Stop being dense. I don't mean most Internet users lack the technical information of most/. readers, I mean most Internet users lack the familiarity with Internet technologies that most/. readers have. To them, two programs with similar sounding names could very well be confused.
Nice call for not being dense. GAIM does not sound or look at all like AOL Instant Messenger. It does look and sound a bit like AIM however, which as pointed out many times was not used as such by AOL at the time.
To someone who is not familiar with internet technology this similarity is completely non obvious. It is obvious to you (and me) because we do have that knowledge.
The usage of the acronym damn well does date back to before gaim. Or do you really think no one (in an age where LOL, WTF, RTFM, IANAL, etc. are all recognized as common words) figured out they could shorten a three word eight syllable and nineteen letter product name to three letters until the gaim people did it?
Did AOL do so? if not it is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
And for the hundredth fucking time, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE TRADEMARK DATE! I am not talking about their legal basis for a lawsuit, which is where that date would matter.
Too fucking bad that this is a discussion about the legal side of it. If you didn't want to discuss that then stay out of the discussion.
I am looking at it from a common sense point of view. Unfortunately common sense is apparently lacking in certain people these days...
Ah, common sense is that when posting in a discussion about the name change as a result of legal threats, the legal side of it will be discussed and is a very relevant part of the discussion. Since you lack that bit of common sense I don't think you are in any position to call on common sense here.
And even if we were talking about the trademark registration date, GAIM WAS NEVER REGISTERED! So AOL would still have come first. So please stop bringing it up, it is irrelevant to what I am discussing and wouldn't help gaim anyways.
Common use of a word makes a trademark unenforcable. That is extremely relevant because it means that gaim does not have to be registered in order to weaken or even invalidate the AIM trademark. It seems that this little bit of common sense is also lacking on your side.
In fact all you seem to be saying is that you don't care about the details, don't care about arguments or anything else because AOL is right and anyone arguing otherwise is stupid, lacks common sense and what not.
Except this specific case of lying, lying under oath is perjury: a crime. Thus, lying under oath is furthering a crime - its own crime of perjury.
Creative explanation, but matter of fact is that lying in that specific case is the crime. It doesn't further any other crime then the lying itself, and if that lying wasn't made criminal, there would not be a crime. Hence, it is a case where lying itself is a crime, and no furthering of any crime is required.
Quite possibly. Most Internet users are not as tech savvy are your typical/. reader.
Uh, what does that have to do with anything? Technical understanding of how a messenger works is irrelevant for being confused by the name of a product. GAIM doesn't in any way look like AOL, so to the typical person it is not confusing. It may be confusing to those who actually dig into what GAIM might stand for.
Again, that is completely false. I don't know how many times I can say this. AOL Instant Messenger is an AOL product that predated gaim,
If you'd bother to read a previous reply from me a bit better you'd have seen that I said the same thing.
AOL Instant Messenger predates GAIM, usage of the acronym AIM and the trademark on it do NOT predate GAIM. Read this carefully a few times maybe..
in fact the original name of gaim was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger. Are you denying that fact,
No, I stated the same thing myself. Is it really that difficult to read things?
or do you still not understand that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger (which must be hard considering how many times I've written it while making the first letters bold)?
Sure, and there are lots of acronyms for many products and brands, which doesn't automatically turn them into trademarks or protect them, UNLESS those who made the product actually use and trademark them.
Which part of having to register a trademark for protection didn't you understand?
But on a business connection of 12m/1.5m I actually get 12m/1.5m most of the time with multiple static IP addresses and no limits on what I can do with it. It costs $249/month, but even that is a deal because the alternative would be a dedicated T1 that only has 1.5m/1.5m for twice the money
12/1 is what I get here, and I get it virtually always. There are moments where it will drop to 10/1 but thats exceptional. Oh, and I do get a fixed IP
And port 25 and 80 are not being blocked
I even have permission to run my own servers
Guess what, thats all on a standard 'residential' DSL connection costing approx $50/month.
I could get 24/1 with the same conditions for approx $90/month.
The difference? I live in a place where the government actually decided they have to actively undo the damage of the telco monopolies of past times with the result that there is real competition. Oh, and the government here also thinks that consumer protection is somewhat important so advertising for 'unlimited' plans has consequences for those advertising, either keep to the promise or face serious fines.
Sometimes you do need regulations for a limited time to undo the damage of previous monopoly granting regulations.
Again, GAIM was clearly a reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, even if the acronym had not yet caught on for the AOL application. So it clearly violated the spirit of trademark law.
Does he acronym GAIM cause any confusion for customers of AOL Intant Messenger?
If not, it is not aginst the spirit of trademark law, to it may be against the letter.
Their product name contained a reference to the acronym of an existing competing product, which trademark law is designed to prevent.
Mo, trademark law is intended to: 1. prevent confusion among customers 2. prevent someone from damaging your brand by using a very similar name.
Since GAIM is not at all similar to AOL, and AOL did not use, let alone trademark AIM when GAIM already existed, there is no confusion possible. The confusion was only introduced by AOL starting to use the acronym AIM and trademarking it.
I am fully aware that the legal world is a different world, so its certainly possible AOL didn't have legal grounding for a lawsuit (IANAL, so I'm not going into that discussion). But the product AOL Instant Messanger predated GAIM, and they named their product to reference the acronym of the of their competition. And for the record, AOL's product was known as AIM well before GAIM was a viable alternative. I remember since I actually used them both back then (AIM on Windows, GAIM on Linux).
This discussion contains tens of references to information disputing that AIM came before GAIM (as a name for the service, or as an acronym for that name. Please come up with something better then your own memory (and for that matter, my own memory also disagrees with your statement, but thats not a good argument for the same reason as why your memory isn't a good argument)
And no, legal nitpicking over what exactly was sent to the trademark office aside, AOL Instant Messenger was not renamed to AIM, AIM is just an abbreviation. Look up the word acronym in a dictionary for more information.
And where I live, AIM is often used as a generic word to denote any kind of instant messenger (nowadays MSN is used even more for this), amd as a result a trademark would fail for reasons of the word having become a generic word, this completely seperate from the issue of if they could enforce such a trademark against someone using a similar name before them.
At any rate, what they sent to the trademark office and when is THE important part here. It is the only thing that determines if they have a trademark at all.
That doesn't sound too bad to me. But it also doesn't capture current conservatism very well. Democratising the middle east doesn't fit into that definition and yet current conservatives support it.
Well, the NEOconservatives say they support this. Note that they call themselves neoconservative and not conservative. WHile they hijacked the word conservative there, their policies and ideas really have very little to do with "conservatism".
We can have a long discussion now about if this is really what the neocons are after, I really don't believe them in this, but that is besides the point.
That's actually one of the things I'd expect to change. If the Republicans run on a small government ticket, socially liberal ticket they'd do a lot better. E.g, they could let The Economist editorial staff design their policies.
Hmm, come to think of it, that's wishful thinking. Still I think the next Republican administration will distance itself from a lot of the Bush II policies in some way, in much the same way that Clinton distanced himself from lots of Democrat conventional wisdom that had become very unpopular in the country at large.
Next problem here.. equaling republican with conservative.
Ever heard about the solid south during the times of civil rights changes? Guess who wanted to keep things as they are, and guess which party was representing them... wrong, not the republicans but the democrats championed the solid south.
Conservative and liberal have become completely useless words in US politics simply because those words have been hijacked way too often by people trying to misdirect voters, to the point where being conservative means promoting change, and being liberal means restricting freedoms.
First of all, the acronym AIM wasn't that widely used prior to the AOL Instant Messanger.
As pointed out (with references) by many posts in this discussion, GAIM as a name was in use before AIM.
Hence, This specific use of a name very similar to AIM predates the use of the name AIM.
Or a bit shorter if the above statement is unclear:
AIM was NOT first, GAIM was.
Second, most product names out there comes out of words or names that were in use before the product came out. Whether or not that move is a wise one is a completely different debate. But if you then come around with a competing product and intentionally name is something similar to the existing product for the purpose of making your product appear as just a version of the existing one (as the makers of Lindows did), then that violates the spirit of the trademark law designed to ensure products can be made distinctive.
All nice and well, but as mentioned by many people, GAIM as a name existed before AIM as a name, so the situation you describe did not occur here.
What happened here is this:
Stage 1:
AOL Instant Messenger was created.
Someone created an alternative called GTK + AOL Instant Messenger.
AOL objected, and the peopel behind GTK + AOL Instant Messenger changed their name to GAIM
Stage 2:
GAIM gets some use and a bit of publicity. It becomes a known alternative for AOL Instant Messenger
AOL Instant Messenger gets renamed to AIM
AOL trademarks AIM
AOL starts harrassing the people behind GAIM
So, it is extremely clear that AIM was NOT the first to use it, and that GAIM did not try to be as similar in name to AIM as possible because AIM simply did not exist as a name at all.
It is also clear that AOL thought the name change smart, and changed the name they use themselves to become very similar.
Because of this, AOL is acting against the spirit of trademark law, tho I bet they are within the letter of trademark law still.
Skipped the rest of your comment because while true, it simply has no relevance for this situation.
Please come back when you are of legal age. The risk of us helping you out being seen as trying to get you to do all kinds of naughty things is simply too big, even when you and I know no such thing happened.
Are you trying to misunderstand the nature of what is going on here? Assuming there is no fraud in court, anything of the results that occur there are by definition legal. Giving someone money without any other oversight ain't even in the same ballpark.
No, I am not misunderstandign what you were saying, but I am pointing out the seemingly unwelcome fact that you can do completely legal things for a not very legal purpose. The legality of your actions is not the only factor that is important, the context and consequences are as important.
That's called perjury and is already a crime - see my point about furtherance of a crime.
It is a crime, no doubt about that. It is also a specific case of lying being a crime.
Read what you wrote, then think about it long and hard. The reason lying is not a crime has nothing to do with it being "too small of an issue" it is because we live in a free society where anything not prohibited is permitted. You write from the point of view that anything not permitted is prohibited.
No, I write from the point of view that there are few if any societies on this planet that consider lying to be a decent and acceptable thing to do. It is however not such a big issue usually that we need laws to deal with it in most cases, unlike for example murder.
You however seem to be reasoning like a lawyer wanting the letter of the law implemented regardless of why that law exists.
That is not what is going on here. There is a law being debated that would outlaw specific sorts of lying. It isn't about creating a specific right, it is about taking that right away from all but a select group.
Are you being dense on purpose here?
Creating a law that forbids a specific kind of lying except for this and that specific case IS explicitly allowing lying in those specific cases.
That may be an unwelcome way of looking at it, but it is definitely a valid way of lookign at it, if you want to try to invalidate it, come up with an argument as to why it is not valid.
You make a nice theoretical argument from the "everything is permitted unless it is forbidden by law" point of view, but you seem to completely ignore the reasons for laws existing, as well as the actual consequences of this proposed law.
The law is the law for a reason. If the reason turns out to be bogus or no longer valid, then that removes the validity of the law.
I believe that actively encouraging someone to commit a crime is bound to give you a bit of a legal problem, and actively participating in said crime definitely makes you guilty.
No entrapment laws needed for this, but the existance of those laws indicates tat even fighting crime is not an excuse or a way to get around this.
And so is me transfering money to another person. It might however become a legal issue still depending on why I transfered that money, whom I transfered it to, and what they are going to use it for.
And lying is a perfectly legal activity when it is not done to further a crime.
Try that one when giving a testimony under oath. Even if what you lied about has no relevance to the case at hand, does not further any crimes or anything, it is still punishable. There are many more cases where lying has been made explicitly illegal.
The fact that lying in general isn't illegal is because usually it is too small an issue to deal with it by law, and most cases of lying are better dealt with by parents or employers or such.
Arguing that lying in itself is not illegal is fine from a technical point of view, but you may want to think about the consequences of allowing lying EXPLICITLY by law.
If personal information gets sold, does that not make it property?
No, it is information. That it has a certain value to certain people or organisations doesn't change that at all.
That you should be in control of this information is something I can agree with. Its why in the EU there are rather strict rules on recording and using personal information, something which especially (but not exclusively) companies from the USA run into quite often, they are not allowed to do the same collect and then use-sell for any purpose tactics on personal information that they seem used to.
(and no, laws don't prevent this problem completely, btu they do reduce it and give people a chance to cause serious disadvantage for any company trying this)
Conservatism is the tendency to keep things as they are unless a proven better alternative shows up, potentially hindering progress (not to be confused with reactionism, which keeps things as they are despite proven better alternatives).
Right now, striving for a small government in the USA is not conservative because the current US government is nto small and hasn't been small for a long time. Wanting to reduce the size of government would better be called progressive, because it is quite a change from the current situation.
Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself
I'm sorry but thats not correct.
If you start using a name that is already being used, then YOU are the one causing possible confusion for customers so you are also the one going against the spirit of trademarks.
In other words, it is very important who used a name first.
What? Without copyright, it would be much more difficult to create these expensive low-return creative works
Such works were already created before modern copyright existed. They were created with a 14 years copyright term as well, so there is very strong historical evidence saying that you do not need modern virtually infinite copyright for such works at all.
if copyright as we have it now would have existed in the 1700s and 1800s, there would be a lot of music that would have been way too expensive to perform for many orchestras however, which would ave reduced interest in such music and would have made far less funds available, resulting in less such works being created.
Quite true but then again, its one thing to force a business to stop their harmful monopolistic practices and another to force that same business to give business assets for free. MS by all means must be forced to comply with the law and play nice. But that intellectual property is legally theirs.
I tend to agree with you there, but I also believe that since they already did substantial damage by not complying, it is quite reasonable to demand that they compensate for that.
Paying a fine is no big penalty for Microsoft unless the fine is really absurdly high. Giving out information that enables competition however is a substantial penalty, and in this case I believe a well deserved one.
Most commercial DVDs use a form of scrambling and it is illegal according to the dmca to circumvent that. Of course this also prevents fair use, and unauthorized copying and distribution was already dealt with by copyright law anyway.
In other words, the dmca just makes it more scary but wasn't needed for going after 'pirates'. Its of course nice to be able to throw some more laws at it if only because it gives a better chance of intimidating someone into a settlement or winning something in court.....
I understand it, so it is good enough, it might even be proper:)
is it not that there is a licence statement when you start playing the dvd?
Is there a way of not accepting it and returning the bought media?
Since in my experience at least no distributor is taking back an already opened DVD, there is no way to disagree, there is no chance to inform yourself about the license before accepting it either, so even if there is such a license displayed, it doesn't seem to forfill the minimum requirements for a valid license agreement.
Not to mention.. all I ever get is an FBI warning about not making unauthorized copies of the DVD, I have yet to see such a license, but I would not be surprised much to find such a thing at some point.
There is fair use, you cannot be punished for making a single copy. However the DMCA (what a wonderful cockup that was) made it so you are breaking the law if you circumvent copy protection stuff to obtain the copy to which you are entitled.
And there is quite a bit of an argument that this was done by the person making the copy available for download, and not the person downloading it.
No court would say you can download an illegal copy to make a 'backup'. The thing is, you are downloading from an unauthorised distribution portal, you wouldn't win the argument. If it is a torrent you would have been uploading too, so your council would likely advise you to avoid that argument.
I seem to recall an argument about how such copies were contraband, and how those receiving such copies were in fact trading stolen goods, and I also seem to recall that this argument failed quite misserably. This actually predates all the downloading going on nowadays and related to bootleg records (you know, those vynil disks). Downloading may be illegal, it may be fair use. The source from which you download does not determine that however for all I can tell.
If you have not made a backup of a dvd/other media before it is damaged, then legally you're screwed. You have broken the copy you had a licence for, so you need to buy a new one. Getting a copy from elsewhere once yours is damaged may sound legal/fair, but it is most definitely not legal. Read the DMCA, its a crazy document (I had to, it's boring in places, but mostly an enlightening read)
Fair and legal are not the same thing. While it may well be illegal, that doesn't make it unfair at all. The one thing clearly not being fair here is expecting people to pay over and over for the same content, but that doesn't determine the legality of this all either.
Nope, the idea of money being for a single copy is as old as a jolly old thing. After all, buying a car does not give you the right to create new copies of that car
It nowhere prevents that, but in most places, I am not allowed to copy the car and SELL it as if it is the original. Making private copies of it for my own use is perfectly fine. Effectively creating a copy by using my car as a template for creating replacement parts for someone else's damaged 'copy' is also perfectly legal.
I never ever signed a contract with the car producer/designer forbidding me from doing those things, and copyright isn't going to work except for quite extreme cases.
, buying a book has not, for centuries, entitled you to make your own copies.
When looking at the law in the USA, originally, buying a book within a certain relatively short amount of time after publication meant that you could not legally copy it. After that time passed, you could make as many copies of it as you liked, all completely legal.
Besides, when you buy a movie, you agree to their licence terms, and that clearly indicates that the licence is for the copy your purchased only.
Last time I bought a DVD there was no agreement or contract that I had to sign, no 'shrinkwrap license' either, so no, I did not agree to any license whatsoever. The entertainment industry loves people believing that they did agree to some kind of license, but without the possibility of informing yourself and without performing an action which indicates active agreement and confirmation that the buyer did take notice of the license, THERE IS NO LICENSE.
Apparently most of the world wants to work here since large numbers apply for work and come here illegally.
Economically, it is the better deal for quite a few people. That doesn't anywhere mean they want to live in the USA however
I've had a lot of friends who are English, Dutch, French, ETC. Most of them complain about the US and talk about how much better it is in their home country.
I may not be a 'friend' of yours, but I have hadpermission to stay and work in the USA untill jan. 2002, and I let it expire out of lack of interest. I might have earned a few bucks more in the USA, but it also would have meant living in a country that can't be arsed to acually understand anything about the world around it, and that I didn't like at all. (and yes, I am aware that many people from the USA do know a bit more, but they are still the exception, esp. when compared with those who are voted into the US government)
Funny they still live and work here so it doesn't help their argument. It's hardly perfect but there must be some pluses since so many fight hard to get and stay here. I have an Australian friend that decided to go back. He stuck it out for 9 months and mostly stayed that long because it took him that long to earn the money to come back. He found he could earn nearly twice as much here for the same job and he had access to more things here. He still likes to boast of Australia but I haven't heard him talk about moving back since his trip back. It's not knocking other countries, I love Europe personally, it's like voting with your dollars in a sense. If it's so awful here why do you want to live here and a hell of a lot of people do want to live here.
The proliferation that may result in Iran obtaining nukes took place a long time ago, first and foremost when Israel got them, then when Pakistan got them.
The problem here is that the USA and much of western Europe let their 'friends' have them, and are now facing the forseeable consequences of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Stop being dense. I don't mean most Internet users lack the technical information of most /. readers, I mean most Internet users lack the familiarity with Internet technologies that most /. readers have. To them, two programs with similar sounding names could very well be confused.
Nice call for not being dense.
GAIM does not sound or look at all like AOL Instant Messenger. It does look and sound a bit like AIM however, which as pointed out many times was not used as such by AOL at the time.
To someone who is not familiar with internet technology this similarity is completely non obvious. It is obvious to you (and me) because we do have that knowledge.
The usage of the acronym damn well does date back to before gaim. Or do you really think no one (in an age where LOL, WTF, RTFM, IANAL, etc. are all recognized as common words) figured out they could shorten a three word eight syllable and nineteen letter product name to three letters until the gaim people did it?
Did AOL do so? if not it is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
And for the hundredth fucking time, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE TRADEMARK DATE! I am not talking about their legal basis for a lawsuit, which is where that date would matter.
Too fucking bad that this is a discussion about the legal side of it. If you didn't want to discuss that then stay out of the discussion.
I am looking at it from a common sense point of view. Unfortunately common sense is apparently lacking in certain people these days...
Ah, common sense is that when posting in a discussion about the name change as a result of legal threats, the legal side of it will be discussed and is a very relevant part of the discussion. Since you lack that bit of common sense I don't think you are in any position to call on common sense here.
And even if we were talking about the trademark registration date, GAIM WAS NEVER REGISTERED! So AOL would still have come first. So please stop bringing it up, it is irrelevant to what I am discussing and wouldn't help gaim anyways.
Common use of a word makes a trademark unenforcable. That is extremely relevant because it means that gaim does not have to be registered in order to weaken or even invalidate the AIM trademark. It seems that this little bit of common sense is also lacking on your side.
In fact all you seem to be saying is that you don't care about the details, don't care about arguments or anything else because AOL is right and anyone arguing otherwise is stupid, lacks common sense and what not.
Oh well, thanks for playing.
Except this specific case of lying, lying under oath is perjury: a crime. Thus, lying under oath is furthering a crime - its own crime of perjury.
Creative explanation, but matter of fact is that lying in that specific case is the crime. It doesn't further any other crime then the lying itself, and if that lying wasn't made criminal, there would not be a crime. Hence, it is a case where lying itself is a crime, and no furthering of any crime is required.
Quite possibly. Most Internet users are not as tech savvy are your typical /. reader.
Uh, what does that have to do with anything? Technical understanding of how a messenger works is irrelevant for being confused by the name of a product. GAIM doesn't in any way look like AOL, so to the typical person it is not confusing. It may be confusing to those who actually dig into what GAIM might stand for.
Again, that is completely false. I don't know how many times I can say this. AOL Instant Messenger is an AOL product that predated gaim,
If you'd bother to read a previous reply from me a bit better you'd have seen that I said the same thing.
AOL Instant Messenger predates GAIM, usage of the acronym AIM and the trademark on it do NOT predate GAIM. Read this carefully a few times maybe..
in fact the original name of gaim was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger. Are you denying that fact,
No, I stated the same thing myself. Is it really that difficult to read things?
or do you still not understand that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger (which must be hard considering how many times I've written it while making the first letters bold)?
Sure, and there are lots of acronyms for many products and brands, which doesn't automatically turn them into trademarks or protect them, UNLESS those who made the product actually use and trademark them.
Which part of having to register a trademark for protection didn't you understand?
But on a business connection of 12m/1.5m I actually get 12m/1.5m most of the time with multiple static IP addresses and no limits on what I can do with it. It costs $249/month, but even that is a deal because the alternative would be a dedicated T1 that only has 1.5m/1.5m for twice the money
12/1 is what I get here, and I get it virtually always. There are moments where it will drop to 10/1 but thats exceptional.
Oh, and I do get a fixed IP
And port 25 and 80 are not being blocked
I even have permission to run my own servers
Guess what, thats all on a standard 'residential' DSL connection costing approx $50/month.
I could get 24/1 with the same conditions for approx $90/month.
The difference? I live in a place where the government actually decided they have to actively undo the damage of the telco monopolies of past times with the result that there is real competition. Oh, and the government here also thinks that consumer protection is somewhat important so advertising for 'unlimited' plans has consequences for those advertising, either keep to the promise or face serious fines.
Sometimes you do need regulations for a limited time to undo the damage of previous monopoly granting regulations.
Again, GAIM was clearly a reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, even if the acronym had not yet caught on for the AOL application. So it clearly violated the spirit of trademark law.
Does he acronym GAIM cause any confusion for customers of AOL Intant Messenger?
If not, it is not aginst the spirit of trademark law, to it may be against the letter.
Their product name contained a reference to the acronym of an existing competing product, which trademark law is designed to prevent.
Mo, trademark law is intended to:
1. prevent confusion among customers
2. prevent someone from damaging your brand by using a very similar name.
Since GAIM is not at all similar to AOL, and AOL did not use, let alone trademark AIM when GAIM already existed, there is no confusion possible. The confusion was only introduced by AOL starting to use the acronym AIM and trademarking it.
I am fully aware that the legal world is a different world, so its certainly possible AOL didn't have legal grounding for a lawsuit (IANAL, so I'm not going into that discussion). But the product AOL Instant Messanger predated GAIM, and they named their product to reference the acronym of the of their competition. And for the record, AOL's product was known as AIM well before GAIM was a viable alternative. I remember since I actually used them both back then (AIM on Windows, GAIM on Linux).
This discussion contains tens of references to information disputing that AIM came before GAIM (as a name for the service, or as an acronym for that name. Please come up with something better then your own memory (and for that matter, my own memory also disagrees with your statement, but thats not a good argument for the same reason as why your memory isn't a good argument)
And no, legal nitpicking over what exactly was sent to the trademark office aside, AOL Instant Messenger was not renamed to AIM, AIM is just an abbreviation. Look up the word acronym in a dictionary for more information.
And where I live, AIM is often used as a generic word to denote any kind of instant messenger (nowadays MSN is used even more for this), amd as a result a trademark would fail for reasons of the word having become a generic word, this completely seperate from the issue of if they could enforce such a trademark against someone using a similar name before them.
At any rate, what they sent to the trademark office and when is THE important part here. It is the only thing that determines if they have a trademark at all.
That doesn't sound too bad to me. But it also doesn't capture current conservatism very well. Democratising the middle east doesn't fit into that definition and yet current conservatives support it.
Well, the NEOconservatives say they support this. Note that they call themselves neoconservative and not conservative. WHile they hijacked the word conservative there, their policies and ideas really have very little to do with "conservatism".
We can have a long discussion now about if this is really what the neocons are after, I really don't believe them in this, but that is besides the point.
That's actually one of the things I'd expect to change. If the Republicans run on a small government ticket, socially liberal ticket they'd do a lot better. E.g, they could let The Economist editorial staff design their policies.
Hmm, come to think of it, that's wishful thinking. Still I think the next Republican administration will distance itself from a lot of the Bush II policies in some way, in much the same way that Clinton distanced himself from lots of Democrat conventional wisdom that had become very unpopular in the country at large.
Next problem here.. equaling republican with conservative.
Ever heard about the solid south during the times of civil rights changes? Guess who wanted to keep things as they are, and guess which party was representing them... wrong, not the republicans but the democrats championed the solid south.
Conservative and liberal have become completely useless words in US politics simply because those words have been hijacked way too often by people trying to misdirect voters, to the point where being conservative means promoting change, and being liberal means restricting freedoms.
First of all, the acronym AIM wasn't that widely used prior to the AOL Instant Messanger.
As pointed out (with references) by many posts in this discussion, GAIM as a name was in use before AIM.
Hence, This specific use of a name very similar to AIM predates the use of the name AIM.
Or a bit shorter if the above statement is unclear:
AIM was NOT first, GAIM was.
Second, most product names out there comes out of words or names that were in use before the product came out. Whether or not that move is a wise one is a completely different debate. But if you then come around with a competing product and intentionally name is something similar to the existing product for the purpose of making your product appear as just a version of the existing one (as the makers of Lindows did), then that violates the spirit of the trademark law designed to ensure products can be made distinctive.
All nice and well, but as mentioned by many people, GAIM as a name existed before AIM as a name, so the situation you describe did not occur here.
What happened here is this:
Stage 1:
AOL Instant Messenger was created.
Someone created an alternative called GTK + AOL Instant Messenger.
AOL objected, and the peopel behind GTK + AOL Instant Messenger changed their name to GAIM
Stage 2:
GAIM gets some use and a bit of publicity. It becomes a known alternative for AOL Instant Messenger
AOL Instant Messenger gets renamed to AIM
AOL trademarks AIM
AOL starts harrassing the people behind GAIM
So, it is extremely clear that AIM was NOT the first to use it, and that GAIM did not try to be as similar in name to AIM as possible because AIM simply did not exist as a name at all.
It is also clear that AOL thought the name change smart, and changed the name they use themselves to become very similar.
Because of this, AOL is acting against the spirit of trademark law, tho I bet they are within the letter of trademark law still.
Skipped the rest of your comment because while true, it simply has no relevance for this situation.
Hey Melissa,
Please come back when you are of legal age. The risk of us helping you out being seen as trying to get you to do all kinds of naughty things is simply too big, even when you and I know no such thing happened.
Are you trying to misunderstand the nature of what is going on here? Assuming there is no fraud in court, anything of the results that occur there are by definition legal. Giving someone money without any other oversight ain't even in the same ballpark.
No, I am not misunderstandign what you were saying, but I am pointing out the seemingly unwelcome fact that you can do completely legal things for a not very legal purpose. The legality of your actions is not the only factor that is important, the context and consequences are as important.
That's called perjury and is already a crime - see my point about furtherance of a crime.
It is a crime, no doubt about that. It is also a specific case of lying being a crime.
Read what you wrote, then think about it long and hard. The reason lying is not a crime has nothing to do with it being "too small of an issue" it is because we live in a free society where anything not prohibited is permitted. You write from the point of view that anything not permitted is prohibited.
No, I write from the point of view that there are few if any societies on this planet that consider lying to be a decent and acceptable thing to do. It is however not such a big issue usually that we need laws to deal with it in most cases, unlike for example murder.
You however seem to be reasoning like a lawyer wanting the letter of the law implemented regardless of why that law exists.
That is not what is going on here. There is a law being debated that would outlaw specific sorts of lying. It isn't about creating a specific right, it is about taking that right away from all but a select group.
Are you being dense on purpose here?
Creating a law that forbids a specific kind of lying except for this and that specific case IS explicitly allowing lying in those specific cases.
That may be an unwelcome way of looking at it, but it is definitely a valid way of lookign at it, if you want to try to invalidate it, come up with an argument as to why it is not valid.
You make a nice theoretical argument from the "everything is permitted unless it is forbidden by law" point of view, but you seem to completely ignore the reasons for laws existing, as well as the actual consequences of this proposed law.
The law is the law for a reason. If the reason turns out to be bogus or no longer valid, then that removes the validity of the law.
Entrapment only applies to law enforcement.
I believe that actively encouraging someone to commit a crime is bound to give you a bit of a legal problem, and actively participating in said crime definitely makes you guilty.
No entrapment laws needed for this, but the existance of those laws indicates tat even fighting crime is not an excuse or a way to get around this.
France, 1798 or thereabout..
All of which are LEGAL activities.
And so is me transfering money to another person. It might however become a legal issue still depending on why I transfered that money, whom I transfered it to, and what they are going to use it for.
And lying is a perfectly legal activity when it is not done to further a crime.
Try that one when giving a testimony under oath. Even if what you lied about has no relevance to the case at hand, does not further any crimes or anything, it is still punishable. There are many more cases where lying has been made explicitly illegal.
The fact that lying in general isn't illegal is because usually it is too small an issue to deal with it by law, and most cases of lying are better dealt with by parents or employers or such.
Arguing that lying in itself is not illegal is fine from a technical point of view, but you may want to think about the consequences of allowing lying EXPLICITLY by law.
If personal information gets sold, does that not make it property?
No, it is information. That it has a certain value to certain people or organisations doesn't change that at all.
That you should be in control of this information is something I can agree with. Its why in the EU there are rather strict rules on recording and using personal information, something which especially (but not exclusively) companies from the USA run into quite often, they are not allowed to do the same collect and then use-sell for any purpose tactics on personal information that they seem used to.
(and no, laws don't prevent this problem completely, btu they do reduce it and give people a chance to cause serious disadvantage for any company trying this)
Conservatism is the tendency to keep things as they are unless a proven better alternative shows up, potentially hindering progress (not to be confused with reactionism, which keeps things as they are despite proven better alternatives).
Right now, striving for a small government in the USA is not conservative because the current US government is nto small and hasn't been small for a long time. Wanting to reduce the size of government would better be called progressive, because it is quite a change from the current situation.
Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself
I'm sorry but thats not correct.
If you start using a name that is already being used, then YOU are the one causing possible confusion for customers so you are also the one going against the spirit of trademarks.
In other words, it is very important who used a name first.
They created high quality recordings of world-class orchestras before modern copyright existed? I didn't realise it was such a new idea. Seriously.
No, but they did write and perform them way before recording was even possible.
What? Without copyright, it would be much more difficult to create these expensive low-return creative works
Such works were already created before modern copyright existed. They were created with a 14 years copyright term as well, so there is very strong historical evidence saying that you do not need modern virtually infinite copyright for such works at all.
if copyright as we have it now would have existed in the 1700s and 1800s, there would be a lot of music that would have been way too expensive to perform for many orchestras however, which would ave reduced interest in such music and would have made far less funds available, resulting in less such works being created.
Quite true but then again, its one thing to force a business to stop their harmful monopolistic practices and another to force that same business to give business assets for free. MS by all means must be forced to comply with the law and play nice. But that intellectual property is legally theirs.
I tend to agree with you there, but I also believe that since they already did substantial damage by not complying, it is quite reasonable to demand that they compensate for that.
Paying a fine is no big penalty for Microsoft unless the fine is really absurdly high. Giving out information that enables competition however is a substantial penalty, and in this case I believe a well deserved one.
"The same people" will do.
Likely they rely on the dmca provisions then
That and copyright in general.
Most commercial DVDs use a form of scrambling and it is illegal according to the dmca to circumvent that. Of course this also prevents fair use, and unauthorized copying and distribution was already dealt with by copyright law anyway.
In other words, the dmca just makes it more scary but wasn't needed for going after 'pirates'. Its of course nice to be able to throw some more laws at it if only because it gives a better chance of intimidating someone into a settlement or winning something in court.....
I'm all for paying people a fair wage, but your argument has a very simple problem..
If those people would receive a better pay, and pay more taxes, guess who has to pay for them getting payed better...
Thirdly (is that proper english?),
:)
I understand it, so it is good enough, it might even be proper
is it not that there is a licence statement when you start playing the dvd?
Is there a way of not accepting it and returning the bought media?
Since in my experience at least no distributor is taking back an already opened DVD, there is no way to disagree, there is no chance to inform yourself about the license before accepting it either, so even if there is such a license displayed, it doesn't seem to forfill the minimum requirements for a valid license agreement.
Not to mention.. all I ever get is an FBI warning about not making unauthorized copies of the DVD, I have yet to see such a license, but I would not be surprised much to find such a thing at some point.
A few minor points..
There is fair use, you cannot be punished for making a single copy. However the DMCA (what a wonderful cockup that was) made it so you are breaking the law if you circumvent copy protection stuff to obtain the copy to which you are entitled.
And there is quite a bit of an argument that this was done by the person making the copy available for download, and not the person downloading it.
No court would say you can download an illegal copy to make a 'backup'. The thing is, you are downloading from an unauthorised distribution portal, you wouldn't win the argument. If it is a torrent you would have been uploading too, so your council would likely advise you to avoid that argument.
I seem to recall an argument about how such copies were contraband, and how those receiving such copies were in fact trading stolen goods, and I also seem to recall that this argument failed quite misserably. This actually predates all the downloading going on nowadays and related to bootleg records (you know, those vynil disks). Downloading may be illegal, it may be fair use. The source from which you download does not determine that however for all I can tell.
If you have not made a backup of a dvd/other media before it is damaged, then legally you're screwed. You have broken the copy you had a licence for, so you need to buy a new one. Getting a copy from elsewhere once yours is damaged may sound legal/fair, but it is most definitely not legal. Read the DMCA, its a crazy document (I had to, it's boring in places, but mostly an enlightening read)
Fair and legal are not the same thing. While it may well be illegal, that doesn't make it unfair at all.
The one thing clearly not being fair here is expecting people to pay over and over for the same content, but that doesn't determine the legality of this all either.
Nope, the idea of money being for a single copy is as old as a jolly old thing. After all, buying a car does not give you the right to create new copies of that car
It nowhere prevents that, but in most places, I am not allowed to copy the car and SELL it as if it is the original. Making private copies of it for my own use is perfectly fine. Effectively creating a copy by using my car as a template for creating replacement parts for someone else's damaged 'copy' is also perfectly legal.
I never ever signed a contract with the car producer/designer forbidding me from doing those things, and copyright isn't going to work except for quite extreme cases.
, buying a book has not, for centuries, entitled you to make your own copies.
When looking at the law in the USA, originally, buying a book within a certain relatively short amount of time after publication meant that you could not legally copy it. After that time passed, you could make as many copies of it as you liked, all completely legal.
Besides, when you buy a movie, you agree to their licence terms, and that clearly indicates that the licence is for the copy your purchased only.
Last time I bought a DVD there was no agreement or contract that I had to sign, no 'shrinkwrap license' either, so no, I did not agree to any license whatsoever. The entertainment industry loves people believing that they did agree to some kind of license, but without the possibility of informing yourself and without performing an action which indicates active agreement and confirmation that the buyer did take notice of the license, THERE IS NO LICENSE.
Of course you are bound by copyright laws.
Apparently most of the world wants to work here since large numbers apply for work and come here illegally.
Economically, it is the better deal for quite a few people. That doesn't anywhere mean they want to live in the USA however
I've had a lot of friends who are English, Dutch, French, ETC. Most of them complain about the US and talk about how much better it is in their home country.
I may not be a 'friend' of yours, but I have hadpermission to stay and work in the USA untill jan. 2002, and I let it expire out of lack of interest. I might have earned a few bucks more in the USA, but it also would have meant living in a country that can't be arsed to acually understand anything about the world around it, and that I didn't like at all. (and yes, I am aware that many people from the USA do know a bit more, but they are still the exception, esp. when compared with those who are voted into the US government)
Funny they still live and work here so it doesn't help their argument. It's hardly perfect but there must be some pluses since so many fight hard to get and stay here. I have an Australian friend that decided to go back. He stuck it out for 9 months and mostly stayed that long because it took him that long to earn the money to come back. He found he could earn nearly twice as much here for the same job and he had access to more things here. He still likes to boast of Australia but I haven't heard him talk about moving back since his trip back. It's not knocking other countries, I love Europe personally, it's like voting with your dollars in a sense. If it's so awful here why do you want to live here and a hell of a lot of people do want to live here.
The proliferation that may result in Iran obtaining nukes took place a long time ago, first and foremost when Israel got them, then when Pakistan got them.
The problem here is that the USA and much of western Europe let their 'friends' have them, and are now facing the forseeable consequences of that.