Yahoo may not receive a direct profit from the auction but they do receive money from ads which are on the auction site. Therefore they do profit by the auctioning of illegal merchandise on their site. IANAL but from a casr I seem to remember awhile back with Compuserve the law seems to say that if you police/monitor a site at all then you are liable for all content on that site. Maybe this has changed or is not true (anyone know?)
According to the article Yahoo is breaking the law.
"Under current law, Yahoo! is liable for the facilitation of such counterfeit goods."
So even though Yahoo is not directly selling the merchandise they can apparently get in trouble for just facilitating it. Unfortunately the article does not say (or provide a link to) the exact law which Yahoo is violating which is a pity because it would be nice to see what constitutes 'facilitation' and if merely providing a link falls under this category.
If you were to put up a site that had the DeCSS source code but was missing one line (which made it unable to compile), would this still be illegal? Essentially what you are then distributing would have no effect and would not by itself be able to decrypt DVDs. The missing one line could be placed on a different server owned by a different person... From a legal standpoint, would this circumvent anything that the MPAA can claim about your site hosting DeCSS (or part of it)?
Not sure if this is the case or not, but does just blocking the AD (and not displaying it) prevent DoubleClick from tracking you? When you load the web page I would assume that the cgi script is still processed and that doubleclick servers are hit to send the ad to your computer (which you then ignore). Thus, they already have your IP and know which web page you were on.
Once again, I do not know if this is the case, and I hope that it isn't because it then you can just configure ipchains to block doubleclick.com (I think)
"What gives us (in fact, not really "us" at all, just some techno-hubristic-weeny branch of humanity) the right to destroy it?"
There is no such thing as not having the right to do something that you are capable of. The power to do something is the same as the right to do it. What we have the right to do is dictated by the most powerful.
If you believe in creation and all that, then think on this: If there is a god, what gave he/she/it/whatever the right to create the universe? The fact that god has the power to do so gave god the right. What gave god the right to create man? What gave god the right to tell us what is right and wrong? What gave god the right to do anything? The fact that god has the power to do it is what gave it the right.
Now, to answer your question on what gives man the right to do as he pleases. If man has the power to do it, then he has the right.
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo may not receive a direct profit from the auction but they do receive money from ads which are on the auction site. Therefore they do profit by the auctioning of illegal merchandise on their site. IANAL but from a casr I seem to remember awhile back with Compuserve the law seems to say that if you police/monitor a site at all then you are liable for all content on that site. Maybe this has changed or is not true (anyone know?)
According to the article Yahoo is breaking the law.
"Under current law, Yahoo! is liable for the facilitation of such counterfeit goods."
So even though Yahoo is not directly selling the merchandise they can apparently get in trouble for just facilitating it. Unfortunately the article does not say (or provide a link to) the exact law which Yahoo is violating which is a pity because it would be nice to see what constitutes 'facilitation' and if merely providing a link falls under this category.
If you were to put up a site that had the DeCSS source code but was missing one line (which made it unable to compile), would this still be illegal? Essentially what you are then distributing would have no effect and would not by itself be able to decrypt DVDs. The missing one line could be placed on a different server owned by a different person... From a legal standpoint, would this circumvent anything that the MPAA can claim about your site hosting DeCSS (or part of it)?
Not sure if this is the case or not, but does just blocking the AD (and not displaying it) prevent DoubleClick from tracking you? When you load the web page I would assume that the cgi script is still processed and that doubleclick servers are hit to send the ad to your computer (which you then ignore). Thus, they already have your IP and know which web page you were on.
Once again, I do not know if this is the case, and I hope that it isn't because it then you can just configure ipchains to block doubleclick.com (I think)
"What gives us (in fact, not really "us" at all, just some techno-hubristic-weeny branch of humanity) the right to destroy it?"
There is no such thing as not having the right to do something that you are capable of. The power to do something is the same as the right to do it. What we have the right to do is dictated by the most powerful.
If you believe in creation and all that, then think on this: If there is a god, what gave he/she/it/whatever the right to create the universe? The fact that god has the power to do so gave god the right. What gave god the right to create man? What gave god the right to tell us what is right and wrong? What gave god the right to do anything? The fact that god has the power to do it is what gave it the right.
Now, to answer your question on what gives man the right to do as he pleases. If man has the power to do it, then he has the right.