Anyone who doesn't recognize this need for secrecy (in cases like this if not this exact one) lives in a fantasy land where the slightest infringement upon civil liberties is more dangerous than the most dangerous of enemies (such as a nuclear armed terrorist).
I do live in such a 'fantasy' land. Changing the things that define us as a nation in order to protect us is an oxymoron. Changing those things destroys the foundation on which we, as a nation, are based. Destroying us does not protect us.
Te language of constitutional amendments passed in the past 100 years or so has changed in a fundamental way. Most of them now include language that implies that the government is the custodian of the rights of the people. I consider this very bad, and have written up a small paper on it and put it up on the web.
If you're making the argument that just because you bought a copy of a CD you should be able to burn copies for the entire world then we have very little to discuss because you seem to think that record companies should be able to survive by selling a single copy of each album they produce.
I don't think record companies should survive in their current form. I won't use iTunes because it tries to take a broken business model and extend it past its useful life by having my own property act against me.
If a firm decides to sell content X only if certain rules are followed by the purchaser, then unless those rules are enforcable the firm won't sell the content.
If those rules involve significant restrictions on the person's behavior after the point of sale, then I do not think those rules should be binding unless a formal contract negotiation process occurs.
The transaction overhead of having to examine the contract terms of each and every single transaction you engage in is extremely onerous, and significantly to the advantage of the seller in most cases.
Additionally, having the enforcement of those rules be carried out by a small agent of the state attached to each and every single thing sold is an anathema to a free society. Enforcement must be purely on the basis of behavior that can be easily detected with a minimum of intrusion into people's lives.
The society you want is not a free one. It is one with a rigid set of rules that have an affect on the simplest, most innocuous actions. And you want to ubiquitous law enforcement to accomplish this goal.
Making this hard using licensing terms is about as much of a restriction of freedom as the the amendments of the constitution are a restriction of the freedom of the majority to impose their will on the minority.
Just because something is music on a CD or download doesn't mean you get unlimited right to give a copy to everyone in the world. That argument is incredibly absurd. If a DRM system is too restrictive for your taste, buy the same content from a vendor with different DRM or else don't buy the content. It's your FREE CHOICE.
It's about as absurd as stating that people should be allowed to speak to eachother in public without having to pay the inventor of the words they use. That business model is dead and buried. Making digital stuff not copyable is like making water not wet. All you will do in trying to change it will be to create the biggest engine of total state control the world has ever seen. All so some idiots with more money than sense who think the world should never change can feel comfortable.
*nod* I'm sure that once they had control of every single electronic device in the area, they would feel free to do that with impunity, and would, since all the devices would report that it never happened.
OK, lets put this differently, looking at your other comments. Since you don't really state what's wrong here...
DRM isn't a reasonable business model. It is a business model that relies on someone reaching into the equipment I own with their grimy little fingers and telling me what I can and can't do with it.
For example, there is no way that mod chips should be illegal. If I want to muck about with the internal workings of a device I own and make it do something else, that should be perfectly OK.
As Vernor Vinge so eloquently stated it in 'Deepness in the Sky'... (this is a paraphrase, since I don't have the book in front of me) "The worst tyrannies are the ones that require some piece of code in every single device.". It don't matter none if that peice of code is put there by a corporation and it's continued functioning in my box is propped up by stupid laws, or if that piece of code is directly required by the government. The end result is basically the same.
Well, it's a draft, and that language could be tightened up, but I think the intent is quite clear. So mostly complaining about this as a reason to not adopt the license without some kind of acknowledgement that the wording is likely a mistake and needs to be fixed is FUD.
I think Linus is just looking for reasons to not adopt GPL v3 because of his rather ambivalent (tipping towards negative) feelings towards the FSF in general and Richard Stallman in particular.
They allow you to join a club and make club membership more important in decision making than whether or not someone really represents you.
My biggest frustration with many republicans is the fact that they claim to be for small government, and this administration has been anything but small government.
My biggest frustration with democrats is that they claim to be all for civil liberties yet silently let pass things like Clinton's support of the clipper chip or Hilary's closed door meetings with insurance companies to hammer out a health care plan that benefitted them.
First, OpenOffice's support of Microsoft Word documents is not perfect, and it never will be because Microsoft will ensure they never have enough information to make it perfect. And that matters. I get Microsoft Word forms reasonably often, and OpenOffice doesn't really handle them all that well. And, there are a number of word processing programs (Abiword being an example) that handle Microsoft Word documents very poorly but handle ODF just fine. So, really, it was increasing choice, not decreasing it.
HTML and CSV are completely inadequate for office documents. HTML is an mediocre display format, and a lousy format for editing.
The question is, who owns the data? When the data is in a Microsoft proprietary format, Microsoft effectively owns the data. You either stay locked in the past forever (not really an option) or pay Microsoft whatever they ask for new software and the ability to read your old data.
It is beyond unacceptable for a government to be in this position. It basically sacrifices sovereignty to Microsoft. What law will Microsoft demand as a price for an upgrade? How much will people have to pay Microsoft in order to send the government a document their software can understand?
Already the deleterious effect of giving Microsoft so much control can be felt in the enormous political wrangling over this. Microsoft has been able to effectively force this guy to resign. It's utterly ridiculous.
They exist as a legal construct, and that legal construct can be responsible for actions. And they exist as a collection of individuals, and those individuals can be responsible.
The existence of those laws is partly predicated on a mistaken belief that moral and ethics do not concern companies. I also think that a society in which morals and ethics are observed is more profitable in the long-term, and that the promise of short-term gains by violating those principles is foolish and not in the long-term best interests of either the entity who does it, or anybody else. So I don't think those laws are necessarily the contradiction people think they are.
Companies have no more morals than people do, and no less. Morals and ethics serve the same purpose for companies as they do for people. This "companies don't and shouldn't have morals" thing is complete bunk.
Morals aren't some mystical edict from a higher power. They're a set of social rules so we can all live together. Companies need them as much as people do.
*laugh* Yes, there were numerous indications that would have led me to believe the original poster was male if I'd looked. But, the only thing that didn't require a bunch of clicking to see was the post I was replying to, not the original, so I stuck it in to be safe.:-) Though, as you said, given the talk of tranny lovin grannies, who can tell?:-)
The thing I care most about are the blurbs that are outreageously biased and/or misrepresent the contents of the article in some major way. I find those incredibly irritating.
I don't care much about grammar or spelling errors as long as the meaning is still clear. And I am only a little annoyed by dupes.
I don't care about spelling and grammar much either. I care about the content of the article. The thing that bothers me the most is the blurbs that are outrageously biased and/or misrepresent the article in some fundamental way. Small grammar and spelling errors just don't bother me at all, except when some important word like 'not' is missing.:-)
In fact, the people who complain about them irritate me a lot more. It seems to me like they're demanding a certain standard of quality (and an only slightly relevant standard at that) from Slashdot that the people who run it have never promised to deliver.
Personally, I'd rather you go find your news outlet that does care deeply about grammar and spelling and leave.
That the various big Internet companies out there would not give in to this extortion. Now, if Yahoo, Amazon and eBay give the same response, the prospect of Bell South using this tool to gain way more control than they have any right to will be much dimmer.
Why do you feel that it creates property unnecessarily? Is an audio recording not already a piece of property? Whether it is digital, on a CD, an LP or an old 8-track, it is something that has value. (Google defines property as "something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that is owned by someone")
The media is definitely property. But DRM attempts to create property out of the bits on the media, not the media itself. The media the bits are on is naturally treated as a piece of property. The bits aren't.
It is quite natural for someone to want to make another phyiscal entity encoding those same set of bits. Lots of people do it all the time even though they are doing something illegal. Law should, in general, not make things that people commonly do in a spirit of good will illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Call me all the names you like. Doesn't make you any more correct.
Exactly.
I'm not advocating decriminalization. I'm advocating the punishment fitting the crime.
Life for someone convicted of any act people decide can be called 'pedophelia'. I think you might be surprised at the world you'd create.
Stripping naked is insufficient. I'm waiting for the day when someone swallows a whole load of plastic explosive before they board the plane.
I do live in such a 'fantasy' land. Changing the things that define us as a nation in order to protect us is an oxymoron. Changing those things destroys the foundation on which we, as a nation, are based. Destroying us does not protect us.
Te language of constitutional amendments passed in the past 100 years or so has changed in a fundamental way. Most of them now include language that implies that the government is the custodian of the rights of the people. I consider this very bad, and have written up a small paper on it and put it up on the web.
I don't think record companies should survive in their current form. I won't use iTunes because it tries to take a broken business model and extend it past its useful life by having my own property act against me.
If those rules involve significant restrictions on the person's behavior after the point of sale, then I do not think those rules should be binding unless a formal contract negotiation process occurs.
The transaction overhead of having to examine the contract terms of each and every single transaction you engage in is extremely onerous, and significantly to the advantage of the seller in most cases.
Additionally, having the enforcement of those rules be carried out by a small agent of the state attached to each and every single thing sold is an anathema to a free society. Enforcement must be purely on the basis of behavior that can be easily detected with a minimum of intrusion into people's lives.
The society you want is not a free one. It is one with a rigid set of rules that have an affect on the simplest, most innocuous actions. And you want to ubiquitous law enforcement to accomplish this goal.
Making this hard using licensing terms is about as much of a restriction of freedom as the the amendments of the constitution are a restriction of the freedom of the majority to impose their will on the minority.
It's about as absurd as stating that people should be allowed to speak to eachother in public without having to pay the inventor of the words they use. That business model is dead and buried. Making digital stuff not copyable is like making water not wet. All you will do in trying to change it will be to create the biggest engine of total state control the world has ever seen. All so some idiots with more money than sense who think the world should never change can feel comfortable.
I want those projects to fork so I can immediately identify them and start ignoring them.
DRM is the ultimate police state. Every single computer will end up with a tiny little agent of the police watching everything you do.
Personally, I'm happy to let them decide whether or not they want to be free. If they don't want to be, they can choose proprietary software.
*nod* I'm sure that once they had control of every single electronic device in the area, they would feel free to do that with impunity, and would, since all the devices would report that it never happened.
OK, lets put this differently, looking at your other comments. Since you don't really state what's wrong here...
DRM isn't a reasonable business model. It is a business model that relies on someone reaching into the equipment I own with their grimy little fingers and telling me what I can and can't do with it.
For example, there is no way that mod chips should be illegal. If I want to muck about with the internal workings of a device I own and make it do something else, that should be perfectly OK.
As Vernor Vinge so eloquently stated it in 'Deepness in the Sky'... (this is a paraphrase, since I don't have the book in front of me) "The worst tyrannies are the ones that require some piece of code in every single device.". It don't matter none if that peice of code is put there by a corporation and it's continued functioning in my box is propped up by stupid laws, or if that piece of code is directly required by the government. The end result is basically the same.
What a load of steaming excrement this is. I don't think I've heard a stupider statement about the GPL even from a Microsoft spokesperson.
Well, it's a draft, and that language could be tightened up, but I think the intent is quite clear. So mostly complaining about this as a reason to not adopt the license without some kind of acknowledgement that the wording is likely a mistake and needs to be fixed is FUD.
I think Linus is just looking for reasons to not adopt GPL v3 because of his rather ambivalent (tipping towards negative) feelings towards the FSF in general and Richard Stallman in particular.
I'm not a huge Ayn Rand fan, but I still prefer her designations... The crooks (Republicans) and the closet suicides (Democrats).
They allow you to join a club and make club membership more important in decision making than whether or not someone really represents you.
My biggest frustration with many republicans is the fact that they claim to be for small government, and this administration has been anything but small government.
My biggest frustration with democrats is that they claim to be all for civil liberties yet silently let pass things like Clinton's support of the clipper chip or Hilary's closed door meetings with insurance companies to hammer out a health care plan that benefitted them.
I think they're trying to cover up shennanigans as well.
First, OpenOffice's support of Microsoft Word documents is not perfect, and it never will be because Microsoft will ensure they never have enough information to make it perfect. And that matters. I get Microsoft Word forms reasonably often, and OpenOffice doesn't really handle them all that well. And, there are a number of word processing programs (Abiword being an example) that handle Microsoft Word documents very poorly but handle ODF just fine. So, really, it was increasing choice, not decreasing it.
HTML and CSV are completely inadequate for office documents. HTML is an mediocre display format, and a lousy format for editing.
The question is, who owns the data? When the data is in a Microsoft proprietary format, Microsoft effectively owns the data. You either stay locked in the past forever (not really an option) or pay Microsoft whatever they ask for new software and the ability to read your old data.
It is beyond unacceptable for a government to be in this position. It basically sacrifices sovereignty to Microsoft. What law will Microsoft demand as a price for an upgrade? How much will people have to pay Microsoft in order to send the government a document their software can understand?
Already the deleterious effect of giving Microsoft so much control can be felt in the enormous political wrangling over this. Microsoft has been able to effectively force this guy to resign. It's utterly ridiculous.
They exist as a legal construct, and that legal construct can be responsible for actions. And they exist as a collection of individuals, and those individuals can be responsible.
The existence of those laws is partly predicated on a mistaken belief that moral and ethics do not concern companies. I also think that a society in which morals and ethics are observed is more profitable in the long-term, and that the promise of short-term gains by violating those principles is foolish and not in the long-term best interests of either the entity who does it, or anybody else. So I don't think those laws are necessarily the contradiction people think they are.
Companies have no more morals than people do, and no less. Morals and ethics serve the same purpose for companies as they do for people. This "companies don't and shouldn't have morals" thing is complete bunk.
Morals aren't some mystical edict from a higher power. They're a set of social rules so we can all live together. Companies need them as much as people do.
*laugh* Yes, there were numerous indications that would have led me to believe the original poster was male if I'd looked. But, the only thing that didn't require a bunch of clicking to see was the post I was replying to, not the original, so I stuck it in to be safe. :-) Though, as you said, given the talk of tranny lovin grannies, who can tell? :-)
The thing I care most about are the blurbs that are outreageously biased and/or misrepresent the contents of the article in some major way. I find those incredibly irritating.
I don't care much about grammar or spelling errors as long as the meaning is still clear. And I am only a little annoyed by dupes.
I don't care about spelling and grammar much either. I care about the content of the article. The thing that bothers me the most is the blurbs that are outrageously biased and/or misrepresent the article in some fundamental way. Small grammar and spelling errors just don't bother me at all, except when some important word like 'not' is missing. :-)
In fact, the people who complain about them irritate me a lot more. It seems to me like they're demanding a certain standard of quality (and an only slightly relevant standard at that) from Slashdot that the people who run it have never promised to deliver.
Personally, I'd rather you go find your news outlet that does care deeply about grammar and spelling and leave.
That the various big Internet companies out there would not give in to this extortion. Now, if Yahoo, Amazon and eBay give the same response, the prospect of Bell South using this tool to gain way more control than they have any right to will be much dimmer.
The media is definitely property. But DRM attempts to create property out of the bits on the media, not the media itself. The media the bits are on is naturally treated as a piece of property. The bits aren't.
It is quite natural for someone to want to make another phyiscal entity encoding those same set of bits. Lots of people do it all the time even though they are doing something illegal. Law should, in general, not make things that people commonly do in a spirit of good will illegal.