It might be, in a twisted way. . . Seems like anyone on the list will be now able to claim "I didn't make charge #12341" and skip out on their debt. Obviously fraud, but I suspect many will try.
The DMCA actually doesn't make it illegal to bypass a copy protection mechanism. Just a bit of trivia . ..
w.r.t. your larger issue, even if we grant end users actual 'rights,' it won't solve the problem. Technology would put those rights into direct conflict with the copyright holder's property rights; if you freely allow users to format shift, etc. the copyrighted material will end up being pirated. Regardless of your opinion about the extent of the resulting losses, one thing is clear. Piracy destoys the essence of what the rightholders own - the right of control (which is not an IP-only concept, btw. Physical possession has never been a significant part of what it means to own property). The DMCA is one way of balancing these conflicting rights. It may not be the best, but it's at least fairly simple and settled. I guess other solutions would be DRM or even-more significant penalties, but I'm not sure if I like those solutions any better. . .
>As for Bezos and Bounty Quest, it is sleazy at best >for Bezos to use Bounty Quest as a repository for >prior art for his own patent filings even if he >decided to do so after the fact.
Characterizing this as 'sleazy' is unfair. The patent laws require that the inventors disclose any prior art that they know about to the PTO. In fact, failure to cite this stuff would make the patent invalid for 'inequitable conduct.'
You need to look at the claims, not the abstract or summary. This patent is more about how to handle orders of out-of-stock items.
1. A method in a computing system for processing item orders, comprising:
receiving a plurality of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items;
organizing the received orders into order groups, the orders of each order group all having the same destination;
for each order group:
determining an availability time for each item of each order of the order group indicating how far in the future the item will become available for shipment;
if all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero, combining all of the orders of the order group into a single composite order for shipment;
if fewer than all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero:
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an availability time of zero into a first composite order for shipment, and
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an nonzero availability time into a second composite order for shipment.
Re:I'm detecting a severe clue shortage in the are
on
GPL Hard to Enforce?
·
· Score: 1
The article vaguely implies that there is a quirk in Dutch copyright law. Unfortunately, they don't really explain the problem or link to the Dutch law.
"But Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GPL, claimed that even if this is a problem in the Netherlands, it will not affect free software elsewhere."
I respectively disagree. The gambling industry has been patenting their 'games-of-chance' for years, yet their is still pleanty of innovation. Basically, they get a really, really narrow claim covering the rules. Competitors can (and do) dream up their own games and make variations of the patented games, they just can't simply copy the original.
>However, its pretty hypocrit of US companies to
>fight a patent that does not fit them.
Potential licensees will ALWAYS argue invalidity at some point. This article is just trying to make a big deal about a standard negotiation practice.
There is no such thing as "breaking a patent." What the big tech companies are *probably* doing (tfa is useless) is asking the court to declare the patent invalid because someone else previously made, used, or sold the invention.
Sections 11 and 12 look like "restrictions" to me. Without these clauses, a consumer would have the "right" to sue under the implied warrantees of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
Another problem is that it's a big investment to register in every country. Every place has slightly different forms and rules, not to mention the obligatory fee. Tough call on whether to make that investment when the work only has 'potential value.'
I suspect you are correct, though it's ironic given that one version of Word doesn't open files from other versions of Word with 99.999% compatibility either.
I suspect that the content owners will simply stop broadcasting in HDTV until they get something like the BC. I'm just thankful I haven't plunked down big-$ for equipment yet.
Silly patents are absolutely irrelevant. Even if they can prove you do infringe, all the patent holder can collect is a "reasonable royalty." A reasonable royalty, in turn, is the amount of $ someone would have paid for a license. If you can rewrite the code in an hour and/or remove it without really caring (i.e., it's a silly patent), the reasonable royalty works out to be around $150, max.
Not to mention songwriters, producers, etc. I guess musicians could pay for their services upfront, in cash. It would be a huge financial risk for a new artist.
>I don't know why this would fall under the DMCA, >other than the fact that its a website. Standard >copyright/trademark law would apply.
I agree. The only DMCA provisions that comes to mind are safeharbor provisions. Ironically, those provisions help the individual/ISP, not Walmart. I'm guessing the reporter(s) saw "DMCA" in the C&D and were too lazy to look up the cited sections (or wanted to drive up their hitcount, for those conspiracy nuts out there).
You bring up a good point, despite the unnecessary cussing. The DMCA only applies to things that are "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under" the copyright laws (other provisions are similar, IIRC). To what copyrighted-work does this encrption scheme limit access? It can't be the photographs . . . Nikon did not contribute in any way. It can't be the camera's firmware . . . how does the this encryption scheme limit when/where/how offen you can access that work?
I'm not a photography buff. Perhaps somone who uses this stuff can explain.
Or more simply, we could require a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art . . . to make and use the same. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl ?title=35&sec=112/
Simple answer. You can't patent a "mathematical expression," just like you can't patent a "law of nature." However, you can patent the application of either solve a specific problem.
There might be a legal issue if he disassembled the code...because most license agreements explicitly forbid disassembly, a court may say he used improper means to get the necessary information. That is, even though reverse engineering is legal, you can't violate other obligations. A reverse engineering effort that relied on 'cleverly inspecting packets' would be much better legal ground.
This strikes me as a publicity stunt. It's hard to see that a civil judgment will make any difference to a spammer. They will simply start a new shell corporation or move off shore. I'd be a far more hopeful if some AG used fraud laws to put some of these folks in jail.
Good points by and large. From my personal experience, though, many of these points also apply to switching between old-MS-software version and a new-MS-software-version. Employees need to be trained b/c options are not in the same place and/or don't work in the same way. IT folks need to be trained b/c the new-version's quirks are different than the old version's quirks.
You might win, but that victory will be cold comfort if you can't enforce the judgement. If the spammers' home legal systems tell the US to shove it, then there isn't much you can do. Look at how much trouble the RIAA is having getting Kazaa in Vanuatu. . .
If the RIAA asked, a judge would likely allow them to search your hard drive. If they find evidence the songs there, you are now in contempt of court. . . and pissed off judge will make the RIAA look like pussey-cats.
Slashdot Mirror
It might be, in a twisted way. . . Seems like anyone on the list will be now able to claim "I didn't make charge #12341" and skip out on their debt. Obviously fraud, but I suspect many will try.
The DMCA actually doesn't make it illegal to bypass a copy protection mechanism. Just a bit of trivia . . .
w.r.t. your larger issue, even if we grant end users actual 'rights,' it won't solve the problem. Technology would put those rights into direct conflict with the copyright holder's property rights; if you freely allow users to format shift, etc. the copyrighted material will end up being pirated. Regardless of your opinion about the extent of the resulting losses, one thing is clear. Piracy destoys the essence of what the rightholders own - the right of control (which is not an IP-only concept, btw. Physical possession has never been a significant part of what it means to own property). The DMCA is one way of balancing these conflicting rights. It may not be the best, but it's at least fairly simple and settled. I guess other solutions would be DRM or even-more significant penalties, but I'm not sure if I like those solutions any better. . .
>As for Bezos and Bounty Quest, it is sleazy at best
>for Bezos to use Bounty Quest as a repository for
>prior art for his own patent filings even if he
>decided to do so after the fact.
Characterizing this as 'sleazy' is unfair. The patent laws require that the inventors disclose any prior art that they know about to the PTO. In fact, failure to cite this stuff would make the patent invalid for 'inequitable conduct.'
You need to look at the claims, not the abstract or summary. This patent is more about how to handle orders of out-of-stock items.
1. A method in a computing system for processing item orders, comprising:
receiving a plurality of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items;
organizing the received orders into order groups, the orders of each order group all having the same destination;
for each order group:
determining an availability time for each item of each order of the order group indicating how far in the future the item will become available for shipment;
if all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero, combining all of the orders of the order group into a single composite order for shipment;
if fewer than all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero:
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an availability time of zero into a first composite order for shipment, and
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an nonzero availability time into a second composite order for shipment.
The article vaguely implies that there is a quirk in Dutch copyright law. Unfortunately, they don't really explain the problem or link to the Dutch law.
"But Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GPL, claimed that even if this is a problem in the Netherlands, it will not affect free software elsewhere."
I respectively disagree. The gambling industry has been patenting their 'games-of-chance' for years, yet their is still pleanty of innovation. Basically, they get a really, really narrow claim covering the rules. Competitors can (and do) dream up their own games and make variations of the patented games, they just can't simply copy the original.
>However, its pretty hypocrit of US companies to >fight a patent that does not fit them. Potential licensees will ALWAYS argue invalidity at some point. This article is just trying to make a big deal about a standard negotiation practice.
There is no such thing as "breaking a patent." What the big tech companies are *probably* doing (tfa is useless) is asking the court to declare the patent invalid because someone else previously made, used, or sold the invention.
Sections 11 and 12 look like "restrictions" to me. Without these clauses, a consumer would have the "right" to sue under the implied warrantees of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
Another problem is that it's a big investment to register in every country. Every place has slightly different forms and rules, not to mention the obligatory fee. Tough call on whether to make that investment when the work only has 'potential value.'
I suspect you are correct, though it's ironic given that one version of Word doesn't open files from other versions of Word with 99.999% compatibility either.
I suspect that the content owners will simply stop broadcasting in HDTV until they get something like the BC. I'm just thankful I haven't plunked down big-$ for equipment yet.
Silly patents are absolutely irrelevant. Even if they can prove you do infringe, all the patent holder can collect is a "reasonable royalty." A reasonable royalty, in turn, is the amount of $ someone would have paid for a license. If you can rewrite the code in an hour and/or remove it without really caring (i.e., it's a silly patent), the reasonable royalty works out to be around $150, max.
Not to mention songwriters, producers, etc. I guess musicians could pay for their services upfront, in cash. It would be a huge financial risk for a new artist.
IIRC, they are targeting large uploaders. . . preaty easy to show that they had a copy.
>I don't know why this would fall under the DMCA, >other than the fact that its a website. Standard >copyright/trademark law would apply. I agree. The only DMCA provisions that comes to mind are safeharbor provisions. Ironically, those provisions help the individual/ISP, not Walmart. I'm guessing the reporter(s) saw "DMCA" in the C&D and were too lazy to look up the cited sections (or wanted to drive up their hitcount, for those conspiracy nuts out there).
You bring up a good point, despite the unnecessary cussing. The DMCA only applies to things that are "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under" the copyright laws (other provisions are similar, IIRC). To what copyrighted-work does this encrption scheme limit access? It can't be the photographs . . . Nikon did not contribute in any way. It can't be the camera's firmware . . . how does the this encryption scheme limit when/where/how offen you can access that work?
I'm not a photography buff. Perhaps somone who uses this stuff can explain.
Or more simply, we could require a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art . . . to make and use the same. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl ?title=35&sec=112/
Simple answer. You can't patent a "mathematical expression," just like you can't patent a "law of nature." However, you can patent the application of either solve a specific problem.
There might be a legal issue if he disassembled the code...because most license agreements explicitly forbid disassembly, a court may say he used improper means to get the necessary information. That is, even though reverse engineering is legal, you can't violate other obligations. A reverse engineering effort that relied on 'cleverly inspecting packets' would be much better legal ground.
This strikes me as a publicity stunt. It's hard to see that a civil judgment will make any difference to a spammer. They will simply start a new shell corporation or move off shore. I'd be a far more hopeful if some AG used fraud laws to put some of these folks in jail.
Good points by and large. From my personal experience, though, many of these points also apply to switching between old-MS-software version and a new-MS-software-version. Employees need to be trained b/c options are not in the same place and/or don't work in the same way. IT folks need to be trained b/c the new-version's quirks are different than the old version's quirks.
You might win, but that victory will be cold comfort if you can't enforce the judgement. If the spammers' home legal systems tell the US to shove it, then there isn't much you can do. Look at how much trouble the RIAA is having getting Kazaa in Vanuatu. . .
Good luck enforcing those legal charges in a Vanuatu court.
If the RIAA asked, a judge would likely allow them to search your hard drive. If they find evidence the songs there, you are now in contempt of court. . . and pissed off judge will make the RIAA look like pussey-cats.