Posted on 08/15/2002 4:54:26 PM PDT by Bush2000
Bad, sad, and mad mad mad metaphor.
If you want to accurize it, you'd need to either have an open-end lease for the car -- and then try to sell what belonged to the dealer -- or, claim that if you purchase the car, you also "purchased" the "right" to start manufacturing carbon copies of it, right down to the "Honda" nameplate and VIN.
I don't think you'd get too far in either case.
"What software do you develop? I would like to try to avoid ever using it."
I'm sure you would like to avoid using it. However, I have no incentive to disclose anything to you in that regard, other than to suggest that should you in fact use it, and be found in violation of the terms and conditions of its license, you will find out what happens to those who violate such agreements.
"that does not give you legitimate reason to push for stronger copyright laws that violate the US Constitution nor does it give you the right to turn your customers into serfs."
Spare me the histrionics. I can't stand drama queens.
"You have obviously brainwashed yourself. Go on, keep believing that. I obviously cannot convince you otherwise and it would be a waste of my time to continue trying. You'd find that I hold the very idea of a 'common good' in deep contempt on most threads."
Cute. Listening to a Libertarianoid (note distinction from "Libertarian", since you now deny membership) decry a "common good" obsession is like listening to an islamist insist that he isn't "against the Jews".
Perhaps your claim might hold a bit more credibility if you had not spent much of your time on this thread advocating that which you now claim to reject.
Must be that recent TH linux patch I applied :)
Second, you can think of software as a kind of interactive cable TV. You don't "own" it in any sense. It's a service. The data and your interactions are clearly covered by the service agreement. Your rights as a consumer are simple: If you don't like it, don't buy. It's that simple. The terms are clear, if you bother to read the license. Illiteracy, ignorance, or apathy isn't an excuse not to pay attention to the terms: They are revealed.
Again, IP laws are a contract and compromise between consumers (the people) and companies. Both have certain rights they expect from the contract. These new laws and EULA's certainly obliterate consumer rights while giving full power to businesses, eliminating the compromise. Do you believe consumers have any inalienable rights with a product/service they have purchased, or that corporations have sole control over all aspects of the products usage.
Except that's the fundamental problem: Your freeloading bretheren want everything for free and, therefore, are reproducing it. That's the crux of the problem and the reason that the license exists.
Software piracy always has been illegal and always will be illegal. Homocide always has been illegal and always will be illegal. Guns aid in homicide. Therefore, should guns be illegal?
The terms are spelled out in black and white. They're legally binding. If that still isn't enough for you, you might want to try "Hooked on Phonics".
Con men still swindle elderly ladies and go to prison for it and the women mostly give their money away foolishly to them. Nothing brazenly illegal about that, no? Are you going to champion their cause?
There are far more differences than that, bub. care to enumerate them? If software were like any other physical consumer good (like a book or a chair or a loaf of braid), I'd agree. But it's not. It can be readily reproduced. It can be readily distributed in a way that physical goods can't. Therefore, it needs special protections to prevent a*holes from stealing it.
I can take a book and easily reproduce portions of it and use it in an article I publish and generate a profit from, as long as I cite the source. Every day FR members reproduce IP from other sources and post it here. Creating new works referencing old ones is what people have been doing for hundreds of years. Academia is completely founded on this principle. Now enter software, this mysterious pseudo product/service, quasi new IP that somehow exists only in peoples minds. Think not of it as organised electrons in memory or magnetic poles on a disk with minimal diference between books with organized ink on paper, but as some mysterious black box that somehow appears on ones computer screen like magic. To learn how software works in order to make a better or compatible product would clearly violate the DMCA; To learn how someone makes a loaf of bread or a chair and build a better one is legal and innovative. To use a m$ (oops) product and a competing product that is disallowed in a future EULA is illegal and could lead to fines and maybe a prison sentence; to combine peanut butter, jelly, and bread makes a tasty combination. To copy a portion of code from a piece of software and give it to another person is a violation of the softwares EULA's and the DCMA and will definitly lead to prison terms and large fines; To copy a recipe from a cookbook and pass it to a friend who loved the meas is a cordial gift.
I never said it was. But I do have a problem with anyone -- particularly government -- confiscating private property.
What does the government have to do with this? I buy a product from a company, I want to use it the way I want to, not the way the corporation sees fit. You do own the software media. and free use of arrangement of bits on the software as long as I do not reproduce and it and give/sell it
This may come as a surprise but software is a relatively new concept. The founders foresaw the protection of intellectual property -- ideas, as it were -- under the blanket of the Constitution. Software represents a bag of ideas. Companies have to be protected. Or else people will abuse it. That you can't accept that fact is particularly galling. You don't mind daytripping with a blindfold on, saying that people shouldn't have the right to reproduce software, but all the while ignoring the fact that eliminating restrictions would create precisely that result. Stunning.
Ahh, so whenever new technologies arise we should automatically revaluate IP laws. Interesting, I wonder if they had this same discussion when books moved from manual printing presses to mechanical ones. Indeed, companies need to be protected and software piracy is (and will be) illegal. On the converse, cosumers should be protected and not be abused by draconian EULA's.
Democracy is always a compromise between freedom and protection. Yes, people do get killed by other people with guns, but as a society we deem guns a valuable tool for protection. Yes, violence in the media probably does affect some people and leads them towards violent tendencies, but we as a society deem violence in the media as an acceptable form of free speech. Yes, allowing people to use software as they would like and allowing them to back it up does indeed allow some people to redistribute it illegally, but the value to end consumers through inovation, utilization, restoration capabilites is worh the trade off. This could lead to a decline in revenue from a perfect world, or lost job opportunites from a company in a perfect world. However, people have been reading, sharing, and learning from books for hundreds of years and yet there are still people writing and publishing books. Contrary to to the reports from the BSA, 12 billion dollars doesn't just disappear off the face of the earth but gets invested else where, or 25,000 people just sit at home dejected, never working again because they didn't get the job of their dreams but find news jobs in the software industry.
There will always be a demand for software, therefore there will always be a company selling a product to fill that demand and if they create a product people like and buy, they will be sucessfull. M$ (oops) products are the most popular software products on the market and therfore are the most pirated, yet this has not kept them from becoming the richest company in the world. Opportunity will always be there as long as there is a market. Once again, leting corporations control all usage of all products is a horrible idea because corporations do not want to compete and give their consumers the best value for the best price, their sole motivation is to maximize profit. Corporate greed is good, corporate greed at the cost of consumer rights and a free market is bad.
The law doesn't prevent you from examining the cab, talking about the idea of a cab, or producing your own cab service, preferably with better air freshners. Of course, this is going by the assumption that you didn't sign a lifetime NDA or EULA license to to contrary.
no doubt McCarthy is a proud member of ashcroft's TIPs program
And are we to believe that through the hundreds of multi paged EULA's agreements that you have undoubtedly agreed to as a software developer, that it is inconceivable that you somewhere along the lines agreed to being added to spam mailing lists?
Oh, yes it does!
NYC has the medallion system. There are a finite number of medallions. Each medallion is a cheap piece of tin that's riveted to the hood of the taxi. The medallion sells for a serious multiple of the value of the taxi itself.
Other cities use other taxi licensing systems.
BTW, the NYC Hack Bureau is a truly byzantine bureaucracy. If you hate software licenses, you'll fry your synapses on Hack Bureau arcana. You see, not only are the taxis regulated, but the drivers have to jump through an amazing number of hoops. (I went about halfway through the process back in '70 or '71 until about three weeks into it, with umpteen subway miles under my belt spent traveling between various hellholes (to interview various licensed companies, to see if I could get sponsored) and back and forth to the Hack Bureau at the Coleseum, filling out mile of forms after mile of forms, I said screw it and went to work for the Post Office.)
If you "clone" the cab, using either a counterfeit medallion, or run a "gypsy" cab without a medallion, you are breaking the law.
Nice try, though. Thanks for playing.
Where the hell did that come from???
WTF does that have to do with the price of s#it in shanghai?
Are you OK??? You running a fever or sumpthin?
Oh, that's right. You're a Libertarianoid, and this is your stock-in-trade drama queen hyperbole.
Kudos!
(Um, where's the damn hat? This quarter is burning a hole in my pocket.)
Only if your spamhausen Liberhoid "freespeach(tm)"[sic] brethren have figured out how to tap my mental waves to determine my email address from an "OK" button click.
You are apparently oblivious to the fact that there were legal issues that arose when copy machines began to proliferate.
You are also apparently unaware that copy and photo shops will refuse to make copies of obvious studio prints or architectural drawings/blueprints unless the customer has written permission from the photographer or architect.
You evidently do not realize that the reason for this is the fact that several businesses have paid gargantuan fines for violating photographers' work.
Serious IP protection is nothing new, nor is it something mysteriously restricted to software.
Some people define a mass-mailing of email to 30 recipients in someone's address book to be spam. I'm trying to make a technical separation so that some stupid AOLer who selects all 70 buddies on their list doesn't get prosecuted.
Frankly this would be a better world if nincompoop AOLers got prosecuted for flushing their toilets in other folks general direction.
ANY "recipient-pay" advertishing is SPAM, and the death penalty itself would be more mercy than these scumbag vermin deserve.
A Bogie moment...
In fact, the Constitution explicitly rejects the "property" model in favor of the "bargain" model (the government gives you a monopoly for a limited time, after which the work matures into the public domain).
Criminal offense in the US, not in Russia. Company is based in Russia and sells its products online through its website last time I visited it. The US is exerting its sovereignty beyond its borders into Russia. The product was sold to Americans buying from a Russian company, based in Russia which hired Russians who were living and working in Russia. I bet you'll come up with some justification like you did in another thread where you said we should screw with foreign nations and their governments whenever it can in any way make us more prosperous or "safer."
On the other hand, it's conceivable that the DMCA permits a civil suit against an academic report that includes source code or object code.
In other words, it must remain theory. No proof of concept. Most jurors couldn't tell the difference between an algorithm written in pseudo-code and one implemented in a real programming language. Effectively, unless you write the algorithm in a natural language, it is a potential civil offense.
If published research does not include working code--which is a vital part of research--the odds of a successful lawsuit rapidly approach zero.
Any decent code monkey can take a good algorithm and implement it. So once again, no algorithm.
Basically what he's saying is that you can talk about a potential hole in a DRM system, but you cannot in any way publish anything that could actually demonstrate its real existance.
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