I believe the author is referring a slight difference between Canadian and American copyright law. Someone explained it to me like this:
I can come over to your house, give you a CD, tell you how to put my CD in your drive, rip it, and burn your own copy. That's legal, in part due to the levies on recordable media in Canada (which go to the artists, though none of that money has ever been distributed; that's another story).
I can't, however, make a copy for you. Weird, but true, from my understanding.
So - the question in Canada is: under which of these two scenarios does P2P filesharing fall? Apparently, the downloading is not illegal, but the sharing is illegal.
I'm currently an EIT (Engineer in Training) just about ready to get my PEng status (Professional Engineer) in BC, Canada. BC and Ontario are currently the only two professional engineering associations in Canada that have Software Engineering as a recognized stream of engineering. What does that mean? Well, a couple things:
The school I came from is accredited: In order to be able to apply for registration, you either need to come from an accredited university program, or if you come from outside Canada, pass a set of exams proving your knowledge. In other words, I have the right educational background to understand the implications of the work I'm doing.
I have had adequate supervised experience: Before you can apply for registration, you must have four years of engineering experience (documented, BTW) under the supervision of another PEng. In other words, I have had the experience required to make decisions on work related to my particular area of expertise.
I have passed the PPE (well, I will soon): The Professional Practice Exam (PPE) is a three hour exam that tests your understanding of the engineer's responsibility to the public health and safety, as well as the Engineer's Act in your province. The Engineer's Act sets out the legal framework for protecting the engineering profession. By passing the PPE, I show that I understand the implication of acting unethically in my role as a professional engineer, and the legal consequences.
While this sounds all well and good, I've found there's a couple of unique features of software engineering that make it an odd fit into the traditional model of the engineering profession:
Software Engineers actually build the product: Unlike other engineers, software engineers usually don't just design the software, they usually write it and test it. When's the last time you saw a civil engineer actually out there, pouring concrete and laying girders? Software engineering, I would argue, has the potential to be far more hands on.
Everyone calls themselves a "software engineer": Unlike the other streams of professional engineering, the associations have been pretty lax in enforcing the rule of law restricting the use of the term "engineer". Under Canadian law the term "professional engineer" is restricted, and so is "engineer" if it used to mislead the public into thinking you are a professional engineer. Basically, the profession has an uphill battle trying to convince people both to become software engineers, and to recognize software engineering.
Software is very generic, and hence, complex: Once you become a professional engineer, you become liable for your work. Though you may do all the right testing, and think everything's bullet-proof, what happens when something beyond you control goes wrong? In the case of software, dissecting the cause of failure in complex systems can be extremely difficult. Therefore, there's a much greater risk in software engineering of getting your ass sued if people start taking it too seriously.
So what's the benefit to you, the code slinger? Well, first off there's the potential for legal protection. A previous poster pointed out you can't enforce ethics. That's not entirely true. In fact, that's the whole point of having a profession in the first place. If you're a professional engineer and you warn against taking a certain action and your company ignores your warnings, your obligation to protect the public usually overrides your obligation to your employer. If you allow the company to proceed with its plans, then you're liable. If you stop the company, they'll have a hard time firing you.
In traditional engineering, you could stop the company from proceeding with its plan by simply refusing to sign off on the design/action. But again, unlike traditional engineering, software engineers don't have quite as much power as traditional engineers. In traditional engineering, such as civil, there's all sorts of laws that require designs be signed off by a professional engineers (building codes, etc). In software engineering, there are no such laws.
For 99% of the software out there the concept of protecting the "public health and welfare" is fuzzy, and therein lies the problem. If the Clippy assistant in Word is buggy, crashes my machine and causes me to lose my work worth $1,000 is the software engineer liable? I suppose so. But did failing thoroughly test to ensure Clippy didn't crash a user's machine place the public health and welfare in jeopardy? Maybe. Economically perhaps, but certainly not "life and limb" jeopardy. In many ways, software engineering is raising the question of an engineer's responsibility to protect society in the context of modern technology.
Overall, I think moving towards a software engineering profession is the "right" thing to do, but it's probably going to take a long time to establish it on equal footing with the other engineering fields.
So let me get this straight...your laptop broke twice in one year and they fixed it? And you're happy about this?
Maybe they should have built a decent product in the first place and avoided the problem altogether...what happens the next time it break? Oh that's right, you're screwed!
My experience with Sony's post-warranty service was anything but brilliant. The VAIOs seem to have the tendency to break down just after the warranty expires, and once that happens, Sony's no longer your friend. In my case, I had to track down the VP of Sony PC Marketing in San Diego and harass him on his cell phone repeatedly. And I'm not the only one that has had these problems with the VAIO line. See the details and letters on: www.brendonwilson.com/ideas/sony.
It seems that "old media" (ie: books publishers) is recognizing this fact a lot faster than newer media (ie: movie and music publishers). I recently finished my first book for New Riders (see www.brendonwilson.com/projects/jxta), and they not only allowed me to post the draft chapters when I asked, but even suggested posting the final version!
This has apparently been accepted by New Riders lately for a few books. My acquisition editor, Stephanie Wall, has done this for about a dozen books, including the Zope book. According to her, New Riders has also come to the same conclusion: offering free online versions of books doesn't hurt the publisher's physical book sales. After all, if someone is crazy enough to read the entire thing off a monitor or print it off, it's doubtful they would have bought the book anyway.
O'Reilly has also taken to doing something similar with its Open Books Project.
Of course, the question is how long this phenomenon will last once we have display technology that allows us to take these electronic books with us in a form indistinguishable from a normal paper book...
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I can come over to your house, give you a CD, tell you how to put my CD in your drive, rip it, and burn your own copy. That's legal, in part due to the levies on recordable media in Canada (which go to the artists, though none of that money has ever been distributed; that's another story).
I can't, however, make a copy for you. Weird, but true, from my understanding.
So - the question in Canada is: under which of these two scenarios does P2P filesharing fall? Apparently, the downloading is not illegal, but the sharing is illegal.
I'm currently an EIT (Engineer in Training) just about ready to get my PEng status (Professional Engineer) in BC, Canada. BC and Ontario are currently the only two professional engineering associations in Canada that have Software Engineering as a recognized stream of engineering. What does that mean? Well, a couple things:
While this sounds all well and good, I've found there's a couple of unique features of software engineering that make it an odd fit into the traditional model of the engineering profession:
So what's the benefit to you, the code slinger? Well, first off there's the potential for legal protection. A previous poster pointed out you can't enforce ethics. That's not entirely true. In fact, that's the whole point of having a profession in the first place. If you're a professional engineer and you warn against taking a certain action and your company ignores your warnings, your obligation to protect the public usually overrides your obligation to your employer. If you allow the company to proceed with its plans, then you're liable. If you stop the company, they'll have a hard time firing you.
In traditional engineering, you could stop the company from proceeding with its plan by simply refusing to sign off on the design/action. But again, unlike traditional engineering, software engineers don't have quite as much power as traditional engineers. In traditional engineering, such as civil, there's all sorts of laws that require designs be signed off by a professional engineers (building codes, etc). In software engineering, there are no such laws.
For 99% of the software out there the concept of protecting the "public health and welfare" is fuzzy, and therein lies the problem. If the Clippy assistant in Word is buggy, crashes my machine and causes me to lose my work worth $1,000 is the software engineer liable? I suppose so. But did failing thoroughly test to ensure Clippy didn't crash a user's machine place the public health and welfare in jeopardy? Maybe. Economically perhaps, but certainly not "life and limb" jeopardy. In many ways, software engineering is raising the question of an engineer's responsibility to protect society in the context of modern technology.
Overall, I think moving towards a software engineering profession is the "right" thing to do, but it's probably going to take a long time to establish it on equal footing with the other engineering fields.
So let me get this straight...your laptop broke twice in one year and they fixed it? And you're happy about this?
Maybe they should have built a decent product in the first place and avoided the problem altogether...what happens the next time it break? Oh that's right, you're screwed!
My experience with Sony's post-warranty service was anything but brilliant. The VAIOs seem to have the tendency to break down just after the warranty expires, and once that happens, Sony's no longer your friend. In my case, I had to track down the VP of Sony PC Marketing in San Diego and harass him on his cell phone repeatedly. And I'm not the only one that has had these problems with the VAIO line. See the details and letters on: www.brendonwilson.com/ideas/sony.
It seems that "old media" (ie: books publishers) is recognizing this fact a lot faster than newer media (ie: movie and music publishers). I recently finished my first book for New Riders (see www.brendonwilson.com/projects/jxta), and they not only allowed me to post the draft chapters when I asked, but even suggested posting the final version!
This has apparently been accepted by New Riders lately for a few books. My acquisition editor, Stephanie Wall, has done this for about a dozen books, including the Zope book. According to her, New Riders has also come to the same conclusion: offering free online versions of books doesn't hurt the publisher's physical book sales. After all, if someone is crazy enough to read the entire thing off a monitor or print it off, it's doubtful they would have bought the book anyway.
O'Reilly has also taken to doing something similar with its Open Books Project.
Of course, the question is how long this phenomenon will last once we have display technology that allows us to take these electronic books with us in a form indistinguishable from a normal paper book...