No matter what zealots tell you, no freedom is absolute. Your freedoms end when they infringe on the rights of others. This includes your freedom of speech.
My thoughts when I first heard about this project were extremely positive for the first 5 seconds or so. I was going to set up a server, and suggest all my other bandwidth-rich friends do the same. Then I thought about what would be going to and from my server.
Anonymity has it's place from time to time, but usually in the cases of an abuse by a higher power against an individual. But in the general case, I feel that freedom of speech entails the responsability of accountability.
If I'm going to say that I hate Virgos, and all Virgos should be locked up and treated as the inhuman beasts that they are, I should have the conviction to do so without a pointy hood over my head.
If I'm going to be distributing porn, I should be able to do it with a clean conscience. If I wanted to post naked pictures on a website, I'd be in some way traceable. And if I wasn't identifiable, there at least would be a mechanism in place (an email to my upstream provider) to curb my freedom of speech if I was posting vile material.
The ideal of individual freedom falls apart in the environment of actual individuals who abuse it.
I'm not saying in any way that this should be a legal matter, or that the product should be banned, just that in the case that it turns out like I expect it to (the majority of traffic for illicit files, both violating copyright and basic human decency) I will have no respect, even a measure of contempt for the people that do run the servers. THEY will be the ones I will hold accountable for the 'free speech' being exercised on the network. And if they were to be sued off the net by the RIAA, church of Scientology and MPAA, I can't say I'll be surprised, or all that upset.
What arguments can you make FOR free, anonymous access to kiddie porn, snuff films and rape/torture erotica? Why should *I*, a server operator, nurture these sorts of activities in an ideal environment?
Hmmm, I'm no proponent of pure capitalism, I just feel the governments, and, well, people generally can worry about more important things than Ricky Martin MP3s and illicit copies of ST:Generations.
A much more fundamental problem with distribution limitations has to do with the fact that 80% of the people in the world will never SEE a DVD player, so much as have to worry about whether or not they're in Zone 1 or Zone 2.
Don't try to circumvent their copyright technology.
Don't try to force them to change their ways by consuming their content in a manner which they don't want you to. If you do that, you're STILL PLAYING THEIR GAME.
Just STOP CONSUMING THEIR CONTENT.
Vote not only with your dollars, but with your time as well. If you don't like the way record companies treat their artists, don't buy records, and certainly don't warez mp3z. Listen to the FREE Mp3s you can get on mp3.com.
If you feel that pollution from gas powered cars is out of control, and blame the petroleum companies, you don't try to change things by stealing gasoline or suing the companies, you RIDE A BIKE!
You don't have some inherent *right* to watch your Star Trek IV movie, it's a priviledge you get when you buy the movie. If someone tells you that to watch their movie you have to stab yourself in the leg with a fork, you don't have to watch it.
My ideas are my own, noone has the right to invade my brain and take them away from me. I don't have the inherent right to listen to a peice of music that someone composed. If they want to share it with me for free, GREAT! If they want to sell it to me, that's great too. But if they don't want to sell it to me, I don't think there's some sort of part of my soul that will die. If they impose stupid restrictions on their content, they can. It's THEIR work.
If a screenwriter, director, actor, musician or artist didn't want restrictions placed on their work by giant corporations, they shouldn't sell out to them by using their distribution channels.
None of this is to say that I don't watch DVDs or buy CDs, just that if someone denied me a certain type of access to a work, I wouldn't feel righteous indignation about it, I'd just get my entertainment elsewhere.
If you hate DVD zoning restrictions, don't buy a DVD player.
If you dislike the fact that 18 of those 19 bucks you spent on a CD go towards lawyers and record company executives, listen to the radio, or take up the guitar.
You don't have the god given right to CONSUME someone else's product in whatever way you want.
Where I think the freedom of information dissemination becomes CRUCIAL is in education and current events. I think access to education is a lot more important than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
"The rest of the world has little to fear from the MPAA and RIAA"
A nice thought, but have you heard of the WTO? It's raison-d'etre is SOLELY for cases like this.
Us here in Canada can't afford to simply ignore what happens in the States, or any other country for that matter. It's the same planet, and like it or not, it'll have an effect on us.
If fly-fishing were banned in every country but Canada, it would *surely* hurt the fly-fishing community here.
That being said, I don't think that the DCMA will mean the end of non-bigtime music. People have the option of NOT CONSUMING the corporate stuff.
You can always go to local concerts for a few bucks, pick up a tape from the guy at the back of the bar, and have 3 bucks left for a beer over the price that you would have spent on a big name album.
Sorry, I wasn't explicit about that point. There's a couple of social factors at work here, but economic forces are by far the most dominant ones (IMO). It just so happens that the US Censuses happen to have the data broken down by race (since *THEY* seem to feel it's so important) as opposed to relating crime rate to more relavant things.
I think that statistics based on the geographic origin of inmates, the amount of money spent per capita on crime control and more importantly EDUCATION in these areas, and the crime rate would be MUCH more interesting.
As far as privacy is concerned, I see the influence of megacorps as something QUITE frightening. They are very interested in maintaining the status quo (at least their rich shareholders and executives are, surely!) and aren't likely to act in a manner that's socially responsible in the long run.
Privacy policies are an aspect of this. Knowledge is power, et al.
I think that COMPANIES should have *LESS* rights to privacy than individuals. What information they're selling to whom should be PUBLIC information.
:Geez, this is not news for nerds, nor stuff that matters!
*sigh* This is getting PATHETIC. I'd bet you that a *large* chunk of the people visiting this site feel that privacy issues (online and not) *ARE* important to them.
Not EVERY article is for EVERYONE.
If you hate Katz so much, save the bandwidth and quit reading his stuff, or for gods sake, stop bitching about him!
The US has 5% of the world's population, and 25% of the world's imprisoned population.
12.8% of the population of the states is black, but 60% of the prison population is black.
Put that together, 15% of the world's prison population is black americans, but they comprise only.6% of the world's total population.
The average black family income is almost HALF of that of the average white family.
Tell me those aren't related.
Tell me that people living in slums are worried about companies buying and selling their credit card information?
Privacy is a 'human right' worried about by rich people.
Not to say I don't think it's important to respect, or think that a positive move towards greater individual privacy vis-a-vis corporations is a BAD thing, just that IMO, it's silly to call it the 'most abused' human right in the US.
Firstly, calling closing certain ports down and filtering internet traffic censorship is a bit misleading.
In the US, the freedom from censorship protected by the first amendment only relates to censorship by the government. A University is a private institution.
Second, I can really feel for the sysadmins running university networks. Their servers are already enough of a headache: Insufficient hardware and meatware resources, many MANY accounts to administer with *high* turnover, complex mixed environments etc.
Napster's security implications are a little frightening. Auto-configuring proxy settings to set up *any* computer on a network as a file server?
Plus, the fact that it has *no* justifiable redeeming qualities as a *legal* tool means that I don't think they should have to take the risk to have it running and chewing up their bandwidth. Anyone who's ever seen the software knows this. Illegal music outnumbers legal music by some ungodly ratio.
University internet accounts are provided FOR EDUCATION PURPOSES. They're subsidized by the tuition fees, which are in turn, subsidized by the government.
If you want to download Warez, Mp3z and pr0n, go do it on a personal internet account.
I don't beleive that a user of a network has 'rights' to completely open, uncontrolled access to do whatever they want with that network, especially when it's still kind of gray where the responsability of the service provider ends in terms of the actions of the service users.
*IDEA* based filtering, forbidding access to, say, a website about interracial marriage, or the Democratic Party's home page or stuff like that is a whole other barrel of fish.
Now unless I'm mistaken, if you borrow a friend's CD, and 'add it to your collection', you've now got unlimited play access to MP3s from that CD, right?
Of course, if you borrow your buddy's CD, you can rip the MP3s yourself. Mind you, if you own a CD, you can do it as well.
What is this service good for again?:)
I suppose not *everyone* has free and easy access to a personal FTP site. But I'd expect that will change over the next couple of years, what with bandwidth and hard drive space being so darn cheap.
Down with all crypto! All information "wants to be free". (Including your private emails)
If a person (or company) produces a private letter (or movie) that they only want their friends (or paying customers) to see, they have the right to that privacy.
If you don't like the policy, don't watch DVDs. If you don't like the MPAA or RIAA's stance on crypto, copyright or whatever, DON'T CONSUME THEIR PRODUCTS. Don't warez them, don't distribute them, don't rent them, don't buy them.
People are free to invent a technology to replace DVD. Make a better drive and implement no crypto. Sell it to all the people who want to distribute their stuff for free.
Otherwise, realize that you live in a somewhat free-market economy, where people have the RIGHT to make closed standards.
This pisses me off to no end. IE does it right, Netscape does it WRONG./td and/tr tags are *not* part of the HTML spec, and are useless, as much as/p tags are. They need *not* be interpreted, as they can be assumed the very next time you see a td or tr respectively (assuming of course there isn't another nested table, but dealing with that is not mind bending either).
*sigh* This'll get moderated out of existance and my karma'll go down I'm sure.
Here Rogers is the largest cable supplier for idiot boxes, as well as the largest broadband Internet provider, as well as one of the largest video rental chains.
The cross advertising is really kinda silly... "Free internet access with a douzen video rentals." "Extra IP addresses if you have more than one TV hooked up to your cable." etc etc.
I'm exaggerating about their special deals, but the point remains.
At least they're FINALLY reselling access to their cable network to other ISPs.
They were neck and neck for a while on the hardware front, had a lot in common actually. I just think it's a shame that noone remembers the poor Atari.
*sniff* I just threw two of the buggers out three weeks ago actually.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I consider driving a privilege. If I'm on a PUBLIC road system, I'm of the opinion that my PRIVACY is a moot point, especially where the safety of others is concerned.
The 'I need a burst of speed to get out of dangerous situations' claptrap I'm hearing is bogus. A technical solution would be to allow 15 seconds or a minute of speeding to merge, pass on a 2 lane road or whatever.
'What if someone's in need of medical attention?'
Well, howzabout an override button which you can press which registers you for a visit from the local constabulary. When they call, you tell them you had to take someone to the hospital, they'll be able to tell, since they've been watching where you're car's gone, and can see if you've actually gone to a hospital.
If you're in a PUBLIC place (public roads) you should act in a way where you don't CARE if anyone's watching.
If you want to drive fast, go to a PRIVATE racetrack where they won't monitor your speed.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that: A) All cars should be governed to 100kph/60mph or maybe even less. We're not in THAT much of a hurry. Lives are at stake.
B) Cars should be replaced by decent public transit systems in metropolitan areas.
At the ISP I work at, the phone system went down at midnight last night. They finally managed to get a phone tech out here to get things back up and running.
Not entirely sure if it's Y2K related, but interesting nonetheless.... Faulty patching for Y2K, maybe?
Not the biggest deal in the world, no corporate clients call in on the holidays anyway. *grin*
Greg
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts when I first heard about this project were extremely positive for the first 5 seconds or so. I was going to set up a server, and suggest all my other bandwidth-rich friends do the same. Then I thought about what would be going to and from my server.
Anonymity has it's place from time to time, but usually in the cases of an abuse by a higher power against an individual. But in the general case, I feel that freedom of speech entails the responsability of accountability.
If I'm going to say that I hate Virgos, and all Virgos should be locked up and treated as the inhuman beasts that they are, I should have the conviction to do so without a pointy hood over my head.
If I'm going to be distributing porn, I should be able to do it with a clean conscience. If I wanted to post naked pictures on a website, I'd be in some way traceable. And if I wasn't identifiable, there at least would be a mechanism in place (an email to my upstream provider) to curb my freedom of speech if I was posting vile material.
The ideal of individual freedom falls apart in the environment of actual individuals who abuse it.
I'm not saying in any way that this should be a legal matter, or that the product should be banned, just that in the case that it turns out like I expect it to (the majority of traffic for illicit files, both violating copyright and basic human decency) I will have no respect, even a measure of contempt for the people that do run the servers. THEY will be the ones I will hold accountable for the 'free speech' being exercised on the network. And if they were to be sued off the net by the RIAA, church of Scientology and MPAA, I can't say I'll be surprised, or all that upset.
What arguments can you make FOR free, anonymous access to kiddie porn, snuff films and rape/torture erotica? Why should *I*, a server operator, nurture these sorts of activities in an ideal environment?
A much more fundamental problem with distribution limitations has to do with the fact that 80% of the people in the world will never SEE a DVD player, so much as have to worry about whether or not they're in Zone 1 or Zone 2.
Greg
Don't try to circumvent their copyright technology.
Don't try to force them to change their ways by consuming their content in a manner which they don't want you to. If you do that, you're STILL PLAYING THEIR GAME.
Just STOP CONSUMING THEIR CONTENT.
Vote not only with your dollars, but with your time as well. If you don't like the way record companies treat their artists, don't buy records, and certainly don't warez mp3z. Listen to the FREE Mp3s you can get on mp3.com.
If you feel that pollution from gas powered cars is out of control, and blame the petroleum companies, you don't try to change things by stealing gasoline or suing the companies, you RIDE A BIKE!
You don't have some inherent *right* to watch your Star Trek IV movie, it's a priviledge you get when you buy the movie. If someone tells you that to watch their movie you have to stab yourself in the leg with a fork, you don't have to watch it.
My ideas are my own, noone has the right to invade my brain and take them away from me. I don't have the inherent right to listen to a peice of music that someone composed. If they want to share it with me for free, GREAT! If they want to sell it to me, that's great too. But if they don't want to sell it to me, I don't think there's some sort of part of my soul that will die. If they impose stupid restrictions on their content, they can. It's THEIR work.
If a screenwriter, director, actor, musician or artist didn't want restrictions placed on their work by giant corporations, they shouldn't sell out to them by using their distribution channels.
None of this is to say that I don't watch DVDs or buy CDs, just that if someone denied me a certain type of access to a work, I wouldn't feel righteous indignation about it, I'd just get my entertainment elsewhere.
If you hate DVD zoning restrictions, don't buy a DVD player.
If you dislike the fact that 18 of those 19 bucks you spent on a CD go towards lawyers and record company executives, listen to the radio, or take up the guitar.
You don't have the god given right to CONSUME someone else's product in whatever way you want.
Where I think the freedom of information dissemination becomes CRUCIAL is in education and current events. I think access to education is a lot more important than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Greg
A nice thought, but have you heard of the WTO? It's raison-d'etre is SOLELY for cases like this.
Us here in Canada can't afford to simply ignore what happens in the States, or any other country for that matter. It's the same planet, and like it or not, it'll have an effect on us.
If fly-fishing were banned in every country but Canada, it would *surely* hurt the fly-fishing community here.
That being said, I don't think that the DCMA will mean the end of non-bigtime music. People have the option of NOT CONSUMING the corporate stuff.
You can always go to local concerts for a few bucks, pick up a tape from the guy at the back of the bar, and have 3 bucks left for a beer over the price that you would have spent on a big name album.
Greg
I think that statistics based on the geographic origin of inmates, the amount of money spent per capita on crime control and more importantly EDUCATION in these areas, and the crime rate would be MUCH more interesting.
As far as privacy is concerned, I see the influence of megacorps as something QUITE frightening. They are very interested in maintaining the status quo (at least their rich shareholders and executives are, surely!) and aren't likely to act in a manner that's socially responsible in the long run.
Privacy policies are an aspect of this. Knowledge is power, et al.
I think that COMPANIES should have *LESS* rights to privacy than individuals. What information they're selling to whom should be PUBLIC information.
Greg
*sigh* This is getting PATHETIC. I'd bet you that a *large* chunk of the people visiting this site feel that privacy issues (online and not) *ARE* important to them.
Not EVERY article is for EVERYONE.
If you hate Katz so much, save the bandwidth and quit reading his stuff, or for gods sake, stop bitching about him!
Greg
I don't think so.
The US has 5% of the world's population, and 25% of the world's imprisoned population.
12.8% of the population of the states is black, but 60% of the prison population is black.
Put that together, 15% of the world's prison population is black americans, but they comprise only .6% of the world's total population.
The average black family income is almost HALF of that of the average white family.
Tell me those aren't related.
Tell me that people living in slums are worried about companies buying and selling their credit card information?
Privacy is a 'human right' worried about by rich people.
Not to say I don't think it's important to respect, or think that a positive move towards greater individual privacy vis-a-vis corporations is a BAD thing, just that IMO, it's silly to call it the 'most abused' human right in the US.
Greg
In the US, the freedom from censorship protected by the first amendment only relates to censorship by the government. A University is a private institution.
Second, I can really feel for the sysadmins running university networks. Their servers are already enough of a headache: Insufficient hardware and meatware resources, many MANY accounts to administer with *high* turnover, complex mixed environments etc.
Napster's security implications are a little frightening. Auto-configuring proxy settings to set up *any* computer on a network as a file server?
Plus, the fact that it has *no* justifiable redeeming qualities as a *legal* tool means that I don't think they should have to take the risk to have it running and chewing up their bandwidth. Anyone who's ever seen the software knows this. Illegal music outnumbers legal music by some ungodly ratio.
University internet accounts are provided FOR EDUCATION PURPOSES. They're subsidized by the tuition fees, which are in turn, subsidized by the government.
If you want to download Warez, Mp3z and pr0n, go do it on a personal internet account.
I don't beleive that a user of a network has 'rights' to completely open, uncontrolled access to do whatever they want with that network, especially when it's still kind of gray where the responsability of the service provider ends in terms of the actions of the service users.
*IDEA* based filtering, forbidding access to, say, a website about interracial marriage, or the Democratic Party's home page or stuff like that is a whole other barrel of fish.
-Greg
Of course, if you borrow your buddy's CD, you can rip the MP3s yourself. Mind you, if you own a CD, you can do it as well.
What is this service good for again? :)
I suppose not *everyone* has free and easy access to a personal FTP site. But I'd expect that will change over the next couple of years, what with bandwidth and hard drive space being so darn cheap.
If a person (or company) produces a private letter (or movie) that they only want their friends (or paying customers) to see, they have the right to that privacy.
If you don't like the policy, don't watch DVDs. If you don't like the MPAA or RIAA's stance on crypto, copyright or whatever, DON'T CONSUME THEIR PRODUCTS. Don't warez them, don't distribute them, don't rent them, don't buy them.
People are free to invent a technology to replace DVD. Make a better drive and implement no crypto. Sell it to all the people who want to distribute their stuff for free.
Otherwise, realize that you live in a somewhat free-market economy, where people have the RIGHT to make closed standards.
Greg
*sigh* This'll get moderated out of existance and my karma'll go down I'm sure.
The US defense budget is on the order of 270 billion.
Greg
The cross advertising is really kinda silly... "Free internet access with a douzen video rentals." "Extra IP addresses if you have more than one TV hooked up to your cable." etc etc.
I'm exaggerating about their special deals, but the point remains.
At least they're FINALLY reselling access to their cable network to other ISPs.
Greg
*sniff* I just threw two of the buggers out three weeks ago actually.
The 'I need a burst of speed to get out of dangerous situations' claptrap I'm hearing is bogus. A technical solution would be to allow 15 seconds or a minute of speeding to merge, pass on a 2 lane road or whatever.
'What if someone's in need of medical attention?'
Well, howzabout an override button which you can press which registers you for a visit from the local constabulary. When they call, you tell them you had to take someone to the hospital, they'll be able to tell, since they've been watching where you're car's gone, and can see if you've actually gone to a hospital.
If you're in a PUBLIC place (public roads) you should act in a way where you don't CARE if anyone's watching.
If you want to drive fast, go to a PRIVATE racetrack where they won't monitor your speed.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that:
A) All cars should be governed to 100kph/60mph or maybe even less. We're not in THAT much of a hurry. Lives are at stake.
B) Cars should be replaced by decent public transit systems in metropolitan areas.
At the ISP I work at, the phone system went down at midnight last night. They finally managed to get a phone tech out here to get things back up and running. Not entirely sure if it's Y2K related, but interesting nonetheless.... Faulty patching for Y2K, maybe? Not the biggest deal in the world, no corporate clients call in on the holidays anyway. *grin* Greg