I think this article shows two things about the face recognition stuff: (1) it doesn't work that well, and (2) even when it doesn't work, it's not as horrible as people think. This guy was obviously embarrased, but nothing all that bad happened to him. He was not arrested. He was not tried and imprisoned. Of course, the real failure here is on the police. A simple background check on this guy would have revealed that he was not the person the woman claimed he was. I don't know if the police did this before dispatching officers to question him, but I hope they did.
I disagree that one could argue that the presumption of innocence is being violated here. The presumption of innocence only protects a person during a criminal trial. The jury must presume the defendant innocent until they are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. Law enforcement never presumes that anyone is innocent--in fact, the main function of law enforcement is to presume just the opposite.
Of course, the idea that our government can perform surveillance on all of us as we walk down the street is distasteful, it's not illegal or violative of our constitutional rights. Using satellite surveillance technology to observe a person at home is much more disturbing, and that techonology has been around for years.
You don't have a clue what fair use means.
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The End of Innovation?
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· Score: -1, Troll
Man, I like reading Slashdot, but the constant stream of comments about our supposed loss of fair use rights has been tiresome from the start. Now, it's just plain stupid.
For the last time, Napster was not fair use. If you do not own a copy of a copyright-protected song and you download a copy of that song from someone else over Napster (whether they own a copy of the song or not), you are infringing the copyright. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No question. Zero.
As for DeCSS, imagine you are a very large industry. You have a serious problem with pirated copies of your product being sold throughout the world. You have an opportunity to introduce a new format for your product which is far superior to any previous formats. You come up with a way to prevent those pirates from bootlegging your product in this new format. Then some snot-nosed computer geek blows that protection out of the water by writing a program and POSTING IT ON THE INTERNET. Suddenly, all your investment in protecting your product from mass-scale piracy is gone. You're pissed. What do you do? Damage control: prevent that program from being any more widely disseminated than it already has been, fire the idiots who screwed up the encryption in the first place, and come up with a better way to protect your product. The first part of the damage control is what that DeCSS suit is about. The DeCSS suit is not about preventing Linux geeks from watching DVDs with their preferred operating system. Sorry folks, the world does not revolve around you.
Final, Dmitry and his little program: this guy violated the DMCA. He wrote a program to circumvent a copyright protection mechanism, AND HE SOLD IT FOR PROFIT. Yes, your sweet, innocent, little Dmitry was making money off of screwing authors out of their royalties. Oh wait! You didn't think about that, did you? Yes, kids, for every book, there is some author out there who gets paid to write it. Who do you think ultimately suffers for Dmitry's fun little program? Yeah, you're getting it now: the writer. Not some faceless corporation, but a person, one person who makes a living by writing stuff other people want to read. By the way, the DMCA does not have a criminal penalty for programs distributed for free. Had Dmitry just posted his program on internet for free, he wouldn't have been arrested (although he still might have been sued).
Thus, ends today's legal lesson. I hope you have learned one thing: you don't know squat about the DMCA or copyright law. Until you take the time to learn about those things, you should stop claiming that your fair use rights are being trampled.
Lucas is trying to cash in on the b-movie sci-fi revival that is sure to follow Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (which is the only true sci-fi film to come out of Hollywood in many a decade). I mean, at least Attack of the Clones will have good company, name-wise anyway: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Jedi.
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING WRITING REPRESENTS MY PERSONAL ANALYSIS OF THIS QUESTION. THIS ANALYSIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE, AND SHOULD NOT BE USED AS, LEGAL ADVICE. BY PUBLISHING THIS ANALYSIS, I DO NOT INTEND TO, AND DO NOT, CREATE A LAWYER-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH ANYONE READING THIS ANALYSIS. THIS ANALYSIS SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN THE READER'S OWN EDIFICATION. EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION AND DOES NOT REPRESENT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER. SLASHDOT'S POLICY ON ATTORNEY INTERVIEWS IS EXPRESSLY INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
The university's policy permits students to keep their broad copyright rights in their works, but requires students to provide the university with specific, limited licenses of use in certain situations. The first situation is original research and investigation (including software) produced by graduate students preparing their thesis. See Section 4.(c)(1)). My off-the-cuff interpretation of this section is that grad students keep the copyright in these original works, but the university gets to keep the work (remember copyright means one owns the rights of production, reproduction, and distribution of a work of original authorship). In other words, the university gets to keep research records, but arguably cannot do anything with it without the approval of the student who created it.
The second situation also applies to grad students. Grad students, in exchange for the award of their degree (as if tuition wasn't enough, geez), grant the university a right to retain, use, and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis. This limited license also grants the university the right to require publication of the thesis, but only for archival use (i.e., sticking it on shelf in the library basement). Again, this license is limited. If a university decided to publish a student's thesis as book and sell it in every supermarket, that would clearly be a violation of the license. What might not be a violation is publication and distribution for a conference of only 50 people. (However, if the university printed and distributed 50 copies a year for several years, the student could probably sue for violation of the license.) Again, the student retains the copyright right in the work.
Although Section 4.(c) is entitled Student Works, the definition of "Traditional Academic Copyrightable Works" (Section 2.(b)) includes works that students might create. Therefore, Section 3.(b) might also apply to student works. Under Section 3.(b)(1), students retain all the rights to works that they create with usually and customarily provided university resources. Section 2.(d) defines "usually and customarily provided university resources." (The definition indicates that Section 3 probably only applies to works created by faculty, but, as mentioned above, Section 3 arguably applies to student works, too.) Section 3(b)(2) provides that works created with resources above and beyond those usually and customarily provided must be licensed to the university for internal use only. Again, I doubt that students would need to worry much about this provision, because most students (even grad students) are not given resources above and beyond those customarily provided. But if that were to happen, the student still retains all rights in the work. The license granted pursuant to Section 3.(b)(2) is extremely limited and only grants the university the right use the work, not to control its distribution or reproduction (except as those relate to its use). Overall, the student gets to keep the bulk of the copyright rights in student-created works.
Looking to the question of how this university policy interacts with the GPL, the issue becomes if a student publishes a work under the GPL, which license controls the University's rights: the GPL or the University policy? The University policy controls the University's behavior. This intellectual property policy is a contract that the student enters into with the university upon matriculation. The contract controls the relationship between the university and the student. However, it does not control the student's relationship with the outside world. Therefore, a piece of software published under the GPL is controlled by the GPL in its relationship with the world besides the university. There does not appear to be anything in the University's policies that would conflict with the GPL (although, I must admit here that I am not familiar with all the specific terms of the GPL, I only have a general idea of what it provides). The licenses granted to the university do not permit the university to control the distribution or reproduction of the work beyond the walls of the campus. Every license granted in the university policy is a license for royalty-free use. Use is a limited right, and it does not give the university the power to prevent others from using open-source code. These licenses are designed to prevent students from telling the university that it cannot use their works. (If you are distributing your software under the GPL, you couldn't cut off the university anyway).
The only area of possible conflict between the GPL and the university policy is in regard to original records (software) created in the process of thesis investigation. The university policy provides that the university owns these records. I do not know what "the original records of an investigation for a graduate thesis" might be, but my best guess is that they are the data that a student might accumulate in researching the thesis. I assume that if a student wrote software to analyze this data, this software might also be considered part of the original records. Therefore, the university might own the copyright for any software of this type. This would prevent that software from being distributed under the GPL because the university, not the student, would be the one to make the decision regarding licensing the work (because the university owns the copyright).
However, I say that the university might own the copyright because, as noted above, it is arguable that the university merely holds the property right to the physical copies of the records, but the student owns the copyright. This distinction is similar to a person owning a compact disk, but the artist owning the copyright to the music on the disk. The person can do anything with the physical disk (e.g., sell it, eat it, trade it), but the artist can control what the person does with the music on the disk (e.g., prevent the person from copying it for another person). Thus, the student might retain the right to control the production, reproduction, publication, and distribution of the original records, but the university gets to keep a copy of those records.
In summary, a student who creates software as part of the requirements for a degree program keeps all copyright rights, without granting any license to the university. (Section 4.(c)). A student in this situation can publish the software under the GPL, and the GPL will control the student's relationship with the University and the rest of the world. A student who creates a work subject to Section 4.(c)(2) can publish the software under the GPL, but the University policy controls the student's relationship with the university, while the GPL controls the student's relationship with the rest of the world. The University policy is not inconsistent with the GPL (and in fact, the GPL would control the University's behavior in areas not covered by the policy). Students who create works subject to Section 4.(c)(1) might lose all copyright right to those works. Arguably, though, the student retains the full copyright, university merely owns copies of these works.
Article doesn't fully understand Hague Treaty
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Harm From The Hague
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· Score: 3
The author of the article forgets one key component of enforcing a judgment: jurisdiction. He makes it sound as if all one has to do is go to France--for example--sue someone there, and bring the judgment to any Hague Treaty signatory to get the judgment enforced. However, the Hague Treaty is about jurisdiction, too. It has detailed rules governing how courts can establish jurisdiction over foreign parties.
There are two things which prevent judgments from being enforceable in foreign countries. The first is the simple idea of sovereignty: France cannot send its police over into the United States to seize the bank account of a person who has a French judgment against him. France has no power to enforce its laws outside its own borders (and the Hague Treaty will not change this). The second thing is related to sovereignty: a French court does not have jurisdiction to resolve questions of my rights unless I am within France's borders or have established some kind of contact with France that makes France's jurisdiction over me reasonable. In other words, if I am not within France's borders, France does not have the sovereign power to decide my rights, because France's sovereignty stops at the border. However, theoretically, if I have established some kind of sufficient contact with France (opening a store there, or selling goods over the internet specifically to people in France), then it sould be reasonable for France to decide my rights (even if they cannot force me to show up) and have that decision, or judgment, be enforceable.
Things do not work this way now. Right now most countries generally have laws governing jursidiction over foreign parties. For example, French law says that if you are a French citizen, you can obtain a judgment over a foreign party for a dispute that arose anywhere in the world just by bringing the case in French court. Then god help that foreign party when they show up in France and the French citizen gets to enforce that judgment. Further, in the United States we give respect to foreign judgments based on the principle of comity. Comity is basically reciprocal respect: the U.S. will enforce French judgments if France will enforce U.S. judgments. (Note that in practice, right now, the U.S. has more respect for French judgments than France has for U.S. judgments.) However, this principle of comity is limited by our notions of due process of law. The U.S. will not enforce judgments that fail to meet a minimum standard of due process protections. For example, I doubt if a U.S. court would enforce a judgment from a secret, Iranian military court (where people are tried without even being allowed to be present to mount a defense or confront their accusers).
The Hague Treaty will change all this for its signatories. First, of all, it provides general rules for jurisdiction. Thus, France would not be able to keep its law that any French citizen can sue any foreign party in a French court and get an enforceable judgment. Each country would have to provide reasonable rules for jurisdiction. Second, the principle of comity (as between signatories) would drop out of the picture. In the U.S., we would already have adequate assurance that a foreign judgment meets our standards of due process. France would be forced to give the same respect U.S. judgments as the U.S. gives to French judgments.
The upshot is that the article ignores the concept of jurisdiction. Just because a French business obtains a judgment against me in France, even under the Hague Treaty, that judgment is not automatically enforced unless it is valid, i.e., the French court had jurisdiction over me. If the French court did not follow the Hague Treaty rules on jurisdiction, which should be fair to all countries, then that judgment will not be valid (think of it as an ultra vires exercise of sovereignty) and it will not be enforceable in other Hague signatory nations.
For those of you with access to Westlaw or Lexis, you can read more about the concept of jurisdiction and the Hague Treaty in a Cornell Law Review article, Jurisdictional Salvation and the Hague Treaty, by Professor Kevin Clermont, published in issue 1 of Volume 85 (November 1999). This is the legal cite: 85 Cornell L. Rev. 89. (You can also read my article for some background on the law of jurisdiction in the U.S., 85 Cornell L. Rev. 1742 (Sept. 2000).)
I don't have the bandwidth to download a ton of digital music off the internet. I don't have the time to burn all my cds for my friends (and most of my friends don't want my music anyway, and most of my music is by bands who would kiss me if I gave them more exposure). I use my cd-burner to make mix cds to use in my car. My big worry about all this talk about "safely copying authorized music in order to protect copyrights" is that I will lose the true fair use of my cds--making copies for my own personal use. It's fine with me if these companies figure out a way to keep people from stealing music off the internet, but if that method keeps me from making copies of music I have purchased for my own personal use, I would say that oversteps the bounds of their copyrights.
There is a big difference between this lawsuit and the suits against gun companies or tobacco companies. In the gun and tobacco lawsuits, only the gun companies manufacture guns and only the tobacco companies manufacture cigarettes. The link of responsibility (although perhaps not legal liability) is clear. In this lawsuit, game companies are not the only ones that package up violence and push it on minors (whether you think it matters or not, video games are targeted at youngsters). Violent images come at us from every possible media. It will be very hard for these plaintiffs to prove that video games, and only video games, provided the violent input that supposedly is responsible for those two maniacs killing their schoolmates. If they can't prove that fact, then the game companies can't be proved liable.
In my opinion, this has about to do with video games as the cigarette lawsuits had to due with cigarettes. The people who will profit most will be the lawyers. It's all about money.
Actually, the cigarette lawsuits were about an entire industry using its money to hide the true (and very harmful) effects of its product from its customers. They were about the vastly increased medical costs that states incurred treating those customers. They were (and are) about forcing the tobacco industry to take responsibility for the harm that it had been causing to millions of people (including non-smokers through those increased medical costs).
My final thought is this: when a child who has been taunted incessantly kills his taunters, why do we blame video games and his parents? Why do we place no blame at all on the deceased, who hurt the child so much that the child saw no recourse but to strike back with extreme force?
Striking back at the people who make fun of you with extreme force? Sorry, but there is no justification for shooting people who tease you. The blame for Columbine falls squarely on the backs of those two psychopaths, and no one else. You are suggesting that the kids who got killed (even assuming that they were actually kids who teased the two murderers) deserved it, because they teased those poor, fragile PSYCHOPATHS. You are suggesting that it is okay to kill someone because he calls you a nerd or a freak. Your statement reflects more of what was wrong with those kids than any video game.
Here's a little legal insight:
You can't file a lawsuit seeking damages without stating the amount of damages. You cannot file a suit saying "I am suing you for a lot of money." When you file a lawsuit you must specifically allege how much money you want as damages, and the basis for that dollar amount. For example, you shoot me. I go to the hospital and get fixed. The hospital visit costs me $10,000. When I sue you for shooting me, I say that I am seeking $10,000 in damages and this money will cover my medical expenses.
So they have already put a price tag on it because they had to in order to file the suit.
Uhhh....that already happened. The article mentions that several lawsuits brought by the victims' families against the parents of the shooters had just settled. Didn't you even read it?
Well, I don't know the exact nature of their claim, but in a civil case (i.e., a lawsuit between private individuals), the burden of proof is generally a "preponderance of the evidence." In layman's terms, all the plaintiffs have to prove is that there is a better than 50/50 chance that the defendants' actions (i.e., selling violent video games to anyone, including minors)caused those kids to go out and kill their schoolmates and teachers.
Pro bono= for free
contingency fee= some percentage of the settlement or judgment, which the lawyer only gets if there is a favorable settlement or judgment.
Lawyers working on a contingency fee do not get paid an hourly fee while they work on the case. If the client gets a favorable settlement or judgment, then the lawyer gets paid his fee (thus the use of the word "contingency"). Pro bono means the lawyer works for free.
You are talking about a lawyer working for a contingency fee, not pro bono.
OMG, these kids are building a weapon of mass destruction. I hardly find this amusing. Nor, I imagine, does the FBI or DoD (although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that DoD is funding this project in some way). How could anyone possibly think that this project is funny or cool? Railing your buddies in Q3 is one thing--it's a computer game, and it's fun. Building a railgun, which if it works could no doubt become the next favorite weapon of the world's militaries, will only contribute to the spread of war across this planet. It's not a game, and it's not funny.
The Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari on this case. This means that the Court has declined to hear the plaintiff's appeal of the decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal's decision. The Supreme Court tells us that there is no precedential value to a denial of certiorari. There are several reasons for this, for example: (1) sometimes the Justices don't believe, for whatever reason, that a particular case is the optimal case for deciding the issues; (2) sometimes the Justices prefer to wait and see what the other Courts of Appeals will have to say on the issue (that is, assuming that there are cases presenting the same issue in the other Circuits). By refusing to grant certiorari, the Supreme Court has not affirmed the Court of Appeals. The Court has not even expressed mild approval of the Fourth Circuit's decision. The Supreme Court has merely said that it will not hear the appeal. Rest assured, someday the Court will tackle this issue, and then we will find out whether internet speech will be protected similarly to other forms of speech.
You present a cogent argument, but you forget one thing: viewing material on the internet actually is part of what is considered to be free speech, just like viewing materials in magazines and books and movies, etc. Think about this: a biology professor is doing research on human male sexual dysfunction. In doing some of his research online he finds an article with pictures of a man's genitalia in both turgid and non-turgid states. This research is not permitted under this law without authorization, yet it is certainly protected speech (meaning that presenting and observing the pictures are protected under the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech). Thus, this law is overbroad--it restricts both unprotected (kiddie pr0n) and protected (research-oriented or artistic pictures of naked humans) speech. The authorization is a red herring, whether the professor gets authorization or not his right of freedom of speech has still been restricted.
The question here is not whether I want my tax dollars paying for state employees to surf pr0n sites, but whether this law runs afoul of the First Amendment by restricting a citizen's access to protected speech. More specifically, because this restriction of speech is not content neutral (that is, it specifically restricts certain speech based on the content of that speech--that content being sexual explicitness), the restriction must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. In plainer english, narrowly tailored means that the restriction must not restrict any more speech than is absolutely necessary. A compelling government interest must be something like (as probably was actually argued in this case) Virginia' interest in preventing its employees from using state computers for some use other than what the state approves those computers for (i.e., preventing their employees from wasting time on the internet when they should be working). What the Court of Appeals probably said (although I haven't read the opinion yet)was that this law satisfied that standard. There are two problems with that conclusion: (1) as I pointed out above, this law is not narrowly tailored; it is overbroad; and (2) that reason is not sufficiently compelling to legitimize blocking the access of persons doing legitimate research, especially when that research is advancing the interests of the state (because it is done by state-employed academics).
Although you make a good point, you fail to understand the significance of our civil liberties. Academic freedom, to the extent that it coincides with our general freedom of speech, is protected by the Constitution.
Normally I wouldn't waste time commenting on something like this, BUT this post is the funniest thing I have ever seen on/. (I love jokes about the French surrendering.)
The most interesting part of this article is that this guy complains that games on new-generation consoles take too many hours to play. I wonder how many hours of play it took him to reach that perfect score? Or how many hours he spent playing that Decathalon of games? I can't get over what a bizarre statement that is, "I don't like those new games, they take too long to play. Excuse me while I go log hour 235,846 on my Atari."
Harrison's Clock Stands Test of Time, Not His Day
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Longitude
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· Score: 1
This book does give Harrison the credit he deserves for inventing the first truly eternal and reliable way to determine longitude. However, when I read it I couldn't help that think that the race to claim the prize was a toss up, nontheless. If I remember correctly, even though Harrison had completed one of his incredible clocks before the astronomers finished mapping the stellar positions, he took so long to make a second clock, and then a third clock, that by the time he had really perfected the darn thing, the sextant was in wide use. Granted, Harrison's method was an easier and more reliable way to calculate longitude. Yet, his solution was so elegant, that mass production, given the time period, was almost impossible. Thus, it seemed to me that while he is certainly deserving of praise (especially because mass technology soon caught up with him), the most practical solution for the time period (even if more prone to errors) was the sextant.
I agree, at least to the extent that you say that the question should be whether a wireless ISP provides good internet service. I don't agree with consumers being scared of new technologies. Savvy tech consumers (which I think means at least 50% of the people who are out there looking for computers and an ISP) are willing to jump onto the next best thing in internet service. For example, as a consumer of internet service (meaning a connection from my home computer to the internet) I am interested in three things (not necessarily in order of importance): speed of the connection, reliability of the connection, and cost. DSL is just starting to become an affordable and reliable option in my area, and I am just starting to consider switching to it. I would switch to wireless if it offered faster speed, more reliability, and lower cost than DSL. I would switch to fiber optics if it did the same. I am not scared of these technologies, but they just aren't viable options yet. DSL has just recently come to my area, and even more recently I found a company that offers what I want for the right price. So until another company comes along that can offer better, I'll go with DSL (and if DSL doesn't work out, I'll go back to my phone line).
For the unsavvy tech consumer (those people using AOL and iMacs), until DSL, or fiber comes preconfigured with the internet connection device (like a computer or PS2) and their houses come preconfigured with whatever hardware is necessary (like DSL jacks intsead of plain phone jacks, or fiber optics outlets/connections in the walls, etc.), they'll stick with phone lines, because they need to have it all spoonfed to them (PlugNPlay). Basically, until broadband is about as easy as hooking up a TV, those people will not switch.
However, I'm not sure that complexity is an issue for wireless, which is why I think it has the most potential. What could be easier than simply plugging a wireless modem into your computer and connecting? The problem with wireless is not simplicity, but the dearth of companies out there who are selling it to the average ISP consumer, which also means that the cost is out of line with current services.
To sum up: service is key, complexity is a block for only about half the market, and technology is not scary.:P
Once again Jon Katz has blessed us with his myopic vision of the world. Through an essay (I use that word loosely in this context) filled with generalities and sweeping conclusions with absolutely no sound reasoning to back up his arguments, Mr. Katz has once again revealed how disconnected he is from reality. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Jon Katz's world view is completely ahistorical, and therefore extremely naive.
Mr. Katz also speaks as if the United States is the only country in the world. I hate to burst his bubble, but gaming is not revolutionizing daily life in probably 90% of the world. For example, I am relatively certain that people in Afghanistan do not have the excess liesure time required for gaming (nevermind the fact that most of them lack the necessary technology).
Furthermore, what is so remarkable about the rise of the new and demise of the old? Isn't that simply a description of the human condition? Hasn't that happened throughout history; the young challenging the conventions of the old, and thereby expanding everyone's horizons? Mr. Katz thrashes Mozart (by dismissing opera and classical music), but Mozart was a revolutionary for his time (putting dance in operas was practically unheard of before Mozart did it).
Actually, it's pretty amusing to witness Katz's overblown sense of self-importance balloon even further as he tries to pass off this hackneyed essay as original material. Give us a break, Jon.
Your take on the stock market is interesting, but hardly reflective of the truth. The value of stock, in general, is not based on public perception of a company. For example, the S&P 500 is based on the diligent, detailed work of expert analysts who look at a variety of factors, including (but not limited to) past performance and earnings, who's running the company, recent changes in the company, and long-term production/business plans. The S&P 500 is not a list of the coolest companies, but a carefully compiled and analyzed list of companies that consistently (over a period of years) produce value. If you buy stock in one of the companies on that list, you are looking for a relatively safe investment based on steady growth. The stock market is not a roulette wheel or poker table, and people who play it that way are destined for disappointment. Investing in the stock market is just like putting your money in the bank, except that stock market investors generally accept slightly higher risk for a slightly higher return (even though they are constantly seeking for ways to limit that risk while keeping returns high). Stocks are just another investment (like an insurance policy, or a retirement annuity, or a trust account), not a popularity contest (and in the end, that is precisely why the dot-com boom had to be short-lived, no one bought into all that for long-term).
An interesting note: the Wall Street Journal does a funny experiment where they have three top stock analysts pick which stocks will be high growth for the next six months, then they pick three other stocks by literally throwing darts at the stock pages. In the past, the dart stocks have consistently out-performed the experts' picks.
Should you ignore politics? Only at your own peril. Like it or not, politics, in a broad sense, is the way power moves in this country (and all human civilization). Politics in the sense of who is going to be the next President of the U.S. is important, too. After all, we have the government that we have RIGHT NOW, and I would rather have the people I think are the best for the job in office (that's not to say that these people are perfect).
JonKatz thinks that corporations are taking over the world, that there is an old politics and a new politics, and that the survival of conventional civic systems is questionable. I'll respond to each of these ideas.
First, there have long been multinational corporations that wield an enormous (even inordinate) amount of power. Remember the East India Company? They practically took over an entire country (India) on their own. How about Standard Oil? Or maybe the robber barons who used technology to give themselves a monopoly by constructing a transcontinental railroad?
Big business has always controlled the cutting edge of technology. And at times, the people's ability to control the corporations has lagged behind the corporations' collective ability to expand. But then the people catch up, and the balance is restored.
Sure, we have multinationals, but we also have a lot more control over them than Jon seems to think. Back when Standard Oil had its monopoly, the U.S. didn't even have antitrust laws. Now we have those laws, and we also have the FTC, FCC, FDA, EPA, and so on. If you think that these agencies do nothing for us, then travel to Romania and see what unregulated, uncontrolled industry really does to the world (massive, catastrophic pollution, for example).
In this latest piece, Katz takes a fictional novel and attempt to use it as some sort of historical context for the present. Gibson's book is not reality. Gibson's work should be put into historical context, not turned into a context of its own. In short, Katz lacks a sense of history. In every single one of his columns on politics he fails to place the present in the context of the (actual) past, and thus his predictions about the future are completely baseless and ultimately useless.
Second, last I checked the so-called old politics was the only game in town. If the new politics is a bunch of kids who spend all their time coding and living online, then I fail to see any improvement over the old system.
Third, I'll believe that conventional civic systems are an endangered species when we get every poor, single mother in the inner city online and participating in grassroots social movements through the internet. Until then, we need conventional systems to keep everyone involved (or to try to involve them). Jon talks about how the net has empowered millions of people, but there are millions more out there without access who need empowerment now, not when the technology finally trickles down.
Once again, JonKatz hits far from the mark. The amazing thing is people like me actually feel compelled to reply to him. After all, if he had to go about spewing this junk the old media way, he'd be just another annoying guy on the street corner with a megaphone, and we would all ignore him.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this article shows two things about the face recognition stuff: (1) it doesn't work that well, and (2) even when it doesn't work, it's not as horrible as people think. This guy was obviously embarrased, but nothing all that bad happened to him. He was not arrested. He was not tried and imprisoned. Of course, the real failure here is on the police. A simple background check on this guy would have revealed that he was not the person the woman claimed he was. I don't know if the police did this before dispatching officers to question him, but I hope they did.
I disagree that one could argue that the presumption of innocence is being violated here. The presumption of innocence only protects a person during a criminal trial. The jury must presume the defendant innocent until they are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. Law enforcement never presumes that anyone is innocent--in fact, the main function of law enforcement is to presume just the opposite.
Of course, the idea that our government can perform surveillance on all of us as we walk down the street is distasteful, it's not illegal or violative of our constitutional rights. Using satellite surveillance technology to observe a person at home is much more disturbing, and that techonology has been around for years.
Man, I like reading Slashdot, but the constant stream of comments about our supposed loss of fair use rights has been tiresome from the start. Now, it's just plain stupid.
For the last time, Napster was not fair use. If you do not own a copy of a copyright-protected song and you download a copy of that song from someone else over Napster (whether they own a copy of the song or not), you are infringing the copyright. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No question. Zero.
As for DeCSS, imagine you are a very large industry. You have a serious problem with pirated copies of your product being sold throughout the world. You have an opportunity to introduce a new format for your product which is far superior to any previous formats. You come up with a way to prevent those pirates from bootlegging your product in this new format. Then some snot-nosed computer geek blows that protection out of the water by writing a program and POSTING IT ON THE INTERNET. Suddenly, all your investment in protecting your product from mass-scale piracy is gone. You're pissed. What do you do? Damage control: prevent that program from being any more widely disseminated than it already has been, fire the idiots who screwed up the encryption in the first place, and come up with a better way to protect your product. The first part of the damage control is what that DeCSS suit is about. The DeCSS suit is not about preventing Linux geeks from watching DVDs with their preferred operating system. Sorry folks, the world does not revolve around you.
Final, Dmitry and his little program: this guy violated the DMCA. He wrote a program to circumvent a copyright protection mechanism, AND HE SOLD IT FOR PROFIT. Yes, your sweet, innocent, little Dmitry was making money off of screwing authors out of their royalties. Oh wait! You didn't think about that, did you? Yes, kids, for every book, there is some author out there who gets paid to write it. Who do you think ultimately suffers for Dmitry's fun little program? Yeah, you're getting it now: the writer. Not some faceless corporation, but a person, one person who makes a living by writing stuff other people want to read. By the way, the DMCA does not have a criminal penalty for programs distributed for free. Had Dmitry just posted his program on internet for free, he wouldn't have been arrested (although he still might have been sued). Thus, ends today's legal lesson. I hope you have learned one thing: you don't know squat about the DMCA or copyright law. Until you take the time to learn about those things, you should stop claiming that your fair use rights are being trampled.
Lucas is trying to cash in on the b-movie sci-fi revival that is sure to follow Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (which is the only true sci-fi film to come out of Hollywood in many a decade). I mean, at least Attack of the Clones will have good company, name-wise anyway: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Jedi.
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING WRITING REPRESENTS MY PERSONAL ANALYSIS OF THIS QUESTION. THIS ANALYSIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE, AND SHOULD NOT BE USED AS, LEGAL ADVICE. BY PUBLISHING THIS ANALYSIS, I DO NOT INTEND TO, AND DO NOT, CREATE A LAWYER-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH ANYONE READING THIS ANALYSIS. THIS ANALYSIS SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN THE READER'S OWN EDIFICATION. EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE IS MY PERSONAL OPINION AND DOES NOT REPRESENT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER. SLASHDOT'S POLICY ON ATTORNEY INTERVIEWS IS EXPRESSLY INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
The university's policy permits students to keep their broad copyright rights in their works, but requires students to provide the university with specific, limited licenses of use in certain situations. The first situation is original research and investigation (including software) produced by graduate students preparing their thesis. See Section 4.(c)(1)). My off-the-cuff interpretation of this section is that grad students keep the copyright in these original works, but the university gets to keep the work (remember copyright means one owns the rights of production, reproduction, and distribution of a work of original authorship). In other words, the university gets to keep research records, but arguably cannot do anything with it without the approval of the student who created it.
The second situation also applies to grad students. Grad students, in exchange for the award of their degree (as if tuition wasn't enough, geez), grant the university a right to retain, use, and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis. This limited license also grants the university the right to require publication of the thesis, but only for archival use (i.e., sticking it on shelf in the library basement). Again, this license is limited. If a university decided to publish a student's thesis as book and sell it in every supermarket, that would clearly be a violation of the license. What might not be a violation is publication and distribution for a conference of only 50 people. (However, if the university printed and distributed 50 copies a year for several years, the student could probably sue for violation of the license.) Again, the student retains the copyright right in the work.
Although Section 4.(c) is entitled Student Works, the definition of "Traditional Academic Copyrightable Works" (Section 2.(b)) includes works that students might create. Therefore, Section 3.(b) might also apply to student works. Under Section 3.(b)(1), students retain all the rights to works that they create with usually and customarily provided university resources. Section 2.(d) defines "usually and customarily provided university resources." (The definition indicates that Section 3 probably only applies to works created by faculty, but, as mentioned above, Section 3 arguably applies to student works, too.) Section 3(b)(2) provides that works created with resources above and beyond those usually and customarily provided must be licensed to the university for internal use only. Again, I doubt that students would need to worry much about this provision, because most students (even grad students) are not given resources above and beyond those customarily provided. But if that were to happen, the student still retains all rights in the work. The license granted pursuant to Section 3.(b)(2) is extremely limited and only grants the university the right use the work, not to control its distribution or reproduction (except as those relate to its use). Overall, the student gets to keep the bulk of the copyright rights in student-created works.
Looking to the question of how this university policy interacts with the GPL, the issue becomes if a student publishes a work under the GPL, which license controls the University's rights: the GPL or the University policy? The University policy controls the University's behavior. This intellectual property policy is a contract that the student enters into with the university upon matriculation. The contract controls the relationship between the university and the student. However, it does not control the student's relationship with the outside world. Therefore, a piece of software published under the GPL is controlled by the GPL in its relationship with the world besides the university. There does not appear to be anything in the University's policies that would conflict with the GPL (although, I must admit here that I am not familiar with all the specific terms of the GPL, I only have a general idea of what it provides). The licenses granted to the university do not permit the university to control the distribution or reproduction of the work beyond the walls of the campus. Every license granted in the university policy is a license for royalty-free use. Use is a limited right, and it does not give the university the power to prevent others from using open-source code. These licenses are designed to prevent students from telling the university that it cannot use their works. (If you are distributing your software under the GPL, you couldn't cut off the university anyway).
The only area of possible conflict between the GPL and the university policy is in regard to original records (software) created in the process of thesis investigation. The university policy provides that the university owns these records. I do not know what "the original records of an investigation for a graduate thesis" might be, but my best guess is that they are the data that a student might accumulate in researching the thesis. I assume that if a student wrote software to analyze this data, this software might also be considered part of the original records. Therefore, the university might own the copyright for any software of this type. This would prevent that software from being distributed under the GPL because the university, not the student, would be the one to make the decision regarding licensing the work (because the university owns the copyright).
However, I say that the university might own the copyright because, as noted above, it is arguable that the university merely holds the property right to the physical copies of the records, but the student owns the copyright. This distinction is similar to a person owning a compact disk, but the artist owning the copyright to the music on the disk. The person can do anything with the physical disk (e.g., sell it, eat it, trade it), but the artist can control what the person does with the music on the disk (e.g., prevent the person from copying it for another person). Thus, the student might retain the right to control the production, reproduction, publication, and distribution of the original records, but the university gets to keep a copy of those records.
In summary, a student who creates software as part of the requirements for a degree program keeps all copyright rights, without granting any license to the university. (Section 4.(c)). A student in this situation can publish the software under the GPL, and the GPL will control the student's relationship with the University and the rest of the world. A student who creates a work subject to Section 4.(c)(2) can publish the software under the GPL, but the University policy controls the student's relationship with the university, while the GPL controls the student's relationship with the rest of the world. The University policy is not inconsistent with the GPL (and in fact, the GPL would control the University's behavior in areas not covered by the policy). Students who create works subject to Section 4.(c)(1) might lose all copyright right to those works. Arguably, though, the student retains the full copyright, university merely owns copies of these works.
The author of the article forgets one key component of enforcing a judgment: jurisdiction. He makes it sound as if all one has to do is go to France--for example--sue someone there, and bring the judgment to any Hague Treaty signatory to get the judgment enforced. However, the Hague Treaty is about jurisdiction, too. It has detailed rules governing how courts can establish jurisdiction over foreign parties.
There are two things which prevent judgments from being enforceable in foreign countries. The first is the simple idea of sovereignty: France cannot send its police over into the United States to seize the bank account of a person who has a French judgment against him. France has no power to enforce its laws outside its own borders (and the Hague Treaty will not change this). The second thing is related to sovereignty: a French court does not have jurisdiction to resolve questions of my rights unless I am within France's borders or have established some kind of contact with France that makes France's jurisdiction over me reasonable. In other words, if I am not within France's borders, France does not have the sovereign power to decide my rights, because France's sovereignty stops at the border. However, theoretically, if I have established some kind of sufficient contact with France (opening a store there, or selling goods over the internet specifically to people in France), then it sould be reasonable for France to decide my rights (even if they cannot force me to show up) and have that decision, or judgment, be enforceable.
Things do not work this way now. Right now most countries generally have laws governing jursidiction over foreign parties. For example, French law says that if you are a French citizen, you can obtain a judgment over a foreign party for a dispute that arose anywhere in the world just by bringing the case in French court. Then god help that foreign party when they show up in France and the French citizen gets to enforce that judgment. Further, in the United States we give respect to foreign judgments based on the principle of comity. Comity is basically reciprocal respect: the U.S. will enforce French judgments if France will enforce U.S. judgments. (Note that in practice, right now, the U.S. has more respect for French judgments than France has for U.S. judgments.) However, this principle of comity is limited by our notions of due process of law. The U.S. will not enforce judgments that fail to meet a minimum standard of due process protections. For example, I doubt if a U.S. court would enforce a judgment from a secret, Iranian military court (where people are tried without even being allowed to be present to mount a defense or confront their accusers).
The Hague Treaty will change all this for its signatories. First, of all, it provides general rules for jurisdiction. Thus, France would not be able to keep its law that any French citizen can sue any foreign party in a French court and get an enforceable judgment. Each country would have to provide reasonable rules for jurisdiction. Second, the principle of comity (as between signatories) would drop out of the picture. In the U.S., we would already have adequate assurance that a foreign judgment meets our standards of due process. France would be forced to give the same respect U.S. judgments as the U.S. gives to French judgments.
The upshot is that the article ignores the concept of jurisdiction. Just because a French business obtains a judgment against me in France, even under the Hague Treaty, that judgment is not automatically enforced unless it is valid, i.e., the French court had jurisdiction over me. If the French court did not follow the Hague Treaty rules on jurisdiction, which should be fair to all countries, then that judgment will not be valid (think of it as an ultra vires exercise of sovereignty) and it will not be enforceable in other Hague signatory nations.
For those of you with access to Westlaw or Lexis, you can read more about the concept of jurisdiction and the Hague Treaty in a Cornell Law Review article, Jurisdictional Salvation and the Hague Treaty, by Professor Kevin Clermont, published in issue 1 of Volume 85 (November 1999). This is the legal cite: 85 Cornell L. Rev. 89. (You can also read my article for some background on the law of jurisdiction in the U.S., 85 Cornell L. Rev. 1742 (Sept. 2000).)
I don't have the bandwidth to download a ton of digital music off the internet. I don't have the time to burn all my cds for my friends (and most of my friends don't want my music anyway, and most of my music is by bands who would kiss me if I gave them more exposure). I use my cd-burner to make mix cds to use in my car. My big worry about all this talk about "safely copying authorized music in order to protect copyrights" is that I will lose the true fair use of my cds--making copies for my own personal use. It's fine with me if these companies figure out a way to keep people from stealing music off the internet, but if that method keeps me from making copies of music I have purchased for my own personal use, I would say that oversteps the bounds of their copyrights.
There is a big difference between this lawsuit and the suits against gun companies or tobacco companies. In the gun and tobacco lawsuits, only the gun companies manufacture guns and only the tobacco companies manufacture cigarettes. The link of responsibility (although perhaps not legal liability) is clear. In this lawsuit, game companies are not the only ones that package up violence and push it on minors (whether you think it matters or not, video games are targeted at youngsters). Violent images come at us from every possible media. It will be very hard for these plaintiffs to prove that video games, and only video games, provided the violent input that supposedly is responsible for those two maniacs killing their schoolmates. If they can't prove that fact, then the game companies can't be proved liable.
In my opinion, this has about to do with video games as the cigarette lawsuits had to due with cigarettes. The people who will profit most will be the lawyers. It's all about money.
Actually, the cigarette lawsuits were about an entire industry using its money to hide the true (and very harmful) effects of its product from its customers. They were about the vastly increased medical costs that states incurred treating those customers. They were (and are) about forcing the tobacco industry to take responsibility for the harm that it had been causing to millions of people (including non-smokers through those increased medical costs).
My final thought is this: when a child who has been taunted incessantly kills his taunters, why do we blame video games and his parents? Why do we place no blame at all on the deceased, who hurt the child so much that the child saw no recourse but to strike back with extreme force?
Striking back at the people who make fun of you with extreme force? Sorry, but there is no justification for shooting people who tease you. The blame for Columbine falls squarely on the backs of those two psychopaths, and no one else. You are suggesting that the kids who got killed (even assuming that they were actually kids who teased the two murderers) deserved it, because they teased those poor, fragile PSYCHOPATHS. You are suggesting that it is okay to kill someone because he calls you a nerd or a freak. Your statement reflects more of what was wrong with those kids than any video game.
I went to the linked site, and this game isn't even released yet. Is this some shameless attempt at advertising? Pathetic.
Then how come they already put a price tag on it.
Here's a little legal insight:
You can't file a lawsuit seeking damages without stating the amount of damages. You cannot file a suit saying "I am suing you for a lot of money." When you file a lawsuit you must specifically allege how much money you want as damages, and the basis for that dollar amount. For example, you shoot me. I go to the hospital and get fixed. The hospital visit costs me $10,000. When I sue you for shooting me, I say that I am seeking $10,000 in damages and this money will cover my medical expenses.
So they have already put a price tag on it because they had to in order to file the suit.
Uhhh....that already happened. The article mentions that several lawsuits brought by the victims' families against the parents of the shooters had just settled. Didn't you even read it?
Well, I don't know the exact nature of their claim, but in a civil case (i.e., a lawsuit between private individuals), the burden of proof is generally a "preponderance of the evidence." In layman's terms, all the plaintiffs have to prove is that there is a better than 50/50 chance that the defendants' actions (i.e., selling violent video games to anyone, including minors)caused those kids to go out and kill their schoolmates and teachers.
Pro bono= for free
contingency fee= some percentage of the settlement or judgment, which the lawyer only gets if there is a favorable settlement or judgment.
Lawyers working on a contingency fee do not get paid an hourly fee while they work on the case. If the client gets a favorable settlement or judgment, then the lawyer gets paid his fee (thus the use of the word "contingency"). Pro bono means the lawyer works for free.
You are talking about a lawyer working for a contingency fee, not pro bono.
OMG, these kids are building a weapon of mass destruction. I hardly find this amusing. Nor, I imagine, does the FBI or DoD (although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that DoD is funding this project in some way). How could anyone possibly think that this project is funny or cool? Railing your buddies in Q3 is one thing--it's a computer game, and it's fun. Building a railgun, which if it works could no doubt become the next favorite weapon of the world's militaries, will only contribute to the spread of war across this planet. It's not a game, and it's not funny.
The Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari on this case. This means that the Court has declined to hear the plaintiff's appeal of the decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal's decision. The Supreme Court tells us that there is no precedential value to a denial of certiorari. There are several reasons for this, for example: (1) sometimes the Justices don't believe, for whatever reason, that a particular case is the optimal case for deciding the issues; (2) sometimes the Justices prefer to wait and see what the other Courts of Appeals will have to say on the issue (that is, assuming that there are cases presenting the same issue in the other Circuits). By refusing to grant certiorari, the Supreme Court has not affirmed the Court of Appeals. The Court has not even expressed mild approval of the Fourth Circuit's decision. The Supreme Court has merely said that it will not hear the appeal. Rest assured, someday the Court will tackle this issue, and then we will find out whether internet speech will be protected similarly to other forms of speech.
You present a cogent argument, but you forget one thing: viewing material on the internet actually is part of what is considered to be free speech, just like viewing materials in magazines and books and movies, etc. Think about this: a biology professor is doing research on human male sexual dysfunction. In doing some of his research online he finds an article with pictures of a man's genitalia in both turgid and non-turgid states. This research is not permitted under this law without authorization, yet it is certainly protected speech (meaning that presenting and observing the pictures are protected under the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech). Thus, this law is overbroad--it restricts both unprotected (kiddie pr0n) and protected (research-oriented or artistic pictures of naked humans) speech. The authorization is a red herring, whether the professor gets authorization or not his right of freedom of speech has still been restricted.
The question here is not whether I want my tax dollars paying for state employees to surf pr0n sites, but whether this law runs afoul of the First Amendment by restricting a citizen's access to protected speech. More specifically, because this restriction of speech is not content neutral (that is, it specifically restricts certain speech based on the content of that speech--that content being sexual explicitness), the restriction must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. In plainer english, narrowly tailored means that the restriction must not restrict any more speech than is absolutely necessary. A compelling government interest must be something like (as probably was actually argued in this case) Virginia' interest in preventing its employees from using state computers for some use other than what the state approves those computers for (i.e., preventing their employees from wasting time on the internet when they should be working). What the Court of Appeals probably said (although I haven't read the opinion yet)was that this law satisfied that standard. There are two problems with that conclusion: (1) as I pointed out above, this law is not narrowly tailored; it is overbroad; and (2) that reason is not sufficiently compelling to legitimize blocking the access of persons doing legitimate research, especially when that research is advancing the interests of the state (because it is done by state-employed academics).
Although you make a good point, you fail to understand the significance of our civil liberties. Academic freedom, to the extent that it coincides with our general freedom of speech, is protected by the Constitution.
Normally I wouldn't waste time commenting on something like this, BUT this post is the funniest thing I have ever seen on /. (I love jokes about the French surrendering.)
The most interesting part of this article is that this guy complains that games on new-generation consoles take too many hours to play. I wonder how many hours of play it took him to reach that perfect score? Or how many hours he spent playing that Decathalon of games? I can't get over what a bizarre statement that is, "I don't like those new games, they take too long to play. Excuse me while I go log hour 235,846 on my Atari."
This book does give Harrison the credit he deserves for inventing the first truly eternal and reliable way to determine longitude. However, when I read it I couldn't help that think that the race to claim the prize was a toss up, nontheless. If I remember correctly, even though Harrison had completed one of his incredible clocks before the astronomers finished mapping the stellar positions, he took so long to make a second clock, and then a third clock, that by the time he had really perfected the darn thing, the sextant was in wide use. Granted, Harrison's method was an easier and more reliable way to calculate longitude. Yet, his solution was so elegant, that mass production, given the time period, was almost impossible. Thus, it seemed to me that while he is certainly deserving of praise (especially because mass technology soon caught up with him), the most practical solution for the time period (even if more prone to errors) was the sextant.
I agree, at least to the extent that you say that the question should be whether a wireless ISP provides good internet service. I don't agree with consumers being scared of new technologies. Savvy tech consumers (which I think means at least 50% of the people who are out there looking for computers and an ISP) are willing to jump onto the next best thing in internet service. For example, as a consumer of internet service (meaning a connection from my home computer to the internet) I am interested in three things (not necessarily in order of importance): speed of the connection, reliability of the connection, and cost. DSL is just starting to become an affordable and reliable option in my area, and I am just starting to consider switching to it. I would switch to wireless if it offered faster speed, more reliability, and lower cost than DSL. I would switch to fiber optics if it did the same. I am not scared of these technologies, but they just aren't viable options yet. DSL has just recently come to my area, and even more recently I found a company that offers what I want for the right price. So until another company comes along that can offer better, I'll go with DSL (and if DSL doesn't work out, I'll go back to my phone line).
:P
For the unsavvy tech consumer (those people using AOL and iMacs), until DSL, or fiber comes preconfigured with the internet connection device (like a computer or PS2) and their houses come preconfigured with whatever hardware is necessary (like DSL jacks intsead of plain phone jacks, or fiber optics outlets/connections in the walls, etc.), they'll stick with phone lines, because they need to have it all spoonfed to them (PlugNPlay). Basically, until broadband is about as easy as hooking up a TV, those people will not switch.
However, I'm not sure that complexity is an issue for wireless, which is why I think it has the most potential. What could be easier than simply plugging a wireless modem into your computer and connecting? The problem with wireless is not simplicity, but the dearth of companies out there who are selling it to the average ISP consumer, which also means that the cost is out of line with current services.
To sum up: service is key, complexity is a block for only about half the market, and technology is not scary.
Once again Jon Katz has blessed us with his myopic vision of the world. Through an essay (I use that word loosely in this context) filled with generalities and sweeping conclusions with absolutely no sound reasoning to back up his arguments, Mr. Katz has once again revealed how disconnected he is from reality. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Jon Katz's world view is completely ahistorical, and therefore extremely naive.
Mr. Katz also speaks as if the United States is the only country in the world. I hate to burst his bubble, but gaming is not revolutionizing daily life in probably 90% of the world. For example, I am relatively certain that people in Afghanistan do not have the excess liesure time required for gaming (nevermind the fact that most of them lack the necessary technology).
Furthermore, what is so remarkable about the rise of the new and demise of the old? Isn't that simply a description of the human condition? Hasn't that happened throughout history; the young challenging the conventions of the old, and thereby expanding everyone's horizons? Mr. Katz thrashes Mozart (by dismissing opera and classical music), but Mozart was a revolutionary for his time (putting dance in operas was practically unheard of before Mozart did it).
Actually, it's pretty amusing to witness Katz's overblown sense of self-importance balloon even further as he tries to pass off this hackneyed essay as original material. Give us a break, Jon.
An interesting note: the Wall Street Journal does a funny experiment where they have three top stock analysts pick which stocks will be high growth for the next six months, then they pick three other stocks by literally throwing darts at the stock pages. In the past, the dart stocks have consistently out-performed the experts' picks.
Should you ignore politics? Only at your own peril. Like it or not, politics, in a broad sense, is the way power moves in this country (and all human civilization). Politics in the sense of who is going to be the next President of the U.S. is important, too. After all, we have the government that we have RIGHT NOW, and I would rather have the people I think are the best for the job in office (that's not to say that these people are perfect).
JonKatz thinks that corporations are taking over the world, that there is an old politics and a new politics, and that the survival of conventional civic systems is questionable. I'll respond to each of these ideas.
First, there have long been multinational corporations that wield an enormous (even inordinate) amount of power. Remember the East India Company? They practically took over an entire country (India) on their own. How about Standard Oil? Or maybe the robber barons who used technology to give themselves a monopoly by constructing a transcontinental railroad?
Big business has always controlled the cutting edge of technology. And at times, the people's ability to control the corporations has lagged behind the corporations' collective ability to expand. But then the people catch up, and the balance is restored.
Sure, we have multinationals, but we also have a lot more control over them than Jon seems to think. Back when Standard Oil had its monopoly, the U.S. didn't even have antitrust laws. Now we have those laws, and we also have the FTC, FCC, FDA, EPA, and so on. If you think that these agencies do nothing for us, then travel to Romania and see what unregulated, uncontrolled industry really does to the world (massive, catastrophic pollution, for example).
In this latest piece, Katz takes a fictional novel and attempt to use it as some sort of historical context for the present. Gibson's book is not reality. Gibson's work should be put into historical context, not turned into a context of its own. In short, Katz lacks a sense of history. In every single one of his columns on politics he fails to place the present in the context of the (actual) past, and thus his predictions about the future are completely baseless and ultimately useless.
Second, last I checked the so-called old politics was the only game in town. If the new politics is a bunch of kids who spend all their time coding and living online, then I fail to see any improvement over the old system.
Third, I'll believe that conventional civic systems are an endangered species when we get every poor, single mother in the inner city online and participating in grassroots social movements through the internet. Until then, we need conventional systems to keep everyone involved (or to try to involve them). Jon talks about how the net has empowered millions of people, but there are millions more out there without access who need empowerment now, not when the technology finally trickles down.
Once again, JonKatz hits far from the mark. The amazing thing is people like me actually feel compelled to reply to him. After all, if he had to go about spewing this junk the old media way, he'd be just another annoying guy on the street corner with a megaphone, and we would all ignore him.