No, hacking IE7 isn't legal. If you don't have Windows you don't have a licence to run IE7:
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I'd say you're wrong on three counts (ironically enough over one comment). One, you're assuming that the people in question don't have a valid licensed copy of Windows. If you'll note what it says, it makes no mention of being legally required to run Windows to use IE7. So, even going along with this license, hacking IE7 wouldn't be illegal. Two, further only one person actually needs to hack IE7 and distribute diffs against the original IE7. Going a step further, if you're able to make the changes to IE7 without "using" it (ie, running it), you wouldn't even need a licensed copy of Windows; while this isn't probably from the start, it is probably that if MS intentionally breaks IE7 that it'd be possible to further the hack already created without having to actually run IE7. Third, unless you're required to agree to the licensed to d/l the software, you can simply hack around agreeing to the license once you have a copy of the software. At that point, IE7 reverts to generic copyright law, and one can clearly use and hack a copyrighted work.
All the Apple EULAs are available online, so there's no need to be "tricked" oir surprised. How is this any different to you not doing your research on a household product, only to find it doesn't have a particular feature or legal use that you wanted? Should have done your research first.
While you're right that the EULA isn't infact a trick (well, it is in the way that it appears you have to accept it to use the software), your analogy is quite flawed. An EULA doesn't grant or inhibit any particular feature nor is it a law. Simple put, the EULA is a burden because to circumvent the EULA without any legal qualms involves the burden of making a copy of the software to a writable container, modifying that copy, and the installing from that copy. Simply put, the majority of people simply do not have the expertise required to do the task, nor is it a reasonable assumption that people should gain that expertise to install software.
"Post sale restrictions" are IMHO the legal flaw in just about *every* EULA.
They are.
You've gone to the store, you've purchased a product, you've driven home, you've opened the product and are in the process of installing the product and WHAMMO -- you're forced to agree to something after you've already expended time, energy and money towards posession of that product.
Now, now. One thing I'd have to disagree with is the "you've already expended time, energy, and money towards possession of that product". Once the sale is done, you don't need to commit any more energy to claim you have ownership rights. Any belief against this merely blurs the idea of the ability of an ability to post-sale force an agreement on that which is legally yours.
If you disagree with the EULA, you'll need to expend further time, energy and money (and bereaucratic frustration) in order to undo the financial transaction and receive compensation. (Ever try taking XP back to Staples and saying you didn't agree with the EULA?).
The real point is more that having to modify the EULA to be able to properly click "I disagree" and still use the software is something of an undue burden upon an owner. It's paramount to selling every new house or car without a key, but providing a key upon post-sale terms. Sure, you can always just jimmy the door and replace the locks, but there's a certain amount of bad-faith involved in the transaction which to some extent justifies just grabbing the key and unlocking the door to your car/house.
This is a form of trickery and extortion that goes far beyond bait-and-switch. It is a transaction in which 'good faith' on the part of the manufacturer is non-existent. EULA's are legal documents which cannot be given due diligence (because the expense of said diligence would vastly exceed the price of the product), and they are agreed to by minors, the elderly and consumers with no legal background every day. The price for disagreement is more wasted effort, more lost time and more lost money.
Quite true.
Post Sale Agreements should be illegal.
And at one time, they were. But then times changed and instead of slapping EULAs on books, individuals started slapping EULAs on software. And the courts, not having the same sort of vast experience as they did with books, were less prompt to slap down the sort of slimy practices that were outlawed decades ago. My only real hope is that in the near future, EULAs are explicitly voided under law, as in practice they're all voidable due to the inherent right of an owner of a copy of a copyrighted work to modify a work to use it (think no further than one's person right to modify a book as they please, conceivably to the extent of making a copy to make the actual changes; of course, that still leaves one stuck to do it on a case-by-case basis, which again hearkens back to the undue burden).
Wait, so if a Web developer wants to test on Safari, what does he do? Answer: Safari doesn't have any real market share, so most people don't bother. But if they really cared, they'd buy a Mac.
Yes, and they'd do so because there is no one that's writing a clone of Mac APIs to run Safari. So, there's really no choice if one wants to test with Safari. A much better analogy is to point out that NetBSD x86 can run Solaris x86 binaries, IIRC, and seeing a company intentionally work to break NetBSD compatability in their program by having it do hash comparison upon Solaris binary files. They could argue they're doing it to verify that the libraries they use are good, but if this is a sudden new policy and users aren't even given the *option* to override this behavior (and void whatever warrant/service contract/whatever), it seems like much more malicious behavior.
You want to test on Windows? Get a Windows machine.
People don't want to test on Windows. They want to test on Wine. They can't test on Wine because IE7 specifically interferes with their ability to use it. Their only alternatives involve either hacking IE7 or creating a fake WGA program. The former would be legal (probably) but is a dangerous treadmill to devote oneself to. The latter may be illegal (as it could be construed as violating the DMCA), so it is probably not an option.
And Wine isn't going to give you a true test experience anyway.
While I agree that that isn't the case today, who is to say that in 6 months time that if IE7 *could* run on Wine that it wouldn't be a true test experience? Wine is growing. New releases are made on a monthly basis. Just how long do you think it'd really take for someone who is really interested in making IE7 work on Wine to make it a valid test experience? It's hardly Microsoft's place to interfere with the future development of a competitor.
Fact is, no matter what Microsoft says, you can reverse engineer, and make changes to their software. It is 100% legal to take a Windows "demo disc" or a XP Home, and apply a patch to the registry that turns it into XP Pro. It's also legal to redistribute that patch.
Won't the DMCA overrule this? IANAL. I'm also not American nor I live in the U.S. so my knowledge of U.S. law is limited to Boston Legal.
Simply put, no. It's not a copy protection scheme to inhibit one product to differentiate it from another, so it's not illegal to make or distribute patches to circumvent this. Even if encryption were involved, it still wouldn't be illegal. (IANAL, btw, but it's clearly copy protection that's covered under the DMCA, not permutations that involve all manner of possible restrictions one could hypothetically enforce.) The only real possibly snarky part to deal with is properly patching the software to circumvent the EULA encase it has provisions designed to inhibit such. The truth is, though, I'd be more weary of EULAs for all the security patches that one needs, as they have changed rather readily over time.
The real question here is, why someone would consider "murder" falling into that provision?
"The proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality"(emphasis mine)
Unless you want to argue that murder is generally accepted morally, murder is out. Of course, the same logic is also a valid reason to ban tits, porn, and a lot of other words. On the other hand, sex, penis, and a lot of words would be acceptable (there's nothing amoral about a necessary function to continue the human species or the clinical description of a part of the body).
Besides, your line of logic that "the site could be a website about preventing " could be used for any amoral domain name, so they'd have to allow any domain name regardless of how it's actually used.
Re:Is the macintosh relevant is a better question.
on
The Relevance of Windows
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There's at least two main things I see wrong with your argument. First of all, your percentages sound off. The main reason I'd imagine this is the case is that you're speaking of only the desktop market. But, there's a lot more to computers than desktops. Depending on how you slice it, embedded OSs far outstrip the number of Windows installs available. Yet, at the same time, one can hardly say it's the case that people are somehow tied into supporting those embedded OSs for years to come.
And that leads into the second main point, the relevance of Windows could just as well be questioning the relevance of Mac OS X or Linux or Amiga. The whole point of Web 2.0 and similar technology is to produce platform agnostic applications that remove any sort of vendor lock-in that might exist. If this is actually achieved, then the only real motivation to continue to use Windows is the amount of driver support that already exists. But, it's not hard to imagine that BSD variants could be created by OEMs with new drivers for new hardware that rather mitigates the point for most people.
So, I wouldn't say it's a reality distortion field. I just think you've misunderstood the question, as the article was pointing out that even that which we might find most relevant today might not be at all tomorrow. What better example than Windows?
Can you tell me what you are talking about and how it could have prevented 9-11? Even dropping a bomb on Osama's head would[n't] have stopped it.
Again, you miss the point. The issue isn't whether or not 9/11 was stoppable. From the sounds of the events behind 9/11, it probably *wasn't* stoppable (though some of the damage might have been mitigated). Instead, the point is that there wasn't even an *attempt* to do anything to stop bin Laden or al Qaeda. It was completely ignored. On top of that, the policies in place by Clinton, however bad they might have been, were at least an attempt to work towards protection from terrorism and shouldn't have been scrapped if no serious replacements were in consideration.
Put simple, it's a question of neglect. That's the incompetence that has repeatedly plagued the Bush administration. This is just a fine example of them hiding said neglect because they knew it'd make them look bad.
You seem to be missing the point. The problem isn't that Mr. Stevens didn't take care of the boiler problem. The problem is that he (a) removed policies already in place and (b) never got around to substituting in replacements. Given the chance for loss of life or maiming involved, it could be easily seen as neglect to not have a plan in place when removing current policies. Ie, it was a known danger with a previous history of causing serious harm. This applies just as much for sending people to fix the roof after selling off all the ladders as it does firing all the boiler maintenance staff.
I recognize that there are many serious concerns that Bush had to face and make plans for. But what justification is there for removing current policy when no replacement is ready to replace it? And what exactly absolves someone from punishment for taking such action? The only justification I can think of is if it was required by law to revert policies of the previous President and further there simply wasn't enough time to enact a new policy. Without the former, the latter is irrelevant (and the blame could be seriously either be put upon Clinton or be dismissed as appropriate actions were taken).
The only argument I can think of that would mitigate the neglect claim is that there was no serious evidence that there was an eminent threat. But to draw an analogy, that's like claiming that leaving poison out anywhere and having it drank by another person's toddler isn't some sort of neglect because one didn't know the toddler would drink the poison. Sure, poisoning isn't a very probably risk, but it's a well known one, and there are steps that could be taken, the minimalist being to keep old policies that dictate to keep all poisons in a single, common place. *end rambling*
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap. Yes, Bush missed signs. Yes, Clinton missed signs. So did damned near everyone else. Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however.
Foreman: Listen, Mr. Stevens. I'm concerned about the leaky pipes leading from the boiler.
Mr. Stevens: Oh. Why?
Foreman: Well, as you know, over the last 10 years, we've had multiple incidents where the pipes have bursted because we simply can't find the materials to create a boiler that won't wear down under such heavy use.
Mr. Stevens: Yes. So?
Foreman: Well, I'm deeply concerned because since you bought this company from Mr. Evans 9 months ago, you've removed all the standing emergency protocol policies and you've yet to set a policy for a catostrophic boiler leak problem.
Mr. Stevens: That's nothing to worry about. We're working on the new smelter in section J.
Foreman: I'm aware of that. But I've been hearing unusual gurgles and deep whines from the pipes.
Mr. Stevens: But, I tell you, the new smelter is much more important. I'm sure we'll get around to writing up emergency policy before anything bad happens.
Two days later, the pipes bursted. Scalding water disfigured 20 employees and killed 2. The conversation between the Foreman and Mr. Stevens didn't go on record at the civil trial against the company. It wasn't deemed worthy by Mr. Stevens to note that if he had kept Mr. Evans policy or had followed the Foreman's advice, the losses suffered would have been much less. Mr. Stevens didn't feel it important to hint that his actions might have been gross neglect, bordering on depraved indifference.
I wonder...why is that, exactly? Why is Vista such a massive project?
It's a serious question. I mean, it's not like they're building HAL-9000 here. It's an OS. A microcomputer OS. Which really, as far as I can tell, doesn't do a whole lot more than a bunch of other OSes that are on the market already. What does it do that's so much more complex, fundamentally, than what OS X does? Or Linux? Or any number of other OSes? Why, exactly, is it such a freaking huge project?
Consider the following links:
"By the time it was released, Microsoft Windows NT 3.0 consisted of 5.6 million lines of code spread across 40,000 source files. A complete build took as many as 19 hours on several machines, but the NT development team still managed to build every day (Zachary, 1994)." -- Best Practices
'There are no other software projects like this," Lucovsky said, "but the one thing that's remained constant [over the years] is how long it takes to build [Windows]. No matter which generation of the product, it takes 12 hours to compile and link the system." Even with the increase in processing horsepower over the years, Windows has grown to match, and the development process has become far more sophisticated, so that Microsoft does more code analysis as part of the daily build. "The CPUs in the build lab are pegged constantly for 12 hours," he said. "We've adapted the process since Windows 2000. Now, we decompose the source [code] tree into independent source trees, and use a new build environment. It's a multi-machine environment that lets us turn the crank faster. But because of all the new code analysis, it still takes 12 hours."' -- Windows 2003 Server, The Road to Gold
Now, take what that says into consideration. Effectively, Windows is one giant source tree. Even though they're able to decompress the source tree into a few sub-trees, you've got one giant source tree. That's a horribly bad thing. There's two main reasons for this.
One, by having everything in the same tree, programmers have a tendency to create all sorts of deep dependency issues in attempts to "speed up" the system. It's these sort of problems that push people against monolithic designs, as those "speed up"s tend also create all sorts of virtually untrackable bugs. It's one major reason that Xorg was split up into modular parts.
Two, by having everything in the same tree, it becomes incredibly difficult to make modifications and improvements in the design. This is partially due to the fact that compile times have a tendency to be dragged out as excessive linking has to be accomplished each compile. And it's partially due to the fact that monoliths are incredibly difficult to adequate comprehend. This latter part means that a person searching to make an addition ends up spending possibly hours trying to figure out just where the changes should be made. Those unwilling to devote the time to do the "right" thing end up just shoving a solution in as a hack and forcing it to run even when the run location is bad. And as we all know, hacks have a tendency to not be fixed. With Microsoft's anal-retentive backwards-compatability standard, this can lead to having to *maintain* such hacks because they become a standard part of the API for people.
Now, you might ask why Microsoft doesn't just divide up this large project into a collection of smaller projects. There's probably five main reasons for this. The first I've already touched on, such would almost certain break compatability. This comes down to the fact that when a hack is included, it almost always resides on the wrong side of what should be a clean break between two different interfaces. The result, then, is that the hack would require a stub across the break, and even with that in place, the timing change (which could involve a memory swap now that the main chunk of actual cod
Counterfeiting is in the process. The resulting product may be physically IDENTICAL to the original on which it is based, but that doesn't make it any less counterfeit.
I disagree. If the government creates a run of $50 bills and ends up calling for them to be destroyed, does that make them counterfeit? What if someone manages to take one and use it? What if by government, I mean some corrupt official intentionally overprinting money so that it can be "destroyed" (ie, hauled off by his goons)? It's still technically the government doing the printing and there's at best questionable fraud taking place (the inclusion of the bills will certainly cause inflation, but to claim that any official of the government printing bills for their own use is fraud would pretty well put most officials as commiting fraud, as clearly *all* money is printed for the use of driving the economy to retain their position in government). So, what all this means, as I see it, is that what exactly counts as counterfeit is much more difficult to define.
And the previous argument doesn't even take into account the second part of the definition of "counterfeit," which reads on intent -- namely, the intent to commit fraud.
Taking my chain of definitions one step further, what is fraud? According to the thesaurus, fraud is...
An act of cheating
Anyone care to argue that pirating software isn't cheating?
Let's start by pointing out that a thesaurus is a horribly way to figure out the exact meaning of a word. Clearly fraud isn't the same thing as cheating or they'd be the same word. Instead, fraud has a specific meaning that has elements in common with cheating. So, what is fraud exactly? Well, fraud can be said to be the intent to profit through lies. To that end, it's not fraud to print up bills that look exactly like US currency and then make it clear to the person you give it to that it's not official currency--whether it violates other laws about the use of something other than official US bills as currency is a separate matter. So, if a person is given or sold a copy of Windows that they know isn't a copy sanctioned by Microsoft, there is no fraud that takes place. Instead, copyright infringement is the act that occurs.
So, while it's true that at least those who are unaware that their copy is illegitimate would claim their version is counterfit and Microsoft could claim that their software provides authentication if it's genuine, clearly those people who *intentionally* pirate already are aware that it's a genuine pirated copy of Windows. And truthfully, it's almost certain there are more people who intentionally pirate Windows than who do it accidentally. The real irony then is that if Microsoft's software trully did manage to function properly (ie, to label both legitimate copies of Windows and known pirated copies of Windows as genuine), then it'd be the case that only people who were unintentionally pirating Windows who would suffer from the limitations imposed by WGA. Of course, given the fact that Microsoft *does* seem focused on finding those people who are unknowingly pirating Windows (as assumedly those who do it knowingly have already chosen not to pay), it's little surprise that their actions reach this conculsion.
No, they don't. The creator has a monopoly by the virtue of a system that grants copyright on creation. This is something that's only as new as the 1970s. Before that point, you had to actually register to obtain this monopoly.
When I paint a painting, or write an original manuscript - I have a monopoly on that item. Only one exists. You didn't understand what I was saying.
Fine. You have a monopoly on the master copy. The problem is, most people don't place much higher value on the master copy of something with duplicates are virtually identical (ie, the degredation in quality of a copy is so low that it decreases the amount of sub-generation copies possible with acceptable quality from something on the order of 100 to 99). Further, presenting your manuscript or painting to the public in any way inherently removes your monopoly, as there's nothing to stop a person from reverse engineering how you created your work and making a virtually identical duplicate. All of this falls under simple privacy laws, not copyright.
Wrong. Plagarism is the act of misattributing an idea as if it were one's own. Copyright infringement is misusing too much or in an unacceptable way part or whole of a copyrighted work. You can commit plagarism on works that aren't copyrighted. The fact is, some reference works can be copyrighted because the artful arrangement of information can be considered a creative work and hence copyrightable. Obviously the phone book isn't artful and can't be copyrighted.
You need to look at the definition for Plagiarism.
If I copy a sentence out of a copyright book, that's probably fair use, even if it's plagiarism. And if I copy a sentence out of a non-copyrighted book, that's simple plagiarism without copyright infringement. People have sued others over plagiarism specifically because it *isn't* copyright infringement. The only thing copyright would be advantageous for is to offer proof that you're the original source for the idea. Unfortunately, since you don't have to register anywhere anymore for a copyright, it's the case that a default copyright doesn't really help much because each person can simply claim they copyrighted it first and there's no simple third party to necessarily prove it true.
As for artists being able to mimic or copy each other, flat out copying wouldn't be any more copyrightable than using a xerox machine.
Not true. Sometimes what people are interested in buying is an artists style. The comparison of someone copying a masterwork by hand and using a xerox machine is inaccurate. The mechanism used for duplication makes all the difference in this area as it is a regarded element of these goods.
Okay, so instead of xerox machine it's a robot that mimics the artistic style of others. When it comes down to it, if that machine makes ten copies of the same thing, each painted version doesn't get its own copyright. There's a lack of creativity in duplication, and it's creativity that is the underpinning for granting copyright.
Actually, playing a work live could be considered a performance, and that entails paying money to the copyright holder. Further, samlping sections of a song and using them in your song is rather questionable, especially if you plan to copyright and sell such a song.
Sorry, playing a song live is not a performance. Performing a play is a performance. Performing a whole album by another band, recording the live show, and then selling the album is a performance. The content in question is taken into account on
In the matter of writings, music, and visual art - the creater has a monopoly by the very virtue of creating a work.
No, they don't. The creator has a monopoly by the virtue of a system that grants copyright on creation. This is something that's only as new as the 1970s. Before that point, you had to actually register to obtain this monopoly.
While a reference work can be copyrighted, to prevent absolute plagerism, the factual information contained in the work is free for anyone to use.
Wrong. Plagarism is the act of misattributing an idea as if it were one's own. Copyright infringement is misusing too much or in an unacceptable way part or whole of a copyrighted work. You can commit plagarism on works that aren't copyrighted. The fact is, some reference works can be copyrighted because the artful arrangement of information can be considered a creative work and hence copyrightable. Obviously the phone book isn't artful and can't be copyrighted.
A work of visual art uses elements that cannot be copyrighted. Colors, subject matter, and medium are not copyrightable. Artists often mimic or copy each others work as a matter of study. This is nothing new.
Depends on if the subject matter is itself copyrightable. One can't necessarily use an image of Mickey Mouse in your image because of copyright. As for artists being able to mimic or copy each other, flat out copying wouldn't be any more copyrightable than using a xerox machine. So, one is still stuck with each artist creating their own unique work with a unique monopoly/copyright.
Copyright comes into play in books when the work is fiction. While the book itself is protected by copyright to prevent unauthorized reproduction - the characters and universe are protected by IP because they never would have existed in their exact state without being created by the author. This does not prevent people from writing stories set in similar fictional worlds. This does not prevent people from using similar story constructs or themes. What it does do is prevent me from writing a story set in a "star wars" like universe and labeling it a "Star Wars" story so I can cash in on the popularity of Star Wars. I am free to create fiction in this universe without the intent of generating a profit from it. Fan fiction is a big example of this.
Actually, fan fiction is probably classifyable as a derivative work. It is simply the cast that George Lucas and others aren't generally interested in fighting a court case that would piss off fans and undoubtedly not produce much of a positive change in profits. Of course, without a court case as a basis to guess on precident, it's all just speculation upon previous fair use rulings.
Music only attempts to copyright the exact peice for purposes of sale. You can still play any work live without charge. You can also mimic or outright sample sections for your arangement. You cannot however, dupe a song by the virtue of its delivery vehicle and sell that copy.
Actually, playing a work live could be considered a performance, and that entails paying money to the copyright holder. Further, samlping sections of a song and using them in your song is rather questionable, especially if you plan to copyright and sell such a song. One has to look no further than fan fiction to see this.
Visual arts are by default a monopoly. Only one physical work exists at first. Copyright is extended to the reproduction of this work. Two people can paint the same building, fruit bowl, or person. They cannot set up a scanner and start selling the scanned artwork.
Visual arts aren't, by default, a monopoly. Once a physical work exists and is sold, the person who receives it could make copies of it and sell those. It's copyright that prevents this.
It's a matter of companies that don't exist because it's illegal.
I'm not following you entirely here, though it's probably my fault. There are plenty of companies that sell non-DRM media, most come in the form of CD stores. I'm guessing you mean taking the file and moving it to another device.
No, I'm not talking about either of those, really. The discussion is focused on the argument that one agrees to the license and hence is bound to it. But any license is predicated on the assumption that aren't being artificially restricted in your ability to make choices. This, however, is not the case. If product X exists in a market place without artificial restriction and you don't like the terms of buying product X, you have three main alternatives. If there already exists in the market place a product Y that's identical to product X minus the terms you dislike (ie, product Y is a perfect substitute), you can simply buy product Y. If there exists no substitute for product X in the market place with terms that are not nefarious, in your view, then you can always make your own product Z for your own consumption. Finally, there's always the option to simply buy nothing even if product Y exists or you have the funds to produce product Z.
In the artificial market of copyright, the situation changes pretty drastically. For one, there is no longer a product Y. At best, there's product X', made by the same company possibly under different terms, but in the end still indirectly funds product X and those nefarious terms you're against. Further, you can't make a product Y. You can try your best to clone product X, but in the end, it will invariably not being a perfect substitute of product X; you will only be able to make a good substitute, and good might not be good enough (look at WINE for an example). So, you're really only left with two choices: buy product X with the nefarious terms or buy nothing at all. This is, by definition, a monopoly. Further, it's a monopoly created wholly by the government. This is what I mean by companies not existing to compete because they're illegal.
It's this situation which is the primary reasons that the "exclusive right(s)" of authors have been repeatedly challenged and overturned in courts as authors (and more usually, their publishers) have tried to further distort what limited grants they've been given into monopolistic grants that know no end. It's why First Sale Doctrine overrides license agreements that would restrict specific exclusive rights listed under copyright, like fair use. In the end, it's why it's hard for me to understand how someone can be Libertarian and at the same time support copyright. While property rights are also an artificial construct, at least they cover a finite good where it can be claimed that some innate property of existance forces there to be no perfect substitutes for things like land.
In any case, with law being written to erode First Sale Doctrine (among other things), I'm not sure if the courts will still support an attempt to balance copyright and the market place. I can only hope so, as it doesn't seem Congress is at all interested in protecting the rights of people in such matters.
When you agreed to their license, which was a binding legal contract. If you don't agree to their license, and therefore don't get their product, you're not affected.
Wrong. Why? Because copyright/patents are a different beast than other products. By this, I mean that you can't simply go to another company and buy a good substitute without the license in most cases because it's not legally possible for other companies to compete (they can't copy the product itself because of copyright). It's not a matter of companies that don't exist because it's not economically feasible. It's a matter of companies that don't exist because it's illegal. It's because of this that the "First Sale Doctrine" was conceived which clarified that you couldn't sign away your rights to do various things, including resell a copy of a work.
DRM doesn't intrinsically interfere with fair use, because non DRM'd media is not affected. The license, not the technology, is what harms your rights.
Wrong, again. Under the DMCA, you need specific permission to circumvent DRM for a coyrighted work unless it falls under a very narrow scope (interoperability and fair use the two main supposed ones). Even then, distributing tools that *allow* you to circumvent DRM under those narrow exceptions is illegal. Given that it's possible for me to break a DRM scheme without ever agreeing to any license*, it can hardly be said that it's the license that's harming one's rights. Clearly it's laws like the DMCA that extend copyright to third parties.
*Think no fruther than creating a DRM scheme under the BSD, releasing it, and also creating a tool to break said DRM. Now, if someone else takes the same DRM scheme and uses it, release of the tool to break said DRM becomes illegal the second a 3rd party copyrighted work is released under the scheme. Of course, IANAL, but that's at least one simple way I can imagine where I never agreed to any license and I'm still being subjected to the choices of other people to use DRM.
I mean, without food you'd die; but you'd be willing to spend every last cent on it because of what it's worth to you?
Absolutely, if that's the price food was going for. Are you saying you'd rather keep your money and starve to death?
Except that's not what the price of food is going for. Rarely is the price of a good and its worth the same. And if it's the case that you think the price is too high--which is quite possible given that Nintendo holds a monopoly on the sale of Nintendo ROMs--the best thing you can do is to try to convince others that the price is too high to encourage Nintendo to decrease the price to increase sales. The simple fact is that with emulator writers out there releasing their emulators for free, the cost of emulation looks amazingly low. It's no surprise then that people would take this to mean that the cost of these ROMs should be quite low, especially given the lack of game development costs. And clearly the worth of a good is judged not only the utility that a good provides you but also on just how much it costs to manufacture; if this wasn't considered, then people would have a very distorted view of utility. This is especially true given that with sufficient profit margins, it's cheaper to start your own company and make the good yourself (assuming that's legal).
So yes, I'm sure that the overpriced ROMs won't be bought by him. But it's only through people expressing *why* they aren't buying the ROMs that Nintendo can begin to have the information necessary to know if they can adjust their price to increase sales or not or if there's simply a lack of demand. The free market is predicated on the assumption of perfect information to perform optimally. Because people don't have perfect information, in the capitalist system people have to speak loudly and often to provide information. This is why it's good that he complained.
The costs of these games for Wii was non-zero. Costs of developing the base emulator aside, each of the games had to be betatested and the emulator patched in case bugs were found.
Include the cost of the base emulator and amortize the cost. You're still looking at an incredibly low value relative to most modern games.
If you seen how emulation goes, each game has a ton of exceptions which are included in a mile-long.ini file which gets loaded with the ROM.
True and false. One, most emulators (NES and SNES) are able to run a ton of games without exceptions. Two, for those emulators that do need to make exceptions, that remains only true for *those* games. Given that not every game is remotely being offered for sale, one has to recognize that a well written emulator has a high chance of covering most (though probably not all) games without hacks. Ie, the cost to develop the emulator becomes the bigger focus of all games at a greater cost to all instead of making hacks for every game. The former is almost certainly more cost effective. The exception is N64 games, which probably *will* need to be heavily hacked. That has more to do with the fact that the N64 games will probably not emulated but virtualized or recompiled.
Still, the file doesn't fix them all, and the games suffer some glitches. If Nintendo is to emulate old consoles using a new emulator, they must test, fix, modify, test again all the ages old code.
Uh, no. While it's possible that Nintendo may opt to rewrite their own games to work with the emulator, it's unlikely that Nintendo will actually do so. It's cheaper to hire current developers to make a better emulator than it is take people in upper management and demote them temporarily to developers to work on the code they or their peers wrote. Really, it's very unlikely that they'll go about patching many, if any, games, except possible to fix bugs in the original programs.
It's not just "dump ROM into upload dir, slap on a price and index entry, make free for upload." It's a pretty complicated process of betatesting and adjusting the emulator to fix bugs that show up.
Very true. Yet, this cost is relatively small compared to creating games from scratch for the emulated system, let alone making new games for the GBA, DS, or Wii. Any claims that the money is to pay for "development costs" is a best misplaced given that the emulator itself is part of the cost of the console. Or would you believe that Sony has a viable argument to charge more for PS1 games played on the PS2 (after all, it's more work to support PS1 games and do all sorts of tweaks to get them to run on the PS2)? The simple fact is, people (me included) were under the impression that Nintendo was going to make a profit on these old properties but at a much lower price (okay, that's not true; we were hoping they'd offer more reasonable prices but assumed they wouldn't given the whole Classic NES line of GBA games). In the end, the amortized cost of doing bug fixing on the ROMs themselves will be, I imagine, incredibly low. I just find it hard to believe that the bug testing can work out to 1/5th the cost of a Wii game given that Wii games themselves require their own bug testing.
Why do you care how much profit they make? What matters is whether the games are worth that price to you.
And he's determining the price based on the amount of profit they make on the good. That's pretty reasonable, given that almost everyone does that for *every* good. I mean, without food you'd die; but you'd be willing to spend every last cent on it because of what it's worth to you? Or do you consider how much it cost to make and how much profit goes into it to decide if some food is just too expensive? Do you eat the cheapest possible food?
If there's zero effort required to aquire the $100, it seems to me that for all intents and purposes you've gained it already, so not picking it up translates to a loss
Well, your analogy is flawed from the start because of the "zero effort required". The premise of opportunity cost is that while there are many opportunities available to you, you only have a limited amount of time to be able to exploit them. Ie, there is always some trade off for any opportunity. For example, that time you spend picking up the $100 and putting it in your wallet is time you would otherwise be able to enjoy your day. If it's the case that you're sufficiently wealthy, the actual act of *not* resting is actually more expensive than picking up the money (and hence the argument on why Bill Gates, for example, has little reason to pick up money he'd see lying on the street).
In any case, from an economic perspective the fact that you choosing to not pick up the $100 would imply that something else (like your free time) is worth more than the money. Ie, it's assumed that being a rational actor you will always choose the optimal choice, even if that optimal choice doesn't translate into money. So, claiming that it's a loss is to claim that either you're an irrational actor or that you want to defy the very premise of what opportunity cost is by making it possible to commit multiple opportunities when it's impossible to do such. In either case, turning to economics (especially free market economics) to try to explain this behavior doesn't bode well.
Never the less, I'd imagine there's many Swedish women who fit the profile.
And I wouldn't disagree.
I'd argue, however, that relative to the number of young Muslim males who would be prepared to blow themselves up, the number is tiny. Which is the point.
No, that's not the point. If the objective is to stop someone blowing up some target and it's impossible for Muslims to do it (assuming that you can actually identify Muslims somehow), then those who want it blwon up will find a non-Muslim to do it for them. At which point, it takes as many non-Muslims to carry out the actual attack as it would have taken Muslims. Ie, it'd take one non-Muslim. Ie, since you already acknowledge there exists as least *one* Swedish female that'd do it, we've completely failed at our objective.
The only real claims at this point that could be made that it's incredibly difficult for a Muslim to actually recruit a non-Muslim or to be able to find out that such a person would be willing to actually carry out such an attack. For the former, one has to recognize that most countries have Muslims, including Sweden, and even if Sweden were to ban Muslims from living in the country, there'd almost certain be some Muslims who would pretend to be non-Muslim* to enter the country and recruit people. And as for the latter, it's certainly a risky business to go all out, but there's ways to test the loyalty of someone without going so far as outting yourself from the start. So, it's not hard to imagine that someone would eventually be recruited.
You don't think things like religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, social standards, media influence, governmental policies, economics, etc are "major factors" ?
Name me a culture, religion, social standard, media influence, governmental politic, or economy that has stopped someone from committing violent acts. Ie, name me a place where there is no crime. I don't think there exists such a place. You may find some groups that have a lower tendency towards crime per capita, but there's very few places that the total crime is an order of magnitude different than another group. Hence, the major factor is that there are overall more Arabs so there will likely be more total Arabs who would commit crimes, especially such a crime as a terrorist attack.
*Obvious this really goes against my earlier point about having a perfect Muslim detector. Obviously, if they can detect Muslims on boarding a plane, they'd have a detector at customs as well. The only things I could suggest is that a person might sneak in, they might find a Swede overseas, or they could use a Christian/Jew/whatever from another country to carry out the task of recruiting. It isn't, after all, the case that all suicide bombers are Muslim.
Absolutely not-it is simply suggesting that if such a profile is used, any wannabe terrorist will find a young person to fly out of Sweden and make sure to purchase round-trip tickets in an attempt to duck the "profile." And probably succeed.
Except young Swedish women aren't exactly queuing up to commit suicide via exploding aeroplane, just in case you haven't noticed.
Number of people in Sweden: approx. 9 million Number of females in Sweden: approx. 4.5 million Number of people it takes to hijack four planes and smash them into buildings: 20-40 Percentage of Swedish women that'd have to be homicidal enough for a Swedish woman terrorist plane plot to work: approx. 0.0089% the female population of Sweden
Now, filter a bit for things like a woman who is in their 20s and you'll increase the percentage a lot. Never the less, I'd imagine there's many Swedish women who fit the profile. The only two major factors that Arabs have over Swedes is that there's more Arabs than Swedes and countries like the US are directly occupying Arab countries. Of course, the whole Pirate Bay story isn't exactly a resounding story of Swedish independence. But then, I digress.
Remember: if one assumes that at least one person on the passenger list is a terrorist, then the passenger list is statistically not a good representative sample of the population. So making broad generalizations about the populace and using it as a basis for profiling the passenger list doesn't make sense.
Before the existance of copyright, everything was in the public domain. While people could outright plagerize others (and many authors did), there was a great overall growth of documents (and that's not to say that most documents were a growth; merely, the net effect was a great growth). Many years later and copyright was formed and most copyrighted works formed as a result of the many public domain works that formed before them. Whole companies seem based primarily on the reincarnating of old public domain works (Disney). Now, GPL software (which is copyleft) is growing off the society that has copyright.
So, in a way it's an interesting comment to make that GPL software benefits from a society of copyright and the way its monetary side-effect has created businesses that are able to provide many of the human resources (directly or indirectly) and even possibly actual code to its end. And it's mainly a statement that people don't live in a vacuum. That the places that have invested into technology would inherently have the people most innately capable of developing software (that is to say, it'd be easier for them to access the technology and the information to learn how to do such), and because that group coincides with the same areas of copyright means they're inherently going to work with the proprietary stuff if it's the most readily available reasonably high quality work that's available (not to say GNU, Linux, BSD, etc aren't high quality, but except for GNU stuff, most people in their twenties or older didn't grow up with the use of such software).
So, it boils down to the fact that people inherently use the stuff in their environment that's available and that is a collection of work that has built up over time as the legal system has placed varied degrees of legal restriction on the ability to redistribute embodied ideas. And over time, this means that people will be able to spend their entire life using only free (as in speech) software. Of course, that's a pretty high goal to reach (vending machines' software might be closed; even if it wasn't, the vending machine maker could physical stop you from extracting the software), and I'm not sure it's a reasonable one (again, the vending machine maker having some compulsory requirement to release source to everyone is pretty unreasonable, even for safety reasons--and I'm certainly some people wouldn't release source unless it's compulsory; a court order for a legal case is another matter, of course) let alone one that's ever existed in the past.
Btw, RMS's stance isn't that people can't have the freedom to use proprietary software; it's that it's moral wrong. Just because someone believes something is morally wrong doesn't mean that they demand it be made illegal. If anything, RMS has worked within the framework of the legal system to allow those inside it to resist it for all like-minded people. That's what the GPL is all about. Linus, on the other hand, believes there's nothing morally wrong about proprietary software and would choose to use proprietary software if it were more pragmatic choice. The ironic part to this, of course, is Linus' refusal to intentionally support binary kernel modules. So as much as he might believe that free and proprietary software may complement each other, he seems to recognize that one can't easily couple the two closely without having both serious negative side-effects (only the outside third party can diagnose problems) and little net gain (the third party gains exposure to the Linux crowd without making an actually permanent contrabution).
In any case, all of this is within the framework of copyright and consentual acts of adults. I'd say that clearly falls under freedom, so it's amusing how often it's brought up as if someone in the FOSS was actually lobbying to reduce freedom; and it's amazingly ironic given how much copyright keeps being expanded to protect proprietary offerings.
Right up there with raising your children for the good of them and society without being specifically paid. Don't you know that people should be first paid to have children and further paid to have *good* children? Anything less is communism. Thank God we've got teachers and police officers that are paid.
Now you'll excuse me while I go off and work on my communist software while some random fellow manages to get paid for providing the service of adding to it or whatever.
Re:Region coding? About reducing sales
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30 Days of DRM
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Region coding is not about copyright
Sadly, region coding is about copyright in part. This stems from the fact that the import/export of a copyrighted work ends up falling under the jurisdiction of each country to decide just how "legal" it is. One can read about Parallel Import to have some idea on the questionable legality of it. And while I agree from a logical standpoint, it doesn't make sense that a copy of a work should revert back to copyright law when it's being merely physical moved about, it's not the case that governments have come to this case in various countries. Just another reason why copyright is bad.
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I'd say you're wrong on three counts (ironically enough over one comment). One, you're assuming that the people in question don't have a valid licensed copy of Windows. If you'll note what it says, it makes no mention of being legally required to run Windows to use IE7. So, even going along with this license, hacking IE7 wouldn't be illegal. Two, further only one person actually needs to hack IE7 and distribute diffs against the original IE7. Going a step further, if you're able to make the changes to IE7 without "using" it (ie, running it), you wouldn't even need a licensed copy of Windows; while this isn't probably from the start, it is probably that if MS intentionally breaks IE7 that it'd be possible to further the hack already created without having to actually run IE7. Third, unless you're required to agree to the licensed to d/l the software, you can simply hack around agreeing to the license once you have a copy of the software. At that point, IE7 reverts to generic copyright law, and one can clearly use and hack a copyrighted work.
While you're right that the EULA isn't infact a trick (well, it is in the way that it appears you have to accept it to use the software), your analogy is quite flawed. An EULA doesn't grant or inhibit any particular feature nor is it a law. Simple put, the EULA is a burden because to circumvent the EULA without any legal qualms involves the burden of making a copy of the software to a writable container, modifying that copy, and the installing from that copy. Simply put, the majority of people simply do not have the expertise required to do the task, nor is it a reasonable assumption that people should gain that expertise to install software.
They are.
Now, now. One thing I'd have to disagree with is the "you've already expended time, energy, and money towards possession of that product". Once the sale is done, you don't need to commit any more energy to claim you have ownership rights. Any belief against this merely blurs the idea of the ability of an ability to post-sale force an agreement on that which is legally yours.
The real point is more that having to modify the EULA to be able to properly click "I disagree" and still use the software is something of an undue burden upon an owner. It's paramount to selling every new house or car without a key, but providing a key upon post-sale terms. Sure, you can always just jimmy the door and replace the locks, but there's a certain amount of bad-faith involved in the transaction which to some extent justifies just grabbing the key and unlocking the door to your car/house.
Quite true.
And at one time, they were. But then times changed and instead of slapping EULAs on books, individuals started slapping EULAs on software. And the courts, not having the same sort of vast experience as they did with books, were less prompt to slap down the sort of slimy practices that were outlawed decades ago. My only real hope is that in the near future, EULAs are explicitly voided under law, as in practice they're all voidable due to the inherent right of an owner of a copy of a copyrighted work to modify a work to use it (think no further than one's person right to modify a book as they please, conceivably to the extent of making a copy to make the actual changes; of course, that still leaves one stuck to do it on a case-by-case basis, which again hearkens back to the undue burden).
Yes, and they'd do so because there is no one that's writing a clone of Mac APIs to run Safari. So, there's really no choice if one wants to test with Safari. A much better analogy is to point out that NetBSD x86 can run Solaris x86 binaries, IIRC, and seeing a company intentionally work to break NetBSD compatability in their program by having it do hash comparison upon Solaris binary files. They could argue they're doing it to verify that the libraries they use are good, but if this is a sudden new policy and users aren't even given the *option* to override this behavior (and void whatever warrant/service contract/whatever), it seems like much more malicious behavior.
People don't want to test on Windows. They want to test on Wine. They can't test on Wine because IE7 specifically interferes with their ability to use it. Their only alternatives involve either hacking IE7 or creating a fake WGA program. The former would be legal (probably) but is a dangerous treadmill to devote oneself to. The latter may be illegal (as it could be construed as violating the DMCA), so it is probably not an option.
While I agree that that isn't the case today, who is to say that in 6 months time that if IE7 *could* run on Wine that it wouldn't be a true test experience? Wine is growing. New releases are made on a monthly basis. Just how long do you think it'd really take for someone who is really interested in making IE7 work on Wine to make it a valid test experience? It's hardly Microsoft's place to interfere with the future development of a competitor.
Simply put, no. It's not a copy protection scheme to inhibit one product to differentiate it from another, so it's not illegal to make or distribute patches to circumvent this. Even if encryption were involved, it still wouldn't be illegal. (IANAL, btw, but it's clearly copy protection that's covered under the DMCA, not permutations that involve all manner of possible restrictions one could hypothetically enforce.) The only real possibly snarky part to deal with is properly patching the software to circumvent the EULA encase it has provisions designed to inhibit such. The truth is, though, I'd be more weary of EULAs for all the security patches that one needs, as they have changed rather readily over time.
"The proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality"(emphasis mine)
Unless you want to argue that murder is generally accepted morally, murder is out. Of course, the same logic is also a valid reason to ban tits, porn, and a lot of other words. On the other hand, sex, penis, and a lot of words would be acceptable (there's nothing amoral about a necessary function to continue the human species or the clinical description of a part of the body).
Besides, your line of logic that "the site could be a website about preventing " could be used for any amoral domain name, so they'd have to allow any domain name regardless of how it's actually used.
There's at least two main things I see wrong with your argument. First of all, your percentages sound off. The main reason I'd imagine this is the case is that you're speaking of only the desktop market. But, there's a lot more to computers than desktops. Depending on how you slice it, embedded OSs far outstrip the number of Windows installs available. Yet, at the same time, one can hardly say it's the case that people are somehow tied into supporting those embedded OSs for years to come.
And that leads into the second main point, the relevance of Windows could just as well be questioning the relevance of Mac OS X or Linux or Amiga. The whole point of Web 2.0 and similar technology is to produce platform agnostic applications that remove any sort of vendor lock-in that might exist. If this is actually achieved, then the only real motivation to continue to use Windows is the amount of driver support that already exists. But, it's not hard to imagine that BSD variants could be created by OEMs with new drivers for new hardware that rather mitigates the point for most people.
So, I wouldn't say it's a reality distortion field. I just think you've misunderstood the question, as the article was pointing out that even that which we might find most relevant today might not be at all tomorrow. What better example than Windows?
Again, you miss the point. The issue isn't whether or not 9/11 was stoppable. From the sounds of the events behind 9/11, it probably *wasn't* stoppable (though some of the damage might have been mitigated). Instead, the point is that there wasn't even an *attempt* to do anything to stop bin Laden or al Qaeda. It was completely ignored. On top of that, the policies in place by Clinton, however bad they might have been, were at least an attempt to work towards protection from terrorism and shouldn't have been scrapped if no serious replacements were in consideration.
Put simple, it's a question of neglect. That's the incompetence that has repeatedly plagued the Bush administration. This is just a fine example of them hiding said neglect because they knew it'd make them look bad.
You seem to be missing the point. The problem isn't that Mr. Stevens didn't take care of the boiler problem. The problem is that he (a) removed policies already in place and (b) never got around to substituting in replacements. Given the chance for loss of life or maiming involved, it could be easily seen as neglect to not have a plan in place when removing current policies. Ie, it was a known danger with a previous history of causing serious harm. This applies just as much for sending people to fix the roof after selling off all the ladders as it does firing all the boiler maintenance staff.
I recognize that there are many serious concerns that Bush had to face and make plans for. But what justification is there for removing current policy when no replacement is ready to replace it? And what exactly absolves someone from punishment for taking such action? The only justification I can think of is if it was required by law to revert policies of the previous President and further there simply wasn't enough time to enact a new policy. Without the former, the latter is irrelevant (and the blame could be seriously either be put upon Clinton or be dismissed as appropriate actions were taken).
The only argument I can think of that would mitigate the neglect claim is that there was no serious evidence that there was an eminent threat. But to draw an analogy, that's like claiming that leaving poison out anywhere and having it drank by another person's toddler isn't some sort of neglect because one didn't know the toddler would drink the poison. Sure, poisoning isn't a very probably risk, but it's a well known one, and there are steps that could be taken, the minimalist being to keep old policies that dictate to keep all poisons in a single, common place. *end rambling*
Foreman: Listen, Mr. Stevens. I'm concerned about the leaky pipes leading from the boiler.
Mr. Stevens: Oh. Why?
Foreman: Well, as you know, over the last 10 years, we've had multiple incidents where the pipes have bursted because we simply can't find the materials to create a boiler that won't wear down under such heavy use.
Mr. Stevens: Yes. So?
Foreman: Well, I'm deeply concerned because since you bought this company from Mr. Evans 9 months ago, you've removed all the standing emergency protocol policies and you've yet to set a policy for a catostrophic boiler leak problem.
Mr. Stevens: That's nothing to worry about. We're working on the new smelter in section J.
Foreman: I'm aware of that. But I've been hearing unusual gurgles and deep whines from the pipes.
Mr. Stevens: But, I tell you, the new smelter is much more important. I'm sure we'll get around to writing up emergency policy before anything bad happens.
Two days later, the pipes bursted. Scalding water disfigured 20 employees and killed 2. The conversation between the Foreman and Mr. Stevens didn't go on record at the civil trial against the company. It wasn't deemed worthy by Mr. Stevens to note that if he had kept Mr. Evans policy or had followed the Foreman's advice, the losses suffered would have been much less. Mr. Stevens didn't feel it important to hint that his actions might have been gross neglect, bordering on depraved indifference.
Consider the following links:
"By the time it was released, Microsoft Windows NT 3.0 consisted of 5.6 million lines of code spread across 40,000 source files. A complete build took as many as 19 hours on several machines, but the NT development team still managed to build every day (Zachary, 1994)." -- Best Practices
'There are no other software projects like this," Lucovsky said, "but the one thing that's remained constant [over the years] is how long it takes to build [Windows]. No matter which generation of the product, it takes 12 hours to compile and link the system." Even with the increase in processing horsepower over the years, Windows has grown to match, and the development process has become far more sophisticated, so that Microsoft does more code analysis as part of the daily build. "The CPUs in the build lab are pegged constantly for 12 hours," he said. "We've adapted the process since Windows 2000. Now, we decompose the source [code] tree into independent source trees, and use a new build environment. It's a multi-machine environment that lets us turn the crank faster. But because of all the new code analysis, it still takes 12 hours."' -- Windows 2003 Server, The Road to Gold
Now, take what that says into consideration. Effectively, Windows is one giant source tree. Even though they're able to decompress the source tree into a few sub-trees, you've got one giant source tree. That's a horribly bad thing. There's two main reasons for this.
One, by having everything in the same tree, programmers have a tendency to create all sorts of deep dependency issues in attempts to "speed up" the system. It's these sort of problems that push people against monolithic designs, as those "speed up"s tend also create all sorts of virtually untrackable bugs. It's one major reason that Xorg was split up into modular parts.
Two, by having everything in the same tree, it becomes incredibly difficult to make modifications and improvements in the design. This is partially due to the fact that compile times have a tendency to be dragged out as excessive linking has to be accomplished each compile. And it's partially due to the fact that monoliths are incredibly difficult to adequate comprehend. This latter part means that a person searching to make an addition ends up spending possibly hours trying to figure out just where the changes should be made. Those unwilling to devote the time to do the "right" thing end up just shoving a solution in as a hack and forcing it to run even when the run location is bad. And as we all know, hacks have a tendency to not be fixed. With Microsoft's anal-retentive backwards-compatability standard, this can lead to having to *maintain* such hacks because they become a standard part of the API for people.
Now, you might ask why Microsoft doesn't just divide up this large project into a collection of smaller projects. There's probably five main reasons for this. The first I've already touched on, such would almost certain break compatability. This comes down to the fact that when a hack is included, it almost always resides on the wrong side of what should be a clean break between two different interfaces. The result, then, is that the hack would require a stub across the break, and even with that in place, the timing change (which could involve a memory swap now that the main chunk of actual cod
I disagree. If the government creates a run of $50 bills and ends up calling for them to be destroyed, does that make them counterfeit? What if someone manages to take one and use it? What if by government, I mean some corrupt official intentionally overprinting money so that it can be "destroyed" (ie, hauled off by his goons)? It's still technically the government doing the printing and there's at best questionable fraud taking place (the inclusion of the bills will certainly cause inflation, but to claim that any official of the government printing bills for their own use is fraud would pretty well put most officials as commiting fraud, as clearly *all* money is printed for the use of driving the economy to retain their position in government). So, what all this means, as I see it, is that what exactly counts as counterfeit is much more difficult to define.
Let's start by pointing out that a thesaurus is a horribly way to figure out the exact meaning of a word. Clearly fraud isn't the same thing as cheating or they'd be the same word. Instead, fraud has a specific meaning that has elements in common with cheating. So, what is fraud exactly? Well, fraud can be said to be the intent to profit through lies. To that end, it's not fraud to print up bills that look exactly like US currency and then make it clear to the person you give it to that it's not official currency--whether it violates other laws about the use of something other than official US bills as currency is a separate matter. So, if a person is given or sold a copy of Windows that they know isn't a copy sanctioned by Microsoft, there is no fraud that takes place. Instead, copyright infringement is the act that occurs.
So, while it's true that at least those who are unaware that their copy is illegitimate would claim their version is counterfit and Microsoft could claim that their software provides authentication if it's genuine, clearly those people who *intentionally* pirate already are aware that it's a genuine pirated copy of Windows. And truthfully, it's almost certain there are more people who intentionally pirate Windows than who do it accidentally. The real irony then is that if Microsoft's software trully did manage to function properly (ie, to label both legitimate copies of Windows and known pirated copies of Windows as genuine), then it'd be the case that only people who were unintentionally pirating Windows who would suffer from the limitations imposed by WGA. Of course, given the fact that Microsoft *does* seem focused on finding those people who are unknowingly pirating Windows (as assumedly those who do it knowingly have already chosen not to pay), it's little surprise that their actions reach this conculsion.
Fine. You have a monopoly on the master copy. The problem is, most people don't place much higher value on the master copy of something with duplicates are virtually identical (ie, the degredation in quality of a copy is so low that it decreases the amount of sub-generation copies possible with acceptable quality from something on the order of 100 to 99). Further, presenting your manuscript or painting to the public in any way inherently removes your monopoly, as there's nothing to stop a person from reverse engineering how you created your work and making a virtually identical duplicate. All of this falls under simple privacy laws, not copyright.
"a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work" -- http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=plagi arism
If I copy a sentence out of a copyright book, that's probably fair use, even if it's plagiarism. And if I copy a sentence out of a non-copyrighted book, that's simple plagiarism without copyright infringement. People have sued others over plagiarism specifically because it *isn't* copyright infringement. The only thing copyright would be advantageous for is to offer proof that you're the original source for the idea. Unfortunately, since you don't have to register anywhere anymore for a copyright, it's the case that a default copyright doesn't really help much because each person can simply claim they copyrighted it first and there's no simple third party to necessarily prove it true.
Okay, so instead of xerox machine it's a robot that mimics the artistic style of others. When it comes down to it, if that machine makes ten copies of the same thing, each painted version doesn't get its own copyright. There's a lack of creativity in duplication, and it's creativity that is the underpinning for granting copyright.
No, they don't. The creator has a monopoly by the virtue of a system that grants copyright on creation. This is something that's only as new as the 1970s. Before that point, you had to actually register to obtain this monopoly.
Wrong. Plagarism is the act of misattributing an idea as if it were one's own. Copyright infringement is misusing too much or in an unacceptable way part or whole of a copyrighted work. You can commit plagarism on works that aren't copyrighted. The fact is, some reference works can be copyrighted because the artful arrangement of information can be considered a creative work and hence copyrightable. Obviously the phone book isn't artful and can't be copyrighted.
Depends on if the subject matter is itself copyrightable. One can't necessarily use an image of Mickey Mouse in your image because of copyright. As for artists being able to mimic or copy each other, flat out copying wouldn't be any more copyrightable than using a xerox machine. So, one is still stuck with each artist creating their own unique work with a unique monopoly/copyright.
Actually, fan fiction is probably classifyable as a derivative work. It is simply the cast that George Lucas and others aren't generally interested in fighting a court case that would piss off fans and undoubtedly not produce much of a positive change in profits. Of course, without a court case as a basis to guess on precident, it's all just speculation upon previous fair use rulings.
Actually, playing a work live could be considered a performance, and that entails paying money to the copyright holder. Further, samlping sections of a song and using them in your song is rather questionable, especially if you plan to copyright and sell such a song. One has to look no further than fan fiction to see this.
Visual arts aren't, by default, a monopoly. Once a physical work exists and is sold, the person who receives it could make copies of it and sell those. It's copyright that prevents this.
No, I'm not talking about either of those, really. The discussion is focused on the argument that one agrees to the license and hence is bound to it. But any license is predicated on the assumption that aren't being artificially restricted in your ability to make choices. This, however, is not the case. If product X exists in a market place without artificial restriction and you don't like the terms of buying product X, you have three main alternatives. If there already exists in the market place a product Y that's identical to product X minus the terms you dislike (ie, product Y is a perfect substitute), you can simply buy product Y. If there exists no substitute for product X in the market place with terms that are not nefarious, in your view, then you can always make your own product Z for your own consumption. Finally, there's always the option to simply buy nothing even if product Y exists or you have the funds to produce product Z.
In the artificial market of copyright, the situation changes pretty drastically. For one, there is no longer a product Y. At best, there's product X', made by the same company possibly under different terms, but in the end still indirectly funds product X and those nefarious terms you're against. Further, you can't make a product Y. You can try your best to clone product X, but in the end, it will invariably not being a perfect substitute of product X; you will only be able to make a good substitute, and good might not be good enough (look at WINE for an example). So, you're really only left with two choices: buy product X with the nefarious terms or buy nothing at all. This is, by definition, a monopoly. Further, it's a monopoly created wholly by the government. This is what I mean by companies not existing to compete because they're illegal.
It's this situation which is the primary reasons that the "exclusive right(s)" of authors have been repeatedly challenged and overturned in courts as authors (and more usually, their publishers) have tried to further distort what limited grants they've been given into monopolistic grants that know no end. It's why First Sale Doctrine overrides license agreements that would restrict specific exclusive rights listed under copyright, like fair use. In the end, it's why it's hard for me to understand how someone can be Libertarian and at the same time support copyright. While property rights are also an artificial construct, at least they cover a finite good where it can be claimed that some innate property of existance forces there to be no perfect substitutes for things like land.
In any case, with law being written to erode First Sale Doctrine (among other things), I'm not sure if the courts will still support an attempt to balance copyright and the market place. I can only hope so, as it doesn't seem Congress is at all interested in protecting the rights of people in such matters.
Wrong. Why? Because copyright/patents are a different beast than other products. By this, I mean that you can't simply go to another company and buy a good substitute without the license in most cases because it's not legally possible for other companies to compete (they can't copy the product itself because of copyright). It's not a matter of companies that don't exist because it's not economically feasible. It's a matter of companies that don't exist because it's illegal. It's because of this that the "First Sale Doctrine" was conceived which clarified that you couldn't sign away your rights to do various things, including resell a copy of a work.
Wrong, again. Under the DMCA, you need specific permission to circumvent DRM for a coyrighted work unless it falls under a very narrow scope (interoperability and fair use the two main supposed ones). Even then, distributing tools that *allow* you to circumvent DRM under those narrow exceptions is illegal. Given that it's possible for me to break a DRM scheme without ever agreeing to any license*, it can hardly be said that it's the license that's harming one's rights. Clearly it's laws like the DMCA that extend copyright to third parties.
*Think no fruther than creating a DRM scheme under the BSD, releasing it, and also creating a tool to break said DRM. Now, if someone else takes the same DRM scheme and uses it, release of the tool to break said DRM becomes illegal the second a 3rd party copyrighted work is released under the scheme. Of course, IANAL, but that's at least one simple way I can imagine where I never agreed to any license and I'm still being subjected to the choices of other people to use DRM.
Except that's not what the price of food is going for. Rarely is the price of a good and its worth the same. And if it's the case that you think the price is too high--which is quite possible given that Nintendo holds a monopoly on the sale of Nintendo ROMs--the best thing you can do is to try to convince others that the price is too high to encourage Nintendo to decrease the price to increase sales. The simple fact is that with emulator writers out there releasing their emulators for free, the cost of emulation looks amazingly low. It's no surprise then that people would take this to mean that the cost of these ROMs should be quite low, especially given the lack of game development costs. And clearly the worth of a good is judged not only the utility that a good provides you but also on just how much it costs to manufacture; if this wasn't considered, then people would have a very distorted view of utility. This is especially true given that with sufficient profit margins, it's cheaper to start your own company and make the good yourself (assuming that's legal).
So yes, I'm sure that the overpriced ROMs won't be bought by him. But it's only through people expressing *why* they aren't buying the ROMs that Nintendo can begin to have the information necessary to know if they can adjust their price to increase sales or not or if there's simply a lack of demand. The free market is predicated on the assumption of perfect information to perform optimally. Because people don't have perfect information, in the capitalist system people have to speak loudly and often to provide information. This is why it's good that he complained.
Include the cost of the base emulator and amortize the cost. You're still looking at an incredibly low value relative to most modern games.
True and false. One, most emulators (NES and SNES) are able to run a ton of games without exceptions. Two, for those emulators that do need to make exceptions, that remains only true for *those* games. Given that not every game is remotely being offered for sale, one has to recognize that a well written emulator has a high chance of covering most (though probably not all) games without hacks. Ie, the cost to develop the emulator becomes the bigger focus of all games at a greater cost to all instead of making hacks for every game. The former is almost certainly more cost effective. The exception is N64 games, which probably *will* need to be heavily hacked. That has more to do with the fact that the N64 games will probably not emulated but virtualized or recompiled.
Uh, no. While it's possible that Nintendo may opt to rewrite their own games to work with the emulator, it's unlikely that Nintendo will actually do so. It's cheaper to hire current developers to make a better emulator than it is take people in upper management and demote them temporarily to developers to work on the code they or their peers wrote. Really, it's very unlikely that they'll go about patching many, if any, games, except possible to fix bugs in the original programs.
Very true. Yet, this cost is relatively small compared to creating games from scratch for the emulated system, let alone making new games for the GBA, DS, or Wii. Any claims that the money is to pay for "development costs" is a best misplaced given that the emulator itself is part of the cost of the console. Or would you believe that Sony has a viable argument to charge more for PS1 games played on the PS2 (after all, it's more work to support PS1 games and do all sorts of tweaks to get them to run on the PS2)? The simple fact is, people (me included) were under the impression that Nintendo was going to make a profit on these old properties but at a much lower price (okay, that's not true; we were hoping they'd offer more reasonable prices but assumed they wouldn't given the whole Classic NES line of GBA games). In the end, the amortized cost of doing bug fixing on the ROMs themselves will be, I imagine, incredibly low. I just find it hard to believe that the bug testing can work out to 1/5th the cost of a Wii game given that Wii games themselves require their own bug testing.
And he's determining the price based on the amount of profit they make on the good. That's pretty reasonable, given that almost everyone does that for *every* good. I mean, without food you'd die; but you'd be willing to spend every last cent on it because of what it's worth to you? Or do you consider how much it cost to make and how much profit goes into it to decide if some food is just too expensive? Do you eat the cheapest possible food?
Well, your analogy is flawed from the start because of the "zero effort required". The premise of opportunity cost is that while there are many opportunities available to you, you only have a limited amount of time to be able to exploit them. Ie, there is always some trade off for any opportunity. For example, that time you spend picking up the $100 and putting it in your wallet is time you would otherwise be able to enjoy your day. If it's the case that you're sufficiently wealthy, the actual act of *not* resting is actually more expensive than picking up the money (and hence the argument on why Bill Gates, for example, has little reason to pick up money he'd see lying on the street).
In any case, from an economic perspective the fact that you choosing to not pick up the $100 would imply that something else (like your free time) is worth more than the money. Ie, it's assumed that being a rational actor you will always choose the optimal choice, even if that optimal choice doesn't translate into money. So, claiming that it's a loss is to claim that either you're an irrational actor or that you want to defy the very premise of what opportunity cost is by making it possible to commit multiple opportunities when it's impossible to do such. In either case, turning to economics (especially free market economics) to try to explain this behavior doesn't bode well.
No, that's not the point. If the objective is to stop someone blowing up some target and it's impossible for Muslims to do it (assuming that you can actually identify Muslims somehow), then those who want it blwon up will find a non-Muslim to do it for them. At which point, it takes as many non-Muslims to carry out the actual attack as it would have taken Muslims. Ie, it'd take one non-Muslim. Ie, since you already acknowledge there exists as least *one* Swedish female that'd do it, we've completely failed at our objective.
The only real claims at this point that could be made that it's incredibly difficult for a Muslim to actually recruit a non-Muslim or to be able to find out that such a person would be willing to actually carry out such an attack. For the former, one has to recognize that most countries have Muslims, including Sweden, and even if Sweden were to ban Muslims from living in the country, there'd almost certain be some Muslims who would pretend to be non-Muslim* to enter the country and recruit people. And as for the latter, it's certainly a risky business to go all out, but there's ways to test the loyalty of someone without going so far as outting yourself from the start. So, it's not hard to imagine that someone would eventually be recruited.
Name me a culture, religion, social standard, media influence, governmental politic, or economy that has stopped someone from committing violent acts. Ie, name me a place where there is no crime. I don't think there exists such a place. You may find some groups that have a lower tendency towards crime per capita, but there's very few places that the total crime is an order of magnitude different than another group. Hence, the major factor is that there are overall more Arabs so there will likely be more total Arabs who would commit crimes, especially such a crime as a terrorist attack.
*Obvious this really goes against my earlier point about having a perfect Muslim detector. Obviously, if they can detect Muslims on boarding a plane, they'd have a detector at customs as well. The only things I could suggest is that a person might sneak in, they might find a Swede overseas, or they could use a Christian/Jew/whatever from another country to carry out the task of recruiting. It isn't, after all, the case that all suicide bombers are Muslim.
Number of people in Sweden: approx. 9 million
Number of females in Sweden: approx. 4.5 million
Number of people it takes to hijack four planes and smash them into buildings: 20-40
Percentage of Swedish women that'd have to be homicidal enough for a Swedish woman terrorist plane plot to work: approx. 0.0089% the female population of Sweden
Now, filter a bit for things like a woman who is in their 20s and you'll increase the percentage a lot. Never the less, I'd imagine there's many Swedish women who fit the profile. The only two major factors that Arabs have over Swedes is that there's more Arabs than Swedes and countries like the US are directly occupying Arab countries. Of course, the whole Pirate Bay story isn't exactly a resounding story of Swedish independence. But then, I digress.
Remember: if one assumes that at least one person on the passenger list is a terrorist, then the passenger list is statistically not a good representative sample of the population. So making broad generalizations about the populace and using it as a basis for profiling the passenger list doesn't make sense.
Before the existance of copyright, everything was in the public domain. While people could outright plagerize others (and many authors did), there was a great overall growth of documents (and that's not to say that most documents were a growth; merely, the net effect was a great growth). Many years later and copyright was formed and most copyrighted works formed as a result of the many public domain works that formed before them. Whole companies seem based primarily on the reincarnating of old public domain works (Disney). Now, GPL software (which is copyleft) is growing off the society that has copyright.
So, in a way it's an interesting comment to make that GPL software benefits from a society of copyright and the way its monetary side-effect has created businesses that are able to provide many of the human resources (directly or indirectly) and even possibly actual code to its end. And it's mainly a statement that people don't live in a vacuum. That the places that have invested into technology would inherently have the people most innately capable of developing software (that is to say, it'd be easier for them to access the technology and the information to learn how to do such), and because that group coincides with the same areas of copyright means they're inherently going to work with the proprietary stuff if it's the most readily available reasonably high quality work that's available (not to say GNU, Linux, BSD, etc aren't high quality, but except for GNU stuff, most people in their twenties or older didn't grow up with the use of such software).
So, it boils down to the fact that people inherently use the stuff in their environment that's available and that is a collection of work that has built up over time as the legal system has placed varied degrees of legal restriction on the ability to redistribute embodied ideas. And over time, this means that people will be able to spend their entire life using only free (as in speech) software. Of course, that's a pretty high goal to reach (vending machines' software might be closed; even if it wasn't, the vending machine maker could physical stop you from extracting the software), and I'm not sure it's a reasonable one (again, the vending machine maker having some compulsory requirement to release source to everyone is pretty unreasonable, even for safety reasons--and I'm certainly some people wouldn't release source unless it's compulsory; a court order for a legal case is another matter, of course) let alone one that's ever existed in the past.
Btw, RMS's stance isn't that people can't have the freedom to use proprietary software; it's that it's moral wrong. Just because someone believes something is morally wrong doesn't mean that they demand it be made illegal. If anything, RMS has worked within the framework of the legal system to allow those inside it to resist it for all like-minded people. That's what the GPL is all about. Linus, on the other hand, believes there's nothing morally wrong about proprietary software and would choose to use proprietary software if it were more pragmatic choice. The ironic part to this, of course, is Linus' refusal to intentionally support binary kernel modules. So as much as he might believe that free and proprietary software may complement each other, he seems to recognize that one can't easily couple the two closely without having both serious negative side-effects (only the outside third party can diagnose problems) and little net gain (the third party gains exposure to the Linux crowd without making an actually permanent contrabution).
In any case, all of this is within the framework of copyright and consentual acts of adults. I'd say that clearly falls under freedom, so it's amusing how often it's brought up as if someone in the FOSS was actually lobbying to reduce freedom; and it's amazingly ironic given how much copyright keeps being expanded to protect proprietary offerings.
Right up there with raising your children for the good of them and society without being specifically paid. Don't you know that people should be first paid to have children and further paid to have *good* children? Anything less is communism. Thank God we've got teachers and police officers that are paid.
Now you'll excuse me while I go off and work on my communist software while some random fellow manages to get paid for providing the service of adding to it or whatever.
Sadly, region coding is about copyright in part. This stems from the fact that the import/export of a copyrighted work ends up falling under the jurisdiction of each country to decide just how "legal" it is. One can read about Parallel Import to have some idea on the questionable legality of it. And while I agree from a logical standpoint, it doesn't make sense that a copy of a work should revert back to copyright law when it's being merely physical moved about, it's not the case that governments have come to this case in various countries. Just another reason why copyright is bad.