All they have to do is remove the offending code - close the FTP site, for example. ISPs don't normally shut the entire site because of DMCA material on one page, or in one directory.
But the longer thay make that old Caldera stuff available, the better it is for the GPL and the worse for them.
"Doesn't the DMCA give the power to turn off access to the Internet and ask questions later?"
Yes... but the person you got shut down merely has to file a "put up or shut up" reply with the ISP, and the person who made the DMCA complaint MUST proceed to filing a formal infringement court case within 10 days or shut up for all time. It's not something you should do lightly.
Some eBay users were being hassled by a fabric manufacturer, because they mentioned their name and showed the fabric made into various objects, or were reselling vintage fabric. The manufactuer accused them of violating their design copyrights by showing the pictures. It was VERY easy to get them to back off, just by firing back a "sez who?" and teelling them that they had 10 days to file something sreoius. The harassment stopped.
"Is using Unix code as a model to make a Linux function a violation of copyright?"
No, because processes can't be copyrighted (patented, yes, but not copyrighted). And given that there are only a certain number of ways to express "1+1=2", and even fewer if you use the limited vocabulary and strict syntax rules of any programming language... it's very likely that source code written by skilled programmers for the same platform, in the same language, for the same task, will strongly resemble each other, and can be identical in many places without implying anyone copied from anyone. It's much like writing a recipe - there are restraints on your creativity because of the subject matter, and you can't start getting "original" without impeding functionality or user comprehension.
102 Subject matter of copyright: In general
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works
of authorship xed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later
developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated,
either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship
include the following categories:
(1) literary works;
(2) musical works, including any accompanying words;
(3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music;
(4) pantomimes and choreographic works;
(5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;
(6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
(7) sound recordings; and
(8) architectural works.
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship
extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept,
principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained,
illustrated, or embodied in such work.
"If SCO succeeds with their far reaching definition of derivative works than this would crush all US based software develoment. Any jerk could argue that by just using a interface/library you created a "derivative work". "
Unfortunately for SCO, the legal definition of a "derivative" work, and a large amount of case law, clearly states that the author of the additional bits hold the copyright, AND that being used in a derivative woork doesn't give any author rights to anything besides the sutff thye created.
103 Subject matter of copyright:
Compilations and derivative works
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specied by section 102 includes compilations
and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting
material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in
which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material
contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does
not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright
protection in the preexisting material.
"SCO claims, in its amended lawsuit against IBM, that Linus Torvalds "cannot or will not" identify the IP owners of the code that is sent to him."
Isn't that all in the repository where you check out code and check in code? If they want to see who owns the code, looking at the copyright notices in the source code files would be a good place to start.
How or where does the GPL have any conflict with USC 17, any part of it? It is just a convenient way for copyright holders to authorize widespread use. How does the GPL "purport to act the same as a copyright"? You can't release anything under the GPL unless you already are the copyright holder. It's a license, it's a "permission", it's a "the rules for using my code".
How or where does the GPL have any conflict with contract law? It does not ask you to do anything illegal - and that is the only thing a contract can't do. It allows anyone to freely copy and distribute copyrighted works, with the consent of the copyright holders already given, subject to some very legal restrictions. It allows creation of derivative works, which a copyright holder has the right to allow, with the perfectly legal restriction that if the derivative work is going to be distributed, it must be distributed with terms that allow others to benefit from your work in the way that you benefited from the work of others who coded before you.
If you want to make a commercial product, and you want to make it by altering GPL software, you can. But you also have to make that modified GPL code available to anyone who asks. If you don't want to share your code... the GPL says you need to hire programmers, start from scratch and write your own, because you don't have the right to suck the copyrighted code of others into your product. If you don't want to share with others, they won't share with you.
Sell short = sell stocks now, buy them back later at a lower price, make money on the difference. You can't sell short, except as a daytrader, unless there are stockholders who are willing to front you the shares. And there aren't any shares available to sell short at the moment (there is a clearing house).
There is some VERY heavy short interest, but it's not readily apparent where it's coming from. If I were a cynic I'd say it's Canopy group shorting shares it owns, knowing damn well they can cover them in a couple of months and make a bundle.
Thanks. I'm a writer/editor. Needless to say, I almost memorize some parts of copyright law because not knowing it can have a direct influence on my pocketbook. And as you see, most of it is fairly clear.
Your analysis is correct - if copyright code was included in Linux without the consent of the holder, it's not under GPL - distribution of it must cease and it should be replaced as fast as possible. The appropriate legal recourse is to go after the person who submitted the code for infringement - just like any author would sue the author who stole text for a novel.
End users are not liable for damages under any reading of USC17 I have seen. If I am a bookstore selling pirated copies of Lord of the Rings, printed by Flybynight Press, Tolkein's estate has to go after them. The most they can do to me is have the judge that I hand over all unsold copies - I can also go after Flybynight for anything I have paid them, as a fraud case, and the feds could be looking into criminal charges. As for the buyers... they can read their books in peace.
I've seen a few infrimgement cases in thye book world: usually the copyright holder notifies the publisher, with enough info to prove their case, by way of a "we believe you are infringing, please stop" letter from a lawyer. Publisher looks at evidence and says "We aren't and we won't, see you in court" or says "Oh, fudge!", tells distributors to retrieve and lock down all the books, freezes the author's royalty account, and then throws the author overboard, and hands all the royalties and other profits from the book to the copyright holder. Author has to cough up a chunk of royalties, will never be published again, and it's usually done with quite soon.
If employees of Caldera submitted code, it's reasonable to believe they did it with the knowledge and consent of management.
Day traders, swing traders and speculators, not investors. See this definition . Basically they play the stock market holding stock for extremely short times to make money, like playing craps or slot machines.
It can be profitable, especially with a volatile stock that is cheap to play with, such as SCO. If you had bought it at noon and sold at 1PM that's a $1.00 per share gain. Do this often enough and you can make a lot of money real fast. You can also go broke real fast.
17 USC 103 (b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
SCO's claim that IBM's AIX is a "derivative work", made in part of code they licensed from "old SCO" is true. However, having your copyright work used in a derivative work by someone else does not give you rights to any third-party work that went into the derivative work, nor does it give the author of the derivative any rights in the source material, although they can usually copyriught the whole thing under their name. IOW, what was yours remains yours, what I created is mine, and his stuff is still his stuff. It would be unusual to have any contract about derivative works to require the creator of the derivative to hand over ABSOLUTE control of all the things they created for the derivative work - and it would be impossible to sneak that past the IBM contracts review team unless you wrote it in invisible ink.
As a civilian example, and assuming the usual assignment of rights for a single use took place, all the songs that went into Moulin Rouge were copyright, making Moulin Rouge's score a "derivative work" (copyrighted as a whole, by whoever wrote the score and re-arranged the music)... but even if I held the copyright to "Lady Marmalade", I would have no rights in the complete score, the screen play, the completed film, or the soundtrack album merely because they used my work. Likewise, the writer of the Moulin Rouge score [probably] had the right to use "Lady Marmalade" in a single film, and they can't use it in the sequel without acquiring permission again.
SCO's position is that their rights in the source work for a derivative work extend "upstream" to all works that went into the derivative - the NUMA code that came from elsewhere, for example - their position may look good in a press release, and may serve to intimidate small businesses, but it has no basis in law.
Right now is a lull... SCO filed, SCO filed an amended complaint, IBM filed a response and a counterclaim... the ball appears to be in SCO's court at the moment. They might be able to file a responce to IBM's counterclaim.
Next step in this would be "discovery phase", where each side asks the other to cough up a lot of paperwork covering the issues. You can't hide evidence from the opposition.
More interesting is what has SCO done about RedHat's suit. If they don't reply, RH wins by default.
"Who on earth is trading their shares at $12.67 today? "
Day traders and stock speculators. It's a day trader's dream, being relatively cheap, very volatile because of the small number of shares, and the subject of two lawsuits from companies that have a lot of cash.
"if IBM has access to both the UNIX source code and the Linux source code"... they do. They would have perfectly legal archive copies of everything they liscensed from the original SCO and AT&T and if you look in the far reaches of their warehouse, they still have the copies of the code Ada, Countess Lovelace, wrote for Charles Babbage's system.
"they should be analyzing the two to determine if any code was improperly copied into Linux"... And you think they haven't already done this? However, Big Blue is not a synonym for Big Mouth. Whatever they know is probably meticulously annotated, ready for trial.
"they have opened up Pandora's Box without knowing what would come out"
Their critical mistake was to accuse IBM of leaking trade secrets, hoping to get a fat settlement or a buyout. IBM can't settle, because their reputation as trustworthy is what makes them billions and billions in data processing. Even if IBM settled for one Argentine peso, it would be admitting that they were not trustworthy, and open the floodgates to a bazillion other lawsuits from failing companies. They will definitely do whatever it takes to stomple SCO into the courtroom floor and scrape them up with the final decision papers.
So why does he cite a section of the law that has abso-fricking-lutely nothing to do with anything? USC-17-301 takes the authority to write copyright laws from the states. That's all it does. And the other bit SCO has cited, USC-17-117, just gives the purchaser of software an indisputable right to make a backup copy and such copies as are needed in the process of installing and using it. It has nothing to do with what the author of the code can do.
If IBM has irrevocably infringed on SCO copyrights by licensing material they do not own copyright to, why are none of the SIX causes of complaint in SCO's lawsuit against IBM about copyright?
"It was a pretty good angle that the lawyer was making" Except for one thing, the lawyer was either misquoted, or has not bothreed to actually read copyright law: The section of copyright law Heise cites, USC-17-301, merely removes copyright disputes from state courts/laws and puts them under the terms of USC-17. It says absolutely nothing that can in any way eliminate the rights of an author under USC-17-106...
USC 17 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4-6 deleted because they only deal with visual arts)
If the owner of the copyrighted code wants to authorize, via the Gnu Public Licence or the Lesser Gnu Public Licence, or a license of the owner's own devising, unlimited reproduction and distribution and modification into derivative works, they can do it. USC 17 106 says they have the EXCLUSIVE rights to do so.
Heise is supposedly a hotshot lawyer, in a top-notch and extremely expensive law firm. HYe is also either an idiot, or being paid to spout bullshit to journalists.
I read Heise's ramblings And here is the reply I sent Ms. Bowman:
Ms. Bowman:
Yes, copyright law governs, but Mark Heise's interpretation of copyright law is one that would not pass muster in a beginning journalism copyright course, and would get well-buttered dinner rolls hurled at him if he presented it in an after-dinner speech in front of any professional writers' organization.
USC 17 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4-6 deleted because they only deal with visual arts)
If the owner of the copyrighted code wants to authorize, via the Gnu Public Licence or the Lesser Gnu Public Licence, or a license of the owner's own devising, unlimited reproduction and distribution and modification into derivative works, they can do it. USC 17 106 says they have the EXCLUSIVE rights to do so. And when licensing one's work, one can place restrictions in the license if one wishes. The GPL has a "poison pill" restriction in it: if you violate the GPL, the GPL ceases to apply, and your permission to copy and distribute and modify also ceases, making you immediately in violation of USC 17 106, and immediately infringing upon the copyright of the author or authors of the work.
As for the USC 17 301 that Heise cites, claiming that it pre-empts the GPL, I sincerely hope he did not say what your article said he said: The section he cited has nothing at all to do with the author's absolute right to authorize use of the author's work:
301 Preemption with respect to other laws
(a) On and after January 1, 1978, all legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright as specified by section 106 in works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression and come within the subject matter of copyright as specified by sections 102 and 103, whether created before or after that date and whether published or unpublished, are governed exclusively by this title. Thereafter, no person is entitled to any such right or equivalent right in any such work under the common law or statutes of any State.
... that does not affect the GPL at all. It does prevent the states from writing their own copyright laws, and nullifies any such laws they might have had before January 1, 1978. Heise fails to grasp that the GPL is not a law, it is a "license" in the legal sense of the word, and it does not conflict with USC 17 in any way. It is merely a widely used way to grant rights which a copyright holder is authorized to grant by USC 17 106.
They are akin to the "rice grain" ID chips used to identify pets and livestock. A use of admittedly larger units is to dispense feed and supplements for cows based on that cow's milk production. As the cow enters the feeed stall, the ID tag is read, compared to the database and the appropriate food, medications (if any) and vitamins are dispensed. If the animal is due for injections or vaccinations, the system signals the farmer and won't open to let the animal out.
In a warehouse, they can simplify inventory taking. On a production line, they can monitor the line. In a hospital, they can locate patients and help track medications (RFID in patient armband has to match RFID in database or the meds cart starts flashing alarms0
If the software installation process or the documentation makes it clear that it is using a "phone home" mechanism and explains what it collects and uses, you could choose to not use the software.
If the first the purchaser knows of this "feature" is a nasty gram from the vendor... that is out of line.
I asked an orthopedic surgeon about this, several years ago. He said the most plausible explanation is that it's because of old scar tissue.
It's similar to "the bends" that deep divres drad, but self limiting. Normally the body tissues are at equilibrium with gases (mostly nitrogen) dissolved in them at whatever concentration the barometric pressure dictates.
When there are slow changed of pressure, you don't notice. But when the barometric pressure drops suddenly, the scar tissue can't exchange gases as quickly at the surrounding tissue and it swells up a bit because the gases try to expand, putting pressure on nearby nerves and making you hurt. A similar, but less common pain happens with a sudden rise in barometric pressure, but it's less pronounced because the scar tissue shrinks.
If you have scar tissue in a joint, it's a double-whammy: the thick synovial fluid also has to outgas, and it's not leting the scar tissue swell. That's why old sprained knees make such good storm predictors.
" It takes less than a day to make a computer reconstruction compared to weeks for a traditional clay model." It will make identifying skeletal remains faster and easier... regardless of the cause of death. Any forensics lab has full or partial skeletons sitting in the "unidentified" queue, and few of them have forensic sculptors to make models to show to relatives of the missing persons.
And... unlike Scavenger, you have to be dead for this to be used on you.
No... he's the sort that would take the letter to the Atty General and try to have them arrested for extortion. With his media contacts, he cold do some serious damage for being a small business.
"it's very nice etc that they switched the whole thing to RH, but come on, if you use commercial software you should pay for it."
They HAD paid for it... this was a case of someone not deleting some commercial stuff when a machine was converted to another use, and ending up with some accidental and UNUSED duplicates on the hand-me-down box in another department. Maybe the software was discarded, maybe it was reinstalled on the machine that replaced it... I work on a lot of surplus systems as a contractor, and I find all kinds of software on them, clearly unused if you look at the file dates, just never uninstalled.
Slashdot Mirror
Give me that and I'll be happy.
But the longer thay make that old Caldera stuff available, the better it is for the GPL and the worse for them.
Yes ... but the person you got shut down merely has to file a "put up or shut up" reply with the ISP, and the person who made the DMCA complaint MUST proceed to filing a formal infringement court case within 10 days or shut up for all time. It's not something you should do lightly.
Some eBay users were being hassled by a fabric manufacturer, because they mentioned their name and showed the fabric made into various objects, or were reselling vintage fabric. The manufactuer accused them of violating their design copyrights by showing the pictures. It was VERY easy to get them to back off, just by firing back a "sez who?" and teelling them that they had 10 days to file something sreoius. The harassment stopped.
No, because processes can't be copyrighted (patented, yes, but not copyrighted). And given that there are only a certain number of ways to express "1+1=2", and even fewer if you use the limited vocabulary and strict syntax rules of any programming language ... it's very likely that source code written by skilled programmers for the same platform, in the same language, for the same task, will strongly resemble each other, and can be identical in many places without implying anyone copied from anyone. It's much like writing a recipe - there are restraints on your creativity because of the subject matter, and you can't start getting "original" without impeding functionality or user comprehension.
102 Subject matter of copyright: In general
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship xed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:
(1) literary works;
(2) musical works, including any accompanying words;
(3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music;
(4) pantomimes and choreographic works;
(5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;
(6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
(7) sound recordings; and
(8) architectural works.
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
Unfortunately for SCO, the legal definition of a "derivative" work, and a large amount of case law, clearly states that the author of the additional bits hold the copyright, AND that being used in a derivative woork doesn't give any author rights to anything besides the sutff thye created.
103 Subject matter of copyright: Compilations and derivative works
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specied by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
Isn't that all in the repository where you check out code and check in code? If they want to see who owns the code, looking at the copyright notices in the source code files would be a good place to start.
How or where does the GPL have any conflict with contract law? It does not ask you to do anything illegal - and that is the only thing a contract can't do. It allows anyone to freely copy and distribute copyrighted works, with the consent of the copyright holders already given, subject to some very legal restrictions. It allows creation of derivative works, which a copyright holder has the right to allow, with the perfectly legal restriction that if the derivative work is going to be distributed, it must be distributed with terms that allow others to benefit from your work in the way that you benefited from the work of others who coded before you.
If you want to make a commercial product, and you want to make it by altering GPL software, you can. But you also have to make that modified GPL code available to anyone who asks. If you don't want to share your code ... the GPL says you need to hire programmers, start from scratch and write your own, because you don't have the right to suck the copyrighted code of others into your product. If you don't want to share with others, they won't share with you.
There is some VERY heavy short interest, but it's not readily apparent where it's coming from. If I were a cynic I'd say it's Canopy group shorting shares it owns, knowing damn well they can cover them in a couple of months and make a bundle.
Thanks. I'm a writer/editor. Needless to say, I almost memorize some parts of copyright law because not knowing it can have a direct influence on my pocketbook. And as you see, most of it is fairly clear.
Your analysis is correct - if copyright code was included in Linux without the consent of the holder, it's not under GPL - distribution of it must cease and it should be replaced as fast as possible. The appropriate legal recourse is to go after the person who submitted the code for infringement - just like any author would sue the author who stole text for a novel.
End users are not liable for damages under any reading of USC17 I have seen. If I am a bookstore selling pirated copies of Lord of the Rings, printed by Flybynight Press, Tolkein's estate has to go after them. The most they can do to me is have the judge that I hand over all unsold copies - I can also go after Flybynight for anything I have paid them, as a fraud case, and the feds could be looking into criminal charges. As for the buyers ... they can read their books in peace.
I've seen a few infrimgement cases in thye book world: usually the copyright holder notifies the publisher, with enough info to prove their case, by way of a "we believe you are infringing, please stop" letter from a lawyer. Publisher looks at evidence and says "We aren't and we won't, see you in court" or says "Oh, fudge!", tells distributors to retrieve and lock down all the books, freezes the author's royalty account, and then throws the author overboard, and hands all the royalties and other profits from the book to the copyright holder. Author has to cough up a chunk of royalties, will never be published again, and it's usually done with quite soon.
If employees of Caldera submitted code, it's reasonable to believe they did it with the knowledge and consent of management.
It can be profitable, especially with a volatile stock that is cheap to play with, such as SCO. If you had bought it at noon and sold at 1PM that's a $1.00 per share gain. Do this often enough and you can make a lot of money real fast. You can also go broke real fast.
17 USC 103 (b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
SCO's claim that IBM's AIX is a "derivative work", made in part of code they licensed from "old SCO" is true. However, having your copyright work used in a derivative work by someone else does not give you rights to any third-party work that went into the derivative work, nor does it give the author of the derivative any rights in the source material, although they can usually copyriught the whole thing under their name. IOW, what was yours remains yours, what I created is mine, and his stuff is still his stuff. It would be unusual to have any contract about derivative works to require the creator of the derivative to hand over ABSOLUTE control of all the things they created for the derivative work - and it would be impossible to sneak that past the IBM contracts review team unless you wrote it in invisible ink.
As a civilian example, and assuming the usual assignment of rights for a single use took place, all the songs that went into Moulin Rouge were copyright, making Moulin Rouge's score a "derivative work" (copyrighted as a whole, by whoever wrote the score and re-arranged the music) ... but even if I held the copyright to "Lady Marmalade", I would have no rights in the complete score, the screen play, the completed film, or the soundtrack album merely because they used my work. Likewise, the writer of the Moulin Rouge score [probably] had the right to use "Lady Marmalade" in a single film, and they can't use it in the sequel without acquiring permission again.
SCO's position is that their rights in the source work for a derivative work extend "upstream" to all works that went into the derivative - the NUMA code that came from elsewhere, for example - their position may look good in a press release, and may serve to intimidate small businesses, but it has no basis in law.
Next step in this would be "discovery phase", where each side asks the other to cough up a lot of paperwork covering the issues. You can't hide evidence from the opposition.
More interesting is what has SCO done about RedHat's suit. If they don't reply, RH wins by default.
Day traders and stock speculators. It's a day trader's dream, being relatively cheap, very volatile because of the small number of shares, and the subject of two lawsuits from companies that have a lot of cash.
"they should be analyzing the two to determine if any code was improperly copied into Linux" ... And you think they haven't already done this? However, Big Blue is not a synonym for Big Mouth. Whatever they know is probably meticulously annotated, ready for trial.
Their critical mistake was to accuse IBM of leaking trade secrets, hoping to get a fat settlement or a buyout. IBM can't settle, because their reputation as trustworthy is what makes them billions and billions in data processing. Even if IBM settled for one Argentine peso, it would be admitting that they were not trustworthy, and open the floodgates to a bazillion other lawsuits from failing companies. They will definitely do whatever it takes to stomple SCO into the courtroom floor and scrape them up with the final decision papers.
If IBM has irrevocably infringed on SCO copyrights by licensing material they do not own copyright to, why are none of the SIX causes of complaint in SCO's lawsuit against IBM about copyright?
USC 17 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4-6 deleted because they only deal with visual arts)
If the owner of the copyrighted code wants to authorize, via the Gnu Public Licence or the Lesser Gnu Public Licence, or a license of the owner's own devising, unlimited reproduction and distribution and modification into derivative works, they can do it. USC 17 106 says they have the EXCLUSIVE rights to do so.
Heise is supposedly a hotshot lawyer, in a top-notch and extremely expensive law firm. HYe is also either an idiot, or being paid to spout bullshit to journalists.
Ms. Bowman:
Yes, copyright law governs, but Mark Heise's interpretation of copyright law is one that would not pass muster in a beginning journalism copyright course, and would get well-buttered dinner rolls hurled at him if he presented it in an after-dinner speech in front of any professional writers' organization.
USC 17 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4-6 deleted because they only deal with visual arts)
If the owner of the copyrighted code wants to authorize, via the Gnu Public Licence or the Lesser Gnu Public Licence, or a license of the owner's own devising, unlimited reproduction and distribution and modification into derivative works, they can do it. USC 17 106 says they have the EXCLUSIVE rights to do so. And when licensing one's work, one can place restrictions in the license if one wishes. The GPL has a "poison pill" restriction in it: if you violate the GPL, the GPL ceases to apply, and your permission to copy and distribute and modify also ceases, making you immediately in violation of USC 17 106, and immediately infringing upon the copyright of the author or authors of the work.
As for the USC 17 301 that Heise cites, claiming that it pre-empts the GPL, I sincerely hope he did not say what your article said he said: The section he cited has nothing at all to do with the author's absolute right to authorize use of the author's work:
301 Preemption with respect to other laws
(a) On and after January 1, 1978, all legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright as specified by section 106 in works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression and come within the subject matter of copyright as specified by sections 102 and 103, whether created before or after that date and whether published or unpublished, are governed exclusively by this title. Thereafter, no person is entitled to any such right or equivalent right in any such work under the common law or statutes of any State.
... that does not affect the GPL at all. It does prevent the states from writing their own copyright laws, and nullifies any such laws they might have had before January 1, 1978. Heise fails to grasp that the GPL is not a law, it is a "license" in the legal sense of the word, and it does not conflict with USC 17 in any way. It is merely a widely used way to grant rights which a copyright holder is authorized to grant by USC 17 106.
In a warehouse, they can simplify inventory taking. On a production line, they can monitor the line. In a hospital, they can locate patients and help track medications (RFID in patient armband has to match RFID in database or the meds cart starts flashing alarms0
If the first the purchaser knows of this "feature" is a nasty gram from the vendor ... that is out of line.
It's similar to "the bends" that deep divres drad, but self limiting. Normally the body tissues are at equilibrium with gases (mostly nitrogen) dissolved in them at whatever concentration the barometric pressure dictates.
When there are slow changed of pressure, you don't notice. But when the barometric pressure drops suddenly, the scar tissue can't exchange gases as quickly at the surrounding tissue and it swells up a bit because the gases try to expand, putting pressure on nearby nerves and making you hurt. A similar, but less common pain happens with a sudden rise in barometric pressure, but it's less pronounced because the scar tissue shrinks.
If you have scar tissue in a joint, it's a double-whammy: the thick synovial fluid also has to outgas, and it's not leting the scar tissue swell. That's why old sprained knees make such good storm predictors.
And ... unlike Scavenger, you have to be dead for this to be used on you.
The same way a clay reconstruction modeler does - they extrapolate from the existing bits if it's not possible to glue them back together.
No ... he's the sort that would take the letter to the Atty General and try to have them arrested for extortion. With his media contacts, he cold do some serious damage for being a small business.
They HAD paid for it ... this was a case of someone not deleting some commercial stuff when a machine was converted to another use, and ending up with some accidental and UNUSED duplicates on the hand-me-down box in another department. Maybe the software was discarded, maybe it was reinstalled on the machine that replaced it ... I work on a lot of surplus systems as a contractor, and I find all kinds of software on them, clearly unused if you look at the file dates, just never uninstalled.