The CPCC is quite clear - if you plan on space-shifting, don't purchase it in the first place - you're only paying twice.
One more example of how broken copyright law is. The music ends up in the same place in the end.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
You could apply that logic to any type of insurance. Yeah, on average, you're better off having no insurance.
True. For smaller costs that can be absorbed by your own cash flow insurance is never a good idea unless you have good reason to believe the insurance company is underestimating your level of risk.
For rare, expensive events that can't be covered by your own resources you have decide whether you want a high risk life with a higher return or a low risk life with lower return. Most people are conservative and assign a high cost to risk (you have only one life and the marginal benefit from the added income you would otherwise have is low) but it's a personal choice. There are also many risks that you can't insure against and the benefit of marginally reducing that total risk with insurance is debatable.
To put it another way: Insurance is nothing more than a bet. The insurance company is betting that they won't have to payout and you're betting they will. And you're playing against the house.
The reason we buy insurance is that so many of us have other-than-average things happen (example: Getting sued for tens of thousands of dollars for that 128 kpbs copy of "Fergielicious" you just had to have).
Perception, not the reality. It's been scientifically shown that people are poor at estimating risk. They tend to overestimate rare events (like being struck by lightning or winning the lottery) and underestimate common events (like crashing a car or having a medical emergency). People also drastically overestimate risks that have an agency (people) involved (like terrorism or being sued) and tend to underestimate risk for things that have no agency (not directly controlled by another person, like flooding or disease).
It's true that everybody, over the course of a lifetime, is likely to have "rare" events happen to them. But then, that's not rare is it, and the above arguments still apply.
not really if you are middle class then you can easily afford legal insurance. that $45.00 a month I pay covers a lot of things with good lawyers all over the country.
Your insurance company isn't a charity. Insurance pays for nothing, it simply averages out the costs and adds an overhead.
In your case paying $45/month means that over an adult lifetime of say 50 years you've paid $27,000 in real terms. That's a lot of opportunity lost
Yes, it may have reduced your worst case outcome but on average you're worse off.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
... FBI (and some if-it-will-save-one-child-it-is-worth-it legislators) demand all the OS vendors to install backdoors so that it can come in and install whatever spyware it wants to be installed?
It's already there. It's called Microsoft Update. Other OS' have similar mechanisms.
They can send out whatever they like whenever they like. They've probably even got a streamlined mechanism for doing it.
How can M$ possibly object when it's <pick your favorite bogeyman> and they've been ordered to keep quiet?
Still, you'd have to do something to collect data. Either you bind into the IP stack, you tie into the browser or you hook the keyboard, all activities that are at the very least suspicious.
Um, disk indexing for searching? I've wondered for a while why vendors are so enthusiastic about enabling disk indexing by default when the majority of computer users search local disks very little and there is a significant overhead in reading the entire disk daily, particularly on laptops.
Gets everything and the only suspicious behavior is reviewing the index as it comes into memory. Abstract, encrypt and report back on the next OS update. Easy.
Behavior analysis is unlikely to find that and they can get any information they like as long as it's not too high volume.
They could put a "trigger" on hashed key words so that the vast majority of users, including security researchers, see no unusual behavior but the keywords trigger a more thorough report and sophisticated back door.
Maybe security researchers should start putting honey pot keywords and files onto their hard disks and see what happens...
When I'm virtualizing a datacenter and need tools to convert machines, manage their resources, manage their operations, etc., then management toys become the make-or-break part of the deal.
Depends on what you mean by a management tool. A pretty GUI is not a management tool. Ability to automatically script/update/check a thousand servers in parallel is a management tool.
It's the first box that's a problem. Every box after that is a copy. And copying is easy if you've planned it right, GUI or no.
---
Any large public or private organisation paying recurring, per-seat licensing for software is being economically stupid.
I see your point however that's not what the condition as posted says. Just because the PDF creator has slapped a "do not copy" bit on some PDF is irrelevant to whether part or all of the material the PDF represents is copyright the PDF creator or not. Only the law in the relevant jurisdiction can decide that, not some specification.
That's why I was happy with a recommendation, not a contractual requirement. The recent slashdot story on false copyright claims is relevant. The blocking of excerpting for review and analysis is another problem with it and copying for personal use is allowed in some jurisdictions also.
A better way to implement that bit would be popup with something like "The creator of this pdf claims copyright 2007 and does not want you to copy this document at all. Copying it may or may not be legal. Do you want to continue?".
Woah, dude, you like totally replaced the S with a dollar implying that you think Microsoft are greedy!
Man, you're so edgy and insightful.
Judging by the response I get M$ astroturfers seem to hate it.
It's just a useful reminder that they're still charging the world $40,000,000,000+ per year, mostly for software written decades ago with the most difficult bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties.
"M$" is a minor response to them putting their marketing keys on general purpose PC keyboards. They reap what they sow.
---
Astroturfers are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
Ha ha ha. If you are "a coder" you too can spend six months studying the code to figure out how to add a trivial feature or fix some obvious bug.
You're a zealot. Days, not months, and you can often pay the upstream to incorporate a fix for you. Or are you going to try to claim that closed source mysteriously makes the costs go away? You'll be paying one way or another.
If you aren't then you can pay someone full-time to learn the code enough to fix a trivial bug. That is, assuming they aren't already very, very familar with it. Then you have other requirements that may be involved, such as interfacing with other hardware or software.
Pay the original writer or pay a third party. A choice you don't have with closed source software.
No, it isn't as easy as "just pay someone".
Yes it is. With both closed source and open source it's always pay someone. It's just that with open source you have more flexibility and the vendor can't control, that is charge, as much. More of a open, free market in other words. I take it you like free markets?
You might have to find them first, or pay for them to learn the code.
Probably not. It depends on the package but popular ones tend to have many contributors giving many choices. Maybe it's a trivial fix costing next to nothing that the closed source vendor doesn't want to implement because they want to keep you on the upgrade treadmill or simply don't want to spend money on because their business objectives aren't aligned with yours.
Best case possible would be they agree to "learn the code" on their own time and will call back when they feel comfortable enough to work productively with a piece of software. That would be very unusual but possible for someone trying to learn their way around.
Nonsense. The usual case is that it's easy to find and fix a problem. Some bugs can be bears but that's true for both closed and open source software and you'll still end up paying for it in either case.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Free software empowers users. We all know that if you're a coder, you can fix free software yourself, but more importantly, if you run an organization that depends on the software, you can pay someone to fix it.
Fixing a mission-critical app can cost bucket loads of cash.
Usually not true. And better than having no option to fix it at all.
The fix that breaks compatibility with the bog-standard install means trouble down the road.
If it's important send the patch upstream and/or modularise it. More options than closed source.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format must respect the access permissions specified in that document. Accessing the document in ways not permitted by the document's access permissions is a violation of the document author's copyright.
Close, and not really closed, but not an entirely open format either.
If they'd made that item a recommendation, rather than a legal requirement, then I for one would've regarded the PDF standard as truly open.
---
DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
I don't think that's a bad ideology, in fact I share the ideology of open standards. But I recognize that there is some ideology there
By that reasoning making a commercial software choice is also ideology.
All decisions can be looked at as ideology and reasoning attempting to label open source usage only as ideology, simply because characteristics of software not traditionally associated with closed source software are considered important, shows a closed source ideologue. Most characterization of open source as ideology driven is usually just an ironic reflection of the writer's own ideology.
Personally, I regard openness in government, even if it's not very quantifiable and could cause a short term, or even long term, hit in performance and productivity (as long as it's not too great), as important. It's all a question of different people assigning different priorities to different software characteristics and looking for different outcomes.
Microsoft built a framework. If the application doesn't follow it and requires you to "reinstall to uninstall" or some such nonsense it is hardly a Microsoft problem.
Ah, yes. The standard M$ washing of hands.
If it's a design fault causing the errors it could well be entirely M$'s fault.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
The moment one tries to curtail speech of any sort, it has a chilling effect.
Free speech can be curtailed by too much noise as as well as too little information. Anonymous, deceptive messages are noise. Astroturf is even worse because it's biased noise.
Marketing parasites like to ignore that simple fact.
People are limited in many ways in what they can say in order to improve free speech and public discourse, the banning of fraud being the obvious example.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
Try to think it through before spouting knee-jerk anti-copyright nonsense.
Try to think it through before spouting knee-jerk pro-copyright nonsense.
Copyright as it is currently implemented is only one of a virtually infinite number of ways the law could be organized with respect to intellectual endeavor.
Stop pretending there could be no better alternative when not even something as simple as the copyright period has been scientifically justified. Let alone justification for the current regime.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Give people with innovative new ideas a monopoly for a few years so that they might recover some of their development costs.
Since the profit that can be made from a patent is almost completely independent of how much a patent might take to develop this reasoning is very weak.
We don't patent in many areas and the economy works just fine. e.g. I have the idea of opening a hardware store in a growing town. Nobody's ever thought of opening a hardware store in that town before so it's clearly completely original and unobvious. I'm successful so somebody decides to open a competing hardware store and get some of the profits. Why can't I get a patent on that idea and stop others competing against me in "my" town?
Patent law at it's root is based on very shaky foundations about what's the same and what's different, what's new and what's the same old same old. And the patent mafia use that ambiguity to empire build. Or to put it another way; when all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with either of those options is if they get out in the wild.
M$ update, and the equivalent on other platforms, is a whopper of a back door. Why doesn't that "get out in the wild"?
---
Commercial software bigots - a dying breed.
The CPCC is quite clear - if you plan on space-shifting, don't purchase it in the first place - you're only paying twice.
One more example of how broken copyright law is. The music ends up in the same place in the end.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
You could apply that logic to any type of insurance. Yeah, on average, you're better off having no insurance.
True. For smaller costs that can be absorbed by your own cash flow insurance is never a good idea unless you have good reason to believe the insurance company is underestimating your level of risk.
For rare, expensive events that can't be covered by your own resources you have decide whether you want a high risk life with a higher return or a low risk life with lower return. Most people are conservative and assign a high cost to risk (you have only one life and the marginal benefit from the added income you would otherwise have is low) but it's a personal choice. There are also many risks that you can't insure against and the benefit of marginally reducing that total risk with insurance is debatable.
To put it another way: Insurance is nothing more than a bet. The insurance company is betting that they won't have to payout and you're betting they will. And you're playing against the house.
The reason we buy insurance is that so many of us have other-than-average things happen (example: Getting sued for tens of thousands of dollars for that 128 kpbs copy of "Fergielicious" you just had to have).
Perception, not the reality. It's been scientifically shown that people are poor at estimating risk. They tend to overestimate rare events (like being struck by lightning or winning the lottery) and underestimate common events (like crashing a car or having a medical emergency). People also drastically overestimate risks that have an agency (people) involved (like terrorism or being sued) and tend to underestimate risk for things that have no agency (not directly controlled by another person, like flooding or disease).
It's true that everybody, over the course of a lifetime, is likely to have "rare" events happen to them. But then, that's not rare is it, and the above arguments still apply.
---
Keep your options open!
not really if you are middle class then you can easily afford legal insurance. that $45.00 a month I pay covers a lot of things with good lawyers all over the country.
Your insurance company isn't a charity. Insurance pays for nothing, it simply averages out the costs and adds an overhead.
In your case paying $45/month means that over an adult lifetime of say 50 years you've paid $27,000 in real terms. That's a lot of opportunity lost
Yes, it may have reduced your worst case outcome but on average you're worse off.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
It's already there. It's called Microsoft Update. Other OS' have similar mechanisms.
They can send out whatever they like whenever they like. They've probably even got a streamlined mechanism for doing it.
How can M$ possibly object when it's <pick your favorite bogeyman> and they've been ordered to keep quiet?
---
Terrorism. The all-purpose excuse.
Still, you'd have to do something to collect data. Either you bind into the IP stack, you tie into the browser or you hook the keyboard, all activities that are at the very least suspicious.
Um, disk indexing for searching? I've wondered for a while why vendors are so enthusiastic about enabling disk indexing by default when the majority of computer users search local disks very little and there is a significant overhead in reading the entire disk daily, particularly on laptops.
Gets everything and the only suspicious behavior is reviewing the index as it comes into memory. Abstract, encrypt and report back on the next OS update. Easy.
Behavior analysis is unlikely to find that and they can get any information they like as long as it's not too high volume.
They could put a "trigger" on hashed key words so that the vast majority of users, including security researchers, see no unusual behavior but the keywords trigger a more thorough report and sophisticated back door.
Maybe security researchers should start putting honey pot keywords and files onto their hard disks and see what happens...
---
Keep your options open!
There's nothing inherently deceptive in submitting your company's (or your own) stories.
If they make clear who they're representing then in general true.
However, at some point excessive volume equals spam and that crowds out alternative points of view and stories.
---
Free speech is compromised by too much noise as well as too little message. Most advertising is content free noise.
When I'm virtualizing a datacenter and need tools to convert machines, manage their resources, manage their operations, etc., then management toys become the make-or-break part of the deal.
Depends on what you mean by a management tool. A pretty GUI is not a management tool. Ability to automatically script/update/check a thousand servers in parallel is a management tool.
It's the first box that's a problem. Every box after that is a copy. And copying is easy if you've planned it right, GUI or no.
---
Any large public or private organisation paying recurring, per-seat licensing for software is being economically stupid.
I see your point however that's not what the condition as posted says. Just because the PDF creator has slapped a "do not copy" bit on some PDF is irrelevant to whether part or all of the material the PDF represents is copyright the PDF creator or not. Only the law in the relevant jurisdiction can decide that, not some specification.
That's why I was happy with a recommendation, not a contractual requirement. The recent slashdot story on false copyright claims is relevant. The blocking of excerpting for review and analysis is another problem with it and copying for personal use is allowed in some jurisdictions also.
A better way to implement that bit would be popup with something like "The creator of this pdf claims copyright 2007 and does not want you to copy this document at all. Copying it may or may not be legal. Do you want to continue?".
---
Paid marketers are the worst zealots.
Woah, dude, you like totally replaced the S with a dollar implying that you think Microsoft are greedy! Man, you're so edgy and insightful.
Judging by the response I get M$ astroturfers seem to hate it.
It's just a useful reminder that they're still charging the world $40,000,000,000+ per year, mostly for software written decades ago with the most difficult bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties.
"M$" is a minor response to them putting their marketing keys on general purpose PC keyboards. They reap what they sow.
---
Astroturfers are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
Ha ha ha. If you are "a coder" you too can spend six months studying the code to figure out how to add a trivial feature or fix some obvious bug.
You're a zealot. Days, not months, and you can often pay the upstream to incorporate a fix for you. Or are you going to try to claim that closed source mysteriously makes the costs go away? You'll be paying one way or another.
If you aren't then you can pay someone full-time to learn the code enough to fix a trivial bug. That is, assuming they aren't already very, very familar with it. Then you have other requirements that may be involved, such as interfacing with other hardware or software.
Pay the original writer or pay a third party. A choice you don't have with closed source software.
No, it isn't as easy as "just pay someone".
Yes it is. With both closed source and open source it's always pay someone. It's just that with open source you have more flexibility and the vendor can't control, that is charge, as much. More of a open, free market in other words. I take it you like free markets?
You might have to find them first, or pay for them to learn the code.
Probably not. It depends on the package but popular ones tend to have many contributors giving many choices. Maybe it's a trivial fix costing next to nothing that the closed source vendor doesn't want to implement because they want to keep you on the upgrade treadmill or simply don't want to spend money on because their business objectives aren't aligned with yours.
Best case possible would be they agree to "learn the code" on their own time and will call back when they feel comfortable enough to work productively with a piece of software. That would be very unusual but possible for someone trying to learn their way around.
Nonsense. The usual case is that it's easy to find and fix a problem. Some bugs can be bears but that's true for both closed and open source software and you'll still end up paying for it in either case.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Free software empowers users. We all know that if you're a coder, you can fix free software yourself, but more importantly, if you run an organization that depends on the software, you can pay someone to fix it.
Fixing a mission-critical app can cost bucket loads of cash.
Usually not true. And better than having no option to fix it at all.
The fix that breaks compatibility with the bog-standard install means trouble down the road.
If it's important send the patch upstream and/or modularise it. More options than closed source.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format must respect the access permissions specified in that document. Accessing the document in ways not permitted by the document's access permissions is a violation of the document author's copyright.
Close, and not really closed, but not an entirely open format either.
If they'd made that item a recommendation, rather than a legal requirement, then I for one would've regarded the PDF standard as truly open.
---
DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
I don't think that's a bad ideology, in fact I share the ideology of open standards. But I recognize that there is some ideology there
By that reasoning making a commercial software choice is also ideology.
All decisions can be looked at as ideology and reasoning attempting to label open source usage only as ideology, simply because characteristics of software not traditionally associated with closed source software are considered important, shows a closed source ideologue. Most characterization of open source as ideology driven is usually just an ironic reflection of the writer's own ideology.
Personally, I regard openness in government, even if it's not very quantifiable and could cause a short term, or even long term, hit in performance and productivity (as long as it's not too great), as important. It's all a question of different people assigning different priorities to different software characteristics and looking for different outcomes.
---
Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
Microsoft built a framework. If the application doesn't follow it and requires you to "reinstall to uninstall" or some such nonsense it is hardly a Microsoft problem.
Ah, yes. The standard M$ washing of hands.
If it's a design fault causing the errors it could well be entirely M$'s fault.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
Just like switching to another OS is impractical for most of us.
What may be impractical in the short term may be very practical in the long term. Sort term pain for long term gain.
Planning ahead in other words. M$ would prefer that people not plan ahead e.g. Get out of the upgrade treadmill and reduce their recurring costs.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
Version 3, on the other hand, makes statements about how software is used.
Just like the TiVo hardware makes statements about how the GPL'ed software can be used. GPLv3 is merely fighting fire with fire.
I fail to understand why hardware vendors should be allowed to do anything they like while not allowing software writers the same privileges.
An eye for an eye. The GPLv3 provisions only activate when a hardware vendor has deliberately tried to do an end run around the GPL.
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DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
Why shouldn't both hardware and software creators have the same privileges?
Yes, and the software they distribute is in no way limited.
Except for the freedom of being able to run a modified version on the hardware it came with. Taking freedom away from the owner.
If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere.
If TiVo doesn't like the software license they can take their business elsewhere. Their choice.
Preventing "evil" by denying someone freedom who has done nothing wrong is evil.
You're a zealot. GPLv3 is merely fighting fire with fire.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
The moment one tries to curtail speech of any sort, it has a chilling effect.
Free speech can be curtailed by too much noise as as well as too little information. Anonymous, deceptive messages are noise. Astroturf is even worse because it's biased noise.
Marketing parasites like to ignore that simple fact.
People are limited in many ways in what they can say in order to improve free speech and public discourse, the banning of fraud being the obvious example.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
Try to think it through before spouting knee-jerk anti-copyright nonsense.
Try to think it through before spouting knee-jerk pro-copyright nonsense.
Copyright as it is currently implemented is only one of a virtually infinite number of ways the law could be organized with respect to intellectual endeavor.
Stop pretending there could be no better alternative when not even something as simple as the copyright period has been scientifically justified. Let alone justification for the current regime.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
We're watching a media industry commit a slow suicide. When it dies, they'll blame it on those who merely wanted to hear and view their product.
True, but it's not "their product". They're just middlemen in the process of being squeezed out.
They might even have to get real jobs where they actually do something productive for their money. One can hope.
---
DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
I have a ms publisher file that I would like to open, what program would you suggest I try?
According to what I have googled there is no Linux program that understands publisher files.
Not ideal but if the text is sufficient you could do this:
strings file.pub|more
"strings" extracts anything that looks like text from a binary file.
This guy is working on something better but he's only just started.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
If the Geek thinks mass-market pricing of Vista is going to be a turn-off, he is delusional.
You're delusional if you think the US experience applies to the 95% of the world's population that don't live in the US.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
Give people with innovative new ideas a monopoly for a few years so that they might recover some of their development costs.
Since the profit that can be made from a patent is almost completely independent of how much a patent might take to develop this reasoning is very weak.
We don't patent in many areas and the economy works just fine. e.g. I have the idea of opening a hardware store in a growing town. Nobody's ever thought of opening a hardware store in that town before so it's clearly completely original and unobvious. I'm successful so somebody decides to open a competing hardware store and get some of the profits. Why can't I get a patent on that idea and stop others competing against me in "my" town?
Patent law at it's root is based on very shaky foundations about what's the same and what's different, what's new and what's the same old same old. And the patent mafia use that ambiguity to empire build. Or to put it another way; when all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
For 15% of 200 million dollars, you can do a heck of a lot on the ground. That will fund.
Eight hours in Iraq.
or six hours of M$.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism