I'm not sure how you can tell that the people were Americans just by looking at them, but I agree that most people don't care whether their DVD is pirated or not, so long as it runs. I don't know of a nation where that's not the case. Tourists snatch up plenty of DVDs. In Nanjing, where there aren't a lot of foreigners, there are also plenty of DVD shops and non-foreign buyers. I never claimed that people don't pirate IP in America. But my statements are still true; China doesn't enforce IP laws. it's a location where people can produce and distribute IP on an industrial scale, and this may be Microsoft's motivation for getting in the good graces of possibly influential Chinese businesspeople, in the hopes of stemming the flow at the source.
I'm not supporting MS. I think they're too damn powerful in the US already, and a worldwide monopoly will be even worse. But that doesn't mean they won't make the effort. They have the means and they have the motivation. I'd be willing to bet they do whatever they can, politically and technolgically, to extract a few more dollars from the growing market that is the PRC.
MS is just another foreign corporation with no understanding of the Chinese business.
Perhaps. But I didn't see a single Linux machine in the 5 months I was there. Maybe in government computers or somthing. All desktops ran windows, and pirated MS CDs went for about 50 cents on the street. (One in three CDs actually worked. Of course, most were in Chineese, so it did me no good.)
Because China doesn't even recognize domestic IP, Chinese programmers have a hard time making money unles they work for overseas business. Because China is a bad place for IP, the vast majority of Chinese software is designed for foreign markets where it does sell and is then imported, and probably pirated.
"Needs" maybe. Wants? Definitely not. The US has tried to pressure China to respect US IP, brands, etc. China has smiled, nodded, pretended to comply, arrested one or two people in show trias and then ignored the problem.
The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act is what gave force to shrinkwrap disclaimers of product liability. Under UCITA, a customer can't sue for damages exceeding the price of the product. If a person disagrees with the liscense, they are supposed to ask for a refund, which must be given under the law. (I tried this, and neither the store nor Macromedia would honor this. The 'cannot be used for commercial purposes' restriction on my educational-discount copy of flash, which wasn't made known until I tried to install the product, rendered the program absolutely useless to me. It was like having a bike and, after buying it, being told the company would prosecute me if I tried to ride it.)
Virginia was the first state to pass UCITA. Probably no small coincidence that AOL is headquartered there.
I got back from China a few months ago. There are American DVDs everywhere. There was a van going around with 'Intellectual Property Enforcement' written on it... in English only... quite obviously for display purposes. China is probably the biggest pirate nation in the world, maybe second to Russia, maybe not. Combine industrial capacity with a total disregard for property laws.
I would not be surprised if this is a step by Microsoft to get some Chinese folks with clout ("guanxi" in Chinese or "connections" in English is even more important in China than in the U.S.) That's the only way for MS to protect its IP in China and head off a prospective haven of bootlegged media and DRM flaunting software.
Re:not prosecuted for defacement
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 1
No. Street vendors can simply become obnoxious by their numbers. *Your* tolerance of their numbers and *others'* tolerance of their numbers may not be the same, eh?
The same can be said of people in general.
not prosecuted for defacement
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
from the article
But Leeds City Council insists his work is illegal because any advertiser needs a permit. The Crown Prosecution Service says he may have been in breach of last year's Anti-Social Behaviour Act.
In short, he isn't being targeted for 'defacement' but for using a public space for commercial ends.
Similarly, if I go downtown and try to sell things on the street, even if I cause no disturbance whatsoever, I can still be held accountable for performing a commercial act in a space that I'm not allowed to do so.
It's a shitty kind of law that needlessly restricts freedom. I'd love to have more street vendors selling without the high overhead that the local shops do, provided that they're not too obnoxious. But the local gov was following the law, however stupid that law was. Maybe he could get a liscense to advertise?
I'll say. I've had several friends who were raped when they were young (15 for one... younger for another.) They told people but the folks were family members and the crime was never prosecuted. *shakes head*
So what's the best way to demand an extortion payment? The new $20 bills have RFID tags in them, so you can't get 'unmarked bills.' Do you ask for gold coins? Or will the cops stake out the location of the drop? Payments to a swiss escrow account, perhaps? There has to be a more creative way...
What's this weather thing everyone keeps talking about? It's day when the lights are on. It's night when the lights are off. If you hear thunder, turn off your computer.... don't tell me you guys actually go outside and stuff.
Just a thought- sometimes lawsuits aren't done to collect money. This is retaliatory, I assume. Possibly, Amazon wants Toys R Us stock to fall. Such a fall delays investor profit taking, if only temporarily. Not sure how it affects a company's credit, ability to leverage it's transactions, etc. An insanly large (as in this case) lawsuit can be used to do damage even if it falls through later. If stock price falls enough, management might be replaced.
Well, no shit, it's fucking hard, asshole. "hamburger+softdrink=happymeal"
Even harder than your letting on, apparently. By my calculation you just fucking jipped me an order of fries and a toy. I bet you'd whine to customers that its always just some "mundane detail" infecting the code, huh?
Say goodbye to noisy oversized vibrators. Old fuel cells Forced vibrators to be quite large, often as much as one foot in length. And since a fan was required to cool the fuel cell, the vibrator would give off an annoying hum. However recent advances have allowed for the creation of a vibrator that is not only small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but is completly silent.
I've had a few products that I legitimatly paid for remotly disabled. I would use this new law, which says it's legal for me to crack programs that I bought, to crack the programs that I bought. Legally.
If it's illegal to pirate software, it should be at least as illegal to shut it down when it was legitimatly purchased, but it's impossible to seek cost-effective redress in court. UCITA would limit damagaes to the cost of the software, if I read it correctly, so the software company never gets punished and I'd still have to pay court costs. Companies like Microsoft have not been at all careful with how they employ the 'remote disable' feature. I want the guns to take what's mine.
I think that might be a problem with the service, though. It encourages fake clickthroughs. I've used Google before. Their ROI is worse than targeted click sites like Overture.
It'll have some obscure name like "The command line interface" and after their concerts everyone will hang around commenting on their music and complaining how they sang one song THREE TIMES in ONE SHOW!! And folks will whine about how their music sucks so much worse than it used to and vendors at the show will sell Music CDs along with Linux Distros and slashcode. And when they do a video it will have Natalie Portman in it. And...
As long as you have a device wired to hundreds of thousands of devices on the planet, why not focus on games that are more interactive? I know that in Japan especially such things are popular. And if it weren't for liability problems, Geocaching on GPS enabled phones would be interesting, at least. But if you're encouraging people to use text messages, maybe you could have chat rooms filled with local people? Just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm assuming you're Chinese and living in China?
I'm not sure how you can tell that the people were Americans just by looking at them, but I agree that most people don't care whether their DVD is pirated or not, so long as it runs. I don't know of a nation where that's not the case. Tourists snatch up plenty of DVDs. In Nanjing, where there aren't a lot of foreigners, there are also plenty of DVD shops and non-foreign buyers. I never claimed that people don't pirate IP in America. But my statements are still true; China doesn't enforce IP laws. it's a location where people can produce and distribute IP on an industrial scale, and this may be Microsoft's motivation for getting in the good graces of possibly influential Chinese businesspeople, in the hopes of stemming the flow at the source.
I'm not supporting MS. I think they're too damn powerful in the US already, and a worldwide monopoly will be even worse. But that doesn't mean they won't make the effort. They have the means and they have the motivation. I'd be willing to bet they do whatever they can, politically and technolgically, to extract a few more dollars from the growing market that is the PRC.
MS is just another foreign corporation with no understanding of the Chinese business.
Perhaps. But I didn't see a single Linux machine in the 5 months I was there. Maybe in government computers or somthing. All desktops ran windows, and pirated MS CDs went for about 50 cents on the street. (One in three CDs actually worked. Of course, most were in Chineese, so it did me no good.)
Because China doesn't even recognize domestic IP, Chinese programmers have a hard time making money unles they work for overseas business. Because China is a bad place for IP, the vast majority of Chinese software is designed for foreign markets where it does sell and is then imported, and probably pirated.
"Needs" maybe. Wants? Definitely not. The US has tried to pressure China to respect US IP, brands, etc. China has smiled, nodded, pretended to comply, arrested one or two people in show trias and then ignored the problem.
No text. No text
The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act is what gave force to shrinkwrap disclaimers of product liability. Under UCITA, a customer can't sue for damages exceeding the price of the product. If a person disagrees with the liscense, they are supposed to ask for a refund, which must be given under the law. (I tried this, and neither the store nor Macromedia would honor this. The 'cannot be used for commercial purposes' restriction on my educational-discount copy of flash, which wasn't made known until I tried to install the product, rendered the program absolutely useless to me. It was like having a bike and, after buying it, being told the company would prosecute me if I tried to ride it.)
Virginia was the first state to pass UCITA. Probably no small coincidence that AOL is headquartered there.
What would be more correct; "I don't care" or "I didn't care?"
I got back from China a few months ago. There are American DVDs everywhere. There was a van going around with 'Intellectual Property Enforcement' written on it... in English only... quite obviously for display purposes. China is probably the biggest pirate nation in the world, maybe second to Russia, maybe not. Combine industrial capacity with a total disregard for property laws.
I would not be surprised if this is a step by Microsoft to get some Chinese folks with clout ("guanxi" in Chinese or "connections" in English is even more important in China than in the U.S.) That's the only way for MS to protect its IP in China and head off a prospective haven of bootlegged media and DRM flaunting software.
No. Street vendors can simply become obnoxious by their numbers. *Your* tolerance of their numbers and *others'* tolerance of their numbers may not be the same, eh?
The same can be said of people in general.
from the article
But Leeds City Council insists his work is illegal because any advertiser needs a permit. The Crown Prosecution Service says he may have been in breach of last year's Anti-Social Behaviour Act.
In short, he isn't being targeted for 'defacement' but for using a public space for commercial ends.
Similarly, if I go downtown and try to sell things on the street, even if I cause no disturbance whatsoever, I can still be held accountable for performing a commercial act in a space that I'm not allowed to do so.
It's a shitty kind of law that needlessly restricts freedom. I'd love to have more street vendors selling without the high overhead that the local shops do, provided that they're not too obnoxious. But the local gov was following the law, however stupid that law was. Maybe he could get a liscense to advertise?
I'll say. I've had several friends who were raped when they were young (15 for one... younger for another.) They told people but the folks were family members and the crime was never prosecuted. *shakes head*
So what's the best way to demand an extortion payment? The new $20 bills have RFID tags in them, so you can't get 'unmarked bills.' Do you ask for gold coins? Or will the cops stake out the location of the drop? Payments to a swiss escrow account, perhaps? There has to be a more creative way...
Then what exactly *IS* the purpose of the law if you think everyone on a jury should bypass it? I don't share your opinion on this matter.
to keep people from copying MP3s, of course.
How about I write you a program that will explain it to him?
What's this weather thing everyone keeps talking about? It's day when the lights are on. It's night when the lights are off. If you hear thunder, turn off your computer. ... don't tell me you guys actually go outside and stuff.
Just a thought- sometimes lawsuits aren't done to collect money. This is retaliatory, I assume. Possibly, Amazon wants Toys R Us stock to fall. Such a fall delays investor profit taking, if only temporarily. Not sure how it affects a company's credit, ability to leverage it's transactions, etc. An insanly large (as in this case) lawsuit can be used to do damage even if it falls through later. If stock price falls enough, management might be replaced.
Well, no shit, it's fucking hard, asshole.
"hamburger+softdrink=happymeal"
Even harder than your letting on, apparently.
By my calculation you just fucking jipped me an order of fries and a toy. I bet you'd whine to customers that its always just some "mundane detail" infecting the code, huh?
It's not a bug. It's a calorie reducing feature.
>If you could buy cool, Bill Gates would be The >Fonz.
An over the hill mainstream pseudo-rebel from the previous generation? Sounds more like Steve Jobs.
Say goodbye to noisy oversized vibrators. Old fuel cells Forced vibrators to be quite large, often as much as one foot in length. And since a fan was required to cool the fuel cell, the vibrator would give off an annoying hum. However recent advances have allowed for the creation of a vibrator that is not only small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but is completly silent.
Job interview;
Well, I can see you're a 30 year old white male.
Would you be willing to work on Christmas?
Yeah, all those old men talking to 14 year old girls in chat rooms.
And those girls are actually middle aged cops.
Now you can be arrested AND horney
I've had a few products that I legitimatly paid for remotly disabled. I would use this new law, which says it's legal for me to crack programs that I bought, to crack the programs that I bought. Legally.
If it's illegal to pirate software, it should be at least as illegal to shut it down when it was legitimatly purchased, but it's impossible to seek cost-effective redress in court. UCITA would limit damagaes to the cost of the software, if I read it correctly, so the software company never gets punished and I'd still have to pay court costs. Companies like Microsoft have not been at all careful with how they employ the 'remote disable' feature. I want the guns to take what's mine.
I think that might be a problem with the service, though. It encourages fake clickthroughs. I've used Google before. Their ROI is worse than targeted click sites like Overture.
There is no alternative to your favourite band
Just wait till RMS and Rob Malda start a group.
It'll have some obscure name like "The command line interface" and after their concerts everyone will hang around commenting on their music and complaining how they sang one song THREE TIMES in ONE SHOW!! And folks will whine about how their music sucks so much worse than it used to and vendors at the show will sell Music CDs along with Linux Distros and slashcode. And when they do a video it will have Natalie Portman in it. And...
As long as you have a device wired to hundreds of thousands of devices on the planet, why not focus on games that are more interactive? I know that in Japan especially such things are popular. And if it weren't for liability problems, Geocaching on GPS enabled phones would be interesting, at least. But if you're encouraging people to use text messages, maybe you could have chat rooms filled with local people? Just a thought.
Thinking about copyrighted material will violate the DMCA.