And now Google is using their monopoly in the web platform market
To find a monopoly, its is not enough that a company is the leading supplier of a product or service, it needs to supply nearly all of that product or service actually consumed in the marketplace. Google isn't anywhere near a monopoly in the "web platform market".
I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft [slashdot.org]. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?
First, I the Adobe (threatened) lawsuit was an antitrust suit. As such, it relied on Microsoft's bundling the feature with a monopoly project to leverage its monopoly against Adobe. Google's office suite is nowhere near a monopoly, and wouldn't be subject to suit on the same grounds.
Second, do we actually know whether Google has a licensing or other arrangement with Adobe?
First, LaTeX is a layout application, than many people use for word processing.
LaTeX with an appropriate front-end is no less a word processor than the tools that are marketted as "word processors". Its not WYSIWYG, but for a long time (even after WYSIWYG word processors were available), neither were most word processors.
For those of use who type well and for whom reaching out to grab the mouse breaks the flow, or attempting to go back after writing to apply structure is harder than typing in the structure as you as you go, an appropriate LaTeX environment is often a better word processing environment than MS Word.
For those of us who end up having to maintain regularly updated documents that dozens of different Word users have edited, each taking different routes to produce similar (but usually not as consistent as intended) appearance, LaTeX or a similar environment that is markup-based rather than focussed around WYSIWYG editing.
You can't compare it to MSWord and assume you've done a comparison of WYSIWYG versus markup.
True, though MS Word is the WYSIWYG program most commonly used, you can compare it MS Word and conclude you've done a comparison to the most important WYSIWYG program that people use.
Second, you're discounting the learning curve and its affect upon collaboration.
LaTeX is, IME (and I've been using Microsoft Word since the Windows 3.11 days, used a number of other WYSIWYG word processors and layout/DTP programs for years, and LaTeX for less than a year), no harder to learn and become proficient beyond a fairly basic level with than many WYSIWYG programs. The instant feedback of WYSIWYG is a big boost for basic familiarity, though, sure.
Most people, performing normal tasks would be a lot better off with some of the WYSIWYG tools available,
Perhaps, though I'm not sure about "most" or what tasks you think of as "normal".
or better yet a hybrid tool like InDesign that allows the user to edit both the markup and the WYSIWYG view.
That may be certainly the case, OTOH, the price tag of InDesign means that in most environments, "most users" aren't going to have InDesign available. Of course, a hybrid product, well-designed, can naturally, have the strengths of both WYSIWYG and markup-based systems, and so its superiority doesn't really say anything about the relative utility of the two models.
I dunno. Copyright and trademarks are different domains. Copyright gives control as a method of increasing value to the creator, trademark gives control largely to prevent deception of consumers. Just because Firefox is opensource doesn't mean anyone should be able to release whatever they want and call it Firefox. While "Iceweasel" is the kind of edge case that provokes debate over who is right or wrong, I think this is pretty clear if you consider extreme cases: for instance, should Microsoft be allowed release a version of Internet Explorer bundled with a default theme that looks like Firefox's default theme called, say, "Firefox 3.0" as a notionally "alternative" browser to IE 7.0 in Windows Vista? I think clearly not. There is a very good case, I think, for strong trademarks in free/open source/copyleft software.
Of course, any disagreement about what's beyond the event horizon is a philosophical disagreement, not a scientific one.:)
The disagreement can be quite scientific. Of course, what is beyond an event horizon cannot be observed, but that's not the point: a hypothesis which would provide an answer for what goes on there could, if it is sufficiently general (such as a general resolution of the conflicts between GR and QM), quite easily produce expirementally falsifiable predictions of events outside of the event horizons of black holes.
Lots of agricultural regions of the world (and others) are having trouble with freshwater supplies, minable phosphates (a key component of artificial fertilizers) are nearing exhaustion, and other resource and climate effects are threatening food production, as well. We could very well see a crisis in food production in the not too distant future.
Okay, now I had to go back and check. The deposit requirement still exists in the law(see 17 USC 407)—indeed, its theoretically broader than it used to be, since the prior limitation that it only applied to works published with notice of copyright has been removed, so theoretically anything subject to copyright must be deposited—but there is a provision which allows classes of works to be exempted by regulation. The copyright office page on Mandatory Deposit provides a general description of the current operation of the requirement, and regulations lay out a dozen exemptions, (catalogs, greeting cards, on-line databases, etc.) but in general the rule remains alive.
You misunderstand, making a copy is almost never illegal.
Actually, no, copying a work is an exclusive right that is part of copyright (the first of the listed exclusive rights, see 17 USC 106), hence the name "copyright". Making a copy of a copyrighted work without permission is often illegal, though (as it usually is not a direct source of harm), it rarely, by itself, provides grounds for imposing any substantial remedy. The harms, and thus most of the available remedies which justify the hassle of filing of a lawsuit, come from distribution.
Also, if someone makes a million copies of a copyrighted work and doesn't distribute them or provide others access to them, chances are no one is ever going to know, even if they would go through the hassle of a lawsuit in that case.
The difference is that this will operate down to 14% humidity. So in other words, you could stick it in the desert and keep the troops watered.
You could distribute it to villages with bad water sources.
I have to think at some point, dehydrating the air in an already arid region is going to have negative effects on the local climate. Maybe not so bad if you are temporarily supporting a mobile, transient military force, but if you start relying on them to support stationary civilian populations, it could be one of those things that's really great in the short-term, with a cost that comes in kicks you in the tail down the line.
Other companies pursuing the same goal (unless there has been litigation about that pursuit) does not demonstrate legal precedent. What Google is doing is marshalling evidence for one piece of an argument that their use is within the "fair use" exception to copyright under 17 USC 701.
The term you're looking for is adverse possession,
No, I think in the case of the beach access, where you aren't claiming to have acquired title to the land but merely a right to use the land that the holder of the title cannot prevent you from exercising, its actually easement by prescription, not adverse possession, though the two are very similar.
Though, in any case, you are correct that there is no direct analog to the applicable real property law in copyright, so the analogy doesn't really work legally, though of course one might argue that the same principal underlying prescriptive easement might argue for the adoption of a similar approach in copyright law.
Next, "everyone doing something" speaks to part of one of the four fair use criteria for legal copying and republishing of works without a copyright holder's permission (effect upon the market). If you meet all these criteria (as Google seems to) then by all means you can tell the RIAA to shove it, although you may have to go to court to prove it.
Market effect is one of four nature of use factors that 17 USC 701 says are to be considered in determining fair use, but you don't have to "meet" all four. The list is a non-exclusive list of factors the court is to weigh (it can, IOW, weigh additional factors not listed), not a checklist of standards where you have to meet some specified level on all four, and if you do, you are in the clear.
So, if they get a pass with 'everyone else is doing it', do I get the same if I want do download some songs or MP3s?
"Everyone else is doing it" is a rather simplified version of what Google will argue, which is likely to be something like (with evidence presented supporting each contention):
1) The use they are making of the work is to enable research, and
2) The method of enabling the research that they are using is widespread for that purpose (the part being characterized as "everyone does it"), and
3) The method of enabling research that they are using does not negatively effect, indeed positively effects, the market for and value of the material indexed.
IOW, it will be tailored to address the purpose and nature of use considerations relevant to "fair use" under 17 USC 107. Good luck trying to assemble convincing evidence on those points to defend your song trading...
The prequel seems similar to the Academy movie that was one of the original ideas for a Star Trek movie (IIRC, fully developed into a script before the idea of bringing back the original cast and doing what became ST:TMP came up), and seems to be the most frequently batted around but never-gets-done idea in Trek.
My prediction: It will suck, hard, particularly with no one previously involved in Trek involved. A prequel works, if it all, by carefully balancing new insights with fidelity to the original characters, and its going to be really hard to do that without any continuity in either the cast or the creative team.
I think they'd be better to do a trek-universe film with an entirely new set of characters, either in a previously unused point on the timeline or overlapping one of the previous series or movies, and give themselves something new to build on without the risk of either doing caricatures of previous characters, or unrecognizable characters with old characters names.
I doubt it will be the last OS Microsoft releases, but it might be the last one they sell, at least at the consumer level.
Now that they'll have established the infrastructure needed to govern a subscription OS, I wouldn't be surprised if the next Microsoft OS will be rented year-to-year, in its consumer versions, with a mandatory and automatic upgrade if you renew once its successor is released. Product "end-of-life" will be a lot more concrete...
I mean, they've been openly pursuing software-as-service, and they've built the infrastructure to extend that to the OS.
...seem to be "consumer" closed-source software to commercially-supported OSS, which probably isn't a fair comparison. Consumer closed source software often has support that compares (sometimes poorly) with free (as in beer) open-source software, rather than OSS with a commercial support contract.
I'm not sure that its generally the case that commercial OSS is more expensive than feature-comparable closed-source software with a parallel support contract, but if one believes that OSS offers an advantage in quality (from the review of the code enable) and/or security against future vendor policy changes (as, support aside, licensing for the code itself and its redistribution will never be an issue), then a premium for that quality may be justified, all other things being equal.
Nothing says it won't, but I was darned surprised that they'd have the gall to announce it as a feature!/blockquote
How, after they released "Windows Genuine Advantage" and billed it as something that provided utility for the user? Seems to me you shouldn't be surprised...
The news is that they've released a means to put them on non-Google web-pages; "Google Gadgets" have been around for a while for Google Desktop, the Google Personalized Homepage, and Google Pages.
Stock market journalism is full of lazy post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis; whenever a stock moves in one direction, stock market journalists reach out and grab the first news item they can find that is positive (if the move is up) or negative (if it is down) and assert as fact that the move was the result of that news item.
The "monitoring" you experienced and the "monitoring" you are currently imposing on your children, are not even *remotely* similar.
I'm not imposing any monitoring on anyone.
There is a vast gulf of difference between "my parents are watching everything I do, all the time" and "I might get caught looking at naughty pictures, but only if I'm unlucky".
Yes, and you know what, setting up a technological monitoring system doesn't mean you are in fact reviewing every bit, either. (And, actually, when I was on the computer, I was usually being watched intermittently—it was more, "I might get away with something, if I'm lucky" than the reverse, except for certain exceptional rare periods.)
The former - while excellent indoctrination into the 24/7/365 government-monitored society of the near future - does not allow a child to think for themselves, make mistakes and learn from them. It is you *dictating* how they should live their lives, rather than letting them work it out for themselves.
That depends entirely on (1) how you review the information, and more importantly (2) what you do with the information. Of course, that's just as true if the information you gain about your child's activities is purely by happenstance rather than planned observation: whether you are allowing your child to think for themselves, make their own decisions, make mistakes and learn from them, only directly intervening when their is a clear, compelling reason and it would be grossly negligent for you to not to intervene has nothing to do with how you gather information, and everything to do with what you do with whatever information you end up with through whatever means. You can attempt to dictate a child's activity and be completely controlling without monitoring them technologically (or even actually paying much attention to their activities in general), and you can leave them with near total freedom while monitoring.
Remember the details of this case! Foley could have had sex with these teenagers, they were over the age of consent.
That's not entirely true. At least, the one that he apparently met in San Diego was under 18, and at least in California law sex (or sodomy) with anyone under the age of 18 is a crime. Now, its true that the age of consent in the District of Columbia is 16, but the actions that he engaged in don't seem to be limtied to the District of Columbia.
Children are under the age of consent and Foley would be facing very different charges.
Its not clear what charges Foley is facing; an investigation has just begun, and no charges have been announced or filed.
"IM" is already far stricter than what he could have said in person or on the phone, sent via postal mail, etc.
That may or may not be the case, but in any case both "IM" and "email" are involved in the case, whatever the existing rules are.
Friends house.. Internet Cafe.. Bottom line, you can't monitor your kids 24x7 - it's impossible.
That's not an excuse for not monitoring what you can (iIndeed, if anything, its an argument for monitoring what you can, I'd say.) But its important to remember that, and particularly to remember not to overreact to what you are monitoring. Monitoring doesn't have to be intrusive and make your children feel oppressed (or even monitored); there probably isn't a need for a direct intervention or response to information gained through any kind of monitoring unless there is an immediate, serious threat revealed.
If they are smart enough to figure out how to get around all the blocks that get put in their way, they should be smart enough to understand the dangers and involve somebody they trust (a parent/grownup/teacher type person) at that point.
One of those has to do with intelligence, the other has to do with maturity. They are pretty much completely orthogonal.
Seriously, didn't you have unrestricted and unmonitored internet access growing up?
Um, no.
I didn't even have "unrestricted and unmonitored dialup BBS access" growing up. Sure, the monitoring technology was limited to my parents walking up and looking at what I was doing (the only computer with a modem in the house being in the living room for most of childhood helped here), and sometimes I would get on when they weren't home (and once got in rather lots of trouble for a month where I racked up a several-hundred-dollar phone bill that way), but certainly I had no expectation of privacy "online".
Why is it even conceivable to play CIA with your children?
Because the parent-child is not that of an elected government to its adult citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
To find a monopoly, its is not enough that a company is the leading supplier of a product or service, it needs to supply nearly all of that product or service actually consumed in the marketplace. Google isn't anywhere near a monopoly in the "web platform market".
First, I the Adobe (threatened) lawsuit was an antitrust suit. As such, it relied on Microsoft's bundling the feature with a monopoly project to leverage its monopoly against Adobe. Google's office suite is nowhere near a monopoly, and wouldn't be subject to suit on the same grounds.
Second, do we actually know whether Google has a licensing or other arrangement with Adobe?
LaTeX with an appropriate front-end is no less a word processor than the tools that are marketted as "word processors". Its not WYSIWYG, but for a long time (even after WYSIWYG word processors were available), neither were most word processors.
For those of use who type well and for whom reaching out to grab the mouse breaks the flow, or attempting to go back after writing to apply structure is harder than typing in the structure as you as you go, an appropriate LaTeX environment is often a better word processing environment than MS Word.
For those of us who end up having to maintain regularly updated documents that dozens of different Word users have edited, each taking different routes to produce similar (but usually not as consistent as intended) appearance, LaTeX or a similar environment that is markup-based rather than focussed around WYSIWYG editing.
True, though MS Word is the WYSIWYG program most commonly used, you can compare it MS Word and conclude you've done a comparison to the most important WYSIWYG program that people use.
LaTeX is, IME (and I've been using Microsoft Word since the Windows 3.11 days, used a number of other WYSIWYG word processors and layout/DTP programs for years, and LaTeX for less than a year), no harder to learn and become proficient beyond a fairly basic level with than many WYSIWYG programs. The instant feedback of WYSIWYG is a big boost for basic familiarity, though, sure.
Perhaps, though I'm not sure about "most" or what tasks you think of as "normal".
That may be certainly the case, OTOH, the price tag of InDesign means that in most environments, "most users" aren't going to have InDesign available. Of course, a hybrid product, well-designed, can naturally, have the strengths of both WYSIWYG and markup-based systems, and so its superiority doesn't really say anything about the relative utility of the two models.
I dunno. Copyright and trademarks are different domains. Copyright gives control as a method of increasing value to the creator, trademark gives control largely to prevent deception of consumers. Just because Firefox is opensource doesn't mean anyone should be able to release whatever they want and call it Firefox. While "Iceweasel" is the kind of edge case that provokes debate over who is right or wrong, I think this is pretty clear if you consider extreme cases: for instance, should Microsoft be allowed release a version of Internet Explorer bundled with a default theme that looks like Firefox's default theme called, say, "Firefox 3.0" as a notionally "alternative" browser to IE 7.0 in Windows Vista? I think clearly not. There is a very good case, I think, for strong trademarks in free/open source/copyleft software.
Lots of agricultural regions of the world (and others) are having trouble with freshwater supplies, minable phosphates (a key component of artificial fertilizers) are nearing exhaustion, and other resource and climate effects are threatening food production, as well. We could very well see a crisis in food production in the not too distant future.
Okay, now I had to go back and check. The deposit requirement still exists in the law(see 17 USC 407)—indeed, its theoretically broader than it used to be, since the prior limitation that it only applied to works published with notice of copyright has been removed, so theoretically anything subject to copyright must be deposited—but there is a provision which allows classes of works to be exempted by regulation. The copyright office page on Mandatory Deposit provides a general description of the current operation of the requirement, and regulations lay out a dozen exemptions, (catalogs, greeting cards, on-line databases, etc.) but in general the rule remains alive.
Actually, no, copying a work is an exclusive right that is part of copyright (the first of the listed exclusive rights, see 17 USC 106), hence the name "copyright". Making a copy of a copyrighted work without permission is often illegal, though (as it usually is not a direct source of harm), it rarely, by itself, provides grounds for imposing any substantial remedy. The harms, and thus most of the available remedies which justify the hassle of filing of a lawsuit, come from distribution.
Also, if someone makes a million copies of a copyrighted work and doesn't distribute them or provide others access to them, chances are no one is ever going to know, even if they would go through the hassle of a lawsuit in that case.
I have to think at some point, dehydrating the air in an already arid region is going to have negative effects on the local climate. Maybe not so bad if you are temporarily supporting a mobile, transient military force, but if you start relying on them to support stationary civilian populations, it could be one of those things that's really great in the short-term, with a cost that comes in kicks you in the tail down the line.
Other companies pursuing the same goal (unless there has been litigation about that pursuit) does not demonstrate legal precedent. What Google is doing is marshalling evidence for one piece of an argument that their use is within the "fair use" exception to copyright under 17 USC 701.
No, I think in the case of the beach access, where you aren't claiming to have acquired title to the land but merely a right to use the land that the holder of the title cannot prevent you from exercising, its actually easement by prescription, not adverse possession, though the two are very similar.
Though, in any case, you are correct that there is no direct analog to the applicable real property law in copyright, so the analogy doesn't really work legally, though of course one might argue that the same principal underlying prescriptive easement might argue for the adoption of a similar approach in copyright law.
Market effect is one of four nature of use factors that 17 USC 701 says are to be considered in determining fair use, but you don't have to "meet" all four. The list is a non-exclusive list of factors the court is to weigh (it can, IOW, weigh additional factors not listed), not a checklist of standards where you have to meet some specified level on all four, and if you do, you are in the clear.
The prequel seems similar to the Academy movie that was one of the original ideas for a Star Trek movie (IIRC, fully developed into a script before the idea of bringing back the original cast and doing what became ST:TMP came up), and seems to be the most frequently batted around but never-gets-done idea in Trek.
My prediction: It will suck, hard, particularly with no one previously involved in Trek involved. A prequel works, if it all, by carefully balancing new insights with fidelity to the original characters, and its going to be really hard to do that without any continuity in either the cast or the creative team.
I think they'd be better to do a trek-universe film with an entirely new set of characters, either in a previously unused point on the timeline or overlapping one of the previous series or movies, and give themselves something new to build on without the risk of either doing caricatures of previous characters, or unrecognizable characters with old characters names.
I doubt it will be the last OS Microsoft releases, but it might be the last one they sell, at least at the consumer level.
Now that they'll have established the infrastructure needed to govern a subscription OS, I wouldn't be surprised if the next Microsoft OS will be rented year-to-year, in its consumer versions, with a mandatory and automatic upgrade if you renew once its successor is released. Product "end-of-life" will be a lot more concrete...
I mean, they've been openly pursuing software-as-service, and they've built the infrastructure to extend that to the OS.
...seem to be "consumer" closed-source software to commercially-supported OSS, which probably isn't a fair comparison. Consumer closed source software often has support that compares (sometimes poorly) with free (as in beer) open-source software, rather than OSS with a commercial support contract.
I'm not sure that its generally the case that commercial OSS is more expensive than feature-comparable closed-source software with a parallel support contract, but if one believes that OSS offers an advantage in quality (from the review of the code enable) and/or security against future vendor policy changes (as, support aside, licensing for the code itself and its redistribution will never be an issue), then a premium for that quality may be justified, all other things being equal.
The news is that they've released a means to put them on non-Google web-pages; "Google Gadgets" have been around for a while for Google Desktop, the Google Personalized Homepage, and Google Pages.
Stock market journalism is full of lazy post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis; whenever a stock moves in one direction, stock market journalists reach out and grab the first news item they can find that is positive (if the move is up) or negative (if it is down) and assert as fact that the move was the result of that news item.
I'm not imposing any monitoring on anyone.
Yes, and you know what, setting up a technological monitoring system doesn't mean you are in fact reviewing every bit, either. (And, actually, when I was on the computer, I was usually being watched intermittently—it was more, "I might get away with something, if I'm lucky" than the reverse, except for certain exceptional rare periods.)
That depends entirely on (1) how you review the information, and more importantly (2) what you do with the information. Of course, that's just as true if the information you gain about your child's activities is purely by happenstance rather than planned observation: whether you are allowing your child to think for themselves, make their own decisions, make mistakes and learn from them, only directly intervening when their is a clear, compelling reason and it would be grossly negligent for you to not to intervene has nothing to do with how you gather information, and everything to do with what you do with whatever information you end up with through whatever means. You can attempt to dictate a child's activity and be completely controlling without monitoring them technologically (or even actually paying much attention to their activities in general), and you can leave them with near total freedom while monitoring.
That's not entirely true. At least, the one that he apparently met in San Diego was under 18, and at least in California law sex (or sodomy) with anyone under the age of 18 is a crime. Now, its true that the age of consent in the District of Columbia is 16, but the actions that he engaged in don't seem to be limtied to the District of Columbia.
Its not clear what charges Foley is facing; an investigation has just begun, and no charges have been announced or filed.
That may or may not be the case, but in any case both "IM" and "email" are involved in the case, whatever the existing rules are.
That's not an excuse for not monitoring what you can (iIndeed, if anything, its an argument for monitoring what you can, I'd say.) But its important to remember that, and particularly to remember not to overreact to what you are monitoring. Monitoring doesn't have to be intrusive and make your children feel oppressed (or even monitored); there probably isn't a need for a direct intervention or response to information gained through any kind of monitoring unless there is an immediate, serious threat revealed.
One of those has to do with intelligence, the other has to do with maturity. They are pretty much completely orthogonal.
Um, no.
I didn't even have "unrestricted and unmonitored dialup BBS access" growing up. Sure, the monitoring technology was limited to my parents walking up and looking at what I was doing (the only computer with a modem in the house being in the living room for most of childhood helped here), and sometimes I would get on when they weren't home (and once got in rather lots of trouble for a month where I racked up a several-hundred-dollar phone bill that way), but certainly I had no expectation of privacy "online".
Because the parent-child is not that of an elected government to its adult citizens.