Everyone seems to think the authors are trying to outlaw used books. They are doing no such thing. They don't like the fact that Amazon is selling used books almost immediately when the new ones go on sale (and I can understand their frustration with this). The Guild's response is to encourage it's members not to link to Amazon, but rather one of the other online bookseller that does no do this. It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Why send people to site where they may end up buying a copy of your book used (and you will get no money from it) when you can send them to another online bookseller where this isn't likely to happen? They don't like how Amazon is doing business, so they are trying to send their business elsewhere. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Why on Earth would you like to block a spambot? So it doesn't get any more useful addresses? No way, man. If you realize you're serving to a bot, go on serving. Each time the bot follows the "next page" link, you/give/ it a next page. With a nicely formatted word1word2num1num2@word1word2.com, where words and nums are random. Give it thousands, millions of addresses this way. This would be good to do with known bad addresses, but random addresses only add more unknowing people to the list. You may add 1000 email addresses to the list and slow them down, but if even 10 of those email addresses are real, you've added to the problem. The bad addresses will be taken out as they are found to be bad, and the good ones will be left in. You've signed JoeRandomUser@RandomDomain.com up for all the spam he can handle, even if he has taken great lengths to keep his email address off the spam lists. In theory this sounds like a great idea, until your the guy getting your email address randomly fed to the bots.
The hard part is proving you requested to be taken off their list. You usually need to at the least send a letter before it is "official" that you requested to be removed. You can request it when they call, and a lot of them will remove you, but if they don't there is no way for you to prove you requested it. It comes down to your word against theirs, and the burden of proof is on you. So yes, by law they have to remove you if you request it, but if they don't it's up to you to prove you requested it.
Punitive damages are given by the court. They are a decision of the court. These people are actually suing for $50 an email, which means they claim that is what cost each email had to them. This is just an absurd number. If they were suing for even $5 an email (which is still outrageously high) I could at least support it (and the court may well decide to give punitive damages). But there is no way on god's green earth that each email cost them $50. This is no different than the businesses that get their webpages defaced and claim it costs them a million dollars to fix the damages. It's just an outrageous claim hoping to make money without any actual work involved.
While I support people going after spammers, I have to question the price of $50 per email. It seems all the time there are people screaming over the price of cds or dvds or how much the RIAA and MPAA say they are losing/sue for. Now that someone is suing spammers for an equally ridiculous amount, where are these people? I think suing for inflated unreasonable damages is wrong, even when your suing spammers.
Many adults like myself take a civil disobedience type approach to music sharing. I buy as many CDs (if not more) than I used to, but I unabashedly use these services to make sure those CDs I buy are going to be worth it. People that fall more or less in this category (I think) are waiting for a good digital music policy from the major labels(although there seems to be no light at the end of this tunnel).
It's hard to say anyone is taking a "civil disobedience" stance on online music sharing. Many people are using it in a positive way , like you are, but that is in no way "civil disobedience". To take a stance like that, people would have to openly share music, and be willing to be arrested and/or sued for it and pay the penalty. Logging onto Morpheus (or Limewire, or Kazaa, or whatever) under an alias, and downloading music is not civil disobedience. Logging onto a public BB and using your own name with your own true contact information and trading music, and then making sure the authorities and the music companies know about it would be civil disobedience. Hiding behind Morpheus and the anonymity it provides is not civil disobedience.
The difference is that all of the Linux/BSD exploits are out in the open, and a large percentage come from people looking at the source code and going "oops!".
Whilst I know the "many-eyes" theory isn't as good as many people think, I'm sure that the average line of code in an open source app gets more eye time that the average line of code in a proprietary, closed source one, so we find a higher percentage of our security problems. Now, just what percentage of security issues do you think that Microsoft et al actually openly admit to? I don't think there have been more than a couple of occasions where microsoft has said, without someone sticking the proverbial gun in their back, hey - security issue, we fess up, come and get the fix. Do you believe they don't find many more? Sure they do, they either just ignore them or quietly fix them and slip it in a servicepack.
Actually, a large portion of security holes in MS software are fixed before there is an exploit. The problem is the few that aren't get lots of press, and people don't install the patches, and MS still gets the blame. The CodeRed worm is a perfect example. There was a patch available months before CodeRed was even heard of, put people didn't install it, and now everyone points to CodeRed as the perfect example of MS vulnerability.
I'm not saying MS is perfect by any stretch, but check out how many security fixes they offer and compare it to the amount of tools for exploiting them. You'll find most holes are fixed before there is an exploit for them available.
I am wondering if the judge in this case was in some manner technically savy, since he noted Kazaa didn't depend on a central server and thus the user network is out of its control, thus Kazaa was just considered a software provider and did not directly break any laws.
I'm wondering how this can be since it has been proven they control who is on the network. They were able to lock Morpheus users out of the Kazaa network, so it MUST depend on a central server, at least for user logins. How exactly can Kazaa kick people off their network, but still claim they have no control over the network?
Draft copies are the biggest reason there will never be a paperless office. If you have a 15 page draft and distribute it to 20 people for comments, trying to organize and incorporate the comments is damn near impossible. Never mind the act of these people commenting is already 3 times harder than it would be if you just gave out hard copy. My boss decided to try "paperless drafts" for documents we were reviewing and it was an abysmal failure. If the IT department thinks it's clunky and convoluted, then everyone else won't think about it at all.
I know I can't be the only one that refuses to play RTS games until they come up with a decent AI for your forces? For me, the real question about the beta is what your forces do when they are finished with their assigned task? Do they stand around waiting for another order, or do they do something intelligent?
Until RTS games have decent enough AI that when your grunt is done building that fort you assigned him to build he goes and either returns to his previous job or starts doing some other productive job, I won't play them. I don't want to micromanage a bunch of grunts, that's my boss's job;-)
I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...
If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...
Except this slippery slope only works with things that are already illegal. They are banning kiddie porn, an illegal activity. There is no correlation with this being transferred to legal activities being banned. First they would have to make adult content illegal, and then they could ban it. The law can only even potentially be used to block illegal material. So the bigger problem would be these activities becoming illegal, not them becoming banned.
It can be forged, but the origins of the email was never in doubt. Both parties admitted they had sent the email, so the only question was whether you could have an "email contract". It does in some ways make sense, since you can have a "verbal contract", and "email contract" isn't much different.
The fees under protest by both parties are: The fee is $1.40 per thousand listeners for Internet-only stations, and 70 cents per thousand listeners for over-the-air stations that simultaneously broadcast online.
How would the record companies enforce such a payment structure? It seems to me that would be no method of counting the listeners that couldn't possibly be altered by the webcasters especially with all the different webcasting programs out there. Does anyone have a clue how the Record Companies were planning to accurately count listeners?
FOr non-commercial stations, I don't know how they would accurately count it. For commercial stations, it would be easy, the station would do it for them. The station is going to keep an accurate count of listeners (or even an inflated count) because that is what they use to price and sell advertising time. So if they keep these stats already, that is what the recording industry will use to charge them.
"Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam" The point is even better than that. The ISP can tell a company not to send email through it's servers. If that company does, then the company can lose up to 2.5 million whatevertheircurrencyis. XS4ALL doesn't have to change or try to block any spam at all from the company. Overall, this brings down XS4ALL's operating cost, plus reduces the spam their customers get. Good news, I hope it goes forward.
This is the point I'm not sure I agree with. According to the ruling (at least the English translation, which I'm assuming is accurate) "XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation", which means they don't have to relay the spam. I'm not sure where this translates into AbFab can't send mail to the mail servers. IT seems to me it would more logically mean that XS4ALL doesn't have to deliver the mail if it is sent to their servers (they have no legal obligation to convey these messages to their users). It's kinda like if I get mail for someone else at my house. I have no legal obligation to convey that message on to the correct address, I can just throw it out. But I can't charge the person who sent it to my house (even if they did it on purpose). They other question is what happens if a user requests email fro AbFab. Out of all their users, I'm sure their is at least one person who wants whatever crap it is their selling. As this ruling talks about unsolicited email, if a person signs up for it, can they be charged for sending it?
It is nice to see that politicians are looking at possiblities to ban these technologies. I am thinking that there may already exist laws that prohibit this practice, at least in some countries. I know that in Norway government agencies are looking at taking legal action against Sony for illegal marketing as they are selling a product marketed as a CD and priced as a CD while it clearly is not a CD! While I completely agree that these discs should not be marketted as CDs (and I believe they aren;t anymore, they have stickers saying they won't play on PCs), banning the technology is the farthest thing from the answer I have ever heard. That is no more a solution than banning P2P sharing is for stopping piracy. They should be able to put whatever they want on the discs, as long as they don't try to pass them off as regular CDs. Banning the technology they use, or their ability to use it, will just set a dangerous precedent. If they can't use technology is ways they want to, what is to say you can use technology in the ways you want to? Technology isn't the problem.
Re:You company does not have permission
on
Abusing the GPL?
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· Score: 2
If you are including other people's GPL'd source code in a program which you distribute, then you must abide by the terms of that license. Section 3 of the GPL is precise enough to disallow scrambling the source code:
You must provide the source code of the whole GPL program to your customers, as defined in clauses 3a, 3b and 3c. The provided source must correspond exactly with the binary that you give your customers. So it must include your modifications, for exactly that version. The provided source must be in the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". That means the source code must be what you actually load into your editor to develop the software. In other words, you must distribute the useful source code.
It seems like section 2 and 3 can easily come into conflict. In what they are doing, the obfuscated code is the binary given to customers. But they prefer to work (I assume) on the non-obfuscated code. I wonder which section would take precedence? It seems that depending on which section they believe (or is finally determined by lawyers) to take precedence, they can either release the obfuscated code, and keep with section 2, or release the original and keep with section 3, but there is no way to keep with both sections in this case.
I know it isn't popular but games and movies do influence people (including youth). Maybe most of us can tell the difference between a minigun and a minimart. Don't underestimate the power of suggestion on an individual who is under a pressure situation or lives in an environment without consequences
You're absolutely right. If someone is unbalanced, they can be influenced, by damn near anything. That includes TV, video games, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, friends, music, and just about anything else. The point is that those things aren't responsible for your actions, you are. If you are unbalanced, you are unbalanced. We can't ban anything that could ever have a bad influence on someone who is unbalanced.
Of course the site is/.ed, so I can't get on and read their terms of service myself, but do they say they keep a copy of the paper, or that they own the paper (or something along those lines)? If all they say is that they keep a copy of the paper, that in no way changes the copyright or ownership of the paper. It doesn't give them the right to reproduce or distribute it in any way. Basically, they are saying they are keeping a copy of the paper to add to their database, in case someone copies this paper in the future. If they claim ownership or copyright of the paper, then there is a problem.
It similar to you giving someone a copy of a picture you took. They now own that copy, and can keep it, but it in no way gives them the right to reproduce it or do anything else with it, as they don't hold the copyright on it.
Does it even matter at all if he got the letter, if he lied about it or even if he told the truth about this company? It's very VERY clear he's telling his opinion and the moment people get fined for telling their opinion is the moment the US can be considerd on par with China and many other countries they can't stand. Emigrate while you can! Actually, it is very important if he got the letter. We don't know all the facts in the case. Everyone is going by the snippets of posts in the article, which I'm sure are far from the entire posts. The rest of the post may have been straight libel. The snippets we got are fairly clear in that he shouldn't have been liable for libel, but we can't say the same thing about everything else he said. Plus, you can say he shouldn't have been sued, because that violates his rights, but it also violates rights if you aren't able to sue someone when you think they did something wrong. The key is the person accused should always have the chance to defend themselves, which he may not have been given in this case.
I think it's pretty obvious someone is lying, but I wonder who it is. They claim he got a letter by registered mail, which means he had to sign for it. He claims he never got it. Seems like a simple thing to go back and check the receipt of the letter (if there was one) and see if he signed for it. I have a feeling he really did get the letter, since even the dumbest lawyer would be smart enough not to lie about something that easily checked in court, especially when you know the guy will challenge it when he gets the judgment (of course I could be wrong and the lawyer really is that dumb). I think finding out about the registered letter will clear up pretty much the whole case.
Just look at the most popular web sites on the web for your lead. By doing this, you will soon realize, a good site has: a plethora of pop-up/pop-unders, at least 2 new windows on closing the current one, spam advertising to ever known email address in existence, and lots and lots of boobs. It's a simple formula, boobs = hits, ask any teenage boy.
If I break the GPL, I can be sued for damages, etc., and must stop distribution. My license is revoked, etc., etc. Can I then go out, download a fresh copy and distribute under the terms of the GPL? Stallman says no, I'm not certain. That's where this case is questionable.
It seems that you couldn't download the same piece of software (as that is the same license, just a different copy of it). I would assume you lose rights to use the GPL for that product. But the real question is what happens when they release an upgrade? Can you once again use the GPL, as this is a different product (well, a different version) and a new license (as a license only applies to the actual product and version it is issued with)? Can they find an old copy of MySQL and just use that, since it's a different license?
It doesn't seem they could ban you from ever using the GPL again, or even using it on different products from the same company. So I doubt they could stop you from using it on different versions of the product either.
NuSphere may not be 'obscure', but the mysql.org website seems a little deceptive. If I didn't investigate it more, I wouldn't have known the difference between mysql.org or mysql.com just by looking at the front page of the website.
MySQL.org presents their website in a manner that does not give credit where credit is due. For one, if you go to mysql.org you will find that it doesn't say whether it developed the software, it just says it's got mysql software available for 'free' download. But the mysql.com guy is correct, in that you cannot download any software without registering with mysql.org first. That indicates to me that it's not 'free' because now mysql.org has customer data to use to market their product to. Plus, it doesn't say: "Hey, we didn't write the software, mysql.com is where you can find that info. We just improved upon it." Besides, I don't think.org websites should ever be for-profit businesses as that is not how that domain was intended to be used.
I completely agree the site is deceptive, although I'm not sure that is a violation of any law. Same thing with not giving credit for the code on the page. It may not be good practice, but as long as they follow the terms of the GPL (making source available, etc) then they are in the clear (legally at least). And I fully agree with the.org not being for profit (although it's a completely lost cause now). I have to take exception with the part about it not being free because you have to register. To be free (as in beer) means you don't pay anything. Saying it's not free because you have to register is like saying something isn't free because you have to go pick it up. Of course I still can't figure out what it being free or not has to do with anything, but free has nothing to do with registration.
As much as I like the idea that individuals should be able to resell software they bought that they did not use, I don't like the ruling in this particular case. Softman was being bundled Adobe packages and breaking them up and selling them individually for a profit. This is something different than Joe User selling his copy of Windows 98 that he got with his computer that he doesn't use. This is a company basically ripping off Adobe. They are selling the bundle cheaper, because it is a bundle. What will end up happening if this takes off is that bundled software will no longer be cheaper than the individual packages. If you want Photoshop and Pagemaker, you will have to buy them individually, because there is no reason for Adobe to sell the bundle that Softman then buys, breaks up, and resells the individual pieces and takes sales away from Adobe.
For individual users, this would be great and make sense and help them out. This will do nothing but hurt the end users is companies are allowed to do it though.
Imagine if this was a drug, and the company line was, "You can't post critical comments about our drug, even if it almost kills you"?
Or an automobile, and you can't post critical comments about it, even if the airbag doesn't work?
Or a fire-alarm, and you can't post critical comments about it even if it doesn't alarm when there's a fire and causes your hosue to burn down?
This is plainly ludicrous. The public has the right to know if a product works, as well as both its pro's and con's.
Software -- *especially* McAfee's anti-virus software -- should be no different. We have the right to know if it actually protects us from viruses, and how well.
As much as I agree with your opinion, your comparisons are utterly ridiculous. This is not a life-threatening case, like your examples. This is much closer to "You can't post critical comments even if you don't like our candy bar." Comparing this to life and death situation only weakens your argument.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone seems to think the authors are trying to outlaw used books. They are doing no such thing. They don't like the fact that Amazon is selling used books almost immediately when the new ones go on sale (and I can understand their frustration with this). The Guild's response is to encourage it's members not to link to Amazon, but rather one of the other online bookseller that does no do this. It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Why send people to site where they may end up buying a copy of your book used (and you will get no money from it) when you can send them to another online bookseller where this isn't likely to happen? They don't like how Amazon is doing business, so they are trying to send their business elsewhere. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Why on Earth would you like to block a spambot? So it doesn't get any more useful addresses? /give/ it a next page. With a nicely formatted word1word2num1num2@word1word2.com, where words and nums are random.
No way, man.
If you realize you're serving to a bot, go on serving. Each time the bot follows the "next page" link, you
Give it thousands, millions of addresses this way.
This would be good to do with known bad addresses, but random addresses only add more unknowing people to the list. You may add 1000 email addresses to the list and slow them down, but if even 10 of those email addresses are real, you've added to the problem. The bad addresses will be taken out as they are found to be bad, and the good ones will be left in. You've signed JoeRandomUser@RandomDomain.com up for all the spam he can handle, even if he has taken great lengths to keep his email address off the spam lists. In theory this sounds like a great idea, until your the guy getting your email address randomly fed to the bots.
The hard part is proving you requested to be taken off their list. You usually need to at the least send a letter before it is "official" that you requested to be removed. You can request it when they call, and a lot of them will remove you, but if they don't there is no way for you to prove you requested it. It comes down to your word against theirs, and the burden of proof is on you. So yes, by law they have to remove you if you request it, but if they don't it's up to you to prove you requested it.
Punitive damages are given by the court. They are a decision of the court. These people are actually suing for $50 an email, which means they claim that is what cost each email had to them. This is just an absurd number. If they were suing for even $5 an email (which is still outrageously high) I could at least support it (and the court may well decide to give punitive damages). But there is no way on god's green earth that each email cost them $50. This is no different than the businesses that get their webpages defaced and claim it costs them a million dollars to fix the damages. It's just an outrageous claim hoping to make money without any actual work involved.
While I support people going after spammers, I have to question the price of $50 per email. It seems all the time there are people screaming over the price of cds or dvds or how much the RIAA and MPAA say they are losing/sue for. Now that someone is suing spammers for an equally ridiculous amount, where are these people? I think suing for inflated unreasonable damages is wrong, even when your suing spammers.
Many adults like myself take a civil disobedience type approach to music sharing. I buy as many CDs (if not more) than I used to, but I unabashedly use these services to make sure those CDs I buy are going to be worth it. People that fall more or less in this category (I think) are waiting for a good digital music policy from the major labels(although there seems to be no light at the end of this tunnel).
It's hard to say anyone is taking a "civil disobedience" stance on online music sharing. Many people are using it in a positive way , like you are, but that is in no way "civil disobedience". To take a stance like that, people would have to openly share music, and be willing to be arrested and/or sued for it and pay the penalty. Logging onto Morpheus (or Limewire, or Kazaa, or whatever) under an alias, and downloading music is not civil disobedience. Logging onto a public BB and using your own name with your own true contact information and trading music, and then making sure the authorities and the music companies know about it would be civil disobedience. Hiding behind Morpheus and the anonymity it provides is not civil disobedience.
The difference is that all of the Linux/BSD exploits are out in the open, and a large percentage come from people looking at the source code and going "oops!".
Whilst I know the "many-eyes" theory isn't as good as many people think, I'm sure that the average line of code in an open source app gets more eye time that the average line of code in a proprietary, closed source one, so we find a higher percentage of our security problems. Now, just what percentage of security issues do you think that Microsoft et al actually openly admit to? I don't think there have been more than a couple of occasions where microsoft has said, without someone sticking the proverbial gun in their back, hey - security issue, we fess up, come and get the fix. Do you believe they don't find many more? Sure they do, they either just ignore them or quietly fix them and slip it in a servicepack.
Actually, a large portion of security holes in MS software are fixed before there is an exploit. The problem is the few that aren't get lots of press, and people don't install the patches, and MS still gets the blame. The CodeRed worm is a perfect example. There was a patch available months before CodeRed was even heard of, put people didn't install it, and now everyone points to CodeRed as the perfect example of MS vulnerability.
I'm not saying MS is perfect by any stretch, but check out how many security fixes they offer and compare it to the amount of tools for exploiting them. You'll find most holes are fixed before there is an exploit for them available.
I am wondering if the judge in this case was in some manner technically savy, since he noted Kazaa didn't depend on a central server and thus the user network is out of its control, thus Kazaa was just considered a software provider and did not directly break any laws.
I'm wondering how this can be since it has been proven they control who is on the network. They were able to lock Morpheus users out of the Kazaa network, so it MUST depend on a central server, at least for user logins. How exactly can Kazaa kick people off their network, but still claim they have no control over the network?
Draft copies are the biggest reason there will never be a paperless office. If you have a 15 page draft and distribute it to 20 people for comments, trying to organize and incorporate the comments is damn near impossible. Never mind the act of these people commenting is already 3 times harder than it would be if you just gave out hard copy. My boss decided to try "paperless drafts" for documents we were reviewing and it was an abysmal failure. If the IT department thinks it's clunky and convoluted, then everyone else won't think about it at all.
I know I can't be the only one that refuses to play RTS games until they come up with a decent AI for your forces? For me, the real question about the beta is what your forces do when they are finished with their assigned task? Do they stand around waiting for another order, or do they do something intelligent?
;-)
Until RTS games have decent enough AI that when your grunt is done building that fort you assigned him to build he goes and either returns to his previous job or starts doing some other productive job, I won't play them. I don't want to micromanage a bunch of grunts, that's my boss's job
I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...
If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...
Except this slippery slope only works with things that are already illegal. They are banning kiddie porn, an illegal activity. There is no correlation with this being transferred to legal activities being banned. First they would have to make adult content illegal, and then they could ban it. The law can only even potentially be used to block illegal material. So the bigger problem would be these activities becoming illegal, not them becoming banned.
It can be forged, but the origins of the email was never in doubt. Both parties admitted they had sent the email, so the only question was whether you could have an "email contract". It does in some ways make sense, since you can have a "verbal contract", and "email contract" isn't much different.
The fees under protest by both parties are:
The fee is $1.40 per thousand listeners for Internet-only stations, and 70 cents per thousand listeners for over-the-air stations that simultaneously broadcast online.
How would the record companies enforce such a payment structure? It seems to me that would be no method of counting the listeners that couldn't possibly be altered by the webcasters especially with all the different webcasting programs out there. Does anyone have a clue how the Record Companies were planning to accurately count listeners?
FOr non-commercial stations, I don't know how they would accurately count it. For commercial stations, it would be easy, the station would do it for them. The station is going to keep an accurate count of listeners (or even an inflated count) because that is what they use to price and sell advertising time. So if they keep these stats already, that is what the recording industry will use to charge them.
"Point of this ruling is that XS4ALL has the right to block spam"
The point is even better than that. The ISP can tell a company not to send email through it's servers. If that company does, then the company can lose up to 2.5 million whatevertheircurrencyis. XS4ALL doesn't have to change or try to block any spam at all from the company. Overall, this brings down XS4ALL's operating cost, plus reduces the spam their customers get. Good news, I hope it goes forward.
This is the point I'm not sure I agree with. According to the ruling (at least the English translation, which I'm assuming is accurate) "XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation", which means they don't have to relay the spam. I'm not sure where this translates into AbFab can't send mail to the mail servers. IT seems to me it would more logically mean that XS4ALL doesn't have to deliver the mail if it is sent to their servers (they have no legal obligation to convey these messages to their users). It's kinda like if I get mail for someone else at my house. I have no legal obligation to convey that message on to the correct address, I can just throw it out. But I can't charge the person who sent it to my house (even if they did it on purpose). They other question is what happens if a user requests email fro AbFab. Out of all their users, I'm sure their is at least one person who wants whatever crap it is their selling. As this ruling talks about unsolicited email, if a person signs up for it, can they be charged for sending it?
It is nice to see that politicians are looking at possiblities to ban these technologies. I am thinking that there may already exist laws that prohibit this practice, at least in some countries. I know that in Norway government agencies are looking at taking legal action against Sony for illegal marketing as they are selling a product marketed as a CD and priced as a CD while it clearly is not a CD!
While I completely agree that these discs should not be marketted as CDs (and I believe they aren;t anymore, they have stickers saying they won't play on PCs), banning the technology is the farthest thing from the answer I have ever heard. That is no more a solution than banning P2P sharing is for stopping piracy. They should be able to put whatever they want on the discs, as long as they don't try to pass them off as regular CDs. Banning the technology they use, or their ability to use it, will just set a dangerous precedent. If they can't use technology is ways they want to, what is to say you can use technology in the ways you want to? Technology isn't the problem.
If you are including other people's GPL'd source code in a program which you distribute, then you must abide by the terms of that license. Section 3 of the GPL is precise enough to disallow scrambling the source code:
You must provide the source code of the whole GPL program to your customers, as defined in clauses 3a, 3b and 3c.
The provided source must correspond exactly with the binary that you give your customers. So it must include your modifications, for exactly that version.
The provided source must be in the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". That means the source code must be what you actually load into your editor to develop the software. In other words, you must distribute the useful source code.
It seems like section 2 and 3 can easily come into conflict. In what they are doing, the obfuscated code is the binary given to customers. But they prefer to work (I assume) on the non-obfuscated code. I wonder which section would take precedence? It seems that depending on which section they believe (or is finally determined by lawyers) to take precedence, they can either release the obfuscated code, and keep with section 2, or release the original and keep with section 3, but there is no way to keep with both sections in this case.
I know it isn't popular but games and movies do influence people (including youth). Maybe most of us can tell the difference between a minigun and a minimart. Don't underestimate the power of suggestion on an individual who is under a pressure situation or lives in an environment without consequences
You're absolutely right. If someone is unbalanced, they can be influenced, by damn near anything. That includes TV, video games, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, friends, music, and just about anything else. The point is that those things aren't responsible for your actions, you are. If you are unbalanced, you are unbalanced. We can't ban anything that could ever have a bad influence on someone who is unbalanced.
Of course the site is /.ed, so I can't get on and read their terms of service myself, but do they say they keep a copy of the paper, or that they own the paper (or something along those lines)? If all they say is that they keep a copy of the paper, that in no way changes the copyright or ownership of the paper. It doesn't give them the right to reproduce or distribute it in any way. Basically, they are saying they are keeping a copy of the paper to add to their database, in case someone copies this paper in the future. If they claim ownership or copyright of the paper, then there is a problem.
It similar to you giving someone a copy of a picture you took. They now own that copy, and can keep it, but it in no way gives them the right to reproduce it or do anything else with it, as they don't hold the copyright on it.
Does it even matter at all if he got the letter, if he lied about it or even if he told the truth about this company? It's very VERY clear he's telling his opinion and the moment people get fined for telling their opinion is the moment the US can be considerd on par with China and many other countries they can't stand. Emigrate while you can!
Actually, it is very important if he got the letter. We don't know all the facts in the case. Everyone is going by the snippets of posts in the article, which I'm sure are far from the entire posts. The rest of the post may have been straight libel. The snippets we got are fairly clear in that he shouldn't have been liable for libel, but we can't say the same thing about everything else he said. Plus, you can say he shouldn't have been sued, because that violates his rights, but it also violates rights if you aren't able to sue someone when you think they did something wrong. The key is the person accused should always have the chance to defend themselves, which he may not have been given in this case.
I think it's pretty obvious someone is lying, but I wonder who it is. They claim he got a letter by registered mail, which means he had to sign for it. He claims he never got it. Seems like a simple thing to go back and check the receipt of the letter (if there was one) and see if he signed for it. I have a feeling he really did get the letter, since even the dumbest lawyer would be smart enough not to lie about something that easily checked in court, especially when you know the guy will challenge it when he gets the judgment (of course I could be wrong and the lawyer really is that dumb). I think finding out about the registered letter will clear up pretty much the whole case.
Just look at the most popular web sites on the web for your lead. By doing this, you will soon realize, a good site has: a plethora of pop-up/pop-unders, at least 2 new windows on closing the current one, spam advertising to ever known email address in existence, and lots and lots of boobs. It's a simple formula, boobs = hits, ask any teenage boy.
Here is the question that the court will answer.
If I break the GPL, I can be sued for damages, etc., and must stop distribution. My license is revoked, etc., etc. Can I then go out, download a fresh copy and distribute under the terms of the GPL? Stallman says no, I'm not certain. That's where this case is questionable.
It seems that you couldn't download the same piece of software (as that is the same license, just a different copy of it). I would assume you lose rights to use the GPL for that product. But the real question is what happens when they release an upgrade? Can you once again use the GPL, as this is a different product (well, a different version) and a new license (as a license only applies to the actual product and version it is issued with)? Can they find an old copy of MySQL and just use that, since it's a different license?
It doesn't seem they could ban you from ever using the GPL again, or even using it on different products from the same company. So I doubt they could stop you from using it on different versions of the product either.
NuSphere may not be 'obscure', but the mysql.org website seems a little deceptive. If I didn't investigate it more, I wouldn't have known the difference between mysql.org or mysql.com just by looking at the front page of the website.
.org websites should ever be for-profit businesses as that is not how that domain was intended to be used.
.org not being for profit (although it's a completely lost cause now). I have to take exception with the part about it not being free because you have to register. To be free (as in beer) means you don't pay anything. Saying it's not free because you have to register is like saying something isn't free because you have to go pick it up. Of course I still can't figure out what it being free or not has to do with anything, but free has nothing to do with registration.
MySQL.org presents their website in a manner that does not give credit where credit is due.
For one, if you go to mysql.org you will find that it doesn't say whether it developed the software, it just says it's got mysql software available for 'free' download. But the mysql.com guy is correct, in that you cannot download any software without registering with mysql.org first. That indicates to me that it's not 'free' because now mysql.org has customer data to use to market their product to. Plus, it doesn't say: "Hey, we didn't write the software, mysql.com is where you can find that info. We just improved upon it." Besides, I don't think
I completely agree the site is deceptive, although I'm not sure that is a violation of any law. Same thing with not giving credit for the code on the page. It may not be good practice, but as long as they follow the terms of the GPL (making source available, etc) then they are in the clear (legally at least). And I fully agree with the
As much as I like the idea that individuals should be able to resell software they bought that they did not use, I don't like the ruling in this particular case. Softman was being bundled Adobe packages and breaking them up and selling them individually for a profit. This is something different than Joe User selling his copy of Windows 98 that he got with his computer that he doesn't use. This is a company basically ripping off Adobe. They are selling the bundle cheaper, because it is a bundle. What will end up happening if this takes off is that bundled software will no longer be cheaper than the individual packages. If you want Photoshop and Pagemaker, you will have to buy them individually, because there is no reason for Adobe to sell the bundle that Softman then buys, breaks up, and resells the individual pieces and takes sales away from Adobe.
For individual users, this would be great and make sense and help them out. This will do nothing but hurt the end users is companies are allowed to do it though.
Imagine if this was a drug, and the company line was, "You can't post critical comments about our drug, even if it almost kills you"?
Or an automobile, and you can't post critical comments about it, even if the airbag doesn't work?
Or a fire-alarm, and you can't post critical comments about it even if it doesn't alarm when there's a fire and causes your hosue to burn down?
This is plainly ludicrous. The public has the right to know if a product works, as well as both its pro's and con's.
Software -- *especially* McAfee's anti-virus software -- should be no different. We have the right to know if it actually protects us from viruses, and how well.
As much as I agree with your opinion, your comparisons are utterly ridiculous. This is not a life-threatening case, like your examples. This is much closer to "You can't post critical comments even if you don't like our candy bar." Comparing this to life and death situation only weakens your argument.