There have also been discussion about this in Finland. However, nobody has suggested such a device to be installed in every car! It has been more like, if you drive drunk and get busted, then you would not be allowed to drive without such device.
So, no insulting to those who are not criminals in first place. OTOH, this would not stop those heavy drunkers who don't give a shit whether they have a driving license or not but will drive nevertheless. Still, probably better than nothing.
Well, so seem to be the mods, as I got modded as flamebait, although I just tried to be funny. It's just that the "IANAL, but I think that..." -like phrases are so common in/., that seeing your post stating "IAAL", and that "it is this way" actually took be by surprise and made me laugh.
But no offense really, just joking. Happy to see real lawyers here, too.
My god, this is simply not possible - man, this is/.! You must be just some miserable karma whore... or then you just made a major typo and forgot the obligatory "N" and ",but".
Well, I believe the latter must be the case. Be more careful on your next post, OK?
I think we should check it out now. I hope the lawyers at FSF et al will get this source and check it for major GPL violations. It would be impossible to check for every possible violation, but it would still be good if someone would try to make sure that MS is not fixing their products - at least not in large scale - at the expense of those OSS programmers publishing under GPL.
Searching the file for "ppc", "mips" and "alpha" it is interesting to realize how much references to these architectures is still lingering there. And hell, even "ppcmac"! I wonder if MS is still maintaining these other architectures internally the same way as Apple is rumoured to have running Mac OS X/x86 installations internally.
OTOH, most of the OS X code (without Quartz etc.) is OSS-maintained on x86 anyway, so it is probably much smaller pain for them.
But Apple's AirPort Extreme WLAN cards aren't supported under Linux either, according to Yellow Dog's support. They neither support modem, bluetooth or external displays. Hell, they even don't support sleep, which kinda sucks in a laptop. At least most Centrino laptops probably support APM (and ACPI, if you can tune it to work).
I have an Apple 12" PowerBook. Never tried running Linux on it, though.
I think you're just trying to be funny, because even if MS can theoretically embrace and extend Unix in some form, they can't really do that for Linux, as it is GPL'd.
Three steps: 1) Think it technically 1st 2) Then find a way to explain it for Joe Musican, so that he understands 3) Make conclusions, and post them on/.
1) By re-ripping any DRM'd audio can be converted to non-DRM'd MP3s in minutes, and such songs can be distributed in P2P network as easily as any. Any amateur can do this, not even skills for analog re-recording are required. The conversion will be lossy, but the quality will still be high enough for P2P. 2) Show step 1. for him in practice, so that he understands that DRM won't stop P2P. Show also, how you can't play those MP3s with your MP3-CD player without the same lossy conversion, and he will understand that DRM will only hurt legitimate customers. 3) Conclusion: you're only right when you say that RIAA are dicks, as they won't listen when you're trying to explain step 2. Nobody talked about giving music away! Hell, I never would, if I would be an artist. But you can still sell MP3s - without any DRM - from your or your retailer's dedicated servers, publish a clear statement that obtaining them from anywhere else is illegal, and let cops bust P2P uploaders as hard as ever.
That's cute. How many customers knows what DRM even means? Although trying our best to avoid seeing it, the world is actually made up of non-geeks. We're the exception to the norm, not them. They are "most customers", not us.
I know, and didn't attempt to claim otherwise. But surprisingly many actually knows. They just won't call it DRM, they call it "copy protection", because they will realize that copied stuff won't work. And surprisingly, quite a lot of ordinary (that is, non-geek) people have had some kind of nasty experiences with different copy protection systems.
If people actually knew exactly what DRM meant, and if they actually had a choice, then surely they'd choose files without DRM. But MP3 or WMA? They don't give a damn.
Oh, but they will. MP3 is a brand. They know it, and they know that MP3s will play virtually everywhere. And they will learn about DRM, too. They will make few bad purchases, but then they will soon realize, that they got some shit, unlike some KaZaa, which offers real MP3s, and feel pissed.
That is why Apple's DRM has some chance for success. It does not alienate customer such way that too many would get disturbed (you can actually burn and re-rip to "crack" the protection), and the files will work on iPods, although not on MP3 CD players and such.
Besides, MS actually uses the term DRM in WMP, and thus, customers will learn that too. I've actually seen a case, where MS DRM was used in it's most restricted form, a lot of and clearly non-experienced people flooded certain discussion forums to tell how pissed they were. Hell, not even license backup was allowed, so, if you had to reinstall Windoze then say goodbye to your stuff, and don't even dream about burning or sharing.
People do not use Macs more for many reasons, but primarily because:
1) They think they're expensive, and they want the cheapest option, 2) They want to use the same stuff as they do at work and 3) They want to play games, and the selection, price and availability of games for Mac aren't good.
What comes to stability - well, W2k/WXP have always been relatively stable when I've used them - I've administered Windows networks but run only OS X and Linux at home, and sometimes I've actually had worse stability problems with XF86 than with W2k/WXP - the kernel ain't the whole OS. And most home users prefer to shut down their boxes when they're not using them anyway, so forced reboots are not any huge issue, if the box just won't actually crash too often.
The article also mentions: "Most customers don't care about the format they're downloading."
This is blatant BS. Most customer's would prefer non-DRMed MP3s, but due to one specific industry cartel there won't be any supply to meet that demand (except P2P).
I do not believe Microsoft's Windows Media Player for the Mac allows listening to protected WMA files, so in that regard the WMA format is more locked in than AAC (currently).
You're right, it doesn't. Well it does allow WMA DRMv1, but that isn't practically used anywhere. The generally-used implementation is known as DRMv2.
I managed to find an English translation of the law. It's here. (Original Finnish text of the act is here).
See chapter 1, article 4, paragraph 2:
"If a person has drawn freely on a work to create a new and independent work, his copyright shall not be subject to the right in the original work."
I think a work could count as "new and independent work", even if you're using a lookalike of an already-known character, like DD as part of it. Using the already-known name, however, would be a violation of chapter 6, article 51:
"A literary or artistic work shall not be made available to the public under a title, pseudonym or signature that makes the work or its author liable to confusion with a previously disseminated work or its author."
Methinks we'll very soon need a real lawyer to work this out for us.;)
Well, I don't know about the exact regulations of Berne Convention, but I think I somewhat know the Finnish copyright law.
IANAL, though, and as I just re-red the law, it seems that my example was partially wrong; yes, someone could draw his/her own DD stories, but calling them DD's would require a license from Disney.
But copyright law does recognize the general notion of derived works, so its just possible that they are right about this.
Well, this is still seems to be mostly U.S. problem.
In Finland - and I think in many other European countries too - the copyright law does not know about derivative works; you can draw Donald Ducks here without paying any royalties for Disney, as long as the stories are your own.
So maybe Linus should just return home to Helsinki and mail Darl that your law doesn't apply to me.;-)
But well... I sorta agree that claiming Linux illegal in U.S. could somewhat disturb its development...
I've understood it't basically the waterstamp that photoshop detects from images scanned with relatively high resolutions. Well, the waterstamp is included in the note paper itself, not in the original graphic, so he shouldn't have had any problems even if he used a legal copy instead of usenet one.;)
Frankly, Slashdot should just disable anonymous posting until it subsides.
No. People may have valid reasons to post as AC. For example, I remember some posts on/. modded as "informative" (IIRC), where the posters claimed to be North Koreans. I don't say that they were necessarily real, but if they were, it's probably no surprise, that they won't log in.
Other such posts could probably easily be found from this story.
Slashdot editors have unlimited mod points - let them handle the crapfloods. We others should just concentrate modding posts up instead of down, just as you said.
You can also edit your comment preferences to give ACs a negative modifier, if you want - then you can't see them, unless someone mods them up or you decide to browse at -1.
you'd have to find a blind barman to be able to pass off your colour laser copies of a Euro note as the real thing
You forget that people tend to be really stupid. Two years ago, when the Euro notes first came, there was a case in northern Finland where two guys almost managed to buy something with an e300 note... too bad that there ain't such a note at all, only e200 and e500. They only failed, because the seller told that he does not have change for such a big note. I was only half an hour lated, before he finally realised his mistake and called the police.
They got them busted, and pictures from the false notes were published. They looked ugly as hell, full of mistakes (besides the value)... but yes, such things can happen.
Slashdot Mirror
There have also been discussion about this in Finland. However, nobody has suggested such a device to be installed in every car! It has been more like, if you drive drunk and get busted, then you would not be allowed to drive without such device.
So, no insulting to those who are not criminals in first place. OTOH, this would not stop those heavy drunkers who don't give a shit whether they have a driving license or not but will drive nevertheless. Still, probably better than nothing.
I guess you are one of the following:
a) non-native English speaker
b) new here
c) both
Well, I belong to category "a" myself, but as a rather regular slashdotter I've got a lesson that Acronym Finder is your friend.
Well, so seem to be the mods, as I got modded as flamebait, although I just tried to be funny. It's just that the "IANAL, but I think that..." -like phrases are so common in /., that seeing your post stating "IAAL", and that "it is this way" actually took be by surprise and made me laugh.
But no offense really, just joking. Happy to see real lawyers here, too.
IAAL.
/.! You must be just some miserable karma whore... or then you just made a major typo and forgot the obligatory "N" and ",but".
My god, this is simply not possible - man, this is
Well, I believe the latter must be the case. Be more careful on your next post, OK?
I think we should check it out now. I hope the lawyers at FSF et al will get this source and check it for major GPL violations. It would be impossible to check for every possible violation, but it would still be good if someone would try to make sure that MS is not fixing their products - at least not in large scale - at the expense of those OSS programmers publishing under GPL.
Searching the file for "ppc", "mips" and "alpha" it is interesting to realize how much references to these architectures is still lingering there. And hell, even "ppcmac"! I wonder if MS is still maintaining these other architectures internally the same way as Apple is rumoured to have running Mac OS X/x86 installations internally.
OTOH, most of the OS X code (without Quartz etc.) is OSS-maintained on x86 anyway, so it is probably much smaller pain for them.
I suspect the lack of comments is due to the fact that this topic is SSOOOOOOO Obvious
Also che surrounding topics were both rather popular. I don't know the exact posting times of these topics, but one could suspect something...
The US have the power to enforce US law everywhere on the planet and close space
I think that only applies to physical space - they still seem to have some problems to enforce them in P2P networks, legal and moral right or not...
..when we will also get full Mac OS X (using native QT libraries - without X11) support?
Yes, I know it compiles and runs. But I mean: Production-quality version. Binary packages would be nice, too.
Any new information about this?
But Apple's AirPort Extreme WLAN cards aren't supported under Linux either, according to Yellow Dog's support. They neither support modem, bluetooth or external displays. Hell, they even don't support sleep, which kinda sucks in a laptop. At least most Centrino laptops probably support APM (and ACPI, if you can tune it to work).
I have an Apple 12" PowerBook. Never tried running Linux on it, though.
Well, at last a truly useful purpose for it. ;-) But you should first find a better name for it. How about Shutters?
I think you're just trying to be funny, because even if MS can theoretically embrace and extend Unix in some form, they can't really do that for Linux, as it is GPL'd.
..as he mentions that "very few of our customers are going to have a pure Unix or pure Windows environment".
Previously, I used to think that at least half of the MS customers or so would have a pure Unix environment. Thanks for enlightening me, Dennis!
Three steps: /.
1) Think it technically 1st
2) Then find a way to explain it for Joe Musican, so that he understands
3) Make conclusions, and post them on
1) By re-ripping any DRM'd audio can be converted to non-DRM'd MP3s in minutes, and such songs can be distributed in P2P network as easily as any. Any amateur can do this, not even skills for analog re-recording are required. The conversion will be lossy, but the quality will still be high enough for P2P.
2) Show step 1. for him in practice, so that he understands that DRM won't stop P2P. Show also, how you can't play those MP3s with your MP3-CD player without the same lossy conversion, and he will understand that DRM will only hurt legitimate customers.
3) Conclusion: you're only right when you say that RIAA are dicks, as they won't listen when you're trying to explain step 2. Nobody talked about giving music away! Hell, I never would, if I would be an artist. But you can still sell MP3s - without any DRM - from your or your retailer's dedicated servers, publish a clear statement that obtaining them from anywhere else is illegal, and let cops bust P2P uploaders as hard as ever.
That's cute. How many customers knows what DRM even means? Although trying our best to avoid seeing it, the world is actually made up of non-geeks. We're the exception to the norm, not them. They are "most customers", not us.
I know, and didn't attempt to claim otherwise. But surprisingly many actually knows. They just won't call it DRM, they call it "copy protection", because they will realize that copied stuff won't work. And surprisingly, quite a lot of ordinary (that is, non-geek) people have had some kind of nasty experiences with different copy protection systems.
If people actually knew exactly what DRM meant, and if they actually had a choice, then surely they'd choose files without DRM. But MP3 or WMA? They don't give a damn.
Oh, but they will. MP3 is a brand. They know it, and they know that MP3s will play virtually everywhere. And they will learn about DRM, too. They will make few bad purchases, but then they will soon realize, that they got some shit, unlike some KaZaa, which offers real MP3s, and feel pissed.
That is why Apple's DRM has some chance for success. It does not alienate customer such way that too many would get disturbed (you can actually burn and re-rip to "crack" the protection), and the files will work on iPods, although not on MP3 CD players and such.
Besides, MS actually uses the term DRM in WMP, and thus, customers will learn that too. I've actually seen a case, where MS DRM was used in it's most restricted form, a lot of and clearly non-experienced people flooded certain discussion forums to tell how pissed they were. Hell, not even license backup was allowed, so, if you had to reinstall Windoze then say goodbye to your stuff, and don't even dream about burning or sharing.
People do not use Macs more for many reasons, but primarily because:
1) They think they're expensive, and they want the cheapest option,
2) They want to use the same stuff as they do at work and
3) They want to play games, and the selection, price and availability of games for Mac aren't good.
What comes to stability - well, W2k/WXP have always been relatively stable when I've used them - I've administered Windows networks but run only OS X and Linux at home, and sometimes I've actually had worse stability problems with XF86 than with W2k/WXP - the kernel ain't the whole OS. And most home users prefer to shut down their boxes when they're not using them anyway, so forced reboots are not any huge issue, if the box just won't actually crash too often.
The article also mentions: "Most customers don't care about the format they're downloading."
This is blatant BS. Most customer's would prefer non-DRMed MP3s, but due to one specific industry cartel there won't be any supply to meet that demand (except P2P).
I do not believe Microsoft's Windows Media Player for the Mac allows listening to protected WMA files, so in that regard the WMA format is more locked in than AAC (currently).
You're right, it doesn't. Well it does allow WMA DRMv1, but that isn't practically used anywhere. The generally-used implementation is known as DRMv2.
I managed to find an English translation of the law. It's here. (Original Finnish text of the act is here).
;)
See chapter 1, article 4, paragraph 2:
"If a person has drawn freely on a work to create a new and independent work, his copyright shall not be subject to the right in the original work."
I think a work could count as "new and independent work", even if you're using a lookalike of an already-known character, like DD as part of it. Using the already-known name, however, would be a violation of chapter 6, article 51:
"A literary or artistic work shall not be made available to the public under a title, pseudonym or signature that makes the work or its author liable to confusion with a previously disseminated work or its author."
Methinks we'll very soon need a real lawyer to work this out for us.
Well, I don't know about the exact regulations of Berne Convention, but I think I somewhat know the Finnish copyright law.
IANAL, though, and as I just re-red the law, it seems that my example was partially wrong; yes, someone could draw his/her own DD stories, but calling them DD's would require a license from Disney.
But copyright law does recognize the general notion of derived works, so its just possible that they are right about this.
;-)
Well, this is still seems to be mostly U.S. problem.
In Finland - and I think in many other European countries too - the copyright law does not know about derivative works; you can draw Donald Ducks here without paying any royalties for Disney, as long as the stories are your own.
So maybe Linus should just return home to Helsinki and mail Darl that your law doesn't apply to me.
But well... I sorta agree that claiming Linux illegal in U.S. could somewhat disturb its development...
I've understood it't basically the waterstamp that photoshop detects from images scanned with relatively high resolutions. Well, the waterstamp is included in the note paper itself, not in the original graphic, so he shouldn't have had any problems even if he used a legal copy instead of usenet one. ;)
Funny. :)
But yeah, it was something almost similar. Too bad, that I can't recall it exactly anymore.
Frankly, Slashdot should just disable anonymous posting until it subsides.
/. modded as "informative" (IIRC), where the posters claimed to be North Koreans. I don't say that they were necessarily real, but if they were, it's probably no surprise, that they won't log in.
No. People may have valid reasons to post as AC. For example, I remember some posts on
Other such posts could probably easily be found from this story.
Slashdot editors have unlimited mod points - let them handle the crapfloods. We others should just concentrate modding posts up instead of down, just as you said.
You can also edit your comment preferences to give ACs a negative modifier, if you want - then you can't see them, unless someone mods them up or you decide to browse at -1.
you'd have to find a blind barman to be able to pass off your colour laser copies of a Euro note as the real thing
You forget that people tend to be really stupid. Two years ago, when the Euro notes first came, there was a case in northern Finland where two guys almost managed to buy something with an e300 note... too bad that there ain't such a note at all, only e200 and e500. They only failed, because the seller told that he does not have change for such a big note. I was only half an hour lated, before he finally realised his mistake and called the police.
They got them busted, and pictures from the false notes were published. They looked ugly as hell, full of mistakes (besides the value)... but yes, such things can happen.