See also: last week's Letters page.

Letters to the editor

From:	 Bob Kopp <r-kopp@DELETETHISuchicago.edu>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Fair use vs. right of first sale
Date:	 Tue, 14 Aug 2001 21:32:32 -0500

On the front page of this week's LWN, you write:

> Others chose to sell their texts and get some of their money
> back. That is fair use, and that is what MetaText would deny to you. 

I beg your pardon, but that is not fair use.  That is an application
of the first sale doctrine, which is an entirely separate part of
copyright law.  Fair use is covered in section 107 of the copyright
statue and allows use of reproductions for purposes such as
"criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple
copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research."  First sale is
covered by section 109, and allows owners of copies of a copyrighted
work to sell or dispose of their copy without authorization from the
copyright holder.  See http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch1.html
for more information.

This may seem like a trivial distinction, but if the open source and
free software communities are to be taken seriously in the debate over
the future of IP, they -- and especially their media outlets -- must
exhibit a basic understanding of copyright law.

Regards,

Bob Kopp

From:	 Fred Mobach <fred@mobach.nl>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: On the astroturfing of Linux Today
Date:	 Thu, 09 Aug 2001 12:24:23 +0200

Hello,

In Linux Weekly News of August 9, 2001 you wrote :

"We sincerely hope that LWN will have no further words to say on this
matter. It is not for us to involve ourselves in how another site
relates with its readers. It does seem, though, that nobody is likely to
benefit from more public accusations or stories of ashamed penguins".

I sincerely hope that this is the last time that such a shameful mess
resulted in a lot of stories because, as you stated, nobody is likely to
benefit. But in case something like this happens again it should get
published again. Things like this hurt many people and might turn them
away from the community. Which I consider even worse.

Regards,

Fred
-- 
Fred Mobach - fred@mobach.nl - postmaster@mobach.nl
Systemhouse Mobach bv - The Netherlands - since 1976

The Free Transaction Processing Monitor project : http://www.ftpm.org/

From:	 "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Astroturfing... ok?
Date:	 Thu, 9 Aug 2001 13:41:50 -0400

Hardly.

In your front page editorial last week on this topic, you say
> Quite a few people are highly upset and, seemingly, out for blood. 
> 
> It is interesting to ponder why that might be. Any site that allows the
> posting of comments tends to get quite a bit of "interesting" material
> posted under clearly pseudonymous, if not completely anonymous names.
> All such postings should be taken with a substantial grain of salt, and
> one would hope that most readers would know that by now. The fact that
> a Linux Today editor felt the need to stuff the comment area is sad and
> unfortunate, but, in the end, it's just comments.

Not at all.

I'm put in mind of a quote from Tom Clancy's _Executive_Orders_.

Reporter Bob Holtzman takes news anchor John Plumber (obvious take offs
on Bob Woodward and John Chancellor) to visit the 7-Eleven store run
by the widow of Sgt Buck Zimmer, who died in Jack Ryan's arms in
_Clear_And_Present_Danger_.  Her son asks Chancellor, er, um, "Plumber"
"Why should we trust *you*?  You're *reporters*."

Says it like a cuss word, mind you.

the actual information is never the real produect in the journalism
business.  What it is that people are *paying* for -- something which
has become *much* easier to see in the footloose environment of the
Internet -- is opinions, selection, judgement, and honesty.

Yes, the comment box may get stuffed.

But by a *staffer*?

Nope.  I agree with those who believe that's beyond the pale.

> The news reported by Linux Today remains separate from those comments.

No, it really doesn't.  Because it's being reported by those same
people.  Anyone who operates consciously -- and especially
professionally -- in the public sphere has, in the final analysis, only
their reputation to stand on.

Reichard no longer has one, from what I can see, and that directly
impacts internet.com.

Negatively.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 804 5015

"So easy to use, no wonder the Internet is going to hell!"
-- me

From:	 Bill Sneed <bsneed@mint.net>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Mono, .NET, & History
Date:	 Fri, 10 Aug 2001 11:32:58 -0400

To the editor:

I would simply remind Sr. Miguel de Icaza of a thought from the 
20th century American philosopher George Santayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

And, with apologies to Homer, "Beware of geeks bearing gifts."

...bill sneed...
prospect, maine

From:	 tom poe <tompoe@source.net>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Mono and Petreley's InfoWorld Article
Date:	 Mon, 13 Aug 2001 03:39:29 -0700
Cc:	 <sal.martinez@home.com>, <baskets@peoplepc.com>

I read the "Microsoft Bait and Switch" article, and agree with the author's 
logic that Ximian is flirting with disaster on one level, at least.
http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/07/30/010730oppetreley.xml

I'm not clear on just what .NET is supposed to do.  Is it that Microsoft is 
promising a secure Internet with it?  If so, how is that possible?  More to 
the point, are companies such as American Express and Verisign really, 
sincerely pursuing such a course?  Or, are they just along for whatever 
profits are to be made?

Actually, when you think about it, Ximian is doing its thing, but it isn't 
the only game in town, as I understand it.  As long as there are options, 
like, maybe not participating with the "Bad Guys".  Isn't that the bottom 
line?  I choose not to spend my money at Amazon.com.  I choose to spend my 
money with Fatbrain.com.  Will I need Passport to do so, at some point?  
Verisign and American Express and others will have to decide what limits they 
place on their market, or is this wrong thinking, anymore?  Just a thought. 
Tom

From:	 Jan <jandersen@striva.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Land of freedom and whatever...
Date:	 Thu, 09 Aug 2001 09:50:19 +0100

As a European I have been watching the news from the US with 
interest for a number of years now. Americans seem to have
strong and brave viewpoints about things like freedom, justice,
democracy, human rights and religion. A lot of the political
rhetorics seem to be concerned with those subjects.

It becomes more and more evident, though, that the beautiful
words are merely words. In America, I hear, one can get arrested
for speaking too loudly about things that might infringe on the
sacred rights of the big copyright-holders. Luckily it is not 
all restrictions and tight laws that make people criminals for
doing what they thought was right: the big companies can still
lie in their adverts, steal from the small companies, buy
politicians and pervert justice.

Is it strange, if the rest of the world is a little bit reserved 
in their judgement of America? Recently your country has lived up
to the worst designations that the communists used to label you
with: 

Imperialism - just take the cases with Dmitry Sklyarov and Matthew 
Pavlovich. USA obviously feels that their laws reach outside the
boundaries of America.

Greedy capitalism with no trace of morality, exploiting everything
and everybody as hard as possible.

Am I wrong? Prove me wrong, please. I would sincerely like to 
be able to go to sleep every night without fearing the ravings of
the world's biggest military power under the leadership of the
country's big industries and the feebleminded Strawman Bush.

/jan

From:	 bryanh@giraffe-data.com (Bryan Henderson)
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Letters: Dmitry Sklyarov's rights as a non-citizen
Date:	 Thu, 9 Aug 2001 20:29:16 -0700

Joe Klemmer laments in his letter to LWN, "As Mr. Sklyarov is not a US
citizen, he is not entitled to the same rights as the rest of us."  The
context is the fact that Sklyarov was held without bail.

I'd like to clarify that fundamental U.S. Constitutional rights such
as the right to reasonable bail apply to everyone in the country,
without regard to immigration status.  Sklyarov's denial of bail was
probably due to the fact that he lives in another country, which makes
him a flight risk.  I think we'd see the same result if he were a US
citizen living in another country.

As long as we're talking about travesties that the US criminal justice
system may have committed against Sklyarov, I'd also like to respond to
the outrage some have expressed that he was arrested in the US even 
though he didn't do anything wrong on his trip to the US and the acts
he's charged with happened outside the US.

First of all, it's well established, and makes sense, that you can violate
US laws while standing on a foreign shore.  Placing drugs on a ship bound
for the US is a classic example.  Putting a program onto a network that
reaches into the US isn't much of a stretch from that.

If he did violate a US law, then the FBI should pick him up at any 
opportunity -- I.e. any time he sets foot on US soil for any reason.

-- 
Bryan Henderson                                    Phone 415-505-3367
San Jose, California

From:	 "Anand Srivastava" <Anand.Srivastava@ascom.ch>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Why the E-Books are failing.
Date:	 Fri, 10 Aug 2001 12:07:17 +0200

Hi,

When I read of E-Books first I thought yes that was a nice thing. It would
give the reader more capabilities (You could listen to them, with any voice
synthesizer, you could search through them, you could print parts and
incorporate their parts into something where you wanted, etc.), would be
lighter than normal books. It would be good. But the Publishers, thought
wow we have a new medium and we can reduce the capabilities as much as we
want so that users can finally not resell their books. And they will have
the maximum profit because they don't require to do any printing. But they
forgot, that when you reduce the capabilities, you also take away the
incentive to buy the books. Now the only incentive that is there is that
they are light.

I think for E-books to succeed, the publishers will have to do the
following things.

1) Give more features than available with normal books. First and most
important is that the E-book should be more usable than normal
books. They should not be for a small time, because good books are friends
forever, why would anybody want to read a book that has no potential to be
a great book.  They should allow basic facilities like, reading aloud,
searching, printing excerpts, mailing excerpts, etc.

2) Make them more interesting to read from proprietory software. The
proprietory software should be able to enhance the reading experience by
providing something more than the normal features. If the basic features
are missing, people would want to use some other means that will give them
the features they want. So the proprietory software has to do something
more for the book.  And if people don't want to read with the proprietory
software there are not enough incentives to buy a copy, when a pirated one
can be got easily without a fee.

2) Make them easy to buy. If they are not, people will get them from the
net free.  People don't necessary steal because they can. But they have to
know that what they are doing is stealing. So education is very important
for the success of E-Books.

3) Use better encryption. Not the type Adobe etc use. Use open algorithms
because they are known to give better encryption. But this can go only so
far. You need only have one password to break the most solid encryption. So
education is absolutely necessary. If the education is there, pirate copies
will only be available from Warez sites. People will probably not trade on
P2P services, if you give them decent value for their money, allow them to
spend money easily, and make it not worth the guilt. Better encryption can
only help in forcing people to the proprietory solution, if the proprietory
solution is good enough and there is not enough incentive to use a
different solution.

Bottom line is that e-books need to be feature rich rather than feature
poor.

There was a time when customer was always right, now the customer is the
first suspect. The publishers will need to learn that you need customers
trust to win new businesses, otherwise only pirates will have the new
businesses.

-anand

From:	 Shlomi Fish <shlomif@vipe.technion.ac.il>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: DeCSS for JavaScript
Date:	 Fri, 10 Aug 2001 04:20:31 +0300 (IDT)


On behalf of the Hackers-IL mailing list, I am proud to present DeCSS for
JavaScript. This is a port of the DeCSS code to the JavaScript language,
which enables it to run on a large number of web-browsers, assuming
JavaScript is enabled.

The following page:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/decss_js.html

at the DeCSS gallery contains a sample HTML page that activates it. The
source code is here:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/css_descramble-js.txt

I believe this marks a new step in the accessibility of the DeCSS code,
because now innocent surfers can violate the DMCA on their home machines
by surfing into particular web-sites. Furthermore, it may be done
involuntarily, as JavaScript enables executing arbitrary code without the
permission of the surfer.

So now there is a world of possibilities such as DeCSS web-boxes,
or distributed DeCSS for JavaScript.

In any case, the Hackers-IL mailing-list homepage is:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hackers-il/

(Note that we are by no means computer intruders, just computer
enthusiasts)

Happy DeCSSing.

	Shlomi Fish





----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@vipe.technion.ac.il 
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@techie.com

A more experienced programmer does not make less bugs. He just realizes
what went wrong more quickly.

From:	 Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: PostgreSQL Global Development Group.
Date:	 Tue, 14 Aug 2001 16:18:04 -0400

Speaking totally personally, and not representing anyone but myself:

I read the LWN interview with Bruce Momjian with more than a little interest, 
being a member of the development community (in an adjunctant position).

I started out with PostgreSQL in the spring of 1997, as a backend for the 
intranet server for WGCR Radio.  We run AOLserver, which is an open source 
webserver with embedded tcl scripting and a powerful database API, and 
Postgres-95 was a semisupported database option for that server. (The side 
story of why AOLserver was used is long, and not relevant to this note...)

After a few false starts, I finally got everything running with AOLserver 
2.2.1, a beta PostgreSQL driver, and PostgreSQL 6.2.1, all on RedHat 4.2.  
Things worked fairly well even then, at least for our web applications that 
back the daily operation of a broadcast radio station, of which I am Chief 
Engineer.

I quickly got frustrated with the pace of RPM releases of PostgreSQL.  
Version 6.3 was released, the first one with subselects.  I badly wanted 
subselects, but no RPM was forthcoming.  I could easily compile it myself, 
but I wanted the RPM installation to make things easier on someone who might 
have to replace me at a moment's notice if I became ill or disabled.  Such a 
replacement wouldn't have the decade-plus Unix experience I have, and would 
have enough trouble with 'rpm -U', much less './configure;make;make install' 
and then sorting out why the files were in different places......and then 
moving it over to the compilerless production server.

After a few cycles of this (6.5 was in beta before a general 6.4.x RPMset was 
in general release from RedHat, as part of RHL 6.0), I got really aggravated 
-- enough to be willing to do this thing of RPM maintaining myself.  So, in 
the summer of 1999 I grabbed the bull by the horns (and made a number of 
missteps and verbal goofs along the way, for which the group was insanely 
patient with me and my naivete -- it's amazing how really naive someone with 
a decade of Usenet and Internet admin experience _can_ be...) and began 
attempting to maintain the RPMset.

RedHat 6.1 shipped with a version of the the RPMset I had worked long and 
hard to make.  The latest RedHat public beta's PostgreSQL RPM has very few 
differences from the RPMset I distribute from the PostgreSQL site --and most 
of the other RPM-based distributions have at least synced up with the 
PostgreSQL sets.   Other developers, particularly a certain fellow at RedHat, 
have helped immensely in the maintenance.  And I have alot left to do and 
learn about this thing of RPMset maintenance.

Along the way, however, I've learned a great deal about the essential need 
for _community_.

Just reading the PostgreSQL website (or the RedHat one for that matter) gives 
a deceptive feeling of 'nothing really going on.'  But when you get inside 
the Open Source Machine, you find the gears of the mailing lists churning at 
incredible rates.  The PostgreSQL HACKERS list, for instance, is rather busy 
-- and it's only one of many lists.  The real action in an Open Source 
project happens on the developers' mailing list.

There is a genuine sense of community in the PostgreSQL group.  I feel that 
my contributions, while not very large, are still worthwhile -- and I am in 
this list mingling with software giants such as Bruce, Vadim Mikheev, Tom 
Lane, Jan Weick, Thomas Lockhart, as well as highly experienced admins such 
as Marc Fournier. I hesitate to mention any but the core developers, to keep 
from leaving anyone out, but you can see the list for yourself at 
http://www.postgresql.org/devel-contrib.html

Fer cryin' out loud, MANY list posters on the HACKERS list have PhD's!  My 
poor BSEET shrivels small in comparison.

Yet, my small amount of help seems to be appreciated, with all the other 
talent that is out there.  It is both humbling and uplifting at the same time 
to be amongst such talent.  It is fulfilling and gratifying to be able to 
help, even in my small way, such a great example of a true OPEN Source 
project.

JMHO.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11