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Sort of.

There was a white paper put out suggesting a superficially similar scheme. Unsurprisingly, the key word the RIAA have missed from the EFF proposal is "voluntary", which makes their claim that their tax is EFF supported highly misleading.

The EFF have published a clarification titled Collective Licensing Good, ISP Tax Bad in case anyone is still uncertain.

I had a conference call with Warner today about this very subject.

This is a good thing. This is just what the EFF wanted:

http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing

Now we have a chance to make this a reality, and you guys are shooting it down?

This "music tax" is a fair way for artists and distributors to get paid while letting people listen and share music however they want. No DRM. You get to keep the music after you leave the university. Use any file sharing network you want.

It would only cost $2 to $10 a month (still in the works, they want our input)... what more do you guys want? This is a huge improvement over the current choice of DRM vs. a lawsuit.

Warner wants to work with the Universities to help implement this... I spoke with them directly this morning, and I really believe Warner is trying to do good with this system. Please, let us give them a chance to do something right. This isn't just Warner pressing some evil tax on the Universities, it is just a pilot to let file sharing thrive without limitations.

I hope this program succeeds, I truly do.

Isn't the main issue against ISPs not the throttling of flows but the injection of fake TCP RST (Reset) packets and other such illegalities. Illegal from the PoV that the protocol specification and IETF have not ratified this behavior. http://www.eff.org/wp/detecting-packet-injection

What is needed is a "secure TCP" where all control information within the packets at TCP level are cryptographically signed like with a MAC checksum. (No SSL does not fix this problem! SSL sits on top of TCP and ISPs a messing with flows at TCP level)

This will however require kernel support at both endpoints. Maybe it could even be implemented as a series of TCP options.

I would not support actions that lead to an internet meltdown that the article suggests, /. is presuming that no flow or congestion control will be implemented via this UDP alternative to TCP (which remains to be confirmed and certainly the forum in the article indicates THERE WILL BE flow/congestion control implemented with the UDP alternative).

Why don't they just use a form of TCP protocol but apply techniques from "VJ Compression" and add a MAC code it should be possible to get the overhead of sequencing .

TCP header (no options) is 20 bytes. UDP header is 8 bytes. UDP provides you port info already for connection tuples. So you have a 12 byte budget to implement:

* reliable sequencing
* flow-control/retransmission (window control/timestamps/selective-ack)
* MAC/protocol security (the real reason IMHO why they need to resort to UDP in the first place)

That should be ample budget. We specifically don't need hi-performance delivery just a protocol that scales well enough in the domain of 30mbit at the users access point communicating to between 1 and 30 others.

this case, in its proper context that anyone with the faintest understanding of law understands, has absolutely nothing to do with your online rights

Uhh, I take it then that your position is that "the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Public Citizen" and the "14 individual faculty members listed in Appendix A who research, teach and write scholarly articles and books about internet law, cybercrime, criminal law and related topics at law schools nationwide". [link] don't have "the faintest understanding of law"? (including "some of the finest and most knowledgeable lawyers and law professors specializing in cyberlaw. The brief was written by Jennifer Granick of EFF and Philip R. Malone of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society's Cyberlaw Clinic").

How grand a legal mind YOU must have since you can so clearly grasp something that none of those people are able to!

-AC

I'm late to the party but just want to "register" my no vote. Heck... I'll donate the $50 to eff. Funny thing is... I was late to this thread because I was spending my online time spec'n a computer for GTA4PC!

That is a good question. Have you checked with EFF? They have a lot of IP talent that might be of use for you, and this sort of thing at least sounds right up their alley.

It seems to me that at least in this type of situation, patent law as it stands prevents any number of good (and bad) ideas from being tested, tried, and released... which is to the detriment of society as a whole. We can learn from the bad ideas just as well - sometimes better - as we can from the good. Often an inventor misses something important, but if it's publicized well, others might not make the same mistake. We call this "learning."

Don't forget that they (ESA) may not be right about the source of P2P sharing. Check your logs and the PC in question before you do anything else. It may not be correct, or it could even be a printer...
(I know it's limewire and not bittoreren, but still)

Now, you can encrypt the payloads (see IPSec), but you can't encrypt the destination address.

That is what onion routing is for. I suggest you read up on the Tor project, where the destination address is indeed encrypted and can't be traced back to the client.

But anonymity isn't required in order for encryption over conventional links to add a great deal of privacy.

> the process covered in this patent in a very successful product called Uncrustables which generates annual sales of over $60 million per year. Given these additional facts, it doesn't sound quite so silly.

Well, only if you don't think that putting peanut butter on both sides of the bread and cutting off the crust didn't have any prior art. But maybe I'm biased because of all the PB&J I ate growing up.

> Albie's filed an ex parte reexamination, which resulted in rejecting all claims of the patent. Smucker appealed to the US Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit which upheld the rejection. So, far from showing that the patent system is broken, examples like this show the fundamental strength of the patent system and how well it works.
[...]
> Filing a lawsuit is just the start of a multi-year process.

Yeah, it works great! The patent issued, even though it was killed on re-examination and they ONLY had to suffer years of litigation!

I note that they didn't mention whether Albie's was able to recover court costs or attorney's fees. If you don't get BOTH of those, victory in court is Pyrrhic at best, because you've lost thousands or millions of dollars just in defending yourself from bogus claims of infringement.

Hardly what I'd call a rousing success.

> If there were zero patent lawsuits then it would mean that the patent system probably had no value!

Value to whom? Patent lawsuits are a burden to society. We grant patents on the presumption that doing so will get people to disclose inventions they would otherwise keep secret. That argument is not without merit, but the execution is problematic.

The trick to maximizing patents value to society as a whole is to keep as much incentive towards useful disclosure as possible so that the expired patents are actually useful, while having as few lawsuits as possible.

Unfortunately, Congress is too often biased towards maximizing the amount of money there is to be made, as if it were a perfect metric for measuring how much society benefits from IP. This is shown by how often they keep increasing the copyright protection terms.

Anyhow, I think I have some fundamental disagreements with that testimony. Especially if they want me to think well of the 'crust-less PB&J with peanut butter on both slices' case.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

I think this guy just wants to know about the ESA and its modus operandi; not what they have to do legally. Obviously, you need a lawyer for that.

That said, I haven't heard of them suing people en masse, though the ESA has been sending takedown notices for a long time now. I seem to recall that you can see a bit of their work on the Pirate Bay's legal complaints page, for example.

Another poster mentions something about removing the files and then hitting the user with a cluestick and having them go away. That pretty much sums up the rumors I've heard on the Internet, but I haven't dealt with them personally. Because it's Limewire, you just have to figure out who has that installed and make them stop (you might be able to block ports, but I have to believe that people would get around that). But you don't necessarily have to offer them up to the ESA as a sacrifice unless they start making legal demands. Obviously, you should be looking for a lawyer whenever they mention any demands.

It might be even safer not to contact them at all, but merely to cut off Limewire access at the source (i.e. the user). They do send a lot of DMCA notices and whatnot. Even if it's not a proper DMCA notice (or intended to be one), sending a letter documenting the infringement is standard practice for copyright disputes. But they send a lot, so you may never hear back so long as you cut off the user.

Just be careful. If you start getting phone calls, follow-ups, or something more personal than a form letter you need to contact the company lawyer (and you might want to, anyhow). None of this should be considered legal advice. The best I have are second-hand rumors about other people's experiences with the ESA which I got from news sites like TorrentFreak.

Good luck.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

> But if you're going to go on an anti-IP crusade, at least know what you're talking about. Try this paper written by one of the partners I work for. It's a very good, very accessible layman's primer on IP. And being informed makes you much more persuasive.

Thank you. I will read that. Even if we might disagree, it is my policy to do my best to learn from every mistake.

But I'm not sure how much we disagree. As much as I am against IP in principle, I'm more pragmatic than to suppose that I can do anything more than to shift the Overton window a bit towards what I believe to be sensible.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

My mistakes are due to knowing more about what patents ought to be than what they are. One need not understand every bit of law to know when its effects are harmful, after all.

Anyhow, I seriously question any claim that there's something 'novel' about this method of making a sandwich. I think lots of people are able to do something else while waiting for something else (like a microwave) to finish cooking. And any time you do something more than once, it's simple enough to break it down into sub-tasks and do each of those before moving on. Lastly, serving the oldest burger first is pretty much exactly as expected.

While you're right that this isn't a purely mental process, it's a rather menial one. Yes, there's a little bit of information buried in there about what "tools" the sandwich maker uses. But lacking very much information about that, even what little is in the claims is pretty damn useless.

So yes, my purpose was mostly to let people laugh at a silly patent. My 'crusade' as you call it, though, is merely to get people to change weird and arbitrary laws to sensible, enforceable ones that respect the Constitutional directive to 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts'. I'm too well aware of the fact that it's easier said than done, but it's pretty obvious that some things aren't working.

I did realize that the patent hadn't issued yet. It's the 'rejected' part of 'rejected or invalidated' because the two aren't the same thing. For picking over everything I might or might not realize so carefully, how did you miss that? I guess I'm not the only one whose brain can do short-circuit evaluation of an 'or' clause.

[Pedants, please note that I know that you are only permitted to skip evaluation of the second half if the first half is true. Even so, I am referring back to his complaint that I ignored half of the machine-or-transformation test.]

Also, I do actually know that the claims are more important than the title, it's just that the flowchart is much more comprehensible than the text of the patent. Normal people, who might in theory want to make use of this patent when it expires, have a hard enough time understanding technology of any sort to begin with. You add legalese to that and the patent becomes worthless as a description of anything. Even though it's supposed to help those "skilled in the art" to duplicate the invention (which art? law??).

Patents as they exist now are a profit center for patent lawyers and a business expense for industry. No one I have ever known derives useful information for them (even though we have patents to get people to disclose their inventions...) and even if they wanted to, they'd be liable for triple damages for willful infringement if they were found to have read someone's patent before it expired.

So maybe we should be reversing this line of questioning. What good are patents? They create a huge legal expense. Why are they worth that?

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Well, PETA could probably get away with their game as a parody under Fair Use.

DMCA take-downs are routinely abused to just shut people up rather than actually go to court.
It has become so bad, that a judge recently ruled that companies who file DMCA take-downs have to consider if fair-use is going to apply beforehand
but his ruling isn't likely to make a whole lot of difference.

I thought methods had to be tied to a particular machine as part of that test? All I see are general references to unspecified "tools" that have "compartments" and whatnot.

Though upon rereading the link that got removed from the article, I guess you're saying that passes through the other fork because it turns ingredients into a sandwich (which, presumably, counts as a transformation)?

I'm just trying to clarify, because I have no intention of making the same mistakes twice.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

The broken link was meant to go here. I have no idea why Slashdot changed it from the original you can find in my submission. Perhaps they intended to link to a past Slashdot story? Oh well.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

They do things like throttle your internet connection if you're using bit-torrent

You're making Comcast look better than they actually are. Last I checked, Comcast wasn't throttling high-bandwidth-use connections based on torrent use, but fraudulently forging RST packets of any torrent connection regardless of file size/bandwidth being used.

The EFF mostly works in the US for obvious reasons, but they do international work as well.

I think it's a fine line. Most lawsuits are settled, and they're settled precisely because both sides hedge their bets and realize that they have a lot to lose by going into an all-out court battle. It's hard for me to accept that offering a settlement up front is inherently wrong to do.

Yeah, you make a good point there. True. Settlements do not imply an unwillingness to sue. I hadn't really thought of it in that way, and you're right.

But there is also a counter point hidden in your argument:

Furthermore, the sheer impossibility of going through with a full lawsuit for every person that the RIAA finds to be sharing files is a problem.

By your own argument, it would be impossible for the RIAA to follow through with every threat they send out. Therefore they must be filing at least a percentage of these fraudulently.

For instance, if you have ten lawyers, and a lawsuit takes about a month, then you could reasonably file 120 cases a year. If you file 200, you are possibly committing fraud. If you file 400, you are probably committing fraud.

Now, I'm not sure of their exact numbers - but I'll bet they don't have the resources to follow through with every single complaint they file.

I'm pretty certain they've moved into the fraud category.

All this talk of just using Photoshop to alter the images is just wrong-headed.

Photoshop's code is closed. Adobe, as well as every other closed-source image editor, could have long ago been "contacted" by agents from the NSA et al. and been "persuaded" under terms of an NDA to include watermark analogs in all images passing through their apps.

This happened with printer manufacturers; why would anyone assume it hasn't happened with image editors (and video and music everything else)? http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

The cameras themselves may even have such tagging info included. Just 1% of the pixels shifted in a predetermined matrix (and compensated for in neighboring pixels) could easily and practically invisibly contain make, model, serial number, and date of file creation.

If this info is in thew hardware, even using open-source editors wouldn't ensure ID-free files.

What is needed, for images, would be an open-source photo ID stripper. This would be an app that: 1) removes all EXIF data from jpegs. 2) reconstitutes the photo by rendering, then applying an algorithm that slightly changes nearly every pixel (including slightly altering progressively larger sections of the photo in case specific pixels don't hold the data but areas do), and then re-compressing the image.

It could even be trained on specific cameras to remove hot and cold pixels.

This would be true anonymity.

The same spies that push porn spam while they "investigate" or that use automated "investigation" that can't tell the difference between a file sharer and a printer? Yeah I kinda doubt it is really costing them much for their "investigation work" there.

But let us be honest here,this has absolutely NOTHING to do with artists or creators,and is nothing but unrestrained greed from non producing middlemen. How else can you explain getting up in court and with a straight face saying Ripping your CD to your iPod isn't fair use because you didn't get prior "authorization"(in the form of giving them another check) first.

And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work. The fact that Steamboat Willie is still under copyright should prove the contract is broken and not worth the paper copyright laws were written on.

All of which we can thank the late Sonny Bono for sponsoring his wonderful legislation. AG

The same spies that push porn spam while they "investigate" or that use automated "investigation" that can't tell the difference between a file sharer and a printer? Yeah I kinda doubt it is really costing them much for their "investigation work" there.

But let us be honest here,this has absolutely NOTHING to do with artists or creators,and is nothing but unrestrained greed from non producing middlemen. How else can you explain getting up in court and with a straight face saying Ripping your CD to your iPod isn't fair use because you didn't get prior "authorization"(in the form of giving them another check) first.

And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work. The fact that Steamboat Willie is still under copyright should prove the contract is broken and not worth the paper copyright laws were written on.

It's all about accountability. German government is held accountable for its actions, while Google, as a foreign company, isn't. At least not from a German perspective.

That's exactly the same reason why CAPPS-II-like data transfer of airline passenger data to the US is very much frowned upon in Germany: people are afraid that those data won't be handled with the same care in the US (probably by some commercial contracted entity) than by their local government authorities.

Mod'ed interesting???

Why should someone accused of copyright infringement have it any easier (cheaper), than someone accused of running a red light, or breaking a contract, or committing a felony (tort, civil, and criminal examples mixed here deliberately)?

Screw being cheaper, if it was the same or even twice as much to defend your self this wouldn't be such an issue. IIRC, this all came about because it was costing the defendants at least $15,000 to even obtain an attorney since it is a federal issue, while the *AA's were offering settlements at a fraction of that - starting at $3,000. Your screwed from the get go, you simply can't go up against $1,000/hr attorneys with all that much hope by yourself, so you have no alternative than to take the settlement - guilty or not.

With traffic fines, you can represent yourself and half the time just showing up for court - it gets reduced, while the *IAA will just get annoyed and rams it up farther. The most expensive I've heard an attorney being for a simple traffic fine - is maybe $1,000, which is still somewhat plausible - $15,000 just to start things out isn't for 95% of the public.

Comparing this crap to a speeding ticket is ridiculous at best... I've never heard of anyone having to go bankrupt because of a traffic fine - hence the 8th amendment.

When it comes to breaking a contract - as a normal citizen there has always been a clause on what it takes to break said contract. With apartments, it was like 85% of the monthly rent, with cell phone companies (which has lately been squashed) it ranged from $150 to $500. From a few to many incidents with contracts and companies, IANAL but I think there is something somewhere that says the said company can't rape you because you decided to break the said contract - I'm not referring to the expensive contracts between businesses mind you.

When it comes felony convictions - You will have someone in your corner helping you fight the charges unless you just out right refuse the help. There is no such help for civil cases...

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/global-network-initiative

For almost two years, EFF has been a participant in negotiations between human rights groups, investors, academics and Internet companies -- including Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft -- aimed at improving how those businesses deal with free expression and privacy issues around the world.

Today, the results of that discussion have been announced. The Global Network Initiative is a set of principles on free expression and privacy that the companies have agreed to follow in all countries they do business within, together with a set of implementation guidelines and a skeleton for an independent watchdog body that will monitor companies for compliance with these principles.

Still, the EFF isn't completely satisfied with the results:

It's not a perfect set of documents. EFF continues to work in the Initiative, but we do have concerns with the limits of this initial agreement:

        * There is no obligation to inform Internet users of the storage location of personal data, and from where it is accessible.
        * There is no commitment to inform users when they hand over their information to agents of government and law enforcement.
        * There is no binding requirement to develop privacy and anti-censorship technologies and include them in new products.
        * GNI assessors are selected by the companies themselves from a list of neutral groups, and do not have untrammeled access to all relevant company documents.

When it comes to addressing their involvement in worldwide human rights abuses, the first step for Internet companies had been admitting that there is a problem. With the Global Network Initiative, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have gone further, and begun to embed human rights assessments into their own company structure. We hope many other companies will join them.

Don't forget, Blizzard was one of the early abusers of the DMCA

I think people would be much more interested in the EFF's viewpoint on the whole DMCA anniversary.

This is an offensive psuedo-criminal abuse of civil torts.

I suppose we have more of this to look forward to with the new Intellectual Property Enforcement Bill passed in the US under the cover of our financial crisis.

I blame Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for colluding with the Bush Administration on this one. Such legislation with sweeping chilling effects deserved its own time for debate and public outrage.

mother#@$#@@#ers.

You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that this was the same company as Diebold.

Oh, wait, it is ...

No, it's not; it's the other one. (Diebold is the same as "Premier Election Solutions".)

cf info at eff.org

(blackboxvoting.com isn't a bad source of info, either).

> You are not pirating his book if he picks a license that allows you to copy. Otherwise he is being the pirate, by making available a copyright work.

Actually, it's not copyright infringement if he gives permission. It's still piracy in the loose sense: getting something for free that most people pay for. At least, that's why I used that term rather than call it "infringement" when it isn't.

I put that in there to rebut the idea that you "can't make any money off of free" because it's clear that you can. You just have to be willing to change your business model to give away the free stuff and charge for the real goods. That's not always easy, so I think it's good for people to see that it can be done.

After all, there are lots of folks who might give this a shot but need some inspiration. Copyright will only get worse as long as the industry fails to adapt to it. Companies are a lot like rabid animals when they're backed into a corner and people should be thinking about a way out of this mess, because things will get really ugly when copyright collapses under its own weight otherwise.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

It's "Dmitry Sklyarov."

I'm sorry if you find EFF's expression of what we're doing one-sided, but I respectfully ask you to travel back in the archives to the times you did support us, and note that EFF's public statements were just as enthusiastic for presenting our positions then as we are now.

It sounds a little like you're more concerned not that EFF has lost impartiality (we were never impartial; I don't think you'd want us to be impartial litigants), but that EFF has become politically partisan.

It hasn't. We've enthusiastically defended Michelle Malkin as we do CAIR. I'm sure if we get a democratic administration, we'll be defending civil liberties against its encroachments just as determinedly as we fought the Clinton administration's unconstitutional encryption policies, and we fought the Bush administration's warrantless, unconstitutional wiretapping.

It's "Dmitry Sklyarov."

I'm sorry if you find EFF's expression of what we're doing one-sided, but I respectfully ask you to travel back in the archives to the times you did support us, and note that EFF's public statements were just as enthusiastic for presenting our positions then as we are now.

It sounds a little like you're more concerned not that EFF has lost impartiality (we were never impartial; I don't think you'd want us to be impartial litigants), but that EFF has become politically partisan.

It hasn't. We've enthusiastically defended Michelle Malkin as we do CAIR. I'm sure if we get a democratic administration, we'll be defending civil liberties against its encroachments just as determinedly as we fought the Clinton administration's unconstitutional encryption policies, and we fought the Bush administration's warrantless, unconstitutional wiretapping.

Help us continue this fight: http://secure.eff.org/wiretapping

We've just opened a new page for student rates: http://www.eff.org/students

Third-party details on how EFF compares to other non-profit groups: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7576

(Unlike many groups, the vast majority of EFF's funding comes from individual donations: it's directly due to personal contributions that we can fight these and civil liberty cases.)

Help us continue this fight: http://secure.eff.org/wiretapping

We've just opened a new page for student rates: http://www.eff.org/students

Third-party details on how EFF compares to other non-profit groups: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7576

(Unlike many groups, the vast majority of EFF's funding comes from individual donations: it's directly due to personal contributions that we can fight these and civil liberty cases.)

Yes, we do need the same over here.

Miss the memo?

Warrantless surveillance of American domestic communications has been going on for years.

Not only has it been comprehensively abused (to exactly nobody's surprise), the spying infrastructure has no legal reason to exist.

That sinister sound you hear is Nixon laughing at you, wearing a Dick Cheney mask.

Blizzard has deleted at least 30 of my D2 accounts.
3 times, I've built up 10 accounts, then lost interest and had them deleted.
Now I whenever I get the itch to play D2 I play a mod instead, like Kingdom of Tenaii.

The above, and the fact that they were one of the early abusers of the DMCA hammer makes me prefer other game makers to them (see also http://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-seven-years-under-dmca ). Those are some of the reasons I play Anarchy Online instead of WoW.

Blizzard has deleted at least 30 of my D2 accounts.
3 times, I've built up 10 accounts, then lost interest and had them deleted.
Now I whenever I get the itch to play D2 I play a mod instead, like Kingdom of Tenaii.

The above, and the fact that they were one of the early abusers of the DMCA hammer makes me prefer other game makers to them (see also http://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-seven-years-under-dmca ). Those are some of the reasons I play Anarchy Online instead of WoW.

According to this, Obama has been facing similar problems. That link comes from an article from the EFF.

...the whole letter. While it's an interesting read - does anybody know if McCain voted pro-DMCA?

> I mean, really, do you think for a second that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are going to appoint someone like Lessig?

Of course not! But as the article says, Bush probably won't have time to appoint anyone, anyhow (he only has about 3 months left). And even if Bush appointed someone, it's a cabinet position, so they'll get replaced in January. In other words, the next president will appoint someone, and there's a 95% chance that the next president will be Obama. Who has been known to consult with Laurence Lessig, BTW. And anyone who wouldn't consider William Patry for the job is probably crazy, given how much he knows (whether Patry would accept is a completely different matter...).

Honestly, at this point we're BONED as far as law goes. The best we can do is hope we get a non-crazy person as the Czar to buy a 4-year reprieve and hope that budget cuts cause them to axe some of this nonsense, because government has a tendency to grow in order to justify its own existence and I don't even want to think about what kind of empire building they'd do.

We could do far, far worse than Patry & Lessig if the MAFIAA were to lobby and get someone cut from the same cloth as Hillary Rosen or Jack Valenti in there. The best move I can find is to rally behind someone so that WE get to choose the IP Czar, rather than Hollywood.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

"Affirmative defense" and "right" aren't wholly distinct things. For example, raising First Amendment rights in litigation is generally done as an affirmative defense, and there too, "courts weigh several different highly 'fuzzy' factors" in their determinations.

The EFF has a small bit about this in q5 of their FAQ.

Second, without copyright reform, the new association will become as corrupt as the first.

Only if listeners let them. If listeners were to stop buying, and attending concerts, if the new association becomes corrupt then it won't last long. There are other artists who remain uncorrupted or became open. The Grateful Dead allowed concert attendees to record concerts and share those recordings. After angering fans they allowed a nonprofit website to continue to offer downloads of their music. John Perry Barlow, a cofounder of the EFF, wrote songs for the Dead.

The only real solution is copyright reform.

As copyright is in the US it's a big problem. I'm not ready to abolish copyrights yet but I'd like to see the copyright term reduced to several years at most.

Falcon

Second, without copyright reform, the new association will become as corrupt as the first.

Only if listeners let them. If listeners were to stop buying, and attending concerts, if the new association becomes corrupt then it won't last long. There are other artists who remain uncorrupted or became open. The Grateful Dead allowed concert attendees to record concerts and share those recordings. After angering fans they allowed a nonprofit website to continue to offer downloads of their music. John Perry Barlow, a cofounder of the EFF, wrote songs for the Dead.

The only real solution is copyright reform.

As copyright is in the US it's a big problem. I'm not ready to abolish copyrights yet but I'd like to see the copyright term reduced to several years at most.

Falcon

In addition, EFF discussed some issues here.

As for the child rape "consensus" thing,they were talking about MILITARY law. Never in the history of our country have we set civil law by looking at military law,and frankly I don't want to start now,thank you very much. And while I think child molestors are scum,the simple fact is after McMartin and The little Rascals day care cases how ANYONE could think it is a good idea to execute someone for rape of a child is beyond me. Anytime you are dealing with such a hot button explosive charge the risk of "guilty until you can prove you are innocent" is just too high. And as we have seen over and over again, someone will take it too damned far. See executing the retarded,executing children,etc. Not to mention the whole "repressed memory" mumbo jumbo. Would you be for executing someone based on a memory?

As for the RIAA, as we have seen their "investigating" gets your printer charged with file sharing and time and time again we have seen states getting onto them because of using unlicensed investigators,yet they still continue. Why? Because you have judges like this that will ignore everything put in front of them and rule for them anyway. News Flash *.AAs of the world: you model is a dinosaur. Join us in the 21st century or please go away and die.

If you lower your prices($20 for a 30 year old album,WTF?) and offer a better product(embedded album art and liner notes,links to contests involving the artists,etc) you will get the customers. All your beating everyone over the head and buying off politicians is doing is making even the honest folks hate your guts and you know what? Very few folks have problems ripping off an @sshole who is screwing them with their monopolistic practices and buying off our legislators. There is NO reason why we shouldn't be able to rip our movies and music easily to our now gigantic hard drives and watch them without the disc. Instead of allowing us an easy way to use what we pay for you get brain trusts like this one who stand up in court and say ripping your cd to your iPod is NOT fair use. You see,greedy sh*t like this is why everyone hates you. And you'd be surprised how many people don't see any problem with ripping off someone they hate,especially if they feel they were ripped off in the first place. So while I got my tunes in the '80s on CD before you really started cranking out the garbage,I don't really see how you are going to get the young folks on your side with crap like this. Your customers hate you,your artists hate you,pretty much everyone except your lawyers HATE you. And one doesn't have to have a masters degree in business to know that isn't a good situation to be in.

i don't see how surveillance is mind-control. the Chinese government want to root out dissidents and suppress dissenting opinions, just as has been done in the U.S. throughout history. ever heard of COINTELPRO? this kind of blatant abuse of political power to actively suppress political dissent was most rampant during J. Edgar Hoover's reign of the FBI and slowly declined after his death. but in recent years such practices have been revived once again.

all governments, especially unpopular ones, fear dissent and subversion. and since political activism can be seen as a subversive act, governments have always targeted activist groups, whether openly or behind closed doors. the recent illegal wiretapping scandal is concrete evidence of such abuses. and under the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T.A.C.T. the federal government can now freely target activist groups under the guise of combating terrorism.

Actually you are wrong here. The BNETD case specifically revolved around reverse engineering for compatability and at least the courts in that case ruled that the EULA was enforceable that forbade reverse engineering of their products. If you doubt this head over the the EFF site and look up the specific case and the rulings on it. It's the BNETD vs. Vivendi/Blizzard case.
http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

the courts have also held that speech may not be forcefully restrained without due process; it matters little who is doing the restraining. The fact that restraint of speech principles apply to individuals, and not just government, is evident from a vast multitude of court cases. If you doubt this, you need only look up cases involving blacks in the South and the KKK, for example.

It's just that I sometimes get tired of people spouting off about what the law says when there's no basis in fact for their assertions.

If you're really interested in decisions about free speech, I'd suggest reading about them. Some good starting sources are the Electronic Frontier Foundation, http://www.eff.org/; and Find Law, http://www.findlaw.com/ as well as many papers and books availablle online, such as http://www.krusch.com/real/copyright.html and http://www.mttlr.org/volthree/foster_art.htm

It's "safer" because they use an adenovirus instead of a retrovirus, so the viral DNA doesn't mingle with the cell's DNA and any trace that it was there vanishes after a few cell divisions.

I actually did a bit of research and explained all of this in my submission (which gave credit to Konrad Hochedlinger and his team, too), but I guess the other guy got there first or something. Why do they only publish the submissions where I screw something up? *sigh* :)

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

First off EULA's are not enforceable.

Sorry; I wish this were true, but it's not. EULAs have been found firmly to be enforceable by the courts.

But enforceability of the EULA is a question that may arise in this case. And the question of enforceability of EULA may depend on which court the case is heard it. No court has made a ruling that says EULAs are generally enforceable are not.

Some courts have found that certain EULAs were enforceable in certain circumstances, others have found that certain EULAs were not enforceable, so there is still some hope that sanity may set in with the courts and the legislatures.

Additionally the laws vary from state to state; some states have passed UCITA, and EULAs are more likely to be found enforceable there.

EULAs are a matter of contract law which is a decision of the states; so it is very possible that such an agreement may be completely legal, valid and enforceable in some states, whereas other states specifically prohibit or do not give EULAs much weight in court (favoring protection of the general public's liberty instead of the corporation's privilege to restrict).

See Blizzard vs BNETD

At issue in this case was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA).

The court issued summary judgement in Blizzard's favor, on the matter of the EULA, they found it enforceable, and that the authors of BNETD had violated it.