This is not a case of the end user violating the EULA, this is a for-profit company violating the EULA to make money. That's a whole different ballgame.
No, it's not. Either the EULA is valid, or it isn't.
And if you were right, then why would an End User License Agreement apply to a reseller like Psystar anyway?
But at some point the people at Psystar must have clicked "I Agree"
But Psystar had already bought the software; the transaction was already over and done with before they were ever presented with any sort of license. At that point, clicking the button (which only coincidentally happens to say "I Agree") to install the software has no more legal significance than taking the damn thing out of the box!
This is the strongest contract in the entire software industry
So, you're claiming that the entire software industry has no valid contracts, then?
Marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and has been defined as such ever since the advent of monogamy.
If that were true, then it wouldn't be necessary to have a Constitutional amendment stating it. Yet such an amendment has been proposed; therefore, you're wrong. QED.
Ah, not an American. So I DON'T have the right to US due process.
Actually, you do:
U.S. Constitution, Amendment V:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Okay, I'm going to try to ask this in the most polite way I can:
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
I thought the OLPC project was about helping children. I thought it
was about teaching them to be self-sufficient, by giving them the
opportunity to see and modify all the code the computer was running. I
thought it was about giving them software (such as Squeak) that would
help them learn.
Obviously, I was wrong. How sad: the most promising educational
project EVER, and you've just FLUSHED IT DOWN THE DAMN TOILET.
Don't play stupid; "gay marriage" doesn't mean "marriage between a man and a woman where one or both is homosexual," it means "marriage between people of the same gender."
There are two reasons why that's not a good solution:
You have to have 5 people on the plan. Not everybody can manage that!
Even $6 is way too fucking expensive for what you get! I mean, come on! We're talking about 160 bytes per message here. That's so much less data than a phone call, it should be negligable, and therefore free once you've paid for a reasonable phone plan (i.e., everything except pay-as-you-go, just to stop people from sending a million messages while making zero calls).
If you read up on why that is in the constitution, you would see that you are wrong.
O RLY?
Actually, I have read up on it. Thomas Jefferson, for example, completely opposed it:
"The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Madison dated 31 July 1788.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181.
James Madison supported it, but only due to assumptions he made which are no longer valid:
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. But is it clear that as encouragements to literary works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our governments than in most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few. Where the power is in the few it is natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger can not be very great that the few will be thus favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many."
-- James Madison, in a letter to Jefferson dated 17 October 1788.
I'm not going to bother looking up a quote from Ben Franklin, but you can bet he'd have agreed with Jefferson -- he, after all, refused to patent any of his inventions and invented the public library!
I have no doubt whatsoever that, if they had seen the situation today, where the existence of the Free Software movement, blogs, YouTube, etc. make it patently obvious that the "encouragements to literary works" are in fact not "too valuable" and the danger of the "few... sacrific[ing] the many to their own partialities and corruptions" has, in fact, come to pass with the rise of organizations like the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc., all of the Founding Fathers including even Madison would have instantly and heartily agreed that the Constitution should have abolished "monopolies" altogether.
I think maybe you missed his point entirely in your eagerness to devow intellectual property, because you never addressed his point, which was to define what the concept of property rights is (a social contract), and then extend that to IP as is currently in effect.
No, I got his point. My point is that that extension is stupid because the underlying analogy is invalid.
the basic assumption that all Western economies are built on (there exist products that are not plentiful in nature, and value can be created by making these products available in exchange for other products which are not plentiful in nature, viz. cash) would evaporate overnight.
Exactly! And that assumption, where it applies to things like books, movies, music, and software, is already evaporating as we speak due to the Internet!
I'm not sure such a replication device is such a great idea.
And yet, once it existed, it would be impossible to suppress or destroy, just like the Internet. Therefore, we're really going to have no choice but to deal with it. The Internet is incompatible with copyright law as we know it; therefore, copyright law must change.
The text you managed to find (the copyright clause) clearly allows congress to "Secure for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." There is very little to interpret in that part of the clause, it's clear.
Yes, but only for the purpose of supporting the former part of the clause. The second part explains the "how," but the first part explains the "why," and it's the "why" that's important for interpreting the law.
So what exactly is unconstitutional?
Any copyright or patent law that fails to promote progress. I agree that this is open to interpretation, but it at least should be required to be considered. Unfortunately, every part of government (including the Supreme Court) fails to do so.
...but if I write some software and post it on a web site, it doesn't have any license, does that mean no one can use it?
Technically, yes. Everything on the Internet -- including this post -- is copyrighted, unless the copyright holder explicitly releases it to the Public Domain. The only thing that might give you the right to download this to your computer (thereby making a copy) as you just did is the implied permission I gave by posting it. This implied permission is not likely to extend to further duplication rights; for example, if you tried to pass this post along to somebody else and I decided to sue you for it, the court would likely side with me.
Does all code have to have a license now?
If it's not Public Domain and you want people to be able to redistribute it, then the answer is certainly "yes." If you want people to be allowed to download it in the first place, the answer is "maybe" (see above). So far, these apply to all creative works, both code and otherwise.
Now, there's also one thing specific to software: If you want people to be able to run it, which incidentally requires at least copying it from disk to RAM, and maybe required copying it from CD to disk or disk to disk (if it was supplied as an installer program rather than an archive or image that didn't require "installation"), then that may also require a license. After all, those copies might be considered to be an incidental consequence of how the technology works, and thus fall under implied permission. Or maybe they don't: this is the rationale behind EULAs.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 1, Clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Note the bold part. That's the thing that Congress is given authorization to do: "promote progress." Not to compensate creators for their effort due to some kind of moral obligation, and certainly not to obstruct progress by preventing people from building on previous works! Now, see the word "by?" That means that the remainder of the clause is nothing more than an example of the way in which the writers of the Constitution imagined accomplishing the previously stated goal. It doesn't mean that Congress must do it, especially the way it's implemented nowadays such that it acts contrary to its purpose; it just means that Congress may do it.
The idea of copyright as an entitlement to artists was imported via the Berne Convention, which should never have been ratified because it is, as I just explained, unconstitutional.
Just because you can create an opinion doesn't make it so. Property is a social contract in ANY sense of the word.
On the contrary, property is the natural consequence of the physical fact that two people can't use the same tangible artifact at the same time. This is exactly the opposite of so-called "intellectual property," which not only naturally duplicates itself and is almost impossible to prevent from duplicating itself, but also only becomes valuable as a consequence of the duplication itself! (For example, would Shakespeare's plays have had any value whatsoever if he had never communicated them to anybody else? No!)
In other words, real property is based on, and compatible with, physical reality. "Intellectual property" is based on lawyers' imaginations and is incompatible with physical reality.
I don't think Ferraris are worth the money either, but I can't just go take one from the dealership or someone else that has one.
That's a bad analogy, because if you took a Ferrari then the previous owner wouldn't have it anymore. Now, if you could replicate the Ferrari a la Star Trek, the situation would be entirely different, and the ethics of it would be much less clear-cut.
I really prefer 2000 over XP even now. But I tend to use XP, because of particular needs: my laptop is a Tablet PC; there's no "Win2k tablet edition." My desktop is shared with my girlfriend; 2000 doesn't have fast user switching. It really sucks, because I'm morally opposed to activation.
That's fine! Why? If file sharing becomes legal, then we wouldn't need the GPL anymore because closed-source would cease to be economically feasible anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
What violations of copyright law have Psystar committed? Be specific.
Unless you're very specifically wanting a low-end but upgradable Mac. Then it's the best deal around, because there's no reasonable alternative.
No, it's not. Either the EULA is valid, or it isn't.
And if you were right, then why would an End User License Agreement apply to a reseller like Psystar anyway?
But Psystar had already bought the software; the transaction was already over and done with before they were ever presented with any sort of license. At that point, clicking the button (which only coincidentally happens to say "I Agree") to install the software has no more legal significance than taking the damn thing out of the box!
So, you're claiming that the entire software industry has no valid contracts, then?
Pigs can eat pretty much anything, but they actually eat what they're fed. And in the U.S., they're fed corn!
Hint: corn kernels are seeds.
If that were true, then it wouldn't be necessary to have a Constitutional amendment stating it. Yet such an amendment has been proposed; therefore, you're wrong. QED.
Um, duh, the REAL real solution is to fix the fucking country so that these anti-American assholes don't have the authority to fucking do it anymore!
I have an iBook, you insensitive clod!
(I actually did swap the drive on it once; it took an hour and about 30 screws of various kinds!)
Actually, you do:
Note that the bolded word is not "citizen!"
Will that violation of ABA Rules have any repercussions either on the new trial or for Mr. Gabriel personally?
Don't play stupid; "gay marriage" doesn't mean "marriage between a man and a woman where one or both is homosexual," it means "marriage between people of the same gender."
Holy shit, they are?! So they decided not to go with OOXML, after all?
There are two reasons why that's not a good solution:
About all I've ever figured out is that the so-called "professional" apps have code in them that says
O RLY?
Actually, I have read up on it. Thomas Jefferson, for example, completely opposed it:
James Madison supported it, but only due to assumptions he made which are no longer valid:
I'm not going to bother looking up a quote from Ben Franklin, but you can bet he'd have agreed with Jefferson -- he, after all, refused to patent any of his inventions and invented the public library!
I have no doubt whatsoever that, if they had seen the situation today, where the existence of the Free Software movement, blogs, YouTube, etc. make it patently obvious that the "encouragements to literary works" are in fact not "too valuable" and the danger of the "few... sacrific[ing] the many to their own partialities and corruptions" has, in fact, come to pass with the rise of organizations like the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc., all of the Founding Fathers including even Madison would have instantly and heartily agreed that the Constitution should have abolished "monopolies" altogether.
Exactly! And that assumption, where it applies to things like books, movies, music, and software, is already evaporating as we speak due to the Internet!
And yet, once it existed, it would be impossible to suppress or destroy, just like the Internet. Therefore, we're really going to have no choice but to deal with it. The Internet is incompatible with copyright law as we know it; therefore, copyright law must change.
Yes, but only for the purpose of supporting the former part of the clause. The second part explains the "how," but the first part explains the "why," and it's the "why" that's important for interpreting the law.
Any copyright or patent law that fails to promote progress. I agree that this is open to interpretation, but it at least should be required to be considered. Unfortunately, every part of government (including the Supreme Court) fails to do so.
Technically, yes. Everything on the Internet -- including this post -- is copyrighted, unless the copyright holder explicitly releases it to the Public Domain. The only thing that might give you the right to download this to your computer (thereby making a copy) as you just did is the implied permission I gave by posting it. This implied permission is not likely to extend to further duplication rights; for example, if you tried to pass this post along to somebody else and I decided to sue you for it, the court would likely side with me.
If it's not Public Domain and you want people to be able to redistribute it, then the answer is certainly "yes." If you want people to be allowed to download it in the first place, the answer is "maybe" (see above). So far, these apply to all creative works, both code and otherwise.
Now, there's also one thing specific to software: If you want people to be able to run it, which incidentally requires at least copying it from disk to RAM, and maybe required copying it from CD to disk or disk to disk (if it was supplied as an installer program rather than an archive or image that didn't require "installation"), then that may also require a license. After all, those copies might be considered to be an incidental consequence of how the technology works, and thus fall under implied permission. Or maybe they don't: this is the rationale behind EULAs.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 1, Clause 8:
Note the bold part. That's the thing that Congress is given authorization to do: "promote progress." Not to compensate creators for their effort due to some kind of moral obligation, and certainly not to obstruct progress by preventing people from building on previous works! Now, see the word "by?" That means that the remainder of the clause is nothing more than an example of the way in which the writers of the Constitution imagined accomplishing the previously stated goal. It doesn't mean that Congress must do it, especially the way it's implemented nowadays such that it acts contrary to its purpose; it just means that Congress may do it.
The idea of copyright as an entitlement to artists was imported via the Berne Convention, which should never have been ratified because it is, as I just explained, unconstitutional.
No, your argument is bullshit.
On the contrary, property is the natural consequence of the physical fact that two people can't use the same tangible artifact at the same time. This is exactly the opposite of so-called "intellectual property," which not only naturally duplicates itself and is almost impossible to prevent from duplicating itself, but also only becomes valuable as a consequence of the duplication itself! (For example, would Shakespeare's plays have had any value whatsoever if he had never communicated them to anybody else? No!)
In other words, real property is based on, and compatible with, physical reality. "Intellectual property" is based on lawyers' imaginations and is incompatible with physical reality.
That's a bad analogy, because if you took a Ferrari then the previous owner wouldn't have it anymore. Now, if you could replicate the Ferrari a la Star Trek, the situation would be entirely different, and the ethics of it would be much less clear-cut.
I really prefer 2000 over XP even now. But I tend to use XP, because of particular needs: my laptop is a Tablet PC; there's no "Win2k tablet edition." My desktop is shared with my girlfriend; 2000 doesn't have fast user switching. It really sucks, because I'm morally opposed to activation.
That's fine! Why? If file sharing becomes legal, then we wouldn't need the GPL anymore because closed-source would cease to be economically feasible anyway.