They appear to have been truly ahead of their time and should be recognized for it.
The market recognized them for it by giving them a head start on capitalizing on the idea. If they were unable to profit from this advantage, then that is their problem.
To the extent that patents are applicable at all, then it is only to ideas that are both expensive to develop and not trivial to discover from using the product. This is hardly ever the case with software ideas.
make these closed software is evil and the devil and your going to hell for using it speeches
Now, of course, that isn't actually what Stallman is saying, or even implying. It is interesting that this is how you read him though, as it must mean that his appeal to your ethics is getting to you on some deeper level.
Stallman's message is a very good one and most people who hear it do recognize it as such. It's just that most people are too greedy, or jaded, or disillusioned to allow themselves to actually assimilate it.
In capitalism, profit is the goal, not innovation or competition.
This may be the case, but this isn't the reason we use capitalism. If all we ever wanted was for some people to get filthy rich, we had a perfectly good system back in the middle ages - it was called feudalism and had an excellent way of producing wealthy people.
The reason we use capitalism today is because it is incredibly effecient at putting out the stuff people want/need at prices people can afford. It drives innovation and makes everyone happy, all around (if managed properly).
A lack of copyright will in its very nature give us more innovation faster and it will give us better products cheaper. Without copyright, it's no longer enough to produce one cash cow and retire for the rest of your life. In stead, you are forced to keep producing stuff people want and this can only be good for society.
I would suggest that Nondescrypt's writing style really is quite distracting (in the excessive use of caps and non word characters). I would even go so far as to suggest that it's annoying.
Pardon my ignorance as an American here, but is that literally an unelected body, and, if so, why would a modern nation have an unelected governing body in the 21st century, let alone the 20th?
Tradition. That's what England is: 1,000 years of tradition.
And the Parliament Acts appear to represent the first slow steps to eventually abolish the Lords. Don't hold your breath waiting though:-)
This ruling wasn't about defaulting to copyright, it was about upholding license terms that were never even seen, let along agreed to.
This is positively wrong. When the court found that the license had not been followed, it was treated as any other copyright infringement. In particular, the defendant was not forced to comply with the license (e.g. by offering its publication with the same license) but was rather warned that future copyright breaches of the same kind will be fined. As I said, then, the defendant can choose either (1) to comply with the license or (2) to break copyright. Since they didn't do (1), the judge put them in category (2).
Do note that had the license not existed in the first place, the only option open to the defendant would have been option (2) - break copyright. This is because everything is always automatically under copyright. The CC license therefore adds options to potential users of the work and takes none away.
This is why licenses must never be unilaterally binding without assent.
The point, I expect, is that by default, it is illegal for you to make use of the work (barring fair use etc.). Everything is automatically copyrighted, so anything that was not made by you must be assumed to be inaccessible to you.
The only thing that may allow you to use the work is if the copyright holder expressly gives you permission to do so. For any work that is distributed under some license, therefore, you have one of two situations:
1) You aren't aware of the license. You must assume you cannot use it.
2) You are aware of the license and decide to use the work since the license lets you.
When it is discovered, at some point, that you have used the work, it is therefore reasonable to assume that you did so by bullet 2 above. The alternative is that you blatantly violated copyright (bullet 1) and then you've really lost the case by default.
The license is therefore "binding" in the sense that the only alternative to being bound by it is to default to the worst possible case in this particular scenario, namely having violated copyright.
Not really. It's not the politicians who decide who get into office, it's the voters. If the best way to get elected is by being a lying, conniving asshole then this just means that those are the politicians who will get there. They have already learned all they need to learn: how to get political power.
Meanwhile, the honest politicians are still around, they're just not getting very many votes so you don't tend to see much of them.
This might be because honest politicians tend to tell the truth, and nothing can hurt as much as the truth can. So people protect themselves by voting for people who tell them pleasant things instead.
We get the same ad campaign in Norway, and I find the message conveyed amusing to say the least. What Microsoft is actually telling us is "if you're still using our software, you're such a dinosaur". Added to the implicit insult directed at their existing customer base, I don't quite see what good they think this campaign might be doing them:-)
We should go back to this. We will let Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tell us what we can listen to... and Bush... and anyone else with the money.
This would be a good thing. You see, nowadays, "people with money" includes ordinary people. This may not have been the case in Bach's days, but it is now.
General wealth and the state of technology conspire to make it quite easy today for an artist to reach out to his audience and obtain money from them directly. This is his "wealthy patron" and it is the business model that has the **AA executives scared out of their minds. It is the business model that will inevitably take over the entertainment industry and kill off its dinosaurs, the only question is how much turbulence we will have to fly through before we get there.
I believe BBC World is funded - at least in part - by advertisment. Personally, if I were in charge of BBC's strategy, I would give it all away to the world and go for cultural conquest victory:-)
What about all the CD's that are not used to copy music? Or worse, I would say, those CDs that are used by non-cartel-affiliated musicians to record their own original music . . .
Traffic analysis isn't about reading messages. It's about infering information without having to read messages. While your suggested campaign of misinformation could certainly be useful, I expect it is too cumbersome and time consuming to be employed everywhere all the time. The enemy needs to get a large number of false positives before they outweigh the benefit of the one true positive. Far better then to just cut him out entirely with random noise. Which is exactly what modern militaries are doing, by the way:-)
If I monitor the communications of a military unit and suddenly find a spike in message traffic, that's a pretty good indicator that something is going on. Anticipating that this might indicate imminent maneuvers from that unit, I might step up alertness of my own forces in the area and send out more scouts than usual. If the unit I monitor uses random noise to throw off traffic analysis, I will not have this information and so will be none the wiser.
For the big players in any industry, all show-stopper patents that you can buy a license for are good for you - even if it's you paying the license. Why? Because each such patent presents a barrier to entry into the market that prevents new upstart companies from competing with the established ones. If someone had a patent on "programs that run on a computer" and charged Â$30 billion for a license, Microsoft and IBM couldn't be any happÃier. For a one-off large sum, they would effectively lock down their market for two decades to come . . .
One example of things you may want to check is whether the code ever calls Thread.stop(). If it does, it is suspect. I am sure there are numerous pitfalls like this to search for once you start thinking about it.
. . . throwing a frog into a pot of water and gradually bringing it to a boil . .. In the interest of public education, I would like to point out that this is an erroneous myth: http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.htm Interestingly, humans are probably more susceptible to this sort of treatment since our bodies will busily try to adjust to the increasing temperature, leading us to think that it's something we can handle. When the frog notices the increased temp, on the other hand, his only strategy for lowering the temperature is to jump away.
Norway's copyright law was recently amended to bow to the corporate masters of the EU. In the new law, it is clearly stated that format-shifting is legal, which was a huge blow to the media cartels. Which isn't to say the new law is a good one (the net effect was to take away rights from the public while giving nothing back in return), but if our politicos were complete corporate whores, it would have been a whole lot worse . . .
The most surprising thing about the PSP version is that it has a number of features that the previous versions do not. Most importantly, it has proper multi-player, but it also has a number of generic side missions that are brand new. Unfortunately, it seems based more on VC than on SA as you can't swim, jump fences, etc.
There are straight "roads" between all the towns if you are prepared to include railroads in your assessment. Getting from LS to SF and back is a breeze along the rails whileas the road is a nightmare. Getting from LS to LV is pretty much straight north all the way on wide roads and if the slight dogleg along the route annoys you, you could always use the rail bridge. LV/SF is nice, straight wide roads all the way.
No one is required to give you a copy of GPL software. The only requirement is that if someone _does_ give you the software, they must also be prepared to give you the source code. If they didn't give you the software in the first place, you're sol. In real terms, if the photo guy distributes his GPL'd software only to people who are required by their employers not to redistribute it, then chances are he is acting in the spirit of the licence. I wouldn't know how federal regulations might interact with this.
Slashdot Mirror
They appear to have been truly ahead of their time and should be recognized for it.
The market recognized them for it by giving them a head start on capitalizing on the idea. If they were unable to profit from this advantage, then that is their problem.
To the extent that patents are applicable at all, then it is only to ideas that are both expensive to develop and not trivial to discover from using the product. This is hardly ever the case with software ideas.
make these closed software is evil and the devil and your going to hell for using it speeches
Now, of course, that isn't actually what Stallman is saying, or even implying. It is interesting that this is how you read him though, as it must mean that his appeal to your ethics is getting to you on some deeper level.
Stallman's message is a very good one and most people who hear it do recognize it as such. It's just that most people are too greedy, or jaded, or disillusioned to allow themselves to actually assimilate it.
In capitalism, profit is the goal, not innovation or competition.
This may be the case, but this isn't the reason we use capitalism. If all we ever wanted was for some people to get filthy rich, we had a perfectly good system back in the middle ages - it was called feudalism and had an excellent way of producing wealthy people.
The reason we use capitalism today is because it is incredibly effecient at putting out the stuff people want/need at prices people can afford. It drives innovation and makes everyone happy, all around (if managed properly).
A lack of copyright will in its very nature give us more innovation faster and it will give us better products cheaper. Without copyright, it's no longer enough to produce one cash cow and retire for the rest of your life. In stead, you are forced to keep producing stuff people want and this can only be good for society.
If they win, does this mean we can download as many Swedish CDs, Games and Movies that we like?
:-)
You will finally be able to fill the holes in your ABBA collection
I would suggest that Nondescrypt's writing style really is quite distracting (in the excessive use of caps and non word characters). I would even go so far as to suggest that it's annoying.
:-)
Hey, don't diss his art!
Pardon my ignorance as an American here, but is that literally an unelected body, and, if so, why would a modern nation have an unelected governing body in the 21st century, let alone the 20th?
:-)
Tradition. That's what England is: 1,000 years of tradition.
And the Parliament Acts appear to represent the first slow steps to eventually abolish the Lords. Don't hold your breath waiting though
. . . the Slashdot summary could have been accurate . . .
Amen to that. As usual, the summary completely failed to sum up the essentials of TFA. These things appear to be written by spin doctors in training.
Is there going to be a countersuit for the fraudulent use of the term "this photo is public"?
Seems doubtful. If there even is a legal definition of a work being "public", I would guess that publication on the Internet qualifies for it.
Of course, IANAL.
This ruling wasn't about defaulting to copyright, it was about upholding license terms that were never even seen, let along agreed to.
This is positively wrong. When the court found that the license had not been followed, it was treated as any other copyright infringement. In particular, the defendant was not forced to comply with the license (e.g. by offering its publication with the same license) but was rather warned that future copyright breaches of the same kind will be fined. As I said, then, the defendant can choose either (1) to comply with the license or (2) to break copyright. Since they didn't do (1), the judge put them in category (2).
Do note that had the license not existed in the first place, the only option open to the defendant would have been option (2) - break copyright. This is because everything is always automatically under copyright. The CC license therefore adds options to potential users of the work and takes none away.
This is why licenses must never be unilaterally binding without assent.
The point, I expect, is that by default, it is illegal for you to make use of the work (barring fair use etc.). Everything is automatically copyrighted, so anything that was not made by you must be assumed to be inaccessible to you.
The only thing that may allow you to use the work is if the copyright holder expressly gives you permission to do so. For any work that is distributed under some license, therefore, you have one of two situations:
1) You aren't aware of the license. You must assume you cannot use it.
2) You are aware of the license and decide to use the work since the license lets you.
When it is discovered, at some point, that you have used the work, it is therefore reasonable to assume that you did so by bullet 2 above. The alternative is that you blatantly violated copyright (bullet 1) and then you've really lost the case by default.
The license is therefore "binding" in the sense that the only alternative to being bound by it is to default to the worst possible case in this particular scenario, namely having violated copyright.
Our politicians have lot to learn.
Not really. It's not the politicians who decide who get into office, it's the voters. If the best way to get elected is by being a lying, conniving asshole then this just means that those are the politicians who will get there. They have already learned all they need to learn: how to get political power.
Meanwhile, the honest politicians are still around, they're just not getting very many votes so you don't tend to see much of them.
This might be because honest politicians tend to tell the truth, and nothing can hurt as much as the truth can. So people protect themselves by voting for people who tell them pleasant things instead.
We get the same ad campaign in Norway, and I find the message conveyed amusing to say the least. What Microsoft is actually telling us is "if you're still using our software, you're such a dinosaur". Added to the implicit insult directed at their existing customer base, I don't quite see what good they think this campaign might be doing them :-)
We should go back to this. We will let Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tell us what we can listen to... and Bush... and anyone else with the money.
This would be a good thing. You see, nowadays, "people with money" includes ordinary people. This may not have been the case in Bach's days, but it is now.
General wealth and the state of technology conspire to make it quite easy today for an artist to reach out to his audience and obtain money from them directly. This is his "wealthy patron" and it is the business model that has the **AA executives scared out of their minds. It is the business model that will inevitably take over the entertainment industry and kill off its dinosaurs, the only question is how much turbulence we will have to fly through before we get there.
I believe BBC World is funded - at least in part - by advertisment. :-)
Personally, if I were in charge of BBC's strategy, I would give it all away to the world and go for cultural conquest victory
What about all the CD's that are not used to copy music?
Or worse, I would say, those CDs that are used by non-cartel-affiliated musicians to record their own original music . . .
Traffic analysis isn't about reading messages. It's about infering information without having to read messages. :-)
While your suggested campaign of misinformation could certainly be useful, I expect it is too cumbersome and time consuming to be employed everywhere all the time. The enemy needs to get a large number of false positives before they outweigh the benefit of the one true positive. Far better then to just cut him out entirely with random noise.
Which is exactly what modern militaries are doing, by the way
If I monitor the communications of a military unit and suddenly find a spike in message traffic, that's a pretty good indicator that something is going on. Anticipating that this might indicate imminent maneuvers from that unit, I might step up alertness of my own forces in the area and send out more scouts than usual.
If the unit I monitor uses random noise to throw off traffic analysis, I will not have this information and so will be none the wiser.
For the big players in any industry, all show-stopper patents that you can buy a license for are good for you - even if it's you paying the license. Why? Because each such patent presents a barrier to entry into the market that prevents new upstart companies from competing with the established ones.
If someone had a patent on "programs that run on a computer" and charged Â$30 billion for a license, Microsoft and IBM couldn't be any happÃier. For a one-off large sum, they would effectively lock down their market for two decades to come . . .
One example of things you may want to check is whether the code ever calls Thread.stop(). If it does, it is suspect. I am sure there are numerous pitfalls like this to search for once you start thinking about it.
. . . throwing a frog into a pot of water and gradually bringing it to a boil . . .
In the interest of public education, I would like to point out that this is an erroneous myth:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.htm
Interestingly, humans are probably more susceptible to this sort of treatment since our bodies will busily try to adjust to the increasing temperature, leading us to think that it's something we can handle. When the frog notices the increased temp, on the other hand, his only strategy for lowering the temperature is to jump away.
4. Suicides are rather expensive to society so you are causing us a substantial cost when you kill yourself. (Ok, so I'Ãm a cyni :-)
Norway's copyright law was recently amended to bow to the corporate masters of the EU. In the new law, it is clearly stated that format-shifting is legal, which was a huge blow to the media cartels.
Which isn't to say the new law is a good one (the net effect was to take away rights from the public while giving nothing back in return), but if our politicos were complete corporate whores, it would have been a whole lot worse . . .
The most surprising thing about the PSP version is that it has a number of features that the previous versions do not. Most importantly, it has proper multi-player, but it also has a number of generic side missions that are brand new. Unfortunately, it seems based more on VC than on SA as you can't swim, jump fences, etc.
There are straight "roads" between all the towns if you are prepared to include railroads in your assessment. Getting from LS to SF and back is a breeze along the rails whileas the road is a nightmare. Getting from LS to LV is pretty much straight north all the way on wide roads and if the slight dogleg along the route annoys you, you could always use the rail bridge. LV/SF is nice, straight wide roads all the way.
No one is required to give you a copy of GPL software. The only requirement is that if someone _does_ give you the software, they must also be prepared to give you the source code.
If they didn't give you the software in the first place, you're sol.
In real terms, if the photo guy distributes his GPL'd software only to people who are required by their employers not to redistribute it, then chances are he is acting in the spirit of the licence.
I wouldn't know how federal regulations might interact with this.
Subsequent investigations into the matter uncovered the surprising fact that the pot's assessment of the situation was completely accurate.