Because the purpose restricts the users' freedoms.
Indeed the same software is distributed the exact same way. This isn't the problem. The problem is that in the latter case that you have removed the freedom of your end-users to exercise freedom 1 (the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to their needs). This was an oversight in the GPLv2. The GPLv3 rectifies this.
As an aside, you can do as you say with the hardware, but you must provide your private signing key so that any modified binaries will run. It's a nitpick, I know, but I wanted to be clear.
Of course it isn't, but that doesn't change my point.
Sure, I'm technically releasing the source code, but no one can do anything with it.
Tivo, etc. are releasing the source code and are doing so within their obligations under the GPLv2, but I don't have the rights that were supposed to be guaranteed to me. Tivo did an excellent job of finding a hole in the GPLv2. RMS did just as excellent of a job by closing that hole.
Your assertion that GPLv3 no longer allows for using the software for "any purpose" is very specious because you define "any purpose" as one which contravenes the license. Hell, you can't even use BSD-licensed software for "any purpose" if your purpose is to remove the copyright notices and/or use the authors of the program to endorse your fork. If that is your logic, then the GPLv2 also did not allow for "any purpose" since you can't use the code in a proprietary program. Indeed, only software in the public domain would meet your definition of "any purpose".
Again, you are free to have objections to the GPLv3, but your reasoning is lacking.
Even considering that the entire point of those restrictions was to tell Tivo "you may not use this software for that purpose"?
Actually that isn't what it says. It says you may use this software for whatever purpose you like, but you have to make sure the users of the software have these specific rights. If that fucks with your business model of restricting the rights of your users, then balls to you. Equivalently, I could say that the GPLv2 sucks because Microsoft can't use such software for their purposes, namely using the software in a proprietary program.
What Tivo et al. wanted to do was use the software but not give the users of the software under GPLv2 the freedoms they were supposed to have. Sure, you could see the code, but you couldn't further modify the code and install it on your Tivo. This reflected an imperfection (in the eyes of the FSF) in the GPLv2.
Suppose you release something using the GPLv2. I take it, modify it, and redistribute it but I put the source code in a secretly devised file format that no one but me can read, encrypt it, or in any way obfuscate it. Sure, I'm technically releasing the source code, but no one can do anything with it. Your software might as well have been released under a BSD-style license.
The entire scenario might be fine with you; I don't know your view on software licenses. If you don't like GPLv3, then simply don't use it. No one is forcing you to do so. Tivo and the like will have to either bite the bullet or start heavily investing in hacking the BSD userspace (or maintain old versions of the GNU tools).
If you put it that way, then yes. But it is a mistake to think that the founders wanted copyright to be used as a way to make money. Copyright recognizes the right to the fruits of your labor as you put it, but that is only a side effect, not the main point.
Now, those infringed rights have to be weighted against my right to benefit from the fruits of my honest labor and to the detriment in society if all software were free. Actually, you're incorrect. The only thing congress can consider when making copyright law is how copyright will affect the "progress of science and useful arts". Constitutionally speaking, copyright is to encourage people to release their creative works and nothing more. It is not to reward your work or give you a way to make a living. It is to benefit society as a whole.
If all software were "free" and more works were released due to the freeness (for whatever values of "free" you are speaking of), then all software should be free. The idea is to find the proper copyright term that will maximize the "progress of science and useful arts". I don't know what that term is, but it certainly isn't the term we have today.
A more careful reading of the article gives a different picture.
What Merle alleges is essentially this:
X sells widgets to Y. Y signed a contract with X to not sell the widgets below a certain price. Y sells some widgets to Z. Z sells the widgets on eBay either at a loss or is more likely getting a deal in violation of Y's contract with X. X notices auctions of their products below the value stipulated in the contract and concludes one of their partners is selling below cost. Therefore, X sues Z for interference in contracts and civil conspiracy, probably using it as leverage in order to compel Z to divulge Y.
In Colon:
The same basic premise is true but ITI says that any sale below a certain price set by them is an infringement of copyright, patent, and trademark law. In this case, X issued DMCA takedown notices to eBay. Z is suing to get a judgment that he isn't actually infringing any IP.
The fact that either of these cases are going to trial is something to be seriously worried about.
RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs....
The service has been operating since 1998 and was built and is being maintained by Mads Haahr who is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland.
So I presume you are against the police using spyware as a tool in all circumstances?
Not at all so long as the proper warrants are issued.
Would your opinion change if the Police had a warrant?
See above.
What if asked your permission to "snoop" your notebook that was stolen from you a week before in an effort to recover it?
That sentence isn't grammatically correct, so I can't tell what you mean.
Is this just limited to adware? If you daughter were kidnapped, would you protest them using her cel phone to track her?
Of course not. Unless I or she (if a legal adult) had turned off any tracking features on the phone. The phone is personal property. If the owner turns off any tracking features they had damn well better not be turned back on without the owner's say so. I might be kicking myself afterward, but that is my choice. Same as people who don't wear seatbelts.
If I buy software that detects spyware on my computer, it had better detect any and all spyware. Without digressing too far, this is why FOSS is very important in a time of decreased privacy. I guarantee you clamav and similar products will detect anything you want them to. If upstream allows for exceptions, we can simply take those exceptions out.
Where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the authority to construct such a bridge in just Alaska?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7, to wit:
To establish post offices and post roads
A post road is any road the post office uses.
I don't agree with the decision to build the bridge; the people who lived there didn't want it, but the building of it is authorized by the constitution.
Re:Offtopic, irrelevant, inconsequential, and lame
on
False Copyright Claims
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· Score: 1
I'm not going to bother arguing your political point. It falls on its own.
Neither am I. It was sarcasm.
For the record, I enjoy Sisko and Picard about equally. Kirk is a very distant third, but in a near dead heat with Archer. Janeway...well she's Janeway. Many of the Voyager episodes are downright painful to watch. I'll spare our readers any reference to "woman problems", but it did always seem that she thought she needed to be tougher than she was. And the annoying voice. God, I hate her voice.
I enjoyed that Sisko wasn't afraid to fire the phasers when they needed to be fired. That is pretty much what put him ahead of Picard.
If you want to look at the series:
TNG > DS9 > Enterprise > Voyager > TOS
That is with TNG being out in front by a wide margin, DS9 and Enterprise rather close and then a huge dropoff to Voyager and TOS. TOS was way too campy for me, and it was very hit-or-miss. Take only the good episodes of TOS and I could rank it above Enterprise.
And, IIRC, the Indiana legislature is controlled by the Democrats. At the very least it was a few years ago, because my conservative stepfather was complaining them.
Part of making a DMCA takedown notice is an oath under penalty of perjury that you hold the copyright to the work in question. The only problem is that perjury is notoriously hard to prosecute (as the prosecution must prove that the alleged knew they were lying), and if the law firm is in any way politically connect to our President, they'll be pardoned anyway.
Give the man a break. So much is the fault of Bush & Co. that if you don't know what you're talking about, you can guess it was them and be correct more often than not.
Surely the law could be changed to ensure works intended for publication should be given copyright. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with getting a copyright on something that will not ever be released to the public domain. It breaks the social contract upon which copyright lies.
If they want to make it a trade secret they don't deserve copyright protection. Copyright is given to encourage authors to publish their works so that all may enjoy them after the term expires. Indeed, no one should be compelled to release their works to the public at large, unless they want the protections that copyright gives them.
If I write a diary and get it notarized, I have a copyright on that work.
You do, but shouldn't. You haven't released anything to the public.
... if someone steals my diary...
Prosecute them for theft. Sue for the money they made on your diary. Sue for violation of privacy. Keep your diary safe.
You already said it in your subject line: "Unfortunately, this is very common".
These contracts are more than "very common", they are the rule. Anything that involves a service will have a one-sided contract like this. As a previous poster said:
And before any wise-ass comes back with "then don't sign it", try living with[out] a cell phone, credit card, phone service, bank account, etc, etc, etc..
You literally have no recourse in most of these cases other than to sue. And, of course, if you don't have the $100 for the overcharges, you don't likely have money for a lawyer to fight the contract you signed. Even if you beat the odds and won, the judge might not refund all legal fees (just what he believes to be reasonable). Therefore, you basically have to take it all in the ass.
Yeah, I was expecting someone to comment on that. IIRC, the Wikipedia article said something to the effect of that it was just coincidental. The article has since been changed, and I don't feel like hunting down the old page.
Shit, most of the time you don't know your encryption key. I have no clue what encryption key was used when I sent my last email to Gmail's SMTP servers. I use TLS, so I don't have the foggiest idea. Same with any website where you use SSL. Doing any offshore banking? I guarantee you don't know your session encryption key; it's pseudo-randomly derived and then thrown away.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the purpose restricts the users' freedoms.
Indeed the same software is distributed the exact same way. This isn't the problem. The problem is that in the latter case that you have removed the freedom of your end-users to exercise freedom 1 (the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to their needs). This was an oversight in the GPLv2. The GPLv3 rectifies this.
As an aside, you can do as you say with the hardware, but you must provide your private signing key so that any modified binaries will run. It's a nitpick, I know, but I wanted to be clear.
Of course it isn't, but that doesn't change my point.
Sure, I'm technically releasing the source code, but no one can do anything with it.
Tivo, etc. are releasing the source code and are doing so within their obligations under the GPLv2, but I don't have the rights that were supposed to be guaranteed to me. Tivo did an excellent job of finding a hole in the GPLv2. RMS did just as excellent of a job by closing that hole.
Your assertion that GPLv3 no longer allows for using the software for "any purpose" is very specious because you define "any purpose" as one which contravenes the license. Hell, you can't even use BSD-licensed software for "any purpose" if your purpose is to remove the copyright notices and/or use the authors of the program to endorse your fork. If that is your logic, then the GPLv2 also did not allow for "any purpose" since you can't use the code in a proprietary program. Indeed, only software in the public domain would meet your definition of "any purpose".
Again, you are free to have objections to the GPLv3, but your reasoning is lacking.
What Tivo et al. wanted to do was use the software but not give the users of the software under GPLv2 the freedoms they were supposed to have. Sure, you could see the code, but you couldn't further modify the code and install it on your Tivo. This reflected an imperfection (in the eyes of the FSF) in the GPLv2.
Suppose you release something using the GPLv2. I take it, modify it, and redistribute it but I put the source code in a secretly devised file format that no one but me can read, encrypt it, or in any way obfuscate it. Sure, I'm technically releasing the source code, but no one can do anything with it. Your software might as well have been released under a BSD-style license.
The entire scenario might be fine with you; I don't know your view on software licenses. If you don't like GPLv3, then simply don't use it. No one is forcing you to do so. Tivo and the like will have to either bite the bullet or start heavily investing in hacking the BSD userspace (or maintain old versions of the GNU tools).
If you put it that way, then yes. But it is a mistake to think that the founders wanted copyright to be used as a way to make money. Copyright recognizes the right to the fruits of your labor as you put it, but that is only a side effect, not the main point.
If all software were "free" and more works were released due to the freeness (for whatever values of "free" you are speaking of), then all software should be free. The idea is to find the proper copyright term that will maximize the "progress of science and useful arts". I don't know what that term is, but it certainly isn't the term we have today.
I got the partial derivative of cos(4x) wrt x evaluated at 0. That's pretty trivial. You could guess at that and do well.
A more careful reading of the article gives a different picture.
What Merle alleges is essentially this:
X sells widgets to Y. Y signed a contract with X to not sell the widgets below a certain price. Y sells some widgets to Z. Z sells the widgets on eBay either at a loss or is more likely getting a deal in violation of Y's contract with X. X notices auctions of their products below the value stipulated in the contract and concludes one of their partners is selling below cost. Therefore, X sues Z for interference in contracts and civil conspiracy, probably using it as leverage in order to compel Z to divulge Y.
In Colon:
The same basic premise is true but ITI says that any sale below a certain price set by them is an infringement of copyright, patent, and trademark law. In this case, X issued DMCA takedown notices to eBay. Z is suing to get a judgment that he isn't actually infringing any IP.
The fact that either of these cases are going to trial is something to be seriously worried about.
Indeed. First page:
...
RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs.
The service has been operating since 1998 and was built and is being maintained by Mads Haahr who is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland.
If I buy software that detects spyware on my computer, it had better detect any and all spyware. Without digressing too far, this is why FOSS is very important in a time of decreased privacy. I guarantee you clamav and similar products will detect anything you want them to. If upstream allows for exceptions, we can simply take those exceptions out.
To establish post offices and post roads
A post road is any road the post office uses.
I don't agree with the decision to build the bridge; the people who lived there didn't want it, but the building of it is authorized by the constitution.
For the record, I enjoy Sisko and Picard about equally. Kirk is a very distant third, but in a near dead heat with Archer. Janeway...well she's Janeway. Many of the Voyager episodes are downright painful to watch. I'll spare our readers any reference to "woman problems", but it did always seem that she thought she needed to be tougher than she was. And the annoying voice. God, I hate her voice.
I enjoyed that Sisko wasn't afraid to fire the phasers when they needed to be fired. That is pretty much what put him ahead of Picard.
If you want to look at the series:
TNG > DS9 > Enterprise > Voyager > TOS
That is with TNG being out in front by a wide margin, DS9 and Enterprise rather close and then a huge dropoff to Voyager and TOS. TOS was way too campy for me, and it was very hit-or-miss. Take only the good episodes of TOS and I could rank it above Enterprise.
The tragic thing is that they're going to end up getting both the former and the latter.
And, IIRC, the Indiana legislature is controlled by the Democrats. At the very least it was a few years ago, because my conservative stepfather was complaining them.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I keep forgetting my sarcasm tags...
Part of making a DMCA takedown notice is an oath under penalty of perjury that you hold the copyright to the work in question. The only problem is that perjury is notoriously hard to prosecute (as the prosecution must prove that the alleged knew they were lying), and if the law firm is in any way politically connect to our President, they'll be pardoned anyway.
Give the man a break. So much is the fault of Bush & Co. that if you don't know what you're talking about, you can guess it was them and be correct more often than not.
Surely the law could be changed to ensure works intended for publication should be given copyright. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with getting a copyright on something that will not ever be released to the public domain. It breaks the social contract upon which copyright lies.
You already said it in your subject line: "Unfortunately, this is very common".
These contracts are more than "very common", they are the rule. Anything that involves a service will have a one-sided contract like this. As a previous poster said:
And before any wise-ass comes back with "then don't sign it", try living with[out] a cell phone, credit card, phone service, bank account, etc, etc, etc..
You literally have no recourse in most of these cases other than to sue. And, of course, if you don't have the $100 for the overcharges, you don't likely have money for a lawyer to fight the contract you signed. Even if you beat the odds and won, the judge might not refund all legal fees (just what he believes to be reasonable). Therefore, you basically have to take it all in the ass.
...which would give them effectively unlimited copyright protection.
Part of getting copyright protection should be depositing a copy of the work at the Library of Congress.
Yeah, I was expecting someone to comment on that. IIRC, the Wikipedia article said something to the effect of that it was just coincidental. The article has since been changed, and I don't feel like hunting down the old page.
Unlikely. AFAIK "Diallo" is a very common last name in Guinea. Quoth wikipedia:
On April 18, 2000, Diallo's mother, Kadiatou, and his stepfather, Sankarella Diallo...
So his stepfather was also named Diallo.
Certainly they may have known each other, but it is near the chances of two Smiths in NYC knowing each other.
Well the only thing we can say about our good friend sigzero is that he believes Bush to be better than Clinton.
That is certainly aiming high.