http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rs20080227_1bvr037007.html
This is the text of the ruling, so from the horse's mouth. My german admittedly is not perfect, but a native speaker told me there is nothing there that actually requires approval from a judge, just an initial suspicion of a crime being committed. Reading through, I can't find any such requirement myself, either. It emphasizes the importance of the relevant basic rights, and states there must be sufficient measures taken to ensure the right to privacy is maintained. But nothing about getting approval from a court as far as I can tell.
Actually, I was wondering if he can plead insanity... If the judge has read up on him, he could probably even plead bat-shit insane and not even need a psych evaluation for that claim to be accepted.
Excuse me? If you had access to the system, running and encrypted bits unlocked, why on earth would you turn it off? As I see it, this might be a problem if you get stormed by an adversary and pull the plug in an effort to secure your data.
Um... presumably, for the contents of memory to be useful for breaking encryption, you'd need to have access to the system while it is running, with the encrypted files/drives/whatever unlocked. In this case, why would you pull the plug at all and not just copy all the data since it's right there, accessible?
I'm all for native apps. Too bad no-one seems interested in making a bare-bones paint application for Linux... Hell, I find Colors! on the nintendo DS, a one-man project, WAY more intuitive and productive to paint with than the Gimp. I know I'm in the minority here, but for pity's sake, can anyone recommend a no-nonsense paint app? I need no filters, except maybe unsharp mask. Layers would be good, textured brushes super, but not strictly necessary, wacom support a must. Um. That's about it. I guess levels / curves and hue/sat adjustment tools can come in handy from time to time.
we'll see what happens Indeed we shall... Just to clarify, the reason I take a dim view of criticizing lack of oversight is that while proper oversight certainly plays an important element in keeping government in check, here concentrating your critique on the technical deficiencies of the law may overshadow the more important questions of principle at play. Similarly I wouldn't concentrate on criticizing the technical unfeasibility of the filtering, except maybe to make a point about how stupidly the lawmakers have acted - criticism against the technological aspects of censorship leaves open the possiblity that one day, somehow, the problems will be overcome and proponents of censorship will then say the criticism has been addressed and censorship can be applied. The problem here is not the tech or the precise wording of the law. There is a broader assault on personal liberty underway, and it is critical to utterly discredit the entire idea of censorship, not just parts of it.
This brings me to a point: How can you justify protecting children by taking fundamental rights away from adults? Those children will grow up, too, and I doubt having had a protected childhood is much consolation to a slave.
What you should do depends on what you find acceptable. If there was oversight, would you approve of this kind of censorship? If you would, then by all means, demand oversight.
For me, the lack of oversight is a minor issue compared to the fact this system exists at all. I would be against it even if they got a court order for each and every site blocked. It would still be an extremely dangerous system. What happens if the government becomes corrupt? What happens if the nation destabilizes. Finland had a civil war once, it's not inconceivable that serious conflict could arise again. There are many scenarios where systems like this could be used by the ones who control them to oppress their opponents. Censorship shifts the balance of power yet more into the hands of the government, which leaves citizens increasingly vulnerable. The government is a hugely powerful machine, and as such is the number one potential enemy for the people it governs. Therefore extreme care must be taken not to give the government too many tools with which to control and monitor the lives of the governed.
Note that for corruption of government you don't necessarely need the cunning bastard-dictator type to rise into power and throw all liberties away. Government is in many ways a lifeform in it's own right, indeed the whole legislative-bureaucratic system is designed to ensure the survival of the organism: the governmental system. It is safe to assume - even without individuals with grand, malicious plans - that governments, unchecked, will tend to obtain more and more power at the expense of the liberties of the citizens they govern. That is the nature of the beast.
New laws are made all the time, but how many laws are decommissioned? This is why it is critical to take a pessimistic long-term view of the effects of decisions made in the short term. If a law can be abused, it will be abused, given enough time. If liberties are not fiercely defended, they will be lost. Not due to bad people, simply due to the laws of probability and the innate tendencies of governmental systems.
Viewing the content isn't illegal according to Finnish law, perhaps because the opportunities for trolling would be enormous. Imagine someone plastering CP images all around the city, or, say, on the front doors of parliament, and calling the cops on anyone who sees them... Possession and distribution are illegal. Of course, computers being what they are, viewing an image pretty much ensures a copy is left on your hard drive. I read about a recent finnish case where a man was fined for possession of CP, which according to his own words he had accidentally downloaded from newsgroups with a bunch of legal porno. Apparently the fact he hadn't deleted all of the material was the crucial thing in leading to his conviction.
So if you ever accidentally stumble upon any illegal porno, be sure to wipe your cache...
I would personally emphasize the long-term effects of laws such as this. How it is deeply troubling that the lawmakers are willing to ditch fundamental liberties like freedom of speech for no actual, demonstrable gain, except maybe the political points they themselves get. How those liberties are in place to ensure the health of the society in the long run, to prevent a slide into totalitarianism. How freedom is retained by fighting for it at all times, and lost by becoming complacent.
I wonder what else, perhaps of a political nature, might make its way onto such lists?
And that's the thing right there. Societies stay more or less free as long as the inhabitants understand why fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are important to their personal safety. That does not seem to be the case these days, a lot of people are willing to sell their freedom for perceived security, or just because they see no use for it. So right now a lot of groundwork is being laid for the new coming of totalitarianism in western countries, with laws just like this one.
A lot of the more questionable laws eroding civic liberties aren't that damaging if you can trust the government. And maybe, in some places, you still can. The problem is, the main function of those liberties is not to defend individuals against oppressive governments, but to defend societies against the rise of such governments in the first place. Remove those protections, even in good faith, and sooner or later society will suffer for it in a big way.
The phenomenon you're talking about is called "lucid dreaming". The methods to train oneself to do it seem to center around habituating oneself to questioning one's state of consciousness and doing reality checks, such as reading a piece of text twice to see if it stays the same. Apparently after enough repetition you'll start doing this in your dreams, too, and when the results don't add up, you'll realize you're dreaming.Or so they say.
I've had a few lucid dreams myself, but never consciously. I find the experience isn't all that great, I'm a bit too aware that nothing I do matters. Also I lose some of the immersion, and become somewhat detached from the dream. It's an odd sensation, actually. I recall once realizing I'm dreaming, and starting to feel the dream slip away. Or more literally, I started to feel myself falling through the floor, and started hopping back up to stay in the dream. Then I had this insight that I need to speak with someone to keep the dream world going, and that did work for a while.
Then again, another time I found a dream I was having so cliché and banal that I said something like "OK, that's it, I'm done with this." and forced my eyes open to wake myself up. Now THAT feels odd, opening your eyes when they're already open, in the dream.
How did this get modded so high up? I can't even parse your sentence. Is this what you meant to say:
"I do think that people should be able to get paid for recordings if you want to [pay them], but if you don't want to, you know, [they can] go out and do a job every day like everyone else does, maybe you shouldn't complain that you aren't getting paid every week living everyone else is."?
or this:
"I do think that people should be able to get paid for recordings if [they] want to, but if [they] don't want to, you know, go out and do a job every day like everyone else does, maybe [they] shouldn't complain that [they] aren't getting paid every week living everyone else is."?
Seriously, wtf are you saying? Who is the "you" in your comment? When you say "people should be able to get paid for recordings if you want to", who is doing the wanting and what do they want? The people? Me? Who?
You mean inter-national, right? This intra-national body with approval and veto powers sounds like something out of US foreign policy... Mainly, an intra-US body with global veto and approval powers.
What if they don't want to tour, or live performance doesn't fit their music? I'd just like to get this clarified: The claim here is that people have no right to expect to get paid for recordings of their works?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rs20080227_1bvr037007.html This is the text of the ruling, so from the horse's mouth. My german admittedly is not perfect, but a native speaker told me there is nothing there that actually requires approval from a judge, just an initial suspicion of a crime being committed. Reading through, I can't find any such requirement myself, either. It emphasizes the importance of the relevant basic rights, and states there must be sufficient measures taken to ensure the right to privacy is maintained. But nothing about getting approval from a court as far as I can tell.
Wow, for a moment there I thought this was a geek site.
Maybe reading from the third layer would have been too slow to be of use for multimedia applications?
Hey, I read the document Gamepolitics claims is the root of all this... Trust me, I'm confusing nothing.
Actually, I was wondering if he can plead insanity... If the judge has read up on him, he could probably even plead bat-shit insane and not even need a psych evaluation for that claim to be accepted.
Very true, but a different thing. Dismount your encrypted volumes before standing by, if there's any risk of unauthorized access. It's common sense.
Excuse me? If you had access to the system, running and encrypted bits unlocked, why on earth would you turn it off? As I see it, this might be a problem if you get stormed by an adversary and pull the plug in an effort to secure your data.
Um... presumably, for the contents of memory to be useful for breaking encryption, you'd need to have access to the system while it is running, with the encrypted files/drives/whatever unlocked. In this case, why would you pull the plug at all and not just copy all the data since it's right there, accessible?
I'm all for native apps. Too bad no-one seems interested in making a bare-bones paint application for Linux... Hell, I find Colors! on the nintendo DS, a one-man project, WAY more intuitive and productive to paint with than the Gimp. I know I'm in the minority here, but for pity's sake, can anyone recommend a no-nonsense paint app? I need no filters, except maybe unsharp mask. Layers would be good, textured brushes super, but not strictly necessary, wacom support a must. Um. That's about it. I guess levels / curves and hue/sat adjustment tools can come in handy from time to time.
Then I guess you don't work in, say, 3d animation or CGI, or anything where the paint tools of gimp really do gimp you when you try to use them.
how do you update NASA, exactly? It's not a hive mind, as far as I know.
Indeed we shall... Just to clarify, the reason I take a dim view of criticizing lack of oversight is that while proper oversight certainly plays an important element in keeping government in check, here concentrating your critique on the technical deficiencies of the law may overshadow the more important questions of principle at play. Similarly I wouldn't concentrate on criticizing the technical unfeasibility of the filtering, except maybe to make a point about how stupidly the lawmakers have acted - criticism against the technological aspects of censorship leaves open the possiblity that one day, somehow, the problems will be overcome and proponents of censorship will then say the criticism has been addressed and censorship can be applied. The problem here is not the tech or the precise wording of the law. There is a broader assault on personal liberty underway, and it is critical to utterly discredit the entire idea of censorship, not just parts of it.
Until the children become adults, anyway...
This brings me to a point: How can you justify protecting children by taking fundamental rights away from adults? Those children will grow up, too, and I doubt having had a protected childhood is much consolation to a slave.
What you should do depends on what you find acceptable. If there was oversight, would you approve of this kind of censorship? If you would, then by all means, demand oversight.
For me, the lack of oversight is a minor issue compared to the fact this system exists at all. I would be against it even if they got a court order for each and every site blocked. It would still be an extremely dangerous system. What happens if the government becomes corrupt? What happens if the nation destabilizes. Finland had a civil war once, it's not inconceivable that serious conflict could arise again. There are many scenarios where systems like this could be used by the ones who control them to oppress their opponents. Censorship shifts the balance of power yet more into the hands of the government, which leaves citizens increasingly vulnerable. The government is a hugely powerful machine, and as such is the number one potential enemy for the people it governs. Therefore extreme care must be taken not to give the government too many tools with which to control and monitor the lives of the governed.
Note that for corruption of government you don't necessarely need the cunning bastard-dictator type to rise into power and throw all liberties away. Government is in many ways a lifeform in it's own right, indeed the whole legislative-bureaucratic system is designed to ensure the survival of the organism: the governmental system. It is safe to assume - even without individuals with grand, malicious plans - that governments, unchecked, will tend to obtain more and more power at the expense of the liberties of the citizens they govern. That is the nature of the beast.
New laws are made all the time, but how many laws are decommissioned? This is why it is critical to take a pessimistic long-term view of the effects of decisions made in the short term. If a law can be abused, it will be abused, given enough time. If liberties are not fiercely defended, they will be lost. Not due to bad people, simply due to the laws of probability and the innate tendencies of governmental systems.
No, no. You must kill all the adults. After all, no measure is too harsh if it protects the children.
I think I know a couple of hundred Finnish ministers of parliament who constitute a clear and present danger to the children of Finland.
Viewing the content isn't illegal according to Finnish law, perhaps because the opportunities for trolling would be enormous. Imagine someone plastering CP images all around the city, or, say, on the front doors of parliament, and calling the cops on anyone who sees them... Possession and distribution are illegal. Of course, computers being what they are, viewing an image pretty much ensures a copy is left on your hard drive. I read about a recent finnish case where a man was fined for possession of CP, which according to his own words he had accidentally downloaded from newsgroups with a bunch of legal porno. Apparently the fact he hadn't deleted all of the material was the crucial thing in leading to his conviction.
So if you ever accidentally stumble upon any illegal porno, be sure to wipe your cache...
I would personally emphasize the long-term effects of laws such as this. How it is deeply troubling that the lawmakers are willing to ditch fundamental liberties like freedom of speech for no actual, demonstrable gain, except maybe the political points they themselves get. How those liberties are in place to ensure the health of the society in the long run, to prevent a slide into totalitarianism. How freedom is retained by fighting for it at all times, and lost by becoming complacent.
And that's the thing right there. Societies stay more or less free as long as the inhabitants understand why fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are important to their personal safety. That does not seem to be the case these days, a lot of people are willing to sell their freedom for perceived security, or just because they see no use for it. So right now a lot of groundwork is being laid for the new coming of totalitarianism in western countries, with laws just like this one.
A lot of the more questionable laws eroding civic liberties aren't that damaging if you can trust the government. And maybe, in some places, you still can. The problem is, the main function of those liberties is not to defend individuals against oppressive governments, but to defend societies against the rise of such governments in the first place. Remove those protections, even in good faith, and sooner or later society will suffer for it in a big way.
IMO the correct course of action for the police would be to get a court order. Right now the law makes the police into judges.
The phenomenon you're talking about is called "lucid dreaming". The methods to train oneself to do it seem to center around habituating oneself to questioning one's state of consciousness and doing reality checks, such as reading a piece of text twice to see if it stays the same. Apparently after enough repetition you'll start doing this in your dreams, too, and when the results don't add up, you'll realize you're dreaming.Or so they say.
I've had a few lucid dreams myself, but never consciously. I find the experience isn't all that great, I'm a bit too aware that nothing I do matters. Also I lose some of the immersion, and become somewhat detached from the dream. It's an odd sensation, actually. I recall once realizing I'm dreaming, and starting to feel the dream slip away. Or more literally, I started to feel myself falling through the floor, and started hopping back up to stay in the dream. Then I had this insight that I need to speak with someone to keep the dream world going, and that did work for a while.
Then again, another time I found a dream I was having so cliché and banal that I said something like "OK, that's it, I'm done with this." and forced my eyes open to wake myself up. Now THAT feels odd, opening your eyes when they're already open, in the dream.
That's great, except hardly anyone actually uses Freenet.
Maybe they have something more to hide. Or maybe it's just petty vengeance.
How did this get modded so high up? I can't even parse your sentence. Is this what you meant to say:
"I do think that people should be able to get paid for recordings if you want to [pay them], but if you don't want to, you know, [they can] go out and do a job every day like everyone else does, maybe you shouldn't complain that you aren't getting paid every week living everyone else is."?
or this:
"I do think that people should be able to get paid for recordings if [they] want to, but if [they] don't want to, you know, go out and do a job every day like everyone else does, maybe [they] shouldn't complain that [they] aren't getting paid every week living everyone else is."?
Seriously, wtf are you saying? Who is the "you" in your comment? When you say "people should be able to get paid for recordings if you want to", who is doing the wanting and what do they want? The people? Me? Who?
You mean inter-national, right? This intra-national body with approval and veto powers sounds like something out of US foreign policy... Mainly, an intra-US body with global veto and approval powers.
What if they don't want to tour, or live performance doesn't fit their music? I'd just like to get this clarified: The claim here is that people have no right to expect to get paid for recordings of their works?