I don't know what the complete answer is but I do know that the people who claim that copyright law as it is currently implemented is the only possible way information creators can benefit are fanatics, very likely entrenched interests and middlemen who know full well that they add no value. Parasites in other words.
This is like claiming that people on wall stret don't have any value because they don't actually, say, drive trucks or work in mines. Wall Street people contribute to the efficient allocation of capital - the market values what they do, and thus they make extraordinary sums. "Middlemen" in, say, music and film, contribute to the efficient allocation of capital by facilitating marketing and distribution, without which, the argument goes, the market would not be as profitable to the "artist" as it would otherwise be. But would it? Well, the point is that in today's day and age, you have to take one of two choices:
(say) RIAA is an evil oligopoly: artists have no choice but to sign on the bottom line and accept slave contracts because the RIAA effectively provides them something of value - that is, marketing, organization, exposure, distribution, and so forth.
the power of the internet allows independent artists to successfully avoid RIAA middlemen and have successful careers. That is to say, the RIAA "middlemen" have no value.
The point is, IT CAN'T BE BOTH, even though on slashdot we routinely see people arguing both, contradictory, standpoints, AT THE SAME TIME.
As for your comments about handwaving (your last paragraph): please don't confuse your own ignorance and lack of education with some assinine belief that such studies have not been done. Copyright is particularly hard to study since it tends to have very noisy data** (though we do have the historical record which shows that EVERY regime which tried to outright ban copyright on philosophical grounds, starting with the french revolution on up, reverted to it after a few years after it found it unworkable.) Where we do have VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY solid evidence is in patents--there is absolutely no question that having a strong patent system spurs innovation. We know this because we can look at certain industries, such as pharmaceuticals and see how they grew or collapsed with respect to changes in local patent law. I am sure if instead of YOUR handwaving, you actually went to a university and looked up studies, this would be rather clear to you.
** here's an example: look at the number of artistic works developed by Taiwan (where copyright was effectively nil for some period) and Hong Kong (where there was effectve british style copyright). Hint: HK dominated in virtually every area. Again, such examples are noisy, but they do exist and the matter HAS been studied "scientifically."
by your reasoning, the "rm" command of unix is illegal.
the rm command:
- does not 'own' the software it deletes
- clearly lets you know what it's going to do before you do it and gives you the option to use it or not use it.
- you are free to use it or not
JUST LIKE THIS SOFTWARE.
stop with your bullshit slashdot lawyer tactics. there is no crime committed when one piece of software deletes or modifies another file, double plus so when it goddam tells you that it's going to do this if you follow a certain sequence of steps, even thougn, in this instance, you'd just happen to like it to be. your desires do not make the law.
typical slashdot "lawyer." you just invent reasoning to suit your needs, throw in a few legal generalities / irrelevancies, and pretend it has anything to do with the law. Yawn.
but if adequately warned, and you still put in a pirated serial number, then you have clearly made your intentions to have files deleted from your PC known.
1. you're right (in this particular case). I was speaking more in principle. If it does not adequately warn (which i dont know for sure either way here - i was relying on comments in this thread for that info), then it should.
2. the legal test here would be the balance of the warnings given vs the severity of the punishment. for example, let's say i have a pet euthenasia store. i can certainly put up a notice that says 'if you bring your dog here and sign these papers and give me money, i will shoot your dog.' and you can do it, and (as far as the relevant discussion here goes), no law has been broken. similarly, if his warnings / the intented operation of the software were clear, then similarly i dont see where any laws are broken (again, in this particular case - if the warnings were not clear, well, then he is probably guilty of misrepresentation. however, if somebody pirates or attempts to pirate the software, it is not clear exactly that the software developer has any duty of care to provide non-misrepresenting software to the pirate. there's also the reality that most people do not equte loss of files with dog (or human) death, as many people here on slashdot seem to. people are expected to have backups of critical files anyway.
3. find me the consumer protection law that applies to this case. i looked through all possible US consumer protection laws and didnt see anything that applied here.
4. cite the law. no handwaving to 'computer fraud and abuse' act, which has no relevance here.
there's nothing in the computer fraud or abuse act that would apply here, as the policy is clearly stated, serves a legitimate social goal (to reduce piracy). whoever 'posted earlier' was handwaving and hoping that something would stick to the refrigerator - the computer fraud and abuse act clearly does not apply in this case, as there is neither fraud (misrepresentation) or abuse ("without authorization"), as authorization is clearly given by the agreed to terms of the software unlock process.
Why shouldnt software be able to say "look - here's what the software does - if you use a pirated code, some files on your system will be deleted?" Please just answer that question. Your supposed "answers" so far are nonsnese:
He's not being judge jury or executioner. he's simply saying that this will happen if you do this. it's up to you whether you want to do this. there is a sign that says do not taunt the dynamite monkey. if you taunt the dynamite monkey, expect to get the expected and stated result.
Your claim that 'this wont stop anyone..' is your opinion. he has a different opinion (one that i happen to share). It may be that you are absolutely right (who knows), but the point isnt who is right or who is wrong - it is that he is well within his rights to offer terms as he likes. as the terms are clearly stated, i can't see how you have a gripe. and even if it was "all for revenge".. who cares? it is his right, especially as the software does as it says it will.
It's not 'fair game' that innocent people get hurt. It's the developers job to make this next to impossible and, if it does happen, to take 100% responsibility if the software does other than as it says it will.
So? so does rm. rm is another program that does exactly what it advertises that it will.
I don't see your point. this software does exactly what it says it will. How exactly is that 'vigilanteism'? Or, should we be throwing software pirates in jail, is what you are saying (clearly it is not, due to #4).
Then you should consider this before deciding whether to purchase his software.
If you think that piracy is a good promotion tool, then have it be pirated for your tool. This is your opinion. He disagrees and has the right to.
The software may be accidentally bought pirated, but it is PURPOSELY sold pirated. By any legal interpretation, responsibility rests with the seller.
The concept of second hand software should be made clear. Much software sold via the interenet / with keycode is sold on a strictly non-transferrable basis. this is simple and fair. personal responsibility means understanding the terms of sale that you agree to. in either case, it does not sound like this would trigger his 'atom bomb.'
and if you are legitimately the victim of this, you can sue the developer. if the developer is smart, he makes this statisticall unlikely, and/or attempts to contact the 'legitimate' keyholder via his registration details before putting this key on the atom bomb list.
the developer is responsible for his bad code if it does not work as advertised. however, by using a simple test for static pirated keycodes, it seems that the chances of this are somewhat slim.
I agree that there is always a chance for the developer to mess up - in this case, he should be responsible, just like the programmer of minesweeper should be responsible if a subtle bug causes your monitor to catch on fire.
what law, exactly, has he broken? his software works exactly as advertised: put in a pirate serial number, and it deletes something. assuming that the notice is clear and not obfuscated, it is not clear to me exactly what law you seem to think he has broken. does the existence of "rm" also break laws because it works as advertised?
You have artificially created a wall that says that he can do what he wants with 'his' software. this is a completely artificial construct that you have created, since most other software interoperates. his software works 100% as advertised.
what law, exactly, has he broken? his software works exactly as advertised: put in a pirate serial number, and it deletes something. assuming that the notice is clear and not obfuscated, it is not clear to me exactly what law you seem to think he has broken. does the existence of "rm" also break laws because it works as advertised?
I have read through the various responses here, but wanted to throw in my 2c - I COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY support what this devleoper is doing. Here's why:
1. it's completely transparent and fair. the developer warns/tells you exactly what will happen if you pirate his software. assuming that the warning is clear and obvious enough, there are no "surprises" nor is he guilty of "breach of contract." I also hope that he would put sufficient contact / question information for anybody that might have the slighest reasonable doubt. 2. it does not require any law enforcement resources. 3. if the developer abuses the system and, for example, punishes a non-guilty party, then he is exposed to lawsuits himself. this encourages him to act responsibly and to thoroughly test his methods. 4. anybody with any sense of reasonableness would have to agree that the piracy situation is completely out of hand, especially when it comes to small software developers. virtually everything and anything has been pirated and is avaialble on file sharing networks. currently the small development house has NO recourse whatsoever, especially since so many of the pirates are in countries where prosecution is de facto impossible if even you could track down the exact person. say what you will about MPAA/RIAA, but small software developers need and deserve protection.
I say bravo for this guy for taking a bold but necessary step in restoring the balance which has gone completely to hell in the world of small software development.
Oh stop it already. Your touchy feely astroturfing adds nothing to the discussion. We could just as easily say that we are a civilization built upon the concept of property rights and contracts, or, more precsisely, that there is a fairly strong case to be made that humans are best motivated by reward thhat is nearby and obvious - that is to say, not by some great notion of sharing (which has the free rider problem), but rather a capitalist sense of barter and exchange.
Day traders and the ignorant make the jobs of real investors much more difficult.
Arguably the dumbest 'smart' statement I've seen on slashdot in a while. The reality is that without day traders and the ignorant, things like heuristic trading schemes set up by large investment banks would be far less profitable. Real investors LOVE day traders and the ignorant, as they are the ones who are giving them money.
Toy manufacturers who make guns that could be confused with real ones are obligated to, and generally see nothing wrong with, placing distinguishing orange plastic nozzles at the ends
The makers of 'Bratz' and other socially irresponsible fare, while successful in the marketplace, have pressure put upon them and are shunned. They are seen as scoundrels.
Meanwhile, eMule and YouTube could have much better built-in method, inperfect, yes, but perhaps better with time, that allowed users to collectively flag and, for example, if some flag threshold is reached, block objectionable content. it wouldnt be perfect, but, as piracy is a game of attrition, not absolutes, it would be unreasonable for it to be anyway. there is no such mechanism. instead, let's just throw up our hands and say 'it's a social problem!' all the while downloading the latest new stuff.
You are correct that it is a social problem and that there will never be one great technological fix that solves it all. However, if you accept that it's a social problem, then:
You should not be so aghast at the idea of fixing it with laws (after all, laws are intended to fix social problems)
You should nevertheless support community efforts to CURB the problem.
Looks to me like you're confused. THee reasons for your confusion is that you think that 'fair use' is a fixed thing, like a 55mph speed limit.
Fair use is NOT a fixed set of rules, such as "you can copy 3 paragraphs, but not 4" or "you can let your sister borrow your CD, but not your second cousin." Because your whole argument rest upon your faulty assumption that Fair Use is indeed such a fixed set of rules, the rest of your argument falls apart.
I encourage you to read more about what fair use actually is, rather than what you would pretend it to be.
In short, your view is that technologists should not be concerned with how their creations are used. In your view, laws that restrict how or what technology you create are bad. Because you are a 'craftsman', you are completely absolved from any real thinking or restrictions about implications, whatsoever. Furthermore, nobody else should be able to put any restrictions on the use of your output, because you are a 'craftsman.'
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical midgets." - Omar Bradley
In hiding behind your "I am a craftsman" defense, you are truly an ethical midget.
The 'technology community' in general has shown no interest in building systems and standards that contain provisions for reasonably safeguarding IP contentholders legal rights
Which might be fine, since there is a reasonable argument to be made that technology should be fairly agnostic with regards to things like this and instead we should rely on the good judgement and self-restraint of humans to implement such controls. Instad, we see that
The 'technological community' in general has shown little to no interest in establishing a culture that encourages the safeguarding of IP contentholders legal rights
By which I mean, for example, that any post here that happens to be 'pro copyright' will typically be modded down, attributed to astroturfing, or so on while even the most juvenile 'F the RIAA' post or 'alternate economic theory' post which attempts to argue that IP regulation is completley unecessary using third grade logic (which to real economists is roughly the equivalent of creationism) gets modded up. Now, slashdot is hardly the 'technological community', but its dominant voice is fairly typical.
As a result, it is not unreasonable for lawmakers to address the problem by passing laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws they pass (including, at first glance, this one) are overbroad, over-reaching, ham-handed, unworkable, and/or completely ignorable. This is only partly because politicians and lawmakers are torpid and ignorant. The larger problem is because truly legislating such stuff is very very hard.
IP protection is like pollution: any single individual has an incentive to pollute/violate copyright. Therefore, collective pressures must be put in place to curb it. Again here we see another slashdot article whose ostensible purpose is to bitch and whine about how some politicians made some dumb law. Are we ever, even once, going to see an article that says "hi - look - the RIAA and MPAA may be arseholes, but they do have a point. software / movie / music / whatever piracy is a serious issue. how would YOU solve it?" Of course, we can expect the usual dumb answers, which are:
It's not really a problem (implied: since the 90% of technologically behind the curve people can continue to subsidize the 10% serious pirates in places like the USA and Europe, while the consumers of the western world can continue to subsidize mass-pirating countries like China and Russia)
Leave it to market forces (ya, like that would work so well with pollution)
All patents and copyrights are nonsense and do no social good. And the waters of Noah's flood were held in a vast vapor canopy were held up because the gravity was less in 3500 BC when the flood happened and the dinosaurs drowned)
Fuck the RIAA / MPAA. Good point, but not relevant
Artists make too little from the contracts they agreed to. Possibly, but not relevant.
It's not for me to solve. Let the rightsholders solve it themselves (fine, then dont complain when overbroad laws come down the pike and high schoolers get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Before us we have the skills to create some really cool content delivery mechanisms. For example, we have the brains to come up with ways for small artists to completely bypass the MPAA and other middlemen and make rasonable incomes directly from their fans. However, as it stands right now even the tiniest independent artist or software maker's work can be found on, for example, eMule in a pirated state. This encourages even more heavy tactics, ham-fisted laws, and DOES cause, for example, small software producers to go out of business.
You'll probably get modded up by all sorts of naive people.
However, the fact of the matter is that creating a rival to an established brand CAN be a decent strategy if you see that the established company is either insanely profitable (thus suggseting that there is room for another market entrant), insanely inefficient / bloated despite its success, or geographically underserves some markets.
In this case, #1 and #3 apply pretty well. Google, while great for english speakers, is quite a ways behind for other languages (not necessarily French, but when I use google in Japanese or in eastern-european languages, for example, it's pretty crap).
However, the key often is that since the techology is established and there is a reasonably well established technology out there as to how this sort of thing should work (of course there is room for improvement, but this is less central), such projects require less brilliance, but more a high degree of competence. Such competence costs money. Such products cost money. Off the top of my head, Opodo is a good example of this. They entered a busy market with nothing particularly new. They build a nonspectacular but working system and muscled their way into a decent market share. Sometimes, that's just the way things are done.
read the article replacing "tamil nadu" with south carolina. believe it or not, the IT economy of south carolina is probably at least as large as that of Tamil Nadu. If the government of South Carolina suddenly decided to use all OSS, would we see half of the globalization-implications-scope comments we see here? No. Rather, linux fans would highlight this as a significant but ultimately small victory for OSS and the rest of the world would just shrug. After all, slashdot duly posts some article every time some town or municipality's government switches fo linux, but some of us notice that even at the rate of one a month, it would take centuries for the world's governments, much less the world as a whole, to take up linux.
The proper solution for governments, indicidentally, is OPEN SOURCE SOTWARE, that is OPERATING SYSTEM NEUTRAL/AGNOSTIC. That is to say, it should run equally on Windows, Linux and Macintosh without too much problem. the operating system is not an interesting question (in fact, it can be OSS but microsoft only... i dont care) any more than the mouse is. the open-ness or closed-ness of the application software itself - that is, the bits of code that embody government policy about voting, welfare, whatever are the important bits to be OSS as long as we have reasonable trust that the underlying OS is fair (and, despite whatever hyperbole you might see here on slashdot, windows and osx are both certainly 'fair' in this respect - microsoft has not created any OS hooks that anybody knows or reasonably suspects to, say, detect voting software running on xp and change the results even though the software itself is correct).
which would be great, as it would allow publishers to have the option of offering items at a lower cost to the consumer for the same reason that the "all you can eat" salad bar at TGI fridays costs more than a single side-salad.
Of course, this is slashdot, so the response that I can expect will be "the companies will use this as an excuse to jack up the prices - aren't you naive!" line from people who don't believe in markets.
Don't worry. That won't stop future slashdot articles and comments making reference to "Now that the BBC has put its entire content into the public domain on P2P..."
Nor will it stop people from reaching the conclusion that since the beeb has put some content on a (very limited) form a non-free P2P network that they therefore have the right to put ANY bbc content onto the P2p network of their choice.
Thanks for the note. I dont know if you'll ever see this response, but I thought i'd follow up any way. Your friends are slightly atypical, broadly speaking, probably because they are well educated, which would make them the elites that I was speaking about earlier. While a typical Russian in the USA, for example, will claim some degree in "philology" or "psychology" (which were the USSR equivalent to wood shop, or, more accurately, "Mrs. degrees") or something similar the truly well educated are, as in most countries, relatively few and far between.
However, your comments or Russian Jewry demand attention.
"Also, most Russian immigrants in the US are Jews, a people who have not been treated well in that part of the world for quite a while. In many ex-USSR countries there has been a huge resurgence in Christianity, and it's not totally clear how that will play out for the very few Jews who remain or haven't already converted"
I think your basic premise is wrong. Jews in the USSR have had a role at least as strong as Jews in the USA. In positions of power: government, business, and mafia, Jews have been a powerful force in the ex-CIS states for quite some time. This is not a sleight on Jews at all - more power to them, I suppose. While of course there have been incidents of anti-semitism, taken as a whole, Jews in Russia are highly successful/influential and not at all persecuted or subject to implicit and explicit racism compared to, say, Central Asians (and believe me, being, say, a black guy in Russia is no picnic either).
I remember in the 1990s (and I suppose they still exist) seeing pamphlets created by Jewish organizations in the USA being mailed to Russia/Ukraine telling jews there exactly what to say at (what kind of stories to invent for) their immigration hearings at a US consulate in order to obtain some persecution-based visa - most of it was nonsense, and ultimately just served to play on traditional western images of "persecuted" Jews to basically help what pretty much amounted to a slightly priviliged class anyway. Oh the irony.
Please understand that I hope that I wrote above what I did in what I believe to be an analytical and dispassionate way. Unfortunately any time one talks of Jews there is a tendency of some people to instantly brand somebody or other an "anti-semite." It's a shame because it's an interesting and important topic.
that said, I will make one more point, and one that is a bit more contentious. anti-semitism anywhere, like any irrational, group hatraed, is horrible and should be condemned. but, by the same token, even if it is thoroughly wrong, sometimes it can be analyzed to understand why it happens. for example, we can trace southern american white racism and the rise of groups such as the KKK to the disempowerment that many (generally poor) whites felt in seeing slaves go free and increasingly compete with them for jobs and other resources.
In this same spirit, we can perhaps understand (though not excuse) why Ukraine and other areas were twisted into a destructive anti-semitism that culminated in horrible anti-semitic atrocities during WW2. This can be traced to the fact that the Communist revolution in Russia. The communist revolution resulted in the deaths of SEVERAL MILLION ukrainians (an act that has never been apologized for, much less memorialized in any meaningful way) in the 1930s and a radical worsening of the overall standard of living for much of western ukraine that had otherwise been under polish rule. Western Ukraine under polish rule was like northern ireland under british rule - a large percentage wanted independence, but the stanard of living was not so horrible - the soviet invasion was as if belfast was suddenly taken over by, say, pakistan.
The key here is that the communist revolution was largely (and not too unfairly) seen as the product of Jewish intellectuals and power-brokers. Unfortunately, the not inexcusable angst was eventually directed largely not at
Sure - in L'viv you'll hear russian - most of Ukrainians prefer to speak Russian. To those who don't know - L'viv was under polish and Austro-Hungarian rule for quite a while and being a cradle of Ukranian nationalism - that speaks volumes about how authentic that nationalism is. Just look at the map.
By that idiot logic, the nationalism by the Palestinians, Kurds, (Northern) Irish, Basque, Catalans, Tamils, and virtually everybody else is "inauthentic." Nice troll.
Slashdot Mirror
- (say) RIAA is an evil oligopoly: artists have no choice but to sign on the bottom line and accept slave contracts because the RIAA effectively provides them something of value - that is, marketing, organization, exposure, distribution, and so forth.
- the power of the internet allows independent artists to successfully avoid RIAA middlemen and have successful careers. That is to say, the RIAA "middlemen" have no value.
The point is, IT CAN'T BE BOTH, even though on slashdot we routinely see people arguing both, contradictory, standpoints, AT THE SAME TIME.As for your comments about handwaving (your last paragraph): please don't confuse your own ignorance and lack of education with some assinine belief that such studies have not been done. Copyright is particularly hard to study since it tends to have very noisy data** (though we do have the historical record which shows that EVERY regime which tried to outright ban copyright on philosophical grounds, starting with the french revolution on up, reverted to it after a few years after it found it unworkable.) Where we do have VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY solid evidence is in patents--there is absolutely no question that having a strong patent system spurs innovation. We know this because we can look at certain industries, such as pharmaceuticals and see how they grew or collapsed with respect to changes in local patent law. I am sure if instead of YOUR handwaving, you actually went to a university and looked up studies, this would be rather clear to you.
** here's an example: look at the number of artistic works developed by Taiwan (where copyright was effectively nil for some period) and Hong Kong (where there was effectve british style copyright). Hint: HK dominated in virtually every area. Again, such examples are noisy, but they do exist and the matter HAS been studied "scientifically."
by your reasoning, the "rm" command of unix is illegal. the rm command: - does not 'own' the software it deletes - clearly lets you know what it's going to do before you do it and gives you the option to use it or not use it. - you are free to use it or not JUST LIKE THIS SOFTWARE. stop with your bullshit slashdot lawyer tactics. there is no crime committed when one piece of software deletes or modifies another file, double plus so when it goddam tells you that it's going to do this if you follow a certain sequence of steps, even thougn, in this instance, you'd just happen to like it to be. your desires do not make the law.
typical slashdot "lawyer." you just invent reasoning to suit your needs, throw in a few legal generalities / irrelevancies, and pretend it has anything to do with the law. Yawn.
but if adequately warned, and you still put in a pirated serial number, then you have clearly made your intentions to have files deleted from your PC known.
1. you're right (in this particular case). I was speaking more in principle. If it does not adequately warn (which i dont know for sure either way here - i was relying on comments in this thread for that info), then it should.
2. the legal test here would be the balance of the warnings given vs the severity of the punishment. for example, let's say i have a pet euthenasia store. i can certainly put up a notice that says 'if you bring your dog here and sign these papers and give me money, i will shoot your dog.' and you can do it, and (as far as the relevant discussion here goes), no law has been broken. similarly, if his warnings / the intented operation of the software were clear, then similarly i dont see where any laws are broken (again, in this particular case - if the warnings were not clear, well, then he is probably guilty of misrepresentation. however, if somebody pirates or attempts to pirate the software, it is not clear exactly that the software developer has any duty of care to provide non-misrepresenting software to the pirate. there's also the reality that most people do not equte loss of files with dog (or human) death, as many people here on slashdot seem to. people are expected to have backups of critical files anyway.
3. find me the consumer protection law that applies to this case. i looked through all possible US consumer protection laws and didnt see anything that applied here.
4. cite the law. no handwaving to 'computer fraud and abuse' act, which has no relevance here.
there's nothing in the computer fraud or abuse act that would apply here, as the policy is clearly stated, serves a legitimate social goal (to reduce piracy). whoever 'posted earlier' was handwaving and hoping that something would stick to the refrigerator - the computer fraud and abuse act clearly does not apply in this case, as there is neither fraud (misrepresentation) or abuse ("without authorization"), as authorization is clearly given by the agreed to terms of the software unlock process.
- He's not being judge jury or executioner. he's simply saying that this will happen if you do this. it's up to you whether you want to do this. there is a sign that says do not taunt the dynamite monkey. if you taunt the dynamite monkey, expect to get the expected and stated result.
- Your claim that 'this wont stop anyone..' is your opinion. he has a different opinion (one that i happen to share). It may be that you are absolutely right (who knows), but the point isnt who is right or who is wrong - it is that he is well within his rights to offer terms as he likes. as the terms are clearly stated, i can't see how you have a gripe. and even if it was "all for revenge".. who cares? it is his right, especially as the software does as it says it will.
It's not 'fair game' that innocent people get hurt. It's the developers job to make this next to impossible and, if it does happen, to take 100% responsibility if the software does other than as it says it will.- The software may be accidentally bought pirated, but it is PURPOSELY sold pirated. By any legal interpretation, responsibility rests with the seller.
- The concept of second hand software should be made clear. Much software sold via the interenet / with keycode is sold on a strictly non-transferrable basis. this is simple and fair. personal responsibility means understanding the terms of sale that you agree to. in either case, it does not sound like this would trigger his 'atom bomb.'
- and if you are legitimately the victim of this, you can sue the developer. if the developer is smart, he makes this statisticall unlikely, and/or attempts to contact the 'legitimate' keyholder via his registration details before putting this key on the atom bomb list.
- the developer is responsible for his bad code if it does not work as advertised. however, by using a simple test for static pirated keycodes, it seems that the chances of this are somewhat slim.
I agree that there is always a chance for the developer to mess up - in this case, he should be responsible, just like the programmer of minesweeper should be responsible if a subtle bug causes your monitor to catch on fire.How exactly is it illegal?
what law, exactly, has he broken? his software works exactly as advertised: put in a pirate serial number, and it deletes something. assuming that the notice is clear and not obfuscated, it is not clear to me exactly what law you seem to think he has broken. does the existence of "rm" also break laws because it works as advertised?
You have artificially created a wall that says that he can do what he wants with 'his' software. this is a completely artificial construct that you have created, since most other software interoperates. his software works 100% as advertised.
what law, exactly, has he broken? his software works exactly as advertised: put in a pirate serial number, and it deletes something. assuming that the notice is clear and not obfuscated, it is not clear to me exactly what law you seem to think he has broken. does the existence of "rm" also break laws because it works as advertised?
I have read through the various responses here, but wanted to throw in my 2c - I COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY support what this devleoper is doing. Here's why:
1. it's completely transparent and fair. the developer warns/tells you exactly what will happen if you pirate his software. assuming that the warning is clear and obvious enough, there are no "surprises" nor is he guilty of "breach of contract." I also hope that he would put sufficient contact / question information for anybody that might have the slighest reasonable doubt.
2. it does not require any law enforcement resources.
3. if the developer abuses the system and, for example, punishes a non-guilty party, then he is exposed to lawsuits himself. this encourages him to act responsibly and to thoroughly test his methods.
4. anybody with any sense of reasonableness would have to agree that the piracy situation is completely out of hand, especially when it comes to small software developers. virtually everything and anything has been pirated and is avaialble on file sharing networks. currently the small development house has NO recourse whatsoever, especially since so many of the pirates are in countries where prosecution is de facto impossible if even you could track down the exact person. say what you will about MPAA/RIAA, but small software developers need and deserve protection.
I say bravo for this guy for taking a bold but necessary step in restoring the balance which has gone completely to hell in the world of small software development.
Oh stop it already. Your touchy feely astroturfing adds nothing to the discussion. We could just as easily say that we are a civilization built upon the concept of property rights and contracts, or, more precsisely, that there is a fairly strong case to be made that humans are best motivated by reward thhat is nearby and obvious - that is to say, not by some great notion of sharing (which has the free rider problem), but rather a capitalist sense of barter and exchange.
Arguably the dumbest 'smart' statement I've seen on slashdot in a while. The reality is that without day traders and the ignorant, things like heuristic trading schemes set up by large investment banks would be far less profitable. Real investors LOVE day traders and the ignorant, as they are the ones who are giving them money.
Fair use is NOT a fixed set of rules, such as "you can copy 3 paragraphs, but not 4" or "you can let your sister borrow your CD, but not your second cousin." Because your whole argument rest upon your faulty assumption that Fair Use is indeed such a fixed set of rules, the rest of your argument falls apart.
I encourage you to read more about what fair use actually is, rather than what you would pretend it to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Is a nice start.
In hiding behind your "I am a craftsman" defense, you are truly an ethical midget.
- The 'technology community' in general has shown no interest in building systems and standards that contain provisions for reasonably safeguarding IP contentholders legal rights
Which might be fine, since there is a reasonable argument to be made that technology should be fairly agnostic with regards to things like this and instead we should rely on the good judgement and self-restraint of humans to implement such controls. Instad, we see that- The 'technological community' in general has shown little to no interest in establishing a culture that encourages the safeguarding of IP contentholders legal rights
By which I mean, for example, that any post here that happens to be 'pro copyright' will typically be modded down, attributed to astroturfing, or so on while even the most juvenile 'F the RIAA' post or 'alternate economic theory' post which attempts to argue that IP regulation is completley unecessary using third grade logic (which to real economists is roughly the equivalent of creationism) gets modded up. Now, slashdot is hardly the 'technological community', but its dominant voice is fairly typical.As a result, it is not unreasonable for lawmakers to address the problem by passing laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws they pass (including, at first glance, this one) are overbroad, over-reaching, ham-handed, unworkable, and/or completely ignorable. This is only partly because politicians and lawmakers are torpid and ignorant. The larger problem is because truly legislating such stuff is very very hard.
IP protection is like pollution: any single individual has an incentive to pollute/violate copyright. Therefore, collective pressures must be put in place to curb it. Again here we see another slashdot article whose ostensible purpose is to bitch and whine about how some politicians made some dumb law. Are we ever, even once, going to see an article that says "hi - look - the RIAA and MPAA may be arseholes, but they do have a point. software / movie / music / whatever piracy is a serious issue. how would YOU solve it?" Of course, we can expect the usual dumb answers, which are:
- It's not really a problem (implied: since the 90% of technologically behind the curve people can continue to subsidize the 10% serious pirates in places like the USA and Europe, while the consumers of the western world can continue to subsidize mass-pirating countries like China and Russia)
- Leave it to market forces (ya, like that would work so well with pollution)
- All patents and copyrights are nonsense and do no social good. And the waters of Noah's flood were held in a vast vapor canopy were held up because the gravity was less in 3500 BC when the flood happened and the dinosaurs drowned)
- Fuck the RIAA / MPAA. Good point, but not relevant
- Artists make too little from the contracts they agreed to. Possibly, but not relevant.
- It's not for me to solve. Let the rightsholders solve it themselves (fine, then dont complain when overbroad laws come down the pike and high schoolers get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Before us we have the skills to create some really cool content delivery mechanisms. For example, we have the brains to come up with ways for small artists to completely bypass the MPAA and other middlemen and make rasonable incomes directly from their fans. However, as it stands right now even the tiniest independent artist or software maker's work can be found on, for example, eMule in a pirated state. This encourages even more heavy tactics, ham-fisted laws, and DOES cause, for example, small software producers to go out of business.What should be done about it?
For far less than 65m you can build your own damn platform and anchor it in the channel or north sea.
However, the fact of the matter is that creating a rival to an established brand CAN be a decent strategy if you see that the established company is either insanely profitable (thus suggseting that there is room for another market entrant), insanely inefficient / bloated despite its success, or geographically underserves some markets.
In this case, #1 and #3 apply pretty well. Google, while great for english speakers, is quite a ways behind for other languages (not necessarily French, but when I use google in Japanese or in eastern-european languages, for example, it's pretty crap).
However, the key often is that since the techology is established and there is a reasonably well established technology out there as to how this sort of thing should work (of course there is room for improvement, but this is less central), such projects require less brilliance, but more a high degree of competence. Such competence costs money. Such products cost money. Off the top of my head, Opodo is a good example of this. They entered a busy market with nothing particularly new. They build a nonspectacular but working system and muscled their way into a decent market share. Sometimes, that's just the way things are done.
The proper solution for governments, indicidentally, is OPEN SOURCE SOTWARE, that is OPERATING SYSTEM NEUTRAL/AGNOSTIC. That is to say, it should run equally on Windows, Linux and Macintosh without too much problem. the operating system is not an interesting question (in fact, it can be OSS but microsoft only... i dont care) any more than the mouse is. the open-ness or closed-ness of the application software itself - that is, the bits of code that embody government policy about voting, welfare, whatever are the important bits to be OSS as long as we have reasonable trust that the underlying OS is fair (and, despite whatever hyperbole you might see here on slashdot, windows and osx are both certainly 'fair' in this respect - microsoft has not created any OS hooks that anybody knows or reasonably suspects to, say, detect voting software running on xp and change the results even though the software itself is correct).
Of course, this is slashdot, so the response that I can expect will be "the companies will use this as an excuse to jack up the prices - aren't you naive!" line from people who don't believe in markets.
Nor will it stop people from reaching the conclusion that since the beeb has put some content on a (very limited) form a non-free P2P network that they therefore have the right to put ANY bbc content onto the P2p network of their choice.
Thanks for the note. I dont know if you'll ever see this response, but I thought i'd follow up any way. Your friends are slightly atypical, broadly speaking, probably because they are well educated, which would make them the elites that I was speaking about earlier. While a typical Russian in the USA, for example, will claim some degree in "philology" or "psychology" (which were the USSR equivalent to wood shop, or, more accurately, "Mrs. degrees") or something similar the truly well educated are, as in most countries, relatively few and far between.
However, your comments or Russian Jewry demand attention.
"Also, most Russian immigrants in the US are Jews, a people who have not been treated well in that part of the world for quite a while. In many ex-USSR countries there has been a huge resurgence in Christianity, and it's not totally clear how that will play out for the very few Jews who remain or haven't already converted"
I think your basic premise is wrong. Jews in the USSR have had a role at least as strong as Jews in the USA. In positions of power: government, business, and mafia, Jews have been a powerful force in the ex-CIS states for quite some time. This is not a sleight on Jews at all - more power to them, I suppose. While of course there have been incidents of anti-semitism, taken as a whole, Jews in Russia are highly successful/influential and not at all persecuted or subject to implicit and explicit racism compared to, say, Central Asians (and believe me, being, say, a black guy in Russia is no picnic either).
I remember in the 1990s (and I suppose they still exist) seeing pamphlets created by Jewish organizations in the USA being mailed to Russia/Ukraine telling jews there exactly what to say at (what kind of stories to invent for) their immigration hearings at a US consulate in order to obtain some persecution-based visa - most of it was nonsense, and ultimately just served to play on traditional western images of "persecuted" Jews to basically help what pretty much amounted to a slightly priviliged class anyway. Oh the irony.
Please understand that I hope that I wrote above what I did in what I believe to be an analytical and dispassionate way. Unfortunately any time one talks of Jews there is a tendency of some people to instantly brand somebody or other an "anti-semite." It's a shame because it's an interesting and important topic.
that said, I will make one more point, and one that is a bit more contentious. anti-semitism anywhere, like any irrational, group hatraed, is horrible and should be condemned. but, by the same token, even if it is thoroughly wrong, sometimes it can be analyzed to understand why it happens. for example, we can trace southern american white racism and the rise of groups such as the KKK to the disempowerment that many (generally poor) whites felt in seeing slaves go free and increasingly compete with them for jobs and other resources.
In this same spirit, we can perhaps understand (though not excuse) why Ukraine and other areas were twisted into a destructive anti-semitism that culminated in horrible anti-semitic atrocities during WW2. This can be traced to the fact that the Communist revolution in Russia. The communist revolution resulted in the deaths of SEVERAL MILLION ukrainians (an act that has never been apologized for, much less memorialized in any meaningful way) in the 1930s and a radical worsening of the overall standard of living for much of western ukraine that had otherwise been under polish rule. Western Ukraine under polish rule was like northern ireland under british rule - a large percentage wanted independence, but the stanard of living was not so horrible - the soviet invasion was as if belfast was suddenly taken over by, say, pakistan.
The key here is that the communist revolution was largely (and not too unfairly) seen as the product of Jewish intellectuals and power-brokers. Unfortunately, the not inexcusable angst was eventually directed largely not at
By that idiot logic, the nationalism by the Palestinians, Kurds, (Northern) Irish, Basque, Catalans, Tamils, and virtually everybody else is "inauthentic." Nice troll.