From: Raffael Cavallaro on
On 2009-10-10 12:08:13 -0400, Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> said:

> A license is a permissino,
> and you don't need permission to do anything you want with
> a copyrighted work that you have properly obtained.

This is clearly false. You obtain a legal DVD copy of the Godfather.
You may not show it publicly - that's a copyright violation.

You keep asserting things that are false. Having a legitimate copy does
not entitle you to do *anything* you wish with your copy. Copyright
holders can place additional restrictions on how you may use your copy
in their license to you. This is well established law.

Notwithstanding such restrictions, you have certain rights which they
may *not* take away in their license. For example, you may show short
clips of your copy of the Godfather in a review. Reverse engineering
restrictions for personal, educational use is specficically allowed,
but publication of the results of that reverse engineering, which is
what the OP did, is specifically forbidden.


--
Raffael Cavallaro

From: Raffael Cavallaro on
On 2009-10-10 11:50:36 -0400, Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> said:

> I never read this garbage. The concept of a license is completely
> meaningless to me.

But it doesn't matter what you consider meaningless because you don't
have the armed force of the state backing up your opinion. The courts
do. What the courts think is meaningful is much more important to those
of us who don't live in our own private reality.

The courts think licenses are valid. The courts can (and do) enforce
their opionion. Your opinion, not so much.


--
Raffael Cavallaro

From: Anti Vigilante on
On Sat, 2009-10-10 at 20:16 -0400, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> On 2009-10-10 12:08:13 -0400, Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> said:
>
> > A license is a permissino,
> > and you don't need permission to do anything you want with
> > a copyrighted work that you have properly obtained.
>
> This is clearly false. You obtain a legal DVD copy of the Godfather.
> You may not show it publicly - that's a copyright violation.
>
> You keep asserting things that are false. Having a legitimate copy does
> not entitle you to do *anything* you wish with your copy. Copyright
> holders can place additional restrictions on how you may use your copy
> in their license to you. This is well established law.
>
> Notwithstanding such restrictions, you have certain rights which they
> may *not* take away in their license. For example, you may show short
> clips of your copy of the Godfather in a review. Reverse engineering
> restrictions for personal, educational use is specficically allowed,
> but publication of the results of that reverse engineering, which is
> what the OP did, is specifically forbidden.

#1. He did not reverse engineer LW. No LW code was touched.
#2. He did not reverse engineer the C library. He merely modified it.
Reverse engineering implies research, implementation, and replacement of
a component.
#3. Distribution of one's research is not prohibited. Distribution of a
binary may be. But even that I consider ridiculous, even if it is law.


From: Kaz Kylheku on
On 2009-10-11, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
> On 2009-10-10 11:50:36 -0400, Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> said:
>
>> I never read this garbage. The concept of a license is completely
>> meaningless to me.
>
> But it doesn't matter what you consider meaningless because you don't
> have the armed force of the state backing up your opinion.

Right. But armed force can back *any* opinion whatsoever, right?

The opinions that the Iranian state backs with force are not the same sets of
opinions that, say, the Irish government backs with force.

Maybe some states do back my opinion with armed force.

In a state where reverse engineering is not illegal, if you try to use
force to stop someone from doing it, that would be construed as some
form of harassment, possibly criminal.
From: Dave Searles on
Ron Garret wrote:
> In article <hapavk$es$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>,
> Dave Searles <searles(a)hoombah.nurt.bt.uk> wrote:
>
>> Assuming
>> generously a one-penny average marginal cost per download
>
> [says I'm a liar]

No, you are.

> It assumes that the cost of developing the software

is amortized over a very large number of eventual downloaders.

> But those costs are clearly non-zero, and they have to be
> recouped somehow if the business is to make even the 5% profit margin
> you so "generously" allow them. How do you propose they do that?

Honest web businesses find something genuinely scarce to sell, perhaps
put ads on their web pages to cover server related costs, and do not
make obscene profits in the thousands of percent or more.