The preamble is not considered part of the list of "enumerated powers"
Fair enough. I read the original post as looking for the philosophical justification for the government's power to intervene. The legal justification is found in the many-times-upheld Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which rests (I believe) pretty firmly on the Commerce Clause.
Put another way, the Commerce Clause gives the government the power to intervene in the Microsoft mess. The Preamble offers insight into the right of the government to that power.
But thanks for clearing up -- or forcing me to:) -- the thrust of the argument.
[welfare:] the state of doing well especially in respect to good fortune,
happiness, well-being, or prosperity
Remedying social ills doesn't lead to general happiness or well-being? So it's OK to dump carcinogens into rivers and lakes, since that's the cheapest way for a business to dispose of them? After all, the government shouldn't try to, say, safeguard public health.
And why does some silly piece of metal or some little sticker cost $40?
Why does a silly piece of plastic (read: CD) cost $0.001 to produce and sell for $20? Because -- the corporatist apologists would have you believe -- there are other costs to be recouped to make the system work. Sort of like generating revenue for a government agency to do its job.
The last time I checked the country was built on capitalism and free enterprise. That means NO INTERFERENCE by the governemnt. Hence PRIVATE and FREE.
(a) "Capitalism" doesn't necessarily mean no government oversight.
(b) Neither this country (US) nor any other has actually ever functioned as a purely economic "free market" society, for the simple reason that such societies cannot function.
(c) The market is not a governor, it's a tool. There are values other than economic value. One of the roles of government -- perhaps its greatest role in the 21st century -- is to ensure that other human values are not subsumed into and subjugated by economic values. It is good to be prosperous. It is not worth the price of your soul to be prosperous.
By no means do I believe that government is always the guy in the white hats, or that government suffers from no venality, corruption, or stupidity, or that a functioning and free society requires checks on the government. All these are true. But it is intellectually disingenuous to claim that the only options are "no government" and "all government".
Elsewise, why can't I shoot you driving down the street? You're not on your property, and hey, I own the gun and bullet -- why can't I do what I want with them?
The government is doing what normal citizens cant do legally, and frankly Im tired of it.
The government is not "normal citizens". It is (in theory) an agency for the common will of those citizens. Of course it has abilities and powers different from an individual. It has restrictions not found on "normal citizens" as well. So what?
It seems a large fraction of slashdot readers believe that any government is automatically bad government. I'm sorry, but they're wrong. Government has a role to play... a part of that role is exactly to ameliorate the excesses of private industry.
I assume you are using a hypothetical figue here, because i would be suprised if targeted ads get 55% response rate
I'd like to point out that, unlike my usual posts, this one wasn't all that obfuscated. To wit, I wrote
Hypothetical case:... This rate of return is ridiculous compared to the current reality. I don't think anyone claims that, currently, targeted ads are 55 times more effective.
The US government is granted the authority to do certain things in the constitution. Stopping "anything MS does to hurt society" is not one of the duties enumerated.
ObShoolhouseRock: The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
To me, that seems to say the government is in the business of remedying social ills.
Bulk mailing has always been more effective in getting responses, and it only makes sense that this will carry over to the internet.
Be careful. A lot of things that "make sense" do not carry over. The Net is not an entirely new medium, but it is a new medium and will have its own rules and sociology. Also quoth the poster:
When you can reach 50 random people for the price of targeting one person it is obvious which is going to work out in the long run.
Far from it. Hypothetical case: The targeted ad costs $1 to reach one person and the broad ad costs $1 to reach 50. But the targeted ad returns at 55% while the broad ad returns at 1%. Then it makes sense to buy the targeted ad.
Caveats: This rate of return is ridiculous compared to the current reality. I don't think anyone claims that, currently, targeted ads are 55 times more effective. But if it could be done... and that's the chimera people have been chasing.
I guess I'm just a little worried about us accepting the term "open source smuggling" for this. Copyright infringement has already been pasted with the misleading demogagogic term "piracy" (Arrgh! Shiver me templates!). Won't "smuggling" be leveraged into another assault on the legitimacy of the movement?
Nor can I buy the CD, repackage it in a different case (or copy it to tape, etc.) and give it to someone, regardless of whether that person has their own legally-aquired original.
Hmm. Unless I give it to them as a gift, or sell it to them for $1. As long as I surrender the CD as well, this is (IMHO) covered by the First Sale Doctrine, which says that content producers cannot control the further distribution of a legal copy. In other words, I can buy a CD, sell it to my friend, who sells it to his friend, etc., ad infinituum, and not pay RIAA a dime.
Now, if I give the disc to my friend, and I create a ripped MP3 disc as well (and give it to my friend), I haven't done anything... I am still under First Sale (IMHO). Or, I could give the disc to my friend, who could then "hire" me to make a ripped copy for him. Yes, I am providing a service, but that service is perfectly in keeping with copyright, Fair Use, and First Sale.
As long as the particular copy resides with one person -- if I do not in fact create the ability for a larger number of people to listen to the disc -- then I think I'm on safe ground. If not, then one could sue Kinko's for providing photocopies -- and sometimes even doing the photocopying -- for my fair use research.
So, it seems (a) mp3.com could store and serve copies I'd made of my own CDs, if I uploaded them; and (b) mp3.com could rip my disc for me, if I sent it to them, since they are just providing a service and my disc would be proof of my ownership. But in the end, are they doing anything different here at all? Sure, I never actually send my disc through the mail. Last time I checked, I could use my credit card online with shipping it through the mail, either.
The key thing is, the end result -- legal listeners and only legal listeners can access digital versions of their music "space shifted" -- seems to be indistinguishable from the two legal and one "illegal" process. Indeed, at no point does this process seem to actually (as opposed to naively) overstep the bounds of Fair Use and First Sale.
I hate to say it, but I think the judge simply bolluxed this one.
A PDF document written about a technical issue is not computer code
Isn't it? What is the difference between a PDF files -- a stream of 1s and 0s which, when interpreted by a certain computer program, causes a particular action (i.e., a display of text) -- and a source code file -- a stream of 1s and 0s which, when interpreted by a certain computer program, causes a particular action (i.e., a display of text)? Is it really true that a PDF file is a sancrosanct copyrighted document but a batch file consisting only of "echo" commands would not be? Even though the batch file transmits the same information to the screen?
Also quoth the poster:
and its protection under copyright law would be unquestioned by any court in the US.
Agreed. Of course, that doesn't prove that the courts aren't laboring under a misconception. Digital data changes everything -- all creative works expressed as digital data are essentially simply numbers and numbers, being concepts, cannot be copyrighted.
But I'm just philosophizing. Like everyone else on slashdot, IANAL.
Actually you could have used with surprising ease.
I had thought so too, but Preview was doing weird things with it... Indeed, here, the brackets obliterated the word "and". Are there escape characters I should know about?
Re:The problem is *storage*
on
Solving Chess?
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· Score: 2
Quoth the poster:
However, unlike distributed.net, where you know when you've found the answer and can throw away wrong answers, you have to save a whole lot of state for a brute-force chess game
True, but not necessarily all the states. I belive all you need to keep are the current champions for the least number of moves to a victory for White, for Black, and for neither. As soon as a new candidate passes the largest of these three numbers, the game can be abandoned.
Or so I think. I haven't done more than Sunday-paper thinking on it, though.
Re:I don't understand the question.
on
Solving Chess?
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· Score: 2
Chess is a game solvable in principle -- there is a "best" first move for white, etc. Look at it this way:
Imagine having God's own Beowulf cluster. Make every possible first move for White. For each of those cases, make each possible first move for Black. For each of those cases, make each possible second move for White. And so on. Every game must end in White winning, Black winning, or a stalemate. (I think... IANACP, so maybe there are situations of infinite recursion. Can a chess game be chaotic?)
Out of all those games, find the game in which White wins after the fewest moves. Call this WW. Find the game in which Black wins after the fewest moves. Call this BW. Find the game in which a stalemate is produced in the fewest moves. Call it SM. Let N(g) be the number of moves to conclude the game g.
Due to HTML, I have to use "lt" and "gt" for "less than" and "greater than".
** If N(WW) lt N(BW) and N(WW) lt N(SM), then White will win. ** If N(WW) lt N(BW) but N(WW) gt N(SM), then Black will cause a stalemate. ** If N(WW) gt N(BW) and N(WW) gt N(SM), then White will cause a stalemate. ** If N(WW) gt N(BW) and N(WW) gt N(SM), then Black will win.
Since at every move, each player will take the move that leads to the most favorable outcome in the fewest moves, and since there is no element of chance in chess, the "best" game is predetermined. Given infinite knowledge -- or even just the really huge knowledge implied by knowing all possible chess games -- the game is "solved".
As noted, the key thing is the completely deterministic rules of chess. Given any initial board, all possible future derivative boards can be known, at least in principle. If both players have access to this database, then the requirement that they try to win forces them to make predetermined moves and thus makes the game automatic.
That's why I don't play chess. Well, that and the fact that any five year old could whup me at it.:)
So I would guess it is in this respect that MP3 was found guilty because they distributed their MP3's to users instead of storing copies made from the users' CDs
This is where it gets mind-bending, though. The CDs are essentially perfectally identical, at least insofar as their digital data is concerned. That is, a given player would read exactly the same sequence of bytes from either CD (whether mine or MP3.com's). The compression algorithms work on that bitstream, so of course, the MP3s that came out would also be bit-wise identical.
But then, in what way does it make sense to distinguish copies from my CD as opposed to copies from MP3.com's CDs? The end-product bitstream is indistinguishable. (NOTE: I understand that RIAA would say that it is the process of copying -- ie., whose licenses are involved and at what stage -- that matters. But personally, I don't believe that that argument holds weight by itself. It assumes the traditional idea of copyright to justify the traditional idea of copyright.)
Consider a somewhat-tortured example. Say Alice writes a novel. She says that it's OK for Bob and Charlene each to read the book, and for that purpose, allows each to make one copy of the manuscript. Bob goes home and types out the novel based on the manuscript. Charlene then takes Bob's copy and types out a new copy. Barring any typographical errors -- and hey, it's a mind experiment, so we can -- the two copies would each be an exact representation of Alice's novel. Has Charlene violated Alice's trust?
On the one hand, Alice said that Bob and Charlene could each make one copy for personal use. Bob, by allowing Charlene to copy his copy, has in some sense violated that.
On the other hand, Bob and Charlene are now exactly where Alice wanted them to be -- each can read his/her personal copy of the novel. In fact, Alice can only detect that something fishy went on because Bob and Charlene tell her. Had she left for a week and returned, she would be completely unable to tell whether Charlene copied the manuscript or copied Bob's copy. And since a difference that makes no difference is no difference, the two cases are the same. In other words, Alice has no grounds to be upset with Bob or Charlene, because their alternative route leads to exactly the same endpoint.
To snap back to reality, I would be quite disappointed if the judge's ruling is based upon a distinction between MP3s copied by MP3.com and those I might have recorded myself and then uploaded. If the files are bitwise identical, what does it mean to distinguish them? If one were called a.mp3 and the other b.mp3, no test by the RIAA or anyone else could determined which was "mine" and which was "MP3.com's". So, does it make any sense to rule based on this unmeasurable difference?
Another piece of the puzzle just fell into place here. Instantaneous, universal Net access really is forcing old concepts to adapt for survival.
Quoth the poster (with my earlier stuff in italics):
And this is why we, as geeks, mystify and terrify the corporate drones. They can't get their minds around the fact that we don't value money (or power, for that matter) the way they do.
You either live in a fantasy world or you're 12 years old. In either case, you're flat ignorant if you think this attitude of yours is a good one. Money makes the world go around my friend. If you don't want to live in a trailor park and feed your kids chicken noodle soup from a can for the rest of your life, I suggest you realize that.
Well, I am considerably older than 12 -- by a factor of 250% or so -- so I supposed the conclusion is that I live in a fantasy world.:)
Seriously, I think the poster missed something I said, perhaps because of the inserted parenthetical. So I repeat myself, at the risk of being rude:
They can't get their minds around the fact that we don't value money... the way they do.
NB: I don't say geeks don't value money. They like money, to have a decent place to live, or to afford cool vacations, or (more likely than not) to buy more neato hardware. But money is not an end in itself, and neither is material accumulation. As such, geeks can get off the treadmill -- they have a point where they can say, "I have enough." Sheep almost never do this. Droids cannot do this -- to them, the rat race is all there is.
Admittedly, as the poster points out, my philosophy sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky. It certainly doesn't sound like it should be viable... but I believe it is. Notice that I say I believe it is, not that I can prove it.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but my material needs are close to being met, and I'm not even in a hugely high-paying job. In fact, I am a teacher at a private school, which (as those in education will tell you) is a recipe for unmet material needs.:)
And finally, I'm glad I made someone laugh. I, for one, don't really thnk what I'm saying is laughable, but hey, your mileage may vary. If my original post has brought a little more laughter into the world, it has already repaid me manifold.
Re:It's a single-use, non-transferrable license ..
on
MP3.com Loses In Court
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· Score: 2
Quoth the poster:
So MP3.COM's massive database of songs is cool and kosher, and they're allowed to build it
A U.S. federal court ruled on Friday that MP3.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:MPPP - news) violated copyright law with
the creation of its database
So, if you believe this somewhat-filtered report, it was the database that the judge KOd, not the actual distribution. Of course, the RIAA claims this is all about "piracy" and copying, but in fact, it's about the database. But we're getting used to the RIAA suing people under some obscure law and then claiming the suit is really about piracy, etc.
Re:Maybe I'll just avoid buying software all toget
on
Fighting UCITA
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· Score: 2
Quoth the poster:
He is a citizen of (and resides in) a country that specifically allows reverse engineering for compatibility by their law
Of course, so does the United States, even under the DCMA... if the law is correctly applied. So far, it hasn't been.
This isn't strictly on-topic but I guess it's tangential. The poster does a reasonable job with the rent-v-sell thingy, but makes the algebraic statement:
the company produces Q* (where Q* = Q1 + (Q2 - Q1)) and rents Q1 of them in term 1, and Q2 in term 2.
Unless you love LISP, that setence has too many parenthesis for comfort:) but what I want to focus on is the definition of Q*:
Q* = Q1 + (Q2 - Q1)
Er, doesn't that imply Q* = Q2 identifically? After all, you're adding and subtracting Q1, so by rearranging terms, we'd have
Quoth the poster (referring to a hypothetical O'Reilly suit over resale of Programming Perl):
They own the IP. Demanding that E-bay stop selling books which contain their IP is no different, in principle, from MS demanding that Ebay stop selling CDs which contain their IP.
Hmm. Once again we seem to hit the problem that effectively indistinguishable intellectual "property" obeys different laws depending on its (essentially irrelevant) packaging. Can Microsoft sue me for selling my copy of Windows 98? What if the purchaser never installs it? When is the license violated?
For that matter, this makes clear why the nefarious Powers are trying to rush UCITA past state legislatures before anyone gets a chance to understand it: They are deathly afraid that the courts will wake up and recognize that the restrictive licenses are illegitimate. In other words, perhaps the Windows 98 CD is like a book and thus the doctrine of First Sale applies: Once I've bought it, I can resell it for whatever price I choose, and MS loses all control over its further distribution.
The full implication of this would be staggering... and, I think, beneficial.
You bought a CD. If you want to listen to it elsewhere, you carry it with you. If you want to sell it, you go right ahead. If you step on it, you are not entitled to a free replacement copy, anymore than you'd get a book replaced if you dropped it in the bathtub.
And this raises, to my mind, the real issue: When I hand over $20 for a CD, what am I paying for? Am I purchasing a physical object (the CD), which happens to have music encoded on it? Am I licensing the disc with rights to play but not copy the disc? Am I purchasing the songs, retaining the right to listen to them via any medium I choose?
A lot of people think it's blank-and-white but I'm not so sure. It's not just the physical object. I expect that anyone would object if they purchased, say, Beethoven's 9th but instead received a blank disc. The encoding of the music obviously adds value.
I think it's clear that in fact, when you purchase a CD, you are really buying both a physical object and a "license" to play the music. After all, why do CDs cost so much more than cassettes of the same album? It is not production costs -- I believe the CD is actually cheaper to manufacture -- and it'd be ludicrous to pretend that it reflect the difference in "up-front" money and marketing expended by the company. But of course a CD lasts longer and is tremendously more convenient than a tape, and some of the cost reflects that added value.
But in the end, is "Bridge Over Troubled Water" a different song when recorded on CD than on cassette? To what extent am I purchasing a particular medium, and to what extent am I trying to hear Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel regardless of medium?
I have the intution that, eventually, we'll realize that it's the information that matters -- that the music, not the medium, is what one buys. But I don't see the path from here to there, and until we find it, the legal system will get twisted further in knots.
Somehow, I suspect my point will be missed and I'll be flamed. But what the heck -- it's chilly today.
Quoth the poster: (emphasis added by me)
There
may be some liberal companies developing censorware and putting on their blacklists sites that promote views that conflict with theirs... It's not all coming from one particular group. Liberals
are just as guilty as conservatives.
Did anyone else notice the shift in sense here? While I would believe that some "liberal" groups support censorship of ideas opposed to them -- I've experience much the same at college -- the poster only suspects this. But then he/she claims that, despite the lack of evidence, liberals are in fact just as guilty.
I'm really not trying to make this into a liberal-v.-conservative thing. I just wanted to point out how quickly we can move from a hypothetical suspicion of guilt to an acceptance of it as proven fact.
When you talk about any librarary, let alone LOC, you start immediately with Joyce, Dickins, Garcia-Marquez, and that's what the libraries are about. Even if we agreed that majority of books there might've been "bilge", that wouldn't have matered because libraries are defined by "good" (to paraphrase Billington)
Um, no, not in the case of the Library of Congress. It is mandated by law that a publisher submit two copies of any book published to the LOC, which is then mandated by law to keep, preserve, and make available that work, for the general use of Congrees and the people of the United States. So if most of what has been published in that oh-so-revered medium (i.e., dead trees) is bilge, then most of what is in the LOC is bilge, too. The LOC is by its nature not allowed to editorialize. That's a good thing, too.
To put that on the Internet is like to roll it in the mud
Huh? You mean that digitally scanning a great work (thereby helping preserve its content against the ravages of time) and putting it out on the Net, where interested people can find it and read it (thereby extending its reach and audience) somehow debases it? I guess I'm just odd, but I thought that Great Books were great because they spoke to us, because readers drew meaning from them. In no way does distribution of a great idea make it less great. Indeed, how great is a book or work if no one ever reads it? What is the point then?
What isn't clear to me is how Billington's attitude does anything toward improving the medium. Is it OK to say, "Oh, boo hoo, the people on the Net are mindless troglodytes obsessed with sex and money -- they should be pursuing culture!", and to then decide by "principle" to make that culture available? How does it hurt the LOC to put its works online? How can adding materials which you claim to be "good" be bad for such an awful medium as the Net?
Sorry, I still don't see how violating his mission gives Billington integrity, intellectual or otherwise.
I thought I was done, but then this caught my eye:
but tell me any five things born on the Internet that, combined, can compare with Joyce's Ulysis. And that is only one book.
Just as soon as you name five things published between 1450 and 1480 that "equal" Ulysses. After all, the Net is only about thirty years old. On the other hand, I see sites such as World Hunger Watch, CNN Online, and yes, even SETI@Home as meritorious. Is there a "literature" of the Net yet? Well, probably none you'd accept as such -- but it's a young medium and it's got growth potential. And that still doesn't answer why you'd want to avoid leavening it with real literature.
The number one annoying thing about libertarians: They can turn just about any conversation into a forum where they lecture about their pet political philosophy.
Sort of like geeks and hackers on slashdot.:)
Even I see the irony here, and I'm one of those who agree there's a resonance between Brazil and hackerdom.
Re:Are They Tallking About The Same Movie I Saw ?
on
Terry Gilliam's Brazil
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· Score: 2
Quoth the poster (quoting someone else, in italics):
It's refreshing to see people bring their "ethos" to bear on the media of the day.
I think it's repugnant. It's intellectually dishonest when you try to force a pre-conceived notion on "objective analysis".
I think it's art. The truly moving and important pieces of art have this in common: they resonante with many different people for many different reasons. They look different to different people, and everyone finds their own meaning in them. Those meanings, considered together, then lead to a new knowledge of something universal about the human condition.
Sure, Gilliam didn't intend to make a hacker flick. It obviously nods to Kafka and (less so) to Orwell. But they are not the end-all, be-all of interpretation. I don't think it's too terribly disrespectful to say that the film happens to have echoes of hackerdom. Tuttle clearly could be a hacker, fixing things for the joy of doing it, fiddling around with "unathorized" modifications, thumbing his nose at both the authorities and the society that support them.
Is Sam a hacker? Well, that's less clear, but it can be argued. He, too, is a fixer. He obviously knows how to get things done, working around the system, and he obviously knows the ins-and-outs of the system. The film is, in one sense, his attempt to "hack" the Ministry of Information. Of course, this is by analogy not identity -- Sam doesn't write any C code that I could see -- but it isn't a ridiculous analogy.
It dismays me to see people who assume that any attempt to find a hacker resonance is "putting square pegs in round holes". My view is that it's more like circumabulating something, attempting to see it from a new angle. Some things are obscured but some things are revealed, and nothing is removed for those who wish to view it the old way.
Where are those projects is simple to answer: they are nowhere comparing to the comercial stuff. But you seem to be okay with the comercialisation with the Internet, even inventing euphemism ("parcel of the new dynamism") to somehow rationalize to yourself that SETI and other your favorite projects are peanuts comparing to the real moneymakers.
By what metric do you call these "peanuts"? Using revenue would seem a tad slanted, since you'd be comparing sites intended solely as revenue-generators to sites offering something else.
Is most of cyberspace filled with commercialism? Sure. Are most sites not particularly uplifiting or eddifying? Well, maybe... I can certainly concede the possibility.
Are most books uplifting or eddifying? Not by a long shot. You might think I would invoke the shelves of your typical mega-mart bookstore. I don't. I invoke the shelves of the Library of Congress itself. Much -- maybe almost all -- of what the printing press has produced is bilge. But it also has produced Dickens, and Joyce, and Garcia-Marquez(sp?).
I asked, quite reasonably, where in Billington's worldview did he place SETI@home or the others? He decries the mindless of the Net, its alleged focus on sex and sensationalism, but he somehow doesn't see the huge number of sites that are oddball, or lovingly maintained, or simply useful. He sees the blinking lights and is entranced, and then complains that those with clear sight do not join him in the fantasy.
Also quoth the poster:
So it seems that the guy, as opose to yourself, show some real integrity here, since he does not accept the Library of Congress to become another peanut.
He shows integrity through condemnation of a medium he doesn't understand, to justify a metaphor that works against him, while undermining the primary purpose of his organization? Wow, I'd love to see your definition of "integrity". Perhaps I am just self-delusional, but I don't see where my integrity was compromised, but I see quite clearly where his might be.
Slashdot Mirror
Put another way, the Commerce Clause gives the government the power to intervene in the Microsoft mess. The Preamble offers insight into the right of the government to that power.
But thanks for clearing up -- or forcing me to :) -- the thrust of the argument.
(b) Neither this country (US) nor any other has actually ever functioned as a purely economic "free market" society, for the simple reason that such societies cannot function.
(c) The market is not a governor, it's a tool. There are values other than economic value. One of the roles of government -- perhaps its greatest role in the 21st century -- is to ensure that other human values are not subsumed into and subjugated by economic values. It is good to be prosperous. It is not worth the price of your soul to be prosperous.
By no means do I believe that government is always the guy in the white hats, or that government suffers from no venality, corruption, or stupidity, or that a functioning and free society requires checks on the government. All these are true. But it is intellectually disingenuous to claim that the only options are "no government" and "all government".
Elsewise, why can't I shoot you driving down the street? You're not on your property, and hey, I own the gun and bullet -- why can't I do what I want with them?
The government is not "normal citizens". It is (in theory) an agency for the common will of those citizens. Of course it has abilities and powers different from an individual. It has restrictions not found on "normal citizens" as well. So what?It seems a large fraction of slashdot readers believe that any government is automatically bad government. I'm sorry, but they're wrong. Government has a role to play ... a part of that role is exactly to ameliorate the excesses of private industry.
Quoth the poster:
I'd like to point out that, unlike my usual posts, this one wasn't all that obfuscated. To wit, I wroteCaveats: This rate of return is ridiculous compared to the current reality. I don't think anyone claims that, currently, targeted ads are 55 times more effective. But if it could be done ... and that's the chimera people have been chasing.
I guess I'm just a little worried about us accepting the term "open source smuggling" for this. Copyright infringement has already been pasted with the misleading demogagogic term "piracy" (Arrgh! Shiver me templates!). Won't "smuggling" be leveraged into another assault on the legitimacy of the movement?
Now, if I give the disc to my friend, and I create a ripped MP3 disc as well (and give it to my friend), I haven't done anything... I am still under First Sale (IMHO). Or, I could give the disc to my friend, who could then "hire" me to make a ripped copy for him. Yes, I am providing a service, but that service is perfectly in keeping with copyright, Fair Use, and First Sale.
As long as the particular copy resides with one person -- if I do not in fact create the ability for a larger number of people to listen to the disc -- then I think I'm on safe ground. If not, then one could sue Kinko's for providing photocopies -- and sometimes even doing the photocopying -- for my fair use research.
So, it seems (a) mp3.com could store and serve copies I'd made of my own CDs, if I uploaded them; and (b) mp3.com could rip my disc for me, if I sent it to them, since they are just providing a service and my disc would be proof of my ownership. But in the end, are they doing anything different here at all? Sure, I never actually send my disc through the mail. Last time I checked, I could use my credit card online with shipping it through the mail, either.
The key thing is, the end result -- legal listeners and only legal listeners can access digital versions of their music "space shifted" -- seems to be indistinguishable from the two legal and one "illegal" process. Indeed, at no point does this process seem to actually (as opposed to naively) overstep the bounds of Fair Use and First Sale.
I hate to say it, but I think the judge simply bolluxed this one.
Also quoth the poster:
Agreed. Of course, that doesn't prove that the courts aren't laboring under a misconception. Digital data changes everything -- all creative works expressed as digital data are essentially simply numbers and numbers, being concepts, cannot be copyrighted.But I'm just philosophizing. Like everyone else on slashdot, IANAL.
Or so I think. I haven't done more than Sunday-paper thinking on it, though.
Imagine having God's own Beowulf cluster. Make every possible first move for White. For each of those cases, make each possible first move for Black. For each of those cases, make each possible second move for White. And so on. Every game must end in White winning, Black winning, or a stalemate. (I think ... IANACP, so maybe there are situations of infinite recursion. Can a chess game be chaotic?)
Out of all those games, find the game in which White wins after the fewest moves. Call this WW. Find the game in which Black wins after the fewest moves. Call this BW. Find the game in which a stalemate is produced in the fewest moves. Call it SM. Let N(g) be the number of moves to conclude the game g.
Due to HTML, I have to use "lt" and "gt" for "less than" and "greater than".
** If N(WW) lt N(BW) and N(WW) lt N(SM), then White will win.
** If N(WW) lt N(BW) but N(WW) gt N(SM), then Black will cause a stalemate.
** If N(WW) gt N(BW) and N(WW) gt N(SM), then White will cause a stalemate.
** If N(WW) gt N(BW) and N(WW) gt N(SM), then Black will win.
Since at every move, each player will take the move that leads to the most favorable outcome in the fewest moves, and since there is no element of chance in chess, the "best" game is predetermined. Given infinite knowledge -- or even just the really huge knowledge implied by knowing all possible chess games -- the game is "solved".
As noted, the key thing is the completely deterministic rules of chess. Given any initial board, all possible future derivative boards can be known, at least in principle. If both players have access to this database, then the requirement that they try to win forces them to make predetermined moves and thus makes the game automatic.
That's why I don't play chess. Well, that and the fact that any five year old could whup me at it. :)
But then, in what way does it make sense to distinguish copies from my CD as opposed to copies from MP3.com's CDs? The end-product bitstream is indistinguishable. (NOTE: I understand that RIAA would say that it is the process of copying -- ie., whose licenses are involved and at what stage -- that matters. But personally, I don't believe that that argument holds weight by itself. It assumes the traditional idea of copyright to justify the traditional idea of copyright.)
Consider a somewhat-tortured example. Say Alice writes a novel. She says that it's OK for Bob and Charlene each to read the book, and for that purpose, allows each to make one copy of the manuscript. Bob goes home and types out the novel based on the manuscript. Charlene then takes Bob's copy and types out a new copy. Barring any typographical errors -- and hey, it's a mind experiment, so we can -- the two copies would each be an exact representation of Alice's novel. Has Charlene violated Alice's trust?
On the one hand, Alice said that Bob and Charlene could each make one copy for personal use. Bob, by allowing Charlene to copy his copy, has in some sense violated that.
On the other hand, Bob and Charlene are now exactly where Alice wanted them to be -- each can read his/her personal copy of the novel. In fact, Alice can only detect that something fishy went on because Bob and Charlene tell her. Had she left for a week and returned, she would be completely unable to tell whether Charlene copied the manuscript or copied Bob's copy. And since a difference that makes no difference is no difference, the two cases are the same. In other words, Alice has no grounds to be upset with Bob or Charlene, because their alternative route leads to exactly the same endpoint.
To snap back to reality, I would be quite disappointed if the judge's ruling is based upon a distinction between MP3s copied by MP3.com and those I might have recorded myself and then uploaded. If the files are bitwise identical, what does it mean to distinguish them? If one were called a.mp3 and the other b.mp3, no test by the RIAA or anyone else could determined which was "mine" and which was "MP3.com's". So, does it make any sense to rule based on this unmeasurable difference?
Another piece of the puzzle just fell into place here. Instantaneous, universal Net access really is forcing old concepts to adapt for survival.
Seriously, I think the poster missed something I said, perhaps because of the inserted parenthetical. So I repeat myself, at the risk of being rude:
NB: I don't say geeks don't value money. They like money, to have a decent place to live, or to afford cool vacations, or (more likely than not) to buy more neato hardware. But money is not an end in itself, and neither is material accumulation. As such, geeks can get off the treadmill -- they have a point where they can say, "I have enough." Sheep almost never do this. Droids cannot do this -- to them, the rat race is all there is.Admittedly, as the poster points out, my philosophy sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky. It certainly doesn't sound like it should be viable ... but I believe it is. Notice that I say I believe it is, not that I can prove it.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but my material needs are close to being met, and I'm not even in a hugely high-paying job. In fact, I am a teacher at a private school, which (as those in education will tell you) is a recipe for unmet material needs. :)
And finally, I'm glad I made someone laugh. I, for one, don't really thnk what I'm saying is laughable, but hey, your mileage may vary. If my original post has brought a little more laughter into the world, it has already repaid me manifold.
For that matter, this makes clear why the nefarious Powers are trying to rush UCITA past state legislatures before anyone gets a chance to understand it: They are deathly afraid that the courts will wake up and recognize that the restrictive licenses are illegitimate. In other words, perhaps the Windows 98 CD is like a book and thus the doctrine of First Sale applies: Once I've bought it, I can resell it for whatever price I choose, and MS loses all control over its further distribution.
The full implication of this would be staggering ... and, I think, beneficial.
A lot of people think it's blank-and-white but I'm not so sure. It's not just the physical object. I expect that anyone would object if they purchased, say, Beethoven's 9th but instead received a blank disc. The encoding of the music obviously adds value.
I think it's clear that in fact, when you purchase a CD, you are really buying both a physical object and a "license" to play the music. After all, why do CDs cost so much more than cassettes of the same album? It is not production costs -- I believe the CD is actually cheaper to manufacture -- and it'd be ludicrous to pretend that it reflect the difference in "up-front" money and marketing expended by the company. But of course a CD lasts longer and is tremendously more convenient than a tape, and some of the cost reflects that added value.
But in the end, is "Bridge Over Troubled Water" a different song when recorded on CD than on cassette? To what extent am I purchasing a particular medium, and to what extent am I trying to hear Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel regardless of medium?
I have the intution that, eventually, we'll realize that it's the information that matters -- that the music, not the medium, is what one buys. But I don't see the path from here to there, and until we find it, the legal system will get twisted further in knots.
Quoth the poster: (emphasis added by me)
Did anyone else notice the shift in sense here? While I would believe that some "liberal" groups support censorship of ideas opposed to them -- I've experience much the same at college -- the poster only suspects this. But then he/she claims that, despite the lack of evidence, liberals are in fact just as guilty.I'm really not trying to make this into a liberal-v.-conservative thing. I just wanted to point out how quickly we can move from a hypothetical suspicion of guilt to an acceptance of it as proven fact.
1010110 01001101 0100011 0100001!
1010110 01001101 0100011 0100001!
With apologies to Johnny O'Binome. :)
What isn't clear to me is how Billington's attitude does anything toward improving the medium. Is it OK to say, "Oh, boo hoo, the people on the Net are mindless troglodytes obsessed with sex and money -- they should be pursuing culture!", and to then decide by "principle" to make that culture available? How does it hurt the LOC to put its works online? How can adding materials which you claim to be "good" be bad for such an awful medium as the Net?
Sorry, I still don't see how violating his mission gives Billington integrity, intellectual or otherwise.
I thought I was done, but then this caught my eye:
Just as soon as you name five things published between 1450 and 1480 that "equal" Ulysses. After all, the Net is only about thirty years old. On the other hand, I see sites such as World Hunger Watch, CNN Online, and yes, even SETI@Home as meritorious. Is there a "literature" of the Net yet? Well, probably none you'd accept as such -- but it's a young medium and it's got growth potential. And that still doesn't answer why you'd want to avoid leavening it with real literature.Even I see the irony here, and I'm one of those who agree there's a resonance between Brazil and hackerdom.
Sure, Gilliam didn't intend to make a hacker flick. It obviously nods to Kafka and (less so) to Orwell. But they are not the end-all, be-all of interpretation. I don't think it's too terribly disrespectful to say that the film happens to have echoes of hackerdom. Tuttle clearly could be a hacker, fixing things for the joy of doing it, fiddling around with "unathorized" modifications, thumbing his nose at both the authorities and the society that support them.
Is Sam a hacker? Well, that's less clear, but it can be argued. He, too, is a fixer. He obviously knows how to get things done, working around the system, and he obviously knows the ins-and-outs of the system. The film is, in one sense, his attempt to "hack" the Ministry of Information. Of course, this is by analogy not identity -- Sam doesn't write any C code that I could see -- but it isn't a ridiculous analogy.
It dismays me to see people who assume that any attempt to find a hacker resonance is "putting square pegs in round holes". My view is that it's more like circumabulating something, attempting to see it from a new angle. Some things are obscured but some things are revealed, and nothing is removed for those who wish to view it the old way.
And, if they create .dash, we could have dot.dash.dot and other Morse code! Or, I suppose, that could just be .dash.
Is most of cyberspace filled with commercialism? Sure. Are most sites not particularly uplifiting or eddifying? Well, maybe... I can certainly concede the possibility.
Are most books uplifting or eddifying? Not by a long shot. You might think I would invoke the shelves of your typical mega-mart bookstore. I don't. I invoke the shelves of the Library of Congress itself. Much -- maybe almost all -- of what the printing press has produced is bilge. But it also has produced Dickens, and Joyce, and Garcia-Marquez(sp?).
I asked, quite reasonably, where in Billington's worldview did he place SETI@home or the others? He decries the mindless of the Net, its alleged focus on sex and sensationalism, but he somehow doesn't see the huge number of sites that are oddball, or lovingly maintained, or simply useful. He sees the blinking lights and is entranced, and then complains that those with clear sight do not join him in the fantasy.
Also quoth the poster:
He shows integrity through condemnation of a medium he doesn't understand, to justify a metaphor that works against him, while undermining the primary purpose of his organization? Wow, I'd love to see your definition of "integrity". Perhaps I am just self-delusional, but I don't see where my integrity was compromised, but I see quite clearly where his might be.