not to mention prohibitively expensive, as in the USA the government may have to compensate patent holders by weakening their rights
Why? If the government weakens the rights of patent holders, it will probably be because the system has flaws. Why should they be compensated when the government corrects those flaws?
we should also bear in mind the consequences of going too far in the opposite direction.
There is no chance of that happening, so why should people bear this in mind?
Too few discussions of patent reform have an intelligent, informed and balanced basis in the purpose and benefits of the current patent system
Maybe because the current patent system is anything but balanced, but rather tilted to the extreme in favor of the patent holders (especially big companies).
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. Digital Rights Management already tells me that someone else is "managing" my rights to my stuff.
The idea is that Digital Rights Management gives the idea that you are given rights, which sounds like a good thing to the unwary, while it truly adds restrictions on your usage. That's why the FSF coined the backronym Digital Restrictions Management, to more accurately describe what DRM does to the customer.
My opinion on software copyrights is that I like them, with two caveats: (1) They should be much shorter and (2) only software that is published with full source should be eligible for copyright protection. The second point is because one of the main goals underlying copyright law is the wide dissemination of ideas so that others can build upon them, and dissemination of expressions that will eventually fall into the public domain. The authors of the original approach never considered the possibility of a medium where it was both possible to publish a work, and keep its contents secret.
Sounds fair. IMO, this would also imply that DRM-protected media wouldn't get copyright protection, since it also keeps the content secret even after copyright expires.
Its ridiculous to call Democrats anything but on the left when they're trying to advance gay rights and keep abortion legal.
In the american political spectrum, the Democrats are considered a left-wing party. When compared with many other countries, such as many western and central European ones, both the Democrats and the Conservatives are considered right-wing parties. This is because our (I'm Swedish) left parties are much farther to the left than the most left-wing party you have. Your "left-wing" party, the Democrats, are pretty comparable with our right-wing parties, the Moderates and the Christian Democrats. Going left, we find the Peoples Party (the Liberals), the Center Party, the Environmental Party, the Social Democrats and the Left Party (previously, the Left Party - The Communists). I guess you have no communist parties in the United States.:)
I think the only successful attack against the **AA will come from within. One of its own members will see the light, recognize the organization as competition, and destroy it.
This is already happening, albeit in a somewhat limited way. As you know EMI signed a deal to sell non-DRMed music through iTunes Music Store. Afterwards, the other big music publishers complained a lot that EMI had signed a deal that would be "bad for the industry", since now people would be demanding that they too release their music without DRM, and they don't want that, since that stops them from selling the same music several times to the same customers. They argued that the music industry should keep a united front of DRM-proponents against their enemy, the customers. It surely becomes much easier to push DRM if all the other big ones are also pushing it. Now customers can point at EMI and demand DRM-free music with some force, and threaten to only get their music from EMI, which would be good for EMI but less good for the other big music publishers.
IIRC, for the minister of justice to tell the police to more strictly enforce copyright law would be okay, but it would not be okay to single out one named case (like e.g. The Pirate Bay) for the police to shut down. That would clearly be a case of ministerstyre.
The MPAA press release immediately after the raid certainly did not help the minister of justice, since the MPAA claimed to have been "working vigorously with the Swedish ministry of justice to bring down The Pirate Bay", which is, in essence, a testimony that ministerstyre had taken place.
Then, he was called to a meeting with the justice minister and suddenly he orders a raid on the Pirate Bay. A coincidence? I think not.
You forgot his "educational" trip to the United States to learn how to deal with those terr^H^H^H^Hpirates. The trip took place about a month before the raid.
Since they should be regarded as a quite harmless type of convict, this prison sentence would then be served in a minimal security prison. This usually mean that you are only locked in during night and can even work during the days.
My guess is that since they are more or less harmless to society (no violence involved) they could be sentenced to use an electronic tag rather than going to prison.
They don't store copyrighted information . The tracker just makes it possible for you to find people who have the copyrighted files.
Bassicaly , if you make TPB illegal , you should make Google illegal too.
This close to what the prosecutor concluded after his investigation into The Pirate Bay half a year before the raid. Since you (in Sweden) cannot prosecute someone for a contributory crime if you cannot prosecute someone for the main crime, bringing down TPB without also prosecuting a significant number of filesharers would be hard or impossible.
That the raid took place anyway, in contrast with the conclusion of the prosecutor's preliminary investigation, certainly fuelled the rumors that the US government had pressured them into acting, probably by threatening with trade sanctions and/or placing Sweden on the WTO list of "rogue" countries.
Even the quote supplied states "the raid was prompted by political pressure from the US" and "which the Swedish government firmly denies." Not exactly a glowing endorsement for supporting some direct order from the US or even a threat of action.
The denial is expected, as an admission would also be an admission of a serious crime.
You have anything to back that up. Anything at all. Heck I'll take links to blogs, since that would at least be something. If you have a credible source I'll even apologize.
That's what a locked cabinet is for. Do not allow children under 13 to handle optical media.
The fact that digital information is infinitely reproducible makes the concept of artificially restricting duplication for backup purposes quite silly (except to the content producers).
That's what buying a computer and iPod and re-buying each movie for your iPod are for.
Is it possible for you to understand why this is frowned upon? People are used to format-shifting, especially on computers, which again makes such restrictions silly.
Or "I want to take home *another* Ford, so I can continue to exercise that private-driving right (which, again, I paid you for) if my kids crash the crap out of the original"
There are significant differences between cars and digital information. The fact that information by its nature can be duplicated indefinitely at no cost makes the idea of making backups a sound one. That someone should artificially restrict the possibility of making backups is just stupid.
Cars, on the other hand, like any physical products, cannot be effortlessly duplicated, but has a material cost for each instance. Supplying a free replacement car would be a cost to the car manufacturer/dealership, but allowing customers to backup their digital movies incurs no costs to the movies companies.
so if you have a computer that is not supposed to be running any app and your HDD is working and your eth0 is up and transmitting : you are 0wn3d.
You know, that could also be Microsoft's WGA trying to determine if you are a pirate. This could very well fall into the definition of being 0wn3d though.;)
can't remember what you bizarre english speaking people actually call numbers with six zeroes. I call them millions, but that's French. In English, billions have nine zeroes, right?
That's called the long scale versus the short scale. I use the long scale for my native language, just like you do (I'm Swedish). In English, 10^6 is a million, 10^9 is a billion, 10^12 is a trillion, etc. In the long scale, 10^6 is a million (miljon in Sw), 10^9 is a milliard (miljard in Sw), 10^12 is a billion (biljon in Sw), 10^15 is a billard, 10^18 is a trillion, etc.
Do you actually mean that it is "IP theft" to take functionality from the Linux Logical Volume Manager and implement it per file in the file system instead? Hardly.
Actually, snapshots with copy-on-write functionality is not new in Linux, but it hasn't been available in the filesystem itself. The Logical Volume Manager is able to create and use COW snapshots, and has been for some time.
Generally speaking - when you write out files to the drive they spread out all over the place and each chunk has an i-node or information node that tells a little about what file it is from, and points to the next and last inodes,
Umm, no. At least for ext3 and similar filesystems, each file or directory corresponds to exactly one inode. The inode contains information about its owner, group, filetype (plain file, directory, symbolic link, FIFO, device file, etc), as well as permission information and extended attributes (such as for ACLs, SELinux security contexts, etc). It also contains pointers to blocklists, but each block does not have a separate inode.
If it is a big enough deal, the buyer expects something.
Or rather, the person representing the buyer expects something for his personal benefit. If the expectation would be for something for the benefit of the corporation as a whole, there would be no problem. That the decision maker makes a decision based upon who sent him the most free event tickets is simply wrong. It is called corruption, and shpould be fought with every available measure.
Umm, no. In all Yum-managed distros I have used, the directory that contains repository configuration files have been/etc/yum.repos.d/. Just add the file there, though problems would arise if this directory is ever changed.
Or better yet, Access Control Lists (present in various flavors of Linux, notably SELinux)
Actually, IIRC, ACLs are orthogonal to SELinux. You can have none, one of them or both. The commonality is that both ACLs and SELinux security contexts are implemented as extended attributes in the ext3 filesystem.
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Why? If the government weakens the rights of patent holders, it will probably be because the system has flaws. Why should they be compensated when the government corrects those flaws?
we should also bear in mind the consequences of going too far in the opposite direction.There is no chance of that happening, so why should people bear this in mind?
Too few discussions of patent reform have an intelligent, informed and balanced basis in the purpose and benefits of the current patent systemMaybe because the current patent system is anything but balanced, but rather tilted to the extreme in favor of the patent holders (especially big companies).
The idea is that Digital Rights Management gives the idea that you are given rights, which sounds like a good thing to the unwary, while it truly adds restrictions on your usage. That's why the FSF coined the backronym Digital Restrictions Management, to more accurately describe what DRM does to the customer.
Sounds fair. IMO, this would also imply that DRM-protected media wouldn't get copyright protection, since it also keeps the content secret even after copyright expires.
In the american political spectrum, the Democrats are considered a left-wing party. When compared with many other countries, such as many western and central European ones, both the Democrats and the Conservatives are considered right-wing parties. This is because our (I'm Swedish) left parties are much farther to the left than the most left-wing party you have. Your "left-wing" party, the Democrats, are pretty comparable with our right-wing parties, the Moderates and the Christian Democrats. Going left, we find the Peoples Party (the Liberals), the Center Party, the Environmental Party, the Social Democrats and the Left Party (previously, the Left Party - The Communists). I guess you have no communist parties in the United States. :)
This is already happening, albeit in a somewhat limited way. As you know EMI signed a deal to sell non-DRMed music through iTunes Music Store. Afterwards, the other big music publishers complained a lot that EMI had signed a deal that would be "bad for the industry", since now people would be demanding that they too release their music without DRM, and they don't want that, since that stops them from selling the same music several times to the same customers. They argued that the music industry should keep a united front of DRM-proponents against their enemy, the customers. It surely becomes much easier to push DRM if all the other big ones are also pushing it. Now customers can point at EMI and demand DRM-free music with some force, and threaten to only get their music from EMI, which would be good for EMI but less good for the other big music publishers.
Exactly. Big corporations that want to censor some piece of information should really read up on the Streisand Effect.
...each side with its own Vista CD-Key, desktop, Office 2007 license, animated cursor and keyboard.There, fixed it for you.
You're right, that's why nobody is using Linux for real systems.</sarcasm>
IIRC, for the minister of justice to tell the police to more strictly enforce copyright law would be okay, but it would not be okay to single out one named case (like e.g. The Pirate Bay) for the police to shut down. That would clearly be a case of ministerstyre.
The MPAA press release immediately after the raid certainly did not help the minister of justice, since the MPAA claimed to have been "working vigorously with the Swedish ministry of justice to bring down The Pirate Bay", which is, in essence, a testimony that ministerstyre had taken place.
You forgot his "educational" trip to the United States to learn how to deal with those terr^H^H^H^Hpirates. The trip took place about a month before the raid.
My guess is that since they are more or less harmless to society (no violence involved) they could be sentenced to use an electronic tag rather than going to prison.
They don't store copyrighted information . The tracker just makes it possible for you to find people who have the copyrighted files.
Bassicaly , if you make TPB illegal , you should make Google illegal too.
This close to what the prosecutor concluded after his investigation into The Pirate Bay half a year before the raid. Since you (in Sweden) cannot prosecute someone for a contributory crime if you cannot prosecute someone for the main crime, bringing down TPB without also prosecuting a significant number of filesharers would be hard or impossible.
That the raid took place anyway, in contrast with the conclusion of the prosecutor's preliminary investigation, certainly fuelled the rumors that the US government had pressured them into acting, probably by threatening with trade sanctions and/or placing Sweden on the WTO list of "rogue" countries.
The denial is expected, as an admission would also be an admission of a serious crime.
Is the Swedish national television (SVT = Sveriges Television) credible enough? The article is in Swedish though: United States government behind site shutdown.
The fact that digital information is infinitely reproducible makes the concept of artificially restricting duplication for backup purposes quite silly (except to the content producers).
That's what buying a computer and iPod and re-buying each movie for your iPod are for.Is it possible for you to understand why this is frowned upon? People are used to format-shifting, especially on computers, which again makes such restrictions silly.
There are significant differences between cars and digital information. The fact that information by its nature can be duplicated indefinitely at no cost makes the idea of making backups a sound one. That someone should artificially restrict the possibility of making backups is just stupid.
Cars, on the other hand, like any physical products, cannot be effortlessly duplicated, but has a material cost for each instance. Supplying a free replacement car would be a cost to the car manufacturer/dealership, but allowing customers to backup their digital movies incurs no costs to the movies companies.
You know, that could also be Microsoft's WGA trying to determine if you are a pirate. This could very well fall into the definition of being 0wn3d though. ;)
can't remember what you bizarre english speaking people actually call numbers with six zeroes. I call them millions, but that's French. In English, billions have nine zeroes, right?That's called the long scale versus the short scale. I use the long scale for my native language, just like you do (I'm Swedish). In English, 10^6 is a million, 10^9 is a billion, 10^12 is a trillion, etc. In the long scale, 10^6 is a million (miljon in Sw), 10^9 is a milliard (miljard in Sw), 10^12 is a billion (biljon in Sw), 10^15 is a billard, 10^18 is a trillion, etc.
As I replied to another of your posts: It isn't.
Do you actually mean that it is "IP theft" to take functionality from the Linux Logical Volume Manager and implement it per file in the file system instead? Hardly.
Actually, snapshots with copy-on-write functionality is not new in Linux, but it hasn't been available in the filesystem itself. The Logical Volume Manager is able to create and use COW snapshots, and has been for some time.
Umm, no. At least for ext3 and similar filesystems, each file or directory corresponds to exactly one inode. The inode contains information about its owner, group, filetype (plain file, directory, symbolic link, FIFO, device file, etc), as well as permission information and extended attributes (such as for ACLs, SELinux security contexts, etc). It also contains pointers to blocklists, but each block does not have a separate inode.
Or rather, the person representing the buyer expects something for his personal benefit. If the expectation would be for something for the benefit of the corporation as a whole, there would be no problem. That the decision maker makes a decision based upon who sent him the most free event tickets is simply wrong. It is called corruption, and shpould be fought with every available measure.
Umm, no. In all Yum-managed distros I have used, the directory that contains repository configuration files have been /etc/yum.repos.d/. Just add the file there, though problems would arise if this directory is ever changed.
To be fair, sudo is a lot older than Windows XP. It is even older than the entire Windows NT-line of operating systems.
Actually, IIRC, ACLs are orthogonal to SELinux. You can have none, one of them or both. The commonality is that both ACLs and SELinux security contexts are implemented as extended attributes in the ext3 filesystem.