Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
In other words, the GPL itself is not 'open source'. It cannot be modified, forked, updated, etc., except by the copyright owners (the FSF). The only thing we mortals are allowed to do is distribute verbatim copies.
Which history books have you been reading? For most of recent history (prior to 1950) Tibet was in effect an independent state. It certainly wasn't considered part of China when Britain invaded Tibet in 1903! Britain then gave it to China because all they wanted was a secure trade route through it. The Tibetans then overthrew the Chinese and by 1906 had regained effective independence. China then descended in to civil war and Europe in to WWI and so everybody lost interest in Tibet until China had become communist and invaded in 1949-50.
Most of China's historical claim to Tibet is based on the fact that from the 1300s Tibet was ruled by Beijing, which is technically true - but it was not ruled by the Chinese! The Mongols (Ghengis Khan, et. al) invaded China, Tibet, Korea and most of the rest of South East Asia and ruled the whole area from Beijing. That hardly gives China a legitamate claim, and it gives them no more of a claim to Tibet than it to Korea.
Since the invasion in 1950 vast numbers of Chinese people have been moved in whilst similarly vast numbers of Tibetans have died of starvation or fled to India, Nepal and Bhutan. The Chinese government has systematically sought to destroy the Tibetan culture, religion, and identity, to the point where Tibetans are now outnumbered by Chinese in their own land. This railroad will only accellerate that process.
This also creates the problem that (particularly in the area of libel) laws vary wildly from place to place. I'm not too sure what Canadian libel laws are like but some places (U.K., Australia, etc.) have much tougher libel laws than the U.S.
This ruling effectively brings U.S. websites under the jurisdiction of foreign libel laws (and vice-versa). Whilst it is reasonable to expect people to understand the laws of their own jurisdiction, is it reasonable to expect people to understand the laws of every jurisdiction in which someone may take action?
Of course, the organisation in question would have to have a presence in the country in which they are being sued, otherwise there is no point in suing them, since the court has nothing to extract settlement against.
how long before I can be convicted under some foreign dictatorship's censorship laws for something I said a thousand miles away?
Probably not long, but then, as I said above, the organisation would have to have a presence in said foreign dictatorship. In practice, it may already happen: imagine what would happen if a U.S. company with a presence in China published on its U.S. website that it supports Taiwanese independence. How long until the Chinese govt takes action against the company's Chinese assets?
Sorry to "take issue with the word 'theft'", but it is significant, both in a legal and moral sense. Legally, theft is defined as taking something with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of it, therefore downloading music is not theft. It is copyright infringement, which is a very different legal concept.
Whether or not downloading music actually deprives the record companies of potential earnings is also far less clear than they would have us believe. It is only depriving them of earnings if the downloader would otherwise have bought the CD.
From personal experience, I think the vast majority of illegal downloading is in circumstances where the downloader would not have bought the CD anyway, either because they consider it too expensive, or because they were downloading it simply to try it out, on the chance it might be good. In some cases, they like it go on to buy the CD (I have certainly done this several times).
Oh, you won't hear anything from moore about Comrade Clinton.
Have you read his book "Stupid White Men"? He probably spends more time bashing the democrats, particularly Clinton, than anyone else. He complains that they are really just Republicans in liberal clothing - something I tend to agree with.
I don't know how much UK law differs in this area, but here there was a case a couple of years ago when the.me.uk domain opened up, where a guy registered nokia.me.uk. When Nokia sued him, he claimed that nokia was his irc name, and he almost won, until the Nokia lawyers discovered his was a lying bastard and had also registered sony.me.uk, bmw.me.uk and a whole load of others. But if he'd been telling the truth, he would have won the case, and thats just based on an irc name, so in a case involving someone's real name I should think they almost certainly would have a valid claim over it.
It's simple... SCO are fast running out of money. They thought IBM would buy them out but they didn't, so they're just going to keep the lawsuits flying until somebody does.
At three month intervals, new directors will be elected by the community in order to fill all vacant seats on the board; each director so elected shall serve on the board for a term of one year, and no individual shall be allowed to serve more than three successive terms.
He is limiting himself to no more than 3 years as a director, so he cannot be accused of attempting to run it dictatorially after its initial creation.
"There is nothing right-wing about the Labour party"
I would say that this is half-true - I think that most of the Labour Party is far more left-wing than Tony Blair, but they don't want to risk going against him. Tony Blair and his entourage, who currently control the Labour Party, are unquestionably right wing. Just look at their policies: from charging student tuition fees to PFI to maintaining exactly the same tax plan as the Tories, and now this. These are not exactly left wing views.
I have supported Labour all my life, I'm not an extreme left-winger by any means (I always considered myself on the right of the Labour Party), but there is no way I can support them now. The way Tony and his cronies have hijacked the Labour Party has sickened me to the point where I'm now a born-again Liberal Democrat:)
Two reasons I can think of:
1) A (fairly unsubtle) donation to SCO's legal fund
2) Because they know that there's Unix code in Windows and they want to make sure its legal in case IBM buys SCO.
I don't think that the parent argument carries much weight, because SCO released the violating code under the GPL with their Linux distro - so using it in Linux hasn't violated their copyright, but to for M$ to use it in Windows would do.
As far as I understand, SCO's case is about copyright, not patents - they're alleging that IBM put Unix code licenced from them in to Linux, but they themselves released Linux (with this code) under the GPL so, effectively giving permission to use it under the GPL. This would not affect Microsoft having to licence it if Windows contained violating code, because they would not be able to use the GPL'ed code. So, from what I can see - from a legal standpoint this will have little effect on the SCO/IBM case, other than helping SCO financially.
havn't scratched our own project (Galileo). The first of the 30 satellites (27 + 3 active spares) will be launched in 2004, with an initial service operational by 2006 and the full system operational by 2008. The links are here (European Commission site), and here ESA site).
I think you must have been mistaken - IIRC the US tried to persuade Europe to dump the project, basically because it will be accurate to around 45cm (guaranteed to withing 100cm), whereas GPS can often be several dozen metres out (and has even known to be several hundred km out!), and the US gov doesn't want European civilians having better tech than their military. The project was debated but they finally agreed to go ahead with it anyway and tell the US gov to get lost (ok, more politely, but that was the basic effect).
The description was not very clear - German MwSt (VAT/sales tax/whatever its called in your country) is 16%. This is charged on everything (including computers) and goes to the government. The copyright levy they're talking about here is ~ US$13 + VAT (i.e. the copyright levy is added before VAT is calculated, so the extra cost to the customer is ~US$15, with $13 going to whoever bribes the politicians and the ~$2 going to the government).
There was an article on the IBM intranet a few months ago (the PS3 chip is being developed jointly by Sony, IBM and Toshiba), which says "Japan's Sony Corp plans to outpace its main rivals into the next generation of game machines by launching a successor to the PlayStation 2 (PS2) in 2005, earlier than expected".
Somehow, 2005 seems far more likely to me - releasing the PS3 is pointless until the PS2 is actually threatened.
I doubt very much if this would be any use for storing saved games as some are suggesting - even rewritable CDs have limits on the number of times they can be rewritten (about 1000 times, I think - I may be wrong). Constantly rewriting save files would exceed this limit fairly quickly (especially with things like autosave options).
Where I can see a use though, is for things like patches - the software developers could release a patch which could simply be written to the original CD, and then when you install the software from then on, any patches could automatically be installed as well.
I really don't see how gene sequences are patentable anyway - I always understood that patents were to protect inventions. Gene sequences are discoveries, not inventions - there is a big difference.
There is also the ridiculous situation where everyone is surely in breach of the patent, since everyone contains a copy of the patented DNA.
It is unreasonable to require each retaler to file and keep track of all 50 states rules/laws/tax amounts.
Here in the EU we simply pay the sales tax of the country of the purchase, e.g. If a person in France buys from a UK online store then they pay UK sales tax, and vice-versa. On-line purchases are not treated any differently to any other purchases.
However such a system in the US could lead to online stores simply moving to states with no or very low sales tax. In the EU there are laws stating that countries have to charge sales tax at at least 15%, so there is not much variation (I think the highest are Denmark and Sweden with 25% but most countries have sales tax at 15-20%).
IANAL, but I really don't see how this sets any precidents that didn't already exist. The way I see it is this:
If a US company with no presence in Australia commits libel against an Australian then can the US company be sued? Theoretically yes, but in reality there would be absolutly no point, since the Australian court has no jurisdiction over the US company or any of its assets, so the court could simply be ignored.
However, if that US company has a branch in Australia it becomes a completely different matter. The Australian court does have jurisdiction over its Australian branch, and therefore the US company cannot simply ignore the ruling, or it could risk having its branch closed down. When a company establishes a branch in another country then the company is effectivly subjecting itself to the laws of that country.
So in answer to a previous post, can a US company be sued in Saudi Arabia for publishing pornography on the internet? No, so long as that company has no presence in Saudi Arabia. However if a US company with a branch in Saudi Arabia publishes pornography then yes, because they have assets which are under the jurisdiction of the Saudi court. The same applies to China - If a US company with a factory in China publishes information on the internet which is deemed illegal in China, then there is a very good chance that the Chinese government would take action against the company's chinese assets.
The demon case is completely irrelevent here - that was between a british individual and a british ISP - there was no question of jurisdiction.
Slashdot Mirror
At the beginning of the GPL you will notice:
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
In other words, the GPL itself is not 'open source'. It cannot be modified, forked, updated, etc., except by the copyright owners (the FSF). The only thing we mortals are allowed to do is distribute verbatim copies.
Which history books have you been reading? For most of recent history (prior to 1950) Tibet was in effect an independent state. It certainly wasn't considered part of China when Britain invaded Tibet in 1903! Britain then gave it to China because all they wanted was a secure trade route through it. The Tibetans then overthrew the Chinese and by 1906 had regained effective independence. China then descended in to civil war and Europe in to WWI and so everybody lost interest in Tibet until China had become communist and invaded in 1949-50.
Most of China's historical claim to Tibet is based on the fact that from the 1300s Tibet was ruled by Beijing, which is technically true - but it was not ruled by the Chinese! The Mongols (Ghengis Khan, et. al) invaded China, Tibet, Korea and most of the rest of South East Asia and ruled the whole area from Beijing. That hardly gives China a legitamate claim, and it gives them no more of a claim to Tibet than it to Korea.
Since the invasion in 1950 vast numbers of Chinese people have been moved in whilst similarly vast numbers of Tibetans have died of starvation or fled to India, Nepal and Bhutan. The Chinese government has systematically sought to destroy the Tibetan culture, religion, and identity, to the point where Tibetans are now outnumbered by Chinese in their own land. This railroad will only accellerate that process.
Most people will just click "yes" and carry on.
This also creates the problem that (particularly in the area of libel) laws vary wildly from place to place. I'm not too sure what Canadian libel laws are like but some places (U.K., Australia, etc.) have much tougher libel laws than the U.S.
This ruling effectively brings U.S. websites under the jurisdiction of foreign libel laws (and vice-versa). Whilst it is reasonable to expect people to understand the laws of their own jurisdiction, is it reasonable to expect people to understand the laws of every jurisdiction in which someone may take action?
Of course, the organisation in question would have to have a presence in the country in which they are being sued, otherwise there is no point in suing them, since the court has nothing to extract settlement against.
Probably not long, but then, as I said above, the organisation would have to have a presence in said foreign dictatorship. In practice, it may already happen: imagine what would happen if a U.S. company with a presence in China published on its U.S. website that it supports Taiwanese independence. How long until the Chinese govt takes action against the company's Chinese assets?
The quote is "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Ghandi.
I'd say we're somewhere between the laughing and fighting stages at the moment.
As far as I know, only copyright infringement for commercial gain is a criminal offence, otherwise its just a civil offence.
Do they still have it? Yes.
Sorry to "take issue with the word 'theft'", but it is significant, both in a legal and moral sense. Legally, theft is defined as taking something with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of it, therefore downloading music is not theft. It is copyright infringement, which is a very different legal concept.
Whether or not downloading music actually deprives the record companies of potential earnings is also far less clear than they would have us believe. It is only depriving them of earnings if the downloader would otherwise have bought the CD.
From personal experience, I think the vast majority of illegal downloading is in circumstances where the downloader would not have bought the CD anyway, either because they consider it too expensive, or because they were downloading it simply to try it out, on the chance it might be good. In some cases, they like it go on to buy the CD (I have certainly done this several times).
Oh, you won't hear anything from moore about Comrade Clinton.
Have you read his book "Stupid White Men"? He probably spends more time bashing the democrats, particularly Clinton, than anyone else. He complains that they are really just Republicans in liberal clothing - something I tend to agree with.
Eclipse itself might be free but the point is that the JVM required to run it isn't.
I don't know how much UK law differs in this area, but here there was a case a couple of years ago when the .me.uk domain opened up, where a guy registered nokia.me.uk. When Nokia sued him, he claimed that nokia was his irc name, and he almost won, until the Nokia lawyers discovered his was a lying bastard and had also registered sony.me.uk, bmw.me.uk and a whole load of others. But if he'd been telling the truth, he would have won the case, and thats just based on an irc name, so in a case involving someone's real name I should think they almost certainly would have a valid claim over it.
It's simple... SCO are fast running out of money. They thought IBM would buy them out but they didn't, so they're just going to keep the lawsuits flying until somebody does.
I would say that this is half-true - I think that most of the Labour Party is far more left-wing than Tony Blair, but they don't want to risk going against him. Tony Blair and his entourage, who currently control the Labour Party, are unquestionably right wing. Just look at their policies: from charging student tuition fees to PFI to maintaining exactly the same tax plan as the Tories, and now this. These are not exactly left wing views.
I have supported Labour all my life, I'm not an extreme left-winger by any means (I always considered myself on the right of the Labour Party), but there is no way I can support them now. The way Tony and his cronies have hijacked the Labour Party has sickened me to the point where I'm now a born-again Liberal Democrat :)
Two reasons I can think of:
1) A (fairly unsubtle) donation to SCO's legal fund
2) Because they know that there's Unix code in Windows and they want to make sure its legal in case IBM buys SCO.
I don't think that the parent argument carries much weight, because SCO released the violating code under the GPL with their Linux distro - so using it in Linux hasn't violated their copyright, but to for M$ to use it in Windows would do.
As far as I understand, SCO's case is about copyright, not patents - they're alleging that IBM put Unix code licenced from them in to Linux, but they themselves released Linux (with this code) under the GPL so, effectively giving permission to use it under the GPL. This would not affect Microsoft having to licence it if Windows contained violating code, because they would not be able to use the GPL'ed code. So, from what I can see - from a legal standpoint this will have little effect on the SCO/IBM case, other than helping SCO financially.
havn't scratched our own project (Galileo). The first of the 30 satellites (27 + 3 active spares) will be launched in 2004, with an initial service operational by 2006 and the full system operational by 2008. The links are here (European Commission site), and here ESA site).
I think you must have been mistaken - IIRC the US tried to persuade Europe to dump the project, basically because it will be accurate to around 45cm (guaranteed to withing 100cm), whereas GPS can often be several dozen metres out (and has even known to be several hundred km out!), and the US gov doesn't want European civilians having better tech than their military. The project was debated but they finally agreed to go ahead with it anyway and tell the US gov to get lost (ok, more politely, but that was the basic effect).
The description was not very clear - German MwSt (VAT/sales tax/whatever its called in your country) is 16%. This is charged on everything (including computers) and goes to the government. The copyright levy they're talking about here is ~ US$13 + VAT (i.e. the copyright levy is added before VAT is calculated, so the extra cost to the customer is ~US$15, with $13 going to whoever bribes the politicians and the ~$2 going to the government).
There was an article on the IBM intranet a few months ago (the PS3 chip is being developed jointly by Sony, IBM and Toshiba), which says "Japan's Sony Corp plans to outpace its main rivals into the next generation of game machines by launching a successor to the PlayStation 2 (PS2) in 2005, earlier than expected".
Somehow, 2005 seems far more likely to me - releasing the PS3 is pointless until the PS2 is actually threatened.
Where I can see a use though, is for things like patches - the software developers could release a patch which could simply be written to the original CD, and then when you install the software from then on, any patches could automatically be installed as well.
There is also the ridiculous situation where everyone is surely in breach of the patent, since everyone contains a copy of the patented DNA.
However such a system in the US could lead to online stores simply moving to states with no or very low sales tax. In the EU there are laws stating that countries have to charge sales tax at at least 15%, so there is not much variation (I think the highest are Denmark and Sweden with 25% but most countries have sales tax at 15-20%).
IANAL, but I really don't see how this sets any precidents that didn't already exist. The way I see it is this:
If a US company with no presence in Australia commits libel against an Australian then can the US company be sued? Theoretically yes, but in reality there would be absolutly no point, since the Australian court has no jurisdiction over the US company or any of its assets, so the court could simply be ignored.
However, if that US company has a branch in Australia it becomes a completely different matter. The Australian court does have jurisdiction over its Australian branch, and therefore the US company cannot simply ignore the ruling, or it could risk having its branch closed down. When a company establishes a branch in another country then the company is effectivly subjecting itself to the laws of that country.
So in answer to a previous post, can a US company be sued in Saudi Arabia for publishing pornography on the internet? No, so long as that company has no presence in Saudi Arabia. However if a US company with a branch in Saudi Arabia publishes pornography then yes, because they have assets which are under the jurisdiction of the Saudi court. The same applies to China - If a US company with a factory in China publishes information on the internet which is deemed illegal in China, then there is a very good chance that the Chinese government would take action against the company's chinese assets.
The demon case is completely irrelevent here - that was between a british individual and a british ISP - there was no question of jurisdiction.