I find it difficult to invest time in reading this when the author demonstrates such a basic misunderstanding of copyright:
>...software, by default, probably cannot be used, modified, or redistributed without a license from the copyright holder.
Of course it can be used and modified. It's the redistribution that is covered by copyright law.
>...you can’t really use software without someone giving you permission.
This is completely false, except where a license is required to obtain a copy to begin with. It is the license that creates the restriction, not the copyright.
MAI Systems v. Peak Computer[0] says otherwise, at least in the 9th Circuit and at least covering use of the program. Other courts and Congress have bent over backwards to try and not disturb the ruling.
Even if it was overturned, modification has been a core part of copyright law since Folsom v. Marsh[1], where the Supreme Court interpreted the entire concept of derivative rights into the law. In fact, this ruling was so expansive they had to invent fair use at the same time just to avoid accidentally overturning the 1st Amendment.
Copyright creates the restriction, specifically to legally mandate a negotiation for the license that absolves you of the restriction. If you do not have a license, you have nothing but a pending lawsuit.
This case establishes that the copy in question was in fact a "copy" as defined by the copyright act, but the infringement was due to the disposition of the parties' rights via a license - not inherent to the copyright. This ruling is highly specific to the case.
I have a hard time believing this, are you suggesting that it is perfectly legal to run pirated software so long as you never entered a license agreement with the creator? Or that the existence of a license you've never interacted with and potentially have no knowledge of has an impact on the legality of you running pirated software? What if a company's internal software is leaked, surely they have the right to prevent other companies from using it?
I am not. Of course it's not legal to use pirated software. By definition pirated software is illegally obtained. But a legally obtained copy can be run without a license, if none was required to obtain the software.
As for "leaked" software: again, if copies are illegally obtained then of course it's illegal to use them.
> Of course it can be used and modified. It's the redistribution that is covered by copyright law.
By what law or principle? IIRC most software is licensed and not sold. And the copyright dictates who defines the terms of the license for software which can be copied. Otherwise how would 'freeware' and trial software be practical if folks could just modify them to bypass any limiters therein?
The same law or principle that allows me to use the pages of a book as wallpaper. Why can't I use my legally obtained copy in anyway I choose so long as it doesn't violate any law or contract? My point is that copyright only protects from the making of copies, and licenses are something else entirely.
“Software, by default,” is created with all rights reserved for the author.
I understand where you’re trying to go with your argument but if the author doesn’t have a means of legal distribution then there’s no way to have a legal copy on your computer to modify and run.
—edit—
And a license doesn’t restrict the rights to software but grants exceptions to the default “all rights reserved” copyright grant.
What? Are you really suggesting that software can’t be legally distributed by its author? And that a license is required before I can make copies for my own use? This is completely incorrect. What about fair use?
You can’t possibly have a legal copy of the software without expressed permission of the author. They may not care who does what with it (IDK, implied permission?) but they could change their mind at any time and chose to enforce their copyright. Which also means first-sale doctrine doesn’t apply as there was no “first sale”.
I also “make copies for my own use” of TV shows, written things, &etc and don’t think anyone would claim that isn’t violating copyright law, especially the producers of said content. In fact, I know this to be true as they have sent me nastygrams via email before. Also, by your reasoning, any company, like a cloud service, could take any code they want as long as they weren’t committing acts of distribution and use it however they want. I think we all know this isn’t the way it works because the anti-cloud licenses which have become popular lately would mean absolutely nothing.
And fair use is not really applicable to the current discussion because statically linking a library without permission isn’t fair use.
If I've legitimately obtained a copy of your work, then I'm entitled to use it, read it, even make my own copies for personal use. Any new work I attempt to distribute would be measured against your original to determine infringement.
VHS has a mono track and a stereo track. Some copies have only the mono track, some setups use only the mono track, ever. My Harry Potter 2 copy has a garbled stereo track, so I manually switch to mono when watching that.
From why I understand of VHS (and I could be wrong here since I’ve not written software to read VHS tapes) is that they don’t have a separate audio track. They just encode NTSC or PAL signals as it would be broadcast over the airwaves. That means audio will be encoded in the signal after the video frame. It also means Teletext is also recorded too (which has been useful for Teletext achievers / historians).
Stereo audio, like colour video, was an advancement that came after broadcasting had already been standardised. Which means they had to find room in the signal to squeeze that additional information in (this is why TV sets that aren’t sync with the broadcasting feed go black and white). Stereo was a relatively recent addition, maybe late 80s or early 90s (I remember really clearly when the technology was turned on but can’t recall how old I was) so it wouldn’t surprise me if stereo audio was subject to the same syncing issues as colour video.
VHS HiFi seems to be a different format entirely but which also used the same storage media (like how CDs have a few different storage formats supported by the same hardware optical discs)
Eh, no. Think about it. If the audio was encoded in the video signal, it would need to be buffered. (Such systems existed, but not in VHS.) Audio in VHS is a continuous analog thing.
You’re thinking digitally. PAL and NTSC are analogue formats. In fact that link you cited even says that’s VHS stores the PAL or NTSC signal verbatim and what I described is exactly how PAL and NTSC store audio.
To quote:
> Each of the diagonal-angled tracks is a complete TV picture field, lasting 1/60 of a second (1/50 on PAL) on the display. One tape head records an entire picture field. The adjacent track, recorded by the second tape head, is another 1/60 or 1/50 of a second TV picture field, and so on. Thus one complete head rotation records an entire NTSC or PAL frame of two fields.
Edit: This a diagram here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC that illustrates how each transmissions frequency is divided up for different aspects of the broadcast.
There were different ways to transmit audio over the air waves, but it was done on a different frequency from the video. There were even schemes to broadcast the audio on regular FM stereo as. Some VCRs had a separate audio in so you could use a separate audio source for instance for dubbing. (But you had to record video at the same time, because of the head switching. So no going back and edit only the audio or only the video, with VHS.)
The audio on VHS was originally stored just like on audio cassette tapes, quoth the VHS wikipedia:
"audio was recorded as baseband in a single linear track, at the upper edge of the tape, similar to how an audio compact cassette operates."
HiFi quote from the same article:
"Hi-Fi audio is thus dependent on a much more exact alignment of the head switching point than is required for non-HiFi VHS machines. Misalignments may lead to imperfect joining of the signal, resulting in low-pitched buzzing"
The audio is not stored at the end or beginning of anything, it's continuous.
You're literally now just saying the same thing I was! It was a different frequency on the same signal. I never said it was chopped between frames! That's some weird conclusion you came to all by yourself. Hence why I said you're thinking digitally rather than of an analogue signal. Or at least not realising a broadcast transmission is broadband rather than narrowband.
Of course it would never be confirmed by Russia. The known pieces correlate well though and consistent - the trenches digging and prolonged presence in the Red Forrest by the soldiers is confirmed, and the background radiation there even without disturbing the ground by digging and driving (such disturbance raises level several folds) is 0.1-10mSv/hour, so 30 days continuous presence would result in 0.07-7 Sv. The radiation sickness would start to show at something 0.5 Sv. The reports of Russian soldiers brought into Homel specialized radiation hospital pretty much dove tails it. Personally to me the most important confirmation is that such event is exactly how things happen in Russian army :)
And just for desert - the commander of the Russian forces which invaded and were stationed in Chernobyl has as a result of that operation recently received a high military award for "preventing nuclear terrorism". Looks more than ironic given that it is his soldiers who got ill and poisoned and who retreating stole and took with them a lot of various contaminated/activated hardware which were stored in Chernobyl zone for years.
Not buying any of it. If we judge by previous longevity, my guess is that Garamond will be the only one of those fonts still in use in the 30th century.
>...software, by default, probably cannot be used, modified, or redistributed without a license from the copyright holder.
Of course it can be used and modified. It's the redistribution that is covered by copyright law.
>...you can’t really use software without someone giving you permission.
This is completely false, except where a license is required to obtain a copy to begin with. It is the license that creates the restriction, not the copyright.