Slashback: Galileo, Backlight, Tariffs

Slashback tonight brings you several updates and amplifications on everything from Java in phones and a GPS system in Europe, to the future of Internet audio streaming and (related) near-unbelievable proposed tariffs on nearly anything that will hold data (in Canada). Read on below for the details.

The man is not often wrong. Doc Searls writes: "I wrote a piece piece at the Linux Journal site that you might want to check out. The very first comment is 'This needs to be Slashdotted.' I agree. And not because I'm looking for attention. I want to *call* attention to the CARP Report, which will kill Webcasting with fees. It's a big deal, and I don't see anybody else talking about it. Yet. And we need to."

Would you say that these are more 'puppies," "babies," or "mommas"? Vladimir Vuksan writes: "There are already hundreds of so called Java midlets that will presumably execute on these Nokia puppies or any other Java enabled browser. Check out http://midlet.org/jsp/index.jsp"

Too bad I can't get the entire Economist free just by reading the ads. FortKnox writes: "ZDNet is running a story about generic "Ad-Free Subscription Services" being used on the internet today. The review of these services is from the 'Ad Space Buyer' and how marketing execs are not keen on the idea. Something interesting to read, seeing Slashdot is testing the services."

How about a countersuit for strong-arm tactics? iosphere writes "According to an article on Wired, the judge in BT's case issued a ruling that questions whether or not the technology that was patented is really analogous to todays definition of a hyperlink. She questions how the patent, which was written with only a single computer terminal in mind, can apply to the internet as we know it now."

Update: 03/15 00:31 GMT by T : arget writes with a few more data points: "An article at News.com suggests that Prodigy has won a TKO in the first round. Another story at ZDNet is more neutral, but quotes an expert saying that prior art will 'come back to haunt BT's efforts.' Both articles agree that motions for summary judgement and probably a ruling will come soon."

Portable Monopoly kylus writes "Roughly a month after it was last mentioned here, the Gameboy Advance light project over at Portable Monopoly takes another step closer to fruition. While the official release date is in May, the group will begin accepting preorders on Friday, March 15th for the $35 light kit, which has been officially named 'Afterburner.' In addition to this news, they've provided some video captures of the product in action."

Remember, as reader Vito puts it, that's Portable Monopoly's warranty-voiding, solder-requiring, tech-support-suiciding Gameboy Advance internal lighting kit. :) Your own risk, et cetera.

This goes beyond disputes about how to spell "meter." meehawl writes with an update on the European Union's plans for a GPS workalike system, which we had previously reported had been scrapped.

"So after the Pentagon removed GPS's Selective Availability, the maximum GPS accuracy is typically within 10 to 20 meters. Differential GPS can reduce this to minute levels, very useful for calling in airstrikes and pinpointing installations, and so on.

So it's probably no surprise that the the European Union's plans to build their own GPS system, the Galileo Project, met such stern resistance from the U.S., with Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asking EU defence ministers not to go ahead, saying it could complicate US satellite-assisted warfare and furthermore could be more easily used by anti-US military forces.

The EU has has now rejected the latest message from the U.S., a State Department exhortation to forgo development. Interestingly, the latest rebuff was framed as an anti-monopoly stance, that competition in satellite navigation would be good for business.

Apparently, Osama is responsible for this latest rebirth of the European space industry.

Perhaps more worryingly, in a related development a UK company was awarded the "Skynet 5" military communications system contract. Don't these people watch movies at all?"

The principle of the thing. Boone^ writes "It's been well covered, but The Tech Report has written a nice little article going through the finer points of the proposed levy and why there should be more people than just Canadians lobbying against it."

Perhaps some more apprentices will emerge from the woodwork? pynchin writes "Kyle Sallee, creator of Sorcerer GNU Linux has just announced on #sorcerer that he will no longer be involved with SGL. Some disgruntled SGL users forked the distro a few days ago -- see www.lunar-penguin.com for details."

Comments

Java will save us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let Java be the language that saves us all from .NET lock-in. Let it be.

To All Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend you snail mail and email a letter to your member of Parliament, politely declaring that you will never vote for the Liberal government, in any election, and will advise your friends, family and neighbours to do the same, unless they repeal this bill.

This money goes straight to the pockets of the Record Company. Which is very wrong, considering the amount of money they steal from musicians.

Re:To All Canadians

[bryan1945]

How is this off-topic?!??!

Let me explain to those twit mods that didn't read any of the articles (christ, you should have understood it from the "Tarriffs" part of the TITLE of the article!)-

The AC is referring to the 2nd to last article in the post. It talks about a Canadian bill which would impose levies on recordable media. CD-RWs would get about $0.60 (Canadian dollars I believe), CD-Rs $1.20, DVD recordable of all types about $2, and $20/GB for harddrives in MP3 players. Think about that last one- the iPod (5GB) just jumped $100 due to this proposed levy.

And the worst part of the bill is that it states that there will NOT be any exceptions for fair use (ie, personal copy). None. They just assume that every single recordable media unit sold will be a dent in profits. This is not a good thing.

Re:To All Canadians

[AndroidCat]

I doubt I'd vote for them regardless of what they do with this bill. (However, I'd like to tell them what to do with this bill. :^)

This is just DAT all over again. The recording industry interests are going to (try to) screw up decent distribution/backup technology for computer users. And I'm tried of buying albulms in 33.3333, tape, CD... (8-track, never heard of it. Anyone saying that I've heard of it will be hit with a massive libel suit!)

When are they going to learn that it's all just information. Eventually they are going to run out of fingers to plug the leaks, and are going to have to deal with the problem that digital information can be copied error-free? And no I'm not going to accept equipment that has some half-assed serial number or zone limitation. I don't pirate music or movies, and I don't see why when I backup my hard drive, I have to pay the record companies payola. From friends who have worked for major labels, they're as fscked busineses as the worst dotcoms at the peak of the insanity. Just because they deal with things that spin, the world does not revolve around them!

Re:To All Canadians

[AndroidCat]

Vote Progressive Conservative. Oh sure, they won't win, the Liberals will get back in with whatever person survives the coming night of the leadership knives. But it will put a stake in the heart of the Reform^w Xenuphobia^w Alliance party.

If you're really desperate, you could vote the best person actually running in your riding, regardless of party, radical concept I know.

Re:To All Canadians

[Cederic]

Forget even "fair use" - I usually use CDRs for copying software patches or game demos or open source/open licenced software between my home PC (where I download it) and friends who have asked me to use my broadband connection to get it for them.

I also use CDRs to copy photos between myself and my family (my camera takes photos 800k in size - at 30 photos a day while on holiday it doesn't take a long holiday to make internet download of photos unrealistic).

Plus of course the backups of my hard disks. And the various linux distributions. etc.

Out of the 20 CDs I've burnt this year (ok, not many) a grand total of 2 have been used for storing record industry owned IP, and both of those are basically collections of music I own on purchased CD anyway.

~Cederic is hoping the UK don't do this too

Odd thing about the tax..

[PopeAlien]

Hey now! I don't mind helping out poor artists like Bryan Adams* with my Data CD purchases, but whats to keep some malicious hacker from playing their MP3.com downloads on their PC's, thereby cheating the industry out of their cut? Where's the tax on Hard-drives?

*poor as in 'low quality' not poor as in 'without cash'.

Re:Odd thing about the tax..

[dieMSdie]

Ye gods, don't give them any ideas! Next thing you know they will want an ISP tax!

GPS

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

How can it be a monopoly, or need competition? Normally, I'm very anti-monopoly, but I can't see how what is a universal free service, paid for by the US gov, counts. It would be different, were the US doing something half-assed (which we often do) like threatening to selectively deny it to Europe... but hell, they're just wasting their own money, and making it that much easier for psycho's to use it. And for what, national pride? Hell, if they wanted that, they could do something impressive, like go to the moon, something which sadly, the US is abandoning.

Re:GPS

[JanneM]

Because it is such an important use, not only for civilian enterprises, but also for military uses, it is sort of unwise to have no control over the system used. The deifintion of 'risk' is roughly 'chance of happening' times 'consequenses if it does', and even though the chance of the US pulling the plug for europeans - or some third party managing to figure out how to cripple the system - is very small, the consequences could be devastating enough that a second, different system could be warrranted. Add to that that Europe and the US might well have different ideas of whom to cut off in conflict in the future, and it seems like a pretty good idea to have a system of our own.

/Janne

Re:GPS

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The sattelites themselves are redundant, for just this purpose. Someone will frag the US ones, but not the euro sats? C'mon. The risk is actually increased, by having a second system. There are two potential systems to subvert/destroy/use for terrorism, and only one has to fall into the wrong hands. Doubles the chance of such an occurrence, does it not?

Re:GPS

[andcal]

The US government can make it less accurate (which they apparently did) or even completely turn it off any time they want to, with no fear of effective reprisal. All they have to do is say it was necessary for national security, and no one can do anything about it besides crying.

Re:GPS

[Dreamweaver]

I think the point was less about destroying the satellites and more about either:

1) The US deciding, "Hey, we're kind of angry at the UK, Europe doesn't really need that GPS thing anymore..."

OR

2) Some nutty terrorist/dictator type somehow getting hold of control codes for the system and, for instance, shifting all returned locations 2 miles north by north west.

In either case, having a second, redundant system would be helpful. If the US decided to try for world domination or something, everyone else having some other GPS system to use would be good for them. On the other hand, if all the returned locations from one system were out of whack one day, important military and business applications could switch to the other system. And even in the unlikely occurance of someone trying to shoot down all the GPS satellites, having a second set would mean that the EU and the US could collaborate and do a sort of satellite sharing thing (assuming support for such were built into the new satellites) until they hunted down and pummelled the person responsible.

Re:GPS

[Goonie]

It would be different, were the US doing something half-assed (which we often do) like threatening to selectively deny it to Europe...

If it was the EU who ran GPS satellites, do you reckon the US Congress would stand for the risk to their military potency, increasing parts of their economy, and civilian safety from the vagaries of EU bureauracy?

I don't think so.

Re:GPS

[topham]

Actually a second system, if it uses a seperate set of frequencies increases the accuracy if the whole system. (Different frequencies are affected by atmospheric interference differently; and can be used to correct for problems; part of the reason the military gets higher accuracy is simply because it uses the second frequency for GPS.)

more Nokia pics...

[bob@dB.org]

at this page

it's just GSM 900/1800, so i guess you americans will just have to wait...

Mobile java games..

[Master Of Ninja]

Some of these mobile java games look quite good actually. They have the golden oldies, as well as some other games - Street Fighter on your mobile anyone? Games seem quite basic, but i'm sure they'll get better over time.

Seriously, J2ME looks very useful; i think i'll have to download the kit to see how it works. Some of the stuff is very useful, considering I have my phone with me practically all the time. A portable graphical calculator, a note pad, games, a dictionary/language translator, and currency convertors? This'll really cut down on all the stuff you have to carry round. Hopefully charges for connecting to the internet via mobile phones will come down so it is cost-effective to use this kind of stuff.

P.S. Look under >graphics>adult for a *very* useful applet for your phone. Although it will be distracting to use when getting into those complicated positions ;-)

GPS Monopoly

[soap.xml]

Okay now I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I agree that a unified GPS would be a *good* thing for global communications and security etc.... however

from the article... The US has another vital unilateralist interest; if GPS is the only global positioning network, all positioning on the planet can only be done by America, so that if the US wants to block, say, a military or civilian aircraft sale by the Europeans it can simply ban the use of GPS avionics in the aircraft's positioning system. French President Chirac is uncompromising about the consequences - this would be economic, security and technological 'vassalage'.

This could really be a REAL concern for other nations. Granted living in the US, it doesn't conern me as much on the loss of communications end, but what does concern me is the potential for abuse, and the backlash that abuse might cause...

Maybe a second network, but compatible network isn't such a bad idea after all.

-ryan

Regarding the hypertext lawsuit...

[miracle69]

With all the discussion we have here on Slashdot regarding copyrights and patents, especially concerning the amount of time one should be allowed to hold a patent or copyright, I found this line rather interesting.

BT's Hidden Text patent was filed in the U.S. in 1977 and issued in 1989. Hidden Text patents filed in Europe have already expired.

Perhaps this sort of thing should be pointed out here in the U.S. to our government. Should we allow lengthened patents, then those evil evil British Terrorists might have a patent on a technology we've based a majority of our new economy on.

Re:Disgruntled?

[jeffphil]

I think the disgruntled people are at the Sorcerer site http://sorcerer.wox.org/ where the home page gives the blow-by-blow account.

Too risky

[TecraMan]

Think how much impact this will have on our daily lives. In the coming years, GPS will become part not only of our cars but also of our mobile phones, PDAs and watches. It will become a key part of our interaction with commerce, transport and health services and will be a secure way to get location-based services (it is passive, unlike GSM location info).

With all that in mind, can you blame the Europeans if they don't trust the US government that this will always remain free and open?

GPS - Europe gets it.

[WasterDave]

I'm frying my hat in butter and a little garlic as we speak. Soon, in little strips and maybe tossed into a salid it shall be headed down my gullet because something I never thought would happen obviously has.

Europe, as a whole, as an administrative behemoth designed primarily to redistribute wealth towards French farmers, has got it. It has understood the whole concept of control of information systems to an almost Microsoft level of conception ... and it doesn't like what it sees.

GPS gives us stuff we *need* right now. It navigates our aircraft, ships, even satellite launches themselves and control of the GPS system equates to control of these increasingly critical resources. If George Dubbya, or indeed any future US president decides that the war against terrorism suddenly includes Europe he'll be able to shut the place down with the single click of a (probably Microsoft) mouse. Let's face it, it's not that unlikely. With the whole Afghanistan thing the US has proven it is quite willing to act unilaterally in kicking anyone's arse it damn well feels like.

Europe's take on the situation? Fuck that, we'll build our own. And using $2.2bn that was otherwise vital for Monsieur Marcaud to sit on his butt and watch Canal+ we suddenly have Europe taking control over it's own future. "if the EU went ahead with its own satellite positioning system its radio signals might interfere with US military operations based on GPS. " - I imagine it says that somewhere on the requirements document too.

Strike one for disarming the warmongering lunatics, thank god for that.

Dave

Re:GPS - Europe gets it.

[ByTor-2112]

NOTE TO ALL: "GPS" is a generic term. The US GPS system is NAVSTAR. The Russian system is GLONASS. The proposed Eurotrash system is Galileo.

Let me assure you of one thing. If the US military decides that Europe is a problem and they need to disrupt GPS operations, they will disrupt GPS operations no matter how many systems are available. The only reason SA was turned off is because the military demonstrated the ability to selectively deny NAVSTAR (and possibly other) service to a more localized area.

Simply put: if they don't want you to have it, you won't have it.

Re:GPS - Europe gets it.

[Crass Spektakel]

Aw, cut it short, ByTor,

its a major difference if the US decides to "filter out" their own NAVSTAR over europe, which would be their best right, because they pay the bill,

or if the US activily disrupts european infrastructur - which would be basically an act of aggression against europe.

True aggression against europe (worlds largest econonomy, half a billion citizens, technolocal mostly equal to the US, a large military, nukes, whatever, name it) is something completely different from pulling the plug from US-NAVSTAR over europe.

I wonder why the US fears an alternate GPS. Only high-tech-powers will depend on GPS, dont think GPS makes any difference in libyia, india or most other regions in the world. GPS is only vital for powers like the EU, US, China, Japan and so on.

And by the way, if the US needs all GPS over one region shut down, they just need to ask and explain. Thats all.

Re:GPS - Europe gets it.

[ender81b]

they will disrupt GPS operations no matter how many systems are available.

How pray tell would they do that? It is damm near impossible (short of a tactical nuke in the upper atmosphere) to disrupt or jam satelite communications. Oh, you could do it over a small area with a EW plane but not over a large area like Europe.

Not to mention the US posses no ASM (anti-satelite missles) to use on these satelites which makes shutting it down slightly difficult.

Independent record labels

[spike_gran]

On the topic of internet radio, it can be expected that large record companies will adopt such a uniform scheme.

Here's a great idea for someone to implement: An indie label rights clearinghouse.

Nothing in the proposal disallows an independent webcaster from using content for free with the permission of the record label. So if we can get a website up that will allow indpendent webcasters and small record labels to meet, they could agree that no broadcasting fees will need to be paid.

Both sides win. Indie labels that weren't going to get any radio play anyway lose nothing by allowing free webcasting. Indie webcasters get to use songs for free.

If Big Music wants too much money for you to use their stuff, then don't promote Big Music.

Nitpick

[Nerds]

The Afterburner is a front light, not a back light.

Re:Disgruntled?

[ThatComputerGuy]

You're right, the people became disgruntled AFTER the lunar-linux thing screwed SGL.

Ad-free subscription criticism is bogus

[Wesley Everest]

The basic argument is that having ad-free subscriptions reduces the amount they can charge for ads, ultimately ending up with no ads.

They're half right. Since selling ads is really selling eyeballs, the ad-free subscription idea means less eyeballs to sell and the eyeballs are worth less. That means the site must either reduce the cost for advertisers or lose them. If they lose all their advertisers, the subscribers will stop subscribing because the ad-free version of the page is no longer less annoying than the "ad" version. That means the site has an incentive to have more and more ads, because the more ads there are on the site, the more money they make in subscriptions.

Hell, it would be in the site's interests to even run ads at no-charge to the advertisers. Wouldn't that be an ironic twist?

Re:Ad-free subscription criticism is bogus

[spitzak]

If they lose their advertisers but have subscribers, they can easily keep their subscribers by discontinuing the free version.

Since they assume I'm guilty anyway

[smartin]

I take this as an absolute license to copy what ever i want on to media that i've prepaid the royalties on. Hey maybe this is the solution to the record companies delemma. Let bands distribute their music directly to the net, we will all pay to a big royalty pot that gets evenly distributed to all artists. Oh by the way, i just started a new group called White Noise.

Java applets for Nokia?

[sulli]

Great, now my phone will crash too, just like my browser. No thanks.

Media levy petition

[mistered]

There's a virtual petition against the proposed media levy increases at Sycorp. They collected more than 25000 "signatures" when the levy was first proposed; there's 572 on the list as I write this.

Fellow Canadians, head over and have a look, and sign it if you want to communicate your "strong disapproval with the levy on blank recording media."

Re:Media levy petition

[FFFish]

THE VIRTUAL PETITION IS USELESS.

The Copyright Board will pay attention only to email sent to majeau.claude@cb-cda.gc.ca, or postal mail sent to the Secretary General.

The electronic petition is a waste of your time. If you want to stop this proposal before it gets off the ground, you need to ACT FAST (you have one month) and SEND YOUR MESSAGE DIRECTLY.

Please take the time to read the proposal itself. And do hit up The Tech Report, which has provided a nice overview of the situation.

ACT NOW! If you don't participate, you will be screwed.

This 'brightens' the homebrew GBA hardware scene

[Vito]

As a followup, this definitely "brightens" the already vibrant homebrew development scene.

The Visoly flash linker and carts are great, and available from (your friends and mine) Lik-Sang, GameGizmo and Easy Buy 2000 (all no-referral URLs).

The multi-boot cables (for downloading small apps to your GBA without needing to flash a cart) are cool, too, and have been exploited to turn your GBA into a handheld terminal. Check out the PDF on that last link; much nicer than reading the page, with pictures. Wish there was someplace within the continental US to order a couple non-ugly ones from, though. Those MBV2s are just too unweildly to use in sexy handheld terminal demonstrations.

Where is Electronic Frontiers Canada?!?!

[farrellj]

They web site hasn't been updated in a year, and email to the head of it doesn't get a reply! Is EFC dead? Must we depend on US groups like EFF and Slashdot to be informed and represented in our fights on the Frontiers of Cyberspace?

ttyl
Farrell

We are Pavlov's Dogs

[jazman_777]

When the entertainment industry churns out some new content, we consume, breathlessly. And we complain about the price. How many of us would be willing to skip out on Star Wars Episode II to make a point? Zero? And we'll buy the CD-RWs etc., complaining all the way home about the price we just willingly paid for a product.

MacFixIt versus comp.sys.mac.system

[bcrowell]

I used to be a heavy MacFixIt user, but their new subscription system prompted me to look around for alternatives, and I ended up switching to the comp.sys.mac.system usenet group. Does anyone know how MacFixIt's new model is working out?

I think there's a tendency for people to overestimate how valuable their websites are, and to employ an unsustainable number of people generating content. There isn't any information on MacFixIt that I want and can't get on usenet.

Re:The Fuck$lashdotNow Report #1 -- Nested Mode

[NanoGator]

If you're trying to convince me not to subscribe to Slashdot, can you at least tell me why?

So ya hate Slashdot, big deal? Im willing to give them $5 if it keeps them online. Why? Because it's one site I can go to in order to keep an eye on what's going on in the world. If you don't like them, not subscribing is fine, but why on Earth would you be so keen on making them go offline? Did somebody mod one of your posts down?

In any case, /. provides a service, they should get something in return. $5 for 1,000 pages seems like a good model to me. It's cheap, and it's useful.

patents are a black art

[kingdon]

Hmm. I often read (and/or skim) court rulings (especially from the Supreme Court), and usually they more or less make sense. But this one... Geez. She starts off with pages on the subject of whether a word means what it seems to mean. And then several more pages about how this applies to "computer" and other words in the hyperlink case. I can sort of see the need for all this, but no wonder patents are such a black art.

Tax on media? Sure, let's have it! Free music!!

[Dr. Awktagon]

Okay, if they tax all media, then I'll get all my music for free. A $2 data CDR is still cheaper than a $19 CD. And since the "artists" (a funny way to spell "record labels", isn't it?) are getting paid (apparently, this is very important), I would feel ZERO moral obligation to EVER buy a CD again (well actually I don't really feel obligated now, but I do it anyway, with a tax I would feel obligated to NOT buy any more music.. why pay twice?).

And OF COURSE every little indie label run out of somebody's bedroom with six releases is going to get their fair share, right?

Sounds good. Music as a public good, lets pay with public funds, and the record labels can go to hell.

Which of course isn't how it will work, the record labels will get fatter and more corrupt as they feast on the blood of the proletariate, most indie record labels will continue to operate at a loss, and CDs will grow to $24 to combat the extra "piracy" brought about by the tax, but we can pretend that life is fair...

This Just In...

[Tim Macinta]

This would have been appropriate for the Slashback section as well, but it was probably published too recently to have made it in, so I will bring it up...

AOL has now actually begun testing the use of Mozilla (Gecko to be specific) as part of its software. There are articles on this at http://news.com.com/2100-1023-860710.html and http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2 169.

Go Mozilla!

Re:Digital storage can happen on paper too.

[Dr. Awktagon]

You have any URLs about that? I remember a product many years ago that would read strips from a piece of paper with a few K of data. It included software to print and a few magazines distributed programs that way until it went the way of the :#::Cue:?#:Cat::// (whatever the correct punctuation is on that thing). Sounds like a good time to bring that tech back to life!!

They should give a cut to free software authors!

[mellon]

I'm being facetious here, of course, but if the Canadian government is going to get into the business of collecting arbitrary royalties on digital media, why do musicians have more of a claim on these royalties than people who write free software?

Wow - I need to drink more beer

[baptiste]

That's what I get for having multiple /. windows open at the same time. I hit reply in the wrong story - doh!

It was intended for this story about Sun and others voting against Apache & IBM related to legal issues for Java standards. My bad!

market self selection

[epine]

I run squid with an ad filter. I know I'm lucky that this works so well. Eventually the content people will invent a protocol which makes it a lot more difficult to scratch out the crap.

But not impossible. When marketting people talk about ads, they don't mean the message. They mean blinking, scrolling, flashing, and all other forms of obnoxious behaviour that make it difficult to attend to anything else on the page.

This kind of content I will always be able to eliminate. Simple rule: if it blinks, flashes, or scrolls, trash it.

I'm so vehemently opposed to obnoxious inputs that I'm more likely to make a mental note to refuse to buy the product than to to be swayed that the product behind the irritation is going to solve all of my problems. One could argue that I'm doing them a favor by scraping out the ads: someone is no longer paying to have those bytes delivered, and none of those bytes are making a dime off of me.

Here's where it has to end up: the advertiser who wants to push their blinking piece of crap under my nose is going to have to pay a very high price. My attention doesn't come cheap. If I'm such a desirable demographic, pay me for it.

How to pay for the clearinghouse

[bmasel]

An indie label rights clearinghouse. ... So if we can get a website up that will allow indpendent webcasters and small record labels to meet, they could agree that no broadcasting fees will need to be paid.

They could also agree to a payment schedule lower than the CARP calls for.

Agreed 100% and then some

[freeweed]

The most salient point in the article:

Perhaps what's worse is that this government program almost encourages piracy. Think about it. If you buy blank media whose price has been increased by a levy, you've got to rip some copyrighted material to get your money's worth. The artists are getting paid from the levy anyway, so you might as well steal their music, right?

I've tried. I really have. I've bought and paid for every damn thing of mine, all legally. I've also bought a hell of a lot of cd-r's, for backing up my legally made (ie: by me) software, photos, video, you name it. I've spent years watching everyone get in on the free ride, and I thought that somehow if I avoided it all, I wouldn't be caught in the backlash. I personally hate the recording industry, and as such, I've not bought anything released in years. Voting with my wallet, you could say. I've also voted to keep the current idiots in power AWAY from Ottawa each time (so much for that doing anything).

And now, the Federal Government is basically telling me to fuck off and die, because it knows that I must be pirating music!

That's it. I give. I hereby declare myself a wanton pirate, and will do my damndest to spread every bit of music that I can. Obviously the creators of it figure I pirate anyway, and would rather just make their money off of blank media, so they must not mind. The Government, having no right to even be involved in the issue, let alone taxing it, is also telling me to pirate all that I can. Fine. From hereon in, every single cdr I buy will be dedicated solely to the copying and distribution of pirated music.

Happy now?

Webcasting

[Sloppy]

Specifically, CARP wants to charge very steeply--punitively--for broadcasting music on the Net

This is incorrect. The copyright office can't do a damned thing about broadcasting music on the net. Nor does CARP. All it addresses is broadcasting someone else's content to other people.

I am pretty convinced that the part of the real reason the xxAA organizations are trying to outlaw things like camcorders and associate music file formats with crime, is that they fear competition from low-budget production, since now, thanks to the Internet, those low-budget producers have just as good of an infrastructure for distribution as the old monopolies did. But it is pure dishonesty to try to pretend that webcasting RIAA music fits into this scheme. When you're playing someone else's music, you're not part of any "creative commons." Copying ain't creativity.

And if you are doing something creative (exactly the kind of stuff RIAA fears) CARP doesn't effect you. If you're making music, you can webcast your music. If you're helping local underground bands, then when you're talking with them at the local bar after the show, you get their permission. They're not going to charge you thousands of dollars. They're people, chat with them.

All this whining about CARP killing webcasting, is total bullshit. If CARP effects you, then you're part of the problem. You're just publicizing the megacorps' products. I don't know why you'd want to do that, or why RIAA doesn't want you to do that, but I don't care. You're still just a tool.

Re:Webcasting

[Sloppy]

Hopefully that one will be beaten

It already has. MPEG is still a problem when you're talking about video, but when it comes to audio, they're not a player anymore. Use Ogg and you don't have to pay anyone.

About the ZDNet Article

[Hackysack]

I'd comment on their site, but I don't trust them with my email address...

Here's what I wrote before their system figured out that sadasdasdasd@asdasdasda.asdasd was a bad address ;)

---Begin---
Advertizers can bite me, and I say that as the owner of a web site which used to depend on advertizing revenue. (actually, oddly enough it was the company that now is Zdet that was providing our ads)

This was a year and a half ago during the final days of "we guarantee a sell out, $2.00 /CPM.

anyhow, we went from pulling revenue of $70,000 a month to nothing inside of 30 days when ZDnet pulled the ad contract from us (new economy, nothing nefarious like content problems).

8 Months ago we moved to a premium subscription model, now we have over 25,000 subscribers. Revenue is much more stable than it ever was during the Advertizing phase.

We still run advertizing on the site, but it's there to mostly convince people to pay to get rid of it, since we make about 100x more off a viewer who pays than a viewer who sees the ads.

Yes, we're an awful demographic. But in the end, the fact that we serve some 60 Million Ads a month should account for more than $3,000 revenue (which is all we get for ads these days)

So, the advertizers can do whatever the heck they like, but untill they're willing to pay more than the individual is willing to pay me to not see the ads, the can lick at the heels of people who don't buy things online as far as I'm concerned.

It's not short sighted. It's called comminity building. Many people will pay $2.00 a month to get rid of the ads on their favorite site. How many advertizers are willing to pay $2.00 for every viewer that comes to your site in a month?

The advertizers can reap the seeds they sewed.

~a
---End---

Re:They should give a cut to free software authors

[liquidsin]

I posted the same thing when this came up the other day, but I was actually serious. Why should the recording artists get all of the 'tax' when some of us aren't burning music, we're burning ISOs of our favourite distros. I want to see all the 'tax' *I* pay on CD-R's go to Debian (and the good folks at IPcop.org, who make a hell of a nice firewall/router, and which is residing on a few cds around here somewhere...)

Lunar forked, but SGL lives on...

[phraktyl]

While the folks at Lunar did indeed fork, and take half of the SGL users along with them, Sorcerer Linux still lives on even without Kyle's leadership. Indeed, in the past week, it has undergone massive changes in management when Kyle tried to remove the distro all together, and many of us stepped up to the plate to keep the project going.

While we are still growing into the project, we have accomplished a great deal in a week, and are planning great things for Sorcerer. It is a great distro, and we are fighting to keep it as such.

Wyatt Draggoo

My petition submission:

[Com2Kid]

Holy shnitz, I just now realized that I spent the last 40 minutes writting this.

Cruds, I have a final due in English too. . . .

Ah oh well; here it goes. It is rather long mind you. I am submitting this through the petition that www.beethoven.com has running.

(begin paste)

As a citizen who believes in the rights of independent artisans to create their own works, I am highly opposed to the ideas for regulation recently introduced by the CARP report.

Art is something that should be free to be spread to all should the artist be willing. While I do not support or condone illegal music broadcasts in any form or by any medium, I do believe that if an artist working under no other contract chooses to release his or her work to the public domain that those who seek to fulfill the artist's wishes and spread that work of art should be allowed to do so with no extra fines or fees levied upon them.
Charging money for Web broadcasts of works in the public domain (let us ignore for the moment works that should not be distributed without proper royalties being paid) is the same as charging me money for putting up a painting in my living room and inviting my friends and family over to view it.

In fact it is even worse then that.

For in this case the painting is one that I was given freely by a friend, or even one that I may have painted myself.

An enactment of the regulations put forth by the CARP report or the enactment of any regulations similar to those, would be tantamount to charging an artist a fee just for painting.

Or charging a musician a fee just for playing their songs for free to anybody who is willing to listen.
This is the equivalent to the long feared Thought Crimes. Except that this is a viewing crime, a listening crime. But instead of charging each individual listener, instead the creator or the distributor of the work is charged instead.

If a United States Citizen opened up his or her house as a museum and allowed artists to freely put up works of art within the house, and allowed other fellow citizens to visit his or her house viewing these works of art, no mention of fees would be involved. In fact it would be quite likely that the citizen who worked to hard to create such a wondrous endeavor for his or her fellow citizens would have their museum granted with not for profit status and be given support by the government at a variety of levels to continue in the wonderful task that he or she is accomplishing.

Indeed, if a citizen pays for with their own money and sets up a radio station to support local artists for no fee, then that individual would be heralded as being a good hardworking samaritan who is doing his or her best to support the arts. Indeed many of the various taxations and regulator fees that are applicable to commercial radio stations would be bypassed and declared unapplicable to this wondrous spreader of the arts.

But under these regulations, if the same citizen guided by the same motivations sets up an online Internet webcasting station and pays for all of the equipment and server fees him or her self, if this United States Citizen dedicates their time and energy to giving freely available public domain artwork out to all for their enjoyment and enrichment;

now this person would be charged potentially thousand of dollars a month in regulatory fees.

This is wrong. Plain and simply, it is wrong. Dedication, hard work, and sacrifice towards an ideal should never in the lands of a free country be grounds for doing no less then what amounts to punishing a person.

This, this, hopefully what I have said, shall help to convince you that charging fees for none commercial entities is wrong.

But what about commercial entities?

I have no problems with fees levied as a portion of an organizations income. And indeed if that Organization is making even a portion of their income off of works of which the rights to are owned by another organization or person, then the profiteering organization should indeed pay a portion of their income in both federal taxes and in royalty fees to those of whom's work they are making a profit of.

But never should a company or an organization be charged more in regulatory fees or taxes or royalties then that organization is bringing in.

Indeed we all know that it is foolishness to charge anybody at a 200% tax rate. Indeed this is detrimental to all. The government itself shall find itself of reduced income after the organization being taxed to such an exorbitant extent is put out of business. It is not good practice to raise chickens, wait for the first batch of eggs to come through, and then kill all of the chickens.

The competitors also lose. They lose money and potential future talent. For it is by the smaller organizations, from free none profit art museums to small for profit radio stations that new and upcoming talents are revealed. The market itself can be carefully gauged from the responses that these new and upcoming artists receive.

Indeed, if Seattle Washington had not had outlets for independent bands to play their music in and gain popularity at, then Universal Music Group (a subsidiary or Universal Studios) would itself have been shortened a few millions dollars a year in revenue for quite number of years by the band Nirvana alone. This is not even taking into account the numerous other musicians who started there way in local clubs and moved up to small independent labels until they were able to eventually make it big so to speak and infuse the U.S. economy with the money that their fans spent on their CDs, Concerts, and other merchandise.

Had those musicians had to pay out thousands of dollars a month just for the right for other people to listen to them, then we all would be a bit poorer.

That the independent labels existed and were fairly taxed according to their profits and nothing else was the sole criteria responsible for allowing many worthwhile artists to align themselves with the major publishers.

The independent artistry industries are ones that we all rely on, and I dare say that one that we all need to continue to survive. My very own art teacher has yet to become a successful world renowned painter, but the money that she makes by selling her works through independent channels has allowed for her to pursue a teaching carrier in which she has the possibility, the potential, to teach artistry to someone who may very well be the next Grand Master of painting.

We can never know if that shall happen or not, but the ever lasting hope that it can happen, that it will happen, the knowledge that it has happened before, that the next great Artists born unto this world shall be an American, is what encourages us to keep going a system which allows for free and open potential and possibility for all.

Over taxing that industry, removing even once source of that potential, is to let that dream, that hope, those aspirations of not just the many, but those aspirations of the all; die.

Please, vote to instead levy only fair and reasonable taxes upon Internet Music Broadcasters. Removing them from business is to remove so much more.

*(End Paste)*

There it is, how do you like it? :)

Re:It's already too late to cancel the tarriff

[innocent_white_lamb]

(1) The Board must certify a tariff and set a levy.

There is no legal reason why a tarriff of 0% could not be set. It's set. It's just 0%. It's been done before in regard to the GST. Some goods are taxable for GST purposes but the tax is zero-rated (I believe that's the term). I think "medical devices" (eyeglasses, hearing aids and the like) fall into that category.

you are incorrect

[Preposterous Coward]

GPS signals are quite easily jammable or disruptible. Here is an example from Defense Daily News:

Jamming is the most common mode of intentional disruption. Russian handheld 4-watt jammers are said to disrupt the signal over an area 100 nautical miles in radius. Jamming devices are available and can be easily built, Carroll said. One-watt jammers, the size of a Coke can, can easily be moved around and deployed. "There is a fairly large GPS disruption industry," he said. (full story)

Using the inverse-square law, this implies that a kilowatt transmitter could disrupt GPS over an area of about 1,500 miles in radius. Admittedly, line-of-sight limitations would probably make a wide-range jammer impractical unless you could get it to altitude as you suggest -- but in any case, it would hardly take a nuclear EMP to impact the efficacy of the GPS system over a large portion of Europe.

Here's one other thought-provoking item, from Aviation International News:

Carroll also stressed the danger of "spoofing," where false GPS signals could slowly divert an aircraft off track, undetected by the pilot. This could be hazardous during an approach. Current civil receiver designs cannot counter spoofing and few provide immediate failure warnings, Carroll noted, so he proposed that new certification standards be developed. (full story)

They can? How?

[marnanel]

They can? How?

Selective Availability

[Fencepost]

The US civilian GPS system supports something called Selective Availability or SA. Basically, it's possible for them to "degrade" the satellite signals slightly to make it much more difficult to get an accurate position reading. In addition it's possible to temporarily disable satellites in such a way as to prevent GPS from being used in a particular area, though this has a noticeable effect on accuracy in surrounding areas as well ("surrounding" = somewhere between 25% and 50% of the Earth's surface). Differential GPS (DGPS) is a way to eliminate the effects of SA for a local area, but requires a DGPS transmitter at a fixed location and additional hardware on each receiver.

Note that all of this applies to the civilian system - the GPS satellites also send out a separate (and encrypted) signal that can be used only with military GPS receivers. Those receivers include both decryption information which must be refreshed every 6 months and a quick 2-3 finger way to flush that information if the receiver is about to fall into enemy hands. All of this means that civilian GPS can be turned off completely without preventing the US military from using it. There are also other limitations in civilian equipment (won't work above 50,000 feet and/or 1000mph, etc.) to make it less suitable for some military use.

Until relatively recently, SA was always on, generally with an accuracy of around 50 meters. That meant basically that 95+% of the time the position reported by a GPS receiver was within 50 meters of the actual position of that receiver. SA can be turned up much higher to at least the 250-300 meter mark. The one exception for SA was actually during the Gulf War, when there were not enough military receivers available to meet demand. For a time, SA was turned off so that the military could conveniently use civilian GPS hardware. More recently (2-3 years ago, during the Clinton administration), SA was turned off or at least down to a minimal level, so consumer units can get an accuracy of 3-5 meters with only the satellite signals. SA is the reason that many civilian receivers have an "average position" function - the best way to get an accurate position was to leave the receiver on and averaging for a day or two.

A concern for foreign governments and at times for the US FAA has been that military control of the availability and accuracy of the signals - no foreign military wants to be dependent on the US for something vital, and the FAA was looking at ways to do more flight automation and didn't like the possibility that they might someday have automated planes landing using GPS when something happened and the military tweaked or turned off the signals. The foreign solution was to build their own system, which the Europeans have been talking about for years now (the Russian GLONASS system was never finished and isn't as accurate as the US system). The FAA solution was to look at putting up one or two satellites of their own, effectively acting as differential GPS transmitters to let aircraft filter out the effects of SA.

Really all of this is a consequence of the system being at its heart a US military system and everyone understanding that what they want is for the most part irrelevant to the US military.

There is (or was) a fairly active Usenet group for discussion of all this at sci.geo.satellite-nav .