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Information Preservation and Data Havens?
tiltowait asks: "An interesting story on LISNews.com this morning about savvy U.S. students photocopying textbooks in Mexico then returning them for refunds got me thinking about data havens. There's already few places on the web where you can exploit countries having different copyright durations and eligibility. On the flip side, there's restrictions such as broadcast blackouts and country-wide firewalls. But just as the rich can use of international tax loopholes and in light of the recent file-sharing victory, are there any projects out there, beyond the P2P networks, to distribute possibly-protected information by any means necessary? For example, your company may already outsource labor, but what about an off-site backup in case of an FBI raid?"
You mean like Cheney being kept in an undisclosed location?
It is wrong to copy textbooks....I'm not going to condone it...
But here's where I call bullshit...Why does there need to be a new edition every two-plus years on subjects that do not change at all? What new discoveries come in math? Do derivatives change at all? How bout sine and cosine? Hmm?
Anybody have an answer?
My MythTV HowTo
just spread your data around. Jurisdictional nightmare.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When data dies it goes to data heven.
I like how not one legitimate use is listed among the reasons given.
and after i got a usb watch for xmas last year, i have gotten into the habit of archiving all of my company email every 3 monhhs, and walking out with the archive on my wrist
i always wondered about the constitutionality of that... it's not really MY email, even though, for all practical purposes, the content of it is more important to me than my company (records of who said what to whom, my ideas, my code, etc.)
we live in a day and age where corporate rights encroach on individual rights more and more
i think we should all do our best to fight that, in big ways and small
walking out with "corporate intellectual property" on my wrist is my way of doing that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I seem to remember reading that some organization was setting up servers on abandoned oil rigs in international waters for just such a purpose. I don't know what happened to them. Something about a giant squid maybe?
This place was referred to in the Wiki article via the link to HavenCo. HavenCo sounds like it's free of any type of outside infringement. Cool.
Cryptonomicon. (a book by Neal Stephenson)
Wouldn't it take hours to photocopy a full textbook? Surely it'd make more sense to do something useful with your time and buy it used somewhere...
--
Are you a Chipotle Fan?
Off-site backup might help in case of an FBI raid, but what if FBI has a warranty to intercept your data prior to the raid?
So the night before raid, while you're happily doing a off-site backup, another copy has been acquired by FBI.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
Reminds me of South Korea.
;-)
The copyright laws there are pretty much non-existant.
For example you can purchase a jacket or article of clothing, and they will embroider it with just about anything you want, including emblems/logos that in America are Trademarked (Starter, Nike, etc).
You can also buy fake oakley sunglasses (AKA Foaklies/Oakies) in many parts of the world for $5 a pop.
The rest of the world doesn't always play by America's rules. But we're working on that.
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
Find a mirrored wiki somewhere
Post your uuencoded encrypted data to it
Step 3: Profit
Plus, going to Mexico isn't all that cost-effective. I'm betting you can find someone who will run anything through his copier as long as you pay him as easily in the USA as in anywhere in the world.
Unforunetely students copy textbooks a ridiculous amount now adays. Plus, for the popular ones, you could actually just google/emule the textbook name and chances are someone has already done it. With some of the engineering books costing easily over 100 dollars....then running into professors that hardly use the book...one can see why students think this is a viable option.
I remember I took a class in Emperical Methods. The text book was 150 dollars and was very poorly translated from Spanish to English...almost to the point of not being able to use it. Definitely a waste of money on that one.
As far as data backup goes, I know there are viable options for potentially important data. The Medical Industry always has a company that they outsource all the PAX system data to. Losing data in these systems is simply not a option. Unfortunetly, I don't think its cheap or viable for non-commercial use.
If your business model suffers from the possibility of a FBI raid, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate your business? Just a thought...
Off-site backups are good for other things, such as preparing for natural disasters, fires, etc...
Copycat crimes: Students duplicate textbooks in Mexican copy shops then return for refund
By Ildefonso Ortiz
The Brownsville Herald
August 22, 2004 -- College students trying to stretch dollars are turning to copy machines and an option that lies just south of the border and outside the law.
Jules Frapart, general manager of the Book Bee on Boca Chica Boulevard, said it's common for students to purchase textbooks, duplicate them at Matamoros copy shops, then return to the store for a refund.
Frapart first observed the practice -- used as a cost-saving measure by cash-strapped students -- while he was general manager at the South Texas Book Company, the former bookstore at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.
"We started seeing students purchasing a book from us and copying it for about a fifth of the price and then return the book (for a refund)," he said. "It's still prevalent."
An attendant at Papeleria La Española in Matamoros said the cost of copying a textbook is about 3.5 U.S. cents per page.
Pasting or binding a book is about $2.36.
The cost to duplicate a 300-page book is slightly less than $13.
Frapart said he understands the temptation to save on textbooks -- which can range in price from $20 to more than $100 in his bookstore.
"It's financial; the cost of books has risen tremendously. So, I can see where it can be a burden," he said.
Mari Chapa, UTB-TSC financial aid director, said her office includes the cost of textbooks when determining financial aid awards.
"We are trying to meet their tuition, fees and books," she said. "However, every student is unique and their award might be different."
Josefina Ruiz, a recent UTB-TSC graduate, understands copying textbooks is wrong but feels it's sometimes justified.
"It (copying textbooks) is illegal, and the authors are losing money," Ruiz said.
"But I see where they come from because the government or the university (doesn't) provide enough money for the average student in our area to pay for classes, including all the unnecessary fees," she said. "And to top this off, $100 books per class."
Carmen Garcia a junior at the university, said photocopying books is not the only money-saving option.
"I go to the library and check out the book," Garcia said. "It doesn't matter if it isn't the right edition; I just look for the material the professor assigned."
According to Floyd Akres, UTB-TSC legal counsel, the average cost for 12 hours at the school is $868.68, not including textbooks.
Frapart said on average, students spend $300 to $400 for books per semester.
"If a student can get by spending $100 versus $400 they might just make copies," he said. "The problem is, not only are they breaking the law, they are not paying royalties to the author."
Duplicating copyrighted material is against U.S. copyright laws and could result in a lawsuit against the violator.
Rob Kesunic, principal legal advisor at the U.S. Copyright Office, said the enforcement of the copyright law is the responsibility of the copyright holder, who could sue for monetary damages. Some violations -- depending on the severity -- could lead to jail time, he said
"They could go after the individual but that may prove difficult," Kesunic said. "It may be more difficult to bring the suit against the copy centers."
Frapart said textbook sales bring booksellers about 25 cents of each dollar.
"From there, we have to cover wages and other expenses," he said.
The author gets about 5 to 10 cents of each dollar. The rest goes to the publisher.
"The publisher needs to cover printing cost, shipping cost and other expenses just like we do," he said. "I know of several publishers that have gone under because they couldn't cover their cost."
Rising book costs have proved profitable for used booksellers.
"The used book market has grown so much. Sixty percent o
I thought thats what a gmail account is for.
who needs one gig of email
how about compressing your data and keeping it in your gmail account.
how can you associate bighardnipples@gmail.com with something like say enron
Anyone remember Sealand? They bought an oil rig or somesuch in international waters and started advertising as a place to store data outside the reach of governments.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
I work in the mortgage industry, and in this industry, no-compete clauses are very common
Among the restrictions of the clause, there is one that specifically mentions theft of company information and not directly soliciting any of the company's clients for a period of time.
If you are in a sales position, taking the archives could represent theft of company data, which would violate privacy laws.
If you are in a customer service position, taking the archives could also represent theft of confidential information and trade secrets.
It's good that you back up your data, but if your company ever found out that you are removing it from the company, you could be subject to criminal prosecution.
An example of this would be the AOL employees that sold aol e-mail accounts to spammers. Granted, they acted on the information, but in today's litigation-happy society, they may not wait for you to act.
Not to mention, by taking the privelaged information, you are opening yourself up to a legal nightmare if the next company you work for does business with the same people/organizations as your previous company. If you don't have a list of previous clients/customers, it is much easier to deny intentionally soliciting/marketing the clients of your previous employer.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
I'm not knocking the fact that there are new discoveries that arrive in many different areas of academia....What I don't understand is the need to update books so often....Update them, fine, but why is there a need to reprint every so often?
My MythTV HowTo
From the first link:
' Interesting and alarming article from the Brownsville (TX) Herald about how Texas students are purchasing books from their college bookstores, transporting them across the border into Mexico, and photocopying the books there to save money. The books are then returned to the bookstore for full credit.'
Very alarming indeed. Who would have thought that students with all the money they have would try something as despicable as this.
But could someone please explain why they have to travel over the border to use a photocopier? Is this against the Patriot Act or something?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
All of the bookstores at my school which are authorized by the professors to sell designated textbooks (What class are you in? Oh, okay. Here are these books) will not let you return the book unless you show proof that you are dropping that class. Otherwise, I assume that many people would've simply done the "drop the book at a copy shop and return it later" method.
Cash, cash, cash, cash, cash.
... ;)
When someone calls in (a lawyer) from someplace (a corporation) and says they have lost $100,000 in business, the FBI gives that one a higher priority. When the company can also produce detailed web logs, cross verified with an ISP (such as a compliant university that wants to avoid lawsuits), the issue is ranked even higher. Like everyone else, the FBI has to show results on paper to Congressional committees in order to get increased funding. And if you're an easy prosecute, or at least perceived as an easy, they're on you.
They've got you a little bit on the crypto use, since anything over 128bits is deemed e-Legal; there's been some cryptographically knowledgable Russkies that were given a tough time by the Men in Black. A large company couldn't get away with using high crypto, as they'd likely get caught. But individuals just might be able to; download it using Knoppix and a ram disk, burn it, use it, then microwave your cd/dvd's when you're done with them.
It's an interesting issue. The safest route is to limit what you learn
I'm not american so I don't understand this: what kind of books are you supposed to buy? I'm in college and all the books I would ever need are available at the library (In fact, all my courses are done without books). I only bought two crypto books (Schneier and Zémor) because I told my teacher I wanted to have fun at home.
I stopped watching after Captain Murphy left.
I don't think the solution to the "text book problem" is violating copyrights. I think the solution in the long run will be to do more open source text books. I understand some professors make money writing text books, but I think others would be very interested in using open source text books, perhaps developed wiki style. You could use processes like Cafe Press's publishing to get deadwood versions, but otherwise, having an annotatable, searchable text book that you can load onto a PDA or a laptop would be really useful, in my opinion. I think my teachers would have definitely been open to the idea of open source text books, provided the content was as good as anything you have to pay $100+. But as some posters pointed out, certain fields don't exactly change a lot over the years. And heck, even the ones that do are perfectly suited to the idea of an open source e-text. All it's going to take is some willing people and a decent grant.
I'd much rather deal with an FBI raid I know about than NSA scrutiny I don't know about.
Of course, with PATRIOT, the distinction is meaningless. The NSA can snoop on citizens domestically and the FBI raids people overseas.
On further thought. Location of your datastore appears meaningless. Maybe a better idea is good ol' distributed secure p2p (freenet and the like). maybe with some stegonography for good measure.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
It is wrong ethically and ... to engage in work that is violating laws of our country and taking away from owners their hard earned rewards that they have worked and slogged days and nights to produce.
On the other hand...
Better way to address your problems are to support and develop electronic formats and buying books in these formats e.g. LaTeX, PDF etc (which don't yet prevent users from distributing) which individual writers can write and make available in formats that allow them to get returns that they would have normally gotten without going thru a publisher... And also people can print copies of that and mail it to you if you wanted a paperback version. But to not pay for somebody's hard work is akin to stealing and such is not the purpose and intent of our community.
It was free until Bush appeared on the Scene. Now, it's just not a big enough fly to swat.
the prinicipality of SEALAND wants to be your data haven.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Maybe I'm the only one who is confused, by why is a request for ideas on how to store content in violation of the law a news item on slashdot? I thought this was "news for nerds" not "news for criminals"?
Offsite backup is a very good idea and not just in case of an FBI raid. If your building burns down, you want to be able to rebuild your business. It's much easier if your books still exist!
It occurs to me that a police raid is enabled by a warrant. The warrant is for a specific location. If they don't know where the backup data is they don't have a carte blanche to go fishing everywhere. Use your imagination.
open source text books, perhaps developed wiki style.
Try this. Exactly what you mentioned. Hopefully the idea will catch on, and information hoarding will cease to cost students so much money.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
As a young(er) Master's student in Computer Science back in 1996, I noted that many of my international colleagues (grad students) photocopying their textbooks and sharing the copies from semester to semester and student to student.
I brought this up at a department meeting I was a student-rep for, and the grad program chair said something like "why should we care?"
I was shocked at this attitude and lack of concern about the actions of those doing the copying. Yes, it is/was illegal and something should have been done/said about it. However, since I knew that several tenured professors didn't care, me saying anything to anyone wasn't going to change the situation. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have alerted the book companies.
many students spend >$350 per semester in order to rent the "proper" edition of a book that has not had any significant changes made to it in years, if ever. after 3 months the students "sell" the books back to the bookstore for around 1/4 what they paid, so the books can be put on the shelf for next semester, assuming there isn't a new edition required for the class.
people tolerate it because "college is important" and you "learn valuable life skills".
This Im not sure about the conficating part but i would assume that they would hve to crack it first
but all of your concerns consider the rights and exposure of corporations
not once do you consider the rights and exposure of the individual
and that's the problem, as i see it, and as i think you fail to grasp
how am i to defend myself from unfair accusations without a backup of my communications? how am i to work in an environment where the corporation has claims on not only the whole of my production, but also any production i might do or any potential for production in any ideas i may have?
you can say i might be untrustworthy with those email records, and that is a valid concern, and you outline some valid scenarios for how i can hurt my company
but i assert to you that the corporation is no more trustworthy than i with those records, and if you claim the corporation IS more trustworhty than i am, then i can beat you to your point by noting that one way the corporation IS more trustworthy than me is that it is bound by rules about proper record retention...
well then, how can you use this as grounds for denying me the same right of record retention to earn my trustworthiness?
so your one-sided list of concerns binds me to a catch-22 situation: i can't be trusted with ownership of records which affect me as an individual, and the rules do not allow me to increase my trustworthiness by proving my fairness with the records i retain... only the corporation takes risks in your view, only the corporation has something to lose with your one-sided view of rules of data retention
then all you can say is that corporate rules about electronic records exist to increase confidence and trust in corporations, and to instill distrust and doubt of individuals
frankly, i take umbrage with your remarks because you represent the vanguard of a crisis of giving corporations more rights than individuals
at the very least, your obsession with the rights of corporations, and complete lack of concern for the rights of the individual, contributes to a very real problem
what i suggest to solve the impass is not to denigrate the rights of corporations to the level of individuals: distrusted and bound by no confidence, but to increase the rights of individuals to that currently enjoyed by corporations: allow them access to and retention of records which share infuence on the life of the individual and the corporation in equal or proportionate measure
fairness should be the whole point, and the current legal environment about electronic data is not fair to the individual, and allows corporation too much leeway for abuse
so elevate the rights of the individual, as if the individual were another corporation going into legal agreement with the corporation when they accept employment with the corporation
fairness
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you did that, and if they can prove intent to defraud, ( which is easy ) you goto jail anyway...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just to make it clear. IT is ilegal to photocopy a book in Mexico. If you get caught you could have serious problems. The thing is that the people who attend the copying machines doesn't give a crap if you are doing something ilegal, you don't even have to bribe nobody, that's why it is "easier". But it is ILEGAL anyways. And yes, I live in Mexico.
Why in today's tech savvy world can't we just get the E-book for a cheaper price. Printing optional. You pay your tuition to the school, they (the school) subsidise the content maker based on enrollment, you get an E-book and you can either use your computer or pay to have it printed.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
About ten years ago I taught for a semester at Birzeit University (just north of Ramallah) and at the time this was routine -- in fact the copy center was one of the most efficient places on campus. Most of the students could barely afford the books at all, so this was hardly depriving a publisher of revenues, but the other curious thing is that it isn't entirely clear that it was illegal: the West Bank is governed (such as it is...) under an assortment of Ottoman, British mandatory, Jordanian, Israeli civil and military, and Palestinian Authority laws, and my guess is that except for Israeli civil law, none of these have a lot to say about photocopying (Ottoman law is particularly silent on the topic!). Meanwhile Israel tends to worry about things other than copyright violations.
- Librarians
to the Rescue
- Copyright
Crusaders Hit Schools
- Internet
Publishing Can Pay Off
- It's
Just the 'internet' Now? (story from here)
- Open-ILS.org | Library software by librarians for librarians
And since a lot of IT crosses over with what librarians do nowadays, this site really is worth a look-see. Just don't feed the GNA^H^H^H Boston Public Library troll (no, really!). So sign up now while we're still on 4-digit UIDs!ps. Yes I've read Cryptonomicon and have heard of what Sealand is doing, but was wondering about any other efforts.
It had to be said.
If your professor isn't trying to screw you and you just need to learn the material, get the previous edition from half.com. Otherwise, I condone copying textbooks and returning them to the bookstore. Take them to Kinko's during the grave shift when no one will bother you, set the photocopier to 2 copies per page, double sided, auto reduce, and you'll end up with 8 textbook pages per double sided page. 2-3 hours of your (non money earning) time + $10-$15 will do a 500+ page book.
Among other things you can download Orwell's complete works and The Great Gatsby.
The University of Adeliade has a slicker version of the same texts.
Is anyone paying fucking attention to what is happening here in America? The conspiracy between the schools, the professors, the bookstores and the publishers is just one example of how America is run for and by those at the top. What I want to know is why the country of parent poster here, which apparently is a country run by the people, for the people, is able to do for him what our America, the "Greatest Country in the World" cannot do for us....
Free market, my ass....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
step 4:
Castro: Can I see that Textbook?
Mr. Burns: Yes, but you have to give it back.
Homer: Mr. Burns, I think we can trust the president of Cuba
(Castro takes the Textbook)
Mr. Burns: Can I have the Textbook back?
Castro (who puts it in his pocket): What Textbook?
source
I'm taking a macroeconomics class and I had a choice between an internet version of the class, which all class materials, including the text are part of a pay to access website. Its $40 for the whole semester. The website is run by the professor who wrote the class materials, and after hosting costs, all of the money goes to him. The other choice was to buy a $100 text book which may or may not be bought back by the bookstore, and I have no want to look at after the semester is over. Guess which section of the class I chose. This is what should be making publishers scared, not some people in a border town making photo copies. I got a cheaper class, my professor makes more money, and the publisher can go to hell.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
From personal experience i know that there are many situations where you need secure and unhindered storage space. i do not keep illegal stuff from the perusal of FBI but i do have stuff that is encrypted and stored in multiple places. why, because with the PATRIOT act the FBI doesn't need a valid reason for search and seizure.
I can buy all of the $100+ books from my courses (that I either returned or did without) from half.com for a tenth of what they cost when they were the "required" edition. When I need one for reference, I'll buy it again for $5. Who's cringing now?
Why do they have to go to Mexico?
.agrippa.
When I was a student at University of California, San Diego I had to go to Kinkos to copy some material a fundraiser for Boy's Club my fraternity was putting on. I had to wait an hour while a team of medical students copied every page of all their textbooks and monoplized all the copiers. I asked them what they were doing and was told point blank that they had just bought those books and they were copying them with the intention of returning them the next day for a refund. I pointed them to a sign hung above the copiers that had a warning about duplicating copywrited material and they just shrugged.
I really need to get my work done so I talked to a Kinko's employee and asked him why he wasn't doing anything about the fact these medical students were blatantly disregarding not only Kinko policy but the law as well. His answer: We put that sign up but we don't really care if they do it. Shocked, I asked for his manager, explained the situation, and was given the exact same reply. Yea, the sign was up there, and the students knew they were doing something illegal in full site of people with the power to stop them, but as long as Kinkos was making money they didn't care.
1) Go to uni library
2) Find book
3) Copy book
4) Put book back on shelf
I have attended a few colleges, and visited a good number more than that to use their libraries (for legit purposes, not to copy textbooks), and have yet to see one where the minimum wage "work/study" slaves would give a damn that you violated copyright laws.
Now, copying a complete textbook can cost as much as buying the book itself (for cheaper texts, anyway). So, another tip:
1) Find old edition of the book used on-line (or on a campus "for sale" board) for $5.
2) Copy only the end-of-chapter questions from the library's version of the latest-and-greatest
Different editions rarely change more than a few words, but almost without fail change the end-of-chapter questions (the only reason to even buy the book for some easier courses, if the prof gives a homework grade). This way, you spend under $10, and actually get to have a copy of the book.
Tell your fellow citizens to come home. We don't want them here.
NetLibrary has a stupid interface - you log in from a member institution, then you can view books online. Good idea, right? Wrong. All of their content is crippled - you can't print it more than a page at a time, save it to a file, or even look at more than two pages consecutively without going through a screen that says "Please type the letters you see in the box. This is to protect against actions you have performed that appear to violate copyright." This is after simply viewing three pages in a row quickly, because I wanted to find a particular equation!
So what did I do?
Right.
I wrote a script that brought up each of 280+ pages sequentially and printed them to TIFF files, popping up a browser so I could perform their human-detection action when required. The I packed the whole thing into a PDF, and ran an OCR on the whole thing. Presto! The original book, in un-DRM'd form, happily readable and printable.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Or you could do what other countries do and have libraries in the universities which have copies of all the books needed for the courses.
After my my college bookstore bought back one of my texts for $7 and put it back on the shelf for $60, I began a personal war against the college textbook industry. From that point on, I photocopied practically all of my textbooks that were over $50 and under 1000 pages. I saved several hundred dollars a few times when a "required" text I'd copied wasn't cracked ONCE during the semester. By my senior year I had a notebook and a digital camera, and I'd snapshot my books instead of photocopying them and stich them into a convenient pdf book. I predict that it won't be too long before this becomes more and more common.
"there is no problem" you say, as if that solves the problem
well, there is a problem, and that you don't see what i am saying is a failure of your faculties, not mine
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Dude... Seriously. Switch to decaf.
Check out this link from the defcon presentation
The stories about "cooperating" with the FBI and also the multi-day outages pretty much sum the whole thing up.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Ryan Lackey, the driving force behind HavenCo, departed the company a year or two back, mainly because the Sealand folks were caving. Essentially, despite the advertising, if somebody with sufficient governmental or financial might gets on HavenCo/Sealand's back, they're going to cave. So frankly I wouldn't really consider it a good data haven anymore. You'd probably do better setting up shop in one of the former Soviet states, or maybe China or something. There also seem to have been some technical issues since Mr. Lackey's departure, which would merit close inspection prior to hosting with HC.
ehintz
.... just legally creative (like the yacht sales in international waters, and the other examples in the question) ways to spread and preserve information. This is the task of librarians, and with things like copyright extensions and fair use limitations, advances in technology are needed to keep up with this charge.
You send a request for Return of the Jedi to the server, and close the connection. The server sees your request, makes a copy of Return of the Jedi for you, then sends it to you. It's not a violation of the law there to send it to you.
If it's legal to bring those photocopies back over the border, then this ludicrous server example should be legal, too.
Please stop smoking weed and start drinking real coffee.
Well, instead of bitching about it, do what smart college students do and buy online. I just spent $95 and bought all 4 of my the textbooks I need for my upcoming semester. What did the bookstore want for these same books? $387.50 If you're still shopping at yuor campus bookstore, you deserve to get the shaft!
What is your penile percentile?
TIA
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It would be nice to find offsite backup partners on some kind of P2P network. If you have 80 gigs to back up, you need to have 80 gigs available on your system to trade off. All encrypted, so it's safe. And if you're extra paranoid, find 2 or more partners!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
About ten years ago I worked in Silicon Valley for a company that had an affiliate in the UK.
I got assigned to back up all the hard disks once a week. One day I suggested to my boss that we make an extra back-up and send it to our English affiliate. My reasoning was that with all the:
1) Earthquakes - There was a 7.2 a few years before centered a few miles away. I remember steel tables bouncing several feet in the air off a concrete floor in the warehouse. There was a 7.4 a few months eariler in L.A. and a 7.3 south of Eureka to the north. Serious scare-the-shit-out-of-you earthquakes are not uncommon in California. The 8.4 quake of 1906 destroyed the entire city of San Francisco in only five minutes.
2) Fires - East Oakland had burned the previous summer and Malibu the summer before. People jsut love to build giant wooden houses ten feet apart and then plant trees with flammable oil in the bark all around them. One schmuck tosses a cigarette butt out the window and half the city is gone two hours later. Typical California.
3) Insurrections - In April 1993, Los Angeles erupted in a giant race riot. White cops beat a black guy with sticks on television after he drove 160 Kilometers-per-hour through many neighborhoods. The trial was moved to the most conservative city in the entire state and they were found not guilty. So the blacks burned down the Korean neighborhoods to protest the police presence in their neighborhoods (which have the highest crime rates in the country). Typical California.
4) Tsumamais - As a result of one of those earthquakes happening offshore, the beach rolls back really really far. Then it comes back up to the highest water mark on the beach, and keeps coming up and up and up. Over the beach, the parking lot, the streets, the stores, the houses, the buildings, the trees, the factory, the warehouses...
5) Incompetent back up technician accidently erasing the invaluable company data. - Uh, we won't spend much time on this one. But it's not all that uncommon. Especially when the backups are done on unpaid overtime.
When I explained all this to them as a good reason to have reasonably current set of backups out of the building, out of the city, and even out of the country, they looked at me as if I were stark raving crazy!
I don't really see copying textbooks as wrong
Copying and sharing are like breathing. You can't regulate it. If you try, freedom will pop up when you least expect it and kick you in the ass for trying.
The only way to get rid of all the stupid copyright and patent laws in the world is for everybody on the planet to download it all and copy it all. Now, go arrest the world. The internet is a global thing. You can't control it with local laws.
IP laws are stupid because our economic systems are stupid. What will happen when intelligent machines start inventing things. Who will own the copyright then? And what will you do when you are no longer needed to do anything, i.e., when your labor and expertise is worthless? Any economic system based on labor is stupid. That includes both capitalism and communism.
in higher esteem than the individual?
I've just come to realize that honest individuals are not the norm anymore.
and honest corporations are the norm?
your pov is inconsistent: either you think corporations are more or less trustworthy than individuals, or, as i do, you think they are equivalent
but if you do think like me, then your observations about individual dishonesty are pointless, as they are balanced out by the same untrustworthy behavior by corporations
who do you trust?
i'm not asking you to trust individuals, only to the level the playing the field between individuals and corporations
you seem to be asking me to trust corporations more than individuals
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, for science/eng majors, textbook buying is a huge pain, but for people like me (English grad) textbooks are cheap, the editions are plentiful, and they're not twenty-pound monsters that crush my frail laptop when I'm going from class to class.
I've said it a thousand times: no matter what your major is, GET THE BOOK LIST FROM THE PROF two or three months before the class starts and ORDER ONLINE. Amazon.com ships textbooks free over what, $25? Even if you save a couple of bucks on one book, you're winning and leaving the overpriced univ book store with leftover stock. This is a good thing.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
This is just my personal opinion so if you don't agree feel free.
There is a fundimental difference between information and physical property.
Information can generally be used simultainiously by multiple people without interfering with any of the other users of the information (we can all listen to the same song/hear the same joke/run the same program without 'taking away' from anyone else who 'uses' the information).
Physical property can generally only be utilized by a single person simultainiously (Only I can use my car/socks/toothbrush during a specific point in time).
This is a big fundamental difference.
It would be nice if information could fit into the physical-property category but it simply doesn't.
The reason it sorta-kinda did for so long was that the copying mechanisms were rather slow/expensive and the end result was always a physical item (paper-book, chemical-film, etc).
Now we have finally gotten to a point where the information is more-or-less 'free' from the physical information-carrier.
The major publishing-house people (those that make the physical items that are used to carry information) seem to be hopelessly trying to re-combine the physical with the informational. This isn't going to happen but they are currently causing a lot of harm in attempting to do so. The longer this 'transitional period' takes the longer all the misery is extended.
The really funny thing in my opinion is that so many people in general also buy into the concept of 'information as physical-type property'.
I would ask that you honestly think about the harm this idea causes vs the 'good' that results from it. I think that if you really truely honestly evaluate it you will see that these laws are causing much more harm than any good that they could ever do from this point forward.
I feel that slowly we are outgrowing this outdated idea just like we outgrew other ideas that no-longer worked in our society. The only real question is how long it will take and how much suffering will be caused during this transition.
In my opinion the actions of the students in this article are much more helpful than harmful. They help bring to light the fact that this system is hopelessly broken.
I flat out reject the argument that just because a law exists that it is somehow a 'moral imperitive' that it is followed. Laws have no inherent moral function. Morals in themselves are not objective but always subjective. Think about the laws on slavery that used to exist if you need a point of reference.
I would also like to state that I make my living as a software developer and physical-media artist. I think/read a lot about history and economic issues and consider myself very much a pro-capitalist strong-physical-property-rights sort of person. I am NOT any sort of socialist hippie tree-hugger type that doesn't understand how the world works and wants everything for free.
"There's already few places on the web..."
^^
should be
"There're already a few places on the web..."
Distinguishing between 'is' and 'are' is not that hard.
One is a (highly recomended and enlightening) unethical invasion of everybodys privacy the other is a (highly recomended) routine way of protecting yourself.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We see NOTHING, we hear NOTHING, we know NOTHING.
Prove the employees knew it. The manager in the grandparent sould at least have denied knowledge. It's not Kinko's job to be a cop.
However we would'nt copy anything bound on the big machines, even if the copyright had run. Can't turn a profit on hand fed stuff.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So ask them. Right out on the first day of class ask why you need that expensive new book. In fact don't buy your books until AFTER the first class, more than once I was told (before I asked...) that the older edition was just as good, if we could find it, the only difference was the page numbers, the price (more than double), and the color of the front cover. Course the bookstore didn't have it, but perhaps you could have found it. In another case I was told that I wouldn't need several of the books on the list.
Oh, and you know those evaluation forms at the end of class. Make sure you complain about the cost of text books there. In most cases the department chooses between one of several books. Make sure they know they are being rated down because of cost!
The point is, students who copy books for their personal, not for profit use, deserve the same qualifier used for convicted murderers?
It's all in the problems sets, which they change slightly in each newer edition, so that you really can't use the old edition and get the homework right.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Bookstore wont buy it back? Fine. Find 4 other students in the same class, chip in to buy one copy of the book, make 4 copies. Whichever person has to do the actual work of flipping thru the pages one at a time to make the first copy (the rest can be copied from that first copy using an autofeeder), gets to keep the book and store it in a safe place to sell it back at the end of the year. Also should save the first generation copy to use to make more copies in case someone trashes theirs.
And how do you read that ?
"In a place where it's not illegal to photocopy a text book, there is no legal dilemma."
Except that in the article, with the exception of a trowaway line about "outside the law", there is no reference to textbook copying actually being legal in Mexico. It is simply not addressed.
My guess would be that the students go to Mexico to copy the books because
1: it's cheaper
2: the Mexican shop could give a rats ass about US OR Mexican copyright law, whereas the local Kinko's might be more fussy.
As for the "no legal dilemna part," I think you are whistling in the wind. Although the copying per se may take place somewhere else, there is possession, importation, etc. The students doing it is penny ante, but if it gets large enough, I'm sure some law could be enforced.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Fight the power! Rules are for other people!
Has anyone else noticed that the above article is cut-and-pasted from so many different sources that it looks more like a ransom note than a news article?
An interesting story on LISNews.com this morning about savvy U.S. students photocopying textbooks in Mexico then returning them for refunds got me thinking about data havens.
Some people leave the country to infringe copyright, then break the spirit of a return policy to create gains. The fact that the copying may or may not break any local laws doesn't mean it's ethical. Does anyone else think this whole self-congratulatory information-anarchy thing has gone a little too far? Buy the fucking books. They're for your education, which is the one thing above all else that I think everyone here respects. The people from whom you are learning should be rewarded for their hard work. And I think that $100 financed over 10 years at 5% works out to something like $1.50 a month. That's noise compared to your cell phone bill, and it's a hell of a lot more important.
The preceding isn't meant as a flame at the submitter. For that, I'll call out that s/he labelled them "savvy", which in context I take to mean 'clever and to be admired'. For the record, the original article calls the trend "alarming".
There's already few places on the web where you can exploit countries having different copyright durations and eligibility. On the flip side, there's restrictions such as broadcast blackouts and country-wide firewalls.
Yeah, and I wonder why they would ever do such a thing. I mean, it's not like they feel their livelihood threatened, or anything. [/sarcasm]
But just as the rich can use of international tax loopholes and in light of the recent file-sharing victory, are there any projects out there, beyond the P2P networks, to distribute possibly-protected information by any means necessary?
Great, smear the rich with ad hominem attacks for the sake of playing to the crowd, then follow it up by implying P2P networks are simply for the purpose of copyright infringement, and asking if there are any other tools you can use to break the law. If you really want to get busted as some sort of civil libertarian protester, that's fine, but you're not going to do anybody any good from the safety of your computer chair. Get out there and be arrested. (In case anyone is keeping score, I feel generally the same way, but getting arrested isn't the best use of my time. For that, I started law school. I'll be spending the next three years of my life gearing up for this fight.)
For example, your company may already outsource labor, but what about an off-site backup in case of an FBI raid?
Now why would the FBI have any reason to raid your company? Because you're doing something illegal maybe? If you're worried about FBI raids, you have bigger problems than off-site backups.
Mark the whole submission [-1, Does More Damage Than Good]. If you really want to do something, then do it. Take law classes, sign up for volunteer work, protest, write letters, get out there and make a difference. The EFF is looking for referral lawyers, for heaven's sake. They need all the help they can get.
-- Dave
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
My first class in college, History 106/World Civ, Professor tells us to buy the books used. His reasoning? Since the classes don't change much, everything important is already highlighted and during the dull parts of class there are always someone else's doodles to entertain you.
You used to have a really crappy sig, but then I stole it.
i have been living for the past 13 years in S. Korea, when was the last time you've visited Korea? yeah... you can buy fake/illegal stuff in S. Korea, "imitations" were sold everywhere maybe 7~10 years ago, but nowadays you have to search for it to buy it. by that i mean go to Itae-won or some place that's famous for "imitations" and it won't be difficult, but look for it elsewhere and you'll have trouble finding it. even fake software is hard to buy off the street now. it's been several years now, since police have be actively(i mean actively) busting people on the street selling illegal goods("imitations")/pirated software.
but its Forewarned is Forearmed, not Forewarned is armed.
Why restirct your data to only two locations? Assume you want to spread your data across k locations.
Let F be the file we want to encrypt, and spread over k juristictions, so that all k encrypted files are needed to decrypt F.
1. Create k-1 random files the same size as F, and call them X1,X2,...,Xk-1.
2. Create another file Xk by assigning the nth bit of Xn to 1 if an odd number of ones existed in the nth bit over all the files, and put a zero otherwise.
3. For every bit of Xk, if it differs from the nth bit of F, then set the bit to 1. Else, set the bit to zero.
We now have k random files that together encode our original file F. To get it back count the number of 1's for each bit, and put a 0 for even and a 1 for odd.
As long as one of your locations is secure the attacker has nothing but a collection of random files.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
www.cryptonomicon.com a very interesting adventure about the birth of computer during 2nd world war, in order to get tha enigma machine cracked faster and later in the century, two IT guys of those days making a data heaven in a country with few laws about computer data ( many hacking principles take part in the story like "van heick phreaking" ) the two stories linked ... really cool for the geek :))
( and scuze for the sucking english )
I've actually attended the University of Texas at Brownsville , the school mentioned in that article for a couple of years, so let me explain how this works. Students purchase the books for their classes early, then take them across the border to any of a number of small copy centers, drop the books off, return either that same day or the next, and then return the books to the bookstore for a full refund before their typical 5 class day return policy.
What you don't understand is the fact that Matamoros (the Mexican city just across the border) is just across a small international bridge (about 120 meters or so long) and two blocks away. Thats it! It would take you no longer than 3 minutes from jumping into your car and navigating traffic around the school to cross the international bridge.
So that's why we go to Mexico. It's just a few minutes drive to a copy center, where someone copies them for us, without us having to do it ourselves.
And yes, this IS VERY cost-effective! To go and return to Matamoros is I believe about $3 (US) and roughly about $13-$15 (US) per 700 page book.
Yeah, we even outsource our book photocopying. LOL!
That's not to say that this is legal in Mexico, but its just that officials don't really care either way about it. You should see the amount of Movie and Music Piracy busts that actually occur there. Yes, they do get busted. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a truck-load of blank CDs stopped at one of the International Bridges on its way TO Mexico.
2: the Mexican shop could give a rats ass about US OR Mexican copyright law, whereas the local Kinko's might be more fussy.
It's not the Mexican shop's job to care about US copyright law.
I don't give a shit about Mexican copyright law. Why should they care about ours?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Let's get moving up the technology curve, OK? Don't you care about wasting our natural resources by using all that paper? Returning the books after scanning them is just a form of recycling. It's the environmentally freindly thing to do, the fact that it saves money is incidental.
This is a big fundamental difference.
Your analysis is flawed because you are missing one fundamental concept: that the cost of creating a piece of information bears little or no relation to the cost of reproducing it. It might cost a few dollars, it might cost $100M dollars in the case of a movie, burning a DVD of it costs the same.
In the physical world, a mechanism exists to ensure that every end user contributes to the cost of creation. In your world, such a mechanism does not exist. If expensive information is to be created AT ALL, then such a mechanism MUST exist.
There is a perfectly workable mechanism: make IP behave economically like physical goods. Do you actually have an alternative?
You can do what my friends and I tried... we setup an online bookstore to sell books to students at our university. At the time, the bookstore was selling for about 2% below list price, so we set our prices about 5% below list. Not much, but it was a start. However, we had some problems with the publishers, shipping, delivery, etc., and didn't break even the first semester. It really is a logistical nightmare, but we didn't screw any students... most got their books, and the rest at least got their money back.
The next semester, we were considering pulling our prices down further, to 8% off list (the problem was we weren't getting enough orders to be taken seriously by the publishers), but just as we were about to do it, the university bookstore pulled their prices down to 10% off list. Good for the students, but it put us out of business at that point.
We thought we had at least accomplished something, but then the prices at the bookstore went back up the next semester to 2% off list.
Oh well, we tried.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
You seem knowledgeable about this, so I was wondering if you know of any good wiki server software for Windows? Eventually I will be running linux, but until then I would like to do something like you are mentioning...it sounds ridiculously useful. Thanks!
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Actually, I don't think this is a problem with America. It's a problem with each and every College and University that does it. The fact that most schools here do it simply indicates that most schools have been sliding down the slippery slope towards abandoning their first and foremost priority: education.
And yes, IMHO, professors selling their textbooks to their own students for profit is an inherent conflict of interest that undermines instructive value.
My personal experience is pretty telling. I have had to buy expensive books with no resale value, but many of those are (to me) worth keeping. Most of the core undergraduate engineering classes here have no required textbooks, just optional reference books. All of the course curriculum in most of my classes is contained in slides and handouts that stay relatively constant over time and teach the material better than any textbook could.
The professors always pass on these notes to whomever teaches the class next, presumably without any royalties other than their existing salaries, which are pretty high. The professors here are, by far, concerned about maintaining the best curriculum, and, for them, that means sidestepping the textbook industry entirely. And.. what school am I talking about? Stanford University.
Bush and Sense in the same context? No way!
I took Calc I in 1989. At that time the booksellers were just starting to use programs like Mathmatica and Maple. Desktop publishing was starting to really take off and larger companies like big book publishers were able to do a whole lot more for a whole lot less. The better visual explanations and better color of the textbooks in the 90's were a significant improvement over the same material from the 80's.
And, now that Mathmatica is often installed on PCs in college labs, students now have access to it, too. Now, they're finally putting code into math texts so students can try things out. This is a very real and very significant change. Even graphing calculators have come down in price significantly, allowing more students to try out more things. And we all know how user friendly computers and calculators are. They don't require any better descriptions to learn how to use than show up in the manuals, do they?
Now, that's not to say that every new edition is jam packed with new stuff, but it's not like there are no reasons to update books, either. There is a lot going on in these areas that may not be immediately obvious.
If your business model suffers from the possibility of a FBI raid, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate your business? Just a thought...
The problem is that almost every business has proprietary secrets that it can't afford to share with the general public. This usually means using encrypted communications - which may draw the suspicion of the FBI. Take for example:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Oh yes, there are a few people paying attention to what is happening over there. And I must say, it scares me. In Germany, University is free for your first 5 years or so. Even after that it is only about $1300 a year. So quite a lot of people study, and even more study things like history, philosophy, politics, philology and other humanities. If they would have to pay back tuition afterwards, they wouldn't choose subjects that make you smarter, but have no imminent cash-value. Sorry guys, but a country, where education is almost inaffordable ends up with beeing 50%-Pro-Bush.
No, I am not Anti-American - the USA were founded by the finest guys and on the most precious principles a country was ever founded upon. It is just that it seems to me, that America is heading for repeating what Europe had until 500 years ago and some islamic countries are going through right now: The Middle Ages.
Yeah, I was surprised when looking at Computer Science books on Amazon.com that they were substantially more expensive than the same books on Amazon.co.uk.
Really savvy students would have them scanned.
But at the large state university I just graduated from, one of the professors arm twisted a major publishing company to get just the pages *he* was going to use from a certaiin (popular) textbook. No useless software or webiste augmentation, just a softcover edition of only the indivdual pages he thought was important to his class. Now, he taught this class to ~2100 students a year, but I think this shows that when publishing companies can be convinced that they don't have the whip hand deals can be made.
You are by no means required to buy the book recommended by the professor. You can buy the previous edition, a used one, another book on the same subject or even borrow one at the library. Granted, these other books are a bit harder to come by, but still.
In most university subjects (at least at introductory levels that are not current research), if you can't learn the subject from another book than the one recommended, then there is something wrong with your ability to abstract, and that is the problem you should try to solve.
Indeed, if the recommended books for a course are changed, it shouldn't have very much effect on the used books market (unless there is an enormous difference in quality between the books).
I've heard of people starting to do this in Asia, particularly since bandwidths have increased recently.
Spots in foreign universities are often paid for by the national or state government. Slots are earned by the students and openings are determined by how much money the state has available to spend on education.
In such a set up, it makes sense for the universities ans the governments to make the educational process as cheap as possible (while maintaining quality, of course). A good way to do this is for the government to fund libraries instead of shelling out $350 per student for shiny new books.
Since American university education is largely funded by the students themselves (or their parents), there is no incentive for educational institutions (or the American educational industry in general) to worry about how much students must spend on books.
(Contrary to the way it sounds - being self-funded and all - university education is far more accessible in the United States than it is almost any other part of the world.)
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
How much would it cost us, divided by registered members to buy a used oil drilling platform, put it in international waters. Also as part of the project put up a few small communications satellites to allow access to the oil platform worldwide. (or at least where slashdot users are grouped). That way we could open-source the legal system, and create our own international site for a "DATA HAVEN". Alternately, it might be easier to just all move to Vanuatu... Seriously, there are a lot of slashdot users, and many make decent money. Let's build our own country in international waters. The ultimate off-site backup
I don't know if it's really that different in Canada, but I can tell you I don't know any professors that like the new edition scam. I know quite a number of profs too, since both my parents are profs. There are some profs that are more or less oblivious to it, and there are others (most of them, in my experience) that hate it, and try to avoid it, by staying with the publishers that have the longer edition cycles, or getting the bookstore to stock old editions (to skip every second edition).
As for the kickbacks - is there any evidence of this? I'm pretty sure that at any Canadian university, if there were proof of this, the prof in question would be out on the street in pretty short order. The prof and the publisher (or more likely an agent of the publisher, who gets to be the fall guy) would likely end up in court not long after.
Of course you're right that authors do get paid when their books sell, but there's nothing wrong with that (I assume you'd agree).
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
> And how do you read that ?
Dunno about the poster or yourself, but I read it through a complex interaction between photons, parts of my eyes, nerves, and brain.
Your analysis is flawed because you are missing one fundamental concept: that the cost of creating a piece of information bears little or no relation to the cost of reproducing it. It might cost a few dollars, it might cost $100M dollars in the case of a movie, burning a DVD of it costs the same.
I'm not 'missing' this and this is not how capitalism works.
A friend of mine who used to live in Cuba explained the difference to me very clearly once:
100 people spend a year digging a whole in the ground (could be that maybe they make a movie, what they do isn't important).
In the communist/socialist system the 'value' of the hole is how much time/effort was spent in digging it.
In the capitalist system the 'value' of the hole is how much someone else is willing to pay for it.
There is a perfectly workable mechanism: make IP behave economically like physical goods.
Actually it isn't a workable mechanism and that is what my post was about. The only way to make it 'workable' is to somehow make it impossible for people to copy the information (make it more physical-like). Basically the only way to do that is to get rid of general-purpose computers entirely. Like all-over-the-world entirely. It is too late for that unless very draconian measures are taken. I honestly think that is a fantasy/nightmare and will never happen. If anything computers will become more flexible and general-purpose because that is what people want and more importantly is what they buy.
Do you actually have an alternative?
Yes. Basically just get rid of all of the copyright/patent laws. This will create an explosion of creativity and new wonderous things. It will be the roaring 90's all over again only this time without the bubble. Productivity would continue once again to expand at near exponential rates (notice how it has kind of slowed down lately as everyone becomes more and more afraind of being sued?).
Lots of people will suffer but those will be the unproductive/uncreative people who add no value to the creative work. There will no longer be a government-backed free lunch.
Would people stop makeing movies/songs/software/books? No. If anything more would be made as the legal costs would be drastically reduced and people with talent and a drive to create would no longer be hampered by government enforced monopolies (want a decent star-wars movie without Lucas butchering it?).
How could they sell what they create? The same way they do now:
Movies: viewed in theaters just as they are now. If somebody makes a cheap vid-cam recording so what? I'm still going to pay more for a high-quality movie experience which only the controler of the movie can provide. DVD sales would probably be hurt but I would still pay more for a 'autorized' copy that I know isn't a cheap rip-off and may not work so I'm not sure about that even.
Songs: Most bands make most of their money in concerts anyway. This is really a non-issue. recorded music is entirely an advertising thing or just brings in slight revenue.
Software: Like the movie-dvd above I will pay more to get the information from a trusted source that I know won't contain virii, spy-ware, ect...
Books: I admit that this one seems tougher than the others but isn't really. If I spend 4-12 hours reading a book I want to know that it is what the author intended so I will pay more for an 'authorized copy' that I know I got straight from the author.
Will there be distribution methods that circomvent the author of the information? Yes. But it really doesn't matter. If anything it acts as good advertising and happens now anyway and there is no way to get rid of it.
Basically it all boils down to the fact that the economic model has changed and some people are desperately clinging to the 'old way' of doing things. Without government sanctioned monopolies certain activities will no longer be profitable and will have to change with
I work for a University library in Papua New Guinea. As you can understand, budgets for books and printed materials are low here, but the costs are going up. Some medical textbpooks cost nearly as much as the average annual per capita income. We currently get most of our book supplies from Australia, however this will be affected by the proposed Free Trade Agreement between Australian and the US. One aspect of the Aust-US FTA that has not received much attention in the Australian press is the intellectual property section. Under the FTA copyright will be extended from 50 to 70 years in Australia (it is already 70 years in the US) and sanctions are to be strengthened to enforce this. Some authors whose works would otherwise be in the public domain within the next few years affected by this clause include JRR Tolkien, Dwight Eisenhowser, Winston Churchill, CS Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, AA Milne,and Albert Einstein. This will have a major impact on libraries, on-line resources and the cost of text books and reference works. If you search on-line book collections currently (eg. Project Gutenberg) you will find many works that are freely available in Australia and elsewhere (as they are 50 years old) but not in the US (as they are under 70). Developing countries need cheap sources of books and publications to promote education. With copyright extensions many books are likely to become more expensive and cheaper editions will disappear unless we can find alternative sources. Developing countries with more generous copyright terms need to get together to produce and distribute low cost educational materials to those in need - both in print and electronic media. Maybe this is being done already. Any suggestions?
I'm one of these 'work/study' slaves and I don't make minimum wage, thank you. I get paid $8/hour and I TAKE ADVANTAGE of it!
/.
Not that I'd still care, considering our massive collection of about 200 books.
THAT'S RIGHT - I'M ACTUALLY PAID TO SURF THE WEB.
More specifically,
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I think perhaps a middle ground exists in the form of the older copyright laws. Personal copying was ilegal but not prosucuted. The only copying that was was copying for profit. This kept copying underground and small scale. Big brother wouldn't come after you unless you were copying for profit. Computers and the Internet do make it easy to copy and share information and without draconian DRM we are not going to change that. As stated by worlds of ends "your never going to stop us from copying the bits we want".
shut
up !!!
Surely you realized that going into the deal, didn't you?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
P.S. Why can't you read?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I think it's like that in most non-US Unis.
CryptoHeaven does exactly that... it stores your data backup offsite, all encrypted with your private keys. So no one can break in or request to surrender your files.
Plus your data would be untouchable in almost every sense, since any US based company would need to hand over your data or have it destroyed locally, and offshore location (check with them first) does not need to comply with US law enforcement or other such requests. Not to say you should be going around putting kiddie pr0n around though. Remember that with power comes great responsibility.
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
It most certainly is, when all that means is going a couple blocks to the south. Note that the article says this is happening at the University of Texas at Brownsville, which gives its zip code as 78520. A quick hop over to maps.yahoo.com shows us that this is smack dab on the border. Have a look here; the blue squiggly line is the Rio Grande itself.
So yes, it can be quite cost effective indeed, depending on where you are. :)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If you think that copyright law is something unique to the US go look up the Berne Treaty. You can barely find a semi-industrialized country that is not a signatory of this treaty, which grants basic copyright protections. Copying the textbook is illegial in most every country on this planet. Let's just stop with all this "I don't know (country) law so I'll pretend it doesn't matter" BS.