Adobe Gets Hit By DMCA 390
Reeses writes "Adobe has asked a U.S. District court to allow them to embed ITC and Monotpye fonts in their documents, claiming "Adobe has asked the court to declare that Adobe's popular Acrobat product does not violate certain provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as claimed by ITC and Agfa Monotype." Which is interesting after the Skylarov/Elcomsoft debacle from a year or so ago. I guess they figured that it didn't apply to them since they enforced it."
What about other Adobe Products (Score:2, Interesting)
But on another note, how would this affect other Adobe products, like building a web page in Photoshop using these fonts and publishing?
Re:What about other Adobe Products (Score:2)
A two edged sword (Score:3, Interesting)
The first thing to do is copyright every digital work you have and then sue any company that modifies it without your permission - which apparently every software program out there will modify your creation on some level. I'm not a software engineer, so I don't know all the intricacies.
Re:A two edged sword (Score:2)
The perils of ill-concieved legislation (Score:2)
Such are the perils of ill concieved and internally inconsistant legislation like the DMCA. Making such drastic changes to the tenets of copyright and fair use, established 200 years ago, is frought with risks. I predict there will be a great many of these suits that victimize the vary companies who supported the legislation as it passed through congress, for the simple reason that for the past three decades, products have been developed based on the previously existing standards of copyright and fair use, and there's no grandfathering clause to speak of in the DMCA.
Eventually the quantity of these suits will diminish, as products based on the old standards are removed from distribution and we become acustomed to the slower creative development and weakened artistic and technical growth dictated by the new intellectual property standards we have imposed on ourselves.
The only remaining question is: Are these new standards in the best interest of the majority?
If so, we will fine a new ballance in our creative and technological endevours. If not, the law must be repealed and a more approprite piece of legislation developed.
--CTH
Re:What about other Adobe Products (Score:2)
Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one like to see the DMCA used against companies that could possibly aid in its downfall.
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
> is the law will be modified to allow Adobe,
> et al. to do what they want, but still
> eliminate, de facto, our fair use rights.
Perhaps it will, but only to the extent that they can maintain the sham under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
Fair use was designed to ultimately promote commerce. We can hope that, eventually, commercial interests will want it back.
"Corporations are legally individual entities" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
The risk that a corporation takes if it breaks a law is much smaller than the risk an actual flesh and blood person takes for doing the very same thing. It's gotten to the point where corporations typically view legal problems as just another operating expense, like paying the electric bill.
I want to see PERSONAL responsibility brought back into the justice system. If a high-level manager makes a decision that amounts to committing a crime, don't drag the company to court - drag HIM to court. If people knew that the things they do at work are things they will be held responsible for, they'd be a lot less willing to do things they know are wrong.
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:4, Informative)
Also a person who is simply accused of something can have their liberty curtailed whilst awaiting trial.
I want to see PERSONAL responsibility brought back into the justice system. If a high-level manager makes a decision that amounts to committing a crime, don't drag the company to court - drag HIM to court. If people knew that the things they do at work are things they will be held responsible for, they'd be a lot less willing to do things they know are wrong.
The concept of "limited liability" originally was intended to protect those who invested in the company. If it went bankrupt the share/stock certificates would be worthless, but there would be no requirment for those people to pay over any more money.
At some point this became twisted into protection for enguaging in stupid even criminal business practices. With stock market pricing having little relationship with actual profitability.
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:3, Funny)
Quick, someone come up with a P2P sharing client that would require the RIAA to violate the DMCA in order to serve up invalid and spoofed files using custom broken clients. There would be something so evil about doing that that the universe might implode.
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:2)
There's your answer right there. If they have to build a custom client, then they've violated the DMCA (reverse engineering, circumventing your encryption, &c.).
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:2)
*Note: This comment was inspired by an effort shortly after Napster was ruled against. The idea was that Pig Latin is a form of encryption and by decrypting it to find copyrighted music, the RIAA could be heavily fined. Wish I could remember who it was who thought of that.
This sounds like a greed lawsuit (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe believes these claims are being made to gain ITC and Agfa leverage in the contractual disputes. Adobe strongly disputes this claim and is asking the court to rule that there is no violation of the DMCA.
What this says to me is that Adobe licensed the fonts, intending to distribute them in electronic documents, and ITC/Afga didn't foresee that, and now they want more money for it, threatening to use the DMCA where it doesn't apply.
The Slashdot headline was sensationalist and misleading. I can't see how ITC/Afga could argue that the DMCA should even apply here.
Re:This sounds like a greed lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
The Slashdot headline was sensationalist and misleading. I can't see how ITC/Afga could argue that the DMCA should even apply here.
Like most companies that have invoked the DMCA recently (Apple, HP, etc.), they're probably doing it as a scare tactic, without any real understanding of what the law applies to. The important part isn't really that the DMCA might apply to font embedding - the important part is that this is yet another group using the cudgel of the DMCA in a dealing with a competitor.
I expect to see "I'm going to sue you under the DMCA" replacing "I'm going to tell Mom" in sibling fights any day now.
Re:This sounds like a greed lawsuit (Score:2)
The way I see it, companies see the potential for a win with the DMCA, but it hasn't really been fully tested. These companies are testing the limits of the legislation and defining the law.
As long as you have faith in the justice system, there isn't any problem here. I myself don't have much faith in the American justice system, but that is only my personal feeling.
Re:This sounds like a greed lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
(Quite possibly yes, but they're not paid to interpret the law in a reasonable manner: they're paid to find interpretations that favour their paymasters and which they reckon have a plausible chance of either standing up in court or which will at least risk sufficient expense and inconvenience to fight that the target will settle out of court. Outside legal circles, this sort of activity is called 'blackmail' and is generally held in low esteem. In some jurisdictions, it is (gasp!) even a criminal offense.)
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
3 quick points:
1. I don't know how much the tech companies are in control of the DMCA - I don't think it's a lot. Remember that a lot of tech companies, ISPs, telecoms were against the DMCA as proposed by the entertainment industry - they had to negotiate the middle ground before purchasing the legislature.
2. The unwritten common law practice in the U.S. is that laws are not enfoced against "special interests" (read companies) who paid for those laws in the first place. So, the question is: did Adobe pay for the DMCA?
3. Finally, we don't know enough about the ITC and Agfa complaint; it may be more of a contractual dispute than a DMCA issue. DMCA could be one of the cards played by them to get some leverage.
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't matter. Adobe is a Patriotic Great American Corporation(tm), while the rest of us are just Evil Terrorist Content Pirates(tm).
Re:Maybe it's a good thing. (Score:2)
2. because the fonts represent letters they are indexed as letters which correspond to computers programs i,e, instructions to render the letter.
3. the indexing might even be construed as an encryption technique to protect the font, I know but we talking about legal stuff and who knows how they'll think.
so a DMCA violation might not be that far fetched
Come on kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahhhhh Karma... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ahhhhh Karma... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ahhhhh Karma... (Score:3, Funny)
<simpsons character="Neslon Muntz" empathy=0 align=evil>HA HA!</simpsons>
Re:Ahhhhh Karma... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Bit by their own dog (Score:4, Interesting)
It will show that poorly written laws with big teeth are dangerous to everyone, whether they are consumers, the non-consuming public, industry, or the politicians who support them.
Cross your fingers, maybe this is the beginning of the end for the DMCA.
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:2)
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:2)
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:2)
If you do it is correct to call you a consumer.
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:2)
If you do it is correct to call you a consumer.
Technically correct, mammal, but then again, so would calling you full of shit be (unless you're on one of those darn cleansing diets) It's the connotation that counts.
The point, my hominid friend, is that the frequent use of the word combined with the very reductionistic philosophy of American and Western Culture in general, means that people begin to be viewed as only consumers.
The Matrix wasn't insightful because it was plausibly efficient for machines to actually use dream-conked humans as a source of power. It was a metaphor for a system something like it... in which human beings are abstracted away into income sources encouraged, required, or forced to consume what you offer. For the right price, of course.
So anyway, to some people, calling them a "consumer" is like calling them "coppertop".
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:3)
You are a consumer. Unless you have radically altered your behavior, don't pretend otherwise.
I am not a consumer! I am a CITIZEN! Please use t (Score:2)
Honestly, I hope not, though I fear in the current political/economic climate that the difference will be rendered negligible. Fortunately, I expect that given a bit of time, the current political/economic climate will pass, too. I hope it will pass, first.
Re:Bit by their own dog (Score:2)
Karma exists (Score:4, Funny)
I am ROFL so much I can't even describe my joy at this.
Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Market ueber Alles types should take note
There is a social and ethical context to everything we do, as individuals, as members of corporations, or as corporations themselves. This is but one small aspect of it, and while it is far too seldom to see payback of this sort for wrongdoing within the span of a human life, it is most gratifying one rare occasions like this when poetic justice actually does occur.
Maybe next time Adobe will reconsider, and perhaps even lobby against such draconian and despicable legislation, rather than amorally adding it to their lawyers' arsenal.
Re:Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell, that's what we've been arguing all these years. What comes around in the market will go around in the market.
Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, since this isn't the Free Market but the Unfree Government enforcing laws at the point of a gun and demanding bribes^Wdonations in return for protection, those with protection money will get away scott free and you and I will be under their thumb.
If only the market were involved...
Re:Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:2)
First, as I said in another post, it is not an indictment of the free market per se, but an idictment of those who view a free market as operating without an ethical or social context, as epitomised by the frequently heard comment "their first duty is to their shareholders, so doing [whatever despicable or harmful action is being discussed] is appropriate and good. The free market will balance things out."
The fact of the matter is that, payback like we are seeing with Adobe is all too uncommon. Far more common are things like Monsanto's poisoning of a southern US town's drinking water, a smoking gun in the form of memos describing PR strategies for if and when they were caught, and not a single person in jail despite the deaths and illnesses caused. Dow Chemical's behavior in India is another example, Microsoft's behavior vis-a-vis countless companies it has destroyed over the years yet another, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum, with hardly a negative consiquence as a result.
A competative free market, as good as it is for producing consumer goods at reasonable prices and performing other economic tasks, is singularly ineffective at providing for the public good when such requires ethical, moral, or wise behavior that is contrary to someone's bottom line.
Re:Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:2, Insightful)
Free Market ueber Alles types should take note ... this is the kind of karmic returns such ill-considered, anti-social behavior in the name of padding stockholders pockets at the expense of the public good warrent, and perhaps now a little more often will actually receive.
Patents has nothing to do with free markets. In fact patents are an example of the opposite. Patents were created by governments to repair a perceived market failure. Apparently some people think that nobody would bother with R&D if they were not granted monopoly priveleges by the government for their "inventions".
Actually, it makes sense for some industries. It is hard to imagine how the pharmaceutical industy could afford to invest so much money in research without patents. For other industries, especially IT and genetics, patents are more of a break on development than a stimulus.
Re:Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:2)
>
>Bought and paid for legislation? Yes. Still legislation, and has nothing to do with the free market. Grow a brain.
I suspect you've made the mistaken assumption that corporate America believes in the Free Market. Balderdash. The Free Market is a tool, like any other tool such as Research, Manufacturing, Creative Bookeeping, or lawyers that are used on the way up the ladder. Unlike the other mentioned tools, the Free Market doesn't stop those below you from climbing up your back. That's what Purchased Legislation is for.
But make no mistake, corporate America doesn't "believe" in the Free Market. The exist in it as they must, and exploit it as they can.
Re:Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:2)
Of course they don't! Where did you get the idea that free market advocates think corporations are their friends? Corporations can only exist through government charter, so it is always in the corporations' best interests to have large intrusive governments.
The Thoughtlessness of Dogma (Score:4, Insightful)
God, your myopia makes a televangelist appear openminded.
Free Marken uber Alles? Hello, flyspeck, it's not the free market that passed the DMCA--it's a hyper-active government that did so.
hyper-active government? Elected government, acting upon the desires its constituency (not the voter, but rather the paying special interest/corporation), in a free market of influence and paid-for legislators, thanks to a 1978 supreme court ruling interpreting corporate finance as equivelent to free speech. If the governmenty is hyper-active, it is because the ever-worshipped 'invisible hand' of the free market of legislative influence has made it so.
Legislation has everything to do with markets, free or otherwise, indeed no market (free or otherwise) can exist in a complete vacuum of legislation and function coherently (if you really need it spelled out for you, consider any number of ungoverned lands as well as the behavior of the black market itself. Lack of regulation means lack of laws for a court to interpret, i.e. a lack of jurisprudence and the rule of the gun, libertarian myths of anarchistic utopia notwithstanding).
But of course, all of that misses the point I originally made entirely (which was, perhaps, your intent). By perusing any number of Ayndroidian posts here on slashdot and elsewhere from people who argue similarly to yourself, the common reply to complaints about corporate malfaescence and misbehavior, be it financial, social, economic, or environmental, is always a handwave toward the mythical 'invisible hand' of the marketplace (which has already been debunked by more recent, and more applicable, economic theory for which a Nobel prise has been granted) with no supporting argument as to how or why a free market would, for example, prevent Monsanto from poisoning the drinking water of a small southern US town than, say, government oversight that would throw such people in jail for doing such a thing.
As I said before, oh thought-challenged reactionary, everything we do is done in an ethical and social context, a fact which libertarian dogma and naive readers of Ayn Rand can't seem to grasp for all its obviousness to the rest of the human population. That goes for Adobe, and is irrevelent with respect to the specifics of the legislation in question, to wit:
Adobe took a social convention (in this case the poorly concieved DMCA, but it might just as well have been copyright law itself, or some other convention) and used it to the detriment of the the society as a whole. Now that another has turned and done a similar thing to them, they are without support. This means that mitigating cirumstances, that might normally have led to a compromise, are likely to fall on deaf ears and evince, at most, an amused chuckle from the common observer.
In other words, now that the tables are turned, the pathetic excuse of "their only responsibility is to their shareholders and it is proper that they do all that is legal, no matter how unethical or reprehensible, to make money" is shown to be the absurdity that most clear thinking people always recognized it to be, namely that, in the end, such behavior undermines not only the society, and hurts not only the victims of the initial misbehavior, but ultimately the very company and stockholders the behavior was purported to benefit.
Alas, the weakness of the free market for determining ethical behavior is that, as often as not, unethical behavior does pay, often with little or no unpleasant consiquence for the corporate wrongdoer. Which of course means if you want to build a society fit for humans to live in, rather than merely one that is designed to service corporate entities at the expense of everyone else, you need more than just a simple, unregulated, free market.
Re:The Thoughtlessness of Dogma (Score:2, Interesting)
The fact that it is inconvenient to your argument to admit that the DMCA is an act of government does not make it a "social convention".
Re:The Thoughtlessness of Dogma (Score:2)
It isn't in the least bit inconvinient to my argument. Social conventions take many forms: formal legislation is one of them.
Re:The Thoughtlessness of Dogma (Score:2)
That may be a free market, by its strictest definition, but such a market, while it may start out competatively, will ultimately devolve into a marketplace of oligarchies and outright monopolies, ultimately indistinguishable from the planned economies founded upon completely antithetical philosophies.
In other words, a purely free market (as you've defined it) is as entanable and unstable as a purely planned economy, be it communist or faschist.
This does not that ALL goverment power is "bad", it just needs to be carefully monitored.
On that point I couldn't agree with you more.
Re:The Thoughtlessness of Dogma (Score:2)
Now, you can argue that in the end, all monopolies will fall, which is true. However, it's also true that in the end, we'll all die, the earth will be destroyed by the sun and the universe will settle into heat death.
These "eventually's" are small comfort to the people that will suffer for many decades under the rules of monopolies if they are permitted to grow without bound.
Economic theories are useless if not applicable to the here and now, and that is where monopolies hold the greatest sway.
If the best example of monopolies you can come up with is the phone companies, try rolling the clock back a few decades before anti-trust legislation was enacted, back to the steel cartels that prompted this legislation. Families starving to death would certainly disagree with your assessment.
Cartels are antithetical to freedom & capitali (Score:3, Insightful)
I like capitalism. I'm quite good at it (and make a very good living at it). Capitalism, in the form of competative free markets is generally good for dealing with most naturally scarce things (not all mind you, as sometimes other pressures can cause the free market to break down. Natural monopolies, such as the road to your home and your drinking water are one type of example. Medical services, where the pressure of having an alternative of dying if you chose not to be a customer, is arguably another area that lends itself only very imperfectly to a competative, free market.)
However, in the realm of ideas, invention, software, and infinitly copiable content, there is no natural scarcity, and capitalism breaks down. So much so that the government feels compelled to create monopolies, with no pretense of a competative, free market.
And you are right, a thriving, cooperative commons, with its own internal (mostly friendly, though sometimes not) competition will outcompete a monopoly cartel every time
Which is exactly what Microsoft is all about with Palladium, and the RIAA and the MPAA are all about with so-called DRM (digital rights revocation). They know they can't compete. Microsoft can't compete with free software and, in the long run, the recording industry and movie studios will not be able to compete with a vibrant community of artists creating free (or very inexpensive) music and movies (the latter quite possibly with blender [blender3d.com], as I am doing). Online copyright violators and file sharers aren't any more of a threat than VHS and cassette tape users were fifteen years ago, and they know that. It isn't about preventing file sharing, its about preventing competition, something a corporation with a cartel mindset simply cannot abide.
Re:Live By the Sword, Die By the Sword (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not blaming it on the free market per se.
The free market is a very useful economic tool and system, when applied appropriately. It is an unmitigated disaster when it is applied inappropraitely (think of what things would be like if, in addition to the local telco and power monopolies, there were also the local highway and street monopoly, if you're having trouble imagining an inappropraite application of the free market. Clearly the borders of what is appropriate and what is not are not entirely black and white. Consider, for example, the debate about healthcare, and the supporting arguments pro and con a private, capitalist health care system vs. a socialized healthcare system. Only someone dogmatically in one camp or the other would be unable to see advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.).
I do blame people who constantly spew the "their first responsibility is to their stockholders, so that makes [insert harmful behavior here] not only okay, but correct." There are situations in which the free market is a singularly inappropriate tool for the building and functioning of a working society and culture, and in which the ethic I just paraphrased above in indefensible.
Hm (Score:5, Informative)
How bizzare (Score:2)
I never would have suspected that.
Re:How bizzare (Score:2)
the story I always heard was it was trivial for the software distributors to make one tiny change to one character and it was legally a new typeface (it wasn't bit for bit identical).
Re:How bizzare (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there's a big difference between a typeface - the set of curves that define the shape of a character - and a computer font - the code that draws those curves. The latter has full protection of law. You can't take the font and change a few bits in it and legally redistribute it, and those companies that did got sued big time. You can, however, print out the font at large sizes and scan it back into the computer, or anything else that copies the curves but not the program/font.
Re:Hm (Score:2)
From the article and linked press release, it seems that this story involves a contract dispute between Adobe and both ITC and Agfa Monotype. It does not involve a utility to change the embedding bits. It involves Adobe believing that they have the contractual right to embed ITC and Agfa Monotype fonts in their documents, while ITC and Agfa Monotype disagreeing.
In fact, the DMCA argument seems to be related to (and I'm guessing here) Adobe ignoring the bits (an "effective access control", huh?) and embedding the fonts even though the fonts say that the software should not do embed them. It does not seem to be going after a "circumvention utility" which allows a user to commit an illegal act.
*Sigh.* There seems to be no "good guy" in any of this...
Re:Hm (Score:2)
There are two issues involved:
While the shapes themselves are not copyrightable, the fonts as a whole, which contain hinting information, etc., are. This, I believe, has long been established.
So that leaves the other question. Do advisory bits "effectively control" access to the copyrighted work? The obvious answer should be "no", but law is so convoluted and messed up that the obvious, sensible answer is often incorrect. I will say this: if the court rules that mere advisory bits "effectively control" access to a copyrighted work, we're all in big trouble.
As to the quote mentioned by another in this thread that goes "Resetting them by any means on fonts you created is not what DMCA tries to prevent.", the DMCA wasn't intended to prevent you from playing DVDs you buy on your Linux box, either, but that's the end result anyway. The DMCA as it is interpreted prevents many things that should be allowed, so don't be surprised if it effectively forbids you to make changes to works that you created yourself.
Sorry, but somebody's gotta say it (Score:3, Funny)
They're getting hit by the DMCA
They're getting hit by the DMCA
They went and messed up
and embedded the font
now they're getting it in the [censored]
They're getting hit by the DMCA
They're getting hit by the DMCA
</YMCA Tune>
Re:Sorry, but somebody's gotta say it (Score:4, Funny)
*Bashes head off of desk so ringing in ears drowns out that horrid, horrid tune*
Soko
ITC, Agfa? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ITC, Agfa? (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a link to the article about it [slashdot.org] to save some time. No point in umpteen people all running the same search over and over.
initial reactions (Score:3, Interesting)
second reaction: so THAT's what a critical mass of dumbasses can do...
and then it dawned on me: so the legends of "lawyers with head in ass" is really true after all...
What exactly is ITC/Afga's complaint based on? (Score:2)
Hard to form any opinion about whether Adobe actually violates some portion of the DMCA, without hearing the actual complaint from ITC/Afga. Unless of course you're a thoughtless warrior against copyright, who doesn't care about niggling details like "the facts".
Re:What exactly is ITC/Afga's complaint based on? (Score:2)
Yes.
TWW
Re:What exactly is ITC/Afga's complaint based on? (Score:3, Informative)
According to Adobe they have secured the rights for their customers to embed fonts from certain companies. Now what if the customer has a copy of the font which has the "do not embed under any circumstances" bits set? Simple, Acrobat can ignore the bits and embed the font anyway. Oops, that's circumventing a copy protection measure, instant DMCA violation.
If that's the case, Agfa has pressed this issue before: see Font Company Wielding DMCA Against Bit-Flipping [slashdot.org]
Of course, there's not enough info in the article to determine if this is the case or not...
Re:What exactly is ITC/Afga's complaint based on? (Score:2)
Mod the parent up, informative.
Re:What exactly is ITC/Afga's complaint based on? (Score:2)
Improper use of the DCMA (Score:2, Funny)
The same is also true of the two parties who brought this frivolous action against Adobe, neither or which I have even heard of. There is nothing at stake in the economy if these clowns get their way. They are only trying to be a thorn in Adobe's side, and from all appearances, are doing it in the most meddlesome and intrusive way they know how.
Mod me down if you like, but I'm sick and tired of seeing people being demonized simply because they want to create wealth and live the American dream. Presumably, when you go home tonight, you're going to fix yourself a meal to eat. Consider this: the employees of Adobe would like to do the very same thing. Do your lofty ideals of socialistic code-sharing take precedence over the health and well-being of decent families?
Re:Improper use of the DCMA (Score:2)
probably the best explanation of why the 'dream' is a nightmare.
WAKE UP DICKHEAD AND SMELL THE ROSES.
Wealth 'creation' isn't a dream, its taking the bread off someone else's table. This isn't some kind of self renewing table, that 'wealth' comes from somewhere.
You need to understand that this is in essence a closed system. No new resources, no new opportunities. Something does not come out of nothing, its TAKEN, its USED UP.
What does this have to do with the DCMA and the story? Sure Adobe gets hoist by their own petard, but its only one more example of how we need a new social contract, a new way in which those that create are recompensed, those that consume are not held hostage....and those that feast on the work of others do not prosper - but are instead destroyed like the parasites they are.
Face it, the 'dream' doesn't work. Wake up and greet the new dawn.
Re:Improper use of the DCMA (Score:2)
Really? I'm a richer man - in the sense that my computer does things it otherwise couldn't, and I have money in my pocket that would otherwise have gone to Bill Gates for a shoddier product - because of Linus, RMS, and the GPL.
From whose table did Stallman take "bread" that spins on my hard drives?
> You need to understand that this is in essence a closed system. No new resources, no new opportunities. Something does not come out of nothing, its TAKEN, its USED UP.
See that big ball of hydrogen 93 million miles away spewing photons everywhere? See all those self-organizing carbon-based replicator units that turn photons into more carbon-based replicators?
System don't look closed to me.
See the carbon-based replicator units that look like hairless apes? See the big cranium on their pink- or brown-skinned bodies?
See the hairy one called RMS and his cranium? That's where much of the wealth on my hard drive came from.
> its only one more example of how we need a new social contract, a new way in which those that create are recompensed, those that consume are not held hostage....and those that feast on the work of others do not prosper - but are instead destroyed like the parasites they are.
>
> Face it, the 'dream' doesn't work. Wake up and greet the new dawn.
Face it, this is the new dawn -- we're living the first generation in history in which the workers truly do own the means of production -- their own brains.
Yet some still insist on preaching industrial-age Marxism - that the quantity of wealth in the world is fixed, despite all evidence to the contrary. (Yes, the third world lives in the same poverty it did 500 years ago, but 10-20% of the world's population now lives better than the kings of Europe at that time, and that population continues to increase. Most of you reading this today, have a higher standard of living than the top 1% of Americans did at the turn of the century.)
Wake up and greet the new dawn? It's already mid-afternoon, sleepyhead.
Re:Improper use of the DCMA (Score:2)
(And throwing this into the bypass the 'all caps' lameness filter)
Re:Improper use of the DCMA (Score:5, Insightful)
> someone else's table. This isn't some kind of self renewing
> table, that 'wealth' comes from somewhere.
You apparently have never had ecconomics, and are operating
under the assumption that there is a fixed amount of wealth,
so that if it is transfered from one entity to another then
that's that, and the rich can by selling a lot of stuff
accumulate all of the wealth and starve out the poor. This
is true of certain kinds of wealth (the most obvious example
being real estate), but it is not true in general and is
certainly not true of currency, at least not under our current
system. I'm going to appear to stray off topic here for a bit,
but I will get back to copyright law before I'm done.
If currency _did_ work that way, then we could increase the
total amount of wealth by just printing tons more money.
But in reality, that would just cause extra inflation. The
ecconomy is not measured in terms of how much currency
exists in the system, but more in terms of how many times
it is spent[1].
Every time a buck is spent, somebody gets something for it.
Let's say you go out and buy Photoshop. You fork over an
outrageous sum of money, and Adobe takes it -- but you get
a copy of Photoshop. Adobe now has your money, and they're
going to do _something_ with it. (Hopefully something other
than wallpaper the executive bathroom, because that would
remove the money from circulation.) Maybe they pay a font
designer for thirty minutes' worth of work. The font designer
now has the money -- but Adobe (hopefully, if everything is
working as it should) has something to show for it, maybe
a nice glyph or something. The font designer will take the
money and do something with it. Maybe he pays his phone bill,
for example. AT&T now has the money (your money, remember?),
but the font designer got to call his mom long distance.
Every time the money changes hands, somebody gets something.
(There are exceptions. For example, you don't get anything
when you spend money to pay your taxes. If the government
takes the tax money and throws it in a vault, they've reduced
your ability to spend money and are not spending it themselves
either, and the whole system becomes impoverished. OTOH, if
they tax you and then turn around and spend the money, then
it is back in circulation and can be spent again.)
Now, this doesn't mean you should necessarily spend your money
as fast as possible. If everyone did that it would boost the
whole ecconomy, and people would have more stuff; you would
have more stuff -- but it wouldn't necessarily be the stuff
you wanted to have. It generally works best if you spend the
money on something you actually want.
Savings are another topic for another day, but basically saving
only hurts the ecconomy if you stuff a billion dollars in a
matress. If you invest it (even in a savings account), it can
to a large extent continue changing hands while you're not using
it, and thus stay in circulation. That has value, which is why
you get to collect interest.
Now, back to copyrights. Copyrights are (in general) good,
because they cause more money to be spent more times. However,
current copyright law may perhaps go too far. Seventy years
after the death of the author, very few works are still in a
position to generate any substantial amount of spending. That
being the case, the duration of copyright is probably too long,
and should probably be shortened. Copyright holders who have
good sense often release their works after a few years (when
they stop generating any real revenue) in order to collect good
PR. (I don't mean they place them into the public domain --
although that is sometimes done too -- but that they start to
give out permissions more liberally than they would have in
the beginning. In software, this can mean taking a commercial
product (e.g., the Zork series) and making it available for
free public download (as Activision did).)
So, is the DMCA good, or bad? Well, waving it around like a
club the way certain entities have been doing of late is a big
pain for everyone concerned. It's annoying, and it accomplishes
very little in the long term. But that goes back to the very
litigation-friendly nature of our society and of our court
system, more than to any given law per se. I've seen several
people post with the opinion that the DMCA does not apply here
and is being misused. Perhaps so; IANAL. It has been misused
in several cases where it does not or should not apply, so that
would not really be a big change.
I still haven't answered the question of whether the DMCA is
good or bad... but I'm not going to do that in this post.
[1] We could quibble about the word "spent", but basically
I'm talking about forking over the money in exchange for
some desired good or service, rather than just giving it
over for nothing in return. Gifts don't harm the ecconomy
(since the givee can turn around and spend the money), but
they don't really contribute either. Taxes fall into the
same category; they are effectively contributions, albeit
mandatory ones, rather than spending in the sense I'm
talking about spending.
Money does not equal wealth (Score:3, Interesting)
you don't get anything when you spend money to pay your taxes.
So having roads to travel on, schools for your children, and armed forces to defend your nation count as nothing?
Copyrights are (in general) good, because they cause more money to be spent more times.
You're saying copyright is good because it will cause people to spend money. That may make sense if people would not otherwise spend that money. In reality, if people could acquire copyrighted content for free, they would spend their money on something else. Furthermore, without copyright, anyone who wants the content could get it; whereas with copyright, only those willing to spend the demanded fee will obtain the content. Thus copyright holds back the distribution of wealth (content).
You argue that copyright is good because it encourages people to spend money. Your argument is flawed. Spending money is only good in that it can encourage the creation of wealth. When you buy a sandwich at McDonalds, you pay McDonalds to serve you a quick, convenient meal, so wealth has been created. McDonalds pays someone to process your order (which is really just overhead), someone to make your sandwich, and a farmer to grow the food. In each case (except for the overhead), McDonalds pays for the creation of wealth.
As another example, suppose I sell my car to a high school student. The student can't afford a new car, so she won't pay anyone to create a car for her. I can't afford a new car, so I won't pay anyone to create one. However, since I gave up my car in return for money, the student has acquired wealth, and I have enough money to buy a new car, thus creating wealth.
Copyright increases wealth only insomuch as it encourages the creation of wealth (content). Without copyright, artists would presumably not bother creating content and no one would get anything. If copyright lasts longer than is necessary, it prohibits people from acquiring wealth, and allows the publisher to collect money for doing nothing.
Spending money for nothing is pointless. It allows some people to collect money for doing nothing, when they should be out creating wealth.
Re:Economics are closed systems.. (Score:2)
Yes, this is true, but often what it comes from is human effort,
which is often (albeit not always) motivated by a paycheck.
> Wealth does *not* come from thin air. Resources are used to create
> it, even if those resources are just the nutrients in the soil that
> eventually end up boosting somebody's brain power. Unless the
> resources used are returned, sooner or later we find there's no
> more resource.
Yes, but we're talking about copyrighted works here, not fossil
fuels. Copyrighted works are produced _primarily_ by human effort,
which is an extremely renewable resource. Yes, it comes from
somewhere. Ultimately it comes from the food you eat. Maybe
you've had science in elementary school: do you remember where
the food chain starts? Photosynthesis is powered by sunlight.
Basically, the human effort to create copyrightable works runs
(indirectly) on solar power. But yeah, if we create too much
then we'll exhaust the sun.
Re:Improper DCMA (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you haven't heard of these companies doesn't mean that they're small. These are two big design groups, and a lot of the typefaces that you see every day in print, on billboards, on TV, and on your own monitor came out of them.
So would the Agfa and ITC employees. So would the designers who use these fonts every day. Everyone out there is trying to make a buck, but doing it by screwing over other people isn't the way it's supposed to be done. Granted, this is a messed up dog eat dog world, but that doesn't excuse laws like the DMCA which will harm us all in the long run. Just because someone like Skylarov didn't contribute to the annual GDP as much as the collective of Adobe doesn't mean that he should be valued any less. Remember, corporations are supposed to be counted as individuals legally, and thus they should have no more privledge and status than any other individual, no matter how much wealth they create.
And just remember that all companies that grew in to these wealth-creating machines had to start small. Two guys in a garage. A guy in a wharehouse. Two men and a woman with an idea. Everyone and everything has to start somewhere, but they never will get the chance to grow if they are squashed prematurely by the big guys. If you really want to see wealth, and if you really want to see growth then you've got to allow for enough freedom for people to do their work. The DMCA allows the big guys to deny that. If you're really for capitalism then you should be against the DMCA.
Re:Improper use of the DCMA (Score:2)
That's right. Like all those wusses that don't support American military action overseas. What they don't realise is that someone has to make the bombs. Making bombs makes money, which is key to the American Dream. If you don't use the bombs, you don't need to make any more, therefore we have to go to war for the sake of the American Dream.
I'm sick of all these hippy liberals with their wussy illogical arguments who want to destroy what makes America great. They should all be shot.
(Hint for moderators - this is sarcasm).
Re:Improper use of the DCMA (Score:2)
Actually, the Consitution Reads:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Article I, section 8, clause 8.
Sounds to me that wealth creation is secondary to the goal of promoting the progress of science and the arts, not for the exclusive right to make money.
Possible Outcomes... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Adobe is sucessful in getting a judge to declare they are not violating the DMCA. This has bad and good reprocussions. The DMCA is strengthened by case law, but what Adobe gets off for, everyone else does as well.
2. Adobe is not sucessful in getting a judge to decalre they are not violating the DMCA. This is initially bad, because the DMCA remains as strong as it was and the restrictions it imposes are stengthened by case law. In the long run, however, Adobe, one of the few non-Media oriented companies that has the most to gain from the DMCA is forced to lobby against it and fight it in court, possibly having longer lasting influence.
The lesson we should learn from all this is that if a law requires a trial just to see if it applies to any certain case, it's probably not a good law and won't be applied fairly.
Files in acrobat format are just artwork. (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably any fonts that shipped with product you got from a software vendor would be (should be) properly registered and legal to use out of the box. Otherwise, the fonts need to be purchased. It should be OK to distribute graphics, artwork, etc. as long as you purchased the fonts. I don't see why documents in Adobe acrobat should be considered any different from artwork produced in any other digital format.
It's a common thing that when sending files to a service bureau for ripping, that you give the service bureau your fonts, or you make sure they are *embedded* in your postscript output. I have never heard that this is considered *copyright infringement*.
The only problem I can forsee is if you can extract the fonts from Acrobat and use them for something else. Then there is a legitimate complaint.
Otherwise, if Adobe can show that Acrobat is yet another format like GIF, JPEG, etc., and that if the person who creates a particular piece of artwork with legally purchased fonts does not violate copyright, then Adobe should win.
If there is a copyright issue, it should be with the person who created the artwork and who didn't use licensed fonts, not with the people who created the file format.
Re:Files in acrobat format are just artwork. (Score:2)
Re:Files in acrobat format are just artwork. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's illegal.
Your serice bureau is expected to be a licensee of whatever fonts it is required to output.
That's for font files themselves. Anything converted to mere outlines (aka, Illustrator's Convert to Path command) doesn't count as a font file (because it's not).
It's the font file that is copyrighted, and considered as program code. So, as such, font files get as much protection as a program (eg, Illustrator).
A few years ago, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police thought fashionable to crack down on service bureau. I worked in one of them back then, and we got searched heavilly. They only found a couple of font files that clients had sent on their disks, but we were able to proved we didn't asked nor required them.
The irony at AFGA (Score:5, Funny)
Ironically, the legalese file which states the terms is a pdf...for which they strongly suggest Adobe Acrobat.
Even funnier! (Score:2)
-- pdffont reports these fonts:
JAFADN+ATRotisSerif
JAEPOI+Exlibris-Bold
Plantin-Italic
Symbol
JAIMNO+Exlibris-Bold
JA
JAMJLC+ATRotisSerif
JAMKFK+Exl
JBBHAD+ATRotisSansSerif
JBBFNC+Exlibr
JBBGBH+ATRotisSerif
(I couldn't get adobe's name out of the pdf, but I assume these trademarks are exclusive to adobe)
Somewhere... (Score:2)
Free fonts (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair about it, we should only grab fonts out of PDF files distributed by the copyright holders of the fonts in question. The most likely candidates for such use would be files from Microsoft and Apple.
And it's legal--they own the fonts, they gave them to us, and they didn't even have a click-through license on them.
Re:Free fonts (Score:2)
Effective DMCA Resistence (Score:2, Insightful)
I know what people are thinking. (Score:2)
It's not cool, especially since ITC and AGFA have some awesome fonts. I suppose it's time to ask Adobe to step up to the plate and make suitable replacements.
And the revolution begins to eat its own children (Score:2)
Screw them and fontmanagers they rode in on.
Adobe's Karma... (Score:3, Funny)
Lack of knowledge is the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Today DMCA, copright laws and patent laws makes it
virtually impossible to leagally write any kind of reasonable complex software without breaking some of those laws. The situation gets even worse as many software products are sold worldwide, and have to adjust to various versions of these laws
around the world.
It's not at all surprising that we see events like this, and we could expect more to come. And as a result software prices will rise. Since sofware companies will probably have to hire more lawyers than developers to be in the clear.
So if you have children send them to law school, and they will have a secure future.
Gotta love federal judges! (Score:2)
Are we all prepared with our collective Nelson laugh when Adobe gets turned down?
Open-sourcing fonts (Score:5, Interesting)
So what's needed is a utility that converts a range of sizes of a bitmapped font to some convenient outline format. This is a compression problem; in the end, when they reach the screen or printer, fonts are bitmaps. Just think of the outline representation as an efficient way to store a set of related bitmaps. It may take a fair amount of crunching and curve-fitting to build outlines that match the bitmaps, but it's certainly possible. Good open-source project - once somebody gets one that more or less works, it's improvable.
Bitmap fonts sometimes come with kerning information, which might be viewed as copyrightable, but if you have the bitmaps, you can derive the kerning information; just try all the letterform combinations, see how close you can get them before the closest distance hits some limit, and record that as the kerning info for that pair.
A tool like this could even be used on scans of fonts, allowing the acquisition of fonts only seen in print. And it's legal in the US.
Re:Open-sourcing fonts (Score:2)
Copying Fonts from PDF (Score:3, Interesting)
We had very specific instructions concerning which fonts we could embed and which were ones were taboo. The legal BS at that time was primarily driven by Adobe's licenses. Service bureaus could, indeed, strip a font right out of a PostScript file. We were only permitted to embed the fonts if the Service Bureau already had a license. If they didn't, then we gave them the font to install, and they were supposed to uninstall it after outputting. It didn't make any more sense then than it does now.
The PDF SDK on the adobe site is the place to look for info on fonts and PDFs. My opinion is that it is possible to strip out the font if it is embedded. The kerning info is contained in the file when you use 100% embedding. Text touchup uses that info when the font isn't installed on the local machine.
Adobe doesn't care.... (Score:2)
This is a *BAD* thing (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way this can be a good thing is for Adobe to fight tooth and nail against it and win. This would establish good precedent and may one day lead to an overturn.
While i would like Adobe to burn on this, them getting hit with this suit is just as bad as if happens to some like Sklyarov.
What goes around, comes around. (Score:3, Funny)
"Damnit, senator! I didn't want this law to be used against us!"
"Effectively controls access" (Score:3, Interesting)
These types of fonts were around for many years prior to the passage of DMCA. During that time, it was legal to ignore the bit. Programmers wrote code that ignored the bit. The code was distributed and a great number of people had access to it. It was legal to create and legal to use.
Then DMCA passed. A law can cause a previously legal activity to become illegal, but it can't cause the previous instances of the activity to become illegal. Thus, even after DMCA was passed, the earlier widespread and routine activity of ignoring the bit, was not illegal.
Given that so many people already had legitimately used tools that ignored the bit for many years, one cannot credibly argue that the bit "effectively controls access" to the work, since it obviously does not. Therefore, DMCA's prohibitions do not apply.
It is strategically vital that Adobe be supported in this, regardless of their other behaviors. If Agfa is able to successfully convince a judge that the bit effectively controls access, it opens the door for any number of other "technological measures" to retroactively(!) become access controls. Tools that are currently in use and legal to use right now, could be caused to become illegal merely by someone releasing another tool that behaves differently. This cannot be tolerated.
Kind of like... (Score:2)
Re:DMCA and maket fareness (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, waitaminute . . .