Moreover, under DMCA, we are liable. That's how it works. Next time, read the summary of the DMCA before posting
So what? We hear a lot of calls, in slashdot as well as elsewhere, that people should stand up, should focus attention on the evils, etc. In other words, calls for civil disobedience. In civil disobedience, you perform the illegal act fully recognizing that it is illegal and that you will suffer the consequences under the law... because you're trying to show it's a bad law.
How is the DMCA ever going to get overturned unless people demonstrate -- over and over again -- that it leads to unforeseen and terrible consequences? That it impacts civil society in ways that are unacceptable? If every time someone is faced with an action under DMCA, they fold, then the the law will never be challenged and it will last forever. Let's face it, that's exactly the effect we all feared under DMCA: Not that people will be prosecuted, but that they will self-censor to avoid legal hassle.
Now, the people runnng slashdot are the ones who face any legal consequences, so they are the ones who must decide whether to walk that path. But it's entirely reasonable for people to have expected that slashdot would go to the wall, considering the editorial exhortations to that effect that we've seen over the years.
NCR, and later Apple, threw a lot of money at pen computing before Palm got it right. Did Palm learn from NCR's mistakes, or would they have gotten everything right on the first try?
The patent system doesn't exist to guarantee that you'll make a profit off throwing a boatload of money at a problem. Sometimes you just lose. If Palm directly utilized technologies pioneered by NCR, then they'd owe a license fee. But owning the concept of a portable transaction device?
I long for the days that the Patent Office insisted on an actual, working prototype before granting anything. For that matter, I long for the days before software patents, "business model" patents, and all the other vapor patents thay've allowed since Bush the Elder was in charge.
A simple acknowledgment in future discussions of this work by the author and
his agents that there is a cryptography based on zeta functions,introduced in
the open literature by Michael Anshel and Dorian Goldfeld and whose patent
rights are assigned to Arithmetica Inc would do for a starter.
Um, is every sci fi author using nuclear power supposed to reference Fermi, Oppenheimer, Einstein, Curie....?
The fact of the matter is, zeta functions are fair game, mathematically, and their possible application to cryptography is not all that inobvious. Sure, the company has the patents on one particular system, but it's pretty clear that the system in the book is not that one.
If Stephenson wants to be nice, he can mention it. But there's no obligation, legal or moral, that he give Arithmetica some free advertising.
Since the system described in the book is pretty primitve (and eminently breakable) by modern standards, I'm not entirely sure why Arithmetica wants to be associated with it anyway.
If I give you a dollar last year, and then $1.10 this year (but meanwhile your costs have increased 30%) I HAVEN'T CUT YOUR BUDGET. Unless of course, you're a bleeding heart that believes that all government programs are *entitled* to continual and eternal funding increases with inflation....
...or a right-wing warhawk who believes that the inability to fight a two-front war a la WWII versus two indpendent opponents each with the strength of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s is somehow an indication that the barbarians are at the gate and we're "selling out" the military.
...or a law-and-order candidate who feels that failure to keep the cop-on-the-beat budget implies a surrender to criminals
....or a personal-automobile fanatic who believes that simple maintenance of existing roads is a plot of pot-smoking fuzzy-headed greenniks.
The point is, it's easy to demonize this sort of thinking (that failing to adjust for cost-of-living is a cut in itself). But it's also virtually useless. If you ask the ordinary "citizen on the street", you'll find that, in their heart of hearts, they begin from a status quo assumption: Let's keep everything where it is now, EXCEPT...
Economists have dealt with this paradox for so long, they've come up with mechanisms to cope. For example, things can be quoted in "real dollars" or "constant 2000 dollars" or whatever. This is more than a trick. Since money is just a measurement of your ability to purchase, inflation really does eat into your money supply. This year, with the same $100, you buy less "stuff" than last year. Thus, your $100 is worth less than last year -- and so, you've been given less than last year.
As a child of the late 1970s, I understand inflationg real good... a failure to adjust for cost-of-living is a cut.
I am not more a lawyer than I am a supermodel, but here's my two bits.
It is legal for me to lend a CD to a friend and let him make a copy for his own use.
Not anymore; the Napster case changed the law.
Um, not ever. I love the BetaMax decision, but let's not abuse it. It has been established that you have the right to make copies of material you have purchased. Your friend has not bought the CD so he cannot copy it.
By the way, you can't use this dodge, either: "Sell" the CD to your friend for $1, let him copy it (as now it's "his"), then "buy" it back for $1. Once your friend sells it to you, he is legally obligated to destroy any copies he's made of it.
Copyright law, as we know, is goofy and inconsistent. But the BetaMax decision is (relatively) lucid.
in other words, MTV will still promote Christina Aguilera and Eminem-- but there will be many more alternatives to MTV
But, the advantage and the power of the recording companies lies almost entirely in their uniqueness... It's their way or the highway, and the highway doesn't go anywhere. But now, the Net is paving new roads.
Breaking the distribution modes breaks the marketing monopoly. I am an optimist, I guess, but I think that if the good stuff is out there, it will get promoted. I think that the Media Moguls do have an impact, but less than is usually believed.
Um, something has to exert a torque on the disc to get it moving. Maybe a physical rod, maybe an electromagnetic grapple, maybe telepathy... but it's not gonna move unless something exerts a torque on it. By Newton's III, that will create an oppositely-directed torque on the "something" that will cause it to rotate the other way.
Now, you could prevent the ISS from rotating by not clamping the DVD player to the station hull. In that case, the DVD player will start to rotate -- perhaps noticeably, since the mass ratio is not so severe. Or you can clmap it to the hull and impart that angular momentum to the station (where it would probably be negligible).
I don't know what you mean when you say
The space station is a mechanically insulated (autonomous) system,
but the fact of being isolated causes this linkage. If ISS+DVD starts off non-rotating, and if they form an isolated system, then their angular momentum must remain zero no matter what they do to each other. So if the disc spins (and picks up angular momentum), the station counter-spins (to cancel it out in the system total).
It doesn't matter that home studios can produce high quality music, the thing that the big labels have over little guys is not quality but marketing (and, for that matter, market power over retailers).
No, not really. What McDonald's has is an infrastructure in place for producing and distributing those burgers. Sure, I can make a few hamburgers that are better than McDonalds, but I'd probably pale at having to serve a few million such burgers.
But look further: The article makes the point that this technology will pose a threat to the Media Moguls when coupled to Net-based distribution systems. To my eye, there seem to be three major areas where the RIAA, traditionally, has held the cards:
Production
Marketing
Distribution
These new systems remove the first. Naptser, MP3s, etc., remove the last. As for the middle: they've never been as good at this as they've claimed, and the Net provides a new medium that, by all accounts, they fail to understand.
The RIAA is being out-evolved, and good riddance.
Re:Can I moderate down the whole story?
on
The Challenger
·
· Score: 3
This might not be "news", but (IMHO) it is "stuff that matters". The past matters. It might be nice working in an industry that hardly existed in 1986 but that doesn't excuse forgetting what came before.
A lot of us techie types were profoundly affected by the Challenger disaster, and I for one am glad to see it commemorated. If you don't think that the crisis moment and the untidy revelations it prompted had some impact, you simply weren't paying attention.
The world would be a poorer place if some of the old Masters had had to work in a pub instead of creating one of their paintings.
Um, a few things:
A few of the "old Masters" did work in the pub, or something similar, to support their art.
Even those that didn't, had patrons. The "Masters" didn't make money from their paintings, per se. And so copyright doesn't really help them.
In fact, free copying can help. Consider the art world: It doesn't matter how perfect a copy of the Mona Lisa is, the value resides in the original. People might once again pay for the bragging rights: He painted that for me; or she wrote and performed that music for me first.
Remember that the current scheme (yes, as in, "pyramid scheme") dates back only a hundred years or so.
OK, but not much longer. The current intellectual property regime has been in place for only a little over a century. Prior to that, there (of course) weren't recordings; and people pretty much played whatever they'd heard.
Hey, here's something the article sparked in me that I'd never thought of:
Movie companies insisted on a "region coding" system for DVDs, because they would make less money if DVD movies were actually tradeable worldwide under existing free-trade laws.
Why use use free-trade laws to attack things like regional encoding? IANAL, but it sounds reasonable that encoding might violate numerous trade agreements.
I'm actually not all that amazed at the lack of college stories. There are several reasons: In college, you take more responsibility for your own learning and you usually spend as much energy on socialization and networking as on pure academic stuff.
Most of all, most colleges are way behind the curve on understanding how and why people learn. More so than any other educational institution, university exists primarily to reproduce itself and thus -- through hiring and tenure decisions -- professors tend to pick people like themselves. This sort of inbreeding runs directly contrary to the iconoclastic tendencies seemingly vital for a good teacher.
Disclaimer: I am a high school teacher, so my view of college profs might be biased.:)
So, if I were t opost that "offending" content on my own website that is being hosted by someone in, let's say, Australia, what the heck can that myopic US judge do to me?
Well, ask that Jansen(?) kid, whose usually benificent Norwegian government bashed in his door at the behest of the US. US money carries a long reach, and remember that most "US" companies (of import in this fight) are transnational corporate behemoths, who will certainly extend this law into any friendly country. And, as with the Berne Convention, there will be tremendous pressure to make all friendly nations conform to a single standard, and the US is likely to set that standard.
But mostly, if the 20th century taught us anything, it's that you can't just ignore something evil. It's not good enough if you've found a place you think is safe. The problem with routing around damage is, the damage remains... and remains a threat.
Remember, time and preparation are good for our side and bad for the MPAA. After all, they really can't come up with any new arguments, and thus benefit from rushing things thru.
Also, the longer it takes, the more people get used to the idea of free art. As it stands now, we have the edge, as the most draconian parts of the DCMA are hinging on this outcome. We have more time to make people aware of how awful this law is.
I see a day when an artist can put out their own material, for which they will get their just rewards (both financial and other).
Technologically, that day is nearly here. Remember that these battles are being initiated by Big Money Media, who are terrified people will copy their holy pap. But Big Money Media -- espcially in music, and growing so in video -- are dinosaurs, whose existence has been based upon controlling distribution. It is that way that Hollywood, et al, control the content. The argument is, it costs a lot of money to produce and distribute, say, a CD, so we can only do a few. Moreover, prod/dist therefore requires the economies of scale that concentrate control into a few hands, who can then create the content they deem most likely to turn a profit.
But with digital equipment and broadband access, it is becoming easier and cheaper to produce and distribute content -- even "professional" quality. Eventually, artists are going to hit upon a mechanism for direct pay -- perhaps Street Performer Protocol, perhaps something else -- and then the scales will fall from their eyes. They will realize they don't need the big distribution houses and the big studios. And then music will be free, in the political sense, because they'll see they can make a decent profit without forking over creative control, 95% of the money, and their souls in return for a contract.
I eagerly await the first album to truly take off due to Internet exposure. That will be the "killer app" that lights the fuse and launches the Free Art revolution.
The biggest threat is that Big Money Media will seize control of the broadband pipe before this liberation happens. Then they'll try to convince everyone that the Internet is just TV II, and will strangle people whose philosophy threatens their own. Think it can't happen? Can you say, AOL/Time-Warner?
In 10 years that will probably mean that your choices are either a)submit to this or b)don't watch televsion.
You know what? I can live without watching television. If they make me make the choice, then that's the way it's going to go... And, I would say, a large number of people might go the same way. So does it matter (to those of us not addicted to TV) if they manage to screw over the people who are?
.
what do they care if it takes a generation or two for all media to be protected like this?
Well, while it's fun to go all Orwellian about this, consider: These are the guys who pull a TV show after a single episode if "the numbers are right". I doubt any of them have the presence of mind, the foresight, or the patience to wait "a generation".
Our main advantage over these forces of darkness is that they are, well, pretty weak-minded, on average. We need fear only the coming of a media Napoleon -- that guy would be scary, but these guys are not.
No, one of the functions of government is to protect the people so they don't have to pay attention to this kind of crap. It's not up to the consumer to determine which things marketed as "food" are not poisonous, nor which things marketed as "motor vehicles" will not explode within 5 days of use.
Look, I rally 'round the bloody shirt of digital freedom as much as the next guy, but let's be real here: Comparing poisonous food or exploding SUVs to restrictions on recording programs is a bit hyperbolic. Is it truly the role of government to protect us all from any infringement of our interests, even the ones we are equipped to handle ourselves?
This just seems to feed into (and off of) the ongoing cult of victimization : "Ooh, look, it's not my fault things are mucked up, even though I directly supported the system with my $$$." The fact of the matter is, the government is as likely to mess this up further as to protect our true interests for us. And, heck, I even believe in government, and I say this.
Here's my proposal: Manufacturers and "content providers" should be allowed to use whatsoever encryption or protection they want... but use of such protection -- use of any mechanism which interferes with the rights of Fair Use, First Sale, timeshifting, spaceshifting, etc. -- obviates and renders null the copyright.
No, really, hear me out. A copyright holder would then have two mutually exclusive means to secure control over copying. The first is the traditional one; that is, the courts and the rule of law. If someone infringes a copyright, let the whole weight of the legal system fall upon him or her. The second mechanism is technical means of protection, such as encryption. In this case, if someone is clever enough to defeat the protection, the copyright holder would have no legal recourse. The work would be public domain.
I think it horribly unfair that, under current practice, copyright holders get to employ the full use of the courts and get to employ mechanisms that abridge my rights as a legitimate user/owner of media. They should have choose one or the other.
After a few glaring failures and compromises of the encryption, I'm betting they'd concede and go back to enforcement of copyright against people who actually do break their bottom line, leaving us legitimate users alone.
The bad news about asteroids is that they're far away
Actually, there are a fair number of near-Earth asteroids known that have orbits that are energetically easier to reach than the Moon, much less Mars.
Some day, our children (or our successors...) will why we spent decades whining about decreasing mineral resources while ignoring the riches right above our heads.
a big plot from the Cobol programmers to make a quick buck and retire before they became really, absolutely obsolite
Ah, obsolite... the mysterious compound that diffuses from keyboards into the fingers of programmers and renders them unable to keep up with changing environments...:)
Slashdot Mirror
How is the DMCA ever going to get overturned unless people demonstrate -- over and over again -- that it leads to unforeseen and terrible consequences? That it impacts civil society in ways that are unacceptable? If every time someone is faced with an action under DMCA, they fold, then the the law will never be challenged and it will last forever. Let's face it, that's exactly the effect we all feared under DMCA: Not that people will be prosecuted, but that they will self-censor to avoid legal hassle.
Now, the people runnng slashdot are the ones who face any legal consequences, so they are the ones who must decide whether to walk that path. But it's entirely reasonable for people to have expected that slashdot would go to the wall, considering the editorial exhortations to that effect that we've seen over the years.
I long for the days that the Patent Office insisted on an actual, working prototype before granting anything. For that matter, I long for the days before software patents, "business model" patents, and all the other vapor patents thay've allowed since Bush the Elder was in charge.
The fact of the matter is, zeta functions are fair game, mathematically, and their possible application to cryptography is not all that inobvious. Sure, the company has the patents on one particular system, but it's pretty clear that the system in the book is not that one.
If Stephenson wants to be nice, he can mention it. But there's no obligation, legal or moral, that he give Arithmetica some free advertising.
Since the system described in the book is pretty primitve (and eminently breakable) by modern standards, I'm not entirely sure why Arithmetica wants to be associated with it anyway.
. ...or a personal-automobile fanatic who believes that simple maintenance of existing roads is a plot of pot-smoking fuzzy-headed greenniks.
The point is, it's easy to demonize this sort of thinking (that failing to adjust for cost-of-living is a cut in itself). But it's also virtually useless. If you ask the ordinary "citizen on the street", you'll find that, in their heart of hearts, they begin from a status quo assumption: Let's keep everything where it is now, EXCEPT...
Economists have dealt with this paradox for so long, they've come up with mechanisms to cope. For example, things can be quoted in "real dollars" or "constant 2000 dollars" or whatever. This is more than a trick. Since money is just a measurement of your ability to purchase, inflation really does eat into your money supply. This year, with the same $100, you buy less "stuff" than last year. Thus, your $100 is worth less than last year -- and so, you've been given less than last year.
As a child of the late 1970s, I understand inflationg real good... a failure to adjust for cost-of-living is a cut.
By the way, you can't use this dodge, either: "Sell" the CD to your friend for $1, let him copy it (as now it's "his"), then "buy" it back for $1. Once your friend sells it to you, he is legally obligated to destroy any copies he's made of it.
Copyright law, as we know, is goofy and inconsistent. But the BetaMax decision is (relatively) lucid.
Breaking the distribution modes breaks the marketing monopoly. I am an optimist, I guess, but I think that if the good stuff is out there, it will get promoted. I think that the Media Moguls do have an impact, but less than is usually believed.
Now, you could prevent the ISS from rotating by not clamping the DVD player to the station hull. In that case, the DVD player will start to rotate -- perhaps noticeably, since the mass ratio is not so severe. Or you can clmap it to the hull and impart that angular momentum to the station (where it would probably be negligible).
I don't know what you mean when you say
but the fact of being isolated causes this linkage. If ISS+DVD starts off non-rotating, and if they form an isolated system, then their angular momentum must remain zero no matter what they do to each other. So if the disc spins (and picks up angular momentum), the station counter-spins (to cancel it out in the system total).That's just the way it works.
But look further: The article makes the point that this technology will pose a threat to the Media Moguls when coupled to Net-based distribution systems. To my eye, there seem to be three major areas where the RIAA, traditionally, has held the cards:
- Production
- Marketing
- Distribution
These new systems remove the first. Naptser, MP3s, etc., remove the last. As for the middle: they've never been as good at this as they've claimed, and the Net provides a new medium that, by all accounts, they fail to understand.The RIAA is being out-evolved, and good riddance.
A lot of us techie types were profoundly affected by the Challenger disaster, and I for one am glad to see it commemorated. If you don't think that the crisis moment and the untidy revelations it prompted had some impact, you simply weren't paying attention.
- A few of the "old Masters" did work in the pub, or something similar, to support their art.
- Even those that didn't, had patrons. The "Masters" didn't make money from their paintings, per se. And so copyright doesn't really help them.
In fact, free copying can help. Consider the art world: It doesn't matter how perfect a copy of the Mona Lisa is, the value resides in the original. People might once again pay for the bragging rights: He painted that for me; or she wrote and performed that music for me first.Remember that the current scheme (yes, as in, "pyramid scheme") dates back only a hundred years or so.
Most of all, most colleges are way behind the curve on understanding how and why people learn. More so than any other educational institution, university exists primarily to reproduce itself and thus -- through hiring and tenure decisions -- professors tend to pick people like themselves. This sort of inbreeding runs directly contrary to the iconoclastic tendencies seemingly vital for a good teacher.
Disclaimer: I am a high school teacher, so my view of college profs might be biased. :)
But mostly, if the 20th century taught us anything, it's that you can't just ignore something evil. It's not good enough if you've found a place you think is safe. The problem with routing around damage is, the damage remains... and remains a threat.
But with digital equipment and broadband access, it is becoming easier and cheaper to produce and distribute content -- even "professional" quality. Eventually, artists are going to hit upon a mechanism for direct pay -- perhaps Street Performer Protocol, perhaps something else -- and then the scales will fall from their eyes. They will realize they don't need the big distribution houses and the big studios. And then music will be free, in the political sense, because they'll see they can make a decent profit without forking over creative control, 95% of the money, and their souls in return for a contract.
I eagerly await the first album to truly take off due to Internet exposure. That will be the "killer app" that lights the fuse and launches the Free Art revolution. The biggest threat is that Big Money Media will seize control of the broadband pipe before this liberation happens. Then they'll try to convince everyone that the Internet is just TV II, and will strangle people whose philosophy threatens their own. Think it can't happen? Can you say, AOL/Time-Warner?
Our main advantage over these forces of darkness is that they are, well, pretty weak-minded, on average. We need fear only the coming of a media Napoleon -- that guy would be scary, but these guys are not.
This just seems to feed into (and off of) the ongoing cult of victimization : "Ooh, look, it's not my fault things are mucked up, even though I directly supported the system with my $$$." The fact of the matter is, the government is as likely to mess this up further as to protect our true interests for us. And, heck, I even believe in government, and I say this.
Here's my proposal: Manufacturers and "content providers" should be allowed to use whatsoever encryption or protection they want... but use of such protection -- use of any mechanism which interferes with the rights of Fair Use, First Sale, timeshifting, spaceshifting, etc. -- obviates and renders null the copyright.
No, really, hear me out. A copyright holder would then have two mutually exclusive means to secure control over copying. The first is the traditional one; that is, the courts and the rule of law. If someone infringes a copyright, let the whole weight of the legal system fall upon him or her. The second mechanism is technical means of protection, such as encryption. In this case, if someone is clever enough to defeat the protection, the copyright holder would have no legal recourse. The work would be public domain.
I think it horribly unfair that, under current practice, copyright holders get to employ the full use of the courts and get to employ mechanisms that abridge my rights as a legitimate user/owner of media. They should have choose one or the other.
After a few glaring failures and compromises of the encryption, I'm betting they'd concede and go back to enforcement of copyright against people who actually do break their bottom line, leaving us legitimate users alone.
OK, it was funny, but actually, the guy's name was Vizzini.
Some day, our children (or our successors...) will why we spent decades whining about decreasing mineral resources while ignoring the riches right above our heads.