The best forms of copy protection are new business models that destroy the motive to copy, not its mechanism.
The argument of the article is solid, but it has fallen into accepting the semantic trap that copyright owners are using to frame the issue.
What is the difference between: 1. Copyright Protection 2. Copy Protection 3. Access Protection
The first is what copyright holders have traditionally held. For the last several decades, however, there has been a trend to equate copying with copyright violation. Nothing could be further from the truth - copyright law only exists because of the balance that was struck between the inherent fair use rights of the public and the statutory rights granted to content providers.
Now, under the DMCA, copyright holders are attempting to change the debate again. According to the DMCA, copyright holders now have the right to dictate the terms under which you can access a copyrighted work.
The community needs to lobby hard to overturn the DMCA's restrictions on access and fair use. That means writing your Congressman and Senator (yes, he or she voted for the DMCA - they all did) and inform them of the abuse of law that the MPAA and RIAA is engaging in. Digital works should be protected by the same tradition of copyright that helped spawn innovation in this country over the last 200 years. Digital works do not deserve special protections beyond the scope of traditional copyright law!
That's the first thing that struck me reading the finding. It deserves massive attention by the community and in the media.
Defendant Roman Kazan alone argues that his conduct falls under Section 512(c) of the Copyright Act,15 which provides limited protection from liability for copyright infringement by certain service providers for information resident on a system or network owned or controlled by them. ... Section 512(c) provides protection only from liability for copyright infringement.18 Plaintiffs seek to hold defendants liable not for copyright infringement, but for a violation of Section 1201(a)(2), which applies only to circumvention products and technologies. Section 512(c) thus does not apply here.
In other words, if this interpretation of the law holds, Slashdot could be sued and held liable because people have posted the source in comments.
I've seen people scoff at the MPAA's attempt to "sue the Internet." The MPAA doesn't want to kill ISPs, they want to be able to fire off letters to every ISP on the planet forcing them to proactively prevent DeCSS from appearing under threat of lawsuit. We need to win this in court, because the MPAA really does believe it can sue the Internet - and if this interpretation of law holds, they may very well be able to!
IntellectualCapital has on of the most even-handed accounts of the DeCSS controversy and the DMCA that I've seen in the mainstream media. The author concludes, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act "effectively gave [copyright] owners the power to write their own intellectual-property statutes."
That is what this is all boils down to, the efforts of the industry to rewrite copyright law outside the halls of Congress. The Judge's opinion, unfortunately, affirms the ridiculous MPAA legal argument against fair use.
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.
In other words, since the defendants are being sued for violating the DMCA not for infrigning copyrights, fair use does not exist!
Certainly databases deserve some copyright protection: the question is how the protection should be worded, and personally I'd like to see people who are knowledgable about the Net involved in the process.
That is far from certain.
First, database are already copyrighted. That is, the actual representation and presentation of data is copyrighted as well as any creative component. For both these reasons dictionaries and resturaunt reviews, for example, are copyrighted.
Second, the database industry is extremely profitable and undergoing an enormous rate of growth. This is not an industry in trouble, suffering from rampant "piracy."
Third, there is no inherent right to copyright protection. Copyright is a statutory right, one that is mercantilist in nature and anathema to a free market, only tolerated because of the wider benefit that the law confers on society.
Databases already enjoy numerous protections against wholesale lifting both in copyright law and under commercial practice law. The propesed legislation gives enormous new powers to those lobbying for the law. Powers to prevent competition, control how their facts are used, and create a monopoly liscense that they have no right to.
This seems pretty legit. Ask Jeeves for example has spent millions of dollars developing "facts" for it's database.
But that does not entitle one to monopoly protection! In a capitalist society, simply spending money on an activity does not grant you special protection under the law. The DVDCCA certainly spent a lot of money developing their encryption scheme - should there be a special law to "protect their investment."
The free of free market is the same free in free software. The free market is and was a radical idea. Copyrights and patents are throwbacks to mercantilism and only implemented in our capitalist system because of the benefit they confer on society as a whole. Unfortunately, as any 17th century mercantilist would tell you, or any large 21st century corporatist, having a monopoly grant is a wonderful thing. The last thing we need to do is extend copyright protection to collections of facts - it's the equivalent of patenting nature.
Current commercial law already protects against the wholesale lifting of data. This propsed legislation would give database holders untold power over how the data, even be those paying to access it, can be used in other projects - even those that may compete in a "potential market" of the database retailer.
One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."
The Net not censorable? This is not the case!
Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.
The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.
The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.
One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."
The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.
The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.
This is nothing similar. You would have to be a sniveling imbicile to believe otherwise.
So, CBS can broadcast an television signal while changing an advertisement on a billboard (that was paid for by a competitor) to an advertisement of it's own. CBS can mislead the public about what was billed as a live event and deprive the billboard owner of advertising revenue by rebroadcasting his ads while replacing the content.
Yet, somehow there is something wrong with iCraveTV rebroadcasting CBS's signal from the public airwaves while not even modifying the signal or advertising at all. A billboard in a public place is a broadcast just like those by CBS over the public airwaves. You can't argue the billboard owner has no rights while CBS does.
The solution is not to fight the flow of progress, but simply for other local broadcasters to go on the Internet. Given a choice, why would someone from Phoenix watch Omaha's local broadcast if theirs was available?
I wonder how they justify their suit against iCraveTV when they themselves repackage and modify other broadcasters' content?
I refer, of course, to the TV media practice of adding and modifying the billboards that get into the scenes they broadcast.
Zing! I sure hope ICraveTV's lawyer brings up this point. What CBS did was completely analogous - and, unlike ICrave's actions, both unethical and resulting in actual monetary harm.
Increasingly, television companies are relying on licensing fees. For instance, part of the money you pay to the cable companies goes straight to the broadcasters pockets. Cable companies have to py for the "right" to show you television you can get for free over the airwaves, and Hollywood would like to make sure they can extend this monopoly tax to the Internet. Eventually, traditional broadcast will probably be stopped and the only way to get television will be through pay-for-service packages over cable or the net.
Your right, under current IP law this is theft. However, that only points to the ridiculous way in which IP rights are currently being interpreted.
Consider, these are images that are being transmitted through the public air waves which anyone with a television can legally recieve and view. Yet the TV broadcasters refuse to broadcast this information over the Internet and when a smart company comes along and rebroadcasts the unedited signal they get slapped with a lawsuit.
If the TV broadcasters are transmiting the information over the public airwaves without charge to the vast majority of people in this country, it just defies common sense that they have any complaints about those same signals being transmitted over the Internet. The real issue here is that the broadcasters and the MPAA have some very nasty plans for how to handle streaming over the Internet and want to snip any expectation of free public viewing in the bud.
I'm not saying that Linus' behavior is wrong, exactly. But what really makes this any different from any other "cybersquatting" issue discussed here.
This action makes me a little uneasy as well. I would be very upset if we see this Linux trademark policing extending to taking domains away from people or blocking "objectionable" domains.
Trademark lawyers have framed the issue such that the public now thinks of domain names and trademarks as analogous. They aren't! If someone registers linuxsucks.com or linuxofficesoftware.com - they have every right to use those domains to diss Linux of discuss the merits of KOffice, Star, etc. I don't want to see Linus start taking domains away from people (even unscrupulous people).
That being said, stopping an auction is different from demanding the domain. Let's give Linus the benifit of the doubt, but be watchful where this leads.
Here are two small excerpts from MS's filing: As one court recently held, "where a patent or copyright has been lawfully acquired, subsequent conduct permissible under the patent or copyright laws cannot give rise to any liability under the antitrust laws."
Plaintiffs do not contend that Microsoft unlawfully acquired its copyrights. Consequently, Microsoft cannot be held to have violated the antitrust laws simply because it exercised its rights under federal copyright law to prevent unauthorized modifications of Windows.
Specifically, MS then states that since the Windows startup screen is part of their copyrighted software - any modifications are prohibited even if the licensing clause didn't expressly forbid such modifications. Several precedents involving television (Monty Pyhton!) and books are referenced.
This is an interesting argument and, unfortunately, I think under current copyright law it is an argument that may be upheld in higher courts. If you treat a computer operating system like a book, then the OEMs have no legal right to make any modifications to the Windows startup screen. Frankly, this simply reflects some of the problems with current copyright law.
It will be very interesting to see how the courts respond to MS's copyright arguments.
There's no mention, or indication, anywhere that this will be open source.
Until there's more than a press release from Nvidia, I'll support 3dfx (and Matrox). 3dfx's Linux effort has released specs, open-sourced code, and their 3d cards are better supported/faster.
LiViD may very well be the most important consumer open-source project being undertaken. Linux simply won't be able to be competitive as a mainstream consumer OS without eye-candy like DVD playback.
Time is also a key issue here. The sooner DVD playback finds it's way into Red Hat and other distributions, the more difficult it will be for the MPAA and the DVDCCA to convince a judge to ban the project.
Here's an excerpt from a recent MPAA court filing: DeCSS remains (for the moment) a "hacker phenomenon." One of our principal concerns is that, in the absence of a judicial finding that DeCSS is illegal, its use will become more widespread.... There is even the risk that DeCSS would be commercialized and offered to the general public, either in the form of retail software or as part of a DVD player
This is yet another example of the holders of intellectual property rights attempting to expand those rights beyond their original scope. The courts need to step in a make perfectly clear that commentary, parody, criticism have nothing to do with trademarks or copyright. Further, some form of deterant (perhaps SLAPP suits) has to be in place to prevent frivolous cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits.
Trademarks grant nothing more than a right to operate a buisness under that name. If you're scared about the ever lengthening copyright term, follow this link.
It summarizes a case about The Three Stooges. The copyright has expired on the Stooges long ago and they are in the public domain, but the former copyright holders are attempting to go after anyone using the Three Stooges for trademark violation! Luckily, a 30-second clip appearing in a movie was deemed not infringe on the trademark. However, whether those selling Stooges T-shirts are violating trademark laws has yet to be decided. Believe it or not, the lawyers interviewed are split on whether placing these public domain characters on T-shirts is legal!
Physics philosphy is bo-ring! Go watch Star Trek, you dumb needledick.
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics has nothing to do with Star Trek and is a valid "solution" to Schrodingers "paradox."
One interesting question related to many worlds would be: Can you envision a physical experiment that would establish the Many Worlds, Copenhagen, Hidden Variable, or other interpretation of quantum mechanics as the "correct" one, or will this question remain on of metaphysics?
This has all happened long ago! When motion pictures were invented at the turn of the century, patents were used by Edison and several large Eastern industrialists to try to dominate the creation and distribution of moving pictures.
It's rather odd, but the same Hollywood that now screams to expand it's protection via questionable IP laws, once was a group of lawless pirates ready to flee to Mexico if the Edison patent police showd up. This story in the millenial edition of The Economist talks breifly about Hollywood's checkered birth.
When an open source video streaming player gets under development, hopefully the project won't have to be run out of Uzbekistan to escape the Real/Microsoft/Apple patent police. If it is, though, thank Hollywood for the inspiration!
Not only is this a market dominated (in reality, simply controlled) by 3 players, these companies are likely to use very dirty legal tactics to continue their hegemony over this market. Unfortunately, streaming is going to only be more important on the web of the future. It will be an enormous shame if there is no open source solution - or, worse, if even the development of an open source solution is stiffled.
Check out this link to read about Real's legal tactics to try to shut down a product that offers the ability to capture streaming files and convert them. If Real succeeds, then even an opne source project allowing file download or file conversion of streaming video would be illegal.:-(
I don't like microsoft any more than the next guy but why would anyone encourage another person to rip them off. It's just wrong. Not to mention you've taken a deal which can help the financially challenged get a computer and come into the information age, even if not a day late (and a dollar [400 shorter now] short).
Where's the rip off? In forcing MS to obey the law? Microsoft is offering $400 to users to try MSN. They knew that to do this in California and Oregon they way they wanted to (calling the rebate a loan to incur financial reporting advantages to themselves), they could not prevent consumers from cancelling MSN.
The corporation made a calculated bet that the advantage to them was greater than the loss of those cancelling MSN before the $400 was made back. They didn't understand the networking effects of the Internet, and they lost. Fair and square, nothing illegal or unethical unless you used the rebate twice or are an MSN customer.
On your second point, it helps the "financially challenged" to have this deal suspended. These are normally sucker rebates, and cost the clueless computer buyer money rather than saving him or her $400.
Best Buy and the others have advertisements in displaying this deal all over California. There are laws that specifically forbid companies from advertising products or services that they don't have in stock.
I don't see how Best Buy can not honor your request for the $400 rebate if you show up between now and whatever date is printed on one of their newspaper advertisements. Taking advantage of the MS loophole may be unethical, but a retailer not honoring an advertisement is akin to breaking a contract and well established legal terrain.
That paragraph says that even successfully using this defense only acquits the one using it - it doesn't invalidate the patent. This looks real bad - a big monkey-wrench to invalidating bad patents.
I sure hope I'm wrong - is there a lawyer in the house who can make better sense of this &%#$%@! ?
This is a very important question that needs to be answered by someone competent in legalese. Does this now really mean that prior use does not automatically invalidate a patent???
I think, whether we have to put up with McCain, Forbes, Gore, or Bradley will be generally okay. The only real threatening candidate is Bush.
In the end though, research the candidates yourself. Don't rely on the superficial mass media reports, but spend some time using the vast resources of the Internet to probe their positions, and reach your own decision. Do vote because our democracy is not a sham unless you believe it is.
Slashdot Mirror
The best forms of copy protection are new business models that destroy the motive to copy, not its mechanism.
The argument of the article is solid, but it has fallen into accepting the semantic trap that copyright owners are using to frame the issue.
What is the difference between:
1. Copyright Protection
2. Copy Protection
3. Access Protection
The first is what copyright holders have traditionally held. For the last several decades, however, there has been a trend to equate copying with copyright violation. Nothing could be further from the truth - copyright law only exists because of the balance that was struck between the inherent fair use rights of the public and the statutory rights granted to content providers.
Now, under the DMCA, copyright holders are attempting to change the debate again. According to the DMCA, copyright holders now have the right to dictate the terms under which you can access a copyrighted work.
The community needs to lobby hard to overturn the DMCA's restrictions on access and fair use. That means writing your Congressman and Senator (yes, he or she voted for the DMCA - they all did) and inform them of the abuse of law that the MPAA and RIAA is engaging in. Digital works should be protected by the same tradition of copyright that helped spawn innovation in this country over the last 200 years. Digital works do not deserve special protections beyond the scope of traditional copyright law!
That's the first thing that struck me reading the finding. It deserves massive attention by the community and in the media.
Defendant Roman Kazan alone argues that his conduct falls under Section 512(c) of the Copyright Act,15 which provides limited protection from liability for copyright infringement by certain service providers for information resident on a system or network owned or controlled by them.
...
Section 512(c) provides protection only from liability for copyright infringement.18 Plaintiffs seek to hold defendants liable not for copyright infringement, but for a violation of Section 1201(a)(2), which applies only to circumvention products and technologies. Section 512(c) thus does not apply here.
In other words, if this interpretation of the law holds, Slashdot could be sued and held liable because people have posted the source in comments.
I've seen people scoff at the MPAA's attempt to "sue the Internet." The MPAA doesn't want to kill ISPs, they want to be able to fire off letters to every ISP on the planet forcing them to proactively prevent DeCSS from appearing under threat of lawsuit. We need to win this in court, because the MPAA really does believe it can sue the Internet - and if this interpretation of law holds, they may very well be able to!
IntellectualCapital has on of the most even-handed accounts of the DeCSS controversy and the DMCA that I've seen in the mainstream media. The author concludes, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act "effectively gave [copyright] owners the power to write their own intellectual-property statutes."
That is what this is all boils down to, the efforts of the industry to rewrite copyright law outside the halls of Congress. The Judge's opinion, unfortunately, affirms the ridiculous MPAA legal argument against fair use.
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.
In other words, since the defendants are being sued for violating the DMCA not for infrigning copyrights, fair use does not exist!
Certainly databases deserve some copyright protection: the question is how the protection should be worded, and personally I'd like to see people who are knowledgable about the Net involved in the process.
That is far from certain.
First, database are already copyrighted. That is, the actual representation and presentation of data is copyrighted as well as any creative component. For both these reasons dictionaries and resturaunt reviews, for example, are copyrighted.
Second, the database industry is extremely profitable and undergoing an enormous rate of growth. This is not an industry in trouble, suffering from rampant "piracy."
Third, there is no inherent right to copyright protection. Copyright is a statutory right, one that is mercantilist in nature and anathema to a free market, only tolerated because of the wider benefit that the law confers on society.
Databases already enjoy numerous protections against wholesale lifting both in copyright law and under commercial practice law. The propesed legislation gives enormous new powers to those lobbying for the law. Powers to prevent competition, control how their facts are used, and create a monopoly liscense that they have no right to.
This seems pretty legit. Ask Jeeves for example has spent millions of dollars developing "facts" for it's database.
But that does not entitle one to monopoly protection! In a capitalist society, simply spending money on an activity does not grant you special protection under the law. The DVDCCA certainly spent a lot of money developing their encryption scheme - should there be a special law to "protect their investment."
The free of free market is the same free in free software. The free market is and was a radical idea. Copyrights and patents are throwbacks to mercantilism and only implemented in our capitalist system because of the benefit they confer on society as a whole. Unfortunately, as any 17th century mercantilist would tell you, or any large 21st century corporatist, having a monopoly grant is a wonderful thing. The last thing we need to do is extend copyright protection to collections of facts - it's the equivalent of patenting nature.
Current commercial law already protects against the wholesale lifting of data. This propsed legislation would give database holders untold power over how the data, even be those paying to access it, can be used in other projects - even those that may compete in a "potential market" of the database retailer.
One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."
The Net not censorable? This is not the case!
Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.
The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.
The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.
One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."
The Net not censorable? This is not the case!
Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.
The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.
The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.
This is nothing similar. You would have to be a sniveling imbicile to believe otherwise.
So, CBS can broadcast an television signal while changing an advertisement on a billboard (that was paid for by a competitor) to an advertisement of it's own. CBS can mislead the public about what was billed as a live event and deprive the billboard owner of advertising revenue by rebroadcasting his ads while replacing the content.
Yet, somehow there is something wrong with iCraveTV rebroadcasting CBS's signal from the public airwaves while not even modifying the signal or advertising at all. A billboard in a public place is a broadcast just like those by CBS over the public airwaves. You can't argue the billboard owner has no rights while CBS does.
The solution is not to fight the flow of progress, but simply for other local broadcasters to go on the Internet. Given a choice, why would someone from Phoenix watch Omaha's local broadcast if theirs was available?
I wonder how they justify their suit against iCraveTV when they themselves repackage and modify other broadcasters' content?
I refer, of course, to the TV media practice of adding and modifying the billboards that get into the scenes they broadcast.
Zing! I sure hope ICraveTV's lawyer brings up this point. What CBS did was completely analogous - and, unlike ICrave's actions, both unethical and resulting in actual monetary harm.
Increasingly, television companies are relying on licensing fees. For instance, part of the money you pay to the cable companies goes straight to the broadcasters pockets. Cable companies have to py for the "right" to show you television you can get for free over the airwaves, and Hollywood would like to make sure they can extend this monopoly tax to the Internet. Eventually, traditional broadcast will probably be stopped and the only way to get television will be through pay-for-service packages over cable or the net.
Your right, under current IP law this is theft. However, that only points to the ridiculous way in which IP rights are currently being interpreted.
Consider, these are images that are being transmitted through the public air waves which anyone with a television can legally recieve and view. Yet the TV broadcasters refuse to broadcast this information over the Internet and when a smart company comes along and rebroadcasts the unedited signal they get slapped with a lawsuit.
If the TV broadcasters are transmiting the information over the public airwaves without charge to the vast majority of people in this country, it just defies common sense that they have any complaints about those same signals being transmitted over the Internet. The real issue here is that the broadcasters and the MPAA have some very nasty plans for how to handle streaming over the Internet and want to snip any expectation of free public viewing in the bud.
I'm not saying that Linus' behavior is wrong, exactly. But what really makes this any different from any other "cybersquatting" issue discussed here.
This action makes me a little uneasy as well. I would be very upset if we see this Linux trademark policing extending to taking domains away from people or blocking "objectionable" domains.
Trademark lawyers have framed the issue such that the public now thinks of domain names and trademarks as analogous. They aren't! If someone registers linuxsucks.com or linuxofficesoftware.com - they have every right to use those domains to diss Linux of discuss the merits of KOffice, Star, etc. I don't want to see Linus start taking domains away from people (even unscrupulous people).
That being said, stopping an auction is different from demanding the domain. Let's give Linus the benifit of the doubt, but be watchful where this leads.
Here are two small excerpts from MS's filing:
As one court recently held, "where a patent or copyright has been lawfully acquired, subsequent conduct permissible under the patent or copyright laws cannot give rise to any liability under the antitrust laws."
Plaintiffs do not contend that Microsoft unlawfully acquired its copyrights. Consequently, Microsoft cannot be held to have violated the antitrust laws simply because it exercised its rights under federal copyright law to prevent unauthorized modifications of Windows.
Specifically, MS then states that since the Windows startup screen is part of their copyrighted software - any modifications are prohibited even if the licensing clause didn't expressly forbid such modifications. Several precedents involving television (Monty Pyhton!) and books are referenced.
This is an interesting argument and, unfortunately, I think under current copyright law it is an argument that may be upheld in higher courts. If you treat a computer operating system like a book, then the OEMs have no legal right to make any modifications to the Windows startup screen. Frankly, this simply reflects some of the problems with current copyright law.
It will be very interesting to see how the courts respond to MS's copyright arguments.
There's no mention, or indication, anywhere that this will be open source.
Until there's more than a press release from Nvidia, I'll support 3dfx (and Matrox). 3dfx's Linux effort has released specs, open-sourced code, and their 3d cards are better supported/faster.
LiViD may very well be the most important consumer open-source project being undertaken. Linux simply won't be able to be competitive as a mainstream consumer OS without eye-candy like DVD playback.
... There is even the risk that DeCSS would be commercialized and offered to the general public, either in the form of retail software or as part of a DVD player
Time is also a key issue here. The sooner DVD playback finds it's way into Red Hat and other distributions, the more difficult it will be for the MPAA and the DVDCCA to convince a judge to ban the project.
Here's an excerpt from a recent MPAA court filing:
DeCSS remains (for the moment) a "hacker phenomenon." One of our principal concerns is that, in the absence of a judicial finding that DeCSS is illegal, its use will become more widespread.
Let's make the MPAA's fears come true!
This is yet another example of the holders of intellectual property rights attempting to expand those rights beyond their original scope. The courts need to step in a make perfectly clear that commentary, parody, criticism have nothing to do with trademarks or copyright. Further, some form of deterant (perhaps SLAPP suits) has to be in place to prevent frivolous cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits.
Trademarks grant nothing more than a right to operate a buisness under that name. If you're scared about the ever lengthening copyright term, follow this link.
It summarizes a case about The Three Stooges. The copyright has expired on the Stooges long ago and they are in the public domain, but the former copyright holders are attempting to go after anyone using the Three Stooges for trademark violation! Luckily, a 30-second clip appearing in a movie was deemed not infringe on the trademark. However, whether those selling Stooges T-shirts are violating trademark laws has yet to be decided. Believe it or not, the lawyers interviewed are split on whether placing these public domain characters on T-shirts is legal!
Physics philosphy is bo-ring! Go watch Star Trek, you dumb needledick.
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics has nothing to do with Star Trek and is a valid "solution" to Schrodingers "paradox."
One interesting question related to many worlds would be: Can you envision a physical experiment that would establish the Many Worlds, Copenhagen, Hidden Variable, or other interpretation of quantum mechanics as the "correct" one, or will this question remain on of metaphysics?
This has all happened long ago! When motion pictures were invented at the turn of the century, patents were used by Edison and several large Eastern industrialists to try to dominate the creation and distribution of moving pictures.
It's rather odd, but the same Hollywood that now screams to expand it's protection via questionable IP laws, once was a group of lawless pirates ready to flee to Mexico if the Edison patent police showd up. This story in the millenial edition of The Economist talks breifly about Hollywood's checkered birth.
When an open source video streaming player gets under development, hopefully the project won't have to be run out of Uzbekistan to escape the Real/Microsoft/Apple patent police. If it is, though, thank Hollywood for the inspiration!
Not only is this a market dominated (in reality, simply controlled) by 3 players, these companies are likely to use very dirty legal tactics to continue their hegemony over this market. Unfortunately, streaming is going to only be more important on the web of the future. It will be an enormous shame if there is no open source solution - or, worse, if even the development of an open source solution is stiffled.
:-(
Check out this link to read about Real's legal tactics to try to shut down a product that offers the ability to capture streaming files and convert them. If Real succeeds, then even an opne source project allowing file download or file conversion of streaming video would be illegal.
I don't like microsoft any more than the next guy but why would anyone encourage another person to rip them off. It's just wrong. Not to mention you've taken a deal which can help the financially challenged get a computer and come into the information age, even if not a day late (and a dollar [400 shorter now] short).
Where's the rip off? In forcing MS to obey the law? Microsoft is offering $400 to users to try MSN. They knew that to do this in California and Oregon they way they wanted to (calling the rebate a loan to incur financial reporting advantages to themselves), they could not prevent consumers from cancelling MSN.
The corporation made a calculated bet that the advantage to them was greater than the loss of those cancelling MSN before the $400 was made back. They didn't understand the networking effects of the Internet, and they lost. Fair and square, nothing illegal or unethical unless you used the rebate twice or are an MSN customer.
On your second point, it helps the "financially challenged" to have this deal suspended. These are normally sucker rebates, and cost the clueless computer buyer money rather than saving him or her $400.
Best Buy and the others have advertisements in displaying this deal all over California. There are laws that specifically forbid companies from advertising products or services that they don't have in stock.
I don't see how Best Buy can not honor your request for the $400 rebate if you show up between now and whatever date is printed on one of their newspaper advertisements. Taking advantage of the MS loophole may be unethical, but a retailer not honoring an advertisement is akin to breaking a contract and well established legal terrain.
That paragraph says that even successfully using this defense only acquits the one using it - it doesn't invalidate the patent. This looks real bad - a big monkey-wrench to invalidating bad patents.
I sure hope I'm wrong - is there a lawyer in the house who can make better sense of this &%#$%@! ?
This is a very important question that needs to be answered by someone competent in legalese. Does this now really mean that prior use does not automatically invalidate a patent???
Japanese companies are notoriously afraid of unpredictable U.S. courts and so they settle, settle early, and settle big.
Not true for any multinational like Nintendo or Sony. Besides, there is no suit in the US (since the US version of the card isn't named after him).
I think, whether we have to put up with McCain, Forbes, Gore, or Bradley will be generally okay. The only real threatening candidate is Bush.
In the end though, research the candidates yourself. Don't rely on the superficial mass media reports, but spend some time using the vast resources of the Internet to probe their positions, and reach your own decision. Do vote because our democracy is not a sham unless you believe it is.