People are concerned about government use of domestic surveillance drones, but how is that different than what happens when people make their own drones, or buy them at a toy store?
I can't tell if your question is rhetorical or not, because it doesn't work as a rhetorical (the simple, obvious answer is false). So here goes the straight-man answer:
1. Private citizens are not (generally) using taxpayer money to do so.
2. Private citizens do not (generally) have the authority to incarcerate other people.
3. Private citizens are supposed to monitor civil servants even when there is no reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
4. Private citizens are not (generally) supposed to engage in surveillance of other private citizens under any conditions.
5. Civil servants are not supposed to engage in surveillance of private citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
6. Civil servants are not supposed to buy or build things unless it is the public will that they do so (this can be an implicit will interpreted by civil leaders such as chiefs of police).
7. Private citizens are not supposed to be inhibited in buying or building things unless the thing in question has been specifically regulated through the legislative process or other due deliberative process authorized by the people.
All of Our Founding Fathers who signed The Declaration of Independence had sufficiently many testicles to do so with their real names.
One example does not a case make. Perhaps you have not heard of Publius. Anonymous speech and anonymous civil disobedience has a long history in democracy. Learn more.
If you want to disobey the law without getting punished, that's not civil disobedience
I think you may have hit "reply" on the wrong comment. My comment specifically points out that I think it is the just and proper duty of the FBI to arrest these people. Cheers.
Today, it's more menacing. Consider the outcomes of just three data breaches launched in the name of hacktivism:
OK, let's consider these outcomes and see if we come up with something that would suitably be called "menacing", with the full emotional meaning of that word.
LulzSec's hack into Sony's PlayStation network in April 2011 is reportedly expected to cost Sony $171 million by the end of the entertainment company's 2012 fiscal year.
Giant corporation that makes a lot more than $171 million per year, due to the economic system that We The People have agreed to use, loses some of that money one year because some of We The People break the law. Giant corporation that gets a helluva lot more taxpayer money spent on protecting its goods every year than the typical American citizen gets in a lifetime (with good reason, but they are the beneficiaries of the good side of We The People). Giant corporation that is the beneficiary of the good nature of We The People loses some of its money one year due to the bad nature of We The People. Not good, and the perpetrators should be charged, but hard for me to see that as "menacing." When I think "menacing", I think hooded figure in a darkened alley with blood spatter on his ratty sneakers, not "Company that is doing very well because of the good of society sometimes loses a little bit to the darker nature of society."
When Former HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr threatened to expose top members of Anonymous, the hacktivist group retaliated by breaking into the security company's systems and exposing controversial and confidential emails. Barr subsequently received death threats and was forced to step down from his job.
Ummm, the death threats are bad, but the reason he had to step down was not because the emails were exposed -- it was because he was directing his company to do some seriously evil and un-American shit. The death threats are probably in the "menacing" category, but given they came to nothing, they are a damned sight less menacing than it was to have a person as malevolent as Aaron Barr in a position with so much power over so many American citizens. Failure to see his exposure and removal as a grand slam win for the citizens of the United States betrays a deeply disturbed sense of justice.
After Anonymous broke into the member database for Bill O'Reilly's website, a woman who's name, email address, physical address and password were exposed during the breach suffered $400 in fraudulent credit card charges and huge amounts of embarrassment after hackers posted pornographic pictures to her Facebook page and sent pornographic emails via her AOL account, according to Ars Technica.
$400 and some porn? Yawn. Bad, but not "menacing" like the part in the old silent movies and radio theater where the organ player would play the big creepy chord (called a "sting", I think).
I understand the motive for CIO to write a piece like this blowing sunshine up the Mr. Henry's skirt and pandering to it's anti-social executive target market, but I'd like to see it at least be a little more artful. This article shows all the subtlety of pooping on the hood of your ex's car.
Mr. Henry mentions the First Amendment, but says nothing about the Declaration of Independence. The First Amendment specifies that free speech is not subject to the discretion of the government, and he swore an oath to defend that boundary of Federal authority. Saying he supports that is like saying he does not support interstate trafficking in illegal goods. That's just doing what he swore he would do -- he doesn't get a pat on the back for that beyond what we inherently owe him for his civil service. The First is not what is in question regarding hacktivism.
The Declaration is the closest thing we have to an official US document that covers what a hacktivist would claim gives him a legitimate mandate to act. Civil disobedience may often include elements of free speech, but it is the illegality of the action that define it as civil disobedience -- it is right in the name.
It is an easy topic to address from the official position of the FBI: "The role of the FBI is to enforce law, and the kind of civil disobedience embodied in the Declaration of Independence is unlawful activity. The Declaration does not make civil disobedience legal, and my job is to enforce the law."
The fact that he did not address it head-on implies one of two things to me: He may not have a deep understanding of the founding of this nation, and the reasons that it had to be founded as it was. Alternately, he may understand the disobedient nature of our founding, but be choosing not broaching the topic.
If a person in his position is not aware of the anarchic nature of this nation's founding, and the reason that disobedience resonates even with lawful patriots, he should be removed from office. He has to at least understand that mentality in order to fight it, if nothing else.
If he is just not broaching the topic, I guess I understand his pragmatic decision, but I find it sleazy. He is being disingenuous and trivializing the extraordinarily delicate balance of true democracy.
It is intrinsic in the nature of Western Democracy that civil disobedience both violates the law and is necessary to refresh the tree of liberty. It is also clearly the charter of the FBI to enforce the law including by arresting people who engage in civil disobedience. Even if he thought it was wrong to arrest such people he would still be obligated to do so -- he is in the executive, not the judicial. The fact that those things are true and also in tension is part of what makes the FBI's job such a difficult task for the men and women who serve. Ignoring that fact does us all a disservice.
In my consulting days I worked in a lot of places across several industries. The idealized IT department you describe, where its staff care about the underserved needs of the company, does not exist. Anywhere. They are either drones, or good but frustrated technologists enmeshed in a system that really wants drones, not creative thinkers and talented problem solvers. And the good ones are never, repeat, never the ones in charge of the IT department.
I tend to agree, most of the time. I've been in a couple places where it worked, to at least some extent, and more where it was possible to make it happen in bits and bobs, here and there. Overall, you are right, it is a challenge, and I have yet to see an organization that I thought capable of getting there 100%.
The point of my post, however, is not whether you can reach the ideal state tomorrow in a given company. It is to be cognizant of the objective and the upside in seeking it. If we are not at least aware of what results in the best outcome (for ourselves, for the company, for the information), then we become part of the problem. If we aren't always looking for little edges, little angles, where we can improve the system, then we are not doing our job. That is true whether you are an end user, the administrator of the ACL, or anywhere in between.
Pragmatism has its place, but being pragmatic without considering the optimal solution is indistinguishable from causing the problem. When you take a pragmatic shortcut, you should be thinking, "This is a pragmatic shortcut which I take consciously. Is there anything I can do, for a reasonable cost to me, to improve this for the next who comes this way, so they might be inclined to walk an inch closer to the optimal path?"
If each of us just gives up a little more each day, as your post seems to suggest, we will surely lead to destruction. If we each try to do a little better each day, we may still wind up down the same road -- but at least we'll be able to say we tried.
The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution
Boy, howdy, AT&T, you can say that again. It is unexpectedly honest of you to recognized that this could only be considered a good thing in the interim. Surely would have been a loss to our information infrastructure in the long run, but you are right that it may have smoothed out the short run a bit. How an honest person managed to slip a hint of truth into your deceptioneering is beyond me.
Whoever wrote that bit, well done. Rest assured that there are people out here who caught your little wink and nod in that phrasing. Nice work.
Don't rise to this asshole author's bait. He's a troll or he is ignorant, and the right answer is neither that people should nor that they should not thwart IT, and the right answer is neither that IT should smack them down nor that IT should give them everything they want.
The right answer is that the people who feel they need to thwart IT are a valuable resource. They are people who have a need that is not being satisfied. That need should be explored and a resolution found. Sometimes the answer is, "No, because it would not be safe / cost-efficient / legal." Sometimes the answer is, "There is already a way to do that, but not the way you are attempting to do it." Sometimes the answer is, "We should add that capability, because it will make the company more profitable."
The idea that it is all X or all Y is fundamentally rooted in "us versus them" mentality. It is a bullshit, douchebag mentality which is, unfortunately, actively fostered by assorted self-righteous nincompoops and the kinds of people who watch the UFC not for the display of physical prowess and grace, but because they like to see people hurting each other.
Don't rise to the bait. Users who are trying to thwart the system are a valuable resource. You want to plumb them to discover unserved needs, underserved needs, and opportunities to improve training. You also want to help them understand why they can't do certain things so that their frustration doesn't fester and become a morale issue.
It is easy to see why the author is a writer. He clearly would not operate well in a more team-oriented context.
Like many Western countries, you sent your manufacturing economy abroad, believing in the fairy story of "Intellectual Property" as the new way of making money.
While there is a lot of merit in what you say, the notion that IP has become most of our economy is not true. If you take the broadest definition of media -- including not just CDs and movie tickets, but things like Internet advertising and billboards -- total US media revenue is something like $450 billion per year. That is about 3.1% of the economy. Add in patent licensing and the monopoly rent portion of revenue on patented products -- using a similarly broad definition -- you're still well under 10% of GDP.
The idea that IP is the last thing we are capable of is false. It may be a larger portion of our economy than of many nations, but it is still a small enough portion of the economy that it could disappear tomorrow and it would not be as bad as the 2008 crash.
That also means that we don't need to set the Internet on fire and start throwing people who download The Little Mermaid in jail. If 10% of the people are assholes who don't pay for the media they consume and we just ignore them and go on with our lives, we'll be fine.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has always pleased me. It doesn't give the sense of helping the underprivileged, admittedly, but they are working to improve the future for everyone. If we don't pull out of our rapid dive into censorship and authoritarianism, we will significantly hobble future generations from all economic castes.
There's a bit of mental gymnastics there, to be sure, but to me it is valid. JM2C
DMCA is better thing than not to have it, because otherwise website owners would be liable for the action their users take.
The DMCA is a shit sandwich on good bread. The good bread doesn't make it a good sandwich. Websites that enable the public to distribute information are a Good Thing, and tossing them to the wolves to protect a copy of The Lion King does not make economic sense. The acceptance of the DMCA by a 2m+ user ID is a startlingly good example of The Overton Window in action (or you are a shill -- not unlikely given your quick +5 for that empty comment). Until we see some serious punishment for one of the serial abusers of the DMCA, it cannot remotely be considered a law in the public interest. It is a weapon of abuse, exactly as so many of us warned it would be when it was getting shoved down our throats, and exactly as so many of us are warning about SOPA now. The fact that they are now even bigger bastards wanting to be even more abusive to protect their little industry does not make the DMCA good.
Quick question: If you had to give up the Internet for a year, or had to give up TV, music, and movies for a year, which would you do? I suspect the answer is, "I could not give up the Internet for a year, because it would cost me my job." We are protecting (poorly, I might add) one small industry at the expense of the most important technological advance in history, which is instrumental to every other industry and even to the small industry that is being protecting. The past 15 years of copyright law have been a nearly unmitigated loss for United States and global economic progress. To pretend otherwise is to betray a lack of sober reflection or understanding of the bigger picture.
If they don't have a copyright claim wouldn't this be Tortious interference?
This is one of the more subtle and devious aspects of SOPA. It removes liability from ISPs for doing whatever the RIAA tells them to do. Not sure if it affects tortious interference, but it does affect restraint of trade. Restraint of trade says that Mastercard can't just refuse to process transactions at, say, K-Mart, without cause. That keeps Mastercard from being in Wal Mart's pocket.
SOPA says it is OK for the people who transport media to be in the pocket of a subset of the people who produce media.
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because cell phones are actually a distraction (though, personally, I still don't think they should be outlawed), and because the NTSB wants to look like it is doing something to justify its share of your paycheck.
Answering that question was really easy. I suspect you intended that question to induce some other reaction. Perhaps in the future you can be less obtuse.
Pardon my vent, I'm just tired of all the weasel-wording, flippant self-righteousness, and general poncery in public commentary. Say what you mean. If your position really does have such inescapable merit, let it stand on its own -- don't browbeat the listener. Show some respect for your audience.
posted a counter-notice and YouTube requires our show to stay off YouTube for 10 days to give UMG the opportunity to decide whether to take us to court or not.
As far as I know, there is no law requiring YouTube to keep the content down for 10 days while UMG decides. Sounds to me like this is not just the DMCA at work. YouTube is going beyond what the law requires in servicing UMG at the expense of smaller players.
YouTube needs to get as big a public black eye over this as UMG. Perhaps bigger, since YouTube owns more of the video distribution market than UMG does of music.
I don't think they did. I don't think this qualifies. I think Google has set up an API at YouTube that lets some very large companies with special privileges request that material be taken down, and YouTube does it for them. It was originally built in response to the high volume of DMCA takedown requests, but I am not sure that calls against this API constitute a copyright claim. I would bet large amounts of money that they do not meet the legal definition of a DMCA takedown request. Too much risk for the labels in doing so.
In the end, it is just YouTube playing ball with the people who own the copyrights to the content on Vevo, which brings YouTube a lot of revenue.
Find the lyrics, sing them yourself, and auto-tune it.
Better make sure nobody can hear you when you do it, or that'd be a public performance violation of copyright. I hear they're working on a bill to allow RIAA lawyers to remove your vocal chords if they suspect you of singing Happy Birthday in the presence of another person or persons.
if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption?
While it may not apply in this specific context, there is a substantive reason.
The old guys in suits you are referring to are US legislators, the RIAA, and the MPAA. There are two significant reasons why you can trust average stoned basement dwellers to be less corruptible (assuming they are average people):
1. There have been a number of instances of members of the suspect set of old guys in suits demonstrating that they are significantly more susceptible to corruption than average people. This provides a measure which can be used to estimate the probability of a randomly selected member of the set being corruptible.
2. The process of becoming a member of the legislature or a senior executive of the **AA includes an iterative filter which (perhaps unintentionally) preferentially selects for those who are willing and capable of playing dirty. This implies that from a set of individuals who begin the process of ascending, the individuals who reach the top of the systems in question will show a biased distribution -- they will have a higher probability of being corruptible than the overall set of people who began the selection process.
Pretty straightforward, I think. Average people are less prone to corruption than average legislators or average executives of the **AA -- both according to observed results and by analyzing the selection process.
Although, I guess, it could be the case that stoned basement dwellers are also a biased set with respect to corruptibility, so I could be wrong.
I have seen several good ideas in this thread already. Here is another that may be useful.
Try to find a way to associate the outcome the user is hoping for with the behavior that you are trying to engender. The user is hoping for their problem to be resolved quickly. The behavior you want to engender is a complete, yet concise, description of the problem and the steps to reproduce it. Make the connection between the former and the latter in the user's mind, and you'll have a self-motivated convert.
When you get a clear and concise report, be sure to thank the submitter and help them realize that the clarity and brevity made it easier to solve the problem. They'll feel good about it, and you might even be one of the few on the tech side to have ever said, "thank you" to that particular end user. (we can be an ornery lot)
When you get an incomplete or vague report and have to ask the user for more information, be sure to explain that a more clear bug report will make it easier for you to solve their problem quickly in the future. Make sure it comes across as, "I want to solve your problem more quickly in the future", not, "You did it wrong."
When you get a rambling, nitpicky, or pure-complaint report, you'll have to use a bit more judgment to figure out how to guide the person for future reference, but you can usually find a way if you think about it.
Really it's just programming -- most end users don't exactly have a complicated UI. Be nice, help them understand how satisfying your needs will benefit them, they'll do it. A nice bonus is that they'll be better end users for every subsequent support person, and they will feel good about doing it.
Simple obvious fact one: The larger company will have a larger market share. Simple obvious fact two: The smaller company will have less market share.
Simple obvious fact three: There is still a valid point being made here.
The point being made is that it is not 600 or 6,000 companies that own the lion's share.
Why is that worth considering (not necessarily good, or bad, but worth considering)? Because, that means we have foregone the opportunity to have 600 small entrepreneurial companies each making 1/100th of what the 6 majors are making. Maybe that would be better, maybe it would be worse. It has some obvious upside (more diverse approaches to the business of making and distributing content being tested, for example), and some obvious downside (less opportunity for big-budget content, for example).
The fact being raised is not that ninety percent of the content is owned by X companies. It is that six companies is a small number, particularly for such a big market. The author says this is bad. He may be wrong, but it is a point worth considering as we move through the massive upheaval that is happening in information production and distribution. This is particularly important given that we are passing a great deal of new legislation that grants the government more power to interfere in the information marketplace by extending the duration and force of fiat monopolies on production and distribution of particular information.
It may all be a good thing, but we would be fools not to contemplate the foregone opportunity to have a larger number of smaller enterprises. Healthy analysis of opportunity cost is critical to maximizing economic productivity, especially in such a heavily government influenced market as information production and distribution.
Sec 337A.(a)(7)(C)(i) (top of the third page of the PDF):
[an Internet site is not infringing]:
if the Internet site has a practice of expeditiously removing, or disabling access to, material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity after notification by the owner of the copyright or trademark alleged to be infringed or its authorized representative;
This still says that a claim is as good as a conviction in terms of requiring the removal of information, and that failure to comply with such claims is enough to cut off the air supply of the company.
We just had a story posted earlier today of a company that was closed down for an entire year without having done anything wrong except being falsely accused. We cannot simply shut down any company that the copyright cabal says we should, especially when they have proven time and again that their dragnets have a total disregard for accuracy.
Sorry Mr. Wyden, I love your work in general, but this is still far outside the realm of due process. I know; failing to support this may mean SOPA gets passed instead -- but the "less wrong" swindle has been pulled on us by these guys too many times for me to buy it anymore. I'm not going to support a law that proposes to shut down slightly fewer innocent businesses.
It is reasonable to assume that priority order of human endeavor starts with the things that are most broken. That makes sense from an objective efficiency perspective, but not from the perspective of pragmatic business. Pragmatic business is focused on maximizing shareholder value. The priority ordering of pragmatic business is highest profit first. In an efficient free market, that would be the same as most broken first. In a market with biasing factors, however, the highest priority markets -- the markets that are most profitable -- are those which benefit most from those biases.
One broad market that has been the benefactor of shifting public resource investment is intellectual property. We have been granting longer and broader monopoly rights, and becoming more narrow in our interpretation and protection of competitive and consumer rights in IP. We have been investing public resources in making IP more profitable. As with any market, IP has ancillary markets. Those ancillary markets benefit from increases in the profitability of the primary market. In the case of IP, one example is television.
Investment on enhancing television, despite the fact that it is more than adequate to home entertainment wants, is a side effect of our public investment in increasing IP profitability.
Television is far from the only such example. Another excellent one is IP law enforcement. We have been investing a lot of effort on "fixing" IP law enforcement, which some would say was not broken. From the RIAA's lawyers and lobbying expenditures to ICE's budget, we spend a great deal of our national income on IP law enforcement.
The increase in IP law enforcement naturally returns us to the beginning of this essay; increasing investment in IP profitability. That is true in the direct sense that our investment is resulting in the capture of more of the potential profit. It is also true -- in proportion to the corruptibility of our government -- in the indirect sense of creating new IP privileges and new potential profit.
Vote with your wallet.... There's tons of high quality CC licensed, and independently produced, media out there.
Totally agreed. Here's a source I just recently found: Podiobooks.
Otherwise quit your bitching.
Don't be silly. Of course people should bitch when they feel that our GDP or public funds are being misdirected. And they should present the reasons for their position, so that their hypotheses can be tested for merit. How else are we supposed to detect when we are on a flawed path?
That doesn't mean you can pirate them.
According to whom, and why? This is an unsupported categorical statement, and lacks prima facie merit. Are you saying that people should not do this because it is illegal, because it harms society, both, or some other reason? You will know when you have presented an actual position, because it will be something that can be rationally challenged based on observable data. Short of that, you are just blowing wind.
Consuming them anyway without paying isn't a protest.
How do you know? How can you say what a person's motivations are for their actions?
It may not be, under your principles, a valid protest. You may have evidence that it is not an effective form of protest. You did not present anything to support either of those positions. Regardless, however, your mere declaration does not preclude copyright infringement from being a protest.
Expressing and explaining your perspective in a way that invites consideration, understanding, and growth is an excellent thing. Merely dictating what others must do to meet with your approval makes you sound like a pontificating ass.
The GOP arn't attacking Obama because he is black - they are attacking him because he is a Democrat, their natural enemy.
I suspect you are thinking of the 20th century. This is the new millennium. The GOP is attacking Obama because the political theater script specifies it. The unwritten charter clearly states that the one political party (commonly known as The Lobbyist Party) shall be split roughly evenly along pretentious wedge-issue lines, that no substantive change will be made on any wedge issues unless it increases the vitriol on the lips of the 80% of citizens who are not really paying attention, that all office-holders will work in earnest to prevent anyone who is not a member of the lobbyist party from winning any election, and that all actual bill passage must be coordinated in closed-door sessions to be attended by representatives of not less than 10% of the major lobbying firms.
The GOP's greatest ally in keeping their share (of political seats and of the lobbying cashflow) at 45% - 55% is the Democrats. And visa versa. The parties are not stupid, and they most certainly are not honorable. The one party exists either by evolution or by intelligent design, depending on your perspective, but that it exists is as obvious as a pumpkin in a pea patch.
Look at it this way: Nobody would believe in God if it weren't for Satan. Put either party in either role, the other is the other. 'round about the 80's or so, the parties smacked their collective forehead and said, "Ohhhhh, that's how we keep ourselves in power without having to actually figure out a healthy path forward for all citizens (that would be hard)."
The iPhone is always with them, so they are always connected. The iPad is with them in classes and at home, sometimes elsewhere. The PS3 for gaming of course, to avoid the annoying mess that is PC gaming.
Did you notice that each of those devices is surrounded by a defensive perimeter of patents, DMCA restrictions, network contracts, and exclusive partnerships? Those things are doing better because our government has propped them up with monopolistic barriers to entry. Monopolies create the opportunity to collect monopoly rents, which offer higher profit margins than the competitive market pricing that general purpose systems face. Hence business investment in the technology field is biased in favor of such walled gardens and the walled garden mentality. That bias leads to distorted evolution. You cannot, by observing a distorted evolutionary system, make declarations about what the customer wants -- he is not making a free market choice.
The walled garden does not reduce exploitability. The very nature of an exploit is that it is doing something the user does not want it to do. A walled garden is no more effective at preventing exploits than a normal operating system with the same security features. The problem is not that normal operating systems cannot have the same security, it is that the investment is not there because the RoI of walled gardens is propped up by monopoly rents.
Slashdot Mirror
People are concerned about government use of domestic surveillance drones, but how is that different than what happens when people make their own drones, or buy them at a toy store?
I can't tell if your question is rhetorical or not, because it doesn't work as a rhetorical (the simple, obvious answer is false). So here goes the straight-man answer:
1. Private citizens are not (generally) using taxpayer money to do so.
2. Private citizens do not (generally) have the authority to incarcerate other people.
3. Private citizens are supposed to monitor civil servants even when there is no reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
4. Private citizens are not (generally) supposed to engage in surveillance of other private citizens under any conditions.
5. Civil servants are not supposed to engage in surveillance of private citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
6. Civil servants are not supposed to buy or build things unless it is the public will that they do so (this can be an implicit will interpreted by civil leaders such as chiefs of police).
7. Private citizens are not supposed to be inhibited in buying or building things unless the thing in question has been specifically regulated through the legislative process or other due deliberative process authorized by the people.
Hope that helps.
All of Our Founding Fathers who signed The Declaration of Independence had sufficiently many testicles to do so with their real names.
One example does not a case make. Perhaps you have not heard of Publius. Anonymous speech and anonymous civil disobedience has a long history in democracy. Learn more.
If you want to disobey the law without getting punished, that's not civil disobedience
I think you may have hit "reply" on the wrong comment. My comment specifically points out that I think it is the just and proper duty of the FBI to arrest these people. Cheers.
Today, it's more menacing. Consider the outcomes of just three data breaches launched in the name of hacktivism:
OK, let's consider these outcomes and see if we come up with something that would suitably be called "menacing", with the full emotional meaning of that word.
LulzSec's hack into Sony's PlayStation network in April 2011 is reportedly expected to cost Sony $171 million by the end of the entertainment company's 2012 fiscal year.
Giant corporation that makes a lot more than $171 million per year, due to the economic system that We The People have agreed to use, loses some of that money one year because some of We The People break the law. Giant corporation that gets a helluva lot more taxpayer money spent on protecting its goods every year than the typical American citizen gets in a lifetime (with good reason, but they are the beneficiaries of the good side of We The People). Giant corporation that is the beneficiary of the good nature of We The People loses some of its money one year due to the bad nature of We The People. Not good, and the perpetrators should be charged, but hard for me to see that as "menacing." When I think "menacing", I think hooded figure in a darkened alley with blood spatter on his ratty sneakers, not "Company that is doing very well because of the good of society sometimes loses a little bit to the darker nature of society."
When Former HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr threatened to expose top members of Anonymous, the hacktivist group retaliated by breaking into the security company's systems and exposing controversial and confidential emails. Barr subsequently received death threats and was forced to step down from his job.
Ummm, the death threats are bad, but the reason he had to step down was not because the emails were exposed -- it was because he was directing his company to do some seriously evil and un-American shit. The death threats are probably in the "menacing" category, but given they came to nothing, they are a damned sight less menacing than it was to have a person as malevolent as Aaron Barr in a position with so much power over so many American citizens. Failure to see his exposure and removal as a grand slam win for the citizens of the United States betrays a deeply disturbed sense of justice.
After Anonymous broke into the member database for Bill O'Reilly's website, a woman who's name, email address, physical address and password were exposed during the breach suffered $400 in fraudulent credit card charges and huge amounts of embarrassment after hackers posted pornographic pictures to her Facebook page and sent pornographic emails via her AOL account, according to Ars Technica.
$400 and some porn? Yawn. Bad, but not "menacing" like the part in the old silent movies and radio theater where the organ player would play the big creepy chord (called a "sting", I think).
I understand the motive for CIO to write a piece like this blowing sunshine up the Mr. Henry's skirt and pandering to it's anti-social executive target market, but I'd like to see it at least be a little more artful. This article shows all the subtlety of pooping on the hood of your ex's car.
Mr. Henry mentions the First Amendment, but says nothing about the Declaration of Independence. The First Amendment specifies that free speech is not subject to the discretion of the government, and he swore an oath to defend that boundary of Federal authority. Saying he supports that is like saying he does not support interstate trafficking in illegal goods. That's just doing what he swore he would do -- he doesn't get a pat on the back for that beyond what we inherently owe him for his civil service. The First is not what is in question regarding hacktivism.
The Declaration is the closest thing we have to an official US document that covers what a hacktivist would claim gives him a legitimate mandate to act. Civil disobedience may often include elements of free speech, but it is the illegality of the action that define it as civil disobedience -- it is right in the name.
It is an easy topic to address from the official position of the FBI: "The role of the FBI is to enforce law, and the kind of civil disobedience embodied in the Declaration of Independence is unlawful activity. The Declaration does not make civil disobedience legal, and my job is to enforce the law."
The fact that he did not address it head-on implies one of two things to me: He may not have a deep understanding of the founding of this nation, and the reasons that it had to be founded as it was. Alternately, he may understand the disobedient nature of our founding, but be choosing not broaching the topic.
If a person in his position is not aware of the anarchic nature of this nation's founding, and the reason that disobedience resonates even with lawful patriots, he should be removed from office. He has to at least understand that mentality in order to fight it, if nothing else.
If he is just not broaching the topic, I guess I understand his pragmatic decision, but I find it sleazy. He is being disingenuous and trivializing the extraordinarily delicate balance of true democracy.
It is intrinsic in the nature of Western Democracy that civil disobedience both violates the law and is necessary to refresh the tree of liberty. It is also clearly the charter of the FBI to enforce the law including by arresting people who engage in civil disobedience. Even if he thought it was wrong to arrest such people he would still be obligated to do so -- he is in the executive, not the judicial. The fact that those things are true and also in tension is part of what makes the FBI's job such a difficult task for the men and women who serve. Ignoring that fact does us all a disservice.
In my consulting days I worked in a lot of places across several industries. The idealized IT department you describe, where its staff care about the underserved needs of the company, does not exist. Anywhere. They are either drones, or good but frustrated technologists enmeshed in a system that really wants drones, not creative thinkers and talented problem solvers. And the good ones are never, repeat, never the ones in charge of the IT department.
I tend to agree, most of the time. I've been in a couple places where it worked, to at least some extent, and more where it was possible to make it happen in bits and bobs, here and there. Overall, you are right, it is a challenge, and I have yet to see an organization that I thought capable of getting there 100%.
The point of my post, however, is not whether you can reach the ideal state tomorrow in a given company. It is to be cognizant of the objective and the upside in seeking it. If we are not at least aware of what results in the best outcome (for ourselves, for the company, for the information), then we become part of the problem. If we aren't always looking for little edges, little angles, where we can improve the system, then we are not doing our job. That is true whether you are an end user, the administrator of the ACL, or anywhere in between.
Pragmatism has its place, but being pragmatic without considering the optimal solution is indistinguishable from causing the problem. When you take a pragmatic shortcut, you should be thinking, "This is a pragmatic shortcut which I take consciously. Is there anything I can do, for a reasonable cost to me, to improve this for the next who comes this way, so they might be inclined to walk an inch closer to the optimal path?"
If each of us just gives up a little more each day, as your post seems to suggest, we will surely lead to destruction. If we each try to do a little better each day, we may still wind up down the same road -- but at least we'll be able to say we tried.
The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution
Boy, howdy, AT&T, you can say that again. It is unexpectedly honest of you to recognized that this could only be considered a good thing in the interim. Surely would have been a loss to our information infrastructure in the long run, but you are right that it may have smoothed out the short run a bit. How an honest person managed to slip a hint of truth into your deceptioneering is beyond me.
Whoever wrote that bit, well done. Rest assured that there are people out here who caught your little wink and nod in that phrasing. Nice work.
Don't rise to this asshole author's bait. He's a troll or he is ignorant, and the right answer is neither that people should nor that they should not thwart IT, and the right answer is neither that IT should smack them down nor that IT should give them everything they want.
The right answer is that the people who feel they need to thwart IT are a valuable resource. They are people who have a need that is not being satisfied. That need should be explored and a resolution found. Sometimes the answer is, "No, because it would not be safe / cost-efficient / legal." Sometimes the answer is, "There is already a way to do that, but not the way you are attempting to do it." Sometimes the answer is, "We should add that capability, because it will make the company more profitable."
The idea that it is all X or all Y is fundamentally rooted in "us versus them" mentality. It is a bullshit, douchebag mentality which is, unfortunately, actively fostered by assorted self-righteous nincompoops and the kinds of people who watch the UFC not for the display of physical prowess and grace, but because they like to see people hurting each other.
Don't rise to the bait. Users who are trying to thwart the system are a valuable resource. You want to plumb them to discover unserved needs, underserved needs, and opportunities to improve training. You also want to help them understand why they can't do certain things so that their frustration doesn't fester and become a morale issue.
It is easy to see why the author is a writer. He clearly would not operate well in a more team-oriented context.
Like many Western countries, you sent your manufacturing economy abroad, believing in the fairy story of "Intellectual Property" as the new way of making money.
While there is a lot of merit in what you say, the notion that IP has become most of our economy is not true. If you take the broadest definition of media -- including not just CDs and movie tickets, but things like Internet advertising and billboards -- total US media revenue is something like $450 billion per year. That is about 3.1% of the economy. Add in patent licensing and the monopoly rent portion of revenue on patented products -- using a similarly broad definition -- you're still well under 10% of GDP.
The idea that IP is the last thing we are capable of is false. It may be a larger portion of our economy than of many nations, but it is still a small enough portion of the economy that it could disappear tomorrow and it would not be as bad as the 2008 crash.
That also means that we don't need to set the Internet on fire and start throwing people who download The Little Mermaid in jail. If 10% of the people are assholes who don't pay for the media they consume and we just ignore them and go on with our lives, we'll be fine.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has always pleased me. It doesn't give the sense of helping the underprivileged, admittedly, but they are working to improve the future for everyone. If we don't pull out of our rapid dive into censorship and authoritarianism, we will significantly hobble future generations from all economic castes.
There's a bit of mental gymnastics there, to be sure, but to me it is valid. JM2C
DMCA is better thing than not to have it, because otherwise website owners would be liable for the action their users take.
The DMCA is a shit sandwich on good bread. The good bread doesn't make it a good sandwich. Websites that enable the public to distribute information are a Good Thing, and tossing them to the wolves to protect a copy of The Lion King does not make economic sense. The acceptance of the DMCA by a 2m+ user ID is a startlingly good example of The Overton Window in action (or you are a shill -- not unlikely given your quick +5 for that empty comment). Until we see some serious punishment for one of the serial abusers of the DMCA, it cannot remotely be considered a law in the public interest. It is a weapon of abuse, exactly as so many of us warned it would be when it was getting shoved down our throats, and exactly as so many of us are warning about SOPA now. The fact that they are now even bigger bastards wanting to be even more abusive to protect their little industry does not make the DMCA good.
Quick question: If you had to give up the Internet for a year, or had to give up TV, music, and movies for a year, which would you do? I suspect the answer is, "I could not give up the Internet for a year, because it would cost me my job." We are protecting (poorly, I might add) one small industry at the expense of the most important technological advance in history, which is instrumental to every other industry and even to the small industry that is being protecting. The past 15 years of copyright law have been a nearly unmitigated loss for United States and global economic progress. To pretend otherwise is to betray a lack of sober reflection or understanding of the bigger picture.
If they don't have a copyright claim wouldn't this be Tortious interference?
This is one of the more subtle and devious aspects of SOPA. It removes liability from ISPs for doing whatever the RIAA tells them to do. Not sure if it affects tortious interference, but it does affect restraint of trade. Restraint of trade says that Mastercard can't just refuse to process transactions at, say, K-Mart, without cause. That keeps Mastercard from being in Wal Mart's pocket.
SOPA says it is OK for the people who transport media to be in the pocket of a subset of the people who produce media.
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because cell phones are actually a distraction (though, personally, I still don't think they should be outlawed), and because the NTSB wants to look like it is doing something to justify its share of your paycheck.
Answering that question was really easy. I suspect you intended that question to induce some other reaction. Perhaps in the future you can be less obtuse.
Pardon my vent, I'm just tired of all the weasel-wording, flippant self-righteousness, and general poncery in public commentary. Say what you mean. If your position really does have such inescapable merit, let it stand on its own -- don't browbeat the listener. Show some respect for your audience.
Good luck guys. Thanks for fighting!
posted a counter-notice and YouTube requires our show to stay off YouTube for 10 days to give UMG the opportunity to decide whether to take us to court or not.
As far as I know, there is no law requiring YouTube to keep the content down for 10 days while UMG decides. Sounds to me like this is not just the DMCA at work. YouTube is going beyond what the law requires in servicing UMG at the expense of smaller players.
YouTube needs to get as big a public black eye over this as UMG. Perhaps bigger, since YouTube owns more of the video distribution market than UMG does of music.
Media conglomerates have been given editorial control of Youtube, subject only to the ability of posters to retain high-priced legal counsel.
That is one of the most densely packed statements of the issue I have seen. Succinct and expository. Well written. Thank you.
make it illegal and punishable to claim copyright
I don't think they did. I don't think this qualifies. I think Google has set up an API at YouTube that lets some very large companies with special privileges request that material be taken down, and YouTube does it for them. It was originally built in response to the high volume of DMCA takedown requests, but I am not sure that calls against this API constitute a copyright claim. I would bet large amounts of money that they do not meet the legal definition of a DMCA takedown request. Too much risk for the labels in doing so.
In the end, it is just YouTube playing ball with the people who own the copyrights to the content on Vevo, which brings YouTube a lot of revenue.
Find the lyrics, sing them yourself, and auto-tune it.
Better make sure nobody can hear you when you do it, or that'd be a public performance violation of copyright. I hear they're working on a bill to allow RIAA lawyers to remove your vocal chords if they suspect you of singing Happy Birthday in the presence of another person or persons.
if you can't trust a bunch of old guys in suits not to become corrupt, why can you trust a bunch of stoned basement dwellers to avoid corruption?
While it may not apply in this specific context, there is a substantive reason.
The old guys in suits you are referring to are US legislators, the RIAA, and the MPAA. There are two significant reasons why you can trust average stoned basement dwellers to be less corruptible (assuming they are average people):
1. There have been a number of instances of members of the suspect set of old guys in suits demonstrating that they are significantly more susceptible to corruption than average people. This provides a measure which can be used to estimate the probability of a randomly selected member of the set being corruptible.
2. The process of becoming a member of the legislature or a senior executive of the **AA includes an iterative filter which (perhaps unintentionally) preferentially selects for those who are willing and capable of playing dirty. This implies that from a set of individuals who begin the process of ascending, the individuals who reach the top of the systems in question will show a biased distribution -- they will have a higher probability of being corruptible than the overall set of people who began the selection process.
Pretty straightforward, I think. Average people are less prone to corruption than average legislators or average executives of the **AA -- both according to observed results and by analyzing the selection process.
Although, I guess, it could be the case that stoned basement dwellers are also a biased set with respect to corruptibility, so I could be wrong.
I have seen several good ideas in this thread already. Here is another that may be useful.
Try to find a way to associate the outcome the user is hoping for with the behavior that you are trying to engender. The user is hoping for their problem to be resolved quickly. The behavior you want to engender is a complete, yet concise, description of the problem and the steps to reproduce it. Make the connection between the former and the latter in the user's mind, and you'll have a self-motivated convert.
When you get a clear and concise report, be sure to thank the submitter and help them realize that the clarity and brevity made it easier to solve the problem. They'll feel good about it, and you might even be one of the few on the tech side to have ever said, "thank you" to that particular end user. (we can be an ornery lot)
When you get an incomplete or vague report and have to ask the user for more information, be sure to explain that a more clear bug report will make it easier for you to solve their problem quickly in the future. Make sure it comes across as, "I want to solve your problem more quickly in the future", not, "You did it wrong."
When you get a rambling, nitpicky, or pure-complaint report, you'll have to use a bit more judgment to figure out how to guide the person for future reference, but you can usually find a way if you think about it.
Really it's just programming -- most end users don't exactly have a complicated UI. Be nice, help them understand how satisfying your needs will benefit them, they'll do it. A nice bonus is that they'll be better end users for every subsequent support person, and they will feel good about doing it.
Simple obvious fact one: The larger company will have a larger market share.
Simple obvious fact two: The smaller company will have less market share.
Simple obvious fact three: There is still a valid point being made here.
The point being made is that it is not 600 or 6,000 companies that own the lion's share.
Why is that worth considering (not necessarily good, or bad, but worth considering)? Because, that means we have foregone the opportunity to have 600 small entrepreneurial companies each making 1/100th of what the 6 majors are making. Maybe that would be better, maybe it would be worse. It has some obvious upside (more diverse approaches to the business of making and distributing content being tested, for example), and some obvious downside (less opportunity for big-budget content, for example).
The fact being raised is not that ninety percent of the content is owned by X companies. It is that six companies is a small number, particularly for such a big market. The author says this is bad. He may be wrong, but it is a point worth considering as we move through the massive upheaval that is happening in information production and distribution. This is particularly important given that we are passing a great deal of new legislation that grants the government more power to interfere in the information marketplace by extending the duration and force of fiat monopolies on production and distribution of particular information.
It may all be a good thing, but we would be fools not to contemplate the foregone opportunity to have a larger number of smaller enterprises. Healthy analysis of opportunity cost is critical to maximizing economic productivity, especially in such a heavily government influenced market as information production and distribution.
Sec 337A.(a)(7)(C)(i) (top of the third page of the PDF):
[an Internet site is not infringing]:
if the Internet site has a practice of expeditiously removing, or disabling access to, material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity after notification by the owner of the copyright or trademark alleged to be infringed or its authorized representative;
This still says that a claim is as good as a conviction in terms of requiring the removal of information, and that failure to comply with such claims is enough to cut off the air supply of the company.
We just had a story posted earlier today of a company that was closed down for an entire year without having done anything wrong except being falsely accused. We cannot simply shut down any company that the copyright cabal says we should, especially when they have proven time and again that their dragnets have a total disregard for accuracy.
Sorry Mr. Wyden, I love your work in general, but this is still far outside the realm of due process. I know; failing to support this may mean SOPA gets passed instead -- but the "less wrong" swindle has been pulled on us by these guys too many times for me to buy it anymore. I'm not going to support a law that proposes to shut down slightly fewer innocent businesses.
TV Isn't Broken, So Why Fix It?
It is reasonable to assume that priority order of human endeavor starts with the things that are most broken. That makes sense from an objective efficiency perspective, but not from the perspective of pragmatic business. Pragmatic business is focused on maximizing shareholder value. The priority ordering of pragmatic business is highest profit first. In an efficient free market, that would be the same as most broken first. In a market with biasing factors, however, the highest priority markets -- the markets that are most profitable -- are those which benefit most from those biases.
One broad market that has been the benefactor of shifting public resource investment is intellectual property. We have been granting longer and broader monopoly rights, and becoming more narrow in our interpretation and protection of competitive and consumer rights in IP. We have been investing public resources in making IP more profitable. As with any market, IP has ancillary markets. Those ancillary markets benefit from increases in the profitability of the primary market. In the case of IP, one example is television.
Investment on enhancing television, despite the fact that it is more than adequate to home entertainment wants, is a side effect of our public investment in increasing IP profitability.
Television is far from the only such example. Another excellent one is IP law enforcement. We have been investing a lot of effort on "fixing" IP law enforcement, which some would say was not broken. From the RIAA's lawyers and lobbying expenditures to ICE's budget, we spend a great deal of our national income on IP law enforcement.
The increase in IP law enforcement naturally returns us to the beginning of this essay; increasing investment in IP profitability. That is true in the direct sense that our investment is resulting in the capture of more of the potential profit. It is also true -- in proportion to the corruptibility of our government -- in the indirect sense of creating new IP privileges and new potential profit.
Vote with your wallet. ... There's tons of high quality CC licensed, and independently produced, media out there.
Totally agreed. Here's a source I just recently found: Podiobooks.
Otherwise quit your bitching.
Don't be silly. Of course people should bitch when they feel that our GDP or public funds are being misdirected. And they should present the reasons for their position, so that their hypotheses can be tested for merit. How else are we supposed to detect when we are on a flawed path?
That doesn't mean you can pirate them.
According to whom, and why? This is an unsupported categorical statement, and lacks prima facie merit. Are you saying that people should not do this because it is illegal, because it harms society, both, or some other reason? You will know when you have presented an actual position, because it will be something that can be rationally challenged based on observable data. Short of that, you are just blowing wind.
Consuming them anyway without paying isn't a protest.
How do you know? How can you say what a person's motivations are for their actions?
It may not be, under your principles, a valid protest. You may have evidence that it is not an effective form of protest. You did not present anything to support either of those positions. Regardless, however, your mere declaration does not preclude copyright infringement from being a protest.
Expressing and explaining your perspective in a way that invites consideration, understanding, and growth is an excellent thing. Merely dictating what others must do to meet with your approval makes you sound like a pontificating ass.
The GOP arn't attacking Obama because he is black - they are attacking him because he is a Democrat, their natural enemy.
I suspect you are thinking of the 20th century. This is the new millennium. The GOP is attacking Obama because the political theater script specifies it. The unwritten charter clearly states that the one political party (commonly known as The Lobbyist Party) shall be split roughly evenly along pretentious wedge-issue lines, that no substantive change will be made on any wedge issues unless it increases the vitriol on the lips of the 80% of citizens who are not really paying attention, that all office-holders will work in earnest to prevent anyone who is not a member of the lobbyist party from winning any election, and that all actual bill passage must be coordinated in closed-door sessions to be attended by representatives of not less than 10% of the major lobbying firms.
The GOP's greatest ally in keeping their share (of political seats and of the lobbying cashflow) at 45% - 55% is the Democrats. And visa versa. The parties are not stupid, and they most certainly are not honorable. The one party exists either by evolution or by intelligent design, depending on your perspective, but that it exists is as obvious as a pumpkin in a pea patch.
Look at it this way: Nobody would believe in God if it weren't for Satan. Put either party in either role, the other is the other. 'round about the 80's or so, the parties smacked their collective forehead and said, "Ohhhhh, that's how we keep ourselves in power without having to actually figure out a healthy path forward for all citizens (that would be hard)."
The iPhone is always with them, so they are always connected. The iPad is with them in classes and at home, sometimes elsewhere. The PS3 for gaming of course, to avoid the annoying mess that is PC gaming.
Did you notice that each of those devices is surrounded by a defensive perimeter of patents, DMCA restrictions, network contracts, and exclusive partnerships? Those things are doing better because our government has propped them up with monopolistic barriers to entry. Monopolies create the opportunity to collect monopoly rents, which offer higher profit margins than the competitive market pricing that general purpose systems face. Hence business investment in the technology field is biased in favor of such walled gardens and the walled garden mentality. That bias leads to distorted evolution. You cannot, by observing a distorted evolutionary system, make declarations about what the customer wants -- he is not making a free market choice.
The walled garden does not reduce exploitability. The very nature of an exploit is that it is doing something the user does not want it to do. A walled garden is no more effective at preventing exploits than a normal operating system with the same security features. The problem is not that normal operating systems cannot have the same security, it is that the investment is not there because the RoI of walled gardens is propped up by monopoly rents.