On a related side note, you do not even own any rights to your own genome.
On a side note, I've seen it said that the best antidote to the ridiculous genome patenting that occurs is, believe it or not, copyright law. After all, your genome is at least as much like code as like a machine... since it need mRNA to function, it's not really a machine (by itself) at all.
Do you think Microsoft would accept the argument by Intel that "Our chips use that code to do word processing, and therefore our patents give us ownership of the code"? Of course not. Likewise, your gene sequence is your gene sequence. If a drug company tries to isolate a gene from you and use it, sue them under copyright!
Esoteric legal point: It might have to be your parents who sue, as they "authored" the sequence. And it might be that all of humanity is a derivative work of a work which has passed into public domain.
I think secretly Perens wants to be the hero of the anti-DMCA movement.
Then more power to him. I don't care whose ego gets fed, if the end result is the repeal of the DMCA and the restoration of sanity to intellectual output law.
Sorry bud - downloading copyrighted music is stealing, it isn't giving things away.
Sorry, bud, but downloading copyrighted music is not stealing. It's "copyright infringement". No theft is going on, since no physical property is being lifted. It's still a crime, but it's a different crime.
Changing the format of material that you allready own is covered under fair use, but it is your responibility to do it. If you do it for others or have others do it for you, then it's no longer fair use it's distrubition.
This, while true, is also insane. (From this, one might deduce a general comment about the whole "intellectual property" regime.) If I take a CD that I own and rip it to MP3, I have broken no laws. It's perfectly valid. If I give a CD I own to a friend and she rips it to MP3, then gives me both the CD and the MP3, it's infringement. Note that the net result is that someone allowed to have two copies has two copies. Note that my friend has not obtained either a disc or an MP3, except in an emphemeral sense. Note that no court of law (indeed, no one at all) would be able to distinguish my MP3 -- a sequence of bits -- from her MP3 -- the exact same sequence of bits.
In other words, once this "crime" has been committed, there is no evidence and no effect of the "crime". No one has been harmed -- not even the poor, bleeding RIAA, since I have access to exactly the same file as if I'd done it myself.
This all dates back to the ill-advised decision in the mp3.com case, and it helps highlight the silliness and plain insanity of copyright law as currently applied.
In what twisted bassackward world does *any* of the uses for a broadcast flag serve the public interest?
Oh, they're ready for that. Read the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. If we don't give Hollywood what it demands, then they won't release digital content. That makes digital TV sort of a dead issue. And it keeps movies off the Internet, so no one will spend for broadband. A lot of phone and cable companies will be stuck with a lot of unused capacity. Then plagues will run the land and the sky will fall open and the earth be swalloed in darkness. Woe!
That argument is of course BS -- it's Hollywood saying, "Give me a broadcast flag or I'll just walk away from the billions that digital broadcast is gonna make me" -- but that doesn't matter. They just need to have an answer, not a good one.
Our legislative system is bogged down with bureaucracy and partisan game-playing.
That's not a failure of the system. That is the system. "Partisan game-playing" is just a different way of saying "deliberative process".
The FCC is an executive agency. It should not be making policy, especially policy of this scope. Haven't you been paying attention to the disastrous results of FCC policy changes in the 1990s? Consolidation of radio into one or two companies. Creation of horizontal media empires. Extensive and undisclosed cross-branding. Death of HDTV.
This is not two elected officials taking the high road out of the muck and mire. This is two elected officials who know that there is no way they can get something like this through Congress -- most voters like their VCRs very much, thank you -- and thus these two elected officials want to do an end-run around the democratic process.
In an administration explicitly modeled on and sympathetic to big business, of course the bought senators would rather deal with the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats are much more likely to have at heart the interests of the senators' masters, Big Media.
Police in Italy didn't care that five Web sites they deemed blasphemous and thus illegal were
located in the United States, where First Amendment protections apply... Though the sites were hosted by U.S. companies, including Blue Gravity Communications Inc. of Pennsauken, New Jersey, authorities in Italy used a suspect's computer and password to reach across the ocean
CNN might have goofed up, but it sure sounds like the servers are in the US.
Almost. But of course, if they don't admit the problem, it's not a "known issue". The conversation would be more like:
Microsoft: Oh yes, there are known issues with that system. We should have a hot update in, say, two to six months. Until then, we suggest the workaround of never leaving the ground.
Pilot: But it's a fratzing PLANE!
Microsoft: If you care to read your End User License Agreement, you will see that Microsoft makes no warranty as to the usefulness of the software for any given task, including that for which it was purchased.
Pilot: This is a $500M plane you're responsible for.
Microsoft: Actually, if you read the EULA, Microsoft is not responsible for any damages caused by failure of the software, whether or not those failures were known, or avoidable, or intentional. Pilot: That's it. I'm ejecting. Microsoft: Actually, sir, the maker of the ejection seats chose not to use WindowsXP embedded. To preserve the integrity of the Windows experience, your on-board avionics have been instructed not to interoperate with the rogue OS on the ejection seat. But WindowsEJ will be out in first quarter 2003 for your ejection seat pleasure.
( i think it is acceptable to give an invalid vote opposed to not going to vote at all )
Not as flamebait, but why? Why should you be allowed to deliberately gum up the works? And if it's to make a point about voting, why should you be opposed to the machine announcing it? What kind of message can you send if there's no one to hear?
Clearly written numbers, or ticks, are unambiguous
Of course. That's what makes them "clearly written". By the same token, "clearly punched holes" are unambiguous, too. The furor is on the in-betweens, and written marks have as much chance for ambiguity as punched holes.
No voting technology will ever be perfect. That's why auditability and accountability are key, no matter what system is used.
You know what? It doesn't matter what the motivation of the people is for complaining. The fact of the matter is, the system is intrinsically unaccountable -- and that's true whether or not Joe won the election. Sure, they might simply be whining. But how would you know? For democracy to work, it is vital that people believe in the integrity of the election process. These machines -- by being unauditable and hence not even in principle accountable to third parties -- undermine that legitimacy.
We tend to forget how often it is someone's "whining" that throws a real problem into sharp relief.
but typically in balloting you are not supposed to get a receipt.
Well, I haven't voted in the multi-thousands of electoral districts, so far be it from me to say what is "typical". But I have voted in four different states and in each one I received a receipt. It doesn't show how you voted but it at least shows a record of voting. If you read the article, some people feel their votes were just dropped, lost in the bit bucket. A receipt at least indicates that something went on.
Do you really think hardware vendors are SO STUPID as to cripple them all in the processor?
Hmmm, let's see.
Recently, business sales of new CPUs have fallen off. Apparently people are running word processors just about as fast as they need to, and so it makes sense to hang onto older, "obsolete" motherboards and "outdated" OSes. This of course threatens the chip makers, since their business model depends on unconstrained growth in demand.
If Microsoft releases Windows Palladium as advertised, then businesses will feel motivated, if not outright compelled, to buy it, since security is a growing concern. But to run Palladium, you need hardware-level encryption and signing. That means to "upgrade" to Windows Palladium, you need to buy an entire new CPU. At least one more rush of hardware purchases awaits!
Consider these quotes:
Giants chip in for Palladium
"...INDUSTRY chip giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have confirmed they will support Microsoft's plan to improve PC hardware and software security..."
Palladium: Safe or Security Flaw?
"...Microsoft's recently announced R&D project, which includes chipmakers Intel and AMD as partners, aims to combine software and hardware extensions to traditional PC architecture..."
So I guess the reason that I think "hardware vendors are SO STUPID as to cripple them all in the processor" is that they've already agreed to do just that.
Of course, how many times has Microsoft been hacked? Not their misconfigured software set up by users in the field, but their truly important computers, the ones they pay attention to.
Never.
Hmmm. A quick search on google yielded:
http://www.attrition.org/security/commentary/ms16. html : Including the Windows Update site -- which I suspect they "pay attention to".
http://www.computeruser.com/news/01/01/25/news9.ht ml
Indeed, that first page includes the interesting fact:
This makes the 17th time a Microsoft Web site has been defaced including the corporation's global sites in Brazil, Slovenia, New Zealand, Mexico, UK, Saudi Arabia and South Africa as well as six servers from their corporate headquarters.
So I guess for Microsoft, "never" has the same definition as "always" does for their uptimes: some short duration.
Sure, that's OK for now, while there are other OSes. But what happens when hardware-level implementation of Palladium takes place? When connection to the Net is mandated to be through Palladium-secure boxes only?
That's like saying, in 1960, "If you don't like what Ma Bell is doing, just get rid of your phone line." It's not a practicable option -- and it should be the only one available.
No one mans right can or should be outwieghed by those of another.
Demonstrably untrue. Go exercise your First Amendment right to free speech by screaming "Fire!" in your neighborhood multiplex. You'll find out quickly that a "compelling state interest" -- in this case, safety of the patrons -- outweighs your right to say whatever you want.
And rightly so. Life in a civilized society involves a social compact, wherein you agree to (reasonable) limits on your rights and I do the same, so that we can live harmoniously.
Or, as was once said, "Your right to swing your fists ends at the tip of someone else's nose."
EPIC's page ( http://www.epic.org/privacy/cpni/) has some info. For Verizon, call (866) 483-9600 and wade through a tedious phone tree (about four minutes, but have your bill handy).
You see, when the checks and balances on power (eg, court orders for wire taps, etc) are removed, there will be corruption. The only question is how much and how bad.
*sigh*. It's going to happen--can we just stop wasting time trying to *fight* it, and spend some energy on doing it *right?*
I've begun to feel that fighting for privacy in the digital age is chasing a chimera. What we need to insist on -- now, strongly, and forever -- is transparency. I want to know who is watching me and what they do with the info. If everyone can keep tabs on everyone else, threat of mutual assured destruction might eke out a livable space for privacy.
Or, to put it more pointedly, how many police stations are under video surveillance? And why not?
The world (and barely even the U.S.) hasn't been in a state of peace since WW2.
Well, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single year when "the world" has been at peace, without going back to before the first guy clubbed someone with an antelope femur...
The article also claims that technology and democracy were responsible for the demise of Communism. This is not true. The USSR couldn't compete against the U.S. market dominance
Duh-huh, what? What exactly do you think gave the US "market dominance"? Why, exactly, could the Soviet block not compete? Because the West had much superior logitistics, tech, and industry... The capitalist ethic (and a relative sparseness of people!) drove innovation, which then fed the cycle to push the technology (and then production) to ever-higher levels.
The Soviet Union probably could have competed indefinitely against the United States of the 1930s. Unfortunately for them, the US kept moving the goal posts... and it is largely the heavy investment in technology (coupled to a fluid and open society) that achieved that.
Whoo Hoo! She's handing out.gif's! Hope the Celeborn guy isn't in them.
More importantly, I hope she paid the Unisys GIF license. Otherwise, forget Sauron... they'll have to face the unspeakable evil of the US intellectual "property" legal system!
My response was to a comment that a law doesn't have to specifically mention every method of committing a crime. The Mossaui case was, and is, a perfect example of a law that was found to be lacking because it didn't mention a specific method of committing a crime.
And here's where we have to bemoan the death of the "reasonable citizen" doctrine. It used to be the case that obvious extensions -- that, for instance, an airplane is a "means of transportation" -- would happen without trouble. The assumption was exactly that the principle of the law was what mattered, and that an uncontrolled proliferation of narrowly-specific laws would actually undermine justice rather than serve it.
Of course, under such a system, any reasonably intelligent person could learn the law on his/her own (Abraham Lincoln, anyone?) and not have to buy into the whole self-propagating system. So of course that had to be changed...
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think Microsoft would accept the argument by Intel that "Our chips use that code to do word processing, and therefore our patents give us ownership of the code"? Of course not. Likewise, your gene sequence is your gene sequence. If a drug company tries to isolate a gene from you and use it, sue them under copyright!
Esoteric legal point: It might have to be your parents who sue, as they "authored" the sequence. And it might be that all of humanity is a derivative work of a work which has passed into public domain.
In other words, once this "crime" has been committed, there is no evidence and no effect of the "crime". No one has been harmed -- not even the poor, bleeding RIAA, since I have access to exactly the same file as if I'd done it myself.
This all dates back to the ill-advised decision in the mp3.com case, and it helps highlight the silliness and plain insanity of copyright law as currently applied.
That argument is of course BS -- it's Hollywood saying, "Give me a broadcast flag or I'll just walk away from the billions that digital broadcast is gonna make me" -- but that doesn't matter. They just need to have an answer, not a good one.
The FCC is an executive agency. It should not be making policy, especially policy of this scope. Haven't you been paying attention to the disastrous results of FCC policy changes in the 1990s? Consolidation of radio into one or two companies. Creation of horizontal media empires. Extensive and undisclosed cross-branding. Death of HDTV.
This is not two elected officials taking the high road out of the muck and mire. This is two elected officials who know that there is no way they can get something like this through Congress -- most voters like their VCRs very much, thank you -- and thus these two elected officials want to do an end-run around the democratic process.
In an administration explicitly modeled on and sympathetic to big business, of course the bought senators would rather deal with the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats are much more likely to have at heart the interests of the senators' masters, Big Media.
Almost. But of course, if they don't admit the problem, it's not a "known issue". The conversation would be more like:
Microsoft: Oh yes, there are known issues with that system. We should have a hot update in, say, two to six months. Until then, we suggest the workaround of never leaving the ground.
Pilot: But it's a fratzing PLANE!
Microsoft: If you care to read your End User License Agreement, you will see that Microsoft makes no warranty as to the usefulness of the software for any given task, including that for which it was purchased.
Pilot: This is a $500M plane you're responsible for.
Microsoft: Actually, if you read the EULA, Microsoft is not responsible for any damages caused by failure of the software, whether or not those failures were known, or avoidable, or intentional.
Pilot: That's it. I'm ejecting.
Microsoft: Actually, sir, the maker of the ejection seats chose not to use WindowsXP embedded. To preserve the integrity of the Windows experience, your on-board avionics have been instructed not to interoperate with the rogue OS on the ejection seat. But WindowsEJ will be out in first quarter 2003 for your ejection seat pleasure.
No voting technology will ever be perfect. That's why auditability and accountability are key, no matter what system is used.
We tend to forget how often it is someone's "whining" that throws a real problem into sharp relief.
- Recently, business sales of new CPUs have fallen off. Apparently people are running word processors just about as fast as they need to, and so it makes sense to hang onto older, "obsolete" motherboards and "outdated" OSes. This of course threatens the chip makers, since their business model depends on unconstrained growth in demand.
- If Microsoft releases Windows Palladium as advertised, then businesses will feel motivated, if not outright compelled, to buy it, since security is a growing concern. But to run Palladium, you need hardware-level encryption and signing. That means to "upgrade" to Windows Palladium, you need to buy an entire new CPU. At least one more rush of hardware purchases awaits!
- Consider these quotes:
- Giants chip in for Palladium
- Palladium: Safe or Security Flaw?
So I guess the reason that I think "hardware vendors are SO STUPID as to cripple them all in the processor" is that they've already agreed to do just that."...INDUSTRY chip giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have confirmed they will support Microsoft's plan to improve PC hardware and software security..."
"...Microsoft's recently announced R&D project, which includes chipmakers Intel and AMD as partners, aims to combine software and hardware extensions to traditional PC architecture..."
- http://www.attrition.org/security/commentary/ms16
. html : Including the Windows Update site -- which I suspect they "pay attention to". - http://www.computeruser.com/news/01/01/25/news9.h
t ml - http://www.vnunet.com/News/1115617
- http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/isn/2001/05/
m sg00028.html
Indeed, that first page includes the interesting fact: So I guess for Microsoft, "never" has the same definition as "always" does for their uptimes: some short duration.That's like saying, in 1960, "If you don't like what Ma Bell is doing, just get rid of your phone line." It's not a practicable option -- and it should be the only one available.
And rightly so. Life in a civilized society involves a social compact, wherein you agree to (reasonable) limits on your rights and I do the same, so that we can live harmoniously.
Or, as was once said, "Your right to swing your fists ends at the tip of someone else's nose."
EPIC's page ( http://www.epic.org/privacy/cpni/) has some info. For Verizon, call (866) 483-9600 and wade through a tedious phone tree (about four minutes, but have your bill handy).
Or, to put it more pointedly, how many police stations are under video surveillance? And why not?
The Soviet Union probably could have competed indefinitely against the United States of the 1930s. Unfortunately for them, the US kept moving the goal posts... and it is largely the heavy investment in technology (coupled to a fluid and open society) that achieved that.
Of course, under such a system, any reasonably intelligent person could learn the law on his/her own (Abraham Lincoln, anyone?) and not have to buy into the whole self-propagating system. So of course that had to be changed...