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Microsoft Misleads on Copyright Reform

The Hill Times this week includes an astonishingly misleading and factually incorrect article on Canadian copyright written by Microsoft.  The most egregious error comes in the following paragraph which attempts to demonstrate why Microsoft thinks reform is needed:

Imagine you're an aspiring author who decides to self-publish on the internet in hopes of supporting yourself and catching the eye of a publishing house. Now imagine someone hacks into your website and accesses your work and begins using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit. You should be protected, right? In Canada, you are not.

Actually, you are protected.  

Copyright law would clearly protect an author whose work was used without permission for commecial benefit.  In fact, the infringer would face the prospect of significant statutory damages.  But don't take my word for it.  One year ago (almost to the day), Microsoft issued a press release trumpeting a win at the Federal Court that led to one of the highest statutory damages awards in Canadian copyright history – $500,000 in statutory damages and an additional $200,000 in punitive damages.  Funnily enough, the company didn't argue that it wasn't protected in that case (update: note that if Microsoft is claiming that there is no protection for the ideas rather than the expression of the ideas, then this is correct, though it's true for all countries since copyright protects the expression, not the ideas themselves).

The column then continues with this gem:

If we take our self-publisher as an example – that person is looking for innovative distribution channels to share their work. If digital distribution methods are not protected, what incentive is there for that person to seek other, even more innovative ways to distribute and commercialize their creations?

Actually, there are lots of incentives.  In fact, Microsoft just bid $44.6 billion for a company (Yahoo) that is one of the most vocal proponents of distributing music without such protections and owns Flickr (itself formerly a Canadian company), one of the most successful online photo sites where over two billion photos have been posted without protection.

Finally, the column concludes by acknowledging that:

Critics of the proposed law often raise concerns about how to provide for fair dealing. The existing Copyright Act already provides exceptions for research, study, the disabled, and more.

Yes it does.  The problem with the laws that Microsoft is seeking is that those exceptions would be trumped by the combination of content that is locked down and the Prentice Canadian DMCA.  But then Microsoft ought to know that, since it is the company selling the digital locks.

52 Comments

  1. MS’s Global BSOD
    Copyright Canada

    A fatal exception in THE TRUTH has occurred at 0028:C0011E36 in MS BUSSTRAT (08) + 00010E36. The current business strategy will now close.

    * Press any key to terminate the current business strategy.
    * Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart your business. You will lose any market value in your current business strategy.

    Press any key to continue _

  2. michael gates says:

    investments
    Is there a connection between the governments new priorities regarding copyright and the recent announcements of Microsoft’s new investments in Canada? I believe that this is another example of corporate greed influencing our elected officials, typical of Microsoft’s past practices.

  3. Thats disappointing that they are putting out this kind of propaganda.

  4. Jennifer Jilks says:

    We know that social and economic interests shape research topics, methods and have bias, including ‘scientific’ research. Results are delivered to a public that does not examine it for accuracy. We believe a lot of what we read. Reliability and validity are not buzzwords for any politicians I know. Nor do they factor into much of that which we read online.

    We know, too, that the Americans shape Canadian policies, or try to. Homeland Security has continued to direct Canadian transportation policy and procedures.

    We must be vigilant and remain form in our convictions. In Canada the geopolitical climate differs from that of the United States (Gwyn, 1995), and does not include the traditional ‘right to bear arms’, or ‘rugged individualism’, rampant in some areas of the country, with heavy-handed applications of either the Quran or the Bible affecting the values of business and government agencies and NGOs.

  5. Let’s call it by it’s tru name: lies. Propaganda is a too nice a word for it.

  6. Why is it wrong for a customer to puchase locked-down content if they’re OK with that arrangement?

  7. There is nothing wrong with customer buying locked down content if they are informed of what that content will do before they buy it.

    Case and point. Sony rootKIT or recent study done on 20+ quality (with a K) commercial programs that collect more information then it is necessary to maintain that lock and then dial home. One of programs that jumped out at me was Vale’s Steam which I have purchased. Yes it is great to have and use digital distribution but I would’ve opted not to buy that software if I knew that amount of data collected was rather large and in some cases unrelated to me playing their games.

    M$ is using their old FUD techniques in new fields now. We should have as country taken Microsoft and slapped it for monopoly. But thanks to their inability to adapt they have lost desktop and server grounds. In desktop they have lost 7.5% to apple and somewhere around 3% to Linux. Open Office is also gaining ground as an alternative office software and it is free. Google is and will remain true threat to Windows because it is platform independent software.

    There has to be a way to call them out on this on TV and to have them defend the issue in public.

  8. Well, I actually have just hacked into the Hill Times website and got a copy of the article in question. According to the article there is nothing stopping me from now doing anything I want with my ill gotten booty, so I guess it is ok if I just post it here :-). (Sorry Michael, I know you’ll have to delete this, but I couldn’t resist.)

    —-

    TORONTO–In a world preoccupied with other pressing and sometimes dramatic concerns, complicated, seemingly arcane policy discussions about copyright may not appear particularly compelling. But as is often the case, such discussions can have a real significance for individual jobs and on our economy in a broader sense. So it is with Canada´s anticipated new copyright legislation, which was expected to be tabled in recent weeks, but now appears to have been delayed at the eleventh hour by its opponents.

    Our current copyright legislation is woefully out of step with the international community in general and our principal trading partners in particular, despite our repeated commitments to do better. In 1996, Canada became a signatory to two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties–the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. We´ve yet to implement either treaty and have now fallen behind in providing a reasonable intellectual property protection regime in this country.

    For too many, the debate over copyright reform has been boiled down to a discussion around doing things like sharing music or movie files over the internet. Supporters of reform are painted as wanting to stifle the creative impulse or protect profits in “cultural” industries; industries, they argue, that should be driven by a commitment to other goals.

    But the reality is something quite different. Rather than stifling creativity, copyright reform is desperately needed in Canada to protect and encourage creativity. Just look at it from the creator´s viewpoint. Imagine you´re an aspiring author who decides to self-publish on the internet in hopes of supporting yourself and catching the eye of a publishing house. Now imagine someone hacks into your website and accesses your work and begins using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit. You should be protected, right? In Canada, you are not.

    Now think about what this reality means not just for authors but also musicians, film makers and artists. Would you be inclined to share your work digitally given this risk?

    This is a simple example, but the importance of copyright reform goes much deeper, with economy-wide implications. Canadians are told over and over again that we are not as innovative as our closest competitors and that this innovation deficit is creating a drag on our ability to compete globally. Copyright reform that brings our legislation up to internationally agreed-upon standards would help create greater incentives to innovate.

    If we take our self-publisher as an example–that person is looking for innovative distribution channels to share their work. If digital distribution methods are not protected, what incentive is there for that person to seek other, even more innovative ways to distribute and commercialize their creations? It´s the same for Canadian companies. Without protection, there may in many cases be no incentive for companies large and small to seek out new ways of reaching untapped markets or of coming up with innovative ways of besting the competition. A lack of protection is damaging in two ways. First, it leaves Canada far behind other jurisdictions in the world by ignoring the potential of the digital age. Second, the narrower and more limited channels of distribution will actually limit the volume of work available to consumers as less will be created in Canada in the first place.

    In short, it is the absence of copyright reform that hinders creativity and innovation, not the opposite.

    Does this mean that the expression of every creative idea must be kept under lock and key? No. Critics of the proposed law often raise concerns about how to provide for fair dealing. The existing Copyright Act already provides exceptions for research, study, the disabled, and more. These exceptions were developed prior to the advent of the digital age following meaningful and thoughtful consideration for the benefit of Canadians. There is no question that in reforming the Copyright Act it is important to continue to ensure that we strike the right balance between the rights of creators and users of works. That being said, perhaps one of the unintended benefits of it taking 10 years to introduce new legislation is that we´ve had plenty of time to assess what works and doesn´t in other countries and to create an updated copyright law that truly works for us.

    Let´s hope 2008 brings renewed attention by Parliament to the pressing need to update our copyright law so artists, innovators and all Canadians can maximize their enjoyment of the benefits of the digital age.

    Michael Eisen is chief legal officer at Microsoft Canada based in Toronto.

    news@hilltimes.com

    The Hill Times

  9. free w/a catch
    The GNU or so do say, FSF, does have a number of clause and not unlike Microsoft, you do have to attach their code and the rights along with it or else its not legal. You can alter it and change them, but you need to provide the original source code. Nothing comes for free without a catch.

  10. To be fair, and I haven’t been able read the full article, the following quote provided from the article is true: “Imagine you’re an aspiring author who decides to self-publish on the internet in hopes of supporting yourself and catching the eye of a publishing house. Now imagine someone hacks into your website and accesses your work and begins using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit. You should be protected, right? In Canada, you are not.” This is true, as it demonstrates the difference between copyright (protection of the embodiment of ideas) and patents or trade secrets (protection of certain ideas/processes/methods).

    The articles asserts that if someone hacks into your secure website and accesses your work without your permission, they can use the “ideas expressed in your work” for their own commercial benefit. The article doesn’t assert that someone could use the work itself (clearly a copyright violation), simply the ideas therein (i.e., not the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night”, but the concept of a dark, stormy night.) It’s a poor analogy, but I think they’re driving at activities, such as currently-illegal-under-US-DMCA hacks to technological protection measures in Microsoft’s XBOX360, more than outright copyright theft. They’re suggesting, I suppose, that the self-publishing author should be able to “tie” his readers down to prevent them from using or otherwise accessing the “ideas behind the work” and permit them only to enjoy the fruits of his ideas (i.e., the published work) and not the ideas themselves. Again, I think it’s a weak analogy.

    Microsoft’s article does, however, ignore that one may have patent protection, common law trade secret protection or other registrable or common law IP rights to protect those ideas. I also have a hard time believing that the intended audience of the article would understand the difference between the protection of ideas and the protection of works embodying the ideas. Last, do we really want to extend monopolies to the ideas behind copyrighted works?

  11. “Now imagine someone hacks into your website and accesses your work and begins using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit. You should be protected, right? In Canada, you are not.”

    I think this might just be a case of clever wording. He doesn’t say “copying your words”, (which would be a copyright infringement), he says “using the ideas expressed in your work”.

    Are “ideas” protected?
    If I had a good idea, I wouldn’t put it online anywhere.

  12. Michael Eisen is chief legal officer at Microsoft Canada based in Toronto.

    Michael Eisen is chief legal officer.

    Has he read ss. 2 through 5 of the Copyright Act? Anyone who had, wouldn’t have made the claim that “you aren’t protected” by copyright if you publish something online.

    He would also not have implied that copyright protects “ideas”. It does not.

    And how can you “hack” something that someone has published to a website? Oh yeah – chief legal officer for Microsoft.

    Eisen and Microsoft deserve massive public ridicule for that piece. Wow.

  13. Oh goody, more Americans trying to write our copyright law.

    Linux, even more reasons to use it now.

  14. Re: free w/a catch
    pol, you are correct in that there is a catch. The GPL is such that credit for the original work must be given to the original author, you cannot copy it and claim it as your own.

  15. What a pile of crap. \”Ideas\” and the \”expression of ideas\”. This would not benefit the common person at all. It will just ensure more monopolistic control by monopolies already trying the fool the common person to give up more rights while thinking they will have more. People with websites \”expressed ideas\” already when they beat the established gray-haireds to the punch with domain names and the courts said, \”oh, that is \”cyber\” squatting\”. If you have a good idea Copyright reform will not increase your chances of cashing in on it or decrease your chances of a monopoly from taking it without paying anything. The law is ad hoc in favour of monopolies, it has to be — they employ a significant amount of people — that\’s what ensures \”the Law\”.

  16. I find it very interesting MS would get in on this debate since their monopoly was built around breaking copyright in the first place.

  17. DRM good!
    Napster bad!

  18. Excellent
    I havent thought about those in years.

    Maybe their deals with the politicians come with their very own mexican house boy.

  19. Only if they are running MS
    “Now imagine someone hacks into your website…”

    This would only happen if the website was run on Microsoft software 😉

  20. What’s good for Microsoft
    What’s good for Microsoft, is bad for everyone else. What’s good for everyone, is bad for Microsoft. I don’t see how this situation can possibly end well for Microsoft.

  21. M$FT
    M$FT Is a corporation and a great deal of corps find mudding the waters with fear uncertainty and doubt helps them get things going their way. There will be those who will quote that article almost verbatim, and I really doubt they are fans of a certain Mr. Geist. M$FT has just paid for \’credibility\’ for their spin, and it only gets more and more muddy from here.

  22. By the same token, if you write a story, get it published, and make tons of money, some one can still “access (purchase and read) your work and begin using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit.

    So what has changed?

    All countries are like this.

  23. \” Now imagine someone hacks into your website and accesses your work and begins using the ideas expressed in your work for their own commercial benefit\”

    What idiot hacker would break into a website, to get content that\’s has already been made available.

    The paragraph is obviously written to illicit fear, but presenting a scary scenario worthy of a B-movie.

  24. An attempt to bullshit the public was detected. [Allow] [Deny]

  25. Code of Professional Conduct
    I wonder if this article is a legal opinion. It is probably inaccurate. Maybe dishonest. A lawyer making these statements in his professional capacity could run afoul of the Code of Professional Conduct — could get in trouble with the bar association.

  26. “I wonder if this article is a legal opinion. It is probably inaccurate. Maybe dishonest. A lawyer making these statements in his professional capacity could run afoul of the Code of Professional Conduct — could get in trouble with the bar association.”

    In the first part of the article I don’t think he’s being inaccurate. If some one “hacks into” your computer and reads your ideas they can copy them. That it true. If some one reads ideas in a novel they can copy them. Ideas are not copyrightable. They never were and they never should be. So the whole first part of the article is really saying nothing.

    As to the rest of it (damages, promoting arts, etc.) they’re probably misleading, although he may actually believe the promoting arts part.

  27. I did not read anywhere about M$ Vista “Buy this software at your own risk. Attention no software or hardware you currently own is going to work with it”. Goverments should make laws to protect people from Microsoft criminal acts.

  28. Microsoft is no stranger to Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) campaigns. They have always used them, they always will. It more cost effective than selling based on quality.

    Vista sucks all sorts of information off of your computer in the name of piracy prevention. The problem is that much of the information I have on my computer is protected by my own copyrights, as well as other people’s copyrights. Yet, Microsoft has free reign to take anything they want, any time.

    How about a law that says they have to let me see what they swipe from my system? How about a law that gives my copyrights protection against large monopolistic American corporations?

    How about laws that say that Microsoft give respect to the copyrights of standards groups? Microsoft pays lip service only; if an open source standard exists then Microsoft will create their own standard just to exterminate (and control) the “standard”.

    If Canada gives extreme copyright protection to corporations like Microsoft, do we actually believe they would open up their source code?

    Microsoft owns more copyrights and patents than anyone could hope to compete against. It uses those patents and copyrights to exterminate competition. “Open source and Linux infringe on Microsoft patents”, they say. Yet, they never sue. They never point out which patents, and in what way. What is odd is that the OPEN source items are being criticized by an extremely closed corporation that has no interest in opening up more than it has to. So, they use FUD to make it sound like an infringement is taking place in order to scare sales toward their own product.

    Microsoft is out to remove all competition. That is no secret, but they use patents and copyright more than quality of product. They sell more software than anyone else, they own as much as 90% of the operating system and office application sales.

    Yet THEY need protection from little old Canada? Not likely. What they want is the ability to sue anyone into submission. They don’t care about your ideas or copyright; they care that theirs trumps yours.

    I also don’t mind spreading my own FUD about. 😉

  29. .
    Seeing as Michael Eisen is a lawyer, could not someone complain to the Ontario Bar Association that he is deliberately misrepresenting the law for financial gain?

  30. that is a load of CRAP!!!
    ok well if an aspiring program put it on his site he KNOWS that he isn’t going o be paid much for the program anyways
    then if people hack him, they wouldn’t steal the ideas, they’d just steal the program, which is illegal, they don’t claim it for their own financial benifeit, they usually torrent it and it spreads minimally, and i mean MINIMALLY, not many people are interested small time programs
    in my opinion, Microsoft is scared of a repeat of what happened in china with vista on future programs
    i myself don’t download programs, i find they’re too annoying to try to figure out how to get past the security they amount on them

  31. >Why is it wrong for a customer to puchase locked-down >content if they’re OK with that arrangement?

    Because sparky, we are talking about copywright law. Everything suddenly is locked down. Oh, and even if people *aren’t* OK with that arrangement, they are still stuck with it. For people like me who like content Freely available off the net (the people who put it there intended for me to have it, freely available for free) suddenly get a bunch of legal crap shoved at us, and people insist that I have to pay someone, somewhere, something. Microsoft being microsoft would likely insist that everything belongs to them in some round about manner (of their making or whatever), and that I should sell my house, car, and forfeit my income to them for life, for some reason or other, whether they deserve it or not. Canadian copyright law as it exists, tries to strike a balance between creators rights (including people like me who contribute freely and like to get contributed freely), and equally importantly, between content providers who don’t make content freely available (or for free either), and a strict limited use for people. Microsofts current goal is to wipe all of that out, much as they did with the DMCA in the USA.

  32. Draft dodger
    Harper will bend over backwards to allow the corporations to screw over Canadians. VOTE Sociat Democrat next election! JACK LAYTON NDP!

  33. Marketing
    The right the Content Controllers are trying to get is the ability to flood the consumer with so much advertising that they cannot make an informed decision on what to buy. Without any free access to their products, we cannot compare what is of value and what is not, so we end up with the lowest value content, flogged with the greatest amount of advertising for the greatest profit.

  34. Here is Michael Eisen’s Bio on M$s site:

    [ link ]

  35. software engineer
    “This is a simple example, but the importance of copyright reform goes much deeper, with economy-wide implications. Canadians are told over and over again that we are not as innovative as our closest competitors and that this innovation deficit is creating a drag on our ability to compete globally. Copyright reform that brings our legislation up to internationally agreed-upon standards would help create greater incentives to innovate.”

    I love the soft-sell language combined with out-right ignorance. They really blend well together.

    I think that if Mr. Eisen did a little research, he’d find that under existing copyright laws the creative industry has seen steady growth and a few records in recent years. That suggests, to me, that content creators are still innovating, competing, and still have incentive to create under current legislation. There’s no reason to change it.

    You don’t need to fix what isn’t broken, Mr. Eisen.

    This entire article attempts to have us believe otherwise — but the truth is too obvious.

  36. R. Bassett Jr. says:

    Rick Wrote:
    “The right the Content Controllers are trying to get is the ability to flood the consumer with so much advertising that they cannot make an informed decision on what to buy. Without any free access to their products, we cannot compare what is of value and what is not, so we end up with the lowest value content, flogged with the greatest amount of advertising for the greatest profit.”

    Protecting consumers from just such practices was the original intent of copyright law.

    Anyone remember those Panasosonic TVs of the late 80s? Pana SO sonic – Obvious knock off, when one looks closely.

    That’s what copyright law is for. It was certainly not intended to protect ideas or sue the small business or consumer. In fact, you can’t patent an idea or anything resembling an idea in our great nation – you need to create a functional prototype or a significant simulation of a functional prototype that shows that when completed, the prototype would be viable. I have the patent papers in my attic somewhere if anyone wants some quotes.

    This Microsoft guy is blowing smoke. I find it almost as insulting as Windows Vista.

  37. Shawn Halayka says:

    What on Earth does this have to do with the “disabled”?

    Nice human touch Microsoft.

  38. Resistance is futile.
    Resistance is futile You will be assimilated.

    Microsoft is patenting a system which will spy any activity of a human been such as heartbeat, emotions and the like.
    The Big Brother era is just started.
    [ link ]

  39. Want The Facts - Not Rhetoric says:

    Let’s be clear – and factual – giving a Creator/Rights Holder a make available right does make them have to sell it – a make available right allows the Creator/Rights Holder to choose to give it away for free OR to sell it – it is their CHOICE. And just to finish that thought a consumer is only going to get into trouble on that issue if they decide to try and steal a work where the Creator/Rights holder wanted the consumer to pay for it – this is plain and simple and we need to stop trying to twist it. And just for the record that is not an American way of thinking it is what many countries Copyright laws around the world – the same countries that are our trading partners and expect us to live up to our committments.

    Now let’s see if this gets edited or ever makes to up on this blog!

  40. Read the article more carefully.
    If you go back and read the article, and ask a competent lawyer, I think you’ll find the MS explanation is perfectly correct.

    Copyright doesn’t protect ideas. To protect an idea online in the way that’s described, you’d need to make the disclosure confidential. To make an online disclosure confidential, you’d need some technology to restrict access.

    Without some legal protection of the technical protection, there’s nothing to stop someone hacking in and using the ideas. That’s not a breach of copyright because it’s just the IDEAS that are being used. Obligations of confidentiality are tricky and they wouldn’t necessarily apply here, or provide any practical protection.

    So, it seems to me that the article is on the ball. You might not agree with the conclusion, but to suggest it’s “propaganda” or “lies” suggests an entrenched anti-MS attitude and a rather blinkered reading of the article.

    Consumer theft of IP is a big issue, and it’s directly responsible for causing my neighbourhood DVD rental store and the local music store to go out of business. I personally know two other people in other towns who’ve closed down DVD stores that they owned – they couldn’t compete with online theft.

    It’s not surprising that industries are trying to protect what’s theirs. Again you might not agree with DRM, but it’s an understandable reaction.

  41. Do you know how many little DVD stores have closed because a blockbuster has opened a store in the neighbored? It’s the nature of capitalism. Businesses go out of business. If you want to distribute locked content Internet it is not the right vector choose a different way. Internet is the “public domain”.

  42. @Observer
    “Consumer theft of IP is a big issue, and it’s directly responsible for causing my neighbourhood DVD rental store and the local music store to go out of business.”

    Who told you that?

    “It’s not surprising that industries are trying to protect what’s theirs. Again you might not agree with DRM, but it’s an understandable reaction.”

    An “understandable reaction” is not necessarily right or good. You seem to suggest that it is.

    For a little more credibility, why don’t you post with your own name?

  43. I don’t think hacking into a computer and reading files to steal “ideas” is breaking DRM. It’s hacking someone else’s computer and surely that’s already illegal under a computer misuse act or something? Also, the whole idea of DRM is to stop you copying something, not to stop you reading / viewing / listening to it.

  44. Want Facts - Not Rhetoric says:

    I think we are talking apples to oranges. It was said above that companies that are failing shoudl come up with different business models but if there are no laws that protect your “property” no matter what business model you develop it will struggle to survive. “Free” is not a business model. With respect to Blockbuster – one of the reasons is failing is because of inadequate protection against illegal downloading.

    On the concept of Blockbuster closing down the smaller stores – that is not true – Blockbuster came in with a different business model and that is what closed down the small shops because Blockbuster came in and did the job better. To keep this idea on track with Copyright Blockbuster did not come in and steal the content from the small store – that would be called theft – theft is when you steal from me (my TV, my car etc.) and I have a law that protects me from that – that is because it is my property – hmmm – imagine that a law based on a property right – hey sort of like what intellectual property should be in tis country – but oh that’s right we don’t have a law against you stealing my intellectual property – and we wonder why other countries think we are a piracy haven second to none other than China – REALLY – wonder why! Michael Eisen knows what he is talking about – it is called IP Law 101

  45. ZEITGEIST
    “Intellectual property” is just an invented concept to define something abstract which for its very nature cannot be stolen. I agree with who calls IP “Imaginative property”. Did you know the term “zeitgeist”? That means ideas raise from the collective imaginary. You never create from a vacuum. Patenting or copyrighting idea that belongs to the public domain is the real crime. An example: MS-DOS was inspired by CP/M Digital Research. That means that the biggest monopolist software company has started its empire by “stealing” ideas from another software house.

  46. Entropy
    That wasn’t a criticism to BLOCKBUSTER it was about the capitalism entropy law (“businesses go out of business all the time”). “Free” is a business model indeed. Open source software companies are actually making money and putting out of business software houses which are selling the same kind of software (and often the “free” version is better in quality).

  47. Want Facts - Not Rhetoric says:

    Entropy – You know what your right – I stand corrected – Free is a business model – but it needs to be a business model by choice – the choice of the Creator/Rights Holder – not by whoever wants it for free.

    O another note did you go to work today and work for free? I know I didn’t – I also know when my bills come in they won’t be free either – But then again I am not a Creator or a Rights HOlder so I guess I have no worries there.

    Hmmm – wonder if Mr. Geist works for free?

  48. SomeOtherGuy says:

    There is no sense in running to Linux to hide from the DMCA. Under the restrictions of the DMCA it would be illegal to play a DVD on your linux machine as the open source media player pays no attention to the copyright protection on it (thereby circumventing it, whether to play or burn). This would be in contravention to DMCA legislation.

  49. MCROSOFT convicted Monopolist
    There is no sense in runing windows to be controled , over sold and made more poor on hte number of reboots that harm equipment , cause grief and when i goto a theatre and the popcorn and pop with 1$ savings is 12.07 cents
    and in same 5 minute walk i can get a 2 litre fo r99 cents and orville redenbocker ( high priced name brand ) for 1.99
    this whole thing is about greed and control. DO YOU WANT CORPORATIONS CONTROLING YOU.
    DO YOU WANT LAWYERS RUNNING YOUR COUNTRY AND THE NDP POSITION is SELLOUT.
    WIPO IS 11 YRS OLD OUTDATED TO TECHNOLOGY ISSUES.
    Radio head and others have proved free/donate gives them more cash then the studios do, why cause they cut out the cost of there crap.

  50. buyout moves yahoo to india
    once they buy it you htink they need ot keep yahoo here?
    NOPE off it goes to india……….
    another stupid move and once agian it proves that ALL THE PARTIES in CANADA are useless tits

  51. Cracker!
    What kind of a lousy cracker wants to write a mystery novel about two children on a boating trip? If you have the skills to circumvent the security surrounding such a website (I’m guessing it’s a website where you have to pay to view the content), why are you working as a novelist? Either this is an aspiring author who spends too much time learning about internet security protocols, or it is a cracker who is trying to write SOMETHING but will never be able to because he’s surrounded by too much hex code and not enough human life.

    The point? Micro-Soft has been issuing these kinds of statements for years. They ran a price comparison of what costs more: Linux (which is free) or MS Windows (Which is $200+ per license). Since it was sponsored by MS, of course MS came out as the cheap alternative.

    Now, Micro-Soft is yelling, “WE NEED DRM AND COPY PROTECTION!” But, in other articles they’re saying, “DOWN WITH DRM! We only use it because we’re told we have to.” If the world started using what comes from Steve Ballmer’s mouth as fertilizer, carrots would be the size of skyscrapers and single watermelons could feed the nations.

  52. R. Bassett Jr. says:

    Hey, maybe we could live in a giant gourds, as my father used to dream…