Applicants for a patent are always required to disclose any prior art of which they are aware. This new accelerated process simply doesn't change that.
There are fairly heavy penalties for failing to disclose prior art, btw. If it can be shown in court that the patentee failed to disclose prior art in an effort to misinform or mislead the examiner then the patent becomes completely unenforceable. Misleading the USPTO includes such acts as burying a relevant piece of information inside stacks of irrelevant info and other questionable tactics.
Parties applying for a patent, because there is no opposing party, are held to extremely high standards of candor (at least as far as standards of candor for lawyers go).
I would suggest you read the opinion again. Posner is pretty clear that placing the device on the car was neither a search nor a seizer at all. Therefore, not even a reasonable suspicion is required. That is why this opinion opens the door to widespread surveillance. Posner realizes this and says that mass surveillance is somehow different. But how many GPS devices planted amounts to "mass" surveillance?
Suppose that a police department has 50 of these devices and plants them on 50 cars at a time, always careful to recover the tracker. Sometimes this police department has probable cause, sometimes a reasonable suspicion, but sometimes just hunches and maybe sometimes in sketchy abusive ways. How could such a practice ever be challenged by this precedent? It is very easy to disguise that kind of "mass" surveillance as a bunch of individual cases of surveillance.
Judge Posner, contrary to Slashdot opinion, is actually a really smart and influential circuit judge. If the SCOTUS eventually considers this question, and it probably will given that the use of GPS devices in this manner has split the circuits, it'll probably adopt his views.
Reverse Engineering. - (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of
subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right
to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological
measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of
that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing
those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve
interoperability of an independently created computer program with
other programs, and that have not previously been readily available
to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such
acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement
under this title.
So it looks like if Alex DOES get sued he has a pretty plausible defense. I.e, he's getting code to run in kernel-mode so that he can get FOSS projects to work properly w/o having signed drivers. Granted if he gets sued he'll have to tell it to the judge whilst a well trained lawyer is saying exactly the opposite.
I'm not sure that the consequences of not having non-lethal weapons are worse than the consequences of having them. The reason being that more flexibility governments have in the use of force the more incentives they have to use force. In other words, when you take away all the costs associated with beating people up to get your way you end up beating up a lot more people a lot more often.
In the short term bullying people around to advance an agenda might seem useful, but eventually those people get pissed off and no amount of suppressive violence will keep their rage in check. Also remember this technology is going to start being deployed in 2010. Do we still want to be in Iraq in 2010?
On the whole I think it's better for violence to have real consequences so that it is used when there is no other option. If at all feasible it is always better to use diplomacy and weapons like this microwave gun reduce incentives to diplomacy.
This story isn't flamebait. It's interesting. The teacher recorded arguably violated a fundamental first amendment protection -- freedom from state established religion. The fact that it'll make some people mad doesn't make the story less relevant or deserving of publication. That anger needs to be heard and understood in order to evaluate the news.
Also, the fact that some religious folk who think that the state SHOULD be able to establish religion will get angry is okay too. Once again, their emotions are apropos.
Sometimes the most relevant news is news that provokes an emotional response.
It seems to me that phrasing the question such that we are referring to "highbrow" games is an intentional mask to the real question: "Are there any games that are also works of art?" By talking about "highbrow" games instead of "artistic" games we can avoid the bad connotations that "art" has swirling around it. But it is also a tad dishonest.
The ambiguity of whether something is art or not plagues every genre. The author here is excluding every game that might be art (but also might not be) with the intention of finding one that most definitely *is* and which he is certain will generate a consensus on that point. After finding that one work, he probably would like to look at it and see what makes it art to develop some test that he can apply to other more questionable games and place them in one category or another.
The flaw in this approach is obvious: art can't be tested for. It is supposed to be surprising. An upwelling of culture, and an expansion of the identifiable. For what it is worth I don't think we've seen any videogames that meet this yet. They've only rehashed issues and forms that have been dealt with in other media or were simply vehicles for pretty pictures (I love Myst, but that's clearly all it is).
Videogames will be art once an artist figures out what videogames can do that no other medium can to further the artistic point. What if Shadow of the Collosus had been a movie instead? A great movie with beautiful cinematography. The plot was mysterious, and interspersed in the sparse dialogue were close-ups of the Hero's face, twisted with uncertainty about the rightfulness of what he was doing. Would that have been better or as good as the game?
Interactivity is clearly the focus for any attempt to make videogames art. But interactivity tends to be repetitive and, in the case of ICO, "crawling, jumping, and whacking things with a stick." If a way can be found to focus artistic intention into interactivity, then maybe we'll have a "highbrow" videogame.
And what is the point of suing one's customers anyway? The simple answer is to deter piracy -- not to collect damages. Is that correct?
If it is, do infringment suits deter piracy?
Also, what is the theory behind $150,000 in damages? That much money seems harsh from the deterrence standpoint, and might make more sense in the context of a commercial outfit reproducing the same work over and over to sell without right.
Slashdot Mirror
Applicants for a patent are always required to disclose any prior art of which they are aware. This new accelerated process simply doesn't change that.
There are fairly heavy penalties for failing to disclose prior art, btw. If it can be shown in court that the patentee failed to disclose prior art in an effort to misinform or mislead the examiner then the patent becomes completely unenforceable. Misleading the USPTO includes such acts as burying a relevant piece of information inside stacks of irrelevant info and other questionable tactics.
Parties applying for a patent, because there is no opposing party, are held to extremely high standards of candor (at least as far as standards of candor for lawyers go).
I would suggest you read the opinion again. Posner is pretty clear that placing the device on the car was neither a search nor a seizer at all. Therefore, not even a reasonable suspicion is required. That is why this opinion opens the door to widespread surveillance. Posner realizes this and says that mass surveillance is somehow different. But how many GPS devices planted amounts to "mass" surveillance?
Suppose that a police department has 50 of these devices and plants them on 50 cars at a time, always careful to recover the tracker. Sometimes this police department has probable cause, sometimes a reasonable suspicion, but sometimes just hunches and maybe sometimes in sketchy abusive ways. How could such a practice ever be challenged by this precedent? It is very easy to disguise that kind of "mass" surveillance as a bunch of individual cases of surveillance.
Judge Posner, contrary to Slashdot opinion, is actually a really smart and influential circuit judge. If the SCOTUS eventually considers this question, and it probably will given that the use of GPS devices in this manner has split the circuits, it'll probably adopt his views.
17 USC 1201(f) (DMCA)
So it looks like if Alex DOES get sued he has a pretty plausible defense. I.e, he's getting code to run in kernel-mode so that he can get FOSS projects to work properly w/o having signed drivers. Granted if he gets sued he'll have to tell it to the judge whilst a well trained lawyer is saying exactly the opposite.
I'm not sure that the consequences of not having non-lethal weapons are worse than the consequences of having them. The reason being that more flexibility governments have in the use of force the more incentives they have to use force. In other words, when you take away all the costs associated with beating people up to get your way you end up beating up a lot more people a lot more often.
In the short term bullying people around to advance an agenda might seem useful, but eventually those people get pissed off and no amount of suppressive violence will keep their rage in check. Also remember this technology is going to start being deployed in 2010. Do we still want to be in Iraq in 2010?
On the whole I think it's better for violence to have real consequences so that it is used when there is no other option. If at all feasible it is always better to use diplomacy and weapons like this microwave gun reduce incentives to diplomacy.
This story isn't flamebait. It's interesting. The teacher recorded arguably violated a fundamental first amendment protection -- freedom from state established religion. The fact that it'll make some people mad doesn't make the story less relevant or deserving of publication. That anger needs to be heard and understood in order to evaluate the news.
Also, the fact that some religious folk who think that the state SHOULD be able to establish religion will get angry is okay too. Once again, their emotions are apropos.
Sometimes the most relevant news is news that provokes an emotional response.
It seems to me that phrasing the question such that we are referring to "highbrow" games is an intentional mask to the real question: "Are there any games that are also works of art?" By talking about "highbrow" games instead of "artistic" games we can avoid the bad connotations that "art" has swirling around it. But it is also a tad dishonest.
The ambiguity of whether something is art or not plagues every genre. The author here is excluding every game that might be art (but also might not be) with the intention of finding one that most definitely *is* and which he is certain will generate a consensus on that point. After finding that one work, he probably would like to look at it and see what makes it art to develop some test that he can apply to other more questionable games and place them in one category or another.
The flaw in this approach is obvious: art can't be tested for. It is supposed to be surprising. An upwelling of culture, and an expansion of the identifiable. For what it is worth I don't think we've seen any videogames that meet this yet. They've only rehashed issues and forms that have been dealt with in other media or were simply vehicles for pretty pictures (I love Myst, but that's clearly all it is).
Videogames will be art once an artist figures out what videogames can do that no other medium can to further the artistic point. What if Shadow of the Collosus had been a movie instead? A great movie with beautiful cinematography. The plot was mysterious, and interspersed in the sparse dialogue were close-ups of the Hero's face, twisted with uncertainty about the rightfulness of what he was doing. Would that have been better or as good as the game?
Interactivity is clearly the focus for any attempt to make videogames art. But interactivity tends to be repetitive and, in the case of ICO, "crawling, jumping, and whacking things with a stick." If a way can be found to focus artistic intention into interactivity, then maybe we'll have a "highbrow" videogame.
And what is the point of suing one's customers anyway? The simple answer is to deter piracy -- not to collect damages. Is that correct?
If it is, do infringment suits deter piracy?
Also, what is the theory behind $150,000 in damages? That much money seems harsh from the deterrence standpoint, and might make more sense in the context of a commercial outfit reproducing the same work over and over to sell without right.