Give some credit to the MPAA's lawyers. They played that card to the hilt during the trial. If I were them trying desperately to save my a$$ (read: business plan), I'd do whatever it takes, including mudslinging and propagating unsubstantiated rumors. BTW IANAL.
This ruling shouldn't come as a surprise. The DMCA is a law on the books, and the role of any judge is to uphold the laws. From the ruling:
...The inescapable facts are the (1) CSS is a technological means that effectively controls access to plaintiffs' copyrighted works, (2) the one and only function of DeCSS is to circumvent CSS, and (3) defendants offered and provided DeCSS by posting it on their web site... The offering or provision of the program is prohibited conduct [under Section 1201(a)(2) of the DMCA]
The judge had no choice.
What is, perhaps, more disturbing though is that the judge passed the buck on the ruling. There's this thing in the US called checks and balances, and one result of this system is that the Legislative branch makes the laws and the Judicial branch is supposed to interpret them. In this case, the judge said that the Legislative body has already made the decision by passing the DMCA. I think the judge needs to take responsibility for the fact that it's his call.
Plan on seeing an appeal. There were serious First Amendment issues raised that can only be fleshed out on appeal. (And no, IANAL.)
Well, technically the Earth doesn't have to be defined as orbiting the Sun. Since we are on the Earth, relative to us the Sun orbits the Earth, and so do all the other planets AND the
asteroid belt (albeit in sort of a silly elliptical orbit).
Although Carnivore reportedly "sniffs" or scans all traffic at an Internet Service Provider once it is installed by court order, the FBI says only the data or messages relevant to a criminal investigation get stored and reviewed.
Yeah, OK. So I'll just walk down the street, tear open all the mail in everyone's mail, read it, photocopy "just the important stuff", and carefully replace all the originals. Last I heard, this was a felony.
This "GScube" is a cheap knock-off of the "G4cube", which is in turn a cheap knock-off of the "borGcube". Everyone knows the Borg assimilated the graphics community a long time ago.
UNIX were highly respected members of society in Roman times. They were used to protect high-ranking women, as they could almost certainly be trusted to Do The Right Thing. Their history is very interesting reading.
Next time I have to fill out an online form asking for personal information, I'm gonna send along an EULA, something like "By receiving this confidential information into your data systems, you agree to X, Y, and Z. You don't have to read this for it to be legal, blah blah." I'm sure you can figure out what X, Y, and Z should be. Use your imagination.
I can't wait till EULAs are upheld. Hey, if I can't reverse engineer their product, the least they can do in return is send me a shiny new $100 on the first of every month!
I hate to play devil's advocate here, but there is a very powerful argument on the side of the MPAA (and RIAA) here that no one seems to notice, and that could spell trouble for the Little Guy in the pending litigation. Oh, and IANAL.
In the past, new tech (vinyl, VHS, CDs) have won out over the large corporations, but for a very simple reason, which has nothing to do with copyright. Rather, the music (or in the case of DVDs, video) has existed in tangible form. As such, it requires resources, materials, and special equipment to duplicate (yes, CD burners count as special equipment). In other words, there weren't too many people who could "steal" from them. The recording industry could look the other way, and write off the losses.
In the case of online, digital content, that simply isn't the case any more. Anyone with a net connection and a hard drive can make a copy of the newly-released, newly-ripped DVD. Because their bottom lines are now seriously threatened, whether or not their sales increase due to Napster users previewing music is irrelevant. They have a powerful argument that the long-overlooked piracy is really a danger to their existence, and may win the day in court.
Courts are about upholding the laws, and the laws are the written representation of the status quo. The music and movie industries are certainly the status quo.
'Cuz they found out I'm near to perfecting my replicator. They want to steal as much money as they can before I can clone it and use it to buy all my new CDs.
There is no inconsistency here. The point of both "stealing music", as you put it, and open-sourcing code is that information, whether digital music or source code, wants to be liberated. We love and respect artists and coders alike, and we feel that their work should reach the widest possible audience.
How about.adult, or some variation thereof? No quabbling about who gets one: if you have content that requires age verification, you get it automatically, and if you don't, you don't. That segregates the pr0n industry, and of course makes it easy to filter content, yada yada. In addition, it makes any government regulation (read "sin tax") very easy to enforce.<p>Of course, that still leaves room for "questionable" content that parents may wish to filter by hand, so the good news for CyberPatrol, NetNanny, et al is that they're still in business.
Um. Maximum speed also depends on the fact that the ship is holding a finite amount of fuel, and the fact that constant thrust doesn't lead to constant acceleration as the ship becomes lighter due to fuel expenditure.
I may not be a high-falutin' MBA, but having worked in several startups of my own, I feel I have some input here. Damn near all companies (even those not run by geeks) have a positive burn rate in their first 2-5 years. If they make it through this period, they are usually solvent thereafter, and if they don't, well, some large percent (maybe 80% or so) of all new companies fail. Making the gross generalization that the "Quake players" caused the positive burn rate is an unfair stereotype.
What's really going on here is simple economics. It's not money that's the motivating goal, it's utility. Individual actors in any market will seek to maximize their utility function. Financial benefit will almost certainly play in defining that function, but as we all know, that's not the whole story.
Parents derive a great deal of utility from raising their children. The act gives them happiness, and I'm sure a lot of them would agree that they wouldn't trade that happiness for any amount of money.
Artists, on the other hand, have their own motivations. If I paint a picture for the sheer joy of the art, I don't give a damn whether or not I get paid. If I paint a picture on commission, then I had better get paid because I derive my utility from the art differently.
My biggest gripe with perl is that there seems to be no mode to require variables to be declared beforehand. I really despise when I'm coding and do something like: my ($fileName) = "/etc/blah/blah.cfg"; if ( $filename =~ m~^/etc~ ) { print "This is in/etc\n"); Solution: use strict;
An attorney for Hit Box, Stefan Ventroni, hailed the ruling as an important step toward giving musicians better protection against unauthorized use of their performances on the Internet.
You think the artists are gonna complain that people like their music? No, it's the record labels that are complaining. More Big Brother propaganda.
Next time you want to grab a CD, download the mp3s, look up the artists' home address, and mail them a check for $10. They make a helluva lot more money than they would otherwise, and you don't have to pay as much for their work. If enough people did this, the artists might get more serious about the idea of not going with a big label and releasing all of their music straight-to-online.
They just closed at $30, up $16 from their opening. Not stellar, but good if you got in early.
Dave Blau
Re:Indiana nearly set Pi = 3.2 in 1897
on
Happy Pi Day!
·
· Score: 1
The full story is told in Petr Beckman's A History of Pi. The bill was stopped because of a chance visit by a local mathematician to the Senate floor. The bill wasn't killed, but rather tabled, and it simply hasn't been back on the agenda since.
IMHO, new patents simply won't work. The system, as regards intellectual property, needs an overhaul. This is, really, what we're talking about here.
One of the major issues which has everyone up in arms is the ability for companies in today's environment to patent genes as soon as they isolate them. If they get there before the Genome Project, they can patent the genes and use them to extract royalties, in the event that researchers (who they don't pay for) discover a use for the gene. See this article for just one example. Before you think they did hard work to get large profits off of this gene, listen to the spin-doctoring:
"It was one of many genes that we found very early in our discovery program. Experiments confirmed that the CCR5 receptor played a key role in the biology of the immune system and as an AIDS virus receptor."
This announcement came out about Feb. 16 of this year. What they're not saying is that they've had the gene isolated for years now, that they applied for the patent immediately after isolating it, and that it was only in February that researchers and scientists not employed by them discovered the link to HIV. This discovery, in turn, prompted the press release.
There is some IP which is worth protecting: that which is demonstrably detrimental to being released into the public. This IP would include certain information being held by those protecting our country, and other information which would hurt individuals or their rights. As much as some here don't like it, there is information which should be held tightly, including IP held by some commonly bashed organizations, since the information is being used for your benefit. Information that is tightly held only because it benefits some multi-billion dollar corporation, and could benefit everyone if had royalty-free, on the other hand, shouldn't be patentable in the first place.
I think there should be a moritorium on patents issued for gene isolation. Even if a private firm isolates a gene, they are doing research which will eventually be duplicated by the Genome Project, and that information should be released into the public domain, license-free. If they want to aid the cause, that's fine, go get a government grant. If they want to develop subsidiary products based on a particular gene, that's OK too. Conventional products and procedures which are limited by, among other things, ingredients and physical restrictions, such as complicated and novel processing requirements, are completely covered by today's patent process. IP, on the other hand, should be free for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
-- Dave
What is, perhaps, more disturbing though is that the judge passed the buck on the ruling. There's this thing in the US called checks and balances, and one result of this system is that the Legislative branch makes the laws and the Judicial branch is supposed to interpret them. In this case, the judge said that the Legislative body has already made the decision by passing the DMCA. I think the judge needs to take responsibility for the fact that it's his call.
Plan on seeing an appeal. There were serious First Amendment issues raised that can only be fleshed out on appeal. (And no, IANAL.)
-- Dave
-- Dave
-- Dave
-- Dave
-- Dave
-- Dave
-- Dave
-- Dave
Next time I have to fill out an online form asking for personal information, I'm gonna send along an EULA, something like "By receiving this confidential information into your data systems, you agree to X, Y, and Z. You don't have to read this for it to be legal, blah blah." I'm sure you can figure out what X, Y, and Z should be. Use your imagination.
I can't wait till EULAs are upheld. Hey, if I can't reverse engineer their product, the least they can do in return is send me a shiny new $100 on the first of every month!
-- Dave
In the past, new tech (vinyl, VHS, CDs) have won out over the large corporations, but for a very simple reason, which has nothing to do with copyright. Rather, the music (or in the case of DVDs, video) has existed in tangible form. As such, it requires resources, materials, and special equipment to duplicate (yes, CD burners count as special equipment). In other words, there weren't too many people who could "steal" from them. The recording industry could look the other way, and write off the losses.
In the case of online, digital content, that simply isn't the case any more. Anyone with a net connection and a hard drive can make a copy of the newly-released, newly-ripped DVD. Because their bottom lines are now seriously threatened, whether or not their sales increase due to Napster users previewing music is irrelevant. They have a powerful argument that the long-overlooked piracy is really a danger to their existence, and may win the day in court.
Courts are about upholding the laws, and the laws are the written representation of the status quo. The music and movie industries are certainly the status quo.
Be watchful.
-- Dave
MUHAHAHAHAHAHA
-- Dave
-- Dave
It's 100% uncrackable. I DARE you to try to get in. The IP address is 127.0.0.1.
-- Dave
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
Parents derive a great deal of utility from raising their children. The act gives them happiness, and I'm sure a lot of them would agree that they wouldn't trade that happiness for any amount of money.
Artists, on the other hand, have their own motivations. If I paint a picture for the sheer joy of the art, I don't give a damn whether or not I get paid. If I paint a picture on commission, then I had better get paid because I derive my utility from the art differently.
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
Just my $0.02.
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
Dave Blau
One of the major issues which has everyone up in arms is the ability for companies in today's environment to patent genes as soon as they isolate them. If they get there before the Genome Project, they can patent the genes and use them to extract royalties, in the event that researchers (who they don't pay for) discover a use for the gene. See this article for just one example. Before you think they did hard work to get large profits off of this gene, listen to the spin-doctoring:
This announcement came out about Feb. 16 of this year. What they're not saying is that they've had the gene isolated for years now, that they applied for the patent immediately after isolating it, and that it was only in February that researchers and scientists not employed by them discovered the link to HIV. This discovery, in turn, prompted the press release.There is some IP which is worth protecting: that which is demonstrably detrimental to being released into the public. This IP would include certain information being held by those protecting our country, and other information which would hurt individuals or their rights. As much as some here don't like it, there is information which should be held tightly, including IP held by some commonly bashed organizations, since the information is being used for your benefit. Information that is tightly held only because it benefits some multi-billion dollar corporation, and could benefit everyone if had royalty-free, on the other hand, shouldn't be patentable in the first place.
I think there should be a moritorium on patents issued for gene isolation. Even if a private firm isolates a gene, they are doing research which will eventually be duplicated by the Genome Project, and that information should be released into the public domain, license-free. If they want to aid the cause, that's fine, go get a government grant. If they want to develop subsidiary products based on a particular gene, that's OK too. Conventional products and procedures which are limited by, among other things, ingredients and physical restrictions, such as complicated and novel processing requirements, are completely covered by today's patent process. IP, on the other hand, should be free for everyone.
For more information about IP in the gene patent area, check out these links:
Property Rights and Ownership
Genome Research and Traditional Intellectual Property Protection
Dave Blau