Wrong. Majority opion is not always law. That's why we have a constitution and a supreme court. That way if lawmakers enact law going against the principles set forth by the founding fathers, the court can strike it down.
"60 million people, vs maybe a few hundred thousand people who work for the RIAA."
So you believe a mojority has a right to infringe on the rights of a minority. I'd rather live in a dictatorship that preserved my individual rights than your twisted society where the majority opinion is law. You have no right to a freedom that infringes on the freedom of another, in this case the constitutionally protected right to maintain a copyright.
Exactly. The ISPs are the only ones who have a case under the "impairs computer functioning", if they can show that they had to drastically increase the computing power and storage space of their system solely because of spam.
"Not really. IANAL, but there's a chasm between commercial speech and noncommercial speech you could drive several dump trucks through. Witness the national do-not-call list. "
My personal opinion is that treating commercial speech differently from noncommercial speech is unconstitutional. People should have the right to say whatever they want. That said, if a company lies about what their product can do, that is a breech of contract, which is a totally separate issue, which you should be able to prosecute a company for. The US has a habit lately of treating businessman as second-class citizens, and slowly eroding their rights.
No one has a right to clog your mail server with unwanted mail. The right to freedom of speech does not mean the right to a free platform for that speech. If I walk into a shopping mall and start babbling about whatever issue at the top of my voice, the owner has the right to legally kick me out. E-mail is a little trickier since your average company allows many different forms of mail to go through and doesn't mind. However, a person should be able to get a court order banning someone from emailing to his mail server, just like you can kick someone off of your property if you don't want them there.
"If SCO isn't interested in being acquired, then why are they sure acting like they are? All this posturing is pointing to wanting to be bought out to make them shut up."
Not necessarily. Maybe they just want more people to invest in SCO and drive up the stock price.
"In some respects, going after IBM first is unwise. If, in fact, SGI is a target, there would be a much greater chance of SCO winning, and getting some money. SGI doesn't have much money to give, but you start to establish some precedent....."
They're going after IBM because they have the best case against IBM, in their opinion a clear violation of contracts. It doesn't matter how big IBM is. The courts don't care. As long as SCO has the capital to hire good lawyers, they have nothing to fear from IBM.
If people don't have POTS in their households, a computer with wireless internet is probably pretty low on their list of priorities. How about a radio, to start with, and a free press to provide news that isn't sanctioned by the local dictator.
"You just made a very strong argument for the right of a free people to keep and bear arms. Imagine if everyone in these countries was sufficiently armed to protect themselves and their families. Most of the "bad apples" that those in power use to oppress everyone else would be dead pretty quickly. Innocent people would die as well of course, but then innocent people are dying in these places already."
Your theory may have worked a 2 centuries ago, but isn't valid anymore. Even if citizens own automatic weapons, a govt. bent on remaining in power will easily slaughter these people with even decades old military technology. Just look at the 200K people killed by Saddam in an uprising in Basra, for example.
"Look at your own country. (I asume USA). There _is_ food to go around, yet some goes hungry.
Distribution of wealth is the real problem."
The reason there is plenty of food to go around in the US is that there is a respect for individual freedoms here. Govt. people with weapons aren't determining who gets what based on need. Instead, people are allowed work and trade freely, allowing motivated people who want to be rich to produce an overabundance of the things others want and need. In communist countries and dictatorships, there is little incentive to do well since who you know, not what you know, is most important. If you don't know the right people, everything you earn will be taken from you except the bare minimum for survival. The result, no one works that hard. Of course, these right are being eroded in the US, as we see regulation now of even drug companies. Apparently, people don't get it when they complain that the US has the most expensive prescription drugs, but then take for granted that the US produces by far the most breakthrough drugs. The real answer is to stop selling these drugs to countries that regulate their prices. That way these laws will be abolished, and US citizens won't have to pay for the rest of the worlds prescription drug socialism.
"Making internet available to them allows them to be at least somewhat competitive on the global market."
Overthrowing dictatorships such as that in N. Korea, Iran, etc. would help a lot more than internet access in allowing these people compete in the global market. Also, they need farming technology. A 1st world farmer with proper technology can work half as hard and produce an order of magnitude more food than a 3rd world farmer.
"has the artist (or more precisely the record label) actually lost something in the same way?"
Yes, he lost his share of a dollar, that he would have gotten if the song wasn't STOLEN. Just because nothing physically was taken, doesn't mean the worth or the product as a whole has been leesened by the ability to copy without payment to the owner. To exemplify, a song that can only be downloaded though payment is worth at least $1. Taken to an extreme, if the same service illegally offered the song for $0, then that's the new worth of the product. The value of the product is reduced, and the owner suffers a loss.
"However, the fact that SCO continued to distribute after they announced that there was an alleged breach makes this a very grey area for them indeed. Once they knew there was a problem, why did they not at least take what little steps they could to prevent further distribution?"
Since they've pulled Linux ditribution before the trial has even started, I doubt there's any grey area here.
What carries it through grey and right into black for SCO is their announcement that their own customers will not be sued because they are "paying for the IP". BZZZT, Wrong answer!
There are three ways of looking at this:
SCO is now openly in breach of the GPL because they are placing restrictions on others (ie, their own customers who they are not allowing to distribute their "IP") which are not compatible with the GPL, or,
They are in fact allowing their "IP" to be distributed by their customers as required by the GPL and therefore have no case to make as regards Linux generally as they have now agreed that the code is okay to distribute, or
Their position (and I think this is where their lawyers are heading) is that the GPL is not legally enforcable. Unfortunately this means that their distribution is illegal as the GPL is the only thing that gives them permission to distribute others' copyrighted works. They can't have it both ways: they can't say the GPL is fine when it allows them to copy others but not when others copy them.
Your points are wrong because the GPL license is no longer valid if the code violates SCO's IP.
Sounds more like FSF FUD. Statements like there can't be any SCO code in GNU because we made everyone promise not to do that are just silly. That doesn't guarantee anything. Also, I doubt that SCO distributing source that violates there own trade secrets matters, as long as they weren't the ones who originally introduced the trade secrets into the source code.
"Messenger 6, in its ultimate form, will be free; iChat AV will cost $30 (but will be free with Apple's next operating-system release, Mac OS X 10.3, code-named Panther, due by year's end).".
There are a lot of people on/. who complain that corporations run the govt. with lobby money. The don't call list is a clear counterexample to this principle. In this case, millions of voters hate telemarketers, and therefore, all the lobby money in the world isn't going to keep the don't call list from appearing. In the end, all the money in the world won't win an election if voters hate your policies. Lobby money only works on issues most voters don't care about, like DRM, DMCA, copyright extensions, etc. If you want laws changed, don't complain that you can't compete against corporate money. Instead, try to get a large number of people outraged at the law.
The phone system isn't really your property however. It's a service you use. It's really the property of AT&T, or whomever, and they should have the right to stipulate in contracts how the phone system is used. As a user, you have the right to accept or refuse the conditions of the service. That's how things would work in a libertarian society anyway. Luckily in this society, there would be multiple phone carriers and you could probably find one that banned phone spam, although it might cost a little more.
Yes. They reverse engineered the MS BIOS and are threatening to give away a derivative work based on what they found. This is a copyright violation since they stole their BIOS code. Apple put a PowerPC company out of business in the mid 90's over a similar issue by refusing to release a modified BIOS to boot MacOS on their PowerPC chip. It would have been illegal for the PPC company to make the new BIOS anyway (they knew how), and it's illegal for these hackers to release a derivative work of the MS XBox BIOS.
Do you really believe these hackers didn't look at the original MS BIOS code when they came up with their Liinux hack? MS's trade secret's have alreay been stolen. And now they're using them to blackmail MS.
Back when a company called Exponential was making bipolar PowerPC chips, Apple decided not to use them. The clone makers wanted to use them. Exponential reverse engineered the BIOS to boot MacOS on their chip. Apple refused to allow the BIOS mods on competing motherboards. The cone makers couldn't sell Macs with the bipolar PowerPC and Exponential went out of business. Basically, if they're reflshing the BIOS, they've probably violated MS's copyright by creating a derivative work. I doubt they figured out how the box works without looking at the MS BIOS code.
"I'm not particularly pleased that the US government now has a growing database tying email addresses to phone numbers."
Yes, also I heard there was this large book that is circulated in every community that links a persons NAME to a PHYSICAL ADDRESS and a PHONE NUMBER. Not only the govt., but the police and ordinary citizens have access to this info. The seem to call the thing a phone book.
Re:Orwell's vision was true!
on
Gates and Security
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"You hear News from the press but really it's the 'what they want you to hear' kind of news."
The fallacy in your argument is that you fail to define "they". In 1984 the govt. controlled the press, and even rewrote history. In the 1st world, the press is independent of the govt., and reports news it thinks people are interested in. If you don't like the news being reported, you even have the option of starting your own news agency. What do you propose? Force people to read news that YOU find interesting?
Re:Orwell's vision was true!
on
Gates and Security
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"That said, many people (Myself included) would say that what we see now from our own, non-Communist Governments approximates pretty closely to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century communist states, and uses a few tricks that are used by INGSOC & Big Brother throughout 1984."
I disagree. A govt. that has as its principle freedom of an individual, including free press, cannot turn into a 1984 state. This is because that type of state needs to control information. This is how they rewrite history, through information control. In a demcracy with a free press, however, leaders don't have the ability to make up facts to make their reign look better than it really is. The best example of a 1984-style regeme is that of N. Korea. Not a cooincidence that this is also a Communist country. Communism places the collective above the individual, and therefore, has no problem abusing individuals and trampling over their rights in order to improve the collective. Of course the collective is most improved when the current leadership remains in power and has more wealth and privilege. It's only natural.
Slashdot Mirror
"...it does."
Wrong. Majority opion is not always law. That's why we have a constitution and a supreme court. That way if lawmakers enact law going against the principles set forth by the founding fathers, the court can strike it down.
"60 million people, vs maybe a few hundred thousand people who work for the RIAA."
So you believe a mojority has a right to infringe on the rights of a minority. I'd rather live in a dictatorship that preserved my individual rights than your twisted society where the majority opinion is law. You have no right to a freedom that infringes on the freedom of another, in this case the constitutionally protected right to maintain a copyright.
No, 60 million people should pay fines for violating RIAA member's copyright.
Exactly. The ISPs are the only ones who have a case under the "impairs computer functioning", if they can show that they had to drastically increase the computing power and storage space of their system solely because of spam.
"Not really. IANAL, but there's a chasm between commercial speech and noncommercial speech you could drive several dump trucks through. Witness the national do-not-call list. "
My personal opinion is that treating commercial speech differently from noncommercial speech is unconstitutional. People should have the right to say whatever they want. That said, if a company lies about what their product can do, that is a breech of contract, which is a totally separate issue, which you should be able to prosecute a company for. The US has a habit lately of treating businessman as second-class citizens, and slowly eroding their rights.
No one has a right to clog your mail server with unwanted mail. The right to freedom of speech does not mean the right to a free platform for that speech. If I walk into a shopping mall and start babbling about whatever issue at the top of my voice, the owner has the right to legally kick me out. E-mail is a little trickier since your average company allows many different forms of mail to go through and doesn't mind. However, a person should be able to get a court order banning someone from emailing to his mail server, just like you can kick someone off of your property if you don't want them there.
How about voting for the average /.er for minister of information.
/.er:There's no UNIX code in Linux. I have no information to support this assertion, but I'll say it again. There is no UNIX code in Linux.
average
"If SCO isn't interested in being acquired, then why are they sure acting like they are? All this posturing is pointing to wanting to be bought out to make them shut up."
Not necessarily. Maybe they just want more people to invest in SCO and drive up the stock price.
"In some respects, going after IBM first is unwise. If, in fact, SGI is a target, there would be a much greater chance of SCO winning, and getting some money. SGI doesn't have much money to give, but you start to establish some precedent....."
They're going after IBM because they have the best case against IBM, in their opinion a clear violation of contracts. It doesn't matter how big IBM is. The courts don't care. As long as SCO has the capital to hire good lawyers, they have nothing to fear from IBM.
If people don't have POTS in their households, a computer with wireless internet is probably pretty low on their list of priorities. How about a radio, to start with, and a free press to provide news that isn't sanctioned by the local dictator.
"You just made a very strong argument for the right of a free people to keep and bear arms. Imagine if everyone in these countries was sufficiently armed to protect themselves and their families. Most of the "bad apples" that those in power use to oppress everyone else would be dead pretty quickly. Innocent people would die as well of course, but then innocent people are dying in these places already."
Your theory may have worked a 2 centuries ago, but isn't valid anymore. Even if citizens own automatic weapons, a govt. bent on remaining in power will easily slaughter these people with even decades old military technology. Just look at the 200K people killed by Saddam in an uprising in Basra, for example.
"Look at your own country. (I asume USA). There _is_ food to go around, yet some goes hungry. Distribution of wealth is the real problem."
The reason there is plenty of food to go around in the US is that there is a respect for individual freedoms here. Govt. people with weapons aren't determining who gets what based on need. Instead, people are allowed work and trade freely, allowing motivated people who want to be rich to produce an overabundance of the things others want and need. In communist countries and dictatorships, there is little incentive to do well since who you know, not what you know, is most important. If you don't know the right people, everything you earn will be taken from you except the bare minimum for survival. The result, no one works that hard. Of course, these right are being eroded in the US, as we see regulation now of even drug companies. Apparently, people don't get it when they complain that the US has the most expensive prescription drugs, but then take for granted that the US produces by far the most breakthrough drugs. The real answer is to stop selling these drugs to countries that regulate their prices. That way these laws will be abolished, and US citizens won't have to pay for the rest of the worlds prescription drug socialism.
"Making internet available to them allows them to be at least somewhat competitive on the global market."
Overthrowing dictatorships such as that in N. Korea, Iran, etc. would help a lot more than internet access in allowing these people compete in the global market. Also, they need farming technology. A 1st world farmer with proper technology can work half as hard and produce an order of magnitude more food than a 3rd world farmer.
"has the artist (or more precisely the record label) actually lost something in the same way?"
Yes, he lost his share of a dollar, that he would have gotten if the song wasn't STOLEN. Just because nothing physically was taken, doesn't mean the worth or the product as a whole has been leesened by the ability to copy without payment to the owner. To exemplify, a song that can only be downloaded though payment is worth at least $1. Taken to an extreme, if the same service illegally offered the song for $0, then that's the new worth of the product. The value of the product is reduced, and the owner suffers a loss.
"However, the fact that SCO continued to distribute after they announced that there was an alleged breach makes this a very grey area for them indeed. Once they knew there was a problem, why did they not at least take what little steps they could to prevent further distribution?"
Since they've pulled Linux ditribution before the trial has even started, I doubt there's any grey area here.
What carries it through grey and right into black for SCO is their announcement that their own customers will not be sued because they are "paying for the IP". BZZZT, Wrong answer! There are three ways of looking at this: SCO is now openly in breach of the GPL because they are placing restrictions on others (ie, their own customers who they are not allowing to distribute their "IP") which are not compatible with the GPL, or, They are in fact allowing their "IP" to be distributed by their customers as required by the GPL and therefore have no case to make as regards Linux generally as they have now agreed that the code is okay to distribute, or Their position (and I think this is where their lawyers are heading) is that the GPL is not legally enforcable. Unfortunately this means that their distribution is illegal as the GPL is the only thing that gives them permission to distribute others' copyrighted works. They can't have it both ways: they can't say the GPL is fine when it allows them to copy others but not when others copy them.
Your points are wrong because the GPL license is no longer valid if the code violates SCO's IP.
Sounds more like FSF FUD. Statements like there can't be any SCO code in GNU because we made everyone promise not to do that are just silly. That doesn't guarantee anything. Also, I doubt that SCO distributing source that violates there own trade secrets matters, as long as they weren't the ones who originally introduced the trade secrets into the source code.
"Messenger 6, in its ultimate form, will be free; iChat AV will cost $30 (but will be free with Apple's next operating-system release, Mac OS X 10.3, code-named Panther, due by year's end).".
There are a lot of people on /. who complain that corporations run the govt. with lobby money. The don't call list is a clear counterexample to this principle. In this case, millions of voters hate telemarketers, and therefore, all the lobby money in the world isn't going to keep the don't call list from appearing. In the end, all the money in the world won't win an election if voters hate your policies. Lobby money only works on issues most voters don't care about, like DRM, DMCA, copyright extensions, etc. If you want laws changed, don't complain that you can't compete against corporate money. Instead, try to get a large number of people outraged at the law.
The phone system isn't really your property however. It's a service you use. It's really the property of AT&T, or whomever, and they should have the right to stipulate in contracts how the phone system is used. As a user, you have the right to accept or refuse the conditions of the service. That's how things would work in a libertarian society anyway. Luckily in this society, there would be multiple phone carriers and you could probably find one that banned phone spam, although it might cost a little more.
"Err, did they do anything actually illegal?"
Yes. They reverse engineered the MS BIOS and are threatening to give away a derivative work based on what they found. This is a copyright violation since they stole their BIOS code. Apple put a PowerPC company out of business in the mid 90's over a similar issue by refusing to release a modified BIOS to boot MacOS on their PowerPC chip. It would have been illegal for the PPC company to make the new BIOS anyway (they knew how), and it's illegal for these hackers to release a derivative work of the MS XBox BIOS.
Do you really believe these hackers didn't look at the original MS BIOS code when they came up with their Liinux hack? MS's trade secret's have alreay been stolen. And now they're using them to blackmail MS.
Back when a company called Exponential was making bipolar PowerPC chips, Apple decided not to use them. The clone makers wanted to use them. Exponential reverse engineered the BIOS to boot MacOS on their chip. Apple refused to allow the BIOS mods on competing motherboards. The cone makers couldn't sell Macs with the bipolar PowerPC and Exponential went out of business. Basically, if they're reflshing the BIOS, they've probably violated MS's copyright by creating a derivative work. I doubt they figured out how the box works without looking at the MS BIOS code.
"I'm not particularly pleased that the US government now has a growing database tying email addresses to phone numbers."
Yes, also I heard there was this large book that is circulated in every community that links a persons NAME to a PHYSICAL ADDRESS and a PHONE NUMBER. Not only the govt., but the police and ordinary citizens have access to this info. The seem to call the thing a phone book.
"You hear News from the press but really it's the 'what they want you to hear' kind of news."
The fallacy in your argument is that you fail to define "they". In 1984 the govt. controlled the press, and even rewrote history. In the 1st world, the press is independent of the govt., and reports news it thinks people are interested in. If you don't like the news being reported, you even have the option of starting your own news agency. What do you propose? Force people to read news that YOU find interesting?
"That said, many people (Myself included) would say that what we see now from our own, non-Communist Governments approximates pretty closely to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century communist states, and uses a few tricks that are used by INGSOC & Big Brother throughout 1984."
I disagree. A govt. that has as its principle freedom of an individual, including free press, cannot turn into a 1984 state. This is because that type of state needs to control information. This is how they rewrite history, through information control. In a demcracy with a free press, however, leaders don't have the ability to make up facts to make their reign look better than it really is. The best example of a 1984-style regeme is that of N. Korea. Not a cooincidence that this is also a Communist country. Communism places the collective above the individual, and therefore, has no problem abusing individuals and trampling over their rights in order to improve the collective. Of course the collective is most improved when the current leadership remains in power and has more wealth and privilege. It's only natural.