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Hacker Crackdown?
rombouts noted that Salon has a good piece on the liability of programmers. From Napster, to Freenet, to DeCSS, on down. If you're scared by any of this, you should be. There are a lot of cases out there right now that are gonna change the world, and folks, it could go either way.
Well, the first thing I have to say here is that a significant portion of the population (not all, or even most, but significant) don't agree with the current drug legislation, either. Personally, if it has a sane disclaimer on it, then the decision to take the risk of using the drug should be up to the adult. Now, if a drug dealer sells you pot laced with something else, and claims that it's pure mary jane, that's product liability. In the same vein, I feel that the tabaco companies may have a liability for their additives - but aside from that, if people choose to smoke, that's their decision.
Getting back to the software question...
Let's examine napster. Written by a college student who wants to trade mp3s with some friends. Alright, this is illegal. But no more illegal than trading dubbed copies at this point - it's still among friends.
Time goes on, and napster grows in popularity. At some arbitrary point, it's no longer trading among friends, it's trading among the general populace. Napster itself is a company at this point, selling a service (not a product - the software was necessary to use the service, but it was the service that offered the illegal mp3s).
The point in all this? The software was used both legally and illegally in the above example... the differance was in scale and method, which the author has no control over (at the point of authoring).
It was the decisions of Napster as a company that made it illegal - not the software itself. The software itself is just a collection of 1s and 0s, a set of instructions.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
I guess the main difference is that we have a long tradition of making our own documents , but we don't have that much tradition of making our own audio recordings (despite the fact that the technology has been around for a while.) So "Digitized Audio Clip" is presumed to be "Copyrighted material." After all, music isn't something that just anyone can make, it requires the funding of a big record label to produce.
To email, do the obvious.
Creating laws which cannot be universally enforced leads to arbitrary enforcement
OK, I'm kind of stating the obvious there, so I'll explain further. If we as a society create laws which have no hope of being enforced consistently because of the number of people already breaking these laws, then we are opening the doors to abuse by the government and police. We end up with a society in which everyone is guilty of something, but the only ones being punished are those who are disliked for some reason. The reason can be just about anything. You give the example of racism, which is a very good one, but is also unfortunately only the beginning. We could end up with a society in which a reporter uncovers some dirt about somebody in power, and ends up going to jail because of it. Sure, the reporter in question could never be directly prosecuted for uncovering dirt (hopefully, although the way our society is going...), but those in power might tell the police to go and arrest the reporter for a crime that everyone commits. This creates an atmosphere in which people are afraid of criticising their leaders. Unfortunately, we are already headed down that path. How many of you can honestly say that you never do anything illegal, and that if the police were watching you 24 hours a day they could find nothing to arrest you for?
Unfortunately, more and more laws are being made that can never (and should never) be effectively enforced. It's not part of a grand conspiracy, but the end result is the same. The reason is simply that the people are always screaming for the goverment to do something, but they never seem to care whether or not what the government did had any effect. They just want laws to "protect the children" and whatnot. But this doesn't simply result in a bunch of worthless laws that we can all laugh at and go home. It ends up creating an environment that is practically asking for government abuse. And abuse they do. And it's only getting worse...
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
I find bribing politicians distasteful, plus I tend not to be able to afford it after paying the mortgage.
I do vote, I do write to my MP (UK Member of Parliament) and I do not post anonymously to Slashdot.
I personally am glad that I am in a profession where a scarcity of quality people gives me a lot of individual bargaining power with my employers - the threat of me leaving to get a job elsewhere tends to be sufficient pressure to ensure good conditions, salary, etc - even though I seldom actually raise it as a possibility.
I do act ethically within my job, I do tell management honestly what I think of them, and I do take into consideration my colleagues (both techy and others).
My response to the article as posted is that to protect myself in future, any source code/software I release as myself (rather than through an employer) I am going to release through a limited liability company - they're cheap and easy to set up here, and can go out of business without cost to me personally should someone get unreasonably litigious.
~Cederic
Beer, if it were introduced as new today, would not make it to market.
Why not? Aspartame did. If that poison is legal, you should be able to sell a kick in the nuts as a safe product.
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I agree with most, however you can't just create a program and let it run rampant, and not expect any repercussions.
"The authors can't otherwise control what's done with it."
If you create something destructive and get it out to a bunch of people, you are the creator and should face the music. You can't hide behind the actions of other people when you had the primary role. That's like Big Tobacco blaming people for smoking. The companies themselves never lit a cigarette for a consumer.
______
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everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it.
http://leftorium.net
I'm fortunate to live in one of those progressive cities that is suing the gun makers because criminals use guns and when people get injured during crimes, public money is used to pay hospital bills.
Actually, the city can't balance it's budgets so it's looking for an easy (read tort) source of funds.
Alan Turing was gay and if he lived in the usa now then he'd no doubt claim you were picking on him and launch a counter-suit...
Thinking back on it, I can see where the products of many RIAA recording artists have changed my life.
;p
DREAM
In '97 I killed my wife after listening to "Enter Sandman". In '99 I killed my dog after first hearing Britney Spears.
/DREAM
In many ways my life would have be better had I never listened to these artists, therefore I am suing each and every one of them as well as the RIAA for giving them a voice.
Anybody know if Johnny Cochran is available?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Its often said Aspirin would not make it to market today.
t
An important question to ask is whether more piracy has been committed using Napster or Microsoft Outlook Express. Measure it in incidents or megabytes. How much copyrighted material has been e-mailed, posted to Usenet and posted on Web sites using Microsoft Outlook Express and read using it as well.
I want to be very clear about this. I am not criticizing Outlook Express. I also don't believe for a minute that Microsoft every intended it to be a piracy tool. Nor do I believe that Microsoft should be liable in any way for the fact that it can be used that way.
Any tool that allows us to publish any data can allow us to publish someone else's copyrighted data in violation of that copyright. Failing to hold the person who committed the violation liable and attacking the programmer who wrote the software instead is at best simply choosing a target of opportunity, who may have partial culpability. At worst, it is scapegoating and a search for deep pockets.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I can imagine! :-) You bet, Norwegian and Swedes have tons of jokes about each other, the content is the same of course, it is just a matter of who's telling it... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Following this reasoning, victims' relatives could then sue gun manufactures for every person ever killed using one of their products.
Why stop there? how about knife manufacturers?
let's sue them as well.
And forks, oh yeah they can very dangerous in the wrong hands.
And baseball bates.
And chainsaws, and hammers, and scissors and staplers, what the hell, let's sue everyone in this f***ed-up country.
So long as a programmer did not build something that can only be used for illegal purposes, I don't see how this can go anywhere.
If so, should we hold baseball bat manufactures, lead pipe manufactures, or gun manufactures responsible anytime their devices are used to commit a crime?
Heh... I'm American of above average intelligence, and I still have to look that word up when I'm writing. Thanc gof dor spel chec! =)
Humorless sig goes here.
I think this is a particularly dangerous ruling, mainly because the author of a perfectly innocent piece of code could be attacked for having their code reused by someone else in a program with a malicious intent.
Daft. Take this example.
"This comb is perfectly harmless."
"No it's not, when you attach it to a chainsaw."
I think it brings into question whether people would want to share their code or not. If this is the case, not, I would say.
M.
No. That is exactly the attitude which makes crimes against humanity possible: "I was just following orders". It doesn't stand up. Each individual is responsible for his or her own actions. You know, this has been the main point of every trail on war-crimes since WWII, and indeed, you bet top nazis where convicted, while they were "just following orders". Why is this wrong? Because if you are willing to follow a lunatic on top, then you are contributing, because if you hadn't followed orders, it had never gone that far. You are all individuals! (No, don't give me that "I'm not!" :-) ).
As for the nuclear bomb, it was the scientists who should have stopped it, because only they could possibly be able to see the consequences of what they were up. Policymakers does not have the proper education to understand that, only the scientists.
As for technology in general, yes we do have a responsibility. As above, you can't just say you are a part of the chain, you will have to take responsibility for what you do. BTW, see Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
If designers of Napster designed it with the purpose of taking away somebody's rights, then, they must take responsibility for it. Ulrich felt that his right to decide how his music was to be distributed, and he has a point there. If Napster creators can convince people that there are more important concerns, then they must do it. It is still their responsibility, they can't run away from it.
In the case of DeCSS, I think the creators are assuming the responsibility for what they have done, and it is no small responsibility, it could prompt massive social change, and it is my firm belief, that it is social change for something good. It is not the DeCSS that should be illegal, but CSS. CSS was designed with the intention of taking away fundamental rights, notably the right for fair use. The creators are hiding behind copyright laws, not assuming the responsibility for something so bad they should have said "no, this stuff is not good, I won't make it". The same goes for a lot of things /. flame about, like spyware.
In conclusion, you must assume responsibility for what you do. Now, it is not ethically minded hackers that I'm most concerned about, it's all the coders who will do anything if you pay them big bucks.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
There are other measures, such as the ISEW, that try to define sustainable development and also take disparity into account. Of course they are not widely used as they make the "world leaders" look much different, especially in retrospect (development has become less and less sustainable in the past decades).
So as someone else said, if you're black and live in LA, the US are pretty far down at the scale, if you're a dot-communist in Silicon Valley, things might look different until your shares go down.
But hey, what's that gotta do with the subject at hand? Mommy, the troll got me!
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In fact, an even better example of how companies can be litigated against for what they do would be the cigarette company litigations that have won billion dollor settlements.
Well, the tabacco companies deliberately and knowingly increased nicotine content to maximize the addictiveness of their product, and added a known carcinogenic substance to improve flavor despite protests by their own scientists that doing so would kill even more people.
The reason the jury awarded such high damages was the willful and deliberate manipulation of the product to make it even more dangerous and harmful to consumers than it already was. It was not because people think tobacco should be illegal.
Put another way: it would not be a bad thing to put the tobacco companies who did these things out of business. Someone else could start a tobacco company with more ethical marketing and production policies (read: selling the natural substance, not doping it with more nicotine and additional carcinogens, and not marketing to children and young teens). Tobacco should not be illegal, but doping it with substances known to cause even more harm, and manipulating its addictive properties to make quitting physiologically more difficult should be -- and just like bars who abuse their liquor licenses, tobacco companies which abuse their priveleges should be shut down and put out of business.
What the tobacco companies did was heinous and unacceptable by just about any standard, and unless we want such irresponsible behavior to continue unabated it is important that they pay the full price for what they have done.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
One problem with the bomb analogy. Computer software is basically a mathematical algorithm, not an invention. Can you imagine Newton and Leibniz being held reponsible for what's done with the calculus? Programmers should be held ethically responsible for what they produce. That should be sufficient.
it's not all laws that need to be re-written, (IMHO), but those that deal with copyright and IP (keeping on-topic). Because there now exists the possibility for citizen run and supported media networks, the law should allow for it also. I think it's very simple (at a high level), only the person who holds a copyright can profit from digital artifacts. This produces a situation with high motivation to disseminate works, but only allows creators to make money off them. Interpretation would define the nuances over time, but I think this is a good foundation.
Enforcing distribution rights will lead to civil rights decay like we've seen during the onerous War on Drugs (except the ones with good lobbyists).
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+&x
A: So they don't have to look at all that misery.
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I think this issue makes more sense when you divide it into two:
The salon article uses the industry that gave us guns, bombs, car and pantyhose as examples of product's creators being separated from the usage of their products. Their argument was valid five years ago, but today it's shot to hell:
When you take a step back from our little microcosm and look at the rest of the world, you can see the growing trend of companies being held accountable for the usage of their products - either intended, in the case of tobacco, or unintended, as with the gun industry. The system is primed and ready to take poor Shawn Fanning and his little Napster upon the gallows for a good ol' public execution. Hanging might have gone the way of the Dodo, but the effect is going to be the same.
The second issue is accountability of software authors, specifically. Hey folks - if you've just been skimming, pay attention now and let me tell you something: Holding software authors accountable for their software is a good thing! (It's also inevitable, but you'll see that) I know I'll get flamed for saying that, but give me a second.
This discussion comes up on Slashdot about once a month. Folks gripe about companies paying the kid down the street to make them a web site, because the kid will do it for far cheaper than a real professional, and have similar results. But once the kid delivers, the company still doesn't have the product it was looking for. So then, they come to the professional.
There needs to be a way to differentiate between you, the professional software engineer, and the kid next door. Sure, you can get MCSE, CNA and a whole slew of other acronyms after your name, but that's not working. Every other engineering discipline has a certification exam that allows you to personally ceritfy yourself as a Professional. Once you're a Professional Engineer, you're held responsible for your work. Civil Engineers are held liable for their bridges, Mechanical Engineers for their machines, and it's a Good Thing. It forces the engineers to hold to their design process and keep the level of quality high.
Every software engineering text that I've read supports this trend towards accountability. The process of creating large software products is slowly becoming more and more of a formalized process. Formal procedures are good, because software design is inherently a very difficult process to make step-by-step. Changing requirements, ignorant customers, bad technology, they all work aganist you. This formal specification of the software design process creates accountability, in the form of Software Requirement Specifications (SRS). A contract, between the company and the customer, outlining the expectations of the new piece of software. The beginning is there.
Companies are going to be held liable for their products. That's inevitable, given the larger trend in our system. But is it fair to hold a kid, be it the DeCSS kid or the Napster kid liable for making public the result of their late-night tinkering? I don't agree, but then, I've got the perspective of the tech-savvy.
Napster probably will be shut down. Shawn Fanning probably will held accountable. We're liable to see a veritable witch-hunt begin over the course of the next couple years as a result. But, in the end, the legal system as well as the software authoring world will be a more mature place. Will a formal system of accountability get set in place? (shrug) The ball is rolling. Which direction it takes down the hill, and what bumps it'll hit are unknowns. But it is rolling.
This whole idea of coder responsibility for others' use of software is merely the latest power grab by these whiners. I'm so glad I don't live in Atlanta any more, where gun makers are under threat of suit for people shooting each other. I just have to shake my head. What's wrong with sending the shooters to jail? Oh, yeah. It's their wretched childhood that made them do it.
Here in Florida, smokers are getting paid to smoke. No. Really. Long-time smokers, people that have been smoking since the European explorers came here and found the natives burning leaves and inhaling the combustion products, are suing the companies that provided them with the instruments of their chosen leisure activity because "we didn't know it'd make us sick!" Baloney. It's common knowledge that smoking will make you sick, and even kill you. But cigarettes and tobacco products are legal. There are warning messages in all advertising. On even the packaging of the products! In newspaper articles and medical research reports. These people have no excuse, other than themselves, for their continued smoking. Yet we find ourselves in the midst of an amost trillion dollar settlement.
About ten years ago, people clammored for air bags in cars. The automakers were reluctant; air bags were a relatively unknown quantity, even though conceptually they held much promise. The Government, out to save us all from ourselves, stepped in. A law was passed mandating air bags in vehicles. Soon after, accidents starting happening where children were hurt or killed by these "life-saving" air bags. Now people are clammoring for "slow-deploying" or switchable air bags. Tell me, if air bags become switchable, how long is it going to take before the first law suit is filed claiming that so-and-so was killed because their air bag was turned off? How negligent of the auto maker to allow car owners the option of turning off safety equipment!
Even before air bags was the seat belt. Cars didn't come with them standard originally. But about 40 years ago books were written and lawsuits came about that end the end meant that every car on the road had seat belts. Cars cost a little more, but hey, now they were safe. Except nobody would use them (well, I like seat belts-- keep me from sliding around :) So fifteen or so years ago, the Government stepped in, and a law was passed requiring seat belt use. Whew! Now we are safe in our cars.
Unless you drive a small car. Ten you are in danger from those of us that choose to drive our urban tanks (personally, I drive a 1995 Firebird). Your chinzy little car may get dramatically better gas milage, may be easier to drive and park, and even cost less. But get in a scrap with your neighbor's Suburban, and you're toast. Tell me, what do you think: Should he not be allowed to have his Geo-Eater, or should you be required to buy a Urban-Sherman?
In each of these cases the Government has stepped in, and in each case we've been told that we're too dumb to live our own lives making our own decisions. It used to be that a boy became a "man" early in his teenage years. Later it was put off 'till his eighteenth birthday. Afterwards, 21, because "men" could drink. Today, I think that about age 83 is right for becoming a "man." Before age 83, we're too dumb and inexperienced to handle our own lives.
We, as a group, want to be coddled. We've come to live in Neverland, and it's populated with nothing but an army of Peter Pans. We never grow up, we never take responsibility.
It's stupid and I resent it.
Jeff
Some of the posts advocate a coders union - that would be a great idea if we were riled up enough to form one. Of course, there is the "Atlas Shrugged" response too, which I like - if it were possible. If society as a whole does not appreciate what coders do, and try to restrict something they don't have the slightest understanding of, then coders should walk away from that society and let them sink. Find a country who would appreciate them (and keep the fscking lawyers out!)
http://www.freedomforum. org/news/2000/04/2000-04-07-01.asp
http://www.freedomforum. org/news/2000/07/2000-07-31-08.htm
http://www.freedomforum. org/news/2000/08/2000-08-03-03.htm
I'm not sure if the First Amendment still works or not, but it's getting closer and closer to the day when its just a hollow promise with no effectiveness in law.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
It's only a matter of time before the public rises up and demands accountability for software. Imagine a senator getting elected on the platform of promising to put programmers behind bars for writing software that is unreliable. Or a district attorney setting out to put programmers behind bars, not for hacking or writing viruses, but for writing products that don't meet government standards.
That'll probably be when I stop coding, then. Or, rather, it'll be the day that I stop being able to give to people the software that I write.
Then they'll set out to put other types of artists behind bars for producing things that don't meet government standards, and I won't be able to share anything with anyone.
I'll still produce, but I'll need to keep everything locked up, hidden away from society.
What a horrible way to live.
-rozzin.
It is true, what has happened has happened, there is nothing we can do about it, and we can't say what history would have looked like if it had been done differently. Now, it is the thoughtsets behind the nukes that I'm after. Both nukes and conventional attacks represents organized mass murders, and I have a problem about that.
It is common that one says that nukes made sure the cold war stayed cold. This has been disputed by a number of high-ranking officers lately, in a document released by a group of them. I got this document from Jack Steinberger (nobel prize physics 1988), but I haven't found it anywhere on the web. It is a very interesting read, though.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Napster is basically a service that lets you locate a file. Since the actual sharing is simply between two people, it seems to fall into that grey area of people exchanging music which each other... which has gone on since audio tapes were first invented... If my friend calls me up and asks me if I know anyone who has song X, and I tell him to call person B to get it, am I legally liable for infringement of copyright? This is what Napster is doing...
On TV you can see all sorts of things that 20 years ago never would have been allowed.
I don't know where you are from, but from where I sit, that sentence is utter bullshit. TV is even more constipated today than it was in the 1970s, at least here in the United States. Sure, you can see more tits and ass, as well as more asses (i.e. iditots) on television, but you don't see much on TV anymore that is truly controversial. Do you think that in today's climate in the U.S. that any studio would think to make a show like ALL IN THE FAMILY? Fuck no!
What is happening is that the powerful groups of oligarchs who really control everything are giving you the illusion of more freedom. Their idea of freedom is "consumer choice," but only so long as that choice is Coke or Pepsi. What the Hell do you think Jose Bove is about, or the protests in Seatle? Rampant consumerism is no replacement for real freedom.
It's time you wake up, open your eyes, and take a good, hard look at what is going on in the western media and in people's day to day lives.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Movies can be as graphics as they like, they have no responsibility towards the viewers. They don't check your criminal/psych records when you go to the theatres, anybody is free to view the movies. Therefore there is the possibility that some of the viewers might be psychologically unbalanced and very influencable. Can you blame this on the movie producers ? No, because they have no control over who sees their movie and who doesn't. Same thing with software developers. The lonestar coder who gives away a newsreader can't be held responsible because leetboy@aol.com uses it to propagate goat porn. If that were true, then maybe I could sue Coca-Cola for keeping me up all night, causing me to be late at work because of insomnia, and eventually resulting in my getting fired for being late all the time.
Contrast this with a valid blame situation, for example if someone rams you with a truck and the resulting injuries prevent you from going to work, you can sue them (their insurance company) to compensate for your lost income, because it was their decision (or indecision) to ram you.
Software developers don't decide they want to make systems crash on purpose, and you can't sue them if it does crash. Maybe your Ram is flaky.. maybe your motherboard is so cheap it can't stand running at 100mhz.. maybe you're just too stupid to properly install it (or the underlying OS). You can't blame M$ because your Houston Tech mobo is too crappy to run crash-free. You can't blame them because your lan admins are ferociously incompetent. As soon as there's any fudge factor between the accused and yourself, their liability basically vanishes. "Maybe it crashed because the wind was blowing from the east instead of the west, restricting airflow into the building, and causing my CPu to overheat." Well maybe it doesn't make much sense but it does invalidate your claim. Doubt is every lawyer's best friend.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
*Sigh*
How to make a sig
without having an idea
If this guy can be held liable for the use of his software what about all of the contributors to 'ftp'? Historically the ftp protocol has been the conduit for the vast majority of pirated digital goods.
Let's go after Microsoft for their filthy 'file-sharing' software.
Hell, while we are at it, let's lynch the designers of the Internet. All this file sharing software wouldn't be possible without the Internet. Shouldn't the makers of the Internet have foreseen this misuse of their creation. For shame Al Gore.
But seriously, I cannot see any sane judge wanting to set such a dangerous precendent as holding the creators of software responsible for the actions of the users of that software, except perhaps in the case where the only possible use of the software is to break the law.
And as for the creator of Yo!NK - this was a brilliant bit of PR work on his part. He catapults himself from relative obscurity as a maker of Yet Another Napster/Gnutella clone, to some level of noteriety. Many more people now know about his software. I doubt very much this guy would have contributed to the Salon article is he seriously anticipated any sort of legal retribution - why draw attention to yourself.
-josh
What if rather than writing the file sharing program (which i am actually writing) I merely distribute details of the protocol.
It could be that I tell my mates down the pub the details of the protocol and it's up to them if they wish to implement it. More likely i'd stick it on a webpage/freenet.
That way I am merely excersising my right to free speech - just as there is nothing wrong with distributing instructions to make bombs and drugs.
(Dont confuse this bit with the DeCSS/Copyleft/MPAA case because that was arguably a proprietary piece of code)
Now similarly I could include a reference implementation with the knowledge of the protocol (standard practise), showing people how to implement it. Using the meatspace example I attach to my book pictures of all the chemistry-like apparatus i need to make amph3tamines (this is hyphotetical mind).
At which point have I gone too far?
Anyway if you can pass the buck for the Gnutella problem back to justin at nullsoft then what stops him passing it on to Microsoft/Borland/Watford (depending on who's tools he uses). They can probably pass it onto intel as well because after all gnutella would never have been possible without intel's aid.
My feeling is actually that most of the blame for the mp3 revolution lies with the CD drive manufacturers. There is (as far as I can tell) no legitimate use for 8x DAE - sure 1x is useful if you need to play cds over a network or on a laptop that doesn't have a pass thru wired from it's cd rom drive - but 8x DAE is designed for ripping, and yet companies like samsung, plextor and creative (to name but a few) deliberately built this feature for their own financial gain.
As for the software/hardware dispute, anyone here should know that computers are finite state machines and as such any computer application can be created using a hardwired set of transistors or even valves... surely this makes it evident that software is not a service but a product??
It's more about a corporate attitude that quality doesn't matter (ie, turning out software with a multitude of bugs) so long as there are lots of cool new bugs and whistles to keep the user entertained until the next expansion. Actual individual programmers are of less of a mentioned threat...though one could suppose that their willingness to work in an environment which supports allowing bug infested programs to go out condemns them outright...
Listen to me Peter, I want this bench. You go sit on that bench over there, and if you're good I'll tell you the rest of
Other than the question of the extent of a programmers liability, another point the article brought up that I thought important was "Unless technologists take a leading role in shaping the legal debate, says Jennifer Granick, a San Francisco lawyer who regularly defends people accused of computer crimes, Oppenheimer's legacy of freedom could be lost."
Not only will that leagacy be lost, we will stand by and watch a group of people, some of which have relatively little knowledge of how our "baby" (the industry) works, molding it and creating it into what they are used to and are familiar with. The scary thing about that is we have never been exposed to such bombardments and tests on defining or having to redefine copyright or amendment rights et al., therefore we run a grave risk of never having legislature evolve to encapsulate our new ways of communicating, sharing ideas and innovationg.
I think what we should do is treat this whole phase of redefinement (sp?) and growth like Linux: if there is something you don't like and | or you think it can be done better, make an effort to say something that will only benefit us in the long run, and reduce chances of implementing *permanent solutions* (ahem, law) that sucks the innovation and enthusiasm out of our baby. (The engineers, scientist and techs will get left out and the marketing and finance people and lawyers make all the money!)
Nuff Respec'
DeICQLady
7D3 CPE
If you think programmers can really escape liability for their products (or should), think about what kind of effort and investment companies like the tobacco industry and auto manufacturers of automobiles and childrens toys and food put into defending themselves from lawsuits and government regulation.
It's only a matter of time before the public rises up and demands accountability for software. Imagine a senator getting elected on the platform of promising to put programmers behind bars for writing software that is unreliable. Or a district attorney setting out to put programmers behind bars, not for hacking or writing viruses, but for writing products that don't meet government standards.
I haven't read it yet, but the Software Conspiracy looks interesting.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
What most people consider freedom is really just license. They take no responsibility for their actions, adn then whine when they are brought up short by the ADULTS in their midst.
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Besides, there's formaldehyde in toothpaste. And that hasn't been taken off the market.
But, you're right there. Methanol (which my chem prof called tree alcohol) is deadly, given you ingest enough of the pure stuff.
Squeak on, brother! ;)
Det visste jeg faktisk :)
(for all you non-Norwegian speakers out there, pardon the unintelligible stuff above.. Just had to make a comment :)
To keep this _somewhat_ on-topic, this is also the Wiccan Rede:
Personally I don't agree with this bastardization, as I feel it works slightly against the concept about True Will, and goes completely against other Thelemic writings.. But to each hir own--
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
A problem
Unfortuantely american society (among others) is leaning in a direction where the individual is no longer accountable for their actions. Liability for individual's actions are being shifted to product manufacturers. This is mostly thanks to lawyers and greedy americans who think they can get the 'big score' by suing large corporations. Additionally large corporations use lawyers and litigation to intimidate individuals out of behavior that while technically legal is contrary to the way corporations believe things should be done.
You aren't responsible when you spill coffee on yourself, McDonalds is.
You aren't responsible when you get a terminal desease for using a product you knew was unsafe for twenty years, Philip Morris is.
You aren't responsbile when you shoot someone while mugging them, Smith and Wesson is.
You aren't responsible when you pirate music, Napster is.
The terrible end result of this strategy is that your individual rights and fredoms are stripped from you by government because you keep proving time and again that you do not want to be responsible to weild these rights. Government turns into a big babysitter.
Thats the big picture; damn sad where we are going. But to focus on what you can do today to protect yourself:
A solution
Anyone who is considering doing something that may draw the wrath of lawyers should consider incorporating. Incorporation provides protection to those who work for corporation so that these people are not fiscally liable for the actions of the corporation. Thus if you write something somebody does not like and you sign all rights to this code over to your corporation (and licensing this code out with GPL or equiv). Then when the lawsuit comes they can only go after whatever assets your corporation holds, rather than your personal assets.
Incorporating is fairly simple, and involves either some research on your part or paying a lawyer to get things moving. I'd say you probably won't be set back more than $1000, and probably around $150/yr to maintain it (could be more depending on which state you incorporate in and how much research and accounting you do yourself).
It's cheap insurance if you anticipate legal threats. One caveat is to ensure you act within your corporation's framework; if you do things that blurs the line between you 'the corporation' and you 'the individual' you could become personally liable again.
-- Greg
IANAL, so go seek one's advice if you'd like to learn more about incorporating and liability.
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
This whole RIAA-MPAA-Napster-GNUTella, et al., is starting to piss me off. How is it that programmers are to be liable for users who feel entitled to free music, movies, or whatever?
It is hard for me to understand why so many technology whores think that because some code is free, now everything related to media is free. I still have to pay for a lot of 'content', such as programming books from O'Reilly. I would not try to steal them (even if I could) because I feel they are valuable. Sure, I could go around reading the PERL man pages or Java Docs (all freely available), by I am still willing to pay legitimate authors for legitimate works.
I know, most of the Napster users are 'just trading music'. At whose expense? Based on the exaggerated Salon article, it appears that the expense of 'just trading music' will cost all of us our freedom.
Is 'free' music really worth it? I wonder...
Finally, it is ironic to me that the technology whores want the copyright laws to help them distribute their code (if the whores actually write code), yet want to abandon them for some free tunes.
P.S. I know some of you on /. are not 'technology whores', but according to the Salon article, 87% of the songs on Napster are copyrighted, so you do the math.
--
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
What about DeCSS? I tend to agree that Napster lacks much of a leagal stance in it's defense. I think it is a crappy example, and much prefer DeCSS. This is software that was developed for fair use purposes,and no one, not even the MPAA with all of it's money, has yet proven even a single instance of it being used for piracy. The intent is to supress it because it has the potential ro aide in piracy, even though that is neither its only, nor its intended, nor indeed its primary use. Napster is certainly morally ambigous, but Jon Johansen believed he was doing nothing save helping other enjoy movies that they had purchased the right to watch. He faced (and may still face, I don't know) CRIMINAL charges for this afrontery to societies mores.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Bad example. I believe that the Nazi privates who actually shoved the victims into the gas chamber and pulled the switch were officially absolved of responsibity. It was the guys near the top of the chain of command who were held responsible.
Interesting. That's the way publishing and copyright used to work in the bad, old days before the Western Nations underwent democratic revolutions. You used to have to get permission from the King or some government agency empowered by the local despot to be able to publish your books. If the ruler didn't like you or what you had to say, tough luck, you have to move to Holland, where the press was pretty much free, and where most of the truly interesting books of the time were printed.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I really don't think we want to go down this road. What you are recommending could make it illegal to type this into your own computer:
for(i=0; i<100000; i++) {
sendEmail("foo@bar.com", "You've got spam!");
}
And there could easily be a legitimate uses for such a program, for example to test the resistance of your own network to mailbombs.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Contrast the Napster thing to the lawsuit against cigarrette corporations, and then let's compare it to the gun industry and the pantyhose industry (wait, this makes sense).
1. Cigarrettes have absolutely no beneficial or good use whatsoever. Every time a cigarrette is smoked, it does harm to someone -- there is no way to use a cigarrette without helping to slowly kill someone, maybe a few people w/ secondhand smoke, mostly yourself. You can't even use an unsmoked pack for a doorstop, it's too light.
2. Guns can be used to murder innocent people, but hey, you can hunt for deer or protect your home from intruders. Okay, so maybe it's stretching it a bit.
3. Napster can be used for evil (stealing music), but it can also be used for good purposes (gives up and coming bands a way to distribute their demos). Although I have to say that much of the music I've downloaded I know for a fact is "stolen", and the rest may very well be for all I know. Yeah, I know the music industry is corrupt, etc., but two wrongs don't make a right. Okay, so this could go either way.
4. The pantyhose industry makes products that are mostly used for good purposes (so women can wear them and feel like they look better), but every once in a while a bank robber puts a stocking over his/her face so the security cameras won't recognize him/her. C'mon, give 'em a break, they just wanted to make women beautiful, they didn't know this would happen!
Now, which of these industries do we shut down: 1, 2, 3, or 4?
Answer: we shut down 3, because it's NOT a huge industry, it's just one guy! Easy, we can take him out like THAT! Plus, he's pitting himself against, you guessed it, another BIG industry!
Even if we assume that the maker of a tool can ever be held responsible for evil that is done with the tool, it's still obvious here that the real reason they are shutting down Napster has nothing to do with that.
Don't post on slashdot. Get back to work.
>A soldier has a duty to disobey an illegal order.
Y'know, I've met so many people that were in the
US Army, and I've decided that it's so big, it has more than one culture.
There are soldiers who were trained and believe as you do, that they learn to question stupid orders.
Then there are soldiers who would do no such thing, that any order would be followed. It would have to be a very immoral thing to rise to the level of being questioned.
The US Army is so large that it's not one organization, I suppose.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Can't these US laws such as the DMCA protect software developers from being held liable for consequences of using their software? Can't programs like Gnutella etc be distributed with such a licence? And won't the licence be legally valid because of the DMCA and whatever laws there are?
Just a thought... IANAL and I don't live in the US so...
A soldier has a duty to disobey an illegal order. That is the policy of the U.S. Army and it is International Law. That is what I was taught when I was a soldier. You can be court-martialed and convicted for carrying out an illegal order.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
All or nothing is a problem. How about this: Do a checksum of all posted works. If anyone asks that you not post their works, check everything with a matching checksum. This is pretty easy to defeat, but it would keep straight copies from working. It would show some intent to prevent illegitimate copying. The problem is, they don't appear to have the intent to prevent illegitimate copying. So they'll probably loose. Metallica will probably stay popular longer than if it weren't a "kind of outlaw thing" to collect their music. Napster probably deserves to loose, but since the digital copyright law passed I have found it impossible to be sympathetic of anyone claiming copyright protection for electronic media.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
..taming the technologists. There's a whole lot of fear out there coming from the people who don't understand what the "high-tech people" do, some of it whipped up by people who stand to gain from a crackdown, some of it just good old fashioned paranoia, and all of it itching for a way to get us under some sort of control before we "take over the world."
They don't realize we already have, and we will never really be stopped, and if they ever do, it's going to get ugly.
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
As my wife once told me: "You may be logically correct. But you are emotionally wrong!" Where will this lead I fret.
God and the soldier we implore, In times of crisis, not before. The danger passed and all things righted, God is forg
The entertainment examples you're talking about are an entirely different issue - some make the argument that actions and attitudes portrayed in the media influence the actions and attitudes of the viewing public (makes sense in the macro case, but hard to pinpoint in the micro).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Napster was created with the INTENT of allowing people to share MP3 files. Napster was even aware that a large majority of the files being traded were copyrighted works, and has done NOTHING to prevent it. After all, it's a lot easier to garner venture capital if you can boast 20 million users (even if most of them are using the service to facilitate the illegal trading of copyrighted work), than if only a couple hundred thousand were using the service purely on the up-and-up.
I agree, on one hand, that it's rediculous to hold the "creator" of an entity responsible for how it is used by others. But Napster is different in that it was a very calculated effort to essentially give the finger to the RIAA. Why, for example, couldn't Napster have facilitated ONLY the trading of MP3 files that have been approved by their respective artists?
No. That is exactly the attitude which makes crimes against humanity possible: "I was just following orders". It doesn't stand up. Each individual is responsible for his or her own actions.
:)
Okay, point taken. As you could probably see, my argument worked on me when I saw it on TV.
But how then does the military manage to get anything done at a low-level? With committees?
As for the nuclear bomb, it was the scientists who should have stopped it
I was talking about standard village-grade bombs, not nuclear bombs. Weapons of mass destruction are different, I fail to see how you could attempt to justify them the way I tried to justify small bombs in my previous post.
As for technology in general, yes we do have a responsibility. As above, you can't just say you are a part of the chain, you will have to take responsibility for what you do.
Whoa, slow down. I was talking about armies and stuff, not technology.
To answer, though, a responsibility to society is not the same thing as liability for another's (or society's) actions. I might be willing to take some responsibility for society if society agreed not to hold me responsible for things done by others which are out of my control. I fundamentally cannot stop people from using something I make in a malicious way, even if that wasn't my intended usage and I took steps to try and prevent malicious usage. By fundamentally, I mean I can't control their muscles. This is what bothers me about taking responsibility for the actions of others, my lack of control over them.
The creators are hiding behind copyright laws, not assuming the responsibility for something so bad they should have said "no, this stuff is not good, I won't make it".
The MPAA have clearly shown that they define "good" in a typically infantile and greedy way: "Good means good for me, and me alone". They, and probably the CCA, honestly believe that what they were doing with CSS was right, because it protected their own interests (read: profit margins, control, etc). It's entirely possible that all the developers felt this way, too. Assuming this is so, since they personally saw nothing objectionable with what they were doing, does this absolve any personal responsibility they may have? Doesn't this imply the need to define a "common good"?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Ian Clarke.
--
Software engineers should not be held accountable for a bug which causes an orbital rocket to deviate from its course and slam into a crowded school - management must allow adequate time for testing.
... ahwell, you'll have caught my drift by now.
Exactly. That's why I don't want all of Microsoft to fry - in fact, I admire most Microsoft programmers because with their extremely limited means they still manage to make something that's pretty good. I only want to fry Microsoft's marketing department. I wonder what deepfried marketborg tastes like?
yeah, up to this far it's been offtopic, but I promise I'll get there...
*clearing throat*
This seems to be a real problem with society today, blaming the tool, the tool's creator, or anything else, except (or sometimes in addition to) blaming those who are really responsible. Sometimes that's warranted, sometimes it's not, and sometimes you land right in the middle of the Zone Where Normal Things Don't Happen Very Often, aka the Gray Area.
First, you have to blame the person who is responsible in the first degree. If you download or serve MP3s from/on Napster, YOU are responsible. If you're dying of lung cancer because you've smoked all your life, YOU are responsible. If you kill somebody because you were driving under the influence, YOU are responsible. If you kill somebody with a firearm, YOU are responsible. If you push the Big Red Button, YOU are responsible. Then you may go and see if those who are responsible in the second degree can or cannot be (partly) blamed.
The key is responsibility. OFCOURSE the creator of Napster is (partly) responsible for the rampant music piracy committed through it. The question is whether he is to blame or not. OFCOURSE Big Tobacco is (partly) responsible for the deaths tobacco causes. The question is whether they are to blame or not. OFCOURSE the alcohol industry is (partly) responsible for deaths by driving under the influence
You are at all times responsible for the results of your actions, whether intended or not. If something goes wrong, it may not have been your fault, but it's still your responsibility. Say you're playing baseball, and you hit the ball so hard into the pitcher's face that he is hospitalised. It's not your fault, in fact, it's nobody's fault, but it's still your responsibility.
Taking such responsibility is a big and hard step, but if everybody did it, the world would be a much better place. And don't forget to visualise whirled peas.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
The source code itself doesn't do anything but communicate, so it's protected speech.
I just have one question about this:
- Imagine I write a book telling people how to make a nuclear bomb. I am allowed to sell this, this is free speech.
- Next, someone buys my book, uses it to build bombs, and sells the bombs. This is not legal - a bomb is not speech, it is a tool.
- Now imagime that when someone bought my book, it could automatically, magically turn into the the bomb that it described. I am only distributing speech, information, a description - but people receive a product, a tool, a bomb.
That is what happens with software. A compiler is a magical device, with no comparison outside the computer. You hand it a description of what you want, and 'poof!' what ever you wished for pops out of the air.I'm a programmer, and I consider a piece of code to be speech, but I can see why the law may have a problem with this.
cheers,
G
Excelent page, worthy of a webby. Love all the gratuitous crotch shots.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
What form of government would you recommend?
I would prefer a libertarian society, whereas others I know prefer something more socialist.
Alot of people agree that we could use something better, unfortunately nobody really agrees on what 'better' is.
I actually think our existing constitution and the government laid out in it would run great if it were actually the form it was in today. But right now it's my view that the executive branch has expanded its power past that dictated by the checks and balances of the constitution and resultingly set up way too many regulatory agencies. And the federal government has stripped much of the consitutionally granted power from the states. And many of our constitutionally granted rights have been curtailed in the name of protecting us from evildoers (or making the job of the police easier).
It would be nice to return to the simpler form our government had when it actually ran as envisioned in the constitution.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Thank you, this is a different issue and somewhat more relevant. The first question seemed to be "What if the filters accidentally block 'legitamate' content?" Which seemed to me to actually be deliberately misleading content, and thus not legitamate. The second question is "what about people getting arround the filter to still post illegitamate content?" The answer is the three simple words that make or break a company in terms of liability :
Contrary to what some Napster supporters would have you believe, they do not need to prevent anyone from ever using their product or service for piracy. What they must do is make a good faith effort at prevention and reduce the piracy use. Instead, they seemed to do everything they could to encourage illegitimate use of the service as part of their business model. This is why they're in trouble. (Its also why the Salon article was so silly, but thats another part of the thread.)
A service of that size can't reasonably be required to verify more than the filename or link name within their web page or servers.
Very true, though they could also de-annonymize it to the extent that when illegitamate use is demonstrated they can kick the violaters off and have it mean something. But those efforts combined would show enough good faith to get them mostly out of the hot water they've dunked themselves in, even if it doesn't eliminate all illegitimate use.
The liability world is all about good faith efforts. This is why an anti-harrassment program will reduce a company's liability if harrassment does occurs. Its not useful to ask "can they ever stop all illegitimate use of their service?" You have to ask "Are they making a good faith effort to reduce such use?" On this point Napster fails, and if we focus on that failure we can make sure that an artist centered venture suceeds.
IMHO, it is the Napster advocates who are endangering the use of the net as a promotional tool for unsigned artists. By claiming that Napster cannot prevent illegitimate use, they are handing the RIAA the amuntion it would need to shut down a service meant to promote artists (who want to be promoted). After all "even advocates of on-line music admit that nothing can be done to prevent infringing use of such a service". If we focus instead on good faith efforts, it leaves Napster screwed (which they are anyway) but leaves the door open for legitimate ventures to promote music on the net. Just a thought.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
So the RIAA and MPAA are now looking at distributors and "enablers" of illegal materials as fair game. Good.
Assuming the RIAA and MPAA prevail, then I submit that the precedent thus created could be used against them in actions against the distribution and exhibition of hate speech in music and movies.
What will be their defense, then?
The ability to severly retard. That's the best summary of the legal process I've ever seen.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Seconded. Drawing a parallel from the world of negligence (UK edition), the question of whether the Defendant is in breach of his duty of care (where one has been established) is put in this way: Did he, having regard to all the circumstances, the chance of harm occurring, the extent of harm foreseeable and the cost of preventive measures relative to the foreseeable harm, take all reasonable preventive measures?
If Napster takes those measures and people are still spoofing them, that is not their fault. It's the difference between posting a sentry who happens to miss an intruder and leaving the door wide open.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Alright, you tell Napster to remove all illegal MP3s. How on earth are they expected to do that? Screen by filename? We've already estblished filename means absolutley nothing. "A rose by any other name..." I can send a number of "This_is_not_a_metallica_song.mp3", which might indeed be picked up by a metallica filter. The only way to know if a submitted mp3 is illegal is to listen to it, adn then ask the company or creator, unless you have prior knowledge. Asking any company to verify ALL content on a public board or file sharing facilitator is foolish. Unfortunately, the only way to make sure Napster isn't transmiting copyrighted material is to shut down completely. Thus for Napster to successfully comply with the injunction, they must go completely offline, and the injuction is effectively against Napster, and ceases to have anything to do with whether a given user is posting copyrighted material.
-Tannin Kal
Nah, rather like holding the chemist who discovered a new hallucinogen responsible for it's use.
You discover such a substance - OK
You publish a detailed description on it's effects and how to make it. - Morally questionable perhaps, but definitly legal.
You cook some up and use it to get a trip. - Stupid, possibly illegal depending on how [over]protective your local laws are, but not a major offence.
You cook some up and start distributing it for free among friends. - No biggie morally, though the law will disagree. However, you are not likely to get caught, even less convicted.
You start cooking on an industrial scale and sell your product for a profit. - Beep, dead wrong!
The sequence of bits named "napster" might not be illegal, and definitly impossible to remove. The service "Napster" is possible illegal, and very possible to stop.
If company after company tries the same thing, RIAA might give up, but as long as they can fight a company or a person at a time, instead of half the internet, they are on their own territotry.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I know this is somewhat strange and frightening for a lot of hackers, indeed, for USA hackers is simply another sign that US hackers will go where they feel most comfortable, underground.
With the decay of justice and freedom of speach in the USA quite obvious from here in Australia (we will follow u soon *sigh*) it is only a matter of some small period of time when the West gives up the leading role for IT and allows my colleagues in the East to lead the way in free software. It will be too late when finally the profits have dried up the greedy swines wonder what happend to good old creativity (read leading edge innovation)(MS need not apply)
India and China represent 40% of the world's population and do you think they will give ONE figgin single IOTA about preventing hackers work!
It is simply a matter of redefining who will lead and who will follow and the way things are shaping up for the USA it's not only M$ who have a real paradigm problem on their hands.
Steelrat
There are none as blind as those who will not see.. (unknown)
I can't resist... They do, Ibelive they call them sights.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I can answer this one easily. Illegal drugs and the dealers are bad, and have no legal standing, because someone who is not licenced to do so, should not be handing out drugs and it is therfore illegal to do so. Please do not bring up how legalizing drugs will fix these problems, this is not the issue. Guns and gun manufacturers on the other hand, have legal standing, even though the sole purpose of a gun is to kill, there are legal uses for a gun, such as target shooting and hunting.
With this in mind, it is already illegal to right programs whose only function is to destroy or hamper computers, there are several laws making it illegal to write and spread virus programs. However Napster and DCSS, can be used for illegal purposes, but also have perfectly legal uses as well, such as filesharing none copyrighted material and making copies of DvD under the Fair use laws. Therefore the programers should be offered the same protection as the gun manufactures.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
What happens when all the file sharing programs are gone? People will just go back to using search engines to find what they're looking for (Ah, the good ole days). What will the RIAA do then? Will they go after Yahoo, AOL and the other orgainizations that supply these tools? That is a fight I would love to see. On a side note... The computer industry should start dishing out a lot more for lobbyists (Not that I'm for giving lawyers more job opportunities). Maybe then they would have a little more pull in Washington.
OK, I'll slow down... :-) You are right, it is a great difference between social responsibility and liability for other people's actions. The main problem that the original article points to, is that the mere threat of a lawsuit is enough to cripple people's expressions, and that's a real threat. It means that what you do can very well be legal, and even be very moral, but as long as you run the risk of pissing somebody big off, you have to be careful what you do. And, lawyers have a social responsibility here too.... :-) Now, as none of us are superhumans, one should not be held liable for outcomes which are impossible for us to foresee. However, in the case of Napster, it seems like they clearly stated that the primary use for Napster would be unauthorized distribution. I might argue that any distribution of art is good, and therefore one should not prosecute Napster creators, but that's a different matter.
I guess so.... :-) I know, it's hard. However, social responsibility also means that one has to take a step back once in a while, and ask oneself "what am I doing?" Then, my point is merely that the one who is most qualified to foresee the consequences of the stuff one is doing, also carries the most responsibility. A nuke-bomb creator is the most qualified to see what it will do when it explodes (while he might not appreciate the social change that comes with it). A lawyer is most qualified to see that filing a suit may cripple expression, the computer professional who is writing CSS is the most qualified to see that it will make fair use difficult. Therefore, these carry a huge social responsibility. I'm saying, hackers don't run away from it, assume it, and grow with it! Others might not, hackers should.
Well, while I'm going off topic, let me recommend a theatre piece called "Copenhagen". It is about Heisenberg's visit to Bohr in Copenhagen during WWII, where it is thought that they discussed the possibility of a German nuclear bomb. AFAIK, it is playing on Broadway (see the link), in London, in Copenhagen, and will play here in Oslo this autumn.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The only legitimite way in which a programmer could be held responsible for the actions of the person who uses their code is if the actions of the person result in damages that were intentionally written into the code and were not in any way disclosed to the user. i.e., Smith and Wesson designs a gun that fires a bullet out the back, so that when you fire it at someone else it blows your own brains out. They don't tell you this, and you go out and shoot someone. You are liable for that person's death, and they are liable for your's. Other than that, any individual is responsible for his or her own actions, regardless of who developed the tools they use.
Anyway, you get the idea. There are many things to be accountable for, and when using that word it's important to remember that. In the case of an author being accountable for a piece of software it's as ludicrous(sp?) as the examples i gave above.
Ceres
As for the nuclear bomb, it was the scientists who should have stopped it, because only they could possibly be able to see the consequences of what they were up.
Off topic but anyways....The dropping of the nuclear bomb saved a lot of lives during WWII, and one could argue that it has saved many since. It's easy to say that the nuclear bomb is evil and the world would be a better place without it, but you really have no way of knowing what overall effect that would have had.
Other posters (and people quoted near the end of the Salon article) have already distinguished between bad code that is dangerous or just buggy, and trying to blame a programmer for a socially destructive use that somebody makes of his or her program. Both are different from the copyright cases at the center of the article which simply use the threats in court to extend corporate power beyond its current limits.
Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc. should also be liable for making some kids brain dead!
Dear Bill Joy,
As one of the head programmers of Freenet, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for making it possible. If we had not had your programming language, Java, and your editor, vi, I doubt we would ever have been able to get an implementation of Freenet working. You made it happen.
Since you must have known that people would one day use your programs to write programs that people could use to avoid censorship laws, you would obviously not have written them if that is not what you wanted, and I'm glad you take responsiblity for it. I hope we will have plenty of time to discuss how the people should be controlled so that they don't learn how to do bad things while in our shared jail cell.
Sincerely, Oskar Sandberg.
(And since you asked CmdrTaco, no I'm not scared. Are we men or are we mice people?)
Hey, we need to extend this to the logical conclusion of Microsoft for the Operating System that allows Napster to run...
Or better... IBM for allowing the user to run windows that runs napster....
Oh wait...
Lets blame Nabisco for the breakfast that the user was eating while the user put together the IBM that will run windows that will run napster that will connect via aol to the internet to share his mp3s...
--
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
the law protects gun manufacturers but holds decss authors liable for loss...
i get it human lives dont matter but corporate pockets do.
I understand the fundamental core of your arguments, and agree with portions of it. (The fact that government imposes arbitrary restrictions, seems to me like a simple truism, but I'll give you points for sincerity.) However, please do not group Napster in with Socrates and Reich. The Internet as a whole, and Napster as one of its child technologies, is an amazing mode of communication, but Napster is not in and of itself a body of "subversive material" any more than a typewriter is subversive.
That's all the law you need... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-b in/query/z?c106:H.R.3778.IH:
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
It is common that one says that nukes made sure the cold war stayed cold.
This was the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction
or MAD for short.
which goes with another acronym I first heard from Dinosaurs (the sitcom), the "We Are Right" initiative...or "war" for short.
--
+&x
Is the concept of so-called "intellectual property" being copyrightable still (or was it ever) valid? Really, copyright/trademark etc. issues do involve free speech and fundamental consitutional rights. There are problems with the laws. I am interested in Freenet exactly because it can protect my religious freedom of expression. Anonymous and redundent information storage will have its drawbacks, but it also has its excellent virtues. As soon as I am able to afford it, I plan to set up a server and a Freenet node. The software is going to be there. If worst-case develops, the developers will simply have to go underground/develop systems for software development that can be conducted anonymously and distributed without centralized authorship.
God is intersted in ending sin and suffering on this planet. Are you? www.GreatControversy.org
And the problem with this would be? "Oh no, I created a file with a name meant to confuse the filters and it caught it, woe is me....."
People who want to post non-copyrighted work and have it get through would be fully capable of it. People who choose to disguize non-infringing work as infringing work just to whine aren't contributing anything useful to the service, so why should we care if they get shut out?
Two simple rules : track titles should accurately describe the content in a way that is computer-searchable. (Everyone knows "not metalica" will show up on a metalica search, misleading track names are chaff in the service and the service provider can ban them.) Second rule, infringing tracks (and any intentional attempts to mimic an infringing track) will lead to the removal of the user.
"Hey I carried a model of a bomb through customs and they harrassed me even though it wasn't really an explosive! there's nothing illegal about strapping wires and silly putty to your chest! They're infringing on my rights for no reason! WAAHHHHHHH!"
Your example of "abuse" is about as mature.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Police and other law enforcement agencies derive their operating monies from other sources, such as property taxes, annual local assessements, etc.
Here in Florida we have this awful thing, the "tourist tax" might be a good name for. It's a tax on anything that a tourist might be interested in-- hotels, restaruants, leisure activities (ie: theme parks). The idea is to hit up the vacationers from out of state. Of course, we residents never use these services. The ides of "soak the traveller" is a sham!
At least there's no Florida state income tax!
Jeff
From the GPL (modified to remove the uppercase because the Lameness filter did not like it):
15. Because the library is licensed free of charge, there is no warranty for the library, to the extent permitted by applicable law. except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the library "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the library is with you. Should the library prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
16. In no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will any copyright holder, or any other party who may modify and/or redistribute the library as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the library (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the library to operate with any other software), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
First, apologies to non us readers, I refrence the US as ours only because of ease and the fact that most of the readers here are US citizens. Isnt it about time we solve the problem by ousting our current goverment? The constitution garuntees us the right to do it. Are we just to lazy? We are losing this battle against the legal systems and the corperates on every front, napster, decss, sites being shutdown cause they say stuff corperate lawyers dont like. IMHO there are more of us then there are of then. We are yielding to a moral minority. We have tried it there way. But we are the majority. Is it we fear the military reprucusions? Most of them are 17-25 years old and spend there spare time on napster too. I dont even use napster myself but Im sick of seeing the corperate world pushing people around. I think its time to replace our existing goverment with something better. Time to get rid of some the lawyers who block lifes progress. If you just look at the tax system which is far to complex for anyone to figure out it shows it needs replacement. Running a goverment isnt as challenging as they make it out to be. The only reason it is at all challenging is all the lawyers. Its time for change. Lets get rid of the old in favor of the new. I stopped using my 386 and bought a new machine when it became obsolete. Hell, my pentium 90 went obsolete so I upgraded again. Goverment shouldnt be made an exception to the upgrade process. If its obsolete throw it away and get something that does the job. Our goverment is obviosly obsolete.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
It seems strange to me...
Lawyers are now going after programmers, the very lifeblood of the internet, and people who are very at home in the distribution of information.
Almost to the point now, that it's looking like the start of a crusade.
Still, you look at any Law, or other corporate entity office, and you see connections to the internet, and reliance on networks, and safe, sharable data.
Most of this, if not all, has come from the freedom of expression by dint of coding.
These people are turning round and biting the hand that's fed them for so long.
And, with the best will in the world, not all those feeding hands take being bitten all too well.
Anyone who's read all the futuristic cyberpunk stories, or played the RPGs will understand where this is going..
If the coders decide to say "Sod the law" one day, what can the law truly do? To remove the code, it needs all ISPs to act in conjunction, or shut down the net.
Doing that would damage so much else that it's not feasible.
There's an old saying that the law is only as powerful as we, as a group, perceive it to be.
The more restrictive the laws become, the more likely the majority of online coders are to consider the law and ass, and actively defy it.
How do you apply a law against the will of the masses?
Either by draconian measures (martial law), or you fail.
Please, lawyers out there.. Be thoughtful, be sensible...
When the balance tips too far in one direction, there's inevitably a huge backlash.
Malk
Does anyone else here see the least bit of hypocrisy in that the RIAA/MPAA are trying to make producers liable for the actions of users?
What about the "free expression" rights always demanded by movie and music makers, so-called artists who are making media even more sensational, whether through violence or sex, simply to increase profits? Popular culture (not art, mind you, since that is not a product like popular culture is) has been defended on the grounds of free expression for years, but it is a product and is in many ways responsible for the sensational reactions that viewers (i.e., users) have.
The way I see it is this:
(0) If code is seen as protected speech, then we should be in the clear.
(1) If code is not defined as speech, then coders are in trouble since computer code will be a product and thus the producers, programmers, will be liable.
(2) If code is speech, then it might not simply be protected speech. In this case, the case needs to be made that code is information, and that if the producers are still to be held liable, then producers of other information sold as products, like musicians (see here for my arguments on music as information), should be held similarly liable, or vice versa.
I personally think code is protected speech; that it can be useful as a tool only occurs if you have a compiler. I would agree that, especially when money is not being made off of it (i.e., somewhat different from Napster's case), code should be considered like an art form, deserving free expression rights.
The bottom line, though, is that coders need to get vocal, and not just on discussion forums. Write the mainstream press, CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, with letters to the editor; write something that outlines your positions in ways others will understand. Heck, I'll post it on DigitalRenegades. Just SAY something that others will hear.
Though it may sometimes not seem that the US is a democracy, it is. And lawmakers always want to keep their jobs by getting your vote.
SB
Editor, DigitalRenegades
a) How many people have gone out and bought albums because they got an MP3 from Napster?
H
b) Does anyone have a car stereo that plays MP3s?
c) I'm going to sue the cook at McDonald's because he/she is cooking unhealthy food for me. I mean, I know it's unhealthy and all, but if she didn't cook it for me, then I wouldn't be increasing my risk of a heart attack.
I think there are a million analogies that could be given to cover a programmers butt. The problem is that the government is made up of politicians who have campaigns that are funded by people. These people contributing to campaign funds include multi-national corporations. It is not in the best interest of multi-national corporations (like movie and music companies) to allow their copyrighted stuff to be shared accross our 'wonderful' internet (or at least they don't think it is). My guess is that the man will lay blame wherever it can. Our only real hope is that enough people get pissed off -- and that may not even matter.
It seems to me that humanity is riddled with twisted logic about blame. Programmers are not the root cause of this problem.
If a programmers are held liable, you can throw that much more freedom out the window.
My prediction of the future:
1) Thou shalt be responsible for someone kicking your ass because you said that his shoes look funny.
2) As a professional football player, thou shalt be responsible for all the little kiddies who try to be like you and end up breaking their arms.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH
It's stuff like this that makes me lose hope. How could we wield the technology we do when we're such a stupid race?
I'll be in the corner crying now.
We're all a bunch of glorified monkeys.
quick, start suing crowbar manufacturers! many houses each year are broken into using crowbars.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
My question is, are the hackers doing it for fame or for a revoluntnary cause? Take freenet for example, why did Ian Clarke have to tell us who he is? or in the case of yo!nk, why can't we have anonymous programmers? I realise that releasing a program anonymously will kind of make the program look illegal as we have today in the virus and warez scene, but how are they going to stop it? virus can be controlled because people don't want virus and run virus scanner. but how do you stop a tool that people want?
Time does not wait.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
That's the idea of the Law. It can't have an amendment. It's the whole of the law. :)
--
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
Well, I've noticed that toy-guns designed to shoot small (hard) rubberballs actually wear a warning which tell:
'Do not shoot at human or animals'.
Now, tell me, why doesn't the guns wear such warnings?
benjaminbruheim
That is not the issue here. We are talking about intent. Someone who writes a trojan horse is intending to break into your system! The guy who wrote DeCSS, on the other hand, intended to use it to play DVD's in Linux. There is a big difference here.
DeCSS is a tool and nothing more. A hammer can be used to hang a picture frame or to smash a car window. Hell even a sharpened pencil could be used for evil things which were not intended... Lets get real! DeCSS is code... It's not evil... It's free speech. Would you go jump off bridge if someone say's "hey, bridges were built to carry people across this revine, but I think we should use it to commit suicide."
Hopefully, if the DeCSS case goes all the way to the Supreme court, the code will be seen as free speech and will win. If it does not, it will be a dark day in the USA and for everyone, whether they know what DeCSS is or not. This will be the first stepping stone for other freedoms to be taken away. The day free speech is not allowed, in whatever form, will be the day America dies as a nation. The efforts of the founding fathers will be for not. That day, people will have to choose -- republican party, democratic party, or Boston Tea Party. I leave you with this quote from the Declaration of Independence:
That to secure these rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Really, should they? The kind they are marketed as does not change them. If I sell baseball bats inscribed 'Shashes faces twice as hard as a regular bat!', then it does not mean that I am assaulting people. I am not responsible for the actions of software written by me, if you use it maliciously. I would be responsible if i wrote a virus, for example. If people are starting to be held accountable for indirect consequences of their actions, then how about putting parents of criminals behind bars?
You hold full responsibility for what you do, wether it is using my software for illegal things, smoking(as in recent compensation lawsuit), or protection your children from violent games(as in cries to limit violence in games).
The government must not protect people from themselves. You should know what is allowed and not, and when using Napster, you should know, which songs are copyrighted an which are not; And when using exploits to crack other people's computers, you are the criminal, not the one who wrote the exploit. Ignorance is no excuse.
I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to death your right to speak it.
napster, as i see it, is designed to share music files compressed in mp3 format. the obvious use for this is to find and download copyright-protected songs, but it's not the only potential use. and other utilities like gnutella & freenet are geared even less to a specific (and illegal) use. these programs make it easier for less-knowledgable users to do what people have been doing for years with usenet, archie, & ftp: finding and retrieving what they are looking for.
individuals need to bear responsibility for their own actions. napster was immediately embraced by people who wanted to trade copyrighted music. i would like to see more discussion about encouraging people to use the technology they are given to play with ethically.
I don't care why you're posting AC
I'm am not a lawyer, but I can tell you from experience that it's not nearly this cut and dry. No warning and no contract is that iron clad these days, even when holding the manufacturer liable is simply ridiculous. Look at silicon breast implants. They simply aren't sold these days. They're not banned per se. The FDA has even declared them safe (yes, some leakage did occur, but it's been shown to be quite safe). What's more, it's been well established in the medical community that they're safe. Yet, no one sells them. The risks have been proven to be too great, witness Dow Cornings loss. What's more, I have discovered first hand that medical device companies can't even get these manufacturers to provide silicon for implantable devices (not breast implants, but just coverings and the like), not even through a distributor. Companies which attempt to purchase it are sent a very strongly worded letter, from the original manufacturer, threatening all kinds of legal action if their product is used.
Both big and small businesses are scared silly of tort lawsuits. Don't kid yourself.
All these cases are just knee jerk reactions. Like the Salon article says, nobody has actually decided on a concrete definition of what software is, so were're seeing them take each case on its merits or demerits.
I find it completely bizzare that technology is now seen as inherently good or evil, not neutral. It seems that it is Napster itself that is bad, not the actions of it's users who download copyrighted MP3.
How come we have double tape decks? Surely that encourages copying? Maybe it's easier to shut down Napster than it is to criminalize millions of users then try to prosecute each one.
Blade Runner in particular shows a very decadent culture of the future (now only 17 years away, and damn if it doesn't look familiar now) where again human life and privacy and freedom are all for sale.
I'm sorry, I can't help it. That sentence reminds me of the lyrics from a Bernard Lavilliers' song (Faits Divers):
A translation into English is something like:
Scary, no?
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
If you follow the throught process that the Music Companies, and Movie Studios are using, then where is the line drawn? You try to hold the coder accountable for the program. What if that program used C, or Perl libraries? What about Ping? Why didn't yahoo sue the person who wrote Ping, if it wasn't for that coder, they wouldn't have been down at all. When someone uses software to do something illegal, they are responsible. This isn't a new thought folks!
Um, this is my sig.
A computer is one of the most powerful things in the history of humanity. One of the most powerful agents of change. Inherent in the very idea of distributed networks is that it makes what was once profitable unprofitable. Unfortunately, the people who are threatened most by this technology control the world-views of most of the people in this nation.
Computers are a lot like the printing press in what its capable of, the dissemination of information, but it goes far, far, beyond the printing press in the amount of information that it can transfer. On the one hand the printing press ultimately prevailed, and brought great change to our society, but on the other it isn't the 1400s any more. And the very thing that makes computers dangerous to the establishment makes them dangerous to us. What's to stop the FBI from using Carnivore boxes to spy not on email but all network traffic, scanning for copies of DeCSS in transit, or hunting down traffic generated by 'illegal' network programs like Gnutella or Napster? If things go poorly now, in these courts, nothing.
My personal opinion is that we are all pretty much screwed, although some of the reports from the congressional hearing do give me hope.
We don't know how bad things are in north Korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I was talking about the general progression of things. The government is increasingly liberal on all forms of media except for technology.
20 years ago, you would never have seen things like: Scared Straight, Oz, Cops, or any other reality based show that we have now. All in the Family was pretty tough... we have cartoons that are worse now.
I suggest taking the V-Chip off your TV.
_____
______
everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it.
http://leftorium.net
Only 87? Ha! I find it hard to believe that one in seven songs transferred on Napster is non-infringing...
Everything in the world is gaining freedom (generally speaking), except for in the computer realm. On TV you can see all sorts of things that 20 years ago never would have been allowed. Programmers however face the opposite: freedoms are going away. Who knows what will happen to a completely innocent and legal program you write today... in a year it might be involved in some intellectual property issue or any number of other things.
This trend is completely backwards because of how the world is run these days... by technology. Why should the tail end of society (soap operas and FOX) get all the freedoms and the bleeding edge get the shaft? Any answers to this problem?
______
______
everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it.
http://leftorium.net
Really? Find me a case where the drug dealer was charged with murder when someone overdosed on the drugs he sold that person.
Why not use Microsoft's EULA? It seems to protect them from any and all responsibility for anything the software does or doesn't do. Certainly if it works for Microsoft, it'll work for Joe Q. Programmer.
The injunction occured in the first place because there was no effort of any sort, good faith or not. Their entire business plan was based arround letting and helping people trade copyright infringing works. Now, they may well be screwed, if your comments are correct. (since they didn't even try to conform to the injunction, we have no idea how a good faith effort would have been received had they presented one.) But they had plenty of warnings and plenty of time before the injunction to show good faith, and they simply didn't bother, so why cry for them now?
PS since the injunction is against a company and not an individual, I really doubt anyone would actually go to jail. And if the corporate veil didn't protect people just this once? [sarcastic comment deleted].
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I'm probably missing something here so please answer my question:
If I write a piece of software which sole (or biggest) purpose is to help other people engage in illegal activities then why should I not be as liable for it as a drug dealer is for the drugs he sells?
Bad quality (bugs) software is one thing and is merely a question of quality tolerance. Writing crime-assisting software is quite another.
Actually, people will just figure out how to code without responsibility. Ever hear of a speakeasy? Prohibition didnt work - it was unenforceable, that's why it was repealed. That, and I think people just finally figured out how ignorant it was to blame an inanimate object for our problems.
Oh, wait a minute, we're in the state of figuring that out now arent we? I'll submit that we are, since we're prosecuting the manufacturer of a hand gun because Johnny got one from his dad's uncles' brother's sister's boyfriends' ex-roomate's cousin-in-law's unlocked gun cabinet and shot his buddy. It's not the fault of the owner for being neglegent, it's the manufacturer. Maybe we arent learning, maybe we're just going through the steps.
Do people actually buy this shit where Johnny's not at fault, or the owner's not? Or is it just the judges? Maybe judges arent people? Oh yeah, they're not, they're lawyers.
I hope society learns that you have the right to own a screw driver, but you dont have the right to take Craftsman to court because you poked your eye with the sharp end...if not, I'd prefer not being a part of this society.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin
how do you know what an illegal order is?
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
A frequent topic of discussion in alt.computer.consultants is the idea of forming a programmers union
UNION sounds very Working Class (Blue Collar) to me.
and going on strike over such things as loose H1-B visa laws in the US.
A computing Degree and 3 years experience, don't sound that loose to me, sounds more qualified that most MCP's:)
A number of people are actively trying to organize such things, but the results so far haven't been promising and the consensus on the reason way is that programmers are just a bunch of pussies too concerned with bringing home the immediate bacon rather than lift a finger to look after their future.
Very Blue Collar, insult your intended allies.
Yeah, that's right - you. Pussies. You may have the balls to post anonymously on Slashdot, but when was the last time you not only voted, but gave money to a political campaign whose position you supported, and did volunteer work for it.
Well since most Politicians are ex-lawyers I can't say I have much faith in any of them.
If you really want to succeed, stop calling it a union, its way too blue collar, call it a chartered/professional association (i.e. Accountant/Lawyers), you then you get a government mandated closed shop.
No, they would not have been watertight. Name another product that you could introduce from day one with a warning label that says, "Normal use of this product will result in a significantly increased risk of lung cancer." It's sale would not be allowed. And lawsuits would ensue if it were sold.
Don't underestimate the litigious nature of our culture. Beer, if it were introduced as new today, would not make it to market.
in closing, i would like to say that regardless of what technology is developed, humans will remain the same; whether they misapply existing technology to kill each other or misapply developing technologies is almost irrelevant. i think that scientists probably consider this as well, and it is probably one reason that they choose to develop technologies anyway even when they know they have a high probability of being misapplied. radar... radar jammers... radar jammer jammers... radar jammer jammer jammers... it goes on infinitely, but at least as we develop better things we understand more of the properties of the universe that we live in, even if we completely fail to understand ourselves. (recommended reading: isaac asimov's 'foundation' series.)
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
This is the primary reason heacker-speak started. Certain phrases had to be avoided so filters and searches wouldn't catch what wsa being written. Unfortunatly, it's also incredibly verstatile. Do you think a filter will catch m3+all1c4 mp3s? No, it will just make those who use Napster have to deal with irritating filenames, irritating searches.
My previous example was indeed a bad one, so I will make a better one. A user creates a web-page of file aliases. He then posts random_file_00416.mp3, adds 5-10s of buffer whitespace to throw off file size checkers, and lists on the webpage that random_file_00416 is indeed a metallica mp3. Once again, the actual name means nothing. Give it a little more time, and a Napster client clone might even incorporate such alising and make it transparent.
A service of that size can't reasonably be required to verify more than the filename or link name within their web page or servers.
-Tannin Kal
That is a bloody awful example. This has absoloutely nothing to do with napster.
The smokers knew that smoking would cause them many health problems, there was a warning on the side of the package for crying out loud. Essentially the smokers sued the Tabacco companies for their own stupidity, and the ruling is almost sure to be struck down on appeal. (For a funny parody of the situation, check out this weeks onion, "Hersheys forced to pay $185 billion in damages to obsese Choclate eaters.)
However, Napster is not preforming a consensual act. They aren't handing out Napster sticks to the recording companies and saying that they may cause you to lose a fraction of your money from pirated songs. These two cases are incompareable.
Furthermore, gun companies do not monitor the use of their products. Napster, having a central point from which to do so, can monitor the use of it's product. The cases are simply mutually exclusive from such points.
-[ Shanoyu - wtr - planetmofo.com ]-
Is this newfound interest in the law warranted -- or are these two programmers just paranoid? Well, if you listen to the attorneys, it sounds like a storm of lawsuits could rain down on developers at any moment.
Dang that's sure friendly of the lawyers to look out for us. And far be it from the media to completely blow a story out of proportion, right? Sounds to me like, "Unknown guy wrote a program that is somewhat similar to Napster and then he got a lawyer." Pardon me if I'm not alarmed by this American Justice system travesty..
Man! This isn't right! maybe next time I release something I will be anonymouse!
We are seeing a surgence of technilogical wars fought in courts based around not only copyrights, monetary valued ideals, personal liabilities, and accountability, but also fore thought and preminition. In the early 1980's the RIAA backed major record lables when the Christian Coalition brought the wrath of God into the court rooms charging vulgar language, sexual content, and satanic overtones didn't belong in music. The coalition brought the MPAA into the courts over violent slasher movies in the early 1990's. Each time charging that the companies producing, writing, and distributing the evil and immoral products were directly responsible for their uses, misuses, and any harm befalling individuals who used their products. Using a microwave at home almost guarantees radioactivity abundant in your home. Many urban legends are based around the uses however like most myths they are born of fact. The fact is the microwaves can be dangerous, if improperly used. Our government mandates that car companies go out of their way to ensure and prove safety testing. Gun manufacturers find themselves under heavy fire an a nearly daily basis over the questionable offense of providing semi-automatic firearms. But what is not seen is how they are held pervasively responsible. If a programmer writes a virus that was used, it is likely he/she will be held in direct responsibility. I'm sure a lot of you will agree with that. But waht determines harmful programming code? If fact, what determines coding at all. Even our own government doesn't know how to classify program code when being copyrighted. Is it art, freedom of speech, text? Look at DeCSS, Napster, Yo!nk, OpenDVD, Copyleft. These companies are among a handful fighting not just for their survival of themselves but to also prevent the unlawful intrusion upon our privacy, right to fair use copyright, and fair trade. A DVD can be copied with or without DeCSS. You don't need the program. Even better it's more costly to copy DVD's than VHS. MPAA releases movies here and videos 2-4-6 months later. Over seas that some movie is released theatrically a year later. Therefore a European purchasing a DVD online may see the movie months before it's theatrical debut in his/her respective country. Consider the logistics behind it. Consider the fair trade laws and the WTO meetings. At some point due to the companies failure to foresee the consumer as intelligent these companies are trying to make us pay the bill. So, when kids kill themselves because they listened to Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iron Maiden... So, when kids murder their parents and blame movies, harsh upbringing, and satan... So, when the RIAA and MPAA blame coders for the misuse of their programs perhaps we should all APPLAUD the hard work of these corporate giants... I for one fought alongside the RIAA saying that, "If a teenager kills himself thingking he heard satan in the music telling him to do so, that kid wasn't all together in the first place...". I said the record companies cannot be held responsible for what people found in their music...I sited freedom of speech...I sited personal interests...I sited personal freedom to own and hear and view whatever I want in this free country...I stood up for the MPAA saying that, "The movies never made my parents want to start a war or kill people, and it doesn't make me want to either, and therefore movies as a whole are not resposible for people misunderstanding the movies meaning..." Let us not forget that RIAA and MPAA found themselves on the other side of the court room not so long ago being help responsible for their actions... Fucking hippocrites!
... there is nothing that has not already been thought
If it comes to pass - as it seems to be wanting to do, every day I look on /. it seems like there is another attempt at abridging my rights as a human, not to mention programmer and geek.
Could it be that people are jealous of my status as a geek? That I work at a "cushy" job, sitting at a desk with a computer in front of me, in an airconditioned office, typing on slashdot while my code compiles - being paid to THINK?
Could it be simple greed? We think of the RIAA as "Valenti" - but this is rarely the case in big business - are these corporations actually filled with nice people, whose chaotic actions actually come down to create a malevolent company? Think of the cells in your body, who know nothing of each other, or each other's functions, yet by thier actions, make up "you"...
Or is there one (or a smal group) of shadowy figures bent on destroying individualism at each of these companies?
I really don't know - and it hurts my head to think about it too much. It hurts my soul, my being, my sense of humanity - to think of this...
As a geek, I want things to be fair - I thought as a kid, things would be better in the adult world, as I grew older. For many things it is - but for many more things, the world is hateful of my status - of the ease at which I grasp things. So they turn to law to shut me up, to make me quit throwing things in thier face that say "See! I intuitively know something you CANNOT grasp."
What they don't realize is that without us, the world goes back to a worse way than it is today. Or maybe it continues on - but still in a worse way.
I have put out a large amount of code on the Net - I now am facing the idea that I may be sued (or worse) for something a bit of my code does because someone else used it in a product or something. My code isn't Napster, or any other file sharing system, but that doesn't make me any less vunerable.
I put this code out so that others could learn. I didn't care what others did with it - what they used it for. I only wanted to contribute to helping others, who have no other source to learn from, to have something to look at to learn from. In my day, it was printouts traded, or magazines with code, or even hand scribbled notes (some of which I still have to this day!). No fear of lawsuits (wouldn't have known what one was then, anyhow), no fear of anything in those days - just the love to code, and the chance to teach another, to show them what it was like to really control the machine.
MegaCorps, listen up!
To my dying day I will fight for my right to code - know that I will do everything in my power and beyond to stand against you.
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE AWAY MY TOOLS!
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE AWAY THE ONE THING THAT KEPT ME FROM GOING MAD FROM THE TAUNTS, JEERS AND PHYSICAL PAIN I WENT THROUGH IN SCHOOL AS A GEEK!
TRY AS YOU MAY, I WILL PERSONALLY SUBVERT ANYTHING YOU THROW UP AGAINST ME.
YOU WILL HAVE TO KILL ME TO SILENCE ME.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I had to find some time to read the 110+ pages court decision. Just throwing the decision like that makes it seem like a mistake by the court, but under this specific case IMHO it's a good decision. We had a company that was advertising it's gun as quote p.30 "Resistant to fingerprints" and that this type of *paramilitary* was targeted to the high end market of the "toughest customers". The court also found that this kind of weaponry had no legitimate use in civilian type situation due to the "Lack of accuracy" and that it's was primarily designed for "Close combat situation requiring rapid exchange rate and fire power over multiple target". This gun is primarily used amongst hard time criminals and gangs.
Also, they were not condemned for the killing, but for negligence. (I.e. releasing a weapon designed for military use into a civilian market.
wiZd0m
If I thought it could possibly be approved, I'd start an amendment to the effect that:
1) There may be no more than 10,000 laws. If you want to add one more, you need to remove one.
2) No law may be longer than Dante's Divine Comedy.
2a) A law may only be about one primary topic, and all attached clauses must be relevant to that topic, and also more relevant to that law than to any other pre-existing law.
3) Every law must be interpreted consistently (i.e., in the same way) by over 50% of the high school juniors.
Personally, this seems like an excessive amount of law, but it seems clearly sufficient.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Hum, hum I don't mean to be a troll gere but the rest of the planet keeps turning when something bad happens in the US. Americans have this anoying tendency to think that everyone want to be like them. Not that being an American is a bad thing but.. I guess most smart people have gotten my point..
On the other had, if a programmer releases a program intended to facilitate the sharing of information, which as a side effect makes possible the sharing of copyrighted information. then THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE. They should have anticipated every possible unlawful use, and written the code so as to prevent it.
COME ON PEOPLE! YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS! I'm amazed in the county how often people come out on one side of an issue when it benefits them, but on the opposite side when it doesn't. This has nothing to do with principle; what this is is the RIAA saying, in effect, "Anybody that attempts to interfere with our God-given right to make obscene profits will be dealt with severly!"
Anybody besides me think that Napster and MP3.COM should start a class-action lawsuit against the RIAA for the harm caused by actions encouraged by their own lyrics, and the USE THEIR OWN ARGUMENTS AGAINST THEM?
It isn't my fault the user ran the program. I just wrote it.
So now what? If we did have laws that protected programmers from liability issues then there would be no grounds for programmers of these types of programs to be disciplined.
Now Microsoft or whoever else can add all the backdoors they want without fear of being sued over it. Of course there could be public outcry, bad publicity, and so on but how much would that really hurt the company?
-
"There is no off position on the genius switch." --Dave Letterman
-
Thats an interesting idea, and I could see how it could apply to software that is sold and possibly should be. On the other hand, I don't see why anyone should be held liable for open-source software that they write (unless they sell it). Perhaps people should be entitled to twice their money back :)
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
On a similar note, while I strongly disagree with the people who want to censor DeCSS, neither can I condone the actions of people who continue to host it, despite the temporary injunction that was granted.
His bed actually. I recently read a biography of him. It is easilly argueable that he committed suicide due to depression over his "treatments" for Homosexuality though. The British government apparently tried to "cure" his "disease" using drugs that would make electrocution thearpy look humane. The side affects included an increase in his already existant clinical depression and a shattering of his previously robust phyisical health (In his youth he had been an Olympic class runner, by the time of his death he was apparently sickly from the drugs.)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Hi,
what I don't understand is why gunmakers can't be litigated against in the same way the likes of napster can.... is there some kind of precedent? and if so why doesn't it also apply for software?
Excuse my ignorance of american law but I'm based in the UK.
mark
"Same goes for software; you can program nmap to check for weak spots in your network, but you can use this tool for good and for bad."
I think this is really similar to saying you and have the right to buy a gun to protect us from all the bad guys who have guns.....And looking at the track record for gun control, I don't think a realiastic solution for this will ever reach past the stalemates or catch-22's that have bogged down the lawmakers, polititions, or lobbyists.
The only difference being that the gun advocates can always point to the "Right To Bear Arms" in the constitution as reason enough for drugged out inner city kids to keeped stocked in Handguns and armor piercing rounds...And we can point to the "Freedom Of Speech" as our corner stone to allow people to disrupt current copyright laws....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
the US != the world
National legislation can only have limited impact.
Its a classic case of Prisoners Dilemma. They have a lot to gain by cooperating, even more to gain if they can grab some of each others marketing space, but lots to lose if they both try and do it and end up in court. The numbers are probably such that it is a pipe dream, but a man can dream...
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
The manufacturers of every kind of product imaginable should be shaking in their boots. One of the big defenses by major firearms manufacturers is that if someone uses their product in a way not intended by them, they can't be held liable for it. If developers of FILE (I say file and not MP3) sharing programs can be held liable for the materials that these programs are transferring accross the net, then why not automakers for people using cars to kill, or gun makers for the thousands of deaths that occur every year?
IANAL... But I play one on
-nt
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
While we may sound brave and ready for blood here, posting to a forum for those we are fairly sure will agree and back us up, I wonder how many of us would walk up to our boss, tell them we thought the body of business and IP law in the US were bunk, and that we refused to support it. Not many, I would guess...and those of you who are lucky enough to be able to work for companies who are socially and envronmentally conscious, or work for yourself, etc., are the exception, rather than the rule. Most of us are stuck working for organizations whose policies and goals we don't necessarily agree with 100%.
So, if even the massed voice of Slashdot falters when confronted with real-world situations, we can't really expect the general population to revolt over Napster, DeCSS, and the like. Assuming this, we can't expect the whole system to simply be tossed out and rewritten from scratch. However, there are some basic milestones that could conceivably be reached in the next couple of years to help begin the process of returning sanity to copyright and patent law.
First, "fair use" must be defined clearly, unambigously, and publicly. The boundaries between acceptable duplication and sharing of protected materials and outright piracy cannot continue to be a grey area to be manipulated by industry at will. This includes clarification of licensing agreements and provision for the development of new distribution technologies.
Second, the RIAA, MPAA, et. al., must step up and provide a usable system of digital distribution for the full range of their products. That means infrastructure, connectivity, micropayment systems, secure transactions, etc. If they expect to be at the wheel for media distribution in the next twenty years, they're going to have to take it as seriously as any other major distribution channel (if not more so).
If either or both fail to happen soon, I don't see how the major interest groups could expect any outcome but the one currently developing: developer and user communities will continue to outpace "big media" by six months to a year, and jump ship to the new, improved work-around as soon as one is shut down.
It's actually in all our best interests to try to see #1 and #2 above happen, because otherwise, the continued proliferation of pirated materials will move in alongside drug trafficking and terrorism as common justifications for government surveillence and unconstitutional status of executive decision as unquestionable national policy. The first strong big-business supporter in the White House will be able to walk all over personal freedoms and liberties so long as enough college kids are swapping illegal MPEG's and warez.
TCP is the culprit alright. Remember, the internet's explosion was an accident.
What Al Gore and friends were aiming for was the "National Information Infrastructure." The NII was in many ways the exact opposite of the internet - EVERYTHING is pay per page, everything was a trusted client . No rights ever devolved to the consumer.
Richard Stallman's The right read is based on the legal framework contemplated for NII.
Now the NII died a pathetic death based on it's technological stupidity and the internet bloomed based on sharing resources being an inherently more efficient approach.
But this really hasn't altered the agenda of those who contemplated the NII. The goal of creating a pay-per-view, trusted-client system stayed in the back of many minds during the whole internet boom.
Today, the internet is no longer the goose that is laying laid the golden egg. It is the golden egg itself. So it makes every bit of sense that wolf will now want to come and cook the goose. The DMCA is a signal for this game to begin.
Liability is a tricky subject. It is based on intents - did you make that booby trap so that someone would die or not? But there are two sides to that. One is "did you have the specific intention for X to happen," the other is "did you have the intention to prevent X from happening." The latter is what just about anyone can tripped up on. It's easy to see how liability could be manipulated so that building something that was absolutely general purpose could be considered a crime.
All you really to bring this about is a large enough scare story to bring the heat down on everyone. (guess where do all the stories of "child molesters" come from anyway?). It seems logical that this kind tactic would indeed lump napster, hackers, and crackers into a single boogey man to be feared by the hapless citizen. Could it reach the "inventers of TCP/IP" for creating a insecure network - possibly.
Far fetched, perhaps. But once you finish reading The right read - please notice that every hypothesis is backed by actually planned laws of that time. Unix will outlawed. Windows CE will be the only OS allowed to consumers.
DIY-code-freaks are what we call hackers (bidouilleurs in French).
For example, somebody who codes (preferably against ISO9xxx heavy standards) practical tools for his own needs.
If these tools could be used in order to gather illegaly copyrighted data, then, according to this article, the hacker could be considered as a pirate, or as a criminal.
In case this happens to be accepted and hackers happen to be condemned because they created such tools then this would especially mean that whoever coding whatever will need a licence to be allowed to share it publicly so that his liability can easily be proofed whenever some malicious guy discovers some funny manipulation to be done with one of his programs.
This is really frightening as Free Software can't afford to rely only on "licensed" coders.
This just reinforce the gap between the way Internet was used 10 years ago and how it works today.
But I still hope this is only Sci-Fi.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Your point is well made, but I still disagree.
If they sell malathion as an insecticide and include directions for appropraite safe use, as well as warnings against unsafe use (such as drinking) then they are watertight against liability. But if they market malathion as mouthwash, no warning label can help. The difference: use of the product as the manufacturer intended will cause harm. The only way tobacco companies could get out of this, is if they claimed cigarettes were only meant for decoration and not for smoking.
All this said, I think the attacks on tobacco companies are silly. Make it illegal or legal. Americans want it both ways. Legal to poison ouselves, but retaining the right to a big wad of cash when we're sick.
Do YOU seriously think 'the authorities' (why do people always put that in quotation marks?) will shut the whole Internet down? No, life wouldn't cease, but no elected official is ever going to take such a drastic measure. In 1993 it might have been done, but not today.
The creator of Napster isn't responsible for the crimes certain Napster's users commit. No more than, as you say, the inventor of gun powder is responsible for the crimes committed by certain gun users.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
It depends mostly on the nature of the unit one serves in. There are units that value discipline and machine-like execution of orders, and there are those that thrive on independence and mistrust. If a tank driver stops to question the directions given him by the commander, who almost always has the best view of the terrain, he is likely to kill everyone in the tank. So tankers are very big on blind discipline. A lot of specialized infantry units, however, require practically psychotic levels of independence, because they usually operate alone or in very small units, and tend to get into a lot of situations that The Book doesn't cover. For this reason, tankers usually get labelled as squares or robots(I don't know what the American slang version would be, but hopefully you'll understand) by infantrymen. In return, they usually think of infantry as unskilled and undisciplined monkeys.
Some, but not all continued development after the war, leading to the H-Bomb, after the USSR had demonstrated an A-Bomb. Many o fthe original scientists refused to work on the H-Bomb, many for reasons of conscience. They saw what they had wrought, and began to think differently about it.
Bill Joy may be having some of the same thoughts. At least it appears that his thinking is moving in the same direction.
'You were so interested in discovering what you could do, that you never stopped to think if you should'
--
Its an attitude/opinion on how things should be that binds us together, not an individual product.
Making a martyr of one of will only strengthen our resolve (e.g. DeCSS)
You can cage a bird, you cannot cage a song.
When will the americans learn? You cannot beat the coders! :-)
Law and the court systems are too slow and the internet is to pervasive to slow down.
It's not that the coders are always right, but it's like trying to stop an exotic pest. The systems in place cannot cope, so in the end they assimilate the newcomer, and an new status quo is formed. And everything is cool again.
Or say the abolition of slavery in america, initially the farmers wouldn't have known what to do ("Uuhhhhhhhhhhh Pay the workers Cleatus? Confound it!") but in the end everything worked out.. And for the better for everyone.
25 years from now we won't know what the fuss was about, media, in all it's forms, will be quite different. And I doubt we'll be paying much for it, but since it's what everyone will be used to, no one will care.
So.. You cannot beat the coders.
If I buy gun, and go on to kill people, can MAGNUM be sued for enabling me to brake the law? How about when I purchase a car that can go way faster then the speed limit. Since I can speed and brake the law, if I chose to do so, should Ford engineers be responsible for giving me the means to brake the law? Should Microsoft engineers be liable for selling visual basic that was used to create "I love you"?
Then why should gnutella, freenet, developers be liable for enabling me to download whichever file I chose to??
The answer is no, no, no, no.
wiZd0m
First people use the slippery slope argument to justify copyright infringement as free speech. Then they use it to justify shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre. Then next thing you know, people are throwing babies out the window and calling it performance art.
Let this be a lesson to all you little yahoos out there running around calling everything you don't like "gay". If it wasn't for Alan Turing, we'd all be playing Quake 3 on our abacuses.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Don't assume that what happens in other countries doesn't affect you. We live in an international world, and events in the United States or Zimbabwe or China affect people everywhere in the world.
You make some valid points. Yes, creators of products (or services) cannot be entirely seperated from the results of usage of said products or services. But in the examples you cite, the products do EXACTLY what they were meant to do. Cheaply made cars break and kill people, well, because they weren't designed not to. Driving a car is not some strange and bizarre activity - in fact it is the activity the car was designed for. Tobacco also was designed (don't even try to tell me otherwise) to deliver a neurostimulant. Inherent to the fact of being a smoked neurostimulant follow many consequences. I think guns are a bit different because they are not failing to perform in the advertised manner or producing unwarrented results (when you shoot something it will get hurt - duh). Guns do exactly what they are supposed to (and what they're supposed to do is the issue, not the metal and wood of a gun).
However, nobody is complaining that the product in question has bad side effects when *used correctly*. Nobody is being hit by shrapnel, or inhaling second hand smoke when they trade files. What is being claimed is that because some people choose to use an entirely valid product for a criminal purpose, the creator of said product, who may have nothing to do with this person, or even the product itself at this time, can be held responsible. Bombs and guns are not a good analogy - because they do *exactly* what they're supposed to do. A file sharing network is for sharing files, agnostic of their legitimacy or value. If somebody is using this service/product criminally it's not the creator's fault. E.g., are car companies responsible for bank heists or drug trafficking? Their responsible for cars breaking down or blowing up, but not for somebody doing something illegal with them.
does that make sense...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well most of the preceding replies have focussed on either analogues to War, Guns, Cars etc or reversing the trend back eventually to (TCP/IP or Intel).
:-)
:) ).
In many earlier discussions the analogues have been made with VCR's and Photocopiers. I would add FAXes as well, though I'm not sure if there has ever been a suit over FAX design removing copyright protection (as opposed to FAXSPAM laws).
It seems ludricous to me that someone who writes software that does similar things can be held responsible for it. I mean, shoot, we don't sue the guy who invented the above physical things (though they are probably all dead now).
There is the question of distribution perhaps... but creating one can't be illegal, can it? - for example, I wonder if you can create say a lock pick and as long as you don't leave your house with it, it is ok. I suspect making an A-bomb probably would be frowned on in ones own house though.
But there is a thin line. IANAL, but I suspect unless a ruling is made that "This piece of software is bad for society", then you cannot be held liable for inventing/designing/coding/compiling such a beast. I would also hope one could not be retroactively sued for distribution, unless a ruling has been made. If you could, the implication is that we will be living in a Stalinist version of the Free Market, waiting for the Court to approve/disapprove every FUNCTIONAL SPEC (heh, combine this with the Patent Office maybe
I think that the worst could be done is after a court ruling is that to distribute a binary would be wrong (and maybe the possesion of such a binary). I would be opposed to this even, but this seems like the only boundary case that would prevent us from falling into legislative cencorship before we hit "emacs newprogram.C".
Responsibility ultimatley has to lie with the user... but I think that Salon article was way, way too scaremongering, if you think through the implications of not being able to code before a legal ruling.
Winton
Society should stop grinding axes and focus on educating people, since all problems which exist today stem from a lack of understanding. Beer manufacturers should not be held accountable for alchohol related accidents - drivers should be aware of how alchohol impedes judgement. The poor peasants in Serbia shouldn't be bombed for the insanity of one man - the west should encourage the citizens to seek a wealthier life. Software engineers should not be held accountable for a bug which causes an orbital rocket to deviate from its course and slam into a crowded school - management must allow adequate time for testing. Etc Etc.
Revolution = Evolution
I really fell its time to start countr sueing the US goverment on these issues
Its hard to sue the organization that makes the laws, especially since the US government is not liable for any mistakes...
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Then how is it that in California all of our gas comes with a warning label that says WARNING -- Contains MTB which is known to damage ground water, cause cancer, beat you cat and will if not used properly throw you little brother off of the nearest building?
So it looks like there is a precedent that if you put the right warnings on something you can get away with selling something that is known to cause damage.
__ Fast - Cheap - Good Pick any two
Upon my reading of the article, the first thing that came to my mind was how Ezra Pound found himself in very big trouble for his muddled radio broadcasts in support of Benitto Mussolini during WWII.
Does it seem irrelevant? Well, let me note that Ezra Pound's actions were the use of creative expression to combat corporatism, not unlike that of the hackers who protested the RIAA and MPAA using code. In the end, it was the campaigning of other poets, including several respected laureates, who finally got the US Government to let Pound out of the insane assylum (where he was sent in place of jail). Similarly, it will probably be the efforts of respected academics and profesisonals such as David Touretsky whose efforts would be most effective in bolstering the cause of protecting creativity, even civilly disobedient creativity.
So if I can connect a few related (if quite broadly) events that come to mind, we have the Declaration of Independence, the Los Alamos scientists, the inventors of radar detectors, and now code from college kids that enables copyright protection. It would be interesting to read from someone who has a coherent history/explorations of such matters of creative freedom and responsibility.
End of ramble.
"What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross" -- E.P.
Dude, aspartame only causes cancer if you eat it constantly every day of your life. And even that has only happened in lab rats. Used in moderation, its fine. Just like Vitamin A.
Fact: Highest number of trial lawyers per head -- United States of America
:-).
Fact: Highest standard of living -- Same Damn Place</i>
Gee, I'd think that first statistic would make a country horrible. _TRIAL_ lawyers is my point here
I'd hate to live somewhere where I had to be insured up to the eyeballs incase of liability...
You are properly versed in the laws of war by the army. They are pretty straight-forward and common sense. They boil down to "don't shoot non-combatants and "don't cause unnecesary suffering." Ot carry forward the Few Good Men analogy, the Marines were still convict of "Conduct Unbecomeing" even though they had only followed orders. It is still a violation of UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's version of criminal law.) to stuff a sock down someone's throat and shave his head, no matter WHO told you to it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
"corporatism... not unlike that..." -- poorly defined antecedent. Read "use" as antecedent, not "corporatism".
"professionals"
"asylum"
"civilly-disobedient"
"enables copyright infringement"
I need to get some sleep.
And I should have noted, for those not familiar with the Ezra Pound case that his complaint was against the influence of corporate profit ("usura" as he termed it) in the world of liberal arts. Interestingly enough, Ezra Pound would have given Courtney Love a righteous smackdown for her silly claims that "artists" are intrinsically (or even properly distinct from) superior to craftsment. Pound felt that the greatest art came about from craft whose value was determined by the patronage of individual tastes.
--Uche
"What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross" -- E.P.
But that would also be a good example of why it doesn't work (IMHO). Care to track down all Linux developers and sue 'm? I don't even want to consider the effort and amount of money that would take.
Whether or not aspartame is carcinogenic, the real hazard is that aspartame gives off methanol when digested (which is then converted into formaldehyde, apparently).
Are we men or are we mice people?
I like the distinction between men and mice people. I prefer a command line, but when doing stuff in X I use a trackball. Viva la command line!
(Score: -3, Funny)
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Breast cancer rates have doubled since it was introduced in soft drinks. Yearly complaints to the FDA related to it's use quadrupled that year, too.
It causes a whole hell of a lot of other problems than cancer in far lower doses, especially if you're diabetic.
Do a little reading, it will scare the shit out of you.
Feel free to find your own links, or start here:
http://aspartamekills.com/ (They're obviously nuts, but just because you're paranoid doesn't mean "they" aren't out to get you. Good links, judge for yourself.)
Aspartame is killing thousands. Anybody that doesn't think that's possible needs to go stare at a pack of cigarrettes and see if "nobody would do that" rings very true.
--
Now there's a lovely thought - dehydrated Neutron Bombs, just add water.
I don't think your analogy quite holds up. What you're suggesting is roughly equivalent to saying that the score for Beethhoven's 5th *is* the symphony, rather than just a detailed set of instructions for reconstructing it using only a concert hall, a conductor and a 150-piece orchestra.
A positive step has to be taken once you've got the source for Beethhoven's 5th before it turns into an executable of the symphony on CD... (and yes, I know I'm driving this metaphor full-tilt over the Clifftop of incomprehension, but it's late and I don't care)
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
The thing is, what was Napster created for? Is there any legal use for this program? Napster was created for the sole purpose of stealing music. There are no other examples where something was built to directly brake the law and it was okay with everyone. If you create a tool that has some legal purpose, but could also be used in some circumstances for illegal purposes, then I'd say you have some immunity because as far as you're concerned, you thought the user was following your instructions.
As far as real weapons go, like guns, atom bomb, etc. Those things were all created LEGALLY to serve a legal purpose. That is, killing bad guys.
Now, the real issue here goes much deeper than legality because we all know that the law does not necessarily define what is right and wrong. That is, people have an implicit sense of what's right and sometimes the law does not properly represent that sense. I think what the court judge asks is "Is this against the law?" and what everyone else asks is "Is this right?" So there's a gap there.
I will agree that within the logical framework of the law, the judge's decision was correct because Napster was created for an illegal end. But my gut feeling tells me that what they're going to do to that programmer who created Napster is not quite right.
The people who have a decision to make are the record companies. They do not want to face the FACT that they can no longer control the distribution of audio recordings. They are all pooing there pants. Of course, on the one hand the labels are crying because a market is dissolving. On the other hand artists are wondering if they will be able to make a living now. Chuck D says, "Companies like Napster are creating new fan interest and establishing a new infrastructure for unknown artists to attract an audience." He's right, your band can get new fans, but will they give you money? I'm sure you will certainly have alot more people coming to your concerts. Perhaps that is where the market is shifting. Maybe recorded material will become so dispensable that people will be craving the live shit. I suppose then we will have a webcasting piracy issue where concert pirates set up illegal live feeds of concerts and people create software to make this faster and easier. In the end, the thing you will not be able to freely distribute is the artist himself.
What I'm saying is that, at least for the music industry, copyright laws can no longer be properly enforced. Those laws were made ideally so that an artist could make some money by the controlling supply of his music. Supply can no longer be controlled so those laws should be dropped and Napster-like programs should be embraced as a source of promotion. Record labels should now concentrate on other aspects of the business such as concert tours.
I think there's a slight difference between holding car/cigarette manufacturers responsible for the effects of their product, and holding programmers responsible for what they create.
On one hand, you have global corporations who's every intention is to make money, and damn the consequonces(sp?), and on the other hand, you have a coder looking to increase his "noosphere"
I don't know about anybody else, but sueing me for writing a GPL'd piece of code would be totally counter-productive, as anybody with an interest in the code could then develop it.
Technology advances regardless of the law. Laws written to govern todays technology will be obsolete when tomorrows technology comes along.
the demonization of creativity you speak of is, i think, an odd form of adaptation itself - a counter-adaptation of sorts. those who cannot adapt to x adapt to those who can adapt to x, if they can. the status quo is displaying an immune reaction... not that it can protect itself. freedom is a virus (i mean that in at least 4 ways), humanity is infected, and the immune system is being subverted as we speak. we are the carriers; you are especially contagious. remember, the difference between a disease and a cure is purely aesthetic, as are the lines between systems and metasystems. the "societal change as biological war in its purest form" metaphor is, i think, very applicable here.
best of luck to ya, man...
-- sayke, v2.3.05
Moderate this guy way up, he's the funniest fucken troll ever.
I personally think Bill Joy is a reactionary idiot, (at least as far as politics goes, I really like java :), and a government mandated responsibility for software to uphold a particular moral philosophy is a bad idea...
But coders should take some responsibility for their software.
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This is one the more intelligent comments on the Salon article that I have seen thus far.
Crag is correct. The Salon article is not about whether a programmer should be held liable for the quality of his/her code and for damage to others resulting from that lack of quality; it is about ways in which the author believes the law is threatening to hold programmers liable for damage done by other people's misuse of their code. It is exactly analogous to the question of whether gun manufacturers should be liable for criminals' use of guns to rob, maim and kill, etc.
The reason it does not make sense to prosecute gun owners for making guns, or programmers from writing code that can be used to misappropriate others' intellectual property, is that it forces the programmers to bear the punishment for other people's misconduct, not their own.
I do disagree with Crag that the tobacco litigation is very different. There, the plaintiffs are claiming that the companies manufacturered a health-endangering product and induced them to use it with fraudulent advertising, etc. Again, they are blaming the manufacturer for the consequences of their use of the product. The tobacco companies' efforts to conceal the dangers of smoking, and the misleading nature of their advertising, however, make this a grayer area.
Cathy Raymond cathyo@ccil.org
hang with me on this one :-)
any hacking done with the tool is the responsibility of the writer of the piece of software..
windows is based upon ms-dos...
Billy Gates wrote (takes credit for?) ms-dos..
looks like we didn't need to wait for the anti-trust trials to go through after all!
(define the-question (or (* 2 b) (not (* 2 b))))
-let's sue volvo for creating getaway cars for bankrobbers
-sue McDonalds for selling coffee at a temperature at which it is supposed to be served
-sue you for not preventing my bike from getting stolen.
-sue trees for their branches can easily be used as clubs
yup.. all makes sense
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Even with the unpleasant US laws on copyright and so on, I think salon are over-egging this one (and IAAL, but NAUSQL; mileage may vary from the US Bar). Look at a few examples:
In fine, the author of a piece of source code is OK. If he does something with it that is not protected, he's potentially in trouble. If he provides some other service that's an infringement of something or other, he's potentially in trouble.
That's what Napster ran aground on: the injunction (which won't get stayed by the Appeal, according to a US attorney friend of mine) was against the inclusion of copyrighted material in their searchable database of traded MP3s, not against the non-infringing uses of the software or in respect of anything the users did.
The injunction ordered Napster to do something they had previously declined to do: exercise some discrimination in the material they included in their list of tradeable MP3 files. Nothing to do with their authorship of any software.
The Oppenheimer defence is available only where you have no control over the end use of the product and there is a substantial lawful end use of same and the product is not dangerous in normal use if it is meant to be safe. (This is a statement of general principle, incidentally: for the specific application in your local jurisdiction consult a lawyer qualified to practise where you are).
Oppenheimer himself had no control over the end use, and that end use was (in the context of a major war) lawful. The product was dangerous in normal use, but then bombs are meant to be.
Big Tobacco is OK all the way up to the danger point. They've been insisting that the product was safe for decades, and now that is coming home to roost. (If they'd sold it, from when they first figured it out, on the basis that "this stuff will kill you: don't say you weren't warned that a little pleasure now will be paid for with a lot of pain later" they'd have been watertight)
DeCSS is perfectly safe to use, and there is a substantial lawful use (at least, lawful everywhere but the US) for a finished product (an executable). The source code itself doesn't do anything but communicate, so it's protected speech. The authors can't otherwise control what's done with it.
Napster, on the other hand, is used almost exclusively (on the evidence in that case, and on Napster's own business plan) for copyright infringement, and Napster run their marketplace as a centralised service so they've got a clear control over what's done with it. It is this last that caught them by the main zipper; it is this that's going to make their eyes water.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Interesting argument, but at another hand, what about full-disclosure security lists where someone illustrates HOW to crack something by writing an exploit?
Is this fundamentally wrong?
Not to mention, the difference between a bomb and someone playing Metallica MP3's without paying. One destroy's property, and can cause injury or death. The other is a $10 economic damage.
A good starting point would be:
Why should programmers be silenced for following their True will? Science is already bogged down and stupidified through the master-servant systems incorporated in all major corporations, the education system and politics. If you have to go through the burden of bureaucracy, or resort to lying to your superiors because you know your real thoughts might get you fired or failed, you're already losing control over your own creativity.Controversial or subversive material such as Socrates' philosophies, the research and books of Wilhelm Reich, or Napster, will always be suppressed by the powers that Be because of fear of the Unknown. The majority of the general public will be fooled all the time. Lawsuits and threats of financial incapacitation have just replaced the poison cup or the burning of books as the establishments instrument of oppression.
Maybe it's time to realise that electorial democracy is just another words for a self-imposed dictatorial oligarchy?
--
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
warranty for the product
hairy issue.. while MS would love for you to use nothing but MS products, I hardly think it's fair for MS to be held accountable if a 3rd party software botches the system and causes the company to go broke. If, however MS claim their OS is able to protect itself from such naughty apps, then they should be accountable if/when it doesn't work. OTOH, if their software screws itself on it's own, then the customer is entitled to a refund or equivalent working product (customer's choice)
liability for third party use
I think this should come down to intent, which (IANAL) would probably be hard to prove. If a piece of software is written and inflicted on the public on purpose then the author/distributor should be accountable. However if the intent is educational, or for another purpose altogether, then they should not be held accountable.
Microsoft Windows runs Napster, Napster was probably built using tools provided by Microsoft. Who's to say that the programmers at Microsoft are not aiding these guys by making sure there products aren't being used by bad guys?
Just a thought.
Bob
J. Robert Oppenheimer has been quoted and referred to as a prime example of creators not being responsible for the use of their creations. However, this is half the story. I can't remember if it was Oppenheimer or not (if not, it was someone else high up in the Manhatten Project), but according to him, the scientists felt a great responsibility for the possible use of the weapon they had been asked to develope, and it was after some soul searching and moral consideration based on what Hitler was doing, and what he could accomplish, that they decided it was the right thing to do.
One of his biggest regrets was that once they had made that decision, they got caught up in their work, and it never even occurred to them to re-evaluate their reasons when the reason they were building it - Hitler - ceased to exist.
In hindsight, he would have liked to have acted differently.
This neatly concurs with my own view, that creators have a degree of responsibility for the nature of their creations.
The distinction is as follows:
Can someone cause harm by using the device?
Can someone cause harm by absuing the device?
The creator takes responsibility for the former, the user takes responsibility for the later (and sometimes the former).
Of course, primary and ultimate responsibility lies with the user.
I'd suggest that while Napster falls primarily on the last count, it does also meet the first - even a token check-box system to indicate which files were copyrighted and thus not to be downloaded unless you had the right would make a difference.
My understanding of the gun manufacturer lawsuits is that they claim the manufacturers deliberately designed and marketed their guns for illegal purposes. This is slightly different from the manufacturers being liable for how users used their products. Again, the first as well as the second catagory is met.
For instance everyone can at least think of a few interesting cases where some kid (or adult) emulated his or her favorite movie scene - or carried out something that was said in a song....
Or in other words we could hold them responsible for all acts of violence in the world today...
But if I write a piece of software that can be used for file swapping and someone uses it to commit copyright infringement, I may be held responsible for contributory infringement by the RIAA and MPAA?
Even the language and analogy itself is disturbing: creating tools for letting people share information is now on the same level as creating nuclear bombs? Isn't the ability to communicate freely at the heart of a democracy?
I think it's pretty clear what the deciding factor is in who can and cannot be held responsible for the software they create: people with money and political influence are exempted from responsibility. Remember that next time you vote and give the third party candidates a chance. Nader is looking pretty good...
I think history will record this time as a time of political ludites.
Going after technology not criminals.
We don't arrest people for wearing all black. We don't ban flashlights or lock picks. We don't ban things becouse a narrow few are threatoned.
We do go after companys that do false/missleading advertising and/or produce shooty products.
But in the high technology arena we let companys issue shrinkwrap liccenses that nullify consummer protection laws. We don't presue false/missleading advertising (to the point of it evolving into an art) and we don't hold the end user responsable for criminal acts.
If a tool is used for a criminal act the tool dose not transform into the embodyment of evil. It remains a tool.
This is the day and age of paranoia... a time of ludites and politics...
It is a good day for ranting....
In the long run... New tools and forums will be set up. Advocacy etc. A body of experence is built to prepair for any situation.
20 years from now... someone will have a new situation.. a new macarthyism.. a new age of politics and fear... one internet search later and problem DIES!!!!....
It's a pain in the backside to be in the fight. To be the ones fighting for freedom. It's not a bloody war this time. Just a legalistic one. Costing in millions of dollars instead of millions of lifes. But it's still annoying...
Next time it'll be the cost of millions of hours...
then it'll simply become a minnor inconvence...
The price of freedom WAS the price of blood.. that price is paid.. now it's costing in hard cold cash.. when the cost is purely time we'll have pritty much secured our freedom for all time...
I don't actually exist.
I would say that a scientist who works on nuclear weapons is very aware of the multitude of purposes to which the technology he is developing could potentially be put to.
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Developing nuclear weapons as opposed for example to reactor research or other areas of nuclear phyics is a highly specific area of research, which has only a single purpose: to make more effective nuclear weapons.
The article refers to making programmers accountable for the ways their software is used against other people, not for how good the software is. This is very different from the liability the automobile and tobacco companies are fighting. This is more like the lawsuits being pressed against the gun makers.
That being said, this concept (programmer is responsible for how his program is used) is ludicrous. While it is important for people to be aware of the potential uses of their creations, the leaders who gave the orders to drop the atomic bomb are to blame, not the scientists who designed it or the works who built it.
This issue is very complex. There is a lot of energy at stake, and a lot of confusion about what can and what "should" be done. The only sure way to solve all these problems once and for all is to hold the final decision makers responsible for _their_ actions. If you are holding a gun, only use it in self defense or for sport. While driving a car, respect the power of 2000 pounds of steal going 70+ mph. While holding a baseball bat, don't blame the manufacturer if you decide to hit someone with it.
No matter what power you hold, there is noone better qualified to keep you from abusing that power than you.
Blaming doesn't get us anywhere. The change we want is much deeper than making it more difficult to cause harm. We need to stop wanting to cause harm.
(We also need to agree on what harm is - napster is certainly a grey area in many peoples' minds.)
A number of people are actively trying to organize such things, but the results so far haven't been promising and the consensus on the reason way is that programmers are just a bunch of pussies too concerned with bringing home the immediate bacon rather than lift a finger to look after their future.
Yeah, that's right - you. Pussies. You may have the balls to post anonymously on Slashdot, but when was the last time you not only voted, but gave money to a political campaign whose position you supported, and did volunteer work for it.
Last time for me was '92, I'm afraid, when the president of Working Software and I organized the Jerry Brown for President campaign in Santa Cruz, California in the company offices.
I donated the maximum Jerry would accept during that campaign - $100.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
This seems like the first step on the journey to when the big software companies finally face down the media companies in court and hopefully bankrupt each other...
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
I don't see why people don't pick the correct country when developing code.
eg.
The EU dosn't have strict export licenses on things like RSA, so if i were a company/group wanting to distribute encription software i would pick the EU over the US and Japan.
like wise i read somewhere that you cant patent software in the EU (though this is probably going to change).
anyhow I only know about the EU and the US anyone have a better country to base software development in?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Could we possibly protect our selves through a new form of licensing. If you have ever read MS licensing agreement you will find they are not responsible in any way of how well their software works or what you use it for. If someone uses IE to steal your cookies it's not MS's fault.
The GPL focuses on protecting the software, not the author. Maybe we need a more protective license.
When the movie came out and included this scene, a similar murder followed, and the relatives of the deceased sued the movie producers - I'm not sure but I think maybe Carroll got sued too, and he'd written the book years and years before the movie came out.
Is the trial finished? Anyone know the results?
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
The decisions on things like MP3s are going to be pretty important, but they're going to only affect ONE aspect of ONE minor part of something that is almost completey MEANINGLESS in the big picture!!
I mean, I like computers and technology, but you have to realize that it really doesn't add up to much. So Napster stays. Yeah. So? So now I can rip my DVDs with some software package. So what?? They will NOT change the world, methinks.
So the government wants to make programmer liable for lots of new things. So loads of people are going to think to themselves "Shit, it could cost me millions in damages to code something that I loose control of". So nobody is going to code anymore. So you loose a large chunk of the innovation of the largest and most profitable industies in America, which after several years criplles the industry. So they drop the laws and everything works out again.
(A simplified view, but...)
"Fact: Highest standard of living -- Same Damn Place"
i .pdf
Not according to the United Nations Human developement report 2000 on this page:
http://www.undp.org/hdr2000/home.html
In this document:
http://www.undp.org/hdr2000/english/presskit/hd
Top five:
1. Canada
2. Norway
3. United States
4. Australia
5. Iceland
Worst Five:
170. Burundi
171. Ethiopia
172. Burkina Faso
173. Niger
174. Sierra Leone
wiZd0m
But remember the golden rule "if one of the sides has lots of money, they are in they are legally right."
When you look at things that way, the laws and actions of the courts and governments are remarkably consistent.
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Of course, suing them couldn't have any success -- the programs are usually open-source, and users will hardly accept modified versions that don't do what they want them to do. However, the industry might sue anway, just to make an example and to prevent others from developing similar schemes. A totally useless effort, obviously, as this would only drive developers underground.
At all times in history, interest groups of a religious, economic or political nature have tried to prevent technological progress to protect their own health and wealth. Every time, though change also created victims, it was for the better of all of us. When the forces of regression and stagnation dominate, you can call that a Dark Age. This has happened several times in history, the last time after the downfall of the Roman Empire.
That is exactly why we need anonymous and redundant information storage systems: To protect any kind of speech from censorship (and the speakers from persecution), be it hacking instructions, drug information or political analysis. This is an opportunity we have never had before in history. If we win now, we might not only win one battle between "good" and "evil". We might actually win the war.
Join FreeNet now. How often do you get the opportunity to save mankind?
--
To us americans the US is the entire world. Nothing else matter's. When your big, you can do what you want. Whether this is good or bad i'll let others decide. But this is how it is.
guvf vf zl fvt
Hey, i just thought. Anyone know if there is an IT Workers Union in the UK? I could easily see this sort of thing happening you know.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Surely if coders are liable for the users misuse of their programs then all writers and inventors are liable for similar misuse. Effectively this means that GunMakers and the NRA are liable for any killings that are carried out with weapons as they intended illegal usage when they created and upheld gunlaws and making weapons, and bands like Metallica are liable for kids going on killing sprees after listening to their music. KidRandom
'Cuz he invented the Internet! :P
Why can't they legally treat software as a work of art, protecting the author from whatever abuses that the users may come up with for their software?
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
The Salon article is interesting, but doesn't distinguish clearly enough between two very different things:
.
• warranty for the product: should the author be liable if the software doesn't behave as it should ? (eg the GPS sending you over a cliff example in the article).
• liability for third party use: eg should the authors of Gnutella or Freenet be liable if their software is used for unlawful behaviour (eg copyright infringement).
Now for the first of these, I'd like to see more liability - at least for commercial software - rather than less. Microsoft's standard licence tries real hard to avoid / limit any liability. Should a commercial vendor really be able to say it's not liable, eg, if the fact that its spreadsheet can't do math leads an individual or a business to lose money ?
(The GPL also has a no warranty provision. Dealing with non-commercial open source software shouldn't be a problem: not only is there no commercial benefit to the author, but in theory the user can look at the code themselves to see if it does what the user wants - and even change the code to suit the user's needs.)
The second gives rise to more difficult problems, and this is where Napster is fighting. (Don't forget that Napster though is providing a service - the server - so if Napster loses it won't necessarily mean that the authors of Gnutella or Freenet would lose.)
The test for a product (eg a VCR) is whether the product is "capable" of a lawful use. In the Sony case, a VCR was held to be capable of doing perfectly lawful things (eg time-shifting TV viewing).
A network sniffing tool that could be used legitimately to check vulnerabilities (so they can be closed) would seem to be OK even if it could also be used to check vulnerabilities (so they can be exploited). Though if it was developed and published with the stated aim of checking and exploiting, a court may be reluctant to accept later arguments that the author shouldn't be nailed because it could also be used to check and close
Say you create a program for personal use (surely not a crime; you're allowed to tape music for personal use) and -- oops -- it's leeched from your PC due to M$ Windows' lax security and spread all over the net...
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
Your credibility takes a considerable hit when you continually use the word 'fucken'. Please either use a real word the rest of us can understand or leave it out completely.
I suspect the post was a troll anyway. For what it's worth, my POV:
World's highest standard of living: Probably Sweden. Maybe Japan. Not the US. Especially if you're black and live in LA.
Lawyers: We need them, admittedly. They are not however, good at making laws. I wont say they are bad, but they are no better than anybody else. Sure, they can help word things so that there are fewer holes, but when it comes to IT, lawyers don't have a clue and so shouldn't be the ones making decisions. It is blatantly ludicrous that as a software developer, I could get shafted sideways by big business, purely because some users of my program have decided to break the law. They may use my software in a manner I didn't think of. I may write software that performs only legal tasks in one jurisdiction, that in another country entirely breaks every law on the books - am I meant to know U.S. law inside out when I don't even live there? I think not.
I think this article on Slashdot was posted as being something of interest to developers worldwide, as a cause of concern to them that political and corporate actions may be making our profession essentially untenable. And I for one will not allow that to happen without causing a lot of grief.
If a few lawyers get their pride bruised along the way, I consider that a bonus.
~Cederic
I have in the past, seen a lot of Anti-Salon sentiment about Salon.
I am curios where this came frame
Salon *did* go public and they are probably going to disappear soon because they haven o real sustainable revenue model BUT
They have some damn talented and smart tech-aware people working for them... Where did the in bed with MS stuff come from..?? Dont falme either im seriously asking. I think they have some excellent writing I never noticed much of a Anti-Linux/Pro-Microsoft flavor
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
You know, this article made me angry out about courts and lawyers in several places. I could rant forever about the ridiculousness of this situation, so I'll focus on one point that particularly irritates me: "coders can't pass the buck."
Let's be realistic. It's not the coders that are passing the buck. It's easy to blame the coder. Single point of failure. In this case, if it were feasable to convict the million or so users that use Napster to illegally pirate copyrighted music, we would do so, in a pinch. But, fact of the matter is, our legal system is not a suitable mechanism to convict a million users. So, let's set this straight. The legal system isn't set up properly to deal with this situation. The courts are passing the buck to the programmer. Agreed?
--
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
"It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be a house of GPL,' but you have made it 'a den of pirates.'"
Ignorence is blis.
While I partially agree with most of what you said, I really don't think the FBI is going to use their Carnivore boxes for "illegal" network programs like Napster (unless ordered by a judge then that is a whole different issue with different implications.)
Even they would probably consider it a waste of resources, and last I checked Congress did not give them an infinate budget to track down every illegal file transfer in the U.S.
--If Pro is opposite of Con, then is Congress the opposite of Progress?