Yes, because of inflation. You expect to have your pay remain the same in real terms, and economists have decided the country's better if money is going down in value by about 2% a year.
The service of discounting your original purchase price of the film. If buying a film automatically granted you the right to copy and distribute it worldwide without paying any additional fee, how much do you think a DVD of Shrek 2 would cost? $10 million? $50 million? More, probably. Of course in reality, most movies would never get made. Those that were made would be shown only in theatres, after a careful body search of every single patron (to make absolutely sure they weren't smuggling in a video camera).
More likely they'd become commissioned works like symphonies in older times. Produced at the whim of some rich patron, but then distributed freely to everyone after that.
Please no responses about how Titanic or Star Wars: Episode III wouldn't be missed. If you don't like big budget movies, then you certainly won't be put out by not being able to download them.
Personally, I don't and I'm not. I could never get bittorrent to work anyway.
What's not consistent is downloading your movies and songs for free (screw licenses, dammit!!), then turning around and complaining about DrDOS violating the GPL (obey licenses, dammit!!).
It is consistent. Ignore the question of whether or not it's legal or violating the license, and concentrate on the effects. The position is "distribute stuff for free, dammit!!".
It's GFDL so anyone can do pretty much anything with it. There were already mirrors with ads around, search google some time for any encyclopaedic project and you'll find a fair few of them. I guess I'll just have to put the official wikipedia in the same "scumbags" category.
Art doesn't need to be lucrative to be done. True artists aren't in it for the money. There would still be enough money around to make a decent living, which is all anyone really deserves.
Yes, and complying with Sony Pictures' license only involves forking over ten bucks.
You may be lucky enough not to have to care about money. Most of us aren't. GPL compliance not only costs you nothing, but only requires things that you should be doing anyway.
Well unless you're a pretty hard-code Socialist, demanding money in exchange for goods and services is "acceptable".
Where's the goods or services in giving me a copy of their software/movie/whatever? The cost of their media/bandwidth, but that's what I'm paying the russian site for.
If I want someone to fix my roof or give me a new car, chances are they will demand money in return. Is that "acceptable"?
Yes. And if I were to commission you to make a film, you would quite rightly expect money in return. But if I buy a film from you and then make a copy and give it to my friend, what service are you providing in the second instance?
The songs and movies this guy is downloading from Russian piracy sites didn't just appear from thin air. Real people had to go to work every day to produce them. These people put a lot of work into making music and video products which the original poster desires; why shouldn't they get payed for their work?
If I spend a month digging holes in the ground and then filling them in again, do I deserve to get paid? Just because you worked doesn't mean other people have to pay you.
I'm not saying I agree with the information-wants-to-be-free position, but it is consistent and defensible.
Many companies don't really understand the GPL, but will follow its guidelines if they're explained to them. But companies WON'T use GPL software if they see OSS bulldogs going after a company publicly when that company hasn't had a sufficient amount of time to respond.
This is hardly bulldog stuff. They've asked them to follow the license, and raised a bit of publicity when they didn't. But they'd be well within their rights to forbid them from distributing the software entirely (the gpl states that once you violate any part of it, all your rights under it are revoked) or even start demanding statuatory damages (is it $125000 these days?) for each copy of DR-DOS sold.
Re:Illegal vs. Against the terms of the license
on
DrDOS Inc Breaking GPL
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· Score: 2, Insightful
AFAIK, violating a license is not illegal. A license is essentially an agreement between two parties (a form of a contract?). Violating the terms is allowed under the law, however there may be specific consequences of violating terms.
No. The term license has been abused by EULA writers, but an actual license gives you permission to do things that are normally forbidden by copyright law. Typically there will be a contract that goes with the license, e.g. "you pay us $2000 per developer who works on the derivative you are creating in return for licenses to distribute binaries of said derivative to third parties", but in the case of the GPL there is no contract, just a unilateral grant of a limited license. You can break a contract, e.g. by lying about how many developers worked on the thing, or simply not paying, in the first case, and you're correct in that that would not be illegal but would have consequences, probably the loss of the licenses in this case. However, you can also violate the license - or, more correctly, infringe the copyright holder's copyright by doing something they have an exclusive right to without having a license from them to do so - e.g. by redistributing source in the first case, or distributing gpl programs without source in the second. And that isn't breach of a contract, it's just straightforward copyright infringement, and fully illegal.
but look back at the original license for the kernel source and I bet you ten to one that there is a clause in there which allows this behavior by the owner of the DR DOS code base.
If there was such a clause it could not have been relicensed under the GPL, in which case the independent guy was violating Caledra's license. There's definitely some license violation going on here.
The ultimate point of all this nonsense about information wanting to be free is that no one wants to pay anything for anything so ANY license makes the information less free because a license automatically signifies it is in some way tied to someone who owns it more than anyone else.
We don't complain about people violating the GPL in ways that make things more free. Do you have an example of it actually happening?
Truly free information has no owners. We used to call that public domain. The GPL and so on is just a way for the cheapskates in amature socialist garb to have their cake and eat it too, but eventually the dogma generates the karma that runs it over.
The GPL increases the amount of information at what many view as an acceptable level of freedom more than making the GPL software entirely free would do. Yes, it's a tradeoff - we lose some freedom by making software GPL/LGPL rather than revised BSD or public domain (yes the revised BSD license still has restrictions, but they don't affect how free the information is, I don't think even the most rabid "information wants to be free" zealot would deny authors the right to have their works attributed to them) - but the idea is that that's outweighed by the greater freedom of information that comes from things which would have otherwise been proprietary being GPL. So far it seems to be working. You have to choose what you see as the level of freedom which matters to you, be it free-as-in-beer, DFSG, RMS' 4 freedoms, pure public domain, or whatever. To most people there is a scale, and something being DFSG-free, although not as free as public domain, is a worthwhile improvement over it being proprietary. By all means, go try and make an OS out of purely public domain software, writing what you need with the help of anyone willing to contribute. I don't think most people would see it as being worthwhile - if it ever became successful there would be a proprietary derivative that had more features, more people would use this because they don't care about freedom, it would have better hardware drivers because it was more popular, etc. The end result would be less freedom, not more.
Calling anything free with a license is just self-deception and there because those using it want to have the power of Intellectual Property OWNERSHIP and still look cool because they are LETTING people not pay money. It's not free as long as someone has to LET me use it.
That's something to take up with your lawmakers. Everything needs a license - many countries won't even let you put something into the public domain other than by waiting x years until the copyright expires.
Because then the poor next person to get that dynamic IP can't use your site, and the guy who did the spamming just disconnects and reconnects and starts going again. Once IPv6 comes in ISPs might give static IPs to everyone, but at the moment there's no way that'll happen. And even then you have people getting viruses and becoming accidental open proxies, unsecured wireless connections, friends coming around, and so on. A site that followed your policies would just lose too many legitimate users.
So Dr. Dos are not even depriving the original author of any potential income, they are just.... well, what exactly? Freeloading on his work? I thought that what the Creative Commons idea was all about...
They're depriving their customers of the ability to see their changed code and improve and learn from it, and share it with their friends. The GPL's a bit unusual in that the payment the author asks for in return for being allowed to redistribute his work goes not to the author himself but to the people the work is redistributed to, but you could see it as similar to the case where an author declares that the royalties from their book should go to a charity.
Yes, and the movie and record companies are only asking that you comply with their licenses.
And you snip the important part of his comment, that complying with the GPL only involves them distributing things they already have and can reproduce at no cost to their customers.
Perhaps it's only ok to demand compliance when the license is GPL?
There are some things which are acceptable to demand and some which aren't. Most people break some laws but would still insist you follow the law on things like murder.
It works both ways for DrDOS inc. too. If they can violate other people's copyrights (which is what you do when you break the GPL terms, it's not like some bullshit EULA) then they shouldn't care about me violating theirs. In which case, anyone got a download link?
Official policy is that KDE shouldn't require anything more than that (well, it depends on some gnu tools but those should run on any posix-compliant system). Of course in practice it's not quite that simple, but it should be very much doable.
That's why it needs so much effort. If you just want to go to mars, grab yourself a Titan IV upper stage for the earth-mars transfer (in fact, if you don't have to worry about taking enough fuel to get back you could use a faster non-hohman trajectory and save on food and oxygen) and stick it on just about anything (I think even a Falcon V would do) and shoot yourself off there.
Unfortunately we then regressed to Java. Also, maybe this means Tk will finally get a decent modern look-and-feel on Linux. I'm sure it looked great in the CDE days, but really, themes that will look like Qt and/or gtk are a must.
Someone above has pointed out the WoW one is worse. They're allowed to get any information they like from anything running on your computer, and do whatever they want with it.
Not necessarily. Just make it posix-compliant (it should be pretty close) and able to run X (which shouldn't require any core OS changes if you're not worried about acceleration, so shouldn't affect the ability of students to understand the main thing), and then you can compile any fancy gui you like for it, with no effect at all on the main system.
Last time this came up someone said you could aim properly by having a hole in the middle of the mirror. You line up the target through the hole, then tilt the mirror so the reflection of the spot made by the sun shining through the hole onto you is also aligned with the hole.
turning off sonar at predictable times sounds like a great idea.
Who said anything about predictable. Having it turned off whenever you go into a new area and listening on passive for a while is best practice generally anyway - once you start pinging whoever's on the receiving end definitely knows you're coming, wheras you may be able to hear them passively without getting detected.
Slashdot Mirror
Sufficiently good that you'd choose it over trying to find a job doing something else.
Yes, because of inflation. You expect to have your pay remain the same in real terms, and economists have decided the country's better if money is going down in value by about 2% a year.
More likely they'd become commissioned works like symphonies in older times. Produced at the whim of some rich patron, but then distributed freely to everyone after that.
Please no responses about how Titanic or Star Wars: Episode III wouldn't be missed. If you don't like big budget movies, then you certainly won't be put out by not being able to download them.
Personally, I don't and I'm not. I could never get bittorrent to work anyway.
What's not consistent is downloading your movies and songs for free (screw licenses, dammit!!), then turning around and complaining about DrDOS violating the GPL (obey licenses, dammit!!).
It is consistent. Ignore the question of whether or not it's legal or violating the license, and concentrate on the effects. The position is "distribute stuff for free, dammit!!".
It's GFDL so anyone can do pretty much anything with it. There were already mirrors with ads around, search google some time for any encyclopaedic project and you'll find a fair few of them. I guess I'll just have to put the official wikipedia in the same "scumbags" category.
Art doesn't need to be lucrative to be done. True artists aren't in it for the money. There would still be enough money around to make a decent living, which is all anyone really deserves.
You may be lucky enough not to have to care about money. Most of us aren't. GPL compliance not only costs you nothing, but only requires things that you should be doing anyway.
Well unless you're a pretty hard-code Socialist, demanding money in exchange for goods and services is "acceptable".
Where's the goods or services in giving me a copy of their software/movie/whatever? The cost of their media/bandwidth, but that's what I'm paying the russian site for.
If I want someone to fix my roof or give me a new car, chances are they will demand money in return. Is that "acceptable"?
Yes. And if I were to commission you to make a film, you would quite rightly expect money in return. But if I buy a film from you and then make a copy and give it to my friend, what service are you providing in the second instance?
The songs and movies this guy is downloading from Russian piracy sites didn't just appear from thin air. Real people had to go to work every day to produce them. These people put a lot of work into making music and video products which the original poster desires; why shouldn't they get payed for their work?
If I spend a month digging holes in the ground and then filling them in again, do I deserve to get paid? Just because you worked doesn't mean other people have to pay you.
I'm not saying I agree with the information-wants-to-be-free position, but it is consistent and defensible.
This is hardly bulldog stuff. They've asked them to follow the license, and raised a bit of publicity when they didn't. But they'd be well within their rights to forbid them from distributing the software entirely (the gpl states that once you violate any part of it, all your rights under it are revoked) or even start demanding statuatory damages (is it $125000 these days?) for each copy of DR-DOS sold.
No. The term license has been abused by EULA writers, but an actual license gives you permission to do things that are normally forbidden by copyright law. Typically there will be a contract that goes with the license, e.g. "you pay us $2000 per developer who works on the derivative you are creating in return for licenses to distribute binaries of said derivative to third parties", but in the case of the GPL there is no contract, just a unilateral grant of a limited license. You can break a contract, e.g. by lying about how many developers worked on the thing, or simply not paying, in the first case, and you're correct in that that would not be illegal but would have consequences, probably the loss of the licenses in this case. However, you can also violate the license - or, more correctly, infringe the copyright holder's copyright by doing something they have an exclusive right to without having a license from them to do so - e.g. by redistributing source in the first case, or distributing gpl programs without source in the second. And that isn't breach of a contract, it's just straightforward copyright infringement, and fully illegal.
If there was such a clause it could not have been relicensed under the GPL, in which case the independent guy was violating Caledra's license. There's definitely some license violation going on here.
We don't complain about people violating the GPL in ways that make things more free. Do you have an example of it actually happening?
Truly free information has no owners. We used to call that public domain. The GPL and so on is just a way for the cheapskates in amature socialist garb to have their cake and eat it too, but eventually the dogma generates the karma that runs it over.
The GPL increases the amount of information at what many view as an acceptable level of freedom more than making the GPL software entirely free would do. Yes, it's a tradeoff - we lose some freedom by making software GPL/LGPL rather than revised BSD or public domain (yes the revised BSD license still has restrictions, but they don't affect how free the information is, I don't think even the most rabid "information wants to be free" zealot would deny authors the right to have their works attributed to them) - but the idea is that that's outweighed by the greater freedom of information that comes from things which would have otherwise been proprietary being GPL. So far it seems to be working. You have to choose what you see as the level of freedom which matters to you, be it free-as-in-beer, DFSG, RMS' 4 freedoms, pure public domain, or whatever. To most people there is a scale, and something being DFSG-free, although not as free as public domain, is a worthwhile improvement over it being proprietary. By all means, go try and make an OS out of purely public domain software, writing what you need with the help of anyone willing to contribute. I don't think most people would see it as being worthwhile - if it ever became successful there would be a proprietary derivative that had more features, more people would use this because they don't care about freedom, it would have better hardware drivers because it was more popular, etc. The end result would be less freedom, not more.
Calling anything free with a license is just self-deception and there because those using it want to have the power of Intellectual Property OWNERSHIP and still look cool because they are LETTING people not pay money. It's not free as long as someone has to LET me use it.
That's something to take up with your lawmakers. Everything needs a license - many countries won't even let you put something into the public domain other than by waiting x years until the copyright expires.
Because then the poor next person to get that dynamic IP can't use your site, and the guy who did the spamming just disconnects and reconnects and starts going again. Once IPv6 comes in ISPs might give static IPs to everyone, but at the moment there's no way that'll happen. And even then you have people getting viruses and becoming accidental open proxies, unsecured wireless connections, friends coming around, and so on. A site that followed your policies would just lose too many legitimate users.
They're depriving their customers of the ability to see their changed code and improve and learn from it, and share it with their friends. The GPL's a bit unusual in that the payment the author asks for in return for being allowed to redistribute his work goes not to the author himself but to the people the work is redistributed to, but you could see it as similar to the case where an author declares that the royalties from their book should go to a charity.
And you snip the important part of his comment, that complying with the GPL only involves them distributing things they already have and can reproduce at no cost to their customers.
Perhaps it's only ok to demand compliance when the license is GPL?
There are some things which are acceptable to demand and some which aren't. Most people break some laws but would still insist you follow the law on things like murder.
It works both ways for DrDOS inc. too. If they can violate other people's copyrights (which is what you do when you break the GPL terms, it's not like some bullshit EULA) then they shouldn't care about me violating theirs. In which case, anyone got a download link?
It pisses off legitimate users and is no good for disabled people/lynx zealots. I've had to use the insecure bookmarked-login thing to read /. lately.
Official policy is that KDE shouldn't require anything more than that (well, it depends on some gnu tools but those should run on any posix-compliant system). Of course in practice it's not quite that simple, but it should be very much doable.
That's why it needs so much effort. If you just want to go to mars, grab yourself a Titan IV upper stage for the earth-mars transfer (in fact, if you don't have to worry about taking enough fuel to get back you could use a faster non-hohman trajectory and save on food and oxygen) and stick it on just about anything (I think even a Falcon V would do) and shoot yourself off there.
I'd do it, no question. Live a few decades longer or die young and live forever.
Unfortunately we then regressed to Java. Also, maybe this means Tk will finally get a decent modern look-and-feel on Linux. I'm sure it looked great in the CDE days, but really, themes that will look like Qt and/or gtk are a must.
Or, if you use a real browser like Konqueror you can just do it without having to hunt down an extension to let you.
Someone above has pointed out the WoW one is worse. They're allowed to get any information they like from anything running on your computer, and do whatever they want with it.
Not necessarily. Just make it posix-compliant (it should be pretty close) and able to run X (which shouldn't require any core OS changes if you're not worried about acceleration, so shouldn't affect the ability of students to understand the main thing), and then you can compile any fancy gui you like for it, with no effect at all on the main system.
That's not the way the word is normally used. We say a chef has created a wonderful desert, an artist has created a sculpture, etc.
Last time this came up someone said you could aim properly by having a hole in the middle of the mirror. You line up the target through the hole, then tilt the mirror so the reflection of the spot made by the sun shining through the hole onto you is also aligned with the hole.
Who said anything about predictable. Having it turned off whenever you go into a new area and listening on passive for a while is best practice generally anyway - once you start pinging whoever's on the receiving end definitely knows you're coming, wheras you may be able to hear them passively without getting detected.