Re:One year is not enough. Look back at the last t
on
The Year In Tech Law
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· Score: 1
point of order: as was explained recently in a/. story, Jon Johansen wasn't re-tried, as we Americans think of it (a la double jeopardy); rather, he went thru a level of appeals which, in his country, means there is some kind of trial which happens in front of the new panel of judges. so if you compare that to the American system, it was more like the continuation of his previous trial -- the continuation of his entire legal process. i believe in America the appellate court simply *reviews* the proceedings of the lower court, maybe with some additional arguments, but in Norway they have a whole *new* trial.
* the courts looked at a law and a part of the MA constitution. * the courts decided the two were at odds (to me it's pretty clear they're right about that) * since constitutions supercede laws, the judges *pointed out* the fact that the law was unconstitutional
in fact, the courts didn't even directly strike down the law (which, as i understand it, is usually the case with an unconstitutional law); rather, they gave the legislature a (limited amount of) time to write a NEW law, which would hopefully be consistent with the constitution.
look, you or your neighbors can hate gay people all day long. or you can love them, and say that gay marriage is wrong for some other reason. but to some of us, it's clear that discrimination against homosexuals is (not only wrong but) unconstitutional. our constitutions normally give protection against unreasonable discrimination.
the only thing you and your neighbors can do about it is to change the constitutions. some states have already done this (including mine, Alaska). in the end, it seems clear to me that the supreme court will interpert the US constitution the same way other courts have interperted it, and state constitutions: to say that discrimination is unconstitutional. that's why your cronies are trying to pass a marriage amendment. i'm not terribly sure that you'll convince two thirds of both houses of congress and three quarters of the states that think so bigoted, though. good luck.
If you route your (illegal albeit encrypted) content thru third parties, and the third parties know about it, then aren't they guilty ("guilty") of contributory copyright enfringement (the same thing Napster was smacked for)? In your example, Hillary may not be able to pounce on the person originally serving the file (if she couldn't trace that person), but she could pounce on each of the people proxying a piece of the file.
Simply not having the file on your hard drive doesn't mean that you haven't broken a part of the copyright law.
This isn't to say that I think the law is reasonable, but to say that you haven't skirted the law with your suggested protocol.
you don't think Norman made a million dollars from that song? like you, i have no numbers to back up my assumption, but i figure he made more than a mil.
that's a great example, by the way, of a truly rockin' one-hit-wonder. love that song.
You say that if enough people are violating a law, then the law is probably bad. In general I agree with you, and in this instance I agree with you, but (to me) it's clear that the pragma is not an absolute: consider apartheid or spousal abuse or drunk driving, all of which were once more widespread than today, and each of which required a change on the part of society.
the world may be a better place without an evil dictator like Saddam in power, but the world is not a better place with an accepted policy that a country with better weapons can impose arbitrary will on another country it doesn't like.
it's tit for tat: everyone is glad Saddam is gone, but a lot of us aren't thrilled with the precident, and we think the world is in fact not a better world for it.
don't be simple. the artist needs the recording executives because they are professionals at producing, advertising, distributing, and selling music.
why go to Boeing when you can just build the plane yourself? the physics of flight are well documented. why go to Intel for a processor when you can build one yourself? there are plenty of books on processor design. why pay for police protection when we could just all arm ourselves and apply vigilante justice?
Napster really was an amazing thing. There was one really rare track I wanted (a recording of a slave field hollar by Henry Ratcliff, recorded by Alan Lomax) that I wanted and found on the first look on Napster. Since then I lost the MP3, and even searching Gnutella every day for the last year I can't find it. Napster in a couple short months achieved a near complete snapshop of humanity's recorded music which I haven't seen since.
i thought price fixing was a conspiracy between companies to keep the price of a general commodity high, thus sidestepping the market force of competition.
Re:You already have several robots in your home
on
The Robots are Coming
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· Score: 1
If others are making the mistake of thinking all robot are anthropomorphic devices, then you are making the mistake of thinking all machines are robots. I do not, for instance, consider my thermometer to be a robot (or did you mean furnace? I don't think my furnace is a robot either). I don't know exactly how I would define 'robot', but I disagree with your assertion that I already live with them in my home.
Although a washing machine might be a border case.
the method for which you seek is to hold half of the company in your name. Steve Jobs learned this lesson: after he was booted from Apple, he started NeXT and held 51% of the stock in his own name. the caveat is that you can't sell anything once you get down to 51%.
what the heck do you want the government to do about spam? i don't even think spam should be illegal, since i realize that a governmental solution can't be applied to a technological solution. it's absurd to suggest that anti-spam laws will stop spam. that's like thinking no one will smoke weed as long as it's illeagal.
the PROBLEM with spam is that the email specification is flawed. the specification ALLOWS things like spoofing headers, there is no authentication, etc. it seems pretty obvious to me that the world needs a new electronic-mail specification, which would include not only secure headers and authentication, but strong crypto and other modern messaging features.
also, some kind of support for attaching money to an email, so that if someone emails you who isn't on your whitelist, they have to attach money (say, a nickel or a quarter -- less than a postage stamp) in the case that you want to keep that payment (ie if you don't want the person to keep bothering you). that would immediately stop spam. a spammer isn't going to spend a nickel to offer you their penis enlarger.
on the other hand, the current email standard allows all kinds of freedom for the people who want the freedom more than the security. hey, you want to have an open mail relay on your 1337 home bsd boxen? go ahead, but you have to deal with potentially unwanted emails.
yo i totally hear that all the time, but i have used only mozilla since before 1.0 and have never had a problem. no wait, one time for a brief time i couldn't do complex banking transactions, but fleet.com quickly fixed whatever certificate problem they were having. one time, in what a year and a half or something? seriously, i dont' know what sites you're ("you" in the larger, general sense) talking about. i guess i probably have different-than-normal surfing habits.
Macs come not only with a developer CD full of Apple's really nice dev software, but also with the full array of standard UNIX tools and compilers. On a Mac, a kid can learn any damn language he wants (anything for which there is a UNIX compiler/interpreter), and compile it (for no more $$ than the cost of the OS/computer) in any of a handful of compilers. Or you can use the (also comes-with-OS) AppleScript if compilers are too scary for you.
If you hate Macs, you can learn JavaScript with any web browser on any platform. I first learned "programming" with HyperTalk in HyperCard, which is somewhat comparable to JavaScript.
If that doesn't make you happy enough, you can buy a TI calculator and do some crazy stuff which is very much on the level of 80s-era hacking.
In fact, now that I've listed all these options (an incomplete list to be sure), I start to wonder what the question asker was missing in the first place? There are TONS of free options for little programmers, not to mention the fact that you can always just buy a compiler.
You said that "some places even have laws to the effect that if you can't reasonably be expected to understand a contract, you can't legally have entered into it". Indeed, this is a legal concept called "the meeting of the minds" and is fundamental law theory in the Western tradition: it means that if the two parties didn't both understand the contract, then the contract can't be valid. The catch is that it's nontrivial to prove that you didn't understand a contract which you signed.
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point of order: as was explained recently in a /. story, Jon Johansen wasn't re-tried, as we Americans think of it (a la double jeopardy); rather, he went thru a level of appeals which, in his country, means there is some kind of trial which happens in front of the new panel of judges. so if you compare that to the American system, it was more like the continuation of his previous trial -- the continuation of his entire legal process. i believe in America the appellate court simply *reviews* the proceedings of the lower court, maybe with some additional arguments, but in Norway they have a whole *new* trial.
i don't understand your beef.
* the courts looked at a law and a part of the MA constitution.
* the courts decided the two were at odds (to me it's pretty clear they're right about that)
* since constitutions supercede laws, the judges *pointed out* the fact that the law was unconstitutional
in fact, the courts didn't even directly strike down the law (which, as i understand it, is usually the case with an unconstitutional law); rather, they gave the legislature a (limited amount of) time to write a NEW law, which would hopefully be consistent with the constitution.
look, you or your neighbors can hate gay people all day long. or you can love them, and say that gay marriage is wrong for some other reason. but to some of us, it's clear that discrimination against homosexuals is (not only wrong but) unconstitutional. our constitutions normally give protection against unreasonable discrimination.
the only thing you and your neighbors can do about it is to change the constitutions. some states have already done this (including mine, Alaska). in the end, it seems clear to me that the supreme court will interpert the US constitution the same way other courts have interperted it, and state constitutions: to say that discrimination is unconstitutional. that's why your cronies are trying to pass a marriage amendment. i'm not terribly sure that you'll convince two thirds of both houses of congress and three quarters of the states that think so bigoted, though. good luck.
If you route your (illegal albeit encrypted) content thru third parties, and the third parties know about it, then aren't they guilty ("guilty") of contributory copyright enfringement (the same thing Napster was smacked for)? In your example, Hillary may not be able to pounce on the person originally serving the file (if she couldn't trace that person), but she could pounce on each of the people proxying a piece of the file.
Simply not having the file on your hard drive doesn't mean that you haven't broken a part of the copyright law.
This isn't to say that I think the law is reasonable, but to say that you haven't skirted the law with your suggested protocol.
you don't think Norman made a million dollars from that song? like you, i have no numbers to back up my assumption, but i figure he made more than a mil.
that's a great example, by the way, of a truly rockin' one-hit-wonder. love that song.
You say that if enough people are violating a law, then the law is probably bad. In general I agree with you, and in this instance I agree with you, but (to me) it's clear that the pragma is not an absolute: consider apartheid or spousal abuse or drunk driving, all of which were once more widespread than today, and each of which required a change on the part of society.
the world may be a better place without an evil dictator like Saddam in power, but the world is not a better place with an accepted policy that a country with better weapons can impose arbitrary will on another country it doesn't like.
it's tit for tat: everyone is glad Saddam is gone, but a lot of us aren't thrilled with the precident, and we think the world is in fact not a better world for it.
don't be simple. the artist needs the recording executives because they are professionals at producing, advertising, distributing, and selling music.
why go to Boeing when you can just build the plane yourself? the physics of flight are well documented. why go to Intel for a processor when you can build one yourself? there are plenty of books on processor design. why pay for police protection when we could just all arm ourselves and apply vigilante justice?
Napster really was an amazing thing. There was one really rare track I wanted (a recording of a slave field hollar by Henry Ratcliff, recorded by Alan Lomax) that I wanted and found on the first look on Napster. Since then I lost the MP3, and even searching Gnutella every day for the last year I can't find it. Napster in a couple short months achieved a near complete snapshop of humanity's recorded music which I haven't seen since.
kudos on that. brilliant.
i thought price fixing was a conspiracy between companies to keep the price of a general commodity high, thus sidestepping the market force of competition.
If others are making the mistake of thinking all robot are anthropomorphic devices, then you are making the mistake of thinking all machines are robots. I do not, for instance, consider my thermometer to be a robot (or did you mean furnace? I don't think my furnace is a robot either). I don't know exactly how I would define 'robot', but I disagree with your assertion that I already live with them in my home.
Although a washing machine might be a border case.
if it requires a pilot's license, and an airport, it's not a car. we already have a word for what it is: airplane.
the method for which you seek is to hold half of the company in your name. Steve Jobs learned this lesson: after he was booted from Apple, he started NeXT and held 51% of the stock in his own name. the caveat is that you can't sell anything once you get down to 51%.
Point of order: a sexual molester (you misspelled that word) loses his rights when he is *convicted* of committing a perverted act.
The Supreme Court has consistently held that privacy is a right of Americans, guaranteed implicitly by the Constitution.
I agree with the Supreme Court.
damnit! right you are. forgive me -- i heard that joke in high school chemistry. long ago.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the condensate.
i think al capone died of syphallus, so to live longer he would have had to do more than stay away from greed...
what the heck do you want the government to do about spam? i don't even think spam should be illegal, since i realize that a governmental solution can't be applied to a technological solution. it's absurd to suggest that anti-spam laws will stop spam. that's like thinking no one will smoke weed as long as it's illeagal.
the PROBLEM with spam is that the email specification is flawed. the specification ALLOWS things like spoofing headers, there is no authentication, etc. it seems pretty obvious to me that the world needs a new electronic-mail specification, which would include not only secure headers and authentication, but strong crypto and other modern messaging features.
also, some kind of support for attaching money to an email, so that if someone emails you who isn't on your whitelist, they have to attach money (say, a nickel or a quarter -- less than a postage stamp) in the case that you want to keep that payment (ie if you don't want the person to keep bothering you). that would immediately stop spam. a spammer isn't going to spend a nickel to offer you their penis enlarger.
on the other hand, the current email standard allows all kinds of freedom for the people who want the freedom more than the security. hey, you want to have an open mail relay on your 1337 home bsd boxen? go ahead, but you have to deal with potentially unwanted emails.
(sigh... quickly) the french stood by saddam AFTER he proved himself to be evil.
(outie)
i think the song you reference is by MC Hammer.
i think it's clear that the GPL prohibits that action.
yo i totally hear that all the time, but i have used only mozilla since before 1.0 and have never had a problem. no wait, one time for a brief time i couldn't do complex banking transactions, but fleet.com quickly fixed whatever certificate problem they were having. one time, in what a year and a half or something? seriously, i dont' know what sites you're ("you" in the larger, general sense) talking about. i guess i probably have different-than-normal surfing habits.
Macs come not only with a developer CD full of Apple's really nice dev software, but also with the full array of standard UNIX tools and compilers. On a Mac, a kid can learn any damn language he wants (anything for which there is a UNIX compiler/interpreter), and compile it (for no more $$ than the cost of the OS/computer) in any of a handful of compilers. Or you can use the (also comes-with-OS) AppleScript if compilers are too scary for you.
If you hate Macs, you can learn JavaScript with any web browser on any platform. I first learned "programming" with HyperTalk in HyperCard, which is somewhat comparable to JavaScript.
If that doesn't make you happy enough, you can buy a TI calculator and do some crazy stuff which is very much on the level of 80s-era hacking.
In fact, now that I've listed all these options (an incomplete list to be sure), I start to wonder what the question asker was missing in the first place? There are TONS of free options for little programmers, not to mention the fact that you can always just buy a compiler.
You said that "some places even have laws to the effect that if you can't reasonably be expected to understand a contract, you can't legally have entered into it". Indeed, this is a legal concept called "the meeting of the minds" and is fundamental law theory in the Western tradition: it means that if the two parties didn't both understand the contract, then the contract can't be valid. The catch is that it's nontrivial to prove that you didn't understand a contract which you signed.