Oh hell yeah. Criminal law is creeping far to much in to what should be civil disputes.
That said, the individual is always going to be at a disadvantage. Corportations have too much legal muscle and influence and can afford to drag things out until you bleed. Even if you represent yourself, they can keep the legal processing dragging on for a long time and effectively ruin your life without ever needing to win or lose in court.
Thankfully in the case of consumer law cases, most companies have agencies that can help. In the case of copyright law, I'm aware of no such agencies. This will hopefully change as more people produce content.
"one or more of such persons do any act to effectuate the object of the conspiracy"
We can take an example. I am the RIAA sterotypical pirate. I make thousands of illegal discs and use the proceeds to fund Islamic terrorist attacks. Anyway, I ask you to loan me your DVD burner. You do so,not realising that I lead a secret double life as Mohammed "Movie Man" Ahmed. If I use your burner to produce pirated discs, you are just as liable as I am - even though my motives are clearly criminal, you were acting innocently. It puts an unreasonable burden on you to police the actions of others. Not only are the feds fighting to protect society from downloaded copies of the Lion King, you'll be part of the fight as well.
You can't blame the player, it's just respecting the settings on the disc. It's the creator of the disc that is responsible. Consumers should not have to hunt around for a specific type of DVD player just so they can skip this junk.
The version of Shrek 2 that I bought contained the following.
Anti-piracy advert (About a minute) Random clips of Unversal films (about 30 seconds) Madagascar advert. This advert was a bloody tedious interview in which Ben Stiller told us how good the film is. It lasted around 5 minutes.
Overall, that's about 5 minutes of unskippable junk, unless my DVD player breaks the rules a little by allowing this stuff to be skipped. It doesn't matter whether or not my player can bypass this stuff, it's the fact that Universal expect its customers to sit through this anytime they want to watch a film they paid for. I returned the disc.
I think it's sensible that Universal should state that the film is protected by copyright. They should do this by printing a warning on the disc and the box. They should not be forcing customers to sit through this tedium each time they watch the film.
If they continue to try to control the user experience to this extent, they can't be surprised when piracy becomes a more attractive option. Pirated products should not be superior to the original.
if you're interested in the madagascar thing, see these links. I wasn't the only one pissed off by it. Thankfully they seem to have removed the advert from later versions. I'm still not paying for Shrek or any Universal DVDs if I can avoid them.
"work for which they were not paid, did not ask your blessing, nor did they need it"
It doesn't matter why someone is doing something, it's the end result that counts. Even if someone is doing volunteer work for a charity, if they do a bad job then something needs to be done. Best intentions are not an excuse. That said, in a project like this it's up to the developers to decide what they want to achieve. As users, we can only hope that our interests are the same as theirs.
"It's the very essence of snobbery to suppose that your personal taste is the yardstick by which others judge success and "
The best thing about open source projects is that they can be very responsive with regard to feedback. Without this feedback, they will stagnate or find it difficult to find a userbase outside the development group. Projects vary a great deal, for example OpenBSD is primarily developed to satisfy the needs and scratch the itches of its developers. MySQL is developed to meet the needs of its users. Either way, projects grow stronger through feedback and suggestions. Most suggestions are unworkable or undesirable but some are good enough to advance the project.
I'd suggest you take Mr Matticus' feedback as it was intended. A constructive critique of the project, backed up with advice on how to resolve his concerns. Two things you managed to totally avoid doing in your 'omg stfu!!1!' response.
The contract is valid as long as it's legal and the user agrees with it. Although most Terms of Use contracts contain the "This is subject to change" clause, the law may go against Blizzard if they try to make an unreasonable change. If the change is pretty harmless, it's probably easier for Blizzard to refund the subscription rather than go to court, even if they're pretty sure they'd win.
Well, it's not a big issue for sites that require a login. All they have to do is flash up the new terms for the users next time they log-in. World of Warcraft does this during patching if the licence has changed. WoW isn't a web site but the principle is the same.
Any site that would change its terms without some kind of notice to users has been operating in cowboy land anyway.
GPL does give some additional protection but only if you do exactly what the FSF ask. They like authors to sign copyright over to them, this way they can assured that an author won't go rogue and decide to relicence the project at a later date. If a GPL project hasn't been signed over to the FSF, the author can still do what they want regards the licencing of new releases - as long as they are the copyright holder or have a licence from contributors that allows them to re-licence. Of course, there's nothing to stop the FSF from going mad and placing a GPL project under a restrictive licence.
If the author retains ownership, the GPL doesn't really add any protection, at least in the context of this conversation. The GPL does provide additional protection regarding the usage of the existing code though, at least if you want those restrictions.
The original licence can be changed as long as the terms of the licence allow this. i.e. "You have permission to distribute this software with no restrictions but this licence is subject to change. Please visit mysteriouscode.com/licence for the latest version". That wording is probably not legal but I'm sure a competent lawyer could write something that would stick.
Even if an existing licence can't be changed, there's nothing to stop the copyright holder from switching to a new licence for future releases, like the XFree86 project. Thankfully most projects can be forked if something like that happens, as we saw with X.Org.
True, it's not a perfect analogy, and you're right that this action against universities is going too far. It's worrying the way the principle of innocent until proven guilty is being disregarded when it comes to copyright. It's even more worrying when tax payers and institutions are being compelled to foot the bill for the RIAA witch-hunts.
I would not be surprised if we see a further tightning of copyright law, probably a bill with a name like "The Protection of Patriotic Authors Bill"
"The issue isn't common sense and practicality. It is of an organization being forced to do something to combat an issue that isn't their job to do. In essence, How would you feel I i told you that you had to device ways to stop people from speeding past your house and you would have to provide technical measure and submit a report detailing them to me. It is a little similar in this effect."
That road analogy doesn't really fit since you're not the owner of the road. A pub analogy is closer. If you run a pub and you allow your pub to be used by drug dealers, the police will take action and you risk losing your licence - effectively shutting you down for not keeping order. The university should publish a clear policy on illegal content and keep a casual eye open for suspicious behavior (i.e. large amounts of traffic) but they shouldn't need to police their networks in the way the RIAA and their henchmen want. A pub landlord will keep an eye on his bar but he can't search everyone coming in and neither should be be obliged to do so.
There's a difference between voting for the Iraq war, and the attempted justification of torture and the removal of human rights. You're correct though in pointing out that neither party is a shining beacon of good governance. America is simply unable to have a reasonable accountable government. Successive governments, Republicans and Democrats alike have seen to that through gerrymandering and the gradual erosion of accountability.
I supported the invasion of Iraq but think the way it was conducted was shamefully naive and incompetent. It's like they were expecting the middle-east to jump, shout "hoorah" and begin building a utopian society.
If students are found to be illegally downloading/sharing content then they need to be tackled individually. The blanket approach that they are proposing is horribly intrusive. Effectively saying "A load of you are probably guilty of something so you're going to give us the money required to carry out random searches without actually trying separate the guilty from the innocent."
In other news, the parents of a child executed by the RIAA reacted with dismay on receiving an invoice for the cost of the bullet.
Yeah, totally agree. I like the BSD-style licences because they allow more freedom and increase adoption rates, OpenSSH being a pretty decent example of a project done well. If a vendor does decide to extend the code and keep their changes for themselves, we haven't lost anything. It's arguable that a lot of contributions are lost because vendors are scared, unnecessarilly so in many cases, of the GPL. The current and very visible approach taken by the FSF is not really helping, particularly when they seem determined to claim control of the hardware that the software is running on.
I hope Linus continues to stick with GPL v2 and his interpretation of it. Based on his recent responses to GPL v3, I'd say that's very likely.
The ability to have multiple screens was and still is pretty amazing. When I went to college and had to use other platforms, I thought they seemed so crude in comparison, even when compared to a machine that was over 6 years old at the time.
You're preaching to the choir, I'm no fan of it because I think GPL2 provides sufficient protection. I agree with you that in combating the tivo effect, they're stopping people from using software in critical systems.
My main point was that people who say "It sux" should expect to receive a barrage of RTFA responses. Not every reader has the time to sit down and view the history of the poster to separate the whiners from the people with well considered objections. The impolite response is definitely more insightful in the case of your post.
The judge who made this decision will demonstrate his technical knowledge by advising the ISPs to tie string around their Internet pipes to make it harder for the big files to get through.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh hell yeah. Criminal law is creeping far to much in to what should be civil disputes.
That said, the individual is always going to be at a disadvantage. Corportations have too much legal muscle and influence and can afford to drag things out until you bleed. Even if you represent yourself, they can keep the legal processing dragging on for a long time and effectively ruin your life without ever needing to win or lose in court.
Thankfully in the case of consumer law cases, most companies have agencies that can help. In the case of copyright law, I'm aware of no such agencies. This will hopefully change as more people produce content.
"one or more of such persons do any act to effectuate the object of the conspiracy"
We can take an example. I am the RIAA sterotypical pirate. I make thousands of illegal discs and use the proceeds to fund Islamic terrorist attacks. Anyway, I ask you to loan me your DVD burner. You do so,not realising that I lead a secret double life as Mohammed "Movie Man" Ahmed. If I use your burner to produce pirated discs, you are just as liable as I am - even though my motives are clearly criminal, you were acting innocently. It puts an unreasonable burden on you to police the actions of others. Not only are the feds fighting to protect society from downloaded copies of the Lion King, you'll be part of the fight as well.
At least that's how I read it.
I think it's a case of "Well fuck me lads, Afghanistan was a push-over. Let's go have a poke at Iraq and then we'll be back home by Christmas!"
A Funny mod doesn't do that justice. "Coffee all over keyboard" would be better.
You can't blame the player, it's just respecting the settings on the disc. It's the creator of the disc that is responsible. Consumers should not have to hunt around for a specific type of DVD player just so they can skip this junk.
i ew.htm0 9/189359.html6 /04/
The version of Shrek 2 that I bought contained the following.
Anti-piracy advert (About a minute)
Random clips of Unversal films (about 30 seconds)
Madagascar advert. This advert was a bloody tedious interview in which Ben Stiller told us how good the film is. It lasted around 5 minutes.
Overall, that's about 5 minutes of unskippable junk, unless my DVD player breaks the rules a little by allowing this stuff to be skipped. It doesn't matter whether or not my player can bypass this stuff, it's the fact that Universal expect its customers to sit through this anytime they want to watch a film they paid for. I returned the disc.
I think it's sensible that Universal should state that the film is protected by copyright. They should do this by printing a warning on the disc and the box. They should not be forcing customers to sit through this tedium each time they watch the film.
If they continue to try to control the user experience to this extent, they can't be surprised when piracy becomes a more attractive option. Pirated products should not be superior to the original.
if you're interested in the madagascar thing, see these links. I wasn't the only one pissed off by it. Thankfully they seem to have removed the advert from later versions. I'm still not paying for Shrek or any Universal DVDs if I can avoid them.
http://www.supercalafragalistic.com/madagascarrev
http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-200704
http://www.aubreyturner.org/index.php?/orglog/200
There are two problems with your argument.
"work for which they were not paid, did not ask your blessing, nor did they need it"
It doesn't matter why someone is doing something, it's the end result that counts. Even if someone is doing volunteer work for a charity, if they do a bad job then something needs to be done. Best intentions are not an excuse. That said, in a project like this it's up to the developers to decide what they want to achieve. As users, we can only hope that our interests are the same as theirs.
"It's the very essence of snobbery to suppose that your personal taste is the yardstick by which others judge success and "
The best thing about open source projects is that they can be very responsive with regard to feedback. Without this feedback, they will stagnate or find it difficult to find a userbase outside the development group. Projects vary a great deal, for example OpenBSD is primarily developed to satisfy the needs and scratch the itches of its developers. MySQL is developed to meet the needs of its users. Either way, projects grow stronger through feedback and suggestions. Most suggestions are unworkable or undesirable but some are good enough to advance the project.
I'd suggest you take Mr Matticus' feedback as it was intended. A constructive critique of the project, backed up with advice on how to resolve his concerns. Two things you managed to totally avoid doing in your 'omg stfu!!1!' response.
I suspect that Kalriath is correct.
The contract is valid as long as it's legal and the user agrees with it. Although most Terms of Use contracts contain the "This is subject to change" clause, the law may go against Blizzard if they try to make an unreasonable change. If the change is pretty harmless, it's probably easier for Blizzard to refund the subscription rather than go to court, even if they're pretty sure they'd win.
Well, it's not a big issue for sites that require a login. All they have to do is flash up the new terms for the users next time they log-in. World of Warcraft does this during patching if the licence has changed. WoW isn't a web site but the principle is the same.
Any site that would change its terms without some kind of notice to users has been operating in cowboy land anyway.
Cheers mate. We're shooting it at the moment and as soon as it's released, you'll get a front row seat at the premiere.
Ha, three things actually. This is why I don't work in accounting.
In 3,000,000 years there shall be two things left on Earth - Reality TV shows, cockroaches and your data.
And Sandra Bullock having her brain stolen over teh internets by a shadowy government organisation. I vote Sam Jackson for the angry black guy.
GPL does give some additional protection but only if you do exactly what the FSF ask. They like authors to sign copyright over to them, this way they can assured that an author won't go rogue and decide to relicence the project at a later date. If a GPL project hasn't been signed over to the FSF, the author can still do what they want regards the licencing of new releases - as long as they are the copyright holder or have a licence from contributors that allows them to re-licence. Of course, there's nothing to stop the FSF from going mad and placing a GPL project under a restrictive licence.
If the author retains ownership, the GPL doesn't really add any protection, at least in the context of this conversation. The GPL does provide additional protection regarding the usage of the existing code though, at least if you want those restrictions.
The original licence can be changed as long as the terms of the licence allow this. i.e. "You have permission to distribute this software with no restrictions but this licence is subject to change. Please visit mysteriouscode.com/licence for the latest version". That wording is probably not legal but I'm sure a competent lawyer could write something that would stick.
Even if an existing licence can't be changed, there's nothing to stop the copyright holder from switching to a new licence for future releases, like the XFree86 project. Thankfully most projects can be forked if something like that happens, as we saw with X.Org.
You did better than me. I stopped reading when I saw "M$" and "Windoze".
True, it's not a perfect analogy, and you're right that this action against universities is going too far. It's worrying the way the principle of innocent until proven guilty is being disregarded when it comes to copyright. It's even more worrying when tax payers and institutions are being compelled to foot the bill for the RIAA witch-hunts.
I would not be surprised if we see a further tightning of copyright law, probably a bill with a name like "The Protection of Patriotic Authors Bill"
"The issue isn't common sense and practicality. It is of an organization being forced to do something to combat an issue that isn't their job to do. In essence, How would you feel I i told you that you had to device ways to stop people from speeding past your house and you would have to provide technical measure and submit a report detailing them to me. It is a little similar in this effect."
That road analogy doesn't really fit since you're not the owner of the road. A pub analogy is closer. If you run a pub and you allow your pub to be used by drug dealers, the police will take action and you risk losing your licence - effectively shutting you down for not keeping order. The university should publish a clear policy on illegal content and keep a casual eye open for suspicious behavior (i.e. large amounts of traffic) but they shouldn't need to police their networks in the way the RIAA and their henchmen want. A pub landlord will keep an eye on his bar but he can't search everyone coming in and neither should be be obliged to do so.
There's a difference between voting for the Iraq war, and the attempted justification of torture and the removal of human rights. You're correct though in pointing out that neither party is a shining beacon of good governance. America is simply unable to have a reasonable accountable government. Successive governments, Republicans and Democrats alike have seen to that through gerrymandering and the gradual erosion of accountability.
I supported the invasion of Iraq but think the way it was conducted was shamefully naive and incompetent. It's like they were expecting the middle-east to jump, shout "hoorah" and begin building a utopian society.
"No. This is the normal form in a corrupt system. Public Officials taking money used to be called "bribery", now it's called "lobbying"."
Well said sir, couldn't have made it any clearer.
The road analogy is a nice one actually.
If students are found to be illegally downloading/sharing content then they need to be tackled individually. The blanket approach that they are proposing is horribly intrusive. Effectively saying "A load of you are probably guilty of something so you're going to give us the money required to carry out random searches without actually trying separate the guilty from the innocent."
In other news, the parents of a child executed by the RIAA reacted with dismay on receiving an invoice for the cost of the bullet.
Yeah, totally agree. I like the BSD-style licences because they allow more freedom and increase adoption rates, OpenSSH being a pretty decent example of a project done well. If a vendor does decide to extend the code and keep their changes for themselves, we haven't lost anything. It's arguable that a lot of contributions are lost because vendors are scared, unnecessarilly so in many cases, of the GPL. The current and very visible approach taken by the FSF is not really helping, particularly when they seem determined to claim control of the hardware that the software is running on.
I hope Linus continues to stick with GPL v2 and his interpretation of it. Based on his recent responses to GPL v3, I'd say that's very likely.
The ability to have multiple screens was and still is pretty amazing. When I went to college and had to use other platforms, I thought they seemed so crude in comparison, even when compared to a machine that was over 6 years old at the time.
You're preaching to the choir, I'm no fan of it because I think GPL2 provides sufficient protection. I agree with you that in combating the tivo effect, they're stopping people from using software in critical systems.
My main point was that people who say "It sux" should expect to receive a barrage of RTFA responses. Not every reader has the time to sit down and view the history of the poster to separate the whiners from the people with well considered objections. The impolite response is definitely more insightful in the case of your post.
It makes sense actually. The photographer created the photo so they should hold the copyright. Take this example.
"twm has been a Slashdot user for some time now. Writing from Germany, he/she is often modded insightful..."
Although I've written that text about you, I am the copyright holder.
The judge who made this decision will demonstrate his technical knowledge by advising the ISPs to tie string around their Internet pipes to make it harder for the big files to get through.