Anyone in London UK can view a selection of games consoles (and, even play some of them, including classic pong) at the design museum as part of Sony's INTERACTION SPACE:
Rediscover your favourite vintage video games - from Pong and Pac-Man to Tomb Raider - by playing them in the Interaction Space on the second floor of the Design Museum. Visitors can also discover the work of the pioneering multimedia designers who are defining the images we will see on our computer and TV screens in the future in the virtual galleries of the Digital Design Museum. Or they can learn more about the designers, architects and technologies featured at the museum in Design at the Design Museum, our online research archive.
It would be fantastic if these sorts of consoles could go to a museum to support future exhibitions of this kind.
Lots of commentary on the ethics of the university being able to revoke a past PhD even though it was not related to the guys actions.
Note that in some other fields this can happen, not for a PhD, but for other professional qualifications: e.g. in the UK, a Chartered Engineer, or a Chartered Patent/Trademark Attorney: you need to do work and meet exams and standards to obtain these qualifications, but if you act unethically or otherwise in the future, you could have these qualifications stripped.
If you read the articles, the economist takes a balanced approach, it clearly lauds the open model in some places, but it does acknowledge that the model doesn't work in other places.
There's so much "crap" out there about "bluetooth is dead, long live 802.11", or "everything will be 802.11" or "elvis works at my local 711".
They are complimentary, remember that Bluetooth was designed _specifically_ as (a) single chip solution, (b) low power, low cost, low size, (c) a short range point to point data replacement.
Until I see true single-chip 802.11 devices that meet these criteria, there's still a space for Bluetooth.
After all, you don't buy "dishwasher power" for your "washing machine".
"As soon as enough people have broadband you can be damn sure ISP's will start introducing draconian bandwidth limits."
You've got that wrong: it's not about the number of people that have broadband, it's about the utilisation of broadband.
For example, there are a lot of 56K dialup users that are happen for occasional web surfing and fetching email. When these people move up to broadband, they'll make some use of additional services, but probably not a great deal.
On the other hand, someone like me as a techie consumes bandwidth like crazy: I'm on a 20:1 contention ratio, and I'd guess that I make up for the "above average" part of that.
However, once viable webcasting to "joe average" becomes available, then the ISP's start to feel the crunch time, because their contention ratio economies all fall apart. Fortunately (a) they should plan for this, (b) technologies such as multicast and distributive technologies should help easy things like webcasting.
Further more, some (but not draconian!) limits are needed, at least QoS: this is the big killer for VOIP at the moment, because while your PSTN call is guaranteed to complete because the phone company spends a lot of money on analysing and planning capacity, the VOIP upstarts just assume that interwork links have the capacity.
What we need is better guarantees about end to end QoS.
Nice try, but Japan has _density_ which means economics of scale, thus high bandwidth is cheap and easy to offer. I lived in Australia for a while, DSL was expensive and restricted: now I live in London UK, DSL is relatively affordable, but speeds are not great (e.g. max 2mbps).
However, it's nice for us techies to talk about high speeds, but for the "web browsing masses", these speeds are reasonably acceptable for surfing, downloading and streaming. The other "mass market" for high bandwidth are online gamers.
The problem as I see it at the moment, is that there are no mass market killer application for high bandwidth yet - sure, iTunes, music downloads and games, but 2-5Mbps speeds are decent for that. You can talk about ISO and P2P sharing, but that's largely restricted to techies as well.
It won't be until "webcasting" offers us something interesting that sub 2-5mbps speeds will begin to look really poor. Websurfing has killed off 56k from being a useful access rate, and it will take Webcasting to kill off sub 2-5mbps.
I already watch BBS news and other information via. broadband rather than turning on the TV. As soon as BBC and other webcasters offer decent content, and the QoS is there, then (a) sub 2-5mbps rates will look poor, (b) ISP's will start to have problems with the "50:1" contention ratio they offer, (c) VOIP will be a reality at the moment.
Your 24Mb/s sounds nice, but it reminds me of Japan's 3G: the economist regularly reports that for all of the high bandwidth it offers, downloading games and tunes are about all it gets used for. In other words, speaking as an engineer, this is bad economics: design and maintain all of the high speed gear and bwidth, but offer no useful content or utility for it.
I'm sure it will come along soon: call it the "disruptive gap": the bandwidth is there, it's calling out for commercial operators to fill the space.
"They're not going to get some old lady to change her pots phone for some fancy IP phone"
Did you comprehend the article? This is more about their internal network, rather than the customer equipment.
They will convert their entire internal network into VOIP, so even if you have an old analog POTS line, your calls will be VOIP'd between exchanges.
Naturally, once they have a native internal VOIP network, then they're in a better position to offer interesting VOIP services directly to the customer. But a vast majority of customers will still be using analog POTS.
It's hardly surprising: if they don't do this then they will fall behind in offering the kinds of innovative services that upstart VOIP vendors can offer. It also makes for better service integration and interoperation with future 4G technologies, etc.
"The constitution is supposed to be vague - it deals with a lot of things!"
And the Broadcast Treaty tries to "fit into" over _a hundred_ different countries who already have disparate intellectual property laws and systems (even though there has been some harmonisation), even though "[t]his is a specific treaty, that deals with a specific issue".
Read Berne, Paris, Washington, TRIPS, etc (do you know what I'm referring to?) to see that wide scale harmonisation is always slightly imprecise.
Has anyone here had experience with trying to build an API to "neatly" adapt several dozen legacy API's ? You'll find that the result is hardly as precise as you'd like.
- investigate the use cases and # of use of different OS's in various market segments; - investigate trends/decline/fall over the past couple of years, etc;
Otherwise, this is all just wanking around based upon individual data points that are interesting in themselves, but are absolutely useless in conveying a broader picture.
Idiot. The US constitution is just as vague: and if you look at most other international treaties you find it to be similar - such treaties always have to leave some leeway to accomodate the specific circumstances of national states.
The purpose of treaties is to get widescale buy in, yet not to make the details so inflexible that it causes members too much pain upon implementation.
(and I'm not saying the Broadcast Treaty is a good one, I'm trying to impart some education on the nature of treaties, and whether or not you like that they are done this way, the fact is that they largely are)
The babbage machines were architecturally similar to modern computers: he implemented ALU, CPU, memory banks, registers, central and secondary memory, etc. It seems quite clear to me (from reading academic papers on the topic, several years ago now) that Babbage's designs were the precursor to modern machines.
The problem is splitting the hairs:
- mechanical or electromechanical? - generally programmable, or fixed programmble? - architecturally modern, or not? - stored program, or not?
and so on. This is obviously not a proper and complete list, but indicates the direction.
This means that Bose and Bang & Olufson now have Apple as a competitor, since clearly Apple is moving into the home-media-entertainment style arena. If you compare the stylishness and all other features of these companies, you'll find a lot of similarities.
Now, if they would undertake a joint venture to leverage Apples computing + iTunes + networking, woth Bones/B&O's Televisions, Sound systems, and so on, we'd have some fantastic interoperable home kit.
That howstuffworks article (http://money.howstuffworks.com/counterfeit.htm) on counterfeiting is US centric: in the US you have poor banknotes that have not evolved with the time. I suggest looking at modern EU (and Australia) banknotes that are highly sophisticated. Especially since this article is about banks in the EU.
"would they think to check all the bills in a stack of seven handed to them for a $130 order?"
They should, otherwise they don't deserve to be in business. That sort of behaviour lets anyone (including the professionals) get away with passing bad notes. As we know, the professionals can always work around joe-average style counter measures.
Anyone in business who is a trader has to employ a higher threshold of verification: and many do, such as magic marker pens. These are perfect examples: the markers are cheap and respond to chemicals in the note. If someone is able to produce notes with the right chemicals to defeat the marker, then they are going to find working around software/hardware countermeasures to be just as easy.
Thus, all of this embedded technology actually adds nothing to what's already out there.
The only people who I see getting diddled by joe average counterfeiting are (a) storekeepers and shops who aren't doing anything as per the above (and magic marker pens are cheap... this is no excuse), or (b) average consumers handling cash who get fooled, who don't have access to any tools such as pens.
But addressing (b) using software countermeasures is useless, because (b) is better solved with holograms and other items on notes that _are_ actually very hard to defeat, and are easy to verify as a result of educational PR by the banks.
Like I said before: more studies and data are needed, not this bank lobbying for their own benefit that seems to push unneeded effort onto software/hardware developers.
This is useless. Banknotes do, and should, have security markers on them that cannot be produced by normal software tools anyway (I am thinking of markers that have tactile feel, holograms, etc). Thus, you need advanced techniques to forge these: and anyone capable of such advanced techniques is going to be able to work around any of these standard software embedded countermeasures.
All these countermeasures are doing is addressing joe average who uses a scanner, photoshop and a printer to make poor forgeries: exactly the type of forgeries that are picked up easily.
Further: I'd like to hear more detailed assessment of forgery rates, nature of how forgeries are constructed and so on, to determine whether the cost of all of this is really justified.
Sorry to hear if you're on a dynamic IP address: be prepared for intermittent connectivity to peers in said networks running this technology.
I don't think this is a good solution, anyway. The better solution is for ISP's to use SNORT or something else to real-time detect _outgoing_ viruses and worms from their own customers, and in response, send email to the customer warning them.
This has a number of benefits: i.e. it actively works towards the source of the problem, not just "blocking" the problem out.
I work with IPR daily, and you are wrong. C&D letters are still protected by copyright like any other letters. The few examples you found doesn't make it right or justify your argument: I can find plenty of copyright infringements on the internet too - in some cases the owners know but don't care, it's not worth their while for time or PR reasons.
"There are certain documents where the copyright won't apply - such as C&D letters. If you try to launch a lawsuit because another person breached copyright by redistributing it, then the defendant can easily claim that it would be moot since it would most likely be entered as evidence for a public record."
Not true, it doesn't necessarily follow that a C&D letter means a court case: many matters are resolved prior to court, and often in these cases the parties want to keep the matter confidential for commercial reasons. These letters are no different to any other business letter.
Now, if you _were_ in pre-trial discovery, then it's probably a different matter. And in fact, in these cases, it's potentially more dangerous to release the material until after the trial has ended because of the possibility of prejudicing the action.
I don't know this guy's product in detail, but I quickly looked at the website, and it seems that he shouldn't be aiming for street-customers - I think he should be pitching to hardware vendors who want to bundle the software in with their hardware, but don't want to develop/manage it in house.
"Think of the awards for McDonalds coffee 'users;' people who eat glass and complain there was no sticker saying not to."
You should read these cases: in particular, the McDonalds Coffee Case, the store had been warned multiple times as a result of scalding, and the coffee temperature was well over "safe" and normal industry levels - thus the suit was a good one, not the bogus style law suits you usually think of.
Most of the commentary has ignored a few important points:
(a) if there were ever legal action over an email (say, for example, that you described something important in the email, and the person used it elsewhere), the fact that you have a disclaimer makes it _stronger_ evidence in the court, that would make damages and remedies much easier: the defendent would not be able to claim "d'oh, I did not know" or argue some other implied license, etc. Often the disclaimer is just explictly stating what is already implicit: because what's implicit to me is not always considered that by you: which is why we have written contracts to make all the details clear.
(b) on the issue of confidentiality: it _is_ true that there is no confidentiality in unsolicited messages, thus the "disclosure" disclaimer is junk, _however_ there is always copyright in your email, so while the recipient may be able to generally disclose what they obtained, that may not disclose the _actual detail_ of it without violating your copyright.
On point (b) is a good example: a lawyer sends you an unsolicited C&D with a disclaimer: you are actually free to run around and tell people about what happened, but if you actually _reproduce_ the entire C&D itself verbatim, you would probably be violating the copyright in the letter.
Personally, I use disclaimers: because frankly some people are quite free and easy with forwarding emails off to other people when I am addressing a specific question to them, not to a general audience. Of course, I don't write anything that would offend other people, but in some cases, material has been forwarded out of context. There's really not much I can do, but if there ever _was_ a nasty situation, then at least I know that I've bought myself a _little_ insurance with some explicit disclaimer.
I admire the effort, but these are badly formed and "loaded" questions, exactly the kind that politicians prefer to avoid, thus the FFII is not making it easy for politicians to give fair answers (I've dealt with MP's and MEP's, and to be honest, mine have been pretty decent - I can't speak for others: they _like_ to see that constituents are actively interested in issues and actively using them to work those issues - what they _don't_ like are shifty attempts to work them over).
For example, the following takes the issue of "program claims" and rests it on a broader concept of "freedom of publication":
"Will you vote for freedom of publication (against program claims)?"
This is a fairly subjective and loaded connection, and not everyone sees it that way. It would have been better to stick to the facts and ask questions like:
"Are you aware that the directive seeks to make it allowable to claim programs on a carrier?" "Do you know that in doing this, it restricts the ability of the open software movement?" "Do you know that in doing so, it starves the european economy of a growing and innovative economic force: that of open source?"
etc
(but this is what I continue to expect from the FFII: too much "overloading" which does them disservice and makes it harder for other people [e.g. business men] to give them fair consideration)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone in London UK can view a selection of games consoles (and, even play some of them, including classic pong) at the design museum as part of Sony's INTERACTION SPACE:
Rediscover your favourite vintage video games - from Pong and Pac-Man to Tomb Raider - by playing them in the Interaction Space on the second floor of the Design Museum. Visitors can also discover the work of the pioneering multimedia designers who are defining the images we will see on our computer and TV screens in the future in the virtual galleries of the Digital Design Museum. Or they can learn more about the designers, architects and technologies featured at the museum in Design at the Design Museum, our online research archive.
It would be fantastic if these sorts of consoles could go to a museum to support future exhibitions of this kind.
Lots of commentary on the ethics of the university being able to revoke a past PhD even though it was not related to the guys actions.
Note that in some other fields this can happen, not for a PhD, but for other professional qualifications: e.g. in the UK, a Chartered Engineer, or a Chartered Patent/Trademark Attorney: you need to do work and meet exams and standards to obtain these qualifications, but if you act unethically or otherwise in the future, you could have these qualifications stripped.
If you read the articles, the economist takes a balanced approach, it clearly lauds the open model in some places, but it does acknowledge that the model doesn't work in other places.
There's so much "crap" out there about "bluetooth is dead, long live 802.11", or "everything will be 802.11" or "elvis works at my local 711".
They are complimentary, remember that Bluetooth was designed _specifically_ as (a) single chip solution, (b) low power, low cost, low size, (c) a short range point to point data replacement.
Until I see true single-chip 802.11 devices that meet these criteria, there's still a space for Bluetooth.
After all, you don't buy "dishwasher power" for your "washing machine".
"As soon as enough people have broadband you can be damn sure ISP's will start introducing draconian bandwidth limits."
You've got that wrong: it's not about the number of people that have broadband, it's about the utilisation of broadband.
For example, there are a lot of 56K dialup users that are happen for occasional web surfing and fetching email. When these people move up to broadband, they'll make some use of additional services, but probably not a great deal.
On the other hand, someone like me as a techie consumes bandwidth like crazy: I'm on a 20:1 contention ratio, and I'd guess that I make up for the "above average" part of that.
However, once viable webcasting to "joe average" becomes available, then the ISP's start to feel the crunch time, because their contention ratio economies all fall apart. Fortunately (a) they should plan for this, (b) technologies such as multicast and distributive technologies should help easy things like webcasting.
Further more, some (but not draconian!) limits are needed, at least QoS: this is the big killer for VOIP at the moment, because while your PSTN call is guaranteed to complete because the phone company spends a lot of money on analysing and planning capacity, the VOIP upstarts just assume that interwork links have the capacity.
What we need is better guarantees about end to end QoS.
Nice try, but Japan has _density_ which means economics of scale, thus high bandwidth is cheap and easy to offer. I lived in Australia for a while, DSL was expensive and restricted: now I live in London UK, DSL is relatively affordable, but speeds are not great (e.g. max 2mbps).
However, it's nice for us techies to talk about high speeds, but for the "web browsing masses", these speeds are reasonably acceptable for surfing, downloading and streaming. The other "mass market" for high bandwidth are online gamers.
The problem as I see it at the moment, is that there are no mass market killer application for high bandwidth yet - sure, iTunes, music downloads and games, but 2-5Mbps speeds are decent for that. You can talk about ISO and P2P sharing, but that's largely restricted to techies as well.
It won't be until "webcasting" offers us something interesting that sub 2-5mbps speeds will begin to look really poor. Websurfing has killed off 56k from being a useful access rate, and it will take Webcasting to kill off sub 2-5mbps.
I already watch BBS news and other information via. broadband rather than turning on the TV. As soon as BBC and other webcasters offer decent content, and the QoS is there, then (a) sub 2-5mbps rates will look poor, (b) ISP's will start to have problems with the "50:1" contention ratio they offer, (c) VOIP will be a reality at the moment.
Your 24Mb/s sounds nice, but it reminds me of Japan's 3G: the economist regularly reports that for all of the high bandwidth it offers, downloading games and tunes are about all it gets used for. In other words, speaking as an engineer, this is bad economics: design and maintain all of the high speed gear and bwidth, but offer no useful content or utility for it.
I'm sure it will come along soon: call it the "disruptive gap": the bandwidth is there, it's calling out for commercial operators to fill the space.
"They're not going to get some old lady to change her pots phone for some fancy IP phone"
Did you comprehend the article? This is more about their internal network, rather than the customer equipment.
They will convert their entire internal network into VOIP, so even if you have an old analog POTS line, your calls will be VOIP'd between exchanges.
Naturally, once they have a native internal VOIP network, then they're in a better position to offer interesting VOIP services directly to the customer. But a vast majority of customers will still be using analog POTS.
It's hardly surprising: if they don't do this then they will fall behind in offering the kinds of innovative services that upstart VOIP vendors can offer. It also makes for better service integration and interoperation with future 4G technologies, etc.
"The constitution is supposed to be vague - it deals with a lot of things!"
And the Broadcast Treaty tries to "fit into" over _a hundred_ different countries who already have disparate intellectual property laws and systems (even though there has been some harmonisation), even though "[t]his is a specific treaty, that deals with a specific issue".
Read Berne, Paris, Washington, TRIPS, etc (do you know what I'm referring to?) to see that wide scale harmonisation is always slightly imprecise.
Has anyone here had experience with trying to build an API to "neatly" adapt several dozen legacy API's ? You'll find that the result is hardly as precise as you'd like.
When you've done a proper study:
- investigate the use cases and # of use of different OS's in various market segments;
- investigate trends/decline/fall over the past couple of years, etc;
Otherwise, this is all just wanking around based upon individual data points that are interesting in themselves, but are absolutely useless in conveying a broader picture.
Idiot. The US constitution is just as vague: and if you look at most other international treaties you find it to be similar - such treaties always have to leave some leeway to accomodate the specific circumstances of national states.
The purpose of treaties is to get widescale buy in, yet not to make the details so inflexible that it causes members too much pain upon implementation.
(and I'm not saying the Broadcast Treaty is a good one, I'm trying to impart some education on the nature of treaties, and whether or not you like that they are done this way, the fact is that they largely are)
The babbage machines were architecturally similar to modern computers: he implemented ALU, CPU, memory banks, registers, central and secondary memory, etc. It seems quite clear to me (from reading academic papers on the topic, several years ago now) that Babbage's designs were the precursor to modern machines.
The problem is splitting the hairs:
- mechanical or electromechanical?
- generally programmable, or fixed programmble?
- architecturally modern, or not?
- stored program, or not?
and so on. This is obviously not a proper and complete list, but indicates the direction.
"Seriously, Apple folds innovations on top of other innovations they make."
Maybe, this product could signal they are moving into the home entertainment space, to compete with the likes of Bose and Bang & Olufsen.
It remains to be seen whether this remains a neat connectivity gizmo, or AirTunes/iTunes moves towards becoming a home media streaming product.
This means that Bose and Bang & Olufson now have Apple as a competitor, since clearly Apple is moving into the home-media-entertainment style arena. If you compare the stylishness and all other features of these companies, you'll find a lot of similarities.
Now, if they would undertake a joint venture to leverage Apples computing + iTunes + networking, woth Bones/B&O's Televisions, Sound systems, and so on, we'd have some fantastic interoperable home kit.
That howstuffworks article (http://money.howstuffworks.com/counterfeit.htm) on counterfeiting is US centric: in the US you have poor banknotes that have not evolved with the time. I suggest looking at modern EU (and Australia) banknotes that are highly sophisticated. Especially since this article is about banks in the EU.
"would they think to check all the bills in a stack of seven handed to them for a $130 order?"
They should, otherwise they don't deserve to be in business. That sort of behaviour lets anyone (including the professionals) get away with passing bad notes. As we know, the professionals can always work around joe-average style counter measures.
Anyone in business who is a trader has to employ a higher threshold of verification: and many do, such as magic marker pens. These are perfect examples: the markers are cheap and respond to chemicals in the note. If someone is able to produce notes with the right chemicals to defeat the marker, then they are going to find working around software/hardware countermeasures to be just as easy.
Thus, all of this embedded technology actually adds nothing to what's already out there.
The only people who I see getting diddled by joe average counterfeiting are (a) storekeepers and shops who aren't doing anything as per the above (and magic marker pens are cheap
But addressing (b) using software countermeasures is useless, because (b) is better solved with holograms and other items on notes that _are_ actually very hard to defeat, and are easy to verify as a result of educational PR by the banks.
Like I said before: more studies and data are needed, not this bank lobbying for their own benefit that seems to push unneeded effort onto software/hardware developers.
This is useless. Banknotes do, and should, have security markers on them that cannot be produced by normal software tools anyway (I am thinking of markers that have tactile feel, holograms, etc). Thus, you need advanced techniques to forge these: and anyone capable of such advanced techniques is going to be able to work around any of these standard software embedded countermeasures.
All these countermeasures are doing is addressing joe average who uses a scanner, photoshop and a printer to make poor forgeries: exactly the type of forgeries that are picked up easily.
Further: I'd like to hear more detailed assessment of forgery rates, nature of how forgeries are constructed and so on, to determine whether the cost of all of this is really justified.
Sorry to hear if you're on a dynamic IP address: be prepared for intermittent connectivity to peers in said networks running this technology.
I don't think this is a good solution, anyway. The better solution is for ISP's to use SNORT or something else to real-time detect _outgoing_ viruses and worms from their own customers, and in response, send email to the customer warning them.
This has a number of benefits: i.e. it actively works towards the source of the problem, not just "blocking" the problem out.
I work with IPR daily, and you are wrong. C&D letters are still protected by copyright like any other letters. The few examples you found doesn't make it right or justify your argument: I can find plenty of copyright infringements on the internet too - in some cases the owners know but don't care, it's not worth their while for time or PR reasons.
"There are certain documents where the copyright won't apply - such as C&D letters. If you try to launch a lawsuit because another person breached copyright by redistributing it, then the defendant can easily claim that it would be moot since it would most likely be entered as evidence for a public record."
Not true, it doesn't necessarily follow that a C&D letter means a court case: many matters are resolved prior to court, and often in these cases the parties want to keep the matter confidential for commercial reasons. These letters are no different to any other business letter.
Now, if you _were_ in pre-trial discovery, then it's probably a different matter. And in fact, in these cases, it's potentially more dangerous to release the material until after the trial has ended because of the possibility of prejudicing the action.
You should have added IANAL to your post.
"I mean, why should I have paid attention to the disclaimer that one time, when I was clearly expected to ignore it hundreds of other times?"
Idiot. You probably also ignore the contents on the hundreds of consumer products you buy.
I mean, just what other reason do you have to use a camcorder in a cinema?
I don't know this guy's product in detail, but I quickly looked at the website, and it seems that he shouldn't be aiming for street-customers - I think he should be pitching to hardware vendors who want to bundle the software in with their hardware, but don't want to develop/manage it in house.
"Think of the awards for McDonalds coffee 'users;' people who eat glass and complain there was no sticker saying not to."
You should read these cases: in particular, the McDonalds Coffee Case, the store had been warned multiple times as a result of scalding, and the coffee temperature was well over "safe" and normal industry levels - thus the suit was a good one, not the bogus style law suits you usually think of.
Most of the commentary has ignored a few important points:
(a) if there were ever legal action over an email (say, for example, that you described something important in the email, and the person used it elsewhere), the fact that you have a disclaimer makes it _stronger_ evidence in the court, that would make damages and remedies much easier: the defendent would not be able to claim "d'oh, I did not know" or argue some other implied license, etc. Often the disclaimer is just explictly stating what is already implicit: because what's implicit to me is not always considered that by you: which is why we have written contracts to make all the details clear.
(b) on the issue of confidentiality: it _is_ true that there is no confidentiality in unsolicited messages, thus the "disclosure" disclaimer is junk, _however_ there is always copyright in your email, so while the recipient may be able to generally disclose what they obtained, that may not disclose the _actual detail_ of it without violating your copyright.
On point (b) is a good example: a lawyer sends you an unsolicited C&D with a disclaimer: you are actually free to run around and tell people about what happened, but if you actually _reproduce_ the entire C&D itself verbatim, you would probably be violating the copyright in the letter.
Personally, I use disclaimers: because frankly some people are quite free and easy with forwarding emails off to other people when I am addressing a specific question to them, not to a general audience. Of course, I don't write anything that would offend other people, but in some cases, material has been forwarded out of context. There's really not much I can do, but if there ever _was_ a nasty situation, then at least I know that I've bought myself a _little_ insurance with some explicit disclaimer.
I admire the effort, but these are badly formed and "loaded" questions, exactly the kind that politicians prefer to avoid, thus the FFII is not making it easy for politicians to give fair answers (I've dealt with MP's and MEP's, and to be honest, mine have been pretty decent - I can't speak for others: they _like_ to see that constituents are actively interested in issues and actively using them to work those issues - what they _don't_ like are shifty attempts to work them over).
For example, the following takes the issue of "program claims" and rests it on a broader concept of "freedom of publication":
"Will you vote for freedom of publication (against program claims)?"
This is a fairly subjective and loaded connection, and not everyone sees it that way. It would have been better to stick to the facts and ask questions like:
"Are you aware that the directive seeks to make it allowable to claim programs on a carrier?"
"Do you know that in doing this, it restricts the ability of the open software movement?"
"Do you know that in doing so, it starves the european economy of a growing and innovative economic force: that of open source?"
etc
(but this is what I continue to expect from the FFII: too much "overloading" which does them disservice and makes it harder for other people [e.g. business men] to give them fair consideration)