Broadcast 2000 Removed From Public Access 264
VRteach writes: "I see that the developers of the fine multimedia software, Broadcast 2000, have removed their main product from public access. Their web site cites a worry of potential liability." The site says that "the distribution of Broadcast 2000 enhanced to unacceptable levels the risk of an individual experiencing significant financial damage due to the extremely expensive nature of high end video production and the high risk inherent in professional video business marketing." It also says they plan to keep issuing "minor works" for now, and as liability issues are resolved to again release major programs.
I am not a lawyer, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Competition and underdogs come from tyrannical control of a market. What are the cost breaks across this market, and where do the huge expenses add up from?
Is this saying what I think it is? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or am I totally reading this wrong? If that's the case it really sucks....unless they copied some of Adobe's functions. If it's just a "similar look and feel and does the same type of stuff" issue, didn't we settle that 10 years ago with Apple Vs. Microsoft?
Mirrors? (Score:2, Insightful)
can someone please explain to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:5, Insightful)
What the...? (Score:3, Insightful)
As near as I can tell it boils down to this: They fear being sued by a customer that lost a lot of money because of their software. Sounds like a smoke screen to me.
Isn't it GPL'ed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I mistaken, or wasn't Broadcast 2000 GPL'ed? If so, why all the hubabaloo? So he doesn't want to do development anymore, I don't blame him. But anyone who is interested can always pick up where he left off.
I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
And where's the other players in all this? Between the Video Toaster and Personal Animation Recorder this kind of stuff was done ten years ago on Amiga. Not to mention (as already was) the Mac-based Avid. another poster mentioned the similarity between B2K and an Adobe product: why would they be afraid of Adobe? If anything, Adobe is a relative newcomer to the field, not an innovator.
There's got to be better reasons.
As I understand it... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's similar to someone refusing to post any more legal opinions on Slashdot because they don't think IANAL will protect them if someone actually takes their legal advice, and loses money/realizes damages because of it.
This is bad news, if it's an accurate assesment because one of the key benefits of the GPL is a release from liability. If you just put something in the public domain then someone can still sue you if using it damages them, but if they use it under the terms of the GPL there's no explicit or implied warranty. So, let's just hope these guys are wrong!
Liability extremes (Score:2, Insightful)
Just imagine what would happen if a class action was taken by IIS users against MS for the CodeRed exploit. We might laugh for a while and figure they had it coming to them, but then there are other issues... like the remote exploit in fetchmail, wsftpd, and others. They too could be faced with users who have experienced real costs associated with bugs in their code. If producers are to be held liable for these exploits despite the limits of liability worlding in their licenses it will have a devestating effect on the production of code and will seriously hamper the release early, release often mantra of Free software.
In the case of Broadcast 2000 they may be over reacting or they may just be among the first to react to the potential liability. Time will tell.
Free Speech Warranty?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, getting in trouble with commercial organizations because you are encroaching on their "intellectual property rights" seems to be a near daily event these days, but warranty liabilities?
Will scientists be sued next for disclosing scientific principles, algorithms and processes for breach of warranty if some experiment backfires? I must conclude that the precident of suing people for releasing their source code into the public domain could have a chilling effect on the open source community, perhaps starting with HeroineWarrior.com.
Closing down B2000 represents a significant blow to the Linux-based Video Editing segment. As I recall, commercial organizations were bundling B2000 in a turnkey video editing hardware solution. I guess they'll be looking for alternatives, none of which are as mature or advanced as B2000.
IANAL, but IMHO free (speech) software should be handled rather like free advice. Take it for what it's worth.
Re:I am not a lawyer, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Company X develops a project using Broadcast 2000. Company X has an incompetent project manager (as most other companies). Incompetent manager cannot meet deadlines and starts blaming everybody and everything. Incompetent manager manages to fire some people on the blame game but gets burned in the process and gets fired too. Incompetent director (who happened to like Incompetent Manager a lot, but is now also on the frying pan) gets a lot of pressure and looks for someone to blame, only there isn't anybody around... Incompetent Director of Incompetent Company puts the blame on the tool (who decided to use this "free" tool? After all, free is always bad...) and sues the maker of Broadcast 2000.
It is sad, but stupidity and lawyers will destroy the world.
The problem with punting (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to fight this battle, here and now, and hopefully, this copyright issue thing is just a pendulum, and it will slowly start to swing the other way. My opinion is that it has to. The media companies have pushed copyright about as far as it can go. I think the way the current legal climate is now, the VCR and the photocopier would never have been produced at all.
What we need is to quit passing laws that protect a business model. There is no inherent right to profit.
Re:Is this saying what I think it is? (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds more like "this software could be used for a mission-critical operation, and if our software breaks, someone might sue us." They have the standard "no warranties" disclaimer, but they're saying that such a warning doesn't seem to carry much weight in today's lawyer-happy society.
Interesting hypothesis. But, I have to imagine that there are a lot of other free software projects which are at least as vulnerable. Pick any language like Perl or Python for that matter. Besides, it's hard to imagine someone (sane) using Broadcast 2000 in their medical life support system, or web-based passenger jet liner remote piloting system, or nuclear power plant cooling system:) So it's hard for me to swallow that explanation. Even if it were so, would it not be possible for someone like FSF or EFF to help them draft a more iron-clad disclaimer of warranty or fitness for any purpose?
I think it's a lot more likely that they got a stern letter from some lawyers retained by parties with large financial interests that are in imminent danger of loss if continued development of Broadcast 2000 proceeds apace.
Exactly who that might be is another matter, but I'm sure there are some likely candidates.
Axagon Composer, Conspiracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
If on the other hand, they've been warned to stop Mafia style. The people doing the warning are basically saying "we don't mind you producing software that competes with ours or is even better, as long as you flog it for a sh*t load of cash so we can flog ours for a sh*t load of cash too. But, if you have the f*cking nerve to write great software and actually dare to give it away free, your gonna put us out of business 'cos we're flogging it for squid, and your not and we're crap etc.. etc.. so either charge money for your software like a Ferengi (spelling?) or drop it, else big dave here's gonna do you in. CAPISH?!!
If the above is the case, then there is something pretty wrong. That, the DMCA, and the SSSCA proves with out a doubt that all the politicians in your government are actually the owners/major-shareholders of all your biggest corporations. So, as big dave would say: your all well and truly ****ed.
-tfga
Total Confusion (Score:3, Insightful)
software writers because of damage that software caused to the organization. Several
involved the RIAA vs mp3/p2p software writers. Several involved the MPAA vs media
player authors. You might say that warranty exemption has become quite
meaningless in today's economy.
The first and third sentences appear to deal with liability to someone who used the software and lost time/money/product because of it. But the soecnd sentence sounds much more like copyright/DMCA issues, with RIAA vs. p2p sounding suspiciously like the Naptster suit. What is the deal here anyhow? If it's IP issues, warranty exemption is the wrong way to go. If it's warranty issues, what in the world do MPAA/RIAA/p2p issues have to do with it? When something makes this little sense, there's something fishy going on. These folks aren't saying everything they know.
Something I dont understand... (Score:2, Insightful)
This company that provides 'broadcast 2000' is worried that some other big company will use or purchase said software, and when a bug arrises that makes the purchasing company lose money, they dont want to be sued.
Why cant the company that provides the broadcast 2000 say that they dont have a warranty on the program, and if you use it, its used as is, any any costs that arrise from something bad that happens from using the software will have to be paid by the user of the software, not the software maker?
Its a fairly common thing to see in liscense agreements, or warranties or whatever.. Did they get sued recently or what?
Um - Anyone know what they're talking about here? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone know what they are talking about? They mention some RIAA stuff and mp3 people, but I can't think of a case where people doing ordinary end user stuff went and sued. The RIAA is trying to keep their death grip on their industry, and ditto MPAA. Broadcast 2000 wasn't using DeCSS, to the best of my knowledge, and anyone who uses free software knows (or had better figure out) that they have no right to sue the writers! That's like bringing me your computer, me saying very clearly I'll be happy to try and fix it at no cost but I can't guarantee anything, and then you suing me because I couldn't make it work and you lost too much time while I was trying! At this rate no one will be willing to help anyone do anything ever for fear of being sued! Free software is a gift to the world. If you want to use something where you have the right to sue someone, you'd better find a commercial company and pay them some money. Insurance companies don't give out free insurance - you pay them to assume the risk that you are going to get large sums of money from them in the future. These people seem to be treating free software like free insurance. I doubt the law will accept that. If so, I wouldn't be surprised if the technical people desert this country and move somewhere where people don't try and use generosity as a way to blame people and force them to pay for their generosity with cash. Talk about screwed up...
I understood it to be about circumvention devices (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically, they're saying they don't have the money to fight big corporations who to all apparent purposes are ready to resort to any and all legal witch hunts to keep media content production expensive and in their control.
In corporate law, the one with the money wins. We are fast approaching a era where innovation becomes is cripled into stagnation because of all the intellectual property claims the 'idea brokers' will have against every new idea. Since our progression as a species is predicated on the formulation of newer/better ideas based on previous ones, it stands to reason that we will progress faster the more those previous ideas are freely available. When the use of previous ideas , even the most mundane ones, begins to require huge expendures in legal fees and licensing, innovation cannot but ramp down to a slower pace as the freedom to innovate becomes solely the realm of entities with deep pockets... it is a question whether it might bring about total stagnation.
It is also a viscious circle. As innovation becomes more and more expensive, companies will argue their right to hold onto their discoveries for longer and longer. This will further increase the cost of any future discoveries to the point where perhaps one day newer discoveries in some areas will become impossible because of the expense incurred in licensing the previous ones.
The founders thought of tomorrow... apparently few people in congress do now. I would argue that the right of a society to progress and evolve belongs in the Charter of Rights/Constitution of every country in the world as an expression that knowledge is a thing that can never be possessed, only used. Such a statement does not discriminate against worthy research receiving privileges with respect to exploiting an idea for a period of time.
Re:can someone please explain to me (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, if Oracle markets its database with the intent of it being viable for mission-critical applications and the database fails, then they ARE liable - however a piece of software expressly marketed with a disclaimer about its use for such things should NOT be liable if it is used that way.
The big difference is that it won't kill Microsoft to fight off some of these frivolous lawsuits but it will kill a smaller company - even when the lawsuits are found to be without basis.