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I guess engineering, design and programming can't possibly be art.

But congress is trying to fix the 'oversight' with HR3820, the "Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004" which would grant Congress the right to overturn the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court "to the extent that [they concern] the constitutionality of an Act of Congress." A two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress would be required to overturn such a decision; this is the same condition applied to overturning a Presidential veto of legislation. The bill is currently in committee.

I wanted to find the bill to see which senators are sponsoring it so that I could post their numbers and addresses. People need to call them. You can always track a bill and see who the sponsors are. Unfortunately, I can not find it on Thomas.

-dameron

DRM has nothing to do with copyright law. It has to do with usage restrictions, which copyright law is pretty much silent on (being about copying, logically enough). Even such benign statements as those in the CreativeCommons license are not statements of copyright law. Licenses are agreements between private parties -- law is public rule. Check out the taxonomy of Rights Languages at the Library of Congress site for an idea of how rights are expressed as contracts and control mechanisms.

If /. Readers had an impact how was it done? Was there a petition link on the previous story that I missed? Was there a letter writing campaign that I missed? Or the the LWV leadership (and the hundreds of their members who oppose paperless ballots) simply derive all their impetus from the firestorm going on in the comments? Did thjey for example read them and think, "wow we have to move now or these people may moderate each other more heavily!"

I am not minimizing the role of discussion here nor am I saying that posting a comment on /. is a waste of time.

What I am saying is that comments on /. stay on /. If you want to pressure other groups don't expect that they will read your comments and change their minds. What you do is take action at the EFF, join the ACLU, get organization info from Blackboxvoting.org, or send letters to the appropriate people (Congress, Whitehouse) . You can even create your own online petition at PeitionOnline.com. The key is to branch out to others and raise their conciousness level not preach to the choir.

According to THOMAS, the DMCA was passed in the Senate in the 105th session of Congress by a 99-0 vote. Kerry, along with every other Senator (except for Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire), including current attorney general John Ashcroft (who, even as a Republican, I loathe) voted for it.

Fire and police departments are state & local authority, same with libraries.

Okay, you're the one that doesn't know what you're talking about. While it's true that there are not special copyrights for digital and analog works and there is only one set of copyright laws which the DMCA modified, almost all of the modifications it made were with regards to digital work (or the design of boats, though that is hardly applicable here). See a summary or the full text.

Get a sense of history and some perspective. Also use Google to both look up and READ the source documentation

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as FDR's
Executive Order 9066 which resulted in concentration camps on US Soil give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as The Holocaust give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

Sending my check(s) to The Electronic Frontier Foundation not the hypocritical ACLU.

Get a sense of history and some perspective. Also use Google to both look up and READ the source documentation

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as FDR's
Executive Order 9066 which resulted in concentration camps on US Soil give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

When the 'big bad' PATRIOT Act gets as bad as The Holocaust give me a ring. Just hope the ACLU took some time from there Brie & Strawberry party with MoveOn to defend our gun rights (The Second Amendment Defends The First Amendment)

Sending my check(s) to The Electronic Frontier Foundation not the hypocritical ACLU.

The Vietnam war was a war with a DRAFT. That means that the government could forcibly send you to go fight and die. The Iraq war, while certainly with its faults, is a war being fought by people who signed up knowing the consequences of signing up. Everyone who is there is there because they chose to join an armed service.

Just wait a little while. Guess what's currently sitting in the committee on armed services:

Senate bill S89: A bill to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

House bill HR163: (same)

The Vietnam war was a war with a DRAFT. That means that the government could forcibly send you to go fight and die. The Iraq war, while certainly with its faults, is a war being fought by people who signed up knowing the consequences of signing up. Everyone who is there is there because they chose to join an armed service.

Just wait a little while. Guess what's currently sitting in the committee on armed services:

Senate bill S89: A bill to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

House bill HR163: (same)

DARPA invented the Internet. History of the light buib can be found here Karl Benz of Germany invented the first motor car. Antonio Meucci invented the telephone.

Jefferson had his own unconventional war.

More here

Gray never filed a patent, he attempted to file a caveat -- a warning that a patent was coming, on February 14, 1876. However, Bell had been in the same patent office earlier in the day -- Bell was the fifth applicant to be processed that day, Gray was 39th.

Source : Library Of Congress

Burning Man, "BM", stick figures, the word Playa, the place name "Black Rock", the word "decompression" and vague attempts at avoiding using these words like "party in the desert", etc are all copyright and trademarked Black Rock City, LLC.

Black Rock City, LLC - we pretend to be about freedom, bullshit "gift economies", etc but we are really about money, protecting the IP that 1,000's of people helped create and market but luckily we are the only ones allowed to put up a gate and charge for entry to the last hippie/hipster paradise (tm) and prosecute anyone who utters any of our words without paying us.

PS In the proud tradition of IP thieves everywhere, we stole the idea. I guess the poor New Mexican artist Bud Schuster didn't have the market savvy and foresight to copyright and trademark the shit out of his ideas and those of the poor locals celebrating the reconquest of the NM territory in 1712. Burning Man Stole their idea from this Zozobra

Suck it, you Black Rock City, more-hipster-than-thou fucks.

I also copied and slightly modified this text and sent it to my state senators.

(I assume you mean your state's U.S. Senators.) Has an equivalent Senate bill been introduced? If not, what did you hope to achieve with your letters? No criticism should be inferred; I'd really like to know -- I'd write my own Senators if I could figure out something more actionable to tell them than "hey, this DMCRA thing in the House is cool."

This bill not only allows for making backups, but [etc]. Yep. Actually the bill is shockingly readable by mere mortals. Here's the text. (If that dodgy-looking URL doesn't work go to the Thomas page and query for "HR 107".)

I also copied and slightly modified this text and sent it to my state senators.

(I assume you mean your state's U.S. Senators.) Has an equivalent Senate bill been introduced? If not, what did you hope to achieve with your letters? No criticism should be inferred; I'd really like to know -- I'd write my own Senators if I could figure out something more actionable to tell them than "hey, this DMCRA thing in the House is cool."

This bill not only allows for making backups, but [etc]. Yep. Actually the bill is shockingly readable by mere mortals. Here's the text. (If that dodgy-looking URL doesn't work go to the Thomas page and query for "HR 107".)

How many Library of Congresses is this?

50

Oh, it isn't, either. Will you people knock it off already with the Library of Congress == 20TB comparison? It's some sort of inane computation made as if the collection were only books, and all the books were represented as ASCII text only. Well, guess what? It's not, and they're not.

American Memory alone is a good bunch of terabytes, and that's just a wee digitized slice, just several million objects, of all the stuff in the Library. There's a lot. Of Stuff. A lot a lot a lot. Pictures. Maps. Movies. Big ol' stuff.

Well, I feel better. Thanks!

Not a bad idea, but there are a few simple rules to make your vote actually count...

First, read the f'ing bill. It's here

Use the telephone. You'll probably never get through to your congressman, but getting through to staff is actually more important. Call the office in DC (http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html) and ask to speak to the STAFF MEMBER who's tracking HR 107. If no one's following it, ask for the staff member who handles IP, technology, or computer issues.

There's no more powerful statement to make than "I'm your constituent, and if this passes it's a problem for me", except for...

"This is so important that it will impact how I'm going to vote in November." But you damn well better believe it if you say it, because that's the easiest lie to detect. (Hey, if your guy's from the wrong party, but does the right thing here, why aren't you voting for him?)

Stay on message. Resist the urge to talk about Iraq, or software patents, or anything else. The point is for the staff member to say, "I got 50 calls today abut HR 107, they're mostly from people in the district, and they all said it's important that the bill gets through". Hard to believe, but if a party whip isn't demanding a position, this generally determines how somebody's gonna vote.

And don't take a lot of time. In the first three minutes, you've made your case or not. In any case, your call has already been recorded as for or against, and is going to be in tomorrow's daily brief. Once you state your case, all you can do is fuck up, unless the staff member starts asking you questions.

Follow up with a fax. It should go to the DC office, the closest district office, the sponsor (Boucher), and if you're feeling creative, all of the bill's cosponsors -- there's actually bi-partisan support. (Available from the bill link above.) Staff tally these things, and it goes into the decision matrix.

BTW, if anybody's from Rhode Island, Patrick Kennedy was a co-sponsor, but withdrew his support.

Don't bother with email. These guys get slashdotted every day (imagine a half million people knowing your email address), so the sad fact is that nobody on the hill reads email.

Follow up, part II: a personal note to the staff member. It may not help this time, but a note card saying "Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today" goes a long, long way the next time you need to talk to your representative. Tip O'Neil got to be Speaker that way, and you can make the case that George H.W. Bush got to be president that way. The legislative process is all about relationships.

Finally, Stay polite. The staff member (or the congressman) may be a pinhead, but if you get belligerent, he might vote the other way because you're seen as an asshole. Bite your tounge, especially if they're stupid.

Note: If your Congressman's a Congresswoman, use your favorite word processor to adjust the genders referenced above. Reread, lather, rinse, repeat.

Notes:
If you're not sure what to write, you can start with my letter to my congresscritter.
If the bill link above stops working (Thomas doesn't seem to like direct-linking bills), just go to Thomas and enter bill number HR107.

Notes:
If you're not sure what to write, you can start with my letter to my congresscritter.
If the bill link above stops working (Thomas doesn't seem to like direct-linking bills), just go to Thomas and enter bill number HR107.

Figures that Slashdot would talk about a piece of proposed legislation without linking to the actual text of the bill in question...

Here's The bill's test on the Thomas system. and here's the list of 15 representatives co-sponsoring the bill.

Read the bill for yourself, then you can think for yourself about what it's going to do if passed.

Figures that Slashdot would talk about a piece of proposed legislation without linking to the actual text of the bill in question...

Here's The bill's test on the Thomas system. and here's the list of 15 representatives co-sponsoring the bill.

Read the bill for yourself, then you can think for yourself about what it's going to do if passed.

Not a new issue, people. Photography impacted public opinion in the Civil War. after the battle pictures of Antietam The library of congress photos of the civil war. Ken Burns has some interesting stuff too ...

The Constitution calls for a well regulated militia. Welcome to the "well regulated" part of that particular edict.

Even if you were properly interpreting that phrase (which you are not, as other repliers have pointed out), it doesn't negate the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." -- Constitution of the United States, Amendment II

"A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed." -- J. Neil Schulman

In the second example, would you claim that it means the government can tell you what books you can and cannot own? (That book has too many pages! We need to outlaw those assault books! They're too dangerous to allow the average citizen to own!)

All this information is recorded somewhere on the House of Reps and Senate websites. I was scanning records hourly as S 1805 (Protection for Lawful firearms commerce) was being debated and voted on in the Senate. I'll dig up the links in a second -- it'll be easier to spot once you've seen them before.

Oh, and Thomas can be used to search for the EXACT text of pending bills in both Houses. They're a myriad o them though so you pretty much need to be involved with an activist group that'll keep you posted on what bills are in committee and which ones have a chance of getting of committee. Unless your reps are on the actual committee it's not much use to call them up and voice opinions on a bill that's not going anywhere. Well, that's my take on it. Seems like your position would have more "oomph" if you call them when you know it's out of committee -- shows that you're on top of the issue.

Yep, there it is: Congress voting records

Here's a better page I gathered up from the Senate's site:

http://thomas.loc.gov/r108/r108.html ... that's at least good for the 108th Congress.

Best way to learn how it works, IMHO, is to watch the NRA and other gun-rights groups. That's how I got involved with it all I guess.

All this information is recorded somewhere on the House of Reps and Senate websites. I was scanning records hourly as S 1805 (Protection for Lawful firearms commerce) was being debated and voted on in the Senate. I'll dig up the links in a second -- it'll be easier to spot once you've seen them before.

Oh, and Thomas can be used to search for the EXACT text of pending bills in both Houses. They're a myriad o them though so you pretty much need to be involved with an activist group that'll keep you posted on what bills are in committee and which ones have a chance of getting of committee. Unless your reps are on the actual committee it's not much use to call them up and voice opinions on a bill that's not going anywhere. Well, that's my take on it. Seems like your position would have more "oomph" if you call them when you know it's out of committee -- shows that you're on top of the issue.

Yep, there it is: Congress voting records

Here's a better page I gathered up from the Senate's site:

http://thomas.loc.gov/r108/r108.html ... that's at least good for the 108th Congress.

Best way to learn how it works, IMHO, is to watch the NRA and other gun-rights groups. That's how I got involved with it all I guess.

On March 10, 1876, the first telephone message was delivered when
Alexander Graham Bell accidentally spilled acid on his hand. Shouting into
his experimental telephone device, he said to his assistant, "Mr. Watson--
come here--I want to see you!" Watson heard the message clearly over the
device and came to Bell's assistance. Alexander Graham Bell had invented
the telephone.
Bell patented his telephone in 1876. The patent gave him and the Bell
Telephone Company the exclusive right to manufacture, sell and use
telephones.

H.R. 3920 - To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.

Of course, the Supreme Court would declare it unconstitutional if it actually somehow was able to get enacted ... :)

Personally, I'll keep my 65k/year job and not have to worry about having my body dragged around the streets.

No, really, at least as soon as the election is out of the way.

It was Harding. First google link.

According to the site, the LoC contains:

• 29 million books
• 2.7 million recordings
• 12 million photographs
• 4.8 million maps
• 57 million manuscripts

These are quick & dirty, back-of-the-napkin estimates:
Book/Manuscripts: (300 pp. x 500 words/page x 8 bytes/word) = ~2MB
Recording: (300 sec x 176,400 bytes/sec) = ~60MB
Photograph: 500KB (2k x 2k, jpeg q=0.8 ??)
Maps: Uhh? Vector? Raster? Hmm, lets say ~10MB?

So... throwing all those numbers together, I come out with roughly...

Oh, let's call it 250 Terabytes. (or 2 Petabits).

At only 6.25 Gb/s that works out to 320,000s, or...

only 3.7 days/LoC

Clearly, more improvement is needed... (and maybe bzip2 would help?)

There's a place for you and a place for me,
it's the local public library.
They have books and things that they lend for free
It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

Educational, informational,
entertainment that's sensational.
It's a way of life, it's for you and me
It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

They have histories, they have mysteries
And for mothers, books of recipes
See a movie show, hear a symphony
It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

If WhenU.com is unhappy about Utah law, I can only imagine how they will respond if either the proposed Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act or the Controlling Invasive and Unauthorized Software Act is passed and signed into law.

These bills have been covered by:

PC World

InfoWorld

ComputerWorld, and

TechNewsWorld

If WhenU.com is unhappy about Utah law, I can only imagine how they will respond if either the proposed Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act or the Controlling Invasive and Unauthorized Software Act is passed and signed into law.

These bills have been covered by:

PC World

InfoWorld

ComputerWorld, and

TechNewsWorld

I have here a list of the names of 207 jews
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz

I have here a list of the names of 207 negroes
Colin Powell
Condi Rice

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumericans
Bush
US Constitution

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumerican opinions
support for nazi-style invasion

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
versus
Censorship
more Censorship

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
versus
Murder
Gangster justice

Maybe the Iraqis are merely exercising their "Right to bear Arms" in their own country against a foreign invader.

Reminds me of this guy: Russian color photos before color film

Eadweard Muybridge had 'films' of walking nude women and trotting horses sorted in 1878 - in fact, he was the guy that helped Leland Stanford win a bet proving that a horse momentarily has all its hooves off the ground when it runs. I vaguely remember an interactive CD-ROM from the early 90's with this stuff on.

Edisons Kinetoscope was demonstrated in 1891 - a good 13 years later. That said, at the time there was a lot of parallel development going on. It's also hard to quantify what exactly cinema was defined as back then. People were coming at it from all sorts of angles - photography, illustration, zoetropes, etc etc.

Actually, for something truly amazing (but slightly offtopic), have a look at Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii's photos of Russia at the trun of the 19th century. This guy was a bit before his time. He took 3 still images of his subject using black and white film and red, green and blue filters. Then he'd project all three images onto a screen to show people... colour photographs! The site has some absolutely stunning images. Worth a look.

ROMs are a great reason to support HR2601 -- the Public Domain Enhancement Act. Copyrighted works that aren't commercially viable stand a chance to enter the public domain after 50 years. If you live in the US, I think you should write you Congressional representatives to co-sponsor this bill.

It definitely is. A democracy is, simply stated, a majority-dictatorship. The framers and founders of the USA created a Democratic Republic, that is not a democracy but rather a Republic with liberty and choice. Our republic made up of the populus, voted democratically by the populus.

Many people misinterpret the US government as a democracy when in fact it is a democratic republic. One of the strenghts is that people are believed to have unalienable rights, rights given to them by their creator that cannot be taken away by any law. The point of this is not religious, but rather that no one can take away unalienable rights. Thus the formation of a body (the US goverment) to protect these rights, versus in the case of many systems (ie a democracy), a government that grants rights.

This is truly power in the peoples hands, rights that one cannot give nor take away, rights that we are created with. Thus the freedom we have is innate, not a privledge or amenity.

Leahy's not nearly as bad as this makes him out to be. He's been a great senator for Vermont, and is generally fairly liberal. He's sponsored tons of bills that I love, inluding the PATRIOT Oversight Restoration Act. And I have to admit, the PIRATE act doesn't seem all that bad. It would simply allow civil prosecution, which makes sense in cases where criminal charges seem too harsh. And since the RIAA is filing civil charges anyway, I'd much rather have the Department of Justice investigating and charging than the RIAA.

> escrow for copyrighted works

Just wanted to reply with a tidbit you may be interested in.

This was actually law before copyright was issued without having to file for it.
That is where the Library of Congress obtained the majority of their works.

From their FAQ page, section 5 talks about the copyright deposits, which unfortunatly are made alot less now, as one doesnt have to file for copyright with a copy of their work.

See also...
fair use
Historical off air recordings

for...
March

at
http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/arsclist.html
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-list s/arsclist/

You know I was just checking the headlines and I see: this piece. Dumbfounded and perplexed, I research this bill. I find that the title of the bill is "To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court."

WTF?! LINK

Sorry to be offtopic or to spam this but it is just plum crazy.

is how many libraries of congress I can download in a minute. *sigh* there should be mod points for campiness or lameness. Hense the anonymous coward :)

Heh - I was about to submit this story. I can add a link to the actual bill, though: H.R. 2735. And, if you happen to be a US voter reading this, go here, find your representatives, and tell them that you support the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act of 2003. Perhaps hint to them that the same rationale could be applied to other things that consumers buy, and might want to fix at some point. Perhaps suggest that, really, some sort of comprehensive Consumers Bill of Rights could be in order. Just a thought.

For HR.163, go here and type hr 163 into the "Bill Number" field.