Right. Which means distribution of CD keys is a violation of the DMCA.
Anyway, I purchased my pirated copy of Windows XP Pro from
Smart Computers Company 133 22th Avenue, Suite 1 Odessa, UA 65071
Can I have my legit copy now?
Seriously, what's to keep people from making up phony resellers who Microsoft can't touch? (the above address is actually that given by a bunch of scammers pretending to sell Apples, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do "sell" XP too)
Gotta love it. You show your true colors before even getting to the content.... "CC: Various department heads at CMU". I can't see how to interpret that as anything other than a threat. A STUPID threat, of course, because if Professor Dannenberg sent his article to a Pittsburgh newspaper, he obviously wasn't worried about department heads reading it.
Of course, your content is about as ill-thought-out. If, as professor Dannenburg asserts, the RIAA isn't paying the artists royalties, then committing copyright infringement isn't stealing from them in any way, shape, or form. Using a very broad definition of stealing (not one I agree with), it's stealing from the RIAA -- stealing their ill-retained gains, in fact.
I tend to think that the use of original images without altering the images means: 1) Wal-Mart had a right to ask him to use other images and 2) he's a pretty poor art student with feel for parody.
Congratulations. You've just ruled out the entire medium of collage.
OK, is it just me, or has Microsoft taken the Apple idea of barely-distinguishable icons for minimize/maximize/close, and made it even worse by making two of them the same color AND made them butt ugly.
The Motif/Windows Classic version may be butt ugly, but at least they're easily distinguishable and big enough to click easily.
Better still to be the manager, but that's not the way a lot of people's skills and interests lie. Client side? That's people stuff, and what (stereotypical) geek wants to deal with people?
The idea that you can take a set of requirements, and send them to a bunch of interchangable code monkeys (whether in Dubuque or Dubai) to be coded is widespread among managers but mostly false, for projects of any complexity. Anyone who has tried to fix the code generated by that process knows this.
And, to remain on topic, comments in code made that way will of course be nonexistent or written in Hinglish.
They could certainly simply reverse-engineer the format and fight it out in court. But they're kind of in a bind because they like broad applications of the DMCA and don't want to weaken it.
It's unlikely white balance information is copyrightable at all. Which means decrypting it isn't bypassing a technological measure protecting a copyrighted work, which means the DMCA doesn't apply. In any case, the white balance information in a photo isn't copyrighted _by Nikon_ (unless a Nikon employee took the picture), so Adobe could probably get any case dismissed for lack of standing.
It's amusing to see Adobe hoist by its own petard. And even more amusing to see that the format (including encryption) has been reverse-engineered, and will be supported by open-source tools.
Or is it just a bunch of blue-skying about lighting things up?
I think this is the sort of patent Justice Bradley described as the "foam" of the "advancing wave of improvement".
1) People like things lit 2) There's lots of ways of lighting things now. 3) Here, we'll broadly patent lighting up a whole bunch of things. 4) PROFIT
Though I think the "inventor" must have been forced at gunpoint to write this patent... consider the line "Example: as your tidy bowl reached the terrifying point of not flooding the sewer lines with chlorine at every flush, your tiny tricolor LED would pulse RED hues to alert you."
Apple invented the desktop metaphor as we know it today. Yes, they took the most basic elements of the GUI from Xerox, but there's a LOT of invention there. I'm not sure why you think Firewire wasn't new technology; it wasn't a new type of technology but it was certainly new. Same goes for the now-obselete Localtalk and ADB.
There's a lot less which can be considered invention under your strict rules today than there was in 1984, but that's no surprise. Most of the basic elements are there now, as they weren't in 1984.
Laches may prevent successful prosecution for damages, but it doesn't take away injunctive relief. So the patent holder may not get his enormous damage claim but he still gets to shut down the infringer.
But that's not all that important; once a bogus patent has to be litigated, most of the damage has already been done. Pretty much any little guy, facing a patent lawsuit, has no choice but to fold -- either pay the ransom or go out of business. The presumption in the courts of the patent's validity combined with the cost of fighting the patent means that he can't realistically fight it in court. For the system to work, the bad patents have to be weeded out beforehand.
The "nonobviousness" standard may look good on paper, but it isn't working in real life. The patent office is issuing tons of patents that would be obvious to someone skilled in the art (and no, trolls, I don't just mean after they've read the patent), given the problem to be solved and the prior art. They issue duplicate patents (LZW), they issue patents for things which have been invented and reinvented many times (instant messaging), etc. It's just plain broken.
If you try to have a discussion framed without assumptions that the system is screwed up, you have to have a discussion framed on the assumption that the system is somehow fair and balanced (oops, FOX trademark... though to be fair and balanced, I believe that one got turned down). And that assumption is simply counterfactual.
Anyone who has actually examined the state of IP law today (patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret) and doesn't use words like "incentivize" already KNOWS it's screwed up.
There may have, at one time, been an attempt to be fair and equitable. Any fairness has been and is being stripped away in all those forms of IP.
Copyright, of course, is the biggest and most well known. Copyright terms have been expanded enormously and registration requirements eliminated. Fines and penalties for violations have increased vastly. What have those who benefit from works in the public domain gotten in return? Nothing; this has all been a gift to copyright owners with no fairness or compensation.
On top of copyright is the DMCA. DMCA 512 gives copyright owners the extraordinary power to get the effect of a restraining order against an alleged infringer without going through all the rigamorole of actually getting a judge to issue one. DMCA 1201 gives the force of law to technological protection measures which restrict use of a work in arbitrary ways which go beyond copyright. What have those who benefit from the public domain gotten in return? Again, nothing.
The latest insult in copyright is the new law criminalizing even more copyright violation, and giving theater owners carte blanche to beat up anyone who attempts to violate copyright within their theater. What did the other side get in return? The undisputed right -- as if they didn't already have it -- to blank out sections of a copyrighted work without actually making a copy.
With trademarks, the biggest gift has been the trademark antidilution act, the "winner-take-all" act. Now, if your mark is "famous" enough, it doesn't matter that an alleged infringer is in a completely different field of endeavor; your famous mark covers everything. This is what Monster Cable has used to go after such diverse groups as Disney (Monsters, Inc), MonsterVintage clothing, and Monster.com.
Trade secret protection is an abuse in and of itself; patents and copyrights are supposed to encourage release of ideas by protecting them once released. Protecting trade secrets allows "IP" holders to have their cake and eat it too -- they can keep the idea secret but still have it protected by law. Any trade secret protection which imposes penalties on those who weren't covered by an NDA in the first place is an abuse.
Patents, of course, have been discussed ad nauseum on Slashdot. There are multiple problems with the system, but most of them are hidden by the biggest one, that of totally bogus patents being granted. These are overbroad patents which patent any solution to a problem rather than a given solution, patents for which prior art exists, patents which are obvious given the prior art, and patents on things which have already been done but are now being done in a different venue (the "...on the Internet" patents).
If those weren't granted, then it would be a lot easier to evaluate whether or not software patents and business process patents per se were a problem. However, given that software and business process patents seem to attract such abuses, it's fair to consider them suspect.
Anyway, my point is that any clear look at the situation reveals that the laws are totally screwed up and that trying to frame it as a basically sound system with a few problems is ridiculous. It's totally screwed up, completely one-sided, deeply flawed, and (because that's the way the politicians are "incentivized") will continue to get worse.
Clean-room reverse engineering is not a requirement of US copyright law. Use of it is an ironclad defense against copyright infringement, but failure to use it isn't automatically copyright infringement.
The reason the PC BIOS was reverse-engineered that way is likely due to two things 1) The overwhelming power of IBMs lawyers 2) The fact that the BIOS did such simple things that even independently-developed code would end up looking very similar in part.
The mere existence of the possibility of a three year jail term makes it a life-ending felony if convicted, whether or not any jail sentence is imposed.
Err, no. Your [1], [2], and [3] don't need to be separate to be avoid tainting. If you never examine the copyrighted code, you can't be tainted by it. (which is why the bnetd case is a total farce; they were accused of infringing the copyright on a server they never had access to. But money can buy judgements...)
In clean room reverse engineering, the dirty side can do anything they want to the code, including disassemble it to see how it works. Taking a binary (or even source) and figuring out what it does IS part of reverse engineering; treating the code as a black box is not a requirement.
I remember that one. It was two papers, one about "radiosity in an enclosed space with no internal light sources" or some such thing. (of course, the problem is trivial). The other was about footprints and actually sounded kind of interesting, though entirely silly. Both were accepted.
Your "no forks" idea is pretty much incompatible with the whole idea of open source, not just the GPL. "Here's my code, don't use it" isn't open source.
Frame someone else. Set up a proxy server on a cow-orkers computer, and use THAT to blog about your employer, who you can name. Include personal details -- theirs. Bad mouth anyone you want. But be sure and not do it while the cow-orker is not at work, and make sure you have a way of removing the proxy (passively would be best) if someone might be catching on.
Slashdot Mirror
Google removes the links... and posts a link to a letter containing the removed URLs.
Right. Which means distribution of CD keys is a violation of the DMCA.
Anyway, I purchased my pirated copy of Windows XP Pro from
Smart Computers Company
133 22th Avenue, Suite 1
Odessa, UA 65071
Can I have my legit copy now?
Seriously, what's to keep people from making up phony resellers who Microsoft can't touch? (the above address is actually that given by a bunch of scammers pretending to sell Apples, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do "sell" XP too)
Gotta love it. You show your true colors before even getting to the content.... "CC: Various department heads at CMU". I can't see how to interpret that as anything other than a threat. A STUPID threat, of course, because if Professor Dannenberg sent his article to a Pittsburgh newspaper, he obviously wasn't worried about department heads reading it.
Of course, your content is about as ill-thought-out. If, as professor Dannenburg asserts, the RIAA isn't paying the artists royalties, then committing copyright infringement isn't stealing from them in any way, shape, or form. Using a very broad definition of stealing (not one I agree with), it's stealing from the RIAA -- stealing their ill-retained gains, in fact.
Nope. Prior to the DMCA was the Netcom case, which protected sites as well as the DMCA, but without the horrendous takedown requirements.
Even before Netcom, hosting providers didn't pre-screen their customer's content, so it would have been put up anyway.
Um, no. What a DMCA counternotification basically says is
1) Hey, big company lawyers, SUE ME! I'm RIGHT HERE!
Then, if they sue you, the ISP has to pull the images in advance of the resolution of the case anyway.
I tend to think that the use of original images without altering the images means: 1) Wal-Mart had a right to ask him to use other images and 2) he's a pretty poor art student with feel for parody. Congratulations. You've just ruled out the entire medium of collage.
OK, is it just me, or has Microsoft taken the Apple idea of barely-distinguishable icons for minimize/maximize/close, and made it even worse by making two of them the same color AND made them butt ugly.
The Motif/Windows Classic version may be butt ugly, but at least they're easily distinguishable and big enough to click easily.
Uhh, these PowerMacs ARE the G5 towers. You can't reasonably like one and dislike the other. Apple has 5 computer lines:
Server: XServe
Professional "Desktop": PowerMac
Professional Notebook: PowerBook
Consumer Notebook: iBook
Consumer desktop: iMac, eMac and Mac Mini
Which division is redundant?
Better still to be the manager, but that's not the way a lot of people's skills and interests lie. Client side? That's people stuff, and what (stereotypical) geek wants to deal with people? The idea that you can take a set of requirements, and send them to a bunch of interchangable code monkeys (whether in Dubuque or Dubai) to be coded is widespread among managers but mostly false, for projects of any complexity. Anyone who has tried to fix the code generated by that process knows this. And, to remain on topic, comments in code made that way will of course be nonexistent or written in Hinglish.
They could certainly simply reverse-engineer the format and fight it out in court. But they're kind of in a bind because they like broad applications of the DMCA and don't want to weaken it.
It's unlikely white balance information is copyrightable at all. Which means decrypting it isn't bypassing a technological measure protecting a copyrighted work, which means the DMCA doesn't apply. In any case, the white balance information in a photo isn't copyrighted _by Nikon_ (unless a Nikon employee took the picture), so Adobe could probably get any case dismissed for lack of standing.
It's amusing to see Adobe hoist by its own petard. And even more amusing to see that the format (including encryption) has been reverse-engineered, and will be supported by open-source tools.
Or is it just a bunch of blue-skying about lighting things up?
I think this is the sort of patent Justice Bradley described as the "foam" of the "advancing wave of improvement".
1) People like things lit
2) There's lots of ways of lighting things now.
3) Here, we'll broadly patent lighting up a whole bunch of things.
4) PROFIT
Though I think the "inventor" must have been forced at gunpoint to write this patent... consider the line "Example: as your tidy bowl reached the terrifying point of not flooding the sewer lines with chlorine at every flush, your tiny tricolor LED would pulse RED hues to alert you."
Apple invented the desktop metaphor as we know it today. Yes, they took the most basic elements of the GUI from Xerox, but there's a LOT of invention there. I'm not sure why you think Firewire wasn't new technology; it wasn't a new type of technology but it was certainly new. Same goes for the now-obselete Localtalk and ADB. There's a lot less which can be considered invention under your strict rules today than there was in 1984, but that's no surprise. Most of the basic elements are there now, as they weren't in 1984.
Alt-Tab? Think "Switcher" from the pre-System-7 days.
Laches may prevent successful prosecution for damages, but it doesn't take away injunctive relief. So the patent holder may not get his enormous damage claim but he still gets to shut down the infringer.
But that's not all that important; once a bogus patent has to be litigated, most of the damage has already been done. Pretty much any little guy, facing a patent lawsuit, has no choice but to fold -- either pay the ransom or go out of business. The presumption in the courts of the patent's validity combined with the cost of fighting the patent means that he can't realistically fight it in court. For the system to work, the bad patents have to be weeded out beforehand.
The "nonobviousness" standard may look good on paper, but it isn't working in real life. The patent office is issuing tons of patents that would be obvious to someone skilled in the art (and no, trolls, I don't just mean after they've read the patent), given the problem to be solved and the prior art. They issue duplicate patents (LZW), they issue patents for things which have been invented and reinvented many times (instant messaging), etc. It's just plain broken.
If you try to have a discussion framed without assumptions that the system is screwed up, you have to have a discussion framed on the assumption that the system is somehow fair and balanced (oops, FOX trademark... though to be fair and balanced, I believe that one got turned down). And that assumption is simply counterfactual.
Anyone who has actually examined the state of IP law today (patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret) and doesn't use words like "incentivize" already KNOWS it's screwed up.
There may have, at one time, been an attempt to be fair and equitable. Any fairness has been and is being stripped away in all those forms of IP.
Copyright, of course, is the biggest and most well known. Copyright terms have been expanded enormously and registration requirements eliminated. Fines and penalties for violations have increased vastly. What have those who benefit from works in the public domain gotten in return? Nothing; this has all been a gift to copyright owners with no fairness or compensation.
On top of copyright is the DMCA. DMCA 512 gives copyright owners the extraordinary power to get the effect of a restraining order against an alleged infringer without going through all the rigamorole of actually getting a judge to issue one. DMCA 1201 gives the force of law to technological protection measures which restrict use of a work in arbitrary ways which go beyond copyright. What have those who benefit from the public domain gotten in return? Again, nothing.
The latest insult in copyright is the new law criminalizing even more copyright violation, and giving theater owners carte blanche to beat up anyone who attempts to violate copyright within their theater. What did the other side get in return? The undisputed right -- as if they didn't already have it -- to blank out sections of a copyrighted work without actually making a copy.
With trademarks, the biggest gift has been the trademark antidilution act, the "winner-take-all" act. Now, if your mark is "famous" enough, it doesn't matter that an alleged infringer is in a completely different field of endeavor; your famous mark covers everything. This is what Monster Cable has used to go after such diverse groups as Disney (Monsters, Inc), MonsterVintage clothing, and Monster.com.
Trade secret protection is an abuse in and of itself; patents and copyrights are supposed to encourage release of ideas by protecting them once released. Protecting trade secrets allows "IP" holders to have their cake and eat it too -- they can keep the idea secret but still have it protected by law. Any trade secret protection which imposes penalties on those who weren't covered by an NDA in the first place is an abuse.
Patents, of course, have been discussed ad nauseum on Slashdot. There are multiple problems with the system, but most of them are hidden by the biggest one, that of totally bogus patents being granted. These are overbroad patents which patent any solution to a problem rather than a given solution, patents for which prior art exists, patents which are obvious given the prior art, and patents on things which have already been done but are now being done in a different venue (the "...on the Internet" patents).
If those weren't granted, then it would be a lot easier to evaluate whether or not software patents and business process patents per se were a problem. However, given that software and business process patents seem to attract such abuses, it's fair to consider them suspect.
Anyway, my point is that any clear look at the situation reveals that the laws are totally screwed up and that trying to frame it as a basically sound system with a few problems is ridiculous. It's totally screwed up, completely one-sided, deeply flawed, and (because that's the way the politicians are "incentivized") will continue to get worse.
The RSA patent covered exponentiation on a finite field. That's pure mathematics.
Clean-room reverse engineering is not a requirement of US copyright law. Use of it is an ironclad defense against copyright infringement, but failure to use it isn't automatically copyright infringement.
The reason the PC BIOS was reverse-engineered that way is likely due to two things
1) The overwhelming power of IBMs lawyers
2) The fact that the BIOS did such simple things that even independently-developed code would end up looking very similar in part.
The mere existence of the possibility of a three year jail term makes it a life-ending felony if convicted, whether or not any jail sentence is imposed.
Felony conviction = no rights and no jobs.
Right. The RIAA would NEVER put up corrupt files matching the hash of a competitor. No, never in a million years.
Err, no. Your [1], [2], and [3] don't need to be separate to be avoid tainting. If you never examine the copyrighted code, you can't be tainted by it. (which is why the bnetd case is a total farce; they were accused of infringing the copyright on a server they never had access to. But money can buy judgements...)
In clean room reverse engineering, the dirty side can do anything they want to the code, including disassemble it to see how it works. Taking a binary (or even source) and figuring out what it does IS part of reverse engineering; treating the code as a black box is not a requirement.
I remember that one. It was two papers, one about "radiosity in an enclosed space with no internal light sources" or some such thing. (of course, the problem is trivial). The other was about footprints and actually sounded kind of interesting, though entirely silly. Both were accepted.
Here's a link:
Fake VIDEA papers
If it was a gift she'd likely win the lawsuit.
Your "no forks" idea is pretty much incompatible with the whole idea of open source, not just the GPL. "Here's my code, don't use it" isn't open source.
Frame someone else. Set up a proxy server on a cow-orkers computer, and use THAT to blog about your employer, who you can name. Include personal details -- theirs. Bad mouth anyone you want. But be sure and not do it while the cow-orker is not at work, and make sure you have a way of removing the proxy (passively would be best) if someone might be catching on.
...is that eventually they'll decide the ultimate "upstream" -- ICANN -- is at fault, and they block /0.