Precedent seems to imply that the resulting object cannot be controlled (e.g. the output of a GPLed program is not GPLed, so why should executing a program on a 3D printer be any different?)
What if the program is a quine?
Then how do you explain the decline in the amount of nutrients that has been observed in many US crops since 1950, according to the USDA? Citations for this are given in this comment.
Michael Pollan makes a similar claim in "In Defense of Food" on page 115:
Since the widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has declined substantially, according to figures gathered by the USDA, which has tracked the nutrient content of various crops since then. Some researchers blame this decline on the condition of the soil; others cite the tendency of modern plant breeding, which has consistently selected for industrial characteristics such as yield rather than nutritional quality.
More detail is given on page 118.
As mentioned earlier, USDA figures show a decline in the nutrient content of the forty-three crops it has tracked since the 1950s. In one recent analysis, vitamin C declined by 20 percent, iron by 15 percent, riboflavin by 38 percent, calcium by 16 percent. Government figures from England tell a similar story: declines since the fifties of 10 percent or more in levels of iron, zinc, calcium, and selenium across a range of food crops. To put this in more concrete terms, you now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple, and you’d have to eat several more slices of bread to get your recommended daily allowance of zinc than you would have a century ago.
Here are some sources cited for that chapter that sound like they might be relevant to those particular claims:
That permission is granted on submission by the Developer.
Only the copyright holder, or someone authorized by the copyright holder, can grant that permission. If someone else tries to do so, the grant is not effective.
Apple wasn't the "distributor" in this case, their AppStore was just being used as a Distribution Channel by the VLC Team. So VLC violated GPL by choosing an incompatible Distribution Channel, Apple had nothing to do with it. Stop spreading obvious lies.
That's not correct. When an end user installs an app via the App Store, software written by, deployed by, and under the control of Apple makes a copy and distributes that copy to the end user. Apple needs the permission of the copyright owner in order to do these things. 17 USC 106.
Apple is relying on the assurance of the developer of the app that he is either the copyright holder, or has the permission of the copyright owner to grant Apple permission to do those things. If the developer did not have permission, than the developer has violated his agreement with Apple, and if Apple were to get sued and have to pay damages to the copyright owner, they'd almost certainly be able to recover those damages from the developer. However, that's between Apple and the developer. The copyright owner is not required to delve into the relationship between Apple and its developers and ascertain the ultimate party that caused his copyright to be violated and try to get them to stop. He can go after anyone who is making and distributing unauthorized copies, and that includes Apple.
I wish they would do this for the Surface Pro. In a recent discussion over on
Gabe at Penny Arcade reviewed it as a device for drawing, and was very pleased with it.
I would love a tablet that is good for those things, but not at $900.
The FSF has a definition of the term "free software".
Software under AGPL is not not free software according to that definition. It violates freedom 0.
Yet the FSF approved AGPL! This was an ethical disaster.
A key difference between free software licenses and commercial software EULAs was that the latter was a two way bargain. The copyright owner, who the law gives the exclusive right to make copies (including, for computer software, making temporary copies in RAM to use the software) grants you via the EULA permission to do that, in exchange for you agreeing not to do some things that otherwise would be allowed under copyright law. For example, you might have to agree to not reverse engineer the software, or to sell it when you are done with it.
The free software licenses, on the other hand, only grant you permissions. They do not require you to give up anything.
Until AGPL. AGPL goes beyond just granting you permission to do things that copyright law says require permission. It places restrictions on what you do with the software on your own machine. It is a EULA.
They eyestrain worry is overstated.
The real problem with an iPad for books, compared to a Kindle or to a paperback novel, is that the iPad hurts a lot more when you doze off reading in bed and drop it on face.
BTW, I'm really tired of seeing, as it was in this article, the BSD license described as being "more liberal" than the GPL. The *ONLY* "freedom" you get with the BSD license that you don't get with the GPL is the freedom to restrict the freedom of others. Claiming that that makes it "more liberal" is akin to saying that we had more freedom before the abolition of slavery because we hadn't had our freedom to own other people (and to treat our property in whatever manner we liked) restricted
I receive some software under GPL. Let G be the set of all things the license allows me to do with/to the software.
I receive some software under BSD. Let B be the set of all things the license allows me to do with/to the software.
G is a strict subset of B.
Hence, B has a more liberal license than G.
Adecco registered the phrase "Around the world in 80 jobs" with the uspto, and a trademark was granted on April 13th.
Nope. Adecco filed an application on April 13th. The application then has to be examined, which typically takes several months. If it gets through that and the examiner decides to allow the mark, that will be published, and then there is a 30 day period where the public is invited to submit reasons the mark should not be granted.
Your comparison to HSBC fails because (1) HSBC was not specifically set up to facilitate money laundering and other criminal activity, and (2) the vast majority of HSBC's business is not in support of criminal activity.
It's more than that. Taxation is theft. Theft is taking of property against the will of the owner of that property. If it is your will to give this property to the state you may volunteer it; if it is not your will they *will* take it and if you refuse you will go to prison or face violence. This is clearly theft, at the point of a gun.
It's not theft because the money they are taking is not your property. Ben Franklin explained it well in his letter to Robert Morris on Christmas, 1783:
The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.
All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
Correct. Statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per song. (They can be lowered to $250 per song if the defendant proves that the infringement was innocent, which basically means proving that the defendant had no reason to believe that the material was copyrighted, which had no chance whatsoever of happening here). So, 24 songs times $750 per song is $18000. That's enough to make their point.
Thomas was a compete idiot for not taking the settlement. She knew she was guilty. She knew they had overwhelming proof. Since the minimum possible damages after losing the suit would be $18000 (hell, even if she could somehow get the lower innocent infringer rate of $250 song it would still be $6000 for 24 songs), she could only worsen her position by going to trial.
According to Ars, the average settlement offered by the RIAA is $3000 plus a written statement by the accused saying that they will not do it again (and probably a confession). That sounds reasonable next to the fines that Thomas-Rasset has been saddled with, but $3000 for $24 worth of music is still outrageous.
It was way more than $24 worth of music. This settlement offer was for all the songs she was sharing, which was around 1700 songs. When she refused and insisted that they take her to court, they only picked 24 songs to actually sue over, since there is no point whatsoever in suing over all 1700.
And even if she was able to swallow that, the written statement that they demand would put you at the RIAA's mercy if they decided to come after you again. It's no wonder that she fought this.
They would not have had grounds to come after again, assuming that she refrained from future file sharing.
The RIAA offered to settle for around $2 to $3 per song shared, and she refused.
He who steps on others to reach the top has good balance.
