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Federal Judge Rules Against Reverse-engineering
zurab writes "A federal judge in Boston threw out a challenge to the DMCA brought by the ACLU for a Harvard Law School student. Ben Edelman decided to ask court's permission to reverse-engineer the Internet filtering software made by N2H2 in fears of being sued by the company. Of interest is a quote from the ruling: "there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass." Full story on Yahoo."
and its so freaking intrusive. it once banned slashdot for "vulgar language" (how often do you see that on /.?
btw, fp!
Write to your elected representatives. Do it now.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
If this stands up, it will be a kick in the teeth to freedom. A free society depends on public disclosure and peer-review. It's sickening to see how so many laws are being aimed at those two targets these days.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
If a product is really doing what it says it's doing? If it has an accurate method for filtering out what is pornography from what isn't? If the people writing the program used proper definitions of pornography when deciding what should be filtered? What the court has done is grant this company impermeability to review or criticism.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
There is a serious problem, maybe it's not with n2h2, but the fact that governement is using software to protect it's citizens completly blind. Sure it sounds all peachy, but cmon, if you're gonna block people off, make sure you know what is being blocked, don't give a company like n2h2 the playground.
There are plenty of open source alternatives anyway, where you can manually control the blocked list, who is doing for the "consulting" for the governement, most likely someone who wants to keep his job. (prolonging the problem brings in more money)
This is bad both ways, gov wants to use proprietary over open source, and gov dosen't care that they can't control which sites are blocked and which aren't.
To be honest, that list should be public to the community, and sites should be debated by a community coucil for their library, to decide which should be allowed by standards in the area, no main entity is the know it all genie of what is right for everyone.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
While the judge's reasoning in this case appears to be wrong, the outcome of the his decision is correct. Part of the anti-circumvention clause states that the Copyright Office was to hold hearings to decide on specific classes of work that should be exempt. They only picked two, which were:
In other words, what the plaintiff wanted to do is not illegal, so he has no standing to challenge the law. You can read about it here. FWIW, that may not be true for long. The Copyright Office is holding another round of hearings, and one of the scheduled topics is whether this exemption should be continued.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Did the submitter read the article?
N2H2 claimed that providing such information to Edelman would compromise trade secrets, and that Edelman had no legal standing to be granted such permission because there was no imminent threat he would be sued.
Maybe they should have picked a more suitable case to file their lawsuit?
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Where is Paul when you need him?
to sue all those who reverse engineered their BIOS and made the clone PC industry possible?
and I can post it on Slashdot right now,
right after I answer the knock at the door...
Cheers, Joel
"there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass"
Yeah right. When institutions like colleges, employers etc begin using these tools to filter out people as well as content ("Tried to access a porn/competitor/undesirable site? You're out of here!") then you bet there will be a plausible interest.
Let the fascist circus roll-on!
he first one relates to the article "Edelman had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed."
Now supposedly the judge says that this list of blocked sites is copyrighted. Excuse me but I'm totally baffled as to how a 3rd party company has copyright on a list that contains domain names that belong to a 4th party. I really need someone to explain this. Does merely making a list of otherwise publicly available information make it copyrightable? Does the mere listing make it something new and special?
The second big problem here seem to go against (IIRC) previous case law on reverse engineering. If this ruling stands you might as well kiss RE good bye. Every company is the US is gonna whine DMCA and "invasive and destructive trespass".
Why do I hear a huge sucking sound?
No it's not.
We still have a right to vote. Unfortunately last election, our popular vote (the people) was ignored by the Governer of Florida, the confusion of the divits, and the amount of time they wasted on investigating it drew out the talley of the electorial past the cutoff date.
Because of Florida has more electorial votes, when they swayed towards Bush it was enough (barely) for him to win the presidency.
Missy Elliot's line in the song Work It "Is it worth it, let me work it, put my thing down flip it and reverse it," was reverse engineered WITHIN HER SONG MIND YOU. Hopefully, the United States will not allow for such blatant disregard for the DMCA.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The best thing that can happen now is for this case to go to the Supreme Court, where it could get national publicity. This is obviously a ridiculous decision simply because it precludes fair use of a product. I mean, what's next? Getting arrested for reverse-engineering the recipe for Krispy Kreme donuts and selling them as my own? You can't have it both ways.
More specifically as regards N2H2, if the inherent security of an application can be compromised by reverse-engineering, then it isn't truly secure. Of course, OpenSSH is both secure and open source, so the argument of securing the source is ridiculous.
And pray exactly WHAT will that accomplish? How many of your "representatives" (and I use the term very loosely) give a shit what their constituants think?
It all comes down to corporate donations and pressure groups. That's "democracy" in America.
This case was a poor choice for the ACLU to cahllenge the DMCA on. Edelman was clearly trying to grind his ax against a web site filtering company. The ACLU needs to find a single issue case to pursue. I think the guy who is being sent to jail for selling XBox mod chips would be a good case to challenge the DMCA on.
People like Edelman need to realize that the filtering companies are doing nothing but building products to meet a demand in the market place. If they are actually concered about cencorship, they need to focus on regulating the implementation of these products by public organizations. As for businesses, they are free to censor all they want.
I'm just waiting for some bozo to re-open a whale oil lamp factory, and sue the EPA for making it illegal to hunt whales for their blubber.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass.
...
no constitutional interest eh?
Edelman had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed.
"It's highly desirable that these products are accurate, that when they say they're blocking pornography, they're really blocking pornography, not people running for Congress who talk about the evils of pornography," he said Wednesday. "Yet the research to date indicates they make a lot of mistakes."
Hrm... I'm not completely familiar with the American constitution but I was under the impression that Freedom of speech and by implication the right to discover what speech you were being denied access to would outweigh the right to protect copyrighted material. Oh and BTW how does finding the list constitute an invasive and destructive trespass.? Yes it could hurt them if competitors used their list in their own products (after all the accuracy of such a list would be the essential element of their system) but I hardly feel it would be destructive in any way. Is the judge just refering to economic damage or is there some other potentiaal cause for damage?
I stole this Sig
voting is the least important part of a democracy on this scale.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
I'll leave this to the lawyers, but consider this. If reverse engineering is not a valid means to an end, where does this leave any preexisting incidents? Does IBM now have a valid case against anybody and everybody using the bios that was reverse engineered from the original IBM PC? Or maybe I'm off base, can somebody shed some insight?
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
-- Grace Murray Hopper
the whol point of reverse engineering wasnt to touch another parties IP. maybe im naive.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
My school employs N2H2's filtering software. I find it to be rather intrusive and annoying when I'm researching (or simply surfing the internet). In N2H2's defense, writing an intelligent filter that will not make any mistakes is close to impossible. I mean - think of what you're asking! A filter that will make near-human decisions based on a site's content/url... I'd like to see you write one. It would be impossible to manually screen each and every page on the internet each and every time they were updated, which would be the only sure-fire way to keep good pages from getting blocked. However, I am of the opinion that N2H2's filtering software Bess could be a little more effective. It does block rediculous pages at times...
Oh well. Until the software gets better, I'll just continue to write scripts to get past the filters =P
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
It's the most important part of a democracy, but one of the lesser parts of a "free society".
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
If the DMCA were around during the Apple II days, perhaps we would not have visicalc, which started the PC era. From the implementing visicalc post today:
"We also needed to implement a file system for the floppies as well as the firmware to support the drive. Steve Wozniak did a very clever and lean design and took advantage of the 6502 processor to control the disk drive as well as for computing. I had to figure out how he did this by reverse engineering it since we need to adjust the code for our needs."
How do you reverse engineer?
Do you use disassemblers? I tried using one and the output gave me a headache.
You are implying that the new Iraqi government won't be controlled by the USA? hahahahaha, silly brainwashed US Americans.
Why aren't we attacking the organizations that use this filtering software instead of attacking the program itself? Wouldn't finding ONE site that shouldn't be filtered be good enough to prove that illegal censorship is in effect?
They way I see it there are only two ways about it. Either the organization can filter whatever they want because it's their own service and they aren't bound by law to make that service public, or they can only filter what's legal to filter... find one thing that's not, and you've got a pretty strong argument to force the organization to abandon the filter.
Big law firms use a tactic of waiting for the opportune time to litigate a case against a weak opponent and then crush them with a legal paramount. We should do the same, setup multiple "straw" opponents and then have a "strong" legal ruling against them which favors our opinion. Bring it to the Supreme Court and then have it heard. David Vs Goliath doesn't work in our "modern" society anymore, setup a straw-man argument and then SET YOUR PRECIDENT! Geeks don't fight like animals, but sometime we must resort to "despicable" means like some of the other bigger corporations.
They give us the illusion of freedom by never actually showing us boundaries until we hit them. Just like all-you-can-eat joints make their selection look bigger with mirrored walls.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This is all about maintaining the status quo - all of it. The DMCA the removal of the "sunset clause" from the Patriot Act, oil from Iraq, hydrogen from coal instead of water, the UWB restraints instead of open development, Linux and open source instead of closed systems, plus the IMF as means of economic policy control. In short, we are at the edge of a new technological revolution that will change the players at the top, and they definitely do not want to go quietly into the night. It is just as silly/pathic as the "salt laws" were in England. Same players, same song, umpteenth verse. Technolgy has to be controlled to maintain the entrenched powers-that-be. Hydrogen for cars locks you to a distribution network, Iraqian oil will keep our oil companies going, UWB has the bandwidth and user density to render the cable and landline companies obsolete, it will also work fine for cell phones, plus it works indoors.
Am I the only one who actually read the Judge's VERY CORRECT opinion? The case was being brought under Declaratory Judgement, ie. I am suing N2H2 because they are about to sue me. The Judge ruled that there was not any proof that N2H2 was about to sue, so the case was thrown out. This ruling had nothing to due with the validity of the DMCA or the scope of reverse engineering exception.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
You're correct. The decision was the right one. Too often, people think the court's decision should be one based on morals, popular decision, or what's best for everyone. That belief is wrong. The court's job is to analize the situation and see how it applies to law. When you do this, you may ONLY see how the law interperets the situation, not morals or the like.
So, as it seems to be a wrong move for innovation, information, and public knowledge, the court was actually doing it's job CORRECTLY. This is so vital because that's what the judicial branch is meant to do, nothing else. Additionally, the decidions that the judicial courts make, will heavily influence all other cases in the future which seem to pend on the same law.
In summation, though the decision reached may seem unfair, morally wrong, or detremental to the public's ability to check and balance situations like this article, the court did it's job correctly.
And if you look through history, I believe this branch of government has probably been the most honorable and noble in terms of their jobs.
Dear Congresscritter,
I have started a PAC to lobby on your behalf. I've started accepting paypal donations and so far my brother sent me $10 so as you can see we're well on our way. I'm thinking about setting up a cafepress shop too so we should be rolling on a bed of very soft money very soon.
I know we don't have as much money as the big corporations, but, uh, we're really nice and uh, we're your constituents, and uh, yeah.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Got himself a nice TV set and recliner. He doen't give a fuck about anything anymore. Living room and television. Television and living room. One positive effect of his chosen lifestyle is the eventual transition from living room to nursing home won't require much adjustment at all.
As I read the legal documents (i.e. incompetantly) it seems that N2H@ got the case dismissed on the basis that they hadn't threatened to sue him. Hopefully this means that if he proceeds with the investigation and gets sued, this case will return to haunt N2H2. I can't actually think how that would happen, though.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Because of Florida has more electorial votes, when they swayed towards Bush it was enough (barely) for him to win the presidency.
Which means that the election was really divided anyway, so it was more of an "acceptable error" than a "theft."
Democracy survived the 2000 election unscathed.
I hope their company (and all such) goes out of business, preferably in an implosion reminiscent of Enron. Nevertheless, I don't think they should be harassed - there are better ways to oppose the spread of censoring software.
"It's highly desirable that these products are accurate, that when they say they're blocking pornography, they're really blocking pornography, not people running for Congress who talk about the evils of pornography," he said Wednesday. "Yet the research to date indicates they make a lot of mistakes."
N2H2 claimed that providing such information to Edelman would compromise trade secrets, and that Edelman had no legal standing to be granted such permission because there was no imminent threat he would be sued.
So explain this one to me...how is a list of banned sites a "trade secret"? Wouldn't one WANT to make this list public knowledge? That's like saying "We expect you to abide by the speed limits, but we're not going to post them because they are a trade secret."
Once again, out justice system is bought out by Big Business. Maybe next election I'll vote democrat...it can't be any worse non-representation than this, can it?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
-Waldo Jaquith
The problem with this is clearly that companies are now using the DMCA to protect trade secrets. This sort of strengthening of the ability of companies to keep technology secret has the potential to have very dire consequences to innovation. Why wouldn't the next step be for Microsoft to use DMCA to squash reverse engineering of a file format or network protocol?
/. readers dislike patents, at least with this as the primary mechanism to protect IP you have time limits, disclosure of the technology and some sort of review to determine if the technology is worthy of a protected status. Patents have to be greatly preferred over the DMCA.
While many
The ruling only says that it is premature. That there is no pending lawsuit. This is similar to Felton v. RIAA.
Fight Spammers!
flipflop quibbles "everyone on slashdot would rather just complain on slashdot instead of actually writing thier representative a well worded letter".
hey f-f, can you attempt justify or prove this assumption?
i don't think i've ever seen anyone here advocating *not* writing to the government.
--hepcat
btw, what % of the
A federal judge says NOTHING CONSTITUTIONAL about
protecting free speech in a library?
It's hard not to say something juvenile about judges being nothing but second rate lawyers who couldnt find a practice.Or how he seems par for the course for Mass. politics.Or that he'd been out drinkin with a kennedy.
So I won't.
Because it's important to have RESPECT for these men who wield power over us.
what a load of shit.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Sofware wasn't even around at the time of the constitution, so how is it even relevant to the situation? We treat it like some holy document, yet it was drafted 200 years ago, many of whose clauses are outdated in today's modern society.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
The judge ruled that he had no standing. This is not saying that reverse engineering is bad.
/. thinks its reporting is "fair and balanced" ala Fox News.
This is saying that the plaintiff did not meet the test for standing.
What does this mean? It means that Slashdot is not actually "News for nerds." It's propaganda for a hostile community. I'm sure that
In reality these inflammatory headlines actually dilute the true story and really don't help our community. It makes us look reactionary. Maybe we should be proposing workable solutions instead of posting stories that reduce the credibility of this website, and nerds all over the world. Stop serving as a mouthpiece for a select few and start working towards something positive!
-Tom the Angry Nerd.
Read the court documents here. Edelman asked the court to permit him to a) ignore the license which bars reverse engineering, and b) ignore N2H2's copyright by publishing the web sites he discovered. The judge noted that Edelman hasn't actually done anything yet, and declared that the court is not in the business of handing out a "get out of jail free" card in case he ever does his research, and N2H2 seeks relief.
I find it interesting that whenever the constitutionality of copyright laws is questioned in court, very rarely is the actual clause that gives Congress the power to grant copyrights really looked at. It reads:
"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
That is, the only part in the Constitution that mentions any thing about copyrights indicates quite clearly, I think, that they are to promote the progress of art and science.
So one has to wonder, when a student asks for permission to reverse engineer encrypted code to make sure it's scientifically valid from a computer science standpoint in so far as doing what it's claimed to do and when there's no evidence whatsoever that he intends to actually infringe on N2H2's "rights" in any way other than showing that their product might possibly be a piece of shit, when was Congress granted power to prevent him from doing that?
Trying to Cheat an American company of its HARD EARNED money
Reverse engineering are evil, you unAmerican liberal SCUM
We live in a capitalist society and evertything has a price and if you DONT pay it you are a THIEF
N2H2 is a great American company and has helped us maintain dominance over everyone else
You are insulting such a great company by questioning their desire to make their rightful profit.
LIBERAL SCUM
WATCH some TV you MORON
SEE who has WON
USA ALWAYS WINS
USA! USA! USA!
Did you bleeding heart liberal scum see how much love and respect the iraqi people showered on our brave troops. We are ALWAYS right.
If you DONT love it, LEAVE IT.
Sure all they see is a program. But if this case were if a person were allowed to replace a part of their cars engine, and the car manufacturer didn't release any specifications, and the person was seeking a ruling allowing him to open up his hood and look around, I think we'd all, including the judge, be laughing at the notion.
But no, it's a mysterious thing called software which somehow is so much different than everything else in the world it requires its own set of protections. Hogwash.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I don't buy the CIA connection theory, nor would I necessarily consider it to be a bad thing if it were true. It's just the connection with former president Bill Clinton that I find helpful in looking into who Judge Richard Stearns is.
isn't the whole job of a locksmith to counteract restrictions? it seems like picking a lock would be the same as breaking into any other device, be it software or hardware. why is it legal for locksmiths to pick locks, but it is illegal for this guy to run a "strings" on the N2H2 binary and pull out the urls? Seems like the DMCA should be fought using common everyday abuses of reverse engineering.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
FWIW, for you people with minds in the gutter, my employer's new firewall is configured in a screwy way that was preventing me from posting to Slashdot (apparently this was not intentional; I have a (low-priority) help ticket open to get it fixed). You can see details in my log; apparently there's a Slashdot FAQ about this.
Anyways, the point is, by connecting to Slashdot thru Anonymizer's proxy, I get around my employer's firewall issue. The same logic holds for people behind N2H2's Bess or other similar "blockers".
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I'm not sure what the big deal here is, reverse engineering has been copyright infringement even before the DMCA.
Proxy servers.....no really...I'm not trolling here or anything, but I have used proxy servers to get to sites which were blocked by our firewall. Just enter a google search for "Wingate servers" and you'll get all sorts of sites hosting lists of proxy servers.....
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Pardon my ignorance, but I've been trying to understand what the DMCA is all about... I see it being mentioned (and hated) in quite a few Slashdot stories, but no one ever really explains what it is. I've tried reading the actual law but it makes no sense to me. So far, I've gathered that the DMCA deals with restrictions on making digital copies of things. But how is that new from old copyright law? And how does it deal with digital restrictions management (DRM), what ever that is? It seems to me that big companies are using the DMCA to fight little guys whenever they copy their intellectual property. What is in the DMCA that allows them to do this? Could they have done this before the DMCA?
Sorry for all the questions, but it would be nice if Slashdot put up some sort of primer on the DMCA for ignorant people like myself.
THANKS!!
They said he didn't have standing. This was because he was not in danger of immediate harm.
"there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass."
- In other words, nothing in the Constitution allows him to sue at the present time.
Furthermore, this was more like an advisory opinion, something courts virtually never grant to begin with.
So, how does this ruling affect the DMCA? It doesn't. Doesn't give it more weight, and it doesn't dilute it.
If he wanted this case to be tried on the merits, he should have contacted some of the web pages blocked and had them file suit claiming that their businesses were economically harmed by the block placed on them. That's the only way I can see.
This post should probably be in an Ask Slashot forum but the topic IS relevent to this story.
My company (which must go unnamed) is bringing legal action against another company who (we believe) has reverse engineered our product (must go unnamed, sorry) and incorporated our technology into his. We are claiming this reverse engineering violates the DMCA.
Before the DMCA, this case would not hold up in court, and our lawyers no this, but under the auspices of the DMCA, they think they can win.
My question: I hate the DMCA, and I despise what my company is doing. Should I quit on moral grounds, or should I try other forms of protest?
Now to be called "Divine Mystery Consecration Act"
uses a filtering "service" that's always down. The NT4 proxy servers only resolve an ip correctly two tries out of three.
It's not too bad, because they have an 802.11b net my Zaurus and iBook can access as well as a "secret router" on 10.0.0.3 that I'm not supposed to know about.
BTW, the NT4 proxy is sp2; I made a single URL that can crash the proxy if entered on any school computer. They really should fire the techies and let me do the job for a gym credit.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
do what i do, bring a cd with dwi to school
The application "dwi2.exe" could not be opened, because it has not been approved by the system administrator.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sure enough, I can now play flash flash revolution during those boring high school comp science classes.
Huh? They let you hook headphones and a 3 by 3 foot DANCE PAD up to their computers and jump around on it during class? At my school, I could only connect a dance pad to an institute-owned machine during meetings of DDR club.
If you're going to dance with your fingers on the keyboard, you might as well play Konami's official version of DDR on a Game Boy Color system.
Will I retire or break 10K?
For those interested in the letter of the law, as published in Federal Register on October 27, 2000 (FR 64556):
The above summary is actually codified into law in 17 U.S.C. 702 Sect 201.40, Exemption to prohibition against circumvention, and can be found in the same FR publication on page 64574. The period of the exemption is temporary, it covers the period from October 28, 2000 through October 28, 2003 only. If the copyright office does not renew these this time around those exemptions will expire.
But what's really interesting is that all of the reasons for their decisions as well a a thourough discussion of other possible excemptions which were considered but not selected! Included among these are most of slashdot's favorites, such as DVDs, video games, reverse engineering, research, etc. Yes it's a government document and looks intimidating, but it's well worth a close read by everybody. As noted a new round of hearings is underway; I encourage everybody to read up on why many exemptions failed last time around and what needs to be done to present a better case next time.
anyone tried it?
:wq
if machine readable code is not "Free Speech" then whats stopping us from Reverse engeneering it?
My school uses Bess too. I really would like to try and find some way around that nosy crap. Interestingly, it seems to not block FTP sites (???). Seems wierd... They censor as much of the internet as they can, but allow me to download an 80 megabyte Tribes 2 demo from ftp.sierra.com, repeatedly... Ok...
/. banned once. I came back the next day and it was unbanned :) At any rate, I think Bess deserves a resounding slashdotting. Start your F5 keys and PING commands!
I look at bess like this: Those bastards can't possibly keep up with the Internet. As soon as the ban one mirror, another shows up. Do a google search,; eventually, you've got to come across at least ONE link they didn't get yet. Works for games and Flash movies...
And I also saw
Beware of he who seeks to control your access to information, for he sees himself your master.
Vote in the elections. Communicate with your representatives. It works. The problem is that not enough voters who care about reverse engineering are educated about why it is bad. If there were enough voters that were educated about why it is so bad would write to their representatives (how many are there who read slashdot?) something would get done.
Interestingly enough, I haven't seen a rational explanation that shows why reverse engineering is a good thing. Which isn't really surprising given crowd, I guess -- more interested in that cool new game that plays on linux than in freedom of expression.
--
Annotateit at Annotateit.com
"Who can defeat the beast?"
Every company is entitled to keep trade secrets. It either that or they must patent their inventions. Patents require disclosure.
Yes patents require disclosure in return for Federal protection of the exlusive use of the thing described. They are very expensive for a company and they give away all your hard work so that others can use it.
Now, thanks to the DMCA, you don't have to chose. Neat eh? You can have your trade secrets published publically in an encrypted form and the US Government will make sure others don't tell anyone about how it works even when they are bright enough to figure it out. They will protect your feble trade secrets from "invasion"! This is really cool, now no one has to tell anyone anything AND be protected by the government. What a great trade! I pay taxes which are used to keep me from understanding the things I own.
Well, I used to own things. Now that I can't do what I want with them or share what I do with my friends, I think some of my things belong to the people who made it. Just imagine this being applied to software! Oh wait, this is software! Really really neat. If I install that program on my computer so that I'm not tempted to look at things someone else thinks are nasty, I'm not only giving up my right to read, I'm giving up ownership of my computer! That's just unbelievable. Next thing you know, you won't be able to share what you know about BIOS. Well, it's good that other people are willing to be responsible for the things I want to use. That way I don't have to worry when they break. Someone will always take care of me.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
For a while in college I was double majoring in CS and Business Education and once in a while in one of the Bus Ed classes I'd be asked to teach 1 class since I had more technical knowlege than the professor or most of the rest of the students. I would teach about different technologies and how they could be used for educational purposes, in a classroom, etc.
Anyway, one day I was teaching about the internet, search engines, etc and I was browsing around on the web in front of class with the display going through a projector onto the wall. I meant to go to the whitehouse web page, but I accidentally typed whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov. This was before I knew what whitehouse.com was (and how I learned what it was). Imagine my surprise!
I'd say the 6 foot tall porn was probably the only thing most of the class remembered about that little lesson. Amazingly enough, I was still asked to teach similar classes after that incident.
You never know.
Isn't this analgous to suing someone because they dissemble their car or vaccum cleaner to see how it functions? Embarrassed to live in Boston, although I was embarrased to live in Boston beforehand, mind you.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
While I agree with that I think you have missunderstood what happened. As horrible as the DMCA is, it did have exmptions for "research". The rulling, however seemed to be that NO expemption applied to the work, so Edelman was prevented from studying the silly software to protect a trade secret. Yahoo has it:
Edelman had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed. He then went to court to seek permission to reverse-engineer N2H2's product, saying he needed court permission because the controversial 1998 law forbids the dissemination of information that could be used to bypass copyright-protection schemes. ... N2H2 claimed that providing such information to Edelman would compromise trade secrets, and that Edelman had no legal standing to be granted such permission because there was no imminent threat he would be sued. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns agreed, writing in a ruling issued Wednesday that "there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass."
It looks fairly straight forward to me. Where did you get your ideas from?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
PS: I thought of this idea, therefor it's copyright me. Any company that wants to use it is feel to negotiate with me for the rights. :)
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
"No siree", argued N2H2 in court to block research of their trade secrets, "we would never go to court to stop research into our trade secrets. We won't sue you, Scout's honor." What amazing duplicity.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
While I certainly agree that the last presidential election had problems, your analysis of the problems could use a little help.
Our popular vote is deliberately irrelevant for the presidential election; this is to prevent a few populous states from running off with the election. Hypothetical situation: the electoral college is thrown out, and two candidates are running for the popular vote in an election. Candidate A has run a very tightly targetted (read: lots of gifts and pork to specific locations) campaign of promises to key population centers, and has almost 100% of the vote in California, Texas and New York, but has only about 40% of the vote in every other state. Even though 47 out of 50 states prefer B, A has a significant chance of winning. This is why we use the electoral college rather than popular vote. If you don't like it, changing the rule requires a constitutional amendment, by all means work towards getting it, many people agree with you.
The Governor of Florida has no obligation to pay attention to the popular vote of the nation, or even Florida (except during his own election, of course). The Governor of Florida is responsible for executing the laws passed by the Florida State Legislature to regulate operation of the election. There are those who allege that he did not do this, that he bent (or allowed his staff and allies to bend) these laws to benefit his brother at the expense of the Gore campaign. Any evidence along these lines is sparse, and it is doubtful that it will ever be proven one way or the other.
The "confusion of the divits" was tragic, and underscored the need of Florida (and most other states for that matter) to reevaluate the systems they use for voting. Many countries do fine just marking an X on a piece of paper and hand counting the pieces of paper. Some countries have interesting higher tech ideas that may be worth considering. Regardless of what gets chosen, it's clear that using a stylus to punch holes in a piece of paper leaves a lot of room for confusion, for not having a clear understanding of the intent of the voter. Minimizing this confusion in the future is very important.
The amount of time they spent investigating was not wasted time IMHO. The amount of time they spent bickering about how to investigate was, and I considered both candidates responsible for that.
Incidentally, are you aware that, in 2001, a group of news agencies carefully examined all the "rejected" ballots in Florida and determined that: A) if Gore had successfully received the partial recount he had requested, he still would have lost; and B) if Bush received the statewide recount that he halfheartedly countersuggested, Gore probably would have won.
So, yes, I consider Bush to be an illegitimate president, simply because a thorough recount indicates that Gore won Florida, and therefore won the election. I don't blame any "ignoring" of the popular vote for the wrong person being in the White House, or any alleged corruption by Bush's brother or campaign manager. I blame simply the sorry state of our voting systems in this country, and the inadequate set of laws governing recounts in the state of Florida.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
As they may get some form of Democracy....Its sad that whilst we fight for "Freedom" in other countries the US internally is becoming more like the monster it is trying to fight.
StarTux
The Court actually simply decided that there was no case in controversy. Edelman sued, before he did anything for a declaratory judgement giving him permission to reverse engineer. The court said they wouldn't decide the case, because it's not sure that N2H2 would sue, or that Edelman would do anything. The only time a court will make a decision if nothing has happened yet (like here, about future potential lawsuits) is if a fundamental right is at question. While copyright Fair Use is important, it is clearly not a fundamental right. So, chill. And wait for someone to actually be sued under the DMCA for reverse engineering for research purposes. If the Court then holds that there is no right to reverse engineer anymore (in spite of Sega v. Accolade.
Thalia
BYU is using N2H2, and I have been repeatedly blocked from Google's news site over the last two days. The block notification states that it is ``Inappropriate Content Blocked by Override List.''
One of my biggest gripes with the system is the way it is implemented; we, as college students, are told ``Ah, ah, ahhhh! This page is a big no-no,'' and we are not even given the option to override the decision of the censoring software if we know for a fact that the page does not have any ``inappropriate content.'' There is no link given, nor is there any contact information, about how to appeal a blocked site. How about letting the students decide for themselves which content is or is not ``appropriate?''
Discussion boards are blocked because they might be used to arrange drug deals, or for the crips and bloods to post messages. Seriously. One very well known Black (OK, "African American") site was blocked for this reason. 99% of it was perfectly fine. Some home-boys were posting messages on the open message board.
And that's all there is to it.
Gee, I sure could go for a couple of Federal Judges about now.
Yeah, I know I'm posting as AC, but this is real!!
Weird News
If it were either invasive or destructive I'd have more respect for this Judge and his ruling. Despite arguments to the contrary, altering the flow of bits through a computer that you own doesn't invade anyone, and the notion that bits can be destroyed is laughable. The Judge needs to reissue his ruling without resorting to terms don't mean squat in the virtual world.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
No where in the DCMA does it say that reverse engeering is illegal. The only legal basis the jugde in this ruling had, is that reverse engineering could violate the companies patents!. This was a section design only to protect license abuses by other companies. The court's ruling is ambiguous at best and probably will be challanged higher up.
Science will save us. The question is, will it destroy us first?
But what's really interesting is that all of the reasons for their decisions as well a a thourough discussion of other possible excemptions which were considered but not selected! Included among these are most of slashdot's favorites, such as DVDs, video games, reverse engineering, research, etc. Yes it's a government document and looks intimidating, but it's well worth a close read by everybody. As noted a new round of hearings is underway; I encourage everybody to read up on why many exemptions failed last time around and what needs to be done to present a better case next time.
Actually, DVDs, video games are protected under that clause.
"protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness."
If a video game fails to boot because it is scratched, then it stands to reason that you can copy it to circumvent the copy protection that is damaged - it's a legitimate work that you're trying to access, and it's preventing you from doing so.
It also allows you to circumvent copy protection on a DVD if DVD players become obsolete. You could probably make a case for circumventing CD protection in a few years to rip to MP3, as well.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I think it'd stand. The first clause actually covers a lot more of what people would consider "fair use" than one would think.
but don't call them a donut.
They sure as fuck aren't that.
It is so important in these uncertain times that we focus our vitreol on case where there is actual legislative or judicial overreaching.
Read the judge's opinion before leaping to conclusions. This is NOT a case that was decided on the merits of an underying DMCA claim.
The plaintiff in this case was not N2H2, but rather the fellow who wanted to do his reverse engineering. He sued under a theory of equity, seeking what is called a declaratory judgment. Before even reaching the question about whether the plaintiff is entitled to act, the Court must first address whether or not it has jurisdiction.
This isn't a light issue -- the Federal Courts only have jurisdiction over ACTUAL "cases and controversies." This is a constitutional limitation. The federal judiciary does not offer what is called "advisory" opinions -- ever.
Here, without touching on the DMCA issue at any level, the Court simply ruled that our erstwhile declaratory judgment plaintiff didn't have the standing to drag D2H2 to court. I agree with others here that the reasoning for no standing was not the Court's strongest argument, but in view of the Copyright Office excemption, this case just doesn't hold water on the standing question.
Mr Patron, I'd like a prime rib, but since I don't know how good your food is, I'd rather not pay for it this time... By the way, I've heard that your salad dressing is excellent, but I'll need instructions so I can make it at home.. errr, make sure I will like it.
Mr Salesperson, I would really like a new stove, but I'm going to need to take it home with me for a month so I can make sure it functions the way I would like. Also, I'm going to need the design specs for every piece of electronics in that stove as well as metal alloy composition reports. Oh, can I try out a new freezer too? Maybe a new pair of those boxers too?
Mr Programmer, I've heard that you've got this wickedly cool algorithm for compression that was previously thought to be impossible, but I'm going to need your source so I can see that it copy it.. errr, see that it is correct. I'm getting real tired of reading assembly...
How do you think a market functions? Isn't "buyer beware" a pretty fundamental concept? And isn't it fairly obvious why that must be so in many cases? Obviously, we are allowed to try things out to some extent in many cases, but we don't end up reverse engineering every phone we buy... Hmm, maybe all my phones are bugged.. Whatever *shall* I do????
Where did you say you live?
that Edelman had no legal standing to be granted such permission because there was no imminent threat he would be sued.
What does "no imminent threat he would be sued" mean ?
They could have sued Edelman preemptively, based on the fact that he possesses mass reverse-engineering tools,
and they could even try to link him to dangerous hacker groups, to wich he'd supposedly give these tools.
Hey, this argument works for countries.
My honest, truthful opinion on this matter is....
Schools, (at least high school) should not use the internet. If they're so concerned about filtering (which really, jesus christ, we're all animals anyway), perhaps to appease all the whiny mothers who protect their kids to the last second possible, then why not go back to the classics?! CLASSIC SCHOOL..... i was around then, in grade school, when there was no internet... it wasn't that bad!!!!
jesus christ, just accept the internet as wild and COMPLETELY UNCONTROLLABLE.
Why not evaluate N2H2's filtering software as a black box by observing which sites get blocked. One could have two computers connected to internet: one is filtered by N2H2, the other is not. Visit the same sites, see what happens, document!
While it is slow and tedious, it violates no laws.
rob
I don't think I'd call a computer program a "literary work." :-)
I also consider the media making the decision about what states are won and not before the election closes, to also be a travesty. The press has a responsibility to report _accurately_. It was obviously in no way clear that before the polls closed, who won the state, but the press had already decided --- Gore. And many folks stayed away from the polls because they thought business has already been taken care of.
So I still do not consider Bush illegitimately elected. Also, remember, the statewide recount said "probably", and this recount was done by same press who skewed the results in the first place by incorrectly announcing the winner prematurely. Like we can trust them.
TurboD
"Because of Florida has more electorial votes, when they swayed towards Bush it was enough (barely) for him to win the presidency."
But the whole Bush election fiasco is a red herring. What about all the people in government who were in power before 2000? Before 1970? The trend towards the current US policies has been going on for DECADES. Bush weilds some power, of course, but mostly he is a mouthpiece for a much larger, very complex establishment.
People like you who focus on the botched election are ignoring the fact that the government in general is a valid expression of the will of the people -- (those who participate in the process + those who abstain from participation) > (the opposition)
Florida doesn't matter. Bush doesn't matter. The real problem is people don't have the attention span to realize that it takes a dozen years to see significant changes in the federal government. Or a day, if you have a heavy enough cause to engender rebellion. But you don't.
Vote, in every local, state and federal election. Stop associating with people who do not. Don't do business with them. Don't be friendly to them. Don't give them jobs, loan them money, or serve them in any way.
Make it so horrendously uncomfortable to life in this country if people know you don't vote, that they will do it.
If that's too hard, institute a $25.00 fine for not voting. Don't make the fine any higher than that. It's not worth trying to get out of paying the fine... so they'll avoid the situation and vote. Fucking vote on everything; municipal bonds, council members, city manager... And stop enabling others not to do it.
If we ever see something as close as Bush v. Gore 2000, but with 99% turnout instead of 50-something%... THAT would be something.
"And many folks stayed away from the polls because they thought business has already been taken care of."
That's what they SAID, but they also happen to be the same half of the registered voters that didn't vote in any of the other elections before or since....
I consider the nearly 50% abstention voters to be in favor of "whoever won". In the final analysis, that makes it something like 75% Bush, 25% Gore.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"Any evidence along these lines is sparse, and it is doubtful that it will ever be proven one way or the other."
Actually, there is documented evidence that dear old Jeb did 'bend the laws' to help his bro: he unjustifiably put some 56.000 people on a list saying these people where blacklisted from voting. It just happens that there was no reason for these people to have their voting priveliges revoked, and that these people would have voted for Gore.
It's not been widely reported on, but it has made the news in various publications; I'd call that evidence.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Our popular vote is deliberately irrelevant for the presidential election; this is to prevent a few populous states from running off with the election.
A "few populous states"? That's the public.
I'll paraphrase: "this is to prevent most of the people from having most of the power"
More specifically, the electoral college serves to make a vote in Montana count more than one in New York.
Even though 47 out of 50 states prefer B, A has a significant chance of winning.
If those 3 states are so much more populated than the others, then this guy deserves it.
Another problem with the Electoral College is that it breaks even worse if there are more than 2 serious contenders. It helps prevent 3rd parties from being viable (instead of just "spoilers").
If you like hypothetical examples, consider this:
Candiate A has 40% of the vote in each state. B has 60% in states west of the Mississipi, and C has the rest. That means A has 57% of the popular vote, with B and C in the 40% range. Yet A gets 0% of the Electoral votes, and the race is between B & C.
http://dansguardian.org/
And its not simply a URL filter like N2H2.
Aah, reminds me of my living in the dorms at college. A couple of years ago I attended the University of Oregon. Back then it was ranked one of the most wired campuses in the nation...
Dual T-3 connections for the entire campus and dorms, each student had his own 10 Mbit ethernet jack in his dorm room, and you could actually utilize the full bandwidth! I loved serving up my IRC fserver full of anime on a nice fat pipe - uploaded approx. 150 GB/week of anime.
I will never forget the day my internet connection was shut off when they blocked my MAC address. Quick trip down to the "appropriate use" offices of the network admins office that day.
They asked me about my running a server in my room - since school policy didn't forbid it, I readily admitted I was hosting video files. The guy I was talking to then mentioned they had several calls from SONY and the MPAA about "someone running a server with video files," but I quickly added that they were not distributed in the US, and I hoped they weren't copyrighted here.
At that point the guy got really interested, and asked me what anime I had up on it and if I wanted to trade...school policy pretty much went out the window there.
But I got the "7th highest bandwidth user on campus award," nearly beating out the mail server! Aaah, I love the 500kBytes/sec days!
(you guys with your own personal T-3's and such can just stop laughing in the background)
our popular vote (the people) was ignored by the Governer of Florida
The U.S. electoral system is a lot older than the Governer of Florida. If you don't like it, there are ways to change it, but you can't suddenly ignore it out because you didn't like the outcome.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
B) if Bush received the statewide recount that he halfheartedly countersuggested, Gore probably would have won.
IIRC, that was Gore by 1 vote, assuming 1 specific chad standard was used. Add to this the damage done to cards during counting, storing, counting, moving, counting, etc., errors in the press's count, and the margin of error is orders of magnitude greater than 1 vote. So all the study shows is that we still don't have a clue and probably never will. About the results, that is.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Of course, to do this his program needs to interoperate with N2H2's software. Hello DMCA exception:
In addition to its main function, the program also happens to identify sites that shouldn't have been blocked.
The judge somehow figured out what has been happening in a case? Sounds like a bit of non-technical reverse engineering to me.
The type of law that we're talking about here is proposed by the senator or congressman most in the pocket of the relevant industry (henceforth SOCMITPOTRI), and is faxed over from the lobbyist's office the day before it is presented. The bill can be effectively opposed at several points in the process, but probably the most effective point is before the SOCMITPOTRI is re-elected. The president may or may not eventually sign these laws, but he isn't elected based on that and wouldn't pay any attention to a letter-writing campaign with this type of focus.
If the goal is rational trade secret and reverse-engineering laws, I would recommend concentrating efforts on electing right-thinking candidates to Congress, rather than on reforming our electoral system (although that may be a laudable goal in its own right).
later,
Jess
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
There is a delicate balance at many points in the Constitution, between making sure each individual is represented the same, and making sure each state is represented the same. Since the states have always had differing populations, it is impossible to achieve both balances simultaneously. The electoral college system is an attempt to win at both, how well it succeeds is debatable.
Yes, it does make the individual in Montana have a marginally more significant vote than the individual in New York.
The political pressure for having each state represented the same is far far less than it was during the first century of this country's existence. While I'm pretty undecided as to whether dumping the electoral college is a good thing or not, I certainly think it is possible now, if enough people want it gone.
Yes, the Electoral College sometimes gets in the way of third party candidates, which IMHO is a bad thing. The Electoral College system as layed out in the constitution really isn't the biggest problem here, far bigger is how the states have decided to make their College votes all or nothing (Maine has a much more healthy system here, but it's so small and homogenous, nobody has seen it work yet), and how most states have the two main parties run their Boards of Elections.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
The DMCA is continually pounding more nails in the coffin of American ingenuity and relevance in the high-tech sector. Until America wakes up and realizes that the proper way to grow both business and society is without laws granting broad protection for "intellectual property". America is already falling behind in the technical arena to other countries with more permissive laws about reverse engineering. Companies should be held to the same scrutiny that research is held to in matters of security, which means full access to the source and algorithms. As a company I would welcome such peer review. Copyrights should be enough to prevent my competitors from "stealing" my secrets. I would also be wary of using any company's products that actively prevents people from putting my product through such peer reviews.
My old secondary/high school used a different system, but that could be circumventented in the same way. I suspect most systems like this can.
"There is a delicate balance at many points in the Constitution, between making sure each individual is represented the same, and making sure each state is represented the same."
This was a necessary compromise to get small states (like Rhode Island) to ratify the constitution. It is *not* a desirable form of democratic representation, since it makes one-person-one-vote irrelevant.
In other words, the idea that states as such, and not their people, should have representation is absurd (there are chunks of federal land larger than the whole state of Rhode island -should they have two senators each?). Democracy means, quite literally, rule of the *people*, not rule of the land. The current system is a terropoly (rule of the land), not a real representative democracy.
Guess that blows many recipe sites, I guess the 'Beef' producers lobbied for that one, cant have terrorist chicken breast recipes floating out there in cyberspace now can we..
But in all seriousness, it shows how bad of an idea these sort of 'filters' are.. they are flawed by design, and prone to 'political' abuse.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was unable to do my book report because doing so would be an illegal analysis of the author's copyrighted work. You can not analyze my action because an analysis of my action requires analysis of the protection on the copyrighted work.
This note is under my copyright and any thought about it is an illegal examination of my work.
Exactly correct. It's nice to see someone else saying this, so I know I'm not the only one.
Most people (in the US) don't grasp that the number of EC votes is the sum of the number of Representatives and Senators (with allowance for DC as well). The bicameral legislature was designed to make sure that states' interests as well as people's interests were represented. Therefore the EC is too, and like you said, there's no perfect way to do that for a singular office like the president. I suppose we could have every state's legislature decide two of the EC votes, reminiscent of how senators were selected prior to the 17th, leaving only 436 for "the people" to decide. That would bring the voter:vote ratio much closer to reality.
Also agreed on the "winner takes all" allotment. Maine and Nebraska are far ahead of the other states in this respect. This has the effect of really hurting 3rd party presidential candidates. Of course, the terrible ballot access laws and the horrible plurality voting system hurt all 3rd party candidates and are therefore much more important issues, but still it should be fixed.
I disagree when you say "The political pressure for having each state represented the same is far far less than it was during the first century of this country's existence" though. That is true only because the federal government has usurped much of the states' authority. The 17th Amendment should be repealed immediately, the federal gov't shrunk to about 1/5 its size, and those responsibilities returned to the states.
Constitutionally Correct
Isn't copyright law intended to protect *published* works? If I made my own internet filter software (why would I want to? I don't know...) and my banned list ended up the same as theirs, could they nail me for copyright infringement? Isn't this more of a trade secret than a copyright?
do not read this line twice.
This ruling does not even reach the merits of the DMCA or reverse engineering. It is concerned with a legal doctrine called standing. The law of standing in Federal Courts means that you must be a proper person to bring a claim. Article III of the US Constitution requires that there be an ACTUAL "case or controversy" for a court to hear. The US federal courts decide cases. The courts do NOT give advisory opinions - e.g., if you do this you will (not) be breaking the law.
The plaintiff here was a Harvard Law Student who asked the court to declare that IF he reverse-engineered the software THEN he would not be breaking the law - essentially asking for advice that the federal courts will not give.
The federal Declaratory Judgment Act allows federal courts to "declare" the rights of the parties, but that is different from giving advice. There still must be an actual case or controversy. To show that, the plaintiff must show that he has a "reasonable apprehension" of being sued. Usually that is done by showing the court some communication between the parties in which one party has either explicitly threatened a lawsuit or because of the relationship between the parties it is obvious that a suit is coming. Here, the law student could not show that, so he lacks standing to bring this suit.
If you doubt the correctness of my statements, look to the key part of Judge Stearns's quote: "there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman [the plaintiff law student] can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material...." He can't assert the rights he is trying to assert. In other words, you aren't the right person to bring this claim, you have no reasonable apprehension of actually being sued by these guys, you are merely asking for advice, we don't do that here, get out of my court but feel free to come back if you actually go ahead and reverse-engineer and you are threatened with a lawsuit.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Well I think it means more a "I don't give a fuck" rather than "whoever won"
So now that reverse engineering is illegal, Microsoft has to give back dos to IBM?
Not only should you quit, but, on your way out, try to amass as much evidence you can which could possibly help the other company in the lawsuit. Even your boss's unorthodox sexual preferences will help.
You only have to play fair with people who play fair.
Without the explosion of the PC, would the money have been available to drive Moore's law? The anti-reverse engineering part of the DMCA is almost un-american in its rejection of capitalism and competition
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
dwi2.exe notepad.exe
The application "notepad.exe" could not be opened, because it does not match the stored digital signature. It may be infected with a virus.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There is a delicate balance at many points in the Constitution,
Many points? Aside from the number of Senators a state gets, what else is there? (Prehaps you mean the very existence of dual congressional houses?)
The political pressure for having each state represented the same is far far less than it was during the first century of this country's existence.
Of course, it was only needed to entice low-population states to join up. There no more need for that now. And, one of the specific national laws low-population states had feared was the abolition of slavery...
far bigger is how the states have decided to make their College votes all or nothing
Well, a problem like that isn't something one can hope the states to solve on their own. To voluntarily give up winner-takes-all electoral assignment can reduce a state's power in 2 ways. Symbolically, the presidential election becomes closer to a real national vote, instead of a "vote of state's votes". And more importantly, candidates would be rewarded less for adjusting their popularity a small amount in a state.
For example, it's barely possible for a Republican to win California, yet they always campaign there (and adjust platforms to attract those voters), because if they did increase just by 3 percentage points, the 54 electoral votes would be decisive. But if California switched to mixed assignment, then getting that same number of voters to switch would gain the Republican only 2 more electoral votes. He'd be better off spending his time, money, and promises on states where a few percentage points still makes a big difference.
Conversely, a few states, like Massachusetts and Mississippi, only ever vote for presidents of a certain party. They would find their national influence somewhat increased by allowing divided votes, as today candidates have no motivation to contest it. (The opposing party will usually hold a single rally, to exhibit confidence to voters in surrounding states, and then give it up for lost)
That stuff only works in theory, its hard to truly determine context for an entire page.
All you would need is one questionable line of text to blow the entire thing.
"massage the breast with oil".... might just trigger it. or any number of medical information pages would be canned beacuse the context IS questionable. ( though a rational *mind* wouldnt ban an abuse support group for example )
Nice idea i agree, but i dont see it ever being effective enough to change my orginal statment in general.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
to add it to the problem program list. and have it removed with PREJUDICE!
http://www.englishfirst.org
I just like to think, no matter what instrusive laws are on the books, that what you do in the privacy of your own local environment without illegal distribution, blah blah blah, will not only be impossible to detect (as it should be), but also ignored. People should not be discouraged from developing useful skills, and the courts should not be able to dictate what directions our lives are not allowed to take (naturally, this argument excludes things like murder, fraud, etc., which the law should definitely defend against).
And I consider the abstentions more "They're both bloody liars. Nobody decent has a chance. So why bother."
I.e., I consider them votes AGAINST ALL of the major contenders.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest that Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass.
Well, then there's also no plausibly protected constitutional interest that the judge can assert that outweighs my right to sodomize him repeatedly with a rusty spork for being a clueless ass hole. I've got an "invasive and destructive trespass" for him!
Stupid ignorant motherfucker. How do idiots like this ever become judges? We need a good ol-fashioned lynching...
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The media reporting the results of exit polls is not in and off itself a bad thing. The way the TV reported them was, they made it sound like states were already irrevocably committed to one candidate. What if one candidate was soundly favored by elderly and jobless who vote during the day, and the other was soundly favored by 9-to-5+overtimers (who miraculously started to vote again) who voted after work. Early exit polls could be reported accurately and still be a bad predictor of the result of the election.
I think the media has been scared away from reporting exit poll results altogether, for at least a while.
The nature of the ballots, and the fact that the whole excercise was legally moot pretty much meant that they had to say "probably" there. The fact that it was still very close clinched it.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Speaking as both Superman AND Wonderwoman, I can proudly say my parents couldn't be more dissapointed in me!
That's why we need voting method reform, so that there is no such thing as a "majority party" and this problem simply goes away. The 17th Amendment was passed as a way to combat a procedural issue (difficulties in filling vacant seats), but instead it drastically changed one of the fundamental power balance triangles of government.
It also increased the amount of money in politics, as senate candidates had to campaign across a whole state rather than just amongst the state legislature. The primary rationale for the supposed "campaign finance reform" was that there is "too much money" in politics. Well, limit senators to campaigning a smaller group then, don't limit every citizen's ability to participate financially!
It also makes senators less responsive to their home states - do you really think California's senators feel more accountable to 50 million individuals than they would to a couple hundred (or whatever the number is) in it's legislature? The citizenry is better served by indirect senatorial elections than direct. A senator doesn't care about you, other than that it is easy to sway the emotions of a herd (which includes you) to keep himself in power. If he had to campaign to a smaller group someone might *gasp* force him into an intelligent reasoned debate, he might have to take a position on issues, he might have to actually take a stand for principles.
Most people are uninformed on state level issues, but the 17th gave them power to elect a federal representative for six years! One of the reasons the House has short terms is so that if the general public's (relatively uninformed) choice for office doesn't work out, he's quickly removed. One of the reasons the Senate has long terms is because it was assumed that the states' legislatures would be composed of thoughtful cool-headed people that could make a more responsible choice. The system was supposed to protect us against ourselves.
People should not have that much (direct) say in selection of US senators. (See above.) The Senate represents the States, therefore the States - as the political entities they are - should select those senators. The power of the states was supposed to serve as a check against the power of the central government. Without any representation in the federal government, how are the states supposed to do that? Like you said, "It's really unfortunate, since many things are really best handled on a state-by-state basis," and I fully agree with that.
Third parties currently have no power, so I don't see how this could hurt it. We need to implement Condorcet voting in as many elections as we can, so minority (ideology, not race!) viewpoints can be heard.
Constitutionally Correct
All these years, and censorware still hasn't gotten better?
All I could think of was the special edition of Redbook for the gestapo set:
Torture getting humdrum? We show you ten quick steps to more productive, and enjoyable convincing!
Better than WHAT? In order to block a site, you have to be smarter than the people that want to see it...
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
And this court decision is a long step into the nightmare. It's not as big a step as the legal right to disappear people, but it's another big one, and in the same direction.
All hope abandon, as far as Europe is concerned...
While this article assumes that Wednesday's approval by the Committee on Legal Affairs makes adoption of Germany's "DMCA" bill in plenary session on Friday "a mere formality" (as even the opposition's sole regret seems to be that fair use rights should have been curtailed even further), many of you sure wish to recount some experiences of the Chilling Effects from Four Years under the DMCA to the Members of the German Parliament about to repeat most of the DMCA's mistakes in their attempt to implement yet another overreaching implementation of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, the highly controversial "monstrosity" known as European Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC.
somebody took a black marker to this judge's newspaper every morning and arbitrarily marked out 10% of the articles? i wonder if he'd get the point.
didn't do any good
0 charsorsorso" In which foo is the port. Basically, if that port gets 324+ chars of data that isn't properly formatted, it gets stuck in an infinite loop.
Anyways, the URL sends data to a certain port(don't want to get to specific). It is "http://10.0.0.1:foo/randomcrapcontinuesherefor30
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I rarely bring my iBook, and I use my Zaurus for programming(python, php, and shellscript until gcc works with OZ.) I can ssh to the school's iMac from third period; I need to install a vnc server and the devtools.
My zaurus is also great for listening to music, watching movies, bug-testing flamecalc, and writing articles for OSnippets(see my sig.)
Most teachers don't give me shit about it; it's hard to get on one kid for using a pocket computer in class when another is stoned and a third is going into labor.
I doubt fuhrer(our principal) woudl apreciate it if he knew though. The tech guys are too stupid to notice the network traffic.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Maybe they don't want you to use them, but there they are. Updated hourly, I think. Some anonymous, some not.
[insert witty comment here]
What I want to know is: If you need to have the specifications publicly available for patented inventions, the same sort of rule ought to apply to copyrighted material, so that I can know as I design some piece of software that I am not infringing on someone's copyright simply by wrighting code that matches.
In fact, this type of thing has already been ruled unconstitutional in New York at least, thanks to the New York Attorney General: So when can we challenge these?
This is why we use the electoral college rather than popular vote.
Actually, the reason you use the electoral college had to do with the mechanics of actually running an election back in the 1800s. It was deemed (probably rightly) far to difficult to orchestrate an election for President amongst all of the States, so they fobbed off to the lesser task of electing the electoral college. The college then get together, several months later, to elect the President. The latter step is now a formality, mostly, as all of the electoral college nominees vote along party lines (though not always...)
The electoral college was always expected to closely tally with the popular vote; this is one reason why the electoral college gets adjusted from time to time, based on population shifts.
The checks and balances to prevent targetted pork-barelling is actually the domain of the Senate. Because the more populated states have the same amount of representation as the less populated states, the smaller states have a much higher representation per capita.
Unfortunately, the concentration of political power into two mainstream parties causes all sorts of break downs in the checks and balances...
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
RodgerDodger wrote:
l ege.html
Actually, the reason you use the electoral college
I assume that, from the "you" and the Australian web address for your account, that you're not in the US. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
had to do with the mechanics of actually running an election back in the 1800s. It was deemed (probably rightly) far to difficult to orchestrate an election for President amongst all of the States, so they fobbed off to the lesser task of electing the electoral college. The college then get together, several months later, to elect the President.
While this was certainly part of the inspiration behind the Electoral College, the big reason for rejecting the popular vote was to prevent New York and Virginia (the two biggest states at the time) from running off with the elections (Virginia got a surprising number of early presidents anyway).
A very good article on the history and functioning of the Electoral College can be found at http://www.truthinmedia.org/Columns/Electoral-Col
The electoral college was always expected to closely tally with the popular vote; this is one reason why the electoral college gets adjusted from time to time, based on population shifts.
The Electoral College is expected to deviate from the popular vote in a very predictable manner (a slight shift in the favor of small states). If they wanted it to closely tally with the popular vote, they simply would have made it the number of Representatives, rather than the number of Representatives plus Senators. Taking out the "Senatoral" EC votes, the 2000 election would have had Gore win with 225 or 224 votes (depending on Delaware, who had one abstention) to Bush's 211. An even closer match to popular vote can be had if states broke down their EC represntation by congressional district.
It doesn't get adjusted to correct for on population shifts, it gets adjusted based on the total number of Senators and Representatives. The number of Senators gets adjusted due to adding (or removing) states, the number of Representatives gets adjusted due to population shifts.
The checks and balances to prevent targetted pork-barelling is actually the domain of the Senate. Because the more populated states have the same amount of representation as the less populated states, the smaller states have a much higher representation per capita.
There are no checks and balances to prevent targetted pork-barrelling, that's why it happens so often.
Unfortunately, the concentration of political power into two mainstream parties causes all sorts of break downs in the checks and balances...
Yes, sadly it does.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
It's not Bess that does the BLOCKING, it's your school district. They categorize a site as "Message Board", "Games", etc, and whoever is running the Bess proxy for your school chooses to filter out certain categories. Just click on the "View Category" link or whatever it is on the annoying little Bess banner and poke around a bit; you'll see what I mean.
-insert a witty something-
Purging voter roles in florida was the real travesty.
That IMO was irreprable harm to the system.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.