A recent study from Harvard Business School found that smaller bioscience companies (the truly innovative ones) were not patenting research results, but rather keeping them as trade secrets. Patenting works for large companies that can afford to defend the patents and have enough to exchange rights with other big companies. So the science will never enter the public domain.
It's time to repeal the laws that encourage universities to take public money for research and then privatize the results for the profits of these big companies. And it's time to reform this crazy system of "intellectual property" law that is destroying science and innovation.
Probably we will first have to change campaign finance laws, though.
In order to resolve the copyright issues, and in order to preserve the public domain on the Internet, the Internet Archive has filed a friend of the court brief in our court case against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. See http://openlaw.org/eldredvreno
As of today, the Supreme Court hasn't decided what to do with the appeal. Stay tuned to openlaw.
The Alan Cox resignation adds a Free Software angle to this sorry case.
Another might well be potential liability by Ghostview and other Free Software PDF viewers. According to some sources, gv "bypasses" the Adobe Security API model and allows a user to read a PDF file with permissions the original publishers did not grant. For example, to print the file.
Could some of the Ghostview, Ghostscript, or other PDF developers comment?
Specifically, if ElcomSoft and/or Dmitry Sklyarov is liable under the DMCA for creating or "trafficking" in a "device" that "bypasses" an "effective" security API that is imposed by "authority" of the copyright owner--then could Ghostview, Red Hat, and other Free Software people be also harrassed by Adobe?
I got the response that Ghostview is not a
"commercial" product. But I don't believe that is enough to excuse a piece of software under the
DMCA--the "access" part of the DMCA doesn't require that the software be sold. Certainly
Adobe will claim damages in lost sales.
Computer technology has made it possible for citizens to publish freely on the net and debate the ideas that are central to the U.S. poltiical democracy. The ideas of the U.S. Founding Fathers were never so important as today.
At the same time, monopoly capitalists have seized contrrol of this technology and are buying legislators to prevent such free publication. Witness the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, granting software patents and for business practices, UCITA, and the impending database protection bill the author notes.
If we who understand technology and who treasure our freedoms do not speak out and convince our neighbors of these problems, then the revolution will be reversed.
You can help by joining the discussions at
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw where online briefs are openly prepared in an effort to fight these new laws.
By the way, Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of the forthcoming book, "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and how It Threatens Creativity," ISBN: 0814788068,
Publisher: New York University Press,
Pub. Date: August 2001
If you want regular online customer support from Microsoft, too, you first have to set up a Passport account. Calling the 800 number is no better--all I got was a runaround, after expensive long-distance calls.
I have a fully authentic Windows 98SE full edition CD-ROM that has evidently gone bad. I bought it at a flea market from a dealer, along with a disk drive, which I was told was needed to make the sale legal.
When the install to the drive stopped because of some error pertaining to a corrupt TrueType font, I used my Linux computer to go to the Microsoft support website which told me to call 1-800-426-9400 and talk to a person there.
This is a lie--there are no persons at that number unless you know an extension.
The answering machine at that number told me to call 1-425-635-7040. The voice mail system told me to input my product ID, which can be found only once you install Win98, by rightclicking the "My Computer" icon. This doesn't help if you can't even install Windows.
The person at that number then told me that he could not help me because I had bought an "OEM" version of the software. He told me to call 1-800-325-1233. But he warned me that if the disc was not bad, that I would have to pay for any support.
The person at that 800 number (after a long wait) told me that the computer dealer should not have sold me the disc in the first place and that I needed to take it back to that dealer. But that dealer has no power to manufacture Win98 discs--only Microsoft can do that.
Eventually I learned that I could apply to buy a new copy of the disc. But I would have to follow some complicated procedure to give them my product ID and key, and they would have to manufacture another disc with the exact same key. The support person claimed that my computer "knew" that number, and no other disc would work on it--even though I had repartitioned and formatted the hard drive. She refused to honor my request to have a replacement disc for a defective one.
Then she told me that I would have to pay $35 for the privilege of getting a replacement disc, even if the disc I bought was defective.
If consumers have to be treated as criminals in order to apply to get support, and have to give up their privacy to this big corporation in return for support--is it any wonder that many of us turn to Linux instead?
It needs to be stated that this case belongs in
the larger category of excesses by private police.
Many of the U.S. public seems to feel that their
safety and well-being requires handing over the public police service to private corporations that operate like the businesses they are. And the increasing false reliance on technology instead of people operating under the law.
Witness the privatization of everything from the sidewalk cop (replaced by a private security guard) to security cameras to prisons and schools.
Does all this privatization really increase safety and this use of technology really secure our rights? Probably not--it is increasing apace even without any scientific studies of its effects--it has a political agenda of its own--to make money for the businesses that are free from the controls that public forces are.
The New York Times article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/12/national/12SEAR. html
calls into question how much Scalia and the
Court majority really understand technology.
Despite its forceful language, the decision was undoubtedly not the court's final word on the subject of privacy and technology. Justice Scalia's emphasis on the home raised the prospect that warrantless imaging of other locations might be upheld. And it is far from clear under the court's precedents that a person in a home that belonged to someone else would have standing to challenge the use of an imager.
Further, the majority limited its holding to devices that are "not in general public use," without explaining that limitation. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens said this limitation was "somewhat perverse because it seems likely that the threat to privacy will grow, rather than recede, as the use of intrusive equipment becomes more readily available."
Since it is likely that the police will not
be the only ones to have such advanced snooping
technology in the future, we should be concerned
about the adequacy of such judicial protections.
We ought also to be concerned about how the
conservatives on the court interpret the
Constitution--the threat to privacy is not so
much from the government and the police today
as it is from corporations.
Dead pixels are usually there from the beginning, so shop carefully. Later, there is the more likely possibility of having a dead streak of pixels.
These LCDs are produced on big assembly lines that need a lot of capital and long runs to be economical. Monochrome LCDs are being produced for small screens such as for cellular phones. Color LCD assembly lines mostly produce larger screens for such uses as portable computers and now desktop displays. Since manufacturers can make more money producing the big screens, and since the factories were built to produce big color screens, they are mostly color now. The price varies by supply and demand--both now favor color screens, which are now going down in retail price as the supply has recently been increased.
If you are considering an LCD display for use by a technical writer, look at the digital LCDs and not the cheaper analog variety--type will look better. The price of a 19-inch CRT monitor has gone down dramatically in the last year and might be more cost-effective for such a purpose than a digital LCD screen.
An interesting paper referred to in the EFF 2600 brief is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =267848
entitled "Locating Copyright Within the First Amendment Skein" by U Texas law professor Neil Netanel. A few excerpts from that abstract:
As copyright law has metamorphisized over recent decades, copyright owner prerogatives have become increasingly bloated, raising serious questions about their need and fit for copyright's incentive-for-original-expression rationale and imposing an increasingly onerous burden on speech. And in parallel, even if free speech law might have presented little ground for subjecting copyright to First Amendment scrutiny in the past, the evolving precepts and analytic framework of First Amendment doctrine now fully support, if not demand, such scrutiny.
I argue that, in line with prevailing First Amendment doctrine, copyright law constitutes content-neutral speech regulation and should be subject to intermediate scrutiny. Copyright law, however, falls within an emerging subcategory of content-neutral regulation. That subcategory consists of government regulation that distributes speech entitlements among prospective speakers, thus giving rise to a suspicion of successful rent-seeking by the highly organized interests to whom the entitlements are granted. In such instances what appears to be courts' implicit suspicion of improper government motive has sometimes led, and ought to lead, to a more rigorous, searching application of intermediate scrutiny than is often otherwise the case.
The big media publishers claim ownership of the means of production for all "intellectual property" and they have bought these new copyright
laws from Congress in an attempt to maintain
control over all use of "their" products in the
new digital age of the Internet.
These media giants have argued (so far successfully) that the First Amendment has nothing
to do with copyright law because of the distinction between idea and expression and
between expression and action. The courts in
Eldred v. Reno (now Eldred v. Ashcroft) against
the copyright term expression agreed with this
argument (wrongly, I believe).
If courts continue to fail to wake up to the
changed circumstances that Professor Netanel notes, then the First Amendment
will not protect us when we publish anything
on the Internet. First it will be the "hackers,"
then the rest of us who will be pushed off by
these "rent-seeking" monopolists. Look, libertarians, it has
now become apparent that it is not government
that is taking away our First Amendment rights,
it is courts following bad legislation that
only favors big publishers.
Professor Netanel is a real conservative who
has long resisted the arguments of his more liberal colleagues that Free Software deserves
some protection against the media giants using
copyright law. We should be glad he is now on
our side. The 2600 arguments are strong and
deserve to win.
But is it good for the U.S. economy to transfer
so many rights to these IP monopolists, in an effort to reward them for "creating" new expressive works? What are the economic facts?
A new book, "The Cheating of America," (ISBN
0-380-97682-X, get it from your public library
while you still have one) from the Center for Public
Integrity gives some anecdotal evidence that such
a massive transfer is not good for the American
economy.
Tax avoidance and evasion has always been commonplace in Hollywood, for example. Tax shelters and offshore corporations and "service
company partnerships" mean that these stars of the economy end up paying NOTHING in U.S. taxes every year, even when they state billions in profits.
Clever accounting (much more creative than
the actual movies themselves) meant, for example,
that Batman grossed some $253 million in
the first year, but, according to Warner Bros.,
ended up losing $36 million and so did not have
to pay any taxes!
The result is that you and I, taxpayers who
pay the studios for the privilege of consuming their trash, pay once again to support the
government that has been purchased by these
movie moguls.
The argument that U.S. consumers will support
these outrageous tricks in order to enjoy a
booming economy is simply uninformed. Instead,
we need to pay more for IRS auditors and congressional investigations and put some of these crooks in jail.
I don't understand the principal's statement that if this student were an adult, it would be a crime. Breaking into a computer is a crime no matter what the age--the perp's age is relevant only in that a child is not judged in a criminal court, usually, but in a juvenile court--but it is the same crime.
But in this case, the principal and school system don't even use the juvenile court system, but instead set themselves up as judge and jury, with no due process or legal protection for the affected parties.
We don't really know yet what this kid was accused of, but you can bet that "breaking into a computer system" is going to be interpreted very liberally by the school system, and never in favor of the student. But this is stupid. As others have pointed out in this discussion, often the system or the administrators are at fault and give users little choice but to use it in a way that others might construe as misuse.
We should not forget that a child's life was sacrificed here. For what? The arbitrary power of the school principal? Do we really want teachers and principals and parents to exert such intense emotional pressures on kids that they kill themselves? For what?
The case in question is but the latest in a long line of similar cases, but it has been ably discussed online over the last several months by some real lawyers in the mailing list archived at http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/2001-01/
under "Veeck vs. SBCCI (US 5th Circuit Ct Appeals)"
If you would rather read some authentic legal opinion instead of the rants of the rest of us on/., please follow the cni-copyright list (and thanks to CNI for hosting it).
It seems to me that these cases violate the spirit of copyright and wrongly instantiate a peculiar economic interest in something called "intellectual property" that is false and repugnant in a democracy under law. Therefore we ought to join together to repeal such laws and decisions, and forge new rules more suitable for this age of the Internet.
When Doug Adams started the online version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at http://www.h2g2.com, he retained copyright on all contributions to this online encyclopedia.
Now that he has died, what happens to his copyright?
The website h2g2.com has been taken over by the BBC. You can read their Terms and Conditions at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/help/copyright.shtml. On that page, it says the BBC owns copyright on everything at the site. But the House Rules at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/HouseRules contradicts that, stating that each contributor retains copyright on her own contributions.
As authors of copyrighted and copylefted works die (prematurely and tragically, to be sure), we will begin to see certain tensions in how we handle copyright. In general, heirs can reclaim rights that the authors thought they had stated liberally.
The best solution would be to plan for such unfortunate occurrences and get a good lawyer to make sure the wrong thing doesn't happen by default under current copyright law. The next step would be to change copyright law so as to make it easier to do what we want, maintain free public access to these works.
The telegraph, the Victorian Internet according to the book of that name, suffered from the same "last mile" problem that the Internet today experiences. The answer then was another paired technology, the pneumatic tube system in cities.
Telegraphers in suburban or other city center locations, according to the book, could communicate directly with other telegraph offices. But it was impractical to have a telegraph office distributed for each business or residential user. Thus the message was communicated first by hand delivery to a telegraph office located centrally in the city, then transcribed by the receiving telegrapher, sent by pneumatic tube to a location near the recipient, and then hand delivered from there.
It was only the wide availability of telephones that destroyed both the telegraph and the pneumatic tube system. Western Union, for example, continued for some years to deliver telegraphs over the last mile via local telephony instead of hand delivery.
So using the pneumatic tube system is a strange echo of a proven old technology, one that we are usually ignorant of because we don't look at our history carefully.
One remaining question will be, are there sufficient concentrations of users (department stores or insurance companies, for example) at the endings of these pneumatic tube companies, or have they left for the suburbs? If the latter, maybe this will promote a return to a vital central city in places where such infrastructure has been preserved.
What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.
Newton to Hooke, 5 Feb. 1676; Corres I, 416
Some people believe the phrase (which originated much earlier, as McNab notes) was used by Newton as an insult to the dwarflike Hooke, a scientific rival.
But McNab argues well for the idea that Newton did not intend it as an insult. Indeed, the surviving correspondence is quite pertinent to our understanding of how science should be carried on.
Significantly, Newton and Hooke agreed not to argue in public, but to carry on their research via private letters--the normal way to publish such information without copyright. It was important to get confirmation from other scientists; it was important to get credit for and defend one's discoveries. (Contrast that to Microsoft's outright theft--without credit--of such technologies as DCE.)
Linus is carrying on in the tradition of his namesake, the brilliant scientist Linus Pauling. Privatizing the public domain of science and technology as Microsoft tries to do, or as Craig Venter tries to do with the human genome, will only lead to disaster for us all, not just the GPL backers. In this age of rampant state-supported capitalism this will be a long battle, but we are off to a good start here.
As Henry Petroski writes about the profession of engineering, it (along with computer engineering) is correctly based on failure.
In other words, engineers learn a lot when bridges fall down. They learn little when bridges elegantly remain standing for lifetimes.
But when a bridge falls down (or a encryption scheme is broken) it is not right to keep the reasons for failure secret. Instead, the reasons must be scientifically investigated (by an outside group, not by the designers) and the information published freely. Otherwise people will continue to be killed by falling bridges (and failed encryption schemes).
Will Judge Newman agree with those who say that computer science is not a science, and computer professionals are not true professionals, and instead must be constant employees of big corporations with many secrets being used to extort profits from customers?
Will he agree with the MPAA that it should be illegal for you to take the batteries out of the smoke detector you bought, but that is screaming in your ear because of the smoke from a put-out kitchen fire?
Or will the court come to its senses and agree that citizens should still have First Amendment rights in this age when big publishers claim to originate and own all 'intellectual property'?
Will the court realize that the government and big corporations that claim rights to control citizen actions in their own homes (like recording a movie or controlling smoke detectors) simply cannot do so! A bridge designed by a computer program devoid of human input, with a bare minimum of materials, has no safety margin and is bound to fall down.
Instead, computer programming should be a profession just like bridge engineering, and we need to have the basic freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights if we are to continue doing it in the way we need to.
I always am reminded of Bob Frankston programming VisiCalc on the Apple ][.
He said he didn't have a printer (Apple sold the Silenttype thermal printer, but it was pretty expensive; it was only later that dot matrix printers from Japan became inexpensive).
So he used a Polaroid camera to take screenshots of the assembler listings and the spreadsheet display.
Nothing should stand in the way of a true genius.
Re:flatland on project gutenberg
on
The New Flatland
·
· Score: 3
The Project Gutenberg text of Flatland was originally issued without the essential illustrations. Now it has them in ASCII form. If you prefer an HTML edition, Eldritch Press has it at http://www.eldritchpress.org/eaa/FL.HTM.
Abbott apparently based much of his satire on the work earlier published by Charles Howard Hinton. You can also read Hinton's works online at Eldritch Press,
at
http://www.eldritchpress.org/chh/hinton.html.
Hinton lead a colorful life for a mathematics professor. Rudy Rucker deserves our thanks for finding and collecting Hinton's contributions. Unfortunately, there were no reports that the year 2000 brought another visitor from that dimension to our world, as Hinton predicted.
Does reading these books pique your interest about the Fourth Dimension? See Thomas F. Banchoff's excellent Scientific American Library paperback, "Beyond the Third Dimension," ISBN 0-7167-6015-0, 1990, 1996.
The Washington Post editorial states that InfoSplit can determine the geographical location of computers accessing the Internet. (So it was indeed claimed during the Yahoo trial, but never confirmed.)
But in the case of AOL users, all of them seem to be located in Virginia.
Does this mean that Virginia law (UCITA, etc.) applies to everybody? And then there are the various anonymizer services (which don't get around some censorship problem that Jeremy raises, such as files that have bits set so they don't pass through routers.)
I agree we ought to oppose censorship, whether it comes from governments, or, more likely, big media corporations such as AOL/Time Warner.
An OpenNapster server at Havenco would be a good trial and I think it deserves our support.
I am the "Eldred" in "Eldred v. Reno." I ought to correct a few misstatements here. Mr Hart says:
Sadly to say, the US Supreme Court just ruled against the case I was supposed to be in [Eldred vs Reno]. ..but at least it was mostly on technical grounds. ..which leaves me possibly to still bring another totally
separate case. ..but the lawyers would never let me get a single word into my own case [Hart vs Reno] so I
made them take my name off of that case, which then became Eldred vs Reno].
It was the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, not the U.S. Supreme Court. See the 2-1 decision under
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno. We are going to appeal the case, eventually to the Supreme Court, and we need your support.
Mr Hart was never "supposed to be in" the case. He refused to become a plaintiff when he was asked. He is welcome to get his own attorneys to file another challenge. In fact, a group at Stanford might be looking to get somebody else to file a challenge in another district, but it won't be Eldred or Hart for that one. Let me know if you are interested.
"[T]he lawyers would never let me get a single word into" the challenge to the CTEA--meaning the pro bono attorneys discovered that Mr. Hart, although not an attorney himself, wished to tell the lawyers what to do. Mr. Hart, you will soon learn when dealing with him, has his own mind. It so happens that his project is not the only one that is concerned about the public domain, and the attorneys found another plaintiff to replace him.
"I made them take my name off of that case"--meaning he refused to go forward with the case unless he personally controlled everything. He has yet to explain what he would have argued differently.
JimCYL says:
Mr. Hart is partially correct when he mentions that copyrights run for 95 years as of
the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. In addition to the other two elements Jim mentions, the 95-year term applies to works first published after 1922, renewed, and under copyright in 1998. (This "retrospective" or "retroactive" extension of term is primarily the basis for the dissent in the appeals court decision. It applies to Project Gutenberg as much as the rest of us, because it more or less sets up a dam for the flow of works into the public domain at January 1, 1923. Project Gutenberg for the most part has refrained from reprinting any works first published after 1922. Eldritch Press and some others do copyright research to find out works that were not renewed and so entered the public domain. For further information, see http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/okbooks.htm l as well as the new book, "The Public Domain," by Stephen Fishman, at http://www.nolo.com
"Eldred Press"--it has become "Eldritch Press."
"The author of a work (or his heirs) can "recapture" his copyright after 35 years by notifying the copyright
office of his intent to do so." Unfortunately, the Copyright Term Extension Act did not follow previous copyright acts, and failed to allow this recapturing when it extended term. As Mr. Hart properly notes, renewal is no longer necessary. Consequently, publishers now have many rights that neither previous laws nor the Constitution ever gave them.
DG asks: "If you could pick any 10 currently copyrighted works, and have them placed in the public domain
(specifically for inclusion in Project Gutenberg) what would they be?"
It should be noted that not all works in Project Gutenberg are in the public domain. For example, Michael S. Hart retains copyright for some. (BTW, the attempt at copyright notice at the bottom of the head is not proper: (C) is not valid, only a "C" inside a circle, or "Copr." or "Copyright" written out. But, anyway, notice is no longer necessary for copyright, only for collecting attorney fees and damages in cases of infringement, and even then the work must be registered (not necessary for most works online, which are under copyright the instant the expression is fixed).
Mr. Hart also says: Actually, more and more of our Etexts are available in more formats, it's just that very often those who
reformat them want the be the ONLY places to get those formats, and thus don't share back with us.
It's a little sad that way, but we have tried to honor the requests from other Etext sites that want to be the
ONLY source for our Etexts in various formats. ..though we disagree with that philosophy. Some day, when I
am older and crankier, perhaps I will just raid their sites against their wills for conversions that are
non-copyrightable: though these days people even claim copyrights on the most trivial conversions. Someday
that older and crankier me may even take them [some are major universities] to court for "misuse of
copyright."
Mr. Hart claims to do his own copyright research, but he is not apparently cognizant of current U.S. copyright law. The underlying text of a work in the public domain is in the public domain, no matter if a site such as Eldritch Press claims copyright on the introduction, notes, added punctuation, editorial corrections, layout, and so on--none of which are creative enough for a copyright infringement claim to be asserted against Project Gutenberg. See, for example, "The Public Domain" for more information about what is under copyright and what is in the public domain.
I ought to say that I don't see Project Gutenberg and Eldritch Press as competitors, the way Mr. Hart appears to to. In fact, I have attempted to donate some of my works to Project Gutenberg, only to have Mr. Hart find some excuse to refuse them. So I instead pay for my own web server and publish my own work. I stand behind them and make my own corrections. The format problem that questioners raise to Mr. Hart is fairly irrelevant today, since it is fairly easy to filter texts from ASCII to HTML or back, or to other formats, as long as the tags apply to the structure and not the layout. (Project Gutenberg texts could use some more standardization on what constitutes italic and so on, I agree.)
We "bookpeople" who publish books on the net could use a little help--see the On-Line Books Page at the link above for more information on what you can do, besides becoming a Project Gutenberg volunteer.
We also see ourselves in alliance with all those who treasure freedom--the same freedom to code a program or to read a book--and so we join with those who oppose the DMCA or the NET act or any other attempts to censor the net or make it safe for e-commerce by excluding those such as Project Gutenberg or others of us "bookpeople." Thanks for your support!
According to New Scientist magazine's "Feedback" column 17 Feb 2001 (see
http://www.newscientist.com/feedback/,
ntl has the following cable modem "user policy" provision for "abuse of the service":
"You must not disclose your password or user ID to anyone else. Your account can only be used for a single internet session at any one time and for no more than 24 hours in any one day."
Ridicule is an appropriate antidote to bureaucratic fever.
BTW, readers in Korea who can't put up their own web sites from their apartments, please read
from Eldritch Press the English translation of the classic Korean novel,
annotated and illustrated, The Cloud Dream of the Nine, at http://www.eldritchpress.org/kim/cloud9.html.
Eldritch Press runs from my home via ATT Mediaone RoadRunner cable modem service in New Hampshire, USA. Thanks, ATT!
The plaintiffs in Eldred v. Reno thank all those who participated in the debate about the constitutionality of copyright extension. We especially wish to thank our many supporters and those who gave the case direct aid (we haven't needed money, just brains). The Berkman Center for Law and Internet at Harvard Law School, Lawrence Lessig (now at Stanford), Charles Nesson, Jonathan Zittrain, and the law firm of Jones, Day, did an outstanding job of representing us pro bono against Bono.
We have not decided about an appeal. We will be discussing that this weekend, and we look forward to your ideas. You may direct them, on either side, in the OpenLaw forum, at
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno/.
Although we lost this particular case this time, the battle of strong "intellectual property rights" advocates against the freedom of the rest of us goes on. Cases such as the DeCSS cases and others demand our participation in deciding issues about how law and technology can get along. The issues have extended from copyrighting books now to copyrighting the human genome. Patents on AIDS drugs may meant life or death for many people in Africa who could never afford a computer.
It is important that we not get discouraged, but that we continue the good fight--we are right, we will eventually prevail, and your children will appreciate what you can do right now in this long struggle for freedom online. Thanks for taking part in this debate and discussion.
A fuller report was in the Eagle-Tribune (Lawrence, Mass.), on Friday, January 12, 2001. Go to http://www.eagletribune.com and do News Search for "Hemmah"--it was under "NH News." For your convenience, it is quoted below:
SALEM -- Police have arrested a Salem man they said created obscene Web sites that mocked the department.
Christopher Hemmah, 19, of Robert Avenue, was arrested last night after a month-long investigation, said police Capt. Alan S. Gould.
Mr. Hemmah is charged with misuse of computer system information, a felony. He is free on $5,000 personal recognizance bail.
Capt. Gould said police obtained search and arrest warrants and went to Mr. Hemmah's home last night. Capt. Gould said they found seven computers, all networked together, two laptops, a Palm Pilot, several hard drives, a large quantity of CDs and a lot of literature and how-to books on computer hacking. He said an article from the Dec. 6 Eagle-Tribune describing the parody Web site search was on top of one of the computers.
"It's a fairly new type of crime,'' Capt. Gould said. He said Officer Ronald Peddle, who knows a lot about computers, was assigned the case. He investigated with detectives to identify the hacker.
Capt. Gould said they shut down two illegal Web sites that put forward a very negative image of the Salem Police Department, some of which was obscene or pornographic in nature.
He said the Salem Police Benevolent Association uses its Web site to keep the community updated on various safety tips and programs.
"The big problem we saw was that you could very well get onto this Web site, put in Salem, N.H. Police and read the obscenities and profanity,'' Capt. Gould said.
He said all of Mr. Hemmah's material was collected and will be checked by the state police lab in Concord and FBI lab.
Capt. Gould said Mr. Hammah will be Salem District Court in March.
Also, here is the earlier, Dec. 6, 2000 article referred to above:
SALEM -- Salem police became the focus of some unwanted publicity when someone created obscene Web sites that mocked the department, police Capt. Alan S. Gould said.
Police shut the sites down, and are now looking for its creators.
One Web site took information from the Salem Police Benevolent Association Web site and made a parody of it by changing words and downloading pictures from the site. A second Web site mentioned the department and had random pornographic pictures attached to it, Capt. Gould said.
"A couple of weeks ago it was brought to our attention two illegal Web sites were out there that were putting forward a very negative image of the Salem Police Department, some of which was obscene or pornographic in nature," Capt. Gould said. "When I saw it, it almost made me sick, and it really upset a lot of officers here."
Officers were able to track down the company that hosted the sites and discovered the people who produced them did so with a fraudulent application. Because of that, the sites were shut down Friday, Capt. Gould said. He would not say which Internet organization hosted the sites.
"Number one, we didn't want that image going out there. Number two, if someone was doing research and wanted information on the police department they would trip on those and be thoroughly disgusted," Capt. Gould said.
Capt. Gould said police are investigating what civil or criminal action the department can take against the Web site creators if they are found.
The web pages at http://www.salempolice.org-- while purporting to represent the official Salem, New Hampshire, Police Dept.--actually are entitled, "Salem Police Benevolent Association," but with no postal or email address or telephone number for contact listed. Not only would it be difficult to understand how the pages or "computer system information" could be misused, it appears to be impossible to reach anyone who could give permission for any use whatsoever, even if that request were concluded legally necessary.
Some of the pages contain the bogus footer, "Copywrite 2000, Salem Police Benevolent Association. All Rights Reserved." If this is intended as a copyright notice, then it is invalid--"copyright" is not spelled correctly. (Although no notice and registration are required under current U.S. copyright law, notice and registration are required to collect damages and attorney fees for copyright infringement.)
Even if the notice were valid, much if not all of the content is clearly not copyrightable by this private police body. This page invites "free downloads" of music from the "Salempalooza CD"--no notice that copyright is owned by "The Skeptics" is given, in likely violation of this band's copyright generated at time of creation.
Furthermore, the page "Hollywood Heroes" is obviously itself in violation of numerous copyright claims by various owners of the photographs and trademarked names, as well as protected by the strong California publicity rights laws. Another page, "Police News" (said to be of 1999!) prints news purporting to be from the official Salem, N.H., Police Department, but lists no permission for this publication from the official body. The photographs and legends and pages at this site appear to be in violation of multiple laws. Depicting "heroes" in civilian clothes pointing guns is very much today in poor taste (especially considering the shootings recently just south, in Wakefield, Mass.!). But, also, for a group that claims to wish to reduce violence, it ignores the considerable local problem for police of profitable trade conducted by "legitimate" New Hampshire businesses selling such firearms to shoppers who then use the firearms on non-"Live Free or Die" citizens.
As far as the "obscenity" charge goes, the Salem, N.H. politicos and police have for many years tried to close down Moonlite Video, an "adult video" store--for "violation of community standards"--so far unsuccessfully. Apparently they feel a prosecution against a parody publication by a "hacker" will be more successful today. No doubt notorious rightwinger Rep. Sununu and his dad, the ex-N.H. governor and presidential aide from Salem, will have to weigh into this moral rights crusade, along with the largest area newspaper, the arch-conservative Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune, and defend the righteous police against "hackers".
BTW, this "Salem" is the one in New Hampshire just north of the Massachusetts border, not the more famous Massachusetts town that was the scene of the witchcraft trials (while the alleged witchcraft activities in the 1600s took place in modern Danvers, north of Salem, Mass.).
Please, if anyone has saved the content of the offending web pages, let us know of links for mirrors--also, how to help in the defense.
Although it is true that/. readers are unusually well-informed on related issues, this Economist leader does make the important point that the U.S. government has deliberately sought to keep this accord secret from public discussion. Its quiet adoption might well mean an end-run around some freedoms on the Internet that many of us, including libertarians as well as liberals, technology experts as well as common consumers, ought to treasure and debate more openly.
Slashdot Mirror
A recent study from Harvard Business School found that smaller bioscience companies (the truly innovative ones) were not patenting research results, but rather keeping them as trade secrets. Patenting works for large companies that can afford to defend the patents and have enough to exchange rights with other big companies. So the science will never enter the public domain.
It's time to repeal the laws that encourage universities to take public money for research and then privatize the results for the profits of these big companies. And it's time to reform this crazy system of "intellectual property" law that is destroying science and innovation.
Probably we will first have to change campaign finance laws, though.
In order to resolve the copyright issues, and in order to preserve the public domain on the Internet, the Internet Archive has filed a friend of the court brief in our court case against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. See http://openlaw.org/eldredvreno
As of today, the Supreme Court hasn't decided what to do with the appeal. Stay tuned to openlaw.
The Alan Cox resignation adds a Free Software angle to this sorry case.
Another might well be potential liability by Ghostview and other Free Software PDF viewers. According to some sources, gv "bypasses" the Adobe Security API model and allows a user to read a PDF file with permissions the original publishers did not grant. For example, to print the file.
Could some of the Ghostview, Ghostscript, or other PDF developers comment?
Specifically, if ElcomSoft and/or Dmitry Sklyarov is liable under the DMCA for creating or "trafficking" in a "device" that "bypasses" an "effective" security API that is imposed by "authority" of the copyright owner--then could Ghostview, Red Hat, and other Free Software people be also harrassed by Adobe?
I got the response that Ghostview is not a "commercial" product. But I don't believe that is enough to excuse a piece of software under the DMCA--the "access" part of the DMCA doesn't require that the software be sold. Certainly Adobe will claim damages in lost sales.
Computer technology has made it possible for citizens to publish freely on the net and debate the ideas that are central to the U.S. poltiical democracy. The ideas of the U.S. Founding Fathers were never so important as today.
At the same time, monopoly capitalists have seized contrrol of this technology and are buying legislators to prevent such free publication. Witness the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, granting software patents and for business practices, UCITA, and the impending database protection bill the author notes.
If we who understand technology and who treasure our freedoms do not speak out and convince our neighbors of these problems, then the revolution will be reversed.
You can help by joining the discussions at http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw where online briefs are openly prepared in an effort to fight these new laws.
By the way, Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of the forthcoming book, "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and how It Threatens Creativity ," ISBN: 0814788068,
Publisher: New York University Press,
Pub. Date: August 2001
If you want regular online customer support from Microsoft, too, you first have to set up a Passport account. Calling the 800 number is no better--all I got was a runaround, after expensive long-distance calls.
See the support options under http://support.microsoft.com/directory/costoptions .asp
Note--paid support costs $35--apparently even to report a defective disc.
I have a fully authentic Windows 98SE full edition CD-ROM that has evidently gone bad. I bought it at a flea market from a dealer, along with a disk drive, which I was told was needed to make the sale legal.
When the install to the drive stopped because of some error pertaining to a corrupt TrueType font, I used my Linux computer to go to the Microsoft support website which told me to call 1-800-426-9400 and talk to a person there.
This is a lie--there are no persons at that number unless you know an extension.
The answering machine at that number told me to call 1-425-635-7040. The voice mail system told me to input my product ID, which can be found only once you install Win98, by rightclicking the "My Computer" icon. This doesn't help if you can't even install Windows.
The person at that number then told me that he could not help me because I had bought an "OEM" version of the software. He told me to call 1-800-325-1233. But he warned me that if the disc was not bad, that I would have to pay for any support.
The person at that 800 number (after a long wait) told me that the computer dealer should not have sold me the disc in the first place and that I needed to take it back to that dealer. But that dealer has no power to manufacture Win98 discs--only Microsoft can do that.
Eventually I learned that I could apply to buy a new copy of the disc. But I would have to follow some complicated procedure to give them my product ID and key, and they would have to manufacture another disc with the exact same key. The support person claimed that my computer "knew" that number, and no other disc would work on it--even though I had repartitioned and formatted the hard drive. She refused to honor my request to have a replacement disc for a defective one.
Then she told me that I would have to pay $35 for the privilege of getting a replacement disc, even if the disc I bought was defective.
If consumers have to be treated as criminals in order to apply to get support, and have to give up their privacy to this big corporation in return for support--is it any wonder that many of us turn to Linux instead?
It needs to be stated that this case belongs in the larger category of excesses by private police.
Many of the U.S. public seems to feel that their safety and well-being requires handing over the public police service to private corporations that operate like the businesses they are. And the increasing false reliance on technology instead of people operating under the law.
Witness the privatization of everything from the sidewalk cop (replaced by a private security guard) to security cameras to prisons and schools.
Does all this privatization really increase safety and this use of technology really secure our rights? Probably not--it is increasing apace even without any scientific studies of its effects--it has a political agenda of its own--to make money for the businesses that are free from the controls that public forces are.
The New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/12/national/12SEAR. html
calls into question how much Scalia and the
Court majority really understand technology.
Since it is likely that the police will not be the only ones to have such advanced snooping technology in the future, we should be concerned about the adequacy of such judicial protections.
We ought also to be concerned about how the conservatives on the court interpret the Constitution--the threat to privacy is not so much from the government and the police today as it is from corporations.
I can only speak from my own experience:
An interesting paper referred to in the EFF 2600 brief is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =267848
entitled "Locating Copyright Within the First Amendment Skein" by U Texas law professor Neil Netanel. A few excerpts from that abstract:
The big media publishers claim ownership of the means of production for all "intellectual property" and they have bought these new copyright laws from Congress in an attempt to maintain control over all use of "their" products in the new digital age of the Internet.
These media giants have argued (so far successfully) that the First Amendment has nothing to do with copyright law because of the distinction between idea and expression and between expression and action. The courts in Eldred v. Reno (now Eldred v. Ashcroft) against the copyright term expression agreed with this argument (wrongly, I believe).
If courts continue to fail to wake up to the changed circumstances that Professor Netanel notes, then the First Amendment will not protect us when we publish anything on the Internet. First it will be the "hackers," then the rest of us who will be pushed off by these "rent-seeking" monopolists. Look, libertarians, it has now become apparent that it is not government that is taking away our First Amendment rights, it is courts following bad legislation that only favors big publishers.
Professor Netanel is a real conservative who has long resisted the arguments of his more liberal colleagues that Free Software deserves some protection against the media giants using copyright law. We should be glad he is now on our side. The 2600 arguments are strong and deserve to win.
But is it good for the U.S. economy to transfer so many rights to these IP monopolists, in an effort to reward them for "creating" new expressive works? What are the economic facts?
A new book, "The Cheating of America," (ISBN 0-380-97682-X, get it from your public library while you still have one) from the Center for Public Integrity gives some anecdotal evidence that such a massive transfer is not good for the American economy.
Tax avoidance and evasion has always been commonplace in Hollywood, for example. Tax shelters and offshore corporations and "service company partnerships" mean that these stars of the economy end up paying NOTHING in U.S. taxes every year, even when they state billions in profits.
Clever accounting (much more creative than the actual movies themselves) meant, for example, that Batman grossed some $253 million in the first year, but, according to Warner Bros., ended up losing $36 million and so did not have to pay any taxes!
The result is that you and I, taxpayers who pay the studios for the privilege of consuming their trash, pay once again to support the government that has been purchased by these movie moguls.
The argument that U.S. consumers will support these outrageous tricks in order to enjoy a booming economy is simply uninformed. Instead, we need to pay more for IRS auditors and congressional investigations and put some of these crooks in jail.
I don't understand the principal's statement that if this student were an adult, it would be a crime. Breaking into a computer is a crime no matter what the age--the perp's age is relevant only in that a child is not judged in a criminal court, usually, but in a juvenile court--but it is the same crime.
But in this case, the principal and school system don't even use the juvenile court system, but instead set themselves up as judge and jury, with no due process or legal protection for the affected parties.
We don't really know yet what this kid was accused of, but you can bet that "breaking into a computer system" is going to be interpreted very liberally by the school system, and never in favor of the student. But this is stupid. As others have pointed out in this discussion, often the system or the administrators are at fault and give users little choice but to use it in a way that others might construe as misuse.
We should not forget that a child's life was sacrificed here. For what? The arbitrary power of the school principal? Do we really want teachers and principals and parents to exert such intense emotional pressures on kids that they kill themselves? For what?
The case in question is but the latest in a long line of similar cases, but it has been ably discussed online over the last several months by some real lawyers in the mailing list archived at http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/2001-01/ under "Veeck vs. SBCCI (US 5th Circuit Ct Appeals)"
If you would rather read some authentic legal opinion instead of the rants of the rest of us on /., please follow the cni-copyright list (and thanks to CNI for hosting it).
It seems to me that these cases violate the spirit of copyright and wrongly instantiate a peculiar economic interest in something called "intellectual property" that is false and repugnant in a democracy under law. Therefore we ought to join together to repeal such laws and decisions, and forge new rules more suitable for this age of the Internet.
When Doug Adams started the online version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at http://www.h2g2.com, he retained copyright on all contributions to this online encyclopedia.
Now that he has died, what happens to his copyright?
The website h2g2.com has been taken over by the BBC. You can read their Terms and Conditions at http://www.bbc.co.uk/help/copyright.shtml. On that page, it says the BBC owns copyright on everything at the site. But the House Rules at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/HouseRules contradicts that, stating that each contributor retains copyright on her own contributions.
As authors of copyrighted and copylefted works die (prematurely and tragically, to be sure), we will begin to see certain tensions in how we handle copyright. In general, heirs can reclaim rights that the authors thought they had stated liberally.
The best solution would be to plan for such unfortunate occurrences and get a good lawyer to make sure the wrong thing doesn't happen by default under current copyright law. The next step would be to change copyright law so as to make it easier to do what we want, maintain free public access to these works.
The telegraph, the Victorian Internet according to the book of that name, suffered from the same "last mile" problem that the Internet today experiences. The answer then was another paired technology, the pneumatic tube system in cities.
Telegraphers in suburban or other city center locations, according to the book, could communicate directly with other telegraph offices. But it was impractical to have a telegraph office distributed for each business or residential user. Thus the message was communicated first by hand delivery to a telegraph office located centrally in the city, then transcribed by the receiving telegrapher, sent by pneumatic tube to a location near the recipient, and then hand delivered from there.
It was only the wide availability of telephones that destroyed both the telegraph and the pneumatic tube system. Western Union, for example, continued for some years to deliver telegraphs over the last mile via local telephony instead of hand delivery.
So using the pneumatic tube system is a strange echo of a proven old technology, one that we are usually ignorant of because we don't look at our history carefully.
One remaining question will be, are there sufficient concentrations of users (department stores or insurance companies, for example) at the endings of these pneumatic tube companies, or have they left for the suburbs? If the latter, maybe this will promote a return to a vital central city in places where such infrastructure has been preserved.
The origin of this phrase is discussed at http://www.newton.org.uk/essays/Giants.html by Andrew McNab.
Some people believe the phrase (which originated much earlier, as McNab notes) was used by Newton as an insult to the dwarflike Hooke, a scientific rival.
But McNab argues well for the idea that Newton did not intend it as an insult. Indeed, the surviving correspondence is quite pertinent to our understanding of how science should be carried on.
Significantly, Newton and Hooke agreed not to argue in public, but to carry on their research via private letters--the normal way to publish such information without copyright. It was important to get confirmation from other scientists; it was important to get credit for and defend one's discoveries. (Contrast that to Microsoft's outright theft--without credit--of such technologies as DCE.)
Linus is carrying on in the tradition of his namesake, the brilliant scientist Linus Pauling. Privatizing the public domain of science and technology as Microsoft tries to do, or as Craig Venter tries to do with the human genome, will only lead to disaster for us all, not just the GPL backers. In this age of rampant state-supported capitalism this will be a long battle, but we are off to a good start here.
As Henry Petroski writes about the profession of engineering, it (along with computer engineering) is correctly based on failure.
In other words, engineers learn a lot when bridges fall down. They learn little when bridges elegantly remain standing for lifetimes.
But when a bridge falls down (or a encryption scheme is broken) it is not right to keep the reasons for failure secret. Instead, the reasons must be scientifically investigated (by an outside group, not by the designers) and the information published freely. Otherwise people will continue to be killed by falling bridges (and failed encryption schemes).
Will Judge Newman agree with those who say that computer science is not a science, and computer professionals are not true professionals, and instead must be constant employees of big corporations with many secrets being used to extort profits from customers?
Will he agree with the MPAA that it should be illegal for you to take the batteries out of the smoke detector you bought, but that is screaming in your ear because of the smoke from a put-out kitchen fire?
Or will the court come to its senses and agree that citizens should still have First Amendment rights in this age when big publishers claim to originate and own all 'intellectual property'?
Will the court realize that the government and big corporations that claim rights to control citizen actions in their own homes (like recording a movie or controlling smoke detectors) simply cannot do so! A bridge designed by a computer program devoid of human input, with a bare minimum of materials, has no safety margin and is bound to fall down.
Instead, computer programming should be a profession just like bridge engineering, and we need to have the basic freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights if we are to continue doing it in the way we need to.
A camera, exactly.
I always am reminded of Bob Frankston programming VisiCalc on the Apple ][.
He said he didn't have a printer (Apple sold the Silenttype thermal printer, but it was pretty expensive; it was only later that dot matrix printers from Japan became inexpensive).
So he used a Polaroid camera to take screenshots of the assembler listings and the spreadsheet display.
Nothing should stand in the way of a true genius.
The Project Gutenberg text of Flatland was originally issued without the essential illustrations. Now it has them in ASCII form. If you prefer an HTML edition, Eldritch Press has it at http://www.eldritchpress.org/eaa/FL.HTM.
Abbott apparently based much of his satire on the work earlier published by Charles Howard Hinton. You can also read Hinton's works online at Eldritch Press, at http://www.eldritchpress.org/chh/hinton.html.
Hinton lead a colorful life for a mathematics professor. Rudy Rucker deserves our thanks for finding and collecting Hinton's contributions. Unfortunately, there were no reports that the year 2000 brought another visitor from that dimension to our world, as Hinton predicted.
Does reading these books pique your interest about the Fourth Dimension? See Thomas F. Banchoff's excellent Scientific American Library paperback, "Beyond the Third Dimension," ISBN 0-7167-6015-0, 1990, 1996.
The Washington Post editorial states that InfoSplit can determine the geographical location of computers accessing the Internet. (So it was indeed claimed during the Yahoo trial, but never confirmed.)
But in the case of AOL users, all of them seem to be located in Virginia. Does this mean that Virginia law (UCITA, etc.) applies to everybody? And then there are the various anonymizer services (which don't get around some censorship problem that Jeremy raises, such as files that have bits set so they don't pass through routers.)
I agree we ought to oppose censorship, whether it comes from governments, or, more likely, big media corporations such as AOL/Time Warner. An OpenNapster server at Havenco would be a good trial and I think it deserves our support.
I am the "Eldred" in "Eldred v. Reno." I ought to correct a few misstatements here. Mr Hart says:
JimCYL says:
DG asks: "If you could pick any 10 currently copyrighted works, and have them placed in the public domain (specifically for inclusion in Project Gutenberg) what would they be?"
It should be noted that not all works in Project Gutenberg are in the public domain. For example, Michael S. Hart retains copyright for some. (BTW, the attempt at copyright notice at the bottom of the head is not proper: (C) is not valid, only a "C" inside a circle, or "Copr." or "Copyright" written out. But, anyway, notice is no longer necessary for copyright, only for collecting attorney fees and damages in cases of infringement, and even then the work must be registered (not necessary for most works online, which are under copyright the instant the expression is fixed).
But if you want to put in your request for books to be scanned, you can do so at the On-Line Books Page at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/in-progress .html#requests
Mr. Hart also says: Actually, more and more of our Etexts are available in more formats, it's just that very often those who reformat them want the be the ONLY places to get those formats, and thus don't share back with us. It's a little sad that way, but we have tried to honor the requests from other Etext sites that want to be the ONLY source for our Etexts in various formats. . .though we disagree with that philosophy. Some day, when I
am older and crankier, perhaps I will just raid their sites against their wills for conversions that are
non-copyrightable: though these days people even claim copyrights on the most trivial conversions. Someday
that older and crankier me may even take them [some are major universities] to court for "misuse of
copyright."
Mr. Hart claims to do his own copyright research, but he is not apparently cognizant of current U.S. copyright law. The underlying text of a work in the public domain is in the public domain, no matter if a site such as Eldritch Press claims copyright on the introduction, notes, added punctuation, editorial corrections, layout, and so on--none of which are creative enough for a copyright infringement claim to be asserted against Project Gutenberg. See, for example, "The Public Domain" for more information about what is under copyright and what is in the public domain.
I ought to say that I don't see Project Gutenberg and Eldritch Press as competitors, the way Mr. Hart appears to to. In fact, I have attempted to donate some of my works to Project Gutenberg, only to have Mr. Hart find some excuse to refuse them. So I instead pay for my own web server and publish my own work. I stand behind them and make my own corrections. The format problem that questioners raise to Mr. Hart is fairly irrelevant today, since it is fairly easy to filter texts from ASCII to HTML or back, or to other formats, as long as the tags apply to the structure and not the layout. (Project Gutenberg texts could use some more standardization on what constitutes italic and so on, I agree.)
We "bookpeople" who publish books on the net could use a little help--see the On-Line Books Page at the link above for more information on what you can do, besides becoming a Project Gutenberg volunteer.
We also see ourselves in alliance with all those who treasure freedom--the same freedom to code a program or to read a book--and so we join with those who oppose the DMCA or the NET act or any other attempts to censor the net or make it safe for e-commerce by excluding those such as Project Gutenberg or others of us "bookpeople." Thanks for your support!
According to New Scientist magazine's "Feedback" column 17 Feb 2001 (see http://www.newscientist.com/feedback/, ntl has the following cable modem "user policy" provision for "abuse of the service":
Ridicule is an appropriate antidote to bureaucratic fever.
BTW, readers in Korea who can't put up their own web sites from their apartments, please read from Eldritch Press the English translation of the classic Korean novel, annotated and illustrated, The Cloud Dream of the Nine, at http://www.eldritchpress.org/kim/cloud9.html.
Eldritch Press runs from my home via ATT Mediaone RoadRunner cable modem service in New Hampshire, USA. Thanks, ATT!
The plaintiffs in Eldred v. Reno thank all those who participated in the debate about the constitutionality of copyright extension. We especially wish to thank our many supporters and those who gave the case direct aid (we haven't needed money, just brains). The Berkman Center for Law and Internet at Harvard Law School, Lawrence Lessig (now at Stanford), Charles Nesson, Jonathan Zittrain, and the law firm of Jones, Day, did an outstanding job of representing us pro bono against Bono.
We have not decided about an appeal. We will be discussing that this weekend, and we look forward to your ideas. You may direct them, on either side, in the OpenLaw forum, at http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno/.
Although we lost this particular case this time, the battle of strong "intellectual property rights" advocates against the freedom of the rest of us goes on. Cases such as the DeCSS cases and others demand our participation in deciding issues about how law and technology can get along. The issues have extended from copyrighting books now to copyrighting the human genome. Patents on AIDS drugs may meant life or death for many people in Africa who could never afford a computer.
It is important that we not get discouraged, but that we continue the good fight--we are right, we will eventually prevail, and your children will appreciate what you can do right now in this long struggle for freedom online. Thanks for taking part in this debate and discussion.
A fuller report was in the Eagle-Tribune (Lawrence, Mass.), on Friday, January 12, 2001. Go to http://www.eagletribune.com and do News Search for "Hemmah"--it was under "NH News." For your convenience, it is quoted below:
Also, here is the earlier, Dec. 6, 2000 article referred to above:
The web pages at http://www.salempolice.org-- while purporting to represent the official Salem, New Hampshire, Police Dept.--actually are entitled, "Salem Police Benevolent Association," but with no postal or email address or telephone number for contact listed. Not only would it be difficult to understand how the pages or "computer system information" could be misused, it appears to be impossible to reach anyone who could give permission for any use whatsoever, even if that request were concluded legally necessary.
Some of the pages contain the bogus footer, "Copywrite 2000, Salem Police Benevolent Association. All Rights Reserved." If this is intended as a copyright notice, then it is invalid--"copyright" is not spelled correctly. (Although no notice and registration are required under current U.S. copyright law, notice and registration are required to collect damages and attorney fees for copyright infringement.)
Even if the notice were valid, much if not all of the content is clearly not copyrightable by this private police body. This page invites "free downloads" of music from the "Salempalooza CD"--no notice that copyright is owned by "The Skeptics" is given, in likely violation of this band's copyright generated at time of creation.
Furthermore, the page "Hollywood Heroes" is obviously itself in violation of numerous copyright claims by various owners of the photographs and trademarked names, as well as protected by the strong California publicity rights laws. Another page, "Police News" (said to be of 1999!) prints news purporting to be from the official Salem, N.H., Police Department, but lists no permission for this publication from the official body. The photographs and legends and pages at this site appear to be in violation of multiple laws. Depicting "heroes" in civilian clothes pointing guns is very much today in poor taste (especially considering the shootings recently just south, in Wakefield, Mass.!). But, also, for a group that claims to wish to reduce violence, it ignores the considerable local problem for police of profitable trade conducted by "legitimate" New Hampshire businesses selling such firearms to shoppers who then use the firearms on non-"Live Free or Die" citizens.
As far as the "obscenity" charge goes, the Salem, N.H. politicos and police have for many years tried to close down Moonlite Video, an "adult video" store--for "violation of community standards"--so far unsuccessfully. Apparently they feel a prosecution against a parody publication by a "hacker" will be more successful today. No doubt notorious rightwinger Rep. Sununu and his dad, the ex-N.H. governor and presidential aide from Salem, will have to weigh into this moral rights crusade, along with the largest area newspaper, the arch-conservative Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune, and defend the righteous police against "hackers".
BTW, this "Salem" is the one in New Hampshire just north of the Massachusetts border, not the more famous Massachusetts town that was the scene of the witchcraft trials (while the alleged witchcraft activities in the 1600s took place in modern Danvers, north of Salem, Mass.).
Please, if anyone has saved the content of the offending web pages, let us know of links for mirrors--also, how to help in the defense.
Jamie Love and the U.S. Consumer Project on Technology have done an outstanding job at http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html in keeping us informed about the Hague Conference on Private International Law. This page includes a reference to one mailing list on the subject, but you can also follow the news on another more general mailing list at http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/upd-di scuss .
Although it is true that /. readers are unusually well-informed on related issues, this Economist leader does make the important point that the U.S. government has deliberately sought to keep this accord secret from public discussion. Its quiet adoption might well mean an end-run around some freedoms on the Internet that many of us, including libertarians as well as liberals, technology experts as well as common consumers, ought to treasure and debate more openly.