I think freenet is a start, but it is not completely anonymous or untraceable yet, but with a few modifications can be made that way. I also think digital cash technology is out there, but the main systems in use today are too propriatory - a GPL'd solution could cause dramatic change.
What we need is a real technological solution, not a political solution to prevent this intrusion of our privacy - and even more it should be something doable in the USA and not rely on over-seas servers, because that is only a short term solution that could bend to political and military pressure. Even more importantly, it should be an infrastructure where we can engage in commerce and transactions in a fair way without 3rd party intervention or involvement. The solution should be indistinguishable from other random and legitimate communication, verify-able for accountability, but untraceable to defend against coercive force.
technically they're nothing wrong with copyright infringment. it's not like copyrights are a real property right, or even an incentive contrary to what many would have you believe. pssst... I went 5 mph over the speed limit yesterday and didn't report that one dollar bill I found at the beach yesterday to the IRS --- WOOOOOOW big crimes, big crimes.....
Lessing really bothers me, he fails IMHO to understand that what we have here is a classic case of old economey trying to regulate the new economey. He also fails to understand that the problem will not go away till we get rid of the notion that it's allright to derive value by restricting the copying practices of other. Even if you do it nicely, or more nicely than is done now, it is still wrong. Not to flame, but if he lived in the industrial revolution - he would have advocated that the free states could peacefully co-exist with the slave states. They didn't get it back then, he doesn't get it now.
How dare you walk on the ground and heat up all those gravel molecules! I protest, and demand federal regulations limiting how much people can walk. Please we must act now to prevent global inmact!!! Can't you heathens listen to what mother Earth is trying to tell us!!
If you read this through you will see how history repeats itself....
During the early 1800's the rich plantation masters were so close to the rich industrialists that many people wondered how in the heck could people who had so many financial ties become so divided and eventually financed opposite sides of a civil war.
The answer is this, in order for the plantation masters to get control of their slaves - they also had to control and regulate industries that relied on a mobile and skilled work force. (the industrialists) Those who didn't see this thought that the slave states could peacefully get along with the free states - they were idiots.
Today the copyright industries, in order to get control of their copyrights, must regulate the computer and information technology industries that are carrying the economy. Some people also think that the solution is some sort of compromise, but they just don't understand that deriving value by restricting the copying practices of others is immoral and will never go away till we cut the problem off at the root - copyrights. This belief is very harmfull, because the longer we wait, the more costly it's going to be to cut the problem off at the root.
That is Not A Solution, but the *problem*!
on
When Elephants Dance
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
His solution is the whole problem. It does not see copyrights as the seed of a vine who'se growth will never stop nickeling and diming freedoms to death untill it is cut off at the root. That's what got us here to begin with. As long as our society accepts that it's morally OK to derive value by restricting the copying practices of others we have doomed ourselves to follow a flawed concept that will always threaten freedom - corporations or not.
seriously, it is a siple fact that with propriatary technologies - the best one always fails. The whole IT industry is built on the corpses of technologies that were better, but failed because propriatary forces kept them from reaching their maximum potential. think RISC vs CISC, intel vs motorolla, mac gui software vs mirosoft gui software, Amiga vs x86, tcp/ip vs token-ring, novell vs ms networks, etc... We shouldn't be sorry they failed, it is our own fault for beliving that it's ok to gain value by legally restricting the ability of others to copy through crack-pot licensing instead of trying to gain competitive advantages by service and speed of development.
...The PGP algorithm was not Phil Zimmerman's to sell....
It shouldn't have been anybdy's to sell..
Whether or not you agree with him (I do), "encryption for the masses" is now a reality.
And the GPL would have made it more of a reality instead now PGP is heading toward the scrap heap.
The USA, the USSR, corporations or what not - taking away freedoms is taking away freedoms and the best way to loose a lot of freedoms is to accept the nickle and diming of a little freedom.
You've put the cart before the horse. Corporations needed encryption - and that led to the adoption of technologies like PGP in the industry, the GPL would have encouraged it's use even more, and perhaps have forever thwarted the patent abuses that came with PGP. It's not like corporations decided from upon high that they would suddenly give their blessing to PGP which would then in turn become entrenched.
Sorta Phil's fault
on
How to Save PGP
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If he would have put it under the GPL from the beginning we would not be seeing this. He would be like the Linus of crypto, but he was so determined to controll the things he shouldn't be controlling that he lost controll over the things he should be.
The person who creats somthing always has controll, what you want here is not controll over your work - it is the ability to controll what someone else does with it once the cat's out of the bag. This does not benefit freedom - it restricts it.
Yes we have seen this before, and yes it failed with the HD manufactures, but we have seen this even a 150 years before that.
In the 1830's there were those who thought that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gyn to extend the size of their plantations for unlimited profit. Today we have a similar problem in the information age - people who think that the only usefull purpose of information technology and the internet is to extend the use of their intellectual property rights for unlimited controll. Today as back then, they couldn't be more wrong, couldn't be more delusional, and couldn't be a bigger threat to individual freedoms.
The only real solution is cut the vine off at the root and attack copyrights directly with defiance and civil disobedience till (like then) they run out of steam and quit trying to take away our freedoms.
We should consider ourselves normal, because as every other generation has shown, freedom is gained through risk, fight, and struggle and no other way (not even voteing sometimes). However, today our risks are a lot less thanks to others who have got us this far.
Here, I think the best solution is defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights alltogether. It is only when we get to the root of the problem that we will "free up our children" to go onto the "next generation of fighting".
I've never owned a gun before, but if anyone fucks with my freedom or free use of my computer all in the name of an obsolete distribution industry like the MPAA and RIAA... then I'll go to their house and mess them up.
With them being such bullies, I understand where you're comeing from, but it is always important to renember - they are the ones who are bullies, not us; they are the ones who are inclined to violence, not us. The simple truth is that we can win this war without taking one drop of blood, all we half to do is act in defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights and eventually they will run out of steam. Not that your response would be unwaranted because when all is said and done they are threatening fundamental freedoms, but we will be far better served if we force their hands and let them initiate the violence so as to show the world who they really are and proove to us who we really are.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that when you allow any copyrights at all, you set up a system and situations that inevitably lead to the endless extensions, the DMCA, copy controls on every PC, and eventually the removal of the freedom of speech all together. Sadly, too many people think that idea solution is some type of compromise or reduction, it is not - that will only eventually lead us back to where we are today. It is only when we are willing to fight copyrights altogether with defiance and civil disobedience and make a stand that wee will cut the vine off at the root. I wish people would understand this.
First off, saying that charging for toll rods is going to hurt the poor is like saying that charging for groceries will hurt the poor. When done right, toll charging would create more incentive for competition and provide an environment much more healthier for the poor and provides better service to boot.
So the question is - how to do it right.
I don't like the GPS idea, I think it should be done per road, and per how crowded it is.
I don't like that the government would own the roads also - anything that charges should allow for competition and private controll.
And tax payers souldn't be expected to pay what they've always been paying.
One thought might to be to allow the roads to be free, but to give paying drivers higher priority to get on. Using digital cash and wireless technology, cars could auto-bid for the front of the line position. The freeway onramp signals would always be optimized for speed throughput and during rush-hour people who don't pay would wait a much longer time.
I don't mean to be rude, but Lessing is in denial. His essay showed brilliant insight on every concieveable angle accept for one: that copyright monopolies are bad to begin with.
It reminds me of those in the 80's who insisted that their is no problem with communisim, but merely the way it was applied, or those in the 1830's who insisted that the problem wasn't slavery but merely our policies on slave treatment. Their elloquent conclusions were worthless because they just didn't get it, if the premise is wrong then everything else is useless
The same is true with copyrights, they restrict freedoms and GROW to restrict more by their very nature. Back in 1776 it might have been bearable, but now in the information age it's not! We simply need to get rid of them even if that means defiance and mass civil-disobedience. Copying for my benefit, the benefit of others, or even for commercial profit is no more wrong then refusing to go to the back of the bus. I'm sorry if some people don't like that, but they are just half to going to get used to it.
Ok, I don't really have a problem with big-business per-se, but in the US many businesses are artificially big because of US regulations and tax laws that are hard to comply with unless your rather big in addition to artifical US govt granted monopolies like patents and copyrights that help lock out smaller competitors. These all go a long way to making sure large companies replace ethical accountabilities with bureauocratic accountabilities (eg we have no personal responsibility for the quality of this meat because it's FDA approved)
Now I don't know if this would have an effect on what's going on in China right now, but I agree with you that the more we accept people doing what they wish the more successfull we will be at promoting freedom everywhere.
I agree with you that the answer/problem doesn't half to do with American corporations per se. But I hope you understand that with a highly industralized economey and a non-free police state - you risk suvere (think Nazi germany) consequences when you face political pressures of a people who seek freedom on one end and industries who seek profit at all costs on the other.
In fact, US intellectual property policies toward China are downright dangerous here. It makes me very worried.
Yes the US has done bad things, they sanctoned the killing of indians, they ignored the horrors of slavery, the put japaneese Americans in concentration camps, and even belw up a religous compound killing dozens of women and children in the name of protecting us in Waco TX, and today the US government is trying to censor us in the name of protecting copyrights, and spy on us in the name of protecting us from terrorisim.
However, US law has accountbilities built in like voteing, the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, press etc... Where are these accountabilities in China? Answer: there are none other than us rideing their butt about human rights and Tiwan. I honestly don't really want to be involved in China's affairs, but we half to be, otherwise it will eventually blow up in our faces like Hitler did, not something I want to find out the hard way.
I understand why they did it in Java, but still wish they would have done it in C. Most JRE's are not free (like Stallman free) and C runs faster, C code is often more compact inspite of what java was supposed to be, and is already pre-installed on most linux platforms - this is expecially nice when you use a modem and don't want download all the overhead of a JRE - but rather just a progam and run it.
Either way, I am just thankfull that they did it. Freenet has huge implications in terms of saving redundant use of bandwidth, and has huge benefits in terms of protecting peoples freedoms in the face of copyright freaks who would turn the world into a police state rather than give up their precious government monopoly on copying that they lobied to extend 100 years longer than it ever should have been, and then shoved the DMCA down our throats, and then wonder why people have had it with copyrights.
There may be a way to deal with spam too. A sender would manually half to set the verification, it could ask a simple question, or be a javascript that would require a keyboard entry.
A better way to do it is to have a system where all the emails are anonymous - and at the end of the message a one time SSL url (possibly javascript) that would allow the recipient to verify it once against it's md5 sum. This way it wouldn't matter what the email said, because anybody could have faked it. Only the person who checked knows for sure if it's real.
Today I can roll my own opperating system for under $1000, where merely 10 years ago it would cost over 10 million - that is the value of free software. (in fact, with any free software, not just opperating systems)
Today if I want my 500 friends (business partners, whatever) to veiw special graphic files, I don't half to send them out to buy a $300 software package. Now they can get it for free saving 150K between us - that is the value of free software
Today I can collaberate with my 500 friends (business partners, whatever) - if we each make a $200 improvement to a software package we each get a piece of software with $100000's worth of improvement. That is the value of free software.
These forces are pushing free software into the marketplace, and are the reason why it is and will become prevalent everywhere. Even if WalMart goes gung ho against Linux, it will make no difference. They are not the force driving Linux - WalMart is small compaired to global marketplace, Linux will happen either way.
The fact that he is so up there thinking that chains like WallMart are going to make all the difference shows that he just doesn't get it and is out of touch with what is really happening in the trenches.
Slashdot Mirror
I think freenet is a start, but it is not completely anonymous or untraceable yet, but with a few modifications can be made that way. I also think digital cash technology is out there, but the main systems in use today are too propriatory - a GPL'd solution could cause dramatic change.
What we need is a real technological solution, not a political solution
to prevent this intrusion of our privacy - and even more it should be
something doable in the USA and not rely on over-seas servers, because
that is only a short term solution that could bend to political and
military pressure. Even more importantly, it should be an infrastructure
where we can engage in commerce and transactions in a fair way without 3rd
party intervention or involvement. The solution should be indistinguishable
from other random and legitimate communication, verify-able for accountability, but untraceable to defend against coercive force.
> Well technically, it's copyright infrigment.
technically they're nothing wrong with copyright infringment. it's not like copyrights are a real property right, or even an incentive contrary to what many would have you believe. pssst... I went 5 mph over the speed limit yesterday and didn't report that one dollar bill I found at the beach yesterday to the IRS --- WOOOOOOW big crimes, big crimes.....
Lessing really bothers me, he fails IMHO to understand that what we have here is a classic case of old economey trying to regulate the new economey. He also fails to understand that the problem will not go away till we get rid of the notion that it's allright to derive value by restricting the copying practices of other. Even if you do it nicely, or more nicely than is done now, it is still wrong.
Not to flame, but if he lived in the industrial revolution - he would have advocated that the free states could peacefully co-exist with the slave states. They didn't get it back then, he doesn't get it now.
How dare you walk on the ground and heat up all those gravel molecules! I protest, and demand federal regulations limiting how much people can walk. Please we must act now to prevent global inmact!!! Can't you heathens listen to what mother Earth is trying to tell us!!
If you read this through you will see how history repeats itself ....
During the early 1800's the rich plantation masters were so close to the rich industrialists that many people wondered how in the heck could people who had so many financial ties become so divided and eventually financed opposite sides of a civil war.
The answer is this, in order for the plantation masters to get control of their slaves - they also had to control and regulate industries that relied on a mobile and skilled work force. (the industrialists) Those who didn't see this thought that the slave states could peacefully get along with the free states - they were idiots.
Today the copyright industries, in order to get control of their copyrights, must regulate the computer and information technology industries that are carrying the economy. Some people also think that the solution is some sort of compromise, but they just don't understand that deriving value by restricting the copying practices of others is immoral and will never go away till we cut the problem off at the root - copyrights. This belief is very harmfull, because the longer we wait, the more costly it's going to be to cut the problem off at the root.
His solution is the whole problem. It does not see copyrights as the seed of a vine who'se growth will never stop nickeling and diming freedoms to death untill it is cut off at the root. That's what got us here to begin with. As long as our society accepts that it's morally OK to derive value by restricting the copying practices of others we have doomed ourselves to follow a flawed concept that will always threaten freedom - corporations or not.
seriously, it is a siple fact that with propriatary technologies - the best one always fails. The whole IT industry is built on the corpses of technologies that were better, but failed because propriatary forces kept them from reaching their maximum potential. think RISC vs CISC, intel vs motorolla, mac gui software vs mirosoft gui software, Amiga vs x86, tcp/ip vs token-ring, novell vs ms networks, etc... We shouldn't be sorry they failed, it is our own fault for beliving that it's ok to gain value by legally restricting the ability of others to copy through crack-pot licensing instead of trying to gain competitive advantages by service and speed of development.
It shouldn't have been anybdy's to sell..
Whether or not you agree with him (I do), "encryption for the masses" is now a reality.
And the GPL would have made it more of a reality instead now PGP is heading toward the scrap heap.
The USA, the USSR, corporations or what not - taking away freedoms is taking away freedoms and the best way to loose a lot of freedoms is to accept the nickle and diming of a little freedom.
You've put the cart before the horse. Corporations needed encryption - and that led to the adoption of technologies like PGP in the industry, the GPL would have encouraged it's use even more, and perhaps have forever thwarted the patent abuses that came with PGP. It's not like corporations decided from upon high that they would suddenly give their blessing to PGP which would then in turn become entrenched.
If he would have put it under the GPL from the beginning we would not be seeing this. He would be like the Linus of crypto, but he was so determined to controll the things he shouldn't be controlling that he lost controll over the things he should be.
The person who creats somthing always has controll, what you want here is not controll over your work - it is the ability to controll what someone else does with it once the cat's out of the bag. This does not benefit freedom - it restricts it.
Yes we have seen this before, and yes it failed with the HD manufactures, but we have seen this even a 150 years before that.
In the 1830's there were those who thought that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gyn to extend the size of their plantations for unlimited profit. Today we have a similar problem in the information age - people who think that the only usefull purpose of information technology and the internet is to extend the use of their intellectual property rights for unlimited controll. Today as back then, they couldn't be more wrong, couldn't be more delusional, and couldn't be a bigger threat to individual freedoms.
The only real solution is cut the vine off at the root and attack copyrights directly with defiance and civil disobedience till (like then) they run out of steam and quit trying to take away our freedoms.
We should consider ourselves normal, because as every other generation has shown, freedom is gained through risk, fight, and struggle and no other way (not even voteing sometimes). However, today our risks are a lot less thanks to others who have got us this far.
Here, I think the best solution is defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights alltogether. It is only when we get to the root of the problem that we will "free up our children" to go onto the "next generation of fighting".
I've never owned a gun before, but if anyone fucks with my freedom or free use of my computer all in the name of an obsolete distribution industry like the MPAA and RIAA... then I'll go to their house and mess them up.
With them being such bullies, I understand where you're comeing from, but it is always important to renember - they are the ones who are bullies, not us; they are the ones who are inclined to violence, not us. The simple truth is that we can win this war without taking one drop of blood, all we half to do is act in defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights and eventually they will run out of steam. Not that your response would be unwaranted because when all is said and done they are threatening fundamental freedoms, but we will be far better served if we force their hands and let them initiate the violence so as to show the world who they really are and proove to us who we really are.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that when you allow any copyrights at all, you set up a system and situations that inevitably lead to the endless extensions, the DMCA, copy controls on every PC, and eventually the removal of the freedom of speech all together. Sadly, too many people think that idea solution is some type of compromise or reduction, it is not - that will only eventually lead us back to where we are today. It is only when we are willing to fight copyrights altogether with defiance and civil disobedience and make a stand that wee will cut the vine off at the root. I wish people would understand this.
First off, saying that charging for toll rods is going to hurt the poor is like saying that charging for groceries will hurt the poor. When done right, toll charging would create more incentive for competition and provide an environment much more healthier for the poor and provides better service to boot.
So the question is - how to do it right.
I don't like the GPS idea, I think it should be done per road, and per how crowded it is.
I don't like that the government would own the roads also - anything that charges should allow for competition and private controll.
And tax payers souldn't be expected to pay what they've always been paying.
One thought might to be to allow the roads to be free, but to give paying drivers higher priority to get on. Using digital cash and wireless technology, cars could auto-bid for the front of the line position. The freeway onramp signals would always be optimized for speed throughput and during rush-hour people who don't pay would wait a much longer time.
I don't mean to be rude, but Lessing is in denial. His essay showed brilliant insight on every concieveable angle accept for one: that copyright monopolies are bad to begin with.
It reminds me of those in the 80's who insisted that their is no problem with communisim, but merely the way it was applied, or those in the 1830's who insisted that the problem wasn't slavery but merely our policies on slave treatment. Their elloquent conclusions were worthless because they just didn't get it, if the premise is wrong then everything else is useless
The same is true with copyrights, they restrict freedoms and GROW to restrict more by their very nature. Back in 1776 it might have been bearable, but now in the information age it's not! We simply need to get rid of them even if that means defiance and mass civil-disobedience. Copying for my benefit, the benefit of others, or even for commercial profit is no more wrong then refusing to go to the back of the bus. I'm sorry if some people don't like that, but they are just half to going to get used to it.
Ok, I don't really have a problem with big-business per-se, but in the US many businesses are artificially big because of US regulations and tax laws that are hard to comply with unless your rather big in addition to artifical US govt granted monopolies like patents and copyrights that help lock out smaller competitors. These all go a long way to making sure large companies replace ethical accountabilities with bureauocratic accountabilities (eg we have no personal responsibility for the quality of this meat because it's FDA approved)
Now I don't know if this would have an effect on what's going on in China right now, but I agree with you that the more we accept people doing what they wish the more successfull we will be at promoting freedom everywhere.
I agree with you that the answer/problem doesn't half to do with American corporations per se. But I hope you understand that with a highly industralized economey and a non-free police state - you risk suvere (think Nazi germany) consequences when you face political pressures of a people who seek freedom on one end and industries who seek profit at all costs on the other.
In fact, US intellectual property policies toward China are downright dangerous here. It makes me very worried.
Yes the US has done bad things, they sanctoned the killing of indians, they ignored the horrors of slavery, the put japaneese Americans in concentration camps, and even belw up a religous compound killing dozens of women and children in the name of protecting us in Waco TX, and today the US government is trying to censor us in the name of protecting copyrights, and spy on us in the name of protecting us from terrorisim.
However, US law has accountbilities built in like voteing, the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, press etc... Where are these accountabilities in China? Answer: there are none other than us rideing their butt about human rights and Tiwan. I honestly don't really want to be involved in China's affairs, but we half to be, otherwise it will eventually blow up in our faces like Hitler did, not something I want to find out the hard way.
I understand why they did it in Java, but still wish they would have done it in C. Most JRE's are not free (like Stallman free) and C runs faster, C code is often more compact inspite of what java was supposed to be, and is already pre-installed on most linux platforms - this is expecially nice when you use a modem and don't want download all the overhead of a JRE - but rather just a progam and run it.
Either way, I am just thankfull that they did it. Freenet has huge implications in terms of saving redundant use of bandwidth, and has huge benefits in terms of protecting peoples freedoms in the face of copyright freaks who would turn the world into a police state rather than give up their precious government monopoly on copying that they lobied to extend 100 years longer than it ever should have been, and then shoved the DMCA down our throats, and then wonder why people have had it with copyrights.
There may be a way to deal with spam too. A sender would manually half to set the verification, it could ask a simple question, or be a javascript that would require a keyboard entry.
A better way to do it is to have a system where all the emails are anonymous - and at the end of the message a one time SSL url (possibly javascript) that would allow the recipient to verify it once against it's md5 sum. This way it wouldn't matter what the email said, because anybody could have faked it. Only the person who checked knows for sure if it's real.
I don't think many people understnad...
Today I can roll my own opperating system for under $1000, where merely 10 years ago it would cost over 10 million - that is the value of free software. (in fact, with any free software, not just opperating systems)
Today if I want my 500 friends (business partners, whatever) to veiw special graphic files, I don't half to send them out to buy a $300 software package. Now they can get it for free saving 150K between us - that is the value of free software
Today I can collaberate with my 500 friends (business partners, whatever) - if we each make a $200 improvement to a software package we each get a piece of software with $100000's worth of improvement. That is the value of free software.
These forces are pushing free software into the marketplace, and are the reason why it is and will become prevalent everywhere. Even if WalMart goes gung ho against Linux, it will make no difference. They are not the force driving Linux - WalMart is small compaired to global marketplace, Linux will happen either way.
The fact that he is so up there thinking that chains like WallMart are going to make all the difference shows that he just doesn't get it and is out of touch with what is really happening in the trenches.