Point me to a PUBLICLY OWNED TELEPHONE NETWORK IN A LARGE CITY as an example. [... ] Pick something that IS very close.
How about electrical infrastructure? Not the same, of course - I'm a inter-networking guy, not an electrical guy, but it strikes me as having some of the same fundamentals: high availability, ubiquitous, critical service, etc. w/ some real-time elements and danger of maintenance beyond that found in even telco networks. The regulated, monopoly environment was disassembled in a manner similar to the bust-out of incumbent telcos almost a decade ago here, so the business history is similar, too. Close enough - what do you think?
If yes, the Utilities Commission where I live in Ontario, Canada was a publicly-owned not-for-profit entity for 85 years, until 1998 (during the period of electrical deregulation in Ontario) when it was spun into a for-profit group of companies owned by the city I live in. Makes money, too.
Good point. I'm not particularly worried about the motivations or intentions of the folks working on this research. They sound like excited people doing cool work.
However, somewhere out there someone is thinking about the possibilities of, as User 956 notes, quantifying intent. Distilling it down to a number that statistically naive people can use to justify something.
For example, I see this at work in hiring practices where a weight is assigned to questions, and a list of preferred responses assigned their own weight. The interview complete, everyone adds up their numbers, and pretty quickly, someone starts to argue that Candidate A is The Guy, because 'he's 2 better than Candidate B'.
People will invest measures of intent with their own meanings unless there are very strong boundaries placed on interpretation.
I don't have a problem with the science. I have a problem with boneheads applying the science. I guess this is sort of what Oppenheimer found out.
This proposed system to get better math and science educators and educations sounds like a meritocracy approach, which may be a foreign concept to some in the heavily union-controlled teacher community.emphasis added
The proposed system doesn't sound like a meritocracy at all. It proposes to pay people by *what they are*, not by *how well/poorly they perform*, the latter being a meritocracy in my books.
This sort of simple formula (where a certain degree or discipline is more heavily weighted in pay band determination) doesn't work. Most arms-length public institutions in Canada use a market differential component in a more complex formula that includes education (disciplines sometimes weighted differently), experience, preparation time, class size, and possibly a performance measure, etc.
The market differential allows the institution to recognise the difficulty in attracting certain disciplines in a particular market, without a long-term bias. Note that it was hard to get CS-trained folks during the dot.com boom - now, not so hard. The associated market differential should be down for CS folks (sorry, dudes).
At any rate, instead of being anxious to get some anti-union vitriol out there, why not think about what a word like 'meritocracy' means first?
You noted your post explicitly OT, so I don't think you're trying to usurp the main thread.
Ray Beckerman - who's postings and efforts I enjoy and admire tremendously - appears to be a little pissed at your post for going OT, but I'm going to take up your question anyway, mainly because I've spent some time talking to musicians, and one musician in particular, about your question.
Off-Topic
My conversational straw poll indicates that the CRIA (the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA) has been successful in getting musicians to believe they need to be partners with CRIA in a fight against music piracy. I think it's an easy place to take musicians to - it's a hot button topic, and nobody wants to feel they're getting ripped of in life.
But a musician's goal in life shouldn't be to minimise piracy, but rather, from a business perspective anyway, to maximise sales of their music. I don't think that the existence of some amount of piracy is causally linked to less sales; rather, piracy *may* be a component of a new distribution model which can help the artist sell *more* material.
So *if* some of an artist's material is pirated, but overall more people are listening to their music and more people are buying their music, do they really give a shit about the piracy that *may* be occurring?
Framed in those terms, musicians I talk to (and I know this is representative of no more than just those musicians) become a lot less uptight. And for those that still feel they're getting ripped off somehow, the Copying Levy in Canada would seem to take even that away (if the dollars collected under the Copying Levy actually got distributed to artists, 'cause I've never met anyone who's seen a penny of it, which is just another instance of the industry ripping them off, but that's another conversation).
So quit worrying about piracy that may or may not be happening, and embrace that new distribution model and sell more stuff.
I'm not an artist making my living off CD and digital copy sales, so I suppose its easy for me to say, but indie artists I know make their sales at live gigs, and I don't think that that is going to change, or that piracy has shinola to do with that. The opportunity to sell digital copies on-line to a much broader audience is an additive element - gravy on existing sales.
This has nothing to do with the sleazy civil suit stuff exposed in the deposition from Ray Beckerman's blog, which is a pretty incredible read. Interestingly, in Canada, the Copying Levy is the basis for the presence of digital music in a shared folder *not* being a problem, as I understand it. Michael Geist's blog is loaded with informative material on this matter from a Canadian perspective. For example, here's a summary of *CRIA* survey material that suggests that those who download the most music via P2P also purchase the most CD's:
All of which suggests that the sort of RIAA thuggery shown in the article's linked deposition shoots the industry in its own feet, and then shoves said feet into their big mouths.
14 MR. BECKERMAN: I would like to mark as Exhibit 3 a two-page article dated
April 19, 2004 by David Chappelle entitled "Newest PacketHound release eliminates illegal trading of copyrighted files."
Oh man, even Chappelle is going over to The Dark Side. That is *not* funny, Dave.
Other countries can turn our people away, but we can't seem to turn other counties people away.
Believe me, the US turns people away. I was refused entry into New York state (from Ontario) in 1983. In retrospect, it was my own fault, as I didn't acknowledge a criminal record for a misdemeanor when asked by INS if I had a criminal record. But once you've been refused, you're pooched man.
I was turned back in 1994 from boarding a flight originating in Canada and terminating in Canada with a stop at an American airport (I was flying American Airlines for reasons beyond my control, and there was no direct flight). I have never successfully acquired a Border Crossing Permit in time to use it within the specified time frame.
After 9/11, I was told by the law firm I had engaged to facilitate entry to forget it - things were tightening up, and people previously refused entry weren't even on the radar. DHS was looking to turn back more people, not start letting previous problem people in. I don't know if this is still the case, as I haven't investigated since 2002.
So I haven't been able to enter the U.S. since 1984, man. I'm an IT professional with no bad associations - but with a misdemeanor record from my late teens.
I suspect the OakLEE is substantively correct in his assertions. The parent post suffer from an excess of rhetoric and a dearth of supporting evidence.
A problem is that the strange case of Manuel Noriega gives credibility to assertions of waltzing over, 'cause the US sure did go to Panama and just 'take' him. Recall that U.S. forces invaded Panama in Operation Just Cause, eventually securing Noriega's surrender after he had been holed up in the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Panama City. He was taken to the States where he was tried and convicted under federal charges of cocaine trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering.
I think the Noriega case informs international perceptions of US behaviour WRT extradition - 'hell, they'll even invade your country if they really want you'.
That being said, it is a perception, not the case in any particular circumstance, including this one.
N.B. I am not a Noriega supporter. I understand that he was a dictatorial scumbag. I'm not trying to get in a flamefest over the rights and wrongs of Noriega's regime. I am simply using this case as an illustration of where a particular perception comes from.
I consider 128kbs MP3's to have unacceptably bad sound quality and this seems to be the standard rate.
Well, no FLAC's on Puretracks (hey, that rhymes!), but their mp3's are encoded at 192kbps, according to the FAQ on the MP3 section of the Canadian site at:
... with Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman saying the argument for removing DRM was "completely without logic or merit." London-based EMI Group, however, is reportedly exploring the lifting of DRM restrictions on its music. Warner this week annouced a new bid to acquire EMI.Emphasis mine
So, is Warner making the move to buy EMI to head off the gang at the DRM pass? From Warner's perspective, DRM is a we-all-stick-together proposition; the only way it can fly is if all the major labels, and hence all the major artists, close ranks and enforce DRM. Does Warner think that if EMI breaks rank, it's over? Are they willing to spend $USD 4.4 Billion to try to ensure the future of DRM?
Obviously here I have to clarify my stance, or people will start taking out their pitchforks.
No pitchforks here. I agree with you - when the accusation includes anything at all similar to 'kiddie porn', the high moral ground has been occupied, and it seems like everything else goes out the windows
Glad to see the ex-judge busted, but wouldn't trust the kid as far as I can throw him. He weirds me out at least as much as the judge.
I mean, you can't argue the result here. But the method sure creeps me out. By focusing on child porn images, this dude gets to stalk 3000 people. And he does is by distributing a trojan, and manually reviewing the material on target computers.
The alt.comp.virus FAQ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/alt-faq/pa rt3/ references a backgrounder on the legalities of computer crime. It's venerable (1998), so I don't know to what extent the author's assertions are still accurate, but he is pretty clear: Distributing a virus affecting computers used substantially by the government or financial institutions is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So if this had ended up on a qualifying computer, the kid would (should) have been busted. Furthermore, Most states have statutes that make it a crime to intentionally interfere with a computer system. These statutes will often cover viruses as well as other forms of computer crime.
As well, if the judge hadn't admitted the journal in question was his, and disclaimed knowledge of the images, how far could they have gotten with this prosecution? The kid admits distributing a trojan, how far is it from there to distributing material? I think a defence lawyer could have a field day with this, but IANAL, just another guy with an opinion.
TFA notes that Skype's motivation is clear - to boldly place their traffic where its traffic has not gone before. Not argument here from me.
My understanding of regulation in the land-line telecommunications world is that it was driven by the desire to enable service additions and competition in a business where there were - and maybe still are - significant barriers to entry. It's expensive to get into the telecommunications business, and when long-standing infrastructure is in place, it makes sense to ensure access to that infrastructure is available to competitors, given fair remuneration for the incumbent. The alternative is duplication of infrastructure - for example, last mile cable - which is bone-headed and, as noted, expensive. Regulate for re-selling of that infrastructure. You get competition which is a Good Thing, which should be fair, encourage innovation, etc. and the incumbent opens an additional revenue stream via the re-sale.
I think it is a fair comment to say that these barriers are not the same for a wireless service. The physical transport - the atmosphere - is already there, so it's not a question of a barrier to entry as a result of cost, at least not in the same way or to the same extent as it is with land infrastructure.
However the spectrum is a shared medium - that's what removes the cost barrier above. Just because someone occupies that shared medium before you do, should they gain an element of exclusivity? I say no. Of course, everyone can start banging their service out over the spectrum, but this doesn't scale, I don't think. Sooner or later, we reach a limit on the co-occupation of the spectrum. I don't know enough about RF communications to know where or when this is, and as such I may get hammered here. If service providers can reasonably co-occupy the spectrum, then this house is made of cards and no doubt someone will tell me.
So if co-occupation if a problem, then a regulatory mechanism to force resale of infrastructure is reasonable.
But Skype doesn't want resale - it wants unencumbered use for customers on wireless networks so that its service can operate in this space. This desire sits at the core of net neutrality, and I'm for it. The service provider is paid for the user's access to the transport, and as long as this is the case, it's none of the service provider's business what I choose to put on the 'line'. You're getting paid for your minutes - don't tell me what I can or cannot say or do.
OT:
Re: arguing by analogy - I can hear the 'you must be new here comments', etc. already, but what the hell. Argument by analogy is attractive because it can help others understand the *concept* of what is being discussed or asserted. But it doesn't *prove* anything - it's just a method to clarify. And mainly, it just leads to people trying to talk about one thing by talking about something else. Predictably, this takes you, well... somewhere else.
I'm not flaming here - but for god's sakes, what do Ford cars and Chevy highways have to do with Skye, net neutrality, or whatever? And moderators seem to encourage it - got a Good Analogy? That's +5: Insightful, baby! So you can't even configure your way out of it.
Ahh... good catch. I wouldn't expect to be anonymous if I were logged in, so it never occurred to me that folks would post 'anonymously' this way. It really just is code for substitute 'Anonymous' for 'My User Name'. If you want to be anonymous, log out.
I'm the original poster, BTW - turns out posting anon still cancels your earlier moderations. Oh well.
I don't get *this* (how many layers of abstraction can be go here?). If you're posting anonymously, how is your relation to the user account used for moderation activity detected? IP?
MAJOR HOAX DISCOVERED -/. ANONYMOUS POSTING NOT ANONYMOUSIf comment moderation had been the explanation used in the post, Taco would not have been involved, I think. It's possible that Slashdot is doing this, but it seems that that would take significant CPU time and would be annoying to users. Besides, changing fonts, quoted blocks, etc changes the fingerprint anyway.
I read two issues in TFA: 1) listening to Jobs and rumours about a DRM-free EMI, DRM is on the way out and 2) the copying levy in Canada is also on the way out, albeit not so quickly, and maybe to be replaced by something else. I'm thrilled by the first, but less optimistic (and possibly less enthusiastic) about the second.
What pisses me off about DRM is that it is not just about ensuring that content cannot be distributed to anyone holus-bolus, but it is about restricting use far and beyond current practise. It is useful to think about DRM not just in the context of say music distribution, but rather in terms of its impact on content distribution and sharing in general. A good example is Stallman's The Right to Readhttp://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html; I don't think there are many people out there who will dispute that I should be able to loan you a book to read, but the current climate and direction of DRM is to indeed to restrict that practise. 'The Right to Read' might have seemed a little far-fetched in 1997 when it was written, but it sure doesn't look all that unlikely now, does it? DRM is no longer (and maybe never was!) about saving content producers from low-effort, high-volume piracy - it is now about fundamentally changing the consumers rights regarding the use of that content.
The copy levy in Canada was intended to recover dollars lost to producers and distributors as a result of technology that facilitated easy copying and the resultant alleged lost revenue. My problem with this is that we don't know whether any revenue actually is lost, and even if we accept that some is, quantifying the lost revenue is not really possible. Well, I guess you can make numbers up, but that's about it.:)
The levy has turned out to have a useful legal side-effect in Canada in that it has provided a basis for stopping P2P downloading from being identified as illegal, much to the chagrin of the distribution industry, who lobbied for the levy in the first place. Extending the levy to other devices I don't like the sound of quite so much.
However, as other posters have noted, we really haven't addressed the problem of compensation for the admittedly low-effort, higher-quality-that-cassette-mixed-tapes digital piracy that abounds today. If I download a song from my P2P network of choice, the artist hasn't been compensated. I'm suspicious of the levy being used as a mechanism for such compensation, because it is so circuitous, but I don't see the industry letting this one go now that they've got it, unless they are blindly pissed off by the legal side-effect.
As long as the levy lets me download music without fear of reprisal, and if those levy dollars could be used as a rough justice method to compensate artists for piracy that does occur (and yes, I do know this may be difficult/not possible), then I'm okay with the levy. I may even be able to live with an extension of the levy
Are there any other ideas out there about how we can fairly compensate artists for uncompensated distribution of their work?
Send Buddy over to my department. I am willing to assume the company's Duty to Accommodate - plus it will help mitigate the Undue Hardship I'm experiencing in trying to locate 'The Really Good Shit' porn. I need a professional.
Just when you think I'm being a smart-ass, this isn't as far out there as you might think. I understand the motovation(s) for this sort of governance, but the implementation is getting pretty whacky. From the Canadian Human Rights Commissions website:
1. What is the duty to accommodate?
The duty to accommodate is the obligation to meaningfully incorporate diversity into the workplace. The duty to accommodate involves eliminating or changing rules, policies, practices and behaviours that discriminate against persons based on a group characteristic, such as race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, marital status, family status and disability. emphasis mine
So my contribution to diversifying sexual orientation is that I wanna monkey spank all day sitting at my desk. Where's the beef?... [Slaps Head]
....Stealing a copy of something leaves behind no evidence...."
Over and over.....copying is not stealing. It is copying. There is a difference.
You know, I've seen this statement a number of times, and I like it. My problem is that I don't think it is strictly the case.
I go to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) when in doubt. (Those of you who doubt that the OED is the definitive reference for the English language, check out the footnote below 1).
The first definition (sense d) in the citation for Steal, verb, is in conflict with the assertion above. I've removed the quotations and tried to retain the time-line of references so that we could see this is no johnny-come-lately definition, but the formatting got kooky too quick, so let it suffice to say that the first reference is in 1275.
steal, v.1
I. To take dishonestly or secretly.
[... ]
d. In wider sense: To take or appropriate dishonestly (anything belonging to another, whether material or immaterial).
Comments/questions/tomatoes?
1 If you don't care for the OED, give Simon Winchester's 'The Meaning of Everything' a read. It's a testament to the hubris of the Victorian Englishman, made all the more amazing by the fact that they pulled it off, albeit a little later than the originally estimated ten years (turned out to be 71 years). And I was boggled as to how dissertations were completed using typewriters when I had the good fortune to discover LaTeX whilest undertaking my grad thesis - these guys (and gals, check out the contribution of the Thompson sisters) did it with lined paper and pigeonholes! It really is an accomplished jewel of literature, and interestingly enough, only recently has its model been reused - look at how the democracy of Wikipedia maps onto the process of creating the OED. I was reading recently about Citizendium, and it occurred to me the Wikipedia is evolving in the direction of the original OED model...
Thanks for saying this and keeping comments honest. After a while, though, and if you hear something enough times, you should know that it gets hard to keep these separate.
[Warning - offtopic]
As a Canadian who has been refused entry to the States, I only encounter Americans in Canada or when I travel internationally. This affects my sample, I suppose - Americans who travel elsewhere arguably have been heisenberg'd, or have a predisposition that leads to a comparatively internationalized point of view. All that being said, the Americans I've met are *all* at variance with American foreign policy, such I understand it via the filter it goes through getting to me. In fact, it can be quite odd - some folks spend time apologising for their government, and not because of prompting from me or any sort of expectation.
I'll tell ya, though, if the only exposure I had to America and Americans was that which comes through the lens of popular media, I think I'd be sure that America is Going Nuts. Television is a pretty weird viewport into American culture, man - from the strange celebrity that derives from 'reality' TV, Bill O'Reilly - who I just don't get at all - and soft-hearted bounty hunters praying (or is that preying) to god before they round up the bad guys... man, that's a pretty weird view.
But just as soon as I think it is waaay over the top, other stuff knocks me on my ass; I mean, Steven Colbert is a pretty good counter-punch to Bill O'Reilly, and I just marvel that he got on the air. You don't see that sort of check and balance just anywhere.
Resenting Amercians is a past-time in Canada of some popularity, not without some reason. But quite honestly, I've always viewed America as the One True Hope for democracy in the world. This seems to be imperilled these days, though; even while democratic evangelism is said to be the basis for your foreign policy, you seem to be prepared to let it be taken away from you at home.What up with that?
I suppose someone is going to call me a troll or tell me they don't give a fsck what I think, and I'm not even quite sure why I starting writing this, but maybe it's just to say that you guys are big, complex and you scare the shit out of us at the same time you inspire us and piss us off.
And I speak for most americans when I say- There are two groups of people in America. The people who live here, and the mega corporations who run it. Please don't lump the two together.
Or maybe it's just a long-winded way to say that no, I don't lump you all together by any means, but you know, you are what you present to the world, if you let that happen.
Well, I was able to subscribe through an anonymizer service. The youtube sign-up requires a valid e-mail address that a confirmation message can be sent to. Sending the confirmation uri through the anonymizer service failed - I can't see the internals of the service enough to understand where the failure occurred (tamper data showed everything ok from my browser's perspective).
Based on this, a youtube account *may* require direct session between your client and youtube for successful sign-up, which would guarantee that they get your IP at sign-up time. And if they get it, they keep it - of that I have no doubt.
I can come up with a number of answers to the question "What is the mandate of a 21st century library?". But I'm not a librarian, so that leaves me as just another opinion on/.
Are computers in libraries a straight support mechanism for traditional school library activities - i.e. do they simply augment the act of research in a library?
Or perhaps we should focus on the entertainment aspect - every library I've been in has a fiction section, and unless you're researching something *about* fiction, then fiction is for entertainment and perhaps personal growth.
This bill appears to support the 'libraries are for research' approach. But public libraries are about *more* than research - they're about entertainment, they're about equity of access to information, and it's not so clear to me that that doesn't include social networking in this day and age.
I also appreciate that providing a mechanism for somebody's kid to get around restrictions at home on IM - 'I'm going to the library to study, Mom!' - may not be the goal.
Suggestions about reserving seats for different uses appear to make the most sense to me.
However, I know a public librarian who would like to throw Internet access out the door of the public library she works at - from her perspective, it's where all the hassles originate, degrading the library goer's experience. Kids arguing over computers, creeps going to porn sites, etc.
What do librarians say? What is a vision for a library today?
Mod parent up. I know that not reading TFA is damn near de rigeur on/., but this is a tad ridiculous, isn't it?
Maybe we can invent a new mod category here - we could call it 'gestalt'. Let everyone comment away, then rank 'em on unseen insightfulness (hey, I *like* that) after we actually get to see the article.
The Private Copying Levy is what lets me download with impunity in Canada. The dollars may or may not actually get to the artists (google away on this one), but it certainly does facilitate my p2p activities.
I don't know who the 'Private Copyright Collective' is, but this position is at odds with what we've been hearing about the Canadian Recording Industry Association's position - last heard as wanting to do away with the levy:
I think this is an interesting tactic: collect levy at the front end, squeeze the availability of material via p2p networks through increased DRM on released materials.
Quite honestly, I don't really notice the levy at my pocketbook, and it does make for an entirely different legal landscape for p2p downloading. Michael Geist is the Guy in the Know about this landscape in Canada - check out his blog at the address above, there's reams of material there.
Summary is linked to the *middle* of the article. This ensures that any/. reader who actually goes to TFA doesn't have to read any of that pesky 'context' or let any of that tiresome 'background' get in their way. Gotta get those First Post!! articles in!
Slashdot Mirror
How about electrical infrastructure? Not the same, of course - I'm a inter-networking guy, not an electrical guy, but it strikes me as having some of the same fundamentals: high availability, ubiquitous, critical service, etc. w/ some real-time elements and danger of maintenance beyond that found in even telco networks. The regulated, monopoly environment was disassembled in a manner similar to the bust-out of incumbent telcos almost a decade ago here, so the business history is similar, too. Close enough - what do you think?
If yes, the Utilities Commission where I live in Ontario, Canada was a publicly-owned not-for-profit entity for 85 years, until 1998 (during the period of electrical deregulation in Ontario) when it was spun into a for-profit group of companies owned by the city I live in. Makes money, too.
Good point. I'm not particularly worried about the motivations or intentions of the folks working on this research. They sound like excited people doing cool work.
However, somewhere out there someone is thinking about the possibilities of, as User 956 notes, quantifying intent. Distilling it down to a number that statistically naive people can use to justify something.
For example, I see this at work in hiring practices where a weight is assigned to questions, and a list of preferred responses assigned their own weight. The interview complete, everyone adds up their numbers, and pretty quickly, someone starts to argue that Candidate A is The Guy, because 'he's 2 better than Candidate B'.
People will invest measures of intent with their own meanings unless there are very strong boundaries placed on interpretation.
I don't have a problem with the science. I have a problem with boneheads applying the science. I guess this is sort of what Oppenheimer found out.
The proposed system doesn't sound like a meritocracy at all. It proposes to pay people by *what they are*, not by *how well/poorly they perform*, the latter being a meritocracy in my books.
This sort of simple formula (where a certain degree or discipline is more heavily weighted in pay band determination) doesn't work. Most arms-length public institutions in Canada use a market differential component in a more complex formula that includes education (disciplines sometimes weighted differently), experience, preparation time, class size, and possibly a performance measure, etc.
The market differential allows the institution to recognise the difficulty in attracting certain disciplines in a particular market, without a long-term bias. Note that it was hard to get CS-trained folks during the dot.com boom - now, not so hard. The associated market differential should be down for CS folks (sorry, dudes).
At any rate, instead of being anxious to get some anti-union vitriol out there, why not think about what a word like 'meritocracy' means first?
OverlyCriticalGuy
You noted your post explicitly OT, so I don't think you're trying to usurp the main thread.
Ray Beckerman - who's postings and efforts I enjoy and admire tremendously - appears to be a little pissed at your post for going OT, but I'm going to take up your question anyway, mainly because I've spent some time talking to musicians, and one musician in particular, about your question.
Off-Topic
My conversational straw poll indicates that the CRIA (the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA) has been successful in getting musicians to believe they need to be partners with CRIA in a fight against music piracy. I think it's an easy place to take musicians to - it's a hot button topic, and nobody wants to feel they're getting ripped of in life.
But a musician's goal in life shouldn't be to minimise piracy, but rather, from a business perspective anyway, to maximise sales of their music. I don't think that the existence of some amount of piracy is causally linked to less sales; rather, piracy *may* be a component of a new distribution model which can help the artist sell *more* material.
So *if* some of an artist's material is pirated, but overall more people are listening to their music and more people are buying their music, do they really give a shit about the piracy that *may* be occurring?
Framed in those terms, musicians I talk to (and I know this is representative of no more than just those musicians) become a lot less uptight. And for those that still feel they're getting ripped off somehow, the Copying Levy in Canada would seem to take even that away (if the dollars collected under the Copying Levy actually got distributed to artists, 'cause I've never met anyone who's seen a penny of it, which is just another instance of the industry ripping them off, but that's another conversation).
So quit worrying about piracy that may or may not be happening, and embrace that new distribution model and sell more stuff.
I'm not an artist making my living off CD and digital copy sales, so I suppose its easy for me to say, but indie artists I know make their sales at live gigs, and I don't think that that is going to change, or that piracy has shinola to do with that. The opportunity to sell digital copies on-line to a much broader audience is an additive element - gravy on existing sales.
This has nothing to do with the sleazy civil suit stuff exposed in the deposition from Ray Beckerman's blog, which is a pretty incredible read. Interestingly, in Canada, the Copying Levy is the basis for the presence of digital music in a shared folder *not* being a problem, as I understand it. Michael Geist's blog is loaded with informative material on this matter from a Canadian perspective. For example, here's a summary of *CRIA* survey material that suggests that those who download the most music via P2P also purchase the most CD's:
n t/task,view/id,1168/Itemid,85/nsub,/
http://michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_conte
All of which suggests that the sort of RIAA thuggery shown in the article's linked deposition shoots the industry in its own feet, and then shoves said feet into their big mouths.
Oh man, even Chappelle is going over to The Dark Side. That is *not* funny, Dave.
[/humour]I don't know about the IRS, but I can tell you that Revenue Canada doesn't *ask* anyone for anything. I suspect it's the same in the States.
Revenuers don't *ask* for nothing; they *tell*.
Believe me, the US turns people away. I was refused entry into New York state (from Ontario) in 1983. In retrospect, it was my own fault, as I didn't acknowledge a criminal record for a misdemeanor when asked by INS if I had a criminal record. But once you've been refused, you're pooched man.
I was turned back in 1994 from boarding a flight originating in Canada and terminating in Canada with a stop at an American airport (I was flying American Airlines for reasons beyond my control, and there was no direct flight). I have never successfully acquired a Border Crossing Permit in time to use it within the specified time frame.
After 9/11, I was told by the law firm I had engaged to facilitate entry to forget it - things were tightening up, and people previously refused entry weren't even on the radar. DHS was looking to turn back more people, not start letting previous problem people in. I don't know if this is still the case, as I haven't investigated since 2002.
So I haven't been able to enter the U.S. since 1984, man. I'm an IT professional with no bad associations - but with a misdemeanor record from my late teens.
I suspect the OakLEE is substantively correct in his assertions. The parent post suffer from an excess of rhetoric and a dearth of supporting evidence.
A problem is that the strange case of Manuel Noriega gives credibility to assertions of waltzing over, 'cause the US sure did go to Panama and just 'take' him. Recall that U.S. forces invaded Panama in Operation Just Cause, eventually securing Noriega's surrender after he had been holed up in the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Panama City. He was taken to the States where he was tried and convicted under federal charges of cocaine trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Noriega
I think the Noriega case informs international perceptions of US behaviour WRT extradition - 'hell, they'll even invade your country if they really want you'.
That being said, it is a perception, not the case in any particular circumstance, including this one.
N.B. I am not a Noriega supporter. I understand that he was a dictatorial scumbag. I'm not trying to get in a flamefest over the rights and wrongs of Noriega's regime. I am simply using this case as an illustration of where a particular perception comes from.
Well, no FLAC's on Puretracks (hey, that rhymes!), but their mp3's are encoded at 192kbps, according to the FAQ on the MP3 section of the Canadian site at:
= GlobalNav_MP3
http://www.puretracks.com/content/viewer.aspx?cid
... with Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman saying the argument for removing DRM was "completely without logic or merit." London-based EMI Group, however, is reportedly exploring the lifting of DRM restrictions on its music. Warner this week annouced a new bid to acquire EMI.Emphasis mineSo, is Warner making the move to buy EMI to head off the gang at the DRM pass? From Warner's perspective, DRM is a we-all-stick-together proposition; the only way it can fly is if all the major labels, and hence all the major artists, close ranks and enforce DRM. Does Warner think that if EMI breaks rank, it's over? Are they willing to spend $USD 4.4 Billion to try to ensure the future of DRM?
EMWTK!
No pitchforks here. I agree with you - when the accusation includes anything at all similar to 'kiddie porn', the high moral ground has been occupied, and it seems like everything else goes out the windows
Glad to see the ex-judge busted, but wouldn't trust the kid as far as I can throw him. He weirds me out at least as much as the judge.
I mean, you can't argue the result here. But the method sure creeps me out. By focusing on child porn images, this dude gets to stalk 3000 people. And he does is by distributing a trojan, and manually reviewing the material on target computers.
The alt.comp.virus FAQ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/alt-faq/pa rt3/ references a backgrounder on the legalities of computer crime. It's venerable (1998), so I don't know to what extent the author's assertions are still accurate, but he is pretty clear: Distributing a virus affecting computers used substantially by the government or financial institutions is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. So if this had ended up on a qualifying computer, the kid would (should) have been busted. Furthermore, Most states have statutes that make it a crime to intentionally interfere with a computer system. These statutes will often cover viruses as well as other forms of computer crime.
The referenced document can be found at http://www.loundy.com/E-LAW/E-Law4-full.html#VII in Section D.
As well, if the judge hadn't admitted the journal in question was his, and disclaimed knowledge of the images, how far could they have gotten with this prosecution? The kid admits distributing a trojan, how far is it from there to distributing material? I think a defence lawyer could have a field day with this, but IANAL, just another guy with an opinion.
Bah - here come the arguments by analogy. Yegads!
But first, on topic stuff:
TFA notes that Skype's motivation is clear - to boldly place their traffic where its traffic has not gone before. Not argument here from me.
My understanding of regulation in the land-line telecommunications world is that it was driven by the desire to enable service additions and competition in a business where there were - and maybe still are - significant barriers to entry. It's expensive to get into the telecommunications business, and when long-standing infrastructure is in place, it makes sense to ensure access to that infrastructure is available to competitors, given fair remuneration for the incumbent. The alternative is duplication of infrastructure - for example, last mile cable - which is bone-headed and, as noted, expensive. Regulate for re-selling of that infrastructure. You get competition which is a Good Thing, which should be fair, encourage innovation, etc. and the incumbent opens an additional revenue stream via the re-sale.
I think it is a fair comment to say that these barriers are not the same for a wireless service. The physical transport - the atmosphere - is already there, so it's not a question of a barrier to entry as a result of cost, at least not in the same way or to the same extent as it is with land infrastructure.
However the spectrum is a shared medium - that's what removes the cost barrier above. Just because someone occupies that shared medium before you do, should they gain an element of exclusivity? I say no. Of course, everyone can start banging their service out over the spectrum, but this doesn't scale, I don't think. Sooner or later, we reach a limit on the co-occupation of the spectrum. I don't know enough about RF communications to know where or when this is, and as such I may get hammered here. If service providers can reasonably co-occupy the spectrum, then this house is made of cards and no doubt someone will tell me.
So if co-occupation if a problem, then a regulatory mechanism to force resale of infrastructure is reasonable.
But Skype doesn't want resale - it wants unencumbered use for customers on wireless networks so that its service can operate in this space. This desire sits at the core of net neutrality, and I'm for it. The service provider is paid for the user's access to the transport, and as long as this is the case, it's none of the service provider's business what I choose to put on the 'line'. You're getting paid for your minutes - don't tell me what I can or cannot say or do.
OT:Re: arguing by analogy - I can hear the 'you must be new here comments', etc. already, but what the hell. Argument by analogy is attractive because it can help others understand the *concept* of what is being discussed or asserted. But it doesn't *prove* anything - it's just a method to clarify. And mainly, it just leads to people trying to talk about one thing by talking about something else. Predictably, this takes you, well ... somewhere else.
I'm not flaming here - but for god's sakes, what do Ford cars and Chevy highways have to do with Skye, net neutrality, or whatever? And moderators seem to encourage it - got a Good Analogy? That's +5: Insightful, baby! So you can't even configure your way out of it.
Ahh ... good catch. I wouldn't expect to be anonymous if I were logged in, so it never occurred to me that folks would post 'anonymously' this way. It really just is code for substitute 'Anonymous' for 'My User Name'. If you want to be anonymous, log out.
Thanks for the info.
I don't get *this* (how many layers of abstraction can be go here?). If you're posting anonymously, how is your relation to the user account used for moderation activity detected? IP?
MAJOR HOAX DISCOVERED - /. ANONYMOUS POSTING NOT ANONYMOUS
If comment moderation had been the explanation used in the post, Taco would not have been involved, I think. It's possible that Slashdot is doing this, but it seems that that would take significant CPU time and would be annoying to users. Besides, changing fonts, quoted blocks, etc changes the fingerprint anyway.
I read two issues in TFA: 1) listening to Jobs and rumours about a DRM-free EMI, DRM is on the way out and 2) the copying levy in Canada is also on the way out, albeit not so quickly, and maybe to be replaced by something else. I'm thrilled by the first, but less optimistic (and possibly less enthusiastic) about the second.
What pisses me off about DRM is that it is not just about ensuring that content cannot be distributed to anyone holus-bolus, but it is about restricting use far and beyond current practise. It is useful to think about DRM not just in the context of say music distribution, but rather in terms of its impact on content distribution and sharing in general. A good example is Stallman's The Right to Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html; I don't think there are many people out there who will dispute that I should be able to loan you a book to read, but the current climate and direction of DRM is to indeed to restrict that practise. 'The Right to Read' might have seemed a little far-fetched in 1997 when it was written, but it sure doesn't look all that unlikely now, does it? DRM is no longer (and maybe never was!) about saving content producers from low-effort, high-volume piracy - it is now about fundamentally changing the consumers rights regarding the use of that content.
The copy levy in Canada was intended to recover dollars lost to producers and distributors as a result of technology that facilitated easy copying and the resultant alleged lost revenue. My problem with this is that we don't know whether any revenue actually is lost, and even if we accept that some is, quantifying the lost revenue is not really possible. Well, I guess you can make numbers up, but that's about it. :)
The levy has turned out to have a useful legal side-effect in Canada in that it has provided a basis for stopping P2P downloading from being identified as illegal, much to the chagrin of the distribution industry, who lobbied for the levy in the first place. Extending the levy to other devices I don't like the sound of quite so much.
However, as other posters have noted, we really haven't addressed the problem of compensation for the admittedly low-effort, higher-quality-that-cassette-mixed-tapes digital piracy that abounds today. If I download a song from my P2P network of choice, the artist hasn't been compensated. I'm suspicious of the levy being used as a mechanism for such compensation, because it is so circuitous, but I don't see the industry letting this one go now that they've got it, unless they are blindly pissed off by the legal side-effect.
As long as the levy lets me download music without fear of reprisal, and if those levy dollars could be used as a rough justice method to compensate artists for piracy that does occur (and yes, I do know this may be difficult/not possible), then I'm okay with the levy. I may even be able to live with an extension of the levy
Are there any other ideas out there about how we can fairly compensate artists for uncompensated distribution of their work?Send Buddy over to my department. I am willing to assume the company's Duty to Accommodate - plus it will help mitigate the Undue Hardship I'm experiencing in trying to locate 'The Really Good Shit' porn. I need a professional.
Just when you think I'm being a smart-ass, this isn't as far out there as you might think. I understand the motovation(s) for this sort of governance, but the implementation is getting pretty whacky. From the Canadian Human Rights Commissions website:
1. What is the duty to accommodate?The duty to accommodate is the obligation to meaningfully incorporate diversity into the workplace. The duty to accommodate involves eliminating or changing rules, policies, practices and behaviours that discriminate against persons based on a group characteristic, such as race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, marital status, family status and disability. emphasis mine
So my contribution to diversifying sexual orientation is that I wanna monkey spank all day sitting at my desk. Where's the beef? ... [Slaps Head]
http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/preventing_discrimination/ page1-en.asp
....Stealing a copy of something leaves behind no evidence...."Over and over.....copying is not stealing. It is copying. There is a difference.
You know, I've seen this statement a number of times, and I like it. My problem is that I don't think it is strictly the case.
I go to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) when in doubt. (Those of you who doubt that the OED is the definitive reference for the English language, check out the footnote below 1).
The first definition (sense d) in the citation for Steal, verb, is in conflict with the assertion above. I've removed the quotations and tried to retain the time-line of references so that we could see this is no johnny-come-lately definition, but the formatting got kooky too quick, so let it suffice to say that the first reference is in 1275.
steal, v.1I. To take dishonestly or secretly.
[
d. In wider sense: To take or appropriate dishonestly (anything belonging to another, whether material or immaterial).
Comments/questions/tomatoes?
1 If you don't care for the OED, give Simon Winchester's 'The Meaning of Everything' a read. It's a testament to the hubris of the Victorian Englishman, made all the more amazing by the fact that they pulled it off, albeit a little later than the originally estimated ten years (turned out to be 71 years). And I was boggled as to how dissertations were completed using typewriters when I had the good fortune to discover LaTeX whilest undertaking my grad thesis - these guys (and gals, check out the contribution of the Thompson sisters) did it with lined paper and pigeonholes! It really is an accomplished jewel of literature, and interestingly enough, only recently has its model been reused - look at how the democracy of Wikipedia maps onto the process of creating the OED. I was reading recently about Citizendium, and it occurred to me the Wikipedia is evolving in the direction of the original OED model ...
http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Everything-Oxford-EWell it sure kicked the shit out of cnn.com. I recall it being even sparser than this when I first viewed it, and it was slow as molasses ...
http://www.september11news.com/USAWebArchives.htm
Reminds me of:
British Bobby: "Stop or I'll yell stop again!"
Canadian Mountie: "Stop or I'll shoot!"
New Jersey State Trooper: "Stop or I'll shoot again!"
Thanks for saying this and keeping comments honest. After a while, though, and if you hear something enough times, you should know that it gets hard to keep these separate.
[Warning - offtopic]
As a Canadian who has been refused entry to the States, I only encounter Americans in Canada or when I travel internationally. This affects my sample, I suppose - Americans who travel elsewhere arguably have been heisenberg'd, or have a predisposition that leads to a comparatively internationalized point of view. All that being said, the Americans I've met are *all* at variance with American foreign policy, such I understand it via the filter it goes through getting to me. In fact, it can be quite odd - some folks spend time apologising for their government, and not because of prompting from me or any sort of expectation.
I'll tell ya, though, if the only exposure I had to America and Americans was that which comes through the lens of popular media, I think I'd be sure that America is Going Nuts. Television is a pretty weird viewport into American culture, man - from the strange celebrity that derives from 'reality' TV, Bill O'Reilly - who I just don't get at all - and soft-hearted bounty hunters praying (or is that preying) to god before they round up the bad guys ... man, that's a pretty weird view.
But just as soon as I think it is waaay over the top, other stuff knocks me on my ass; I mean, Steven Colbert is a pretty good counter-punch to Bill O'Reilly, and I just marvel that he got on the air. You don't see that sort of check and balance just anywhere.
Resenting Amercians is a past-time in Canada of some popularity, not without some reason. But quite honestly, I've always viewed America as the One True Hope for democracy in the world. This seems to be imperilled these days, though; even while democratic evangelism is said to be the basis for your foreign policy, you seem to be prepared to let it be taken away from you at home.What up with that?
I suppose someone is going to call me a troll or tell me they don't give a fsck what I think, and I'm not even quite sure why I starting writing this, but maybe it's just to say that you guys are big, complex and you scare the shit out of us at the same time you inspire us and piss us off.
Or maybe it's just a long-winded way to say that no, I don't lump you all together by any means, but you know, you are what you present to the world, if you let that happen.
Well, I was able to subscribe through an anonymizer service. The youtube sign-up requires a valid e-mail address that a confirmation message can be sent to. Sending the confirmation uri through the anonymizer service failed - I can't see the internals of the service enough to understand where the failure occurred (tamper data showed everything ok from my browser's perspective).
Based on this, a youtube account *may* require direct session between your client and youtube for successful sign-up, which would guarantee that they get your IP at sign-up time. And if they get it, they keep it - of that I have no doubt.
Any librarians out there?
I can come up with a number of answers to the question "What is the mandate of a 21st century library?". But I'm not a librarian, so that leaves me as just another opinion on /.
Are computers in libraries a straight support mechanism for traditional school library activities - i.e. do they simply augment the act of research in a library?
Or perhaps we should focus on the entertainment aspect - every library I've been in has a fiction section, and unless you're researching something *about* fiction, then fiction is for entertainment and perhaps personal growth.
This bill appears to support the 'libraries are for research' approach. But public libraries are about *more* than research - they're about entertainment, they're about equity of access to information, and it's not so clear to me that that doesn't include social networking in this day and age.
I also appreciate that providing a mechanism for somebody's kid to get around restrictions at home on IM - 'I'm going to the library to study, Mom!' - may not be the goal.
Suggestions about reserving seats for different uses appear to make the most sense to me.
However, I know a public librarian who would like to throw Internet access out the door of the public library she works at - from her perspective, it's where all the hassles originate, degrading the library goer's experience. Kids arguing over computers, creeps going to porn sites, etc.
What do librarians say? What is a vision for a library today?
Mod parent up. I know that not reading TFA is damn near de rigeur on /., but this is a tad ridiculous, isn't it?
Maybe we can invent a new mod category here - we could call it 'gestalt'. Let everyone comment away, then rank 'em on unseen insightfulness (hey, I *like* that) after we actually get to see the article.
Who's in?
The Private Copying Levy is what lets me download with impunity in Canada. The dollars may or may not actually get to the artists (google away on this one), but it certainly does facilitate my p2p activities.
n t/task,view/id,1200/Itemid,85/nsub,/
I don't know who the 'Private Copyright Collective' is, but this position is at odds with what we've been hearing about the Canadian Recording Industry Association's position - last heard as wanting to do away with the levy:
http://michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_conte
I think this is an interesting tactic: collect levy at the front end, squeeze the availability of material via p2p networks through increased DRM on released materials.
Quite honestly, I don't really notice the levy at my pocketbook, and it does make for an entirely different legal landscape for p2p downloading. Michael Geist is the Guy in the Know about this landscape in Canada - check out his blog at the address above, there's reams of material there.
Summary is linked to the *middle* of the article. This ensures that any /. reader who actually goes to TFA doesn't have to read any of that pesky 'context' or let any of that tiresome 'background' get in their way. Gotta get those First Post!! articles in!