Domain: eff.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to eff.org.
Comments · 6,386
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Re:Are you kidding? Here's some realistic methods.If you want to help remove the RIAA's power, here's a few ideas: You could - indeed, you should - also join your local digital rights organisation, and help out if you can.
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Re:Scary Tech
The unique identification of many (soon to me most or all) inkjets and color lasers was not
done for you or me. It was done quietly for law enforcement to be able
to *find* the owner of any printed document.
The enormity of that type of underhanded removal of privacy is
just gobsmacking. And most vendors quietly went along with it.
This technology will no doubt be used in a similar vein - any
picture uploaded onto the internet can be traced back to *you*.
Freedom takes another blow. -
Don't print on color laser printers...
...or your ads might be mistaken for counterfeit money.
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/ -
Altered Behavior
Alter their behavior? Like installing Peer Guardian? Or maybe a Tor client? Or perhaps just opening up a WAP?
What do these US lobby groups (note: not law enforcement agencies) think they can do against Canadian citizens? -
Re:Willing and able
Some do, and some don't. Verizon, for example, went to bat for its customers when the RIAA was launching one of its first full broadsides of subpoenas. They had to go into appeals, but eventually obtained a decision invalidating the subpoenas.
That's the difference between "don't be evil" and "genuinely, honestly don't be evil."
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A slight to EFF?FTA (emphasis mine):
Other companies have taken legal action against bloggers only to have those actions backfire. In January, Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) was reportedly forced to pay $700,000 to cover the legal expenses of bloggers against whom it had tried to take legal action, thanks to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group that defends bloggers.
Oh, so that's what EFF does.
Good thing Forbes cleared that up for me, I thought they do a lot more than that. And what does San Fran have to do with this case? EFF is an national organization -- and though it is based in SF, the article misrepresents tham as being a local group. -
Re:IP_address aliasing
Tor. JAP (www only). I2P.
I personally like JAP, though it only does WWW. The servers are in Germany, go to google.com and you get "Google Deutschland". It's the easiest of the three. Tor makes you set up something like Privoxy, not sure about I2P. For JAP, just start it (it's in Java and runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows) and point your browser's proxy settings to localhost:4001.
Tor has the advantage of letting you route anything through it. If you use it, don't be an asshole by using it for Bittorrent or anything else high bandwidth or illegal.
I personally like using JAP when at public access points, though for anything other than casual browsing I use OpenVPN and browse through my home network. -
Re:This is really bad because he is a journalist
There are some tests for whether someone is a reporter for the purposes of constitutional privilege, mostly on whether what someone's saying in their publication is generally considered news.
I don't think the law would make any material, legal, difference (relating to freedom of speech issues) between the output of an indymedia cameraman and, say, a conventional freelance news photographer, despite one guy's output being unpaid and on the internet. Certainly the judge in Apple vs Does did address that very subject, and found it was almost unanimous among all the respondents there (I think there was a brief by some Industry cartel murmuring that people posting on the internet might be dangerous to business or something, but they can go screw themselves, obviously). -
Tor Network
Just sit behind a Tor Network (http://tor.eff.org/) and post away. All this work by the EU will be wasted.
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Death of the first amendment.
You have to remember this -- there is no guarantee of free speech from any corporation. The US Constitution guarantees that "government" shall not infringe the right to a citizen's free speech. Any time you have a non-governmental agency "it doesn't apply".
Yeah, just like the constitution doesn't guarantee you the right to habeas corpus, it just forbids the government from taking it away. We certainly have come a long way from Voltaire and "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
You claim the US government protects freedom of speech, yet it's really amazing how many different ways the government has evolved to suppress free speech. Free speech zones, copyright law, decency standards, muzzling scientists who believe in global warming, muzzling scientists who don't believe in global warming, the terrorism witch hunt, the child porn witch hunt, and the list continues...
Actually that last one was even better than censorship. It was thought crime. The man sent to prison for writing a fictional story never distributed or even intended to distribute that story. He was sent to prison for the crime of thinking bad thoughts.
My reaction to this story? Well I guess you've figured it out by now... I don't like censorship. I'm ok with Amazon distributing books. I'm not quite sure why Theodp@aol.com is so afraid of books. A book can't hurt you. And, um Google, I know it's cliche and all, but you're letting the terrorists win.
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Proprietors do users no favors by locking them in.
So, Apple is bad because they continue to use DRM on the iTunes store. Brilliant. It can't be because, oh, I don't know, that the media companies would absolutely freak out if Apple unilaterally dropped DRM. They can't -- they would end up in court I suspect.
According to Fred von Lohmann of the EFF, Apple would not drop iTunes Music Store DRM even if they could. As I understand it (I don't recall exactly where, but I think it was from one of DVD Jon's recent blog posts on the topic), Apple employs DRM on tracks from labels that don't want DRM. von Lohmann concludes, quite rightly:
Apple's warm embrace of DRM here is every bit as reprehensible as Lexmark's effort to use DRM to eliminate interoperable printer cartridges and Chamberlain's effort to use DRM against replacement garage door clickers.
Incredible is the reaction on tech discussion sites like
/. and digg where Lexmark and Chamberlain get almost universally razzed but people believe the line that Apple only reluctantly employs digital restrictions.von Lohmann's post is quite informative and shows the real purpose of Apple's iTMS DRM—to lock in iTMS customers. DVD Jon builds on this in his recent blog posts.
Then there's Steve Jobs' recent lie about not "gum[ming] up" networks with third-party software, which the FSF debunked handily.
One doesn't need to delve too far into history to see how proprietors, no matter how slick their ads or how popular their consumer electronics, are not working in your best interests.
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Re:Tor is not so effective
why can't the preview and submit buttons be further apart? i wasn't done yet...
anyway, look at the list of stuff they're working on and are requesting assitance with.
http://tor.eff.org/volunteer.html.en/
they've got a bunch of stuff planned, but stuff takes time. if you know what to do for any of the stuff, get in there and go at it! -
Re:The important part is the proof!
If you read the transcripts from the Supreme Court Grokster appeal, you can isolate the exact moment when Justice Scalia realizes what Grokster does. And you can taste the immediacy of his determining that it was very, very illegal.
Fortunately, Grokster's advertising campaign, which featured the ability to get new releases for free, kept the justices from rendering a ruling that affected all P2P sharing. While a big supporter of P2P file sharing, I fear for its future.
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Re:When you know so little about TOR...
The creators of TOR couldn't have possibly missed this, and anyone who complains should remember that when you lie with dogs, you may wake with fleas. You're going to have to take the bad with the good.
I can't tell if you are saying that they are purposefully ignoring the possibility or what, but take a look here: http://tor.eff.org/faq-abuse.html.en
They are clearly aware of what Tor could be used for. -
And?
Don't vote. Don't voice your opinion to the representatives most of you didn't vote for. Don't organize a coordinated political attack on the DMCA and this is what we all get.
For dog's sake don't support the eff either. http://www.eff.org/ You wouldn't want to be marginalized as a zealot, fanatic or crackpot.
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Re:Apples moves into VMI don't know. It seems like some parts of EULAs have been enforced through court action, some parts have been found invalid, and other parts simply haven't been tested yet. From what I've read, this restriction by MS might be valid, especially if they print it on the outside of the box.
http://linuxjournal.com/article/5628 - The Good
http://www.eff.org/wp/eula.php - The Bad
goatse - The Ugly -
Relakks
While I think defeating such legislation is the best idea, if such garbage does pass look into using a service like Relakks. For those who don't know this is a vpn service ran by the Swedish Pirate Party. Read their faq for more info. By the way, why not donate to the eff to help defeat this type of garbage in the first place?
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Re:You're thinking too hard
I think you're both looking for Tor. Works great, if you don't mind speeds comparable to dialup.
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Re:Isn't a task for Free Software Foundation?
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Re:Isn't a task for Free Software Foundation?
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Re:Possible Reason
IANAL, but I believe each DMCA complaint must include a statement along the lines of: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
Using a bot to send out such notices would be dangerous, as any false positives would open the sender up to a countersuit- ala, Michael Crook. -
Re:Parser error
It's secret (police hacking). Just like "real world" searches, computers may not be searched secretly. So far.
Oh, they can be secretly searched alright, but only by the M$+CIA, and possibly other organizations like the RIAA+MPAA that have done a backroom deal with M$. TC will help insure that not even governments can see them doing it.
If you're naive enough to think they're not doing it consider the CIA's annual budget, consider what they've been discovered doing behind closed doors already (conventional spying, Echelon, some printer tracking, passenger tracking,
...).Forget terrorists, foreign organizations and governments should be much more paranoid about being spied upon via their PC's for business and military intelligence than they currently appear to be. It's just too easy.
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Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
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Re:How do you run up $700K in legal fees?
Settling immediately is completely different to arguing a case in court, especially when the case was appealed. That involves researching and writing big stacks of legal documents. See http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Apple_v_Does/ .
Also, it's very rare for a U.S. court to award fees like this. It's a sign that the court thought Apple's actions in bringing this lawsuit were pretty egregious. When you do win fees, there's a damage multiplier, x2 or so. So the real costs of fighting this case were a bit lower. -
Re:Yeah, and "She was asking for it," right?
I'm just saying in the real world people try whatever works, without regard to what some smart fella sat down and wrote in a law somewhere.
You're not talking about "trying whatever works," you're talking about deliberately leeching other people's hard work without compensating them in any way for their time or effort.
Let's say you agree to mow someone's yard for fifty bucks and even go so far as to draw up a legal contract with all of the terms and conditions. You go out there and spend hours perfectly manicuring the lawn. When you're done, the person says, "Wow, great job! My god, you even trimmed the driveway, the place looks fantastic! Oh, and by the way, I'm not going to pay you." Justifiably mad, you take them to court and sue for your $50.
Then next thing you know, some raving asshole is posting comments on Slashdot saying that, "The lawn service non-payers have the right to fight back... It's that simple."
I wonder, if it was written in law... [blah blah blah stupid rambling]
You're an idiot. I suppose that if it's written into law that you must not shoot your mother in the head (like, um, it is?) that you'd go ahead and blow her head off it since all laws are so evil, right? If your tiny little brain can't figure out the difference between good laws (like the kind that say that people actually have to pay you—gasp!—for stuff you are selling) and bad laws, then I don't see any point in arguing any further. Like I said, you're an idiot, and there's no point.
Maybe in your world, you try whatever you want whenever you want. Having worked for all sorts of businesses both small and large (two people all the way up to dozens of thousands), we in the real world do not simply "try whatever works." We evaluate software, and if we want to use it, we pay the people for it or do whatever the license otherwise demands, or we uninstall it and do something else. In any event, we in the real world obey the law. If we don't like the law, guess what. We obey it anyway. If the law is so screwed up that we find it intolerable, we lobby to change it by writing to our Congresscritters, supporting organizations such as the EFF, and so on. But even while we're doing that, in the real business world, we don't just pick and choose which laws we will and won't obey.
Now if you want to talk about our personal lives, then yeah, I've downloaded some movies and television shows now and then because I couldn't get them any other way. I'm no saint. But I also have bought tons of stuff on CD, DVD, iTunes, etc. whenever it is available because I believe that compensating people for their hard work is a Good Thing. That's also why I've donated to various FOSS efforts even though I really don't have to. And I've also tried out eval copies of commercial software that I've been interested in buying, and if I like the software, guess what... I buy it.
Everyone I associate with is the same way. The non-tech people I know don't want to bother figuring out how to crack software or where to get already cracked versions. The tech people I know are decent moral people who acknowledge the time and effort it takes to develop sophisticated software.
So again, rationalize all you want, but simply using software you want without abiding by the terms under which the author or publisher licenses it isn't legal, it isn't moral, it isn't your screwed up view of human nature, it's just you being an asshole, you giving the BSA ammunition it needs to convince the public that they should have more power than they should, you setting back the goals of the FOSS movement, and you being an asshole (which bears mentioning twice because you're such a huge one).
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Don't mess with my rights
Don't mess with my right to make backup copies of any medium I want to. To not allow me the freedom to copy a CD, or a DVD, or any other digital file is a violation of my rights as a consumer. I won't stand for it. Go http://eff.org/EFF! Vista is trying to make us upgrade our computers so that they can control exactly what hardware they want us to use. To me, that's unfair. I won't be installing Vista on my computer ever. You've got that in writing.
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The EFF is Fighting DRM and needs your help...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a couple of email campaigns set up to fight against DRM becoming law. http://action.eff.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AD
V _homepage has a list of all their campaigns.
The campaign for fighting against DRM is here http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=221
The campaign for reforming the DMCA, which makes breaking DRM illegal, is here: http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=115
Take the time and go send some emails. The MPAA and the RIAA believe their loss of sales is due to piracy not a boycott of their products. Voting with your wallet will not work. -
The EFF is Fighting DRM and needs your help...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a couple of email campaigns set up to fight against DRM becoming law. http://action.eff.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AD
V _homepage has a list of all their campaigns.
The campaign for fighting against DRM is here http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=221
The campaign for reforming the DMCA, which makes breaking DRM illegal, is here: http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=115
Take the time and go send some emails. The MPAA and the RIAA believe their loss of sales is due to piracy not a boycott of their products. Voting with your wallet will not work. -
The EFF is Fighting DRM and needs your help...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a couple of email campaigns set up to fight against DRM becoming law. http://action.eff.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AD
V _homepage has a list of all their campaigns.
The campaign for fighting against DRM is here http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=221
The campaign for reforming the DMCA, which makes breaking DRM illegal, is here: http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=115
Take the time and go send some emails. The MPAA and the RIAA believe their loss of sales is due to piracy not a boycott of their products. Voting with your wallet will not work. -
Legal Defamation Info from EFFI've often wondered *exactly* what is required to prove defamation, so I did some digging.
This is from the EFF, giving good guidelines on what constitutes defamation.
Note that what makes this really tricky for the online world is that in most cases defamation is a state matter, not a Federal one, making jurisdiction a tough issue. Different states have different qualifications for defamation, one of the most relevant being whether or not the defendant knowingly made false statements about the plaintiff.
As an example, note the qualifications for defamation in Minnesota
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Re:They've got it all wrong...
Furthermore, music purchased from the iTunes store does not require an iPod - it only requires iTunes which is available for free on both Macs and Windows machines. iTunes allows you to burn your purchased music to a CD so you can listen on myriad other devices. The only thing it limits is the portable devices you can play the purchased music on in its native format.
He's right. If you do buy a song on iTMS, you do have a choice to either play it on your PC/Mac, burn it to a CD (audio only)... or use the iPod. It's your choice.
And you can play regular ol' MP3's on the iPod, and the Windows version of iTunes can convert unprotected WMA files to M4A files, just tell iTunes where they're located, and then iTunes will convert them to the native iTunes/iPod format. (Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the Mac OS X version.)
Even if Apple had a case against the Norwegian government, I have been reading in a lot of places (WWW and in print) that the EU is outlawing software patents, and protection of any medium in any way. Just ask the Electronic Frontier Foundation, http://www.eff.org/, they're trying to crack down on Hollywood from restricting people's Fair Use rights, because I have been seeing on that site about how H'Wood is wanting to "police piracy" when some people want to rip their CD's or their DVD's for their iPods or their PSP's, not go and share them online. (Remember the "anti-piracy" rootkit that Sony Music installed on a bunch of Windows PC's about this time last year on a few of their CD's?)
Apple does have the right to sell you music. You also have the right to buy it or not. There is ALWAYS the "Cancel" button in each EULA. If you don't like the terms lined out for you, then don't accept the agreement. Plain and simple.
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Yes, but...
The EFF didn't criticize Esno for keeping your personal information either.
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DMCA constitutionality
If the DMCA is going to be overturned, it won't be on the basis of the first amendment, at least not in the way it's described above. It's well established that even speech (not to mention code as speech) can be restricted as a result of its non-speech qualities; certainly you're restricted from publishing copywritten material even though that publication might otherwise be protected.
While I agree that code is speech - and this argument seems plausible - that's only a first step; you'd then have to demonstrate that the speech is permissible.
If we're going to talk about why the DMCA should be overturned it ought to at least be a discussion based on plausible grounds. I think the crux of this article is great - this is a horribly struck balance with little safeguards in place. This is precisely what you would expect from a bill written by and for a particular industry. This is problematic in its own right, but always remember, there're two avenues to getting rid of it.
1) consumer advocacy; there needs to be consumer groups, or proxies (think electronics industry; think how much Sony electronics has been hamstrung by Sony music over the years; how about those minidiscs) to lobby for Congressional, not court action
2) Court battles. These don't all have to involve the constitution. The DMCA has a host of statutory problems. And if you're going to talk constitutional, then let's talk about what's out there. Start glancing at some law reviews on the topic or visiting the EFF's website. There are plenty of arguments out there. Let's make those arguments public, and not spurious ones that don't help us win and only give fodder to the content monopoly.
148 U. Pa. L. Rev. 673
2002 U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol'y 289
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences .php
And remember, lawyers are on both sides. They're neither good nor evil. Indeed, if you're suing someone they might be helpful (as the article suggests). -
Anonymity, we hardly knew ye...
Really, laws regulations and initiatives like this (and this and this and this) make it increasingly necessary for the Powers that Be(tm) to think about criminalizing online anonymity altogether, lest the bureaucracy be powerless to enforce their will.
And with so few people who even know they should care about this, who's to stop it? Unless Tor and I2P get encapsulated within programs that millions of people use (à la Torpark), well... if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it...
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Broadcast Treaty
It means that if a television station aired a public domain film, then the television station would hold all the rights to re-air that content for 50 years.
Theoretically, a Creative Commons-licensed podcast could be broadcast by a cable station, and then the creator would lose rights to rebroadcast the material on their own!
More info via the EFF. -
Re:Why does *anyone* have to own this stuff?
If YouTube, et al have done anything, it's show that a different business model can work: the value is not in production of the material, it's in delivering it.
Commercial distributors are very well aware of this fact; they've been profiting from it for decades.
The reason for introducing this new 'broadcast right' is so that they can continue to do so as they have been in the face of competition.
Sadly, this is not a new development - this activity has been ongoing for some years. See also: http://www.eff.org/IP/broadcastflag/ -
What is wrong with that...
...is that it negates the right to anonymous political speech.
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/
You *cannot* know where the money is coming from for every bit of political activism you come across. Elected officials' campaign funding sources, maybe. Gifts made to those officials? Maybe that too. Beyond that, you have no right to know that supersedes my right to political speech with no requirement that I reveal my identity or disclose anything else about myself. In order for the government to facilitate that ability for you, it would need to do such severe damage to the first amendment that we might as well not even concern ourselves with government reform any longer.
Do not put weapons into the hands of your friends that you would not want wielded by your enemies. -
Re:The term paid is key
If someone is working under a grant from the Mozilla Foundation, does that invalidate their paper on the relative security of IE vs. Firefox?
Good god, on Slashdot of all places I'd have thought people would evaluate arguments on their own merits, not on the motivations of the author, which are meaningless.
Some authoritative writer can be paid by the DNC to put out an article about the urgency of global warming, and some authoritative writer can be paid by the RNC to put out an article on the economic crisis that will follow if some new tax is enacted. The fact that they were paid doesn't make their arguments any different from those of the independent professor at the university. If they fudged the data, they fudged the data, and the proof of that is in what they wrote, not in their bank statement.
If this legislation conflicts with the right to anonymous political speech, who wins?
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/ -
Re:We just want to see zee papers
... The first thing you do when seizing control of a country is quietly sieze control of the media without the populace knowing. But if the media are the people the people that becomes alot more difficult, especially if they can blog with relative anonmity using a few tools...
Yeah, but doesn't AT&T reroute all Internet traffic through the NSA anyway? Of course if AT&T does it, I'm sure all the other big ISPs do, too. They wouldn't want to lose out on big government jobs! -
Re:On a scale of 1 to 10...
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Go to the Finnish Composer's Copyright Society
The Finnish Composer's Copyright Society, Teosto http://www.teosto.fi/teosto/webpages.nsf should be able to help. This should be what they do. The Electronic Frontier Foundation might be able to help too http://www.eff.org/about/ You can and should get something done about this. There are people out there who will help (i.e. lawyers and organisations).
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It's bad but not quite as bad as implied
I've read the act and it applies to music acquired under a statutory license (SoundExchange license) ie music from the major labels.
If you use your own music or indy music you're not required to use DRM. I guess the question is whether or not webcasters using services like Live365 and Shoutcast will get a choice or if DRM will be added regardless of content. The Shoutcast protocol is fairly well known so I suspect even if the offical webcasting software requires DRM, third party software will still allow open streams.
The EFF still has their analysis of the bill up from it's previous unsuccessful introduction at
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004587.php -
Re:Completely ludicrous
Actually they've been trying to implement an uncrackable watermarking system which would flag restricted music, then they wanted to mandate all recording devices and computers everywere detect these watermarks (at an increased expense in terms of cost for hardware and/or processing time--scanning all audio data is not free). It was called SMDI. Didn't really fly: first off, Professor Ed Felton showed he could easily crack the watermarking. Second, the bills which would've enforced things like the mandatory watermark detection (such as the SSSCA --info at EFF) caused a huge uproar. I think the MPAA also wanted it for video too.
I mean those systems could cause major problems. Just imagine if you are filming your best friend's wedding, some joker walks by with his jukebox--maybe not even audiable enough for you to notice, but loud enough for the system to detect it, and the watermarking causes your camera to stop recording. Let's say you lose the "I do" part. That could really happen.
From what I understand, banks and national treasuries have convinced some software and hardware developers to detect watermarking for photographic things. Such as Photoshop and printer drivers and such. Some printers also create a fingerprint so supposedly the secret service (or whatever agency controls currency fraud in your country) can trace the printed paper back to who printed it.
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Re:My rights : Your rights
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Re:For those of us not in Canada...
I know it's usually bad form to reply to yourself, but I wanted to post the message I sent.
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Although I am not a Canadian citizen, I ask that you consider the global implications of a change that your government is planning to make to Canadian copyright law. I am a professional writer, and citizen of the globe who is concerned about the planned extension of Canadian copyright into what is called "Digital Rights Management." Although I make my living producing work which is protected under copyright law, I am heavily opposed to DRM and the restriction of "Fair Use".
DRM has been shown to stifle innovation and promote monopolistic behavior, effectively locking consumers into vendor choices that may not be in their best interests. For more information, please see:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/
Here in the United States (and elsewhere), many artists, software developers, and other creative rights holders have been fighting our own government's attempts to pass similar legislation. I sincerely believe that no country will make any useful, fair, copyright law reforms until our respective governments understand that we can no longer afford to be myopically nationalistic. We live in a Global, Digital Age, and we need to understand that when we pass legislation that could effectively isolate our citizens from the World Economy.
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BTW, I also know that "global citizen" sounds silly. If anyone knows of a more elegant term, please let me know. -
Ehm!? Have you bought into their viral marketing?
"On a panel a few weeks ago, I asked the head lawyer for Apple's iTunes Music Store whether Apple would, if it could, drop the FairPlay DRM from tracks purchased at the Music Store. He said "no." I was puzzled, because I assumed that the DRM obligation was imposed by the major labels on a grudging Apple."
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001557.php -
Brothers and sisters, we must spread the gospel!
there seems to be an agreement between Sony and Microsoft that HDCP protection won't actually be required by Blu-Ray discs until at least 2010, maybe even 2012
So basically what this means is that we have three (or at most six) years to get Joe Sixpack pissed off about this. All of us Slashdotters love to bitch and moan about the MAFIAA, but if we got off our collective asses and started making noise about this, we could probably prevent them from ever enabling this.
As for how to do this, well there's no one right way. Defective by Design is obviously relevant, as is the EFF. I think it would be effective for people to develop a little presentation that could be given to people, so those of us who belong to e.g. civic organizations could give a little talk to people about this stuff. Writing your elected officials is probably a good idea as well. -
So...
Why not just use Google Translate to "translate" Youtube?
Quite simple, really. Not sure if Youtube's videos will work (which would make it a useless workaround), but translating from (for example) Chinese Simplified to English will usually ensure you get non-altered text (it being a different character set the engine's looking for and all. You could also technically use one of the following IP's if it's just blocked at the domain level (Youtube's linking seems to be all relative):
208.65.153.242
208.65.153.245
208.65.153.251
208.65.153.253
208.65.153.241
And then there's the obligatory mention of Tor.
Yes, I also realize that my first method is cruelly aligned to anglophones. -
Re: "unreasonable"
We couldn't say that it was because a UAE Intelligence officer told us, because that would compromise his operation.
I call bullshit. That's exactly what the FISA special courts are for.
This idea that "we can't tell the courts because that would compromise our operations" is no more than "we don't want anyone to be supervising us".
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Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraftThe most competitive and successful beings on Earth are bacteria and insects. "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value,", as some wag once put it.
Perhaps a better choice of words would be "processor speed" rather than "intelligence", although one would also have to factor in algorithm efficiency. Bacteria, for instance, use what we would term as a P2P distributed genetic algorithm. Humans use the biological equivalent of large parallel supercomputers running advanced weighted neural network.
It's difficult to estimate processing ability, but since we're dealing with parallel systems, the processing speed is likely proportional to the storage size. Each human being has around 1e12 synapses. They're analogue, but lets assume that their effects can be approximated by a 1 kilobyte number. That would give us a memory size of 1e15 bytes, or 1 petabyte. There are around 6 billion humans, so that's a collective memory storage capability of 6e24 bytes.
On the other hand, there's around 5e30 bacteria (according to Google), and whilst they lack large processing systems like our brains, they will swap DNA the same way programmers pass around code (there's a fascinating article by Bruce Sterling on the subject of bacteria and how robust they are). So in terms of computational ability, it seems as if bacteria have more collective CPU power than humanity does.
I haven't looked into insect adaptation much, but it wouldn't surprise me if their collective CPU power exceeds humanity's as well.
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Re:Nobody knows/cares
There is a lot of money AGAINT net nuetrality and not enough for it.
I agree 100%. I have already made my 2007 donation to EFF. Have you?