Avoiding LispWorks Personal annoyances
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From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 1 Oct 2009 11:19 Alessio Stalla <alessiostalla(a)gmail.com> writes: > On Oct 1, 5:02 pm, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) > wrote: >> Kaz Kylheku <kkylh...(a)gmail.com> writes: >> > On 2009-10-01, Tim Smith <reply_in_gr...(a)mouse-potato.com> wrote: >> >> In article >> >><e4d6dd55-54f9-4079-bed5-022428eb1...(a)j9g2000prh.googlegroups.com>, >> >> gnubeard <gnube...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >>> I don't steal. >> >> >> Stealing is not the best analogy for what you are doing. >> >> >> A pure free market doesn't work well for intellectual goods, such as >> >> books, music, software, and so on, because the marginal cost of making a >> >> copy is close to zero. In a pure free market (which means there would be >> >> no legal restrictions on making and distributing copies) you'd only get >> >> books and music from artists who are independently wealthy or otherwise >> >> find a patron, because trying to make money actually selling books and >> >> CDs wouldn't work. As soon as you published, the copies would start, and >> >> they would undercut you enough that you'd just never make back your >> >> initial costs. >> >> > Copying isn't the best analogy for what he is doing. He has a legal copy of the >> > software. Having obtained a legal copy of a work, all he is doing is flipping >> > the bits of a storage device which he owns. I.e. doing as he pleases with >> > private property. >> >> Would this analogy do: >> >> He's at an ATM, and there's a lamppost nearby. He noticed that >> when drawing money from the ATM, if he kicks the lamppost that >> sends a pulse in the ATM that prevents it to debit his account. > > He doesn't own the ATM, the bank does, so he's not allowed to fiddle > with it. He didn't fiddle with it. He only fiddled with the utility providing the ATM its power. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__
From: Alessio Stalla on 1 Oct 2009 14:26 On Oct 1, 5:19 pm, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) wrote: > Alessio Stalla <alessiosta...(a)gmail.com> writes: > > On Oct 1, 5:02 pm, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) > > wrote: > >> Kaz Kylheku <kkylh...(a)gmail.com> writes: > >> > On 2009-10-01, Tim Smith <reply_in_gr...(a)mouse-potato.com> wrote: > >> >> In article > >> >><e4d6dd55-54f9-4079-bed5-022428eb1...(a)j9g2000prh.googlegroups.com>, > >> >> gnubeard <gnube...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >> >>> I don't steal. > > >> >> Stealing is not the best analogy for what you are doing. > > >> >> A pure free market doesn't work well for intellectual goods, such as > >> >> books, music, software, and so on, because the marginal cost of making a > >> >> copy is close to zero. In a pure free market (which means there would be > >> >> no legal restrictions on making and distributing copies) you'd only get > >> >> books and music from artists who are independently wealthy or otherwise > >> >> find a patron, because trying to make money actually selling books and > >> >> CDs wouldn't work. As soon as you published, the copies would start, and > >> >> they would undercut you enough that you'd just never make back your > >> >> initial costs. > > >> > Copying isn't the best analogy for what he is doing. He has a legal copy of the > >> > software. Having obtained a legal copy of a work, all he is doing is flipping > >> > the bits of a storage device which he owns. I.e. doing as he pleases with > >> > private property. > > >> Would this analogy do: > > >> He's at an ATM, and there's a lamppost nearby. He noticed that > >> when drawing money from the ATM, if he kicks the lamppost that > >> sends a pulse in the ATM that prevents it to debit his account. > > > He doesn't own the ATM, the bank does, so he's not allowed to fiddle > > with it. > > He didn't fiddle with it. He only fiddled with the utility providing > the ATM its power. I was writing a lengthy reply to try to confute this, but then I started to see things from a different perspective. My main argument was the distinction between information and physical objects. I realized that they have in common a lot more than I thought. A program is ultimately a sequence of bytes. A chair is ultimately a combination of atoms. But what distinguishes them from other sequences of bytes, from other combinations of atoms? What makes them be Lispworks and the chair I'm sitting on? The meaning we assign them. Seeing LispWorks as a program is more convenient than seeing it as a sequence of bytes, and seeing a my chair as a chair is more convenient than looking at it as a combination of atoms. The most convenient way for us to interpret a certain thing is the meaning, the essence of that thing, what that thing really "is". In that light, changing bytes of LispWorks is like changing atoms of a chair, or of an ATM to return to your example. No one can claim property on a byte or on an atom, but one can claim property on the thing the byte or the atom "belong" to. Clearly bytes don't differ from atoms in this respect, contrarily to what I believed before. Still, what troubles me is that we are able to deal with bytes much more easily than with atoms. I cannot copy a chair or modify an ATM by messing with it at the atomic level. I can however do those things on programs and information in general, and I still don't believe we need laws to limit those possibilities we have with bytes. Does this mean that when you reach the technical level necessary to copy something almost freely, and to change it at the level of its basic constituents, private property naturally ceases to exist? I have to think more about this. Alessio
From: Dave Searles on 1 Oct 2009 15:35 Raffael Cavallaro wrote: > On 2009-09-29 21:30:05 -0400, gnubeard <gnubeard(a)gmail.com> said: > >> Circumventing >> the 5-hour limit for non-commericial personal use is ALLOWED by the >> license. > > Not if if involves reverse engineering how LW implements the time limit, > and of course, it does. Literalist. Authoritarian. Fascist.
From: Dave Searles on 1 Oct 2009 15:39 Dave Searles wrote: > The problem is ultimately an attack on our fundamental property rights. > We NEED, for a proper capitalist society and for a *free* one, that OUR > things are actually OURS. If our software, and maybe appliances, cars, > and so on cease to be ours and become agents of organizations whose > agendas are not always going to dovetail with our own, with this > relationship actually considered legally binding, then we cease to > become citizens and property owners and we become a new class of serfs > with a mixture of corporate and governmental overlords. Got a scary preview of such a world the night after writing this, when I watched CSI:NY. Cars have software, more and more as time goes on, and increasingly vendors seek to clamp down on how it may be used. Give them ways to exert ownership over our vehicles, and a) that CSI:NY can easily come true when some hacker gets at the vendor-override mechanism and b) the same shenanigans can be used by the vendor for its own motives or at government gunpoint for government purposes, unaccountably and stealthily. > This is also why the FSF and free software (like Clojure (EPL), ABCL > (GPL), and SBCL (BSD)) are so important. And growing more important with every passing day.
From: Dave Searles on 1 Oct 2009 15:46
Raffael Cavallaro wrote: > On 2009-09-30 04:57:17 -0400, Alessio Stalla <alessiostalla(a)gmail.com> > said: > >> The point imho is that, unlike a signed contract, it is not >> objectively verifiable that the user has read and accepted the >> license. > > Civil courts in the US use the standard of "preponderance of evidence." > This means the side whose claim is *more likely* based on evidence > presented prevails (no need for proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" which > is the much higher criminal standard). > > So courts have asked themselves which is more likely, that someone who > installed the software was somehow completely unaware of the license > presented, or that the user was aware of the license. Aware of the license is a very different kettle of fish from agreed to the license. Surely you don't think that merely reading a contract, without signing it, can bind you to its terms? The same reasoning logically must apply to seeing a software license but avoiding clicking "I accept" by whatever method. > This is why the "hack the installer" defense is pretty worthless. The > very act of hacking the installer is evidence on the side of "the user > knew there was a license agreement." I'd love to see a non-software business try that sort of argument. "He got ahold of one of our widgets and knew we like to sell them to people only if they sign this contract, therefore he should be bound by the terms of that contract even though we have no evidence that he ever did so!" Maybe going after someone who may have gotten the widget second-hand, or who for whatever reason simply was able to purchase one without the salesman getting his John Hancock on the dotted line. |