Once you become integral to the
economic prosperity, the government must oversee it. Why? Because private groups will not represent the public's interests.
Ah, I see. You're assuming that the government represents the public's interests, rather than the interests of the private groups who lobby the government. I'd love to believe this, but evidence seems to argue that public interest is less important to government lately...
Okay, so campaign spending limits didn't work -- at least in that situation.
Has any country ever tried to tackle the problem from the other side -- putting a financial disincentive on the corporations' involvement in politics? For instance, put a tax on corporate campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. Ideally, this might reduce the amount that corporations spend on politicians and politics, which might make the personal contributions more valuable to said politicians.
Over the past 180+ years the US has never been invaded or conquered, the government has been stable, and the standard of living has been
consistently very high compared to the rest of the world. We have had waves of immigration from every part of the world by people seeking refuge
from tyranny and famine.
And this is untrue for all other countries in the world? When was the last time Britain was invaded or conquered? When was the last revolution in the Netherlands? How long did the Roman republic last?
Why is it that USians (me included, until recently) seem to think that because there our country has many good aspects that it must be unique and immeasurably better than any other country is or ever has been???
</RANT>
"Hell, one could argue that any publicly traded company is, in fact, legally bound to break the law, if it will result in increased profits after all is said
and done."
So does this mean I can make my own public company, murder you during work hours and steal all your possessions and get away with it? It's not
like I'm gonna get in trouble if I don't get caught right? Therefore my shareholders demand this of me, or else they will sue my sorry ***. Where do
you live btw?
(IANARP [...relevant professional], and I'm only familiar with US situations)
Remember, there's a difference between criminal liability and civil liability. Corporate officials are not protected from criminal liability, so in your example they could be prosecuted for the murder. However, corporate officials are protected from civil liability. If a civil suit is brought against the company, it is not brought against the officials, but only the company. The individuals only stand to lose their investment in the company.
Another complicating factor is the severly grey scale view of right and wrong in civil suits. In a criminal case, the question is usually whether you did the action or not. In a civil case, the question is often whether or not the action was even illegal. This subjectivity means that it's easier for a company to look at potentially liable actions from a cost/benefit viewpoint rather than an ethical viewpoint.
There are often situations where a company profits from a decision that may carry civil liability. Sometimes, the profit could be greater than the legal bills, settlement, or judgement that they might have to pay if/when they get caught. Ultimately, these risks could be profitable for the company.
I'm not sure about being legally required to be as profitable as possible, though. I've seen many allegations that shareholders have sued companies for not being profitable, but a quick search of the web didn't turn up anything for me. Even if shareholders could sue for unprofitable decisions, I doubt that any judge in his right mind would rule against the company if the decision was to give up some profitability to avoid civil liability...although, again, we're dealing with grey scales in civil liability.
Your comment makes me wonder if you're willing to put commerce and legality above morality and ethics (which differs from person to person of
course). I can assure you it is a huge mistake if you do.
The question isn't whether a poster to/. is willing to do that, it's whether a company is willing to do that. Unfortunately, the reality is that companies often do consider profit and legality to be the only standard they must live by, and completely ignore morality and ethics.
Or maybe you believe law has no foundation in morality and ethics, and therefore one should break them whenever profitable? I'm sorry to say
that this is also wrong, even if you don't share the morality and ethics included in the law. However, there's only one way to find out, and that's to
live what you preach.
I wish we could live in an ideal world where corporations and corporate officials all lived by clear standards of morality and ethics. The reality is that many corporations have repeatedly shown that they have already decided to live by profit alone, and deal with legal liabilities only as they affect their bottom line.
The sad thing is that this attitude is so prevalent, and seems to be increasing...
This is America, where every God Fearing Bible thumper is out to let us know sex is bad.
Sorry as The Bible contains references to murder, genocide, rape, incest, etc its been blocked by censorware. So you'll just have to find something
else to thump:)
Not quite. They're perfectly safe thumping the Bible, as long as they don't open it or read it!
In fact, it might even be more effective to thump a block of wood with a leather cover that says "Holy Bible"...that way there'd be no temptation to read it!;-P
But the *design* of that car is owned by the manufacturer. You can't make a part-by-part reconstruction of your car by making the parts yourself, unless you have permission from the manufacturer.
Where do you come up with this?
Now, the actual design documents are copyrighted, so if I copied said documents in order to make the duplicate components, that would be copyright infringement.
Some of the components I need to make might be obscured by trade secrets, so I'd have to figure them out without obtaining the trade secrets illegally.
Other components could be covered by patents, so it would be illegal to sell them until the patent expired.
And trademark law would prevent me from marketing my hand-built sports car as, say, a "Corvette", even if it was identical to the Chevrolet sports car. (see Carroll Shelby's trademark lawsuit against Factory Five Racing)
But as long as I stay within these strictures, I don't see anything that would make it illegal for me to make a component-level duplicate of my car. Could you enlighten me?
- For example, think about a newbie, he wants to buy a new car, he asks in a forum "which car should I use?".
He will receive MANY answers: Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Honda, etc,etc...
The number of answer will confuse him, and will create some troubles, he will ask Ford-related question in a group of users which only drive Hondas for example, well you get the idea.
So having such a big diversity is a "bad" things for a newbie, it confuses him..
- Another example: At one time, I wanted to customize a new car in order a) to learn how that car works b) improve the performance of the car, if possible.
Which car? Well frankly I don't care, the only thing I wanted is to find a well-made car which would be used for a long time..
But the problem is that there is a big number of cars (Ford, Chevy, Honda, etc..), and frankly I don't want to spend years looking at all the
technological details in order to see which has the "best" technology before helping the "best" to become even better..
So, unable to choose, I gave up..
Oh, wait...we don't all drive Fords, do we?
That's strange...it seems that most people can deal with the variety available in automobiles, whether they're picking one just to use or to customize. Why would a text editor be any different?
I think that what you propose is impossible. You cannot prevent piracy (by a technical means) without infringing upon legitimate fair use too.
Well, now, you may just be right. In fact, you probably are right. I sure can't see any easy way to allow fair use while still controlling access.
But my whole point is that the legislation as it stands now basically gives them carte blanche to implement any type of access controls they want as long as they also deter copyright infringement. The best incentive I can think of to encourage the MPAA to respect our fair use rights is to remove their protection from circumvention devices if their device substantially impairs fair use of their works.
If we have legislation like this, then the MPAA et al. will have great incentive to find some way to protect copyright without impairing fair use. If not, then the government has given tacit approval to their encroachment on fair use rights.
Piracy can only be prevented by
Convincing people how stupid it is to bite the hands that feed them. (e.g. If sales of The Matrix 2 are too low, due to piracy, then there won't be a The Matrix 3.)
Creating a deterrant by mercilessly and visibly prosecuting people after they have committed piracy.
Again, I agree -- adding additional penalties to "use of a circumvention device while infringing copyrights" might help with the deterrent, too...
It's interesting that both briefs spend most of their time trying to persuade the judge that their own interpretation of the DMCA is correct. The MPAA claims that anything that allows decryption is a tool for circumvention of copyright protection, and prohibited by the DMCA. The defense claims that decryption for fair use purposes is not a violation of copyright, and thus cannot be considered circumvention of copyright protection.
Unfortunately, the statute could easily be read either way...
It's pretty obvious that it's in the best interest of the MPAA (and other copyright-holding entities) to have as much control as possible over those purchasing and using their content. They have no incentive, financial or otherwise, to preserve the fair use rights of the public.
The interpretation of DMCA advocated by the MPAA's counsel hands them that control on a silver platter, and allows them to prevent both copyright infringement and fair use with the same protection tool.
That's the basic fault of the DMCA: it doesn't make any clear distinction between prevention from copyright infringement and prevention of legitimate fair use of copyrighted material. This is what needs to be fixed, either through the courts or through the Congress.
All we need is something that preserves the legislative protection for tools that protect copyright without affecting fair use, but removes the protection for tools that prevent both infringement and fair use. Maybe like this (of course, IANAL):
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively prevents infringing access to a work protected under this title. This prohibition shall not apply to technological measures that limit or restrict fair use of the work [as defined elsewhere]
There is a difference between selective breeding and tinkering with God's blueprint for life. By directly taking a hand to DNA scientists are pretending that they have the Lord's wisdom, something which is clearly false.
I'm not sure I'm clear about your understanding of God and His job. Could you answer a couple questions for me:
Are you saying that genetic diseases and harmful mutations are the result of God's wisdom, and to counteract them would be wrong?
If we would be "doing God's job" to use genetic knowledge and technology to counteract genetic diseases, aren't we also "doing God's job" when we use medical knowledge and technology to counteract other diseases?
Here's a summary of the link (William Allen Simpson posting to the cryptography mailing list):
An electronic signature can be a "sound, symbol, or process" - like clicking an "Agree" or "Continue" button
The electronic signature creates a legally binding contract as long as there is "a statement of the hardware and software requirements" and it is confirmed "in a manner that reasonably demonstrates that the consumer can access information in the electronic form that will be used"
Vendors are allowed to charge extra fee for tangible or immutable copy of transaction record
Vendors are allowed to charge "withdrawal of consent" fee for ppl that begin but do not complete an electronic transaction
Vendors can specify that this electronically-signed contract applies to a whole category of future transactions
"The legal effectiveness, validity, or enforceability of any contract executed by a consumer shall not be denied solely because of the failure to obtain electronic consent or confirmation of consent by that consumer...."
The consumer is required to provide accurate information to allow the vendor to contact them electronically
to deal with problem #2. What if along with each page returned, a site also returned a relevancy rating and identified the procedure or algorithm used to reach that rating. This would allow the querying site to verify that rating with the same procedure, and provide a general trustworthiness rating for the site.
Of course, this means that the procedure(s) used to generate the relevance rating must be publically available. But there's nothing stopping the source site from using a different rating system internally to find the pages, as long as they use a public algorithm for the rating that's returned with the page...
In your essay you say, "the expectations of people on the Internet are different and more demanding than citizens' expectations in general."
Are these higher expectations a result of being on the Internet, or does Internet access self-select people that have higher expectations?
Will the influx of people onto the Internet raise the expectations of the general populace, or will it dilute the expectations of the Internet community?
Okay, I'm seeing a lot of comments about how a windows-type UI (WinCE, X, whatever) doesn't fit very well on a PDA. That's true, but unlike WinCE, the UI is not tied into the OS. Even if the Yopy comes out with a WinCE-like X-based UI, another UI could be hacked into it.
I'm thinking that PDA UI development is really early in its life cycle -- there's still a lot of ideas to be tried. The PalmOS UI is pretty much the best available right now, AFAIAC, but there's much room for improvement.
If Samsung provides good enough support (HW docs, driver source, etc.), the Yopy has the potential for becoming a UI-hacker's machine. It's the first one that separates the OS from the UI, allowing UI development. We could see some really interesting progress on PDA UIs with a platform like this...
It seems that most of the remedies proposed are missing the most important issue: how will the remedy prevent MS from using the same strategies on other products? Let's face it, the strategies they used for IE have pretty much accomplished their purpose.
Any remedy that only focuses on preventing the IE strategies is doomed to fail, because MS is already looking at the next products that need help...
The most obvious "opportunity" right now is MSN. They are already using the "MSN rebate" on hardware to try and tie people into using MSN. They've also hinted that they may change their app licensing strategy from "sale" to rental over the Internet (can you say "MSN"?).
There are two types of tactics that we need to watch for:
Technological exclusionary practices; e.g., MS could make it much easier to update of Windows or MS apps if you've got an MSN subscription, even if they don't move to a "rental" licensing scheme.
Business exclusionary practices; e.g., MS could easily tie an MSN subscription to its sale of Windows to the OEMs.
No matter whether the remedy is a breakup or strict regulation, it will fail miserably unless it is broad enough and forward-looking enough to prevent MS from using identical strategies on future products like MSN.
Doing a quick Google search, I ran across this article praising the development of "interactive relationship managers" (IRMs) like the one developed by Predictive Networks. The author is all agog about the marketing benefits of using these IRMs to target exactly what the customers want. He says that 'the "best customers"...[will] make sure that the only advertising that gets through is advertising that they really want to hear.' But then he claims that the way to do this is to use IRMs that 'collect user data based on the surfing habits of ISP customers and then make appropriate suggestions as to what else those customers might like or need.
He also mentions the opportunity for companies to act as free ISPs to their customers so that they can easily gather the profiling information.
<RANT> This "solution" is patently ridiculous (maybe it should be patented!). Am I a "best customer" in his terms, or not? I absolutely do not want my time and bandwidth wasted by any advertisement unless I decide that I want to see it. According to his definition, that makes me a "best customer".
But there's no way that I want any commercial entity, either software or meatware, to profile my actions and try to figure out what I might be interested in. I'm sorry, but this "best customer" wants to choose for himself what he's interested in seeing. I know best what I'm interested in. Any other "solution" is a travesty, and especially one that violates my privacy in order to provide a useless "service" that I do not want at all.
Not only is the IRM a violation of my privacy, but it's also ineffective -- my current interests are not determined by my previous interests. If I am interested in purchasing something, I will find the information I need for myself. And it will be good information -- not just biased marketing drivel.
How can someone be so clueless to think that IRMs are a solution for people who want to control what advertising they see? They are the same marketing solution all over again - "we will tell you what you should be interested in."
Sorry, but I'm not listening. I already know what I'm interested in. </RANT>
Actually, replacing a car radio might not be that bad of an analogy, in certain situations at least.
For instance, a lot of the newer Hondas bundle other circuitry, like the remote door locks, directly into the radio. If you want to replace the radio, you've either got to give up that bundled functionality or keep the original radio (and stuff it somewhere else) so it can continue to provide that functionality.
A similar thing happens with Bose systems. They don't use standard signal levels between the radio and the speakers, so if you replace the radio, you either have to use an adapter to make it work or replace the speakers as well.
Hmmm...bundling unrelated technology...using non-standard and proprietary interfaces...strategies sound familiar, eh?:(
The basis for your software market proposal seems to be simply a method to create and enforce scarcity of IP access so that IP can fit into traditional market models. Yet one of the most powerful changes in the "information age" is the reduction or removal of the cost of duplicating and transferring IP.
Why should we use artificial scarcity to make IP fit into the traditional market models rather than developing new market models that fit the reality of minimal-cost duplication?
we've got two conflicting versions of the story. Thanks for clearing that up.
I'd be interested in seeing the Independant article. Is the it available on the web, or do I have to try and find a paper copy? Do US newsstands carry The Independant, or is it primarily distributed in the UK?
The host itself reviewed the contents of the pages before removing them having had potentially liabalous materials brought to their attention.
Are you saying that NetBenefit found potentially libellous materials on Outcast's site? The interview makes it clear that Outcast's site was removed because they failed to give legal assurance to NetBenefit that there would be no libellous material posted in the future. On what basis are you asserting otherwise?
I'm going to have to look into outcaste,
Ah, so you aren't directly familiar with the situation??
but if they are from the brance of queer politic that I think they are I could well believe that they are less than rigarous with thier sources of facts.
I'm sorry, but that's both prejudice and circular reasoning. You're saying, "If Outcast is like what I think they're like, then they're probably like this, too."
Look, it doesn't matter what "branch of politic" they come from, or whether they're gay or straight, or anything. It doesn't matter whether you or I agree or disagree with their philosophy.
What does matter is that their site was apparently removed as prior restraint against some percieved potential for libellous material being posted in the future. If that's the test of speech, then God help us all -- 'cause we sure aren't helping ourselves!
I also find it amusing that you are supporting the removal of a site based on potential future libellous material, when you assert that Outcast could well be "less than rigarous with thier sources of facts." If that isn't directly libellous, then it sure seems to be evidence that you may be posting libellous material in the future. Should your access be revoked based on that?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, I see. You're assuming that the government represents the public's interests, rather than the interests of the private groups who lobby the government. I'd love to believe this, but evidence seems to argue that public interest is less important to government lately...
Has any country ever tried to tackle the problem from the other side -- putting a financial disincentive on the corporations' involvement in politics? For instance, put a tax on corporate campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. Ideally, this might reduce the amount that corporations spend on politicians and politics, which might make the personal contributions more valuable to said politicians.
And this is untrue for all other countries in the world? When was the last time Britain was invaded or conquered? When was the last revolution in the Netherlands? How long did the Roman republic last?
Why is it that USians (me included, until recently) seem to think that because there our country has many good aspects that it must be unique and immeasurably better than any other country is or ever has been???
</RANT>
(IANARP [...relevant professional], and I'm only familiar with US situations)
Remember, there's a difference between criminal liability and civil liability. Corporate officials are not protected from criminal liability, so in your example they could be prosecuted for the murder. However, corporate officials are protected from civil liability. If a civil suit is brought against the company, it is not brought against the officials, but only the company. The individuals only stand to lose their investment in the company.
Another complicating factor is the severly grey scale view of right and wrong in civil suits. In a criminal case, the question is usually whether you did the action or not. In a civil case, the question is often whether or not the action was even illegal. This subjectivity means that it's easier for a company to look at potentially liable actions from a cost/benefit viewpoint rather than an ethical viewpoint.
There are often situations where a company profits from a decision that may carry civil liability. Sometimes, the profit could be greater than the legal bills, settlement, or judgement that they might have to pay if/when they get caught. Ultimately, these risks could be profitable for the company.
I'm not sure about being legally required to be as profitable as possible, though. I've seen many allegations that shareholders have sued companies for not being profitable, but a quick search of the web didn't turn up anything for me. Even if shareholders could sue for unprofitable decisions, I doubt that any judge in his right mind would rule against the company if the decision was to give up some profitability to avoid civil liability...although, again, we're dealing with grey scales in civil liability.
The question isn't whether a poster to /. is willing to do that, it's whether a company is willing to do that. Unfortunately, the reality is that companies often do consider profit and legality to be the only standard they must live by, and completely ignore morality and ethics.
I wish we could live in an ideal world where corporations and corporate officials all lived by clear standards of morality and ethics. The reality is that many corporations have repeatedly shown that they have already decided to live by profit alone, and deal with legal liabilities only as they affect their bottom line.
The sad thing is that this attitude is so prevalent, and seems to be increasing...
In fact, it might even be more effective to thump a block of wood with a leather cover that says "Holy Bible"...that way there'd be no temptation to read it! ;-P
Where do you come up with this?
Now, the actual design documents are copyrighted, so if I copied said documents in order to make the duplicate components, that would be copyright infringement.
Some of the components I need to make might be obscured by trade secrets, so I'd have to figure them out without obtaining the trade secrets illegally.
Other components could be covered by patents, so it would be illegal to sell them until the patent expired.
And trademark law would prevent me from marketing my hand-built sports car as, say, a "Corvette", even if it was identical to the Chevrolet sports car. (see Carroll Shelby's trademark lawsuit against Factory Five Racing)
But as long as I stay within these strictures, I don't see anything that would make it illegal for me to make a component-level duplicate of my car. Could you enlighten me?
- For example, think about a newbie, he wants to buy a new car, he asks in a forum "which car should I use?".
He will receive MANY answers: Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Honda, etc,etc... The number of answer will confuse him, and will create some troubles, he will ask Ford-related question in a group of users which only drive Hondas for example, well you get the idea.
So having such a big diversity is a "bad" things for a newbie, it confuses him..
- Another example: At one time, I wanted to customize a new car in order a) to learn how that car works b) improve the performance of the car, if possible.
Which car? Well frankly I don't care, the only thing I wanted is to find a well-made car which would be used for a long time.. But the problem is that there is a big number of cars (Ford, Chevy, Honda, etc..), and frankly I don't want to spend years looking at all the technological details in order to see which has the "best" technology before helping the "best" to become even better.. So, unable to choose, I gave up..
Oh, wait...we don't all drive Fords, do we?
That's strange...it seems that most people can deal with the variety available in automobiles, whether they're picking one just to use or to customize. Why would a text editor be any different?
Well, now, you may just be right. In fact, you probably are right. I sure can't see any easy way to allow fair use while still controlling access.
But my whole point is that the legislation as it stands now basically gives them carte blanche to implement any type of access controls they want as long as they also deter copyright infringement. The best incentive I can think of to encourage the MPAA to respect our fair use rights is to remove their protection from circumvention devices if their device substantially impairs fair use of their works.
If we have legislation like this, then the MPAA et al. will have great incentive to find some way to protect copyright without impairing fair use. If not, then the government has given tacit approval to their encroachment on fair use rights.
Piracy can only be prevented by
Again, I agree -- adding additional penalties to "use of a circumvention device while infringing copyrights" might help with the deterrent, too...
Unfortunately, the statute could easily be read either way...
It's pretty obvious that it's in the best interest of the MPAA (and other copyright-holding entities) to have as much control as possible over those purchasing and using their content. They have no incentive, financial or otherwise, to preserve the fair use rights of the public.
The interpretation of DMCA advocated by the MPAA's counsel hands them that control on a silver platter, and allows them to prevent both copyright infringement and fair use with the same protection tool.
That's the basic fault of the DMCA: it doesn't make any clear distinction between prevention from copyright infringement and prevention of legitimate fair use of copyrighted material. This is what needs to be fixed, either through the courts or through the Congress.
All we need is something that preserves the legislative protection for tools that protect copyright without affecting fair use, but removes the protection for tools that prevent both infringement and fair use. Maybe like this (of course, IANAL):
I'm not sure I'm clear about your understanding of God and His job. Could you answer a couple questions for me:
Are you saying that genetic diseases and harmful mutations are the result of God's wisdom, and to counteract them would be wrong?
If we would be "doing God's job" to use genetic knowledge and technology to counteract genetic diseases, aren't we also "doing God's job" when we use medical knowledge and technology to counteract other diseases?
n/m
- An electronic signature can be a "sound, symbol, or process" - like clicking an "Agree" or "Continue" button
- The electronic signature creates a legally binding contract as long as there is "a statement of the hardware and software requirements" and it is confirmed "in a manner that reasonably demonstrates that the consumer can access information in the electronic form that will be used"
- Vendors are allowed to charge extra fee for tangible or immutable copy of transaction record
- Vendors are allowed to charge "withdrawal of consent" fee for ppl that begin but do not complete an electronic transaction
- Vendors can specify that this electronically-signed contract applies to a whole category of future transactions
- "The legal effectiveness, validity, or enforceability of any contract executed by a consumer shall not be denied solely because of the failure to obtain electronic consent or confirmation of consent by that consumer...."
- The consumer is required to provide accurate information to allow the vendor to contact them electronically
BEWARE!Of course, this means that the procedure(s) used to generate the relevance rating must be publically available. But there's nothing stopping the source site from using a different rating system internally to find the pages, as long as they use a public algorithm for the rating that's returned with the page...
Would this help at all?
Are these higher expectations a result of being on the Internet, or does Internet access self-select people that have higher expectations?
Will the influx of people onto the Internet raise the expectations of the general populace, or will it dilute the expectations of the Internet community?
Einstein's genius was in finding new (and better) ways of looking at things. Seems to me that's what's needed here, too...
Ya know what? You've gotta be right. It must all just be coincidence. MS would never stoop to making a coordinated attack on its critics, right?
I guess I'll have to wait for the Dura to come out. I need more than just *one* unit of durability -- on any scale you wish to use!
I'm thinking that PDA UI development is really early in its life cycle -- there's still a lot of ideas to be tried. The PalmOS UI is pretty much the best available right now, AFAIAC, but there's much room for improvement.
If Samsung provides good enough support (HW docs, driver source, etc.), the Yopy has the potential for becoming a UI-hacker's machine. It's the first one that separates the OS from the UI, allowing UI development. We could see some really interesting progress on PDA UIs with a platform like this...
Any remedy that only focuses on preventing the IE strategies is doomed to fail, because MS is already looking at the next products that need help...
The most obvious "opportunity" right now is MSN. They are already using the "MSN rebate" on hardware to try and tie people into using MSN. They've also hinted that they may change their app licensing strategy from "sale" to rental over the Internet (can you say "MSN"?).
There are two types of tactics that we need to watch for:
No matter whether the remedy is a breakup or strict regulation, it will fail miserably unless it is broad enough and forward-looking enough to prevent MS from using identical strategies on future products like MSN.
Doing a quick Google search, I ran across this article praising the development of "interactive relationship managers" (IRMs) like the one developed by Predictive Networks. The author is all agog about the marketing benefits of using these IRMs to target exactly what the customers want. He says that 'the "best customers"...[will] make sure that the only advertising that gets through is advertising that they really want to hear.' But then he claims that the way to do this is to use IRMs that 'collect user data based on the surfing habits of ISP customers and then make appropriate suggestions as to what else those customers might like or need.
He also mentions the opportunity for companies to act as free ISPs to their customers so that they can easily gather the profiling information.
<RANT>
This "solution" is patently ridiculous (maybe it should be patented!). Am I a "best customer" in his terms, or not? I absolutely do not want my time and bandwidth wasted by any advertisement unless I decide that I want to see it. According to his definition, that makes me a "best customer".
But there's no way that I want any commercial entity, either software or meatware, to profile my actions and try to figure out what I might be interested in. I'm sorry, but this "best customer" wants to choose for himself what he's interested in seeing. I know best what I'm interested in. Any other "solution" is a travesty, and especially one that violates my privacy in order to provide a useless "service" that I do not want at all.
Not only is the IRM a violation of my privacy, but it's also ineffective -- my current interests are not determined by my previous interests. If I am interested in purchasing something, I will find the information I need for myself. And it will be good information -- not just biased marketing drivel.
How can someone be so clueless to think that IRMs are a solution for people who want to control what advertising they see? They are the same marketing solution all over again - "we will tell you what you should be interested in."
Sorry, but I'm not listening. I already know what I'm interested in.
</RANT>
For instance, a lot of the newer Hondas bundle other circuitry, like the remote door locks, directly into the radio. If you want to replace the radio, you've either got to give up that bundled functionality or keep the original radio (and stuff it somewhere else) so it can continue to provide that functionality.
A similar thing happens with Bose systems. They don't use standard signal levels between the radio and the speakers, so if you replace the radio, you either have to use an adapter to make it work or replace the speakers as well.
Hmmm...bundling unrelated technology...using non-standard and proprietary interfaces...strategies sound familiar, eh? :(
Thanks for the link. Balances things out a bit.
Oh, and no problem with you playing the devil's advocate -- sometimes you've got to be inciteful to be insightful! ;)
Why should we use artificial scarcity to make IP fit into the traditional market models rather than developing new market models that fit the reality of minimal-cost duplication?
I'd be interested in seeing the Independant article. Is the it available on the web, or do I have to try and find a paper copy? Do US newsstands carry The Independant, or is it primarily distributed in the UK?
Are you saying that NetBenefit found potentially libellous materials on Outcast's site? The interview makes it clear that Outcast's site was removed because they failed to give legal assurance to NetBenefit that there would be no libellous material posted in the future. On what basis are you asserting otherwise?
Ah, so you aren't directly familiar with the situation??
I'm sorry, but that's both prejudice and circular reasoning. You're saying, "If Outcast is like what I think they're like, then they're probably like this, too."
Look, it doesn't matter what "branch of politic" they come from, or whether they're gay or straight, or anything. It doesn't matter whether you or I agree or disagree with their philosophy.
What does matter is that their site was apparently removed as prior restraint against some percieved potential for libellous material being posted in the future. If that's the test of speech, then God help us all -- 'cause we sure aren't helping ourselves!
I also find it amusing that you are supporting the removal of a site based on potential future libellous material, when you assert that Outcast could well be "less than rigarous with thier sources of facts." If that isn't directly libellous, then it sure seems to be evidence that you may be posting libellous material in the future. Should your access be revoked based on that?