Personally, I'm most saddened by the fact that low-power enthusiasts were so inadequate at lobbying their respective Representatives and Senators. The only buzz I remember hearing about this issue was on NPR a couple of months ago.
Yeah, which is exactly why there should be alternatives to having all our airwaves owned by big corporations. Nobody else has much of a voice without the ability to be heard by the masses. If it doesn't become a public issue, you'll see no help from congress. They side with the money every time unless they are threatened by bad publicity.
Ugh... yeah... if anyone actually saw Demolition Man, the future was portrayed somewhat similarly. They'd listen to "classic" commercial jingles on the radio.
The argument could be made that this kind of advertising is an unauthorized use of your computing resources.
Until every site out there starts including a EULA stating that by entering their domain, you give your explicit permission for them to transmit and display ads in your browser. Blocking, or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of such ads is illegal under the Digital Millenium Advertisers Revenue Protection Act, and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and fines of up to $25,000 per offense. Additionally, trafficking in programs designed to steal revenue from advertisers via blocking or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of advertisements is illegal under section 12.4(b) of the DMARPA, and is punishable by up to 8 years in prison and fines of up to $75,000 per offense.
Ok, since I just realized how long this thing got, I'm going to say this up front. I may come off as being rather pissed about this. That's true, but I'm not pissed at you or what you wrote, just at a lot of things surrounding this issue. Please don't take offense.
making it illegal not to posses or produce porn, but to profit from it.
Seems to me that there's no real evidence that porn actually causes any harm to people who look at it, even if they look at it often. As for exploitation, I don't think I understand the reasoning. People get exploited all the time in many industries. Take professional athletes for instance. They often get lured away from getting a real education by representatives of the big leagues. They play sports that are often quite physically damaging to their bodies. Some of them are paid very well, until they can't play any more. Some of them are not paid very well at all, and still suffer many of the same consequences as the well-paid players.
Now, why is it ok for professional athletes to be exploited, but not for professional performers in the porn industry? Seems to me it's the product that many people don't like, mainly due to their religious beliefs, so they look for reasons to justify their persecution of the industry. Yet the same people ignore the exploitation in many other industries and areas of our lives.
If someone wants to let someone take pictures of them nude, then that should be their right. What's wrong with being nude? Many people are not at all offended by nudity and consider it to be quite natural. If someone wants to let someone film them having sex, again, what's wrong with that? Even if they want to do it for a living? People are willing to pay for it. Sure, they embellish and enhance the performance, but so does hollywood with everything they do. What it all comes down to is that some people feel that nudity and sex are inherently immoral except within the limits of what their religion prescribes. Then they procede to try to stamp out anything that offends them, wherever it may occur.
A good example of this is a church near where I live. They are lobbying the city to close down a nearby "gentleman's club" because they feel it is too close to their church. They've show this place on the news several times. It's hardly offensive in appearance. It looks just like any other nightclub from the outside. There's no lewd language or pictures to be seen. Nothing to offend anyone. But since they know that there are topless dancers inside, they are offended. Since they are offended, they feel they have the right to force the owners of the club out of business.
Perhaps it is this sort of action that colors my views on these issues. Because I see many of the people who are against nudity and pornography as being intolerant bullies that try to force everyone to conform to their own views of how people should act. It disgusts me and I do what I can to support those people who are willing to stand up to the bullies, even when they are doing it mainly to defend their ability to make a profit. I don't think there is anything wrong with profiting from porn, as long as it's done within the constraints of the laws that protect employees in other industries.
Re:"Abadoned"? They're refusing to look very hard.
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Warez and Abandonware
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· Score: 1
I think that you may be able to find a couple of the games still around somewhere, but the vast majority of the games posted on the abandonware sites i've visited can't be found anywhere else. Heck, even some fairly recent games (last couple years) can't be found anymore. I was trying to find Microprose's Magic: The Gathering game. They still have a page for it on their website, but it's not available from their store. Can't find it at Chips-n-Bits either. I'd like to get a copy of it though, so I've been doing a bunch of web searches to find it. No luck so far.
Re:Ancient games should not be copyright released
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Warez and Abandonware
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· Score: 2
You don't have to give up the name. Just the game. Make the game freely downloadable for anyone who wants it. The corporation can still own the brand name.
Yeah. He got the name of the Metal Gear sequel wrong. It was actually "Metal Gear: Solid Snake." Then there was also another game called "Metal Gear: Snake's Revenge."
Maybe some people do, but some people think Pro Wrestling and the Jerry Springer Show are real too. There will always be morons, but thankfully they are usually easy to spot, and we've grown accustomed to ignoring them.
This isn't really the same as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Anything posted anonymously will face a tough credibility problem. Would you really take something said anonymously serious without something to corroborate it?
Besides, I think it's a step we need to take. The world has already been moving in the opposite direction. We have less and less privacy all the time. There are bound to be people that decide to take steps to recover some privacy.
Wow.. you take porn pretty serious, huh? Maybe that's the problem. Porn is entertainment. It's not art. It's not meant to educate you about relationships between men and women. It's designed to arouse and stimulate your imagination. You're free to either look at porn or not. You're free to determine when and with whom you have sex. So are the rest of us. Now if we can just get the damn politicians and religious groups to understand that it's not their place to decide for us how we should live our lives, things should be just fine.
I don't think anyone is saying you have a right to free access, it's more along the lines of a right to purchase access without being discriminated against because you are using it in some way that the provider doesn't like. Kind of like the way the electric company couldn't cut off my electricity if they found out I was watching porno movies at home and took offense to it. They are not allowed to descriminate against me on that basis. By the same token, Time Warner or AT&T should not be allowed to deny anyone the right to purchase bandwidth from them (preferably at a price that is deemed fair by the government since there's no real competition to keep the prices reasonable). While they may not be allowed to deny you the right to purchase bandwidth, they can charge additional fees (again, as deemed reasonable by the government) to run lines to outlying areas.
The DeCSS case was lost because of a bad law, and the fact that the defense really had no way to "prove" that DeCSS was developed for a "legitimate purpose" other than the words of one of its creators, who, being a 16 year old kid, didn't carry much weight with the judge apparently. With a copyright case, they can hold the lawbook under the judge's nose and point out why he cannot rule against them, because there is no such law that states that they must actively defend their copyright. There isn't any ambiguity as to whether or not a copyright holder can prohibit someone from distributing their copyrighted material, except in cases where the defendent is claiming that the alleged infringement is fair use. In that case it wouldn't even matter whether Microsoft let's others do it or not, so it's moot.
I don't think you've got the Napster argument right either, but that's another discussion. All things considered, the earlier arguments about revisionism at Microsoft are probably much more likely given the fact that Microsoft has a history of doing such things.
Oh joy, another Microsoft apologist. The Stacker incident was a good example precisely because it IS old. It would be interesting to see how Microsoft explains the "development" of their disk compression technology today.
If you want recent examples, I could refer to the DOJ case and Microsoft's lies and underhanded tricks related to that. Just let me know if you want to hear it...
If they continued to allow BugTraq to distribute without restrictions, a defendant in such a case could state that "BugTraq does this, with info freely available on MS's site, why can't I with the MS-Net spec, freely available on MS's site?"
Yet you also say this:
Yes, I know that you don't have to actively defend copyrights -- you could let something slip by for years, and then sue as long as your copyright is still valid.
Surely you understand that any defendent claiming that "BugTraq gets to do it, why can't I??" would have no case precisely because of what you say in your second statement above. Given that, this is not a legitimate legal reason for denying BugTraq the right to republish MS bug reports. Therefore there must be another reason. I think many of the posts above are much more likely than your scenario.
but (understandably) he's reluctant to distribute it, allowing for a more full analysis of SmartFilter's flaws, because there is no similar exemption for distribution of anti-circumvention tools.
I think you meant "circumvention tools", not "anti-circumvention tools." Nits aside though, do you think that the lack of an explicit exemption for distribution of these legally created tools was by design or by oversight? How tough would it be to get Congress to correct such a flaw in the law? (actually I think the DMCA itself was one big flaw, but fixing it a piece at a time is better than leaving it intact as is)
They're in the business of selling bandwidth. Once I've bought that bandwidth, it's mine to do with as I please.
I think you are more in agreement than you realize. They are certainly able to decide the terms under which they give you access (or sell, lease, whatever) to a certain amount of bandwidth, since they own that bandwidth. That is one of the problems with the current state of things. Some of us ARE arguing that they should just be in the business of selling bandwidth, with no strings attached. The same kind of regulation that would also state that they cannot deny service to someone. This is to prevent them from using their control over the bandwidth to strike exclusive deals with ISPs and others to the detriment of consumer choice. They can charge a fair price for providing that service (which could include a fee for running cable out in the coutry) and it would work much like the phone system. The key is that they need to be watched very closely, since, as just about any economist will tell you, if they aren't watched, they will tend to screw the consumer every chance they get. That's mainly thanks to the fact that cable companies usually have a monopoly in any given service area. It's rare for there to be any competition, and even where competition exists, there certainly isn't much of it. Without competition to act as a market regulator, we need government regulation.
The only right you have is to do as you please 'til you harm another. There's no such thing as a right to food, water, electricity, plumbing, healthcare, a job or Internet access.
It's one thing to have the customer pay for certain costs associated with their personal circumstances (e.g. living in the country), but it's quite another to be able to deny people service altogether, for whatever reason (e.g. they don't want to use the ISP that you approve of).
OTOH you do have a right to do whatever you want with the bandwidth you buy. This nonsense of disallowing servers must be stopped.
How do you come to this conclusion? Assuming that your previous statements mean that you believe that broadband providers should not have to offer access to everyone equally, why do you believe they should have to offer access on terms most agreeable to you, rather than the terms they dictate in their EULAs?
Simple fact: Humans (in industrialized nations mainly, and the U.S. primarily) are causing changes in the earth's climate. This is having a very significant effect on weather patterns and sea temperatures. We've made a damn big hole in the ozone layer and the temperature change is now killing off coral reefs. This is due to a 1 degree temperature increase over a short period of time. The temperature is expected to increase up to another 14 degrees in this century, a very dramatic increase for such a short period of geological time. This will likely cause extremely destructive weather patterns, along with melting ice caps and the resultant sea-level changes that will flood many lower areas of the world.
I could go on, but I've said enough to make my point. We, as people living in industrialized nations cannot simply deny our effect on this planet. We cannot just say that we believe that we can survive it, and to hell with those poorer people and nations that probably can't. They'll lose their land and their lives. This seems acceptable to those who claim that what we do doesn't matter. I guess they have to find some way to justify their position. Profits might be negatively impacted otherwise.
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Personally, I'm most saddened by the fact that low-power enthusiasts were so inadequate at lobbying their respective Representatives and Senators. The only buzz I remember hearing about this issue was on NPR a couple of months ago.
Yeah, which is exactly why there should be alternatives to having all our airwaves owned by big corporations. Nobody else has much of a voice without the ability to be heard by the masses. If it doesn't become a public issue, you'll see no help from congress. They side with the money every time unless they are threatened by bad publicity.
Heheh... no kidding... I wonder how much time I spent on that game. Oh, and Metroid too.
If in-game tools existed to program 2D/3D action or RPG elements, you'd have a real winner.
This sounds like Neverwinter Nights. Can't wait for this game to hit the stores.
Anyway, X-Files, IMAO, is worthless without Duchovny
Amen.
Ugh... yeah... if anyone actually saw Demolition Man, the future was portrayed somewhat similarly. They'd listen to "classic" commercial jingles on the radio.
The argument could be made that this kind of advertising is an unauthorized use of your computing resources.
Until every site out there starts including a EULA stating that by entering their domain, you give your explicit permission for them to transmit and display ads in your browser. Blocking, or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of such ads is illegal under the Digital Millenium Advertisers Revenue Protection Act, and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and fines of up to $25,000 per offense. Additionally, trafficking in programs designed to steal revenue from advertisers via blocking or otherwise interfering with the transmission or display of advertisements is illegal under section 12.4(b) of the DMARPA, and is punishable by up to 8 years in prison and fines of up to $75,000 per offense.
Corporate-owned copyrights get 90 years now.
Actually it's life + 70 years.
4K should be enough for anyone.
This is gonna hurt my karma, but I couldn't resist... sorry folks :)
Ok, since I just realized how long this thing got, I'm going to say this up front. I may come off as being rather pissed about this. That's true, but I'm not pissed at you or what you wrote, just at a lot of things surrounding this issue. Please don't take offense.
making it illegal not to posses or produce porn, but to profit from it.
Seems to me that there's no real evidence that porn actually causes any harm to people who look at it, even if they look at it often. As for exploitation, I don't think I understand the reasoning. People get exploited all the time in many industries. Take professional athletes for instance. They often get lured away from getting a real education by representatives of the big leagues. They play sports that are often quite physically damaging to their bodies. Some of them are paid very well, until they can't play any more. Some of them are not paid very well at all, and still suffer many of the same consequences as the well-paid players.
Now, why is it ok for professional athletes to be exploited, but not for professional performers in the porn industry? Seems to me it's the product that many people don't like, mainly due to their religious beliefs, so they look for reasons to justify their persecution of the industry. Yet the same people ignore the exploitation in many other industries and areas of our lives.
If someone wants to let someone take pictures of them nude, then that should be their right. What's wrong with being nude? Many people are not at all offended by nudity and consider it to be quite natural. If someone wants to let someone film them having sex, again, what's wrong with that? Even if they want to do it for a living? People are willing to pay for it. Sure, they embellish and enhance the performance, but so does hollywood with everything they do. What it all comes down to is that some people feel that nudity and sex are inherently immoral except within the limits of what their religion prescribes. Then they procede to try to stamp out anything that offends them, wherever it may occur.
A good example of this is a church near where I live. They are lobbying the city to close down a nearby "gentleman's club" because they feel it is too close to their church. They've show this place on the news several times. It's hardly offensive in appearance. It looks just like any other nightclub from the outside. There's no lewd language or pictures to be seen. Nothing to offend anyone. But since they know that there are topless dancers inside, they are offended. Since they are offended, they feel they have the right to force the owners of the club out of business.
Perhaps it is this sort of action that colors my views on these issues. Because I see many of the people who are against nudity and pornography as being intolerant bullies that try to force everyone to conform to their own views of how people should act. It disgusts me and I do what I can to support those people who are willing to stand up to the bullies, even when they are doing it mainly to defend their ability to make a profit. I don't think there is anything wrong with profiting from porn, as long as it's done within the constraints of the laws that protect employees in other industries.
I think that you may be able to find a couple of the games still around somewhere, but the vast majority of the games posted on the abandonware sites i've visited can't be found anywhere else. Heck, even some fairly recent games (last couple years) can't be found anymore. I was trying to find Microprose's Magic: The Gathering game. They still have a page for it on their website, but it's not available from their store. Can't find it at Chips-n-Bits either. I'd like to get a copy of it though, so I've been doing a bunch of web searches to find it. No luck so far.
You don't have to give up the name. Just the game. Make the game freely downloadable for anyone who wants it. The corporation can still own the brand name.
Yeah. He got the name of the Metal Gear sequel wrong. It was actually "Metal Gear: Solid Snake." Then there was also another game called "Metal Gear: Snake's Revenge."
Maybe some people do, but some people think Pro Wrestling and the Jerry Springer Show are real too. There will always be morons, but thankfully they are usually easy to spot, and we've grown accustomed to ignoring them.
This isn't really the same as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Anything posted anonymously will face a tough credibility problem. Would you really take something said anonymously serious without something to corroborate it?
Besides, I think it's a step we need to take. The world has already been moving in the opposite direction. We have less and less privacy all the time. There are bound to be people that decide to take steps to recover some privacy.
Wow.. you take porn pretty serious, huh? Maybe that's the problem. Porn is entertainment. It's not art. It's not meant to educate you about relationships between men and women. It's designed to arouse and stimulate your imagination. You're free to either look at porn or not. You're free to determine when and with whom you have sex. So are the rest of us. Now if we can just get the damn politicians and religious groups to understand that it's not their place to decide for us how we should live our lives, things should be just fine.
I don't think anyone is saying you have a right to free access, it's more along the lines of a right to purchase access without being discriminated against because you are using it in some way that the provider doesn't like. Kind of like the way the electric company couldn't cut off my electricity if they found out I was watching porno movies at home and took offense to it. They are not allowed to descriminate against me on that basis. By the same token, Time Warner or AT&T should not be allowed to deny anyone the right to purchase bandwidth from them (preferably at a price that is deemed fair by the government since there's no real competition to keep the prices reasonable). While they may not be allowed to deny you the right to purchase bandwidth, they can charge additional fees (again, as deemed reasonable by the government) to run lines to outlying areas.
The DeCSS case was lost because of a bad law, and the fact that the defense really had no way to "prove" that DeCSS was developed for a "legitimate purpose" other than the words of one of its creators, who, being a 16 year old kid, didn't carry much weight with the judge apparently. With a copyright case, they can hold the lawbook under the judge's nose and point out why he cannot rule against them, because there is no such law that states that they must actively defend their copyright. There isn't any ambiguity as to whether or not a copyright holder can prohibit someone from distributing their copyrighted material, except in cases where the defendent is claiming that the alleged infringement is fair use. In that case it wouldn't even matter whether Microsoft let's others do it or not, so it's moot.
I don't think you've got the Napster argument right either, but that's another discussion. All things considered, the earlier arguments about revisionism at Microsoft are probably much more likely given the fact that Microsoft has a history of doing such things.
Oh joy, another Microsoft apologist. The Stacker incident was a good example precisely because it IS old. It would be interesting to see how Microsoft explains the "development" of their disk compression technology today.
If you want recent examples, I could refer to the DOJ case and Microsoft's lies and underhanded tricks related to that. Just let me know if you want to hear it...
This doesn't make sense. You say this:
If they continued to allow BugTraq to distribute without restrictions, a defendant in such a case could state that "BugTraq does this, with info freely available on MS's site, why can't I with the MS-Net spec, freely available on MS's site?"
Yet you also say this:
Yes, I know that you don't have to actively defend copyrights -- you could let something slip by for years, and then sue as long as your copyright is still valid.
Surely you understand that any defendent claiming that "BugTraq gets to do it, why can't I??" would have no case precisely because of what you say in your second statement above. Given that, this is not a legitimate legal reason for denying BugTraq the right to republish MS bug reports. Therefore there must be another reason. I think many of the posts above are much more likely than your scenario.
but (understandably) he's reluctant to distribute it, allowing for a more full analysis of SmartFilter's flaws, because there is no similar exemption for distribution of anti-circumvention tools.
I think you meant "circumvention tools", not "anti-circumvention tools." Nits aside though, do you think that the lack of an explicit exemption for distribution of these legally created tools was by design or by oversight? How tough would it be to get Congress to correct such a flaw in the law? (actually I think the DMCA itself was one big flaw, but fixing it a piece at a time is better than leaving it intact as is)
They're in the business of selling bandwidth. Once I've bought that bandwidth, it's mine to do with as I please.
I think you are more in agreement than you realize. They are certainly able to decide the terms under which they give you access (or sell, lease, whatever) to a certain amount of bandwidth, since they own that bandwidth. That is one of the problems with the current state of things. Some of us ARE arguing that they should just be in the business of selling bandwidth, with no strings attached. The same kind of regulation that would also state that they cannot deny service to someone. This is to prevent them from using their control over the bandwidth to strike exclusive deals with ISPs and others to the detriment of consumer choice. They can charge a fair price for providing that service (which could include a fee for running cable out in the coutry) and it would work much like the phone system. The key is that they need to be watched very closely, since, as just about any economist will tell you, if they aren't watched, they will tend to screw the consumer every chance they get. That's mainly thanks to the fact that cable companies usually have a monopoly in any given service area. It's rare for there to be any competition, and even where competition exists, there certainly isn't much of it. Without competition to act as a market regulator, we need government regulation.
There should be no government interference that states, "You can't have simple IP-only connectivity, unless you also sign up for the Moron Channel".
Actually, I think that we're looking for "government interference" to prevent the broadband providers from dictating the very same thing.
The only right you have is to do as you please 'til you harm another. There's no such thing as a right to food, water, electricity, plumbing, healthcare, a job or Internet access.
It's one thing to have the customer pay for certain costs associated with their personal circumstances (e.g. living in the country), but it's quite another to be able to deny people service altogether, for whatever reason (e.g. they don't want to use the ISP that you approve of).
OTOH you do have a right to do whatever you want with the bandwidth you buy. This nonsense of disallowing servers must be stopped.
How do you come to this conclusion? Assuming that your previous statements mean that you believe that broadband providers should not have to offer access to everyone equally, why do you believe they should have to offer access on terms most agreeable to you, rather than the terms they dictate in their EULAs?
Simple fact: Humans (in industrialized nations mainly, and the U.S. primarily) are causing changes in the earth's climate. This is having a very significant effect on weather patterns and sea temperatures. We've made a damn big hole in the ozone layer and the temperature change is now killing off coral reefs. This is due to a 1 degree temperature increase over a short period of time. The temperature is expected to increase up to another 14 degrees in this century, a very dramatic increase for such a short period of geological time. This will likely cause extremely destructive weather patterns, along with melting ice caps and the resultant sea-level changes that will flood many lower areas of the world.
I could go on, but I've said enough to make my point. We, as people living in industrialized nations cannot simply deny our effect on this planet. We cannot just say that we believe that we can survive it, and to hell with those poorer people and nations that probably can't. They'll lose their land and their lives. This seems acceptable to those who claim that what we do doesn't matter. I guess they have to find some way to justify their position. Profits might be negatively impacted otherwise.