My iPod Mini had a non-removable battery. The replacement battery cost £3.95, and it took about 15 minutes to dissassemble, swap the battery, and reassemble.
It's not unreasonable for a home (ie, non-commercial, not another ISP, etc) subscriber to a subscription service such as Internet to be accountable for the activities of other people who use the services in his home. As a parent, I'm held responsible for the activities of my children. I see no reason why I, as an ISP subscriber, should not be also accountable for what people do with a network connection that I pay for. If I don't trust someone to do things that I don't want them to, I shouldn't be letting them on my network.
It's not unreasonable to say that since you signed the contract with the ISP, you are responsible to the ISP for the use of that service. If you are allowed 10 GB of downloads plus extra data at $10 per GB, and I download 100 GB at your home, then the ISP can come to you for the money. You may then sue me to recover the money.
However, if the service is used for copyright infringement or more serious crimes, that has nothing to do with the contract between you and the ISP. If you had quit the contract but the ISP hadn't turned off the service yet by mistake, the same crime would have happened. As far as you are responsible for your children because you are the parent, surely you would be responsible if they downloaded stuff at my home and not at yours.
Does this ruling apply if someone downloads child porn, makes bomb threats, discusses with terrorists or other larger crimes? Just saying it should be consistent if pirates get a pass.
In the context of this ruling, an IP address is not enough evidence to justify giving your name and address to someone who claims that his copyright is infringed, but isn't really interested in sorting out the copyright infringement but only to blackmail you into a settlement. Especially if someone tries to get the names of dozens of people while paying only one court fee.
On the other hand, it is surely enough evidence to get the police started investigating serious crimes.
A classic is Compaq, and their IBM Compatable computers. The engineering team reversed the IBM BIOS, all calls, and wrote a document defining their function.
These engineers were now 'dirty' and could not write the BIOS, and that task was given to a second group, using only the specification.
I think it's not that they couldn't write the BIOS, there were just two problems: Those engineers _might_ copy what IBM did even when trying not to - if a problem has five different obvious solutions, then a new team would pick one more or less randomly, while the old team would have been more likely to pick the IBM solution. And of course if / when this went to court, it is a much stronger position to say "No, we didn't copy it. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't have copied it." than to say "No, we didn't copy it. We could have, but we deliberately didn't.".
You are wrong. You also suffer from overestimating your intelligence, and from the inability to understand simple legal arguments. This judge hasn't made any claim that Oracle's APIs are protected by copyright. The judge has instructed the jury to examine the question whether Google has copied the API without considering whether Oracle's APIs are protected.
And your assertion that header files and build scripts are not copyrightable is pure nonsense. Any header file that I write, and any script that I write, has enough documentation and comments to make it absolutely protected by copyright.
I could define an API with function names that form a poem. That would probably not be very good as an API, but quite probably protected by copyright.
Seems a bit non-sensical to me: "You, spend the next several weeks doing a bunch of work based on an assumption that I may invalidate, but only after you are done."
Absolutely not. Considering how often Slashdot posters claim that judges are stupid, you show a distinct lack of logic.
The judge decides matters of law. Whether an API is protected by copyright or not is a matter of law and will be decided by the judge. The jury decides matters of fact. Whether Google copied the API or not is a matter of fact, to be decided by the jury. Whether Google should be convicted is a combination of both. The judge just tells the jury not to waste their time thinking about matters of law, and not let their opinion about the law influence their decision.
In C-style languages, what the judge is doing can be represented using the logical and operator. Nobody complains about that one.
I agree - it's been one of my big complaints about iProducts. My Android phone updates over the air, as does my Nook Color. If I plug them into a PC then I get an added bonus (easy file transfer mostly) but I could use either one heavily for years without ever needing to plug it into a PC and not really miss out on anything.
I'd miss out on my books being backed up and readable on my Mac, which is exactly what happens with eBooks bought on my iPad, either from Apple or from other sources as long as it is standard EPUB format.
So if I post a blog in the UK for everyone to see, but I don't explicitly authorize anyone to view it (the authorization is just implicit), then the Googlebot would be committing a crime by going through it and indexing it? Is that what you're saying?
Implicit authorisation = authorisation. No authorisation = no authorisation. Simple, isn't it? You have authorisation to read this post. You have no authorisation to record this post being sent wirelessly from my computer to my router, or being transmitted from my router to my ISP, and so on.
The sheriff was the defendant. The plaintiffs intended to uses the likes as evidence that the defendant fired them for protected speech. The judge said that the likes were not protected speech, which infers that if he did fire them for that then it was legitimate, meaning the case did not need to continue.
So the judge basically says that if you "like" the facebook site of someone opposing the sheriff they can be fired for that because it is not "protected speech", but if you post a lengthy comment on some website telling the world why they should vote against the current sheriff, then you couldn't be fired for that? Doesn't make sense.
How will Apple be able to leverage such a system to sell third-party content and take their cut?
Apple doesn't need to.
You seem to think that Apple makes lots of money from third party content. But for 30%, Apple provides all the infrastructure, all the payment processing, all you have to do is provide a master copy and your bank account details. Apple also provides all their services for free when you distribute things for free. Like university courses, and lots of free books and audio books. And when I buy through iTunes, Apple doesn't get anywhere near 30% because somehow I always manage to get gift cards sold at 20% rebate.
In reality, App Store, iTunes Music Store, iBook Store, they are just advertisements for hardware sales.
If they seriously went after this guy it would be such an awful PR nightmare that even owning the media and news corporations wouldn't help them. Even the Republicans would turn on them.
They could try to get a fine of 300,000 times $150,000, with an order to pay the fine at $5 per month until it is paid back.
Could anyone post a link where I can find Tor's ebook offerings, especially DRM free ones? Google searches like "tor ebooks" just get me to were Tor is blogging about ebooks. Guys, if you want to sell stuff then could you please not hide where you sell it?
DRM is so easy to remove from ebooks that it's really not much of an inconvenience. Downloaded music DRM used to be a bit more difficult and more restrictive. And don't get me started about the ridiculousness of DRM on digital movies.
Removing DRM is illegal. Therefore, if it has DRM, I know that I could remove it, but I'm totally unwilling to do something illegal in order to read a book that I paid for. Therefore, no matter how little inconvenience, I won't buy it.
Which do you think Tor would rather they do? Not sure about Tor, but my publisher really likes direct sales of eBooks because the margin is higher (they get to keep the cut that the retailer usually takes).
I don't know how it works with Tor books, but books in DRM-free ePub format that I pay for and that get downloaded using a link in the browser will automatically show a dialog "Do you want to open this book in iBooks" on my iPad, they then get automatically imported and opened, and appear in my iTunes library as well - interestingly marked as "purchased" even though I didn't buy them through iTunes at all.
Note that if the profitability of removing DRM is dependent on eBooks being more attractive because they're able to be read on multiple devices then that profitability will disappear if one device begins to dominate the market. Why should I care if my eBook is multi-platform if I'm only ever going to read it on one platform?
You would care very much if in three years time, there are much better readers for a different platform.
Theses sort of cases are really hurting the customer, banks have no reason to invest in a serious authentication scheme for online banking. It's a joke, my bank uses a password and some random question about me. At the very least they need to offer a true two factor solution, preferably token or certificate based.
Well, it hurts the bank's customer, because the bank's customer was the one who entered ten transaction codes into a fraudulent website himself. With a token based solution, you will come back screaming when a scammer convinces a customer to hand over their token.
That's the same as English (before), French (avant), Latin (ante), German (vor), and even Esperanto (antaux). I think the logical and original thing would be forward = future, since you are moving towards it, but I am not aware of any language doing that, though I much prefer when languages have different words for space and time (e.g. Norwegian and Italian).
My first birthday happened _before_ my second birthday. Both birthdays are long behind me now, but my 60th, 70th and 80th birthday are still before me.
As macs later got GPU accelerated video decoding on OS X I'd say the issue with Flash on Macs wasn't Adobes fault in the first place but rather Apples.
Having implemented an h.264 decoder from the published sample implementation for some internal project before Core 2 was released, and having used Flash on a Macintosh, I can tell you that the slow speed and CPU eating behaviour of Flash is not due to having no GPU acceleration. A 320 x 240 movie shouldn't use 80% of the CPU time on any Mac, GPU acceleration or not.
Are they? Consider this: a person doesn't want to support the people who make the product because they utilize DRM, but still wants the product. I'm not saying it's right, but what I am saying is that it's a very possible scenario.
In that case, find an author, any author, near where you live, and send them some cash. If everyone who hates DRM would do that, a lot more books would be written. Or make a donation to the Red Cross or something similar.
iTunes ended up DRM free because the middleman (Apple, obviously) was convinced by consumers that DRM wasn't necessary, and encouraged the labels to drop DRM as a requirement. It became obvious to everyone that people are happy to spend their money to support artists they enjoy. I'm sure there's still quite an active music trading scene, but there's money changing hands, too.
iTunes ended up DRM free because the middleman (Apple, obviously) who had told the labels from the very start and again and again and again that DRM wasn't helping gave in to the labels' request for variable pricing (which in practice meant that all the good stuff became more expensive) to get the same DRM-free deal that the labels gave to Amazon for free.
Totally invalid comparison. A Mac with say thousand potent windows viruses on its hard drive, connected to a network with Windows PCs, would not do any harm - because none of those Windows PCs would open any of those infected files.
Apple is pretty hostile towards GPLv3. They won't distribute any code licensed under it. That's almost certainly why they stuck with an older version of Samba in OS X until they could replace it with their own implementation. Pretty much, once something goes GPLv3, they're going to fork & maintain, or rewrite from scratch.
Slashdot Mirror
My iPod Mini had a non-removable battery. The replacement battery cost £3.95, and it took about 15 minutes to dissassemble, swap the battery, and reassemble.
It's not unreasonable for a home (ie, non-commercial, not another ISP, etc) subscriber to a subscription service such as Internet to be accountable for the activities of other people who use the services in his home. As a parent, I'm held responsible for the activities of my children. I see no reason why I, as an ISP subscriber, should not be also accountable for what people do with a network connection that I pay for. If I don't trust someone to do things that I don't want them to, I shouldn't be letting them on my network.
It's not unreasonable to say that since you signed the contract with the ISP, you are responsible to the ISP for the use of that service. If you are allowed 10 GB of downloads plus extra data at $10 per GB, and I download 100 GB at your home, then the ISP can come to you for the money. You may then sue me to recover the money.
However, if the service is used for copyright infringement or more serious crimes, that has nothing to do with the contract between you and the ISP. If you had quit the contract but the ISP hadn't turned off the service yet by mistake, the same crime would have happened. As far as you are responsible for your children because you are the parent, surely you would be responsible if they downloaded stuff at my home and not at yours.
Does this ruling apply if someone downloads child porn, makes bomb threats, discusses with terrorists or other larger crimes? Just saying it should be consistent if pirates get a pass.
In the context of this ruling, an IP address is not enough evidence to justify giving your name and address to someone who claims that his copyright is infringed, but isn't really interested in sorting out the copyright infringement but only to blackmail you into a settlement. Especially if someone tries to get the names of dozens of people while paying only one court fee.
On the other hand, it is surely enough evidence to get the police started investigating serious crimes.
A classic is Compaq, and their IBM Compatable computers. The engineering team reversed the IBM BIOS, all calls, and wrote a document defining their function. These engineers were now 'dirty' and could not write the BIOS, and that task was given to a second group, using only the specification.
I think it's not that they couldn't write the BIOS, there were just two problems: Those engineers _might_ copy what IBM did even when trying not to - if a problem has five different obvious solutions, then a new team would pick one more or less randomly, while the old team would have been more likely to pick the IBM solution. And of course if / when this went to court, it is a much stronger position to say "No, we didn't copy it. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't have copied it." than to say "No, we didn't copy it. We could have, but we deliberately didn't.".
The Judge is wrong.
You are wrong. You also suffer from overestimating your intelligence, and from the inability to understand simple legal arguments. This judge hasn't made any claim that Oracle's APIs are protected by copyright. The judge has instructed the jury to examine the question whether Google has copied the API without considering whether Oracle's APIs are protected.
And your assertion that header files and build scripts are not copyrightable is pure nonsense. Any header file that I write, and any script that I write, has enough documentation and comments to make it absolutely protected by copyright.
I could define an API with function names that form a poem. That would probably not be very good as an API, but quite probably protected by copyright.
Seems a bit non-sensical to me: "You, spend the next several weeks doing a bunch of work based on an assumption that I may invalidate, but only after you are done."
Absolutely not. Considering how often Slashdot posters claim that judges are stupid, you show a distinct lack of logic.
The judge decides matters of law. Whether an API is protected by copyright or not is a matter of law and will be decided by the judge. The jury decides matters of fact. Whether Google copied the API or not is a matter of fact, to be decided by the jury. Whether Google should be convicted is a combination of both. The judge just tells the jury not to waste their time thinking about matters of law, and not let their opinion about the law influence their decision.
In C-style languages, what the judge is doing can be represented using the logical and operator. Nobody complains about that one.
I agree - it's been one of my big complaints about iProducts. My Android phone updates over the air, as does my Nook Color. If I plug them into a PC then I get an added bonus (easy file transfer mostly) but I could use either one heavily for years without ever needing to plug it into a PC and not really miss out on anything.
I'd miss out on my books being backed up and readable on my Mac, which is exactly what happens with eBooks bought on my iPad, either from Apple or from other sources as long as it is standard EPUB format.
If you had a laptop with you, you probably did.
Your laptop will immediately discard any data from an unsecured and unencrypted network that it is not connected to.
So if I post a blog in the UK for everyone to see, but I don't explicitly authorize anyone to view it (the authorization is just implicit), then the Googlebot would be committing a crime by going through it and indexing it? Is that what you're saying?
Implicit authorisation = authorisation. No authorisation = no authorisation. Simple, isn't it? You have authorisation to read this post. You have no authorisation to record this post being sent wirelessly from my computer to my router, or being transmitted from my router to my ISP, and so on.
The sheriff was the defendant. The plaintiffs intended to uses the likes as evidence that the defendant fired them for protected speech. The judge said that the likes were not protected speech, which infers that if he did fire them for that then it was legitimate, meaning the case did not need to continue.
So the judge basically says that if you "like" the facebook site of someone opposing the sheriff they can be fired for that because it is not "protected speech", but if you post a lengthy comment on some website telling the world why they should vote against the current sheriff, then you couldn't be fired for that? Doesn't make sense.
How will Apple be able to leverage such a system to sell third-party content and take their cut?
Apple doesn't need to.
You seem to think that Apple makes lots of money from third party content. But for 30%, Apple provides all the infrastructure, all the payment processing, all you have to do is provide a master copy and your bank account details. Apple also provides all their services for free when you distribute things for free. Like university courses, and lots of free books and audio books. And when I buy through iTunes, Apple doesn't get anywhere near 30% because somehow I always manage to get gift cards sold at 20% rebate.
In reality, App Store, iTunes Music Store, iBook Store, they are just advertisements for hardware sales.
If they seriously went after this guy it would be such an awful PR nightmare that even owning the media and news corporations wouldn't help them. Even the Republicans would turn on them.
They could try to get a fine of 300,000 times $150,000, with an order to pay the fine at $5 per month until it is paid back.
Could anyone post a link where I can find Tor's ebook offerings, especially DRM free ones? Google searches like "tor ebooks" just get me to were Tor is blogging about ebooks. Guys, if you want to sell stuff then could you please not hide where you sell it?
DRM is so easy to remove from ebooks that it's really not much of an inconvenience. Downloaded music DRM used to be a bit more difficult and more restrictive. And don't get me started about the ridiculousness of DRM on digital movies.
Removing DRM is illegal. Therefore, if it has DRM, I know that I could remove it, but I'm totally unwilling to do something illegal in order to read a book that I paid for. Therefore, no matter how little inconvenience, I won't buy it.
Which do you think Tor would rather they do? Not sure about Tor, but my publisher really likes direct sales of eBooks because the margin is higher (they get to keep the cut that the retailer usually takes).
I don't know how it works with Tor books, but books in DRM-free ePub format that I pay for and that get downloaded using a link in the browser will automatically show a dialog "Do you want to open this book in iBooks" on my iPad, they then get automatically imported and opened, and appear in my iTunes library as well - interestingly marked as "purchased" even though I didn't buy them through iTunes at all.
Note that if the profitability of removing DRM is dependent on eBooks being more attractive because they're able to be read on multiple devices then that profitability will disappear if one device begins to dominate the market. Why should I care if my eBook is multi-platform if I'm only ever going to read it on one platform?
You would care very much if in three years time, there are much better readers for a different platform.
Theses sort of cases are really hurting the customer, banks have no reason to invest in a serious authentication scheme for online banking. It's a joke, my bank uses a password and some random question about me. At the very least they need to offer a true two factor solution, preferably token or certificate based.
Well, it hurts the bank's customer, because the bank's customer was the one who entered ten transaction codes into a fraudulent website himself. With a token based solution, you will come back screaming when a scammer convinces a customer to hand over their token.
That's the same as English (before), French (avant), Latin (ante), German (vor), and even Esperanto (antaux). I think the logical and original thing would be forward = future, since you are moving towards it, but I am not aware of any language doing that, though I much prefer when languages have different words for space and time (e.g. Norwegian and Italian).
My first birthday happened _before_ my second birthday. Both birthdays are long behind me now, but my 60th, 70th and 80th birthday are still before me.
As macs later got GPU accelerated video decoding on OS X I'd say the issue with Flash on Macs wasn't Adobes fault in the first place but rather Apples.
Having implemented an h.264 decoder from the published sample implementation for some internal project before Core 2 was released, and having used Flash on a Macintosh, I can tell you that the slow speed and CPU eating behaviour of Flash is not due to having no GPU acceleration. A 320 x 240 movie shouldn't use 80% of the CPU time on any Mac, GPU acceleration or not.
Are they? Consider this: a person doesn't want to support the people who make the product because they utilize DRM, but still wants the product. I'm not saying it's right, but what I am saying is that it's a very possible scenario.
In that case, find an author, any author, near where you live, and send them some cash. If everyone who hates DRM would do that, a lot more books would be written. Or make a donation to the Red Cross or something similar.
iTunes ended up DRM free because the middleman (Apple, obviously) was convinced by consumers that DRM wasn't necessary, and encouraged the labels to drop DRM as a requirement. It became obvious to everyone that people are happy to spend their money to support artists they enjoy. I'm sure there's still quite an active music trading scene, but there's money changing hands, too.
iTunes ended up DRM free because the middleman (Apple, obviously) who had told the labels from the very start and again and again and again that DRM wasn't helping gave in to the labels' request for variable pricing (which in practice meant that all the good stuff became more expensive) to get the same DRM-free deal that the labels gave to Amazon for free.
Macs are the computer equivalent of Typhoid Mary?
Totally invalid comparison. A Mac with say thousand potent windows viruses on its hard drive, connected to a network with Windows PCs, would not do any harm - because none of those Windows PCs would open any of those infected files.
Addendum: Every engineer worth his weight in salt should be able to write Lisp/Scheme code as well.
I just had to check this. According to what local councils in the UK pay for salt for gritting streets, my weight in salt is worth less than £2.
I thought they were counting actual use, and not vague childhood memories?
Apple is pretty hostile towards GPLv3. They won't distribute any code licensed under it. That's almost certainly why they stuck with an older version of Samba in OS X until they could replace it with their own implementation. Pretty much, once something goes GPLv3, they're going to fork & maintain, or rewrite from scratch.
I wonder which side the hostility comes from.