No. You still don't get it. DRM is orthogonal to copyright.
DRM restricts the rights of the owner of something. That something may be copyrighted, or it might not be. The restriction may be imposed by the copyright holder, or it may be imposed by someone else. DRM does not enforce copyright, it imposes restrictions unconnected to copyright. Copyright deals with publication or public performance, neither of which are restricted by DRM.
When I buy a book at my local bookstore, I own that copy. It is mine to do with as I wish, with the exceptions imposed by copyright, and only for those books which are copyrighted - some are public domain. When I leave the store, I pass through a gate which will sound an alarm if the sales clerk has not deactivated the sensor attached to the book. That gate has nothing to do with copyright, it is an anti-shoplifting measure. Just as DRM is a technical measure attached to a product. In both cases, the products are often also copyrighted, but those technical measures have nothing to do with copyright. The gate doesn't prevent me from publishing the book, and neither does DRM. The gate doesn't prevent me from reading the book aloud to a public gathering (public performance), and neither does DRM. Anti-shoplifting systems and DRM are technical measures applied to products to prevent actions unrelated to copyright. Measures applied to products which may also be copyrighted, but also to products which are not copyrighted. And copyrighted products might not have DRM or anti-shoplifting measures attached. They're independent.
DRM has been used with public domain material. DRM has been applied over the strong objections of the copyright holders, in the case of several authors and musicians. DRM is a tool used to control distribution. In the case of the PSP, the primary purpose is to prevent the copyright holder (the game company) from selling games without paying Sony. DRM is about control by someone other than the owner; in the case of PSP games, control by Sony over the game company and the owner of a copy of the game. It overrides the property rights of the game owner, and the rights of the copyright holder, giving control to a third party who has NO rights over the game.
"...in ways the copy right owner doesn't want you to."
The right that you're talking about doesn't exist. The copyright (one word) holder has control over publishing copies and public performance, and that's it. Any owner of a legal copy may USE his copy in any other way, with those two exceptions.
DRM is often attached to material which is also copyrighted, but the 'rights' being managed are rights that don't exist in copyright law.
"Isn't interoperability more a question of standards compliance than licensing?"
Standards often include patented features. Most standards bodies require a minimum of RAND licensing. RAND is not sufficient to allow GPL implementations, however. Microsoft has a history of crafting licenses and patent grants that preclude GPL implementations.
The benefit of open standards comes from opening up competition, by removing standards compliance from control by a sole source. In the current market, Microsoft can crush any competitor that uses the same business model as Microsoft, so 'standards' that may only be used by similar commercial enities don't offer real competition. Only Free software, supported by a business model that can't be crushed by Microsoft, has shown a serious threat to Microsoft's domination. Yes, Apple, Sun, and others have had an impact, but they are vulnerable to changes in management direction. Sun may have saved Java from Microsoft, but they could turn around and sell it to Microsoft. I don't expect that to happen, but it's possible.
Interoperability with standards isn't enough. The standards need to be open, too. There's a lot of professional PR doublespeak about what 'open standard' means, but I rely on one test: can someone write a GPL implementation that complies with the patent licenses?
There are many features in file names that I normally avoid, such as whitespace or special characters. But it is MY option to use them if I run into a situation where they would be useful. And that's the point: the decision should be mine, not forced by the filesystem designer.
The filesystem is too low a level to make sensible policies about case. It belongs at the application level, where ignoring case may make sense in certain contexts, but not others. The filesystem can't know the context, the application may have some idea, and only the user can be sure when case matters.
I prefer software that just does what I tell it. Software that tries to be smarter than me just gets in my way. I know that the proper symbol for millihenry is 'mH', that's what I type, and it's a pain when Word changes it to 'Mh'. If I name a file 'mH', then that's what I'll type, and I'd like it left that way.
If case doesn't matter, then why don't you always use upper case?
Add RAM. Marketing considerations always drive default PC configurations towards faster CPUs at the expense of everything else, and RAM suffers the most. 128MB is fine if you only run one application, but you don't - anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, and multitudes of Microsoft 'improved user experience' crap are usually running. 2000 has less of the latter than XP, though.
Demanding sex acts from a subordinate is harrassment. Demanding that a subordinate look at pictures of sex acts is, too.
It isn't harrassment when you are alone in your locked office looking at porn. It probably isn't what you being paid to do, unless you work for Larry Flynt. Porn just isn't part of most people's jobs.
The easy way for companies to prevent harrassment through the use of sexually oriented materials is to ban all sexually oriented materials. Just as they probably ban alcohol, weapons, and illegal drugs from company premises. The business has no need for those things, and banning them provides a legal defense against lawsuits arising from their misuse by employees or others on company property.
Yes, children are required by law to attend school. And schools should consider their policies carefully.
Violating those policies also deserves careful thought. Enabling others to violate those policies deserves careful thought.
The student has every right to run a personal web site, and say what he wishes on it. Criticism of school policies on a private site is a matter of free speech. Violating school policies takes place on school property, using school resources, and is not a matter of free speech. The fact that the student may be required to attend school does not mean that he can do whatever he wishes with school computers.
He's not in trouble for running a proxy. He's in trouble for using it from school computers, and helping other students use it from school computers.
When I was young, I helped a friend take apart padlocks and figure how they worked. We figured out that there was a master key. All of this happened at his home, and would have gone without notice. However, he took the master key to school and opened the locker of another student. That happened at school, and violated school rules. May well have been against the law, too. He was suspended for what he did at school. I, however, was suspended for what I did at his home. I didn't open any lockers, or have a master key. Unfair? I did nothing wrong at school. He did. But I helped him do it, even though my help happened away from school. I never thought he would open other lockers, but I helped make it possible, so when he did, it was as if I had done it. I was part of a conspiracy to commit a crime.
I was curious, and wanted to understand locks. I had no interest in opening other student's lockers. But when my friend broke school rules by using a key that I had helped him make, I became part of his crime. I learned about locks, but the important lesson was about conspiracy. The important lesson was that when I acted with others in a group effort, then I was responsible for any and all of the actions of the group. I learned that thinking about how my actions affected me was not enough, that I needed to think about how others would respond to my actions. I learned that helping others do stupid things meant that I was acting as stupidly as they were.
I hope that this student has learned the right lessons. If you think that school policies are flawed, say so. You have the right to publish your thoughts, using your own resources. The school, however, has the right to control how school resources are used. Don't violate policies unless you are willing to pay the price. Helping others violate policies is the same as violating them yourself. Taking a moral stand means being willing to pay the price.
A student has the right to do as he pleases with his own property outside of school. The school has the right to control the use of school property, setting policies on computer and network use. The school not only has a right to control use of their computers, but is obliged by law to control such use. They're dealing with minors, and minors must be supervised, in person or by technical means.
The school may not have any grounds for shutting down the student's computer. But if he set up a proxy to violate the school's policies for the use of the school's computers, then they certainly can revoke his school account. If he told other students about his proxy and allowed them to use it, then he has conspired to violate school policies, and all of the students involved should lose their accounts. You should be aware that conspiracy to commit a crime almost always carries a heavier penalty than the crime itself.
Now, you are talking about violated school rules, not laws. But the principle applies; conspiracy to violate school policies and rules will carry a stiffer punishment. The proxy may be private property and beyond school control, but the school has a legitimate interest in how the school's computers are used, and using a private proxy with school computers is no longer a purely private matter. Engaging in a conspiracy to violate school policies could well result in suspension, and possibly expulsion.
Welcome to the real world. When you get a job, if you violate company policies, you may be fired. Keep your private life separated from your work and school life. Just because you have an account doesn't mean you own that account. Anything on a work computer belongs to the company, and is NOT private. Get and use a personal Internet access account and use it for all personal email and downloading. The second that you download porn using a company computer, the company is liable for tolerating a sexually harrassing work environment - unless they fire your ass, which they will. The second that you download music or software using the company network, the company is liable to copyright infringement. Keep your music on your own devices, such as CDs or flash players, and don't EVER copy it to a company hard drive or network.
Don't put people into a position where smacking you down is a smaller problem than letting you continue. The school MUST control use of school computers, and failing to do so will create far larger problems than suspending a student. Firing an employee for violating company policies is far easier than settling harrassment or copyright infringement lawsuits. When you shit on people, don't be surprised when it comes right back at you. If you don't like surprises, think about the effect of your actions on other people before you act.
No, I would not think that they would go with the largest share of the pie. That share is taken.
The place to start is with niches which are less contested, and grow those niches. Tackle the larger market segments only after refining the product and organization against the weaker competition.
The Japanese auto makers did not enter the US market with full-sized sedans. They worked their way up from economy cars, which Detroit viewed as unprofitable. They built dealer networks, brand recognition, and customer tastes in the segment with the weakest competition. Only after they were strong there did they move up to larger cars. Same pattern with pickups: small, then mid-sized, and full-sized (the largest market segment) came last. Small bulldozers, now every size.
I'm not saying that they should ignore Windows. But they should put some effort into open drivers, where ATI and Nvidia are weak. Intel seems to grasp this. But there's a real lack of low cost, modest performance graphics choices for open systems using AMD processors.
Yugo built old Fiat designs in old Fiat factories that were purchased and moved. The Soviets also licensed some of the same designs. The truly ugly Soviet cars were local designs.
The worst of British auto manufacturing has been carefully preserved in India.
You thought globalization was new, or that socialism was immune to it? The problem is too much power in too few hands. Centralized power leads to poor performance, no matter what economic or political system it masquerades under.
I've never seen Azureus leak memory, and I run it for weeks at a time. Ubuntu 5.10, Sun JRE 1.5.0+update06, Azureus 2.4.0.2, Stuffer plugin. It does grab a hefty chunk of RAM, but that amount is stable on my system. Even for the 50GB torrent I once downloaded!
Given my non-leaky experience, I'm not convinced that the problem is with Azureus or Java. With Azureus grabbing about 0.5GB of RAM, that may be exposing leaks in your OS's VM. Or possibly the UI toolkit, which is the other thing that differs from platform to platform.
I don't doubt that you are seeing a problem. Others have similar complaints. But it just might be that Azureus and Java are stressing your system in ways that are exposing other flaws.
Yes, I do own software that I've purchased. I don't own software that I've licensed. The distinction is a contract.
A wide variety of restrictions and conditions may be included in a sales contract. But a contract requires that all parties to the contract understand and agree to the terms in advance of the exchange of value. I've licensed software under a true contract, and was required to read, understand, agree, sign, and date that contract before I received the software or before the vendor would accept my money.
If you buy retail software, that's an ordinary sale, not a sales contract. If you gave your money and received the software, then the transaction is final. No EULA revealed after the fact of the sale changes the nature of the sale. Click-throughs and sealed envelops do not represent agreement, because the time for any agreement passed once the goods and money changed hands.
That's why the average consumer doesn't care what the EULA claims. They understand that the typical EULA is a fiction, that a so-called License Agreement lacks the one true indication of agreement: acceptance of the terms shown by the exchange of value. The deal is done when the exchange is made. The terms are those that were disclosed and agreed to in advance of the exchange. It's a simple concept, even children understand agreement must occur before the deal is closed, and changes after the fact are not binding.
There have always been, and will always be, those who profit from creating complication and confusion around business transactions. Some swindles and frauds are illegal, some trickery and sharp practice is just inside the law. But it's all dishonest.
If Philips discloses, in advance, that others will keep partial control of the device, and buyers read and agree to those terms, then I have no problem with such informed consent. Just as I can sell my house with the condition that I will have the use of it for the rest of my life. The price will reflect those terms. What I can't do is agree to sell, take the money, and then later tape a notice on the front door that entering the door indicates acceptance of additional terms. It's the buyer's door once I take his money, and he can do whatever he wants with it. It's no different than taping that notice on every door in the neighborhood. I can claim it, but my claim is without merit.
When I buy something, I buy it for one very simple purpose: to gain exclusive control over it.
If Philips wants to keep control over a TV or other device, that's fine. Give it to me, loan it to me, and I can accept that the owner keeps control over it - and I'm not the owner. But we have a technical term for selling property without turning over control, and that term is 'Fraud'.
When I sold my previous home, I surrendered control over it to the new owner. I no longer control how that house is used, who may come and go, and which TV shows may be watched in the living room.
It looks like Philips wants to pretend to sell me a device, while keeping control over it. That's not a sale, and presenting it as one is a clear case of fraud.
I think that you may be struggling with the essential paradox of antitrust suits. Antitrust law defines a monopoly as one who has market power, where market power is the ability to get away with actions that would cause loss of sales in an ordinary market. Having market power is legal. Anti-competitive behavior is legal, and normally punished by market forces. But anti-competitive acts committed with market power are illegal. The law steps in when normal market conditions fail.
The paradox is that proof of market power depends on showing that anti-competitive acts did not result in the usual harm to the alleged monpolist's sales. The acts are only illegal if the monopolist gets away with them. If the market punishes your anticompetitive acts, then you aren't a monopolist.
It's fairly clear that AMD had a superior product in the Athlon 64. In a normal market, that would mean that AMD could charge a premium price. But AMD not only had to have a better product to take sales from Intel, but they had to charge a lower price, too. That strongly suggests that Intel has market power, and that they used it to suppress competition rather than out-compete.
The suggestion that antitrust suits are motivated by jealousy is silly, and you should be ashamed of trivializing a suit that obviously exposes AMD to considerable work and expense.
I agree that it is unhealthy to use lawsuits as a replacement for sound business development. Lawsuits often indicate the presence of corruption. But that corruption may be on either side - who filed the suit doesn't tell you who is at fault. Intel lost the technology lead for a while, which reflects management problems. Did those management problems also allow illegal, corrupt behavior to cover up the loss of the technical lead?
Did AMD substitute lawsuits for innovation? Or did Intel substitute corrupt practices for innovation? Filing the suit tells us that someone had trouble competing. The sourt will tell us which party it was.
It would be mighty silly to stop mentioning the format, and claim that it was price alone. It was the format that drove the price.
Where the hell do you think prices come from? Any company can make DVD players, and the price reflects that. Any company can make DVDs, and the price reflects that. Combination of economies of scale and vigorous competition from multiple vendors. Sony created a new format that was locked to Sony products, hoping that would allow them to avoid the price wars.
Sony does these proprietary things *because* they think they can charge higher prices. The price didn't just happen, it's part of the plan.
In spite of the evidence of the stupidity of the typical consumer, it's becoming clear that consumers are still smarter than Sony executives.
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No. You still don't get it. DRM is orthogonal to copyright.
DRM restricts the rights of the owner of something. That something may be copyrighted, or it might not be. The restriction may be imposed by the copyright holder, or it may be imposed by someone else. DRM does not enforce copyright, it imposes restrictions unconnected to copyright. Copyright deals with publication or public performance, neither of which are restricted by DRM.
When I buy a book at my local bookstore, I own that copy. It is mine to do with as I wish, with the exceptions imposed by copyright, and only for those books which are copyrighted - some are public domain. When I leave the store, I pass through a gate which will sound an alarm if the sales clerk has not deactivated the sensor attached to the book. That gate has nothing to do with copyright, it is an anti-shoplifting measure. Just as DRM is a technical measure attached to a product. In both cases, the products are often also copyrighted, but those technical measures have nothing to do with copyright. The gate doesn't prevent me from publishing the book, and neither does DRM. The gate doesn't prevent me from reading the book aloud to a public gathering (public performance), and neither does DRM. Anti-shoplifting systems and DRM are technical measures applied to products to prevent actions unrelated to copyright. Measures applied to products which may also be copyrighted, but also to products which are not copyrighted. And copyrighted products might not have DRM or anti-shoplifting measures attached. They're independent.
DRM has been used with public domain material. DRM has been applied over the strong objections of the copyright holders, in the case of several authors and musicians. DRM is a tool used to control distribution. In the case of the PSP, the primary purpose is to prevent the copyright holder (the game company) from selling games without paying Sony. DRM is about control by someone other than the owner; in the case of PSP games, control by Sony over the game company and the owner of a copy of the game. It overrides the property rights of the game owner, and the rights of the copyright holder, giving control to a third party who has NO rights over the game.
"...in ways the copy right owner doesn't want you to."
The right that you're talking about doesn't exist. The copyright (one word) holder has control over publishing copies and public performance, and that's it. Any owner of a legal copy may USE his copy in any other way, with those two exceptions.
DRM is often attached to material which is also copyrighted, but the 'rights' being managed are rights that don't exist in copyright law.
"Isn't interoperability more a question of standards compliance than licensing?"
Standards often include patented features. Most standards bodies require a minimum of RAND licensing. RAND is not sufficient to allow GPL implementations, however. Microsoft has a history of crafting licenses and patent grants that preclude GPL implementations.
The benefit of open standards comes from opening up competition, by removing standards compliance from control by a sole source. In the current market, Microsoft can crush any competitor that uses the same business model as Microsoft, so 'standards' that may only be used by similar commercial enities don't offer real competition. Only Free software, supported by a business model that can't be crushed by Microsoft, has shown a serious threat to Microsoft's domination. Yes, Apple, Sun, and others have had an impact, but they are vulnerable to changes in management direction. Sun may have saved Java from Microsoft, but they could turn around and sell it to Microsoft. I don't expect that to happen, but it's possible.
Interoperability with standards isn't enough. The standards need to be open, too. There's a lot of professional PR doublespeak about what 'open standard' means, but I rely on one test: can someone write a GPL implementation that complies with the patent licenses?
There are many features in file names that I normally avoid, such as whitespace or special characters. But it is MY option to use them if I run into a situation where they would be useful. And that's the point: the decision should be mine, not forced by the filesystem designer.
The filesystem is too low a level to make sensible policies about case. It belongs at the application level, where ignoring case may make sense in certain contexts, but not others. The filesystem can't know the context, the application may have some idea, and only the user can be sure when case matters.
I prefer software that just does what I tell it. Software that tries to be smarter than me just gets in my way. I know that the proper symbol for millihenry is 'mH', that's what I type, and it's a pain when Word changes it to 'Mh'. If I name a file 'mH', then that's what I'll type, and I'd like it left that way.
If case doesn't matter, then why don't you always use upper case?
"RAM: 128 MB"
Add RAM. Marketing considerations always drive default PC configurations towards faster CPUs at the expense of everything else, and RAM suffers the most. 128MB is fine if you only run one application, but you don't - anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, and multitudes of Microsoft 'improved user experience' crap are usually running. 2000 has less of the latter than XP, though.
Demanding sex acts from a subordinate is harrassment. Demanding that a subordinate look at pictures of sex acts is, too.
It isn't harrassment when you are alone in your locked office looking at porn. It probably isn't what you being paid to do, unless you work for Larry Flynt. Porn just isn't part of most people's jobs.
The easy way for companies to prevent harrassment through the use of sexually oriented materials is to ban all sexually oriented materials. Just as they probably ban alcohol, weapons, and illegal drugs from company premises. The business has no need for those things, and banning them provides a legal defense against lawsuits arising from their misuse by employees or others on company property.
Yes, children are required by law to attend school. And schools should consider their policies carefully.
Violating those policies also deserves careful thought. Enabling others to violate those policies deserves careful thought.
The student has every right to run a personal web site, and say what he wishes on it. Criticism of school policies on a private site is a matter of free speech. Violating school policies takes place on school property, using school resources, and is not a matter of free speech. The fact that the student may be required to attend school does not mean that he can do whatever he wishes with school computers.
He's not in trouble for running a proxy. He's in trouble for using it from school computers, and helping other students use it from school computers.
When I was young, I helped a friend take apart padlocks and figure how they worked. We figured out that there was a master key. All of this happened at his home, and would have gone without notice. However, he took the master key to school and opened the locker of another student. That happened at school, and violated school rules. May well have been against the law, too. He was suspended for what he did at school. I, however, was suspended for what I did at his home. I didn't open any lockers, or have a master key. Unfair? I did nothing wrong at school. He did. But I helped him do it, even though my help happened away from school. I never thought he would open other lockers, but I helped make it possible, so when he did, it was as if I had done it. I was part of a conspiracy to commit a crime.
I was curious, and wanted to understand locks. I had no interest in opening other student's lockers. But when my friend broke school rules by using a key that I had helped him make, I became part of his crime. I learned about locks, but the important lesson was about conspiracy. The important lesson was that when I acted with others in a group effort, then I was responsible for any and all of the actions of the group. I learned that thinking about how my actions affected me was not enough, that I needed to think about how others would respond to my actions. I learned that helping others do stupid things meant that I was acting as stupidly as they were.
I hope that this student has learned the right lessons. If you think that school policies are flawed, say so. You have the right to publish your thoughts, using your own resources. The school, however, has the right to control how school resources are used. Don't violate policies unless you are willing to pay the price. Helping others violate policies is the same as violating them yourself. Taking a moral stand means being willing to pay the price.
A student has the right to do as he pleases with his own property outside of school. The school has the right to control the use of school property, setting policies on computer and network use. The school not only has a right to control use of their computers, but is obliged by law to control such use. They're dealing with minors, and minors must be supervised, in person or by technical means.
The school may not have any grounds for shutting down the student's computer. But if he set up a proxy to violate the school's policies for the use of the school's computers, then they certainly can revoke his school account. If he told other students about his proxy and allowed them to use it, then he has conspired to violate school policies, and all of the students involved should lose their accounts. You should be aware that conspiracy to commit a crime almost always carries a heavier penalty than the crime itself.
Now, you are talking about violated school rules, not laws. But the principle applies; conspiracy to violate school policies and rules will carry a stiffer punishment. The proxy may be private property and beyond school control, but the school has a legitimate interest in how the school's computers are used, and using a private proxy with school computers is no longer a purely private matter. Engaging in a conspiracy to violate school policies could well result in suspension, and possibly expulsion.
Welcome to the real world. When you get a job, if you violate company policies, you may be fired. Keep your private life separated from your work and school life. Just because you have an account doesn't mean you own that account. Anything on a work computer belongs to the company, and is NOT private. Get and use a personal Internet access account and use it for all personal email and downloading. The second that you download porn using a company computer, the company is liable for tolerating a sexually harrassing work environment - unless they fire your ass, which they will. The second that you download music or software using the company network, the company is liable to copyright infringement. Keep your music on your own devices, such as CDs or flash players, and don't EVER copy it to a company hard drive or network.
Don't put people into a position where smacking you down is a smaller problem than letting you continue. The school MUST control use of school computers, and failing to do so will create far larger problems than suspending a student. Firing an employee for violating company policies is far easier than settling harrassment or copyright infringement lawsuits. When you shit on people, don't be surprised when it comes right back at you. If you don't like surprises, think about the effect of your actions on other people before you act.
No, I would not think that they would go with the largest share of the pie. That share is taken.
The place to start is with niches which are less contested, and grow those niches. Tackle the larger market segments only after refining the product and organization against the weaker competition.
The Japanese auto makers did not enter the US market with full-sized sedans. They worked their way up from economy cars, which Detroit viewed as unprofitable. They built dealer networks, brand recognition, and customer tastes in the segment with the weakest competition. Only after they were strong there did they move up to larger cars. Same pattern with pickups: small, then mid-sized, and full-sized (the largest market segment) came last. Small bulldozers, now every size.
I'm not saying that they should ignore Windows. But they should put some effort into open drivers, where ATI and Nvidia are weak. Intel seems to grasp this. But there's a real lack of low cost, modest performance graphics choices for open systems using AMD processors.
Yugo built old Fiat designs in old Fiat factories that were purchased and moved. The Soviets also licensed some of the same designs. The truly ugly Soviet cars were local designs. The worst of British auto manufacturing has been carefully preserved in India. You thought globalization was new, or that socialism was immune to it? The problem is too much power in too few hands. Centralized power leads to poor performance, no matter what economic or political system it masquerades under.
I've never seen Azureus leak memory, and I run it for weeks at a time. Ubuntu 5.10, Sun JRE 1.5.0+update06, Azureus 2.4.0.2, Stuffer plugin. It does grab a hefty chunk of RAM, but that amount is stable on my system. Even for the 50GB torrent I once downloaded!
Given my non-leaky experience, I'm not convinced that the problem is with Azureus or Java. With Azureus grabbing about 0.5GB of RAM, that may be exposing leaks in your OS's VM. Or possibly the UI toolkit, which is the other thing that differs from platform to platform.
I don't doubt that you are seeing a problem. Others have similar complaints. But it just might be that Azureus and Java are stressing your system in ways that are exposing other flaws.
...and Flight Simulator.
Yes, I do own software that I've purchased. I don't own software that I've licensed. The distinction is a contract.
A wide variety of restrictions and conditions may be included in a sales contract. But a contract requires that all parties to the contract understand and agree to the terms in advance of the exchange of value. I've licensed software under a true contract, and was required to read, understand, agree, sign, and date that contract before I received the software or before the vendor would accept my money.
If you buy retail software, that's an ordinary sale, not a sales contract. If you gave your money and received the software, then the transaction is final. No EULA revealed after the fact of the sale changes the nature of the sale. Click-throughs and sealed envelops do not represent agreement, because the time for any agreement passed once the goods and money changed hands.
That's why the average consumer doesn't care what the EULA claims. They understand that the typical EULA is a fiction, that a so-called License Agreement lacks the one true indication of agreement: acceptance of the terms shown by the exchange of value. The deal is done when the exchange is made. The terms are those that were disclosed and agreed to in advance of the exchange. It's a simple concept, even children understand agreement must occur before the deal is closed, and changes after the fact are not binding.
There have always been, and will always be, those who profit from creating complication and confusion around business transactions. Some swindles and frauds are illegal, some trickery and sharp practice is just inside the law. But it's all dishonest.
If Philips discloses, in advance, that others will keep partial control of the device, and buyers read and agree to those terms, then I have no problem with such informed consent. Just as I can sell my house with the condition that I will have the use of it for the rest of my life. The price will reflect those terms. What I can't do is agree to sell, take the money, and then later tape a notice on the front door that entering the door indicates acceptance of additional terms. It's the buyer's door once I take his money, and he can do whatever he wants with it. It's no different than taping that notice on every door in the neighborhood. I can claim it, but my claim is without merit.
When I buy something, I buy it for one very simple purpose: to gain exclusive control over it.
If Philips wants to keep control over a TV or other device, that's fine. Give it to me, loan it to me, and I can accept that the owner keeps control over it - and I'm not the owner. But we have a technical term for selling property without turning over control, and that term is 'Fraud'.
When I sold my previous home, I surrendered control over it to the new owner. I no longer control how that house is used, who may come and go, and which TV shows may be watched in the living room.
It looks like Philips wants to pretend to sell me a device, while keeping control over it. That's not a sale, and presenting it as one is a clear case of fraud.
I think that you may be struggling with the essential paradox of antitrust suits. Antitrust law defines a monopoly as one who has market power, where market power is the ability to get away with actions that would cause loss of sales in an ordinary market. Having market power is legal. Anti-competitive behavior is legal, and normally punished by market forces. But anti-competitive acts committed with market power are illegal. The law steps in when normal market conditions fail.
The paradox is that proof of market power depends on showing that anti-competitive acts did not result in the usual harm to the alleged monpolist's sales. The acts are only illegal if the monopolist gets away with them. If the market punishes your anticompetitive acts, then you aren't a monopolist.
It's fairly clear that AMD had a superior product in the Athlon 64. In a normal market, that would mean that AMD could charge a premium price. But AMD not only had to have a better product to take sales from Intel, but they had to charge a lower price, too. That strongly suggests that Intel has market power, and that they used it to suppress competition rather than out-compete.
The suggestion that antitrust suits are motivated by jealousy is silly, and you should be ashamed of trivializing a suit that obviously exposes AMD to considerable work and expense.
I agree that it is unhealthy to use lawsuits as a replacement for sound business development. Lawsuits often indicate the presence of corruption. But that corruption may be on either side - who filed the suit doesn't tell you who is at fault. Intel lost the technology lead for a while, which reflects management problems. Did those management problems also allow illegal, corrupt behavior to cover up the loss of the technical lead?
Did AMD substitute lawsuits for innovation? Or did Intel substitute corrupt practices for innovation? Filing the suit tells us that someone had trouble competing. The sourt will tell us which party it was.
It would be mighty silly to stop mentioning the format, and claim that it was price alone. It was the format that drove the price.
Where the hell do you think prices come from? Any company can make DVD players, and the price reflects that. Any company can make DVDs, and the price reflects that. Combination of economies of scale and vigorous competition from multiple vendors. Sony created a new format that was locked to Sony products, hoping that would allow them to avoid the price wars.
Sony does these proprietary things *because* they think they can charge higher prices. The price didn't just happen, it's part of the plan.
In spite of the evidence of the stupidity of the typical consumer, it's becoming clear that consumers are still smarter than Sony executives.