If you bought a swim suit with a crotch-shaped hole on the back side of the material, but the front of the suit is completely solid, and then you went and cut out the front material to the shape of the existing hole, well then you'd have a proper analogy to what Rockstar did.
The hole was there all along, but it was patched so no one would see it under normal conditions. By modifying the suit/game, you exposed a "hidden detail" of the original item but it can hardly be said that the manufacturer intended to expose the hole. For all we know, it was a band-aid fix to remove "inappropriate" material in a fast and effective way that required less re-testing than removing the code completely. With deadlines and time crunches of the corporate world and to a greater extent the video gaming industry, I would not be surprised at all if that was the rationale behind leaving the content in, but making it otherwise inaccessible.
At the same time, here's a good reason not to get Firefox:
1) Firefox doesn't have that huge ActiveX feature that IE has
Believe it or not many corporate intranet sites and even some web sites in general use and like ActiveX to make their pages more "interactive". Until FF can replace ActiveX with something more secure while providing similar functionality I don't see FF replacing IE in any large corporate environment whose web development teams are using ActiveX components -- and that's a lot of them
By the way - the artist gets paid royalties to have their song paid on the radio.
Actually the label gets paid, the artist gets next to nothing. And you're right, with copyright Johnny legally has to ask permission to use the work. However, if he doesn't and the artist (or label in reality) does not approve of the use of his/her work, then they can demand Johnny take it out/down. If Johnny complies, that's the end of it because Johnny has not profited from this work in any measurable way - if not then Johnny's open to a lawsuit.
As for compiling a list, Johnny needs no such compilation, he just needs to create a Creative Commons license which states who and how his work may be used. Some artists release their music that way, but let's assume in this case they didn't.
Finally, YouTube is not making money off the video itself, but off of advertising revenue from the ads around the video - there's a difference. Johnny is not making that money either, so the artist/label can either go after Johnny for posting the infringing material, or YouTube for profiting from it (or technically both, but that pursuit seems pointless -- Johnny probably has no money and YouTube isn't liable if they take the material down upon request).
Sure, but you're changing the situation again. What was described was completely legal "Fair Use". All these other what-ifs are simply modifications that change the given fair scenario into an unfair one.
The original poster proposed that what little Johnny does was benefitting not only himself (because his work is appreciated by others) but also benefitting the original artist because their work has reached an expanded audience. Johnny does not accept money or any form of payment for this and gives credit where due. He's using one song, not an entire album (though one could argue the negative impact of producing an photo montage long enough to include all the songs on an album, but it's unlikely that would be considered fair use in the eyes of the law -- it's all very subjective).
If Johnny takes payment or lies (even by omission of fact) about the copyright of all included works, then he is violating copyright law and fair use.
I don't know of any artist who doesn't want people to experience their work before they buy it (I'm thinking visual and audio art here) because *most* people don't tend to buy creative works without experiencing the creative work first (hearing a song on the radio, seeing a postcard of a painting, etc.). Artists don't want their work sold by others and they don't want their work devalued by reducing the rarity of it (if I make a 5 million copies of an album and start handing them out for free, I'm reducing the market value of that album by flooding the market with inexpensive copies -- that hurts the artist's ability to earn a living off that album).
Johnny's little work of art with a copyrighted song in the background is not putting anyone out of work or devaluing the song. In this case it's probably increasing the value of the song if Johnny's art becomes popular, the song's artist by association becomes more popular (assuming the song's catchy and people like it as much as Johnny's work).
Ah, but now it's not Johnny's bad -- it's the person who's infringing copyright who should be held liable (in civil law, not criminal). Johnny did everything right, "someone" is the one in the wrong according to ethics and copyright law.
I'm not criticizing their ability to write, simply to type. If you browse through usenet via Google Groups you'll find WAY too many examples of people who simply cannot type (or choose not to) when seriously asking for help. It's embarrassing and hard to read - I personally do not respond to people who cannot take the extra time to at least type out words to the best of their ability.
I have no problem with typing in shorthand when in an IM conversation because sometimes it's hard to keep up if you're typing a lot in a busy chat, but leave that mangling of language in IM.
Moderation? I doubt it. Slashdot moderators can't even get insightful posts modded correctly let alone figuring out which kid is doing better at his homework than another and modding him/her up appropriately.
Not only does it run faster than conventional memory, it's an anti-smoking chip: if it catches you smoking at the computer it infects your cigar/cigarette with itself
But 'hacker' is the cool new way to say 'cracker' when talking about black-ops virus writers and spammers and other ill-behaving developers. Try as you might to change it back it's become engrained in our modern language, only the hackers will remember that hackers are the ones who come to the rescue, not the script kiddies who call themselves 'leet'.
The act of circumventing the copy protection on the XBox (to get around the Dashboard) is illegal by the DMCA. The DMCA doesn't care if you use software or hardware mechanisms to circumvent (even poor) copy protection. Consider that the DMCA even applies to copy protection on CDs that is activated with Autorun. By holding shift or disabling Autorun you're effectively circumventing that copy protection and therefore violating the DMCA in the strictest sense.
There are a few exceptions as pertain to Fair Use rights, but the DMCA is not like a patent. It cannot be invalidated because the circumvention is "obvious" or "so easy a 3 year-old could do it accidentally". It's a broad, stupid, law written to protect those who couldn't deal with our court system and the existing copyright laws.
Clearly your comment suggests you know very little about the capabilities of Linux and the state of Linux gaming - or you're just being a troll.
For your information, Flash is often ported to Linux a fair time after it's written for Windows so the likelihood of this game being Flash 9 is slim to none since there will probably not be a Linux port of Flash 9 by that time. Also, thereareseveralgames that look and play better in Linux using OpenGL than they do in Windows on the same hardware. I would expect that this game simply will use OpenGL as the graphics engine allowing the majority of code written to be cross-platform with very little to port between Windows, Linux and Mac.
In this case, I agree - you break a contract you're subject to the consequences.
I was responding to the blanket statement that software that is not finished should not be seen. Obviously when you enter a nondisclosure agreement you agree to limit your rights in exchange for something. But in a general sense without an NDA there's no compelling reason not to allow incomplete software to be seen by people interested in the software itself.
My examples come from open source because that's where incomplete software is most often exposed to the world. Businesses are allowed to do whatever they wish and in many cases it's not in their best interest to allow incomplete software to be accessed because it could tarnish a brand name or have other negative effects.
As a blanket statment software does not deserve to be kept secret any more than it deserves to be released. It was the phrasing of the statment I was objecting to.
The product isn't done yet, so it doesn't deserve to be seen.
What?! I think what you mean to say is because the product hasn't been released by Apple yet, it should not be distributed. Just because a product is not finished doesn't mean it doesn't deserve some attention - that's what Alpha and Beta testing is all about. In the world of open source, quite often wildly incomplete code is put out for all to download / try with the understanding that it's a work in progress and you're welcome to offer suggestions or submit patches to fix bugs.
I'm thinking if Duke Nukem Forever were to be released prematurely that the community drive to try it out and report bugs might help make this vaporware reappear. If it were open-sourced like Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory then the game might actually be completed and have multi-platform support.
There are plenty of reasons why software should not be released / seen before it's complete, but just because it's incomplete is not a sufficient reason for not allowing access to it.
But then again, you don't have publishing houses telling authors they need to write a book with not less that 50 chapters and not more than 60. With musicians, the labels tell them they need to produce three "sellable" albums with at least 11 tracks each. So the artist writes 5 to 10 catchy songs and spreads them out over the three albums with filler tracks for the rest. The albums will sell because of the catchy songs, but the rest of them are just to please the label which doesn't really care about the music in the first place.
I'd argue that while the infrequent band will write a full album that creates a cohesive whole, it's not what the majority of mainstream music is and it's not what people are used to expecting anymore (maybe they did back in the 70s, but those days are gone). Perhaps they could make a deal with iTMS to only sell the full album and not the tracks piecemeal. That would be an interesting test of the iTMS users -- will they buy an album if it's only sold like a regular CD and not by track?
Patents should exist where they are needed to allow companies to make healthy profits on risky ideas. However, that is all they are needed for - if a company is able to make a healthy profit without a patent, then one is not necessary. Patent lifetimes should probably be tweaked by industry as well - in industries where we expect a high level of expense to ensure quality (such as pharmaceuticals) we should probably grant longer patents (or lower the safety standards to reduce up-front costs). In an industry like toothbrush designs they should probably be shorter. Software patents should probably only last a year or two - as softare is not capital-intensive and a two year head start is plenty to make a profit.
I disagree. Patents on drugs should not be lengthened because while it is very risky and expensive to do drug research, that's the nature of the business. Who's the one to draw the lines at what's "risky enough" to have a 10 year patent vs. a 5 year patent vs. a 1 year patent? It becomes very subjective and subjective always equates to "unfair" in someone's eyes. Objective patent laws are the best we can hope for and making a patent have the same value across the board is the goal.
Additionally, I personally think software patents shouldn't exist - we already have copywrite law governing software, why do we need a patent for it (or for a process in that regard)? But more to the point, I disagree with your assertion that "software is not capital-intensive". When you get into a large corporate environment, they have to / usually break down the software development into several stages, some of which are capitalizable and some of which are not. For example: spending 2 years on research and design of a software system requires the spending of a large amount of money on workers' salaries and benefits (and housekeeping like electricity and heating/cooling, etc.) - all of which is not capitalizable, it's just an expense. The work that is capitalizable (at least in my company) is the development work and testing work because the direct results of that work is a software system that can be capitalized upon for X number of years. Again, the software maintenance of said system is not capitalizable and is an expense. So a software shop will spend a fair amount of non-capitalizable money on producing software that is of limited capitalizable benefit (probably only can be capitalized upon for 2-5 years depending on the purpose of the system).
From friends who have one, I hear TiVo is a great product - far better than anything offered by Dish, DirecTV or cable companies and I'd hate to see them go out of business because of this. Additionally, Echostar seems to have played some dirty pool in getting their own DVR out the gate by peeking at a TiVo that was left behind during negotiations between TiVo and Echostar for licensing DVRs. But at the same time, I don't think that TiVo should have such a broad patent on this technology. In this case, it seems they're using their patent defensively simply to stay alive in a market that can quickly and easily be taken away from them by the satellite and cable companies that provide the content transport.
This is a philosophically painful case for me because I want to root for TiVo because they have a superior product, but not for patents. And I want to root for Echostar because I have one of their DVRs and would hate to lose it's functionality. I also don't want to root for TiVo because a win for them will negatively impact Dish customers who through no fault of their own are being punished for Echostar's behavior. That's like Microsoft users being forced to remove the Quicktime player from all Windows installations because of some industrial espionage they did against Apple (just by way of example -- it didn't really happen).
Slashdot Mirror
If you bought a swim suit with a crotch-shaped hole on the back side of the material, but the front of the suit is completely solid, and then you went and cut out the front material to the shape of the existing hole, well then you'd have a proper analogy to what Rockstar did.
The hole was there all along, but it was patched so no one would see it under normal conditions. By modifying the suit/game, you exposed a "hidden detail" of the original item but it can hardly be said that the manufacturer intended to expose the hole. For all we know, it was a band-aid fix to remove "inappropriate" material in a fast and effective way that required less re-testing than removing the code completely. With deadlines and time crunches of the corporate world and to a greater extent the video gaming industry, I would not be surprised at all if that was the rationale behind leaving the content in, but making it otherwise inaccessible.
At the same time, here's a good reason not to get Firefox:
1) Firefox doesn't have that huge ActiveX feature that IE has
Believe it or not many corporate intranet sites and even some web sites in general use and like ActiveX to make their pages more "interactive". Until FF can replace ActiveX with something more secure while providing similar functionality I don't see FF replacing IE in any large corporate environment whose web development teams are using ActiveX components -- and that's a lot of them
Actually the label gets paid, the artist gets next to nothing. And you're right, with copyright Johnny legally has to ask permission to use the work. However, if he doesn't and the artist (or label in reality) does not approve of the use of his/her work, then they can demand Johnny take it out/down. If Johnny complies, that's the end of it because Johnny has not profited from this work in any measurable way - if not then Johnny's open to a lawsuit.
As for compiling a list, Johnny needs no such compilation, he just needs to create a Creative Commons license which states who and how his work may be used. Some artists release their music that way, but let's assume in this case they didn't.
Finally, YouTube is not making money off the video itself, but off of advertising revenue from the ads around the video - there's a difference. Johnny is not making that money either, so the artist/label can either go after Johnny for posting the infringing material, or YouTube for profiting from it (or technically both, but that pursuit seems pointless -- Johnny probably has no money and YouTube isn't liable if they take the material down upon request).
Will this delay Reiser 4?!?
If he plea-bargins can he be put on a work-release program so we can get it on time?
Sure, but you're changing the situation again. What was described was completely legal "Fair Use". All these other what-ifs are simply modifications that change the given fair scenario into an unfair one.
The original poster proposed that what little Johnny does was benefitting not only himself (because his work is appreciated by others) but also benefitting the original artist because their work has reached an expanded audience. Johnny does not accept money or any form of payment for this and gives credit where due. He's using one song, not an entire album (though one could argue the negative impact of producing an photo montage long enough to include all the songs on an album, but it's unlikely that would be considered fair use in the eyes of the law -- it's all very subjective).
If Johnny takes payment or lies (even by omission of fact) about the copyright of all included works, then he is violating copyright law and fair use.
I don't know of any artist who doesn't want people to experience their work before they buy it (I'm thinking visual and audio art here) because *most* people don't tend to buy creative works without experiencing the creative work first (hearing a song on the radio, seeing a postcard of a painting, etc.). Artists don't want their work sold by others and they don't want their work devalued by reducing the rarity of it (if I make a 5 million copies of an album and start handing them out for free, I'm reducing the market value of that album by flooding the market with inexpensive copies -- that hurts the artist's ability to earn a living off that album).
Johnny's little work of art with a copyrighted song in the background is not putting anyone out of work or devaluing the song. In this case it's probably increasing the value of the song if Johnny's art becomes popular, the song's artist by association becomes more popular (assuming the song's catchy and people like it as much as Johnny's work).
Ah, but now it's not Johnny's bad -- it's the person who's infringing copyright who should be held liable (in civil law, not criminal). Johnny did everything right, "someone" is the one in the wrong according to ethics and copyright law.
I'm not criticizing their ability to write, simply to type. If you browse through usenet via Google Groups you'll find WAY too many examples of people who simply cannot type (or choose not to) when seriously asking for help. It's embarrassing and hard to read - I personally do not respond to people who cannot take the extra time to at least type out words to the best of their ability.
I have no problem with typing in shorthand when in an IM conversation because sometimes it's hard to keep up if you're typing a lot in a busy chat, but leave that mangling of language in IM.
Kind of gives new meaning to the phrase "debugging memory code" eh?
Yes, but unfortunately the typing skills of kids these days r n0t az gud az u wood xpect w/ all thair im convos n stuff lol ttyl
Moderation? I doubt it. Slashdot moderators can't even get insightful posts modded correctly let alone figuring out which kid is doing better at his homework than another and modding him/her up appropriately.
Not only does it run faster than conventional memory, it's an anti-smoking chip: if it catches you smoking at the computer it infects your cigar/cigarette with itself
Sounds like Dr. Sbaitso (Sound Blaster Acting Intelligent Text to Speech Operator). Nice to see fake AI hasn't improved in 15 or so years.
But 'hacker' is the cool new way to say 'cracker' when talking about black-ops virus writers and spammers and other ill-behaving developers. Try as you might to change it back it's become engrained in our modern language, only the hackers will remember that hackers are the ones who come to the rescue, not the script kiddies who call themselves 'leet'.
At least Google Images brings it up with the search "Where's Waldo"
Each will crush the other into a single singularity again.
How do you clean up a black hole? With another black hole of course! No muss, no fuss.
The act of circumventing the copy protection on the XBox (to get around the Dashboard) is illegal by the DMCA. The DMCA doesn't care if you use software or hardware mechanisms to circumvent (even poor) copy protection. Consider that the DMCA even applies to copy protection on CDs that is activated with Autorun. By holding shift or disabling Autorun you're effectively circumventing that copy protection and therefore violating the DMCA in the strictest sense.
There are a few exceptions as pertain to Fair Use rights, but the DMCA is not like a patent. It cannot be invalidated because the circumvention is "obvious" or "so easy a 3 year-old could do it accidentally". It's a broad, stupid, law written to protect those who couldn't deal with our court system and the existing copyright laws.
Read your constitution. Or look at what other insightful posters have already posted: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195199&cid= 15995576
Clearly your comment suggests you know very little about the capabilities of Linux and the state of Linux gaming - or you're just being a troll.
For your information, Flash is often ported to Linux a fair time after it's written for Windows so the likelihood of this game being Flash 9 is slim to none since there will probably not be a Linux port of Flash 9 by that time. Also, there are several games that look and play better in Linux using OpenGL than they do in Windows on the same hardware. I would expect that this game simply will use OpenGL as the graphics engine allowing the majority of code written to be cross-platform with very little to port between Windows, Linux and Mac.
Thank you.
In this case, I agree - you break a contract you're subject to the consequences.
I was responding to the blanket statement that software that is not finished should not be seen. Obviously when you enter a nondisclosure agreement you agree to limit your rights in exchange for something. But in a general sense without an NDA there's no compelling reason not to allow incomplete software to be seen by people interested in the software itself.
My examples come from open source because that's where incomplete software is most often exposed to the world. Businesses are allowed to do whatever they wish and in many cases it's not in their best interest to allow incomplete software to be accessed because it could tarnish a brand name or have other negative effects.
As a blanket statment software does not deserve to be kept secret any more than it deserves to be released. It was the phrasing of the statment I was objecting to.
What?! I think what you mean to say is because the product hasn't been released by Apple yet, it should not be distributed. Just because a product is not finished doesn't mean it doesn't deserve some attention - that's what Alpha and Beta testing is all about. In the world of open source, quite often wildly incomplete code is put out for all to download / try with the understanding that it's a work in progress and you're welcome to offer suggestions or submit patches to fix bugs.
I'm thinking if Duke Nukem Forever were to be released prematurely that the community drive to try it out and report bugs might help make this vaporware reappear. If it were open-sourced like Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory then the game might actually be completed and have multi-platform support.
There are plenty of reasons why software should not be released / seen before it's complete, but just because it's incomplete is not a sufficient reason for not allowing access to it.
But then again, you don't have publishing houses telling authors they need to write a book with not less that 50 chapters and not more than 60. With musicians, the labels tell them they need to produce three "sellable" albums with at least 11 tracks each. So the artist writes 5 to 10 catchy songs and spreads them out over the three albums with filler tracks for the rest. The albums will sell because of the catchy songs, but the rest of them are just to please the label which doesn't really care about the music in the first place.
I'd argue that while the infrequent band will write a full album that creates a cohesive whole, it's not what the majority of mainstream music is and it's not what people are used to expecting anymore (maybe they did back in the 70s, but those days are gone). Perhaps they could make a deal with iTMS to only sell the full album and not the tracks piecemeal. That would be an interesting test of the iTMS users -- will they buy an album if it's only sold like a regular CD and not by track?
Upgrading Wi-Fi: What, When, and Wi?
I disagree. Patents on drugs should not be lengthened because while it is very risky and expensive to do drug research, that's the nature of the business. Who's the one to draw the lines at what's "risky enough" to have a 10 year patent vs. a 5 year patent vs. a 1 year patent? It becomes very subjective and subjective always equates to "unfair" in someone's eyes. Objective patent laws are the best we can hope for and making a patent have the same value across the board is the goal.
Additionally, I personally think software patents shouldn't exist - we already have copywrite law governing software, why do we need a patent for it (or for a process in that regard)? But more to the point, I disagree with your assertion that "software is not capital-intensive". When you get into a large corporate environment, they have to / usually break down the software development into several stages, some of which are capitalizable and some of which are not. For example: spending 2 years on research and design of a software system requires the spending of a large amount of money on workers' salaries and benefits (and housekeeping like electricity and heating/cooling, etc.) - all of which is not capitalizable, it's just an expense. The work that is capitalizable (at least in my company) is the development work and testing work because the direct results of that work is a software system that can be capitalized upon for X number of years. Again, the software maintenance of said system is not capitalizable and is an expense. So a software shop will spend a fair amount of non-capitalizable money on producing software that is of limited capitalizable benefit (probably only can be capitalized upon for 2-5 years depending on the purpose of the system).
From friends who have one, I hear TiVo is a great product - far better than anything offered by Dish, DirecTV or cable companies and I'd hate to see them go out of business because of this. Additionally, Echostar seems to have played some dirty pool in getting their own DVR out the gate by peeking at a TiVo that was left behind during negotiations between TiVo and Echostar for licensing DVRs. But at the same time, I don't think that TiVo should have such a broad patent on this technology. In this case, it seems they're using their patent defensively simply to stay alive in a market that can quickly and easily be taken away from them by the satellite and cable companies that provide the content transport.
This is a philosophically painful case for me because I want to root for TiVo because they have a superior product, but not for patents. And I want to root for Echostar because I have one of their DVRs and would hate to lose it's functionality. I also don't want to root for TiVo because a win for them will negatively impact Dish customers who through no fault of their own are being punished for Echostar's behavior. That's like Microsoft users being forced to remove the Quicktime player from all Windows installations because of some industrial espionage they did against Apple (just by way of example -- it didn't really happen).