Kinda sad that the only way out of a two party system is instant runoff voting, and congress will never ever enact voting reform that jeopardizes the two party system.
People said the same thing about the British system, which has been two party since before the U.S. was formed, but it looks as though there may well be changes within one year. Change is not impossible, but the main parties who will lose out will fight it tooth and nail.
You comment is like saying if I put a bag over your heard, you will find a way to moderate your breathing.
This is a massive exaggeration. If your comment is true - that regulating CO2 is so lethal to industry - then how come the European Union Emission Trading Scheme hasn't brought the EU to its knees? How come Germany is second in exports to only China, despite having a central position in the EU, and a fraction of the population of China?
take all those scientists sent to convince the world they needed to tax and impoverish their populations through IPCC reports, and put them in a room with the purpose of finding practical sources of clean energy or ways to make existing sources cleaner.
So, rather than just have the nations involved feedback the cost of the externality to an emitting company, and allow each company to moderate their behaviour as they wish, you would rather have a global group of scientists, financed by your governments through taxation, with the aim of developing emission reduction solutions that will be enforced on companies?
Surely companies know best how to reduce their emissions? Surely the capitalist way would be to feedback the cost of the externality and let the market handle it? Why do you want a statist, government-led solution instead?
The only difference will be that they will pay more
That is what the power companies said when the EPA began to regulate SO2 emissions, but it didn't happen - instead, the emitting companies significantly reduced their emissions to the point where the cost of a permit became negligible.
The reality is that, when the cost of an externality is added to the cost of an activity, then people will moderate that activity to lower their own costs. This is basic economics.
So they were all fined a combined 402 million. They made that,
Did they? What were the profits of the respective DRAM divisions of these companies in the period that the cartel operated (1998-2002)?
I'm not disputing your claim - just asking for evidence. Hynix lost $4 billion in 2008; the DRAM market has traditionally been highly competitive and not the huge source of profits that some people think it is.
Nations like the US and EU don't want to punish companies too harshly.
The stated aim of fines due to EU competition policy is to "deter companies from setting up or continuing cartels". Think of it in the same regards as the FSF and GPL enforcement - the aim is to bring companies into compliance, not to generate funds by way of punishment. Obviously a fine will also act as a form of punishment - the difference is that the policy is to bring companies into compliance with the law, rather than bring companies to the edge of bankruptcy.
Your response had nothing to do with the UK or the US
The context of this Slashdot story is a British man being extradited from the UK to the US. The poster I was replying to was explicitly talking about the UK and US, and in fact used the acronyms UK or US eleven times in his post. Apparently, this was not enough to convey that the context of my statement may relate to the UK and US, and for this I humbly apologise.
Downloading is not distribution
The post that I replied to (and quoted) specifically mentioned bittorrent, not generic downloads. The bittorrent protocol is, by design, almost always one that also distributes.
(in order to be criminal, it has to include a profit motive, so using bittorent for personal use isn't going to land you in jail).
The original poster claimed that copyright infringement was a civil issue (not criminal) in the context of extradition treaties. My point was that in many countries copyright infringement is a criminal issue. In the UK the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that "The making, dealing in or use of infringing copies is a criminal offence". There does not need to be a profit motive - making a copy (bittorrent download) or using a copy (watching that downloaded movie) is a criminal act. I would imagine that the law is probably the same in Australia.
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
Note that only (A) requires a profit motive. (B) would cover pretty much any bittorrenting if the prosecutor could establish that "one downloader"="one infringing copy", so the financial cost of works would be = cost of movie * number_of_downloaders.
Conspiracy to commit copyright infringement is a criminal act if the conspiracy would reasonably be harmful to society.
conspiracy: a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act
It could easily be argued that a bittorrent download constitutes a conspiracy between the downloaders to commit unlawful copyright infringement, which again would be a criminal act.
"The Pirate Party delivers bandwidth to the home page and the search engine The Pirate Bay, while the tracker and the torrent files that were previously on the page are now hosted elsewhere. These were never affected by the German court decision."
"The only sure defense against rape is the willingness to fight, and even this may be no protection against gang assault. In many prisons a small, unaggressive white is sure to be raped, probably by blacks or Hispanics. As one prison guard explains, a young white has “almost zero” chance of escaping rape “unless he’s willing to stick someone with a knife and fortunate enough to have one.” Some of the tougher inmates may even fight each other for the chance to rape an effeminate young white."link
Have you never, ever committed a crime? Really? Because if you have, maybe you would like to reconsider your views.
"I hate to say this, but if you weren't racist when you came to prison more than likely you will be when you leave."
Sounds like a great way to rehabilitate criminals and build a better society. Not.
The treaty was written and signed to combat terrorism.
No it wasn't. The treaty was written to allow people to be extradited for non-terrorist acts - there have already been extraditions for financial fraud, child abuse, and price fixing. See Wikipedia. If lawmakers had wanted to limit it to acts of terrorism, they could have done so, but they didn't. Clearly, the treaty was also intended to cover non-terrorism crimes.
I am curious as to whether the US law has ever been used to extradite a US citizen to the UK?
You also probably shouldn't be sending folks to the US over bittorrent downloads seeing as how that is a civil crime and I am pretty damn sure not subject to extradition treaties.
Copyright infringement is a criminal act. At least one person has already been extradited to the US on charges of copyright infringement.
in order for the extradition to work, the US have to state damages above a certain level.
Citation please? As far as I know, the US only have to show that they suspect he may have committed a crime eg. Alex Stone) was extradited on mere suspicion of assault, with no evidence and no $ loss value.
As regards extradition, where I am.au, and I imagine in the UK too (since we share much of the same law on questions like these), an extradition should be granted only for an offence recognised by local (ie the country granting the request) law
Maybe not. The extradition of Ian Norris was approved by a court despite his acts not being a crime in the UK. He appealed on that basis and was successful, but then got extradited on "obstruction of justice" - a pretty generic offence. I would like to see the British judicial system attempt to extradite a US citizen for "obstruction of justice" with regard to an event that was not a crime in the US - I suspect such an extradition attempt would be unsuccessful.
It was made illegal in the Terrorism Act 2006, which was passed following the 7/7 London bombings. The Act itself was controversial, as it brought in new crimes of "glorifying" terrorism, and "inciting someone to commit acts of terrorism", both of which have implications for free speech. The new laws have been used to successfully prosecute various people such as "cyber-jihadist" Younes Tsouli.
Being that the ODB port is generally directly under the drivers side dash, its rather hard for someone to plug into it without it being noticed.
Yeah, but the network that port is attached to is physically wired throughout the car. Hypothetically you might be able to get access to it via sensors on the gas tank, exhaust, sunroof, doors etc.
The researcher's basic issue is that the network protocol for digital components in automobiles has few security features. Imagine a computer network in some safety critical environment - say, a manufacturing facility where servers provide monitoring and control functions. These servers are linked by a network switch that allows a single compromised device to sniff and spoof all traffic. Furthermore, imagine that there is no ssh, no login password etc. A single compromised server could be used to effectively do anything that is possible from any other server. Now, this is undoubtedly the way that many server rooms operate, but more security conscious sites will install firewalls between servers, filter command packets, have servers use encryption and authentication, so that serverA knows that it really is taking commands from serverB. That is essentially what the researchers are arguing - that as more and more microcontrollers are connected to the onboard diagnostics network, then it would be useful for that network to include some security features. How long will it be before there are wireless interfaces to the network? Do OnStar and similar systems just provide a link to the onboard diagnostic network? If so, then that could be exploited remotely. Is the OnStar protocol limited to cutting the engine? Or would it also allow you to accelerate and disable the brakes?
Another reason that the comparison with DRM may be invalid - your computer can't be used to kill you, no matter how hacked its software is. People are naturally more concerned when a hack of the device could result in casualties, regardless of whether the hack requires physical access. Would you trust any old PC technician to service your PC if the results could kill you?
Whether you would call a complete network of devices that encrypt and authenticate communications any two peers a "DRM" system is debatable. There is certainly a similarity to, say, printer manufacturers locking out foreign ink systems, but in this case the argument could certainly be made that a Toyota braking system should never be blindly accepting commands from anything other than a Toyota brake pedal, etc. Should the engine blindly accept acceleration commands from the gas tank sensors? Surely it makes sense to lock it down and not allow this?
must be producing something that uses it or actively developing something that uses it
Two problems:
Does the item that uses the patent have to actually do anything? I can take a patent, and then implement some product that I have absolutely no intention of ever selling or releasing to the public. And if I did sell it, would there be a minimum sales threshold for the patent to be valid? If I make a single item, put it on ebay, does that then make the patent valid?
What about companies that produce intellectual property, such as patents, and then license those patents to third parties? The patents involved in this model are now no longer valid, because the inventor does not directly produce items for sale?
The patent system relies on the ability to discriminate between entities with valid patents, and entities without valid patents. This is the fundamental issue - whether this is even possible. Even assuming that it is possible, there are still problems.
Who decides whether or not a patent is valid. How is a jury qualified to decide on patent validity? Should there be some alternative? What?
The cost. Will the state continue to finance the patent system, through patent offices, examiners, courts? Fixing the patent system will require a greater investment than is currently being made by any nation - who is going to pay for this? The inventor? That would favour rich over the poor. Should it continue to be paid for through taxation? That will require increasing taxes.
The current system favours large corporations that can afford to keep patent lawyers on the payroll. Small inventors can not afford court cases that run for years.
Geographical scope of patents in a globalised economy. What if a company in China violates your U.S/E.U. patents, running software on servers that are accessible globally? This kind of scenario requires a global patent framework, with some kind of oversight body (WIPO? United Nations?). Do you really want that? If you say that corporations in other countries can willfully violate patents, then corporations will favour locating subsidiaries in countries that have no patent enforcement. We are already seeing this - hardware companies moving to China, which has one of the lowest rates of patent enforcement in the world, and biotech companies opening R&D subsidiaries in India.
Where is the evidence that the patent system actually does what it is supposed to - that is, enable real inventors to fairly profit from their inventions, whilst maintaining the right of others to compete fairly by manufacturing their own inventions. When was the last time you heard a positive patent story? Ever?
come to an even worse dead-end when that runs out too
When the sun dies, all life on Earth will end. The only hope of surviving such an event is to discover a non-Earth non-Sun based energy source and travel to the stars. However, there might not be such an energy source, in which case the human species will end - the only questions are how and when.
Statistics on browser share are difficult, and these results are biased towards tech users. What I'm seeing from fellow developers at the moment is that most are mixing firefox (with firebug) for development, and chromium for actual browsing. I'm not saying that Chrome is particularly better than Firefox, but that there may be good reasons that people are using Chrome despite the serious disadvantage of it not having the great Firefox plugins, and Mozilla corp. would be acting reasonably to investigate why.
Slashdot Mirror
Kinda sad that the only way out of a two party system is instant runoff voting, and congress will never ever enact voting reform that jeopardizes the two party system.
People said the same thing about the British system, which has been two party since before the U.S. was formed, but it looks as though there may well be changes within one year. Change is not impossible, but the main parties who will lose out will fight it tooth and nail.
You comment is like saying if I put a bag over your heard, you will find a way to moderate your breathing.
This is a massive exaggeration. If your comment is true - that regulating CO2 is so lethal to industry - then how come the European Union Emission Trading Scheme hasn't brought the EU to its knees? How come Germany is second in exports to only China, despite having a central position in the EU, and a fraction of the population of China?
Because the only way for most companies to reduce carbon emissions is to reduce the amount of business they do
That is what people said about regulating SO2 emissions, and yet somehow the world survived...
take all those scientists sent to convince the world they needed to tax and impoverish their populations through IPCC reports, and put them in a room with the purpose of finding practical sources of clean energy or ways to make existing sources cleaner.
So, rather than just have the nations involved feedback the cost of the externality to an emitting company, and allow each company to moderate their behaviour as they wish, you would rather have a global group of scientists, financed by your governments through taxation, with the aim of developing emission reduction solutions that will be enforced on companies?
Surely companies know best how to reduce their emissions? Surely the capitalist way would be to feedback the cost of the externality and let the market handle it? Why do you want a statist, government-led solution instead?
The only difference will be that they will pay more
That is what the power companies said when the EPA began to regulate SO2 emissions, but it didn't happen - instead, the emitting companies significantly reduced their emissions to the point where the cost of a permit became negligible.
The reality is that, when the cost of an externality is added to the cost of an activity, then people will moderate that activity to lower their own costs. This is basic economics.
So they were all fined a combined 402 million. They made that,
Did they? What were the profits of the respective DRAM divisions of these companies in the period that the cartel operated (1998-2002)?
I'm not disputing your claim - just asking for evidence. Hynix lost $4 billion in 2008; the DRAM market has traditionally been highly competitive and not the huge source of profits that some people think it is.
Nations like the US and EU don't want to punish companies too harshly.
The stated aim of fines due to EU competition policy is to "deter companies from setting up or continuing cartels". Think of it in the same regards as the FSF and GPL enforcement - the aim is to bring companies into compliance, not to generate funds by way of punishment. Obviously a fine will also act as a form of punishment - the difference is that the policy is to bring companies into compliance with the law, rather than bring companies to the edge of bankruptcy.
Your response had nothing to do with the UK or the US
The context of this Slashdot story is a British man being extradited from the UK to the US. The poster I was replying to was explicitly talking about the UK and US, and in fact used the acronyms UK or US eleven times in his post. Apparently, this was not enough to convey that the context of my statement may relate to the UK and US, and for this I humbly apologise.
Downloading is not distribution
The post that I replied to (and quoted) specifically mentioned bittorrent, not generic downloads. The bittorrent protocol is, by design, almost always one that also distributes.
(in order to be criminal, it has to include a profit motive, so using bittorent for personal use isn't going to land you in jail).
The original poster claimed that copyright infringement was a civil issue (not criminal) in the context of extradition treaties. My point was that in many countries copyright infringement is a criminal issue. In the UK the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that "The making, dealing in or use of infringing copies is a criminal offence". There does not need to be a profit motive - making a copy (bittorrent download) or using a copy (watching that downloaded movie) is a criminal act. I would imagine that the law is probably the same in Australia.
In the USA, criminal infringement must be willful and one of:
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
Note that only (A) requires a profit motive. (B) would cover pretty much any bittorrenting if the prosecutor could establish that "one downloader"="one infringing copy", so the financial cost of works would be = cost of movie * number_of_downloaders.
Conspiracy to commit copyright infringement is a criminal act if the conspiracy would reasonably be harmful to society.
conspiracy: a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act
It could easily be argued that a bittorrent download constitutes a conspiracy between the downloaders to commit unlawful copyright infringement, which again would be a criminal act.
From TF translation:
"The Pirate Party delivers bandwidth to the home page and the search engine The Pirate Bay, while the tracker and the torrent files that were previously on the page are now hosted elsewhere. These were never affected by the German court decision."
I hope he has the shit raped out of him
+5 Insightful? Only on Slashdot...
"The only sure defense against rape is the willingness to fight, and even this may be no protection against gang assault. In many prisons a small, unaggressive white is sure to be raped, probably by blacks or Hispanics. As one prison guard explains, a young white has “almost zero” chance of escaping rape “unless he’s willing to stick someone with a knife and fortunate enough to have one.” Some of the tougher inmates may even fight each other for the chance to rape an effeminate young white." link
Have you never, ever committed a crime? Really? Because if you have, maybe you would like to reconsider your views.
"I hate to say this, but if you weren't racist when you came to prison more than likely you will be when you leave."
Sounds like a great way to rehabilitate criminals and build a better society. Not.
The treaty was written and signed to combat terrorism.
No it wasn't. The treaty was written to allow people to be extradited for non-terrorist acts - there have already been extraditions for financial fraud, child abuse, and price fixing. See Wikipedia. If lawmakers had wanted to limit it to acts of terrorism, they could have done so, but they didn't. Clearly, the treaty was also intended to cover non-terrorism crimes.
I am curious as to whether the US law has ever been used to extradite a US citizen to the UK?
You also probably shouldn't be sending folks to the US over bittorrent downloads seeing as how that is a civil crime and I am pretty damn sure not subject to extradition treaties.
Copyright infringement is a criminal act. At least one person has already been extradited to the US on charges of copyright infringement.
in order for the extradition to work, the US have to state damages above a certain level.
Citation please? As far as I know, the US only have to show that they suspect he may have committed a crime eg. Alex Stone) was extradited on mere suspicion of assault, with no evidence and no $ loss value.
As regards extradition, where I am .au, and I imagine in the UK too (since we share much of the same law on questions like these), an extradition should be granted only for an offence recognised by local (ie the country granting the request) law
Maybe not. The extradition of Ian Norris was approved by a court despite his acts not being a crime in the UK. He appealed on that basis and was successful, but then got extradited on "obstruction of justice" - a pretty generic offence. I would like to see the British judicial system attempt to extradite a US citizen for "obstruction of justice" with regard to an event that was not a crime in the US - I suspect such an extradition attempt would be unsuccessful.
Can sombody explain why this is illegal?
It was made illegal in the Terrorism Act 2006, which was passed following the 7/7 London bombings. The Act itself was controversial, as it brought in new crimes of "glorifying" terrorism, and "inciting someone to commit acts of terrorism", both of which have implications for free speech. The new laws have been used to successfully prosecute various people such as "cyber-jihadist" Younes Tsouli.
Being that the ODB port is generally directly under the drivers side dash, its rather hard for someone to plug into it without it being noticed.
Yeah, but the network that port is attached to is physically wired throughout the car. Hypothetically you might be able to get access to it via sensors on the gas tank, exhaust, sunroof, doors etc.
The researcher's basic issue is that the network protocol for digital components in automobiles has few security features. Imagine a computer network in some safety critical environment - say, a manufacturing facility where servers provide monitoring and control functions. These servers are linked by a network switch that allows a single compromised device to sniff and spoof all traffic. Furthermore, imagine that there is no ssh, no login password etc. A single compromised server could be used to effectively do anything that is possible from any other server. Now, this is undoubtedly the way that many server rooms operate, but more security conscious sites will install firewalls between servers, filter command packets, have servers use encryption and authentication, so that serverA knows that it really is taking commands from serverB. That is essentially what the researchers are arguing - that as more and more microcontrollers are connected to the onboard diagnostics network, then it would be useful for that network to include some security features. How long will it be before there are wireless interfaces to the network? Do OnStar and similar systems just provide a link to the onboard diagnostic network? If so, then that could be exploited remotely. Is the OnStar protocol limited to cutting the engine? Or would it also allow you to accelerate and disable the brakes?
Another reason that the comparison with DRM may be invalid - your computer can't be used to kill you, no matter how hacked its software is. People are naturally more concerned when a hack of the device could result in casualties, regardless of whether the hack requires physical access. Would you trust any old PC technician to service your PC if the results could kill you?
Whether you would call a complete network of devices that encrypt and authenticate communications any two peers a "DRM" system is debatable. There is certainly a similarity to, say, printer manufacturers locking out foreign ink systems, but in this case the argument could certainly be made that a Toyota braking system should never be blindly accepting commands from anything other than a Toyota brake pedal, etc. Should the engine blindly accept acceleration commands from the gas tank sensors? Surely it makes sense to lock it down and not allow this?
The paper
That link really should have been in the summary....
must be producing something that uses it or actively developing something that uses it
Two problems:
The patent system relies on the ability to discriminate between entities with valid patents, and entities without valid patents. This is the fundamental issue - whether this is even possible. Even assuming that it is possible, there are still problems.
if we ran out of cheap, easy energy sources
It might happen sooner than you think.
come to an even worse dead-end when that runs out too
When the sun dies, all life on Earth will end. The only hope of surviving such an event is to discover a non-Earth non-Sun based energy source and travel to the stars. However, there might not be such an energy source, in which case the human species will end - the only questions are how and when.
Interesting that you cite mashable.com, since they actually say that Chrome share amongst their users was 14.8% two months ago.
Fair enough, as I already said, the 20%ish figure came from tech oriented sites. Usage amongst the general population may be significantly lower.
Correction: Techcrunch 20%
citation.
Statistics on browser share are difficult, and these results are biased towards tech users. What I'm seeing from fellow developers at the moment is that most are mixing firefox (with firebug) for development, and chromium for actual browsing. I'm not saying that Chrome is particularly better than Firefox, but that there may be good reasons that people are using Chrome despite the serious disadvantage of it not having the great Firefox plugins, and Mozilla corp. would be acting reasonably to investigate why.