KaVir
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#31 id:13082 Posted Oct 1, 2008, 5:27 am
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quixadhal said:Arguments about intellectual property that refer to physical property law usually don't work well.
I was explaining the way bare licences work. Trespass is a form of infringement on property rights, and it has plenty of legal precedent. There is no such precent for bare licences and software, so we (like lawyers) can only speculate at this point.
quixadhal said:It's absolutely still wrong, and illegal, but it's not quite the same as theft, trespass. or property rights.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf
"Copyright is a personal property right, and it is subject to the various state laws and regulations that govern the ownership, inheritance, or transfer of personal property as well as terms of contracts or conduct of business."
quixadhal said:It's more like I built a house and we agreed that you can live in it, so you move in.
No, it's not, because we're talking about bare licences. Unless you're suggesting that we didn't sign any contract, and that I don't have to pay any fees or rent - in which case it's rather like a (grown-up) child living with their parents, or a live-in lover or relative. If you break up with your girlfriend, and she doesn't pay anything towards the rent, you certainly have the right to kick her out of your house. The fact that you originally agreed to let her live with you doesn't mean that you're stuck with her for the rest of your life.
quixadhal said:Out of curiosity, does the DikuMUD license qualify as bare?
As I said earlier, "Some lawyers argue licences such as the GPL are bare licences, while some argue the opposite; there's currently no way to be sure how mud licences would be classified."
It is my personal opinion that the Diku licence is a bare licence, but I know others feel differently.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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David Haley
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#32 id:13089 Posted Oct 1, 2008, 10:05 am
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Samson said:If it's widespread, obviously harm is done. But are you seriously trying to tell me that one person violating the terms is going to cause your imminent collapse?
I didn't say it was going to cause imminent collapse... no need to go to hyperbole. I was saying that there was at least some harm done as opposed to none whatsoever.
Samson said:Also, if your distribution system is weak enough to put a copy in someone's hands before they've consummated a royalty contract you're a fool, period. You'd make #### sure that you had signatures, mailing information, credit card numbers and such long before selling a license to someone. I would hope your terms would be ironclad enough to include charging someone's card automatically each month/year/whatever to collect those royalties, and contain provisions for being able to collect damages from someone who commits fraud against you in the form of stopping payments through some other means.
You realize that there are several whole categories of products for which the above does not work at all, right? Any kind of software download, for example, for which you're supposed to limit usage to non-commercial activity. Or student versions that you're not supposed to use in certain circumstances. In these cases, all of the safeguards you describe above cannot exist.
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quixadhal
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#33 id:13092 Posted Oct 1, 2008, 1:07 pm
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Mabus said:To quote from the USDoJ:
Quote:* Cyber theft comprises crimes in which a computer is used to steal money
or other things of value. Cyber theft includes embezzlement, fraud, theft of
intellectual property, and theft of personal or financial data.
That just tells me that the USDoJ is as clueless as everyone else. The definition of the word theft makes it impossible to apply to data, unless you were to have physical access to the media. Theft has nothing to do with wrongful possession, it's wrongfully depriving someone of a possession. I could steal your bicycle and dump it a block away, and even though I don't have it anymore, it's still theft. I can copy all your mp3 files, and despite what the RIAA wants you to think, I haven't stolen anything. I may have violated quite a few copyrights, and one can try to make the argument that I've denied the record companies "virtual profits" that they "would have received" if the copies hadn't been made... but that's NOT theft.
Of course, I suppose they can just redefine theft. Why not, nobody seems to care about accuracy these days anyways.
Regarding Samson's comments about piracy, I wish I could find the exact quote, but the CEO of Oracle once said something that seems appropriate here. "We're not really concerned about piracy. Those people wouldn't be our customers anyways." Not exact, but the gist of his statements in the interview I read was that most of the people who pirate (software) would probably do without, or find another solution, rather than buy it.
Personally, I detest people talking about "virtual profit" or "losses" of sales that "should have happened." That's the same kind of speculation that led to the dot.com collapse, and is now leading to the housing and loan industry's meltdown. Count the checks after you've cashed them, that's your profit. Anything else is just fairy dust.
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David Haley
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#34 id:13094 Posted Oct 1, 2008, 1:17 pm
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It's almost nonsensical to say that the DoJ doesn't know what comprises a given crime, no? Is not the legal/judicial system (almost by definition) the source of such things?
Re: piracy. It's not a question of should-have-happened, it's a question of being owed something that is being withheld. Yes, the Oracle CEO is correct in that those people wouldn't be customers anyhow. But that doesn't excuse or make acceptable the piracy, it just means that Oracle does not see the need to act upon it.
quixadhal said:That's the same kind of speculation that led to the dot.com collapse, and is now leading to the housing and loan industry's meltdown.
Eh... not really, the picture is a little more complicated, but let's not go there at the moment. 
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