Simple. Use public-key crypto. Have a four byte cd key. Sign it with the private key. Done. Don't be so quick to disqualify public-private key crypto. It really works well for just about everything.
Of course, the problem with this would be that no one wants to type in a cd key that long. My suggestion is to actually put it on the cd. That way no one has to type in anything. Of course, you would have to have a way to burn every cd slightly differently.
I haven't played uo either, but you can get uo at a store for $10, and it's packaged with (at least, not sure) the first month of play. Since additional months are $10, I don't see the problem with such a model...
Are you drunk? The li0n worm hit a lot of linux/unix machines back in january. We're not immune to worms or viruses. We never have been, we never will be. Imho, our security is better than microsoft's, but that does not make us immune to exploits. If you're just realizing this now, you better wake up from your drunken stupor.
The board is run by people appointed by corporations that have pumped money into ICANN. Since they want to reduce the number of At Large elected members, and make it harder to join the At Large program, I hardly believe that it could be considered "global self-regulation". Perhaps this should read:
This is *screwed up*. If this is allowed to stand, then it will mean that all web sites in the US will have to conform to the state laws of *every* state if they want to avoid fighting off law suits. The death of the internet as we know it. Unless we all leave the US, which is looking more and more attractive everyday. I'll stick around long enough to see what happens though.
What mechanism would allow fair use but not mass infringement of digital copyright?
I have no idea. But I'm not willing to sacrifice fair use in order to protect copyrighted material. I do think that protecting copyrighted material is important, but not as important as fair use of the material.
Also, I'm not willing to sacrifice first amendment rights to protect copyrighted material. I believe that source code should be protected under the first amendment. Thus, I should have the right to write and distribute code that would break technological protection measures.
I wish that copyright were not so at odds with free speech at this moment, but I would completely trash copyright before I would give up free speech. Both are important, but free speech is much more important that copyright. --
I don't have a huge problem with the entire realm of information being regulated.
I do.
We're actually there already, information is regulated based on its attributes.
I disagree. Copyrighted works are regulated, but much information is not.
I've often told folks that a good starting point is that, if behavior is illegal in meatspace, you'd better examine its parallel in cyberspace.
I agree.
While I'm sure folks think its cute that RMS uses copyright as a weapon against copyright, RMS wouldn't think its cute if Microsoft helped itself to unrestricted use of GPL'ed software.
RMS believes in copyright. I do too. There's nothing wrong with restricting distribution of a copyrighted work. That's the whole point of copyright. What I have a problem with is restricting uses of a copyrighted work which have previously been considered fair use.
I'd have to have it nailed down more %^) I'm not sure how to make it more clear.
For instance, I work with software that I have no permission to talk about outside of allowable venues.
Which brings up a whole other topic. Information which is restricted by contract. I don't have any problem with this. When you signed the contract, you knew about the restrictions, and agreed to them. So I don't have a problem as long as the restrictions were clearly stated in the contract.
Given the 'information econonomy', since information has value, the law is going to be all over the realm in which information lives.
The information economy of the information age. We're not there yet, but we're moving in that direction. The question which plagues me is this: how Free will information be in the information age, when we get there? Some corporations want no freedom. I would at least like to keep the degree of freedom we have now. I'd be happy if we repealed the dmca, and passed legislation to protect fair use.
I think we still have a misunderstanding. I believe that *most* (not all) information should be Free. But not necessarily the *form* of the information.
Suppose you copyright your resume (don't know why you would, but just as an example). I would still be able to distribute the information that your resume contains, but I would not be able to distribute the resume itself (w/o your permission).
So if I write a program to decrypt dvd's, and copyright it, it isn't freely distributable. But someone can copy my algorithm, and distribute that, because that is just information which my program contains, and not the program itself.
Does this make sense?
As for personal info, I think we need laws to protect privacy. But these laws must be very carefully crafted, or they'll do more harm than good.
Any other info you think should be regulated other than personal info?
> I am really interested in this IP debate
I think we agree on IP more than you think. We just have our definitions of information confused. You think a copyrighted work is information, whereas I think the copyrighted work *contains* information. The information is freely distributable. The work isn't. That's what I think anyway. Do you agree if you use my definition of information? --
You are correct that personal information shouldn't be free. However, that's not a very good example, seeing as how personal information *is* sold. And *is* posted. Unless your a minor, there's not bloody much you can do about it.
Copyright exists to protect a *form* of information, and not the information itself. That's why I said that freedom of information can co-exist with sane copyright laws. Our society is *very close* to having a degree of information freedom that I would be happy with.
I do believe in copyright, and did not intend for my post to imply that I didn't. But our current copyright laws are screwed up. I need not comment further about the dmca, but I will say I believe the current copyright term of 92 years is *far* too long. I would suggest fifty years.
I agree that our first amendment rights are being violated, but Sklyarov was not arrested for criticizing Adobe. He was arrested for traficking a "circumvention device."
I fail to see how our rights to criticize governments and large corporations are being taken away.
The two things about the dmca that I don't like:
1. Outlaws fair use.
2. Traficking a circumvention device should be protected by the first amendment. So the dmca violates our first amendment right to spread information about how to circumvent "technological protection measures." It should be noted that this is the first copyright law which restricts the spread of information, instead of the form of the information.
Information wants to be free. Freedom of information can co-exist with sane copyright laws.
Restore freedom of information. Reform copyright law.
I'd be careful about doing that. Most dvd rom drives are set up so you can only change the region code five times. After that, you're stuck. The way I understand this is that it's implemented in the drive's hardware, so software can't fix it...
Fortunately, I got my dvd rom drive before they started doing that. I wonder how the RCE discs work on these drives. I'll be quite angry if they don't work... --
I wonder how difficult it would be to make the next version of unicode be 24 bit? It would break all existing implementations of course, but since unicode doesn't solve the problem it was designed to solve, continued existance in its present form is certainly not beneficial...
Harlan Ellison is really intelligent too. I love some of his stories.
Though I believe some of his position is justified, I disagree with it He's suing aol because software they developed (gnutella) was used to pirate his works. I know everyone here has heard this a million times, but that's like suing sony for making cd burners. What I would like to see is one of the people who *actually pirated* his work to pay for it. Looks like the guy who actually posted his stories to usenet got off scotch-free. I don't want to hold ISP's liable for their user's actions. I want to hold the actual users liable. --
You have to agree that the introduction of the clans destroyed a brilliant balance. Before the clans, there was no perfect 'mech for any given task. A limited number of 'mechs, with only a few variants each. No 'mech was optimally configured. The inner sphere had basically lost the technology necessary to build 'mechs. A 'mech was more valuable than the life of it's pilot. IMO, this was much more interesting to play than after the clans arrived.
Introduce the clans. The clans can build 'mechs. Then the inner sphere learns how to as well. The clans have highly configurable 'mechs. When you see a certain kind of 'mech, you have no clue what is on it. All you know is the weight. It could be configured for speed. Could be configured for close combat. You don't know.
I agree that there are unresolved ethical questions about distance learning. But I don't think you pointed any of them out. What you suggest is simply censorship, pure and simple. Of course we should keep these hate groups out of our schools, but we can't keep them from offering "educational materials" to the general public, because to do so would violate the first amendment.
The ethical questions I would point out are of the effectiveness of distance learning. What you are doing is taking the presence of the teacher away from some of the students. I believe it would be very difficult to teach in such a situation. Having a message board to post questions to is very different from being able to raise your hand and ask a question. Even with cameras and two way streaming video, this is no substitute for actualy teacher presence, imo.
I loved battletech. My brother and I used to play. We'd spend hours filling out mech sheets, then line all our mechs up on a huge hex sheet and go at it. It was hours of fun for the whole family. And such a balanced game too.
Until they released all the clan stuff. Then it seemed the game was targetted to an audience that a certain battletech website called "munchies"
But what I really hated about all the clan stuff was that it seemed to take the strategy out of the game. Clan "rules of warfare" dictated that all combat was one-on-one. IMO, this makes game play *much* less interesting. One way to avoid this would be to have a inner sphere vs. clan battle. Good luck. Clan 'mechs and equipment are much superior. Whoever played the inner sphere would have to be a tactical genius to win.
I definitely agree. I don't believe that measuring a student's ability to learn a new video game against their grades in a class would have much correlation. Past and current involvement with video games would be much more interesting. I would also be interested to know not only how much video games they had played in the past, but what genre. I would expect having played a lot of puzzle games in the past would have a much different effect, than say, playing shooters.
Even if such a study could be done (which I highly doubt because it would have to be done on humans), it would still not result in doom (or any other violent game) becoming illegal. At worst, it would mean that it would be illegal for minors to play violent games. Not that this is a wonderful thing, but it is the worst possible scenario. I find particularly interesting the study which looked at the short term effects. More aggressive punishment by those who played wolf3d. Less aggressive punishment by those who played myst. I think the lesson we can learn from this is clear. Balance your violent game-play with Myst.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Sony is also selling the ps2 at a loss. So, this is common for consoles. I believe Nintendo does make money from console sales though.
So, how would you do it?
Simple. Use public-key crypto. Have a four byte cd key. Sign it with the private key. Done. Don't be so quick to disqualify public-private key crypto. It really works well for just about everything.
Of course, the problem with this would be that no one wants to type in a cd key that long. My suggestion is to actually put it on the cd. That way no one has to type in anything. Of course, you would have to have a way to burn every cd slightly differently.
I haven't played uo either, but you can get uo at a store for $10, and it's packaged with (at least, not sure) the first month of play. Since additional months are $10, I don't see the problem with such a model...
We can cut out the parts that Speilberg screwed up. Stupid Speilberg...
Are you drunk? The li0n worm hit a lot of linux/unix machines back in january. We're not immune to worms or viruses. We never have been, we never will be. Imho, our security is better than microsoft's, but that does not make us immune to exploits. If you're just realizing this now, you better wake up from your drunken stupor.
global self-regulation? riiiiight.
The board is run by people appointed by corporations that have pumped money into ICANN. Since they want to reduce the number of At Large elected members, and make it harder to join the At Large program, I hardly believe that it could be considered "global self-regulation". Perhaps this should read:
This is *screwed up*. If this is allowed to stand, then it will mean that all web sites in the US will have to conform to the state laws of *every* state if they want to avoid fighting off law suits. The death of the internet as we know it. Unless we all leave the US, which is looking more and more attractive everyday. I'll stick around long enough to see what happens though.
What mechanism would allow fair use but not mass infringement of digital copyright?
I have no idea. But I'm not willing to sacrifice fair use in order to protect copyrighted material. I do think that protecting copyrighted material is important, but not as important as fair use of the material.
Also, I'm not willing to sacrifice first amendment rights to protect copyrighted material. I believe that source code should be protected under the first amendment. Thus, I should have the right to write and distribute code that would break technological protection measures.
I wish that copyright were not so at odds with free speech at this moment, but I would completely trash copyright before I would give up free speech. Both are important, but free speech is much more important that copyright.
--
I don't have a huge problem with the entire realm of information being regulated.
I do.
We're actually there already, information is regulated based on its attributes.
I disagree. Copyrighted works are regulated, but much information is not.
I've often told folks that a good starting point is that, if behavior is illegal in meatspace, you'd better examine its parallel in cyberspace.
I agree.
While I'm sure folks think its cute that RMS uses copyright as a weapon against copyright, RMS wouldn't think its cute if Microsoft helped itself to unrestricted use of GPL'ed software.
RMS believes in copyright. I do too. There's nothing wrong with restricting distribution of a copyrighted work. That's the whole point of copyright. What I have a problem with is restricting uses of a copyrighted work which have previously been considered fair use.
I'd have to have it nailed down more %^)
I'm not sure how to make it more clear.
For instance, I work with software that I have no permission to talk about outside of allowable venues.
Which brings up a whole other topic. Information which is restricted by contract. I don't have any problem with this. When you signed the contract, you knew about the restrictions, and agreed to them. So I don't have a problem as long as the restrictions were clearly stated in the contract.
Given the 'information econonomy', since information has value, the law is going to be all over the realm in which information lives.
The information economy of the information age. We're not there yet, but we're moving in that direction. The question which plagues me is this: how Free will information be in the information age, when we get there? Some corporations want no freedom. I would at least like to keep the degree of freedom we have now. I'd be happy if we repealed the dmca, and passed legislation to protect fair use.
--
I think we still have a misunderstanding. I believe that *most* (not all) information should be Free. But not necessarily the *form* of the information.
Suppose you copyright your resume (don't know why you would, but just as an example). I would still be able to distribute the information that your resume contains, but I would not be able to distribute the resume itself (w/o your permission).
So if I write a program to decrypt dvd's, and copyright it, it isn't freely distributable. But someone can copy my algorithm, and distribute that, because that is just information which my program contains, and not the program itself.
Does this make sense?
As for personal info, I think we need laws to protect privacy. But these laws must be very carefully crafted, or they'll do more harm than good.
Any other info you think should be regulated other than personal info?
> I am really interested in this IP debate
I think we agree on IP more than you think. We just have our definitions of information confused. You think a copyrighted work is information, whereas I think the copyrighted work *contains* information. The information is freely distributable. The work isn't. That's what I think anyway. Do you agree if you use my definition of information?
--
You are correct that personal information shouldn't be free. However, that's not a very good example, seeing as how personal information *is* sold. And *is* posted. Unless your a minor, there's not bloody much you can do about it.
Copyright exists to protect a *form* of information, and not the information itself. That's why I said that freedom of information can co-exist with sane copyright laws. Our society is *very close* to having a degree of information freedom that I would be happy with.
I do believe in copyright, and did not intend for my post to imply that I didn't. But our current copyright laws are screwed up. I need not comment further about the dmca, but I will say I believe the current copyright term of 92 years is *far* too long. I would suggest fifty years.
--
I agree that our first amendment rights are being violated, but Sklyarov was not arrested for criticizing Adobe. He was arrested for traficking a "circumvention device."
I fail to see how our rights to criticize governments and large corporations are being taken away.
The two things about the dmca that I don't like:
1. Outlaws fair use.
2. Traficking a circumvention device should be protected by the first amendment. So the dmca violates our first amendment right to spread information about how to circumvent "technological protection measures." It should be noted that this is the first copyright law which restricts the spread of information, instead of the form of the information.
Information wants to be free. Freedom of information can co-exist with sane copyright laws.
Restore freedom of information. Reform copyright law.
--
It's really more of a novela than a novel. IIRC, it's only 50 or 60 pages. Great story though.
--
Yeah, I'm aware of those programs, but will these hacks (cracks?) work for RCE discs? I have no idea.
--
I'd be careful about doing that. Most dvd rom drives are set up so you can only change the region code five times. After that, you're stuck. The way I understand this is that it's implemented in the drive's hardware, so software can't fix it... Fortunately, I got my dvd rom drive before they started doing that. I wonder how the RCE discs work on these drives. I'll be quite angry if they don't work...
--
I wonder how difficult it would be to make the next version of unicode be 24 bit? It would break all existing implementations of course, but since unicode doesn't solve the problem it was designed to solve, continued existance in its present form is certainly not beneficial...
Maybe it should be 32 bit just to make sure...
--
That article is pretty bogus.
It claims that the NSA has a device which can translate radio transmissions from any language to any other language.
riiiiight.
--
Harlan Ellison is really intelligent too. I love some of his stories.
Though I believe some of his position is justified, I disagree with it He's suing aol because software they developed (gnutella) was used to pirate his works. I know everyone here has heard this a million times, but that's like suing sony for making cd burners. What I would like to see is one of the people who *actually pirated* his work to pay for it. Looks like the guy who actually posted his stories to usenet got off scotch-free. I don't want to hold ISP's liable for their user's actions. I want to hold the actual users liable.
--
You have to agree that the introduction of the clans destroyed a brilliant balance. Before the clans, there was no perfect 'mech for any given task. A limited number of 'mechs, with only a few variants each. No 'mech was optimally configured. The inner sphere had basically lost the technology necessary to build 'mechs. A 'mech was more valuable than the life of it's pilot. IMO, this was much more interesting to play than after the clans arrived.
Introduce the clans. The clans can build 'mechs. Then the inner sphere learns how to as well. The clans have highly configurable 'mechs. When you see a certain kind of 'mech, you have no clue what is on it. All you know is the weight. It could be configured for speed. Could be configured for close combat. You don't know.
I agree that there are unresolved ethical questions about distance learning. But I don't think you pointed any of them out. What you suggest is simply censorship, pure and simple. Of course we should keep these hate groups out of our schools, but we can't keep them from offering "educational materials" to the general public, because to do so would violate the first amendment.
The ethical questions I would point out are of the effectiveness of distance learning. What you are doing is taking the presence of the teacher away from some of the students. I believe it would be very difficult to teach in such a situation. Having a message board to post questions to is very different from being able to raise your hand and ask a question. Even with cameras and two way streaming video, this is no substitute for actualy teacher presence, imo.
But then, ianae (i am not an educator)
I loved battletech. My brother and I used to play. We'd spend hours filling out mech sheets, then line all our mechs up on a huge hex sheet and go at it. It was hours of fun for the whole family. And such a balanced game too. Until they released all the clan stuff. Then it seemed the game was targetted to an audience that a certain battletech website called "munchies" But what I really hated about all the clan stuff was that it seemed to take the strategy out of the game. Clan "rules of warfare" dictated that all combat was one-on-one. IMO, this makes game play *much* less interesting. One way to avoid this would be to have a inner sphere vs. clan battle. Good luck. Clan 'mechs and equipment are much superior. Whoever played the inner sphere would have to be a tactical genius to win.
I definitely agree. I don't believe that measuring a student's ability to learn a new video game against their grades in a class would have much correlation. Past and current involvement with video games would be much more interesting. I would also be interested to know not only how much video games they had played in the past, but what genre. I would expect having played a lot of puzzle games in the past would have a much different effect, than say, playing shooters.
lol
I remember that game. It was great fun until I took it to school when I was in fifth grade and another student figured out the optimal strategy...
Even if such a study could be done (which I highly doubt because it would have to be done on humans), it would still not result in doom (or any other violent game) becoming illegal. At worst, it would mean that it would be illegal for minors to play violent games. Not that this is a wonderful thing, but it is the worst possible scenario. I find particularly interesting the study which looked at the short term effects. More aggressive punishment by those who played wolf3d. Less aggressive punishment by those who played myst. I think the lesson we can learn from this is clear. Balance your violent game-play with Myst.
Odd. I got the ICANN At Large announcement, but I didn't get any of the spam. I wonder how that happenned.