Slashdot Mirror

From what I recall of the original IBM project page, this beast was designed to be as readable as printed text in a book.. basically the images are sharper, less blurry than current CRT/LCD technology, which typically has 80/100 ppi. This is something to watch out for, I think.

If you don't like the films that make it to your back yard, your house might be in the wrong town. Check out the NYT film to see what kind of movies are always showing. Most of these films make it around in one form or another, but let's face it not everybody has time to see everything.

http://partner s.n ytimes.com/2000/10/05/technology/06CYBERLAW.html

I wonder how come this isn't widely known yet ... s/www.nytimes.com/channel.nytimes.com/
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I wonder how come this isn't widely known yet ... s/www.nytimes.com/channel.nytimes.com/
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I wonder how come this isn't widely known yet ... s/www.nytimes.com/channel.nytimes.com/
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As always:

http://partners.ny tim es.com/2000/10/05/technology/05SPAC.html

Revelation Zero: The beginning of the end.

http://partners.nytim es. com/2000/10/04/science/04BLOO.html

schweet... too bad they canned the cypherpunks/cypherpunks account there, but as long as this works who cares. No annoying banners or anything...

No registration required.

Here is a link to the story that doesn't need a login.

According to this story in the NY Times, the Democrats have given up their attempt to append the illegal immigrant legislation to the H-1B visa bill. They are instead planning to attach it to an appropriations bill. The H-1B bill is now assured of easy passage through Congress; American corporations have once again bribed the federal government to fsck over the american worker.

http://partners.nytim es.com/2000/09/25/technology/25PALM.html

The timing could not be better. On page A16 of the New York Times and articles in many other Newspapers there is an article, "Clinton Focuses on Access Of Disabled to Computers." These efforts are in part geared towards those are unable to type. With $16 million in grant money it would be cool to see at least part of this money going toward Linux based solutions for people with disabilities.

Check it out online at: http://www.nytimes.com/200 0/09/22/technology/22CLIN.html (Free registration required)

Why was the H1B visa created? I believe it was because of an observed shortage of 'qualified people'.

What has been done to increase our shortage of qualified people since the creation of the H1B? Very little, what's up with that?

Since the 'shortage' of 'qualified people', top-level managers have been a little more patient of the comments from the 'artisans' rank and file. I have seen this.

We do need more help from experts from other places. But do we need so many? I believe not.

Since the massive downsizing of the early 1990's, we have seen the indifference of training from our own ranks. We have seen the hiring from outside at the expense of training from others. And now we have seen what is happening to those who have come here.

I understand the concept of Short Term Gains. I understand the concept of A New Life. I understand the concept of Logistics. Why does the American solution take the moving of whole populations?

http://channel.nytimes .com/2000/09/18/technology/18BASI.html

...just replace the "www" with "partners" in the URL.

http://www.nytimes.com/200 0/09/14/technology/14GEE2.html

- Armage Bedar
The STATS Man

Here is the privacy-enhanced version of the article (remember to turn off cookies and use a proxy server!).

Every time you see a "www.nytimes.com" URL, just replace "www" with "partners".
--
I noticed

I actually was posting on way too little sleep, the sexual harassment lawsuits I was thinking of actually were the ones which significantly removed reduced privacy rights which was the first time that had happened. I can't find the links right now but one of these was a judgement to open Senator Packwood's personal diaries, which was apparently unusual. Also sexual harassment has become the default excuse as to why employers (when they want to monitor) "must" monitor their employees. (here's a link on the erosion of privacy rights at the NYT)

However as an aside the "PC" movement in the early ninties did affect the tone of what could be said. For examle there was a professor in the business school at my university who was forced out because of some comments 1 student objected to. He was well liked (by the students in general anyway) and gifted at teaching and was a tenured professor. His being publicly forced to resign was a result of this attack on free speech and was quite surprising result(however some universities can be pretty viscious politically so there my have been something else going on which wasn't public).

small warning for posting fake PR

Gore Takes Tough Stand on Violent Entertainment

I really think that a lot of the christian hating is just based on a "please leave us alone" attitude. People aren't objecting to say, the Amish, because the Amish aren't trying to force their views on anyone else, despite the fact that most pro-technology people would find the Amish lifestyle anathema.

I do think, however, that there is something seriously wrong in knocking Bush's conservatism and not knocking Gore's conservatism. After all, I'm pretty well convinced that Bush's pandering to the Christian right is just based on vote getting... whereas I believe Gore is a true believer.

At any rate, one or the other is going to get elected and it is going to suck for gamers and people who believe in Free Speech in general no matter which way the election goes.

I suggest computer and console game developers read up on the Comics Code authority, because I forsee something similar in gaming's future:

Comic books were forced to adhere to a code which simplified and neutered the westerns, crime and romance genres. The horror comic books all but disappeared, while the funny animal comics flourished. Over a half dozen publishers went under, and a number of talented industry professionals moved into other fields for a while. --Origin Of The Comics Code Authority

The political arena thing is amusing, but it reminds me of, Are You a Red Dupe?, a final attempt at political satire from an industry that is about to have the life and creativity crushed out of it.

Over in the New York Times, we see that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman are calling for regulation by the FTC and legislation to punish the entertainment industry for marketing violent material to minors. It would be called false and deceptive marketing, similar to the tobacco cases. At least Bush is somewhat skeptical, saying he "prefers" self-regulation to federal censorship. (Still not making a ringing denunciation of censorship, though.) I would think trying to make advertising violent movies, music, and video games to minors basically illegal would be something for Slashdot to care about.

Over in the New York Times, we see that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman are calling for regulation by the FTC and legislation to punish the entertainment industry for marketing violent material to minors. It would be called false and deceptive marketing, similar to the tobacco cases. At least Bush is somewhat skeptical, saying he "prefers" self-regulation to federal censorship. (Still not making a ringing denunciation of censorship, though.) I would think trying to make advertising violent movies, music, and video games to minors basically illegal would be something for Slashdot to care about.

www.foveon.net has more info. They say the chip is a 22mm square. Now, that is much smaller than a 35mm piece of film. The actual pixel size is 0.18 microns. I'm not sure what the grain size of film is.

The New York Times has an article (free reg. req.)that has a bit more info. It states that presently the sensor does only black and white pictures.

to think it does. And in the confusion that is presently called copyright everybody has bought off on this idea. But it's not just Slashdotters who are confused about copyright - everybody is. Including, which is very depressing to say, our lower courts. So we are in good (bad!) company. The erosion of our public "copyright" has reached the point where we have been put in a "virtual prison", and by illusion have lost all our rights given to us by our constitution. I say by "illusion", because companies want us to believe that we don't own the work that they sell us, that we just "rent it".

The startling fact of the matter is, and some of you are going to have a hard time believing this is - but it's true- that copyright owners do not "own" the work that they have a copyright for. They own the right to copy only, not the work that they have a copyright for. See the link below to understand this (and before you email me in a huff). So the notion of "intellectual property" is not constitutional. Only the "right to copy" is constitutional.

Congress has sold us down the river Big Time . They have bastardized copyright law to the point that it is only good for suing people, which is exactly what MPAA/RIAA and pals wanted in the first place. If anybody wants to have _any_ right to fair use in the future, we have to get organized. Whatever shreds of public access to the works of authors, both past, present and future - we _must_ protect. It's so bad that nobody knows what those rights are any more, and especially what they should be . You must read this to appreciate fully what's going on here. And to understand that Congress has enacted unconstitutional laws at the bequest of companies, and nobody has noticed until now. Please email me (kphil(at)hotmail)if you are interested in organizing to reclaim our public rights. It's going to be long, hard, and boring work. But it has to be done.

of the people I talk to. They think it absolutely does not matter one iota. The either don't know, don't understand, don't care, or don't want to be bothered.

Admittedly, some of the issues are technical, complicated, and the result of letting the media mafia get their way is not apparent.

The fact of the matter is that the same symptom that has produced bad copyright law has also been unable to do anything about healthcare. And that's a congress that is overrun with special interests. See what a billionare says about it here.

I would like to start an informal discussion on IRC on organizing/strategies to correct/inform public attitude about this. If you are one those who want do something, email me kphil(at)hotmaiI

I sent it on September 7th, which was (accoring to the Inter@ctive Week story) was the last day for public comments.

I am writing in regards to the proposal by the MPAA to require copy-protection circuitry in all digital TV devices sold in the U.S. I first heard about this from an article in the online news service ZDnet's "Inter@ctive Week". The article can be found here:

http://www.zdnet.c om/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2623119,00.html

I am vehemently opposed to any such requirement whatsoever. We have already been through this before, with the famous "Betamax decision" by the Supreme Court, and now we have to do it again. Have a look at the following article in the New York Times:

http://ww w.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/09/biztech/articles/ 02napster.html

Take special note of what Jack Valenti once said about VCRs, back in 1982 before the Supreme Court made its decision. Think about how ridiculous his statements seem in retrospect. This is just the same old story again. They are trying to stop consumers from exercising fair use rights. Now, as before, the only correct decision is to simply allow people to record TV broadcasts without any restrictions whatsoever. Anything less would be a violation of consumers' rights.

One of the things that bothers me the most is that the MPAA is asking for copy prevention mechanisms to be required in all devices, but without any restrictions on how they will be used. Sure, they claim they won't copy-protect everything, as Fritz Attaway (executive vice president and Washington general counsel at the MPAA) said, "the vast majority of content won't be copy-protected", but does anyone really believe that? Once they get the mechanisms in place, they will use it for everything -- I mean EVERYTHING. Anyone who really believes otherwise is fooling themselves.

Relying on broadcasters to voluntarily decide not to copy-protect some content would be irresponsible to say the least. If the FCC is to actually allow this rule to go into place, there absolutely MUST be some set of rules governing what types of content may be copy-protected. News, for example, must never be copy-protected. Public broadcasting must never be copy-protected. In fact, I believe that the default should be not to copy-protect any broadcasts, and that only a very small subset of all broadcasts should be allowed to qualify for copy-protection. And the smaller that subset is, the better.

If, as they say, the "vast majority of content" will not be copy-protected, then they certainly wouldn't mind putting that in writing, would they? If that really is their plan, then surely they won't object to a rule forcing them to stick to that plan, will they? So go ahead, put it in writing -- hold them to it! That way, if they resist being held to their statements, you will then know they are lying! Don't let them trick you by saying "this is our plan, but we don't want to be held to it". Voluntary enforcement of rules is worse than no enforcement at all. Be suspicious, and be aggressive. Don't let them walk all over you. Make them agree to it in writing.

In closing, I must also protest your lack of publicity regarding this issue. Nowhere on the FCC's website is there any mention of the upcoming decision, and nowhere is there any call for public comments. Were it not for that obscure news source I mentioned above, I would never have known about this at all. Is this your idea of serving the public interest? Silently letting an industry bully such as the MPAA dictate policy for all U.S. consumers?

Sincerely,
<my name>
(a VERY concerned consumer)

Any comments on my letter would be welcome.

• The economy is good now, but it won't always be.
• The Internet gold rush is, for the most part, over. Your chances of making millions from stock options, after working only a couple years, are very slim. So take a long term view of your career.
• If you're interested in programming, understand this: the software industry is incredibly ageist. Unless you're exceptionally brilliant, you may be unable to find work as a programmer past the age of 40!

• Too old to write code? on USNews.
• Questioning the Labor Shortage , the New York times piece referred to in an earlier Slashdot article
• Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage, Dr. Norman Matloff's testimony to the House Subcommittee on Immigration

I've got news for you. $50k is the median salary for a family in the U.S. That's right, if you have two children and earning $50k/year (sometimes that's with two earners together bring in that much, with latchkey kids who come home with no one to greet them or supervise them after school), you are very squarely in the middle class in the United States. Statistically, 50% of the families will be earning more than you, and 50% of the families will be earning less.

Comments about how $50,000 as a starting salary is "not enough for a US tech to survive" is the sort of things which cause the rest of the country to regard us as spoiled brats. And you know, perhaps they're right.

The New York Times did a case study of 4 "middle-class" families and how they worked to make ends meet, and what their dreams and aspirations were. It was entitled "The American Middle, Just Getting By", and it was published on August 1, 1999 (front page of section 3). I strongly recommend that techies either download it from the NY Times web page (for $2.50), or go to the library and look at it in the archives (which is better 'cause it's free and the NY Times archives doesn't have the color pictures that went with the story). It's guaranteed to give you a better perspective about how the rest of the country lives. Non U.S. techies I suspect will; also find it revealing.

try this to skip the login

better than his articles?

You Decide!

Wooha, a little "business logic" aikido...you want my personal habits data? Well, sirs and madams, *here* you have it!

This reminds me of an amusing story I ran across in the NYTimes: "Cultural Sabotage Waged in Cyberspace"...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. DeGraff is hoping that his investment will be used for projects like making "anti-souvenirs," aimed at various social injustices and offered to tourists, or purchasing recorded books by conservative pundits so leftist speeches can be recorded over the original material and the tapes can be put back onto sales racks in book stores.

Clearly, this is no typical investment firm. RTMark (its name derives from "registered trademark" but is pronounced "art mark") describes itself as a brokerage that "supports the sabotage of corporate products." Its projects have included switching voice boxes in Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and creating Gatt.org, a look-alike Web site that lampooned the World Trade Organization.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hmm...has anyone ever fiddled with their NYTimes cookies? I wonder what changing some of the numbers and letters would do to their tracking databases? Hmm... ;)..
Anyway, thanks for your wonderful suggestion!

______________________(
// ///#\)

Here Is the article without reg.

NY Times is eavesdropping on u with biscuits! Use this link instead!

"Could I have a source for the Giuliani comment?"

A quick Google search on Giuliani DNA turns up a lot of hits. The comment seems to have been reported in the New York Times in December 1998, for which no free online record exists, but, the New York Civil Liberties Union mentions it in a very dry paper about DNA, if that's reputable enough for you:

"The rounding up of a whole class of people, the collection of physical samples, and the extraction of DNA information from those samples are illegal in the United States of America. Or so we had thought.

"New York Governor George Pataki wants to expand the state DNA databank from violent felons to all felons. New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wants to include all newborn children. Meanwhile, the New York City Police Department has been collecting DNA samples from suspects without their consent or their knowledge, and without the benefit of court orders."

This news report references thi s 404 NYT page.

And this message-board post gives a specific date in the NYT, which is as close as I could get in five minutes:

"When asked whether all children should have DNA tests at birth, the Mayor said: "...I would have no problem with that, or fingerprinting all children...There is absolutely no reason why people should be afraid of being identified..." It's not invasive," the Mayor said. "It doesn't invade any right of privacy. You don't have a right not to be identified. I don't remember a constitutional amendment that gives you the right not to be identified."-N.Y. Times 12/17/98 "Giuliani Backs DNA Testing of Newborns for Identification"

Finally, check out more of Robert Lederman's comments. As someone who's been falsely arrested over 40 times for painting unflattering portraits of Giuliani, he has a special interest in DNA fingerprinting.

Jamie McCarthy

This is an intentional link to DeCSS.

Any site that has advertisements most likely at some point links to some pages that link either to search engines or directly to illegal material. Whereas those themselves can be unintentional, and thus legal, my link above states that it is a link to DeCSS. Thus, my link is illegal.

Too bad we don't have DMCA in Finland.

Blah. Plain insanity.

There are two ways to stop this. One is for everyone to comply. The other is for DeCSS to show up EVERYWHERE - on a much more massive scale than ever before. The MPAA would be spending so much in the way of time and resources that they might even have to stop judging movies.

Actually, we can do BOTH. The solution is to distribute deCSS widely, but not link to it - but make it understood how to acquire it easily.

Everyone with a domain should put deCSS in webroot. Don't link to it, but make it standard - you should be able to go to any website you want and type in http://www.domainname.com/deCSS.zip and bingo! you download the file. But nary an <a href=""> anywhere!

Every webmaster on every site, commercial, private, personal, educational - should put deCSS in webroot. Imagine:

• http://www.mit.edu/deCSS.zip
• http://www.nytimes.com/deCSS.zip
• http://www.whitehouse.gov/deCSS.zip

webmasters, unite! Civil Obedience on a grand scale! !Link !

let's show the MPAA it isn't linking per se they should fear, but the power of people to resist in an organized way when their rights are taken away for corporate gain. or, more colloquially...

The First Rule of Link Club is: you don't talk about !Link Club

The Second Rule of !Link Club is: YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT !LINK CLUB.

The Third Rule of !Link Club is: if this is your first night, you WILL put deCSS in webroot!

JOIN !LINK CLUB! spread the word...

There's also a NYTimes article about this here.

blah blah free registration required blah blah

This is what happens when you have ivory tower academics weighing in on things. I've been with companies that have serveral thousand of their own internal applications... entire history of the industry indeed.

The NYTimes report I read on this study implied that they are just counting commercial applications. Your thosands of internal applications and all the other internal apps aren't in the figure.

Even if it's corrent, the statistic is useless.

The New York Times is running what I think is a more substantive article on the Kursk sinking that also supports the cavitation-torpedo-gone-bad theory.

Of course, free registration is required so they know where to find you and take your guns away.

-

http://www 10.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/biztech/articles /28code.html replace www with www10

and on Napster:

"The lawsuits against Napster may be aimed at piracy, but they could also stomp out small record labels and unsigned artists who want their music to float freely through the world of Napster. But the big labels want to shut down the entire service. If the current laws are not strong enough, they want new laws that will stop people from making some kinds of open technology. They imagine a world where technology will control and limit people instead of liberating them."

Go NYT!

PS. I just submitted this as a story, and it's been reclassified as "YRO" in the submissions queueue, so it might hit the front page soon.

Just found this article today at the NYTimes (with that silly registration thing). Basically, a guy in Germany came up with the exremely clueful idea that we should be looking for conditions that favor a process of metabolism, rather (or in addition to) merely playing witch's brew with an inert mixture of chemicals, and hoping that the molecules will suddenly start dancing a petri waltz.
Read the article, or look it up someplace else. A report in Science by Dr. George D. Cody. And the original theory was proposed by Dr. Günther Wächtershäuser.

Oh, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just wanted to remind everyone of that.

(don't forget that if you want to avoid NYT registration there's always username:cypherpunks, password:cypherpunks)

Library's have been proven not to be a great threat to the sale of books.

Where has this been proven? Can you show me some evidence?? The fact is that libraries would continue to enjoy wide public support even if they were shown to hurt book sales, because they provide an undeniable public benefit, just as Napster does.

The same cannot be said, that napster will not hurt the sale of records.

In fact much more can be said: Napster actually helps the sale of records.

And while you may try to refute that sales will actually be hurt, that is unproven, and highly doubtful.

No it's not. Read the link. (I've included it several times in this thread, but you seem to have never clicked on it.) In case you're wondering, Jupiter Communications is one of the most respected media research and analysis in the world.

As that article in the Atlantic Monthly pointed out, CD sales around college campuses were down [though not in huge numbers], while national sales were up. This fact alone is cause for concern, or at least question.

Yes it is. Luckily, these questions have been answered. The research at issue was part of a study bought by the RIAA to use at the trial. Fortunately, there are myriad problems with its seemingly negative conclusions. Most egregiously, the study failed to take into account purchases of CDs at online stores like CDNow. Due to the fact that college students are among the most wired and moreover among the most likely to purchase items online of any demographic, this failing very likely explains entirely the fall in "college music store" sales. Further supporting this conclusion is the fact that the study found sales at "college music stores" fell more in the year before Napster came out than in the year after!! Thus the most likely conclusion to be drawn from this RIAA-sponsered study is that 1) online stores like CDNow and amazon.com have taken sales from record stores near college campuses, but 2) Napster has spurred CD sales enough amongst college students to partially reverse the trend.

And in any case, despite what you may believe, the average Napster user is *not* a college student. Besides, speaking from my own experience as a college student, Napster has actually limited my recent CD purchases, because I don't currently own a stereo besides my computer. Once I move out of my tiny dorm room into an apartment, though, you can bet I'll buy a good stereo, and plenty of CD's--many of them purchases I would never have made had I not had my enjoyment of different types of music enhanced by Napster.

Napster traffics the most popular songs in almost instantly, and theoretically, only one purchase needs to be made for this to happen!

Oh come on. For one thing, there are something like 100 different (unconnected) Napster servers, and most users are only logged on a small fraction of the time, so in any real world situation hundreds of source copies are necessary to cause any particular song to be available on Napster even remotely reliably. But this is all besides the point. Are you honestly telling me that only 1 (or very few) of Napster's 20 million users went out and bought, eg. the new N'Sync CD which sold 2.4 million copies in its first week? Obviously not. This is totally, patently absurd and has nothing to do with whatever real effect Napster has on CD sales.

Something like 90% of the mp3s listed on there are redundant--only the most recent and currently popular songs.

Just logged onto Napster now, and it's showing 765,685 songs being shared on this particular server alone. If we accept your 90% figure (I'd guess 95% is closer to the truth, but whatever), that means people are sharing over 75,000 unique songs at this moment on that server alone!! In comparison, the RIAA ensures that only 150 new songs get radio play in any given year. 150. So let's see which avenue of free music is more culturally enriching and offers more avenues away from the "most recent and currently popular songs":

radio--150 songs a year
Napster--75,000 songs at any given time

Hmm...looks like society and the spread of worthwhile art come out about 500 times better with Napster than with the old way of getting free music. Indeed, that 75,000 songs represents almost three times as many songs as are released by the major labels in an entire year! That's right--the major labels only released around 2,600 albums in 1999; meanwhile, over 3,000 artists have explicitly released their music for distribution over Napster (and an additional 14,000 have given their permission by joining Napster's new artist program). Let me restate that for you: there have been more songs expressly released to Internet public domain sharing since Napster debuted than there have been songs distributed by the major labels in the same time period.

And you want to claim that Napster consists only of "the most recent and currently popular songs"? Are you joking or just remarkably ignorant???

You're going to have a hard time arguing that music enriches the mind to the same extent that a good book does, especially when it's pop music!

Well now you've really made an idiot of yourself. Suffice it to say that no one with any appreciation of art or culture--least of all writers of important literature--would ever claim inherent superiority for any one particular medium of art over all others. In fact, most knowledgable people would argue that particular pieces of music can be every bit as expressive, enriching, artistic and important as the greatest works of literature, much less the trashy romance novel drivel which makes up the plurality of check outs at the typical public library. Nevermind Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms (although you can certainly find not only their works but those of almost every classical composer of note on Napster); nevermind even the great impact of jazz, argued by many to be the most important artistic movement of the 20th Century. There are plenty of challenging, important, "mind enriching" works of art to be found even amongst today's pop music. Any attempt to compare the artistic worth of the typical piece of fiction on the New York Times Bestseller List to, just to take a very successful and rather mainstream pop album, Radiohead's masterful Ok Computer, is laughable. For crying out loud, look at that list! It's all romance novels and police thrillers, with some battle-the-Antichrist born-again lit thrown for variety (#11). You have to go all the way to #16 (off the official list) to even find an important author. And this is without taking into account the NYT's recently spun-off Harry Potter Bestseller List.

The average piece of new fiction sold today is almost certainly of lower cultural and artistic value some of the most popular new music. Sorry to destroy your illusions, but the average book checked out of a public library is probably of even lower quality.

But that's besides the point. The point of all this isn't to engage in cultural snobbery and certainly not to censor based on it. Despite, probably because of, the fact that libraries check out millions of copies of trashy romance novels a day, they are still vital institutions to society, providing important positive functions to their communities. Exactly the same, if not more, can be said of Napster.

On a side note, if you really don't believe that music can be as enriching as written words, you probably just haven't heard enough good music. Start exploring.

Library's have been proven not to be a great threat to the sale of books.

Where has this been proven? Can you show me some evidence?? The fact is that libraries would continue to enjoy wide public support even if they were shown to hurt book sales, because they provide an undeniable public benefit, just as Napster does.

The same cannot be said, that napster will not hurt the sale of records.

In fact much more can be said: Napster actually helps the sale of records.

And while you may try to refute that sales will actually be hurt, that is unproven, and highly doubtful.

No it's not. Read the link. (I've included it several times in this thread, but you seem to have never clicked on it.) In case you're wondering, Jupiter Communications is one of the most respected media research and analysis in the world.

As that article in the Atlantic Monthly pointed out, CD sales around college campuses were down [though not in huge numbers], while national sales were up. This fact alone is cause for concern, or at least question.

Yes it is. Luckily, these questions have been answered. The research at issue was part of a study bought by the RIAA to use at the trial. Fortunately, there are myriad problems with its seemingly negative conclusions. Most egregiously, the study failed to take into account purchases of CDs at online stores like CDNow. Due to the fact that college students are among the most wired and moreover among the most likely to purchase items online of any demographic, this failing very likely explains entirely the fall in "college music store" sales. Further supporting this conclusion is the fact that the study found sales at "college music stores" fell more in the year before Napster came out than in the year after!! Thus the most likely conclusion to be drawn from this RIAA-sponsered study is that 1) online stores like CDNow and amazon.com have taken sales from record stores near college campuses, but 2) Napster has spurred CD sales enough amongst college students to partially reverse the trend.

And in any case, despite what you may believe, the average Napster user is *not* a college student. Besides, speaking from my own experience as a college student, Napster has actually limited my recent CD purchases, because I don't currently own a stereo besides my computer. Once I move out of my tiny dorm room into an apartment, though, you can bet I'll buy a good stereo, and plenty of CD's--many of them purchases I would never have made had I not had my enjoyment of different types of music enhanced by Napster.

Napster traffics the most popular songs in almost instantly, and theoretically, only one purchase needs to be made for this to happen!

Oh come on. For one thing, there are something like 100 different (unconnected) Napster servers, and most users are only logged on a small fraction of the time, so in any real world situation hundreds of source copies are necessary to cause any particular song to be available on Napster even remotely reliably. But this is all besides the point. Are you honestly telling me that only 1 (or very few) of Napster's 20 million users went out and bought, eg. the new N'Sync CD which sold 2.4 million copies in its first week? Obviously not. This is totally, patently absurd and has nothing to do with whatever real effect Napster has on CD sales.

Something like 90% of the mp3s listed on there are redundant--only the most recent and currently popular songs.

Just logged onto Napster now, and it's showing 765,685 songs being shared on this particular server alone. If we accept your 90% figure (I'd guess 95% is closer to the truth, but whatever), that means people are sharing over 75,000 unique songs at this moment on that server alone!! In comparison, the RIAA ensures that only 150 new songs get radio play in any given year. 150. So let's see which avenue of free music is more culturally enriching and offers more avenues away from the "most recent and currently popular songs":

radio--150 songs a year
Napster--75,000 songs at any given time

Hmm...looks like society and the spread of worthwhile art come out about 500 times better with Napster than with the old way of getting free music. Indeed, that 75,000 songs represents almost three times as many songs as are released by the major labels in an entire year! That's right--the major labels only released around 2,600 albums in 1999; meanwhile, over 3,000 artists have explicitly released their music for distribution over Napster (and an additional 14,000 have given their permission by joining Napster's new artist program). Let me restate that for you: there have been more songs expressly released to Internet public domain sharing since Napster debuted than there have been songs distributed by the major labels in the same time period.

And you want to claim that Napster consists only of "the most recent and currently popular songs"? Are you joking or just remarkably ignorant???

You're going to have a hard time arguing that music enriches the mind to the same extent that a good book does, especially when it's pop music!

Well now you've really made an idiot of yourself. Suffice it to say that no one with any appreciation of art or culture--least of all writers of important literature--would ever claim inherent superiority for any one particular medium of art over all others. In fact, most knowledgable people would argue that particular pieces of music can be every bit as expressive, enriching, artistic and important as the greatest works of literature, much less the trashy romance novel drivel which makes up the plurality of check outs at the typical public library. Nevermind Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms (although you can certainly find not only their works but those of almost every classical composer of note on Napster); nevermind even the great impact of jazz, argued by many to be the most important artistic movement of the 20th Century. There are plenty of challenging, important, "mind enriching" works of art to be found even amongst today's pop music. Any attempt to compare the artistic worth of the typical piece of fiction on the New York Times Bestseller List to, just to take a very successful and rather mainstream pop album, Radiohead's masterful Ok Computer, is laughable. For crying out loud, look at that list! It's all romance novels and police thrillers, with some battle-the-Antichrist born-again lit thrown for variety (#11). You have to go all the way to #16 (off the official list) to even find an important author. And this is without taking into account the NYT's recently spun-off Harry Potter Bestseller List.

The average piece of new fiction sold today is almost certainly of lower cultural and artistic value some of the most popular new music. Sorry to destroy your illusions, but the average book checked out of a public library is probably of even lower quality.

But that's besides the point. The point of all this isn't to engage in cultural snobbery and certainly not to censor based on it. Despite, probably because of, the fact that libraries check out millions of copies of trashy romance novels a day, they are still vital institutions to society, providing important positive functions to their communities. Exactly the same, if not more, can be said of Napster.

On a side note, if you really don't believe that music can be as enriching as written words, you probably just haven't heard enough good music. Start exploring.

This other NYTimes article at http ://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900 sci-environ-climate.html says that one of the first scientists to warn us about CO2 levels affecting climate says that other greenhouse gases may be just as important in their affect, even though they're not produced in nearly the quantities CO2 is. Things like ozone (at ground level, it's a Bad Thing), soot (think diesel exhaust), methane (a big byproduct of rice farming, for some reason) and the like may, all put together, contribute just as much to global warming.

So what, right? Well, not only are there usually better/easier techniques for reducing these (as opposed to CO2), there's usually a lot of immediate reasons (health, economic) to do so, and a lot more immediate results (you don't have to wait 50 years, say, to see a difference in a city skyline once you cut out soot). There's also the advantage of doing an end run around the "You're destroying valuable Capitalism!" argument that arises whenever you talk seriously about cutting CO2.

"The other concern -- that a liability based on a link to another site simply because the other site happened to contain DeCSS or some other circumvention technology in the midst of other perfectly appropriate content could be overkill -- also is readily dealt with. The offense under the DMCA is offering, providing or otherwise trafficking in circumvention technology. An essential ingredient, as explained above, is a desire to bring about the dissemination. Hence, a strong requirement of that forbidden purpose is an essential prerequisite to any liability for linking."

He explains that this is OK by analogy of defamation law: if you say something bad about a public figure, part of what they have to prove to convict you is that you knew it was false when you said it. So, your state of mind at the time of the alleged crime becomes legally significant.

The judge is looking for a way to uphold the DMCA without creating a chilling effect that will prevent webmasters everywhere from having to worry "am I going to get in trouble for linking to the wrong thing?" But the act of deliberately linking to a URL cannot be distinguished from desiring to disseminate the information at that URL. That is the whole point of linking: disseminating the information at the other end.

Do you think the judge has noticed that the New York Times -- the same newspaper he frequently references in the titles of precedent-setting legal decisions -- has linked to the DeCSS links on at least three occasions -- April 28, June 16, and July 14? Most reasonable people would conclude that the Times had "a desire to bring about the dissemination" [of DeCSS] in so doing. What else could it have had in mind?

The Times obviously has a vested interest in keeping it legal to link. In the June 16 article, titled "Is Linking Illegal?", the opening sentence is: "A crucial aspect of online journalism is the ability to garnish articles with hyperlinks that instantly refer readers to Web sites related to newsworthy issues."

Do you think the Times will get more involved in this issue? How about if 2600 replaces its links with meta-links (links to links) -- exactly as the Times did -- and gets re-sued?

Jamie McCarthy

"The other concern -- that a liability based on a link to another site simply because the other site happened to contain DeCSS or some other circumvention technology in the midst of other perfectly appropriate content could be overkill -- also is readily dealt with. The offense under the DMCA is offering, providing or otherwise trafficking in circumvention technology. An essential ingredient, as explained above, is a desire to bring about the dissemination. Hence, a strong requirement of that forbidden purpose is an essential prerequisite to any liability for linking."

He explains that this is OK by analogy of defamation law: if you say something bad about a public figure, part of what they have to prove to convict you is that you knew it was false when you said it. So, your state of mind at the time of the alleged crime becomes legally significant.

The judge is looking for a way to uphold the DMCA without creating a chilling effect that will prevent webmasters everywhere from having to worry "am I going to get in trouble for linking to the wrong thing?" But the act of deliberately linking to a URL cannot be distinguished from desiring to disseminate the information at that URL. That is the whole point of linking: disseminating the information at the other end.

Do you think the judge has noticed that the New York Times -- the same newspaper he frequently references in the titles of precedent-setting legal decisions -- has linked to the DeCSS links on at least three occasions -- April 28, June 16, and July 14? Most reasonable people would conclude that the Times had "a desire to bring about the dissemination" [of DeCSS] in so doing. What else could it have had in mind?

The Times obviously has a vested interest in keeping it legal to link. In the June 16 article, titled "Is Linking Illegal?", the opening sentence is: "A crucial aspect of online journalism is the ability to garnish articles with hyperlinks that instantly refer readers to Web sites related to newsworthy issues."

Do you think the Times will get more involved in this issue? How about if 2600 replaces its links with meta-links (links to links) -- exactly as the Times did -- and gets re-sued?

Jamie McCarthy

"The other concern -- that a liability based on a link to another site simply because the other site happened to contain DeCSS or some other circumvention technology in the midst of other perfectly appropriate content could be overkill -- also is readily dealt with. The offense under the DMCA is offering, providing or otherwise trafficking in circumvention technology. An essential ingredient, as explained above, is a desire to bring about the dissemination. Hence, a strong requirement of that forbidden purpose is an essential prerequisite to any liability for linking."

He explains that this is OK by analogy of defamation law: if you say something bad about a public figure, part of what they have to prove to convict you is that you knew it was false when you said it. So, your state of mind at the time of the alleged crime becomes legally significant.

The judge is looking for a way to uphold the DMCA without creating a chilling effect that will prevent webmasters everywhere from having to worry "am I going to get in trouble for linking to the wrong thing?" But the act of deliberately linking to a URL cannot be distinguished from desiring to disseminate the information at that URL. That is the whole point of linking: disseminating the information at the other end.

Do you think the judge has noticed that the New York Times -- the same newspaper he frequently references in the titles of precedent-setting legal decisions -- has linked to the DeCSS links on at least three occasions -- April 28, June 16, and July 14? Most reasonable people would conclude that the Times had "a desire to bring about the dissemination" [of DeCSS] in so doing. What else could it have had in mind?

The Times obviously has a vested interest in keeping it legal to link. In the June 16 article, titled "Is Linking Illegal?", the opening sentence is: "A crucial aspect of online journalism is the ability to garnish articles with hyperlinks that instantly refer readers to Web sites related to newsworthy issues."

Do you think the Times will get more involved in this issue? How about if 2600 replaces its links with meta-links (links to links) -- exactly as the Times did -- and gets re-sued?

Jamie McCarthy