I'm going to pretend that this post really is "interesting" and not "flamebait": Trademark allows for the development of a business identity. It prevents other people from making money off of your good name. It is generally limited to areas where someone is using a confusingly similar name that would lead customers to believe they are getting the "real thing" but they are not. It does not extend to unrelated business areas where a reasonable customer would not confuse the names, nor does it extend to every use of a word, though corporations often try to make it so. So, for example, I might be able to get away with selling "Olde MacDonald's Scotch Whiskey" without infringing on the trademarks of McDonalds resteraunt chain, nor 3M's Scotch brand products. Mount Olympus Camera Co. would not fly, but Mount Olympus Software, probably would. I might be able to sell "Unix Cheese Puffs" and "Unix Caffiend Cola" if the judge doesn't think I'm trading on X/Open's good name.
My point is that X/Open do not own the word "Unix" they just some rights to exclusive use of it as a name for an operating system, and related things. THAT DOES NOT GIVE THEM THE RIGHT TO THE DOMAIN NAME. What we don't want is people squatting on a domain, with no use for it other than to hold it hostage and to sell it to a party that does have use for it. That doesn't mean that a trademark holder is the only party with a legitimate interest in the domain, nor should their claim automatically be more legitimate just because they have a trademark. If I register NBC.* as a site or sites for Nehalem Baseball Club or some such before National Broadcasting Company does, they shouldn't be able to take it away from me.
That gaping slot on the front of my case seems to have 2 uses: collecting dust, and teasing me into trying to put a zip disk in. Then it shouts "ha got you again." while I put the zip disk into the correct slot. At least thats what I hear in my head.
I think you misunderstood that sentence. Everything that Karl wants to review must be turned over to him, confidential or not, before August 9th. He can publish anything non-confidential any time he wants, and if he wants to publish something that is "confidential" then he gives them 10 days notice that he is going to do it, and they have to convince a judge that there is good reason to keep it confidential if they want to stop him. Since California law says all those records are public, ICANN would have a darn tough time ever convincing a judge to seal anything from publication, but they are free to try.
As others have said, this is a pretty complete victory for Karl. Of course this is only the beginning of any real action Karl might be able to take, but it is a very good beginning.
Thats a nice anecdote, but I prefer actual statistics. When I was last shopping for HDD, the Maxtor 7200rmp disk had a better mean time between failures than either the WD or IBM drives.
Since I have not had any trouble with my Maxtor drives, I think that the guy is probably correct in supposing that the deaths were heat related.
"The safe harbor is unavailable if:
the copyright owner impairs the trading of files that don't
contain her copyrighted work, unless such impairment is necessary to impair= the trading of her copyrighted work."
My reading of that is that the "unless" exception only applies to P2P file trading. So if they say that they can only stop you from trading their copyrighted work by stopping you from trading any files, then they can get away with it. But under no circumstances will they be able to effect your upstream provider, or destroy ANY of your files. I am not aware of a DoS attack that wouldn't effect your upstream provider, so I think DoS attacks are right out. I could be wrong of course. And its only a bill, it can still be amended for better or worse, or just plain fail. Here's hoping that it just plain dies.
The law only provides for the copyright holder to impede distribution over a public, decentralized p2p network. Here is the text from the section by section analysis.
"Sec.514(a) provides copyright owners with a safe harbor from liability under= state or federal law only for actions designed to prevent the unauthorized= distribution of their works via a publicly available, peer-to-peer (P2P)
file-trading network. The safe harbor provided by Sec.514(a) does not allow= the removal of files or data from a P2P user's computer, the corruption of= files or data on a P2P user's computer, or any other actions that would
impair the integrity of any computer file or data. Sec.514(a) does not
specify the particular technologies that a copyright owner can use pursuant= to the safe harbor. Rather, it allows the use of any technology that
performs interdiction functions within the parameters outlined."
I don't know what methods are left if DoS and virii are out, but I'm sure the *AA people had something in mind when they gave the bill to Berman.
No really officer, I was just testing to see if these keys that I came by were enough to get in, or if there was also a security system. And I did it 18 times because I wanted to be really sure. Yes, I did see that "NO TRESSPASSING" sign, but its not like I stole anything.
I decided to look for myself and found no mention of contact with Venus or Mars in the mission description for Pioneer 10 or 11, or Voyager 1 or 2. I am not an astro-physicist, but it sure seems to me that risks associated with a slingshot off Venus would outweigh the gains to be made in speed. If you can show me a link, I would be grateful.
However, I don't think this law will allow DOS attacks and the other nasty things you enumerate.
"Sec.514(b) further limits the safe harbor created by Sec.514(a) by listing
specific circumstances in which a copyright owner cannot rely on the safe
harbor. The safe harbor is unavailable if:
the copyright owner impairs the trading of files that don't
contain her copyrighted work, unless such impairment is necessary to impair= the trading of her copyrighted work (Sec.514(b)(1)(A));
the interdiction efforts of the copyright owner cause economic
loss to any person other than the file trader (Sec.514(b)(1)(B));"
Since a DOS attack would hurt your ISP, it seems like that would be right out. Their "technological measures" are going to have to be more narrowly targeted than a DOS flood. There seem to be numerous other measures in the bill which allegedly prevent a copyright holder from abusing this safe harbor provision. Naturally, I don't trust that this is all on the up-and-up, but they are going to make the bill sound reasonable to many people.
What I am far more worried about in this bill is that it allows for vigilantism, which has obvious problems, and there doesn't appear to be a way to appeal this action, short of taking them to court for a long and drawn out court battle. This is completely unbalanced. The vigilante can take action against you without the burden of due process, but you must take on the burden of legal action to defend yourself. IMHO, our letters to congresspeople should concentrate on the circumvention of our courts rather than on internet traffic.
If you can't see the difference between telling a carrier that they cannot upgrade part of their system with a competitor's product without voiding the warranty of the entire system, and voiding a warranty of someone who deliberately operates equipment beyond it's designed voltages, clock rates, and temperatures, then I don't think we can have a rational discussion.
1 year renewal ($49): 2 year renewal ($89): 3 year renewal ($125):
If you renew now with Comodo we will extend the lifetime of your new Certificate
by 60 days at no extra cost - allowing you to begin using your upgraded
Certificate immediately.
What they are selling is not an renewal nor an upgrade of the current certification. It is a new certificate. I understand your arguement about the meaning of "upgrade", but I still think it is deceptive. If they were trying to be up front about what they are selling you, then they would say something like "Instead of renewing your old certificate before it expires, you should buy a new, better certificate from us. Its a better deal and we promise you won't regret it." But they don't, they make an ambiguous pitch.
I'm disappointed that CNN doesn't even list the names it asserts are confusingly similar to corporate websites. But I have to think that the confusing similarity shouldn't matter in this case. IMHO, this IS a free speech issue, as I think that this man's political commentary that relates directly to the domain names in question SHOULD be considered a valid interest in the domain name.
Don't you think that calling their offering a RENEWAL is deceptive? It is a new and different certificate from the one that is expiring. It is not a renewal, it is a replacement.
"I personally don't really give a shit if little Johnny down the street is using ogg or not...The only thing I would like to see regarding ogg is portable ogg players..."
But don't you think those two things are related? I think we are going to need an ogg vorbis user base before we can get a manufacturer to add support in a portable player. Ogg Vorbis support from WinAmp and Real is a step towards getting more user support. It becomes a bit of a chicken/egg problem until you get critical mass. I for one, am not going to rip my whole CD collection to Ogg until I can play it in the car and the living room without buying a laptop. A handheld portable covers both those.
I think jovlinger means that the (reduced mission) ISS will not have accomplished very much compared to a rail gun launcher that could have been built here on earth instead using that money. IMHO, this is another casualty of our success with the space shuttle program: meaning the investment in shuttles means that (politically) we have to use them instead of making something better and cheaper.
I'm sure he doesn't mean a rail gun ON the ISS, it would probably push the ISS out of orbit with that equal and opposite reaction thing.
Yes, what would People magazine and Entertainment Tonight do if there were no movie stars. I think they could make do. After all, look at the Hilton sisters, who have accomplished nothing other than inheriting a whole lotta money.
I think most of the audience won't reject a good character just because it is CG. Pierce Brosnan is retiring from the James Bond movies. Big fans of James Bond movies will still go no matter if the next JB is CG or a real person to be named later. Heck, with the proper CG, Jason Alexander could be an action star.
so the artists at ILM might refuse to work on your movie if you do your rendering at a non-union shop in Australia or New Zealand? So the non-union shop wins ALL the VFX work, (or none of it). I'm not seeing a down side for the movie producer or the non-union shop here, if they can get the work done. The only danger I see is if the actor's union does a sympathy boycott and all the actors refuse to work on movies that aren't 100% union. I suppose that is a possibility, but not a likelyhood.
" But that leads to a question, if you need actors do all this motion capture, why bother with the CG renders at all?"
Well I know it was a rhetorical question, but I think that the possibility of such a thing makes movie producers salivate. No more paying a "big name" 10 million dollars for a movie. Somebody "owns" the right to the face and image, so the actors are totally replaceable. They could have done a spectacular Tomb Raider with a photorealistic Lara with a perfect figure, perfect skin, etc. used a gymnast and/or a dancer at $100/hour or something for the action motion capture, then used a really talented but ugly no-name actress with a good voice for the voice acting and the face motion capture. It could all be done on a sound stage with CG backrounds. Or say for some other movie we want to use Cathleen Turner, but we want her to look like she did back in Romancing the Stone.
I'm not saying this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Photo-realistic computer generated graphics are just a tool, but a revolutionary one.
So you are suggesting that they should use computer graphics to portray Jean Reno having sex with Natalie Portman when she was 13? If thats a joke, its not funny, its sick. Please tell me you didn't mean it that way, or you hadn't really considered the implications.
I appreciate your cynicism, but I fail to see any connection between me buying a CD from a local band, and them signing a record label contract. In fact, if enough people buy music direct from the band, say over some vast public data network, perhaps bands won't need major labels at all. Hey look, there is a data network right here.
I wouldn't call $4 million NZ (or even US) to be a tremendous amount of capital, for a project like this. If they never use it for another project, they will still have gotten their money out of it. Sure, its a lot of money to me, but I bet they spent more than that on film stock.
But I think the other guy is right and Peter Jackson will make good use of this equipment and these people in the future.
I agree completely, and I think that judging from what we saw in FotR, they already have super-talented animators. Now I think they are just needing to remove some of the constraints on those artists. I'm guessing that the giant battles taking place in the next two movies are justifying the increase in computing power. I think we may really get the best of all possible movies here.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to pretend that this post really is "interesting" and not "flamebait": Trademark allows for the development of a business identity. It prevents other people from making money off of your good name. It is generally limited to areas where someone is using a confusingly similar name that would lead customers to believe they are getting the "real thing" but they are not. It does not extend to unrelated business areas where a reasonable customer would not confuse the names, nor does it extend to every use of a word, though corporations often try to make it so. So, for example, I might be able to get away with selling "Olde MacDonald's Scotch Whiskey" without infringing on the trademarks of McDonalds resteraunt chain, nor 3M's Scotch brand products. Mount Olympus Camera Co. would not fly, but Mount Olympus Software, probably would. I might be able to sell "Unix Cheese Puffs" and "Unix Caffiend Cola" if the judge doesn't think I'm trading on X/Open's good name.
My point is that X/Open do not own the word "Unix" they just some rights to exclusive use of it as a name for an operating system, and related things. THAT DOES NOT GIVE THEM THE RIGHT TO THE DOMAIN NAME. What we don't want is people squatting on a domain, with no use for it other than to hold it hostage and to sell it to a party that does have use for it. That doesn't mean that a trademark holder is the only party with a legitimate interest in the domain, nor should their claim automatically be more legitimate just because they have a trademark. If I register NBC.* as a site or sites for Nehalem Baseball Club or some such before National Broadcasting Company does, they shouldn't be able to take it away from me.
Is that a combination of delude and dilute?
That gaping slot on the front of my case seems to have 2 uses: collecting dust, and teasing me into trying to put a zip disk in. Then it shouts "ha got you again." while I put the zip disk into the correct slot. At least thats what I hear in my head.
I think you misunderstood that sentence. Everything that Karl wants to review must be turned over to him, confidential or not, before August 9th. He can publish anything non-confidential any time he wants, and if he wants to publish something that is "confidential" then he gives them 10 days notice that he is going to do it, and they have to convince a judge that there is good reason to keep it confidential if they want to stop him. Since California law says all those records are public, ICANN would have a darn tough time ever convincing a judge to seal anything from publication, but they are free to try.
As others have said, this is a pretty complete victory for Karl. Of course this is only the beginning of any real action Karl might be able to take, but it is a very good beginning.
Thats a nice anecdote, but I prefer actual statistics. When I was last shopping for HDD, the Maxtor 7200rmp disk had a better mean time between failures than either the WD or IBM drives.
Since I have not had any trouble with my Maxtor drives, I think that the guy is probably correct in supposing that the deaths were heat related.
"The safe harbor is unavailable if: the copyright owner impairs the trading of files that don't contain her copyrighted work, unless such impairment is necessary to impair= the trading of her copyrighted work."
My reading of that is that the "unless" exception only applies to P2P file trading. So if they say that they can only stop you from trading their copyrighted work by stopping you from trading any files, then they can get away with it. But under no circumstances will they be able to effect your upstream provider, or destroy ANY of your files. I am not aware of a DoS attack that wouldn't effect your upstream provider, so I think DoS attacks are right out. I could be wrong of course. And its only a bill, it can still be amended for better or worse, or just plain fail. Here's hoping that it just plain dies.
The law only provides for the copyright holder to impede distribution over a public, decentralized p2p network. Here is the text from the section by section analysis.
"Sec.514(a) provides copyright owners with a safe harbor from liability under= state or federal law only for actions designed to prevent the unauthorized= distribution of their works via a publicly available, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-trading network. The safe harbor provided by Sec.514(a) does not allow= the removal of files or data from a P2P user's computer, the corruption of= files or data on a P2P user's computer, or any other actions that would impair the integrity of any computer file or data. Sec.514(a) does not specify the particular technologies that a copyright owner can use pursuant= to the safe harbor. Rather, it allows the use of any technology that performs interdiction functions within the parameters outlined."
I don't know what methods are left if DoS and virii are out, but I'm sure the *AA people had something in mind when they gave the bill to Berman.
No really officer, I was just testing to see if these keys that I came by were enough to get in, or if there was also a security system. And I did it 18 times because I wanted to be really sure. Yes, I did see that "NO TRESSPASSING" sign, but its not like I stole anything.
Why do you believe that?
I decided to look for myself and found no mention of contact with Venus or Mars in the mission description for Pioneer 10 or 11, or Voyager 1 or 2. I am not an astro-physicist, but it sure seems to me that risks associated with a slingshot off Venus would outweigh the gains to be made in speed. If you can show me a link, I would be grateful.
However, I don't think this law will allow DOS attacks and the other nasty things you enumerate.
"Sec.514(b) further limits the safe harbor created by Sec.514(a) by listing specific circumstances in which a copyright owner cannot rely on the safe harbor. The safe harbor is unavailable if:
the copyright owner impairs the trading of files that don't contain her copyrighted work, unless such impairment is necessary to impair= the trading of her copyrighted work (Sec.514(b)(1)(A));
the interdiction efforts of the copyright owner cause economic loss to any person other than the file trader (Sec.514(b)(1)(B));"
Since a DOS attack would hurt your ISP, it seems like that would be right out. Their "technological measures" are going to have to be more narrowly targeted than a DOS flood. There seem to be numerous other measures in the bill which allegedly prevent a copyright holder from abusing this safe harbor provision. Naturally, I don't trust that this is all on the up-and-up, but they are going to make the bill sound reasonable to many people.
What I am far more worried about in this bill is that it allows for vigilantism, which has obvious problems, and there doesn't appear to be a way to appeal this action, short of taking them to court for a long and drawn out court battle. This is completely unbalanced. The vigilante can take action against you without the burden of due process, but you must take on the burden of legal action to defend yourself. IMHO, our letters to congresspeople should concentrate on the circumvention of our courts rather than on internet traffic.
If you can't see the difference between telling a carrier that they cannot upgrade part of their system with a competitor's product without voiding the warranty of the entire system, and voiding a warranty of someone who deliberately operates equipment beyond it's designed voltages, clock rates, and temperatures, then I don't think we can have a rational discussion.
Lets review the rest of the wording:
1 year renewal ($49):
2 year renewal ($89):
3 year renewal ($125):
If you renew now with Comodo we will extend the lifetime of your new Certificate by 60 days at no extra cost - allowing you to begin using your upgraded Certificate immediately.
What they are selling is not an renewal nor an upgrade of the current certification. It is a new certificate. I understand your arguement about the meaning of "upgrade", but I still think it is deceptive. If they were trying to be up front about what they are selling you, then they would say something like "Instead of renewing your old certificate before it expires, you should buy a new, better certificate from us. Its a better deal and we promise you won't regret it." But they don't, they make an ambiguous pitch.
I'm disappointed that CNN doesn't even list the names it asserts are confusingly similar to corporate websites. But I have to think that the confusing similarity shouldn't matter in this case. IMHO, this IS a free speech issue, as I think that this man's political commentary that relates directly to the domain names in question SHOULD be considered a valid interest in the domain name.
Don't you think that calling their offering a RENEWAL is deceptive? It is a new and different certificate from the one that is expiring. It is not a renewal, it is a replacement.
"I personally don't really give a shit if little Johnny down the street is using ogg or not...The only thing I would like to see regarding ogg is portable ogg players..."
But don't you think those two things are related? I think we are going to need an ogg vorbis user base before we can get a manufacturer to add support in a portable player. Ogg Vorbis support from WinAmp and Real is a step towards getting more user support. It becomes a bit of a chicken/egg problem until you get critical mass. I for one, am not going to rip my whole CD collection to Ogg until I can play it in the car and the living room without buying a laptop. A handheld portable covers both those.
I think jovlinger means that the (reduced mission) ISS will not have accomplished very much compared to a rail gun launcher that could have been built here on earth instead using that money. IMHO, this is another casualty of our success with the space shuttle program: meaning the investment in shuttles means that (politically) we have to use them instead of making something better and cheaper.
I'm sure he doesn't mean a rail gun ON the ISS, it would probably push the ISS out of orbit with that equal and opposite reaction thing.
Thanks for clearing that up. I was getting a headache trying to figure out how/why one would send a probe past Venus on it's way to Jupiter, etc.
Yes, what would People magazine and Entertainment Tonight do if there were no movie stars. I think they could make do. After all, look at the Hilton sisters, who have accomplished nothing other than inheriting a whole lotta money.
I think most of the audience won't reject a good character just because it is CG. Pierce Brosnan is retiring from the James Bond movies. Big fans of James Bond movies will still go no matter if the next JB is CG or a real person to be named later. Heck, with the proper CG, Jason Alexander could be an action star.
so the artists at ILM might refuse to work on your movie if you do your rendering at a non-union shop in Australia or New Zealand? So the non-union shop wins ALL the VFX work, (or none of it). I'm not seeing a down side for the movie producer or the non-union shop here, if they can get the work done. The only danger I see is if the actor's union does a sympathy boycott and all the actors refuse to work on movies that aren't 100% union. I suppose that is a possibility, but not a likelyhood.
" But that leads to a question, if you need actors do all this motion capture, why bother with the CG renders at all?"
Well I know it was a rhetorical question, but I think that the possibility of such a thing makes movie producers salivate. No more paying a "big name" 10 million dollars for a movie. Somebody "owns" the right to the face and image, so the actors are totally replaceable. They could have done a spectacular Tomb Raider with a photorealistic Lara with a perfect figure, perfect skin, etc. used a gymnast and/or a dancer at $100/hour or something for the action motion capture, then used a really talented but ugly no-name actress with a good voice for the voice acting and the face motion capture. It could all be done on a sound stage with CG backrounds. Or say for some other movie we want to use Cathleen Turner, but we want her to look like she did back in Romancing the Stone.
I'm not saying this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Photo-realistic computer generated graphics are just a tool, but a revolutionary one.
So you are suggesting that they should use computer graphics to portray Jean Reno having sex with Natalie Portman when she was 13? If thats a joke, its not funny, its sick. Please tell me you didn't mean it that way, or you hadn't really considered the implications.
I appreciate your cynicism, but I fail to see any connection between me buying a CD from a local band, and them signing a record label contract. In fact, if enough people buy music direct from the band, say over some vast public data network, perhaps bands won't need major labels at all. Hey look, there is a data network right here.
I wouldn't call $4 million NZ (or even US) to be a tremendous amount of capital, for a project like this. If they never use it for another project, they will still have gotten their money out of it. Sure, its a lot of money to me, but I bet they spent more than that on film stock.
But I think the other guy is right and Peter Jackson will make good use of this equipment and these people in the future.
I agree completely, and I think that judging from what we saw in FotR, they already have super-talented animators. Now I think they are just needing to remove some of the constraints on those artists. I'm guessing that the giant battles taking place in the next two movies are justifying the increase in computing power. I think we may really get the best of all possible movies here.
What Union? Is there a Movie Producers Union?