They [members of Congress] shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.
I believe that this means that Senators and Representatives cannot be sued or arrested for any action taken as part of their duties, even if said action is later found to be unconstitutional. After all, a law isn't unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says it's unconstitutional -- a Senator can claim to have been acting in good faith.
This clause is practically obsolete. It applies only to arrests in civil suits, which were still common in this country at the time the Constitution was adopted. It does not apply to service of process in either civil or criminal cases. Nor does it apply to arrest in any criminal case. The phrase ``treason, felony or breach of the peace'' is interpreted to withdraw all criminal offenses from the operation of the privilege.
Of course IANAL, so I can't really say what the application is.
No. It's about * exercising prior restraint * demonizing sites * forcing sites to figure out how you want your children raised, because you can't be bothered * enabling selective enforcement * pandering to those who can't exert themselves to actually think on an issue
i.e., no geographical location means no community standards
Or, maybe, no geographical locations means "community" is not the same as "locale". In other words, there is a community on the 'Net -- heck, there are zillions of distinct communities on the 'Net -- but they are no longer defined via geographical proximity. Communities in cyberspace are built on shared interests and that's about it. As such, it becomes hard to even create the idea of community standards, let alone enforce them.
I had a rancorous debate with a philosophy professor awhile back (Hi, Nell!). She maintained that the Net was eroding community and leading to isolation and despair. Offered as examples were the declining role of local lodges, the Boy Scouts, etc. (OK, to be fair, she was indicting more than the Net; she went after all of modern American sociology.) I countered that there were still communities, but they had been freed of the shackles imposed by the need for geographical poximity.
In other words, these communities are more of the mind than of the body. In many ways, this is healthier and more beneficial.
I'm not sure how that will play out in the area of regulating the Web. I think that, technologically, it is essentially impossible and people will eventually be forced to this frightening conclusion: Hey, I have to raise my own kids, because society can't and won't.
Aren't all (english) words, and therefore all texts, simply an arrangement of 26 letters that are in the public domain?
Yes, they are. That is a far different thing than ssaying that any given word is a letter.
Also blockquoth the poster:
You can break down anything to the component level, molecular level or whatever
I am not saying that, say, the Brittany Spears MP3 is "made up of" numbers. I am saying that, in a very real sense, that MP3 is a number. By allowing a record company to enforce a copyright on that number, you remove it from the legitimate realm of work -- perhaps thereby preventing the creation of a beautiful image whose binary expression happens to be the same number.
Indeed, each ASCII letter is a binary number (isn't "A" 0100 0001?). So if I create an MP3 which happens to have the binary representation 0100 0001, I can copyright it and you can't have any file that consists solely of the letter "A". Indeed, I can quickly write a script that generates streams of bits of arbitrary depth and thereby "pre-copyright" all songs. OK, it'd take a bit of time and oo-gobs of storage, but then, not exponentially more than storing the MP3s themselves.
So, under current law, I apparently can own all digital information. Neat.
Now, I hope that most people would agree that government is no[sic] competent for this task single handed
OK, I'll agree. But then, the market isn't competent for this task single-handedly, either. That is, perhaps, the point: That at this juncture in history we have two dominant regulators on the behavior of people, the State and the Corporation. Neither of these can be trusted entirely, although neither need be evil. But both want to increase their power at the expense of the individual. At the moment, as I see it, the State is waning and the Corporations are in the ascendancy. That is the trend we must fight.
I fall back upon a tenet of American politics: Create powers in tension. Don't allow the concentration of power into any particular sector, but create a system where the power structure is divided and shiftable. It can lead to paralysis but it does not generally lead to great evil.
The threat to the liberty of individuals and the dignity of humanity comes from this: More so than ever, the State and the Corporation are allies. The one kowtows to the other, and thus the inherent tension is lost. So we have no one looking to contain corporatism. And like an unbalanced engine, the system will spin faster and faster until it destroys itself.
OK, I am obviously chasing phantoms here, but hey, I like to hear my own voice. So here goes:
Blockquoth the poster:
your original point was about copyrighting computer code, not copyrighting numbers.
I can only assume either (a) I am being more obfuscated than usual or (b) you're not reading the actual posts. Here is the contention: A computer file is a collection of bits, in that it is recorded as a series of binary states (one being designated "on" or 1, and the other as "off" or 0). Every file has a definite start and a definite end. You can therefore string the bits together, with the start bit being the least significant and so on. Taken togather, that string of bits becomes a binary number. That's the connection that was being made.
Concrete example: Let's take the following "picture" and encode it. My picture is simply a crude letter L, as follows:
X
XX
Now, we'll encode that as four pixels, meaning we really have
X.
XX
or, assuming "X" is the on state,
10
11
I'll assume our tiny encoder (gPEG?) takes the upper left corner as the first bit and then proceeds left-to-right and then top-to-bottom. Our gPEG would then consist of the following bits in a file:
1011
This is sort of significance-reversed (although that isn't terribly relevant). I can view this as the binary number 1101, or the base ten number 13. My "picture" is really just a number. Of course, the gPEG conversion would allow me to reverse the transformation and produce a picture. But another program (gNOTE?) could instead read this as a sequence of pulses to the speaker in my computer, making a little ditty.
Same file, different interpretation. It's just a number, and what you do with the number determines what it means. In that sense -- admittedly, as my original subject line indicated, a radical sense -- the file itself is not copyrightable, because it is just a number. Sure, playing it through the gPEG makes it a picture, but playing it through gNOTE makes it a sound.
Hypothetical: I take a CD which I own and rip a track to MP3. I take the MP3 file and, using a specially-written program, interpret the data as pixel hues for a PNG. Perhaps, if the original MP3 happens to have especially nice behavior, the picture that comes out is aesthetically pleasing. (It'd have to be an abstract thing, of course.) If I then sell the PNG, am I violating copyright?
PROCEED WITH CAUTION: If you say "yes", you are saying that encoding an MP3 entitles someone to ownership of a number... allowing that someone to sue a different artist, expressing himself/herself in a different way (say, PNG), were to create an image whose binary representation happened to match the MP3. Given that, I'd rush out and artificially create MP3s that happen to be the binary strings 0 (easy), 1, 10, 11, 100, etc. And then I'd own most of mathematics.
Also blockquoth the poster:
because computer code is (mostly) not numbers, it is not laws of nature... it is CPU instructions, written text, sampled sound, drawn graphics
No, a file is none of these until interpreted by a given algorithm. A tape recording is physically different from a book, which is physically different from a painting. But digitize them, strip them of their associated extension, and suddenly they are indistinguishable. If a file doesn't end in MP3, how do you know it's a song?
I know you won't agree but that's OK -- you're just wrong. The system is fundamentally flawed, because it does rest upon a fallacy; i.e., that songs, books, articles, pictures, etc. have physically meaningful distinctions in the digital domain. They don't -- they are each just a number -- and therefore the system creaks and groans and (I believe) ultimately crashes.
Eventually the IP system will Blue Screen of Death . What happenms next will be extremely interesting.
It [copyright] applies to any form of recorded human expression.
Not so. While copyright applies to more than text, it does not apply to all forms of recorded expression. Heck, there is text (like trade secrets) to which it doesn't apply. Another form of recorded expression to which it doesn't apply is mathematics and science -- you can't copyright Snell's Law. Nor can you copyright the number 3. Or, for that matter, the number 20 495 860 385 076 968 840 495 689 039 673 068 305 847 658 573 857 395 738 957 935 476 039 750 385 038 503 934 (base ten).
Indeed not, since binary code is simply a stream of numbers and numbers cannot be copyrighted. In fact, this goes much further... Anything represented on a digital computer is simply a binary number. Sure, the number is huge but it's just a number. (In fact, it's just an integer.) And numbers cannot be patented or copyrighted as they already exist in the public domain.
OK, I understand that when I take this particular sequence of numbers and feed it as input to a particular decoding program, out comes the latest Brittany Spears or whatever. So what? If I take it and feed it to Word, out comes a file of text. (It's gibberish. But then again, a lot of what is produced with Word is gibberish.)
It's not at all hard to imagine a program that takes an MP3 file and produces a pretty picture... maybe a histogram or something. At that point, can you argue that the MP3 is uniquely a representation of the Brittany Spears song? Maybe I want it for some other purpose. Do I really believe that digitizations has completely undermined the entire basis of intellectual "property"? Actually, yes, but I don't expect the system to fall. This nagging inconsistency at its root might, however, force a rationalization sometime soon, wherein the social contract is reviewed and amended in the full light of day rather than (metaphorically) hidden in the cover of darkness.
Face it, we're not the organism anymore; we're cells.
*Shiver* That's it, exactly. The great ideological battle of the 21st century will not be between capitalism and communism, or between religious and secular, or even between have and have-not. It will between citizens and the new lifeform we've spawned, corporations.
Where do dead monitors go? Basically into landfills.
And they're full of nasty components and chemicals. I think a typical computer+monitor has 2.5 pounds of lead, which has to be disposed of as hazardous waste in some communities...
I'd rather deal with the line than not have control.
Well, you're entitle to your opinion, but I believe you're nuts. I've been at schools with online registration and without. Registration is hell when done in person. I guess I disagree that your ability to spend a night in line reflects any great merit or right to a class. In essence, the process is still random.
A more fair use would be to have a clear and public point system, including granting seniors more points, etc., so that those who have invested the most time in the school have preference.
Right on. People make these issues too easy, too one-button. "Government" is not a synonym for "evil" or even for "clueless". I don't defend the many abuses and inefficiencies, but you can't condemn the entire structure based on that.
As an example, it is local government that is trying to eliminate lines at toll booths via EZ Pass and its ilk.
Let me tell you, this Internet thing has not made the morning commute on I-494, I-94, or I-35W any friggin easier.
Not yet. But as telecommuting becomes more doable and more common, and as people shop online more (and less at malls), and as the culture time-smears into a 24-hour operation, you very well might see traffic drop on the highways and roads.
But here's a thought: why is time not relative? Everything in the universe (that we know of) travels in the same direction at the same rate through time
Er, no. Photons (the particle for light) do not experience time at all, from our frame of reference. And if you compare your clock to an identical one on a rocket moving (quickly) past, you'd see that the rocket's clock would be running slow compared to yours. This has been empirically verified, both through muon counts and through a careful airplane experiment.
What's really weird, though, is that the rocket would see your clock as running slow.
Gripping a moving target?
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
Oh my god! when you run ICQ, it fetches a MOTD from icq's server! INVASION OF PRIVACY!
Oh no.. when I run Unreal Tournament, it fetches a web page from the UT site and tells me if I have upgrades! EVERY TIME I RUN IT! what a violation of privacy!
Um, it's not an "invasion" when you ask them in. There are several significant differences between the Mattel case and the ones you mention:
(a) Most importantly, you are informed of these behaviors... you know exactly what's going on and why.
(b) Also, the cases you mention involve directly the functionality of the system. In other words, the ICQ MOTD allows ICQ to alert users (if need be) of changes in the system. The UT update check allows UT to notify you of, well, updates -- enhancements or fixes of behavior of the software. Because these network interactions directly affect the performance of the software, in a relatively obvious manner, it's reasonable for the companies to expect that you know about them. But Mattel's software did not enhance the program, check for bug fixes, or do anything else that could reasonably be construed as vital to the operation of the software. It allowed them to update ads, in a splash screen.
(c) I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be willing to go out on a limb: When the ICQ program retrieves the MOTD, it is the ICQ program -- not some other mysterious program tucked away in your registry -- that retrieves the MOTD. When the UT engine retreives updates, it is the UT engine -- not some deceptive, hidden daemon -- that goes out and retrieves the update. But here, it is not the software you (thought you) purchased that does the Net connect. It is a different program, installed quietly and (originally) without notification or approval, that sits in the background and, without informing you, does a Net connect.
If you don't see that these fall into different classes, well, I'm not responsible for your misapprehension. But they are different and the Mattel case is more sinister.
Re:You're actually mistaken - let me explain
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster (Moses Lawson):
The application does not contact the server ever. Not when it launches or at any other time. There is a background process that talks to the server once a day (maybe every two days)
Um, that's supposed to be better than having the app do it? Personally, I really despise the little fly-on-the-wall background apps that lurk and wait. That's even more of an invasion of privacy, since the user has no good reason to connect the background app to the one that installed them.
No matter how you dice it, this little "feature" is one step aware from spyware, and it's a teensy step at that. How do we know that it's not collecting info? How do we know its mission wasn't expanded after you wrote it? This was a tremendous screw-up on Broderbund's part and they cannot finnesse their way out, no matter how "benign" the software was intended to be.
Blockquoth the poster, quoting someone else in italics:
The Romans tried to stop christianity. Christianity became popular. Drugs were made illegal in this country. Drugs became popular. Rock music was chastized by the establishment as being "satanic". Rock becomes popular. Anyone starting to see a pattern here?
What else is illegal? Suicide is. The rates are rising, but I don't know if it is "popular" by any means. Bank robbery is illegal. I just got back from robbing one myself, actually. I think that Christianity, rock music and drugs all have other draws than just being forbidden.
Fair enough... but the "forbidden" aspect does draw people in. It adds a certain allure.
I think the actual truth evidenced by these examples is this: You can't legislate morality. In other words, you can make something illegal and therefore (perhaps) deter people through the consequences they face. But that won't convince people it is wrong. I know it's naive but I believe that most people have a relatively well-balanced sense of morality, and they can sesne when someone else makes a law that contravenes it. They might obey such a law but they don't respect it.
In counterpoint, consider the experience with drunk driving in the USA. Although it's still a problem, the astonishing thing is, rates of DUI (for young drivers) have been falling for almost a decade. (See, for example, http://w ww.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/promdrunk/G ENERALFACTS.HTML for data on trends.) This has happened in part due to enhanced enforcement but largely due to education and a shift in perception. I teach high school and my kids are increasingly of the opinion that drinking and driving is more than illegal... it's stupid. No amount of laws seem to reach them, because they don't take their moral bearing from laws. Insteasd, they evaluate laws based on interactions with their moral sense.
To bring this back to slashdot ground, I think the MPAA and RIAA and all the other evil acroynms are fighting a losing battle, because their methods don't deal with the morality of the issue. By relying on technological mechanisms (backed by draconian laws), they seem to be ceding the ground over the "rightness" of copying. And because they treat all digital distribution as morally equivalent to mass-producing bootlegs, they create an essential disconnect with their consumers.
Re:ZoneAlarm firewall - a few problems
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
there does not seem to be a way to turn this feature off
I believe all you have to do is call up the ZoneAlarm console, click the Alerts tab, and deselect "Log to a text file".
a case MAY be fast tracked to the SC, so as to preserve the rights of consumers at large (read: ALL Americans) rather than the rights of the few or the one (I.E. Microsoft)
OK, time to get on my hobby horse and rant against a dangerous creeping locution: The anti-trust laws aren't intended to protect consumers. They are intended to protect citizens. The proper lines to draw are not between consumers at large v. producer, but citizens v. corporation.
I know it sounds minor. But we are already far too close to believing the hype and buying into the reduction of everyone to consumer cogs. There is value that transcends economic value. People are more than producers and consumers. Citizenry matters.
Slashdot Mirror
However, to be fair, there is a differing view at the US Government Printing Office Annotated US Constitution (http://www.access. gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/art1.html):
Of course IANAL, so I can't really say what the application is.* exercising prior restraint
* demonizing sites
* forcing sites to figure out how you want your children raised, because you can't be bothered
* enabling selective enforcement
* pandering to those who can't exert themselves to actually think on an issue
I had a rancorous debate with a philosophy professor awhile back (Hi, Nell!). She maintained that the Net was eroding community and leading to isolation and despair. Offered as examples were the declining role of local lodges, the Boy Scouts, etc. (OK, to be fair, she was indicting more than the Net; she went after all of modern American sociology.) I countered that there were still communities, but they had been freed of the shackles imposed by the need for geographical poximity.
In other words, these communities are more of the mind than of the body. In many ways, this is healthier and more beneficial.
I'm not sure how that will play out in the area of regulating the Web. I think that, technologically, it is essentially impossible and people will eventually be forced to this frightening conclusion: Hey, I have to raise my own kids, because society can't and won't.
It just might be time for a civil equivalent to the Bill of Rights.
Also blockquoth the poster:
I am not saying that, say, the Brittany Spears MP3 is "made up of" numbers. I am saying that, in a very real sense, that MP3 is a number. By allowing a record company to enforce a copyright on that number, you remove it from the legitimate realm of work -- perhaps thereby preventing the creation of a beautiful image whose binary expression happens to be the same number.Indeed, each ASCII letter is a binary number (isn't "A" 0100 0001?). So if I create an MP3 which happens to have the binary representation 0100 0001, I can copyright it and you can't have any file that consists solely of the letter "A". Indeed, I can quickly write a script that generates streams of bits of arbitrary depth and thereby "pre-copyright" all songs. OK, it'd take a bit of time and oo-gobs of storage, but then, not exponentially more than storing the MP3s themselves.
So, under current law, I apparently can own all digital information. Neat.
At last, someone who seems to have understood my point... I don't really believe this destroys IP law, but it's certainly an issue.
I fall back upon a tenet of American politics: Create powers in tension. Don't allow the concentration of power into any particular sector, but create a system where the power structure is divided and shiftable. It can lead to paralysis but it does not generally lead to great evil.
The threat to the liberty of individuals and the dignity of humanity comes from this: More so than ever, the State and the Corporation are allies. The one kowtows to the other, and thus the inherent tension is lost. So we have no one looking to contain corporatism. And like an unbalanced engine, the system will spin faster and faster until it destroys itself.
Blockquoth the poster:
I can only assume either (a) I am being more obfuscated than usual or (b) you're not reading the actual posts. Here is the contention: A computer file is a collection of bits, in that it is recorded as a series of binary states (one being designated "on" or 1, and the other as "off" or 0). Every file has a definite start and a definite end. You can therefore string the bits together, with the start bit being the least significant and so on. Taken togather, that string of bits becomes a binary number. That's the connection that was being made.Concrete example: Let's take the following "picture" and encode it. My picture is simply a crude letter L, as follows:
Now, we'll encode that as four pixels, meaning we really have or, assuming "X" is the on state, I'll assume our tiny encoder (gPEG?) takes the upper left corner as the first bit and then proceeds left-to-right and then top-to-bottom. Our gPEG would then consist of the following bits in a file: This is sort of significance-reversed (although that isn't terribly relevant). I can view this as the binary number 1101, or the base ten number 13. My "picture" is really just a number. Of course, the gPEG conversion would allow me to reverse the transformation and produce a picture. But another program (gNOTE?) could instead read this as a sequence of pulses to the speaker in my computer, making a little ditty.Same file, different interpretation. It's just a number, and what you do with the number determines what it means. In that sense -- admittedly, as my original subject line indicated, a radical sense -- the file itself is not copyrightable, because it is just a number. Sure, playing it through the gPEG makes it a picture, but playing it through gNOTE makes it a sound.
Hypothetical: I take a CD which I own and rip a track to MP3. I take the MP3 file and, using a specially-written program, interpret the data as pixel hues for a PNG. Perhaps, if the original MP3 happens to have especially nice behavior, the picture that comes out is aesthetically pleasing. (It'd have to be an abstract thing, of course.) If I then sell the PNG, am I violating copyright?
PROCEED WITH CAUTION: If you say "yes", you are saying that encoding an MP3 entitles someone to ownership of a number ... allowing that someone to sue a different artist, expressing himself/herself in a different way (say, PNG), were to create an image whose binary representation happened to match the MP3. Given that, I'd rush out and artificially create MP3s that happen to be the binary strings 0 (easy), 1, 10, 11, 100, etc. And then I'd own most of mathematics.
Also blockquoth the poster:
No, a file is none of these until interpreted by a given algorithm. A tape recording is physically different from a book, which is physically different from a painting. But digitize them, strip them of their associated extension, and suddenly they are indistinguishable. If a file doesn't end in MP3, how do you know it's a song?I know you won't agree but that's OK -- you're just wrong. The system is fundamentally flawed, because it does rest upon a fallacy; i.e., that songs, books, articles, pictures, etc. have physically meaningful distinctions in the digital domain. They don't -- they are each just a number -- and therefore the system creaks and groans and (I believe) ultimately crashes.
Eventually the IP system will Blue Screen of Death . What happenms next will be extremely interesting.
Which was exactly my original point.
OK, I understand that when I take this particular sequence of numbers and feed it as input to a particular decoding program, out comes the latest Brittany Spears or whatever. So what? If I take it and feed it to Word, out comes a file of text. (It's gibberish. But then again, a lot of what is produced with Word is gibberish.)
It's not at all hard to imagine a program that takes an MP3 file and produces a pretty picture ... maybe a histogram or something. At that point, can you argue that the MP3 is uniquely a representation of the Brittany Spears song? Maybe I want it for some other purpose. Do I really believe that digitizations has completely undermined the entire basis of intellectual "property"? Actually, yes, but I don't expect the system to fall. This nagging inconsistency at its root might, however, force a rationalization sometime soon, wherein the social contract is reviewed and amended in the full light of day rather than (metaphorically) hidden in the cover of darkness.
I just don't think that "camping out" counts as a valid reason for preference.
A more fair use would be to have a clear and public point system, including granting seniors more points, etc., so that those who have invested the most time in the school have preference.
As an example, it is local government that is trying to eliminate lines at toll booths via EZ Pass and its ilk.
What's really weird, though, is that the rocket would see your clock as running slow.
(a) Most importantly, you are informed of these behaviors ... you know exactly what's going on and why.
(b) Also, the cases you mention involve directly the functionality of the system. In other words, the ICQ MOTD allows ICQ to alert users (if need be) of changes in the system. The UT update check allows UT to notify you of, well, updates -- enhancements or fixes of behavior of the software. Because these network interactions directly affect the performance of the software, in a relatively obvious manner, it's reasonable for the companies to expect that you know about them. But Mattel's software did not enhance the program, check for bug fixes, or do anything else that could reasonably be construed as vital to the operation of the software. It allowed them to update ads, in a splash screen.
(c) I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be willing to go out on a limb: When the ICQ program retrieves the MOTD, it is the ICQ program -- not some other mysterious program tucked away in your registry -- that retrieves the MOTD. When the UT engine retreives updates, it is the UT engine -- not some deceptive, hidden daemon -- that goes out and retrieves the update. But here, it is not the software you (thought you) purchased that does the Net connect. It is a different program, installed quietly and (originally) without notification or approval, that sits in the background and, without informing you, does a Net connect.
If you don't see that these fall into different classes, well, I'm not responsible for your misapprehension. But they are different and the Mattel case is more sinister.
No matter how you dice it, this little "feature" is one step aware from spyware, and it's a teensy step at that. How do we know that it's not collecting info? How do we know its mission wasn't expanded after you wrote it? This was a tremendous screw-up on Broderbund's part and they cannot finnesse their way out, no matter how "benign" the software was intended to be.
I think the actual truth evidenced by these examples is this: You can't legislate morality. In other words, you can make something illegal and therefore (perhaps) deter people through the consequences they face. But that won't convince people it is wrong. I know it's naive but I believe that most people have a relatively well-balanced sense of morality, and they can sesne when someone else makes a law that contravenes it. They might obey such a law but they don't respect it.
In counterpoint, consider the experience with drunk driving in the USA. Although it's still a problem, the astonishing thing is, rates of DUI (for young drivers) have been falling for almost a decade. (See, for example, http://w ww.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/promdrunk/G ENERALFACTS.HTML for data on trends.) This has happened in part due to enhanced enforcement but largely due to education and a shift in perception. I teach high school and my kids are increasingly of the opinion that drinking and driving is more than illegal ... it's stupid. No amount of laws seem to reach them, because they don't take their moral bearing from laws. Insteasd, they evaluate laws based on interactions with their moral sense.
To bring this back to slashdot ground, I think the MPAA and RIAA and all the other evil acroynms are fighting a losing battle, because their methods don't deal with the morality of the issue. By relying on technological mechanisms (backed by draconian laws), they seem to be ceding the ground over the "rightness" of copying. And because they treat all digital distribution as morally equivalent to mass-producing bootlegs, they create an essential disconnect with their consumers.
I know it sounds minor. But we are already far too close to believing the hype and buying into the reduction of everyone to consumer cogs. There is value that transcends economic value. People are more than producers and consumers. Citizenry matters.