But again, just like images, there should be "standard" content formats to fall back on for maximal compatibility.
I don't know where this myth arose that previous versions of HTML specified "standard" image formats, but it's just not true. Read the specifications yourself.
Not specifying any particular video codec for <video> is exactly the same as how images were handled. Including a recommendation for Theora is a change from how images were handled.
No, I want formats to be loosely-coupled. I'm in favour of standard formats. I'm not in favour of one format being coupled to another for no technical reason.
you complain about browsers that don't support your formats.
I wasn't complaining that Firefox doesn't support JPEG 2000. Go back and read the thread again. Ignorant Aardvark was describing a (to him) hypothetical scenario where the HTML specification didn't require particular image formats, and said that the consequence was a nightmare of image formats that weren't reliably supported by open-source browsers. I was pointing out that this is, in fact, the world we live in today, and pointed out JPEG 2000 support in Firefox as evidence of that.
Wouldn't the web be a better place if there were a few good, open standards of media on which the web platform could standardize?
Sure it would. But it's not the HTML specification's job to provide leverage for a particular video or audio codec. The HTML specification should standardise HTML and not blunder into orthogonal issues like video/audio codecs.
MPEG is the name of a working group. Some of the formats they have standardised contain patented technology. It's not accurate to say "MPEG contains patents".
so has the same issue as including any other patented technology
Certain companies (Nokia and Apple among them) have reported
that they still fear that undisclosed patents may exist that cover the
relevant codecs, as they might exist for other formats like MPEG4/H.264.
The difference is that while Apple (for example) have already assumed the
risk of submarine patents with H.264, they currently have taken no risks
with respect to the aforementioned codecs, and they do not wish to take on
that risk. Given the extremely large sums of money that are awarded for
patent violations (cf. Microsoft's recent settlements), it is
understandable that companies with the high profile of Apple and Nokia
would not wish to take on such risks.
While many codecs are patent-encumbered, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is equally risky to implement them for any particular organisation.
HTML doesn't want to use patented tech
HTML hates anthropomorphism.
Nobody is saying that the HTML 5 specification should recommend a patented codec. They are saying that it shouldn't recommend any particular codec.
gif was free until UNISYS bought Compuserv and started enforcing Lev-Zempel and jpeg was free until a patent troll bought a related patent.
No, they were always patent-encumbered, it's just that people didn't know about it until UNISYS started cracking down on infringers.
I can see Apple wanting to fight ogg-vorbis, as they have a heavy investment in AAC and Quicktime and I'm sure they would rather see that tech in.
I'm sure they would, but this isn't about picking Quicktime over Ogg. You can't win this argument by saying how bad Quicktime, MPEG or anything else might be, because the alternative people are proposing is no recommendation, not a recommendation for competing formats.
Because people tend to get carried away occasionally? I don't know, you can step through the revisions to find where it was first introduced if you like. Just because something has been included in a draft, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea or within the remit of the working group. Hell, people getting carried away and bolting on unnecessary things is so common in the software industry, there's even names for it like "creeping featuritis".
You correctly note that current the HTML 4.01 recommendation doesn't require JPEG, PNG, etc., but you fail to note that it does specifically mention three image formats, and they are "GIF, JPEG, and PNG".
Yes, it mentions them, it doesn't recommend them. Look at what it says:
src = uri [CT] This attribute specifies the location of the image resource. Examples of widely recognized image formats include GIF, JPEG, and PNG.
It mentions them as examples to illustrate how the <img> element type is used, not in order to promote them and certainly not to "specify them as baseline standards" as Ignorant Aardvark was claiming.
And how in hell did I "fail to note" that it mentions them? I explicitly said it mentions them.
Of course, if you did mention that, it would be a lot harder to use the current recommendations treatment of images to argue that removing the mention of Ogg formats from the HTML5 draft is consistent with the way prior HTML standards have treated images.
That's simply not true. There is a world of difference between mentioning popular formats as examples and saying that vendors should implement them.
Not really, because all major browsers support JPEG and PNG, despite the fact that the HTML specifications haven't recommended them.
HTML is a standard; it only works when it specifies exactly which formats are to be used
It does no such thing. For instance, it doesn't require browsers to implement JavaScript, it provides scripting language-independent hooks that can be used to support JavaScript or any other scripting language. It doesn't require browsers to implement CSS, it provides stylesheet language-independent hooks that can be used to support CSS or any other stylesheet language. It doesn't require browsers to implement JPEG or PNG, it provides image format-independent hooks that can be used to support JPEG, PNG or any other image format. And the HTML 5 specification is taking the exact same approach by not requiring Theora or Vorbis, but providing codec-independent hooks that can be used to support Theora, Vorbis or any other codec.
The choice of video and audio codecs is outside the scope of the HTML 5 specification. Attempting to more tightly couple independent formats is myopic.
What about standards for video and audio rendering? Why don't these exist?
They do. However having standard codecs and attempting to tie together formats that are orthogonal in nature are two separate matters. The <video> element type works regardless of the video codec in use, so the HTML specification attaching itself to one particular codec is unnecessary.
For the same reason standard image formats are supported, so that you can show them inline and you know everyone can see them if they use a modern browser.
And yet this is possible without any version of HTML ever recommending a particular format for the <img> element type.
It would have been really nice to have a common denominator where if you want to put up a video you can just assume a single format will actually work on all modern browsers of all platforms (one day).
Yes, that would be nice. However the specification didn't aid that goal before this change either. It only recommended Theora. Vendors were still free to ignore the recommendation and not bother implementing it, and that's exactly what multiple vendors were planning on doing. So what has been lost by removing the recommendation?
So what's the point in having it in there then? The vendors who don't want to implement it won't, and the people wanting an open baseline won't get one. The recommendation did nothing for openness or interoperability, it just gave people an official excuse to bash vendors that won't implement it.
All other things being equal, a smaller specification that everybody can agree on is better than one with unnecessary, contentious recommendations. There was never any need for this recommendation, it just bloated the already massive specification.
The reason why ISPs can get away with copying resources into their caches is because they are "incidental copies", where permission for copying is implied for the purpose of normal operation. Web developers can apply Cache-Control: no-transform to indicate that changes of this nature should not take place. It seems to me that any ISP that alters such pages would be creating unauthorised derivative works and permission would not be implied to copy, thus making them guilty of copyright infringement.
Discussion forums are full of very helpful, very talented developers.
Perhaps some are, but every time I've come across a link to somebody posting code in a forum, it's always been full of huge glaring mistakes, security holes, etc. In fact, I can't think of any place I've seen worse code than in forums.
I clicked on his link to the paper, and was disappionted to find a PDF. Google failed me when I made a cursory effort to find an HTML version.
Huh? Paste the link to the PDF into Google. It provides a "view as HTML" link.
The paper he links is itself incorrect in its very first page when it speaks of "the rights of owners and users of creative works."
"Owners" is the correct term, check the law yourself. At worst, you could say that the wording was ambiguous by not explicitly saying "copyright owners".
The US Constitution makes it quite clear that the "owners" of creative works are we, the people.
No it doesn't. It says:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
paying extra to CALL a cell phone just sucks. How do you know if you are calling a cell phone?
In the UK, all mobile phone numbers start with 7. I believe this is common in other countries as well, so charging more to call a mobile phone is perfectly reasonable in these places.
It certainly isn't the case that a program's output is always bound by the same licence as the program, it's just that it makes sense for web services to be licensed this way
You're missing the point. GCC's output isn't bound by the same license as the program, not because it doesn't make sense for the license to do that, but because the license can't do that, because the output of a tool isn't a derivative work (except in corner-cases like Bison). The FSF say this themselves in the GPL FAQ:
Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
In general this is legally impossible; copyright law does not give you any say in the use of the output people make from their data using your program.
It's when you start installing extensions that it goes downhill, and as a web designer I need quite a few extensions.
You should be using a separate profile for web designing and surfing. Otherwise your surfing extensions (e.g. Adblock, NoScript, minimum font size, etc) could interfere with your designing, and you've already acknowledged that your designing extensions are interfering with your surfing.
The trouble with this is that the people purportedly bound by the license are users, not distributors. The GPL works because the people in question are distributing copies and thus need a license. People installing software on a server are not.
In the USA, you have the legal right to make copies of software for the purpose of using it. Copying it to your server is not copyright infringement. Running it is not copyright infringement. You don't need a license. So what compels AGPL users to accept this license and be bound by its terms? Where is the consideration?
Eventually someone will "win", but this will be a phyrric victory as the amount of money they will have to pay for a licence will be so high that they'll either go bankrupt, have to join up with some other bidders (who pulled out earlier) or not have enough monkey left to actually build the systems they wanted to implement.
Yeah, I hate it when I go to build something and realise that I've run out of monkey.
To the point being made by other posters however plagiarism is a more serious matter then copyright infringement IMHO.
If you want to address that point, then with all due respect, please reply to the people saying it. I haven't even remotely touched on the issue of the relative seriousness of these actions. An argument against misleading rhetoric is an entirely different thing to judging the ethical implications of these actions, and I'm thoroughly sick of people attempting to tie the two together. By all means, argue your point about relative seriousness all you want, but it bears no relation to what I wrote so please don't give the impression that it does by attaching your arguments to my comment. I'm sorry for being blunt, but this "bundling" of arguments is oft-used by trolls and I've learned that zero tolerance is the only option. If you want to argue ethics, this is the wrong thread to do it in.
I made no comment regarding the relative seriousness of the two actions and my argument for clarity of language does not imply anything in this respect.
That's as disingenuous as when record companies claim that you "steal" potential profits. This is not theft. Nothing is being taken away from the original author's possession. There is a perfectly accurate word for what has happened here, it is "plagiarism". Why play word games instead of using the proper word for things?
But if you chose to place your work under, say, the Creative Commons, you've just told the world at large, "here, take it and use it as you wish, I don't want anything in return, I don't forbid anything, have fun with it."
In addition to what Phil has pointed out in another reply, it's worth pointing out that there are many different Creative Commons licenses, and they vary in what they permit. Some of them do not permit commercial use, some of them require attribution, some of them are more permissive.
Please, if you are going to make claims about what something does and doesn't permit, at the very least you should be vaguely familiar with it yourself. Creative Commons is a brand name for a bunch of different licenses, not a license itself.
The holiday doesn't really have any symbols other than American flags and stuff, and that's not too great for public relations as I'm showcasing a particular country's role in a major war.
Isn't the poppy pretty damn iconic as far as Rememberence Day is concerned?
Also, the green little helmet doesn't have to identify any single nation, even though it's an American holiday.
It's an international holiday. Calling it an American holiday borders on the offensive to many people. At the very least you entrench the stereotype of USA as self-centred and ignorant or the rest of the world.
Cooking (make me a BLT, lay the table, pack the kids' lunches for school the next day).
Cleaning (clean the shower, do the vacuuming, do the dusting).
Driving (I want to catch up on my email during the drive to work).
Laundry (take the clothes out of the laundry basket, wash them, dry them, iron them, put them in the wardrobe).
Moving (I'm moving house soon, and I'd rather not spend half a day loading all of my possessions onto a truck and then the rest of the day unloading them).
Grepping (I lost my keys, help me look for them. I can't remember what page that funny bit of the 400-page book I was reading was on, find it for me).
Mailing (throw away all my junk mail, scan in my statements, archive and shred them).
Shopping (pick up some milk, find out which supermarket is cheapest for what I'm buying).
Decorating (I want this room in a different shade of blue).
Gardening (water the plants, do the weeding, mow the lawn).
Construction (I can't figure out how to build this desk I bought from Ikea).
Answering the door (I'm expecting a delivery, but I'll be at work all day, there are Jehovah's Witnesses that need some company).
You're telling me that all of this is technologically possible and that it's not in widespread use because it's simply more convenient to simply do it ourselves?
Take a look at the context here. This is a record industry executive and no doubt that statement was made in the middle of a discussion of copyright infringement. He's not saying that all encryption is illegal, he's talking about a specific offence, and how encryption is used in relation to that.
I'm one of the first to complain about record companies' misuse of language, but you are completely overreacting here.
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I don't know where this myth arose that previous versions of HTML specified "standard" image formats, but it's just not true. Read the specifications yourself.
Not specifying any particular video codec for <video> is exactly the same as how images were handled. Including a recommendation for Theora is a change from how images were handled.
No, I want formats to be loosely-coupled. I'm in favour of standard formats. I'm not in favour of one format being coupled to another for no technical reason.
I wasn't complaining that Firefox doesn't support JPEG 2000. Go back and read the thread again. Ignorant Aardvark was describing a (to him) hypothetical scenario where the HTML specification didn't require particular image formats, and said that the consequence was a nightmare of image formats that weren't reliably supported by open-source browsers. I was pointing out that this is, in fact, the world we live in today, and pointed out JPEG 2000 support in Firefox as evidence of that.
Sure it would. But it's not the HTML specification's job to provide leverage for a particular video or audio codec. The HTML specification should standardise HTML and not blunder into orthogonal issues like video/audio codecs.
MPEG is the name of a working group. Some of the formats they have standardised contain patented technology. It's not accurate to say "MPEG contains patents".
In Hickson explained Apple's situation quite well:
While many codecs are patent-encumbered, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is equally risky to implement them for any particular organisation.
HTML hates anthropomorphism.
Nobody is saying that the HTML 5 specification should recommend a patented codec. They are saying that it shouldn't recommend any particular codec.
No, they were always patent-encumbered, it's just that people didn't know about it until UNISYS started cracking down on infringers.
I'm sure they would, but this isn't about picking Quicktime over Ogg. You can't win this argument by saying how bad Quicktime, MPEG or anything else might be, because the alternative people are proposing is no recommendation, not a recommendation for competing formats.
Because people tend to get carried away occasionally? I don't know, you can step through the revisions to find where it was first introduced if you like. Just because something has been included in a draft, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea or within the remit of the working group. Hell, people getting carried away and bolting on unnecessary things is so common in the software industry, there's even names for it like "creeping featuritis".
Yes, it mentions them, it doesn't recommend them. Look at what it says:
It mentions them as examples to illustrate how the <img> element type is used, not in order to promote them and certainly not to "specify them as baseline standards" as Ignorant Aardvark was claiming.
And how in hell did I "fail to note" that it mentions them? I explicitly said it mentions them.
That's simply not true. There is a world of difference between mentioning popular formats as examples and saying that vendors should implement them.
I'm not sure if you are trying to be ironic here or if you are actually serious.
No HTML specification does that. The farthest any HTML specification goes is mentioning that they are common formats.
Yes, in fact that's precisely the state of the world today. For instance, Firefox doesn't support JPEG 2000.
Not really, because all major browsers support JPEG and PNG, despite the fact that the HTML specifications haven't recommended them.
It does no such thing. For instance, it doesn't require browsers to implement JavaScript, it provides scripting language-independent hooks that can be used to support JavaScript or any other scripting language. It doesn't require browsers to implement CSS, it provides stylesheet language-independent hooks that can be used to support CSS or any other stylesheet language. It doesn't require browsers to implement JPEG or PNG, it provides image format-independent hooks that can be used to support JPEG, PNG or any other image format. And the HTML 5 specification is taking the exact same approach by not requiring Theora or Vorbis, but providing codec-independent hooks that can be used to support Theora, Vorbis or any other codec.
The choice of video and audio codecs is outside the scope of the HTML 5 specification. Attempting to more tightly couple independent formats is myopic.
They do. However having standard codecs and attempting to tie together formats that are orthogonal in nature are two separate matters. The <video> element type works regardless of the video codec in use, so the HTML specification attaching itself to one particular codec is unnecessary.
And yet this is possible without any version of HTML ever recommending a particular format for the <img> element type.
Yes, that would be nice. However the specification didn't aid that goal before this change either. It only recommended Theora. Vendors were still free to ignore the recommendation and not bother implementing it, and that's exactly what multiple vendors were planning on doing. So what has been lost by removing the recommendation?
So what's the point in having it in there then? The vendors who don't want to implement it won't, and the people wanting an open baseline won't get one. The recommendation did nothing for openness or interoperability, it just gave people an official excuse to bash vendors that won't implement it.
All other things being equal, a smaller specification that everybody can agree on is better than one with unnecessary, contentious recommendations. There was never any need for this recommendation, it just bloated the already massive specification.
The reason why ISPs can get away with copying resources into their caches is because they are "incidental copies", where permission for copying is implied for the purpose of normal operation. Web developers can apply Cache-Control: no-transform to indicate that changes of this nature should not take place. It seems to me that any ISP that alters such pages would be creating unauthorised derivative works and permission would not be implied to copy, thus making them guilty of copyright infringement.
Perhaps some are, but every time I've come across a link to somebody posting code in a forum, it's always been full of huge glaring mistakes, security holes, etc. In fact, I can't think of any place I've seen worse code than in forums.
Huh? Paste the link to the PDF into Google. It provides a "view as HTML" link.
"Owners" is the correct term, check the law yourself. At worst, you could say that the wording was ambiguous by not explicitly saying "copyright owners".
No it doesn't. It says:
It says nothing at all about public ownership.
Also, read this.
In the UK, all mobile phone numbers start with 7. I believe this is common in other countries as well, so charging more to call a mobile phone is perfectly reasonable in these places.
You're missing the point. GCC's output isn't bound by the same license as the program, not because it doesn't make sense for the license to do that, but because the license can't do that, because the output of a tool isn't a derivative work (except in corner-cases like Bison). The FSF say this themselves in the GPL FAQ:
In fact, I believe Konqueror's predecessor, KFM could also do this. The feature is about seven years old.
You should be using a separate profile for web designing and surfing. Otherwise your surfing extensions (e.g. Adblock, NoScript, minimum font size, etc) could interfere with your designing, and you've already acknowledged that your designing extensions are interfering with your surfing.
The trouble with this is that the people purportedly bound by the license are users, not distributors. The GPL works because the people in question are distributing copies and thus need a license. People installing software on a server are not.
In the USA, you have the legal right to make copies of software for the purpose of using it. Copying it to your server is not copyright infringement. Running it is not copyright infringement. You don't need a license. So what compels AGPL users to accept this license and be bound by its terms? Where is the consideration?
Yeah, I hate it when I go to build something and realise that I've run out of monkey.
If you want to address that point, then with all due respect, please reply to the people saying it. I haven't even remotely touched on the issue of the relative seriousness of these actions. An argument against misleading rhetoric is an entirely different thing to judging the ethical implications of these actions, and I'm thoroughly sick of people attempting to tie the two together. By all means, argue your point about relative seriousness all you want, but it bears no relation to what I wrote so please don't give the impression that it does by attaching your arguments to my comment. I'm sorry for being blunt, but this "bundling" of arguments is oft-used by trolls and I've learned that zero tolerance is the only option. If you want to argue ethics, this is the wrong thread to do it in.
I made no comment regarding the relative seriousness of the two actions and my argument for clarity of language does not imply anything in this respect.
That's as disingenuous as when record companies claim that you "steal" potential profits. This is not theft. Nothing is being taken away from the original author's possession. There is a perfectly accurate word for what has happened here, it is "plagiarism". Why play word games instead of using the proper word for things?
In addition to what Phil has pointed out in another reply, it's worth pointing out that there are many different Creative Commons licenses, and they vary in what they permit. Some of them do not permit commercial use, some of them require attribution, some of them are more permissive.
Please, if you are going to make claims about what something does and doesn't permit, at the very least you should be vaguely familiar with it yourself. Creative Commons is a brand name for a bunch of different licenses, not a license itself.
Isn't the poppy pretty damn iconic as far as Rememberence Day is concerned?
It's an international holiday. Calling it an American holiday borders on the offensive to many people. At the very least you entrench the stereotype of USA as self-centred and ignorant or the rest of the world.
Take a look at the context here. This is a record industry executive and no doubt that statement was made in the middle of a discussion of copyright infringement. He's not saying that all encryption is illegal, he's talking about a specific offence, and how encryption is used in relation to that.
I'm one of the first to complain about record companies' misuse of language, but you are completely overreacting here.