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 Report from the War Department.

 Author:  Topic:  Posted:
May 09, 2002
 Comments:
We are pleased to announce that the Adequacy Department of War is now complete and in operation. Membership and exact duties of the War Department must remain secret for security reasons, of course, but we can say that the War on Copyright Violation has been turned over to the War Department, which has authorised me to release some information on the progress of the campaign.

diaries

More diaries by RobotSlave
How much Xanax will be adequate?
I am speechless.
How to Smash Global Industrial Capitalism Without Leaving Your Bar-Stool
Down Time
Irresponsible Meat Judge
A Formal reminder.
Excerpt
Ice Cores
Prepare the Huskies
Circus Roboticus
Idle Amusements
Helpful Tip
Why "Hacker?"
Bloody Mary
Declaration of War
Confidential to Karel Jenczek
Dear Mr. Script Kiddie, Sir:
Deletion Notice
It is my great pleasure to report that the War on Copyright Violation has been an unprecedented success. The evildoers have been driven from their hiding places, and their leaders are on the run. The threat of Copyright Violation is still very real, of course, but thanks to decisive action on the part of the Interim Comittee, Copyright Violation has been almost completely eliminated at Adequacy.org.

There are still evildoers at large, unfortunately, and they will be persued and brought to justice, but the fundamental decency of Adequacy readers has come to the fore in this troubling time, and the cooperation, support and spirit of these fine people has been a tribute to their respective nations, religions, and parantage.

Deletion Notices will of course continue to appear whenever Copyright Violation rears its ugly head at Adequacy, but we are stronger now than we have ever been before, and with continued vigilance, we can put the last remnant of this horror behind us forever.

The resiliance of the Adequacy readership has been fantastic. Thank you, and may you enjoy the fruits of Victory.


Get a hobby!!!!!!!! (none / 0) (#1)
by Narcissus on Thu May 9th, 2002 at 08:18:37 PM PST
Try coin collecting or crochet. But my God do something constructive with your life.




--------------------------------
Ok, who picked the flower???

He's saving us from point by point. (none / 0) (#2)
by elenchos on Thu May 9th, 2002 at 08:44:26 PM PST
What could be a more rewarding hobby than that?


I do, I do, I do
--Bikini Kill

not really (none / 0) (#3)
by Anonymous Reader on Thu May 9th, 2002 at 10:25:16 PM PST
It seems more to me it's about censorship rather than copyright violations. I would be happy to compile a list of editors who seem to be immune to deletion notices.

Poor wiggums. (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by tkatchev on Thu May 9th, 2002 at 10:46:34 PM PST
Did you get censored? Oh, you did? You know, I simply so feel for you... Really, I do... My heart bleeds when I think of the injustice. I feel for you, I really do.


--
Peace and much love...

 
For Your Information (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by First Incision on Thu May 9th, 2002 at 11:22:06 PM PST
You do not run this site, the editors do. You should be thankful that your posts are put on the website in their entirety by default. If you publish something that an editor does not like, the editor has the choice of revoking that post's publication or editing the post. That is because the site does not belong to you. It belongs to the editors.
_
_
Do you suffer from late-night hacking? Ask your doctor about Protonix.

what the hell!?! (none / 0) (#7)
by Anonymous Reader on Fri May 10th, 2002 at 11:01:34 AM PST
What are you talking about? I'm referring to the fact that it seems like editors have the rights to copy and paste from previous comments. Isn't that what this is all about? The copyright holder is the author not the publisher. It even restates that fact at the bottom of the pages.

Example:

Look I believe this
I don't care about copyright law so I copied from your post. I'm an editor I think that makes me immune to the law.

I told you you'd lose this argument. (none / 0) (#8)
by RobotSlave on Fri May 10th, 2002 at 11:49:27 AM PST
As I noted before, you're not going to be able to back up your accusations of hypocrisy with evidence.

Go ahead. Try. For each instance of an editor quoting the work of another without deletion, I can produce at least two examples of normal users quoting the work of another without deletion.

We do allow quoting here at Adequacy. There are very stringent requirements placed on this quoting, requirements even more restrictive than the limitations placed on Fair Use in US copyright law, but our requirements are applied evenhandedly, to editor and user alike.

If you want to accuse us of hypocrisy, you're going to have to do better than shrill repetition of your charge. Adequacy is not the place for that sort of bleating.


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

horse shit (none / 0) (#10)
by Anonymous Reader on Fri May 10th, 2002 at 10:01:32 PM PST
First this is the second time I have ever visited this site. The first was ehn I posted my previous comment. So I don't know who held a discussion with.

The only difference I see is how the text is formatted. If it's in BOLD it's a copyright violation. Otherwise it's quoting. Bullshit! Maybe if you copy more than one line it's a violation. Should I compile a list of these?

Someone doing line by line rebuttals could argue they are simply quoting various parts of the article/diary/post. Your hypocratic bullshit is no longer funny. If someone you don't particularly like does it then it's a violation. If an editor or Adequacy.org "buddy" does it, it's quoting. Bullshit!

Anyone may use any portion of this post in their own post/diary/poor excuses for "articles" or respond to it as they see fit. However, in doing so they must adhere to the same guidelines.

Poor child. (none / 0) (#11)
by RobotSlave on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 12:34:37 AM PST
Does it hurt to be that bull-headed?

Go ahead. Look around. You'll see that formatting doesn't make a bit of difference. If you'd rather I humiliated you by linking to specific examples, just keep it up.

As to your claims of having visited the site only twice, they don't stand up to even a cursory examination. How did you come to the false conclusion that only editors were allowed to use quotation after a single visit to the site?

Not that your answer to that would matter. You are unmistakably recognizable, both in your "style" and your choice of issues. And then there's the little matter of the logs. We know who you are.

You've lost arguments with me before. And you keep coming back for more. Perhaps I should start charging you for my services?

Incidentally, your attempt to introduce viral licensing terms into your comment won't hold up here. You may not use your copyright to dictate terms on the licensing of another person's copyright.

You are trying to imitate the GPL without the first clue as to what the legal structure of or basis for that document might be. If you want to give others permission to use your work, go ahead and do so. But don't bother trying to force others to use your personal licensing terms for their own work.

You may license your comments under the GPL, of course, if you wish, but I'd advise you to be prepared for disappointment if you do, as the GPL does not do nearly as much as zealots like yourself often seem to think it does.


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

GPL... (none / 0) (#12)
by The Mad Scientist on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 07:31:11 AM PST
...pisses off Microsoft and prevents them from assimilating code covered by it.

What more we could want?


Maybe. Maybe not. (none / 0) (#24)
by RobotSlave on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 03:21:10 PM PST
I suspect GPL amuses Microsoft because it causes so much difficulty and controversy amongst the ranks of Open Source Zealots, who might otherwise cooperate with one another.

I'd argue that the BSD licence and the Public Domain pose a bigger threat to Microsoft over the long term than the GPL, but license fights bore me to tears these days. Feel free to take it up if you're cold, and you need a flamewar to keep you warm.


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

Licence wars... (none / 0) (#27)
by The Mad Scientist on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 06:12:47 PM PST
...are either amusing (when you see them once per time) or boring (when they become common stuff for you).

Personally, I believe that if you have the time to read the legalese you don't have better things to do. If there is a source code, and the code compiles (and works), good enough for me.

My personal gripe is about the lack of comments in the code. For a little modification I have to study the code for long time. (Though I don't tend to write comments too, so I try to not bitch too loudly.)


What? (none / 0) (#29)
by RobotSlave on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 10:43:06 PM PST
If you think that people who read the "legalese" don't have better things to do, then you've never been involved in a lawsuit, gone to law school, met an attorney, or given any thought at all to the philosophy of Law. There are plenty of people out there who have very good reason to read and understand the letter of the Law.

Frankly, if you don't want to read the Law (or the "legalese," as you put it), then you're just going to have to put up with someone else, someone with more patience and wit, telling you what the Law says, and what it doesn't.

If we to turn this argument around and point it at the software you quietly complain about, then we might draw the conclusion that lack of comments in "code" is likely due to the fact that people have "better things to do" than read the "programmese."

Do you know what they call a body of written Law? It's called a code of Law. Perhaps you never came across that phrase in your technical training?


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

When I checked last... (none / 0) (#33)
by The Mad Scientist on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 01:41:27 PM PST
...the legalese had no impact on the real performance and functionality of any program code (or, in general, all technology I ever got my hands on).

The most effective approach is thus to just ignore it.

At the moment a device works as I want it to, it ends for me and I move to another problem. I done things this way for more than a decade, and no one ever complained.


I see now. (none / 0) (#35)
by RobotSlave on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 06:02:33 PM PST
You were only talking about software licenses.

You're right-- they're only worth reading if you care about whether or not you're going to get into legal trouble for doing this or that with the software.

Reading licenses might also help if you want to get into enormously boring ideological flamewars, but it seems you can do that without ever reading a single line of any of the licenses under debate.


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

 
are you half retarded? (none / 0) (#31)
by detikon on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 12:49:54 PM PST
Allow me to quote from your post.
I'd argue that the BSD licence and the Public Domain pose a bigger threat to Microsoft over the long term than the GPL, but license fights bore me to tears these days. Feel free to take it up if you're cold, and you need a flamewar to keep you warm.
BSD license: You can use my work anyway that you want to but you must give the author(s) credit and cannot claim you wrote it. It must remain under the BSD license. You can even list those credits in some obscure place where most users are unlikely to ever see it like HELP >> ABOUT [insert program name]. It can be used in open source software, closed source or proprietary works.

Public Domain: You can use this work in anyway that you want and don't have to give anyone any credit at all. You just can't claim that you wrote it. However, you can list what you wroked on leading others to believe you wrote the whole thing.

Wow what a threat.

The problem now facing the software giant is that as the GPL proliferates and older BSD-style licenses begin to diminish in the developer community, there is less and less code available for the company to "embrace and extend."




Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.

Boring, Boring License War (none / 0) (#34)
by RobotSlave on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 05:50:07 PM PST
Boring, boring, boring.

Over time, BSD licensed and Public Domain software will be a bigger threat to Microsoft than software under the GPL. This is due to the fact that Microsoft's competitors can not use GPLed code in their proprietary products. They can, however, use BSD or Public Domain code. Have you heard of a company called "Apple?"

The GPL, and other encumbering licenses, are a hindrance to professional software developers. They're dandy for hobbyists, but when it comes time to develop a profitable proprietary product, they stand in the way.

Furthermore, over time, every single line of GPLed code will fall into the Public Domain. This probably won't have an impact in your lifetime, but have you ever even tried to think about what things might be like when there is 100-year-old software sitting in the internet archives? 500 year-old-software?

Do you have any evidence that BSD-style licenses are "diminishing" as GPLed code "proliferates?" Do you use X-Windows? Have you heard of a project called "Darwin?" Do you know of any OS distributions that have a stated or implicit goal of "no BSD-style code?" How about distributions with a stated or implicit goal of "no code under GPL?"

God damn, but that was boring.

Do me a favor-- if your cognitive dissonance kicks in again and sends you into another typing-fugue to re-establish your delusional world-view, do you think you could refrain from posting until the fit has passed, and then go back and add some bits about pet monkeys or muscle cars or pineapples or something?


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

oh no a threat! (none / 0) (#36)
by detikon on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 09:14:20 PM PST
Please. OSS (including GPL'd code) can be combined with closed source code. Microsoft even sold a software package which included both. Apple also makes GPL'd products available to developers.

As far as proprietary goes you obviously haven't been reading the news lately. People are embrassing something that been around for awhile. People want standards not proprietary. When I say standards I mean industry standards. I don't mean standards with MS propietary extensions.

Now on to the public doamin. Does this mean we might one day see MS licensed software in the public doamin? Even if linux (the most popular GPL'd software out there) fades away the GPL will still be there. Look at how old the BSD license is. It's older than Microsoft.

You want proof? I could pull a Yoshi/osm and tell you to fuck off and that I don't need to prove shit. Either that or you could simply visit the FSF.org or opensource.org and read through the various licenses. You could read how many licenses have been deemed GPL compatible. You could then visit development sites and find out how many projects are currently licensed under nonBSD-style licenses.

The license for Xwindows is more similar to the modified BSD license. While FreeBSD and Mach fall under their respective licenses Darwin is licensed under The Apple Public Source License (APSL). Apple is also playing around with GPL'd code in terms of DarwinOS and DarwinOS x86. Apple is even playing around with Linux (and GPL'd software) on MacOSX.

No one has a major problem against incorporating BSD-style licensed code. Many projects use it (ie Linux) however, work is in progress to replace the code with that under the GPL and LGPL. You also find GPL'd and LGPL'd code include with FreeBSD for example. No one has a problem using BSD-style licensed code. It's licensing that's the problem. There are only two OS (since you want to limit it to OSes) project which will not permit GPL'd code in their OS ditribution. Windows and OpenBeOS.




Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.

Eh? (none / 0) (#38)
by RobotSlave on Mon May 13th, 2002 at 02:14:52 AM PST
Wuh?

M'sorry, I fell completely asleep halfway through that thing that you wrote for yourself.

Could you wake me up with something about pet monkeys, muscle cars, pineapples, or other amusing subject matter? Please?


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

 
I love this!!! (none / 0) (#37)
by Anonymous Reader on Mon May 13th, 2002 at 12:36:57 AM PST
In a previous post RobotSlave wrote:

The GPL, and other encumbering licenses, are a hindrance to professional software developers. They're dandy for hobbyists, but when it comes time to develop a profitable proprietary product, they stand in the way.

This is just too fucking much. The reason why corporations like Microshaft love BSD-like licenses is that they can take other peoples work. $4.5 billion in R&D!?! More than likely that money went towards convincing low life Microshaftites that they actually worked really hard on this stuff.

Oh the GPL is a viral license. Look if I write code for some OS (i.e. Linux) I don't have to use GPLed code. Does it help? Sure it does. Is it completely necessary? Hell no it's not. I'm so tired of hearing Microsoft is better. OSS sucks because it's communist and crappy and for hobbyist and and and yeah and stuff like that. If Microsoft and companies like it were worth a shit they wouldn't have to worry about violating the GPL. They would simply write better code.

Hate to tell ya but most in the open source community could give a shit about mixing closed source and open source software. Hey as long as it does what they need it to do. Want to make it open source without having to worry about people ripping you off ala-BSD? License in a way which prevents people from doing so. If you want you can even force people to submit back any changes they have made. It's done all the fucking time.

 
just because... (none / 0) (#13)
by detikon on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 10:21:39 AM PST
...this person only visited the site twice doesn't mean he/she was here for 5 minutes or less, stupid. Anyone willing to read through the first 5 diary entries/articles could reach the same conclusion, dumbass.




Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.

Oh really? (none / 0) (#23)
by RobotSlave on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 03:12:43 PM PST
Actually, I think you'd have to spend the better part of a day reading the site before you witnessed the deletion of even a few comments. With those few, it would be quite unlikely that all instances of copyright violation shared the same formatting conventions.

In fact, the only way in which a user might notice that many comments with copyright violation in bold had been deleted, but fail to notice that other styles had been deleted, would be if that person had been posting comments containing copyright violation in bold, only to have them deleted.

And you, detikon, are the user who most closely matches this profile. You're too angry to post anonymously without revealing your identity. I suggest you just post as "detikon" from now on-- you're not fooling anyone but yourself.


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

Funny, that (none / 0) (#26)
by iat on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 03:42:56 PM PST
You're too angry to post anonymously without revealing your identity. I suggest you just post as "detikon" from now on-- you're not fooling anyone but yourself.

By strange coincidence, I was just about to suggest he went back to posting as NAWL or PotatoError.


Adequacy.org - love it or leave it.

 
funny stuff (none / 0) (#14)
by detikon on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 10:30:29 AM PST
You must work for Microsoft. Fuck licensing and copyrights. If only we could all be dumbshits. You all have been doing is arguing semantics. Nothing more. One perception versus another.

Go ahead and argue copyright and trademark law. No claims from this site would ever hold up in court. I'll bet you a half a million. Hell how about the whole million?

Maybe I should actually register the trademarks this site claims to hold. I'll have this puppy shut down so fast and then I would laugh and laugh and laugh.




Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.

I'll call your bluff (none / 0) (#22)
by iat on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 03:00:33 PM PST
No claims from this site would ever hold up in court. I'll bet you a half a million. Hell how about the whole million?

OK, I'll accept your wager, detikon. I didn't know you were a lawyer, but I'm intrigued that you seem to have a greater knowledge of the law than Adequacy's legal department.

Maybe I should actually register the trademarks this site claims to hold. I'll have this puppy shut down so fast and then I would laugh and laugh and laugh.

I'll call your bluff on that too. Go ahead and try your best to register our trademarks. And when you've been humiliated, we'll all "laugh and laugh and laugh" at your expense.

It's time to put up or shut up, detikon.


Adequacy.org - love it or leave it.

 
Great idea! (none / 0) (#25)
by RobotSlave on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 03:37:35 PM PST
Perfect. You want to stop arguing about copyright law, and put all these confusing claims to the test? Excellent!

Why don't you go ahead, then, and try to register some trademarks and use them to get this site shut down?

Let us know when the papers have been filed, so we can all get our last posts in before the court flips the switch and the lights go out.

I've got better things to do with half a million, but I'll give you $1,000 if you manage to pull it off. This isn't even a bet, mind you. I don't expect you to pony up when you fail. I'll give you a cool grand if you can pull off the threat you've been boasting about. You can collect when the site has gone dark due to your actions in court.

Of course, you might have to actually talk to a lawyer at some point...


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

 
excuse me (none / 0) (#15)
by Anonymous Reader on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 11:07:10 AM PST
Incidentally, your attempt to introduce viral licensing terms into your comment won't hold up here. You may not use your copyright to dictate terms on the licensing of another person's copyright.
That's quoting in case you can't figure it out.

Seeing as how it is his property he can put any restrictions on the copyright he chooses. In responding to his argument you are agreeing to those terms.

I suggest you actually read the copyright law rather than attempting to make it up as you go along.

Fool. (none / 0) (#20)
by RobotSlave on Sat May 11th, 2002 at 02:44:58 PM PST
In responding to the comment, I did not quote any original material. Therefore, I am not bound by any licensing terms, valid or not, that the author attempted to attach to his or her copyright.

You might have to read that over a few times before you understand it.

I suggest you learn to read closely before attempting to read copyright law. Skimming through in an attempt to find phrases that support your desire to steal music does not constitute a serious reading of the law.


© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

read it yourself (none / 0) (#30)
by Anonymous Reader on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 12:19:53 PM PST
I believe in his post it said something along the lines that if you use any portion or respond to this post in any way you accept the same guidleines. You could have avoided the whole thing by simply not responding.

New word for you. (none / 0) (#32)
by RobotSlave on Sun May 12th, 2002 at 01:00:50 PM PST
The word you want to look up is "applicable."

License terms based on copyright apply to the copying of original material. See? It's called copyright. The user attempted to impose conditions on response to a work, which is not covered under copyright law (unless it includes copied material, of course).

If you know of some other area of Law that might provide a creator with a legal basis from which to impose licensing terms on response (that does not involve copying), I'd be absolutely fascinated to hear about it. You idiot.




© 2002, RobotSlave. You may not reproduce this material, in whole or in part, without written permission of the owner.

 
you need color codes (5.00 / 1) (#6)
by Anonymous Reader on Fri May 10th, 2002 at 12:30:34 AM PST
The bulb of the thermometer dividing the Adequacy logo should be color coded according to the threat copyright violators might pose whenever a less than flattering opinion of Lunix is expressed in the diaries or the front page. You really cannot fight terrorism without a system of strong visual cues to pre-empt useless debate and accidental lapses of patriotism. Red signals danger, full stop, no ifs ands or buts. Snap out of your idle liberalist reverie, be alert, look suspiciously around and expect the unexpected.

I, for one, would feel much safer if we had colors.


 

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