"Well, actually, if Immersion is some mom-and-pop that's just trying to make a living and Sony really is infringing on some patent that isn't some B.S. patent, but rather something that really is a non-obvious original invention, then that really sucks, and Sony should pay licensing fees."
I don't follow why you think one set of laws should apply, or another, depending on the ownership structure of the company with the patent.
I share your contempt for patent protection applied to trivial inventions, but even then, I don't see how it takes away anyone's right to due process, or why it does not apply to everyone equally.
A much more realistic view on this story is that Groklaw has discovered that the service they provide is not solely of use to the opponents of SCO.
Either they should be more careful, for example, not posting these neutral documents, or else they should accept their journalistic role as being one of impartiality. If they contained language that was critical of SCO, instead of merely being verbatim transcripts of the hearings, there would never be a problem with SCO using the documents unmodified. Doesn't the PDF format offer some kind of rudimentary DRM?
"Most of the filings are PDFs which can be pulled off of PACER. Some filings are paper only. Frank Sorenson went down to the courtroom and paid for copies which he scanned and put up on the web as images stuffed in PDFs -- not OCRed."
Did he perform this humble service for the benefit of humanity, or for the benefit of all except one specific party to the case being discussed?
It is regrettable that his work has ended up being of service to SCO themselves, but then, not one word in these transcripts is favorable to SCO, so why on Earth would they want to present these documents?
If he wanted to protect against this kind of use, he should have included remarks in the documents of an editorial nature. Perhaps, harshly critical of SCO, so that they would never have simply used the documents in an unmodified form.
I really don't think it would be an easy case to argue to a judge, that you hold a copyright to a version of a transcript, which can be construed to solely exclude a party to that case which the transcript pertains to, from use or even from distribution.
>Since PJ and the groklaw volunteers spent >considerable effort and cash to make these documents > available, might SCOXE not be liable for theft of >services?
What's the doctrine that allows them to make these documents available for YOUR use, but specifically excludes them from being used by A PARTY TO THE TRIAL of which these are transcripts?
It's really not the kind of fight you'd want to persue, if you are choosing your fights.
Another thing I can't understand. To the WORD, these court documents are the most embarrassing thing for SCO that I can imagine.
Seems like, far from wanting to publicize these documents, they'd want to suppress them as much as possible. No reasonable person reads this stuff and concludes that SCO's case has merit.
But it would be a tough row to hoe, to make the claim that her documents containing the transcripts of a court case, do not confer a certain amount of rights for use, to a PARTY to that court case.
SCO hangs itself with its own rope, but a legal challenge to this material might backfire. Take it in more abstract terms, and take the bias against SCO out of the picture. Then try to make the case that you would have to argue *in court* that the party to the case should be punished to any significant degree for using the copies of the transcripts to their case that you have been kind enough to publish on the web.
Yes, there is an argument that the formatted and published work is under copyright even if the original material is not, but that argument is far from one that would guarantee "whopping bankrupting fines" against SCO.
Don't be surprised if this turns into a court order against GL to stop publishing this material.
If they have posted court documents, with content unchanged after the transcript, how can the Groklaw people be claiming to be the source? Or has Groklaw altered the court documents, in which case, why would anyone want to present GL's version as authoritative?
Reading the GL comments, I see the argument is about formatting.
I don't necessarily buy the notion that a document of public record such as a court transcript, becomes your *intellectual* property just because you typed it in / scanned it / xeroxed it / dictated it, or any such thing. Physical property, yes, but I don't see how it bestows any copyright to you, since there should be *NO* concept of *copyright* on this material in the first place; it is a historical record of a public hearing, not a creative work of art.
What PJ did, to obtain and transcribe these documents, she did as a service to the country, including the parties to the trial, not as a service to Groklaw.
"Say what? Do you have to cite the library from which you checked out a book you cite, too?"
You are expected to provide enough information for later researchers to corroborate your work. A publication date and author will generally suffice. In the case of journal articles, you usually give the volume of the journal, and these will be cross-referenced when the journals are aggregated.
"Of course there are limitations, but blocking traffic for any reason is not one of them."
You just dodged my question.
"We're blocking your traffic, since we can do so for any reason." The reason is that you're a Jew. Is this okay?
If the *reason* for taking action abridges someone's rights, it's not justified, and there is no contract that can justify certain classes of abridgement of rights.
This could be a case of censorship. There is no authority that can be granted in a contract, that can justify, for example, a first amendment violation by an instrument of the state, such as a network administrator of a state university.
"... I would have watched it all the time. Being so busy, the problem I have with new television shows is that by the time I figure out the regular schedule (and by chance actually have free time during airing), they are playing repeats again."
I'd insist on hearing it from a judge. The lawyer can knock on my door all day, but unless he is accompanied by Marshals, nothing he says to me has any more weight than, say, the Jehova's Witness knocking at my door.
Certified mail is a good start to getting something to me that I will actually put in a file folder instead of the trash bin, but I still won't regard it as having any authority over me.
If you want to abridge someone's rights or compel their behavior, you need a court order, or you need to persuade them somehow. Persuasion probably needs to start with a polite request. Threats won't do a damn thing.
>Yet, their attitude was 100% "fuck you, fuck you >entirely, we will eat you alive, we don't give a >shit"
Seeing as they didn't even bother to obtain a court order, which would help them see their wishes fulfilled, I don't see where you got your 100% figure.
A "C&D Letter" is not the same thing as, say, a temporary restraining order.
There's a world of difference between a request (however impolite) from an individual, and an instrument signed by a judge.
When you comply with an order like this, you are taking the law into your own hands, in a sense, when you should insist that they take you to court. If they think they have enough of a case that the first hearing comes about, at least you get the chance to state your case, and if you are required to take action then, at least it will be on the order of someone authorized to make such orders. Anybody can write a C&D letter, and ask for anything at all, that doesn't make it the law, and it does not have any authority over you.
Don't surrender your right to due process of law just because some jerk got paid to sign a letter.
I don't understand why anyone would comply with an "order" that was not issued by a judge.
Any clown can write a "Cease and Desist" letter, or make any other request they'd like to make, but until it bears the signature of a judge, it has no more authority than any other request.
Don't cave in to every asinine request some lawyer makes. Lawyers are NOT agents of the state whose every whim must be followed wihout question by every subject of the state, but it certainly sounds like people believe that, every time some C&D letter is thrown at anyone's feet.
"I knew there was something fishy when there was a BBC news blurb on the "leak" a few days after the/. story. "
I could not understand how anybody's BS filter let this through in the first place. Everything about this story stunk like an intentional marketing ploy from the start.
>Kudos to France for working so hard to "cut down on >crime"!
If your prisons and justice system can generate a net profit, your government has a motivation to *increase* crime, particularly, to increase the number of intelligent, non-violent criminals.
Prisons don't actually have to create revenue to create a net profit, they only have to create jobs (for the employees, not the inmates.) Inmate labor is just gravy.
"I know it's not QUITE the same as extortion, as the person with the vulnerability knowledge isn't seeking financial gain."
Why is financial gain a necessary ingredient of extortion? Any "valuable consideration" should suffice. If commerce can use the barter system, why can't crime?
"Reverse engineering is legal in Europe, and is a protected right under European law. (91/250/EEC [eu.int], article 6.)"
For now. But European law seems to be on a trend away from sanity, while people behave as if European law will always remain sane, and as if the USA has a monopoly on corruption and ignorance and insanity in government.
One of the big strengths that keeps me a WF customer is the way they have fully embraced the online aspect of banking. The ATMs aren't any more a risk than the (excellent) online services the bank provide.
They are telling Diebold to cram it in their asses, and making a solution that THEY control. This is a good thing.
There are political arguments against Windows, but an embedded windows system that is subjected to good QA and security auditing isn't really going to be any easier to hack than a closed system like the other banks use.
WF has put together a pretty good user interface for their ATMs. So they used Windows instead of VXWorks or QNX.
I'm with you on the political aspect, but I can't make myself automatically assume that a system built on windows is naturally insecure. I certainly cannot make an argument that I'd be comfortable taking to a bank board of directors, or even one that makes a sufficient case for me changing banks. I *like* the new ATMs, I have no irrational fear of SSL-enabled transport protocols, and the few people I know on the inside of Wells Fargo assure me that it's a great place to work, has clueful management that isn't out of touch with IT, etc.
>Have you tried another brand burner, just for kicks?
Just a Samsung DVD burner and the same Yamaha 3200 24x CDRW that I've been using forever. Each of these has different failures. I'm thinking about getting a Plextor, and I probably will if someone here doesn't tell me that's a mistake now.
"What are you doing on the framebuffer that requires the accelerated driver, and what ancient burning software are you using that doesn't handle 2.6"
Well, I have no problem at all except for kernel drivers themselves. I don't use much software that cares what version of the kernel I run, except for VMWare (the vmmon and vmnet drivers are very sensitive to the kernel interfaces), MATLAB (not a kernel issue, but it is very senstive to libc version), and ALSA/Jack (one thing that's MUCH better for me in 2.6). Also, I have had no luck installing Oracle9i anywhere, but I think this is also related to libc and jre compatability issues, not kernel changes.
Asking why I don't just not use the radeonfb driver is a red herring, my argument is that it should never have been tagged in as stable, particularly after I reported problems with it at every 2.6 release. You could "solve" any problem by simply suggesting "don't use that feature" but that's not really a solution to anything.
Also, the vesafb gives very slow scrolling for me. With the vesafb, I cannot use fbset to change modes, nor can I have different modes per vc.
The linux console framebuffer is one of the very few UI features of linux that cannot be duplicated exactly on Windows. I know I can have rxvt's or whatever, but it's not the same, doesn't look the same, doesn't behave the same, etc.
I like the framebuffer console so much, I consider it to be one of the most important features of linux.
VesaFB has worked when the radeon driver didn't, so I'll grant that. But it's beside the point. A broken driver should never have been in a production kernel config as stable, not experimental.
I understand the problem is with DRI and the fact that ATI don't want to contribute to the effort -- this matters to me as a linux advocate, but as a linux USER, I don't care for excuses.
"Are you running strange hardware or binary-only drivers or something?"
I have had severe problems with consoles on the Radeon framebuffer device (fixed since 2.6.10), and also serious trouble with IDE CD writers (which is partly a kernel issue, partly client software).
In 2.6.11, I can get a CD writer to work if I put it as Master as/dev/hdc, on it's own ide bus with no hdd. The same configuration is never a problem under 2.4.
Other than these specific issues, 2.6 has not been a problem for me, but both these issues have been showstoppers. (The console on the framebuffer on a Radeon card is an absolute requirement of mine, as is CD writing to an ATAPI device.)
Slashdot Mirror
"Well, actually, if Immersion is some mom-and-pop that's just trying to make a living and Sony really is infringing on some patent that isn't some B.S. patent, but rather something that really is a non-obvious original invention, then that really sucks, and Sony should pay licensing fees."
I don't follow why you think one set of laws should apply, or another, depending on the ownership structure of the company with the patent.
I share your contempt for patent protection applied to trivial inventions, but even then, I don't see how it takes away anyone's right to due process, or why it does not apply to everyone equally.
A much more realistic view on this story is that Groklaw has discovered that the service they provide is not solely of use to the opponents of SCO.
Either they should be more careful, for example, not posting these neutral documents, or else they should accept their journalistic role as being one of impartiality. If they contained language that was critical of SCO, instead of merely being verbatim transcripts of the hearings, there would never be a problem with SCO using the documents unmodified. Doesn't the PDF format offer some kind of rudimentary DRM?
Groklaw is anything but a nonbiased source.
"Most of the filings are PDFs which can be pulled off of PACER. Some filings are paper only. Frank Sorenson went down to the courtroom and paid for copies which he scanned and put up on the web as images stuffed in PDFs -- not OCRed."
Did he perform this humble service for the benefit of humanity, or for the benefit of all except one specific party to the case being discussed?
It is regrettable that his work has ended up being of service to SCO themselves, but then, not one word in these transcripts is favorable to SCO, so why on Earth would they want to present these documents?
If he wanted to protect against this kind of use, he should have included remarks in the documents of an editorial nature. Perhaps, harshly critical of SCO, so that they would never have simply used the documents in an unmodified form.
I really don't think it would be an easy case to argue to a judge, that you hold a copyright to a version of a transcript, which can be construed to solely exclude a party to that case which the transcript pertains to, from use or even from distribution.
>Since PJ and the groklaw volunteers spent
>considerable effort and cash to make these documents
> available, might SCOXE not be liable for theft of
>services?
What's the doctrine that allows them to make these documents available for YOUR use, but specifically excludes them from being used by A PARTY TO THE TRIAL of which these are transcripts?
It's really not the kind of fight you'd want to persue, if you are choosing your fights.
Another thing I can't understand. To the WORD, these court documents are the most embarrassing thing for SCO that I can imagine.
Seems like, far from wanting to publicize these documents, they'd want to suppress them as much as possible. No reasonable person reads this stuff and concludes that SCO's case has merit.
But it would be a tough row to hoe, to make the claim that her documents containing the transcripts of a court case, do not confer a certain amount of rights for use, to a PARTY to that court case.
SCO hangs itself with its own rope, but a legal challenge to this material might backfire. Take it in more abstract terms, and take the bias against SCO out of the picture. Then try to make the case that you would have to argue *in court* that the party to the case should be punished to any significant degree for using the copies of the transcripts to their case that you have been kind enough to publish on the web.
Yes, there is an argument that the formatted and published work is under copyright even if the original material is not, but that argument is far from one that would guarantee "whopping bankrupting fines" against SCO.
Don't be surprised if this turns into a court order against GL to stop publishing this material.
If they have posted court documents, with content unchanged after the transcript, how can the Groklaw people be claiming to be the source? Or has Groklaw altered the court documents, in which case, why would anyone want to present GL's version as authoritative?
Reading the GL comments, I see the argument is about formatting.
I don't necessarily buy the notion that a document of public record such as a court transcript, becomes your *intellectual* property just because you typed it in / scanned it / xeroxed it / dictated it, or any such thing. Physical property, yes, but I don't see how it bestows any copyright to you, since there should be *NO* concept of *copyright* on this material in the first place; it is a historical record of a public hearing, not a creative work of art.
What PJ did, to obtain and transcribe these documents, she did as a service to the country, including the parties to the trial, not as a service to Groklaw.
"Say what? Do you have to cite the library from which you checked out a book you cite, too?"
You are expected to provide enough information for later researchers to corroborate your work. A publication date and author will generally suffice. In the case of journal articles, you usually give the volume of the journal, and these will be cross-referenced when the journals are aggregated.
"Of course there are limitations, but blocking traffic for any reason is not one of them."
You just dodged my question.
"We're blocking your traffic, since we can do so for any reason." The reason is that you're a Jew.
Is this okay?
If the *reason* for taking action abridges someone's rights, it's not justified, and there is no contract that can justify certain classes of abridgement of rights.
This could be a case of censorship. There is no authority that can be granted in a contract, that can justify, for example, a first amendment violation by an instrument of the state, such as a network administrator of a state university.
An emergency responder had another party dispose of needles in a coke bottle?
"That would be your best bet, because legally, they can do whatever they want with their network for any reason what-so-ever"
So it would be perfectly okay and completely legal, for them to decide that only non-jews may use the network?
Or do you think there might actually be some limitations on their authority to "do whatever they want with their network?"
> Write something original
Create something that *represents the University*, in some context of it being University-sponsored research.
> Publish it via bittorrent.
First make sure that this mode of publishing was demanded and authorized by the head of the department for whom the research was conducted.
> Sue them over free speech restriction.
Make the left hand and the right hand, arm-wrestle.
"... I would have watched it all the time. Being so busy, the problem I have with new television shows is that by the time I figure out the regular schedule (and by chance actually have free time during airing), they are playing repeats again."
You've never seen what Tivo could do for you?
> I'd wait for the lawyer to knock on my door
I'd insist on hearing it from a judge. The lawyer can knock on my door all day, but unless he is accompanied by Marshals, nothing he says to me has any more weight than, say, the Jehova's Witness knocking at my door.
Certified mail is a good start to getting something to me that I will actually put in a file folder instead of the trash bin, but I still won't regard it as having any authority over me.
If you want to abridge someone's rights or compel their behavior, you need a court order, or you need to persuade them somehow. Persuasion probably needs to start with a polite request. Threats won't do a damn thing.
>Yet, their attitude was 100% "fuck you, fuck you
>entirely, we will eat you alive, we don't give a
>shit"
Seeing as they didn't even bother to obtain a court order, which would help them see their wishes fulfilled, I don't see where you got your 100% figure.
A "C&D Letter" is not the same thing as, say, a temporary restraining order.
There's a world of difference between a request (however impolite) from an individual, and an instrument signed by a judge.
When you comply with an order like this, you are taking the law into your own hands, in a sense, when you should insist that they take you to court. If they think they have enough of a case that the first hearing comes about, at least you get the chance to state your case, and if you are required to take action then, at least it will be on the order of someone authorized to make such orders. Anybody can write a C&D letter, and ask for anything at all, that doesn't make it the law, and it does not have any authority over you.
Don't surrender your right to due process of law just because some jerk got paid to sign a letter.
I don't understand why anyone would comply with an "order" that was not issued by a judge.
Any clown can write a "Cease and Desist" letter, or make any other request they'd like to make, but until it bears the signature of a judge, it has no more authority than any other request.
Don't cave in to every asinine request some lawyer makes. Lawyers are NOT agents of the state whose every whim must be followed wihout question by every subject of the state, but it certainly sounds like people believe that, every time some C&D letter is thrown at anyone's feet.
"As others have noted, if you read the card holder agreement, the signature on the card accepts the terms of the that agreement."
So why can they change the terms without sending me a new card to sign?
>I tried writing "SEE IDENTIFICATION" in large
>letters with a black Sharpie.
You don't realize the stupidity you're dealing with.
They then look at your signature on the receipt, which looks nothing like (literally) "SEE IDENTIFICATION", and refuse to accept it...
I had a customer who was completely illiterate and signed checks with an "X". Bank once returned a check because the X's didn't match.
"I knew there was something fishy when there was a BBC news blurb on the "leak" a few days after the
I could not understand how anybody's BS filter let this through in the first place. Everything about this story stunk like an intentional marketing ploy from the start.
"SCO sent out a precedent, a company with massive software patents"
Kindly list the patents in SCO's portfolio.
>Kudos to France for working so hard to "cut down on
>crime"!
If your prisons and justice system can generate a net profit, your government has a motivation to *increase* crime, particularly, to increase the number of intelligent, non-violent criminals.
Prisons don't actually have to create revenue to create a net profit, they only have to create jobs (for the employees, not the inmates.) Inmate labor is just gravy.
"I know it's not QUITE the same as extortion, as the person with the vulnerability knowledge isn't seeking financial gain."
Why is financial gain a necessary ingredient of extortion? Any "valuable consideration" should suffice. If commerce can use the barter system, why can't crime?
"Reverse engineering is legal in Europe, and is a protected right under European law. (91/250/EEC [eu.int], article 6.)"
For now. But European law seems to be on a trend away from sanity, while people behave as if European law will always remain sane, and as if the USA has a monopoly on corruption and ignorance and insanity in government.
> but I'm (still) a Wells Fargo customer!
One of the big strengths that keeps me a WF customer is the way they have fully embraced the online aspect of banking. The ATMs aren't any more a risk than the (excellent) online services the bank provide.
They are telling Diebold to cram it in their asses, and making a solution that THEY control. This is a good thing.
There are political arguments against Windows, but an embedded windows system that is subjected to good QA and security auditing isn't really going to be any easier to hack than a closed system like the other banks use.
WF has put together a pretty good user interface for their ATMs. So they used Windows instead of VXWorks or QNX.
I'm with you on the political aspect, but I can't make myself automatically assume that a system built on windows is naturally insecure. I certainly cannot make an argument that I'd be comfortable taking to a bank board of directors, or even one that makes a sufficient case for me changing banks. I *like* the new ATMs, I have no irrational fear of SSL-enabled transport protocols, and the few people I know on the inside of Wells Fargo assure me that it's a great place to work, has clueful management that isn't out of touch with IT, etc.
I'll take WF over Bank One *ANY* *DAY*.
>Have you tried another brand burner, just for kicks?
Just a Samsung DVD burner and the same Yamaha 3200 24x CDRW that I've been using forever. Each of these has different failures. I'm thinking about getting a Plextor, and I probably will if someone here doesn't tell me that's a mistake now.
"What are you doing on the framebuffer that requires the accelerated driver, and what ancient burning software are you using that doesn't handle 2.6"
Well, I have no problem at all except for kernel drivers themselves. I don't use much software that cares what version of the kernel I run, except for VMWare (the vmmon and vmnet drivers are very sensitive to the kernel interfaces), MATLAB (not a kernel issue, but it is very senstive to libc version), and ALSA/Jack (one thing that's MUCH better for me in 2.6). Also, I have had no luck installing Oracle9i anywhere, but I think this is also related to libc and jre compatability issues, not kernel changes.
Asking why I don't just not use the radeonfb driver is a red herring, my argument is that it should never have been tagged in as stable, particularly after I reported problems with it at every 2.6 release. You could "solve" any problem by simply suggesting "don't use that feature" but that's not really a solution to anything.
Also, the vesafb gives very slow scrolling for me. With the vesafb, I cannot use fbset to change modes, nor can I have different modes per vc.
The linux console framebuffer is one of the very few UI features of linux that cannot be duplicated exactly on Windows. I know I can have rxvt's or whatever, but it's not the same, doesn't look the same, doesn't behave the same, etc.
I like the framebuffer console so much, I consider it to be one of the most important features of linux.
VesaFB has worked when the radeon driver didn't, so I'll grant that. But it's beside the point. A broken driver should never have been in a production kernel config as stable, not experimental.
I understand the problem is with DRI and the fact that ATI don't want to contribute to the effort -- this matters to me as a linux advocate, but as a linux USER, I don't care for excuses.
"Are you running strange hardware or binary-only drivers or something?"
I have had severe problems with consoles on the Radeon framebuffer device (fixed since 2.6.10),
and also serious trouble with IDE CD writers (which is partly a kernel issue, partly client software).
In 2.6.11, I can get a CD writer to work if I put it as Master as
Other than these specific issues, 2.6 has not been a problem for me, but both these issues have been showstoppers. (The console on the framebuffer on a Radeon card is an absolute requirement of mine, as is CD writing to an ATAPI device.)