To Be Determined: Study Journal #3

Law & Computing

October 6

Free Software: Sometimes having software for free isn't always the best thing. Money saved on support costs can end up going to spending your own time to troubleshoot your own problems. Linux may offer a lot of freedom, but it requires a vast amount of time to master and customize to suit your needs. Is your time worth the same or less than the cost of paying a support team to take care of any problems that may come up?
I feel like the Free Software Movement is the nerd version of the hippie movement. Share everything with everyone. What is mine is yours. Bill Gates did come off pretty strongly though that he felt that the creators of good, clean, documented code should be paid for their work. I think that we have a nice balance today between free software and intellectual property.
I think it is funny that Linus Torvalds thought that it was embarrassing to call his operating system Linux in public.

October 8

Trade Secrets: Confidential information that the company depends on can be considered a trade secret. However, if someone can duplicate this trade secret, then the secret is out and can be reverse-engineered by anybody.
To obtain a patent, you need to apply at the patent office. It takes about three years to get the application process completed due to so many patents coming in. If you are the first to get a patent in for some technology, then you will most likely be the one to get it. Patents are used primarily to sue other people.
Copyright: Copyrightable material has to originate with you and have a portion of creativity to it. It is more lenient with independent creation.

October 13

Why would the government grant a monopoly to someone? It helps to protect inventors and give them rights to their inventions, as well as give more motivation for innovation. This can be a double edged sword with patent trolls though.
I think that software patents should not have a duration of twenty years. Most technology is rapidly evolving to the point that what is patented today becomes outdated in just a few short years. I feel that five years would be a much more appropriate length of time.
Non-Compete Clause: These agreements keep a person from leaving a company and going to work for their competitors. A company normally pays extra to add these clauses to employment contracts.

October 15

Is being apathetic unethical? In Cliff Stoll's situation, system admins that were apathetic and did nothing to prevent the hackers moving through their system then allowed the hackers to move on to bigger and more important systems.
I, like many others, find the Windows Updates very annoying. I run Windows on a Mac, and so I am constantly booting back and forth between operating systems. It is a major drain on my time when Windows decides to update when I am in the middle of switching back over to Mac OS X. However, I am very grateful that they go through all the work of keeping my data and system secure and safe.
I find it interesting that as Cliff gained more knowledge during his experience with the hackers, he started moving his political views more towards the right. I know that there are extremists on both sides of the line, but maybe learning more would help us all to center ourselves. Education and knowledge allow us to see more options and choices.

October 20

The FBI is unable to investigate if less than $100,000 is involved. This affected the Cuckoo's Egg story because there wasn't a monetary loss happening for anyone.
Before 1996, theft did not include taking pictures or copies of information, such as taking a picture of the KFC recipe in their vault. An example of this is Fuji stealing the technology of the disposable camera from Kodak. (Economic Espionage Act of 1996)
One of the biggest reasons that the United States lost the Vietnam War is due to the actions of John A. Walker. He passed on military secrets pertaining to the machinery that encoded and decoded messages for the Navy.