Instead, why not just fill all "idle" bandwidth with random noise? Any well-encrypted data will blend right in, without the high CPU overhead of crunching lots of numbers to encrypt routine traffic.
The point is that I don't want the record companies having that much say over what I can and cannot do with a CD that I purchased. The fact that I never even used my.mp3.com has nothing to do with it.
I agree on the general issue, however if you look at it they are not really saying you can't do anything with *your* mp3 files, they are saying that mp3.com can not do a nifty market-share grab by using other people's IP.
If they planned this as a money-making venture they were not smart to avoid even good faith efforts at cutting a deal with someone. It would probably have been cheaper to go *just* to RIAA or one of the associations they could claim they reasonably believed had the rights to cut a deal about it, and agree to a royalties scheme. Then if they still got sued (probable), they'd have that to fall back on and RIAA (or whoever else got a cut) on their side instead of against them.
It's all still mafia-style tactics in the music industry, especially when you start threatening turf.
As for how this affects me, well, hell, I'll still do whatever the hell I please, and under whatever name I choose, and with whatever level of accountability I choose.
Really. Look at all these massive settlements.
Obviously mp3.com couldn't come to these settlements unless there were some reasonable expectation of them being able to pay it.
One thing this shows is that it would have probably been cheaper to come to an agreement BEFORE starting to take in dough using questionable IP policies, but from the amount of money mp3.com is expecting to be able to cough up, there is obviously money to be made in this.
As for the free beer crowd, I don't see how this handles the numerous decentralized free file sharing utilities out there, or makes Freenet any less viable.
But if mp3.com expects to rake in huge sums of cash I frankly am not going to weep for them if they forced by a court to cough up the profits, even to scumbags like Sony, RIAA, etc.
Interestingly, if Harris were to somehow win this one it would probably be worse for them than if they lost it.
First, granting an injunction on the RBL would be prior restraint and is pretty unlikely in any case.
Second, refusing to grant the preliminary injunction is also the judge's way of saying "Look, you guys aren't going to win anyway."
Unfortunately MAPS didn't just post the damn actual ruling (I like that better than idiot-simple non-lawyer explanations of what a judge said), but I bet it has something about "likelihood of prevailing on the merits" with judge-talk for "not bloody likely" somewhere near it.
Jobs is an asshole and always has been. A brilliant asshole, but nevertheless, a true asshole.
Woz was the wiz. I can't imagine him ever condoning stupidity of this major sort.
It's pretty pathetic to see what was spawned in the legendary times of the Homebrew Club is now acting like some techie version of the cult of Scientology.
Are these corporate cocksuckers going to hire Helena Kobrin next?
Incidentally, the "Microsoft of genomics" or, rather, the Monsanto of genomics, is currently being sued by three different classes of shareholders for alleged fraud in their statements.
Apparently, Celera announced they intended to reap huge profits from selling licensing fees to access human genome information, apparently contravening their agreement with the Human Genome Project, and they didn't bother to indicate in their statements concerning expected future profits that the HGP is dedicated eventually to making all this information public.
What Celera had in mind was a system rather like Westlaw, where they would essentially hold intellectual property rights over the human genome.
Anyone in their right mind would oppose this fascist, I. G. Farben-under-Hitler-type company from holding some sort of monopoly on the human genome.
The three classes of stockholders suing Celera were understandably pissed, but the lawsuit has brought out some interesting information concerning this frankly evil corporation.
In doing some reasearch, I found a site with various domain name disputes. One dispute [that has been decided] jumped out at me. It seems that a fellow in Germany registered 'scientologie.org' and of course you-know-which-quasi-religious-entity had a hissy fit. In this case, even though that 'religious' entity had a trade mark on SCIENTOLOGIE, the judge dismissed the case...
The Scientology crime cult claimed the trademark, and did in fact happen to have registered it.
Here, however, is the rub. A guy named Nordenholz, long before Hubbard, had a book with the unappealing title Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens (tr: Scientology, Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge), and the German renegade Free Zone Scientologists bought the rights to this book from the author's heirs. Apparently, L. Ron Hubbard "borrowed" the name Scientology himself.
The decision is here, as well as the various arguments.
This whole thing has taken almost five years to work out, so the system is broken, but in this case the Good Guys won. Since the Nordenholz rights preceded the rights of the cult, their trademark on "Scientologie" is probably invalid. It's nice to see such a bunch of thugs get the boot from time to time.
Incidentally, and to bring it back to somewhat more relevance, the Free Zone Scientologists state "Are you interested in alternative ways of progressing in Scientology and related approaches to Clearing without the vast expenses and excessive control of the Church of Scientology?" Hmm, sounds like an open source version;-)
"This lawsuit is about stealing," MPAA president Jack Valenti said in a press conference this morning. "Technology may make stealing easier, but it doesn't make it right."
That's for sure. It's about the MPAA's right to steal.
And technology may make it easier to "steal," but that does not make this lawsuit right, nor does it turn technology or search engines into burglar's tools.
As usual, news.com is virtually useless and doesn't list anything resembling what the actual cause of action is. Contributory infringement? Vicarious liability? Some provision of the DMCA? They don't tell us. Jerks.
The stupid shitheads could have tried reading RFC 821 and used standard techniques of mail handling that have been around since fucking 1982.
Then there would be no Melissa, no Love Bug and none of this other crap based on pathetic software that can't even handle a Date field. The pitiful MSNBC article was worthless, and apparently this is some kind of buffer overrun error. Can't they even avoid that shit, or have it actually CRASH when it hits an error it can't handle? This is one occasion where a BSOD would be preferable to what this idiotic software allows.
Yeah, I know, standard boilerplate Microshaft sucks rant.
So, a judge with a bent for privacy could order the FBI to NOT use Carnivore to tap an email system, even while approving the wiretap.
Fat chance of that.
I know... Innocent people will never fall prey to government surveillance, the story goes, because the bureau can't place a tap without a permission from fair and impartial judge. A lovely thought -- but I'll leave you with one more figure from the wiretap report.
Number of wiretap applications denied by judges nationwide last year: Zero.
More than that, I've heard anecdotes of federal judges who just hand out signed, blank orders for wiretaps and search-and-seizures and just let the LEO fill them out at will.
I, Robert J. Cipriano, hereby declare and state as follows:
[. ..]
38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."
39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.
40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.
Incidentally Earthlink is now owned by Mindspring, so the same conditions may not currently prevail. Cipriano is also not the best source, as he is virtually a pathological liar, but he did indeed work for Earthlink, and whatever else Cipriano may have said, it's disturbing a Scientology lawyer could duke people into a job there at will.
I think ISPs should keep point-to-point logs as well as log, say, an rc hash of certain content such as email and news.
With the hash, the data can not be retrieved as such, but it is possible to verify objectionable content as genuine and not forged. This would be in the "kiddie porn/death threat/Metallica song" category.
These logs should be expired in a reasonable period of time. Any sufficiently serious death threat could not fail to be investigated within 30 days. Any behavior which is not repeated within that period of time can be considered at an end. Tough for the slowpoke.
Otherwise, no content logging, and no intrusive logging such as unauthorized snooping on what software is being used and how.
"I said quod erat demonstrandum, baby Ooh, you speak French!" - "Airhead," Thomas Dolby
This proves my law about spelling flames, which is that all spelling flames have to include a spelling error, and at least half of all grammar flames have to spell it "grammer."
Speaking of which, a company called Jeremy's Microbatch has a flavor called "Wired" which is essentially excessively caffeinated vanilla ice cream you can eat with your Jolt Cola.
Great stuff.
The Microbatch site is majorly Flash-heavy. Maybe I just brought it up to start a Flash sucks flamewar.
And all the Linux geeks out there wouldn't be programming for whoever because no Big Business wants to invest in software. [A bunch of other shrieking strident unprovable assertions deleted.]
OK, so where in all this weird ranting do you get to the point where you prove that without Bill Gates, we wouldn't have something better?
In either case, the argument is nonsensical. By the very construction of IP law software is the expression of an idea and therefore covered by copyright. Certain methods, also by their very nature, are covered by patent.
With or without Bill Gates, that would be inevitable. Of course, without Bill Gates, a lot of people would not have jobs supporting their constantly-crashing trashy software.
I thank Bill Gates for untold hours of income hand-holding bozos every time they get a blue screen.
Argument- Computer Business has taken off due to Bill Gates/Copyright.
Some argument. I say the computer business taking off had to do with the availability of cheap ICs, the plummeting cost of memory and storage, and that people started wanting them. For some reason I don't credit Bill Gates writing snotty letters to Dr. Dobbs Journal for the existence of inexpensive, ubiquitous computers.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead, why not just fill all "idle" bandwidth with random noise? Any well-encrypted data will blend right in, without the high CPU overhead of crunching lots of numbers to encrypt routine traffic.
have been on the web long enough to remember Adam Currys' MTV.com when it was just on gopher, and when they sued him to get the domain? I have.
And there's even an archive of that dispute over at EFF in the Legal Cases section.
I think it was the first high-profile domain name dispute.
I've also been online enough I remember when people called it the Internet instead of the Web.
I agree on the general issue, however if you look at it they are not really saying you can't do anything with *your* mp3 files, they are saying that mp3.com can not do a nifty market-share grab by using other people's IP.
If they planned this as a money-making venture they were not smart to avoid even good faith efforts at cutting a deal with someone. It would probably have been cheaper to go *just* to RIAA or one of the associations they could claim they reasonably believed had the rights to cut a deal about it, and agree to a royalties scheme. Then if they still got sued (probable), they'd have that to fall back on and RIAA (or whoever else got a cut) on their side instead of against them.
It's all still mafia-style tactics in the music industry, especially when you start threatening turf.
As for how this affects me, well, hell, I'll still do whatever the hell I please, and under whatever name I choose, and with whatever level of accountability I choose.
One thing this shows is that it would have probably been cheaper to come to an agreement BEFORE starting to take in dough using questionable IP policies, but from the amount of money mp3.com is expecting to be able to cough up, there is obviously money to be made in this.
As for the free beer crowd, I don't see how this handles the numerous decentralized free file sharing utilities out there, or makes Freenet any less viable.
But if mp3.com expects to rake in huge sums of cash I frankly am not going to weep for them if they forced by a court to cough up the profits, even to scumbags like Sony, RIAA, etc.
Interestingly, if Harris were to somehow win this one it would probably be worse for them than if they lost it.
First, granting an injunction on the RBL would be prior restraint and is pretty unlikely in any case.
Second, refusing to grant the preliminary injunction is also the judge's way of saying "Look, you guys aren't going to win anyway."
Unfortunately MAPS didn't just post the damn actual ruling (I like that better than idiot-simple non-lawyer explanations of what a judge said), but I bet it has something about "likelihood of prevailing on the merits" with judge-talk for "not bloody likely" somewhere near it.
Woz was the wiz. I can't imagine him ever condoning stupidity of this major sort.
It's pretty pathetic to see what was spawned in the legendary times of the Homebrew Club is now acting like some techie version of the cult of Scientology.
Are these corporate cocksuckers going to hire Helena Kobrin next?
Apparently, Celera announced they intended to reap huge profits from selling licensing fees to access human genome information, apparently contravening their agreement with the Human Genome Project, and they didn't bother to indicate in their statements concerning expected future profits that the HGP is dedicated eventually to making all this information public.
What Celera had in mind was a system rather like Westlaw, where they would essentially hold intellectual property rights over the human genome.
Anyone in their right mind would oppose this fascist, I. G. Farben-under-Hitler-type company from holding some sort of monopoly on the human genome.
The three classes of stockholders suing Celera were understandably pissed, but the lawsuit has brought out some interesting information concerning this frankly evil corporation.
Find the "slashdot troll" gene and eliminate these pitiable mutants from society, for their own good.
In doing some reasearch, I found a site with various domain name disputes. One dispute [that has been decided] jumped out at me. It seems that a fellow in Germany registered 'scientologie.org' and of course you-know-which-quasi-religious-entity had a hissy fit. In this case, even though that 'religious' entity had a trade mark on SCIENTOLOGIE, the judge dismissed the case...
There is an article here from Globe Technology.
The Scientology crime cult claimed the trademark, and did in fact happen to have registered it.
Here, however, is the rub. A guy named Nordenholz, long before Hubbard, had a book with the unappealing title Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens (tr: Scientology, Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge), and the German renegade Free Zone Scientologists bought the rights to this book from the author's heirs. Apparently, L. Ron Hubbard "borrowed" the name Scientology himself.
The decision is here, as well as the various arguments.
This whole thing has taken almost five years to work out, so the system is broken, but in this case the Good Guys won. Since the Nordenholz rights preceded the rights of the cult, their trademark on "Scientologie" is probably invalid. It's nice to see such a bunch of thugs get the boot from time to time.
Incidentally, and to bring it back to somewhat more relevance, the Free Zone Scientologists state "Are you interested in alternative ways of progressing in Scientology and related approaches to Clearing without the vast expenses and excessive control of the Church of Scientology?" Hmm, sounds like an open source version ;-)
In the United States, a different principle is established. Our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land.
Yeah, tell it to the Indians.
"This lawsuit is about stealing," MPAA president Jack Valenti said in a press conference this morning. "Technology may make stealing easier, but it doesn't make it right."
That's for sure. It's about the MPAA's right to steal.
And technology may make it easier to "steal," but that does not make this lawsuit right, nor does it turn technology or search engines into burglar's tools.
As usual, news.com is virtually useless and doesn't list anything resembling what the actual cause of action is. Contributory infringement? Vicarious liability? Some provision of the DMCA? They don't tell us. Jerks.
I would like to see the linux community make a better email program then outlook.
Fucking /bin/mail is a better email program than outlook. Reading it out of /usr/spool with cat is a better email program than outlook.
Anyway, elm rules. All three methods I list are better than outlook, because they actually work and don't infect your computer with viruses.
The stupid shitheads could have tried reading RFC 821 and used standard techniques of mail handling that have been around since fucking 1982.
Then there would be no Melissa, no Love Bug and none of this other crap based on pathetic software that can't even handle a Date field. The pitiful MSNBC article was worthless, and apparently this is some kind of buffer overrun error. Can't they even avoid that shit, or have it actually CRASH when it hits an error it can't handle? This is one occasion where a BSOD would be preferable to what this idiotic software allows.
Yeah, I know, standard boilerplate Microshaft sucks rant.
"We deliver anywhere"
Umm, this is Planet X, turn right after Pluto, follow the wobble in Neptune's orbit, and we're halfway to the Oort cloud.
"Way Fast delivery, dude"
"It's the pizza that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!"
"Our pizza's out of this world"
A large, double cheese, with tribble sausage. Also a six-pack of Romulan ale and two Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.
So, a judge with a bent for privacy could order the FBI to NOT use Carnivore to tap an email system, even while approving the wiretap.
Fat chance of that.
I know... Innocent people will never fall prey to government surveillance, the story goes, because the bureau can't place a tap without a permission from fair and impartial judge. A lovely thought -- but I'll leave you with one more figure from the wiretap report.
Number of wiretap applications denied by judges nationwide last year: Zero.
From a recent Kevin Poulsen article on SecurityFocus.
More than that, I've heard anecdotes of federal judges who just hand out signed, blank orders for wiretaps and search-and-seizures and just let the LEO fill them out at will.
Quoted from Arnie Lerma's website:
DECLARATION OF ROBERT J. CIPRIANO
I, Robert J. Cipriano, hereby declare and state as follows:
[. . .]
38. I was befriended the first day of my employment at Earthlink by a Mr. Michael Hamra, another sales associate. I quickly started a friendship with Mr. Hamra and spent countless hours talking about various things including how Earthlink started with investments, by Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other wealthy Scientologists, into Sky Dayton's idea of an internet service provider. Mr. Hamra told me how Sky Dayton had a coffee shop before starting Earthlink and that he, because of being a Scientologist and his friendships with celebrity Scientologists, he was able to build a multi-million dollar company that could, "Watch over the entire internet from within the internet."
39. Additionally, Mr. Hamra told me he was one of the founding group of Scientologist who ran Earthlink out of a Glendale one room office where he made sales calls from a bathroom in the office. Mr. Hamra said, "The Church of Scientology now had a database of information on every subscriber which included names, credit card info., credit reports, telephone info., computer info., who had referred them to Earthlink and who were their previous ISP providers." Mr. Hamra told me about the "other Earthlink building" which was next door on New York Avenue in Pasadena. Mr. Hamra told me that the other building was high security and is where Earthlink and the Church of Scientology did all the monitoring of the internet. Mr. Hamra was always very interested in my testimony in Berry v. Cipriano. It became clear to me that he was reporting what I was saying to other in Scientology.
40. I received many incoming sales calls while at Earthlink from individuals who would ask, "Are you a bunch of Scientologists?" We were trained to never admit that we were involved with the Church Of Scientology.
---
There is also an article on this in the Phoenix New Times.
Incidentally Earthlink is now owned by Mindspring, so the same conditions may not currently prevail. Cipriano is also not the best source, as he is virtually a pathological liar, but he did indeed work for Earthlink, and whatever else Cipriano may have said, it's disturbing a Scientology lawyer could duke people into a job there at will.
With the hash, the data can not be retrieved as such, but it is possible to verify objectionable content as genuine and not forged. This would be in the "kiddie porn/death threat/Metallica song" category.
These logs should be expired in a reasonable period of time. Any sufficiently serious death threat could not fail to be investigated within 30 days. Any behavior which is not repeated within that period of time can be considered at an end. Tough for the slowpoke.
Otherwise, no content logging, and no intrusive logging such as unauthorized snooping on what software is being used and how.
I read about this in Cryptonomicon already.
Non sequitur, dude.
"I said quod erat demonstrandum, baby
Ooh, you speak French!" - "Airhead," Thomas Dolby
This proves my law about spelling flames, which is that all spelling flames have to include a spelling error, and at least half of all grammar flames have to spell it "grammer."
I am *so* sick of "End of Internet" postings, I have been seeing them for fifteen years now.
Now it's clickable.
not karma whoring - not worth moderating up.
Blatantly karma whoring. . .not that anyone's modding this thread anyway.
Ben and Jerry's, for instance
Speaking of which, a company called Jeremy's Microbatch has a flavor called "Wired" which is essentially excessively caffeinated vanilla ice cream you can eat with your Jolt Cola.
Great stuff.
The Microbatch site is majorly Flash-heavy. Maybe I just brought it up to start a Flash sucks flamewar.
And all the Linux geeks out there wouldn't be programming for whoever because no Big Business wants to invest in software.
[A bunch of other shrieking strident unprovable assertions deleted.]
OK, so where in all this weird ranting do you get to the point where you prove that without Bill Gates, we wouldn't have something better?
In either case, the argument is nonsensical. By the very construction of IP law software is the expression of an idea and therefore covered by copyright. Certain methods, also by their very nature, are covered by patent.
With or without Bill Gates, that would be inevitable. Of course, without Bill Gates, a lot of people would not have jobs supporting their constantly-crashing trashy software.
I thank Bill Gates for untold hours of income hand-holding bozos every time they get a blue screen.
Argument- Computer Business has taken off due to Bill Gates/Copyright.
Some argument. I say the computer business taking off had to do with the availability of cheap ICs, the plummeting cost of memory and storage, and that people started wanting them. For some reason I don't credit Bill Gates writing snotty letters to Dr. Dobbs Journal for the existence of inexpensive, ubiquitous computers.
A LISP program, maybe.
The responses could have been generated by a BASIC program, picking from a list of "Jon Katz sucks [sucks/is stupid/is boring/is on crack]."