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China and the MPA
A riddle: What do China and the Motion Picture Association have in common? The answer this week: arrogance. Plus stupidity.
Both are about to learn the hard way what American educators, religious leaders, law enforcement officials - even politicians - are just beginning to figure out: The Net isn't censorable. Neither is the software that runs programs, links Web sites, plays, movies and music, stores or transmits information and ideas.
The Net is an unyielding trade-off. If you want to do business or sell things on it, you sacrifice monopoly and control, and use technology to offer choice and options. If you don't, you're heading backwards.
Both the Chinese government and the MPA have learned little from recent technological history, following in the bovine steps of the music industry, which alienated a generation of liberated music lovers by huffing and puffing but failing to slow or stop the spread of digital music technology.
Institutions both governmental and corporate that feel threatened by the Net and the Web, are developing a pattern. Rather than embrace innovative and empowering new technologies to offer consumers and citizens choice and freedom, they seek out a handful of targets to use as warnings, examples of the nasty fate that will befall transgressors.
If any approach is doomed to fail in this era, it's that one. Too bad some people will have to pay along the way, sacrifices on the altar of corporate or governmental obliviousness.
For all the media hype about technology, pornography and e-commerce, one of the most striking but still largely unrecognized legacies of the Net has been the death blow it's dealt to the very idea of censorship. One industry and institution after another - music, the law, medicine, Wall Street, academe, the media- is coming to terms with this new reality, voluntarily or otherwise.
For hundreds of years, censorship has been the primary tool by which government, monarchies, educational and religious institutions and, lately, powerful corporations, have asserted political, cultural and economic dominance. They're going to have to learn to live without it.
This week, police in Norway raided the home of Jon Johansen, a teenager, at the request of the Motion Picture Association, which has joined in the global effort to suppress certain software - in this case DVD viewing code -- deemed responsible for copyright violations and intellectual property theft (last week, the recording industry went after Mp3.com). Last month, the DVD Copyright Control Association sued 72 hackers and Web site authors for posting - or even linking to software (DeCSS) that unlocks the system for preventing illegal copying of video discs.
Johansen's arrest got widespread media coverage in America, unusual for a foreign-based copyright case. Perhaps one reason is that companies like Disney, owner of ABC News, which covered the story yesterday on television and radio, have a decidedly vested interested in publicizing the notion that music, movies and culture in general belong to private corporations, not code-writing geeks and nerds. Hackers (usually crackers) have often been singled out in this way - paraded before hordes of reporters and hauled off dramatically to jail. The authorities know they haven't got a prayer of rounding up all the alleged wrongdoers, but they can make so much noise they might fool people into thinking otherwise.
The arrest came at almost the same moment China announced restrictions on its burgeoning Net chat rooms and e-mail accounts. Ocurring continents apart, the two incidents seemed oddly connected.
The MPA - along with the music industry, one of the world's largest cartels outside of Columbia -- has claimed in several legal actions that the kind of DVD-viewing software Johansen allegedly used was developed outside of the industry's monopoly, and is thus illegal. The organization particularly wants to suppress so-called reverse engineering and the public posting and sharing of DVD codes.
Governments like China are attempting a different kind of information control, an equally doomed effort to stick their fingers in the digital dike.
On Wednesday, the agency that oversees China's Internet users [http://slashdot.org/article.pl'sid=00/01/26/1254221&mode=thread] issued severe new regulations intended to control the release of "state secrets" and other unauthorized information over the Internet, one of the broadest efforts yet by a government to do what is inherently impossible: control online speech.
The Chinese government is in a classic technological quagmire, almost the same one facing the movie industry. Does it want to grow and prosper in a techno-driven, linked global economy or not? Embracing and deploying innovative new technology is essential to investment and development in the 21st Century. That puts increasing pressure on undemocratic governments, who quite correctly dread the spread of computing, e-mail and chat rooms, and on corporations, who fear the loss of profitable monopolies.
China has nearly nine million Internet users, significantly up from two million a year ago, according to a survey by the government's China Internet Information Center. But many Chinese believe the figure is dramatically higher. One computer analyst working from Hong Kong wrote earlier this year that China may actually have more than 35 million e-mail accounts. As for the world's code-sharing DVD nerds, nobody knows how many there are - but it's believed to number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Despite Johansen's show arrest, and the imprisonment of a handful of Chinese political dissidents speaking out online, both groups are beyond conventional policing. But that doesn't mean a lot of people won't pay by being persecuted, jailed or worse before the futility of the censorship effort becomes clear.
This week's regulations in China were announced by the aptly-named State Secrecy Bureau, a murky agency which seems to be taking over efforts to control the Net and to identify and arrest users who post "illegal" information on the Web.
Does this seem vastly different from the way corporate interests around the world (for more on the issues surrounding the Johansen incident, see http://www.eff.org/ ) are seeking to curb the dissemination of software and intellectual property online? Maybe it isn't. Both corporations and government, since they can't monitor all of the many millions of offenders online, are singling out targets of opportunity. They believe they're sending miscreants a message, but instead, they appear to be alienating and enraging the next generation of consumers as well as prodding geeks and nerds to continue to develop software as a political and cultural tool.
The powerful reality is that there aren't enough cops and lawyers on the planet, not even in China, to monitor all the chat rooms and the millions of e-mail accounts. There sure aren't enough to police the distribution of open source and other code like the one that runs DVD's.
Ultimately, such regulations are utterly doomed, as are efforts to restrict source codes for DVD players or the transmission of music and information online.
But before China and the MPA learn this inevitable lesson, an indeterminate number of victims will be snared and made examples of. As futile and sometimes tragic as these persecutions are, these people will pay the price for the growing freedom everyone else is enjoying.
I disagree, it seems (given recent examples) that the attempt to censor has the reverse effect. It causes even more of the "questionable" material to pop up everywhere. I have a copy of the DeCSS code that I otherwise could have cared less about on my server simply for this reason.
DeCSS has become more widespread than most code fragments not because people are using it, but because people are taking a stand against those trying to censor them.
More effective censorship in this example would have been to not do anything about, then it would have been a midly importent project in the open source world, but would never have become as popular as it is now.
Finkployd
If Open Source is to win, REALLY win, it must defeat not the armies of the Sauron (the MPA) or the Orcs and Trolls of Sauruman (the RIAA) but the One Ring (Power Over Others). Yes, that means -fighting- those armies, but as in Tolkein's depiction, those battles can be won or lost by either side, and it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. All that matters is whether The Ring is destroyed or handed over.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A full-featured (at least professional looking) application that any luser can install and play DVDs out of the box would really get the point of this lawsuit across to the various journalists and shapers of public opinion.
IANAL yet, I think Stiletto has an excellent point here. As long as the DeCSS code stays in its current mystic form, it'll be easy for the MPAA's layers to manipulate a technologically-challenged judge into any sort of demented rulings. Yet, it we were to have a product to show to the judge and argue "See, we couldn't do this without DeCSS", I think the MPAA's case would be much harder to sell.
But while that was really true of USENET, it was less true of the Internet. The situation became worse as the technology progressed. Early routers were very simple, looked at each packet independently, and never examined content. Very little control of the network was available. Serious sites tried to have multiple routes, and packets from the same session might take different routes. So there was no good place to insert censorship.
Now we have firewalls, proxies, more rigid network structure, and much smarter routers. Blocking based on IP address is routine. Blocking based on content is available as off-the-shelf technology. So is user-monitoring software. All of this scales up enough that all of China is being firewalled.
So, unfortunately, the net is now censorable. Not perfectly, but enough so that we can't just laugh at censorship threats.
Now, I am not saying that the Chinese people want to be censored, but I think they don't view the Chinese government as censoring the Internet. Rather, they view it as the government protecting the people from a Western lifestyle that is full of greed and shy of morals.
In fact, I think the greatest piece of evidence to show that censorship in China will indeed work is the fact that ordinary Chinese citizens are helping censor the Internet! See:c e000125.html
http://abc news.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/china_webpoli
I had a friend who was a diplomat in Russia. A couple years ago, he came home, and we discussed Russia's future. He thought Russia would revert to Communism before year 2000. His argument was that the Russian populace liked the Communist system, and had come to expect a big government, big brother type of authority in charge. Granted, it's past 2000, and Russia isn't Communist... yet. Who knows what Putin has up his sleeves, though. :)
In summary... while we Westerners might find any restriction of free speech as unforgiving, other cultures see protection from outside thoughts and ideals as comforting.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
JOHN KATZ IS SATAN!! WHERE IS KURT WARNER? HE WOULD KICK KATZ' ASS!
This well-intentioned post makes the same wrong assumption that has allowed so much oppression:
It's the same assumption made by those who think voters should have to register.
It's the same assumption made by those who thought that women shouldn't vote, or that the poor shouldn't vote, or that no one should vote.
It's the same assumption made by those who apathetically allow others to make decisions for them.
The assumption is that people are not capable of running their own lives, and making their own decisions.
I would ask the poster: what measures do you recommend for stopping these examples of hysteria? It sounds to me like the best recipe is creating a society where people are encouraged to think for themselves. How exactly does a society become mature enough to respond correctly to misinformation? By being exposed to it, and simultaneously being allowed to look at all the information, and decide the facts themselves. What caused the harms that were corrected by the laws you mention? Lack of access to the truth.
Maybe people don't always act like adults. Maybe we do make horrible mistakes due to ignorance, fear, and gullibility. But the lesson of liberty is that we must be allowed to act like adults, educate ourselves, and make the important decisions. Because the alternative is tyranny.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Nothing wrong with GPLing software, after all, it's your code. However, I believe your aims and the GPL are not consistent. Your project wants to become massively distributed over the world, in effect, a standard. For this type of distribution, I believe that history has shown a more liberal license such as BSD for the TCP/IP stack or X works better. I don't think the stated aims of this project care whether the software is hosted on a commercial or noncommercial system. Wouldn't it be wonderful if commercial systems, even Windows (doubtful) were to do the work of distributing this software for you?
IANAL, but I question whether for most systems it is legal to link your GPLed code with anything but something such as the GPLed Kaffe. (Well for you since it's your code anything is legal, but I'm talking about others to whom it is distributed.) A Java VM is not a systems component for most systems so it doesn't fall under that exception to the GPL. This sort of technicality is what got KDE excluded from being distributed with Debian.
"Its simple, if you dont want anyone duplicating DVD's dont make DVD-R's"
I just had a thought: I don't know if DVD disks can be run in a regular CDrom, but if they can, why not just create self-playing media and encrypt the exe along with the actual copyrighted material? Might've had a leg to stand on then..
sparkane
(sniff) True! It's all TRUE!!! (sob)
Every single one of your points is dead on, I am a pathetic rutabaga-loving, New Yorker-snubbing, American Anthem-listening, passwordless sham and I haven't the courage to face another day (BLAM!)
Thank you.
Yep, that's exacty how I accidentally found it. I was pointed to trolltalk and mistyped the sid and found that I could create my own thread trolltlak. I don't agree that Rob should do anything about this. Why rap the hornet's nest?
The Don Knot's guy might become angered and release a plauge of locusts upon the land, or something.
"Every minute I have to spend dealing with booking agents, gallery owners, theater owners and the like is actually about five minutes I can't spend doing what I enjoy"
.."
C'mon, it's NOT that hard to be your own business outlet if you work via the net. Tons of small bands are doing it. It's so cheap and easy to create the dumbest site which does the bare essentials: lets visitors listens to clips or whole songs and then says: "want to hear more? send $$ to
It all comes down to wanting to be big rich rock stars, because that's really the only thing the industry really offers: STATUS. Maybe not even riches, since the artists' frequently don't get royalties for their work, just a flat fee, then they have to hit the concert road to make real money - which I'll admit, would not be as possible without the big labels. But there you are, it all comes down to money.
sparkane
That sounds excellent. Thanks.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Of course, Boyle's treatise is fairly useless to anyone who takes a position other than the extreme of "the State is too stupid to regulate technology effectively." Actually, it affirms Katz' original thesis. That is, the State *can* exert some power, and it can do so in non-obvious ways. However, Boyle does definitely concede that such control is not likely to be effective. I mean, has any of the controlling technologies mentioned in that essay have a meaningful impact on the Net as we know it today? Do you hear the Solid Oaks and Mayberry USA's of the world announcing multi-billion dollar IPOs? No? What about the V-chip manufacturers? Big business, right? The Huxley-esque "world controllers" can try, but ultimately, they won't get very far. Why? It literally becomes too expensive, both in terms of dollars and manpower.
"If he's going to submit it to a mainstream media source he should at least fix all of the technical innacuracies . . . "
. . . and his grammatical ones. Sorry, but people judge you by the words you use and the grammar you do or do not know. I'm not a very hard-core grammar or spelling kind of guy, especially with these informal posts, however, some of these longer articles should be at least checked by one copy-editor. Katz's words are the words, like it or not, that will most likely see in a mainstream medium. While many of these people won't care one way or another, some will, and those are educated people in other fields. We need support from end-users of products, especially against the MPAA and DVD consortium (sp). Nerds alone can't do it.
I'll offer to do it (the copy-editing), but I'm only human, and still learning.
Dan
Don Knots! That guy rulez!
> largest cartels outside of Columbia
Hee hee. Didn't know Columbia was such a dangerous place. By chance did you mean Colombia?
Earl Higgins
While I do agree with your point, I do not like the comparison between prohibition and DeCSS, because theres simply nothing wrong with DeCSS at all. Breaking DVD encryption was done to access rights we really should have had from day one. Now, I think prohibition is pretty stupid, too, but it is more controversial. Comparing fair use to alcohol would give many people the wrong idea.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
American University law professor James Boyle has a nice article addressing this point ("Foucault in Cyberspace: Surveillance, Sovereignty, and Hard-Wired Censors"), in which he argues that proponents of the idea that the web is uncensorable underestimate the ability of the government to regulate the net, and to enroll private agents (e.g. ISPs) to enforce policy.
Warning: Be prepared for somewhat dense prose, if you're not used to reading this kind of article. It's well worth the effort, though; he certainly changed the way I thought about net censorship. I also recommend the rest of his site to anyone interested intellectual property issues. (If only he'd get rid of that one <blink> tag, arggghh.)
The other encouraging thing is that some people can discern the truth by comparing what they're being told to what they experience. Of course, they need to view things with an open mind.
I wonder if zealots are strident because they're insecure: they see evidence all around them that their cherished beliefs are wrong.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
1. Comparing the MPA and the music industry to China is nauseous. I think the MPA and RIAA are stupid and misunderstand the Internet, but comparing them to the totalitarian Chinese state is a bit of a stretch.
2. The net is very censorsable -- at least as censorable as r/l. Katz is mistaken when he thinks that in order for the net to be censored that someone has to monitor *every* chat room. Not even close. All that is needed is to monitor a significant minority of chat rooms and make several high profile examples of offenders in order to deter the sort of things China doesn't want (this is, after all, exactly the role fulfilled by other criminal prosecutions -- no crime can be punished perfectly, but by publicly punishing a broad sample of cirminals, others are deterred from committing the same crime, though again, not perfectly).
In China, for example, state censorship of the Internet works surprisingly well. I've talked to people in Chia via email who refuse to talk about certain topics because they know people have been thrown in jail for such activities.
Fear is rather easy to generate for an authoritarian state.
I didn't see the phrase that annoyed you, but I'll give my take on it.
Grow up.
In a political discussion it is perfectly acceptable to say, "America screwed up royally" when referring to the American government screwing up royally. It is equally acceptable to say "China has no clue about what the Internet really is," when you're referring to China's stupid attempt to regulate online speech.
Now if he said "Chinese suck", then I'd agree with you. But to say "China sucks" is quite acceptable. You cannot be racist about a LAND, you can be racist about a PEOPLE.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
--
Yeah, that's exactly what Andrew was complaining about. People say "China" and don't specify whether they mean the Chinese government, people, hackers, whores, or some other group.
...
Imagine if everyone said that Unix was made by "America"
He needs to stop using phrases like "techno-savvy" and "wired-generation".
I'm assuming he has used these terms here, or other similar buzzwords commonly used by lazy wanna-be journalists.
Anyone who has read this article by accident care to comment, and save me the effort of ploughing through ?
I made that mistake last time, I don't have time to make the same mistake twice...
What the MPAA and other 'official' organizations are doing is the same thing the US tried when it outlawed Alcohol. Driving the perpetrators underground and increasing their profit margins. Organized crime won't be stopped, just the occasional unlucky hacker.
The MPAA and others are guilty of underestimating peoples' curiosity. They are also guilty of stupidity for encouraging the use of such an easily broken code scheme. Now they want blame every one else for their mistakes.
I'm surprised production houses and artists haven't sued the MPAA, the RIAA and others for endorsing sloppy encryption techniques.
What a bunch of arrogant, self important idiots, all of them.
At the high prices Record companies and movie distributors charge, it's just too temptimg for criminals to resist getting in on the action.
I normally post a movielog on my web page, detailing every theatrical release I see. After these recent events, I've decided to start an Anti-Movielog, in which I will record all the movies I don't see, but otherwise would have if these outrages had not occured.
I just got to thinking, why not implement it on a massive scale? How many people who normally go to movies are actually planning to boycott? If there's an appreciable number, wouldn't it be cool to have a web page where people could go and tell everyone exactly which movies they're not seeing on what dates. Then we could keep a running total to show the movie industry exactly how much money they're costing themselves.
Of course, keeping it honest could be a potential problem. We wouldn't want the hypothetical database to be Slashdotted and the polls stuffed by repeat voters, or people who wouldn't have seen the movies anyway. Still, it's an idea to think about. I'd like to know anyone else has ideas about this. If there's enough interest, I'd be willing to help out on such a project.
This battle is far from won.
Wether we like it or not, this is going to be settled in court and this is not finished yet. If DeCSS is outlawed, this will give the MPA an instrument against everyone (in the US at last) that distributes it and considering who owns the media - what do you think will the average american think about those who get arrested?
There is a chance that you are right, but that is all it is. A chance. Moveable type, radio, television were similar chances and look what happened.
Ciao, Peter
Yes, that's not the full name, but most people do call it China, just like people call France 'France' and the United Kingdom the 'United Kingdom', both of which have longer real names.
Or are you upset he attributed the actions of the government to the country?
I'm really confused here.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I think this hits on an important point that
crosses several types of things that governments
do.
Whenever governments try to legislate and curb
act which are not violent, and have no victem
(in the case of software copying, you could argue
that the software company is a "victem" however
they don't even know its going on) then they
create a big problem.
With "real" crimes, there is a victem. Either
a body on the ground with some evidence as to
how it happend ot identiy of the killer through
fingerprints, or a person who was robbed etc.
ie. the victem brings the attention of the police
to the crime. If Joe's store is robbed, surely he
isn't going to sit back and hope the police decide
to come by and ask him if he has been robbed
lately.
Whats my point?
The point is, that with all this "intellectual
property" (what a silly term) the crime that
is being searched for is almost impossible to
identify. Any TCP/IP connection can be one...it
can be happening in the privacy of someones
bedroom and noone will ever goto the police and
complain.
There will NEVER be enopugh manpower to hunt
down consensual "crimes". Whether it is stopping
"Unauthorized copying", protitution, drugs,
or sex with foodstuffs (which is illegal in some
states).
The real danger is that things like this will be
used as an excuse to give the police more and more
powers. It will end up being used (not necissarily
intentionally) to erode privacy.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Jon, I've never replied to one of your articles before; I didn't have anything to say in responce to them. However, I have something to say to you: glad to see you :-)
:-)
I'm glad you learned that in a place like Slashdot, as opposed to "traditional media," the six degrees of separation are actually one degree of separation. That degree being the will to speak. If you have it, you'll be seen and heard by many others
"I don't know why they don't show up."
-- your Karma is likely low, and people aren't seeing you because of thresholds (or it could be you don't post as much as some). I suggest you preview a few times before hitting submit, and then make sure the comment is posted via your user page. It's also good for tracking replies to your posts, and keeping on top of interesting threads.
Have fun..
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
(Caveat: this comment is based on reading the project overview - please correct me if I missed something)
I have also pondered such a technology-based solution to censorship. Although the idea is attractive, a huge obstacle to implementation, which as far as I can tell Freenet does not address, is the spam problem. If such a system allowing anonymous posting ever becomes widely used (which is the goal, after all), I would predict that spammers would quickly clog it to the point of making it unusable (cite Usenet as precedent).
This problem rules out most straightforward implementations. My idea to solve this is not fully developed, but would be a network that anyone could access, but that only those who "payed" could post on. Payment would consist of operating a server, and via an untracable digital cash scheme, operation of the server would give you the right to post (minus system overhead).
For example, if you run a server that can store 20 MB of content from the network and the overhead tax is 50%, you would get digital cash that let you post 10 MB of material on the network. This would prevent spam, since the spammers couldn't get a free ride: they would have to pony up storage space.
The big problem (obviously) is devising an authentication system that creates the digital cash that is both 1) secure and 2) does not constitute a point of attack for a goverment trying to bring down the system.
I'd be interested in hearing whatever ideas people might have as to how to accomplish this.
America should free all the innocent blacks in their Americunt jails first, before they comment others.
I really don't have much else to say beyond that. If you start criticizing an article without reading it, you are no better than those who label deCSS as a program for copying DVDs...I know it's not the best analogy, but it's just about as stupid and wrongheaded. -Loki
Says it all.
Sure it's a Communist country, and it's done some shitty things, but it's not as stupidly backwards as you seem to believe it is. I don't know what the "AIDS baths" are that you're talking about, but if you'll remember, our own country hasn't exactly been all that advanced on stopping aids itself until very recently. Give 'em a break, their country is five times the size of ours, of course they have bureaucracy problems. You're right, it does sound racist. -Loki
Funny. Don't recall making any of those assertions. However, your post does point out hat I didn't clarify a few things.
I would ask the poster: what measures do you recommend for stopping these examples of hysteria? It sounds to me like the best recipe is creating a society where people are encouraged to think for themselves.
I would recommend education. Ultimately, I would want a society where everyone HAS to learn, has to grow, has to think. I'm a strong believer in sinking resources into education and encouraging critical thinking.
However, such development takes time, decades even. A population that has not yet reached that level of maturity is vulnerable throughout that entire time. That is why I feel that censorship is sometimes a necessary evil, a stopgap measure until the population has reached the maturity required. I do not advocate permanent censorship :)
As an analogy, think of raising a child. Yes, you sink huge amounts of time and effort educating the child. However, neither do you allow the little tyke unrestricted freedom and access, because he might go walk on a freeway, stick his finger in an electric outlet or something of the sort. Are you not taking away his freedom? Are you not taking away his rights? Yes. But only for as long as necessary.
Freedom is fantastic. Human rights are awesome. However, blindly asserting that it is appropriate at any stage, any time, any person ... is irresponsible. Wisdom is knowing when to apply the right concepts at the right time. For a final thought - look at the development of countries in Asia. Compare the development of "true democracies" in the American sense vs. the "democratic dictatorships". You will find that on average, it was the "less free" nations that developed the best. There are notable exceptions of course.
In summary: To each when they are truly ready for it, and only then. Full democracy and freedom are appropriate for societies that have matured enough to support it.(BLAM!)
:-)
Can I have your American Anthem album, since you won't be needing it anymore?
I am actually glad that the MPA is going to such extremes, and the chinese government as well. Such actions are sealing their fate, and ensuring that their demise will only accelerate.
The net is the great equalizer. Empowering the individual. So use that power for good. Do not let the big corporate greedy monopolistic bastards scare you with thier strong arm tactics, for then they have won.
a big FUCK YOU to government and corporate scare tactics used to silence freedom.
(and a DeCSS mirror: http://cubicmetercrystal.com/decss/ )
Truth is, in any country where education isn't sufficiently high and skepticism isn't strongly in place, the free flow of information can hurt much more than it can help.
;)
So, you're saying that freedom is the American imperialist tool of oppression?
Even "modern" Western societies fall prey to scaremongering. Come on, Y2K! It's the end of the world as we know it! Thousands of programmers on the internet repeated this trash, as they imagined a scenario where the worst happened (power, telephone, gas, nuclear, etc all going kaput at once. Nothing could be fixed because of all infrastructure being paralyzed. Back to to the stone age, with riots, and all that.)
Just look at Europe and the insane paranoia over beef and Mad Cow Disease. There's never been any proof of the link between MCD and CJD. Hell, there's not even any info on whether or not the incidence of CJD is higher than its historical or natural level.
Then there are the green pressure group scare tactics over genetically modified foods, pharmaceuticals, or pretty much any new technology. A US ad by Turning Point shows a mouse with a human ear growing on its back (transplanted cells into a plastic-matrix merely being fed by the mouse's circulatory system, e.g. incubated), and the green ad uses the picture as an example of the HORRIFIC abuse that genetic engineering poses on nature (even tho the actual mouse wasn't GM'ed)
The whole precautionary principle debate is ridiculous. If it was truly applied to all new technologies, we wouldn't be able to eat any new recipes. Can you prove that those new Smoothy drninks that blend together lots of veggies won't result in a chemical side-effect? Better run government tests on that! Does anyone actually realize that cooking *is* chemistry? That's not to say that there should be no regulation, since regular *breeding* as described above is also regulated (many "natural" plants have lots of toxins in them) What's needed is rational discourse however, not bohemian granola hippies teaming up with labor unions and dancing wild in the streets of Seattle, or green pressure groups opening spreading false propaganda to encourage fear.
(see http://www.junkscience.com/dec99/earie.htm )
Some hack farmer blindly crosses different plant species, with huge bits of genes being swapped back and forth (some infact is "genetic junk" being accidently reactivated), and people think it is perfectly natural, and "safer" Meanwhile, a scientist transfers a single gene between two species instead of cut-and-pasting huge segments, and it is somehow "dangerous" (while at the same time, being more precise and careful), because it's not "natural"
There is a total lack of education about RISK in this society, and the pressure groups are praticing a scare compaign to take advantage of that.
In fact, there is a general lack of tolerance in general. Everything is seen as black and white. Corporations? Evil. Government? Evil? Socialism? Evil. Capitalism? Evil. GM? Evil. Microsoft? Evil. Closed Source? Evil. No one bothers to consider or weigh specific cases or situations any more. Everything is simple categorized and dismissed.
On slashdot, I see nine gazillion comments on every new story to the effect "what's so new about this? big deal." Before people even read a story, they hit the reply button and start dismissing it. And while there are generally a few thoughtful essays posted, the vast majority of responses are 1-3 line dismissals or "dittos"
Can someone please teleport me to Vulcan or some planet where there is more thoughful discussion?
The Internet can only be censored to the extent that freedom of assembly can be curtailed. Okay, let's assume the DMCA holds, the 2600 guys go to jail, and there comes a "Black Monday" where the U.S. government savagely starts shutting down wide swaths of the Internet. Let's assume that for a second.
What would happen is that, unless communications channels were shut down *completely* - including email - people would still talk. Email would be strong encrypted. Then they'd get together in living rooms and continue the work. "Illegal" code would get exchanged even faster, even wider. Open websites would be replaced with encrypted BBS systems. And in the end, that would reflect in the consumer market, and things would be forced back open.
It would be a long, ugly process. A lot of people would get hurt along the way. But it would happen.. because in the United States we have a constitutional right to free assembly. It's probably the most important right we have, next to free speech.
In China, the government sees no particular right to free assembly. You're pretty much allowed to assemble as long as it doesn't interfere with the interests of the state. In the U.S., it's a different story, at least for now.
but really, it's just inappropriate to refer to the Chinese government as "China", especially if you're going to say something like "China is stupid". I know this wasn't Katz's intention, I'm sure he's not a racist, but he should still be more careful with the words he uses.
You could also argue that boycotting all forms of watching movies unfairly hits a lot of other people, like ushers at theaters, the girl behind the videostore counter ("sorry, have to cut you, business is bad") and so on.
/. and see if they think I or anyone that is taking this position is kidding.
But how many peole are being unfaily hit by the MPAA's actions? Will we as users of alternative operating systems say "ok, stick a fork in us, were done." We are unfairly being being stopped from using a product we purchased (DVD's). If the people that may be "cut" as you put it know why "business is bad". I am sure in turn they will yell and scream about being unfaily being cut because the major company is unfairly treating others. Lets face it Life is not Fair. We have the right to fight injustice in a peaceful manner even if that means "voting with our dollars". To large corporations that is the single biggest thing that hurts, Lost profits. What do you think the shareholders of those companies will do when profits are way down. They will want to know what is wrong. When they are told "no revenue". Don't you think those shareholders will start demanding the heads of some corporate executive if things are not fixed pronto?
If we all stop buying DVDs they'll need to consider what would happen if the format actually failed entirely due to their evil efforts.
I don't see this happening either, DVD is to entrenched right now. It is to popular. It would take a HELL of alot to kill DVD at this point.
I have stopped all movie going, renting of movies, purchasing of CD's (exept for the ones I buy directly from artists), I also sent emails to these MPAA jokers telling them exactly what I am doing and why I am doing it. I have also told them I am publicly advocating a TOTAL boycott of their products. Let them come over and read the threads here a
Yes the MPAA and it's subsidiaries have LOTS of moeny. But like I said wait till their quarterly earnings take a nose dive. Wall street is not very forgiving and neither are shareholders.
Best offense is a Total BOYCOTT, BOYCOTT, BOYCOTT, Hit them were it counts. And I don't mean in the groin, well, this is hitting them in the groin. So make them FEEL it.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Do you have a source for such statistics? I don't say this as a challenge - I think you're probably right. But I've refrained from making this argument in the past because I didn't have hard evidence to back it up.
So far, the Australian Broadcasting Authority has issue a couple of "Takedown Notices" to certain websites hosting prohibited content. Each of those sites was back up again running from an offshore host server within hours.
Electronic Frontiers Australia has more details..
--
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
I don't wanna rain on your parade, but the DVD CCA charges a licensing fee of USD$10,000 to developers wishing to write a DVD-decoder. For a company like Xing, IBM, or Microsoft, this is small change. However, I defy you to find an open-source project that has this kind of funding, and is willing to spend it on what is, in the long run, a relatively small part of Linux.
Your only hope is that Corel or RedHat (or someone with some IPO money - wink, wink, Andover) picks up the cause, but I doubt they're willing to drop that kind of cash on DVD, either.
The point is, people already purchase a DVD drive from one of the DVD CCA's licensed vendors, and purchase the DVD CCA licensed studio's movie (and it's associated rights) from a DVD CCA licensed distributor. Why should we have to pay for the software to make these two items (from which the DVD CCA already collected their due) talk to our video/sound system?
In summary, your assertion that some OS developer could just go and write a DVD player is false, and shows that you havn't been reading these threads much (the USD$10,000 licensing fee has been thoroughly discussed, and that information is available from the DVD CCA). Barring the intervention of the local lottery, or a very benevolent corporate sponsor, licensed DVD playback is beyond the means of the open-source community.
Wasnt slashdot just praising chila last week?
fickle, fickle
The Über-Troll Round Table, held in an underground bunker here at Slashdot, masterminds the creation,
distribution, and content of the Slashdot MEEPTspace. Protected by 30' steel doors, it offers peace and quiet for
the Über-Troll so that s/he may do their job with full confidence.
Sorry, a phrase like that deserves repeating. :)
One of the goals of the Über-Troll Round Table is to have a far reaching influence - much like other cult groups
such as the Illuminati. Though this would seem most difficult, they have already obtained JonKatz as a member.
Why is this posted Jan. 31, but the URL is http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/27/201525 4 ??? Just curious.
I believe the way these "fake sids" work is like this: (and Rob, you might want to consider correcting this...)
Whenever you post a message on Slashdot, among all the data and parameters you submit is the sid. This is some kind of ID code used to tie an article to a discussion. When you click "Submit," the posting script inserts a new row into the database with the sid, cid (comment ID), the parent comment's cid, and etc. Now, the posting script just does a database insertion; it doesn't check to see if the article with the corresponding sid actually exists. So, by using fake sids (that don't belong to any article), you can theoretically create your own private discussion group right here on Slashdot!
Here's how it's done:
Althought I generally agree with Jon Katz's writings, I have to disagree here. Yes, in an intelligent world, corporations would change their business models to remain competitive. But that is not the world we live in. Corporations would rather change the law than change the way they do business. That is why movie studios fought videotape and why they are fighting OpenDVD. True, they may not be able to stop reverse engineering completely, but they can create (if the courts and congress let them) a very strong chilling effect. It may not be perfect censorship, but it is effective censorship nonetheless.
Just take a look mpa.org and they are refrenced on MPAA.org. Now, Mr. Smartie-grits-in-pants, check CNN Entertainment News for even more info.
This is going to sound racist, BUT, what do you expect from a Communist society that offers AIDS baths to cure AIDS and have restaurants whose dishes are primarily animals sexual organs! Communist Regimes should not exist.
Absolutely not. What it prevents is playing the movie without unscrambling software. I think part of the idea might be to make money on the players, and not worry so much about the data itself. If you have two friends with DVD players and infinite disk space, there's no real way to stop them from sharing everything.
and it has nothing to do with the availability of information. How many Americans would ever read the Communist Manifesto? How many Americans would read Atheism: A Philosophical Justification or consider polyamory? Some, I admit, but the fact of the matter is that if you teach them young enough and from all angles that one view is right and the other is absurd, fringe, radical, or evil, the vast majority will reject that view outright, regardless of whether the information is readily available; they simply won't be willing to read it, or take it seriously in the rare case that they do. They certainly won't wait to read both sides before coming to a conclusion. There's more than one way to prevent a society to read, and it seams the censorship of the future is to grind it into them at a young enough age not to question the authority of the government. A few will slip by, but not enough to convince the rest. 90% of the world's humans practice the religion of their parents - the lasting and enormous power of childhood censorship and propaganda cannot be seriously denied.
I wish you to be right. But I think you are wrong. Neither the politicians, nor the leaders had the resources behind them MPAA has. They had to push questionable laws and usually they failed (Australia being a noteable exemption). The difference in this case is:
The law (MCPA) has already been pushed and quite a few previous laws exist.
These people do not need to finance a media campaign to promote their cause. And they can promote it at no extra expense. As I said in one of the previous threads on the topic they can lie as much as they wish and there is nobody to oppose them with an equivalent amount of firepower. Quoting myself from a previous thread:
A LIE REPEATED ONE HUNDRED TIMES BECOMES THE ULTIMATE TRUTH.
Gobels
Repeat after me: "encrypted DVD cannot be copied" - exempt from the presentation of MPAA for the preliminary injuction in New York. The transcript is at:2600.com - one of the sites hit with injunction. The quote is located in the very beginning.
Presenting it here once again for sake of paranoia (who knows what will they try to injunct next time, the truth maybe):
MR. GOLD: Now, before plaintiffs were willing to make DVDs available, they decided that they had to have an encryption technology so that the content and their copyright interest in the content could be protected, something that would scramble the picture and scramble the sound. And that system was created, and it is called CSS, which stands for content scrambling system. And you can't watch a movie unless you have an authorized DVD player, and the authorized DVD player has the computer key to the program. So with a DVD and an authorized player, the authorized player will unscramble the picture and the sound and you can watch your movie. But you can't copy it. The CSS technology prevents that.
Yeah, right, not like I can copy the entire DVD bit by bit encrypted, make a 100000 copies and sell them...
And as you see the judge accepted this argument wholehartedly and put the entire weight of the US law system behind it. Though the argument is a lie. One that has been repeated 100 times so far and shall be repeated until Gobels holds true.
There has not been a single case when such firepower and finances have been used to make the net silent. And the chances of bringing the Net silent in this case are too high.
You also miscalculate for the fact that all those who failed before are likely to join the crusade seeing MPAA to score points aginst the net as a whole. The Net against all who want to put it under control... Well, I will make no guesses here. I doubt that the net will win so we can all go to O'Raily and by ourselfs a coopy of DataBase Nation to educate ourselves on how shall we live further on. Or a copy of 1984 for that matter.
P.S. I hope I am wrong as well... But...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Dikes usually don't like that. It would be safer for then to stick their fingers in the digital gay.
Dikes usually don't like that. It would be safer for them to stick their fingers in the digital gay.
I'm afraid the Net is semi-censorable. The Internet as a global phenomenon isn't, but each server in each country is censorable by that country. Each country could also attempt to refuse to allow certain packets from certain sites to pass through the routers in that country just to be really Nazi-esque.
Thankfully, it is hell to do and most governments aren't really bothering as most politicians seem not to come from the IT world. A concerted effort on the part of various countries could restrict the Net - it is just whether we can all be that cooperative.
One of the strongest things in Katz's piece is the almost throwaway phrase "DVD viewing software" when referring to DeCSS.
It's important that we refer to it in that way to make the point that it is control over their viewing monopoly that the MPAA are in fact trying to enforce, and not what they actually claim in court.
Perhaps a few might defend the morality of their primary directive "make film once, suck the public dry forever", but nobody sane would argue in favor of their control of DVD viewing software on computers --- that just smells too much of multi-sector monopoly. No doubt this is why the MPAA lawyers never mention any reason beyond the ficticious "piracy" and equally imaginary "keys to the store" -- they know that if they made the MPAA's real goal explicit then they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
The papers and other media need to be made aware of the MPAA's real target, and the term "DVD viewing software" should be used whenever possible to drive the real issue home, repeatedly.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The MUSIC PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION of the United States is what Jon was speaking of and he was very clear about it. As much as it pains me to side with Jon on ANYTHING, I must in this case.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I'm reading that a lot here on Slashdot, but are you sure? Read this section from the DVD FAQ at dvddemystified.com. It says that the DVD-ROM drive's firmware reads the key block on the disc and exchanges authentication codes with the CSS module of the DVD player software. If this is the case, then why would the firmware allow the key block to be copied? If it can't be copied, how do you create a bit-for-bit copy of a disc short of hacking the firmware on the drive -or- *gasp* cracking CSS?
I'm not saying DeCSS is for piracy. I do believe it's for viewing DVDs on Linux, but that's what it is intended to do. Let's not ignore what it can do. The MPAA's legal team sure won't.
Copyright is owned by Tolkien Enterprises.
Write to:
Director of Licensing,
TOLKIEN ENTERPRISES,
2600 Tenth Street
Berkeley CA 94710.
They are a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, but I believe that the Tolkien Estate (Christopher and the others) are the copyright holders, and the above is a licensee
dave
I'm sorry, but I must correct you on this point: "Please Die" was about abusive language online (emails, chat rooms, message boards, etc) it was not about criticism. Telling someone to 'please die' is not criticism, it's a rude and immature attack on someone. I found those 3 articles to be rather thought provoking. (Why don't you go back and re-read them if still think they are about accepting criticism.)
/. It's as if he really isn't a part of the community, only looking in at us. He has responded to my emails in the past, but I wish he'd show up in the postings. Come on, Jon, quit ignoring us!
I agree that it's 100% lame that he doesn't post replies to his articles here on
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Education without some form of indoctrination is a myth. The best we can do is to minimize the indoctrination component by exposing the student to a variety of views, while at the same time giving them the tools to compare, contrast, and realize the full implications of each one.
In many areas of human endeavor, there is no objective standard. Is the "Ode to Joy" a better piece of music than "Axis: Bold as Love"? (I'm not touching that question with a ten-foot pole, thanks.) Science is not immune: we have to deal with questions like what makes a theory more "elegant" than another, or what does the collapse of the quantum wave function really "mean"?Even mathematics is built of a heap of axioms, which in themselves are not objective. The only thing that sets the axioms apart from some other set of declarations is that they are useful to us - they help us deal with the universe in such as way as to meet our wants and needs and enjoy our lives. Which is, at its heart, a very subjective recommendation.
So what's the standard? I can't see a sound argument for anything other than, "Does this improve the quality of my life?"
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Features: China and the MPA
Posted by JonKatz on 04:00 PM January 31st, 2000
from the arrogance-and-stupidity dept.
Says it all really.
We have elected a new leader and he is now promoted to the rank of diety.
Thank you.
Sorry, I'm donating it to the Smithsonian. I tried to donate my body to science but they wouldn't return repeated phone calls. :-)
May I be pained again now?
Sure. Though, in fairness, the MPAA? (regex) really needs to decide what its name is; furthermore, all of the lawsuits have been filed by the "MPAA". Now, the "MPA" may have had the kid arrested. All I know is that "industry stooge Jack Valenti" (tm) is involved with both. And I have $100 that says Katz got this right by accident (in the same way that the late Gene Siskel was only right about movies when he agreed with Roger Ebert).
This is starting to make my head hurt.
(Incidentally, the DVD fiasco made Reason Express this week; see here for details.)
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
Thank you for resolving my dilemma ;-)
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
do not upset the Don Knots guy! as he is now a diety.
Thank you.
Bloom's just another cultural supremicist who equates "different (i.e., non-DWEM) ideas may be valid" with "all ideas are equally valid".
(For the record, I should point out that about 50% of my ancestors are DWEMs, and I bear them no ill will. I'm a fan of many DWEMs, but there are also people who aren't dead, white, European, or male, who I highly respect.)
And if this were being learned, school uniforms and student drug tests would never be accepted. We'd have students standing up in the middle of DARE lectures asking about prohibition-fueled violence, or history students demanding to be taught about the labor movement of the late 1800s. At the very least we'd have more 18-year-old voters registering as something other than Demopublican or Repubicrat. I don't see this happening, do you?Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Culture in general belongs to society at large. It is in the best interest of the corporation to to make you forget that 'The Little Mermaid' existed before Disney's version. Thus elements of the culture end up belonging to the corporation. Btw-> thanks to the Canadian Government for selling the image of the Mountie (Royal Canadian Mounted Police- you know, red jacket, funny black pants) to Disney. But I can't fault corporations for that, they're just trying to make a buck like everybody else (and before I get flamed to oblivion for that last, a man's gota eat, so hold your torches). I can fault them for thier tactics in trying to do so.
And now the blindingly obvious...
Individual works of art such as movies, and music do in fact belong to individual people, or corporations. They have for ages, and people do and have in fact earned a living making works of art that become part of a culture. (Depending upon how you look at it code can be a piece of art. But I digress.)
Culture in and of itself cannot be completely owned by one person/entity. There is a culture that is shared by code-writing geeks and nerds[sic] and in some sense it does belong to them as a group, but it also belongs to the individuals who have contributed it. A case in point, slashdot. It belongs to the comunity that uses it, and at the same time it belongs to Andover. Would you fault Andover for owning it?
The presumption that something that makes up part of your culture belongs to you is exactly what got people so angry when the interface to freshmeat changed a while back (remeber?). The culture doesn't belong to code-writing geeks and nerds any more than it does to the corporations. (And now my bias comes through.)Its just that invoking code-writing geeks and nerds is the only way that Katz attempts to write for, and connect with, this audience.
--locust
Apologies to any current HOWTO maintainer...
1. Read Slashdot story X.
2. Read Slashdot story Y.
3. Read Slashdot story Z.
4. Read into Slashdot story X. Let this affect you personally.
5. Read into Slashdot story Y. Let this affect you personally.
6. Read into Slashdot story Z. Find (usually contrive) a common plot.
7. Reread Slashdot stories X and Y. Use contrived plot to aid in providing desired results.
8. Create new words to aid in describing plot.
9. Write story.
10. Liberally use the word 'Net' in rewrite.
11. Post story.
12. Wait for comments to pour in.
13. Remember comments are useful in next article, so select a choice few.
14. Repeat process.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Now, while the Internet today looks like a great thing, what about the future? Because technology so apparently has outrun any regulatory bodies it looks like we are heading towards a technological anarchy (at least netwise).
Around the corner True Virtual Reality is waiting. With it, everyone can connect themselves to the Net as never before. When that day arrives, will there be an online chaos? The most skillful hacker/cracker can do what (s)he wants without anybody being able to stop her/him. And the potential victims can't leave the net because then they'd be left behind.
Internet today is probably the most chaotic community that ever has existed and it will remain so. But is there a cap to it, a self-regulatory feature which won't allow the internal structure to fall apart in the next few years/decades?
Just a few thoughts. I plan to be c00l enough to survive in the VR. :-)
"The Internet, of course, is more than just a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs." - Time Magazine
Can someone explain to me why all of Katz's so-called "media critques" sound as though they've been authored by a college freshman?
In *every single essay* Katz has a sentence that reads remarkably similar to this:
"For hundreds of years, censorship has been the primary tool by which government, monarchies, educational and religious institutions and, lately, powerful corporations, have asserted political, cultural and economic dominance. "
Or, how about this:
"Institutions both governmental and corporate that feel threatened by the Net and the Web, are developing a pattern. Rather than embrace innovative and empowering new technologies to offer consumers and citizens choice and freedom, they seek out a handful of targets to use as warnings, examples of the nasty fate that will befall transgressors."
Does anyone edit Katz's writings? These lines are the typical "throwaway lines" used to link paragraphs in five-paragraph essays. They don't say anything specific and are always rooted in nifty generalizations that have no basis in fact. "For hundreds of years..." For chrissake, Katz: do some fucking research and get us a number. Use a fucking incident -- an actual event to make your writing more persusaive.
I read all of Katz's essays, and I'm amazed: he's a remarkably lightweight critique who never offers any specfic "insights." What Katz offers is generalized FUD: he picks up on an issue, decides to fit it in with his "project", and, damn the facts or specifics, writes around the issue until he drills home a point that could have been "drilled home" in the first sentence.
Does Katz just write these things willy-nilly and send them off to Slashdot to be "published?" Does anyone actually offer Katz some constructive criticism about his pieces?
Jon, really: you need an editor. You shouldn't fire these pieces off for public consumption until you do some real research. They're not persuasive texts: they're ramblings.
It's the typical sort of Slashdot mentality: well, if I can't think of a comparison, well, I'll use Hitler -- or, better yet, I'll use the typical "communism bad, capitalism good" sort of comparison -- or, wait! -- how about "open source good, non open source bad" -- yeah! that's it.
Katz, go ahead and respond to this. I never see any responses to your so-called "pieces". Why do you write like a college freshman? Why don't you do better research? Why don't you use an editor?
Will not die easily. In fact, they are likely to die only when the old men running them do.
;P
The internet is very young to most of the world. And has become one of the best forums for the exchange of information, ideas, and culture the world has ever seen. This, of course, is a threat to institutions that are trying to maintain a strangle hold on their respective monopolies. Well, tough, they can't stop ideas.
BTW, how did the first post show up 3 days before the article?
Enforce Darwinism
Crap, that stupid
You're right. I assume (hope) Mr. Katz knows the difference as well. But... The DVD CCA sued claiming that that is what DeCSS was for. They claimed that DeCSS was solely to illegally copy DVDs. Yes, this is wrong, and that is part of the problem with their case. No DeCSS is needed to duplicate DVDs. DeCSS is just needed to view them.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
the scene takes place on a beach. mud-guts and condelini are playing with a life-sized cardboard figure of queen amidala. toecutter and bubba zanetti are watching. jon the boy is standing behind toecutter. toecutter grows impatient with mud-guts and condelini playing. he beats his gnu-sausage against the sand.
bubba zanetti whispering into toecutter's ear: joviality is a game of children...
toecutter: mud-guts... get out of there! condelini... put her against the post.
mud-guts and condelini both comply
toecutter: we have a problem here! bubba zanetti has informed me on good authority that she has been sent by the mpa, full of treachery. the mpa... kill our pride!
jon the boy grows impatient and snatches the gnu-sausage from toecutter. he runs over to the cardboard figure and bludgeons it with the sausage.
jon the boy: if you're going to waste the mpa, you gotta do it big!
bubba zanetti shakes his head in disgust.
bubba zanetti: ain't got no style do ya, chicken shit?! goes to water, on a cardboard cutout!
toecutter rises and walks over to jon the boy. he grabs him by the hair and pulls him up from the ground. he puts his arm around him and walks off toward the ocean with him.
toecutter: it's ok... it's ok! it's alright... you'll get your chance! just remember to keep your sweet, sweet mouth shut!
toecutter pulls jon the boy's head back by his hair and begins to plant a deep french kiss on him... but stops just as their lips are about to touch. he puts his arm around jon the boy and walks into the water with him.
thank you.
The MUSIC PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION of the United States is what Jon was speaking of and he was very clear about it. As much as it pains me to side with Jon on ANYTHING, I must in this case.
;-)
From the beginning of Katz's article:
This week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA)...
I guess you can de-pain yourself
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
Sauron, Orc, Troll, Saruman, The One Ring, and Frodo are probably owned by a media conglomerate, especially with a string of feature films about them coming out soon.
(It's funny, laugh.)
Now this is just wierd. What the hell are you talking about?
Our widget says 'submit story' whereas his widget must say 'post story'. Big difference there.
----------------
Overheard: "Aww, why'd you go and install Windows on a perfectly good machine?"
But this is precisely why the Internet is rapidly becoming the medium of choice for the artists you list: it allows for immediate and direct dissemination of content to consumers, without the need for the "middlemen" (who in the actual world are necessary, but also a tremendous financial drain to the artist's profits). The Internet is providing opportunities for reaching audiences to which many artists traditionally did not have access. It is no longer necessary to have a recording contract with a major label to get your CD (or MP3) purchased and played by thousands of people. As throughput increases, the same will be true for video as well. Visual artists don't need to beg for showings or space; the website becomes their virtual gallery. And this is precisely why the RIAA and MPAA are so frightened: the Internet threatens to make obsolete the system which has been put in place by media corporations solely for their benefit (with only marginal benefit to the artists themselves). If an artist can produce, promote, sell and distribute their work totally on their own to a world-wide audience, which can then peruse the product without proprietary audio-visual hardware, then what need is there for recording companies or film distributers, et al?
"Courage is the price that life exact for granting peace. The soul that knows it not knows no escape from little thin
Hyperbolize much?
;)
The net has not destroyed the idea of censorship. The net has not even made it especially hard to censor. Harder, yes, but the fact is, people with guns can still make you stop talking about their government.
Jon, your understanding of the issue does not surpass that shown by the MPAA press statements. You happen to be right, but not through understanding, just through knowing people who do.
Go away. Stop preaching at us. Stop pretending you're part of "us". You've got wayyy too much political agenda to be a hacker.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Do you think people are conscious of this as a political issue? People have accepted the rise of these corporations without a peep? I wonder when they will really organize..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
..Who will educate people, since the mainstream media has been almost wholly purchased by these same corporations?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
God I'm glad I'm one of the well educated, rich, mature, white middle class Americans who isn't some dumb, gullable hick from some dumbass country nobody cares about.
Now, if you'll excuse me I have to run to the Piggly-Wiggly and pick up copy of the Weekly World News and check my horoscope to find out if it's a good day to go up on the hill and wait for Jesus to come pick me in his golden UFO and take me heaven at the Earth's core.
Ok, to be a bit less snide here, I've lived in some of these countries where the people are "children" and need a "parent" like government to protect them, and in my observation the average shoeless peasant on the street is a damn sight savvier than the average 20 somthing dingbat that I meet on the streets here in the God's own country.
This is a very tough choice for an artist. As a writer, I hate to be my own businessperson, but increasingly, I have no choice. And the Web makes this palatable for the lst time.The problem is hardly any single artists have any power to market or publicize. Maybe if some banded together.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
--
Open dk() needs you too.
Thank you.
With the growth of the internet, Linux, MP3s, and any other open method of media distribution, it is becoming aparent that the populace will not long endure the shackles that have been placed them by the global mega-corps.
Yes they will. The populace in general are under-educated about this. A vast majority of consumers don't have a clue about any of this. They know what they are told by the corps. They will buy whatever they are told to buy from the corps. Heck, I just saw something on the local news about "a device which tracks your movement on the internet", of course referring to cookies. The news people didn't understand what cookies were, just that they represented some vague threat.
I don't want to sound like a fatalist, but I think that you assume people are smarter than they really are (at least about technological/political issues).
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
You stupid fart Katz. Its US Government that allows these patents not Chinese.
Sweep at your own f***in door, you arrogent ass.
The most important way to handle this would be for the Artist's to form their own distribution companies and take the Media giants out of the picture. Sell your song, movie or picture. Forget
worrying about what its released on, because that just limits your market.
I can think of several very good reasons why you wouldn't want to do this. They all boil down basically to this very simple truth: If I'm an artist (of whatever stripe -- moviemaker, songwriter, painter, whatever), the last thing in the world I would want to do is be forced to be a businessman. Every minute I have to spend dealing with booking agents, gallery owners, theater owners and the like is actually about five minutes I can't spend doing what I enjoy (one minute to psych myself up for something I'd really rather not be doing, one minute to deal with the suits, and three minutes to unpsych myself and get back into a frame of mind where I feel like Creating Art again).
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
Good article, JonKatz. A well-stated, fully-supported article. Slashdot readers probably realize this for the most part, but a good read all the same.
You should also consider submitting this article to a somewhat more "mainstream media" site. Whether or not it would be accepted, this article would make an interesting read for non-technical people as well. Especially the totalitarian types.
If he's going to submit it to a mainstream media source he should at least fix all of the technical innacuracies, the most of glaring of which is his assertion that CSS prevents copying of DVDs.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
It pays to preview doesn't it...
Has it aired yet? I don't recall seeing a summary or wrap-up of it here.. anyone got any info for us?
BilldaCat
efforts to stick their fingers in the digital dike
Sorry, a phrase like that deserves repeating.
I agree. Perhaps we've found the right niche for Jon. Let's have a Slashdot political action committee to draw attention to tech issues in the presidential elections. Put Rob in suit and have Jon write inflamatory/attention getting speeches for him.
Hey, if we're going to sit around bitching and moaning over the latest censorship, encryption, whatever, outrage, we might as well get some press coverage out of it. Who knows? We might even change a few peoples minds on the subject.
Does this
I'm not a lawyer and don't get paid $500 an hour but it seems common sense to me.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
So if the MPAA makes it illegal (via winning this battle) to reverse engineer software and protocols, well what is this going to do for the US as far as competetivness?
Non US companies can reverse engineer, US ones can't, hmm guess this will have some implications.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Damn! #24 is in our mission statement.
This is not about copying of works, but about playing them.
Actually, it's not even about playing movies. It's about free speach and opening secret protocols. The DeCSS source code CANNOT playback movies. Source code is merely precise instrucitons on how to create an executable - it is not the executable itself. This is a case about your rights to communicate the fact that you figured out somebody else's secret.
In the Bernstein case, source code in general and encryption source code specifically was ruled to be protected speach and it's expressive content was ruled to override any aspects of its ability to control a machine when those aspects might validly be used to regulate it.
The MPA was formed in 1945 in the aftermath of World War II to reestablish Americanfilms in the world market, and to respond to the rising tide of protectionism resulting in barriers aimed at restricting the importation of American films.
The MPA's name was changed from the Motion Picture Export Association of America to the Motion Picture Association in 1994 to more accurately reflect the global nature of audiovisual entertainment in today's international marketplace.
Looks to me like Katz got it right.
Truth is, in any country where education isn't sufficiently high and skepticism isn't strongly in place, the free flow of information can hurt much more than it can help.
Good point, but I think that the quickest way for people to learn skepticism is by repeated exposure. Hopefully, after getting their 11,000th chain email / doomsday prediction, they'll come to realize that it's all just noise and advertising. I say this with some trepidation, though, having just recieved a 'good-luck' chain-letter forwarded by a fellow white, middle-class friend. I'll 'return' the favour with 50 or so replies w/history ; ) That usually helps to get the point across.
These people need American TV, beer and video games.
**>>BELCH
Not so many years ago there was separate but equal, until one person... just one decided that they weren't going to sit in the back of the bus.
The more things change the more they stay the same. We've been sitting in back of the OS bus for years. Since the media has discovered that Linux is "cool" and companies realize they can turn a buck on the hard work of the Open Source revolution, it is this revolution that is in a position of power and importance. It's time to
change the world.
Katz is right. This is a fight we can and will win. We have to. We have no choice otherwise it's over. This is our Waterloo. Or rather I should say, this is their Waterloo. This is where we stand up and say, no we are in charge of our destiny and we're not going to tolerate the behavior of jackbooted thugs like the MPAA.
I wanna play DVDs on my Linux box. It's a simple yet tragic hard fought freedom. And if we all don't earn this freedom, what's the next one to fall?
I hope that come LinuxWorld this week that there are plenty of folks that take some time out of the convention and protest. Let the media know, blast the message, we're not going to sit in the back of the bus. We don't back down, and we're not going to tolerate some mega corperation dictating terms of what we can or can not do with our computers.
If the petigree of DeCSS is in doubt, time to make an alternative implementation and post it on the net.
Regards...
This reminds me of an older (80's?) scifi book, "Cyberbooks" by Ben Bova IIRC. It predated the whole WWW and all the little handheld computers.
An approximate quote from the book:
(naive inventor-type character): "So, with my new invention, we can get and read books without having to go to a store, find them, and buy them! We don't need to print them, truck them across the country, stock them in warehouses, track them in inventory, put them on store shelves, or any of those hassles! It will be great! You'll just buy one cyber-pad, and then adding books to it will be cheap and easy!"
(older, worldly-wise character looks around nervously) "Shhh, keep it down, kid. You're going to get us killed! Don't you see how many jobs you could eliminate with this thing? Don't you realize how big and powerful the publishing and bookstore companies are?"
Once again, science fiction predicted the future. I'll have to dig that book out and read it again.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Universities are *PRIVATE* networks, they are free to run their network any way they see fit.
.and this is the important part.. the Internet is a network of networks, a collection of public & private networks.. it's power comes from the common use of protocols and cooperation.
If the government enstates controls, we sidestep them.
If they block a port, we pick a new one.
If they block a protocol, we tunnel inside another one.
If they make the whole network innefficient, we build a new one.
That's how it works. That's how we got what we have today.
It's one thing to say they can use technical solutions.. but those solutions have to exist! And they DON'T! And many companies, you can bet, have spent ENORMOUS amounts of money to find them, only to come up blank.
Remember..
The government cannot tell me what to do with my network. They cannot tell you what to do with yours, and they cannot tell us both what to do when we hook them together.
Yes. And Censorship would not have stopped this. Those who started it should be held responsible.
And people, the public, have to learn to decide for themselves whether information is good or not.
ONe problem with technical support email is that it gets SWAMPED. IT is *SO* easy to send mail, people send mail all the time without thinking. If they actually had to write a letter, or talk coherently on the phone, they would work a bit harder to solve their own problems first.
A similar effect happens with the public.. they get email, and don't think about how easy it coul dhave been for it to be a hoax.. they assume some kind of 'effort' was needed to inform them about a riot.
Yes. And Censorship would not have stopped this. Those who started it should be held responsible.
And people, the public, have to learn to decide for themselves whether information is good or not.
ONe problem with technical support email is that it gets SWAMPED. IT is *SO* easy to send mail, people send mail all the time without thinking. If they actually had to write a letter, or talk coherently on the phone, they would work a bit harder to solve their own problems first.
A similar effect happens with the public.. they get email, and don't think about how easy it coul dhave been for it to be a hoax.. they assume some kind of 'effort' was needed to inform them about a riot.
The Truth in Advertising and the FDA regulations are not censorship. They do not prevent you from saying your bit. They simply state that if you *lie* or *misrepresent* what you are advertising/claiming, you can be held legally responsible. This is not censorship, this is how soceity shoudl function. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences of that speech.
First, I totally support DeCSS and the like.
ON that note.. I must point something out.
Who ever said we couldn't write a player for linux? Who is the 'they' that didn't write one? *ANY* developer can apply and get appropriate keys. Yes, it probably costs money.. but how much? Certainly, this puts it outside the realm of true open source....
but to say that 'they' won't allow a player for linux, or to insinuate it, is wrong. there is no 'they'.
ALL YOU AMERIKKKAN MORONS SHOULD ROT AWAY SLOWLY. THE WHOLE WORLD HATES YOU. ONE DAY WE WILL UNITE, INVADE AMERIKKKA AND KILL ALL YOU HYPOCRIT PROPAGANDA-BASTARDS. YOUR PRESIDENT GOT STABBED IN THE BACK BY A FAT BITCH WHO STUCK A SIGAR IN HIS FAT ASS! DIE DIE DIE!!!
I'm surprised this artlcle doesn't mention the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999
o ry/0,3700,2314449,00.html
2 8:
This act would outlaw internet content relating to politically incorrect drugs, effectively outlawing dissenting political speech from those that would like to end the insane drug war that grips the U.S.
The U.S. Government sees the drug war cash cow being threatened by free communication on the internet, so plans to crush our 1st amendment right to free speech.
Links:
http://web-e7.zdnet.com/zdtv/cybercrime/news/st
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.14
One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."
The Net not censorable? This is not the case!
Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.
The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.
The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.
Disclaimer: Deals more with the govt censorship issue than the MPAA. I happen to hold the personal opinion that the MPAA is just trying to find a way to gouge the average consumer more :)
Summary: Not all censorship is bad. Take a chill pill
That felt like a highly inflammatory article, which painted everything with a huge, broad brush. Ok, so we know that Jon Katz feels that censorship, big government and big organizations of any kind are bad. But is that always true? The average American judges based on what they see around them, which is not necessarily true around the world. Education levels, gullibility, etc, vary. Are there places where SOME controls might not be bad? A couple of examples:
These are anecdotes which I know through personal experience or through friends who were actually there. I'm very sure that most non-first world country people have heard these and could contribute some even funnier/sadder stories. Or even people in developed countries.
Truth is, in any country where education isn't sufficiently high and skepticism isn't strongly in place, the free flow of information can hurt much more than it can help. Censorship to most governments is less about keeping total control over their citizens than it is about keeping out false information, information that can lead to totally irrational and damaging actions. For instance, a funny facet of politics in M'sia are the "poison pen" campaigns, when unsigned letters are circulated about a particular political candidate. These letters contain some absolutely unbelievable accusations. It doesn't matter that the average, well-educated voter would dismiss this out of hand. It just needs to hit the more gullible ones who will believe it and the candidate's reputation is ruined ... for no reason.
The US has plenty of such safeguards too. It's just not called censorship here, even though it is the control of information. Think "Truth in Advertising", or FDA approval for health claims.
Personally, I think that as a population matures, people get more skeptical and you can trust the general population to decide for themselves what is right and what isn't. However, in a developing world, a little more control and protection may be a better idea. Something along the lines of Plato's Philosopher King ideals ... only when you are truly "educated" can you make better decisions. Also akin to the parent/child relationship, where the parent must guide the child until he's ready to make his own decisions.
One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."
The Net not censorable? This is not the case!
Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.
The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.
The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.
Actually, I zeroed in on "The MPA - along with the music industry, one of the world's largest cartels outside of ;-)
Columbia -- has claimed in several legal actions that the kind of DVD-viewing software
Johansen allegedly used was developed outside of the industry's monopoly, and is thus
illegal. The organization particularly wants to suppress so-called reverse engineering and the
public posting and sharing of DVD codes." and blasted right past the beginning. Thank you for relieving my pain and I can go back to my usual disagreeable self
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
You ought to read Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. Contrary to your assertion that children in the US are taught from a young age that one view is right, they're taught not to judge, not to compare, but to accept other viewpoints as equally valid. That tends to reinforce the other idea taught by movies, music, peers, and television -- that authority is, intrinsically, something to be distrusted.
If the philosophy I can devise is just as valid as that of Spinoza or Berkeley or Anselm, why bother reading them? I might as well just go watch TV. The best way to convince an otherwise literate society not to read is to convince the people that there's no use learning anything. Mmm, intellectual laziness. That's why the most popular sites on the Internet aren't the Library of Congress or Project Gutenberg, but are sites like Yahoo! and that pornography place.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
Not in virtual, in reality, physically. At some point all of the phiber of Jack Valenti's body will stretch to the thickness of one molecule and then he will explode. At that point we will be rid of him and will be free to distribute fine works such as this to the Linux users of the world.
Thank You
Hey; I'm in Detroit and I'm getting ready to organize a protest in front of one of our bigger movie theatres soon. Should be fun; stand around, make some noise. And, most importantly, I wanted to point out what I think will be my main point--yes, it isn't about copying at all, you're completely right. But really, in the sense that it will affect most of the known world, it isn't about COMPUTERS at all, either. It's about a corporation deliberately stepping over the laws for the purpose of turning another dollar; it's about the free market that will be denied to everyone within the MPAA's self-stated jurisdiction. I intend to make sure everybody knows that the jargon: "encryption", "hacker", "pirate", all that shit is just the MPAA blowing smoke, hoping to the gods nobody figures out that this affects you--not if you run Linux or hack or whatever, but IF YOU WATCH MOVIES. Thanks, Pksc
THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL ME POSTPONES THE INEVITABLE.
Thank You
>dont make DVD-R's
:-)
:-)
>hard drive copies
What's the difference between having it on DVD-Recordable, and a Hard Drive (other than the price?)? A regular DVD-Player for home won't play burned DVDs and obviously not hard drives. So just keep your movies on other media.
It is a waste of time NOT to make DVD-R because if you don't someone else will just invent R-DVD instead (Ie - the same thing, just "different").
There will ALWAYS be ways to pirate stuff... the only thing, for example, stopping people from storing copies of their DVD movies to hard drive right now is the cost. But, at the current pace, I bet you'll be able to buy a 30 GB hard drive for under $50 in 3 years. That'll store 5 or 6 DVD movies!
For now, you can always just backup your HD to DAT/DLT. $10 bucks a movie, give or take...
My suggestion to those who want to keep their software from being pirated is simple - if you think ANYONE has been making copies of your software tell the police. They'll put 'em in the slammer.
Of course, statistics show that piracy actually _helps_ sales of most computer software. Same with movies too. (Note: I am not talking about the piracy where people package pirate CDs that look like originals with original looking manuals in an original looking box, or the pirated movies that are sold at flea shops as originals. I am talking about the cracked software and movies dubbed at home from TV.).
CNN Entertainment Interview
Uh, I think you mean "Free Tibet".
Mongolia is an independent country, Tibet was invaded in 1954 and the Chinese government is practising a systematic cultural and ethnic genocide through imigration of ethnic chinese and suppression of Tibetan culture.
It is currently illegal to posses a picture of the dalai lama in Tibet so most tibetans keep an empty
yellow picture frame in their home as a symbolic gesture.
see www.tibet.org and www.tibet.com for info
The people have spoken and they all said: [Penguin sound]
... although most penguins use perl instead of awk ;) Of course, the real sound is 'ribbit' (don't ask)
I saw somewhere the sound penguins make described as 'awk' (IIRC, it was a Terry Pratchett book - The Lost Continent - when someone (the librarian?) was turned into one), and remember thinking how appropriate
Seriously, though, I really hope that industry people realise that open standards are far better than closed ones, and no matter how much copy protection you try and put on things, it'll be the people, not the pirates and warez kiddies, that lose out in the long run.
--
...not to mention everyone who opposes censorship might be to actually complete a Linux-based DVD player based on the DeCSS code.
Then 'we' could point to that innocuous software and say 'Look... *this* was the point of cracking CSS". Might really help the public to understand the hammerlock that the DVD people have on the entire format too...
let me find that link. brb.
I can understand for it to be illegal to duplicate hardware, but the point of software is to take advantage of hardware and use it. Its simple, if you dont want anyone duplicating DVD's dont make DVD-R's. If they do refuse to make a recordable media type for a certain technology. That technology will simply become obsolete. As for hard drive copies, is it now illegal to have a mental pictures? The most important way to handle this would be for the Artist's to form their own distribution companies and take the Media giants out of the picture. Sell your song, movie or picture. Forget worrying about what its released on, because that just limits your market.
With the growth of the internet, Linux, MP3s, and any other open method of media distribution, it is becoming aparent that the populace will not long endure the shackles that have been placed them by the global mega-corps. This will not be a sudden or violent revolution, but rather a quiet and constant one.
As Linux has grown and will subsume other OSs in the computer world, DVD and other proprietary standards will likewise whither and die.
The people have spoken and they all said: [Penguin sound]
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Subject says it all...
I realize this is the digital frontier, but if you're going to write an article about the arrogance and stupidity of the Motion Picture Association of America, the least you could do is get the name right.
Also, use of the phrase "industry stooge (or shill) Jack Valenti" is de rigeur in any discussion of the MPAA. Please use it in any future articles on this topic; it would warm my heart.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
My in-laws are from Taiwan, and when talking about the government on the mainland, they NEVER simply call it China, in ANY language. Many people are very interested in keeping a distinction between the greater concept of China and the gangsters who run the mainland.
Given Taiwan's role in the computer industry, you can do your part to keep computer prices low by observing the distinction yourself.
Trolling, and rather well 8=P
Fortune favors the bold. -Virgil
It's not true that I don't post replies to articles on Threads. I do. I don't know why they don't show up. But I have to survive in a practical way as well. I get hundreds of e-mails a day, write several columns a week, plus books and articles. I can't also go online all day and respond to every single post on Threads. I can't do it.But I do go on as often as I can, and that is regularly.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Last month, the DVD Copyright Control Association sued 72 hackers and Web site authors for posting - or even linking to software (DeCSS) that unlocks the system for preventing illegal copying of video discs.
I've seen a lot of criticism directed to John Katz here in Slashdot. Not that I like his style, but I've always felt that people went a bit overboard with that. Now, is it true that the DVD encryption prevents copying? Or should I finally understand the reason for all that criticism?
As far as the Chinese government goes, it doesn't seem like there is much anyone can do about it if they don't live in China (and little anyone who lives there can really do abou it).
But the RIAA, MPAA, and other various "cartels" in the USA can be fought.
As it stands, the Linux DVD project is just a bunch of viewing tools, and filesystem and hardware drivers--not something the average Linux luser is going to be able to put together yet.
What will finally put the nail in the MPAA's coffin is a graphical, userland program that is simple to install, and comparible to the various Windows players out there. Get it into RedHat or one of the other distributions.
Think of it from the journalists' point of view: sure, we can mirror the source all over the place but face it, a bunch of source files is meaningless to a clueless reporter, or worse, to them it means hacker. A full-featured (at least professional looking) application that any luser can install and play DVDs out of the box would really get the point of this lawsuit across to the various journalists and shapers of public opinion.
If you are a bored coder looking for a project, please consider helping the Linux Video project!
________________________________
One thing that they really need to figure out is the issue of copying. I have read that you can already make bit for bit copies of DVDs. But I have also read that these copies can't play on any standard DVD since the "copy protection" part of the disk is not burned correctly on these copiers. Also, the major point the OSS is making is that the MPA is keeping them from making backup copies of their DVDs, which they are legally entitled to. The problem being they have already argued that copies can be made. They then continue to argue that DeCSS doesn't help pirates make copies of movies, which defeats the whole point of argueing that they are using DeCSS for making legal backup copies. You could back up a DVD on your harddrive, perhaps a bit more compressed. Or you could have the DVD act as the back-up, and view it from the harddisk. That way, it doens't matter so much if the film on your harddisk is obscenely large, because you can delete it again if you don't want it there anymore, as you still have the DVD. Harddisks are getting bigger and bigger, and I don't think the day that we can have a film on our harddrives in DVD Video quality without it being to draconian is that far away. However, if you want to be a pirate and actually distribute the DVDs, well, then I really don't think you'd want to distribute it on harddisks... You could do it on normal CDs, but then you get bad quality and no added content. Not much point to it then.
Bjarke Roune
Well, I can understand the choice of Java. But if you want to write a server in a language other than C++ or Java, you might consider Eiffel.
Eiffel definition is controlled by a user organization (NICE), there is GNU Eiffel compiler in addition to several commercial ones. Plus Eiffel is very portable.
The only problem with Eiffel that there aren't as many libraries as there are for Java.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I thought Jon Katz was a smargle lover. He needs to be naked, petrified, and have hot grits dumped on his head.
"Bad moderator, no karma"
What the hell am I talking about? Follow the links and all will be revealed.
You can create your own sid by entering a URL such as http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=myownsid
and then make a reply to that comment thread and you've just created your own discussion board.
Every couple of years or so we get to see a new "superproduction" which must be necessarily more costly to produce than the former one.
The stars must always get higher salaries, just to pretend they are better. People like Jim Carrey and Sandra Bullock get over $10 million per film. Are they so much better than the extras who almost pay to appear in films?
The public doesn't seem to think so. They will do anything to get a free copy of a film or music. After all, when I buy a book, it's mine as long as I keep it. There is no "pay per read" for books, why should I pay every time I want to see an old film?
Eventually, producers will have to come to the conclusion that it's useless to try to impose value by marketing alone. If they want to be paid for their work, it must be for real work, with real value to the buyer.
Most people are not thieves, they will not steal a work of art if they are convinced that it's morally wrong to do so. But people aren't suckers either. They do not agree kindly to the idea of rich magnates getting richer by deceiving the masses.
When I think of these major bodies trying to censor the internet, I laugh because I know that they will fail in their attempt, it isn't just because of the sheer volume of stuff contained "in" the internet, but because of the spread. The seeds of thought and the new ideas that are spawned from these seeds are what give the internet the spiders web sort of feel, but just like the spider's web, whatever is cut away, will reappear. You can't block every layer of communication and decide what can travel along what line, you will just have to live with what you can't control.
Get out the hose and soak down your estate, because the brushfire is on the way, and you might get burned.
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/... I've been watching this a little while, and it looks VERY interesting, IMHO.
Digital Dyke
Thank You
Being sixteen is not an easy age for any male. I was no different than any other. I spent all the time I could masturbating while looking at magazines with pictures of naked women. Then, I began to peek at my mother while she was undressing. I could slip outdoors and go up to her bedroom window and stand, able to see everything, as she always had one area that gave me a view. I would marvel at her slightly plump forty year old shape. Her large breasts, like two fleshy teardrops, dipping downward, only to turn outward at the ends, which seemed capped entirely with deep chocolate disks, the nipples protruding from their centers dramatically, even in their most flaccid state. Her tummy was the milkiest white and, just a scant few inches beneath her navel, a nest of raven black curls began. A vee that seemingly carpeted the area between her legs unlike any that I had seen in my magazines. For about three weeks, I spent nearly every evening at moms' window. Sometimes, I grew so hard that I would pull my erect cock out and pump it right there. Then, one warm evening, only a few days after summer vacation had begun, I went to my "spot" only to find that the view had been blocked. I went inside, only to hear the water running in the shower and knew that mom was in there. Going to my room, I undressed and was preparing to get into bed when I heard mom call "Jon Katz, will you come here". Slipping my robe on, I went to the bathroom, thinking she had fallen. To my surprise, she was still in the shower. "Please scrub my back.", she smiled, opening the shower door and looking at me as if it were an everyday occurrence. I was dumbstruck, but reached for a loafer. "No, not like that, take your robe off and get in here with me!:, she insisted. Like a puppy, I obeyed and blushed as I saw her eyeing my penis. Slowly, I began to suds the loafer and then her back. "Have you been the flower bed lately?", she asked slyly, turning to look me in the eye and brushing her hip against my penis as she did. I jumped from the contact, my face burning. I knew I was beet red. "You can see all of me now honey!' she said, stepping out of the shower and starting to towel dry. I blindly turned off the water and stood, looking at her, as she placed the towel between her legs and pulled it back and forth slowly. "Mmmmm, how do I look up close?", she purred, her eyes oddly dimmed. My shaft started to expand as I gawked at her naked body. "Why, my goodness, look what's happening to you!" You're as big as a horse between your legs!", she gasped and reached out to grasp me. "If you want to see mommy, all you have to do is say so!" she sighed as her hand pumped my thick foreskin back and forth. She keep this up for several minutes, then, still holding onto me, led me to her bedroom. Releasing me, she lay on the bed, her legs opened wide. "Put your mouth on me here!" she instructed, her fingers parting the columns of hair and revealing her pink gash. I lay between her open legs and did as she said. "Now, lick me! Run you tongue into the hole some.-ahhh yesss that's it, now go up yes yes there - on that but, it's my clitty and uhhhh shit more, god it's sooo nice!" Miss Katzs' ass started to churn and she started to groan loudly. "Turn around, quick!" she gurgled and as I did, I felt her mouth on my cock. "ohhh mom, ohhh mom!" I groaned. "Don't talk, eat me!" she gasped. My tongue began to lap at her and I became entranced by the aroma of her pussy. I had never smelled or tasted one before, but I knew that it couldn't get any sweeter that hers! "Fuck my pussy - NOW!", she ordered and pulled me around. Her hand guided my cock to her and I lunged forward, to the hilt of her slick hot cunt as she gasped and thrust her hips upward in a frenzy. "Fuck me hard!" she panted and my hips began to more frantically. I didn't come earlier because she was so forceful that I guess she had me frightened as well as excited. I was unaware that she was cumming at first, as I was a virgin, but her sound and movements finally clued me in. "Come in me - please come in me!" she wailed as her body shook it what was her throes of orgasm. I felt my column begin to spurt jets of semen over and over. I don't know how many streams of come I pumped, but she later commented that she had your mouth on me here!" she instructed, her fingers parting the columns of hair and revealing her pink gash. I lay between her open legs and did as she said. "Now, lick me! Run you tongue into the hole some.-ahhh yesss that's it, now go up yes yes there - on that but, it's my clitty and uhhhh shit more, god it's sooo nice!" Miss Katzs' ass started to churn and she started to groan loudly. "Turn around, quick!" she gurgled and as I did, I felt her mouth on my cock. "ohhh mom, ohhh mom!" I groaned. "Don't talk, eat me!" she gasped. My tongue began to lap at her and I became entranced by the aroma of her pussy. I had never smelled or tasted one before, but I knew that it couldn't get any sweeter that hers! "Fuck my pussy - NOW!", she ordered and pulled me around. Her hand guided my cock to her and I lunged forward, to the hilt of her slick hot cunt as she gasped and thrust her hips upward in a frenzy. "Fuck me hard!" she panted and my hips began to more frantically. I didn't come earlier because she was so forceful that I guess she had me frightened as well as excited. I was unaware that she was cumming at first, as I was a virgin, but her sound and movements finally clued me in. "Come in me - please come in me!" she wailed as her body shook it what was her throes of orgasm. I felt my column begin to spurt jets of semen over and over. I don't know how many streams of come I pumped, but she later commented that she had hand guided my cock to her and I lunged forward, to the hilt of her slick hot cunt as she gasped and thrust her hips upward in a frenzy. "Fuck me hard!" she panted and my hips began to more frantically. I didn't come earlier because she was so forceful that I guess she had me frightened as well as excited. I was unaware that she was cumming at first, as I was a virgin, but her sound and movements finally clued me in. "Come in me - please come in me!" she wailed as her body shook it what was her throes of orgasm. I felt my column begin to spurt jets of semen over and over. I don't know how many streams of come I pumped, but she later commented that she had my "Syrup" on both inner thighs, to her knees. As we lay exhausted, mom whispered, "Honey, the nest time you want to see me, just ask if we can play. I'll know what you want and I assure you, I let you play!" hand guided my cock to her and I lunged forward, to the hilt of her slick hot cunt as she gasped and thrust her hips upward in a frenzy. "Fuck me hard!" she panted and my hips began to more frantically. I didn't come earlier because she was so forceful that I guess she had me frightened as well as excited. I was unaware that she was cumming at first, as I was a virgin, but her sound and movements finally clued me in. "Come in me - please come in me!" she wailed as her body shook it what was her throes of orgasm. I felt my column begin to spurt jets of semen over and over. I don't know how many streams of come I pumped, but she later commented that she had my "Syrup" on both inner thighs, to her knees. As we lay exhausted, mom whispered, "Honey, the nest time you want to see me, just ask if we can play. I'll know what you want and I assure you, I let you play!"
That's seems to be another trend - wherever there is controversy, all sides are equal, and all arguments to one are close-minded bigotry. Still, those things are generally not the important ones; society has made sure to keep you thinking in line where it counts. Islam may be as valid as Christianity, but not (the significantly different) atheism. Democrat or Republican or sometimes even Libertarian, but anarcho-syndicalism? Yeah right, you nihilistic terrorist! Taxes aren't theft, the government is different from the mafia, arresting prostitutes isn't kidnapping, casual sex is wrong or bad, let alone that among young children, "parent's rights", etc. There are countless things the majority is simply unwilling to question under any circumstance.
The Closing of the American Mind looks interesting.. I'll check it out, thanks.
The same works for software. Sites such as Freshmeat.net dont need to profit from each of its software listings to stay around. It is a gateway to the works of others. Thats the same thing I think any sort of distribution organization should be.
mongolia = kmalloc (sizeof (foo), GFP_KERNEL);
:
:
:
kfree (mongolia);
Oh, and, maybe you should s/mongolia/tibet/g as another post suggests.
The first option, chosen by most power mongers, is to try to suppress all change. Any invention, change, or technological advance is branded heresy, traitorous, or in these digital days, as piracy.
The second option, which is almost never chosen by anyone who has power over any large chunk of anything, is to try and keep pace with the change. This, of course, is immensely difficult.
The catch is that those who try to suppress all change invariably end up getting toppled, because of the simple fact that you can't stop progress. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You can't close Pandora's box.
The second catch is that it is almost impossible to keep up with all the change that goes on in the world. Those who try to keep up with it either end up becoming innefectual power holders, or they fail to keep up with it and revert to supression.
The stable system is the one where change is allowed, and power is transfered smoothly to those who have grown up around the newer systems (systems in the most general sense). Instead of a palace coup, the power is handed down to someone new, and the previous holder frequently hangs around to advise the new leadership on the <cliche>timeless truths of leadership</cliche>. This system always is a bit behind the current front edge of technology and whatnot, but is never so far behind that people say 'fsck these a-holes, we'll take control now thank you.'
If the MPAA, DVD/CA, etc. would embrace this, they would stand a chance of not losing it completely. However, organizations such as these almost never take the stable approach. They are concentrated on maximum gain, and maximum gain, in the short term, is had by suppression and extortion. They don't really care if the systems they are a part of topple five years after they drop dead. They are interested in becoming very rich now.
-Matt
-Cheetah
You're right. I assume (hope) Mr. Katz knows the difference as well. But... The DVD CCA sued claiming that that is what DeCSS was for. They claimed that DeCSS was solely to illegally copy DVDs. /. poster (especially the anonymous ones) are defacto spokespersons for the internet users as a whole, having a misspeak like that in the main story header is just playing into their hands.
Yes, this is wrong, and that is part of the problem with their case. No DeCSS is needed to duplicate DVDs. DeCSS is just needed to view them.
I think what Munky was referring to was that the DVD CCA used selected, out of context posts from slashdot to boost their own case. Given that they seem to assume every
--
-=DaveHowe=-
It's an entirely different feature that's tries to prevent copying; a specially-mangled block on the disk, or something.
This is kinda off-topic, but since Katz's brings it up, and everyone seems to be talking about it, I'll talk about it too. I'm not taking sides on the whole DeCSS thing, because I think it has legitimate uses, but can also see how it opens things wide up for pirating of DVDs, but I have a feeling the MPA will easily win this case if the OSS doesn't figure out what exactly it's argueing. There are so many confusing points the OSS is trying to make that the may very well lose through disorganization.
One thing that they really need to figure out is the issue of copying. I have read that you can already make bit for bit copies of DVDs. But I have also read that these copies can't play on any standard DVD since the "copy protection" part of the disk is not burned correctly on these copiers. Also, the major point the OSS is making is that the MPA is keeping them from making backup copies of their DVDs, which they are legally entitled to. The problem being they have already argued that copies can be made. They then continue to argue that DeCSS doesn't help pirates make copies of movies, which defeats the whole point of argueing that they are using DeCSS for making legal backup copies. There are only 2 options, either DeCSS helps people make copies (whether they are legal copies or not) or it doesn't have anything to do with making copies, in which case their arguement about making legal backups in null and void. Everyone needs to get their ducks in a row if they plan on having any chance to win this case, because at the rate it's going, it looks like a lost cause...
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
This could be very interesting, but not if it stays exclusively within the world of Java. Could Sanity or one of the other developers perhaps comment on the issue of opening this up to the larger non-Java world?
This isn't intended as an anti-Java comment (quite the opposite), but merely a reflection on the fact that we'll be needing C, C++, Perl, Tcl and Python language bindings if this is to take the world by storm and fulfil its promise. Many top-class developers in languages other than Java would like to contibute to the effort I'm sure, but they can't do that unless they are given either existing bindings or an interoperability API in the lingua franca of C so that they can create them themselves.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The Net isn't censorable.
I want to think you're right, Jon. I really do. But if these corporations get their way, as they seem to have done for at least the last 100 years, they might figure out a way to MAKE it censorable. Or just plain kill it. These are legitimate things to worry about.
grep -ri 'should work'
Okay, this article begs for a link to Cluetrain. Some points from that site that the MPAA should heed:
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
69. Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall Street. You're not impressing us.
70. If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't let you talk that way.
72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.
Katz, you should know better.
Wow, the MPAA and China... This is certainly a match signed in hell and witnessed by Steve Case himself.
...post is not news for nerds, stuff that matters. It is offtopic.
Moderate as such.
Apologies in advance, but I must say this:
I, too, want to stick my finger in a digital dike.
I'm not talking about making simultaneous efforts to stick my finger in a digital dike; I'm talking about the real deal here.
This areticle in a way goes with the "Corporate Conglomerate HOWTO" posted earlier. It pretty much sums up that the MPAA, the DVDCA, The Music Industry, and china have been reading the HOWTO mentioned above. Reverse enginnering has been oging on ever since the 2nd person to own a computer learned how to program and could see what the 1st person was doing, so unless an entire court has been bought or there is an incredibly stupid chain of events that defy Logic, Reverse engineering will be legal. As for China realizing that the internet is Not censorable. I don't see that for decades. They would several all Links to the outside world before they would admit that they don't have control over Speach on the internet.
Yeeeeeah!
Nothing confuses me more than when some agency claims that exposure to information is bad.
It's tempting to dismiss the MPAA and Chinese Government as themselves ignorant, but we know the justified (if not just) reasons for their actions. The MPAA wants a monopoly (oligopoly?) on DVD players. Chinese Government wants a controllable populace, and why not, they've had one for 5000 years, right? Ugh.
In every case where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a little more knowledge is usually the safest thing of all.
But at least I was in Mr. Mao's neighbourhood!
Thanks for the URL's.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
What more can one say?
To borrow from Randy Newman:
Boom goes London
And Boom! Paris
More room for you and more room for me.
South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
there'll be no one left to blame us....
A lousy writer with a great topic trumps a t-riffic writer with - uh, what were we talking about? - trumps one of those, every time.
Right down here at the bottom of this very page I see a little phrase in underlined blue: submit story. If you can crank out a rabble-rousing editorial any better than Katz, whip it out.
Yours WD "rah rah Katz" K - WKiernan@concentric.net
In China though, the government can censor. When I was in China, TV broadcasts from Hong Kong (before the handover) were censored, and some reports were blocked. The University internet went though a filter in Bejing.
Censorship does not work in a "free" country. Some companies in the USA want to forget that.
Fight Spammers!
I'm not going to boycott all movies. Who would know? How many people will read your anti-movie list? Making it public would be interesting, but as you note there are problems with that. You could also argue that boycotting all forms of watching movies unfairly hits a lot of other people, like ushers at theaters, the girl behind the videostore counter ("sorry, have to cut you, business is bad") and so on.
What I've done is sent them an email saying I'm going to boycott all DVDs, and won't start replacing my large tape/laserdic library until they knock off the lawsuits. This is more specifically targeted, which will make it show up in the books more obviously. You know, like "Hey Fred, we're selling tapes and theatre tickets, but those DVDs are going nowhere! Hmmm..."
An overall drop might make them think it's just a broad downturn and they need to turn the screws harder to "protect" their investment. If we all stop buying DVDs they'll need to consider what would happen if the format actually failed entirely due to their evil efforts.
It seems to have worked with DIVX!
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Excellent. It was so obvious but I never figured it out until right now. Trolls are using /. as their own personal discussion board by creating their own sid trolltalk which someone pointed out a long time ago and speculated that they must have hacked /. somehow to do this. But no, it is simple to create a discussion thread for others to see apart from /. stories. Here's one I just started called jonkatzsucks.
The trolls were using trolltalk to post their little troll exploits and to plan little troll barrages and to talk crap about moderators and basically stroke each other off when they did a particularly good troll, but someone found out about this and started 'stalking' one of the trolls. They created a new sid and only invited each other through e-mail to join to keep the stalker and other wanna-be's out of their 'inner sanctum'. Wow, I wish I was cool enough to join their troll 'guild'!
I know this is lame, but I'm kinda suprised at how easy this is to do and how there is this semi-invisible sub-culture of trolls that live in the bowels of slashdot that I had to post this again.
/. as their own personal discussion board by creating their own sid trolltalk which someone pointed out a long time ago and speculated that they must have hacked /. somehow to do this. But no, it is simple to create a discussion thread for others to see apart from /. stories. Here's one I just started called jonkatzsucks.
If its this easy to do, then Rob must know about it and leave it be because it is pretty obvious and would seem easy enough to shut down. I can only assume he doesn't bother because that would only piss off the trolls and they would go on a far more destructive rampage than is generally seen. Plus, each post is a banner impression, so what the hell, right?
Excellent. It was so obvious but I never figured it out until right now. Trolls are using
The trolls were using trolltalk to post their little troll exploits and to plan little troll barrages and to talk crap about moderators and basically stroke each other off when they did a particularly good troll, but someone found out about this and started 'stalking' one of the trolls. They created a new sid and only invited each other through e-mail to join to keep the stalker and other wanna-be's out of their 'inner sanctum'. Wow, I wish I was cool enough to join their troll 'guild'!
So if there is a way to index all the sid threads or if someone is able to guess the new inner sanctum troll sid, it would make for good reading, I'm sure.
> A riddle: What do China and the Motion Picture
> Association have in common? The answer this
> week: arrogance. Plus stupidity.
Please, Jon and others, distinguish whether you are speaking of the Chinese people or The Chinese Government when ranting/writing.
Your opening 'riddle' implies it is the Chinese people you are refering to as 'stupid' and 'arrogant', yet in the text of your article you clearly meant the Chinese Government (Chinese Communist Party or CCP to be more precise).
While it may seem like I'm splitting hairs here to a Western mind such as yours, the difference is crucial when refering to a group such as "the Chinese" who most definitely do NOT have a government "...of, by, and for the people" in the Western sense.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, CCP...CCA... coincidence? ;-)
Earl Higgins
This is not what CSS does, it scrambles the content from being viewed by anything but a registered player capable of returning authentication tokens back to the hardware. The wording Jon uses here implies that Jon Johansen is a Cracker that wanted to start a piracy business selling ripped DVDs. This is not the case, Mr. Johansens thoughts were somerthing like this: "I like Linux...I like DVDs...too bad I can't watch DVDs on Linux...OH! Wait. I will just reverse engineer the CSS system and make a player for Linux. HEY I DID IT. I had better tell the world." That had not intention of ripping DVDs. Please remember that the courts are going to be listening to what we say, and if we stray off and say that de_css is for ripping DVDs, were going to lose this case.
Munky_v2
"Warning: you are logged into reality as root..."
Jay
The MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations are really choosing the wrong targets. All over Asia, and especially in China, you can find massive industrial-sized factories putting out pirated software / movies / music and yet the MPAA decides to harass a Norweigan coder and let the Chinese government continue it's support of pirated media.
In order to illustrate how impossible it is to control the web, I would encourage some developer to include a simple comment "Free Mongolia" somewhere in the source code.
Just for the warm feeling it'll give everyone knowing that it'll be on each Chinese Govenrment computer.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
You should also consider submitting this article to a somewhat more "mainstream media" site. Whether or not it would be accepted, this article would make an interesting read for non-technical people as well. Especially the totalitarian types.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
"China" does refer to the government of the country as well as the geographical region and the people. Learn better english here.
Thank you.
Katz writes:
Comments like that have been made for hundreds of years, each time a new means of publishing has enabled more to published wider and cheaper, but have any been the death blow? If they had, Jon wouldn't be writing that sentence, would he?
Among many, the urge to censor runs strong and deep. It always has, it always will. Many with that urge are just now beginning to pay attention to the Internet. The battle lines have been drawm, but the war is not remotely close to over.
I will dance in the streets if and when the day comes when the Internet has dealt a death blow to the very idea of censorship. But to argue that the day is already upon us is fatuous at best