It might just be me, but I'm not sure this hearing is entirely a bad thing... Stay with me here.
The DMCA passed in, what, 1998, under figurative cover of darkness before anyone quite knew what was going on. (I think. My history is shaky here.) A lot of people are suddenly getting bitten by it and are surprised to see it applied in the way it has been. But, alas, it's a done deal... changing the law would involve deflecting a lot of momentum.
Now we have industry-friendly groups calling for revising the DMCA. Oh, sure, they want to tighten it up. But who cares what they want? The key thing is, they've made it a possible topic of debate again and this time, we are not asleep at the switch. Suddenly, it's not completely "out there" to talk about copyright and DMCA and so on.
Used properly, this might be a tremendous do-over. Maybe we can do it right this time around.
So tell me why the small minority of independent artists distributing their music on napster have more important rights than the RIAA.
Because the latter is a right to silence and the former a right to speak?
Because a free society must go out of its way to protect the "small minority", since the majority will otherwise ride roughshod over it without regard to right or wrong?
Because the RIAA's tactics lead to chilling effects, stifling, legislation-through-litigation, and a throttling of creativity?
Because copyright exists "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", not to secure the bottom line of certain cartels?
Because First Amendment trumps just about anything? (And should!)
If however I take the pages off and then look at them at some point in the future, when I have time...
Meanwhile, of course, you've silenced a legitimate user, chilled the expression of other legitimate users (who might now be very circumspect in the criticisms, parodies, etc. that they levy), and handed management of your site over to external lawyers. Your own argument is that you have "one third the staff" -- how long will it take until it's "some point in the future"? A day? A week? A month? A year? Will your bosses really back you up when you say, "Oh, we actually should take on these lawyers over this page that we removed a year ago"? Or will they figure that the battle is already over?
Again, I can't speak for the UK. In the States, we are told over and over again that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Notification by an interested party does not constitute proof. I believe the only morally responsbile thing to do is to immedaitely archive the site in question and begin looking into it at (as you say) a reasonable time. But side with the student, because he is your constituent.
In fact, the most reasonable response is to fire a letter back demanding documentation for the alleged infringement. Have them have to assert, under penalty of perjury, that they are indeed the copright owners. But you do not have to roll over immediately. Make them get formal and involved. Otherwise you are surrendering your responsibility and you are failing your bosses and your students.
If one student placed me in a position where I could loose my service for all the others then I would have to drop his service till I could be sure that the others would be unaffected
"In Germany, they first came for the XXX, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a XXX.... Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
Why can't people see that we are all in this together? It's not good enough to protect some users by sacrificing one. It's not good enough to allow "just a little" intimidation to keep your job, or keep your job easy. It's not enough to say, "Well, it will all be sorted out eventually, but it's not my fight."
It is your fight, and it is my fight, and it is the fight of all people everywhere who have not yet surrendered their humanity, who believe that human dignitiy trumps economic imperative, who value freedom and crave freedom and breathe freedom. Ligitgation through intidation, like legislation through litigation, eats away at the core values that make life worth living and the democracies worth defending.
It will not be the computer that will dehumanize us. It will the powers that use the computer to strip away our freedoms and our dignity... and it will be the sheep who roll over rather than raise a fuss, who acquiesce in the smothering of others, just so long as it's quiet until their turn comes.
It's not about making people happy -- slashdotters or lawyers -- it's about doing what is right
but it would certainly keep them out of legal hot water.
As if that were a good thing?? They were being bullied by a lawyer and they rolled over. Guess what happens now? They get bullied by even more lawyers, for even less grounds.
Earlier, the poster said:
I don't think that the administration should be under any imperative to check up on allegations before they act.
This position is particularly untenable considering how easy it would have been to check... thirty seconds, tops. Of course, then you'd have to stand up to the lawyers and actually defend a person entitled to your defense.
But even if it were difficult, the university should have checked first. A university is a privileged place. Part of the price is a larger responsibility to speak out, to defend the free flow of ideas, to resist conformity pressures. Sadly most universities fail to see this, but it's true nonetheless.
I would have thought that Oxford was more than a vocational school focused only on the bottom line. I would have thought that a venerable institution like that, having fought hard for its liberties and rights, would stand up to penny-ante scare tactics and drawn a line in the sand. I guess I was wrong.
But for the average administrator, there are no rewards to being a no-holds-barred defender of academdic freedom.
Except maybe the defense of your soul... just because administrators often cave doesn't mean we should support them when they do. There is a right response here, and Oxford didn't give it.
To my way of thinking anything that gets me involved with Lawyers and the college bureacracy more than necessary falls under that category
Which simply underscores that many people working at universities are, sadly, unaware of issues of academic or social freedom. He posted a "spoof" -- a parody, a "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule" (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary). I suppose I can't comment on UK free speech laws, but in the US, parodies are protected.
If you don't think that the parody could serve a legitimate purpose as social commentary, consider the agitation it caused in this case.
This trouble isn't "unnecessary", unless you feel that the student's right to free speech is "unnecessary". I'm sorry, but the student's web site was legitimate and any trouble you'd have with the lawyers or the college bureaucracy would have been part of your job.
I wouldn't have been so surprised or even incensed if this had been a corporate site. We expect that kind of reasoning in the Corporate World. I had hoped a university -- especially one as venerable as Oxford -- would see matters more clearly. Sadly, the business of higher education is becoming business.
If RealNetworks wants to know that I listen to LiveAudioWrestling every Sunday evening or Monday afternoon, and throughout the week listen to commentaries in RealAudio by some individual wrestlers, why do I care?
Because your habits are none of their business? Because they can use that make compile a profile of you? Because the security of that profile is not mentioned, much less proven?
As long as people are willing to trade their privacy for (in this case) hypothetical conveniences --- "Here's my DNA, where's my free Happy Meal?" --- we will face a long, hard, uphill battle to secure the details of our lives. *Sigh*
Actually, they didn't. No one "copyrights" anything. The act of creation grants copyright to the creator of a piece, who receives that copyright without any further action, notice, or disclaimer. You don't even need the litte (c) thingy.
What people mean, when they say "He copyrighted that", is that the creator registered copyright with the Library of Congress (in the US). This establishes a paper trail and can serve as official record of a copyright. The existence of a stamped LOC form tends to settle issues of priority. Without registering the copyright, you run the risk that you might not be able to collect punitive damages if someone infringes.
Does it matter to this issue? Well, maybe not directly. But then again... The real issue is not whether the document was copyrighted (it almost certainly qualifies). The real issue is, (a) Is the usage on Slashdot "Fair Use"? and (b) Is Andover.Net responsible for any infringement?
My entirely amateur legal eagle view is that the answers are (a) Yes and (b) No, but heck, I don't even play a lawyer on TV.
Same basic idea goes here - it's just not the right way to handle things.
I disagree... this is not the same basic idea. In the WAVE thing, kids were paid to inform. Here, Congress is defining the right of a private citizen to recover damages incurred by a violator of civil law. Read carefully... it is not all spam, only those that falsify origins or defraud the recipient.
The issue is, spam costs time and money. Unlike even junk mail, the sender suffers effectively no cost, but the recipient does. It's annoying enough when this is "legitimate" but it's maddening when the message is fraudulent.
Despite the wonderful Wild West connotations of "bounty", this isn't a bounty... it's not a reward, it's a right to recover damages.
(1) There is a right of free speech on the Internet.
I'm so happy Congress found it, I thought it was lost before.
Hmmm. DMCA. UCITA. PTO... I think there's evidence that the First Amendment had gone missing for awhile. I know it's irksome that Congress feels the need to assert the existence of a right guaranteed in the Constitution, but... but, it's nice to have this formal and in print.
Take for example the recent love bug. One came out then 20 more were made over night. Maybe many more would have been made if we went and put the source code on a highly visible site.
Or maybe, if the Outlook code were open-sourced, overnight a fix and patch would have been developed and distributed... in fact, if the Outlook code were open-sourced, maybe the bug would have been found and fixed before it allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to be lost to productivity shutdowns...
Uh-huh. And if these big companies can't make money, who's going to create the warez and music for you to share?
Yeah, you're right. I've always heard that Aristotle, Aquinas, and Shakespeare wrote their works for the quick bucks they could make.
Realistically, true artists produce art because they have to -- something in their souls move them and won't allow them to not create. I think that a lot of programmers are similar... most of the open source projects began because (a) someone had an "itch" they had to scratch and (b) once they had begun to scratch it, they weren't opposed to helping others scrath their itches, too.
If economic value is the only value you recognize, of course, this makes less than sense. In fact, it's downright scary. That's why the suits and the drones and droids absolutely despise and (I think) secretly fear the FSOS movement. They don't understand it, because it's not entirely driven by economic profit. But if you free your mind from those sorts of blinders you begin to see that such things can make sense.
this case has nothing to do with Intellectual Property at all, it's solely about reverse engineering
I believe you're mistaken. Reverse Engineering is usually a defense against suits over patent infringement. Unless the form or process involved in producing something is owned, there would be no problem in copying it or reverse-engineering it.
IP is bigger than copyright, patent law, or trademark law by themselves.
The difference is that CSS is an access control and the DMCA prevents circumvention of access controls.
Fair enough. But isn't any encoding system at all an encryption system for access control? I mean, without the hardware and drivers, you can't access the content...
Does this mean something like Babelfish would be in violation of copyright laws?
Heck, let's take this to its logical extreme: When I browse, the requested pages hop via several different servers, which each must store copies of the material (even if emphemerally). So each and every site is a violator of copyright, unless the original site provies an explicit grant of right to copy. Thus, by merely browsing the Web, I am violating, and inducing others to violate, the copyright of the sites I visit.
Traditional IP law is dead. The corpse just doesn't know it yet.
REMEMBER, IF YOU MODERATE THIS DOWN, YOU WILL BE ADMITING THAT SLASHDOT IS ONLY INTERESTED IN PROMOTING IT'S OWN NARROW VIEWPOINT, DISCOURAGING FREE SPEACH AND OPPOSING VIEWS.
Look, this guy has perfected the "click-through" license for slashdot posts. By merely moderating the post, you agree to the content! He/she is obviously a UCITA supporter.:)
(PS: Did you notice that, per usual format, the license is all in caps?)
Why not take your proprietary (attorney/client privelege) and open it up?
Because, unfortunately, the American legal system doesn't (yet?) recognize the philosophical validity of the free software / open source movement. Attorney/client privelege is a tremendous bulwark and a great asset in a defense, especially afgainst a well-funded aggressive opponent. Without it -- or if it is lost -- the attorney can (I believe) be subpenoed, forced to answer questions about the strategy being used, etc.
Whether we like it or not, this case will almost certainly be played out under the existing rules, not under a new philosophical regime.
Yeah, go ahead and use Linux, I hear it has no bugs *giggle*
Well, it's good to see that people can still laugh, or giggle, or whatever. At least it's not all in caps.
Linux has bugs. All software has bugs, and probably always will. But serious bugs in Linux get fixed in a matter of weeks -- sometimes days -- while gaping security holes in MS software can sit out there for six months or a year before a service pack gets them.
The Linux community isn't afraid of bugs nor has the community invested its ego or its lucre in appearing "bug-free". As a result, precisely because we are willing to own up to bugs, they are rarer, less serious, and less persistent than in closed-source OSs.
So there is something laughable here, but it sure as heck isn't the decision to use Linux...
When can we expect to see some front-page news on this First Amendment issue? (I assume it is not because they didn't hear about it or don't know who to ask to learn the facts.)
Well, I've struck my little blow for democracy by writing to the Gray Lady and letting the editors know about this. Not that they know me from Adam, but just in case this somehow slipped below their radar...
Whether or not you believe that "information should be free" that is not an issue, we live in a capitalist society and both individuals and business entities own their ideas.
This is facetious. Sure, if you define away the problem, magically the problem appears to go away. But the issue is exactly whether "both individuals and business entities own their ideas". Intellectual property is not a natural concept; it is something granted by the government (or the society) and as such, its status is certainly an object of worthwhile discussion.
To my eye, intellectual "property" is not property. I usually use the scarcity reasoning when discussing this, but a new angle has occured to me. Thanks in part to vehement slashdotters:) I've had to think about the argument that property is anything that has value, owing to its ability to be traded for products, services, or other property.
But of course, digital data would seem not to have this particular trait. Take the RIAA at face value: If broadband becomes common and digital copying truly widespread, then would anyone pay for, say, a Metallica CD? The RIAA says No, and I suppose I might agree with them. But that means that, say, Metallica CDs have no intrinsic value in the digital world.. that, naturally, they fall to zero value and are not property.
Why, then, do we have armies of lawyers specializing in "intellectual property" -- copyright lawyers going after Napster, for example? Because, by granting copyrights and trade marks, the government manufactures values for the "intellectual property." The state-sanctioned monopoly allows companies to restrict supply and so drive up profits. But without the state, IP is not property.
To conclude, I'd like to remind the poster -- and any readers who've stayed with me:) -- that the saying is not (as quoted from the post)
information should be free
but, rather, that
Information wants to be free
More verbosely, the natural and proper state of information is to be free, just as the natural and proper state of a human is to be free. "Should" implies a moral stance, but I think most "information is free" people would shy away from a purely moral argument. "Wants to be", or the stronger "is", is a recognition of economic truth.
Whether you believe information should be free, information does "want" to be free... it is free (in the free speech sense and the free beer sense) unless artificially penned in by walls erected by the government and patrolled by the corporations.
*Sigh* You're probably right about losing in court, but if you consider the proviso
solely to harass any person at the called number or who receives the communication
you see the glimmer of a way out. The original poster wasn't doing this solely to harass the spammer. He/she was following the emailed instructions for removing his/her address from the list. (I assume that the computer actually played a message, not just called and hung up.) So it could be argued that this was a legitimate approach.
If the spammer countered that a single call would have sufficed, one might point out that the same could be said of the original spam: there was no need to send it every week. Since the spammer obviously doesn't trust messages to be delivered, why should the poster?
Although the irony would be delicious, this probably wouldn't actually hold up, though.
However cookies are an integral part ("standard") of a browser. In fact did you know that the services at Hotmail, and Amazon (one click shop) wouldnt even work without the damn cookies?
Yet another reason I don't use Amazon.com anymore. Sites that use cookies need to be explicit about why and how, and then the user could (grudgingly) allow certain ones, from trusted sites, to be set. I complained not long ago to staples.com, and actually received a response indicating that the privacy concerns are forcing them to re-think their requirement of cookies. Maybe there's more hostility than we thought...
Also quoth the poster:
There is a bad side to every method. Including secure transactions.
But you can choose methods that minimize the "bad side" and make it hard to exploit, rather than (as here) relatively easy.
And yet more from the poster:
If every one knew just how unsafe secure transactions are on the net, we would all be in alot of trouble, and possibly out of work in the long run.
Does your personal code of ethics really say that you should keep quiet about known dangers because it might affect your earning potential? How ruthlessly pragmatic! Or... we can raise a ruckus over these sorts of too-simple exploits and, through the glare of publicity, perhaps encourage the people involved to design better products.
Slashdot Mirror
The DMCA passed in, what, 1998, under figurative cover of darkness before anyone quite knew what was going on. (I think. My history is shaky here.) A lot of people are suddenly getting bitten by it and are surprised to see it applied in the way it has been. But, alas, it's a done deal ... changing the law would involve deflecting a lot of momentum.
Now we have industry-friendly groups calling for revising the DMCA. Oh, sure, they want to tighten it up. But who cares what they want? The key thing is, they've made it a possible topic of debate again and this time, we are not asleep at the switch. Suddenly, it's not completely "out there" to talk about copyright and DMCA and so on.
Used properly, this might be a tremendous do-over. Maybe we can do it right this time around.
Because a free society must go out of its way to protect the "small minority", since the majority will otherwise ride roughshod over it without regard to right or wrong?
Because the RIAA's tactics lead to chilling effects, stifling, legislation-through-litigation, and a throttling of creativity?
Because copyright exists "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", not to secure the bottom line of certain cartels?
Because First Amendment trumps just about anything? (And should!)
Again, I can't speak for the UK. In the States, we are told over and over again that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Notification by an interested party does not constitute proof. I believe the only morally responsbile thing to do is to immedaitely archive the site in question and begin looking into it at (as you say) a reasonable time. But side with the student, because he is your constituent.
In fact, the most reasonable response is to fire a letter back demanding documentation for the alleged infringement. Have them have to assert, under penalty of perjury, that they are indeed the copright owners. But you do not have to roll over immediately. Make them get formal and involved. Otherwise you are surrendering your responsibility and you are failing your bosses and your students.
Why can't people see that we are all in this together? It's not good enough to protect some users by sacrificing one. It's not good enough to allow "just a little" intimidation to keep your job, or keep your job easy. It's not enough to say, "Well, it will all be sorted out eventually, but it's not my fight."
It is your fight, and it is my fight, and it is the fight of all people everywhere who have not yet surrendered their humanity, who believe that human dignitiy trumps economic imperative, who value freedom and crave freedom and breathe freedom. Ligitgation through intidation, like legislation through litigation, eats away at the core values that make life worth living and the democracies worth defending.
It will not be the computer that will dehumanize us. It will the powers that use the computer to strip away our freedoms and our dignity ... and it will be the sheep who roll over rather than raise a fuss, who acquiesce in the smothering of others, just so long as it's quiet until their turn comes.
Earlier, the poster said:
This position is particularly untenable considering how easy it would have been to checkBut even if it were difficult, the university should have checked first. A university is a privileged place. Part of the price is a larger responsibility to speak out, to defend the free flow of ideas, to resist conformity pressures. Sadly most universities fail to see this, but it's true nonetheless.
I would have thought that Oxford was more than a vocational school focused only on the bottom line. I would have thought that a venerable institution like that, having fought hard for its liberties and rights, would stand up to penny-ante scare tactics and drawn a line in the sand. I guess I was wrong.
If you don't think that the parody could serve a legitimate purpose as social commentary, consider the agitation it caused in this case.
This trouble isn't "unnecessary", unless you feel that the student's right to free speech is "unnecessary". I'm sorry, but the student's web site was legitimate and any trouble you'd have with the lawyers or the college bureaucracy would have been part of your job.
I wouldn't have been so surprised or even incensed if this had been a corporate site. We expect that kind of reasoning in the Corporate World. I had hoped a university -- especially one as venerable as Oxford -- would see matters more clearly. Sadly, the business of higher education is becoming business.
As long as people are willing to trade their privacy for (in this case) hypothetical conveniences --- "Here's my DNA, where's my free Happy Meal?" --- we will face a long, hard, uphill battle to secure the details of our lives. *Sigh*
What people mean, when they say "He copyrighted that", is that the creator registered copyright with the Library of Congress (in the US). This establishes a paper trail and can serve as official record of a copyright. The existence of a stamped LOC form tends to settle issues of priority. Without registering the copyright, you run the risk that you might not be able to collect punitive damages if someone infringes.
Does it matter to this issue? Well, maybe not directly. But then again... The real issue is not whether the document was copyrighted (it almost certainly qualifies). The real issue is, (a) Is the usage on Slashdot "Fair Use"? and (b) Is Andover.Net responsible for any infringement?
My entirely amateur legal eagle view is that the answers are (a) Yes and (b) No, but heck, I don't even play a lawyer on TV.
The issue is, spam costs time and money. Unlike even junk mail, the sender suffers effectively no cost, but the recipient does. It's annoying enough when this is "legitimate" but it's maddening when the message is fraudulent.
Despite the wonderful Wild West connotations of "bounty", this isn't a bounty ... it's not a reward, it's a right to recover damages.
Realistically, true artists produce art because they have to -- something in their souls move them and won't allow them to not create. I think that a lot of programmers are similar ... most of the open source projects began because (a) someone had an "itch" they had to scratch and (b) once they had begun to scratch it, they weren't opposed to helping others scrath their itches, too.
If economic value is the only value you recognize, of course, this makes less than sense. In fact, it's downright scary. That's why the suits and the drones and droids absolutely despise and (I think) secretly fear the FSOS movement. They don't understand it, because it's not entirely driven by economic profit. But if you free your mind from those sorts of blinders you begin to see that such things can make sense.
IP is bigger than copyright, patent law, or trademark law by themselves.
Traditional IP law is dead. The corpse just doesn't know it yet.
And, since adding content changes it as much as remvoing it, doesn't that put Hotmail in danger of being a copyright violator?
(PS: Did you notice that, per usual format, the license is all in caps?)
Whether we like it or not, this case will almost certainly be played out under the existing rules, not under a new philosophical regime.
Linux has bugs. All software has bugs, and probably always will. But serious bugs in Linux get fixed in a matter of weeks -- sometimes days -- while gaping security holes in MS software can sit out there for six months or a year before a service pack gets them.
The Linux community isn't afraid of bugs nor has the community invested its ego or its lucre in appearing "bug-free". As a result, precisely because we are willing to own up to bugs, they are rarer, less serious, and less persistent than in closed-source OSs.
So there is something laughable here, but it sure as heck isn't the decision to use Linux...
To my eye, intellectual "property" is not property. I usually use the scarcity reasoning when discussing this, but a new angle has occured to me. Thanks in part to vehement slashdotters :) I've had to think about the argument that property is anything that has value, owing to its ability to be traded for products, services, or other property.
But of course, digital data would seem not to have this particular trait. Take the RIAA at face value: If broadband becomes common and digital copying truly widespread, then would anyone pay for, say, a Metallica CD? The RIAA says No, and I suppose I might agree with them. But that means that, say, Metallica CDs have no intrinsic value in the digital world .. that, naturally, they fall to zero value and are not property.
Why, then, do we have armies of lawyers specializing in "intellectual property" -- copyright lawyers going after Napster, for example? Because, by granting copyrights and trade marks, the government manufactures values for the "intellectual property." The state-sanctioned monopoly allows companies to restrict supply and so drive up profits. But without the state, IP is not property.
To conclude, I'd like to remind the poster -- and any readers who've stayed with me :) -- that the saying is not (as quoted from the post)
but, rather, that More verbosely, the natural and proper state of information is to be free, just as the natural and proper state of a human is to be free. "Should" implies a moral stance, but I think most "information is free" people would shy away from a purely moral argument. "Wants to be", or the stronger "is", is a recognition of economic truth.Whether you believe information should be free, information does "want" to be free ... it is free (in the free speech sense and the free beer sense) unless artificially penned in by walls erected by the government and patrolled by the corporations.
If the spammer countered that a single call would have sufficed, one might point out that the same could be said of the original spam: there was no need to send it every week. Since the spammer obviously doesn't trust messages to be delivered, why should the poster?
Although the irony would be delicious, this probably wouldn't actually hold up, though.
Also quoth the poster:
But you can choose methods that minimize the "bad side" and make it hard to exploit, rather than (as here) relatively easy.And yet more from the poster:
Does your personal code of ethics really say that you should keep quiet about known dangers because it might affect your earning potential? How ruthlessly pragmatic! Or... we can raise a ruckus over these sorts of too-simple exploits and, through the glare of publicity, perhaps encourage the people involved to design better products.