Let's take a trip down memory lane. Me making a copy of a CD for a friend technically violates the copyright, but only the dumbest and most opperesive states would bother to enforce it.
In Denmark (or Norway) this isn't illigal (yet?). As long as your friend owns a licenced/legal copy, he may give you a copy, you can make a copy or a third party may make a copy for you as long as it isn't done for profit. You cannot do this with your unlicensed (but still legal) copy. This applies to music and movies etc in Norway, but not programs / games. I don't know if it applies to more than music in Denmark.
This is a right WTO is trying to force the scandinavian governments to remove. Last I heard Denmark was considering extra taxes on CDR/DVD media to compensate the hungry multinationals, in Norway the laws will probably be changed to criminalize this form of cultural exchange.
In Denmark (and Norway) copyright is limited to (at the moment): * Sole right to profit from distribution of the work * Sole right to mass distibution * Sole right to any form of distribution IF: the work has no CULTURAL importance (ie. computer program)
There's no money lost if you see it in the theatre either -- IF you leave before the end. Just go out and ask for your money back.
I always watch every movie to the end, and I read every book till the last page. If I don't, I have no right to bitch, moan and complain about it afterwards. And that is always more important to me than getting my money back...
The amount of money I spend going to the cinema and buying DVDs is mostly a fixed number: the rest of my money. No matter how good quality the Harry Potter II rip I probably will find on DC the next couple of days is, I'll still show up at the cinema, atleast twice. And I'll probably buy the DVD as well. I don't think *good* movies loose much money to piracy at all.
The not so good movies might loose some of their marked if they are heavily pirated. If I'd downloaded Reign Of Fire before I went to see it at the cimema, I would probably have seen another movie instead. That way Hollywood would still get all its money, but I wouldn't feel ripped of. I can't afford to see all movies (I don't even have time for that), so there is no money *lost* if that was the way it happened.
Now I bet the quality of the copy released on the net isn't that great, and even watching it might ruin the whole experience. Fitting punishment for beeing so silly.
How did this get modded Interesting, rather than Flamebait? If one reads the article, one finds that Australia has decided to pull the plug on websites that are used to organize violent protests. Such websites are illegal in the United States as well, however the legal tests for shutting down such sites are stricter in the US. The First Amendment does not protect speech that advocates specific criminal acts.
The possiblility for abuse is just to great to pass such a law. Free speach is not so broad in Astralia as in Norther Europe / the US to begin with. It already is illigal to advocate criminal acts, this law makes it impossible for organistaions or groups that have been involved in violent protests to get their message out on the internet. That means that *every* group who's involved in a protest where *someone* commits acts of violence, will get shut down.
The law removes these groups (both those responsible for violence and the others) right to have thier views aired. It is not possible to remove just the illigal parts of someones message, but that doesn't give you the right to mute all their speech.
They are the country with the most reported wiretaps per person. I'm sure that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are just models of honesty and transparency about that sort of thing, since they're such good USAPATRIOTs. Ahem.
In a previous slashdot story, it was indicated that Australia uses wiretaps 20 times more often than the US government does. CIA, FBI and NSA probably does a lot we don't know about. But if only 1/20th of the actual wiretaps are recorded, I think even Joe Sixpack would get a bit upset if it ever came out.
There might be more in China, Iraq, Saudia Arabia or North Korea, but they don't report their numbers. (But I would guess the number of phones / citizen is so much lower, they would come out below Australia).
Canada is the United States' biggest trading partner. I'd love to know what strange ideas Americans are getting by that route.
It was more meant as: where the hell did they get such a stupid idea from? That can't be done in a free country. Then you'd have to monitor most of your citizens. But ofcourse, they must have seen how well it works in China (it can work in a totaliterian country, I'm sure), and forgotten to ask themselves *why* it works there.
Most wiretaps per citizen, I don't know so I'm not going to argue that point.
Australian wiretaps was mentioned in this slashdot story. Recored numbers sais 20 times more often than the US, so even though the FBI, NSA and CIA might do a bit more than they let us know, and we don't know about China, Iraq and North Korea (but I bet the number of phones per citizen is much lower in those countries)
Aborigines aren't second rate citizens. There are MANY high profile aboriginies in Government and other areas, such as sporting. Aboriginal people have access to effectively interest free government provided home loans, they are guaranteed places at university and they get more government support than any european descent person does. I'm not saying that conditions are perfect for every aborigine in Australia and I'm not saying that there hasn't been 2 centuries of persecution but the means is now there for them to take hold and turn it all around.. and plenty have. There are isolated communities which are impoverished, agreed. But I can point to various US Indian communities in the same state.
It might be getting better, but that doesn't change the fact that Australia was one of the last nations on earth to recongize the rights of its native inhabitants. And no, it wasn't much better in the US, but I wouldn't hold them up as an example of good behaviour in this regard anyway.
As for the crap you are spinning about imprisoning ILLEGAL immigrants. We do exactly the same as the US and the UK and 1/2 of bloody Europe. The only difference at the moment is we have so bloody many that the time it takes for a recent illegal immagrant to get completely through the system can be between 6 months and 2 years. As the levels drop back down again, time will decrease and it will be a non issue like it was 10 years ago.
Again I don't think bringing what the US is doing into the debate will stengthen your case. In most of Europe the imigrants are threaded a bit better, no basic human rights are violated etc. Small point? You are kidding yourself if you think "everyone" is treating illigal immigrants that way.
China is one of Australia's most important trading partners along with the US, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan. Shit, we send 1/2 the wheat we grow every year to IRAQ, so I suppose we must all have terrorist insticts?? That's the lamest argument I've ever come across.
That was more of a sidenote... Just meant to say that censoring the internet is a ludicrus idea, and they had to get it from somewhere (it just can't be implemented in a non-totaliterian system). So they got the idea from China where it is at least possible to try something like that. I don't think it *can* be done in any "western" country.
I think the view you have of Australia is purely coloured by your own personality and being an easy target for derogatory media.
Before I went to Australia, I had a very positive impression of the country. But after staying there for 2 months, well I just don't like it much anymore. When they threatened to kill the captain of Tampa, if he brought any of the refugees Tampa had picked up to shore. There were nearly 200 people, many of them i need of medical attention aboard the ship. In violation of international sea-law, they refused to take in the refugees. You just can't do that!
I'm not. I've been to the land down under, and it's one of the more fascist countries I've visited. They are even worse than the US.
They are the country the most wiretaps per citizen. They still treat the aborigines as second rate citizens, and they inprison imigrants in consentration camps.
China is Australias morst important trading partner. Now wonder some strange ideas come back from China.
If you bothered to read the policy, you'd see that they do not reserve the right to filter and/or block ports and trafic. So the users DID NOT AGREE to anything other than not running a server and not violate third party copyrights.
Whether a p2p client is a server or not i irrelevant, the only option available to the service provider according to the policy the users agreed to, is revocation of service.
And after studying the Acceptable Usage Policy a bit more in detail, I wouldn't recommend their service to anyone.
This company is into the business of CENSORSHIP! From the "PenTeleData Internet Access Acceptable Usage Policy": The personal use of or commercial distribution of vulgar language, sexually suggestive language, obscene language, obscene images or vulgar images which are transmitted, posted, or displayed are prohibited to traverse any PTD system or any system accessible through PTD.
It all depends on what service they claim to sell. Unless it is explicitly stated in their terms of service that they may block any incomming trafic and block any port they see fit, they cannot do this. Most ISP's require users to sign on for atleast 1 year, if they change the service (and it was not stated explicitly in the contract that they can do it) the contract is void. Or better yet, they could be stopped from doing it before all outstanding contracts have run out.
My ISP gave me a router with a DHPC server, NAT and a firewall. They gave me the password to the admin user on the router, and a two page instruction on how to open ports on the firewall, and set up NAT servers. Their examples included running a web and ftp server on one pc, and opening ports for p2p apps for another pc. They won a customer for life.
Time to get the news out. Write you your representative in congres / parliment and ask what they are doing about this kind of monopolistic abuse. Ask them to consider making new laws to protect the uninformed consumers.
In europe, where consumer rights still exist, it has atlease some chance of makeing a difference.
In civilized countries in the free world, you are allowed to: 1. Copy music / movies from a bought cd/dvd and share with friends, family and others you have a established relationship with (ie. have talked with on IRC, the DC chat etc.) 2. Distribute captures of TV shows/movies from open channels (if you do it for free)
Now, that makes most of what I do on P2P networks legal where I live. With Gnutella / Kazza you're not on solid ground (how can you argue that you know everyone dl from you, and everyone you dl from?), but with DC(++) you have a limited number of people in a "closed" community with regular communication (chat, messages). Now all you have to do is: don't share DVD-rips or mp3s if you don't own the original, don't share software (unless it's share/free/open ware).
Tada! All legal. The US is trying hard to remove these laws in free conties through WTO, but we won't take it.
Flamebait, but I'll bite:)
Debian might be more difficult to install, but where did you get the "RedHat pisses all over Debian in terms of quality and usability" from?
If by usability you mean "easy to install for grandma" perhaps, if not: please explain what makes RedHat better.
And for quality? If you define quality as having a stable system with packages that don't trash eachother, and is easy to keep secure. Then you are sadly mistaken. But if by quality you mean a system with new, hot and unstested packages and late security fixes, by all means RedHat must be of much higher quality.
Hu? The CD is payed for even though it is stolen in the shop. The record company and the artist still get their money. The shop has allready paid all it's going to pay for the CD. Did you think the shops mailed the money to the artist after each sale?
A DMA capable controller didn't help much in the old days. Seeking still took much cpu. I'm talking about the good old days here, 1992-1994. The first 2x and 4x drives where horrible CPU hogs.
But no matter, that was not the point, just an example.
SMT isn't necessarily a good idea for desktop computers, perhaps espesially from a GUI / responsiveness point of view. SMP machines don't share cache, and have problems with running thightly coupled threads, because the treads have to check the other CPU's cache when reading / writing to a (cached) shared resource. On a SMT this is not a problem, as the cache shared.
SMP handles does a very good job of "hiding" all the processes the OS runs from a desktop user, you'll never experince slowdowns when the OS / an other app wirtes / reads from disk (if it's not because it's out of memory, and have to use the swap files...). On older systems this could be a significant problem. Playing games from cd-rom was often impossible, as the cd-rom drive used 40%-60% cpu when reading / seeking. With SMP you had another cpu to do your stuff, while the OS did it's stuff on another (not true of course, but close).
An SMT pc woun't necessarily benefit the same way as a SMP when running such unrelated processes simultaneous, especially cache intensitive processes (cache is a shared, limited resource).
I think SMT will benefit processor intensitve programs like simulations, and (multitreaded) games.
If some way of restricting each process / threads use of cache isn't implemented, realtime scheduling on these processors will be all but impossible (it's rather hairy on SMP as well).
Not much unlike the US. Get a grip. The US doesn't respect human rights any more that the Chineese. And as for using technology to harm people, how about Echelon and the wonderfull new Gesta^H^H^H^H^HDepartment of Homeland Security.
Art, computer code, music, books and other works are protected by copyright. That doesn't mean it's IP. IP implies ownership (usually of an idea). That is an absurd consept, you can't own an idea. Copyright is more than enough to protect music/books/movies. As for software, protecting the code should be enough, giving Amazon a patent on "one-click-shopping" does not.
Although copyrights have been extended way too long to profit the public (which they are there to do), most people think it's a reasonable idea. If someone makes a work of art, they should be -compensated. A conviently way to do it, would be to restrict others from copying it for a limited period, making the creator sole distributer for a while. The way copyrights work / should work.
As for how this relates to the story, copyright doesn't restrict RE, patents / IP do. The EULA's restricts the user from RE the product even though it's not protected by patents. IOW: The EULA's tries to restrict the users fair use rights of a copyrighted product (RE is / used to be fair use or something similar).
Of course , Sony's business practices aren't much better then Microsoft, but that is going way off topic.
Not much better? They are actually much worse.
While Microsoft is off killing competitors, Sony is out forcing DRM on Microsoft and buying politicans in order to make it law.
What is worse? A monopoly on closed source OS, or the extinction of the pc? If Sony and Disney get it the way they want, the PC dies and a DRM Microsoft machine replaces it. Microsoft would be more than happy to just sell Office and WinXX with a subscription model giving them say $150 a year for 95% of all desktop PCs. They would NEVER have pusshed for DRM if they didn't think it would be mandated by law. Now they are just making sure they still sell 95% of all OS's (the fact that they now will sell 100% doesn't hurt, but that cannot be why MS is doing this).
Slashdot Mirror
In Denmark (or Norway) this isn't illigal (yet?). As long as your friend owns a licenced/legal copy, he may give you a copy, you can make a copy or a third party may make a copy for you as long as it isn't done for profit. You cannot do this with your unlicensed (but still legal) copy. This applies to music and movies etc in Norway, but not programs / games. I don't know if it applies to more than music in Denmark.
This is a right WTO is trying to force the scandinavian governments to remove. Last I heard Denmark was considering extra taxes on CDR/DVD media to compensate the hungry multinationals, in Norway the laws will probably be changed to criminalize this form of cultural exchange.
In Denmark (and Norway) copyright is limited to (at the moment):
* Sole right to profit from distribution of the work
* Sole right to mass distibution
* Sole right to any form of distribution IF: the work has no CULTURAL importance (ie. computer program)
- Ost
All the better! I reward the studioes releasing good movies. The bad ones are not worth my money, so I don't see those in the cinema.
Dl movies of the net might be a good way to choose *which* movie to watch at the cinema.
- Ost
I always watch every movie to the end, and I read every book till the last page. If I don't, I have no right to bitch, moan and complain about it afterwards. And that is always more important to me than getting my money back...
- Ost
The amount of money I spend going to the cinema and buying DVDs is mostly a fixed number: the rest of my money. No matter how good quality the Harry Potter II rip I probably will find on DC the next couple of days is, I'll still show up at the cinema, atleast twice. And I'll probably buy the DVD as well. I don't think *good* movies loose much money to piracy at all.
The not so good movies might loose some of their marked if they are heavily pirated. If I'd downloaded Reign Of Fire before I went to see it at the cimema, I would probably have seen another movie instead. That way Hollywood would still get all its money, but I wouldn't feel ripped of. I can't afford to see all movies (I don't even have time for that), so there is no money *lost* if that was the way it happened.
Now I bet the quality of the copy released on the net isn't that great, and even watching it might ruin the whole experience. Fitting punishment for beeing so silly.
- Ost
The possiblility for abuse is just to great to pass such a law. Free speach is not so broad in Astralia as in Norther Europe / the US to begin with. It already is illigal to advocate criminal acts, this law makes it impossible for organistaions or groups that have been involved in violent protests to get their message out on the internet. That means that *every* group who's involved in a protest where *someone* commits acts of violence, will get shut down.
The law removes these groups (both those responsible for violence and the others) right to have thier views aired. It is not possible to remove just the illigal parts of someones message, but that doesn't give you the right to mute all their speech.
In a previous slashdot story, it was indicated that Australia uses wiretaps 20 times more often than the US government does. CIA, FBI and NSA probably does a lot we don't know about. But if only 1/20th of the actual wiretaps are recorded, I think even Joe Sixpack would get a bit upset if it ever came out.
There might be more in China, Iraq, Saudia Arabia or North Korea, but they don't report their numbers. (But I would guess the number of phones / citizen is so much lower, they would come out below Australia).
It was more meant as: where the hell did they get such a stupid idea from? That can't be done in a free country. Then you'd have to monitor most of your citizens. But ofcourse, they must have seen how well it works in China (it can work in a totaliterian country, I'm sure), and forgotten to ask themselves *why* it works there.
- Ost
Australian wiretaps was mentioned in this slashdot story. Recored numbers sais 20 times more often than the US, so even though the FBI, NSA and CIA might do a bit more than they let us know, and we don't know about China, Iraq and North Korea (but I bet the number of phones per citizen is much lower in those countries)
It might be getting better, but that doesn't change the fact that Australia was one of the last nations on earth to recongize the rights of its native inhabitants. And no, it wasn't much better in the US, but I wouldn't hold them up as an example of good behaviour in this regard anyway.
Again I don't think bringing what the US is doing into the debate will stengthen your case. In most of Europe the imigrants are threaded a bit better, no basic human rights are violated etc. Small point? You are kidding yourself if you think "everyone" is treating illigal immigrants that way.
That was more of a sidenote... Just meant to say that censoring the internet is a ludicrus idea, and they had to get it from somewhere (it just can't be implemented in a non-totaliterian system). So they got the idea from China where it is at least possible to try something like that. I don't think it *can* be done in any "western" country.
Before I went to Australia, I had a very positive impression of the country. But after staying there for 2 months, well I just don't like it much anymore. When they threatened to kill the captain of Tampa, if he brought any of the refugees Tampa had picked up to shore. There were nearly 200 people, many of them i need of medical attention aboard the ship. In violation of international sea-law, they refused to take in the refugees. You just can't do that!
- Ost
I'm not.
I've been to the land down under, and it's one of the more fascist countries I've visited. They are even worse than the US.
They are the country the most wiretaps per citizen. They still treat the aborigines as second rate citizens, and they inprison imigrants in consentration camps.
China is Australias morst important trading partner. Now wonder some strange ideas come back from China.
- Ost
Anyone remember the Ministry of Peace from Babylon 5? Sounds like it's comming, and fast at that, to the US.
Didn't you guys learn anything from the 50s?
- Ost
If you bothered to read the policy, you'd see that they do not reserve the right to filter and/or block ports and trafic. So the users DID NOT AGREE to anything other than not running a server and not violate third party copyrights.
Whether a p2p client is a server or not i irrelevant, the only option available to the service provider according to the policy the users agreed to, is revocation of service.
And after studying the Acceptable Usage Policy a bit more in detail, I wouldn't recommend their service to anyone.
This company is into the business of CENSORSHIP!
From the "PenTeleData Internet Access Acceptable Usage Policy": The personal use of or commercial distribution of vulgar language, sexually suggestive language, obscene language, obscene images or vulgar images which are transmitted, posted, or displayed are prohibited to traverse any PTD system or any system accessible through PTD.
I mean, how can you defend such a company at all?
- Ost
Still doesn't justify cutting ports at random.
So no, not fair enough.
- Ost
Nextgentel (in Norway).
2Mbit/640kbit for ~$65.
- Ost
It all depends on what service they claim to sell. Unless it is explicitly stated in their terms of service that they may block any incomming trafic and block any port they see fit, they cannot do this. Most ISP's require users to sign on for atleast 1 year, if they change the service (and it was not stated explicitly in the contract that they can do it) the contract is void. Or better yet, they could be stopped from doing it before all outstanding contracts have run out.
My ISP gave me a router with a DHPC server, NAT and a firewall. They gave me the password to the admin user on the router, and a two page instruction on how to open ports on the firewall, and set up NAT servers. Their examples included running a web and ftp server on one pc, and opening ports for p2p apps for another pc. They won a customer for life.
- Ost
Time to get the news out.
Write you your representative in congres / parliment and ask what they are doing about this kind of monopolistic abuse. Ask them to consider making new laws to protect the uninformed consumers.
In europe, where consumer rights still exist, it has atlease some chance of makeing a difference.
- Ost
In civilized countries in the free world, you are allowed to:
1. Copy music / movies from a bought cd/dvd and share with friends, family and others you have a established relationship with (ie. have talked with on IRC, the DC chat etc.)
2. Distribute captures of TV shows/movies from open channels (if you do it for free)
Now, that makes most of what I do on P2P networks legal where I live. With Gnutella / Kazza you're not on solid ground (how can you argue that you know everyone dl from you, and everyone you dl from?), but with DC(++) you have a limited number of people in a "closed" community with regular communication (chat, messages). Now all you have to do is: don't share DVD-rips or mp3s if you don't own the original, don't share software (unless it's share/free/open ware).
Tada! All legal. The US is trying hard to remove these laws in free conties through WTO, but we won't take it.
- Ost
All well and good, but hell will freeze over before you get a XboX II to act as a PVR with no strings attached.
- Ost
And yes, I do work and we use debian on some of our production servers and all of our development servers.
Others seem to like it as well: You could also check out www.debian.org/users
And by the way, NASA uses Debian for their Aeroshark and Ziti clusters. They have put Debian in space as well, but the link seems to be rotten...
- Ost
My point exactly.
Apache, mysql/postgresql, tomcat etc. are all available in up to date *secure* packages. What more do you need?
- Ost
Do you need XFree 4.2 with KDE 3.1beta on you server? I don't.
- Ost
Flamebait, but I'll bite :)
Debian might be more difficult to install, but where did you get the "RedHat pisses all over Debian in terms of quality and usability" from?
If by usability you mean "easy to install for grandma" perhaps, if not: please explain what makes RedHat better.
And for quality? If you define quality as having a stable system with packages that don't trash eachother, and is easy to keep secure. Then you are sadly mistaken. But if by quality you mean a system with new, hot and unstested packages and late security fixes, by all means RedHat must be of much higher quality.
- Ost
Hu? The CD is payed for even though it is stolen in the shop. The record company and the artist still get their money. The shop has allready paid all it's going to pay for the CD. Did you think the shops mailed the money to the artist after each sale?
- Ost
A DMA capable controller didn't help much in the old days. Seeking still took much cpu. I'm talking about the good old days here, 1992-1994. The first 2x and 4x drives where horrible CPU hogs.
But no matter, that was not the point, just an example.
- Ost
SMT isn't necessarily a good idea for desktop computers, perhaps espesially from a GUI / responsiveness point of view. SMP machines don't share cache, and have problems with running thightly coupled threads, because the treads have to check the other CPU's cache when reading / writing to a (cached) shared resource. On a SMT this is not a problem, as the cache shared.
SMP handles does a very good job of "hiding" all the processes the OS runs from a desktop user, you'll never experince slowdowns when the OS / an other app wirtes / reads from disk (if it's not because it's out of memory, and have to use the swap files...). On older systems this could be a significant problem. Playing games from cd-rom was often impossible, as the cd-rom drive used 40%-60% cpu when reading / seeking. With SMP you had another cpu to do your stuff, while the OS did it's stuff on another (not true of course, but close).
An SMT pc woun't necessarily benefit the same way as a SMP when running such unrelated processes simultaneous, especially cache intensitive processes (cache is a shared, limited resource).
I think SMT will benefit processor intensitve programs like simulations, and (multitreaded) games.
If some way of restricting each process / threads use of cache isn't implemented, realtime scheduling on these processors will be all but impossible (it's rather hairy on SMP as well).
- Ost
Not much unlike the US.
Get a grip. The US doesn't respect human rights any more that the Chineese. And as for using technology to harm people, how about Echelon and the wonderfull new Gesta^H^H^H^H^HDepartment of Homeland Security.
- Ost
Art, computer code, music, books and other works are protected by copyright. That doesn't mean it's IP. IP implies ownership (usually of an idea). That is an absurd consept, you can't own an idea. Copyright is more than enough to protect music/books/movies. As for software, protecting the code should be enough, giving Amazon a patent on "one-click-shopping" does not.
Although copyrights have been extended way too long to profit the public (which they are there to do), most people think it's a reasonable idea. If someone makes a work of art, they should be -compensated. A conviently way to do it, would be to restrict others from copying it for a limited period, making the creator sole distributer for a while. The way copyrights work / should work.
As for how this relates to the story, copyright doesn't restrict RE, patents / IP do. The EULA's restricts the user from RE the product even though it's not protected by patents. IOW: The EULA's tries to restrict the users fair use rights of a copyrighted product (RE is / used to be fair use or something similar).
- Ost
What is worse? A monopoly on closed source OS, or the extinction of the pc? If Sony and Disney get it the way they want, the PC dies and a DRM Microsoft machine replaces it. Microsoft would be more than happy to just sell Office and WinXX with a subscription model giving them say $150 a year for 95% of all desktop PCs. They would NEVER have pusshed for DRM if they didn't think it would be mandated by law. Now they are just making sure they still sell 95% of all OS's (the fact that they now will sell 100% doesn't hurt, but that cannot be why MS is doing this).
Still off topic, but Sony ain't better at all.
- Ost