If the author cares to explain why my analysis of what the license actually contained is in any way inaccurate, and I agree, I’ll be more than happy to apologize for my erroneous statement. At the moment, the facts I’ve seen do not appear to support the infringement claim.

“It was all a misunderstanding, an honest mistake,”

Natural enough for the news stories to reflect the juicy claims without going so far as to put the address of the javascript file with the license in a browser URL, download it and read it.

Since I notified the author of the lack of foundation for his claims, it’s possible that there will soon be updated distributions available, with a less free license.

Even if you are correct in all the above, the stories I’ve read insist that the license requires registration with the author, something that the author was quoted as saying he never saw from Hatch or the company in charge of his website.

-kd

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107946/2003/06/18.html#a557

rick boucher’s got it figured out.

If that is the case, then why doesn’t he put his constituents money to good use and come up with a workable solution, or at least something that may lead to one, instead of suggesting widely derised ideas that (according to later assertions) even HE doesn’t like?

“I think that the various analogies go too far in suggesting that self-help remedies are wrong even in principle….Consider, by way of analogy, the laws that exist in many (if not all) states that allow one to exercise the use of force in protecting one’s own tangible personal property.”

The key here is protecting. We aren’t talking about trying to prevent a crime, Hatch’s proposal would sanction extreme reactions to a (suspected) crime that has already occured. We allow force to be used in defence of life, liberty and property as a practical matter, but we do not condone vigilante justice after the fact, especially if guilt has yet to be proven. The penal code you cite even has the word immediate in it. I can see no reasonable parallel between the two scenarios.

Furthermore, consistently treating copyrights as if they were real estate ignores the fact that copyrights are more like laws governing forms of transportation; they are defined by technology, not simply affected by them. One does not adjust copyright laws they way one changes real estate laws to accomodate for flight patterns. Trying to apply copyrights that were designed for old media, which is a relatively passive experience for the user, to new media, which is more interactive and malleable, is like trying to govern air and ground travel by the same rules.

The RIAA and friends are not losing money because people like to steal stuff, they are losing money because they insist on seeing MP3s and other digital media as if they were font changes. It would be as if the scribes and ruling class of Europe had reacted to the printing press only by marveling at the nice block letters and wondering how best to fill in the gaps with illustrations.

What he was “all for” was not confiscation of computers after due process. It was the destruction of computers by a private party, remotely, on mere suspicion, without regard for the error that remote detection by mindless computer programs is prone to, without regard for whether the destruction endangers life or limb (by starting a fire, for instance) and without regard for whether the computer in question was at the same time running a program on which someone’s life or livelihood depends: for modern computers (as Sen. Hatch seems to have forgotten) are capable of multitasking, that is, sharing their processors’ time among a number of different process in a way that looks simultaneous to the human users.

First, Hatch suggested such measures only as a last resort. Re-read the quoted language in The Washington Post article to which Professor Lessig links. You don’t really have to engage in a great deal of parsing to see that Hatch would prefer another solution.

Second, the analogies in the preceding comments are correct insofar as they suggest that Hatch’s proposal appears to be a highly disproportionate response to the problem. But I think that the various analogies go too far in suggesting that self-help remedies are wrong even in principle.

Technological obstacles may effectively rule out Hatch’s suggestion, but the very idea of self-help remedies in the context of protecting property rights does not strike me as extreme. Consider, by way of analogy, the laws that exist in many (if not all) states that allow one to exercise the use of force in protecting one’s own tangible personal property.

I try to offer a fuller and more charitable view of Hatch’s comments and a justification of such self-help remedies in principle over at my blog.