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There's a very interesting paper that documents that extrinsic rewards (like profits) actually hinder the creative process in some areas. The paper documents the origins of the copyright/patent system as being a replacement for an earlier system where 'patents' were given as 'rewards' by monarchy, based on 'favoritism' rather than on anything to do with creativity -- somewhat akin to the modern day 'knighthood's being granted as a reward by monarchy to some individuals who 'please the monarchy' (in these days, more often for contributions that benefit the society or country of the monarch).

The idea that they were needed as a reward for creativity became a later justification for continuation of copyright/patents under anglo-saxon law.

But the paper cites references that show that in reality, copyrights and patents often have the opposite effect -- they do not inspire further creativity and actually hinder the process!

Very interesting read: Intellectual Property's Great Fallacy.

There is nothing in life that says that investors should be guaranteed a return on their work via government intervention in the market. The problem is not the ethical notion that researchers and the investors who finance them should be rewarded for their work and risk taking. The problem, as you are well aware, is that software patents are patents on math.

Besides, as you said, On2 made a lot of money on their patents. How much money did they make from implementation and support of the software they wrote? No one ever mentions that. The First Mover Advantage is a real advantage. Just ask McDonalds, AT&T and YouTube. As you have probably guessed, I'm against patents entirely. I haven't seen one single study which says that they encourage innovation or are a net benefit to society. As a matter of fact, there is a very recent, very interesting paper on the subject. You can check that out here.

While you may find reason to disagree with the paper, it's a pretty accurate assessment of the patent law here in the States. To me, this is the best explanation in a short, concise essay that what is wrong with patents.

To my knowledge, no court has addressed that particular issue to date. Professor Adam Gershowitz argues in his 2008 UCLA Law Review article http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084503 that courts addressing warrantless cell phone searches might consider distinguishing between data that is stored locally on a cell phone and data that is accessible via a cell phone. The rationale for such a distinction is rooted in the notion of the "immediate grabbing space" which police are allowed to search incident to arrest.

I strongly urge you and everyone here with an interest to read this paper, entitled "Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence and Intellectual Property Reform. I've copied the abstract below but the basic gist is to utilize a system of peer review. It's far from perfect, but despite being five years old it's a fresh look at a crippled system, and would be a great starting point to get the ball rolling on the conversation needed to fix this.

Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence, Open Review and Patent Reform argues that remedying the information deficit that impedes effective patent examination is a key to improving patent quality. The article shifts the locus of patent reform to the administrative practice of examination. It addresses the problem by proposing a new model for open examination whereby self-selected, scientific experts submit prior art with commentary to the patent examiner. Open examination combines the transparency and self-selection of public participation with the structured practices of peer review. It goes beyond them, however, by eschewing the closed conception of expertise that sometimes plagues peer review and by making legal decision-making more transparent and accountable than traditional notice-and-comment rulemaking.

Metaphorically, open examination marries the practices of Wikipedia to the authority of administrative law. By redesigning the method for patent examination, this proposal points the way towards a new approach for both intellectual property and administrative law, not by altering statutory or judicial standards, but by improving agency institutional competence. The United States Patent and Trademark Office will launch the Community Patent Review pilot in 2007 to try open examination and generate concrete data to drive reform.

Sodom and Gomorrah anyone? Why is the bible a good book?

At face value, the Bible is a good example. However, concealed within this outwardly perverted tome lies a body of great spiritual knowledge. Those stories use symbols to describe spiritual concepts (see Aggadah). These profound concepts can be learnt by anyone so inclined. I'm not saying it shouldn't be banned, I personally think there are better ways to enter spirituality - just that the overwhelming majority would leave it unmolested.

I understand that you may be not be spiritual, suffice it to say that many are.

Until Selena Kitt can justify her stories as more than base masturbation material, the great unwashed will unfortunately perceive it as a threat to the species. For a primer on biological repugnance, check out something like Origin of Emotions (Mark Devon, Harvard University).

It is very interesting how the unconscious cannot separate fact from fiction. This is true within the human body (as detailed by your friendly neighbourhood psychologist) and human society in general, as each individual element reflects the whole. These unconscious people sleepwalk their way through life, chasing pleasure and shrinking from pain like mere children. And like any child in the family, they rule society with an iron fist. This is the law of nature.

You need to block Facebook widgets because they track even without your being signed in (or even a member):
Facebook's 'Like This' button is tracking you (Whether you click it or not)
which is derived from this paper:
Facebook Tracks and Traces Everyone: Like This! (Social Science Research Network)
Assuming you are not a member of facebook and have no need of the "Share" and "Like" buttons, the hosts file is your friend. Just enter 127.0.0.1 for facebook.net, facebook.com, facebookcdn.com (there may be others but I can't be bothered to look for them right now)

Feel free to quote the laws to which you're referring in which DHS is permitted to...

No can do.. They are secret laws*.. Sorry that it's just an abstract, but the idea came across pretty good.

*actually regular asset forfeiture laws will do.

Our corporate overlords will never allow it. Even judges are only as good as the corporations pay for.

Fortunately the Constitution has something to say about copyrights. Check out this Congressionally-mandated report about the feared impact of DMCA on the first sale doctrine.

DMCA Section 104 Report

A plausible argument can be made that section 1201 may have a negative effect on the operation of the first sale doctrine in the context of works tethered to a particular device. In the case of tethered works, even if the work is on removable media, the content cannot be accessed on any device other than the one on which it was originally made. This process effectively prevents disposition of the work. However, the practice of tethering a copy of a work to a particular hardware device does not appear to be widespread at this time, at least outside the context of electronic books. Should this practice become widespread, it could have serious consequences for the operation of the first sale doctrine, although the ultimate effect on consumers is unclear. (emphasis mine)

And here's an interesting law review article about the most significant obstacle to applying first sale to digital rights "digital exhaustion." Digital Exhaustion: UCLA Law Review, Vol. 58

Amazon (and publishers) are much better off if they can keep Congress from either creating legislation or the Courts from creating precedent about the first sale doctrine as it applies to digital media; one or the other is going to happen if they don't treat digital media more like traditional media.
And that's why Amazon is begrudgingly offering this "lending" feature.

What?
there's never any shortage of good counter arguments.
educate yourself.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

You might be also interested in why it's good that people have a right to remain silent even though obviously (in your world) if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear from telling the truth freely.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#

The Eastern District of Texas is not the most patentee-favorable district in the country. Recent research by Mark Lemley found that it had the 6th highest patentee win rate of districts with a significant number of patent infringement cases. The Northern District of Texas, Middle District of Florida, District of Nevada, District of Delaware, and District of Oregon are all more favorable to the patentee.

The Texas Eastern patentee win rate was 40.3%, compared to a high of 55.1% in Texas Northern. The lowest rate was Georgia Northern at 11.5%. There's a wide range in win rates, and the rates are affected by a lot of factors.

Furthermore, blaming the Eastern District of Texas is a tremendous case of confusing correlation with causation. Litigants select Texas Eastern for a lot of reasons. For example, it's a fairly fast docket (though not the fastest), and the judges are experienced and have a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. Further, while the Federal Circuit controls patent law, there are lots of other issues that are based on 5th Circuit law, which may be attractive for various reasons.

Actually, there was a recent study I saw that showed that there is a strong bias against computer science majors at the USPTO. The results were that software patents have grown to the second largest category, while I think CS majors are 7th place (it might have been CS and computer engineering combined, computer engineering dealing mostly with hardware). This means that we've either got unqualified people granting software patents, or those granting software patents are incredibly overworked. Neither of these is favorable, even if there is competence.

I'm sure that "vague language" has never been interpreted by the courts. Oh wait:

1. There must be a pressing and substantial objective
2. The means must be proportional
   1. The means must be rationally connected to the objective
   2. There must be minimal impairment of rights
   3. There must be proportionality between the infringement and objective

You're right, though, that's pretty permissive in what it allows the government to do. Fortunately for Americans, their rights are not subject to such "vague language". For example, when courts are trying to decide if it right has been violated, the most stringent judicial review they are allowed to use is strict scrutiny. What are the three prongs a law must pass to survive strict scrutiny?

1. It must be justified by a compelling governmental interest
2. It must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest
3. It must be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest

Totally different situations, obviously, especially since it's been speculated that the Canadian test comes from the SCOTUS test for commercial speech. Still, between 1990 and 2003, 30 percent of federal cases involving strict scrutiny have approved of the rights restrictions.

Look, I'm not saying there aren't Canadian laws or court decisions I disagree with, while the US is completely messed up. But don't pretend that the country that gave the world "free speech zones", "contemporary community standards" for obscenity, the PATRIOT Act and other national security laws, Morse v. Frederick and Gonzales v. Raich and other ridiculous drug laws, among many, many other laws and court decisions can look down on other jurisdictions' rights while implying theirs are absolute. It's not just what you write in your constitution, it's how five of the nine people in black robes interprets it. And given some of the wacky decisions I've seen out of your country lately, I'll take my nine red-robed over your nine black-robed.

Actually, Quebec language laws have not used the notwithstanding clause since 1993, though politicians have certainly threatened to since. The reason Quebec languages laws are legal is due to Section 1 of the Canadian Charter, which allows violation of other parts of the Charter as to "reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." This has been interpreted by the courts (R. v. Oakes) as requiring there be a "pressing and substantial objective" where the means are rationally connected to the objective, minimally impairing the rights and contain proportionality between the infringement and the objective. These limits are somewhat similar to strict scrutiny in the US (which through the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment is the strictest scrutiny possible that can apply to the Bill of Rights; many government actions require only rational basis), and contrary to popular belief, between 1990 and 2003, 22 percent of federal cases involving free speech restrictions survive strict scrutiny.

As a Quebec anglophone, don't think I approve of the Quebec language laws, but you also shouldn't think that the Canadian Charter is impotent while the US Bill of Rights has no restrictions on it. If that were true, there wouldn't be "free speech zones", or "community standards" regarding obscenity, or principals being able to suspend students for holding up a "humourous" sign referring to drugs at an event outside school grounds.

What is the "real" game? Your original scenario seems to envision the ultimatum game on an island, or some kind of zero sum game (which ultimatum is not).

The "real" game is the game that's played by people. The mathematical game can be anything, as long as the payoffs are specified.

Most economists would agree that it's fair to assume a utility function weakly increasing on income. Therefore U(x+n)>=U(x) where x is original pre-game income (even zero as your model suggests), and n>=0.

Unfortunately that consistently fails the real world tests. Such utilities simply do not model human beings playing the game. From this review of empirical studies:

The most important conclusion that falls out of this review is that players' motivations, which often are not the ones posited by traditional game theory (and neo-classical eco- nomics, in general), and their perceptions of others' motivations are of fundamental importance in understanding strategic interac- tion.

Economists have proposed many ways to overcome the failure of U(x+n)>= U(x) in the ultimatum game (that paper gives some), but it wasn't my intention in these comments to advocate any particular one, rather to point to the underlying issue by way of some examples.

The only way your model makes sense is with a jealousy/spite variable where U is weakly decreasing on the income of the other person.

No, there's no need to interpret the decrease as jealousy/spite. T(original)FA is a study of CEOs in high stakes games. Such games have a natural setting which is no bigger than the market/industry in which the action takes place, so it's reasonable (imho) to consider strategies where the future actions of the major competitor(s) are explicitly incorporated in the payoffs. To take a slashdot example, in a game between Microsoft and Google, or a game between Microsoft and Apple etc, shrewd market tactics may well look like jealousy/spite.

That may very well be a viable construct for a utility function, but your argument is replete with unstated assumptions.

Fair point, but like I said, I'm not trying to advocate a particular alternative, but rather criticise the bits that fail empirically. It may be that such criticisms are better framed within a single alternative, but then again this is slashdot and there are diminishing returns to writing elaborate comments.

It looks like this paper has only been "published" on the Social Science Research Network. In their FAQ peer review is only mentioned twice, and only in reference to one of their sister networks.

It's funny, because if you go find their actual paper, they didn't measure testosterone at all. "In this paper we examine whether testosterone, which is associated with male dominance seeking and which we have proxied by male CEO age, is associated with M&A withdrawals, the use of tender offers, and bid initiation." Fucking ridiculous, I'm surprised this paper even got published.

From their actual paper's conclusion section: "In this paper we examine whether testosterone, which is associated with male dominance seeking and which we have proxied by male CEO age, is associated with M&A withdrawals, the use of tender offers, and bid initiation." No, they didn't sample anyone's testosterone. Go RTFA the real FA.

From their actual paper's conclusion section: "In this paper we examine whether testosterone, which is associated with male dominance seeking and which we have proxied by male CEO age, is associated with M&A withdrawals, the use of tender offers, and bid initiation." Fucking ridiculous, I'm surprised this paper even got published. They didn't even sample anyone's testosterone.

Now that they're leading protests for... I guess they're protesting that Obama is black.

Read this, then come back here:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1643323

Really enlightening stuff. Fox News isn't really the problem with the 'because he is black' angle. Polarization is. And Obama is rather blind for not seeing that an endorsement for 'change' didn't necessarily mean 'liberal change'. Only 20% of those polled, on both sides of the isle, actually endorsed that sort of thing in 2009. Thusly, the whole 'secret agenda' thing has a lot more basis than it seems to at first glance.

Fox is feeding on this, to be sure, and inflaming it, but the actual emotions appear to be based on more reasonable things.

Anyway, read the paper.

It seems, from the analysis in this well-founded paper ("One-Click Download"), that Obama is indeed, a p**k. And an arrogant one, at that...

In all seriousness, though, it makes for an excellent read. Sorry about the clumsy segue...

Fashion industry proves everybody wrong on this issue, it has no copyright or patent protection (they do have trademarks) and their industry is much more creative and much more profitable than most other (non resource mining) industries.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878401

Except that the actual truth is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum.

Fashion industry shows how profitable it is, especially compared to most other industries, and in Fashion industry there are no copyrights or patents. Sure there are trademarks, but no copyrights or patents at all, and they are highly creative and profitable, thus proving your position inconsistent with reality.

This seems like a sensible distinction to make. There's some analysis of the US situation here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244.

The gist seems to be that although copyright itself gives no protection, it can successfully be argued to be fraud to willfully misrepresent PD status at least if $ is involved.

Officers arrest people on the suspicion of wrongdoing, not because they are guilty. The state has powers to hold any citizen against their will for a "reasonable time" in most locales. This is (and has to be) legal for the system to function

Ah, but you've incorrectly inducted one thing from another.

An arrest of someone who didn't do it can be lawful on one hand, but it doesn't follow that on the other hand it must be unlawful to resist. Both can be lawful, the general result is that a bunch of people get hurt. The purpose of the idea isn't really to allow people wrongfully arrested to start a firefight to try and stop it, but to protect people wrongfully arrested who (for example) refuse to let themselves be handcuffed and let away quietly for a crime that they know that they didn't commit from being prosecuted merely for not complying with an arrest which (a) they knew to be wrong and (b) turned out to be wrong.

Rolling back to my original post, I deliberately used the word 'wrongful' to avoid any actual legal terms which have existing definitions;
wrongful = 'screw up' = 'arresting someone who turned out to be innocent'.
Police officers are not omniscient, that is why they're not prosecuted for kidnapping when they arrest the wrong person, but that doesn't mean that arresting the wrong person wasn't a screw-up.

This article for instance, is a very interesting exploration of resisting a false arrest. In essence, it was a common law right, which has been given the chop by all but around 12 states (10 years ago when it was written) through legislation.

What you're talking about is the technical amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act that was passed in the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999 - specifically, in Public Law Number 106-113, app. I, sec. 5005 (which can be found here, but you'll have to search for "sound recording" - it's near the bottom). Semi-contemporary coverage of this can be found here. The legal ramifications of that attempt at stealth-legislation are discussed in David Nimmer's Sound Recordings, Works for Hire, and the Termination-of-Transfers Time Bomb.

But, that scandal was fixed - in the Work Made for Hire and Copyright Corrections Act of 2000, Public Law Number 106-379, which can be found here.

The greater scandal is the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act, Pubic Law Number 105-304, which is still codified at 17 U.S.C. ch. 13 (the law can be found here). David Nimmer has speculated in his treatise and elsewhere that the sui generis protection for boat hull designs is a trojan horse to later allow new designs to be protected by this bizarre "copyright" provision. And in fact, such protection has been considered for fashion designs.

Fact of the matter is that stealth amendments happen all the time. Copyright is not an area of that law that congress people pay much attention to.

I still think that the Netherlands 'right to anonymity' is the way things should be heading http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=%201447332

It pretty much says that there isn't a general right to anonymity in Dutch law (just in special cases, like voting), and that there probably shouldn't be (though they seem to be in favor of adding more special cases).

http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1691.htm Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "The wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive ID card scheme represents everything that has been wrong with government in recent years." Boom! heady stuff in the UK, leading the free world. I still think that the Netherlands 'right to anonymity' is the way things should be heading http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=%201447332

Hey phantomfive, that last web page you loaded? That image on the left? It's mine! The webmaster there stole it from me! You downloaded illegal material under copyright!

Why don't you go turn yourself in?

Seriously, how on earth could you believe that an ordinary person could not occasionally infringe copyright? There is no magic way to know the copyright status of anything, anymore, now that Berne has made registration a thing of the past. See Infringement Nation, by John Tehranian.

Visa versa, sometimes when people try to pirate illegally, they are actually downloading material which the copyright owner himself is providing: see the Viacom debacle vs. Google, where it turns out that Viacom itself was uploading "lets make this look pirated" videos to YouTube.

If I seed a torrent which says "The first 1/2 of New Blockbuster Movie, provided free of charge as a teaser", is it unreasonable for Ordinary Joe not to believe it is legal? What if it were an old movie, claiming to be a low quality teaser?

And even in the case where it's obvious that some of the material is under copyright, Ordinary Joe cannot be sure if, perhaps, fair use is appropriate here. Only the courts can decide that. (Would you blast a relative for posting a short video of his infant dancing to copyrighted music?)

The first person broadcasting on a specific frequency in a specific area has the right to do so. Anybody who comes after that and interferes has to adjust the frequency they broadcast on or stop broadcasting.

There would have to be court actions to resolve disputes

I know this is slashdot but if you had read the article I linked to you would have read where it said the courts were resolving the issue:
"For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights--in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory--to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their 'homesteading' users."

If someone were to start broadcasting in an area on a frequency someone else was already broadcasting on the first person was able to sue those who were interfering and win the right to continue while those interfering had to stop.

or an agency could be created to manage the spectrum and license parts of the spectrum to people to radiate, the licensing fees would go towards the cost of managing the spectrum.

So only those with large bank accounts were able to broadcast? There is no need for the artificial limit to who can broadcast. There is no spectrum scarcity, The End of Spectrum Scarcity. There actually was no scarcity when licenses were first required and with improvements in electronics more and more broadcasters were able to broadcast.

• The Case For Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A T Economic Perspective[pdf]
• Questioning the Scarcity of the Spectrum: The Structure of a Spectrum Revolution
• Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)
• Optimal Abolition of FCC Spectrum Allocation[pdf]
  "Property Rights for Spectrum Markets"
  "Market allocation of radio spectrum was the policy recommendation of Coase (1959). Yet scholars who rst attempted to formulate the enabling mechanism of property rights in frequencies (Coase, Meckling, and Minasian, 1963; Levin, 1968; DeVany, Eckert, Meyers, O'Hara, and Scott, 1969; Minasian 1975) met with limited success. Experience illuminating how such markets would function was scarce. Today, however, data on spectrum rights regimes abound. One body of evidence comes from the U.S. experience with liberal licenses for cellular networks; another from countries that have adopted more general spectrum property regimes."
• The Wireless Craze, the Unlimited Bandwidth Myth, the Spectrum Auction Faux Pas, and the Punchline to Ronald Coase's "Big Joke": An Essay on Airwave Allocation Policy

The FCC needs to be redefined with a much clearer scope

No, the FCC needs to be abolished. It exists only to keep the mass media the mass media reducing competition. Put another way, it's centralized planning with the attending command and control mechanisms. There is no other reason for it to exist.

Falcon

Who is smart enough to determine patent eligibility? And if anyone is smart enough to do so, would they be working for the patent office or gaming the system for their own benefit?

I'm not sure that anyone is smart enough to consistently draw the line between patentable or not. I think that is one of the problems that makes patents so difficult to manage to the point where they stifle innovation rather than encourage it.

With current technology, disclosure of patents is not such a big deal anymore. Reverse engineering is much easier with the tech we have now, and the idea can be communicated to the world very easily. It's gotten to the point where centralized design and innovation has become more expensive than networked collaboration. That makes patents obsolete. And without patents, manufacturers will be innovating just to stay ahead of their competition rather than resting on patents.

The Age of User Innovation is upon us.

What about fair use? If I buy a music CD, I can make private copies of it. Why should it be different with books? According to a professor of law at DePaul University, it probably isn't: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1437812

Walk into a library, scan all the books, store it on your hard drive.
Walk into a video rental store, feed all the disks into your DVD drive and store it on your hard drive.

They're making copies and don't want to pay the copyright holder.

Wrong analogy is wrong, unless there's any evidence they haven't bought the books. If you buy a CD, for example, you can make private copies. Why should it be different with books? According to a Professor of Law, it probably isn't, although deciding it is obviously a court prerogative.

then what's the problem with it?

"Why, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide, Government Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom:
The Case Against Expanding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Powers".
'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy.
If you have nothing to hide, you have everything to fear.

Falcon

It is bad news. You've just been brainwashed by the thousands of stories in the media about how patents are bad that bad news looks good to you.

Patents allow inventors to earn a living. How is making money by creating valuable things bad?

It is good news, you're the one who's been brainwashed. Though it uses copyrights not patents open source is a good example of people making a living without a monopoly. People and businesses make money by offering buyers something they are willing to pay for. And seeing as how this specific discussion is about software patents, economists say "Pro-softpatent analysts have yet to find benefit from software patents". More than one economic paper or study has concluded patent protection may reduce overall innovation and social welfare. For more scholarly papers check out Google scholar. Of course many of those papers have to be paid for to read, with Research on Innovation having more. As a practical example take Apple, although other companies make and sell portable music players and smart phones Apple still leads the markets with the iPod and iPhone. Even after another company has released product X Apple can come along, release it's own version, then dominate the market.

Falcon

Full disclosure, I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro however my music player is an old Sony Walkman CD player and my cell-phone's a Nokia. I love my Mac but have no interest in getting either an iPhone or an iPod. If I ever get a smart phone it may have Android, then again I don't plan getting one. I don't know if I'll ever get an mpg3 player either. I might when my Walkman dies but I'[m not sure what.

Read up on the labor movement of the early 1900's, or the era of the robber baron, and tell me that capitalists have a good track record with civil rights.

I don't think anyone (including the labor movement) was particularly interested in anyone else's rights - except their own - in the early 1900's. For that matter, it may still be the case. Here is another example.

... the mandatory requirement to purchase a product.

I have wondered in times past what would drive me to drop out. I think this is it. I shall not be forced under pain of fine and imprisonment to purchase another's private product. No. Enough.

Worse still than this bill's moral absurdity is the precedent it sets. There are legal scholars now who promote the idea of mandatory tort liability insurance for everone ([1]). No doubt they would be pleased to see this camel's nose lifting the tent's edge.

Mandatory medical insurance or go to prison? The irony is too rich.

[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=844210

You don't encrypt your email or seal your correspondence in a tamper-proof opaque envelope because you want privacy, you do that because you want your private email to be secure against someone violating your privacy. Not to create the concept of expectation of privacy in the first place.

Just to expand on this, Orin Kerr has a paper discussing this very issue. Encryption does NOT create an expectation of privacy.

Does encrypting Internet communications create a reasonable expectation of privacy in their contents, triggering Fourth Amendment protection? At first blush, it seems that the answer must be yes: A reasonable person would surely expect that encrypted communications will remain private. In this paper, Professor Kerr explains why this intuitive answer is entirely wrong: Encrypting communications cannot create a reasonable expectation of privacy. The reason is that the Fourth Amendment regulates access, not understanding: no matter how unlikely it is that the government will successfully decrypt ciphertext, the Fourth Amendment offers no protection if it succeeds. As a result, the government does not need a search warrant to decrypt encrypted communications. This surprising result is consistent with Fourth Amendment caselaw: it matches how courts have resolved cases involving the reassembly of shredded documents, recovery of deleted files, and the translation of foreign languages. The Fourth Amendment may regulate government access to ciphertext, but it does not regulate government efforts to translate ciphertext into plaintext.

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, contending that Section 798 of the Espionage Act, prohibiting the publication of classified information regarding U.S. communications capabilities, can constitutionally be applied to the media, for several reasons: 1) A majority of the Justices in the Pentagon Papers case recognized that prior restraints on publication of highly sensitive, classified information regarding ongoing military and communications operations would be permissible; 2) The prospect of post-publication liability for violating the Espionage Act was also recognized by a majority of the Justices; and 3) The Freedom of Press Clause of the First Amendment is equally applicable to citizens and the institutional media.

Link

Blaming lawyers for our troubles is short-sighted. The number of opportunities in law is actually going down, and the typical advice for people who want to go to law school these days is don't bother. That doesn't sound like some dystopian future world where lawyers would be in high demand suing each other into oblivion.

If your anger should be directed somewhere, it should be directed at the wealthiest 10% of america, who own 72% of it's wealth. Which would be fine (after all, there's nothing inherently wrong with being rich), except they also don't pay their fair share of taxes either, which means cutbacks in education, social services, and so on. They will use their considerable political influence to continue that things continue the way they are, and of course, they've managed to drill into people's heads that more taxes == evil, so you have people frothing at the mouth and protesting against their own best interest.

So first you bash people's legitimate desire for privacy, than you claim to have a legitimate reason for anonymity? You *do* realise, don't you, that anonymity is just another aspect of privacy?

So, either you're for privacy, or you're not, but stop pretending you have a legitimate reason for abolishing it while taking full advantage of it.

Required reading for those 'I've got nothing to hide' people.

Also, perhaps you can explain how somebody chooses not to be born in a particular country?

Not posting anonymously because I'm not scared of what people have to say.

My recommendation is that pak9rabid go fuck him/her-self.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565&rec=1&srcabs=667622#

I agree with you in not caring if statistics are collected about what I watch as long as they're not identifiable as mine. In other words, if I watch some otter porn, I don't want to start seeing PlayOtter advertisements show up in my mailbox. I don't want there to be records that my mother-in-law can use against me at Thanksgiving dinner.

The real problem is not the harmless collection of some anonymous marketing data. No, the problem is that the onus shouldn't be upon the citizen to protect his privacy from the government, corporations, and other citizens. Maximum privacy should be the default, with personal information being completely owned by the individual. Opting out of email and mail and phone calls should never be the case.

I will almost always vote for the politicians who understand and will likely legislate the importance of privacy. Maybe I don't care about exposing my television watching habits. But do I care about having my web surfing habits exposed? Do I care about having my financial details shared with others? History of the abuse of private data has shown that the slope is horribly slippery. The slippery slope should be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

To quote yar's post above:

Check out Daniel Solove's work- here's a good start.
"I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565&rec=1&srcabs=667622

But ... American copyright law doesn't apply outside America...

Are you sure? I recommend you read Prof. Neil Netanel's paper, Why Has Copyright Expanded?. In part he argues that the US trade representative (heavily influenced by US content industry lobbyists) has used its significant leverage in the shaping of international IP treaties (such as TRIPS and WIPO) to greatly expand copyright protections in countries around the world (and, sinisterly, to expand the US's own copyright regime).

To the extent that the United States is the content-capital of the world (yeah, I know that's highly debatable), other countries should take note of US copyright policy and politics. If Australia adopts (more) draconian copyright rules - that sucks, especially for Australians. If the US adopts (more) draconian copyright rules, that's probably the harbinger of ever more draconian international treaties, which often economically coerce countries into changing their own laws.

Some quotes from Netanel's article:

"[C]opyright and other intellectual property lobbyists have also exerted extraordinary influence on the US position in international treaty and trade agreement negotiations. The industries have regularly used their political muscle to lead US negotiators to initiate treaty negotiations and sponsor provisions requiring other countries to expand their copyright protection...

"TRIPs requires WTO member countries to comply with prescribed standards for intellectual property protection and authorizes the imposition of trade sanctions against countries that fail to do so. In its initial submission to the TRIPs negotiations, the US delegation, working closely with copyright industry associations, proposed language on the permissible scope of countries’ limitations to copyright holder rights that would have made all but a highly crabbed, market-centered version of fair use a violation of the agreement.

"[T]he industry has continued adeptly to use international treaty negotiations as part of its domestic legislative strategy. The ‘paracopyright’ anti-circumvention provisions enacted as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 are another case in point.... [A]dministration officials, led by former software-industry lobbyist Bruce Lehman, brought the copyright industry-backed digital agenda to the World Intellectual Property Organization and urged that it be incorporated into new intellectual property treaties then under consideration.

"In December 1996 a WIPO-sponsored diplomatic conference adopted two of those treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty."

Have a read at this piece of work: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 While hiding in plain sight has its value, not being able to hide anything can have plenty of harm to an innocent person, especially if they have no control of how their data is used or interpreted.

Don't let yourself get bent out of shape over this. Read the paper which is being quoted by the article before you start believing nonsense and posting your own. The Klein article misrepresents and quotes out of context. For example, here is the Cass Sunstein quote that Aaron Klein picks and edits to his liking:

"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."

Sounds really scary right? Okay, here is the full paragraph from Sunstein's paper, available online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 :

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

Note the last sentence. Sunstein leaves the 2 points quoted by Klein out of the recommendation. The paper itself is somewhat insightful and worth a skim. There are things to disagree with perhaps, but this isn't some civil liberty crushing maniac.

Why not link in HuffingtonPost, FreeRepublic, and MichaelMoore.com while you're at it. ;)

For those who care about the actual paper rather than the right-wing spin of it:

--------

Abstract:
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
------

Note how the Slashdot header linked to COINTELPRO, to imply that that's what's being talked about? Even in the *scenario* where infiltration is discussed, the paper explicitly states, "By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions." The paper is about how (or whether to) dispel conspiracy theories to prevent them from spreading, not to prosecute the individuals who promote them. Cognitive infiltration is discussed (again, in purely theoretical terms) in not just a covert manner, but also an overt manner. A lot (although not all) of the paper also is about overseas actions against muslim radical organizations, too, giving examples of tactics we're already employing to dispel conspiracy theories that help fuel terrorist organizations. Anyone who doesn't realize that our government actively employs propaganda even against non-conspiracy-theories isn't paying attention.

Now, all of that said, Sunstein does come across in the end as as supporting debunking conspiracy theories which can "create or fuel violence" by "rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cogitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and informationally isolated social networks." Which form of cognitive infiltration discussed -- covert or overt -- is not mentioned, nor is whether this is a reference to domestic, international, or both kinds of conspiracy theories.

I disagree, but it's not as radical of a paper as it's being made out to be.

...someone they can scare with random stuff that never really happens...

• Yes, I suppose that
• you must be entirely
• right, despite the
• easily Googled evidence
• to the contrary.
• Of course, Googling is a rare skill, and one can't
• expect everyone to grasp it.

That, by the way, was a hit directly on your head with the clue-bat. :)

An interesting side effect of the DOJ's decision to force Microsoft to document more of their protocols was that internal Microsoft employees have found their job easier and the teams more efficient.
I stumbled across this tidbit while research for a final paper about software patent (good/bad/why/alternatives). You can read about it here.

At the expense of being forced to sell memory chips at higher prices ?

No thanks, I prefer to spend on Defense as well.

Same false argument has been put forward to defend of CCTV.
I prefer to shit in privacy, but it seems Eric Schmidt doesn't.

He should read this article.

Solove, Daniel J., 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=998565