Washington State's anti-spam legislation was recently held unconstitutional on the ground that states may not regulate the flow of spam, in that doing so is unduly restrictive of interstate commerce in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Does the constitution require that the average citizen pay for the interstate commerce initiatives of Losers Inc. or are we allowed to require that they pick up their own costs?
Maybe, but I should not be forced to be a member of that community (by means of endless daily spam) any more than I should be forced to be a member of the Love the cactus community.
I guess you missed the recent article about the Galeon project...
No, I did read about it and I am certainly looking forward to the day that I can try it out. I understand that there are some licensing issues but I expect that they will be worked out eventually.
What I AM objecting to is their making money at the expense of my rights to do what I want with the items I own.
You are making presumptions as to what exact Rights you actually have. The concept of IP is enshrined in law. You have only those Rights that are extended to you by that law. Now maybe we think those laws are morally or ethically wrong. Maybe the vast majority of persons out there agree with us. But until we get those laws changed for the better, they are still law, and they still apply to us, whether we like it or not.
Let me ask you this: If you could get a CD (copy) for free of an artist you very much liked and admired and the artist asked for a donation, would you do it? Why or why not?
Probably, assuming I was able, and not in my usually penniless state.:) I'm usually penniless because I spend so much money on CD's. I'd be overjoyed if I didn't have to pay so much to the distributors. I'd much prefer to pay $7 to the artist than $15 to CDnow. And if I had to pay $15 I'd much rather pay that to the artist too. Unfortunately, that is rarely an option.
BTW, I have nearly 50 Gbytes of MPEG files, and I own the original CD for every one of them (which should tell you something about my willingness to pay for the music like). Only one of my CDs was given to me (Weedpuller -- Congenital; good!) by the artist. When their next album came out I was quick to buy a copy direct from them!
OTOH I won't pay to download an MPEG file. The quality is generally too low and the "object" in question is too ephemeral. But that's just me...
If I built a car and sold it to you and you gave it to Frank (or built another one and gave THAT to Frank) no one would say that MY rights had been violated.
You could sell the car (or CD) that you had bought, but you could not create another identical car and place it on the market. What, you think you can start manufacturing Camrys and Toyota won't eat you alive?
Tori Amos. I knew a friend on IRC who was a Tori fanatic. One day he asked me if he could make me a tape of some of his favourite Tori songs and send it to me. I said sure. A few months later and I was hooked. I have three Tori albums and four singles, with plans to buy more.
That's the way it's supposed to work. (BTW, I have her albums too. She's hot, the music is good, and the Piglet Photo is a classic!) But there was a risk that you would just keep the tape and buy nothing, wasn't there?
I downloaded the Born Slippy MP3 and after loving it for a few weeks, went out and bought the album. I now have seven Underworld albums, and despite this, the RIAA still considers me a criminal.
Again, Underworld took a risk, and luckily for them, it paid off (at least in your case).
But shouldn't Underworld and Tori have the right to decide not to take that risk?
It's not a one-hit wonder, Creep is on there twice;-)
Absolutely! (But the first one is better than the second.)
I bought their album(s) off the web from CDnow or wherever, paying $15+ each including shipping. Now I would have been more than happy to send that $15 direct to Radiohead if they would have sent me a CD in return. But instead I had to go through a distribution chain as long as your arm, and in the end, Radiohead probably got what? A buck if they were lucky?
The artists themselves need to look into direct distribution.
I an analogy to FedEx in this thread or Katz's about if 90% of FedEx's business was transporting bootleg movies, FedEx would be in the clear because they are the courier.
If I sold you a screwdriver, and you used it to force open someones kitchen door and steal their silver, would I be liable for the theft?
I would strong disagree with you. Being popular does not make art bad, but the best art will rarely ever be popular, because by nature, to be "popular", you must be taylored primarily to the ignorant.
So if, heaven forbid, people actually like your music, then it is automatically bad music?
Some groups believe that if authors had no monetary incentive to create published works, then no one would publish anything. The OSS movement shows that people have additional reasons to produce and publish works.
Regardless of what you (or I) believe the OSS movement shows, I don't think that people who don't agree with the OSS movement should be forced to publish their software under the OSS model. And I similarly do not accept that a musician who chooses not to give their music away free should be forced to do so either. Right or wrong, they should be free to choose for themselves.
I completely agree that there are legitimate uses for anonymity. But I can't think of any legitimate reason for spoofing your IP address.
Maybe I'm just dense, but it looks to me like the Itrace proposal in no way compromises anonymity, but instead defeats (or tries to defeat) IP spoofing. And I can not see any good reason why this should be considered a bad thing.
JK said "We should..." and I took the we to mean the entire internet community. If he had said "I intend to do X, my collegues have promised to do the same, and I think that we should all consider such an action" I don't think you would have found much to complain about - unless you just like to bash JK.
First the guy says he won't review Slack because of it's "ridiculously slow release schedules". Well there are new releases on CD 2-3 times a year, and updates always available for download, but maybe he doesn't know that.
Then he says "Let's begin with some basics: How often do the vendors release new distributions?" and completely fails to answer his own basic question!
Still, in these comments there is subtext which says, "a true artist will create art even if he doesn't get paid. Anyone else has 'sold out', and is just trying to be The Man." The reality is, with the exception of the wealthy, is that artists, like programmers, chefs, and day-care workers, must get paid for their work if they are going to continue to do it. We shouldn't expect free food from chefs, free health care from doctors, free programs from programmers, nor do we label them "Sell-outs" or less than "true-professionals" if they expect/require to be paid for their work.
Hear hear!
There is entirely too much of this "If they wanna be paid they can't be real artists and obviously have no talent" nonsense. What, you are only allowed to earn any financial reward by selling tee-shirts and going on tours? Rubbish! What about someone who (perhaps for health reasons) can't or simply does not want to play their music live? And what exactly does selling tee-shirts have to do with making music anyway?
...giving your friend a copy of your DVD is considered fair use by some people.
Who exactly is "some people" and what makes their opinion relevant?
I believe that in most countries the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material is legally wrong (illegal). Now "some people" may consider that there is nothing morally wrong with it, and may think that it is "fair use" and who knows - I might even agree with them. But they (our) opinion is not relevant in the courts.
It's about giving consumers the right to decide the price of music not some record label guy.
Excuse me?
The consumer gets to determine the price of a product? Only in as much as the market generally influences the cost of any item by agreeing or refusing to pay the asking price.
I don't see that the consumer should tell the artist that they are only allowed to charge (say) $5 for their album. If the artist feels that they will charge $5000 for the album, I feel that is their right. Of course, I doubt they will get many sales at that price, and maybe they will decide to lower the price to $5, but that is their choice. If they insist they want to hold out for $5K/copy, why then they are entirely free to do so.
i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
I'd say that the similarity is that we want to be rewarded for the efforts of our labours, whether we are making music or canned corn. Perhaps each person will hope for different rewards. One person might be satisfied with the warm fuzzy feeling they get from knowing that they produced great canned corn. The next person might be more interested in cash. But both persons are looking to be rewarded.
I'm no musician, but if I was, should I not have the right to decide what reward I deserve for my creation? Should I be forced to give away my creations for free because this is what someone else thinks is the right thing for me do?
I'm sort of tired of hearing that anyone who produces music (or any sort of "art") and wishes to be financially compensated for their efforts is somehow not really an artist or (even more condescending) not talented!
Re:My Suggested Solution:
on
Pirate DNS?
·
· Score: 1
The.com TLD goes to multinational companies
What is a "multinational" company? If a guy has a one-man shop in the Azores but his website is located in Korea and he takes orders from people in the USA, does that make his business a "multinational"? Doesn't the WWW in escence make all companies "multinational"?
ISPs will be responsible for not allowing business to be conducted on personal pages.
Whose definition of the term "Conducting Business" will you use? Will a musical fan-site that has an associate program with links to Amazon be considered a business?
Where do personal pages fit in? As sub-domains of a country code. I suggest www.goatsluts.personal.cc.
So "personal" sites are limited to country-level naming conventions? When Slashdot came online, was it immediately a multinational business thus allowing the use of the ".org" domains? Or should it have started as a "personal.us" site and then upgrade to an "org.us" and then change the domain again to a plain old ".org"?
My "personal" (or if you prefer, "vanity") site is already on the ".com" domain. Are you planning to rape me, steal my domain and make me re-register under "personal.bb"? I am involved in an associate program with CDnow and links to their site appear on myne. Should my ISP discontinue service, or just put my domain up for grabs? If I start tying fishing flies and offering them for sale, does that then allow me to retain the ".com" TLD? Or only ".com.bb"? Suppose nobody ever buys any of my $10,000 fishing flies. Does that mean I'm not really in business after all? Or just that I have a poor business model and have not yet gone bankrupt?
When I posed this exact question to Slashdot a few weeks ago, it was not considered worthy of inclusion in the AskSlashdot list!:-/ Anyway...
I don't see any technical reason why this would not work. If an organization set up their own top-level servers, then all that would be needed would be to persuade other people (ISP's and such) to use them! They could define a whole bunch of new TLD's and fail-over to the current serrvers for TLD's like.com etc. Hopefully the organization in question would be a non-profit organization with an ethical policy about things like squatting, domain speculation, dispute resolution and the like. We are talking FreeDNS or OpenDNS!
Of course, I have no idea about the LEGAL hurdles that might surface, but if the top-level servers were in Sealand (for instance) what sort of legal action could be brought? Would the USA (as owners of the internet, thanks to inventor Al) pass laws making it illegal for people in the USA (and of course, other countries) from using the OpenDNS service?
There are a lot of reasons to live in Barbados, but if access to high-tech IT is your goal, keep looking.
There is a lot of encouragement for the national adoption of information technology. Considerable effort being put into encouraging early adoption in schools. There is even a policy to allow computer hardware and software to land duty-free, so as to keep the cost down and allow wider acceptance. However, the costs are still high enough that you won't want to purchase hardware locally if it can be avoided.
Bandwidth is another matter. Point-to-point local telephone is flat-rate, so there is no per-minute charge for dialling an ISP. But the telco has a terrible reputation for customer service. They are also the LD carrier, and the top-level ISP as well. Say "Monopoly". And compared to the USA, the bandwidth is relatively expensive, and the QOS is poor and spotty. Only limited services are available (ADSL only now being tested). To nail up an internet connection of (say) 128kbps would cost you thousands of dollars each month for private use only. To be able to re-sell the bandwidth will cost several times more.
Local employers are often thick-headed and hide-bound. If you send the boss an e-mail on the LAN, he is likely to call you on the phone, tell you to print a copy, and bring it to his office. Unless you work for a company that is directly related to the IT industry, chances are they are computer-illiterate. Even some of the companies that are in the IT field are so incompitent I refuse to use their services.
As for the entire issue of "Online Rights", well, it has not to my knowledge been tested even in the tinyest way. But I have a feeling that the local ISPs would rush to terminate your service if there was even the smallest suggestion that you were being a naughty boy! So I don't think you will be able to set up an off-shore data haven to make copies of DeCSS available to the world.
As I said, there is considerable interest for national adoption of IT, and I hope that we can rapidly catch up in that regard, but as of today, I would have to say that Barbados was not an ideal spot.
But as I said, there are lots of other reasons to live here, and it's a great place to visit!
In theory, the electromagnetic spectrum spans from zero Hz to infinity Hz, but it's not practical to use it all.
Low frequencies need large antennas. Nobody wants to hang a 160 meter dipole off their web-pad, do they? No. And high frequencies become extremely line-of-site and easily attenuated or blocked. You don't want to have to precisely aim a laser out the window at your ISP either. You probably don't want more than a few cm of antenna so a minimum freq. of what, 2 GHz? And anything over maybe 25 GHz will be absorbed by a heavy shower of rain, so maybe that will be a practical top limit.
Antennas (and your radio-connected web-pad will need one) are designed to operate at a resonant frequency. They will function when operated off-frequency, but with reduced efficiency. You probably won't get practical operation at about more than +/-10% from your resonant frequency, so if you have a resonant frequency of 20 GHz your web-pad won't want to transmit any lower than 18 GHz or higher than 22 GHz, so you have a useable radio bandwidth of 4 GHz, and that is very line-of-site and with lots of path-loss. Drop your carrier to 10 GHz will improve on the path-loss and directionality, but halve the radio bandwidth.
When you modulate a carrier it occupies more bandwidth as the data rate increases. Someone (Nyquist?) says that your bandwidth usage is twice your data rate. At a 20 GHz carrier you only have 4 GHz useable radio bandwidth (the antenna won't handle anything wider) so your data-rate can only be 2Gbit/sec. That 2Gbit/sec has to be shared by everyone within range of your transmitters. Using CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection) you can share this bandwidth, but there is a theoretical maximum data rate which is less than the unshared maximum. The figure 18% is ringing a bell - someone please correct me! Anyway, 18% of 2 Gbit/sec is 360 Mbit/sec, assuming that nobody else is using sharing the bandwidth. Multiple users will cause interference with each other, pushing the actual, practical data rates way down.
Reducing the size of "cells" and increasing their number will help. The cells can be linked via fibre. The range to the heart of the cell will be smaller, so path-loss/attenuation will not be as important a factor, allowing the use of higher carrier frequencies, giving higher data rates.
Who knows? Some of what I just said might even be correct!
Slashdot Mirror
Washington State's anti-spam legislation was recently held unconstitutional on the ground that states may not regulate the flow of spam, in that doing so is unduly restrictive of interstate commerce in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Does the constitution require that the average citizen pay for the interstate commerce initiatives of Losers Inc. or are we allowed to require that they pick up their own costs?
Well, isn't SPAM also a comunity?
Maybe, but I should not be forced to be a member of that community (by means of endless daily spam) any more than I should be forced to be a member of the Love the cactus community.
As soon as it's runnable and you have some decent documentation (i.e. readable)
Absolutely!
Call it Alpha if it crashes a lot.
No, when it crashes a lot, we call it v3.0
Beta if it only crashes now and then.
If it only crashes Now and then, it is good enough to be called v3.11 for Workgroups!
I guess you missed the recent article about the Galeon project...
No, I did read about it and I am certainly looking forward to the day that I can try it out. I understand that there are some licensing issues but I expect that they will be worked out eventually.
I've tried it, because I'd really like a nice new browser.
It's mega-bloat and buggy to boot. I can't even get one online session complete without it crashing. On top of which it's as ugly as hell.
Oh, and the coffee-perculator client is not functional yet either. But I'm sure they will delay the project by another year or so until it is.....
What I AM objecting to is their making money at the expense of my rights to do what I want with the items I own.
:) I'm usually
You are making presumptions as to what exact Rights you actually have. The concept of IP is enshrined in law. You have only those Rights that are extended to you by that law. Now maybe we think those laws are morally or ethically wrong. Maybe the vast majority of persons out there agree with us. But until we get those laws changed for the better, they are still law, and they still apply to us, whether we like it or not.
Let me ask you this: If you could get a CD (copy) for free of an artist you very much liked and admired and the artist asked for a donation, would you do it? Why or why not?
Probably, assuming I was able, and not in my usually penniless state.
penniless because I spend so much money on CD's. I'd be overjoyed if I didn't have to pay so much to the distributors. I'd much prefer to pay $7 to the artist than $15 to CDnow. And if I had to pay $15 I'd much rather pay that to the artist too. Unfortunately, that is rarely an option.
BTW, I have nearly 50 Gbytes of MPEG files, and I own the original CD for every one of them (which should tell you something about my willingness to pay for the music like). Only one of my CDs was given to me ( Weedpuller -- Congenital; good!) by the artist. When their next album came out I was quick to buy a copy direct from them!
OTOH I won't pay to download an MPEG file. The quality is generally too low and the "object" in question is too ephemeral. But that's just me...
If I built a car and sold it to you and you gave it to Frank (or built another one and gave THAT to Frank) no one would say that MY rights had been violated.
You could sell the car (or CD) that you had bought, but you could not create another identical car and place it on the market. What, you think you can start manufacturing Camrys and Toyota won't eat you alive?
Tori Amos. I knew a friend on IRC who was a Tori fanatic. One day he asked me if he could make me a tape of some of his favourite Tori songs and send it to me. I said sure. A few months later and I was hooked. I have three Tori albums and four singles, with plans to buy more.
That's the way it's supposed to work. (BTW, I have her albums too. She's hot, the music is good, and the Piglet Photo is a classic!) But there was a risk that you would just keep the tape and buy nothing, wasn't there?
I downloaded the Born Slippy MP3 and after loving it for a few weeks, went out and bought the album. I now have seven Underworld albums, and despite this, the RIAA still considers me a criminal.
Again, Underworld took a risk, and luckily for them, it paid off (at least in your case).
But shouldn't Underworld and Tori have the right to decide not to take that risk?
It's not a one-hit wonder, Creep is on there twice ;-)
Absolutely! (But the first one is better than the second.)
I bought their album(s) off the web from CDnow or wherever, paying $15+ each including shipping. Now I would have been more than happy to send that $15 direct to Radiohead if they would have sent me a CD in return. But instead I had to go through a distribution chain as long as your arm, and in the end, Radiohead probably got what? A buck if they were lucky?
The artists themselves need to look into direct distribution.
Followup to OK Computer should be out soon!
I an analogy to FedEx in this thread or Katz's about if 90% of FedEx's business was transporting bootleg movies, FedEx would be in the clear because they are the courier.
If I sold you a screwdriver, and you used it to force open someones kitchen door and steal their silver, would I be liable for the theft?
What about if I sold you a lock-pick?
I would strong disagree with you. Being popular does not make art bad, but the best art will rarely ever be popular, because by nature, to be "popular", you must be taylored primarily to the ignorant.
So if, heaven forbid, people actually like your music, then it is automatically bad music?
That sounds like CONDESCENDING RUBBISH to me.
Some groups believe that if authors had no monetary incentive to create published works, then no one would publish anything. The OSS movement shows that people have additional reasons to produce and publish works.
Regardless of what you (or I) believe the OSS movement shows, I don't think that people who don't agree with the OSS movement should be forced to publish their software under the OSS model. And I similarly do not accept that a musician who chooses not to give their music away free should be forced to do so either. Right or wrong, they should be free to choose for themselves.
I completely agree that there are legitimate uses for anonymity. But I can't think of any legitimate reason for spoofing your IP address.
Maybe I'm just dense, but it looks to me like the Itrace proposal in no way compromises anonymity, but instead defeats (or tries to defeat) IP spoofing. And I can not see any good reason why this should be considered a bad thing.
I think you are being too harsh.
JK said "We should..." and I took the we to mean the entire internet community. If he had said "I intend to do X, my collegues have promised to do the same, and I think that we should all consider such an action" I don't think you would have found much to complain about - unless you just like to bash JK.
First the guy says he won't review Slack because of it's "ridiculously slow release schedules". Well there are new releases on CD 2-3 times a year, and updates always available for download, but maybe he doesn't know that.
Then he says "Let's begin with some basics: How often do the vendors release new distributions?" and completely fails to answer his own basic question!
Sheesh!
The fun part is, Slackware releases more often than any distribution he covered.
:-)
:-/
;-)
Sensible people already know this!
The reviewer did not know this.
Therefore....
Still, in these comments there is subtext which says, "a true artist will create art even if he doesn't get paid. Anyone else has 'sold out', and is just trying to be The Man." The reality is, with the exception of the wealthy, is that artists, like programmers, chefs, and day-care workers, must get paid for their work if they are going to continue to do it. We shouldn't expect free food from chefs, free health care from doctors, free programs from programmers, nor do we label them "Sell-outs" or less than "true-professionals" if they expect/require to be paid for their work.
Hear hear!
There is entirely too much of this "If they wanna be paid they can't be real artists and obviously have no talent" nonsense. What, you are only allowed to earn any financial reward by selling tee-shirts and going on tours? Rubbish! What about someone who (perhaps for health reasons) can't or simply does not want to play their music live? And what exactly does selling tee-shirts have to do with making music anyway?
...giving your friend a copy of your DVD is considered fair use by some people.
Who exactly is "some people" and what makes their opinion relevant?
I believe that in most countries the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material is legally wrong (illegal). Now "some people" may consider that there is nothing morally wrong with it, and may think that it is "fair use" and who knows - I might even agree with them. But they (our) opinion is not relevant in the courts.
It's about giving consumers the right to decide the price of music not some record label guy.
Excuse me?
The consumer gets to determine the price of a product? Only in as much as the market generally influences the cost of any item by agreeing or refusing to pay the asking price.
I don't see that the consumer should tell the artist that they are only allowed to charge (say) $5 for their album. If the artist feels that they will charge $5000 for the album, I feel that is their right. Of course, I doubt they will get many sales at that price, and maybe they will decide to lower the price to $5, but that is their choice. If they insist they want to hold out for $5K/copy, why then they are entirely free to do so.
i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
I'd say that the similarity is that we want to be rewarded for the efforts of our labours, whether we are making music or canned corn. Perhaps each person will hope for different rewards. One person might be satisfied with the warm fuzzy feeling they get from knowing that they produced great canned corn. The next person might be more interested in cash. But both persons are looking to be rewarded.
I'm no musician, but if I was, should I not have the right to decide what reward I deserve for my creation? Should I be forced to give away my creations for free because this is what someone else thinks is the right thing for me do?
I'm sort of tired of hearing that anyone who produces music (or any sort of "art") and wishes to be financially compensated for their efforts is somehow not really an artist or (even more condescending) not talented!
The .com TLD goes to multinational companies
What is a "multinational" company? If a guy has a one-man shop in the Azores but his website is located in Korea and he takes orders from people in the USA, does that make his business a "multinational"? Doesn't the WWW in escence make all companies "multinational"?
ISPs will be responsible for not allowing business to be conducted on personal pages.
Whose definition of the term "Conducting Business" will you use? Will a musical fan-site that has an
associate program with links to Amazon be considered a business?
Where do personal pages fit in? As sub-domains of a country code. I suggest www.goatsluts.personal.cc.
So "personal" sites are limited to country-level naming conventions? When Slashdot came online, was it immediately a multinational business thus allowing the use of the ".org" domains? Or should it have started as a "personal.us" site and then upgrade to an "org.us" and then change the domain again to a plain old ".org"?
My "personal" (or if you prefer, "vanity") site is already on the ".com" domain. Are you planning to rape me, steal my domain and make me re-register under "personal.bb"? I am involved in an associate program with CDnow and links to their site appear on myne. Should my ISP discontinue service, or just put my domain up for grabs? If I start tying fishing flies and offering them for sale, does that then allow me to retain the ".com" TLD? Or only ".com.bb"? Suppose nobody ever buys any of my $10,000 fishing flies. Does that mean I'm not really in business after all? Or just that I have a poor business model and have not yet gone bankrupt?
When I posed this exact question to Slashdot a few weeks ago, it was not considered worthy of inclusion in the AskSlashdot list! :-/ Anyway...
.com etc. Hopefully the organization in question would be a non-profit organization with an ethical policy about things like squatting, domain speculation, dispute resolution and the like. We are talking FreeDNS or OpenDNS!
I don't see any technical reason why this would not work. If an organization set up their own top-level servers, then all that would be needed would be to persuade other people (ISP's and such) to use them! They could define a whole bunch of new TLD's and fail-over to the current serrvers for TLD's like
Of course, I have no idea about the LEGAL hurdles that might surface, but if the top-level servers were in Sealand (for instance) what sort of legal action could be brought? Would the USA (as owners of the internet, thanks to inventor Al) pass laws making it illegal for people in the USA (and of course, other countries) from using the OpenDNS service?
There are a lot of reasons to live in Barbados, but if access to high-tech IT is your goal, keep looking.
There is a lot of encouragement for the national adoption of information technology. Considerable effort being put into encouraging early adoption in schools. There is even a policy to allow computer hardware and software to land duty-free, so as to keep the cost down and allow wider acceptance. However, the costs are still high enough that you won't want to purchase hardware locally if it can be avoided.
Bandwidth is another matter. Point-to-point local telephone is flat-rate, so there is no per-minute charge for dialling an ISP. But the telco has a terrible reputation for customer service. They are also the LD carrier, and the top-level ISP as well. Say "Monopoly". And compared to the USA, the bandwidth is relatively expensive, and the QOS is poor and spotty. Only limited services are available (ADSL only now being tested). To nail up an internet connection of (say) 128kbps would cost you thousands of dollars each month for private use only. To be able to re-sell the bandwidth will cost several times more.
Local employers are often thick-headed and hide-bound. If you send the boss an e-mail on the LAN, he is likely to call you on the phone, tell you to print a copy, and bring it to his office. Unless you work for a company that is directly related to the IT industry, chances are they are computer-illiterate. Even some of the companies that are in the IT field are so incompitent I refuse to use their services.
As for the entire issue of "Online Rights", well, it has not to my knowledge been tested even in the tinyest way. But I have a feeling that the local ISPs would rush to terminate your service if there was even the smallest suggestion that you were being a naughty boy! So I don't think you will be able to set up an off-shore data haven to make copies of DeCSS available to the world.
As I said, there is considerable interest for national adoption of IT, and I hope that we can rapidly catch up in that regard, but as of today, I would have to say that Barbados was not an ideal spot.
But as I said, there are lots of other reasons to live here, and it's a great place to visit!
In theory, the electromagnetic spectrum spans from zero Hz to infinity Hz, but it's not practical to use it all.
Low frequencies need large antennas. Nobody wants to hang a 160 meter dipole off their web-pad, do they? No. And high frequencies become extremely line-of-site and easily attenuated or blocked. You don't want to have to precisely aim a laser out the window at your ISP either. You probably don't want more than a few cm of antenna so a minimum freq. of what, 2 GHz? And anything over maybe 25 GHz will be absorbed by a heavy shower of rain, so maybe that will be a practical top limit.
Antennas (and your radio-connected web-pad will need one) are designed to operate at a resonant frequency. They will function when operated off-frequency, but with reduced efficiency. You probably won't get practical operation at about more than +/-10% from your resonant frequency, so if you have a resonant frequency of 20 GHz your web-pad won't want to transmit any lower than 18 GHz or higher than 22 GHz, so you have a useable radio bandwidth of 4 GHz, and that is very line-of-site and with lots of path-loss. Drop your carrier to 10 GHz will improve on the path-loss and directionality, but halve the radio bandwidth.
When you modulate a carrier it occupies more bandwidth as the data rate increases. Someone (Nyquist?) says that your bandwidth usage is twice your data rate. At a 20 GHz carrier you only have 4 GHz useable radio bandwidth (the antenna won't handle anything wider) so your data-rate can only be 2Gbit/sec. That 2Gbit/sec has to be shared by everyone within range of your transmitters. Using CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection) you can share this bandwidth, but there is a theoretical maximum data rate which is less than the unshared maximum. The figure 18% is ringing a bell - someone please correct me! Anyway, 18% of 2 Gbit/sec is 360 Mbit/sec, assuming that nobody else is using sharing the bandwidth. Multiple users will cause interference with each other, pushing the actual, practical data rates way down.
Reducing the size of "cells" and increasing their number will help. The cells can be linked via fibre. The range to the heart of the cell will be smaller, so path-loss/attenuation will not be as important a factor, allowing the use of higher carrier frequencies, giving higher data rates.
Who knows? Some of what I just said might even be correct!
73, de Gus
Eight Papa Six Sly Mongoose
"That's 2 bits per Hz"
Err... I think that's 2 Hz per bit!