Arguably, copyright holders who encrypt their works aren't living up to their side of the deal.
I would argue further that claiming copyright on encrypted work is defrauding society and stealing valuable legal protection services.
The US DOJ should prosecute anyone who claims copyright on the following materials:
- DVDs with CSS.
- Computer software with registration keys.
- Video programs with automatic gain copy control.
They should warn first and give offenders a little time to disclaim illegal copyrights. Everyone has a natural right to produce encrypted work, it's just wrong to claim copyright on such.
The DOJ needs to drop any pending prosecutions for infringment of illegal copyrights, and Congress needs to shovel the unconstitutional slop out of US Code Title 17.
What? Set active scripting to 'prompt' mode, so that I can decide when I want it used? What? Turn it on momentarily while I access Windows Update? What? Add Microsoft.com to my trusted sites list momentarily?
No... instead I will point out how ironic this is on the Microsoft-friendly site, Slashdot.
And even more ironic is that when you do this, the dialog that pops up says: "Scripts are usually safe. Do you want to enable scripts?"
How do you educate new users about the real security issues when you have to compete with such bizarre misinformation from the machine? My answer: delete all IE-based browsers and provide an alternative.
Red Hat is trying to sell a product that can be downloaded for free.
Cool, I want that! Please post the URL I can use to download pressed RedHat software CDs, printed manuals, technical support, training, and consulting services for free.
So far the only stuff I've found for free download on their site is some software and documentation, but none of the stuff that they actually sell.
I mean, it was really me who chose to eat that enchilada at lunch, right?
Nope, it wasn't you. It was the grasses (wheat) secreting a chemical (starch) in order to use you (humans) as a weapon (agriculture) in their eons-old war against the trees.
It is true that our government sells power like a product. Let's all hold our noses and play along for a minute. First realize that you produce the product and the government only distributes it. When your representative sells your product, he can charge whatever retail price the market will bear. It is your duty to demand a fair wholesale price.
To do that, you must understand the market for your product and how its price is set. Power is normally sold on a per law basis. The price of a law is simply proportional to quality of the arguments against it. This sounds like an excellent business opportunity to stimulate the price of your product!
Seriously though, intelligent public debate increases the price of a bad law (as does shrewd propaganda). Sometimes the price is made higher than any buyer is willing to pay. This is evident as occasionally bad laws die in Congress, the courts, and on the President's desk. Of course, good laws die in those places too.
In our system, 1 law = $X = Y% of votes = Z logical arguments. This might even be fair, but we'll never know because the exchange rates are not published. It is clear that the law buying power of a single large corporation exceeds the voting power of all of the people. There is something wrong with that.
By definition, allowing non-people to control government is against the public interest. One possible solution to this problem is to limit participation in goverment to individual natural persons only.
Yes, it is a long shot, but the system can be fixed. At a minimum it would require one person or organization with a conscience and access to large amounts of money, votes, or logic. Is that so much to ask?
Yikes; do you have any idea how long it would take to argue the set of patents and copyrights? Who makes those decisions? MS is certain to protest anyone they don't like, and that would be grounds for appealing such a remedy.
I wonder about that too. I hope that some smart lawyer will address it. I do suspect that our courts have lots of untapped power here. If a court refuses to hear an infringement claim, what can you do about it?
Think about what happened with Cipro. Do we even need the courts?
I think that the DOJ could simply say: "We will no longer prosecute patent and copyright infringement claims against Microsoft."
My public comment will be something along these lines...
United States Department of Justice:
State Attorneys General:
United States District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly:
I object to the proposed Microsoft settlement. I believe that it will require too much government involvement and its enforcement will be too expensive. I doubt that it will correct the damage done by Microsoft or cause them to reform their behavior.
I propose a simpler, cheaper remedy which will be effective and fair: Revoke some of Microsoft's patents and copyrights. Give them back to their rightful owners or to the public.
This remedy would return the competitive system to its natural state by freeing Microsoft's competitors to produce interoperable products without the threat of lawsuits. It would also strongly deter future anticompetitive acts by entities which value their patent and copyright privileges.
This remedy would be fair because it would both reduce Microsoft's ability to profit from their crimes and seize the assets used as tools to commit those crimes. The value of many of Microsoft's works was created mainly by depriving consumers of any alternative choices. Consumers and computer vendors should be allowed the right to freely duplicate the existing Microsoft works. Those works are inferior to the work which would have been produced in an freely competitive marketplace.
It would be trivial to implement this remedy. The court would simply select an appropriate set of patents and copyrights, declare them void, and refuse to enforce them. The selection could be limited to only those patents and copyrights directly involved in criminal acts, or the court could deny Microsoft all patent and copyright privileges for some period of time.
As a general rule, an anticompetitive monopolist should never be granted extra power to prevent competition through patent and copyright. To the contrary, a market entity's access to legalized monopoly protection should be inversely proportional to its size. This would lead to a stable market of medium sized producers and would maximize competition and innovation.
Finally, I want to suggest that every computing product or service offered for sale, whether from Microsoft or not, should be accompanied by a warranty [see note 1]. The warranty should clearly document the product's input and output, including the type, purpose, and format of all files and network resources used. While this is not currently law, the court should require it of Microsoft from now on.
note 1: Because source code describes exactly what a program does, unobfuscated source code should be considered a sufficient warranty for software products.
Thank you for your good work. I hope you are able to find a fair solution in the best interest of society.
Another nice
article on the public comment period.
A more official reference to the tunney act itself.
Paragraph d says: At the close of the period during which such comments may be received, the United States shall file with the district court and cause to be published in the Federal Register a response to such comments.
Good points, but I would expect it to work a little differently. People would use the proposed anti-monopolist rules as a defense against patent and copyright infringement lawsuits initiated by the monopolist. Someone with a lot of courage might deliberately provoke a monopolist into suing over a key copyright or patent, but that would be rare.
I think that these rules would make monopolists hesitant to use the legal system as a weapon against emergent competitors and nonprofit amateurs.
We do need an effective way to discourage companies from wanting to #1 (of only 1) in any market. This would promote capatalism by slowing the runaway accumulation of private ownership by the few.
They have far too much power and there's no clear way to stop them.
Microsoft does have too much power, but I think we can stop them. Here's how.
When an organization monopolizes a commodity or service, government should not reinforce that monopoly with patent and copyright protection. It is simply wrong for a government to grant Microsoft a copyright on an operating system until they no longer monopolize that commodity.
When a monopolist abuses their monopoly, then they should be punished. An easy way to do that is simply to refuse to grant any patent or copyright protection at all to that organization, for some period of time.
Any government could easily use these simple controls to prevent and reverse economic damage by aggressive monopolists. Every country should integrate these controls into their laws.
which is why Open Source is required. So we can all see exactly where the code stinks and we can fix it. Too bad legacy development models don't provide such advantages. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just buy quality software?
Do the relevant standards permit the client identifier to be used for discrimination? Maybe they should prohibit that.
I doubt that Microsoft is being honest about their reason for refusing service to non Microsoft browser users. I suppose it will all be explained in court.
If this turns out to be another illegal monopoly abuse, then I hope the court revokes any patents and copyrights involved in the crime. Maybe a good general remedy for Microsoft abuses would be to prohibit them from holding any patents or copyrights at all, for a few years.
Any computer that can't handle a static discharge to any external port, especially a serial port, is defective. Any lawsuits should be directed to the computer maker (or/dev/null).
The harder the telcos fight free networks, the sooner free networks will destroy the telcos. Let's hope they fight really hard. The Internet must be owned and operated by its local users.
There is still one thing that telcos can help us with. Wireless freenets will give us a huge distributed network which none of our existing heirarchical routing mechanisms can handle. Geographical routing and IPv6 should solve the problem. It would be nice of telcos to work out the details, while they still exist.
Instead they will probably fight the future. They will abuse government to restrict the spectrum we need. They will also restrict the interim services we buy from them. Note that Internet access, by definition, connects any set of networks to the rest of the Internet. If telcos restrict the network topologies allowed use their services, they can't call those services 'Internet'. That would be fraud.
"We don't know anything about the methodology or how the questions were asked, but [the survey] directly contradicts what we hear from our members," Weinstein told the E-Commerce Times.
Imagine that. People who don't trust AOL aren't inclined to fill out AOL customer satisfaction surveys.
I don't trust AOL either. They took money from my bank account without my authorization.
In the US, the public has leverage over software producers because we grant legal protection for ideas. Even for the ideas of those who try to steal from us using trojan software and traps (like secret APIs, file formats, and network protocols). That's crazy.
We can change the rules to reward only those who treat us fairly. Like this:
No software is eligible for trademark, copyright, or patent protection unless the software producer documents the location and format of all information that the software reads and/or writes.
Documentation may be in the form of unobfuscated source code. If documentation is provided in any other form, it must be designed to be understood by any intended user of the software, and it must be made freely available without purchase, transfer, or use of the software itself.
You're right. If my (non-Windows) machine was compromised (at all) it would require a complete reinstall. Same goes for those rare Code Red victim boxes that actually run IIS for a good reason.
But I was referring to the average Code Red infected machine. Those machines have nothing sensitive, only some downloaded music and porn, copies of commercial software borrowed from the office, and a resume claiming N years experience administering Windows.
It is only reasonable to format and reinstall an infected machine if the admin honestly plans to either keep up with security updates or disconnect it from the net. Most Code Red victims will do neither of those.
If the cost of the Code Red cleanup was really $2B, and if 300K servers were really infected, then the average cleanup cost per infected server would be $6666.67. I can't wait to see this factored into the Win2K total cost of ownership.
The average cleanup takes a couple minutes. Are NT admins really paid that well, or are they just very slow?
BTW, when is the NT version of Code Red coming out? Seems like it should have a much larger audience of forgotten and neglected servers.
Re:Use Open Source to Fight Code Red
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
Not if you do this:
cd/var/www/html (or apache server root)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=default.ida count=100000
The phrase "public performance" seems archaic and imprecise. Does a modified GPLd servlet behind an unmodified GPLd webserver count? What about a modified GPLd SQL procedure three tiers away from the 'public' user? I don't think so.
If you want to protect such code, why not say this: "If you modify the program and distribute either the program or its output, then you must provide your modifications to all recipients of the modified program or its output."
Slashdot Mirror
Arguably, copyright holders who encrypt their works aren't living up to their side of the deal.
I would argue further that claiming copyright on encrypted work is defrauding society and stealing valuable legal protection services.
The US DOJ should prosecute anyone who claims copyright on the following materials:
- DVDs with CSS.
- Computer software with registration keys.
- Video programs with automatic gain copy control.
They should warn first and give offenders a little time to disclaim illegal copyrights. Everyone has a natural right to produce encrypted work, it's just wrong to claim copyright on such.
The DOJ needs to drop any pending prosecutions for infringment of illegal copyrights, and Congress needs to shovel the unconstitutional slop out of US Code Title 17.
What? Set active scripting to 'prompt' mode, so that I can decide when I want it used? What? Turn it on momentarily while I access Windows Update? What? Add Microsoft.com to my trusted sites list momentarily?
No... instead I will point out how ironic this is on the Microsoft-friendly site, Slashdot.
And even more ironic is that when you do this, the dialog that pops up says: "Scripts are usually safe. Do you want to enable scripts?"
How do you educate new users about the real security issues when you have to compete with such bizarre misinformation from the machine? My answer: delete all IE-based browsers and provide an alternative.
Red Hat is trying to sell a product that can be downloaded for free.
Cool, I want that! Please post the URL I can use to download pressed RedHat software CDs, printed manuals, technical support, training, and consulting services for free. So far the only stuff I've found for free download on their site is some software and documentation, but none of the stuff that they actually sell.
I mean, it was really me who chose to eat that enchilada at lunch, right?
Nope, it wasn't you. It was the grasses (wheat) secreting a chemical (starch) in order to use you (humans) as a weapon (agriculture) in their eons-old war against the trees.
It is true that our government sells power like a product. Let's all hold our noses and play along for a minute. First realize that you produce the product and the government only distributes it. When your representative sells your product, he can charge whatever retail price the market will bear. It is your duty to demand a fair wholesale price.
To do that, you must understand the market for your product and how its price is set. Power is normally sold on a per law basis. The price of a law is simply proportional to quality of the arguments against it. This sounds like an excellent business opportunity to stimulate the price of your product!
Seriously though, intelligent public debate increases the price of a bad law (as does shrewd propaganda). Sometimes the price is made higher than any buyer is willing to pay. This is evident as occasionally bad laws die in Congress, the courts, and on the President's desk. Of course, good laws die in those places too.
In our system, 1 law = $X = Y% of votes = Z logical arguments. This might even be fair, but we'll never know because the exchange rates are not published. It is clear that the law buying power of a single large corporation exceeds the voting power of all of the people. There is something wrong with that.
By definition, allowing non-people to control government is against the public interest. One possible solution to this problem is to limit participation in goverment to individual natural persons only.
Yes, it is a long shot, but the system can be fixed. At a minimum it would require one person or organization with a conscience and access to large amounts of money, votes, or logic. Is that so much to ask?
Yikes; do you have any idea how long it would take to argue the set of patents and copyrights? Who makes those decisions? MS is certain to protest anyone they don't like, and that would be grounds for appealing such a remedy.
I wonder about that too. I hope that some smart lawyer will address it. I do suspect that our courts have lots of untapped power here. If a court refuses to hear an infringement claim, what can you do about it?
Think about what happened with Cipro. Do we even need the courts? I think that the DOJ could simply say: "We will no longer prosecute patent and copyright infringement claims against Microsoft."
This idea interests the hell out of me...
My public comment will be something along these lines...
United States Department of Justice:
State Attorneys General:
United States District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly:
I object to the proposed Microsoft settlement. I believe that it will require too much government involvement and its enforcement will be too expensive. I doubt that it will correct the damage done by Microsoft or cause them to reform their behavior.
I propose a simpler, cheaper remedy which will be effective and fair: Revoke some of Microsoft's patents and copyrights. Give them back to their rightful owners or to the public.
This remedy would return the competitive system to its natural state by freeing Microsoft's competitors to produce interoperable products without the threat of lawsuits. It would also strongly deter future anticompetitive acts by entities which value their patent and copyright privileges.
This remedy would be fair because it would both reduce Microsoft's ability to profit from their crimes and seize the assets used as tools to commit those crimes. The value of many of Microsoft's works was created mainly by depriving consumers of any alternative choices. Consumers and computer vendors should be allowed the right to freely duplicate the existing Microsoft works. Those works are inferior to the work which would have been produced in an freely competitive marketplace.
It would be trivial to implement this remedy. The court would simply select an appropriate set of patents and copyrights, declare them void, and refuse to enforce them. The selection could be limited to only those patents and copyrights directly involved in criminal acts, or the court could deny Microsoft all patent and copyright privileges for some period of time.
As a general rule, an anticompetitive monopolist should never be granted extra power to prevent competition through patent and copyright. To the contrary, a market entity's access to legalized monopoly protection should be inversely proportional to its size. This would lead to a stable market of medium sized producers and would maximize competition and innovation.
Finally, I want to suggest that every computing product or service offered for sale, whether from Microsoft or not, should be accompanied by a warranty [see note 1]. The warranty should clearly document the product's input and output, including the type, purpose, and format of all files and network resources used. While this is not currently law, the court should require it of Microsoft from now on.
note 1: Because source code describes exactly what a program does, unobfuscated source code should be considered a sufficient warranty for software products.
Thank you for your good work. I hope you are able to find a fair solution in the best interest of society.
Sincerely,
Dave King
Irving, Texas
Another nice article on the public comment period.
A more official reference to the tunney act itself.
Paragraph d says: At the close of the period during which such comments may be received, the United States shall file with the district court and cause to be published in the Federal Register a response to such comments.
Good points, but I would expect it to work a little differently. People would use the proposed anti-monopolist rules as a defense against patent and copyright infringement lawsuits initiated by the monopolist. Someone with a lot of courage might deliberately provoke a monopolist into suing over a key copyright or patent, but that would be rare.
I think that these rules would make monopolists hesitant to use the legal system as a weapon against emergent competitors and nonprofit amateurs. We do need an effective way to discourage companies from wanting to #1 (of only 1) in any market. This would promote capatalism by slowing the runaway accumulation of private ownership by the few.
They have far too much power and there's no clear way to stop them.
Microsoft does have too much power, but I think we can stop them. Here's how.
When an organization monopolizes a commodity or service, government should not reinforce that monopoly with patent and copyright protection. It is simply wrong for a government to grant Microsoft a copyright on an operating system until they no longer monopolize that commodity.
When a monopolist abuses their monopoly, then they should be punished. An easy way to do that is simply to refuse to grant any patent or copyright protection at all to that organization, for some period of time.
Any government could easily use these simple controls to prevent and reverse economic damage by aggressive monopolists. Every country should integrate these controls into their laws.
which is why Open Source is required. So we can all see exactly where the code stinks and we can fix it. Too bad legacy development models don't provide such advantages. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just buy quality software?
Do the relevant standards permit the client identifier to be used for discrimination? Maybe they should prohibit that.
I doubt that Microsoft is being honest about their reason for refusing service to non Microsoft browser users. I suppose it will all be explained in court.
If this turns out to be another illegal monopoly abuse, then I hope the court revokes any patents and copyrights involved in the crime. Maybe a good general remedy for Microsoft abuses would be to prohibit them from holding any patents or copyrights at all, for a few years.
No, this policy is part of the Microsoft anti-competition initiative.
The anti-spam initiative is responsible for the frequent Outlook crashes, so no one can send mass email.
That seems reasonable. If it is true, then shouldn't Microsoft lose copyrights to Windows and IE?
Could also lose patents that were abused?
When are they going to figure out that phones need a nice bright LED to use as a flashlight? The backlight just doesn't cut it.
Using varied software gives a corporation a degree of isolation from a radical economic event that occurs in the market for a single type of software.
What if an operating system vendor were to change its leasing terms and increase its price?
While looking for the best IE5 "Security Settings" to recommend to our Windows users, I ran across this wonderful nugget of Microsoft wisdom:
"Scripts are usually safe. Do you want to allow scripts to run?"
To reproduce:
Set Tools | Internet Options | Security | Custom Level | Scripting | Active Scripting = Prompt
Go to an infected server (like http://dkb3.dkbnet.com)
Notice that it gives no other clues about what is going on. Nothing.
Any computer that can't handle a static discharge to any external port, especially a serial port, is defective. Any lawsuits should be directed to the computer maker (or /dev/null).
The harder the telcos fight free networks, the sooner free networks will destroy the telcos. Let's hope they fight really hard. The Internet must be owned and operated by its local users.
There is still one thing that telcos can help us with. Wireless freenets will give us a huge distributed network which none of our existing heirarchical routing mechanisms can handle. Geographical routing and IPv6 should solve the problem. It would be nice of telcos to work out the details, while they still exist.
Instead they will probably fight the future. They will abuse government to restrict the spectrum we need. They will also restrict the interim services we buy from them. Note that Internet access, by definition, connects any set of networks to the rest of the Internet. If telcos restrict the network topologies allowed use their services, they can't call those services 'Internet'. That would be fraud.
"We don't know anything about the methodology or how the questions were asked, but [the survey] directly contradicts what we hear from our members," Weinstein told the E-Commerce Times.
Imagine that. People who don't trust AOL aren't inclined to fill out AOL customer satisfaction surveys.
I don't trust AOL either. They took money from my bank account without my authorization.
In the US, the public has leverage over software producers because we grant legal protection for ideas. Even for the ideas of those who try to steal from us using trojan software and traps (like secret APIs, file formats, and network protocols). That's crazy.
We can change the rules to reward only those who treat us fairly. Like this:
No software is eligible for trademark, copyright, or patent protection unless the software producer documents the location and format of all information that the software reads and/or writes.
Documentation may be in the form of unobfuscated source code. If documentation is provided in any other form, it must be designed to be understood by any intended user of the software, and it must be made freely available without purchase, transfer, or use of the software itself.
But I was referring to the average Code Red infected machine. Those machines have nothing sensitive, only some downloaded music and porn, copies of commercial software borrowed from the office, and a resume claiming N years experience administering Windows.
It is only reasonable to format and reinstall an infected machine if the admin honestly plans to either keep up with security updates or disconnect it from the net. Most Code Red victims will do neither of those.
The average cleanup takes a couple minutes. Are NT admins really paid that well, or are they just very slow?
BTW, when is the NT version of Code Red coming out? Seems like it should have a much larger audience of forgotten and neglected servers.
cd /var/www/html (or apache server root)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=default.ida count=100000
Is that so wrong?
The phrase "public performance" seems archaic and imprecise. Does a modified GPLd servlet behind an unmodified GPLd webserver count? What about a modified GPLd SQL procedure three tiers away from the 'public' user? I don't think so. If you want to protect such code, why not say this: "If you modify the program and distribute either the program or its output, then you must provide your modifications to all recipients of the modified program or its output."