Re:You are mistaken . . .
on
ACM vs. RIAA
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· Score: 2
Well, until the Supreme Court makes a definitive statement, I will continue to believe the DMCA unconstitutional. And I am far from alone... No fewer than 46 professors of law share the opinion and were willing to file an amicus brief in the deCSS case to that effect. So I think that the law is somewhat less cut-and-dried than you purport.
Some interesting excerpts:
"The Intellectual Property Clause 'is both a grant of power and a limitation.' Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 5 (1966)... Congress may not extend protection to unoriginal subject matter, nor to ideas, processes, methods of operation, and the like unless the threshold for patentability is met. Feist, 499 U.S. at 349-50; Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 103-04 (1879). Nor may it grant protection for proper subject matter in perpetuity. A law that protects informational goods without regard for these limitations cannot claim the Intellectual Property Clause as its authority. The Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. at 93 94"
"The Necessary and Proper Clause affords Congress a wide degree of latitude in exercising the other powers enumerated in Article I. See McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 413-21 (1819). However, the clause is not an unlimited grant of authority. In particular, Congress may not use the necessary and proper power to avoid clear limits on its other numerated powers under pretext of advancing them. The Intellectual Property Clause is a limited grant of authority, and the anti-device provisions abrogate these limits."
"The necessary and proper power allows Congress only those means 'which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, [and] which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution.' McCulloch, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) at 421."
"This limitation is not merely theoretical. The Court's recent decision in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), illustrates that it is real, and cannot be overcome by mere assertion of
a relation, however indirect, between the activity sought to be regulated and a power actually granted to Congress. See 514 U.S. at 566-68 (holding that intrastate activity may be regulated pursuant to Congress' commerce power only if it "substantially affect[s]" interstate commerce)(3)"
"In sum, with or without the treaty power as backstop, the Necessary and Proper Clause does not empower Congress to redefine its own authority to avoid specific, affirmative limits on that authority."
"Finally, Congress may have intended the anti-device provisions as an exercise of the commerce power. What Congress may not do using the Necessary and Proper Clause, however, it also may not do using the Commerce Clause. Neither Congress nor this Court may adopt a construction of any power enumerated in Article I that would nullify limits on other Article I powers, or render other Article I powers superfluous."
"Congress may not invoke the Commerce Clause to extend exclusive protection to public domain or copyright-expired subject matter, or to eliminate fair use of copyrighted expression, any more than it may invoke the Necessary and Proper Clause to do so."
"In United States v. Moghadam, 175 F.3d 1269, 1275-76 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 120 S. Ct. 1529 (2000), the court acknowledged that a law enacted pursuant to the commerce power cannot survive review if it is 'fundamentally inconsistent' with the Intellectual Property Clause.." [emphasis added]
In conclusion, "The DMCA's anti-device provisions lack constitutional mooring, and may not be invoked to bar appellants, or anyone else, from reproducing, distributing, or linking to DeCSS. If Congress wishes to afford protection for 'technological measures' applied to protect copyrighted works beyond that which copyright law already affords, it must return to the drawing board."
So there is extensive precedent for asserting that the DMCA is broadly unconstitutional. Swweeping it away with a wave of the magic "Commerce Clause" wand simply does not suffice.
Re:DMCA Does Not Depend on the Copyright Clause!
on
ACM vs. RIAA
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
Congress expressly based its power to pass DMCA not on the Copyright [Clause], but upon the Commerce Clause
Well, that's all nice and good, but essentially irrelevant. Congress doesn't decide whether a law is constitutional; the Supreme Court does. What Congress might have done is present an argument that the DMCA is Constitutional because it draws its force from the Commerce Clause. There is nothing that requires the Court to agree with them on that point.
The Court is not stupid. They will be able to look at a law
called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act,
placed at US Code 17 (the location of copyright law), and
having several sections indicating that it was to implement WIPO treaties on copyright
and realize that, in fact, it is a copyright law. They can reject the Commerce Clause argument as specious (and insulting) and saw that the law, if valid, draws its force from the Copyright Clause -- and they can then evaluate whether, in fact, the Copyright Clause allows the DMCA.
Congress might have fooled itself into the basis of the law, but the Court has the actual say.
However we might feel about the constitutional validity of the DMCA, right now it's a law. Breaking it is a crime.
This is simply not true. If a law is unconstitutional, then it's not a law. It cannot be enforced. Of course, the DMCA has not (yet) been found unconstitutional, so people can be prosecuted under it. But if Sklyvarov and his attorneys hold that the DMCA is unconstitutional, then his plea of "not guilty" is perfectly valid because -- from his viewpoint -- he did not break any law.
The point is, once we had worked out a "dictionary", we could explain to them the experiments they could do to produce, for example, exactly one ampere. Then they could see how many of their units of current are contained in one ampere, and Voila!, suddenly each species can calibrate the electronics experiments of the other. This means that we could actually compare data, physical theory, etc.
Of course, you'd need more than the amp. There are a bunch (seven?) of fundamental constants, out of which all other units can be made. You'd need them all, and to communicate them, you'd need experiments that determine their value. So far, we have no such procedure for mass... so we couldn't calibrate the masses in the experiments.
It's not that the aliens are stupid. It's that we don't yet know how to communicate the value of a mass independent of a reference mass.
Oh, and by the way: The late doctor never said the aliens had space travel. Indeed, he implied the opposite: If we had to communicate from afar... using, I suppose, EM waves.
Well, I guess all those chip manufacturers will be a little ticked that they spent all that money on extremely-well calibrated factories... NOW you tell us!
Re:and where is this in the traditional media?
on
Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 2
Well, the New York Times web site is a mirror of the New York Times in-print edition, so I don't think your argument applies. I'm pretty sure the Tribune site is similar.
Re:not to "get around copyright protections"
on
Sklyarov Indicted
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
Does anyone else think the difference is important?
Well, lurking on slashdot, there are a few of us who believe the battleground is the language employed. But we learn that the typical slashdot thread is not hospitable to arguments based on nuance and subtlety... that's why we can have a hundred messages arguing whether "piracy is evil or a right", but not one decrying the arrogation of the word "piracy" to apply to a markedly non-violent crime (copyright infringement).
Yield the language and you yield the war... but it doesn't seem to make much headway here.
... this country is based on freedom for americans, not for everyone.
Amazingly, astonishingly, this is not true. It is one of the wonders of human history, and perhaps more than a little accidental, but the United States (in theory) recognizes the freedoms of humanity regardless of nationality. The courts have consistently ruled that immigrants, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, etc., are all entitled to all the Constitutional guarantees that citizens are. If these things are true, they are true for everyone.
We can argue, of course, about how well the US lives up to that high standard, but it is the standard.
Every one of these includes a line like "first prosecution under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act". So I guess the mainstream media is noticing the case and they're even using the name of the "said act".
Those are just the ones I pulled off the page I'm keeping following the case. It's hardly an exhaustive list, either.
My point is, all this bellyaching -- "No one is paying attention" -- is simply not true. It's just an excuse to sit on one's behind and do nothing, because "the System" is allegedly ignoring the issue and "the people" allegedly don't care.
Fact is, people do care. Copyright law is arcane and obscure, so perhaps it's understandable that there aren't mass protests in the streets. Yet. But the allegation that the mainstream media is completely ignoring this is hooey.
Common sense and intelligence often seem to be inversely proportional.
Indeed. Which is why the standard was a "reasonable man" and not, say, a "well-educated man". The idea is, there are certain rules of living that one evolves as one moves through the world, and -- quite a hypothesis here! -- such rules are, within a certain fuzzy box, common to everyone and recognizable by anyone reasonable.
"Reasonable man" and "common sense" are not exactly the same thing but are very related.
There used to be something called the "reasonable man" standard. (Yes, it's a sexist term. This was a while ago.) Basically, the courts asked whether an average, ordinary reasonable mind would have seen the danger. If so, no liability applies for the manufacturer, since the user "should have known better". Alas, setting the bar for a "reasonable" mind is hard and the standard appears to have fallen away.
Still, knowledge shouldn't be departmentalized to begin with.
I disagree strongly. First, since the breadth of human knowledge far exceeds the capacity of any one person, there will always be specialization. People will focus by nature. Over time, this will lead to people with similar interests gravitating toward each other, communicating most especially with each other, and so on. Eventually, you end up right back at departments. If disciplines are inevitable, why not stick with those that have arisen naturally and have already proven profoundly useful?
Second, I think people in different disciplines, by nature of their "isolated" education, think differently... and that's a good thing. Diversity of approach is a key ingredient for truly creative progress. Physicists think differently from biologists -- I've never met anyone in either discipline who'd argue with that -- and so physicists and biologists bring different things to the table. When a friend of mine was looking for postdocs, she was hired by a group doing "biophysics"... but they had not a single biophysicist. They had three biologists, two chemists and (with her) a physicist. The head researcher said he wasn't really even considering biophysicists, because he wanted a dyed-in-the-wool physicist who would see things in the "physics way".
All the energy lives at the interface of the disciplines, but you can't have interfaces without boundaries.
Well, maybe, but I don't think so. I think I'm using the terminology (fuzzy and techie) that was in vogue at both of the schools I undertook degrees at, used by most people on both sides of the divide with just a little bit of self-effacing and irony and, perhaps, the tiniest bit of good humor not to be mightily offended at every term.
I can't resist quoting Sam Seaborn of The West Wing:
Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.
An addition problem more-or-less unique to the US is the monopoly status of the government-run schools.
Um, I hate to burst your bubble. But the US is actually the least centralized education system of the industrialized world. In fact, there is no monopoly for government-run schools, as evidenced, ironically, by the private and Catholic school systems that you elsehere praise.
The teachers union has its flaws -- my mom worked for 22 years in NYC public schools, so I've seen the inside at least a little -- but it's hardly the root cause of the problem in the US. And currently the move is not away from grading but in fact toward it... excessively so, in my opinion. The national testing movement is not productive, not effective, and not worthwhile. It turns out students who don't know how to learn -- not even for the stupid test, much less in real cases.
the respect of the masses has shifted towards more money-oriented professions... no one wants to become a teacher anymore, and the education level has declined sharply. It's not always about the money...
Um, doesn't this imply that it is about the money? In the idyllic heydey you mention, when teachers weren't paid, what were they paid compared to other professions and opportunities? In other words, were they poor compared to the US but well-paid compared to their neighbors? In a non-capitalist society, that payment could include a sizable "respect" component, which certainly can ease life.
In the States, respect is shown by and measured by the monetary recompense. It's not that teachers are low-paid, per se, that's the problem. It's that the low pay results from -- and reinforces -- a general lack of respect for the profession.
I will state the following general rule, confirmed by all observations I have done:
On average, a science/engineering major will be better read, more broadly educated, and more receptive to out-of-field learning than a liberal arts major
This is only a general rule and of course varies tremendously in individuals, but I have seen it borne out well during the fifteen years I've been thinking about it. Science and engineering types are well aware of literature, art, music. Many work consciously to improve their appreciation of same. But very few of my English Lit friends read Scientific American, much less Q.E.D.. Their eyes glaze over at even the most elementary science or technical discussion.
Look at it this way: When I was in college, as a physics major, I had to take
14 physics and science courses
10 math courses
2 computer science courses
2 literature courses
4 philsophy courses
4 religion courses
4 social science courses (econ, soc, history)
Note that the school differentiate among philosophy, social science, and humanities. But for non-tech majors, all of physics, chemistry, biology, mech engineering, chem engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science, continuous mathematics, and discrete mathematics were lumped together as the undifferentiated blob "math/sci". And fuzzies only had to take a total of two math/sci courses.
Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be. And I like it. Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.
This isn't to bash teaching (or teachers), it's just to illustrate that the best and the brightest tend to go elsewhere.
As a teacher entering my sixth year, I think I'm insulted.:)
Sadly, what you say is true. We lose a lot of sharp people because they cannot handle the pay scale. A lot stay, too. In America right now, teaching is a vocation. It attracts people who feel passionately about it; and a good number of those are educated, intelligent, effective people. But their motivation is trans-rational, like faith; it doesn't make sense on a strictly rational level. And so anyone with talent but without that drive, will migrate to a more highly-rewarded career.
What people don't realize is that salaries are not the main problem. The problem is the working enviornment.
As a teacher, I can speak to this: By itself, pay is not really the deciding issue. But (most) teachers aren't dopes, and we understand this: in a society such as ours, importance is signified by money. It's the American way of keeping score. So when someone with two Masters is paid the lowest salary of nearly any profession, it sends a message about how highly the society values that person... or fails to.
Pay is a shorthand for many other issues, especially professionalism and respect. Those of us who teach understand that we'll never get rich doing it; but we'd like it to be a solid middle class career. None of my friends, all teachers under 35, expect to make teaching their full-life career or to live well doing it.
What is truly corrosive, though, is the lack of respect for the profession. You would never, ever think of telling your doctor, "Well, I could do your job if I wanted to take the time". Or, "I don't like your answer and I pay your salary, so tell me what I want." Yet teachers are often instructed to give kids the grades their parents want. I have met many blank stares -- and one or two outright laughs -- when I tell parents I can't recommend their kids for an advanced class because it would violate my professional ethics.
Pay might draw more people into teaching. Honest respect -- not "education president" lip service -- is what will keep them in the classroom. I continue because every year I manage to earn the respect of some intelligent, albeit young and inexperienced -- people.
Somewhere along the line, they have to connect to the Net, just like us.
Only if you consider DSL/cable/dialup "just like" leasing a dedicated server (probably server cluster) in a massive data center.
Point taken. I meant, there has to be someone "upstream" from them, in that they don't form a part of the backbone.
MPAA members own the copyrights to nearly mainstream all movies, and they license rights to a great portion of the mainstream recorded music, so it's hard to imagine what you'd accuse them of pirating... software or books ??
USENET posts. News articles. I dunno. It doesn't matter -- the point is not to prove that they have violated a copyright, but merely to accuse them of it, and so force the ISP to shut their connection while the matter was investigated. It'd only be a minor annoyance, but it'd at least highlight the insanity of the current system.
Imagine shutting wwww.mpaa.com for even a few hours. It might play in the news, if nothing else.
Who honestly burns CDs filled with Word/Abiword/KOffice documents at home?
Um, me.
I only burn backup disks to my system. I don't put music -- illegal or otherwise -- on CD-R. I don't pretend that there are legions of people only putting data on CD-R, but there are a few of us. And because this use is legitimate and non-infringing, and doesn't interact with RIAA titles at all, I don't see why the RIAA should have a say, or charge a tax, about it.
Try arguing that a child pornographer's site should not be shut down until a court decides that it is, in fact, illegal.
OK, how about this: "A child pornographer's site should not be shut down until a court decides that it is, in fact, illegal. It should not be taken down because the principle of Due Process is at the core of the American justice system. Due Process is a statement that citizens have value, that government (and corporations) cannot at whim and willy-nilly obstruct citizens. Due Process is a means wherein justice can be served and the enforcers can be held accountable. I would want to see an alleged child pornography site shut down without a hearing to the exact same extent I'd want an alleged child pornographer's door broken down without a warrant -- that is, not at all."
The courts move expeditiously in important matters. If the crime is really so blatant as to pose an iminent danger to the public, the warrant will come and come quickly. If you can't be bothered to get a warrant, perhaps there's really no substance to the charge.
The powers of government are not untrammeled and unlimited. It is in the long term best interest of every citizen of a free state that the state be restricted in what it can do, even in areas of supposed public safety.
How, then, can it be any less in the interest of every citizen of a free state that corporations be denied this power, too?
The child pornography thing is an obvious straw man argument, but I don't care: It helps highlight the crucial bit of this case, which is not the alleged crime and its seriousness. The focus should be on the egregious and invasive display of arrogant power by the MPAA and the craven, sad, and futile kowtowing of the ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
Some interesting excerpts:
a relation, however indirect, between the activity sought to be regulated and a power actually granted to Congress. See 514 U.S. at 566-68 (holding that intrastate activity may be regulated pursuant to Congress' commerce power only if it "substantially affect[s]" interstate commerce)(3)"
So there is extensive precedent for asserting that the DMCA is broadly unconstitutional. Swweeping it away with a wave of the magic "Commerce Clause" wand simply does not suffice.
Well, that's all nice and good, but essentially irrelevant. Congress doesn't decide whether a law is constitutional; the Supreme Court does. What Congress might have done is present an argument that the DMCA is Constitutional because it draws its force from the Commerce Clause. There is nothing that requires the Court to agree with them on that point.
The Court is not stupid. They will be able to look at a law
- called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act,
- placed at US Code 17 (the location of copyright law), and
- having several sections indicating that it was to implement WIPO treaties on copyright
and realize that, in fact, it is a copyright law. They can reject the Commerce Clause argument as specious (and insulting) and saw that the law, if valid, draws its force from the Copyright Clause -- and they can then evaluate whether, in fact, the Copyright Clause allows the DMCA.Congress might have fooled itself into the basis of the law, but the Court has the actual say.
This is simply not true. If a law is unconstitutional, then it's not a law. It cannot be enforced. Of course, the DMCA has not (yet) been found unconstitutional, so people can be prosecuted under it. But if Sklyvarov and his attorneys hold that the DMCA is unconstitutional, then his plea of "not guilty" is perfectly valid because -- from his viewpoint -- he did not break any law.
What he did was legal, because the DMCA is unconstitutional. Of course it'll take a trial to establish this, but his claim is perfectly valid.
Of course, you'd need more than the amp. There are a bunch (seven?) of fundamental constants, out of which all other units can be made. You'd need them all, and to communicate them, you'd need experiments that determine their value. So far, we have no such procedure for mass... so we couldn't calibrate the masses in the experiments.
It's not that the aliens are stupid. It's that we don't yet know how to communicate the value of a mass independent of a reference mass.
Oh, and by the way: The late doctor never said the aliens had space travel. Indeed, he implied the opposite: If we had to communicate from afar... using, I suppose, EM waves.
If there isn't, then you're way smarter than most practicing physicists... gravity is hard.
Well, I guess all those chip manufacturers will be a little ticked that they spent all that money on extremely-well calibrated factories... NOW you tell us!
Well, the New York Times web site is a mirror of the New York Times in-print edition, so I don't think your argument applies. I'm pretty sure the Tribune site is similar.
Well, lurking on slashdot, there are a few of us who believe the battleground is the language employed. But we learn that the typical slashdot thread is not hospitable to arguments based on nuance and subtlety... that's why we can have a hundred messages arguing whether "piracy is evil or a right", but not one decrying the arrogation of the word "piracy" to apply to a markedly non-violent crime (copyright infringement).
Yield the language and you yield the war... but it doesn't seem to make much headway here.
Amazingly, astonishingly, this is not true. It is one of the wonders of human history, and perhaps more than a little accidental, but the United States (in theory) recognizes the freedoms of humanity regardless of nationality. The courts have consistently ruled that immigrants, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, etc., are all entitled to all the Constitutional guarantees that citizens are. If these things are true, they are true for everyone.
We can argue, of course, about how well the US lives up to that high standard, but it is the standard.
Well, how about:
Every one of these includes a line like "first prosecution under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act". So I guess the mainstream media is noticing the case and they're even using the name of the "said act".
Those are just the ones I pulled off the page I'm keeping following the case. It's hardly an exhaustive list, either.
My point is, all this bellyaching -- "No one is paying attention" -- is simply not true. It's just an excuse to sit on one's behind and do nothing, because "the System" is allegedly ignoring the issue and "the people" allegedly don't care.
Fact is, people do care. Copyright law is arcane and obscure, so perhaps it's understandable that there aren't mass protests in the streets. Yet. But the allegation that the mainstream media is completely ignoring this is hooey.
Indeed. Which is why the standard was a "reasonable man" and not, say, a "well-educated man". The idea is, there are certain rules of living that one evolves as one moves through the world, and -- quite a hypothesis here! -- such rules are, within a certain fuzzy box, common to everyone and recognizable by anyone reasonable.
"Reasonable man" and "common sense" are not exactly the same thing but are very related.
There used to be something called the "reasonable man" standard. (Yes, it's a sexist term. This was a while ago.) Basically, the courts asked whether an average, ordinary reasonable mind would have seen the danger. If so, no liability applies for the manufacturer, since the user "should have known better". Alas, setting the bar for a "reasonable" mind is hard and the standard appears to have fallen away.
I disagree strongly. First, since the breadth of human knowledge far exceeds the capacity of any one person, there will always be specialization. People will focus by nature. Over time, this will lead to people with similar interests gravitating toward each other, communicating most especially with each other, and so on. Eventually, you end up right back at departments. If disciplines are inevitable, why not stick with those that have arisen naturally and have already proven profoundly useful?
Second, I think people in different disciplines, by nature of their "isolated" education, think differently
All the energy lives at the interface of the disciplines, but you can't have interfaces without boundaries.
To be fair, I probably should have avoided a term that can seem derogatory out of the context in which I came to learn it.
But hey, that's just me.
Um, I hate to burst your bubble. But the US is actually the least centralized education system of the industrialized world. In fact, there is no monopoly for government-run schools, as evidenced, ironically, by the private and Catholic school systems that you elsehere praise.
The teachers union has its flaws -- my mom worked for 22 years in NYC public schools, so I've seen the inside at least a little -- but it's hardly the root cause of the problem in the US. And currently the move is not away from grading but in fact toward it... excessively so, in my opinion. The national testing movement is not productive, not effective, and not worthwhile. It turns out students who don't know how to learn -- not even for the stupid test, much less in real cases.
Um, doesn't this imply that it is about the money? In the idyllic heydey you mention, when teachers weren't paid, what were they paid compared to other professions and opportunities? In other words, were they poor compared to the US but well-paid compared to their neighbors? In a non-capitalist society, that payment could include a sizable "respect" component, which certainly can ease life.
In the States, respect is shown by and measured by the monetary recompense. It's not that teachers are low-paid, per se, that's the problem. It's that the low pay results from -- and reinforces -- a general lack of respect for the profession.
This is only a general rule and of course varies tremendously in individuals, but I have seen it borne out well during the fifteen years I've been thinking about it. Science and engineering types are well aware of literature, art, music. Many work consciously to improve their appreciation of same. But very few of my English Lit friends read Scientific American, much less Q.E.D.. Their eyes glaze over at even the most elementary science or technical discussion.
Look at it this way: When I was in college, as a physics major, I had to take
Note that the school differentiate among philosophy, social science, and humanities. But for non-tech majors, all of physics, chemistry, biology, mech engineering, chem engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science, continuous mathematics, and discrete mathematics were lumped together as the undifferentiated blob "math/sci". And fuzzies only had to take a total of two math/sci courses.
Techies are more well-rounded because the current system forces them to be. And I like it. Don't compromise the techies; force the fuzzies to the same depth and breadth in the sciences as we were expected to have in the humanities.
As a teacher entering my sixth year, I think I'm insulted.
Sadly, what you say is true. We lose a lot of sharp people because they cannot handle the pay scale. A lot stay, too. In America right now, teaching is a vocation. It attracts people who feel passionately about it; and a good number of those are educated, intelligent, effective people. But their motivation is trans-rational, like faith; it doesn't make sense on a strictly rational level. And so anyone with talent but without that drive, will migrate to a more highly-rewarded career.
As a teacher, I can speak to this: By itself, pay is not really the deciding issue. But (most) teachers aren't dopes, and we understand this: in a society such as ours, importance is signified by money. It's the American way of keeping score. So when someone with two Masters is paid the lowest salary of nearly any profession, it sends a message about how highly the society values that person... or fails to.
Pay is a shorthand for many other issues, especially professionalism and respect. Those of us who teach understand that we'll never get rich doing it; but we'd like it to be a solid middle class career. None of my friends, all teachers under 35, expect to make teaching their full-life career or to live well doing it.
What is truly corrosive, though, is the lack of respect for the profession. You would never, ever think of telling your doctor, "Well, I could do your job if I wanted to take the time". Or, "I don't like your answer and I pay your salary, so tell me what I want." Yet teachers are often instructed to give kids the grades their parents want. I have met many blank stares -- and one or two outright laughs -- when I tell parents I can't recommend their kids for an advanced class because it would violate my professional ethics.
Pay might draw more people into teaching. Honest respect -- not "education president" lip service -- is what will keep them in the classroom. I continue because every year I manage to earn the respect of some intelligent, albeit young and inexperienced -- people.
Point taken. I meant, there has to be someone "upstream" from them, in that they don't form a part of the backbone.
USENET posts. News articles. I dunno. It doesn't matter -- the point is not to prove that they have violated a copyright, but merely to accuse them of it, and so force the ISP to shut their connection while the matter was investigated. It'd only be a minor annoyance, but it'd at least highlight the insanity of the current system.
Imagine shutting wwww.mpaa.com for even a few hours. It might play in the news, if nothing else.
Um, me.
I only burn backup disks to my system. I don't put music -- illegal or otherwise -- on CD-R. I don't pretend that there are legions of people only putting data on CD-R, but there are a few of us. And because this use is legitimate and non-infringing, and doesn't interact with RIAA titles at all, I don't see why the RIAA should have a say, or charge a tax, about it.
OK, how about this: "A child pornographer's site should not be shut down until a court decides that it is, in fact, illegal. It should not be taken down because the principle of Due Process is at the core of the American justice system. Due Process is a statement that citizens have value, that government (and corporations) cannot at whim and willy-nilly obstruct citizens. Due Process is a means wherein justice can be served and the enforcers can be held accountable. I would want to see an alleged child pornography site shut down without a hearing to the exact same extent I'd want an alleged child pornographer's door broken down without a warrant -- that is, not at all."
The courts move expeditiously in important matters. If the crime is really so blatant as to pose an iminent danger to the public, the warrant will come and come quickly. If you can't be bothered to get a warrant, perhaps there's really no substance to the charge.
The powers of government are not untrammeled and unlimited. It is in the long term best interest of every citizen of a free state that the state be restricted in what it can do, even in areas of supposed public safety.
How, then, can it be any less in the interest of every citizen of a free state that corporations be denied this power, too?
The child pornography thing is an obvious straw man argument, but I don't care: It helps highlight the crucial bit of this case, which is not the alleged crime and its seriousness. The focus should be on the egregious and invasive display of arrogant power by the MPAA and the craven, sad, and futile kowtowing of the ISP.