No. Your analogy is part of the problem. The DOJ and Feds have subverted the concept of innocent until proven guilty into If you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't have anything to hide.
By setting up your analogy with the statement that there is a dead body in the trunk, you've already presumed guilt, nothing any civilized society should be doing.
What kind of a crime can be committed where the only access to incriminating evidence lies in the mind of the accused? We're entering a dangerous era of thought-crime. Why doesn't the DOJ just apply some random permutation on the data so that it generates some unrelated and arbitrary but incriminating documents?
TL;DR - Law enforcement should either do better detective work to find evidence without relying on the accused to provide it, or save taxpayer money, cut the whole "democracy" shenanigans, and just use false or forced confessions.
This is precisely why historically, the FCC did not allow on company to be both a content creator and content provider or "carrier". There is a huge conflict of interest which is not in the best interest of either innovation or the citizenry in general.
You mean the FCC actually protected public interest at one point? With the likes of Meredith Baker it's hard to believe they ever did anything other than line their own pockets by selling democracy, one dollar at a time.
... Proper patents require a schematic, software patents should require source code...
In that case, software should be (and is) copyrightable, not patentable. The issue is that the US patent system is granting a legal monopoly (aka, a patent) on a vague conceptual description with no physical embodiment. Innovation dies when the simple act of improving upon ideas (aka, algorithms) is illegal.
The system is terribly broken, and the influence of $$$ in the political/legal system prevents it from being fixed.
You just described what every videogame console has already been doing.
But unlike Android, consoles aren't sold on a platform of openness.
If non-rooted Andoid gains adoption because of this, then Google will have done more to neuter Linux than Microsoft ever could.
This Orwellian doublespeak makes my brain hurt. They only sound like features because marketing won't call it "Limited Application Execution" and "Digital Restrictions Management". Has anyone seen my tinfoil hat?
And so the era of mandatory "trusted computing" begins, kicked off, ironically, by Google.
If you wish to consume licensed IP content on a device in your possession, then the content owners will determine what computing functions are allowed on such device. And the device remote kill-switch will make you think-twice about content misuse.
As I've watched Android dominate the tablet market, I'm bothered by the fact that these devices do not give root access without "jailbreaking". Isn't Android a major step toward the very scary world of "Trusted Computing"? That is, the hardware manufacturer, government, or whoever else has power can deny the ability for a user to run a program (or all programs!) at whim. Right out of the box, the user is denied permission to use their hardware in the way that they see fit.
I feel much more comfortable with a full Linux distro that empowers its users, rather than makes them comfortable with someone else holding the keys to their machine. Besided, android hardly seems compatible with the "open" goals of OLPC. A full distro would take advantage of a real JVM and a much richer software eco-structure instead.
We assume that banks transact their client's funds with an implicit neutrality, or else
anyone in possession of a check couldn't trust that it was a valid
monetary substitute. BoA isn't indicating "illegal" behavior, only that
the recipient is acting in a manner inconsistent with BoA policies.
Between the Government stampede to eliminate the 1st amendment, and the use of
corporations to act where the rule-of-law isn't convenient, the US Government and Corporate overlords are playing with fire.
All democracy-loving non-US entities should be watching carefully as this plays out.
Thomas Jefferson said, "Information is the currency of democracy". The WikiLeaks drama is showing us how readily our own politicians will abandon core values of democracy in order to avoid embarrassment. It also clearly demonstrates that we live in a world where our personal communications can readily be disrupted at the whim of private corporations under pressure from these same politicians.
The entertainment industry has tried to criminalize peer-to-peer technologies for years, but what is happening with WikiLeaks makes it more essential *now*, than ever before, that we adopt open source peer-to-peer technologies on a large scale. Perhaps the most important of these is The tor project which permits private and anonymous communications. Democracy cannot exist if people cannot speak freely without fear of reprisal. The more TOR relays that exist around the globe, the more immune we all are to the government/corporate censorship we are witnessing. Do your part in ensuring your digital rights by running a relay and becoming part of the network.
If you value democracy then you should understand that the backlash from the WL episode will be a push for laws and technology to control communications at the direct expense of democratic ideals which require free speech. Anonymity and secure peer-to-peer communications, already at risk, will be further threatened under the premise of terrorism. If you want to help ensure that democracy prevails in the face of reactionary politics, then run a TOR server ( http://www.torproject.org/ ) now, and consider any of these alternatives.
The new war on "Information Terrorism" is about the join forces with the war on copyright infringement in pushing for IT related laws at the direct expense of free speech (and hence, democracy). Anonymity and secure peer-to-peer communications are at the root of this conflict on both sides. Consider doing something instead of just watching.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, here, but human-nature says that most people (even Slashdotters) are watching this unfold without realizing they can be a part of it.
The WL episode is showing us that our own politicians would readily abandon core values of democracy in order to avoid embarrassment. It also clearly demonstrates that we live in a world where our personal communications can readily be disrupted at the whim of private corporations under pressure from these same politicians.
Democracy can only thrive with the uninhibited exchange of communications between individuals. If you want to help ensure democracy, do any of the following:
1) Run a TOR server ( http://www.torproject.org/ ). This is software that helps provide freedom and privacy by encrypting and distributing network communications. If you don't want to run TOR on your machine, rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and do it on someone else's box.
2) Support the EFF ( http://www.eff.org/ ). This organization understands technology and knows that in the digital age, information is power.
3) Support open-source distributed alternatives to web-based software-as-a-service. EveryDNS, Paypal, Twitter, Amazon's EC2, and even our beloved Google are points of vulnerability in democracy since their fundamental obligation is to shareholders instead of to an innate code of ethics. How would you find information if Google bowed to Government pressure? The only thing that will ensure corporations stay in line is the existence of alternatives such as a distributed search engine (http://yacy.de/ ).
4) Support open-source software by using it, contributing time or money to its development, and requesting that our Governments make policies to use it. The world would be a very different place if the power of public-key-encryption was kept solely in Government and Corporate hands. Only Free and Open Source Software ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software ) ensures that all members of society who use information technology are on the same footing.
5) Let others know what is at stake, spread the word. Democracy takes active participation, and this takes patience and explanation so that nontechnical Constituents have the understanding that you possess.
Our communications technology is only a tool and can be used to both facilitate democracy and better the world, or to enslave humankind. We are witnessing the first infowar of the digital age, and the powers that be will use it to push hard for bans on encryption, crackdown on peer-to-peer communication, and other information tools.
Will you watch silently and let information technology turn into a tool of repression, or will you take a stand while you still can? The race is on, do something!
I think the GP meant that the __corporations__ of *Siemens* and *Nokia* are facilitating (aka "help"ing) to silence activists in Iran by providing deep-packet inspection tools to Government controlled telecom.
To that extent, a centralized government controlled data infrastructure can always be used for nefarious purposes, even if that wasn't the intent on installation. As for-profit companies, Nokia and Siemens probably approached the proposal by looking at the bottom line profit, not the moral implications. Its just business.
But regardless of the intent why the DPI machines were put in place, the possibility for good and evil are both increased in lock-step. Within the US our centralization and inspection of domestic data in the name of fighting terrorism takes us down a slippery slope, even though the possible (and likely) misuses of this data are swept under the rug.
There are those of us who believe that the only way to ensure free speech (and all the good and bad that accompany it) is to ensure societies ability to develop decentralized communications exchange,
The commercial products are slick but expensive. If you use DamnSmallLinux it becomes trivial and cheap to recycle an old laptop that you have lying around. You can pick up one on eBay with decent specs for less than $75 that will hold thousands of pictures and is even networkable. A 100MHz pentium, 64MB RAM, and 800MB HD will hold thousands of pictures, is networkable, and will consume less than 40 watts.
There's a good explanation of this sort of thing here with a program that will reduce resolution and quality of a batch of pictures so that the pictureframe laptop doesn't need much CPU power. The same program can also be used to display a slideshow, or you can use any number of script/program methods.
Good explanations elsewhere in internet on removing the keyboard and making it look less like a laptop and more like a pictureframe... or leave it mostly intact and use it to surf the web when desired.
Print your own hologram (after calculating it) !
on
The Future of Holograms
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Speaking of holograms... for generating holograms without a laser (just your PC, a laser printer, and a transparency), check out the MedCosm CGHmaker.
Although it's easy to view this patent as a frivolous innovation that will probably be overturned (eventually) if MS chooses to pursue action against competitors, the danger is in the precedent that is continually being set by the USPTO. By failing to adequately examine the concepts behing these obvious patents (eg, running a process authorized by root, single/double/triple clicking a mouse, etc.), our patent system is perverted into one where the burden falls on new inventors to prove that their innovations do not infringe on patents, rather then a system where the burden falls on patent-holders to prove that their IP has been infringed upon.
This strategy may work in the US, where we can simply put the inventor^h^h^h^h^h criminals in jail (note that the US already has among the highest incarcerated population %-ages), but it probably won't hold up well against the rest of the world, especially the parts that don't think the USPTO is the last word. Unless we can start to incarcerate a larger percentage of the world's population for infringing on US IP, this strategy may not prove to be sustainable.
Perhaps corporate sponsorship of prisons facilities would help make this strategy a winner...
LWV's position is indefensible... How can any organization not endorse a completely open voting system with paper trail and software which is open to public examination? LVW's current position threatens the fabric of democracy by entrusting corporations, not citizens, with the critical task of ensuring that our elections are credible.
Moreover, opposition to a public advocacy group such as verifiedvoting.org implies that a conflict of interest exists within LVW which pits its leadership against the very members which they are supposed to represent.
What's next? Speaking out against nonpartisan efforts to register voters?
It all has to do with business practices and control. You're absolutely right about only Ford-authorized car parts working with Fords in the future... And the practice of "licensing for use" (usually with Draconian terms) rather than "selling" a product is used virtualy everywhere with companies from Lexmark to Intuit to the RIAA paving the way.
So the *real* question, in my mind, is: How we can steer things as society fragments between those who can "own" property, and those who are only able to "use" property?
Open source is one crucial part of helping prevent this fragmentation, along with creative-commons licensing of media (creativecommons.org), and perhaps organized educational campaigns to consumers letting them know what they are giving up in exchange for opening that shrink-wrapped EULA-laden widget.
But when corporate interests are intent on herding consumers into "Terms-of-Use" based agreements which prevent a consumer from actually owning something, what is the best way to combat this?
Perhaps someone needs to explain how capitalism is supposed to work to the clueless Google management team. Looks like they still think that offering a better product/service translates into financial gain for the company.
Don't they know anything about changing a horizontal market into a vertical one, locking users in with Digital Restrictions Management, absolving all sense of responsibility with a EULA, and ensuring product obsolescence?
Amazing that these guys could even find funding with their cluelessness. Must've occurred during the irrational dot-com business-model era in the 90's.
technology issues in posted responses
on
RFID Hell
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Reading through the responses to this technology, it seems that several issues are being addressed/readdressed:
1) Mandatory tagging of criminals - There seems to be a fundamental difference between tagging someone as part of their sentence and tagging someone after their sentence has been served (eg, after release from prison). The latter seems a dangerous trend since it indicates that the punishment for certain crimes may change in an arbitrary fashion, even *after* a criminal has served their time and been "rehabilitated" by societal punishments.
Granted, some crimes are heinous and deserve drastic punishments, but punishments should be known at the time of sentencing. Make the punishment as harsh as is warranted (eg, death sentence or consecutive life sentences effectively ensures that an offender never returns to society), but once a punishment has been fulfilled , no additional arbitrary punishments should be levied. Being unable to agree on what the rule-of-law is at the time of sentencing is very bad. A rule-of-law which is not transparent and clear is not a rule-of-law.
2) RFID technology is good|bad - Anyone who has spent their life thinking about technology knows that technology itself it neither our damnation nor our savior. It is amoral and merely a tool created and used by humans to leverage our ideas.
However, history has shown that we have a penchant for killing each other over issues with no obvious resolution (eg, Who's God is better, Who's skin color is better, etc). Technology just speeds up the process of letting us work out our differences, and, when that fails, subjugate/maim/torture/kill the enemy when they it is obvious that they will not take on our point of view.
3) The posters are "anti-technologist fear mongers" - since this crowd is generally very technology savvy, it is probably more likely that you misunderstand the message being articulated. People on Slashdot certainly seem to get more worked up that your general everyday nongeek citizenry. But that is likely because of the "slippery-slope" issues that are addressed. Looking at how humans use and misuse technology to abuse each other, it is often clear to those with a background in technology what form the abuses could take. Generally, it seems that humans eventually arrive at a solution better for everyone (eg, more tolerant), but only after a more short-term period which exploits the technology to the severe disadvantage of an unfortunate minority.
BTW, although annoying that the article is not based on RFID technology, that hardly matters in the grand scheme. GPS, RFID, biometrics, DRM, etc. are all just technologies. They have amazing potential for benefit of societies. But unless the potential for human-rights abuse is acknowledged and carefully monitored, things will get very bad before things get better.
No technology is without potential for abuse. Period.
You miss the point. The very organization that was supposed to judiciously handle infrastructure has intentionally involved themselves in a clear conflict of interest.
Wouldn't you have a problem if all misdialed telephone numbers were intentionally directed to "Telemarketers Inc" so that a telemarketer could politely inform you that you misdialed while trying to sell you some Viagra?
Netster (or any other sleazy site-finder service), J-Lo, or your grandma should all should have the same right to demand that the practice stop (though in practice, this take money). If you believe in "rule-of-law" then you should realize that it applies equally to everyone. Netster has filed the lawsuit because they have a financial interest at stake, but regardless of how we feel about Netster, that doesn't make Verisign's behavior any more savory.
Now how can I go about redirecting those misdialed telephone numbers to my telemarketing firm???
No, we're not going to protest Google, silly... We need the tech-savy Google staff to perform an organized protest just like the UK software patent protest. For a single day, Google should delist all search terms where the DMCA has been used to try to force Google to break only selected links.
If Google indiscriminately cutoff all of these links, then Sharman (Kazaa), Church of Scientology, and many other sites would be hurt by their own actions. If the wording were right on the "delisted" search result page, perhaps this would even bring the outrage of the DMCA to public attention.
What a fitting application of the golden rule!
Anyone who can help me get this idea to the top at Google?
No doubt Google desires to be apolitical, but the DMCA (and software patents) will kill even their business model if this progression is not reversed soon.
The battle between the RIAA and listeners appears to be very similar to the battle between software vendors (Micro$oft et al) and end-users.
Since the combination of technology (DRM) and law (DMCA, EULA's) give unreasonable amounts of leverage to the IP producers, the only real alternative for the end-user is to avoid winding up a criminal by choosing something with less restrictive licensing.
Can someone respond by explaining the alternative licensing arrangements available to artists? What sites post media created under these licenses?
If large numbers of these files started showing up on P2P networks, this could have the potential to legitimize their content, benefit non-RIAA artists, and share some good music/art with the world all without supporting the RIAA.
Of course, you've got to stop buying the RIAA's latest boy-band fad, but that shouldn't be a problem here...
Oh, and lastly, is SCO challenging any of these artistic licenses yet?
Slashdot Mirror
No. Your analogy is part of the problem. The DOJ and Feds have subverted the concept of innocent until proven guilty into If you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't have anything to hide.
By setting up your analogy with the statement that there is a dead body in the trunk, you've already presumed guilt, nothing any civilized society should be doing.
What kind of a crime can be committed where the only access to incriminating evidence lies in the mind of the accused? We're entering a dangerous era of thought-crime. Why doesn't the DOJ just apply some random permutation on the data so that it generates some unrelated and arbitrary but incriminating documents?
TL;DR - Law enforcement should either do better detective work to find evidence without relying on the accused to provide it, or save taxpayer money, cut the whole "democracy" shenanigans, and just use false or forced confessions.
This is precisely why historically, the FCC did not allow on company to be both a content creator and content provider or "carrier". There is a huge conflict of interest which is not in the best interest of either innovation or the citizenry in general.
You mean the FCC actually protected public interest at one point? With the likes of Meredith Baker it's hard to believe they ever did anything other than line their own pockets by selling democracy, one dollar at a time.
... Proper patents require a schematic, software patents should require source code...
In that case, software should be (and is) copyrightable, not patentable. The issue is that the US patent system is granting a legal monopoly (aka, a patent) on a vague conceptual description with no physical embodiment. Innovation dies when the simple act of improving upon ideas (aka, algorithms) is illegal.
The system is terribly broken, and the influence of $$$ in the political/legal system prevents it from being fixed.
You just described what every videogame console has already been doing.
But unlike Android, consoles aren't sold on a platform of openness. If non-rooted Andoid gains adoption because of this, then Google will have done more to neuter Linux than Microsoft ever could.
btw, Trusted Computing is almost as much of an oxymoron as Digital Rights Management.
This Orwellian doublespeak makes my brain hurt. They only sound like features because marketing won't call it "Limited Application Execution" and "Digital Restrictions Management". Has anyone seen my tinfoil hat?
And so the era of mandatory "trusted computing" begins, kicked off, ironically, by Google.
If you wish to consume licensed IP content on a device in your possession, then the content owners will determine what computing functions are allowed on such device. And the device remote kill-switch will make you think-twice about content misuse.
As I've watched Android dominate the tablet market, I'm bothered by the fact that these devices do not give root access without "jailbreaking". Isn't Android a major step toward the very scary world of "Trusted Computing"? That is, the hardware manufacturer, government, or whoever else has power can deny the ability for a user to run a program (or all programs!) at whim. Right out of the box, the user is denied permission to use their hardware in the way that they see fit.
I feel much more comfortable with a full Linux distro that empowers its users, rather than makes them comfortable with someone else holding the keys to their machine. Besided, android hardly seems compatible with the "open" goals of OLPC. A full distro would take advantage of a real JVM and a much richer software eco-structure instead.
We assume that banks transact their client's funds with an implicit neutrality, or else anyone in possession of a check couldn't trust that it was a valid monetary substitute. BoA isn't indicating "illegal" behavior, only that the recipient is acting in a manner inconsistent with BoA policies.
Between the Government stampede to eliminate the 1st amendment, and the use of corporations to act where the rule-of-law isn't convenient, the US Government and Corporate overlords are playing with fire.
All democracy-loving non-US entities should be watching carefully as this plays out.
Thomas Jefferson said, "Information is the currency of democracy". The WikiLeaks drama is showing us how readily our own politicians will abandon core values of democracy in order to avoid embarrassment. It also clearly demonstrates that we live in a world where our personal communications can readily be disrupted at the whim of private corporations under pressure from these same politicians. The entertainment industry has tried to criminalize peer-to-peer technologies for years, but what is happening with WikiLeaks makes it more essential *now*, than ever before, that we adopt open source peer-to-peer technologies on a large scale. Perhaps the most important of these is The tor project which permits private and anonymous communications. Democracy cannot exist if people cannot speak freely without fear of reprisal. The more TOR relays that exist around the globe, the more immune we all are to the government/corporate censorship we are witnessing. Do your part in ensuring your digital rights by running a relay and becoming part of the network.
If you value democracy then you should understand that the backlash from the WL episode will be a push for laws and technology to control communications at the direct expense of democratic ideals which require free speech. Anonymity and secure peer-to-peer communications, already at risk, will be further threatened under the premise of terrorism. If you want to help ensure that democracy prevails in the face of reactionary politics, then run a TOR server ( http://www.torproject.org/ ) now, and consider any of these alternatives.
The new war on "Information Terrorism" is about the join forces with the war on copyright infringement in pushing for IT related laws at the direct expense of free speech (and hence, democracy). Anonymity and secure peer-to-peer communications are at the root of this conflict on both sides. Consider doing something instead of just watching.
btw, if you agree with the sentiments I expressed, please spread them beyond our geek-realm to the rest of the Interwebs...
For example, you can upvote it here on reddit
or copy it wholesale, edit into oblivion, and post somewhere else. Let everyone realize that they can play a role in spreading digital Democracy.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, here, but human-nature says that most people (even Slashdotters) are watching this unfold without realizing they can be a part of it.
The WL episode is showing us that our own politicians would readily abandon core values of democracy in order to avoid embarrassment. It also clearly demonstrates that we live in a world where our personal communications can readily be disrupted at the whim of private corporations under pressure from these same politicians.
Democracy can only thrive with the uninhibited exchange of communications between individuals. If you want to help ensure democracy, do any of the following:
1) Run a TOR server ( http://www.torproject.org/ ). This is software that helps provide freedom and privacy by encrypting and distributing network communications. If you don't want to run TOR on your machine, rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and do it on someone else's box.
2) Support the EFF ( http://www.eff.org/ ). This organization understands technology and knows that in the digital age, information is power.
3) Support open-source distributed alternatives to web-based software-as-a-service. EveryDNS, Paypal, Twitter, Amazon's EC2, and even our beloved Google are points of vulnerability in democracy since their fundamental obligation is to shareholders instead of to an innate code of ethics. How would you find information if Google bowed to Government pressure? The only thing that will ensure corporations stay in line is the existence of alternatives such as a distributed search engine (http://yacy.de/ ).
4) Support open-source software by using it, contributing time or money to its development, and requesting that our Governments make policies to use it. The world would be a very different place if the power of public-key-encryption was kept solely in Government and Corporate hands. Only Free and Open Source Software ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software ) ensures that all members of society who use information technology are on the same footing.
5) Let others know what is at stake, spread the word. Democracy takes active participation, and this takes patience and explanation so that nontechnical Constituents have the understanding that you possess.
Our communications technology is only a tool and can be used to both facilitate democracy and better the world, or to enslave humankind. We are witnessing the first infowar of the digital age, and the powers that be will use it to push hard for bans on encryption, crackdown on peer-to-peer communication, and other information tools.
Will you watch silently and let information technology turn into a tool of repression, or will you take a stand while you still can? The race is on, do something!
I think the GP meant that the __corporations__ of *Siemens* and *Nokia* are facilitating (aka "help"ing) to silence activists in Iran by providing deep-packet inspection tools to Government controlled telecom.
To that extent, a centralized government controlled data infrastructure can always be used for nefarious purposes, even if that wasn't the intent on installation. As for-profit companies, Nokia and Siemens probably approached the proposal by looking at the bottom line profit, not the moral implications. Its just business.
But regardless of the intent why the DPI machines were put in place, the possibility for good and evil are both increased in lock-step. Within the US our centralization and inspection of domestic data in the name of fighting terrorism takes us down a slippery slope, even though the possible (and likely) misuses of this data are swept under the rug.
There are those of us who believe that the only way to ensure free speech (and all the good and bad that accompany it) is to ensure societies ability to develop decentralized communications exchange,
The commercial products are slick but expensive. If you use DamnSmallLinux it becomes trivial and cheap to recycle an old laptop that you have lying around. You can pick up one on eBay with decent specs for less than $75 that will hold thousands of pictures and is even networkable. A 100MHz pentium, 64MB RAM, and 800MB HD will hold thousands of pictures, is networkable, and will consume less than 40 watts.
There's a good explanation of this sort of thing here with a program that will reduce resolution and quality of a batch of pictures so that the pictureframe laptop doesn't need much CPU power. The same program can also be used to display a slideshow, or you can use any number of script/program methods.
Good explanations elsewhere in internet on removing the keyboard and making it look less like a laptop and more like a pictureframe... or leave it mostly intact and use it to surf the web when desired.
Speaking of holograms... for generating holograms without a laser (just your PC, a laser printer, and a transparency), check out the MedCosm CGHmaker.
Anyone know of a really hi-res output device?
Although it's easy to view this patent as a frivolous innovation that will probably be overturned (eventually) if MS chooses to pursue action against competitors, the danger is in the precedent that is continually being set by the USPTO. By failing to adequately examine the concepts behing these obvious patents (eg, running a process authorized by root, single/double/triple clicking a mouse, etc.), our patent system is perverted into one where the burden falls on new inventors to prove that their innovations do not infringe on patents, rather then a system where the burden falls on patent-holders to prove that their IP has been infringed upon.
This strategy may work in the US, where we can simply put the inventor^h^h^h^h^h criminals in jail (note that the US already has among the highest incarcerated population %-ages), but it probably won't hold up well against the rest of the world, especially the parts that don't think the USPTO is the last word. Unless we can start to incarcerate a larger percentage of the world's population for infringing on US IP, this strategy may not prove to be sustainable.
Perhaps corporate sponsorship of prisons facilities would help make this strategy a winner...
SCOX (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=scox) is up almost 10% at of 10:30 EST. It must be true! Why does this stock move paradoxically to the news?
LWV's position is indefensible... How can any organization not endorse a completely open voting system with paper trail and software which is open to public examination? LVW's current position threatens the fabric of democracy by entrusting corporations, not citizens, with the critical task of ensuring that our elections are credible.
Moreover, opposition to a public advocacy group such as verifiedvoting.org implies that a conflict of interest exists within LVW which pits its leadership against the very members which they are supposed to represent.
What's next? Speaking out against nonpartisan efforts to register voters?
This is a shameful time for the league.
It all has to do with business practices and control. You're absolutely right about only Ford-authorized car parts working with Fords in the future... And the practice of "licensing for use" (usually with Draconian terms) rather than "selling" a product is used virtualy everywhere with companies from Lexmark to Intuit to the RIAA paving the way.
So the *real* question, in my mind, is: How we can steer things as society fragments between those who can "own" property, and those who are only able to "use" property?
Open source is one crucial part of helping prevent this fragmentation, along with creative-commons licensing of media (creativecommons.org), and perhaps organized educational campaigns to consumers letting them know what they are giving up in exchange for opening that shrink-wrapped EULA-laden widget.
But when corporate interests are intent on herding consumers into "Terms-of-Use" based agreements which prevent a consumer from actually owning something, what is the best way to combat this?
Perhaps someone needs to explain how capitalism is supposed to work to the clueless Google management team. Looks like they still think that offering a better product/service translates into financial gain for the company.
Don't they know anything about changing a horizontal market into a vertical one, locking users in with Digital Restrictions Management, absolving all sense of responsibility with a EULA, and ensuring product obsolescence?
Amazing that these guys could even find funding with their cluelessness. Must've occurred during the irrational dot-com business-model era in the 90's.
Reading through the responses to this technology, it seems that several issues are being addressed/readdressed:
1) Mandatory tagging of criminals - There seems to be a fundamental difference between tagging someone as part of their sentence and tagging someone after their sentence has been served (eg, after release from prison). The latter seems a dangerous trend since it indicates that the punishment for certain crimes may change in an arbitrary fashion, even *after* a criminal has served their time and been "rehabilitated" by societal punishments.
Granted, some crimes are heinous and deserve drastic punishments, but punishments should be known at the time of sentencing. Make the punishment as harsh as is warranted (eg, death sentence or consecutive life sentences effectively ensures that an offender never returns to society), but once a punishment has been fulfilled , no additional arbitrary punishments should be levied. Being unable to agree on what the rule-of-law is at the time of sentencing is very bad. A rule-of-law which is not transparent and clear is not a rule-of-law.
2) RFID technology is good|bad - Anyone who has spent their life thinking about technology knows that technology itself it neither our damnation nor our savior. It is amoral and merely a tool created and used by humans to leverage our ideas.
However, history has shown that we have a penchant for killing each other over issues with no obvious resolution (eg, Who's God is better, Who's skin color is better, etc). Technology just speeds up the process of letting us work out our differences, and, when that fails, subjugate/maim/torture/kill the enemy when they it is obvious that they will not take on our point of view.
3) The posters are "anti-technologist fear mongers" - since this crowd is generally very technology savvy, it is probably more likely that you misunderstand the message being articulated. People on Slashdot certainly seem to get more worked up that your general everyday nongeek citizenry. But that is likely because of the "slippery-slope" issues that are addressed. Looking at how humans use and misuse technology to abuse each other, it is often clear to those with a background in technology what form the abuses could take. Generally, it seems that humans eventually arrive at a solution better for everyone (eg, more tolerant), but only after a more short-term period which exploits the technology to the severe disadvantage of an unfortunate minority.
BTW, although annoying that the article is not based on RFID technology, that hardly matters in the grand scheme. GPS, RFID, biometrics, DRM, etc. are all just technologies. They have amazing potential for benefit of societies. But unless the potential for human-rights abuse is acknowledged and carefully monitored, things will get very bad before things get better.
No technology is without potential for abuse. Period.
You miss the point. The very organization that was supposed to judiciously handle infrastructure has intentionally involved themselves in a clear conflict of interest.
Wouldn't you have a problem if all misdialed telephone numbers were intentionally directed to "Telemarketers Inc" so that a telemarketer could politely inform you that you misdialed while trying to sell you some Viagra?
Netster (or any other sleazy site-finder service), J-Lo, or your grandma should all should have the same right to demand that the practice stop (though in practice, this take money). If you believe in "rule-of-law" then you should realize that it applies equally to everyone. Netster has filed the lawsuit because they have a financial interest at stake, but regardless of how we feel about Netster, that doesn't make Verisign's behavior any more savory.
Now how can I go about redirecting those misdialed telephone numbers to my telemarketing firm???
No, we're not going to protest Google, silly... We need the tech-savy Google staff to perform an organized protest just like the UK software patent protest.
For a single day, Google should delist all search terms where the DMCA has been used to try to force Google to break only selected links.
If Google indiscriminately cutoff all of these links, then Sharman (Kazaa), Church of Scientology, and many other sites would be hurt by their own actions. If the wording were right on the "delisted" search result page, perhaps this would even bring the outrage of the DMCA to public attention.
What a fitting application of the golden rule!
Anyone who can help me get this idea to the top at Google?
No doubt Google desires to be apolitical, but the DMCA (and software patents) will kill even their business model if this progression is not reversed soon.
The battle between the RIAA and listeners appears to be very similar to the battle between software vendors (Micro$oft et al) and end-users.
Since the combination of technology (DRM) and law (DMCA, EULA's) give unreasonable amounts of leverage to the IP producers, the only real alternative for the end-user is to avoid winding up a criminal by choosing something with less restrictive licensing.
Can someone respond by explaining the alternative licensing arrangements available to artists? What sites post media created under these licenses?
If large numbers of these files started showing up on P2P networks, this could have the potential to legitimize their content, benefit non-RIAA artists, and share some good music/art with the world all without supporting the RIAA.
Of course, you've got to stop buying the RIAA's latest boy-band fad, but that shouldn't be a problem here...
Oh, and lastly, is SCO challenging any of these artistic licenses yet?