Ow... the kicker here is that dual licensing _is_ legitimate. As a software author I am allowed to do that- I GPL stuff and that code then is completely bound by the terms of the GPL, but if I'm not mistaken, I and only I am allowed to also release the same thing under other different licenses. None of this can un-GPL the GPL license- but for instance if I am the sole author I could simultaneously do GPL and also release the code to a proprietary person. They would have no access to GPLed modifications as they did not agree to _that_ license, but they would be able to place whatever stupid restrictions they wanted on their own little version of the code.
With me so far? Good, here's the kicker. Under the Passport Terms of Service, if you are the sole author of something that's open source and you're contributing it to someone else under the GPL or any other license... well, MS can deny that the person has a right to use the 'means of transmission' (Passport) without signing up. They cannot 'un-GPL' something you GPLed, or take away people's rights under that license...
BUT! If you are the sole author, and thus legally able to assign licenses and dual-license your stuff, YOU are giving Microsoft their own special license to that GPLed code, which is subject to NONE of the restrictions you intended to place upon it. They don't get access to further development- but the other development does not get access to whatever MS does to it, because effectively YOU gave them a special license with no restrictions or obligations. This exists alongside the GPL license you originally intended.
If I'm not mistaken, this can only take place if you're the sole author and legally able to do such sublicensing- if I download all of Debian, I don't become the original copyright holder, and though the licensing allows me carte blanche it doesn't let me do special sublicenses for stuff that's not mine. But if you are the sole author, you do have the capacity to simultaneously use different licenses and that is the sort of person who would be hosed completely by this trick.
So- just by using Passport it doesn't give you the power to give Microsoft stuff that is not yours to dual-license, and that emphatically includes GPL stuff that _cannot_ be dual-licensed except by the original author (once it's out there it stays GPL, that fork remains uncorruptable). But if _you_ introduce stuff that you are the original copyright holder, and use Passport- you cannot enforce that the code is GPL, because you're simultaneously giving MS its own distinct license, which they have total freedom to do anything they want with it AND to license the result as restrictively as they want. Your use of GPL _does_ _not_ affect MS's license of the stuff sent through Passport.
The question on my mind is: can a router be made to be part of Passport? If my ISP ended up forced to run stuff through Passport and signed something that said 'all your users are belong to us', would this end up binding me even though I didn't willingly sign up?
Unless you are a signatory to a Passport Participant License and Service agreement...you may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from through the Passport Web Site and service.
The main thrust of this is, if you are doing business with anyone using Passport, _you_ must also sign up, or be prohibited from using the materials. Basically it's leverage on people using it in a business setting: if you get sent materials or business stuff through Passport and make use of it without yourself being a member (this would include email, and certainly would cover anything like free web hosting space), you are a criminal and can be prosecuted even if the person sending the information intended for you to use it. They retain a copyright of their own on the material so you're not 'infringing on the copyright' but you never consented to Microsoft's terms for use of materials transferred via Passport, so you'd be sued basically for abuse of the service (taking advantage of it without signing up). This will hold up a lot better in the case of a web hosting service- it'd be a little insane applied to e-mail.
You agree that no joint venture, partnership, employment, or agency relationship exists between you and Microsoft as a result of this agreement or use of the Passport Web Site or service.
This one's easy: if not for this clause it could be argued that Microsoft, for being legally allowed to entirely control communications between people, may be acting as an 'agent' or employer. Basically, it's not so unusual for an entity to provide the communications channels between someone and someone else, even including the ability to harshly control the sort of communications permitted. If you were an author and needed someone to be the communications between you and book publishers, you'd get an agent, who would be the go-between and may have other protections like restricting your ability to simultaneously do other submissions (I'm not up on that part really). Microsoft is taking a role of a communications middleman and asserting controls and limits on the means of communicating, asserting exclusivity, so they are an agent. The reason the clause specifically says you agree that they're NOT an agent is because presumably agents have rules they have to follow, and Microsoft wishes to be able to assert the rights of an agent without suffering any of the limitations.
King County, Washington, U.S.A.
Conspiracy theories are all very fun but I suspect this is simply the nearest court to Microsoft HQ. So, if you sue, then _you_ have to travel, and the Microsoft lawyers only have to stroll down the street a few blocks. Perhaps they'll build a little bunker right by the court for comfort and convenience!:)
Balls. Better go tell mp3.com and indeed every single site on the web that _publishes_ copyrighted information.
What is confusing you is this: 'transfer'. There is no transfer, because you are not _giving_ _up_ your own copyrights. You still keep them and have full rights to them.
This is not that difficult to understand. It'd be very much another story if MS were trying to _take_ your own rights away from you so you can't have them. They are shrewd enough not to attempt this. Instead, your rights become nonexclusive because MS gets total permission to do whatever it likes with the copyrighted materials- anything that is not actually a _transfer_. There is no transfer because you keep rights too. It's an assignment of rights, a licensing. There is loads and loads of precedent that you can do this in a nonexclusive way on the web with only a click-through- or not even that, in the case of mp3.com's new terms, when the previous terms included securing your automatic agreement to new terms after a time period, with or without your knowledge or consent.
I Am Not A Lawyer either- but I am more of a not-lawyer than you;) honestly, where does 'transfer' even enter into it? You get a grip yourself- this is perfectly real.
I think it does deserve the beating, simply because genuine philanthropy and social benefit _is_ (gasp!) important. It's not meaningless, and it's not a helpful thing when con artists continue to add still more weight to the side of the argument that says 'there is no such thing as philanthropy, honesty or social benefit'.
In a way, I guess what I am saying is that they deserve the beating _most_ for the misrepresentation: they're perfectly free to get people to donate computers to a for-profit company to develop IP on cancer curing which will then be withheld from cancer patients. They're free to do that. But they gotta CALL it that. Calling it philanthropy totally devalues philanthropy, and some of us think it can ill afford such devaluation at this point.
I'm no kind of hero man. There are so many people out there who're just like me- turn away from the TV and commercial FM radio and you'll spot 'em all over the place. Maybe I'm just madder than most because I'm 32 and have spent _years_ learning about this stuff and learning how to do it myself instead of being a passive consumer person with a neat little role in society.
If you like what I have to say and want to cheer me up, then when I _do_ finish all this CD mastering and move over to Ampcast and start selling awesome CDs, buy some- I do enough very different sorts of music that probably there's something in there you'd like.
If you _really_ want to cheer me up, save your money and buy a guitar and start making your own damn art!
-chris
This better not fly. Why? Let me tell you why. Right now I'm in the middle of overhauling my studio, my multitrack recorder, and for that matter my computer to remaster all my music because Ampcast is gearing up to offer musicians the ability to sell _true_ Red Book CD Audio burned-to-order. I'm overhauling everything because I want these CDs I offer to be just fantastic quality, technically. I've done everything from rebuilding equipment to writing audiophile dithering algorithms to accomplish this, and I've had to do it all myself with totally limited resources.
I DON'T HAVE FUCKING TIME TO PERSONALLY AUTHORISE EVERY LITTLE DOWNLOAD!
_Apologies_ to anyone who is offended by this strong language- but I am _very_ angry here. As copyright holder it is UP TO ME how I want to license my stuff. As it happens, I use the statement "All commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY", because I fully intend to completely permit ALL FORMS of fair use copying and EVERY sort of copying and sharing and trading that doesn't actually involve someone charging people for my stuff. That is MY RIGHT under the law. _I!_ am the one who says what people can do with it.
Even _if_ the idea of this isn't 'submit your song to the RIAA to have Napster given permission to let YOU host it on YOUR computer only', even if the idea is that Napster keeps the records, I am really angry and finding this suggestion absolutely intolerable. As copyright holder _I_ have the right to authorise every listener I have to share my stuff on Napster. I've even asked people to do just this, repeatedly- I thought it would not only help me but would also add to the argument that Napster links to lots of different kinds of content.
I am not trying to get a free ride off the RIAA, okay? I'm not even _seeking_ fame and money and record contracts that are fair. I am perfectly content to do all the work for producing my own music, to seek out places like besonic and ampcast that aren't ripping me off, to accept that I may not sell zillions of CDs even once I finish the work of making them available from Ampcast. I'm not asking for help with all this, and I'm not getting any. I have to do it all myself and that suits me fine.
But I draw the line at having to be a _fucking_ performing rights organisation too, just because OTHER PEOPLE can't deal with the idea that people can exchange their artworks without paying. I am completely offended at this to the point that I begin to understand the feelings of some slashdotters and anarcholibertarians when confronted with unions: I am more socialist myself but here's a situation where I am forbidden to license my stuff under my own rules because that would mean people could legally share it on napster without my _personal_ authorisation. And I'm looking at a possible future where, every time some new sharing program or P2P thing comes around, I have to PERSONALLY go and give them an 'it's okay to share my music' before they're permitted. Goddammit, I write that on my CDs! I do not have TIME to piddle around being a performing rights organisation. The record companies have time and resources to do this kind of crap, and I do _not_.
And I am _pissed_ that they are even suggesting it. Sorry for all the strong language. I am _so_ pissed at this suggestion. I'm sorry, I put a great deal of effort into checking out the resources available to me (like ampcast, and for that matter CafePress) that let me offload some of the work in being an active, productive Internet artist and musician, and this ability is absolutely central to increasing the fluidity and efficiency of the Internet age and allowing people like me access to the world's commerce and media. It is _crucial_ that I am allowed to set my own terms on copyright and that this is _respected_: requiring me to authorise each new little P2P startup is refusing to honor the copyright licensing I already make that specifically authorizes noncommercial copying! I _must_ be allowed to authorise just-plain-listeners to share my stuff on P2P networks etc, do anything with it as long as it's noncommercial- because _I_ don't have the time to run around being a Publishing Rights Organisation and an IANAL and a publicist and an advertising flack and a suit. It's just not reasonable. Why the hell can't they at least let _me_ do my work and allow the random forces of the net to bring me whatever publicity or sales turn up? Why do they effectively plan to _force_ me to operate as a rights agent and individually authorize every little P2P thing that might turn up? I am so angry...
OK, that was messy and a lot of extrapolation but I've got a lot of work to do which these nice people at the RIAA are _not_ helping me do in any way shape or form, so I'd better go off and do it and hope other people can keep the RIAA from loading even _more_ compulsory work on me for the privilege of trying to distribute MY OWN music... I _so_ don't have the time to track down the relevant people and scream at them... if anyone wishes these views cleaned up for broader publication I'd be more than happy to do so and promise not to say F**K...
Actually, the way I heard it was that the Classic compatibility layer (sorta like a virtual MacOS 9) needs the 128 megs. If you only run OSX apps, you can get away with a more Unixish 64M (not bad for a glitzy window manager running antialiased Display PDF on everything)
"For example, when you click a folder full of music files, you'll see links to publish the entire folder to the Web (using a wizard, of course) and buy music online from WindowsMedia.com. But at this stage--and in the upcoming final version--this feature publishes only to MSN sites or to a local network, not to your own Web or FTP site."
Oh, _that's_ an oversight. I'm sure they'll just rush lickety-split to fix that one and keep their users from being compelled to use MSN for the feature!:P
(BTW, anyone else very weirded out by all the 'now has X feature, like MacOS' talk? When did _that_ start happening?)
The only difference is- source code IS an implementation. That would require the parasite to make another implementation and then patent that. With what you're proposing, it is only possible to put up basically an abstract. The most obvious implementation then falls to the parasite, so it's actually a bit easier for them seeing as they would have to come up with an implementation that's not a direct copy of someone else's implementation anyhow.
Again- with published source code a person would have to re-implement something obvious (like a shopping cart, or 'one click' button) before patenting it and being allowed to use the patent. If we give this database any ideas it's a simple matter of the parasite just whipping off the _most_ obvious implementation and patenting that. There's no question that they'd get the patent, and it's quite likely that they'd be allowed to use it.
None of this is good but, respectfully, I would suggest that building up a database of idea abstracts is worse. Better to build up the 'database' of open source which is at least _implementations_ that can't reasonably be directly patented by third parties without possibly awkward re-implementing.
Nonsense. It raises the bar (which _is_ good) by forcing people to go and come up with actual implementations of ideas and patent those, rather than patenting overarching concepts.
It also gathers together all the 'most valuable' ideas for cherry-picking so that unrelated people can go do just that, and will. Yes, it's good for companies to have to come up with specific implementations of ideas and patent only those- but implementations of YOUR ideas?
This isn't a patent reducer. It is the basis for a patent _explosion_. The resulting flood of patents will be much more like what patents were supposed to be. They'll also cover pretty much every implementation of common ideas that you could think of, making it more or less impossible to use the 'free' source ideas in the database without jumping through some serious hoops, or licensing your idea back from a company that patented the implementation you need when you gave it access to the underlying concept and said 'Ha-HA! Now you can't patent this underlying concept like some of you guys have been improperly doing!'
Just keep away from this one... the backlash of implementation patents is going to be horrible, if this catches on. And, ironically, if you discount the fact that the basic inventing was done by someone else, the implementation patents will hold up far better in court, being more specific and less over-reaching in their claims!
Bruce, this is bait for people to go forth and patent every SPECIFIC APPLICATION of an idea that's placed in the prior-art database. Not enough space is given to cover every imaginable application, and it's trivial to develop such an idea in a specific direction and then patent _that_.
I totally concede that this is more like what patents _should_ be... IP claims on specific implementations of solutions to problems. I totally see that.
However, this hardly makes it sensible for ME to put ideas in a place where others can go forth and patent all the best implementations and then sue me to stop me using them! I'm sorry. This is well-meant but fatally flawed.
Good point. This would be a fertile breeding ground for people to go through, grab anything that looked important, and busily patent _applications_ (you know, what patents were supposed to be in the first place?) of the idea. A dozen implementations this way, a dozen that way- none of them make claims on the central broad concept, nor should they, but it'd be pretty trivial to go 'OK, this is the background' (like a patent for a machine that is not a patent for the background concept of 'a gear') 'now here's the REAL invention!'
As such, anything put on this database would easily become an absolute minefield and not safe to use- because there's not enough space given for an exhaustive enumerating of applications, and patents would be cheerfully filed on all the best applications- and because they would be implementations, they'd be rubberstamped through like all patents, never challenging the underlying concept but making it impossible to _implement_ it in the real world without legal exposure.
What a bad idea. No thank you. This is so not the way to solve the problem. Frankly, it provides an avenue to worsen the problem... except in the abstract sense of 'joy! now they can't patent a gear!'. Riiiight- instead, smart people backed by corporate lawyers are put to work 24/7 patenting every conceivable application of the gear. You're better off not baiting them that way...
First of all, the guy _stated_ his motives and reasons, so this second-guessing is very much applying early-21st-century amorality to a situation that was about as far from it as could be imagined.
Secondly, it is fascinating to see the way every suggestion of this nature seems to be moderated up to 5. I think this is revealing more about the Slashdot readership's confused but striking agenda than we really need to know... what is it that produces this compelling need to view Ben Franklin in a more cynical, post-20th-century light? Is it so unthinkable to accept his words and concede the guy seemed to consider social benefit a greatly important thing, worth more than personal gain?
Honestly, it's a little shocking to me. I wouldn't bat an eyelash to see lots of slashdotters mocking Franklin for being a dumbass who'd never amount to anything, but it's very disconcerting to see what appears to be a broadly supported grassroots slashdotter _desire_ to rewrite the motivations of history...
I should clarify: the situation was such that the bean-counters and lawyers at Boeing would have rather _not_ taken any sort of action that even hinted that the crash was Boeing's fault. To redesign the rudder would have meant possibly admitting there was something wrong with it in the first place, a bad tactical move, so the lawyers wanted Boeing to stonewall and say "It was the (dead) pilot's fault! You can't give expensive airplanes to loser pilots like that!"
Again- the rudder got the redesign. There are times when the bean counters and lawyers SHOULD NOT win. That was one of them. In the software industry the bean counters and lawyers always win...
If I remember the details correctly, the Boeing 707's early incarnations had a degree of yaw instability. If you let it get into a severe Dutch roll situation (an instability in flight on the yaw axis), the plane could flip, throw off engines, crash.
The plane was well under control and test pilots were entirely comfortable with its flight envelope- then, some flights training airline pilots turned sour, with inexperienced pilots allowing too much yaw to develop, causing either emergencies or in one case a full-scale crash with fatalities to the flight crew onboard during the training flight.
Boeing risked being legally put on the spot and took responsibility for redesigning the rudder, giving more yaw authority and making the dangerous situation less easy for an inexperienced pilot to get into. Boeing covered the costs of this itself, and a good thing too.
I don't see many software vendors even attempting to be as trustworthy. The software company version of this would be changing the trainee pilots' contracts to say "And if the trainee crashes our expensive aircraft, his estate has to pay for the broken plane! Plus we keep his car."
One, is this sort of thing related to the music data or is it simply a matter of screwing with catalog data? If it, or some later attempt to do this, is related to music data, what is that going to do to BLER rates? For those of you who don't do this professionally, BLER rates is the amount of uncorrectable burst errors in the actual music data. 2X burning has been tested and proved to produce the lowest BLERs, other burn speeds (and 80 minute media, BTW) are worse or much worse- this is all in the context of a CD that will still play on most players, it will simply interpolate fake data to cover up burst errors. A trained ear can hear this interpolation on detailed sounds as a blurring or muddying up of the musical textures. So... are the major labels preparing to put out 'CDs' crammed with BLERs to try and trip up copiers? Will they (as with the watermarking) trade off the already limited CD fidelity on the assumption that consumers don't need high fidelity CDs for their $20?
Two, is this an increase in momentum towards a state where the labels spend nothing on their actual product (the artists) and everything on media control techniques (for all values of 'media';) )? I recently read an interesting interview with several members of Little Feat (Bill Payne and Paul Barrere) in which the subject drifted onto Napster. Payne's reaction was contempt- not for Napster, but for the record labels! His position was that he'd started working with the labels in the early seventies when artists had a certain amount of creative input into the process, and got support and artist development from the labels to produce better music. His scorn for current industry practices had to be seen to be believed- said that they had been doing nothing but churning out hit single 'product' for years, and that this was going to come and bite them in the ass (_his_ phrase). He asked, where are the labels going to be in ten or twelve years, spending nothing on artist development? He saw Napster as basically the 'infinte internet radio' concept, not directly bringing artist revenue but serving as a resource that hardworking independent artists could make use of- and in his opinion and Barrere's, although the new state of affairs requires a consumer to make more effort to find music, people are ALREADY putting forth this extra effort, and will be turning more and more to the indie/online/free resources. Not because they are innately evil criminals at heart, but simply because the record industry, in its own continued efforts to minimise expenses and maximize promotion and sales, is no longer putting out a quality product. The idea is that people don't really want to buy Britney Spears, N'Sync etc: it's just momentum and habit that keeps them buying from that source, the industry, and the momentum IS BEGINNING TO FAIL.
Like the man said- in ten years, the industry will be in a self-created hell. Maybe 'time loves a hero' but time hates last year's one-hit wonder! Given that the industry doesn't develop artists any more, that they don't pay and that they don't _completely_ control distribution channels (just _traditional_ distribution channels like Sam Goody and all the legal FM radio stations), there is less and less of a reason to interact with the industry on any level- whether as a customer, an artist, or even a support technician like a mastering engineer: I've seen a mastering guy admit his little secret, that half his business comes from indie musicians who want their CD to sound better than other indie musicians. The guy was leery of even mentioning this because he didn't want to jinx it. Well- he needn't worry- in ten years _all_ the competitive indie musicians will be turning to indie studios (on their own dime up-front) and indie mastering engineers to produce indie CDs (see Ampcast's upcoming program to burn to order from _red book_ masters- basically, soon indies will be able to match industry standards on ALL levels right down to the UPC barcode) and compete with other indies in a REAL market, one defined by lots of people selling their stuff with easy access to the market, the market being defined purely on the basis of product quality, not what the labels let you know about. Artist A's CDs might be incredibly well produced, Artist B is an incredible performer but the CDs are made off mp3s, Artist C's just a gifted amateur but is selling for $5 a CD- you get to pick what you want.
THAT is the future. If the industry's attempts to cripple its own products make this happen sooner, or make indie media more reliable and playable and usable than industry stuff, then I would have to say go to it guys! Go nuts, add copy-control onto heavy watermarking and make it so you can't play the product in half the CD players out there. You'll earn my undying gratitude by committing quality suicide in this way...
My only concern would be, keep a sharp eye on the legislators. It's one thing for the industry to mandate something- it's another for them to railroad through legislation that deprecates existing stuff. For instance, if they come up with a new Audio CD format, that's one thing, but if they get legislation made to massively tax, or prohibit, humble ol' Red Book CD Audio format, then they'd get to arbitrarily handicap the indie producers. If they get to define a replacement format and it's like DVD then they get to prevent indie producers and consumers from even having access to the authoring technology (see the stories on Apple DVD and what the MPAA has forced Apple to do). This is the hot issue, not whether you have a right to fair-use copy any company's specific product. You can survive doing without Britney but it's another story if nobody is permitted to do their own music and media and put it out alongside Britney, over the Internet. Public access to authoring and media is a _must_.
Re:Improved nVidia drivers?
on
Linux in 3D
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· Score: 2
Good lord no, what would that have to do with render-farms and 3D workstations? nVidia is gamer cards....though now that you mention it, I suppose it is possible that nVidia killed off all the other options. Is there a customary higher-end option on Linux boxen, or is nVidia all there is? It's sure not great on image quality.
Goddammit, I am _autistic_ and even I am not so pedantic as to seriously be swayed by the appeals court legalistic maneuvering. And have you entirely failed to notice the appeals court has also had some pretty sharp words for Microsoft as well?
I don't know which way it's going to go. Naturally, many forms of media _are_ in Microsoft's pocket and entirely dependent on MS for revenues directly or indirectly- how surprising can it be that these sources uniformly see the appeal as a huge vindication for MS? Clue: the verdict is NOT IN. There could be surprises- they could be engaging in some heavy Jackson bashing to clear themselves of the appearance of partiality, just as Jackson released findings of fact to insulate his work from the expected ravages of highly paid lawyers! Every step of the way the judges have had to go heavily on the defensive.
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft lies in court ("I'm sorry, I don't buy that for a second"- this from their big ally?)
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft introduced FAKE EVIDENCE (the video evidence of 'identical' windows boxes, one without IE)
Perjury _is_ a crime and contempt of court can lead to getting booted out of the courtroom- and if it was any _normal_ criminal, the antics of MS defense lawyers would have led to charges. It's not a normal criminal- there's a bottomless well of lawyers that can be dragged in and instructed to behave with the same contempt and untruthfulness, so booting the individual lawyers WILL NOT WORK. The judges are forced to let acts of perjury and contempt go unchallenged so the process doesn't get completely clogged. This is not reliable evidence that they are going to find for the lying, perjuring, and obviously, baldly guilty defendant.
Everyone swore that Jackson was going to let MS go up until the last minute as well- the media was uniformly convinced that nothing MS did was hurting them, and that Jackson would buy into the argument that as software didn't exist in the Industrial Age, antitrust didn't apply no matter what the company's motives were or what it did to twist arms.
Well- again, I am _autistic_ and even I am not so pedantic as to be completely stupid about this issue. The fact that I could write a word processor is not the freaking point! The fact that I would have to be totally insane to expect to SELL it, is. Microsoft has consistently taken over ENTIRE SECTORS of software development and made it completely absurd for a market to exist in them. That is the problem in a nutshell. It's irrelevant HOW they did it- although they did it with armtwisting and APIs, it would still be destruction of a market even if they'd made the market similarly barren using only quality (and that totally ignores the relevant point of distribution, and that's where we begin to see armtwisting again).
The judges are hearing this 'en banc' which is not an accident or trivial thing- and it may be speculative, but I can identify one very very good reason for the appeals court to put up the APPEARANCE that they totally disrespect Jackson's findings and procedures. If I was them, I would want to know if it were TRUE. Was Jackson a loon, or is Microsoft really so far gone that they will lie to the judges, fake evidence, make no sense at all? If the appeals court defers to Jackson on anything, it is a warning sign to Microsoft, and if I were the appeals court, I would want to send NO warning signs. Let the biggest MS supporter say anything he likes to reassure the MS defense- his courtroom comments ARE NOT VERDICTS! The chance that the MS defense can be baited into replicating their embarrassing performance in front of Jackson is too important to miss- the appeals court MUST KNOW if it was a fluke, or if the defense is that contemptuous, and most importantly they must know if Microsoft will respect the court enough to comply with sanctions after a previous failure to do so. Only a position of complete contempt for the court and the verdict will justify a structural remedy, as Jackson well knew, and as the appeals court believes even more strongly- otherwise it's much simpler to just issue conduct requirements and leave it at that.
Whatever the makeup of the 'en banc' appeals court, I do not believe for a second that it is an accident that the MS defense is being invited to exactly duplicate their attitude and performance they gave Jackson. They're being baited, coaxed to throw caution to the wind and show just how arrogant they can be, reveal their true colors before a full 'en banc' court of appeals judges (I assume they can talk to each other as a jury would?). Only this can truly reveal whether they are incapable of respecting a conduct remedy- and the court MUST know that, above all else, before passing judgement on whether Jackson's conclusions of law were correct. Many people feel they were correct.
Free, you say? It's news to _me_ that online content is free. From where I'm standing, I have to _pay_ for web hosting, and do so without batting an eyelash, because I have content I want to put up, and I want people to be able to see it.
Are you arguing that I am supposed to be _paid_ for having content on the internet? Gee, that's nice of you, but what planet are you from? I am eternally grateful that I no longer have to pay for the paper and printing of fliers, pay for cassette tapes and duplicate them, etc etc all to just try and get content to a curious onlooker.
If you are really upset that you're not being paid just to have content available to curious onlookers, I suggest the quick and easy solution of not having content. You should be grateful you got to show me pictures of CK your dog without having to print them up on physical media and somehow get them to me... nice dog btw...
Slashdot Mirror
With me so far? Good, here's the kicker. Under the Passport Terms of Service, if you are the sole author of something that's open source and you're contributing it to someone else under the GPL or any other license... well, MS can deny that the person has a right to use the 'means of transmission' (Passport) without signing up. They cannot 'un-GPL' something you GPLed, or take away people's rights under that license...
BUT! If you are the sole author, and thus legally able to assign licenses and dual-license your stuff, YOU are giving Microsoft their own special license to that GPLed code, which is subject to NONE of the restrictions you intended to place upon it. They don't get access to further development- but the other development does not get access to whatever MS does to it, because effectively YOU gave them a special license with no restrictions or obligations. This exists alongside the GPL license you originally intended.
If I'm not mistaken, this can only take place if you're the sole author and legally able to do such sublicensing- if I download all of Debian, I don't become the original copyright holder, and though the licensing allows me carte blanche it doesn't let me do special sublicenses for stuff that's not mine. But if you are the sole author, you do have the capacity to simultaneously use different licenses and that is the sort of person who would be hosed completely by this trick.
So- just by using Passport it doesn't give you the power to give Microsoft stuff that is not yours to dual-license, and that emphatically includes GPL stuff that _cannot_ be dual-licensed except by the original author (once it's out there it stays GPL, that fork remains uncorruptable). But if _you_ introduce stuff that you are the original copyright holder, and use Passport- you cannot enforce that the code is GPL, because you're simultaneously giving MS its own distinct license, which they have total freedom to do anything they want with it AND to license the result as restrictively as they want. Your use of GPL _does_ _not_ affect MS's license of the stuff sent through Passport.
The question on my mind is: can a router be made to be part of Passport? If my ISP ended up forced to run stuff through Passport and signed something that said 'all your users are belong to us', would this end up binding me even though I didn't willingly sign up?
The main thrust of this is, if you are doing business with anyone using Passport, _you_ must also sign up, or be prohibited from using the materials. Basically it's leverage on people using it in a business setting: if you get sent materials or business stuff through Passport and make use of it without yourself being a member (this would include email, and certainly would cover anything like free web hosting space), you are a criminal and can be prosecuted even if the person sending the information intended for you to use it. They retain a copyright of their own on the material so you're not 'infringing on the copyright' but you never consented to Microsoft's terms for use of materials transferred via Passport, so you'd be sued basically for abuse of the service (taking advantage of it without signing up). This will hold up a lot better in the case of a web hosting service- it'd be a little insane applied to e-mail.
You agree that no joint venture, partnership, employment, or agency relationship exists between you and Microsoft as a result of this agreement or use of the Passport Web Site or service.
This one's easy: if not for this clause it could be argued that Microsoft, for being legally allowed to entirely control communications between people, may be acting as an 'agent' or employer. Basically, it's not so unusual for an entity to provide the communications channels between someone and someone else, even including the ability to harshly control the sort of communications permitted. If you were an author and needed someone to be the communications between you and book publishers, you'd get an agent, who would be the go-between and may have other protections like restricting your ability to simultaneously do other submissions (I'm not up on that part really). Microsoft is taking a role of a communications middleman and asserting controls and limits on the means of communicating, asserting exclusivity, so they are an agent. The reason the clause specifically says you agree that they're NOT an agent is because presumably agents have rules they have to follow, and Microsoft wishes to be able to assert the rights of an agent without suffering any of the limitations.
King County, Washington, U.S.A.
Conspiracy theories are all very fun but I suspect this is simply the nearest court to Microsoft HQ. So, if you sue, then _you_ have to travel, and the Microsoft lawyers only have to stroll down the street a few blocks. Perhaps they'll build a little bunker right by the court for comfort and convenience! :)
What is confusing you is this: 'transfer'. There is no transfer, because you are not _giving_ _up_ your own copyrights. You still keep them and have full rights to them. This is not that difficult to understand. It'd be very much another story if MS were trying to _take_ your own rights away from you so you can't have them. They are shrewd enough not to attempt this. Instead, your rights become nonexclusive because MS gets total permission to do whatever it likes with the copyrighted materials- anything that is not actually a _transfer_. There is no transfer because you keep rights too. It's an assignment of rights, a licensing. There is loads and loads of precedent that you can do this in a nonexclusive way on the web with only a click-through- or not even that, in the case of mp3.com's new terms, when the previous terms included securing your automatic agreement to new terms after a time period, with or without your knowledge or consent.
I Am Not A Lawyer either- but I am more of a not-lawyer than you ;) honestly, where does 'transfer' even enter into it? You get a grip yourself- this is perfectly real.
In a way, I guess what I am saying is that they deserve the beating _most_ for the misrepresentation: they're perfectly free to get people to donate computers to a for-profit company to develop IP on cancer curing which will then be withheld from cancer patients. They're free to do that. But they gotta CALL it that. Calling it philanthropy totally devalues philanthropy, and some of us think it can ill afford such devaluation at this point.
Of course, my cowardly friend! I do both kinds of music- country _and_ western ;)
I'm Slashdot User #580, who else?
I'm no kind of hero man. There are so many people out there who're just like me- turn away from the TV and commercial FM radio and you'll spot 'em all over the place. Maybe I'm just madder than most because I'm 32 and have spent _years_ learning about this stuff and learning how to do it myself instead of being a passive consumer person with a neat little role in society.
If you like what I have to say and want to cheer me up, then when I _do_ finish all this CD mastering and move over to Ampcast and start selling awesome CDs, buy some- I do enough very different sorts of music that probably there's something in there you'd like.
If you _really_ want to cheer me up, save your money and buy a guitar and start making your own damn art! -chris
I DON'T HAVE FUCKING TIME TO PERSONALLY AUTHORISE EVERY LITTLE DOWNLOAD!
_Apologies_ to anyone who is offended by this strong language- but I am _very_ angry here. As copyright holder it is UP TO ME how I want to license my stuff. As it happens, I use the statement "All commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY", because I fully intend to completely permit ALL FORMS of fair use copying and EVERY sort of copying and sharing and trading that doesn't actually involve someone charging people for my stuff. That is MY RIGHT under the law. _I!_ am the one who says what people can do with it.
Even _if_ the idea of this isn't 'submit your song to the RIAA to have Napster given permission to let YOU host it on YOUR computer only', even if the idea is that Napster keeps the records, I am really angry and finding this suggestion absolutely intolerable. As copyright holder _I_ have the right to authorise every listener I have to share my stuff on Napster. I've even asked people to do just this, repeatedly- I thought it would not only help me but would also add to the argument that Napster links to lots of different kinds of content.
I am not trying to get a free ride off the RIAA, okay? I'm not even _seeking_ fame and money and record contracts that are fair. I am perfectly content to do all the work for producing my own music, to seek out places like besonic and ampcast that aren't ripping me off, to accept that I may not sell zillions of CDs even once I finish the work of making them available from Ampcast. I'm not asking for help with all this, and I'm not getting any. I have to do it all myself and that suits me fine.
But I draw the line at having to be a _fucking_ performing rights organisation too, just because OTHER PEOPLE can't deal with the idea that people can exchange their artworks without paying. I am completely offended at this to the point that I begin to understand the feelings of some slashdotters and anarcholibertarians when confronted with unions: I am more socialist myself but here's a situation where I am forbidden to license my stuff under my own rules because that would mean people could legally share it on napster without my _personal_ authorisation. And I'm looking at a possible future where, every time some new sharing program or P2P thing comes around, I have to PERSONALLY go and give them an 'it's okay to share my music' before they're permitted. Goddammit, I write that on my CDs! I do not have TIME to piddle around being a performing rights organisation. The record companies have time and resources to do this kind of crap, and I do _not_.
And I am _pissed_ that they are even suggesting it. Sorry for all the strong language. I am _so_ pissed at this suggestion. I'm sorry, I put a great deal of effort into checking out the resources available to me (like ampcast, and for that matter CafePress) that let me offload some of the work in being an active, productive Internet artist and musician, and this ability is absolutely central to increasing the fluidity and efficiency of the Internet age and allowing people like me access to the world's commerce and media. It is _crucial_ that I am allowed to set my own terms on copyright and that this is _respected_: requiring me to authorise each new little P2P startup is refusing to honor the copyright licensing I already make that specifically authorizes noncommercial copying! I _must_ be allowed to authorise just-plain-listeners to share my stuff on P2P networks etc, do anything with it as long as it's noncommercial- because _I_ don't have the time to run around being a Publishing Rights Organisation and an IANAL and a publicist and an advertising flack and a suit. It's just not reasonable. Why the hell can't they at least let _me_ do my work and allow the random forces of the net to bring me whatever publicity or sales turn up? Why do they effectively plan to _force_ me to operate as a rights agent and individually authorize every little P2P thing that might turn up? I am so angry...
OK, that was messy and a lot of extrapolation but I've got a lot of work to do which these nice people at the RIAA are _not_ helping me do in any way shape or form, so I'd better go off and do it and hope other people can keep the RIAA from loading even _more_ compulsory work on me for the privilege of trying to distribute MY OWN music... I _so_ don't have the time to track down the relevant people and scream at them... if anyone wishes these views cleaned up for broader publication I'd be more than happy to do so and promise not to say F**K...
Actually, the way I heard it was that the Classic compatibility layer (sorta like a virtual MacOS 9) needs the 128 megs. If you only run OSX apps, you can get away with a more Unixish 64M (not bad for a glitzy window manager running antialiased Display PDF on everything)
Oh, _that's_ an oversight. I'm sure they'll just rush lickety-split to fix that one and keep their users from being compelled to use MSN for the feature! :P
(BTW, anyone else very weirded out by all the 'now has X feature, like MacOS' talk? When did _that_ start happening?)
The only difference is- source code IS an implementation. That would require the parasite to make another implementation and then patent that. With what you're proposing, it is only possible to put up basically an abstract. The most obvious implementation then falls to the parasite, so it's actually a bit easier for them seeing as they would have to come up with an implementation that's not a direct copy of someone else's implementation anyhow.
Again- with published source code a person would have to re-implement something obvious (like a shopping cart, or 'one click' button) before patenting it and being allowed to use the patent. If we give this database any ideas it's a simple matter of the parasite just whipping off the _most_ obvious implementation and patenting that. There's no question that they'd get the patent, and it's quite likely that they'd be allowed to use it.
None of this is good but, respectfully, I would suggest that building up a database of idea abstracts is worse. Better to build up the 'database' of open source which is at least _implementations_ that can't reasonably be directly patented by third parties without possibly awkward re-implementing.
(see the cover of Absolutely Free... funny how we're ignoring modern media and bantering madly away with 30 and 40 year old references...)
The thing to remember is, dishonesty is not new :)
It also gathers together all the 'most valuable' ideas for cherry-picking so that unrelated people can go do just that, and will. Yes, it's good for companies to have to come up with specific implementations of ideas and patent only those- but implementations of YOUR ideas?
This isn't a patent reducer. It is the basis for a patent _explosion_. The resulting flood of patents will be much more like what patents were supposed to be. They'll also cover pretty much every implementation of common ideas that you could think of, making it more or less impossible to use the 'free' source ideas in the database without jumping through some serious hoops, or licensing your idea back from a company that patented the implementation you need when you gave it access to the underlying concept and said 'Ha-HA! Now you can't patent this underlying concept like some of you guys have been improperly doing!'
Just keep away from this one... the backlash of implementation patents is going to be horrible, if this catches on. And, ironically, if you discount the fact that the basic inventing was done by someone else, the implementation patents will hold up far better in court, being more specific and less over-reaching in their claims!
I totally concede that this is more like what patents _should_ be... IP claims on specific implementations of solutions to problems. I totally see that.
However, this hardly makes it sensible for ME to put ideas in a place where others can go forth and patent all the best implementations and then sue me to stop me using them! I'm sorry. This is well-meant but fatally flawed.
As such, anything put on this database would easily become an absolute minefield and not safe to use- because there's not enough space given for an exhaustive enumerating of applications, and patents would be cheerfully filed on all the best applications- and because they would be implementations, they'd be rubberstamped through like all patents, never challenging the underlying concept but making it impossible to _implement_ it in the real world without legal exposure.
What a bad idea. No thank you. This is so not the way to solve the problem. Frankly, it provides an avenue to worsen the problem... except in the abstract sense of 'joy! now they can't patent a gear!'. Riiiight- instead, smart people backed by corporate lawyers are put to work 24/7 patenting every conceivable application of the gear. You're better off not baiting them that way...
Secondly, it is fascinating to see the way every suggestion of this nature seems to be moderated up to 5. I think this is revealing more about the Slashdot readership's confused but striking agenda than we really need to know... what is it that produces this compelling need to view Ben Franklin in a more cynical, post-20th-century light? Is it so unthinkable to accept his words and concede the guy seemed to consider social benefit a greatly important thing, worth more than personal gain?
Honestly, it's a little shocking to me. I wouldn't bat an eyelash to see lots of slashdotters mocking Franklin for being a dumbass who'd never amount to anything, but it's very disconcerting to see what appears to be a broadly supported grassroots slashdotter _desire_ to rewrite the motivations of history...
Oh, c'mon, he _stated_ his motives. You calling him a liar? :)
Again- the rudder got the redesign. There are times when the bean counters and lawyers SHOULD NOT win. That was one of them. In the software industry the bean counters and lawyers always win...
The plane was well under control and test pilots were entirely comfortable with its flight envelope- then, some flights training airline pilots turned sour, with inexperienced pilots allowing too much yaw to develop, causing either emergencies or in one case a full-scale crash with fatalities to the flight crew onboard during the training flight.
Boeing risked being legally put on the spot and took responsibility for redesigning the rudder, giving more yaw authority and making the dangerous situation less easy for an inexperienced pilot to get into. Boeing covered the costs of this itself, and a good thing too.
I don't see many software vendors even attempting to be as trustworthy. The software company version of this would be changing the trainee pilots' contracts to say "And if the trainee crashes our expensive aircraft, his estate has to pay for the broken plane! Plus we keep his car."
*spit*
One, is this sort of thing related to the music data or is it simply a matter of screwing with catalog data? If it, or some later attempt to do this, is related to music data, what is that going to do to BLER rates? For those of you who don't do this professionally, BLER rates is the amount of uncorrectable burst errors in the actual music data. 2X burning has been tested and proved to produce the lowest BLERs, other burn speeds (and 80 minute media, BTW) are worse or much worse- this is all in the context of a CD that will still play on most players, it will simply interpolate fake data to cover up burst errors. A trained ear can hear this interpolation on detailed sounds as a blurring or muddying up of the musical textures. So... are the major labels preparing to put out 'CDs' crammed with BLERs to try and trip up copiers? Will they (as with the watermarking) trade off the already limited CD fidelity on the assumption that consumers don't need high fidelity CDs for their $20?
Two, is this an increase in momentum towards a state where the labels spend nothing on their actual product (the artists) and everything on media control techniques (for all values of 'media' ;) )? I recently read an interesting interview with several members of Little Feat (Bill Payne and Paul Barrere) in which the subject drifted onto Napster. Payne's reaction was contempt- not for Napster, but for the record labels! His position was that he'd started working with the labels in the early seventies when artists had a certain amount of creative input into the process, and got support and artist development from the labels to produce better music. His scorn for current industry practices had to be seen to be believed- said that they had been doing nothing but churning out hit single 'product' for years, and that this was going to come and bite them in the ass (_his_ phrase). He asked, where are the labels going to be in ten or twelve years, spending nothing on artist development? He saw Napster as basically the 'infinte internet radio' concept, not directly bringing artist revenue but serving as a resource that hardworking independent artists could make use of- and in his opinion and Barrere's, although the new state of affairs requires a consumer to make more effort to find music, people are ALREADY putting forth this extra effort, and will be turning more and more to the indie/online/free resources. Not because they are innately evil criminals at heart, but simply because the record industry, in its own continued efforts to minimise expenses and maximize promotion and sales, is no longer putting out a quality product. The idea is that people don't really want to buy Britney Spears, N'Sync etc: it's just momentum and habit that keeps them buying from that source, the industry, and the momentum IS BEGINNING TO FAIL.
Like the man said- in ten years, the industry will be in a self-created hell. Maybe 'time loves a hero' but time hates last year's one-hit wonder! Given that the industry doesn't develop artists any more, that they don't pay and that they don't _completely_ control distribution channels (just _traditional_ distribution channels like Sam Goody and all the legal FM radio stations), there is less and less of a reason to interact with the industry on any level- whether as a customer, an artist, or even a support technician like a mastering engineer: I've seen a mastering guy admit his little secret, that half his business comes from indie musicians who want their CD to sound better than other indie musicians. The guy was leery of even mentioning this because he didn't want to jinx it. Well- he needn't worry- in ten years _all_ the competitive indie musicians will be turning to indie studios (on their own dime up-front) and indie mastering engineers to produce indie CDs (see Ampcast's upcoming program to burn to order from _red book_ masters- basically, soon indies will be able to match industry standards on ALL levels right down to the UPC barcode) and compete with other indies in a REAL market, one defined by lots of people selling their stuff with easy access to the market, the market being defined purely on the basis of product quality, not what the labels let you know about. Artist A's CDs might be incredibly well produced, Artist B is an incredible performer but the CDs are made off mp3s, Artist C's just a gifted amateur but is selling for $5 a CD- you get to pick what you want.
THAT is the future. If the industry's attempts to cripple its own products make this happen sooner, or make indie media more reliable and playable and usable than industry stuff, then I would have to say go to it guys! Go nuts, add copy-control onto heavy watermarking and make it so you can't play the product in half the CD players out there. You'll earn my undying gratitude by committing quality suicide in this way...
My only concern would be, keep a sharp eye on the legislators. It's one thing for the industry to mandate something- it's another for them to railroad through legislation that deprecates existing stuff. For instance, if they come up with a new Audio CD format, that's one thing, but if they get legislation made to massively tax, or prohibit, humble ol' Red Book CD Audio format, then they'd get to arbitrarily handicap the indie producers. If they get to define a replacement format and it's like DVD then they get to prevent indie producers and consumers from even having access to the authoring technology (see the stories on Apple DVD and what the MPAA has forced Apple to do). This is the hot issue, not whether you have a right to fair-use copy any company's specific product. You can survive doing without Britney but it's another story if nobody is permitted to do their own music and media and put it out alongside Britney, over the Internet. Public access to authoring and media is a _must_.
Good lord no, what would that have to do with render-farms and 3D workstations? nVidia is gamer cards. ...though now that you mention it, I suppose it is possible that nVidia killed off all the other options. Is there a customary higher-end option on Linux boxen, or is nVidia all there is? It's sure not great on image quality.
Now- care to BET on it? Preferably large sums of money...
I don't know which way it's going to go. Naturally, many forms of media _are_ in Microsoft's pocket and entirely dependent on MS for revenues directly or indirectly- how surprising can it be that these sources uniformly see the appeal as a huge vindication for MS? Clue: the verdict is NOT IN. There could be surprises- they could be engaging in some heavy Jackson bashing to clear themselves of the appearance of partiality, just as Jackson released findings of fact to insulate his work from the expected ravages of highly paid lawyers! Every step of the way the judges have had to go heavily on the defensive.
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft lies in court ("I'm sorry, I don't buy that for a second"- this from their big ally?)
The appeals court cannot have failed to notice Microsoft introduced FAKE EVIDENCE (the video evidence of 'identical' windows boxes, one without IE)
Perjury _is_ a crime and contempt of court can lead to getting booted out of the courtroom- and if it was any _normal_ criminal, the antics of MS defense lawyers would have led to charges. It's not a normal criminal- there's a bottomless well of lawyers that can be dragged in and instructed to behave with the same contempt and untruthfulness, so booting the individual lawyers WILL NOT WORK. The judges are forced to let acts of perjury and contempt go unchallenged so the process doesn't get completely clogged. This is not reliable evidence that they are going to find for the lying, perjuring, and obviously, baldly guilty defendant.
Everyone swore that Jackson was going to let MS go up until the last minute as well- the media was uniformly convinced that nothing MS did was hurting them, and that Jackson would buy into the argument that as software didn't exist in the Industrial Age, antitrust didn't apply no matter what the company's motives were or what it did to twist arms.
Well- again, I am _autistic_ and even I am not so pedantic as to be completely stupid about this issue. The fact that I could write a word processor is not the freaking point! The fact that I would have to be totally insane to expect to SELL it, is. Microsoft has consistently taken over ENTIRE SECTORS of software development and made it completely absurd for a market to exist in them. That is the problem in a nutshell. It's irrelevant HOW they did it- although they did it with armtwisting and APIs, it would still be destruction of a market even if they'd made the market similarly barren using only quality (and that totally ignores the relevant point of distribution, and that's where we begin to see armtwisting again).
The judges are hearing this 'en banc' which is not an accident or trivial thing- and it may be speculative, but I can identify one very very good reason for the appeals court to put up the APPEARANCE that they totally disrespect Jackson's findings and procedures. If I was them, I would want to know if it were TRUE. Was Jackson a loon, or is Microsoft really so far gone that they will lie to the judges, fake evidence, make no sense at all? If the appeals court defers to Jackson on anything, it is a warning sign to Microsoft, and if I were the appeals court, I would want to send NO warning signs. Let the biggest MS supporter say anything he likes to reassure the MS defense- his courtroom comments ARE NOT VERDICTS! The chance that the MS defense can be baited into replicating their embarrassing performance in front of Jackson is too important to miss- the appeals court MUST KNOW if it was a fluke, or if the defense is that contemptuous, and most importantly they must know if Microsoft will respect the court enough to comply with sanctions after a previous failure to do so. Only a position of complete contempt for the court and the verdict will justify a structural remedy, as Jackson well knew, and as the appeals court believes even more strongly- otherwise it's much simpler to just issue conduct requirements and leave it at that.
Whatever the makeup of the 'en banc' appeals court, I do not believe for a second that it is an accident that the MS defense is being invited to exactly duplicate their attitude and performance they gave Jackson. They're being baited, coaxed to throw caution to the wind and show just how arrogant they can be, reveal their true colors before a full 'en banc' court of appeals judges (I assume they can talk to each other as a jury would?). Only this can truly reveal whether they are incapable of respecting a conduct remedy- and the court MUST know that, above all else, before passing judgement on whether Jackson's conclusions of law were correct. Many people feel they were correct.
If they do a thorough patent search it makes them liable for triple damages in the event they do get sued...
Free, you say? It's news to _me_ that online content is free. From where I'm standing, I have to _pay_ for web hosting, and do so without batting an eyelash, because I have content I want to put up, and I want people to be able to see it.
Are you arguing that I am supposed to be _paid_ for having content on the internet? Gee, that's nice of you, but what planet are you from? I am eternally grateful that I no longer have to pay for the paper and printing of fliers, pay for cassette tapes and duplicate them, etc etc all to just try and get content to a curious onlooker.
If you are really upset that you're not being paid just to have content available to curious onlookers, I suggest the quick and easy solution of not having content. You should be grateful you got to show me pictures of CK your dog without having to print them up on physical media and somehow get them to me... nice dog btw...