Slashdot Mirror

You've almost certainly heard that the DVD CCA [Copyright Control Association] is trying to get a restraining order that would force hundreds of Web sites to remove all links to information about DeCSS. Slashdot is one of the named sites. The hearing is today, in San Jose, California. If you can get there, we urge you to go and help "show the flag." You won't be alone. If you can't make it in person, stay tuned. We'll have updates throughout the day. Meanwhile, click below now for news, opinions from various members of the Slashdot crew, and a long list of links to other resources and stories elsewhere about the DVD CCA's attempt to not only stop DeCSS, but to stifle anyone who publishes or links to information about DeCSS. Update at 1:20 p.m. EST. (Please see bottom of the story.)

Leading up to Today's Hearing
- by Emmett Plant
Emmett Plant is Slashdot's newest author.

Monday, DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. filed for a restraining order in a California court. The targets of this cease-and-desist order were individuals and organizations who had made DVD decryption source code freely available on the net, by hosting the code themselves or linking to a website that did. Commmunity response has been fast and furious, with a deluge of Slashdot comments and submissions, and the immediate organization of Open Source community members to attend the hearing this morning.

Technically, the argument boils down to the issue of reverse engineering. Ideologically, the argument challenges the ideals of free speech, freedom of information, and the ability to innovate on behalf of computer users, hardware engineers and software developers all over the planet.

On Monday night, I spoke to a gentleman who had received the order just minutes prior, and although he didn't want his name mentioned, he provided with me with his thoughts.

"It should be legal when you've got people reverse engineering this kind of stuff. But a small minority in the business community want to lock down the information, citing that it's a trade secret. It's sort of like being busted in math class for passing answers around. [The code] is basically a mathematical equation that decrypts poorly encrypted DVD data. I support the free human right to freedom of thought. That's how civilization has gotten to where it is today, without lawyers heading innovators off at the pass."

Would he be willing to go to court to defend himself?

"Probably not. There are a lot of sites that are mirroring [the code], and they'll keep the program alive. I'll sleep easy at night knowing I did my part."

In many ways, the cease-and-desist only made it easier for people to get their hands on the code. As soon as the community heard about the order, many people posted the code on their websites as a sign of protest. Many community members have made the code available on overseas servers that don't face the possible legal repercussions associated with sites located in the United States.

Another interesting point of this case is that anyone who linked to a site that contained the information is also being held liable in the case. This is particularly frightening. This means that in the spirit of the cease-and-desist order, almost everyone on the web with a site that links to anywhere else falls into the legal maelstrom, as long as it eventually leads to a site with the code posted on it.

The legal ramifications of the case are extremely influential. The DVD CCA lawyers are fighting a battle against reverse engineering, an engineering process that enables the computer industry to utilize powerful tools like the IBM-compatible personal computer and countless hardware device drivers.

The hearing will take place this morning at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California.

----------

Funny and Sad at the Same Time
- by Hemos

The particularly humorous section of the lawsuit, at least for me, is that what they are trying to do is make linking illegal. That's right. Linking. Is. Illegal. Once we cross the the bridge of dictating what can and cannot be linked to, than we open ourselves up to a world of people being able to sue whenever something they don't want linked is linked. Without linking, the Web is dead.

----------

Shaky Legal Grounds
- by Michael Sims

The legal standing for the DVD companies is so shaky it's not even funny. The danger is that they can effectively paint the opposition as a bunch of crooks and the judge will feel that *justice* requires a ruling in their favor despite the law - that can be averted if the defense makes a strong competent showing tomorrow, presumably. The second danger is that they will inflict sufficient costs on the defendants that others will be dissuaded from doing even perfectly legal things. That can't be prevented.

----------

Planning to Join the Protest in Person?

The best source of information on how to help out at the Santa Clara County Courthouse is this page from Chris DiBona's Web site. It tells you where and when to be, what to wear, and what to expect. Worth reading even if you can't make it. Nice to know that Chris and others, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are doing a great job for all of us on this!

----------

Update by Emmett @ 1:20 p.m. EST:

Chris DiBona called me at 8:30 a.m. PST from right outside the courtroom, letting me in on the scene. The Open Source community has about 25 people there, as well as a lawyer or two of their own. The community members present are busy distributing the DeCSS source code on floppy disk as well as leaflet hard copy. No pictures will be taken of the interior of the courtroom, and there wasn't enough time to apply for the permit to record what happens inside.

Chris will be calling me as soon as they let out with up-to-the-minute information and notes from the community members inside the courtroom.

----------

Links to Other DVD CCA Stories and Sites

Boston Globe
Washington Post
Wired News
ZDNet
siliconvalley.com
Chris DiBona's excellent page
PZ Communications DeCSS Resource Site
CNN.com
Lemuria.org DeCSS Defense page
Dan Gillmor (SV.com columnist)
Santa Clara County Superior Court info
OpenDVD.org
EFF to the Rescue!

----------

Please send additional links to roblimo@slashdot.org so we can add them to the list. Thanks.

Silverpike writes "The Boston Globe is running an article about how life really is in Silicon Valley. Why would you want to live in a place where you live like a pauper on a great salary? This is the first time I've seen this in print, despite the fact that engineers/IT people have felt this for several years. " I read a recent Rolling Stone piece on much of the same issue - how much it costs to live in the Valley. It's an incredible place to be, but it's also more expensive than almost anywhere.

rsborg writes "After reading this Boston Globe article on Ecommerce being a boon to the environment, I got to wondering what ever happened to that whole environmentalism thang. Seems all we can think about is "going digital", but it seems that the less and less we think we're using "dead tree" formats, the fact remains that book prints are becoming larger, faxes are increasing, and the office is nowhere near paperless. We all know that Net seems quite capable of patting itself on the back... is this for real, or just another placebo?"

Seth Finkelstein writes "According to a story in the Boston Globe, eBay is suing an auction-indexing company. eBay says its auction data is unique, and legal claims include 'trespassing, copyright infringement, and false advertising.'" The suit was filed "under a California statute originally written to fight 'cracking'" - I wonder if that's how trespassing got listed as a charge.

Here's a little more background on this lawsuit. In early October, an ABC News story described how the auction-indexer, Bidder's Edge, had taken out a full-page New York Times ad slamming eBay's protective attitude. At that time it decided not to list eBay items. In early November, it changed its mind and, says a ZDNet story, put eBay items back on its site. Thus the lawsuit.

If a specialized search engine for auctions is illegal, aren't all search engines illegal? Disobey the robots.txt file and go to jail?

tuck was the first of many to submit this important milestone in arguably the world's most important scientific endeavor. The Human Genome Project has completed mapping its first entire chromosome, number 22. Second-smallest of our 23 chromosomes, some of 22's genes can cause "heart defects, immune system disorders, cancers, schizophrenia and mental retardation." Portion of its DNA which is "junk" (encodes no protein): 42%. Read it at your favorite source: CNN, MSNBC, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the AP, or Reuters.

Slashdot's received a lot of submissions about RIAA actions recently, and the actions of colleges taken after the RIAA sent them nasty letters. One of the interesting things about this is that the RIAA is apparently not listing any specific offenders, just sending general warnings to any and all colleges with computer networks. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, copyright holders acquired several new rights, with the promise they wouldn't abuse them. They're abusing them. (More...)

A good example is a demand letter to a Swiss university, ETH Zurich, which demands that the school immediately terminate all web pages with illegal MP3 files (illegal is of course a judicial decision; the letter presumes that all MP3s are illegal); that the school provide names and home addresses of all students with MP3 files hosted on the school's servers; that the school provide the date that those MP3 files were first hosted (for every MP3 on every server); and that the school provide the IP address for every machine anywhere on the internet which downloaded a MP3 file from the school's servers.

The letter closes with a carrot: we'll adjust our monetary demands based on how well you comply with this letter. Better hope your IP address doesn't appear too many times in those web server logs.

We can probably assume that the demands to U.S. schools are much the same - far-reaching, extortionate letters which are not specific about any particular infringement alleged to be occurring, but which are intended nonetheless to scare the universities into cracking down on their students. The terms of the compromise of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act were that the RIAA and related groups would do the policing of their copyrights - if they found a specific file that they alleged was unlawfully infringing, they have a procedure to follow, specific information to provide about the specific infringing file, and the ISP (college or whatever) is supposed to "do their part" by deleting/removing said file if the paperwork is correct. ISPs and colleges are not supposed to do the grunt work themselves - that results in the kind of overbroad crackdowns that we've seen. This was the subject of specific negotiations during the process of creating this law.

But the RIAA, of course, would prefer that schools and ISPs do their cracking down for them. So they send these general scare letters, hoping to trigger a reaction.

Scare tactics work. Universities scan through student computers, trying passwords on protected directories. The new Rio players will incorporate all of the RIAA's desired protections against copying of MP3 files - the price of settling the RIAA's lawsuit. The next target is Napster.

RIAA will now be filing suit against Napster, an application which effectively functions like a single purpose IRC server, connecting people who want to share MP3 files, whether legally or not. (There's a linux port of Napster; better download it quick.) Some schools, like Oregon State University, are so scared they're blocking all access to Napster servers from school systems. In the ideal world, Napster should probably win - the RIAA could monitor their servers and demand that infringing users be eliminated, but the service equally provides people with an avenue to share legal MP3 files, and this significant non-infringing use is all that is needed under copyright law. The article I just linked to and a nice Wired story both show Napster feebly trying to insist on their duties under the DMCA, saying that the RIAA needs to tell them in writing about specific instances of infringement - but the RIAA doesn't care about the law.

Napster, of course, has no money to fight a lawsuit. This is exactly what happened to the Rio: they won in court, but since the RIAA planned to appeal the suit and drain more money out of Diamond Multimedia, they settled by promising that future Rio's would include the RIAA's copyright protections. Like the Dentist's extortion tactics in Cryptonomicon[1], RIAA lawsuits are equally powerful whether they are on solid legal grounds or not - Napster will lose this suit, whether they win or lose, because the RIAA can afford the money to fight it and Napster cannot. So presumably Napster and RIAA will come to some agreement, settle the lawsuit, and Napster's next generation will incorporate the RIAA's demanded copyright protection system.

Just remember, RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen says she loves the idea of Napster to build communities, "but not on the backs of huge mega-corporations with billions of dollars of revenue quarterly."[2]

The RIAA is hardly the only abuser. The Business Software Alliance, essentially a front group for protecting Microsoft's copyrights, does similar things with regard to "pirated" software. (What a PR genius it was who thought of describing all copying of software as piracy! Probably the same person behind the "cyber-squatter" label for anyone who owns a domain that a company covets.) The BSA is now raiding homes of people accused of copying software.

The idea behind copyright is to expand the amount of information available to the public by creating a government-mandated monopoly on reproducing it - for a limited time (28 years maximum, at the beginning - today the maximum copyright term could be over 150 years). Copyright has always has the inherent give-back to society - the work would pass out of protection, and then anyone could copy it and use it as they saw fit. But copyright is now essentially unlimited - over the last twenty years, the length of the copyright period has increased by forty years, so that essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain. In about 15-18 years, copyright holders will again be petitioning Congress to extend the copyright term, so that entities like Mickey Mouse never enter the public domain. The extension is now being challenged as unconstitutional, but the challengers lost in District Court and it's far from certain that this suit can succeed.

In today's world, it's customary to speak of copyright as some sort of innate right. It isn't. It's there for the betterment of society, but its functioning, today, contributes nothing to society - all it is is a government-sanctioned monopoly transferring money from your pocket to others, with nothing ever given back - and no possibility of give-backs until 2019, under current law.

We need to rethink copyright. It's not a fundamental right of corporations to receive a 95-year government monopoly. Businesses plan on a five-year cycle - if something isn't forecast to make a return on investment in five years, it doesn't get done. A five-year grant of copyright to corporate authors would serve just as well in promoting the development of new material, and would bring a tremendous amount of material into the public domain, which is copyright's true intent. With a much smaller amount of material actually under copyright, enforcement of it would be far simpler and more straightforward.

But naturally this would cost certain companies a lot of money - they're used to wallowing in their government-granted monopoly. Disney has made back their costs for creating Mickey Mouse billions of times over, but they're used to the cash flow now and would be willing to buy an entire Congress to protect it. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed with the aid of a great deal of subterfuge, but most importantly, a great deal of campaign contributions. Now you can be a criminal not just for actually copying anything, but for making a "device" (hardware or software) which facilitates copying - we're talking five years in Federal prison. Imagine doing five years in Federal prison so that Congress can protect their campaign donations, errr, I mean, Disney's cash flow.

We're extremely close to the day when debuggers are illegal. Through threats, strategic campaign donations, and outright extortion practiced on upstart companies, copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.

Making changes in this system requires a fundamental commitment from the U.S. populace that it be changed. The commitment doesn't exist yet, but as more and more people experience the power of copyright to affect what they can and cannot publish online, and the abuses of the companies dedicated to protecting copyright beyond the terms of the increasingly-protective law, perhaps it will in the future.

Some slashdot readers will no doubt say, "Open source, you idiot!" Open source is a reaction to these problems, not a solution to them. Despite the open source phenomenon, the trend is toward more and more works being locked up, and locked up permanently, behind laws and cryptographic protocols. It shouldn't have to be a war between words, pictures and code that is always free to use and words, pictures and code that is locked up for all eternity - we should demand that the social contract envisioned in the Constitution be fulfilled by forcing copyright holders to give back to society, whether they want to or not.

-- Michael Sims

[1] Gratuitous Cryptonomicon reference provided free of charge.

[2] Quote may not reflect Rosen's exact words, but does reflect her intent.

Slashdot's received a lot of submissions about RIAA actions recently, and the actions of colleges taken after the RIAA sent them nasty letters. One of the interesting things about this is that the RIAA is apparently not listing any specific offenders, just sending general warnings to any and all colleges with computer networks. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, copyright holders acquired several new rights, with the promise they wouldn't abuse them. They're abusing them. (More...)

A good example is a demand letter to a Swiss university, ETH Zurich, which demands that the school immediately terminate all web pages with illegal MP3 files (illegal is of course a judicial decision; the letter presumes that all MP3s are illegal); that the school provide names and home addresses of all students with MP3 files hosted on the school's servers; that the school provide the date that those MP3 files were first hosted (for every MP3 on every server); and that the school provide the IP address for every machine anywhere on the internet which downloaded a MP3 file from the school's servers.

The letter closes with a carrot: we'll adjust our monetary demands based on how well you comply with this letter. Better hope your IP address doesn't appear too many times in those web server logs.

We can probably assume that the demands to U.S. schools are much the same - far-reaching, extortionate letters which are not specific about any particular infringement alleged to be occurring, but which are intended nonetheless to scare the universities into cracking down on their students. The terms of the compromise of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act were that the RIAA and related groups would do the policing of their copyrights - if they found a specific file that they alleged was unlawfully infringing, they have a procedure to follow, specific information to provide about the specific infringing file, and the ISP (college or whatever) is supposed to "do their part" by deleting/removing said file if the paperwork is correct. ISPs and colleges are not supposed to do the grunt work themselves - that results in the kind of overbroad crackdowns that we've seen. This was the subject of specific negotiations during the process of creating this law.

But the RIAA, of course, would prefer that schools and ISPs do their cracking down for them. So they send these general scare letters, hoping to trigger a reaction.

Scare tactics work. Universities scan through student computers, trying passwords on protected directories. The new Rio players will incorporate all of the RIAA's desired protections against copying of MP3 files - the price of settling the RIAA's lawsuit. The next target is Napster.

RIAA will now be filing suit against Napster, an application which effectively functions like a single purpose IRC server, connecting people who want to share MP3 files, whether legally or not. (There's a linux port of Napster; better download it quick.) Some schools, like Oregon State University, are so scared they're blocking all access to Napster servers from school systems. In the ideal world, Napster should probably win - the RIAA could monitor their servers and demand that infringing users be eliminated, but the service equally provides people with an avenue to share legal MP3 files, and this significant non-infringing use is all that is needed under copyright law. The article I just linked to and a nice Wired story both show Napster feebly trying to insist on their duties under the DMCA, saying that the RIAA needs to tell them in writing about specific instances of infringement - but the RIAA doesn't care about the law.

Napster, of course, has no money to fight a lawsuit. This is exactly what happened to the Rio: they won in court, but since the RIAA planned to appeal the suit and drain more money out of Diamond Multimedia, they settled by promising that future Rio's would include the RIAA's copyright protections. Like the Dentist's extortion tactics in Cryptonomicon[1], RIAA lawsuits are equally powerful whether they are on solid legal grounds or not - Napster will lose this suit, whether they win or lose, because the RIAA can afford the money to fight it and Napster cannot. So presumably Napster and RIAA will come to some agreement, settle the lawsuit, and Napster's next generation will incorporate the RIAA's demanded copyright protection system.

Just remember, RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen says she loves the idea of Napster to build communities, "but not on the backs of huge mega-corporations with billions of dollars of revenue quarterly."[2]

The RIAA is hardly the only abuser. The Business Software Alliance, essentially a front group for protecting Microsoft's copyrights, does similar things with regard to "pirated" software. (What a PR genius it was who thought of describing all copying of software as piracy! Probably the same person behind the "cyber-squatter" label for anyone who owns a domain that a company covets.) The BSA is now raiding homes of people accused of copying software.

The idea behind copyright is to expand the amount of information available to the public by creating a government-mandated monopoly on reproducing it - for a limited time (28 years maximum, at the beginning - today the maximum copyright term could be over 150 years). Copyright has always has the inherent give-back to society - the work would pass out of protection, and then anyone could copy it and use it as they saw fit. But copyright is now essentially unlimited - over the last twenty years, the length of the copyright period has increased by forty years, so that essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain. In about 15-18 years, copyright holders will again be petitioning Congress to extend the copyright term, so that entities like Mickey Mouse never enter the public domain. The extension is now being challenged as unconstitutional, but the challengers lost in District Court and it's far from certain that this suit can succeed.

In today's world, it's customary to speak of copyright as some sort of innate right. It isn't. It's there for the betterment of society, but its functioning, today, contributes nothing to society - all it is is a government-sanctioned monopoly transferring money from your pocket to others, with nothing ever given back - and no possibility of give-backs until 2019, under current law.

We need to rethink copyright. It's not a fundamental right of corporations to receive a 95-year government monopoly. Businesses plan on a five-year cycle - if something isn't forecast to make a return on investment in five years, it doesn't get done. A five-year grant of copyright to corporate authors would serve just as well in promoting the development of new material, and would bring a tremendous amount of material into the public domain, which is copyright's true intent. With a much smaller amount of material actually under copyright, enforcement of it would be far simpler and more straightforward.

But naturally this would cost certain companies a lot of money - they're used to wallowing in their government-granted monopoly. Disney has made back their costs for creating Mickey Mouse billions of times over, but they're used to the cash flow now and would be willing to buy an entire Congress to protect it. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed with the aid of a great deal of subterfuge, but most importantly, a great deal of campaign contributions. Now you can be a criminal not just for actually copying anything, but for making a "device" (hardware or software) which facilitates copying - we're talking five years in Federal prison. Imagine doing five years in Federal prison so that Congress can protect their campaign donations, errr, I mean, Disney's cash flow.

We're extremely close to the day when debuggers are illegal. Through threats, strategic campaign donations, and outright extortion practiced on upstart companies, copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.

Making changes in this system requires a fundamental commitment from the U.S. populace that it be changed. The commitment doesn't exist yet, but as more and more people experience the power of copyright to affect what they can and cannot publish online, and the abuses of the companies dedicated to protecting copyright beyond the terms of the increasingly-protective law, perhaps it will in the future.

Some slashdot readers will no doubt say, "Open source, you idiot!" Open source is a reaction to these problems, not a solution to them. Despite the open source phenomenon, the trend is toward more and more works being locked up, and locked up permanently, behind laws and cryptographic protocols. It shouldn't have to be a war between words, pictures and code that is always free to use and words, pictures and code that is locked up for all eternity - we should demand that the social contract envisioned in the Constitution be fulfilled by forcing copyright holders to give back to society, whether they want to or not.

-- Michael Sims

[1] Gratuitous Cryptonomicon reference provided free of charge.

[2] Quote may not reflect Rosen's exact words, but does reflect her intent.

This week, for your questioning pleasure, we have assembled a four-member panel of antitrust experts who are willing to speculate on what might happen to Microsoft next - if anything. But before you start posting questions, please hit some of the links we've provided to several other stories about the potential results of Judge Jackson's Nov. 5 Findings of Fact. (more below)

First, let's introduce our guests:

Don Weightman was the gentleman who did our Instant Legal Analysis immediately after the Findings of Fact announcement. We had many requests for him as an interview guest. So here he is.

Richard Hawkins engaged in the general practice of law for five years prior to obtaining his Ph.D. in Economics and Statistics. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa, and practices only in antitrust and other economic issues in the law. His past includes both hardware and software development, including the mail-merge patch for LyX.

John Lederer is a retired lawyer in Oregon, Wisconsin. He is currently active in technology and intellectual property issues. He practiced in the antitrust and transportation areas and argued three U.S., Supreme Court cases.

David Niemi is a system engineer with a background in economics as well as software. He has been administering and developing for UNIX and Linux since 1987, and has been following Microsoft's antitrust adventures closely since 1993.

Next, a few selected stories about the Microsoft Saga that you may not have read:

• Findings of Fact, A Two-Themed Opus (from The Linux Show.)
• Jerry's Take On The Microsoft Decision: Wrong! (Jerry Pournelle in Byte.)
• Microsoft willing to settle antitrust case (from the Boston Globe.)
• Now bust Microsoft's trust (from The Economist.)
• Militant Microsofties Bunker mentality... (from SF Gate.)
• Don't You Sass Me, Mr. Micro-Smartypants! is a humor piece we couldn't resist including that talks about how things might go if Judge Judy was in charge of the Microsoft trial. It's from - believe it or not - The New York Times. (Free registration required to read.)

Necessary Legal Disclaimer: Although three out of our four panelists are attorneys, all they are providing here is speculation. While our panelists are smart and well-read, no one can predict the future accurately, so you should not base business or personal decisions on their answers to Slashdot readers' questions. For legal or investment advice, please arrange a personal consultation with a qualified professional.

Now Let's Get Down to Business

As usual, moderators will select the most interesting questions, and Tuesday afternoon Slashdot editors will do the final "cut" and forward 10 - 15 chosen questions to the panelists - who are all Slashdot readers, just so you know. Answers will appear Friday. So ask away!

This week, for your questioning pleasure, we have assembled a four-member panel of antitrust experts who are willing to speculate on what might happen to Microsoft next - if anything. But before you start posting questions, please hit some of the links we've provided to several other stories about the potential results of Judge Jackson's Nov. 5 Findings of Fact. (more below)

First, let's introduce our guests:

Don Weightman was the gentleman who did our Instant Legal Analysis immediately after the Findings of Fact announcement. We had many requests for him as an interview guest. So here he is.

Richard Hawkins engaged in the general practice of law for five years prior to obtaining his Ph.D. in Economics and Statistics. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa, and practices only in antitrust and other economic issues in the law. His past includes both hardware and software development, including the mail-merge patch for LyX.

John Lederer is a retired lawyer in Oregon, Wisconsin. He is currently active in technology and intellectual property issues. He practiced in the antitrust and transportation areas and argued three U.S., Supreme Court cases.

David Niemi is a system engineer with a background in economics as well as software. He has been administering and developing for UNIX and Linux since 1987, and has been following Microsoft's antitrust adventures closely since 1993.

Next, a few selected stories about the Microsoft Saga that you may not have read:

• Findings of Fact, A Two-Themed Opus (from The Linux Show.)
• Jerry's Take On The Microsoft Decision: Wrong! (Jerry Pournelle in Byte.)
• Microsoft willing to settle antitrust case (from the Boston Globe.)
• Now bust Microsoft's trust (from The Economist.)
• Militant Microsofties Bunker mentality... (from SF Gate.)
• Don't You Sass Me, Mr. Micro-Smartypants! is a humor piece we couldn't resist including that talks about how things might go if Judge Judy was in charge of the Microsoft trial. It's from - believe it or not - The New York Times. (Free registration required to read.)

Necessary Legal Disclaimer: Although three out of our four panelists are attorneys, all they are providing here is speculation. While our panelists are smart and well-read, no one can predict the future accurately, so you should not base business or personal decisions on their answers to Slashdot readers' questions. For legal or investment advice, please arrange a personal consultation with a qualified professional.

Now Let's Get Down to Business

As usual, moderators will select the most interesting questions, and Tuesday afternoon Slashdot editors will do the final "cut" and forward 10 - 15 chosen questions to the panelists - who are all Slashdot readers, just so you know. Answers will appear Friday. So ask away!

lost_packet writes "Today's Boston Globe has an article about yahoo removing posts from their chat boards. quote:"The truthfulness of these messages wasn't in dispute, said Yahoo chief executive Jeff Mallett. But the company took down the material to reduce its impact. Yahoo has to ''be careful'' because ''what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives,'' Mallett said in an recent interview." " The scary thing about this is that if you remove messages, you are supposedly liable for the rest of them. Its definitely a sticky situation.

lost_packet writes "Today's Boston Globe has an article about yahoo removing posts from their chat boards. quote:"The truthfulness of these messages wasn't in dispute, said Yahoo chief executive Jeff Mallett. But the company took down the material to reduce its impact. Yahoo has to ''be careful'' because ''what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives,'' Mallett said in an recent interview." " The scary thing about this is that if you remove messages, you are supposedly liable for the rest of them. Its definitely a sticky situation.

dwh wrote to us about The Boston Globe reporting on Iowa's first steps towards Internet voting. It's tenative, with just putting computers by the boothes, but it's a first step. The article does a good job of addressing the pros and cons while talking about the first states, WA and VA which have tried it already. What do you folks think? Good or bad?

RomulusNR writes "The 'state' of Massachusetts is firing back at years of Siliconia by nicknaming itself the ".commonwealth". (Ya see, MA isn't really a state, it's a Commonwealth, as are KY, VA, and PA, allowing them to come up with this somewhat tacky nickname.) Boston Globe has a story on this, and there's also the official .COMmonwealth site. Oh, and another groaner: MA is also now "the state of things to come". " Yes, it is official: Virgina - the .com state and MA are now in competition.

ajs sent us a good investigative piece from the Boston Globe. Many of you recall the article about the Long Island particle accelerator that was going to try to replicate Big Bang conditions. Over the last three months, it's moved around the media, culminating with Fred Moody's scare piece about it, although the British Sunday Times recently picked it up yet again. The Globe article does a great job dissecting the actual facts behind the experiment and pokes fun at the growth of this Chicken Little-type story.

Blob Pet writes "The Associated Press reports that ABC News published the IP addresses of those who participated in an 'Internet news broadcast' Monday with Sam Donaldson. It prevents someone like Bill Clinton from pretending to be an average American and preaching how great the President is on an online forum hehe." There's also a privacy concern or two here, as the article points out, and IMO ABC booted it on this one. Would "Mark from DC" have been as free with his opinions if he'd known his bosses could easily trace him? I doubt it.

dkm writes "The Boston Globe has an interesting article on legislation in Congress to make databases copyrightable. " Copyright issues are so nice and stickey; but at least it's not patents. Yet.

Lazaru5 writes "Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel wrote this article for the Boston Globe Online Business section. " It's something of an incendiary article, but I think it's great to see the amount of press that *BSD has been getting lately.

Lazaru5 writes "Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel wrote this article for the Boston Globe Online Business section. " It's something of an incendiary article, but I think it's great to see the amount of press that *BSD has been getting lately.

geophile writes "This Boston Globe article starts out talking about Java's failure to take over the world, and then questions whether Linux will suffer the same fate. " Interesting question, and perhaps I'm being partial, but I feel as though Java promised that it was going to change the world-right then and there. Linux has been building for quite sometime, and continues to develop.

Joe Vigneau writes "The Boston Globe has an article that says the Alpha, even now that Microsoft will no longer support it, won't dissappear off the face of the earth. Here's one quote: 'The market has basically been pretty clear that the market for us is the Linux space,' Borkowski said."

Joe Vigneau writes "The Boston Globe has an article that says the Alpha, even now that Microsoft will no longer support it, won't dissappear off the face of the earth. Here's one quote: 'The market has basically been pretty clear that the market for us is the Linux space,' Borkowski said."

HP LoveJet writes "US maintainers of sites dedicated to falun gong, a meditation technique whose practitioners are being systematically harassed by Chinese government authorities, say that recent attacks on their servers are traceable to--guess who?--the Chinese government. Scary stuff. "

/dev/random writes "I found this quaint little story by David Warsh about GNU, Linux, Opensource, and "hacker"s in the Globe today. I suppose it can pay off to read the business section. "

/dev/random writes "I found this quaint little story by David Warsh about GNU, Linux, Opensource, and "hacker"s in the Globe today. I suppose it can pay off to read the business section. "

joshwa writes "The Boston Globe today reported a study by Nature saying that search engines barely index one-sixth of the pages on the net. To a certain extent it's a plug for the Northern Light search engine, which claims to be the most comprehensive (at a staggering 16 percent of the web), but it's an interesting read nonetheless. "

joshwa writes "The Boston Globe today reported a study by Nature saying that search engines barely index one-sixth of the pages on the net. To a certain extent it's a plug for the Northern Light search engine, which claims to be the most comprehensive (at a staggering 16 percent of the web), but it's an interesting read nonetheless. "

babbage writes "Chris Nandor tried to help out the Red Sox by stuffing the MLB All Star Ballot. Baseball says they were on to him all along. He says he'll be back next year. " Ah, yes, that wonderful point where sports and computer connect, probably sans changing IPs, but with the mis-use of "hacker".

crow writes "The Boston Globe columnist who started the rumor that Microsoft is porting Office to Linux now has a column where he reports that Microsoft claims it has no efforts underway to port Office to Linux. In fact, Microsoft claims that there has been no interest from customers about Office for Linux. However, Microsoft now has an email address where people can comment about Microsoft applications in regards to Linux: linuxq@microsoft.com " Quite frankly, I'll be happy man if I never have to see that little paper clip again. Ever.

SysAdmin writes "I read an AP report in my hometown paper that says the gov't just accused Microsoft of faking a video which shows how performace suffers in Windows98 after the government's IE-scrubber is run. " I try to avoid posting articles like this, but this is pretty significant-some of other sites are talking about perjury charges and such being brought against the lawyers. Additionally, another bit was sent to us by El pointed an article in which MS lawyers were contradicting themselves, as a MS patent claimed that Web browser are seperate from the OS. Lastly, the Canadian province of Alberta has decided to sue Microsoft, amongst others, for Y2k conversion costs-thanks to colonel for that one.

Ted S. Warren writes " The Globe has a column by David Warsh that ran in Sunday's (12/13/98) Boston Globe about OSS, Tim O'Reilly, and Linux. Good press. " Sorta a PHB page, but still good.

El Flynn sent us this story where you can read about internet addiction! The surprising part is that it took them this long to realize that it might be an addiction. The scary part is that the study claims that those of us who are addicted to the net may be likely to have other psychological disorders. Mind you the disorders they list seem kinda trivial. Course maybe I should seek help too *grin*

Frank Earl writes "Here's another "computer journalist" that is going to go "all Linux" for a month's time... This time it's the Boston Globe's journalist, Hiawatha Bray. Here's his editorial and here's his site where he's planning on posting updates on his progress. It'll be interesting where all this sort of stuff is going to be leading in another 6 months to two years from now... "

An article at the Boston Globe presents an interesting solution to Netscape's recent losses in the browser war. The author suggests Netscape create and sell their own Linux distribution, the reason being that Microsoft will be able to leverage their control of the operating system for some time. Read on. Ignoring the fact the author states "There's no chance Linux can overthrow the Microsoft empire...", I think he has hit a chord. This would enlarge Linux's already large market share, as well as be a large weapon against Microsoft. A distrobution backed by Netscape would not only impress even the most vocal critics, and the consumer market would take note as well, I'm sure.

Is it really "the next logical step"?

This story over at the Boston Daily Globe talks from a fairly non technical viewpoint about the problem with Microsoft and it's operating systems. The author suggests that the answer is Macintosh *giggle* but at least the first part of the article shows the entertaining stuff that all us Linux Users don't worry about (BSoD? Wierd Crashes that require a reinstall? Registry Corruption?) Thanks to Christopher Blizzard for sending this our way.