It was a link to FAQ for the MS open xml format (not patent free, but free for anyone to use without royalties.) In other words you can use it, but can't change it on them. I think you will find it quite educational.
Do a little research on a site not run by MS. First the license forbids GPL programs from using the format. Second the format relies upon binary data encoded in the XML header that is completely undocumented. Putting "open" in the name does not make it open and is just a speaking point for politicians and a way to propagate this FUD you are spreading. No one with any technical knowledge has been fooled by this.
The argument originally made was over fear that the ms format wouldn't be readable in 10 years.
...which it probably won't be since it is still in an undocumented format and old Word files currently cannot be read by any program available on the market today.
Her numbers for Office at FULL PREMIUM PRICE
OK, let me nip this in the bud. Whatever the cost of Office it will be more than zero dollars right? So if we are comparing the cost of upgrading to a new version of Word (which eventually all users will have to do if they stick with.doc) and the cost of training and support for that versus the cost of a free office suite plus the cost of training and support for that, you are claiming that the Word option will be more cost effective. Now keeping in mind that the state can take bids from lots of different companies for training, support, and upgrades to Open Office, whereas they have to pay whatever MS decides to ask for the same for Word, you are still claiming that Word will be cheaper? At what point did the nice doctors drill that hole in your head?
The answer to that would be the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who use the MS software and are happy with it (I'm one of them).
Most users don't even know what word processor they use and don't really care. For that matter most users don't have any word processor on their computer. If they want to send.doc files to the state, fine Open Office can read and convert them. If, for some reason, they don't want to download Open Office, they can request documents in a different format like.doc, or PDF and the state can still make those for them if they feel the need. And if you want to use Word and you still want to exchange office files with the state, well you're a customer, just ask MS to implement that format or buy a program to convert from a third party.
The typical person does not want to go search the web for some "free" software they had never heard of just to read a government document. Not to mentions people's hesitation to install it and have it clutter up their computer with another program.
They don't have to search for it, the state can distribute it themselves on their own server along with the files. I'd guess most people would be happier to download a free program from the state than have to pay hundreds of dollars to buy one just to read files they've already paid for with tax dollars. As for "cluttering up their hard drives" take a look at the footprint of MS Office vs. Open Office. One is a lot more clutter than the other, guess which one.
The state CIO's job is to serve the people, not the OSS agenda.
Hahahah, yeah it is a open source conspiracy. They have an "agenda." Open Source is a feature, plain and simple. It means programs can be modifies and are always subject to competitive bids. That has little to do with this case. The state has mandated an open standard. That is just common sense.An open standard serves the people, saves them money, and insures availability of documents for the future. It also happens to mean you need to convince MS to support that standard and/or get a third party to write a converter if you want to do business. Boo hoo. The same is true for WordPerfect's format and any other. Your assertion that a state should always use the same, closed, for pay, software that you do is foolish and short sighted. Get a clue already.
I just thought I'd address a few of your arguments here, to clarify a few things.
That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files
You're the one spouting crap. MS Word can't even open all MS Word files and likely nothing ever will be able to since the spec is not published. I have plenty of Word files I have inherited that cannot be opened by any currently available software (only be old versions of Word that are unavailable). That is annoying for my company's private records. It is wholly unacceptable for documents owned by "The People."
Here are the hardware specs for OO and MS Office 2k3. The hardware requirements are virtually identical.
Why don't you read your own links, specifically the supported OS's. Also, the link you post is for Open Office 2, The first version is still available, supports the same format, and has lesser requirements.
PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the.doc format (actually MS's format is more open).
You are misinformed. PDF is an open, published, unencumbered standard with multiple readers and writers. 50 years from now, if someone needs to read a PDF, and no readers work on any current OS, they can read the spec and implement one, or a conversion to a format that is supported. DOC is a closed, unpublished, undocumented, intentionally obfuscated, has dozens of versions, and some versions are patent encumbered. That is a big difference.
After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.
OK, who is it that is so afraid of spyware they will refuse to download a program from a government website? Do tell.
Interesting enough its democrats looking to keep them, because its best (at least at this point) for the citizens.
That is your opinion and a pretty weak one. So far your arguments for using word have still been, "everyone else does." Gee great logic. OpenOffice can read and write.doc file adequately right now and supports the state's preferred format, and is free and is open source so modifications to it are subject to competitive bidding. Word costs money, is closed source, does not support the preferred format, and is only available from one supplier (one known to criminally abuse their market position). Are you going to provide any arguments for Word, or are you just going to continue to spout uninformed technical FUD and ad hominem attacks. You're pathetic. I hope MS is not paying you too much for you astroturf, your arguments are sure not worth much.
Generally this factor boils down to commercial vs. non-commercial use... A second inquiry asks whether the new work merely supersedes the objects of the original creation, or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or diff character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message. Here, Google is making perfect digital copies that are not any different than the original. Here, the new use supersedes the old use, again weighing against Google.
This is somewhat true and it is true that Google is using the works, or a service based upon finding them, for commercial gain. To claim it is only commercial vs. non-commercial is an oversimplification. In this case Google is not duplicating the use of the originals, but providing a new use, a way to search for and find works. This is a completely different use than reading a work.
This factor recognizes that some works are closer to the core of intended copyright protection than others, with the consequence that fair use is more difficult to establish when the former works are copied.
Actually my understanding of this section is that it is usually misunderstood and that the nature of the work speaks mainly to to purpose of copyright and how it is upheld by a given instance of reproduction. In this case Google is indexing publicly available libraries and providing what amounts to a very advanced card catalogue. This will work in their favor.
In this case, Google is copying 100% of each text into its database.
Since Google is not using the works themselves and is only republishing excerpts this is classified in the same way thumbnail images and copies of works in network devices during transfer are. That is to say, it is the end result of what is republished, not what is originally copied that speaks to this provision. The courts have traditionally looked at the end result of what a user of a service or device sees, not the technical mechanism that provides it. Copying entire works for the purpose of providing an excerpt has been upheld before as fair use.
Certainly, Google will argue that reproducing 2 or 3 lines of text will hardly effect the market for a book, in fact it will enhance it by teasing the user into purchasing the book. However, the counter-argument is that wide-spread scanning of books, without regard for copyright holders, will act as a disincentive for authors to produce future works. Additionally, the argument will be put forth that, should Google decide to license its database to others, or if the contents are stolen, then the dissemination of perfect copies of their works onto the internet for all to download would destroy the value of the works entirely.
Google can trot out as many authors as needed to testify about how they want their works indexed and how having their work indexed has increased sales. There are already protests by authors against these groups who claim to represent them and against publishers who have joined this suit.
As for licensing or theft of a database you should know neither has any bearing on legitimate uses. You can ban a legitimate use on the presupposition of a future illegal use.
On balance, I cannot see how Google could possibly win a fair use argument. It would be silly of them to even attempt to put one forth.
Take a look at "Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corp." for precedent on application of these four criteria and note that Google's use of libraries is very similar in most ways. Arriba Soft Corporation copied entire copyrighted images into a database, without permission from the copyright holder, and then made that database searchable and provided thumbnail excerpts of that work. The project was commercial and paid for by ads. Further all but one district court has filed supporting that precedent. That one exception is where the suit against Google is filed. With conflicting precedent an appeal to the Supreme court is nearly guaranteed.
That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license.
Is this even a coherent sentence? I assume you intended to babble some uninformed BS about how MS's new file format is open, even though it isn't, and cannot be implemented by other vendors since it stores vital information as encoded chunks of binary data within the XML.
But to address your premise, I can't find that anywhere in the state constitution or in any laws. I think that is a nice notion you have, but isn't the job of the CIO of the state.
Umm, the CIO is supposed to get the best tech at the best price. Just like everything else, he wrote a standard for what he wanted and is accepting bids. Just because the standard they decided upon is the Open Office format instead of a format only one vendor can bid on does not mean he is legislating. You might notice he chose the standard the entire European Union has also decided upon.
This is not rocket science. Just because you have been buying a special kind of patented electrical plug for years, does not mean you should not choose a new one when it comes time to renovate a building, especially when anyone can bid on the new one, while only one company can bid on the old one. It is common sense and business sense not to lock yourself into on supplier.
The CIO should be implementing the most compatible solution for the citizens.
I'm glad you said that. Who can run OpenOffice and write to that format? Anyone, the software is free and runs on all major OS's. Who can run Word and write to.doc? The subset of the population that is running Windows or Mac OS and can afford to spend $100+. I think it is clear which one is more compatible.
When you have 95% + of a market you are the standard.
Who cares if it is a de-facto standard. It locks you into one supplier which means you are screwed in purchasing negotiations. Only an idiot would go with a product available only from one vendor. If MS wants to be a supplier then they can meet the product specifications of their customer. Gee what a crazy concept, a supplier providing what the customer wants, and bidding against other suppliers. If MS does not want to bid and compete, well that is certainly there choice. So far your only argument has been, they should do what everyone else does because everyone else is doing it. What a great way to stifle all progress forever. Hopefully the legislators in MA will not be as blind as you are.
As the last article on this noted, there are a fair number of blind and deaf state workers who could not get by using OpenOffice.
This has been suggested, but I have not seen research to back it up. Even were that the case, those workers could still use Koffice, Abiword, Wordperfect, or any other word-processor that supports the open Document format (all have announced support) and which integrates with braille boards and other such devices.
Not to mention that a fiscally conservative approach would be to use MS Office on older hardware due to its lower processor and memory consumption compared to OOo.
The state has a site license for MS Office now, which will only support Office 2003 and later as of next year. Office 2003 and 12, both have much higher resource requirements and only run on Windows XP, which is beyond the capabilities of some of their current hardware. Open Office runs on older OS's and uses less resources, contrary to your assertion.
Did you even read the article? The proposed cost of Open Office, with training, support, and installation is 5 million. The proposed cost of Office, without training for the new version is 50 million. Yeah, it sounds like sticking with the 50 million dollar offer sure is a great deal. What crack head modded you insightful?
It is almost inevitable that Google Print will be subverted and Google will seek the very same protections that it claims the publishers should not have.
While Google's investment in scanning is certainly worthwhile, it is by no means the only one of its kind and some of the others are freely available. Take a look at the EU's project to do the same with the libraries of Europe. No, the real advantage Google has and has always had over its competitors is not content, but the ability to rapidly, and cheaply index, search, and sort that content. The heart and soul of Google's value is in thousands upon thousands of cheap computers running a proprietary OS as a mesh. That is what makes print.google.com special and even should someone manage to break the weak DRM Google is using and suck down all the texts they have (which is arguably more expensive than just re-scanning them in the first place) they will have to develop as fast and efficient of search technology if they want to effectively compete. Even then they still have to pay for the bandwidth and machines to host that content and no one is as good at generating revenue through well placed ads as Google. Google has patents to protect that technology, and I don't think you have to worry about them trying to use copyrights on their database to try to deter competition. Google has some smart people working for them and they certainly know that inevitably their will be other engines that search this same data, possible sucked down from their own servers. I doubt they are really worried about it.
hough I personally believe what Google are doing is not ethically/morally wrong, they are most probably 'breaking' our unjust (injust?) copyright laws.
My research into the subject suggests the opposite. Although the laws are somewhat vague, Google appears to meet all four criteria for fair use and every single district has filed supporting briefs supporting a case with significant precedent, except the district in which the case against google has been filed. I suspect this is because the lawyers involved know they will be unlikely to prevail in the end, but are hoping to win the initial case and force the issue to the supreme court, possibly with an injunction in place. This is because they hope to delay and possible temporarily stop Google's actions while they try to get laws pushed through the courts to make what Google is doing illegal.
The only reason they are 'getting away' with it is because they are the most powerful domain on the net. No-one dares mess with Google.
I think you are overstating Google's influence by a lot. First, the people suing Google don't care if they are findable by Google as they are not a consumer facing body. Second, they are a bunch of middle men, what do they care about publicity? Will you stop buying books from those publishers and hurt the authors (who mostly support Google's actions)? No I think you have this backwards. Google is legally going to prevail, and these publishers are just delaying while trying to pass some laws to avoid the future possibility of being cut out of the deal. They fear for their position as middle men and are fighting hard to stop anything that might be progress.
I think programs like the Warden will be a big part of the incentive that drives the adoption of better security tools for home PCs. Virtualization and jails are already being developed and researched by the OSS community and MS but users who cannot trust software vendors are going to be the driving force behind their implementation. Nice, application level ACLs that tell your OS exactly what WoW can and cannot do on your machine would be pretty darn welcome for a lot of users right now, especially pre-configured ones for different types of applications. Assuming Blizzard implemented their spyware to only allow WoW to run when given enough permission, a virtual machine will easily solve that problem.
Note, I'm not saying anything Blizzard is doing is nefarious, only that no one really knows for sure and a lot of people would rather not blindly trust all the software manufacturers and random shareware they grab from the internet. I certainly hope these technologies become common kit soon, because I'm tired of waiting for decent security against malware, trojans, etc. Sooner or later remote exploits will become hard to do, and we'll need security against this type of vector.
Is that surprising, considering demand is so high, world-wide?
What ever gave you the idea demand is higher? Basic economics tells us that any resource sold at least partially for luxury reasons is elastic, and as price goes up, demand responds by going down. Gas prices went up. Tourist towns are going broke since people are avoiding driving places for vacations. RV sales are dead in the water, since they use so much gas. SUV sales went down for the first time this decade. I'd say all of those are indications of declining demand for gas. This implies higher margins, although that is hard to determine with certainty. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
All of this, of course, is a complete tangent from the original topic of the RIAA's illegal business tactics and avoidance of a free market and the competitive advantages a free market brings to consumers.
we're talking about licensing of copyrighted material.
For the most part, that is not true. Most sales are the copyright holder publishing a copy, not licensing it.
That used to be the case, yes, but the Internet is changing that.
Internet distribution is still a blip on the radar, especially distribution of works not already popularized through standard distribution channels. It's a bit premature to say the internet will change the nature of the game.
These organizations actually serve the musicians, not the distribution networks.
That's not the point, the point is a single national entity that collects copyrights leads to an easily established cartel that manipulates a market.
Say the musician keeps the copyright. They want to sell their material in different countries. What are they going to do? They're going to probably give different organizations the right to sell the music for them. Only to make it fair for those organizations, those rights need to be exclusive to some geography/whatever.
You've missed the point. Musicians make deals with a single company, who then resells the copyright distribution worldwide. By ensuring the artists retain the copyright, and see reasonable direct profit from it, they are not only able to bargain with organizations to redistribute, but they can bargain from a position of some security, and can even distribute directly if they so choose. It's not as though the average musician sells their rights more than once. That is the problem, they need to be free to sell wherever they want.
Only to make it fair for those organizations, those rights need to be exclusive to some geography/whatever.
Why? Would most artists not prefer to license the right to, global organizations? Artists gain no profit from the cartels and have no reason to support them. Why would they not license to say Apple for redistribution in all iTunes stores?
Note that this has nothing to do with the transfer of copyright, it's simply the licensing of the rights that derive from copyright protection. Which is what an intellectual property holder wants to do. How else are they supposed to make money?
It is normal practice to sign over all copyright instead of licensing redistribution. That has a lot of drawbacks. As for how a artist is supposed to make money, by licensing, in their own interest and with a guaranteed share of the profit to counter the power help over them by an illegal cartel that controls the distribution chain. Right now most artists don't make any money selling music. No really, none. They only make money on concerts and merchandise, some of which goes to pay off their debt to the record company.
But this is the problem that people like Apple face in offering music across borders. They have to track down and deal with different parties in different geographies. That takes time. It takes money.
And the reason for that is because the cartels have a vested interest in maintaining local cartels and hence segregate licensing rights. Artists have no such vested interest. Most would gladly license Apple, MS, and anyone else who wants to redistribute their music for a reasonable percentage. The complexity, cost, and barriers are made solely by the music cartels and facilitated by a system that turns a blind eye to their exploitation of artists using their established stranglehold on local distribution.
It means all the record companies got together and decided on one price for all music, rather than competing against one another for the lowest price. They picked a number they thought would make the most profit, rather than letting the market decide the price. They then used their domination of the market to force out competitors and dominate all distribution channels with anti-competative contracts. This is illegal and they have already been found guilty. Unfortunately our legal system is run by crooks and their punishment was donating the fine worth of music (at the artificially high sale price rather than the pittance it actually costs them) to schools and libraries. They used this as an opportunity to dump crap CDs they could not sell. Some libraries received hundreds of copies of Will Smith's Willenium album. I kid you not. For that crime against humanity, alone the entire RIAA membership deserves execution.
If we are "going along with it," that means this is a price the market will bear
That term is traditionally used to describe a single producer selling items into a free market. What we are looking at here is an illegal collaboration among distributors, thus it is the highest price consumers will pay, not what a free market value would be.
Also consider inflation, and you will see the actual price of a CD has indeed come down quite a bit over the years.
The cost of production of CDs has never been lower. Mass pressed CDs cost pennies. Most artists actually lose money making the album. In a fair market, CDs would probably cost a few dollars.
You probably also think gas prices in towns affected by hurricanes should be kept as low as they were before hurricanes, thereby creating gas shortages, rather than letting supply and demand to its thang, increasing the cost of a good that is in short supply to naturally curb hoarding.
Whenever there is a coalition (OPEC) or a monopoly in place, the free market does not operate. It is not as though you can buy oil from one producer or another and they compete, because most of them are part of a cartel, that colludes to set the price. There is a reason this is illegal. Perhaps you may have noticed the price gouging lawsuits leveled against the oil companies or the fact that their price increases were justified by what have been verified as lies? Maybe you missed the news about how in spite of the hurricane damage to their equipment and the overtime repairs the oils companies somehow made record profits last quarter?
The market is what it is. If you think CDs are "too expensive," don't buy them. If enough people agree, they'll come down in price or be replaced by similar technology that is less expensive.
First, I don't buy them. Second, no they won't come down in price or be replaced, instead the record companies will lobby to have laws passed that are effectively taxing hard drives and other storage devices and taxes upon network connections to make money. They have already passed such laws in many places and are lobby hard for them in others. Finally your pseudo-argument, "The market is what it is" is pure bullcrap. One might as well argue, "Blacks are slaves and is the way it is." Claiming that something is the current state of things is no logical justification. Just because something is the status quo does not make it fair or ethical or right.
But your main argument about music creators having to sign away their rights to the record labels has nothing to do with whether or not music is available for download across international borders. Different topic.
You are dead wrong. Pretty much everyone is a Berne Coonvention signatory these days. That means they agree to honor copyrights from foreign nations under the same laws they have for domestic copyrights. Thus, small independent musicians can and do make music and sell it on the internet across pretty much all national borders. The reason they can do this, is because they have the copyright. The problem is, in order to be heard by a significant number of people (i.e. get that music on the radio, MTV, in stores, etc.) a musician has to sign a contract with one or more distribution houses. Because almost all countries collect fees on behalf of copyright owners and have a national organization for that purpose it makes it easy for a cartel to lobby and control the collection of royalties, and thus the lions share of domestic music. Given that, it is only a tiny hop to control the distribution channels. At that point they have effectively build a wall between musicians and consumers and charge exorbitant fees, often in excess of 100% of the profit from selling the music.
If laws were passed that said The artists who create an perform a work cannot transfer that copyright and all licenses for sale and distribution of copyrighted works must return at least 10% of the cost of each sale or performance to the artist(s), then artists could at least make a fair profit on these deals. Also, since they would retain the copyright, they could sell overseas without having to go through another distributor.
Before you make any arguments about cost increases that would result, remember the RIAA has multiple times been convicted of price fixing, setting the price of CDs at what they think people will pay, rather than at a competitive cost. They know raising the price will lose them sales, so they have would have to decide between fewer sales (much less profit) or the same sales, with their share being smaller.
t would be better if OO dont get into feature adding mode. Instead of adding features make the ones already there better.
If the OpenOffice team really wants to have a better product they should buy a copy of Framemaker, which Adobe bought and has been slowly killing for the last decade. Then they should shamelessly clone all the features and add them to the word processor component. It is scary that they have chosen a buggy and poorly designed word processor like Word to clone, rather than a professional word processor and layout application.
Because music has far more inherent replay value than video.
Your comment only makes sense if there is no free market and competition. Sure, music has more replay value, but the whole point of a free market is that it should become efficient and sell based upon quality and price. In a music business without price fixing, music is created and sold at a reasonable markup on the cost of production and various producers compete so sell not only the best music, but at a lower price than their competitors. Look at the PC market, Dell is usually among the cheapest of the retailers, and their machines are sold at only a slight markup on the cost of production to try to out-cheap everyone else.
What the price differential discussed here (DVD vs. CD) shows is that either music production is unbelievably expensive, more-so than creating significantly more full motion video with sound, special effects, and music in the background or the prices are being maintained at an artificial level. Given that the RIAA has been convicted of price fixing several times now, I'm guessing it is the latter.
That makes it sound like a big conspiracy theory, but I don't think it's that. Yes, there are different rights (publisher, performance, etc.) with different organizations collecting them, but I'm not sure it's any more complex than selling anything in a different country.
If I want to buy a toaster made in Canada, I order one from their website and they ship it to me. I may or may not be responsible for paying an extra tax or levvy on it because it is exported/imported. This seems pretty reasonable. The company that makes the toaster sells it.
If I want to buy a song online, written and performed by a Canadian artist, in Canada, in general I have to buy the song from an American company that owns the rights to that song, only in the U.S. and I have to buy a different copy if I want to get it in Canada. In no circumstance do I have any dealing with the artists that made the song and whose rights the laws are supposed to be protecting... and you don't see anything strange about that? Hell it takes Apple months to offer a song in the EU and they are being sued over it since different cartels charge them different prices, but the law says they can't sell them at different prices. Most musicians in the US who want their music to be heard by more than a tiny minority have to sign away their rights to a major label at terms so unfavorable they usually end up losing money on the deal. You don't see anything wrong with a system where musicians have to take a loss on selling their creation just to get it heard, in the hopes that they can break even or make some money on concerts and merchandise? Sure there are a tiny few superstars who do not fall into this category, but that does not make for a healthy market. When the average producer of art has to pay to give away their music to their audience and be heard and middle men make a huge profit reselling that work for good money, the system is seriously broken.
Now I wish that they would start selling the videos in stores OTHER THAN the US....
I actually think this is a good illustration of the fact that the copyright system is very broken. The theory of copyright is an author, band, producer, or artist creates a work and is granted exclusive rights to republish it. They generate money from selling copies, which encourages them to produce more works to make more money. One would then assume, if someone like Apple wanted to resell a song or TV show they would go to said band or producer, buy a license to redistribute it, and start offering it. This does not happen.
The reality of the situation is the producers of work almost inevitably have to give up that copyright to numerous parties in numerous countries since various organizations and cartels have monopolized all the popular distribution and advertising venues in a given territory. In order to distribute a work in multiple countries Apple (or any other retailer) has to contact hundreds of organizations, negotiate hundreds of licenses and evaluate hundreds of separate business cases. This leads to most works only being distributed in one given country and a very segregated market. It also leads to most artists making very little compared to the middle men with the cartel. How could the system have gotten this fucked up? This is exactly what the drafters of the original copyright laws in the U.S. were trying to avoid, since the printing house cartels were so detrimental in Europe. I guess greed and money eventually will corrupt any legal system.
What gaurantee do we have that the.mobi admins will really track the important (especially emerging) standards correctly? If a new phone comes out that supports some special new wireless web standard that they haven't heard about yet, and I design my site to the new spec, will they drop my domain?,/i>
Presumably they will act in the best interest of adding value to their domain, something that means up to date standards, since that is what benefits them. As for some "special new standard" it will depend upon if it really is a standard, or just an attempt to embrace and extend.
Who said that domain names have anything to do with the web, or at least standard uses of http? Perhaps I want to register a.mobi domain and offer up a service based on my own custom xml api over http, which gets hit by some java software I sell for cellphones. It won't comply with their known standards, but it is a mobile phone network service. Perhaps I'm offering something completely different, like ssh service over port 443 for proxy bypassers, etc..
You may notice the content on the.edu domain is restricted to only educational institutions as decided by the TLD registrar. That is filtering based upon criteria that must be proved beforehand. Now they are enforcing standards on http, https, etc. on the.mobi domain so that it is all actually content mobile phones can see. Both of these things adds value for the end user. In one case I know the services are from an educational institution, in the other case I know it will work with any standards compliant mobile device. As for other services for that domain, neither of us has an informed opinion since no policies have been mentioned.
Are they really going to take a zone xfer of all the hostnames within a client.mobi domain, and portscan them all to find services that should be machine-verified for standards compliance? If so, what ports do you check and which do you not? Is it ok to offer noncompliant web-services over port 888?
I don't know and neither do you. I imagine they care about the standard web ports and will let you do what you want on the others, although it could be a violation of your license with them and eventually they may restrict mail, IM, etc. But then if you are going to offer noncompliant services on a non-standard port, you might as well go whole hog and offer them on an unexpected TLD too.
DNS is a lookup service for IP addresses in general. IP addresses are used for many things besides displaying standards-compliant content for standard browsers via http on some port or other. Some people seem to think that browsers are the only thing that generate IP traffic anymore.
Some people just don't understand that specific TLDs are for specific purposes. They think the internet is.com, and all the other TLDs are "extra" domains they have to register for the same purpose as.com to keep customers who mistype the URL from being confused. Domains are supposed to be for a purpose and if the purpose of.mobi is to offer standards compliant services to mobile devices, then the registrar has every right to police that domain to insure content that does not fit into that category is removed. Maybe you should petition for a ".nonstd" TLD that you can run your broken/propietary services on.
Because a major player in said market is a monopoly that has a history of abusing that monopoly and of intentionally breaking standards, web standards, in order to illegally extend that monopoly?
Why would you want to force compliance of crappy or unused technology on an entire TLD?
Who is to say what is crappy and what is not? They are enforcing standards, not technology per se. This makes the sites universally readable by anyone who obeys standards and hopefully provides a level playing field for phone and software makers, while invalidating the tactic of intentionally extending and breaking those standards to create incompatibility that benefits one player. Basically, this keeps MS from using Frontpage and their mobile OS to dominate the space with a broken, de-facto standard that pushes all the other players out of the space. Letting the free market decide only works when you have a free market, not when you have a monopoly trying to extend into the space. This in turn adds value to this particular TLD from the end-user perspective and consequently from the perspective of web site operators.
Why not just let the domain regulate itself? If I go to a.mobi domain in my cell phone browser and it looks like crap, I won't go back. The website doesn't get any traffic. The company fixes it.
First, they are trying to add value to their domain. If users learn that sites on that domain always work with all their mobile devices they will prefer it, which will make sites there more attractive, which will lead to more value for the owners. Second, letting the free market decide works great if you have a free market. As it is, however, you have minor interference from a swarm of governments and one huge monopoly trying to embrace and control said market. MS would like nothing better than to control the mobile OS space, and thus the internet for mobile users. They have the cash to strategically break service for 20% of users in the interest of gaining long term control and profits. This is not in the best interests of the domain owners and will reduce the value of the domain. Basically, I see this as a shrewd move assuming they can pull it off and one that favors end users.
"Hey, you don't know me, but I just KNOW you'll love what I have in this box. Go ahead, take it home and open it." Trusting complete strangers isn't a mark of techno-ignorance, it's a mark of idiocy.
In order for you analogy to be correct, users have to know enough about how poorly their computer is designed to know that they are trusting strangers, which they don't.
For example, if a person who knows very little about technology buys a new portable radio/TV and they are watching the TV and see an advertisement that says, "Bob has set up a cool new radio station. Check it out at 101.3 AM on your radio." And that person then tunes in to 101.3 AM and their radio breaks, would you call them an idiot for trusting the TV? Because that is how most people view computers, sort of like a TV, game console, radio, encyclopedia, and telephone all rolled into one. The problem is not that people are idiots, it is that computers behave very stupidly by default, are very complex and buggy, and do a piss-poor job of informing the user, in easy to understand terms, what is going on. People should have a better understanding of computers, but computers should function much more securely as well. Do most users want to run random executables from the internet? No; so they should be warned when they perform an action that would cause that to happen. When running random executables from the internet, do most users want that executable to have complete access to the network, all their files, all their hardware, and the core components of their OS? No; by default executables from the internet should run in a locked-down sandbox. This isn't brain surgery here. Computers should behave more safely by default and I suspect market forces would have moved them in this direction a long time ago, if not for the fact that they have been bypassed by a certain monopoly. Only now are application level ACLs and jails becoming usable on some systems, because on most systems there is little demand. I suspect this to can be attributed to the aforementioned monopoly. In terms of the inevitable car analogy, If their was one car monopoly and they had not bothered to add ignition or door keys to their cars then there is not a lot of demand for door keys on those "fringe" non-monopoly made cars that make up 1% of cars. No one steals them anyway, since so many cars don't even have ignition keys.
If MS ever gets its act together and makes its OS as secure, by default, as the average Linux distro is today, then the demand will crop up for ACLs, jails, etc. as malware authors move to trojans as their main vector. In the meantime, the computing world crawls forward under the shadow of hugely insecure Windows boxes everywhere. To summarize, people aren't idiots, although they are uneducated. Computers behave in very stupid ways that no one in their right mind should consider an appropriate default for a new user. I blame Microsoft.
WE HATE SPAM! Geeze... this is only going to get worse before it gets better... and it's been getting worse for 10 years...
You still get spam? My mail program checks four accounts every day, three of which have never, ever had a spam message show up. The fourth used to get spam occasionally, but my filters got better. Between the server side filtering and the bayesian filtering in my client, I thought spam was a solved problem. Of course I always give a one-time address to web sites for registration and commercial purposes, but how hard is that? Click twice to make one and twice more to delete it when I'm done. Maybe you just need some better mail solutions.
Being as most creatures don't come with light-emitting organs as standard equipment, this speculation falls short of an explanation. Maybe there were large populations of electroluminescent bacteria a hojillion years ago.
Hmmm, a predator swims by overhead temporarily blocking the light of the sun, some creatures with a basic light sensor learn to dive when this happens. It makes sense to me. Even really basic sight is better than no sight.
No, just narrower. A disadvantage, like tunnel vision.
Well, technically it is directionalizing the light detection, which may be an advantage or disadvantage, depending upon the degree of directionality and the number and configuration of light sensitive "eyes." Additionally this would serve the same purpose as our eye sockets do now, to protect this sensitive spot from damage.
Again, the creature's eye become LESS useful until it reaches a point where the aperture narrowed enough to focus the light onto the "retina", instead of in front of or behind it.
Not so. Eyes would initially have been useful for spotting movement, since that is the type of light change most needed for survival. Assuming the direction they are facing can be changed, this may well allow a creature to detect the direction of an incoming object. Have you ever seen a one eyed person judge distance. Most compensate for their depth perception by constantly moving their heads a little bit. This could easily have worked in the same way.
I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.
Other posters have already given you a few examples.
It means that South Korea is obligated to recognize foreign copyrights, and stripping that protection for (arguably valid) nationalist reasons would almost certainly be in violation of international law.
The Berne Convention only requires a minimum copyright length and that countries treat foreign copyrights the same as they do their own. If Korean law allows or can be changed to allow the confiscation rights from abusive monopolies there is no conflict. For that matter, the Korean courts can just declare the intellectual property to be the fine MS must pay. In either case, Korea is unlikely to be reprimanded by the WTO since they are dealing with a criminal in the first place and an abuse monopoly that has already been found guilty in the US and EU court systems. I disagree that this would be a problem for them, but I'm no expert on international trade law.
The "we may leave the market" statement is a good scare tactic, but like another poster said, is normal to hear in the beginning.
I'm not too sure about this. You have to remember they are threatening a government, not some other corporation. Not much is stopping S.Korea from ruling that MS is abusing their monopoly so badly that they have decided to renounce all of MS's intellectual property rights and all versions of Windows and other products are free for all citizens. Alternately, they could run that the Korean subsidiary of MS must separate from the National corporation and continue development of Windows as a local product. Governments have a lot more options in dealing with MS than you seem to be giving them credit for.
Slashdot Mirror
It was a link to FAQ for the MS open xml format (not patent free, but free for anyone to use without royalties.) In other words you can use it, but can't change it on them. I think you will find it quite educational.
Do a little research on a site not run by MS. First the license forbids GPL programs from using the format. Second the format relies upon binary data encoded in the XML header that is completely undocumented. Putting "open" in the name does not make it open and is just a speaking point for politicians and a way to propagate this FUD you are spreading. No one with any technical knowledge has been fooled by this.
The argument originally made was over fear that the ms format wouldn't be readable in 10 years.
...which it probably won't be since it is still in an undocumented format and old Word files currently cannot be read by any program available on the market today.
Her numbers for Office at FULL PREMIUM PRICE
OK, let me nip this in the bud. Whatever the cost of Office it will be more than zero dollars right? So if we are comparing the cost of upgrading to a new version of Word (which eventually all users will have to do if they stick with .doc) and the cost of training and support for that versus the cost of a free office suite plus the cost of training and support for that, you are claiming that the Word option will be more cost effective. Now keeping in mind that the state can take bids from lots of different companies for training, support, and upgrades to Open Office, whereas they have to pay whatever MS decides to ask for the same for Word, you are still claiming that Word will be cheaper? At what point did the nice doctors drill that hole in your head?
The answer to that would be the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who use the MS software and are happy with it (I'm one of them).
Most users don't even know what word processor they use and don't really care. For that matter most users don't have any word processor on their computer. If they want to send .doc files to the state, fine Open Office can read and convert them. If, for some reason, they don't want to download Open Office, they can request documents in a different format like .doc, or PDF and the state can still make those for them if they feel the need. And if you want to use Word and you still want to exchange office files with the state, well you're a customer, just ask MS to implement that format or buy a program to convert from a third party.
The typical person does not want to go search the web for some "free" software they had never heard of just to read a government document. Not to mentions people's hesitation to install it and have it clutter up their computer with another program.
They don't have to search for it, the state can distribute it themselves on their own server along with the files. I'd guess most people would be happier to download a free program from the state than have to pay hundreds of dollars to buy one just to read files they've already paid for with tax dollars. As for "cluttering up their hard drives" take a look at the footprint of MS Office vs. Open Office. One is a lot more clutter than the other, guess which one.
The state CIO's job is to serve the people, not the OSS agenda.
Hahahah, yeah it is a open source conspiracy. They have an "agenda." Open Source is a feature, plain and simple. It means programs can be modifies and are always subject to competitive bids. That has little to do with this case. The state has mandated an open standard. That is just common sense.An open standard serves the people, saves them money, and insures availability of documents for the future. It also happens to mean you need to convince MS to support that standard and/or get a third party to write a converter if you want to do business. Boo hoo. The same is true for WordPerfect's format and any other. Your assertion that a state should always use the same, closed, for pay, software that you do is foolish and short sighted. Get a clue already.
I just thought I'd address a few of your arguments here, to clarify a few things.
That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files
You're the one spouting crap. MS Word can't even open all MS Word files and likely nothing ever will be able to since the spec is not published. I have plenty of Word files I have inherited that cannot be opened by any currently available software (only be old versions of Word that are unavailable). That is annoying for my company's private records. It is wholly unacceptable for documents owned by "The People."
Here are the hardware specs for OO and MS Office 2k3. The hardware requirements are virtually identical.
Why don't you read your own links, specifically the supported OS's. Also, the link you post is for Open Office 2, The first version is still available, supports the same format, and has lesser requirements.
PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the .doc format (actually MS's format is more open).
You are misinformed. PDF is an open, published, unencumbered standard with multiple readers and writers. 50 years from now, if someone needs to read a PDF, and no readers work on any current OS, they can read the spec and implement one, or a conversion to a format that is supported. DOC is a closed, unpublished, undocumented, intentionally obfuscated, has dozens of versions, and some versions are patent encumbered. That is a big difference.
After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.
OK, who is it that is so afraid of spyware they will refuse to download a program from a government website? Do tell.
Interesting enough its democrats looking to keep them, because its best (at least at this point) for the citizens.
That is your opinion and a pretty weak one. So far your arguments for using word have still been, "everyone else does." Gee great logic. OpenOffice can read and write .doc file adequately right now and supports the state's preferred format, and is free and is open source so modifications to it are subject to competitive bidding. Word costs money, is closed source, does not support the preferred format, and is only available from one supplier (one known to criminally abuse their market position). Are you going to provide any arguments for Word, or are you just going to continue to spout uninformed technical FUD and ad hominem attacks. You're pathetic. I hope MS is not paying you too much for you astroturf, your arguments are sure not worth much.
Generally this factor boils down to commercial vs. non-commercial use... A second inquiry asks whether the new work merely supersedes the objects of the original creation, or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or diff character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message. Here, Google is making perfect digital copies that are not any different than the original. Here, the new use supersedes the old use, again weighing against Google.
This is somewhat true and it is true that Google is using the works, or a service based upon finding them, for commercial gain. To claim it is only commercial vs. non-commercial is an oversimplification. In this case Google is not duplicating the use of the originals, but providing a new use, a way to search for and find works. This is a completely different use than reading a work.
This factor recognizes that some works are closer to the core of intended copyright protection than others, with the consequence that fair use is more difficult to establish when the former works are copied.
Actually my understanding of this section is that it is usually misunderstood and that the nature of the work speaks mainly to to purpose of copyright and how it is upheld by a given instance of reproduction. In this case Google is indexing publicly available libraries and providing what amounts to a very advanced card catalogue. This will work in their favor.
In this case, Google is copying 100% of each text into its database.
Since Google is not using the works themselves and is only republishing excerpts this is classified in the same way thumbnail images and copies of works in network devices during transfer are. That is to say, it is the end result of what is republished, not what is originally copied that speaks to this provision. The courts have traditionally looked at the end result of what a user of a service or device sees, not the technical mechanism that provides it. Copying entire works for the purpose of providing an excerpt has been upheld before as fair use.
Certainly, Google will argue that reproducing 2 or 3 lines of text will hardly effect the market for a book, in fact it will enhance it by teasing the user into purchasing the book. However, the counter-argument is that wide-spread scanning of books, without regard for copyright holders, will act as a disincentive for authors to produce future works. Additionally, the argument will be put forth that, should Google decide to license its database to others, or if the contents are stolen, then the dissemination of perfect copies of their works onto the internet for all to download would destroy the value of the works entirely.
Google can trot out as many authors as needed to testify about how they want their works indexed and how having their work indexed has increased sales. There are already protests by authors against these groups who claim to represent them and against publishers who have joined this suit.
As for licensing or theft of a database you should know neither has any bearing on legitimate uses. You can ban a legitimate use on the presupposition of a future illegal use.
On balance, I cannot see how Google could possibly win a fair use argument. It would be silly of them to even attempt to put one forth.
Take a look at "Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corp." for precedent on application of these four criteria and note that Google's use of libraries is very similar in most ways. Arriba Soft Corporation copied entire copyrighted images into a database, without permission from the copyright holder, and then made that database searchable and provided thumbnail excerpts of that work. The project was commercial and paid for by ads. Further all but one district court has filed supporting that precedent. That one exception is where the suit against Google is filed. With conflicting precedent an appeal to the Supreme court is nearly guaranteed.
This lawsuit is about tying things up in
That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license.
Is this even a coherent sentence? I assume you intended to babble some uninformed BS about how MS's new file format is open, even though it isn't, and cannot be implemented by other vendors since it stores vital information as encoded chunks of binary data within the XML.
But to address your premise, I can't find that anywhere in the state constitution or in any laws. I think that is a nice notion you have, but isn't the job of the CIO of the state.
Umm, the CIO is supposed to get the best tech at the best price. Just like everything else, he wrote a standard for what he wanted and is accepting bids. Just because the standard they decided upon is the Open Office format instead of a format only one vendor can bid on does not mean he is legislating. You might notice he chose the standard the entire European Union has also decided upon.
This is not rocket science. Just because you have been buying a special kind of patented electrical plug for years, does not mean you should not choose a new one when it comes time to renovate a building, especially when anyone can bid on the new one, while only one company can bid on the old one. It is common sense and business sense not to lock yourself into on supplier.
The CIO should be implementing the most compatible solution for the citizens.
I'm glad you said that. Who can run OpenOffice and write to that format? Anyone, the software is free and runs on all major OS's. Who can run Word and write to .doc? The subset of the population that is running Windows or Mac OS and can afford to spend $100+. I think it is clear which one is more compatible.
When you have 95% + of a market you are the standard.
Who cares if it is a de-facto standard. It locks you into one supplier which means you are screwed in purchasing negotiations. Only an idiot would go with a product available only from one vendor. If MS wants to be a supplier then they can meet the product specifications of their customer. Gee what a crazy concept, a supplier providing what the customer wants, and bidding against other suppliers. If MS does not want to bid and compete, well that is certainly there choice. So far your only argument has been, they should do what everyone else does because everyone else is doing it. What a great way to stifle all progress forever. Hopefully the legislators in MA will not be as blind as you are.
As the last article on this noted, there are a fair number of blind and deaf state workers who could not get by using OpenOffice.
This has been suggested, but I have not seen research to back it up. Even were that the case, those workers could still use Koffice, Abiword, Wordperfect, or any other word-processor that supports the open Document format (all have announced support) and which integrates with braille boards and other such devices.
Not to mention that a fiscally conservative approach would be to use MS Office on older hardware due to its lower processor and memory consumption compared to OOo.
The state has a site license for MS Office now, which will only support Office 2003 and later as of next year. Office 2003 and 12, both have much higher resource requirements and only run on Windows XP, which is beyond the capabilities of some of their current hardware. Open Office runs on older OS's and uses less resources, contrary to your assertion.
Did you even read the article? The proposed cost of Open Office, with training, support, and installation is 5 million. The proposed cost of Office, without training for the new version is 50 million. Yeah, it sounds like sticking with the 50 million dollar offer sure is a great deal. What crack head modded you insightful?
It is almost inevitable that Google Print will be subverted and Google will seek the very same protections that it claims the publishers should not have.
While Google's investment in scanning is certainly worthwhile, it is by no means the only one of its kind and some of the others are freely available. Take a look at the EU's project to do the same with the libraries of Europe. No, the real advantage Google has and has always had over its competitors is not content, but the ability to rapidly, and cheaply index, search, and sort that content. The heart and soul of Google's value is in thousands upon thousands of cheap computers running a proprietary OS as a mesh. That is what makes print.google.com special and even should someone manage to break the weak DRM Google is using and suck down all the texts they have (which is arguably more expensive than just re-scanning them in the first place) they will have to develop as fast and efficient of search technology if they want to effectively compete. Even then they still have to pay for the bandwidth and machines to host that content and no one is as good at generating revenue through well placed ads as Google. Google has patents to protect that technology, and I don't think you have to worry about them trying to use copyrights on their database to try to deter competition. Google has some smart people working for them and they certainly know that inevitably their will be other engines that search this same data, possible sucked down from their own servers. I doubt they are really worried about it.
hough I personally believe what Google are doing is not ethically/morally wrong, they are most probably 'breaking' our unjust (injust?) copyright laws.
My research into the subject suggests the opposite. Although the laws are somewhat vague, Google appears to meet all four criteria for fair use and every single district has filed supporting briefs supporting a case with significant precedent, except the district in which the case against google has been filed. I suspect this is because the lawyers involved know they will be unlikely to prevail in the end, but are hoping to win the initial case and force the issue to the supreme court, possibly with an injunction in place. This is because they hope to delay and possible temporarily stop Google's actions while they try to get laws pushed through the courts to make what Google is doing illegal.
The only reason they are 'getting away' with it is because they are the most powerful domain on the net. No-one dares mess with Google.
I think you are overstating Google's influence by a lot. First, the people suing Google don't care if they are findable by Google as they are not a consumer facing body. Second, they are a bunch of middle men, what do they care about publicity? Will you stop buying books from those publishers and hurt the authors (who mostly support Google's actions)? No I think you have this backwards. Google is legally going to prevail, and these publishers are just delaying while trying to pass some laws to avoid the future possibility of being cut out of the deal. They fear for their position as middle men and are fighting hard to stop anything that might be progress.
Note, I'm not saying anything Blizzard is doing is nefarious, only that no one really knows for sure and a lot of people would rather not blindly trust all the software manufacturers and random shareware they grab from the internet. I certainly hope these technologies become common kit soon, because I'm tired of waiting for decent security against malware, trojans, etc. Sooner or later remote exploits will become hard to do, and we'll need security against this type of vector.
Is that surprising, considering demand is so high, world-wide?
What ever gave you the idea demand is higher? Basic economics tells us that any resource sold at least partially for luxury reasons is elastic, and as price goes up, demand responds by going down. Gas prices went up. Tourist towns are going broke since people are avoiding driving places for vacations. RV sales are dead in the water, since they use so much gas. SUV sales went down for the first time this decade. I'd say all of those are indications of declining demand for gas. This implies higher margins, although that is hard to determine with certainty. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
All of this, of course, is a complete tangent from the original topic of the RIAA's illegal business tactics and avoidance of a free market and the competitive advantages a free market brings to consumers.
we're talking about licensing of copyrighted material.
For the most part, that is not true. Most sales are the copyright holder publishing a copy, not licensing it.
That used to be the case, yes, but the Internet is changing that.
Internet distribution is still a blip on the radar, especially distribution of works not already popularized through standard distribution channels. It's a bit premature to say the internet will change the nature of the game.
These organizations actually serve the musicians, not the distribution networks.
That's not the point, the point is a single national entity that collects copyrights leads to an easily established cartel that manipulates a market.
Say the musician keeps the copyright. They want to sell their material in different countries. What are they going to do? They're going to probably give different organizations the right to sell the music for them. Only to make it fair for those organizations, those rights need to be exclusive to some geography/whatever.
You've missed the point. Musicians make deals with a single company, who then resells the copyright distribution worldwide. By ensuring the artists retain the copyright, and see reasonable direct profit from it, they are not only able to bargain with organizations to redistribute, but they can bargain from a position of some security, and can even distribute directly if they so choose. It's not as though the average musician sells their rights more than once. That is the problem, they need to be free to sell wherever they want.
Only to make it fair for those organizations, those rights need to be exclusive to some geography/whatever.
Why? Would most artists not prefer to license the right to, global organizations? Artists gain no profit from the cartels and have no reason to support them. Why would they not license to say Apple for redistribution in all iTunes stores?
Note that this has nothing to do with the transfer of copyright, it's simply the licensing of the rights that derive from copyright protection. Which is what an intellectual property holder wants to do. How else are they supposed to make money?
It is normal practice to sign over all copyright instead of licensing redistribution. That has a lot of drawbacks. As for how a artist is supposed to make money, by licensing, in their own interest and with a guaranteed share of the profit to counter the power help over them by an illegal cartel that controls the distribution chain. Right now most artists don't make any money selling music. No really, none. They only make money on concerts and merchandise, some of which goes to pay off their debt to the record company.
But this is the problem that people like Apple face in offering music across borders. They have to track down and deal with different parties in different geographies. That takes time. It takes money.
And the reason for that is because the cartels have a vested interest in maintaining local cartels and hence segregate licensing rights. Artists have no such vested interest. Most would gladly license Apple, MS, and anyone else who wants to redistribute their music for a reasonable percentage. The complexity, cost, and barriers are made solely by the music cartels and facilitated by a system that turns a blind eye to their exploitation of artists using their established stranglehold on local distribution.
What does "artificially high" mean?
It means all the record companies got together and decided on one price for all music, rather than competing against one another for the lowest price. They picked a number they thought would make the most profit, rather than letting the market decide the price. They then used their domination of the market to force out competitors and dominate all distribution channels with anti-competative contracts. This is illegal and they have already been found guilty. Unfortunately our legal system is run by crooks and their punishment was donating the fine worth of music (at the artificially high sale price rather than the pittance it actually costs them) to schools and libraries. They used this as an opportunity to dump crap CDs they could not sell. Some libraries received hundreds of copies of Will Smith's Willenium album. I kid you not. For that crime against humanity, alone the entire RIAA membership deserves execution.
If we are "going along with it," that means this is a price the market will bear
That term is traditionally used to describe a single producer selling items into a free market. What we are looking at here is an illegal collaboration among distributors, thus it is the highest price consumers will pay, not what a free market value would be.
Also consider inflation, and you will see the actual price of a CD has indeed come down quite a bit over the years.
The cost of production of CDs has never been lower. Mass pressed CDs cost pennies. Most artists actually lose money making the album. In a fair market, CDs would probably cost a few dollars.
You probably also think gas prices in towns affected by hurricanes should be kept as low as they were before hurricanes, thereby creating gas shortages, rather than letting supply and demand to its thang, increasing the cost of a good that is in short supply to naturally curb hoarding.
Whenever there is a coalition (OPEC) or a monopoly in place, the free market does not operate. It is not as though you can buy oil from one producer or another and they compete, because most of them are part of a cartel, that colludes to set the price. There is a reason this is illegal. Perhaps you may have noticed the price gouging lawsuits leveled against the oil companies or the fact that their price increases were justified by what have been verified as lies? Maybe you missed the news about how in spite of the hurricane damage to their equipment and the overtime repairs the oils companies somehow made record profits last quarter?
The market is what it is. If you think CDs are "too expensive," don't buy them. If enough people agree, they'll come down in price or be replaced by similar technology that is less expensive.
First, I don't buy them. Second, no they won't come down in price or be replaced, instead the record companies will lobby to have laws passed that are effectively taxing hard drives and other storage devices and taxes upon network connections to make money. They have already passed such laws in many places and are lobby hard for them in others. Finally your pseudo-argument, "The market is what it is" is pure bullcrap. One might as well argue, "Blacks are slaves and is the way it is." Claiming that something is the current state of things is no logical justification. Just because something is the status quo does not make it fair or ethical or right.
But your main argument about music creators having to sign away their rights to the record labels has nothing to do with whether or not music is available for download across international borders. Different topic.
You are dead wrong. Pretty much everyone is a Berne Coonvention signatory these days. That means they agree to honor copyrights from foreign nations under the same laws they have for domestic copyrights. Thus, small independent musicians can and do make music and sell it on the internet across pretty much all national borders. The reason they can do this, is because they have the copyright. The problem is, in order to be heard by a significant number of people (i.e. get that music on the radio, MTV, in stores, etc.) a musician has to sign a contract with one or more distribution houses. Because almost all countries collect fees on behalf of copyright owners and have a national organization for that purpose it makes it easy for a cartel to lobby and control the collection of royalties, and thus the lions share of domestic music. Given that, it is only a tiny hop to control the distribution channels. At that point they have effectively build a wall between musicians and consumers and charge exorbitant fees, often in excess of 100% of the profit from selling the music.
If laws were passed that said The artists who create an perform a work cannot transfer that copyright and all licenses for sale and distribution of copyrighted works must return at least 10% of the cost of each sale or performance to the artist(s), then artists could at least make a fair profit on these deals. Also, since they would retain the copyright, they could sell overseas without having to go through another distributor.
Before you make any arguments about cost increases that would result, remember the RIAA has multiple times been convicted of price fixing, setting the price of CDs at what they think people will pay, rather than at a competitive cost. They know raising the price will lose them sales, so they have would have to decide between fewer sales (much less profit) or the same sales, with their share being smaller.
t would be better if OO dont get into feature adding mode. Instead of adding features make the ones already there better.
If the OpenOffice team really wants to have a better product they should buy a copy of Framemaker, which Adobe bought and has been slowly killing for the last decade. Then they should shamelessly clone all the features and add them to the word processor component. It is scary that they have chosen a buggy and poorly designed word processor like Word to clone, rather than a professional word processor and layout application.
Because music has far more inherent replay value than video.
Your comment only makes sense if there is no free market and competition. Sure, music has more replay value, but the whole point of a free market is that it should become efficient and sell based upon quality and price. In a music business without price fixing, music is created and sold at a reasonable markup on the cost of production and various producers compete so sell not only the best music, but at a lower price than their competitors. Look at the PC market, Dell is usually among the cheapest of the retailers, and their machines are sold at only a slight markup on the cost of production to try to out-cheap everyone else.
What the price differential discussed here (DVD vs. CD) shows is that either music production is unbelievably expensive, more-so than creating significantly more full motion video with sound, special effects, and music in the background or the prices are being maintained at an artificial level. Given that the RIAA has been convicted of price fixing several times now, I'm guessing it is the latter.
That makes it sound like a big conspiracy theory, but I don't think it's that. Yes, there are different rights (publisher, performance, etc.) with different organizations collecting them, but I'm not sure it's any more complex than selling anything in a different country.
If I want to buy a toaster made in Canada, I order one from their website and they ship it to me. I may or may not be responsible for paying an extra tax or levvy on it because it is exported/imported. This seems pretty reasonable. The company that makes the toaster sells it.
If I want to buy a song online, written and performed by a Canadian artist, in Canada, in general I have to buy the song from an American company that owns the rights to that song, only in the U.S. and I have to buy a different copy if I want to get it in Canada. In no circumstance do I have any dealing with the artists that made the song and whose rights the laws are supposed to be protecting... and you don't see anything strange about that? Hell it takes Apple months to offer a song in the EU and they are being sued over it since different cartels charge them different prices, but the law says they can't sell them at different prices. Most musicians in the US who want their music to be heard by more than a tiny minority have to sign away their rights to a major label at terms so unfavorable they usually end up losing money on the deal. You don't see anything wrong with a system where musicians have to take a loss on selling their creation just to get it heard, in the hopes that they can break even or make some money on concerts and merchandise? Sure there are a tiny few superstars who do not fall into this category, but that does not make for a healthy market. When the average producer of art has to pay to give away their music to their audience and be heard and middle men make a huge profit reselling that work for good money, the system is seriously broken.
Now I wish that they would start selling the videos in stores OTHER THAN the US....
I actually think this is a good illustration of the fact that the copyright system is very broken. The theory of copyright is an author, band, producer, or artist creates a work and is granted exclusive rights to republish it. They generate money from selling copies, which encourages them to produce more works to make more money. One would then assume, if someone like Apple wanted to resell a song or TV show they would go to said band or producer, buy a license to redistribute it, and start offering it. This does not happen.
The reality of the situation is the producers of work almost inevitably have to give up that copyright to numerous parties in numerous countries since various organizations and cartels have monopolized all the popular distribution and advertising venues in a given territory. In order to distribute a work in multiple countries Apple (or any other retailer) has to contact hundreds of organizations, negotiate hundreds of licenses and evaluate hundreds of separate business cases. This leads to most works only being distributed in one given country and a very segregated market. It also leads to most artists making very little compared to the middle men with the cartel. How could the system have gotten this fucked up? This is exactly what the drafters of the original copyright laws in the U.S. were trying to avoid, since the printing house cartels were so detrimental in Europe. I guess greed and money eventually will corrupt any legal system.
The humans evolved fishing boats and nets to move into damned near any water for more prey.
I was wondering why that boat was growing on my left foot. I guess random genetic mutation caused it to be there.
What gaurantee do we have that the .mobi admins will really track the important (especially emerging) standards correctly? If a new phone comes out that supports some special new wireless web standard that they haven't heard about yet, and I design my site to the new spec, will they drop my domain?,/i>
Presumably they will act in the best interest of adding value to their domain, something that means up to date standards, since that is what benefits them. As for some "special new standard" it will depend upon if it really is a standard, or just an attempt to embrace and extend.
Who said that domain names have anything to do with the web, or at least standard uses of http? Perhaps I want to register a .mobi domain and offer up a service based on my own custom xml api over http, which gets hit by some java software I sell for cellphones. It won't comply with their known standards, but it is a mobile phone network service. Perhaps I'm offering something completely different, like ssh service over port 443 for proxy bypassers, etc..
You may notice the content on the .edu domain is restricted to only educational institutions as decided by the TLD registrar. That is filtering based upon criteria that must be proved beforehand. Now they are enforcing standards on http, https, etc. on the .mobi domain so that it is all actually content mobile phones can see. Both of these things adds value for the end user. In one case I know the services are from an educational institution, in the other case I know it will work with any standards compliant mobile device. As for other services for that domain, neither of us has an informed opinion since no policies have been mentioned.
Are they really going to take a zone xfer of all the hostnames within a client .mobi domain, and portscan them all to find services that should be machine-verified for standards compliance? If so, what ports do you check and which do you not? Is it ok to offer noncompliant web-services over port 888?
I don't know and neither do you. I imagine they care about the standard web ports and will let you do what you want on the others, although it could be a violation of your license with them and eventually they may restrict mail, IM, etc. But then if you are going to offer noncompliant services on a non-standard port, you might as well go whole hog and offer them on an unexpected TLD too.
DNS is a lookup service for IP addresses in general. IP addresses are used for many things besides displaying standards-compliant content for standard browsers via http on some port or other. Some people seem to think that browsers are the only thing that generate IP traffic anymore.
Some people just don't understand that specific TLDs are for specific purposes. They think the internet is .com, and all the other TLDs are "extra" domains they have to register for the same purpose as .com to keep customers who mistype the URL from being confused. Domains are supposed to be for a purpose and if the purpose of .mobi is to offer standards compliant services to mobile devices, then the registrar has every right to police that domain to insure content that does not fit into that category is removed. Maybe you should petition for a ".nonstd" TLD that you can run your broken/propietary services on.
Why wouldn't the market determine the criteria?
Because a major player in said market is a monopoly that has a history of abusing that monopoly and of intentionally breaking standards, web standards, in order to illegally extend that monopoly?
Why would you want to force compliance of crappy or unused technology on an entire TLD?
Who is to say what is crappy and what is not? They are enforcing standards, not technology per se. This makes the sites universally readable by anyone who obeys standards and hopefully provides a level playing field for phone and software makers, while invalidating the tactic of intentionally extending and breaking those standards to create incompatibility that benefits one player. Basically, this keeps MS from using Frontpage and their mobile OS to dominate the space with a broken, de-facto standard that pushes all the other players out of the space. Letting the free market decide only works when you have a free market, not when you have a monopoly trying to extend into the space. This in turn adds value to this particular TLD from the end-user perspective and consequently from the perspective of web site operators.
Why not just let the domain regulate itself? If I go to a .mobi domain in my cell phone browser and it looks like crap, I won't go back. The website doesn't get any traffic. The company fixes it.
First, they are trying to add value to their domain. If users learn that sites on that domain always work with all their mobile devices they will prefer it, which will make sites there more attractive, which will lead to more value for the owners. Second, letting the free market decide works great if you have a free market. As it is, however, you have minor interference from a swarm of governments and one huge monopoly trying to embrace and control said market. MS would like nothing better than to control the mobile OS space, and thus the internet for mobile users. They have the cash to strategically break service for 20% of users in the interest of gaining long term control and profits. This is not in the best interests of the domain owners and will reduce the value of the domain. Basically, I see this as a shrewd move assuming they can pull it off and one that favors end users.
"Hey, you don't know me, but I just KNOW you'll love what I have in this box. Go ahead, take it home and open it." Trusting complete strangers isn't a mark of techno-ignorance, it's a mark of idiocy.
In order for you analogy to be correct, users have to know enough about how poorly their computer is designed to know that they are trusting strangers, which they don't.
For example, if a person who knows very little about technology buys a new portable radio/TV and they are watching the TV and see an advertisement that says, "Bob has set up a cool new radio station. Check it out at 101.3 AM on your radio." And that person then tunes in to 101.3 AM and their radio breaks, would you call them an idiot for trusting the TV? Because that is how most people view computers, sort of like a TV, game console, radio, encyclopedia, and telephone all rolled into one. The problem is not that people are idiots, it is that computers behave very stupidly by default, are very complex and buggy, and do a piss-poor job of informing the user, in easy to understand terms, what is going on. People should have a better understanding of computers, but computers should function much more securely as well. Do most users want to run random executables from the internet? No; so they should be warned when they perform an action that would cause that to happen. When running random executables from the internet, do most users want that executable to have complete access to the network, all their files, all their hardware, and the core components of their OS? No; by default executables from the internet should run in a locked-down sandbox. This isn't brain surgery here. Computers should behave more safely by default and I suspect market forces would have moved them in this direction a long time ago, if not for the fact that they have been bypassed by a certain monopoly. Only now are application level ACLs and jails becoming usable on some systems, because on most systems there is little demand. I suspect this to can be attributed to the aforementioned monopoly. In terms of the inevitable car analogy, If their was one car monopoly and they had not bothered to add ignition or door keys to their cars then there is not a lot of demand for door keys on those "fringe" non-monopoly made cars that make up 1% of cars. No one steals them anyway, since so many cars don't even have ignition keys.
If MS ever gets its act together and makes its OS as secure, by default, as the average Linux distro is today, then the demand will crop up for ACLs, jails, etc. as malware authors move to trojans as their main vector. In the meantime, the computing world crawls forward under the shadow of hugely insecure Windows boxes everywhere. To summarize, people aren't idiots, although they are uneducated. Computers behave in very stupid ways that no one in their right mind should consider an appropriate default for a new user. I blame Microsoft.
WE HATE SPAM! Geeze... this is only going to get worse before it gets better... and it's been getting worse for 10 years...
You still get spam? My mail program checks four accounts every day, three of which have never, ever had a spam message show up. The fourth used to get spam occasionally, but my filters got better. Between the server side filtering and the bayesian filtering in my client, I thought spam was a solved problem. Of course I always give a one-time address to web sites for registration and commercial purposes, but how hard is that? Click twice to make one and twice more to delete it when I'm done. Maybe you just need some better mail solutions.
Being as most creatures don't come with light-emitting organs as standard equipment, this speculation falls short of an explanation. Maybe there were large populations of electroluminescent bacteria a hojillion years ago.
Hmmm, a predator swims by overhead temporarily blocking the light of the sun, some creatures with a basic light sensor learn to dive when this happens. It makes sense to me. Even really basic sight is better than no sight.
No, just narrower. A disadvantage, like tunnel vision.
Well, technically it is directionalizing the light detection, which may be an advantage or disadvantage, depending upon the degree of directionality and the number and configuration of light sensitive "eyes." Additionally this would serve the same purpose as our eye sockets do now, to protect this sensitive spot from damage.
Again, the creature's eye become LESS useful until it reaches a point where the aperture narrowed enough to focus the light onto the "retina", instead of in front of or behind it.
Not so. Eyes would initially have been useful for spotting movement, since that is the type of light change most needed for survival. Assuming the direction they are facing can be changed, this may well allow a creature to detect the direction of an incoming object. Have you ever seen a one eyed person judge distance. Most compensate for their depth perception by constantly moving their heads a little bit. This could easily have worked in the same way.
I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.
Other posters have already given you a few examples.
It means that South Korea is obligated to recognize foreign copyrights, and stripping that protection for (arguably valid) nationalist reasons would almost certainly be in violation of international law.
The Berne Convention only requires a minimum copyright length and that countries treat foreign copyrights the same as they do their own. If Korean law allows or can be changed to allow the confiscation rights from abusive monopolies there is no conflict. For that matter, the Korean courts can just declare the intellectual property to be the fine MS must pay. In either case, Korea is unlikely to be reprimanded by the WTO since they are dealing with a criminal in the first place and an abuse monopoly that has already been found guilty in the US and EU court systems. I disagree that this would be a problem for them, but I'm no expert on international trade law.
The "we may leave the market" statement is a good scare tactic, but like another poster said, is normal to hear in the beginning.
I'm not too sure about this. You have to remember they are threatening a government, not some other corporation. Not much is stopping S.Korea from ruling that MS is abusing their monopoly so badly that they have decided to renounce all of MS's intellectual property rights and all versions of Windows and other products are free for all citizens. Alternately, they could run that the Korean subsidiary of MS must separate from the National corporation and continue development of Windows as a local product. Governments have a lot more options in dealing with MS than you seem to be giving them credit for.