Australia has a copyright provision called "fair dealing" which is similar to fair use in some ways. However, the two are certainly not identical. See this information sheet (PDF format) for details. In particular, fair dealing specifies a number of categories for usage of a copyrighted work. It is important for the use of a work to fall within one of the categories for the use to be fair. In this respect, "fair dealing" sounds less general and open-ended as compared to US "fair use." (Among other things, the information sheet talks about the differences between "fair dealing" and "fair use.")
It is always a good idea to be aware with respect to sensitive data. In particular, it is important to know exactly who processes the data, and where they are located. This applies regardless of where a company is located. There are issues if the subcontracting is done to another party in the USA. However, it is likely more difficult to hold an overseas perpetrator responsible. See this article which talks about assessing healthcare privacy concerns with outsourcing.
Who would have guessed that the non-commercial software would do better than certain proprietary packages? For many people outside the Slashdot site, commercial proprietary software represents virtually all software.
One difference between shareware/freeware/FOSS software and commercial proprietary software is that commercial software sometimes has excessive features. Ads for commercial software can compare packages based on their features, so having more features looks better. Of course, not everyone uses every feature. Worse yet, more features can mean more complexity and more things to go wrong. Software that is electronically distributed by an individual or a group does not usually rely on ads, so this is not an issue for them.
Ideally, it might have helped to have tested more software packages and more different items of spyware (perhaps the most troublesome and/or the most common ones.)
The Kazaa service could try to hold users liable for violating a license agreement that prohibited copyright violation. Usually, it would be up to the service as to whether they allowed others to violate their contract. Keep in mind that Kazaa users could be in different countries with different rules about contracts (even if copyright laws existed in these countries.)
The Kazaa service is different from the Napster service because the Kazaa service has no centralized control for blocking files. Even if the software was updated to block a file, it is likely that the file and/or the software could be altered by users to defeat the blocking.
Internet petitions are not necessarily effective though they sound like a great idea. Information such as e-mail addresses can be faked. A better idea would be to encourage people to write nicely to software producers. If many people felt strongly about abandonware, a company might well take notice. Even if a company releases a package of older titles, that is better than nothing.
Perhaps there is something to be said for public funding of political campaigns. Though it might sound expensive, it is important for the government to be responsive to all people.
This page specifies, among other information, the copyright terms in various countries. In some cases, the "life of author+70 years" term was adopted in a retroactive manner, and supposedly this meant that copyrights were restored on public domain works. In Mexico, copyright is for the author's life+100 years! For copyrights in Cote d'Ivoire, the term is usually life + 99 years.
Anonymous proxy services could bypass backbone filtering. The services would have to have legitimate uses (i.e. privacy protection) to avoid being targeted.
For resisting censorship, peer-to-peer systems may have hope. The manufacturers cannot really control the use of the systems even if their license prohibits illegal use. The Freenet system is resistant to censorship but is difficult to use.
On the Apple Macintosh platform, it appears to be possible to detect if a disabled menu item is chosen. Apple mentions that the need for this is rare and that it would happen in situations such as providing context-sensitive help. Virtually no software does this.
That is, everything should have been possible without a keyboard
A certain other OS has keyboard equivalents for virtually every menu command and pushbutton, etc. This may be because the presence of a mouse could not be counted on.
Having menu commands requiring a mouse was sometimes a problem. The "Restart" command was included in this category. A crash could leave the cursor frozen without affecting the keyboard. It was possible to patch the system software so that the restart command could be invoked via the keyboard.
Australia has a copyright provision called "fair dealing" which is similar to fair use in some ways. However, the two are certainly not identical. See this information sheet (PDF format) for details. In particular, fair dealing specifies a number of categories for usage of a copyrighted work. It is important for the use of a work to fall within one of the categories for the use to be fair. In this respect, "fair dealing" sounds less general and open-ended as compared to US "fair use." (Among other things, the information sheet talks about the differences between "fair dealing" and "fair use.")
The EFF has said that the legality of ripping audio CDs is unclear. Likely, it would be considered "fair use". In 1971, Congress commented on not restraining noncommercial home recording. The Sony Betamax case found that "time-shifting" copyrighted broadcasts for home viewing was fair use. Making personal copies of music with certain devices is allowed under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. For a digital copy to be legitimate under the AHRA, the recording device must prevent multiple-generation copies via copy protection. Also, manufacturers of digital recording devices and/or of blank recording media must pay royalties to the recording industry. Computer equipment is excluded from the AHRA. In the court case RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. it was ruled that a portable MP3 audio player was outside the scope of the AHRA. This was because the player only recorded music from a computer system. In the case, it is said that use of the player is compatible with the main purpose of the AHRA; the main purpose of the AHRA is "facilitation of personal use."
In any case, non-commercial ripping of legitimately-obtained audio CDs is not likely to hurt anyone.
It would be useful if users could handle encrypted and/or authenticated e-mail messages. The GnuPG encryption software can be freely (as in freedom) used by all users. For it to be effective, it would be necessary to obtain at least a few public keys from others in a trusted manner. Perhaps businesses could generate their public keys and provide them to GnuPG users for authentication purposes. The S/MIME standard is built into certain e-mail clients, but sending (not sure about receiving) secure mail with the user's identity requires obtaining an electronic certificate from a certificate authority company. Perhaps the implementation and support for secure e-mail standards could be made easier for users while still remaining effective. Businesses would hopefully follow up if users demanded secure e-mail.
P2P is seen as empowering individuals over corporations. However, RFID has the potential to empower corporations over individuals. It is problematic when people are not aware of RFID being used.
The chance of successfully fooling the user is increased if a script can alter the browser interface. For instance, a script might hide the status bar and then generate its own status bar with a fake lock icon. Users can prevent this by adjusting their browser preferences to prevent unauthorized interface alterations.
Users of the Mozilla Firefox browser can secure their setup with the following steps:
Choose the "Preferences..." menu item.
In the list on the left, choose Web Features.
If JavaScript scripting is enabled, select the "Advanced..." button.
Uncheck the checkboxes for allowing status bar text alteration, hiding/showing the status bar, and disabling/replacing context menus.
Choose OK in the dialog box and then choose OK in the Preferences dialog box.
Re:Who will "fix" the internet and how?
on
Gone Phishing?
·
· Score: 1
Software can be likely be made more secure if the effort was made. Consider the emphasis on features for commercial software, and the dominance of a certain OS platform. Demand from users for more secure software can help. (This is not to imply that users are to blame; many of them are simply not software experts.)
Authentication of e-mail is useful, but it could make it difficult to send anonymous messages for legitimate reasons i.e. reporting an act of wrongdoing. There are technologies such as OpenPGP and S/MIME but not everyone has support for them.
The "viral" aspect of the GPL applies only in certain circumstances. (Maybe "viral" is not the best term.) These circumstances are when a developer chooses to combine code with GPL-covered code or if a software package is used with a GPL-covered library. (Not everyone agrees with respect to dynamic linking and GPL requirements. See this article which tries to use an analogy of a written work referencing a copyrighted character elsewhere.) The "viral" rule about licensing copies under the GPL also applies when copies are distributed to the public.
Of course, if a library was licensed under a proprietary license, it is extremely likely that dynamically linking to the library would be restricted. This would be especially true if the license was a contract that exceeded normal copyright restrictions.
The LGPL is designed to enforce copyleft for libraries while allowing the library to be used as a library with proprietary software. Sometimes, there may be competing proprietary libraries that do the same thing as a copylefted library. In this case, the GPL could discourage usage of the library. (It is OK to use the regular GPL for libraries instead.) To help free software, it would be better to use the GPL for libraries that do not have competing proprietary libraries. Note that an LGPL-covered library can only be used like a library regarding proprietary software. For instance, distributing copies of the library under a proprietary license would not be permitted.
Supposedly, the GPL applies to static linking and dynamic linking of GPL-covered libraries. One individual has said that proprietary software may be able to legally use GPL-covered libraries via dynamic linking. The idea is that proprietary software could be designed to use a GPL-covered library not included with the software; users would be told to install the library. The software would not contain any code from the library (header files could be redone with clean-room reverse-engineering) and thus would not be a "derivative work."
There is also a discussion about situations involving open-source license compliance. For instance, it mentions a situation where a software package uses a specific library (there are copylefted and non-copylefted versions of the same library.) If the software is not copylefted, can it be designed to look for and use the library when it is run, even if the library is copylefted? What if the copylefted version of the library is recommended over the non-copylefted version?
A good way of describing things...the U.S. Constitution is actually like a set of rules and guidelines with the force of law. The specifics are general and can be fitted to unexpected situations while preserving the same spirit.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there no way we can do it, since they ALWAYS ultimately follow the money?
There might be something to be said for public funding of politics.
Australia has a copyright provision called "fair dealing" which is similar to fair use in some ways. However, the two are certainly not identical. See this information sheet (PDF format) for details. In particular, fair dealing specifies a number of categories for usage of a copyrighted work. It is important for the use of a work to fall within one of the categories for the use to be fair. In this respect, "fair dealing" sounds less general and open-ended as compared to US "fair use." (Among other things, the information sheet talks about the differences between "fair dealing" and "fair use.")
someone can request a takedown for copyright material of they don't own?
Perhaps they were thinking of industry trade associations which sometimes enforce copyrights of their members on their behalf.
In the case of the DMCA, the complaining party must state that they are authorized to take such action by the copyright owner. Of course, such a statement could be untrue.
It is always a good idea to be aware with respect to sensitive data. In particular, it is important to know exactly who processes the data, and where they are located. This applies regardless of where a company is located. There are issues if the subcontracting is done to another party in the USA. However, it is likely more difficult to hold an overseas perpetrator responsible. See this article which talks about assessing healthcare privacy concerns with outsourcing.
Who would have guessed that the non-commercial software would do better than certain proprietary packages? For many people outside the Slashdot site, commercial proprietary software represents virtually all software.
One difference between shareware/freeware/FOSS software and commercial proprietary software is that commercial software sometimes has excessive features. Ads for commercial software can compare packages based on their features, so having more features looks better. Of course, not everyone uses every feature. Worse yet, more features can mean more complexity and more things to go wrong. Software that is electronically distributed by an individual or a group does not usually rely on ads, so this is not an issue for them.
Ideally, it might have helped to have tested more software packages and more different items of spyware (perhaps the most troublesome and/or the most common ones.)
This especially applies to the "Warning: Your system is infected!" or "Click here to remove spyware" type messages.
The Kazaa service could try to hold users liable for violating a license agreement that prohibited copyright violation. Usually, it would be up to the service as to whether they allowed others to violate their contract. Keep in mind that Kazaa users could be in different countries with different rules about contracts (even if copyright laws existed in these countries.)
The Kazaa service is different from the Napster service because the Kazaa service has no centralized control for blocking files. Even if the software was updated to block a file, it is likely that the file and/or the software could be altered by users to defeat the blocking.
An individual has argued that the Mickey Mouse character may already be public domain because of previous copyright requirements that were not properly satisfied.
Internet petitions are not necessarily effective though they sound like a great idea. Information such as e-mail addresses can be faked. A better idea would be to encourage people to write nicely to software producers. If many people felt strongly about abandonware, a company might well take notice. Even if a company releases a package of older titles, that is better than nothing.
Perhaps there is something to be said for public funding of political campaigns. Though it might sound expensive, it is important for the government to be responsive to all people.
Those who are interested can take a look at the following for starters:
Public Campaign -- A New Kind of Reform Politics
Public Campaign Action Fund
Campaign Finance Reform: The Issue
Money In Politics - Common Cause
This page specifies, among other information, the copyright terms in various countries. In some cases, the "life of author+70 years" term was adopted in a retroactive manner, and supposedly this meant that copyrights were restored on public domain works. In Mexico, copyright is for the author's life+100 years! For copyrights in Cote d'Ivoire, the term is usually life + 99 years.
A few years ago, the RIAA wanted four Internet backbone providers to block access to a music server in China. The court case was never resolved because the music site went offline. The fact that a few companies can control inbound and outbound Internet traffic might well be a concern in itself... Consider the implications of such a chokepoint on Internet traffic. One article considered whether the providers were "common carriers" like a postal service. (This means that they are not liable for illegal content because they are not really supposed to filter content.)
Anonymous proxy services could bypass backbone filtering. The services would have to have legitimate uses (i.e. privacy protection) to avoid being targeted.
For resisting censorship, peer-to-peer systems may have hope. The manufacturers cannot really control the use of the systems even if their license prohibits illegal use. The Freenet system is resistant to censorship but is difficult to use.
On the Apple Macintosh platform, it appears to be possible to detect if a disabled menu item is chosen. Apple mentions that the need for this is rare and that it would happen in situations such as providing context-sensitive help. Virtually no software does this.
That is, everything should have been possible without a keyboard
A certain other OS has keyboard equivalents for virtually every menu command and pushbutton, etc. This may be because the presence of a mouse could not be counted on.
Having menu commands requiring a mouse was sometimes a problem. The "Restart" command was included in this category. A crash could leave the cursor frozen without affecting the keyboard. It was possible to patch the system software so that the restart command could be invoked via the keyboard.
Australia has a copyright provision called "fair dealing" which is similar to fair use in some ways. However, the two are certainly not identical. See this information sheet (PDF format) for details. In particular, fair dealing specifies a number of categories for usage of a copyrighted work. It is important for the use of a work to fall within one of the categories for the use to be fair. In this respect, "fair dealing" sounds less general and open-ended as compared to US "fair use." (Among other things, the information sheet talks about the differences between "fair dealing" and "fair use.")
The EFF has said that the legality of ripping audio CDs is unclear. Likely, it would be considered "fair use". In 1971, Congress commented on not restraining noncommercial home recording. The Sony Betamax case found that "time-shifting" copyrighted broadcasts for home viewing was fair use. Making personal copies of music with certain devices is allowed under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. For a digital copy to be legitimate under the AHRA, the recording device must prevent multiple-generation copies via copy protection. Also, manufacturers of digital recording devices and/or of blank recording media must pay royalties to the recording industry. Computer equipment is excluded from the AHRA. In the court case RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. it was ruled that a portable MP3 audio player was outside the scope of the AHRA. This was because the player only recorded music from a computer system. In the case, it is said that use of the player is compatible with the main purpose of the AHRA; the main purpose of the AHRA is "facilitation of personal use."
In any case, non-commercial ripping of legitimately-obtained audio CDs is not likely to hurt anyone.
It would be useful if users could handle encrypted and/or authenticated e-mail messages. The GnuPG encryption software can be freely (as in freedom) used by all users. For it to be effective, it would be necessary to obtain at least a few public keys from others in a trusted manner. Perhaps businesses could generate their public keys and provide them to GnuPG users for authentication purposes. The S/MIME standard is built into certain e-mail clients, but sending (not sure about receiving) secure mail with the user's identity requires obtaining an electronic certificate from a certificate authority company. Perhaps the implementation and support for secure e-mail standards could be made easier for users while still remaining effective. Businesses would hopefully follow up if users demanded secure e-mail.
P2P is seen as empowering individuals over corporations. However, RFID has the potential to empower corporations over individuals. It is problematic when people are not aware of RFID being used.
The chance of successfully fooling the user is increased if a script can alter the browser interface. For instance, a script might hide the status bar and then generate its own status bar with a fake lock icon. Users can prevent this by adjusting their browser preferences to prevent unauthorized interface alterations.
Users of the Mozilla Firefox browser can secure their setup with the following steps:
Software can be likely be made more secure if the effort was made. Consider the emphasis on features for commercial software, and the dominance of a certain OS platform. Demand from users for more secure software can help. (This is not to imply that users are to blame; many of them are simply not software experts.)
Authentication of e-mail is useful, but it could make it difficult to send anonymous messages for legitimate reasons i.e. reporting an act of wrongdoing. There are technologies such as OpenPGP and S/MIME but not everyone has support for them.
The "viral" aspect of the GPL applies only in certain circumstances. (Maybe "viral" is not the best term.) These circumstances are when a developer chooses to combine code with GPL-covered code or if a software package is used with a GPL-covered library. (Not everyone agrees with respect to dynamic linking and GPL requirements. See this article which tries to use an analogy of a written work referencing a copyrighted character elsewhere.) The "viral" rule about licensing copies under the GPL also applies when copies are distributed to the public.
Of course, if a library was licensed under a proprietary license, it is extremely likely that dynamically linking to the library would be restricted. This would be especially true if the license was a contract that exceeded normal copyright restrictions.
The LGPL is designed to enforce copyleft for libraries while allowing the library to be used as a library with proprietary software. Sometimes, there may be competing proprietary libraries that do the same thing as a copylefted library. In this case, the GPL could discourage usage of the library. (It is OK to use the regular GPL for libraries instead.) To help free software, it would be better to use the GPL for libraries that do not have competing proprietary libraries. Note that an LGPL-covered library can only be used like a library regarding proprietary software. For instance, distributing copies of the library under a proprietary license would not be permitted.
Supposedly, the GPL applies to static linking and dynamic linking of GPL-covered libraries. One individual has said that proprietary software may be able to legally use GPL-covered libraries via dynamic linking. The idea is that proprietary software could be designed to use a GPL-covered library not included with the software; users would be told to install the library. The software would not contain any code from the library (header files could be redone with clean-room reverse-engineering) and thus would not be a "derivative work."
There is also a discussion about situations involving open-source license compliance. For instance, it mentions a situation where a software package uses a specific library (there are copylefted and non-copylefted versions of the same library.) If the software is not copylefted, can it be designed to look for and use the library when it is run, even if the library is copylefted? What if the copylefted version of the library is recommended over the non-copylefted version?
A good way of describing things...the U.S. Constitution is actually like a set of rules and guidelines with the force of law. The specifics are general and can be fitted to unexpected situations while preserving the same spirit.