I'm not saying Autodesk is innocent here; technically, they should have done the research.
"Technically?!" Are you not aware that Autodesk's lawyer perjured himself by sending a fraudulent DMCA notice? That's a felony, you know! Unfortunately, the odds are next to nothing that he'd end up getting prosecuted for it, but still...
Hint: There is no such thing as 'legal' second-hand Autodesk software. They have the most draconian license agreement in existence.
Hint #2: There is such a thing as legal second-hand Autodesk software, because their draconian license agreement is bunk, as this lawsuit aims to prove.
Can you show a single case, ever, where a court, anywhere, has forced a defendant to reveal their source code for failure to comply with a software license?
No, but that's because no license which specified that source code had to be revealed has ever been tested! And anyway, I'm not a lawyer. Instead, I'm trying to argue this from the perspective of simple common sense, which seems to be woefully lacking in the legal world!
Here's a simple question: when the company does stop distributing, how do the copies already distributed suddenly become non-infringing? By magic?
No, that wouldn't bring you into compliance. After all, what about the GPL code you already distributed? You still have to give the source code for that!
In reality, it's due to a disconnect from the business people and the people doing the work.
I agree, there's a huge lack of basic legal knowledge among non-lawyer workers. For example, just the other day I had to warn my girlfriend, who is an artist working at a computer game company, that the fonts available at all those "free font" websites might not actually be free to use when embedding the code of the font in the game itself (as opposed to using the vector or raster data output from the font "program").
Of course, fonts are an exceptionally complex and screwed-up case -- even more so than "normal" software -- but it's not hard to imagine that most developers and artists would be just as clueless about that kind of thing as she was.
The problem with most projects like this is that 1) they don't register with the copyright office...
How would a software project, which gets modified extremely frequently, accomplish that anyway? Wouldn't you have to continually re-register after every CVS commit, as every new version is a new derivative work of the old?
Who was hurt? Perhaps the authors because the [copyright infringers] were making a lot of money with the [infringed] code? There's got to be a ton of precedent for awarding damages to the owner of a copyright when someone else is illegally profiting from the sale of that copyrighted work.
There, fixed that for you. If you agree that parties like the RIAA and MPAA are wrong, deceitful, and unfair when they mislabel copyright infringement as "theft" or "stealing" -- and you should agree -- then you shouldn't mislabel the offense either. Hypocrisy* is bad, mmkay?
(*Obviously, if you agree with the RIAA's diction then you're not hypocritical, but that's unlikely because you would be in the minority of Slashdot readers. If that's the case, I apologize.)
...or by buying the CD instead to begin with. In fact, the only good reason to bother with the software you mention is to decrypt stuff that's "free music Tuesday" or "iTunes exclusive" etc.
Incidentally, it appears that there's nothing that works for Mac users, which is really too bad.
Everyone is happy using iTunes, but what happens when somebody comes out with a portable music player that's better than the iPod, or just as good, but for cheaper?
As an iTunes user, I'll just use my music on that player instead. Why can I do this, even though I use iTunes? Because I don't use the store, stupid -- there's a difference! "iTunes the program" is not the same thing as "the iTunes store," and I'm getting sick and tired of people conflating the two!
Now, granted, I'll have to transcode all the music I ripped into Apple Lossless format, but that's okay because I specifically picked it because it's lossless.
I believe that in April 2009 that there will be A LOT of computers running XP and a comparatively small number of computers running Vista -- and XP may even still be available.
And I believe I'll still be running Windows 2000 for any of my non-Tablet PC Windows needs.
Three more words: DMCA anti-circumvention clause. You're not really suggesting a significant percentage of users would ever participate in such an obviously immoral, wicked, evil, heinous, illegal activity as trying to use their property in a way other than the manufacturer intended, are you?
Windows Vista on a Wacom-enabled Tablet PC is the way to go!
All jokes aside, I have Vista on a Tablet PC, and I'll tell you: even though Vista's tablet-related features are better than XP Tablet Edition's, they're not enough better to be worth dealing with all the rest of Vista's bullshit. Luckily, my tablet came with XP (and a really cheap "upgrade" offer for Vista, which is why I bothered to try it), and I'll be switching back the first convenient chance I get.
No. The idea is free. Someone's perfectly free to make a game mimicking mine, and I won't complain (I might find it in poor taste, but that doesn't mean it's not their right).
I am selling my implementation of an idea.
You completely missed my point. The essential thing is that you're still selling bits of information, not a physical object (even if you're providing the game on physical media, the physical media is not the game).
A physical product is inherently sellable because, since it is physical, the production of it can be controlled. In contrast, pure information (such as a video game) is inherently not sellable because anyone can copy it infinitely. That's an important distinction: the natural state of physical objects is to be "property," while the natural state of information is to belong to the Public Domain. The only reason you're able to sell copies of your game is that the government has chosen to artificially modify that reality using a construct of law called copyright law.
But given that they are, indeed, the creators of the work, I would also see it as equitable that someone who wished to bring the game or product to newer platforms to require the consent of the original creator.
That's ridiculous. Or, at least, European. Let me explain: in Europe, they have this idea of "artist's rights" (or something like that). The idea is that artists, as creators, have some sort of moral right to dictate how the work is used, and some moral right to be paid for it. Although that's valid in Europe, America explicitly rejected that argument as a basis for copryight law. After all, why should the artist have dictatorial control over the work? The mere fact that he created it doesn't make it his, because -- as I've already explained -- ideas inherently belong to the commons. No art is created in a vacuum; he surely took inspiration from everyting which preexisted in that commons, and thus his creation should become part of it in turn. This is the basis for copyright law in the U.S.: it is a way to encourage the creation of such works, in order to enrich the Public Domain. This is also why copyright expires. After all, if the artist really had a moral right to the work, why shouldn't he retain that right in perpetuity? Real (i.e., physical) property doesn't "expire;" if copyright were property then it shouldn't expire either.
So anyway, I completely disagree that the author should have any right to say whether a piece of software would be allowed to be ported to a new platform. Obviously it wouldn't be reasonable to force him to do the work himself, but it also wouldn't be unreasonable to force him to release the source code to someone who wanted to do it, especially if the code was otherwise "abandonware."
I have to admit that there is some truth to what you say. I knew a lot of engineering students who seemed to be in it just for the money. But I also knew a few who were pre-med and pre-law.
How did the "engineering->law" thing work out for them? I'm wondering because I'm an engineering undergrad right now, but I'm beginning to consider law school as an alternative to (engineering) grad school because Slashdot has made me realize I like arguing about the law. In particular, did they end up getting more interesting (and/or better paid) jobs than people who did the "humanities->law" track?
Slashdot Mirror
"Technically?!" Are you not aware that Autodesk's lawyer perjured himself by sending a fraudulent DMCA notice? That's a felony, you know! Unfortunately, the odds are next to nothing that he'd end up getting prosecuted for it, but still...
Hint #2: There is such a thing as legal second-hand Autodesk software, because their draconian license agreement is bunk, as this lawsuit aims to prove.
No, but that's because no license which specified that source code had to be revealed has ever been tested! And anyway, I'm not a lawyer. Instead, I'm trying to argue this from the perspective of simple common sense, which seems to be woefully lacking in the legal world!
Here's a simple question: when the company does stop distributing, how do the copies already distributed suddenly become non-infringing? By magic?
Care to provide any reasoning to back up that unsupported assertion?
No, that wouldn't bring you into compliance. After all, what about the GPL code you already distributed? You still have to give the source code for that!
I agree, there's a huge lack of basic legal knowledge among non-lawyer workers. For example, just the other day I had to warn my girlfriend, who is an artist working at a computer game company, that the fonts available at all those "free font" websites might not actually be free to use when embedding the code of the font in the game itself (as opposed to using the vector or raster data output from the font "program").
Of course, fonts are an exceptionally complex and screwed-up case -- even more so than "normal" software -- but it's not hard to imagine that most developers and artists would be just as clueless about that kind of thing as she was.
You forgot to kick CowboyNeal into a hole.
How would a software project, which gets modified extremely frequently, accomplish that anyway? Wouldn't you have to continually re-register after every CVS commit, as every new version is a new derivative work of the old?
There, fixed that for you. If you agree that parties like the RIAA and MPAA are wrong, deceitful, and unfair when they mislabel copyright infringement as "theft" or "stealing" -- and you should agree -- then you shouldn't mislabel the offense either. Hypocrisy* is bad, mmkay?
(*Obviously, if you agree with the RIAA's diction then you're not hypocritical, but that's unlikely because you would be in the minority of Slashdot readers. If that's the case, I apologize.)
My guess is that the salesperson was simply too stupid to think of it.
...or by buying the CD instead to begin with. In fact, the only good reason to bother with the software you mention is to decrypt stuff that's "free music Tuesday" or "iTunes exclusive" etc.
Incidentally, it appears that there's nothing that works for Mac users, which is really too bad.
As an iTunes user, I'll just use my music on that player instead. Why can I do this, even though I use iTunes? Because I don't use the store, stupid -- there's a difference! "iTunes the program" is not the same thing as "the iTunes store," and I'm getting sick and tired of people conflating the two!
Now, granted, I'll have to transcode all the music I ripped into Apple Lossless format, but that's okay because I specifically picked it because it's lossless.
Holy shit! Tell me which structures these Excel-using idiots are designing, so that I can avoid being crushed by them!
The real question is, what the fuck is Microsoft doing using 16-bit integers for this kind of thing on a 32-bit system anyway?!
And I believe I'll still be running Windows 2000 for any of my non-Tablet PC Windows needs.
Why don't you list the particular models you encountered, so the rest of us know to avoid such obviously broken hardware?
No, it's 2K. All those other new features you're rambling about are completely negated by the fucking "activation" bullshit!
Three more words: DMCA anti-circumvention clause. You're not really suggesting a significant percentage of users would ever participate in such an obviously immoral, wicked, evil, heinous, illegal activity as trying to use their property in a way other than the manufacturer intended, are you?
That's why I (still!) prefer Win2K to any other version of Windows.
All jokes aside, I have Vista on a Tablet PC, and I'll tell you: even though Vista's tablet-related features are better than XP Tablet Edition's, they're not enough better to be worth dealing with all the rest of Vista's bullshit. Luckily, my tablet came with XP (and a really cheap "upgrade" offer for Vista, which is why I bothered to try it), and I'll be switching back the first convenient chance I get.
Uh, that's an Apple dialog box, mot a Microsoft one.
Eww, robosexual sicko!
So, how's the view from that sarchasm?
You completely missed my point. The essential thing is that you're still selling bits of information, not a physical object (even if you're providing the game on physical media, the physical media is not the game).
A physical product is inherently sellable because, since it is physical, the production of it can be controlled. In contrast, pure information (such as a video game) is inherently not sellable because anyone can copy it infinitely. That's an important distinction: the natural state of physical objects is to be "property," while the natural state of information is to belong to the Public Domain. The only reason you're able to sell copies of your game is that the government has chosen to artificially modify that reality using a construct of law called copyright law.
That's ridiculous. Or, at least, European. Let me explain: in Europe, they have this idea of "artist's rights" (or something like that). The idea is that artists, as creators, have some sort of moral right to dictate how the work is used, and some moral right to be paid for it. Although that's valid in Europe, America explicitly rejected that argument as a basis for copryight law. After all, why should the artist have dictatorial control over the work? The mere fact that he created it doesn't make it his, because -- as I've already explained -- ideas inherently belong to the commons. No art is created in a vacuum; he surely took inspiration from everyting which preexisted in that commons, and thus his creation should become part of it in turn. This is the basis for copyright law in the U.S.: it is a way to encourage the creation of such works, in order to enrich the Public Domain. This is also why copyright expires. After all, if the artist really had a moral right to the work, why shouldn't he retain that right in perpetuity? Real (i.e., physical) property doesn't "expire;" if copyright were property then it shouldn't expire either.
So anyway, I completely disagree that the author should have any right to say whether a piece of software would be allowed to be ported to a new platform. Obviously it wouldn't be reasonable to force him to do the work himself, but it also wouldn't be unreasonable to force him to release the source code to someone who wanted to do it, especially if the code was otherwise "abandonware."
How did the "engineering->law" thing work out for them? I'm wondering because I'm an engineering undergrad right now, but I'm beginning to consider law school as an alternative to (engineering) grad school because Slashdot has made me realize I like arguing about the law. In particular, did they end up getting more interesting (and/or better paid) jobs than people who did the "humanities->law" track?