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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?"
Civil Disobedience, GPL and The Creative Commons
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
No.
Reading HavenCo's User Policy is like a joke.
Theres no protection at all, everything you do is public, and the best part:
If a customer is found to have violated the AUP, HavenCo reserves the right to take appropriate action, possibly including permanent filters on a customer's network connection (inbound/outbound mail and web), disconnection, and recovery of costs related to the AUP investigation from the customer prior to return of customer equipment or remaining credit balance. HavenCo also may turn over the results of an AUP violation investigation to law enforcement, other network administrators, or others.
Would you give your sensitive data to them?
liqbase
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
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 place the blame for this solely on the professors. They have been known to receive "incentives" for frequently changing versions. The cost, of course, is paid by the students. If professors stopped choosing the newest edition, which has no additional material from the older one, publishers would stop playing these games.
One more: MIT's OpenCourseWare
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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!
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.
- 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.
You're thinking of the bizzare nation of Sealand
One of my college professors with an overabundance of ethics made it a point to hand out, in cash, his $4 royalty back to each student who purchased his book.
While this would be ripe for abuse in larger classes (i.e. get in line multiple times) a similar arrangement would be simple to reach with the bookstore where the book simply gets sold for less than normal, and it comes out of the professor's royalties.
An even better approach would be to contribute to www.opentextbook.org instead. In particular, this would be a great way for a new professor to show off his/her writing skills in a way that's simpler than trying to find a publisher.
Because that price in Mexico includes labor.
Basically you hand them the text book and come back a few hours later to find it all nicely copied and bound....assuming, of course, that after spending the $100 you saved on drinking Coronas and dodgy prostitutes, you are able to work out where the hell it was you left the book
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
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.
Opentextbook.org has very little content-- the link I meant to include is http://en.wikibooks.org
While opentextbook is an interesting start up, you may want to consider WikiBooks. It is already in a huge number of languages and covers many more topics. Not to mention the other Wiki's available.
PS. If you run your own linux box, set up a mediawiki on it. I use mine for doing research, homework and keeping course notes. Very nice!
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Like I said in my post, use it for topical material that is pertinent to you and or a small group of people you know. That way you don't fill up the wiki sites with a bunch of largely irrelevant cruft.
My wiki is a great place for me to keep track of stuff that is probably not that interesting to most people.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Actually in many cases, they'll just mess with the metrics on the font, change the leading slightly, increase the gutter, etc. You can easily force an entire book to reflow, thus getting a "new" edition, without making any change of substance to the materiel.
It's also (at least morally) wrong to charge > 80 dollars for a textbook that will only be used for half a semester, yet that's exactly what I found when in the university bookstore today (and not just for one of the books)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You are not being denied a life saving drug because you cannot afford it...its a textbook not medicine, food, shelter, or clothing. If 80 dollars is the market price then that is what you must pay. If you dont want to pay that much then you will have to do without or find a substitute, but you cannot justify theft because you dont like the price. If you dont like the way our system works here then join the communist party and move to Cuba.
Fortunately, the library is pretty good and doesn't object to photocopying parts of a book. Nor should they, since they pay copyright taxes on photocopiers.
They do not object to students copying portions of copyrighted works because this is completely legal under the doctrine of fair use. There are some caveats on this and common sense should apply (copying the entire book except for the title page, for example, would NOT be fair use), but generally copying a portion of the work for criticism, creating derivative works, and the like is perfectly legal.
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.