So, this appears to be the school's way of backing down gracefully. That is, they get to drop the charges without having to admit that it was wrong to press the charges in the first place.
Not necessarily. The charges were pressed and dropped by the prosecutor, not the school. The school might have recommended it, but they might not have.
Overall, not a bad out come. But, it does leave it as an open question whether or not the school district will every try something like this again.
All the school district had to do was refer the case to the police. At that point it was really out of their hands. Maybe they will try to deal with this sort of thing internally in the future, but I doubt it. It's much easier to just pass the buck on to someone else.
I wonder how bad it'll be at the point where I have kids old enough to go to school. Makes me wonder if home schooling might be the way to go.
You probably work in a large corporation. The reason most of those rules are there is simply so that the techs who maintain the computers have less work to do. Remember, most people working at your company are probably not as smart as you are. Depending on your organization some of it might also be actual security, though.
All you can do, really, is grin and bear it until you can manage to land a job at a smarter company, or else gather up the money and connections to start your own.
what these kids committed was NOT a felony, but it did BREAK school rules/policies.
Sure, but not in a way which should have been treated as criminal. They broke school rules, but did they break the law?
Personally, I'd probably take the deal, because they probably did break some law or another. Not a fair law, but a law nonetheless, and fighting a law that you broke which is just unfair is usually a losing battle and almost definitely so in this particular case.
You know, what I don't get is this - there is a reason that juvenile offenders are supposed to be treated as juveniles by the law.
I'm not sure this particular case had much to do with the kids being kids, other than maybe the fact that they got caught. I mean, if your boss gave you a laptop to use at home, and the admin password was taped to the back of it, wouldn't you use the password to install software on the thing?
I would, I'd just be smart enough to uninstall the software before bringing it back to work (well, after reading this whole story maybe I wouldn't). That shouldn't be a felony. Breach of contract maybe, grounds for getting fired if the boss really cared, but not a felony.
On rare occasions where it does get bad enough for a boycott, the company quickly takes steps to address the cause.
The thing is, I'm not even sure what the cause is in this situation. People want to be able to download music for free off the internet? No amount of boycotting would allow that, because some customers is better than no customers.
Yeah, I exaggerated a bit, occassionally where the boycott is extremely well organized and followed by a large group of people, they can work. Even then, you have to have some sort of reasonable demand. What is the demand here, we want the RIAA to let us download music for free?
If we came up with a reasonable demand, for instance "no more DRM", and then organized a boycott specifically targetted at record companies which used DRM, there might be success. But the organization would have to be key. And there'd have to be enough people who care about some particular issue which is reasonable to expect the record companies to change.
Personally, I don't really care. I don't think I've ever bought a CD from an RIAA affiliated record company (I own two, but I think they were gifts). Not because it's a boycott, though. When I used to listen to a lot of music, I used to download it all. I bought from indie artists directly, but I considered that more a donation than anything else. Nowadays I listen to the radio once in a while and that's it.
It's not like we're talking about something important like public transportation back in the 60s.
Copyright benefits society by making ideas sellable assets and allowing artists (including writers, musicians, etc) to work fulltime on their art instead of doing it as a hobby while needing another job to make a living. That means more and higher quality art.
That's certainly the theory. I have my doubts as to how well it works in practice, though.
Look at e.g. a videogame made these days. They take tens of people one or two years of working (more than) fulltime, you can't tell me they could pull that off if they couldn't make a living off it.
You know what though, I'd gladly give up all the videogames in the world for free online access to the library of congress.
Sure, some details of the copyright implementation could be changed without harming its usefulness but you seem to take issue with the entire system.
Yeah, I do. I think the entire system of copyright should be eliminated. Not changed, not modified, eliminated.
I'm bringing this up because it's wrong to complain about a rule when applied in a way that doesn't benefit you and claim it's okay to ignore that rule but complaining when people do the same when the rule is applied in a way that benefits you.
No, it isn't, not at all.
In this case, copyright applied to music means you have to pay for a copy of the music and thus doesn't benefit you so you claim it can be ignored because you think copyright protects works too long (while copying something made last year) or the rightsholders are evil while copyright applied to the GPL means e.g. MS can't take Linux code and integrate it into Windows without opensourcing windows.
If there wasn't copyright, there wouldn't be a need for Microsoft to open source Windows. Sure, we could ask them for the source code, but it'd be easy enough to reverse engineer it anyway.
If they did that you'd be there complaining because it'd benefit you if they were to release the entire Windows sourcecode.
I wouldn't be complaining, but I would prefer them to release the source code to Windows. But that has nothing to do with copyright law, or the fact that they took Linux code. Microsoft does use BSD-licensed code in its product, and doesn't release the source code. I think this is a bad thing, and I'd prefer if they released their source code, but I'm not complaining about it.
Both benefit some people and hurt others. While the numbers of people benefitted and hurt differ, that doesn't mean one is more right than the other.
Well, I disagree there. One is more right than the other, and that's at least in part because one is more beneficial to society than the other.
And the law can only say one thing: It's wrong to hurt the rights of other people.
The law is irrelevant, though.
I mean, we're not talking about something you'll die without, all you can buy on the intellectual property market is luxury. And luxury isn't necessarily free nor does it need to be. The only reason people have for illegally downloading copyrighted works is because they don't want to pay the pricetag attached. Hardly an altruistic goal.
These people weren't sued for downloading copyrighted works, they were sued for distributing copyrighted works, and considering that they were doing so for no consideration in return, I'd say it *was* an altruistic goal.
Your example seems pretty easy to resolve. Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_flies and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies. It would be trivial to include a dictionary of this size and match on a "largest phrase" basis. You could in theory even build the dictionary automagically with a large enough corpus, by simply recognizing the number of times the two words appear together.
Of course, for the record, CMU's parser fails on this one. I thought for sure they'd pass, but apparently they don't have "fruit flies" in their dictionary.
One is distributing the song without the permission of the author (rule for getting a permission: "pay money"), the other is distributing software without the permission of the rights holder (rule for getting permission: "distribute source").
Yes, but it's doing so under completely different circumstances. The GPL makes sense. Traditional copyright doesn't.
The RIAA says you can't copy and distribute their stuff unless you're an official distributor and approriately paying them, the FSF says you can't copy and distribute their stuff unless you provide the sourcecode or instructions how to get it.
Exactly.
Both systems work from a single ruleset: The rule that the copyright holder can deny or approve copying, redistribution and the creation of derivative works.
Yes, but again, one application of the rule benefits society, and one hurts it.
If you don't allow the rightsholder to grant or deny permission to copy or create derivatives you also revoke the right of the GPL to stop people from making modifications and releasing them without sourcecode.
As a government, well, you could, but you're talking about law now. The original comment was about whether or not it was "a huge deal", not about whether or not it was a violation of the law. It's like saying that going 5mph faster in your car on your way to the volunteer fire department is not a problem, but running a red light while going to the supermarket is. Sure, they're both traffic laws, but to say that sometimes breaking traffic laws is OK and sometimes it isn't is not hypocrisy in any way.
Or do you want to force your belief system down my throat by allowing only certain rules for accepting/denying copying/derivation?
That's what the government is doing. We're just talking about whether or not it's a big deal. In other words, we're just talking about our belief system, not forcing it down someone's throat.
Let me point out another huge difference between the two things. In one case, that of P2P, the person in question is violating copyright law for the benefit of others. In the other, that of not distributing source, the person is probably violating the law to make a profit. That's a huge distinction in many people's mind. There are many people who don't get bent out of shape about P2P who nonetheless would get bent out of shape about someone selling pirated CDs on the sidewalk. Likewise, there are many people who wouldn't care if I ran a P2P network to distribute Linux ISOs without the source, but would care if I sold Linux ISOs on the sidewalk and didn't offer the source (even more if the source was otherwise unavailable).
In any case, the people calling it hypocrisy don't seem to know what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is when you lie about whether or not you think something is wrong. Distinguishing between two different things and calling one wrong but the other right isn't hypocrisy. In this case we're not even talking about a double standard. A double standard is when one applies different rules to different people, based on who the person is. This is just an example of applying different rules to different circumstances, based on what those circumstances are.
What's to stop the defendant from claiming that they didn't download the files?
Nothing, although it'll probably cost the defendent a lot of money to make that claim, as most people wouldn't know how to do so without hiring a lawyer.
If you run a WAP, there is virtually no way (short of them seizing your PC) for them to prove that you actually downloaded the files.
The burden of proof is not very high in a civil case. It really depends on the details. If you and your lawyer are smart enough, and you're willing to perjure yourself, you could probably get away with it. Of course, you'll also spend quite a bit on legal fees.
The majority of Slashdot seems to think copying a song without permission is no big deal.
I feel this way, but I'm not sure if the majority of Slashdot does or not.
But when a company copies Linux and releases it without the source, then it's a HUGE deal.
Nah, it's not a huge deal, but it's a bigger deal than copying a song without permission, assuming you mean a modified copy. If you mean an unmodified copy, then no, I don't think anyone but RMS is gonna consider that a huge deal.
Gotta love the hypocrisy.
There's nothing hypocritical about it. One issue is copying a song without the permission of the author. The other is distributing software without distributing the source code. There really isn't even much of a similarity.
The real point is that it doesn't matter, because copyright infringement is still copyright infringement, and a copyright holder has to defend against it.
Well, no, they don't have to. I don't blame them for doing so, but they don't have to.
I want to echo the double-standard mentioned elsewhere in that some people defend infringing on copyrighted materials via P2P but get upset when the copyright of the GPL is violated.
There probably are some people who feel this way, and there are some legitimate reasons to feel so (there's a difference between profitting off of someone's work and giving copies away for free). But most people are pretty consistent on this point.
In this case, the quality of family life outweighed the need to commute by the father.
I'm sure the family life is just great with the father of the family never being at home.
Sometimes it's not a matter of if the extra space is merely convenient, but if the people consider it to be far more essential.
I find it hard to believe that it's ever essential, at least here in the US, for someone who lives outside the city to work in the city. It's always a choice, and I just don't see how it's ever a good one (on a long-term basis).
Short-term, fine, sometimes an opportunity comes up and you can't wait to move first and act later. But I'm specifically talking about doing this year after year.
The cost of living, especially when working in a city like NYC, consists of much more than just the cost of an apartment. The train alone is going to cost hundreds of dollars a month. Now add parking fees at the train station, because you're not going to get a place within walking distance to the train station very cheaply. This is without even mentioning all the indirect costs. Adding 10 hours to a 40 hour work week is going to raise at least some of them.
Jobs that will pay for that are much easier to find in the city, thus I live 50 miles from work.
If you're putting yourself through such a commute every day, I sure hope it's impossible to find a job that will pay for your needs, not just harder. Personally I find it hard to believe that a job in the city pays that much more that it could ever be worth such a long commute. In just one year you've probably spent over 13 40-hour work weeks just in commuting. Would you give up your 100 acres for a 3 month vacation? This is without even factoring in the cost of all that commuting, both in direct costs and indirect ones.
Umm it is not dumb when the cost of living 30 miles away from the city could be half of it is in the city, as well as fewer crimes and a quieter area.
That explains why one might want to live 30 miles from the city (though it is probably an exaggeration, I doubt the cost is half). Doesn't explain why one might want to live there and still work in the city.
Personally I'd be willing to do it temporarily, and I have. But as a permanent solution, it sucks.
and here is a news flash. Not all people live in cities. Their are areas like suburban and rural area in which people live too.
You might be surprised to find that cycling is no more dangerous than driving.
Depends on where you're driving/riding. If it's a road that wasn't built to handle bicycles, then it's most certainly more dangerous, not to mention illegal, to ride a bike.
I think we're both saying the same thing but from slightly different angles, perhaps you more capably than I in fact
Thanks, but to some extent it's just that this discussion has started to win me over a bit. Basically I started thinking about what really distinguishes one unix OS from another. In theory, you should be able to say your OS is "unix", meaning essentially "posix compliant", and leave it at that. But I can't just take an HP/UX or Solaris executable and run it in FreeBSD or Linux, whereas I probably could take a RedHat executable and run it in Debian (I might run into some problems with the filesystem structure, but ignoring that). Of course, there's ELF vs. a.out or whatever, but don't most OSes support the same a.out format? The main reason for the incompatibility is the libc (speaking broadly of all the standard libraries). In fact, if I wrote up a good libc, I could probably get any software to run on any OS, this is kind of the idea of Cygwin.
Anyway, after thinking about this, I go and look for an alternative to glibc for Linux, and I can't find anything that isn't highly experimental. So in that sense, I guess I can see RMS's point. I'm not really running a Linux OS, I'm running glibc/Linux OS. Maybe that's the solution, instead of the awkward GNU/Linux we can call it the only slighly less awkward glibc/Linux. Or maybe Cyglin:).
Nowhere more so than in technology, in fact in technology due to the fact that people don't on the whole understand what they are talking about [...] so they clasp onto any term they can and more so if it's a "handle" or name per se.
This sloppy invention of terms seems to be happening even more nowadays, probably largely in part due to the internet (or is that Internet? [g]). Consider "spam", or "troll", or even "web", none of which have very well defined terms largely because the phenomenon they describe was changing so rapidly during the invention of their name. "Troll" is actually one of my pet peeves, because the term which originally described something quite specific (someone who posts messages in Andy Kaufman fashion to make some inside joke) has become an essentially meaningless synonym for "jerk". This is the cost of pure descriptivism, I suppose.
As for Minix, yes I do consider Minix a whole OS as such, partucularly in light of the fact that AT wrote it all from scratch ( well with some student help I think ) and the kernel and the OS tools etc including the file system were all part of the whole, that is, he didn't take seperate kernel, file system, os tools and drivers, and unix like commands and glue them together to make Minix.
The thing is, it's my understanding that the original version of Linux was done this way, and that GNU was added later. Of course, I could be completely wrong on this one, the few sources I read yesterday didn't make this point very clear.
Solaris even I consider a whole operating system, albeit the fact that it's roots were in the BSD family, but through market forces it was driven into the SYSV camp, I really do consider Solaris with it's tighly controlled kernel and os software, drivers, libraries, and unix tools, to be a whole and complete operating system.
The big difference is that one company releases the entire system. But to apply that criterium to Linux we'd have to call every distro a different OS, and that doesn't capture it right either. And even then, the first OS based on Linux was created by Linus in much the same way Solaris creates Solaris.
Well I understand where you're comming from but yes, I do think that it's reasonable to use the Distro name as the OS name per se
As long as it's a popular distro, yeah, I agree, because "RedHat" for instance implies "Linux" (although it does so in a way similar to how "Linux" implies "GNU").
It does? what do you use to replace the GNU tools like GCC, the glibc, sed, diff, df, date, who, w, find and such? Do you have
Just because it's "used" as a noun, doesn't in turn make it right, I refer to varous forms of Traffic Authorities as a range of four letter "nouns" but that doesn't make the Police department become what I call them.
As a descriptivist, I have to disagree with you here. If enough people use a word to mean something, then that's a perfectly valid meaning of the word. If you look up "pig" in most dictionaries, you'll see a definition there which says something like "Offensive Slang. Used as a disparaging term for a police officer." Enough people use it that way, so it's a perfectly valid term. Likewise, if you happen to have a dictionary which contains "Linux" in it, most likely, if it wasn't written by the FSF, it will say that Linux is an operating system, not a kernel, because that's what people use the term to mean. In fact, that's the what the person who originally invented the term meant, and it's what the etymology of the term shows that it means. You don't dispute that "Minix" is an operating system, and not just a kernel, do you?
But I for one tend to use the Brand name of the "distro" rather than just refer to a distro as Linux, for example
And what if you roll your own? What should I call my Linux From Scratch distro? I suppose if someone asked me what OS I have I could say LFS, but most people probably have never heard of that, whereas they'll know a lot more if I say "Linux". And what if I didn't use LFS?
But before you miss the point of the last bit there, Debian as an operating system does for example run just fine with other "kernels" than Linux!
And my system will run just fine with other "tools" than GNU ones.
That's from the Debian folk, not me, yes, even the folks over at Debian, a well known, well used, and indeed trusted open source operating system, clearly state that THEY know that Linux is just a kernel, not the operating system!
Yes, for whatever reason, Debian chose to buy in to the whole GNU/Linux renaming scheme. But they're one of the few who have done so. And even then, almost every time they use the term "Linux" they use it as an adjective and follow it with "kernel". Because to do otherwise would be unacceptable to most people - when people use Linux as a noun they're almost always referring to the OS, not the kernel.
Look, I suppose you could make an argument that what really makes an operating system an operating system is not the kernel, but the standard library. If I ran a FreeBSD kernel with a GNU libc, or a Linux kernel with BSD libc, what would I have? Well, until that becomes commonplace, I'd just have to explain it. And at that point, yeah, I guess GNU/FreeBSD or BSD/Linux would be an acceptable abbreviation.
I mean, you've won over my heart (it was easy, I'm a closet RMS fan), but I still can't bring myself to say that the rest of the world is wrong. Personally I'm of the opinion that what we call the OS really doesn't matter that much so long as we are able to communicate clearly. And there's also the fact that Linus was the first one to create a working operating system, so that to some extent gave him the naming rights. And if I know the story correctly, the very first Linux OS didn't even use GNU (or did Minix use GNU as well?)
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So, this appears to be the school's way of backing down gracefully. That is, they get to drop the charges without having to admit that it was wrong to press the charges in the first place.
Not necessarily. The charges were pressed and dropped by the prosecutor, not the school. The school might have recommended it, but they might not have.
Overall, not a bad out come. But, it does leave it as an open question whether or not the school district will every try something like this again.
All the school district had to do was refer the case to the police. At that point it was really out of their hands. Maybe they will try to deal with this sort of thing internally in the future, but I doubt it. It's much easier to just pass the buck on to someone else.
I wonder how bad it'll be at the point where I have kids old enough to go to school. Makes me wonder if home schooling might be the way to go.
You probably work in a large corporation. The reason most of those rules are there is simply so that the techs who maintain the computers have less work to do. Remember, most people working at your company are probably not as smart as you are. Depending on your organization some of it might also be actual security, though.
All you can do, really, is grin and bear it until you can manage to land a job at a smarter company, or else gather up the money and connections to start your own.
Please note that using that login constitutes felony computer trespass.
what these kids committed was NOT a felony, but it did BREAK school rules/policies.
Sure, but not in a way which should have been treated as criminal. They broke school rules, but did they break the law?
Personally, I'd probably take the deal, because they probably did break some law or another. Not a fair law, but a law nonetheless, and fighting a law that you broke which is just unfair is usually a losing battle and almost definitely so in this particular case.
Can't they have their records expunged when they turn 18?
You know, what I don't get is this - there is a reason that juvenile offenders are supposed to be treated as juveniles by the law.
I'm not sure this particular case had much to do with the kids being kids, other than maybe the fact that they got caught. I mean, if your boss gave you a laptop to use at home, and the admin password was taped to the back of it, wouldn't you use the password to install software on the thing?
I would, I'd just be smart enough to uninstall the software before bringing it back to work (well, after reading this whole story maybe I wouldn't). That shouldn't be a felony. Breach of contract maybe, grounds for getting fired if the boss really cared, but not a felony.
On rare occasions where it does get bad enough for a boycott, the company quickly takes steps to address the cause.
The thing is, I'm not even sure what the cause is in this situation. People want to be able to download music for free off the internet? No amount of boycotting would allow that, because some customers is better than no customers.
Yeah, I exaggerated a bit, occassionally where the boycott is extremely well organized and followed by a large group of people, they can work. Even then, you have to have some sort of reasonable demand. What is the demand here, we want the RIAA to let us download music for free?
If we came up with a reasonable demand, for instance "no more DRM", and then organized a boycott specifically targetted at record companies which used DRM, there might be success. But the organization would have to be key. And there'd have to be enough people who care about some particular issue which is reasonable to expect the record companies to change.
Personally, I don't really care. I don't think I've ever bought a CD from an RIAA affiliated record company (I own two, but I think they were gifts). Not because it's a boycott, though. When I used to listen to a lot of music, I used to download it all. I bought from indie artists directly, but I considered that more a donation than anything else. Nowadays I listen to the radio once in a while and that's it.
It's not like we're talking about something important like public transportation back in the 60s.
Copyright benefits society by making ideas sellable assets and allowing artists (including writers, musicians, etc) to work fulltime on their art instead of doing it as a hobby while needing another job to make a living. That means more and higher quality art.
That's certainly the theory. I have my doubts as to how well it works in practice, though.
Look at e.g. a videogame made these days. They take tens of people one or two years of working (more than) fulltime, you can't tell me they could pull that off if they couldn't make a living off it.
You know what though, I'd gladly give up all the videogames in the world for free online access to the library of congress.
Sure, some details of the copyright implementation could be changed without harming its usefulness but you seem to take issue with the entire system.
Yeah, I do. I think the entire system of copyright should be eliminated. Not changed, not modified, eliminated.
I'm bringing this up because it's wrong to complain about a rule when applied in a way that doesn't benefit you and claim it's okay to ignore that rule but complaining when people do the same when the rule is applied in a way that benefits you.
No, it isn't, not at all.
In this case, copyright applied to music means you have to pay for a copy of the music and thus doesn't benefit you so you claim it can be ignored because you think copyright protects works too long (while copying something made last year) or the rightsholders are evil while copyright applied to the GPL means e.g. MS can't take Linux code and integrate it into Windows without opensourcing windows.
If there wasn't copyright, there wouldn't be a need for Microsoft to open source Windows. Sure, we could ask them for the source code, but it'd be easy enough to reverse engineer it anyway.
If they did that you'd be there complaining because it'd benefit you if they were to release the entire Windows sourcecode.
I wouldn't be complaining, but I would prefer them to release the source code to Windows. But that has nothing to do with copyright law, or the fact that they took Linux code. Microsoft does use BSD-licensed code in its product, and doesn't release the source code. I think this is a bad thing, and I'd prefer if they released their source code, but I'm not complaining about it.
Both benefit some people and hurt others. While the numbers of people benefitted and hurt differ, that doesn't mean one is more right than the other.
Well, I disagree there. One is more right than the other, and that's at least in part because one is more beneficial to society than the other.
And the law can only say one thing: It's wrong to hurt the rights of other people.
The law is irrelevant, though.
I mean, we're not talking about something you'll die without, all you can buy on the intellectual property market is luxury. And luxury isn't necessarily free nor does it need to be. The only reason people have for illegally downloading copyrighted works is because they don't want to pay the pricetag attached. Hardly an altruistic goal.
These people weren't sued for downloading copyrighted works, they were sued for distributing copyrighted works, and considering that they were doing so for no consideration in return, I'd say it *was* an altruistic goal.
The second link is bad, of course. Should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_flies and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies. But I just noticed, this whole matching of the longest phrases thing is probably something our brain does as well. Does anyone else have the song "Fly Like An Eagle" in their head now?
Your example seems pretty easy to resolve. Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_flies and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies. It would be trivial to include a dictionary of this size and match on a "largest phrase" basis. You could in theory even build the dictionary automagically with a large enough corpus, by simply recognizing the number of times the two words appear together.
Of course, for the record, CMU's parser fails on this one. I thought for sure they'd pass, but apparently they don't have "fruit flies" in their dictionary.
One is distributing the song without the permission of the author (rule for getting a permission: "pay money"), the other is distributing software without the permission of the rights holder (rule for getting permission: "distribute source").
Yes, but it's doing so under completely different circumstances. The GPL makes sense. Traditional copyright doesn't.
The RIAA says you can't copy and distribute their stuff unless you're an official distributor and approriately paying them, the FSF says you can't copy and distribute their stuff unless you provide the sourcecode or instructions how to get it.
Exactly.
Both systems work from a single ruleset: The rule that the copyright holder can deny or approve copying, redistribution and the creation of derivative works.
Yes, but again, one application of the rule benefits society, and one hurts it.
If you don't allow the rightsholder to grant or deny permission to copy or create derivatives you also revoke the right of the GPL to stop people from making modifications and releasing them without sourcecode.
As a government, well, you could, but you're talking about law now. The original comment was about whether or not it was "a huge deal", not about whether or not it was a violation of the law. It's like saying that going 5mph faster in your car on your way to the volunteer fire department is not a problem, but running a red light while going to the supermarket is. Sure, they're both traffic laws, but to say that sometimes breaking traffic laws is OK and sometimes it isn't is not hypocrisy in any way.
Or do you want to force your belief system down my throat by allowing only certain rules for accepting/denying copying/derivation?
That's what the government is doing. We're just talking about whether or not it's a big deal. In other words, we're just talking about our belief system, not forcing it down someone's throat.
Let me point out another huge difference between the two things. In one case, that of P2P, the person in question is violating copyright law for the benefit of others. In the other, that of not distributing source, the person is probably violating the law to make a profit. That's a huge distinction in many people's mind. There are many people who don't get bent out of shape about P2P who nonetheless would get bent out of shape about someone selling pirated CDs on the sidewalk. Likewise, there are many people who wouldn't care if I ran a P2P network to distribute Linux ISOs without the source, but would care if I sold Linux ISOs on the sidewalk and didn't offer the source (even more if the source was otherwise unavailable).
In any case, the people calling it hypocrisy don't seem to know what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is when you lie about whether or not you think something is wrong. Distinguishing between two different things and calling one wrong but the other right isn't hypocrisy. In this case we're not even talking about a double standard. A double standard is when one applies different rules to different people, based on who the person is. This is just an example of applying different rules to different circumstances, based on what those circumstances are.
I'm surprised no one asked the key question: so, how much did you spend buying CDs in 2005?
Searching Google for "boycott", I see boycott RIAA, boycott Microsoft, boycott Amazon, boycott Bush, and boycott Nike.
Doesn't seem to me like boycotts work.
What's to stop the defendant from claiming that they didn't download the files?
Nothing, although it'll probably cost the defendent a lot of money to make that claim, as most people wouldn't know how to do so without hiring a lawyer.
If you run a WAP, there is virtually no way (short of them seizing your PC) for them to prove that you actually downloaded the files.
The burden of proof is not very high in a civil case. It really depends on the details. If you and your lawyer are smart enough, and you're willing to perjure yourself, you could probably get away with it. Of course, you'll also spend quite a bit on legal fees.
The majority of Slashdot seems to think copying a song without permission is no big deal.
I feel this way, but I'm not sure if the majority of Slashdot does or not.
But when a company copies Linux and releases it without the source, then it's a HUGE deal.
Nah, it's not a huge deal, but it's a bigger deal than copying a song without permission, assuming you mean a modified copy. If you mean an unmodified copy, then no, I don't think anyone but RMS is gonna consider that a huge deal.
Gotta love the hypocrisy.
There's nothing hypocritical about it. One issue is copying a song without the permission of the author. The other is distributing software without distributing the source code. There really isn't even much of a similarity.
The real point is that it doesn't matter, because copyright infringement is still copyright infringement, and a copyright holder has to defend against it.
Well, no, they don't have to. I don't blame them for doing so, but they don't have to.
I want to echo the double-standard mentioned elsewhere in that some people defend infringing on copyrighted materials via P2P but get upset when the copyright of the GPL is violated.
There probably are some people who feel this way, and there are some legitimate reasons to feel so (there's a difference between profitting off of someone's work and giving copies away for free). But most people are pretty consistent on this point.
Ah, thanks.
In this case, the quality of family life outweighed the need to commute by the father.
I'm sure the family life is just great with the father of the family never being at home.
Sometimes it's not a matter of if the extra space is merely convenient, but if the people consider it to be far more essential.
I find it hard to believe that it's ever essential, at least here in the US, for someone who lives outside the city to work in the city. It's always a choice, and I just don't see how it's ever a good one (on a long-term basis).
Short-term, fine, sometimes an opportunity comes up and you can't wait to move first and act later. But I'm specifically talking about doing this year after year.
The cost of living, especially when working in a city like NYC, consists of much more than just the cost of an apartment. The train alone is going to cost hundreds of dollars a month. Now add parking fees at the train station, because you're not going to get a place within walking distance to the train station very cheaply. This is without even mentioning all the indirect costs. Adding 10 hours to a 40 hour work week is going to raise at least some of them.
Jobs that will pay for that are much easier to find in the city, thus I live 50 miles from work.
If you're putting yourself through such a commute every day, I sure hope it's impossible to find a job that will pay for your needs, not just harder. Personally I find it hard to believe that a job in the city pays that much more that it could ever be worth such a long commute. In just one year you've probably spent over 13 40-hour work weeks just in commuting. Would you give up your 100 acres for a 3 month vacation? This is without even factoring in the cost of all that commuting, both in direct costs and indirect ones.
Umm it is not dumb when the cost of living 30 miles away from the city could be half of it is in the city, as well as fewer crimes and a quieter area.
That explains why one might want to live 30 miles from the city (though it is probably an exaggeration, I doubt the cost is half). Doesn't explain why one might want to live there and still work in the city.
Personally I'd be willing to do it temporarily, and I have. But as a permanent solution, it sucks.
and here is a news flash. Not all people live in cities. Their are areas like suburban and rural area in which people live too.
Here's another. Not all people work in cities.
You might be surprised to find that cycling is no more dangerous than driving.
Depends on where you're driving/riding. If it's a road that wasn't built to handle bicycles, then it's most certainly more dangerous, not to mention illegal, to ride a bike.
I think we're both saying the same thing but from slightly different angles, perhaps you more capably than I in fact
Thanks, but to some extent it's just that this discussion has started to win me over a bit. Basically I started thinking about what really distinguishes one unix OS from another. In theory, you should be able to say your OS is "unix", meaning essentially "posix compliant", and leave it at that. But I can't just take an HP/UX or Solaris executable and run it in FreeBSD or Linux, whereas I probably could take a RedHat executable and run it in Debian (I might run into some problems with the filesystem structure, but ignoring that). Of course, there's ELF vs. a.out or whatever, but don't most OSes support the same a.out format? The main reason for the incompatibility is the libc (speaking broadly of all the standard libraries). In fact, if I wrote up a good libc, I could probably get any software to run on any OS, this is kind of the idea of Cygwin.
Anyway, after thinking about this, I go and look for an alternative to glibc for Linux, and I can't find anything that isn't highly experimental. So in that sense, I guess I can see RMS's point. I'm not really running a Linux OS, I'm running glibc/Linux OS. Maybe that's the solution, instead of the awkward GNU/Linux we can call it the only slighly less awkward glibc/Linux. Or maybe Cyglin :).
Nowhere more so than in technology, in fact in technology due to the fact that people don't on the whole understand what they are talking about [...] so they clasp onto any term they can and more so if it's a "handle" or name per se.
This sloppy invention of terms seems to be happening even more nowadays, probably largely in part due to the internet (or is that Internet? [g]). Consider "spam", or "troll", or even "web", none of which have very well defined terms largely because the phenomenon they describe was changing so rapidly during the invention of their name. "Troll" is actually one of my pet peeves, because the term which originally described something quite specific (someone who posts messages in Andy Kaufman fashion to make some inside joke) has become an essentially meaningless synonym for "jerk". This is the cost of pure descriptivism, I suppose.
As for Minix, yes I do consider Minix a whole OS as such, partucularly in light of the fact that AT wrote it all from scratch ( well with some student help I think ) and the kernel and the OS tools etc including the file system were all part of the whole, that is, he didn't take seperate kernel, file system, os tools and drivers, and unix like commands and glue them together to make Minix.
The thing is, it's my understanding that the original version of Linux was done this way, and that GNU was added later. Of course, I could be completely wrong on this one, the few sources I read yesterday didn't make this point very clear.
Solaris even I consider a whole operating system, albeit the fact that it's roots were in the BSD family, but through market forces it was driven into the SYSV camp, I really do consider Solaris with it's tighly controlled kernel and os software, drivers, libraries, and unix tools, to be a whole and complete operating system.
The big difference is that one company releases the entire system. But to apply that criterium to Linux we'd have to call every distro a different OS, and that doesn't capture it right either. And even then, the first OS based on Linux was created by Linus in much the same way Solaris creates Solaris.
Well I understand where you're comming from but yes, I do think that it's reasonable to use the Distro name as the OS name per se
As long as it's a popular distro, yeah, I agree, because "RedHat" for instance implies "Linux" (although it does so in a way similar to how "Linux" implies "GNU").
It does? what do you use to replace the GNU tools like GCC, the glibc, sed, diff, df, date, who, w, find and such? Do you have
Just because it's "used" as a noun, doesn't in turn make it right, I refer to varous forms of Traffic Authorities as a range of four letter "nouns" but that doesn't make the Police department become what I call them.
As a descriptivist, I have to disagree with you here. If enough people use a word to mean something, then that's a perfectly valid meaning of the word. If you look up "pig" in most dictionaries, you'll see a definition there which says something like "Offensive Slang. Used as a disparaging term for a police officer." Enough people use it that way, so it's a perfectly valid term. Likewise, if you happen to have a dictionary which contains "Linux" in it, most likely, if it wasn't written by the FSF, it will say that Linux is an operating system, not a kernel, because that's what people use the term to mean. In fact, that's the what the person who originally invented the term meant, and it's what the etymology of the term shows that it means. You don't dispute that "Minix" is an operating system, and not just a kernel, do you?
But I for one tend to use the Brand name of the "distro" rather than just refer to a distro as Linux, for example
And what if you roll your own? What should I call my Linux From Scratch distro? I suppose if someone asked me what OS I have I could say LFS, but most people probably have never heard of that, whereas they'll know a lot more if I say "Linux". And what if I didn't use LFS?
But before you miss the point of the last bit there, Debian as an operating system does for example run just fine with other "kernels" than Linux!
And my system will run just fine with other "tools" than GNU ones.
That's from the Debian folk, not me, yes, even the folks over at Debian, a well known, well used, and indeed trusted open source operating system, clearly state that THEY know that Linux is just a kernel, not the operating system!
Yes, for whatever reason, Debian chose to buy in to the whole GNU/Linux renaming scheme. But they're one of the few who have done so. And even then, almost every time they use the term "Linux" they use it as an adjective and follow it with "kernel". Because to do otherwise would be unacceptable to most people - when people use Linux as a noun they're almost always referring to the OS, not the kernel.
Look, I suppose you could make an argument that what really makes an operating system an operating system is not the kernel, but the standard library. If I ran a FreeBSD kernel with a GNU libc, or a Linux kernel with BSD libc, what would I have? Well, until that becomes commonplace, I'd just have to explain it. And at that point, yeah, I guess GNU/FreeBSD or BSD/Linux would be an acceptable abbreviation.
I mean, you've won over my heart (it was easy, I'm a closet RMS fan), but I still can't bring myself to say that the rest of the world is wrong. Personally I'm of the opinion that what we call the OS really doesn't matter that much so long as we are able to communicate clearly. And there's also the fact that Linus was the first one to create a working operating system, so that to some extent gave him the naming rights. And if I know the story correctly, the very first Linux OS didn't even use GNU (or did Minix use GNU as well?)