Non-discriminatory Net access is not "a strip club", and is becoming more and more of an essential commodity to people-in their education, in their work, in the businesses they run, in the schools they attend.
We already see false advertising from several ISP's, where they advertise a given speed but then severely cap how much bandwidth you can use in a month, not to mention those which advertise "6 Mbps service!", without mentioning, that if you happen to want to -upload- something, it's nowhere near that. At the very least, they should -have- to advertise it as 6 Mbps download/384 Kbit upload, or whatever the case may be. They also should not be permitted to advertise "unlimited Internet service" unless it is, in fact, that-no bandwidth cap, no rules against servers, no other similar garbage. Anything with those restrictions is LIMITED Internet service, and should be required to be clearly marked.
For example, let's take an ISP that offers 1 Mbit/s download, but "caps" the user to 5 GB (or, to make the math easier, 40 Gb) per month. What are they really offering?
Well, first, let's figure seconds in a month. We shall take a 30-day month just for a nice average, even it being February now.
By my calculations, you'd have (30 days) * (24 hours) * (60 minutes) * (60 seconds), or 2592000 seconds, in a 30-day month.
Now, what's your effective speed? Well, to get a "per-second" rating, let's divide the amount of data you can download (40 Gb, in our example, or 40,000,000,000 bits), by that number of seconds (2592000), to get a nice per-second rating.
Will you look at that? 15433, if we round up-or about 15 Kb/s. You can actually shift -less- data, through this ISP, then you can through dial-up! And yet they advertise "2 million times faster then dial-up!" or whatever garbage it is now.
But these people are telling the truth. Really. And they're not going to collude. Really. They've got a great record so far of not screwing over the customer. And you're right too, it only takes maybe half a billion dollars to even have -any- hope of launching a telco startup. I mean, I've got that in my shoebox in the basement, and I'm sure you do too. So I'm sure both of us could just launch a startup tomorrow and be happy as hell.
While there are differences, and likely some place the point is that -many- successful flat-rate services are offered-and the progress is generally -from- the initial pay-by-the-minute -to- flat rate, and any attempt to move the other way is a money grab. I don't have a "choice" in my area, there is ONE broadband company. Therefore, like any monopoly, they must be regulated-and if they try and pull anything like this, we've got a citizen initiative process for a reason!
I also object that anyone is paying "more then their share". If you want to use the Net very lightly, you can get much cheaper dialup service, and in fact many do. Broadband providers already charge a hefty premium for their services, and should expect that the users willing to pay such a premium will be those who will make use of it. So I -am- paying "my share", I pay significantly more for broadband then I would for dialup. But with broadband providers having a monopoly/oligopoly in many areas, we certainly can't just allow them to "name their price", any more than the telcos. They're making money hand over fist already and have no need for more.
But no one pays extra to make hour-long local calls, if they like, and this procedure has worked very well for quite some time too. Everything, so to speak, is a "finite resource", but with the amount of unused bandwidth floating around there, and the low levels ISP's cap it at (Japan and many European cities see 20-100 Mbps as a matter of course), there's no excuse for this. I expect to pay for bandwidth at a flat rate, and I expect to use it. If all I wanted to do was occasionally look at webpages and check my email, I'd use the $8/month dialup ISP here. I pay $50 a month for broadband because -I expect to use it-.
Actually, there are -plenty- of police officers (though I don't know specifically about DEA agents) who do indeed advocate the end to Prohibition II, or changes to other laws. The DEA, I might remind you, -is- a federal organization-we can debate about whether corporations, with their charters, in effect are (though my answer would be "Absolutely, and they're subject to the same restrictions, else the gov't should be writing them into the charter"), but if a DEA officer wrote an article which simply said "Law X should be repealed", while continuing doing his job of enforcing it while it -does- exist, they'd be in very, very hot water if they booted him out.
Hypothetical case of Oracle: Absolutely not, provided that you make clear you are stating your opinion -personally- and not as a representative of Oracle, and do not use relationships gained "on-the-job" to spread the word. If you want to tell your personal friend that Oracle would be overkill for building a personal webpage and MySQL is the way to go, they should absolutely -not- be able to fire you for that. On the other hand, if you called customers -you- sold to on the job, and told them so, then -you-, not the company, are deliberately involving company affairs in personal time. But in most cases, no, they'd not. Is someone who works at McDonald's forbidden from saying to their friends "Let's go to Wendy's tonight?" Would you find that acceptable if they were?
The ethics bit...very tenuous. While I would agree that, for example, a law firm could fire someone for committing a murder or assisting in embezzlement, even if not technically on company time, we're more talking about someone saying they do what millions do. That's more getting fired for admitting you speed on the highway every so often, but in your personal vehicle, not a company one. I wouldn't find that an acceptable reason to fire even if the law firm normally represents speeders. I do, however, believe this is the -one- thing they do have in their favor. If she had simply been advocating consumers' rights and that DRM be removed, they'd have nothing at all.
In this scenario, your discussion of the -firm's- reputation is also irrelevant-just because -their official position- is not "Let's fight rules we feel are unjust and request their change", does not mean a given employee can disagree. Your employer is forbidden by law from, for example, telling you who to vote for, or even attempting to find out. They should be similarly barred from restricting your right to advocate changes in the law. While you are "on the clock", they can certainly expect that you will support their position, or at least remain mute if you disagree, but they have no such right to those expectations once you're on your own time. Taking a job should not require you to -personally- adopt every philosophy of your employer, every hour of every day.
Final scenario: I don't find Ford's policy reasonable, but I also don't find it nearly so objectionable. Asking someone to walk a bit farther is a far cry from firing them, and purchasing a car is far from as sacred a right as freedom of speech.
If my employer intends to monitor and regulate what I do when off work, I expect to be paid my full amount, including overtime, on a basis of working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If this were done -at- work, I can understand it, but there is nothing wrong with working in a field while still advocating change. It is, in fact, one of our most fundamental rights to advocate change-and if exercising that means you can't get a job, you effectively don't have it.
Well, three years later, I know this, far as the ID goes. Though, of course, the man with a gun and a powertrip can ultimately do as he likes at the time...
I am -pretty- sure he was a cop though, being that they do have federal cops down in that area around the federal building, and he was driving one of the marked cars ("Police" with the U.S. Seal under it, lightbar, whole bit), and was wearing a uniform/badge (though he never got close enough I could see the name).
If everyone stands idly by while they trample over our rights, very shortly we'll have no rights left. It is not the job of the President, Congress, the Supreme Court, or even the ACLU to stand up for your rights-ultimately, it is YOUR responsibility.
When I was photographing the beautiful old federal buildings in downtown Denver (probably about 3 years ago), a federal officer pulled up and told me to stop taking pictures. When I asked him what law I was breaking, he refused to answer, but demanded my ID and told me I was now going to have a "record with the FBI." When I then asked him for his name and/or badge number, he got back in his car and drove away.
A...negative effect? So amazon.com's practice of providing a link to purchase a book, the text of the first few pages of that book, and the ability to purchase it immediately has a -negative- value upon that book's sales? Somehow, I doubt this.
-IF- Google were reproducing the entire story, I could see your (and their) point. But they're not-they're simply giving you a "teaser" that makes it -more- likely you'll visit the site in question (and see their ads, which is the method of "purchase" here.) Further, any publisher who -doesn't- want to be included can make a cute little file called robots.txt, and say goodbye to their google listing.
Of course, they don't -want- just to remove their own google listings, but they also want to remove the advantage it gives to smaller and online-only sources. If they were simply upset about their -own- listings being included, they can even contact Google to delist immediately rather then wait for the next crawl, -and- change robots.txt at the same time. Generally, courts require that you make a "good faith" effort to resolve a matter -before- suing. I believe, in this case, Google could easily argue that they are acting in good faith by honoring removal requests and robots.txt, and that the publishers are not-obviously, they've -not- contacted Google, or their listings would be removed!
As to amount and substantiality, generally short quotes and excerpts have been held by the courts to be fair use. Google's not reprinting the whole thing-and even if they were, Google's caching has already been ruled legal.
So, between the fact that Google provides an easy mechanism -not- to be listed, copies only a small portion of the work, and directs users -to the site in question- to read the rest, I can't imagine they'd have too much of a case. I figured the cache and images ones to be more potentially dangerous by far, and both of those were ruled fair use.
And the way they made that change was...by convincing their fellow colonists that things weren't right, and advocating that they, too, stand up for change! Why do you think Paine passed out brochures detailing what was going on, if -not- to wake people up and exhort them to get off their ass and do something about it?
Great-god-knows-how-many-grandparent is in many ways correct. It IS a major problem that so many see "the way things are" and don't realize that change is possible. It is also a major problem that those who do are ostracized and scorned. What's wrong with a bit of criticism, even of the general public? Abolitionists criticized -very- broad segments of society at large, as did those in the civil rights movement, and both succeeded. (Not to say progress doesn't remain to be made, mind you.) Now, the opinion could certainly be better supported, but I guess I don't see how holding the opinion in itself can be called "immature."
And I just used up the last of my mod points too...I don't downmod often, but the ones like this are sure well-deserving of it.
However, you do provide an excellent illustration of one of the main points of the problem-this attitude that anyone who is dissatisfied or disillusioned simply needs to "grow up". Tell me again, what was Ben Franklin's age at the time of the American Revolution? Jefferson? Adams? Payne? Should they have just "grown up" and accepted that oppression is "just the way it is"?
Real adults, with real adult brains, are capable of thinking for themselves and forming their own opinions-even if that opinion places them at odds with the majority. It is indeed unfortunate that so many have never grown up-but I say that of those who lack critical thinking ability, not of those who have worked to develop it.
Now, were you planning on -refuting- any of the points made by grandparent, or just resorting to childish (yes, on your part) behavior?
Well, interested then...how would you propose to eliminate patent trolling? Or do you find the practice of using patents as "land mines" for massive lawsuits, rather then as protection for a legitimate, in-production invention, acceptable? Shouldn't a patent be considered effectively obvious if someone else, with no idea what you had done, comes up with a similar concept?
That RIM -sees- NTP as a patent troll? And then goes on to say how they were specifically set up just to wait for someone to step on the land mine? NTP -is- a bunch of patent trolls!
This is about everything that's wrong with the US patent system. -Actually putting into successful production- the object of your patent, or selling it entirely, should be one of the major criterion for it remaining valid. Otherwise, you are just a patent troll, making the real inventors walk through your minefield, and then waiting to profit from their work when they step on it.
I'm glad RIM didn't settle, and still hasn't settled-so to speak. Maybe now we WILL get some meaningful patent reform.
And the use you're stating (profit from ads) would be an industrial, for-profit motive, just as would be republication in a newspaper or magazine, and even -my- proposed restrictions would apply. On the other hand, if I think the article's interesting, and want to print it out to show a friend who doesn't have net access, or email it to a friend that accepts only text emails (no links), that shouldn't be illegal (even technically) for me to do-I'm not profiting. I'd also have no trouble with an attribution requirement, but that's not normally a problem on filesharing networks-the sharers aren't generally claiming that they filmed the movie or wrote the song.
Plagiarism is a different story, but you don't even need copyright to prevent that. Copying without citation is an implicit claim that that's your original work. If it's not, that's fraud, and defamation of the original writer-and we've got plenty of very good laws against fraud and defamation.
Or, of course, we could always reform copyright, limiting its term to 5 or 10 years, and making it a regulation on industrial, for-profit use of the material, rather than private, not-for-profit sharing. I think that'd solve it pretty nicely-anyone -selling- the stuff is going to leave an easily followed trail (the money's got to go to someone!), and we'd have -no- more reason to worry about what private individuals are doing with their stuff.
Hrm...troll indeed? Alright, I'll bite. I'm aware of BitTorrent's excellent ability to copy information, but I'd never heard of a case where someone used it to steal something. How would you go about that?
Bear in mind-stealing involves taking away from or depriving(requirement 1) the rightful owner of a possession, of that possession(requirement 2) without that person's consent(requirement 3).
Even if we presume true (and many do not) the tenuous arguments that the person whose file the computer resides on is not "really" the rightful owner of the data on it, and doesn't have permission to say what may or may not be done with it, only requirement 2 and 3 are satisfied. Requirement 1 is never met-copying something doesn't involve taking it away.
Now, on the other hand, you might have mistakenly referred to copyright infringement as theft. Many (though not all) uses for Bittorrent do indeed meet its definition. But I'm sure no one around here tries to substitute an incorrect, inflammatory word for the proper term for something, thinking it strengthens their point!
Because software is NOT a tangible thing, period. Mathematical formulas are one thing which are NOT supposed to be patentable, and software is, though a complex one, nothing more than a mathematical formula.
Now, I do agree with software being subject to copyright protection (provided that similar reforms are made to copyright, our current system has it all wrong.) That leaves the author free to sell his/her program, if that's what they should wish, it just doesn't allow them to prohibit someone else from doing something similar without directly copying their work.
Now, the debate as to the length of copyright (why do we really need more then 5-10 years?), the end-run around fair use (DRM and EULA's), and the restrictions on personal, rather than industrial/for-profit copying, are another subject. I do not agree with any of these. However, if we changed copyright to ensure that it lasted only 5 years or so, changed the Fair Use provision to read "Regardless of any license, contract, or other agreement, consumers have the right to...", and changed copyright back to an INDUSTRIAL regulation prohibiting PROFITING from someone else's work, I'd have no trouble at all with strict enforcement of such copyrights.
Back to the subject at hand, though-the reason software shouldn't be patentable IS because it's properly covered by copyright. Machines and the like are not (and cannot) be covered by copyright, so they are under the patent system instead. Business methods and the like should be covered by neither.
That -can- be, if they're used mainly for archival purposes, but CD's have the advantage that they do not degrade during use. Since a record is, of course, touched by the needle during playback, it necessarily suffers some wear each time it is played. A frequently-used record won't last 100 years. (Records do have the advantage, however, especially with sound recordings, that this "gradual" wear will tend to produce a correspondingly gradual decrease in sound quality, rather than a sudden and total failure.)
Also, more importantly, would the applications and software those users need be available and run on these machines? And would they not cost more than the hardware itself and thus blow the benefits of cheaper hardware out of the water?
Asked about this, Hilf would only say that "this is precisely the challenge Microsoft is working with the industry to address."
In other words: "Please ignore the fact that even if we win, we lose." And I'd really like to see some DATA, on this, rather then "Oh really, it did just as well! (Course we installed full-blown Linux setups, and likely minimal Win installations...)". What did they use? GNOME? KDE? Something in the vein of a blackbox or fluxbox? Or no GUI at all? The ability to choose heavy, light, or no GUI is one of Linux's main strengths in itself, and one Win currently cannot match.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy crap, why do I always use up my last mod point right before finding something so deserving?
Well done!
Non-discriminatory Net access is not "a strip club", and is becoming more and more of an essential commodity to people-in their education, in their work, in the businesses they run, in the schools they attend.
We already see false advertising from several ISP's, where they advertise a given speed but then severely cap how much bandwidth you can use in a month, not to mention those which advertise "6 Mbps service!", without mentioning, that if you happen to want to -upload- something, it's nowhere near that. At the very least, they should -have- to advertise it as 6 Mbps download/384 Kbit upload, or whatever the case may be. They also should not be permitted to advertise "unlimited Internet service" unless it is, in fact, that-no bandwidth cap, no rules against servers, no other similar garbage. Anything with those restrictions is LIMITED Internet service, and should be required to be clearly marked.
For example, let's take an ISP that offers 1 Mbit/s download, but "caps" the user to 5 GB (or, to make the math easier, 40 Gb) per month. What are they really offering?
Well, first, let's figure seconds in a month. We shall take a 30-day month just for a nice average, even it being February now.
By my calculations, you'd have (30 days) * (24 hours) * (60 minutes) * (60 seconds), or 2592000 seconds, in a 30-day month.
Now, what's your effective speed? Well, to get a "per-second" rating, let's divide the amount of data you can download (40 Gb, in our example, or 40,000,000,000 bits), by that number of seconds (2592000), to get a nice per-second rating.
Will you look at that? 15433, if we round up-or about 15 Kb/s. You can actually shift -less- data, through this ISP, then you can through dial-up! And yet they advertise "2 million times faster then dial-up!" or whatever garbage it is now.
But these people are telling the truth. Really. And they're not going to collude. Really. They've got a great record so far of not screwing over the customer. And you're right too, it only takes maybe half a billion dollars to even have -any- hope of launching a telco startup. I mean, I've got that in my shoebox in the basement, and I'm sure you do too. So I'm sure both of us could just launch a startup tomorrow and be happy as hell.
While there are differences, and likely some place the point is that -many- successful flat-rate services are offered-and the progress is generally -from- the initial pay-by-the-minute -to- flat rate, and any attempt to move the other way is a money grab. I don't have a "choice" in my area, there is ONE broadband company. Therefore, like any monopoly, they must be regulated-and if they try and pull anything like this, we've got a citizen initiative process for a reason!
I also object that anyone is paying "more then their share". If you want to use the Net very lightly, you can get much cheaper dialup service, and in fact many do. Broadband providers already charge a hefty premium for their services, and should expect that the users willing to pay such a premium will be those who will make use of it. So I -am- paying "my share", I pay significantly more for broadband then I would for dialup. But with broadband providers having a monopoly/oligopoly in many areas, we certainly can't just allow them to "name their price", any more than the telcos. They're making money hand over fist already and have no need for more.
But no one pays extra to make hour-long local calls, if they like, and this procedure has worked very well for quite some time too. Everything, so to speak, is a "finite resource", but with the amount of unused bandwidth floating around there, and the low levels ISP's cap it at (Japan and many European cities see 20-100 Mbps as a matter of course), there's no excuse for this. I expect to pay for bandwidth at a flat rate, and I expect to use it. If all I wanted to do was occasionally look at webpages and check my email, I'd use the $8/month dialup ISP here. I pay $50 a month for broadband because -I expect to use it-.
I imagine there is. Unfortunately, "conspiracy to commit stupidity" is not illegal, so they're off the hook.
Or a Congressman. Don't forget they set the value at $250,000.
Actually, there are -plenty- of police officers (though I don't know specifically about DEA agents) who do indeed advocate the end to Prohibition II, or changes to other laws. The DEA, I might remind you, -is- a federal organization-we can debate about whether corporations, with their charters, in effect are (though my answer would be "Absolutely, and they're subject to the same restrictions, else the gov't should be writing them into the charter"), but if a DEA officer wrote an article which simply said "Law X should be repealed", while continuing doing his job of enforcing it while it -does- exist, they'd be in very, very hot water if they booted him out.
Actually, I presume this law firm was a corporation.
Corporations are in effect "artificial people", chartered and in fact CREATED by...
Fill in the blank please!
Hypothetical case of Oracle: Absolutely not, provided that you make clear you are stating your opinion -personally- and not as a representative of Oracle, and do not use relationships gained "on-the-job" to spread the word. If you want to tell your personal friend that Oracle would be overkill for building a personal webpage and MySQL is the way to go, they should absolutely -not- be able to fire you for that. On the other hand, if you called customers -you- sold to on the job, and told them so, then -you-, not the company, are deliberately involving company affairs in personal time. But in most cases, no, they'd not. Is someone who works at McDonald's forbidden from saying to their friends "Let's go to Wendy's tonight?" Would you find that acceptable if they were?
The ethics bit...very tenuous. While I would agree that, for example, a law firm could fire someone for committing a murder or assisting in embezzlement, even if not technically on company time, we're more talking about someone saying they do what millions do. That's more getting fired for admitting you speed on the highway every so often, but in your personal vehicle, not a company one. I wouldn't find that an acceptable reason to fire even if the law firm normally represents speeders. I do, however, believe this is the -one- thing they do have in their favor. If she had simply been advocating consumers' rights and that DRM be removed, they'd have nothing at all.
In this scenario, your discussion of the -firm's- reputation is also irrelevant-just because -their official position- is not "Let's fight rules we feel are unjust and request their change", does not mean a given employee can disagree. Your employer is forbidden by law from, for example, telling you who to vote for, or even attempting to find out. They should be similarly barred from restricting your right to advocate changes in the law. While you are "on the clock", they can certainly expect that you will support their position, or at least remain mute if you disagree, but they have no such right to those expectations once you're on your own time. Taking a job should not require you to -personally- adopt every philosophy of your employer, every hour of every day.
Final scenario: I don't find Ford's policy reasonable, but I also don't find it nearly so objectionable. Asking someone to walk a bit farther is a far cry from firing them, and purchasing a car is far from as sacred a right as freedom of speech.
If my employer intends to monitor and regulate what I do when off work, I expect to be paid my full amount, including overtime, on a basis of working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If this were done -at- work, I can understand it, but there is nothing wrong with working in a field while still advocating change. It is, in fact, one of our most fundamental rights to advocate change-and if exercising that means you can't get a job, you effectively don't have it.
Well, three years later, I know this, far as the ID goes. Though, of course, the man with a gun and a powertrip can ultimately do as he likes at the time...
I am -pretty- sure he was a cop though, being that they do have federal cops down in that area around the federal building, and he was driving one of the marked cars ("Police" with the U.S. Seal under it, lightbar, whole bit), and was wearing a uniform/badge (though he never got close enough I could see the name).
When an official lies to the public, it is patriotism. When the public lies to an official, it is perjury.
Don't give it up! Stand up for yourself!
If everyone stands idly by while they trample over our rights, very shortly we'll have no rights left. It is not the job of the President, Congress, the Supreme Court, or even the ACLU to stand up for your rights-ultimately, it is YOUR responsibility.
When I was photographing the beautiful old federal buildings in downtown Denver (probably about 3 years ago), a federal officer pulled up and told me to stop taking pictures. When I asked him what law I was breaking, he refused to answer, but demanded my ID and told me I was now going to have a "record with the FBI." When I then asked him for his name and/or badge number, he got back in his car and drove away.
Luckily, mine had a happier ending then this guy.
A...negative effect? So amazon.com's practice of providing a link to purchase a book, the text of the first few pages of that book, and the ability to purchase it immediately has a -negative- value upon that book's sales? Somehow, I doubt this.
-IF- Google were reproducing the entire story, I could see your (and their) point. But they're not-they're simply giving you a "teaser" that makes it -more- likely you'll visit the site in question (and see their ads, which is the method of "purchase" here.) Further, any publisher who -doesn't- want to be included can make a cute little file called robots.txt, and say goodbye to their google listing.
Of course, they don't -want- just to remove their own google listings, but they also want to remove the advantage it gives to smaller and online-only sources. If they were simply upset about their -own- listings being included, they can even contact Google to delist immediately rather then wait for the next crawl, -and- change robots.txt at the same time. Generally, courts require that you make a "good faith" effort to resolve a matter -before- suing. I believe, in this case, Google could easily argue that they are acting in good faith by honoring removal requests and robots.txt, and that the publishers are not-obviously, they've -not- contacted Google, or their listings would be removed!
As to amount and substantiality, generally short quotes and excerpts have been held by the courts to be fair use. Google's not reprinting the whole thing-and even if they were, Google's caching has already been ruled legal.
So, between the fact that Google provides an easy mechanism -not- to be listed, copies only a small portion of the work, and directs users -to the site in question- to read the rest, I can't imagine they'd have too much of a case. I figured the cache and images ones to be more potentially dangerous by far, and both of those were ruled fair use.
And the way they made that change was...by convincing their fellow colonists that things weren't right, and advocating that they, too, stand up for change! Why do you think Paine passed out brochures detailing what was going on, if -not- to wake people up and exhort them to get off their ass and do something about it?
Great-god-knows-how-many-grandparent is in many ways correct. It IS a major problem that so many see "the way things are" and don't realize that change is possible. It is also a major problem that those who do are ostracized and scorned. What's wrong with a bit of criticism, even of the general public? Abolitionists criticized -very- broad segments of society at large, as did those in the civil rights movement, and both succeeded. (Not to say progress doesn't remain to be made, mind you.) Now, the opinion could certainly be better supported, but I guess I don't see how holding the opinion in itself can be called "immature."
And I just used up the last of my mod points too...I don't downmod often, but the ones like this are sure well-deserving of it.
However, you do provide an excellent illustration of one of the main points of the problem-this attitude that anyone who is dissatisfied or disillusioned simply needs to "grow up". Tell me again, what was Ben Franklin's age at the time of the American Revolution? Jefferson? Adams? Payne? Should they have just "grown up" and accepted that oppression is "just the way it is"?
Real adults, with real adult brains, are capable of thinking for themselves and forming their own opinions-even if that opinion places them at odds with the majority. It is indeed unfortunate that so many have never grown up-but I say that of those who lack critical thinking ability, not of those who have worked to develop it.
Now, were you planning on -refuting- any of the points made by grandparent, or just resorting to childish (yes, on your part) behavior?
Well, interested then...how would you propose to eliminate patent trolling? Or do you find the practice of using patents as "land mines" for massive lawsuits, rather then as protection for a legitimate, in-production invention, acceptable? Shouldn't a patent be considered effectively obvious if someone else, with no idea what you had done, comes up with a similar concept?
That RIM -sees- NTP as a patent troll? And then goes on to say how they were specifically set up just to wait for someone to step on the land mine? NTP -is- a bunch of patent trolls!
This is about everything that's wrong with the US patent system. -Actually putting into successful production- the object of your patent, or selling it entirely, should be one of the major criterion for it remaining valid. Otherwise, you are just a patent troll, making the real inventors walk through your minefield, and then waiting to profit from their work when they step on it.
I'm glad RIM didn't settle, and still hasn't settled-so to speak. Maybe now we WILL get some meaningful patent reform.
And the use you're stating (profit from ads) would be an industrial, for-profit motive, just as would be republication in a newspaper or magazine, and even -my- proposed restrictions would apply. On the other hand, if I think the article's interesting, and want to print it out to show a friend who doesn't have net access, or email it to a friend that accepts only text emails (no links), that shouldn't be illegal (even technically) for me to do-I'm not profiting. I'd also have no trouble with an attribution requirement, but that's not normally a problem on filesharing networks-the sharers aren't generally claiming that they filmed the movie or wrote the song.
Plagiarism is a different story, but you don't even need copyright to prevent that. Copying without citation is an implicit claim that that's your original work. If it's not, that's fraud, and defamation of the original writer-and we've got plenty of very good laws against fraud and defamation.
Or, of course, we could always reform copyright, limiting its term to 5 or 10 years, and making it a regulation on industrial, for-profit use of the material, rather than private, not-for-profit sharing. I think that'd solve it pretty nicely-anyone -selling- the stuff is going to leave an easily followed trail (the money's got to go to someone!), and we'd have -no- more reason to worry about what private individuals are doing with their stuff.
Hrm...troll indeed? Alright, I'll bite. I'm aware of BitTorrent's excellent ability to copy information, but I'd never heard of a case where someone used it to steal something. How would you go about that?
Bear in mind-stealing involves taking away from or depriving(requirement 1) the rightful owner of a possession, of that possession(requirement 2) without that person's consent(requirement 3).
Even if we presume true (and many do not) the tenuous arguments that the person whose file the computer resides on is not "really" the rightful owner of the data on it, and doesn't have permission to say what may or may not be done with it, only requirement 2 and 3 are satisfied. Requirement 1 is never met-copying something doesn't involve taking it away.
Now, on the other hand, you might have mistakenly referred to copyright infringement as theft. Many (though not all) uses for Bittorrent do indeed meet its definition. But I'm sure no one around here tries to substitute an incorrect, inflammatory word for the proper term for something, thinking it strengthens their point!
Because software is NOT a tangible thing, period. Mathematical formulas are one thing which are NOT supposed to be patentable, and software is, though a complex one, nothing more than a mathematical formula.
Now, I do agree with software being subject to copyright protection (provided that similar reforms are made to copyright, our current system has it all wrong.) That leaves the author free to sell his/her program, if that's what they should wish, it just doesn't allow them to prohibit someone else from doing something similar without directly copying their work.
Now, the debate as to the length of copyright (why do we really need more then 5-10 years?), the end-run around fair use (DRM and EULA's), and the restrictions on personal, rather than industrial/for-profit copying, are another subject. I do not agree with any of these. However, if we changed copyright to ensure that it lasted only 5 years or so, changed the Fair Use provision to read "Regardless of any license, contract, or other agreement, consumers have the right to...", and changed copyright back to an INDUSTRIAL regulation prohibiting PROFITING from someone else's work, I'd have no trouble at all with strict enforcement of such copyrights.
Back to the subject at hand, though-the reason software shouldn't be patentable IS because it's properly covered by copyright. Machines and the like are not (and cannot) be covered by copyright, so they are under the patent system instead. Business methods and the like should be covered by neither.
That -can- be, if they're used mainly for archival purposes, but CD's have the advantage that they do not degrade during use. Since a record is, of course, touched by the needle during playback, it necessarily suffers some wear each time it is played. A frequently-used record won't last 100 years. (Records do have the advantage, however, especially with sound recordings, that this "gradual" wear will tend to produce a correspondingly gradual decrease in sound quality, rather than a sudden and total failure.)
From TFA:
Also, more importantly, would the applications and software those users need be available and run on these machines? And would they not cost more than the hardware itself and thus blow the benefits of cheaper hardware out of the water? Asked about this, Hilf would only say that "this is precisely the challenge Microsoft is working with the industry to address."
In other words: "Please ignore the fact that even if we win, we lose." And I'd really like to see some DATA, on this, rather then "Oh really, it did just as well! (Course we installed full-blown Linux setups, and likely minimal Win installations...)". What did they use? GNOME? KDE? Something in the vein of a blackbox or fluxbox? Or no GUI at all? The ability to choose heavy, light, or no GUI is one of Linux's main strengths in itself, and one Win currently cannot match.