Why is this marked off topic? I heard the same thing, though I'm not sure I trust the source. Can anyone here that saw the beginning of the WB broadcast confirm or deny?
Ok, perhaps this is flamebait, but I'm asking, because I think it has some relevance.
I read on the 'net that when "The WB" covered Bush's speech yesterday, there was a mic on that shouldn't have been. They claimed that they heard someone feeding lines to Bush during the first part of the speech - i.e. reading lines to Bush, Bush then repeating what he heard.
Anyone else see this? Or is it political FUD? It would explain his strangely halting delivery.
The politicians are trying to blame the free market to cover for their own problems.
Free market and de-regulation are in no way synonymous. Deregulation was an attempt to replace the government monopolized power production in CA with a free market system. An attempt that failed thanks to the machinations of several powerful energy companies which hijacked the plan and replaced the government monopoly with their own. They then went on to schedule "scheduled matinence" at peak months of consumption to drive up the wholesale price and pad their profits. Thankfully the CA Attorney General is currently investigating these alleged acts of collusion.
The private sector only constitutes a free market when there are multiple players in the industry. An industry dominated by one or two entities (as the CA wholesale electricity market is) can not operate as a free market. In those situations a deregulated market is simply less free than a regulated market. A fact that right wing ideolouges (such as the CA GOP that created this fiasco) who don't understand the term "free market" choose to ignore.
Most of you have considered NVidia to be evil for quite some time (since they decided not to give their extremely-high-quality drivers to their competitors for free (GL drivers have a lot of hardware-independent code it them!)) and more evidence is just what you want. Woohoo, rally behind 3dfx, they're saints!
If the driver quality is so good, why did nVidia have to steal GPL code to get their drivers to work? The fact is, both Matrox and 3dfx have realeased open source drivers for Linux - there's no reason to support nVidia until they do as well.
All that matters to me now is who makes the best hardware. And for me, a 3D game engine writer, that is NVidia.
I feel sorry for you, that you have no perspective of your one personal future well-being. What should matter to you is having access to the information and the source code of the products you buy. That is the only way to insure you don't get stuck with a legacy product that will not work in the future, or that the disaster that Microsoft has inflicted on the PC world is not replicated in the hardware realm should a closed-source graphics card maker take control of the market.
If anything, their open source driver is a publicity stunt aimed at getting support because they cant get it from their products, where nvidia completely destroys them.
Why do you say this? Free software is about having the freedom to access the source for software you own. So what if it's a "publicity stunt." At least if you buy a 3dfx product you have access to the Linux driver source and a complete description of the register information. That's more than can be said for nVidia, and why (until they nVidia opens their source code) I will never buy an nVidia product and will be taking 3dfx's side in this fight.
Oh, and don't forget, remember the Slashdot story about nVidia stealing GPL code and putting it in their "proprietary" drivers. Or the more recent story about them threatening websites that gave positive 3dfx reviews. nVidia is not a company that, as it is run now, deserves your consumer dollar.
Before everybody starts to scream about having these guys drawn and quartered, I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract.
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It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
Because your so-called "freedom of contract" has nothing to do with free market capitalism and even less to do with libertarianism. Particularly, as in this case, when the only aim of the contract is to restrict the normal free market for textbooks that would otherwise exist.
The ridiculous thing is that there is nothing new in this attempted monopoly power grab. At the end of the last century, the major publishing houses attempted to destroy the textbook resale market by printing "license agrrements" in the inside cover of books stating the books could not be resold for less than their cover price. The Suprmeme Court, thankfully, found this for the restraint of trade and abuse of copyright that it was. Now, just because the books are released electronically the publishers think they can get away with this again!
In a free market, the purchasers rights beyond first sale are sacrosanct - that's what it means to own something. A contract that restricts the market by dictating how a product may be used after it's sold is nothign more than a barrier to the invisible hand of the market. If you had to agree to use Mobil gasoline in your Ford SUV, not to sell MSFT shares for less than you bought them, or not resell your medical textbooks - either as a libertarian or a believer in the free market you should be up in arms.
In theire latest court filing, the DVDCCA really rips at Matthew Pavlovich and LIVID. Here's the opening:
Defendant Pavlovich is a leader in the so-called "open source" movement, which is dedicated to the proposition that material, copyrighted or not, should be made available over the Internet for free.
The DeCSS fight is a fight that must be won, and supporting LiVid and getting a polished open source DVD player for Linux is a prerequisite for Linux ever dominating the desktop. Everyone please do what they can to support this fight.
You may agree or disagree with that viewpoint, for for christ's sake, do NOT try to claim that somehow peta.org's first amendment rights are being violated.
Of course this is about Free Speech! Free speech is of no value if you are only free to speak in obscure or difficult to find locations. Indeed, the Supreme Court has already tackled this very subject in the real world many times. In some cases (i.e. privately owned town square), your free speech rights even extend to the ability to speak on someone else's private property.
Anyone who cares about free speech rights in the 21st century needs to be very concerned about the growing expansion of trademark and copyright law into areas that traditionally were protected by the First Amendment. The stealing of peta.org is a clear example of this trend.
This article is slightly incorrect, the MPAA is suing 2600. Not the DVDCCA. This is, in fact, a very important point as the entire legal and technical relationship between the MPAA is quite important to the defense case.
It is worth noting that Mr. Valenti outright perjures (well, okay, if you believe neither Gates nor Clinton committed perjury, I guess Jack didn't either) himself by claiming he has no idea what the DVDCCA is.
It would not surprise me in the LEAST if you could waive these rights.
In today's society everything you do is accompanied by a legal document. Shrinkwrap for software, clickwrap for transactions over the Internet. Anyone who thinks these sort of documents can be applied in an independent, impartial manner is naive beyond belief.
What has happened is we are turning every facet of society into a contract "negotiation" where powerful firms are able to dictate whatever rights you have. We are, in effect, allowing law to be written not be elected legislators but by a contract lawyer.
In spite of what some may say, it's not even all that revolutionary. As I mentioned elsewhere on this thread, there was once a very heated legal debate about whether object code could be legally copyrighted.
If you think about it, for a book or any other copyrighted material you purchase, you acquire access to the "source." I don't think software should be any different.
Imagine this world, software vendors distribute their programs on CD entirely in source since object code is not copyrightable. The makefile has some "copy protection" scheme that binds an executable to your specific hardware. Sure, it's cumbersome to reinstall the binaries when you upgrade, but that insures you won't give away your source code CD.
I think software vendors rights could be just as strongly protected as they are now. And users would have access to the source code of the software they purchased, making sure that any evil intentions are exposed in public.
Quite a long time ago, when consumer computer software was a rather new thing - there was a raging legal argument about whether or not object code was even covered by copyright.
The arguments against centered on the claim that object code was entirely functional and not expressive (pure funtionality is not copyrightable unlike creative expressions).
Of course, computer object code was eventually ruled a copyrightable medium. It's a shame object code was not determined to be entirely functional. To protect their software, computer programs would then have to be released in source code with a makefile that bound the object code to your hardware. It would be somewhat cumbersome to reinstall software whenever you upgraded, but software authors rights would be protected and users rights to fully inspect their software would be assured. I think the impact to the software industry would have been entirely positive.
In any event, of course proprietary code can be "open source." That's why I prefer the term free code or free software since a plain english reading of "open source" (rather than Open Source) just means you have access to the code - and says nothing more.
Capitalism, at its core, requires growth. It requires that resources be consumed, that new markets be formed and that new products be introduced - atleast "real" laise fair(sp??) capitalism. This is fundamentally at odds with the environmental movement.
Not at all. In fact, pure capitalism is both a very radical and enivornmental friendly concept. Don't forget that the free in "free market" is the same free as in "free software."
Several problems generally occur in the implementation, though, that work counter to the free market.
First, market participants learn that in a truly free market their profits are severely limited by competition. As a result, bad apples often try to subvert the system and establish monopolies or cartels.
Second, the free market rests on the supposition that market participants are rational agents. In reality, of course, rationality is only an approximation of human (and corporate) behaviour. One result is that short term gains are often over-emphasized, while long term gains are over-discounted.
Uninformed market participants are often not properly able gauge the value of long term assets such as the enivornment. There is nothing incompatible between the free market and environemntalism. Your demand for clean air is just like any other good, in a truly free capitalist system the market will work to meet the demand for a clean enivornment
Take a look at the MPAA's FAQ about DeCSS and copyright in the digital age - it would be funny if it weren't so downright scary. http://www.mpaa.org/Press/DVD_FAQ.htm
Among other things, they claim Fair Use effectively no longer exists: It is a right to use what is available, not a right of access to works for fair use purposes.
Most importantly, this concept of fair use does not override specific statutory enactment such as the DMCA, which are intended by Congress to give clear protection to the rights of the creative community to use technological means to protect its product.
As with most people posting comments, IANAL. While this does appear to be of questionable legality, I think that point only serves to indicate the broken nature of the current legal framework surounding copyrights, broadcast, and the Internet.
Consider. Suppose I hooked my PC and PCTV card to the net, wrote some code to do much what these guys were doing, then used a web interface to set my VCR from work or catch an episode of The Simpsons during lunch. That would be entirely legal - it's just a VCR operating with a remote that can function from anywhere in the world. However, if anyone else accessed this home page I am suddenly a copyright criminal?
Of course, the underlying problem is that broadcasters are refusing to release material on the Internet until they have a technical solution in place that will allow them to charge again for the same material they have already charged you for or distributing for free over the public airwaves.
It is worth pointing out that the current patent and copyright system bares almost no resemblence to that which existed after the founding of the Republic.
In the 1700s, only a handful of patents were granted each year. The bestowing of a government monopoly was considered such an exceptional event that the Secretary of State personally approved each patent application.
As well, copyrights lasted for a relatively brief period of time, had to be registered by depositing an archival copy of the work, and had to be renewed or the copyright would expire.
It looks like the whole iCraveTV.com events played out in the Czech Republic as well. This simply proves that iCrave and their Czech counterparts were fullfilling a market niche (I watched a bit while I was in Japan).
If the MPAA doesn't want to keep repeating this around the globe, they need to sit down with the broadcasters and find some way to get television programming on the web. There simply is no reason, all these years after the first web radiocasts, that streaming television can't be found online.
With all due respect to the community, a call-in campaign to say that UCITA is all bad is probably the best way to assure that UCITA will ultimately pass exactly as drafted.
A defeatist attitude can only lead to defeat. Your voice can make a difference, a thousand voices can make as much difference as the the bribes paid to Virginia's legislators (bribes that are only effective because they help secure votes - legislators will flee a truly, widely unpopular position regardless of the cash on the table).
Thanks to efforts in the Open Source community (including Slashdot) and growing consumer opposition, the February vote on this ridiculous bill has been delayed as a somewhat more friendly bill is considered.
Educating the media and state legislators about UCITA can and will have an effect. Resolve to write one dead-tree letter on the issue ever week from now until it's dead.
I'm writing this on a VAIO laptio I bought in Japan last year; however, I will never buy another product from Sony.
Just a few days ago, we had news on Slashdot about Sony's attempts to squash Connectix. A while back, there was the story about Sony's dirty tricks in it's suit against Bleem - including trying to retrieve a list of all Bleem's customers.
And, please don't forget the whole mess with the DVDCCA and MPAA suits against DeCSS. Sony is one of, perhaps the most, powerful of the Hollywood studios - and their plans for the future are not something you want to be a part of.
On the business practice side, Sony acts like a yakuza company - they make Microsoft look good. And in spite of the fact that the PS2 uses Linux as is development environment, the PS platform is so closed it makes Windows look like Open Source Software. (To publish a game on the PS, Sony must approve your software, you must pay a per/sale royalty, and those profits are used by Sony to fund your competitors - Sony's inhouse game developers)
There was a time, when Morita was running the place and Sony was fighting for consumer choice and the right to own a VCR, that Sony was an upstanding corporate citizen. That is not the case now. Sony makes some fine consumer electronics, but realize who you are giving your money to. Your cash is your vote - take it to another company.
Besides, there's no 3d accelerator on any Sony laptops.;-) I'm serious though, consider how your money is being spent!
If you read the legal documents submitted to the court in the DVDCCA case in California, you will see that the DVDCCA lawyers cited the original Sony v. Connectix injunction to support their case. Talk about having the chair pulled out from under you!
I assume the EFF is, at this very moment, submiting the appropriate paperwork to inform the court of this development.
The funny thing about this whole debate over access control for copyrights is - it all happened long ago around the turn of the century. Actually, it was a bit different the last time. The last time, it was an attempt by patent holders to expand their rights through outrageous "Licenses" and the Motion Picture Industry was fighting for freedom!
Read the Supreme Court decision in MOTION PICTURE PATENTS CO. v. UNIVERSAL FILM MFG. CO. , 243 U.S. 502 (1917) for some amusemt. Edison and the New York patent holders attempted to do all the evil things the MPAA and DVDCCA are now doing. Hopefully the Court will uphold the doctrine of "first sale" and allow thos who purchase DVDs to use them as any other piece of property that they own.
Oh, and even before motion pictures, book publishers attempted to use licenses printed inside book covers to prevent customers from selling used books after they finished reading them. History does repeat and greedy corporations don't seem to change.
The author concludes, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act "effectively gave [copyright] owners the power to write their own intellectual-property statutes." This is exactly what the MPAA is trying to do. The DMCA effectively removes fair use by making it a crime to circumvent access control even if you would normally have a legal fair use right to access the material.
Defating this will not be easy. In the MPAA suit in New York, Judge Kaplan has already decided in his Memorandum Opinion that fair use isn't even an issue the court will address: Finally, defendants claim that they are engaged in a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.27 They are mistaken.
Section 107 of the Act provides in critical part that certain uses of copyrighted works that otherwise would be wrongful are "not . . . infringement[s] of copyright.''28 Defendants, however, are not here sued for copyright infringement.
Very frightening stuff - let the media and your representatives know what this debate is about!
Did you know that MLK's family try to prevent people, including civil rights activists, from using Kings speaches and stuff? MLK would be much more of a cultural icon today (and we would probable have less racism) execpt for the efforts of his children.
The amazing thing about this is, it was only a quirk under the old law that prevented them from succeeding. Shortly before the "I have a dream" speech, MLK distributed the text to several journalists without a copyright notice.
Under the current law, that no longer matters. If MLK gave his speech 10 years ago, his estate could require teachers showing a video of the speech (beyond fair use soundbites) to pay a liscense fee!
One simple way to implement a "use it or lose it" philosophy is through copyright renewal - the way copyright intially worked in this company. If you want continued copyright protection, you should have to pay a small service fee. This would insure creative works enter the public domain if they are neglected.
In this respect, I agree with companies like Disney being able to maintain their copyrights indefinitely. If Disney invests as much time and money on these characters as they do to keep them 'alive', they should be encouraged to do so.
On this point, I strongly disagree. Imagine all the Disney works (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Little Mermaid,...) that would never have been created if copyrights lasted indefinately. Disney's icons are a part of the popular cultural because of the limited monopoly grant bestowed by the government. They have an obligation to honor their side of the agreement and allow the works to enter the public domain.
Copyright is not an inherent right, but a statutory right granted by governments for a specific goal - the progress of the arts and sciences.
It's sad that so many materials are locked away, hidden and ususable by the general public.
This is an additional, and very serious, problem with current copyright law. For example, movie studios have an economic incentive to not releasing old works. When these titles die, it removes the small competition they pose for your viewing time.
It is hard to know how many other treasures like It's a Wonderful Life (which beacme popular when it entered the public domain before it was stolen by Viacom) are sitting in film vaults in Hollywood slowly deteriorating.
There is a solution to this problem, and it draws on the early copyright law of this country. Two prominent features of the original copyright law where 1) Registration and 2) Renewal.
1. Registration of objects seeking copyright protection insured that a copy of a book, for example, was stored by the government so that it would be available to enter the public domain at the expiration of the copyright. Thus the public was assured that it's public domain interests were not ignored.
2. Renewal required that an author seeking the full length of copyright term request renewal after 14 years. This insured that most works entered the public domain quickly while extremely valuable works could be renewed by their creators. Thus average copyright terms were kept short, yet the incentive to create was maintained because valuable works could have their copyrights renewed (for up to 28 years).
It is clearly evident today how thoughtful our forefathers were in creating a system of intellectual property which spawned innovation and creativity. Current law does not serve that purpose, but only the purpose of monopoly. If we return to a system requiring registration and renewal, we can more fairly balance and protect the intellectual property rights of authors with the public good. Requiring registration (digital submissions of films, music, books, etc.) for a full copyright term would insure that these creations don't disappear from the earth.
Proposal: An intelligent system, I think, would grant a 10 year automatic copyright, with the option for a 50 year renewal provided only that a digital archive was submitted to the Copyright Office.
The site http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/ has a lot of information about the Sonny Bono Copyright Act and the disgusting lobbying that went on to get the legislation passed. It also has sample letters to Congress and Congresional addresses.
I urge everyone to write their representatives complaining about the subversion of copyright and intellectual property rights that the industry is in the process of conducting. It is worth also mentioning the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which allows even the terms of access to copyrighted works to be dictated, and the resulting assault by the MPAA on our rights to view DVDs we purchased.
To those who say your voice is not heard, most members of Congress and people in government are ordinary folk looking to continue in their jobs. Both soft money industry donations and your voice matter. If you think your voice cannot match the lobby funds of industry titans - you are mistaken.
Taking a cynical view that public interest plays no role, in a purely economic analysis, their is a cost to every vote. Given the money spent on campaigns and the number of votes actually up for grabs - that is a significant conversion price, probably comparable to a $500 donation.
A thousand letters from constituents to every representative addressing will make a difference. So please put a fraction of the time spent reading Slashdot into efforts to inform Congress and the media about the abuse of IP laws!
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this marked off topic? I heard the same thing, though I'm not sure I trust the source. Can anyone here that saw the beginning of the WB broadcast confirm or deny?
Ok, perhaps this is flamebait, but I'm asking, because I think it has some relevance.
I read on the 'net that when "The WB" covered Bush's speech yesterday, there was a mic on that shouldn't have been. They claimed that they heard someone feeding lines to Bush during the first part of the speech - i.e. reading lines to Bush, Bush then repeating what he heard.
Anyone else see this? Or is it political FUD? It would explain his strangely halting delivery.
The politicians are trying to blame the free market to cover for their own problems.
Free market and de-regulation are in no way synonymous. Deregulation was an attempt to replace the government monopolized power production in CA with a free market system. An attempt that failed thanks to the machinations of several powerful energy companies which hijacked the plan and replaced the government monopoly with their own. They then went on to schedule "scheduled matinence" at peak months of consumption to drive up the wholesale price and pad their profits. Thankfully the CA Attorney General is currently investigating these alleged acts of collusion.
The private sector only constitutes a free market when there are multiple players in the industry. An industry dominated by one or two entities (as the CA wholesale electricity market is) can not operate as a free market. In those situations a deregulated market is simply less free than a regulated market. A fact that right wing ideolouges (such as the CA GOP that created this fiasco) who don't understand the term "free market" choose to ignore.
Most of you have considered NVidia to be evil for quite some time (since they decided not to give their extremely-high-quality drivers to their competitors for free (GL drivers have a lot of hardware-independent code it them!)) and more evidence is just what you want. Woohoo, rally behind 3dfx, they're saints!
If the driver quality is so good, why did nVidia have to steal GPL code to get their drivers to work? The fact is, both Matrox and 3dfx have realeased open source drivers for Linux - there's no reason to support nVidia until they do as well.
All that matters to me now is who makes the best hardware. And for me, a 3D game engine writer, that is NVidia.
I feel sorry for you, that you have no perspective of your one personal future well-being. What should matter to you is having access to the information and the source code of the products you buy. That is the only way to insure you don't get stuck with a legacy product that will not work in the future, or that the disaster that Microsoft has inflicted on the PC world is not replicated in the hardware realm should a closed-source graphics card maker take control of the market.
If anything, their open source driver is a publicity stunt aimed at getting support because they cant get it from their products, where nvidia completely destroys them.
Why do you say this? Free software is about having the freedom to access the source for software you own. So what if it's a "publicity stunt." At least if you buy a 3dfx product you have access to the Linux driver source and a complete description of the register information. That's more than can be said for nVidia, and why (until they nVidia opens their source code) I will never buy an nVidia product and will be taking 3dfx's side in this fight.
Oh, and don't forget, remember the Slashdot story about nVidia stealing GPL code and putting it in their "proprietary" drivers. Or the more recent story about them threatening websites that gave positive 3dfx reviews. nVidia is not a company that, as it is run now, deserves your consumer dollar.
Before everybody starts to scream about having these guys drawn and quartered, I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract.
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It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
Because your so-called "freedom of contract" has nothing to do with free market capitalism and even less to do with libertarianism. Particularly, as in this case, when the only aim of the contract is to restrict the normal free market for textbooks that would otherwise exist.
The ridiculous thing is that there is nothing new in this attempted monopoly power grab. At the end of the last century, the major publishing houses attempted to destroy the textbook resale market by printing "license agrrements" in the inside cover of books stating the books could not be resold for less than their cover price. The Suprmeme Court, thankfully, found this for the restraint of trade and abuse of copyright that it was. Now, just because the books are released electronically the publishers think they can get away with this again!
In a free market, the purchasers rights beyond first sale are sacrosanct - that's what it means to own something. A contract that restricts the market by dictating how a product may be used after it's sold is nothign more than a barrier to the invisible hand of the market. If you had to agree to use Mobil gasoline in your Ford SUV, not to sell MSFT shares for less than you bought them, or not resell your medical textbooks - either as a libertarian or a believer in the free market you should be up in arms.
In theire latest court filing, the DVDCCA really rips at Matthew Pavlovich and LIVID. Here's the opening:
Defendant Pavlovich is a leader in the so-called "open source" movement, which is dedicated to the proposition that material, copyrighted or not, should be made available over the Internet for free.
The DeCSS fight is a fight that must be won, and supporting LiVid and getting a polished open source DVD player for Linux is a prerequisite for Linux ever dominating the desktop. Everyone please do what they can to support this fight.
You may agree or disagree with that viewpoint, for for christ's sake, do NOT try to claim that somehow peta.org's first amendment rights are being violated.
Of course this is about Free Speech! Free speech is of no value if you are only free to speak in obscure or difficult to find locations. Indeed, the Supreme Court has already tackled this very subject in the real world many times. In some cases (i.e. privately owned town square), your free speech rights even extend to the ability to speak on someone else's private property.
Anyone who cares about free speech rights in the 21st century needs to be very concerned about the growing expansion of trademark and copyright law into areas that traditionally were protected by the First Amendment. The stealing of peta.org is a clear example of this trend.
This article is slightly incorrect, the MPAA is suing 2600. Not the DVDCCA. This is, in fact, a very important point as the entire legal and technical relationship between the MPAA is quite important to the defense case.
It is worth noting that Mr. Valenti outright perjures (well, okay, if you believe neither Gates nor Clinton committed perjury, I guess Jack didn't either) himself by claiming he has no idea what the DVDCCA is.
It would not surprise me in the LEAST if you could waive these rights.
In today's society everything you do is accompanied by a legal document. Shrinkwrap for software, clickwrap for transactions over the Internet. Anyone who thinks these sort of documents can be applied in an independent, impartial manner is naive beyond belief.
What has happened is we are turning every facet of society into a contract "negotiation" where powerful firms are able to dictate whatever rights you have. We are, in effect, allowing law to be written not be elected legislators but by a contract lawyer.
Good idea!
In spite of what some may say, it's not even all that revolutionary. As I mentioned elsewhere on this thread, there was once a very heated legal debate about whether object code could be legally copyrighted.
If you think about it, for a book or any other copyrighted material you purchase, you acquire access to the "source." I don't think software should be any different.
Imagine this world, software vendors distribute their programs on CD entirely in source since object code is not copyrightable. The makefile has some "copy protection" scheme that binds an executable to your specific hardware. Sure, it's cumbersome to reinstall the binaries when you upgrade, but that insures you won't give away your source code CD.
I think software vendors rights could be just as strongly protected as they are now. And users would have access to the source code of the software they purchased, making sure that any evil intentions are exposed in public.
Quite a long time ago, when consumer computer software was a rather new thing - there was a raging legal argument about whether or not object code was even covered by copyright.
The arguments against centered on the claim that object code was entirely functional and not expressive (pure funtionality is not copyrightable unlike creative expressions).
Of course, computer object code was eventually ruled a copyrightable medium. It's a shame object code was not determined to be entirely functional. To protect their software, computer programs would then have to be released in source code with a makefile that bound the object code to your hardware. It would be somewhat cumbersome to reinstall software whenever you upgraded, but software authors rights would be protected and users rights to fully inspect their software would be assured. I think the impact to the software industry would have been entirely positive.
In any event, of course proprietary code can be "open source." That's why I prefer the term free code or free software since a plain english reading of "open source" (rather than Open Source) just means you have access to the code - and says nothing more.
Capitalism, at its core, requires growth. It requires that resources be consumed, that new markets be formed and that new products be introduced - atleast "real" laise fair(sp??) capitalism. This is fundamentally at odds with the environmental movement.
Not at all. In fact, pure capitalism is both a very radical and enivornmental friendly concept. Don't forget that the free in "free market" is the same free as in "free software."
Several problems generally occur in the implementation, though, that work counter to the free market.
First, market participants learn that in a truly free market their profits are severely limited by competition. As a result, bad apples often try to subvert the system and establish monopolies or cartels.
Second, the free market rests on the supposition that market participants are rational agents. In reality, of course, rationality is only an approximation of human (and corporate) behaviour. One result is that short term gains are often over-emphasized, while long term gains are over-discounted.
Uninformed market participants are often not properly able gauge the value of long term assets such as the enivornment. There is nothing incompatible between the free market and environemntalism. Your demand for clean air is just like any other good, in a truly free capitalist system the market will work to meet the demand for a clean enivornment
Take a look at the MPAA's FAQ about DeCSS and copyright in the digital age - it would be funny if it weren't so downright scary.
http://www.mpaa.org/Press/DVD_FAQ.htm
Among other things, they claim Fair Use effectively no longer exists:
It is a right to use what is available, not a right of access to works for fair use purposes.
Most importantly, this concept of fair use does not override specific statutory enactment such as the DMCA, which are intended by Congress to give clear protection to the rights of the creative community to use technological means to protect its product.
As with most people posting comments, IANAL. While this does appear to be of questionable legality, I think that point only serves to indicate the broken nature of the current legal framework surounding copyrights, broadcast, and the Internet.
Consider. Suppose I hooked my PC and PCTV card to the net, wrote some code to do much what these guys were doing, then used a web interface to set my VCR from work or catch an episode of The Simpsons during lunch. That would be entirely legal - it's just a VCR operating with a remote that can function from anywhere in the world. However, if anyone else accessed this home page I am suddenly a copyright criminal?
Of course, the underlying problem is that broadcasters are refusing to release material on the Internet until they have a technical solution in place that will allow them to charge again for the same material they have already charged you for or distributing for free over the public airwaves.
It is worth pointing out that the current patent and copyright system bares almost no resemblence to that which existed after the founding of the Republic.
In the 1700s, only a handful of patents were granted each year. The bestowing of a government monopoly was considered such an exceptional event that the Secretary of State personally approved each patent application.
As well, copyrights lasted for a relatively brief period of time, had to be registered by depositing an archival copy of the work, and had to be renewed or the copyright would expire.
Here's a link from the Prague Business Journal:
http://www.pbj.cz/pbj/article.asp?id=70386
It looks like the whole iCraveTV.com events played out in the Czech Republic as well. This simply proves that iCrave and their Czech counterparts were fullfilling a market niche (I watched a bit while I was in Japan).
If the MPAA doesn't want to keep repeating this around the globe, they need to sit down with the broadcasters and find some way to get television programming on the web. There simply is no reason, all these years after the first web radiocasts, that streaming television can't be found online.
With all due respect to the community, a call-in campaign to say that UCITA is all bad is probably the best way to assure that UCITA will ultimately pass exactly as drafted.
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A defeatist attitude can only lead to defeat. Your voice can make a difference, a thousand voices can make as much difference as the the bribes paid to Virginia's legislators (bribes that are only effective because they help secure votes - legislators will flee a truly, widely unpopular position regardless of the cash on the table).
If you doubt your effect, here's a story about the Collection of Information Antipiracy Bill:
http://www.l awnewsnetwork.com/practice/techlaw/news/A15771-20
Thanks to efforts in the Open Source community (including Slashdot) and growing consumer opposition, the February vote on this ridiculous bill has been delayed as a somewhat more friendly bill is considered.
Educating the media and state legislators about UCITA can and will have an effect.
Resolve to write one dead-tree letter on the issue ever week from now until it's dead.
I'm writing this on a VAIO laptio I bought in Japan last year; however, I will never buy another product from Sony.
;-) I'm serious though, consider how your money is being spent!
Just a few days ago, we had news on Slashdot about Sony's attempts to squash Connectix. A while back, there was the story about Sony's dirty tricks in it's suit against Bleem - including trying to retrieve a list of all Bleem's customers.
And, please don't forget the whole mess with the DVDCCA and MPAA suits against DeCSS. Sony is one of, perhaps the most, powerful of the Hollywood studios - and their plans for the future are not something you want to be a part of.
On the business practice side, Sony acts like a yakuza company - they make Microsoft look good. And in spite of the fact that the PS2 uses Linux as is development environment, the PS platform is so closed it makes Windows look like Open Source Software. (To publish a game on the PS, Sony must approve your software, you must pay a per/sale royalty, and those profits are used by Sony to fund your competitors - Sony's inhouse game developers)
There was a time, when Morita was running the place and Sony was fighting for consumer choice and the right to own a VCR, that Sony was an upstanding corporate citizen. That is not the case now. Sony makes some fine consumer electronics, but realize who you are giving your money to. Your cash is your vote - take it to another company.
Besides, there's no 3d accelerator on any Sony laptops.
Which is the same with DeCSS.
If you read the legal documents submitted to the court in the DVDCCA case in California, you will see that the DVDCCA lawyers cited the original Sony v. Connectix injunction to support their case. Talk about having the chair pulled out from under you!
I assume the EFF is, at this very moment, submiting the appropriate paperwork to inform the court of this development.
The funny thing about this whole debate over access control for copyrights is - it all happened long ago around the turn of the century. Actually, it was a bit different the last time. The last time, it was an attempt by patent holders to expand their rights through outrageous "Licenses" and the Motion Picture Industry was fighting for freedom!
Read the Supreme Court decision in MOTION PICTURE PATENTS CO. v. UNIVERSAL FILM MFG. CO. , 243 U.S. 502 (1917) for some amusemt. Edison and the New York patent holders attempted to do all the evil things the MPAA and DVDCCA are now doing. Hopefully the Court will uphold the doctrine of "first sale" and allow thos who purchase DVDs to use them as any other piece of property that they own.
Oh, and even before motion pictures, book publishers attempted to use licenses printed inside book covers to prevent customers from selling used books after they finished reading them. History does repeat and greedy corporations don't seem to change.
IntellectualCapital has on of the most even-handed accounts of the DeCSS controversy and the DMCA that I've seen in the mainstream media: http://ic.voxcap.com/issues/issue34 3/item8106.asp
The author concludes, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act "effectively gave [copyright] owners the power to write their own intellectual-property statutes." This is exactly what the MPAA is trying to do. The DMCA effectively removes fair use by making it a crime to circumvent access control even if you would normally have a legal fair use right to access the material.
Defating this will not be easy. In the MPAA suit in New York, Judge Kaplan has already decided in his Memorandum Opinion that fair use isn't even an issue the court will address:
Finally, defendants claim that they are engaged in a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.27 They are mistaken.
Section 107 of the Act provides in critical part that certain uses of copyrighted works that otherwise would be wrongful are "not . . . infringement[s] of copyright.''28 Defendants, however, are not here sued for copyright infringement.
Very frightening stuff - let the media and your representatives know what this debate is about!
Did you know that MLK's family try to prevent people, including civil rights activists, from using Kings speaches and stuff? MLK would be much more of a cultural icon today (and we would probable have less racism) execpt for the efforts of his children.
The amazing thing about this is, it was only a quirk under the old law that prevented them from succeeding. Shortly before the "I have a dream" speech, MLK distributed the text to several journalists without a copyright notice.
Under the current law, that no longer matters. If MLK gave his speech 10 years ago, his estate could require teachers showing a video of the speech (beyond fair use soundbites) to pay a liscense fee!
Robert Wilde
One simple way to implement a "use it or lose it" philosophy is through copyright renewal - the way copyright intially worked in this company. If you want continued copyright protection, you should have to pay a small service fee. This would insure creative works enter the public domain if they are neglected.
...) that would never have been created if copyrights lasted indefinately. Disney's icons are a part of the popular cultural because of the limited monopoly grant bestowed by the government. They have an obligation to honor their side of the agreement and allow the works to enter the public domain.
In this respect, I agree with companies like Disney being able to maintain their copyrights indefinitely. If Disney invests as much time and money on these characters as they do to keep them 'alive', they should be encouraged to do so.
On this point, I strongly disagree. Imagine all the Disney works (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Little Mermaid,
Copyright is not an inherent right, but a statutory right granted by governments for a specific goal - the progress of the arts and sciences.
Robert Wilde
It's sad that so many materials are locked away, hidden and ususable by the general public.
This is an additional, and very serious, problem with current copyright law. For example, movie studios have an economic incentive to not releasing old works. When these titles die, it removes the small competition they pose for your viewing time.
It is hard to know how many other treasures like It's a Wonderful Life (which beacme popular when it entered the public domain before it was stolen by Viacom) are sitting in film vaults in Hollywood slowly deteriorating.
There is a solution to this problem, and it draws on the early copyright law of this country. Two prominent features of the original copyright law where 1) Registration and 2) Renewal.
1. Registration of objects seeking copyright protection insured that a copy of a book, for example, was stored by the government so that it would be available to enter the public domain at the expiration of the copyright. Thus the public was assured that it's public domain interests were not ignored.
2. Renewal required that an author seeking the full length of copyright term request renewal after 14 years. This insured that most works entered the public domain quickly while extremely valuable works could be renewed by their creators. Thus average copyright terms were kept short, yet the incentive to create was maintained because valuable works could have their copyrights renewed (for up to 28 years).
It is clearly evident today how thoughtful our forefathers were in creating a system of intellectual property which spawned innovation and creativity. Current law does not serve that purpose, but only the purpose of monopoly. If we return to a system requiring registration and renewal, we can more fairly balance and protect the intellectual property rights of authors with the public good. Requiring registration (digital submissions of films, music, books, etc.) for a full copyright term would insure that these creations don't disappear from the earth.
Proposal: An intelligent system, I think, would grant a 10 year automatic copyright, with the option for a 50 year renewal provided only that a digital archive was submitted to the Copyright Office.
Robert Wilde
The site http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/ has a lot of information about the Sonny Bono Copyright Act and the disgusting lobbying that went on to get the legislation passed. It also has sample letters to Congress and Congresional addresses.
I urge everyone to write their representatives complaining about the subversion of copyright and intellectual property rights that the industry is in the process of conducting. It is worth also mentioning the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which allows even the terms of access to copyrighted works to be dictated, and the resulting assault by the MPAA on our rights to view DVDs we purchased.
To those who say your voice is not heard, most members of Congress and people in government are ordinary folk looking to continue in their jobs. Both soft money industry donations and your voice matter. If you think your voice cannot match the lobby funds of industry titans - you are mistaken.
Taking a cynical view that public interest plays no role, in a purely economic analysis, their is a cost to every vote. Given the money spent on campaigns and the number of votes actually up for grabs - that is a significant conversion price, probably comparable to a $500 donation.
A thousand letters from constituents to every representative addressing will make a difference. So please put a fraction of the time spent reading Slashdot into efforts to inform Congress and the media about the abuse of IP laws!