Well yes actually. That's what they are being sued for. I know it sounds ridiculous but that is the plaintiff's claim.
The plaintiff's claims were nowhere near as sensible as the things you asked about. (Actually, Apple's legal reply to most of the claims was "what you are claiming doesn't make any sense". Usually a legal reply to a reasonable accusation either says "we didn't do it" or "we were allowed to do it". )
How can DRM and locking out competitors ever be defined as good for consumers?
I suggest you read what the case was actually about. Apple is claimed to have prevented Realnetworks from adding Apple's DRM to Realnetworks' DRM music and copying it onto Apple's iPods. The reality is that Realnetworks created an awful hack and damaged the data on an iPod in the process to an extent that Apple's software thought the iPod was broken and reformatted it.
To your question "How can DRM ever be defined as good for customers": Without DRM, it would be impossible to rent videos online for cheap instead of having to buy them for three times as much. And in 2006 when this happened, without DRM there would have been no online music stores. Surely offering you to buy music with DRM is better than not offering you to buy music without DRM.
This is not true, even if Apple insists on saying it is. As near as I can tell, what they mean is that they aren't putting DRM on music that was added after the DRM-free date. However, the iTunes library is full of music that is as "protected" by DRM as it ever was. Or at least that was true three years ago, when I spent far too much time working out how to strip the DRM off of a song I downloaded from it.
Just in case that you still have a reasonable amount of music with FairPlay DRM: You can buy Apple's "iTunes Match" for a year, which will among other things allow you to replace any music bought from Apple, and any music from anywhere that the software recognises, with DRM free 256 Kbit/sec copies. Costs about $25 or so. If you have lots of music with DRM or in lower quality, it's worth it.
It's still relevant, but an expected ruling. This is not about DRM on the songs, it is about DRM on the connection between iTunes and the devices. That is, you can't use a non-apple device with iTunes. And Apple can go out of their way to make that happen.
I think you are making the mistake of thinking that Apple was sued for something that remotely makes sense. They weren't.
Apple sold music with DRM in 2006. That music was hard or impossible to copy, as music with DRM should be. But that's not what Apple was sued for. And making it impossible for music with DRM to be copied is actually what DRM is there for.
Realnetworks had developed their own DRM "solution". Which had the unfortunate disadvantage that it didn't play on iPods, and it didn't play on Microsoft "Playforsure" compatible players either. So it was quite dead in the water. So Realnetworks decided to create a hack where they removed their own DRM, then put fake "FairPlay" (that's Apple's DRM) around it, and copied that to the iPod.
It turned out that they damaged directory structures on the iPod, and the iPod's "FairPlay" implementation noticed that there was something fishy about these files. Altogether so bad that Apple's software suggested that you reformat the iPod. And that is what these lawyers complain about: That Apple didn't allow their hacked DRM to play on an iPod.
The obvious and 100% iPod compatible solution would have been to remove the DRM and _not_ to try to add Fairplay DRM to the music. Music without DRM, like mp3, AAC, WAV, ALAC has always played on all iPods.
So, once the order has been placed, haven't you effectively entered into a contract for sale or something?
Most likely the sale is only entered at a later stage. Could be if the charge your credit card, could be if the ship.
And most likely, they have terms and conditions that basically say "we offer what you see on the website, except if there are obvious mistakes". And the only way you could complain is if you spot a pattern, like if this happens repeatedly, or if they refuse to sell to you but don't change the advertised price.
Re:Why not ask the authors of the GPL Ver.2?
on
The GPLv2 Goes To Court
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Now all that said, from all I've heard the authors of the GPL were quite competent in what they were doing, so it is quite likely that the GPL says what they meant.
I think the most important thing is about remedies, and there is quite strong precedence. It seems that if you use open-sourced software and don't do what you are supposed to do according to the license, you are a copyright infringer, and not someone in breach of contract. So the damages are those of a copyright infringer (up to $150,000 per work, or the proven damage), and not those of a person in breach of contract.
If you distribute a license to use for these terms and you control the patent on them you have an implied license to do so and all it will take is a promissory estoppel motion to squash that claim.
I really wouldn't think so. Sure, it has to be made clear that the license for the software doesn't include the license for the patents. But it would make absolute sense if a patent holder made it easy for companies to actually use their patent by providing open source software to use the patent, instead of everyone having to create their own proprietary software.
Well, that part is actually not up to the GPL to define it's a key part of copyright law, if it's not derivative it's not covered by copyright so the GPL wouldn't apply.
Well... Copyright law is about different things, mostly about copying and creating derivative works. A judge would decide whether someone made a copy, or whether someone created a derivative work, according to the law, and the GPL cannot override this. With that decided, the judge will then conclude that either you did need permission by the GPL, or you didn't need permission by the GPL to do what you did.
On the other hand, the GPL can say in its own terms what it allows you to do. They could say "you are allowed to create a derivative work if you do A, B and C; we consider it a derivative work if you did X, Y and Z". Then the judge would check if you did X, Y and Z to decide whether you needed to do A, B and C to get permission from GPL.
If you didn't need permission, then it doesn't matter what the GPL says. If you did need permission, then it matters.
Re:Hope they keep Stallman off the stand...
on
The GPLv2 Goes To Court
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
RMS only commissioned the license. He did not create it. The lawyer that actually drafted the license would likely be a much better "witness" assuming that such things would even be considered in this case.
Even so, what the lawyers who created the license intended doesn't matter. Or what he was told that the license should achieve, doesn't matter either. The text of the license matters.
No, the taxi drivers are arguing they can be the only ones to drive people to their destination and charge them for the ride.
The taxi drivers are arguing that since there is a shitload of rules and regulations that they have to follow to be allowed to drive people to their destination and charge, others shouldn't be allowed to do so without following the same shitload of rules and regulations.
They are also probably worried that prices are driven down by a company exploiting people who just want to make a bit of extra money. I'd love to see what percentage of Uber drivers have proper insurance and pay their taxes.
Now, most economists would say that raising prices during periods of high demand is what suppliers should do, for various reasons.
In the UK, a few years ago they had a "petrol strike" where drivers refused to transport fuel to petrol stations. Panic ensued. One owner of a petrol station who still had fuel left decided to double the price.
Three days later the strike was over. Two months later, the station closed down, bankrupt.
I really respect what you are saying in general, about greed and poverty, as it appears to come from a good heart and personal experience. However, I really doubt the Islamic State guys are motivated by socioeconomic suffering. I'm not sure what their motivation is but I can speculate on many other sources for motivation.
Well, look at the guys. Their religion tells them to dress and to behave towards women so that no woman would touch them with a barge pole unless forced to. The average bearded muslim looks ten times worse than the average Unix programmer and has a tenth of the brain, so they have no chance to get laid by any woman volunteering without getting paid.
And that just drives them nuts and hateful. Instead of shaving and getting a decent haircut and doing something to make themselves a bit attractive, they believe some fairy tales of virgins waiting for them in heaven. Sorry, guys, heaven is not where you are going! No virgins for you!
Consider this: These people are not muslims. They are total fuckwits who lost their minds and got their hands on some guns. If the religion that they claim to "support" is correct in what it teaches, then these guys will end up in hell for what they are doing. If other religions are correct in what they teach, they will end up in a slightly different but equally terrible place. That's one of the few negative aspects of being an atheist, knowing that these guys won't get the punishment they deserve.
Careful with your terminology - "rapist" means a conviction
Not at all. You can be falsely convicted of rape, then you are not a rapist. Or you can be wrongly set free, then you are still a rapist. "Rapist" is about the fact that someone has committed the crime. "Convicted rapist" is someone being convicted for the crime.
Usually, the software developer requires that you accept the EULA in order to get the right to use the software. Does that mean that you accepted the EULA if you use the software? It doesn't.
It means that if you use the software, you _either_ accepted the EULA _or_ you committed an act of copyright infringement. However, IBM cannot know which one. Therefore, they cannot do things that would be illegal if you didn't accept the EULA, like accessing your files.
(Many EULAs contain terms that allow you only limited amount of copying. That's completely legal, because either you accept the EULA and accept that you cannot make unlimited copies, or you don't accept the EULA and cannot legally make any copies at all. This EULA is different).
Facial recognition could be used to make the look-ups faster and more accurate. And most drivers are associated with one or two vehicles, so the police could have someone's picture up before they even approach the driver in most cases.
With a driver license, it's really _you_ who will be trying to convince the police officer that you have a valid license. So facial recognition isn't really needed. You're right, most of the time a police officer taking a photo of your license plate could automatically be shown photos of one or sometimes two people who are most likely driving the car and are in the system as having a license or as having no license.
If nothing comes up or the driver doesn't meet the pictures, the driver would need to give the police officer information that leads to the license. Typically name and birthday, or address, or even license number if you learned it by heart and don't want to give your name. Then same thing, the information is looked up and a picture shown to the police officer.
Problem would be if you lost your license and gave your twin brother's information. Knowing that information is probably much easier than stealing his driving license.
A police officer may be allowed to search your phone, but that doesn't do him or her any good if the phone is locked. In a warrantless search, they are allowed to look at things that are in the open, which would quite obviously exclude searching anything where they need your help.
Uber has its bad points but what it does is empower citizens to do things that will make them some extra money, If you are willing to drive people after work then go ahead, if you want to make a career out of it that is good too.
Hiring these guys and paying them a wage would be a much much better way to give them some extra money. And do you really want to be driven around by a guy who is dog tired after a full working day? I'd rather be driven by a taxi driver who has just one job.
Can we just say that this is not "ridesharing". Ride sharing happens when I want to go from A to B, and I pick you up on the way because you want to go to a similar route.
The Uber drives have no intention to go from A to B themselves. They are sitting at home waiting from phone calls. It's a private hire car, where you rent out a car together with a driver, to transport other people for payment to places that you don't want to go yourself.
How much will these apps cost? Are they free? Are they free except you have to pay $$$ for the required analytics?
Who knows? They are meant for businesses, and they are made by IBM, and IBM is in it for the money. So significant amounts of money will change hands from customers to IBM, one way or another.
These are not web apps, these are proper apps. You know the apps that you need a PC for and not a toy tablet. Except they run on an iPad. You buy them and give them to your employees who use them for work. Which you can't do on a toy tablet. Except you can:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Well yes actually. That's what they are being sued for. I know it sounds ridiculous but that is the plaintiff's claim.
The plaintiff's claims were nowhere near as sensible as the things you asked about. (Actually, Apple's legal reply to most of the claims was "what you are claiming doesn't make any sense". Usually a legal reply to a reasonable accusation either says "we didn't do it" or "we were allowed to do it". )
How can DRM and locking out competitors ever be defined as good for consumers?
I suggest you read what the case was actually about. Apple is claimed to have prevented Realnetworks from adding Apple's DRM to Realnetworks' DRM music and copying it onto Apple's iPods. The reality is that Realnetworks created an awful hack and damaged the data on an iPod in the process to an extent that Apple's software thought the iPod was broken and reformatted it.
To your question "How can DRM ever be defined as good for customers": Without DRM, it would be impossible to rent videos online for cheap instead of having to buy them for three times as much. And in 2006 when this happened, without DRM there would have been no online music stores. Surely offering you to buy music with DRM is better than not offering you to buy music without DRM.
This is not true, even if Apple insists on saying it is. As near as I can tell, what they mean is that they aren't putting DRM on music that was added after the DRM-free date. However, the iTunes library is full of music that is as "protected" by DRM as it ever was. Or at least that was true three years ago, when I spent far too much time working out how to strip the DRM off of a song I downloaded from it.
Just in case that you still have a reasonable amount of music with FairPlay DRM: You can buy Apple's "iTunes Match" for a year, which will among other things allow you to replace any music bought from Apple, and any music from anywhere that the software recognises, with DRM free 256 Kbit/sec copies. Costs about $25 or so. If you have lots of music with DRM or in lower quality, it's worth it.
It's still relevant, but an expected ruling. This is not about DRM on the songs, it is about DRM on the connection between iTunes and the devices. That is, you can't use a non-apple device with iTunes. And Apple can go out of their way to make that happen.
I think you are making the mistake of thinking that Apple was sued for something that remotely makes sense. They weren't.
Apple sold music with DRM in 2006. That music was hard or impossible to copy, as music with DRM should be. But that's not what Apple was sued for. And making it impossible for music with DRM to be copied is actually what DRM is there for.
Realnetworks had developed their own DRM "solution". Which had the unfortunate disadvantage that it didn't play on iPods, and it didn't play on Microsoft "Playforsure" compatible players either. So it was quite dead in the water. So Realnetworks decided to create a hack where they removed their own DRM, then put fake "FairPlay" (that's Apple's DRM) around it, and copied that to the iPod.
It turned out that they damaged directory structures on the iPod, and the iPod's "FairPlay" implementation noticed that there was something fishy about these files. Altogether so bad that Apple's software suggested that you reformat the iPod. And that is what these lawyers complain about: That Apple didn't allow their hacked DRM to play on an iPod.
The obvious and 100% iPod compatible solution would have been to remove the DRM and _not_ to try to add Fairplay DRM to the music. Music without DRM, like mp3, AAC, WAV, ALAC has always played on all iPods.
she was, briefly, the largest vessel afloat
No, she was the largest vessel, briefly afloat :-)
So, once the order has been placed, haven't you effectively entered into a contract for sale or something?
Most likely the sale is only entered at a later stage. Could be if the charge your credit card, could be if the ship.
And most likely, they have terms and conditions that basically say "we offer what you see on the website, except if there are obvious mistakes". And the only way you could complain is if you spot a pattern, like if this happens repeatedly, or if they refuse to sell to you but don't change the advertised price.
Now all that said, from all I've heard the authors of the GPL were quite competent in what they were doing, so it is quite likely that the GPL says what they meant.
I think the most important thing is about remedies, and there is quite strong precedence. It seems that if you use open-sourced software and don't do what you are supposed to do according to the license, you are a copyright infringer, and not someone in breach of contract. So the damages are those of a copyright infringer (up to $150,000 per work, or the proven damage), and not those of a person in breach of contract.
If you distribute a license to use for these terms and you control the patent on them you have an implied license to do so and all it will take is a promissory estoppel motion to squash that claim.
I really wouldn't think so. Sure, it has to be made clear that the license for the software doesn't include the license for the patents. But it would make absolute sense if a patent holder made it easy for companies to actually use their patent by providing open source software to use the patent, instead of everyone having to create their own proprietary software.
Well, that part is actually not up to the GPL to define it's a key part of copyright law, if it's not derivative it's not covered by copyright so the GPL wouldn't apply.
Well... Copyright law is about different things, mostly about copying and creating derivative works. A judge would decide whether someone made a copy, or whether someone created a derivative work, according to the law, and the GPL cannot override this. With that decided, the judge will then conclude that either you did need permission by the GPL, or you didn't need permission by the GPL to do what you did.
On the other hand, the GPL can say in its own terms what it allows you to do. They could say "you are allowed to create a derivative work if you do A, B and C; we consider it a derivative work if you did X, Y and Z". Then the judge would check if you did X, Y and Z to decide whether you needed to do A, B and C to get permission from GPL.
If you didn't need permission, then it doesn't matter what the GPL says. If you did need permission, then it matters.
RMS only commissioned the license. He did not create it. The lawyer that actually drafted the license would likely be a much better "witness" assuming that such things would even be considered in this case.
Even so, what the lawyers who created the license intended doesn't matter. Or what he was told that the license should achieve, doesn't matter either. The text of the license matters.
No, the taxi drivers are arguing they can be the only ones to drive people to their destination and charge them for the ride.
The taxi drivers are arguing that since there is a shitload of rules and regulations that they have to follow to be allowed to drive people to their destination and charge, others shouldn't be allowed to do so without following the same shitload of rules and regulations.
They are also probably worried that prices are driven down by a company exploiting people who just want to make a bit of extra money. I'd love to see what percentage of Uber drivers have proper insurance and pay their taxes.
The amount of cheerleading for Uber here is fucking ridiculous.
They just received 1200 million dollars funding. Astorturfing is cheap.
Now, most economists would say that raising prices during periods of high demand is what suppliers should do, for various reasons.
In the UK, a few years ago they had a "petrol strike" where drivers refused to transport fuel to petrol stations. Panic ensued. One owner of a petrol station who still had fuel left decided to double the price.
Three days later the strike was over. Two months later, the station closed down, bankrupt.
I really respect what you are saying in general, about greed and poverty, as it appears to come from a good heart and personal experience. However, I really doubt the Islamic State guys are motivated by socioeconomic suffering. I'm not sure what their motivation is but I can speculate on many other sources for motivation.
Well, look at the guys. Their religion tells them to dress and to behave towards women so that no woman would touch them with a barge pole unless forced to. The average bearded muslim looks ten times worse than the average Unix programmer and has a tenth of the brain, so they have no chance to get laid by any woman volunteering without getting paid.
And that just drives them nuts and hateful. Instead of shaving and getting a decent haircut and doing something to make themselves a bit attractive, they believe some fairy tales of virgins waiting for them in heaven. Sorry, guys, heaven is not where you are going! No virgins for you!
The ones that are already rolled in you won't stop easily. It's about the impressionable ones that are not enrolled.
If you don't understand why Muslims are angry about drawings of Mohammed, then you are a big part of the problem.
Consider this: These people are not muslims. They are total fuckwits who lost their minds and got their hands on some guns. If the religion that they claim to "support" is correct in what it teaches, then these guys will end up in hell for what they are doing. If other religions are correct in what they teach, they will end up in a slightly different but equally terrible place. That's one of the few negative aspects of being an atheist, knowing that these guys won't get the punishment they deserve.
Careful with your terminology - "rapist" means a conviction
Not at all. You can be falsely convicted of rape, then you are not a rapist. Or you can be wrongly set free, then you are still a rapist. "Rapist" is about the fact that someone has committed the crime. "Convicted rapist" is someone being convicted for the crime.
It doesn't work that way.
Usually, the software developer requires that you accept the EULA in order to get the right to use the software. Does that mean that you accepted the EULA if you use the software? It doesn't.
It means that if you use the software, you _either_ accepted the EULA _or_ you committed an act of copyright infringement. However, IBM cannot know which one. Therefore, they cannot do things that would be illegal if you didn't accept the EULA, like accessing your files.
(Many EULAs contain terms that allow you only limited amount of copying. That's completely legal, because either you accept the EULA and accept that you cannot make unlimited copies, or you don't accept the EULA and cannot legally make any copies at all. This EULA is different).
The article you are linking to is many years old. You can't extract anything from a modern iPhone if it is locked.
Facial recognition could be used to make the look-ups faster and more accurate. And most drivers are associated with one or two vehicles, so the police could have someone's picture up before they even approach the driver in most cases.
With a driver license, it's really _you_ who will be trying to convince the police officer that you have a valid license. So facial recognition isn't really needed. You're right, most of the time a police officer taking a photo of your license plate could automatically be shown photos of one or sometimes two people who are most likely driving the car and are in the system as having a license or as having no license.
If nothing comes up or the driver doesn't meet the pictures, the driver would need to give the police officer information that leads to the license. Typically name and birthday, or address, or even license number if you learned it by heart and don't want to give your name. Then same thing, the information is looked up and a picture shown to the police officer.
Problem would be if you lost your license and gave your twin brother's information. Knowing that information is probably much easier than stealing his driving license.
A police officer may be allowed to search your phone, but that doesn't do him or her any good if the phone is locked. In a warrantless search, they are allowed to look at things that are in the open, which would quite obviously exclude searching anything where they need your help.
Uber has its bad points but what it does is empower citizens to do things that will make them some extra money, If you are willing to drive people after work then go ahead, if you want to make a career out of it that is good too.
Hiring these guys and paying them a wage would be a much much better way to give them some extra money. And do you really want to be driven around by a guy who is dog tired after a full working day? I'd rather be driven by a taxi driver who has just one job.
Can we just say that this is not "ridesharing". Ride sharing happens when I want to go from A to B, and I pick you up on the way because you want to go to a similar route.
The Uber drives have no intention to go from A to B themselves. They are sitting at home waiting from phone calls. It's a private hire car, where you rent out a car together with a driver, to transport other people for payment to places that you don't want to go yourself.
How much will these apps cost? Are they free? Are they free except you have to pay $$$ for the required analytics?
Who knows? They are meant for businesses, and they are made by IBM, and IBM is in it for the money. So significant amounts of money will change hands from customers to IBM, one way or another.
:-)
These are not web apps, these are proper apps. You know the apps that you need a PC for and not a toy tablet. Except they run on an iPad. You buy them and give them to your employees who use them for work. Which you can't do on a toy tablet. Except you can