George Henry wrote:
Perhaps you are unaware that, even after you purchase an SCS Pactor modem,
you must purchase a license to use the Pactor III protocol... and trying to circumvent the licensing requirement is probably illegal just about anywhere in the world, not just in the U.S.
You *have* heard of intellectual property rights, haven't you?
Yes, sure we have!
But in this very particular case the owner of these rights can only enforce them in those countries where they have got granted patents and they are still active/maintained (periodic fees paid to local patent offices).
I am not aware of the list of countries in which they filed their PACTOR III related patents, but since SCS is a relatively small company I would guess they only cover the most important countries, where possible competition could pop-up or where most of the users would be located: e.g. USA & Europe and eventually for strategic reasons Japan, China and very selectively a few more (= cost, cost, cost)...
It should be therefore easy for one of those very talented Russian or Ukranian programmers to write a software PACTOR III modem variant and publish it on a Russian web-server to make it publicly available and this even fully legal in case there is no patent granted in Russia (which I think is quite unlikely that it was filed there)
Then only the people downloading it in the States or Europe (or other patented countries) for instance and starting to use it are infringing the patents (not the programmer/distributor in this case) and SCS could theoretically sue them. (but would become extremely complicated to manage in real life due to various factors)
Actually it would be a very similar story to some of the MP3-Encoders floating around on internet - infringing some German Fraunhofer Institute audio compression patents in many countries.
Sorry for this off-topic posting, but I could not leave the bold IP rights statement of George uncommented, hi !
Oscar, DJ0MY
On the topic of software piracy, Oscar DJ0MY mentioned ...
owner of these rights can only enforce them in those countries ... It should be therefore easy for one of those very talented ... ... programmers to write a software PACTOR III modem variant and publish it on a [overseas] web-server to make it publicly available ... blah blah blah ...
Oh yes, so easy to justify if you skip all of the steps. Usually one needs to decide WHAT one is doing before one decides HOW one will do it.
WHAT: Steal software that is protected under legal rights
HOW: Just do it overseas whether other amateurs in USA or overseas condone stealing and bragging about it on amsat servers.
Most would stop at WHAT ... the stealing ...
could not leave the bold IP rights statement ...
And, I could not leave the bold stealing IP rights statement uncommented.
There are so many good people on the -bb, where do these others come from?
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM k9jkm@amsat.org
"On the topic of software piracy, Oscar DJ0MY mentioned ...
There are so many good people on the -bb, where do these others come from?
-- 73 de JoAnne K9JKM k9jkm@amsat.org "
All,
I want to respond to this whole thing but all I see is that it would be best to just delete it. But I must for the following reason beg that we DROP IT!
1) PACTOR III is not a practical protocol for ham sats so extended discussion is not appropriate 2) 99.9999% of the nice people on this bb do not code protocol emulators so we don't need to hear about stealing over priced technology (even if it's fine German engineering). 3) A simple question was asked about sound card with P-III and we are now beating each over the head.
In the US tomorrow is Black Friday so lets all help the economy and buy something we don't need...and not talk about this subject anymore...
:>)
Flames on satellite topics are always welcome (well sort of) :>)
Dave WB7DRU
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JoAnne Maenpaa wrote:
On the topic of software piracy, Oscar DJ0MY mentioned ...
Who mentioned software piracy? In nearly all of the world *outside* the US, it's perfectly legal to implement PACTOR III. I think Japan is the only other country with software patents. There may be some European countries that attempt to have software patents, but under EU law they shouldn't.
Here in the UK, we do not have software patents. You can't patent imaginary property.
owner of these rights can only enforce them in those countries ... It should be therefore easy for one of those very talented ... ... programmers to write a software PACTOR III modem variant and publish it on a [overseas] web-server to make it publicly available ... blah blah blah ...
Oh yes, so easy to justify if you skip all of the steps. Usually one needs to decide WHAT one is doing before one decides HOW one will do it.
WHAT: Steal software that is protected under legal rights
You can't steal imaginary property, either. You can make an unlicenced copy of it, but that's not the same thing. If you physically went into a shop and stole a PACTOR III modem, that would be different.
HOW: Just do it overseas whether other amateurs in USA or overseas condone stealing and bragging about it on amsat servers.
Most would stop at WHAT ... the stealing ...
could not leave the bold IP rights statement ...
And, I could not leave the bold stealing IP rights statement uncommented.
I'll care about SCS and their patent when they stop "stealing" GPLed software.
There are so many good people on the -bb, where do these others come from?
No idea where you come from. The planet Ad-Hominem, perhaps?
Gordon
participants (4)
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David Donaldson -
Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ -
JoAnne Maenpaa -
Oscar Diez