A critical difference between corporations and the military or any federal organization is that you cannot overcome these problems by simply appointing super great leaders, because those leaders will still be bound by the same federal laws. The problems really do start and end with Congress and that is what the General was getting at when he talked about contractors knowing how to manipulate the procurement system. Federal and Military employees are extremely limited in how they can manage a contract or bid. A contractor that knows how to manipulate the system knows that they can easily lock the Federal Gov into proprietary platforms and that there is not a whole lot that the government can do to get out of it until Congress changes procurement laws.
"You are giving dropbox the rights to do whatever they want to with your content, according to this. "
Let's qualify this. They can do what they want in order to deliver the advertised Service. They can't just up and decide to sell your stuff, for example, as that is not a Service they sell.
Nope, your are granting them rights, not on your content, but on the content that you are uploading, potentially content to which you may not be the copyright holder and therefore have no right to grant them even a limited license on the the content unless you are the original author and copyright holder.
It sounds like you have to be in a position to grant a Dropbox rights in the first place. If you are not the original author, that is a bit of a problem. This clause is a BIG problem, but not just for the reasons pointed out in the summary. This means that you cannot use dropbox to transfer your legally purchased music, movies, books, or other content between devices because you do not have the right to grant Dropbox the rights that they are asking for in most cases.
The summary missed the true problem which is that this TOS requires that the user hold copyright or right to grant a license on the material in question. Which means you can only put up original content, public domain, etc... Legally purchased MP3s cannot be uploaded, GPL content cannot be uploaded (as there terms are not GPL compatible). It is a slippery slope and poorly thought out move by dropbox's lawyers. By opening door to the idea that users need to control certain copyright terms in order to use cloud based storage, you essentially make it useless from a standpoint of using the service legally and you will increase pressure from **AA to force cloud based storage managers to police and filter content.
Personally, I don't encourage piracy, but the telephone company also has no business sticking their nose into their customers business. If it is okay for them to do this, then it will just be expanded to rummaging through their customers web traffic, intercepting ads and replacing them with their own and endless other violations of their customers privacy and dignity. People should take to actions, and working through congress is not one of them because Congress is a bunch of corrupt and worthless turds.
1. Pirate as much crap over neighbors wireless connections as you can. Even if you just delete the stuff. Make sure as many customers as possible get their internet limited so that AT&T has a lot of POed customers.
2. Start realizing that these companies have bribed governments into giving them royalty free access to other peoples property, and as a result, most of their valued infrastructure is on other peoples property and it is extremely vulnerable to sabotage.
True, the domains of good and evil are subjective, but through the looking glass of Western and US values I think we can conclusively say that Wikileaks' mission is "good". The very first amendment to the US Constitution is designed to ensure that people can be informed of the actions of their government. There is a reason that it was the first.
Not entirely true, Wikileaks scope of work goes far beyond the war. Most of their initial leaks were targeted against organized crime and regimes that most of us would consider to be the bad guys.
The GPL is not a shrinkwrapped license or anything like a shrinkwrapped license. I understand your confusion because the very existence of shrinkwrapped licenses have created a great deal of confusion among many people including most lawyers and judges. The very first confusion is the impression that shrinkwrapped licenses have anything to do with copyright. They in fact have nothing to do with copyright. They are not copyright licenses, but are usage licenses (contracts), hence the common name as End-User Licensing Agreement. Many EULAs do not even mention copyright and that is because copyright law already restricts the ability of the user to copy and distribute the media, making an additional contract, with regards to copyright, unnecessary. An EULA is a contract intended to restrict usage rights, which is why so many people are against them being shrinkwrapped, because unlike copyright, usage-rights are not implicitly restricted by law
The GPL is purely a copyright license. You do not have to agree to it if you are merely using the software because it does not attempt to restrict your usage rights like an EULA. What the GPL give yous is an actual license to copy and distribute the work under certain conditions. A rights guarantee which is almost non-existent in the world of single user closed source software. In absence of the GPL, you would be restricted by copyright law which would not allow you to copy and distribute the media at all.
Sounds good to me... Hey, when do I get my royalty check to compensate me for the right of way that I provide to these companies so that they can deliver service to my neighbors?
Oh, I see, it is wrong for us to regulate their billion dollar network, but it is okay for the the government to secure them trillions of dollars worth of property from people like me.
I would disagree and say that the underlying architecture that drives the designer to an API requires some creativity and critical thinking, but not the API themselves. I immediately think of three equivalent hardware device that I recently had to work with that all had seperate driver APIs. Since the functionality of the cards were the same in order to confrom to a standard, the APIs had to provide access the same types of functions and that drove them to have APIs that were practically identical except for the actual function names and parameter names.
and when you purchase media like a CD, you still do not have a copyright license (you cannot copy and distribute) and are bound only by copyright law. When you want additional rights, like the right to distribute, then you must attain a license (which is the role of a license such as the GPL).
I don't think that your argument is a strawman (nor was the grandparent post). Unfortunately your post is not in agreement with copyright rulings that have already said that sweat-of-the-brow labor and the amount of capital investment is not a factor in determining if something is copyrightable.
No, What it means is that anybody selling anything has the right to shaft you. Shrink-wrapped licenses have absolutely nothing to do with copyright. They may contain verbage related to copyright or any other specific right. They are quite simply a contract. They could just as easily be applied to a pack of gum. Unfortunately, most judges apparently lack the simple intellect to understand the not so subtle difference between an end-user license and a copyright agreement.
In the article, it explicitly states that she does not run a business
This is why there's rules about what is and isn't a business, and they have very little to do with the protestations of the person running the business/non-business.
Exactly, that is why there are rules. But in this case, the rules do not appear to exist. If Philadelphia has a law that says any who sells something is running a business, then I will admit that you are right. But I seriously doubt that this is the case, and if it is the case, then they probably have a lot of cracking down to do and there is no reason that they should single out bloggers.
And your comment about Walmart makes no sense. Walmart does not have a single owner, and even if it was privately owned by a single owner, It is always beneficial to be a business. Why would any business want to pay higher taxes? The default (in any city or state that I have heard of) is that you are not a private business until you decide that you want to be.
Cracking down is completely unnecessary. The fact is, a home based business serves as an excellent tax shelter, and the IRS does not want people declaring hobbies like this as a business because they will lose out on tax revenue. If I could start a personal blog and be allowed to declare it as a business on my taxes, then I would start one tomorrow.
You should only need a business license if you are a business. It is perfectly legal to declare this small amount of income as personal income and pay normal taxes on it. In fact, the IRS would prefer it that way and may not even allow you to declare this as a business if you tried. The cities employees causing this problem are clearly ignorant of the applicable laws.
In the article, it explicitly states that she does not run a business, which would make blogging a hobby at which she makes a small amount of income. As long as she declares this as part of her personal income, then this is perfectly legal. The business privelige license is for businesses (according to the cities' own website), so it makes no sense that she would need to purchase this license, or pay taxes as if she were running a business.
To make matters more difficult, if she were to attempt to declare this as a business, the IRS would expect her to demonstrate that she intends to turn this into a profitable endeavor, because running a home based business offers tremendous tax benefits and they try to crack down on the number of people who attempt to declare their hobby as a business.
In summation, It looks like the some of the City of Philadelphia employees do not understand their own laws, or tax law, on a most basic and simplistic level.
I am in agreement with what you said, but the contentious point is what you did not discuss...It is okay to charge higher prices for better service or to limit service based on overall network capacity. Network Neutrality is not in opposition to this. Network Neutrality is specifically concerned with equal access among applications and services over the internet. If traffic is unusually heavy and bandwidth has to be downgraded, then that is okay as long as it is downgraded equally for all internet data regardless of source, destination, or nature.
I do not think that it is fair for them to say "sorry, we cannot offer you the service that you paid for, our network is far too obselete to actually offer the service that we are advertising and have agreed to provide." Allowing them to kick off the heavy traffic users would provide them an incentive not to upgrade the networks and compete with other carriers. Instead of competing by pushing out better networks, carriers would start competing for the customers who pay for the high end data packages but do not actually use it much. They would show the heavy users the door. Networks are not improved, therefore customers don't buy new phones, small businesses do not create new apps and services, fewer jobs are created, and life is shittier for everybody.
The best compromise is to simply negotiate contracts with your customers stating that they are limited to X capacity of download at Y speed, after which they are downgraded to Y' speed? This is equally effective and not in conflict with net neutrality. Limiting specific apps or protocols gets you into that area that we are trying to avoid where the networks can manipulate the market of the Internet... eg, wireless networks would intentionally downgrade Skype service because it is a competing product.
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A critical difference between corporations and the military or any federal organization is that you cannot overcome these problems by simply appointing super great leaders, because those leaders will still be bound by the same federal laws. The problems really do start and end with Congress and that is what the General was getting at when he talked about contractors knowing how to manipulate the procurement system. Federal and Military employees are extremely limited in how they can manage a contract or bid. A contractor that knows how to manipulate the system knows that they can easily lock the Federal Gov into proprietary platforms and that there is not a whole lot that the government can do to get out of it until Congress changes procurement laws.
"You are giving dropbox the rights to do whatever they want to with your content, according to this. "
Let's qualify this. They can do what they want in order to deliver the advertised Service. They can't just up and decide to sell your stuff, for example, as that is not a Service they sell.
Nope, your are granting them rights, not on your content, but on the content that you are uploading, potentially content to which you may not be the copyright holder and therefore have no right to grant them even a limited license on the the content unless you are the original author and copyright holder.
It sounds like you have to be in a position to grant a Dropbox rights in the first place. If you are not the original author, that is a bit of a problem. This clause is a BIG problem, but not just for the reasons pointed out in the summary. This means that you cannot use dropbox to transfer your legally purchased music, movies, books, or other content between devices because you do not have the right to grant Dropbox the rights that they are asking for in most cases.
The summary missed the true problem which is that this TOS requires that the user hold copyright or right to grant a license on the material in question. Which means you can only put up original content, public domain, etc... Legally purchased MP3s cannot be uploaded, GPL content cannot be uploaded (as there terms are not GPL compatible). It is a slippery slope and poorly thought out move by dropbox's lawyers. By opening door to the idea that users need to control certain copyright terms in order to use cloud based storage, you essentially make it useless from a standpoint of using the service legally and you will increase pressure from **AA to force cloud based storage managers to police and filter content.
1. Pirate as much crap over neighbors wireless connections as you can. Even if you just delete the stuff. Make sure as many customers as possible get their internet limited so that AT&T has a lot of POed customers.
2. Start realizing that these companies have bribed governments into giving them royalty free access to other peoples property, and as a result, most of their valued infrastructure is on other peoples property and it is extremely vulnerable to sabotage.
Whats the latest threat from imagination land?
True, the domains of good and evil are subjective, but through the looking glass of Western and US values I think we can conclusively say that Wikileaks' mission is "good". The very first amendment to the US Constitution is designed to ensure that people can be informed of the actions of their government. There is a reason that it was the first.
Winning side of a war? You have a lot to learn about war.
Your personal view of Julian Assange has nothing to do with whether Wikileaks' mission is for the good or bad of society.
Not entirely true, Wikileaks scope of work goes far beyond the war. Most of their initial leaks were targeted against organized crime and regimes that most of us would consider to be the bad guys.
The GPL is not a shrinkwrapped license or anything like a shrinkwrapped license. I understand your confusion because the very existence of shrinkwrapped licenses have created a great deal of confusion among many people including most lawyers and judges. The very first confusion is the impression that shrinkwrapped licenses have anything to do with copyright. They in fact have nothing to do with copyright. They are not copyright licenses, but are usage licenses (contracts), hence the common name as End-User Licensing Agreement. Many EULAs do not even mention copyright and that is because copyright law already restricts the ability of the user to copy and distribute the media, making an additional contract, with regards to copyright, unnecessary. An EULA is a contract intended to restrict usage rights, which is why so many people are against them being shrinkwrapped, because unlike copyright, usage-rights are not implicitly restricted by law
The GPL is purely a copyright license. You do not have to agree to it if you are merely using the software because it does not attempt to restrict your usage rights like an EULA. What the GPL give yous is an actual license to copy and distribute the work under certain conditions. A rights guarantee which is almost non-existent in the world of single user closed source software. In absence of the GPL, you would be restricted by copyright law which would not allow you to copy and distribute the media at all.
Oh, I see, it is wrong for us to regulate their billion dollar network, but it is okay for the the government to secure them trillions of dollars worth of property from people like me.
I would disagree and say that the underlying architecture that drives the designer to an API requires some creativity and critical thinking, but not the API themselves. I immediately think of three equivalent hardware device that I recently had to work with that all had seperate driver APIs. Since the functionality of the cards were the same in order to confrom to a standard, the APIs had to provide access the same types of functions and that drove them to have APIs that were practically identical except for the actual function names and parameter names.
and when you purchase media like a CD, you still do not have a copyright license (you cannot copy and distribute) and are bound only by copyright law. When you want additional rights, like the right to distribute, then you must attain a license (which is the role of a license such as the GPL).
I don't think that your argument is a strawman (nor was the grandparent post). Unfortunately your post is not in agreement with copyright rulings that have already said that sweat-of-the-brow labor and the amount of capital investment is not a factor in determining if something is copyrightable.
No, What it means is that anybody selling anything has the right to shaft you. Shrink-wrapped licenses have absolutely nothing to do with copyright. They may contain verbage related to copyright or any other specific right. They are quite simply a contract. They could just as easily be applied to a pack of gum. Unfortunately, most judges apparently lack the simple intellect to understand the not so subtle difference between an end-user license and a copyright agreement.
I checked, and it looks like you are completely right. But for the record... That law is insane.
This is why there's rules about what is and isn't a business, and they have very little to do with the protestations of the person running the business/non-business.
Exactly, that is why there are rules. But in this case, the rules do not appear to exist. If Philadelphia has a law that says any who sells something is running a business, then I will admit that you are right. But I seriously doubt that this is the case, and if it is the case, then they probably have a lot of cracking down to do and there is no reason that they should single out bloggers.
And your comment about Walmart makes no sense. Walmart does not have a single owner, and even if it was privately owned by a single owner, It is always beneficial to be a business. Why would any business want to pay higher taxes? The default (in any city or state that I have heard of) is that you are not a private business until you decide that you want to be.
Because the IRS says so.
Cracking down is completely unnecessary. The fact is, a home based business serves as an excellent tax shelter, and the IRS does not want people declaring hobbies like this as a business because they will lose out on tax revenue. If I could start a personal blog and be allowed to declare it as a business on my taxes, then I would start one tomorrow.
You should only need a business license if you are a business. It is perfectly legal to declare this small amount of income as personal income and pay normal taxes on it. In fact, the IRS would prefer it that way and may not even allow you to declare this as a business if you tried. The cities employees causing this problem are clearly ignorant of the applicable laws.
To make matters more difficult, if she were to attempt to declare this as a business, the IRS would expect her to demonstrate that she intends to turn this into a profitable endeavor, because running a home based business offers tremendous tax benefits and they try to crack down on the number of people who attempt to declare their hobby as a business.
In summation, It looks like the some of the City of Philadelphia employees do not understand their own laws, or tax law, on a most basic and simplistic level.
I am in agreement with what you said, but the contentious point is what you did not discuss...It is okay to charge higher prices for better service or to limit service based on overall network capacity. Network Neutrality is not in opposition to this. Network Neutrality is specifically concerned with equal access among applications and services over the internet. If traffic is unusually heavy and bandwidth has to be downgraded, then that is okay as long as it is downgraded equally for all internet data regardless of source, destination, or nature.
The best compromise is to simply negotiate contracts with your customers stating that they are limited to X capacity of download at Y speed, after which they are downgraded to Y' speed? This is equally effective and not in conflict with net neutrality. Limiting specific apps or protocols gets you into that area that we are trying to avoid where the networks can manipulate the market of the Internet... eg, wireless networks would intentionally downgrade Skype service because it is a competing product.
You have made a great set of observations and I wish that KDE mgmt would give this a read.