Very true. On the other hand, how many command line programs are written for win32 these days? There is really no good reason for MS to deprecate "gets".

For that matter, how is memcpy_s any safer than memcpy? If you specify a length argument that exceeds buffer size it will overrun anyway, regardless of the function you use. Their whole doggarn problem is with pointers. I don't think the ms devs understand them at all.

MS should leave the ISO standard alone. There's nothing wrong with it. Rather, they should concentrate on fixing their holy OS (as in an OS full of holes) and hiring devs that actually understand programming.

The only reason TPB lost is because their lawyers suck.

Seriously.

All they did is to provide an infrastructure for file sharing. There is nothing wrong with sharing files. It only becomes illegal once criminals use an infrastructure to share copyrighted material.

Just so, this ISP is guilty of providing an infrastructure that criminals might use. Just like the municipality provides roads for bank robbers to drive over. The whole internet is guilty of the same!

Deleting customer records though, is the same as were someone at the traffic department to suddenly start wiping tape recordings from CCTV cameras in order to protect criminals. This is, IMHO way more criminal than what TPB did.

One might argue that TPB did nothing to prevent copyright theft on behalf of the copyright holders. They might have been more conscientious about removing links to known copyrighted songs or videos for example. On the other hand, it may equally be argued that they are a third party to the theft, and preventing such theft was not their responsibility.

At least they did not destroy records- there were none to destroy

- The Louse

Just haul up Google, type in "virus" and count the number of instances targeting Microsoft vs. Linux. That should convince anyone. alternately, do "WIN32 virus" vs. "Linux virus"

In the dark ages, many innocent people were accused of witchcraft or wizardry, tortured and burnt at the stake- all according to the law of the land. It was all perfectly legal and above board. No-one could object without courting the same fate. If you didn't like your neighbor, or someone pissed you off, you could just toddle along to the local church and denounce him. People were nice to one another!

A similar thing happened in France with their revolution. Aristocracy? Don't you dare walk along with you nose in the air, or it just might get cut off- at the neck.

Now we have a new Inquisition, the RIAA. If you and your pal have a fall out, you better be careful or he may just pay a visit to the RIAA and you get sued for what amounts to a life sentence. $200 000 or thereabouts for a student means taking a loan (if you can get it these days) effectively pawning your assets for decades as you pay off interest. Kiss goodbye to your retirement fund.

If a record label owns copyright to a song, what exactly did they contribute to it's production? Generally, nothing. The artist is just not in a position to mass produce and market the song on his own, and therefore sells his copyright to the label for a fee. If he is lucky he may get royalties as a part of the deal. Talk about selling your soul to the devil! Pun intended.

What the RIAA is all about, is protecting the monopoly of the record label over the work of art. We can't have some upstart mass producing the same work at ostensibly lower cost than the record label and undercutting prices, or in the case of p2p, producing and distributing it at zero cost; that would put the record labels out of business, and destroy the artist's reason for producing works in the first place.

Now that sounds perfectly reasonable, does it not? The same perfectly sound reasoning applied to the protection of the institution of the church from devil worship and the protection of the newly formed French revolutionary government from competition.

Quite a quandry we have.

True enough

If no-one is still actively selling or marketing the material at that stage, then there will be no-one to sue you. Unfortunately, for that to be the case, the material is probably not worth the salvage effort at that point.

If I had a crystal ball, I would envisage future libraries of copyright or ex-copyright material privately owned by large companies, to which one would have to subscribe to gain access. Such access would probably be limited and controlled by asymmetric key management and legal contract.

If someone thinks it's important enough to extend copyright period to 70 years after death, it's a pretty safe bet that someone thinks they can make oodles of boodle from the effort.

Kiss goodbye to the age of freedom of information.

Sorry to disappoint, but take a look at what James Boyle, an expert in intellectual property law, says on the subject in His Book It's true- the DMCA makes old copyright law, and the span of years, largely irrelevant.

Folks, it does not matter whether they extend copyright by another 100 years after the death of an artist.

In another 5-10 years, all new works will be protected by encryption. The DMCA makes it illegal to bypass any copyright protection measures, and does not state that it's ok to bypass such measures after 50, 70 or 100 years. Therefore, after 100 years it will still be illegal to bypass the measure, regardless of whether the copyright itself has expired.

The poor artist is not the issue here, or the reason for extending the period. Before anyone will publish your work, most authors are required to sign over their copyright to the publisher. All of these rights are owned by the publishers, not the artists. It's that business which is being protected by laws such as DMCA.

In answer to a previous poster/programmer about him not getting paid royalties for his code, he got paid a salary in return for the copyright to the code. The code and copyright to it does not belong to him, but to the company he worked for. This is in fact similar to the case of the modern artist/publisher relationship.

Copyright, as it used to be 50 years ago when authors or artists retained ownership, hardly exists anymore.

This 'extension' is a red herring. If they made the period only 5 years after the death of an artist instead of 70 years, the DMCA would still protect the copyrighted work in perpetuity. Publishers would still be able to sell these works and be protected from other people selling the same work, as they would be held liable for breach of the DMCA, not copyright!

We should be more concerned about the imposed & implied loss of fair use rights, such as the ability to freely use copyrighted works in education, research etc.