This article should really be on the main page. Getting a few thousand rather than a few dozen to submit their comments would really help. (Of course, having well thought-out and presented comments is the most important!)
I'm a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. As a computer researcher I know that it is vital to have access to general-purpose, open computers. Mandatory Digital Rights Management technology in computers would make it unacceptably difficult to study and improve upon computer systems.
In addition, I'm also worried that DRM technology would raise the barriers to entry with regard to amateur content creation. As it stands, it is easy for anyone to create their own pictures or music or stories or movies, encode them in standard formats, and share them with people -- this has led to a rich and flourishing landscape of amateur content on the internet. Implicit in the Digital Rights Management proposals that I have seen is the idea that content is created only by the large corporations that make up the entertainment industry. By requiring content creators to license patents or programs, meet difficult requirements, or use proprietary formats, the amateur is locked out of effectively distributing his work. Infringing on the ability for amateurs to create and share their own works is a tragedy beyond any other consequence of DRM. After all, the purpose of copyright as stated in the constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts!"
Please don't stifle technology innovation, and the vast and wonderful potential for our consumers to become content creators themselves, all just to protect business models of the last century. Leave the burden on these businesses to prosecute copyright infringers, or to otherwise develop content delivery systems that are are profitable AND friendly to consumers.
Actually, the most interesting part of this bill (to me) is that it modifies the worst part of the DMCA (17 USC 1201) concerning circumvention devices. Paraphrasing...
Circumvention is not a violation if:... " such act is necessary to make a non-infringing use under this title; and "
" the copyright owner fails to make publicly available the necessary means to perform such non-infringing use without additional cost or burden to such person. "
Providing a circumvention device is not a violation if:... " such means are necessary to enable a non-infringing use..."
" such means are designed, produced and marketed to enable a non-infringing use..."
" the copyright owner fails to make available the necessary means referred to "
This is great! With those in place, the DMCA becomes a mere annoyance rather than a real impediment to software development.
At CMU, what they say is, "They can hurt, but they can't help." Most strong applicants have fairly high GRE scores (700+), and once you're in the pool of applications they're considering, they don't look at the GRE scores again. The General GRE scores probably matter even less.
This is really sensible -- though I agree with the FSF's principles and really agree about "Free Software" versus "Open Source", the name GNU/Linux is just really bad. Even just the fact that it's four syllables is too much.
Still, the worst offender (outside of perhaps the purposefully colorful NES emulator "NESticle" and the irc client "BitchX") is Ogg Vorbis. Yikes.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at -- that API was originally undocumented stuff, but now Palm wouldn't dare remove support for it due to all the apps that use it.
Well, they don't want you using it for divx or mame -- they lose something like $75 to $150 for each box they sell! They need you to buy it and then buy games, otherwise there's no point...
What the "hackers" really need to do is make use of undocumented features in ways that every home user will want to use. Then Microsoft wouldn't dare remove them -- I remember this happening several times in the old days of the Palm Pilot (Remember all those *Hack programs?)
There are plenty of things I want from computing before getting rid of the simple inconvenience of remembering multiple passwords and user names. Let's work on those first. For instance: Encrypted email and instant message traffic. Network daemons without remote security holes in them. More fine-grained access control to resources. Universal unicode support. Support for writing real applications in modern programming languages.
First, I doubt they're talking about "warchalking" (really, there needs to be a better name for this); rather, the unauthorized use of someone else's wireless network.
There seem to be a lot of people here defending this use of someone's wireless network. How are you justifying this? I'll be the first to admit that legality doesn't always coincide with morality, and that words like "thief" and "steal" are used far more often than they should be. For instance, I don't think that copying software or MP3s or even ideas is "stealing" -- because the copying doesn't deprive the original owner of the right to use the software or idea.* In other words, (if you are familiar with "natural law") the resource is abundant, not scarce. However, bandwidth really is scarce!! Many small businesses (the usual kind that have open APs) have a shared T1 or worse, and some pay metered bandwidth. Unless we can determine that they really do have an excess of bandwidth or that they don't mind us using their service, how can we possibly justify this kind of thing?
Some forms of illegal activity (ie, copying software) can be morally justified with a cogent argument, but we should really be careful not to let that extend to thoughts like, "Anything I like doing is moral in cyberspace."
* I know this is a pretty glib argument, but that's not really the subject here.
(Apply to each element of the list [1, 2, 8, 13, 19] the function that calls foo.bar.yukims.glock with the pair of a and its argument.)
I agree that this kind of repetition is to be avoided, but that doesn't mean that we should be avoiding it by introducing syntactic hacks into the language. In fact, just adding higher-order code to a language (ie, having a functional language) solves this kind of problem elegantly and briefly.
I'd use this (supposing that my laptop battery worked and my school didn't already have wireless), but:
- I would probably be spending most of my time over ssh, not the web
- I would filter out the banners
- Getting banner sponsors, is really, really hard
> The CSS scheme used to "encrypt" movies on DVD is about as strong a "technological > measure" as this glue, yet the DMCA still seems to apply, according to the courts, and > that is the whole point.
Really, you should look at the definition of technological measure in the context of the DMCA. Here it is:
A technological measure ''effectively controls access to a work'' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Does glue require the application of information (??), or a process or a treatment (??) to gain access to the copyrighted work? No. They are talking about encoding schemes. Also, the strength of the encoding essentially has no bearing -- as long as it meets the definition then it doesn't matter how strong or weak it is.
> DeCSS, which was written in order to allow people to do many things besides pirate movies > was not primarily designed for circumvention, yet the DMCA still seems to apply, according > to the courts, and that is the whole point.
I don't agree with this. The purpose of DeCSS was indeed to circumvent the CSS system. (Whether CSS is a "technological measure" and DeCSS a "device" is somewhat less obvious, though I don't think the court was unreasonable here.) One might have any number of reasons to want to circumvent CSS, some of which are legal and many of which are moral; however, what you do after circumvention is not addressed at all in the DMCA. (This is one of the biggest problems with the law.)
The question to ask is, "What other uses does DeCSS have other than to decrypt CSS-encoded data?" Not: "Why might someone use DeCSS other than to pirate movies?"
The court was convinced that DeCSS was in violation of the DMCA, and that's a pretty reasonable reading of the existing law. (The law itself is NOT reasonable, and I think that's the main problem with the DeCSS fiasco.)
The DMCA does not make general purpose tools illegal. If that's what you fear about the DMCA, then don't worry, you are safe! (That is, until we get Digital Rights Management legislation...) On the other hand, if you hate the DMCA because it makes bona fide circumvention devices (that enable both illegal and legal uses of copyrighted content) illegal, then carry on. But really, to argue that the DMCA outlaws gravity just makes us look like a bunch of paranoid whiners.
You should read the DMCA more carefully. The device has to be primarily designed for circumvention, and must not have any other commercially significant uses. Also, it would probably be hard to argue that glue is a "technological measure" as defined in the DMCA.
The DMCA is a bad law, and I know you guys are half joking, but blowing it out of proportion like this I think does our cause disservice. Actually understanding what it makes illegal, and being able to hold intelligent conversations about it's implications -- that's what helps us.
That's what HTML is supposed to be, not what it is. I agree that it would be sort of nice if everyone could use the standards (not so easy, since browser support is poor) and use it as a content-markup langauge, but really we want to just make pages that look nice and display correctly. Standards don't help with that until they're implemented and working. HTML right now is a loosely collected set of folklore about what you can do to get a consistent look across browsers.
What do you know? A more drastic and invasive procedure has a greater effect. Except, splints cost $6, and surgery costs thousands and leaves you without the use of your hands for weeks.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. As a computer researcher I know that it is vital to have access to general-purpose, open computers. Mandatory Digital Rights Management technology in computers would make it unacceptably difficult to study and improve upon computer systems.
In addition, I'm also worried that DRM technology would raise the barriers to entry with regard to amateur content creation. As it stands, it is easy for anyone to create their own pictures or music or stories or movies, encode them in standard formats, and share them with people -- this has led to a rich and flourishing landscape of amateur content on the internet. Implicit in the Digital Rights Management proposals that I have seen is the idea that content is created only by the large corporations that make up the entertainment industry. By requiring content creators to license patents or programs, meet difficult requirements, or use proprietary formats, the amateur is locked out of effectively distributing his work. Infringing on the ability for amateurs to create and share their own works is a tragedy beyond any other consequence of DRM. After all, the purpose of copyright as stated in the constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts!"
Please don't stifle technology innovation, and the vast and wonderful potential for our consumers to become content creators themselves, all just to protect business models of the last century. Leave the burden on these businesses to prosecute copyright infringers, or to otherwise develop content delivery systems that are are profitable AND friendly to consumers.
If you have kids or grandkids, you could uh, die.
Actually, the most interesting part of this bill (to me) is that it modifies the worst part of the DMCA (17 USC 1201) concerning circumvention devices. Paraphrasing ...
... " such act is necessary to make a non-infringing use under this title; and "
... " such means are necessary to enable a non-infringing use ..." ..."
Circumvention is not a violation if:
" the copyright owner fails to make publicly available the necessary means to perform such non-infringing use without additional cost or burden to such person. "
Providing a circumvention device is not a violation if:
" such means are designed, produced and marketed to enable a non-infringing use
" the copyright owner fails to make available the necessary means referred to "
This is great! With those in place, the DMCA becomes a mere annoyance rather than a real impediment to software development.
My own DMCA Battle...
At CMU, what they say is, "They can hurt, but they can't help." Most strong applicants have fairly high GRE scores (700+), and once you're in the pool of applications they're considering, they don't look at the GRE scores again. The General GRE scores probably matter even less.
My understanding is that the tests were cancelled everywhere. Is that wrong?
This is really sensible -- though I agree with the FSF's principles and really agree about "Free Software" versus "Open Source", the name GNU/Linux is just really bad. Even just the fact that it's four syllables is too much.
Still, the worst offender (outside of perhaps the purposefully colorful NES emulator "NESticle" and the irc client "BitchX") is Ogg Vorbis. Yikes.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at -- that API was originally undocumented stuff, but now Palm wouldn't dare remove support for it due to all the apps that use it.
Well, they don't want you using it for divx or mame -- they lose something like $75 to $150 for each box they sell! They need you to buy it and then buy games, otherwise there's no point...
What the "hackers" really need to do is make use of undocumented features in ways that every home user will want to use. Then Microsoft wouldn't dare remove them -- I remember this happening several times in the old days of the Palm Pilot (Remember all those *Hack programs?)
There are plenty of things I want from computing before getting rid of the simple inconvenience of remembering multiple passwords and user names. Let's work on those first. For instance: Encrypted email and instant message traffic. Network daemons without remote security holes in them. More fine-grained access control to resources. Universal unicode support. Support for writing real applications in modern programming languages.
First, I doubt they're talking about "warchalking" (really, there needs to be a better name for this); rather, the unauthorized use of someone else's wireless network.
There seem to be a lot of people here defending this use of someone's wireless network. How are you justifying this? I'll be the first to admit that legality doesn't always coincide with morality, and that words like "thief" and "steal" are used far more often than they should be. For instance, I don't think that copying software or MP3s or even ideas is "stealing" -- because the copying doesn't deprive the original owner of the right to use the software or idea.* In other words, (if you are familiar with "natural law") the resource is abundant, not scarce. However, bandwidth really is scarce!! Many small businesses (the usual kind that have open APs) have a shared T1 or worse, and some pay metered bandwidth. Unless we can determine that they really do have an excess of bandwidth or that they don't mind us using their service, how can we possibly justify this kind of thing?
Some forms of illegal activity (ie, copying software) can be morally justified with a cogent argument, but we should really be careful not to let that extend to thoughts like, "Anything I like doing is moral in cyberspace."
* I know this is a pretty glib argument, but that's not really the subject here.
Jesus. Stop posting these obvious questions! Just type them into Google:
where do I ask my questions other than slashdot
That results in this link:
ask.slashdot.org
Sheesh.
... the C programming language.
GIANT SHEEP ASSES.
How about:
app (fn i => foo.bar.yukims.glock(a, i)) [1, 2, 8, 13, 19]
(Apply to each element of the list [1, 2, 8, 13, 19] the function that calls foo.bar.yukims.glock with the pair of a and its argument.)
I agree that this kind of repetition is to be avoided, but that doesn't mean that we should be avoiding it by introducing syntactic hacks into the language. In fact, just adding higher-order code to a language (ie, having a functional language) solves this kind of problem elegantly and briefly.
I'd use this (supposing that my laptop battery worked and my school didn't already have wireless), but:
- I would probably be spending most of my time over ssh, not the web
- I would filter out the banners
- Getting banner sponsors, is really, really hard
> measure" as this glue, yet the DMCA still seems to apply, according to the courts, and
> that is the whole point.
Really, you should look at the definition of technological measure in the context of the DMCA. Here it is:
Does glue require the application of information (??), or a process or a treatment (??) to gain access to the copyrighted work? No. They are talking about encoding schemes. Also, the strength of the encoding essentially has no bearing -- as long as it meets the definition then it doesn't matter how strong or weak it is.
> DeCSS, which was written in order to allow people to do many things besides pirate movies
> was not primarily designed for circumvention, yet the DMCA still seems to apply, according
> to the courts, and that is the whole point.
I don't agree with this. The purpose of DeCSS was indeed to circumvent the CSS system.
(Whether CSS is a "technological measure" and DeCSS a "device" is somewhat less obvious, though I don't think the court was unreasonable here.) One might have any number of reasons to want to circumvent CSS, some of which are legal and many of which are moral; however, what you do after circumvention is not addressed at all in the DMCA. (This is one of the biggest problems with the law.)
The question to ask is, "What other uses does DeCSS have other than to decrypt CSS-encoded data?" Not: "Why might someone use DeCSS other than to pirate movies?"
The court was convinced that DeCSS was in violation of the DMCA, and that's a pretty reasonable reading of the existing law. (The law itself is NOT reasonable, and I think that's the main problem with the DeCSS fiasco.)
The DMCA does not make general purpose tools illegal. If that's what you fear about the DMCA, then don't worry, you are safe! (That is, until we get Digital Rights Management legislation...) On the other hand, if you hate the DMCA because it makes bona fide circumvention devices (that enable both illegal and legal uses of copyrighted content) illegal, then carry on. But really, to argue that the DMCA outlaws gravity just makes us look like a bunch of paranoid whiners.
You should read the DMCA more carefully. The device has to be primarily designed for circumvention, and must not have any other commercially significant uses. Also, it would probably be hard to argue that glue is a "technological measure" as defined in the DMCA.
The DMCA is a bad law, and I know you guys are half joking, but blowing it out of proportion like this I think does our cause disservice. Actually understanding what it makes illegal, and being able to hold intelligent conversations about it's implications -- that's what helps us.
In other news, I took a leak 5 minutes ago.
It's not a macro virus in the sense you mean. These "field codes" are not checked by macro virus protections.
That's what HTML is supposed to be, not what it is. I agree that it would be sort of nice if everyone could use the standards (not so easy, since browser support is poor) and use it as a content-markup langauge, but really we want to just make pages that look nice and display correctly. Standards don't help with that until they're implemented and working. HTML right now is a loosely collected set of folklore about what you can do to get a consistent look across browsers.
You might consider adding the ConCert project:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~concert/
We aim to provide a framework for grid computing with certified code (run native code without needing to trust anyone) and strong language support.
What do you know? A more drastic and invasive procedure has a greater effect. Except, splints cost $6, and surgery costs thousands and leaves you without the use of your hands for weeks.
The CS department has NNTP servers that feed our local machines. When I was an undergraduate, though, it did suck that there was no news server.