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Copyright Office Needs Comments On DMCA By March 31
mdonaghy writes: "The EFF and the U.S. Copyright Office are looking for [further] public comments on the DMCA, as stated in this EFF alert. The deadline for comments is Friday, March 31. This should be a good place to voice our concerns about copyrights that several readers have previously voiced in Slashdot forums." (more)
Though the DMCA was signed into law in 1998, the rules of engagement are still being debated. This is your chance to make "reply comments," and address the arguments raised by the entertainment giants. The EFF link above sorts important previous comments straightforwardly into "pro-freedom" and "anti-freedom," for obvious reasons.
If you haven't yet added your voice, you now have nearly two weeks to do so. You might want to read the thread about the last round of comments on the same issue, and emulate the comments you find most persuasive.
Me willing to try tough love if need be. If me break Oog's head with rock, will Oog consent to live in harmony with fellow hominids?
#$%#%#^ I found this wacky arse website with "anti-linux" pics..http://www.polyester.net..Check this out..
Click to en-large the anti-linux movement.. erm. ok.. They got something called "geek satire" also..
Hackers suspected as Microsoft 747 explodes in mid-air due to blue screen of death.
Cisco integrates routing, switching and underwear drawer technology.
IBM plans to change the shampoo world.
Microsoft Unveils Plans for X-Brush tooth brushes.
!!New Computer Viruses!!!
It's apparent you can't differentiate between sarcasm and mental imbalance. I prescribe an avoidance of all humour until you determine the source of this malady.
Right back atcha, cowboy. Read my post again, if you can't differentiate between sarcasm and humorlessness.
By the way, your sarcasm happens to be indistinguishable from the rantings of an awful lot of very immature little boys around here. No, it did not strike me as sarcasm at the time, and looking at it now, it still doesn't. It still looks like somebody working off a lot of rage on a random target, which is why I got in your face so extravagantly. Of course ASCII is not a perfect mirror of the soul, as we all know, and I'm glad to hear that you were not well or completely reflected in that post.
If people are not allowed to allocate resources amongst themselves voluntarily, the only other alternative is the dictator.
If you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, the only alternative is eternal damnation. It's right there in the Bible.
One article of faith is as good as the next IMHO.
Furthermore, who (other than you) said anything about allocating resources involuntarily? Did I? Not that I recall. You're pushing a false opposition here: The only alternative to the status quo is Josef Stalin. Therefore, when you see somebody questioning the status quo, you start attacking Stalinism, and it's just too damn bad if that's not what's being advocated.
You prove me a Stalinist as follows: "First, let's assume he's a Stalinist. Okay, now that we've got that established . .
Human life expectancy has been increasing thought the industrial revolution, in the middle ages; you'd be lucky to live to 38.
That's in cities. Cities back then were real, real bad. They were a giant petri dish. For contrast, look into the life expectancies of nomadic (primitive nomadic) and similar societies. The condition of cities in the middle ages tells you a lot about epidemiology and damned little about the natural state of the human animal.
You and I today, and almost everyone else in the US and other 'first-world' countries has a standard of living that even the richest overlords of pre-industrial era would kill for.
Absolute nonsense. The average pre-industrial overlord was accustomed to servants and all kinds of things that we never even dream of, and which he would never, ever give up just for a flush toilet and a color TV. Visit Versailles sometime and tell me if you'd trade that for a nice house in the suburbs with a mortgage, an ulcer, three snot-nosed brats and a loud neighbor.
As for the rest, um, you got documentation of all that? I'm not denying it, I'm just wondering if it's one of those "the whole world could fit in Texas" kind of things, or not.
By the way, look here
But when I saw him trying to argue that life expectancy had *fallen* to 55 in the 20s, I realized he's just trolling.
Well, you're right about me trolling, but AFAIK the life-expectancy thing was reasonably accurate.
Urbanization reduced human life-expectancies drastically. As sanitation etc. improved, life expectancies went up too. I've seen the numbers, this is not a joke.
Just for thoroughness' sake, how many Mongolian nomads do you think die of lung cancer or heart disease?
IMHO a blind faith in "progress" is just as goofy as a blind rejection of it. The myth that only the present is livable is like the myth that only the US is livable (or only Afghanistan, or fill-in-your-native-country). It's nonsense.
--80md
Hmmm . . .
Farming in the past was done to survive
"The past" is a big place. Try the 19th century in the US.
f "progress" continues at its present rate, the conditions you live in now will, in 100 years, seem as brutish and primitive as the conditions you describe in the last century (the 19th; the 20th century has about nine months left in it
This is such a wild assertion; I really would enjoy some evidence to support it.
Which assertion? About it still being the 20th century? Blah blah, there was no year zero, you've yeard it before
I asserted that if "progress" continues at its present rate, there will be at least as much of it in the next 100 years as there was in the past 100 years. Is that a "wild assertion"? IMHO it's simple arithmetic.
People in 1900 were just as proud of their high technology and standard of living as we are of ours. If we "advance" as much in the next 100 years as we did in the last 100 years, the people in 2100 will look at us the same way we look at people in 1900. If 1900 looks "primitive" to us now, 2000 will look "primitive" to people in 2100 -- assumign that "progress" continues at its present rate.
There certainly is a lot of crap, depression, waste, and hopelessness in the world. There also is a lot of hope, ambition, excitement, and joy.
Yeah, I've noticed that. Was there no joy in 1900? And there will be no joy in 2100? I'm not seeing your point here.
and yeah, the govt can ask for my comment, but /. will prolly censor it. =|
Why is it that people don't have any reading comprehension anymore? This isn't an 'ask slashdot', you send your comments directly to the gov... dumbass, how can slashdot censor your email to the government?
Actually economially competition is far more efficient than a single cooperation.
Cats fly with wings.
One unsupported assertion deserves another.
In 1975 0.8-1.0 Bn people were living under starving or near starving conditions, today 600 - 800 Mn people live under the same conditions. 1975 the official population of Earth was 4 Bn, today its 6 Bn. The amount of people under the worst conditions has never been less as a percentage of the total population and for the last 50 years not less even in number.
UNIX and computers? Yeah, absolutely. Neither was developed for profit initially. Computers were invented at Bletchley Park and then in academia. Back in the 1970's, Thompson used to send out tapes for the cost of the tape + shipping. Stroustrup did the same with CFront ten years later. C took a long, long time to become a commercial product for AT&T (hmmm . . . did it ever?). Then there's ARPANET (a non-profit gov't funded abberation that business wouldn't touch for the first ten years), and the web. Offhand, I can't think of anything interesting and innovative in software that was done for profit. Obviously I must be missing something, but when I run through all the innovations (in the old sense, not the MS sense
Oddly, I brought that up just in the hope of roping some howling, bloodthirsty Free Software zealots in to the discussion, but sadly none seem to have arrived. At the time I wrote it I didn't bother thinking much about it, and I thought it was crap. Apache and GCC aren't the most innovative programs on Earth; they're just solid implementations of things that are well understood. Ditto Linux and probably the last 20 years of BSD's, too.
Competition gave us AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy; cooperation gave us the internet. No publically-held company would ever have done something like the net, because there's no way to control it and extract money out of everybody who uses it. Business has given us tightly-controlled, proprietary, incompatible crud for networking. Business has added some nice doodads to the internet (javascript for example), but nothing fundamental.
None of this is a law of nature, and most of it pertains only to software. It's also pretty much doctrinaire Slashbot opinionating, but that alone doesn't make it completely wrong, does it?
--80md
We have anti-trust and anti-price-fixing laws because these forms of cooperation work too well for the general good.
We have laws against physical destruction of others and their property because that form of competition works too well for the general good.
There is no single "iron law of life." You are mistaking mental projections of limited concepts for reality. For a happier outlook, try also projecting the concept of benign interdependence, for example.
When your concepts become richer, they will still be concepts, not reality, though it's hard to see this, because they shape the subjective reality you experience. (What I am saying is based on my own conceptual model of reality, which is not reality either, although it contains a model of its own existence within whatever reality is :)
It is foolish to judge competition and cooperation as moral antagonists. There are good and evil forms of both, which can be distinguished (by the pure in heart) according to their fruits.
But I'm not "slamming" anybody and it's really nothing to me whether he's gay or whatever. Why should I care?
Furthermore, he's expressing the conventional wisdom on the subject in a reasonably clear and accurate way. Should I complain? He provided a concrete example of that kind of thinking for me to refute. I'm glad he did.
You're locked in a destructive, competitive mindset where everybody loses. I can't see the point.
I agree, nice job, and eloquently written.
ttm
YOU INSULT OOG??? OOG BREAK HEAD NOW... YOU SEE MORE OF OOG ON SLASHDOT LATER
Tony the Tiger says "They're Gr-r-reat!®"
Competition, alas, is the iron law of life. Observe any life form on our busy little planet. All are engaged in well-founded economic strategies which they must execute well or fall prey to the competition. What makes you think that we are somehow exempt?
Nothing. I'm just taking issue with the indefensible assertion (if you must have polysyllables
Take a look around you. The large-scale competition on which our culture is based seems to be killing off small-scale cooperation (or something is, and that's the most likely-looking culprit from where I sit), and the situation is not sustainable. I don't care if we've gotten along okay with industrial capitalism for a century and a half; when it's been proven useful over a millenium or more, then we'll talk. At the rate it's going, I don't see any reason to believe that it'll hold up that long. It's based on the assumption that the only life worth living is one with a CD player -- oops, DVD, sorry! Okay, ratchet forwards by fifty gadgets and fifty years: Assuming that the whole thing doesn't crash first, they'll look back and wonder how those poor people back in 2000 managed to live in such a state of filthy, crude primitivism. Well, right now we think we're doing okay. In fact, we think that we're the first people in history who've had all the stuff they need. Are we wrong? People thought the exact same way 100 years ago. They felt sorry for the poor slobs 100 years earlier who hadn't had trains. Now, of course, we know that 100 years ago was a terribly primitive time, and the people were all miserable. How stupid of them to think they were advanced. We're the ones who are advanced! That sounds sensible, right? Right. It'll sound equally sensible in another century when somebody says it about poor primitive us. "Progress" is a waste of effort, because it's never, ever enough. It's an addiction. We're junkies. Yeah, life would suck without all our gadgets. Watch an addict trying to kick heroin: That's you and me without "progress". Think about it as you watch him, though: Ask yourself whether he's an idiot for trying to quit. If he just gave in and took a shot, he'd feel a lot better, right? Right. For a little while, anyway.
Just Testing
If what you meant by sarcasm was simply that you didn't literally intend to piss on my carpet, uhhh, yeah, I got that
You, in any case, still missed my sarcasm, so at worst we're even
IF OOG GET FISH HEADS, THEN MAYBE OOG NOT BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!
I'm not in this to make Oog angry, really I'm not. If Oog angry, me failed in mission to communicate effectively. Me sad, and I mean that sincerely.
Oog, we're all in this together, and we don't gain anything if we break head now. When we break head now, we all lose and the DMCA wins. Oog not want that, me sure.
That's my pa.
What's the matter gay boy, can't tell the difference between cock & cunt.
I'll have your ho momma teach you a few things.
"Badness" is a variable whose meaning can be purchased by the highest bidder. The DMCA has purchased the right to define who is right and wrong. They have paid good money to determine who is a law abiding citizen. The United States cannot allow this to happen and be a democracy at the same time. I say we bring back the guilletine and do some housecleaning. Nothing could convey the public's distaste for corrupion like a few "heads" of state encircling congress. All kidding aside, we have a problem here. It's not good enough to deal with the laws after they've been passed. The only solution is to find the useless "representitives" and get them the fuck out of there as soon as possible. I mean exposing the corruption and having them step down. Fuck waiting for elections. I am certain that those fuckers are *so* dirty that it wouldn't take long to unearth enough to get them out. Had to be some major illegal stuff going on to get the DMCA passed. No way that any sane legal process could pass a stinker like that.
Does itrun on leeenoooks?
--
Randy Ziskind
Snowflake Technologies
ME SIMTWAK. ME KILL OOG AND GRAK FOR NOTHING! THEY FURRY AND HAVE TAIL, NOT SEE VALUE OF MECHANICAL ADVANTAGE!
I note that quite a few of the companies indicate that there is no need to allow reverse engineering etv as it does not affect consumers.
Anyone know of any old games that do not play on modern MS machines but will ONLY play on dosemu.
This would be one powerful argument for reverse engineering. As a non US citizen, I am putting this forward so that someone in the USA can research and come up with a few examples of the harm that planned or unplanned redundancy can do to legal owners of a copyright work.
In the Mattel Cyber Patrol case we have the perfect counter example of why DCMA needs to be changed. As written, It allows poorly secured systems to be defended by Laywering, not the standard method of analysis and exposure of weakness. If Microsoft chose (or now choses) the same route as Mattel under the current DCMA, namely if a poorly written/flawed security aspect is exposed, you use legalistic techniques to harass, remove the websites and sue the security firm and programmers exposing the weakness, consider how poor the security of windows would be for all users today... The right to analyse, and publicize these weaknesses is mostly what forces these folks to fix problems, rather than cover them up or ignore them...
I guess it saves the back strain of bending over to suck your own cock , hey Katz?
Stop posting this shit!!!
OOG BREAK OPEN SOURCE CD OVER AC'S HEAD!!!! OOG NO STUPID, OOG SEE THROUGH LIE, OOG KNOW YOU MAKE FUN OF OOG!
that was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear of its destruction.
is that I am ready to drain more moderator points the way that Taco's mom drains my....
Is there another -2 in my future? Bring it on you censoring commie bastards.
Or I would have to go down to your grade school and teach you a lesson fag boy!!
That's what's called "trolling". You will learn a lot about it before you have used the Internet very long.
...at first I thought this was some guy who stumbled across some anarchist literature, and actually took it seriously. But when I saw him trying to argue that life expectancy had *fallen* to 55 in the 20s, I realized he's just trolling.
What about the region coding? Peter K
Oog, look me in eye: Me no make fun. Me shit you not. Oog much valued fellow passenger of spaceship Earth. Me no need bad Karma. Me respect Oog as fellow member of genus Homo. Me no give damn which species. Me strong believer in genus-level solidarity and mutual support.
Lamer
Educate yourself, here is no pride in your stupidity. BTW your mom gives killer BJ's
YOU PUSSY, OOG KILL WIMPS... OOG STAB WIMP WITH BROKEN OPEN SOURCE CD!
>no more factories. Who, then, would make these? --------the trogs, of course........
No need to babble boy. Just get on your knees and smoke the meat!!!
Competition generates products whose purpose is to be sold; cooperation generates artifacts whose purpose is to be used.
Is there much difference? In the end, not really. Consider that every product to be sold is still an artifact to be used. You're simply talking about the same object in two different ways.
No, the product to be sold is designed to appeal, in the store, to somebody who's buying something. In very few cases is anything beyond that point considered relevant. I'm talking about the difference between McDonalds and, well . . . food. A decent meal. There's very little in common between the two.
Our parents drank instant coffee. We won't touch the stuff. Times change and people get sick of being fed garbage all the time. This too shall pass.
My belief is that we've only been trying this "oceans of trash" approach for a very short period of time, and we'll get over it. In 100 years, we'll be back to making things by hand, because factories are unpleasant to work in and live near, and they produce nothing that's of any lasting worth. A time will come when people wake up and smell the coffee.
I'd be impressed if you could come up with even a single shred of evidence to support that view.
What view? That industrial capitalism is a recent invention? That McDonalds is crap? That 150 years is so short a time (compared to the amount of time we've been here) as to be meaningless? Hunter-gatherer life may not be your idea of a vacation (nor mine), but we got along fine that way for a couple million years. I'd like to ask you if you have a single shred of evidence that industrial capitalism is going to be a viable system for even a thousand years.
I do agree that factories are unpleasant to work in and live near, but I have yet to see anything that works better.
I've yet to see anything that works worse, in terms of any goal that's demonstrably worth pursuing. Yes, factories "work" if your goal is to have what factories produce. Likewise, atomic tests are great if you're into fallout, and you can't beat a deep, filthy wound for some good old-fashioned gangrene. I'm questioning the goal, not how efficiently we're attaining it.
I'm also sounding really damn sarcastic, and I apologize. Morally, the right thing for me to do would be to go back and fix that last paragraph so I don't sound like an asshole, but dammit, I really like the way it sounds
You really think a house built by means of a house-raising will last that long? In the past, perhaps. But no longer. Houses have gotten significantly more complex since house-raisings were common. Size has increased, as has the common number of floors and rooms.
When I wrote that, I was thinking about an old 18th century PA Dutch farmhouse our neighbors lived in when I was growing up. Oh, yeah, and our other neighbors lived in another one, but I was thinking of the first. Functionally speaking, those were both better houses than our frame thing with the aluminum siding. If you're building to last, it makes sense to build well.
It's also worth noting that when house-raisings were common, everyone knew how to build houses. This was partly because the design was simpler, but also because of necessity: people had to know this
Well, probably not everybody everybody, but certainly most people. I can't see that learning how to build houses is a worse waste of time than sitting in front of the TV with your jaw in your lap.
Unless you actually intended to have a Sluggy Freelance reference in your quote (which I doubt) I think you were talking about the "point" of life.
That would be correct, thank you
What is the "point" of life? Nobody knows. I'd like to think that a large part of it has to do with enjoying life, wouldn't you?
That's pretty much my whole point.
the times you speak of going back to are, generally speaking, not going to enrich people's lives.
I'm not saying we should all move to Lancaster County and wear funny hats. I'm saying that we're basically junkies injecting new gadgets into our veins (so to speak
In the past, people couldn't do this as a general rule; they were tied to the land by backbreaking labor day in and day out, all their lives. They could never seek real happiness; to even have one or two happy times in one's life was considered a true blessing
The time they spent in "backbreaking labor", we spend "consuming entertainment". Their minds were more involved, and when they were done they had something to show for it. We didn't evolve to sit on couches. Yes, backbreaking labor is damned hard! I have done a bit (not much, thank god (ha ha)
If "progress" continues at its present rate, the conditions you live in now will, in 100 years, seem as brutish and primitive as the conditions you describe in the last century (the 19th; the 20th century has about nine months left in it
They forget that while things may let you seek happiness, they don't bring it themselves. In essence, they've become chained by exactly what makes them free.
You aren't explaining exactly how they're being made free by all this crap. Has anybody ever been "made free" by crap? Well, maybe a few people, but a few people will claim to have been made free damn near anything, be it Scientology or polygamy or you-name-it. Yes, more people than ever before now have the spare time to read Aristotle and really get down to cases with the old boy. Nobody does. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, do-gooders believed that once the working class had a light, generous 60-hour workweek, they'd all go to night school and become intellectuals. They didn't.
If you give people enough hopelessness and misery they'll frequently turn bad (visit North Philadelphia some time), but no amount of material abundance will ever turn them good. There's a remarkable similarity in morals and outlook between the idle rich and the idle poor.
Have a little faith in humanity. They'll come out all right if you let them.
If the people who get the toxic waste in their groundwater were the same ones who get to decide whether or not to put it there in the first place, I'm sure it would all work out just fine.
Each time period has its own things going for it (and going against it for that matter), but all things considered this is still probably the best time to live in, at least so far.
IMHO you're basing that evaluation on irrelevancies, though there's room for debate. And bandwidth for it, too
Just because the "blatant, outrageous absurdity of the DMCA" is obvious to us, don't expect it to appear unreasonable to those who have no clue.
Well, then it's time to start educating people
As for your statements arguing that all property is morally indefensible, I am curious upon what concepts such a morality is based. Could you elaborate?
Cooperation works. Competition is destructive, wasteful, and deadening. Competition generates products whose purpose is to be sold; cooperation generates artifacts whose purpose is to be used. Compare most modern products of factories to anything handmade and old. The difference in quality and durability is astonishing. Sure, factories produce so much crap that the rotten quality of it all is not a short-term problem: We can throw it away and replace it, again and again. Is this a valid long-term strategy? Personally, I doubt it. My belief is that we've only been trying this "oceans of trash" approach for a very short period of time, and we'll get over it. In 100 years, we'll be back to making things by hand, because factories are unpleasant to work in and live near, and they produce nothing that's of any lasting worth. A time will come when people wake up and smell the coffee. There are a few products of industrialization that can't be duplicated with handcrafts, and some of those are worth keeping: Computers, for example. Networks. Some of what the pharmaceutical industry is doing may be worth keeping, if they can learn to behave themselves and if the FDA starts doing their job right: Detect the poisonous shit (like they did with Thalidomide -- if you have two arms and ten fingers, thank the FDA), but stop there. Right now they spend 10% of their time and budget policing the drug companies, and the other 90% attacking anybody who dares compete with the drug companies. But people are getting sick of it. People are slowly getting sick of a lot of things.
I don't expect that my great-grandchildren will have to breathe filthy air and eat petroleum byproducts (there's ample reason to suppose that the petroleum will all be gone by then anyway).
The bottom line with all of this is the undenyable fact that the "competitive" property-based worldview has produced a river of shit and damned few goodies. I say we keep the good parts and to hell with the rest. You can spend two years fighting with a contractor and have a house that'll last for fifty years, or you can have a house-raising with your neighbors and have something that'll be around for two hundred years and be better to live in the whole time. Anybody who prefers the former of those two options is missing the poing about life in general.
i really belive that they should add bacon shit to the list of exempt media
you know why? look at this guy money's posts... he is obviously a fucking karma whore... hes trying to get an insightful mod without being insightful, its a fucking game of his... power to you for slamming the fag
not being an American and all? I've not bothered with this since it has to do with American law, and I can't see them caring about what non-American's think of it. And hey, it's not like the Americans would try to force their laws down my countries throat, right? *cough*Helms Burton*cough*iCrave*cough
Intolerant people should be shot.
However, it's just not practical at this point in history to talk seriously about abolishing property in general. We can only fight one battle at a time, and the one we've got on our collective plate right now is intellectual property.
It's a generally accepted fact that "intellectual property" is an artificial monopoly granted by the state and enforced by law. The framers of the Constitution thought it was reasonable to allow this to a limited extent, but history has proven them wrong. It's a slippery slope, and if you allow even a little of it, it gets out of hand and everybody loses except for Disney. Even the right-wingers can see that, although the somehow think this makes it magically different from "normal" property. Never mind that; we're allied for the moment and we'll see who comes out on top when the shit really hits the fan. I'm willing to take my chances
Right now, however, we have a golden opportunity to use the blatant, outrageous absurdity of the DMCA to bring attention to this issue and illustrate the destructive and useless nature of IP as a general concept. We can win this one. We can put a final and permanent stop to "intellectual property" in the United States, by means of a Constitutional amendment banning the very idea of IP forever.
In the fullness of time, we'll win the whole shooting match -- but first let's get our asses in gear and take that first step.
I laughed, I cried -- it was better than cats!
Okay, you've wracked your brain and come up with an example that's totally loaded in your favor and based on unexamined assumptions (like, if your engineers are so damn great, why is the company going tits up?)
Making up a story is nice but it proves nothing.
You're also forgetting the basic rule of capitalism, which is that the companies that can't thrive are supposed to die. Giving me a story about a company dying for lack of capitalism isn't going to convince me to be more of a capitalist, because dying companies are what capitalism is all about. Well, that's not quite right: They're half of what it's about; the other half is living companies thriving like Microsoft et al.
So it seems to me that all you're really saying is that life's a bitch and then you go bankrupt. I know that. It's a bummer.
How's this instead:
You da man.
Your neighbors are da men, too, and da women and then there's that one, uhh, guy (I think) who could very well be either. And that person s/he lives with. Never mind! You all da, uhh, people. And if somebody gets laid off because the CEO is a bonehead, that's a bummer but nobody's going to let you starve over something like that.
Meanwhile, your company, the Amalgamated Widget Co. of Squid Valley Arkansas, is in a blue funk because your two star researchers (who happen to be the s/he and his or her, uhh, partner) got hit flattened by a falling piano on Main Street and now you don't have a new product. So you pick up some trade magazines, and dammit if 3M (famed still for their research dept., quality, reliability, support, and whatnot) didn't invent a groovy new widget. Your loyal customers in Squid Valley would just as soon do business with you as with 3M, so you download the plans from 3M's web site (on your FreeBSD box) and go into production.
That's just one small example of why your conclusions depend on themselves. If you take a fish and give it lungs, it'll die; but if you give it legs, lungs, feet, teeth, etc. ad infinitum then it's an antelope and all's well. The whole system has to be self-consistent. No formalized "system" at all is best, as the DMCA is aggressively demonstrating.
Personally, I find the output of pdflatex and dvipdfm to be far superior to the output of ps2pdf. Anyone who has ever seen the output of ps2pdf knows that PS->PDF conversion is less than optimal. The resulting document (if I understand correctly) is basically just a set of images embedded in a simple PDF document. Unfortunately, these images can appear very blobby when read with a GUI reader. They tend to print just fine (though perhaps at a lower resolution than what would normally be possible).
Just my $0.02, I guess..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
And while you're at it, proofread what you contribute. Grammar is tough if you haven't had English for years and don't have an MLA style guide handy, but give it your best shot.
/. are horrendous spellers--most of the time that's OK, but this is probably one of the few times that it's a good idea to be meticulous.
But do take the time to run things through ispell. Spelling words correctly doesn't take much time, but has a big effect on presentation and credibility. Lots of people who post on
Our rights in the United States are being slowly taken away by companies. We need let them know
we are will stand for them pushing us around.
Join the fight.
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
Here are the losses I listed in my comment:
Inability to play a DVD on an unsupported OS (as you said) due to the CSS licensing. The inability to connect a DVD player through a VCR for users who do not own a new television with an RCA or S-video input due to the Macrovision protection on the output of a DVD player. The inability for the owner of an american to play DVDs from another region (i.e. my girlfriend's japanese mother) due to the region restrictions imposed via the CSS licensing. And lastly, see comment #100 (not mine) for an example of a gentleman losing business in the video editing industry due to the illegality of trying to decrypt CSS encoded video. Hope these help!
like, if your engineers are so damn great, why is the company going tits up?)
..... so you download the plans from 3M's web site (on your FreeBSD box) and go into production.
Bad management? From someone who doesn't think through all the problematic situations that might arise from ideas?
Meanwhile, your company, the Amalgamated Widget Co...dammit if 3M... didn't invent a groovy new widget
Now, why would 3m even bother employing any engineering staff if anyone could just start copying their ideas? Why would they want to spend millions of dollars coming up with ideas that anyone could use when they could keep using the same ideas for free? There has to be some incentive for people to spend money developing ideas.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This is the reaction of somebody with serious emotional problems, as well as a total inability to imagine a society not populated entirely by like [people like this] sociopath.
Right, but regardless of your opinion of him, he's still THERE Isn't he? The problem with the idea of total cooperation is that some people won't cooperate, and then your fucked.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Here in Metropolis by the Bay, one city had the brilliant idea of providing "public" bicycles.
Actualy, this system works perfictly in Prog (or Norway or some place like that). Diffrent systems work for diffrent sets of people... Nothing ever gets stolen in japan, but Corporate bribery and stuff runs rampent. Here, its the other way around (AFAIK). There isn't really that much you can do about it.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Apache, and GCC are both pretty aberant when you compare them to the rest of the computer industry (esp hardware)
Also, nether really presents any new ideas...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Ether that, or highly stupid. I'm pretty sure it's a troll, and a good one at that :P
And as far as servents go, you can still have them now if you happen to have the same relitive wealth of an overloard, but the quality of life for those servents is much better...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"Cooperation works. Competition is destructive..."
Certainly cooperation works on a small scale -- where people know each other well. As for it working on a larger scale, I'll leave defending that position up to you. You might start by refuting the incentives that drive the prisoner's dilemma.
Competition, alas, is the iron law of life. Observe any life form on our busy little planet. All are engaged in well-founded economic strategies which they must execute well or fall prey to the competition. What makes you think that we are somehow exempt?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
The people of your country might just as well take away your rights, possibly fueled by saying "They did it, so it must be right."
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Please excuse that long-winded ranting sentence.
ME GRAK, ME BREAK OOG HEAD FOR YOU. COST 1 FISHHEAD LESS THAN OOG WANT. COMPITITION GOOD NO?
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Ask Jon Johansen what the impact on U.S. laws have been to him. Many countries enforce worldwide patent/copyright legislation and intellectual property. If we set the standard here, it will filter out. Sony Japan is already freaking about the DVD bug in their Playstation 2 that allows users to view region 1 DVD's. They will be removing it from the design and looking for ways to pull it from existing players. The world market will bow to the U.S. and for better or worse, you'd best be ready. (unless you live in a country where no one cares what we think ) The additional voices can't hurt. Worst case scenario, create a hotmail address here in the U.S.
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
After reading through the EFF's well written comments, I doubt I could put it any better or come up with anything new. So my question is....
If a lot of people wrote in and reiterated the points made in the EFF's comments to express their support for the pro-freedom side, would it be better than a few people writing in with new comments?
Anyone have ideas how this will impact on TROTW? i mean contaraty to /.s general slant, :P
o ps' law: Nothing ever gets built on time or within budget.
and as i keep commenting, the world does not consist of US alone, and "those pesky Canadians" they sometimes mention
but then i believe a good solution to the worlds problems would be bombing
the headquarters of any company with over 10 000 employees...send my greetz to the US goverment..:P
------------------------------------------
Che
Love's like playing "Marvel Vs. Capcom" with the default Dreamcast controller: Lots of fun but it hurts l
To see an example of the output, read my comment (a trojancow_a) on http://www.loc.gov/copyright/120 1/comments/201.pdf, the copyright office's web site. (The cow's at the bottom.)
Please don't use this service unless you are submitting a comment, generating one PDF places a real load on the server. Thanks.
Have a cow man!
Karl <kop@meme.com>
It probably would help the economy. If your life goal is to help the economy, let me offer you a few pointers:
1. Buy everything that is marketed to you, to the limits of your income.
2. Extend the limits of your income with credit cards.
3. Question nothing, it slows down your consumption.
4. Work really long hours.
5. Buy stuff online while at work.
6. Help the efficiencies of capitalism, buy only popular products, media etc.
7. Encourage conformity.
Yay! you're helping the economy!
I don't think anyone's claiming that data is physical.
Simply put, when you make a copy, the original entity is neither damaged or destroyed.
That's a fairly short sighted viewpoint. The problem is this -- how should the costs of producing intellectual work be distributed ? And copyright provides a way of sharing the said costs. It basically dictates that everyone who uses a copy pays an equal share ( though the copyright holder may choose to exercise some discretion here ). This seems reasonably fair. There is competition to constrain prices. It is true that copying is easy but creating the intellectual work is hard, and the question is how should the cost of creating such work be distributed ? And copyright provides a fairly good answer. Copyright does not prevent other models from coexisting, and no other model has truiumphed over the copyright model. This would suggest that copyright is superior to other models.
We should be allowed open access to the unrestricted copying and redistribution as long as the originals are unchanged, undamaged whatever and that all subsequent copies keep their integrity. Published or in the wild data should be immanently shareable,
Well that's a nice idea. Let's just make everything free. The problem is that it fails to answer tough questions such as -- what financial incentive is there to create intellectual work under your proposal ? If there really is a better way, why is it that the copyright model dominates ?
I'm not a big fan of the DMCA, but on the other hand, I don't see copyright as a "thing of the past". You certainly haven't provided any evidence that there's "comething of the future" to replace it.
It's apparent you can't differentiate between sarcasm and mental imbalance. I prescribe an avoidance of all humour until you determine the source of this malady.
I came from a small town and I am unfortunately still in the habit of not locking anything here in Metropolis by the Bay. I have come home several times to find my front door not locked (though never swinging wide open).
However, I have been robbed on occasion. I am well aware of the actions of sociopaths. How will your property-less society prevent sociopaths?
Here in Metropolis by the Bay, one city had the brilliant idea of providing "public" bicycles. They were for the express purpose of anyone to use who needed them. Within a week they were all missing or ruined beyond repair. However, my several of the local employers in the area provide free bicycles for their empoyees to use on the "campus". Occasionally one will turn up missing, but by and large they don't. The difference between the two is that one set of bicycles are not owned and in the other they are.
But perhaps a better example of the consequences of property-less society can be seen with housing. Although there are numerous exception, by and large, those who own their own homes take care of them and those that rent do not. This observation applies equally well to either wealthy and poor neighborhoods. Extreme examples of this can be seen on college campuses.
Property-less society is like any utopia. It looks good on paper but it can't possibly work in accordance to human nature. If people are not allowed to allocate resources amongst themselves voluntarily, the only other alternative is the dictator.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Your experience and your practical questions demonstrate rather clearly just how poorly this law was thought out.
The entire thing so unworkable that it would not be imposed on an older (that is, better understood by our representatives) segment of our society. Unfortunately for us, cyberspace is changing too fast for non-specialists to understand it. Further, it is threatening another established niche every day. This is a recipe for serious trouble, and we will see more and more of it in the years to come.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
You Da Man
Literaly
In the following example, you're the man who makes decisions at a company called XYZ. You da CEO.
Your company has been wracked with 2 unprofitable quarters in a row, and cutbacks (layoffs/downsizing) seem like the only way to keep the company afloat. The tteam you assembled to help you with the problem is recomending you start by firing some of the research staff.
You hesitate, of course, because you're an engineer yourself and still have a lot of friends in research that you don't want to see go hungry.
Then, one day, like a gift from above, the same research team you were considering laying off makes a startling presentation. They've been working on a new process that would allow you lower your price to the consumer by 25%. All they ask is 2 more years of research dollars to complete the task.
The problem is, with the recently passed "Freedom from IP" act, you have no garantee you will ever see one thin dime out of the 2 years of research you're about to fund. You fight to keep your engineers by taking the idea to your board, but they vote you down because they know that without protection for intelectual investment, the company will never see any return on the 2 year investment.
You're company sinks further into debt, and your forced to layoff your team of engineers.
You're not the man anymore.
This is just one small example of why IP exists and why it's a good thing for help research move forward.
_________________________
If we're going to see many more of these, maybe someone should bang up a LaTeX style for the comment format they're looking for :-)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
4. I am aware of no works or classes of works that have, because of the implementation of technical protection measures, become unavailable to persons who desire to be lawful users.
with fair use on non-standard/OSS platforms but what other compelling arguments can we make?
We can protest the monopoly creating effects of CSS with regard to hardware for content playback in that only companies with the blessing of the MPAA can produce playback hardware which then stifles competition in these markets and keep new players from entering. All in all it puts too much power in the hands of a few groups that do not have the interests of everyone in mind.
Also, the hindrance to academic research that needs access to digital media in these protected formats and requires computer analysis on *nix systems.
Can anyone else add/improve these arguments, it would be good to collect them in a thread to assist letter writers.
no sig.
The companies who can understand this shift have a significant advantage on how we are going to be doing business tomorrow. The same goes for DMCA if they apply the same "Old School" model to today./tomorrows technical environment problems, the problems will not get addressed, they will increase ten fold. I don't thing the folks behind DMCA are nessasarily evil, they just simply are using the wrong tools, the wrong model and for some reason forcing a round peg in a square hole.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Yes, it actually does. The copyright office is generally and IMO sincerely interested in fixing this. The DMCA and all it encompasses was a bad move pushed though congress much like pork on any other bill. I doubt that anyone in the political (read nontechnical) areana really knew of it's implications. Now that were stuck with it, and it has received so much flame, they have to look at it, because the political community is beginning to learn just how far reaching this is. Your posted comments, letters and communications with the copyright office, elected representetives and lobbies like EFF do have an impact. Write that letter.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Do these comments have any impact on the outcome of any legistlation that the beaucracies adopt? It seems to me that we have been asked to give such comments in the past as well, but haven't seen any results. Will the Copy right office post an acknowledgement saying that the overwhelming response was negative or positive or non comittal? Therefore we will or will not or further consider this legistlation? Is there any means of getting feedback on weather our comments are being heard or not? -- YAH00
Send to 1201@loc.gov a message containing the name of the person making the submission, his or her title and organization (if the submission is on behalf of an organization), mailing address, telephone number, telefax number (if any) and e-mail address.
:P
Efficeincy is beauty, efficeincy is art. Can you dig it? -- Clutch
They coulda just posted that in the body of the story, and not made us go thru three links.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
You still definitely should respond though, intelligently! These are our rights they're taking away. Every time any one of our rights are taken away, even in smallest, it makes it easier for our rights to be taken away in the future. If an abundance of people don't stand up and say "NO!" I foresee a time when we will be almost devoid of rights. And for those of you who say "I don't count," EVERY comment on this counts. If everyone decided they would not voice their opinion to protect their rights, no one would, and this would lead to a very horrible future...
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
The MPAA has exploited the DMCA to architect CSS licensing in a way that completely manipulated and controlls the publishers and DVD player manufacturers. If the MPAA wins out over DeCSS, a precident will be set that will set back the MPAA a long way.
Also don't just submit one comment. They are public and you can respond to other comments already received and posted. (See the last /. story on this). Lastly don't stop at just the copyright office. Support EFF,and also write you elected represetatives and let them know how you feel, Make sure that in all your verbal or written communication to either an elected official, industry lobby or industry exec that you be nice. Elected officials really don't respond well to flames, spam, mail floods or harsh language. You will come off as a script kiddie and be completely ignored. For a loose reference, re-read the Linux Advocacy Guide, it will give you the right sort of flavor for your communications.
The house of representatives has a search facility to find your representative:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The senates listing is here:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.c fm
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
The DMCA can be interpreted to put ISPs out of business if they don't respond quickly to requests. Several weeks ago, I recieved an email from the RIAA telling me that a customer of ours had an illegal site up, and that we could be help responsible for ANY OTHER copyright violations, now that they have informed us. This was not a site hosted by us, but a customer with a broadband connection. This brings up the following questions...
1.) How does the RIAA go about finding these sites, do they scan networks for port 21. Do they hop on IRC to find these sites?
2.) How am I, as a network admin, supposed to prevent any single user from setting up a server that violates any provision of the DMCA?
3.) If I, as a network admin, am unable to determine whether or not the material on a server is indeed violating any law, am I required to shut it down until I am able to determine this?
4.) Am I, a normal user, allowed to make back-up copies of music that I own. What formats am I allowed to make these back up copys in. Can I make a duplicate of a CD, for my car. According to the DMCA, I can'tIf we don't do something about these issues now, we lose our opportunity to do so for 2 years, then 3 years after that.
perl -e "print(pack('H37','4d65726b7572795a40676e7572642e6e6574'))"
If you wish, we'll also make suggestions for how you can improve your comments for maximum effect.
Just send your message to:
Copyright_reply@hotmail.com
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.