For certain values of 'wrong'. You (N.B.-any use of 'you' in this post is collective, not directed at parent) can't simply assume that something that is wrong refers to morality.
Breaking the law is wrong. Violating one's morals is wrong. One is a legal wrong, one is a moral wrong. I see people try to make this distinction periodically and insisting that it's not "wrong" to break a law. It absolutely is wrong; if it weren't, then you would not be violating anything. Just because something is morally sound doesn't mean it's not also wrong.
The basic problem is that morality is an individual matter, and people vary. People must have the moral integrity to obey and respect the law; society doesn't function otherwise. However, that does not mean that in some circumstances some other moral imperative won't clash. Moral conflicts are inevitable. Life is about choices--if you feel that the weight of the situation requires breaking a law, own it. Be prepared for society, which passes judgment on its members, to disagree and act accordingly. The social contract requires the application of law; disagreeing with the law is not an excuse to evade consequences.
Accept the consequences of the action you take like a responsible adult. It really is that simple. Sometimes morality is inconvenient. C'est la vie.
What is wrong with a "penalty" that is contracted for and spelled out as a penalty for early termination right there in the original agreement that you signed?
The issue isn't the penalty, but rather the provided rationale.
Arguing that the fee exists to recover their costs, and then having it shown that there are no costs to recover (or significantly lesser costs) for a large group of customers, but then proceeding to charge them anyway, makes the practice a violation of California consumer protection laws.
It's a different game when you're selling a consumer product sometimes. While you and your neighbor could enter into a contract asserting a $1000 penalty for failure to fully perform, when the issue is an ongoing service arrangement, you can't charge an onerous fee for the simple reason that you're no longer generating a profit on a customer.
A term contract provides the benefit of comparatively lower rates and/or additional services. The discount exchanges periodic profit for an indefinite period for a projected total profit over a definite period.
The damage sustained to the service provider is loss of that projected profit, and the customer stands to be unjustly enriched based on being freed of the unfulfilled obligations. In California, though, the service provider can't punish you for the simple choice to leave.
What is next? A court reviewing a software license agreement that has a large penalty clause in it?
Probably not, because you're describing something that is almost certainly a merchant-merchant transaction. Even if not, penalty clauses for performance milestones are acceptable, but only to the extent that they are agreed to as liquidated damages. If you have recouped your losses, taking money for spite from consumers is frowned upon--but private parties are certainly welcome to contract for any weird thing they like, so long as it's not illegal.
The problem is twofold. One, the ETF is charged indiscriminately, regardless of the value of the subsidy. This means that it is a deterrent from switching carriers for those who owe no subsidy. Two, Sprint does not prorate its ETF (or did not, as of this lawsuit) like e.g., AT&T does.
Addressing both of these concerns with a subsidy-recovery fee would be perfectly enforceable. The summary's implication that this may start a domino effect is a relatively obtuse statement.
Penalties for breaking contracts are upheld daily by law if disclosed. Penalties that are in no small part cost recovery, doubly so. However, it's been clear for many years that the cellular companies don't actually care about just covering their losses--otherwise they'd be able to tell you at any given point what your prorata share of the original hardware subsidy is. You as a consumer should also have the the right to pay the remaining subsidy amount plus a nominal penalty for processing ($~25), and then be placed on a month-to-month plan or walk away.
Precisely why the government should not bear the burden of setting up such a system, and, given the lack of incentive for the market to implement it on its own, why it will never happen.
The first operational connection would be [last name] and any of the search terms.
pre/2 always refers to the previous term to the left, so it would then prepare [first name] within 2 of [last name]. The addition of the 'and' is a result of the fact that this secondary operation may fail if there aren't two words before the last name. It is largely superfluous, but there's a possibility that there is a quirk in Lexis retrieval--some queries have to include what seems like an unnecessary connector because it does affect the results it retrieves. We have a few such queries that we use, particularly due to lack of uniformity in referring to technologies and computer terminology.
pre/2 is indeed processed first, but if you don't have an argument in the format 'x pre/2 y', then the syntax fails. pre/2 certainly doesn't move an arbitrary search term into that position. 'Clinton' within 7 of 'spotted owl' would be the first pull, and then 'Bill' within two words preceding 'Clinton' would be the second.
Those who make money from selling DRM encumbered products should be taxed on them
They already are.
If companies want to shaft their customers like this, they should get no help from the government.
They don't need help from the government. The consumers are quite willing to accept less to save (less than) a buck. It's why Walmart is so successful.
Government help enforcing copyrights and such should be supplied on the basis that they give their customers a fair deal.
It is a fair deal. It's not a good deal for certain groups of people. There's a difference.
Municipal libraries are horribly underfunded as-is, and the Library of Congress archives works of significance, but does not retain all works submitted.
The cost of maintaining such a system, and its existence itself, falls outside of LoC's mandate and budget. It would be simultaneously dismissed by different groups as frivolous spending, an unnecessary archive of insignificant works, an extension of government control (by those conspiracy theorists who believe the government would withhold certain works), and a system perpetuating something they hate (by those who refuse to recognize eminently valid IP). A small, but powerful, segment of Big Business would also hate the idea, since there is no legal requirement that they prepare a DRM-free version. They lose the ability to enforce their exclusive rights after time, but that's not the same as forcing them to hand over the keys.
Taxpayers also have a tendency to kill things that are reasonable as a form of protest against the things they don't like paying for. Unfortunately, any given expenditure is going to have detractors, and so this is a major source of political gridlock and it tends to kill the relatively small potatoes. It's also the first target for budget cuts (just like the city library is one of the first services cut).
It is, for all intents and purposes, an idea too reasonable to be palatable. Such a requirement would require an Act of Congress and the president, without being eviscerated or overextended in the handling of that particular football. It also has questionable return on investment potential, since most of the content, software included, is of little to no value in the future, hence its commoditization in the present, so justifying its existence would mainly be for placation of a fraction of the anti-DRM crowd.
On the contrary, the query turns up a number of results on many of the attorneys who would be seeking such a position. Having just tried it with one such applicant I happen to know, I got six hits. Trying with a different person, a name from EOUS yields 37 results.
Moreover, if the query turned up little, it wouldn't be the one she uses to weed out these candidates.
but the point is that the query brings back "#search term - last name# within 7 of #search term#"
The results of the query beg to differ. I ran two out of curiosity, but will not be running more. It seems to me that you're misunderstanding the/pre expression.
So essentially you would get a list of citations where the last name of the candidate would follow one of the search terms by one or two words and also fell within 7 words of any of the search terms. Sounds like a lot of records.
That's the point. Cast a wide net, then throw out the dolphins.
It's pretty easy to see from the results the ones that aren't "sexy" and move on to the next one. This is pretty much SOP for Lexis--you don't want to miss something, so you put up with extra results. Further, since it's based on a transactional model for charges, you pay for each query, so it helps to get as much as possible in any given results list, since you can sort through it without incurring additional charges.
I don't have to put copyright notices on my works nor register them with some central governing agency.
But if you want to sell DRM'd copies, you should supply a non-DRM'd copy to ensure that once the copyright expires, there is another version available. This has the benefit of ensuring a richer public domain (because many works simply disappear before the end of copyright).
However, the parent's suggestion is not without problems. First and foremost, where does the DRM-free copy go? The government isn't (and shouldn't) pay for a database of the files. You can't mandate that a business stay in operation. What would be the incentive for private industry to store files without sharing them for decades? Is most of the stuff we buy even worth anything when copyright expires?
On the last point, most of what is produced vanishes because it doesn't matter. It has no real significance, no staying power, and a century from now, nobody will even care about it. Thus, the inability to access DRM'd files is a non-issue for most of the consumer product. Products with the enduring popularity or cultural significance to survive copyright will almost certainly be maintained from the original in a useful manner (whereas a WMA from 2008 might be useless, low quality trash in 2100). Very little is available solely in DRM-wrapped formats; it's a consumer option for low price disposables. Contrary to the Slashdot conspiracy, no media industry is hoping for a pay-for-play setup being the only option. It might be the wet dream of a few greedy people, but as someone who works daily with content creators seeking to protect their interests and sell their work, that's the exception, not the rule.
Once the copyright expires, it doesn't matter whether you acquired it as a DRM'd file, a DRM-free file, or on CD. You can just delete the DRM'd file and acquire a then-modern-format, high quality copy wherever you like.
Was their agreement with you worded such that you were right to assume that the song would be available to use at your discretion (i.e. without dependance on their DRM servers), or did they leave enough loopholes in to make it known that the song will only work in the presence of their DRM servers, and that those servers were not guaranteed to work past a certain point?
This is a little backwards. Unless they made an explicit guarantee about future availability and compatibility, future prospects are just that: prospective. Supposition. A gamble. If technology, society, or any other element changes, rendering an investment worthless, you just lost. It's not any different anywhere else.
Just read the Forbes article. The money comes from family, business, or investment--unrelated to prior involvement in politics. Few people get rich while they're politicians--most are rich first; many get rich after retiring (consulting jobs, plush board appointments, the lecture circuit). The ones that get rich while in office attract attention, and, as we see here, indictments.
But were Scrabulous to do that, they could not effectively compete with Hasbro, because the overwhelming majority of the players of that game have a preferred arrangement, namely Hasbro's.
No. That's not what effective competition means, even if you could point to any evidence of such a preference. I know of no one who plays Scrabble because of the arrangement of the board and who would refuse to play a variant with a different arrangement, and I know of no court that would receive such an assertion without a fit of laughter. Effective competition does not mean equal popularity. You don't seriously mean to imply that AMD products are not effective competition for Intel products because Intel is substantially more popular, do you? If Hasbro is engaging in price discrimination, aggressive distribution contracts, or vendor lock-in to prevent Scrabble competitors, that's one thing. A nonfunctional layout simply does not hinder competition. You must either be completely out of your element.
Again, zero favorable precedent. No gameboard copyright has ever been judged essential for fair competition.
Competition is hindered if no one else can make the one board arrangement that people apparently want to play.
I've seen nothing to suggest that Scrabble's popularity is based on its board arrangement. Equal popularity is not guaranteed to competitors.
But that is yet another factual issue where I think we'll have to agree to disagree and wait for it to be determined by a jury.
It's not a factual issue. The jury doesn't decide what is or is not functional.
Not just the league; also the inventor and manufacturer.
The inventor and manufacturer prescribe no such rule. Period. Mere description is not a rule.
If the arrangement wasn't important for play, why has it never changed?
Why would Hasbro change it? It hasn't changed because there hasn't been viable, lawful competition. The only other products have been short-lived or otherwise uninfluential reproductions, not competitors.
Many games have more than one. Poker and solitaire immediately spring to mind.
Poker and solitaire are families of games. Any given game must have a single set of rules, or it cannot be played by more than one player.
In the Pac-Man case, the dots were functional as a means of keeping score and indicating progress toward completion of the level.
In the Pac-Man case, the dots were unprotectable in and of themselves. You've missed the point while managing to come out on the opposite side of the issue here.
The idea/expression dichotomy, the merger doctrine, the scenes a faire doctrine, and the utility doctrine are all deeply concerned with not allowing a copyright holder to monopolize functionality.
Precisely. But as every case on the books has elaborated for you, the layout of squares is not functional here. End of story. You have provided no precedent--none, whatsoever--in the face of multiple citations against.
But again, 'the' rules are all the rules. There are no platonic rules. You cannot point at a subset of all the possible rules for a game and say that those are 'the' rules, as you have been doing. Some rules may be more popular than others, some rules may be endorsed by different players, but they're all equally valid rules in the end.
No. You're ignoring a mountain of case law.
Descriptions that are prescribed for uniformity in a league are not rules. Never mind the fact that league rules fall entirely outside the scope of the current discussion--just consider that any arbitrary design element could be made into a "rule" by introducing a version that specified it to be so. This is clearly not the case.
When you have a single implementation in question, as we do here, and when that implementation contains both rules and description, as we have here, the description does not become a rule simply because some unrelated third party might require it for a private league. To do so would eviscerate the entire meaning of the rule-description distinction, not to mention obviate the need for any functionality inquiry.
Refuting them is easy. But that wouldn't ever make you shut up. For example, conflating license and license agreement makes your entire previous post worthless.
I don't give a shit what the courts have said; I care about what the courts should say based on the fundamental principles of property, copyright, and common sense!
For someone who doesn't even know what real property means and comes up with a disingenuous heap of dung in a failed attempt to back out of it, this doesn't surprise me one bit.
There's little point in continuing with someone so far detached from reality and rationality.
First of all, why should I review the terms when they don't actually matter anyway (as per my previous sentence)?
Because no court has ever agreed with your statement. There has never been a ruling that EULAs are categorically unenforceable.
Second, the only situation where I could reasonably be expected to review the terms is if the damn cashier handed them to me and refused to take my money
The cashier doesn't care. They're selling you a box. What it contains is immaterial to a merchant.
And it's exactly the same with the software: yes, Apple owns the copyrights and patents and trademarks, but those are not the product! The product is my copy, and I own it! Completely!
Exactly. And Apple, being the owner of the copyrights, patents, and trademarks, gets to determine how, when, and to what extent it allows you access to them.
You can do whatever you want with the actual, physical plastic disc. You can make a hat out of the actual, physical box if you want.
Apple does not have the right to simultaneously claim to be selling me a copy, while also telling me that I'm not allowed to use it.
Yeah, they don't. They give you a copy contingent on your using it in accordance with the terms under which they're selling it. Your blustery argument invalidates the GPL, upgrade pricing, promotional pricing, site licensing, and all the other consumer-beneficial options otherwise available. That's not even getting into your gross incompetence with regard to what any actual caselaw says.
And if the only piece of paper you get with the damn thing is the receipt (from the store, not the manufacturer) then there's most certainly not any fucking license!
License != license agreement.
I said "real property." That means actual, physical, tangible objects,
No. Real property is land. Real property law deals with...wait for it...land.
You're just boring now. Your trolling wins no awards.
What I'm trying to say is that one party cannot unilaterally change the terms of the sale contract after the sale has been completed.
The sale contract is the conveyance of media and its licenses. You should review those licenses prior to purchase. The terms don't change. They were there to begin with. You have an opportunity to review before purchase, after purchase but before opening the box, after opening the box but before breaking the seal on the software package, and finally after breaking the seal but prior to using the software. It's unusual to have that many opportunities to back out.
Your claim is as stupid as saying that a Ford Focus is a "multi-million dollar product" because that much was put into designing the thing, and ignoring the fact that that cost is amortized over the number of units.
Except that in the case of OS X, the cost is not amortized over the number of units, but predominantly through the sale of Macs.
Just as with the Ford Focus, purchasing one copy does not entitle you to ownership over the entire Ford Focus product. You get ownership over the physical materials. After deducting physical costs and business overhead, you are left with an amount in a Ford Focus which exists in the form of royalties of IP--over $1000 per car, in fact.
The ratio of the parts is irrelevant. The retail cost contains materials (ownership transferred), business overhead (ownership not relevant), and license remuneration (ownership shared).
Second, you already own the software, ever since you handed over your money at the store.
You own exactly as much as was offered for sale and no more. At no point, short of a direct buyout of the entire product from Apple, do you ever attain complete ownership of OS X.
Prove it.
Not necessary. The only way to avoid it is a convoluted scheme of willful blindness.
My computer hardware didn't come with an EULA. My car didn't come with an EULA. Nothing else I own whatsoever came with an EULA! And you know what? Despite that, I'm sure quite a few of them embody somebody's patents.
They most certainly did come with a license. It need not be in the form of a EULA, but if they wanted to, they could.
Bottom line: if you and Apple are right in believing an explicit patent license is necessary, then every other manufacturer in the entire world is wrong.
No they're not. They do it, too. But nice try.
Apple's rights to contract freely end where my real property rights
I don't see what land has to do with it.
Rant rant rant. Too bad it's just plain, ignorant bullshit.
the fucking lawyers pull weird definitions out of their asses
It's not a weird definition. Label is a synonym for 'brand'.
that conflict with the plain language of the shit they write
It doesn't conflict, because the plain language has no clear meaning. There's a reason words have to be locked down to something specific, and it's to prevent this absurdity.
there's still the matter of the EULA being null and void because it violates the doctrine of first sale
No it doesn't. The entire unit can still be conveyed as a package. DFS challenges are on resale rights, and the case you're relying on made no judgments as to whether the license agreement was binding, but simply that the product purchased can be resold with the sum of its parts, the license being one of them.
is a contract of adhesion
That doesn't make it illegal per se.
does not provide equitable consideration to the owner (i.e., the buyer) of the software
Of course it does. Unless you think that $129 is a fair price for a multimillion dollar product, there's no failure of consideration, and you're the first person deranged enough even to challenge that. Certainly $129 isn't the price of the media.
cannot be proven to have been agreed to in the first place!
You clicked on 'I agree', manifesting assent. Even Wikipedia's dubious information on the subject concedes that point. You are bound to its enforceable terms.
Indeed, without the license, you could not have a legal right to use the software, because beyond the copyright, OS X contains patents belonging to Apple and to third parties, and without an express or compulsory license, you can't use the patents at all. It is unlawful for Apple to convey the copy without a license in the first place.
It should be irrelevant to the court, which has no business whatsoever in propping up Apple's -- or anyone else's -- business model!
They're not propping up a business model. They're propping up the essential, fundamental, and omnipresent right to contract freely.
If the other person is offering you a bad deal, you get to walk away from it. End of story.
However, if someone takes my software (say it's GPL licensed), makes modifications to it, and uses it in his business, he has no legal burden to release those changes back to me unless he distributes the software to others.
Nope. If you're going to tell Jobs to take his license and smoke it, I'm going to do the same to your GPL'd product. Fair is fair.
Once you've conveyed the copy, it's mine under your ridiculous and overbroad interpretation of DFS. And don't try to say it's not a "sale" because it'll just make you look like an idiot, since DFS doesn't actually require the exchange of money.
No it's not. Label is a term with a legal definition.
"An informative display of written or graphic matter, such as a logo, title, or similar marking, affixed to goods or services to identify their source. A label may be put on the packaging or container of a manufactured product, or on the packaging or surface of a natural substance." Black's, 8th.
The sticker does not magically transform it into an Apple-labeled machine, despite your best efforts, no matter how badly Slashdotters wish it were so.
If they lose the challenge, then Apple will change its business model, since the retail sale of OS X does not even account for 1% of their revenue, and it is the sale of Macs, with their full license, that pays for development. OS X packages are released for Macintosh computers at $129 as an upgrade. That will end if it is ever forced to permit reselling of upgrade packages for white box systems.
Of course, that will never happen, because the discounted upgrade price is a consumer benefit, and no court in its right mind would eliminate that source of low-cost purchasing.
We do not live in some platonic world where there is a master set of perfect rules for any game.
A distraction. Any game has a set of rules, which are differentiated from mere description of the implementation of those rules.
but that the board wasn't infringing barring virtually identical copying. Which we might see here in the case of the colors, being protectable, creative choices, but not for the grid (as you've agreed), or the functional special squares, IMO.
We have here identical copying. And there is zero authority indicating that the special squares are functional. Indeed, based upon the case law I've provided (and I'll not you've provided none), there is no indication of functionality here.
Well, we've gotten away from the copyrightability of the board, but sure, provided that we're talking about non-functional elements.
We haven't. You are the one presenting the hybridized analysis about functionality in a copyright context--but applying a definition of functionality that leaves no room for anything to fall outside of it. An arbitrary element on a gameboard may well be nonfunctional, even if it possesses utility.
The game of Scrabble can be played with a different arrangement of special squares. There simply can be no argument that the board needs to be reproduced in its entirety, including arrangements, colors, and functions, in order to execute the rules of the game.
But that doesn't answer whether or not the arrangement is functional or not! (The colors, as I've said before, seem protectable; Scrabulous was foolish to copy those) Hell, the plaintiff in that case even agreed that functional elements could be copied freely. It's just that the design turned out to be not all that functional.
Sure it does. The problem is that you are applying an unusual definition of both 'rules' and 'functional'--to wit, a feature of the layout maybe nonfunctional even if it has utility. From Midway: "this [...] does not mean that a design feature is nonfunctional only if it serves no utilitarian function. Rather, the circuit court recognized that a design feature, adopted for identification purposes, may be deemed nonfunctional even if it serves some useful purpose." The Scrabble board is distinctive, recognizable, arbitrary, and nonfunctional.
You can make no argument that competition would be burdened by protecting Hasbro's arbitrary arrangement.
_A_ version of scrabble can certainly be played with a different arrangement of special squares.
No. Scrabble itself can be played with a different arrangement. Mere description, for at least the fifth time now, does not constitute a rule. Reliance on league specification is misplaced. If I paint lines for hockey in orange and green for Irish pride, I can play hockey fully. I may not be able to offer my venue for a particular league, but this is immaterial to playing the game itself.
You are trying to transform copyrights and trademarks into patents, and I predict failure.
On the contrary, you are reducing the established standards for infringement here to meaningless levels, neglecting longstanding tests and definitions in favor of ones without any authority. Patents do not enter into the scenario at any point; no one is claiming ownership of a rule, and any patent reference is as misplaced as your reliance on integrating extraneous regulations imposed by leagues with the rules of the game itself.
Apparently they got sued back in the 50's for obvious reasons, but won their case.
The only suit I'm aware of is a trademark one, which is outside the scope of the gameboard entirely. (Scarabeo is Scrabble in Italian).
And besides, what you just stated is inconsistent. First, because if there's no requirement for special squares to be in specific locations, why would there be a requirement that the starting square be in the center?
Because there is a rule that the first word played must cross the center square.
which conflicts with your claim that the board can be of any size without effecting the rules.
Affect. Affecting the rules. I don't recall having said any size, merely that it need not be the same size, nor did I specify that the gravamen consisted of size of the board alone.
However, as for league rules, they're still rules. Rules are uncopyrightable wherever they happen to be found, and regardless of originality or creativity.
You keep parroting this line, resisting the obvious distinction. There's no question about copyright on the rules. League rules, however, are not rules of the game. If a league specifies that lines must be a specific color, then the league would have to be the party objecting, and would duly lose, not having a copyright.
Do you know of any attempts in other game cases? Maybe this is the first.
It's not. The Midway Pac-Man et al. case comes to mind. Trivial Pursuit also won a challenge. I believe Monopoly (also a Hasbro property) has also sued successfully.
You seem to be forgetting the Fruehauf linchpin, or else are not as familiar with this area of law as you claim to be: "The crucial consideration is whether protection against imitation of the design feature will hinder effective competition."
Because Scrabble can be played with a different arrangement of "special squares" without changing any of the rules of the game, there can be no credible argument that a different configuration will hinder competition at all.
Many of the biggest boons to open source software have come about not because of converts to the religion, but because of business seeking the best solution to a given problem. If paying $x to customize Ubuntu is cheaper than paying $x+y to support users without it, most businesses are going to customize Ubuntu for sufficiently large values of y.
Here's another: if you break the law, even if you consider it unjust, be prepared for society to disagree with you and be man enough (most women already are) to accept the consequences.
Eventually, your sacrifice may convince others to do the same, and maybe the law will change. Until then, if you're standing on principle, stand on it.
If you don't want to be caught, and you don't want to face the possibility of punishment, don't break the law. If it's really an unjust law and you really believe in that cause, some jail time or a fine is worth it--or your advocacy of breaking the law "for justice" is hollow and worthless.
The evidence seems to indicate otherwise. All the scrabble boards I've ever seen are uniform in layout.
Can you identify an unauthorized, commercially distributed board other than the one in the instant dispute?
So you're saying that whenever a rule is not universal, it's not a rule?
No, as I said quite clearly, mere description is not a rule.
Does that mean that it's not a rule, because you can play baseball without it? Of course not!
No, it means it's a variant of the rules. The designated hitter rule, of course, is not a simple description of a playing surface. Unlike baseball, where the absence of third base would make the rules inoperative, the location of "special tiles" does not change the rules. You continue to place tiles in a downward or rightward configuration to make valid words in the language of choice, starting from the center square. You continue to add the point values, plus perform any of the mathematical operations indicated by the underlying squares, to get your word score. You continue to be restricted to one "direction of travel" per turn, and any cardinally adjacent square must form a valid word to be a valid move.
There is no "rule" that says special squares must be at specific locations, except that there must be a center square. There is no "rule" that says you cannot play on a board of different dimensions.
You are applying an unusual and unsupported definition of 'rule', confusing it with the description of a particular implementation of those rules. This devalues the word 'rule' and oversteps the bounds of case law.
You need it to play the game according to the most common set of rules.
No, you don't.
There are a couple of different scrabbles, actually, depending on the choice of dictionary
Again, the rule is that the word be valid in the agreed-upon dictionary. The choice of dictionary is not a rule. External rules applied for league conformity are not rules of the game, they're rules of the league. They do not apply.
Scrabble apparently does too.
It does not. It contains an operational rule and a description of their gameplay surface. The description is not a rule of the game, but merely an indication of what a play can expect in that implementation. Monopoly-type games can be played according to the rules with different gamepieces, property names, arrangements, and colors. Clue-type games can be play according to the rules with completely different props, rooms, and characters.
No game board arising from a unique origination as a commercial property has ever, to my knowledge, been found to be not copyrightable. It's not a chess board. Scrabble must be played on a grid of tiles--anyone can use a grid of tiles. The arrangement, operation, and color of "special" tiles is not prescribed by a gameplay rule under any definition advanced by any court I've seen for a non-sequential game.
Like I said, it's a good attempt, but it's not supported by existing law. It also vacuously overbroadens the definition of 'rule' to the point of uselessness.
Slashdot Mirror
For certain values of 'wrong'. You (N.B.-any use of 'you' in this post is collective, not directed at parent) can't simply assume that something that is wrong refers to morality.
Breaking the law is wrong. Violating one's morals is wrong. One is a legal wrong, one is a moral wrong. I see people try to make this distinction periodically and insisting that it's not "wrong" to break a law. It absolutely is wrong; if it weren't, then you would not be violating anything. Just because something is morally sound doesn't mean it's not also wrong.
The basic problem is that morality is an individual matter, and people vary. People must have the moral integrity to obey and respect the law; society doesn't function otherwise. However, that does not mean that in some circumstances some other moral imperative won't clash. Moral conflicts are inevitable. Life is about choices--if you feel that the weight of the situation requires breaking a law, own it. Be prepared for society, which passes judgment on its members, to disagree and act accordingly. The social contract requires the application of law; disagreeing with the law is not an excuse to evade consequences.
Accept the consequences of the action you take like a responsible adult. It really is that simple. Sometimes morality is inconvenient. C'est la vie.
What is wrong with a "penalty" that is contracted for and spelled out as a penalty for early termination right there in the original agreement that you signed?
The issue isn't the penalty, but rather the provided rationale.
Arguing that the fee exists to recover their costs, and then having it shown that there are no costs to recover (or significantly lesser costs) for a large group of customers, but then proceeding to charge them anyway, makes the practice a violation of California consumer protection laws.
It's a different game when you're selling a consumer product sometimes. While you and your neighbor could enter into a contract asserting a $1000 penalty for failure to fully perform, when the issue is an ongoing service arrangement, you can't charge an onerous fee for the simple reason that you're no longer generating a profit on a customer.
A term contract provides the benefit of comparatively lower rates and/or additional services. The discount exchanges periodic profit for an indefinite period for a projected total profit over a definite period.
The damage sustained to the service provider is loss of that projected profit, and the customer stands to be unjustly enriched based on being freed of the unfulfilled obligations. In California, though, the service provider can't punish you for the simple choice to leave.
What is next? A court reviewing a software license agreement that has a large penalty clause in it?
Probably not, because you're describing something that is almost certainly a merchant-merchant transaction. Even if not, penalty clauses for performance milestones are acceptable, but only to the extent that they are agreed to as liquidated damages. If you have recouped your losses, taking money for spite from consumers is frowned upon--but private parties are certainly welcome to contract for any weird thing they like, so long as it's not illegal.
The problem is twofold. One, the ETF is charged indiscriminately, regardless of the value of the subsidy. This means that it is a deterrent from switching carriers for those who owe no subsidy. Two, Sprint does not prorate its ETF (or did not, as of this lawsuit) like e.g., AT&T does.
Addressing both of these concerns with a subsidy-recovery fee would be perfectly enforceable. The summary's implication that this may start a domino effect is a relatively obtuse statement.
Penalties for breaking contracts are upheld daily by law if disclosed. Penalties that are in no small part cost recovery, doubly so. However, it's been clear for many years that the cellular companies don't actually care about just covering their losses--otherwise they'd be able to tell you at any given point what your prorata share of the original hardware subsidy is. You as a consumer should also have the the right to pay the remaining subsidy amount plus a nominal penalty for processing ($~25), and then be placed on a month-to-month plan or walk away.
Precisely why the government should not bear the burden of setting up such a system, and, given the lack of incentive for the market to implement it on its own, why it will never happen.
The first operational connection would be [last name] and any of the search terms.
pre/2 always refers to the previous term to the left, so it would then prepare [first name] within 2 of [last name]. The addition of the 'and' is a result of the fact that this secondary operation may fail if there aren't two words before the last name. It is largely superfluous, but there's a possibility that there is a quirk in Lexis retrieval--some queries have to include what seems like an unnecessary connector because it does affect the results it retrieves. We have a few such queries that we use, particularly due to lack of uniformity in referring to technologies and computer terminology.
pre/2 is indeed processed first, but if you don't have an argument in the format 'x pre/2 y', then the syntax fails. pre/2 certainly doesn't move an arbitrary search term into that position. 'Clinton' within 7 of 'spotted owl' would be the first pull, and then 'Bill' within two words preceding 'Clinton' would be the second.
Those who make money from selling DRM encumbered products should be taxed on them
They already are.
If companies want to shaft their customers like this, they should get no help from the government.
They don't need help from the government. The consumers are quite willing to accept less to save (less than) a buck. It's why Walmart is so successful.
Government help enforcing copyrights and such should be supplied on the basis that they give their customers a fair deal.
It is a fair deal. It's not a good deal for certain groups of people. There's a difference.
Municipal libraries are horribly underfunded as-is, and the Library of Congress archives works of significance, but does not retain all works submitted.
The cost of maintaining such a system, and its existence itself, falls outside of LoC's mandate and budget. It would be simultaneously dismissed by different groups as frivolous spending, an unnecessary archive of insignificant works, an extension of government control (by those conspiracy theorists who believe the government would withhold certain works), and a system perpetuating something they hate (by those who refuse to recognize eminently valid IP). A small, but powerful, segment of Big Business would also hate the idea, since there is no legal requirement that they prepare a DRM-free version. They lose the ability to enforce their exclusive rights after time, but that's not the same as forcing them to hand over the keys.
Taxpayers also have a tendency to kill things that are reasonable as a form of protest against the things they don't like paying for. Unfortunately, any given expenditure is going to have detractors, and so this is a major source of political gridlock and it tends to kill the relatively small potatoes. It's also the first target for budget cuts (just like the city library is one of the first services cut).
It is, for all intents and purposes, an idea too reasonable to be palatable. Such a requirement would require an Act of Congress and the president, without being eviscerated or overextended in the handling of that particular football. It also has questionable return on investment potential, since most of the content, software included, is of little to no value in the future, hence its commoditization in the present, so justifying its existence would mainly be for placation of a fraction of the anti-DRM crowd.
On the contrary, the query turns up a number of results on many of the attorneys who would be seeking such a position. Having just tried it with one such applicant I happen to know, I got six hits. Trying with a different person, a name from EOUS yields 37 results.
Moreover, if the query turned up little, it wouldn't be the one she uses to weed out these candidates.
but the point is that the query brings back "#search term - last name# within 7 of #search term#"
The results of the query beg to differ. I ran two out of curiosity, but will not be running more. It seems to me that you're misunderstanding the /pre expression.
So essentially you would get a list of citations where the last name of the candidate would follow one of the search terms by one or two words and also fell within 7 words of any of the search terms. Sounds like a lot of records.
That's the point. Cast a wide net, then throw out the dolphins.
It's pretty easy to see from the results the ones that aren't "sexy" and move on to the next one. This is pretty much SOP for Lexis--you don't want to miss something, so you put up with extra results. Further, since it's based on a transactional model for charges, you pay for each query, so it helps to get as much as possible in any given results list, since you can sort through it without incurring additional charges.
I don't have to put copyright notices on my works nor register them with some central governing agency.
But if you want to sell DRM'd copies, you should supply a non-DRM'd copy to ensure that once the copyright expires, there is another version available. This has the benefit of ensuring a richer public domain (because many works simply disappear before the end of copyright).
However, the parent's suggestion is not without problems. First and foremost, where does the DRM-free copy go? The government isn't (and shouldn't) pay for a database of the files. You can't mandate that a business stay in operation. What would be the incentive for private industry to store files without sharing them for decades? Is most of the stuff we buy even worth anything when copyright expires?
On the last point, most of what is produced vanishes because it doesn't matter. It has no real significance, no staying power, and a century from now, nobody will even care about it. Thus, the inability to access DRM'd files is a non-issue for most of the consumer product. Products with the enduring popularity or cultural significance to survive copyright will almost certainly be maintained from the original in a useful manner (whereas a WMA from 2008 might be useless, low quality trash in 2100). Very little is available solely in DRM-wrapped formats; it's a consumer option for low price disposables. Contrary to the Slashdot conspiracy, no media industry is hoping for a pay-for-play setup being the only option. It might be the wet dream of a few greedy people, but as someone who works daily with content creators seeking to protect their interests and sell their work, that's the exception, not the rule.
Once the copyright expires, it doesn't matter whether you acquired it as a DRM'd file, a DRM-free file, or on CD. You can just delete the DRM'd file and acquire a then-modern-format, high quality copy wherever you like.
Was their agreement with you worded such that you were right to assume that the song would be available to use at your discretion (i.e. without dependance on their DRM servers), or did they leave enough loopholes in to make it known that the song will only work in the presence of their DRM servers, and that those servers were not guaranteed to work past a certain point?
This is a little backwards. Unless they made an explicit guarantee about future availability and compatibility, future prospects are just that: prospective. Supposition. A gamble. If technology, society, or any other element changes, rendering an investment worthless, you just lost. It's not any different anywhere else.
Just read the Forbes article. The money comes from family, business, or investment--unrelated to prior involvement in politics. Few people get rich while they're politicians--most are rich first; many get rich after retiring (consulting jobs, plush board appointments, the lecture circuit). The ones that get rich while in office attract attention, and, as we see here, indictments.
But were Scrabulous to do that, they could not effectively compete with Hasbro, because the overwhelming majority of the players of that game have a preferred arrangement, namely Hasbro's.
No. That's not what effective competition means, even if you could point to any evidence of such a preference. I know of no one who plays Scrabble because of the arrangement of the board and who would refuse to play a variant with a different arrangement, and I know of no court that would receive such an assertion without a fit of laughter. Effective competition does not mean equal popularity. You don't seriously mean to imply that AMD products are not effective competition for Intel products because Intel is substantially more popular, do you? If Hasbro is engaging in price discrimination, aggressive distribution contracts, or vendor lock-in to prevent Scrabble competitors, that's one thing. A nonfunctional layout simply does not hinder competition. You must either be completely out of your element.
Again, zero favorable precedent. No gameboard copyright has ever been judged essential for fair competition.
Competition is hindered if no one else can make the one board arrangement that people apparently want to play.
I've seen nothing to suggest that Scrabble's popularity is based on its board arrangement. Equal popularity is not guaranteed to competitors.
But that is yet another factual issue where I think we'll have to agree to disagree and wait for it to be determined by a jury.
It's not a factual issue. The jury doesn't decide what is or is not functional.
Not just the league; also the inventor and manufacturer.
The inventor and manufacturer prescribe no such rule. Period. Mere description is not a rule.
If the arrangement wasn't important for play, why has it never changed?
Why would Hasbro change it? It hasn't changed because there hasn't been viable, lawful competition. The only other products have been short-lived or otherwise uninfluential reproductions, not competitors.
Many games have more than one. Poker and solitaire immediately spring to mind.
Poker and solitaire are families of games. Any given game must have a single set of rules, or it cannot be played by more than one player.
In the Pac-Man case, the dots were functional as a means of keeping score and indicating progress toward completion of the level.
In the Pac-Man case, the dots were unprotectable in and of themselves. You've missed the point while managing to come out on the opposite side of the issue here.
The idea/expression dichotomy, the merger doctrine, the scenes a faire doctrine, and the utility doctrine are all deeply concerned with not allowing a copyright holder to monopolize functionality.
Precisely. But as every case on the books has elaborated for you, the layout of squares is not functional here. End of story. You have provided no precedent--none, whatsoever--in the face of multiple citations against.
But again, 'the' rules are all the rules. There are no platonic rules. You cannot point at a subset of all the possible rules for a game and say that those are 'the' rules, as you have been doing. Some rules may be more popular than others, some rules may be endorsed by different players, but they're all equally valid rules in the end.
No. You're ignoring a mountain of case law.
Descriptions that are prescribed for uniformity in a league are not rules. Never mind the fact that league rules fall entirely outside the scope of the current discussion--just consider that any arbitrary design element could be made into a "rule" by introducing a version that specified it to be so. This is clearly not the case.
When you have a single implementation in question, as we do here, and when that implementation contains both rules and description, as we have here, the description does not become a rule simply because some unrelated third party might require it for a private league. To do so would eviscerate the entire meaning of the rule-description distinction, not to mention obviate the need for any functionality inquiry.
"Liar!"
Refuting them is easy. But that wouldn't ever make you shut up. For example, conflating license and license agreement makes your entire previous post worthless.
I don't give a shit what the courts have said; I care about what the courts should say based on the fundamental principles of property, copyright, and common sense!
For someone who doesn't even know what real property means and comes up with a disingenuous heap of dung in a failed attempt to back out of it, this doesn't surprise me one bit.
There's little point in continuing with someone so far detached from reality and rationality.
The media does not require any "license" to use
The media isn't the issue.
First of all, why should I review the terms when they don't actually matter anyway (as per my previous sentence)?
Because no court has ever agreed with your statement. There has never been a ruling that EULAs are categorically unenforceable.
Second, the only situation where I could reasonably be expected to review the terms is if the damn cashier handed them to me and refused to take my money
The cashier doesn't care. They're selling you a box. What it contains is immaterial to a merchant.
And it's exactly the same with the software: yes, Apple owns the copyrights and patents and trademarks, but those are not the product! The product is my copy, and I own it! Completely!
Exactly. And Apple, being the owner of the copyrights, patents, and trademarks, gets to determine how, when, and to what extent it allows you access to them.
You can do whatever you want with the actual, physical plastic disc. You can make a hat out of the actual, physical box if you want.
Apple does not have the right to simultaneously claim to be selling me a copy, while also telling me that I'm not allowed to use it.
Yeah, they don't. They give you a copy contingent on your using it in accordance with the terms under which they're selling it. Your blustery argument invalidates the GPL, upgrade pricing, promotional pricing, site licensing, and all the other consumer-beneficial options otherwise available. That's not even getting into your gross incompetence with regard to what any actual caselaw says.
And if the only piece of paper you get with the damn thing is the receipt (from the store, not the manufacturer) then there's most certainly not any fucking license!
License != license agreement.
I said "real property." That means actual, physical, tangible objects,
No. Real property is land. Real property law deals with...wait for it...land.
You're just boring now. Your trolling wins no awards.
What I'm trying to say is that one party cannot unilaterally change the terms of the sale contract after the sale has been completed.
The sale contract is the conveyance of media and its licenses. You should review those licenses prior to purchase. The terms don't change. They were there to begin with. You have an opportunity to review before purchase, after purchase but before opening the box, after opening the box but before breaking the seal on the software package, and finally after breaking the seal but prior to using the software. It's unusual to have that many opportunities to back out.
Your claim is as stupid as saying that a Ford Focus is a "multi-million dollar product" because that much was put into designing the thing, and ignoring the fact that that cost is amortized over the number of units.
Except that in the case of OS X, the cost is not amortized over the number of units, but predominantly through the sale of Macs.
Just as with the Ford Focus, purchasing one copy does not entitle you to ownership over the entire Ford Focus product. You get ownership over the physical materials. After deducting physical costs and business overhead, you are left with an amount in a Ford Focus which exists in the form of royalties of IP--over $1000 per car, in fact.
The ratio of the parts is irrelevant. The retail cost contains materials (ownership transferred), business overhead (ownership not relevant), and license remuneration (ownership shared).
Second, you already own the software, ever since you handed over your money at the store.
You own exactly as much as was offered for sale and no more. At no point, short of a direct buyout of the entire product from Apple, do you ever attain complete ownership of OS X.
Prove it.
Not necessary. The only way to avoid it is a convoluted scheme of willful blindness.
My computer hardware didn't come with an EULA. My car didn't come with an EULA. Nothing else I own whatsoever came with an EULA! And you know what? Despite that, I'm sure quite a few of them embody somebody's patents.
They most certainly did come with a license. It need not be in the form of a EULA, but if they wanted to, they could.
Bottom line: if you and Apple are right in believing an explicit patent license is necessary, then every other manufacturer in the entire world is wrong.
No they're not. They do it, too. But nice try.
Apple's rights to contract freely end where my real property rights
I don't see what land has to do with it.
Rant rant rant. Too bad it's just plain, ignorant bullshit.
the fucking lawyers pull weird definitions out of their asses
It's not a weird definition. Label is a synonym for 'brand'.
that conflict with the plain language of the shit they write
It doesn't conflict, because the plain language has no clear meaning. There's a reason words have to be locked down to something specific, and it's to prevent this absurdity.
there's still the matter of the EULA being null and void because it violates the doctrine of first sale
No it doesn't. The entire unit can still be conveyed as a package. DFS challenges are on resale rights, and the case you're relying on made no judgments as to whether the license agreement was binding, but simply that the product purchased can be resold with the sum of its parts, the license being one of them.
is a contract of adhesion
That doesn't make it illegal per se.
does not provide equitable consideration to the owner (i.e., the buyer) of the software
Of course it does. Unless you think that $129 is a fair price for a multimillion dollar product, there's no failure of consideration, and you're the first person deranged enough even to challenge that. Certainly $129 isn't the price of the media.
cannot be proven to have been agreed to in the first place!
You clicked on 'I agree', manifesting assent. Even Wikipedia's dubious information on the subject concedes that point. You are bound to its enforceable terms.
Indeed, without the license, you could not have a legal right to use the software, because beyond the copyright, OS X contains patents belonging to Apple and to third parties, and without an express or compulsory license, you can't use the patents at all. It is unlawful for Apple to convey the copy without a license in the first place.
It should be irrelevant to the court, which has no business whatsoever in propping up Apple's -- or anyone else's -- business model!
They're not propping up a business model. They're propping up the essential, fundamental, and omnipresent right to contract freely.
If the other person is offering you a bad deal, you get to walk away from it. End of story.
However, if someone takes my software (say it's GPL licensed), makes modifications to it, and uses it in his business, he has no legal burden to release those changes back to me unless he distributes the software to others.
Nope. If you're going to tell Jobs to take his license and smoke it, I'm going to do the same to your GPL'd product. Fair is fair.
Once you've conveyed the copy, it's mine under your ridiculous and overbroad interpretation of DFS. And don't try to say it's not a "sale" because it'll just make you look like an idiot, since DFS doesn't actually require the exchange of money.
No it's not. Label is a term with a legal definition.
"An informative display of written or graphic matter, such as a logo, title, or similar marking, affixed to goods or services to identify their source. A label may be put on the packaging or container of a manufactured product, or on the packaging or surface of a natural substance." Black's, 8th.
The sticker does not magically transform it into an Apple-labeled machine, despite your best efforts, no matter how badly Slashdotters wish it were so.
If they lose the challenge, then Apple will change its business model, since the retail sale of OS X does not even account for 1% of their revenue, and it is the sale of Macs, with their full license, that pays for development. OS X packages are released for Macintosh computers at $129 as an upgrade. That will end if it is ever forced to permit reselling of upgrade packages for white box systems.
Of course, that will never happen, because the discounted upgrade price is a consumer benefit, and no court in its right mind would eliminate that source of low-cost purchasing.
We do not live in some platonic world where there is a master set of perfect rules for any game.
A distraction. Any game has a set of rules, which are differentiated from mere description of the implementation of those rules.
but that the board wasn't infringing barring virtually identical copying. Which we might see here in the case of the colors, being protectable, creative choices, but not for the grid (as you've agreed), or the functional special squares, IMO.
We have here identical copying. And there is zero authority indicating that the special squares are functional. Indeed, based upon the case law I've provided (and I'll not you've provided none), there is no indication of functionality here.
Well, we've gotten away from the copyrightability of the board, but sure, provided that we're talking about non-functional elements.
We haven't. You are the one presenting the hybridized analysis about functionality in a copyright context--but applying a definition of functionality that leaves no room for anything to fall outside of it. An arbitrary element on a gameboard may well be nonfunctional, even if it possesses utility.
The game of Scrabble can be played with a different arrangement of special squares. There simply can be no argument that the board needs to be reproduced in its entirety, including arrangements, colors, and functions, in order to execute the rules of the game.
But that doesn't answer whether or not the arrangement is functional or not! (The colors, as I've said before, seem protectable; Scrabulous was foolish to copy those) Hell, the plaintiff in that case even agreed that functional elements could be copied freely. It's just that the design turned out to be not all that functional.
Sure it does. The problem is that you are applying an unusual definition of both 'rules' and 'functional'--to wit, a feature of the layout maybe nonfunctional even if it has utility. From Midway: "this [...] does not mean that a design feature is nonfunctional only if it serves no utilitarian function. Rather, the circuit court recognized that a design feature, adopted for identification purposes, may be deemed nonfunctional even if it serves some useful purpose." The Scrabble board is distinctive, recognizable, arbitrary, and nonfunctional.
You can make no argument that competition would be burdened by protecting Hasbro's arbitrary arrangement.
_A_ version of scrabble can certainly be played with a different arrangement of special squares.
No. Scrabble itself can be played with a different arrangement. Mere description, for at least the fifth time now, does not constitute a rule. Reliance on league specification is misplaced. If I paint lines for hockey in orange and green for Irish pride, I can play hockey fully. I may not be able to offer my venue for a particular league, but this is immaterial to playing the game itself.
You are trying to transform copyrights and trademarks into patents, and I predict failure.
On the contrary, you are reducing the established standards for infringement here to meaningless levels, neglecting longstanding tests and definitions in favor of ones without any authority. Patents do not enter into the scenario at any point; no one is claiming ownership of a rule, and any patent reference is as misplaced as your reliance on integrating extraneous regulations imposed by leagues with the rules of the game itself.
Apparently they got sued back in the 50's for obvious reasons, but won their case.
The only suit I'm aware of is a trademark one, which is outside the scope of the gameboard entirely. (Scarabeo is Scrabble in Italian).
And besides, what you just stated is inconsistent. First, because if there's no requirement for special squares to be in specific locations, why would there be a requirement that the starting square be in the center?
Because there is a rule that the first word played must cross the center square.
which conflicts with your claim that the board can be of any size without effecting the rules.
Affect. Affecting the rules. I don't recall having said any size, merely that it need not be the same size, nor did I specify that the gravamen consisted of size of the board alone.
However, as for league rules, they're still rules. Rules are uncopyrightable wherever they happen to be found, and regardless of originality or creativity.
You keep parroting this line, resisting the obvious distinction. There's no question about copyright on the rules. League rules, however, are not rules of the game . If a league specifies that lines must be a specific color, then the league would have to be the party objecting, and would duly lose, not having a copyright.
Do you know of any attempts in other game cases? Maybe this is the first.
It's not. The Midway Pac-Man et al. case comes to mind. Trivial Pursuit also won a challenge. I believe Monopoly (also a Hasbro property) has also sued successfully.
You seem to be forgetting the Fruehauf linchpin, or else are not as familiar with this area of law as you claim to be: "The crucial consideration is whether protection against imitation of the design feature will hinder effective competition."
Because Scrabble can be played with a different arrangement of "special squares" without changing any of the rules of the game, there can be no credible argument that a different configuration will hinder competition at all.
Are they mutually exclusive?
Many of the biggest boons to open source software have come about not because of converts to the religion, but because of business seeking the best solution to a given problem. If paying $x to customize Ubuntu is cheaper than paying $x+y to support users without it, most businesses are going to customize Ubuntu for sufficiently large values of y.
Win-win.
Here's another: if you break the law, even if you consider it unjust, be prepared for society to disagree with you and be man enough (most women already are) to accept the consequences.
Eventually, your sacrifice may convince others to do the same, and maybe the law will change. Until then, if you're standing on principle, stand on it.
If you don't want to be caught, and you don't want to face the possibility of punishment, don't break the law. If it's really an unjust law and you really believe in that cause, some jail time or a fine is worth it--or your advocacy of breaking the law "for justice" is hollow and worthless.
The evidence seems to indicate otherwise. All the scrabble boards I've ever seen are uniform in layout.
Can you identify an unauthorized, commercially distributed board other than the one in the instant dispute?
So you're saying that whenever a rule is not universal, it's not a rule?
No, as I said quite clearly, mere description is not a rule.
Does that mean that it's not a rule, because you can play baseball without it? Of course not!
No, it means it's a variant of the rules. The designated hitter rule, of course, is not a simple description of a playing surface. Unlike baseball, where the absence of third base would make the rules inoperative, the location of "special tiles" does not change the rules. You continue to place tiles in a downward or rightward configuration to make valid words in the language of choice, starting from the center square. You continue to add the point values, plus perform any of the mathematical operations indicated by the underlying squares, to get your word score. You continue to be restricted to one "direction of travel" per turn, and any cardinally adjacent square must form a valid word to be a valid move.
There is no "rule" that says special squares must be at specific locations, except that there must be a center square. There is no "rule" that says you cannot play on a board of different dimensions.
You are applying an unusual and unsupported definition of 'rule', confusing it with the description of a particular implementation of those rules. This devalues the word 'rule' and oversteps the bounds of case law.
You need it to play the game according to the most common set of rules.
No, you don't.
There are a couple of different scrabbles, actually, depending on the choice of dictionary
Again, the rule is that the word be valid in the agreed-upon dictionary. The choice of dictionary is not a rule. External rules applied for league conformity are not rules of the game, they're rules of the league. They do not apply.
Scrabble apparently does too.
It does not. It contains an operational rule and a description of their gameplay surface. The description is not a rule of the game, but merely an indication of what a play can expect in that implementation. Monopoly-type games can be played according to the rules with different gamepieces, property names, arrangements, and colors. Clue-type games can be play according to the rules with completely different props, rooms, and characters.
No game board arising from a unique origination as a commercial property has ever, to my knowledge, been found to be not copyrightable. It's not a chess board. Scrabble must be played on a grid of tiles--anyone can use a grid of tiles. The arrangement, operation, and color of "special" tiles is not prescribed by a gameplay rule under any definition advanced by any court I've seen for a non-sequential game.
Like I said, it's a good attempt, but it's not supported by existing law. It also vacuously overbroadens the definition of 'rule' to the point of uselessness.