I think some software needs copyrigth (or something similar) to flourish. Basically thats true for anything shrink-wrap. Which last I heard accounts for 5-10% of all software-development.
It'd be hard to finance Ratchet&Clank without copyrigth, or some other similar reward-mechanism.
I can see other better models though. For example, I'd be in favour of a flat fee, distributed according to how users want.
Instead of selling Playstation games, Sony could sell $X/month subscriptions to Playstation-network or whatever, and have 80% of that redistributed to game-developers based on user-voting or whatever.
Copyrigth is harmful because it limits access to finished works. Useful because it (in theory anyway!) stimulates the creation of new works. If you could stimulate the creation of new works *without* restricting access to existing works, that'd be much better.
That was my first thougth. Well, not your answer, but the question -- what exactly does Sun want ?
Why would SUN care one way or another if some people work for free ?
Why does it matter to sun at all if OSS is "sustainable" or not ?
In what way does it benefit SUN if companies reward OSS-developers more ?
SUN has been really fuzzy for like literally a decade now. It's perfectly unclear what role they see themself playing and how they want to interact with the community. Sometimes they do something good, then a month later they do something terminally stupid, repeat ad nauseum...
In the case where the creator never gives anyone a copy, copyrigth is irrelevant in any case, certainly he controls what is done with an object (or file) that only he himself has.
The moment he gives or sells someone else a copy (or for that matter the original) copyrigth becomes relevant. It restricts *certain* actions of the recipient. Even *IF* I give or sell you a copy of some creative work I made, you can't legally copy it or perform it in public.
Other than that though, I've no control over how you use the work. You can rent a video and show it to 10 friends, there's nothing the copyrigth-hodler can do to prevent you from this. (10 friends ain't a "public performance") If you bougth a DVD, but you're tired of it. You can sell it on Ebay. Again, copyright-holders have no say in the matter. If you are particularily unfond of Ayn Rand, you are free to use paper from Atlas Shrugged as toilet-paper, though I'd advice against it as the paper-quality ain't rigth.
*someone* will have to copy a work for you to be able to use the copy. Copyrigth restricts the actions of those people. Doesn't mean it restricts you. (except for the part about copying and public performances)
I know registration used to be mandatory in the US. I just don't agree that it is wise. Thing is, you don't always *know* when you write something what is going to become valuable and/or important.
I already *said* I agree with renewal, to ensure that works are openly available when the original author ain't findable or ain't interested. 10 years automatically on everything, thereafter 100$ for the next 10 years, thereafter an order of magnitude more pro 5 years sounds sane to me.
Everyone gets 10 years. $100 gives you 15. $1000 gives you 20. $10K gives you 25. $100K gives you 30. $1M gives you 35, most works would not be renewed farther than this. 35 years is an *eternity* when you're talking of the comercial potential of a work.
With yearly deprecation of 4%, getting a certain income for the next 35 years is 80% of the value of getting it forever. So in economic terms, 35 years of copyrigth is 98% of forever. Todays ~100 years copyrigth is equivalent to 99% of forever -- in economic terms at 4% deprecation.
Constitution says "limited times", congress decides upon a number that, in practice, is 99% of forever in economic terms and 100% of forever in human terms. (since its significantly longer than a human life) The supreme-court argues that the clause "for limited terms" in the constitution is meant to be meaningless: They actually came within an inch of saying that congress voting for copyrigth to last for 10^999 years would be perfectly fine. It's "limited" afterall. That its much longer than the life-expectancy of the universe is irrelevant.... Way to push by-the-letter interpretation rather than *intent*.
Companies are free to pay OSS-developers if they like. And infact, a pretty large part of the core OSS-developers are paid by some company to do what they do.
But it's pretty strange to claim that something which seems to have worked just fine for the last 15 years is "not sustainable", without providing any argument whatsoever as to what, exactly, prevents the next 5 years for working for the same reason that the last 5 has.
Copyright is a legal construct created to encourage authors and other creative types to make their works public (e.g., published, performed, broadcast, etc.) by letting them retain legal control of the work. The import point is the person who creates the work gets to control its use.
Uhm. No. Try again. Copyrigth allows the copyrigth-holder to control *copying*. (honestly, the name is a dead give-away, amazing you didn't get that. It's called *COPY*-rigth for a reason !) The creater gets to control copying, and some related activities such as public performance of the work. (really a sort of "copying", inthat it makes a work accessible for a larger group of people)
It most definitely does NOT allow the creator to control use.
That is a very uncomfortable point for the MPAA/RIAA et al.
Fact: Copyrigth exists at all in order to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts".
So, the relevant question is, if we cut copyrigth to say 15 years, would that actually result in less progress in science and the useful arts ? That is, is it likely that production of creative works would actually be seriously harmed by this ?
For software, the answer is a pretty definitive "no". There's no way in hell anyone will write a new program -- because of 100 years copyrigth, while not being able to do the same for 15 years copyrigth.
Nonsense. It's perfectly possible, for example, to be of the opinion that the best choice would be no copyrigth, and the second-best choice would be GPL.
Which makes it perfectly logical to choose GPL today, and at the same time oppose copyrigth today.
Mandatory registration is a bad idea. Because it introduces a hurdle that again tips the scale in favour of large corporations and away from ordinary citizens.
It would mean, for example, that 99% of all bloggers would enjoy no copyrigth, as basically noone would bother to register repeatedly. So, absent big corporations would be free to rip such material off.
Meanwhile, everything coming out of the same big corporations would naturally be registered.
Mandatory renewal, on the other hand, is a good idea. It'd atleast ensure that copyrigth expired on those things that really are without comercial value, allowing the public to freely use them (and perhaps create new worthwhile works from the ashes of old)
So, he is arguing against a position that I've never heard anyone holding.
These members of the anti-copyright crowd cite the GPL (GNU Public License) as an alternative to copyright without any sense of the ironic fact that the GPL can't exist without copyright.
Starting with RMS himself, most people *either* say copyrigth is fine -- GPL is our prefered copyrigth-notice OR they say: copyrigth is fundamentally a bad idea, but aslong as we've got it, we've got no choice but to make the best of it, GPL is our attempt at this.
The biggest group I know are somewhere in between; They accept copyrigth, but consider life+100 years completely ridicolous. Copyrigths on software should probably expire in a decade. My prefered state of affairs would be no DMCA or similar law, 5 year copyrigth on software, and as much of that software as possible under the GPL. (yeah, this would mean you could take 6-year-old GPL-software and put it in a closed product. Fine with me !)
It's sorta like the MANY people who say that software-patents are BAD, but aslong as we do have them, it migth be worthwhile to gather up an Open Source defencive patent-pool.
Who *are* these people he argues against ? Do they even exist ?
But banning is not required. They are attempting to do something which is fundamentally imposible anyway. They want to hand over to you encrypted content, a complete implementation of the decryption-algorithm AND all needed keys, and nevertheless prevent you from decrypting the data.
That does not work. Bruce Schneier said it best: Trying to make bits non-copiable is about as likely to suceed as an attempt to make water not wet.
All that is needed for the free market to dismantle such crap by itself is to let it.
That is -- remove any and all laws that protect these mechanisms. Kill the DMCA, basically.
DRM ain't dangerous. It won't and can't work.
DRM combined with laws preventing their removal and/or breakage is *very* dangerous.
It's just that the law ain't adequate for todays global media-landscape.
The law should be changed so that not only is it illegal to *publish* exit-polls in france on election day, but even *taking* them should be stopped. If you really want to avoid influencing voters I mean.
Today is just silly -- you don't get to read french exit-polls prior to 8pm, unless you're capable of asking Google or one of the many foreign media that reported them from a few hours after the polling-stations *opened*.
Meanwhile, journalists talk about the election without being able to say what they actually do know, only they can't say it. Which is sorta absurd.
Unless I'm very thoroughly misinformed, publishing exit-polls on election day is forbidden -- aslong as the polling-stations are open.
Exit-polls are normally quite reliable, so in cases like this, when its not very close, they are able to predict actual outcome with a very high probability of being correct.
That is why you could read exit-polls all day -- provided you visited a foreign webpage instead of one belonging to french media. (though some foreign media respect the french law too, despite not being legally required to)
That many polling-stations close earlier, and some counting is done earlier is true, but irrelevant since these numbers aren't communicated to anyone prior to 8pm. The strange situation with the exit-polls is that everyone knows what they say (certainly every journalist covering the election) yet they are all prevented from saying what they say, do they pretend not to know, sort of, until 8pm.
Because, in France it's not allowed to publish voter-polls on election day before all polling-places are closed. Which happens at 8 pm.
In reality, everyone knew since these polls where in, early in the morning, that she'd lose, it's just, they all sorta pretend not to know until it's "official". You see, french law has little influence abroad, so anyone with an internet-connection has been able to read these polls all day. Only in French media are they disallowed.
So, each and every journalist covering the election, and every politician aswell, knew the result (aproximately, but good enough since it wasn't a close race anyway) hours earlier.
In this setting it makes perfect sense to admit defeat at 20:01. It'd have been disrespectful of the law and the voters to do so any earlier, and pointless to wait much longer when the numbers where as obvious as they where.
There's no indication whatsoever that sex was important, or even relevant, in this election.
Unlike the two major parties in the US, the various parties in France actually have significantly different political ideas, like you said there's even an active communist party.
Having multiple users on a single computer at the same time is a fine idea. But why not put 2 users on, each with a 15" screen, instead of letting them share a 19" ? It'll give them more space, more freedom (you head doesn't have to be 10 inches from mine...) and would actually be cheaper.
How much does it matter if you can't speak a string of hexes for copyright/DMCA reasons? It doesn't.
Speaking arbitrary strings of hexes doesn't have much value as such. However, it is the implications of such which matter. I'm not arguing its a slippery slope that will possibly lead somewhere bad. I'm arguing its horribly bad -- TODAY.
How much does it matter to computer-security to be able to freely and openly discuss weaknesses and strong points of existing computer-security systems ?
How much does it matter that established rights such as the right to use quotes or parts of a work in satire, in critial commentary, in teaching, all the stuff that qualifies as "fair use" ?
How much does it matter that we are allowed to keep creative works and make them accessible for future generations ? DVD-players won't be commonplace 50 years from now. How do you make it so your grandchildren can watch a movie from when you where a kid if you're *NOT* allowed to break CSS ?
How much does it matter that copyrigth is "for limited times" ? It's in the constitution. Not that the current administration has much respect for that... There is NO exception in the DMCA that allows circumvention when the copyright on the protected work has expired...
How much does it matter that we have free trade, rather than artificial barriers to trade such as region-coding. (region coding is a different thing, but if it's implemented with the same mechanism, DMCA will prevent breaking both)
How much does it matter that people can actually use their own damn property in the manner they themselves choose, aslong as they stay legal ? How do you re-sell an iTunes-song again ? How do you read an Adobe-DRM-pdf-crap ebook on Linux again ? How can people legally help you do that aslong as the DMCA is in effect ?
I don't give a fuck about hex-strings. Nobody does.
I do however care about handing over the keys to large parts of our culture to a small group of publishers, while receiving essentially nothing whatsoever in return. (What are, from the POV of the consumer the ADVANTAGES of a DRM-iTunes song over a unencumbered mp3/ogg-file again ???)
I also care deeply about free speech. Discussing the weaknesses in cryptographic systems is without shadow of a doubt speech.
That means, you're likely to produce that very same key by chance after having tried 2**112 times, so if you had on the order of 590295810358705651712 terabytes of random data, you'd be likely to have the key somewhere by pure chance.
There's on the order of 1 billion PCs in the world, if they all contained only random data (they don't) they'd need 590295810358 or thereabouts TB of disk-space each, before it'd be likely that one of them would, by chance, contain the key.
Now, there's another order of magnitude computers if you include calculators, microwave ovens and the like. But on the other hand, many computers contain copies of the *same* (or very similar) files, which don't help.
My conclusion ?
It is very very likely that that sequence of hex-numbers has NOT appeared in the world prior to this use as a key.
Scientific notation is to blame. 2^112 doesn't *look* terribly daunting, that doesn't stop it from actually *being* humongous though.
Please for Deity's sake -- learn the very basics of law and the actual case you're talking about.
It is amazing, in this thread alone, there's literally dozens of people completely confusing issues with no relation to oneanother whatseover.
Nobody ever claimed that these numbers should be removed because they are copyrigthed. They are not, and if you know even a tiny tiny bit about copyrigth, you would know that they CAN NOT be. Copyrigth applies to creative works. A single random number is not creative. (indeed, if creativity went into selecting it, then it would no longer BE random)
The claim is that the number violates the DMCA, by forming part of a mechanism for working around a technical system that is controlling access to a copyrigthed work. Completely different law.
Certainly a lot of people have given up on smoking (or never started) because of increased public awareness of the health-risks to oneself and those around you, along with less acceptance of smoking from non-smokers. There's no law saying you can't smoke at a private dinner-party. In my circle of friends you'd be very VERY rude if you did so though.
But it's also silly to suggest that the legal climate has -zero- influence. Lots of smoking-related law also had a positive impact. Laws such as:
Age-limits.
Taxation.
Smoking-prohibitions basically everywhere other than outdoor and in private vehicles/buildings.
Warning-labels. Awareness-programs. Incentives. Financial support for programs to help people stop smoking.
You're rigth, law isn't the entire explanation. Not even close. But it's one piece in the larger puzzle.
You don't have to explain something that does not, infact, exist.
Fact is, it is very easy, near trivial, to test if people can infact detect being looked upon from behind.
Fact is, if you did, and succeeded, you'd qualify for a cool million bucks from the Randi Foundation
Sad fact is, neither you, nor any of the rest of the crackpots will bother attempting this, instead you'll go on babbling, repeatedly *claiming* that it is true, rather than *demonstrating* that it is, infact, true. Because deep down inside, you know that you cannot, infact, demonstrate it.
I think youre rigth. It really is either-or. And if we agree that we don't want a system where people unable to pay are literally left to die, then that leaves government-supported universal healthcare.
I actually think the Norwegian system works fairly well. There are *precisely* 2 conditions for being covered by our universal healthcare-system.
One, you must be legally in Norway.
Two, the stay must be for a period, planned or actual, longer than a year. (so tourists aren't covered)
People who do not qualify will also be treated in emergencies offcourse. The difference is that emergency help is all they get unless they pay, and even for that the govt will attempt to get the money back afterwards.
Makes things very simple and very predictable. And avoids one of the many welfare-traps that countries with hybrid systems, such as germany tends to have: In Germany the state pays for your treatment (indirectly trough an insurance) if you earn less than a certain minimum. You need to pay for insurance yourself if you earn more.
Practical result ? If you earn sligthly under that minimum, and are offered a somewhat larger position, your only logical choice is to decline. Unless you fancy working more and earning less, which lets face it, aint all *that* motivating.
The strange thing is, we don't actually spend more money on healthcare than countries like Germany or USA, infact we spend less, but still get more doctors/population and in general scores well on whatever healthcare-indicator you can think up.
Yeah, there's inefficiencies. I just don't see any evidence that privatizing actually suceeds in reducing those much. The US system is completely ridicolous.
Slashdot Mirror
It'd be hard to finance Ratchet&Clank without copyrigth, or some other similar reward-mechanism.
I can see other better models though. For example, I'd be in favour of a flat fee, distributed according to how users want.
Instead of selling Playstation games, Sony could sell $X/month subscriptions to Playstation-network or whatever, and have 80% of that redistributed to game-developers based on user-voting or whatever.
Copyrigth is harmful because it limits access to finished works. Useful because it (in theory anyway!) stimulates the creation of new works. If you could stimulate the creation of new works *without* restricting access to existing works, that'd be much better.
SUN has been really fuzzy for like literally a decade now. It's perfectly unclear what role they see themself playing and how they want to interact with the community. Sometimes they do something good, then a month later they do something terminally stupid, repeat ad nauseum...
In the case where the creator never gives anyone a copy, copyrigth is irrelevant in any case, certainly he controls what is done with an object (or file) that only he himself has.
The moment he gives or sells someone else a copy (or for that matter the original) copyrigth becomes relevant. It restricts *certain* actions of the recipient. Even *IF* I give or sell you a copy of some creative work I made, you can't legally copy it or perform it in public.
Other than that though, I've no control over how you use the work. You can rent a video and show it to 10 friends, there's nothing the copyrigth-hodler can do to prevent you from this. (10 friends ain't a "public performance") If you bougth a DVD, but you're tired of it. You can sell it on Ebay. Again, copyright-holders have no say in the matter. If you are particularily unfond of Ayn Rand, you are free to use paper from Atlas Shrugged as toilet-paper, though I'd advice against it as the paper-quality ain't rigth.
*someone* will have to copy a work for you to be able to use the copy. Copyrigth restricts the actions of those people. Doesn't mean it restricts you. (except for the part about copying and public performances)
I already *said* I agree with renewal, to ensure that works are openly available when the original author ain't findable or ain't interested. 10 years automatically on everything, thereafter 100$ for the next 10 years, thereafter an order of magnitude more pro 5 years sounds sane to me. Everyone gets 10 years. $100 gives you 15. $1000 gives you 20. $10K gives you 25. $100K gives you 30. $1M gives you 35, most works would not be renewed farther than this. 35 years is an *eternity* when you're talking of the comercial potential of a work.
With yearly deprecation of 4%, getting a certain income for the next 35 years is 80% of the value of getting it forever. So in economic terms, 35 years of copyrigth is 98% of forever. Todays ~100 years copyrigth is equivalent to 99% of forever -- in economic terms at 4% deprecation.
Constitution says "limited times", congress decides upon a number that, in practice, is 99% of forever in economic terms and 100% of forever in human terms. (since its significantly longer than a human life) The supreme-court argues that the clause "for limited terms" in the constitution is meant to be meaningless: They actually came within an inch of saying that congress voting for copyrigth to last for 10^999 years would be perfectly fine. It's "limited" afterall. That its much longer than the life-expectancy of the universe is irrelevant.... Way to push by-the-letter interpretation rather than *intent*.
But it's pretty strange to claim that something which seems to have worked just fine for the last 15 years is "not sustainable", without providing any argument whatsoever as to what, exactly, prevents the next 5 years for working for the same reason that the last 5 has.
Uhm. No. Try again. Copyrigth allows the copyrigth-holder to control *copying*. (honestly, the name is a dead give-away, amazing you didn't get that. It's called *COPY*-rigth for a reason !) The creater gets to control copying, and some related activities such as public performance of the work. (really a sort of "copying", inthat it makes a work accessible for a larger group of people)
It most definitely does NOT allow the creator to control use.
Fact: Copyrigth exists at all in order to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts".
So, the relevant question is, if we cut copyrigth to say 15 years, would that actually result in less progress in science and the useful arts ? That is, is it likely that production of creative works would actually be seriously harmed by this ?
For software, the answer is a pretty definitive "no". There's no way in hell anyone will write a new program -- because of 100 years copyrigth, while not being able to do the same for 15 years copyrigth.
Which makes it perfectly logical to choose GPL today, and at the same time oppose copyrigth today.
It would mean, for example, that 99% of all bloggers would enjoy no copyrigth, as basically noone would bother to register repeatedly. So, absent big corporations would be free to rip such material off.
Meanwhile, everything coming out of the same big corporations would naturally be registered.
Mandatory renewal, on the other hand, is a good idea. It'd atleast ensure that copyrigth expired on those things that really are without comercial value, allowing the public to freely use them (and perhaps create new worthwhile works from the ashes of old)
Crypto - less so.
Which is why I advocate worrying about bad law and not so much about bad technology.
So, he is arguing against a position that I've never heard anyone holding.
These members of the anti-copyright crowd cite the GPL (GNU Public License) as an alternative to copyright without any sense of the ironic fact that the GPL can't exist without copyright.
Starting with RMS himself, most people *either* say copyrigth is fine -- GPL is our prefered copyrigth-notice OR they say: copyrigth is fundamentally a bad idea, but aslong as we've got it, we've got no choice but to make the best of it, GPL is our attempt at this.
The biggest group I know are somewhere in between; They accept copyrigth, but consider life+100 years completely ridicolous. Copyrigths on software should probably expire in a decade. My prefered state of affairs would be no DMCA or similar law, 5 year copyrigth on software, and as much of that software as possible under the GPL. (yeah, this would mean you could take 6-year-old GPL-software and put it in a closed product. Fine with me !)
It's sorta like the MANY people who say that software-patents are BAD, but aslong as we do have them, it migth be worthwhile to gather up an Open Source defencive patent-pool.
Who *are* these people he argues against ? Do they even exist ?But banning is not required. They are attempting to do something which is fundamentally imposible anyway. They want to hand over to you encrypted content, a complete implementation of the decryption-algorithm AND all needed keys, and nevertheless prevent you from decrypting the data.
That does not work. Bruce Schneier said it best: Trying to make bits non-copiable is about as likely to suceed as an attempt to make water not wet.
All that is needed for the free market to dismantle such crap by itself is to let it.
That is -- remove any and all laws that protect these mechanisms. Kill the DMCA, basically.
DRM ain't dangerous. It won't and can't work.
DRM combined with laws preventing their removal and/or breakage is *very* dangerous.
It's just that the law ain't adequate for todays global media-landscape.
The law should be changed so that not only is it illegal to *publish* exit-polls in france on election day, but even *taking* them should be stopped. If you really want to avoid influencing voters I mean.
Today is just silly -- you don't get to read french exit-polls prior to 8pm, unless you're capable of asking Google or one of the many foreign media that reported them from a few hours after the polling-stations *opened*.
Meanwhile, journalists talk about the election without being able to say what they actually do know, only they can't say it. Which is sorta absurd.
Unless I'm very thoroughly misinformed, publishing exit-polls on election day is forbidden -- aslong as the polling-stations are open.
Exit-polls are normally quite reliable, so in cases like this, when its not very close, they are able to predict actual outcome with a very high probability of being correct.
That is why you could read exit-polls all day -- provided you visited a foreign webpage instead of one belonging to french media. (though some foreign media respect the french law too, despite not being legally required to)
That many polling-stations close earlier, and some counting is done earlier is true, but irrelevant since these numbers aren't communicated to anyone prior to 8pm. The strange situation with the exit-polls is that everyone knows what they say (certainly every journalist covering the election) yet they are all prevented from saying what they say, do they pretend not to know, sort of, until 8pm.
In reality, everyone knew since these polls where in, early in the morning, that she'd lose, it's just, they all sorta pretend not to know until it's "official". You see, french law has little influence abroad, so anyone with an internet-connection has been able to read these polls all day. Only in French media are they disallowed.
So, each and every journalist covering the election, and every politician aswell, knew the result (aproximately, but good enough since it wasn't a close race anyway) hours earlier.
In this setting it makes perfect sense to admit defeat at 20:01. It'd have been disrespectful of the law and the voters to do so any earlier, and pointless to wait much longer when the numbers where as obvious as they where.
Unlike the two major parties in the US, the various parties in France actually have significantly different political ideas, like you said there's even an active communist party.
Having multiple users on a single computer at the same time is a fine idea. But why not put 2 users on, each with a 15" screen, instead of letting them share a 19" ? It'll give them more space, more freedom (you head doesn't have to be 10 inches from mine...) and would actually be cheaper.
The idea is old though. Really old.
Speaking arbitrary strings of hexes doesn't have much value as such. However, it is the implications of such which matter. I'm not arguing its a slippery slope that will possibly lead somewhere bad. I'm arguing its horribly bad -- TODAY.
- How much does it matter to computer-security to be able to freely and openly discuss weaknesses and strong points of existing computer-security systems ?
- How much does it matter that established rights such as the right to use quotes or parts of a work in satire, in critial commentary, in teaching, all the stuff that qualifies as "fair use" ?
- How much does it matter that we are allowed to keep creative works and make them accessible for future generations ? DVD-players won't be commonplace 50 years from now. How do you make it so your grandchildren can watch a movie from when you where a kid if you're *NOT* allowed to break CSS ?
- How much does it matter that copyrigth is "for limited times" ? It's in the constitution. Not that the current administration has much respect for that... There is NO exception in the DMCA that allows circumvention when the copyright on the protected work has expired...
- How much does it matter that we have free trade, rather than artificial barriers to trade such as region-coding. (region coding is a different thing, but if it's implemented with the same mechanism, DMCA will prevent breaking both)
- How much does it matter that people can actually use their own damn property in the manner they themselves choose, aslong as they stay legal ? How do you re-sell an iTunes-song again ? How do you read an Adobe-DRM-pdf-crap ebook on Linux again ? How can people legally help you do that aslong as the DMCA is in effect ?
I don't give a fuck about hex-strings. Nobody does.I do however care about handing over the keys to large parts of our culture to a small group of publishers, while receiving essentially nothing whatsoever in return. (What are, from the POV of the consumer the ADVANTAGES of a DRM-iTunes song over a unencumbered mp3/ogg-file again ???)
I also care deeply about free speech. Discussing the weaknesses in cryptographic systems is without shadow of a doubt speech.
They key as part of a technical system meant to restrict access to copyrigthed works have protection under the DMCA.
That means, you're likely to produce that very same key by chance after having tried 2**112 times, so if you had on the order of 590295810358705651712 terabytes of random data, you'd be likely to have the key somewhere by pure chance.
There's on the order of 1 billion PCs in the world, if they all contained only random data (they don't) they'd need 590295810358 or thereabouts TB of disk-space each, before it'd be likely that one of them would, by chance, contain the key.
Now, there's another order of magnitude computers if you include calculators, microwave ovens and the like. But on the other hand, many computers contain copies of the *same* (or very similar) files, which don't help.
My conclusion ?
It is very very likely that that sequence of hex-numbers has NOT appeared in the world prior to this use as a key.
Scientific notation is to blame. 2^112 doesn't *look* terribly daunting, that doesn't stop it from actually *being* humongous though.
It is amazing, in this thread alone, there's literally dozens of people completely confusing issues with no relation to oneanother whatseover.
Nobody ever claimed that these numbers should be removed because they are copyrigthed. They are not, and if you know even a tiny tiny bit about copyrigth, you would know that they CAN NOT be. Copyrigth applies to creative works. A single random number is not creative. (indeed, if creativity went into selecting it, then it would no longer BE random)
The claim is that the number violates the DMCA, by forming part of a mechanism for working around a technical system that is controlling access to a copyrigthed work. Completely different law.
Certainly a lot of people have given up on smoking (or never started) because of increased public awareness of the health-risks to oneself and those around you, along with less acceptance of smoking from non-smokers. There's no law saying you can't smoke at a private dinner-party. In my circle of friends you'd be very VERY rude if you did so though.
But it's also silly to suggest that the legal climate has -zero- influence. Lots of smoking-related law also had a positive impact. Laws such as:
You're rigth, law isn't the entire explanation. Not even close. But it's one piece in the larger puzzle.
Where Government gets its money is a completely separate question. A flat tax called VAT is already a pretty large part of the answer to that.
Fact is, it is very easy, near trivial, to test if people can infact detect being looked upon from behind.
Fact is, if you did, and succeeded, you'd qualify for a cool million bucks from the Randi Foundation
Sad fact is, neither you, nor any of the rest of the crackpots will bother attempting this, instead you'll go on babbling, repeatedly *claiming* that it is true, rather than *demonstrating* that it is, infact, true. Because deep down inside, you know that you cannot, infact, demonstrate it.
I actually think the Norwegian system works fairly well. There are *precisely* 2 conditions for being covered by our universal healthcare-system.
People who do not qualify will also be treated in emergencies offcourse. The difference is that emergency help is all they get unless they pay, and even for that the govt will attempt to get the money back afterwards.
Makes things very simple and very predictable. And avoids one of the many welfare-traps that countries with hybrid systems, such as germany tends to have: In Germany the state pays for your treatment (indirectly trough an insurance) if you earn less than a certain minimum. You need to pay for insurance yourself if you earn more.
Practical result ? If you earn sligthly under that minimum, and are offered a somewhat larger position, your only logical choice is to decline. Unless you fancy working more and earning less, which lets face it, aint all *that* motivating.
The strange thing is, we don't actually spend more money on healthcare than countries like Germany or USA, infact we spend less, but still get more doctors/population and in general scores well on whatever healthcare-indicator you can think up.
Yeah, there's inefficiencies. I just don't see any evidence that privatizing actually suceeds in reducing those much. The US system is completely ridicolous.