You mean there are >0 people here who run WinThings and haven't customised the Program
menu?
Rename all the links to apps you run more
than once a month, to start with a unique
character. Move them to the Program folder.
Move any crud folders you don't want to
get rid of to (e.g.) "!crud", and rarely-used
apps somewhere else (shame you can't have a
folder called "+").
Why?
Phone rings. Want your diary. Alt-Esc, P, D
I don't own a mouse. I don't have RSI. I suspect a connection.
Neat coding solution. Unofortunately, law is
not code (especially in the "civil law" jurisdictions like US & UK).
IANAL but (a) this looks set to be a UK lawsuit and (b) I am a lay UKian with some experience of copyright law.
UK courts do their very best to avoid this course of action. They want to see genuinely adversarial cases.
There's an additional problem in that they want to see cases with significant financial amounts in dispute. Trust me, I'm thinking hard how to argue this...
...absent scale bars, can't be sure, but it certainly looks as though your flying saucer is three (count 'em, 3) pixels in the SOHO image.
Re:Sigh... EU Directive != DMCA
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 1
No, he's not, is he?
They'll be able to slow things down if everything goes to plan - e.g. my second alternative, where the X National Institute
for the Blind goes to court proactively to
get MPEG-4 opened up, by which time of course
we'll all be using, er, something else. (In
my case, either celluloid, or whatever turns
up on broadcast TV, or games on paper, which is why I overlooked the regionalization issue.)
But if people produce the necessary and
entirely legal tools to enable what (for
the sake of US readers) we'll call the "fair uses"
now, then register all their credit cards and hardware in their cat's name and sit back saying "so, sue me"...
Re:Sigh... EU Directive != DMCA
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 1
Gosh, your name isn't Hugenholz, is it?
No... in most EU countries these questions about where, when, how much are going to have to go through the courts; either with prosecutions of those who decrypt for themselves - which I think must eventually fail, but only after schlepping all the way through the national courts to den Haag - or with proactive cases by, for example, the associations of Blind people.
The "Skylarov" defence would have been much more interesting under EU law...
Re:You're correct: it's worse!
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 1
Mmm, you may have a point on regionalization-defeating measures.
I've long been looking for the logic-bomb which
I assume the bright enarques of the French Civil Service inserted in the Directive, specifically to stuff Hollywood. I think we're in the right part of regulation-space here:-)
And yes, it was impossible to get hold of anyone involved in the Directive for several
years' worth of lunchtimes, when they were being entertained courtesy AOL, Disney, et al. Allegedly.
Re:You're correct: it's worse!
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 1
That's just a difference in legal language - one that's implied by the differences between Common Law (US, UK, IE, CA, AU, IN... you see the
pattern?) and Civil Law (elsewhere). Sounds to me as though, despite your email server location, you're assuming US law already applies everywhere?
And the difference between technological measures that control access to a work
and those that limit access to the terms of
the licence authorised by the rights-holder would be... what?
'Course, I object to unreasonable non-authorisation by corporate rights-holders. But, until they bully me out of my rights as an author, I'm a rights-holder. And in most Civil Law jurisdictions we're talking about authorisation by actual, breathing authors here... the Netherlands being the exception for works authored in the course of employment.
Re:Sigh... EU Directive != DMCA
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 1
Sheesh. I said "read it". I forgot only to mention that when reading an EU Directive you can skip the "whereas"es and definitions and go straight to Chapter 2 (unless you're a judge in den Haag).
I simplified it, but here it is:
Article 6: Obligations as to technical measures
4. Notwithstanding the legal protection provided for in paragraph 1, in the absence of voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, Member States
shall take appropriate measures to ensure that rightholders make available to the beneficiary of an exception or limitation provided for in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(a), (2)(c), (2)(d), (2)(e), (3)(a), (3)(b) or (3)(e) the means of benefiting from that exception or limitation, to the extent necessary to benefit from that exception or limitation and where that beneficiary has legal access to the protected work or subject-matter concerned.
My emphasis. I rest my case.
Sigh... EU Directive != DMCA
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 2, Informative
PLEASE go read the Directive. It's short, as these
things go, certainly much snappier than US legislation is - though the URL I have is long:
Among other differences from the DMCA, it establishes a *right* to exercise the equivalent of "fair-use". My reading of the draft UK regulations implementing this Directive suggests,
for example, that if I want to make a Braille transcript of Disney's next opus and it's encrypted, I can apply to the Home Secretary
(=~ Minister for the Interior) for appropriate
cracking tools to get the job done.
And my reading of the Directive itself is that
once an encrypted work enters the public domain,
it must open itself up. Cue "foom" sound of.PDFs blatting out plain text automatically
70 years after my death and mailing the Gutenberg Project to say 'hi'...
And, as others have pointed out, the fact that
EU member states are late implementing the
Directive doesn't mean it falls. It's not a
US Constitutional Amendment, guys. Other legal
systems are available, out here.
F'rexample, only five or six of 15 EU member states have implemented another Directive that says freelances
can claim interest (at 7% over base) on invoices
paid late by our clients. But even Greece will
get round to it eventually - even if it takes
a Greek suing her government in den Haag to make
it do so.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean there are >0 people here who run WinThings and haven't customised the Program menu?
Rename all the links to apps you run more than once a month, to start with a unique character. Move them to the Program folder. Move any crud folders you don't want to get rid of to (e.g.) "!crud", and rarely-used apps somewhere else (shame you can't have a folder called "+").
Why?
Phone rings. Want your diary. Alt-Esc, P, D
I don't own a mouse. I don't have RSI. I suspect a connection.
For some values of "database", this'll
be describing the 1989 CERN WWW server,
no?
Neat coding solution. Unofortunately, law is not code (especially in the "civil law" jurisdictions like US & UK).
IANAL but (a) this looks set to be a UK lawsuit and (b) I am a lay UKian with some experience of copyright law.
UK courts do their very best to avoid this course of action. They want to see genuinely adversarial cases.
There's an additional problem in that they want to see cases with significant financial amounts in dispute. Trust me, I'm thinking hard how to argue this...
...absent scale bars, can't be sure, but
it certainly looks as though your flying
saucer is three (count 'em, 3) pixels
in the SOHO image.
No, he's not, is he?
They'll be able to slow things down if everything goes to plan - e.g. my second alternative, where the X National Institute for the Blind goes to court proactively to get MPEG-4 opened up, by which time of course we'll all be using, er, something else. (In my case, either celluloid, or whatever turns up on broadcast TV, or games on paper, which is why I overlooked the regionalization issue.)
But if people produce the necessary and entirely legal tools to enable what (for the sake of US readers) we'll call the "fair uses" now, then register all their credit cards and hardware in their cat's name and sit back saying "so, sue me"...
Gosh, your name isn't Hugenholz, is it?
No... in most EU countries these questions about where, when, how much are going to have to go through the courts; either with prosecutions of those who decrypt for themselves - which I think must eventually fail, but only after schlepping all the way through the national courts to den Haag - or with proactive cases by, for example, the associations of Blind people.
The "Skylarov" defence would have been much more interesting under EU law...
Mmm, you may have a point on regionalization-defeating measures.
I've long been looking for the logic-bomb which I assume the bright enarques of the French Civil Service inserted in the Directive, specifically to stuff Hollywood. I think we're in the right part of regulation-space here :-)
And yes, it was impossible to get hold of anyone involved in the Directive for several years' worth of lunchtimes, when they were being entertained courtesy AOL, Disney, et al. Allegedly.
That's just a difference in legal language - one that's implied by the differences between Common Law (US, UK, IE, CA, AU, IN... you see the pattern?) and Civil Law (elsewhere). Sounds to me as though, despite your email server location, you're assuming US law already applies everywhere?
And the difference between technological measures that control access to a work and those that limit access to the terms of the licence authorised by the rights-holder would be... what?
'Course, I object to unreasonable non-authorisation by corporate rights-holders. But, until they bully me out of my rights as an author, I'm a rights-holder. And in most Civil Law jurisdictions we're talking about authorisation by actual, breathing authors here... the Netherlands being the exception for works authored in the course of employment.
Sheesh. I said "read it". I forgot only to mention that when reading an EU Directive you can skip the "whereas"es and definitions and go straight to Chapter 2 (unless you're a judge in den Haag).
I simplified it, but here it is:
Article 6: Obligations as to technical measures
My emphasis. I rest my case.
PLEASE go read the Directive. It's short, as these things go, certainly much snappier than US legislation is - though the URL I have is long:
http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi !celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=32001L0029 &model=guichett
Among other differences from the DMCA, it establishes a *right* to exercise the equivalent of "fair-use". My reading of the draft UK regulations implementing this Directive suggests, for example, that if I want to make a Braille transcript of Disney's next opus and it's encrypted, I can apply to the Home Secretary (=~ Minister for the Interior) for appropriate cracking tools to get the job done.
And my reading of the Directive itself is that once an encrypted work enters the public domain, it must open itself up. Cue "foom" sound of .PDFs blatting out plain text automatically
70 years after my death and mailing the Gutenberg Project to say 'hi'...
And, as others have pointed out, the fact that EU member states are late implementing the Directive doesn't mean it falls. It's not a US Constitutional Amendment, guys. Other legal systems are available, out here.
F'rexample, only five or six of 15 EU member states have implemented another Directive that says freelances can claim interest (at 7% over base) on invoices paid late by our clients. But even Greece will get round to it eventually - even if it takes a Greek suing her government in den Haag to make it do so.