Posts by Jouni Leppajarvi

Hackintosh maker gets legal greeting from Apple

@Mike

>If Apple spend time and money developing an operating system why

>*shouldn't* they be able to dictate the conditions on how it's used?

They probably could, (to a point,) with an explicit license agreement between them and each customer.

However, with EULAs in general it is my understanding that the provider of the software takes the stand that since they hold the copyright, anyone making copies must have a license from them to make copies of the software and this license is granted only when the terms of the EULA are met; since using a piece of PC software requires making copies of the same on the mass storage medium (installing) and RAM(/swap) (running), an EULA effectively applies to its use as well.

To make an EULA work the provider of the software is relying on the protection of the copyright laws. This is where it gets interesting, however: for example here (*) the law explicitly allows for making the copies of a computer program that are necessary for running the same, which would seem to thoroughly wreck the legal foundation of an EULA as presented above.

(*) Finland, the rest of EU is likely to be similar (?)

Garage sale genius juices software-hawking eBayers

EULA ...

>Essentially, if this judgment stands, it more or less negates any of

>the "non-transferrence" statements in EULA's of various software.

...

More importantly this would seem to negate typical EULAs in general. This would only be fair: if the software companies (and their customers) want to license the wares, fine, but they should do so with an explicit contract, instead trying to impose / extort a contract after the fact (= sale).

HMRC pays criminal for 'tax dodger' discs

The real problem (and a solution)

The real problem here is the existence of such tax-havens. These should be squashed as the parasites they are, feeding on tax-evasion (and money laundering for more sinister purposes) . A (plausible threat of) a trade embargo including, in particular, all financial transactions should do it nicely.

US cruiser nails crippled spy-sat on first shot

Nitpcik

>... gaining domestic support for the troubled missile-defence programme - without

>whose hardware and knowhow the sat-shoot would have been impossible.

Didn't the Chinese do a similar thing with their (comparatively) low-tech gear ? (An adapted ICBM ?)

Finland censors anti-censorship site

Slight correction & comment

...

>That's because it requires Finnish internet service providers (ISPs) to block

...

Actually, according to the HS story on the subject the blocking is voluntary: some ISPs use the list and block the sites on it and some do not.

As I understand it, the law just specifies that such a list is to be compiled based on verified complaints to the police, provided to ISPs (and kept secret, probably because publishing a list of child porn sites by the government is considered questionable).

At the time the law was passed I for one considered it problematic in principle, but thought that there would not be much of a practical problem as I and most other Finns hold the police (including the "KRP" = "NBI") in high respect. Sadly it seems that this trust was misplaced; indeed, I now consider that setting up a government censorship infrastructure for whatever reason is a bad idea; KRP had its change to demonstrate otherwise but botched it.

In fairness to the government and the KRP it should be considered that it seems that the implementation of the measure placed this trust on a single individual who apparently was not up to the task. Then again, this can be seen as just another mistake, and the government is, of course, ultimately responsible for passing a law that allowed this.

It is interesting to see what sort of career development is in store for this fellow.