Slashdot Mirror
ACLU Files New DMCA Challenge
joeblowme writes "Finally, someone is stepping up to the plate to challenge the DMCA. The ACLU is filing a lawsuit on behalf of a 22-year-old programmer claiming that the law hinders the ability to effectively test internet filtering software. The story can be found here at CNet. Hopefully this will lead to one victory in reducing the scope of the DMCA." The ACLU's press release is available, as is their complaint.
i'm glad the ACLU is stepping up to the plate on this one. good that they're on Bruce Perens' side too. renew your membership today!
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
I usually cannot stand the ACLU. IMHO I feel like they usually get involved in issues that they really don't belong in because of the publicity they recieve. I hope this isn't the case here. I see their power and finances being a great benefit to the fight against the DMCA. I hope they can help fight for rights that I feel like we should have here in the US.
/me has my fingers crossed.
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
You mean that guy is paid to download porn all day?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
an interview, and more information on Edelman (the programmer/researcher) can be found here here.
The site has been semi slashed. Reading now. OK. Sounds like a long shot to mee. The courts haven't helped before. Why should they now? We need to get this thing repealled in it's present form.
In Legal First, ACLU Sues Over New Copyright Law: Says Blocking Program Lists Should Be Revealed
t ure.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, July 25, 2002
NEW YORK-In the first challenge of its kind, the American Civil Liberties Union today asked a federal court in Massachusetts to rule that a computer researcher has First Amendment and "fair use" rights to examine the full list of sites contained in an Internet blocking program and to share his research tools and results with others.
The ACLU said the lawsuit has relevance not only for researchers but for parents and other consumers - including thousands of schools and libraries - who want to know what the software is actually blocking.
Reseacher Benjamin Edelman wants to take a closer look at N2H2's Internet blocking program.
"Current copyright law and blocking software licenses prevent consumers from looking under the hood of the blocking products they buy," said Ann Beeson, Litigation Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program and lead counsel in the case. "These products do not work as advertised, and consumers have a right to know what they're really buying," she said.
The ACLU legal papers filed today seek a "declaratory judgment" from the court on behalf of researcher Benjamin Edelman, who wishes to examine a controversial blocking program manufactured by N2H2 Inc., of Seattle.
The lawsuit challenges provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and the non-negotiable N2H2 license, which forces buyers to accept a "fine print" contract saying they won't attempt to access the list of blocked sites.
"Especially when governments in the U.S. and abroad mandate the use of blocking programs, the public has a right to know what is being blocked, and I believe I have a right to uncover this information without being subject to a corporate lawsuit," said Edelman, a computer expert and consultant who currently works for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. Edelman is suing as an individual and not on behalf of the Berkman Center or Harvard Law School.
Earlier this year, Edelman provided expert testimony in an ACLU challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act, a federal law passed in December 2000 that ties crucial library funding to the mandated use of blocking programs on Internet terminals used by both adults and minors in public libraries. The court overturned the law, which is now on direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
N2H2 refused Edelman's request for a list of their blocked sites and intervened in the trial to prevent disclosure of other confidential information in open court. The court granted this request, but later unsealed the testimony, ruling that it did not warrant trade secret protection. Without a court ruling that his continued research is protected under the law, Edelman said he fears the company's aggressive actions make clear that he would be sued.
According to the ACLU legal complaint, N2H2 controls a significant portion of the library market, and its blocking program is used by at least five state governments, including Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that over 65,000 public schools used some sort of blocking program in the year 2001, and N2H2's 2001 annual report claims that over 40 percent of those schools (attended by over 16 million students) currently use N2H2's program, making the company the leader in the education market.
Human rights groups are also seeking information on the lists of Web sites blocked by repressive foreign governments that are increasingly using blocking programs to limit citizens' access to the outside world. Edelman's other research has investigated usage of blocking software in China and Saudi Arabia. N2H2 is one of the blocking program vendors currently competing for the contract to supply Saudi Arabia with blocking technology to prevent its citizens from accessing sites about religion, health, education, humor, and entertainment.
Although the DMCA provides a limited exception for accessing lists of blocked Web sites, Beeson said that it is meaningless because another provision blocks users from writing the software tools necessary to access the lists.
"The copyright law says you can look under the hood under certain circumstances but you can't build a tool needed to open the hood," Beeson said. "This irrational rule is chilling important scientific research in violation of the First Amendment."
The lawsuit, Edelman v. N2H2, Inc., was filed in federal district court in Boston, MA. Attorneys in the case are Beeson, Christopher Hansen and Kevin Bankston of the national ACLU.
The ACLU's legal complaint is online at http://www.aclu.org/court/edelman.pdf
A Web feature on the case, with links to Edelman's research, is online at http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/Edelman_N2H2_fea
A Web feature on the ACLU's challenge to CIPA is online at http://www.aclu.org/features/f032001a.html
Edelman's research on the use of blocking programs by foreign governments is online at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering
Several years ago (pre dot-bomb), I had a friend who worked in Cupertino at Spyglass Software, makers of SurfWatch. While she had a variety of duties, her primary job was to review site-block requests sent in from SurfWatch users, and as time permitted, web surf looking for sites not accounted for in the SurfWatch "blocked" database. She'd sometimes spend four or five hours a day looking primarily for new XXX sites.
;-)
I remember she said it was bizarre to walk into an office where everyone was hard at work with hardcore pr0n on their screens.
err, I suppose that was an unforgivable pun.
-A.
What did the walrus say to the penguin? "No soap, radio."
On the other hand, the ACLU tends to get lots of attention, so more people should become aware of the DMCA.
Watch out DMCA, its a trap!
But, lets extend this a little. There is also issues of consumer protection, where you purchase a product, but then talk about how bad it is, that could violate a term in a license agreement. Or, it could do damage to your hardware and data, but you can get that fixed for a fee. Both these situations could violate a state's consumer protection act.
Fight Spammers!
It only took them a decade or so to realize that there were free speech issues online.
Best Slashdot Co
...couldn't the lawsuit be considered a circumvention device?
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
card carrying member of the ACLU, (I stopped donating because of their defense of MAMBLA)It's good to see them fight a worthy cause.
It means the squirrel is a "friendly," and is desperately trying to communicate to you that there is going to be a mass rodent revolt any day now. They'll chew through the hoses in your car engine, knock over your bicycle, eat the center out of all your bread (leaving just the crusts), and vomit all over the house.
Jesus, get out of there! And take that hero squirrel with you, they'll skin him alive if they find out he ratted!
Second of all, I'm wondering why the ACLU gets such a bad rap here on ./, a place that seems to stand by some of the same basic principles that the organization swears by.
It's interesting how people tend to not like an organiztion which is interested primarily in defending some of the basic tenets of the US constitution.
The ACLU gets involved in many many issues which you do not hear about. Many of these are not "sexy" issues, which make news. For instance, they were recently involved with protecting the rights of Haitian refugess, basically preventing people from being deported into deplorable situations. Sure, many of you don't like the idea of immigrants, even though 99.9% of you (in the US) are descended from immigrants, but it is the basic principles of protection from tyranny of the majority that the ACLU defends.
This particular issue is of direct relevance to /. as they are going after legislation which most here (rightly) hate. However, they exist largely to protect the public from the "mob mentality" that often ignores the rights of many groups whose opinions are in the minority.
Witness their actions regarding the USA PATRIOT act; a ridiculous bill which basically removes many basic freedoms guaranteed in the constitution under the rubrick of protecting us from enemies. Sure there may be a point to trying to be better protected, but I'm of the view that if you remove freedom, there's very little left to protect.
Sure the ACLU ends up getting involved with issues that may end up pissing off some their own constituencies (e.g. Skokie) but it's the principles of freedom that they stand for, not just the rhetoric.
If you're going to bash the ACLU, then provide an alternative.
I can't believe it's not lard!
In my opinion, this doesn't seem like it'll get too far. They need to apply their energies somewhere with a far greater chance of success (video/audio copyprotection that prevents consumers from viewing/listening to products they purchase). It may just be that I don't read the right news sites, but it seems to me that this area has largely been ignored. People complain about the dmca, but they don't seem to want to challenge it in court on valid points. For example, I bought a dvd, i happen to like freebsd, and I don't own a dvd player up at school except for the one on my computer. What happens when I want to view it? I'm not allowed to? Didn't I purchase the right to view that dvd? I didn't purchase the right to copy it and give it to all my friends, that is illegal, and is made illegal under existing laws. The DMCA is redundant and excessive. They make it illegal not just to copy something but to have the means to copy something. Should photocopiers and printers be made illegal? I can scan in and print out a copyrighted book and distribute it to my friends using these tools.
The problem is that our nation has become a nation of corporations and organizations.
We are a nation of individuals with individual rights.
The government has no business making it illegal to do things that have been legal since the beginning of our nation. We have always been allowed to read books, and until recently we have been allowed to view and listen to movies and music which we purchase.
Hmm, this turned into a bit of a rambling rant, sorry.
We have a tool that decrypts the n2h2 list. My office is next to the guy that wrote it...He said it took like an hour to figure out how to decrypt it and twenty minutes to get a working prototype of his little program. Of course this is more about the legal side of doing that.
look two posts higher on the page -- same thing
See, that's why I gave money. That's why I'm literally a card carrying menber of the ACLU.
I actually joined after 9/11 cuz the religious right was freaking me out. This most recent news is just extra. I'll be giving them money again this year.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
I think the ACLU is actually going to have a pretty good chance at this. They have a well informed client who can explain the technology to the court. That is a key aspect to many of the cases involving high tech. If you let the other side dictate the education of the court on the technology, you're hosed. But with the client being an expert witness I'd have to say they're set up pretty good. I'm sure they have also done their research and are in a venue/ court that will be more open to their arguments. Best of luck to them though, its still going to be a dogfight!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It seems to me that the DMCA is going to win on constitutionality... However, what if we the people could sue the US gov't under the DMCA? What if we made some weak encryption, and then passed some copyrighted materials around that happen to be illegal... so the US gov't intercepts our transmission, breaks the encryption and then arrests someone with the "evidence"... and said person countersues under the DMCA saying you can't admit that as evidence, it was discovered by breaking the copy protection mechanism I put on it, and if you admit it it will be available publicly its a copyrighted work. (I don't know what we could encrypt that would be illegal enough to cause all this to happen.. but its a thought.. probably not a good one, so mod it down or whatever..) but the only way I see this law getting overturned at this point is for it to interfere with a gov't investigation/prosecution of terrorism or something. (al quaida should start copyrighting all of their transmission inside the US).
I really don't understand the ACLU's strategy here. Aren't people already allowed to do this kind of research thanks to the librian of congress's decision on exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention scheme?
If he's already allowed to do this type of research, what harm is the ACLU basing their decision on? Won't they just get thrown out of court for bringing an issue that isn't ripe for decision? (i.e. that has no consequences, because the librarian of congress has already crafted an exemption for this research)
Support for this case... how can we support it?
Where do I send an e-mail?
&
Where do I send a hand written letter?
Let me (us) know and I'm lickin' stamps. It's the LEAST I (we) can do, and I'd rather do something than just reading about it. I know, I know, hope and pray for the universe to hit a state of harmony in order for the courts to see the evil-doing(TM) in the DMCA, that'll help too!
At least living in a squirrelarchy will be better than living under the rule of George W. Bush.
Do not eat this sig.
Even sent them the recommended $270 for a year. Almost immediately I got tons of letters practically demanding that I be more generous. I decided they were wasting my money and ignored them from then on. I also was a bit ticked when they supported sending that 17 (?) year old kid back to Russia with his parents after he'd lived here for some time and didn't want to go back, and would be an adult in just a year. But it was the obnoxious dunning letters that got my goat.
Infuriate left and right
I mean honestly who do you cheer for here? The ACLU is notorious for picking extremely foolish topics and going after them like its some pressing political issue.
You know the stories I am talking about. "The ACLU has filed suit on the State of Florida for being called the Sunshine State. Mark Walbourne is allergic to the sun and feels inadiquate that he lives in Florida and people refer to it as the Sunshine State in his presence."
Its probably not popular to the slashdot crowd, but the ACLU is just as weak-minded and lame as the DMCA
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
Well you basically pointed out exactly WHY a lot of people hate the ACLU. Protecting HATIANS? Hello, it's the AMERICAN civil liberties union. I am all for immigration.. LEGAL immigration.. not illegal immigration. The ACLU also are race warlords. They like to group people into race/sex/sexual prefrence etc. instead of treating people as individuals. I could go on, but it's time for lunch :)
Nothing gets past you, Sherlock.
You realize, of course, that the site actually is an ACLU membership application.
Good on you for keeping the trolls down, even when they're being informative.
What is the meaning of telling the age of the programmer in this story?
Corporations already have a remedy if someone misuses protected material--a civil suit.
Of course, that is cost-prohibitive to the corporations. Why sue someone over a $10 CD's worth of music.
But:
A criminal remedy is just a civil remedy that the government pays for.
Ta da.
-- Paul
I'm sure this has been tried at some point or another. Anyone know what the legal results were?
Oh goodness me! You have to push the wheel on your mouse two or three more times to get past a posted article. Poor, poor baby!
Someone stop the planet. If there are people like this here, I want to leave.
The ACLU is a bunch of ultra left wing liberals (read communists). Blah......
I am calling for a boycott of Michael Sims, America's number one enemy in the fight against anti-anti-censorware, until he gives me an apology for his rampant goatse'ing and usurping of the Censorware Project , my pride and joy.
Frankly, I'm shocked that I am not revered by all of Slashdot. My contributions to the world of anti-censorware research are comparable to the contributions of Jesus Christ to the field of religion. I won more awards from that project than Michael won in his whole damned life.
Do not underestimate me. I will be heard.
Though this message is posted anonymously, I will attest to it and verify it if needed. Other message posted by similar-looking accounts, or not attested, are frauds. - Seth Finklestein, uid#90154
Don't you mean NAMBLA?
Before taking up this DMCA case, which NAMBLA organization did the ACLU defend?
Will I retire or break 10K?
..their own publication: The Year in Civil Liberties. The 2000 one is not organized as effectively, so you should check out one of the older ones first, like 1999.
Perhaps the most striking thng one notices about the ACLU, uppon browsing these documents, is the large number of cases involving schools and children. I don't know about you, but I remember a very strong undercurrent of civil rights violations from high school. Not necissarily anything as bad as the cases that ACLU takes, but educators and legislators have demonstrated time and again an almost total disrespect for the constitutional rights of minors.
The bottom line about the ACLU is that if the government (including when a person/corperation is using government power) is significantly infringing on your rights, there is a very good chance the ACLU will support your possition. They might not want to send a lawyer, but you can oftin get freidn of the court breifs and simillar things."
Does anyone else croggle at the irony in this? A test-case against an overly-restrictive law, for the benefit of testing software used to restrict access.
Ah, well... we'll take 'em where we can get 'em. ANY ruling that goes against the DMCA is a good start, and even a case that loses can serve to publicise the DMCA's faults.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Where do I send an e-mail? Where do I send a hand written letter?
If you want to contact those 535 Americans who have the power to get rid of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's circumvention ban once and for all, you may contact them here:
Write Your Representative
Write Your Senators
Will I retire or break 10K?
Read through the body of the DMCA listed in the complaint. There is a specific loophole incorporated on the recommendation of the Librarian of Congress that makes lists of websites blocked by software a special class of copyrighted works and gives users of those works special rights. (Or rather, gives their rights more protection.)
Seems likely that this case might fall neatly under that section of the DMCA and therefore not be the DMCA-buster we all want it to be. (Although the incredibly restrictive EULA is another matter perhaps...)
I met Ben at the Internet Law Program at the Berkman Center earlier this summer. I was hoping something like this would happen; he'll make an ideal defendant.
In a test case like this, what we're looking for is an unimpeachable plaintiff -- someone whose motives can't really be questioned, who actually has a good reason to want to do what he's doing, who has great credentials, and who's really bright. They've got that in Ben; he basically has the clout of Harvard University behind him. Not to mention the near-total respect of everyone at the Berkman Center; they refer to him as their "boy genius".
There is one potential problem: he's already written software that does nearly what he wants to do without violating the DMCA. For the ACLU's last test case on filtering, he wrote a script that tried to access everything in non-porn categories of Yahoo's directory, keeping track of what it wasn't able to access. This is a reasonably good (though not perfect) method of determining the contents of the blocked-sites list. We have to hope that the court doesn't decide that scripts like the one Ben already wrote are "good enough," and that there is no legitimate research need to create and disseminate a program that decrypts the list itself.
I was thinking that all othe News Channels, except Fox, were biased to the left...
weird...2 different perceptions of the same thing.
The above messge is posted by a troll.
The real Seth Finkelstein doesn't want
to say anything in this discussion, due
to the multitude of legal implications.
Wow, excellent question...
Oh wait, no it isn't. RTFA!!!!
From the article:
Filter-hacking protections
There is some legal immunization for blocking-software researchers. When enacting the DMCA in 1998, Congress ordered the Library of Congress to weigh exemptions to the law's broad prohibition against circumventing copy-protection techniques.
In October 2000, the Library of Congress ruled that "the case has been made for an exemption for compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications."
But that exemption explicitly does not permit a researcher to write and distribute software that decodes the encrypted blacklists. Because Edelman wants to do just that, the ACLU argues, the Library of Congress' decision is insufficient.
The DMCA's limited exemption for some forms of reverse-engineering also does not apply, the lawsuit claims. According to the DMCA, reverse-engineering must be done for "the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program" necessary to create similar software.
Because Edelman's purpose is instead to critique filtering software, the ACLU says, he could be liable under the DMCA unless the court intervenes.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
These are apparently the thoughts that dominate the minds of America's lawmakers.
You know it's true.
Slashdot does not have a consensus on the value of the ACLU, "basic principles", the quality of various operating systems or programming languages, the best drugs to take while coding, or just about anything else.
The reason why some people dont like the aclu boils down very simply to racism. Racism is still with us unfortunately.
The ACLU's job usually involves protecting the weak, because:
1. their civil liberties get infringed most often
2. they usually cannot afford their own lawyers.
Well the weak often end up being minorities. Of course that is not always true and many non whites have been protected by the aclu.
But in any event their actions of protecting minorities irks a lot of people, especially after these actions have been duly lied about by various media.
But you cannot blame it all on right wing media. Many people are racist, and thats it.
"I don't want to go to jail," said Edelman, who graduated from Harvard in June, and who plans to study law there this fall. "I want to go to law school."
He want to be a lawyer?
Motion Denied. Case Closed.
/. Where the truth
Now that Traficant has finally been kicked out.
Nope, no sig
IIRC, they gave Hillary Rosen (of RIAA fame) an award for protecting free speech rights.
You're right, they did... in 1997. Perhaps you aren't deliberately being trollish, but the water shouldn't be muddied to fool people into thinking the ACLU agrees with Rosen's more recent behavior.
Of course, you do realize that it's only do to your rabid frothing wild-eyed constant bullshit-spewing and stalking of michael for the last few years that it's a believable troll, right? You made your bed, now you get to lie in it. Had you and michael kept your lover's quarrels private, you wouldn't have to see this. But no, you had to stalk your ex-boyfriend, and now you get to live with the results.
That companies that operate in the United States are helping foreign governments to censor their citizen's internet access. Not only are they working counter to the stated purposes of the United States government, but they're working to instill the kind of xenophobia and insular thinking that have led to the current generation of terrorist leaders. I, for one, am glad to know that my tax dollars support a company like N2H2 that is doing it's best to keep countries like Saudi Arabia from being accountable to their citizens by helping to filter REAL news away from those citizens. Any country that wants to filter the Internet (an on-demand communications tool at its core) has something it wishes to hide from those citizens. If the United States is truly as supportive of open and transparent government as we say we are (and I'm guardedly optimistic about our commitment) we would press criminal charges against companies that comport themselves in this manner.
Whoever moderated this to Troll should be banned from moderation. Obviously an ACLU supporter that doesn't want opposing viewpoints to be heard - so much for free speech, huh?
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Time will tell. If the ACLU just wants an exception to the anti-circumvention clause and doesn't seek to overturn it entirely, wouldn't this do more harm than good? Asking for an exception would be like agreeing with the DMCA otherwise, it seems.
In the exemptions to circumvention, the Librarian of Congress includes:
Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsolescence.
The obsolence of Win95 prohibts me from installing new software. Would this give me the legal right to circumvent the security measures that prohibit me from making the proper adjustments to the OS to allow said program to install and run properly?
Or am I misinterpreting this?
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
Real link is http://forms.aclu.org/contribute/contribute.cfm
w hich SUPRISE! forwards you to Virtual Sprockets, who handles the credit card info and everything. So you know! shrugs, for once crollercoaster was telling the truth. Of course once you pay at virtual sprockets you get a free peak as a goatse link.
the ACLU had a pretty bad rap in the late 80's and early 90's for fighting for things many people in America disliked. (ACLU was anti school prayer, very pro abortion, I know there was others but I can't remember them) Basically getting into subjects that split the nation, and don't nessesarly have a definate constitutional mandate but simply an interpretation. Anyways, nowadays they tend to not be as extremly left wing as they used to be. But they havn't really tried to gain any PR with the middle line conservatives. Which they could do if they tried, but they arn't. Most conservatives have no idea that they have changed at all, and only recently have I figured this out myself. Though I'm still not quite sure if I should donate or not, as I used to think they were a bunch of jerks. So you know.
So basically, are you saying you don't mind if people are deported into a deporable living environment if they are "foreigners"?
No new precedent will be set. Previous rulings will be used to apply to all items at issue here, and he won't get all the rulings he hopes for (will just have to take his chances).
- His purchase of the software will enable him to use it as property (sold not licensed), so he won't be affected by "contractual" EULA terms.
- The DMCA won't be affected; he will get words from the judge similar to previous cases, saying that if he writes his own code to decrypt the list it's fine; if he publishes the list he discovered, that's also fine; if he distributes his code he's in violation of the DMCA.
- Many of the claims will be dismissed for a 'lack of standing to challenge the court' as the article described happened to Felten.
But, I'll be following this with interest -- anyone got opinions on whether the judge will be forced to get into the "source code vs object code issue"?
We need to make an example of how crazy the DMCA is.
You know how you can camoflauge writing using colored dots? well, come up with an "encryption" mechanism that hides messages using these colored dots.
When copied using a Black & White photocopier, the copier will be more sensitive to some colors, causing those colors to stand out more... Specifically, the colors making up the dots of the message. Making a photocopy would therefore "decrypt" the message! Bingo! illegal under DMCA!
Maybe an extreme example, but I'm sure there are many things out there that already exist that can be leveraged to show how insane the DMCA is.
Personally I don't like the ACLU because of their hypocricy. They claim to be defenders of the Constitution but they are quite selective about which parts of the Constitution to defend. To paint ACLU opponents as all closet racists is its own special type of bigotry.
While there isn't much call for a lot of 3rd amendment work, there certainly is a lot of call for 2nd amendment litigation. Even 1st amendment issues like the grossly bigoted Blaine amendments haven't attracted a lot of ACLU condemnation over the years and these anti-catholic efforts are enshrined in dozens of state constitutions.
When the ACLU is evenhanded in its defense of the Constitution, I'll take it all back. Until then, no money for them and they can talk to the hand.
So what you're saying is that if any one from a nasty country with sub-standard living conditions can make it to the USA that they should be allowed to stay? Wow that is bright! We have to protect the USA. The only way we can do that is by placing restrictions on immigration. Hey, if you want to come to the USA from a 3rd world country, go for it. But follow our laws and rules! We cannot handle the influx of immigrants that would come if we just said "ok, if your country sucks, you can come here and stay without any paperwork... just show up". And then it comes down to who decides what is "deploreable conditions". As Americans, we tend to think that not having 3 meals a day and not having McDonalds and BurgerKing is deplorable. Who sets the standard?
Well, it's about time. Not that I particularly like the ACLU, I generally don't. But they have a good track record of picking battles that can be won. And then winning them. And the DMCA is definitely one foe that deserves to lose, spectacularly.
So what you're saying is that if any one from a nasty country with sub-standard living conditions can make it to the USA that they should be allowed to stay? Wow that is bright! We have to protect the USA.
What are we protecting the USA from? From foreigners? That seems like a pretty racist view. There are some people (foreign and US-citizen) who are enemies of the USA, but certainly not everyone. I don't know you but I suspect the USA didn't feel the need to protect itself from your ancestors, regardless of how they were admitted into the country.
I support anyone's ability to come here without "paperwork". There is plenty of room in the USA for anyone who wants to enjoy the freedoms we have here.
His request was flatly refused because, according to an emailed reply from an N2H2 representative, "I am sure that you have enough intelligence to know that [the list] is proprietary information and will not be shared. I am also sure that life will some day bring you greater things to do with your time."
That's what the blocking software company sent to this guy when he requested the full blocking list.. I bet that guy's wishing he had been a bit more professional when he wrote that e-mail...
Sure, many of you don't like the idea of immigrants, even though 99.9% of you (in the US) are descended from immigrants
When you get right down to it we are all children of immigrants. Just because many of us in the united states have immigrated more recently doesn't mean that we want people flooding into the country by the millions.
Actually, current evidence points to the immigration of H. Sapiens from Eurasia to the Americas accross the Berings Straights land bridge in three separate waves from 7,000 to 40,000 years ago. Thus 100% of the /. readers in North and South America are "descended from immigrants". The only difference is in the number of generations since the immigration.
They are fighting for laws that were created, the seperation of church and state, the freedom to do what you want with your bodies... They were fighting against the role of the church creating laws, America is based on the fact that there is a seperation of church and state...or is supposed to be.
"Full sources for linux currently runs to about 200kB compressed" --Linus Torvalds 31-Jan-1992
Corporations can't hide "whatever the feel like hiding" bacause they give up that right for two privileges; the privilege of transferring legal liability to the corporation instead of the individuals who start it; and the privilege of selling products to consumers.
Once they decided to sell a product, the customers have the right to determine if the product works as advertised, or if it is a shoddy product that doesn't. And scholars and scientists have the right to examine and test the products to see how well they live up to the corporation's claims.
Say what you like about the ACLU, it could be worse. If it were the American Civil Engineer's Union, they'd just pour a lot of concrete on all of us and leave.
Examining the "Liberal Media" Claim: Journalists' Views on Politics, Economic Policy and Media Coverage
For the sake of the EFF I'm very glad that the ACLU is taking up this cause. The EFF has only so much money- far fewer people donate than you think- and money is their limiting resource: if they had more, they could take on more cases. Even with their limited budget (much, much smaller than the ACLU's) they fought the DMCA. Now they can move funds to equally important technology cases without fear that the DMCA is legally unopposed. Being ahead of the curve is expensive: you don't get the same sympathy donations from the general public. I've written it before: join the EFF so they'll be there (on principle *and* with enough funds) for You.
I can see that abortion is not something that is explicitly in the constitution, but I can't understand why people think that teacher- or administrator-led school prayer can be constitutional. The logic goes like this:
1) The 1st amendment says that Congress can't establish (that is, make official) a religion in the US.
2) Numerous court rulings have held that the bill of rights applies to state and local governments in addition to Congress. (If you disagree with that we'd all be pretty screwed, rights-wise, as the state gov's could suppress free speech, establish offical state churches, etc.)
3) Public schools are funded by the state and have their policies and agendas set by elected school boards (which are government bodies).
4) If a school official leads a prayer, then the government is telling citizens (students) that the religion associated with that prayer is correct, and therefore is establishing an official state religion.
Of course, nothing in the constitution or court precedent prevents a student from praying quietly to him/her self, or requesting accommodation to pray on his/her own outside of class.
jf
the ONLY charity (if you want to call it that) that is worth donating to is the ACLU. what they do for civil liberties is admirable.
Slashdot does not have a consensus on the value of the ACLU, "basic principles", the quality of various operating systems or programming languages, the best drugs to take while coding, or just about anything else.
Isn't there a statistic that says that 50% of all software projects fail? One wonders...
Looking at the ACLU's website, the only things I can find about spam are: several suggestions that they are looking closely at the problem and the proposed legislation, which is unarguably sound; and the assertion that the disputed e-mail in the Hamidi/Intel case is not spam, which does not seem to be supportive of spam in itself. Can you provide a current link to ACLU policy on spam?
The article linked to (from 1997) says that the many bills that seek to control commercial e-mail on the basis of content face First Amendment issues, and that state-specific legislation also has jurisdictional problems. Personally, I'd rather see spam fail for social and technical reasons, rather than legislative. Certainly if I had to choose between Free Speech and eliminating spam, I know what my choice would be.
Compared to paying the lawyers to bully for their clients interests, at $0.14 per share it may be cheaper to buy the company outright (N2H2) and then plunder its resources. An added benefit is the additional safe haven known as "competitive research" is gained in cracking open the filtering of competitive products. (Perhaps this can be used as a marketing tool to irritate the competitors a la Joe Isuzu "Does your product filter against..(porn of the hour)?" ; "How about the use of ...(circumvention tool)?")
i find the idea of illegal immigration to be silly..
just because some government came along, drew some imaginary lines, certain people are "legal" and certain people are "illegal"?
thats silly.. people are not illegal...
I just gave the ACLU $250 this morning. Vote with your voice or your pocketbook! The multinational corporations already do..
cpeterso
I don't need to deal with this harassment. If Seth Finkelstein (a subtle misspelling of my name, Seth Finklestein) wants to question my identity, he can do so while logged in. Otherwise, Michael Sims posting anonymously, stop bothering me.
Courts don't usually like cases like these, because they are entirely hypothetical:
We plan to do X, and we're afraid that we will be sued and/or prosecuted under laws Y. Can you please tell us whether or not X will be legal?
The problem is, you can come up with any number of possible X and Y's of this form and ask a court for an opinion. Courts would be swamped if they had to rule on every possibility like this. Courts prefer to deal with actual disputes, not hypothetical ones. They may throw this whole thing out on that basis.
In this particular case, while Edelman *plans* to pursue this research, don't forget that he's entering Harvard Law School in a couple of months. From what I've heard, that's a pretty challenging program. He may not have that much time on his hands to pursue his hobby of saving the world. So until he actually engages in the activity, it is all hypothetical.
Further, while the suit envisions various responses that N2H2 and/or the government might bring, based on the DMCA and the license agreement, these are again entirely hypothetical. If the court does rule on these matters, nothing would prevent N2H2 from proceeding on other grounds not anticipated by the ACLU. So the court would be faced with the same lawsuit twice, and its efforts to rule on the hypothetical case would turn out to have been a waste of time.
In the end, ruling on hypothetical actions and hypothetical responses usually involves too much uncertainty to make the effort worth the court's time. Sometimes they will do it if it is a sufficiently important case, but more often they'll say, come back when there is an actual dispute with facts on the table. That's basically what happened with the Felten case, and chances are the same thing will happen here.
It's not the same as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater (which also should be "protected" speech IMHO). Anyone who thinks like that definitely does not belong in the ACLU.
Free speech is a principle. Speech either is or is not free. Either you can go to jail for saying something or you can't. Period. It's because of people like you that we need the ACLU and Libertarians in general.
I look forward to the day when you have to worry about what you say in public for fear of being reported by others to the state. Remember that someone has to decide what speech is legal and what is not. And, that someone is not going to be you.
Perhaps one day it will be illegal to spell Microsoft with a "$", or to even speak the word with a negative tone of voice.
The details of NAMBLA's beliefs are completely irrelevant to this discussion. I don't care even the slightest what they believe. I don't care if they're advocating immediate (meaning right now, before I can even finish writing this sentence) thermonuclear war to fight world hunger, or the release of Ebola-Marburg-Smallpox-Lassa superviruses into the wild to save the rainforests, or having kittens for breakfast to promote healthy skin. The more unpopular and offensive the belief, the more important its defense. Popular beliefs don't need a constitution or a bill of rights to protect them. The Nazis didn't seize power. They were voted in.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I don't believe in your right to talk about your "tastes" in a public forum. Time to see the inside of a small prison cell. Why don't you just admit that the only reason you are against the DMCA is because you want to steal the work of others, personally. That it's a practical issue, just for you. Perhaps the US should pass a law allowing only you to speak freely. Everyone else has no right to say anything except what you want to hear. To be truly fair, we need a law making any speech that you "feel" is bad or harmful illegal. Of course as an athiest, I will have to be put to death. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but it's speech that can really kill you. Let's pass the Hemlock Amendment to the constitution. What happened to Galileo and Socrates was just. It was a moral imperative. Heresy must not be tolerated in any form. Death to the infidels, and to all Heretics!
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
In any case, simple polarisation of political views along a left-right divide is a nonsense and an unfortunate artifact of two-party systems.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Technically called "El Viaje Misteria de Nuestro Homer." Scene (to the best of my recollection):
Bart (Speaking to Lisa in the kitchen): "So, I says to Mabel, I says..."
Homer (Walking in, after going on the space coyote sequence): "Kids, where's your mother?"
Lisa: "Out back."
Homer walks away.
Bart: "So I says to Mabel, I says..."
Scene ends.
the ACLU was _ONCE_ the organization dedicated to liberty and freedom. However, now they are not the ones to represent those lofty ideals as they themselves are one of the grand causes of their demise (the ideals). Perhaps we should put Clinton in as "protector of honor, integrity, country and the rule of law" or maybe someone can resurrect Hitler to be the leading Zionist spokesman.
Sometimes people feel that saying something is so dangerous, that it shouldn't be allowed. (circumstances included)
If MAMBLA is man boy love something or other...... (sorry if I'm wrong... thats why I'm posting as annon coward)
That could be more dangerous than a fire.
However, speach against NAMBLA could be allowed... and the people who want to protect their lives could speak against it, and not restrict the others speach.
so... I'm against man boy love stuff... but... I guess I can live with them being arround, so long as I can freely speak against it... (speaking against stuff sucks...)... speaking for an alternative to MBLA stuff..
He said he was doing it to protect researchers from future hypothetical lawsuits (such as protecting what this guy wants to do). Let's hope this judge has more sense for the good of the people.