That's all fine and dandy on the larger picture, but what about those who have purchased these binaries and thus have a right to the sourcecode and want it?
Are they going to at least be offered a full refund if they aren't getting the full product they've purchased? They bought something that should legally be under the gpl, since it's not they are currently holding pirated software.
"Now, I'm not a Mac person, I've never used any of these applications. However, there are several things to remember. First, in this case, the author of iTerm is the only person who can demand the source be released. You cannont enforce someone elses copyrights. So the copyright holders of iTerm are the only people with a leg to stand on in actually getting the source coughed up."
Normally true, but if you've bought the product you have a leg to stand on as well, there are certain legal rights your supposed to have and you do have a right to demand them.
No actually this is entirely accurate, they DO have to release all of their code under the GPL or they break the law.
They might be able to get away with it if they stop distributing and cut the gpl'd code out of their next release but that doesn't make it legal.
The terms of the gpl (which they must release their ENTIRE codebase under since the lgpl allows linking and the gpl does not) also stipulate that they only have to distribute the code to those who they've distributed the binaries to... but that is a mute point, whatever license and restrictions they've put out are null, void, and now unenforcable, since they don't have any legal grounds to license the code under it... meaning those people can sue if the software causes their computer to burst into flame and destroys data worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Also any of those who has bought a binary and recieves the sourcecode has every legal right to turn around and redistribute it to those who cocoatech DID NOT distribute a binary to, so this essentially only saves them bandwidth.
ummm I think I prefer the kernel developers staying right where they are and dedicating their spare time to improving the kernel tyvm. Maybe we could reassign the community trolls or something.
Aside from the fact that it is ancient and hopelessly outdated, it also randomly covers various subjects. Some it covers indepth and some are barely discussed.
It has no comprehensive flow to it, this is not the type of book that could be read and gone through from cover to cover and set aside. It is structured like a reference manual but doesn't have reference level coverage of all the topics discussed. In fact, some are rather pointless... why go into sendmail if your not going to cover enough to actually get a mailserver setup?
Other than that, I think some people should contact the author and see about getting this OK'd for linux doc uses and update it... fill in the holes etc. A single linux book with contributors and volunteers out the arse, finally a place where nonprogrammers can do their part... would be an awessome idea, and this looks like as good a place to start as any.
Or you could just download the pdf/ps versions of the howto's and print them, then as opposed to thousands of pages or random unordered shit, you actually have nice formated books.
That depends on what your using to print it;) To print a 1200 page book on my HP Laserjet 4100 costs me $.02/page and that comes out to $29 (with a binder) and 5mins to punch holes in it. Since pretty much all manuals are 1200 pages or less I'd say the $29 is cheaper than $50+
copyright is for X length of time, period, either you have it or you don't. Short of giving it up or selling it, you cannot lose your copyright. You don't have to defend it, it's not like a trademark.
"You can honestly say with a straight face that Napster and mod chips didn't make the music and video game piracy orders of magnitude worse? Getting a copy of your friend's cassette tapes still required a fair amount of time and effort to accomplish. Video game systems prior to the PSX has bootlegs, but you couldn't get every game for free with just a $50 modchip and a bunch of 25 cent cds."
It doesn't take much less time and effort to download mp3's through a dial-up connection and that is what most people have. Broadband penetration isn't very significant yet. Whether filesharing actually decreases sales or increases sales is an entire debate unto itself.
As for mod-chips, do you realise how drastically insignifanct the number of people who even have them are??? Even if they did promote piracy I doubt the.0000001% of console owners with modchips have any significant impact on the worldwide or national levels in terms of piracy.
Congratulations, you've finally woken up to the reality of te broken existance that has been in place in this country for the 22yrs I've been around and continues growing worse.
Don't cry to the polititions, they are mere puppets for the corporations.
I dunno how far that would get since well into the 90th percentile of iraq's population felt he was a good ruler. He certainly had a higher popularity rating than any ruler in the US ever did.
"I agree with the original AC poster when he lays some of the blame for the DMCA at the feet of the copyright infringers. If you deny that they provided the lobbyists with ammunition that helped push this law through, then I think you're kidding yourself."
I wouldn't argue that last for a minute. If I'm someone who pirates music and doesn't buy the albums of music I enjoy (pirating doesn't mean you don't buy) then it makes little difference if I pirate one song or a 1000, it hasn't cost the RIAA one penny one way or the other since I'm not someone who buys music. MOST pirates actually buy more music due to piracy, not less, they support the artists they enjoy, since they get to hear more artists, they enjoy more, and therefore buy more. Whether they have massive music collections where they only had semi massive collections before is again irrelevant.
So you see, it scales, while the technical number of infringing copies made may have increased, I would argue that sales have not been lost because of this.
I was under the impression it was ok to bypass security measures if the platform on which the software runs is obsolete??? Pc's in general aren't obsolete, but win95 doesn't run on current hardware.
It applies to our workstations yes. Obviously I've got access to everything (kind of helps for the administration part), but my regular workstation is as locked down as everything else.
*notes your terminology sounds like a quote from a RIAA fud fest*
First there are virtually ZERO perfect digital copies floating around the internet. All of them are compressed into the mp3 format, which is by definition loss of quality. That's how mp3 works, it makes the file smaller by cutting out pieces of the audio your less likely to hear. Therefore a mp3 can never be a perfect copy, not even close to perfect.
"Yeah, and those people with 30 gigs of MP3s.. I'm sure obtaining that much illegal music wouldn't have been practical a few years ago."
That has very little to do with piracy that has any impact. First, those people your talking about are just about the only ones BUYING music after the gestapo has been let loose, the true music addicts. And the same people with 30gig's now, had 100 or so copied tapes. Big deal, now their collection is bigger, that doesn't mean they've suddenly stopped buying cd's from the bands they want to support.
Second, either I'm a criminal and willing to break the law or I'm not. Do you really think making it illegal twice to rip off music is going to stop me if it being illegal once didn't??? No it's just going to piss me off because the only illegitimate use for the circumvention devices was ALREADY illegal, the DMCA doesn't make them any more illegal, it just makes the legitimate uses illegal.
And whether 30gig's of mp3's or a couple hundred tapes (I can easily think of at least 15 people I know who used to have at least that many pirated tapes). It really makes no difference, people are going to buy the albums and songs they want to buy for their own reasons, their going to pirate what their going to pirate. Their going to sample what their going to sample.
"I think any competent programmer would tell you that any software copy-protection method, and nearly any hardware copy-protection method CAN be circumvented. Therefore it became necessary for those methods to have some force of law behind them."
I won't let this degrade into a "did! did not!" debate. But if copyright infringement got worse PROSECUTE. Copyright infringement was ALREADY illegal. The only extension the DMCA added of significance is that it's now illegal to circumvent protective measures EVEN WHERE THEY EXTEND WELL BEYOND the limited controls given by copyright.
Remember the RIAA nor the musicians own the music, the people own the music. The people have said thankyou for their contribution by giving them LIMITED control for a LIMITED period of time over LIMITED aspects of OUR property.
Personally I think we need a new DMCA, toss out the old one, copyright holders (myself included, I have copyrights for books, poems, source code, and web content) should lose copyright if they choose technological protections in place of it. They should be mutually exclusive, either you depend on the law and press for it to be enforced, OR you depend on vigilante self enforcement.
I think it's better to emphasis "protected by dongles" in #2 even though only #3 would apply to mame and roms. Since protected by dongles takes a HELL of alot more out of the running than "prevent access due to malfunction or damage". #2 is targeted at businesses involved in manufacturing with old unsupported software.
For the most part these aren't for the benefit of people at home.
ah my friend you are mistaken, I'm free now to crack any and all protections that stand in my way from making my copy of win95 run on the commadore 64!!!
That's true, copyrighted materials aren't owned by the copyright holder, they are owned by the people, the people via copyright have granted them temporary control over how certain aspects of the people's property can be used in exchange for being the first one to create it. After that time, those rights go back to the owners of all human knowledge, thoughts, and ideas, mankind.
That's BS, it's not like copyright infringement has been or was any worse than it was before the digital age. The only things that changed were hard economic times and the copyright holders believing they now had the technical means to control their works in ways that were never before possible. When they found out that the technical means were there, but that their money couldn't buy enough technical prowess to keep these new controls in place, they lobbied for laws so that they could.
This has never been about people infringing copyright, it's about control and maximizing profit. These changes came about as a result of it being technology possible to restrict buyers this way, NOT as a result of people needing to be restricted.
Damn right, it's a business network I'm responsible for making as secure as possible from inside and out. This most assuredly IS a dictatorship and not a democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
That's all fine and dandy on the larger picture, but what about those who have purchased these binaries and thus have a right to the sourcecode and want it?
Are they going to at least be offered a full refund if they aren't getting the full product they've purchased? They bought something that should legally be under the gpl, since it's not they are currently holding pirated software.
"Now, I'm not a Mac person, I've never used any of these applications. However, there are several things to remember. First, in this case, the author of iTerm is the only person who can demand the source be released. You cannont enforce someone elses copyrights. So the copyright holders of iTerm are the only people with a leg to stand on in actually getting the source coughed up."
Normally true, but if you've bought the product you have a leg to stand on as well, there are certain legal rights your supposed to have and you do have a right to demand them.
cocoatech was contacted via the forums and released some code, but not everything they should be.
In that sense, they've already been contacted prior to slashdotting the issue and already refused.
No actually this is entirely accurate, they DO have to release all of their code under the GPL or they break the law.
They might be able to get away with it if they stop distributing and cut the gpl'd code out of their next release but that doesn't make it legal.
The terms of the gpl (which they must release their ENTIRE codebase under since the lgpl allows linking and the gpl does not) also stipulate that they only have to distribute the code to those who they've distributed the binaries to... but that is a mute point, whatever license and restrictions they've put out are null, void, and now unenforcable, since they don't have any legal grounds to license the code under it... meaning those people can sue if the software causes their computer to burst into flame and destroys data worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Also any of those who has bought a binary and recieves the sourcecode has every legal right to turn around and redistribute it to those who cocoatech DID NOT distribute a binary to, so this essentially only saves them bandwidth.
ummm I think I prefer the kernel developers staying right where they are and dedicating their spare time to improving the kernel tyvm. Maybe we could reassign the community trolls or something.
Aside from the fact that it is ancient and hopelessly outdated, it also randomly covers various subjects. Some it covers indepth and some are barely discussed.
It has no comprehensive flow to it, this is not the type of book that could be read and gone through from cover to cover and set aside. It is structured like a reference manual but doesn't have reference level coverage of all the topics discussed. In fact, some are rather pointless... why go into sendmail if your not going to cover enough to actually get a mailserver setup?
Other than that, I think some people should contact the author and see about getting this OK'd for linux doc uses and update it... fill in the holes etc. A single linux book with contributors and volunteers out the arse, finally a place where nonprogrammers can do their part... would be an awessome idea, and this looks like as good a place to start as any.
Or you could just download the pdf/ps versions of the howto's and print them, then as opposed to thousands of pages or random unordered shit, you actually have nice formated books.
That depends on what your using to print it ;) To print a 1200 page book on my HP Laserjet 4100 costs me $.02/page and that comes out to $29 (with a binder) and 5mins to punch holes in it. Since pretty much all manuals are 1200 pages or less I'd say the $29 is cheaper than $50+
copyright is for X length of time, period, either you have it or you don't. Short of giving it up or selling it, you cannot lose your copyright. You don't have to defend it, it's not like a trademark.
"You can honestly say with a straight face that Napster and mod chips didn't make the music and video game piracy orders of magnitude worse? Getting a copy of your friend's cassette tapes still required a fair amount of time and effort to accomplish. Video game systems prior to the PSX has bootlegs, but you couldn't get every game for free with just a $50 modchip and a bunch of 25 cent cds."
.0000001% of console owners with modchips have any significant impact on the worldwide or national levels in terms of piracy.
It doesn't take much less time and effort to download mp3's through a dial-up connection and that is what most people have. Broadband penetration isn't very significant yet. Whether filesharing actually decreases sales or increases sales is an entire debate unto itself.
As for mod-chips, do you realise how drastically insignifanct the number of people who even have them are??? Even if they did promote piracy I doubt the
That my friend is my greatest achievement. Nobody will ever be able to counter my typo-fu!
Congratulations, you've finally woken up to the reality of te broken existance that has been in place in this country for the 22yrs I've been around and continues growing worse.
Don't cry to the polititions, they are mere puppets for the corporations.
I dunno how far that would get since well into the 90th percentile of iraq's population felt he was a good ruler. He certainly had a higher popularity rating than any ruler in the US ever did.
Don't you think it would be depressing if that off-site ISP burned down or were hit by a meteor. You have a LOCAL backup as well right?
"I agree with the original AC poster when he lays some of the blame for the DMCA at the feet of the copyright infringers. If you deny that they provided the lobbyists with ammunition that helped push this law through, then I think you're kidding yourself."
I wouldn't argue that last for a minute. If I'm someone who pirates music and doesn't buy the albums of music I enjoy (pirating doesn't mean you don't buy) then it makes little difference if I pirate one song or a 1000, it hasn't cost the RIAA one penny one way or the other since I'm not someone who buys music. MOST pirates actually buy more music due to piracy, not less, they support the artists they enjoy, since they get to hear more artists, they enjoy more, and therefore buy more. Whether they have massive music collections where they only had semi massive collections before is again irrelevant.
So you see, it scales, while the technical number of infringing copies made may have increased, I would argue that sales have not been lost because of this.
I was under the impression it was ok to bypass security measures if the platform on which the software runs is obsolete??? Pc's in general aren't obsolete, but win95 doesn't run on current hardware.
It applies to our workstations yes. Obviously I've got access to everything (kind of helps for the administration part), but my regular workstation is as locked down as everything else.
*notes your terminology sounds like a quote from a RIAA fud fest*
First there are virtually ZERO perfect digital copies floating around the internet. All of them are compressed into the mp3 format, which is by definition loss of quality. That's how mp3 works, it makes the file smaller by cutting out pieces of the audio your less likely to hear. Therefore a mp3 can never be a perfect copy, not even close to perfect.
"Yeah, and those people with 30 gigs of MP3s.. I'm sure obtaining that much illegal music wouldn't have been practical a few years ago."
That has very little to do with piracy that has any impact. First, those people your talking about are just about the only ones BUYING music after the gestapo has been let loose, the true music addicts. And the same people with 30gig's now, had 100 or so copied tapes. Big deal, now their collection is bigger, that doesn't mean they've suddenly stopped buying cd's from the bands they want to support.
Second, either I'm a criminal and willing to break the law or I'm not. Do you really think making it illegal twice to rip off music is going to stop me if it being illegal once didn't??? No it's just going to piss me off because the only illegitimate use for the circumvention devices was ALREADY illegal, the DMCA doesn't make them any more illegal, it just makes the legitimate uses illegal.
And whether 30gig's of mp3's or a couple hundred tapes (I can easily think of at least 15 people I know who used to have at least that many pirated tapes). It really makes no difference, people are going to buy the albums and songs they want to buy for their own reasons, their going to pirate what their going to pirate. Their going to sample what their going to sample.
"I think any competent programmer would tell you that any software copy-protection method, and nearly any hardware copy-protection method CAN be circumvented. Therefore it became necessary for those methods to have some force of law behind them."
I won't let this degrade into a "did! did not!" debate. But if copyright infringement got worse PROSECUTE. Copyright infringement was ALREADY illegal. The only extension the DMCA added of significance is that it's now illegal to circumvent protective measures EVEN WHERE THEY EXTEND WELL BEYOND the limited controls given by copyright.
Remember the RIAA nor the musicians own the music, the people own the music. The people have said thankyou for their contribution by giving them LIMITED control for a LIMITED period of time over LIMITED aspects of OUR property.
Personally I think we need a new DMCA, toss out the old one, copyright holders (myself included, I have copyrights for books, poems, source code, and web content) should lose copyright if they choose technological protections in place of it. They should be mutually exclusive, either you depend on the law and press for it to be enforced, OR you depend on vigilante self enforcement.
I think it's better to emphasis "protected by dongles" in #2 even though only #3 would apply to mame and roms. Since protected by dongles takes a HELL of alot more out of the running than "prevent access due to malfunction or damage". #2 is targeted at businesses involved in manufacturing with old unsupported software.
For the most part these aren't for the benefit of people at home.
ah my friend you are mistaken, I'm free now to crack any and all protections that stand in my way from making my copy of win95 run on the commadore 64!!!
That's true, copyrighted materials aren't owned by the copyright holder, they are owned by the people, the people via copyright have granted them temporary control over how certain aspects of the people's property can be used in exchange for being the first one to create it. After that time, those rights go back to the owners of all human knowledge, thoughts, and ideas, mankind.
That's BS, it's not like copyright infringement has been or was any worse than it was before the digital age. The only things that changed were hard economic times and the copyright holders believing they now had the technical means to control their works in ways that were never before possible. When they found out that the technical means were there, but that their money couldn't buy enough technical prowess to keep these new controls in place, they lobbied for laws so that they could.
This has never been about people infringing copyright, it's about control and maximizing profit. These changes came about as a result of it being technology possible to restrict buyers this way, NOT as a result of people needing to be restricted.
We are talking about TV here not broadband. Maybe it's different in a larger city? Here you get maybe 2 channels without a tower or cable/satillite.
Damn right, it's a business network I'm responsible for making as secure as possible from inside and out. This most assuredly IS a dictatorship and not a democracy.