 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Warp wrote:
> Isn't discrimination against customers based on their country of origin
> illegal in most places? I think some people call that "racism" (even though
> it's not the technically correct term).
One of the tragedies of modern (all) times is that everything that is
racist is considered wrong, and lots of prejudices aren't properly
addressed simply because they're not technically racist.
--
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright
until you hear them speak.
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawaz org<<<<<<
anl
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Isn't discrimination against customers based on their country of origin
>>> illegal in most places? I think some people call that "racism" (even though
>>> it's not the technically correct term).
>
>> Now *that* would be an interesting lawsuit in the USA. Especially since in
>> most cases it's illegal to discriminate based on "country of origin" (i.e.,
>> ethnicity).
>
> Yeah, certainly if there was some physical shop which refused to sell
> anything to anyone coming from eg. the middle-East or Africa, that would
> certainly cause a huge commotion and a bunch of lawsuits. But seemingly
> online stores are exempt from this law, for some reason? Exactly what is
> this based on?
I think the analogy (in general) is invalid.
Likely, if you're an American visiting Japan, and try to buy something
from a store, they'll sell it regardless of citizenship.
Online purchases (probably) have slightly different legal implications.
Sales tax being one of them.
There may be an issue of export control. In the physical case, it's not
the shop owner's job to ask whether you'll be taking it abroad. If you
then return to the US with it, you may violate Japanese/international
laws, but the shop owner won't have.
In the online world, the retailer may be considered to actually have
delivered the product abroad. Then he becomes liable.
Anyone over here ever bought any of those much cheaper "international"
textbooks? The ones from India explicitly say something like "Cannot be
sold outside of India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka". I
believe I've seen some Korean books with similar large print. Now I
could physically go and buy the book there and bring it with me. Don't
know if I'll be breaking a law (I'm not selling...).
I happen to have bought all of mine domestically in the US. Likely
someone bought them from India/Korea, brought them to the US, and resold
them - which may be illegal for him to do so.
In case anyone is wondering - those books are not pirated or anything.
They're licensed by the original publishers to those countries (cheaper
quality paper, etc). They're much cheaper over there (easily 15x
cheaper). Likely the license terms are that they not be sold abroad -
particularly back to the US. The reasoning makes sense.
--
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright
until you hear them speak.
/\ /\ /\ /
/ \/ \ u e e n / \/ a w a z
>>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
anl
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Likely the license terms are that they not be sold abroad -
> particularly back to the US. The reasoning makes sense.
Then the question becomes who is violating the license, and when?
Can the publisher enforce on me a contract by printing it inside the book?
Am I required by US law to uphold a contract in India? Are you breaking
Indian law by buying a book in the US sold to you in the US?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:58:56 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:03:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>
>>> Right. That's why I said "DMCA notwithstanding".
>>
>> Problem is, we can't choose to ignore DMCA. I'm not sure I follow you
>> here.
>
> I meant my opinion/analysis was "DMCA notwithstanding." Not that the
> actual law is. I.e., I don't know enough about DMCA to say how it might
> have changed the landscape, so if you ignore the DMCA, then what I said
> is valid. :-)
Oh, I see - makes sense now.
>> Taking Jeremy's suggested idea, I purchase a program that's developed
>> to run on the Mac, but I don't have a Mac. If my intention is the
>> important one and my intention is to run it on a Linux-based PC, would
>> it be legal for me to reverse-engineer the program in order to
>> recompile it to run on Linux? I would seriously doubt that, and I
>> think a challenge on that basis would ultimately fail in court.
>
> Sure. But this is the argument made by DeCSS authors: Nobody had a
> license to play the legally-purchased DVD on a Linux machine, so they
> circumvented the protection to make that possible. Of course,
> distributing a program that not only played the disk but made it
> possible to copy it was the bigger problem, I think. Makes it hard to
> separate out the different concerns in the court cases.
Well, that also assumes, though, that it's legal to play the disc back on
whatever device you have if it has a DVD reader.
But the play/copy argument is something I've had at work (for that
matter), electronic distribution of training materials where you've put
some restriction on it using technological means to prevent copying
doesn't work because most modern OSes don't distinguish between "open to
read" and "open to copy" (since "open to copy" implies "open to read").
That's where the whole CSS copy protection (and most if not all others)
fall down - in that if you can open something to use it legally, someone
will find a way to do so to make a copy of it.
And ultimately, of course, trying to put a restriction on it like that
inconveniences legitimate users but those who are determined will find a
way around it. The whole idea of copy protection (and consequent
litigation ala RIAA and MPAA) is problematic from a technological
standpoint for this reason. The ones that *AA need to go after aren't
the casual downloaders, but those who actually *profit* by selling
illegal copies of the content - like the street vendors common in many
urban areas (I hear about ones in New York, for example, but don't know
how much of that is urban legend and how much is actually happening).
Those are the people cutting into the profits. The 7 year old who
downloads 20 or 30 tracks using a Bittorrent client probably wasn't going
to buy the product anyways. But the guy who purchases an illegally made
copy of the disc from a street vendor *is* paying for the product and
cutting the artist (and the *AA folks, though they're of less concern to
me because they don't really add any value, just cost IMHO) out of the
profits.
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:55:22 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> That's ultimately the question though - did you buy it, or did you buy
>> a license that says you can use it?
>
> Yes. And does the license specifically deny me the ability to patch the
> software to run it on a different OS?
Depends on the license, but I could see that a license could allow "only
these specific uses and all other uses are prohibited". That kind of
legalese is commonly used so people don't circumvent it by being creative.
> If you're going to argue you
> only licensed it to me and that copyright fair use shouldn't apply, you
> don't get to argue that it's copyrighted too. :-) *Everything* has to
> be in the license.
Well, yes, but "everything" can be included in the "no other use is
permitted" language. So, for example, the license could read that "you
are permitted to install the software on one computer at a time, and
execution of that program is permitted only on the system it is installed
on for the purpose of using the program for its intended purpose as
outlined in the product documentation. Any other use is strictly
prohibited under the terms of this license."
>> Could be. Of course, if it's illegal to distribute the software, that
>> makes it kinda hard to obtain legally to use on media you legally own.
>
> Not if you wrote it. Also, it depends on what's "software". Remember the
> whole PGP-printed-in-a-book argument? DeCSS printed on t-shirts?
Oh yes, I do remember those - I wanted one of those DeCSS T-Shirts, in
fact, but never got around to purchasing one.
>> I'm getting out of my depth here, but it seems to me that federal law
>> would have *something* about contracts in it.
>
> I don't think the Constitution says anything about intrastate contracts.
> Of course, not being in the Constitution never stopped anyone before. At
> least not lately.
Well, the US Constitution isn't the only document that outlines federal
law, either. That said, there are a lot of weird things that cover
interstate commerce which is governed by federal law, but I think it'd be
trivial to demonstrate that a piece of software produced in one locality
can be sold in any locality and thus the terms of the license should fall
under federal jurisdiction rather than state jurisdiction. Not being
familiar with the details of the Prologic case, I'm not sure why they
didn't use that argument (or why it didn't work if they did use it).
Jim
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> If I offer something for sale, I would have absolutely no expectations
> regarding to whom I could or could not sell it.
> "Hi. I want to buy a recording from you."
> "Ok, but are you black? Do you live in China?
But what if (for example) you need to pay and do a lot of admin work to
legally sell in China? And your work, for whatever reason, has little
demand from China? What then when someone from China calls to buy your
work?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4a2812bd@news.povray.org...
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > Well, in Argentina CDs cost about three times less than in the US. If
iTunes
> > music store was opened here with their current US prices, *nobody* would
> > buy. If they opened here and adjusted their prices, then they would have
to
> > take measures to avoid US citizens from setting their country to
Argentina
> > and pay 3x less. (= get 3x less ripped off than usual)
> Isn't discrimination against customers based on their country of origin
> illegal in most places? I think some people call that "racism" (even
though
> it's not the technically correct term).
If you are going to argue that, isn't it racism to have national borders?
Even state lines?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
> I really fail to see the logic in this business model. If someone wants
> to buy a piece of music, why should it matter where he lives?
The logic is that the distributers tailor their content for each region to
reduce costs. It would be a big waste of resources (for very little return)
to make available every piece of music worldwide that was even a bit popular
to every country.
What might be a good idea is a "no results found, would you like to search
international stores?", and then inform you that download times might be
longer because it's not coming from your regional server. But again, would
it be profitable to set up such a system?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Jim Henderson wrote:
> Well, yes, but "everything" can be included in the "no other use is
> permitted" language.
True.
> Oh yes, I do remember those - I wanted one of those DeCSS T-Shirts, in
> fact, but never got around to purchasing one.
I think I still have the one with PGP encoded as barcodes on it. I was
actually involved in a company helping to fund the legal fund for that one.
> I'm not sure why they
> didn't use that argument (or why it didn't work if they did use it).
In part, they wanted the Louisiana venue because it was Napoleanic, and
hence much friendlier to the attacking party. One defendant was in
California and the other in Ontario or some such, IIRC, but they brought
suit in Lousiana based on both companies having customers in Louisiana.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
scott wrote:
> It would be a big waste of resources (for very little
> return) to make available every piece of music worldwide that was even a
> bit popular to every country.
Not on the internet. At least, not if you discount the costs imposed by
countries wanting to collect their taxes and such.
It's no harder for me to download a track from Japan than the US, and no
harder for them to sell it, except to the extent they may need to go thru
the hassle of getting a US sales tax collection thing, pay US taxes on
income, and so on. If the governments got out of the way and just taxed
their own citizens, it wouldn't cost any more.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
