it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
You think that's crazy -- I've heard that some people keep an entire extra grid of buttons next to their mouse that has -- get this -- over *100* buttons. Not only that, but some of the really extreme cases out there actually develop *pure muscle memory* of where all those buttons are. There are even people who call themselves "Eee-Maxers" (sp? e-macksers maybe? emacsers?) who also memorize and even customize dozens of what they call "key chords" -- pressing multiple buttons simultaneously to extend vastly beyond the 100 key limitation.
And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?
Really? Try working in advertising for a while, it will open your eyes.
The simple answer is this: Good products cost money, both to develop and to produce. Shoddy products with good PR sell just as well and cost less to produce. Advertising and engineering are both tax deductible at the same rate.
Plus you get to spend your meetings with pretty people in shiny clothes who love to say "yes" instead of with grumpy engineers who keep saying "that's not possible." Then there are the side benefits of after-hours with pretty co-workers who like to say "yes."
Hmm, I think that your distinction is not too bad, but then the argument for counterfeiting being a national security issue becomes unsustainable.... To my mind, and obviously IANAL, "counterfeit" is falsified monetary instruments of some sort (money, checks, etc.). Trademark doesn't cover that type of thing. Falsified commercial products are trademark violations, probably in combination with copyright and possibly patent violations.
I think you have a good point, and I may agree. Let's see...
What else do we call counterfeiting? Gucci purses were a big thing to knock off for a while (I may be betraying my age there, or maybe they still are). That was called counterfeiting.
As you note, currency doesn't have trademark (I think, at least generally, though perhaps there are cases), so it needs a word for misrepresentation, and counterfeiting is that word.
Counterfeiting is the attempt to pass spurious money as genuine. It is a problem because it dilutes the value of the money. Trademark infringement is the use of a "confusingly similar" mark, the problem of which must precisely be that an honest person might mistake it for the good which enjoys the fiat monopoly on the mark. The outcome is dilution of the mark -- in fact I think that is how it is remarked upon in law.
I think I'm with you on that point. I think it implies that the attachment of the term "counterfeiting" to trademark infringement was a co-opting of law to attach extra punishment, or perhaps to add gravitas in the public eye, to something which already had a body of law surrounding it.
Can we work back from there to redefining copyright infringement as counterfeiting?
No, I think not. Simple copyright infringement is still mechanically different than counterfeiting (whether used specifically for money or even if extended to trademark infringement). Copyright infringement may be accompanied by a case of trademark infringement. If one accepts the (seemingly flawed) notion that trademark infringement is also counterfeiting, and a case of infringement involved both copyright infringement and trademark infringement, it still would not follow that the copyright infringement portion is a case of counterfeiting.
Very interesting. I think I now completely agree with your supposition about trademark infringement not being counterfeiting. However, even if it is, it is still not grounds to consider copyright infringement itself to be counterfeiting.
It is a very interesting thing to think about, this conflation of trademark infringement with counterfeiting. It diluted (to borrow the term) the meaning of the term "counterfeit" in law, and served the interests of a subset of society. There was a cost to our communal system of justice, and from the same cause benefit was accrued to a subset of the community. An interesting redistribution of wealth, if nothing else.
I completely agree with your cynicism. I feel much the same way, but wanted to avoid sounding too far over the edge to avoid scaring off more moderate (or less aware, if you prefer) folk.
I have a hard time seeing how "counterfeit" is meaningfully different than "illegal copy" when it comes to digital goods,
From one angle, I agree. If you start with the question, "Suppose there is a case of a digital download which is a case of counterfeiting, how (if at all) would it be distinguished from copyright infringement?"
However, I think that is a leading question. I think the first question is, "What makes counterfeiting different from copyright infringement, and are there cases of digital downloads which meet that definition?"
I think it is not that infringing digital downloads are both copyright infringement and counterfeit because it is hard to distinguish them. I think it is that it is hard to distinguish them because one does not have any common examples to reflect upon (at least not yet). The closest example I can think of that would fit the true spirit of counterfeiting would be if a new competitor to Hulu emerged that claimed to be sourcing their content with the approval of the television studios, but was not.
That is; copyright infringement is infringing distribution of a copyrighted material, even if you make no pretense that the source is legitimate. Counterfeit is attempting to deceive the recipient into believing that a good is legitimately sourced, even if the good itself is a perfect reproduction. The reason that counterfeit is unlawful is because it eliminates the ability of honest people to purchase honest goods. The reason copyright infringement is unlawful is because it is a case of dishonest people choosing not to purchase honest goods. There are cases which satisfy both, but conflating the two is not beneficial to an efficient system of justice.
That's my best effort anyway. It is a very interesting point to attempt to defend. Thanks for challenging it!
A lot of what we have seen so far on this is second hand, conjecture, etc. The "leaked document" in this case doesn't seem to exist -- it looks like Michael Geist's blog entry is what is being referenced. I think it is reasonable to suppose that the blog entry may be accurate, but we don't really know that it is.
So what do we know? What conclusions can we draw from the information we have?
1. It is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The word "counterfeiting" in there seems like an important data point. 2. It has been quashed by citing national security. National security has certainly become an extraordinarily loose standard, but it still means something. 3. Lots of copyright bigwigs have signed the NDA. 4. Three Google representatives have signed the NDA. (not sure what that contributes to this post, but I think it is worth noting) 5. The Obama administration has appointed a number of high ranking RIAA lawyers to the DoJ. I think that they are prohibited from being involved in official court duties related to copyright issues for two years from leaving the industry.
Item 5 leads me to wonder what those lawyers would be up to if they can't participate in actual proceedings. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that they might be working on ACTA, and combined with item 3 above makes me tend to think that the conjecture that ACTA is related to copyright is true. Yet its title mentions "counterfeiting."
For years the government has referred to selling fake packaged copies of Windows 95 as counterfeit, which seems fair enough. They are an attempt to pass something off as the genuine article, to deceive the recipient into believing it is the real thing. This is a particularly dangerous thing with money, where the term "counterfeit" is most commonly used, because it devalues the currency. It is also a problem with things like software, in part because the person buying it cannot be confident that they are getting the real product.
In short, the reason "counterfeit" is worse than mere copyright infringement is because its misrepresentation as the genuine article has extra costs to society. It is on this basis that investigation and punishment of counterfeit products is a more serious issue than of copyright infringement alone.
So, that makes me wonder: Is the ACTA about what has traditionally been defined as counterfeit, or might it be about redefining all copyright infringement as counterfeiting? If so, it might make the national security issue make sense; counterfeiting is somewhat reasonably considered a national security issue. So if copyright infringement is redefined to be counterfeiting, then all copyright infringement would become, by a wave of a magic wand, a national security issue and would activate sections of the law created to deal with the more serious problem of traditional counterfeiting.
Heck, if you were sufficiently twisted, you could even think that because this will classify a whole new swath of people as counterfeiters, and because counterfeiting is a national security issue, that disclosing the reclassification of copyright infringement would "tip our hand" to the people who are soon to be defined as counterfeiters. And we wouldn't want to disrupt these enemies of the state before we get a chance to classify their actions as hostile to the state.
Either way we could have a lot of fun with this, we just need a few red balloons and volunteers to be "DARPA agents". Yes, of course we could just post disinformation, but wouldn't it be more fun to get participants to post disinformation with conviction and confidence be behind it? F'en with people is so fun.
OK, good to go -- I've just ordered three red weather balloons on eBay.:)
The possible things come to mind: Gather intelligence on how quickly people are able to come together to form a working group, and what the structure of the group is likely to be.
Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?
Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.
Any other ideas come floating to mind?
I was going to post the same question and propose items 1 and 3. I was going to compare this to the intentional disinformation we sent in WWII using encryption we suspected to be compromised -- it gave us excellent intel on the ability of the axis to deploy a fighting force. It fits nicely with the idea that in sociological testing it is important to disguise the actual nature of the test, so that the respondents do not alter the outcome (consciously or subconsciously).
In that case, you've just broken their experiment.
But then, perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge...:)
How many column inches did your corporation dedicate to Balloon Boy? If the answer is more than "1", then I submit that your corporation is part of the problem, not part of the solution. That is an example of what is wrong with for-profit journalism, and the very reason that many of us would be happy to see it die its rightful death.
You want to be a journalist? I applaud you, for we have very few of those left outside of YouTube and the blogosphere (though those media, of course, comprise also the typical rabble of any crowd) -- it might be refreshing to have a member of the traditional media who cared first, last, and always for journalism over sales. If that is you, then may I kindly suggest that you discard the shackles of that sensationalist rag-shadow of a once noble institution, and do what you claim to believe in. Show me your ethics, then perhaps I shall consider your message to have some principled weight.
Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite.
We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press tradition, one that speaks directly to today's crisis. The First Amendment necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.
Indeed, the post-colonial press system was built on massive postal and printing subsidies. The first generations of Americans never imagined that the market would provide sound or sufficient journalism. The notion was unthinkable. They established enlightened subsidies, which broadened the marketplace of ideas and enhanced and protected core freedoms. Their initiatives were essential to America's progress.
So, the subsidies were on the infrastructure of free speech, eh?
Fine; how about this: The government subsidizes the Internent, and to satisfy that "first amendment" thing you mention, they also require net neutrality. For the subsidy side, I propose that the United States government establish and fund some sort of entity for assigned names and numbers that can remove the expense of individual corporations having to develop their own contentious and lawsuit-encumbered system for apportioning such things, and a do the same for a name resolution system of some sort, with root nameservers provisioned largely at government expense. Perhaps the government could even go back in time and invent the system itself.
Would that be enough of a subsidy and guarantee of freedom of speech? I think it is a pretty solid foundation at the least.
Now, jerkwad, go forth and take advantage of all that we taxpayers have given ourselves through the creation of the Internet and the continued provision of its core infrastructural metadata. You want to journalize? Good! Be fruitful and journalize. Compete, you putz. And if you think the competition is skewed (and I think it is) perhaps you can start by journalizing about what is wrong with the system, just as the pamphleteers started not by begging for handouts but by invigorating the public furor.
But stop trying to dip in my pocket, you welfare queen.
a 'confidential House ethics committee report,' was recently leaked through file-sharing software to the Washington Post.
Hi Government,
I like when the government tells me, even unintentionally, about things that it is doing to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. I would like you to do more investigations and to loop us (your employers) in on the details of the process and the outcomes. Some people will misinterpret such investigations in both directions. That is not cause to shield us from the information, it is cause to shed more daylight on the process so we, your employers, can understand what you are up to each day. This is much like my boss asking me to keep him in the loop on the projects I work on, and is commonly referred to as "accountability."
In short: More disclosures, please -- accidental, intentional, and malicious alike.
> I was under the impression your Amendment rights are only between you and your government.
The "you" in the dare was meant to imply law enforcement officials.
They would, as you suggest, have enough, but are they allowed to use it to get a warrant? If a police officer committed an unlawful search he would not be allowed to use it to get a warrant (so they have to say, "I thought I heard someone screaming for help" (or something similar depending on context)). Does the same apply (thinly as it does) to evidence gained by other unlawful means?
The Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring that, absent special circumstances, the government obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before entering. This is strong privacy protection for homes and the items within them in the physical world.
From the United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
The meaning of the word "and" in law is extremely, painfully well established. It means the same thing it does in boolean logic. The fourth amendment does not protect papers in one's house; it protects papers and houses.
Anyone can make an honest mistake. But a federal judge who does not understand the first sentence of one of the ten most important specifications of the limitations of federal power is wildly outside the scope of reasonable mistakes for his position. He should be removed from office by the most expedient means available. This is not an acceptable mistake for a person who has sworn an oath to defend The Constitution, and whose most solemn duty is to interpret it correctly.
When I board an airplane, I occasionally check a bag. That bag may contain my papers. The bag is stored in a container which is the property of a third party. The bag may be unsecured. My only reasonable expectation of privacy arises from the fact that my papers are in a bag.
If I ride the train to work, I may put my briefcase in the overhead container without locking it. I may even use the bathroom along the way, and leave my bag stored in a government owned vehicle unattended. I still have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Similarly, if I rot 13 an electronic communication, and state that it is a private communication, it meets the exact same standards of expectation of privacy as a physical document that is protected.
With that, I give you this: The following message is a private communication from me to the original founders of Slashdot. It is rot 13 encrypted, which is equally secure as if I left my briefcase unlocked on a table at a coffee shop. I dare you to violate my 4th amendment rights.
Gunax lbh sbe perngvat fhpu n cbjreshy cyngsbez sbe gur qvfphffvba bs bhe shaqnzragny evtugf.
I wonder what would be the effect of someone else decrypting the above text and posting it? Suppose I left my briefcase on a table in a coffee shop, someone opened it and photographed the contents, then gave those photos to the police. Would the police be allowed to act on that information?
Not that it is the case here, but would the police be allowed to "hint" to someone that it sure would be nice to have a copy of the plaintext?
Did you watch the video? It's a squad walking around a shopping mall slaughtering everything that moves. A crowd of people just standing around, someone trying to pull a friend to safety, screaming bystanders trying to run away..
Did you hear about us running a helicopter gunship through a wedding? (they were firing guns in the air in celebration when an allied aircraft flew over) Or dropping white phosphorous on towns? (it both provides illumination and has a very high lethality rate)
War is like that sometimes. I believe we did not intentionally kill civilians, but when the soldiers and officers on the ground believe it is the least wrong thing to do, they do it. That happens in war. In every war. And sometimes those decisions turn out to be wrong. Pretending it is otherwise would be dishonest and remove our ability to make an informed, rational decision about what is sufficient motive for war.
Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities.
If that's the only objection from accredited members of the oligarchy, it's easy to fix. Just require all encryption to use published certs from approved corporations. Then you can apply the three strikes law to anyone who is using encryption for evil purposes, like doing anything other than shopping at approved online merchants. Frankly, if you're not using the Internet to give your money back to the accredited members of the regime, you're probably a terrorist anyway. I don't see why we would want to cripple our ability to channel additional money to the senior establishments in the oligarchy in order to let terrorists use the Internet.
And that's fine, if by "everything you can" you mean lobbying to have their loopholes removed, rather than retroactively punishing them for actions that were legal when they occurred. And yes, that is in your best interests; you really don't want politicians being able to throw you in prison because something you legally did last year is now illegal.
First, I want to stress that I already in this very short interaction have respect for you -- you seem to be basing your position on solid fundamentals. I appreciate that, and respect it.
And I must respectfully disagree.:)
Whether it was legal last year is not for us to decide, as WANAL. It is for the courts to decide, which is what the original submitter is saying. We (the alternative taxpayers) have good rationally self-interested cause to seek to have Microsoft pay maximal taxes (assuming the pure rational self-interested position presented earlier). The original submitter (or the article he is parroting, or whatever) claims to have valid legal cause to support our rationally self-interested objective. It is then in our rational self-interest to test the theory at court, except to the extent that the cost to us of the court proceeding exceeds the value to us of shifting the tax burden (admittedly an extremely difficult pair of numbers to calculate, let alone predictively calculate).
Again, this is assuming the pure rational self-interest model which is the basis for Microsoft attempting to minimize its portion of the tax burden.
It is absurd to suggest that any public company not do the maximum they can to minimize their tax liability.
It is absurd to suggest that I, the alternative taxpayer, should not castigate them leaving the tax burden to me. If we're all just rationally self-interested parties, then I should be doing everything I can to get Microsoft to pay as much of the tax burden as possible, for exactly the same reasons that you assert that they should attempt to shift the burden onto me.
Advertising is just another type of contract, effectively.
I really like that -- I don't think I've heard it put that way before. What of advertising which misrepresents the product, but does not do so explicitly enough to be considered a contract? The reason legalese seems so strange is because it works differently than our minds do. If an advertiser can exploit the peculiarities of the human mind to deceive the viewer about the product, without actually making a legal statement of fitness for a purpose, is there harm? Should it be regulated?
Preventing gross exploitation of people. . . OK, this one is a fine line.
Definitely a very difficult one.
Liberals often take this one too far, and that's where we get the concept of the "Nanny State".
I completely agree, and it is (in my opinion) a very bad thing. As another example, I think some would point to Abu Ghraib as an example of the hard-line neoconservative view being insufficiently concerned with this. I am not trying to make the liberals look good by comparison -- my goal is to show that both major parties are sorely remiss in balancing the needs of the nation on this matter.
Do not libertarians believe it is ok to use the power of government to maintain liberty and basic safety for that country's citizens?
This is an excellent question, often raised, and very worthy of consideration. How do you balance the three?
- Government authority should be avoided except where necessary, because it is intrinsically susceptible to corruption.
- Liberty is objectively good, and is intrinsically a threat to basic safety.
- Basic safety is objectively good, and is intrinsically a threat to liberty.
It is the very delicacy of this balance, I think, that makes these three values such a constant plaything of emotional rhetoric. While I prefer rational discourse myself, it bears considering that emotional rhetoric is what moves people. I think I would like to hear more emotional rhetoric supporting personal liberty -- but nobody with power wants increased personal liberty, and people without power have a hard time accessing the airwaves.
This, of course, brings us back to your very cogent argument in favor of net neutrality. Which is to say that I have learned a lot from having this conversation with you. Thanks!
the piracy rate is estimated at around 80% during the first week after release. Since a common excuse for piracy is "try before you buy," they also looked at the related iPhone DeviceIDs to see how many of the pirates went on to purchase the game. None of them did.
Interesting answers to irrelevant questions.
Here's the money question: How many sales were displaced?
Suppose we want that information: Can you think of a test which would detect displaced sales?
The ignorance is trying to define ONE free market, you tend to destroy the 'free' part with your definition since you confine it and remove the freedom to choose the best approach to the problem.
To clarify:
I was discussing the free market, a formal economic theory which is largely rooted in Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." It is distinct from the concept of a market which is free, which can be different things to different people depending on their definition of "free."
I did not express an opinion on the best approach or collection of approaches to establishing or maintaining the free market.
I obviously don't have access to your mind, and text misses a great deal of nuance. I am sure I will miss much of the subtlety, and make a few wrong turns even in this brief analysis.
I think the 'free' in free market is the same free as in 'Free Software'... I personally don't really care about 'maximizing the efficiency of allocation of resources'... I'm pretty strongly pro-free-market, because I am pro-Freedom.
That seems clearly libertarian. It professes that liberty is the most important want. If a society optimizes for personal liberty, it may not maximize total societal satisfaction of wants. If maximization of liberty does not coincide with maximum efficiency of allocation of resources, and there is a member of society for whom liberty is not the most important want, his or her total satisfaction of wants will be lower than it would in an efficiency maximizing society.
However, maximizing liberty may necessarily imply maximizing the freedom of each individual to choose to satisfy some other want with greater precedence than the want for liberty. If I spin that one around in my head a few times, I think that it may imply that objective libertarianism necessarily coincides with the free market? Odd, I'll have to think about that one.
the regulatory role of the government... should be about such things as maintaining honesty... protecting human safety... preventing gross exploitation of people... protecting the environment/public resources.
That sounds either hybrid or authoritarian. It professes that there are diverse goals, and that either these goals are shared by society (hybrid) or that they should be imposed on others regardless of their priorities (authoritarian). It is also possible that they all spring from some underlying principle not specifically noted.
there is also a place for more... regulations when it comes to [markets] which... are necessarily limited to [a small n-opoly].... (... a market is only free if anyone can get into a business... with no artificial... [barriers to entry]).
That sounds like advocacy for balancing of lack of competition. Lack of competition is a frequently cited cause of inefficient pricing in an otherwise free market. You also focus, however, specifically on net neutrality which could indicate that the underlying motive is free speech. I think that paragraph could imply either free market advocacy or libertarianism, but could also be something else.
So, I think that it is appropriate for the government to have a larger regulatory role in industries in which a truly free market does not and cannot exist.
The addition of "and cannot" leads me to think this is more about libertarianism than the free market, which would reinforce the first paragraph.
So, what does that make me?
You have a variety of overlapping and moderately conflicting beliefs about socioeconomic theory, with a clear leaning toward libertarianism except on those issues you care most about. You seem interested in both expressing and exploring those ideas, which leads me to believe you are also a critical thinker.
My apologies -- I should have clarified: I was talking about the theory of free market economics, not a market which is free. Free markets are a part of the theory of free market economics, but it is a much broader and richer science. If you are interested in the economic theory, a great place to start is "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. He is the father of free market economics, and that book is considered a seminal work by most scholars of Western economic theory.
How do you protect your trademark without sending out C&Ds?
Contact the very nice folks at SparkFun and ask, "Pardon -- could you put a disclaimer on your 'About' page or 'FAQ' stating that you are not associated with Sparc? That way we have our 'You must defend your trademark' ass covered, but we don't have to be dicks about it."
Slashdot Mirror
it is hard to imagine a world in which so many tiny buttons on a mouse make sense.
You think that's crazy -- I've heard that some people keep an entire extra grid of buttons next to their mouse that has -- get this -- over *100* buttons. Not only that, but some of the really extreme cases out there actually develop *pure muscle memory* of where all those buttons are. There are even people who call themselves "Eee-Maxers" (sp? e-macksers maybe? emacsers?) who also memorize and even customize dozens of what they call "key chords" -- pressing multiple buttons simultaneously to extend vastly beyond the 100 key limitation.
And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?
Really? Try working in advertising for a while, it will open your eyes.
The simple answer is this: Good products cost money, both to develop and to produce. Shoddy products with good PR sell just as well and cost less to produce. Advertising and engineering are both tax deductible at the same rate.
Plus you get to spend your meetings with pretty people in shiny clothes who love to say "yes" instead of with grumpy engineers who keep saying "that's not possible." Then there are the side benefits of after-hours with pretty co-workers who like to say "yes."
Hmm, I think that your distinction is not too bad, but then the argument for counterfeiting being a national security issue becomes unsustainable. ... To my mind, and obviously IANAL, "counterfeit" is falsified monetary instruments of some sort (money, checks, etc.). Trademark doesn't cover that type of thing. Falsified commercial products are trademark violations, probably in combination with copyright and possibly patent violations.
I think you have a good point, and I may agree. Let's see...
What else do we call counterfeiting? Gucci purses were a big thing to knock off for a while (I may be betraying my age there, or maybe they still are). That was called counterfeiting.
As you note, currency doesn't have trademark (I think, at least generally, though perhaps there are cases), so it needs a word for misrepresentation, and counterfeiting is that word.
Counterfeiting is the attempt to pass spurious money as genuine. It is a problem because it dilutes the value of the money. Trademark infringement is the use of a "confusingly similar" mark, the problem of which must precisely be that an honest person might mistake it for the good which enjoys the fiat monopoly on the mark. The outcome is dilution of the mark -- in fact I think that is how it is remarked upon in law.
I think I'm with you on that point. I think it implies that the attachment of the term "counterfeiting" to trademark infringement was a co-opting of law to attach extra punishment, or perhaps to add gravitas in the public eye, to something which already had a body of law surrounding it.
Can we work back from there to redefining copyright infringement as counterfeiting?
No, I think not. Simple copyright infringement is still mechanically different than counterfeiting (whether used specifically for money or even if extended to trademark infringement). Copyright infringement may be accompanied by a case of trademark infringement. If one accepts the (seemingly flawed) notion that trademark infringement is also counterfeiting, and a case of infringement involved both copyright infringement and trademark infringement, it still would not follow that the copyright infringement portion is a case of counterfeiting.
Very interesting. I think I now completely agree with your supposition about trademark infringement not being counterfeiting. However, even if it is, it is still not grounds to consider copyright infringement itself to be counterfeiting.
It is a very interesting thing to think about, this conflation of trademark infringement with counterfeiting. It diluted (to borrow the term) the meaning of the term "counterfeit" in law, and served the interests of a subset of society. There was a cost to our communal system of justice, and from the same cause benefit was accrued to a subset of the community. An interesting redistribution of wealth, if nothing else.
I completely agree with your cynicism. I feel much the same way, but wanted to avoid sounding too far over the edge to avoid scaring off more moderate (or less aware, if you prefer) folk.
I have a hard time seeing how "counterfeit" is meaningfully different than "illegal copy" when it comes to digital goods,
From one angle, I agree. If you start with the question, "Suppose there is a case of a digital download which is a case of counterfeiting, how (if at all) would it be distinguished from copyright infringement?"
However, I think that is a leading question. I think the first question is, "What makes counterfeiting different from copyright infringement, and are there cases of digital downloads which meet that definition?"
I think it is not that infringing digital downloads are both copyright infringement and counterfeit because it is hard to distinguish them. I think it is that it is hard to distinguish them because one does not have any common examples to reflect upon (at least not yet). The closest example I can think of that would fit the true spirit of counterfeiting would be if a new competitor to Hulu emerged that claimed to be sourcing their content with the approval of the television studios, but was not.
That is; copyright infringement is infringing distribution of a copyrighted material, even if you make no pretense that the source is legitimate. Counterfeit is attempting to deceive the recipient into believing that a good is legitimately sourced, even if the good itself is a perfect reproduction. The reason that counterfeit is unlawful is because it eliminates the ability of honest people to purchase honest goods. The reason copyright infringement is unlawful is because it is a case of dishonest people choosing not to purchase honest goods. There are cases which satisfy both, but conflating the two is not beneficial to an efficient system of justice.
That's my best effort anyway. It is a very interesting point to attempt to defend. Thanks for challenging it!
A lot of what we have seen so far on this is second hand, conjecture, etc. The "leaked document" in this case doesn't seem to exist -- it looks like Michael Geist's blog entry is what is being referenced. I think it is reasonable to suppose that the blog entry may be accurate, but we don't really know that it is.
So what do we know? What conclusions can we draw from the information we have?
1. It is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The word "counterfeiting" in there seems like an important data point.
2. It has been quashed by citing national security. National security has certainly become an extraordinarily loose standard, but it still means something.
3. Lots of copyright bigwigs have signed the NDA.
4. Three Google representatives have signed the NDA. (not sure what that contributes to this post, but I think it is worth noting)
5. The Obama administration has appointed a number of high ranking RIAA lawyers to the DoJ. I think that they are prohibited from being involved in official court duties related to copyright issues for two years from leaving the industry.
Item 5 leads me to wonder what those lawyers would be up to if they can't participate in actual proceedings. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that they might be working on ACTA, and combined with item 3 above makes me tend to think that the conjecture that ACTA is related to copyright is true. Yet its title mentions "counterfeiting."
For years the government has referred to selling fake packaged copies of Windows 95 as counterfeit, which seems fair enough. They are an attempt to pass something off as the genuine article, to deceive the recipient into believing it is the real thing. This is a particularly dangerous thing with money, where the term "counterfeit" is most commonly used, because it devalues the currency. It is also a problem with things like software, in part because the person buying it cannot be confident that they are getting the real product.
In short, the reason "counterfeit" is worse than mere copyright infringement is because its misrepresentation as the genuine article has extra costs to society. It is on this basis that investigation and punishment of counterfeit products is a more serious issue than of copyright infringement alone.
So, that makes me wonder: Is the ACTA about what has traditionally been defined as counterfeit, or might it be about redefining all copyright infringement as counterfeiting? If so, it might make the national security issue make sense; counterfeiting is somewhat reasonably considered a national security issue. So if copyright infringement is redefined to be counterfeiting, then all copyright infringement would become, by a wave of a magic wand, a national security issue and would activate sections of the law created to deal with the more serious problem of traditional counterfeiting.
Heck, if you were sufficiently twisted, you could even think that because this will classify a whole new swath of people as counterfeiters, and because counterfeiting is a national security issue, that disclosing the reclassification of copyright infringement would "tip our hand" to the people who are soon to be defined as counterfeiters. And we wouldn't want to disrupt these enemies of the state before we get a chance to classify their actions as hostile to the state.
Either way we could have a lot of fun with this, we just need a few red balloons and volunteers to be "DARPA agents". Yes, of course we could just post disinformation, but wouldn't it be more fun to get participants to post disinformation with conviction and confidence be behind it? F'en with people is so fun.
OK, good to go -- I've just ordered three red weather balloons on eBay. :)
http://cgi.ebay.com/3-Red-Weather-Balloons-3-ft-30-Gram-Meteorological-New_W0QQitemZ120480696030QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20091015?IMSfp=TL091015191003r33317
HAHAHAAHAH -- I *love* the way you think. :)
The possible things come to mind:
Gather intelligence on how quickly people are able to come together to form a working group, and what the structure of the group is likely to be.
Find new and interesting ways for this sort of huge area recon. Can a geek use roadway cameras effectively? Are there other ways of gathering this sort of information?
Test some software that they have written to trawl the web searching for specific words among the randomness of the intertubez.
Any other ideas come floating to mind?
I was going to post the same question and propose items 1 and 3. I was going to compare this to the intentional disinformation we sent in WWII using encryption we suspected to be compromised -- it gave us excellent intel on the ability of the axis to deploy a fighting force. It fits nicely with the idea that in sociological testing it is important to disguise the actual nature of the test, so that the respondents do not alter the outcome (consciously or subconsciously).
In that case, you've just broken their experiment.
But then, perhaps that is not what they are observing. Perhaps they figured out that we would figure out the actual meaning of the challenge, and what they are actually measuring is the rate at which we perceive the actual intent of the challenge... :)
And another thing:
How many column inches did your corporation dedicate to Balloon Boy? If the answer is more than "1", then I submit that your corporation is part of the problem, not part of the solution. That is an example of what is wrong with for-profit journalism, and the very reason that many of us would be happy to see it die its rightful death.
You want to be a journalist? I applaud you, for we have very few of those left outside of YouTube and the blogosphere (though those media, of course, comprise also the typical rabble of any crowd) -- it might be refreshing to have a member of the traditional media who cared first, last, and always for journalism over sales. If that is you, then may I kindly suggest that you discard the shackles of that sensationalist rag-shadow of a once noble institution, and do what you claim to believe in. Show me your ethics, then perhaps I shall consider your message to have some principled weight.
Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite.
We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press tradition, one that speaks directly to today's crisis. The First Amendment necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.
Indeed, the post-colonial press system was built on massive postal and printing subsidies. The first generations of Americans never imagined that the market would provide sound or sufficient journalism. The notion was unthinkable. They established enlightened subsidies, which broadened the marketplace of ideas and enhanced and protected core freedoms. Their initiatives were essential to America's progress.
So, the subsidies were on the infrastructure of free speech, eh?
Fine; how about this: The government subsidizes the Internent, and to satisfy that "first amendment" thing you mention, they also require net neutrality. For the subsidy side, I propose that the United States government establish and fund some sort of entity for assigned names and numbers that can remove the expense of individual corporations having to develop their own contentious and lawsuit-encumbered system for apportioning such things, and a do the same for a name resolution system of some sort, with root nameservers provisioned largely at government expense. Perhaps the government could even go back in time and invent the system itself.
Would that be enough of a subsidy and guarantee of freedom of speech? I think it is a pretty solid foundation at the least.
Now, jerkwad, go forth and take advantage of all that we taxpayers have given ourselves through the creation of the Internet and the continued provision of its core infrastructural metadata. You want to journalize? Good! Be fruitful and journalize. Compete, you putz. And if you think the competition is skewed (and I think it is) perhaps you can start by journalizing about what is wrong with the system, just as the pamphleteers started not by begging for handouts but by invigorating the public furor.
But stop trying to dip in my pocket, you welfare queen.
a 'confidential House ethics committee report,' was recently leaked through file-sharing software to the Washington Post.
Hi Government,
I like when the government tells me, even unintentionally, about things that it is doing to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. I would like you to do more investigations and to loop us (your employers) in on the details of the process and the outcomes. Some people will misinterpret such investigations in both directions. That is not cause to shield us from the information, it is cause to shed more daylight on the process so we, your employers, can understand what you are up to each day. This is much like my boss asking me to keep him in the loop on the projects I work on, and is commonly referred to as "accountability."
In short: More disclosures, please -- accidental, intentional, and malicious alike.
Sincerely,
Your Boss
>> I dare you to violate my 4th amendment rights.
> I was under the impression your Amendment rights are only between you and your government.
The "you" in the dare was meant to imply law enforcement officials.
They would, as you suggest, have enough, but are they allowed to use it to get a warrant? If a police officer committed an unlawful search he would not be allowed to use it to get a warrant (so they have to say, "I thought I heard someone screaming for help" (or something similar depending on context)). Does the same apply (thinly as it does) to evidence gained by other unlawful means?
From the article's reprint of the opinion:
The Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring that, absent special circumstances, the government obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before entering. This is strong privacy protection for homes and the items within them in the physical world.
From the United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
The meaning of the word "and" in law is extremely, painfully well established. It means the same thing it does in boolean logic. The fourth amendment does not protect papers in one's house; it protects papers and houses.
Anyone can make an honest mistake. But a federal judge who does not understand the first sentence of one of the ten most important specifications of the limitations of federal power is wildly outside the scope of reasonable mistakes for his position. He should be removed from office by the most expedient means available. This is not an acceptable mistake for a person who has sworn an oath to defend The Constitution, and whose most solemn duty is to interpret it correctly.
When I board an airplane, I occasionally check a bag. That bag may contain my papers. The bag is stored in a container which is the property of a third party. The bag may be unsecured. My only reasonable expectation of privacy arises from the fact that my papers are in a bag.
If I ride the train to work, I may put my briefcase in the overhead container without locking it. I may even use the bathroom along the way, and leave my bag stored in a government owned vehicle unattended. I still have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Similarly, if I rot 13 an electronic communication, and state that it is a private communication, it meets the exact same standards of expectation of privacy as a physical document that is protected.
With that, I give you this: The following message is a private communication from me to the original founders of Slashdot. It is rot 13 encrypted, which is equally secure as if I left my briefcase unlocked on a table at a coffee shop. I dare you to violate my 4th amendment rights.
Gunax lbh sbe perngvat fhpu n cbjreshy cyngsbez sbe gur qvfphffvba bs bhe shaqnzragny evtugf.
I wonder what would be the effect of someone else decrypting the above text and posting it? Suppose I left my briefcase on a table in a coffee shop, someone opened it and photographed the contents, then gave those photos to the police. Would the police be allowed to act on that information?
Not that it is the case here, but would the police be allowed to "hint" to someone that it sure would be nice to have a copy of the plaintext?
Did you watch the video? It's a squad walking around a shopping mall slaughtering everything that moves. A crowd of people just standing around, someone trying to pull a friend to safety, screaming bystanders trying to run away..
Did you hear about us running a helicopter gunship through a wedding? (they were firing guns in the air in celebration when an allied aircraft flew over) Or dropping white phosphorous on towns? (it both provides illumination and has a very high lethality rate)
War is like that sometimes. I believe we did not intentionally kill civilians, but when the soldiers and officers on the ground believe it is the least wrong thing to do, they do it. That happens in war. In every war. And sometimes those decisions turn out to be wrong. Pretending it is otherwise would be dishonest and remove our ability to make an informed, rational decision about what is sufficient motive for war.
Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities.
If that's the only objection from accredited members of the oligarchy, it's easy to fix. Just require all encryption to use published certs from approved corporations. Then you can apply the three strikes law to anyone who is using encryption for evil purposes, like doing anything other than shopping at approved online merchants. Frankly, if you're not using the Internet to give your money back to the accredited members of the regime, you're probably a terrorist anyway. I don't see why we would want to cripple our ability to channel additional money to the senior establishments in the oligarchy in order to let terrorists use the Internet.
And that's fine, if by "everything you can" you mean lobbying to have their loopholes removed, rather than retroactively punishing them for actions that were legal when they occurred. And yes, that is in your best interests; you really don't want politicians being able to throw you in prison because something you legally did last year is now illegal.
First, I want to stress that I already in this very short interaction have respect for you -- you seem to be basing your position on solid fundamentals. I appreciate that, and respect it.
And I must respectfully disagree. :)
Whether it was legal last year is not for us to decide, as WANAL. It is for the courts to decide, which is what the original submitter is saying. We (the alternative taxpayers) have good rationally self-interested cause to seek to have Microsoft pay maximal taxes (assuming the pure rational self-interested position presented earlier). The original submitter (or the article he is parroting, or whatever) claims to have valid legal cause to support our rationally self-interested objective. It is then in our rational self-interest to test the theory at court, except to the extent that the cost to us of the court proceeding exceeds the value to us of shifting the tax burden (admittedly an extremely difficult pair of numbers to calculate, let alone predictively calculate).
Again, this is assuming the pure rational self-interest model which is the basis for Microsoft attempting to minimize its portion of the tax burden.
AT&T: Those damned iPhone users are going to kill us. Disable VoIP!
Time passes...
AT&T: Those damned iPhone users are still killing us. It is Net Neutrality's fault!
Time passes...
AT&T: Those damned iPhone users are still killing us! We need... wait, we have to configure what now? No, no, no, it's the government's fault!
It is absurd to suggest that any public company not do the maximum they can to minimize their tax liability.
It is absurd to suggest that I, the alternative taxpayer, should not castigate them leaving the tax burden to me. If we're all just rationally self-interested parties, then I should be doing everything I can to get Microsoft to pay as much of the tax burden as possible, for exactly the same reasons that you assert that they should attempt to shift the burden onto me.
Advertising is just another type of contract, effectively.
I really like that -- I don't think I've heard it put that way before. What of advertising which misrepresents the product, but does not do so explicitly enough to be considered a contract? The reason legalese seems so strange is because it works differently than our minds do. If an advertiser can exploit the peculiarities of the human mind to deceive the viewer about the product, without actually making a legal statement of fitness for a purpose, is there harm? Should it be regulated?
Preventing gross exploitation of people. . . OK, this one is a fine line.
Definitely a very difficult one.
Liberals often take this one too far, and that's where we get the concept of the "Nanny State".
I completely agree, and it is (in my opinion) a very bad thing. As another example, I think some would point to Abu Ghraib as an example of the hard-line neoconservative view being insufficiently concerned with this. I am not trying to make the liberals look good by comparison -- my goal is to show that both major parties are sorely remiss in balancing the needs of the nation on this matter.
Do not libertarians believe it is ok to use the power of government to maintain liberty and basic safety for that country's citizens?
This is an excellent question, often raised, and very worthy of consideration. How do you balance the three?
- Government authority should be avoided except where necessary, because it is intrinsically susceptible to corruption.
- Liberty is objectively good, and is intrinsically a threat to basic safety.
- Basic safety is objectively good, and is intrinsically a threat to liberty.
It is the very delicacy of this balance, I think, that makes these three values such a constant plaything of emotional rhetoric. While I prefer rational discourse myself, it bears considering that emotional rhetoric is what moves people. I think I would like to hear more emotional rhetoric supporting personal liberty -- but nobody with power wants increased personal liberty, and people without power have a hard time accessing the airwaves.
This, of course, brings us back to your very cogent argument in favor of net neutrality. Which is to say that I have learned a lot from having this conversation with you. Thanks!
the piracy rate is estimated at around 80% during the first week after release. Since a common excuse for piracy is "try before you buy," they also looked at the related iPhone DeviceIDs to see how many of the pirates went on to purchase the game. None of them did.
Interesting answers to irrelevant questions.
Here's the money question: How many sales were displaced?
Suppose we want that information: Can you think of a test which would detect displaced sales?
The ignorance is trying to define ONE free market, you tend to destroy the 'free' part with your definition since you confine it and remove the freedom to choose the best approach to the problem.
To clarify:
I was discussing the free market, a formal economic theory which is largely rooted in Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." It is distinct from the concept of a market which is free, which can be different things to different people depending on their definition of "free."
I did not express an opinion on the best approach or collection of approaches to establishing or maintaining the free market.
I obviously don't have access to your mind, and text misses a great deal of nuance. I am sure I will miss much of the subtlety, and make a few wrong turns even in this brief analysis.
I think the 'free' in free market is the same free as in 'Free Software' ... I personally don't really care about 'maximizing the efficiency of allocation of resources' ... I'm pretty strongly pro-free-market, because I am pro-Freedom.
That seems clearly libertarian. It professes that liberty is the most important want. If a society optimizes for personal liberty, it may not maximize total societal satisfaction of wants. If maximization of liberty does not coincide with maximum efficiency of allocation of resources, and there is a member of society for whom liberty is not the most important want, his or her total satisfaction of wants will be lower than it would in an efficiency maximizing society.
However, maximizing liberty may necessarily imply maximizing the freedom of each individual to choose to satisfy some other want with greater precedence than the want for liberty. If I spin that one around in my head a few times, I think that it may imply that objective libertarianism necessarily coincides with the free market? Odd, I'll have to think about that one.
the regulatory role of the government ... should be about such things as maintaining honesty ... protecting human safety ... preventing gross exploitation of people ... protecting the environment/public resources.
That sounds either hybrid or authoritarian. It professes that there are diverse goals, and that either these goals are shared by society (hybrid) or that they should be imposed on others regardless of their priorities (authoritarian). It is also possible that they all spring from some underlying principle not specifically noted.
there is also a place for more ... regulations when it comes to [markets] which ... are necessarily limited to [a small n-opoly]. ... (... a market is only free if anyone can get into a business ... with no artificial ... [barriers to entry]).
That sounds like advocacy for balancing of lack of competition. Lack of competition is a frequently cited cause of inefficient pricing in an otherwise free market. You also focus, however, specifically on net neutrality which could indicate that the underlying motive is free speech. I think that paragraph could imply either free market advocacy or libertarianism, but could also be something else.
So, I think that it is appropriate for the government to have a larger regulatory role in industries in which a truly free market does not and cannot exist.
The addition of "and cannot" leads me to think this is more about libertarianism than the free market, which would reinforce the first paragraph.
So, what does that make me?
You have a variety of overlapping and moderately conflicting beliefs about socioeconomic theory, with a clear leaning toward libertarianism except on those issues you care most about. You seem interested in both expressing and exploring those ideas, which leads me to believe you are also a critical thinker.
My apologies -- I should have clarified: I was talking about the theory of free market economics, not a market which is free. Free markets are a part of the theory of free market economics, but it is a much broader and richer science. If you are interested in the economic theory, a great place to start is "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. He is the father of free market economics, and that book is considered a seminal work by most scholars of Western economic theory.
How do you protect your trademark without sending out C&Ds?
Contact the very nice folks at SparkFun and ask, "Pardon -- could you put a disclaimer on your 'About' page or 'FAQ' stating that you are not associated with Sparc? That way we have our 'You must defend your trademark' ass covered, but we don't have to be dicks about it."