The quote from the letter shows that the university is clearly blowing smoke and either did not talk to their legal department, or if they did, they ought to fire their lawyers. Although you sometimes have to wonder about the sanity of the US legal system, there is still a basic principle that something is legal unless it is determined to be illegal. Therefore, courts do not have to rule P2P activity as legal before you can engage in that activity. Even pending litigations do not constitute that P2P activity is currently illegal (unless you break the law using the P2P stuff).
Also, it is very unlikely that any court would rule specifically on student P2P activity. Students are strange animals, but in general rulings like this would apply to everyone, not just to students.
They are obviously playing on threatening people, and hiding behind vague statements in an effort to simply avoid the entire risk of people potentially using P2P technology to download (or upload) illegal materials. I'd personally recommand replying back to the university, explaining your legal use of P2P, and explaining that their letter seems to be based on some flawed assumptions, both legally and factually.
But do not expect to win unless you really want to fight this desperately. It's their network and though you pay tuition and all that, it is still their network, and so they get to decide what goes, whether it makes sense or not.
The problem with your suggestion is of course that putting the trackers and website in a safe haven is hardly any protection for those that decide to download the copyrighted material. In the end, although the distribution medium can be held liable, the same certainly holds true for the people that use the medium to violate copyright laws.
So, yes that would protect the trackers, but you certainly would still be open to lawsuits if you used that system to download copyrighted materials.
Given that probably the biggest problem with kids these days is related to the fact that parents do not take a decent interest in what their kids do, and that they mainly leave it up to "The System" to raise their kids properly, I highly doubt parents would use this kind of a system.
It is more likely that school officials and other 'officials' would be using this type of technology.
Let's face it... In today's US society, the government and school system have taken over the role of parents in raising the kids to a large extend. Child protection services and such have a higher authority than parents do, and school have so many responsibilities that parents should have kept. Parents in the past being lazy about their task obviously has led to a society where common sense is extinct.
In a society where it is perfectly fine for a school bus to cause all traffic to come to a complete stop to let kids off the bus, and where then crossing guards stop traffic to allow kids to cross AGAINST the traffic light signals...
While I do think that the/. editors are right in not changing people's submissions, at the same time I think people ought to at least have some decency in their messages. It shouldn't become a disgusting lashing out. Should all belgians now start pointing out that while pedophily cases in Belgium did indeed make major news, the US' slate isn't exactly clean with the numerous cases of violence in schools etc. And the obvious inability of the US school and law enforcement system to make something as basic as school safe for kids.
Enough said on that...
If you read the article that is reference thoroughly, it should be clear that the arrests were related to mp3blast.com, and not Napster. Yes, apparantly they are investigating Naster cases also.
It's really amazing though how critical people are about other countries. Which is strange to come from people in a country where a show like Jeopardy can have an international contest with a US 5 time champion as one of the "international" contestants, putting that US champion against people that do not have english as their native language, and then (I guess) be proud that surprise-surprise the US contestant wins.
I'm a division manager for an IT company, and we've been interviewing people for Java and Perl positions lately. And while we do get alot of candidates (of which only 1 was unemployed, and less than 10% in H-1B status), quite few actually have a decent knowledge of computer science. Very basic questions about knowledge of algorithms and such are answered all too often wrong. And on average the H-1B candidates do alot better on basic CS knowledge compared to US candidates. (Flame away if you like - it's an observation of reality.)
So in all, I can say that there definitely seems to be a shortage of CS professionals that actually really know what they are doing and that have the knowledge to be productive in writing quality software, rather than software that merely works.
The posting is hardly worth attention, other than to set things straight. For one, the H1B program didn't start 6 years ago, but quite a while before then. Also, people who come to the US on an H1B know from even before they arrive that they are getting a temporary visa. So there's hardly a reason to complain about that.
The real bugger is that the green card process has been made so complicated and lengthy that the almost normal transition from H1B to green card through employment is hell for alot of people, who tend to start staying alot longer on H1B visas and it also leads to a higher turnover rate in people coming and going on those visas.
Reason for having the H1B program is a mere result of the industry realizing that there is a shortage of willing people to take jobs, and that alot of foreigners are higher skilled than US citizens that are considered equivalent. That's not meant as an insult to anyone, but as a mere stating of truth (and a very well known one).
Face it... Immigration law sucks; people come here and get somewhat abused by the H1B program (but obviously willingly do so - I know, since I did it); and it is very easy to abuse people that are here on an H1B. But hey... no one forces people to come to the US on an H1B.
The main problem with the H1B program has nothing to do with workers being deported etc... It's a case of mixed intent. People come to work for a US company on an H1B because they want to make use of the dual intent status of H1B visas, meaning that the intent is both to be in the US temporarily and to apply for a green card to immigrate permanently. That's a major flaw, because people really use the H1B as a foot-in-the-door to immigate to the US. If the US government would make the immigration process sensible, there wouldn't be a need for a dual intent visa, and the H1B program wouldn't get stuck being a trampoline to immigrant status.
It is both understandable and sad to see that things like this happen. Indeed, the media tends to take things out of context and make a story even out of slight remarks. Worse, some people's comments indeed are getting used against them.
However, on the other hand is the point that people should think before the speak. Quite often that is the core of the problems. Especially when you are a figure of power, high standing, or just well-known, it is important to be careful with what you say or write, because of course people will interpret things, and quote you on what you say. If you have thoughts you wish to express, but you don't want them to be thrown back at you as in 'You said...' then don't say them:-)
So if people would take a bit more accountability into consideration when writing things, or when giving interviews or speeches, etc... And if the media could perhaps stick a bit more to reporting rather than scandal and headline hunting, things would look alot better.
I do have to wonder (and probably and going to be flamed to no end on this) whether suddenly the Debian Free Software Guidelines are considered the de facto standard for what can be considered open source software. I do realize that it is the basis for being able to claim the official "Open Source" mark. But I fear that throwing up this argument against some services might be counterproductive. Face it, not everyone is going to agree to the DFSG, for whatever reasons. Does that mean we should not accept things people like that write? Or should it not be acceptable to be used for the general workings of something so complex and pretty much anarchy-based as the Internet? Sorry, but I do not agree. I feel that being reasonable on both sides is better than not. I really do not feel that allowing e.g. modular approaches to be able to not use proprietary parts would be sufficient to cover danger areas. And perhaps let's give ISC the chance to try to rectify the situation in such way that all parties are sufficiently cared about.
There is a reason why often commercial compilers perform better than GCC - not using that advantage is sometimes plain silly.
All this is entirely out of context for the discussion of NSI's 'license', but as far as taxes go... A large amount of tax agreements exist between countries to lift the burden of double tax collection. It tends to have some finer differences between the different agreements, but in general it boils down to the fact that the country where you spend more than 183 days in a year can tax you, while the other won't.
So most of the time, you only pay taxes in the country where you work and reside (in a living sense, not by what e.g. the US INS considers residing).
In my personal case, I am a citizen and resident of Belgium, I live in the US, and I work in the US. And by tax agreement between Belgium and the US, only the US will tax me.
This is good news indeed, given that CVS is quite a nice source control system. With the past news that Cyclic was dropping support for it, and handing over support to the open source community, quite some people I spoke with did have worries about the future for CVS. While open source communities tend to work well, it is more of a problem to get an established project like CVS under new "management".
With the still existing "fear" from many companies to bring what they consider unsupported software in-house, this may actually ensure that some doors stay open for CVS to enter the business world.
Slashdot Mirror
The quote from the letter shows that the university is clearly blowing smoke and either did not talk to their legal department, or if they did, they ought to fire their lawyers. Although you sometimes have to wonder about the sanity of the US legal system, there is still a basic principle that something is legal unless it is determined to be illegal. Therefore, courts do not have to rule P2P activity as legal before you can engage in that activity. Even pending litigations do not constitute that P2P activity is currently illegal (unless you break the law using the P2P stuff).
Also, it is very unlikely that any court would rule specifically on student P2P activity. Students are strange animals, but in general rulings like this would apply to everyone, not just to students.
They are obviously playing on threatening people, and hiding behind vague statements in an effort to simply avoid the entire risk of people potentially using P2P technology to download (or upload) illegal materials. I'd personally recommand replying back to the university, explaining your legal use of P2P, and explaining that their letter seems to be based on some flawed assumptions, both legally and factually.
But do not expect to win unless you really want to fight this desperately. It's their network and though you pay tuition and all that, it is still their network, and so they get to decide what goes, whether it makes sense or not.
The problem with your suggestion is of course that putting the trackers and website in a safe haven is hardly any protection for those that decide to download the copyrighted material. In the end, although the distribution medium can be held liable, the same certainly holds true for the people that use the medium to violate copyright laws.
So, yes that would protect the trackers, but you certainly would still be open to lawsuits if you used that system to download copyrighted materials.
Given that probably the biggest problem with kids these days is related to the fact that parents do not take a decent interest in what their kids do, and that they mainly leave it up to "The System" to raise their kids properly, I highly doubt parents would use this kind of a system.
It is more likely that school officials and other 'officials' would be using this type of technology.
Let's face it... In today's US society, the government and school system have taken over the role of parents in raising the kids to a large extend. Child protection services and such have a higher authority than parents do, and school have so many responsibilities that parents should have kept. Parents in the past being lazy about their task obviously has led to a society where common sense is extinct.
In a society where it is perfectly fine for a school bus to cause all traffic to come to a complete stop to let kids off the bus, and where then crossing guards stop traffic to allow kids to cross AGAINST the traffic light signals...
Enough said on that...
If you read the article that is reference thoroughly, it should be clear that the arrests were related to mp3blast.com, and not Napster. Yes, apparantly they are investigating Naster cases also.
It's really amazing though how critical people are about other countries. Which is strange to come from people in a country where a show like Jeopardy can have an international contest with a US 5 time champion as one of the "international" contestants, putting that US champion against people that do not have english as their native language, and then (I guess) be proud that surprise-surprise the US contestant wins.
See my point?
I'm a division manager for an IT company, and we've been interviewing people for Java and Perl positions lately. And while we do get alot of candidates (of which only 1 was unemployed, and less than 10% in H-1B status), quite few actually have a decent knowledge of computer science. Very basic questions about knowledge of algorithms and such are answered all too often wrong. And on average the H-1B candidates do alot better on basic CS knowledge compared to US candidates. (Flame away if you like - it's an observation of reality.)
So in all, I can say that there definitely seems to be a shortage of CS professionals that actually really know what they are doing and that have the knowledge to be productive in writing quality software, rather than software that merely works.
The real bugger is that the green card process has been made so complicated and lengthy that the almost normal transition from H1B to green card through employment is hell for alot of people, who tend to start staying alot longer on H1B visas and it also leads to a higher turnover rate in people coming and going on those visas.
Reason for having the H1B program is a mere result of the industry realizing that there is a shortage of willing people to take jobs, and that alot of foreigners are higher skilled than US citizens that are considered equivalent. That's not meant as an insult to anyone, but as a mere stating of truth (and a very well known one).
Face it... Immigration law sucks; people come here and get somewhat abused by the H1B program (but obviously willingly do so - I know, since I did it); and it is very easy to abuse people that are here on an H1B. But hey... no one forces people to come to the US on an H1B.
The main problem with the H1B program has nothing to do with workers being deported etc... It's a case of mixed intent. People come to work for a US company on an H1B because they want to make use of the dual intent status of H1B visas, meaning that the intent is both to be in the US temporarily and to apply for a green card to immigrate permanently. That's a major flaw, because people really use the H1B as a foot-in-the-door to immigate to the US. If the US government would make the immigration process sensible, there wouldn't be a need for a dual intent visa, and the H1B program wouldn't get stuck being a trampoline to immigrant status.
However, on the other hand is the point that people should think before the speak. Quite often that is the core of the problems. Especially when you are a figure of power, high standing, or just well-known, it is important to be careful with what you say or write, because of course people will interpret things, and quote you on what you say. If you have thoughts you wish to express, but you don't want them to be thrown back at you as in 'You said
So if people would take a bit more accountability into consideration when writing things, or when giving interviews or speeches, etc... And if the media could perhaps stick a bit more to reporting rather than scandal and headline hunting, things would look alot better.
Sounds like the hopes of a dreamer, right?
whether suddenly the Debian Free Software Guidelines are considered the
de facto standard for what can be considered open source software. I do
realize that it is the basis for being able to claim the official
"Open Source" mark. But I fear that throwing up this argument against
some services might be counterproductive. Face it, not everyone is going to agree to the DFSG, for whatever reasons.
Does that mean we should not accept things people like that write? Or should it not be acceptable to be used for
the general workings of something so complex and pretty much anarchy-based as the Internet?
Sorry, but I do not agree. I feel that being reasonable on both sides is better than not. I really do not feel that allowing e.g. modular approaches to be able to not use proprietary parts would be sufficient to cover danger areas.
And perhaps let's give ISC the chance to try to rectify the situation in such way that all parties are sufficiently cared about.
There is a reason why often commercial compilers perform better than GCC - not using that advantage is sometimes plain silly.
All this is entirely out of context for the discussion of NSI's 'license', but as far as taxes go... A large amount of tax agreements exist between countries to lift the burden of double tax collection. It tends to have some finer differences between the different agreements, but in general it boils down to the fact that the country where you spend more than 183 days in a year can tax you, while the other won't.
So most of the time, you only pay taxes in the country where you work and reside (in a living sense, not by what e.g. the US INS considers residing).
In my personal case, I am a citizen and resident of Belgium, I live in the US, and I work in the US. And by tax agreement between Belgium and the US, only the US will tax me.
This is good news indeed, given that CVS is quite a nice source control system. With the past news that Cyclic was dropping support for it, and handing over support to the open source community, quite some people I spoke with did have worries about the future for CVS. While open source communities tend to work well, it is more of a problem to get an established project like CVS under new "management".
With the still existing "fear" from many companies to bring what they consider unsupported software in-house, this may actually ensure that some doors stay open for CVS to enter the business world.