It's too bad the Standard article didn't mention Lawrence Lessig's testimony from a couple months ago that aired the same point about "non-infringing uses" plus two other good points.
One of the interesting bits of information in the article was how complicated it is to collect royalties from all users of popular music (background music in department stores, etc.). I bet the system could never work through just policing; it's just not worth anybody's while to try to cheat in those systems. If the record labels and musicians would relax a bit, maybe a consensus solution could be found.
I have heard that the Church in Galileo's time didn't actually want to suppress his information about the solar system. They just begged him to give them a little more time, and let them publish the information themselves. They knew the truth had to come out, and were hoping they could adapt to the new age where the Earth was not at the center of the universe. Sounds like the RIAA trying to buy time until SDMI works.
Unfortunately for SDMI, it seems easier to make a technology that enables people to do things than one that disables them from doing things. Lessig's warnings in the "Code" book are still pertinent, but the tide seems to be going with those who want to share. I think that the record companies will do fine, like the Catholic Church (which, if you've been reading news stories about traffic jams in Rome this year, seems to be pretty robust).
They're not going to sell it to other people - information like that is valuable to them
Businesses get quite tidy sums of money by selling information on customers to other businesses. Many plan on it as part of their income. Precisely because it is valuable, other companies want to buy it.
One of the ways Tesco is backward is that, unlike an increasing number of sites, it posts no privacy policy. (At least, I can't find one.) Sites with such privacy policies often promise not to sell your data unless you give permission. Having a privacy policy is no guarantee, though. In the U.S., one has to hope that the FTC can catch and prosecute violations of such policies, which is by no means certain.
News stories seem to be focusing on the importance of providing a nice interface to Linux. But hasn't Microsoft moved beyond the issue of what's pretty and how easy it is to click your way someplace? Components and the.NET initiative is where they're trying to make a difference now. And Bonobo may be the biggest contribution of GNOME in making a desktop that's right for this decade.
The Association for Computing Machinery recently considered the certification of software engineers and came out against it. (The terms they used might have been slightly different; I don't have the article at hand.) The reason, as I understood it, is that programming as an engineering discipline has not progressed to the point where coders can be confident they've made an airtight and unbreakable program. In other words, while liability is a worthwhile goal, prosecuting programmers is just a way of screwing them for something they can't fully control.
Other posters (and people quoted near the end of the Salon article) have already distinguished between bad code that is dangerous or just buggy, and trying to blame a programmer for a socially destructive use that somebody makes of his or her program. Both are different from the copyright cases at the center of the article which simply use the threats in court to extend corporate power beyond its current limits.
Download a binary you know nothing about, and you're asking for trouble. For that reason, I doubt the Napster or Freenet model will extend beyond a few types of material like music or porn where you don't really care if you download something corrupted or low-quality. I know people get "warez" from all sorts of sites, but it's the kind of situation that could easily be exploited by the malicious.
While I wouldn't trust an investment analyst with a piece of play money from a Monopoly set, it's interesting what they're saying about the prospects of Microsoft[0] and Microsoft[1] should the company be broken up:
The gist is that they'd put their money on the applications company and let the operating system company shrivel up. Wasn't Windows 2000 supposed to be a great platform?
The exponential spread of requests opens up the most likely source of disruption: denial-of-service attacks caused by flooding the system with requests. The developers have no solution at present, but suggest that clients keep track of the frequency of requests so that they can recognize bursts and refuse further contact with offending nodes.
Furthermore, the time-to-live imposes a horizon on each user. I may repeatedly search a few hundred sites near me, but I will never find files stored a step beyond my horizon. In practice, information may still get around. After all, Europeans in the Middle Ages enjoyed spices from China even though they knew nothing except the vaguest myths about China. All they had to know was some sites in Asia Minor, who traded with sites in Central Asia, who traded with China.
The spread of MP3 files, and their centrality to Napster, skew the debate over free and copyrighted content. Lots of people are willing to download free music files from strangers, because if they find out that the sampling quality is lousy or the song breaks off halfway through, nothing has been lost. They can go back to Napster and try another site.
Matters would be entirely different if you tried to get free software from strangers, especially in binary form. You'd never know whether a Trojan Horse was introduced that, two years later, would wipe your hard disk clean and send a photo of a naked child to the local police chief. (And you thought UCITA's self--help provision was as bad as it could get!)
The DMCA is a long bill with lots of clauses, not all of them bad. It is supposed to shield ISPs where content simply passes through their routers or servers. The site physically hosting the content is responsible for taking down unauthorized copyrighted works, but it is also supposed to put the works right back up again (well, it takes a couple weeks) if the person claiming a copyright violation fails to file suit against the offender and prove ownership. The clauses are very complicated and IANAL; check out Section 202 of the law for the real thing.
I feel very good about putting this book under an open content license, and I'm actively working on preparing more books that will have some kind of open content license. The industry is still in a very experimental phase, which is why the Using Samba license is something of a hodge-podge. But there will be more open books, and the company is backing me.
Another poster astutely identified updates and new editions as difficult areas. I think the license is not the problem here; logistics are. Samba developers and O'Reilly are still working out these logistics. That's a different story.
There was also a brief discussion of lots of related issues at the O'Reilly Web site:
I spent a lot of time in the article looking at the U.S. cases (and one set of European cases) that led up to the law. (I wish I had more case law outside the U.S., but it was hard enough finding the U.S. cases, as a Slashdot poster has pointed out.) The reason I examined these so closely is that it bothers me, as it bothered some posters, that one site might lift material lock, stock, and barrel from another site. If it became commonplace, it would really discourage investment in collection information.
After looking at every case cited in the literature I could find (note that I'm not claiming I found every relevant case) I could conclusively say that critics of the database law are right. It's pretty easy to protect the information you gather by putting in an element of creativity (as defined by the courts). I've said that in the sections of the article about Feist and the subsequent cases. In some countries, like Britain, copyright law is even broader and gives more protection to collections.
Some have asked whether courts and regulators can protect competition and innovation. The Magill case in Ireland shows that sometimes they do. My reason for raising the issue was that database laws are a fait accompli in the European Union; they'll be hard to reverse, and the goal now should be to limit the damage (or as proponents of the laws might say, to preserve a proper balance).
I like Croaker's post a lot, along with the article that started this thread. An experimental type of manual in the 1980s that tried to appeal to hands-on learners was called minimalist documentation. I don't think it ever caught on. Its approach was to suggest things the user could try out on an interactive system; the system's responses would hopefully help the user develop a conceptual model of what was going on.
For another view of computer documentation, try my article:
We're gradually easing into open-content (whatever you want to call it) books at O'Reilly. It's not quite official yet, but we'll have a public discussion soon on the O'Reilly Web site about the rewards and difficulties of making books open. Now that I've done a couple, I realize there's a shitload of issues to work out.
Nice to see my company defended by others; I don't feel like getting into the debate in a heavy-handed way. We sometimes move too slow; we don't always choose the best direction. The GNU publishing model is wonderful, and it may well win out. But different models can co-exist too.
I'll take a stab at this since no one else has--go easy on me because I don't have all my archives and Web sites to look at.
In theory, editing and moderation make the difference, as the poster suggested. If you don't moderate at all, or moderate just to remove spam and irrelevent posts, you're not liable--but if you edit at a certain level, like removing posts with racial slurs in them, you are liable for anything that slips through.
Take a break for reality. In the U.S., I don't know of any case where an ISP or even a forum like Slashdot was found liable. Prodigy and AOL have both been through the courts (remember when Matt Drudge was sued, and AOL along with him?--I was sure AOL would get the book thrown at them that time because they paid Drudge) but emerged Teflon-clean. Please correct me if I've forgotten something.
In the U.S., the copyright act makes you liable under certain conditions, yahda, yawn, read the law. (Just 130 pages, I think.)
In England, there's one case that's scared ISPs a lot: the Demon case (that's the name of the ISP, guys) where somebody successfully sued for defamation when they didn't respond to requests to remove defamatory newsgroup posts. Could have been any ISP that carried newsgroups--scary, I told you.
In France, a new law absolves the ISP from liability under most circumstances. In Germany, too, the ISP is shielded but there are loopholes. ISPs may be liable for illegal content if filters are available and work well.
Some taxes are necessary, but I'm surprised the liberals/leftists are so concerned with preserving sales taxes. My semi-orthodox understanding always was that sales taxes were regressive in effect (neutral in theory, but regressive in effect) because the lower economic classes spent more of their income on goods than the upper classes.
After all, that's why a lot of places (including my state, which people used to like to call Taxachusetts) don't have sales tax on necessities like food and clothing.
In Europe the stakes are much higher. Some items have an value-added tax over 20%. And some are "sin taxes" (like an alcohol) with a social mission. The debates start to get complicated. But one could argue, "just increase the income tax (especially on higher-income people) and eliminate all sales taxes anyhow."
Slashdot Mirror
It's too bad the Standard article didn't mention Lawrence Lessig's testimony from a couple months ago that aired the same point about "non-infringing uses" plus two other good points.
I have heard that the Church in Galileo's time didn't actually want to suppress his information about the solar system. They just begged him to give them a little more time, and let them publish the information themselves. They knew the truth had to come out, and were hoping they could adapt to the new age where the Earth was not at the center of the universe. Sounds like the RIAA trying to buy time until SDMI works.
Unfortunately for SDMI, it seems easier to make a technology that enables people to do things than one that disables them from doing things. Lessig's warnings in the "Code" book are still pertinent, but the tide seems to be going with those who want to share. I think that the record companies will do fine, like the Catholic Church (which, if you've been reading news stories about traffic jams in Rome this year, seems to be pretty robust).
One of the ways Tesco is backward is that, unlike an increasing number of sites, it posts no privacy policy. (At least, I can't find one.) Sites with such privacy policies often promise not to sell your data unless you give permission. Having a privacy policy is no guarantee, though. In the U.S., one has to hope that the FTC can catch and prosecute violations of such policies, which is by no means certain.
News stories seem to be focusing on the importance of providing a nice interface to Linux. But hasn't Microsoft moved beyond the issue of what's pretty and how easy it is to click your way someplace? Components and the .NET initiative is where they're trying to make a difference now. And Bonobo may be the biggest contribution of GNOME in making a desktop that's right for this decade.
Other posters (and people quoted near the end of the Salon article) have already distinguished between bad code that is dangerous or just buggy, and trying to blame a programmer for a socially destructive use that somebody makes of his or her program. Both are different from the copyright cases at the center of the article which simply use the threats in court to extend corporate power beyond its current limits.
Download a binary you know nothing about, and you're asking for trouble. For that reason, I doubt the Napster or Freenet model will extend beyond a few types of material like music or porn where you don't really care if you download something corrupted or low-quality. I know people get "warez" from all sorts of sites, but it's the kind of situation that could easily be exploited by the malicious.
Microsoft investors face split decision
The gist is that they'd put their money on the applications company and let the operating system company shrivel up. Wasn't Windows 2000 supposed to be a great platform?
Some relevant material from the article The Value of Gnutella and Freenet:
The DMCA is a long bill with lots of clauses, not all of them bad. It is supposed to shield ISPs where content simply passes through their routers or servers. The site physically hosting the content is responsible for taking down unauthorized copyrighted works, but it is also supposed to put the works right back up again (well, it takes a couple weeks) if the person claiming a copyright violation fails to file suit against the offender and prove ownership. The clauses are very complicated and IANAL; check out Section 202 of the law for the real thing.
Another poster astutely identified updates and new editions as difficult areas. I think the license is not the problem here; logistics are. Samba developers and O'Reilly are still working out these logistics. That's a different story.
There was also a brief discussion of lots of related issues at the O'Reilly Web site:
http://forums.oreilly.com/~publishing
I spent a lot of time in the article looking at the
U.S. cases (and one set of European cases) that led up to
the law. (I wish I had more case law outside the U.S., but
it was hard enough finding the U.S. cases, as a Slashdot
poster has pointed out.) The reason I examined these so
closely is that it bothers me, as it bothered some posters,
that one site might lift material lock, stock, and barrel
from another site. If it became commonplace, it would really
discourage investment in collection information.
After looking at every case cited in the literature I could
find (note that I'm not claiming I found every relevant
case) I could conclusively say that critics of the database
law are right. It's pretty easy to protect the information
you gather by putting in an element of creativity (as
defined by the courts). I've said that in the sections of
the article about Feist and the subsequent cases. In some
countries, like Britain, copyright law is even broader and
gives more protection to collections.
Some have asked whether courts and regulators can protect
competition and innovation. The Magill case in Ireland shows
that sometimes they do. My reason for raising the issue was
that database laws are a fait accompli in the European
Union; they'll be hard to reverse, and the goal now should
be to limit the damage (or as proponents of the laws might
say, to preserve a proper balance).
Andy Oram
For another view of computer documentation, try my article:
http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo/professional/reliabl e.html
Methods and Mechanics of Creating Reliable User Documentation
Nice to see my company defended by others; I don't feel like getting into the debate in a heavy-handed way. We sometimes move too slow; we don't always choose the best direction. The GNU publishing model is wonderful, and it may well win out. But different models can co-exist too.
In theory, editing and moderation make the difference, as the poster suggested. If you don't moderate at all, or moderate just to remove spam and irrelevent posts, you're not liable--but if you edit at a certain level, like removing posts with racial slurs in them, you are liable for anything that slips through.
Take a break for reality. In the U.S., I don't know of any case where an ISP or even a forum like Slashdot was found liable. Prodigy and AOL have both been through the courts (remember when Matt Drudge was sued, and AOL along with him?--I was sure AOL would get the book thrown at them that time because they paid Drudge) but emerged Teflon-clean. Please correct me if I've forgotten something.
In the U.S., the copyright act makes you liable under certain conditions, yahda, yawn, read the law. (Just 130 pages, I think.)
In England, there's one case that's scared ISPs a lot: the Demon case (that's the name of the ISP, guys) where somebody successfully sued for defamation when they didn't respond to requests to remove defamatory newsgroup posts. Could have been any ISP that carried newsgroups--scary, I told you.
In France, a new law absolves the ISP from liability under most circumstances. In Germany, too, the ISP is shielded but there are loopholes. ISPs may be liable for illegal content if filters are available and work well.
After all, that's why a lot of places (including my state, which people used to like to call Taxachusetts) don't have sales tax on necessities like food and clothing.
In Europe the stakes are much higher. Some items have an value-added tax over 20%. And some are "sin taxes" (like an alcohol) with a social mission. The debates start to get complicated. But one could argue, "just increase the income tax (especially on higher-income people) and eliminate all sales taxes anyhow."