The science and fiction of teleporting

In one of our History & Visions of New Media sessions we briefly discussed teleportation. This is a technological concept well known to every Star Trek fan (including me). I am not going to go into details about how teleportation could scientifically work as claimed by some scientists but rather question the idea of teleporting animate objects.

The principle idea behind teleportation is that you scan an object and build a stream of information which could then be communicated to another location where the same object is assembled based on the scanned information. Sounds a lot like copying, doesn't it? Basically yes and no.... in order to avoid a lot of questions on the topic of "copy vs. original" sci-fi writers often don't leave the original intact. Gene Rodenberry also opted for this choice when he created the world of Star Trek.

Okay, so you could in principle copy or transfer an object from one place to another. Obviously this could revolutionize the manufacturing and courier industry but what would happen when you tried to teleport a live subject? This is where science grinds to a halt and personal religion and/or beliefs take over because in order to answer this question we would have to define life itself. What makes an inanimate object live? Do live beings have a soul? These are ageless questions that have scratched the brains of thinkers throughout history. If anybody has an answer to these questions they are welcome to share them in the comments.

So what's the point of this post? My goal was just to point out that even though replicating inanimate objects might be scientifically feasible it should not be mistaken for the "transporter" from Star Trek. Any talk of actually teleporting something should be treated with skepticism because the fundamental principles are questionable. I'm not saying it's impossible but in order to teleport live beings we will have to boldly go where no man has gone before....

(Star Trek transporter image courtesy of blog.scifi.com)

GPL vs. lawyers

During the last Intellectual Property and New Media lecture we discussed about the GNU Public License (GPL). This is one of the most widely used licenses for open-source software which protects everybody's right to use, copy and modify free software. However there are plenty of companies taking advantage of open-source software and violating the GPL license because it's an easy way to profit and gain credit from the work of others.

Even though GPL has been around since 1989 only recently (after 2000) the first court cases in connection with GPL have emerged. This is probably due to the fact that open-source programmers are not the kind of people to take big name companies and their armies of lawyers to court. Needless to say that making GPL software is not going to make you a millionaire and there is no profit to be made from protecting the GNU Public License in court. This is usually enough to scare lawyers away from taking on a pro-GPL case. However there are a selected few who DO have the time, resources and willingness to fight in the name of free software. Harald Welte and Armijn Hemel are members of this elite group and they are the lone sheriffs in the very wild west of open-source software planes. Luckily they have the courts on their side.

Welte founded gpl-violations.org a website that is dedicated to "gathering, maintaining and distributing information about people who use and distribute GPL licensed free software without adhering to the license terms." The project has successfully resolved over 100 GPL infringement cases both in and out of court. Some of the more well-known court cases have been fought in Germany against D-Link (read the English translation of the verdict here) and Sitecom (unofficial English translation of the verdict also available). News of these cases have echoed around the Internet because GPL related court cases are VERY rare. Most of gpl-violations.org cases have also been resolved outside the court room.

However gpl-violations.org was not the first one to take GPL rights to court. In 2002 MySQL AB along with The Free Software Foundation's chief legal counsel, Eben Moglen, made history by taking Progress Software Corporation to court because of GPL license infringement. In this case Progress was selling a proprietary software product called Gemini that was linked to MySQL's open-source code licenced under GPL. You can read more about the case from a lawyers point of view in the FindLaw article by Laura A. Majerus. The Register also has a news article regarding the case.

But it's not always the pro bono freedom fighters who file suit against profit-hungry corporations. In a very amusing case Daniel Wallace actually sued the Free Software Foundation (the organization behind GPL) for price fixing in 2005. Wallace claimed that by fixing the price of software at 0.- the GPL license was restricting fair trade and prohibiting competitive business practices. It's no surprise that the case was dismissed without prejudice. Nevertheless Wallace was not deterred. He consequently filed 4 amended complaints which were all dismissed. With the dismissal of his last appeal on 20/03/2006 the court ordered him to pay the FSF's legal costs.

This is where any sensible person would realize their foolishness and quietly walk away... but not Wallace. It would seem that the concept of open-source software as a "good thing" was still beyond his reach. In 2006 he filed another lawsuit against IBM, Novell, and Red Hat claiming that they profit from the distribution of open-source software (especially Linux) and were therefore engaging in anticompetitive price fixing. Yet again he failed in his quest to expose the "conspiracy" because the courts dismissed his case... but he STILL kept on trying and filed an appeal in the Seventh Circuit Appeal Court where his case was heard in front of three judges who YET AGAIN dismissed him due to a number of problems with his complaint. Chief Judge Easterbrook definitively stated that "[t]he GPL and open-source software have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws."

For further in depth analysis regarding this comical case I recommend reading The Register's article titled "Free software still legal - judge". After reading about Wallace and his epic court battles it's no wonder that he has a Wikipedia entry in his name.

As far as I understand all court cases in connection with the GNU Public License have been ruled in favor of open-source software and it's principles. This is surely a clear sign that GPL is a good way to protect free software. I'm not saying that it's perfect but if it's good enough to hold up in a court of law then it's good enough for me. If anybody reading this posting has other information I would greatly appreciate it if they would care to share their thoughts in the comments.

My only fear is that with the increasing amount of open-source code the number of companies exploiting the open-source community will overwhelm the small number of lawyers willing to fight against them in a court of law. Hopefully every case won for the GPL team will make it easier for others to protect the principles of free software.

(GNU logo from www.gnu.org)