'The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers...'
- Princess Leah
And, no, just because it's a direct quote doesn't mean it's a copyright violation. For that I would have had to include substantially the entire script in it's exact sequence, minimum. That's why it seems to me that even if SCO -- using Microsoft's checkbook to do it -- proves a few snippets found their way into a larger work, proves exactly nothing and their suit should lawfully fail (as we all know intuitively it should). Microsoft's partial funding of the SCO suit gives this otherwise nuisance suit an aire of respectability, simply because of all the well-heeled stakeholders and economic ramifications for the US, which is why this tragicomedy persists. Microsoft can take people -- and maybe even some small projects -- down with it, but down it goes nonetheless.
As for Microsoft's potential regarding software patents, so what? Let 'em huff and puff. First of all, they would have to prove true novelty, and proof of inventorship and all that. Even with their massive resources, they're sitting ducks for proving their case. How many bazillion lines of code would have to be surrendered and at what cost from their own archives to prove that an idea's origin was specifically as they stated? And how about all the lines of code written in universities and high schools alike? Surely elements of publicly disclosures could be found in some paper written somewhere...a strategy used recently by Microsoft itself, if memory serves... And who would care anyway? How hard is it to write around a software patent? And they would have to disclose a great many things that they'd rather not, which is probably why this isn't a very big problem at the moment. I believe that patents protect only commercialization of claimed innovations, and not against the kinds of uses that would present true threat to their revenue. Such discussions have no doubt been undertaken within the hallowed, bloodstained halls of the Mighty Microsoft, but no doubt die at the feet of the Poor Risk-Reward God.
And, moreover, a complete rewrite of Linux to avoid copyright issues? Geezleweeze, just run the source through a synonym-substitution process and keep track of the changes, then rewrite the compiler to compile against the changes. Then run documentation files to do the same synonym substitution. Sure, a lot of text file processing, but way better than the alternative. And it stops a copyright suit dead in its tracks.
All currently successful business models -- Microsoft's especially -- are anachronisms. They represent how things were, not how they are which is why they get fundamentally weaker as time goes on.
As for Phoenix, how hard is it to write a BIOS given all the true talent out there? It's probably the next truly fundamentally important open-source initiative to get done, IMHO...
I think that it is rather that "the right hand knows exactly what the left is doing."
Follow the money: The big money and their lackey lawyers go to court to keep from paying original copyright holders based on media type, but consistently sue buyers of their copyright permission for doing the same when the same legal principle is at stake. All this as they try -- and sometimes succeed -- to embed an illegal private-company tax on blank media to get "royalties" on everything that is put on all every type of media. I can't wait for the levy on copy paper...
This ruling seems to reaffirm "fair use". IMHO it is a mistake to encourage people to specify the media in their license agreements...rather it should be based on sales volume of the content, regardless of the specific medium.
It is of no particular advantage to anyone that all groups want it all ways. It seems that the courts have consistently said (in most countries) that purchasers of content have the right to "fair-use" copying and preserving of that content. It also proves that "blank media taxes" violate this principle. These laws presume that all content is licensed for a particular medium (which in this case Disney says "No, it is not medium-dependent"), when clearly my own creative works are not owing a royalty to anyone.
Somehow I suspect that the RIAA and MPAA will continue to use financial terrorism to charge for the same content over and over in spite of "fair use" but only pay out based on "fair use". A simple case of "Heads: they win, Tails: we lose."
now all they need to do is add some security holes, change the command line params to 'slash' instead of 'dash' rename all the basic commands to something else so as to retain copyright...
Uhh...yes I did. Here's the relevent excerpt for my comment:
"An international group of independent researchers attending the Word Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has revealed important technical and legal flaws, relating to data protection and privacy, in the security system used to control access to the UN Summit. The system not only fails to guarantee the promised high levels of security but also introduces the very real possibility of constant surveillance of the representatives of the civil society." (Italics added.)
The so-called "security system" indeed used advanced technology, not for security but for surveillance of the innocent, violating the basic human right to presumption of innoncence and 'the right to be left alone'. AS a security system it was useless, but then again it was obviously not meant to be one. Homeland Security. Patriot Act. Etc.
that only an utter fool would throw away civil liberties for the [impossible] promise of enhanced "security" via technology. While it is clear this monitoring and surveillance is useful in harrassing the innocent citizenry just trying to get through their pressure-filled day, there is zero proof it does anything more. More anxiety, less actual security, higher taxes, more days in court, more fines. Perfect.
The inexperienced put faith in every word, the shrewd look to history as prologue.
Re:Sad state of affairs...
on
Stealth Inflation
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's rather simple...the only way to manage the costs for any goods and services is to pay for it yourself. If you outsource payment to a shared-risk fund of any kind, you will introduce valueless expenses and lose control of the costs.
Insurance companies are essential to US fiscal policy. They keep money in the markets that would otherwise not be there, and in payment, the companies make healthy profits. When they lose money in the markets, your premiums rise, since they establish premiums against net profit, whcih is calculated against all expenses and losses and gains.
It seems that when gains are reaped from portfolio investments the primary costs rise (e.g. medical costs) to absorb the gains without affecting revenue, and there is little squawking from anyone since premiums don't rise, net company revenue does not fall and the payees get richer. If primary cost side did not rise then company revenue from premiums would have to fall (a zero-sum effect), and the underlying business would look flat, and equity share prices would fall.
Thus, when the insurance company's market losses accelerate, coverages get cut (the payees get less) and premiums rise, to mostly pay for the secondary (market) losses, and everybody then squawks (like now).
Shared risk pools have given way to veiled communism, which must fail; pure 'tragedy of the commons.'
Really? Name 5 of these people who have been '"bankrupted, blacklisted, jailed, and left with a life not worth living"'. Since you clearly hear about it so often, then I expect you to prove it.
You first, though: Name five Chinese people that have been shot by a tank for stealing CD's. And if you think that the US doesn't deploy troops against "subversives", think "Kent State."
how about starting with the list of university students that became RIAA targets? What happened to these people is disgusting. What these people were forced to admit and agree to was all about the potential threats of financial and personal ruin by teams of corporate lawyers with unlimited budgets.
If it were not a true and real possibility, these would have never agreed to the extensive admissions of guit to escape a costly court case to exhonerate themselves, or pay the few hundred dollars in "damages" to the record companies (remember their royalties are a fraction of the sticker price) for thier bootleg Wesley Willis tunes. That is financial terrorism, it ois America's vested money-for-no-sustaining-value interests.
As for the various political "detainees" held under "military rules," I cannot make a distinction between this behavior and any other totalitarian regime's behavior when it feels "threatened." This is not just about Guantanamo either. There was a very interesting case of a female Chinese national who had entered the US via Portland OR. Despite all the evidence to the contrary (and there was much) the detained her for some number of days (like 4 or 5, if memory serves) and was strip-searched. Twice. Guess they needed to go back and double-check those private areas. And the Chinese Consulate was never notifed, which is a strict no-no. Her husband, who made it through the careful border guard post at the airport, had no idea what happened to his wife for days. And that's just one case I am personally aware of (the schmuck head of Oregon immigration was known to me personally...he got "reassigned" over this case a few others). Of course her husband was panicked, he had no idea what happened to his [completely innocent] wife.
I don't see any U.S. Army troops and tanks on the streets killing people who steal CD's. Do you?
No, you don't see that. What you do see is people getting bankrupted, blacklisted, jailed, and left with a life not worth living. In some cases, if you violate the Patriot Act, run afoul of Homeland Security, or have your profile flagged as "suspicious" (US Gov Matrix has been resurrected), your life is turned into a huge steaming brown mass. Having your name ruined and being consigned to a life of poverty in the US is worse than death in many ways. It's torture in every sense of the word, especially if it all begins when your human rights to "fair use" of creative works for personal enlightenment and enjoyment get trumped by legislation that's basically rooted in fiscal policy. DMCA is censorship for financial reasons, whereas the Patriot Act is sensorship on an political-ideological basis.
And occasionally somebody's executed (Patriot Act here, not DMCA). I think the last time I looked, Amnesty International reported that on 7% were truly and completely innocent. I'm not sure at what percentage of innocents executed it becomes State-sanctioned murder to "encourage" others to stay to the rules without question, but I'm sure there's a number when it does... They say that China is bad because it executes innocent people, well, wake up, they kill innocent people in America too, all the time. And of course there are the locked-up non-citizens in Guantanamo. Left there to rot because they [presumably] have a different point of view than American policy makers. Think "re-education camp" here.
I see these as slight variations on a theme. All governments do these things to the citizenry, and try to say it's necessary to keep peace and order. But it never is, really, the true agenda is to create an environment where wealth can be ammased by a few at the expense of the many. True, some newly established post-revolutionhary governments have given momentary respite (like the US for its first 80 years or so of existence, and France too, at about the same time and duration). It's not that I don't like America -- it's the same as every other government on Earth before it -- I am not a fan of any of them. Man dominates man to his injury, a wise man once wrote about 3,000 years ago. This will always be true.
Perhaps the most deeply unsettling phrase I've ever heard is "America -- love it or leave it." It is the chant of the profoundly ignorant.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Clearly, not many posting to this have been through the patent process. It is a difficult, time consuming, financially draining process -- particularly for indivual inventors where true innovation comes from. The average hours spent on patents is so misleading that only fools would latch on to it as a significant issue. It's like the FTC saying that the average computer program takes 25 hours to write.
Big companies like Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, get patents pushed through without a question. Ordinary inventors get pulled through knotholes. It's simple risk management and fiscal policy. Trying to fix unfair application of sensible rules by rewriting the rules to make patents harder to enforce is about as naive as it gets.
The problem with loosening the rules or turning them on the inventor is that once you tell someone "how" to do something, it becomes obvious. It's like telling Clapton that he cannot have copyright to "Layla" the words have been used a million times before and the musical arrangement was obvious, everybody can hum a tune like that.
This thread to me suggests a wholesale ignorance of patents and the patent process and why you patent something at all.
Do you actually think that just because patents go away you won't have powerful and rich people and groups using the "courts" to steal from the true innovators and block less influential and poorer competitors? If so you have no understanding of history or law...too sad...
Of course, this is an historical truth and a reality. But for a beneficial comparison, one simply needs to read The Law by Frederic Bastiat. It was written around 1850. Bastiat's hope for the US was based on many factors that are no longer true because of the many castrating Acts passed since 1865, such as the one mentioned here. Another significant change was the War Powers Act which basically reduced the US Congress to a consultative group largely dedicated to redistributing plundered wealth. An interesting Executive order (made possible by the War Powers Act) is EO13083. (http://www.uhuh.com/nobypass/eo13083/sxs.htm)
The scariest people in the USA are the ones shouting "love it or leave it."
Get a life. The RIAA and MPAA has made peer-to-peer an illegal activity in and of itself, independent of content transferred, and worse still, has introduced the presumption of guilt into ordinary law and transmogrifies P2P users into outlaws and then persecutes them with a fervor reminiscent of the Inquisition. They use a form of financial terrorism to intimidate and restrict lawful rights to protect ever-growing appetites for luxury and wealth and ivory tower and perks. They are a despicable lot, to be sure.
This is very much different than protecting open source software from becoming closed source, thereby subverting the will of the lawful owners and creators.
Apart from the occasional antiestablishment extremist, most/.ers acknowledge copyright legitimacy but object to unabashed attempts by Gordon Gecko wanna-be's to hijack the donated efforts of right-hearted people for corporate profits. If I own an LP of Dark Side of the Moon and want to download an MP3 of it, that's fair use. Same with a MPEG version of my movies. Why should I be jailed and bankrupted over it? Because the record company execs have to go back to earning a living if I'm free to enjoy this lawful liberty?
This, my poor misguided, misinformed./er, is certainly not hypocritical. But Cisco's and Broadcom's actions are in violation of the law. The irony here is that they endeavor to profit from free software, but are acting in a way that would prevent anyone else -- not just their competitors from benefiting likewise. That is hypocrisy of the highest order, outdone only by your own. And you're fat too.
Sharing data files between application classes and implementations is, IMHO, the biggest reason for perpetuating M$'s stranglehold on the marketplace and they know it.
The single most effective way to break the M$ juggernaut is to pass legislation -- in all jurisdictions -- that user data is owned by its creator -- the application's user -- and that the entire format and decoding techniques must be fully and openly disclosed to the public and NO proprietary (e.g, DMCA protected) methods can be used to obscure contents or prevent its decoding.
At which point I am quite sure keystrokes and UI look-and-feel and other silly what-not will be profoundly irrelevant.
Corporations are an inferior descendent subset of trusts. The State franschises corporations so that they can write the Articles and thus "see" into the records without having to subpoena on the basis of substantiated evidence of a crime (at least, in most commonlaw based legal systems). That's why the super-rich always organize their affairs in "blind" trusts, almost always with a charitable remainder trust on the top.
For a listing of all the families with these types of trusts, just watch the credits on most any documentary produced in the US. A common naming convention puts "Foundation" at the end. One requirement for a charitable remainder-based blind trust in the USA is that a percentage of the money be given to another legally-recognized trust. A favorite is producing documentaries since it allows the backers to "position" history.
Read Bastiat's The Law. It argues that governments get their authority from individuals to protect individual rights. Thus, governments cannot ever plunder property or violate the inherent rights of one individual on the behalf of another. There is a reason that although regarded as one of the clearest-thinking economists, and The Law as one of the best essays on a just society, he is not taught in most republics or in most law or economics courses.
C'mon, a Public Utilities Board, who make their living imposing regulations telephone companies want to regulate telephone traffic, and everyone is surprised? PUC's exist because of a lack of competition. VoIP is competitive and therefore poses a threat to their existence. It is self-serving mission creep that they should extend their own charter by thinking that they exist to regulate all forms of voice traffic. What is surprising, is, that it took this long. It was inevitable.
'Buying them off' in the context of the parent post's reference to Microsoft was referring to the idea that goverment officials get paid for doing Microsoft a favor so that Microsoft can do as it pleases. This is corruption. 'Cutting them in' means that they (the government in question) gets a share of the ongoing economic activity created by the monopoly protection or other unfair competitive advantage. 'Buying them off' also suggests that there is a direct financial benefit to the individual lawmakers for the legislation itself. 'Cutting them in' (again, them=the gov'ts, not the officials) allows the "state" to "benefit" not only the lawmakers, hence encouraging some amount of public approval -- jobs, tax breaks, whatever -- there is "public benefit", the Robin Hood concept. The financial reward to the lawmakers is in the future, not the present, and generally only indirectly, not directly. Sure, they manipulate trust-fund investments ahead of law change announcements, get cushy private-sector jobs in their afterlife, etc., but the public does get some share in the wealth redistribution. It's about sharing in the upside, not getting paid for "a favor done." Buying them off is "bad" in the public's eye, "cutting in" allows the public to share in the booty, so is seen as "good", at least by the [public] beneficiaries.
It is not the issue what the speed of the device is. What is relevant is that the protocol used is encrypted, so: By determining what the speed is, you must have "decoded it" while reverse engineering it. You are hereby bankrupted under DMCA. Go directly to jail.
Without question, these laws, and others like it, were set up in the first place to protect profits of companies that have no legitimate marketplace advantage. Microsoft subverting Kerberos to protect and extend its monopoly position, and then persecuting those who exposed the fraud is but one perverse, disgusting example of how one can determine that DMCA's consequences were not only anticipated but are increasingly encouraged. Such laws establish closed economies which are absolutely determined to fail. However, the failure does not generally harm those on the top of the pyramid.
That DMCA is consistently upheld as a concept requiring everyone prove, at devestating cost, their innocence is precisely what he law intended. People often confuse "law" with "righteousness" and "justice". If DMCA proves anything, it proves this common idea of "law" false.
Perhaps the only adjustment to DMCA is that it needs to be amended to explicitly permit trumping -- and summary judgements against DMCA's provisions in such cases -- by both "fair use" and fair competition concepts.
Okay, perhaps, one more: Everyone invoking DMCA must fund, without financial limitation and without the chance for recovery the legal costs for the defense, even if they plaintiff prevails. Damages, without limitation should be awarded to any defendent who proves "fair use" regardless of the standing under DMCA's provisions.
If DMCA does have an unintended consequence, it may be this: that things like literature, art and music created with copy protection extends copyright protection forever. Disney no longer needs to protect Mickey -- Simply watermark him and claim that the watermark prevents unlawful copying. When ordinary copiers and whatnot copy his image anyway, thereby circumventing the "protection" they can sue (translation: bankrupt you) under DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
- Princess Leah
And, no, just because it's a direct quote doesn't mean it's a copyright violation. For that I would have had to include substantially the entire script in it's exact sequence, minimum. That's why it seems to me that even if SCO -- using Microsoft's checkbook to do it -- proves a few snippets found their way into a larger work, proves exactly nothing and their suit should lawfully fail (as we all know intuitively it should). Microsoft's partial funding of the SCO suit gives this otherwise nuisance suit an aire of respectability, simply because of all the well-heeled stakeholders and economic ramifications for the US, which is why this tragicomedy persists. Microsoft can take people -- and maybe even some small projects -- down with it, but down it goes nonetheless.
As for Microsoft's potential regarding software patents, so what? Let 'em huff and puff. First of all, they would have to prove true novelty, and proof of inventorship and all that. Even with their massive resources, they're sitting ducks for proving their case. How many bazillion lines of code would have to be surrendered and at what cost from their own archives to prove that an idea's origin was specifically as they stated? And how about all the lines of code written in universities and high schools alike? Surely elements of publicly disclosures could be found in some paper written somewhere...a strategy used recently by Microsoft itself, if memory serves... And who would care anyway? How hard is it to write around a software patent? And they would have to disclose a great many things that they'd rather not, which is probably why this isn't a very big problem at the moment. I believe that patents protect only commercialization of claimed innovations, and not against the kinds of uses that would present true threat to their revenue. Such discussions have no doubt been undertaken within the hallowed, bloodstained halls of the Mighty Microsoft, but no doubt die at the feet of the Poor Risk-Reward God.
And, moreover, a complete rewrite of Linux to avoid copyright issues? Geezleweeze, just run the source through a synonym-substitution process and keep track of the changes, then rewrite the compiler to compile against the changes. Then run documentation files to do the same synonym substitution. Sure, a lot of text file processing, but way better than the alternative. And it stops a copyright suit dead in its tracks.
All currently successful business models -- Microsoft's especially -- are anachronisms. They represent how things were, not how they are which is why they get fundamentally weaker as time goes on.
As for Phoenix, how hard is it to write a BIOS given all the true talent out there? It's probably the next truly fundamentally important open-source initiative to get done, IMHO...
Follow the money: The big money and their lackey lawyers go to court to keep from paying original copyright holders based on media type, but consistently sue buyers of their copyright permission for doing the same when the same legal principle is at stake. All this as they try -- and sometimes succeed -- to embed an illegal private-company tax on blank media to get "royalties" on everything that is put on all every type of media. I can't wait for the levy on copy paper...
I submit they know exactly what is going on here.
It is of no particular advantage to anyone that all groups want it all ways. It seems that the courts have consistently said (in most countries) that purchasers of content have the right to "fair-use" copying and preserving of that content. It also proves that "blank media taxes" violate this principle. These laws presume that all content is licensed for a particular medium (which in this case Disney says "No, it is not medium-dependent"), when clearly my own creative works are not owing a royalty to anyone.
Somehow I suspect that the RIAA and MPAA will continue to use financial terrorism to charge for the same content over and over in spite of "fair use" but only pay out based on "fair use". A simple case of "Heads: they win, Tails: we lose."
Money doesn't talk --- it SCREAMS
now all they need to do is add some security holes, change the command line params to 'slash' instead of 'dash' rename all the basic commands to something else so as to retain copyright...
"An international group of independent researchers attending the Word Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has revealed important technical and legal flaws, relating to data protection and privacy, in the security system used to control access to the UN Summit. The system not only fails to guarantee the promised high levels of security but also introduces the very real possibility of constant surveillance of the representatives of the civil society." (Italics added.)
The so-called "security system" indeed used advanced technology, not for security but for surveillance of the innocent, violating the basic human right to presumption of innoncence and 'the right to be left alone'. AS a security system it was useless, but then again it was obviously not meant to be one. Homeland Security. Patriot Act. Etc.
Umm, so, did YOU read the article?!?
Hard Drive will soon be redefined as a US-Canada border crossing with cheap storage media packed in the boot.
The inexperienced put faith in every word, the shrewd look to history as prologue.
Insurance companies are essential to US fiscal policy. They keep money in the markets that would otherwise not be there, and in payment, the companies make healthy profits. When they lose money in the markets, your premiums rise, since they establish premiums against net profit, whcih is calculated against all expenses and losses and gains.
It seems that when gains are reaped from portfolio investments the primary costs rise (e.g. medical costs) to absorb the gains without affecting revenue, and there is little squawking from anyone since premiums don't rise, net company revenue does not fall and the payees get richer. If primary cost side did not rise then company revenue from premiums would have to fall (a zero-sum effect), and the underlying business would look flat, and equity share prices would fall.
Thus, when the insurance company's market losses accelerate, coverages get cut (the payees get less) and premiums rise, to mostly pay for the secondary (market) losses, and everybody then squawks (like now).
Shared risk pools have given way to veiled communism, which must fail; pure 'tragedy of the commons.'
Spam that.
You first, though: Name five Chinese people that have been shot by a tank for stealing CD's. And if you think that the US doesn't deploy troops against "subversives", think "Kent State."
If it were not a true and real possibility, these would have never agreed to the extensive admissions of guit to escape a costly court case to exhonerate themselves, or pay the few hundred dollars in "damages" to the record companies (remember their royalties are a fraction of the sticker price) for thier bootleg Wesley Willis tunes. That is financial terrorism, it ois America's vested money-for-no-sustaining-value interests.
As for the various political "detainees" held under "military rules," I cannot make a distinction between this behavior and any other totalitarian regime's behavior when it feels "threatened." This is not just about Guantanamo either. There was a very interesting case of a female Chinese national who had entered the US via Portland OR. Despite all the evidence to the contrary (and there was much) the detained her for some number of days (like 4 or 5, if memory serves) and was strip-searched. Twice. Guess they needed to go back and double-check those private areas. And the Chinese Consulate was never notifed, which is a strict no-no. Her husband, who made it through the careful border guard post at the airport, had no idea what happened to his wife for days. And that's just one case I am personally aware of (the schmuck head of Oregon immigration was known to me personally...he got "reassigned" over this case a few others). Of course her husband was panicked, he had no idea what happened to his [completely innocent] wife.
Put the flag down and get a clue.
Clearly the moderators are the ones chanting america love it or leave it.
No, you don't see that. What you do see is people getting bankrupted, blacklisted, jailed, and left with a life not worth living. In some cases, if you violate the Patriot Act, run afoul of Homeland Security, or have your profile flagged as "suspicious" (US Gov Matrix has been resurrected), your life is turned into a huge steaming brown mass. Having your name ruined and being consigned to a life of poverty in the US is worse than death in many ways. It's torture in every sense of the word, especially if it all begins when your human rights to "fair use" of creative works for personal enlightenment and enjoyment get trumped by legislation that's basically rooted in fiscal policy. DMCA is censorship for financial reasons, whereas the Patriot Act is sensorship on an political-ideological basis.
And occasionally somebody's executed (Patriot Act here, not DMCA). I think the last time I looked, Amnesty International reported that on 7% were truly and completely innocent. I'm not sure at what percentage of innocents executed it becomes State-sanctioned murder to "encourage" others to stay to the rules without question, but I'm sure there's a number when it does... They say that China is bad because it executes innocent people, well, wake up, they kill innocent people in America too, all the time. And of course there are the locked-up non-citizens in Guantanamo. Left there to rot because they [presumably] have a different point of view than American policy makers. Think "re-education camp" here.
I see these as slight variations on a theme. All governments do these things to the citizenry, and try to say it's necessary to keep peace and order. But it never is, really, the true agenda is to create an environment where wealth can be ammased by a few at the expense of the many. True, some newly established post-revolutionhary governments have given momentary respite (like the US for its first 80 years or so of existence, and France too, at about the same time and duration). It's not that I don't like America -- it's the same as every other government on Earth before it -- I am not a fan of any of them. Man dominates man to his injury, a wise man once wrote about 3,000 years ago. This will always be true.
Perhaps the most deeply unsettling phrase I've ever heard is "America -- love it or leave it." It is the chant of the profoundly ignorant.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Big companies like Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, get patents pushed through without a question. Ordinary inventors get pulled through knotholes. It's simple risk management and fiscal policy. Trying to fix unfair application of sensible rules by rewriting the rules to make patents harder to enforce is about as naive as it gets.
The problem with loosening the rules or turning them on the inventor is that once you tell someone "how" to do something, it becomes obvious. It's like telling Clapton that he cannot have copyright to "Layla" the words have been used a million times before and the musical arrangement was obvious, everybody can hum a tune like that.
This thread to me suggests a wholesale ignorance of patents and the patent process and why you patent something at all.
Do you actually think that just because patents go away you won't have powerful and rich people and groups using the "courts" to steal from the true innovators and block less influential and poorer competitors? If so you have no understanding of history or law...too sad...
The scariest people in the USA are the ones shouting "love it or leave it."
Video surveillance, spot checks...positively Orwellian.
This is very much different than protecting open source software from becoming closed source, thereby subverting the will of the lawful owners and creators.
Apart from the occasional antiestablishment extremist, most /.ers acknowledge copyright legitimacy but object to unabashed attempts by Gordon Gecko wanna-be's to hijack the donated efforts of right-hearted people for corporate profits. If I own an LP of Dark Side of the Moon and want to download an MP3 of it, that's fair use. Same with a MPEG version of my movies. Why should I be jailed and bankrupted over it? Because the record company execs have to go back to earning a living if I'm free to enjoy this lawful liberty?
This, my poor misguided, misinformed ./er, is certainly not hypocritical. But Cisco's and Broadcom's actions are in violation of the law. The irony here is that they endeavor to profit from free software, but are acting in a way that would prevent anyone else -- not just their competitors from benefiting likewise. That is hypocrisy of the highest order, outdone only by your own. And you're fat too.
The single most effective way to break the M$ juggernaut is to pass legislation -- in all jurisdictions -- that user data is owned by its creator -- the application's user -- and that the entire format and decoding techniques must be fully and openly disclosed to the public and NO proprietary (e.g, DMCA protected) methods can be used to obscure contents or prevent its decoding.
At which point I am quite sure keystrokes and UI look-and-feel and other silly what-not will be profoundly irrelevant.
For a listing of all the families with these types of trusts, just watch the credits on most any documentary produced in the US. A common naming convention puts "Foundation" at the end. One requirement for a charitable remainder-based blind trust in the USA is that a percentage of the money be given to another legally-recognized trust. A favorite is producing documentaries since it allows the backers to "position" history.
Read Bastiat's The Law. It argues that governments get their authority from individuals to protect individual rights. Thus, governments cannot ever plunder property or violate the inherent rights of one individual on the behalf of another. There is a reason that although regarded as one of the clearest-thinking economists, and The Law as one of the best essays on a just society, he is not taught in most republics or in most law or economics courses.
C'mon, a Public Utilities Board, who make their living imposing regulations telephone companies want to regulate telephone traffic, and everyone is surprised? PUC's exist because of a lack of competition. VoIP is competitive and therefore poses a threat to their existence. It is self-serving mission creep that they should extend their own charter by thinking that they exist to regulate all forms of voice traffic. What is surprising, is, that it took this long. It was inevitable.
'Buying them off' in the context of the parent post's reference to Microsoft was referring to the idea that goverment officials get paid for doing Microsoft a favor so that Microsoft can do as it pleases. This is corruption. 'Cutting them in' means that they (the government in question) gets a share of the ongoing economic activity created by the monopoly protection or other unfair competitive advantage. 'Buying them off' also suggests that there is a direct financial benefit to the individual lawmakers for the legislation itself. 'Cutting them in' (again, them=the gov'ts, not the officials) allows the "state" to "benefit" not only the lawmakers, hence encouraging some amount of public approval -- jobs, tax breaks, whatever -- there is "public benefit", the Robin Hood concept. The financial reward to the lawmakers is in the future, not the present, and generally only indirectly, not directly. Sure, they manipulate trust-fund investments ahead of law change announcements, get cushy private-sector jobs in their afterlife, etc., but the public does get some share in the wealth redistribution. It's about sharing in the upside, not getting paid for "a favor done." Buying them off is "bad" in the public's eye, "cutting in" allows the public to share in the booty, so is seen as "good", at least by the [public] beneficiaries.
It is not the issue what the speed of the device is. What is relevant is that the protocol used is encrypted, so: By determining what the speed is, you must have "decoded it" while reverse engineering it. You are hereby bankrupted under DMCA. Go directly to jail.
That DMCA is consistently upheld as a concept requiring everyone prove, at devestating cost, their innocence is precisely what he law intended. People often confuse "law" with "righteousness" and "justice". If DMCA proves anything, it proves this common idea of "law" false.
Perhaps the only adjustment to DMCA is that it needs to be amended to explicitly permit trumping -- and summary judgements against DMCA's provisions in such cases -- by both "fair use" and fair competition concepts.
Okay, perhaps, one more: Everyone invoking DMCA must fund, without financial limitation and without the chance for recovery the legal costs for the defense, even if they plaintiff prevails. Damages, without limitation should be awarded to any defendent who proves "fair use" regardless of the standing under DMCA's provisions.
If DMCA does have an unintended consequence, it may be this: that things like literature, art and music created with copy protection extends copyright protection forever. Disney no longer needs to protect Mickey -- Simply watermark him and claim that the watermark prevents unlawful copying. When ordinary copiers and whatnot copy his image anyway, thereby circumventing the "protection" they can sue (translation: bankrupt you) under DMCA.
Commercial companies don't 'buy off governments.' They cut them in. There's a profound difference between these two concepts.