I understand what you're saying here, but I think your reasoning is flawed. Yes, the number of privacy policies and the number of cases where privacy has been infringed have both increased. However, what's to say that the number of privacy policies haven't increased as a RESULT of privacy being infringed?
I see these policies as a way of companies voluntarily restricting themselves. IMO, anyone who has any expectation of privacy on the internet is a fool anyway. And I would compare privacy policies more to the nutritional facts available at fast food resteraunts. You could argue that "customers can't be expected to read the nutritional facts on every food we ever want to eat", but the facts are there for an educated consumer who wants to know.
Furthermore, RedHat is doing the right thing in this case. They're VOLUNTARILY chosing not to enforce a patent that could be a potential source of income to them. There is NOTHING forcing them to do this, and from what I've read on the patents, they're legitimate patents, not jokes like the one-click patent.
I think this was a large part of their reasoning for releasing this API. If people are going to do this ANYWAY (and it would be highly impractical to try and force people not to), why not create a way that will save both groups time, bandwidth, and CPU cycles? Rather than taking their ball and going home (or telling their lawyer to go beat up the mean person on the playground who doesn't want to play their way), like many large corperations seem to do, Google is working with people who use their service in creative ways to save themselves time and money.
While Fair Use may be enough to protect the technically inclined, the average joe consumer may have no idea how to bypass this technology, getting screwed over.
If party A licenses software from Microsoft, and agrees not to hold Microsoft liable for any bugs in their code, than MS may be safe from suit from party A. However, if party A's sevevers start attacking party B's servers, and party B never had a contract with Microsoft, there's nothing legally stopping them from trying to sue Microsoft. In that, I think, is why issues like this are important.
Agreed. The same thing has been repeatedly said about MMORPG companies that treat their customers like dung, and yet EverQuest is still growing and running strong.
While this may be true for some people, it is most certainly not true for the masses.
What scares me, however, is that our modern system of government seems to be built around this principal, to an extent. If the government does too many "bad things", eventually, the people will decide that the government has gone "too far", and change will happen. But is that really true?
The only thing I can see seems to be here, at camelotexchange's own site. There doesn't appear to be anything on Mythic's own site, but I wouldn't really expect them to post up anything that wasn't carefully reviewed either.
Right. As much as I realize that AOL wants to protect it's business interests, and that going after their competition is a wise move, and that there are differences between AOL and MS's situation, this seems kinda lame.
If a work like this, which can only questionably be catagorized as a a "parody" is defended by the courts under fair use, does that mean that we're likely to find Fan Fiction defendable under the same defense?
Then again, the company in question being sued probably had enough money to hire some skilled lawyers. Individual fan fiction writers may just find themselves killed by legal fees, not by legal decisions, which is rather unfortunate.
(IANAL, but I am someone taking a college level law class)
What you're talking about with the interspousal relationship is actually two issues: the first is that the husband-wife relationship is privilaged, which means that a wife will not be forced to testify against her husband and vice versa, in order to perserve marital harmony. This exists for lawyer/client and doctor/patient as well, because "we" (As in the people who made these laws) believe that people have the right to have their situation advocated as best as possible in court, and also that people should be able to the best possible medical treatment available, and not have threat of prosecution interfere.
The reason that domestic violence was an issue is that there used to be a concept of intersposal immunity, that spouses could not sue each other in civil court (immunity also exists/existed that prevents children from suing their parents), both types of immunity are slowly going away/have gone away as we have become a more enlightened society.
As to where attourney-client privilage comes from, it comes from the same place that garuntees us other things that aren't necessarily found in the US Constitution, in laws that exist at either the federal or state level. Stuff like this would be consumer protection (Warantees, lemon laws, etc), doctor-patient privilaged relationship, etc.
Really? I don't have a source to cite, but I believe I read in either the NYTimes Magazine, Time, or NewsWeek, that the BAR Association only made a resolution that if they know someone's LIFE is in danger, they are forced to report them.
Re:Scrolling LED sign in space, anyone?
on
Budget Satellite
·
· Score: 1
More importantly, what would someone put on such a scrolling LED sign?
All your satellite are belong to us? Anyone that can come up with anything else witty?
This brings up an interesting point. I've heard that the right to space shift (ie: coppying from CD to casette) is allowed, would the same principal apply to ebooks too?
(Probably not, given that it gets in the way of big business, but meh)
Jeez, I don't think I've ever seen a company promise 100% ANYTHING. Even Conxion, which hosts everything Microsoft, doens't garuntee 100% uptime. I wonder if the judges would be happy with 99.9%? Hell, do governments even require absolute 100% for things like saftey? Anyone who works in the US government care to comment?
As I understand it, the fines are to make up for the damage that will occur if accidents DO occur. Is it possible then to argue that speeding DOES in fact cause a loss? Somewhat similar to how insurance companies work? They charge people lots of money to pay for the damages of an event that may or may not happen to the individual charged, but will eventually happen and cost the insurance company money.
It's actually quite easy to turn the paperclip off.
Right click on the little sucker, click options, un-click the checkbox "Use the Office Assistant" or whatever the hell it is. I do it on every fresh install and I never see the little bastard again.
...were intelligent enough to realize that getting into the business of investing in various produects that help get over cigarette addiction was a DUMB idea.
After seeing the post a few days ago about an Australian man suing the Dow Jones and seeking the trial to be held in Australia, I'm starting to get very scared about juriddiction of different political entities and the internet. I think there needs to be a world-wide meeting and agreement on how exactly things like this are handled over the internet. Never before has it been easier to break a law you didn't even know existed, or yet, didn't know applied to you.
Another thing to consider: I've seen in a number of the click-through licence agreements that you agree that all disputes will be tried in the state/town of the company who is selling the software. Now imagine if that happened somewhere where the company selling/publishing the software was in Virgina, or another state covered by the UCITA. Does this mean that you would be covered by the UCITA too?
More accurate would be Linux browsers making it so that Microsoft.com cannot be visited (or vice versa). It's not a matter of one directly competing media, but rather a branch of one company not allowing advertisements for a completely different competing medium.
Napster wasn't a "music piracy site". There's a strong difference between actually comitting a crime and providing a good/service that allows others to. That's why we allow things that fall under freedom of speech that tell people how to commit crimes, and why we haven't changed the Constitution to make guns alot more difficult or impossible to legally own.
I would be the first one to admit that I can more than understand that risking loosing a lawsuit would take alot of guts, but I don't think Napster was ever in danger of being sued for damages. All they were being sued for was an injunction to force them to filter song names. Filing appeals doesn't risk paying damages either. Yes, there are lawyers fees, but I don't quite see it as "[selling] your computer to pay them damages"
I had thought that Napster was going to fight this out to the bitter end. Have they even gone to appeals court yet? I had been looking forward to watching someone with the support of the public, and of money standing up to the big media groups. I'm aware that pirating music is wrong and don't argue that, I had just been under the impression that Napster was going to fight things out as a simple music-sharing service, not something that promotes piracy.
I just had a random thought. The 2nd Amendment says that people have the right to bear "Arms". Dictionary.com, other than the normal definition as a part of one's body, has one definition of "arms" as weapons. Given the MPAA's recent comparisons of DeCSS to a crowbar, which is a weapon, I wonder if DeCSS could be argued under right to bear arms? While the 2nd Amendment does say that the purpose of the Amendment is to allow militias, which are "necessary to the security of a free state", hasn't it also been interperted to allow firearms to prevent against tyrany if necessary. Of course, this opens up the whole can of worms of gun control laws and regulation, but it's something I'd love to hear some feedback on.
Seeing as how Microsoft codenamed WinXP Windows Whistler, does that mean other companies should stop "ripping off" the practice of using codenames, such as Coppermine, etc?
Or the fact that Microsoft has an advertising group, other companies should stop ripping off Microsoft and not bother to come up with an attactive-sounding name for their products, because gee, that's been done before by other people?
Slashdot Mirror
I understand what you're saying here, but I think your reasoning is flawed. Yes, the number of privacy policies and the number of cases where privacy has been infringed have both increased. However, what's to say that the number of privacy policies haven't increased as a RESULT of privacy being infringed?
I see these policies as a way of companies voluntarily restricting themselves. IMO, anyone who has any expectation of privacy on the internet is a fool anyway. And I would compare privacy policies more to the nutritional facts available at fast food resteraunts. You could argue that "customers can't be expected to read the nutritional facts on every food we ever want to eat", but the facts are there for an educated consumer who wants to know.
Furthermore, RedHat is doing the right thing in this case. They're VOLUNTARILY chosing not to enforce a patent that could be a potential source of income to them. There is NOTHING forcing them to do this, and from what I've read on the patents, they're legitimate patents, not jokes like the one-click patent.
I think this was a large part of their reasoning for releasing this API. If people are going to do this ANYWAY (and it would be highly impractical to try and force people not to), why not create a way that will save both groups time, bandwidth, and CPU cycles? Rather than taking their ball and going home (or telling their lawyer to go beat up the mean person on the playground who doesn't want to play their way), like many large corperations seem to do, Google is working with people who use their service in creative ways to save themselves time and money.
While Fair Use may be enough to protect the technically inclined, the average joe consumer may have no idea how to bypass this technology, getting screwed over.
Overall, I think this attempt is admirable.
If party A licenses software from Microsoft, and agrees not to hold Microsoft liable for any bugs in their code, than MS may be safe from suit from party A. However, if party A's sevevers start attacking party B's servers, and party B never had a contract with Microsoft, there's nothing legally stopping them from trying to sue Microsoft. In that, I think, is why issues like this are important.
Agreed. The same thing has been repeatedly said about MMORPG companies that treat their customers like dung, and yet EverQuest is still growing and running strong.
While this may be true for some people, it is most certainly not true for the masses.
What scares me, however, is that our modern system of government seems to be built around this principal, to an extent. If the government does too many "bad things", eventually, the people will decide that the government has gone "too far", and change will happen. But is that really true?
It sort of makes you wonder.
The only thing I can see seems to be here, at camelotexchange's own site. There doesn't appear to be anything on Mythic's own site, but I wouldn't really expect them to post up anything that wasn't carefully reviewed either.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Right. As much as I realize that AOL wants to protect it's business interests, and that going after their competition is a wise move, and that there are differences between AOL and MS's situation, this seems kinda lame.
good work.
first few lines:
Think Twice, Red Hat
by Andy Oram
Jan. 19, 2002
If a work like this, which can only questionably be catagorized as a a "parody" is defended by the courts under fair use, does that mean that we're likely to find Fan Fiction defendable under the same defense?
Then again, the company in question being sued probably had enough money to hire some skilled lawyers. Individual fan fiction writers may just find themselves killed by legal fees, not by legal decisions, which is rather unfortunate.
(IANAL, but I am someone taking a college level law class)
What you're talking about with the interspousal relationship is actually two issues: the first is that the husband-wife relationship is privilaged, which means that a wife will not be forced to testify against her husband and vice versa, in order to perserve marital harmony. This exists for lawyer/client and doctor/patient as well, because "we" (As in the people who made these laws) believe that people have the right to have their situation advocated as best as possible in court, and also that people should be able to the best possible medical treatment available, and not have threat of prosecution interfere.
The reason that domestic violence was an issue is that there used to be a concept of intersposal immunity, that spouses could not sue each other in civil court (immunity also exists/existed that prevents children from suing their parents), both types of immunity are slowly going away/have gone away as we have become a more enlightened society.
As to where attourney-client privilage comes from, it comes from the same place that garuntees us other things that aren't necessarily found in the US Constitution, in laws that exist at either the federal or state level. Stuff like this would be consumer protection (Warantees, lemon laws, etc), doctor-patient privilaged relationship, etc.
Really? I don't have a source to cite, but I believe I read in either the NYTimes Magazine, Time, or NewsWeek, that the BAR Association only made a resolution that if they know someone's LIFE is in danger, they are forced to report them.
More importantly, what would someone put on such a scrolling LED sign?
All your satellite are belong to us? Anyone that can come up with anything else witty?
This brings up an interesting point. I've heard that the right to space shift (ie: coppying from CD to casette) is allowed, would the same principal apply to ebooks too?
(Probably not, given that it gets in the way of big business, but meh)
Jeez, I don't think I've ever seen a company promise 100% ANYTHING. Even Conxion, which hosts everything Microsoft, doens't garuntee 100% uptime. I wonder if the judges would be happy with 99.9%? Hell, do governments even require absolute 100% for things like saftey? Anyone who works in the US government care to comment?
As I understand it, the fines are to make up for the damage that will occur if accidents DO occur. Is it possible then to argue that speeding DOES in fact cause a loss? Somewhat similar to how insurance companies work? They charge people lots of money to pay for the damages of an event that may or may not happen to the individual charged, but will eventually happen and cost the insurance company money.
I've been using mine for about 7 years so far in various forms and whatnot, probably longer than you have.
It's actually quite easy to turn the paperclip off.
Right click on the little sucker, click options, un-click the checkbox "Use the Office Assistant" or whatever the hell it is. I do it on every fresh install and I never see the little bastard again.
...were intelligent enough to realize that getting into the business of investing in various produects that help get over cigarette addiction was a DUMB idea.
Um, hello? Have you ever PLAYED Diablo 2? That makes EverQuest look NICE.
After seeing the post a few days ago about an Australian man suing the Dow Jones and seeking the trial to be held in Australia, I'm starting to get very scared about juriddiction of different political entities and the internet. I think there needs to be a world-wide meeting and agreement on how exactly things like this are handled over the internet. Never before has it been easier to break a law you didn't even know existed, or yet, didn't know applied to you.
Another thing to consider: I've seen in a number of the click-through licence agreements that you agree that all disputes will be tried in the state/town of the company who is selling the software. Now imagine if that happened somewhere where the company selling/publishing the software was in Virgina, or another state covered by the UCITA. Does this mean that you would be covered by the UCITA too?
I dunno about you guys, but I'm scared.
More accurate would be Linux browsers making it so that Microsoft.com cannot be visited (or vice versa). It's not a matter of one directly competing media, but rather a branch of one company not allowing advertisements for a completely different competing medium.
Napster wasn't a "music piracy site". There's a strong difference between actually comitting a crime and providing a good/service that allows others to. That's why we allow things that fall under freedom of speech that tell people how to commit crimes, and why we haven't changed the Constitution to make guns alot more difficult or impossible to legally own.
I would be the first one to admit that I can more than understand that risking loosing a lawsuit would take alot of guts, but I don't think Napster was ever in danger of being sued for damages. All they were being sued for was an injunction to force them to filter song names. Filing appeals doesn't risk paying damages either. Yes, there are lawyers fees, but I don't quite see it as "[selling] your computer to pay them damages"
I had thought that Napster was going to fight this out to the bitter end. Have they even gone to appeals court yet? I had been looking forward to watching someone with the support of the public, and of money standing up to the big media groups. I'm aware that pirating music is wrong and don't argue that, I had just been under the impression that Napster was going to fight things out as a simple music-sharing service, not something that promotes piracy.
I just had a random thought. The 2nd Amendment says that people have the right to bear "Arms". Dictionary.com, other than the normal definition as a part of one's body, has one definition of "arms" as weapons. Given the MPAA's recent comparisons of DeCSS to a crowbar, which is a weapon, I wonder if DeCSS could be argued under right to bear arms? While the 2nd Amendment does say that the purpose of the Amendment is to allow militias, which are "necessary to the security of a free state", hasn't it also been interperted to allow firearms to prevent against tyrany if necessary. Of course, this opens up the whole can of worms of gun control laws and regulation, but it's something I'd love to hear some feedback on.
Seeing as how Microsoft codenamed WinXP Windows Whistler, does that mean other companies should stop "ripping off" the practice of using codenames, such as Coppermine, etc?
Or the fact that Microsoft has an advertising group, other companies should stop ripping off Microsoft and not bother to come up with an attactive-sounding name for their products, because gee, that's been done before by other people?
Troll