I don't really see it that way. The Famine Times were kind of like the Dark Ages. Basically nothing happened during the Famine Times. People struggled to survive in the face of the fall of the galactic empire. I don't think there would be any stories worth telling from the Famine Times.
Err wrong pal. GNU/Linux is the OS, for the record.
Err wrong pal. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. He gets to say how people can use that name. He's said that he doesn't want people to use the name "GNU/Linux" to refer to anything, kernel, OS, or otherwise. If you want to call it something else, that's fine, but you can't call it "GNU/Linux."
I've read this before-- the thing about how Frank Herbert had plans for a book 7-- but it seems to me that the ending of Chapterhouse is just too perfect. I prefer the saga the way it is now, ending on a cliffhanger and with that little commentary by Marty and Daniel, who many people think represented Bev and Frank Herbert talking out of character about the story itself.
It seems to fit, for me, with the interwoven theme of prescience. Paul was cursed by his prescience, and Leto's vision of the future was of humans who were immune to prescience. The end of Chapterhouse, in which Duncan and Sheeana fleeing the known universe in a no-ship, seems to symbolize Herbert's creation escaping beyond the limits of his own vision.
Why not just rack it with the decks and other sundry equipment in the edit suites?
I don't know how many post houses you've been in, but in the one's I've worked with there are no decks and other sundry equipment in the edit suites. All that stuff goes in the machine room, and is run by tape ops.
Imagine the chaos if every suite had its own decks. You'd have tapes everywhere, stuff would get lost. Mass hysteria!
In a well-ordered house, though, the editor picks up the phone or toggles the mike and says, "Hey, Phil, can you patch me into VTR 3 and give me tape 177?"
Somebody needs to combine the high-density, inexpensive technology of blade servers with a scalable single-system-image design. I'd like to be able to take a single rack chassis, four units high or something, and put one CPU in it, or two, or fourteen, or whatever, but not have to dick around with clustering or load-balancing or something.
SGI kind of went that direction with their Origin series (2000 and 3000, and now Altix), but they're overbuilt. It costs a fortune to buy an empty system, and a fortune to put processors and slots in it.
Maybe somebody has done this already. I don't really keep up with the whole blade server thing very much. Anybody know?
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet. Apple has a little blurb on the Xserve page, at the bottom on the right, that says,
The workstation for digital video
Thinking of using Xserve as a workstation for working with digital video? Good call: You can get a built-to-order unit from the Apple Store with an AGP 4X graphics card with 64MB of DDR video RAM installed in the AGP/PCI combo slot. Final Cut Pro and optional high-performance PCI cards for audio and real-time video editing complement the solution.
That's new, isn't it? I remember that there was a lot of talk when Xserve first came out about using it as a workstation, and the consensus was that it wouldn't work very well because the graphics card didn't offer much. I guess Apple was listening. I can think of four post-production houses within ten miles of my house that would be interested in replacing some of the Final Cut systems with Xserves. Keep a couple of G4's around for doing audio and video I/O, but do all the creative work on rack systems in the main equipment room. Very cool.
Just a few months ago, last summer I think it was, I was looking for inexpensive RAID solutions that included Fibre Channel to the host and IDE on the back end. Performance wasn't an issue for us; capacity was, and reliability was somewhere in the middle of the importance stack. (Our customers were willing to accept occasional down-time, but were very price-sensitive.)
I found a system from a company called Chapparal-- I have no idea if I spelled that right. This system used IDE drives, bridged inside the box to SCSI, which was in turn bridged outside the box to Fibre Channel. Performance sucked ass, and it didn't have redundant anything, but the price was right: $10,000 a TB.
Now, just six months later, Apple-- a company known for higher-than-average prices-- is selling a technically superior and much better built box with twice the storage for roughly the same price.
While I wouldn't classify this as a cheap solution-- it's too well built and has too many features to be called "cheap"-- it's definitely a good deal.
The downside, of course, is that you'll have to return your Xserve now, and then place an order for a new one. Since the Apple Store web site is estimating a ship date of late March for the new machine, you'd be without a server for about six weeks at the absolute minimum.
Life's just full of these little dilemmas, isn't it?
The reason they don't get "free advertising" on Slashdot is because Dell, IBM, Toshiba, and 18 other computer manufacturers all introduced the same new models today.
In order to be news, it has to be both new and interesting. The latest PC from Bob's Computers of Dayton, Ohio, is neither.
IBM's Power4-based systems are not going to be very useful to people who want a more powerful Xserve. Those people are going to be running BLAST, or some other vectorized application. The Power4 lacks the PowerPC G4's vector processing features.
What those people are really waiting for is an Xserve with PowerPC 970 processors in it. If everything goes as predicted, that will combine the cruncy outside of Power4 with the chewy middle of Altivec.
No more so than the fact that the original main supporter of the Motorola 68000 is now doing PowerPC, or that the original main supporter of NuBus is now doing PCI, or that the original main supporter of Mac OS 9 is now doing Mac OS X.
Times change. Apple hasn't shipped a SCSI hard drive in years.
IDE doesn't cut it (IMAO) in the real world, no matter whose badge is on the front of it.
Behind a RAID controller, IDE drives cut it quite nicely in the real world. What's important is the host interface, and the number of spindles behind the controller. This RAID will do just fine.
Section K? The sections of Title 17 are numbered, as are the sections of the bill that amended it. Would you mind citing something a little more specific, please?
Oh yes, personal attacks always help a discussion of supposed facts.
While I'm certainly not above making a personal attack when I feel it's called for, this wasn't such a case. I'm just telling you the facts. From your previous posts, I'm not convinced your qualified to have an ethical discussion on this matter. So we're not going to have one.
Think about the bad software patents that have been granted.
I am unaware of any bad software patents. I am aware that there are some vocal individuals and groups who assert that some patents are bad, but I've found universally that those particular individuals and groups are either completely unfamiliar with the text of the patents in question, or deliberately misrepresenting them in order to make their point.
Certain basic elements in the craft of creating music have been ?removed? by the misuse of copyrights.
For example?
He takes inspiration from Shakespeare?s Hamlet and creates a brilliant work.
Good for him. Anybody is free to do the same thing with any work in the vast library of public domain works. The liibrary of public domain works is ever-increasing-- some works have entered the public domain this very day! I fail to see any harm here.
The case I quoted (?The Wind Done Gone?) is a similar treatment to ?Gone With the Wind?.
That was ruled to be non-infringing by the courts. Again, no harm. You're arguing against the status quo, but using examples of ways that the status quo is working perfectly to support your argument!
At best it allows ideas to be multiplied and leveraged (standing on the shoulders of giants), and also provides insights into commonality or differences of people and society.
Blah blah. You keep talking about ideas, but ignore the fact that copyright protection has no effect on ideas. Only on expressions of ideas. Your argument is completely inapplicable!
Define ?unauthorized?!
Um. Without authorization. Do you need a dictionary?
In my example, I?ve been prevented from making a back-up copy, an act that is legal (I?ll agree that it is not a ?right?, but the legality of making back-ups is well defined through actual court cases).
Yup. And if you get around to letting me know what, exactly, is wrong with that, please let me know. We are all prevented from doing otherwise perfectly legal things every day. I used to work for a company that had a strict dress code policy. It's perfectly legal for me to wear a shirt without a tie, but I was not allowed to do so in my place of business. Are you suggesting that my employer was breaking the law?
So in a literal sense it is an ?unauthorized? copy, but you make an incorrect leap when you call the action illegal
Title 17, chapter 12, defines the act of circumventing an access control mechanism as being unlawful, and specifies both civil and criminal remedies. I'm not making a leap. I'm simply quoting the law.
Now back to the analogy, the car manufacturer may not like the fact I can change tires, and may even make such actions ?unauthorized?. That does not make it illegal either.
It does if there's a law on the books that says you can't circumvent a tire access control mechanism.
This is where the new law comes in, and changes the status quo. The manufacturer (i.e. copyright holder) gets broad new powers and the ability to legally prevent actions that are legal. That is precisely what the DMCA has done with its anti-circumvention clause.
Amazing. So you're telling me that a new law, passed recently, took something that was previously legal and made it illegal? My head's swimming. That's certainly unprecedented.
You can spout RIAA/MPAA propaganda about the difference between a right and an exception; but the plain fact is that the bill gives publishers the ability to prohibit legal activities.
And you can get as up-in-arms about this as you like, but the plain fact is that it is not an illegal, unconstitutional, or unjust state of affairs. In fact, if you could get your head out of your ass for just a fraction of a second and consider the question from the point of view of a copyright holder-- which you are, though you seem reluctant to admit it for some reason-- you'll realize that the new law is, in fact, quite appropriate and reasonable, and it serves to close a loophole in the existing statute that was, at best, a serious nuisance to copyright holders. Which is, again, all of us.
Congratulations. You just pissed off the entire country of France. As if the current state of Franco-American (heh) relations wasn't bad enough, now we've got the language problem to deal with.
Criminals are citizens, too, with the same rights and duties as other citizens
Actually, they aren't. Citizens who have been convicted of a felony are in an entirely separate class from citizens who have not. They have a different set of rights and duties.
This system is definitely flawed, seriously flawed.
Maybe so. If you can come up with a better one, though, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it.
There's an old saying that America's representative democracy is the second-worst system of governance ever conceived, and that everything else ties for first place.
You know, you have a point there. If Person X publishes a work, then Person Y creates an unauthorized derivative work from Person X's work, then technically the derived work would be protected by Person X's copyright.
So I think you're right, and that I was wrong.
I still say that the GPL is an intentionally convoluted mess, and that it's ripe for a good, stiff legal challenge. It actually reminds me of one of those programming contests where you have to write the (functionally) biggest program in the fewest characters. The GPL makes me think that somebody got a group of lawyers in a room and said, "Come up with the shortest license you can that includes as many bewildering recursive obligations as possible." It's a mess, I tell you.
the GPL doesn't require you to distribute the source code with the software
It does, however, require you to jump through certain other hoops, such as the requirement to distribute a copy of the GPL itself with your software. So the source code issue can be effectively ignored; the simple fact that they're distributing their product without a written (electronic or paper) copy of the GPL means that they're in violation of it.
not that I care, GNU/Linux reads any filesystem anyway
For the record, the name is "Linux," not "GNU/Linux." Might want to refer to Torvalds's trademark for further details on that point.
If you distribute the binary of a GPL derivative work, and you don't distribute the source code for the derivative, then you've violated the GPL.
Interestingly enough, there are other requirements for GPL compliance. Simply distributing your source code is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one to demonstrate compliance. For example, "You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change." Also, the oft-ignored "banner clause" in paragraph 2c.
RMS would rip your tongue right out of your head for saying such a thing. While valid and useful, comparing software to physical property is ideologically unacceptable. Consider yourself warned.;-)
We can interpret the present situation in either of two ways. One: the offending party did not accept the terms of the GPL, and has committed copyright infringement. Two: the offending party did accept the terms of the GPL, but is failing to comply with the conditions contained therein. Because there is no feedback mechanism to inform the authors of a piece of GPL-licensed software that you have accepted their license, we have absolutely no way of knowing which one of those interpretations is the correct one.
But either interpretation leads to the same conclusion. If this derivative work was created by making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work, then any copyright claim on this work is invalid, and we're all free to copy and distribute it as we see fit. Contrariwise, we could interpret the current situation to mean that the authors did accept the terms of the GPL, and that the derivative work is, in fact, licensed by the GPL-- as all derivative works made from GPL-licensed works must necessarily be-- in which case we're free to copy and distribute it as we see fit.
This is, incidentally, a fine example of why, in my opinion, the GPL badly needs to be tested in court and found invalid. This kind of ambiguity is just unacceptable in a legally binding document, and somebody needs to force the FSF to revise the license to make sure this kind of scenario cannot arise.
But that's just my opinion. I will undoubtedly be moderated "troll" for daring to utter a disparaging word about the FSF and the GPL.
I gave several examples of ?positive rights?, including ?time-shifting?, and DHRA copying
These are not rights. These are privileges. For example, consider the proposed broadcast flag. Some content protected by the broadcast flag may not be timeshifted by digital means. This is not illegal. It's perfectly legal. Why? Because timeshifting is not a right.
Maybe we need to have a little refresher on the definition of "right." A right is a legally guaranteed freedom. I have a right to free speech, for example, because the Constitution prohibits the passing of a law that abridges my freedom of speech. Get it? A right is a legally guaranteed freedom.
You have no legally guaranteed freedom to timeshift, or to make home recordings, or to create a parody, or to do any other thing with somebody else's copyrighted works. If you do these things, it is not a copyright infringement, but that's far from being the same thing as saying that you have the legally guaranteed freedom to do those things. Copyright holders, on the other hand, have the right-- the legally guaranteed freedom-- to determine who can and who can't make use of their works. I, as a copyright holder, am legally entitled to release a CD that, through some hypothetical technical means, can only be played on a Tuesday. There's nothing in the copyright statues, or any other body of US law, that makes that illegal. If you do something to your CD player that enables you to play my CD on a Saturday, however, you have broken the law. Because I, as the copyright holder, have the legally guaranteed freedom to decide when and how you can play my CD.
Are you starting to understand the difference between privileges and rights now?
Sorry if you got confused here - I was talking ethics, not law.
No offense, but I'm not convinced that you're qualified to have an ethical discussion of this matter. It seems obvious from your posts thus far that you're only interested in the mythical "rights" of the consumer, and care not for the very much real rights of the producer. Because of your obvious bias, I'd have to say that I'm really not all that interested in hearing your opinion on the ethics of copyright.
The reason copyright laws have expanded to protect ideas is because they were largely written by copyright owners
Um. I hate to break it to you, dude, but you are a copyright owner. Every person who has ever written anything down is a copyright owner. Trying to couch this in terms of haves versus have-nots just makes you look like an idiot.
What I argue is that the amount of protection is gotten out of whack, and is actually harmful to new authors
Harmful how? Because you can't take characters, dialogue, or plots from other people's work to use in your own? That's specious at best. Re-adapting old works for a new audience is certainly one form of artistic expression, but it's hardly a significant form. And the body of work that is not protected by copyright is vast and broad; anybody who just insists that they have to adapt somebody else's work instead of creating their own original work-- like, say, Disney-- can draw on the vast and ever-increasing body of public domain works. Having recent works protected by copyright does those people no harm whatsoever. None.
It all comes down to the difference between copying and inspiration. Copyright prohibits copying. It has no effect whatsoever on inspiration.
Your belief in total originality with no other influences is very touching.
Your belief that protecting a work with a copyright has any effect whatsoever on that work's being an influence to others is... well, not touching. It's really fucking stupid. Blindingly stupid, even.
I bought a car, and saw the tires were going to wear out. I used to be able to replace the tires, but the DMCAR law was passed with a loophole that allowed manufacturers to prevent me from replacing the tires.
Bzzt. My bullshit detector is going off. See, the DMCA doesn't prevent you from being able to replace something. It prevents you from being able to make an unauthorized copy of something. Your analogy is-- quite deliberately, I'm starting to believe-- bogus, because you're saying that the DMCA doesn't let you replace something that has worn out. If your copy of "Deep Throat" wears out, buy another. The idea that you feel like should be somehow entitled to a free set of tires-- i.e., to make an unauthorized, illegal copy-- is laughable at best, and really incredibly depressing at worst.
Look, the way I see it this is coming down in one of two ways. Option one: you are uninformed and naive. This is fine. I have no problem with this. Ignorance is not a crime. Option two: you are deliberately choosing to ignore the plain facts in an effort to advance some kind of a political agenda. That prospect frankly turns my stomach. So which is it?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really see it that way. The Famine Times were kind of like the Dark Ages. Basically nothing happened during the Famine Times. People struggled to survive in the face of the fall of the galactic empire. I don't think there would be any stories worth telling from the Famine Times.
Err wrong pal. GNU/Linux is the OS, for the record.
Err wrong pal. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. He gets to say how people can use that name. He's said that he doesn't want people to use the name "GNU/Linux" to refer to anything, kernel, OS, or otherwise. If you want to call it something else, that's fine, but you can't call it "GNU/Linux."
Duncan is a ghola. There are dozens of Duncan gholas throughout the series.
It's more like cloning than resurrection, and believe me, there's a good reason for it. Keep reading.
I've read this before-- the thing about how Frank Herbert had plans for a book 7-- but it seems to me that the ending of Chapterhouse is just too perfect. I prefer the saga the way it is now, ending on a cliffhanger and with that little commentary by Marty and Daniel, who many people think represented Bev and Frank Herbert talking out of character about the story itself.
It seems to fit, for me, with the interwoven theme of prescience. Paul was cursed by his prescience, and Leto's vision of the future was of humans who were immune to prescience. The end of Chapterhouse, in which Duncan and Sheeana fleeing the known universe in a no-ship, seems to symbolize Herbert's creation escaping beyond the limits of his own vision.
But what the hell do I know, anyway?
Why not just rack it with the decks and other sundry equipment in the edit suites?
I don't know how many post houses you've been in, but in the one's I've worked with there are no decks and other sundry equipment in the edit suites. All that stuff goes in the machine room, and is run by tape ops.
Imagine the chaos if every suite had its own decks. You'd have tapes everywhere, stuff would get lost. Mass hysteria!
In a well-ordered house, though, the editor picks up the phone or toggles the mike and says, "Hey, Phil, can you patch me into VTR 3 and give me tape 177?"
Somebody needs to combine the high-density, inexpensive technology of blade servers with a scalable single-system-image design. I'd like to be able to take a single rack chassis, four units high or something, and put one CPU in it, or two, or fourteen, or whatever, but not have to dick around with clustering or load-balancing or something.
SGI kind of went that direction with their Origin series (2000 and 3000, and now Altix), but they're overbuilt. It costs a fortune to buy an empty system, and a fortune to put processors and slots in it.
Maybe somebody has done this already. I don't really keep up with the whole blade server thing very much. Anybody know?
Is this really a cheap solution?
Yes.
Just a few months ago, last summer I think it was, I was looking for inexpensive RAID solutions that included Fibre Channel to the host and IDE on the back end. Performance wasn't an issue for us; capacity was, and reliability was somewhere in the middle of the importance stack. (Our customers were willing to accept occasional down-time, but were very price-sensitive.)
I found a system from a company called Chapparal-- I have no idea if I spelled that right. This system used IDE drives, bridged inside the box to SCSI, which was in turn bridged outside the box to Fibre Channel. Performance sucked ass, and it didn't have redundant anything, but the price was right: $10,000 a TB.
Now, just six months later, Apple-- a company known for higher-than-average prices-- is selling a technically superior and much better built box with twice the storage for roughly the same price.
While I wouldn't classify this as a cheap solution-- it's too well built and has too many features to be called "cheap"-- it's definitely a good deal.
The downside, of course, is that you'll have to return your Xserve now, and then place an order for a new one. Since the Apple Store web site is estimating a ship date of late March for the new machine, you'd be without a server for about six weeks at the absolute minimum.
Life's just full of these little dilemmas, isn't it?
The reason they don't get "free advertising" on Slashdot is because Dell, IBM, Toshiba, and 18 other computer manufacturers all introduced the same new models today.
In order to be news, it has to be both new and interesting. The latest PC from Bob's Computers of Dayton, Ohio, is neither.
IBM's Power4-based systems are not going to be very useful to people who want a more powerful Xserve. Those people are going to be running BLAST, or some other vectorized application. The Power4 lacks the PowerPC G4's vector processing features.
What those people are really waiting for is an Xserve with PowerPC 970 processors in it. If everything goes as predicted, that will combine the cruncy outside of Power4 with the chewy middle of Altivec.
Yes. The ability to do all those things without having to hire a kid with personal hygiene issues and a bad attitude.
There is zero reason to use UFS. Use HFS+, and if you're afraid you're going to lose power or suffer a panic or something, enable journaling.
Yes. Yes, I can.
No more so than the fact that the original main supporter of the Motorola 68000 is now doing PowerPC, or that the original main supporter of NuBus is now doing PCI, or that the original main supporter of Mac OS 9 is now doing Mac OS X.
Times change. Apple hasn't shipped a SCSI hard drive in years.
IDE doesn't cut it (IMAO) in the real world, no matter whose badge is on the front of it.
Behind a RAID controller, IDE drives cut it quite nicely in the real world. What's important is the host interface, and the number of spindles behind the controller. This RAID will do just fine.
Read section K of the DMCA
Section K? The sections of Title 17 are numbered, as are the sections of the bill that amended it. Would you mind citing something a little more specific, please?
Oh yes, personal attacks always help a discussion of supposed facts.
While I'm certainly not above making a personal attack when I feel it's called for, this wasn't such a case. I'm just telling you the facts. From your previous posts, I'm not convinced your qualified to have an ethical discussion on this matter. So we're not going to have one.
Think about the bad software patents that have been granted.
I am unaware of any bad software patents. I am aware that there are some vocal individuals and groups who assert that some patents are bad, but I've found universally that those particular individuals and groups are either completely unfamiliar with the text of the patents in question, or deliberately misrepresenting them in order to make their point.
Certain basic elements in the craft of creating music have been ?removed? by the misuse of copyrights.
For example?
He takes inspiration from Shakespeare?s Hamlet and creates a brilliant work.
Good for him. Anybody is free to do the same thing with any work in the vast library of public domain works. The liibrary of public domain works is ever-increasing-- some works have entered the public domain this very day! I fail to see any harm here.
The case I quoted (?The Wind Done Gone?) is a similar treatment to ?Gone With the Wind?.
That was ruled to be non-infringing by the courts. Again, no harm. You're arguing against the status quo, but using examples of ways that the status quo is working perfectly to support your argument!
At best it allows ideas to be multiplied and leveraged (standing on the shoulders of giants), and also provides insights into commonality or differences of people and society.
Blah blah. You keep talking about ideas, but ignore the fact that copyright protection has no effect on ideas. Only on expressions of ideas. Your argument is completely inapplicable!
Define ?unauthorized?!
Um. Without authorization. Do you need a dictionary?
In my example, I?ve been prevented from making a back-up copy, an act that is legal (I?ll agree that it is not a ?right?, but the legality of making back-ups is well defined through actual court cases).
Yup. And if you get around to letting me know what, exactly, is wrong with that, please let me know. We are all prevented from doing otherwise perfectly legal things every day. I used to work for a company that had a strict dress code policy. It's perfectly legal for me to wear a shirt without a tie, but I was not allowed to do so in my place of business. Are you suggesting that my employer was breaking the law?
So in a literal sense it is an ?unauthorized? copy, but you make an incorrect leap when you call the action illegal
Title 17, chapter 12, defines the act of circumventing an access control mechanism as being unlawful, and specifies both civil and criminal remedies. I'm not making a leap. I'm simply quoting the law.
Now back to the analogy, the car manufacturer may not like the fact I can change tires, and may even make such actions ?unauthorized?. That does not make it illegal either.
It does if there's a law on the books that says you can't circumvent a tire access control mechanism.
This is where the new law comes in, and changes the status quo. The manufacturer (i.e. copyright holder) gets broad new powers and the ability to legally prevent actions that are legal. That is precisely what the DMCA has done with its anti-circumvention clause.
Amazing. So you're telling me that a new law, passed recently, took something that was previously legal and made it illegal? My head's swimming. That's certainly unprecedented.
You can spout RIAA/MPAA propaganda about the difference between a right and an exception; but the plain fact is that the bill gives publishers the ability to prohibit legal activities.
And you can get as up-in-arms about this as you like, but the plain fact is that it is not an illegal, unconstitutional, or unjust state of affairs. In fact, if you could get your head out of your ass for just a fraction of a second and consider the question from the point of view of a copyright holder-- which you are, though you seem reluctant to admit it for some reason-- you'll realize that the new law is, in fact, quite appropriate and reasonable, and it serves to close a loophole in the existing statute that was, at best, a serious nuisance to copyright holders. Which is, again, all of us.
Remove your crust... what? My Fronch is limited to what you'd read on a menu.
Congratulations. You just pissed off the entire country of France. As if the current state of Franco-American (heh) relations wasn't bad enough, now we've got the language problem to deal with.
Thanks a lot, Sheenmaster.
Criminals are citizens, too, with the same rights and duties as other citizens
Actually, they aren't. Citizens who have been convicted of a felony are in an entirely separate class from citizens who have not. They have a different set of rights and duties.
This system is definitely flawed, seriously flawed.
Maybe so. If you can come up with a better one, though, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it.
There's an old saying that America's representative democracy is the second-worst system of governance ever conceived, and that everything else ties for first place.
You know, you have a point there. If Person X publishes a work, then Person Y creates an unauthorized derivative work from Person X's work, then technically the derived work would be protected by Person X's copyright.
So I think you're right, and that I was wrong.
I still say that the GPL is an intentionally convoluted mess, and that it's ripe for a good, stiff legal challenge. It actually reminds me of one of those programming contests where you have to write the (functionally) biggest program in the fewest characters. The GPL makes me think that somebody got a group of lawyers in a room and said, "Come up with the shortest license you can that includes as many bewildering recursive obligations as possible." It's a mess, I tell you.
the GPL doesn't require you to distribute the source code with the software
It does, however, require you to jump through certain other hoops, such as the requirement to distribute a copy of the GPL itself with your software. So the source code issue can be effectively ignored; the simple fact that they're distributing their product without a written (electronic or paper) copy of the GPL means that they're in violation of it.
not that I care, GNU/Linux reads any filesystem anyway
For the record, the name is "Linux," not "GNU/Linux." Might want to refer to Torvalds's trademark for further details on that point.
If you distribute the binary of a GPL derivative work, and you don't distribute the source code for the derivative, then you've violated the GPL.
Interestingly enough, there are other requirements for GPL compliance. Simply distributing your source code is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one to demonstrate compliance. For example, "You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change." Also, the oft-ignored "banner clause" in paragraph 2c.
Consider the physical-property equivalent
;-)
RMS would rip your tongue right out of your head for saying such a thing. While valid and useful, comparing software to physical property is ideologically unacceptable. Consider yourself warned.
We can interpret the present situation in either of two ways. One: the offending party did not accept the terms of the GPL, and has committed copyright infringement. Two: the offending party did accept the terms of the GPL, but is failing to comply with the conditions contained therein. Because there is no feedback mechanism to inform the authors of a piece of GPL-licensed software that you have accepted their license, we have absolutely no way of knowing which one of those interpretations is the correct one.
But either interpretation leads to the same conclusion. If this derivative work was created by making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work, then any copyright claim on this work is invalid, and we're all free to copy and distribute it as we see fit. Contrariwise, we could interpret the current situation to mean that the authors did accept the terms of the GPL, and that the derivative work is, in fact, licensed by the GPL-- as all derivative works made from GPL-licensed works must necessarily be-- in which case we're free to copy and distribute it as we see fit.
This is, incidentally, a fine example of why, in my opinion, the GPL badly needs to be tested in court and found invalid. This kind of ambiguity is just unacceptable in a legally binding document, and somebody needs to force the FSF to revise the license to make sure this kind of scenario cannot arise.
But that's just my opinion. I will undoubtedly be moderated "troll" for daring to utter a disparaging word about the FSF and the GPL.
I gave several examples of ?positive rights?, including ?time-shifting?, and DHRA copying
These are not rights. These are privileges. For example, consider the proposed broadcast flag. Some content protected by the broadcast flag may not be timeshifted by digital means. This is not illegal. It's perfectly legal. Why? Because timeshifting is not a right.
Maybe we need to have a little refresher on the definition of "right." A right is a legally guaranteed freedom. I have a right to free speech, for example, because the Constitution prohibits the passing of a law that abridges my freedom of speech. Get it? A right is a legally guaranteed freedom.
You have no legally guaranteed freedom to timeshift, or to make home recordings, or to create a parody, or to do any other thing with somebody else's copyrighted works. If you do these things, it is not a copyright infringement, but that's far from being the same thing as saying that you have the legally guaranteed freedom to do those things. Copyright holders, on the other hand, have the right-- the legally guaranteed freedom-- to determine who can and who can't make use of their works. I, as a copyright holder, am legally entitled to release a CD that, through some hypothetical technical means, can only be played on a Tuesday. There's nothing in the copyright statues, or any other body of US law, that makes that illegal. If you do something to your CD player that enables you to play my CD on a Saturday, however, you have broken the law. Because I, as the copyright holder, have the legally guaranteed freedom to decide when and how you can play my CD.
Are you starting to understand the difference between privileges and rights now?
Sorry if you got confused here - I was talking ethics, not law.
No offense, but I'm not convinced that you're qualified to have an ethical discussion of this matter. It seems obvious from your posts thus far that you're only interested in the mythical "rights" of the consumer, and care not for the very much real rights of the producer. Because of your obvious bias, I'd have to say that I'm really not all that interested in hearing your opinion on the ethics of copyright.
The reason copyright laws have expanded to protect ideas is because they were largely written by copyright owners
Um. I hate to break it to you, dude, but you are a copyright owner. Every person who has ever written anything down is a copyright owner. Trying to couch this in terms of haves versus have-nots just makes you look like an idiot.
What I argue is that the amount of protection is gotten out of whack, and is actually harmful to new authors
Harmful how? Because you can't take characters, dialogue, or plots from other people's work to use in your own? That's specious at best. Re-adapting old works for a new audience is certainly one form of artistic expression, but it's hardly a significant form. And the body of work that is not protected by copyright is vast and broad; anybody who just insists that they have to adapt somebody else's work instead of creating their own original work-- like, say, Disney-- can draw on the vast and ever-increasing body of public domain works. Having recent works protected by copyright does those people no harm whatsoever. None.
It all comes down to the difference between copying and inspiration. Copyright prohibits copying. It has no effect whatsoever on inspiration.
Your belief in total originality with no other influences is very touching.
Your belief that protecting a work with a copyright has any effect whatsoever on that work's being an influence to others is... well, not touching. It's really fucking stupid. Blindingly stupid, even.
I bought a car, and saw the tires were going to wear out. I used to be able to replace the tires, but the DMCAR law was passed with a loophole that allowed manufacturers to prevent me from replacing the tires.
Bzzt. My bullshit detector is going off. See, the DMCA doesn't prevent you from being able to replace something. It prevents you from being able to make an unauthorized copy of something. Your analogy is-- quite deliberately, I'm starting to believe-- bogus, because you're saying that the DMCA doesn't let you replace something that has worn out. If your copy of "Deep Throat" wears out, buy another. The idea that you feel like should be somehow entitled to a free set of tires-- i.e., to make an unauthorized, illegal copy-- is laughable at best, and really incredibly depressing at worst.
Look, the way I see it this is coming down in one of two ways. Option one: you are uninformed and naive. This is fine. I have no problem with this. Ignorance is not a crime. Option two: you are deliberately choosing to ignore the plain facts in an effort to advance some kind of a political agenda. That prospect frankly turns my stomach. So which is it?
No. That's not how it works.
Actually that's exactly how it works. For better or for worse.