"Super-DMCA" Outlaws Ph.D. Thesis

zenquest writes "SecurityFocus reports in this article that a recently-enacted Michigan law makes the graduate work of Niels Provos illegal. (His honeyd project was discussed here a few months back.) According to the article, "Among other things, residents of the Great Lakes State can no longer knowingly "assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise" any device or software that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service." It's also a crime to provide written instructions on creating such a device or program. Violators face up to four years in prison." Provos has had to move his website and research papers to a server in the Netherlands. Similar bills are under consideration in seven states, and have become law in six others. The EFF has more information about the individual states. So, does this mean that Caller-ID block now illegal, as well?"

Comments

outrageous

[drizuid]

This is outrageous, how far will the DMCA go before those in charge realize what it's doing to us. How much will it take before soemone decides to put an end to it.

Re:outrageous

[Lobo]

It will go as far as we allow the politicians to take it. Tell them what you think via snail mail or by phone, if that does not work tell them at the polls!

Re:outrageous

[mark2003]

Unfortunately I think they do know and either don't care or have self-interests that benefit from this.

Re: outrageous

[Black Parrot]

> This is outrageous, how far will the DMCA go before those in charge realize what it's doing to us. How much will it take before soemone decides to put an end to it.

When those in charge realize what it's doing to us, you can kiss the chances of getting it repealed goodbye.

Re:outrageous

[grumpygrodyguy]

This is outrageous, how far will the DMCA go before those in charge realize what it's doing to us. How much will it take before soemone decides to put an end to it.

Hitler made a policy of eradicating intellectualis in order to quell dissent within germany. George Bush and friends are promoting laws that do the same thing within the United States. In an ideal republican world, there will be no "end to it". Or, as Orwell put it, "the future is a boot stomping on a human face forever".

Clinton may have passed the DMCA, but like any other sensible human being he would re-evaluate its effect, listen to his public, and make changes that were better in accord with the spirit of america. There is little hope of that within the current regime.

Intellectuals, professionals, and the middle-class are the enemies of republicanism. Just as republicanism is the enemy of the american dream.

Re: outrageous

[Black Parrot]

> It will go as far as we allow the politicians to take it. Tell them what you think via snail mail or by phone, if that does not work tell them at the polls!

Votes are anonymous; your plan is probably illegal in Michagan.

Re:outrageous

[TopShelf]

Presidents don't pass laws, Congress does. All the President can do is use an (overrideable) veto, which they don't do very often, only on those issues which are truly fundamental to their platform. I think it's safe to say that nobody in Washington is informed well enough on this front to make it their central legislative focus, so the lobbyists get to define the details and steer the bill into law.

However, this Michigan case doesn't really relate to the DMCA, does it? It sounds like it's targetting towards cable theft, but is written overly broadly and catches a huge array of legitimate activity within its net.

Re:outrageous

[Darth Maul]

> Intellectuals, professionals, and the
> middle-class are the enemies of republicanism.
> Just as republicanism is the enemy of the
> american dream.

That is ludicrous. Obviously you want to take this issue and make it partisan, so if that's the case, you actually want to replace "republicanism" with "the democratic party". This is more correct for two reasons:

1) The Democratic Party wants more people on welfare, therefore intellectuals, and the middle-class are actually what Democrats want to get rid of. Only those uneducated, lower-class "citizens" can properly suck on the big mommy government!

2) The American Dream? By that do you mean the dream that everyone can work hard and make a decent living for themselves? The Democratic Party sure doesn't want you working hard for yourselves! They want the big government to give you what you need.

So, truthfully, youre statement was a pretty sad attempt to lash out at Republicans.

Re:outrageous

[workindev]

This makes sense. You don't like a law that a Democrat sponsored, a Democratic legislature voted for, and a Democratic president signed into law. Of course the obvious thing to do is blame the Republicans. Sounds reasonable.

Re:outrageous

[mark2003]

Outrageous!

Republican fits much better - look at the last two Presidents for God's sake. An intelligent, intellectual Democrat vs. a barely sentient Republican.

Re:outrageous

[goldspider]

Wow, as if it wasn't bad enough that you paint all republicans (and all conservatives, I suppose)as Nazis, you went on to suppose what another (presumably better) man would have done?

How does shit like this get moderated up when all it is is a rant based on raw, emotional partisan hatred.

I don't know who it speaks more poorly of, the author or the people who moderated it up.

Re:outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Bubba was pretty smart, but he was dumb enough to get caught being blown by a fat intern on company time.

Re:outrageous

[elmegil]

Get off it. Fritz Hollings, the senator from Disney, is a Democrat. Politicians are bought and sold by the corporations at this point, and it doesn't matter one damn bit whether they're Republican or Democrat. To say otherwise is being blind to reality, and only likely to start fights between ourselves instead of against those who we need to target.

Re:outrageous

[Carbonite]

Clinton may have passed the DMCA...

That's right, a Democrat signed the DCMA. It was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate, which obviously means not a single Democrat voted against it. Yet you somehow believe it's the fault of the Republicans?

As for eradicating intellectual dissenters in the US, that should be a rather easy task since I've seen so few. Most dissenters seem to do little more than chant rhyming nonsense. It's rare that they use facts to back up their arguments, instead relying on the tired "War for Oil" and "Bush = Hitler" mantra.

Re: outrageous

[Triv]

I'm pretty sure he meant vote 'em out of office, not bug people as they vote...

Triv

Re:outrageous

[Carbonite]

I'm curious, could you name the major accomplishments of Bill Clinton? I'm not talking about events that coincided with his presidency, like the economy. Provide the top ten if possible.

Re:outrageous

[molarmass192]

I'm neither a Republican or Democrat but where'd you get that take on welfare? The number of people on welfare declined significantly while the Democrats were in office and that decline ended abruptly when the Republicans took office. I'd say the Republican's have done a very poor job of managing the economy since they took over.

Re: outrageous

[jez_f]

But if you had electronic voting, it would be iligal as it would be disguising the source of the transmition. Badly drafted law. Or more like drafted just how the RIAA etc wanted it done without any thought to the consiquences.

Re:outrageous

[Carbonite]

I'd say the Republican's have done a very poor job of managing the economy since they took over.

I'd say that you overestimate the government influence on the economy. The government can nudge and even push the economy at times, it can't drag it from recession to prosperity. Also, if you study the stock market, you'll notice the downward trend startied in the middle of 2000, when Clinton was still President.

Re:outrageous

[elmegil]

I agree that the original poster has their head up their nether regions, but....

Most dissenters seem to do little more than chant rhyming nonsense.

I take issue with this. Every time I've tried to have a rational conversation with a pro-war person, they've devolved into frothing at the mouth and repeating the same tired propaganda which they have swallowed hook, line, and sinker. Even if I can be adult enough to agree to disagree because I have some respect for them (in some cases, not all), I still get cheap shots about how all protesters and dissenters are supporting terrorism etc. There is no open mind for any kind of dialog there, just blind acceptance that what the government says must be true because "they're in a position to know".

It seems ludicrous that you dismiss all dissenters based on public activity in forums where you just can't have a long thought out discussion (I can't say I look forward to the idea of large crowds of people reading dissertations). Try actually having a discussion with someone in person or somewhere like warblogging.com before you dismiss all of us because of some of us.

Re: outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Wooosh!! That one went right over your head didn't it?

Re:outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

You know I have been watching this for 4 presidents now. I watch Republicans sit and pat themselves on the back for electing the president they did, bragging about what great americans they are. When in reality what happens is the stock market tanks and unemployment skyrockets. Oh, and the middle class does get smaller under a republican admin also. I am just wondering how long republicans will live under this state of self denial...."THAT THEY ARE FUCKING UP THIS COUNTRY". WAKE UP...YOUR PARTY IS BROKEN.

Re: outrageous

[alphastar]

Actually, the DCMA was petitioned by the MPAA. Minor nitpick, I know, but significant when you consider the content.

Re:outrageous

[SatanicPuppy]

Sad attempt? I think the sad attempt was your attempt to deflect blame FROM the republicans.

Welfare has what to do with intellectual property?

The reason it is seen as a Republican issue is because it is a big business big money issue, and when big business speaks, the Republican party listens. They are so busy enriching themselves, they have no time to listen to anyone who is unwilling to line their pockets.

The people who are hurt by this legislation are the very people you purport to be speaking for: The hard working, american dream believing entreprenuers, who don't have corporate muscle behind them. Do you think Microsoft is being hurt by this? Sony? Intel? Dell? The RI-fricking-IA?

You want to talk partisan politics? I hate all politicians who listen harder to the rich than the poor; that includes democrats as well as republicans. Any law that favors a bloated market strangling monopoly over 99% of the rest of us can only be enacted by a government that is sitting in the pocket of corporations. This includes Republicans especially, but democrats as well.

We have a government that is so totally corrupted by big money that something like the damn DMCA could pass by the margin that it did! It's so fricking typical that you blame "big government" when you should be blaming big business!

Grow a brain man. You're getting royally screwed just like the rest of us.

Re:outrageous

[nytes]

Ha! I got you there! Bill Clinton:
1) Signed the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act.
2) Signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
3) Signed the DMCA.

There you have it - Proof that Clinton was working against the corporate interests, for the little guy, and for a more free and open society.

Re: outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

> Votes are anonymous; your plan is probably illegal in Michagan.

WTF is insightful about that? What are you, 13? DID ANY OF YOU READ THE LAW? You don't vote over the phone, genius. This is not really DMCA-ish - there is not a single mention of copyright or intellectual property in the law. It is supposed to help stop telemarketing and those "survey" people by forcing them to identify themselves. How it applies to security research is a big stretch to me - I don't see it going to court any time soon.

If you want to vote over the phone anonymously, call up American Idol or Married by America.

Re:outrageous

[sirinek]

And I'll tell you right now that jackass probably wont respond because he knows deep down inside he knows he's wrong.

The blind faith of GWB's supporters sickens me. Maybe they should turn off their AM radio and form a thought of their own.

Re:outrageous

[SlowMovingTarget]

That smells like short-term memory to me.

The economics that allowed for a decline in welfare and a budget surplus were created under a conservative administration and eroded away by the previous liberal administration. The U.S. economy began it's down-turn well before G.W.Bush took office, not after. Bush inherited the economic mess the previous administration left behind.

More pointedly, the economic model of corporations trying to appear profitable as opposed to actually being profitable also hurt America's economy. When stock values went down, all the big corporations resorted to improving their "operations cost" by cutting payroll, hence cutting jobs. Executives did this regardless of how profitable the corporation was at the time.

This is not a problem caused by the current administration, or even the previous one. Nor was Enron, or WorldCom. This was a problem caused by greed (IMHO).

This same problem of greed, both on the part of the MPAA and their cousins in the cable companies, and the lobbyists and politicians, produces rushed laws that do more harm than good. When the laws of the land were first developed, they were considered thoughtfully. Great care was taken to represent the interests of the people. Legislators felt a heavy moral responsibility to make good decisions and good laws on behalf of the people who elected them

The moral impetus to represent public interest has been one or two steps removed from public office for quite a while. The driving force is to get reelected, and so, to make money. Corporate interests form a copious source of money, and hence legislation is passed without thought about the consequences for individuals, or even for the "economic good." Bad motive begets bad law.

Writing law can be like writing code: undesirable coupling yields side effects.

Re:outrageous

[Zuke8675309]

Republican fits much better - look at the last two Presidents for God's sake. An intelligent, intellectual Democrat vs. a barely sentient Republican.

Ahh well, partisan nastiness rears it's ugly head once again. Why don't you just say that you dislike his politics instead of lowering yourself into silly namecalling. Bush has an undergraduate degree from Yale and a MBA from Harvard. Most level-headed folks would call that a pretty decent academic pedigree. I suppose you could claim that a degree from Yale is no big deal, but then again maybe not since your man Clinton has a degree from Yale as well.

Re:outrageous

[SlowMovingTarget]

You beat me to clicking the Submit button. Good comment.

Re:outrageous

[workindev]

When in reality what happens is the stock market tanks and unemployment skyrockets. Oh, and the middle class does get smaller under a republican admin also

Are you kidding? The republican economic record is solid. Reagans' supply-side economics produced a higher economic growth than any other president in the past 50 years. Here are some facts about the Reagan economic record as referenced in the above study:

Economic growth topped the charts at 3.2% under Reagan, as opposed to 2.6% under Clinton and 2.5% under Carter.

The unemployment rate dropped .2% per year during the Reagan years, as opposed to an average raise of .2% before Reagan took office, and no change after he left office.

Every income bracket showed an increase in real income during the Reagan years. Families with income less than $50,000 saw a 5.9% increase in real income, while families making more than $75,000 saw only a 2.5% increase

The poorest quintile saw an increase of 6% in real income during the Reagan years. This figure is -3% after Reagan left office.

Blacks and Minorities saw an 11% increase in income during the Reagan years, and only 2% increase after Reagan left office.

This data is especially significant when we take into account the fact that the Clinton economic legacy left us no better off after the bubble burst. In fact, we now know that many of the companies that were reporting economic "success" during the Clinton years were lying to us (see Enron, Global Crossing, Worldcom, and a host of other companies). Is that an admirable economic record?

Re:outrageous

[parliboy]

To rephrase your second paragraph:

It's a bill that's written overly broadly and catches all sorts of legal activity in its net? Why no, of course that's nothing at all like the DMCA.

Re:outrageous

[Carbonite]

OK, I'll bite. I usually don't respond to people who use childish name calling, but the fact is that I am right.

In the past few months I've talked with numerous (25-30) dissenters, some who are active protesters, some who are more passive. I've found that most of them are more anti-Bush than anti-war (you also seem to fit into this category).

I haven't found a single dissenter who protested the bombing of Kosovo or Clinton's missile attacks on Iraq. Yet now they all claim to simply love peace and that war is never the answer. That's hypocrisy, plain and simple.

It's true that there are people who blindly support Bush (I did not vote for him). It's also true that many people supported Clinton despite the shame he brought upon the presidency. The main problem I have with the dissenters is that they don't "form a thought of their own". Yes, that is painting with broad strokes, but when you hear the same words from dozens of supposedly free-thinking people, you do start to wonder if they share a brain.

Re:outrageous

[CrazyDuke]

To you, sir, I say thank you.

Re:outrageous

[ncc74656]

Wow, as if it wasn't bad enough that you paint all republicans (and all conservatives, I suppose)as Nazis, you went on to suppose what another (presumably better) man would have done?

How does shit like this get moderated up when all it is is a rant based on raw, emotional partisan hatred.

You're new here, aren't you? Anything that goes against the DNC talking points is regarded by the moderators as thoughtcrime. It's doubleplusungood and is to be modded into oblivion. Correct thought (defined as an echo of whatever Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi are saying) is rewarded.

And they say we are the mind-numbed robots...

Re:outrageous

[schon]

I haven't found a single dissenter who protested the bombing of Kosovo or Clinton's missile attacks on Iraq.

You have now.

Clinton's actions in attacking Iraq were dispicable, and tarnishes the efforts he made to end violence in the middle east.

It's also true that many people supported Clinton despite the shame he brought upon the presidency.

Depends on what you mean by "shame" - if it's the forementioned middle-east actions, then I'm with you. If it's the Lewinsky "scandal", you need to get your priorities straightened out.

Yes, he lied under oath, but he lied to a question that should not have been asked. Lewinsky had no bearing on how well he ran the country.

Re:outrageous

[AutumnLeaf]

Please turn down the volume knob on your rhetoric.

Kosovo was a NATO action in which the US participated, initiated in response to active ethnic cleansing by the serbs. It is not an apples to apples comparison.

Iraq was not actively engaged in ethnic cleansing when we initiated action against them, and our "coalition" does not have the sanction of a governing world political organization (unless you consider the US a governing world political organization).

Clinton did not bring shame to the presidency. He brought shame to himself, and to those who supported him (in our country). In other countries, people wondered what the big deal was. The idea of mistresses is more commonly accepted elsewhere. And she wasn't even a mistriss.

The presidency is the presidency. It has no shame.

Clinton missile attacks were also in response to ethnic cleansing (at least military action by Iraq against Kurds.) They amounted to little more than a "shot across the bow." In fact, my research on them makes me think that the target selection was so "weak" that I'm sure Saddam was laughing at the cowardice of the US.

Let me guess.... you're "still right." That's okay. "You're right dude! You are so right! Damn... you are right again!"

Feel better now?

p.s. Most Gulf War II dissenters probably don't actively oppose the Kosovo actions or the Iraq missile strikes because they don't remember the relevant details enough to feel comfortable discussing them... so they waffle.

Re: outrageous

[fliplap]

Federal law already requires them to identify themselves, why do they need a state law so broad to back up this one simple purpose?

Re:outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

You mispelled "me too".

Re: outrageous

[royalblue_tom]

Nope, it mentions "telecommunications device", which, if you read the section pdescribing that in cludes any device for or facilitating internet access.

RTFA, and assocaited pages, please.

Re: outrageous

[ManoMarks]

I'm pretty sure the original poster was making a joke. If you vote by secret ballet, you're concealing your identity. Clearly, no one votes by phone, at least not in a real election.

Re:outrageous

[tphil913]

Please cite the relevent law that details this exception to the perjury statute. I don't think you're going to find that 'question that should not have been asked' clause. If Clinton's lawyer didn't object to the question, then it's their damn fault. If the judge overruled the objection, it's a matter for a higher court to resolve.

There is no wiggle room in the criminal penalties for perjury. If you're under oath you answer the question truthfully. No exceptions.

BTW, thanks for admitting that Clinton DID lie under oath.

Re:outrageous

[ManoMarks]

Look, I'm no huge Clinton fan, but you can't take all credit for the economy away from him. The economy grew by leaps and bounds during his presidency, due in part to the people he put into office to shepard it along, and the support that he gave them, particularly his secratary of the treasury. That's a pretty huge thing. What happens as soon as he leaves? The Republicans do all the things they did in the 80's to lead us into slow growth and massive unemployement. Like I said, I'm no big fan of his. He was certainly a corporate shill, like all the rest of the politicians in Washington (except Barbara Lee and a handful of others) But compared to the massive for-sale sign the Bush administration has put on the country, it's nothing.

Re: outrageous

[Jardine]

Not in Michigan, but the last municipal election in Ontario was done by phone.

Re:outrageous

[Uberbah]

I haven't found a single dissenter who protested the bombing of Kosovo

As someone else pointed out, that was a UN operation that was finally started over "ethnic cleansing". The only "problem" with the operation is that it was about 5 years too late.

Clinton's missile attacks on Iraq.

Missle attacks meant to knock out some of Iraqs military. Or can't you tell the difference between dropping a few cruise missles on suspected sites and handing out oil contracts before you've even finished the unilateral invasion and deposing another counties leader who has never attacked us?

Clinton despite the shame he brought upon the presidency

Shame, eh? Lets spend over 100 million dollars picking apart your entire life, and when we can't prove any ciminal wrongdoing, we'll manufacture pergury charges against you by asking irrelevant questions about your sex life until you lie. This will all be justified afterword by your "shameful lying". I mean jesus, somebody lying about their sex life? The world will end!

Re:outrageous

[jaoswald]

Bush has an undergraduate degree from Yale and a MBA from Harvard.

If you are going to compare Bush and Clinton, you should realize that Clinton wasn't the son of George H. W. Bush or the grandson of Prescott Bush, which put GWB's getting into (and coasting through) Yale into a somewhat less impressive realm. Keep in mind also that GWB is quite proud of having been a C student at Yale, whereas Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar.

Re:outrageous

[elmegil]

Are you claiming that Clinton is the first president to lie under oath? Given the huge furor it made, you'd think he was lying about killing babies.

Oh wait, the folks who do really dastardly crap always have the sense to call in the 5th amendment (Ollie North) or find some technicality to get off on (John Poindexter). Oh, right, those guys weren't president, and allegedly the president had no clue what they were doing. Now that's effective leadership!

Re:outrageous

[jaoswald]

Your post is somewhat interesting, but ignores a simpler argument: that neither President's policies really had anything to do with the statistics you quote. In both cases, the responsibility probably rests more squarely with the Federal Reserve. As in Paul Volcker killing Carter-era stagflation with the recession early in Reagan's presidency, and Alan Greenspan carefully regulating monetary policy, but also talking about how the "New Economy" was really new, and not a speculative bubble.

Re:outrageous

[Pinball Wizard]

Every time I've tried to have a rational conversation with a pro-war person...

Every time I've tried to have a rational argument with an anti-war person, they've devolved into frothing at the mouth, repeating the same, tired propaganda which they have swallowed hook, line, and sinker. If you support the war, you get cheap shots from protesters and dissenters calling you bloodthirsty murderers who place human life second to oil profits.

Certainly no argument, however lucid and rational, will ever convince an anti-war protester that taking out a ruthless dictator is the right thing to do. There is no open mind for any kind of dialog there, just blind acceptance that war is baaad, mmmkay?

Re:outrageous

[ChemicalSpider]

I find it reprehensible that the majority of the protesters have to rely on the "War for Oil" or "Bush = Hitler" mantras. However when you look past these bandwagon protesters and find the people with real coherent arguments, there are reasons to disagree with the War besides mindless chants. I think the biggest argument against the war would be that invading Iraq heightens the anti-West feeling in the middle east. That being said, its also plain to see that it seems despite anything the West does, the middle east will resent the West. Perhaps, if we step out of Iraq quickly and cleanly as soon as the people are liberated we can surprise most middle eastern people and they will start to change their minds.

When you start to look at the real issues, then perhaps we can start coming to agreements, or at least being able to understand why the opposition disagrees with us. This goes for both sides, although its most apparent right now with the anti-war protesters. It is much more constructive to criticize ideas based on their merit, not on the party that originated them. Instead of finding one thing you can propagandize on the media in order to sway public opinion, or by trying to ignore or paint over it(civilian casualties in the war as an example), just give them the facts on both sides and let the public use their brains and some critical thinking and make up their own minds.

The problem with this, is people don't have time to think. They're too busy watching American Idol, or downloading mp3s, or smoking pot. It's just simpler to manipulate public opinion with propaganda than to present honest ideas.

Re:outrageous

[jedidiah]

The perjury statute is simply IRRELEVANT. If you hound a man long enough, he will slip up. You are simply attempting to apply an egregiously excessive standard to a single person while convienently exempting anyone else.

Clinton's reaction to the witchhunt that people like you put him through is meaningless until we similarly put some other (republican presidents) to the torch.

Re:outrageous

[jedidiah]

Oh yeah. That's right.

Anyone that thinks that Reagan and Bush I didn't purjure themselves simply has republican party blinders on.

Compared to gun running, lying about an affair is completely inconsequential.

Re:outrageous

[hackstraw]

Presidents don't pass laws, Congress does.

Yeah, right, and Congress declares war too.

Re: outrageous

[ManoMarks]

Wow. How did they do that without risking the security of the process? As if that's as much a problem in Canada as it is in the U.S.

Re:outrageous

[Carbonite]

Yes, I suppose you're right. When you dodge the truth, you'll usually be caught once your words are scrutinized. It's rather inaccurate to call it a witchhunt since Clinton, unlike the accused girls in Salem, actually was guilty.

Re:outrageous

[TarPitt]

Well, he pushed through an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit , specifically designed to provide tax breaks to lower income working people. This is one tax break that the Wall Street Journal opposes.

According to this site we also have the following :

The economy created 7.7 million new jobs in the first 34 months of this Administration.

Passed the largest deficit-cutting plan in history -- saving more than $1 trillion over seven years.

On track for three consecutive years of deficit reduction -- for the first time since Harry Truman.

Cut federal spending by $255 billion over 5 years.

Made new tax cuts available to over 90% of small businesses.

Unemployment has fallen from 7% when President Clinton took office to its current rate of 5.6%

Lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation since 1968.

1994 real GDP growth was the highest in a decade.

I'm sure, though that some folks will claim these are all either an amazing coincidence, or are in fact the fruition of the Reagan/Bush years. Anything bad is of course Bill's fault, or can be blamed on Lyndon Johnson as a failed policy of the Great Society.

Re:outrageous

[elmegil]

rational argument

Perhaps if you didn't resort to oxymorons, you'd have more success discussing the issue rationally.

Re:outrageous

[elmegil]

Guilty of....an affair. Woo hoo. Not proven to be guilty of any of the other crap he was hounded for for several years. Again: if you push someone repeatedly and analyze every aspect of their life that might have some poor reflection on their character (or lack thereof, let's be honest :-), you will find a technicality you can try to hang them on. Of course, I'd be really curious for the opportunity to ask GWB under oath about his "youthful indiscretions" in using cocaine. And I wonder if he ever had extramarital sex? Let's get the hounds to it, so we can prove our point; if he's really innocent, he shouldn't mind, right?

Re:outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

This link kinda speaks for itself on this issue.

Re:outrageous

[Dman33]

Crap... I already lost my mod points earlier in this thread... I would have definately given you a +1 for that one!

Re:outrageous

[Slime-dogg]

I usually take issue with the dissenters that do not have a rational argument. The majority of those that were against the war seemed to froth at the mouth as much as Michael Moore, who seemed to think that 20% of America was the majority. They're arguments are based more upon emotion, and how they feel about this or that.

The main point is that war sucks. Yeah, I'm for it, but I feel the same pain for those that get hurt and die. Why am I not opposed to it then?

Understand that there's a difference between leniency and negligence. It's been shown that those countries that spoke loudest against the war were actually violating a NATO pact, going against something that they kept calling the U.S. and England to honor when the war came around. This is one strike against those against the war, as hypocrisy does not do well in the public opinion. It is unfortunate that most Americans are unable to articulate it, but this is mostly the result of the modern American tendancy to shirk responsibility (different rant).

The biggest issue, though, is if we had been lenient, what would we do then? If we had extended the deadline, for instance, and allowed the Hussein regime more time, and then have them fail yet again to remove WMD... what would we do? This is the equivalent of bending over and letting Saddam spank you, mostly because you've lost the respect (read fear) of Saddam. I won't try to be too religious here, but you can equivocate this to the acts of God described in the Bible. I'm not saying that the U.S. is God, but when God sent prophets to warn people to change, and they didn't change, God wasn't in the business of giving second chances. This instilled the fear of God into the people, for they knew that he was not to be crossed.

Thus, it shows up in foriegn policy. The U.S. has decided to play the role of playground monitor, and as such must command the respect of all of the playing children. If the U.S. warns someone to stop what they're doing, and that someone gives the U.S. the equivalent of the finger, it's the dury of the U.S. to act out the rest of their role.

Now, you could argue about whether or not the U.S. has the right to play such a role. I can't give you the answer to that, but I can give you evidence. It goes to show that most of the world does not mind of the U.S. plays the role of policeman. In fact, when a country is really falling into desparate times, and we ignore, people look at us and say "You're heartless, how could you ignore the rest of the world?" It's a catch-22, we're stuck because if we don't help, we're killing people that others say that we're responsible for, but if we take responsibility and kill people as a result, we get labelled as killers.

There are numerous cases of Saddam's regime torturing and killing people at will... innocent people. In fact, the U.S. has released Kuwaiti hostages from as far back as '92, who were held in Iraq. Go figure, a country attacks a smaller country, and then takes hostages and hangs on to them indefinitely.

Saddam is not innocent, as most dissenters would have us believe. Saddam had no fear of the U.S., because of the lax pursuance of the Clinton regime. Saddam had no real limitations put upon him. He got weapons, he could have recieved food, water, and everything necessary for his citizens. He could have complied with the terms of the original treaty. He could have done a lot of things to make Iraq a better place for his people. Instead, he concentrated on gathering arms, non-compliance, and working for the appearance that the sanctions were causing undue suffering of the Iraqi people.

Those people are way better off without him.

Re:outrageous

[Slime-dogg]

It's amusing too. The serbs were participating in ethnic cleansing only because the Bosnians were doing it first. Of course, they could have chosen a better method of handling the Bosnians, but it was the Bosnians that, in fact, started the whole mess. They started killing Serbs, and once the Serbs turned around and started killing them, they cried to the U.S. for help.

The U.S., of course, turned a blind eye to the original actions of the Bosnians. It's a shame that so many had to die on both sides, but it's an even worse shame that most people don't realize who was being bad first.

Re:outrageous

[Slack3r78]

The economics that allowed for a decline in welfare and a budget surplus were created under a conservative administration and eroded away by the previous liberal administration

How do you figure? Reagan left us with the largest budget deficits in this country's history. The elder Bush didn't exactly do much to reverse it. In fact, when Bush left office in 1992, the federal debt was over four times the amount it was when Reagan entered office in 1980. The federal budget didn't go into surplus until 1998, SIX YEARS into Clinton's presidency. I'm sorry, but the claim that the economic success of the mid 90's is due to Republican policy quite is more than a slight stretch when the twelve years of Republican administration beforehand weren't exactly booming economic success stories.

I also find blaiming the current downturn on Clinton laughable. Yes, the market was inflated, and it had already started to let go some when Bush came in, but you can't honestly believe that what he's done since coming into office has helped the economy drastically or will be good for the federal government in the long run, can you? When Bush came into office, the federal government was running a $127 billion surplus. The projected DEFICIT for this year was projected to be $307 billion back in February - before the additional costs of an Iraqi war got thrown into the mix. So, explain to me, when the government is going to be in danger of losing more money in one year under Bush than in 3 years of surplus combined, how do Republican policies drive a budget surplus? I'd really like to know.

Re:outrageous

[ryanwright]

Well, he pushed through an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit [irs.gov], specifically designed to provide tax breaks to lower income working people.

People who pay zero in federal taxes still qualify for this. It's another form of welfare.

The top 50% of wage earners in the country (those who make over $27,682 per year) pay 96.09% of the taxes. Reference. Yet Clinton is a "good guy" for reducing taxes for the "poor", and the Republicans are "bad" for reducing taxes for the "rich"? The poor pay virtually nothing in federal taxes! You can only cut taxes for the people that actually pay them.

Re:outrageous

[vrt3]

It's been shown that those countries that spoke loudest against the war were actually violating a NATO pact

I'm curious to know: exactly how did they violate a NATO pact?

Re:outrageous

[Slack3r78]

That being said, its also plain to see that it seems despite anything the West does, the middle east will resent the West.

I happen to disagree. Most of the middle east has good reason to dislike the west. More often than not, we've supported brutal, totallitarian regimes that would willingly serve our interests over democratic ones. US intervention in the middle east has generally been a negative thing for the arabs. That said, I honestly believe those relations could be repaired, but it would take many years of listening to the arabs and actively trying to come to a reasonable compromise. Unfortunately, the current administration is not interested in compromising with anyone, as they have demonstrated.

Perhaps, if we step out of Iraq quickly and cleanly as soon as the people are liberated we can surprise most middle eastern people and they will start to change their minds.

Actually, this would be the hugest mistake we could make at this point. A quick pull out would lead to a power vaccuum... in the middle of the most volatile region of the world. A recipe for disaster. The US HAS to stay on for the long term. At the same time, however, the US presence will have to be completely transparent for the arabs to accept us as legitimate. I believe we've already failed in this respect. Declaring that reconstructiong contracts may only be awarded to US corporations and that "Iraqi oil will be used to pay for it" immediately gives the arab world the perception of the US as attempting to set up a colony. Yes, it sounds ludicrous to us, but would sound completely reasonable to a member of the arab world at this point. Getting the arab world to trust us, and through that, stop hating us, is a task which requires delicacy and careful diplomacy on the part of the US. I simply see the Iraqi war as neither of these, and as only going to cause more harm than good in the long run.

Re:outrageous

[elmegil]

While I agree that many of the dissenters rely too heavily on emotional rather than rational points, and also agree that Iraq will truly be better off without Saddam, I completely disagree with your assertion that the majority of dissenters believe that Saddam was innocent.

As you point out, we took the role of playground monitor, and most of us who dissent believe we are not justified in doing so. Furthermore, if we are justified in doing so, we've been exercising something called "selective enforcement" where bad guys who go along with us in most things get to keep being bad guys, and bad guys who don't, get slapped. That sure seems hypocritical, and definitely won't win us friends among those we want to influence to be good guys. When you compound that with Rumsfeld's apparent attitude that we have the might, so we're right, and you have a recipe for the international mess we've gotten ourselves into. I don't think we're likely to see the full ramifications of the damage we've done to our alliances for a long time to come.

That really sums up to total of why I was opposed to the war. You yourself acknowledge that there appears to be room for disagreement on what's justified policing and what's not; all I can say is, if we're going to be the world's policeman we damn well better start applying "equal protection" principles to everyone, instead of the hypocritical bs we have spouted for the last 50 years.

Re:outrageous

[GlassHeart]

no argument, however lucid and rational, will ever convince an anti-war protester that taking out a ruthless dictator is the right thing to do.

I can think of a few things that could help:

• Plan the war better. Expect the resistance, and occupy Baghdad in a more orderly fashion to avoid the looting of hospitals and museums.
• Plan the post-war transparently. There was very little discussion before the war, and transparency is the best way to quell any murmurs about oil interests.
• Find terrorists in Iraq. Remember, the war was partly about how Saddam was harboring and aiding terrorists. So far, they don't seem to be crawling all over the place like in Afghanistan.
• Find illegal weapons. Or produce the pre-war intelligence (that doesn't need as much protection as before) that led you to believe they exist.
• Listen. Invest heavily in diplomacy. Many opponents of GWB don't think he really tried enough to make diplomacy work.

Try to understand that it looks like GWB accomplished the "regime change" objective, but still cannot prove either a terrorist link or a WMD link, much less dispel rumors of an oil link. Did you know that US troops were sent to protect the Iraqi oil ministry's documents, while it allowed hospitals and museums to be looted? It obviously doesn't prove an oil link, but you need to admit to yourself that it doesn't look very good, either.

The point is not who is wrong and who is right. A President, especially a "compassionate conservative", is doing something wrong if he is polarizing his country. It's obviously not easy, but that's why you didn't just elect any random idiot for the job, right?

Re:outrageous

[edverb]

Regarding the current conflict, the fundamental question yet to be answered is this:

Does the US invasion of Iraq makes the world:
(a) safer?
(b) more dangerous?

Anybody who claims to already know the answer to that fundamental question can be totally disregarded, and thrown on the pile with Miss Cleo.

Re:outrageous

[schon]

Please cite the relevent law that details this exception to the perjury statute.

He was questioned about his personal sex life. Please cite the releveant law that details where the sexual activities the President performs with consnsual partners is anyone else's business.

BTW, thanks for admitting that Clinton DID lie under oath.

You're welcome, although I didn't realize that my opinion on the matter was so important to you.

Are there any other meaningless actions I can do that will make your life a little bit better?

Re:outrageous

[AutumnLeaf]

The Soviet Occupation was the lid keeping Yugoslavia from reaching the boiling point. Once the uber-bad-guy was gone, the ethnic groups turned on each other as the "Pan Serbian Movement" (championed by Tito? I believe) crumbled.

Going farther back, though Germans were not "ethnic cleansed" after WWII, millions of German's were displaced from their homes and lands in surrounding countries. The surrounding countries essentially "purged" the lands of Germans.

I'm fairly certain the same dyamics at work in Yugoslavia will resurface in Iraq. The various factions that co-existed somewhat side-by-side under Saddam mostly are now clamoring for power. The Kurds, Sunni's, and Shites (sp?) are as concerned about the other guy getting a leg-up as they are about themselves. Meanwhile, Iraqi exhiles are coming into town thinking its "their time now." Those who stayed have resentment towards those who left, etc....

Oh - as for who was being bad first between Bosnians and Serbs... That conflict goes back hundreds of years. It defies common sense to even try to figure out who started what. What happened in Yugoslavia was just another pebble in the ocean of history, and another page in the unfortunate tale of racially/ethnically motivated aggression.

Re:outrageous

[attobyte]

You know what I find funny is the whole damn country can only identify itself with two parties. That is how shallow we are. It is Pro-Choice or Pro-Life, it is for the poor or for the Rich. It is Pro-Corporate or Pro-People. This country has forgot it roots and I can't wait to see the demise of a once great nation. Politicans are all bought and paid for, Clinton and Bush are for themselves not for you.

You want to know how those two think. Go play Sim City 3000 and raise or lower taxes. Thats Bill and George all they are doing is playing a game with your life. They don't give two shits about you or any of your feelings towards them.

Sorry but the truth hurts

Atto

Re:outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

The French and the Germans both sold weapons to China, knowing full well that those weapons would end up in Iraq. They also had deep economic investments in Iraq, all the while participating in NATO (with supposed economic sanctions)

They probably oppose the war because Saddam Hussein owes them lots and lots of money. If he's gone, they get no money. It's greed: plain and simple.

Re:outrageous

[ChemicalSpider]

On the US pulling out of Iraq, I actually agree with you. What I meant when I said "step out of Iraq as quickly and cleanly as possible," I actually meant we do have to stick around, but be transparent as you said and do our best to get the Iraqi's independent quickly. And while I think it may see a bit shifty to only grant reconstruction contracts to the US corporations(are Britain and other coalition countries included), one could point out that this was a war fought primarily by the US - therefore it would be unfair to the US if French, Russian, German, etc corporations got the profitable contracts due to our work.

I also agree with you for the most part about Arab American relations. As you put it "I honestly believe those relations could be repaired but it would take many years of listening to the arabs and actively trying to come to a reasonable compromise." I was just pointing out the anti-Western bias (justified or not - I'm not arguing either way right now) that exists in the arab world. In order to reach a reasonable compromise both sides will have to do some active listening and make positive steps. As things look now, there is a full spectrum in both the Arab world and the West of those who wish to patch up relations and others who could care less. And those lines in the West aren't necessarily drawn along Party lines.

It's amazing what happens when an honest discussion happens rather than trying to demonize each other because we hold different opinions. Rather than spewing propaganda, there is an exchange of ideas. I learn why people disagree with me besides the fact that they think "Bush is as bad as Hitler" or that "the war is only for oil."

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

Re:outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

And while 7000 year old treasures were stolen and destroyed in the Iraq museum, US troops were bravely defending the oil ministry.

Re:outrageous

[drsmithy]

The poor pay virtually nothing in federal taxes!

They don't have much to start with - that's the point.

I'm not American, so I don't know your tax brackets to do some relevant calculations. However, knocking tax down by, say, 5% is going to mean a lot more to someone earning $20k/year than it will to someone earning $100k/year. If you only earn $300ish/week, $20 can be the difference between eating regularly and sporadically. If you earn $1000ish a week, $100 might mean the difference between going out for dinner three times a week instead of twice.

So, pardon me if I weren't to weep should the rich miss out on (another) tax cut.

And, as always, the real losers out of the tax race are the middle income earners - the people who earn too much to be able to benefit from government assistance, but not enough to be worry-free about money (and, quite frankly, if you're earning more than about US$60k a year and _worried_ about money, you need to take a step back and think about your lifestyle).

Re:outrageous

[Slack3r78]

It's not a matter of "identifying with only two parties" so much as accepting the reality of strength in numbers. Were the US set up with a parliamentary style government, the yes, we could afford to have 400 active political parties all with their own unique political agenda. But since Jefferson couldn't convince us of the dangers of having political parties early on, this is what we have. Personally, I don't think it's as bad as people like to make it out to be. The problem isn't the two party system so much as big business money and corruption in government. The stumbling block there is we're having a hell of a time cleaning it up because there IS corruption. For example, John McCain has been trying for years to push campaign finance reform bills through congress, and each time, he's met with stiff resistance.

An interesting side note is that I've found that among Republicans I know, John McCain is usually not thought very highly of at all. I really don't understand this. I've always personally found this strange, as McCain comes across as very straight forward and honest - an overall good guy. However, McCain is essentially the outcast of the Republican party, mainly because he's the most moderate congressional Republican I can think of. There seems to be a growing gap between the ideology of the Democrats and Republicans, which is the major weakness of the two party system. The Republicans seem to be drifting further and further to the right, and I'm not sure what's going to come in to fill the gap of the moderate-conservative Americans out there unless this reverses itself soon. I think it'd be a shame for the most extreme members of EITHER party to dictate things, when there are huge numbers of people sitting in the middle unheard.

As for your feelings on people's polarity regarding big issues, well, this is the reason why they're big issues. These are generally the issues that people feel most passionately about, and therefore why it may SEEM like everyone is hard set on side or another. Not to mention the fact that once something goes to law, the LAW is supposed to see it in a black and white manner. (DMCA and the like excluded). The only reason this is a problem is the same reason why the political system is so messed up as it is - people don't know or care enough to think for themselves. I think having political parties is a good thing as it allows those with similar views to work as a cohesive unit. It's just that people now don't seem to be able to think enough to break from the party line when they don't really agree with something.

Re:outrageous

[Slack3r78]

And while I think it may see a bit shifty to only grant reconstruction contracts to the US corporations(are Britain and other coalition countries included), one could point out that this was a war fought primarily by the US - therefore it would be unfair to the US if French, Russian, German, etc corporations got the profitable contracts due to our work.

I definitely understand the logic behind this. What it's missing, however, is the fact that, at this point in time, improving the public perception of the US in the arab world is far more important than the "right" of US corporations to be involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.

(are Britain and other coalition countries included)

To be honest, I'm not really sure on that, I'd have to check. What I do know though, is that it's been stated that contracts will not be awarded through the usual bidding process and that the amounts of the contracts will in some cases be kept secret due to "security" issues. How building roads in Iraq pertains to US national security is beyond me. If nothing else, it gives the image that the contracts will go to corporations that are "buddies" of the current administration, thus further damaging the arab view of the US.

As things look now, there is a full spectrum in both the Arab world and the West of those who wish to patch up relations and others who could care less. And those lines in the West aren't necessarily drawn along Party lines.

Agreed. Repairing US relations with the middle east (fortunately) hasn't become a party issue here. However, the group currently in power has, I believe, made it clear as to what their methodology in regards to this is and is going to continue to be. It just seems to me that they've completely missed the point that the PR game is the most crucial element of this war, and if they do, they underestimate the arab people. Dropping pamphlets is one thing, but until you follow through with action but without dictating anything to the Iraqi people (ie: who contracts may or may not be awarded to) you haven't done anything but engage in propaganda. I would get into what I think would be a logical approach to the reconstruction of Iraq, but it'd just double the length of this already long post. :)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

The same goes for you. Where you take the "Bush==Hitler" and "this war is for oil," I get to hear the equivalents from the pro-war side, and if you try to disagree, they almost always resort to branding you "Unamerican." It's like when I checked my email today and opened the mail on my comment moderation here on /. 4 or 5 of my posts had been raped as far as moderation goes, yet the opposing view point on the same thread went basically unscathed. I couldn't care less about the karma, but it does annoy me that people could be so closed minded as to resort to something like that on what's supposed to be a forum for the exchange of ideas. So yeah, it's nice when I can have a civil discussion about the issues with someone like yourself, and I appreciate it.

Re:outrageous

[bigmattana]

I think the biggest argument against the war would be that invading Iraq heightens the anti-West feeling in the middle east.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and sort of uh.... disagree with you there. When I make important decisions, you can be sure that how the middle east feels about them is the last thing on my mind. Islamic extremists are not reasonable people, and worrying about what they think is the equivalent of worrying what a KKK leader thinks. Sure, they may kill you, but in the grand scheme of things their opinions do not determine right and wrong. Most Iraqis support getting rid of Saddam, and would have done it themselves if they could have. The rest of the middle east is simply mad because they feel powerless and are being fed anti-american propaganda 24/7.

I have heard decent arguments against the war, but this is not one of them. People in the middle east who hate us do so because we support Israel. This is not going to change until the Arabs stop wanting to eradicate Jews from the face of the earth (something that most Jews do NOT want to do to them).

This talk of doing things based on what other people groups think is absurd. I reminds me of junior high school all over again. Of course, since this attitude is so prevelent these days, sometimes I forget that I am not still in junior high.

Re:outrageous

[ChemicalSpider]

Perhaps I should clarify. I was pointing out the strongest opposition argument that I had encountered (as opposed to Just War Theory or former US support of Saddam). So while I think that we should be careful about how our image is portrayed in the middle east, I fully support Bush and the troops. What I was trying to get at, is I'd much rather hear those decent and thoughtful arguments to the chants and mantras of the protesters who really havent done much research or thought about the issues involved.

The Iraq war can be a step forward or backward in Arab-Western relations. It all depends on what happens in the near future. But I also agree with you that Israel is probably the most central issue with the Middle Eastern states. I would like to think that Arabs don't necessarily want to eradicate the Jews from the face of the earth so much than just remove them from the Middle Eastern area. If we demon the Arabs as such intolerant and hateful people then we're just as bad, if not worse, than our own characterization of the Arabs.

Re:outrageous

[bigmattana]

Alright, what you stated is probably more accurate than what I said. (Arabs don't want to destroy Jews, just relocate them.) However, that statement in itself may seem like it is demonizing them. I personally don't think it is, because not all Arabs feel that way and the ones the do aren't necessarily hateful, they just feel like it is wrong for Jews to be there based on religious beliefs. Something has got to give, though, because the nation of Isreal isn't going to be moving anytime soon.

That being stated, I think we are actually on the same page with the "image" thing. We should be doing things that are right which would improve our image, but not let our image come before whether it is right or wrong. Wouldn't it be great if AS A NATION we made an effort to raise money for relief in Afganistan and Iraq, much like we did with the September 11th thing? Maybe we could put donation boxes in post offices and other government buildings. In this case, we could be sure that it would actually get to the people, instead of humanitarian aid that goes to Africa and gets averted by the local warlords. Also, it wouldn't rely on economy-draining taxes like the rest of the war, though it would probably involve the usual 50% overhead our government seems to need for everything if they were actually the ones overseeing it. I am seriously considering writing my congressman and suggesting this. I think the majority of Americans would be glad to see something like this. I know there are already relief programs set up, but I think it takes some leadership to rally the people to take part in something as a group. This type of thing could become a tradition whenever there is a large need somewhere in the world. If that were to happen, our image around the entire world would improve, though we would still need to make sure that our leaders are not simultateously taking advantage of other countries. There are so many good things we could do to help the Arab world and our image with them other than sitting back while Saddam desecrates his own people and possibly us.

Re:outrageous

[Lips]

I went to hear John Ralston Saul talk once. He maintains that after the WTC attacks, the markets paniced and were about to go into meltdown. But governments around the world stepped in, cut interest rates and did stimulus "stuff" (IANAE) to stop the collapses. So far it seems to have worked pretty well.

Re: outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

secret ballet

That's my secret too.

Re:outrageous

[attobyte]

I didn't say 400 did I? Can you say that you agree with one side completely? I never agree with one side I think that a 6 party system could happen but it will never happen because politicians don't want it to happen. Plus this country thinks it can't happen. Like I said we are shallow as a country. Why is it that when some third party comes up and I vote for someone in it I am told that I am waisting my vote. I am told that I should choose the lesser of two evils. Okay let me give you a choice then. Hitler or Stalin. Its not a choice and sometimes there is not a choice in a two party system.

Atto

Re:outrageous

[Slack3r78]

Nah, I don't agree completely with either side if you look at every issue. I do wish there were more parties, but as it is, the two majors have tended to be more middle of the road, hence their popularity. Just about every other party that's sprung up that I can think of has just been a more radical version of one side. Nader's Green party is a far more left-radical movement than most people are comfortable with. I wouldn't trust the Greens as long as Nader is in charge myself, but that's another story. Then there's the Reform party which... I'm still not sure what the hell they're actually supposed to be, I'm not sure anyone really is, but they've always seemed to have a far-right bent to their platform. Really, the only group that has a clear, well defined platform that doesn't fall to any extremes I can think of is the Libertarian party. They just run into the stumbling block of gaining enough support to actually accomplish much of anything, unfortunately.

I do think that if things continue on their current course however, you may get to see a 3rd party in the next decade. Unless the Republican party ceases their drift to a more and more extreme right as they have the past few years, they're going to alienate moderate-conservatives, and it wouldn't surprise me to see John McCain and like-minded individuals break away to form a new party, and chances are they'd take a lot of middle-right voters with them. Really, I believe getting corporate money out of politics is what would help the minor parties start to make an impact. Until there's real campaign finance reform and corporations can buy Congressional seats, realistically, we're stuck with the two party system.

Re:outrageous

[N1XIM]

Why is it that people continue to confuse 'nation' and 'state'? A 'nation' is a group of people whom share common language, history, ideas, customs, and often territorial homelands. A 'state' is a political entity that often represents one nation (sometimes more, like the USA--one of few true multinational 'states'; ok so the USA is actually a republic of independent states that have given up true autonomy to prevent the chaos of our 1861-1865 war--but that is another issue) and controls some land-based territory.
The people of the various Arab countries (read states here) are all of one nation.

Re:outrageous

[attobyte]

Your last sentance I do think you meant "can't" instead of "can". :)

I agree with your comments I think this country needs campaign finance reform very badly and then maybe we would see people open up a little more. They will be able to hear more then two sides of the story and make a better desicions. I do think the News media is full of BS and doesn't give all the facts but thats another thread. :)

I can identify with the Libertarian party more then the other two just because I see their motives are so "corporate sided".

Disgusting

[ralico]

Is it now also illegal to drop an anonymous note into a suggestion box in Michigan?

Re:Disgusting

[mgs1000]

And you better not forget to put a return address on all of your mail!

Re:Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, that is not a telecommunications device, so this law does not apply.

"telecommunication - The science and technology of communication at a distance by electronic transmission of impulses, as by telegraph, cable, telephone, radio, or television." (diciontary.com)

Re:Disgusting

[feed_me_cereal]

In other news, slashdot is asked to change "Anonymous Coward" to "Anonymous Felon" in michigan.

Re:Disgusting

[McCart42]

Next up: jail all the ventriloquists.

Re:Disgusting

[Tsujigiri]

Umm, how are either of these (suggestion box and snail mail) telecommunications?

Less than 6 hours

[k98sven]

..between reposts now.

Is someone keeping statistics on this?
Perhaps we could extrapolate CmdrTaco's repost-delay and figure out approximately when he will lose all near-memory and become like the guy in the film Memento?

Re: Less than 6 hours

[Black Parrot]

> ..between reposts now. Is someone keeping statistics on this?

I've been plotting the convergence, hoping it will tip me off on the end of the world.

(Think of the killing I'll make by selling off all my stocks 10 minutes before it all ends!)

Quick Question...

[nochops]

Doesn't this outlaw NAT?

Think of all the poor little DSL routers out there.

Oh the humanity!!

Re:Quick Question...

[WPIDalamar]

That's one of the main complaints about these new laws. Normal things like NAT aren't allowed.

The proposed MA (massachusetts) one is slightly less worse ... it at least says you have to do it with the intent of performing unauthorized actions.

Unfortunatly, they don't define unauthorized, so it's assumed your service provider determines what's authorized. Your ISP says no nat.. BAMN you're breaking the law. Someone else's ISP is ok with it, they're not (even tho they're doing the same exact thing).

Re:Quick Question...

[shdowwar]

Thats how I read it.

Yet another example of how politicians pass bills that they never expect to be enforced, just so that they can line their pockets with money. I really do hope that they realize that if this stupidity continues, not only will they be unable to move forward with technology, but they will squash educated thought and push us backwards!

Just the stuff off the top of my head that would now be illegal...

Cable/DSL routers for home use
Private networks for business
NAT and firewalling
Proxy servers
SSH and SSL tunnels
Email Listservs set to strip off headers

Re:Quick Question...

[squeegee-me]

If you read Sec. 540c. paragraph c, you apparently need to get your phone companies permission to use a cordless phone in your home now. Least that is how I read it....

"To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider."

Re:Quick Question...

[Ponty]

It's a good thing that anon.penet.fi is already gone or they'd have to shut down again. :-)

Re:Quick Question...

[Carbonite]

The proposed MA (massachusetts) one is slightly less worse

Just a nitpick: What's the point of using the abbreviation for Massachusetts immediately followed by the full name? I always though that the whole point of abbreviations was to conserve writing and reading time. Note that "MA" is never used again in the post.

Re:Quick Question...

[chefren]

Should't the state police start raiding and arresting Michigan state employees for surfing from behind such nasty things as proxies and firewalls. That would cause a stir, I'm sure. Hit the with their own stupid laws I say!

Re:Quick Question...

[dohcvtec]

Think of all the poor little DSL routers out there
What about Direcway, or whatever it's called now? As I understand it, satellite internet customers are actually on an RFC 1918 network, with NAT on the satellite end.

Re:Quick Question...

[WPIDalamar]

Yup, it was DMB (dumb)!

A lot of people when they see MA, they think Maine... so there's the reason I did it.

When I did it, I thought I was going to use MA again... which I didn't end up doing (which is why it was dumb!)

Guess I should read my own posts.

Re:Quick Question...

[harlows_monkeys]

Doesn't this outlaw NAT?

No

Which is more illegal, NAT or DNS?

[Limburgher]

NAT conceals IP addresses from software, which DNS sets up an obscuring layer betwixt the IP addresses and the user for purposes of convenience. In both cases, the IP address is hidden, though still discoverable using the proper methods.

Add to this caller ID blocking, and most importantly, Anonymous Cowards.

Re:Which is more illegal, NAT or DNS?

[Trestop]

You are aware that this law effectivly forbids selling/advertising/installing/providing support/etc' to any OS that contains firewalling and NAT components ? (i.e. Linux/*BSD/Windows >= 2k)

Re:Which is more illegal, NAT or DNS?

[indros]

wouldn't it be nice if the lawmakers offices were running NAT, and someone sent a cease and decist based upon this law.

Re:Which is more illegal, NAT or DNS?

[jez_f]

would this mean that connecting to any PC that is behind NAT anyware is illgal in Mitchigan. And I think it Makes freenet completly out of the question.

Re:Which is more illegal, NAT or DNS?

[Ryosen]

You mean they finally figured out a way to get rid of Windows XP? =)

Bright Side

[4of12]

Slashdot won't be getting any more AC posts from Michigan.

Re:Bright Side

[Pembers]

Better yet, if this law really is as broad as claimed, most software for sending spam is now illegal in Michigan. It might even be illegal to operate an open relay, or to use one for spamming. Persuading law enforcement to go after a spammer on these grounds would be another matter altogether, I suppose.

Re:Bright Side

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another win for Anti-Terrorism. I feel much safer now.

Re:Bright Side

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly enough, Michigan State University's current email system runs an open relay only a couple miles from the state capitol building.

Re:Bright Side

[Branc0]

The question is... Is slashdot liable for AC posts from Michigan?

Re:Bright Side

[Zemran]

Does that mean that Hotmail accounts are now illegal in Michigan?

Re:Bright Side

[Anonymous Coward]

I am (an outlaw) from Michigan!

Re:Bright Side

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but Michigan residents in DC can still post as AC's. "Look mom! I'm an AC"

I just posted anonymously

[Anonymous Coward]

*waves to Michigan's legislators*

Duplicate of Last Night's Slashback

[Loiosh-de-Taltos]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/14/201725 1&mode=thread&tid=133&tid=167&tid= 99 ...oops?

I sure hope not.

[geesus]

So, does this mean that Caller-ID block now illegal, as well?
Whats the world comming to?

Re:I sure hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it go so far to require the Telco to provide caller ID to everyone? Isn't charging for that information effectively blocking that information?

Re:cum on me

[paiute]

And for Heaven's sake, don't have sex standing up. it might lead to dancing!!!!

what about caller id blocking

[dalesyk]

Someone should inform the telcos that they cannot offer this service anymore. Then the army of telco lawyers will kill the bill.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they're going to pay out millions in legal fees to save caller ID blocking. And the moon is made of cheese, too.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[naoursla]

Better yet, what about caller id. If they don't send you the signal are they hiding the origin. Does this mean that they are legally required to provide caller id information to everyone?

Re: what about caller id blocking

[Black Parrot]

> Someone should inform the telcos that they cannot offer this service anymore.

Wouldn't a caller ID blocking honeypot be fun? Have a device that suppresses the ring on your end if the ID is blocked, but returns the sound of a ring to the other end for however long the caller cares to listen.

Probably illegal though. Probably illegal for me to suggest it.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[Thud457]

Damn straight, they sell that service to telemarketers. Just like the USPO, the telcos stick it to the little guy to subsidize advertizing routes used by sleazy businesses. YAY for free enterprise! Simple human decency be dammned!

Re:what about caller id blocking

[Omnifarious]

It wasn't a service they had wanted to offer in the first place. It was only added to caller id because of immense pressure from privacy groups.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[outsider007]

Someone should inform the telcos that they cannot offer this service anymore. Then the army of telco lawyers will kill the bill.

It's doubtful that this law is going to be enforced, and especially not against the telcos. It's just one of those things that sound like a good idea to a bunch of 65 year old white guys who don't understand what's going on.

no, the sky is not falling. states can pass as many dumb laws as they want, there's still higher courts that will listen and overturn the bad ones.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[Cyberdyne]

Better yet, what about caller id. If they don't send you the signal are they hiding the origin. Does this mean that they are legally required to provide caller id information to everyone?

They aren't hiding it - just not telling you it. Having said that, I would like to see CLID made a required service (i.e. any telco providing lines must at least offer CLID, at some limited price) - and I'd love to see CLID-blocking banned! (I have it filtered anyway; make any anonymous calls to me, and you just get an "error message" from the telco: "This line does not accept anonymous calls." or similar.)

If you're calling me, why on earth would you want to conceal your identity? Either it's a nuisance call (in which case I definitely don't want to receive it!) or it involves some sort of identity, whether personal or corporate. The only sort of caller I can think of which would want to be anonymous is the sort I don't want to receive in the first place ;-)

Re:what about caller id blocking

[Suidae]

Either it's a nuisance call [...] or it involves some sort of identity, whether personal or corporate.

Course, it could be a friend calling you from a pay phone out in the middle of nowhere because his ride broke down.

I don't block any calls, but if I don't get ID information I'm more likely to let voicemail pick it up.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[mapinguari]

In that case, it should be labeled PAYPHONE. I've actually seen that once or twice on my caller ID.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[MountainLogic]

There are some very important reasons to allow CLID blocking. Organizations such as domestic violence shelters, health care providers, public health, etc require CLID. For example, do you want a CLID tag left on your hon display that says "County VD clinic," called? Even if they no one answers "finger prints" are left for every one in your house to see.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[realdpk]

"no, the sky is not falling. states can pass as many dumb laws as they want, there's still higher courts that will listen and overturn the bad ones." ..for a (significant) price.

Re:what about caller id blocking

[Cyberdyne]

There are some very important reasons to allow CLID blocking. Organizations such as domestic violence shelters, health care providers, public health, etc require CLID. [I think you mean CLID blocking here ;-)] For example, do you want a CLID tag left on your hon display that says "County VD clinic," called? Even if they no one answers "finger prints" are left for every one in your house to see.

If the wrong person answers, there's one hell of a big fingerprint right there anyway. Which is why calling like that is an incredibly dumb idea. (I'd actually forgotten the US system gives names as well; the UK's CLID implementation is number only. Which also avoids the problem, as long as you're careful how the switchboard operator answers!)

You could make an exception for cases like that, much as directory assistance will give out "unlisted" numbers in emergencies (to appropriate authorities, that is). Or just show their number as having a person's name, or being number-only. For the VD clinic, unless it's a standalone clinic unrelated to anything else, just use the hospital switchboard: easy enough to explain away if needed.

These are hardly major issues, or frequent occurences, anyway. A much bigger problem in the UK is that, with local calls still being charged per minute for most people, any call you make to the local VD clinic will then show up on the phone bill... AFAIK, that's never been a problem here. You just don't phone them; if you're waiting for results, either collect them in person, or have them mailed in a suitable envelope. Never having had any involvement with VD clinics (or VD!) it's not something I've encountered - the phone system is my field...

If for some reason they really, really need the ability to make anonymous calls, they could get a specific exception. I'm still not convinced this is the case: do domestic violence shelters make many calls of that sort? I'm sure VD clinics have worked out some way of handling calls answered by the wrong person long before this!

i've thought of something....

[smd4985]

the government can do for unemployed technologists. Give them a job at local, state, and federal legislatures explaining to lawmakers how broad statues such as the DMCA outlaw perfectly common sense technologies (routers, firewalls, academic research) and chill innovation in industry and academia.

Re:i've thought of something....

[ratamacue]

Great, another reason to make government bigger. This is exactly why the US government today is more expensive than ever, and exactly why we're losing more and more of our civil rights every year. Government creates a "solution" (DMCA) to solve a "problem" (their intellectual property laws are inherently ambiguous and overly complex and thus are exploited very easily), and in the process, creates a new problem (nobody except the lawyers can understand the law) that they can solve, all the while making government more expensive and more oppressive. I'm not buying it.

Government is the problem here, not the solution. The solution involves reducing the scope and powers of government, not expanding those powers.

Re:i've thought of something....

[smd4985]

I guess I didn't make it clear, but I was being facetious. That said, I think lawmakers could benefit with some tech expertise at their disposal....

Re:i've thought of something....

[ratamacue]

Personally I am opposed to all types of patent law (it contaminates the basis of natural property rights), so my proposed solution is to simply eliminate patent law, instead of endlessly "reforming" it, year after year, knowing perfectly well that it will never reach a state that works for everyone.

Re:i've thought of something....

[Anonymous Coward]

The topic here is copyright law, not patents. Patents serve a vital role in industry, by allowing companies to protect their inovations and profit from them for a certain number of years. Patents expire, though the patent holder can get 1 extension. After a patent expires, that technology can be used by anyone. Copyrights go on basically forever. The actual lenght is something like, life of the author + 70 years, but then next time the some major copyright get close to expiring, the congress will extend the duration. If copyrights were still in their original form in the US, 12 year with a 12 year extension, they would be a good thing, but in their current form, they just stifle inovation.

What worries me

[kinnell]

... is that the US will use it's diplomatic muscle to force laws like this on those of us who live in the free world.

Re: What worries me

[Black Parrot]

> ... is that the US will use it's diplomatic muscle to force laws like this on those of us who live in the free world.

It's not the diplomatic muscle you have to worry about. For the USA, "diplomacy" now means telling everyone else what's going to happen. Then the ordinary sort of muscle is engaged.

Re:What worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

Which free world is that? The one where there has never been freedom of speech? The one where you can't criticize your government? The one where you can't buy things you like because the government takes >60% of your income to give to people who won't work?

Re:What worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm guessing its not the one (USA) where the governmet takes ~30% of your income to build missles and bombs to force other countries to eat their shit and that kill innocent people...

Re:What worries me

[mark2003]

Notice he said the FREE world - i.e. the rest of the West outside of the US, where we are free to criticise our government to a much greater extent than in the US and don't pay 60% tax (except for Norway).

Re: What worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

American diplomacy is now made at the point of a gun. All hail Bush Caesar!

Re: What worries me

[B3ryllium]

Caesar is a name, not a title. We can just call him King George the Monkey-Faced.

Re:What worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

where we are free to criticise our government to a much greater extent than in the US

Really? Try insulting the french president, or advocating a nazi party candidate in Germany. (here's a hint, both of these are illegal)

Re:What worries me

[Abcd1234]

... is that the US will use it's diplomatic muscle to force laws like this on those of us who live in the free world.

Well, I live in Canada, and this hasn't happened yet, nor is there any push (that I'm aware of) to pass similar laws here (minus the odd anti-terrorist law which gets introduced and subsequently shot down). So, for now at least, I'm feeling pretty comfortable about my freedom.

Re: What worries me

[kinnell]

Caesar is a name, not a title

Actually, although it started out as a name, it was eventually adopted as the title of the roman emperor. The german word for emperor, Kaiser, comes from Caesar. King George the Monkey Faced sounds better, though.

Re: What worries me

[Ed_Moyse]

Tsar (or Tzar) comes from Caesar too.

Re:What worries me

[mark2003]

Really?

When was the last time someone got arrested for insulting the French Pres? Le Monde does it all the time. Therefore I would suggest that you are talking merde.

I like the example of advocating a Nazi party candidate though. It is a real shame it is illegal to support someone who would want all non-Aryans, gays and mentally and physically handicapped people to the gas chambers isn't it.

Try picking arguments next time that are either true or any sane person would agree with.

Re:What worries me

[PD]

Actually it is a complete shame that a person can't support that genocidal Nazi candidate. If you only have freedom to say "nice" things, then you don't really have freedom at all.

Re:What worries me

[frank_adrian314159]

Don't worry! We'll get around to you. We've had the annexation papers ready since 1858, but we've been busy lately. Sorry for the inconvenience...

Re:What worries me

[alexandre]

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp01100e.html

dont worry, we'll get screwed soon enought

(there was an asked for coments from the gov about a new DMCA-like law a year ago... but i can't find the link right now... i know all the received comments are online, mine is. )

Re:What worries me

[terminal.dk]

And the USA is now asking Denmark to send large amounts of troops down to Iraq to command all the troops there post-war.

Is this another plot to force us to implement the same crazy restrictions ? Will the other NATO countries help Denmark if USA really forces us ?

Here in Denmark, NAT is normal. It is how most ADSL providers ship the included router. But some providers only allows one computer on the cheaper connections. This is regulated by a contract, and not by law.

Why don't americans use contracts to regulate business between 2 or more parties ?

Re: What worries me

[Lord Sauron]

King George... Monkeys... Let's call him George of the Jungle. Both are just plain stupid, fight well, don't understand anything about civilization and are brutal. The only difference is that one is naive and the other is as bad as Hitler.

Re: What worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

So does 'Shah' as in Shah of Iran. Funny how one word can transform completely through successive corruptions of its original pronunciation/spelling

Re: What worries me

[Black Parrot]

> So does 'Shah' as in Shah of Iran.

No, 'Shah' is from a native Persian word, and has cognate forms in Sanskrit.

IIRC an earlier form of 'Shah' was already in use for the kings of the old Persian Empire, Cyrus and Xerxes and that lot.

Re:What worries me

[juhaz]

You have total freedom to say whatever you wish but you also have a responsibility for what you said.

Why should talking be any more free from possible consequences than any other action?

Re:What worries me

[mark2003]

The freedom to say "nasty" things is a bit diferent to positively encouraging people to go out and ethnically cleanse their neighbourhood.

Move

[pr0nbot]

Sick of the USA? Move to Europe! Then when it gets as bad in Europe as it is in the US, we can all move to liberal China.

Re:Move

[Anonymous Coward]

We can also get a liberal case of SARS too!

Re: Move

[Black Parrot]

> Sick of the USA? Move to Europe!

Better if we stayed here and voted.

At least until things get a little worse; then the brain drain begins.

Re: Move

[The AtomicPunk]

The problem is everyone votes for democrats and republicans.

There is no significant difference between the two. Neither one has any intention of doing anything other than enlarging government and reducing freedoms.

Anyone who doesn't yet realize this has a screw lose, or their head buried in the sand.

Most will grab a single issue and say "I can't vote Libertarian because they like pot!" So they'll agree on 98% of the issues, but instead, vote for a republican that they disagree with on 7 5% of the issues because of pot, or abortion, or one other authoritarian leaning in them.

Re: Move

[swordgeek]

No difference between the Dems and the GOP? I disagree.

Please realise that I'm neither an American citizen nor a resident (although I was a few years back). This is an outsider's point of view.

However, I feel that there's a fundamental difference between the two. It may not be a difference in intent, but the two parties have different entrenched power, which means different practical goals. Consider that the republicans have been running the "Thinktank for a new American century" since well before Bush jr. was even nominated. That thinktank defines the goals of the US government, and pictures the US as an absolutely authoritative "peacekeeper" of the world, forcing American values on all countries that don't comply, with as much force as possible.

Now from what I've seen, the democrats have neither the coffers, the non-electoral power, the highly developed back-room infrastructure, or the gall to afford this brand of megalomania, so they have historically tried to get along with the voters and the international community more often.

Or in other words; while both parties are after the same goals and policies, the Democrats aren't able to implement them through brute force, violence, intimidation, and ruthlessness. The Republicans are.

Re: Move

[mkldev]

No, they vote for the two parties because of the perception that third-party candidates never hold any significant political office above the state level. And they're about 95% right.

Third-party candidates are a niche player. They provide a proving ground for new ideas that eventually make it out onto the major party tickets, but otherwise it is extremely unlikely for one to get enough votes to hold any national office. This is as true today as it has been throughout history.

The real problem is that the majority of humans are, frankly, idiots. Most of the Americans on this board probably scored 99th percentile on tests. That means 99% of Americans are dumber than they are. It's hard for intellectuals to understand how so many people can be so clueless, but the reality is that you just have to write it off as human nature.

The founding fathers understood this. That's why we don't have the general public directly voting for laws. Our government was created with the notion of making us feel good about ourselves---like we're involved in the lawmaking---without actually giving us enough voice to screw things up.

The real problem is that in the early days, only the most intellligent people could run for office, because the political parties consisted largely of intellectuals. Over the centuries, it has become watered down, and now they're mostly composed of lawyers. Unfortunately, the public as a whole is too clueless to understand that this isn't how it's supposed to be, and thus the situation is difficult if not impossible to change.

The problem, then, becomes the need to set up a third party of intellectuals, but with sufficient charisma to actually win an election. This, sadly, is the big reason most third parties fail. They tend to be a bunch of kooks. Now if there were a third party created by slashdotters, it might be at the very least interesting, so long as onily those with social graces appear in public.

Thoughts?

Re:Move

[alphastar]

Liberal China? I hope that was sarcastic, since China is still a communist semi-dictatorial state. Last I knew, free press didn't exist and it was illegal to have a religion.

Re: Move

[haraldm]

I'm afraid that as long as presidential candidates need to fund their own campaigns with the help of industry sponsors, this is not going to change a lot. The US one-and-a-third party system just adds to it. Good grief.

Re:Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainland China isn't exactly beacon of freedom, but looking in the way USA is moving for last couple of years, one can extrapolate...

... and then start saving for road trip to Congo, since I don't know of any natural resources being there, except, maybe, mosquitos. Should be fairly safe then.

Re: Move

[hellfire]

Our political system is in a deep long death spiral because our political system is "garbage in, garbage out." You can't elect different people for this reason. While I disagree there is no difference between these two parties, both parties have to some how appeal to the masses to get elected, and when the masses sway in a certain direction, the parties simply follow.

The democrats are in deep shit right now because the entire country is swinging very far to the right on the political spectrum and if the democrats don't follow, they get elected right out of their seats. But there are still plenty of dissenting democrats who are trying to hold on.

Re: Move

[Guppy06]

"That's why we don't have the general public directly voting for laws."

That's also why they didn't let people vote directly for the President or Senators. But state laws and the Seventeenth Amendment (respectively) got around those "problems."

"because the political parties consisted largely of intellectuals."

No, the whole intent of the design of the federal government was to avoid political parties outright. They felt that party politics were what caused their problems with the UK Parliament to begin with. Leaving the decision of Senators up to the state legislatures was supposed to ensure that anybody who makes it to the Senate has a broad multipartisan appeal, and the Electoral College was essentially intended to be a nominating committee to present the House of Representatives with presidential candidates to vote for (it was supposed to be difficult for the electors to communicate with each other in an effort to ensure that no presidential candidate got a majority outright).

Re: Move

[Suidae]

Now from what I've seen, the democrats have neither the coffers, the non-electoral power,

Oh, don't worry about that, they're working hard on giving the president dictatorial powers, it won't be long now.

Re: Move

[Anonymous Coward]

"you just have to write it off as human nature"

I find it difficult to say that humans are stupid by nature.

A quick review of world history will make it painfully obvious that the stupidity of the masses is a phenomena engineered by the power-thirsty elites. Even the pharohs of ancient egypt knew this...

The modern day approach is to consistently undermine social services and education, and even in some cases to carry out direct action to undermine the health of the people. (e.g. the CIA importing crack/cocaine into black neighborhoods... now why do you think they did that?? hint: making money to fund illegal arms smuggling to terrorists in the third world wasn't the only reason.)

Think about it, lest you yourself become a member of the mass of idiots.

Re: Move

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

Do your research and vote in the primaries for the candidate that you like best moron. If you don't vote in the primaries (which influence what sort of candidate gets on the major party ticket) you dont have room to complain. But then again the fewer people vote, the more powerful my vote becomes.

Re: Move

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds really cool. I'd like to read more. Was this is one of the federalist papers? Could you direct me to your source?

Re: Move

[Guppy06]

Aside from Federalist 68, there's The Electoral College For Europeans by Michael Gilson De Lemos and A Dissertation on the Electoral College by John Reilly. There may be other sources I got this from that I can't remember right now.

The idea was that the electors met in their respective states (as opposed to having them all get together in one place) to debate who to vote for. Meeting separately was supposed to prevent them from organizing themselves into voting blocs along party lines. They'd usually pick somebody that was popular in the region (so long as one of the two people they voted for wasn't from that particular state), and unless there was somebody with national appeal (ie. Washington), nobody was expected to always get the majority of votes in 13 different groups of people. The House would then decide between the people that got electoral votes.

Political parties got around this by nominating electors who had already decided on who to vote for. Instead of trying to figure out how to win through thirteen (now fifty) separate debates, they eliminated the debates entirely.

Re: Move

[Guppy06]

To vote in a primary (at least in most states), you have to join that particular political party. And requiring voters to join either the Democratic or Republican Party (or any party, for that matter) is just as bad as requiring them to join the Communist Party in my book.

Personally, I prefer the way things are handled here in Louisiana. Everybody who wants to put their name on the ballot does so, irreguardless of party. If nobody gets a majority, a run-off between the two big vote earners happens a month later. No primaries, no requirement for party membership or sponsorship.

Re: Move

[Guppy06]

"The modern day approach is to consistently undermine social services and education,"

You do realize that, by complaining about the "lack" of resources the feds spend on education, social services, etc, you yourself helping the federal government gain more power also, right? What else could you possibly be doing by trying to get the federal government to take over state roles?

Re:Move

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. you can believe in whatever religion you want china and freely worship in it in public.

Re: Move

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

Many states have an open primary system. You can choose to vote for one party or the other in the primaries, but not both. How do you think McCain won in Michigan? It wasn't from the card carrying members voting for him.

Re: Move

[The AtomicPunk]

Unfortunately, that's just not true. Democrats initially got us involved in Vietnam and refused to get out. Korea - democrats. Clinton got us into Somolia, Bosnia, etc...

You're thinking too near term and not looking back. :)

Both parties are about monopolizing power. That's why they won't support things like a national sales tax to eliminate witholding - too much power to the people.

They also set up all sorts of nice laws to keep third parties off the ballots.

Things like welfare end up being nothing more than the vehicle for creating a perpetual underclass that maintains their voter power base.

Re: Move

[The AtomicPunk]

My response to that is that if you never vote for what you want, you'll certainly never get it.

The Libertarians have cost the republicans seats in the last several elections. This at least opens the eyes of the republicans so that they realize there's a demographic out there they don't appeal to. This isn't as nice as getting a Libertarian in, but it's better than simply doing nothing.

If I just voted republican, nothing would ever be gained.

Netherlands

[EdMcMan]

I think I am going to move to the Netherlands soon. The only laws the US seems to be missing are laws prohibiting stupid laws!

Re:Netherlands

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... The US Government used to respect the Constitution, but that document has been worth toilet paper ever since FDR and his socialistic "New Deal".

Re:Netherlands

[mark2003]

Damn FDR eh! Only got the US up and running again and helped it over the great depression.

I guess being a socialist he must be responsible for all the erosions of individual rights that have been implemented by Republicans. Is he also responsible for Bush being a complete f**king idiot as well?

Re:Netherlands

[ftvcs]

Wel, mag ik u dan als eerste welkom heten in ons gastvrije land van kaas en water. Geweldig toch!

=

Hi, your are hereby prohibited to enter our country because of illigal export regulations by your FBI. Go somewhere else.

Re:Netherlands

[korgull]

Water ?
Regen bedoel je toch ?

Re:Netherlands

[FatRatBastard]

Damn FDR eh! Only got the US up and running again and helped it over the great depression.

Nope, you have Hitler to thank for that. WWII pulled us out of the depression, not FDR's social plans. Those plans *did* give people jobs, which helped keep some people employed but didn't do anywhere near as much for the economy as a whole.

In fact, liberals of the time said didn't do enough to end the depression.

I guess being a socialist he must be responsible for all the erosions of individual rights that have been implemented by Republicans.

And how many Democrats voted for PATRIOT as well? Er... almost all of them.

And who interned thousands of Japaneese Americans? *cough*cough* FDR.

Re:Netherlands

[Cpt_Kirks]

You all missed the big one.

Look up the "War and Emergency Powers Act" by FDR. Where do you think all of the un-Constitutional "Executive Orders" come from.

Re:Netherlands

[Jedi Alec]

I think I am going to move to the Netherlands soon. The only laws the US seems to be missing are laws prohibiting stupid laws!

You're aware Bush could call for an invasion any time he likes, right?

Re:Netherlands

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the problem started when we saved those
Puritans from British law enforcement in the
1600s - and subsequently let them escape to the
new world.

Toon Moene (toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl).
^^

Stupid DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

What do they think they can gain from this. Do they not know that this will have to be law for the law? I mean this would allow all the FBI, CIA, police, etc. to be open and unblocked. Smart thinking DMCA.. bunch of ID10T's..

Anonymous proxies?

[fliplap]

What about things like anonymous proxies and remailers? Privacy? Who needs that?

In related news.

[rmadmin]

Michigan residents are no longer allowed to pick their nose. Offenders will be not get a chance to defend themselves, they will not pass go, they will immediately be punished by death.

Welcome to the real world Neo. :-(

Welcome to Dark Ages II

[siasl]

Now we have classes of knowledge itself that are forbidden. "Thou shalt not teach thy children the sins of anonymous e-mail". Oops, they are the ones who instructed me!!!

Re:Welcome to Dark Ages II

[puff-d-dwaggie]

how about "Thou shalt not teach thy PARENTS the sins of anonymous e-mail" ????

Re:Welcome to Dark Ages II

[praedor]

I could have told you we were headed for another Dark Ages upon Ws election/appointment/annointing to the presidency. All his Bible-thumping, hallaleuiah, praise JAY-SUS bullshit is the epitome of Dark Ages. Don't think, just read the Bible and accept JAY-SUS as your savior or go to the rack.

Science and technology is only useful in the ways it can further Godly-government control of evil individuals who would violate tenants of the 10 Commandments.

One thing I found especially telling...official US Govt spokesperson (this morning in my local paper from an AP source) indicated that the US would help Iraqi's recover the looted antiquities from their museums. The key hilarity was in the Jesus/Bible-thumper mushy-words in which they were described as artifacts dating back 10,000 years or more. At-frickin'-least! Some of the artefacts go backwards up to 40,000 years but that would violate the fantasy that the world was created 10,000 years ago - and this is central to GW's fantasy world belief system. This IS the Dark Ages alright.

madness

[monkey_jam]

so if i put my mobile phone back in its box, am i breaking the law?

If hide me TV under a blanket (or, say, tin-foil), am i breaking the law?

Re:madness

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use one of those 1-800 calling cards I wonder if your breaking the law. I notice they say my brother is calling from Texas when he uses them in Florida.

so-much-for-researhc

[electro_mike]

so much for "researhc"? Boy, My friend wasn't joking that this was a good site..... if you were not a compulsive grammer/spelling corrector.

Re:so-much-for-researhc

[Glytch]

I see your new hear. Welcom too Slahsdot.

Where's this coming from?

[sotweed]

Does anyone know what the impetus behind these DMCA+ laws is coming from? They seem enough different in intent that I doubt it's the Disney+friends music world. They've already been passed in half a dozen states (including Michigan), and are under consideration in several more. I'm writing my state legislators, but I think the time has come to mount a campaign to roll back the DMCA in its entirety. It's clear (to me, anyway) that it's bad law. We were smart enough to undo prohibition, although it took about 12 years. Maybe we can correct this error more promptly.

Re:Where's this coming from?

[jasonditz]

1. Fear of technology that most of the congress doesn't understand

2. Greater fear of those who know about that technology and therefore must be dangerous.

3. Blind desire to control the actions of everybody else.

Re:Where's this coming from?

[Mr. No Skills]

I think a lot of this type of thing is coming from lawyers trying to prevent the public uncovering of security related devices and algorithms. Obviously a philosophical issue wuth them, where they think they can provide more security by making it illegal to discovery how security devices work. This logic can only be pushed by companies trying to slow down their need to respond to security flaws in their products.

My 2 Cents...

Re:Where's this coming from?

[Abcd1234]

We were smart enough to undo prohibition, although it took about 12 years. Maybe we can correct this error more promptly.

What makes you say that? The US continues to wage it's ill-conceived War on Drugs, and doesn't show any signs of stopping, or even slowing down, despite mounting evidence that it's making absolutely no difference while costing the American public billions and jailing untold numbers of harmless citizens.

Frankly, I think the US government is so tightly wrapped up in it's cozy blanket of rhetoric and propaganda that it is unable to see the reality of it's current situation. This applies to all the stupid moves of the US government... the DMCA, the PATRIOT act, the "War on Terrorism", the "War on Drugs"... Oh well, it just makes me more and more proud that I'm a Canadian.

Re:Where's this coming from?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you elect poli sci majors to public office. Politicians that didn't skate by taking Physics for Poets would have at least some inkling of technology.

Re:Where's this coming from?

[Suidae]

4. Ignorance.

I'd be suprised if anyone writing this has even the slightest idea what NAT or a proxy is, and didn't realize that the wording of this law could be applied to them.

Dear Ted Turner,

[Anonymous Coward]

Our group is putting together a hostile takeover bid for Haliburton, or even better, Bechtel. Could you please see your way to helping us out with a few million dollars?

thx,
The Comittee to Buy Back the Constitution

Why does he think he can just move it?

[ProtonMotiveForce]

The law is of course idiotic - I won't bother to comment on it.

But why does he think he can just move the stuff to the Netherlands? He is still a US citizen and a Michigan citizen, and he is still producing the documents that are illegal. It doesn't matter where he publishes _to_, it's where he publishes _from_.

If a Dutch citizen published it then fine - it's legal there, but he's not accomplishing anything by putting the documents in another country, and I don't know why he thinks he is. If they wanted to prosecute they could.

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[bheerssen]

I think that the point is that he no longer has those documents in his possession. No documents, no crime. The documents in question were written before the law came into effect, and he apparently moved them immediately when it did go into effect. But being electronic documents, he should be absolutely certain that no unintentional copies remain on his computers.

This brings up an interesting question, if I live in Michigan (which I don't), would it be illegal for me to view the docs on the web? I mean, once having viewed them, I would have a cached copy on my computer.

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[mattsucks]

Actually, according to the article, he is a German national. And we (the US) hate foreign nationals, and especially Germany, right? I mean, Germany had the gall to think outside our box, and foreign nationals ... well, they're all just sleeper terrorists.

A bit overstated, I know, but I think Provos needs to worry about more than just his thesis. Patriot Act, anyone?

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Honig the Apothecary]

Though nobody has yet been prosecuted under the law, Provos, a German national, says his concern is genuine. "As a foreigner I have to be very careful... I'd rather follow the law to the letter than be negatively surprised later."

He is not a US Citizen, nor a Michigan citzen. Read the article. He gets his visa revoked and a trip home, or a nice little jail sentence, but I'm sure the German government would call bulls*it and try to get him back. but at least by putting his work in another country the US Government cannot completely take it as evidence. Honig

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[kinnell]

if I live in Michigan (which I don't), would it be illegal for me to view the docs on the web? I mean, once having viewed them, I would have a cached copy on my computer.

ISTR a while ago, when they were trying to work out how to apply copyrighting of images published on the internet, they decided that a copy in the cache is not legally a copy - it's only a copy when you deliberately save it to your hard drive. Otherwise, there is no way to enforce copyright protection of online images and publish them, short of illegalising caching mechanisms, which would be absurd. So copies in your cache are legally invisible, sort of.

Disclaimer: IANAL

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, Niels Provos is a German national. This makes the situation a little more complex, I'm afraid.

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this comment being modded up? Even as I was reading, it got another insightful +1. If the poster doesn't even appear to read the article, don't promote it.

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[pfankus]

But why does he think he can just move the stuff to the Netherlands? He is still a US citizen and a Michigan citizen...

No, actually, he's not. Reading the article helps a bit:

Though nobody has yet been prosecuted under the law, Provos, a German national, says his concern is genuine. "As a foreigner I have to be very careful... I'd rather follow the law to the letter than be negatively surprised later."

I'm assuming with the state of internation relations as of late, he's probably most worried of being deported, or better yet detained as an enemy combatant for aiding with terror plots, let alone finishing his dissertation.

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[dissy]

> short of illegalising caching mechanisms, which would be absurd.

What was the story that you are posting under about again? ;)

I dont think absurd is enough of a reason for our lawmakers to not do something anymore...

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[jeffasselin]

But why does he think he can just move the stuff to the Netherlands? He is still a US citizen and a Michigan citizen, and he is still producing the documents that are illegal.

Probably because he's NOT a US citizen. From this Register Article:

Though nobody has yet been prosecuted under the law, Provos, a German national,

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Delirium Tremens]

Actually, it's you as an American citizen who should worry more than Provos would ever.

If anything goes absurdly bad for him or for you in some wild situation, he at least has the Netherlands' diplomats to get him out of the United States and back to his homeland. But you would be charged as being an ennemy combattant or held indefinitely as some material witness for some secret investigation that can not be revealed under the PATRIOT act. And then, nobody would be able to help you. At least, no true patriot would, rigth?

But we all know that this would never happen. That's why we trust the US government and that's why there is a sunset clause in the PATRIOT act, isn't it?

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like I live in Soviet Russia. This sucks. We need to take back America!

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Delirium Tremens]

Hum, the term "enemy combattant" can only be assigned to a US citizen. Since he is a foreign citizen, he would rather be held as a "material witness" under the PATRIOT act. The later comes without charge, so no need for him to worry about getting a lawyer. And the former can bare you from your constitutional right to an attorney. Isn't that nice?

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Delirium Tremens]

German diplomats, that is.

Re:Why does he think he can just move it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but now the beauty of american legislation: if you create documents that are *available* in Michigan, you are guilty of a crime as well. Thus, a Dutch citizen publishing this work on the web can never, for the rest of his life, enter the state of Michigan safely.

Call me paranoid, but I don't dare enter the USA for fear of being persecuted. God knows what laws I broke there...

i'm back to USSA

[air1]

god the US are starting to look more and more like the USSR, you guys have the best constitution out there, shame it seems to get really easy these days to crush the first amendment.

Re:i'm back to USSA

[Ponty]

Actually, the 1936 USSR Constitution is a pretty neat document. Red the first and third articles if you're curious.

Obviously, it was never implemented according to its spirit, but it's still pretty neat.

Re:i'm back to USSA

[usotsuki]

*sigh* yeah...it's no wonder people call it "Amerika" (sic) nowadays...

-uso.
Living in Amerika...I Feel Bad!

This is horrible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we in Michigan know exactly what it is like to live under a repressive regime such as Saddam Hussein's. I wonder if anyone will invade to liberate us?

Re:This is horrible.

[B3ryllium]

Your only hope is ...

Canada.

Scary, huh? We might have to send in the giant beavers to liberate you.

Caller ID

[91degrees]

The law makes it illegal to hide the information from a service provider without the service provider's permission. In the case of caller ID, the service provider is the telephone company. You are not hiding the onformation from them, and even if you were, by using the service they provide, they are giving permission.

Re:Caller ID

[FyRE666]

The law makes it illegal to hide the information from a service provider without the service provider's permission.

Hmm, so when I go shopping for my pants (that's "boxer shorts" to you Americans I think), I'll have to wander around the store in the nude to make sure they have enough information?

Re:Caller ID

[A_Known_Coward]

Ok, fine. The telco is the service provider.

What I see illegal here now is using an external caller ID scrambler. Or have these types of devices already been outlawed?

What about secure telephone devices (encoders, voice masking, etc)?

With the rate at which things are going, we'll soon be safe from all these freedoms.

Re:Caller ID

[Anonymous Coward]

In a related development, the FCC is considering allowing local cable and telephone monopolies to block independent ISP's from using their lines. This law is intended as companion to that regulatory change. Taken together:

(1) Your local telco/cable monopoly will be able to ban all ISP's other than itself from using its lines, and charge whatever the hell it wants to while selectively censoring content;

(2) It will be illegal to circumvent this ban.

Other legal documents

[truthsearch]

So I can legally post software that tells people how to create a bomb. Posting how to create a bomb on a web site has been to federal court and protected. But I can't write software to conceal a communications device? Which is more dangerous? And where does it end? Will anyone in the federal government be able to say code is a form of speech any time soon?

Re:Other legal documents

[nuggz]

Just don't tell anyone to use the bomb as a technical measure to conceal communications.

Re:Other legal documents

[mjh]

Will anyone in the federal government be able to say code is a form of speech any time soon?

Umm... well actually, they already have.

What about Spam?

[lexbaby]

Does this make nearly all Spam coming in or coming from Michigan illegal? All the Spam I see has the originating address hidden in some way.

Re:What about Spam?

[PhxBlue]

Right! Michiganders are sure to freely surrender their right to privacy if it means less spam!

Just because a horribly-conceived law has a positive side-effect, doesn't mean it's not still a horribly-conceived law.

Ignorance and stupidity are now illegal

[greg_barton]

...can no longer knowingly "assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise" any device or software that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service."

Interesting. So, if you consider the brain and it's systems as hardware and software, ignorance and stupidity are now illegal. Either that or complex systems that can't be understood by the simplest of intellects are illegal.

A mind that can't figure out how to trace a signal through a telecommunications service could be interpreted as being "deceived" about the origin of said signal. So, either stupid people won't be allowed to use such a system, or the system itself should be outlawed.

Re:Ignorance and stupidity are now illegal

[Ayandia]

If they outlawed stupidity prison guards everywhere would be ordered to simply guard the other side of the wall too.

Re:Ignorance and stupidity are now illegal

[elmegil]

No no no. They are now MANDATORY.

My poor country

[DarkAurora]

My poor country has lost its mind. Hey Europe, you got room for one more?

FBI: Please don't arrest me.

Re:My poor country

[ScooterBill]

Yeah, we've gone to hell in a handbasket to quote my grandmother. I was thinking that Canada looks nice although it's only a matter of time before our fearless leader decides they need to be brought into line.

Re:My poor country

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking that Canada looks nice although it's only a matter of time before our fearless leader decides they need to be brought into line.

Your leader can kiss my Maple Leaf emblazoned a$$.

In the mean time, come on up for a beer.

Re:My poor country

[B3ryllium]

Before you know it, Canada will have a Manley Prime Minister, and then all this will change!

(I think he's in line to be the next Liberal leader - Manley. John Manley.)

Re:My poor country

[RobinH]

(I think he's in line to be the next Liberal leader - Manley. John Manley.)

Let's hope... though I'm afraid Martin is just too popular.

the nature of law...

[LifesABeach]

"if you are a lawful person, and enjoy eating sauage; then you should never see how both are made."

Re:the nature of law...

[Shriek]

Eww, now I lost my appetite for Soylant Green.

Sometimes I just got double-check...

[voixderaison]

the first amendment.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.billofrights.html
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Rather than mandatory school prayer (doh! there they go again!) and flag worship in school, kids should recite the first amendment, every morning, before class, and every lunch time, before eating. Elected officials, too. All of 'em, at every level. And political appointees, too.

Re:Sometimes I just got double-check...

[The_Unforgiven]

I don't know, mods...

I think he's on to something there.

Re:Sometimes I just got double-check...

[usotsuki]

Hm, why is this modded -1 Redundant? I think it should be modded Insightful. ;)

-uso.

Re:Sometimes I just got double-check...

[nytes]

kids should recite the first amendment, every morning...

Almost. Everyone just needs to recite the first 5 words of the first ammendment. Then we'd be far better off.

You can't get there from here.

[ackthpt]

Well, let's put a slightly diffrent spin on this and see how sentiments go...

"Among other things, residents of the Great Lakes State can no longer knowingly "assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise" any device or software that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service."

Suppose Ralan Alsky (just to pick a name at random) sends .. uh .. email, routed in such a way that you can't tell he was the originator. He connects with an open relay, possibly the Total Home Network, Coordination and Entertainment device in, say Gill Bates' (just to pull another name at random) house, normally used for counting the wilted stalks of celery in his refridgerator crisper drawer and monitoring dog poop rings in his front lawn (much less mysterious than crop circles, but there they are), the email is sent to thousands of worthy individuals (worth of being on some CD he loaded up with publicly posted email addresses from alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus) Ralan has devised a way to avoid indicating the origin of a missive, a Dell Optiplex GX150 in his garage, which promotes a certain salve, which when applied to a certain private part make a certain HOT penny stock worth 24% more in the morning and consolidates debt to a 2nd mortgage on an old pair of Nikes at 3.85% APR. Further, the affiliate who has paid Ralan for this service accepts calls at a certain payphone booth outside a Southfield, MI, 7-11 for the first 4 hours the missive has been present on the internet.

Now, I ask you in all objectivity, "should that be illegal?"

Re:You can't get there from here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderation in laws is a good thing, you know. Why don't we just give every policeman an assault rifle and tell him to shoot anybody he thinks might have committed a crime? Because that would be crazy. Laws like this are crazy for the same reason, though they aren't quite AS crazy.

Re:You can't get there from here.

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Uh Bill, that already is illegal. That's a federal crime. Covering your tracks after committing a crime is already illegal.
Covering your tracks when you aren't breaking the law shouldn't be banned.

--

Re:You can't get there from here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya but if your not breaking the law then why bother covering your tracks? Who cares at that point? Yes, looking at lolita pics on your PC is illegal, and I to would be ashamed and want my tracks covered. Sounds to me like there trying to imply that anyone who wants to hide there tracks is bad, and frankly I dont disagree. Be a man, stand by what your doing becuase if you cant, then your breaking the law most likley.

lol, this coming from an AC, but frankly, I hate filling out registrations.

Re:You can't get there from here.

[ackthpt]

lol, this coming from an AC, but frankly, I hate filling out registrations.

I just think you're trying to cover your tracks. John Ashcroft will be notified, promptly!

;-)

This just in....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now illegal to use your telephone, record player, computer, and PDA, in a any manner whatsoever. Thank you.

More news views and things that amuse at pajonet.com

Fight fire with fire

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers might have issues eliminating laws like this thus we have to make the law a lot more controversial...

Use this law to thus go after Spammers with a legal ax. After all, they are conceling themselves quite well.

Any RIAA bot on a P2P network that is trying to act and look like a normal user? Conceled identity, sue them!

Any person trying to investigate anybody online by posing as a normal person (and not as an agent of whatever department they are with) can no longer due that, it is illegal.

Wireless networks without authentication are now illegal, sue any network provider that doesn't provide adequate software to protect your network.

Sue Ebay, who cannot find out where the criminals using their service are located at (after all, they provided the communication medium and didn't authenticate both sides).

Heck, have a field day with these laws. Get your lawyers and earn some money! As soon as a lot of people start doing that, the law will crumble as corporations and criminals alike cry like mad. Certainly, if the normal person cannot change laws, then the normal citizen must make the law a lot more aggravating to those who can change it.

Re:Good!

[Thud457]

We can't go to war with Sirius until August, SILLY!

/me marks the list

[The_Unforgiven]

/me crosses out Michigan as a state to live in... /me looks at his driver's license, featuring a photo of a bridge on the top...

Aw, shit.

The future of science in the US

[godIsaDJ]

This is a disturbing trend. It seems that science in the US is undermined by political, economical and social factor, most of which are of arguable intent and nature.

I do research on security and cryptography related technologies. I'm happy I don't have to deal with this kind of censorship and I wish to express my sympathy for Provos. He's not even american for fuck's sake. And Honeyd is probably used more for protection by admins than by hackers around!

I wonder, is he gonna get the phd after all??

Another scary example, scarier perhaps if not so blatant, is this http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,130 26,933055,00.html

i'd mod you up

[jonnyfivealive]

for what its worth...no points for me

Well, so much for...

[Quixadhal]

electronic voting machines. Guess we'll be stuck with good old paper punch voting machines in Michigan, since it would be a felony to allow democratic voting practices via any electronic medium under the new law.

Re:Well, so much for...

[ralico]

Here is the link Section 750-219a defining telecommunications devices: I read the section which looks like it defines telecommunications device (disclaimer: IANAL), and it seems to me voting machines would fall under telecommunications devices given the linked definition.
And even paper punch cards would be illegal, if the data was transmitted electronically in some stage of the process. So no matter how they vote, it would be illegal to use voting machines anonymously. In which case, the voters of Michigan would have to have their votes identitied to comply with the law. Doesn't this break a constitutional ammendment or two?

[OT] Doooop

[legLess]

Christ, Taco, will you read your own fucking site every now and then?

And *69?

[siskbc]

Can the phone companies in Michigan offer caller-ID block? Should be illegal to do that too.

Re:And *69?

[dohcvtec]

How about unlisted and unpublished numbers as well?

Re:And *69?

[restauff]

No, the phone companies can still offer the service, since it is not to their disadvantage. If I understand correctly, this law only applies to technologies that would block information from the ISPs / Telcos / other corporations with lots of lobbyists living in Lansing. With Caller-ID blocking, the phone companies still know the origin and destination, so they aren't missing out on charging everyone lots of extra money.

Re:And *69?

[Anonymous Coward]

The phone company know it as much as I know my ip address. However if I conceal my ip address, that would be illegal at that state.

With regard to the caller id block. No, it was not a crime, but you just make it a crime now. Did you read the word *knowingly*? If you now know it, and block it, that's it, tough time ahead.

Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[DailyGrind]

Originally I was upset that Canada, where I live, did not follow the US, its close ally, into Iraq.

This single post change all that.

I believe that anonymity is the basis of a healthy democracy. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and say something controversial without being anonymous. I believe that the benefits of anonymous statements far out way the costs.

The "...this is illegal because terrorists can use it..." argument is getting stale...

There is a fine line between safety and police state and the US is passing it in a hurry.

So hats of to living in Canada the home of the free.... until the US invades because we are thinking of legalizing possession of marihuana. As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Black Parrot]

> So hats of to living in Canada the home of the free.... until the US invades because we are thinking of legalizing possession of marihuana. As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.

Legalize it and the money will quit going into the black market.

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[usotsuki]

Bingo!!!!!

Legalize WEED, it's safer than Alky and did prohibition work for *it*?

-uso.
Hmm, when should I think about trying to put together a Million Man Marijuana March? ;)

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Abcd1234]

Legalize it and the money will quit going into the black market.

Umm... I know that, the grand-parent poster knows that (it's called sarcasm ;), but apparently that pesky American government doesn't know that. Perhaps someone should let them know... although, they didn't seem to learn much from prohibition (what's that saying about learning about your history or being doomed to repeat it?).

Re:Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[pmz]

As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.

Don't forget oil, rubber, sugar, coffee, and diamonds! They support terrorists, too!! Stop these atrocities, now, while we still can!!!

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Anonymous Coward]

But of course they know. Keeping the most popular drugs illegal gives enormous leverage to the law enforcement institutions to incarcerate whomever they please. It's a great mechanism for keeping the rich separate from the less-rich (by putting them in prison simply because they can't afford a high-powered lawyer to enforce the US 'one law for the rich' rules). Legal marijuana/mushrooms/etc. would make it so much harder to imprison people -- the government would have to admit that recreational drug use is, at most times, a purely victimless 'crime' (hey, if you take so many drugs that you can't make a decision *not* to hit someone, then it's your own fault -- people are ALWAYS accountable for their actions.)

And what would all those corrupt DEA/CIA/whatever guys in places like Miami do for extra cash? (Going by memory here -- weren't a ton of them caught actively aiding Colombian drug cartels in cocaine importation years ago?)

Re:Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Raveolution]

As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.

I dont know how the USofA will cop out when they discover that their population are the leaders in ingesting prozac, xanax, valium and other very-much-damaging drugs (not counting "illegal" drugs)... maybe they have to encarcerate every citizen in their country... hmm that could be passed next, to support DMCA... (sorry the eng)

Re:Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[wolf-]

MP3z, pirated software....

Re:Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[haraldm]

And young women and children, for chrissake. Much more efficient to smuggle and much less dangerous too!

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[snkline]

No, no, no. You see, if we legalize them drugs will be everywhere. Do you really want to see ice cream trucks handing out pot to kids, or heroin, or coke!!!!!!! ;-P

Re:Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[evilviper]

As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.

Ironically, when they are legal, they DON'T support terrorism. That said, it's highly debatable if they do support terrorism even when they are illegial.

But anyhow, drugs are the least of your worries.

BUSH: The CIA has detected that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are both now in Canada. Not in a fortifed bunker, or surrounded by armed guards, but having tea in a restaurant.
C.I.A: No, we are 100% sure that they are not in Canada.
BUSH: Nevermind what the CIA tells you. They ARE in Canada.
U.N.: No, they are not! We are completely sure.
BUSH: Yes they are, and the Canadian government is not cooperating fully.
Canada: We looked where you told us to look. What else do you want us to do? What's this barrel for?
BUSH: That makes them a terrorist state.
Congress: What's this that we're signing now? Oh nevermind, here ya go.
BUSH: The invasion begins tommorow.

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[HiThere]

That was official business.

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Alien Being]

"Legalize it and the money will quit going into the black market."

But then how would Wolfowitz and Cheney fund their next covert regime change in the Republic of Fubar?

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[jred]

Well, maybe not to kids (you can bet there'd be a smoking age). But hell, yeah. Mr. Marihuana Man is more than welcome to drive through my neighborhood, ringing his bell :D

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[jred]

Well, *first* you have to get them off the couch... :)

Re: Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Black Parrot]

> No, no, no. You see, if we legalize them drugs will be everywhere.

Maybe you're wisecracking, but if not... drugs are already everywhere.

Did you think all those commercials on TV trying to scare people off drugs by playing the terrorism card were on the air because we don't have an epidemic drug problem?

Re:Hitler and Stalin laughing in their graves

[Erik Hollensbe]

Sorry, I don't mean to jolt, but it's kind of sad that we're talking about the ability to be anonymous, and you turn it (albeit unintentionally, and the people saying 'right on!' are just as bad) into a drug war argument.

It's no better than the 'drugs support terrorism' ads, really. I have nothing against that particular cause but discrediting it with associating it with something almost completely unrelated is just giving the guys that disagree with you more fodder.

i can assure

[m1chael]

you andria (hehe sorry its just funny), if we keep these laws in power how will this bring technological innovation and creative thought to the american people?

Government Stepping On Itself

[Flamesplash]

I work for large academic Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) lab that for the most part works on DoD contracts. We are allowed to connect to work from home via secure ID cards and are encouraged to get a free single port router from work to use at home, these routers employ NAT for extra security.

Does that mean that people who work for organizations that do DoD work can no longer protect their home systems, and thus protect the governmental work systems?

Re:Government Stepping On Itself

[pmz]

Does that mean that people who work for organizations that do DoD work can no longer protect their home systems, and thus protect the governmental work systems?

If you are able access DoD systems from home, then whatever is on those systems isn't very important to begin with. The level of trust on any home computer is pretty darn low, considering how many "untrusted" people have access to it (friends, relatives, neighbors, etc.). Additionally, while SecureID cards work very well, I wouldn't bet national security on them, and many home router applicances have simple back doors or weak passwords.

My bet is that your contracts are for either DoD websites or academic-type research that is inconsequential to national security. There is also a good chance the projects are simply pork won by your congressman--such projects are often inconsequential in any capacity.

Re:Government Stepping On Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for large academic Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) lab that for the most part works on DoD contracts.

MITRE?

Re:Government Stepping On Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

"My bet is that your contracts are for either DoD websites or academic-type research that is inconsequential to national security. There is also a good chance the projects are simply pork won by your congressman--such projects are often inconsequential in any capacity. "

My bet is that he knows what his own work is. and your comments don't address his points at all.

Re:Government Stepping On Itself

[Flamesplash]

The systems accessible externally don't contain classified data that's for sure. No classified system is connected to the outside world. These systems are the standard desktop systems accessible from anyone's office with the appropriate userids/passwords, and the data is unclassified so it is nothing that I couldn't copy to a floppy or print out and take home otherwise.

I'll refrain from addressing the troll aspects of your message.

Re:Government Stepping On Itself

[pmz]

I'll refrain from addressing the troll aspects of your message.

I didn't mean to sound like a troll; rather, I'm pretty jaded by some of the DoD contracts I've seen. Some projects are an easy way to settle into job-security through lack of progress and a pile of money somewhere up in the food chain.

Yeah, right!

[Chocolate Teapot]

In response to the early criticism, the industry groups pushing for the law released a new version of their model legislation on April 1st that, among other things, adds an "intent to defraud" to the language

Sure they did. Like we are going to believe what they said on April 1st.

write your rep & colorado

[skydude_20]

Two things to note, first, if you haven't, please write your state senators and reps right now, either to stop the chance of this happening or hoping that in states that its too late, that they might review and amend.
Second, for all you fellow Coloradans, this is currently in the works (SuperDMCA), I think it's going to pass the senate without issue, so please those of you write your reps and senators and stop this one while we still can.
Thanks.

Re:write your rep & colorado

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Skydude - my reps know me by name. Do you know the bill's title and/or number? I'd be glad to drop them a line.

--

Re:write your rep & colorado

[zenquest]

House Bill 03-1303

Re:write your rep & colorado

[Bendebecker]

No one gives a damn if you write your senator (or rep.). If you think it makes any difference, you are lying to yourself. The politicians don't give a shit about the public. They vote the way the people who pay for their campaigns want them to vote. This country was once a democracy. Now it is as democratic as the business you work at. What your bosses say goes. Welcome to the real world. Doesn't it suck?

Re:write your rep & colorado

[Lumpy]

It wont matter. Those in the know and understanding of what damage the laws does are way too damned lazy to get off their butts and picket at the capitol steps. What is needed is to bring MEDIA attention to these things, your letters and email mean squat to these people. and 5 of us picketing doesn't mean squat to the media. you need 20-100 people there all complaining and picketing. ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION.

I tried to get a few to go to the lansing steps to bring attention to this before it was passed. but the geeks and techies are so damned lazy or in what I think is reality they really dont care about it to show up... you end up looking like a pitiful wierdos with 2-3 of you are picketing and handing out flyers.

They like to make noise, and bitch but when it comes to actually put up or shut up.... geeks shut up.

good luck to you anyways, but if your technological population is anything like michigans, they're a bunch of air with no substance.

Direct Action

[capitalsucks]

Im thinking we need to take direct and immediate action against all rich bastards involved in this and the Palladium project.

Coming soon: Brain Drain FROM the US

[Anonymous Coward]

These laws will make smart people like Niels Provos leave the US. The CIA and DOD will have to recruit externally for people that can "Defend" the US from Cracker and the like.

This is just another "Security by obscurity" law.

(Or maybe a solution to one of murphy's law: If we don't want know that it's broke, it not broken, ever!)

So I guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

in a couple years Iraq will have to come and liberate us:(

Cell phones

[Drew Sullivan]

Does this mean that ALL cell phone must provide the phone number to caller ID.

moved to the Netherlands?

[demigod]

Provos has had to move his website and research papers to a server in the Netherlands.

Maybe we should all move to the Netherlands as well.

The root of DMCA problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

"This statute essentially criminalizes the mere possession of technology," says Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the legislation.

Which just goes to show that the root of the DMCA problem is the same kind of thinking that gun-control fanatics engage in: it's best to outlaw the technology because you might do something bad with it.

Time to renew my NRA membership.

Something to remember: Software doesn't pirate movies or hack into computers. People do.

You've got it all wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Late July to August.

And, you've got your intel all jumbled up - Sirus declares war on terrorists!

Beeeeeotch!

The days of Ma Bell

[prh1999]

There sending us back to the days of Ma Bell and the AT&T monopoly, when you couldn't touch the phone line without permission.

Proxies are illegal to!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well someone had to say it :/

Don't you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

..what the great USofA if coming too.
I here there is some room in Canada.

the future...

[drunk_as_in_beer]

It is now illegal to use your telephone, record player, computer, and PDA, in a any manner whatsoever. Thank you.

"It is now illegal to be alive. Do not attempt to kill yourself, that is illegal too. Please turn yourself in immediately, so that you can spend the rest of your life in the prison we have built for you."

maryland bill vs michigan bill ?

[karavak]

According to EFF some states have had S-DMCA since 2000. Am I reading the site wrong and that those dates are not referring to S-DMCA but something else?

Also, I live and work in Maryland where according to info on EFF, this bill has been in effect since 2001 and I heard nothing about it and it hasn't caused any problems with NAT's, proxies, etc.

Has it been around for a while and now they are trying to enforce it in some places but not in others?

I tried to review the michigan and Maryland bills but I'm not a lawyer and my legal speak is pretty bad so I'm wondering what the big difference is.

Re:maryland bill vs michigan bill ?

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Select one of the blwo

A. The law differs between stats.

N. You are a criminal but no law enforcement officer understands the law - so they can arrest anyone

3. Both of the above.

Re:maryland bill vs michigan bill ?

[haraldm]

Even then - a law which is there but is not enforced is a major tool for suppression and arbitrariness. When I see what stupid and stoneaged laws are sometimes pulled to annoy people or get rid of someone - well, you get the idea. No, I am not paranoid, just seeing what happen(s|ed).

Re:maryland bill vs michigan bill ?

[evilviper]

Fortunately, there is still trial by jury, so you have 12 normal people who can say 'no', when they try to pull that one. It only takes 1 in 12 to prevent it.

On the other hand, if Bush points at you, you are whisked off to camp X-Ray, never to be heard from again.

[caller ID] This screws doctors on home-call....

[stuartkahler]

[making caller-id blocking illegal....]

Doctors on home-call call through the hospital switchboard to hide their home phone number from patients. Otherwise the occasional nutcase (I want fucking antibiotics now or I'll sue you!!!!) would harrass doctors in the middle of the night and when they're off duty.

I think this law is more aimed to ease the government with their warrantless searches of your e-mail, phones and web surfing habits. I suppose tht big brother gets pissed when he's not sure who he's watching.

Professors above the law

[CrazyJim0]

How can you make a law when you don't understand it?

Arresting a professor for furthering a field is the same as saying,"Lawmakers are waaaay more intelligent than college professors."

Re:Professors above the law

[Tirs]

Actually they are... That's why they have chosen to be lawyers and not college professors :-(

Re:Professors above the law

[Anonymous Coward]

If you judge intelligence by the amount of money people make, then I don't think you're very intelligent.

Many researchers are idealistic and driven by intellectual curiosity, rather than cynical and motivated by money and power.

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now illegal to use your telephone, record player, computer, and PDA, in any manner whatsoever that does not involve payment to an arbitary authority.

By reading this document, you agree to the aforementioned terms and conditions. All your information belong to us.

Thank you.

i've thought of something....A fish out of water.

[Anonymous Coward]

OH! A bunch of geeks with the social skills of a marshmellow are going to interact daily with political figures. Nevermind the fact that it seems a lot of geeks don't have a firm grasp of politics (or the law) for that matter. I wonder if I should go for the super-size popcorn, and drink? This spectator "sport" is going to be fun.

Who is the the service provider?

[nuggz]

Is the caller ID blocked by my service provider, or the callers service provider?
Does the callers cell phone company, or mine, or the long distance provider in between block the caller ID?

What if I run a company switchboard, I am routing calls for them, I am their service provider, the phone company is hiding the origin of the call.

What about an answering forwarding service who answers my phone?

Re:Who is the the service provider?

[91degrees]

Is the caller ID blocked by my service provider, or the callers service provider?

Yours

Does the callers cell phone company, or mine, or the long distance provider in between block the caller ID?

Yours

What if I run a company switchboard, I am routing calls for them, I am their service provider, the phone company is hiding the origin of the call.

You may be right. Sue the telephone company.

This is so 1984...

[CreatorOfSmallTruths]

In 1984 (by George Orwell) *everyone* is being traced *all the time*.

I just wonder if this is going to be the same as the MP3 , DIVX and other freely available technologies been so far -
When will they learn you can't stop progress, sometimes its good for the musicians (the invention of CD Roms), sometimes its good for the customer (ogg)

Michigan ACs, beware!

[mysticgoat]

So does this also mean that slashdot has to

• block everybody from Michigan, or
• set up a filter so people from Michigan don't have the A.C. option, or
• do away with Anonymous Coward?

After all, the whole thing with AC is disguising the source of the post.

Worrisome, this is.

[note to moderators: Don't mod as "funny". This is truly serious tinfoil hat stuff. Think about it.]

Re:Michigan ACs, beware!

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you for repeating what thousands of other commenters have already said

note to moderators: BORING

Re:Michigan ACs, beware!

[mysticgoat]

Oh, your welcome. It really wasn't any problem; I'm really good at repeating stuff.

Re:Michigan ACs, beware!

[sulli]

And given that Slashdot is based in Ann Arbor, they could be really fucked.

Or the law could be overturned as being a first amendment violation (free press). We can hope.

Everything is illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think it was possible to go through life without breaking any laws (save a few like speeding slightly). But lately it's becoming clear that laws are becoming so overreaching that not breaking them is impractical. So people are living their lives by breaking stupid laws and hoping for one of two things:

1. The people who would take legal action either don't care enough to spend the money, or would pay more in public relations for hassling someone doing something that is totally reasonable.
2. The people enforcing the law realize how absurd it is (what they really realize is that it breaks a more fundamental law like the Constitution)

People don't just break laws they had nothing to do with, but they consciously sign in to contracts they couldn't explain to their friends without laughing, or crying as the case may be. I was just asked to sign a contract that would give away any IP I created during and for one year after employment that could be related to my company's business. That's basically everything I do. When I asked the recruiter about it, he said no one took it seriously, and "we do it to make employees think twice about everything they do." I'm not making this up. Laws are being used as weapons, and not for their intended purpose, which is to maintain order and justice.

Conceal, obscure vs not publicise

[nuggz]

When I NAT/ipmasq am I obscuring the final destination?
Or am I merely not advertising the final destination.

If I covertly forward email back and forth between two people am I violating this law? or am I THE service provider?

hmmm

[Seanasy]

The PA version also makes it illegal to shoot at buildings and sniff glue. Odd.

Re:hmmm

[haraldm]

According to this law you are not allowed to possess, sell, or advertise normal computers because they qualify as "telecommunication devices" capable of decrypting arbitrary stuff. Strange.

Re:hmmm

[qzulla]

Uhm shoot INTO occupied buildings. A world of difference.

qz

wtf?

[K.]

Does this means that phones now have to display which exchange they're using?

The real story

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline:
Slashdot Readers are a Bunch of Politically Impotent Whiners, unable to organize effectively against inane legislation.

Stop supporting the EFF and other organizations with such poor track records.

After a lot of hand-wringing, the EFF cannot get a significant case in front of the U.S. Supremem Court...

They suck.

Shouldn't that be...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dupe of URL"?

The Power Given to Government

[Creep73]

This law will be used like many others. According to the law caller ID blocking and NAT will be outlawed however you will probably not see the removal of the DSL router from the market. What you will see however, is the hypocritical application of a law that shouldn't be in existence. Law makers and companies will use this law to further their wants and desires while ignoring any possible blow back the law could have on them. I personally would get highly upset if I were to find a Michigan resident complaining on /. who has not sent a strong letter to their legislature. For some reason I can not see this type of law lasting long if people were contacting their representatives to tell them what they thought of their voting habits. Unfortunately I think that you have a great many people complaining on /. and leaving the government to do its own thing which leaves all power in the hands of the government where it doesn't belong. Most officials, when it comes to technology, are stupid so educate them! Most officials have a long line of companies and such asking that official to protect them (the company) and their products and a short list of individuals asking them to protect the individual and their rights as consumers and Americans. What is the point? The individual will be the one to get hosed here. Caller ID blocking will not go away. If you don't like the law try writing your representatives while posting on /.

Re:The Power Given to Government

[pmz]

Most officials, when it comes to technology, are stupid so educate them!

One problem is that by the time someone is old enough and has the right type of experience to get into legislature, they are (1) not technically inclined, (2) their existing technical knowledge is likely obselete, (3) they try to think about technology in non-technological terms, (4) the learning curve to really understand modern technology is simply too high. As an example to (4), how many slashdotters could learn what they know now through some sort of one-time "education campaign" aimed as more of a slap in the face than anything?

You mentioned Hitler....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now just play the Race Card, and your argument will be complete, according to the Standard Liberal Handbook for Senseless Arguments and Ridiculous Analogies.

AC

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this make me illegal in michigan? MUAHAHAH Breakin tha law!

I propose we go to war over this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a violent war per say, but a legal one.

Let's presume that the government passes a law like this that we don't like.

And lets say that there are clear examples of the government breaking their own law.

Is there any legal means by which we can bring a lawsuit against the government if they break their own laws, even if the laws are not specifically affecting us?

For example, if the government has NAT's in use, and this law outlaws those, is there any way we, without the cooperation of the local government, who will obviously not cooperate, can bring a criminal or civil lawsuit against them for breaking their own law?

If we can use their own laws against them, then that will discourage them from passing future laws like this, and will force them to change the law.

Unfortunately though it's likely that what they would merely end up doing is writing exemptions into laws for government employees.

However, in that case, what we can then do is go after the coporations that lobbied for these laws with the laws they lobbied for.

SURELY there are any number of governemnt agencies and corporations that are violating the very laws which they have helped to pass...

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fp

Re:[caller ID] This screws doctors on home-call...

[arkanes]

It's a bought bill by the cable providers, actually. It extends the already signifigant legal protection they have on cable service (theft of service or tresspass to chattel in any OTHER industry is a civil matter, it's criminal for cable...) to IP service over cable. The AUP now has the force of law, not just the threat of civil penalties or termination of services, behind it.

What if...

[sh00z]

IANAL, but shouldn't anybody ticketed by a hidden radar speed trap be able to use this law to their advantage? After all, if the police are disguising "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service," they're in violation of the law. Right?

Re:What if...

[certron]

>IANAL, but shouldn't anybody ticketed by a hidden
>radar speed trap be able to use this law to their
>advantage? After all, if the police are disguising
>"the existence or place of origin or destination of
>any telecommunications service," they're in
>violation of the law. Right?

I hate to say this, but... "in violation of the law" ? They *are* the law!
(yes, yes, oversight and fair trials, Constitutional rights, and why not, the Magna Carta...)

I was just discussing this with someone else a few days ago, how sodomy laws still exist in a number of US states (most places say anything other than missionary style is technically illegal) and not only do the laws require an unreasonable invasion of privacy to enforce, but they are being enforced unevenly, being used to harass certain target people. These laws are just one more tool for the law enforcement establishment (the local police up to the FBI, and the judiciaries that paralell them) to make life difficult for 'undesirable' elements in society.

Instead of mentioning how KMFDM's "What do you know, Deutschland?" is playing behind me, and the sample 'dogmatic police state' is in it, I'll just make reference to a quote that I can't remember, about how a state passes laws to make everyone a criminal, um, and how that is bad.

Re:What if...

[stanmann]

Actually, the "sodomy" laws are fairly vague... and they typically read...

Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

Obviously, this could cover anything a judge wanted to apply it to... but would be difficult to apply to be so specific as applying to "missionary position only"... but not impossible... however, it could also be stretched to cover using "barrier methods" of birth control.

Re:What if...

[ManoMarks]

Thus proving that, yes indeed, every discussion leads back to the Nazis.

Re:What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would a radar gun be considered a "place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service"? If the readings were sent to a central database... perhaps.

Now, IANAH, but what I'm wondering...are servers not forced to "broadcast" every service they are running to anyone who "asks"? Otherwise they may be disguising the existence of a telecommunication service.

Re:What if...

[certron]

"Thus proving that, yes indeed, every discussion leads back to the Nazis."

While my first response is to ask "Which Nazis?" I can't find the full text of either of these speeches to get an understanding of their content.

I did, however, come across a number of quotes on a gun rights site from Hitler advocating that any citizen who wants to carry a gun should join the SS, and that all citizens who were not should turn their guns in. A disarmed populace is easier to control. A little further down this thread is someone who no longer laughs at the 'rednecks who fear the government will take away their guns'.

About the samples:
http://www.sloth.org/samples-bin/samples /group?exa ct=KMFDM
http://www.sloth.org/samples-bin/samples /source?ex act=Kennedy%2C+John+F%2E+%28President%29

Interestingly enough, in KMFDM's song "Dogma" one of the lyrics is "Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country has done to you."

Re:What if...

[Master of Transhuman]

I always like Chiun's response to the quoting of Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"...

He said, "And where's he now?"...

'Nuff said...

Re:What if...

[aicra]

Actually Certron, (Hi) in some states it is illegal to use photo radar because like in AZ, the statutes state there needs to be a signed issued document by an officer present at the scene. The only people, if any are there in the photo van, or photo red light is a technician. The tickets here are signed by using a rubber stamp signature and thus fall out of the legal limits, even for "the law"!!

anonymous = unsigned + unaccountable

[Speare]

The legal notion of 'anonymity' is actually comprised of two components: can you publish or do something without directly indicating your identity, and can you avoid being held accountable for your actions or statements. The blanket term of 'anonymity' just blurs the issues.

The courts have consistently decided that you can operate "unsigned," in that it would abridge or chill your freedoms of speech and silence to make your identifying signatures compulsory.

The courts have NOT supported the notion that you could operate in a way that you are "unaccounted;" if an illegal and unsigned statement or speech or action can eventually be tracked to you, then you must face the consequences.

What matters here is whether NAT or DNS or Caller-ID blocks or DoD/RSA mechanisms are going to be seen as attempts to be unsigned, or unaccountable. The legislatures have rarely put much careful attention to this distinction; this may have to be handled by the more contemplative (and usually better-informed) judiciary.

Re:anonymous = unsigned + unaccountable

[civilizedINTENSITY]

The two are not orthoganal. To be accountable one must be identifiable. To be indentifiable is the same as being "signed". You differentiate between "directly indicating" vs. being "tracked". There is no such difference, excepting only the degree of exertion.

"The courts have consistently decided that you can operate "unsigned," in that it would abridge or chill your freedoms of speech and silence to make your identifying signatures compulsory."

So then I won't have my freedoms chilled if only those who *really* want my ass can find me?

Reality check, folks

[swordgeek]

OK, let's get something clear here. This guy has NOT been charged, threatened, or implicated in anything illegal. There seems to be no actual legal advice involved, just the fearful interpretation of a college student whose major is NOT law.

Is this a bad law? Yes.
Should it be struck down? Absolutely.
Is this guy (and others) in trouble? Quite possibly.

But there's a big difference between people reacting to (perceived) bad law, and people actually getting arrested, charged, tried, and convicted by that bad law. Work at striking down the law--don't spend time making a martyr of someone who isn't dead yet.

Re:Reality check, folks

[JohnFluxx]

The difference isn't as big as you try to make out.
Does it really matter if they charge anyone under the new law, if it makes everyone too fearful to break it?

Creepy - Is "View Source" an illegal feature?!

[Malic]

So, are software developers of web browsers guilty of a crime by enabling the ability to View Source of any web page?!

One has to wonder how long it will be before computers and the hoods of automobiles will have "Do not remove this seal under penalty of law" enclosing their contents from view...

website in NL

[e**(i pi)-1]

Niels Provos website is
http://niels.xtdnet.nl/honeyd
This info is of course just for people who are allowed to access it ...

It's real simple...

[sterno]

Republican politicians - rich people
Democratic politicians - guilty rich people

Can we report the telco's?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who could we contact to report the telco's for providing Caller ID? Who can we call to report Cisco for selling firewalls? Who can we call to report Linksys, SMC, Netgear? Can we call someone to tell on AOL and their DNS? or MS?

We need to get these people behind the barrel of this super law so they can fight it for us. Cause you know damn well writing your congressman doesn't do shit. They have a $10/hr intern answering the emails with a form letter. They NEVER read them.

One step closer to the Global Village

[ProteusQ]

We want Information... Information... Information!

You won't get it!

By hook or by crook, we will.

How do you know that?

We own it. Every last one and zero.

What about liberty? What about free will?!

(mocking laughter)

he's right

[bogie]

Republicans do a lot of talk about the need to dismantle the "bloated" Federal government but really they only want to dismantle some of it. They want to dismantle all of the social programs and consumer rights laws while at the same time building a permanent massive police state that invades every aspect of our lives.

Even worse then the spying are the secret search warrants which bypass the judicial system.

People are being held for anything, for any length of time, and without access to the outside all under the guise of "protecting the citizens(aka the state).

Librarians are being hushed with threat of jail time and we have a Pres. who has made it clear how he feels about those who don't support his right to conquer anyone for any reason.

This is all like some bad dream and the 1984 jokes aren't even funny anymore. I no longer laugh at those Rednecks hiding in the woods waiting for the government to come and seize their guns.

Re:he's right

[da]

[tsk!] all these comparisons to 1984 are just ridiculous - it's much more like Brave New World...

When we've all got broadband access and webcams then it'll be like 1984...

Re:he's right

[pohl]

ok, so where's my soma?

Re:he's right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's better known by the terms "television" and "beer". :)

I have a better idea.

[rice_burners_suck]

So if I make a telephone system using two coffee cans and a piece of string, and then I hide that system in a hole that I dig in my backyard, then I would have "developed" a device (the hole) that "conceals" the existence of a "telecommunications service" (the coffee can telephone system) and would go to the slammer for four years.

This sounds like a really good deal but I think I've got a better one... Make up a separate branch of the government that has its own laws and does not follow the Constitution. This branch of government would be responsible for intellectual property laws and the punishments for violations of these laws. All members of this government would be appointed by the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft. These appointed officials would make up all the rules and regulations. Nobody else has any say in what this government does. Henceforth, intellectual property officers would enforce the laws. Each intellectual property officer would have the authority to do anything they deem necessary to find violators of intellectual property laws. This includes the right to break into peoples' property for no reason whatsoever and rummaging through whatever they want. Once they find an alleged violator, which can be anyone they want, each intellectual property officer would then serve as prosecutor, judge and jury. The violator is guilty until proven innocent. There would be no lawyers. Under the law, there would no way to prove anyone innocent once accused of violating intellectual property laws. Therefore, once accused, an individual is proven guilty and sentenced. The penalty for violating intellectual property laws would be death by whichever method the intellectual property officer prefers. To expedite the processing of intellectual property violations cases, death camps would be constructed around the country and anyone without blonde hair, blue eyes and proof of native American ancestors going back 30 generations would be gathered in masses and sent to these death camps to die because they are already proven guilty of intellectual property violations. To prevent intellectual property from being stolen, all information would be burned in enormous bonfires. The nuclear weapons of the entire would would be thrown into the mix, destroying everything in existance and ending the world. Once all living things are dead, intellectual property laws will no longer be violated.

Yeah... That'll solve the problem.

Re:I have a better idea.

[dentar]

Make up a separate branch of the government that has its own laws and does not follow the Constitution.

That's already in place. It's called the Bush Administration.

Re:I have a better idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I make a telephone system using two coffee cans and a piece of string, and then I hide that system in a hole that I dig in my backyard, then I would have "developed" a device (the hole) that "conceals" the existence of a "telecommunications service" (the coffee can telephone system) and would go to the slammer for four years.

Actually, that is incorrect. Since you developed and own the "telecommunications service" you would not be breaking the law by concealing it from yourself.

Re:I have a better idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>To expedite the processing of intellectual property violations cases, death camps would be constructed around the country and anyone without blonde hair, blue eyes and proof of native American ancestors going back 30 generations would be gathered in masses and sent to these death camps to die because they are already proven guilty of intellectual property violations.

IE: just about every single american, including the current administration...

sonuds good to me =)

-- Some Canadian Metis

Re:I have a better idea.

[Guppy06]

I think you meant Congress. They're the ones that have difficulty with the whole "shall make no law" concept.

Re:I have a better idea.

[surprise_audit]

No, I think you're thinking of Homeland Security.

My son and a friend were stopped while about to board a cruise ship, because one of them was carrying a video camera. Upon being told that videoing the port area was illegal, they attempted to explain that the camera was turned off and the lens cap was in place. This only made the situation worse - they were interrogated in separate rooms for over half an hour, with the security folks apparently unable or unwilling to listen to reason.

My son was unfailingly polite during the whole incident, but whenever he suggested that they simply play back the tape to see what was on it, he was told "Don't get smart with us, we can throw you in jail." After being released, the boys were talking about the incident, only to discover the same security officer standing behind them on the escalator. He subjected them to another half hour of harrassment, after waving vaguely towards a group of random civilians that he claimed "were witnesses to the boys filming the port area, and that the boys had repeatedly pushed the camers in their faces".

Both times it would have taken maybe 2 minutes to review the tape and issue a warning about not using the camera. Both times the security officer felt it more important to throw them against the wall, make them "assume the position", pat them down and verbally harangue them.

Re:I have a better idea.

[dentar]

That would have won that guy a lawsuit had it been me that was the toy cop's victim.

Routers, etc.

[joncarwash]

All I can say to Michigan State police is have fun collecting every cable/dsl router (that usess NAT) in the state, including those at retail stores and warehouses. Oh, and hope you have enough room in jail for every person who owns one, the manager of the store where the bought it, the delivery boy who delivered it to the store, the truck driver who drove it into the state, and whoever decided to advertise the router in the state. And I am sure there are no routers that use NAT anywhere in any Michigan government office either... right...

Re:Routers, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to throw you in jain to make your life a living hell. They can just fine the shit out of you. Either way you're getting fucked.

Re:Routers, etc.

[yoshi_mon]

Would it be too much to ask some currently unemployed geek to walk into their local Mi police station and proclaim that they are in violation of his law?

When the cops where to arrive at his/her house and find only a NAT setup, make sure the press and the ACLU/ERF are well notified.

Since the damn media (And sadly to a lesser extent, the public.) only responds to this type of sensationalistic beating over the heads of what might be wrong with something, is it time to take this plunge?

(Yeah, sinking down to their level and all but you can't make a Soviet omelet without breaking some eggs.)

Re:Routers, etc.

[zaffir]

I'm in Michigan. I'm a minor. I'll consider this. I'd like to see what they do.

Complaining helps?

[alakazam]

Everytime I go to Safeway or Radio Shack (the only two places in my town that rent DVDs) I complain that they no longer get the wide-screen version of movies.

They said it's because too many people were complaining about the "black bars" on the screen so now they only buy full-screen.

As long as most people are clueless our little voices won't even start to be heard.

Jay

Georgia House Bill 867

[wolf-]

For those in the State of Georgia interested in putting forth an opposition to this legislature, my office number is 770.719.3852. My email for this will be hsb867@lobosoft.com.

I just called our four representatives for District 48. One of them has called me back so far, and said that honestly, single phone calls are in no way as efffective as collective opposition.

So, if you are a small business owner, a computer consultant, or even just an individual who is looking at a felony record if this passes, email me.

To find out who your representative is Georgia, you can visit Polling Place and Elected Officials finder at the secretary of states website.

What about VOIP?

[Influxx]

Does this make voice over ip services like vonage illegal? Subscribers can choose a phone number in any area code thus indirectly conceiling their physical location to the person being called. A person could be making the call from next door or from another continent and the person on the receiving end would be none the wiser.

In Soviet Russia

[DrSkwid]

In Soviet Russia

the state hides YOU!

Caller ID block still legal!

[lowmagnet]

...But only because it makes a lobbying interest (the phone companies) money!

Cops Masquerading to Catch Pedophiles

[Bander]

I just read an article on some mainstream newspaper's online site (probably either the NYT or the Washington Post, given my surfing habits), and they had an interesting article about cops who pose as 13-year-old girls in order to sting child molesters. It was a fun article, because the middle aged male cop had to go around asking the women in his department how to chat like a barely postpubescent teenage girl.

I was concerned that this might constitute entrapment, but now I'm much more worried that the officers are violating Michigan law. For example, if you are a pedophile who lives in Ann Arbor, are you legally entitled to sue an officer that uses such a ploy?

I mean, I'm all for taking pedophiles off the streets. I'm less enthusiastic about tempting them into compromising situations. But there's a certain irony to the Michigan statute in this application that only confuses my already bewildered sense of right and wrong.

-- Bander

No firewall/NAT?

[gmuslera]

Put all the legislators computers directly connected to internet, with no firewall, no nat, no port blocking, and show them this way how long could survive our information society with the kind of measures they are aproving laws for.

In PA...

[lylum]

you aren't even allowed to possess a computer anymore. > 910. MANUFACTURE, DISTRIBUTION, USE OR POSSESSION OF DEVICES 15 FOR THEFT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES.

Oh Hell, It makes my Dissertation Illegal Too!

[The Infamous TommyD]

My Dissertation Please don't download it in Michigan! :-)

This is outlandishly ignorant and foolishly confident of the legislature. What makes them think that outlawing this knowledge will somehow change things? All this does is make it harder for the good guys.

DHCP

[Salsaman]

Does this mean then, that dhcp is now illegal ? After all, it could be construed as a device which 'hides the origin' of communications, since it can assign a pseudo-random IP address to a device.

Not truly feasible

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the sentiment of your post; however, it is not practical.
The major problem with what you say is that unless you can somehow convince vast numbers of people to do it, it will never be able to do more that pull votes away from (generally) the Democrats (I say this because, from what I've seen, the most popular "minor" parties tend to be left of center). I'm not trying to beat a dead horse or play the blame game, but it's very likely that Gore would have won in 2000 had Nader not run.

I do have another problem with this, though. Firstly, the reason most people don't vote for 3rd parties is because they've never heard of them, not because they disagree with one plank in their platform. Secondly, in my experience the majority of them tend to have a single issue that they're campaigning on. I realize that more substantial ones like Libertarian are exceptions to this, but it seems to me to be the rule.

I think that eventually, 3rd parties will become much more viable than they are today--but not until there's some real campaign finance reform (ie, when the government finally decides that a. corporations aren't people and b. money isn't speech). We have to work within the system to change the system.

There are some 3rd parties whose ideas and ideals I fully agree with. Unfortunately, what I see is that voting for them will make my vote simply a statement, since there is very little actual chance for a 3rd party candidate to get more than about 15% of the vote.

Dan Aris
not bothering to log in from school

Re:Not truly feasible

[slipstick]

You sound like a reasonable person to me so don't
take this too harshly.

But, that is the absolutely stupidest thing I've
ever read. It's this type of thinking that keeps
3rd parties out of the race. Vote for who is going
to represent your interests, not for whom might be
the least of the evils otherwise nothing, absolutely
nothing changes.

Your only real power in a
democracy is to fire the employees. The only way
to do that is to not vote for them. As a practical
consideration every vote for a 3rd party in a
given election likely raises their profile for
the next. Talk to others about voting for a
3rd party, tell them that you did it because
you expect change "eventually" not necessarily
this election, only than are you likely to see
change. Otherwise you'll be perpetually waiting
for "change"(shit) to happen.

It's likely you'll be disappointed in "this" election, and the next, and maybe even the one
after that. But...the one after that, now it
stood up, and that's what you'll inherit, the
strongest castle in the land. Oops, I slipped
into Monty Python mode but you get the idea.
Don't set your sites on today or you'll perpetually be disappointed.

Re:Not truly feasible

[lgraba]

This is nice in theory, but in elections with 3 stong candidates, voters always think: I would like to vote for B, but if I do, it is likely that A will win over C, with B in third, and if I had a choice, I'd rather have C than A. In this manner, you can end up with winner that the majority of the people do not want.

This is the reason that some are pushing for Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). In this method, everyone votes for their top choices, in order. Then, say in a 3 candidate election, after the first round, the third place candidates votes would revert to the second choice on those ballots. In this way, you would eventually come down to a two-way race, and you would get a more accurate picture of who the voters want (or don't want) in office. At the same time, people can list their true favorite as their top choice.

I'm sure IRV would be more complicated to implement, but it would eliminate winners with only 34% of the vote (and possible up to 66% against them.)

Re:Not truly feasible

[Dr. Manhattan]

Getting election laws changed to something more sensible, like Instant Runoff or the Borda Count would be very hard.

On the other hand, vote swapping sites have been ruled sort-of-legal. This may offer a way to 'back-door' a more fair election system, until enough sensible people are elected to fix it directly.

Re:Not truly feasible

[slipstick]

This is true, and irrelevant to my point.

I know what "people" do but the question is what
are "you" going to do. The fact is the deck is stacked. The chances of electorial reform is non-existant in the current climate. So if in fact B is the best choice for everyone not just you than "eventually" B will win, but only if you vote for him this time. You have to take the chance of putting up with "shit". Otherwise you'll perpetually get bile and sometimes you'll get shit anyway.

There's only two ways out of the mess we've dug ourselves and one of them causes a lot of unnecessary death. The other takes longer and may hurt but in the end is much more satisfying and quite possibly more enduring.

You just can't think short term.

This is sadly reminiscent of the Simpson's episode where the aliens kill and than masquerade as Clinton and Dole. They're found out before the election but "What are you going to do? It's a two party system." gets one of them elected anyway.

The short sited concept of "what's in it for me this time?", absolutely sickens me.

Basically outlawing communications companies

[Thing 1]

This law basically outlaws communications companies. For instance, AT&T probably has internal documents describing the limitations of their systems.

These documents are now illegal.

How can a communications company continue their research without being able to document it?

Re:Basically outlawing communications companies

[Luveno]

How can a communications company continue their research without being able to document it?

The same way a certain software company developed Win32, probably.

Violating HIPAA?

[lowmagnet]

I think this law may violate HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) because it circumvents HIPAA's requirement for 'Reasonable measures' to be taken in regards to securing PHI (Primary Health Information) against third parties.

I wonder which law will win out?

Switchboards illegal - cordless phones too :-)

[northwind]

This is great news. With one genious penstroke the politicians once again has proven that brains and hammers don't mix.
How about switchboards? They cleverly conceals the sub-stations (which are telecommunication devices, any) from being reached at will.
And how about FBI and CIA? Finally we can get the information about where the secret phones are installed.
And cordless phones? Obviously a device intended to conceal the location of the handset.
I guess the next will be a ban on illegal use of punctuation...
I refuse to do battle of wits with unarmed persons.

Revolution

[Cheeba Racer]

It seems to me that now might be a good time to start a revolution against the those who are in charge. Why not start it here in *cyberspace.* Make the Michigan law unenforceable. Overwhelm them by making as many copies of "illegal" technology and distribute them to as many locations as possible. Make it impossible for them to arrest everybody.

Maybe I'm on the wrong track. But there are a lot of smart people here. (?) I'm sure someone can find an effective way to fight back.

Get us some case law, quick

[lysium]

These laws need some case law to cut them down, quick. Someone in Michigan (or related states) should immediately launch a lawsuit against, say, their ISP for providing NAT, with the sole intent of having the judge rule in favor of the defendant. Perhaps even orchastrate the whole affair with the cooperation of the ISP....if that is legal. Better that way then having case law start off with easy-to-prosecute cases that only fortify this foolishness.

All I know is that something needs to be done. This law strikes me as well-suited for selective (targeted) prosecution.

----------

Re:Get us some case law, quick

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you launch a lawsuit for a criminal offense?

You can report it to the police and get them to investigate, but you can't force the prosecution to actually take the case. For criminal laws, the government gets to selectively prosecute.

Re:Get us some case law, quick

[lysium]

File a police report? Turn yourself in?

Get the Word Out!

[LightForce3]

All you /.ers in Michigan (that includes most of the editors, at least Taco and CowboyNeal), notify your local TV stations and newspapers about this and other effects of the Super DMCA. Write to your representatives and senators, too. Please, be respectful, but don't sugar-coat anything.

I don't know about you, but this law slipped in under my radar.

Write your Reps at Congress.org!

[zachjb]

I suggest that everyone checks out Congress.org.

It is a cool little web site that you can write to each member of the government with a few simple mouse clicks.

I just got done writing my Reps and Senators in Indiana regarding this "model law" to see what they thought of it, if they plan to implement something like this soon in Indiana, and how I am strongly opposed to any such legislation. I suggest that everyone follows my lead so you can hear for yourself how your government feels about this matter.

Sad times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck those in charge of America.

Not happy enough to fuck around with the lives of other nations people, now they even fuck around with the lives of their own.

Links on EFF page

[AciDive]

None of the links on the EFF page work, here are some that should work:
mcl-750-219a:

• Obtaining telecommunications services with intent to avoid charge; violation; separate incidents pursuant to scheme or course of conduct; enhanced sentence based on prior convictions; definitions.

mcl-750-540c:

• Prohibited conduct with regard to telecommunications access device; violation as felony; penalty; amateur radio service; forfeiture; order; definitions.

mcl-750-540h:

• Intent to permit or obtain unauthorized receipt of telecommunications service.

So why did this guy move his papers to .nl again?

[anonymous loser]

It seems like a researcher working on a PhD thesis would be the *perfect* test case for this law, if folks were really interested in getting it curbed or thrown out entirely.

It also seems that if his university were really interested in fostering research (as most pretend to be, at least), they'd back him with their own lawyers.

So, I have to ask why he hasn't consulted with UM administration to see about keeping his PhD thesis where it belongs.

IRC?

[Viking Coder]

Doesn't this also blast anonymous IRC services?

Psycho.

That's like saying it's a felony to not put your return address on a postcard.

DNS Split Namespace is Illegal

[Pup5]

Our company doesn't publish our internal DNS to the outside world... for good reason. This is now illegal in Michigan?

That sounds wise.

Doing Something About It

[jtkooch]

I don't know why, maybe boredom, but I sent an e-mail to every single Michigan state senator, and rep, telling them in fairly simple terms how this law can criminalize innocent activities, i.e. NAT. I don't even live in Michigan. But it will be interesting to see what kind of feedback I get, if any.

Why this happens in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll sum it up by asking a simple question:

How many of you outraged folks actually did something about this other than posting on slashdot or just reading about it?

People who take action get what they want in life more often than people who sit around complaining--especially if the complaining is focused solely to those who are NOT in a position to change things.

So you want to whine about DCMA? Complain about it to your representatives IN WRITING and let them know this is an issue that will determine your & your friends' votes.

The price of liberty is NOT as cheap as pure laziness. The price is vigilence. Instead of bitching about how our American government is bad, fix how bad of a American citizen you are first. You might discover that when enough of us improve ourselves as citizens, our goverment will also improve.

If you treat this as a spectator sport, you'll have as much an impact on the outcome as a sports fan screaming at his football via TV on Monday nights.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get off your ass & participate! Write that letter or start a petition! Unless of course you prefer having a scapegoat to whine about rather than doing your part as a citizen.

Re:Why this happens in the USA

[jasonsfa98]

Here in the US you could spend your entire life fighting bullshit. I for one will not devote my life to fighting against stupid ass congressmen/law makers who are only out for their own interest. I will still continue to complain so those who choose to fight this crap can. "Don't blame me, I didn't vote."

Accountability is always a *good* thing!

[c0d3h4x0r]

This is actually good news. The biggest problem with the Internet is its anonymous nature.

If you want things like junk e-mail and DoS attacks to finally end, then you're going to have to get used to an Internet that has accountability and identifiability built in. It's the only real solution.

Re:Accountability is always a *good* thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Making anonymity illegal isn't the way to go. These types of laws are always selectively enforced, and you can bet that they won't make people go after spammers and DoSers any more than they already do.

Spamming and DoSing should themselves be illegal, and to some extent and in some places, are. Still, most of the time they go on unhindered. Not (only) because they are difficult to trace (often, they aren't - for any spam to be useful, you have to have a valid contact address where duped people can send money etc.), but because it's impractical.

Anonymity, on the other hand, is sometimes important. For one thing, it's a protection against oppressive governments. While the US government may not currently be doing so (at least not openly), if it ever decides to go after people simply for speaking out against government policies, having anonymity as a technical (and legal) possibility is a good thing.

Re:Accountability is always a *good* thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass. I'd rather put up with spam than lose my ability to use things like firewalls, NAT, proxies, etc.

I bet you don't mind having people disappear in the middle of the night in the name of homeland security, do you? It's safer in the long run, after all. So what if you can no longer disagree with the government or go outside after 22:00?

Re:Accountability is always a *good* thing!

[c0d3h4x0r]

Anonymity is not needed as long as other rights are explicitly protected. Free speech is explicitly protected by the US Constitution.

It's already illegal to infringe upon someone's free speech, kidnap them, murder them, or harass them. Therefore there is no need for them to have to hide behind anonymity to enjoy those rights.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

!!WARNING!! Welcome to a police state !

[boy_afraid]

!!WARNING!! Welcome to a police state !

You DO NOT have the right to:
- Have a thought all your own. If you have a thought then you probably copyrighted it from someplace else, you owe us a royalty payment
- Own a book, you can only rent from a pre-approved list authorized from the US Attorney General
- A fair an impartial jury, you will be tried in a secret military tribunal.
- Citizenship. Your US citizenship could be stripped from you when we feel like it.
- Remain silent. We will harrass and tick you off until you tell us what we want to know, including by using sleep deprevation.
- Privacy. We see, hear, and know everything about you, including what you do in those long showers you take.
- Liberty. That was nice while it lasted.
- Freedom. We own you. We give you the thought and feel of freedom, but we control.
- Democracy. We actually give you an option of who to vote for, but it doesn't matter because we'll still control the politician with super whores.
- Taxation with representation. We control the horizontal, we control the verticle, we also control the purse. Everytime we use a bomb, we need to replace it. We decide how much we get paid and how much you get to take home.

Brought to you by the Ameri-Corp, USA. "The big brother that you always feard."

Other side of the argument

[Anonymous Coward]

I think perhaps everybody is in a real hurry to declare this bill evil. There is no doubt it is confusing and written horribly. But the way I interpret it, it may not be such a bad idea.

It is illegal to shoot a gun at somebody, but you can still own one. I think this law trys to do the same thing with software. It makes software that commits crime illegal, and will make it much easier for law enforcement to deal with computer crime.

find who this affects, get corporations to unite

[kcm]

What we need to do is find who this affects, and unite them against the legislation. It just *doesn't matter* if a bunch of people say they don't like it -- the law might gain one or two exception clauses, like normal.

This potentially affects the auto industry, which is huge in Michigan -- I would assume most of them use secure links to transmit all kinds of data to other states and countries. How would they react to finding out they can no longer keep their IP safe?

What other industries and "big money" exist that would be opposed to this? Who can we unite against this?

I've seen the markup of the bill, and not only did they remove clauses which specified "for illegal purposes" (more or less), but they removed every single bit of specific language used, in order to extend the law to t-shirts, songs, etc. for matters like DeCSS. It's pretty ugly.

I live in Michigan, work with CITI quite a bit (Niels is indeed a cool guy and deserves all the support we can give, since he has certainly given it out himself), and I'm truthfully pretty scared to think about what this could mean to me. Who wants to move to Europe? You think I'm kidding?

doctors

[trefoil]

my parents are doctors, and we actively block caller-id due to the reason that, if a person gets the home phone number of a doctor, that doctor will never get any rest again. Some people just don't have common courtesy to respect the privacy of others. Being on call, means that he works away from the office.. and comes back in if there's an emergency.. but a diaper rash on a newborn doesn't consist of an emergency, no matter how hysterical the parents are.

Perspective from a michigan citizen

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd like to prevent a horrible bill like this in your own state, stop the UAW from declaring election day a holiday. Otherwise they'll elect a Canadian lawyer to your highest executive position.

Outlawing DVD players

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is unlawful to possess devices to circumvent access restriction mechanisms, doesn't that also make it illegal to possess things like DVD Players? Wouldn't Sony, Philips, Toshiba, etc., all be in violation? After all, they exist to "circumvent" CCS to allow you to view the movies on the disk...

"from the so-much-for-resear-*hic* dept."

[Anonymous Coward]

Proofreading Nazi here -- that should be "research" in the department heading, right?


<<<< This Service brought to you by Distributed Proofreaders >>>>

selective enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Just beacuse the law isn't being enforced doesn't mean that it isn't the law, and doesn't mean that it won't be enforced as suits a political agenda.

Spam and DRM/Palladium?

[gr8_phk]

Does this outlaw spam? point of origin usually concealed.

Does this outlaw palladium? Not sure how, because I'm not sure what it really is yet. I do understand that some information will be kept from the owner of the network.

How do they plan to enforce this?

[Capt_Troy]

I don't understand how they plan to enforce stuff like this that is provided on the internet based on a state or even federal law? There will always be places to host this stuff, in this case the grad student was able to host this illegal content in the Netherlands. So is our government spinning it's wheels trying to enforce something that it can never physically enforce? Isn't there more pressing matters to worry about?

If we keep this up, pretty soon companies in countries with reasonable laws pertaining to this type of information are going to start charging Americans an arm and a leg to host their stuff!

Both Parties Suck

[bigpat]

And I mean Suck. They suck the life out of America. They suck the life out of every individual that is forced to work an average of 10 years during their lifetime (based on around a 15% income tax and a 60 year lifespan) in the service not of themselves, but of the federal governement. That is at least 2 months every year working for what? What free people would choose to do that to themselves? And still the federal government can't pay the bills that they are writing...

Trillions of dollars in debts have been accumulating, yet we still play these stupid games. Oh it's the Dems fault... it's the Republicans. No, it's America's fault. America's fault for not seeing through the daily lies that our elected representatives now even seem to believe themselves. America's fault for believing the carpet baggers when they tell you they have all the answers to your daily struggles. America's fault for signing up for all those credit cards which you can never pay off. American's fault for their forgiveness, when the itinerant congressman or president tell you and themselves that the lies they told were better than the alternative. America's fault for not seeing through the scam of social security from the very beginning... It only works when the population is growing and most people don't live very long, still sound good to you?

Both parties have ceased representing the interests of citizens in the government, but instead try to banally represent the excesses of goverment back to us in patriotic terms.

Now we see all these restrictive laws being passed ... and we wonder why? Because we have elected a generation of spinless whanabees. They are so used to believing their own lies, that when a big corporation goes to a congressman and says 'we need your laws to keep us in business', the congressman doesn't think 'is what they are asking consistent with an American value of freedom?'... no, they ask themselves whether the business is big enough to keep the coffers flowing.

With every iteration, laws become more restrictive more intrusive and more unintelligable. Until one day, noone can live a day of their lives without fear that somehow they are breaking some law and right and wrong are so far removed from the law that only your political connections or your subserviance will keep you out of harms way.

Big government is bad government.

And yes, I just did my taxes!

Re:Both Parties Suck

[agrounds]

With every iteration, laws become more restrictive more intrusive and more unintelligable. Until one day, noone can live a day of their lives without fear that somehow they are breaking some law and right and wrong are so far removed from the law that only your political connections or your subserviance will keep you out of harms way.


I find your ideas to be intriguing. I'd like to sign up for your newsletter.

Seriously though, that is the best rant I've read in a while! Are you Michael Moore's love-child?

Re:Both Parties Suck

[bigpat]

I'm the bastard son of Ayn Rand and most of the Libertarian Party

Although, I think the LPs should tone down the "we just want to fire everyone that works in government" rhetoric. There are some good people doing good things in government we should do our best to make certain that their work continues outside of goverment. Any major change in society will hurt people unless it is done gradually over time.

With that said, I think I've been up too late figuring out my "basis"... If line 3 is greater than line 45 then multiply line 23 by .20 otherwise... skip the next section and go kick your local congressman's ass.

Re:Both Parties Suck

[attobyte]

Good Comment.

I only wish more people in this country would wake up and see what is really going on. :(

Atto

Re:Both Parties Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely. A memorable quote I heard on this subject a while ago is "democrats and republicans, a dime of difference; one's for big government, one's for bigger." I don't remember where I heard that, but it is certainly quite true.

I think the main reason we're in this mess is because we have such a flawed voting system, one that essentially forces you to vote for whichever of the two major parties you hate less. We need a better election method.

Re:Both Parties Suck

[skywire]

They suck the life out of every individual that is forced to work an average of 10 years during their lifetime (based on around a 15% income tax and a 60 year lifespan)

If only it were true! Even the poorest Americans have a little more than 15% of the gross shown on each paycheck withheld (half shown on the check stub, half hidden) for Social Security, for an effective rate of 14% of their full gross (counting the hidden 7.6%). If the average FIT is 15% (for an an effective rate of 14% of the full gross pay), that makes a total average Federal tax on income of about 28%.

Consider the wealth the average taxpayer could amass by retirement if allowed instead to first use that 14% to pay off a house note and following that, invest it. Social Security is nothing other than the most brilliantly deceptive and successful political scheme ever devised: an engine for maintaining people in poverty while paradoxically garnering their fervent political support!

Use /. to influence next elections?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wondering.. is it possible to use /. as a place to select, state by state, which senators would be more beneficial to the /. crowd.. just so that we don't see anymore DCMA - type laws passing.. so we can get senators that are more friendly to our cause in to office?

I'm just asking this because technology & politics are clashing soo much these days that, even thought we are geeks for the most part.. I think that we have to get political about various issues, either stand together or get wiped out...

Welcome to America, Land of the... Free?

[CharonX]

When I was younger I admired America.
Land of the Free, Land of the Limitless Possibilities for Everyone.
Of course, these were only a small boy's dreams - when I grew older I saw that there were problems, like in my own country, but still it looked quite a good place to live, and still there was the hint of desire to emigrate.
Yet this changed in the last few years, its not that the politicians here have become better, quite in contrary, they blow more hot air than ever, opposing each other for oppositings sake - but DMCA, Patriot Act, Homeland Security, Disregard to the UN, and Goverment initiated Patriotism that borders on Nationalism made me worry.
What had become of the Freedom? What had become of tolerance? What had become of Peace?
I am scared of this new America, where its government does what it wants to no matter what the people and the world say, where being Islamic became as bad as a few decades ago being suspected to be a Communist...
What has become of America?

Netherlands???

[sampson7]

Um, why do people assume that simply moving your documents to a server in another country renders you immune from (United States) state or federal jurisdiction?

Unless he's removed himself to the Netherlands (and even that's complicated), he should consult with an attorney specializing in these issues. Otherwise, prepare to be a test case!

Turn Yourself In!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the best ways to protest this would be for everyone in Michigan who legally purchased a NAT box to go to the State prosecuter's office in Ann Arbor and turn themselves in. If 4 or 5 hundred admins came in and protested this, the resultant case load would insure that the prosecutors would want this law overturned if only to get this idiotic assault on our rights off the books. Granted, this is a big personal risk, but it might be time to head this off with a radical action.

Bye, Bye NAT

[bheerssen]

Googling for my own state's (Texas) Super DMCA, I found this by Dan Wallach, an asst. professor at Rice University. He has some interesting things to say aout the bills before our House and Senate. So in the interest of fact checking, I looked at the Senate version.

Sure enough, by the letter of the law, NATs would be illegal. It prohibits owning or creating any technology that is used to knowingly modify a communications sevice in ways unauthorized by the service provider. The bill imposes a Class A misdemeanor for the first offence, except where five or more 'communications devices' are employed in the 'criminal episode'. In that case, the crime is a felony.

In my home, I have a wireless NAT setup. There are four desktop systems and a laptop that regularly access the internet via that network. Additionally, there is one more desktop that occasionally joins the network. That makes seven discreet communications devices, including the router, that are employed in gaining access. The definition of a communication device is very broad and includes single connectors,switches and connections (presumably between devices). Theoretically, the state could use each cat5 cable and external wireless nic as communications devices, upping my number of devices to 10 or 12. Since my ISP only grants authorized access to one communication device in my service contract, I would fall squarely under the stated definition of a felony under this bill. For running a freakin' home network!

I freely admit that I use my internet service connection in ways unauthorized by my provider. Sure. And they can cut my service at any time of their choosing if they find out. I accept that. I'm violating the agreement, therefore they have the right to terminate it. Simple, to the point, and effective.

But now I could become a felon as well. That's where I draw the line. In my opinion, the state has no business enforcing civil contracts with the criminal justice system. That's what the civil courts are for. If my provider cares to, they can try to get compensation for any perceived loss in a civil court. There is no need to make my activities a felony.

Somethings got to be done. I'm going to do my part and write a letter. Please do yours.

Re:Bye, Bye NAT

[Suidae]

It seems that one could argue that your service provider is providing access for one and only one device, the NAT box. You are not hiding the source of communications from the outside world, the source is clearly marked as the NAT box, the only device for which your service provider is providing service. Anything going to your service provider is understood to come from you or someone you have authorized to use your residential connection.

It doesn't matter what happens to the data once it passes the demark point, any more than it matters how many or where the telephone extensions in your house are located.

If packets start coming out of your NAT box with spoofed source addresses, then it is apparent that you are attempting to hide the source.

I think that if this were to ever go to court the judge would less concerned about how many computers you have in your closet and more concerned about why you are letting terrorist use them.

Re:Bye, Bye NAT

[gizmonic]

I freely admit that I use my internet service connection in ways unauthorized by my provider. Sure. And they can cut my service at any time of their choosing if they find out. I accept that. I'm violating the agreement, therefore they have the right to terminate it. Simple, to the point, and effective.

Okay, IANAL, but here is my take on this anyway...

What you are saying is that you have entered into a service agreement and now have no intention of actually adhering to the agreement? But, instead of canceling the contract, which you no longer agree to (if indeed, you ever actually did agree to), you will continue to break the agreement until you are caught. That would constitute fraud, which is indeed a crime, and can be prosecuted under the criminal as well as civil courts. Theft of service is still theft. Theft is criminally prosecutable. If you don't like it, don't steal. Simple, to the point, and effective, so to speak...

I'm not saying I like the law any better than you do. The fact of the matter is, Super-DMCA or not, they could technically make a decent criminal theft of service case against you right now, based on the contract you enetered into when you got the service.

I detest the RIAA, DMCA, Patriot Act and the like. I also fully support and admire those who would perform civil disobediance in breaking those laws. (Which requires public disclosure of your actions, by the way...)

However, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle between what the RIAA and their DMCA wants, and what the "I am owed everything" generation and their "I bought this cd fair and sqaure, so if I want to make copies for all my friends I should have the right to" wants.

Copying copyrighted music is theft. Stealing service is theft. If you don't like it, change the system. If you are going to steal, fine. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other, and I won't tell you not to. Just quit whining about the fact that you might actually get in trouble if you get caught. I am so sick of that!

Not a popular opinion around here, to be sure, but not being a coward, I refuse to post Anonymously. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to tell my Karma good-bye...

Re:Doesn't this outlaw NAT?

[LunarFox]

Regarding your question of routers:

As I see it, there are two separate issues to worry about there. Living in Michigan myself, and not only using an IPtables/NAT script but also offering it to the public, I'm following this law with considerable interest:

"Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service" MCL 750.540c(1)(b)

The first issue: As a NAT user, I might technically obscure the "place of origin"... namely, local 192.168.0.0/24 IPs. But if I send spam from any of these machines, my public IP is still quite visible. Now, I would like to see this law applied to spoofing, bouncing off open relays/proxies, etc -- in those cases, you are indeed concealing the place of origin, and with malicious intentions.

What concerns me isn't the state government (yet), it's the ISP. Therein lies the second issue: theft-of-service allegations, via this bit about "concealing the existence". Ergo, a firewall/NAT/router splits one IP into something multiple machines can use, and I don't pay Comcast for each separately. Don't think they wouldn't try to sue you... see "Buckeye Cable".

Both of these are markedly different applications than in the original story, which goes to show how broadly this law could be interpreted.

Remember When...

[bradintheusa]

Australia was called the village idiot for it's laws.

What does this make the USA?

Re:So why did this guy move his papers to .nl agai

[Anonymous Coward]

For one thing, he's not a US citizen, which makes it extra-stupid to get tangled up with the law.

More than just the ISP

[digitallis]

Quote from Section 750.219a of the Michigan Compiled law:
"(a) "Telecommunications" and "telecommunications service" mean any service lawfully provided for a charge or compensation to facilitate the origination, transmission, retransmission, emission, or reception of signs, data, images, signals, writings, sounds, or other intelligence or equivalence of intelligence of any nature over any telecommunications system by any method, including, but not limited to, electronic, electromagnetic, magnetic, optical, photo-optical, digital, or analog technologies. "

Note: This means that any sort of comminication is defined as a "telecommunications service" If I give you a book, I have just provided you with a telco service. So, not only does this stomp on Web-related things, it also applies to that flyer you pinned to the public posting board while noone was looking.

Re:More than just the ISP

[mark-t]

Well, on the upside... it will finally get rid of all those telephone pole ads with nothing more than a phone number that are ultimately geared to getting you to sell Herbalife products (after, of course, spending several hundred dollars yourself).

Re:More than just the ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the part about it being "over any telecommunications system".

Somehow I don't think hadning someone a book could even remotely be considered a "telecommunications system".

We have to protect The Children <TM>

[Anonymous Coward]

There are battered women and their offspring under the protection of shelters that routinely employ such measures. One of my co-workers volunteers at one... She is literally not allowed to tell me where it is.

It's been established that the way to get your bill passed is to shed a few tears over how it's necessary for The Precious Children <TM> . . . Let's put it to good use. Get in touch with the domestic violence constituencies and have them educate legislators that privacy protects people.

SVM, ERGO MONSTRO

No Freenet in Michigan

[warpSpeed]

So it is illegal to run a Freenet server in Michigan now?

aliases

[ir8monkey]

just wondering, but if the s-dmca goes though, would it not also make it illegal to use an alias on the internet? because you are not showing the true originator of the statement.

hrmm...makes you think...

Does Michigan use NAT on govt networks?

[UncleRoger]

Hopefully, they've removed them all by now... (Anyone need parking tickets fixed in Michigan?)

For that matter, have all the banks operating in Michigan removed their security?

Dang, if only I didn't have this conscience thing!

What about the less obvious types of communication

[estoll]

a controversial new state law that makes it a felony to possess software capable of concealing the existence or source of any electronic communication.

What about software that writes to removeable media (CD, floppy, etc)? It doesn't record who wrote to the media. Should we outlaw these devices?

What about all the machines which transmit communications anonymously? Remote controls, FM transmitter, etc. Should these all be outlawed?

I'm having a hard time thinking of other examples. Feel free to add onto this list.

calm down

[dildofire]

i could be wrong, but i don't think this means you can't block your caller id from showing up on another subscriber's phone. when you block your caller id with *70 or whatever it is, your number is still sent through the phone network all the way to the terminating switch. a flag is sent in the signalling that means "don't show the originating number" (the presentation flag, i believe). so this law wouldn't outlaw *70.

any other telecom geeks out there? am i wrong?

What the hell are they thinking?

[BYte69]

legal disclaimer: If you live in one of the states with this law please don't read this. I am behind a firewall and a proxy server.

What the hell are they thinking? Or are they thinking. Who else besides the EFF is fighting this? If you use ANY telcom service you are breaking this law. Hello WTF!!!!! How can this stand? Why do I always feel someone is watching? Oh I forgot they are. It's not that I do anything that I need to worry about but please don't make me have to take down firewalls, proxy servers, etc. We want a secure infrastructure but they outlaw the very tools needed to secure it that is a fatal flaw. Fix it.
RATM, (rage against the machine)

BYte69

Corporate Outrage

[Shamanin]

Holy crap for brains, Disney is now a state of its own with senator and all. I'm about to go crazy-go-nuts!

Re:Corporate Outrage

[elmegil]

I guess you aren't from around these parts. Hollings is from California, but consistently votes for things that benefit Disney and against things that would not benefit Disney. Therefore he has come to be known as "the senator from Disney", in common usage.

Re:Corporate Outrage

[rworne]

Umm, actually Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are from California. Hollings is from South Carolina.

It doesn't matter a whit that Disney isn't in the state that Hollings represents. All Senators and Representatives, regardless of political party, represent large wads of cash.

Re:Corporate Outrage

[cHiphead]

you've obviously never been to south carolina... its quite strange... there we were, driving through the hills, farm land all around... lo and behold, there is a Disney Factory Outlet sitting in the middle of a field. this is about 45 minutes south east of Greenville, somewhere on the way to/near Jonesboro. Very surreal, very government conspiracy like. Its probably a nuclear weapons plant in reality.

Fuck that ...

[rocketfairy]

Let's send them anonymous hatemail!

- posting a.c. while it's still legal ...

phone numbers

[pneuma_66]

I am surprised noone has said this, but arent regular, unlisted phone numbers essentially obfuscating who you are calling ? If you have no phone directory, the numbers are meaningless. However, you can guess the approximate location by the area code and exchange. But, that information doesnt always match up with what it should be, due to things such as number portability and such.

A brief Illinois DMCA+ review

[Anonymous Coward]

The Illinois version of this bill (passed in 02) is littered with:

"for the commission of a theft of a communication service or to receive, disrupt, transmit, decrypt, or acquire, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, transmission, decryption or acquisition, of any communication service without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider"

so I don't think it's a threat to nat routers (you've purchased the communication service. and I don't buy the argument that if you didn't have a router you'd buy two connections, thus you're "stealing" one) and other security measures. Presumably if you're using a security device or protocol to protect data or communication from third parties you have permission to use the service in the first place.

On a second read, however, it does appear that the second clause, the part after the first "or", could be abused, but only if it's read as "[to use an unlawful communication device] to receive, disrupt, transmit ... without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider." This would require users of NAT routers to ask their ISP for permission to use their router, but I don't think (I hope) that's the correct interpretation of that passage.

Also worthy of note is the fact that everything in the bill only applies to what they define as an "unlawful communication device", which is limited to devices capable of receiving communication services without permission. The only way a legal device could be targeted is if it were "programmed" to recieve communication services without permission, and I don't think (I hope) they wouldn't consider creating a config file "programming".

The only part of the bill that I see as questionable (in my brief read through) is that they define an unlawful device as one that's capable of receiving communication services without permission from the provider. This would outlaw all televisions and coaxial cables because they could be used to steal cable tv. It would outlaw cell phones with flashable roms, as they could be reflashed to steal cell service. It would outlaw far too many reasonable technologies, even ones the MPAA wants us to have (can't sell DVD's without a TV or coax). I hope they meant "a device that is produced for the purpose of" rather than "a device that is capable of", but I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA actually voted for the senators, much less that they thought deeply about the implications of this clause.

No, Taco knows what he's doing!

[jtheory]

Perhaps you didn't notice (or misinterpreted), but this story is "from the so-much-for-researhc dept." ...meaning we do NOT check for earlier posts (or misspellings either, apparently).

About time! Technology is dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to tell you why, but I have to reload my guns.

Call your ISP every time...

[Anonymous Coward]

To all my fellow Michiganders:
You should start calling your ISP _every_ time that you want to encrypt something, to ask permission.
Same goes for the phone company before placing a call with the blocked caller IDs.
You should call router/NATbox companies and retailers and ask them if they are upset that their products could very well be illegal in michigan.
You should call the local DA and report Libraries (and other public orgs) for using web proxies... actually I'll bet that many DA offices in Michigan use web proxies! You should have them prosecute themselfs!

so you get the idea... let's get annoying with this! The more people who realize how ambiguous and ridiculous this law is.
oh- and dont forget to contact your state representatives and tell them how deeply disappointed you are in them!

Hmmm

[SCHecklerX]

This law could be used to outlaw NAT, IPSec, SSH, etc. Idiots:

(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.

Positions

[John Bayko]

The positions aren't really that complicated. It's just that people resist understanding the other side because that might take energy from their protestations.

Pro war:

• There is no alternative to war (people are suffering and dying - possible direct threats by Iraq government).

Weakness:

• Assumes war will work - possible post-war chaos may be worse.
• Lack of diplomacy simply pisses off rest of world.

Anti-war:

• War will injure and kill innocents.
• No legal authority.

Weakness:

• Peace has also allowed innocents to be injured and killed.
• Lack of action allows governments to commit far more illegal/immoral acts.

Also forgotten is, exactly what is the alternative to war? Anti-war seems to be all opposition and no proposition. Pro-war seems to be "one tool fits all". For example, rewind back to January:

• First, drop main sanctions as long as Iraq coopertes with weapons inspectors. They weren't doing any good anyway. Threaten to re-impose them if inspections are prevented.
• Once disarmament is completed, drop remaining sanctions but require monitoring of questionable imports (e.g. chlorine imported for water purification must be accounted for, and can be spot-checked).
• Promote free-trade zone for Arabian League. Countries must be allowed to trade manufacturing, technology, and leverage intellectual resources. Oil is a lazy money source that doesn't promote economic development.
• Increased economic interaction will require increased (and more open) communication.
• Foreign aid targeted directly to hospitals, schools, etc., not to governments - but under control of locally elected administrative boards, not the donating countries/groups. Aid is conditional on fair elections which must meet democratic standards - the governments won't be too concerned because it will be too low a level to make policy decisions, but the general population will gain direct experience with practical democracy (not just a theory).
• Even if the elected representatives want to teach that Israel doesn't exist, let them - democracy should come first. But:
• Provide independent arabic news and entertainment, to give people a choice. Even if it's initailly banned, see the point above - economic leaders will need more open communication, and will also want the privileges of more open entertainment. As the middle class expands, so will the demands for openness.

That's just an outline of one possibility. There are others, and many, many more details would need to be addressed. But it is an alternative to war. Unfortunately, it would take a few decades - but then again, this is roughly the U.S strategy for dealing with China ("Constructive Engagement"), so it can be done.

Re:Positions

[elmegil]

This deserves the "Insightful" moderation so much more than my post, I am almost ashamed of being moderated up.

Re:Positions

[Anonymous Coward]

* First, drop main sanctions as long as Iraq coopertes with weapons inspectors. They weren't doing any good anyway. Threaten to re-impose them if inspections are prevented.

Threaten to re-impose sanctions that aren't doing any good? You expect them to fear the re-announcement of what they already ignored/bypassed?

Also, the "inspectors" were only supposed to confirm what Iraq said. "We destroyed 14 missiles of this type at this location" -- inspectors could go there and count the pieces. Inspectors were not supposed to play hide-and-seek or be investigators trying to dig up hidden things. Inspectors were expected to report discrepancies, and to confirm "other" information, but not required to walk every inch with a Geiger counter.

At least the sanctions forced smugglers to do some effort, and made Syria hide the oil it was smuggling from Iraq (did you hear that Syria announced it had a lot less oil available, just after U.S. forces blew up a pipeline from Iraq to Syria?). However, the bribes to bypass the sanctions were increasing Saddam's personal riches...

* Once disarmament is completed, drop remaining sanctions but require monitoring of questionable imports (e.g. chlorine imported for water purification must be accounted for, and can be spot-checked).

Disarmament was already completed. That's what Iraq said.

* Promote free-trade zone for Arabian League. Countries must be allowed to trade manufacturing, technology, and leverage intellectual resources. Oil is a lazy money source that doesn't promote economic development.

No, oil is an easy money source. Many people/companies in the region took that money and used it to finance what you just listed. For an example, look up the source of Bin Laden's family money. The spoiled rich kid's money is from a huge construction firm, not from an Alaska annual oil check.

You get money from work. Aren't you spending some of that on your computer stuff and increasing your computing skills? Many people with money left over after necessities will spend some on "productive" things, it does not all go to buying popcorn. The oil money which goes to individuals is treated the same way - some will buy a palace with a pool, some will build the factory they always dreamed of.

* Increased economic interaction will require increased (and more open) communication.

Only communication between clerks. Has the money flowing to/from China increased communication?

* Foreign aid targeted directly to hospitals, schools, etc., not to governments

Like the UNICEF boxes with school supplies, which were found in storage at a palace?

Re:Positions

[John Bayko]

What I outlined was just one possible proposal, and I did say it would need a lot more details worked out, so I'm not going to defend it as the one complete answer. But some of your points:

• First, drop main sanctions as long as Iraq coopertes with weapons inspectors. They weren't doing any good anyway. Threaten to re-impose them if inspections are prevented.

Threaten to re-impose sanctions that aren't doing any good? You expect them to fear the re-announcement of what they already ignored/bypassed?

They weren't doing good because they lasted too long. After about three years, any government can work around them. Sanctions are more effective if they change based on the circumstances (As an analogy, a mosquito won't bother you very long if it stays on your arm - it'll be squashed. It will bother you if it keeps biting and then moving around before you can react).

Also, the "inspectors" were only supposed to confirm what Iraq said.
[...]
Disarmament was already completed. That's what Iraq said.

I should have said "disarmament process" - disarmament plus inspections.

• [...] Oil is a lazy money source that doesn't promote economic development.

No, oil is an easy money source. Many people/companies in the region took that money and used it to finance what you just listed.

Some is, but the upper class that gets the money tends to keep it - the American free marketers have a theory that it will eventually trickle down, but the situation in developing countries isn't the ideal environment for that system to work (I won't debate whether it actually does) - specifically, when they want more modern things, they buy them from the west, rather than developing their own economies.

I'm not necessarily talking about trade barriers being raised, but additional incentives - lower import duties, pre-clearance for customs (or customs elimination, as with the EU), perhaps a common currency to make purchases within the free trade area more convenient than imports. Entepreneurs and the free market would do the rest over the long term.

It would also make them less likely to want to attack any of their trading partners, they may just depend on them for limo parts or something.

Regardless, it is just a possible strategy, and you could always suggest something that works better.

• Increased economic interaction will require increased (and more open) communication.

Only communication between clerks. Has the money flowing to/from China increased communication?

Actually, it has. Information about things such as the recent mining disaster which would have simply been unreported before have been spread among the internet-connected as well as business contacts. China is trying to limit Internet access to the outside world, but this happened within the country, not affected by the national firewall.

In order for a capital-driven economy to function efficienly, those who actually do the planning and make the decisions need to communicate with each other directly, which is why centrally controlled economies are so inefficient (they're good for long-term planning, but suck at reacting to any real-life variation). That decision-making manager-level middle class in China is growing quickly.

As the need for communication grows, the government will need to decide whether to devote more of its resources to monitor a growing communications system, or limit communications and choke off its own economic growth (basically, give up its "capitalism under communism" strategy and return to a stagnant, planned economy that didn't work before). China's current leadership is even more liberalized-market (because it's been successful) than the previous leaders who started it.

• Foreign aid targeted directly to hospitals, schools, etc., not to governments

Like the UNICEF boxes with school supplies, which were found in storage at a palace?

Er, no, exactly not like that.

Re:Positions

[leandrod]

> That's just an outline of one possibility.

There is one big problem with your assumptions. You assume Iraq's tyrant was rational and wanted the best. Let me remember you no one, not even Muslim Arabs, trusts Muslim Arab politicians. Words in that culture aren't expected to have the same relationship to reality as in the Western world, even in this age of decadence. The good of the people isn't even a concept for them; fairness is just a cover for agression and self-victimization.

Re:Positions

[mink]

Am I reading that wrong? It's impossible for Arab Muslims to make good on their word, and they cant be trusted?

Re:Positions

[leandrod]

> Am I reading that wrong?

Yes, you are.

> It's impossible for Arab Muslims to make good on their word

I singled out Arab Muslim politicians. While one can argue no politicians whatsoever can be trusted, I blamed cultural features to single them out.

Re:Positions

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for responding. I am a wee bit behind in my /. reading and some issues here are IMO worth taking the time to follow up on.
Any particular timeframe or groups I whould look at to get a better idea of how poitics operate in the region besides the Palastinian/Israel conflict?

Re:Positions

[leandrod]

> Any particular timeframe or groups I whould look at to get a better idea of how poitics operate in the region besides the Palastinian/Israel conflict?

Due to the current politically correct climate, it is hard to get a feeling of how it is with Muslims and Jews short of having direct experience. In general the Muslim press and sites are all but useless, due to widespread censorship and brutal repression; but their point of view is widely defended in the European press and sites. The Israeli press, for example The Jerusalem Post and sites are better due to freedom and education, but right now they are more biased than usual, as they are reacting defensively to European bashing and siding with their enemies.

Some very informative books exist, the problem is finding them. One I remember well is _Oh, Jerusalem_, that gives some background from an Israeli point of view. Perhaps the more useful would be to read and compare good editions of the Old Testament of the Bible (Tanach) and the Koran, the difference is striking.

Re:outrageous - Jesse "The Body" Ventura

[axis-techno-geek]

addendum

Violators will also be subject to repeated body slams, suplexes, and various other forms of punishment by the Governor. Public viewing available on Pay-Per-View for only $29.95.

I see a great need...

[cgreuter]

for a FAQ that explains when you need a good IP lawyer and how to find one. I'm surprised that there isn't one yet, actually.

Honeynet may not apply

[SailorFrag]

IANAL, but I'm not sure if a honeynet would apply to this law.

Section 219a's definition of a telecommunications service:

(a) "Telecommunications" and "telecommunications service" mean any service lawfully provided for a charge or compensation to facilitate the origination, transmission, retransmission, emission, or reception of signs, data, images, signals, writings, sounds, or other intelligence or equivalence of intelligence of any nature over any telecommunications system by any method, including, but not limited to, electronic, electromagnetic, magnetic, optical, photo-optical, digital, or analog technologies.

And then the law linked to says this:

(b) Conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service.

By running a honeynet, you are not hiding the existance or location from the telecommunications provider, just the hacker attempting to connect. And a telecommunications service must be lawfully provided for a charge or compensation -- I seriously doubt the hacker is paying for access to the honeynet server.

OTOH I can't be sure that it's impossible to make up a situation in which the honeynet could be illegal, so it might be illegal to distribute it.

Regardless, I'm happy that Canada doesn't have anything like this.

Re:Honeynet may not apply

[pair-a-noyd]

Don't you folks up there pay an insanely high pirating tax on black CDR's??

I thought they ASSUME that everyone will use EVERY blank CDR to pirate music so they tax the shit out of you just because you PROBABLY will pirate music..

Re:Honeynet may not apply

[SailorFrag]

Well, sort of There's a levy (different from a tax) that is supposed to go to the artists in proportion to their sales. For CD-Rs sold as "Music CD-Rs", which can be recorded to using burners that hook up to the stereo, then it's kind of expensive at (I don't have the exact figures handy) CAD$1.20. Data CDs are only like CAD$0.20 though. The sales tax is far more significant than the levy.

Copyrights?

[trentfoley]

The title of the article indicates that it has something to do with copyrights. I see nothing of the sort. What I do see is the beginnings of anti-spam and anti-fraud laws that might actually work. It sickens me when otherwise intelligent people use highly charged phrases like "Super-DMCA" to incite others. It sickens me even more when I see the general slashdot croud merrily feeding this troll.

Also, the college kid has not been bothered in any way by this. Has he been charged with anything? No. His preemptive action drew the attention of some amateurish "journalist" that decided to sensationalize the non-incident.

it's "loose", not "lose"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who doesn't yet realize this has a screw lose

Creepy; I'm used to seeing this error the other way around (and granted, this is probably a typo, since the rest of the post is well-written).

Anyway, gentle readers:
* "Lose" is a verb, always. Don't lose your shoes.
* "Loose" is generally used as an adjective; it's the opposite of "tight". Your shoes are too loose and may fall off.

You CAN use "loose" as a verb (meaning "to set loose"), but it's kind of archaic and very uncommon. Here's some lines from a very famous Yeats poem that uses it twice as a verb:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

all we need to do is create our own telecommunications network, and then exploit that. or could the dmca stop that too?

Read more carefully

[pauljlucas]

From section 219:

"Telecommunications" and "telecommunications service" mean any service lawfully provided for a charge or compensation to facilitate the origination, transmission, retransmission, emission, or reception of signs, data ... over any telecommunications system by any method...

A caller (the origin) is not "providing for a charge" to the callee to either call him or block his number. The telco, while blocking the number, doesn't typically charge for this (at least SBC doesn't).

Regardless, concealing the identity of the caller is not concealing the origin of the service: the service originates at the telco's CO switch. The caller is not providing a service (for a charge or otherwise) to the callee.

And if that weren't enough, the text of section 540c starts as:

A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, ...

A telco is not a person.

It's not just AC's....

[revery]

After all, the whole thing with AC is disguising the source of the post.

Well posting as mysticgoat isn't exactly a reliable form of identification, is it?

We're all going to have to use our full names from now on, probably along with Social Security number with our address, phone number, and bank account numbers posted as well.

I'll go first: My name is Spangler Hummus Reese, SSID 123-45-6789, bank account number 6544352. I live in Watersmeet, MI on Old Highway 2, just past Fire Tower Road, and I am a Sagittarius. I do not have a phone, but I have been known to make up a call sign and practice karaoke on ham radio frequencies.

I feel better already.

--

Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.

flame on

[Uberbah]

There is no significant difference between the two.

(borrowed from an SNL schetch)

Question: is your head filled with human excrement, or dog excrement? Is there any history of mental retardation in your family?

Ok, serioulsy now, how can intelligent person say, with a straight face, that there is no difference between Dems and the GOP? Not that there aren't a lot of reasons to currently dislike the Democratic party: their general spinelessness, blind support of feminists and their efforts to retroactively extend copyrights every 20 years.

But thats a far cry from thowing people in jail indefinetly without a lawyer, unilateraly invading another country that hasn't attacked us, passing laws like the Patriot Act and rushing to add trillions to our nations debt.

<I>Anyone who doesn't yet realize this has a screw lose, or their head buried in the sand.</I>

Stones, glass houses.

<I>Most will grab a single issue and say "I can't vote Libertarian because they like pot!" </i>

No, most people don't vote Libertarian because it might be a fine philosophy for a country or city state, but a rotten system for a nation with a few hundred million people in it. One thing Libs don't seem to realize is that while it will certainally screw up, the primary job of government is to serve the people, while the primary job of business is to make money. You might succeed in taking power away from the gvt, but it will just be snapped up by businesses. So in the long run it will cost you more, not less, and you will have fewer choices, not more.

Re:flame on

[Guppy06]

"the primary job of government is to serve the people,"

No, the primary job of government is to earn votes. How they decide to do that is their business, which may or may not involve "serving the people." Simply convincing the voters that you are serving them works just as well.

Re:flame on

[The AtomicPunk]

Ok, serioulsy now, how can intelligent person say, with a straight face, that there is no difference between Dems and the GOP? Not that there aren't a lot of reasons to currently dislike the Democratic party: their general spinelessness, blind support of feminists and their efforts to retroactively extend copyrights every 20 years.

I see you're one of those republicans "asleep at the wheel".

Democrats: Make government bigger, 7% a year.
Republicans: Make government bigger, 6.5% a year.
Libertarians: Make government smaller.

Democrats: Ban firearms.
Republicans: Ban most firearms.
Libertarians: Legalize firearms.

Democrats: Ban drugs.
Republicans: Ban drugs.
Libertarians: Legalize drugs.

Any random problem:
Democrats: Throw money at it.
Republicans: Throw money at it.
Libertarians: Think.

Your only defense that there's a "huge difference" between democrats and republicans is by bringing up 3 vague non-democrat specific trivial examples and slinging a couple of insults.

If you can't see the big picture, you're hopeless.

One thing Libs don't seem to realize is that while it will certainally screw up, the primary job of government is to serve the people, while the primary job of business is to make money.

The country was founded on the same ideals libertarians support, so if there's a fundamental problem with freedom, I fail to see how our country became such an overwhelming success.

Or do you propose that we're a success because of reduced freedoms and government control of a larger and larger part of our personal finances?

Also, I don't run into many instances that private corporations end up costing more than the government to perform a particular function. Sure, there are examples, but they're red herrings.

If you're hinting at corporate welfare or corporate legal protections, I agree, those are complete horseshit and need to be thrown out as quickly, if not quicker, than personal entitlements!

flame on

[Uberbah]

alright, lets try that again with proper formatting, and me not being a dork and using the preview:

There is no significant difference between the two.

(borrowed from an SNL schetch)

Question: is your head filled with human excrement, or dog excrement? Is there any history of mental retardation in your family?

Ok, serioulsy now, how can intelligent person say, with a straight face, that there is no difference between Dems and the GOP? Not that there aren't a lot of reasons to currently dislike the Democratic party: their general spinelessness, blind support of feminists and their efforts to retroactively extend copyrights every 20 years.

But thats a far cry from thowing people in jail indefinetly without a lawyer, unilateraly invading another country that hasn't attacked us, passing laws like the Patriot Act and rushing to add trillions to our nations debt.

Anyone who doesn't yet realize this has a screw lose, or their head buried in the sand.

Stones, glass houses.

Most will grab a single issue and say "I can't vote Libertarian because they like pot!"

No, most people don't vote Libertarian because it might be a fine philosophy for a country or city state, but a rotten system for a nation with a few hundred million people in it. One thing Libs don't seem to realize is that while it will certainally screw up, the primary job of government is to serve the people, while the primary job of business is to make money. You might succeed in taking power away from the gvt, but it will just be snapped up by businesses. So in the long run it will cost you more, not less, and you will have fewer choices, not more.

Then get a different provider

[pauljlucas]

Sure enough, by the letter of the law, NATs would be illegal. It prohibits owning or creating any technology that is used to knowingly modify a communications sevice in ways unauthorized by the service provider.

That presupposes that NATs are "unauthorized by the service provider."

While I have no great love for telcos in general, SBC's (for example) Terms of Service explicitly allow NATs. They even sell "home routers" that allow multiple computers to be connected simultaneously (i.e., a NAT box) on their web site. Heck, SBC even explictly allows servers to be run. The way they exercise control is by limiting upstream bandwidth to 128Kpbs. (You can pay more per month to get the limit raised.) 128Kbps and my static IP is just fine for me to ssh server on to my Linux box.

It's typically the cable companies that have Draconian TOS because they are used to the model of charging for every TV in the house. (FYI, cable companies are expressly forbidden from doing this in Santa Clara, California by local ordinance.) Used to their model, they want to charge for every computer in your house too.

No, I don't work for SBC or any subsidiary or affiliate thereof, nor even in the telecommunications industry.

Re:Then get a different provider

[fizbin]

I don't know where you've been, but cable companies haven't been able to charge per-TV in years, anywhere. In fact, the per-TV issue is right now one of the big advertising points the cable giants are using in the ad. campaign against satellite.

1984

[chris_7d0h]

This is unfortunately yet another step in the trend which started a few years back. Every other month, reading /. makes me think that someone's agenda is to create a version of George Orwell's version of the future in which most people ( those not exempt from the laws, like politicians / party members) are fed FUD and punished for even the slightest of actions natural to a human society.

How many years until the US of A corp. is "re branded" Oceania? A chip on the shoulder at the moment is some minor opposition to external conflict, but give it some time, more FUD and more punishment the citizen of the US might succumb to the "master plan".

At the moment, great progress has been made into raising the public's aggression towards "Eurasia" (France, Germany ..) and attempts have started fueling the same for "Eastasia" (Korea..).

One thing's for sure, I'll be watching the size of the common US dictionaries and if they start shrinking, I'll migrate to a third world island and start growing carrots or something.

- "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

Re:1984

[pair-a-noyd]

The dictionaries HAVE shrunk!
My neighbor has one from about 1925 and it's about 8 inches thick and weighs a good ten pounds, the pages are thin like a bible.

Now, this is no troll, no flamebait, it's FACT.
There is one word that is considered by many to be offensive. It's the N word. BUT, in that huge dictionary he has there THREE PAGES of variations of that word in there that have nothing at all to do with the offensive word. I won't list any of them here but believe me, there USED to be a lot of words back then that people used on a regular basis that have been sent to the dust bin.

I collect OLD encyclopedia's, the older, the better and you can see history re-written over the years.

I have seen programs on the History Channel, I have even taped them, where on one program describing a world event (the program was recorded 10 years ago for instance) they say one thing, then on a newer version of the SAME program, just remade in the last year or two, history is totally different than what they were telling people 10 years ago.

People forget. They forget easily. They depend on the idiot box to remind them. "Oh, I remember now" as they sit there throwing popcorn down watching the "History" Channel.

There is a global agenda to mold minds and to win your heart and your soul.

ingsoc...

Loophole?

[mark-t]

"It's also a crime to provide written instructions on creating such a device or program."

Simple... Don't write them down. Record a demonstration on video!

Or, of course, record simple spoken instructions as an MP3.

The only way this law has a chance of succeeding is if they make certain *KNOWLEDGE* illegal to possess, and one guess where that leaves us.

Dark side.

[twitter]

Slashdot won't be getting any more AC posts from Michigan.

People in Michagan will no longer be able to look at Slashdot. The ISPs will no longer be able to carry it, you won't be able to tell anyone about it and the Slashcode can't be read, understood or used in Michigan.

The only forms of communications allowed there now are switched coper networks, broadcast TV and helioscopes, just like Ma Bell and CBS wanted. The rest is just too confusing and had to be scrapped or the Terrorist would have won. The Supreme court of Michigan is at this moment deciding the fate of ventriloquists. Way to go Michingan, you are a state after the hearts of simpletons everywhere. I love you, you love me, we are a happy family.

Herman Go�ring

[Blue Stone]

Herman Goëring's testimony at the Neurenberg Trials:

"Naturally the common people don't want war, but it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship...

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...

"All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Re:Herman Go�ring

[grumpygrodyguy]

Wow. Ya, that just about sums it up.

Unenforceable.

[mark-t]

If a person *did* successfully conceal their identity and origin, then they wouldn't be caught, would they?

This law is patently unenforceable, since if they can catch you, it meant that you were traceable, which meant that you weren't breaking the law.

Re: Found them

[alexandre]

Here

NAT not illegal...sort of.

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Among other things, residents of the Great Lakes State can no longer knowingly "assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise" any device or software that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service."

I dont think NAT could be considered illegal from this statement since you still have an *accountable* IP address on the other side of the NAT router. So if you hook up, say, a linksys router to your dsl modem, you are not in anyway obscuring the IP address ("place of origin" / "destination") allocated to you by your ISP. So your network is traceable.

The existence of your network can be found by using nmap to sniff your traffic and detect the fingerprint of your router. Now, unless you do some fishy stuff to that fingerprint, it should match an NAT dsl router. Now, using the same statement, we cannot "advertise" the existence of this router, so the ISP can't force you to declare its existence in their TOS. They will have to do all the work and find it for themselves, which actually helps the user because then the existence is documented by your ISP without the user having to "advertise" anything. :) Ok, that was dumb. lets move on to the real issues.


>"To receive, disrupt, decrypt, transmit, retransmit, acquire, intercept, or facilitate the receipt, disruption, decryption, transmission, retransmission, acquisition, or interception of any telecommunications service without the express authority or actual consent of the telecommunications service provider."

case 1: 192.0.0.* traffic -> nat router -> ISP

Well, assuming your internal net even qualifies as a "telecommunications service", then there could be a problem if you dont own the network you are retransmitting the traffic from thru your router. Otherwise,

case 2: ISP -> nat router -> 192.0.0.*

This is the iffy part. Here, it could be construed that you are retransmitting the traffic from your ISP. But I see this as your router (your computer -- even a linksys router is a computer) "receiving" the traffic from your ISP, whom already gave you permission to receive in their TOS. Assuming this traffic is not broadcast (192.168.1.255) on your network, then it is delivered to ONE computer. Consider what happens in a *NIX environment when, say, the X server communicates with itself thru 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 and the use of sockets. As an aside, those are technically "retransmissions" so enabling networking of ANY kind in a *NIX kernel is illegal...my guess is that BG wrote this law to kill the *nix competition....Anyway, a lawyer could prolly prove that if packets are only delivered to one computer, then a computer+nat router is analagous to a computer network adapter +SCSI/IDE bus, where the network conversation is saved to a file on your harddrive.
(ie. tcpdump > outfile). Unless, they make computers illegal (think: DMCA+DRM), then lawyer wins. right?
I mean, once you recieve packets from your ISP, you should be able to do what you want with them since the bits are your legal property, assuming no TOS rules apply. So save them to file or print them out for some fancy toilet paper (BTW, printing this data also qualifies as "retransmitting" via paraport or whatever link your computer talks to lp0 thru).

Well, there's my $0.02. AC.

how can you Amerikans take this??

[Anonymous Coward]

You have so many guns, why do you not overthrow your government?

I thought your precious constitution gave you the right to keep and bear arms and to overthrow your government with those arms when it becomes tyranical !

With your Presidentski running around bombing everyone at the whim of Israel, the US looks like a big, global bully.
And your own government is taking away your right to free speech that you always wail about?

Do somehting about it already or shut up and quit crying!!

Re:how can you Amerikans take this??

[jasonsfa98]

Yeah but as soon as we try to assemble we will be terrorist. Instead of REAL PATRIOTS.

One solution is to move to Europe

[WillASeattle]

Germany just passed a revised copyright law to expressly permit academic research and the digital copying of materials, especially over networks or via electronic storage devices. Sometimes the best answer to repression is to get the Heck out of Dodge ...

What part of "resident" don't you understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

"residents of the Great Lakes State can no longer..."

OK, so this law forced him to move his forbidden stuff outside the state?
Therefore the law applied to him, thus he is a resident?
That phrasing forbids residents from DOING things.
It does not mention WHERE they do it.
His stuff being outside the state doesn't matter, he is either doing or not doing what the law forbids.

For that matter, he could move to The Netherlands. But he couldn't do these things until he is legally no longer a resident of that state -- which might require that he not live in the state for a certain period, a period during which it would be illegal to do those things because he's still a "resident".

Well, you do have the Electronic Privacy Act

[WillASeattle]

One of the good things for you Canadians is that you have the Electronic Privacy Act, as well as a stronger bill of rights in your constitution. Also, your corporate laws don't bend over to help them quite so much as ours do here in the US.

Florida's Bill...

[scharkalvin]

While IANAL, a quick reading of the FL bill (which
is actually a re-write of existing statue) sounds like it is an extension of law protecting cable tv operators from illegal descrambler boxes to protect providers of similar services over other media from theft of service. If your DSL provider's existing conditions of service now allows NAT, this bill wouldn't change a thing since it has verbage to the effect of usage allowed under the service providers terms of use.

Re:i've thought of something....A fish out of wate

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

As a Political Science major and geek I am insulted. I have more social skills than a marshmellow. Im somewhere in between "lawyer" and "toadstool"

More dangerous

[No Such Agency]

Posting how to create a bomb on a web site has been to federal court and protected. But I can't write software to conceal a communications device? Which is more dangerous?

Ha. With a bomb, you could kill a bunch of the worker proles in a supermarket or office building, or maybe even one or two members of the elite if you plan it really well. With the ability to conceal a communications device you could actually plan a protest, demonstration, walkout, sit-in, love-in or other more constructive revolutionary action in secret. Losing the ability to monitor all we do and say is much more important to "them" than a few human beings blown to bits. Besides, "they" actually LIKE it when bombs go off - the Terrorists get blamed and the government can take away even more of your rights.

This makes Windows XP illegal! Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since XP implements raw sockets, and this is exploited by many DDOS clients to conceal the origin for a given flood of packets, and a DDOS attack could be considered a "service" to some individuals, does this make Windows XP illegal? Ha!

Norm Coleman has "informational" meeting with MPAA

[esanbock]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/04/14/coleman. travel.ap/index.html

Home of the ..., land of the brave

[derfla8]

I had to take the "free" out, because Americans are obviously just brave. The US is a country that lacks:

1) Freedom of speech
2) Freedom to smoke natural unprocessed plants
3) Freedom of press, (yeah, CNN is NOT a propaganda engine, keep telling yourself that)

Americans are sure quick to fight wars in foreign lands, while leaving their homeland unprotected from tyranny.

Memories of Battle Creek, Michigan

[jbn-o]

It might even be illegal to operate an open relay [...]

Ah the memories. Did the city of Battle Creek, MI ever get its act together and hire a clueful sysadmin? After how that city manager's office overreacted to ORBZ (thus depriving the world of a valued resource), it would be pure schadenfreude to watch them lose a lawsuit for operating an open relay under the new law.

My bet is that you don't know what an FFRDC is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you make your comment, why don't you find out what they do. Some even run by places like MIT.

Re:So why did this guy move his papers to .nl agai

[Anonymous Coward]

> why he hasn't consulted with UM administration to see about keeping his PhD thesis where it belongs.

actually he has, and the administration has been painfully slow to respond. They basically told him to watch out until they can make some sense of all of this.

our hope is that the Michigan DA will publish some kind of working document as to what they actually plan to enforce, keeping in mind of course that this could seriously hamper the tech research sector that this state has been trying to harvest for some time now...

i think that it is obvious that no one, including the DA and the representatives that passed this bill, have any idea what it means.

USA - Home of freedom

[brasholt]

I keep wondering how long the US can continue claiming it is the most free country in the world.

Freedom to own a gun just isn't enough, guys!

I still laugh aloud every time I hear a *beep*, a silence or a audio-dub (with a supposedly less harmful word) whenever someone happens to say a "bad" word on US tv-shows (or even Hollywood movies).Come on! - where's freedom of speech?.

What is allowed these days? Is anything allowed?
Could you guys assemble a list of the top 10 - no lets say 100 worst limitations to the freedom of people in the US today?

As much as I love the US for a lot of reasons, in this respect I feel very lucky to be from a country which has a much more sane view on freedom. (Denmark)

Zone Alarm?

[computer_redneck]

If I understand what the article said wouldnt Zone Alarm also be considered Illegal since it blocks access and knowledge of your computer on the Internet?

Re:About time! Technology is dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nine out of ten of the voices in my head told me to stay home today and clean my guns..

I couldn't resist

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet russia... Ph.D. Thesis Outlaws you!

My Take after reading the law in MI

[computer_redneck]

From what I can see this law was drafted for Radio transmission and maybe phone transmission. Applying it to the Internet and to computers in general is a misrepresentation of what the law is for. If anything the law needs to be refined or removed and replaced.
I understand and unfortunately dislike the heavy handed tatics. Though considering all the spam I get about Free Cable I would like them to but those people.

He did a fairly good job.

[BraveLittleHamster]

This site has a reasonable summary of his accomplishments.
Some that I liked :

Family and Medical Leave Act - Helped guarantee maternity/paternity leave and family illness.

Cut taxes for low income families (Under $27K)

Cut federal spending by 255 billion dollars. Even though we were in a boom his administration focused on a budget that wasn't pure fantasy.

Issued a new executive order to require polluters to disclose information to the public and expanded the public's right-to-know about toxic releases.

Fought for passage of and signed into law the Congressional Accountability Act.

today I am free

[Anonymous Coward]

because I LEGALLY OWN an AK-47.
I will USE that AK-47 to protect my right to free speech.
I will USE that AK-47 to protect my home from TYRANTS.
If some mother fucker wants to come TRY to enfoce some 1984 BULLSHIT they will say hello and goodbye to the business end of my AK-47.

FUCK YOU BIG BROTHER. I will run my firewalls and NAT on my Linux boxes and you will NOT stop me from doing so.

FOAD Big Brother..

Re:today I am free

[jasonsfa98]

yeah ... The thing is, as soon as a bunch of geeks start bustn' caps at to po-po they will say that the plan is working just as they wanted it to. Bringing the terrorist out of the woodwork. But I do agree with you.

Re:outrageous - Jesse "The Body" Ventura

[Dman33]

Violators will also be subject to repeated body slams, suplexes, and various other forms of punishment by the Governor. Public viewing available on Pay-Per-View for only $29.95.

Uh, Michigan... not Minnesota.

Incidentally, it might not be bad to see Gov Granholm body slamming all hot female offenders...

Some things

[theolein]

At first I thought that we in Europe are blessed not to be governed by laws as titanicly stupid as this, but no doubt some of our enlightened politicians will also jump on this bandwagon sometime.

The second thing I thought when reading this was of a Dead Kennedy's song, "Now it's 1984, knock knock who's at your back door..." or something like that.

I think that given the way our so called free world is going it is definitely time to start thinking about going to live a life as a warlords gunman in Afghanistan. At least there you know they want want to kill you, and nobody is going to give you long sickly lectures on terrorism while they slowly rob you of any freedoms you may have. Perhaps it's better to go down fighting than living in this pig of a christianised sterile society...?

Re:today I am free ---- not french

[Anonymous Coward]

gee, it's nice to see a fellow citizen with some backbone.Most folks these days are gutless chickenshits or stupid.

Other things outlawed by this.

[stj]

There has been some start to the list. Let's continue:

cell phones - arguably the conceal where you are calling from

prepaid cell phones - no comment

wireless phones - you can call from any place in your house and within quite a decent range outside of it

how about phone booths?

all NATs as it has been mentioned zillion times

walkie-talkie thingies

baby monitors

I think that the list is essentially infinite. The real question is how the law would be used. Law in itself is just a piece of paper. GB still has laws dating many centuries back that give some people rights to do weird things (e.g. take a herd of domestic animals across the main London bridge...)

Say, that, hypothetically, Verizon starts to execute its right to control who connected what to their service. That would be the nail to the end of their broadband service. Nobody would buy any service from them and all those who have it would drop it immediately (or after waiting 'til their 8 months expire to avoid paying some $170 of penalty). IMHO, that's gonna be one more thing we are going to have a good laugh at.

Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you happen to not read the part about "for a charge or compensation"? Geez, you folks are all getting your panties in a wad over a law that on its face only applies to commercial entities, basically only ISPs. Caller-ID is legal. NAT is legal. Split-DNS is legal. Even stego is legal. As long as you don't actually charge anyone for providing the service...

You, sir, are a tard

[alizard]

You're new here, aren't you? Anything that goes against the DNC talking points is regarded by the moderators as thoughtcrime. It's doubleplusungood and is to be modded into oblivion. Correct thought (defined as an echo of whatever Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi are saying) is rewarded.

Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi supported both the DMCA and the Patriot Act and everybody knows it. This includes the moderators. If it were one of my mod point days, I would simply have marked you as a troll because we don't have a Tard label to apply yet.

No major IT shop can comply with the MI 'dmca'

[alizard]

So why hasn't anyone documented violations by the MI State Government IT operations... or Ford, or GM, etc. and publically demanded that the organizations be called to account and filed felony criminal complaints against CIOs with the misfortune to be running IT operations in MI?

If the MI state government is forced to unplug the law or their computers, they'll go for the law. While it might hurt individual legislators in terms of future campaign contributions from companies that bought these laws, I'm pretty sure that restrictions on operations (hint: IP masquerading given IPv4 address limitations, VPN, etc.) involved with literal super-DMCA compliance means the state government is out of business. Which is exactly where it belongs.

So if you don't like the law (especially if you're in MI)... do something about it.

remember th good old days?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when you could take a dump in your own house and not get slapped with;
5 Copyright violations
4 Years in prison
3 Patent infringements
2 court orders
And a partridge in a pear tree (opps, I hope I don't get sued for using that last one.)

Where can we report violators of this law?

[jasonsfa98]

Cause I would love to make the call accusing major corps in MI of violating this crap law.

Other illigalities

[CAIMLAS]

Wouldn't this make ip routing, masquerading, and forwarding tools illigal as well?

IPTABLES and IPCHAINS, to name a few. And CISCO routers, maybe? Or how about Linksys home routers for your average cable modem user?

Looks like everyone's in trouble.

Re:Other illigalities

[jasonsfa98]

Those have been mentioned already. I would love for someone to report Cisco, Linksys, Netgear, MS, SMC, 3Com, HP of violating this act by: ..."assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise any device or software that conceals the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service." Let those companies with the deep pockets pay to have this shit over turned. Cause the average Joe like me cannot afford to fight every god damn DMCA battle that arises.

Security through Apathy

[uberdave]

Simple: Nobody really cares about Municipal politics in Ontario.

Re:Security through Apathy

[Jardine]

Pretty much. I do remember some people complaining that the phone lines were jammed on the last day you could vote so a lot of people probably didn't get through. Municipal governments really aren't all that powerful. There are a few cities but any city under about 50000 doesn't really have a whole lot to do.

Call Diverters, External Call Forwarding, Wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

I have designed several private automatic branch
exchange (PABX) systems. These are telephone
switches that allow you to have multiple phones
and utilize several outside lines.

One feature was "External Call Forwarding". Basically, you called in and your call was
forwarded to automatically by the switch. From
what I am reading, this hides "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service." Any analog call
forward device would meet this description.

I guess the only way you can forward calls is
via the telephone system and even there it must
be a SS7 system.

They are outlawing any means of forwarding calls. It would be interesting to see if call forwarding as a feature is now outlawed or if they only allow it if both ends of the call are on digital switches that they can intercept.

boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not boycott the MPAA, hell even the RIAA? Don't go to the movies, don't rent from Blockbuster, don't buy CDs. Tell your friends and family the same. If you want to watch a movie you don't have, borrow it from a friend; last time I checked that right hasn't been taken away, well at least not yet.

These industry associations have all this money to lobby for anti-consumer legislation because we give it to them! The DMCA was bad enough, how much more do they have to do before we as a people say "We don't like you, and we refuse to support you!"?

If we don't step up at some point and exclaim with a resounding voice that we don't support their laws, and that we will not live with them, then who knows what will be next? At the rate our governments (fed. and state) are passing these self-serving (to the associations), anti-consumer laws, the day may come when we are legally required to go to the movies X times per month, and buy Y CDs.

My Passport

[AusG4]

Excuse me... I was just busy making sweet love to my Canadian Passport.

Yanks, ya better get used to the phrase "zeig-heil" ... because your government is leading you down the path from "worlds greatest democracy" to "world most paranoid fascist state".

Bush needs to be taken out to pasture... years of work towards a state where the world was -largely- at peace, all undone by an baseball team owning oil tycoon.

For your own sake... save yourselves.

Re:My Passport

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, excuse me, but I am a card carrying, registered Nazi and this is NOT what you think it is and Nazism is not what you think it is.

This mess that is going on is KGB type garbage. It's Soviet Union communism. It's STASI. But it's NOT NAZI, and our government is so far from Nazism that there is no hope. If our government was a Nazi government I would be CHEERING them, but alas, I am not, I despise my government for thier 1984 big brother tactics.

The US government is STASI !!

Re:My Passport

[AusG4]

Well, live and let live, so I'm not gonna call you down directly (I think that Nazism calls you down on it's own, but I digress)... but I find it amusing that a self proclaimed, card carrying nazi is calling down the US government.

Says a whole pant-load about the US government.

Either way .. bless my home and native land.

How to force a reversal

[Brett Johnson]

Although IANAL, would it be possible to file an injunction blocking the sale of Win 2K and WinXP, Linux, Mac OS X, all Firewall and VPN software, and all hardware routers and firewalls that use NAT? Given the preposterousness of halting the sale and ownership of most computing resources within the state, the legislature might consider revoking Super-DCMA.

US destroying it's technology leadership

[nn43]

Between shipping H1-Bs/L-1s in, outlawing certain technologies, and shipping technology jobs off-shore - I fear the United States of America is about to become a half measure of what it once was.

I have to admit it - I rarely voted since I was young. But now in my early thirties, I compare the US to what I knew of it in my youth, and I don't like the changes and directions this country's politicians are taking it.

They are destroying the goose that laid the golden egg. Already Asia has cool gadgets that will never make it over here; And broadband services for pennies of what it is here.

Is there any wonder why the economy is in shabbles? For a country who's economy is driven by technology (god knows it isn't McDonald's or manufacturing) we are doing everything we possibly can to destroy that industry!

This is to prevent telephone redirection

[dbn3]

Looking at the text of the law, it seems that this law is primarialy aimed at those irritating companies who redirect phone calls to collect huge usage fees.

Only when it is read very broadly could it apply to this grad student's project. But I don't blame him for being cautious. Being the defendant in the test case of a new law is a very difficult place to be.

Great Way to set precedence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Call from one of the Great Lake States and have a "friend" consistantly prank call you in the middle of the night, log the calls time and such... make sure the "prankster" has caller ID block enabled. Sue the prankster. See either a baffled judge questioning "Why this law is in place." or if the court upholds the law, then you can file criminal cases against all those damm tele-marketers. Either way I see it as a win win situation.

Telecommunications Device

[lousyd]

It would do well, I think, to ask:

Just what is a "telecommunications service" and in what way can it have a "destination". I think the answer would show just what kind of reality the makers of this law imagine exists.

Sick of this BS

[Comrade Pikachu]

OK, I called my senator. It really pisses me off, though. I come home at the end of the day, exhausted, only to find that as I have been doing my part to rebuild our economy, my representatives in government have been courted by big business who are seeking to limit my rights as a citizen and my choice as a consumer.

Instead of spending a relaxing evening at home, I have to wade through a bunch of documents, compose an articulate response, find out how to contact my senator... what a pain. I know that's the price we pay in a democracy, that's the second time in one week (I also had to let my reps in DC know what a bad idea it was to permanent-ize the Patriot act). What the hell are my representatives up to? Aren't they supposed to be carrying some of the load here, and be looking after my interests?

It's already past 11:30, and I haven't even checked BoingBoing yet. Pisses me off.

Does this mean...

[mortonda]

Kansas is no longer the state to dump on?

(I'm from Kansas)

sounds like NAT is out of the question

[delong]

residents of the Great Lakes State can no longer knowingly "assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise" any device or software that conceals "the existence or place of origin or destination of any telecommunications service."

There goes NAT out the window folks...

Derek

Make The System Work For You!

[nathanh]

I've been watching the recent trend of blaming everything on terrorism. Don't like drugs? Well, drugs supports terrorism! Don't like anonymity? Well, anonymity supports terrorism! Think you're entitled to some privacy? Well think again, because privacy just leads to terrorism! Now we can joyfully add security research to the list of activities that support terrorism.

At first I was worried but then I saw the light. I realised that this system can be made to work for you just as easily as it works for the religious right. Simply pick something you don't like and link it to terrorism. Within days you'll have a senator fighting for your freedom! You don't even need a strong argument because any nonsense will convince a senator.

To start the ball rolling:

Tampon ads on television. A seemingly innocent advertisement for female sanitary products but scratch the surface and the terrorist roots are revealed. A CIA study found that 100% of female terrorists have used tampons. Also tampons have been linked with strange mood swings in females leading to... dare I say... TERROR in the male population. Further investigations found that it isn't blue water they're soaking up in the ad: it's NERVE GAS. The devious terrorists have been using tampon ads as training videos. Each ad is merely a demonstration of the latest in gas-mask technology. This is all leading to the day when the terrorists will launch a world-wide attack; with pads over their faces and the wings securely tied to their ears the terrorists will spray entire cities with blue liquid, killing us all!

For the freedom of society and the cessation of terrorism, I demand that tampon ads on television are banned immediately.

just for completeness, are ac posts illegal? V2.1

[wadiwood]

This time I remembered the tab key instead of the return key dammit, maybe the filter will save me.

From an email I received 2 weeks ago

[* Check out comp.risks digest 22.66 which has a discussion of legislation being considered by Massachusetts, Texas and some others. The start of this discussion was an article by Ed Felten, "Use a Firewall, Go to Jail" Freedom to tinker archives/000336.html

These laws aim to prohibit any technique used to hide the source of any communication. For example, tunnelling over SSH or using TLS with your email. Even NAT would be illegal because the ultimate source of the IP traffic would not be evident to the recipient nor to any ISP.

Apparently similar laws have already been passed in Michigan, Virginia, Delaware and Illinois.

Of course, making something illegal doesn't stop it happening, and if every business which uses a NAT-enabled router was prosecuted you could imagine the outcry.

*]

And when I finally learnt to put the url in the search...

other slashdot links

Michigan First With A Law That Could Outlaw VPNs
On March 30th, 2003 with 554 comments
zaren writes "Holy frell, Taco, we're gonna be criminals! I was checking out Freedom to Tinker after reading the posting about that multi-state anti-VPN-style...
Section: Your Rights Online > Privacy


Broad Bills to Protect 'Communications Services'
On March 28th, 2003 with 550 comments
mttlg writes "According to Freedom to Tinker, MA, TX, SC, FL, GA, AK, TN, and CO have introduced similar bills that would make it illegal to possess, use, etc....
Section: Your Rights Online > United States


DRM and Threat Analysis
On March 19th, 2003 with 185 comments
miladus writes "A timely and concise intervention by Ed Felten on the topic of DRM and the models used (or not used) to represent the threats to defeat. In...
Section: Main > News


I wonder if AC posts are legal?

And at least now I know why my submisson got rejected...

Maddening...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I read this (I am not a law expert), it seems to me that it allows any ISP the ability to change their Terms Of Service to say that NAT devices are prohibited. As soon as the ISP makes this simple change, everyone who has one of these device is now breaking the law (not just the ISP's TOS) and is subject to criminal prosecution. Of course, our ever-so-helpful telecommunications "partners" would probably add a "power user" package so that we could have multiple machines sharing one connection for a small fee (per machine of course)!

Lewinsky = security breach

[ccmay]

Lewinsky had no bearing on how well he ran the country.

Horse shit. It was a gross breach of security. Such behavior exposed him to blackmail. What if Lewinsky had been an agent of Mossad? It was also, according to feminist dogma, sexual harrassment of an underling.

He wouldn't have been able to get a job as a janitor at the CIA, if he had to go through the same security clearance process as everyone else working in sensitive jobs in the executive branch.

The first time he stuck his cock in Monica's mouth, he became unfit to hold a position of trust, regardless of your opinion of the morality of his actions. The Senate was guilty of dereliction of duty for not removing him from office. It boggles my mind that apparently serious people could argue otherwise.

-ccm

Georgia House Bill 867 - Update #1

[wolf-]

The Bill has been read twice on the House floor and has passed into Committee. It is now in the Public Utilities Committee with David Lucas, Chairman.

Upon initial reading of the bill, it is amazing the level of deception being used to change the status quo. The previous bill, which covered cable and pay phone service theft, specified the illegal devices. The new bill removes that entire section (as opposed to changing it) and makes ties the legality of the device to the granting of permission from the service provider.

Example: I have a website. Through that website, I provide a service. Lets just say I pass information along, articles. You have a zip disk. Today, that Zip Drive/Disk. That drive is legal under current Georgia law. However, if I do not EXPRESSLY and SPECIFICALLY grant you permission to store on that Zip drive/disk the articles I, the service provider, deliver to you, your device is now an illegal device under the new law. Absurd, isn't it? Lets go a bit farther. Without proving to a judge the value of damages, I can have an injunction placed on you, seize that drive, and have it held until we all go to court.

Last Post!

[alpg]

Couldn't we jury-rig the cat to act as an audio switch, and have it yell
at people to save their core images before logging them out? I'm sure
the cattle prod would be effective in this regard. In any case, a traverse
mounted iguana, while more perverted, gives better traction, not to mention
being easier to stake.

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...