Certainly some games have rules that specify the arrangement of elements on the playing surface.
Scrabble not being one of them, it does not matter.
hat the board is the expression of the rule, rather than it being printed in black and white on the piece of paper that comes in the box, is inconsequential.
I have never seen this expressed in any authority, ever. If the game's rules can be implemented on a board of a different configuration, the board is not a rule.
How so? Functionality will kill trade dress stone dead.
Arrangement of squares is not functional on any reading of the term I've ever encountered.
I'll take that bet. Prisons are full of wrongly-convicted people who are just awful, and often enough, criminals, but nevertheless innocent of the particular crime they were accused of.
That was never the context. If, in the commission of an unlawful act, they engaged in acts of moral turpitude or otherwise presented themselves unfavorably, that is something considered. No one was ever speaking of their broader history or anything outside the context of the actions in question.
First, "distinctive and arbitrary" are irrelevant terms for copyright
I wasn't referring to grounds for copyright. I was referring to characteristics of the work. Distinctive and arbitrary is encapsulated by originality and creativity, but originality and creativity can produce a functional necessity.
Hasbro's scrabble is just the ne plus ultra of scrabble.
No. There is no other Scrabble. You are, for the nth time, begging the question.
Putting the ball in their court is hardly the same as making their case impossible.
Putting the ball in their court with nothing but negative citing authority to their position is what makes their case improbable. Nothing is impossible.
Sadly, human nature is often at odds with justice. Look at all the procedural and evidentiary safeguards we've set up over the years, and we still have problems.
Agreed, but in this case, the totality of the evidence is relevant. Opinions regularly reflect this practice and do make inferences as to intent, which inform the opinions. It's both natural and expected, just as mitigating factors in the criminal law.
Again, we're back to the colors, which Scrabulous was foolish to copy,
No. We're back to the copyrighted gameboard, for which you have provided no authority to invalidate their copyright. Since it is clear you cannot disassociate your analysis from this point, it would be prudent to simply end here.
Both case law and general presumption with creative works supports a copyrighted gameboard. Unless and until it is demonstrated that the gameboard is the subject of an improper copyright, none of your analysis with respect to that point applies. You make an interesting point, but operate from a nonstandard definition of 'rules'. The rules of Quake do not depend on the level maps. The rules of golf do not depend on a particular course. Mere descriptions are not rules. Reproduction of game surfaces is infringement, as has been established.
But I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of dice manufactured and sold are extremely plain and interchangeable.
This seems to have drifted from the point: dice are not marketed by trademark. I doubt if anyone could identify for you a single manufacturer of dice without research.
Only non-functional parts of games, like the art on the box, are copyrightable.
The board is non-functional. If I make my own custom board with a different arrangement of "special" squares, the rules of the game can still be obeyed fully.
Works and inventions are most valuable to the public when they are free for all to use.
This is only tangentially related to your argument, and not at all relevant to whether Hasbro should be able to protect its distinctive implementation and name. There's no copyright on the rules or type of modeling; anyone is free to use a Scrabble board--but you're not talking about use, or even personal reproduction. You're talking about commercial reproduction and distribution, not making it available for all.
There is always a need to have free access to copyrighted materials, which is why we have the copyrights expire!
You're arguing out of context. There is never a need for material under copyright. While a patent may prevent an important product from reaching its greatest potential if no one can come up with an alternate method, works under copyright are always distinctive and arbitrary. There is never a need for a painting to be available to all; this should appear eminently obvious, since most work is never reproduced and never seen by society as a whole. A compelling desire, and a fair price for statutory protection, absolutely. A need, absolutely not.
Which are just another set of rules. No rules, no matter how popular or unpopular, no matter how creative or uninspired, how distinctive or generic, are ever, ever, ever copyrightable.
No such assertion. Tournament specifications are over and above the rules of the game. You need not have red and blue lines to play hockey, but you may well need them to play in a given league. This does not make the color functional to the game of hockey itself.
That's decidedly unjust. I suppose you would be willing to condemn the most despicable man alive, regardless of his actual innocence?
An innocent man cannot be despicable. I would be more lenient on a first-time offender with a minor possession charge than I would on a repeat offender with priors. I would likewise be more apt to presume an isolated omission of paperwork for construction permits was not fraudulent as opposed to someone with a history of poor record-keeping and a number of consumer complaints, even if those complaints never resulted in a judgment.
It is part of the context of a case, and any lawyer worth his salt will paint a picture. The first and most important obstacle before the bench or a jury is getting them to like you. You are far more likely to err on the side of an upstanding citizen when faced with equipoise. It's simple human nature. Is it copying? Yes. Is it infringing? Absolutely. Is there any reason to suspect they were doing anything other than trying to infringe and get away with it? No. De minimis, it's just not.
Scrabulous' best hope is outside the law: they have to look like they're not just an opportunistic ripoff and might argue an untapped market, doing it better and faster than Hasbro, and competing fairly.
Pretty standard stuff (though their description of the game strikes me as bolstering my the-board-is-functional argument).
It does not, as it is a synergistic description of the features of Scrabble(r), not scrabble-type word tile/crossword games. In fact, if you did read the complaint you see that the gameboard is, in fact,
Not all of the footage shot makes it into the finished film; this includes alternate angles, scenes shot but never finished, and deleted scenes cut after post-production...and probably other stuff. Even if it is included, it is sometimes composited from multiple source shots, which each need to be stored on disk, on top of the finished shot.
Right, that's why it's so impossible to find a chess set these days; with the game being generic and all, no one wants to be in that market.
On the contrary, generic games benefit from many suppliers, but only to the extent that there is variation: competition on design, variations (e.g, themed pieces, non-standard boards), materials used, and size of set.
So long as a work is copyrighted, the copyright holder will use his monopoly to charge above-market-value prices for the work.
A specious argument, considering both version are free of charge. I agree with the notion, but not its application to the instant dispute.
Or are you upset that Bayer faces competition on the aspirin front?
Bayer produces a functional product and deals in patents. Don't conflate the analysis. Works under copyright are by their nature original and not necessary for the functional progress of science and technology. There is frankly never a need to have free access to copyrighted material. Anyone can produce a non-copyrighted form of the same thing with some effort and ingenuity.
If I try to play in tournament scrabble with a bag full of blank tiles, and I claim that they are all worth 10 points each, and the board I bring along has a dozen quadruple word score squares, I bet they're going to say that my set is against the rules.
They would be against the tournament rules, which functions as a league, would be enforcing specific restrictions for players to compete. Again, an off-point example. You could sit down with a bag of blank tiles valued at ten points and play a word-tile game with them. It wouldn't be that much fun, but that's no matter.
It can be if virtually nothing about the game board is copyrightable to begin with.
Again, you're simply begging the question with your analysis. I agree with the statement that only that which is copyrightable is protected, but I do not agree that the layout of the board is outside this scope. Gameboards, and their digital level map equivalents, are regularly the subject of copyright, and I have never seen a case rejecting that.
I don't think that a de minimis argument will work well, though it has a chance, and it's what they'll have to do.
Agreed.
The other parts may be totally reproduced without a by-your-leave, and we cannot allow that lawful copying to prejudice us against Scrabulous.
Of course we can. Lawful, but clearly opportunistic and blatant, reproduction naturally colors the view and provides a rationale for the unlawful reproduction. It is the temperance of justice--a party who makes an effort to make a reasonable, restrained use of a protected property should be entitled to the benefit of the doubt. A party fully reproducing and gambling on a win is not entitled to such benefit.
No, it's not, as the Shredded Wheat case teaches us:
Kellogg is not on point for this matter. Your referenced section speaks to a competitor's ability to use a generic mark, not to whether the mark was generic to begin with. Timeliness of competition does not matter once the mark is established as generic, just as Kellogg holds.
A mark is generic if it is so perceived by the public
The mark here refers to a specific game, marketed by a specific company. It is not generic. 'Scrabble' does not refer to crossword games generally (as kleenex to tissues); it refers to Scrabble.
If the game is not proprietary, however, would you agree that people are therefore referring to the game itself, rather than the version of the game sold by Hasbro as distinguished from identical versions of the game from other sources?
I don't accept the premise. When people refer to Scrabble, they are referring to the Hasbro property.
Au contraire. In order to perfectly replicate the gameplay, the layout and scoring system must be copied. Consider: if you wrote down the moves of the game, as is done in chess, and replayed that game on two boards, one with Hasbro's layout and scoring system, and another one which was different, the outcome of the two games would be different.
Precisely the point! Scrabble is not a generic game like Chess. It requires specific strategy. Quake and Doom are quite similar games with essentially identical gameplay. The strategies used in the two games overlap, but are not interchangeable. If Doom were to introduce the same level maps, same characters, and same point scores, it too would be infringing.
If these things changed, then players would want to adopt different play strategies (e.g. what if the triple word scores were closer together, that you might be able to get two fresh ones on a single play?) Clearly, the gameplay is greatly effected by these things.
So? It's supposed to affect strategy. Almost all games have variations offered by competitors--in fact, that's what drives the market. If everyone offered the same game, there'd be little value in purchasing more than one. The same rules on a different board would be a novel variant, making use of non-copyrighted gameplay in order to produce a lawful, competing product.
In fact, it is a goal of copyright law: why else would we put things into the public domain?
To foster progress and innovation, not fund a lazy freerider.
Do you remember the outcome of Feist?: Sweat of the brow doesn't matter one whit.
A gross mischaracterization.
The underlying rules, wherever, and however they might happen to be expressed, are uncopyrightable.
The rules do not extend to the board, the distribution of pieces, or the values of the scoring.
Still, that's a rule of the league. They can't own that rule.
No such assertion.
Any rule, from any source, is fair game, unless there's a patent involved.
No such assertion. The gameboard is not a rule; there is no league. Game boards are frequently copyrighted for the exact purpose of making a novel, competing game. You can play murder mystery games with characters, props, and a gameboard that is not Clue, but obeys the same rules. Simply reproducing Clue by calling it 'Hint' is contrary to the spirit and function of the law
The game plays differently with fewer E's, differently scoring B's, and a different number of triple word score squares.
No, gameplay is exactly the same. You are conflating strategy and outcome with gameplay.
As the court observed in Incredible Technologies, Inc. v. Virtual Technologies, Inc.:
I think holding a trademark on an English word for 60 years is really pushing it.
A trademark needs to last as long as the product lasts; otherwise, there is no value to it. If people keep buying Ford-branded cars, because Ford has built a reputation (presumably for quality, so pretend I didn't randomly choose 'Ford' for this purpose) as a trusted source in the minds and hearts of the people, Ford needs to defend that trademark. Unless you're saying that companies should change their names and start over every 50 years, then I don't think you've really followed that thought to fruition.
I really don't think monopolies should be held for that long, especially since the word existed before the game did.
Whether the word existed or not (or whether it's a word at all) is not relevant. They are not occupying the word. They are occupying the association of a symbol with their identity, which is the most efficient, intelligible way for this type of market system to operate.
Sure, corporation 3714115 could sell you product 6787383a-98E3, but that's not exactly conducive to building yourself up as a merchant or getting people to talk about your products.
Trademarks don't protect the marked good or service.
No, they protect origins. Scrabulous isn't saying "play our scrabble game"--they're intentionally exploiting the Scrabble brand to attract customers. That's a very different process than the consumers' widespread use genericizing one vendor's mark.
It doesn't matter whether or not there is competition, what matters is whether customers find the mark distinctive or not.
The mark is ipso facto distinctive if there are no competing marks. Scrabulous isn't a competitor, it's a reproducer. I think you are getting bogged down by issues not in play. Let's set it apart.
Trademark Scrabble is a registered trademark of Hasbro. It has not been genericized, because when people refer to Scrabble, they are not referring to word-tile games, they are referring to Scrabble, one particular, proprietary variant. Whether Scrabulous is sufficiently similar depends on how good Hasbro's counsel is and how tight their DuPont analysis is. A case can be made either way.
Copyright The Scrabble board layout and scoring system are again, arbitrary and proprietary. There is no legitimate need to reproduce the particulars of the Scrabble board in order to replicate the game play. Scrabble is not a social, collaborative work that has been packaged in board form. It is a particular, proprietary entertainment property based on a concept ripe for competition, innovation, and improvement. The only conceivable need for an exact reproduction of scoring values, board layout, colors, letter distribution, and sequence parameters (maximum 7 letters per play, maximum word length 15) is to profit from the work of another party.
Combined with the legitimate duplication of gameplay and the per se infringement of the mark (even barring its potential weakness), and the lack of historical existence of this game, there are strong policy implications here. The total effort and effect represents a wholesale ripoff, for profit, by an unauthorized party. This is a compelling story, and if you're suggesting it plays no role in the considerations, you're not at all familiar with arguing before the bench, or a jury, for that matter.
Game rules are a method for playing the game, and methods are not ever copyrightable. Period.
Absolutely.
The board layout isn't trademarkable
No such claim.
I suspect the colors for the lines in hockey aren't up to each rink owner to pick for himself
Colors in hockey are dictated by the league.
Straight-up copying is perfectly lawful where unpatented rules are concerned.
Copying of gameplay, not copying of inventory, aesthetics, or distribution. A game can be played with the general rules of Scrabble without regard to any of the specifics. The rules do not require that there be 5 E's, or that a B have a score of 3, or that triple word score tiles be red, or that there be 6 of them on the board.
Scrabulous, regardless of its chosen name, could introduce a game with the rules of Scrabble without infringement. They could have released a game with new features. They didn't even try to add any distinctiveness. They intentionally capitalized on and profited from something entirely not their own, and Hasbro has every right, no matter how poorly advised, to pursue it.
That is, of the copyrightable elements of Hasbro's scrabble game, copying merely the colors was so minimal an amount of copying
That would be true if it were the extent of their copying. Your analysis begs the question.
Trademarks are really interesting in that if your trademark is really successful, that success is likely to backfire, as your customers begin to associate the good or service itself with the mark.
Again, this is dependent on the game itself being generic. You're confusing a brand in a market with many brands, with a single product and brand being reproduced.
Just look at the massive efforts Xerox has had to undertake for decades to try to avoid this
Xerox has competitors. Original games do not. You never saw the shelves of stores lined with games with that board layout, seven letters, where an X is worth 8 points. People don't associate crossword games with Scrabble. They associate Scrabble with Scrabble. You have to have competitors in order to have a generic effect.
To play the game in question, you have to have a 15 by 15 grid, with certain specific squares that have certain specific attributes.
There's no rule that says it must be 15 by 15, nor do the rules specify the arrangement of pink and blue squares (or their effect).
Think of basketball: you can't arbitrarily swap the 2-point and 3-point scoring areas while still adhering to the rules; the rules control the arrangement of the playing area.
Basketball is a collaborative sport resulting from rules and exchanges. It is not the entertainment product of a single company, produced and marketed specifically for years by a corporate effort. I can't tell whether you're being disingenuous or if you truly believe that Scrabble existed before it was placed on the market.
If all they've got on the copyright front are the color choices for the various bonus squares, that seems extremely weak to me. Could be de minimis.
No, because the allocation of double/triple word and letter scores is based on an arbitrary configuration, not to mention that their specific existence is also arbitrary. It's not de minimis--nor is the assignment of point values to the letters, nor is the number of each letter provided. There are a hundred different ways it could be organized and still consistent with the general gameplay rules. There are also notable improvements that could be made on the gameplay by a competitor.
They're perfectly within their rights to use a non-distinctive mark regardless of the effect on Hasbro.
And if people think the game is called SCRABBLE, rather than that the game is called 'crossword game,' this particular one being from the source associated with the SCRABBLE trademark, then the mark is generic.
Conclusory. Since there has not historically been another source for this particular game, the inquiry is incomplete. Moreover, if you were paying close attention, you'd see that I was not, in fact, responding to an assessment of a weak trademark, but rather the copyright of the game board and scoring system. How you can find an arbitrary board arrangement and an arbitrary scoring system to be insufficiently original is puzzling, if you'll pardon the pun.
People don't think that all crossword games are Scrabble. A mark, even an admittedly weak one, is viable evidence in a total reproduction effort. It's quite easy to paint the picture that they're exploiting what they see as a weak mark if they take up your line of reasoning, intentionally supplanting, rather than innovating, improving, or adapting. Combined with the fairly colossal ad revenue from Facebook and you're looking at a lot of money on the backs of someone else.
Hasbro has their work cut out for them.
Absolutely. And it's likely to blow up in their faces, because people seem quite clear in their preference for Scrabulous over Scrabble on Facebook.
Even on the graphical elements, if there are a small number of ways of expressing something, that expression is not protected either.
While that is more or less correct (with a number of caveats), take a look at the Scrabulous board. It IS the Scrabble board. Take a look at the point values for letters. They ARE the Scrabble point allocations.
There are not a small number of ways of representing the letter and the score, there is no similar limit on the type of point allocation, nor on the distribution (or even type) of "score multipliers" on the game board.
Even setting aside the trademark, which deliberately plays on the word Scrabble and thus trades on the reputation of the actual game, the game board and pieces are identical. This means that people can play Scrabble from a source that is not Scrabble. Certainly Scrabulous' developers/owners should be able to produce a tiled word game, but a precise reproduction of Scrabble is not reasonably necessary to do so, except if you are attempting to trade on the work, reputation, and popularity of a rival. That's not competition, but rather attempted supplanting.
No, when you're telling me how long vowels "really" are pronounced -- and people don't actually go by that -- you are making prescriptions.
No, I'm providing description of phonetic processes.
Hey, what if I did shorten the relevant vowels you claim are different so that they're the same?
You can't. It's how the articulatory processes work.
and people don't actually go by that
Yes, they do, unless they've replaced their vocal tract with a machine.
The question was whether they form past tenses the way that regular verbs do. They don't.
Linguistically--phonetically, phonemically, semantically, morphosyntactically--they do. Orthography is a surface transformation, and something linguists, with the exception of those studying orthography, do not concern themselves with.
No one said it is.
Sure you did, by making the specious association between the pronunciation of 'said' and 'paid'. We won't even get into how your phonemic transcription of 'said' was incorrect.
Hey, man, take it up with the folks who wrote the paper
I don't need to. Have you read the actual paper? I thought not.
Still waiting for that "+1 insightful" mod?
Which would prove what, exactly? Continuing to troll isn't going to work.
Your phonemic transcription is inadequate and oversimplified. Again, dipthongs are pronounced shorter than clustered vowels, and the consonant sequence has an impact on pronunciation as well. As an unrelated example, the vowels in 'ride' and 'write' are not, in fact, the same length.
Paid does NOT rhyme with "said":/sed/
No one said it did.
If "said" were regular and thus "sayed", on the other hand, it would.
'Said' is not dipthongized. 'Said' has been affected by vowel shift and elision. The vowel in the middle is [+mid +front -round]. The vowel in 'paid' is a dipthong of/ei/, [+mid +close +front -round][+front {+close|+central} -round].
'Say' and 'pay' are not related in that way because sibilants and liquids lengthen subsequent vowels.
No, *you* gave my words that impression
"In fact, some linguist has evidence showing that verbs regularize in proportion to how uncommon they are"
Proportional shift implies rate of change. Your statement is plainly false--the extremely uncommon verbs are actually the ones least likely to change, because they aren't used frequently enough for people to shift. In order for the most uncommon irregular verbs to change, the majority of speakers would have to uniformly abandon the structure.
Wait wait wait -- I mean, that's all for which it is good, right?
No. You're making a crack at prescriptivist English teachers, not linguists.
Further, you're not understanding that 'paid' is already an evolved past tense form, and is not particularly linguistically irregular. Linguistics does not correct; it models.
Continuing your humorously glib and ignorant remarks is just making you look like an idiot.
I don't live in a cave, and I have a degree in Linguistics. The article you linked is based on linguistic frequency. Being in the news does not make one informed of its significance.
You gave the impression that there was an accelerated trend in this direction. 15 verbs in 500 years, as predicted, is consistent with standard patterns of language shift. In fact, these patterns informed Lieberman's calculations.
"Paid" is dipthongized and is unlikely to change. Its irregularity is not complex, but a trend of simplification.
You conflate spelling with linguistic irregularity. Morphosyntactically, the verb is not in need of reconciliation by these processes.
And that you think "payed" sounds different from "paid"
Take a look at waveforms sometime. Words that are not diphthongized are pronounced differently, with moraic anaptyxis. It's a natural psycholinguistic consequence of the realization of language, and is a fascinating area of study.
That is a good thing because the fewer irregular forms English has, the easier it is to learn.
That's ridiculous. The past tense of 'pay' is formed by a rule from a class of verbs utilizing compensatory shortening. {Bleed, plead, lay, tell} are all members of various subclasses here. Vowel shift is responsible for the orthographical differences.
If your point is that you want increased regularity in English, changing "paid" to "payed" would introduce further error, not to mention make English harder (not easier) to write.
'Payed' is not an alternate spelling of 'paid'--it's a distinct pronunciation, and conflating them is the loss of linguistic distinguishment. There are plenty of areas where English could be "cleaned up" as a result of a thousand years of "code" editing--but this isn't one of them.
You'd be making a double irregular and vastly complicating English on the linguistic level. It's true most people don't work with phonetics and morphosyntax in their lives, but most things are not as arbitrary as you'd think.
In fact, some linguist has evidence showing that verbs regularize in proportion to how uncommon they are
"Full incorporation" would render "incorporation" pointless. Incorporation is achieved through multiple sections of Amend. XIV, and, somewhat counter-intuitively, not usually on Privileges and Immunities grounds.
Regardless, Amend. I freedom of speech is incorporated.
But interestingly, the definitions of the word in the dictionary all come back to the definitions "To commit theft".
You must be using one strange dictionary. "to take without permission or legal right" "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment" "dishonestly pass off as one's own" "to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance" "gain unexpectedly"
Now, taking someone's 'intellectual property' and permanently depriving them of it (i.e removing any ability of them to use that knowledge ever again) would be theft.
Intellectual property is not knowledge.
I'm actually interested to hear where 'personal property' and 'real property' are considered false metonyms
Everywhere. Property at law is not an object. It is a set of legal rights, nothing more and nothing less. Property does not refer to an object at all.
I'm pretty certain it doesn't trump physics as far as reality goes
There are no physics to property.
RMS is simply trying to put together a view of the spirit of the law
No, because he, like you, simply doesn't understand it.
I'm just wondering how long the legal systems of the West can continue with the current arcane and lopsided IP Law
It is neither arcane nor lopsided. You've provided no justification for that statement. It is based on the same fundamental tenets as all property law. If you consider all property to be arcane and lopsided, that's a valid possibility, but you can't rationally single out IP there.
rguments seem very much like one of the (rightly) derided zealots in tech who simply say "Read the manual. If you don't understand down to the metal, don't use a computer.
Because people in this discussion have continually represented themselves not as people who are seeking to understand, but who dismiss IP outright (despite not actually having bothered to figure it out), and who put their particular brand of analysis to it to declare it "inconsistent" despite having spent exactly zero time considering what property law is and how it works.
They draw legal conclusions out of complete ignorance and simply do not tolerate the fact that they are plainly wrong. They demonize anyone who disagrees with the groupthink and blindly follow any half-baked criticism because it supports their ideological view. Frankly, there is no other way to indicate that they don't know what the hell they're talking about except to come out and say it. They're not looking for the answer. They think they know the answer and that people on the other side are automatically trolls, shills, corporate profiteers, or hapless sheep who can't think for themselves.
It's interesting to note here that you are pointing this out in the context of my arguments where the other argument is the one setting the tone. I have provided citations to legal authority everywhere I've been asked. The other side has not and cannot. At each stage where the RMS letter pops up and duly falls apart, people begin turning to ephemera such as claiming that they weren't talking about a legal term--when in fact they clearly were.
I always found to be a good way to lose a debate
It's not a debate when the other side is arguing from ignorance. The fact that they think it is is the problem. For some reason, Slashdotters on this issue think they know more than they do, and present their unjustified and unsubstantiated thoughts as truth. Their entire "argument" is an emotional response, and they've lost merely by entering it.
Don't you consider that just a tad derogatory (and potentially just plain wrong)?
No. Anybody who vehemently believes they're right about something they've clearly not bother
That's incorrect. Changes made internal to LGPL software must be released, it's only external software that links to LGPL that has the right to stay closed.
You misunderstand. What I'm saying is that Apple could have adopted the KHTML libraries without digging around in them and kept everything else closed.
They chose to dig around and make improvements, thus obligating them to share. Then they did share those changes.
If Apple had wanted to be real dicks about it, they could have stripped out the Qt portions and sent the stripped-down source back to the KHTML developers, simply leaving KHTML be and linking to it as-is. They didn't do that because they honestly wanted to improve the KHTML code, in addition to making it compatible with their OS. They were willing to share those changes as a fair price for free access. They could stop at WebCore and JSCore, but by open-sourcing WebKit as a whole, they lose very little and gain quite a lot, so it makes sense as a tactical decision.
That's an open source success story. But it's not the only way it could have happened. There are plenty of other ways that development could have been structured to avoid sharing even as much as they do. But WebKit is a good platform, and it doesn't hurt Apple's interests to share it. In fact, in an Internet largely catering to Trident's broken-down rendering and runner-up Gecko, which, not to demean it, is feature-rich at the expense of being slow and bulky, getting people to pay attention to WebKit is good for everyone.
KHTML provided the HTML and XML parsing engine, the DOM tree exports, the CSS parsing engine, the layout engine.
Source? All indications are that Apple wrote their own DOM, and that their CSS parsing is not KHTML's (which was one of the problems in adapting changes back to KHTML years back). They also certainly wrote the SVG support, which KHTML lacked.
That means that WebCore is a derivative of a pair of LGPL'd products.
No. WebCore does not contain KJS code. That's JSCore. WebCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KHTML, but it contains libraries that are not part of KHTML as well. JSCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KJS.
Further, since WebKit is, apparently, a derivative of WebCore
No. WebKit is a wrapper, providing API-level access to WebCore and JSCore, as well as integrating the debugging unit (starts with a D...). It is not a derivative work for the purposes of the LGPL.
Note: IIRC, WebKit and WebCore are parallel products - one isn't built on top of the other, but one was forked from the other.
Which you are extending in arbitrary direction while claiming equally plausible extension in other directions are for some insane reason immensely more difficult.
It's not an arbitrary direction. Corrosion resistance is a matter of scale, not of technology. Rotating spacecraft is a known and obvious principle, but it's not a matter of scale, because there is no functional implementation. There are any number of problems, even setting aside the economics of it. There's the force differential between head and foot, the Coriolis effect, friction losses, counterweights, RCS difficulties, navigational instability, problems with mobility, and plenty of others.
In fact there are studies being done on space elevators (and nasa funded competitions) which is more than I can say about things floating on venus.
...we already have had things floating on Venus. Can't say the same about space elevators.
Interestingly enough unless you want to construct a really long floating runway space planes are probably less useful than capsules.
The space plane does not need to land, and the Venusian aircraft does not need to achieve orbit. They simply need to be able to rendezvous in the upper atmosphere as a transfer point. We already have aircraft that can do the job of the Venusian craft. The space plane just needs engines powerful enough to regain orbit, but since it's not starting from the ground, the biggest problem is an adequate fuel supply for it to burn. There's plenty of CO2; there's also a reasonably sufficient amount of nitrogen. NO2 is a monopropellant.
On that note where do you plan to get all the fuel to send your rocket out of the Venus atmosphere?
Why are we sending rockets out of the Venus atmosphere, except as return vehicles, which would be delivered with fuel?
Again if you have links than please share them and I'd like to once again note that earth orbit is NOT low gravity (it's in fact effectively no gravity).
It's not magic. Physiological problems increase as gravity decreases. Check out any of the low-gravity, centrifugal, and stepped microgravity studies.
Nothing infeasible about a rotating space station as it can be done with existing materials.
Then why doesn't the ISS have gravity? Rotating spacecraft are currently infeasible. It's a simple idea with no simple implementation. Many smart people have worked extensively at it, and each small-scale test introduces a new unresolved problem. We have gotten no closer to being capable of building such a working artificial gravity environment since the idea was floated in the 60s.
Yes, but in order to achieve adequate buoyancy with heavy objects, you'll want to go with as much of a differential as possible. You would want supplies of helium and/or hydrogen in order to maximize lift and minimize the necessary volume.
Regardless, the cost of sending large volumes of any kind would be prohibitive. The first vehicle would have to be a powered aircraft, capable of collecting or cracking lifting gases into a storage vessel for use by subsequent trips.
I know. I was merely putting it into functional terms with accessible technology. The problem with an airship is bringing the initial supplies to fill the "balloon"--the first vehicle would have to be a more plane-like aircraft, unless we were to send massive supplies of say, helium, in advance of the first habitat.
No it's not and I never said excavation since soil can be put on top of structures.
A layer of dirt isn't radiation shielding.
And floating cities in a poisonous acid atmosphere AREN'T science fiction?
Cities of any kind are science fiction. Flying habitats are not science fiction, no. We already have long-term aircraft prototypes. Hell, given a sufficient supply of fuel, all you really need is a more corrosion-resistant aircraft.
It is a meaningful way if you need 10000 times the volume to hold up something as then you need to ship in even more material.
What?
Just because it doesn't agree with your point doesn't make something implausible.
When did this become a binary discussion? We have a basic grasp on technologies for habitat modules, surface or floating. Rotating spacecraft and space elevators are not impossible, but they are extremely implausible. We don't even have a realistic roadmap.
since you seem to like selectively saying things are impossible I claim space planes are impossible in turn.
I said nothing was impossible, and again, we already have working prototypes of suitable space planes. The space shuttle is one important step. Various X-projects are another.
Rotating spacecraft and space elevators haven't even advanced to a prototype stage. They're not in the same ballpark. They're not feasible based on anything we have now.
Last I checked there have been no studies on the prolonged effects of low gravity since so far we've had either gravity or no gravity. In fact I believe the general view was that low gravity wouldn't be that harmful.
Check again. Low gravity causes loss of bone density, muscle atrophy, decreased production of red blood cells, headaches, weakened immune systems, and gastrointestinal complications. Prolonged exposure requires significant readjustment and often physical training upon returning to Earth. The closer the gravity to earth-normal, the more attenuated these effects.
Not exactly a problem unless you go outside and even then it's not much of a problem since spacesuits mostly are there to keep you from cooking to death (vacuum is a great insulator).
You misunderstand. The Earth-like temperature reduces the complexity of environmental systems because it naturally maintains a habitable environment. Space being an insulator is exactly the problem.
A mixed blessing given the toxic atmosphere since it will get in through holes which isn't a problem with vacuum.
Making something airtight is much less expensive than making something sufficient reinforced to persist in vacuum, on top of also being airtight.
A good argument however two of the places I mentioned are giant rocks into which heat will dissipate quite nicely.
Not as easily, no. The insulation and isolation required of habitats in this environment would prevent heat transfer to those two giant rocks. It could be done, and we have the technology, but simplicity is best, and Venus maintains the edge, even over the Moon and Mars.
Not really, the moon and mars have soil which you can pile on top of things.
No. Now you're talking about excavation. That's quite a different (and much more expensive) beast than the surface habitats the rest of your post presumes.
So does the moon and mars although to lesser extents while space habitats can be spun.
The point was earth-like gravity, and spinning space habitats are science fiction.
At least on the moon and mars you can go and get some nice different views.
At the expense of fuel and risk of excursion equipment breaking down on that little joyride. Further, if clouds are going to get boring, then a different configuration of dust and rocks is going to be equally boring. People spend days lying on the grass watching the sky (or at least they used to). People don't really stare at static wastelands.
Venus also lacks natural resources that aren't in the atmosphere
What natural resources would it require? If you're talking about extracting oxygen and hydrogen out of rocks, how is that different from extracting it from hydrocarbons and sulfur dioxides?
floating cities limit maximum density of materials
Not in any meaningful way.
it's heavier gravity well makes leaving it more difficult
Only for a rocket, which would have nowhere to launch anyway. Space plane.
it is incapable of supporting a space elevator
So? We can't build one anyway.
It's not that you don't raise valid concerns, it's that the sum of them still weighs favorably to forays in living elsewhere. Under no circumstances does it make sense to dismiss this while keeping Mars in the scopes. A functioning habitat on Venus would be the most Earth-like, particularly given the effects of prolonged low-gravity on the human body.
1. Temperature 2. Atmospheric Pressure 3. Heat dissipation 4. Waste disposal (if you subscribe to the argument that disrupting the lunar or Martian landscape with heaps of trash would be wrong, but tossing down where sulfur, pressure, and intense heat will take care of it and where we'll never see it is not such a problem) 5. More natural radiation shielding than the Moon or Mars or space itself outside of Earth orbit 6. Gravity 7. Clouds (I'm serious. Staring at a constant, motionless lunar landscape for months would be less than pleasant once the novelty wears off. At least Venus has movement).
It's not exactly a plug-n-play Earth, but it's got a lot of benefits compared to the three environments you mention, and really just two fundamental disadvantages: corrosive atmosphere and the need to stay aloft. Dealing with the former is not exactly rocket science, pun intended. It's a challenge, sure...but we've overcome greater ones to get this far. Venus may well be the most practical next step (if we solve the "keeping a city in the air" bit).
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly some games have rules that specify the arrangement of elements on the playing surface.
Scrabble not being one of them, it does not matter.
hat the board is the expression of the rule, rather than it being printed in black and white on the piece of paper that comes in the box, is inconsequential.
I have never seen this expressed in any authority, ever. If the game's rules can be implemented on a board of a different configuration, the board is not a rule.
How so? Functionality will kill trade dress stone dead.
Arrangement of squares is not functional on any reading of the term I've ever encountered.
I'll take that bet. Prisons are full of wrongly-convicted people who are just awful, and often enough, criminals, but nevertheless innocent of the particular crime they were accused of.
That was never the context. If, in the commission of an unlawful act, they engaged in acts of moral turpitude or otherwise presented themselves unfavorably, that is something considered. No one was ever speaking of their broader history or anything outside the context of the actions in question.
First, "distinctive and arbitrary" are irrelevant terms for copyright
I wasn't referring to grounds for copyright. I was referring to characteristics of the work. Distinctive and arbitrary is encapsulated by originality and creativity, but originality and creativity can produce a functional necessity.
Hasbro's scrabble is just the ne plus ultra of scrabble.
No. There is no other Scrabble. You are, for the nth time, begging the question.
Putting the ball in their court is hardly the same as making their case impossible.
Putting the ball in their court with nothing but negative citing authority to their position is what makes their case improbable. Nothing is impossible.
Sadly, human nature is often at odds with justice. Look at all the procedural and evidentiary safeguards we've set up over the years, and we still have problems.
Agreed, but in this case, the totality of the evidence is relevant. Opinions regularly reflect this practice and do make inferences as to intent, which inform the opinions. It's both natural and expected, just as mitigating factors in the criminal law.
Again, we're back to the colors, which Scrabulous was foolish to copy,
No. We're back to the copyrighted gameboard, for which you have provided no authority to invalidate their copyright. Since it is clear you cannot disassociate your analysis from this point, it would be prudent to simply end here.
Both case law and general presumption with creative works supports a copyrighted gameboard. Unless and until it is demonstrated that the gameboard is the subject of an improper copyright, none of your analysis with respect to that point applies. You make an interesting point, but operate from a nonstandard definition of 'rules'. The rules of Quake do not depend on the level maps. The rules of golf do not depend on a particular course. Mere descriptions are not rules. Reproduction of game surfaces is infringement, as has been established.
But I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of dice manufactured and sold are extremely plain and interchangeable.
This seems to have drifted from the point: dice are not marketed by trademark. I doubt if anyone could identify for you a single manufacturer of dice without research.
Only non-functional parts of games, like the art on the box, are copyrightable.
The board is non-functional. If I make my own custom board with a different arrangement of "special" squares, the rules of the game can still be obeyed fully.
Works and inventions are most valuable to the public when they are free for all to use.
This is only tangentially related to your argument, and not at all relevant to whether Hasbro should be able to protect its distinctive implementation and name. There's no copyright on the rules or type of modeling; anyone is free to use a Scrabble board--but you're not talking about use, or even personal reproduction. You're talking about commercial reproduction and distribution, not making it available for all.
There is always a need to have free access to copyrighted materials, which is why we have the copyrights expire!
You're arguing out of context. There is never a need for material under copyright. While a patent may prevent an important product from reaching its greatest potential if no one can come up with an alternate method, works under copyright are always distinctive and arbitrary. There is never a need for a painting to be available to all; this should appear eminently obvious, since most work is never reproduced and never seen by society as a whole. A compelling desire, and a fair price for statutory protection, absolutely. A need, absolutely not.
Which are just another set of rules. No rules, no matter how popular or unpopular, no matter how creative or uninspired, how distinctive or generic, are ever, ever, ever copyrightable.
No such assertion. Tournament specifications are over and above the rules of the game. You need not have red and blue lines to play hockey, but you may well need them to play in a given league. This does not make the color functional to the game of hockey itself.
That's decidedly unjust. I suppose you would be willing to condemn the most despicable man alive, regardless of his actual innocence?
An innocent man cannot be despicable. I would be more lenient on a first-time offender with a minor possession charge than I would on a repeat offender with priors. I would likewise be more apt to presume an isolated omission of paperwork for construction permits was not fraudulent as opposed to someone with a history of poor record-keeping and a number of consumer complaints, even if those complaints never resulted in a judgment.
It is part of the context of a case, and any lawyer worth his salt will paint a picture. The first and most important obstacle before the bench or a jury is getting them to like you. You are far more likely to err on the side of an upstanding citizen when faced with equipoise. It's simple human nature. Is it copying? Yes. Is it infringing? Absolutely. Is there any reason to suspect they were doing anything other than trying to infringe and get away with it? No. De minimis, it's just not.
Scrabulous' best hope is outside the law: they have to look like they're not just an opportunistic ripoff and might argue an untapped market, doing it better and faster than Hasbro, and competing fairly.
Pretty standard stuff (though their description of the game strikes me as bolstering my the-board-is-functional argument).
It does not, as it is a synergistic description of the features of Scrabble(r), not scrabble-type word tile/crossword games. In fact, if you did read the complaint you see that the gameboard is, in fact,
Not all of the footage shot makes it into the finished film; this includes alternate angles, scenes shot but never finished, and deleted scenes cut after post-production...and probably other stuff. Even if it is included, it is sometimes composited from multiple source shots, which each need to be stored on disk, on top of the finished shot.
Right, that's why it's so impossible to find a chess set these days; with the game being generic and all, no one wants to be in that market.
On the contrary, generic games benefit from many suppliers, but only to the extent that there is variation: competition on design, variations (e.g, themed pieces, non-standard boards), materials used, and size of set.
So long as a work is copyrighted, the copyright holder will use his monopoly to charge above-market-value prices for the work.
A specious argument, considering both version are free of charge. I agree with the notion, but not its application to the instant dispute.
Or are you upset that Bayer faces competition on the aspirin front?
Bayer produces a functional product and deals in patents. Don't conflate the analysis. Works under copyright are by their nature original and not necessary for the functional progress of science and technology. There is frankly never a need to have free access to copyrighted material. Anyone can produce a non-copyrighted form of the same thing with some effort and ingenuity.
If I try to play in tournament scrabble with a bag full of blank tiles, and I claim that they are all worth 10 points each, and the board I bring along has a dozen quadruple word score squares, I bet they're going to say that my set is against the rules.
They would be against the tournament rules, which functions as a league, would be enforcing specific restrictions for players to compete. Again, an off-point example. You could sit down with a bag of blank tiles valued at ten points and play a word-tile game with them. It wouldn't be that much fun, but that's no matter.
It can be if virtually nothing about the game board is copyrightable to begin with.
Again, you're simply begging the question with your analysis. I agree with the statement that only that which is copyrightable is protected, but I do not agree that the layout of the board is outside this scope. Gameboards, and their digital level map equivalents, are regularly the subject of copyright, and I have never seen a case rejecting that.
I don't think that a de minimis argument will work well, though it has a chance, and it's what they'll have to do.
Agreed.
The other parts may be totally reproduced without a by-your-leave, and we cannot allow that lawful copying to prejudice us against Scrabulous.
Of course we can. Lawful, but clearly opportunistic and blatant, reproduction naturally colors the view and provides a rationale for the unlawful reproduction. It is the temperance of justice--a party who makes an effort to make a reasonable, restrained use of a protected property should be entitled to the benefit of the doubt. A party fully reproducing and gambling on a win is not entitled to such benefit.
No, GP had it right. "2K" is ~2048x1080, with some variance. With 1080 horizontal lines, and approximately 2000 (2k) horizontal pixels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg
http://www.dcinematoday.com/dc/features.aspx?ID=16
http://campustechnology.com/articles/45435/
No, it's not, as the Shredded Wheat case teaches us:
Kellogg is not on point for this matter. Your referenced section speaks to a competitor's ability to use a generic mark, not to whether the mark was generic to begin with. Timeliness of competition does not matter once the mark is established as generic, just as Kellogg holds.
A mark is generic if it is so perceived by the public
The mark here refers to a specific game, marketed by a specific company. It is not generic. 'Scrabble' does not refer to crossword games generally (as kleenex to tissues); it refers to Scrabble.
If the game is not proprietary, however, would you agree that people are therefore referring to the game itself, rather than the version of the game sold by Hasbro as distinguished from identical versions of the game from other sources?
I don't accept the premise. When people refer to Scrabble, they are referring to the Hasbro property.
Au contraire. In order to perfectly replicate the gameplay, the layout and scoring system must be copied. Consider: if you wrote down the moves of the game, as is done in chess, and replayed that game on two boards, one with Hasbro's layout and scoring system, and another one which was different, the outcome of the two games would be different.
Precisely the point! Scrabble is not a generic game like Chess. It requires specific strategy. Quake and Doom are quite similar games with essentially identical gameplay. The strategies used in the two games overlap, but are not interchangeable. If Doom were to introduce the same level maps, same characters, and same point scores, it too would be infringing.
If these things changed, then players would want to adopt different play strategies (e.g. what if the triple word scores were closer together, that you might be able to get two fresh ones on a single play?) Clearly, the gameplay is greatly effected by these things.
So? It's supposed to affect strategy. Almost all games have variations offered by competitors--in fact, that's what drives the market. If everyone offered the same game, there'd be little value in purchasing more than one. The same rules on a different board would be a novel variant, making use of non-copyrighted gameplay in order to produce a lawful, competing product.
In fact, it is a goal of copyright law: why else would we put things into the public domain?
To foster progress and innovation, not fund a lazy freerider.
Do you remember the outcome of Feist?: Sweat of the brow doesn't matter one whit.
A gross mischaracterization.
The underlying rules, wherever, and however they might happen to be expressed, are uncopyrightable.
The rules do not extend to the board, the distribution of pieces, or the values of the scoring.
Still, that's a rule of the league. They can't own that rule.
No such assertion.
Any rule, from any source, is fair game, unless there's a patent involved.
No such assertion. The gameboard is not a rule; there is no league. Game boards are frequently copyrighted for the exact purpose of making a novel, competing game. You can play murder mystery games with characters, props, and a gameboard that is not Clue, but obeys the same rules. Simply reproducing Clue by calling it 'Hint' is contrary to the spirit and function of the law
The game plays differently with fewer E's, differently scoring B's, and a different number of triple word score squares.
No, gameplay is exactly the same. You are conflating strategy and outcome with gameplay.
As the court observed in Incredible Technologies, Inc. v. Virtual Technologies, Inc.:
I think holding a trademark on an English word for 60 years is really pushing it.
A trademark needs to last as long as the product lasts; otherwise, there is no value to it. If people keep buying Ford-branded cars, because Ford has built a reputation (presumably for quality, so pretend I didn't randomly choose 'Ford' for this purpose) as a trusted source in the minds and hearts of the people, Ford needs to defend that trademark. Unless you're saying that companies should change their names and start over every 50 years, then I don't think you've really followed that thought to fruition.
I really don't think monopolies should be held for that long, especially since the word existed before the game did.
Whether the word existed or not (or whether it's a word at all) is not relevant. They are not occupying the word. They are occupying the association of a symbol with their identity, which is the most efficient, intelligible way for this type of market system to operate.
Sure, corporation 3714115 could sell you product 6787383a-98E3, but that's not exactly conducive to building yourself up as a merchant or getting people to talk about your products.
Trademarks don't protect the marked good or service.
No, they protect origins. Scrabulous isn't saying "play our scrabble game"--they're intentionally exploiting the Scrabble brand to attract customers. That's a very different process than the consumers' widespread use genericizing one vendor's mark.
It doesn't matter whether or not there is competition, what matters is whether customers find the mark distinctive or not.
The mark is ipso facto distinctive if there are no competing marks. Scrabulous isn't a competitor, it's a reproducer. I think you are getting bogged down by issues not in play. Let's set it apart.
Trademark
Scrabble is a registered trademark of Hasbro. It has not been genericized, because when people refer to Scrabble, they are not referring to word-tile games, they are referring to Scrabble, one particular, proprietary variant. Whether Scrabulous is sufficiently similar depends on how good Hasbro's counsel is and how tight their DuPont analysis is. A case can be made either way.
Copyright
The Scrabble board layout and scoring system are again, arbitrary and proprietary. There is no legitimate need to reproduce the particulars of the Scrabble board in order to replicate the game play. Scrabble is not a social, collaborative work that has been packaged in board form. It is a particular, proprietary entertainment property based on a concept ripe for competition, innovation, and improvement. The only conceivable need for an exact reproduction of scoring values, board layout, colors, letter distribution, and sequence parameters (maximum 7 letters per play, maximum word length 15) is to profit from the work of another party.
Combined with the legitimate duplication of gameplay and the per se infringement of the mark (even barring its potential weakness), and the lack of historical existence of this game, there are strong policy implications here. The total effort and effect represents a wholesale ripoff, for profit, by an unauthorized party. This is a compelling story, and if you're suggesting it plays no role in the considerations, you're not at all familiar with arguing before the bench, or a jury, for that matter.
Game rules are a method for playing the game, and methods are not ever copyrightable. Period.
Absolutely.
The board layout isn't trademarkable
No such claim.
I suspect the colors for the lines in hockey aren't up to each rink owner to pick for himself
Colors in hockey are dictated by the league.
Straight-up copying is perfectly lawful where unpatented rules are concerned.
Copying of gameplay, not copying of inventory, aesthetics, or distribution. A game can be played with the general rules of Scrabble without regard to any of the specifics. The rules do not require that there be 5 E's, or that a B have a score of 3, or that triple word score tiles be red, or that there be 6 of them on the board.
Scrabulous, regardless of its chosen name, could introduce a game with the rules of Scrabble without infringement. They could have released a game with new features. They didn't even try to add any distinctiveness. They intentionally capitalized on and profited from something entirely not their own, and Hasbro has every right, no matter how poorly advised, to pursue it.
That is, of the copyrightable elements of Hasbro's scrabble game, copying merely the colors was so minimal an amount of copying
That would be true if it were the extent of their copying. Your analysis begs the question.
Trademarks are really interesting in that if your trademark is really successful, that success is likely to backfire, as your customers begin to associate the good or service itself with the mark.
Again, this is dependent on the game itself being generic. You're confusing a brand in a market with many brands, with a single product and brand being reproduced.
Just look at the massive efforts Xerox has had to undertake for decades to try to avoid this
Xerox has competitors. Original games do not. You never saw the shelves of stores lined with games with that board layout, seven letters, where an X is worth 8 points. People don't associate crossword games with Scrabble. They associate Scrabble with Scrabble. You have to have competitors in order to have a generic effect.
To play the game in question, you have to have a 15 by 15 grid, with certain specific squares that have certain specific attributes.
There's no rule that says it must be 15 by 15, nor do the rules specify the arrangement of pink and blue squares (or their effect).
Think of basketball: you can't arbitrarily swap the 2-point and 3-point scoring areas while still adhering to the rules; the rules control the arrangement of the playing area.
Basketball is a collaborative sport resulting from rules and exchanges. It is not the entertainment product of a single company, produced and marketed specifically for years by a corporate effort. I can't tell whether you're being disingenuous or if you truly believe that Scrabble existed before it was placed on the market.
If all they've got on the copyright front are the color choices for the various bonus squares, that seems extremely weak to me. Could be de minimis.
No, because the allocation of double/triple word and letter scores is based on an arbitrary configuration, not to mention that their specific existence is also arbitrary. It's not de minimis--nor is the assignment of point values to the letters, nor is the number of each letter provided. There are a hundred different ways it could be organized and still consistent with the general gameplay rules. There are also notable improvements that could be made on the gameplay by a competitor.
They're perfectly within their rights to use a non-distinctive mark regardless of the effect on Hasbro.
You're arguing a point no one is making.
And if people think the game is called SCRABBLE, rather than that the game is called 'crossword game,' this particular one being from the source associated with the SCRABBLE trademark, then the mark is generic.
Conclusory. Since there has not historically been another source for this particular game, the inquiry is incomplete. Moreover, if you were paying close attention, you'd see that I was not, in fact, responding to an assessment of a weak trademark, but rather the copyright of the game board and scoring system. How you can find an arbitrary board arrangement and an arbitrary scoring system to be insufficiently original is puzzling, if you'll pardon the pun.
People don't think that all crossword games are Scrabble. A mark, even an admittedly weak one, is viable evidence in a total reproduction effort. It's quite easy to paint the picture that they're exploiting what they see as a weak mark if they take up your line of reasoning, intentionally supplanting, rather than innovating, improving, or adapting. Combined with the fairly colossal ad revenue from Facebook and you're looking at a lot of money on the backs of someone else.
Hasbro has their work cut out for them.
Absolutely. And it's likely to blow up in their faces, because people seem quite clear in their preference for Scrabulous over Scrabble on Facebook.
Even on the graphical elements, if there are a small number of ways of expressing something, that expression is not protected either.
While that is more or less correct (with a number of caveats), take a look at the Scrabulous board. It IS the Scrabble board. Take a look at the point values for letters. They ARE the Scrabble point allocations.
There are not a small number of ways of representing the letter and the score, there is no similar limit on the type of point allocation, nor on the distribution (or even type) of "score multipliers" on the game board.
Even setting aside the trademark, which deliberately plays on the word Scrabble and thus trades on the reputation of the actual game, the game board and pieces are identical. This means that people can play Scrabble from a source that is not Scrabble. Certainly Scrabulous' developers/owners should be able to produce a tiled word game, but a precise reproduction of Scrabble is not reasonably necessary to do so, except if you are attempting to trade on the work, reputation, and popularity of a rival. That's not competition, but rather attempted supplanting.
No, when you're telling me how long vowels "really" are pronounced -- and people don't actually go by that -- you are making prescriptions.
No, I'm providing description of phonetic processes.
Hey, what if I did shorten the relevant vowels you claim are different so that they're the same?
You can't. It's how the articulatory processes work.
and people don't actually go by that
Yes, they do, unless they've replaced their vocal tract with a machine.
The question was whether they form past tenses the way that regular verbs do. They don't.
Linguistically--phonetically, phonemically, semantically, morphosyntactically--they do. Orthography is a surface transformation, and something linguists, with the exception of those studying orthography, do not concern themselves with.
No one said it is.
Sure you did, by making the specious association between the pronunciation of 'said' and 'paid'. We won't even get into how your phonemic transcription of 'said' was incorrect.
Hey, man, take it up with the folks who wrote the paper
I don't need to. Have you read the actual paper? I thought not.
Still waiting for that "+1 insightful" mod?
Which would prove what, exactly? Continuing to troll isn't going to work.
Your phonemic transcription is inadequate and oversimplified. Again, dipthongs are pronounced shorter than clustered vowels, and the consonant sequence has an impact on pronunciation as well. As an unrelated example, the vowels in 'ride' and 'write' are not, in fact, the same length.
Paid does NOT rhyme with "said": /sed/
No one said it did.
If "said" were regular and thus "sayed", on the other hand, it would.
'Said' is not dipthongized. 'Said' has been affected by vowel shift and elision. The vowel in the middle is [+mid +front -round]. The vowel in 'paid' is a dipthong of /ei/, [+mid +close +front -round][+front {+close|+central} -round].
'Say' and 'pay' are not related in that way because sibilants and liquids lengthen subsequent vowels.
No, *you* gave my words that impression
"In fact, some linguist has evidence showing that verbs regularize in proportion to how uncommon they are"
Proportional shift implies rate of change. Your statement is plainly false--the extremely uncommon verbs are actually the ones least likely to change, because they aren't used frequently enough for people to shift. In order for the most uncommon irregular verbs to change, the majority of speakers would have to uniformly abandon the structure.
Wait wait wait -- I mean, that's all for which it is good, right?
No. You're making a crack at prescriptivist English teachers, not linguists.
Further, you're not understanding that 'paid' is already an evolved past tense form, and is not particularly linguistically irregular. Linguistics does not correct; it models.
Continuing your humorously glib and ignorant remarks is just making you look like an idiot.
I don't live in a cave, and I have a degree in Linguistics. The article you linked is based on linguistic frequency. Being in the news does not make one informed of its significance.
You gave the impression that there was an accelerated trend in this direction. 15 verbs in 500 years, as predicted, is consistent with standard patterns of language shift. In fact, these patterns informed Lieberman's calculations.
"Paid" is dipthongized and is unlikely to change. Its irregularity is not complex, but a trend of simplification.
You conflate spelling with linguistic irregularity. Morphosyntactically, the verb is not in need of reconciliation by these processes.
And that you think "payed" sounds different from "paid"
Take a look at waveforms sometime. Words that are not diphthongized are pronounced differently, with moraic anaptyxis. It's a natural psycholinguistic consequence of the realization of language, and is a fascinating area of study.
Your glib remarks do not impress.
That is a good thing because the fewer irregular forms English has, the easier it is to learn.
That's ridiculous. The past tense of 'pay' is formed by a rule from a class of verbs utilizing compensatory shortening. {Bleed, plead, lay, tell} are all members of various subclasses here. Vowel shift is responsible for the orthographical differences.
If your point is that you want increased regularity in English, changing "paid" to "payed" would introduce further error, not to mention make English harder (not easier) to write.
'Payed' is not an alternate spelling of 'paid'--it's a distinct pronunciation, and conflating them is the loss of linguistic distinguishment. There are plenty of areas where English could be "cleaned up" as a result of a thousand years of "code" editing--but this isn't one of them.
You'd be making a double irregular and vastly complicating English on the linguistic level. It's true most people don't work with phonetics and morphosyntax in their lives, but most things are not as arbitrary as you'd think.
In fact, some linguist has evidence showing that verbs regularize in proportion to how uncommon they are
Where?
"Full incorporation" would render "incorporation" pointless. Incorporation is achieved through multiple sections of Amend. XIV, and, somewhat counter-intuitively, not usually on Privileges and Immunities grounds.
Regardless, Amend. I freedom of speech is incorporated.
See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925).
But interestingly, the definitions of the word in the dictionary all come back to the definitions "To commit theft".
You must be using one strange dictionary.
"to take without permission or legal right"
"to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment"
"dishonestly pass off as one's own"
"to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance"
"gain unexpectedly"
Now, taking someone's 'intellectual property' and permanently depriving them of it (i.e removing any ability of them to use that knowledge ever again) would be theft.
Intellectual property is not knowledge.
I'm actually interested to hear where 'personal property' and 'real property' are considered false metonyms
Everywhere. Property at law is not an object. It is a set of legal rights, nothing more and nothing less. Property does not refer to an object at all.
I'm pretty certain it doesn't trump physics as far as reality goes
There are no physics to property.
RMS is simply trying to put together a view of the spirit of the law
No, because he, like you, simply doesn't understand it.
I'm just wondering how long the legal systems of the West can continue with the current arcane and lopsided IP Law
It is neither arcane nor lopsided. You've provided no justification for that statement. It is based on the same fundamental tenets as all property law. If you consider all property to be arcane and lopsided, that's a valid possibility, but you can't rationally single out IP there.
rguments seem very much like one of the (rightly) derided zealots in tech who simply say "Read the manual. If you don't understand down to the metal, don't use a computer.
Because people in this discussion have continually represented themselves not as people who are seeking to understand, but who dismiss IP outright (despite not actually having bothered to figure it out), and who put their particular brand of analysis to it to declare it "inconsistent" despite having spent exactly zero time considering what property law is and how it works.
They draw legal conclusions out of complete ignorance and simply do not tolerate the fact that they are plainly wrong. They demonize anyone who disagrees with the groupthink and blindly follow any half-baked criticism because it supports their ideological view. Frankly, there is no other way to indicate that they don't know what the hell they're talking about except to come out and say it. They're not looking for the answer. They think they know the answer and that people on the other side are automatically trolls, shills, corporate profiteers, or hapless sheep who can't think for themselves.
It's interesting to note here that you are pointing this out in the context of my arguments where the other argument is the one setting the tone. I have provided citations to legal authority everywhere I've been asked. The other side has not and cannot. At each stage where the RMS letter pops up and duly falls apart, people begin turning to ephemera such as claiming that they weren't talking about a legal term--when in fact they clearly were.
I always found to be a good way to lose a debate
It's not a debate when the other side is arguing from ignorance. The fact that they think it is is the problem. For some reason, Slashdotters on this issue think they know more than they do, and present their unjustified and unsubstantiated thoughts as truth. Their entire "argument" is an emotional response, and they've lost merely by entering it.
Don't you consider that just a tad derogatory (and potentially just plain wrong)?
No. Anybody who vehemently believes they're right about something they've clearly not bother
That's incorrect. Changes made internal to LGPL software must be released, it's only external software that links to LGPL that has the right to stay closed.
You misunderstand. What I'm saying is that Apple could have adopted the KHTML libraries without digging around in them and kept everything else closed.
They chose to dig around and make improvements, thus obligating them to share. Then they did share those changes.
If Apple had wanted to be real dicks about it, they could have stripped out the Qt portions and sent the stripped-down source back to the KHTML developers, simply leaving KHTML be and linking to it as-is. They didn't do that because they honestly wanted to improve the KHTML code, in addition to making it compatible with their OS. They were willing to share those changes as a fair price for free access. They could stop at WebCore and JSCore, but by open-sourcing WebKit as a whole, they lose very little and gain quite a lot, so it makes sense as a tactical decision.
That's an open source success story. But it's not the only way it could have happened. There are plenty of other ways that development could have been structured to avoid sharing even as much as they do. But WebKit is a good platform, and it doesn't hurt Apple's interests to share it. In fact, in an Internet largely catering to Trident's broken-down rendering and runner-up Gecko, which, not to demean it, is feature-rich at the expense of being slow and bulky, getting people to pay attention to WebKit is good for everyone.
KHTML provided the HTML and XML parsing engine, the DOM tree exports, the CSS parsing engine, the layout engine.
Source? All indications are that Apple wrote their own DOM, and that their CSS parsing is not KHTML's (which was one of the problems in adapting changes back to KHTML years back). They also certainly wrote the SVG support, which KHTML lacked.
That means that WebCore is a derivative of a pair of LGPL'd products.
No. WebCore does not contain KJS code. That's JSCore. WebCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KHTML, but it contains libraries that are not part of KHTML as well. JSCore contains LGPL'd libraries from KJS.
Further, since WebKit is, apparently, a derivative of WebCore
No. WebKit is a wrapper, providing API-level access to WebCore and JSCore, as well as integrating the debugging unit (starts with a D...). It is not a derivative work for the purposes of the LGPL.
Note: IIRC, WebKit and WebCore are parallel products - one isn't built on top of the other, but one was forked from the other.
No. WebCore is a component of WebKit.
Which you are extending in arbitrary direction while claiming equally plausible extension in other directions are for some insane reason immensely more difficult.
It's not an arbitrary direction. Corrosion resistance is a matter of scale, not of technology. Rotating spacecraft is a known and obvious principle, but it's not a matter of scale, because there is no functional implementation. There are any number of problems, even setting aside the economics of it. There's the force differential between head and foot, the Coriolis effect, friction losses, counterweights, RCS difficulties, navigational instability, problems with mobility, and plenty of others.
In fact there are studies being done on space elevators (and nasa funded competitions) which is more than I can say about things floating on venus.
...we already have had things floating on Venus. Can't say the same about space elevators.
Interestingly enough unless you want to construct a really long floating runway space planes are probably less useful than capsules.
The space plane does not need to land, and the Venusian aircraft does not need to achieve orbit. They simply need to be able to rendezvous in the upper atmosphere as a transfer point. We already have aircraft that can do the job of the Venusian craft. The space plane just needs engines powerful enough to regain orbit, but since it's not starting from the ground, the biggest problem is an adequate fuel supply for it to burn. There's plenty of CO2; there's also a reasonably sufficient amount of nitrogen. NO2 is a monopropellant.
On that note where do you plan to get all the fuel to send your rocket out of the Venus atmosphere?
Why are we sending rockets out of the Venus atmosphere, except as return vehicles, which would be delivered with fuel?
Again if you have links than please share them and I'd like to once again note that earth orbit is NOT low gravity (it's in fact effectively no gravity).
It's not magic. Physiological problems increase as gravity decreases. Check out any of the low-gravity, centrifugal, and stepped microgravity studies.
Nothing infeasible about a rotating space station as it can be done with existing materials.
Then why doesn't the ISS have gravity? Rotating spacecraft are currently infeasible. It's a simple idea with no simple implementation. Many smart people have worked extensively at it, and each small-scale test introduces a new unresolved problem. We have gotten no closer to being capable of building such a working artificial gravity environment since the idea was floated in the 60s.
Yes, but in order to achieve adequate buoyancy with heavy objects, you'll want to go with as much of a differential as possible. You would want supplies of helium and/or hydrogen in order to maximize lift and minimize the necessary volume.
Regardless, the cost of sending large volumes of any kind would be prohibitive. The first vehicle would have to be a powered aircraft, capable of collecting or cracking lifting gases into a storage vessel for use by subsequent trips.
I know. I was merely putting it into functional terms with accessible technology. The problem with an airship is bringing the initial supplies to fill the "balloon"--the first vehicle would have to be a more plane-like aircraft, unless we were to send massive supplies of say, helium, in advance of the first habitat.
No it's not and I never said excavation since soil can be put on top of structures.
A layer of dirt isn't radiation shielding.
And floating cities in a poisonous acid atmosphere AREN'T science fiction?
Cities of any kind are science fiction. Flying habitats are not science fiction, no. We already have long-term aircraft prototypes. Hell, given a sufficient supply of fuel, all you really need is a more corrosion-resistant aircraft.
It is a meaningful way if you need 10000 times the volume to hold up something as then you need to ship in even more material.
What?
Just because it doesn't agree with your point doesn't make something implausible.
When did this become a binary discussion? We have a basic grasp on technologies for habitat modules, surface or floating. Rotating spacecraft and space elevators are not impossible, but they are extremely implausible. We don't even have a realistic roadmap.
since you seem to like selectively saying things are impossible I claim space planes are impossible in turn.
I said nothing was impossible, and again, we already have working prototypes of suitable space planes. The space shuttle is one important step. Various X-projects are another.
Rotating spacecraft and space elevators haven't even advanced to a prototype stage. They're not in the same ballpark. They're not feasible based on anything we have now.
Last I checked there have been no studies on the prolonged effects of low gravity since so far we've had either gravity or no gravity. In fact I believe the general view was that low gravity wouldn't be that harmful.
Check again. Low gravity causes loss of bone density, muscle atrophy, decreased production of red blood cells, headaches, weakened immune systems, and gastrointestinal complications. Prolonged exposure requires significant readjustment and often physical training upon returning to Earth. The closer the gravity to earth-normal, the more attenuated these effects.
Not exactly a problem unless you go outside and even then it's not much of a problem since spacesuits mostly are there to keep you from cooking to death (vacuum is a great insulator).
You misunderstand. The Earth-like temperature reduces the complexity of environmental systems because it naturally maintains a habitable environment. Space being an insulator is exactly the problem.
A mixed blessing given the toxic atmosphere since it will get in through holes which isn't a problem with vacuum.
Making something airtight is much less expensive than making something sufficient reinforced to persist in vacuum, on top of also being airtight.
A good argument however two of the places I mentioned are giant rocks into which heat will dissipate quite nicely.
Not as easily, no. The insulation and isolation required of habitats in this environment would prevent heat transfer to those two giant rocks. It could be done, and we have the technology, but simplicity is best, and Venus maintains the edge, even over the Moon and Mars.
Not really, the moon and mars have soil which you can pile on top of things.
No. Now you're talking about excavation. That's quite a different (and much more expensive) beast than the surface habitats the rest of your post presumes.
So does the moon and mars although to lesser extents while space habitats can be spun.
The point was earth-like gravity, and spinning space habitats are science fiction.
At least on the moon and mars you can go and get some nice different views.
At the expense of fuel and risk of excursion equipment breaking down on that little joyride. Further, if clouds are going to get boring, then a different configuration of dust and rocks is going to be equally boring. People spend days lying on the grass watching the sky (or at least they used to). People don't really stare at static wastelands.
Venus also lacks natural resources that aren't in the atmosphere
What natural resources would it require? If you're talking about extracting oxygen and hydrogen out of rocks, how is that different from extracting it from hydrocarbons and sulfur dioxides?
floating cities limit maximum density of materials
Not in any meaningful way.
it's heavier gravity well makes leaving it more difficult
Only for a rocket, which would have nowhere to launch anyway. Space plane.
it is incapable of supporting a space elevator
So? We can't build one anyway.
It's not that you don't raise valid concerns, it's that the sum of them still weighs favorably to forays in living elsewhere. Under no circumstances does it make sense to dismiss this while keeping Mars in the scopes. A functioning habitat on Venus would be the most Earth-like, particularly given the effects of prolonged low-gravity on the human body.
1. Temperature
2. Atmospheric Pressure
3. Heat dissipation
4. Waste disposal (if you subscribe to the argument that disrupting the lunar or Martian landscape with heaps of trash would be wrong, but tossing down where sulfur, pressure, and intense heat will take care of it and where we'll never see it is not such a problem)
5. More natural radiation shielding than the Moon or Mars or space itself outside of Earth orbit
6. Gravity
7. Clouds (I'm serious. Staring at a constant, motionless lunar landscape for months would be less than pleasant once the novelty wears off. At least Venus has movement).
It's not exactly a plug-n-play Earth, but it's got a lot of benefits compared to the three environments you mention, and really just two fundamental disadvantages: corrosive atmosphere and the need to stay aloft. Dealing with the former is not exactly rocket science, pun intended. It's a challenge, sure...but we've overcome greater ones to get this far. Venus may well be the most practical next step (if we solve the "keeping a city in the air" bit).