Encryption is only protection against a casual leak. It is no proof against someone with real access leaking an internal document. It is certainly no proof against a court order or subpoena. Lawsuits often come with many such subpoenas.
Again, I am not a lawyer, but as I understand IP law, Trade Secrets are perfectly copyrightable, but since they're protected by Trade Secret law, which is stronger than copyright law, you seldom see copyright infringement suits for copying trade secrets.
Trade Secrets are mutually exclusive with Patents. You cannot patent a trade secret. To patent something, you need to publish the details of the thing, this would remove the trade secret status.
You can still question Microsoft's copyright of this, since it can be argued that their document is a derivative work, and therefore Microsoft cannot control the copyrights.
Unfortunately, none of those question have anything to do with the matter at hand.
Considering Microsoft invoked the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, they are quite pertinent.
The fact of the matter is that Slashdot's servers contain copyrighted material. The copyright holder asked that it be removed. Your response seems to be, "well, you suck, and should never have copyrighted it in the first place. Nyahh!"
I am not a lawyer, but under the "fair use" provisions affimred by the Supreme Court, it is perfectly legal to copy copyrighted works if the copy qualifies as fair use. Some of these questions (specifically 1, 2, 7 and 8) seem to be geared towards developing a fair use defense in the event that this goes far enough to require the courts get involved.
The things you are interpreting as "you never should have copyrighted it in the first place", I interpret quite differently. The DMCA doesn't give just anyone the right to demand that anything be taken down just on their say-so. It requires that certain things be true, and the questions are demanding that Microsoft show some evidence that their invocation of the DMCA is valid here.
Microsoft is on very shaky ground here, and these questions address that shakiness.
The point is that they did copyright it. Slashdot is in the wrong.
Again, Slashdot is only in the wrong if the use was not fair use. If Slashdot decides to take this defense it would be a long and costly issue for the courts to decide. I would assume Microsoft was banking on Andover.Net not being willing to put up with such a battle. I hope this letter means that they're wrong.
From what I've heard about it, XFree86 4.0 server binaries work on all operating systems written for the same architecture so the Linux binary should work with *BSD.
If you actually have a BSD system you might want to install it and see if it works.
So if I were running NetBSD on a PPC system, this binary would work? Somehow I don't think so.
The poster owns the copyright to the post. Since the Berne Convention, you own a copyright to everything you write, even when a copyright statement does not appear. For something to go into public domain, the author has to place very explicit statement to that effect.
Well, yes, that's why it says at the bottom of every Slashdot page "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster." On the other hand, I'd say that since the text is in an public forum with international visibility, fair use copying should be interpreted rather liberally. If you don't want to see your text written somewhere else, this isn't the best place to put it.
Yes, the Linux trademark is proprietary. It's clear (at least to me) he was talking about the software, not the trademark. The software is not proprietary.
I thought it covered that. There is no blanket answer to the question that will make everyone happy. Since the question can't be answered collectively, Slashdot will soon have a feature that allows you to answer that question for your own posts.
And what if one of the featured decides that the published version is too personal, and, despite of the alterations for privacy, all too personal and identifiable?
Then there's a problem. Either the person can quietly stew and be generally upset, or yell and scream, making themselves even more visible. This isn't a perfect world we live in, and some things just don't have easy solutions.
As far as I can tell, the bulk of the content was written by Jon Katz for slashdot, as opposed to being written for the book. Some content was included from other slashdot posters. The employees of Slashdot did the editing, and Andover did the publishing. Therefore, Jon Katz should get authorship credit, since he wrote most of the material.
Disclaimer: I was not involved in the production of the book, the above is merely my interpretation of various comments by Jon Katz, Commander Taco and Hemos.
The Demon ISP case in the UK was settled also, no precident was set, but see what it's doing to the ISP industry in Britain anyway.
Just because no legal precident is set doesn't mean it won't have a chilling effect, very few computer game companies have pockets deep enough to fight the Hasbros of the world in court.
According to Mirriam Webster's Dictionary (look under [2,adjective]), proprietary means something that something is "used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right". Nobody has the exclusive legal rights to Linux, therefore it's not proprietary.
In the article, Ransom Love also keeps spreading a common misconception about Free Software Licenses. He claims that if you make any modifications to Linux, the license demands that you distribute the changes. That is patently false. What the license demands is that if you distribute a modified version of Linux, you have to make the code to your modifications available. Anyone can keep any changes they want a secret, as long as they aren't distributing them. With fundimental misunderstandings like this, is it any wonder people think of Caldera and Ransom Love as outsiders when it comes to Linux.
According to one source I read, the only use of the file is for ASP support for Visual Interdev version 1.0. Deleting the file will break Visual Interdev 1.0 support, not in and of itself a big deal, most people have either run away from Microsoft authoring tools, or upgraded to a recent version of FrontPage.
On the other hand, knowing Microsoft I wouldn't be surprised if the manner in which Visual Interdev support is broken is by the server crashing when a Visual Interdev 1.0 client makes a request for ASP info. This would replace the security hole with a denial of service attack.
Not only that, they've actively enforced it. At the time of the RIAA lawsuit they've actually banned I think fifty people from the network for copyright violations, at the request of various copyright holders.
I get the impression they can't, because the certification includes the installation.
My understanding is they could produce standalone certified system, and offer a service where they install and have certified a network sytem. It would be expensive though. I could be very wrong, since I've never been involved in such a process.
What I wonder is, what operating systems do B1-ready systems run at the present?
That's easy one to answer. According to the TPEP Evaluated Products List, the following operating systems have been used in B1-rated systems:
Amdahl UTS/MTS v2.1.5+ Computer Associates CA-ACF2 MVS v6.1 with CA-ACF2 MAC Digital SEVMS, several versions on VAX and version 6.1 on Alpha Digital Ultrix MLS v2.1 on VAXStation (Microvax) Harris CX/SX v6.1.1 and v6.2.1 HP HP-UX BLS v8.04 and v9.0.9+ SGI Trusted Irix v4.0.5EPL (where this code came from) Unisys OS1100SR1 and OS1100/2200, Several releases
You'll see that rather than making their mainstream operating system ratable, most vendors (eg. Digital, HP and SGI) offer a special version of the OS that is set up to meet the rating criterion.
Irix (and Secure Irix, in this case) has some features that Linux lacks. I don't mind them on the Linux bandwagon if it means that the Free Linux kernel can get more functionality, security and scalability.
True, Linux can never be B1 (or any level) certified itself (neither can NT be C2 certified, contrary to Microsoft's marketing). It can, however be B1 ready, with all the features needed to produce a B1-rated system. Then, VA Linux Systems or Penguin Computing can produce and sell a truly B1 (or C1, for that matter) certified system. That would be a very nice thing to happen.
As for A1, I don't think any modern operating system can reach that level. The proof requirements for A1 certification would be prohibitively expensive for anything but the most scaled down system.
The Gimp (and presumably this site as well) uses libungif. It can read LZW compressed GIFs (which is not a violation of the patent), and can produce GIF format images that do not use LZW compression (and are, therefore, larger than LZW-compressed GIFs).
Read this article I remembered a piece of email I received a week or two ago, these people do 25watt peltier units for £25uk or 4 for £89uk, 100 watts of cooling power on a coke or pepsi (lets not be colaist) is probably sufficient.
This was two 50 watt peltier units (i.e. 100 watts). It was sufficient to cool it to just about typical refrigerator temperature, but not to freeze it. It looks like the site you reference is selling 51 watt peltier units for £25uk, not 25 watt.
Also, now you're talking European soda cans, which are a bit narrower and would require tooling new cold plates for the right radius.;-)
Deep linking (and any sort of linking) is not illegal in and of itself. On the other hand, just because it is a link does not protect you from other laws, such as "passing off", in this case, where one company pretends to be tightly connected with another. Similarly, the fact that it's a link should fail to protect you in cases of libel, fraud, and other informational crimes.
Linking should be free, but that is not a defense against doing things that should not be free, and that's what I see the real issue here as. Finding someone liable for passing off via a link won't have a chilling effect on links, it will just have a chilling effect on passing off, which is way too common on the web.
Unless you are in law enforcement it can not be considered entrapment. This has been discussed on Bugtraq and many other lists. www.securityfocus.com, goto forums and then bugtraq, I don't remeber the title of the discussion though but it was within the last month or so.
A bit of an oversimplification. In most states, it also is entrapment if you are acting as an agent of law enforcement (i.e. Police, District Attorneys, FBI, and a number of Federal, State and Local Government agencies). Basically, if the law gets involved, or if you have any special arrangements with a law enforcement agency, take down any uncompromised honeypots or they might get in the way of apprehending or prosecuting the invader. If you don't care about apprehending or prosecuting the invader, honeypots don't cause any problems here.
Although you might be liable if they use your machine as a jump point to lauch more attacks.
I am not a lawyer, but I'd say you probably would be held liable if it could be shown that you deliberately allowed the unauthorized user access to your system.
That is the problem. NetBenefit PLC is acting entirely rationally, given the great liability to which they are now exposed. They are not the problem... it is the ruling.
Ah, but their behavior is not rational given the ruling. I am not a lawyer (and certainly not a British one), but as I recall the ruling, Demon was held liable for content on their site that they were notified about and failed to remove. That is not a precedent for "Every ISP is liable for everything on their site", it's a precedent for "If an ISP knows about objectionable material on their site, they have to remove it or be held liable."
NetBenefit knows there is no legally objectionable material on the Outcast portion of their site. They are not liable for anything. Even if Outcast were to post something defamatory, NetBenefit still wouldn't be liable until someone could prove that they knew the defamatory content was there and did nothing about it.
Is the fundimental problem the Demon libel ruling? Kind of, I'd say Britain's draconian libel laws that generated the ruling are more to blame. I'd still say NetBenefit is overreacting, and I would act differently. Hypothetically speaking, if I were in NetBenefit's shoes, I would have: * kept Outcast online; * sent a polite letter to Pink Paper's lawyers saying I understand their concerns, and if they become aware of any defamatory content on our site, let us know so we can remove it; and * bitched out my MP
I think that doing the above (and following through if notified of anything) would be sufficient to protect an ISP in this circumstance from any lawsuit with meat behind it. As for frivolous lawsuits, I have heard that Britain is much harsher on them than the US is, and NetBenefit would likely find the opposing side paying for their legal expenses.
Going through the website at the link provided won't let you download the beta unless you accept a tracking cookie from ads.web.aol.com. It looks like you can do an FTP download without cookie tracking from: ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/nets cape6/english/6_PR1.
No, 2.4 is not released yet. This is a document intended to help people understand the 2.4 kernel when it is released. The author did the same thing for the 2.2 kernel and (if I recall correctly) the 2.0 kernel as well. At this point, it's no secret what will and won't be in the kernel, so might as well work on the documentation now.
Public Domain means anybody can do anything with the code. CPHack is not public domain.
The GPL allows free modification and redistribution, but prevents redistribution under more restrictive terms, therefore it is not public domain. CPHack might be under the GPL, but yes there appears to be some controversy about that.
The Artistic License also allows free modification and redistribution, and also prevents redistribution under more restrictive terms, but is looser than the GPL as to where the more restrictive terms can't be.
If copyrights were assigned to Mattel, than Mattel has the right to redistribute the software under new and different licenses. Under the circumstances, I don't think they will.
Assuming the software actually was distributed under the GPL, than we all have the right to redistribute it, verbatim or in modified form, under the GPL. I don't know where the mention of the Artistic license is coming from, because the only one who can change the license to Artistic is the copyright holder (i.e. Mattel), and the chances of that are slim.
Slashdot Mirror
arivanov wrote:
Well, besides saying encrypt them!!!
Encryption is only protection against a casual leak. It is no proof against someone with real access leaking an internal document. It is certainly no proof against a court order or subpoena. Lawsuits often come with many such subpoenas.
----
Again, I am not a lawyer, but as I understand IP law, Trade Secrets are perfectly copyrightable, but since they're protected by Trade Secret law, which is stronger than copyright law, you seldom see copyright infringement suits for copying trade secrets.
Trade Secrets are mutually exclusive with Patents. You cannot patent a trade secret. To patent something, you need to publish the details of the thing, this would remove the trade secret status.
You can still question Microsoft's copyright of this, since it can be argued that their document is a derivative work, and therefore Microsoft cannot control the copyrights.
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Reality Master 101 wrote:
Unfortunately, none of those question have anything to do with the matter at hand.
Considering Microsoft invoked the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, they are quite pertinent.
The fact of the matter is that Slashdot's servers contain copyrighted material. The copyright holder asked that it be removed. Your response seems to be, "well, you suck, and should never have copyrighted it in the first place. Nyahh!"
I am not a lawyer, but under the "fair use" provisions affimred by the Supreme Court, it is perfectly legal to copy copyrighted works if the copy qualifies as fair use. Some of these questions (specifically 1, 2, 7 and 8) seem to be geared towards developing a fair use defense in the event that this goes far enough to require the courts get involved.
The things you are interpreting as "you never should have copyrighted it in the first place", I interpret quite differently. The DMCA doesn't give just anyone the right to demand that anything be taken down just on their say-so. It requires that certain things be true, and the questions are demanding that Microsoft show some evidence that their invocation of the DMCA is valid here.
Microsoft is on very shaky ground here, and these questions address that shakiness.
The point is that they did copyright it. Slashdot is in the wrong.
Again, Slashdot is only in the wrong if the use was not fair use. If Slashdot decides to take this defense it would be a long and costly issue for the courts to decide. I would assume Microsoft was banking on Andover.Net not being willing to put up with such a battle. I hope this letter means that they're wrong.
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Scumdamn wrote:
From what I've heard about it, XFree86 4.0 server binaries work on all operating systems written for the same architecture so the Linux binary should work with *BSD.
If you actually have a BSD system you might want to install it and see if it works.
So if I were running NetBSD on a PPC system, this binary would work? Somehow I don't think so.
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gargle says:
The poster owns the copyright to the post. Since the Berne Convention, you own a copyright to everything you write, even when a copyright statement does not appear. For something to go into public domain, the author has to place very explicit statement to that effect.
Well, yes, that's why it says at the bottom of every Slashdot page "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster." On the other hand, I'd say that since the text is in an public forum with international visibility, fair use copying should be interpreted rather liberally. If you don't want to see your text written somewhere else, this isn't the best place to put it.
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Yes, the Linux trademark is proprietary. It's clear (at least to me) he was talking about the software, not the trademark. The software is not proprietary.
----
Luis Casillas asks:
So, really, who owns the posts?
I thought it covered that. There is no blanket answer to the question that will make everyone happy. Since the question can't be answered collectively, Slashdot will soon have a feature that allows you to answer that question for your own posts.
And what if one of the featured decides that the published version is too personal, and, despite of the alterations for privacy, all too personal and identifiable?
Then there's a problem. Either the person can quietly stew and be generally upset, or yell and scream, making themselves even more visible. This isn't a perfect world we live in, and some things just don't have easy solutions.
----
As far as I can tell, the bulk of the content was written by Jon Katz for slashdot, as opposed to being written for the book. Some content was included from other slashdot posters. The employees of Slashdot did the editing, and Andover did the publishing. Therefore, Jon Katz should get authorship credit, since he wrote most of the material.
Disclaimer: I was not involved in the production of the book, the above is merely my interpretation of various comments by Jon Katz, Commander Taco and Hemos.
----
The Demon ISP case in the UK was settled also, no precident was set, but see what it's doing to the ISP industry in Britain anyway.
Just because no legal precident is set doesn't mean it won't have a chilling effect, very few computer game companies have pockets deep enough to fight the Hasbros of the world in court.
----
According to Mirriam Webster's Dictionary (look under [2,adjective]), proprietary means something that something is "used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal right". Nobody has the exclusive legal rights to Linux, therefore it's not proprietary.
In the article, Ransom Love also keeps spreading a common misconception about Free Software Licenses. He claims that if you make any modifications to Linux, the license demands that you distribute the changes. That is patently false. What the license demands is that if you distribute a modified version of Linux, you have to make the code to your modifications available. Anyone can keep any changes they want a secret, as long as they aren't distributing them. With fundimental misunderstandings like this, is it any wonder people think of Caldera and Ransom Love as outsiders when it comes to Linux.
----
According to one source I read, the only use of the file is for ASP support for Visual Interdev version 1.0. Deleting the file will break Visual Interdev 1.0 support, not in and of itself a big deal, most people have either run away from Microsoft authoring tools, or upgraded to a recent version of FrontPage.
On the other hand, knowing Microsoft I wouldn't be surprised if the manner in which Visual Interdev support is broken is by the server crashing when a Visual Interdev 1.0 client makes a request for ASP info. This would replace the security hole with a denial of service attack.
----
Not only that, they've actively enforced it. At the time of the RIAA lawsuit they've actually banned I think fifty people from the network for copyright violations, at the request of various copyright holders.
----
Ian Bicking wrote:
I get the impression they can't, because the certification includes the installation.
My understanding is they could produce standalone certified system, and offer a service where they install and have certified a network sytem. It would be expensive though. I could be very wrong, since I've never been involved in such a process.
What I wonder is, what operating systems do B1-ready systems run at the present?
That's easy one to answer. According to the TPEP Evaluated Products List, the following operating systems have been used in B1-rated systems:
Amdahl UTS/MTS v2.1.5+
Computer Associates CA-ACF2 MVS v6.1 with CA-ACF2 MAC
Digital SEVMS, several versions on VAX and version 6.1 on Alpha
Digital Ultrix MLS v2.1 on VAXStation (Microvax)
Harris CX/SX v6.1.1 and v6.2.1
HP HP-UX BLS v8.04 and v9.0.9+
SGI Trusted Irix v4.0.5EPL (where this code came from)
Unisys OS1100SR1 and OS1100/2200, Several releases
You'll see that rather than making their mainstream operating system ratable, most vendors (eg. Digital, HP and SGI) offer a special version of the OS that is set up to meet the rating criterion.
----
Irix (and Secure Irix, in this case) has some features that Linux lacks. I don't mind them on the Linux bandwagon if it means that the Free Linux kernel can get more functionality, security and scalability .
----
True, Linux can never be B1 (or any level) certified itself (neither can NT be C2 certified, contrary to Microsoft's marketing). It can, however be B1 ready, with all the features needed to produce a B1-rated system. Then, VA Linux Systems or Penguin Computing can produce and sell a truly B1 (or C1, for that matter) certified system. That would be a very nice thing to happen.
As for A1, I don't think any modern operating system can reach that level. The proof requirements for A1 certification would be prohibitively expensive for anything but the most scaled down system.
----
The Gimp (and presumably this site as well) uses libungif. It can read LZW compressed GIFs (which is not a violation of the patent), and can produce GIF format images that do not use LZW compression (and are, therefore, larger than LZW-compressed GIFs).
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JamesSharman wrote:
;-)
Read this article I remembered a piece of email I received a week or two ago, these people do 25watt peltier units for £25uk or 4 for £89uk, 100 watts of cooling power on a coke or pepsi (lets not be colaist) is probably sufficient.
This was two 50 watt peltier units (i.e. 100 watts). It was sufficient to cool it to just about typical refrigerator temperature, but not to freeze it. It looks like the site you reference is selling 51 watt peltier units for £25uk, not 25 watt.
Also, now you're talking European soda cans, which are a bit narrower and would require tooling new cold plates for the right radius.
----
Deep linking (and any sort of linking) is not illegal in and of itself. On the other hand, just because it is a link does not protect you from other laws, such as "passing off", in this case, where one company pretends to be tightly connected with another. Similarly, the fact that it's a link should fail to protect you in cases of libel, fraud, and other informational crimes.
Linking should be free, but that is not a defense against doing things that should not be free, and that's what I see the real issue here as. Finding someone liable for passing off via a link won't have a chilling effect on links, it will just have a chilling effect on passing off, which is way too common on the web.
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Shafik wrote:
Unless you are in law enforcement it can not be considered entrapment. This has been discussed on Bugtraq and many other lists. www.securityfocus.com, goto forums and then bugtraq, I don't remeber the title of the discussion though but it was within the last month or so.
A bit of an oversimplification. In most states, it also is entrapment if you are acting as an agent of law enforcement (i.e. Police, District Attorneys, FBI, and a number of Federal, State and Local Government agencies). Basically, if the law gets involved, or if you have any special arrangements with a law enforcement agency, take down any uncompromised honeypots or they might get in the way of apprehending or prosecuting the invader. If you don't care about apprehending or prosecuting the invader, honeypots don't cause any problems here.
Although you might be liable if they use your machine as a jump point to lauch more attacks.
I am not a lawyer, but I'd say you probably would be held liable if it could be shown that you deliberately allowed the unauthorized user access to your system.
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Jerf wrote:
That is the problem. NetBenefit PLC is acting entirely rationally, given the great liability to which they are now exposed. They are not the problem... it is the ruling.
Ah, but their behavior is not rational given the ruling. I am not a lawyer (and certainly not a British one), but as I recall the ruling, Demon was held liable for content on their site that they were notified about and failed to remove. That is not a precedent for "Every ISP is liable for everything on their site", it's a precedent for "If an ISP knows about objectionable material on their site, they have to remove it or be held liable."
NetBenefit knows there is no legally objectionable material on the Outcast portion of their site. They are not liable for anything. Even if Outcast were to post something defamatory, NetBenefit still wouldn't be liable until someone could prove that they knew the defamatory content was there and did nothing about it.
Is the fundimental problem the Demon libel ruling? Kind of, I'd say Britain's draconian libel laws that generated the ruling are more to blame. I'd still say NetBenefit is overreacting, and I would act differently. Hypothetically speaking, if I were in NetBenefit's shoes, I would have:
* kept Outcast online;
* sent a polite letter to Pink Paper's lawyers saying I understand their concerns, and if they become aware of any defamatory content on our site, let us know so we can remove it; and
* bitched out my MP
I think that doing the above (and following through if notified of anything) would be sufficient to protect an ISP in this circumstance from any lawsuit with meat behind it. As for frivolous lawsuits, I have heard that Britain is much harsher on them than the US is, and NetBenefit would likely find the opposing side paying for their legal expenses.
----
Going through the website at the link provided won't let you download the beta unless you accept a tracking cookie from ads.web.aol.com. It looks like you can do an FTP download without cookie tracking from:
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/nets cape6/english/6_PR1.
----
No, 2.4 is not released yet. This is a document intended to help people understand the 2.4 kernel when it is released. The author did the same thing for the 2.2 kernel and (if I recall correctly) the 2.0 kernel as well. At this point, it's no secret what will and won't be in the kernel, so might as well work on the documentation now.
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So now there'll be GNU/Linux and Amiga/Linux. Kewel. I hope the Open Amiga (COSA) people have convinced them it should be Free.
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I'm not sure I understand your question.
Public Domain means anybody can do anything with the code. CPHack is not public domain.
The GPL allows free modification and redistribution, but prevents redistribution under more restrictive terms, therefore it is not public domain. CPHack might be under the GPL, but yes there appears to be some controversy about that.
The Artistic License also allows free modification and redistribution, and also prevents redistribution under more restrictive terms, but is looser than the GPL as to where the more restrictive terms can't be.
If copyrights were assigned to Mattel, than Mattel has the right to redistribute the software under new and different licenses. Under the circumstances, I don't think they will.
Assuming the software actually was distributed under the GPL, than we all have the right to redistribute it, verbatim or in modified form, under the GPL. I don't know where the mention of the Artistic license is coming from, because the only one who can change the license to Artistic is the copyright holder (i.e. Mattel), and the chances of that are slim.
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Or a Napsterfs translator for HURD?
Also, don't forget FreeNet.
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