
This went on for two-years!! How many small but promising software companies went under because the FBI was distributing their software illegally?
This has to be one of the most outrageously blatant examples of the need for STRICTER control over our government's law-enforcement powers. Not only, did they take part in illegal activities, they made it more damaging to those that the law was intended to protect.
Aren't all of you programmers out there happy to find out that your tax dollars have been spent for the last two years PROMOTING software piracy?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they would not have created it, but then the author to whom you are replying isn't going to be able to use it anyway. He's going to have to switch over from using that closed-source crappy piece of shit software to something that he can actually use. Also, what you seem to be saying in your example of BSD vs. GPL is that you wanted to take some code from another author and put it in your own commercial software, right? Now, if that code had been GPL'd you wouldn't have been allowed to "steal" that code for use in a closed-source commercial software product, as you did with the BSD'd code, right? However, you neglected to think about the fact that you "could" have coded the feature yourself, but apparently were too lazy to do so. Since you, apparently, are working for profit, why is it that you feel justified in taking advantage of the work of others without providing them with compensation?
To sum it all up, are you saying that you should be paid for freeloading?
Nice guys that the BSD crew are, they don't mind if you do that. But, no, it doesn't necessarily help your user to be locked out of the code they are using. The GPL insures that the code remains open and modifiable all the way down the programming food chain. The BSD license does not, and that is why the above poster ended up wasting a lot of his own valuable time. The people who closed RtX traded his time for theirs, and he got the shaft.
So that people like you are forced to read things they don't want to open their minds to.
What the hell does the death of millions of Jews have to do with shock value?
I thought he brought it up to illustrate what unscrupulous governments accomplish when they are blindly given abolute power by their citizens. If that shocks you, then you are ignorant. Which is exactly why the point needed to be illustrated to you, in particular. He thought that it might help to make you reconsider blindly giving your power to an unscrupulous government. But, since you have apparently already made that decision, your shock was the only thing that registered. Walk on, blind man, I hope the ovens aren't too hot for you.
Stupid. That "tax refund" was actually an advance on tax cuts you would be getting next year. So, in effect, Bush bribed voters to get elected, which barely worked. Even so, the amount of money spent by the citizens on maintaining the operation of their government is no real measure of the amount of liberty we do or do not have.
Is that after Nazi Germany and Cambodia? Or are you talking only about formalized, court-sanctioned killing?
Yes that was nice. ;)
That's exactly right, but does it really matter which puppet they entertain us with? The same agenda is pushed forward year after year regardless of who is in office. Only the insignificant details change.
I'd agree with you except I don't think the part about "active use" is a good idea. It's just too easy to "actively use" something again and then sue any "copyright infringers" to maintain a monopoly on something. Twenty-five years, max, period, end of story. If you haven't made your fortune yet, you don't deserve one. Any piece of culture that's been in the public eye for twenty-five years is a integral, undeniable part of the culture that belongs to everyone. It's just a common idea now. Anybody with a video reproduction plant ought to be able to print up 5 million copies of Steamboat Mickey and sell them for whatever they can get for them, including Disney. But, who's going to buy that crap?
.
Wow.
I don't think I've ever seen such a complete case of total media brainwashing.
It's interesting to me how you distinguish "terrorism on a civilian population" from the way we attack "justified military targets". Just because these targets are justified in our eyes does not mean that we are just. To those who attacked us, that target was justified.
It seems unlikely that they hate us because we "Do unto others as we would have done unto us", as we "obviously" do, and "Turn the other cheek", as we continue to do. Wait, which Judeo/Christian values are we acting according to that they have a problem with?
No, actually many countries in the Middle East did so for EXACTLY that reason, IMHO. But the condolences that were sincere, and there were many, were for the loss of human life. Not for our country or it's symbols of greed and military aggression. Most civilized countries were wise enough not to state that distinction out loud, though.
.
Wrong. Corporations do, you stupid piece of shit.
No thanks, take everything you've got and shove it up your fucking ass!
.
May be, but you need an Orwell state to support a Huxley state. Huxley states are incredibly wasteful and over-consumptive, as we are in the US. So, we need to establish slave states in other parts of the world to keep our fresh supply of Nikes and cocaine. There's only room for so many fat lazy pigs at the world table. Somebody's got to starve.
Well said. Is the US acting in the best interest of the human species by bankrupting Ukraine over issues of profit margin for US corporations? I don't think so.
It would make it easier for them to track down large scale pirates, because they could trace the numbers from paper prints or CD burns back to the machines manufacturer. They can then trace that machine through it's distribution channels to the poor sucker who bought it. So, it "could" be used to track down pirates. Not that any large scale pirate is going to be stupid enough to let them track him that way. However, this could easily be used to track down the publishers of subversive literature. Also, to hunt traffickers of any kind of illicit data. If someone burns a hardcopy of something and it falls into the government's hands, then there's a built in trail back to someone involved.
I guess those examples may be a little far fetched. My lifestyle certainly isn't that interesting. My bitch, though, is that it shows that the government is taking the attitude that it must watch all of us, because they see us all as criminals. Not only do I not trust them to use their surveillance powers properly, but I'm offended that they are implying that I'm doing something wrong (or that I would if they weren't watching).
It sure as hell wouldn't be perfectly legit for anyone to do that to us. Our laws are "supposed" to be based on the will of the people in this representative government. I don't know what the Ukrainian form of government is. But, I'm sure it doesn't amount to "we do whatever we are told to do by the United States". If Switzerland told the US that we had better start killing off all of our first born children, would we do it? If they had the financial power to hurt our country's economy if we didn't, would you tell George Dubyah to go piss up a rope when he came for your kid? Would this be the "Land of the Free" if George did come for your kid?
The US needs to start acting like the "Land of the Free" and treating other nations as like we fought to be treated, as independent, autonomous states. How hard is that to understand?
If the IP-hoarders are so scared to peddle their wares in these rebellious pirate countries, then they shouldn't sell them there. Instead, they are using force to create their desired market, so that they can rape their profits on their own greedy terms. I say, "Fuck the Bastards".
This isn't about IP. It's about lock in of corporate profit and control. Intellectual property itself is a misnomer, as it is not really property. Once you realize that it is impossible for an idea to "belong" to someone, then you will see how heinous this really is. Rethink your brainwashed assumption, theft of IP is NOT theft. It is NOT property. Disney wants you to think it is, but that does not make it so. Hello. Hello. Hello.
This is not a legitimate action. This is an abuse. This is an act of war. The corporations are waging a financial war of attrition against sovereign states, in order to force them into obedience. They are protecting their "right" to profit at all cost. Think about it.
The corporations are trying to remold the way the world works in an attempt to reap profit in the most efficient way possible. Not in the way that is best for the world, but in the way that is most FINANCIALLY profitable. Human life and everything else are secondary to this one simple goal: Increase profit.
Information doesn't want anything. Information is an abstract concept. Can you own a concept? Only if you keep it to yourself. Can we as a society agree to pay you tribute because you shared your original idea with the rest of us? Sure, but we have to agree to do it. And sometimes, after we have paid and paid and paid for the same old idea, paying for it again doesn't seem like such a great idea. But we don't ever have to reward you in any way for sharing your creativity with us. If you don't like that, then keep your ideas to yourself.
The problem with that though, is that then nobody benefits from your creation or stroke of genius. So we as a society agree that we should thank you for sharing with us. And, this is good for you, because you get to share the idea and are also shown that we appreciate it. But, that's it. After a while, your idea starts to show its age. It's no longer as exciting or has attained commonplace usage. New ideas take the forefront and we spend our time and our money thanking the creators of those ideas. Your idea is old hat now. There's really no need to thank you for it anymore, because we have already spent sufficient time doing that and it's time to move on.
Does any of that sound like property to you? It shouldn't, because it's not. It's the way we progress and evolve and live as a culture. Disney would have you eternally thanking Walt for Mickey Mouse until the end of all time. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, that's not how human nature works. That would be artificial, because Mickey Mouse is just no longer that important for us. It would take a very powerful entity indeed to make us continue to waste our time and money thanking the dead-as-a-doornail-Walt for such an irrelevant and commonplace cultural fixture. But Disney's that powerful. They are MAKING us bow down.
That is my take on this whole Intellectual Property hoopla. Who cares what information wants. What do you want?
.
>Who gets to decide what the community is? Does it consist of people who don't contribute back modifications? If not, someone decides who that community is. That person is analogous to the medieval lord (totalitarian aristocrat) who legally owns the "village commons".
With the GPL, the author (yes, under copyright law) decides who the community is. By the terms of the GPL, that community is everyone who chooses to be a part of it. Nobody is excluded.
> The only software that the "community" owns is public domain software. Everything else is owned by the copyright holder. That may be an individual, a group such as the FSF, or a corporation such as Redhat. Since they set the rules under which I can distribute the software, they are the owners.
Wrong. Public domain software can be slightly modified and re-released in a closed-source fashion. The GPL is not necessarily perfect, but, for the most part, accomplishes what the BSD license and Public Domain software cannot.
Ownership of the code is really not the issue. Under copyright law, all code is owned by someone, and they decide who can use it and under what terms. When the owner chooses the GPL as a license, he makes a gift of his "property" to the community and as copyright holder establishes himself as the gaurdian of this gift. Red Hat or the FSF can also serve as the gaurdian. This is only an issue if the owner has made modifications to the code and wants to put that under a different license. As copyright holder they can do that, but they still cannot take back the original GPL'd code.
> An oxymoron. You can only steal what you do not own. If the commons is owned by everyone, then what is stolen is the already the thief's property. If it is owned by no one, then there is no property to steal
Wrong again. You can steal a piece, or all, of the commons. It does not belong to "nobody" it belongs to everybody. You can steal a part of a physical commons by putting up barbed wire fences around "your" piece of it and shooting anyone who climbs through the fence. The GPL merely says that you cannot put up fences on this land, even if you work long and hard to keep that piece of it beautiful.
> Speaking of greed, why are you so insistant on a license that requires all modifications come back to you? Or to put it another way, if you don't like the fact that the MIT license does not require people to give you their modifications, then you can go code them your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
I think you misunderstand. And I wasn't attacking you personally. Forgive me. I'm not insisting that anybody put their code under the GPL. It's not about the code coming back to "me". I am expressing why I would choose to put MY code under the GPL. Since I do value giving away my code so that others may benefit, I choose the GPL in order to safegaurd that gift. I choose the GPL in order to block the greed of others. The deal is that if you want to take advantage of my code, to avoid having to do the work that I already did, then you can do the same for others. If you don't think that's a fair trade, then don't take the deal.
Sure the MIT license is fine. But I wouldn't use it under most circumstances, because it would annoy me to see Microsoft, or anybody for that matter, take my code and make a fat wad of cash off of closing the source code. That would just piss me off. I guess those who choose that license are just bigger people than I. What can I say, I'm weak.
You're right, except that the idea of using copyright to entrust a work to the public domain undermines the selfish mentality that drives copyright hoarding. It does make a statement. Whether you choose to receive it or not.
When you take photographs, you are infringing on GOD(TM)'s copyright. As a servant and representative of GOD(TM), I hereby inform you that you are in violation of the copyright laws of the United States of America. Furthermore, we require that you send all of your copies of GOD(TM)'s work to us within 14 business days, or face criminal prosecution and the Wrath of GOD(TM).
GOD(TM) created this world and everything in it. If you continue to attempt reproduction of it's wonders, even with your silly low bandwidth devices, you will be prosecuted. This world is HIS! And don't you forget it!
The GPL is not based on the "current" copyright model. It is in fact based on the reality that there is a copyright model. Whether it is the copyright law of the framers or the copyright law of the modern corporation, the GPL still takes advantage of that reality to create a community trust software pool. What makes the GPL work is the fact that it does not allow anyone to steal the work of the community and sell it back to that same community at a profit. The BSD type license does allow that to happen. If every piece of GPL software was switched to a BSD license, then, slowly but surely, as individuals or profit-based enterprises made enhancements to that code, the new code will be taken from the community though it is based in large part on code written and owned by the community. As this theft of the commons occurs, it will be necessary for you to pay for closed source software to stay current with technological advances. Or you will have to write the new code yourself.
The GPL is the gaurdian of the community's software pool. The GPL is a deal. If you want to leverage someone else's work to make yours easier, then you have to allow others to leverage your work. If you don't like the deal, then you can code it your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
End of fucking story.
The paranoia level of most amateur pirates, those likely involved in this case (Professionals print CD's, etc, etc..), is very low due to the idea that nobody really cares enough to bust them. It's just not that big a deal, because not many people really get much use out of it. This attitude has been generally been pretty safe, until now. That is how these people are caught. They are intentionally led to think that nobody really gives a shit about their petty crimes, then BOOM!! they find that they have been the subject of this massively out of proportion expensive investigative effort. It's really a very strange scenario. You know that if you speed by a cop, you are pretty likely to get pulled over. But, if you drove past the same cop doing 80 in a 35 everyday and he didn't ever pull you over, you'd think he wasn't ever going too. Then one day he pulls you over and gives you 200 tickets. Would you feel stupid? Or just cruelly misled?
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So maybe this whole thing was an accident? The FBI along with members of several other agencies were running this pirating ring with the help of kids from MIT who are getting government funding for research and the funding of unnamed corporate executives. Ohh yeah, and how are you going to run your shit without some computer-network admins. Anyway, they probably got popped by the BSA, who agreed to let them off the hook and spin the story by claiming the FBI and co-conspirators were trying to "bust" software pirates. And the tax dollars "spent on the investigation" can be funneled off to the BSA (Microsoft).
.. It sounds reasonable to me..
If fair was fair, I'd have to say Yes. However, since in the Napster case, the providers of the pirated MP3's were WAY too numerous to prosecute, that left only Napster.
And, actually, Napster, if they didn't say that, might as well have. It was obviously going to be a big use for the tech.
In this case, the govt. has the first-gen pirates and their people-based distro network to bust, so I figure they won't bother to bust themselves...
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It appears to me that what happened was that they setup a site and undercover agents who were infiltrating the warez scene "advertised" it to others in the scene as a distribution point. Since these people were already pirating, it is doubtful that this would be seen as entrapment, in my opinion.
However, the fact that they became a distribution point makes them software pirates as well. It's not like buying drugs off of a dealer, where the drugs end up confiscated by the state. All of those 12,000 copyrighted programs were pirated BY the government, and they should be liable for all 100,000 individual incidents of which they most likely have detailed server logs.
This went on for two-years!! How many small but promising software companies went under because the FBI was distributing their software illegally?
This has to be one of the most outrageously blatant examples of the need for STRICTER control over our government's law-enforcement powers. Not only, did they take part in illegal activities, they made it more damaging to those that the law was intended to protect.
Aren't all of you programmers out there happy to find out that your tax dollars have been spent for the last two years PROMOTING software piracy?