Right, well, a lawyer would have fun with that little bit.
Machine-readable = OCR. I'll print the source code in OCRA font size 10 to a PDF. Hardware-based OCR scanners can read that at over 99.999% accuracy.
Medium Customarily Used for Software Interchange = 360K 5.25" floppy disk drive, DOS formatted, the PDF gzipped and split into sections. For a typical program, that's about 500 disks worth.
On top of that, you have to manually build the source. No scripts, no make, no autoconf.
That'd all be within the letter of the GPL, right?
:)
The add-ons are nuts. I ran into one that was a "picture toolbar", to make it "easy" to save images from webpages into your home directory or whatever.
The problem is it was nasty bloated. One instance of the toolbar added about 25 mb on IE. Imagine having about 10 windows open like I usually do. 10 x 25 = 250MB of extra IE overhead. Swapping left and right.
Just curious, any add-on toolbars or some such? My wife's laptop had a pair of toolbars that collectively used 20 MB per instance. One IE window = 40 mb of extra added overhead.
The DataGrid control which you are referring to allows you to implement default paging and sorting or custom paging and sorting.
Actually I am not talking about the DataGrid. It's very basic. But, you are incorrect. The DataGrid when used properly generates one and only query. If you used a stored procedure from SQL Server it's insanely fast. I designed and implemented a system that uses the DataGrid to page, sort, and edit 2.5M records with the average record being about 1k. By your account, that should have generated, ohh, let's see.. 2,500,000,000 bytes of traffic to the client, give or take overheard. But it doesn't. Because you are wrong. One query, stored procedure, with the DataGrid getting what it needs from the server-side recordset as needed.
Since then I've moved onto other DataGrids, for example:
http://www.axezz.com/AxpDatagrid/Index.aspx
And since wrote my own that uses a client-side XML request and XSLT to load only the records needed ala-carte. As a control it successfully allows users to page, search, and edit without any full-round trips to the server and it's so much more efficent than a PHP solution that that the users went gaga. I was able to convert the 4million record table to a MS-SQL database, running on one web server and one database server from a 3 web-server/1-database server Apache/MySQL setup.
It's ASP.NET at it's best. Most other web-development platforms do not anything at all to encourage re-use and encapsulation, namely PHP 4.x. They encourage users like yourself to do things "the fucking way they are fucking supposed to be fucking fucking har har har".
You can swear about it "all the fucking time" and "the fucking controls", but you are completely wrong about many, many things.
Making.NET scale is pathetically easy. Making controls use only the smallest subset of data needed is easy. Making nice, friendly, single round trip data grids is easy.
MS heard a lot of feedback - from me included - that developers weren't going to spend time and effort learning about Avalon and WinFS if only Longhorn users would have it. WinXP is very well saturated right now, today.
There is no way I am going to develop any app that only works for Longhorn users. At the last PDC conference there were a lot of shallow "ohh's and ahhs" but not a lot of excited committment, because hey, why bother if my users can't use it for 5 years?
PHP lets you do that, but you have to progam it. Page date? Sure. Put in a URL parameter for "recordstart=" and "numofrecords=". Sort by a column? Sure, put in a parameter for "col=" and "sortorder=" - there are a hundred ways to do it. Then in your PHP code you read those parameters and craft a SQL query to do the deed.
Sounds fine, right?
ASP.NET developes can do that with literally two clicks and setting a property or maybe two. Then you create a stored procedure for your query (abstracting out that phase), and your users can sort by any column, page with user-definable page lengths - without generating a new query to the server (whereas your PHP example probably generates a query on every page request). If the user has a new-ish browser he/she can resort without another page load, as well as probably re-size the number of records on page. If the user is on an older browser or one without javascript enabled the script automatically detects this and serves a static copy, much like the one you generated with PHP.
ASP.NET is a good platform for web-development. It's language independent - C#, VB.NET, Python, even Perl! is possible. It is event driven and object orietated, and serves proper valid XHTML or HTML. It allows great object re-use, encapsulation, and verification possibilities. It is fast to develop in and performs well under load.
Very solid technology.
(That being said, I am still primarily a PHP4 developer).
A lot of the functionality of ASP.NET can be recreated manually with PHP4, and much of can be done natively with PHP5. But most PHP developers don't. Instead they manually code the same drudge-work of reading URL parameters, generating and parsing SQL-statements, and writing really un-resuable bits of code.
You are not being entirely genuine though, there have been a number of libc related sploits and security problems over the last 30 years.
One line in a link you provide proves me right:
Write bug-free code.
I've mostly given up on the standard C library. Many of its facilities, particularly stdio, seem designed to encourage bugs. A big chunk of qmail is stolen from a basic C library that I've been developing for several years for a variety of applications. The stralloc concept and getln() make it very easy to avoid buffer overruns, memory leaks, and artificial line length limits.
DJB has given up on the standard C lib.
If you've already spent big money developing software for MS platforms, this is a good way to increase performance when you hit a scalability wall. Some tasks parallelize very well, and some others not so much. But for redudancy and performance clustering your application may make a great deal of sense.
If you've spent $2M developing your infrastructure around MS development platforms another $800/whack for a server license isn't going to kill you.
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
C has a really crappy track record of being secure actually. As does C++. Fundamentally, they are just fine. In practice, just about ever buffer overflow exploit around was enabled at least partly because the developers were sloppy and used unchecked buffers. This is not possible in C# or other.NET langauges.
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
Right, and like Apple and the Linux worlds have never rushed anything to get something market?
You guys have the right idea in that cluster computing is going to be a bigger market than it currently is, but you have to be more hungry and learn again how to ship software that creates desire and meets your customers needs in a timely fashion.
You contradict yourself. MS is sensing demand for Windows software that can cluster without much modification. Okay, so they are getting a product ready to do that, and working on getting other features that competitors have ramped up for future versions. It's called having a plan. You can't release a product that is on par with 5 or 10 year established competitors at the 1.0 level.
And I imagine you know this! What version of Mac OS X are we at now? 10.3.x? How come 10.3.x wasn't ready when 10.x.x was ready? Huh? Huh? Huh? If Apple can't deliver features people want in a timely manner...
Software is incremental. You can't skip straight to exactly everything everyone wants. You have to go through the iterations, whether you want to or not. That's just the bottom line!
Finally, a last note. You note about locking you into a Microsoft paradigm. The people this is targted to are users of MS software already.
I think I read that at the time, actually. Not 100%...
I think the sentiment and quote is right. If someone wants to spread a rumor, float a trial baloon, etc all s/he has to do is make it sexy a bit and make a phone calls. If you are in Washington power circles you know who to call to get it in print.
And you know how the game works.. get it in the social gossip section. Then that gets referenced by something in the odd-ball news. Then it's "widely reported", etc.
If you have something to say - speak. But own your words. Especially about something which reflects negatively on someone else. Own what you say. Own what your agenda.
Anonymous sourcing is bad journalism. Almost always the person doing the leaking has an agenda. If a journalist wanted to withhold a name for fear of death, or physical harm, that's one thing.
But journalists should not be giving easy outs to people who want to embarrass, harm, or rip-down a person or group.
As another poster noted, there is no federal journalist shield law, and only some states have them, and in only some cases.
Anonymous sourcing was designed to protect individuals from retaliation and give a whistleblower a chance to live a normal life.
At this point though, with how our culture has developed, anonymous sources are a scourage in my opinion. There are numerous cases of anonymous sources being up and out fabricated, and used a cover for rumor and gossip by journalists.
If people want rumors and gossip, fine. Let journalists give it to us straight: this is what we heard at a cocktail party, or at a bar, or what I dreamed up in the shower, or what seems likely given the circumstance.
It's such a game now in other areanas that anonymous "tipsters" argue over the exact wording of how they will be credited "an insider with years of service" or "a high-ranking government offical" etc.
The assumption that journalists are protected is, really, not right in most cases!
The issue of judicial oversight and judicial review is something I am working on, and am deeply interested in.
With Congress getting more and more polarized, you could well see congress by a simple majority pass laws that strip the Supreme Ccourt of the responsbility of reviewing certain cases.
Literally, the Congress could pass a law that says "Law Bar: The Supreme Court shall not hear cases regarding Law Foo."
"Law Foo: Abortion is illegal. Guns are illegal."
It could create a real crisis of government. Right now the SCOTUS very rarely declares anything unconstitional, and it goes long stretches between doing so. It almost never completely invalidates a law, usually only parts and bits and pieces.
Too much use of the judical review will inspire congress to open a case of Constitional whup-ass. Essentially, the "right" to judicial review of congressional activities could be revoked very easily! Then the courts would just be hearing matters of equity and law, not of Constitionality.
That's how things were probably intended. If Congress did go that route I think you'd see a pretty strong movement to get an amendment added giving the SCOTUS the right for final review.. but maybe not!
The Judicary Act of 1798 set up the framework and laid out the position of the courts. You are correct in saying that Marbury v Madision was when the court headed by Marshall asserted that it had the power to review Congressionally approved laws. It was more formally assigned by Congress in the Judicary Act of 1869, and again reaffirmed in the Evarts Act of, I believe 1890.
The Constitition really does not say that the courts should determine Constitionality. Before the Marbury case, the courts and the Supreme court were really very very limited. The idea that we have three equal branches of government was never truly supported at the beginning of the national. Congress and the executive initially looked upon the courts as a body for the settling of disputes between States, between the Federal government and States, between people, for criminal, and for matters that were of national importance. The way the supreme court has shaken out is interesting. Regardless, Marshall took a big risk, and someone could have easily called his bluff about judical review.
As it stands now, Congress could well curb the Supreme Court power to review certain types of cases. For example, there is talk that the Congress may limit the courts ability to review gay marriage cases, or seperation of church and state cases.
That was Terri Gross on NPR's fresh air....
Tthat was one of my favorite interviews ever i think.
Terri is one of the least technical people, probably ever. Yet her interview was still interesting thanks to little tidbits like that!
These clauses establish the courts in general, however, do nothing to establish the rights of any court specifically to determine the constitionality of any charge.
Let me give you a hint. Congress assigned the courts the duty of determining if the laws it passed were Constititionally valid.
In the early days of the country, the vice-president was the loser of the presidential election.
Right, and as of 1804, this has been changed by an the 12th amendment.
Senators were appointed by their state politicians.
And this has been changed by a constitutional amendment - the 17th, which went into effect in 1913.
Africans were 3/5 of a person.
Right, and this was changed by the 13th amendment, which went into effect in 1865.
See a pattern here? Everything you mentioned was changed by an amendment.
You claimed the Constitution says the the courts determine what is or is not Constitutional. I've read the Constitution, studied it, and am now asking you to provide me with some sense of where you believe the Constitition directs the courts to rule on constitionality.
Can you please do that? Or, as I suspect, did you make that part up, assuming that it was true, or that no one would notice?
Constitution: "When push comes to shove, judges will decide whether an act contradicts the Constitution".
Care to back that up?
The Courts rule on constitutionality by act of law, not by constitutional provision. In the early days of the country it was actually the executive that made such decisions.
Which is what I meant when I said that the law is not really enforcable.
That's fine, just so long as you agree than that about 95% of laws are "unenforceable". Most laws cannot be 100% enforced, and that's how they are designed. To heavily punish offenders that do get caught to put pressure on others not offend in the first place.
I don't care what radio sells. A p2p client can show ads too.
An if an artist or group of artists got together and authorized this, than I am happy for them and happy for the customer! But whereas they have authorized radio, they have explicitly and repeadetly not authorized - by and large - sharing via p2p. Some artists have, and for them - great! I am happy they choose to try something new.
I just don't want such influence locked up - as it is happening today. If I make a documentary and talk to someone, while they are drinking Coke and have an episode of Simpsons is playing on TV in the background, I need to get permission from Coke and from FOX to show my movie. This is ridiculous!
You do not need permission from Coke. That is simply untrue. If, for example, you show more than a few moments of the Simpsons - more than fair use allows - you need permission. There are decades of fair use case law on the matter. This is not new - this has *always* been true about copyright. It in no way has been expanded, except in length.
I am with you on fair use. It is critical - critical to our culture - that artists be able to build from the culture they inherit, and richly and boldy expand and drive us forward.
What do I do if the artist is dead? Eg. Charlie Parker? What if the rights are no longer owned by the artist?
There is a concept called assignment. An artist sells his or her art for money up front. No artist could ever police nearly half as effective the RIAA or MPAA. These are organization,primarily, of artists and by artists. If you are mad at the RIAA or MPAA than in fact you are made at the artists that make up those organziations. They are acting directly at the behest of their members.
You joke about Metallica, but you miss my point *again*. There exists a small number of artists who permit unrestricted file sharing. Metallica specifically and famously is not one of those groups. You say fine, I'd never download their music. But not because you respect their copyrights, but frankly, because you think they suck. That is not ethnical behaviour. Ethical behaviour is respecting the rights despite your desire to violate them, namely, because you want to have a copy of the music without paying for it.
Sometimes laws are not just (insert an obligatory reference to slavery here:)).
If you want to argue that copyright is unjust, do so. However, you have already stated you respect artists wishes and copyright. If you want to change your position, fine.
Technology makes it, in this case, easier to disrespect copyrights. The topic of this article is wholesale copyright infringement of modern media - movies, music, television for the express purpose of not paying. There is no fair use argument. There is no reasonable argument that what these people do is a infringement of the rights of the artists involved.
If you want to continue this discussion, I'd love to via e-mail. danheskett-at-gmail-dot-com.
Again, it's not as clear as you want it to be. Have you read Lessig's "Free Culture" (if not, you should you can download a free copy from his website)
I have, and I agree with much of what he written.
But, if I miss an episode of "South Park", 'cause I had to work late, and I then download it and watch it, am I commiting a crime? What if no DVD version exists? Maybe I would pay a buck to download it legally, were it available.
1. The reason is immaterial.
2. Yes, you are comitting a crime, almost certainly, under the law. That video is copyprotected. That video is not authorized. You are infringing on the rights of very real people. Now, if the creators want to authorize you to do so.. well then, we can talk..
3. If there were a way for you to pay a buck, and it were authorized by the owner, than I'd be happy for you. But as of today, there is not. Therefore, what you are doing is wrong. They explicitly disallow it.
If so, why aren't the 6 million Napster users in jail? Or at least fined $150K per copy?
Why aren't the 25-50 million Americans who routinely speed into the criminal range in jail? For the same reason why Napster users weren't rounded up. No law is designed with the intent of catching 100% of infringers.
I'm too happy to compensate the artists. That's why these days I buy most of my CDs directly from the artists.
Great. Then we agree. You should respect the wishes of the creators.
Regarding downloading music, why is it that record companies pay tons of money to have songs played o n the radio, so I can hear for free. But when I download it from someone else (at no cost to the record company), they freak out!
When you are listening on the radio, the song is not the product. YOU are the product, that the radio station sells to advertisers. When you listen to music on the radio it is an impetus to buy more music. When you download and retain a copy, it is very very often a substitute for buying the music. That is why the artists freak out.
Look, Metallica doesn't want you downloading thier music without authorization or payment being made to them. If you do so, you are violating the creators of the art piece wishes. What makes that violation any more acceptable than if I took a copy of Larry's book, removed his attribution from it, and sold it as an original work under my own name? The fundamental question is whether or not copyrights are to be respected. You can't just pick and choose whose you want to accept, and whose you want to deny. That's simply unethical.
You either respect what the creators want, or you don't. It is very clearly black and white. I am not suggesting it's theft to download infringe on copyrights. I am not suggesting you should go to jail. I am suggesting, however, that without a doubt, responsible citizens should respect copyrights.
No US court has approved of file sharing copy-protected works without the authorisation of the owner. And that's how it should be. Ultimately, this is a question about respect for artists, respect for the law, and respect for the work and capital that goes into creating modern media.
Well, again in many cases this is not infrigment but fair use. If I tape "Aprentice" and then lend a tape to a friend, isn't that "fair use"?
It depends. You are allowed to make copies for "time shifting", according to various court rulings. You can also make secondary copies of digital media for backups, assuming you can and you dont break any encryption doing it. You can lend your media to friends.
But clearly, what you are suggesting, is not what is happening. Courts have not ruled on the matter and Congress has made clear what they don't approve of. You cannot make a perfect digital copy of something you time shifted and give that to someone else. It's copyright infringement.
model is dying and it's being proped up with unenforcable laws
The laws are perfectly enforceable, as we are seeing. It's only a matter of time before your broadband provider has automated monitoring that forwards infringement straight to the appropriate body. The thing is, you don't want to be enforceable. You want it to be unforceable, so you can claim the business model is dying.
The fact is and remains that what people are copying today is (1) not 28 years old, or even 14 years old. It is 10 days old, if that. Television shows mostly is what is in question here. (2) That people sharing digital copies of these copyright protected materials do not know the people they are sharing with, and are in fact often trading them. This is clearly not in the spirit of fair use. Fair use is to protect dissent, to allow reasonable copying, and to allow society to benefit in spite of copyrights. None of that is in the spirit of what is going on. What is going on is wholesale near automated copyright infringement between near-anonymous parties.
We are not heading towards a pay-per-view world. Those business models have failed again and again in the new digital era. What works is reasonable copy protection and inexpensive prices. iTunes and the iPOD are the number #1 example of this model working. Millions of songs sold, all with copy protection. People have access to their fair use rights, and the artists are compensated.
I agree with your point about the extension of copyright.
It is absurdly wrong. It takes a good concept, and goes at it to the point where it is far to long.
But, you have to acknowledge that the vast majority of what is being infringed - and what the MPAA and RIAA are largely fighting - is copying of *recent* or *not yet released* content. That's the just the fact. There isn't a lot of pirating going on regarding Gone With the Wind.
People are infringing on recent copyrights. That's just the fact!
Slashdot Mirror
Right, well, a lawyer would have fun with that little bit.
Machine-readable = OCR. I'll print the source code in OCRA font size 10 to a PDF. Hardware-based OCR scanners can read that at over 99.999% accuracy.
Medium Customarily Used for Software Interchange = 360K 5.25" floppy disk drive, DOS formatted, the PDF gzipped and split into sections. For a typical program, that's about 500 disks worth.
On top of that, you have to manually build the source. No scripts, no make, no autoconf.
That'd all be within the letter of the GPL, right?
:) The add-ons are nuts. I ran into one that was a "picture toolbar", to make it "easy" to save images from webpages into your home directory or whatever.
The problem is it was nasty bloated. One instance of the toolbar added about 25 mb on IE. Imagine having about 10 windows open like I usually do. 10 x 25 = 250MB of extra IE overhead. Swapping left and right.
Just curious, any add-on toolbars or some such? My wife's laptop had a pair of toolbars that collectively used 20 MB per instance. One IE window = 40 mb of extra added overhead.
The DataGrid control which you are referring to allows you to implement default paging and sorting or custom paging and sorting.
.NET scale is pathetically easy. Making controls use only the smallest subset of data needed is easy. Making nice, friendly, single round trip data grids is easy.
Actually I am not talking about the DataGrid. It's very basic. But, you are incorrect. The DataGrid when used properly generates one and only query. If you used a stored procedure from SQL Server it's insanely fast. I designed and implemented a system that uses the DataGrid to page, sort, and edit 2.5M records with the average record being about 1k. By your account, that should have generated, ohh, let's see.. 2,500,000,000 bytes of traffic to the client, give or take overheard. But it doesn't. Because you are wrong. One query, stored procedure, with the DataGrid getting what it needs from the server-side recordset as needed. Since then I've moved onto other DataGrids, for example: http://www.axezz.com/AxpDatagrid/Index.aspx And since wrote my own that uses a client-side XML request and XSLT to load only the records needed ala-carte. As a control it successfully allows users to page, search, and edit without any full-round trips to the server and it's so much more efficent than a PHP solution that that the users went gaga. I was able to convert the 4million record table to a MS-SQL database, running on one web server and one database server from a 3 web-server/1-database server Apache/MySQL setup.
It's ASP.NET at it's best. Most other web-development platforms do not anything at all to encourage re-use and encapsulation, namely PHP 4.x. They encourage users like yourself to do things "the fucking way they are fucking supposed to be fucking fucking har har har".
You can swear about it "all the fucking time" and "the fucking controls", but you are completely wrong about many, many things.
Making
That's exactly it.
MS heard a lot of feedback - from me included - that developers weren't going to spend time and effort learning about Avalon and WinFS if only Longhorn users would have it. WinXP is very well saturated right now, today.
There is no way I am going to develop any app that only works for Longhorn users. At the last PDC conference there were a lot of shallow "ohh's and ahhs" but not a lot of excited committment, because hey, why bother if my users can't use it for 5 years?
PHP lets you do that, but you have to progam it. Page date? Sure. Put in a URL parameter for "recordstart=" and "numofrecords=". Sort by a column? Sure, put in a parameter for "col=" and "sortorder=" - there are a hundred ways to do it. Then in your PHP code you read those parameters and craft a SQL query to do the deed.
Sounds fine, right?
ASP.NET developes can do that with literally two clicks and setting a property or maybe two. Then you create a stored procedure for your query (abstracting out that phase), and your users can sort by any column, page with user-definable page lengths - without generating a new query to the server (whereas your PHP example probably generates a query on every page request). If the user has a new-ish browser he/she can resort without another page load, as well as probably re-size the number of records on page. If the user is on an older browser or one without javascript enabled the script automatically detects this and serves a static copy, much like the one you generated with PHP.
ASP.NET is a good platform for web-development. It's language independent - C#, VB.NET, Python, even Perl! is possible. It is event driven and object orietated, and serves proper valid XHTML or HTML. It allows great object re-use, encapsulation, and verification possibilities. It is fast to develop in and performs well under load.
Very solid technology. (That being said, I am still primarily a PHP4 developer). A lot of the functionality of ASP.NET can be recreated manually with PHP4, and much of can be done natively with PHP5. But most PHP developers don't. Instead they manually code the same drudge-work of reading URL parameters, generating and parsing SQL-statements, and writing really un-resuable bits of code.
I did that, as a test, and was using 48M.
That's actually about 50% less, not more.
You are not being entirely genuine though, there have been a number of libc related sploits and security problems over the last 30 years.
One line in a link you provide proves me right:
Write bug-free code. I've mostly given up on the standard C library. Many of its facilities, particularly stdio, seem designed to encourage bugs. A big chunk of qmail is stolen from a basic C library that I've been developing for several years for a variety of applications. The stralloc concept and getln() make it very easy to avoid buffer overruns, memory leaks, and artificial line length limits.
DJB has given up on the standard C lib.
If you've already spent big money developing software for MS platforms, this is a good way to increase performance when you hit a scalability wall. Some tasks parallelize very well, and some others not so much. But for redudancy and performance clustering your application may make a great deal of sense.
If you've spent $2M developing your infrastructure around MS development platforms another $800/whack for a server license isn't going to kill you.
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
.NET langauges.
C has a really crappy track record of being secure actually. As does C++. Fundamentally, they are just fine. In practice, just about ever buffer overflow exploit around was enabled at least partly because the developers were sloppy and used unchecked buffers. This is not possible in C# or other
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
Right, and like Apple and the Linux worlds have never rushed anything to get something market?
You guys have the right idea in that cluster computing is going to be a bigger market than it currently is, but you have to be more hungry and learn again how to ship software that creates desire and meets your customers needs in a timely fashion.
You contradict yourself. MS is sensing demand for Windows software that can cluster without much modification. Okay, so they are getting a product ready to do that, and working on getting other features that competitors have ramped up for future versions. It's called having a plan. You can't release a product that is on par with 5 or 10 year established competitors at the 1.0 level.
And I imagine you know this! What version of Mac OS X are we at now? 10.3.x? How come 10.3.x wasn't ready when 10.x.x was ready? Huh? Huh? Huh? If Apple can't deliver features people want in a timely manner...
Software is incremental. You can't skip straight to exactly everything everyone wants. You have to go through the iterations, whether you want to or not. That's just the bottom line!
Finally, a last note. You note about locking you into a Microsoft paradigm. The people this is targted to are users of MS software already.
I think I read that at the time, actually. Not 100%...
I think the sentiment and quote is right. If someone wants to spread a rumor, float a trial baloon, etc all s/he has to do is make it sexy a bit and make a phone calls. If you are in Washington power circles you know who to call to get it in print.
And you know how the game works.. get it in the social gossip section. Then that gets referenced by something in the odd-ball news. Then it's "widely reported", etc.
If you have something to say - speak. But own your words. Especially about something which reflects negatively on someone else. Own what you say. Own what your agenda.
Apple is more interested in stopping the leak.
Anonymous sourcing is bad journalism. Almost always the person doing the leaking has an agenda. If a journalist wanted to withhold a name for fear of death, or physical harm, that's one thing.
But journalists should not be giving easy outs to people who want to embarrass, harm, or rip-down a person or group.
I dont think they are irresponsible, I think they should have published their sources.
I am well aware of the history, I just think the danger is overblown.
With todays culture the killing or harming of a source would be a huge scandal, especially by the government.
There really is no reason other than deception for a journalist to protect sources. More often than not the source has an ax to grind.
When you facilitate people with an agenda you are not a journalist anymore, you are a participant in an agenda.
As another poster noted, there is no federal journalist shield law, and only some states have them, and in only some cases.
Anonymous sourcing was designed to protect individuals from retaliation and give a whistleblower a chance to live a normal life.
At this point though, with how our culture has developed, anonymous sources are a scourage in my opinion. There are numerous cases of anonymous sources being up and out fabricated, and used a cover for rumor and gossip by journalists.
If people want rumors and gossip, fine. Let journalists give it to us straight: this is what we heard at a cocktail party, or at a bar, or what I dreamed up in the shower, or what seems likely given the circumstance.
It's such a game now in other areanas that anonymous "tipsters" argue over the exact wording of how they will be credited "an insider with years of service" or "a high-ranking government offical" etc.
The assumption that journalists are protected is, really, not right in most cases!
The issue of judicial oversight and judicial review is something I am working on, and am deeply interested in.
With Congress getting more and more polarized, you could well see congress by a simple majority pass laws that strip the Supreme Ccourt of the responsbility of reviewing certain cases.
Literally, the Congress could pass a law that says "Law Bar: The Supreme Court shall not hear cases regarding Law Foo."
"Law Foo: Abortion is illegal. Guns are illegal."
It could create a real crisis of government. Right now the SCOTUS very rarely declares anything unconstitional, and it goes long stretches between doing so. It almost never completely invalidates a law, usually only parts and bits and pieces.
Too much use of the judical review will inspire congress to open a case of Constitional whup-ass. Essentially, the "right" to judicial review of congressional activities could be revoked very easily! Then the courts would just be hearing matters of equity and law, not of Constitionality.
That's how things were probably intended. If Congress did go that route I think you'd see a pretty strong movement to get an amendment added giving the SCOTUS the right for final review.. but maybe not!
It truly is a house of cards...
The Judicary Act of 1798 set up the framework and laid out the position of the courts. You are correct in saying that Marbury v Madision was when the court headed by Marshall asserted that it had the power to review Congressionally approved laws. It was more formally assigned by Congress in the Judicary Act of 1869, and again reaffirmed in the Evarts Act of, I believe 1890.
The Constitition really does not say that the courts should determine Constitionality. Before the Marbury case, the courts and the Supreme court were really very very limited. The idea that we have three equal branches of government was never truly supported at the beginning of the national. Congress and the executive initially looked upon the courts as a body for the settling of disputes between States, between the Federal government and States, between people, for criminal, and for matters that were of national importance. The way the supreme court has shaken out is interesting. Regardless, Marshall took a big risk, and someone could have easily called his bluff about judical review.
As it stands now, Congress could well curb the Supreme Court power to review certain types of cases. For example, there is talk that the Congress may limit the courts ability to review gay marriage cases, or seperation of church and state cases.
That was Terri Gross on NPR's fresh air.. ..
Tthat was one of my favorite interviews ever i think.
Terri is one of the least technical people, probably ever. Yet her interview was still interesting thanks to little tidbits like that!
You answered my question, but incorrectly.
These clauses establish the courts in general, however, do nothing to establish the rights of any court specifically to determine the constitionality of any charge.
Let me give you a hint. Congress assigned the courts the duty of determining if the laws it passed were Constititionally valid.
In the early days of the country, the vice-president was the loser of the presidential election.
Right, and as of 1804, this has been changed by an the 12th amendment.
Senators were appointed by their state politicians.
And this has been changed by a constitutional amendment - the 17th, which went into effect in 1913.
Africans were 3/5 of a person.
Right, and this was changed by the 13th amendment, which went into effect in 1865.
See a pattern here? Everything you mentioned was changed by an amendment.
You claimed the Constitution says the the courts determine what is or is not Constitutional. I've read the Constitution, studied it, and am now asking you to provide me with some sense of where you believe the Constitition directs the courts to rule on constitionality.
Can you please do that? Or, as I suspect, did you make that part up, assuming that it was true, or that no one would notice?
Constitution: "When push comes to shove, judges will decide whether an act contradicts the Constitution".
Care to back that up?
The Courts rule on constitutionality by act of law, not by constitutional provision. In the early days of the country it was actually the executive that made such decisions.
Which is what I meant when I said that the law is not really enforcable.
,primarily, of artists and by artists. If you are mad at the RIAA or MPAA than in fact you are made at the artists that make up those organziations. They are acting directly at the behest of their members.
:)).
That's fine, just so long as you agree than that about 95% of laws are "unenforceable". Most laws cannot be 100% enforced, and that's how they are designed. To heavily punish offenders that do get caught to put pressure on others not offend in the first place.
I don't care what radio sells. A p2p client can show ads too.
An if an artist or group of artists got together and authorized this, than I am happy for them and happy for the customer! But whereas they have authorized radio, they have explicitly and repeadetly not authorized - by and large - sharing via p2p. Some artists have, and for them - great! I am happy they choose to try something new.
I just don't want such influence locked up - as it is happening today. If I make a documentary and talk to someone, while they are drinking Coke and have an episode of Simpsons is playing on TV in the background, I need to get permission from Coke and from FOX to show my movie. This is ridiculous!
You do not need permission from Coke. That is simply untrue. If, for example, you show more than a few moments of the Simpsons - more than fair use allows - you need permission. There are decades of fair use case law on the matter. This is not new - this has *always* been true about copyright. It in no way has been expanded, except in length.
I am with you on fair use. It is critical - critical to our culture - that artists be able to build from the culture they inherit, and richly and boldy expand and drive us forward.
What do I do if the artist is dead? Eg. Charlie Parker? What if the rights are no longer owned by the artist?
There is a concept called assignment. An artist sells his or her art for money up front. No artist could ever police nearly half as effective the RIAA or MPAA. These are organization
You joke about Metallica, but you miss my point *again*. There exists a small number of artists who permit unrestricted file sharing. Metallica specifically and famously is not one of those groups. You say fine, I'd never download their music. But not because you respect their copyrights, but frankly, because you think they suck. That is not ethnical behaviour. Ethical behaviour is respecting the rights despite your desire to violate them, namely, because you want to have a copy of the music without paying for it.
Sometimes laws are not just (insert an obligatory reference to slavery here
If you want to argue that copyright is unjust, do so. However, you have already stated you respect artists wishes and copyright. If you want to change your position, fine.
Technology makes it, in this case, easier to disrespect copyrights. The topic of this article is wholesale copyright infringement of modern media - movies, music, television for the express purpose of not paying. There is no fair use argument. There is no reasonable argument that what these people do is a infringement of the rights of the artists involved. If you want to continue this discussion, I'd love to via e-mail. danheskett-at-gmail-dot-com.
Again, it's not as clear as you want it to be. Have you read Lessig's "Free Culture" (if not, you should you can download a free copy from his website)
I have, and I agree with much of what he written.
But, if I miss an episode of "South Park", 'cause I had to work late, and I then download it and watch it, am I commiting a crime? What if no DVD version exists? Maybe I would pay a buck to download it legally, were it available.
1. The reason is immaterial.
2. Yes, you are comitting a crime, almost certainly, under the law. That video is copyprotected. That video is not authorized. You are infringing on the rights of very real people. Now, if the creators want to authorize you to do so.. well then, we can talk..
3. If there were a way for you to pay a buck, and it were authorized by the owner, than I'd be happy for you. But as of today, there is not. Therefore, what you are doing is wrong. They explicitly disallow it.
If so, why aren't the 6 million Napster users in jail? Or at least fined $150K per copy?
Why aren't the 25-50 million Americans who routinely speed into the criminal range in jail? For the same reason why Napster users weren't rounded up. No law is designed with the intent of catching 100% of infringers.
I'm too happy to compensate the artists. That's why these days I buy most of my CDs directly from the artists.
Great. Then we agree. You should respect the wishes of the creators.
Regarding downloading music, why is it that record companies pay tons of money to have songs played o n the radio, so I can hear for free. But when I download it from someone else (at no cost to the record company), they freak out!
When you are listening on the radio, the song is not the product. YOU are the product, that the radio station sells to advertisers. When you listen to music on the radio it is an impetus to buy more music. When you download and retain a copy, it is very very often a substitute for buying the music. That is why the artists freak out.
Look, Metallica doesn't want you downloading thier music without authorization or payment being made to them. If you do so, you are violating the creators of the art piece wishes. What makes that violation any more acceptable than if I took a copy of Larry's book, removed his attribution from it, and sold it as an original work under my own name? The fundamental question is whether or not copyrights are to be respected. You can't just pick and choose whose you want to accept, and whose you want to deny. That's simply unethical.
You either respect what the creators want, or you don't. It is very clearly black and white. I am not suggesting it's theft to download infringe on copyrights. I am not suggesting you should go to jail. I am suggesting, however, that without a doubt, responsible citizens should respect copyrights.
No US court has approved of file sharing copy-protected works without the authorisation of the owner. And that's how it should be. Ultimately, this is a question about respect for artists, respect for the law, and respect for the work and capital that goes into creating modern media.
Interesting. Bill Gates isn't actually the CEO Microsoft.
Just so you know. He's hasn't been for, well, Jeez, must be getting over 5 years now.
Well, again in many cases this is not infrigment but fair use. If I tape "Aprentice" and then lend a tape to a friend, isn't that "fair use"?
It depends. You are allowed to make copies for "time shifting", according to various court rulings. You can also make secondary copies of digital media for backups, assuming you can and you dont break any encryption doing it. You can lend your media to friends.
But clearly, what you are suggesting, is not what is happening. Courts have not ruled on the matter and Congress has made clear what they don't approve of. You cannot make a perfect digital copy of something you time shifted and give that to someone else. It's copyright infringement.
model is dying and it's being proped up with unenforcable laws
The laws are perfectly enforceable, as we are seeing. It's only a matter of time before your broadband provider has automated monitoring that forwards infringement straight to the appropriate body. The thing is, you don't want to be enforceable. You want it to be unforceable, so you can claim the business model is dying.
The fact is and remains that what people are copying today is (1) not 28 years old, or even 14 years old. It is 10 days old, if that. Television shows mostly is what is in question here. (2) That people sharing digital copies of these copyright protected materials do not know the people they are sharing with, and are in fact often trading them. This is clearly not in the spirit of fair use. Fair use is to protect dissent, to allow reasonable copying, and to allow society to benefit in spite of copyrights. None of that is in the spirit of what is going on. What is going on is wholesale near automated copyright infringement between near-anonymous parties.
We are not heading towards a pay-per-view world. Those business models have failed again and again in the new digital era. What works is reasonable copy protection and inexpensive prices. iTunes and the iPOD are the number #1 example of this model working. Millions of songs sold, all with copy protection. People have access to their fair use rights, and the artists are compensated.
I agree with your point about the extension of copyright.
It is absurdly wrong. It takes a good concept, and goes at it to the point where it is far to long.
But, you have to acknowledge that the vast majority of what is being infringed - and what the MPAA and RIAA are largely fighting - is copying of *recent* or *not yet released* content. That's the just the fact. There isn't a lot of pirating going on regarding Gone With the Wind.
People are infringing on recent copyrights. That's just the fact!