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It's really the war between PC users, pirates and developers that has lead things to where they are now.

No it's because the internet allowed companies to steal PC game software, before the internet existed they couldn't literally steal the game or keep part of the software hostage on their computers, they had to give you the entire thing you paid for. The internet radically undermined customer power and gave it all to companies so they could just keep the fucking software. So no it's total theft.

I suggest you read what lawrence lessig has written about the corporate agenda of the copyright mafia.

http://www.lessig.org/new-blog...

The problem is that third parties do not represent the majority of the country and likely a minority of any given area.

That's not the problem. Neither do the other two parties and they do fine.

I used to think the problem with third parties was that they do not run for local offices and only focus on national offices unlesd it is a plant designed to siphon votes from a particular canditate in order to let a less desirable one get elected. But after looking around a bit, i have concluded that the honest reality is that third parties simply do not have much support. I tend to disagree with less on issues from a candidate with a big party than i disagree with on with the closest counter part third party. Many people feel the same at least on a local level and a third party is a waste on the national level because they will have to either caucus with a big party or fight both of them and end up being ignored.

Third parties simply are not big tent parties and are likely better off running as one of the big parties through the primary process. An example of this is the tea parties (yes, there are more than one).

Now if you disagree, before replying, think about how the tea party republicans have been treated and explain how any third party trying to do something without even partial support of a big party would do any better.

The problem is that you're (and the rest of us) voting for the two candidates that the "Lesters" have picked for us to vote on. The game is rigged.

I was gonna ask why Republic, Lost wasn't available under a Creative Commons license but I see that it has in fact become available under a CC license since the last time I checked a while ago. I suggest all US citizens go to http://republic.lessig.org/ and start reading.

We are living in Lesterland.

http://lesterland.lessig.org/

Important fact, JSTOR a private company:

"Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured 'appropriate' out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. " (emphasis mine)-- Prosecutor as Bully, Lessig

I'm actually sad if JSTOR gets tarred by anything here. They may not have agreed with Swartz's actions, but they didn't want him sent to prison over them, and they were the supposed harmed party.

MIT, however, decided to betray its core principles, and they had status as a "secondary victim."

"MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the 'criminal' who we who loved him knew as Aaron."-- Prosecutor as Bully, Lessig

The irony here is that people who know about "the MIT way" would not have expected this out of MIT, but might have expected it out of JSTOR, However, JSTOR deserves a complete pardon here. They refused to play ball with a politically ambitious Fed, and basically should have no blame in any of this.

Meanwhile, MIT should have offered to turn this over to the Federal Prosecutors:

MIT Hall of Hacks.

Why settle for one hacker when you can capture an entire gang? So much evidence, I'm surprised Carmen Ortiz wasn't drooling. I mean, someone stole a police car and placed on the Great Dome! Surely she could have gotten someone prison time for that. Probably every student at MIT has done something that Ortiz and Heymann would find "Juicy," so really they should go hog wild!

[snark]Frankly, shouldn't administrators who allow such a museum, a celebration of criminality and, even worse, disrespect for the rules do some time themselves? They are misleading their students into a life of crime![/end snark]

Frankly, if I were a student at MIT with any talent, I'd be looking to transfer. MIT is over.

Important fact, JSTOR a private company:

"Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured 'appropriate' out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. " (emphasis mine)-- Prosecutor as Bully, Lessig

I'm actually sad if JSTOR gets tarred by anything here. They may not have agreed with Swartz's actions, but they didn't want him sent to prison over them, and they were the supposed harmed party.

MIT, however, decided to betray its core principles, and they had status as a "secondary victim."

"MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the 'criminal' who we who loved him knew as Aaron."-- Prosecutor as Bully, Lessig

The irony here is that people who know about "the MIT way" would not have expected this out of MIT, but might have expected it out of JSTOR, However, JSTOR deserves a complete pardon here. They refused to play ball with a politically ambitious Fed, and basically should have no blame in any of this.

Meanwhile, MIT should have offered to turn this over to the Federal Prosecutors:

MIT Hall of Hacks.

Why settle for one hacker when you can capture an entire gang? So much evidence, I'm surprised Carmen Ortiz wasn't drooling. I mean, someone stole a police car and placed on the Great Dome! Surely she could have gotten someone prison time for that. Probably every student at MIT has done something that Ortiz and Heymann would find "Juicy," so really they should go hog wild!

[snark]Frankly, shouldn't administrators who allow such a museum, a celebration of criminality and, even worse, disrespect for the rules do some time themselves? They are misleading their students into a life of crime![/end snark]

Frankly, if I were a student at MIT with any talent, I'd be looking to transfer. MIT is over.

I think you have value, transactions, and blocks a bit confused.

A typical transaction redeems the output of one or more prior transactions as its inputs, and generates one or more new outputs. Each output specifies the conditions required to redeem it; usually this condition is to sign the new transaction with a specific key. Any excess value from the inputs that is not directed to an output is deemed a transaction fee. Executing a transaction consists simply of specifying inputs and outputs, signing it, and sending it out to some Bitcoin peers.

A block is a data structure that contains a header including a proof of work, a reference to the preceding block it was based on (forming the block chain), a special "coinbase" transaction specified by the miner that disburses collected transaction fees and subsidies, and a collection of whatever additional transactions the miner sees fit to include in the block (subject to a few limits intended to prevent denial of service attacks).

While I agree that economic majority is a rather nebulous concept, it ultimately boils down to whether nodes agree on the validity of a transaction, and in this context, as Lessig so eloquently put it, code is law.

Talk to Lawrence Lessig, it's his next big project: http://wiki.lessig.org/index.php/Corruption

They did that already once in Denmark. They took over copyright on Tarzan and then forced a pre-existing character, Gummi-Tarzan, to change names to "Gummi-T"

Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard law professor. He is bright, articulate, technically savvy and an excellent speaker/presenter.

For those unfamiliar with him, he spent a decade focused on Law and Technology, especially related to copyright. More recently, he has shifted his focus to Institutional and Political Corruption.

He has taken a break from his blogging site, but its still a good read and his books are listed here:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/

His contact information is:
http://republic.lessig.org/contact.php/

Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard law professor. He is bright, articulate, technically savvy and an excellent speaker/presenter.

For those unfamiliar with him, he spent a decade focused on Law and Technology, especially related to copyright. More recently, he has shifted his focus to Institutional and Political Corruption.

He has taken a break from his blogging site, but its still a good read and his books are listed here:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/

His contact information is:
http://republic.lessig.org/contact.php/

so what? Whether it's good or bad, it's still copyright infringement. The most this study could argue for is to encourage copyright holders to ignore piracy. It does not provide an excuse, or even a rationalization, for piracy. If you're looking for an ethical out, this isn't it.

It says nothing about the real problem with copyright, the continual extension of terms. Disney got rich copying from Mark Twain, Bros. Grimm, Aesop, etc., yet wants to prevent others from doing the exact same to them. THAT is the problem. As Lawrence Lessig has (unsuccessfully) argued, copyright exists to encourage the creation of works ("promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts," in the US), and extending copyright on existing works does nothing to achieve that.

I have no problem with laws protecting IP for limited periods (relative to the useful lifetime - longer for philosophical works, shorter for technological ones), but I do have a problem with keeping those works from the public domain indefinitely.

A vital part of human culture is that every generation of people can build upon the innovations of the previous. This is how we got from living in caves to reaching for the stars. Greedy corporations are systematically destroying this mechanism for their own personal gain. This must be stopped or our civilization will have no future. Lawrence Lessig dat a much better job at explaining this than I do: http://remix.lessig.org/

Random late thoughts:

Society as a whole gains from having more people getting access to quality education, arts, tools, communication, etc...

The unlimited copies now made possible through the internet do change the game just like print did and allows us to elevate the society to a higher level.

I do want to see artists making a living if that helps them continuing to deliver great things for society.

But the gain from having culture cheaply available to all far out weights the lost to the artist.

I do think the network effect is also very much downplayed in this linked argument and that a lot of people I listen to and pay to see their concert would never be on my list if it wasn't for copying and the internet.

What it seems to be doing is spreading the wealth to smaller players, not destroying it, just like it was in the 50s before the big majors killed diversity.

I also don't think there is ever a direct link between artists being paid and the quality of their work.

Artists who are really passionate will still manage to produce their art form no matter what.

I'm hoping we'll find a way to encourage new talent, pay a decent wage to those well know who have contributed something worthwhile and still allow free copying of everything to everyone for the greater good...

I'd also suggest those books: Remix, Piracy and The Wealth of Networks.

Many of the earliest examples of corruption were blatant enough that they practically self-announced. Lawrence Lessig has spoken/written extensively on the issue - check out his videos at http://lessig.org/

It is correct to say that Warner issued the previous takedown notice, but it's not correct to say that they actually owned the copyright to any of the songs in the video. Warner's takedown notice was due to the Muppet version of the song "Mahna Mahna" which was published on a Muppet's Greatest Hits album released by Rhino (a Warner Subsidiary). However, Warner does not own the copyright to that recording of that song. They were just licensed to release it. The copyright is owned by the copyright holder of the original recording of that song, which is currently Disney by way of the Muppet's Holding Company. Warner almost certainly accidentally added this CD to their song database without checking the actual copyright status of it.

I had been hoping to see something come out of that, but I never saw any updates from Lessig about what happened in the long term (counter-notice or whatnot). If you look at his blog, the last update was here which reveals that it was "Mahna Mahna" which lead to the takedown notice. Given that the song was only licensed by Warner and not owned by them, I don't understand how they could issue a takedown notice without committing perjury.

http://www.amazon.com/Remix-Making-Commerce-Thrive-Economy/dp/B0029LHWFY/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1#reader_B0029LHWFY

Click on copyright.

http://remix.lessig.org/remix.php

Creative Commons Version

The book will be available under a Creative Commons license from Bloomsbury Academic. Stay tuned for launch.

As I said before when it comes to him making money those evil copyright laws he so dislikes are perfectly acceptable.

Agreed - and it's the same in publishing.

The question of reputation is central in academic publishing. The same book will be at an advantage if it is published by Macmillan rather than brought out by an unknown press, or published online. The large and respected presses carry an automatic sense that their books are likely to be well-written and worth reading. Once an author has a good reputation, maybe they can start publishing under Creative Commons licences or the like. Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain have both done this - but only after spending a long time building up their reputations and writing a lot of other books under - presumably - the usual contracts. And their books come out with "big-name" publishers like Penguin and Yale alongside being freely available to download.

You just can't ignore the cachet of the publisher when it comes to books. It's one of the factors that academics use to evaluate whether a new book is worth their time or not, and that in itself often reflects the fact that the good publishers provide invaluable services in reviewing and editing.

I'm not defending Macmillan's move, btw - just pointing out that it's not quite as easy as it might seem to write the publishers out of the process.

Rhetoric was not just part of Obama's campaign. Rhetoric was his entire campaign...

Really? All rhetoric? No policy? Not, say, on Net Neutrality?

Not to say that some of the rhetoric wasn't impressive on its own. The speech on race that he gave in response to the Reverend Wright controversy showed some pretty strong insights.

It's not because people knew or particularly cared about his policy plans

Maybe you didn't. Personally, I got on board precisely because I thought some policy positions like the one above demonstrated some insights I didn't see elsewhere, or at least that he spent some time talking to the right people.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that a lot if not most people vote on rhetoric and symbolism -- what a candidate means to them, how it fits into whatever political narrative they've internalized. That's almost certainly true no matter which election or candidates we're talking about. But that's a really different statement from yours, which appears to be that there was no policy substance to the Obama campaign, and I don't think that statement is particularly defensible.

There is no mention whatsoever of fair use.

Well, there actually is a mention of fair use in the parent guide but all it does is refer you to a better site. The only other mention is -- hilariously enough -- in their own terms of use about using the materials on the site under fair use.

But that's beside your point, let's play a game. Pretend you have the floor in front of primary school students and you want to explain fair use. What do you say?

I'm not saying they shouldn't mention it. Because it's not well defined. Fair use is, in my opinion, an abomination in that it's a "law" that's not defined in anyway. And what's even better is when I try to cite the safe harbor laws or portion limits on Slashdot, I'm ridiculed over and over (not that I've ever practiced law but as a citizen it's the most I can find) despite my analysis being correct! So with my masters degree in computer science, I am clearly unable to pin down what precisely constitutes fair use and what does not. I imagine that were I charged with uploading and editing fair use samples of every song off of David Bowie's Hunky Dory album (which I did) that my innocence would depend entirely on how much money I have for a lawyer ... not the law. Because "fair use" is ambiguous and the so called "doctrine" is downright laughable. If you don't agree with me, go ahead and post a response arguing for or against my above Wikipedia edits being "fair use." I'll gladly play the devil's advocate if someone doesn't beat me to it.

So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children? Or how you plan to "win their hearts and souls" with the fair use doctrine?

What I want for Christmas: someone in my government to man up and bring any amount of clarity to copyright law, fair use and (while we're at it) patents. Something shouldn't be unclear until you've already been sued for doing it. That's how you find yourself in situations like the RIAA suing thousands of people and watching court case after court case resolve to millions in damages awarded from an average citizen to a huge conglomerate of lawyers and labels.

You're missing my point (and simply regurgitating what PopeRatzo wrote.)

The point isn't that some people will do it for free, the point is that we're stuck in a place where it doesn't matter, because everybody thinks copying anything is illegal.

Lawrence Lessig says that most lawyers aren't sure if it's even possible to put something in the public domain anymore. And if it's not in the public domain, then someone owns it - and if someone owns it, it's not part of our culture.

Also the bit where your data is locked into whatever file formats the cloud provider has and you will have difficulty maintaining your own back ups and migrating to a different provider if the current one is inadequate or fails.

Yup. It's just another variation of a walled garden.

While not about software-as-a-service, JCDL 09 had an insightful paper "What Happens When Facebook is Gone?", about the lack of control, specifically archivability, of the content on facebook. The key quote:

Archiving oneâ(TM)s personal Facebook data is also not currently possible. Facebook does not provide a mechanism to locally archive oneâ(TM)s profile, activities, or messages or to export oneâ(TM)s profile to other social networking sites. This is despite efforts like the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web [23], a manifesto espousing the opinion that all data from social networks should be transportable, and public statements made by Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) in 2007 supporting that opinion [21].

Let us all remember Lawrence Lessig's observation "code is law."

Wasn't there a "sampling" case where it was ruled that using a certain percentage of a song (a few seconds IIRC) were not considered to be copyright infringement?

No, but there was a famous sampling case in which the judge ruled explicitly "Get a license or do not sample." The issue of sampling hasn't seen any Supreme Court action, but at the moment this is the highest ruling on the matter, and it explicitly outlaws any and all digital sampling.

Here's the actual opinion, it's actually pretty readable.

While this seems like an opinion that runs counter to many tenants slashdotters hold dear, I think we should at least consider it. By any measure, Posner is one of the most impressive judges on the bench today-- and in my opinion, one of the only judges that really 'get' all the issues surrounding copyright and digital things in general.

I'm hardly alone-- Lessig has noted that there isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person, and Posner was Obama's first choice when asked which sitting judge he would most like to argue before.

So you may disagree with this opinion-- I'm leaning that way too-- but it's worth fair consideration. Go and actually read his post before passing judgment. When he was guest blogging about copyright law at Lessig.org back in 2004, he noted, "I am distrustful of people who think they have confident answers to such questions." That goes for both sides in this debate.

Sort of a hack job by techcrunch actually.

Great comments - note that the blog in question is written by Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics (also at Chicago) as well as Judge Posner.

While people have focused on a single comment in the blog; they miss the overall argument - how do you make it economically attractive for people to create independent news gathering organizations, so that only a few large corporations have control over what is presented as news. The comment in questions poses - is there a way to ensure they are actually compensated for their work; and suggested a change in copyright law as away to do that. While many may not agree with such a change; the bloggers are simply illustrating one way to make running a news organization financially viable, not saying that is the only, best or preferred solution.

While this seems like an opinion that runs counter to many tenants slashdotters hold dear, I think we should at least consider it. By any measure, Posner is one of the most impressive judges on the bench today-- and in my opinion, one of the only judges that really 'get' all the issues surrounding copyright and digital things in general.

I'm hardly alone-- Lessig has noted that there isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person, and Posner was Obama's first choice when asked which sitting judge he would most like to argue before.

So you may disagree with this opinion-- I'm leaning that way too-- but it's worth fair consideration. Go and actually read his post before passing judgment. When he was guest blogging about copyright law at Lessig.org back in 2004, he noted, "I am distrustful of people who think they have confident answers to such questions." That goes for both sides in this debate.

Sort of a hack job by techcrunch actually.

Great comments - note that the blog in question is written by Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics (also at Chicago) as well as Judge Posner.

While people have focused on a single comment in the blog; they miss the overall argument - how do you make it economically attractive for people to create independent news gathering organizations, so that only a few large corporations have control over what is presented as news. The comment in questions poses - is there a way to ensure they are actually compensated for their work; and suggested a change in copyright law as away to do that. While many may not agree with such a change; the bloggers are simply illustrating one way to make running a news organization financially viable, not saying that is the only, best or preferred solution.

While this seems like an opinion that runs counter to many tenants slashdotters hold dear, I think we should at least consider it. By any measure, Posner is one of the most impressive judges on the bench today-- and in my opinion, one of the only judges that really 'get' all the issues surrounding copyright and digital things in general.

I'm hardly alone-- Lessig has noted that there isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person, and Posner was Obama's first choice when asked which sitting judge he would most like to argue before.

So you may disagree with this opinion-- I'm leaning that way too-- but it's worth fair consideration. Go and actually read his post before passing judgment. When he was guest blogging about copyright law at Lessig.org back in 2004, he noted, "I am distrustful of people who think they have confident answers to such questions." That goes for both sides in this debate.

Sort of a hack job by techcrunch actually.

While this seems like an opinion that runs counter to many tenants slashdotters hold dear, I think we should at least consider it. By any measure, Posner is one of the most impressive judges on the bench today-- and in my opinion, one of the only judges that really 'get' all the issues surrounding copyright and digital things in general.

I'm hardly alone-- Lessig has noted that there isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person, and Posner was Obama's first choice when asked which sitting judge he would most like to argue before.

So you may disagree with this opinion-- I'm leaning that way too-- but it's worth fair consideration. Go and actually read his post before passing judgment. When he was guest blogging about copyright law at Lessig.org back in 2004, he noted, "I am distrustful of people who think they have confident answers to such questions." That goes for both sides in this debate.

Sort of a hack job by techcrunch actually.

Larry Lessig, also known as the guy who defended Obama's vote on the FISA bill, saying, among other things:

He voted to strip immunity from the FISA compromise. He has promised to repeal the immunity as president. His vote for the FISA compromise is thus not a vote for immunity. It is a vote that reflects the judgment that securing the amendments to FISA was more important than denying immunity to telcos. Whether you agree with that judgment or not, we should at least recognize (hysteria notwithstanding) what kind of judgment it was. The amendments to FISA were good. Getting a regime that requires the executive to obey the law is important. Whether it is more important than telco immunity is a question upon which sensible people might well differ.

(emphasis mine)

I'm afraid I lost a lot of the (considerable) respect I had for the guy up until that point.

The question now is: Will Lessig be stupid enough to support Messiah Obama again in 4 years. Only time will tell.

Lessig is not a one-issue voter, despite his strong positions on copyright. His reasons for supporting Obama in 2008 are available to read (and there's a video around, too), and they were not limited to copyright issues. They weren't even principally about copyright.

Lessig was most interested in Obama's foreign policy and how much better he thought it would be than the foreign policy of the people who brought us the Iraq War. Remember, Lessig is somewhat libertarian in his leanings, and a libertarian foreign policy would never have allowed for the Iraq War. The professor also liked Obama's pledge not to take money from corporate lobbyists, which is a major issue that Lessig seems to care about almost as much as copyright reform, if not more. Bad, one-sided policies that favor major industries are more or less guaranteed when those industries are allowed to line the pockets of the legislature, so one could argue that government reform is a precondition of good copyright policy. (Government reform is the goal of his Change Congress movement, which sadly I haven't heard much about lately.)

So even with a poor, one-sided copyright policy (and we certainly seem to be headed toward more of the same with Obama), it's the non-copyright shifts away from Bush era policies that seem to weigh with him more. If Lessig's positions are unchanged in 2012, and if the Republicans are unchanged in 2012, I'd be very surprised if Lessig backed anyone else but Obama.

I'm pretty sure there are incredibly talented lawyers out there who haven't made a living off of suing their customers, lying in court, using fraudulent evidence discovery mechanisms and bad evidence. Like, I don't know, some justice clerk or even a slashdot poster.

I've got to admit, this is one of two areas where Obama is worse than Bush. While he hasn't proven he can out-Bush Bush in this particular area (see warrantless wiretaps and Internet security), he's certainly not deviating either from a course of action that will take him there.

Just listen to those demos, they're freaking amazing (not that I liked any of them, but just looking at the queues and matchings of everything, this is impressive beyond words). Specifically (and unsurprisingly) the rap song at the end was the clear winner, sounding eerily well-matched to the vocals. (Disclaimer: perhaps I'm impressed because I'm intimately familiar with the first two while I don't know the third song's original intended sound, but I do expect something with less acoustic range/complexity is easier to adapt.)

This gets negative vibe because it comes from our favorite enemy (at least while we transfer our hate to somebody more worthy of it these days), but I think this could be the start of something great, even if it means we have to listen to some crap on the way. Isn't that the big benefit to Creative Commons? Isn't that why we eat up Lessig's remix argument?

This is a good first step. Sad that it's not Free Software, as the next step is incorporating remix and a larger (user-submitted) library of base music to the system (see the intro video on the microsoft.com article link), and perhaps the step after that is in getting the system to automatically figure out things like tempo and an optimized list of suggested music stylings.

To Microsoft (if you're actually reading this) or perhaps otherwise those who wish to re-implement the idea: even as a closed-source solution, if you create a system that would allow (advanced) users to create their own base music, you will start a music revolution.

http://lessig.org/

Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a "shift" or "soften[ing]" of earlier views. That's because there isn't any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had -- whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.

According to this version of blip.tv's wikipedia article, Lessig has praised blip.tv for already meeting some of these standards.

In general, blip.tv is an open platform. It offers direct download links for all videos it hosts, including videos that it has transcoded (i.e. Flash videos). This led Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig to call blip.tv a "true sharing site" (along with Flickr and Eyespot, among others) in contrast to YouTube's "fake sharing site" because blip.tv "explicitly offers links to download various formats of the videos it shares." [1]

The actual source is an article on Lessig's blog.

*Is* the Office of the President Elect a part of the federal government, though? AFAIK it's being run by the Obama-Biden Transition Project, which certainly isn't a federal office, regardless of it being hosted on a .gov domain.

That said, Obama et al have responded to Lessig just a little while ago in making Change.gov licensed under CC-BY, rather than just a straight copyright. (You can also view the Change.gov copyright policy page.) Once again, I'm surprised and kinda shocked by how quickly they will respond to people. It's almost like they're responsible to the people or something.

And that would raise the demand for expensive, uncustomizable software how?

You've saved me from having to rebut that, great comment.

You might like Lessig's review of Keen's book.
http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html

The letter is available at http://lessig.org/blog/YouTube%20copyright%20letter%2010.13.08.pdf.

See this post, defending Obama's vote for telecom immunity: http://www.lessig.org/blog/2008/07/the_immunity_hysteria.html Furthermore, he supports enforcement of copyright law (always has, although is concerned about its reach and absolutely against its retroactive extension).

They could be street performers for all we know. The information we have at the moment is too vague.

No it isn't. You're just getting desperate in defending your predetermined idea. You wouldn't accept it from McCain that he took money from RIAA and other big contents (who also, btw, like net neutrality), so why do you accept if from Obama.

Regardless Google has a lot to gain from net neutrality since that would be the first site to redirect if you were an ISP. The revenue from default search page would be HUGE. They have been behind Obama for

Google is 10x worse than microsoft in the monopolizing department, but, they say "don't worry we mean well".

They also push censorship on the Chinese, and don't take principled stances (e.g. their chinese search results don't at least specify that the results are censored).

I understand google has many people soothed for the moment, but I think you and I both know in our hearts that google won't be our friend for very much longer.

Google "don't worry we 'do no evil'" is doing lots, lots of 'evil' (e.g. monopolizing, privacy invasions, censorship, ...), but they somehow have people soothed for the moment. I can see why they'd support Obama. Neither will be "our friend" for very long.

About your anti-child-molesting laws. To be completely honest : I wouldn't care if they turned my whole house upside down to save 1 child.

Besides I know the law and if they intrude under the guise of this law they can collect evidence, but they can't use it for any unrelated charge. If they do try to use it for an unrelated charge, then I go free in that case, and the law that you can't be sued twice for the same crime kicks in, effectively clearing me of any crimes that they might have discovered during that search.

For the McCain anti-copyright laws, read this

That's true.

Barrack has my support on this issue based on him having the support of Larry Lessig. I believe he'll do the right thing as it comes to what my views are.

http://lessig.org/blog/2007/11/4barack.html

While McCain has Lawrence Lessig's blessing

So does Obama. http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/11/4barack.html
Additionally Obama has long supported Net Neutrality.

We can't have a situation in which the corporate duopoly dictates the future of the internet and that's why I'm supporting what is called net neutrality.

That is a quote from Obama's podcast he was doing while he was a senator. http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060608-network_neutral/

Well Obama's a lawyer that took the RIAA's "free money" while senator.

He's a lawyer people. The RIAA regularly gives him a couple grand "for the kids". Let's not kid ourselves on his real positions. He's an enemy of fair use, an enemy of free speech on the web.

While McCain has Lawrence Lessig's blessing and has worked to enhance fair use in the past according to Lessig, he's probably not a candidate that will make fair use a government priority either. But he may try and improve the situation a little.

Heh given Lessig's site, it's no wonder only Obama gets paid by the RIAA.

*sigh* I liked Obama for his "get out of Iraq" talk. He backtracked all those statements, now wants to remain there and spend even more than McCain (does he think that's a popular position ?). For every single other point I like McCain. *sigh*

I'm gonna go McCain. Yes he's Bush's successor, but at least he doesn't take "free money" from the devil. And it's becoming increasingly unclear on just what point Obama differs from Bush.

That's specious reasoning. You only need to wire the places where people live, and Alaska and the Rocky Mountain states are comparatively empty. Let's take Wyoming, the least populous state, has 522,830 people in 253,348 sq km, at an ave density of 2.08 per sq km. Compare this to the city of San Francsico that is not only more populous (764,976 residents), and physically smaller at 600.7 sq km (only 121 of which are actually land), gives you a population density of 6,324.4 / sq km. In the SF Metro area is 7,264,887 people in 9,128.2 sq km at an ave density of 795.9 persons / sq km. Yet, SF doesn't have the pipes that the rest of the modern world has.

The United States is falling behind infrastructure because the companies with the municipal monopolies don't want to invest in it. Instead, they'd rather take the short view where infrastructure improvements are viewed as simply a loss rather than an investment.

We started the millennium fifth in the world in broadband penetration, and now we're 22nd. What happened? Well competition , actually decreased, and with less competition there's less incentive to improve.

Japan, and hell, Sweden not only have faster pipes, but they actually cost less too. Let me repeat that. Americans are paying more for less. Now why? Well at least in Japan, the monolopies like NTT, have to resell their pipes to competitors at wholesale prices. Luckily for Americans, this isn't the case.

So in conclusion: we suck.

I lost all respect for Lessig when he described the opposition to telecom immunity as "leftist hysteria". It's like if Richard Stallman suddenly called opposition to DRM the work of "Linux zealots".

In other words, you're fucked either way. The DMCA is on both sides' agenda.

I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying, but it does bear mentioning that Lawrence Lessig endorses someone whom he thinks is worth supporting precisely because of his stance on technology issues:

read carefully what Net Neutrality for Obama is. There's no blanket ban on offering better service; the ban is on contracts that offer different terms to different providers for that better service. And there's no promise to police what's under the technical hood (beyond the commitment already articulated by Chairman Powell): This is a sensible and valuable Net Neutrality policy that shows a team keen to get it right -- which includes making it enforceable in an efficient way, even if not as radical as some possible friends would like.

Second, on the important: As you'll read, Obama has committed himself to a technology policy for government that could radically change how government works. The small part of that is simple efficiency -- the appointment with broad power of a CTO for the government, making the insanely backwards technology systems of government actually work.

But the big part of this is a commitment to making data about the government (as well as government data) publicly available in standard machine readable formats. The promise isn't just the naive promise that government websites will work better and reveal more. It is the really powerful promise to feed the data necessary for the Sunlights and the Maplights of the world to make government work better. Atomize (or RSS-ify) government data (votes, contributions, Members of Congress's calendars) and you enable the rest of us to make clear the economy of influence that is Washington.

I'm not trying to Appeal to Authority here. What I'm saying is that if you perform a bit of analysis, you will find that not all presidential candidates are created equal where technology matters are concerned.

But here's the part where I agree with you: The two major parties are the ones who craft the law, and there's no guarantee that they'll agree with their president on issues such as these.

Jack Balkin's Blog: http://balkin.blogspot.com/
Read a while, it will do you some good.

Larry Lessig's blog: http://www.lessig.org/blog/

Now - go read.

I've read submissions from Adobe that they don't support patents... This was a few years ago, so they may possibly have since changed their minds.

Yep, mind-changing. They opposed software patents back in 1994 or so. However, their current CEO, John Warnock, supports software patents (and has actually lobbied Congress in favor thereof.)

Besides, this is from the About screen of Photoshop CS3:

"Protected by U.S. Patents 4,667,247; 4,837,613; 5,050,103; 5,146,346; 5,185,818; 5,200,740; 5,233,336; 5,237,313; 5,255,357; 5,546,528; 5,625,711; 5,634,064; 5,729,637; 5,737,599; 5,754,873; 5,781,785; 5,808,623; 5,819,278; 5,819,301; 5,832,530; 5,832,531; 5,835,634; 5,860,074; 5,870,091; 5,905,506; 5,929,866; 5,930,813; 5,943,063; 5,974,198; 5,995,086; 5,999,649; 6,023,264; 6,025,850; 6,028,583; 6,049,339; 6,072,502; 6,073,148; 6,084,684; 6,100,904; 6,185,342; 6,205,549; 6,208,351; 6,269,196; 6,275,587; 6,289,364; 6,298,157; 6,313,824; 6,324,555; 6,337,925; 6,357,038; 6,385,350; 6,396,959; 6,408,092; 6,411,730; 6,411,742; 6,415,278; 6,421,460; 6,434,269; 6,456,297; 6,466,210; 6,507,848; 6,515,675; 6,563,502; 6,563,509; 6,587,592; 6,604,105; 6,606,166; 6,639,593; 6,701,023; 6,711,557; 6,720,997; 6,721,446; 6,728,398; 6,748,111; 6,754,382; 6,771,816; 6,775,821; 6,785,866; 6,791,573; 6,803,923; 6,825,852; 6,842,786; 6,844,882; 6,857,105; 6,862,102; 6,865,301; 6,894,704; 6,934,909; 6,970,169; 6,983,074; 7,002,597; 7,006,107; 7,006,707; 7,042,467; 7,071,948; 7,088,375; patents pending"

That seems like a healthy amount of support, don't you agree? ;)

- David Stein

Here is the actual link .

With the reasonable comes the unreasonable, while you'd want to restrict your employees from advocating killing you the next guy wants to prevent his employees from supporting the party he doesn't vote for.

1) We have secret ballots.

2) If your political convictions are not worth a job, on what basis do you claim that they are worth listening to?

It has always been understood that financial dependence compromises you. The basic nature of employment is subservience. Check out Lawrence Lessig's video "Corruption - The Alpha Version". About 20 minutes in he starts talking about independence. The solution in my view is not to attempt to change the nature of employment, which won't work. If you let an employer be your sole source of income, you are dependent on them, and you are going to feel that bite you at some time (unless you've become so used to it that you don't notice).

My advice: if you need a job right now, start contracting or something in your own time, or at least save enough for a time of unemployment and have your resume and contacts up to date. If you aren't prepared to walk out of that job, you are dependent and you'd better understand that. You can either accept that as a permanent state, or you can do something about it, but crying foul or trying to get laws to protect you job isn't the thing to do. I've worked in jobs where they can't fire someone they want to get rid of, and you'd be better off leaving.

I'm saying that Lessig and Obama are friends who used to teach together at the University of Chicago law school. I'm saying that Obama called Lessig up when he was going to run for president in order to discuss his internet/technology policy. I don't have the source for this, but I'm not making it up--hopefully my credibility on Slashdot is sufficient.

There has even been speculation by people outside the tech industry that Lessig may be tapped for the Supreme Court in an Obama administration. I've even come across fervently anti-Obama blogs that discuss their fear that Obama will appoint "communist Lessig" to the Court--so it's not just Lessig lovers who are suggesting this appointment may happen.

I think maybe Lessig mentions as much in his 20-minute presentation here. I don't want to watch the 20 minutes on my slow-as-molasses computer right now, though.

Also, Obama has invited Lessig to speak with him. source