Yes, that's kind of what I came in here to say. I'm not familiar with the 2 Live Crew Supreme Court decision mentioned in the summary, but there are multiple issues when talking about musical copyrights: the musical composition, the lyrics, and the actual recording.
Even if they change the lyrics, if they're using a derivative musical composition, I think it's a derivative work. Parody is a form of protected speech, but IIRC doing a parody isn't enough to get you off the hook for copyright infringement. There a rule like, you have to be parodying the actual copyrighted work, not just using the copyrighted work in your parody. I'm fuzzy on the details (IANAL), but I think maybe you can't use parody in a defense here unless you're actually parodying the musical composition itself.
I think Weird Al usually sought permission of some kind. I don't know if he paid royalties, but I remember there being some kind of controversy over Amish Paradise because Weird Al's management said they'd gotten permission from Coolio, and then after the fact Coolio denied it.
Also, popularity tends to impede progress. The more people are using a software or hardware product, the more you have to lose by breaking compatibility with old version or doing something zany. Meanwhile, more obscure products have a greater need to do something a little zany in order to carve out their niche.
Yeah, honestly I'm a little confused by the question. If you want to use DNS to connect to internal servers via VPN, then don't you want to route your DNS traffic through the tunnel to use internal DNS servers? And once you're doing that, how could the ISP possibly hijack that DNS traffic? It's encrypted.
Re:Sophistry To Kill First Sale Doctrine
on
Why Bother With DRM?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That, and to encourage people to re-buy the same content for different devices. Years ago, there were statements by record companies (sorry, I have no citation, but I remember it) that you should have to buy a copy of the song for your MP3 player, for your home stereo, for your mobile phone, and for your car stereo. 4 different copies. If a new device came out, you should have to buy a copy for that device too.
Obviously, the cableco's should want to scrap the extra contract and extra cost of the VOD contract and just give us all "virtual DVRs". Or perhaps they could scrap the VOD contract, and continue to charge the customers the same amount of money for their "DVR with infinite rewind", keeping the money that would have gone to the channel for VOD.
Why not drop the channel end of things? I mean, I know why. It's a money maker. But as a customer, I'd rather ditch DVR and channels and just have access to everything as VOD.
Yes, it's completely redundant because the intentions of both parties are clear, i.e. the website wants you to look at the ads and you don't want to. If they didn't want you to look at them, they wouldn't have put them on their site. If you wanted to look at them, you wouldn't have installed AdBlocker.
So what does it help to have each party again declare, "Yes, I'm sure that I want what I'm already saying I want."? In what way does this help?
I noticed that, too. I left the ads enabled. Slashdot is one of the few sites where I feel like it's worth supporting, and also where I occasionally see something interesting in the ads. Not that I like ads, but if anything, the fact that they're valuing my contributions enough to offer me the ability to block the ads makes me want to support them more. Weird, huh?
Your only constraint is that if you redistribute, you must pay the licensing fee to the original team.
I guess that's part of the problem right there: what constitutes the "original team". I assume the project can't be forked, or else you'd have to continue to pay the original team? And how much payment is warranted in that case? As you phase out the original code with your own, can you pay less? What If I just want to grab some small part of code for a totally different project, do I have to negotiate separate licenses for each piece, or do I have to pay a blanket fee as though I'm going to distribute the entire project?
Maybe "FairSoftware" has all the solutions to these questions, but it seems like these are lots of potentially complicated issues. I would guess that, the more complicated the licensing issues, the less readily people will be to contribute.
Why is it that developers think they need to move crap around or redesign so that they frustrate users? Is it some kind of sick game?
Because that's what Microsoft does. See, if you're going to release a new application or operating system and ask customers to pay for the upgrade, it helps if you offer new functionality that the customers can use. However, developing new functionality that's actually useful is difficult, and if you aren't able or aren't willing to do that, then the next best thing is to make it look very different. Ideally it will look much better, but as Windows XP's Luna theme has proven, "different" is enough.
Because if something looks different enough, human psychology makes people think that it is actually different. Also, culturally, we're disposed to think that newer+different=better. Therefore, people will pay to upgrade even if they don't stand to benefit.
So with each new version of Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office, they always change the UI even if the functionality is the same. At the very least, they apply a new skin and shuffle around which controls go where.
I'm not sure, though, what the benefit is for FOSS. It's not like people are going to pay to upgrade to the new version of OpenOffice.
My biggest problem with the rebellion against the File Menu is that every operating system except Vista and Windows 7 use it. So if you're developing a brand new Windows application, anticipating it will be running on something post-XP, then it makes sense to ditch the File Menu for something more ribbon-like.
But please, don't get to clever. If you're running on Gnome or KDE or OSX, please just stick with the conventions of that OS. If you use alien UI conventions, even if they're theoretically better, it's just going to make your application look out of place, and you're likely to confuse and annoy people.
If you're working on OpenOffice and you really really want to get clever with UI conventions, please join up with one of the DE developers or start your own DE, and come up with really clever and interesting conventions. Maybe you'll revolutionize modern computing, but leave the office suite UI alone until you do.
One, perhaps overlooked, benefit of fax is that if the paper went through the sending machine successfully, then you can be certain that the fax was received at the other end.
Funny, but that hasn't been my experience. I've had lots of experiences where I faxed something and called to confirm that the fax was received, only to find out it wasn't. Now I can't tell you why for sure. Maybe their fax machine bit it, maybe mine screwed up. Like you said, maybe I faxed the blank side of the paper or something stupid. Maybe their fax machine ran out of paper, and the fax will come out when someone adds more. Maybe it came through but got shuffled into some other papers, or put on the wrong guy's desk.
Maybe, maybe, maybe... I don't know. Emails, on the other hand, go directly to the correct person pretty much every time. There are SMTP logs showing what got transmitted to which server. It's really no less reliable than Fax.
I think you're just reading this whole thing with the wrong emphasis. The interesting part of this is not that a baby monitor can cause interference for WiFi. The interesting aspect is more that the interference many people experience in urban areas is because of devices like baby monitors.
Lots of people in big cities find trouble maintaining a stable WiFi network because the signal keeps dying even though everything is well within range. The assumption has been that it's a result of too many people having WiFi in too great a concentration, and so they're all interfering with each other. So the news here is the idea that, no, it's not other WiFi devices, it's baby monitors.
Part of the problem is, being in a city, it's not easy to tell what the problem is. If at random times of the day your WiFi cuts out, how are you to know that one of your neighbors is turning on the baby monitor? If you live out on a farm with nothing in range but your own house, you're probably going to figure it out much more quickly.
You might as well say that phone is obsolete because we have VoIP or Skype.
I would say normal phone service will be obsolete when everyone can get an Internet connection with enough bandwidth to handle VoIP. Until then, it's safe. I also think that, sooner or later, after we all have enough bandwidth to download HD video with no problem, cable TV providers and even TV "channels" may become obsolete.
But anyone who can fax something can get Internet access capable of sending/receiving emails. Fax technology in this day and age is approaching "silly".
Right, but the law is regarding distribution among the digits of possible first digits. Given that 1 is the only possible first digit in base 2, it could still be said to hold.
I don't actually know, I'm guessing here. But it seems like in base-8, you wouldn't be looking to include the digit 9 in your distribution analysis.
In those urban areas where public transportation is a no-brainer, it already exists, and people are generally happy with it.
I don't agree. There really aren't that many cities where the public transportation is sufficient to allow you to live comfortably without a car. Even in DC, the Metro is slow, doesn't really go enough places, and shuts down too early at night.
So both options are available, and people can vote with their feet.
Part of the problem is that you have decades of infrastructure investment and cultural development heading in the other direction. People are effectively brainwashed to the point where they don't understand their options.
5 or 10 years ago, people thought real-estate was a never-fail investment. Public policy at the time and cultural forces lead them to believe that was the case, and people voted with their wallets. Don't you think we'd be better off now if more people had spoken out, or maybe if some governmental body had tried to put on the breaks a little?
Part of the problem is exactly that people think you either have to have a car or live in a place like NYC, but that's a false choice. You can have relatively suburban areas where public transportation meets common transportation needs. You have to plan the development of those suburbs better than we have been doing, and you need to actually invest in public transportation more than we have been doing, but it can be accomplished.
This is like saying that fax is obsolete because we have text/handwriting recognition.
No, fax is obsolete because it's a stupid technology. Scan it to PDF and email it.
Sorry, I know it's off-topic, but I get annoyed whenever someone asks me to fax something, or wants to fax me something. You may as well be asking me to dial into your BBS system so we can share files.
I don't really have sympathy, but I understand the mess they're being confronted with. If they admit that it should be legal to break DRM in cases of fair use, then the DRM-breaking tools themselves will have to be legal. Then suddenly they have no ground to control the distribution of DRM-breaking tools, which means everyone will have them, which means DRM will be completely useless.
Now there's a good argument that those things should happen, but it's pretty clear that the MPAA doesn't want that to happen. Given that, of course they're going to argue that there's some other way for people to exercise fair use, no matter how ridiculous that argument is.
I can't help but think about the Cramer video where he talks about stock manipulation. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, skip right to around the 3 minute mark, where he's talking about calling reporters to start rumors.
Now maybe this rumor is legit, or maybe it's just someone's flight of fancy, but these days, whenever I hear completely unconfirmed and seemly baseless rumors like "Apple might buy [insert company here]," it makes me think of Jim Cramer.
I understand I'm not answering the question, and what I'm about to say isn't exactly "the truth", but more like one way to think about it: there's no way of knowing.
If your forego the Megacorp money, you might complete your product and end up making 100 times as much money. Or your whole project could fall apart in 3 months for reasons that you have no way of anticipating right now. Maybe one of your team will get hit by a car, or fall in love and move to Tokyo.
On the other hand, if you sell to Megacorp, you might end up being able to make your project into everything you envisioned and find fame and fortune through Megacorp's extensive resources. On the other hand, the corporate culture may strangle your soul to the point where you need to quit and check yourself into a mental institution.
There's no right answer here. Without knowing the particulars of what your project is and which Megacorp wants to buy it, the only real advice I can think to give is to think it over and then try to act from hope rather than fear. And keep in mind that if you're fresh out of college, you can probably afford to make a few mistakes, and still have time to start over. Instead of spending all your time afraid of making mistakes, remember that you want to make the best use of your successes and mistakes by learning as much as you can from them.
Sure, but here's the question: How does that help Microsoft's customers? It doesn't help the customer who bought a computer from Joe, because their computer now has stopped working until the customer pays more money. On the other hand, that customer isn't even Microsoft's customer, because that person hasn't bought anything from Microsoft.
As a Microsoft customer, I don't see how hurting Joe or hurting Joe's customer can help me at all. I can tell you that I've had difficulties in the past with Microsoft's activation and WGA, so I know that these things can hurt customers.
So that leaves two possibilities, as far as I can tell:
Microsoft is lying when they say WGA is meant to protect the interests of their customers.
Although I have purchased many of copies of Windows and Office through Microsoft's eOpen program, they do not consider me a "customer".
Either way, this inclines me even further to look for an alternative vendor. I don't like when vendors lie to me, and when the vendor says, "The customer is always right," I want that to be me. When I'm giving someone lots of money, I want them to be trying to keep me happy, and to be reluctant to screw me over.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that's kind of what I came in here to say. I'm not familiar with the 2 Live Crew Supreme Court decision mentioned in the summary, but there are multiple issues when talking about musical copyrights: the musical composition, the lyrics, and the actual recording.
Even if they change the lyrics, if they're using a derivative musical composition, I think it's a derivative work. Parody is a form of protected speech, but IIRC doing a parody isn't enough to get you off the hook for copyright infringement. There a rule like, you have to be parodying the actual copyrighted work, not just using the copyrighted work in your parody. I'm fuzzy on the details (IANAL), but I think maybe you can't use parody in a defense here unless you're actually parodying the musical composition itself.
I think Weird Al usually sought permission of some kind. I don't know if he paid royalties, but I remember there being some kind of controversy over Amish Paradise because Weird Al's management said they'd gotten permission from Coolio, and then after the fact Coolio denied it.
Also, popularity tends to impede progress. The more people are using a software or hardware product, the more you have to lose by breaking compatibility with old version or doing something zany. Meanwhile, more obscure products have a greater need to do something a little zany in order to carve out their niche.
It may be that the list of DNSes for the computer to check starts with ISP DNS first, then if that fails it next tries the VPN's DNS.
If the client computer is set up that way, that's the user's (or administrator's) fault. You can't really blame is ISP.
Well in that version, you always win.
Yeah, honestly I'm a little confused by the question. If you want to use DNS to connect to internal servers via VPN, then don't you want to route your DNS traffic through the tunnel to use internal DNS servers? And once you're doing that, how could the ISP possibly hijack that DNS traffic? It's encrypted.
That, and to encourage people to re-buy the same content for different devices. Years ago, there were statements by record companies (sorry, I have no citation, but I remember it) that you should have to buy a copy of the song for your MP3 player, for your home stereo, for your mobile phone, and for your car stereo. 4 different copies. If a new device came out, you should have to buy a copy for that device too.
Obviously, the cableco's should want to scrap the extra contract and extra cost of the VOD contract and just give us all "virtual DVRs". Or perhaps they could scrap the VOD contract, and continue to charge the customers the same amount of money for their "DVR with infinite rewind", keeping the money that would have gone to the channel for VOD.
Why not drop the channel end of things? I mean, I know why. It's a money maker. But as a customer, I'd rather ditch DVR and channels and just have access to everything as VOD.
Yes, it's completely redundant because the intentions of both parties are clear, i.e. the website wants you to look at the ads and you don't want to. If they didn't want you to look at them, they wouldn't have put them on their site. If you wanted to look at them, you wouldn't have installed AdBlocker.
So what does it help to have each party again declare, "Yes, I'm sure that I want what I'm already saying I want."? In what way does this help?
I noticed that, too. I left the ads enabled. Slashdot is one of the few sites where I feel like it's worth supporting, and also where I occasionally see something interesting in the ads. Not that I like ads, but if anything, the fact that they're valuing my contributions enough to offer me the ability to block the ads makes me want to support them more. Weird, huh?
And no, I'm not a plant.
Your only constraint is that if you redistribute, you must pay the licensing fee to the original team.
I guess that's part of the problem right there: what constitutes the "original team". I assume the project can't be forked, or else you'd have to continue to pay the original team? And how much payment is warranted in that case? As you phase out the original code with your own, can you pay less? What If I just want to grab some small part of code for a totally different project, do I have to negotiate separate licenses for each piece, or do I have to pay a blanket fee as though I'm going to distribute the entire project?
Maybe "FairSoftware" has all the solutions to these questions, but it seems like these are lots of potentially complicated issues. I would guess that, the more complicated the licensing issues, the less readily people will be to contribute.
Why is it that developers think they need to move crap around or redesign so that they frustrate users? Is it some kind of sick game?
Because that's what Microsoft does. See, if you're going to release a new application or operating system and ask customers to pay for the upgrade, it helps if you offer new functionality that the customers can use. However, developing new functionality that's actually useful is difficult, and if you aren't able or aren't willing to do that, then the next best thing is to make it look very different. Ideally it will look much better, but as Windows XP's Luna theme has proven, "different" is enough.
Because if something looks different enough, human psychology makes people think that it is actually different. Also, culturally, we're disposed to think that newer+different=better. Therefore, people will pay to upgrade even if they don't stand to benefit.
So with each new version of Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office, they always change the UI even if the functionality is the same. At the very least, they apply a new skin and shuffle around which controls go where.
I'm not sure, though, what the benefit is for FOSS. It's not like people are going to pay to upgrade to the new version of OpenOffice.
My biggest problem with the rebellion against the File Menu is that every operating system except Vista and Windows 7 use it. So if you're developing a brand new Windows application, anticipating it will be running on something post-XP, then it makes sense to ditch the File Menu for something more ribbon-like.
But please, don't get to clever. If you're running on Gnome or KDE or OSX, please just stick with the conventions of that OS. If you use alien UI conventions, even if they're theoretically better, it's just going to make your application look out of place, and you're likely to confuse and annoy people.
If you're working on OpenOffice and you really really want to get clever with UI conventions, please join up with one of the DE developers or start your own DE, and come up with really clever and interesting conventions. Maybe you'll revolutionize modern computing, but leave the office suite UI alone until you do.
One, perhaps overlooked, benefit of fax is that if the paper went through the sending machine successfully, then you can be certain that the fax was received at the other end.
Funny, but that hasn't been my experience. I've had lots of experiences where I faxed something and called to confirm that the fax was received, only to find out it wasn't. Now I can't tell you why for sure. Maybe their fax machine bit it, maybe mine screwed up. Like you said, maybe I faxed the blank side of the paper or something stupid. Maybe their fax machine ran out of paper, and the fax will come out when someone adds more. Maybe it came through but got shuffled into some other papers, or put on the wrong guy's desk.
Maybe, maybe, maybe... I don't know. Emails, on the other hand, go directly to the correct person pretty much every time. There are SMTP logs showing what got transmitted to which server. It's really no less reliable than Fax.
I think you're just reading this whole thing with the wrong emphasis. The interesting part of this is not that a baby monitor can cause interference for WiFi. The interesting aspect is more that the interference many people experience in urban areas is because of devices like baby monitors.
Lots of people in big cities find trouble maintaining a stable WiFi network because the signal keeps dying even though everything is well within range. The assumption has been that it's a result of too many people having WiFi in too great a concentration, and so they're all interfering with each other. So the news here is the idea that, no, it's not other WiFi devices, it's baby monitors.
Part of the problem is, being in a city, it's not easy to tell what the problem is. If at random times of the day your WiFi cuts out, how are you to know that one of your neighbors is turning on the baby monitor? If you live out on a farm with nothing in range but your own house, you're probably going to figure it out much more quickly.
You might as well say that phone is obsolete because we have VoIP or Skype.
I would say normal phone service will be obsolete when everyone can get an Internet connection with enough bandwidth to handle VoIP. Until then, it's safe. I also think that, sooner or later, after we all have enough bandwidth to download HD video with no problem, cable TV providers and even TV "channels" may become obsolete.
But anyone who can fax something can get Internet access capable of sending/receiving emails. Fax technology in this day and age is approaching "silly".
Or I suppose the digit "8" for that matter.
Right, but the law is regarding distribution among the digits of possible first digits. Given that 1 is the only possible first digit in base 2, it could still be said to hold.
I don't actually know, I'm guessing here. But it seems like in base-8, you wouldn't be looking to include the digit 9 in your distribution analysis.
In those urban areas where public transportation is a no-brainer, it already exists, and people are generally happy with it.
I don't agree. There really aren't that many cities where the public transportation is sufficient to allow you to live comfortably without a car. Even in DC, the Metro is slow, doesn't really go enough places, and shuts down too early at night.
So both options are available, and people can vote with their feet.
Part of the problem is that you have decades of infrastructure investment and cultural development heading in the other direction. People are effectively brainwashed to the point where they don't understand their options.
5 or 10 years ago, people thought real-estate was a never-fail investment. Public policy at the time and cultural forces lead them to believe that was the case, and people voted with their wallets. Don't you think we'd be better off now if more people had spoken out, or maybe if some governmental body had tried to put on the breaks a little?
Part of the problem is exactly that people think you either have to have a car or live in a place like NYC, but that's a false choice. You can have relatively suburban areas where public transportation meets common transportation needs. You have to plan the development of those suburbs better than we have been doing, and you need to actually invest in public transportation more than we have been doing, but it can be accomplished.
This is like saying that fax is obsolete because we have text/handwriting recognition.
No, fax is obsolete because it's a stupid technology. Scan it to PDF and email it.
Sorry, I know it's off-topic, but I get annoyed whenever someone asks me to fax something, or wants to fax me something. You may as well be asking me to dial into your BBS system so we can share files.
Plus, the voice on the menus speaks So. Fucking. Slowly. When. They. Tell. You. What. Time. The. Person. Who. Left. The. Message. Called.
The "visual voicemail" on the iPhone is really a pretty good solution. Phone-based menu systems suck, but there's nothing wrong with voicemail itself.
I don't really have sympathy, but I understand the mess they're being confronted with. If they admit that it should be legal to break DRM in cases of fair use, then the DRM-breaking tools themselves will have to be legal. Then suddenly they have no ground to control the distribution of DRM-breaking tools, which means everyone will have them, which means DRM will be completely useless.
Now there's a good argument that those things should happen, but it's pretty clear that the MPAA doesn't want that to happen. Given that, of course they're going to argue that there's some other way for people to exercise fair use, no matter how ridiculous that argument is.
I can't help but think about the Cramer video where he talks about stock manipulation. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, skip right to around the 3 minute mark, where he's talking about calling reporters to start rumors.
Now maybe this rumor is legit, or maybe it's just someone's flight of fancy, but these days, whenever I hear completely unconfirmed and seemly baseless rumors like "Apple might buy [insert company here]," it makes me think of Jim Cramer.
I understand I'm not answering the question, and what I'm about to say isn't exactly "the truth", but more like one way to think about it: there's no way of knowing.
If your forego the Megacorp money, you might complete your product and end up making 100 times as much money. Or your whole project could fall apart in 3 months for reasons that you have no way of anticipating right now. Maybe one of your team will get hit by a car, or fall in love and move to Tokyo.
On the other hand, if you sell to Megacorp, you might end up being able to make your project into everything you envisioned and find fame and fortune through Megacorp's extensive resources. On the other hand, the corporate culture may strangle your soul to the point where you need to quit and check yourself into a mental institution.
There's no right answer here. Without knowing the particulars of what your project is and which Megacorp wants to buy it, the only real advice I can think to give is to think it over and then try to act from hope rather than fear. And keep in mind that if you're fresh out of college, you can probably afford to make a few mistakes, and still have time to start over. Instead of spending all your time afraid of making mistakes, remember that you want to make the best use of your successes and mistakes by learning as much as you can from them.
Sure, but here's the question: How does that help Microsoft's customers? It doesn't help the customer who bought a computer from Joe, because their computer now has stopped working until the customer pays more money. On the other hand, that customer isn't even Microsoft's customer, because that person hasn't bought anything from Microsoft.
As a Microsoft customer, I don't see how hurting Joe or hurting Joe's customer can help me at all. I can tell you that I've had difficulties in the past with Microsoft's activation and WGA, so I know that these things can hurt customers.
So that leaves two possibilities, as far as I can tell:
Although I have purchased many of copies of Windows and Office through Microsoft's eOpen program, they do not consider me a "customer".
Either way, this inclines me even further to look for an alternative vendor. I don't like when vendors lie to me, and when the vendor says, "The customer is always right," I want that to be me. When I'm giving someone lots of money, I want them to be trying to keep me happy, and to be reluctant to screw me over.