Umm... and Al Gore will NOT appoint 3-4 pro-business anti-liberty justices?
The DMCA was written by a democratic congressman, and signed into law by a democratic president. The Democrats aren't the saints fighting against abuses of business like they would have much of the population think, simply only when it suits their power base (unions, etc). Don't forget that.
They differ in many other ways, but when it comes to passing laws favoring corporate interests over individual liberty, Bush and Gore are not far apart.
Yeah, well DeCSS has the primary purpose of allowing all those who legitimately purchased their DVDs to view them on the platform of their choice, it even says so in the source code.
No, DeCSS has the primary purpose of circumventing access control. Neither of us can like it (I know I don't), but that is the way it is. I'll be more blunt: Viewing DVDs on the platform of your choice is circumventing access control, which is why DeCSS has struggled legally so far.
Says who? Only the people who sell software. They want this to be the case, but that doesn't mean much.
Currently, UCITA and other bribery aside, you own software just like you own a book. You own the physical work and all rights pertaining to the use of the data printed on it, where those rights don't conflict with copyright. (You can copy it temporarily (overhead projector, etc) for purposes or reading it, burn it, underline/highlight it, and nearly anything else.)
They (the publisher) can't revoke those rights under any circumstances... you paid for it, they sold it, it's yours.
Well, yes and no. Yes, the software IS yours, and you DO own it... for a short amount of time. You can do whatever you want with it, until that software forces you to sign some type of license agreement, which can change everything. You CAN legally decide not to accept that license, not to accept that contract. But since just about all software requires acceptance as a condition of installation, it doesn't do you much good.
So yes, you own the software, but you can't really do anything with it. To do so is to accept the terms of the contract.
And you seem to have an unusual definition of "cruel or unusual punishment." The phrase normally refers to situations where the punishment is greater than the they crime would seem to deserve. In the previous example of hacking a DVD player to be able to play region 1 discs on a region 2 player (or reversed), jail time very easily fits into the definition of "cruel and unusual."
You seem to have a bizarre idea of jail as well. Despite what some "press stories" from tough-on-crime hard-liners would have you believe, jail is no country club.
Getting caught for possesion of marijuana will, on one's first offense, lead to probation, for most of the "hard" drugs, first offens
You sure about that? The trend these days (at least where I live in California), is towards harsh sentences (such as large fines or prison) for even first time users, despite a smattering of ballot measures aimed at reducing sentences. Sortof of a "scare them straight the first time" approach, I suppose...
(In case anyone doesn't know, Randall's only crime was to get on the wrong side of Intel in Oregon, where the government basically does anything Intel wants. See here for details. Please boycott Intel and write to them to tell them you are doing so)
Well... yes and no. Intel apparently doesn't like Randell, but the idea that that was his only crime is silly. Randall cracked Intel's internal machines while he was there, machines he had no authority to touch. Especially at big companies like Intel, that's a big no-no. He didn't ask for authority, he just broke into a box. It seemed pretty arrogant by many of those protesting against his treatment that Intel should have simply trusted Randell's 'good name' in the perl community instead of being seen as someone who might have done something really damaging. I agree that the punishment/sentance was very excessive, but don't say he did absolutely nothing wrong. The moral: make sure you're allowed to run security sweeps on certain boxes before you do so.
Yes, I know you're just playing around, but this sort of example really is rediculous. Such a "license" would probably not be enforcable under any current law for several reasons.
Saying "by reading this you agree..." is no contact. The other person has to actually
-agree- to the contract, which is one reason the clickthrough licenses are in a legal grey area: it's not determined whether that's a real agreement or not either.
Even if I don't agree with your terms, there's nothing that stops me from reading your article anyway. There's no law against reading everything you write even if I don't agree with your terms. If, say, Office 2000 had a bug in it which allowed the installation to continue even if I clicked no on the license agreement, I'd still be allowed to use it.
Contracts require "consideration" for them to be legally valid. That is, a contract that is so one-sided would never be upheld.
And if technology becomes advanced enough to guarantee potential immortality to individuals? Do we cease then to be worthy of rights?
OT: I'm not sure, but I think we'd come closer to that. Technology to grant immortality (or even just extremely long life spans) would be a complete disaster.
The craftsmen guild chamber (german word: Handwerkskammer - an instituition noone in America would ever dream of in the worst kind of nightmare) may even sue you if you own a computer shop and touch hardware without being 'certified' by them.
America probably wouldn't consider it since the pronunciation of that German name in the US would sound a little too much like "Handwork Scammer," which is probably a little too close to the truth. Those Germans are a kooky bunch.:)
I'm not American and as such am I not under the control of your laws.
Mmmm... wasn't that European kid accused of writing DeCSS arrested? Convicted, no, but please do not assume that where the Internet is involved, that non-Americans are somehow "safe" from stupid American laws.
(and even with DMCA, it is only supported by one state IIRC?)
I believe you're thinking of the UCITA, something very different, but more odious.
but America does seem to be the only country which thinks that its laws apply to every country on the planet.
France and its anti-nazi memorabilia laws attacking Yahoo comes to mind.;)
I don't know how cali got such a liberal rep, but there you go.
Yes, California is rather conservative and uptight. So how did California get its reputation for being liberal? From it's concentrated areas of liberalism, such as Berkeley, San Francisco, and a few southern areas. Those places get headlines and cause the ruckus, but the rest of the state is fairly conservative, and it's the overall effect that wins out. (The average)
It's not every RH 7.0 only, it's the default installation only
If you just toss up a box without doing any kind of security check like removing unnecessary services (running a software updater on your website is not a bright idea), then you deserve all the pain you will get. That kind of incredible cluelessness is damaging not only to you, but to the rest of the community when someone starts playing with the r00ted box.
Not defending RH on this, btw, I think they deserve criticsm for the screwups. I dislike major new features which were not included in the beta. I'm just saying this shouldn't be an issue on systems which have been properly maintained.
I created a device, using my knowledge of how CSS supposidly works. Am I guilty of circumventing copyright measures to the disk?
Yes, sortof. (See below)
My device functions the same way as all the other "licenced" players. How could I be guilty of "circumventing" copyright measures?
Because the DMCA does strike against circumventing copyright control measures, it strikes more broadly: at anything that is "unauthorized" to access the contents. The word access here is very important. The DMCA does not criminalize devices which can be used to steal, it crimilizes devices which can be used for unauthorized access.
Those pages base a supposed lack of obligation to pay Federal Income Tax on a very bizarre redefinition of what it means to be a United
States citizen. What a load. This might work in Waco, but it probably won't fly in most of the U.S.
Uhh... it didn't exactly work in Waco either, did it?:)
I agree- please don't waste votes on Nader. He's not gonna win, and if Bush does...we got trouble. Gore may not be the most honorable man, but hell of a lot moreso than Bush. At least he owns up to his past drug-use. And anyone who is actually aware, realizes Gore never said he 'invented the internet' and as was posted here
previously, has been absolved of his mistaken comment.
This attitude has always pissed me off. The only such thing as a "wasted vote" is when the voter stays at home instead of voting. The only good reason to vote for someone is if you are honestly and truly behind that person for the presidency. There is no "anyone but this candidate" option on the ballot; there is no way to vote against someone. You vote FOR a candidate. Not wanting Bush to win is a terrible reason for voting for Gore. The two major political parties don't mind that though, since such attitudes keep them in power. If you want real change and real improvement, vote for someone who really represents your beliefs. Otherwise you are only perpetuating the status quo.
If I were an IRCop, that would be one thing UI would make a note of - Help with the damn nick stealers and chan takovers!
How can someone steal your nick on Efnet? It's not yours. It "belongs" to whomever is using it at the moment. How can someone steal your channel on Efnet? The channel "belongs" to whomever has ops in it at the moment. There is no nick or channel ownership on Efnet. If you want such things, then perhaps you should give networks that make nick/channel ownership a focus a try.
Erf. Sorry, I should point out that point #3 is paraphrased. I didn't mean to make it appear with the double-quotes as if that was an exact quote from the docs.
Can you point out in the Samba documentation where they recommend turning on plain text passwords?
I didn't see anywhere where they flat-out state that you should just turn plain-text passwords on, but they do do a little lobbying for why they think that could be a good idea:
Same passwords for both Unix and NT there, instead of storing them in different password files
The passwords are stored in the smbpasswd file, and the encrypted versions there aren't using terribly good encryption -- at least that's what I was able to glean from the docs.:)
They actually say "Hey, plain text passwords over the network aren't that big a deal, since you're probably using other services like telnet and ftp that use plain-text passwords"
They have a Win9XPlaintext.reg registry file displayed pretty prominantly at the top of the docs too. I'm not sure if this is RedHat or the Samba team who added it, but it's references in a few Samba docs, so I'll guess Samba.
Just about all of the above came from ENCRYPTION.txt that came with my version of 2.0.6. They're pretty clearly not discouraging plaintext passwords, and someone (RedHat or samba?) put a big huge scary warning in the sample smb.conf file telling people to only enable encryption if they really really know what they are doing. Then again, I think people should only be running Samba if they know what they are doing anyway.;)
I've never had a single problem with Creative's drivers on any of my Soundblaster cards.. the SBPro, Vibra16, or Live! I see them as being pretty nice and stable, as far as drivers go.
Now the sound drivers that came with my old PC Chips motherboard... THOSE were some terrible drivers.;)
Someone who has no respect for the law has no right on the road.
Someone who has no "respect" for the law has every right to be on the road. But if they're a hazard, they can be taken off. Here's what I disagree with: removing the license of a person for a non-traffic offense. If they get a DUI, then fine, they should lose their license. But this has nothing to do with how they drive!
I don't find having a drink if you're under the age of 21 as being completely irresponsible. It might be illegal of course, and illegality is the only thing the government can decide. The government cannot make "underage" drinking immoral or irresponsible, they can only make it illegal.
Debian upgrades are a breeze compared to rpm distro's. Once Debian is installed there is nothing but upgrade from there. Just point apt-get to the right place and there you go.
I don't know, I haven't had much of a problem upgrading my RedHat machine. Once I downloaded an entire distribution and ran rpm -Fhv *.rpm to upgrade.. it wasn't that hard. Granted, this won't always work if a new library is used in your old programs, but that's usually easy to fix as well.
I'm suprised that a big house like Adobe hasn't bought it out already - the ambitions of the VirtualDub team will make this program a possible competitor to Adobe Premiere.
Don't forget that VirtualDub is GPL'd, so it might stick around for awhile, even if Adobe did somehow buy it -- old versions would always be available, anyway, and people could still work on those versions.
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The DMCA was written by a democratic congressman, and signed into law by a democratic president. The Democrats aren't the saints fighting against abuses of business like they would have much of the population think, simply only when it suits their power base (unions, etc). Don't forget that.
They differ in many other ways, but when it comes to passing laws favoring corporate interests over individual liberty, Bush and Gore are not far apart.
No, DeCSS has the primary purpose of circumventing access control. Neither of us can like it (I know I don't), but that is the way it is. I'll be more blunt: Viewing DVDs on the platform of your choice is circumventing access control, which is why DeCSS has struggled legally so far.
Currently, UCITA and other bribery aside, you own software just like you own a book. You own the physical work and all rights pertaining to the use of the data printed on it, where those rights don't conflict with copyright. (You can copy it temporarily (overhead projector, etc) for purposes or reading it, burn it, underline/highlight it, and nearly anything else.)
They (the publisher) can't revoke those rights under any circumstances... you paid for it, they sold it, it's yours.
Well, yes and no. Yes, the software IS yours, and you DO own it... for a short amount of time. You can do whatever you want with it, until that software forces you to sign some type of license agreement, which can change everything. You CAN legally decide not to accept that license, not to accept that contract. But since just about all software requires acceptance as a condition of installation, it doesn't do you much good.
So yes, you own the software, but you can't really do anything with it. To do so is to accept the terms of the contract.
You seem to have a bizarre idea of jail as well. Despite what some "press stories" from tough-on-crime hard-liners would have you believe, jail is no country club.
You sure about that? The trend these days (at least where I live in California), is towards harsh sentences (such as large fines or prison) for even first time users, despite a smattering of ballot measures aimed at reducing sentences. Sortof of a "scare them straight the first time" approach, I suppose...
Well... yes and no. Intel apparently doesn't like Randell, but the idea that that was his only crime is silly. Randall cracked Intel's internal machines while he was there, machines he had no authority to touch. Especially at big companies like Intel, that's a big no-no. He didn't ask for authority, he just broke into a box. It seemed pretty arrogant by many of those protesting against his treatment that Intel should have simply trusted Randell's 'good name' in the perl community instead of being seen as someone who might have done something really damaging. I agree that the punishment/sentance was very excessive, but don't say he did absolutely nothing wrong. The moral: make sure you're allowed to run security sweeps on certain boxes before you do so.
OT: I'm not sure, but I think we'd come closer to that. Technology to grant immortality (or even just extremely long life spans) would be a complete disaster.
I'm sure his responses were passed through an editor who would correct spelling/grammatical errors anyway.
America probably wouldn't consider it since the pronunciation of that German name in the US would sound a little too much like "Handwork Scammer," which is probably a little too close to the truth. :)
Those Germans are a kooky bunch.
Mmmm... wasn't that European kid accused of writing DeCSS arrested? Convicted, no, but please do not assume that where the Internet is involved, that non-Americans are somehow "safe" from stupid American laws.
(and even with DMCA, it is only supported by one state IIRC?)
I believe you're thinking of the UCITA, something very different, but more odious.
but America does seem to be the only country which thinks that its laws apply to every country on the planet.
France and its anti-nazi memorabilia laws attacking Yahoo comes to mind. ;)
I've had Pacbell DSL for about 8 months now, and the longest outage I've ever had was for a few hours...
Yes, California is rather conservative and uptight. So how did California get its reputation for being liberal? From it's concentrated areas of liberalism, such as Berkeley, San Francisco, and a few southern areas. Those places get headlines and cause the ruckus, but the rest of the state is fairly conservative, and it's the overall effect that wins out. (The average)
- It's not every RH 7.0 only, it's the default installation only
- If you just toss up a box without doing any kind of security check like removing unnecessary services (running a software updater on your website is not a bright idea), then you deserve all the pain you will get. That kind of incredible cluelessness is damaging not only to you, but to the rest of the community when someone starts playing with the r00ted box.
Not defending RH on this, btw, I think they deserve criticsm for the screwups. I dislike major new features which were not included in the beta. I'm just saying this shouldn't be an issue on systems which have been properly maintained.Yes, sortof. (See below)
My device functions the same way as all the other "licenced" players. How could I be guilty of "circumventing" copyright measures?
Because the DMCA does strike against circumventing copyright control measures, it strikes more broadly: at anything that is "unauthorized" to access the contents. The word access here is very important. The DMCA does not criminalize devices which can be used to steal, it crimilizes devices which can be used for unauthorized access.
Uhh... it didn't exactly work in Waco either, did it? :)
This attitude has always pissed me off. The only such thing as a "wasted vote" is when the voter stays at home instead of voting. The only good reason to vote for someone is if you are honestly and truly behind that person for the presidency. There is no "anyone but this candidate" option on the ballot; there is no way to vote against someone. You vote FOR a candidate. Not wanting Bush to win is a terrible reason for voting for Gore. The two major political parties don't mind that though, since such attitudes keep them in power. If you want real change and real improvement, vote for someone who really represents your beliefs. Otherwise you are only perpetuating the status quo.
How can someone steal your nick on Efnet? It's not yours. It "belongs" to whomever is using it at the moment. How can someone steal your channel on Efnet? The channel "belongs" to whomever has ops in it at the moment. There is no nick or channel ownership on Efnet. If you want such things, then perhaps you should give networks that make nick/channel ownership a focus a try.
I didn't see anywhere where they flat-out state that you should just turn plain-text passwords on, but they do do a little lobbying for why they think that could be a good idea:
- Same passwords for both Unix and NT there, instead of storing them in different password files
- The passwords are stored in the smbpasswd file, and the encrypted versions there aren't using terribly good encryption -- at least that's what I was able to glean from the docs.
:)
- They actually say "Hey, plain text passwords over the network aren't that big a deal, since you're probably using other services like telnet and ftp that use plain-text passwords"
- They have a Win9XPlaintext.reg registry file displayed pretty prominantly at the top of the docs too. I'm not sure if this is RedHat or the Samba team who added it, but it's references in a few Samba docs, so I'll guess Samba.
Just about all of the above came from ENCRYPTION.txt that came with my version of 2.0.6. They're pretty clearly not discouraging plaintext passwords, and someone (RedHat or samba?) put a big huge scary warning in the sample smb.conf file telling people to only enable encryption if they really really know what they are doing. Then again, I think people should only be running Samba if they know what they are doing anyway.Now the sound drivers that came with my old PC Chips motherboard... THOSE were some terrible drivers. ;)
Someone who has no "respect" for the law has every right to be on the road. But if they're a hazard, they can be taken off. Here's what I disagree with: removing the license of a person for a non-traffic offense. If they get a DUI, then fine, they should lose their license. But this has nothing to do with how they drive!
I don't find having a drink if you're under the age of 21 as being completely irresponsible. It might be illegal of course, and illegality is the only thing the government can decide. The government cannot make "underage" drinking immoral or irresponsible, they can only make it illegal.
I don't know, I haven't had much of a problem upgrading my RedHat machine. Once I downloaded an entire distribution and ran rpm -Fhv *.rpm to upgrade.. it wasn't that hard. Granted, this won't always work if a new library is used in your old programs, but that's usually easy to fix as well.
Don't forget that VirtualDub is GPL'd, so it might stick around for awhile, even if Adobe did somehow buy it -- old versions would always be available, anyway, and people could still work on those versions.