Actually it does, courts make the distinction between internal use and external distribution all the time in reference to large organisations. Usually not that large, of course, but the principle is the same.
No court will ever find that passing out a program to 10,000 people is not distribution.
I've had software on hundreds of computers being used by thousands of people on a site license - this was not 'distribution' and I had no rights to distribute it.
When you got the site license you were given explicit permission to distribute it to everyone on a site.
The DoD doesn't need the GPL to tell it what kind of arrangements it can or cannot make with it's employees, that's absurd.
If your employer orders you to violate a license, she is breaking the law. If the DoD orders someone to violate Microsoft's copyright (by copying Microsoft Access(r) without paying) or Linus's copyright (by copying modified Linux without giving the recipient permission to redistribute), it is illegal in either case.
demonstrate to a court that it was nothing but a sham perpetrated to evade the license
It can be trivially demonstrated that the sole purpose was to evade the intent of the license, yes. But that doesn't mean its a "sham". Even if an organization has no purpose but to thwart GPL, it's still an organization. Legally, the threshold to calling yourself an "organization" or even "corporation" is low. If organizations get an exception to the GPL, what's to stop the proliferation of code-sharing clubs? (They have already been attempted, and they failed, because organizations actually have no exception)
The copyright holder for those programs is the FSF, the FSF is on record that it is their understanding and intention that the license allows such use.
But this doesn't bind any other GPL programs. And realistically, the FSF's software isn't what people will want to duplicate. For a specific example, look at Qt from Trolltech. The DoD would like to transition its Unix X11 programs away from Motif and towards a modern toolkit, but they're unwilling to pay for a commercial license to Qt, and Trolltech's lawyer would be all over them if a GPLed version were given out to 600,000 soldiers and sailors.
At some point the employee was handed a CD-Rom containing a file named COPYING which includes the text "You may copy and distribute the Program in object code or executable form".
By that action, the company gave him authorization. If they hadn't wished to give that permission, they shouldn't have distributed a GPLed program.
That page of FAQs is not legal advice. Nothing on the page claims it was written by lawyers. (The GPL itself was)
That FAQ does say that "an organization just making the copies for itself is not distribution". Which is obviously contrary to the English language:
distribute: v, to give out or deliver especially to members of a group
If they had wanted to use a different definition of "distribution", then they should've included the alternative meaning in the text of the license, instead of on an auxilliary webpage that has no legal standing. In any court hearing, the judge will consult only the GPL itself and national copyright law- not HTML pages from fsf.org.
The most important* GPLed projects, Linux and KDE, are not owned by the FSF. Those authors have not agreed to use a non-standard definition of "distribution". The FSF's opinions mean nothing to those projects- only the text of the license they use.
There is no 'exception' needed since internal copying by a single entity is not considered to be distribution.
It is according to the definition of "distribution" in a dictionary of the English language. "to give out or deliver especially to members of a group" That's the same definition that applies to US copyright law. Note that US law doesn't consider corporations to be single entities for purposes of using copyrighted works.
then they must license the modifications to him under the GPL.
You must invoke the GPL (giving the recipient full redistribution rights) whenever performing an act that violates the author's copyright. This includes anything it would be illegal to do with a traditional proprietary program like Microsoft(tm) Access(r). Making a single copy for a co-worker to use on your job is one such violation.
Umm no. As long as it doesn't leave the DoD it's not 'distribution' under the terms of the license. You don't have to do shit.
Do you know how many employees the DoD has? More than 1 million.
The word "distribution" means passing something out. Nobody can claim that giving a program to 1 million people spread around the world is not "distribution". The fact that all the recipients get paychecks from the same place means nothing.
See this entry in the GPL FAQ.
I've seen that entry in the FAQ. FAQs, however, have no legal weight. Only licenses do. What I don't see is anything in the text of the GPL itself to modify the definition of "distribution" to something other than in the English dictionary.
Quoting from that FAQ: an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
It says the organization doesn't have to release to the public. It does not say the organization can forbid its members from releasing to the public. (In any group of a million users, at least a few will feel like uploading to USENET)
If a boss can forbid his employees from redistributing a GPLed program based on the strength of the employment contract between them, or because they're in the same "organization", then commercial software vendors could evade the GPL by requiring their customers to sign onto shell corporations first. Obviously, that can't fly.
You are assuming this cannot happen with open source encryption.
Don't put words into someone else's mouth. Nobody claimed it "cannot happen".
Humans are fallable, we can never be sure that an encryption we've designed is unbreakable. The (valid) assumption we make is that exploits will be more likely to be announced if there are more people looking at the code.
Plus, it's faster and more reliable to check an algorithm for flaws if you actually have the algorithim, rather than just a sample of output sniffed from the airwaves. If an open-source code goes unbroken for 20 years, you can feel somewhat safe with it. If a closed source one survives that long, you'll never be sure if its really safe, or just nobody tried to crack it.
Back in 1945 when we didn't have electronic computers, the portability and speed of a Navajo was an advantage. But if one single Navajo was captured or defected, their whole code system is gone, and they have no possibility of replacing it.
The only people who should ever rely on Security Through Obscurity are those who know their data too worthless to bother stealing.
AIX, Solaris, and HPUX should really be higher on that list than either OSX or OpenBSD (based on a sampling of CS in the DoD)
Anyway, that post is a blatant troll. Obviously, its a copy of a theological screed with operating systems substituted for religions. Here's the original on Kuro5hin.
The GPL is a copyright license, and as such covers only _distribution_ and posession, not use or output.
As a copyright license, it naturally covers everything copyright does. Obviously, that mainly means copying. (Although the written law uses the term "duplication")
To make a single copy of a program for the person who shares your office is a violation of copyright. Doing that without the author's permission is a crime. To have permission under the GPL, you must give the recipient unlimited redistribution rights. If you don't do this- such as if you're not allowed to grant such rights- then you cannot make copies of a GPL program.
Secondly, if they keep it internally, it's not "dissemminated"
The GPL contains no "internal use" exception. I also can't tell where you're quoting "disseminated" from- that word doesn't occur in the Slashdot post, the GPL, or US copyright law (prior to the recent creation of the DMCA)
If I create a secret application based on GPL libraries, I am by no means obligated to post the source code to a public site..
The GPL never requires you to post code to a public site. You only have to give it to people who recieve binaries.
I am going to distribute my application to are going to be people within the DoD.
When you distribute that application to fellow DoD employees, you have two choices.
Give them unlimited permission to pass out copies to whomever they want. This is a violation of security clearance, and you could be prosecuted for treason.
Forbid them from handing out copies to anyone. Doing this will violate the GPL, meaning you have broken copyright law by duplicating the software.
If you have trouble understanding the second point, imagine that I want to sell a modified Gimp (GPL program), and that I first require all customers to sign a promise that they won't hand out copies. Then I sell them the Gimp, along with the GPL, whose permission to re-distribute I claim has been overridden by the other promise. See how that doesn't work?
I sell software to the DoD, so I know how this works. We can include BSD licensed code, no problem, but GPL stuff is off-limits.
In practice, this doesn't matter much, because very few programs are actually classified, even if they process classified data files (they just do this processing from within a SCF, Secure Computing Facility, where there is no way for a trojan program to send messages outside)
I would NOT be offended if goverment agencies decided to use undocumented closed source protocals
I wouldn't be offended- I'd be scared. The rule of thumb is that "Security through obscurity is no security at all", but realistically, it's good enough for some situations where there aren't large numbers of dedicated, well-fianced enemy spies. That is, anyplace other than National Security can get away with it for a while.
It is critical that, if a software developer who knows the code defects, we can simply change everyone's password and not junk the entire system until the program can be re-written from scratch. But that's what relying on closed-source for security would require.
Hell if they want to write their propriority software in ADA, more power too them.
The US government doesn't write proprietary software. Or anything else proprietary for that matter- all their intellectual works are public domain. Some of them are protected under security classification, like the way Air Force bases belong to the public, but they're not allowed inside without permission.
(And, a Top-Secret classification will expire long before copyrights do...)
Try google.com someday. But here's a story on C-Net. Notice that the central contractor for this project is Ross Perot's company. (Here's another article which mentions different defense contractors doing the work, plus other big IT jobs)
The Training Superiority Program seeks to transform military training by providing continuously-available, on-demand mission-level training for all forces at all echelons.
The limiting factor to the number of Predators that can be airborne at once is not available drones, but bandwidth contention.
Gee, do you think they should encrypt the network? Gee can it be monitored? The fact you even thought of this should tell you the military has thought of it as well.
Yes, it sounds obvious and logical. But yet, the military only noticed this after UK satellite-dish hobbyists started recording unencrypted Predator feeds from the Middle East.
If they EMP you, it won't be a big area.
EMPs have been known to have a diamter greater than 2000 miles. Refer to Test Shot Starfish for background. Creating an EMP that is controlled (directional) and yet still powerful is actually more technologically challenging than firing a large one.
Umm, a small tactical nuke will kill them. Lack of communication at that point is moot. See above comment.
A nuke explosion at a high altitude is the easiest way to create a widespread EMP blast. Electronics will be damaged at a distance 100s of times greater than the human-lethal blast range.
There are obvious reasons why a nation with atomic weapons might be more willing to employ them for EMP against equipment, rather than targeting troops on the ground.
Russia still maintains a capability to fire a large nuke into the upper atmosphere, which would blackout London and Berlin in a single shot. The US State Department claims that North Korea has a system with similar power.
After the production team moved on to Australia, the concrete from the freeway was ground up for use as road base. The lumber was shipped to Mexico for building low-income housing, the foam cave broken down to become building insulation.
Do you really think ET's race could have survived long enough to build those spaceships they have if they moved like an eighty-year-old arthritic grandmother? The equivalent of wolves on their planet would have torn them to pieces long before they developed civilization.
The natural implication is that they were faster and sturdier before inventing their high-technology. After that, a few millenia of robot-assisted laziness takes over and evolution pushes in a different direction.
It's a scifi standard: the degree to which a society depends on its technology indicates how long it has possessed it.
(Watch- in 200 years or so, you'll see a trend towards that on this planet!)
That's why you should never ever have dynamically linked setuid programs! (Or, if they do exist, they should give up root before calling any non-static functions. Some programs do that)
A few years ago, several GNOME programs that were setuid were rearranged to no longer be root, because of this vulnerability. Xcdroast is one of the more famous ones.
Additionally, in a system where normal users are allowed to mount their own filesystems, they should only be permitted to place them in ~/mnt.
The author doesn't own the copyright, the publishing company does (usually).
That's the US way. In Japan the author often keeps copyright.
However, only for a manga is it possible for one person to have copyright for the entire thing. An anime will have had contributions from others (seiyuu, musicians, Koreans, etc).
However, the author will know the publisher, and to keep authors happy, any publisher (in Japan or the US) will permit authors to pass out small amounts of the work. (If not, 500000 yen should be about enough to convince him to release one copy)
allow you to make a copy of the fansubbers work
I didn't say anything about that. They wouldn't let you copy the fansub- only the original. They can't actually let you copy the fansub- that would violate the fansubbers' copyrights!
You could also hire a private translator.
Well of course, that would be a necessary step, if you don't speak Japanese. But you'd also need special permission to take a copy of the original. A region 2 DVD, for example, isn't supposed to be exportable.
The interesting thing is that "pirates" or fansubbers are fully willing to perform equivalents of all those production tasks for free, and to a level of quality acceptable to many viewers.
The single most expensive part of creating a DVD for legal sale in America is the English dubbing- and many fans count that as a big negative. (They're a minority of total buyers, though)
Often the fan-produced versions have superior translation and disc layout compared to professional work. Most importantly, they can pack 15 good quality episodes on a DVD-R (Divx4 compression), where an official disc will never have more than 5. Much, much more convient in terms of physical storage space and disc-swapping during playback.
(And remember than DVD-R has less than 50% of the gigabytes of a mass-produced DVD).
In English, to call someone a geek or nerd is an insult- it has denotations of having no social graces (geek) or hygiene (nerd).
(The original definition of nerd: "A preppy who gets a courseload so heavy that his study-time precludes daily showers". It was spelled with a "u" back then.)
There is a lot of data to back that up. In the 70s and 80s, Japan didn't recognize international IP, and it borrowed liberally from foreign inventors to build its economy. Only when they were locally creating more than they used did Japan want to sign on to the Berne convention.
Further back, the Industrial Revolution started in Engliand in the 1800s. Their intellectual property laws forbid the free spread of that manufacturing information. But industrial spies (most famously Francis Cabot Lowell) escaped with the plans to the US, where those laws weren't respected, and created industrial superpowers.
My understanding is that an exceeding number of "American" inmates are actually somebody else's population, which is to say, illegal aliens.
Nope. The large majority of US prison inmates are US citizens. (800,000+ of them)
The government can incarcerate illegal aliens after convicting them of crimes, but it has little motivation to do this, unless they're guilty of something really major. Its already very expensive to maintain cells for all the US convicts- why strain the budget further by housing foreigners on 7 year "possesion with intent" sentences?
When illegal aliens are arrested, they often get deported before we bother to try them for the particular offense.
people realized that the Nazis had committed crimes which exceeded what had been known before by several orders of magnitude
Within the first few books of the Bible you can find descriptions of quite similar events. Prehaps they were exaggerating, though.
"Genocide is next to Godliness"
The US built a civilization in which Indians could not survive meaningfully, yet destroying all Indians was not their goal.
The "Indian" culture and way of life hasn't survived- a natural consequence of technological obselesence.
However, the people have survived. The population of "native Americans" has been continually increasing for 400 years. However, the ones who survived best are those who assimilated into the US civilization. The ones who resisted were the most likely to be killed.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it does, courts make the distinction between internal use and external distribution all the time in reference to large organisations. Usually not that large, of course, but the principle is the same.
No court will ever find that passing out a program to 10,000 people is not distribution.
I've had software on hundreds of computers being used by thousands of people on a site license - this was not 'distribution' and I had no rights to distribute it.
When you got the site license you were given explicit permission to distribute it to everyone on a site.
The DoD doesn't need the GPL to tell it what kind of arrangements it can or cannot make with it's employees, that's absurd.
If your employer orders you to violate a license, she is breaking the law. If the DoD orders someone to violate Microsoft's copyright (by copying Microsoft Access(r) without paying) or Linus's copyright (by copying modified Linux without giving the recipient permission to redistribute), it is illegal in either case.
demonstrate to a court that it was nothing but a sham perpetrated to evade the license
It can be trivially demonstrated that the sole purpose was to evade the intent of the license, yes. But that doesn't mean its a "sham". Even if an organization has no purpose but to thwart GPL, it's still an organization. Legally, the threshold to calling yourself an "organization" or even "corporation" is low. If organizations get an exception to the GPL, what's to stop the proliferation of code-sharing clubs? (They have already been attempted, and they failed, because organizations actually have no exception)
The copyright holder for those programs is the FSF, the FSF is on record that it is their understanding and intention that the license allows such use.
But this doesn't bind any other GPL programs. And realistically, the FSF's software isn't what people will want to duplicate. For a specific example, look at Qt from Trolltech. The DoD would like to transition its Unix X11 programs away from Motif and towards a modern toolkit, but they're unwilling to pay for a commercial license to Qt, and Trolltech's lawyer would be all over them if a GPLed version were given out to 600,000 soldiers and sailors.
the company didn't authorize them to do that.
At some point the employee was handed a CD-Rom containing a file named COPYING which includes the text "You may copy and distribute the Program in object code or executable form".
By that action, the company gave him authorization. If they hadn't wished to give that permission, they shouldn't have distributed a GPLed program.
That FAQ does say that "an organization just making the copies for itself is not distribution". Which is obviously contrary to the English language:
distribute: v, to give out or deliver especially to members of a group
If they had wanted to use a different definition of "distribution", then they should've included the alternative meaning in the text of the license, instead of on an auxilliary webpage that has no legal standing. In any court hearing, the judge will consult only the GPL itself and national copyright law- not HTML pages from fsf.org.
The most important* GPLed projects, Linux and KDE, are not owned by the FSF. Those authors have not agreed to use a non-standard definition of "distribution". The FSF's opinions mean nothing to those projects- only the text of the license they use.
*Ok, GCC is arguably more important than KDE.
There is no 'exception' needed since internal copying by a single entity is not considered to be distribution.
It is according to the definition of "distribution" in a dictionary of the English language. "to give out or deliver especially to members of a group" That's the same definition that applies to US copyright law. Note that US law doesn't consider corporations to be single entities for purposes of using copyrighted works.
then they must license the modifications to him under the GPL.
You must invoke the GPL (giving the recipient full redistribution rights) whenever performing an act that violates the author's copyright. This includes anything it would be illegal to do with a traditional proprietary program like Microsoft(tm) Access(r). Making a single copy for a co-worker to use on your job is one such violation.
Umm no. As long as it doesn't leave the DoD it's not 'distribution' under the terms of the license. You don't have to do shit.
Do you know how many employees the DoD has? More than 1 million.
The word "distribution" means passing something out. Nobody can claim that giving a program to 1 million people spread around the world is not "distribution". The fact that all the recipients get paychecks from the same place means nothing.
See this entry in the GPL FAQ.
I've seen that entry in the FAQ. FAQs, however, have no legal weight. Only licenses do. What I don't see is anything in the text of the GPL itself to modify the definition of "distribution" to something other than in the English dictionary.
Quoting from that FAQ:
an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
It says the organization doesn't have to release to the public. It does not say the organization can forbid its members from releasing to the public. (In any group of a million users, at least a few will feel like uploading to USENET)
If a boss can forbid his employees from redistributing a GPLed program based on the strength of the employment contract between them, or because they're in the same "organization", then commercial software vendors could evade the GPL by requiring their customers to sign onto shell corporations first. Obviously, that can't fly.
You are assuming this cannot happen with open source encryption.
Don't put words into someone else's mouth. Nobody claimed it "cannot happen".
Humans are fallable, we can never be sure that an encryption we've designed is unbreakable. The (valid) assumption we make is that exploits will be more likely to be announced if there are more people looking at the code.
Plus, it's faster and more reliable to check an algorithm for flaws if you actually have the algorithim, rather than just a sample of output sniffed from the airwaves. If an open-source code goes unbroken for 20 years, you can feel somewhat safe with it. If a closed source one survives that long, you'll never be sure if its really safe, or just nobody tried to crack it.
It makes no sence at all.
Back in 1945 when we didn't have electronic computers, the portability and speed of a Navajo was an advantage. But if one single Navajo was captured or defected, their whole code system is gone, and they have no possibility of replacing it.
The only people who should ever rely on Security Through Obscurity are those who know their data too worthless to bother stealing.
AIX, Solaris, and HPUX should really be higher on that list than either OSX or OpenBSD (based on a sampling of CS in the DoD)
Anyway, that post is a blatant troll. Obviously, its a copy of a theological screed with operating systems substituted for religions. Here's the original on Kuro5hin.
The GPL is a copyright license, and as such covers only _distribution_ and posession, not use or output.
As a copyright license, it naturally covers everything copyright does. Obviously, that mainly means copying. (Although the written law uses the term "duplication")
To make a single copy of a program for the person who shares your office is a violation of copyright. Doing that without the author's permission is a crime. To have permission under the GPL, you must give the recipient unlimited redistribution rights. If you don't do this- such as if you're not allowed to grant such rights- then you cannot make copies of a GPL program.
Secondly, if they keep it internally, it's not "dissemminated"
The GPL contains no "internal use" exception. I also can't tell where you're quoting "disseminated" from- that word doesn't occur in the Slashdot post, the GPL, or US copyright law (prior to the recent creation of the DMCA)
The GPL never requires you to post code to a public site. You only have to give it to people who recieve binaries.
I am going to distribute my application to are going to be people within the DoD.
When you distribute that application to fellow DoD employees, you have two choices.
- Give them unlimited permission to pass out copies to whomever they want. This is a violation of security clearance, and you could be prosecuted for treason.
- Forbid them from handing out copies to anyone. Doing this will violate the GPL, meaning you have broken copyright law by duplicating the software.
If you have trouble understanding the second point, imagine that I want to sell a modified Gimp (GPL program), and that I first require all customers to sign a promise that they won't hand out copies. Then I sell them the Gimp, along with the GPL, whose permission to re-distribute I claim has been overridden by the other promise. See how that doesn't work?I sell software to the DoD, so I know how this works. We can include BSD licensed code, no problem, but GPL stuff is off-limits.
In practice, this doesn't matter much, because very few programs are actually classified, even if they process classified data files (they just do this processing from within a SCF, Secure Computing Facility, where there is no way for a trojan program to send messages outside)
I would NOT be offended if goverment agencies decided to use undocumented closed source protocals
I wouldn't be offended- I'd be scared. The rule of thumb is that "Security through obscurity is no security at all", but realistically, it's good enough for some situations where there aren't large numbers of dedicated, well-fianced enemy spies. That is, anyplace other than National Security can get away with it for a while.
It is critical that, if a software developer who knows the code defects, we can simply change everyone's password and not junk the entire system until the program can be re-written from scratch. But that's what relying on closed-source for security would require.
Hell if they want to write their propriority software in ADA, more power too them.
The US government doesn't write proprietary software. Or anything else proprietary for that matter- all their intellectual works are public domain. Some of them are protected under security classification, like the way Air Force bases belong to the public, but they're not allowed inside without permission.
(And, a Top-Secret classification will expire long before copyrights do...)
Try google.com someday. But here's a story on C-Net. Notice that the central contractor for this project is Ross Perot's company. (Here's another article which mentions different defense contractors doing the work, plus other big IT jobs)
They don't have a bandwidth problem
The limiting factor to the number of Predators that can be airborne at once is not available drones, but bandwidth contention.
Gee, do you think they should encrypt the network? Gee can it be monitored? The fact you even thought of this should tell you the military has thought of it as well.
Yes, it sounds obvious and logical. But yet, the military only noticed this after UK satellite-dish hobbyists started recording unencrypted Predator feeds from the Middle East.
If they EMP you, it won't be a big area.
EMPs have been known to have a diamter greater than 2000 miles. Refer to Test Shot Starfish for background. Creating an EMP that is controlled (directional) and yet still powerful is actually more technologically challenging than firing a large one.
Umm, a small tactical nuke will kill them. Lack of communication at that point is moot. See above comment.
A nuke explosion at a high altitude is the easiest way to create a widespread EMP blast. Electronics will be damaged at a distance 100s of times greater than the human-lethal blast range.
There are obvious reasons why a nation with atomic weapons might be more willing to employ them for EMP against equipment, rather than targeting troops on the ground.
Russia still maintains a capability to fire a large nuke into the upper atmosphere, which would blackout London and Berlin in a single shot. The US State Department claims that North Korea has a system with similar power.
Do you really think ET's race could have survived long enough to build those spaceships they have if they moved like an eighty-year-old arthritic grandmother? The equivalent of wolves on their planet would have torn them to pieces long before they developed civilization.
The natural implication is that they were faster and sturdier before inventing their high-technology. After that, a few millenia of robot-assisted laziness takes over and evolution pushes in a different direction.
It's a scifi standard: the degree to which a society depends on its technology indicates how long it has possessed it.
(Watch- in 200 years or so, you'll see a trend towards that on this planet!)
That's why you should never ever have dynamically linked setuid programs! (Or, if they do exist, they should give up root before calling any non-static functions. Some programs do that)
This evil user could just set LD_PRELOAD to his own library, without needing to mess with new filesystems.
A few years ago, several GNOME programs that were setuid were rearranged to no longer be root, because of this vulnerability. Xcdroast is one of the more famous ones.
Additionally, in a system where normal users are allowed to mount their own filesystems, they should only be permitted to place them in ~/mnt.
The author doesn't own the copyright, the publishing company does (usually).
That's the US way. In Japan the author often keeps copyright.
However, only for a manga is it possible for one person to have copyright for the entire thing. An anime will have had contributions from others (seiyuu, musicians, Koreans, etc).
However, the author will know the publisher, and to keep authors happy, any publisher (in Japan or the US) will permit authors to pass out small amounts of the work. (If not, 500000 yen should be about enough to convince him to release one copy)
allow you to make a copy of the fansubbers work
I didn't say anything about that. They wouldn't let you copy the fansub- only the original. They can't actually let you copy the fansub- that would violate the fansubbers' copyrights!
You could also hire a private translator.
Well of course, that would be a necessary step, if you don't speak Japanese. But you'd also need special permission to take a copy of the original. A region 2 DVD, for example, isn't supposed to be exportable.
The interesting thing is that "pirates" or fansubbers are fully willing to perform equivalents of all those production tasks for free, and to a level of quality acceptable to many viewers.
The single most expensive part of creating a DVD for legal sale in America is the English dubbing- and many fans count that as a big negative. (They're a minority of total buyers, though)
Often the fan-produced versions have superior translation and disc layout compared to professional work. Most importantly, they can pack 15 good quality episodes on a DVD-R (Divx4 compression), where an official disc will never have more than 5. Much, much more convient in terms of physical storage space and disc-swapping during playback.
(And remember than DVD-R has less than 50% of the gigabytes of a mass-produced DVD).
Moreover, there is no actual legal way to obtain the material in English.
Technically, the legal way is to fly to Japan, hunt down the author, and give him one million yen.
In English, to call someone a geek or nerd is an insult- it has denotations of having no social graces (geek) or hygiene (nerd).
(The original definition of nerd: "A preppy who gets a courseload so heavy that his study-time precludes daily showers". It was spelled with a "u" back then.)
Any language that needs an interactive interpreter is TOTALLY unsuited for classrooms.
There is a lot of data to back that up. In the 70s and 80s, Japan didn't recognize international IP, and it borrowed liberally from foreign inventors to build its economy. Only when they were locally creating more than they used did Japan want to sign on to the Berne convention.
Further back, the Industrial Revolution started in Engliand in the 1800s. Their intellectual property laws forbid the free spread of that manufacturing information. But industrial spies (most famously Francis Cabot Lowell) escaped with the plans to the US, where those laws weren't respected, and created industrial superpowers.
My understanding is that an exceeding number of "American" inmates are actually somebody else's population, which is to say, illegal aliens.
Nope. The large majority of US prison inmates are US citizens. (800,000+ of them)
The government can incarcerate illegal aliens after convicting them of crimes, but it has little motivation to do this, unless they're guilty of something really major. Its already very expensive to maintain cells for all the US convicts- why strain the budget further by housing foreigners on 7 year "possesion with intent" sentences?
When illegal aliens are arrested, they often get deported before we bother to try them for the particular offense.
people realized that the Nazis had committed crimes which exceeded what had been known before by several orders of magnitude
Within the first few books of the Bible you can find descriptions of quite similar events. Prehaps they were exaggerating, though.
"Genocide is next to Godliness"
The US built a civilization in which Indians could not survive meaningfully, yet destroying all Indians was not their goal.
The "Indian" culture and way of life hasn't survived- a natural consequence of technological obselesence.
However, the people have survived. The population of "native Americans" has been continually increasing for 400 years. However, the ones who survived best are those who assimilated into the US civilization. The ones who resisted were the most likely to be killed.