My guess, being a careful student of Law & Order and NYPD Blue (which makes me a legal expert, you know), is that he/she would be charged with Involuntary Manslaughter. The cracker didn't mean to kill the astronauts, but his actions caused their deaths. For it to be Murder the cracker would to have had the intention of killing the astronauts.
As of now no one has personally been sued because of Napster, Scour Exchange, etc. That however, is going to change and programs like Gnutella are going to force that change.
The scary reality is that Gnutella is going to force artists to go after the individual user who is pirating their music. It is true that Metallica has said they will not go after the individual person, but that doesn't mean the next artist won't. I think things will change severely if people themselves are dragged into court because of copyright violation.
Gnutella and its clones are backing artists into a corner, and pretty soon they are going to come out swinging. It won't be pretty.
You're right in that if a web designer wanted to he/she could go to great lengths to hide the URL from me, and that frequently happens when I visit sites such as those I spoke of before. In this case its a question of risk vs. return. When I'm surfing Blues News, Yahoo, and such the risk is minimal that I'm going to be "hijacked." Other types of sites however, will do that. Hence, the JavaScript goes off. Doing this takes care of the status bar, pop up windows, etc., and makes for a much more enjoyable browsing experience.
Irregardless, taking away the status bar is just wrong. Its been common knowledge of all the web designers and IT people that I have spoken with, and seeing someone in the position of Mr. Zeldman break that rule is rather disheartening.
I never intended my comment to actually be moderated up as a question to send to Mr. Zeldman, but whatever. After reading his response I think it only appropriate that I answer his (mis)statements.
The status bar *does* reveal the url of the page it links to - just like an untreated status bar would do. It also provides ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMENTARY.
Contrary to what you have written, you're website does not give me the URL of the page that I am going to. One link, the one to alistapart.com, does, but that is the only link that reveals the URL and then it is only because you included it as part of the description. Netscape Navigator never shows a URL. IE also keeps the URLs a secret. I swapped computers and still the URL was hidden from view. I'm not sure what page you are looking at, but it isn't zeldman.com. At zeldman.com you'll find the "ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMENTARY" that you spoke of, but not any URLs (save the one I spoke of above).
The point of all this, which you may or may not understand, is that I (and quite a few others who responded to my post and with whom I have discussed the subject in general) want to know where I am going. On your site I have to trust you that when I click on a link I'll go to the page you said I would. Quite frankly, I don't trust you. Furthermore, I don't trust any webpage I go to. When I am about to click on a link I want to see that I am not being taken off-site to another page with who-knows-what on it.
You have one link for free web graphics ("Steal"). How do I know that you aren't taking me to some "sponsor" that pays you by the click-thru? I would if the URL was there. However, there is none. Like I said before, I don't trust you, so I want to know where I am going.
Perhaps I should be a little more trusting of my fellow web designers, and I try. During normal everyday browsing it helps to have JavaScript turned on, especially with the number of online accounts, credit cards, investments, etc., that I have. When I surf sites where the chances of deception are high however (hacking/cracking, etc.), I turn JavaScript off.
It doesn't matter who owns it, whether it is Microsoft, Linus, Red Hat, or whomever. The fact of the matter is that a piece of copyrighted material was posted to the board. And the owner, in this case Microsoft, has every right to ask and expect that it be taken down. It doesn't take the DMCA to make that copyright violation wrong.
Let's say I posted the complete text to the latest Grisham novel. Would not the publishing company that distributed his work have the right to ask for the text to be removed? I would certainly think so. Its no different than Microsoft asking for their copyrighted Kerberos material to be removed.
Now as for the links and the instructions, MS will just have to deal. I refuse to believe that those things are illegal or wrong. The courts have already stated that links are fine, and instructions are also acceptable. After all, there are books on the market as to how to be a hitman!
I think MS doesn't have a leg to stand on with regards to the latter two issues they raise. I don't think, and I believe it has been backed up by court case(s) (I trust fellow/.ers will advise me if I'm wrong or right), that linking is not illegal. Similiarly, telling someone how to do something is generally not illegal either. Search long enough and you'll find specifications on how to make bombs, tap phones, etc. Things such as these are illegal when done but not when discussed.
The only thing I believe MS has a legit gripe with is the posting of the copyrighted work. I realize how unpopular this is going to make me around here, but what is the difference between this and if I posted the complete text to Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October? Each is a copyrighted work, and just because this is an open discussion forum doesn't give me the right to reproduce the work as a whole so that anyone may get it.
Hell, down at the bottom of the page there is the copyright notice for Andover.net. What do you think they would do if I started a website called Slashdotdot.org in which I did nothing but reproduce all of Slashdot picture for picture and word for word? Do you think Andover would just let that go?
Message starts a little OT, then swings back to the particular topic at hand.
Fine, if people want to stop Metallica from protecting their work from being stolen by illegal MP3 trading, then I don't want to hear or read another word on Slashdot about any company violating the GPL.
What Metallica is being asked to do is to allow the free and unrestricted trading of their music, their work, by any means the end user sees fit. If people think that the band should allow this, then how dare anyone criticize a company for not releasing the source code to a program? After all, restrictions are being placed on how the code can be used or changed with the GPL. This is hardly free and open as the majority opinion wants Metallica's music to be. Is there a difference here?
As for the "violation of privacy" that has occured...please. Napster users are not having their privacy violated when they are sharing MP3s with the world in an open and searchable database. Finding those users stealing from Metallica hardly requires "invading" their privacy. It just requires typing the word "metallica" into the search function of Napster.
Warning: Disjointed and hastily written rant below.
I am really sick of the idiotic argument that usually runs something along these lines: If the record companies would just change their marketing and/or stance on MP3s, then the music buying public would gladly pay for MP3s.
There just isn't a nice way to say it: This argument is stupid. Period.
Mr. Katz asks if the genie is out of the bottle. Yes, its out of the bottle, and the genie is free. Do you think that people are going to now start paying for the genie? Answer: NO!
Is not the fact the Linux is free one of the chief arguments of its supporters? What about GPL'd software? Did not Netscape have a stranglehold on the web browser market once they released it for free?
People are not going to pay for something they got originally as free. That's just the way people are. Why is this concept so hard for everyone to grasp?
I'm not sure how many gigs of MP3s I have available to me. But the players that have only 64MB of RAM? Huh? Figure 3-5MB for a song (get up to the higher quality ones and it can be more) and I can only hold an album-and-a-half or so. What's the point of that?
So the MP3 player is smaller. That doesn't matter at all to me if I'm stuck with the same 10-20 songs unless I go back ot my computer. If I took a long trip I'd probably want to kill myself by the end of it from hearing the same music over and over again! I'd much rather take a CD walkman and a a CD wallet with 15 CDs. The disc player is bigger than the MP3 one, sure, but not that much bigger. The wider music selection more than makes up for the extra size.
I always said that when an MP3 player could hold multiple gigs of music I'd consider buying one. I believe that day has arrived!
excuse me??? your whole campus has one t1 line? like quit yer bitchin' and some real bandwidth. no wonder napster is using 25% of it.
Like as I said in like my post I am like on a small liberal arts campus with like 1000 students which are like all under-grads. Like A T1 is like plenty of bandwidth for like that few number of people. Like this isn't like Ohio State with like enough people to like be a small city.
Here we tried to go that route. We noticed a problem a couple months ago. Instead of immediately imposing an outright ban on Napster we attempted to inform the students of the problem. We've posted signs, talked to RAs about educating their residents, gone to the student congress, etc. Result? Now Napster is only taking about 30% of our total bandwidth where it was taking about 40%. That's a reduction, yes, but 30% is still way over the top.
College students, at least the ones here, don't like being told what to do. The bottom line is that sometimes us IT people just have to be totalitarian pricks.
Nice guys finish last, and nice IT workers get fired.
I wish Napster was only taking up 5% of our total bandwidth!
Here at the college where I am a technician we've already had the first part of our firewall system installed to secure the campus and restrict the use of Napster. Our reason to kill Napster is the same one repeated many times in this forum--bandwidth. Currently, Napster is taking up about 25-30% of the sum total of our T1 line.
It used to be a 3-to-1 ratio of incoming to outgoing traffic. 75% of the traffic came into the campus LAN and 25% (or less) went out. This year, that has all changed. As I write this our MRTG graph shows 150K+ going out and less than 100K comming in. At night its even worse (typical night: 50K+ out vs. ~10K in). On average we are split equally between traffic comming in and traffic going out.
I probed and port scanned the network a couple weeks ago and found 30-40 people who were running a Napster server. Lets say each server allows 10-20 users. At peak that would mean 300-800 people are downloading large MP3 files. We have a student body of 1000. The math becomes a little frightening at this point.
At the end of the episode. The CG-Afterglow avatar's head was replaced with Scully's. That's why I said that it wasn't really Gillian Anderson, but oh-so close!
I realize that television standards are more strict than film, but it just seems wrong to rewrite the song. There may be swearing and profanity, but that's the point. SP:BLU worked because it used the language to expose the hypocrisy about the MPAA film guidelines. Take that away, and the message is lost.
If it's my dime, I can spend all day searching for and indexing AC "Naked and petrified/grits down the pants" posts if I want to.
No, you can't.
Your money is paying for your slice of the bandwidth pie. Just as all of the other student's money is paying for their slice. If you are downloading your "naked grits" and it doesn't interfere with them doing their work on the network, fine. No problem.
However, if your constant downloading is having an adverse effect on other students attempts to use the network, then you are abusing the network. When that happens, I'll ask you to stop. If you don't, then I'll unplug your data port from the hub.
Your right to use the network is no more important than all of the other student's right to use the network. As long as you respect their right to use the network, I'll make sure they respect your equal right to use the network.
I applaud Carmack for his work, if he is in fact going to rewrite the IP stack. However, does he, or anyone else for that matter, think this will "pressure Microsoft" to modify their implementation? Hasn't Microsoft operated with this air of "We'l do what we want, when we want?" Why should this change that now?
The biggest reason not to buy a DVD player right now is that you can't get any of The Trilogy on DVD. DVD truly won't have arrived until we get to see all of the Star Wars films in this format.
Although, in the meantime I think we can make due with The Matrix.;)
Slashdot Mirror
--
My guess, being a careful student of Law & Order and NYPD Blue (which makes me a legal expert, you know), is that he/she would be charged with Involuntary Manslaughter. The cracker didn't mean to kill the astronauts, but his actions caused their deaths. For it to be Murder the cracker would to have had the intention of killing the astronauts.
As of now no one has personally been sued because of Napster, Scour Exchange, etc. That however, is going to change and programs like Gnutella are going to force that change.
The scary reality is that Gnutella is going to force artists to go after the individual user who is pirating their music. It is true that Metallica has said they will not go after the individual person, but that doesn't mean the next artist won't. I think things will change severely if people themselves are dragged into court because of copyright violation.
Gnutella and its clones are backing artists into a corner, and pretty soon they are going to come out swinging. It won't be pretty.
You're right in that if a web designer wanted to he/she could go to great lengths to hide the URL from me, and that frequently happens when I visit sites such as those I spoke of before. In this case its a question of risk vs. return. When I'm surfing Blues News, Yahoo, and such the risk is minimal that I'm going to be "hijacked." Other types of sites however, will do that. Hence, the JavaScript goes off. Doing this takes care of the status bar, pop up windows, etc., and makes for a much more enjoyable browsing experience.
Irregardless, taking away the status bar is just wrong. Its been common knowledge of all the web designers and IT people that I have spoken with, and seeing someone in the position of Mr. Zeldman break that rule is rather disheartening.
Plus, its just friggin' annoying.
I never intended my comment to actually be moderated up as a question to send to Mr. Zeldman, but whatever. After reading his response I think it only appropriate that I answer his (mis)statements.
The status bar *does* reveal the url of the page it links to - just like an untreated status bar would do. It also provides ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMENTARY.
Contrary to what you have written, you're website does not give me the URL of the page that I am going to. One link, the one to alistapart.com, does, but that is the only link that reveals the URL and then it is only because you included it as part of the description. Netscape Navigator never shows a URL. IE also keeps the URLs a secret. I swapped computers and still the URL was hidden from view. I'm not sure what page you are looking at, but it isn't zeldman.com. At zeldman.com you'll find the "ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMENTARY" that you spoke of, but not any URLs (save the one I spoke of above).
The point of all this, which you may or may not understand, is that I (and quite a few others who responded to my post and with whom I have discussed the subject in general) want to know where I am going. On your site I have to trust you that when I click on a link I'll go to the page you said I would. Quite frankly, I don't trust you. Furthermore, I don't trust any webpage I go to. When I am about to click on a link I want to see that I am not being taken off-site to another page with who-knows-what on it.
You have one link for free web graphics ("Steal"). How do I know that you aren't taking me to some "sponsor" that pays you by the click-thru? I would if the URL was there. However, there is none. Like I said before, I don't trust you, so I want to know where I am going.
Perhaps I should be a little more trusting of my fellow web designers, and I try. During normal everyday browsing it helps to have JavaScript turned on, especially with the number of online accounts, credit cards, investments, etc., that I have. When I surf sites where the chances of deception are high however (hacking/cracking, etc.), I turn JavaScript off.
Now as for the "Question #12" comment...huh?
I find it hard to ask HTML questions to someone who has committed the cardinal sin of taking away the status bar with JavaScript.
It doesn't matter who owns it, whether it is Microsoft, Linus, Red Hat, or whomever. The fact of the matter is that a piece of copyrighted material was posted to the board. And the owner, in this case Microsoft, has every right to ask and expect that it be taken down. It doesn't take the DMCA to make that copyright violation wrong.
Let's say I posted the complete text to the latest Grisham novel. Would not the publishing company that distributed his work have the right to ask for the text to be removed? I would certainly think so. Its no different than Microsoft asking for their copyrighted Kerberos material to be removed.
Now as for the links and the instructions, MS will just have to deal. I refuse to believe that those things are illegal or wrong. The courts have already stated that links are fine, and instructions are also acceptable. After all, there are books on the market as to how to be a hitman!
I think MS doesn't have a leg to stand on with regards to the latter two issues they raise. I don't think, and I believe it has been backed up by court case(s) (I trust fellow /.ers will advise me if I'm wrong or right), that linking is not illegal. Similiarly, telling someone how to do something is generally not illegal either. Search long enough and you'll find specifications on how to make bombs, tap phones, etc. Things such as these are illegal when done but not when discussed.
The only thing I believe MS has a legit gripe with is the posting of the copyrighted work. I realize how unpopular this is going to make me around here, but what is the difference between this and if I posted the complete text to Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October? Each is a copyrighted work, and just because this is an open discussion forum doesn't give me the right to reproduce the work as a whole so that anyone may get it.
Hell, down at the bottom of the page there is the copyright notice for Andover.net. What do you think they would do if I started a website called Slashdotdot.org in which I did nothing but reproduce all of Slashdot picture for picture and word for word? Do you think Andover would just let that go?
Message starts a little OT, then swings back to the particular topic at hand.
Fine, if people want to stop Metallica from protecting their work from being stolen by illegal MP3 trading, then I don't want to hear or read another word on Slashdot about any company violating the GPL.
What Metallica is being asked to do is to allow the free and unrestricted trading of their music, their work, by any means the end user sees fit. If people think that the band should allow this, then how dare anyone criticize a company for not releasing the source code to a program? After all, restrictions are being placed on how the code can be used or changed with the GPL. This is hardly free and open as the majority opinion wants Metallica's music to be. Is there a difference here?
As for the "violation of privacy" that has occured...please. Napster users are not having their privacy violated when they are sharing MP3s with the world in an open and searchable database. Finding those users stealing from Metallica hardly requires "invading" their privacy. It just requires typing the word "metallica" into the search function of Napster.
Warning: Disjointed and hastily written rant below.
I am really sick of the idiotic argument that usually runs something along these lines: If the record companies would just change their marketing and/or stance on MP3s, then the music buying public would gladly pay for MP3s.
There just isn't a nice way to say it: This argument is stupid. Period.
Mr. Katz asks if the genie is out of the bottle. Yes, its out of the bottle, and the genie is free. Do you think that people are going to now start paying for the genie? Answer: NO!
Is not the fact the Linux is free one of the chief arguments of its supporters? What about GPL'd software? Did not Netscape have a stranglehold on the web browser market once they released it for free?
People are not going to pay for something they got originally as free. That's just the way people are. Why is this concept so hard for everyone to grasp?
The way I see it, it comes down to these questions. Perhaps I am oversimplifying things, but these are good questions to ask yourself.
Does an artist/band have the right to decide how his/her/their music is distributed?
Does an artist/band have the right to be compensated for the work that he/she/they do(es) to create his/her/their music?
Now this is something I will buy!
I'm not sure how many gigs of MP3s I have available to me. But the players that have only 64MB of RAM? Huh? Figure 3-5MB for a song (get up to the higher quality ones and it can be more) and I can only hold an album-and-a-half or so. What's the point of that?
So the MP3 player is smaller. That doesn't matter at all to me if I'm stuck with the same 10-20 songs unless I go back ot my computer. If I took a long trip I'd probably want to kill myself by the end of it from hearing the same music over and over again! I'd much rather take a CD walkman and a a CD wallet with 15 CDs. The disc player is bigger than the MP3 one, sure, but not that much bigger. The wider music selection more than makes up for the extra size.
I always said that when an MP3 player could hold multiple gigs of music I'd consider buying one. I believe that day has arrived!
excuse me??? your whole campus has one t1 line? like quit yer bitchin' and some real bandwidth. no wonder napster is using 25% of it.
Like as I said in like my post I am like on a small liberal arts campus with like 1000 students which are like all under-grads. Like A T1 is like plenty of bandwidth for like that few number of people. Like this isn't like Ohio State with like enough people to like be a small city.
Here we tried to go that route. We noticed a problem a couple months ago. Instead of immediately imposing an outright ban on Napster we attempted to inform the students of the problem. We've posted signs, talked to RAs about educating their residents, gone to the student congress, etc. Result? Now Napster is only taking about 30% of our total bandwidth where it was taking about 40%. That's a reduction, yes, but 30% is still way over the top.
College students, at least the ones here, don't like being told what to do. The bottom line is that sometimes us IT people just have to be totalitarian pricks.
Nice guys finish last, and nice IT workers get fired.
I wish Napster was only taking up 5% of our total bandwidth!
Here at the college where I am a technician we've already had the first part of our firewall system installed to secure the campus and restrict the use of Napster. Our reason to kill Napster is the same one repeated many times in this forum--bandwidth. Currently, Napster is taking up about 25-30% of the sum total of our T1 line.
It used to be a 3-to-1 ratio of incoming to outgoing traffic. 75% of the traffic came into the campus LAN and 25% (or less) went out. This year, that has all changed. As I write this our MRTG graph shows 150K+ going out and less than 100K comming in. At night its even worse (typical night: 50K+ out vs. ~10K in). On average we are split equally between traffic comming in and traffic going out.
I probed and port scanned the network a couple weeks ago and found 30-40 people who were running a Napster server. Lets say each server allows 10-20 users. At peak that would mean 300-800 people are downloading large MP3 files. We have a student body of 1000. The math becomes a little frightening at this point.
This is a college LAN, not a server farm.
At the end of the episode. The CG-Afterglow avatar's head was replaced with Scully's. That's why I said that it wasn't really Gillian Anderson, but oh-so close!
Ok, so it wasn't really Gillian Anderson, but that made the show worth it, right?
I realize that television standards are more strict than film, but it just seems wrong to rewrite the song. There may be swearing and profanity, but that's the point. SP:BLU worked because it used the language to expose the hypocrisy about the MPAA film guidelines. Take that away, and the message is lost.
If it's my dime, I can spend all day searching for and indexing AC "Naked and petrified/grits down the pants" posts if I want to.
No, you can't.
Your money is paying for your slice of the bandwidth pie. Just as all of the other student's money is paying for their slice. If you are downloading your "naked grits" and it doesn't interfere with them doing their work on the network, fine. No problem.
However, if your constant downloading is having an adverse effect on other students attempts to use the network, then you are abusing the network. When that happens, I'll ask you to stop. If you don't, then I'll unplug your data port from the hub.
Your right to use the network is no more important than all of the other student's right to use the network. As long as you respect their right to use the network, I'll make sure they respect your equal right to use the network.
I applaud Carmack for his work, if he is in fact going to rewrite the IP stack. However, does he, or anyone else for that matter, think this will "pressure Microsoft" to modify their implementation? Hasn't Microsoft operated with this air of "We'l do what we want, when we want?" Why should this change that now?
The biggest reason not to buy a DVD player right now is that you can't get any of The Trilogy on DVD. DVD truly won't have arrived until we get to see all of the Star Wars films in this format.
Although, in the meantime I think we can make due with The Matrix. ;)
The days of the free wheeling Internet seem to be numbered.