The ZDNet article and much of the discussions are likely to seem laughable in a few years when file transfer technologies are commonplace and the various legal issues have been sorted out.
Remember that copying songs, or TV shows, or poetry is not evil or, necessarily, illegal. Copyright violation is not murder, theft, bigamy, incest or jaywalking. It is violation of a category of law that society has put in place to foster the common good through creativity. Society has decided that efficiency is promoted by installing stop lights at intersections and creating a crime known as jaywalking. There is nothing evil about jaywalking and there is nothing evil about copyright violation -- it is simply the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided that copying broadcast TV shows for personal convenience was noncommercial "fair use" in the Betamax case. For Congress to outlaw, and the Supreme Court to uphold a prohibition on copying copyright music from a commercial CD to your hard drive or from your hard drive to your RIO for your own noncommercial listening pleasure would be a stretch.
Once a copyright piece of music is legally on your hard drive which is accessible to others on the internet, what should be the governing legal principles? It seems to me that while there are two possible outcomes in theory, there is only one practical outcome. The first is that Congress and the Courts decide that noncommercial exchange is fair use, akin to playing your boom box at the beach. There is no way that Congress will outlaw, and the Supreme Court will uphold a prohibition on file transfer software. There are enough files that aren't copyright and plenty of instances where the copyright holders want to do file transfers to establish the legitimacy of file transfer programs. Using legal software for noncommercial exchange of copyright material could, conceivably be found to fair use. I don't think that will happen.
I think that the Congress and the Courts will resolve this by taxing the users and giving the money to the copyright holders. Users of audiotape and audio CDR's are taxed (they call it a royalty) for the benefit of copyright holders. (For example, see 65 FR 19025, April 10, 2000.) Once the RIAA has either driven Napster into the ground with legal costs, or gotten some part of the exchange process declared illegal, they can get Napster to gather information about what is being exchanged that will be valuable both for marketing purposes and for establishing the tax rate. Remember that even noncommercial colleges pay annual royalties for use of copyright non-dramatic music.
The RIAA has managed to get the U.S. government to tax almost everything that moves for their benefit under the name of copyright. They can't get the Congress to tax the digital exchange via Napster, Gnutella, etc. until the RIAA establishes that there is something illegal going on. Hence the law suits. Once they have established, either through a attrition or a legitimate reviewed legal victory, that there is some copyright violation, the problem is to figure out what to tax. Hard drives? DSL connections? RIOs? Any device that plays MP3? All of the above?
The ironic thing is that MP3's and Napster are almost certainly boosting CD sales. MP3's boost the demand for music by increasing the situations where you listen to your own music rather than the radio. Ripping MP3s from your own CDs is so much more efficient than downloading, checking, and organizing that if you have more money than time, it is more reliable to buy a CD and rip it. For those with more time than money, Napster lowers the average price per song which, depending on the elasticity, may actually increase total dollars spent. Increasing CD sales coincident with the increased use of Napster, if sustained, will mean that copyright holders will get increased royalties along with increased sales.
So MS wants to tweak Kerebros so that its interoperability is asymetric. They can't patent the "extension" because it is "obvious" but they want to establish some IP claim for all the reasons that IP is so important these days. A "trade secret" IP claim is dandy, but they can't really keep it secret or the "extension" will never get used outside of MS. Hence the "publication" of the "trade secret." If they don't fuss about the SlashDot articles "revealing" the "secrets" they wouldn't have a prayer down the road of claiming IP so they write the letter.
There is nothing diabolical in the process; it's just what happens when you try to lay claim to IP that really isn't yours and then do what your lawyers tell you to do without thinking.
After you have checked out the law as referenced by rjeong, try reading the opinion. The Judge's ruling is available here in.pdf format. The conclusion states "This court has determined above that Napster does not meet the requirements of subsection 512(a) because it does not transmit, route, or provide connections for allegedly infringing material through its system. The court also finds summary adjudication inappropriate due to the existence of genuine issues of material fact about Napster's compliance with subparagraph 512(i)(A), which a service provider must satisfy to enjoy the protection of any section 512 safe harbor."
The upshot is that Napster may have hung itself by its failure to police users of its system but a more careful service provider might survive a similar lawsuit and Napster may yet prevail.
When you read McCrabb's comments in the context of SCO's statements in their 10K they make sense. SCO (1) sells server operating systems (2) focuses on Intel processors (3) owns the UNIX IP from AT&T (4) supports open standards such as I20, XPG-4, Spec 1170, DCE and OSF/Motif(R) POSIX(R), FIPS and Internet standards, and (5) talks about "leveraging the open source and Linux opportunity." (The "Leveraging" discussion is in SCO's 1999 annual report page 11, available in PDF on SCO's Web site.) Their basic business model is to sell proprietary based server solutions to companies who are big enough to pay the freight. Their 10K says "SCO's mission is to create, market, and support the server software that system builders choose for networked business computing." To the extent that SCO can guide Linux in a direction that favors SCO and hurts NT they will be right in there pitching. Don't count on them doing anything that will make Linux a substitute for SCO products rather than a complement. SCO also has a page on Linux which I read to say "we can help you install Linux instead of Windows and then talk to an SCO based server." SCO is not a big company. They had worldwide sales of $223 million in FY1999 and competes with UNIX/RISC server software on one hand and NT/Intel software on the other. They have an installed base and a set of third party ISPs that they are totally dependent on. I expect they see SGI's example as exactly what not to do.
I did a bit more research and must concede that (1) the BEW case was substantially about defamation and (2) the IP exception related to the section 230 exemption would make using 230 a bit of a stretch for Yahoo. As a matter of public policy, ISPs shouldn't be held responsible for the sins of third parties but the law may not get us there at this time. We shall see.
The exemption does not only apply to libel. In a recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, the Court held that section 230 of the CDMA immunizes "interactive service providers" from liability for third-party content on their system. In that case, the issue was decline in stock price caused by inaccurate information.
There was a recent decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit where the Court found that AOL was an interactive service provider and is immune from suit in a case where inaccurate stock price information provided by AOL apparently caused plaintiff's stock price to crash and burn. If Yahoo is also an "interactive service provider" under the terms of the Communications Decency Privacy Act of 1966, I would think that the suit wouldn't get very far.
This is another one of the interesting aspects of the internet that is being sorted out in the Congress and the Courts. It points out the importance of lobbying Congress and having good legal counsel in pivotal cases.
Lessig's article suggests that the "right" form of regulation fosters innovation while the "wrong" regulations kill innovation. He cites AT&T as an example. In fact, people innovate within the environment they find themselves. AT&T was considered a natural monopoly with decreasing marginal costs so they endured vast regulation. Their accountants and managers used their ingenuity to raise the capital base upon which their returns could be calculated. For those who think of innovation strictly in technological terms, creative accounting might not be impressive, but that was a degree of freedom that the regulatory regime allowed.
The internet will use optical fiber, copper, satellite, various parts of the EM spectrum, and who knows what else, owned by a variety of economic agents. As ecloud says, there will be new regulations on top of existing regulations because use of the various parts of the communications network by the internet will present novel conflicts that must be resolved. Inevitably, some the regulatory decisions will rule out some "innovations" while paving the way for still others. Also, inevitably, some of the innovations that are fostered will be in the areas of law and accounting rather than new technology or new business techniques.
One of the beauties of the end-to-end model that Lessig describes is that it is possible to, in principle, download into your house using the EM spectrum and upload using copper associated with either the telephone or cable network. The possibilities make competition almost certain and the guiding principle of the regulators should be to promote that competition.
You are correct and it doesn't matter that you are as far as the "image" part of this case is concerned. Whether you like it or not, lot's of decisions are made, in the first instance, based on whether something seems "good" or "bad". Judge Edward F. Harrington may well have approved an expedited hearing schedule and the other hurry up measures because he is inclined to think that CyberPatrol ("CP") is doing good, however effectively, and Jansson and Skala, by allowing kids to circumvent CP are doing bad and should be stopped.
I'm talking about general public perception of the issue -- that is to say, PR. The lead paragraph in the Yahoo story on Wednesday took the "spin" provided by CP and presented it as a "method for kids to... access [pornographic] sites." As other posters have said, it's too bad that Jansson and Skala didn't keep the circumvention part of the code to themselves. There is a legitimate debate going on as to whether or not such filtering software should be mandatory in public schools and libraries. To the extent that Jansson and Skala revealed the sites that are blocked inappropriately, they made a positive contribution to the argument for no filters. To the extent that they permit kids to get around filters, they offset, and perhaps negate that positive contribution.
I just went back to the SlashDot article of Thursday, March 16. It refers to "...CPHack's minor feature of circumventing the program when installed." (This quote is just after the "Update 03/16 6:60 PM EDT" message.) If the the program circumvents the blocking of sites, whether or not it allows the kids to see the parents' password, then you almost certainly lose the PR battle.
Your comment raises an important question of fact.
The Yahoo story said "...two computer experts who developed a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access those Web sites."
Is this story incorrect? Did Jansson and Skala publish "a method for kids to deduce... password" or didn't they? Revealing URLs by someone with no competitive product can be viewed as high-minded. Enabling innocent little children to be exposed to smut is a very bad thing.
The public relations battleground looks a lot different if it is *only* the URLs that are revealed but not passwords using any of the Jansson and Skala code.
Money buys the time of people who stay in touch with (1) the issues and (2) the people who write the laws/regulations/rules, etc. It also buys the legal talent that can affect the outcome of pivotal court cases. IMHO it is really hard to consistently have your voice heard without an organized presence on the ground in Washington. Of course, it also helps if you vote and write letters to your representative. You can write to your representative here.
There may be existing organizations who already mostly reflect the point of view of the/. community. Does anyone know anything about EFF or IFEA? What other organizations have shown that they can be effective? Recall the Internet Alliance was crowing about their role in the DOC/DOJ report that concluded no new laws were needed to combat internet crime. The members of the IA are spending money to be organized and stay on top of "their" issues.
As the article above mentions, the/. community has money -- that money can give it a voice in the legislative and judicial processes. What are the/. issues? Is there an important core? Who can effectively get the/. community's message across?
Do let's get the conventional media to make into heros the hackers who publish a way for small children to circumvent the filter software that responsible adults have installed to prevent their darlings from viewing smut while demonizing the corporation that blocks known sources of the key.
Come on guys, this is a dead loser from a public relations point of view.
There are all sorts of legal issues in this case that will be given short shrift if Jansson and Skala lose by default. Had they had representation on Friday, counsel for CyberPatrol could have been challenged on jurisdictional grounds. The facts here are a far cry from those of iCraveTV where deliberate use of U.S. networks by U.S. citizen/residents to make money performing copyright works was easy to show. What is the jurisdiction case here?
I haven't seen the actual order, but the draft asks for discovery in 24 hours -- much sooner than normal. How can mirror web sites be acting "in concert" with Jansson and Skala in a legal sense if their operators have never meet, spoken, or, in most cases, exchanged emails? How about the serving of a supoena by email? We have all heard stories of tricks used by servers to physically serve a supoena on a defendent. How are they getting away with that one? The point is, in legal battles, legal fire must be fought with legal fire. CyberPatrol is winning this round (1) by intimidation and (2) by default. The important issues of copyright law including noncommercial fair use can be lost the same way.
Service revenues are dependent on having an installed base. If IBM hadn't reversed the trends on big systems through the changes in systems and software that they made, they wouldn't have had anything to service.
They behaved like a corporation that had to please its stockholders.
They closed several plants.
They cleaned up their balance sheet in several other ways.
They changed aspects of their technology to make big systems easier to install and maintain.
They made it easier for big iron to be servers for non-IBM clients.
And far from least, the market decided that big iron was really valuable for lots of reasons having to do with security, flexibility, reliability, and shear capacity.
...linux and most unixes are used for *work*.. mainly the heavy lifting...
There are two sides to the market. Linux/Unix is used for the heavy lifting because that is what it is good for at this point. Windows is used in spite of its fundamental problems simply because so many users can manage to get their particular job done using software that runs under Windows.
For example, I have lots of vinyl that I would like to efficiently put on MP3s and listen to on my Abex AD-600A. The problem is to rip from the vinyl, filter for scratches, adjust the blank space at the beginning and end, save as an MP3, compile MP3s in the correct order and write to CDROM. I can do it under Windows using Sound Forge and Nero but I can't imagine how to go about it under Linux. I'd like to hear what hardware/software others have used to solve that problem under Linux.
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me
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Craig/Simons/iCraveTV violated the copyright laws of the U.S. in the U.S. by knowingly "performing" copyright works over the telephone wires/optical fibres in the U.S. part of the internet. The fact that the transmissions started in Canada is immaterial. The copyright laws are written broadly enough to cover "performance" over the wires/optical fibres that make up the internet.
As I understand it, iCraveTV accepted U.S. jurisdiction to the extent that the programs were viewed by people in the U.S. but maintained that the were not liable because they had procedures in place for restricting U.S. viewers. They lost.
Re:what i dont understand, please enlighten me
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The complaint lists William R. Craig, George Simons, William R. Craig Consulting ("WRC"), and iCraveTV and TVRadio Now, Corp. as defendents. Craig and Simons are, according to the complaint, Pittsburgh residents; the WRC Consulting principal business address is in Pittsburgh, and the domain name for iCrave is registered to a Pittsburgh address. It is pretty clear that the Pennsylvania court had jurisdiction over a suit brought against the first three defendants. If Craig and Simon lost the case in U.S. courts under U.S. law, which, on the face, seems likely, they could be held personally liable. I expect that Craig and Simons weren't much interested in putting themselves personally in a position to lose all their U.S. assets in the event of a judgment against them and/or effectively losing the ability to enter the U.S. again because of outstanding warrants.
As far as Canadian courts enforcing a judgment against a Canadian person entered by a U.S. court, there is a recent case, Braintech where a Texas court issued a judgment against a Canadian and the Canadian court decided that the behavior didn't violate Canadian law and wouldn't enforce the Texas court judgment.
Such jurisdictional issues are a hot topic in legal circles. If you want to see how a lawyer thinks about these issues, read the text of a speech given yesterday at a conference at George Mason University here. The American Bar Association has an "Internet Jurisdiction" project which you can read about here.
Finally, I think it is important to remember that there are international treaties relating to intellectual property that are very valuable to U.S. citizens because our higher than average standard of living is based, to a significant degree, on the IP that we create. You can read the two treaties that are the basis for the DMCA under the "documents" section here.
Original mathematics is usually done by the young. The subject of the fourth place finalist, Abelian groups was done by Abel 1828 when he was 26 -- he died in 1829 having created new branches of mathematics. Ramanujan's genius was apparent at 15 although he first published in 1911 at age 23. His work on the partition of numbers was done in his twenties and he died in 1920 at the age of 32. As G.H. Hardy laments in "A Mathematician's Apology", the real mathematics is done by the young.
Hardy wrote a wonderful little book "A Mathematician's Apology" ("AMA") where he recounts his experiences working with the top number theorists of the day. I recall a anecdote regarding Ramanujan in AMA where he goes to visit Ramanujan when the Indian is sick. Hardy says that the number of the taxi he road over in, 1729, wasn't very interesting. Ramanujan says "Oh no, that is the smallest integer that can be represented as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
Jerf is on the right track. Some elaboration is, perhaps, helpful.
The copyright, patent, trademark, etc. laws of the U.S. that protect intellectual property ("IP") all flow from U.S. Constitution:
The Congress shall have the power -- [T]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. (Article I, Section 8)
Congress and the administrative agencies have implemented the Constitution's directive so that ideas may not be patented/copyright -- the creations that express those ideas are. So, an idea for a book/movie about a lovely woman living beneath her station, rescued by a prince/tycoon after conflict with jealous/greedy competitors for the princes'/tycoons' attention/money cannot be protected under the copyright laws. The movie "Pretty Woman" is an expression of that idea and is copyright, consistent with the constitution. Patents are granted by governments for the expressions, not the ideas.
Copyright violation is not theft; it is not murder; it is not bigany -- it is copyright violation. There is nothing inherently evil about copying a book/movie/song just as there is nothing inherently evil about bigamy of jaywalking. We as a society have decided that our notions of efficiency, and perhaps decency are promoted by creating copyrights and making their violation illegal, just as we build crosswalks and make jaywalking illegal -- however actively enforced. The international community has seen the wisdom of more or less buying into Western notions of IP and have endorsed treaties that protect the same sorts of IP. (The DMCA primarily implements U.S. obligations under two such treaties.)
Congress has not granted authors and inventors "exclusive" use by any means, and as a result, not all copying of a "creative expression" is illegal. For works clearly covered by copyright, the principle of "fair use" is alive and well as witnessed by the Connectix and RIAA vs. Diamond cases. The Legislative History of the DMCA makes it clear that Congress intends to maintain "fair use" while updating the laws regarding copyright and performance to the new technologies. It is premature to assert that the DMCA makes the end of civilization as we know it. There must be cases brought, won or lost and subject to judicial review before we know the impact of the DMCA will be. In addition, historically, the author/owner of the work must assert copyright in order for the copyright laws to apply. I don't see SlashDoters putting the copyright symbol on their posts and I challenge anyone to go to court and prove that damages are warranted as a result of someone copying SlashDot comments.
Congress is going to keep writing laws that give authors and inventors "exclusive use" until the Constitution is changed and they don't have to. They will incorporate Edison cylinders, radio, the web, and holographic implants into the laws as necessary to do their job. In that event, while I applaud Jon Katz' efforts to stimulate debate on the intersection of the law and the web, I believe he could have a greater impact on the shape of things to come by promoting public comment while laws/regulations/rules are in flux and by promoting support for the defense in the DeCSS and Napster prosecutions by telling us where to send contributions.
Sorry, I'm a parent of two -- one in high school and one in college. They have had their own computers for many years and web access since early 1996 and never had censor software on their computers. Their mother and I have tried to help them to understand the power of the Christian principle of love for one's fellow man and, on that basis, to distinguish pictures (or sculptures, etc.) that lovingly represent the human form and those that show the degradation of people. Is this naked couple harmful to our children?
To my mind, putting Net Nanny on a kid's computer says "I don't trust you." more than it says "I want to protect you." However, I accept that reasonable people can disagree.
I expect that Sony's concern with Playstation relates to their setback in the Connectix case. I read recently that the Playstation is Sony's cash cow at the moment and they, naturally, want to protect it. The Connectix press release can be found here.
One should take some comfort from court decisions such as this one that respect the principle of "fair use". Comments to rulemaking bodies, letters to your representatives to Congress, serve to protect the narrow interests of, for example, legitimate users of DeCSS. Will you vote in November?
Keep in mind that the DMCA primarily exists to implement U.S. obligations under international treaties. The U.S. has probably the greatest interest in those treaties because intellectual property ("IP") is a significant contributor to U.S. citizens' higher than average standard of living.
It wasn't that long ago that copyright holders could not protect their IP in foreign contries. H.M.S. Pinafore was a great hit in the U.S. in the 1870's but Gilbert and Sullivan couldn't collect royalties. See here. If it was your ox being gored by a Chinese sweatshop reverse engineering your code and putting your company out of business by selling a copycat product in the U.S. via the internet, I expect you would look more kindly on the treaties and the DMCA that enable you to protect your company's IP and your job.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that copying songs, or TV shows, or poetry is not evil or, necessarily, illegal. Copyright violation is not murder, theft, bigamy, incest or jaywalking. It is violation of a category of law that society has put in place to foster the common good through creativity. Society has decided that efficiency is promoted by installing stop lights at intersections and creating a crime known as jaywalking. There is nothing evil about jaywalking and there is nothing evil about copyright violation -- it is simply the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided that copying broadcast TV shows for personal convenience was noncommercial "fair use" in the Betamax case. For Congress to outlaw, and the Supreme Court to uphold a prohibition on copying copyright music from a commercial CD to your hard drive or from your hard drive to your RIO for your own noncommercial listening pleasure would be a stretch.
Once a copyright piece of music is legally on your hard drive which is accessible to others on the internet, what should be the governing legal principles? It seems to me that while there are two possible outcomes in theory, there is only one practical outcome. The first is that Congress and the Courts decide that noncommercial exchange is fair use, akin to playing your boom box at the beach. There is no way that Congress will outlaw, and the Supreme Court will uphold a prohibition on file transfer software. There are enough files that aren't copyright and plenty of instances where the copyright holders want to do file transfers to establish the legitimacy of file transfer programs. Using legal software for noncommercial exchange of copyright material could, conceivably be found to fair use. I don't think that will happen.
I think that the Congress and the Courts will resolve this by taxing the users and giving the money to the copyright holders. Users of audiotape and audio CDR's are taxed (they call it a royalty) for the benefit of copyright holders. (For example, see 65 FR 19025, April 10, 2000.) Once the RIAA has either driven Napster into the ground with legal costs, or gotten some part of the exchange process declared illegal, they can get Napster to gather information about what is being exchanged that will be valuable both for marketing purposes and for establishing the tax rate. Remember that even noncommercial colleges pay annual royalties for use of copyright non-dramatic music.
The RIAA has managed to get the U.S. government to tax almost everything that moves for their benefit under the name of copyright. They can't get the Congress to tax the digital exchange via Napster, Gnutella, etc. until the RIAA establishes that there is something illegal going on. Hence the law suits. Once they have established, either through a attrition or a legitimate reviewed legal victory, that there is some copyright violation, the problem is to figure out what to tax. Hard drives? DSL connections? RIOs? Any device that plays MP3? All of the above?
The ironic thing is that MP3's and Napster are almost certainly boosting CD sales. MP3's boost the demand for music by increasing the situations where you listen to your own music rather than the radio. Ripping MP3s from your own CDs is so much more efficient than downloading, checking, and organizing that if you have more money than time, it is more reliable to buy a CD and rip it. For those with more time than money, Napster lowers the average price per song which, depending on the elasticity, may actually increase total dollars spent. Increasing CD sales coincident with the increased use of Napster, if sustained, will mean that copyright holders will get increased royalties along with increased sales.
There is nothing diabolical in the process; it's just what happens when you try to lay claim to IP that really isn't yours and then do what your lawyers tell you to do without thinking.
The upshot is that Napster may have hung itself by its failure to police users of its system but a more careful service provider might survive a similar lawsuit and Napster may yet prevail.
When you read McCrabb's comments in the context of SCO's statements in their 10K they make sense. SCO (1) sells server operating systems (2) focuses on Intel processors (3) owns the UNIX IP from AT&T (4) supports open standards such as I20, XPG-4, Spec 1170, DCE and OSF/Motif(R) POSIX(R), FIPS and Internet standards, and (5) talks about "leveraging the open source and Linux opportunity." (The "Leveraging" discussion is in SCO's 1999 annual report page 11, available in PDF on SCO's Web site.) Their basic business model is to sell proprietary based server solutions to companies who are big enough to pay the freight. Their 10K says "SCO's mission is to create, market, and support the server software that system builders choose for networked business computing." To the extent that SCO can guide Linux in a direction that favors SCO and hurts NT they will be right in there pitching. Don't count on them doing anything that will make Linux a substitute for SCO products rather than a complement. SCO also has a page on Linux which I read to say "we can help you install Linux instead of Windows and then talk to an SCO based server." SCO is not a big company. They had worldwide sales of $223 million in FY1999 and competes with UNIX/RISC server software on one hand and NT/Intel software on the other. They have an installed base and a set of third party ISPs that they are totally dependent on. I expect they see SGI's example as exactly what not to do.
This is another one of the interesting aspects of the internet that is being sorted out in the Congress and the Courts. It points out the importance of lobbying Congress and having good legal counsel in pivotal cases.
The internet will use optical fiber, copper, satellite, various parts of the EM spectrum, and who knows what else, owned by a variety of economic agents. As ecloud says, there will be new regulations on top of existing regulations because use of the various parts of the communications network by the internet will present novel conflicts that must be resolved. Inevitably, some the regulatory decisions will rule out some "innovations" while paving the way for still others. Also, inevitably, some of the innovations that are fostered will be in the areas of law and accounting rather than new technology or new business techniques.
One of the beauties of the end-to-end model that Lessig describes is that it is possible to, in principle, download into your house using the EM spectrum and upload using copper associated with either the telephone or cable network. The possibilities make competition almost certain and the guiding principle of the regulators should be to promote that competition.
I'm talking about general public perception of the issue -- that is to say, PR. The lead paragraph in the Yahoo story on Wednesday took the "spin" provided by CP and presented it as a "method for kids to ... access [pornographic] sites." As other posters have said, it's too bad that Jansson and Skala didn't keep the circumvention part of the code to themselves. There is a legitimate debate going on as to whether or not such filtering software should be mandatory in public schools and libraries. To the extent that Jansson and Skala revealed the sites that are blocked inappropriately, they made a positive contribution to the argument for no filters. To the extent that they permit kids to get around filters, they offset, and perhaps negate that positive contribution.
Too bad, you got my hopes up there for a time.
The Yahoo story said "...two computer experts who developed a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access those Web sites."
Is this story incorrect? Did Jansson and Skala publish "a method for kids to deduce ... password" or didn't they? Revealing URLs by someone with no competitive product can be viewed as high-minded. Enabling innocent little children to be exposed to smut is a very bad thing.
The public relations battleground looks a lot different if it is *only* the URLs that are revealed but not passwords using any of the Jansson and Skala code.
Money buys the time of people who stay in touch with (1) the issues and (2) the people who write the laws/regulations/rules, etc. It also buys the legal talent that can affect the outcome of pivotal court cases. IMHO it is really hard to consistently have your voice heard without an organized presence on the ground in Washington. Of course, it also helps if you vote and write letters to your representative. You can write to your representative here.
There may be existing organizations who already mostly reflect the point of view of the /. community. Does anyone know anything about EFF or IFEA? What other organizations have shown that they can be effective? Recall the Internet Alliance was crowing about their role in the DOC/DOJ report that concluded no new laws were needed to combat internet crime. The members of the IA are spending money to be organized and stay on top of "their" issues.
As the article above mentions, the /. community has money -- that money can give it a voice in the legislative and judicial processes. What are the /. issues? Is there an important core? Who can effectively get the /. community's message across?
Come on guys, this is a dead loser from a public relations point of view.
There are all sorts of legal issues in this case that will be given short shrift if Jansson and Skala lose by default. Had they had representation on Friday, counsel for CyberPatrol could have been challenged on jurisdictional grounds. The facts here are a far cry from those of iCraveTV where deliberate use of U.S. networks by U.S. citizen/residents to make money performing copyright works was easy to show. What is the jurisdiction case here?
I haven't seen the actual order, but the draft asks for discovery in 24 hours -- much sooner than normal. How can mirror web sites be acting "in concert" with Jansson and Skala in a legal sense if their operators have never meet, spoken, or, in most cases, exchanged emails? How about the serving of a supoena by email? We have all heard stories of tricks used by servers to physically serve a supoena on a defendent. How are they getting away with that one? The point is, in legal battles, legal fire must be fought with legal fire. CyberPatrol is winning this round (1) by intimidation and (2) by default. The important issues of copyright law including noncommercial fair use can be lost the same way.
They closed several plants.
They cleaned up their balance sheet in several other ways.
They changed aspects of their technology to make big systems easier to install and maintain.
They made it easier for big iron to be servers for non-IBM clients.
And far from least, the market decided that big iron was really valuable for lots of reasons having to do with security, flexibility, reliability, and shear capacity.
There are two sides to the market. Linux/Unix is used for the heavy lifting because that is what it is good for at this point. Windows is used in spite of its fundamental problems simply because so many users can manage to get their particular job done using software that runs under Windows.
For example, I have lots of vinyl that I would like to efficiently put on MP3s and listen to on my Abex AD-600A. The problem is to rip from the vinyl, filter for scratches, adjust the blank space at the beginning and end, save as an MP3, compile MP3s in the correct order and write to CDROM. I can do it under Windows using Sound Forge and Nero but I can't imagine how to go about it under Linux. I'd like to hear what hardware/software others have used to solve that problem under Linux.
As I understand it, iCraveTV accepted U.S. jurisdiction to the extent that the programs were viewed by people in the U.S. but maintained that the were not liable because they had procedures in place for restricting U.S. viewers. They lost.
As far as Canadian courts enforcing a judgment against a Canadian person entered by a U.S. court, there is a recent case, Braintech where a Texas court issued a judgment against a Canadian and the Canadian court decided that the behavior didn't violate Canadian law and wouldn't enforce the Texas court judgment.
Such jurisdictional issues are a hot topic in legal circles. If you want to see how a lawyer thinks about these issues, read the text of a speech given yesterday at a conference at George Mason University here. The American Bar Association has an "Internet Jurisdiction" project which you can read about here.
Finally, I think it is important to remember that there are international treaties relating to intellectual property that are very valuable to U.S. citizens because our higher than average standard of living is based, to a significant degree, on the IP that we create. You can read the two treaties that are the basis for the DMCA under the "documents" section here.
The copyright, patent, trademark, etc. laws of the U.S. that protect intellectual property ("IP") all flow from U.S. Constitution:
Congress and the administrative agencies have implemented the Constitution's directive so that ideas may not be patented/copyright -- the creations that express those ideas are. So, an idea for a book/movie about a lovely woman living beneath her station, rescued by a prince/tycoon after conflict with jealous/greedy competitors for the princes'/tycoons' attention/money cannot be protected under the copyright laws. The movie "Pretty Woman" is an expression of that idea and is copyright, consistent with the constitution. Patents are granted by governments for the expressions, not the ideas.
Copyright violation is not theft; it is not murder; it is not bigany -- it is copyright violation. There is nothing inherently evil about copying a book/movie/song just as there is nothing inherently evil about bigamy of jaywalking. We as a society have decided that our notions of efficiency, and perhaps decency are promoted by creating copyrights and making their violation illegal, just as we build crosswalks and make jaywalking illegal -- however actively enforced. The international community has seen the wisdom of more or less buying into Western notions of IP and have endorsed treaties that protect the same sorts of IP. (The DMCA primarily implements U.S. obligations under two such treaties.)
Congress has not granted authors and inventors "exclusive" use by any means, and as a result, not all copying of a "creative expression" is illegal. For works clearly covered by copyright, the principle of "fair use" is alive and well as witnessed by the Connectix and RIAA vs. Diamond cases. The Legislative History of the DMCA makes it clear that Congress intends to maintain "fair use" while updating the laws regarding copyright and performance to the new technologies. It is premature to assert that the DMCA makes the end of civilization as we know it. There must be cases brought, won or lost and subject to judicial review before we know the impact of the DMCA will be. In addition, historically, the author/owner of the work must assert copyright in order for the copyright laws to apply. I don't see SlashDoters putting the copyright symbol on their posts and I challenge anyone to go to court and prove that damages are warranted as a result of someone copying SlashDot comments.
Congress is going to keep writing laws that give authors and inventors "exclusive use" until the Constitution is changed and they don't have to. They will incorporate Edison cylinders, radio, the web, and holographic implants into the laws as necessary to do their job. In that event, while I applaud Jon Katz' efforts to stimulate debate on the intersection of the law and the web, I believe he could have a greater impact on the shape of things to come by promoting public comment while laws/regulations/rules are in flux and by promoting support for the defense in the DeCSS and Napster prosecutions by telling us where to send contributions.
To my mind, putting Net Nanny on a kid's computer says "I don't trust you." more than it says "I want to protect you." However, I accept that reasonable people can disagree.
For those of you who haven't heard of the Apex AD-600A, look here.
One should take some comfort from court decisions such as this one that respect the principle of "fair use". Comments to rulemaking bodies, letters to your representatives to Congress, serve to protect the narrow interests of, for example, legitimate users of DeCSS. Will you vote in November?
Keep in mind that the DMCA primarily exists to implement U.S. obligations under international treaties. The U.S. has probably the greatest interest in those treaties because intellectual property ("IP") is a significant contributor to U.S. citizens' higher than average standard of living.
It wasn't that long ago that copyright holders could not protect their IP in foreign contries. H.M.S. Pinafore was a great hit in the U.S. in the 1870's but Gilbert and Sullivan couldn't collect royalties. See here. If it was your ox being gored by a Chinese sweatshop reverse engineering your code and putting your company out of business by selling a copycat product in the U.S. via the internet, I expect you would look more kindly on the treaties and the DMCA that enable you to protect your company's IP and your job.