Yes, DRM, if implemented properly and in a manner to honour tair use rights would actually be a good thing. In any case, it would be better than a flawed alternative that does not respect fair use. See
this for a proposl. Be sure to check my followup because there is an obvious, though minor, flaw in the original proposal.
I tend to support this, after all the GPL asks so little. But, I would also add a "reprieve" clause, that is, if complience is restored within some reasonable length of time, say 30 days after notification of non-complience, the license is automaticaly reinstated. In unusual circumstances, a court might order an extention of the reprieve period.
I do recall, though, RMS causing a bit of a stir when TrollTech finally made Qt free. He pointed out that previously distributing otherwise-GPL code linked against Qt was a GPL violation, and, while the problem no longer existed, prior violators had to be *technically* absolved of their previous sin before they could redistribute once more. IIRC, he also urged the relevent copyright holders to forgive the gaffe.
At the time, the/. crown seemed pretty upset that RMS was being so pedantic about license complience, though I found that he was just pointing out a technicality.
So, it would appear that RMS, at least, intends for GPL violators to be forever prohibited from redistrubution of the relevent work unless forgiven. This is not inconsistent with also suggesting that returning to complience result in forgiveness - it just gives the GPL some teeth.
Obviously an escrowed media private key should not be used for anything other than unlocking content where the copyright is help by another.
Even if such a device were implantable, it would serve little other purpose.
Though, I will grant the temptation to use it for other, less benign purposes, would be great. One solution to mitigate this risk is to encourage multiple escrow services so that there is no guarantee that such a key is, in fact, unique, but that the liklihood of there being an excessive number of holders of the same private key be acceptably slim for producers of keyed content. This would render such a key essentially useless as a form of identification.
As with all technologies, this can be used for good, evil, and convenience. Whether convenience becomes evil depends greatly on deployment.
Why the two houses on one income? Surely, if both ex's are working, they can support two houses. Furthermore, the non-custodial parent no longer requires as large a house, and isn't feeding and clothing three other people. Those dollars, and the savings on a lower mortgage can pay for the child care.
It strikes me that two incomes/two houses/child care is about as burdensome as one income/one house/no child care.
The key escrow services need to have the private keys of the equipment, not the public ones, otherwise anyone could impersonate a key escrow service, unless the equipment can use the public key of the key escrow service used to validate the signature on the encrypted user private key provided.
Using the latter technique esclusively is undesirable, of course, because it means that the possible escrow services have to be hard coded in the equipment.
To recap: the escrow service either has to be known to the equipment, or the escrow service has to know the equipment's private key.
Clearly, one of the way to keep proponents of bad copyright-protection laws (i.e. those which deny even traditional fair use), is to propose better ones, even if one is opposed to copyright in principle, or thinks the present balance is not fair.
Clearly, one solution is keeping copyright data encrypted until it is eventually displayed. This can be strengthened by ensuring that copyright data that is distributed is encrypted only for the recipient. While inconvenient, it becomes trivial if on-line distribution takes off. This allows for tracking each copy, to make sure that that those who possess a copy are entitled to, and provides an audit trail to illegal redistributors. It also reduces the effect of cracking an encryption key. Such technology would mesh well with existing PKI mechanisms for encryption, authentication, and digital signatures: you could keep your home movies secure if you wanted.
Of course, you could still make analog recordings of displayed copyright content, and perfect untracable copies of those, unless all digital content had to be signed, making the copy tracable, at least. Frankly the loss of anonymity this would imply would be worse than the protections it would provide. Of course, if interactive content increases in popularity, such analog transcriptions, losing the interactive components, would be less desireable than "the real thing". Furthermore, they'd have to me made in real-time, further inconveniencing the casual infringer. Commercial infringers, presumably, would be caught by virtue of their distribution volume.
Of course, any such mechanism will require some form of secure DRM in playback, or transcription devices. However, it is not necessary to have it in recording devices, so making backup copies of content, and redistributing them in encrypted form (say, emailing a movie from your city home to your country home) would not be an issue. Laws against circumventing such DRM would, of course, be necessary, and technology making it difficult would be desirable. But, such DRM would not have to be ubiquitously installed in storage devices, only transcoding and playback devices (like video cards, TVs, etc.) Already we are seeing crude forms of this in the form of region-coded hardware DVD decoders. While undesirable for other reasons, at least the technology does not pollute the computer itself.
Of course, besides content backups, one also needs to be assured that defective hardware can be replaced and rekeyed to permit playback of existing encrypted content. Furthermore, the private decryption key needs to be kept secret from the owner (lest he produce unencrypted content for distribution): the owner provides a public key when getting custom encrypted content. Obviously, the decryption should take place in the final digital to analog conversion stages, lest a cleartext signal be available for capture (creative use of epoxy, and tamper switches, can help defeat such casual hacking, though).
Of course, content providers would like to be the ones to control the generation of private and public keys, and the installation of private keys in playback and transcoding hardware. But, this is not practical: there are many content providers, and to burden the end-user with a plethora of key pairs is unreasonable. From the consumer's perspective, they'd like to have (a) a single key pair (or a few at most), (b) the ability to install their private key on new or replacement equipment with little difficulty (i.e. independent of manufacturer, or even product type). One possibility is the installation of a user private key encrypted with the public key corresponding to yet another equiment-specific private key.
The new equipment is connected to an on-line key escrow service, the user's public key is provided to the equipment (say, via a smart card, or other device), the key escrow service validates the public keys of user and equipment, and ensures that neither are revoked, and then downloads the user private key encrypted with the equipment public key to the equipment. This requires that equipment and user key-pairs be registered with a "media key escrow service". This service can generate the user key pairs, and either generate the equipment key pairs, or escrow the equipment public keys for the manufacturer. One can envsion several such escrow services, each escrowing equipment public keys pairs from major equipment manufacturers, and honouring key revocation requests from manufacturers, and courts (who'd revoke a user key upon conviction of copyright infringement).
For this system to work, most media key escrow services would have to escrow public keys from most manufacturers, but, since the keys are public, this should not be a problem. Ensuring that they properly revoke such keys on demand from the manufacturer is more important. Furthermore, in the event that an escrow service becomes defunct, it is important that the private keys they escrow for end-users not be lost. Howewver, even this is not completely essential, for each playback or transcoding device already escrows the end-user private key: it just needs to be coaxed into reencrypting it with the non-revoked equipment public key of new equipment and transfering it to same. So long as an end user has at least one peice of equipment holding their private key, they won't lose access to their licensed content.
Of course, because end-user equipment is uncontrolled, getting it to reencrypt isn't easy -- it needs to be sure that the public key of the new equipment isn't bogus, and that the corresponding private key is, indeed, secret, and not generated by the end-user himself. One posibility is to have the new equipment actually at the end of a network connection to a new media key escrow service, with the corresponding public key installed in the old equipment when it was manufactured. Obviously, all known media key escrow services would be so coded in equipment manufactured. This moves the point of weakness to the media escrow services, whose very public operation makes it difficult to covertly engage in copyright infringement, and which will likely have deep pockets if they do. Nothing stops a government, for example, from providing this service.
Is the idea of key escrow frightening, in that one's data isn't really secure? Perhaps, but remember that it isn't the end-user's data but that of the copyright holder. The trust relationship needs to be established between them and the escrow service.
This infrustructure is hardly perfect. There are always ways to circumvent copy protection or access schemes. However, this can be made (a) sufficiently difficult to be a strong casual deterrent, (b) ensure that those parties engaging in widespread infringement are likely visible and have deep pockets (if an escrow service goes bad, for example).
Oh, and if anyone else thinks of patenting these ideas... FORGET IT! I GOT FIRST DIBS!!
Well, yes, and no. I presume, based on/. demographics that you are an American citizen. Apologies if you're not, though arguments similar to what follows might apply in your country.
See, the U.S.A. taxes citizens based on citizenship, and tax-residence ("IRS: are you a resident?" "Yes" "PAY TAX!"; "INS: are you a resident?" "Er,..." remembers what he told the IRS... "yes." "DEPORTED! for visa violation -- next!"). So an American citizen collecting lottery winning in Canada, even if a tax-resident of Canada, or a dual citizen must pay U.S. tax on them (but can deduct lottery losses against them).
It gets worse.
Because Canada does not tax lottery winnings, there is no offsetting foreign tax credit available on your Canadian taxes. There are some rare tax situations where earnings are taxed in both countries as different things, and thus no foreign tax credit relief is available: you get taxed twice Over the years, harmonization of the Canadian and U.S. tax codes has reduced the number of such situations, but there still are some nasty surprises.
The poster above this one wrote, Offer people a good product, at the price the market is willing to bear, and they will buy it.
And this is very true. There are services on the 'net that for which I hapilly pay: PayMyBills.com, for one, and they aren't exactly cheap ($10.95/month for 30 transactions, $0.50/transaction after that -- I think it's $1 or $2 more now, but my rate is grandfathered, and there are other plans available).
What do I get for this $11? They provide me with a P.O. Box, scan my paper bills, email me notifications, allow me to pay online (via EFT or their cutting of a cheque from bank accounts to which I've given them access). They can handle on-line "smart bills", too, but this requires that they have access to your other on-line accounts. Having access to (some of) my bank accounts is enough -- all they could do is steal a months worth of expense $$$, but not screw up my other on-line service settings (I registered how many domains?!). Oh yeah, they can be instructed to pay certain bills regularly, or on-demand up to a certain amount. In short, they do a lot for that $11. While I'm not 100% satisified with their service, I'm satisfied enough to keep using it. Beats having to keep all those paper bill records, too (which was my primary reason for subscribing, actually).
Compare this to other fee-based on-line services. A lot of them try to sell information, or entertainment, on a monthly-fee basis. The kind of information offered usually isn't worth the price, and, as for purchasing entertainment, I prefer a pay as you go model -- I must have spent $5000 on-line in 2001, mostly for electronic equipment, and the odd book (note: bn.com benefits from my boycott of Amazon.com due to their 1-click patent heavy-handedness)
Now, PayMyBills was rather clever: they started charging me $3.95, then $5.95, then $6.95, and finally $10.95 a month. I suppose some would be irritated by this practice, and to some degree I was, but I'd say the service was worth $10 to $12 a month to me, so I stayed with them, and this latest price has been stable for a while. But, the important thing was that they weren't completely free to begin with (except for a trial period), so right off the bat, they got customers who were willing to pay. How much might be unknown, but it's the step from $0 to $(some small X) that's the biggest one in getting rid of free loaders. I'm sure that if they raise their prices too much, people will go back to paper statements, return envelopes, and stamps. The banks are starting to offer competition, but they generally don't want to deal with scanning paper bills.
An area for growth here is magazine subscriptions. You know, I get EDN (well, that doesn't count, 'cause it's free for me), and Circuit Cellar Ink on paper. Sometimes one or two articles will be interesting. I usually toss the magazine after a week -- I used to archive "important" ones, but they just took up too much room. It would be nice if I could (a) see a synopsis of all the articles, (b) pay for just the ones I want to read, (and c) get a digital copy, perhaps a synopsis of all the articles I read on an end-of-year CD (for an extra fee). That's something for which I'd probably be willing to pay $10 a year plus $0.25 to $0.50 per complete article: basically half the price of a paper subscription for access, and the other half if I read all the articles.
I think that refers to the license document, and terms therein, and not a new "License". Even if it did, the prior License states that it is the only licence that applies (section 4), and the new copy of the Program you received is substantially identical to the old one.
Otherwise, consider that I receive two copies of a License for something. Can I void one by non-complience, return to complience, and pull out the other copy? I don't think so.
Still, a contract is always interpreted in the most negative light by the court when it comes to the rights of the person who drew up the contract (the reasoning being that that had the opportunity to make it as air tight as possible). I presume that a license agreement would be treated similarly, so you may have a valid "out".
I doubt the court will accept the argument that past non-compliance with the GPL causes a permanent loss of rights to a free software package. Even if they did, it would be easy to get around it - the offending company could simply form a new subsidiary that is legally a different entity...
I dunno.
Copyright prevents redistribution of original or derived works. Only the GPL (in this case), lets you redistribute, and that license is void if you fail to honour its terms. So, yes, you could distribute future versions if they were not derivative works, which is unlikely.
Obtaining the code from a different source wouldn't help, as your right to redistribute has been withdrawn by the copyright holder, and applies over all copies. Establishing another company would be considered as a "sham" by the court.
To put it simply, you'se fuck-ed (and not in a good way).
However, I suppose you could distribute
prior versions, and back-port future diffs into them, if you are now in complience.
One of the things I love most about America is our right to free speech.
So far, so good.
The ability to live in a country where we can publicly speak out against injustice and oppression is priceless.
In theory at least. For all it's great moral principles of life, liberty, and pursuit of hapiness, the U.S.A., in practice, has seen some very ugly violations of same: slavery, McCarthyism, internment camps, etc. I suppose nobody is perfect, and mistakes serve to teach lessons.
Where would our nation, and even the world be if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not free to challenge his people to practice nonviolent protest?
Well, his freedom got him murdered, because he dared assert it. But, the point is made: his assertion of his principled right to liberty paved the way for greater freedoms for others. If we defend liberty, perhaps only some of us will enjoy it, but if we don't, then none of us will. It takes a while, but I, too, have come to the conclusion that I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
However, the issue of free speech is not so cut and dry.
Oh, oh! I sense waffling ahead.
I hope that most people will agree with me that COMPLETELY free speech is NOT a good thing.
Er, I don't.
For example, what if a witness was free to lie when testifying at a trial? Laws against purgery are technically "curbing" free speech.
No, laws against purgery serve to punish those who lie under oath. With the narrow exception of a sub-peona, no one is forced to testify. And, even then, no one can be forced to testify against themselves.
I think you are confusing a right with the freedom to voluntarily give up that right if you chose (and, indeed, you would not be truely free if you couldn't).
However, these kinds of restrictions are necessary in order to promote justice and freedom for all.
Again, no. A functioning judicial system may require those making use of it to accept certain rules of order. You are free to not accept those rules if you chose to not prosecute, and you are free to not testifiy in a manner that would be self-incriminating. In any conflict, we see contrary "freedoms" clash, and resolution requires either the making of war on one another (something neither party is likely to want), or accepting terms of a neutral intermediary to settle the dispute. The jurisdiction of a court is accepted because it is much better than the alternative, not because it is an unwanted restriction on our freedoms.
An extreme example might help: in theory, I should be free to go around killing people. But, then, it would stand to reason that others would likely go around trying to kill me. It does not take much to realize that giving up the "right" to kill people in exchange for not getting killed one's self, is, er, a pretty good deal.
Still, there is no law of physics that prevents me from commiting murder. I'm "free" to do this if I really want to. Obviously I don't want to.
Laws against slander, libel, death threats, and the proverbial "yelling fire in a crowded theater" fall into the same category.
You're (a) mixing two different things, (b) expressing a common misunderstanding about the "yelling fire in a theater" case.
First, prescriptions against deceitful or threatening speech exist because such speech causes harm (loss of reputation, or a rational fear for one's life). Even then, the standard is high: truth is a defense against libel, and the expression of an opinion as such is always protected.
Second, yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not prohibited... if there is, in fact, a fire. The reason is that the resulting panic, as bad as it may be, is presumed less harmful than an actual fire, but more so than no fire at all. Because there is no time to weigh the merit of the word "fire!" under those circumstances, it can't quailfy as an opinion, and so, the misleading expression of a state of immediate emergency is unlawful.
These laws are designed to protect the general public from the misuse of free speech.
This is a perverse way of looking at it. Such laws prohibit actions that are likely to harm, not speech per se. Except in the case of a threat, the nature of the harm is that of, at least, fraud. Arguing that this is a restriction on speech is like arguing that a prohibition against stealing is a restriction on trade.
So where do issues like pornography and hate speech fall? The question is, if purgery is prohibited in order to protect the public, could hate speech be prohibited for the same reason?
I fail to see how pornography is "hate" speech, though some might find it's general objectification of women as degrading. And, indeed, if it can be shown that the intent of publishing pornography (literally, "evil writing"), is to degrade, it can be restricted. However, there are no scientific studies which suggest that erotic displays of the naked humab body are harmful to any normal person exposed to them, even children; for all the anecdotal evidence that has been presented to support these claims. In fact, there is compelling evidence that social norms that are sexually repressive cause more harm, espescially to children, who grow up with all sorts of hangups or obsessions about things taboo.
Of course, this does not mean that anyone should be forced to be exposed to images they do not wish to see, either in their homes, or public places where such images would be "out of place". Again, prohibitions against such displays can fall under the fraud stautes: no one expects an X-rated show in place of a kid's magic show, for example.
As for "hate" speech, or speech which is unpopular, that generally deserves the greatest protection: if it exposes blatent corruption, it needs be told; if it is ugly, it will be ignored. I've written this before, and I'm sure I'll do so again, but the idiot standing on a street corner yelling racial epithets is less harmful than the guy who (secretly) won't give you a job because of the colour of your skin, despite all the appearances of offering "equal opportunity" employment. Yup, fraud, again. At least you can see the bigot for what he is.
And, exactly what constitutes "free speech"? I'm certainly no expert on the Constitution, but I believe that the first ammendment was put into place not to allow citizens to say and act whatever and however they please, but rather to act as a guard against the kind of oppression that was found in England at the time.
Er, the oppression of which you speak, was state restriction of unsanctioned expression: criticism of the state, non-approved religeon, etc. Which does raise an interesting issue: it is the government which is prohibited against restraining speech, and not private individuals. This is why business establishments can enforce a code of conduct, and employers can fire people for expressing undesirable views, even if true.
"Free speech" was intended to allow citizens to protest the actions of government when government overstepped its bounds, or was acting improperly. A prime example of this is the civil rights movement.
Actually, it is broader than that. Free speech means that the government can't restrict what you can express, unless the act, independent of the speech, is harmful. While this includes critical speech, it is not limited to it. This is important because it allows the expression of statements (i.e. Clinton got a blow job from a White House intern) without having to frame them as critical of government, and letting others decide what they think.
I don't believe that the first ammendment was intended to protect individuals who want to post child pornography on the Internet.
Drop the "child". Child pornography is prohibited generally because it encourages exploitation of children against their will, or without their consent, or understanding. Frankly, I always though that a legally emancipated 16-year-old (or whatever the relevant age is in one's jurisdiction) should be free to permit erotic images of herself to be published. The presumption is that she has demonstrated that she is capable of acting as an adult in society and understands the issues. There are, in fact, a small number of just-under-18 professional models who were prohibited from displaying their naked breasts in "calender" style publications. Since their income is derived from their appearance, and the earning years for this profession are generally limited, it could be argued that this was unlawful restraint of one's freedom to earn a living (the idea being that the popularity would increase with a bit of "skin", espescially if it was a calender displaying different models, most over 18, and bearing their breasts, placing the 17-year-old at a popularity disadvantage for future publications).
One can argue that is isn't the best way to make a living, and shouldn't be actively encouraged, and I'd tend to agree. But, it is not for me to decide what other adults, or people considered adults under the law, do as long as it is peaceful.
So, that leaves prohibitions against pornography in general, and the case for those has already shown to be flimsier than a g-string.
And, although it's rather controversial these days, I don't believe it protects those who want to make copies of DVDs and CDs and distribute them over the net or to their friends. That is an issue of "Fair Use", not free speech.
The idea here is that is not your speech to be freely "spoken". But here too, the first ammendment trumps the temporary protections offered by copyright in the end. Of course, lately, we're seeing a rather unusual definition for the work "temporary".
Would any of us be satisfied with a world in which Skylarov and Johansen could be persecuted as they have been, in which the DMCA, WIPO regulations, and the SSSCA are enforced laws, but copyright terms were shortened to something reasonable?
Certainly the DMCA and SSSCA are seriously brain-dead even without effectively indefinite copyright terms. However, let's stick to one issue at a time: excessive copyright protections are bad on their face, with or without these other laws.
Furthermore, even with the DMCA as it stands, I think the cases against Sklyarov and Johansen are without merit. Repeat after me: "interoperability". You are right to use the word "persecuted" and not "prosecuted". And, persecuted for what? Exercising simple fair use! Which brings up back to basic copyright law.
So the response to these bad laws should be three fold:
1) Fight excessive copyright terms. Part of the civil disobedience approach to this is to reproduce and redistribute material that has essentially been abandoned by the copyright holder -- so called abandonware.
2) Exercise and defend your right to fair use. Use deCSS, certainly, and openly, but only for interoperability reasons.
3) This addresses the valid issues you raised: fight for the ability to engage in fair use. Technological means to prevent it should not be tolerated.
Well, for starters, I wouldn't presume that there should be no such notion as copyright, as suggested by our trolly friend above. But, neither would I suggest that ideas and writings with essentiually zero cost of reproduction be an indefinite gravy train for the author.
The original copyright terms would be a good start, but even those are too long when it comes to the usefulness of things like software. Five years protection after first deployment sounds better. And, if you produce derivative works, each gets a brand new five year copyright term. So, at worst, the public domain is five years behind the bleeding edge.
Is there a single country in the world without a social welfare system that you would want to live in for more than a month?
There sure is! Ever heard of Hong Kong?
Well, perhaps not the Hong Kong of today, what with Chinese rule, and all (though the commies in Bejing apprear to not be very willing to kill this golden-egg-laying goose). (Note: my aim is to insult Communists in general here, not specifically the citizens of China.)
But the interesting thing is that Hong Kong prospered and became self-sufficient precisely because Britian withdrew any type of social support and left the colony to fend for itself.
Social wealth redistribution may "feel good" and all, but studies have shown that tax rates greater than a few percent (as in "less than 5"), actually stiffle long-term prosperity because those best suited to invest to produce spin-offs that benefit all (i.e. innovation) are robbed of the capital to do so, and the innovation market is surprisingly sensitive to the least little bit of taxation.
No, not cool. When you rent a movie, you are borrowing it. (albeit for a fee.) part of the mechanism that renting works on is only one copy is out there at a time
I can envision the scenario where someone rents a movie, time and space-shifts it to a DVD (because there is no VCR in the media room, but there is a VCR and DVD writer in, say, the computer room, watches the movie from the DVD in the media room later (still possessing the video), destroys the DVD or erases it (DVD+RW), and returns the movie.
Contrived, admitedly, but perfectly fair use. Who am I to presume this is not what the troll meant ?;->
I have obtained a DVD copier (at great expense) and I frequently rent movies and copy them so I can view them later, like so:
O.K., cool!
I use DeCSS-derived software to copy DVDs to my Hard Drive and later to DVD, only this time encoding free!
Also cool, sounds like traditional fair use to me. I too use CSS-defeating software so I can view DVDs I purchased under [GNU/]Linux.
I hand out free copies of DVD movies everywhere I can to as many people as I can, along with a 2600 flier about how bad the DMCA is.
Unless these are movies you made, this is uber-uncool. You should be fighting for fair-use, and reductions of copyight protection terms, not blatently fueling the flames of oppression. Such piracy just proves "them" right. Handing out the 2600 flyer is cool. I wear my anti-DVD/CCA t-shirt proudly, too, and explain what it means when people ask.
I realize that you posted in jest, but civil disobedience isn't about completely ignoring bad law, just orderly refusal to obey those parts of the law that are ill-concieved.
Read: I agree you guys should bitch about this - it's not fair.. but let's not compare it true moments in history
You know, I debated whether I should bring up far more important historical issues, because the present battle is less important. One can not compare the gravity of Women's Sufferage, the Nazi and Civil Rights Movements to copyright and fair use.
But, while the gravity of the wrongness may be different, the principle isn't. The only difference is that it will take longer for the outrage to grow, and, in the end, some of it will be misplaced (hating corporations simply because of their wealth, rather than how they got it).
This does not mean, however, that we should accept the status quo. After all, I bet that, at the time, the Civil Rights Movement, was percieved by many as "just the grumblings of some ornery niggers". I've heard many arguments that "slavery was all right at the time", for example. Frankly, while my garden does need to be fertalized, I never bought that line of crap.
You know, anything worth having is worth fighting for, perhaps even killing for. I mean, that's why we kill enemies, isn't it?
I look at the black civil rights movement in the United States, and while the efforts of heros like Martin Luther King can't go ignored, I have a hard time believing that Malcom X and the Black Panthers weren't a positive force in bringing about social change (not that enough has been done yet...)
Americans, as a society, accept the death penalty for heinous crime (rightly or wrongly) and the use of deadly force to "uphold the law".
Perhaps the law, in this case, has been bought and paid for, and the legislators morally bankrupt. Should we tolerate violence as a response? I'm not so sure the answer is necessarily no.
In any dispute there are conflicting ethics, and absent the rule of law, we have only those to guide us in deciding if killing is right or wrong. When we kill a killer we are merely applying their own ethical principles to them. Surely, there is no ethical argument against this? (Of course, the matter of actual guilt is another sticky issue, but that does not change the principle if guilt is assured).
There is great reluctance to "take the law" into one's own hands, and engage in vigilante justice, for it shows an abandonment of established law, and can lead to anarchy. But, do not presume, that this drastic course is necessarily wrong: should we have stood by while the Nazis "legally" masacred Jews? Should a black woman stand or sit at the back of the bus? Should the profiteers of the present hold a monopoly on the distribution of wealth in the future? No! I say. No!, with all my strength and conviction. And, I don't have to be Jewish, or Black, or poor to believe this.
You know, the U.S. Declaration of Independence has the phrase, "...all men are created equal..." (and, obviously, this should be read as "men and women") and that's a damn fine principle to believe in. I should not subject my fellow to something I myself would not wish to endure. For all the blood shed over religeous differences, many faiths embrace the "Golden Rule" implied by this. My neigbour can be richer than I, buy finer things than I, and generally live an easier life than I. But, under no circumstance, can he be more priveleged than I under the law, or "buy" same. This principle I hold "self-evident" and think worth fighting to defend. (No, I am not an American, but that doesn't mean that Americans don't occasionally "get it" and are worth paying attention to when they do).
Of course, all disputes settled by violent means are "just" if you win, and "injust" if you lose. The winner gets to write the history books. So, if you're going to advocate violence, bring a decent army (hint: the U.S. does badly in guerilla wars). In this case, the choice of violent revolt should be gated by the number of supporters, as much as the inflexibility and impartiality of the opponent.
My advice?
Wait for the judge's and lawmaker's total income to be public, and the industry's white hooded henchmen to become visible. As the internet has become mainstream, so will the emperor's clothes be shown to be non-existent. In the mean time, while I do not want one J. Valenti or one H. Rosen dead for their actions, I take comfort in the belief that others do.
I remember paying around CA$1000 for a decent parka around 1979. Of course, that, normal clothing and thermal underwear were good to around -50C. Never been out in anything colder than around -44C, though.
The Office de la langue française SOLELY relies on delation from citizens...
Which then results in people going around with rulers measuring the height of English words. These people are paid out of tax dollars.
I never said that l'Office (as they are less than affectionately called) employs people to go looking for such illegal signs. But, having seen some of their employees' tactics first hand, it wouldn't surprise me if they did.
...when it comes to prosecute a company (not a human individual)...
By "company", do you mean corporation? Or do you include sole proprieterships and partnerships? Sole proprieterships (businesses run by an individual) are caught in these laws as well, though some aspects of the law are more lax when it comes to businesses with less than a certain number of employees. The commercial sign laws aren't, IIRC. Of course, even without a registered business, one can be found to be "in business", by virtue of engaging in an "adventure in trade". Signage can be considered as advertising for such an adventure.
...who posts a COMMERCIAL sign not written in french.
Finally, one point right out of three. Yes, commercial signs... which is why it is important that signs that merely express an opinion have been found to not be commercial.
Obviously I didn't like it there, so I left. One less anglo to "deny" les Quebecois their version of manifest destiny by voting "non" in the next Neverendum. Of course, this also means one less taxpayer filling the public trough to the tune of some CA$25000 a year (and that's just in Quebec).
Guess they'll have to ration those rulers, n'est pas?
I know I'm going out on a limb here, and there may be spreadsheets that violate the premises I use to conclude that they are data and not software, but most that I've encountered qualify as data.
Consider: Is '5' a program or data? It is certainly interpreted from it's representation within the computer to produce a literal '5'. I think it would be folly to argue that '5' is a program, though in the process of being presented to us, it controls many things, rather like a program. Still, we consider it data.
Now, consider (1+1/1000)^1000. Is that a program or data? It certainly requires interpretation to produce a result. But that result is an approximation to e, the base of the natural logarithms. We may also series expansion approximations to irrational numbers, like pi. Are those programs? I would still say no.
I'd say this because the result of these "programs" does not change with each run. Their output may as well be data. A program with no input (and I've yet to see a spread sheet prompt, when I have it recalculate, unless there is some error) always produces the same output and can be considered identical to that output. It is precisely because spreadsheets fix the data that their embedded formulas use, that the spreadsheet as a whole can be considered data. Unlike a program, a spreadsheet isn't "run", it just "is", once the numbers are entered. Errors in the embedded formulae are no different than errors in transcription, or manual processing of the numbers. Both these are subject to audit, so incorrect embedded formulae can be caught when the data is presented. This is not so with a program, where the input and output are distinct from the program itself.
In the same way that accounting records can be audited, spreadsheets can also be audited: all the intermediate steps are still there. There is no need to "pre-audit" or "license" the program to make sure it is correct.
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Yes, DRM, if implemented properly and in a manner to honour tair use rights would actually be a good thing. In any case, it would be better than a flawed alternative that does not respect fair use. See this for a proposl. Be sure to check my followup because there is an obvious, though minor, flaw in the original proposal.
I tend to support this, after all the GPL asks so little. But, I would also add a "reprieve" clause, that is, if complience is restored within some reasonable length of time, say 30 days after notification of non-complience, the license is automaticaly reinstated. In unusual circumstances, a court might order an extention of the reprieve period.
At the time, the /. crown seemed pretty upset that RMS was being so pedantic about license complience, though I found that he was just pointing out a technicality.
So, it would appear that RMS, at least, intends for GPL violators to be forever prohibited from redistrubution of the relevent work unless forgiven. This is not inconsistent with also suggesting that returning to complience result in forgiveness - it just gives the GPL some teeth.
Even if such a device were implantable, it would serve little other purpose.
Though, I will grant the temptation to use it for other, less benign purposes, would be great. One solution to mitigate this risk is to encourage multiple escrow services so that there is no guarantee that such a key is, in fact, unique, but that the liklihood of there being an excessive number of holders of the same private key be acceptably slim for producers of keyed content. This would render such a key essentially useless as a form of identification.
As with all technologies, this can be used for good, evil, and convenience. Whether convenience becomes evil depends greatly on deployment.
It strikes me that two incomes/two houses/child care is about as burdensome as one income/one house/no child care.
Using the latter technique esclusively is undesirable, of course, because it means that the possible escrow services have to be hard coded in the equipment.
To recap: the escrow service either has to be known to the equipment, or the escrow service has to know the equipment's private key.
You mean evade being taxed.
Clearly, one solution is keeping copyright data encrypted until it is eventually displayed. This can be strengthened by ensuring that copyright data that is distributed is encrypted only for the recipient. While inconvenient, it becomes trivial if on-line distribution takes off. This allows for tracking each copy, to make sure that that those who possess a copy are entitled to, and provides an audit trail to illegal redistributors. It also reduces the effect of cracking an encryption key. Such technology would mesh well with existing PKI mechanisms for encryption, authentication, and digital signatures: you could keep your home movies secure if you wanted.
Of course, you could still make analog recordings of displayed copyright content, and perfect untracable copies of those, unless all digital content had to be signed, making the copy tracable, at least. Frankly the loss of anonymity this would imply would be worse than the protections it would provide. Of course, if interactive content increases in popularity, such analog transcriptions, losing the interactive components, would be less desireable than "the real thing". Furthermore, they'd have to me made in real-time, further inconveniencing the casual infringer. Commercial infringers, presumably, would be caught by virtue of their distribution volume.
Of course, any such mechanism will require some form of secure DRM in playback, or transcription devices. However, it is not necessary to have it in recording devices, so making backup copies of content, and redistributing them in encrypted form (say, emailing a movie from your city home to your country home) would not be an issue. Laws against circumventing such DRM would, of course, be necessary, and technology making it difficult would be desirable. But, such DRM would not have to be ubiquitously installed in storage devices, only transcoding and playback devices (like video cards, TVs, etc.) Already we are seeing crude forms of this in the form of region-coded hardware DVD decoders. While undesirable for other reasons, at least the technology does not pollute the computer itself.
Of course, besides content backups, one also needs to be assured that defective hardware can be replaced and rekeyed to permit playback of existing encrypted content. Furthermore, the private decryption key needs to be kept secret from the owner (lest he produce unencrypted content for distribution): the owner provides a public key when getting custom encrypted content. Obviously, the decryption should take place in the final digital to analog conversion stages, lest a cleartext signal be available for capture (creative use of epoxy, and tamper switches, can help defeat such casual hacking, though).
Of course, content providers would like to be the ones to control the generation of private and public keys, and the installation of private keys in playback and transcoding hardware. But, this is not practical: there are many content providers, and to burden the end-user with a plethora of key pairs is unreasonable. From the consumer's perspective, they'd like to have (a) a single key pair (or a few at most), (b) the ability to install their private key on new or replacement equipment with little difficulty (i.e. independent of manufacturer, or even product type). One possibility is the installation of a user private key encrypted with the public key corresponding to yet another equiment-specific private key.
The new equipment is connected to an on-line key escrow service, the user's public key is provided to the equipment (say, via a smart card, or other device), the key escrow service validates the public keys of user and equipment, and ensures that neither are revoked, and then downloads the user private key encrypted with the equipment public key to the equipment. This requires that equipment and user key-pairs be registered with a "media key escrow service". This service can generate the user key pairs, and either generate the equipment key pairs, or escrow the equipment public keys for the manufacturer. One can envsion several such escrow services, each escrowing equipment public keys pairs from major equipment manufacturers, and honouring key revocation requests from manufacturers, and courts (who'd revoke a user key upon conviction of copyright infringement).
For this system to work, most media key escrow services would have to escrow public keys from most manufacturers, but, since the keys are public, this should not be a problem. Ensuring that they properly revoke such keys on demand from the manufacturer is more important. Furthermore, in the event that an escrow service becomes defunct, it is important that the private keys they escrow for end-users not be lost. Howewver, even this is not completely essential, for each playback or transcoding device already escrows the end-user private key: it just needs to be coaxed into reencrypting it with the non-revoked equipment public key of new equipment and transfering it to same. So long as an end user has at least one peice of equipment holding their private key, they won't lose access to their licensed content.
Of course, because end-user equipment is uncontrolled, getting it to reencrypt isn't easy -- it needs to be sure that the public key of the new equipment isn't bogus, and that the corresponding private key is, indeed, secret, and not generated by the end-user himself. One posibility is to have the new equipment actually at the end of a network connection to a new media key escrow service, with the corresponding public key installed in the old equipment when it was manufactured. Obviously, all known media key escrow services would be so coded in equipment manufactured. This moves the point of weakness to the media escrow services, whose very public operation makes it difficult to covertly engage in copyright infringement, and which will likely have deep pockets if they do. Nothing stops a government, for example, from providing this service.
Is the idea of key escrow frightening, in that one's data isn't really secure? Perhaps, but remember that it isn't the end-user's data but that of the copyright holder. The trust relationship needs to be established between them and the escrow service.
This infrustructure is hardly perfect. There are always ways to circumvent copy protection or access schemes. However, this can be made (a) sufficiently difficult to be a strong casual deterrent, (b) ensure that those parties engaging in widespread infringement are likely visible and have deep pockets (if an escrow service goes bad, for example).
Oh, and if anyone else thinks of patenting these ideas... FORGET IT! I GOT FIRST DIBS!!
See, the U.S.A. taxes citizens based on citizenship, and tax-residence ("IRS: are you a resident?" "Yes" "PAY TAX!"; "INS: are you a resident?" "Er, ..." remembers what he told the IRS... "yes." "DEPORTED! for visa violation -- next!"). So an American citizen collecting lottery winning in Canada, even if a tax-resident of Canada, or a dual citizen must pay U.S. tax on them (but can deduct lottery losses against them).
It gets worse.
Because Canada does not tax lottery winnings, there is no offsetting foreign tax credit available on your Canadian taxes. There are some rare tax situations where earnings are taxed in both countries as different things, and thus no foreign tax credit relief is available: you get taxed twice Over the years, harmonization of the Canadian and U.S. tax codes has reduced the number of such situations, but there still are some nasty surprises.
And this is very true. There are services on the 'net that for which I hapilly pay: PayMyBills.com, for one, and they aren't exactly cheap ($10.95/month for 30 transactions, $0.50/transaction after that -- I think it's $1 or $2 more now, but my rate is grandfathered, and there are other plans available).
What do I get for this $11? They provide me with a P.O. Box, scan my paper bills, email me notifications, allow me to pay online (via EFT or their cutting of a cheque from bank accounts to which I've given them access). They can handle on-line "smart bills", too, but this requires that they have access to your other on-line accounts. Having access to (some of) my bank accounts is enough -- all they could do is steal a months worth of expense $$$, but not screw up my other on-line service settings (I registered how many domains?!). Oh yeah, they can be instructed to pay certain bills regularly, or on-demand up to a certain amount. In short, they do a lot for that $11. While I'm not 100% satisified with their service, I'm satisfied enough to keep using it. Beats having to keep all those paper bill records, too (which was my primary reason for subscribing, actually).
Compare this to other fee-based on-line services. A lot of them try to sell information, or entertainment, on a monthly-fee basis. The kind of information offered usually isn't worth the price, and, as for purchasing entertainment, I prefer a pay as you go model -- I must have spent $5000 on-line in 2001, mostly for electronic equipment, and the odd book (note: bn.com benefits from my boycott of Amazon.com due to their 1-click patent heavy-handedness)
Now, PayMyBills was rather clever: they started charging me $3.95, then $5.95, then $6.95, and finally $10.95 a month. I suppose some would be irritated by this practice, and to some degree I was, but I'd say the service was worth $10 to $12 a month to me, so I stayed with them, and this latest price has been stable for a while. But, the important thing was that they weren't completely free to begin with (except for a trial period), so right off the bat, they got customers who were willing to pay. How much might be unknown, but it's the step from $0 to $(some small X) that's the biggest one in getting rid of free loaders. I'm sure that if they raise their prices too much, people will go back to paper statements, return envelopes, and stamps. The banks are starting to offer competition, but they generally don't want to deal with scanning paper bills.
An area for growth here is magazine subscriptions. You know, I get EDN (well, that doesn't count, 'cause it's free for me), and Circuit Cellar Ink on paper. Sometimes one or two articles will be interesting. I usually toss the magazine after a week -- I used to archive "important" ones, but they just took up too much room. It would be nice if I could (a) see a synopsis of all the articles, (b) pay for just the ones I want to read, (and c) get a digital copy, perhaps a synopsis of all the articles I read on an end-of-year CD (for an extra fee). That's something for which I'd probably be willing to pay $10 a year plus $0.25 to $0.50 per complete article: basically half the price of a paper subscription for access, and the other half if I read all the articles.
Otherwise, consider that I receive two copies of a License for something. Can I void one by non-complience, return to complience, and pull out the other copy? I don't think so.
Still, a contract is always interpreted in the most negative light by the court when it comes to the rights of the person who drew up the contract (the reasoning being that that had the opportunity to make it as air tight as possible). I presume that a license agreement would be treated similarly, so you may have a valid "out".
I'm curious as to what the court will say.
I dunno.
Copyright prevents redistribution of original or derived works. Only the GPL (in this case), lets you redistribute, and that license is void if you fail to honour its terms. So, yes, you could distribute future versions if they were not derivative works, which is unlikely.
Obtaining the code from a different source wouldn't help, as your right to redistribute has been withdrawn by the copyright holder, and applies over all copies. Establishing another company would be considered as a "sham" by the court.
To put it simply, you'se fuck-ed (and not in a good way).
However, I suppose you could distribute
prior versions, and back-port future diffs into them, if you are now in complience.
So far, so good.
The ability to live in a country where we can publicly speak out against injustice and oppression is priceless.
In theory at least. For all it's great moral principles of life, liberty, and pursuit of hapiness, the U.S.A., in practice, has seen some very ugly violations of same: slavery, McCarthyism, internment camps, etc. I suppose nobody is perfect, and mistakes serve to teach lessons.
Where would our nation, and even the world be if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not free to challenge his people to practice nonviolent protest?
Well, his freedom got him murdered, because he dared assert it. But, the point is made: his assertion of his principled right to liberty paved the way for greater freedoms for others. If we defend liberty, perhaps only some of us will enjoy it, but if we don't, then none of us will. It takes a while, but I, too, have come to the conclusion that I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
However, the issue of free speech is not so cut and dry.
Oh, oh! I sense waffling ahead.
I hope that most people will agree with me that COMPLETELY free speech is NOT a good thing.
Er, I don't.
For example, what if a witness was free to lie when testifying at a trial? Laws against purgery are technically "curbing" free speech.
No, laws against purgery serve to punish those who lie under oath. With the narrow exception of a sub-peona, no one is forced to testify. And, even then, no one can be forced to testify against themselves.
I think you are confusing a right with the freedom to voluntarily give up that right if you chose (and, indeed, you would not be truely free if you couldn't).
However, these kinds of restrictions are necessary in order to promote justice and freedom for all.
Again, no. A functioning judicial system may require those making use of it to accept certain rules of order. You are free to not accept those rules if you chose to not prosecute, and you are free to not testifiy in a manner that would be self-incriminating. In any conflict, we see contrary "freedoms" clash, and resolution requires either the making of war on one another (something neither party is likely to want), or accepting terms of a neutral intermediary to settle the dispute. The jurisdiction of a court is accepted because it is much better than the alternative, not because it is an unwanted restriction on our freedoms.
An extreme example might help: in theory, I should be free to go around killing people. But, then, it would stand to reason that others would likely go around trying to kill me. It does not take much to realize that giving up the "right" to kill people in exchange for not getting killed one's self, is, er, a pretty good deal.
Still, there is no law of physics that prevents me from commiting murder. I'm "free" to do this if I really want to. Obviously I don't want to.
Laws against slander, libel, death threats, and the proverbial "yelling fire in a crowded theater" fall into the same category.
You're (a) mixing two different things, (b) expressing a common misunderstanding about the "yelling fire in a theater" case.
First, prescriptions against deceitful or threatening speech exist because such speech causes harm (loss of reputation, or a rational fear for one's life). Even then, the standard is high: truth is a defense against libel, and the expression of an opinion as such is always protected.
Second, yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not prohibited... if there is, in fact, a fire. The reason is that the resulting panic, as bad as it may be, is presumed less harmful than an actual fire, but more so than no fire at all. Because there is no time to weigh the merit of the word "fire!" under those circumstances, it can't quailfy as an opinion, and so, the misleading expression of a state of immediate emergency is unlawful.
These laws are designed to protect the general public from the misuse of free speech.
This is a perverse way of looking at it. Such laws prohibit actions that are likely to harm, not speech per se. Except in the case of a threat, the nature of the harm is that of, at least, fraud. Arguing that this is a restriction on speech is like arguing that a prohibition against stealing is a restriction on trade.
So where do issues like pornography and hate speech fall? The question is, if purgery is prohibited in order to protect the public, could hate speech be prohibited for the same reason?
I fail to see how pornography is "hate" speech, though some might find it's general objectification of women as degrading. And, indeed, if it can be shown that the intent of publishing pornography (literally, "evil writing"), is to degrade, it can be restricted. However, there are no scientific studies which suggest that erotic displays of the naked humab body are harmful to any normal person exposed to them, even children; for all the anecdotal evidence that has been presented to support these claims. In fact, there is compelling evidence that social norms that are sexually repressive cause more harm, espescially to children, who grow up with all sorts of hangups or obsessions about things taboo.
Of course, this does not mean that anyone should be forced to be exposed to images they do not wish to see, either in their homes, or public places where such images would be "out of place". Again, prohibitions against such displays can fall under the fraud stautes: no one expects an X-rated show in place of a kid's magic show, for example.
As for "hate" speech, or speech which is unpopular, that generally deserves the greatest protection: if it exposes blatent corruption, it needs be told; if it is ugly, it will be ignored. I've written this before, and I'm sure I'll do so again, but the idiot standing on a street corner yelling racial epithets is less harmful than the guy who (secretly) won't give you a job because of the colour of your skin, despite all the appearances of offering "equal opportunity" employment. Yup, fraud, again. At least you can see the bigot for what he is.
And, exactly what constitutes "free speech"? I'm certainly no expert on the Constitution, but I believe that the first ammendment was put into place not to allow citizens to say and act whatever and however they please, but rather to act as a guard against the kind of oppression that was found in England at the time.
Er, the oppression of which you speak, was state restriction of unsanctioned expression: criticism of the state, non-approved religeon, etc. Which does raise an interesting issue: it is the government which is prohibited against restraining speech, and not private individuals. This is why business establishments can enforce a code of conduct, and employers can fire people for expressing undesirable views, even if true.
"Free speech" was intended to allow citizens to protest the actions of government when government overstepped its bounds, or was acting improperly. A prime example of this is the civil rights movement.
Actually, it is broader than that. Free speech means that the government can't restrict what you can express, unless the act, independent of the speech, is harmful. While this includes critical speech, it is not limited to it. This is important because it allows the expression of statements (i.e. Clinton got a blow job from a White House intern) without having to frame them as critical of government, and letting others decide what they think.
I don't believe that the first ammendment was intended to protect individuals who want to post child pornography on the Internet.
Drop the "child". Child pornography is prohibited generally because it encourages exploitation of children against their will, or without their consent, or understanding. Frankly, I always though that a legally emancipated 16-year-old (or whatever the relevant age is in one's jurisdiction) should be free to permit erotic images of herself to be published. The presumption is that she has demonstrated that she is capable of acting as an adult in society and understands the issues. There are, in fact, a small number of just-under-18 professional models who were prohibited from displaying their naked breasts in "calender" style publications. Since their income is derived from their appearance, and the earning years for this profession are generally limited, it could be argued that this was unlawful restraint of one's freedom to earn a living (the idea being that the popularity would increase with a bit of "skin", espescially if it was a calender displaying different models, most over 18, and bearing their breasts, placing the 17-year-old at a popularity disadvantage for future publications).
One can argue that is isn't the best way to make a living, and shouldn't be actively encouraged, and I'd tend to agree. But, it is not for me to decide what other adults, or people considered adults under the law, do as long as it is peaceful.
So, that leaves prohibitions against pornography in general, and the case for those has already shown to be flimsier than a g-string.
And, although it's rather controversial these days, I don't believe it protects those who want to make copies of DVDs and CDs and distribute them over the net or to their friends. That is an issue of "Fair Use", not free speech.
The idea here is that is not your speech to be freely "spoken". But here too, the first ammendment trumps the temporary protections offered by copyright in the end. Of course, lately, we're seeing a rather unusual definition for the work "temporary".
Certainly the DMCA and SSSCA are seriously brain-dead even without effectively indefinite copyright terms. However, let's stick to one issue at a time: excessive copyright protections are bad on their face, with or without these other laws.
Furthermore, even with the DMCA as it stands, I think the cases against Sklyarov and Johansen are without merit. Repeat after me: "interoperability". You are right to use the word "persecuted" and not "prosecuted". And, persecuted for what? Exercising simple fair use! Which brings up back to basic copyright law.
So the response to these bad laws should be three fold:
1) Fight excessive copyright terms. Part of the civil disobedience approach to this is to reproduce and redistribute material that has essentially been abandoned by the copyright holder -- so called abandonware.
2) Exercise and defend your right to fair use. Use deCSS, certainly, and openly, but only for interoperability reasons.
3) This addresses the valid issues you raised: fight for the ability to engage in fair use. Technological means to prevent it should not be tolerated.
Well, for starters, I wouldn't presume that there should be no such notion as copyright, as suggested by our trolly friend above. But, neither would I suggest that ideas and writings with essentiually zero cost of reproduction be an indefinite gravy train for the author.
The original copyright terms would be a good start, but even those are too long when it comes to the usefulness of things like software. Five years protection after first deployment sounds better. And, if you produce derivative works, each gets a brand new five year copyright term. So, at worst, the public domain is five years behind the bleeding edge.
There sure is! Ever heard of Hong Kong?
Well, perhaps not the Hong Kong of today, what with Chinese rule, and all (though the commies in Bejing apprear to not be very willing to kill this golden-egg-laying goose). (Note: my aim is to insult Communists in general here, not specifically the citizens of China.)
But the interesting thing is that Hong Kong prospered and became self-sufficient precisely because Britian withdrew any type of social support and left the colony to fend for itself.
Social wealth redistribution may "feel good" and all, but studies have shown that tax rates greater than a few percent (as in "less than 5"), actually stiffle long-term prosperity because those best suited to invest to produce spin-offs that benefit all (i.e. innovation) are robbed of the capital to do so, and the innovation market is surprisingly sensitive to the least little bit of taxation.
I can envision the scenario where someone rents a movie, time and space-shifts it to a DVD (because there is no VCR in the media room, but there is a VCR and DVD writer in, say, the computer room, watches the movie from the DVD in the media room later (still possessing the video), destroys the DVD or erases it (DVD+RW), and returns the movie.
Contrived, admitedly, but perfectly fair use. Who am I to presume this is not what the troll meant ? ;->
O.K., cool!
I use DeCSS-derived software to copy DVDs to my Hard Drive and later to DVD, only this time encoding free!
Also cool, sounds like traditional fair use to me. I too use CSS-defeating software so I can view DVDs I purchased under [GNU/]Linux.
I hand out free copies of DVD movies everywhere I can to as many people as I can, along with a 2600 flier about how bad the DMCA is.
Unless these are movies you made, this is uber-uncool. You should be fighting for fair-use, and reductions of copyight protection terms, not blatently fueling the flames of oppression. Such piracy just proves "them" right. Handing out the 2600 flyer is cool. I wear my anti-DVD/CCA t-shirt proudly, too, and explain what it means when people ask.
I realize that you posted in jest, but civil disobedience isn't about completely ignoring bad law, just orderly refusal to obey those parts of the law that are ill-concieved.
You know, I debated whether I should bring up far more important historical issues, because the present battle is less important. One can not compare the gravity of Women's Sufferage, the Nazi and Civil Rights Movements to copyright and fair use.
But, while the gravity of the wrongness may be different, the principle isn't. The only difference is that it will take longer for the outrage to grow, and, in the end, some of it will be misplaced (hating corporations simply because of their wealth, rather than how they got it).
This does not mean, however, that we should accept the status quo. After all, I bet that, at the time, the Civil Rights Movement, was percieved by many as "just the grumblings of some ornery niggers". I've heard many arguments that "slavery was all right at the time", for example. Frankly, while my garden does need to be fertalized, I never bought that line of crap.
You know, anything worth having is worth fighting for, perhaps even killing for. I mean, that's why we kill enemies, isn't it?
I look at the black civil rights movement in the United States, and while the efforts of heros like Martin Luther King can't go ignored, I have a hard time believing that Malcom X and the Black Panthers weren't a positive force in bringing about social change (not that enough has been done yet...)
Americans, as a society, accept the death penalty for heinous crime (rightly or wrongly) and the use of deadly force to "uphold the law".
Perhaps the law, in this case, has been bought and paid for, and the legislators morally bankrupt. Should we tolerate violence as a response? I'm not so sure the answer is necessarily no.
In any dispute there are conflicting ethics, and absent the rule of law, we have only those to guide us in deciding if killing is right or wrong. When we kill a killer we are merely applying their own ethical principles to them. Surely, there is no ethical argument against this? (Of course, the matter of actual guilt is another sticky issue, but that does not change the principle if guilt is assured).
There is great reluctance to "take the law" into one's own hands, and engage in vigilante justice, for it shows an abandonment of established law, and can lead to anarchy. But, do not presume, that this drastic course is necessarily wrong: should we have stood by while the Nazis "legally" masacred Jews? Should a black woman stand or sit at the back of the bus? Should the profiteers of the present hold a monopoly on the distribution of wealth in the future? No! I say. No!, with all my strength and conviction. And, I don't have to be Jewish, or Black, or poor to believe this.
You know, the U.S. Declaration of Independence has the phrase, "...all men are created equal..." (and, obviously, this should be read as "men and women") and that's a damn fine principle to believe in. I should not subject my fellow to something I myself would not wish to endure. For all the blood shed over religeous differences, many faiths embrace the "Golden Rule" implied by this. My neigbour can be richer than I, buy finer things than I, and generally live an easier life than I. But, under no circumstance, can he be more priveleged than I under the law, or "buy" same. This principle I hold "self-evident" and think worth fighting to defend. (No, I am not an American, but that doesn't mean that Americans don't occasionally "get it" and are worth paying attention to when they do).
Of course, all disputes settled by violent means are "just" if you win, and "injust" if you lose. The winner gets to write the history books. So, if you're going to advocate violence, bring a decent army (hint: the U.S. does badly in guerilla wars). In this case, the choice of violent revolt should be gated by the number of supporters, as much as the inflexibility and impartiality of the opponent.
My advice?
Wait for the judge's and lawmaker's total income to be public, and the industry's white hooded henchmen to become visible. As the internet has become mainstream, so will the emperor's clothes be shown to be non-existent. In the mean time, while I do not want one J. Valenti or one H. Rosen dead for their actions, I take comfort in the belief that others do.
I remember paying around CA$1000 for a decent parka around 1979. Of course, that, normal clothing and thermal underwear were good to around -50C. Never been out in anything colder than around -44C, though.
at least
Which then results in people going around with rulers measuring the height of English words. These people are paid out of tax dollars.
I never said that l'Office (as they are less than affectionately called) employs people to go looking for such illegal signs. But, having seen some of their employees' tactics first hand, it wouldn't surprise me if they did.
By "company", do you mean corporation? Or do you include sole proprieterships and partnerships? Sole proprieterships (businesses run by an individual) are caught in these laws as well, though some aspects of the law are more lax when it comes to businesses with less than a certain number of employees. The commercial sign laws aren't, IIRC. Of course, even without a registered business, one can be found to be "in business", by virtue of engaging in an "adventure in trade". Signage can be considered as advertising for such an adventure.
Finally, one point right out of three. Yes, commercial signs... which is why it is important that signs that merely express an opinion have been found to not be commercial.
Obviously I didn't like it there, so I left. One less anglo to "deny" les Quebecois their version of manifest destiny by voting "non" in the next Neverendum. Of course, this also means one less taxpayer filling the public trough to the tune of some CA$25000 a year (and that's just in Quebec).
Guess they'll have to ration those rulers, n'est pas?
Consider: Is '5' a program or data? It is certainly interpreted from it's representation within the computer to produce a literal '5'. I think it would be folly to argue that '5' is a program, though in the process of being presented to us, it controls many things, rather like a program. Still, we consider it data.
Now, consider (1+1/1000)^1000. Is that a program or data? It certainly requires interpretation to produce a result. But that result is an approximation to e, the base of the natural logarithms. We may also series expansion approximations to irrational numbers, like pi. Are those programs? I would still say no.
I'd say this because the result of these "programs" does not change with each run. Their output may as well be data. A program with no input (and I've yet to see a spread sheet prompt, when I have it recalculate, unless there is some error) always produces the same output and can be considered identical to that output. It is precisely because spreadsheets fix the data that their embedded formulas use, that the spreadsheet as a whole can be considered data. Unlike a program, a spreadsheet isn't "run", it just "is", once the numbers are entered. Errors in the embedded formulae are no different than errors in transcription, or manual processing of the numbers. Both these are subject to audit, so incorrect embedded formulae can be caught when the data is presented. This is not so with a program, where the input and output are distinct from the program itself.
In the same way that accounting records can be audited, spreadsheets can also be audited: all the intermediate steps are still there. There is no need to "pre-audit" or "license" the program to make sure it is correct.
Funny. It costs me WAY more to support a wife'n'kids.