Well, let's be honest: whatever authorization google grants or doesn't grant is irrelevant: they don't own the data (fortunately!) - which is merely keywords. Even if they did "own" a keyword by virtue of having trademarked it, that only grants limited rights (again, fortunately!) - you can't prevent others from merely mentioning or linking to your trademarked name in general - essentially as long as you're not misrepresenting it.

Users - namely google employees - apparently agreed by means of an absurd EULA (don't we love em) to send click-stream data, and Bing is merely correlating that "freely" given data.

Now, whether an EULA should suffice to permit scraping this invasive (not just the link, but form fields or text elsewhere on the page) is kinda dubious, but heck, companies have long required you to sell your soul as prerequisite to using their software, and claimed that usage means agreement.

They aren't "merely" honoring a take-down request; they're the designers, builders and distributors of a software system that's antithetical to free software; in which users no longer have the right to modify or redistribute software regardless of who wrote it.

The app store is most certainly not GPLv2 friendly.

The point is to just Say No to vendor lock-in; to the benefit of users and small software firms around the world. It's rather noble of him to take this stand despite the unfair vilification he gets for it, don't you think?

The dev asked for the app to be removed because Apple was violating its license term. Apple does not have a license to distribute VLC while imposing additional restrictions beyond those of the GPL, but chose to violate that license.

The fact that Apple claims they don't verify licenses does not make them less legally bound to oblige by them; and in this case the license wasn't a secret, so they can't claim the intermediate distributor (Applidium) misled them either: they willfully (by manually approving distribution) infringed on this dev's license. Of course, they're chosing to ignore licensing issues in their approval process, so it's hard to claim any kind of malice: they just happen to be wrong, that's all.

It is indeed their fault and responsibility - no one elses; not Applidium (who is not violating the license) nor VLC (who isn't party to Apple's app-store in the first place): just Apple.

In common sense terms, Apple is restricting modification and redistribution. After all, you cannot actually run let alone redistribute a modified app without Apple's say-so. Were Apple merely the app-store provider - that is, just one-of-many distributors - this wouldn't be an issue, but with iOS devices, they are the only distributor.

Now, it's fine that some free-software apps don't mind this additional restriction and choose not to take action - but Apple, even as a third party distributor, is violating the GPL by imposing additional restriction on the license.

The GPL is not about zero-cost distribution, the GPL is about the right for downstream users to modify the program. Apple very intentionally disables this; their app-store is the very antithesis of free software: a world in which you cannot run any program without Apple's stamp of approval.

The fact that apple says "we don't verify the license" doesn't mean that's suddenly OK or the law or whatever. It's not as is Applidium lied about the license, so Apple can't claim to be innocent of the issue - they just choose to ignore it; that's their responsibility, even if they don't want it.

They want to avoid vendor lock in, of which Apple's control-freak behavior is a perfect example. The app-store is the very anti-thesis of free software: a world in which you cannot run any program you wrote unless The Man approves.

Redistribution with modifications is not possible in the app-store.

Apple, not (merely) Applidium violated the license. They're distributing the software, after all. Even with the most positive spin possible you could merely argue they're just a bulk-distributor and not liable as long as they honor take-downs, but even that argument is dubious: after all, they manually approve apps, so it's hard to argue they don't control what "users" (such as Applidium) post.

Whatever his literal argument, he's right that you cannot distribute meaningfully free software via the app-store. You cannot, after all freely *modify* and redistribute it. It completely undermines the whole point of free software, which is not that it can't cost money, but that it may be improved by others.

Apple *definitely* makes that impossible.

"misleadingly edited" isn't what this eyewitness claims either: http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/52113/WikiLeaks__Collateral_Murder__U_S__Soldier_Ethan_M/

I don't know what you're smoking, but you're obviously completely immune from reality if you think none of the documents released by wikileaks demonstrate unethical behaviour on the part variour parties involved. It's hardly "acceptable" to do medical experiments on africans without their consent (pfizer IIRC), nor to boast of bribing officials in all levels of government (shell), nor to any of a host of things the US government owns up to doing.

And you're either lying or badly misinformed if you think the "collateral murder" video was "misleadingly edited". Did you watch the movie - you know, the almost 40 minute long hardly edited at all video? Or did you watch some specially shortened version? I can't tell, but the long version pretty clearly demonstrates human error - perhaps an honest error, but not one that permits the dishonest, unethical cover up that followed.

Another issue here is the escalation of violence. It may seem like a great thing to have the right to do *anything* in self-defense, but if people actually start defending themselves dangerously, criminals are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Or, for a particularly sad case I remember, where a swat team executed a search and the victim of the search got frightened by the masked men storming into his house, pulled his gun from under his pillow (or whereever)... and got shot by the police. In effect, the police murdered an (as it turns out) innocent man, destroyed lots of property - and all because they didn't want to risk their own skin, a risk that only existed because the guns in self defense are not uncommon.

Make no mistake, if a burglar breaks into your house, he's taking a risk, and will arm himself to the level he thinks necessary to deal with it. He'll be prepared and will probably have done this before, and you probably won't. So unless you think you're going to win in a fight and he thinks that too, you're better off not escalating the situation.

It matters. People don't like being in prison for even small amounts of time; and being a registered offender means you're more likely to be identified the next time 'round. Then there's the social pressure: for those in not-entirely dysfunctional families and peer groups, exposure is a nasty penalty in itself. All in all, if you know you've been caught once, you're not as likely to risk it again - even if the penalty isn't harsh. A small penalty with a high chance of punishment that follows quickly is generally more effective than a high penalty and a small chance of punishment that isn't executed for years.

You don't lock up kids for years when they do something wrong either - right? And yet, they still seem to learn. And while adults may not change their ways quite so easily, there's no point in overdoing it either: that's just wasting state resources and wasting the time of a member of the public who despite the minor infraction can still be an otherwise productive, social member of the public.

Using more punishment than necessary isn't just immoral, it's plain stupid: it wastes both the state's and convicts resources and can invite police fraud. Even fines (which aren't as inefficent as prison time) have a huge overhead, and can be pointlessly small or overly harsh depending on the convicts resources. Better to invest in prevention.

So, *if* CCTV's would actually enable higher probability lower severity punishments that'd be great. Unfortunately, the article doesn't actually quite go that far. I wouldn't quite trust the officer in charge of the camera's (who's job or prestige might make him a vested intrest) to make a completely unbiased report; and that's who the BBC is quoting. And what he's saying doesn't quite mean the CCTV's *improved* policing, just that they were *part* of policing in those 2500 cases. Perhaps spending the police resources elsewhere rather than on CCTV's would have been even more effective; and perhaps some of those 2500 cases would have been solved anyway and the CCTV's were merely incidental. In any case, the article doesn't demonstrate they were actually useful.