The usefulness is that the spirit and letter of the Postgres license are maintained to produce a (presumably) cheaper Oracle clone. If there was an Open Source database to compete with Oracle, Postgres is certainly it. As long as the Postgres people are happy, and the people who migrate away from Oracle don't get screwed, then the EnterpriseDB project is profitable while continuing to contribute to the community that started the project.
That's it for Stephen Harper, I think. It is possible to follow-up this vote with a vote of non-confidence. That should provoke the Spring election that many Canadians were expecting. It doesn't mean he won't win again, though...
It's also true of any copyrighted work. Fair Use implies that an exception to the copyright law is being made because the particular infringement is not damaging to the copyright holder. This decision was left to the courts to make on a case-by-case basis until DMCA became law. Now you can't argue the Fair Use defense because you obviously broke a law to obtain the copy you're arguing Fair Use for. DMCA is so evil because it claims to uphold the Fair Use defense while finding a devious means to ensure that someone who makes such an argument is already guilty.
Sorry, but you still lose. I'm a hacker myself, and I can type really fast and don't have to refer to the manual. But forcing myself to use the GUI has improved my productivity. Seriously, try it a few times: cd/dir; rm -rf ab<TAB> versus dragging said folder to the trash can. cd/a1<TAB>/a2<TAB>/a3<TAB> versus switch to tree/folder view, expand, expand, expand. This experience is totally OS-agnostic. I'm more productive with Finder, Nautilus and even Windows Explorer than from the terminal.
More complex tasks are almost definitely easier if they've been provided for in the GUI. I compare my development productivity in, say, Eclipse versus command-line tools and I'm light-years faster. In addition, the repetitive tasks disappear into the background. Not having to think about how to invoke the compiler every time helps. Yes, I know you can define your default 'make' and 'compile' commands so you don't ever have to leave EMACS/vi, but that's more like GUI usage, dontchathink?
I use my terminal for only 2 things now: SSH into my Linux servers and to do ridiculously powerful things that are really difficult in a GUI. Here's one of my favourites, though there's programs that do this correctly now too:
$ for i in `find . -name \*.html`; do sed -e '/path1/path2/g' $i.sed && mv $i.sed $i; done
About profiting off the back of someone else's work... What do you call fair compensation? Many large companies generate huge profits from people's works, while giving those people a miniscule cut. Also, do you think someone should be able to continue making ridiculous profits indefinately? Surely there's a point where it's no longer fair compensation, and now they;re just ripping people off. Something more than 0 would be nice. Acknowledgement that I was the original author would be better, even if I didn't get paid. I'm only speaking from experience, but there's at least one person out there who got paid (substantially) by using my work. He didn't write it, he contributed in the form of vague ideas and didn't participate in the debugging and testing. I got paid to write it, but the royalties from this work went into the pocket of someone who had more of a management than a creative role. And my name still isn't on it, nor can I use this project meaningfully on either a resume or portfolio.
It's rarely the artist who rips people off; it's the guy that rips off the artist that also rips off everyone else.
That's exactly the problem. In fact, this bill is a worthless waste of time. If anti-circumvention isn't addressed, then the DMCA still wins. The DMCA doesn't remove Fair Use rights, it just makes it illegal to obtain a copy which would be protected by those rights. This new bill only reinforces what is already law.
As someone cleverly pointed out, current "protections" involve distributing both lock and key in an obscured form, then using a proprietary technology to put the key in the lock. Therefore, the reason for this encryption is suspect. The end-user is provided both cryptotext and private key, but told it is illegal to use them together except through a particular device (what we're selling) for a specific purpose (to watch exactly once).
My guess is that installing WGA is giving Microsoft permission to cross-reference your license with sales records, credit card numbers, etc. Really, I don't put anything past them. If your license is both valid and paid-for and nothing is recorded like "seen on BitTorrent on such-and-such a date", then it's genuine. Otherwise it's not.
I'm guessing the change is that Microsoft no longer considers you to be a pirate if your license key is marked with "seen on BitTorrent", just "Not Sure".
The first "Ask Slashdot" was somewhat interesting. Now I'm tired of you. Don't you do any real work?
You know the law better than we do, and I'll bet you already know the answer. Libraries and Video Rental stores are all over the place. I'm guessing they're legal. If you lived in Canada, it's legal to have a "Shared Folder" accessible on the Internet. Does that constitute "making available?" I think you've deliberately asked the question in a vague way to promote pseudo-legal discussion, in much the same way that an artist plays their muse; at some point, something interesting appears. But it's all wrong and needs to be reworked by the "master". I, for one, don't think that's an appropriate way to create art. After all, it's the muse who came up with the original idea and the artist that gets paid for it.
So please, NewYorkCountyLawyer, don't make me start going through the articles in Firehose again to vote down your incessant questioning. Once should have been enough for you.
That's what corporate America believes. That the legal system is better protection than a firewall or proper security measures. There's only one problem with this belief: The breach happens before the defense kicks in. Where the cost of such a breach is shareholder confidence (isn't happening yet, too many bullshitters spinning too many lies), national security (hey, NSA and CIA actually *do* have security), or invasion of privacy (oh, that's why it doesn't matter, you just have to issue a hollow apology after the fact), legal protection simply isn't enough. Anyone who tells you otherwise has far too much faith in the ability of the Law to protect.
These methods all still fail to take into account the overarching problem -- how do we entice people who have to this point established their right to use P2P systems to obtain content to start paying the bill? Further, this method is a flat rate; it favours those who leech large amounts of content to those who actually listen to everything they download.
So little of my Internet usage is actually related to the concerns of the Copyright lobby. It seems as inappropriate to levy my network usage as to levy my blank media (which also rarely gets used to hold such copyrighted content, and when it does it falls well within my Fair Dealing rights. I can still make a mix CD from music I have rights to, can't I?). Given the option, I'll simply opt not to pay said fees since they make assumptions about my network usage that aren't true.
I want the ability to purchase full rights to whatever media I've purchased: backup, reencode and distribute among my devices accordingly. If that doesn't happen, well, I guess I'll just have to go back to downloading large chunks of unidentifiable content over encrypted channels. Sorry, but the end-user holds all the cards here. The industry is looking for a way to move past it's obsolescence; the end-user can already find high-quality content for free. Therefore the price the industry needs to compete with is $0.00. Good luck with that.
People upgrade to keep current and compatible. That's an oxymoronic statement. Keeping current often breaks compatibility, especially when talking about Microsoft (see the reams of posts regarding Office backward compatibility). Users of Red Hat Fedora can also attest to the problems of keeping current.
I have server machines I won't upgrade because I DON'T want to be current. The machine is stable and still does what it needs to do. I'm sure there's people out there that still use WP5.1 for DOS, because it does what they need to do. Upgrading to keep "current" is stupid. Upgrading to stay compatible is just a marketing tool. Upgrading because something offers you a useful feature that wasn't in a previous version might be worth the risk, provided it still does everything it used to do.
I've definitely dealt with AIs that won't lose at any cost. Hell, I've found bugs in games thrown up by a desperate AI. I think that like in "Wargames" some AIs need to be toned down just a bit. It's hard to convince gamers that fantasy isn't reality when you see AIs go to great lengths to win something that they'd normally lose (feels kind of like a "survival of the fittest" scenario). Excessive meta-game activity is a sure sign that things have gotten out of hand. Arguably, virtual currency and item trading falls into this category, though those things don't make me nearly as angry as being cheated out of something I won fair and square.
Sorry if this didn't make much sense, but I spend too much time playing fantasy RPGs.
A well-done imitation to be sure, but you misused the word "anecdotal". My post lacked anything more than opinionated "I read it and I think the quality of the article is poor", which is appropriate in this case since there's nothing objective to argue.
For me, the fact that OSS is no longer considered a grassroots movement is a good thing. Now we can actually make the distinction between OSS and FOSS. OSS is an important concept, and it's been around since the beginning of Unix. OSS simply means that source code is included with the license. If you want to show integrity, OSS is the way to go. It allows your client to independently verify your work. Given the amount of spyware and rootkit stories we hear, you'd be silly to trust any ISV who *didn't* provide source code with their product. But you can still have your client sign an NDA, use a license that prevents redistribution, etc. OSS was and still is a workable business model.
FOSS is still a grassroots movement, and will continue to be. The reason is simple; FOSS builds on concepts of OSS to perform a public service. FOSS is about freedom, which requires integrity in addition to a whole bunch of other grassroots goodness.
So no, OSS hasn't lost it's halo (assuming it ever had one) because it's always been about openness and integrity. If it weren't, it wouldn't be OSS.
If you don't like it don't play. As I'm sure you're aware, there's plenty of other ways to spend your free time. Don't try and foist your problems with RPG onto me. TFA lacked anything more than anecdotal "I played for too long and didn't have any fun".
Yes, other nations have telecom monopolies as well, but for some reason they're not facing the same kind of problems. I suspect that the difference is that with a state monopoly, you can vote for change. With a government sanctioned economic monopoly, you can only bend over. Well, no. Canada's telecom monopolies have screwed me pretty good on a couple of occasions. We can't elect them out either. I've come to the realization that civil servants in Canada have a lot of power, even beyond the term of the government who appointed them in the first place. Thus, even though there's a Conservative government, there's a *lot* of old Liberals running the government offices. That makes organizations like the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) very influential. The CRTC is responsible for enforcement of broadcasting and telecommunications regulations nation-wide.
A majority Conservative government could theoretically remove all the Liberals from their posts given enough time, but in practice that hasn't happened yet. Usually the incumbent just adds some of his own people to the administration (I guess it's easier to hire than fire).
It's the same calculation for the distributors, just a different medium now:
Cost to sign artist + Cost to press CDs + cost to ship CDs = total cost
Divide by the number of CDs pressed and you have your cost per CD. I'm guessing it's a lot less than the $15-20 we currently pay for a CD.
Replace "Cost to press CDs" and "Cost to ship CDs" with "Cost to pay high-school intern to rip CD" and "Cost to host private P2P tracker" and you've got the cost to release it on the Internet. Notice that "Cost to pay high-school intern" and "Cost to host private P2P tracker" are pretty much constant whether you sell 1 track or 1 billion tracks. That's the advantage of digital media.
Believe it or not, there is still value in something whose value can be apparently diluted to near-zero. It might only require a student to make a quality rip, but it still takes a little effort. Enough effort that it's worth avoiding if someone else can do it equally well. More importantly:
The real reason that these files are so readily available on filesharing networks is that once people download the file, the file is left in the share folder and others are able to download it from there. If people can be convinced to use sanctioned download services it may actually serve to help reduce piracy by keeping these files out of individuals' share folders on the various networks. I absolutely agree. While many people have a firehose-style cable connection that offers near-unlimited bandwidth, I prefer high-end DSL service and don't have unlimited bandwidth. I actually convert bandwidth to cash before downloading something. I pay excess bandwidth charges at $1.99/Gb, so a 1.4Gb movie comes out to $3 if I've already used my quota for the month -- half of what it costs at Blockbuster, but I can walk to Blockbuster in 5 minutes while the movie takes an hour or 2 to download. Also I get guaranteed quality at Blockbuster.
Music Industry Execs: here's the information you need to build a viable business model. I will pay for the bandwidth/hosting and effort required for each MP3, plus contribute to the artist's royalties, and in a show of extreme generosity, even throw in a few pennies to keep the industry alive. That comes out to about $0.25/track by my estimate. Do it without DRM and you've got a winner. BTW: $0.25 * 10 billion tracks / year = 1 hell of a lot of cash.
All these responses and we're still just arguing English semantics. The legalese is apparently quite clear. Pre-air distribution (besides being a breach of the Right to Distribute) is also a breach of the Right to Perform. Details at Bitlaw. Since the infraction is copyright infringement, it is not theft.
From an ethical standpoint and specific to the copyrighted material being discussed, the infringement on the Right to Perform is damaging to the copyright holder (FOX). It translates directly to a very real loss in advertising revenue. I don't see any issue with FOX going after this infringement, and I don't see how YouTube's refusal to cooperate would have been a good PR move. I fully support this guy being busted for pre-air distribution and I don't see that the law did anything unethical to bust him.
That being said, I hope we don't see FOX going after people for distributing the same episode after it has been aired, since I can't see such an infringement translating into real revenue loss for FOX.
Standard procedure for the problems almost everyone has with HDCP-enabled cable boxes is to *reboot the box*. Apparently, in the exchange of encryption keys a handshake sometimes gets dropped, and nobody has a firmware solution. Heck, even the hardware devices won't cooperate when they're forced to use HDCP!
UAC has no concept of the source of the execution command. What really needed to be added to Vista is a concept of the "source" of code execution. In the case of UAC there should be the notion of not only the code execution but of the source, such as a keyboard, mouse or other input device. These sources identify execution requests as coming from a HUMAN, and not some nasty zombie pc making virus I'm sure that's the way things would be if it were possible. I don't think you understand computers at a low enough level to know why things don't work this way. All of this source checking gets done long before machine-code instructions ever hit the core (CPU), so all you need to do is somehow intercept the call to find out if the "code" was launched by a human, change "zombie" to "human" and now your killer swarm of zombies just turned into a mob of violent humans.
In reality, the hardware is optimized for speed. That is, the core will execute the instructions it receives without any sort of bounds checking. If an instruction fails, then an error code is stored and the next instruction is fetched and executed. It's only during boot time that a kernel has the opportunity to install code at particular vectors to prevent other code from sitting there. That's the PC architecture -- it was designed years ago and for good or bad, we're stuck with it (Ironically, many people make the same argument about Microsoft). That's why the kernel is so important: if it fails to protect a particular interrupt vector or other system integration point, then a userland program can elevate itself to kernel-level privileges and walk all over both the running OS and the data on your hard drives.
The only way to implement your idea (and many others like it) would be to have the hardware recognize this "code source" (or whatever magic bullet you have defined) and act accordingly.
Long story short, people are looking for a technological solution to a lack of education. Like it or not, there's a lot of people on the Internet now that need education. Vista's UAC seems to be along those lines, though extremely insulting and inflexible to an advanced user. It's like it was designed to "raise awareness" of "potentially unsafe operations" so that someone who was previously a clueless idiot can now see that many operations are potentially unsafe. Of course, the prompts don't explain WHY to this person, which eliminates UAC even as an education tool.
The problem I have is that many people, including security people, assume that ease of use and security are polar opposites and it blinds them to real problems. They're not polar opposites? Security involves increasing the amount of authentication/authorization/auditing involved in performing a particular action. Therefore removing security increases ease of use. A couple of examples to support the generalization: Your door is easier to use when it does not have locks. A DVD is easier to rip when it does not have DRM. It is easier to enter a client's building when you don't have to sign a security log and obtain a visitor's pass.
You are right in one thing, however. Ease of use is often not considered in security and the implementation is occasionally more complicated than it needs to be. In my example, a door with two or more locks requiring different keys, DRM validated by multiple sources, signing multiple logs and passing multiple checkpoints in the building to reach your destination. In Real Security(TM) implementations, though, ease-of-use necessarily must take a back seat to meeting the security requirements. I'll take a clunky UI to a security system tested by someone I trust (me, in many cases) over "ease-of-use" any day of the week. The ease-of-use guys tend not to know much about security.
I'm not defending MS for its past mistakes, oversights, poor execution, and so on, but I do think people need to pony up a little more energy to protect themselves. I'm no security expert, but it just seems like responsible living to me. Yes, it is a matter of responsibility. You (the person surfing the internet, loading the truck, drinking from the tubes, whatever) are responsible for your own privacy while online. Period. There's not a law in the world that will magically turn off all viruses, trojans and malware overnight. However, what will happen is that end-user products will improve to the point where it's a turnkey solution, and a simple verification of some basic settings will protect you from all but the highly organized and criminal bad guys.
The problem, as I see it, is that the large companies are not interested in your privacy. In fact, they're interested in invading it. They'll say that they just want to serve you better as a customer, but it's really long-term surveillance. If big business was interested in using the Internet as a vehicle for expansion rather than exploiting consumers, we'd see reliable and cheap wifi-enabled routers in every home with broadband. Windows viruses would be nothing more than an annoyance, maybe even a joke like in the good old days. And everyone would know how to protect themselves from them. They certainly wouldn't threaten to cause billions of dollars of unaccountable transactions.
The funny thing is that before big business discovered the Internet, there was a considerable community movement toward ensuring that everyone was able to implement basic security. After all, your machine is a potential security threat to me if you fail to secure it, much like a ski that doesn't have those little brakes on them could become a hazard to the entire hill when you wipe out.
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The usefulness is that the spirit and letter of the Postgres license are maintained to produce a (presumably) cheaper Oracle clone. If there was an Open Source database to compete with Oracle, Postgres is certainly it. As long as the Postgres people are happy, and the people who migrate away from Oracle don't get screwed, then the EnterpriseDB project is profitable while continuing to contribute to the community that started the project.
That's it for Stephen Harper, I think. It is possible to follow-up this vote with a vote of non-confidence. That should provoke the Spring election that many Canadians were expecting. It doesn't mean he won't win again, though...
:)
Gotta love Canadian politics
It's also true of any copyrighted work. Fair Use implies that an exception to the copyright law is being made because the particular infringement is not damaging to the copyright holder. This decision was left to the courts to make on a case-by-case basis until DMCA became law. Now you can't argue the Fair Use defense because you obviously broke a law to obtain the copy you're arguing Fair Use for. DMCA is so evil because it claims to uphold the Fair Use defense while finding a devious means to ensure that someone who makes such an argument is already guilty.
Sorry, but you still lose. I'm a hacker myself, and I can type really fast and don't have to refer to the manual. But forcing myself to use the GUI has improved my productivity. Seriously, try it a few times: cd /dir; rm -rf ab<TAB> versus dragging said folder to the trash can. cd /a1<TAB>/a2<TAB>/a3<TAB> versus switch to tree/folder view, expand, expand, expand. This experience is totally OS-agnostic. I'm more productive with Finder, Nautilus and even Windows Explorer than from the terminal.
More complex tasks are almost definitely easier if they've been provided for in the GUI. I compare my development productivity in, say, Eclipse versus command-line tools and I'm light-years faster. In addition, the repetitive tasks disappear into the background. Not having to think about how to invoke the compiler every time helps. Yes, I know you can define your default 'make' and 'compile' commands so you don't ever have to leave EMACS/vi, but that's more like GUI usage, dontchathink?
I use my terminal for only 2 things now: SSH into my Linux servers and to do ridiculously powerful things that are really difficult in a GUI. Here's one of my favourites, though there's programs that do this correctly now too:
$ for i in `find . -name \*.html`; do sed -e '/path1/path2/g' $i.sed && mv $i.sed $i; done
It's rarely the artist who rips people off; it's the guy that rips off the artist that also rips off everyone else.
That's exactly the problem. In fact, this bill is a worthless waste of time. If anti-circumvention isn't addressed, then the DMCA still wins. The DMCA doesn't remove Fair Use rights, it just makes it illegal to obtain a copy which would be protected by those rights. This new bill only reinforces what is already law.
As someone cleverly pointed out, current "protections" involve distributing both lock and key in an obscured form, then using a proprietary technology to put the key in the lock. Therefore, the reason for this encryption is suspect. The end-user is provided both cryptotext and private key, but told it is illegal to use them together except through a particular device (what we're selling) for a specific purpose (to watch exactly once).
My guess is that installing WGA is giving Microsoft permission to cross-reference your license with sales records, credit card numbers, etc. Really, I don't put anything past them. If your license is both valid and paid-for and nothing is recorded like "seen on BitTorrent on such-and-such a date", then it's genuine. Otherwise it's not.
I'm guessing the change is that Microsoft no longer considers you to be a pirate if your license key is marked with "seen on BitTorrent", just "Not Sure".
The first "Ask Slashdot" was somewhat interesting. Now I'm tired of you. Don't you do any real work?
You know the law better than we do, and I'll bet you already know the answer. Libraries and Video Rental stores are all over the place. I'm guessing they're legal. If you lived in Canada, it's legal to have a "Shared Folder" accessible on the Internet. Does that constitute "making available?" I think you've deliberately asked the question in a vague way to promote pseudo-legal discussion, in much the same way that an artist plays their muse; at some point, something interesting appears. But it's all wrong and needs to be reworked by the "master". I, for one, don't think that's an appropriate way to create art. After all, it's the muse who came up with the original idea and the artist that gets paid for it.
So please, NewYorkCountyLawyer, don't make me start going through the articles in Firehose again to vote down your incessant questioning. Once should have been enough for you.
That's what corporate America believes. That the legal system is better protection than a firewall or proper security measures. There's only one problem with this belief: The breach happens before the defense kicks in. Where the cost of such a breach is shareholder confidence (isn't happening yet, too many bullshitters spinning too many lies), national security (hey, NSA and CIA actually *do* have security), or invasion of privacy (oh, that's why it doesn't matter, you just have to issue a hollow apology after the fact), legal protection simply isn't enough. Anyone who tells you otherwise has far too much faith in the ability of the Law to protect.
These methods all still fail to take into account the overarching problem -- how do we entice people who have to this point established their right to use P2P systems to obtain content to start paying the bill? Further, this method is a flat rate; it favours those who leech large amounts of content to those who actually listen to everything they download.
So little of my Internet usage is actually related to the concerns of the Copyright lobby. It seems as inappropriate to levy my network usage as to levy my blank media (which also rarely gets used to hold such copyrighted content, and when it does it falls well within my Fair Dealing rights. I can still make a mix CD from music I have rights to, can't I?). Given the option, I'll simply opt not to pay said fees since they make assumptions about my network usage that aren't true.
I want the ability to purchase full rights to whatever media I've purchased: backup, reencode and distribute among my devices accordingly. If that doesn't happen, well, I guess I'll just have to go back to downloading large chunks of unidentifiable content over encrypted channels. Sorry, but the end-user holds all the cards here. The industry is looking for a way to move past it's obsolescence; the end-user can already find high-quality content for free. Therefore the price the industry needs to compete with is $0.00. Good luck with that.
Now I have to watch ads every 15 minutes of raid time. What a PITA. Isn't my subscription fee enough revenue?
I have server machines I won't upgrade because I DON'T want to be current. The machine is stable and still does what it needs to do. I'm sure there's people out there that still use WP5.1 for DOS, because it does what they need to do. Upgrading to keep "current" is stupid. Upgrading to stay compatible is just a marketing tool. Upgrading because something offers you a useful feature that wasn't in a previous version might be worth the risk, provided it still does everything it used to do.
Of course the first thing any smart Vista user would do is replace IE7 with Firefox. ;)
I've definitely dealt with AIs that won't lose at any cost. Hell, I've found bugs in games thrown up by a desperate AI. I think that like in "Wargames" some AIs need to be toned down just a bit. It's hard to convince gamers that fantasy isn't reality when you see AIs go to great lengths to win something that they'd normally lose (feels kind of like a "survival of the fittest" scenario). Excessive meta-game activity is a sure sign that things have gotten out of hand. Arguably, virtual currency and item trading falls into this category, though those things don't make me nearly as angry as being cheated out of something I won fair and square.
Sorry if this didn't make much sense, but I spend too much time playing fantasy RPGs.
A well-done imitation to be sure, but you misused the word "anecdotal". My post lacked anything more than opinionated "I read it and I think the quality of the article is poor", which is appropriate in this case since there's nothing objective to argue.
Mod +1 Pedant please.
For me, the fact that OSS is no longer considered a grassroots movement is a good thing. Now we can actually make the distinction between OSS and FOSS. OSS is an important concept, and it's been around since the beginning of Unix. OSS simply means that source code is included with the license. If you want to show integrity, OSS is the way to go. It allows your client to independently verify your work. Given the amount of spyware and rootkit stories we hear, you'd be silly to trust any ISV who *didn't* provide source code with their product. But you can still have your client sign an NDA, use a license that prevents redistribution, etc. OSS was and still is a workable business model.
FOSS is still a grassroots movement, and will continue to be. The reason is simple; FOSS builds on concepts of OSS to perform a public service. FOSS is about freedom, which requires integrity in addition to a whole bunch of other grassroots goodness.
So no, OSS hasn't lost it's halo (assuming it ever had one) because it's always been about openness and integrity. If it weren't, it wouldn't be OSS.
If you don't like it don't play. As I'm sure you're aware, there's plenty of other ways to spend your free time. Don't try and foist your problems with RPG onto me. TFA lacked anything more than anecdotal "I played for too long and didn't have any fun".
A majority Conservative government could theoretically remove all the Liberals from their posts given enough time, but in practice that hasn't happened yet. Usually the incumbent just adds some of his own people to the administration (I guess it's easier to hire than fire).
Cost to sign artist + Cost to press CDs + cost to ship CDs = total cost
Divide by the number of CDs pressed and you have your cost per CD. I'm guessing it's a lot less than the $15-20 we currently pay for a CD.
Replace "Cost to press CDs" and "Cost to ship CDs" with "Cost to pay high-school intern to rip CD" and "Cost to host private P2P tracker" and you've got the cost to release it on the Internet. Notice that "Cost to pay high-school intern" and "Cost to host private P2P tracker" are pretty much constant whether you sell 1 track or 1 billion tracks. That's the advantage of digital media.
Believe it or not, there is still value in something whose value can be apparently diluted to near-zero. It might only require a student to make a quality rip, but it still takes a little effort. Enough effort that it's worth avoiding if someone else can do it equally well. More importantly: The real reason that these files are so readily available on filesharing networks is that once people download the file, the file is left in the share folder and others are able to download it from there. If people can be convinced to use sanctioned download services it may actually serve to help reduce piracy by keeping these files out of individuals' share folders on the various networks. I absolutely agree. While many people have a firehose-style cable connection that offers near-unlimited bandwidth, I prefer high-end DSL service and don't have unlimited bandwidth. I actually convert bandwidth to cash before downloading something. I pay excess bandwidth charges at $1.99/Gb, so a 1.4Gb movie comes out to $3 if I've already used my quota for the month -- half of what it costs at Blockbuster, but I can walk to Blockbuster in 5 minutes while the movie takes an hour or 2 to download. Also I get guaranteed quality at Blockbuster.
Music Industry Execs: here's the information you need to build a viable business model. I will pay for the bandwidth/hosting and effort required for each MP3, plus contribute to the artist's royalties, and in a show of extreme generosity, even throw in a few pennies to keep the industry alive. That comes out to about $0.25/track by my estimate. Do it without DRM and you've got a winner. BTW: $0.25 * 10 billion tracks / year = 1 hell of a lot of cash.
All these responses and we're still just arguing English semantics. The legalese is apparently quite clear. Pre-air distribution (besides being a breach of the Right to Distribute) is also a breach of the Right to Perform. Details at Bitlaw. Since the infraction is copyright infringement, it is not theft.
From an ethical standpoint and specific to the copyrighted material being discussed, the infringement on the Right to Perform is damaging to the copyright holder (FOX). It translates directly to a very real loss in advertising revenue. I don't see any issue with FOX going after this infringement, and I don't see how YouTube's refusal to cooperate would have been a good PR move. I fully support this guy being busted for pre-air distribution and I don't see that the law did anything unethical to bust him.
That being said, I hope we don't see FOX going after people for distributing the same episode after it has been aired, since I can't see such an infringement translating into real revenue loss for FOX.
Thanks for that. Some very good examples of user-friendly security.
In reality, the hardware is optimized for speed. That is, the core will execute the instructions it receives without any sort of bounds checking. If an instruction fails, then an error code is stored and the next instruction is fetched and executed. It's only during boot time that a kernel has the opportunity to install code at particular vectors to prevent other code from sitting there. That's the PC architecture -- it was designed years ago and for good or bad, we're stuck with it (Ironically, many people make the same argument about Microsoft). That's why the kernel is so important: if it fails to protect a particular interrupt vector or other system integration point, then a userland program can elevate itself to kernel-level privileges and walk all over both the running OS and the data on your hard drives.
The only way to implement your idea (and many others like it) would be to have the hardware recognize this "code source" (or whatever magic bullet you have defined) and act accordingly.
Long story short, people are looking for a technological solution to a lack of education. Like it or not, there's a lot of people on the Internet now that need education. Vista's UAC seems to be along those lines, though extremely insulting and inflexible to an advanced user. It's like it was designed to "raise awareness" of "potentially unsafe operations" so that someone who was previously a clueless idiot can now see that many operations are potentially unsafe. Of course, the prompts don't explain WHY to this person, which eliminates UAC even as an education tool.
You are right in one thing, however. Ease of use is often not considered in security and the implementation is occasionally more complicated than it needs to be. In my example, a door with two or more locks requiring different keys, DRM validated by multiple sources, signing multiple logs and passing multiple checkpoints in the building to reach your destination. In Real Security(TM) implementations, though, ease-of-use necessarily must take a back seat to meeting the security requirements. I'll take a clunky UI to a security system tested by someone I trust (me, in many cases) over "ease-of-use" any day of the week. The ease-of-use guys tend not to know much about security.
The problem, as I see it, is that the large companies are not interested in your privacy. In fact, they're interested in invading it. They'll say that they just want to serve you better as a customer, but it's really long-term surveillance. If big business was interested in using the Internet as a vehicle for expansion rather than exploiting consumers, we'd see reliable and cheap wifi-enabled routers in every home with broadband. Windows viruses would be nothing more than an annoyance, maybe even a joke like in the good old days. And everyone would know how to protect themselves from them. They certainly wouldn't threaten to cause billions of dollars of unaccountable transactions.
The funny thing is that before big business discovered the Internet, there was a considerable community movement toward ensuring that everyone was able to implement basic security. After all, your machine is a potential security threat to me if you fail to secure it, much like a ski that doesn't have those little brakes on them could become a hazard to the entire hill when you wipe out.