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Comment Re:Free SaaSS can exist (Score 1) 326

which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.

This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.

A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.

Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.

Comment Re:Free SaaSS can exist (Score 1) 326

If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does

Once I have a copy, you can't control what I do with that copy until I want to make another copy. This is defined by copyright law, and includes (among other things):

* Performing a stage play or audiovisual work
* A public performance of a song
* Remixing or arranging a song (a compulsory license can be acquired if the song is commercially released)
* Sending a copy of a novel, software program, or other literary work to another person

What's not on this list: Merely using a software program over the network, as no copy is being made. I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.

Comment Re:Feminism (Score 2, Informative) 1134

No, it's called individual rights when you think that everyone should have equal rights regardless of sex, race, physical traits, or anything besides the mere fact you're human.

It's called feminism when you believe women should have the same rights as men, and not necessarily the other way around - an obsolete position at best, an appalling contradiction at worst.

Comment Re:Not Net Neutrality (Score 1) 531

Again, Net Neutrality is a routing rule. Your router is either neutral or it isn't (and when it isn't, maybe in various degrees). It has nothing to do with the law per se. If I build my own router in my intranet that routes to i.e. give priority to my computer, then all other nodes, my router is no longer neutral; but that does not mean that it is "fraudulent" (I own the thing! It's obviously impossible to defraud myself).

Now when I sign up with my ISP, I expect that, absent other agreements, they won't care about where my packets are address to or from, just if I'm exceeding their bandwidth limit I agreed to - the only terms they mention that would result in packet loss.

If they end up dropping packets on some other mean, I'd call that fraud. But fraud is not for the FCC to enforce, and it has little to do with one ideology vs. another.

Comment Re:Not Net Neutrality (Score 2) 531

I really wasn't trying to get into Marxism, but as an armchair university professor, I would guess that a computer network is necessarily built of capital (i.e. nodes of routers and computers), and the alternative to prevent suppression of the working class would be collective ownership of the routers; with some arbitrary "equitable" and/or "fair" routing scheme, which I guess would look like Net Neutrality (and it is, so far as I can tell, a good routing principle).

Aside, Adam Smith also casually used Labor Theory of Value (lacking a better alternative to explain the relationship of costs to prices), the settlement on Marginal Theory of Value didn't come about until Carl Menger.

There's examples of rent-seeking and legal barriers to entry too numerous to list, but municipal networks would be an example of the latter. If I wanted to install a high-capacity line to houses, I'd have to compete with the taxpayer-funded installed lines - an artificial increase in costs (cost being the value of the next-best alternative).

Comment Re:Not Net Neutrality (Score 2) 531

I'm not sure what you're getting at; I think you mean to qualify "considering only Wikipedia/Facebook traffic, each being used equally, each should account for about 50% of packet drops", but that's not necessarily correct either, Facebook has much more streaming media than Wikipedia and would likely show considerably more packet loss.

I'm also not sure we want to go all-out on the "treat all data equally" idea militantly; what does that mean? If I pay for a dedicated pipe at a data center, I'm paying per Mbps, i.e. the rate above which they'll start dropping packets. What if I also want to pay for low latency because my company does low-latency telecommunications (i.e. please don't ever drop my packets, so long as I don't send too many of them), and I don't want to lay down the capital necessary to dig my own fiber darknet? Obviously this is okay, but your literal rule suggests otherwise.

Comment Re:Not Net Neutrality (Score 2) 531

Forged RST packets, captive portals, and injecting into webpages are wrong, they are fraud (i.e. slap them with a class-action lawsuit), but it's not a violation of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality involves routing rules, period. (Use the respective terms: Forged packets and captive portals.)

The FCC might be proposing regulations around Net Neutrality; but the point of the article doesn't concern that, it's that FCC shouldn't be the packet police.

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