Slashback: Spamnation, Long-Distance, Libel

Slashback with updates and amplifications on Apple's stance on DRM, EasyInternetCafe's court battle over CD burning, a copyright law being drafted after Lessig's own heart, the lawyer vs. eBay saga, and VoIP calling with Linux. Read on below for the details.

But sir, all of these songs are under the Open Content License! atta1 writes "In an article on The Register, EasyInternetcafe has lost its court battle against British Phonographic Industry (BPI) over burning downloaded music to CD."

When last mentioned (August of last year), EasyInternetCafe was trying to avoid fines from BPI for letting Internet cafe customers burn to CD music they'd downloaded there.

After all, somebody's got to write 'em. g_adams27 writes "Several weeks ago, Larry Lessig proposed anti-spam legislation he'd like to see Congress pass -- legislation which he was willing to bet his job on. Now it looks like Washington might be taking his bet... and they want us to help out!

A congressional aide appears to be drafting legislation based on Larry's suggestions and is asking the Politech list for suggestions. The proposed law is posted here."

IP leases are nicer than telephone leases. Lots of people were interested in the story posted the other day about VoIP support in GnomeMeeting. I mentioned there that theKompany had a VoIP application for Zaurus owners; Shawn Gordon of theKompany writes with information about a forthcoming desktop version as well.

"So we released tkcPhone a few weeks ago, we found some issues with Net2Phone that we've just finished sorting out today, and we've about wrapped up the tkPhone beta, which we expect in a day or two. Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support. We also can have a system tray notifier and a roomier user interface. Because we spent so much time optimizing everything to work on the Zaurus, it means your desktop performance is going to be very good.

We decided to use SIP as opposed to H323 for a lot of reasons: smaller, faster, lighter, newer, easier hardware requirements. So with our phone a regular sound card and a headset/mic will typically suffice for what you need or want to do. Our arrangement with Net2phone means that in addition to PC-to-PC calls, you can make PC-to-phone and PC-to-mobile calls as well. The prices range from free to as little as $0.02 per minute in the U.S. and $0.03 minute internationally. You're already paying for your internet access, might as well start to piggyback this stuff.

tkPhone is not free however, it is $9.95 for the electronic version of the application. We expect to have it up for sale about February 10, 2003."

And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both the Bayonne project (mentioned several times before)and asterisk (also discussed here).

You mean they're against my inalienable right to watch movies for free? geekee writes "An article on CNET states that the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) will include DRM support in the MPEG-4 open standard. Without DRM, the ISMA doesn't believe MPEG-4 will be able to compete against proprietary standards such as that provided by Microsoft since content owners 'want continually improved tools, with rights management.' For instance, Movielink, an online movie rental source, has opted to support Microsoft and RealNetwork formats because of their DRM capabilities. An interesting thing to note is that Apple is a member of the ISMA, and has previously declared its opposition to DRM."

Money talks, and sometimes it says nasty things. scubacuda writes "Since eBay removed the alleged libelous statements, Roger Grace has agreed to drop his libel lawsuit for $2.5 million in punitive damages from eBay and $100,000 from Tim Neeley (who wrote that the magazines he bought from Grace had arrived late and in a worse condition than advertised). Interestingly, eBay removed the feedback not because it was 'negative,' but rather because 'the contact information for the seller was not correct.' Chris Donlay, eBay spokesman, says, '[T]hat is one of the circumstances in which we will consider removing the feedback,' EBay attorneys even went to far as to claim that Grace's original lawsuit is 'completely without merit.'"

(Here's the Slashdot post from last Saturday, 'Attorney Sues eBay over Negative Feedback'.)

Comments

Okay, hands up everyone...

[AndroidCat]

Who read that as "EasyInternetcafe has lost its court battle against British Pornographic Industry"?

Re:Okay, hands up everyone...

[RIT Beast]

I must say, I also was wondering why pornstars had united against CD burning.

plus

[labratuk]

And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both...

Might I also add (the albeit not particularly well named, IMHO) Linphone.

DRM forced in open standard?

[cabra771]

so we get a few versions of mpeg4 with DRM attached. Doesn't mean we won't see those rogue codecs without DRM floating around just like we have tons of flavors of DivX codecs right now to chose from.

eBay has removal in their rules.

[saskboy]

It is no strange occurance for eBay to remove feedback. One party having invalid contact info is just one of the reasons. Others include feedback that contain swear words, real names, website ads, and underage bidders.

The person who sued eBay is an idiot, because eBay removes feedback if a court orders that feedback made by an individual is libel. Don't sue eBay, sue the person.

DRM in free video formats

[Louis-Nap]

Putting DRM in MPEG-4 to increase industry acceptance should make us think...could it be a good idea to start thinking about DRM in free video formats (like Ogg whatchamacallit). I know that the slashdot crowd here can't bear the thought of DRM anywhere, but hear me out.

What if we had an open-source codec, which was capable of operating with or without DRM? Without DRM we could all use it and be happy knowing we aren't lining any corporations pockets, and don't have to worry about the situation changing in the future. With DRM, companies who wanted to stream secure video would be able to know that the DRM mechanism is secure (because everyone has the code for it!)

Just a thought...

Re:DRM in free video formats

[sweetooth]

Or better yet how about we discourage the use of DRM by not purchasing or using products that contain it and not developing formats that support DRM. Unless of course you don't have a problem with DRM. The only thing that corporations understand is the bottom line, and until the addition of these technologies affects thier bottom lines negativly we will continue to see an increase in thier use.

Also, I believe the names you are looking for are Ogg Tarkin or Ogg Theora.

Question

[unterderbrucke]

"Several weeks ago, Larry Lessig proposed anti-spam legislation he'd like to see Congress pass -- legislation which he was willing to bet his job on. Now it looks like Washington might be taking his bet... and they want us to help out!"

When will they be willing to "help us out" and get rid of the DCMA?

Proposed email subject lines.

[zeugma-amp]

After taking the time to read the proposed law concerning spam, I have to say that it seems to be fairly well thought out (with one exception that I'll get to in a second). The requirement that there be a subject line beginning with either 'ADV:' or 'ADULTADV' is spot on what I would like to see more than anything else. If such a requirement could be enforced, it would be incredibly simple for ISPs to allow you to configure your email account so that any message with such a subject line be automatically deleted, or better yet, rejected by the mailserver as delivery is attempted. I'm not sure exactly how the latter would work with standard mail daemons, but I'm sure someone would code for it.

The other requirements and restrictions mentioned are perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned, but subject line requirements would go a long way towards relieving the burden of both users and ISP who have to prrocess mail.

I'd also like to see open mail relays be made illegal , but the technical challenges of writing such a law in a way that didn't unintentionally totally screw things up beyond belief is probably too bug a hurdle for legislators to deal with.

The main problem with laws such as these is that they just will not work. Forged 'from' headers (also dealt with by the law) exist in spam because it is so universally hated. It is dangerous to post spam from your real address. This is why many spammers make use of unsecured overseas servers to spew their garbage. Without the cooperation of the foreign countries, it is going to be difficult, if not impossible to police or enforce this without the rest of us falling prey to unintended consequences like some ISPs disallowing the use of mailing lists because they are afraid of some nebulous FUD that will be spread about the consequences of such a law no matter what it actually says.

I hate spam as much or more than anyone, but it is my firm opinion that national laws are no more than mere annoyances on the internet.

Re:Proposed email subject lines.

[weave]

Yeah, but there's a problem. The receiving system can't reject the message until after it accepts it since the Subject is part of the DATA portion of the SMTP message. Therefore, I am still paying for the unwanted bandwidth (and I pay $2/gig from my colo provider for my server). Now if they could mandate an ADV string in the HELO or MAIL part of the conversation, the SMTP server could reject and close the connection immediately.

(I suppose that the SMTP server, upon seeing Subject: ADV could send a tcp-reset as the next packet and hope the sending end shuts up, but still not as nice as above)

I, as a service provider, should have the right to reject all ADV messages. If my customers don't like that policy (that would be clearly spelled out), they could move to a different provider (one which might accept micropayments for receiving ADV messages, which would bring down the cost of service to the customers, making *some* of them happy.)

I think Lessig will be looking for a job...

Man am I confused..

[NanoGator]

"Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support."

How many of those are typos and how many are actual product names?

Re:Unfortunate if we do...

[NanoGator]

"...there's no rational reason to worry computer video formats containing DRM."

The reason this is a problem is that it stalls innovation. If CD's had working DRM 5 years ago, would we have MP3 players? That may or may not be of interest to you, but an iPod is considerably smaller than a CD player, plus it stores a good deal more music.

I disagree completely

[einhverfr]

We're on the brink of getting all sorts of content available through the Internet. It is not inconcievable that many of us will actually abandon TiVO, mini-satellite systems, and cable and hook our computers directly up to our televisions to get all of our video content within the next couple of years. DRM in no way hampers our ability to make and distribute video -- it's just a necessary step towards permitting the creators of such content to share their work with us on their terms.

You sound like you hold with the idea that people have the moral right to place any restrictions on any content they redistribute. I do not believe this, and as long as you define moral right here as being the greater good for the greater people, the legal opinions have grappled with this in a moral way, and have always upheld the idea that there are limits to the rights we grant copyright holders-- that fair use is still protected.

In essence, we as a society lease provided content to the content providers-- if it is intellectual property, it is owned by the public as a whole. This is why, I believe that the Constitution of the United States of America specifically states that Congress may provide for exclusive rights (aside from fair use as interpreted by the courts) for a LIMITED TIME.

If we are so interested in "Their Terms" then we should go to a model of perpetual copyright. Why not? We do seem to be moving in that direction. And I do not think that all cultural expression should be owned forever.

Do not remove this tag...

[peacefinder]

I think I see a loophole in the proposed bill. There does not (yet) seem to be a prohibition against intermediate mail relays stripping the "ADV:" (or "ADULTADV:") tag from the subject line. The unscrupulous initiator could route it through some equally unscrupulous server that strips such tags and forwards the mail. "Gee, it had the tag when it left MY server..."

Better get that closed, guys... wouldn't want Larry to lose his job. :)