Martyrdom generally is taken to be a situation where you know your going to die for a cause you believe strongly in (slight understatement there!).
I was using "martyr" in the more general sense,
as in "one who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle", according to dictionary.com.
That to me says you probably read into all this what I do, which is that this kid really was doing something more than we've heard.
Not really. I think I'm just a lot more
cynical about the US legal system than you
are. That is, being right doesn't even mean
you're likely to win, and even a court
victory can be pyrrhic.
Also, martyrs
think they can make a difference. Will the
RIAA suffer a serious blow if he actually
won in court, or would they just walk away
and terrorize somebody else? Is even the
best case (he wins, they pay his legal
fees) worth that victory?
if as he says he really believes he did nothing wrong, than I do think it's fair to criticize him for giving up so easily (relatively speaking of course). Just because it's not me doesn't completely invalidate the opinion I think.
The point I'm trying to make is that you can
certainly criticize him for giving up too
easily (poor negotiation skills, for example),
but you should not criticize his value
judgement that what he has to lose is not
worth the potential benefits.
Similarly, if you had solid evidence against
a mobster, but decided to destroy it because
of the potential risk to your family, it might
be a foolish thing to do. He might kill you
all anyway. He might have been arrested and
never be able to bother anybody again. However,
I'm not going to call you an "asshole" for
that value judgement, whether or not I value
my family the same way.
Just because your parents choose to live
like this, should you be penalized?
To a certain extent, yes.
If your parents chose to invest your college
fund in a dot-com and lost it all, you are
penalized. If your parents chose to live a
life of crime, you might have to grow up in
a foster home with your chances in life somewhat
stacked against you. If your parents chose
to use contraceptives, you wouldn't be alive
to start with.
I don't think it's possible to have every kid
start off on the same footing, short of some
truly draconian (and likely ill-fated)
governmental meddling. Moving to a rural
area is not nearly the only way parents can
screw up their children's chances in life,
in any case.
I have far too much to lose in my estimation,
and this overrides my principals quite frankly,
because the principal of being there for my
family is more important to me than fighting a
battle like this. [...] but at some point you
have to have the strength of your convictions
above all else and fight for them when you
really have to.
Sorry, where is that "point", and why are you
a better person to determine where it is than
the person actually faced with the choice?
Yes, I'd rather the kid stood up to the bully
and actually won. However, martyrdom is a
personal choice, and somebody who chooses not
to is not an "asshole". What do you know
about what this kid had to lose?
How about if Jesse sues the RIAA for libel and various damages?
Libel is (rightfully) one of the hardest crimes
to prove, because of its potential chilling
effect in silencing opposition or nozzling an
aggressive media outlet. Libel in a civilized
country is a very small exception to free
speech.
Generally, it requires that the defendant to not
only publish a false statement, but to know it
to be false at the time of publication. I
don't think there are many ambulance chasers
who would take on libel cases. Their time is
likely better spent on automobile accidents.
When the federal government takes in less money, Oklahoma suffers more. Most people don't realize we are a subsidized state (as are most of the small populated mid-western/western states).
It's worse than that. Below is an article
in yesterday's New York Times Magazine
paraphrased:
First of all, the federal government is not
cutting spending to give you that tax cut. It's
going into deficit spending, which means it
just borrowed some money (with interest) on
your behalf, and that money is used to finance
the usual programs - not big investments like
an interstate highway system that could pay off
big down the road. Basically, the government
just forced you to borrow some money.
Secondly, the federal government continues to
require states to do things without supplying
the money. The most current one is the
increased security requirements after 9/11,
which the federal government is not entirely
paying for. Unlike the federal government,
state governors are required by law to pass
a balanced (no deficit) budget, which means
they are forced to cut programs. The cuts
ripple down to the local level, where a mayor
now really has to find money to pay teachers
and police. What could they do? Increase
various taxes, or cut services that voters
have already come to expect, which is political
suicide.
It's not a tax cut, it's a tax shift. As an
added bonus, the federal government just
incurred debt (which benefit the people with
enough money to lend to the government).
Do they mean to see how things go and keep options open for welcoming Artist-Labels in the future? They have to walk a tightrope between satisfying the big labels and giving maximum access to the independents.
Exactly. A record label is a company that
gives advances to artists to help them produce
music, then takes a cut of the profits. At
this stage of the Store, Apple clearly wants
to deal with selling finished songs, and not
get in the business to producing songs. This
is perfectly fine with the big record labels,
because in essence Apple is just another
retail store.
If Apple deals directly with artists, then
the line blurs. A successful artist who has
completed contract obligations can go
straight to Apple, cutting the labels out.
With $4B in the bank, why not spend some of
that helping budding artists produce their
first album? All of a sudden, Apple becomes
competition.
Linus brought us an unencumbered operating
system and the benevolent credo of OSS.
Open source software predated Linux. The GNU
project was launched in 1984, when Linus was
just 15. He didn't get his 80386 computer
until 1991, and in any case Linux was built
on gcc. Linus is also "only" responsible
for the kernel of the OS. The Unix utilities
mainly came from GNU, X came from MIT, and
KDE/Gnome were not created by Linus, either.
This is not to minimize his contributions.
Linus Torvalds is a wonderful representative
of the OSS movement, but he didn't "bring"
you all of those things, all by himself.
This sort of misattribution is what makes
some people insist on calling it GNU/Linux,
if only to make a point.
They are the leaders of idealogical, as
well as technological, movements.
That's even more off-track. Linus uses
BitKeeper, which isn't open source, and
generated some controversy for that. Woz
isn't terribly active with "ideological"
pursuits, either. In fact, RMS referred to
Linus as "just an engineer", specifically
because of his neutral stance on politics
in technology.
Apple to me was always the underdog but their openness really gave them a chance to make it. But as soon as they achieved a substantive degree of success, the company got greedy and tried to monopolize the market.
Lament as you might, the moment a company goes
public, the original founders lose a great
degree of control over moral direction. You
could say that a public company is entirely
profit-oriented and amoral, and this is not
unique to Apple.
IBM stole their thunder by copying their open architecture design and having more resources.
And IBM is a shining example in the PC hardware
market? The historical fact is that the clones
killed the IBM-brand PC, even though until
about the VGA, IBM dictated all major iterations
of hardware. I see no reason Apple would
survive better if the Macintosh was open.
That is, the 680x0 Macintosh might have done
much better, but Apple the company wouldn't
necessarily have.
Openness (or closedness) has no inherent
impact on the marketplace today. When the
Apple ][ was introduced, it shipped with
programming manuals and a complete ROM
listing. If Dell does that today, they'll
literally just waste money. The x86 PC's
relative success as a "breed" does have to
do with its openness, but that success has
not consistently benefited anybody
except Microsoft and perhaps the largely
unsung clone BIOS manufacturers. How many
of the first generation clone manufacturers
(or for that matter, IBM itself) are still
around?
My advice to Apple is to have more trust in the computing public. Embrace more open standards and don't feel so threatened if others can compete with you.
Open standards like ethernet, TCP/IP, 802.11b
and g, ZeroConf, Firewire, USB, ATA, VGA,
and so on? What are you talking about?
Apple is not Microsoft, they do not crush people just for the hell of it or demand utter domination in a market space.
That doesn't mean a monopoly Apple would be good
for the consumers, either. For example, Steve Jobs
has strong opinions on how things should be done,
so while Apple has created some of the most
interesting hardware and software, I would not
necessarily want a world where the Apple Way was
the only way.
Even benign monopolies are frequently bad for
consumers. Typically, their services get sloppy
and costly, because you don't have another choice.
I like Apple, which is why I buy Apple, but it's also
why I don't want to see Apple take over from
Microsoft. Fifty-fifty would be great for everybody
else.
"Professional" is inhuman. Usually, any act of honesty is described as 'unprofessional'
That's not true at all. To be "professional"
(or to be "unprofessional", for that matter),
one must belong to a profession. This is an
important line of work, with a clear (if not
strict) code of ethics. One who obeys such
ethics is "professional", and one who violates
them is "unprofessional".
An honest doctor is hardly "unprofessional"
if she blows the whistle on, for example,
HMOs disregarding sound medical advice to
reject patients. An honest civil engineer
is also not "unprofessional" for saying that
the bridge will never carry the load it was
advertised to. In fact, their respective
professional ethics require them to speak
in such cases.
On the other hand, employees are generally
required to keep various secrets for their
employers. Being too candid and too "honest"
about your work on a public site can damage
your employer. This is frequently
"unprofessional", especially if your
statements fall under ranting, rather than
whistle-blowing. For a programmer, if your
boss decides to ship with 100 bugs (and you
think it should be cut down to 10), it's
unprofessional to complain about it on the
website. (The professional thing to do is
to take it up with your boss or your boss'
boss, etc.) On the other hand, it's entirely
professional to use any means possible,
including a blog, to alert people to the
fact that your company's product has a bug
that could kill them. There is, of course,
a big gray area in between.
I could care less that a person was 'unprofessional' -- because a person's character is not defined by how well he conforms to his employers view of how best to achieve profit.
Indeed, but that's not what the word means.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 1
If this goes to trial, it all comes out in discovery. If SCO believes that they will actually end up in court, they gain little by keeping it a secret.
What makes you think SCO wants a trial?
if the offending code is pointed out, it will be removed -- "problem" solved.
What makes you think SCO wants the code to
be removed?
Point is, you're not covering all the possible
objectives SCO might have in your analysis.
It's entirely possible that all they want is
a regular slice of the Linux pie, requiring
IBM and Red Hat and others to pay them
royalties per copy shipped since the violation
occurred until the code is replaced. That
objective would explain why they don't
particularly want the offending code removed
right now.
It cannot help their legal case that they ignore this opportunity to get the alleged problem fixed as soon as possible.
If this was a patent case, and SCO believes
that there's no good unpatented way to do
something Linux absolutely needs to do, they'll
probably have already published everything
and started demanding royalties. Problem is,
they probably don't have monopolies to a lot
of the techniques they used, data structures
they chose, etc, such that preventing Linux
from using their actual code will do them any
good.
Try to assume that SCO is telling the truth.
Once they discovered the violation, imagine
how you might maximize the money you
can make from it. Feel free to think evil
thoughts. I'm not saying SCO is operating in
good faith and showing good form, you know,
just that they aren't acting unreasonably
(beyond reason; irrationally; crazily).
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 1
This is legally invalid.
I'm not a legal professional. Are you? You
write with great authority, yet you misspell
a common legal word "damages", so I'm a bit
confused.
They cannot refuse to disclose the nature of dammages for years on end, not allowing the other party to fix it, and then try to claim dammages for those years.
It's not a very similar case, but submarine
patents on GIF and JPEG have in fact been
hidden for years on end, presumably waiting
for them to be popularly used. (Yes, I
understand that this is a copyright case.)
IIRC, there's generally a period of time
within which complaints have to be raised,
after which even crimes like murder are not
prosecuted. I'm not aware of defendants having
the right to a speedy indictment.
Anyway, it'd be wonderful if you can actually
back up your assertions on how this will play
in court.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 1
I can see that the NDA might be necessary, I doubt any one person will be able to remember any of the other source code they'd look at, and be able to type that verbatim into the Linux kernel from memory.
In a lot of proprietary code, what's valuable
is the approach. That is, there are many well
known data structures and algorithms, but the
one that performs best is usually a minor tweak
of a well known one. The value comes from you
knowing it and your competition not knowing it,
and anybody who spends enough time on the
problem would figure it out as well. Without
an NDA, ideas of this sort cannot useful trade
secrets, even if the actual source is not
copied verbatim.
I'm not saying this is the case with SCO. I'm
just saying it's not unreasonable.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 1
SCO is essentially saying "you stole
something from my house when you came to visit
the other day, but I won't tell you what you
stole so you can give it back to me, because
it will affect my case against you for
burglary". Which is bullshit.
This is not a perfect analogy by any means.
If you took physical property from me, and
give it back when I ask for it, indeed there's
little actual loss to me.
Now, source code is valuable in a very
different way. For example, binary search is
a common and unpatentable algorithm. However,
the amount of research required to conclude
that binary search is the best choice for a
given situation may in fact be worth money
in the sense that you (now) know it, but your
competition doesn't. In such a case, stolen
code can cause you great competitive harm,
even if your competitor removes the offending
copied code, and reimplements binary search.
This is the nature of a lot of proprietary
code.
Thus, assuming SCO's claims are true, I find
it reasonable for SCO not so much to want
Linux to remove the offending code, but to
buy it (pay royalties). SCO's investment may
not have produced anything patentable or
otherwise exclusive to them, that "returning"
the code will repair. With the backlash
against them, publicizing the offending code
will ensure that kernel developers work
faster than ever to remove all traces of it.
What good does that do SCO, under my
assumptions?
Point is, a lot of people who have responded
to my post assume that SCO's objective is to
have the offending code removed ("property
returned"). If you try assuming they have a
different objective, a lot of their actions
begin to make more sense.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, of course that is 100% unreasonable.
My point was that, assuming that showing the allegedly
copied code in context (SCO source tree) can help
prove both that SCO does own the code, and help
date the source code as it corresponds to some known
binary release, the NDA is not unreasonable.
If SCO showed the entire world:
[...] This bullshit would already have ended.
I'm not a lawyer, but I do find it reasonable to deny your
opponent any information you can (legally, of course)
for as long as you can. Again, reasonable if you assume
that they are telling the truth.
Since they haven't told IBM what they can do to remediate the problem, it's clear that they don't want to mitigate the damages. This necessarily means that they do not have a case.
No, it does not. Their purpose may not be to mitigate
any damages. It may make them more money if
Linux vendors are required to pay SCO some royalties
until the offending code is removed. In this light, the
longer the Linux developers leave it in, the more
money SCO might demand. They may also be forcing
IBM to buy them out. The supposition that their
motive may not simply be for Linus to purge some code
does not necessarily mean they don't have a case.
Do you see a pattern? If you assume, even just for
the sake of argument, that SCO is telling the truth,
then its actions are not entirely unreasonable. An NDA
does allow experts better visibility into the allegations,
and gives them a stronger case. Keeping IBM in the
dark as long as possible is good legal tactic. Keeping
Linux developers in the dark gives them a longer
period of violation for which to demand reparation.
You don't appear to see this, probably because you've
stuck to the assumption that they are lying.
I'm not arguing with you as to whether SCO is lying.
The facts of that case will eventually become either
clear or irrelevant. The main point of this reply is
that it is often instructive to assume that your
opponent is telling the truth, and then their
apparently irrational actions suddenly make sense.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What's in the secret code that I can't see by looking the kernel source?
Not to take SCO's side, but their NDA requirement
is not unreasonable.
If there's a file, say feature.c, that Linux
ripped off illegally, SCO proves nothing by
showing you a copy of feature.c. They obviously
could've downloaded it from kernel.org five
minutes ago, and changed a couple of comments.
The theft of feature.c would only make sense
in the context of the entire SCO source tree.
That is, let's say they shipped version 3.1415
in 1995, and they show you a source tree with
feature.c included, that compiles exactly to
v3.1415's dated binaries. You are therefore
convinced that feature.c was SCO property
and a meaningful part of SCO products circa
1995, not just added in two months ago so
they could sue Linux. If feature.c later
turned up in Linux, then somebody might have
stolen it.
Basically, SCO needs to prove that the code
does belong to SCO, and that it predates
the "copied" code in Linux. Both require
the context of the rest of SCO's source tree.
Therefore, it's unreasonable to ask them to
let competitors such as Linus Torvalds look
all over their source tree, just to allege
that Linux may have received illegal code
contributions.
So you'd rather your children get and spread stds? Considering the end of that sort of extreme lifestyle..
No, silly.
If I had children, and there were only two
choices: to kill a lot of people with guns,
or to have sex with a lot of people and then
die getting and spreading STDs, I choose the
latter. Now, if I had a third choice,
neither of the two, I'd choose that instead.
The problem
is that society seems to say that it's more
acceptable for the same "impressionable" kids
to see violence than sex, by the relative
availability of these influences.
Re:Victories won't come in court.
on
Copyright Defeats?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think it is high time to realize how naive we were to ever think that the courts would straighten this out for us.
I can hardly agree more! The courts are
rightfully reluctant to make law, and their
undemocratic nature should make everybody
very nervous should the Supreme Court decide
it's in the lawmaking business. Instead,
they are primarily interested in whether laws
are contradictory, and in particular whether
a specific law contradicts the Constitution.
The Eldred case shows, on the positive side,
that the Supreme Court does not even want to
appear to make law, even if they do seem to
agree that it was bad law.
What US citizens need to do is to take back
their Congress. There's no dodging this
responsibility. US copyright laws
are beginning to be imposed on other
countries (Taiwan, for example, was pressured
into 70-year copyrights), yet only US citizens
can rein this in. Nobody else has the power
to.
How many people will actually notice that some obscure work has slipped into the public domain?
Only those who suddenly want to look for it,
and do find it on Gutenberg or another archive
site. Even then, they won't necessarily know
it's because of some law passed in 2003. Why
should they have to know or understand to
benefit?
The key problem is imbalance, and this trivial fee notion does nothing to restore it.
The trivial fee idea dodges the issues where
we are at odds with Disney: Mickey Mouse and
friends. Disney has proven willing to spend
lots of money in Congress to protect them, even
if it means protecting thousands of other works
that Disney could not care less about. This
idea basically invites Disney to agree where
we can agree, and I think anybody opposing a
$1 fee after 50 years of monopoly is going to
look exceedingly silly.
With all due respect, the problem is not a lack
of good ideas. In fact, the original copyright
law (time-limited monopoly) was a pretty darn good
idea itself. The problem is that Disney and
other major copyright holders find it cheaper
to purchase 20 year extensions directly from
Congress, than to pay your 1%, or to release
their works into the public domain as per the
old law.
If something that is copyright is not available from the copyright holder, it should (sooner, rather than later) be legal for it to be made available by someone else.
Easily defeated. I write a novel, publish it,
and keep 50 copies in a warehouse. I put up a
sign (a web site, if you want) that says you
can have one copy if you write me a valid check
for $5M. The work is "available from the
copyright holder", and therefore it is protected
by copyright as long as I have copies to sell.
(Nobody may agree with my price, but who are you
(and who is the government) to tell me what the
right price for a work of art should be?)
Point is, your idea is about as trivially
"defeated" for your objective as the $1 idea.
Forgive if I'm reading you wrong, but you project an air of "we'll deign to allow you 'ownership' of 'your' work, which rightly belongs to our mighty collective".
Let's talk about a world without copyright laws
first.
An author writes a novel. This novel is entirely
her property, and if she locks it in a safe and
never shows it to anyone, nobody can take it
from her. On the other hand, she can't sue
anybody for copying her story or characters,
either.
If she chooses to publish the work, then she
can run into some problems. Some people will
pay her for a copy of the book, but some will
surely just reprint the book for cheaper.
This forms a disincentive for her to publish,
because it really does feel a lot like being
taken unfair advantage of.
Here, the State steps in. The author is
given a monopoly, so that nobody
may copy her work. In addition, she would be
able to sue somebody who tried to write a
very similar book afterwards. This now forms
an incentive to publish.
However, other authors and the public as a
whole now suffers. The names you could use
for characters and other copyrightable elements
of a story will decrease as each work is
published. In the distant future, it's
possible that any non-trivial work will
violate some copyright. This is clearly not
beneficial to society, which is why copyright
is usually a time-limited monopoly, not a
perpetual one.
Here's the important part: by publishing
the work, the author implicitly agrees to the
deal. If you don't want it to ever lapse
into the public domain, don't publish it, or
use some other form of enforceable protection
(such as an NDA).
The notion that the public is owed the work
comes from the author or artist having taken
advantage of the benefits of copyright. We
aren't owed anything unpublished, but any
published work is "owed", and should by right
be given to us for free in some years. That's
the deal.
If all we/. users stop listening to CC they still have millions of sheep out there who don't know any better to advertise to.
Who said anything about Slashdot readers?
The original question was: "Are we, the
general public, capable of sending the right
messages to the large corporations, or are
we cattle [...]" to which I responded:
"whatever you think Clear Channel is today
is whatever the consumers wanted."
The "we" in the original question referred
to "the general public", as did the term
"consumers" in my initial response, as did
the "we" in my later response, as did the
"millions of sheep" in your post. None of
that referred to "Slashdot readers", who
are so obviously irrelevant to the discussion
I hardly understand why you brought it up.
I hope this helps you and at least two others
who had trouble comprehending the same line
grasp the context of the discussion. I
repeat, Clear Channel's stated objective is
to cater to its customers (advertisers), but
it cannot do so without getting itself a good
number of listeners to advertise to. Therefore,
Clear Channel's success means that a lot of
people ("general public") do like their
stations. If you think that makes them "sheep"
or "cattle", then you've answered the original
rhetorical question.
Slashdot Mirror
I was using "martyr" in the more general sense, as in "one who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle", according to dictionary.com.
That to me says you probably read into all this what I do, which is that this kid really was doing something more than we've heard.
Not really. I think I'm just a lot more cynical about the US legal system than you are. That is, being right doesn't even mean you're likely to win, and even a court victory can be pyrrhic.
Also, martyrs think they can make a difference. Will the RIAA suffer a serious blow if he actually won in court, or would they just walk away and terrorize somebody else? Is even the best case (he wins, they pay his legal fees) worth that victory?
if as he says he really believes he did nothing wrong, than I do think it's fair to criticize him for giving up so easily (relatively speaking of course). Just because it's not me doesn't completely invalidate the opinion I think.
The point I'm trying to make is that you can certainly criticize him for giving up too easily (poor negotiation skills, for example), but you should not criticize his value judgement that what he has to lose is not worth the potential benefits.
Similarly, if you had solid evidence against a mobster, but decided to destroy it because of the potential risk to your family, it might be a foolish thing to do. He might kill you all anyway. He might have been arrested and never be able to bother anybody again. However, I'm not going to call you an "asshole" for that value judgement, whether or not I value my family the same way.
To a certain extent, yes.
If your parents chose to invest your college fund in a dot-com and lost it all, you are penalized. If your parents chose to live a life of crime, you might have to grow up in a foster home with your chances in life somewhat stacked against you. If your parents chose to use contraceptives, you wouldn't be alive to start with.
I don't think it's possible to have every kid start off on the same footing, short of some truly draconian (and likely ill-fated) governmental meddling. Moving to a rural area is not nearly the only way parents can screw up their children's chances in life, in any case.
Sorry, where is that "point", and why are you a better person to determine where it is than the person actually faced with the choice?
Yes, I'd rather the kid stood up to the bully and actually won. However, martyrdom is a personal choice, and somebody who chooses not to is not an "asshole". What do you know about what this kid had to lose?
Libel is (rightfully) one of the hardest crimes to prove, because of its potential chilling effect in silencing opposition or nozzling an aggressive media outlet. Libel in a civilized country is a very small exception to free speech. Generally, it requires that the defendant to not only publish a false statement, but to know it to be false at the time of publication. I don't think there are many ambulance chasers who would take on libel cases. Their time is likely better spent on automobile accidents.
It's worse than that. Below is an article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine paraphrased:
First of all, the federal government is not cutting spending to give you that tax cut. It's going into deficit spending, which means it just borrowed some money (with interest) on your behalf, and that money is used to finance the usual programs - not big investments like an interstate highway system that could pay off big down the road. Basically, the government just forced you to borrow some money.
Secondly, the federal government continues to require states to do things without supplying the money. The most current one is the increased security requirements after 9/11, which the federal government is not entirely paying for. Unlike the federal government, state governors are required by law to pass a balanced (no deficit) budget, which means they are forced to cut programs. The cuts ripple down to the local level, where a mayor now really has to find money to pay teachers and police. What could they do? Increase various taxes, or cut services that voters have already come to expect, which is political suicide.
It's not a tax cut, it's a tax shift. As an added bonus, the federal government just incurred debt (which benefit the people with enough money to lend to the government).
I don't know why people are dismissive of $12,000. This is pure profit, which is probably more and easier money than they can make selling 1,000 CDs.
Not to mention it puts fear into college students who think they're too poor to be of interest to the RIAA.
Exactly. A record label is a company that gives advances to artists to help them produce music, then takes a cut of the profits. At this stage of the Store, Apple clearly wants to deal with selling finished songs, and not get in the business to producing songs. This is perfectly fine with the big record labels, because in essence Apple is just another retail store.
If Apple deals directly with artists, then the line blurs. A successful artist who has completed contract obligations can go straight to Apple, cutting the labels out. With $4B in the bank, why not spend some of that helping budding artists produce their first album? All of a sudden, Apple becomes competition.
Open source software predated Linux. The GNU project was launched in 1984, when Linus was just 15. He didn't get his 80386 computer until 1991, and in any case Linux was built on gcc. Linus is also "only" responsible for the kernel of the OS. The Unix utilities mainly came from GNU, X came from MIT, and KDE/Gnome were not created by Linus, either.
This is not to minimize his contributions. Linus Torvalds is a wonderful representative of the OSS movement, but he didn't "bring" you all of those things, all by himself. This sort of misattribution is what makes some people insist on calling it GNU/Linux, if only to make a point.
They are the leaders of idealogical, as well as technological, movements.
That's even more off-track. Linus uses BitKeeper, which isn't open source, and generated some controversy for that. Woz isn't terribly active with "ideological" pursuits, either. In fact, RMS referred to Linus as "just an engineer", specifically because of his neutral stance on politics in technology.
Lament as you might, the moment a company goes public, the original founders lose a great degree of control over moral direction. You could say that a public company is entirely profit-oriented and amoral, and this is not unique to Apple.
IBM stole their thunder by copying their open architecture design and having more resources.
And IBM is a shining example in the PC hardware market? The historical fact is that the clones killed the IBM-brand PC, even though until about the VGA, IBM dictated all major iterations of hardware. I see no reason Apple would survive better if the Macintosh was open. That is, the 680x0 Macintosh might have done much better, but Apple the company wouldn't necessarily have.
Openness (or closedness) has no inherent impact on the marketplace today. When the Apple ][ was introduced, it shipped with programming manuals and a complete ROM listing. If Dell does that today, they'll literally just waste money. The x86 PC's relative success as a "breed" does have to do with its openness, but that success has not consistently benefited anybody except Microsoft and perhaps the largely unsung clone BIOS manufacturers. How many of the first generation clone manufacturers (or for that matter, IBM itself) are still around?
My advice to Apple is to have more trust in the computing public. Embrace more open standards and don't feel so threatened if others can compete with you.
Open standards like ethernet, TCP/IP, 802.11b and g, ZeroConf, Firewire, USB, ATA, VGA, and so on? What are you talking about?
That doesn't mean a monopoly Apple would be good for the consumers, either. For example, Steve Jobs has strong opinions on how things should be done, so while Apple has created some of the most interesting hardware and software, I would not necessarily want a world where the Apple Way was the only way.
Even benign monopolies are frequently bad for consumers. Typically, their services get sloppy and costly, because you don't have another choice. I like Apple, which is why I buy Apple, but it's also why I don't want to see Apple take over from Microsoft. Fifty-fifty would be great for everybody else.
That's not true at all. To be "professional" (or to be "unprofessional", for that matter), one must belong to a profession. This is an important line of work, with a clear (if not strict) code of ethics. One who obeys such ethics is "professional", and one who violates them is "unprofessional".
An honest doctor is hardly "unprofessional" if she blows the whistle on, for example, HMOs disregarding sound medical advice to reject patients. An honest civil engineer is also not "unprofessional" for saying that the bridge will never carry the load it was advertised to. In fact, their respective professional ethics require them to speak in such cases.
On the other hand, employees are generally required to keep various secrets for their employers. Being too candid and too "honest" about your work on a public site can damage your employer. This is frequently "unprofessional", especially if your statements fall under ranting, rather than whistle-blowing. For a programmer, if your boss decides to ship with 100 bugs (and you think it should be cut down to 10), it's unprofessional to complain about it on the website. (The professional thing to do is to take it up with your boss or your boss' boss, etc.) On the other hand, it's entirely professional to use any means possible, including a blog, to alert people to the fact that your company's product has a bug that could kill them. There is, of course, a big gray area in between.
I could care less that a person was 'unprofessional' -- because a person's character is not defined by how well he conforms to his employers view of how best to achieve profit.
Indeed, but that's not what the word means.
What makes you think SCO wants a trial?
if the offending code is pointed out, it will be removed -- "problem" solved.
What makes you think SCO wants the code to be removed?
Point is, you're not covering all the possible objectives SCO might have in your analysis. It's entirely possible that all they want is a regular slice of the Linux pie, requiring IBM and Red Hat and others to pay them royalties per copy shipped since the violation occurred until the code is replaced. That objective would explain why they don't particularly want the offending code removed right now.
It cannot help their legal case that they ignore this opportunity to get the alleged problem fixed as soon as possible.
If this was a patent case, and SCO believes that there's no good unpatented way to do something Linux absolutely needs to do, they'll probably have already published everything and started demanding royalties. Problem is, they probably don't have monopolies to a lot of the techniques they used, data structures they chose, etc, such that preventing Linux from using their actual code will do them any good.
Try to assume that SCO is telling the truth. Once they discovered the violation, imagine how you might maximize the money you can make from it. Feel free to think evil thoughts. I'm not saying SCO is operating in good faith and showing good form, you know, just that they aren't acting unreasonably (beyond reason; irrationally; crazily).
I'm not a legal professional. Are you? You write with great authority, yet you misspell a common legal word "damages", so I'm a bit confused.
They cannot refuse to disclose the nature of dammages for years on end, not allowing the other party to fix it, and then try to claim dammages for those years.
It's not a very similar case, but submarine patents on GIF and JPEG have in fact been hidden for years on end, presumably waiting for them to be popularly used. (Yes, I understand that this is a copyright case.) IIRC, there's generally a period of time within which complaints have to be raised, after which even crimes like murder are not prosecuted. I'm not aware of defendants having the right to a speedy indictment.
Anyway, it'd be wonderful if you can actually back up your assertions on how this will play in court.
In a lot of proprietary code, what's valuable is the approach. That is, there are many well known data structures and algorithms, but the one that performs best is usually a minor tweak of a well known one. The value comes from you knowing it and your competition not knowing it, and anybody who spends enough time on the problem would figure it out as well. Without an NDA, ideas of this sort cannot useful trade secrets, even if the actual source is not copied verbatim.
I'm not saying this is the case with SCO. I'm just saying it's not unreasonable.
This is not a perfect analogy by any means. If you took physical property from me, and give it back when I ask for it, indeed there's little actual loss to me.
Now, source code is valuable in a very different way. For example, binary search is a common and unpatentable algorithm. However, the amount of research required to conclude that binary search is the best choice for a given situation may in fact be worth money in the sense that you (now) know it, but your competition doesn't. In such a case, stolen code can cause you great competitive harm, even if your competitor removes the offending copied code, and reimplements binary search. This is the nature of a lot of proprietary code.
Thus, assuming SCO's claims are true, I find it reasonable for SCO not so much to want Linux to remove the offending code, but to buy it (pay royalties). SCO's investment may not have produced anything patentable or otherwise exclusive to them, that "returning" the code will repair. With the backlash against them, publicizing the offending code will ensure that kernel developers work faster than ever to remove all traces of it. What good does that do SCO, under my assumptions?
Point is, a lot of people who have responded to my post assume that SCO's objective is to have the offending code removed ("property returned"). If you try assuming they have a different objective, a lot of their actions begin to make more sense.
My point was that, assuming that showing the allegedly copied code in context (SCO source tree) can help prove both that SCO does own the code, and help date the source code as it corresponds to some known binary release, the NDA is not unreasonable.
If SCO showed the entire world: [...] This bullshit would already have ended.
I'm not a lawyer, but I do find it reasonable to deny your opponent any information you can (legally, of course) for as long as you can. Again, reasonable if you assume that they are telling the truth.
Since they haven't told IBM what they can do to remediate the problem, it's clear that they don't want to mitigate the damages. This necessarily means that they do not have a case.
No, it does not. Their purpose may not be to mitigate any damages. It may make them more money if Linux vendors are required to pay SCO some royalties until the offending code is removed. In this light, the longer the Linux developers leave it in, the more money SCO might demand. They may also be forcing IBM to buy them out. The supposition that their motive may not simply be for Linus to purge some code does not necessarily mean they don't have a case.
Do you see a pattern? If you assume, even just for the sake of argument, that SCO is telling the truth, then its actions are not entirely unreasonable. An NDA does allow experts better visibility into the allegations, and gives them a stronger case. Keeping IBM in the dark as long as possible is good legal tactic. Keeping Linux developers in the dark gives them a longer period of violation for which to demand reparation. You don't appear to see this, probably because you've stuck to the assumption that they are lying.
I'm not arguing with you as to whether SCO is lying. The facts of that case will eventually become either clear or irrelevant. The main point of this reply is that it is often instructive to assume that your opponent is telling the truth, and then their apparently irrational actions suddenly make sense.
Not to take SCO's side, but their NDA requirement is not unreasonable.
If there's a file, say feature.c, that Linux ripped off illegally, SCO proves nothing by showing you a copy of feature.c. They obviously could've downloaded it from kernel.org five minutes ago, and changed a couple of comments. The theft of feature.c would only make sense in the context of the entire SCO source tree. That is, let's say they shipped version 3.1415 in 1995, and they show you a source tree with feature.c included, that compiles exactly to v3.1415's dated binaries. You are therefore convinced that feature.c was SCO property and a meaningful part of SCO products circa 1995, not just added in two months ago so they could sue Linux. If feature.c later turned up in Linux, then somebody might have stolen it.
Basically, SCO needs to prove that the code does belong to SCO, and that it predates the "copied" code in Linux. Both require the context of the rest of SCO's source tree.
Therefore, it's unreasonable to ask them to let competitors such as Linus Torvalds look all over their source tree, just to allege that Linux may have received illegal code contributions.
No, silly.
If I had children, and there were only two choices: to kill a lot of people with guns, or to have sex with a lot of people and then die getting and spreading STDs, I choose the latter. Now, if I had a third choice, neither of the two, I'd choose that instead.
The problem is that society seems to say that it's more acceptable for the same "impressionable" kids to see violence than sex, by the relative availability of these influences.
I can hardly agree more! The courts are rightfully reluctant to make law, and their undemocratic nature should make everybody very nervous should the Supreme Court decide it's in the lawmaking business. Instead, they are primarily interested in whether laws are contradictory, and in particular whether a specific law contradicts the Constitution. The Eldred case shows, on the positive side, that the Supreme Court does not even want to appear to make law, even if they do seem to agree that it was bad law.
What US citizens need to do is to take back their Congress. There's no dodging this responsibility. US copyright laws are beginning to be imposed on other countries (Taiwan, for example, was pressured into 70-year copyrights), yet only US citizens can rein this in. Nobody else has the power to.
Only those who suddenly want to look for it, and do find it on Gutenberg or another archive site. Even then, they won't necessarily know it's because of some law passed in 2003. Why should they have to know or understand to benefit?
The key problem is imbalance, and this trivial fee notion does nothing to restore it.
The trivial fee idea dodges the issues where we are at odds with Disney: Mickey Mouse and friends. Disney has proven willing to spend lots of money in Congress to protect them, even if it means protecting thousands of other works that Disney could not care less about. This idea basically invites Disney to agree where we can agree, and I think anybody opposing a $1 fee after 50 years of monopoly is going to look exceedingly silly.
With all due respect, the problem is not a lack of good ideas. In fact, the original copyright law (time-limited monopoly) was a pretty darn good idea itself. The problem is that Disney and other major copyright holders find it cheaper to purchase 20 year extensions directly from Congress, than to pay your 1%, or to release their works into the public domain as per the old law.
Easily defeated. I write a novel, publish it, and keep 50 copies in a warehouse. I put up a sign (a web site, if you want) that says you can have one copy if you write me a valid check for $5M. The work is "available from the copyright holder", and therefore it is protected by copyright as long as I have copies to sell. (Nobody may agree with my price, but who are you (and who is the government) to tell me what the right price for a work of art should be?)
Point is, your idea is about as trivially "defeated" for your objective as the $1 idea.
Let's talk about a world without copyright laws first.
An author writes a novel. This novel is entirely her property, and if she locks it in a safe and never shows it to anyone, nobody can take it from her. On the other hand, she can't sue anybody for copying her story or characters, either.
If she chooses to publish the work, then she can run into some problems. Some people will pay her for a copy of the book, but some will surely just reprint the book for cheaper. This forms a disincentive for her to publish, because it really does feel a lot like being taken unfair advantage of.
Here, the State steps in. The author is given a monopoly, so that nobody may copy her work. In addition, she would be able to sue somebody who tried to write a very similar book afterwards. This now forms an incentive to publish.
However, other authors and the public as a whole now suffers. The names you could use for characters and other copyrightable elements of a story will decrease as each work is published. In the distant future, it's possible that any non-trivial work will violate some copyright. This is clearly not beneficial to society, which is why copyright is usually a time-limited monopoly, not a perpetual one.
Here's the important part: by publishing the work, the author implicitly agrees to the deal. If you don't want it to ever lapse into the public domain, don't publish it, or use some other form of enforceable protection (such as an NDA).
The notion that the public is owed the work comes from the author or artist having taken advantage of the benefits of copyright. We aren't owed anything unpublished, but any published work is "owed", and should by right be given to us for free in some years. That's the deal.
Who said anything about Slashdot readers?
The original question was: "Are we, the general public, capable of sending the right messages to the large corporations, or are we cattle [...]" to which I responded: "whatever you think Clear Channel is today is whatever the consumers wanted."
The "we" in the original question referred to "the general public", as did the term "consumers" in my initial response, as did the "we" in my later response, as did the "millions of sheep" in your post. None of that referred to "Slashdot readers", who are so obviously irrelevant to the discussion I hardly understand why you brought it up.
I hope this helps you and at least two others who had trouble comprehending the same line grasp the context of the discussion. I repeat, Clear Channel's stated objective is to cater to its customers (advertisers), but it cannot do so without getting itself a good number of listeners to advertise to. Therefore, Clear Channel's success means that a lot of people ("general public") do like their stations. If you think that makes them "sheep" or "cattle", then you've answered the original rhetorical question.
That's both true and false. If we all stop listening to Clear Channel stations, then they won't be able to sell advertising.