The fact that this kind of immature pablum gets moderated as "Insightful" is evidence of the decline of Slashdot into a morass of ill-informed juvenile political ranting.
The existence of intellectual property is not the issue here. In fact, it looks like the ever-histrionic Timothy is the one who introduced the phrase into the conversation. (You really have to be careful to watch where the quotation marks are in Timothy's stories.)
Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. If someone makes something, they own it until they decide otherwise. If a make a chair, it's my property. If I write a book, it's my property.
Only utopian fools who believe that "Everything Belongs to Everyone" seriously espouse the abolition of property rights. (Including those that protect the vaunted halls of open source software. Absent IP rights, open source would not be possible.)
That said, Timothy and many others need to understand that this ISO proposal is simply a bad decision. Even if they do approve it, how are they going to enforce it?
>> [parent likens a Documents directory to the home directory, saying a Documents directory is much better]
Sorry, but I didn't say a Documents directory is better than a home directory. I just said offering a user the option of storing files in a canned Documents directory is the same knid of notion as offering a canned home directory. Both are exactly the same thing; only the name is different.
Yet, we constantly see any OS that offers a Documents directory panned as a dumbed down tool for stupid users. On the other hand, if the same thing happens in UNIX, only called a home directory, it is extolled as a wonderful piece of design.
The point I was trying to make is that this review seems at least partially premised in the bogus but widespread notion that Linux users are smarter than Windows users simply because they use Linux.
It's very good to see Sun launch a a Linux distribution that won't make repel adults in horror, but Gulker perpetuates at least one of the abiding and unfortunate errors of many Linux supporters.
Contrary to the linkage made by the review, ease of use is not synonymous with "dumbing down". Ease of use does not mean hiding capabilities. It simply means what it says: easy to use.
Example: Creating a "Documents" directory and suggesting users sore all their documents there makes a system easier to use. Nothing frces a user to do that; no capability is lost. If a user wants to track through the file system and store files in other locations, nothing prevents that. A "Documents" directory is based on the same principle as the "etc" and "home" directories. Both provide a suggested place to store files that share certain characteristics. If using a "Documents" directory is for dummies, why don't we see smart admins storing configuration files all over the file system? Surely, anyone smart enough to use Unix doesn't need help finding files?
Other examples exist, but the perpetuation of the bogus ease of use/dumbing down linkage remains an ugly theme of the Linux community.
>> , I don't think they're terrorists anymore than the Ethiopian at the Shell station down the street is a terrorist.
Neither do I, but I'm happy prosecutors can apply the law that way. Seems to me it is more important to get meth off the streets than to quibble about the interpretation of a few words.
Reducing crime by deliberately decriminalizing criminal behavior is a silly libertarian game. Would you eliminate, say, manslughter, simply by decalring it legal?
As for banning alcohol and gambling, we've tried that before and failed to do immense social pressure. People like these socially acceptable addictions. Hoever, that doesn't mean we shouldn't make penalties for crimes committed while under the influence of many drugs much more severe. I've never seen the point of gambling myself, so I'd be happy to see it disappear.
Allowing alcohol but banning meth, etc., is ideologically inconsistent, but I'm no longer will to sacrifice peoples' welfare and safety to personal ideological consistency. Too many people think being faithful to their own ideology is more important that being faithful to people.
>>...people *choose* to use drugs. Who are we to tell them what they can and can't do with their own lives?
It's naive and self-serving to think that people with a drug addiction harm only themselves. More often than not, my taxes fund their treatment. My taxes always fund the police who have to chase and try to arrest these losers.
Pretending there is no social cost from drug addiction, pretending that drug addicts don't ruin the lives of people around them is an exercise in deliberate naivete.
Try asking the children of a meth addict "Who are we to tell them what they can and can't do with their own lives?"
Well, you're right, but environmental damage is in no way equal to the damage meth does to human beings. Just why, I wonder, do environmentalists worry more about damage to trees than to people?
You know, I can look up words in a dictionary, and I don't really care what you might think, but, as someone who's opinions fall considerably to the left of center, I consider the folks I'm castigating as poseurs and dilettants. I paricualr, the Voice exists simply because it can make money from advertisements targetting this phony crowd.
>>...the guy running a meth lab who's now up for a life sentence for 'manufacturing chemical weapons' instead of the much shorter sentence he would have been facing under the current drug laws. Wonderful, huh?
In the part of the country where I live meth labs are a major problem in many counties. Prosecutors using these new procedures are seeing their arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates increase.
That all sounds pretty wonderful to me. If you're making meth, you're dealing in death and ruined lives.
If -- and it's a very big and doubtful if -- science fiction is in trouble, it is due to a dearth of good writers and good writing, not to any "end of history", "the future is now" nonsense.
It is arrogantly stupid for anyone in the year 2003 to imagine that we've plumbed the depths of science and technology Not that that has anything at all to do with good writing, but some folks seem to think that because we can do a few of the things that H.G. Wells and Jules Verne wrote about a century ago, we've reached the end of our tether.
Even judging by the bogus rockets and robots yardstick, we've only managed to get to the next nearest stellar body -- the Moon, and our robots are lucky to be able to vacuum the floor. Getting to the Moon is rather like the first sailors paddling 100 yards out into the surf and coasting back in. And we're a very long way from needing Asimov's laws.
Science fiction isn't dead, but some readers' hopes and imaginations seem to be.
What's petty about a hearty dislike for the pampered and coddled set who have a knowledge of thte world and politics that's no deeper than the foam on their three dollar lattes?
Serious and real leftists get my respect and, sometimes, my agreement. People who parade under a leftist banner simply because they feel alienated get my disdain.
People will always have honest disagreements about what is right and what is wrong. That's why we invented things like legally binding contracts. Apple Corps and Apple Computer willingly gave up sdme of freedom to act independently when they sign that contract.
What you and I think is moot, as you say it ought to be. What the contract says is still very much in force.
My guess is Apple Corps has lawyers with better memories than Steve Jobs.
I think it's a stupid stunt on the part of ABC and Brian Ross. I'm sure it will make for a good story. He isn't the first reporter to resort to this.
However, they knew what they were doing was illegal. (After all, there's no news if you smuggle something legal through customs.) I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be prosecuted.
Now, there is potential benefit that may come from this, if it develops that systemic security issues are involved, rather than sloppy work by one customs agent. Balance that against potentially encouraging real terrorists to smuggle real uranium.
In any case, Ross doesn't deserve a get out of jail card.
I think people who host and distribute copyrighted content -- music, etc. -- are, by definition, infringing copyright. I oppose that. I believe that preserving copyright is more important than allowing people to get free music. But, that's my opinion.
I believe that the content industry will use this widespread copyright infringement as the issue on which to drive the kind of draconian technical changes that can enfore copyright. I don't welcome that prospect.
I don't think the RIAA is an especially astute organization, and I doubt that dropping music sales have much of anything to do with file sharing.
As for restraining trade, it seems to me that the only reason to engage in that is to reduce your competitors' sale and increase yuor sales and, hence, profit.
As for your using p2p to distribute your content, that's fine. That's how you, as the creator of that copyrighted work, choose to assign some of your rights to others. But, if you choose to go the traditional route, and sell that work to a publisher, then anyone who makes and distributes multiple copies without your permission is infringing on your copyright.
It isn't the p2p that's at issue. That's just the distribution channel, and it is legally irrelevant. It is the behavior of copyright violators that is at issue, regardless of the tools they use.
You're right that laws exist re: whistle-blowers. But, to my knowledge, no laws exist outlining similar treatment for network violators who uncover hitherto unknown weaknesses in that network.
Now, it's possible to make an argument that such a law ought to exist, but it doesn't, and I'm not going to make that argument because I wouldn't support such a law.
So my position remains the same: He broke the law and merits prosecution.
I see no room for gray here. Someone broke the law. Arguably, the victim became aware of security gaps as a result of that crime. What's gray, though? Someone broke the law and merits prosecution. End of story. Don't like that law? Different story.
Analogies are pointless, but...if a burglar enters my home through a hole in the roof I didn't know was there, should that burglar escape prosecution simply because I learned about the hole? Should I, the victim, express my joy about being burglarized by buying an advertisement confessing my sins of omission and praising the criminal who burglarized me?
I see no difference, no gray area, between that house burglar's crime and burglarizing a private network. Both are criminal acts.
Don't be silly. It's obvious that bugs and security lapses should be repaired, however they are discovered.
But, then, I didn't say anything at all like that.
Here's what I've said: This Llamo character seems to have admitted to engaging in illegal actions, i.e., breaking into a corporation's private and internal network. Of course, that corporation should learn from that and fix those shortcomings. But, that fact does not erase Llamo's behavior. Whatever the motivation, whatever actions are taken afterwards, breaking the law remains breaking the law, and anyone who does that is a criminal.
To believe otherwise is to believe that anyone has the right to act as a network security vigilante, and that any criminal action vis-a-vis a network is excusable if the criminal simply tells someone abou the security gaps he found. OF course, that's utter nonsense.
Sure, network crime is serious, but rewarding criminals only makes it worse. That's moronic logic, to mimic your subtle word use. That kind of behavior only encourages other criminals to try the same thing, and how many of them will turn around and report their actions to the victim?
You don't make crime go away by saying "Thank You" to criminals.
People in the IT business who hold your opinions are simply encouraging more crime and justifiying many people's unfortunate opinion that computer geeks are just a bunch of "hackers" waiting to strike.
I don't harbor any romantic notions about criminals goiong up against "insurmountable obstacles". They're just criminals.
I don't believe the notions of legality and illegality are "petty" or that notions of morality and immorality are higher. We live in a society governed by law, not indivudal conceptions of morality, because the latter produces chaos and anarchy.
Robin Hood is fiction. This guy, unfortunately, is real.
Finally, the money the NYT spent dealing with this criminal act is unproductive money. It's no less wrong to burglarize a corporation as it is a private individual. Widespread unreasoning antipathy to business doesn't excuse criminal behavior.
As for people not getting hurt, well, if your private data, e.g., Social Securoty, medical records, were viewed by this criminal, would you feel all that comfortable?
He engaged in illegal activity to break into NYT's private network. By itself, the breaking in, regardless of how he did it or the failings of the NYT's security system, it's illegal.
You can define it away, or rationalize it by saying he was just trying to be helpful, but that's all soporific nonsense. If someone stole your car, would you excuse with the claom that the thief was only trying to help you learn how to protect your car?
If this criminal wanted to help the NYT, he should have written a business proposal and sent it to them.
I'm not going to go back and dig up my original post, but I don't believe I linked DRM directly to copyright infringement.
That said, of course RIAA members are simply using the copyright issue as a tool to boost sales. Is that restraint of trade? Maybe, maybe not. After all, people are giving the stuff away.
Are RIAA members evil scum because they're trying to do that? No. They're doing exactly what I'd expect any business to do: protect their profits.
Are RIAA members making a mistake by not attempting to beat file sharers at their own game and market music online? Of course.
Are music sales down because people are simply downloading free copies? Probably, to an extent. I also think sales are down because the overall population is getting older (typically, people buy less music once they're beyond their teens and twenties; and, finally, there's not much interesting "pop" music out there. This happened in the years between the Beatles, et al, arrived, and the initial flurry of creativity that marked the 1950's output of pop artists like Elvis, etc.
Do I believe that file sharers are violating copyright? Yes, especially if they're behaving as distributors by hosting large numbers of tracks for download by anonymous individuals. That's not fair use as I read the law.
(The technology used to make and distribute copies of copyrighted material has no bearing on the legality of that action, contrary to frequent assertions that the rules are different for the Internet. Using the Internet to distribute 1000 unauthroized copies is as illegal as using a printing press to make 1000 unauthorized copies of a book and handing them out to strangers on a street corner.)
Do I believe protecting copyright is more important than protecting people's ability to steal commercial music? Yes.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that this kind of immature pablum gets moderated as "Insightful" is evidence of the decline of Slashdot into a morass of ill-informed juvenile political ranting.
The existence of intellectual property is not the issue here. In fact, it looks like the ever-histrionic Timothy is the one who introduced the phrase into the conversation. (You really have to be careful to watch where the quotation marks are in Timothy's stories.)
Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. If someone makes something, they own it until they decide otherwise. If a make a chair, it's my property. If I write a book, it's my property.
Only utopian fools who believe that "Everything Belongs to Everyone" seriously espouse the abolition of property rights. (Including those that protect the vaunted halls of open source software. Absent IP rights, open source would not be possible.)
That said, Timothy and many others need to understand that this ISO proposal is simply a bad decision. Even if they do approve it, how are they going to enforce it?
>> [parent likens a Documents directory to the home directory, saying a Documents directory is much better]
Sorry, but I didn't say a Documents directory is better than a home directory. I just said offering a user the option of storing files in a canned Documents directory is the same knid of notion as offering a canned home directory. Both are exactly the same thing; only the name is different.
Yet, we constantly see any OS that offers a Documents directory panned as a dumbed down tool for stupid users. On the other hand, if the same thing happens in UNIX, only called a home directory, it is extolled as a wonderful piece of design.
The point I was trying to make is that this review seems at least partially premised in the bogus but widespread notion that Linux users are smarter than Windows users simply because they use Linux.
It's very good to see Sun launch a a Linux distribution that won't make repel adults in horror, but Gulker perpetuates at least one of the abiding and unfortunate errors of many Linux supporters.
Contrary to the linkage made by the review, ease of use is not synonymous with "dumbing down". Ease of use does not mean hiding capabilities. It simply means what it says: easy to use.
Example: Creating a "Documents" directory and suggesting users sore all their documents there makes a system easier to use. Nothing frces a user to do that; no capability is lost. If a user wants to track through the file system and store files in other locations, nothing prevents that. A "Documents" directory is based on the same principle as the "etc" and "home" directories. Both provide a suggested place to store files that share certain characteristics. If using a "Documents" directory is for dummies, why don't we see smart admins storing configuration files all over the file system? Surely, anyone smart enough to use Unix doesn't need help finding files?
Other examples exist, but the perpetuation of the bogus ease of use/dumbing down linkage remains an ugly theme of the Linux community.
P2p will survive and grow if, and only if, the content available via p2p is attractive.
The question posed is a bit like asking, 500 years ago, if the printing press will survive. Well...it depends on what's printed.
If p2p is the only way to get something people want, then it will surviv e. If p2p offers nothing people want, it will fade.
>> , I don't think they're terrorists anymore than the Ethiopian at the Shell station down the street is a terrorist.
Neither do I, but I'm happy prosecutors can apply the law that way. Seems to me it is more important to get meth off the streets than to quibble about the interpretation of a few words.
Reducing crime by deliberately decriminalizing criminal behavior is a silly libertarian game. Would you eliminate, say, manslughter, simply by decalring it legal?
As for banning alcohol and gambling, we've tried that before and failed to do immense social pressure. People like these socially acceptable addictions. Hoever, that doesn't mean we shouldn't make penalties for crimes committed while under the influence of many drugs much more severe. I've never seen the point of gambling myself, so I'd be happy to see it disappear.
Allowing alcohol but banning meth, etc., is ideologically inconsistent, but I'm no longer will to sacrifice peoples' welfare and safety to personal ideological consistency. Too many people think being faithful to their own ideology is more important that being faithful to people.
Infantile twit.
>> ...people *choose* to use drugs. Who are we to tell them what they can and can't do with their own lives?
It's naive and self-serving to think that people with a drug addiction harm only themselves. More often than not, my taxes fund their treatment. My taxes always fund the police who have to chase and try to arrest these losers.
Pretending there is no social cost from drug addiction, pretending that drug addicts don't ruin the lives of people around them is an exercise in deliberate naivete.
Try asking the children of a meth addict "Who are we to tell them what they can and can't do with their own lives?"
Well, you're right, but environmental damage is in no way equal to the damage meth does to human beings. Just why, I wonder, do environmentalists worry more about damage to trees than to people?
>> No matter how much you may dislike the alleged effects of a drug on someone, that doesn't make it a 'chemical weapon'.
So, tell your representatives in Congress to amend the law. Meanwhile, I'm quite happy to see meth dealers get what's coming to them.
>> Good job!
Why, thank you.
You know, I can look up words in a dictionary, and I don't really care what you might think, but, as someone who's opinions fall considerably to the left of center, I consider the folks I'm castigating as poseurs and dilettants. I paricualr, the Voice exists simply because it can make money from advertisements targetting this phony crowd.
>> ...the guy running a meth lab who's now up for a life sentence for 'manufacturing chemical weapons' instead of the much shorter sentence he would have been facing under the current drug laws. Wonderful, huh?
In the part of the country where I live meth labs are a major problem in many counties. Prosecutors using these new procedures are seeing their arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates increase.
That all sounds pretty wonderful to me. If you're making meth, you're dealing in death and ruined lives.
If -- and it's a very big and doubtful if -- science fiction is in trouble, it is due to a dearth of good writers and good writing, not to any "end of history", "the future is now" nonsense.
It is arrogantly stupid for anyone in the year 2003 to imagine that we've plumbed the depths of science and technology Not that that has anything at all to do with good writing, but some folks seem to think that because we can do a few of the things that H.G. Wells and Jules Verne wrote about a century ago, we've reached the end of our tether.
Even judging by the bogus rockets and robots yardstick, we've only managed to get to the next nearest stellar body -- the Moon, and our robots are lucky to be able to vacuum the floor. Getting to the Moon is rather like the first sailors paddling 100 yards out into the surf and coasting back in. And we're a very long way from needing Asimov's laws.
Science fiction isn't dead, but some readers' hopes and imaginations seem to be.
What's petty about a hearty dislike for the pampered and coddled set who have a knowledge of thte world and politics that's no deeper than the foam on their three dollar lattes?
Serious and real leftists get my respect and, sometimes, my agreement. People who parade under a leftist banner simply because they feel alienated get my disdain.
People will always have honest disagreements about what is right and what is wrong. That's why we invented things like legally binding contracts. Apple Corps and Apple Computer willingly gave up sdme of freedom to act independently when they sign that contract.
What you and I think is moot, as you say it ought to be. What the contract says is still very much in force.
My guess is Apple Corps has lawyers with better memories than Steve Jobs.
I think it's a stupid stunt on the part of ABC and Brian Ross. I'm sure it will make for a good story. He isn't the first reporter to resort to this.
However, they knew what they were doing was illegal. (After all, there's no news if you smuggle something legal through customs.) I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be prosecuted.
Now, there is potential benefit that may come from this, if it develops that systemic security issues are involved, rather than sloppy work by one customs agent. Balance that against potentially encouraging real terrorists to smuggle real uranium.
In any case, Ross doesn't deserve a get out of jail card.
This is really simple:
I think people who host and distribute copyrighted content -- music, etc. -- are, by definition, infringing copyright. I oppose that. I believe that preserving copyright is more important than allowing people to get free music. But, that's my opinion.
I believe that the content industry will use this widespread copyright infringement as the issue on which to drive the kind of draconian technical changes that can enfore copyright. I don't welcome that prospect.
I don't think the RIAA is an especially astute organization, and I doubt that dropping music sales have much of anything to do with file sharing.
As for restraining trade, it seems to me that the only reason to engage in that is to reduce your competitors' sale and increase yuor sales and, hence, profit.
As for your using p2p to distribute your content, that's fine. That's how you, as the creator of that copyrighted work, choose to assign some of your rights to others. But, if you choose to go the traditional route, and sell that work to a publisher, then anyone who makes and distributes multiple copies without your permission is infringing on your copyright.
It isn't the p2p that's at issue. That's just the distribution channel, and it is legally irrelevant. It is the behavior of copyright violators that is at issue, regardless of the tools they use.
I'll comment:
You're right that laws exist re: whistle-blowers. But, to my knowledge, no laws exist outlining similar treatment for network violators who uncover hitherto unknown weaknesses in that network.
Now, it's possible to make an argument that such a law ought to exist, but it doesn't, and I'm not going to make that argument because I wouldn't support such a law.
So my position remains the same: He broke the law and merits prosecution.
I see no room for gray here. Someone broke the law. Arguably, the victim became aware of security gaps as a result of that crime. What's gray, though? Someone broke the law and merits prosecution. End of story. Don't like that law? Different story.
Analogies are pointless, but...if a burglar enters my home through a hole in the roof I didn't know was there, should that burglar escape prosecution simply because I learned about the hole? Should I, the victim, express my joy about being burglarized by buying an advertisement confessing my sins of omission and praising the criminal who burglarized me?
I see no difference, no gray area, between that house burglar's crime and burglarizing a private network. Both are criminal acts.
Don't be silly. It's obvious that bugs and security lapses should be repaired, however they are discovered.
But, then, I didn't say anything at all like that.
Here's what I've said: This Llamo character seems to have admitted to engaging in illegal actions, i.e., breaking into a corporation's private and internal network. Of course, that corporation should learn from that and fix those shortcomings. But, that fact does not erase Llamo's behavior. Whatever the motivation, whatever actions are taken afterwards, breaking the law remains breaking the law, and anyone who does that is a criminal.
To believe otherwise is to believe that anyone has the right to act as a network security vigilante, and that any criminal action vis-a-vis a network is excusable if the criminal simply tells someone abou the security gaps he found. OF course, that's utter nonsense.
Sure, network crime is serious, but rewarding criminals only makes it worse. That's moronic logic, to mimic your subtle word use. That kind of behavior only encourages other criminals to try the same thing, and how many of them will turn around and report their actions to the victim?
You don't make crime go away by saying "Thank You" to criminals.
People in the IT business who hold your opinions are simply encouraging more crime and justifiying many people's unfortunate opinion that computer geeks are just a bunch of "hackers" waiting to strike.
I don't harbor any romantic notions about criminals goiong up against "insurmountable obstacles". They're just criminals.
I don't believe the notions of legality and illegality are "petty" or that notions of morality and immorality are higher. We live in a society governed by law, not indivudal conceptions of morality, because the latter produces chaos and anarchy.
Robin Hood is fiction. This guy, unfortunately, is real.
Finally, the money the NYT spent dealing with this criminal act is unproductive money. It's no less wrong to burglarize a corporation as it is a private individual. Widespread unreasoning antipathy to business doesn't excuse criminal behavior.
As for people not getting hurt, well, if your private data, e.g., Social Securoty, medical records, were viewed by this criminal, would you feel all that comfortable?
He engaged in illegal activity to break into NYT's private network. By itself, the breaking in, regardless of how he did it or the failings of the NYT's security system, it's illegal.
You can define it away, or rationalize it by saying he was just trying to be helpful, but that's all soporific nonsense. If someone stole your car, would you excuse with the claom that the thief was only trying to help you learn how to protect your car?
If this criminal wanted to help the NYT, he should have written a business proposal and sent it to them.
I'm not going to go back and dig up my original post, but I don't believe I linked DRM directly to copyright infringement.
That said, of course RIAA members are simply using the copyright issue as a tool to boost sales. Is that restraint of trade? Maybe, maybe not. After all, people are giving the stuff away.
Are RIAA members evil scum because they're trying to do that? No. They're doing exactly what I'd expect any business to do: protect their profits.
Are RIAA members making a mistake by not attempting to beat file sharers at their own game and market music online? Of course.
Are music sales down because people are simply downloading free copies? Probably, to an extent. I also think sales are down because the overall population is getting older (typically, people buy less music once they're beyond their teens and twenties; and, finally, there's not much interesting "pop" music out there. This happened in the years between the Beatles, et al, arrived, and the initial flurry of creativity that marked the 1950's output of pop artists like Elvis, etc.
Do I believe that file sharers are violating copyright? Yes, especially if they're behaving as distributors by hosting large numbers of tracks for download by anonymous individuals. That's not fair use as I read the law.
(The technology used to make and distribute copies of copyrighted material has no bearing on the legality of that action, contrary to frequent assertions that the rules are different for the Internet. Using the Internet to distribute 1000 unauthroized copies is as illegal as using a printing press to make 1000 unauthorized copies of a book and handing them out to strangers on a street corner.)
Do I believe protecting copyright is more important than protecting people's ability to steal commercial music? Yes.
>> ...that statement is a crime, and I could be sent up for years. Justify THAT.
Works for me. Bye.