Set aside all the crap about whether you can or can't completely turn WDS off and ponder this:
Microsoft made a clone of Google Desktop, then used its monopoly position to send it to everyone to hurt Google's business. They did the same with Netscape, Stacker, and a whole host of other old products too. It's classic Microsoft: find a competitor you want to hurt, clone one of their most important products, then include it in the OS and integrate it in ways that no one else can.
Now, if they wanted to do it right, they'd have made an easy, user-accessible way to choose your desktop search application from the start (i.e. a control panel, not net stop whatever).
It's not just that they file a John Doe suit, it's that they join dozens or even hundreds of unrelated parties into a single lawsuit. The one and only basis for that is that all the Does in that lawsuit share the same ISP, which is not, to my non-lawyerly knowledge, a permissible reason for joining parties according to the FRCP. One Texas judge ordered them to put a stop to that very practice of "defrauding" the state of its rightful filing fees, yet the practice continues in other venues.
Also, even once they have someone's identity, they've been known to play tricks with John Doe suits. I believe that, in the case of Mr. Merchant, he retained a lawyer and they offered to make his hard drive available, but only to outside counsel. The RIAA withdrew that lawsuit before they filed an answer in court (you can do that, it's a free pass to get out of court) and filed another John Doe suit in an attempt to get his hard drive directly, where they could have in-house people fish through it at will. By virtue of that being a John Doe suit, they meant to keep his lawyer out of the courtroom, preventing the counsel they knew he had from responding to their dirty tactics.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that although John Doe suits are perfectly normal, the way the RIAA uses them is not. They use pretty much any trick they think they can get away with, however dirty, even if it's contrary to the law. And when they pull these tricks, they try to make sure that no one is able to object.
To be honest, it tempts *me* to do things that I sincerely doubt are well supported by any laws at all. For example, can you file amicus briefs in random John Doe suits pointing out that Texas case? I have no idea, and incredibly dubious, but it might be worth the price of a stamp, especially because I could ask that the judge give those facts judicial notice even if the amicus itself was thrown in the trash... The other trick might be doing so anonymously. Can you even file an amicus anonymously? I haven't the foggiest. But I'm pretty sure I could just not sign my name. And I'm also pretty sure I could sign it "John Doe" out of an abundant sense of irony:-) For all I know, I'll end up being one of the Does by mistake someday (I don't listen to or like their crappy music, why on earth would I waste HD space on it?). I'd like to say that might even make them waste a little money responding or objecting to it, but I bet they'd make a form letter brief to reply to them if anyone made a habit of it...
Of course, these things being done ex parte also makes it pretty hard for me to find out about them before they're over...
> Insightful? That mod wasn't posted by a software engineer I'm sure.
You might lose that bet. I'm not the OP, but I agree with them.
> As a proud member of the development corp, I do really feel insulted to hear the sum of my creative energies, and the sweat and blood of my work referred to as an imaginary product.
Are you taking that as an insult? I wouldn't. It's rightfully called imaginary because it's the product of the imagination. Or because software isn't really a traditional "product" in the first place, but a service. Providing CDs in a box might be making a product in some sense, but not a very useful one given how much easier it is to download things. And I think of CDs in a box (distribution) as something separate from writing the software to begin with.
> Why they want to do this is obvious, it's a license to print money. Unfortunately for them, under these traditional economic theories it is the scarcity of a resource that makes it valuable (gold, platinum, wood) and an unlimited resource has very little, or no, monetary value.
From here on, I certainly agree with you. I really hate to see "harm to society" measured in dollars instead of people. Only an executive could come up with something that cold blooded.
> All the applications you learn now will be out of date when you use them. I'm sure all the artists who spent forever learning Photoshop will love to hear that.
There's no real replacement for Photoshop, anyhow, if you want to do print work. It's improving, but they're incredibly finicky about color (CMYK, device profiles, etc.). For other things like Office & Windows it's probably right. Almost everything I knew about where to find settings in Windows 3.1/95/98/NT/ME/XP is utterly and completely useless in Vista.
But you should learn to use software, not learn one specific UI. If all you know is a single UI, the software "training" you got was useless. Learning to use more than one application that does the same thing isn't always a waste of time.
> Has he mentioned that teachers can use this software free of cost?
My mother was a teacher. She and all the other elementary school teachers in my town paid for *LOTS* of stuff out of their own pocket simply because they cared about the kids and the community. You're severely overestimating school budgets if you think that the reduced price educational versions are cheap enough, especially in communities where the teachers aren't that nice.
> OpenOffice is almost as good, all it needs is a grammar checker.
Ugh. If you're using Word's grammar checker for anything the least bit important, you're insane. There are exactly two things I can imagine it being useful for:
* Counting words, paragraphs, etc. * Removing passive voice for a school assignment.
Passive voice has its place. It shouldn't be overused and should be avoided in certain types of writing, but it isn't even wrong. It might be a very poor style to use but it's not wrong. You will note that I excluded doubled words from that list. Those get caught by the spell checker, not the grammar checker.
> Isn't the F/OSS community capable of having a better spokesman?
Feel free to speak up. I don't think anyone gets to choose who else may and may not speak on behalf of some issue.
> Believe it or not, the architect and manager of the RIAA's terror campaign called me up several weeks ago to give me his personal assurance that the RIAA doesn't use trolls. (Ha, ha, ha).
Man, I'd love to know what prompted that conversation?:] Assuming it's not privileged or something.
And I'm glad to know that Slashdot is useful to you. BTW, I think there's also a post way up near the top of this story, buried in low-karma comments asking if there's anything that can be done for RIAA victims you might wish to respond to, too, if you have any ideas. Might be nice to have that on a permanent web page people can be pointed to if you've got any good ideas. I keep feeling like I'd like to do more, but I feel like I can't do much more than offer words of support or give my opinion on technical matters. Of course, that's why I'm so glad to see you organizing useful information on the RIAA's legal strategies to help anyone else who gets caught in the drift net.
Just so you know, the submitter's name is Ray Beckerman. He is a New York lawyer who has represented his share of RIAA victims and he has posted many articles updating us on the progress of these cases, including the one where he asked us to respond to the RIAA's "expert" witness who had basically admitted in a deposition to having essentially no scientific basis for his findings.
Because his clients are generally not wealthy and cannot afford thousands of dollars on experts and legal fees, he's turned to those of us in the technical community who are sick of the RIAA's bullying legal tactics, and I believe he found an Ask Slashdot helpful for once, in spite of the trolls (surely that must be a first...).
If you want to know about the cases he's involved in, he posts about those (and others) over on his blog. Or just talk to him when he shows up on Slashdot. He's a nice guy, he reads (and responds to) pretty much all replies to his posts, save maybe the trolls. And if he seems a bit curt at times, it's because the RIAA is also watching him. That's right, they've taken note of his blog and possibly other things and tried to twist the things he says and does to use against him in court. I can't see how it's even relevant (it probably isn't), but the RIAA lawyers aren't known for playing nice (or even by the rules, if you look at all the stuff they try and pull ex parte; one Texas judge got mad at them for trying to "defraud" the state of filing fees).
In other words, he's a good lawyer, and one of our few allies in the fight against the RIAA. Very, very few people can afford to represent themselves in court, even if they're innocent, and the RIAA is taking every advantage of that fact:(
I, for one, intend to do pretty much anything in my power to help him out.
I think that's mentioned in TFA.
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
That programs used over a network don't have to have their source released. However, the GPLv3 solves this by making itself compatible with the Affero GPL, which blocks the "ASP Loophole" so it really does fix it, albeit indirectly (i.e. you have to insert some Affero licensed software in there to close the loophole). After all, for many projects the "ASP Loophole" just isn't a problem in practice, and there's no sense in requiring it for every application.
Yeah, it's a problem that Microsoft has such a well-oiled political machine. Their phony "activist" groups, usually made up of shills and crazy Libertarians who seem to think that this country should be ruled by businesses instead of people, and their PR people are remarkably persistent. They have the ACT and other corporate whores who dance like puppets at their beck & call. Any time the government does something Microsoft doesn't like, they complain. If they've *ever* taken a position contrary to Microsoft, I've never seen it. And given how rare that level of agreement is, well, you have to seriously question their status as an independent entity... CAGW isn't very different, either, but they *might* just be deluded. I can't see how it's government "waste" to standardize on an open format that everyone, even Microsoft, can implement instead of being beholden to a single-vendor standard, but apparently they think so. I guess I can sympathize with the politicians, though--is there any difference between deluded libertarians or conservatives and corporate whores? I'm not quite sure.
Anyhow, I don't think it's useful to think in terms of "resistance is futile" because they can't keep a stranglehold on things forever. For once, idiotic nationalism might be useful when foreign governments see Microsoft as a US entity, so the rest of the world will probably break away before the US does. Of course, that will probably make the US even more of a technical backwater than it already is becoming thanks to telephone and cable monopolies making sure that we don't have any decent speed internet connections.
Which is why my backup plan is to learn Japanese, assuming I don't lose my mind in the process... Konnichiwa! Gaijin no baka to moshimasu. Yoroshiku.
Yes, Microsoft's add-on is utter crap, but a few other people make them, too.
Also, you have to look at this another way: * Are all our old-format Microsoft documents going to be accessible in 10 years? I mean, who has a copy of Word 1.0 these days? And no, the legacy support in current versions is NOT good enough.
* Aren't we going to go through the same damn trouble in the next new, incompatible version of Word?
Between those two factors, you may be saving some pain in the short term, but you're hurting yourself in the long run. Further proof of Microsoft's intensive lobbying, though. I mean, what's wrong with ensuring that you save your documents in formats anyone can read without being tied to a specific vendor?
But nooooo, that's only what the evil IBM lobbyists want you to believe! Gotta trust the Microsoft lobbyists if you know what's good for you (and your campaign funding).
I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to something like this buried under an old thread. There are so many cases now on your litigation page, though, I can barely keep any of them straight at this point. But that's a good thing, I suppose--it must mean that more people are choosing to litigate instead of entering into unfair settlements. Though I still wish the RIAA would just stop the campaign entirely.
Err, I didn't mean to make a statement so much as to ask a question, but I do thank you for your input. Are there any good, up-to-date resources I might use to understand this better?
I wish there were something simple that listed the elements required for a finding of copyright infringement. Or perhaps that law isn't well-settled? I mean, suing random individuals for copyright infringement is pretty novel, as, apparently, are most of the RIAA's claims.
> I'm surprised at you, Alter_Fritz. Didn't you read the transcript of the January 26, 2007, oral argument in Elektra v. Barker, where Judge Karas lectured Mr. Gabriel on the absence of "volition".
I can't seem to find that particular transcript, but my connection is a bit slow right now and my mind might be, too.
In the mean time, please educate me: I had thought that copyright law was some kind of strict liability. I.E. if you have the infringing files, you're guilty. Have I misunderstood copyright law, or mistaken one of the RIAA's suppositions for fact? I would greatly appreciate relevant guidance as to what elements are required for a finding of copyright infringement? Or is that too complex a subject? For simplicity, you can assume that we're talking about an ordinary file sharing case.
I've tried to educate myself by reading relevant legal filings, but I lack the legal training required to understand the fine nuances that make law difficult.
> Let's expand this a little - I copy your video game, with it's CD-key. In this example, you partially lose the ability to do online play.
Then you stole the USE of the CD key (because he can't use it) from the person, while infringing upon the copyright of whoever made the video game for a total of two separate offenses.
Also, plagiarism might be called stealing CREDIT for a work (because the original author no longer gets credit due to your lack of attribution), but it might also be copyright infringement. Again, there are two separate problems there and you do well not to confuse them.
> What's more likely is that tales of dragons grew out of another animal--namely pre-existing reptiles, snakes and crocodilians.
I personally always figured that someone found some fossils, say a nice big T-Rex skull or similar and the legends grew from there. Mind you, I have no proof, but that's what I've always conjectured.
I mean, a T-Rex looks a LOT more like a dragon to me than a crocodile, but that's just me.
> Young earth hypothesis is a recent addition to Christian thought?
Ancient Christian scholars came at it from a completely different angle and believed Genesis to be metaphorical. You see, their opponents argued that, "If God is omnipotent, why did it take Him seven days to create the world?"
Whatever might be causing their symptoms, it's apparently NOT electromagnetic waves. See this for details. It may be a very real symptom, but you should be more careful when making claims about WHAT caused it and you need a proper scientific study to rule out any other causes.
Until then, I'm going to have to go with all the published studies showing that, whatever might cause people to feel "EM sensitive", it's not actually EM that's causing it.
> Which will hopefully finally put an end to all the nonsense conspiracy theories that "Novell admitted that Linux infringes patents" etc., even though Novell have constantly re-iterated that such a claim was ridiculous.
I wouldn't call that a "conspiracy theory" because it was Microsoft who perpetuated that claim. Yes, they went to the media and used it to whip up all this FUD, like the 235 patents bit. And with the rest of us unable to read the agreement...
Anyhow, I figured that was just Microsoft stabbing their "partners" in the back. Hopefully, that will teach Novell not to deal with them again, it's been nothing but trouble for them and I don't think they intended anything bad--they probably just wanted to protect their customers--but they chose a really bad way to do that.
>> question 4: As the body of copyright material grows and grows, doesn't that mean that creativity becomes more and more impossible?
> What? Are you saying that the only way to be "creative" is to blatantly plagiarize existing works?
In short: yes. First off, suppose this had always existed. You know those words you're using? Those are other people's ideas. They were all coined by people we may not remember (although OED does list the first known use for many of them) and, by that theory, belong to them. Whenever I write, I cannot help but see the sources which inspired me. I remember reading the GNU philosophy section over these arguments. I remember developing the argument I just used about words while reading Wikipedia.
Originality is overrated. If you break it down, you'll just see that it's a combination of familiar things which, for whatever reason, turned out to be unexpected. Google's search engine was a very original idea, no one else had thought of ranking web pages like that, but it was drawn from the scholarly practice of citing sources that had been around for ages, as well as the scientific and legal practice of figuring out importance in terms of which works are most cited.
Einstein's theories were very original. But the physics and the math were developed by others, he just put all the pieces no one could explain together. Other people made the pieces for him. He filled in the rest and assembled them. Genius, yes. Original, yes. But also built on the work of others. And again I see an inspiration: it was Newton who said that if he'd seen further than other men, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Of course, he was trying to say that he didn't rip off the idea of calculus from Liebnitz, who was very short (and who came up with the same idea independently... how does copyright law handle THAT one?). So we give Newton credit for being first, and we use something akin to Liebnitz' notation.
Oh math. Maybe that's why I'm so keen to see inspiration everywhere. You may think it's original, but the entire framework of mathematics is a vast, complex, layered framework of ideas, abstractions and techniques which have been built and refined by more people than I could possibly keep track of. You see, you CAN'T do math without using someone else's ideas. You may think it's all 1+1 = 2, but there's a damn good reason why you start hearing ancient Greek names by the time you get to algebra. And there's a good reason you don't start hearing the names of people who are actually still alive until you're in graduate school, or close to it.
So tell me, why don't you think of something totally, completely and utterly original to prove me wrong? Oh, wait. You may say it's original, but it's all based on things you were taught, things you've experienced, etc. The only original thing anyone can bring out is that which they alone have experienced, and you'd be surprised at how few such things there are (I can reference XKCD now; I thought I was the only one who'd ever done something silly like make up rules for walking across a tiled floor).
Maybe that's not "blatantly plagiarizing" but you'd have to be totally, utterly and completely oblivious to all the things you've been influenced by not to realize that your thoughts did not all originate with you.
My guess, and it's only a guess, because I cannot read your mind, is that you heard some bad argument over "it's not theft, it's copyright infringement" (hey, the Supreme Court says so, too, so...) and fell in with the people arguing that because you don't like the idea of doing anything illegal or else have libertarian tendencies that trigger a knee jerk whenever it comes to "property rights" and such (now, with the abuse of Eminent Domain a while back, that was wrong, but that was also actual, tangible property).
Of course, I don't like doing illegal things either. That's why I want to see the law changed.
BTW, I give any and everyone a world-wide, fully p
Unfortunately, I think he was asking if a person who was guilty of copyright infringement could get away with it because of the unscrupulous RIAA tactics in prosecuting the cases.
Alas, I'm not sure he was aware that no reputable lawyer will ever advise you to break the law, although I should hope he was aware that you are, in fact, a reputable lawyer.
> Personally I think I get to moderate a lot - Probably about once a week, sometimes more often. There are times when I let my 3 days slip by, because its too hard to keep up.
I don't know exactly what's up with it--there wasn't anything new in the FAQ last I read it--but I've noticed the same thing. Funny thing is, until just a few months ago, I never got to moderate at all. Then I hit some threshold and *wham* it's not uncommon to get a few mod points.
Anyhow, my strategy is to find (if possible) whichever posts have accurate information and mod those up, if possible. Of course, that's easier said than done...:]
I have almost the inverse of his problem. I post anonymously, but only when posting from work.
Why? I don't want them to learn my Slashdot username. Not that I really have anything to hide, but it's more out of trying to retain some semblance of privacy. And they do have that annoying censor firewall in place, though my boss is nice enough not to care what I do online so long as I get done what he wants done.
Oddly, I end up submitting almost as many stories as comments, and waiting an hour to post another anonymous comment is kind of annoying, but that's somewhat better, because it makes me think about which comments are the most useful, rather than dashing off every post that comes to mind:]
Slashdot moderation is *far* from perfect... but it's a hell of a lot better than elsewhere. You have to wade through a lot less crap to get to the good stuff than you do anywhere else. Fark comments aren't worth reading, although the photoshop contest pics can be cool. I don't even read Digg, and sites like Groklaw are nice enough, but it's really time consuming to find the interesting posts. Unless PJ reposts them as a story, you'd never know that the 39th post in that huge thread was the interesting one, while all the rest just said "when will SCO get delisted?" (Short answer? They'll hit bankruptcy first.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's so bad, they even wanted to find a UAC for XP. *shudder*
I read this back when it was in the firehose, and there isn't even one piece of software on there I'd install if they were giving it away, either.
Set aside all the crap about whether you can or can't completely turn WDS off and ponder this:
Microsoft made a clone of Google Desktop, then used its monopoly position to send it to everyone to hurt Google's business. They did the same with Netscape, Stacker, and a whole host of other old products too. It's classic Microsoft: find a competitor you want to hurt, clone one of their most important products, then include it in the OS and integrate it in ways that no one else can.
Now, if they wanted to do it right, they'd have made an easy, user-accessible way to choose your desktop search application from the start (i.e. a control panel, not net stop whatever).
It's not just that they file a John Doe suit, it's that they join dozens or even hundreds of unrelated parties into a single lawsuit. The one and only basis for that is that all the Does in that lawsuit share the same ISP, which is not, to my non-lawyerly knowledge, a permissible reason for joining parties according to the FRCP. One Texas judge ordered them to put a stop to that very practice of "defrauding" the state of its rightful filing fees, yet the practice continues in other venues.
:-) For all I know, I'll end up being one of the Does by mistake someday (I don't listen to or like their crappy music, why on earth would I waste HD space on it?). I'd like to say that might even make them waste a little money responding or objecting to it, but I bet they'd make a form letter brief to reply to them if anyone made a habit of it...
Also, even once they have someone's identity, they've been known to play tricks with John Doe suits. I believe that, in the case of Mr. Merchant, he retained a lawyer and they offered to make his hard drive available, but only to outside counsel. The RIAA withdrew that lawsuit before they filed an answer in court (you can do that, it's a free pass to get out of court) and filed another John Doe suit in an attempt to get his hard drive directly, where they could have in-house people fish through it at will. By virtue of that being a John Doe suit, they meant to keep his lawyer out of the courtroom, preventing the counsel they knew he had from responding to their dirty tactics.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that although John Doe suits are perfectly normal, the way the RIAA uses them is not. They use pretty much any trick they think they can get away with, however dirty, even if it's contrary to the law. And when they pull these tricks, they try to make sure that no one is able to object.
To be honest, it tempts *me* to do things that I sincerely doubt are well supported by any laws at all. For example, can you file amicus briefs in random John Doe suits pointing out that Texas case? I have no idea, and incredibly dubious, but it might be worth the price of a stamp, especially because I could ask that the judge give those facts judicial notice even if the amicus itself was thrown in the trash... The other trick might be doing so anonymously. Can you even file an amicus anonymously? I haven't the foggiest. But I'm pretty sure I could just not sign my name. And I'm also pretty sure I could sign it "John Doe" out of an abundant sense of irony
Of course, these things being done ex parte also makes it pretty hard for me to find out about them before they're over...
> Insightful? That mod wasn't posted by a software engineer I'm sure.
You might lose that bet. I'm not the OP, but I agree with them.
> As a proud member of the development corp, I do really feel insulted to hear the sum of my creative energies, and the sweat and blood of my work referred to as an imaginary product.
Are you taking that as an insult? I wouldn't. It's rightfully called imaginary because it's the product of the imagination. Or because software isn't really a traditional "product" in the first place, but a service. Providing CDs in a box might be making a product in some sense, but not a very useful one given how much easier it is to download things. And I think of CDs in a box (distribution) as something separate from writing the software to begin with.
> Why they want to do this is obvious, it's a license to print money. Unfortunately for them, under these traditional economic theories it is the scarcity of a resource that makes it valuable (gold, platinum, wood) and an unlimited resource has very little, or no, monetary value.
From here on, I certainly agree with you. I really hate to see "harm to society" measured in dollars instead of people. Only an executive could come up with something that cold blooded.
> All the applications you learn now will be out of date when you use them. I'm sure all the artists who spent forever learning Photoshop will love to hear that.
There's no real replacement for Photoshop, anyhow, if you want to do print work. It's improving, but they're incredibly finicky about color (CMYK, device profiles, etc.). For other things like Office & Windows it's probably right. Almost everything I knew about where to find settings in Windows 3.1/95/98/NT/ME/XP is utterly and completely useless in Vista.
But you should learn to use software, not learn one specific UI. If all you know is a single UI, the software "training" you got was useless. Learning to use more than one application that does the same thing isn't always a waste of time.
> Has he mentioned that teachers can use this software free of cost?
My mother was a teacher. She and all the other elementary school teachers in my town paid for *LOTS* of stuff out of their own pocket simply because they cared about the kids and the community. You're severely overestimating school budgets if you think that the reduced price educational versions are cheap enough, especially in communities where the teachers aren't that nice.
> OpenOffice is almost as good, all it needs is a grammar checker.
Ugh. If you're using Word's grammar checker for anything the least bit important, you're insane. There are exactly two things I can imagine it being useful for:
* Counting words, paragraphs, etc.
* Removing passive voice for a school assignment.
Passive voice has its place. It shouldn't be overused and should be avoided in certain types of writing, but it isn't even wrong. It might be a very poor style to use but it's not wrong. You will note that I excluded doubled words from that list. Those get caught by the spell checker, not the grammar checker.
> Isn't the F/OSS community capable of having a better spokesman?
Feel free to speak up. I don't think anyone gets to choose who else may and may not speak on behalf of some issue.
> Believe it or not, the architect and manager of the RIAA's terror campaign called me up several weeks ago to give me his personal assurance that the RIAA doesn't use trolls. (Ha, ha, ha).
:] Assuming it's not privileged or something.
Man, I'd love to know what prompted that conversation?
And I'm glad to know that Slashdot is useful to you. BTW, I think there's also a post way up near the top of this story, buried in low-karma comments asking if there's anything that can be done for RIAA victims you might wish to respond to, too, if you have any ideas. Might be nice to have that on a permanent web page people can be pointed to if you've got any good ideas. I keep feeling like I'd like to do more, but I feel like I can't do much more than offer words of support or give my opinion on technical matters. Of course, that's why I'm so glad to see you organizing useful information on the RIAA's legal strategies to help anyone else who gets caught in the drift net.
And seeing which politicians are willing to sell out America on issues like this has given me a good idea of who not to vote for.
Sadly, the list is pretty damn long at this point.
> Perhaps you can explain to me exactly how he violated Microsoft's contract by using the published APIs?
Because, uhhh, they said so and they will hire expensive lawyers if he doesn't cave!
(Well, that's what *Microsoft* said, more or less... If I have to read any more crap like that, I'm going to SKU their ecosystem.)
Just so you know, the submitter's name is Ray Beckerman. He is a New York lawyer who has represented his share of RIAA victims and he has posted many articles updating us on the progress of these cases, including the one where he asked us to respond to the RIAA's "expert" witness who had basically admitted in a deposition to having essentially no scientific basis for his findings.
:(
Because his clients are generally not wealthy and cannot afford thousands of dollars on experts and legal fees, he's turned to those of us in the technical community who are sick of the RIAA's bullying legal tactics, and I believe he found an Ask Slashdot helpful for once, in spite of the trolls (surely that must be a first...).
If you want to know about the cases he's involved in, he posts about those (and others) over on his blog. Or just talk to him when he shows up on Slashdot. He's a nice guy, he reads (and responds to) pretty much all replies to his posts, save maybe the trolls. And if he seems a bit curt at times, it's because the RIAA is also watching him. That's right, they've taken note of his blog and possibly other things and tried to twist the things he says and does to use against him in court. I can't see how it's even relevant (it probably isn't), but the RIAA lawyers aren't known for playing nice (or even by the rules, if you look at all the stuff they try and pull ex parte; one Texas judge got mad at them for trying to "defraud" the state of filing fees).
In other words, he's a good lawyer, and one of our few allies in the fight against the RIAA. Very, very few people can afford to represent themselves in court, even if they're innocent, and the RIAA is taking every advantage of that fact
I, for one, intend to do pretty much anything in my power to help him out.
That programs used over a network don't have to have their source released. However, the GPLv3 solves this by making itself compatible with the Affero GPL, which blocks the "ASP Loophole" so it really does fix it, albeit indirectly (i.e. you have to insert some Affero licensed software in there to close the loophole). After all, for many projects the "ASP Loophole" just isn't a problem in practice, and there's no sense in requiring it for every application.
Yeah, it's a problem that Microsoft has such a well-oiled political machine. Their phony "activist" groups, usually made up of shills and crazy Libertarians who seem to think that this country should be ruled by businesses instead of people, and their PR people are remarkably persistent. They have the ACT and other corporate whores who dance like puppets at their beck & call. Any time the government does something Microsoft doesn't like, they complain. If they've *ever* taken a position contrary to Microsoft, I've never seen it. And given how rare that level of agreement is, well, you have to seriously question their status as an independent entity... CAGW isn't very different, either, but they *might* just be deluded. I can't see how it's government "waste" to standardize on an open format that everyone, even Microsoft, can implement instead of being beholden to a single-vendor standard, but apparently they think so. I guess I can sympathize with the politicians, though--is there any difference between deluded libertarians or conservatives and corporate whores? I'm not quite sure.
Anyhow, I don't think it's useful to think in terms of "resistance is futile" because they can't keep a stranglehold on things forever. For once, idiotic nationalism might be useful when foreign governments see Microsoft as a US entity, so the rest of the world will probably break away before the US does. Of course, that will probably make the US even more of a technical backwater than it already is becoming thanks to telephone and cable monopolies making sure that we don't have any decent speed internet connections.
Which is why my backup plan is to learn Japanese, assuming I don't lose my mind in the process...
Konnichiwa! Gaijin no baka to moshimasu. Yoroshiku.
Yes, Microsoft's add-on is utter crap, but a few other people make them, too.
Also, you have to look at this another way:
* Are all our old-format Microsoft documents going to be accessible in 10 years? I mean, who has a copy of Word 1.0 these days? And no, the legacy support in current versions is NOT good enough.
* Aren't we going to go through the same damn trouble in the next new, incompatible version of Word?
Between those two factors, you may be saving some pain in the short term, but you're hurting yourself in the long run. Further proof of Microsoft's intensive lobbying, though. I mean, what's wrong with ensuring that you save your documents in formats anyone can read without being tied to a specific vendor?
But nooooo, that's only what the evil IBM lobbyists want you to believe! Gotta trust the Microsoft lobbyists if you know what's good for you (and your campaign funding).
Thanks!
I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to something like this buried under an old thread. There are so many cases now on your litigation page, though, I can barely keep any of them straight at this point. But that's a good thing, I suppose--it must mean that more people are choosing to litigate instead of entering into unfair settlements. Though I still wish the RIAA would just stop the campaign entirely.
Err, I didn't mean to make a statement so much as to ask a question, but I do thank you for your input. Are there any good, up-to-date resources I might use to understand this better?
I wish there were something simple that listed the elements required for a finding of copyright infringement. Or perhaps that law isn't well-settled? I mean, suing random individuals for copyright infringement is pretty novel, as, apparently, are most of the RIAA's claims.
> I'm surprised at you, Alter_Fritz. Didn't you read the transcript of the January 26, 2007, oral argument in Elektra v. Barker, where Judge Karas lectured Mr. Gabriel on the absence of "volition".
I can't seem to find that particular transcript, but my connection is a bit slow right now and my mind might be, too.
In the mean time, please educate me: I had thought that copyright law was some kind of strict liability. I.E. if you have the infringing files, you're guilty. Have I misunderstood copyright law, or mistaken one of the RIAA's suppositions for fact? I would greatly appreciate relevant guidance as to what elements are required for a finding of copyright infringement? Or is that too complex a subject? For simplicity, you can assume that we're talking about an ordinary file sharing case.
I've tried to educate myself by reading relevant legal filings, but I lack the legal training required to understand the fine nuances that make law difficult.
> Let's expand this a little - I copy your video game, with it's CD-key. In this example, you partially lose the ability to do online play.
Then you stole the USE of the CD key (because he can't use it) from the person, while infringing upon the copyright of whoever made the video game for a total of two separate offenses.
Also, plagiarism might be called stealing CREDIT for a work (because the original author no longer gets credit due to your lack of attribution), but it might also be copyright infringement. Again, there are two separate problems there and you do well not to confuse them.
> What's more likely is that tales of dragons grew out of another animal--namely pre-existing reptiles, snakes and crocodilians.
I personally always figured that someone found some fossils, say a nice big T-Rex skull or similar and the legends grew from there. Mind you, I have no proof, but that's what I've always conjectured.
I mean, a T-Rex looks a LOT more like a dragon to me than a crocodile, but that's just me.
> Young earth hypothesis is a recent addition to Christian thought?
Ancient Christian scholars came at it from a completely different angle and believed Genesis to be metaphorical. You see, their opponents argued that, "If God is omnipotent, why did it take Him seven days to create the world?"
Whatever might be causing their symptoms, it's apparently NOT electromagnetic waves. See this for details. It may be a very real symptom, but you should be more careful when making claims about WHAT caused it and you need a proper scientific study to rule out any other causes.
Until then, I'm going to have to go with all the published studies showing that, whatever might cause people to feel "EM sensitive", it's not actually EM that's causing it.
> Which will hopefully finally put an end to all the nonsense conspiracy theories that "Novell admitted that Linux infringes patents" etc., even though Novell have constantly re-iterated that such a claim was ridiculous.
I wouldn't call that a "conspiracy theory" because it was Microsoft who perpetuated that claim. Yes, they went to the media and used it to whip up all this FUD, like the 235 patents bit. And with the rest of us unable to read the agreement...
Anyhow, I figured that was just Microsoft stabbing their "partners" in the back. Hopefully, that will teach Novell not to deal with them again, it's been nothing but trouble for them and I don't think they intended anything bad--they probably just wanted to protect their customers--but they chose a really bad way to do that.
>> question 4: As the body of copyright material grows and grows, doesn't that mean that creativity becomes more and more impossible?
> What? Are you saying that the only way to be "creative" is to blatantly plagiarize existing works?
In short: yes. First off, suppose this had always existed. You know those words you're using? Those are other people's ideas. They were all coined by people we may not remember (although OED does list the first known use for many of them) and, by that theory, belong to them. Whenever I write, I cannot help but see the sources which inspired me. I remember reading the GNU philosophy section over these arguments. I remember developing the argument I just used about words while reading Wikipedia.
Originality is overrated. If you break it down, you'll just see that it's a combination of familiar things which, for whatever reason, turned out to be unexpected. Google's search engine was a very original idea, no one else had thought of ranking web pages like that, but it was drawn from the scholarly practice of citing sources that had been around for ages, as well as the scientific and legal practice of figuring out importance in terms of which works are most cited.
Einstein's theories were very original. But the physics and the math were developed by others, he just put all the pieces no one could explain together. Other people made the pieces for him. He filled in the rest and assembled them. Genius, yes. Original, yes. But also built on the work of others. And again I see an inspiration: it was Newton who said that if he'd seen further than other men, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Of course, he was trying to say that he didn't rip off the idea of calculus from Liebnitz, who was very short (and who came up with the same idea independently... how does copyright law handle THAT one?). So we give Newton credit for being first, and we use something akin to Liebnitz' notation.
Oh math. Maybe that's why I'm so keen to see inspiration everywhere. You may think it's original, but the entire framework of mathematics is a vast, complex, layered framework of ideas, abstractions and techniques which have been built and refined by more people than I could possibly keep track of. You see, you CAN'T do math without using someone else's ideas. You may think it's all 1+1 = 2, but there's a damn good reason why you start hearing ancient Greek names by the time you get to algebra. And there's a good reason you don't start hearing the names of people who are actually still alive until you're in graduate school, or close to it.
So tell me, why don't you think of something totally, completely and utterly original to prove me wrong? Oh, wait. You may say it's original, but it's all based on things you were taught, things you've experienced, etc. The only original thing anyone can bring out is that which they alone have experienced, and you'd be surprised at how few such things there are (I can reference XKCD now; I thought I was the only one who'd ever done something silly like make up rules for walking across a tiled floor).
Maybe that's not "blatantly plagiarizing" but you'd have to be totally, utterly and completely oblivious to all the things you've been influenced by not to realize that your thoughts did not all originate with you.
My guess, and it's only a guess, because I cannot read your mind, is that you heard some bad argument over "it's not theft, it's copyright infringement" (hey, the Supreme Court says so, too, so...) and fell in with the people arguing that because you don't like the idea of doing anything illegal or else have libertarian tendencies that trigger a knee jerk whenever it comes to "property rights" and such (now, with the abuse of Eminent Domain a while back, that was wrong, but that was also actual, tangible property).
Of course, I don't like doing illegal things either. That's why I want to see the law changed.
BTW, I give any and everyone a world-wide, fully p
Unfortunately, I think he was asking if a person who was guilty of copyright infringement could get away with it because of the unscrupulous RIAA tactics in prosecuting the cases.
Alas, I'm not sure he was aware that no reputable lawyer will ever advise you to break the law, although I should hope he was aware that you are, in fact, a reputable lawyer.
> Personally I think I get to moderate a lot - Probably about once a week, sometimes more often. There are times when I let my 3 days slip by, because its too hard to keep up.
:]
I don't know exactly what's up with it--there wasn't anything new in the FAQ last I read it--but I've noticed the same thing. Funny thing is, until just a few months ago, I never got to moderate at all. Then I hit some threshold and *wham* it's not uncommon to get a few mod points.
Anyhow, my strategy is to find (if possible) whichever posts have accurate information and mod those up, if possible. Of course, that's easier said than done...
I have almost the inverse of his problem. I post anonymously, but only when posting from work.
:]
Why? I don't want them to learn my Slashdot username. Not that I really have anything to hide, but it's more out of trying to retain some semblance of privacy. And they do have that annoying censor firewall in place, though my boss is nice enough not to care what I do online so long as I get done what he wants done.
Oddly, I end up submitting almost as many stories as comments, and waiting an hour to post another anonymous comment is kind of annoying, but that's somewhat better, because it makes me think about which comments are the most useful, rather than dashing off every post that comes to mind
Slashdot moderation is *far* from perfect... but it's a hell of a lot better than elsewhere. You have to wade through a lot less crap to get to the good stuff than you do anywhere else. Fark comments aren't worth reading, although the photoshop contest pics can be cool. I don't even read Digg, and sites like Groklaw are nice enough, but it's really time consuming to find the interesting posts. Unless PJ reposts them as a story, you'd never know that the 39th post in that huge thread was the interesting one, while all the rest just said "when will SCO get delisted?" (Short answer? They'll hit bankruptcy first.)
DiDio is highly pro-SCO, or was last I bothered to check. So unless someone can point me to where she's done a complete 180...