... and Bill Gates is prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's guru and personal adviser on IT-technology... The good thing is that these things change. Look, Microsoft used to have the British Prime Minister in its pocket (you could argue that Tony Blair was actually somewhere else, not in Microsoft's pocket, but that would be impolite). Today, the relationship between Microsoft and the British Prime Minister is a lot less good, and after the next elections I'll expect a major backlash against Microsoft. Which is kind of bizarre; one would naively expect that Open Source software would be much more appealing to a Labour government than a convicted monopoly and maybe less appealing to a conservative party, but it seems to be playing out the other way round.
I think Apple created Safari for two reasons: One, they want a browser under their own control that runs on the iPhone. Safari for Windows is there to a large extent so that web developers using Windows can test webpages with a browser that is reasonably close to the iPhone browser. Second, they want WebKit. WebKit (the rendering engine used by Safari) also drives the help system (Help is implemented as.html pages with certain extensions) and Dashboard (again, mostly.html pages with certain extensions).
The point is the legal statutes of "making available" are absurd, and should be struck down by the Courts as unconstitutional. You are wrong. The law in this case is absolutely fine and dandy and very clear. However, the law about "making available" doesn't say what the RIAA wants the courts to believe it says. One high profile case is going back to the courts right now because the judge figured out that while a defendant (likely) made songs available for downloads, that wasn't "making available for further distribution" in the sense of copyright law. Because the judge was hoodwinked by the RIAA, he gave the wrong instructions to the jury, which therefore came to the wrong conclusions, so it has to go back to the court.
If you contacted a supermarket chain and offered them copies of Britney Spears' latest album so they can distribute them all over the country, that would be "making available for further distribution" in the sense of copyright law and would be illegal even if the supermarket chain doesn't accept your offer. If you offer the same album to ten thousand private citizens to download and keep, that is not "making available for further distribution" in the sense of the copyright law, even though the RIAA claims it is. As long as nobody accepts your offer and downloads the album, nothing illegal has happened.
Well, it's "copyrighted", not "copywritten", which isn't even a word. Of course it is a word. It just doesn't mean what you think it means.
Copywriter = "A person who writes the text of advertisements or publicity materials". A copywriter copywrites advertisements. Advertisements are copywritten by copywriters.
If I knew you bought illegal drugs, despite being a crime, that doesn't mean I should hope you were really buying illegal drugs when i murder you by shooting you in the head. No matter if you were buying illegal or legal drugs, I would still be in even more trouble for murdering you.
There was a case where person A bought illegal drugs, and person B stole the drugs from A. A called the police. The police investigated, and B was eventually convicted for theft. A was also convicted for possession of illegal drugs:-)
So the fact that another person committed a crime may stop them from calling the police if you commit a crime against them, but once the police is involved, their crime won't help you at all.
Here in the US we have one little legal principle known as "innocent until proven guilty". Perhaps you've heard of it, perhaps not. Essentially, it's what keeps the justice system from being a Jump to Conclusions mat.
Who marked that as "insightful"? First, there is the relationship between companies. Company A hosted bittorrents. Company B thought company A was doing something illegal. There is no "innocent until proven guilty" here at all. If I believe a company rips off its customers, I won't buy from them. I don't care whether it is proven or not, what counts is what I believe. Same here, what counted for Mediadefender's actions was what they believed.
However, their actions were clearly illegal and breaking multiple US laws. First they were hacking into Revision3's servers, interfering with their intended purpose. That is illegal. Then when Revision3 figured it out and closed the holes allowing that attack, Mediadefender started a concentrated DoS attack against Revision3, taking the site effectively down. That is absolutely one hundred percent illegal. And it did not happen by accident, Mediadefender bought tons of hardware for the purpose of creating attacks like this one - which would be illegal whether Revision3 had done something bad or not.
The only _legal_ actions that Mediadefender could have taken would have been to take Revision3 to court, to call the police, or to write letters to the company asking them to stop doing what they are doing. If the told the police that Revision3 did something criminal, and Revision3 were dragged to court, _then_ "innocent until proven guilty" would come into play. In this case, none of this happened. Mediadefender just took some illegal action.
"Innocent until proven guilty" will also apply when Mediadefender is taken to court, since a criminal investigation is on its way. And in every future court case that relies on information from Mediadefender, the defense will ask Revision3 to appear in court and destroy Mediadefender's reputation.
Especially interesting if you recall that Microsoft claims the OEM versions of Windows that come pre-bundled with new systems are non-transferable. Microsoft has actually been hit by exactly the opposite problem in India. Apparently Microsoft used some clever accounting to sell software in India in such a way that they didn't have to pay tax on the profits either in India or in the USA. Then the Indian inland revenue figured out that if Microsoft was _licensing_ the software, not selling it, then Microsoft had to pay taxes. Accordingly, Microsoft was sent a nice bill, because they _claim_ that their software is licensed, not sold.
Renting is not the same thing at all, you have one copy which you legally purchased, you loan the copy to someone else, only one person has that copy at any one time. As has previously been pointed out, even if you wanted to try and make it illegal the rental company could always just "sell" the copy to their customer with a promise to buy it back minus an amount per diem. They could even contractually agree up front to accept a certain amount of the price up front. German law has some general terms to prevent nonsense like that. Basically, it doesn't matter what a contract says if the contract doesn't agree with what is happening in reality. Therefore, if you rent out videos then you can set up contracts about "selling" and "buying back at a lower price" as much as you like, if the fact is that you are renting a video then you are renting it.
I wonder whether the guy would have a claim against Autodesk for improperly interfering with his contractual relationship with Ebay . .. That's exactly what he is suing for. For damages with previous interference with his relationship with eBay, and for a declaration that Autodesk will not interfere in the future; first when he puts the two copies that he still owns to an auction, and second when he manages to buy more copies in garage sales.
But what the court actually determined is that software licensing agreements (as currently written) do not apply to third parties. And that those third parties have the right to resell software under the first sale doctrine. I don't think the court determined that the EULA doesn't apply to third parties. What it determined was that when you buy the Autodesk software, it is a sale, not a license. And that one specific part of copyright law, that when you buy a copyrighted work you have the right to sell it to someone else, cannot be stopped by a EULA.
Yes, the seller in this case was not the original buyer, but the court didn't say anything about how this would affect the case. The final decision of the court might very well say that even the original purchaser has the right to sell the software.
Note that according to what the judge wrote in his decision, one of the original buyers might be in trouble, because apparently they bought Autodesk Version X, then bought an upgrade to Autodesk Version Y which required them to destroy the old copies, and then sold the old CDs with version X. But that's a different story and doesn't affect this case.
I just read this article. The author has no idea what a summary judgment motion is, nor the significance of having it denied. Summary judgment motions are just long shot motions brought early in a case to try to dismiss it if there are no facts in dispute. The significance of a *denial* of such a request simply means there are facts in dispute, or the law isn't so clear. IT IS A NON-EVENT. Nobody has won -- the case simply proceeds. You should have read what the judge wrote. In this case, there are no facts in dispute. However, in a motion for summary judgement the judge can only rule for the moving party (in this case Autodesk who asked for the summary judgement) and the case is closed and won by the moving party, or the judge can deny the motion for summary judgement and the case goes on. The judge cannot possibly, at this point, rule against Autodesk. However, in this case, the judge can use exactly the same arguments to finally decide the case against Autodesk when it is time to do so.
First sale allows you to distribute modified works, but not copies of the modified work. The key difference being that you can buy a book, rip out pages, draw all in it, turn it into a mosaic or what not. You can not photocopy the book, leaving the book in tact, modify the copy then sell that copy, even if it's bundled with the book. This is true for software too. I guess what you are really saying is that it is pretty damn hard to create a version of MacOS X that is modified but not copied.
This is exactly the situation the judge's ruling doesn't cover: he said that if there's some kind of re-possession, it is a license; if not, it is a sale (and gave the relevant Ninth Circuit precedents). Ceasing to work after the license-term amounts to re-possession; Autocad doesn't do that, so it was a sale. Did the judge say that, that "ceasing to work after the license term amounts to re-possession"?
What he said clearly was: If you have to return the software, it is licensed. If you keep the software, it is a sale. If you keep the software but agree to destroy it, it is still a sale. With these small differences, I wouldn't want to guess where "software that ceases to work" stands without someone citing relevant cases.
What if Josh Evans really existed, and was true to what was spoken? Because then it would be a freedom of speech issue.
That would be similar to the difference of the girl being pushed down the stairs and her falling down the stairs by accident. Or someone intentionally hit by a car or being accidentally hit.
Of course. Because they keep 25 year old bugs as compatibility features, while we break compatibility and fix them. Actually, it would be an important consideration before fixing a bug like this to check very carefully whether the fix could reasonably cause problems. Now in this case, the most likely effect other than making no difference whatsoever is that some software that occasionally crashes will crash less often. But it would be conceivable that some software actively works around the problem in a way that causes it to malfunction if the problem is fixed.
I have a question about that; I quite often browse the net for code samples. There are thousands of sites that people have posted "How to build a sample Direct3D application" or "How to access a parallel port" or whatnot. Sample code is presented, sometimes full (generally simple) programs, but no license is declared at all. I'm sure that as a practical matter, it's pretty safe to use those code snippets, because nobody will ever know or care. But legally, is code that has been freely published as training material, free without restrictions for those being trained to use? The first problem is that you don't know the origin of the code, so that is a certain risk. For example, I could run programming courses, using lots of examples that are all copyrighted in my course. If a student takes these examples and publishes them on a website, there is an obvious legal problem if you download it. I don't think that for your private use this is a big risk, unless there were signs of copyright infringement that a reasonable person should have noticed.
For your real question: It seems that you are downloading the source code with permission of the author, so that is fine. I think you are fine as long as you don't make any copies except those allowed by copyright law, like backups. If you build your own Direct3D application, do all the typing without looking at the code you downloaded to avoid copying the code by accident.
One of my work colleagues this evening told me he's just bought a Macbook Pro. He does quite like it but when he went to get a price quote from Apple for upgrading from 2GB to 4GB memory, he was quoted £500.
Strange, on www.apple.com/ukstore it is only £120. Not that Apple doesn't make good money if you buy RAM from them; just go to Crucial and get it cheaper.
(a) a small number of hours for the three new pages (b) a huge number of hours for writing the same 28 pages again (c) cost of copying 28 pages (d) all of the above?
Just wondering: Since this is Judge Lazzara's second case already, I would think that he now knows more about the subject than your average judge, so it would only make sense to let him handle whatever over similar cases come anywhere near his court. Does the judicial system work that way, giving judges similar cases where possible, or are the cases handled by a random judge?
That is fascinating. The judge got a motion from the RIAA to dismiss the defendant's counterclaims, and he didn't even bother to give the defendants a chance to reply! Instead he saved them the cost for their lawyers and rejected the RIAA's motion to dismiss without causing any work for the defendants. I just wonder how unusual that is.
It could be a brick. There is nothing to prevent Apple from releasing a patch that would simply erase the BIOS/EFI from the thing. It's not like they couldn't get their hands on one box to see exactly how to do it. Apple would be fine as long as this happens unintentionally. But if Apple bought a Psystar bpx and made sure it gets bricked, that would be trouble.
I hope the clones have a EULA banning Apple employees or agents from using this for use in establishing fraud or infringement cases. That would be no problem. Apple can sue them, and then ask Psystar to provide the evidence themselves. That is what discovery is for.
But anyone mentioning the EULA is way off the mark anyway. The EULA (End User License Agreement) states what an end user can do or can't do with the Leopard software. For Psystar, something else is more important: The EULA doesn't apply, because they are end users, so only copyright law counts. Copyright law allows Apple to (1) control who can and who can't make copies of the software and (2) who can distribute their software. (2) is the important bit here: Psystar has no right to distribute Apple software.
It also seems that Psystar induces its customers to break the EULA (and whether Apple can enforce the EULA or not doesn't matter; Psystar isn't allowed to do this), and that is a major part of its business. That is interfering with Apple's business and illegal.
Damages for copyright infringement are absolutely NOT based on market value, unless you can somehow explain how the market value for something that sells for less than a dollar via a legal online vendor somehow gets turned into a value between $750 and $150,000. I suggest that it is *you* and not the parent that are speaking from the "make-believe world".
The problem is that the law seems to consider for example Microsoft Office (for sale for a few hundred dollars) or some bespoke software solution that was created for a few hundred thousand dollars as _one_ copyrighted works, but a CD box "100 B-sides from the 60's" that sells for $19.99 in your supermarket counts as _one hundred_ copyrighted works. So making _any number_ of copies of Microsoft Office carries a penalty from $750 to $150,000, while making any number of copies (including one) of the hundred song box set counts as hundred offences with a minimum penalty of 100 x $750.
Carjacking is theft. Downloading is copyright violation.
The difference is that theft deprives the owner of use of the original.. Copyright violation does not.
That is factually correct, but very misleading. For copyrighted works, the value of physical possession is in most cases very little (some antique records have significant value as physical objects); the value lies in the ability to charge money for allowing to make copies, and that is what copyright violation takes away.
The NDA issue may only exist because of the beta nature of the SDK. Past MacOS-X betas have has similar NDAs that were lifted when the final product shipped. No, if you become an ADC member there is always an NDA, so that Apple doesn't have to be careful if they release anything new. Now obviously you can distribute source code under GPL if it _doesn't_ contain anything that is itself under NDA, and you can't distribute it (under GPL or otherwise) if it _does_ contain things under NDA. It would probably be useful if Apple said what exactly is under NDA. For example, if my code calls a function "int ApplesTopSecretFunction (void)" then is the call in the source code covered by NDA? Is explaining what the call does under NDA? Is a reference to a header file under NDA?
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... and Bill Gates is prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's guru and personal adviser on IT-technology... The good thing is that these things change. Look, Microsoft used to have the British Prime Minister in its pocket (you could argue that Tony Blair was actually somewhere else, not in Microsoft's pocket, but that would be impolite). Today, the relationship between Microsoft and the British Prime Minister is a lot less good, and after the next elections I'll expect a major backlash against Microsoft. Which is kind of bizarre; one would naively expect that Open Source software would be much more appealing to a Labour government than a convicted monopoly and maybe less appealing to a conservative party, but it seems to be playing out the other way round.I think Apple created Safari for two reasons: One, they want a browser under their own control that runs on the iPhone. Safari for Windows is there to a large extent so that web developers using Windows can test webpages with a browser that is reasonably close to the iPhone browser. Second, they want WebKit. WebKit (the rendering engine used by Safari) also drives the help system (Help is implemented as .html pages with certain extensions) and Dashboard (again, mostly .html pages with certain extensions).
If you contacted a supermarket chain and offered them copies of Britney Spears' latest album so they can distribute them all over the country, that would be "making available for further distribution" in the sense of copyright law and would be illegal even if the supermarket chain doesn't accept your offer. If you offer the same album to ten thousand private citizens to download and keep, that is not "making available for further distribution" in the sense of the copyright law, even though the RIAA claims it is. As long as nobody accepts your offer and downloads the album, nothing illegal has happened.
Copywriter = "A person who writes the text of advertisements or publicity materials". A copywriter copywrites advertisements. Advertisements are copywritten by copywriters.
If I knew you bought illegal drugs, despite being a crime, that doesn't mean I should hope you were really buying illegal drugs when i murder you by shooting you in the head. No matter if you were buying illegal or legal drugs, I would still be in even more trouble for murdering you. There was a case where person A bought illegal drugs, and person B stole the drugs from A. A called the police. The police investigated, and B was eventually convicted for theft. A was also convicted for possession of illegal drugs :-)
So the fact that another person committed a crime may stop them from calling the police if you commit a crime against them, but once the police is involved, their crime won't help you at all.
Here in the US we have one little legal principle known as "innocent until proven guilty". Perhaps you've heard of it, perhaps not. Essentially, it's what keeps the justice system from being a Jump to Conclusions mat. Who marked that as "insightful"? First, there is the relationship between companies. Company A hosted bittorrents. Company B thought company A was doing something illegal. There is no "innocent until proven guilty" here at all. If I believe a company rips off its customers, I won't buy from them. I don't care whether it is proven or not, what counts is what I believe. Same here, what counted for Mediadefender's actions was what they believed.
However, their actions were clearly illegal and breaking multiple US laws. First they were hacking into Revision3's servers, interfering with their intended purpose. That is illegal. Then when Revision3 figured it out and closed the holes allowing that attack, Mediadefender started a concentrated DoS attack against Revision3, taking the site effectively down. That is absolutely one hundred percent illegal. And it did not happen by accident, Mediadefender bought tons of hardware for the purpose of creating attacks like this one - which would be illegal whether Revision3 had done something bad or not.
The only _legal_ actions that Mediadefender could have taken would have been to take Revision3 to court, to call the police, or to write letters to the company asking them to stop doing what they are doing. If the told the police that Revision3 did something criminal, and Revision3 were dragged to court, _then_ "innocent until proven guilty" would come into play. In this case, none of this happened. Mediadefender just took some illegal action.
"Innocent until proven guilty" will also apply when Mediadefender is taken to court, since a criminal investigation is on its way. And in every future court case that relies on information from Mediadefender, the defense will ask Revision3 to appear in court and destroy Mediadefender's reputation.
Yes, the seller in this case was not the original buyer, but the court didn't say anything about how this would affect the case. The final decision of the court might very well say that even the original purchaser has the right to sell the software.
Note that according to what the judge wrote in his decision, one of the original buyers might be in trouble, because apparently they bought Autodesk Version X, then bought an upgrade to Autodesk Version Y which required them to destroy the old copies, and then sold the old CDs with version X. But that's a different story and doesn't affect this case.
What he said clearly was: If you have to return the software, it is licensed. If you keep the software, it is a sale. If you keep the software but agree to destroy it, it is still a sale. With these small differences, I wouldn't want to guess where "software that ceases to work" stands without someone citing relevant cases.
That would be similar to the difference of the girl being pushed down the stairs and her falling down the stairs by accident. Or someone intentionally hit by a car or being accidentally hit.
For your real question: It seems that you are downloading the source code with permission of the author, so that is fine. I think you are fine as long as you don't make any copies except those allowed by copyright law, like backups. If you build your own Direct3D application, do all the typing without looking at the code you downloaded to avoid copying the code by accident.
Strange, on www.apple.com/ukstore it is only £120. Not that Apple doesn't make good money if you buy RAM from them; just go to Crucial and get it cheaper.
You forgot:
Question #3: You bill your clients
(a) a small number of hours for the three new pages
(b) a huge number of hours for writing the same 28 pages again
(c) cost of copying 28 pages
(d) all of the above?
Just wondering: Since this is Judge Lazzara's second case already, I would think that he now knows more about the subject than your average judge, so it would only make sense to let him handle whatever over similar cases come anywhere near his court. Does the judicial system work that way, giving judges similar cases where possible, or are the cases handled by a random judge?
That is fascinating. The judge got a motion from the RIAA to dismiss the defendant's counterclaims, and he didn't even bother to give the defendants a chance to reply! Instead he saved them the cost for their lawyers and rejected the RIAA's motion to dismiss without causing any work for the defendants. I just wonder how unusual that is.
But anyone mentioning the EULA is way off the mark anyway. The EULA (End User License Agreement) states what an end user can do or can't do with the Leopard software. For Psystar, something else is more important: The EULA doesn't apply, because they are end users, so only copyright law counts. Copyright law allows Apple to (1) control who can and who can't make copies of the software and (2) who can distribute their software. (2) is the important bit here: Psystar has no right to distribute Apple software.
It also seems that Psystar induces its customers to break the EULA (and whether Apple can enforce the EULA or not doesn't matter; Psystar isn't allowed to do this), and that is a major part of its business. That is interfering with Apple's business and illegal.
The problem is that the law seems to consider for example Microsoft Office (for sale for a few hundred dollars) or some bespoke software solution that was created for a few hundred thousand dollars as _one_ copyrighted works, but a CD box "100 B-sides from the 60's" that sells for $19.99 in your supermarket counts as _one hundred_ copyrighted works. So making _any number_ of copies of Microsoft Office carries a penalty from $750 to $150,000, while making any number of copies (including one) of the hundred song box set counts as hundred offences with a minimum penalty of 100 x $750.
The difference is that theft deprives the owner of use of the original.. Copyright violation does not.
That is factually correct, but very misleading. For copyrighted works, the value of physical possession is in most cases very little (some antique records have significant value as physical objects); the value lies in the ability to charge money for allowing to make copies, and that is what copyright violation takes away.