Could it not be made a (contractual) requirement that in order for a patented 'process' to be included in a standard that a royalty-free non-revokable licence be issued (at the time of inclusion in the standard) covering any implentation of the standard?
Will the effect be that great? The article states royalty free, not patent free. So as long as the patent is royalty free then there should be no problem.
Are limited (or no) vision users not better catered for by text mode and a braille terminal? At least one other distribution (SuSE) checks for braille terminals during installation.
So the matter should be brought to court, as least as far as showing that "John Doe" has a case to answer. The court should then order the ISP to reveal the identity of the John Doe(s) concerned so that the matter can be brought to trial.
So maybe instead of / as well as selling albums on CD, they could be also be released on DVD with music videos, live performances etc as well as the higher quality sound track. I already have a number of live performances on DVD. This would be one more way of the recording industry to make more money out of the consumer.
How could that happen? Surely the presence of the standard should count as prior art. A patent does not serve its stated purpose unless it is the first publication of the technique.
A very simple solution to this would be to declare void any pending patent application where another implementation is brought to market (paid or free) before the patent is granted/published. The purpose of a patent is to encourage publication to enhance the pool of knowledge, and if another implementation is created prior to the patent being published (and therefore the creator of the 2nd implementation could not have discovered the invention/technique from the patent) the granting of a patent to increase the knowledge pool is superfluous.
So maybe standards and patents need to be (legally) declared to be mutually exclusive, with the standard overriding the patent.
The purpose of a patent is to provide an incentive for the inventor to publish his/her invention rather than keep it as a trade secret. Incorporating into a standard also requires publication (standards and trade secrets are definitely mutually exclusive), so does not require the 'incentive' of a patent to make it public.
Maybe the problem is not with explicit linking (via "a href" tags but with presenting content from another site and making it seem to be part of the page being viewed (eg displaying images from another site or putting content in a frame.) Probably the lawyers do not appreciate or know the difference.
For deployment in the corporate environment, will the IT department not choose the packages to be installed? The user will be presented with the corporate standard desktop with a word processor, spreadsheet, email program etc. The difference with Linux is that the IT department has a greater choice of which packages to install. Also an open source Linux package is much easier for them to customise to the corporate requirements than a proprietary Windows one would be.
The problem with keeping your money in your pocket is that the "industry" (record or movie) will not believe it. Instead they will cite the decrease in revenue as evidence of increase in piracy.
Software used to come with warranties. When I first started work, the mainframe software had bugs but the supplier was contracted to fix (or provide work arounds) for any problems we encountered. Granted, we had to pay for this and the time to fix (and thus the priority given by the supplier) depended on the severity of impact to our business.
Most suppliers now make you wait, and pay, for the next version upgrade in order to get bugs fixed. So what would be wrong, both for closed and open source, software suppliers to provide a waranty to fix (genuine) bugs in a timely manner. To a great extent the open source community already does this. It often does not take long between a (serious) bug or security problem being reported and a fix being published.
I own quite a few DVDs, but nowhere have I seen a condition refering to the playback equipment. There are conditions on home/private use only and restrictions on sale/export but nothing about only using an 'approved' player.
What if it is you that are visiting? When you are on holiday, you can still buy books or CDs and continue to enjoy them when you return home. So why should you be prevented from (or rather why should the copyright owners have the power to dictate that 'thou shall not') playing the DVD when you return home?
Please pardon my ignorance, but what has DeCSS got to do with region coding? CSS protects DVDs irrespective of the region coding. I am in region 2, and still need DeCSS (or equivalent) to play region 2 coded DVDs on Linux.
While it may not be practical to extradite the executives, would it not be possible for a court to find the Company guilty and freeze or sequester the assets of the Australian (or whichever country) office/subsidiary?
Win 1-3 were almost certainly NOT OSs. They were just applications running on top of MS/PC/DR-DOS. Windows NT, 2K & XP are almost certainly Operating Systems. Windows 9X is not so clear cut.
Why? Microsoft own and write (or have bought the companies which wrote) the applications that are shipped with Windows, and would claim that they are all part of Windows. A linux distribution contains both Linux and multiple applications - often several applications which serve the same function. So a typical Linux distribution encourages competition whereas Windows stifles it.
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If the initial licence (to all implementors of the standard) is non-revokable, I do not see why not.
Could it not be made a (contractual) requirement that in order for a patented 'process' to be included in a standard that a royalty-free non-revokable licence be issued (at the time of inclusion in the standard) covering any implentation of the standard?
Will the effect be that great? The article states royalty free, not patent free. So as long as the patent is royalty free then there should be no problem.
/proc/cpuinfo shows the p4 in my system supports hyperthreading, but the BIOS does not enable it - so I cannot use it.
Why does Linux (2.4) need BIOS support for hyperthreading?
If you use ISDN rather than POTS then your telephone is digital. So most (company) PBXs would also fall under the law.
Are limited (or no) vision users not better catered for by text mode and a braille terminal? At least one other distribution (SuSE) checks for braille terminals during installation.
So the matter should be brought to court, as least as far as showing that "John Doe" has a case to answer. The court should then order the ISP to reveal the identity of the John Doe(s) concerned so that the matter can be brought to trial.
So maybe instead of / as well as selling albums on CD, they could be also be released on DVD with music videos, live performances etc as well as the higher quality sound track. I already have a number of live performances on DVD. This would be one more way of the recording industry to make more money out of the consumer.
How could that happen? Surely the presence of the standard should count as prior art. A patent does not serve its stated purpose unless it is the first publication of the technique.
A very simple solution to this would be to declare void any pending patent application where another implementation is brought to market (paid or free) before the patent is granted/published. The purpose of a patent is to encourage publication to enhance the pool of knowledge, and if another implementation is created prior to the patent being published (and therefore the creator of the 2nd implementation could not have discovered the invention/technique from the patent) the granting of a patent to increase the knowledge pool is superfluous.
So maybe standards and patents need to be (legally) declared to be mutually exclusive, with the standard overriding the patent.
The purpose of a patent is to provide an incentive for the inventor to publish his/her invention rather than keep it as a trade secret. Incorporating into a standard also requires publication (standards and trade secrets are definitely mutually exclusive), so does not require the 'incentive' of a patent to make it public.
Maybe the problem is not with explicit linking (via "a href" tags but with presenting content from another site and making it seem to be part of the page being viewed (eg displaying images from another site or putting content in a frame.) Probably the lawyers do not appreciate or know the difference.
For deployment in the corporate environment, will the IT department not choose the packages to be installed? The user will be presented with the corporate standard desktop with a word processor, spreadsheet, email program etc. The difference with Linux is that the IT department has a greater choice of which packages to install. Also an open source Linux package is much easier for them to customise to the corporate requirements than a proprietary Windows one would be.
Double digit growth - between 10 and 99 units were sold.
The problem with keeping your money in your pocket is that the "industry" (record or movie) will not believe it. Instead they will cite the decrease in revenue as evidence of increase in piracy.
It would nice if there was a user preference to open in a new tab rather than a new window even in these situations.
Is there not a difference between a warranty and consequental damages? Warranties normally just refund the money paid, repair or replace the goods.
Software used to come with warranties. When I first started work, the mainframe software had bugs but the supplier was contracted to fix (or provide work arounds) for any problems we encountered. Granted, we had to pay for this and the time to fix (and thus the priority given by the supplier) depended on the severity of impact to our business.
Most suppliers now make you wait, and pay, for the next version upgrade in order to get bugs fixed. So what would be wrong, both for closed and open source, software suppliers to provide a waranty to fix (genuine) bugs in a timely manner. To a great extent the open source community already does this. It often does not take long between a (serious) bug or security problem being reported and a fix being published.
I own quite a few DVDs, but nowhere have I seen a condition refering to the playback equipment. There are conditions on home/private use only and restrictions on sale/export but nothing about only using an 'approved' player.
What if it is you that are visiting? When you are on holiday, you can still buy books or CDs and continue to enjoy them when you return home. So why should you be prevented from (or rather why should the copyright owners have the power to dictate that 'thou shall not') playing the DVD when you return home?
Please pardon my ignorance, but what has DeCSS got to do with region coding? CSS protects DVDs irrespective of the region coding. I am in region 2, and still need DeCSS (or equivalent) to play region 2 coded DVDs on Linux.
How do they count lost profits? Surely it should be increased profits as people using DeCSS will buy DVDs which they would otherwise not have done.
While it may not be practical to extradite the executives, would it not be possible for a court to find the Company guilty and freeze or sequester the assets of the Australian (or whichever country) office/subsidiary?
Win 1-3 were almost certainly NOT OSs. They were just applications running on top of MS/PC/DR-DOS. Windows NT, 2K & XP are almost certainly Operating Systems. Windows 9X is not so clear cut.
Why? Microsoft own and write (or have bought the companies which wrote) the applications that are shipped with Windows, and would claim that they are all part of Windows. A linux distribution contains both Linux and multiple applications - often several applications which serve the same function. So a typical Linux distribution encourages competition whereas Windows stifles it.