While Appnor could get away with this if they had, for example, rewritten all external contributions,...
Only if they re-wrote them 'clean room' fashion. If you sit there with the original code in front of you and re-write it like that, it's still a derivative work for copyright purposes. A good example is that if you (say) rewrite a Fortran program in C pretty much line-for-line, the original copyrights still apply; if you only copy the functionality and and public interfaces black-box fashion, it's OK (ignoring patents!).
It's quite probable Appnor's developers *did* see and refer to the original code if/when they rewrote parts of it. Although this isn't specifically enough to make it a derivative work, I believe it would be considered pretty damning evidence combined with some specific examples of code structure similarity.
Been tempted by the free DDO and LOTRO, but they don't have Linux clients. Don't know about DDO but LOTRO is rated gold/platinum for Linux under Wine, if you've got moderate Linux skills it looks like a relatively small effort to get it working.
It's streching the law a lot further than the Grokster case though. In that case, the ruling was that Grokster was effectively saying 'go on, use our software to violate copyright by donwloading a load of stuff for free'. Fairly clear cut if you allow any concept of 'contributory infringement'.
In this case, saying that 'you can technically run some software *which you purchased* on this hardware, but you should consider the EULA and relevant consumer law' is far less clear-cut.
And would Apple really want to take the risk that the court rules that a comsumer who has paid for a copy of OS X is entitled to run it on any hardware they choose (if they can get it to work)? This EULA clause could easily be struck out as being as unreasonable as (say) Sony requiring you to only play their CDs on their equipment etc. The EFF etc. might well provide money to fight this clause due to its implications if valid.
It is copyright infringement to promote hardware as capable of running Mac OS X if you are not Apple Inc.
Unautorized copying, modifying, or distributing OS X is potentially copyright infringment.
'Promoting (your) hardware' in any way (unless you copyied text etc. from Apple ads etc.) has nothing to do with copyright.
In the Pystar case, Pystar are alleged to have modified OS X and distributed the modified version.
You would however probably get into trouble with consumer and/or contract law if you just said 'Runs OS X (not included)' without pointing out clearly that not only does the buyer have to purchase a copy of OS X, *they* will have to ignore parts of Apple's EULA (which may or may not be valid), and also that Apple updates could 'break' their system at any time. and the buyer will have no OS support from Apple.
Would we ever decide that Amazon is required to offer any book regardless of its content? I don't think so.
Agreed, forcing them to sell particular books is unlikely to ever be a reasonable option and I don't think I've seen anyone suggest this as such.
But if they become even more dominant than today, refusal to handle certain books could become one aspect of a multi-stranded competition/monopoly abuse case (e.g., they control 95%+ of the market, *and* refuse to handle - amongst other legal works - books critical of their dominance *and* abuse publisher contracts to prevent any meaningful competition).
Solutions might then include (say) breaking them up into multiple companies as has happened in the past.
I'm just baffled that Slashdot users would still have such a difficult time distinguishing censorship from private business action. It cheapens the very seriousness of the term "censorship" to use it in such an improper, and frivolous way.
You're baffled because you don't appear to understand that when a private business becomes sufficiently dominant, then its actions become almost indistinguishable from that of a government. That's not to say that Amazon is at that level *yet*. but it's a continuum, not an either/or situation. Already, for a lot of people, if a book is not on Amazon, it doesn't exist. We need to be debating the issue of when private business "censorship" becomes equivalent to actual government censorship *now*, not when it's too late.
...corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
When the corporations write the laws and fund the politicians to get them enacted, this distinction is meaningless. If you need examples, just look at some of the 'IP' laws enacted across the globe in the last 20 years or so. In many cases, parts of the legal text are exactly as written by the 'IP owners' lawyers.
Corporations have the power to get governments to do on their behalf all the things they can't do themselves.
Large organizations like governments get source... Yes, true and well known and build binaries. Never heard of this - any sort of evidence would be interesting. but I seriously doubt it exists.
The best thing you can do is to use WPA2 with a long random password full of special characters. Even then you're open to a bruteforce attack.
Disagree. Such a bruteforce attack with the password you describe would be one of those 'will not succeed before the heat death of the universe' type things.
and thus I am languishing on a 10Mbps cable connection with 512k of upstream
Assuming you must be referring to Virgin Media cable, you should find your upstream doubled to 1Mb/s shortly (if not already). It came as a pleasant surprise to me when I did a speed test a few weeks ago since I didn't know it was happening. I think the whole country's supposed be done within the next few months. See http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/discover-broadband/broadband-speed/upload-speeds.html
Which absolutely means you are anti-capitalism. Period. End of discussion. Since you likely receive a paycheck because of capitalism, you're a hypocrite. If you make anything above minimum wage, I'll happily accept the difference so as to rid you of your hypocrisy.
You're completely off your head with this stuff. All I did was make a comment about the totally bizarre pricing structure for digital vs physical album. Do you see the bit where I said this justified copyright violation? No, because it's not there. I buy the physical CD and wonder why anyone buys album downloads. Or did you confuse me with the GP poster or something?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pricing structure now.
A pricing structure that typically (in the UK anyhow) charges about 10-20% more** for lossy digital album downloads than it does for lossless physical CDs (with free delivery) has certainly got something seriously wrong with it.
**My experience, comparing various back catalogue albums, Amazon CD vs. iTunes prices.
If you put the Olympic rings on anything, the IOC will be after you in nothing flat,...
The Olympic rings and other Olympic related items have very specific and unique international legal protection, so I don't believe they have any relevance to any other case.
Using Omagh as an example of an 'IRA' bombing is at best misleading. Most people would take IRA to mean 'the provos', Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams etc.
The Omagh bombing was committed by a splinter group opposed to the peace process, the so-called 'Real' IRA.
In many cases the IRA (the provos) *did* give meaningful warnings of bombs (obviously not out of the kindness of their hearts, but for tactical reasons).
Yes, you're right - GPLed software should come with a warranty including acceptance of full financial liability for any damages, up to the amount paid for the license to run the software.
Totally bogus comparison. TPB doesn't store any illegally copied material itself, it just indexes it. It's equivalent to (say) a free magazine which makes its money by advertising and contains lists of *where to find* free copies of CDs and DVDs made by third parties, rather than actually suppling the CDs and DVDs itself. TPB is just an extremely specialist version of (say) google - which makes at least some of its ad money through people searching for 'illegal' downloads - google even has a special torrent search function.
IMHO the MPs, MePs, or regulators who have signatures on this policy to "harvest organs" should automatically receive a year in jailtime.
a) There's no evidence at all that any government, MP, regulator etc. new anything about this until long after it stopped, or that there was any 'policy' as such. b) It's 20+ years ago so virtually no one responsible would still be in office. c) The main culprit appears to be one man - a Dr Scofield - who died in 1985
There might be some retired coroners and doctors still alive who were involved to some extent, but they'd probably be in their 80's, and as a UK taxpayer I would be pretty unhappy about them being pursued at no doubt vast expense, especially given the likelyhood of any prosecutions failing due to the time lapse and perhaps unclear laws at the time and uncertainty as to which if any laws were actually broken (given that coroners were involved, this may have been an unethical but not actually illegal practice). The important thing is that this stopped 20 years ago.
But the prevailing attitude is that science can do no harm when in fact it has and does cause harm--...
This may be true or not, but your example doesn't really support your assertion. By your description, the whole thymus error was based on a failure to use proper scientific methods - i.e. not using a randomized sample when assessing thymus size, and not properly investigating the effects of radiation before using it on humans. So all this example illustrates is what happens when you *fail* to 'do the science'.
Unfortunately, there's no such provisions for atheists or people with a faith not belonging to a recognized religion.
It's not ideal, but I would take at face value the fact that 'God' is not defined anywhere in the oath, so you can take it as meaning 'The Laws of Physics' or something, which is pretty close to God in the particular sense of the 'First Cause'. Some religions do have an idea of 'God' which is pretty close to this.
Or you could keep your fingers crossed while reciting the oath. I hear that works pretty well:)
Once the school reports someone, they're implicitly making an accusation that illegal activity has already occurred. I don't think it is up to the police to decide at that point; it is a matter for the courts.
So if I go to the police and accuse my neighbour of (say) being a terrorist (I saw him with a thing that looked like a bomb!), then the police will *automatically arrest and charge him*, regardless as to any other evidence, since "it's for the courts to decide"?
You seem to have missed the step where the police *investigate* and do things like question witnesses, and only proceed if there appears to be some sort of case to answer. If the student was accused of illegally donwloading 'linux-whatever.iso' and can show pretty clear evidence of permission for anyone to download it, the college would have nothing to counter with and their case evaporates. The college would also need to show something relating to why this was a criminal and not civil copyright matter, given that the police have no interest in civil copyright enforcement. Alright, some particularly stupid police officer who (say) didn't like students, might ignore all this *once* but it would soon turn into a media story + malicious prosecution suits + police wasting time etc., the EFF would probably get involved (with money etc.) and the college policy (the automatic report to police bit anyhow) would stop right there.
Most cable modems, TV capture cards and a growing list of other devices only work in Linux because somebody's taken the time to reverse engineer
Are there any cable modems currently available that need a specific driver? Surely all cable modems these days can plug into (e.g.) any WiFi router via ethernet and just work, without the need for any other hardware/specific OS/drivers etc? It's certainly like that with Virgin Media in the UK.
Slashdot Mirror
While Appnor could get away with this if they had, for example, rewritten all external contributions,...
Only if they re-wrote them 'clean room' fashion.
If you sit there with the original code in front of you and re-write it like that, it's still a derivative work for copyright purposes. A good example is that if you (say) rewrite a Fortran program in C pretty much line-for-line, the original copyrights still apply; if you only copy the functionality and and public interfaces black-box fashion, it's OK (ignoring patents!).
It's quite probable Appnor's developers *did* see and refer to the original code if/when they rewrote parts of it. Although this isn't specifically enough to make it a derivative work, I believe it would be considered pretty damning evidence combined with some specific examples of code structure similarity.
Been tempted by the free DDO and LOTRO, but they don't have Linux clients.
Don't know about DDO but LOTRO is rated gold/platinum for Linux under Wine, if you've got moderate Linux skills it looks like a relatively small effort to get it working.
It's streching the law a lot further than the Grokster case though. In that case, the ruling was that Grokster was effectively saying 'go on, use our software to violate copyright by donwloading a load of stuff for free'. Fairly clear cut if you allow any concept of 'contributory infringement'.
In this case, saying that 'you can technically run some software *which you purchased* on this hardware, but you should consider the EULA and relevant consumer law' is far less clear-cut.
And would Apple really want to take the risk that the court rules that a comsumer who has paid for a copy of OS X is entitled to run it on any hardware they choose (if they can get it to work)?
This EULA clause could easily be struck out as being as unreasonable as (say) Sony requiring you to only play their CDs on their equipment etc.
The EFF etc. might well provide money to fight this clause due to its implications if valid.
It is copyright infringement to promote hardware as capable of running Mac OS X if you are not Apple Inc.
Unautorized copying, modifying, or distributing OS X is potentially copyright infringment.
'Promoting (your) hardware' in any way (unless you copyied text etc. from Apple ads etc.) has nothing to do with copyright.
In the Pystar case, Pystar are alleged to have modified OS X and distributed the modified version.
You would however probably get into trouble with consumer and/or contract law if you just said 'Runs OS X (not included)' without pointing out clearly that not only does the buyer have to purchase a copy of OS X, *they* will have to ignore parts of Apple's EULA (which may or may not be valid), and also that Apple updates could 'break' their system at any time. and the buyer will have no OS support from Apple.
Would we ever decide that Amazon is required to offer any book regardless of its content? I don't think so.
Agreed, forcing them to sell particular books is unlikely to ever be a reasonable option and I don't think I've seen anyone suggest this as such.
But if they become even more dominant than today, refusal to handle certain books could become one aspect of a multi-stranded competition/monopoly abuse case (e.g., they control 95%+ of the market, *and* refuse to handle - amongst other legal works - books critical of their dominance *and* abuse publisher contracts to prevent any meaningful competition).
Solutions might then include (say) breaking them up into multiple companies as has happened in the past.
I'm just baffled that Slashdot users would still have such a difficult time distinguishing censorship from private business action. It cheapens the very seriousness of the term "censorship" to use it in such an improper, and frivolous way.
You're baffled because you don't appear to understand that when a private business becomes sufficiently dominant, then its actions become almost indistinguishable from that of a government. That's not to say that Amazon is at that level *yet*. but it's a continuum, not an either/or situation. Already, for a lot of people, if a book is not on Amazon, it doesn't exist. We need to be debating the issue of when private business "censorship" becomes equivalent to actual government censorship *now*, not when it's too late.
...corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
When the corporations write the laws and fund the politicians to get them enacted, this distinction is meaningless.
If you need examples, just look at some of the 'IP' laws enacted across the globe in the last 20 years or so. In many cases, parts of the legal text are exactly as written by the 'IP owners' lawyers.
Corporations have the power to get governments to do on their behalf all the things they can't do themselves.
Summary:
IBM's *hardware* is not innovative, so here's a bunch of examples showing their more recent *software* was all bought in from elsewhere.
Have a look at some of IBM's massive collection of hardware patents (disc, memory, processor, IO, whatever).
Large organizations like governments get source...
Yes, true and well known
and build binaries.
Never heard of this - any sort of evidence would be interesting. but I seriously doubt it exists.
The best thing you can do is to use WPA2 with a long random password full of special characters. Even then you're open to a bruteforce attack.
Disagree. Such a bruteforce attack with the password you describe would be one of those 'will not succeed before the heat death of the universe' type things.
and thus I am languishing on a 10Mbps cable connection with 512k of upstream
Assuming you must be referring to Virgin Media cable, you should find your upstream doubled to 1Mb/s shortly (if not already). It came as a pleasant surprise to me when I did a speed test a few weeks ago since I didn't know it was happening. I think the whole country's supposed be done within the next few months.
See http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/discover-broadband/broadband-speed/upload-speeds.html
Which absolutely means you are anti-capitalism. Period. End of discussion. Since you likely receive a paycheck because of capitalism, you're a hypocrite. If you make anything above minimum wage, I'll happily accept the difference so as to rid you of your hypocrisy.
You're completely off your head with this stuff. All I did was make a comment about the totally bizarre pricing structure for digital vs physical album. Do you see the bit where I said this justified copyright violation? No, because it's not there. I buy the physical CD and wonder why anyone buys album downloads.
Or did you confuse me with the GP poster or something?
How often do people boot their Linux machines?
Lots of people Dual boot Linux and Windows and they will often switch several times a day.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pricing structure now.
A pricing structure that typically (in the UK anyhow) charges about 10-20% more** for lossy digital album downloads than it does for lossless physical CDs (with free delivery) has certainly got something seriously wrong with it.
**My experience, comparing various back catalogue albums, Amazon CD vs. iTunes prices.
If you put the Olympic rings on anything, the IOC will be after you in nothing flat,...
The Olympic rings and other Olympic related items have very specific and unique international legal protection, so I don't believe they have any relevance to any other case.
Using Omagh as an example of an 'IRA' bombing is at best misleading. Most people would take IRA to mean 'the provos', Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams etc.
The Omagh bombing was committed by a splinter group opposed to the peace process, the so-called 'Real' IRA.
In many cases the IRA (the provos) *did* give meaningful warnings of bombs (obviously not out of the kindness of their hearts, but for tactical reasons).
Yes, you're right - GPLed software should come with a warranty including acceptance of full financial liability for any damages, up to the amount paid for the license to run the software.
Also, OOo is atrocious at resources usage. You'd waste man hours per week just in start up times.
3 year old Dell 530, 2Gb RAM, 2.2Ghz dual core.
Open office startup time on Ubuntu: 2-3 seconds, reduced to about 1s with 'preload' package installed.
Totally bogus comparison. TPB doesn't store any illegally copied material itself, it just indexes it. It's equivalent to (say) a free magazine which makes its money by advertising and contains lists of *where to find* free copies of CDs and DVDs made by third parties, rather than actually suppling the CDs and DVDs itself. TPB is just an extremely specialist version of (say) google - which makes at least some of its ad money through people searching for 'illegal' downloads - google even has a special torrent search function.
IMHO the MPs, MePs, or regulators who have signatures on this policy to "harvest organs" should automatically receive a year in jailtime.
a) There's no evidence at all that any government, MP, regulator etc. new anything about this until long after it stopped, or that there was any 'policy' as such.
b) It's 20+ years ago so virtually no one responsible would still be in office.
c) The main culprit appears to be one man - a Dr Scofield - who died in 1985
There might be some retired coroners and doctors still alive who were involved to some extent, but they'd probably be in their 80's, and as a UK taxpayer I would be pretty unhappy about them being pursued at no doubt vast expense, especially given the likelyhood of any prosecutions failing due to the time lapse and perhaps unclear laws at the time and uncertainty as to which if any laws were actually broken (given that coroners were involved, this may have been an unethical but not actually illegal practice). The important thing is that this stopped 20 years ago.
...you're not allowed to bury grandpa in your back yard.
Yes you are (in the UK) - if you get the right permission:
http://www.gardenlaw.co.uk/gardenburial.html
But the prevailing attitude is that science can do no harm when in fact it has and does cause harm--...
This may be true or not, but your example doesn't really support your assertion.
By your description, the whole thymus error was based on a failure to use proper scientific methods - i.e. not using a randomized sample when assessing thymus size, and not properly investigating the effects of radiation before using it on humans. So all this example illustrates is what happens when you *fail* to 'do the science'.
Unfortunately, there's no such provisions for atheists or people with a faith not belonging to a recognized religion.
It's not ideal, but I would take at face value the fact that 'God' is not defined anywhere in the oath, so you can take it as meaning 'The Laws of Physics' or something, which is pretty close to God in the particular sense of the 'First Cause'. Some religions do have an idea of 'God' which is pretty close to this.
Or you could keep your fingers crossed while reciting the oath. I hear that works pretty well :)
Once the school reports someone, they're implicitly making an accusation that illegal activity has already occurred. I don't think it is up to the police to decide at that point; it is a matter for the courts.
So if I go to the police and accuse my neighbour of (say) being a terrorist (I saw him with a thing that looked like a bomb!), then the police will *automatically arrest and charge him*, regardless as to any other evidence, since "it's for the courts to decide"?
You seem to have missed the step where the police *investigate* and do things like question witnesses, and only proceed if there appears to be some sort of case to answer. If the student was accused of illegally donwloading 'linux-whatever.iso' and can show pretty clear evidence of permission for anyone to download it, the college would have nothing to counter with and their case evaporates. The college would also need to show something relating to why this was a criminal and not civil copyright matter, given that the police have no interest in civil copyright enforcement.
Alright, some particularly stupid police officer who (say) didn't like students, might ignore all this *once* but it would soon turn into a media story + malicious prosecution suits + police wasting time etc., the EFF would probably get involved (with money etc.) and the college policy (the automatic report to police bit anyhow) would stop right there.
Most cable modems, TV capture cards and a growing list of other devices only work in Linux because somebody's taken the time to reverse engineer
Are there any cable modems currently available that need a specific driver? Surely all cable modems these days can plug into (e.g.) any WiFi router via ethernet and just work, without the need for any other hardware/specific OS/drivers etc?
It's certainly like that with Virgin Media in the UK.