The thing that struck me most about this article is that the writer seems to have missed the boat on the whole open source community issue. First and foremost linux is written by the linux community for the linux community. It is not as the author assumes written and aimed as a weapon against Microsoft.
The writer makes some valid points though, linux is more difficult to setup and administer, and this statement is nothing new. I could go on for hours about stuff that could be better, the point here is that when I get the chance I try and make it better instead of moaning about it, this is the spirit of the linux community.
RedHat and other linux companies are part of what I like to call the 'second stage'; they are taking linux and trying to sell it into the market place. The RedHat installer for example can make things far easier for the installation process. The open source community is about exactly this, the kernal hacker sees a need for support for some piece of hardware and he knuckles down and does it, RedHat sees a need for ease-of-use features and that's what they are starting to do/
I have no intention of flaming this poor guy, sometimes I feel sorry for the guys who get flamed over stuff like this (the email to his boss was downright out of order). The message we need to get out is that the open source movement is a totally different method of development from conventional software development, it can't be judged in the same way as conventional software.
Well, for those who were never forced to study "Animal Farm" at school, it is a parody of the Russian revolution set on a farm where the pigs take the role of the communist leaders.
As you correctly pointed out, this article could have been read, as Bob implying that open source was akin to Communism. From the tone of the article however I prefer to read it as him likening the open source movement to a revolution that is turning full circle. Maybe I'm just a nice guy but I prefer to think of Bob as a self justified fool, not as a vindictive bigot that would slap the communist label on something he doesn't like in order to start a witch-hunt.
I really have to admit I was expecting an article along these lines to come out sooner or later. For those who haven't read the article it likens Linus going along with a closed source windows targeting system to the pigs in the Orwell's 'Animal Farm' slowly becoming what the revolution supposedly toppled.
Linus (like most of us) is a true supporter of open source and everything it stands for, he (also like most of us) is a realist who realizes the world isn't what we would like it to be. Linus makes very little out of linux and contrary to what the article states does not really 'control' it. The article makes stupid statements like the following:
"So just to keep Torvalds honest, I'm thinking that Crusoe chips, which are mostly software, should be open source and basically free."
Now lets be facing it, Bob Metcalfe is not a stupid man. He knows as well as you and I that Linus does not own or control Transmeta, the very suggestion that a commercial company should give away it's prized possession for free goes against every principle of the free market. It's also completely silly to suggest that should be done just because one Linus Torvalds is currently employed there.
If I had any choice in the matter, every thing I write would be free and open source, my mortgage would magically pay itself and the world would be free of hunger and poverty. However since reality requires me to get a job I chose to get a job that interested me. For the last 5 years I've been working as a 3D programmer in the games industry, now would Bob suggest that SCI (my previous employer) should open source Carmageddon2 just because an employee (me) who is an open source advocate played a small role in it's development. I expect Linus took a job with Transmeta for the same reasons, because it looked like a fun and interesting thing to do. Transmeta employed linus because he is a damned good programmer, of course the fact he is the man behind linux was never going to hurt.
The article goes to the depths of saying
"But with Torvalds saying some animals are more equal than others, why is the sanctimonious open-source press still cheering him on? Are the likes of Slashdot.org, just gobbled by VA Linux, also porking out in Orwell's farmhouse?"
This man is just trying to start an argument. Linus has done a vast amount of good for the open source community, should we really be attacking him for being involved in a closed source project for his current employer?
All in all this is Bob Metcalfe doing the 'tabloid thang' and trying to attack the open source community in the lowest possible way
This law effectively makes DeCSS legal in the UK. Since the law requires that (on demand) we hand over encryption keys to any encrypted data in our possession, they can hardly justify putting us in jail for having the key in the first place. I quote the relevant part:
"And, as a result, the Bill proposes that the police or the security services should have the power to force someone to hand over decryption keys or the plain text of specified materials, such as e-mails, and jail those who refuse."
Now you know about all the hassle that has resulted from your posting DeCSS, the arrest, the press attention etc.. If you could go back and change your miund about posting it, would you?
Is it just me or have their been one to many articles saying 'Linux is great at cutting costs because it's er free!'. Stating the obvious must be a full year at journalist coledge, and to report on linux you must have passed with honors.
"It sounds like you are saying that the MPAA is choosing option number 2, but it's not!. It would seem to me that the CSS system is an attempt to put good locks on the doors and windows."
The CSS system is a form of crytography, the level of which doesn't even rate as 'week'. I was in no way attempting to suggest that it is ok to crack something that was protected.
What I was attempting to say however that if you have something valuable and don't protect it very well you can more expect it to be stolen, wrong it may be but badly protected valuables get stolen.
You have to remember here that the MPAA is quoting potential loss figures that dwarf the insurance value of the English Crown Jewels, the Crown Jewls are stord in huge vault below ground inside a fort. The Css system was protected with a system in crytography terms equivlenet to a spring catch on a balsa wood door.
The core of my argument (on this point) is that expecting the tax-payer to pick up a large chunk of the bill for damage-control on secret a secret that was not very well protected is not entirely fair. Yes it's wrong to steal secrets but I would like the law changed to say:
If you want the taxpayer funded courts to help defend you secrets you need to provide adacuate protection for them yourselves.
Ok no cheating this time, get yourself a copy of the cd, load your fave debugger and get cracking. A nice clean reverse enginearing is what is needed here, none of this debuging xing to get the details wus boy cheating (joke!).
Well, sorry about the duplicate post but I figured a more-or-less duplicate news item was worthy of a more-or-less duplicate comment. Becuase the last news item was posted so late at night only a small percentage of slashdoters read it, which is why it was posted again. This is the same reason I posted the comment again. I appologise if this offended.
On the karma point, over a certain level karma is irrelivent (25 I think), once you have the +1 bonus there is no real meaning to karma and I honestly don't care.
So if their are any moderators reading this please mod this down to -1, that way I don't gain any Karma and this guy can be happy. If this doen't work I'll post a nice little troll comment later today to lose some Karma and settle this once and for all.
Well, things are starting to get a bit out of hand. Before I mumble on about real issues I would like to ask a question. What is the best way to protect your personal possessions from theft, 1) Buy good locks for your doors and windows, or 2) Leave the door open and sue anyone who steals anything.
This is no longer about Jon Johansen, or the cracking of DeCSS, this is about Abuse of privilege. In any country the legal system is paid for by the people and is there to protect the people and other legal entities (including corporations). The legal system is not there to replace adequate safe guards, do we complain when prisoners start law suits at the publics expense because they got the wrong kind of peanut butter? Do we complain when able-bodied people call an ambulance to take them for a checkup? The answer to this is yes (I hope) because it's abuse of the system. In the same way we should protest that entities like the MPAA think they can throw their weight around at the public's expense due to little more then their own failings, yes I know they pay for their own lawyers but the courts etc. all come from the taxpayer.
The issues surrounding the right to access legal acquired information etc. have been covered in other posts, but I would like to bring to people's attention another abuse of the CSS system. The CSS system is there to protect against piracy and to enforce the region coding system. I am angered by the abuse of the region coding system, a DVD disk costs about twice as much in the UK as it does in the US, and quite often does not have as many added extras (interviews, clips etc..). The region coding system forces us to buy often inferior products at always exaggerated prices. Naturally a booming market in imported DVD's and 'chipped' players sprung up but the MPAA lobbied the British government into a large scale crackdown of the 'Grey imports'. Once again taxpayer money wasted in support of big business screwing over the overage joe.
For these reasons I will continue to host a mirror at http://www.exaflop.org and urge other mirror owners to email me and pass on their URLs to aid in the construction of a larger list of mirrors. The MPAA and it's members need to learn three lessons, 1) Attempting to control legal use of a legally purchased product is futile, 2) They cannot continue to abuse privilege, 3) There is no putting of the baby back into the womb once it has been born.
Well, things are starting to get a bit out of hand. Before I mumble on about real issues I would like to ask a question. What is the best way to protect your personal possessions from theft, 1) Buy good locks for your doors and windows, or 2) Leave the door open and sue anyone who steals anything.
This is no longer about Jon Johansen, or the cracking of DeCSS, this is about Abuse of privilege. In any country the legal system is paid for by the people and is there to protect the people and other legal entities (including corporations). The legal system is not there to replace adequate safe guards, do we complain when prisoners start law suits at the publics expense because they got the wrong kind of peanut butter? Do we complain when able-bodied people call an ambulance to take them for a checkup? The answer to this is yes (I hope) because it's abuse of the system. In the same way we should protest that entities like the MPAA think they can throw their weight around at the public's expense due to little more then their own failings, yes I know they pay for their own lawyers but the courts etc. all come from the taxpayer.
The issues surrounding the right to access legal acquired information etc. have been covered in other posts, but I would like to bring to people's attention another abuse of the CSS system. The CSS system is there to protect against piracy and to enforce the region coding system. I am angered by the abuse of the region coding system, a DVD disk costs about twice as much in the UK as it does in the US, and quite often does not have as many added extras (interviews, clips etc..). The region coding system forces us to buy often inferior products at always exaggerated prices. Naturally a booming market in imported DVD's and 'chipped' players sprung up but the MPAA lobbied the British government into a large scale crackdown of the 'Grey imports'. Once again taxpayer money wasted in support of big business screwing over the overage joe.
For these reasons I will continue to host a mirror at http://www.exaflop.org and urge other mirror owners to email me and pass on their URLs to aid in the construction of a larger list of mirrors. The MPAA and it's members need to learn three lessons, 1) Attempting to control legal use of a legally purchased product is futile, 2) They cannot continue to abuse privilege, 3) There is no putting of the baby back into the womb once it has been born.
I think we can start of with a sem-apropriate quote from Brian Behlendorf:
``The great thing about mod_rewrite is it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. The downside to mod_rewrite is that it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail.'' -- Brian Behlendorf Apache Group
The point I'm trying to make here is that traditionaly under unix configuration has been quite a complex thing. Practicly everything under wintel has been designed with a cutsie little 'properties' dialogue in mind. Most of the time under unix the system and tools are vastly more configurable. Just look at the network thingy in a windows control panel, it's unwealdy, obease and not entirely effective at getting the job done, now imagine what it might look like under linux with the 10 fold greater flexibility the architechture lends to configuration. It may well be possible to design simple dialogues to hland the simple stuff like ip address, dialup and the like (effectively just the definitions at the top of all the config scripts and a few enable dissables). What you are unlikely to see however is an 'apply' button that asks you to 'please wait while I recompile the kernal', it's just plain silly. A certain degree of configuration can be hidden from the user by dialogues but until some big changes under the hood are implemented sooner or latter your going to have to roll your sleaves up. The question you then need to ask is how much flexibility are we willing to sacrifice for user friendliness?
<SMELL class="flower:rose" strength="%75">This idea has potential</SMELL><SMELL class="fruit:apple:rotten" strength="%80">I like to see inovation on the net.<SMELL class="turd:dog:fresh:runny" strength="%100">But it does have some drawbacks.</SMELL>
It's kinda like CDDB but remembers your CD collection. The worst part of this is that from the descriptions it only works with mp3's already on MP3.com so there is no issue of piracy beyond what MP3.com already contain.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the UK is the true land of the free. You yanks with your namby pamby constitution and your free speach, right to arms and all that are boging yourself down in pathetic law suits, injunctions etc.
This law suit along with the the DeCSS one is not about real issues, it's about paranoid's seeing the bottom line thretened and back into the corner, pointing fully loaded lawyers at everyone that 'looks at them funny' and screaming for their mothers.
I was going to do this myself but one of my co-webmasters got there first. The files in question are now avalable at www.exaflop.org, here is the text of my friends news posting.
"Well, the MPAA doesn't want you to see it but we do. Here is a list of the files they don't want you to get hold of. It's still unclear if this silly injunction can actualy hold long term, knowbody seems to know if this software is actualy breaking any rules. However here in the true land of the free they certainly are not illegal, that more extradition red tape and a little something we like to call the atlantic meen these files are likely to stay up for some time to come. I would really love to see a CA state judge pass an injunction against a UK website."
At one company I used to work for the managers would always complain that their expense credit cards would keep bouncing becuase accounting would put of paying poulty sums for months, aparently we nearly had the phone line cut of a couple of times.
I have heard suggesting that this kind of thing is common accros lots of companys, I wonder how many valuable domains will be lost over the next few years attributable to sloth from the bean counters. This guy proberbly done the right thing in using the whole thing to get quite a bit of publicity for himself, I however might have been tempted to nab the url for myself after it had been 'reposesed'.
People talk about the value of generic domain names before they have been used, but what of the value of a domain name like hotmail after it has become so popular. Makes you wonder how much Microsoft would have been prepaired to pay to get it back. I know there are rules against domain sitting that allow a company to claim a domain name they have a trademark in relation to, but would this stand up in court if the name had been lost due to non payment?
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that struck me most about this article is that the writer seems to have missed the boat on the whole open source community issue. First and foremost linux is written by the linux community for the linux community. It is not as the author assumes written and aimed as a weapon against Microsoft.
The writer makes some valid points though, linux is more difficult to setup and administer, and this statement is nothing new. I could go on for hours about stuff that could be better, the point here is that when I get the chance I try and make it better instead of moaning about it, this is the spirit of the linux community.
RedHat and other linux companies are part of what I like to call the 'second stage'; they are taking linux and trying to sell it into the market place. The RedHat installer for example can make things far easier for the installation process. The open source community is about exactly this, the kernal hacker sees a need for support for some piece of hardware and he knuckles down and does it, RedHat sees a need for ease-of-use features and that's what they are starting to do/
I have no intention of flaming this poor guy, sometimes I feel sorry for the guys who get flamed over stuff like this (the email to his boss was downright out of order). The message we need to get out is that the open source movement is a totally different method of development from conventional software development, it can't be judged in the same way as conventional software.
Well, for those who were never forced to study "Animal Farm" at school, it is a parody of the Russian revolution set on a farm where the pigs take the role of the communist leaders.
As you correctly pointed out, this article could have been read, as Bob implying that open source was akin to Communism. From the tone of the article however I prefer to read it as him likening the open source movement to a revolution that is turning full circle. Maybe I'm just a nice guy but I prefer to think of Bob as a self justified fool, not as a vindictive bigot that would slap the communist label on something he doesn't like in order to start a witch-hunt.
I really have to admit I was expecting an article along these lines to come out sooner or later. For those who haven't read the article it likens Linus going along with a closed source windows targeting system to the pigs in the Orwell's 'Animal Farm' slowly becoming what the revolution supposedly toppled.
Linus (like most of us) is a true supporter of open source and everything it stands for, he (also like most of us) is a realist who realizes the world isn't what we would like it to be. Linus makes very little out of linux and contrary to what the article states does not really 'control' it. The article makes stupid statements like the following:
Now lets be facing it, Bob Metcalfe is not a stupid man. He knows as well as you and I that Linus does not own or control Transmeta, the very suggestion that a commercial company should give away it's prized possession for free goes against every principle of the free market. It's also completely silly to suggest that should be done just because one Linus Torvalds is currently employed there.
If I had any choice in the matter, every thing I write would be free and open source, my mortgage would magically pay itself and the world would be free of hunger and poverty. However since reality requires me to get a job I chose to get a job that interested me. For the last 5 years I've been working as a 3D programmer in the games industry, now would Bob suggest that SCI (my previous employer) should open source Carmageddon2 just because an employee (me) who is an open source advocate played a small role in it's development. I expect Linus took a job with Transmeta for the same reasons, because it looked like a fun and interesting thing to do. Transmeta employed linus because he is a damned good programmer, of course the fact he is the man behind linux was never going to hurt.
The article goes to the depths of saying
This man is just trying to start an argument. Linus has done a vast amount of good for the open source community, should we really be attacking him for being involved in a closed source project for his current employer?
All in all this is Bob Metcalfe doing the 'tabloid thang' and trying to attack the open source community in the lowest possible way
This law effectively makes DeCSS legal in the UK. Since the law requires that (on demand) we hand over encryption keys to any encrypted data in our possession, they can hardly justify putting us in jail for having the key in the first place.
I quote the relevant part:
I presume of course you are refering to people form seattle?
I wonder if we can come up with a name that is an anagram ofthe offending lines of DeCSS source?
Now you know about all the hassle that has resulted from your posting DeCSS, the arrest, the press attention etc.. If you could go back and change your miund about posting it, would you?
When you first put DeCSS on your website, did you expect the fuss and attention it has gained? or was this a huge suprise to you.
Is it just me or have their been one to many articles saying 'Linux is great at cutting costs because it's er free!'. Stating the obvious must be a full year at journalist coledge, and to report on linux you must have passed with honors.
"It sounds like you are saying that the MPAA is choosing option number 2, but it's not!. It would seem to me that the CSS system is an attempt to put good locks on the doors and windows."
The CSS system is a form of crytography, the level of which doesn't even rate as 'week'. I was in no way attempting to suggest that it is ok to crack something that was protected.
What I was attempting to say however that if you have something valuable and don't protect it very well you can more expect it to be stolen, wrong it may be but badly protected valuables get stolen.
You have to remember here that the MPAA is quoting potential loss figures that dwarf the insurance value of the English Crown Jewels, the Crown Jewls are stord in huge vault below ground inside a fort. The Css system was protected with a system in crytography terms equivlenet to a spring catch on a balsa wood door.
The core of my argument (on this point) is that expecting the tax-payer to pick up a large chunk of the bill for damage-control on secret a secret that was not very well protected is not entirely fair. Yes it's wrong to steal secrets but I would like the law changed to say:
If you want the taxpayer funded courts to help defend you secrets you need to provide adacuate protection for them yourselves.
Ok no cheating this time, get yourself a copy of the cd, load your fave debugger and get cracking. A nice clean reverse enginearing is what is needed here, none of this debuging xing to get the details wus boy cheating (joke!).
Last one to crack+wideband buys the beer!Well, sorry about the duplicate post but I figured a more-or-less duplicate news item was worthy of a more-or-less duplicate comment. Becuase the last news item was posted so late at night only a small percentage of slashdoters read it, which is why it was posted again. This is the same reason I posted the comment again. I appologise if this offended.
On the karma point, over a certain level karma is irrelivent (25 I think), once you have the +1 bonus there is no real meaning to karma and I honestly don't care.
So if their are any moderators reading this please mod this down to -1, that way I don't gain any Karma and this guy can be happy. If this doen't work I'll post a nice little troll comment later today to lose some Karma and settle this once and for all.
Well, things are starting to get a bit out of hand. Before I mumble on about real issues I would like to ask a question. What is the best way to protect your personal possessions from theft, 1) Buy good locks for your doors and windows, or 2) Leave the door open and sue anyone who steals anything.
This is no longer about Jon Johansen, or the cracking of DeCSS, this is about Abuse of privilege. In any country the legal system is paid for by the people and is there to protect the people and other legal entities (including corporations). The legal system is not there to replace adequate safe guards, do we complain when prisoners start law suits at the publics expense because they got the wrong kind of peanut butter? Do we complain when able-bodied people call an ambulance to take them for a checkup? The answer to this is yes (I hope) because it's abuse of the system. In the same way we should protest that entities like the MPAA think they can throw their weight around at the public's expense due to little more then their own failings, yes I know they pay for their own lawyers but the courts etc. all come from the taxpayer.
The issues surrounding the right to access legal acquired information etc. have been covered in other posts, but I would like to bring to people's attention another abuse of the CSS system. The CSS system is there to protect against piracy and to enforce the region coding system. I am angered by the abuse of the region coding system, a DVD disk costs about twice as much in the UK as it does in the US, and quite often does not have as many added extras (interviews, clips etc..). The region coding system forces us to buy often inferior products at always exaggerated prices. Naturally a booming market in imported DVD's and 'chipped' players sprung up but the MPAA lobbied the British government into a large scale crackdown of the 'Grey imports'. Once again taxpayer money wasted in support of big business screwing over the overage joe.
For these reasons I will continue to host a mirror at http://www.exaflop.org and urge other mirror owners to email me and pass on their URLs to aid in the construction of a larger list of mirrors. The MPAA and it's members need to learn three lessons, 1) Attempting to control legal use of a legally purchased product is futile, 2) They cannot continue to abuse privilege, 3) There is no putting of the baby back into the womb once it has been born.
I will not let my software decompile and erase while you discuss this indictment on slashdot!
Well, things are starting to get a bit out of hand. Before I mumble on about real issues I would like to ask a question. What is the best way to protect your personal possessions from theft, 1) Buy good locks for your doors and windows, or 2) Leave the door open and sue anyone who steals anything.
This is no longer about Jon Johansen, or the cracking of DeCSS, this is about Abuse of privilege. In any country the legal system is paid for by the people and is there to protect the people and other legal entities (including corporations). The legal system is not there to replace adequate safe guards, do we complain when prisoners start law suits at the publics expense because they got the wrong kind of peanut butter? Do we complain when able-bodied people call an ambulance to take them for a checkup? The answer to this is yes (I hope) because it's abuse of the system. In the same way we should protest that entities like the MPAA think they can throw their weight around at the public's expense due to little more then their own failings, yes I know they pay for their own lawyers but the courts etc. all come from the taxpayer.
The issues surrounding the right to access legal acquired information etc. have been covered in other posts, but I would like to bring to people's attention another abuse of the CSS system. The CSS system is there to protect against piracy and to enforce the region coding system. I am angered by the abuse of the region coding system, a DVD disk costs about twice as much in the UK as it does in the US, and quite often does not have as many added extras (interviews, clips etc..). The region coding system forces us to buy often inferior products at always exaggerated prices. Naturally a booming market in imported DVD's and 'chipped' players sprung up but the MPAA lobbied the British government into a large scale crackdown of the 'Grey imports'. Once again taxpayer money wasted in support of big business screwing over the overage joe.
For these reasons I will continue to host a mirror at http://www.exaflop.org and urge other mirror owners to email me and pass on their URLs to aid in the construction of a larger list of mirrors. The MPAA and it's members need to learn three lessons, 1) Attempting to control legal use of a legally purchased product is futile, 2) They cannot continue to abuse privilege, 3) There is no putting of the baby back into the womb once it has been born.
I think we can start of with a sem-apropriate quote from Brian Behlendorf:
The point I'm trying to make here is that traditionaly under unix configuration has been quite a complex thing. Practicly everything under wintel has been designed with a cutsie little 'properties' dialogue in mind. Most of the time under unix the system and tools are vastly more configurable. Just look at the network thingy in a windows control panel, it's unwealdy, obease and not entirely effective at getting the job done, now imagine what it might look like under linux with the 10 fold greater flexibility the architechture lends to configuration. It may well be possible to design simple dialogues to hland the simple stuff like ip address, dialup and the like (effectively just the definitions at the top of all the config scripts and a few enable dissables). What you are unlikely to see however is an 'apply' button that asks you to 'please wait while I recompile the kernal', it's just plain silly. A certain degree of configuration can be hidden from the user by dialogues but until some big changes under the hood are implemented sooner or latter your going to have to roll your sleaves up. The question you then need to ask is how much flexibility are we willing to sacrifice for user friendliness?<SMELL class="flower:rose" strength="%75">This idea has potential</SMELL><SMELL class="fruit:apple:rotten" strength="%80">I like to see inovation on the net.<SMELL class="turd:dog:fresh:runny" strength="%100">But it does have some drawbacks.</SMELL>
note to self: 'Plain old text' does not do what it ses on the tin!
note to self #2: Use preview more
This idea has potentialI like to see inovation on the net.But it does have some drawbacks.
This idea has potentialI like to see inovation on the net.But it does have some drawbacks.
Take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!
YES! You hit the nail(mole?) right on the head.
It's kinda like CDDB but remembers your CD collection. The worst part of this is that from the descriptions it only works with mp3's already on MP3.com so there is no issue of piracy beyond what MP3.com already contain.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the UK is the true land of the free. You yanks with your namby pamby constitution and your free speach, right to arms and all that are boging yourself down in pathetic law suits, injunctions etc.
This law suit along with the the DeCSS one is not about real issues, it's about paranoid's seeing the bottom line thretened and back into the corner, pointing fully loaded lawyers at everyone that 'looks at them funny' and screaming for their mothers.
I was going to do this myself but one of my co-webmasters got there first. The files in question are now avalable at www.exaflop.org, here is the text of my friends news posting.
At one company I used to work for the managers would always complain that their expense credit cards would keep bouncing becuase accounting would put of paying poulty sums for months, aparently we nearly had the phone line cut of a couple of times.
I have heard suggesting that this kind of thing is common accros lots of companys, I wonder how many valuable domains will be lost over the next few years attributable to sloth from the bean counters. This guy proberbly done the right thing in using the whole thing to get quite a bit of publicity for himself, I however might have been tempted to nab the url for myself after it had been 'reposesed'.
People talk about the value of generic domain names before they have been used, but what of the value of a domain name like hotmail after it has become so popular. Makes you wonder how much Microsoft would have been prepaired to pay to get it back. I know there are rules against domain sitting that allow a company to claim a domain name they have a trademark in relation to, but would this stand up in court if the name had been lost due to non payment?