From the start of genetic engineering for food crops, we should have seen that corporations would start to patent genes. We should have realized that just making the human genome public domain would not be enough. This decision is only for a food crop today, but it will set the standard for future court cases.
Slashforward, ten, maybe even five years....
"Your honor, Monsanto HumanoGenetics would like an injunction against the defendant. Two years ago my client used a protoviral gene therapy to cure Mr. Smith of leukemia. One month ago he donated one of his genetically modified kidneys to his son, who was dying of leukemia-related kidney failure. Mr. Smith's son is now enjoying the benefits of Monsanto's research and hard labor without paying an appropriate and reasonable fee. This is in violation of the defendant's license agreement with Monsanto."
"These are very serious charges, Counselor. Mr. Smith, what do you have to say?"
"My God, your Honor... I was trying to save my son's life!"
"Your Honor, Monsanto is not a heartless company, but we believe we must preserve the fruits of our intelletual property. As per the license agreement between Mr. Smith and Monsanto, the donated kidney must be removed from his son's body and either returned to Mr. Smith's body, or submitted immediately to Monsanto."
"Wha... you bastards! You'll kill him!"
"Mr. Smith, I'm afraid the precedent has been set many times in the courts over the past ten years. The results of the genetic therapy belong to Monsanto, and you agreed to the terms of the license agreement. The operation to remove Mr. Smith's son's kidney will take place immediately. Case closed...."
Don't think it can happen? With this decision, I see it as much more likely than any sort of legal and bioethical issues revolving round human cloning.
I would be very interested in hearing discussion from bioethics students and philosophers. We are rapidly entering a point in time, if we have not already passed said point, when to merely be able to do a thing is not enough reason to actually do that thing.
So... what now? Unlike politicians, whom we have passing rapport with anyways, research companies are beyond our reach. We cannot picket them, we cannot blast them verbally, we cannot do anything to stop them. Beyond those doors, God Money is what dictates what happens.
That leaves us with the legistlatures of our respective countries. The governments must be made aware of the ethical horror which is threatening us. For make no mistake, we are verily threatened. This is not an SF ethics-thriller, this is not a grade-B horror film, this is real. The genes are real, the people are real, and the future... the future is all too frighteningly real.
I mean, Jesus, I remember driving in LA on vacation and seeing a cop in her squad car with the shotgun holster mounted right in the front seat. I mean, holy shit, that thing's loaded.
The United States is actually rather palatial as far as armed police go. Yes, in quite a few metropolitan areas, the police have shotguns in the cars; in some of these, the shotguns are in racks in the front of the car.
However, there is an important point to be made: the United States does not have a national police force, it does not have a police force that is paramilitary in nature and equipment. (SWAT/response teams are the exception, but they are a part of most major police departments, and not the department itself.)
Some European countries, actually, have even scarier things. France has a national, paramilitary police force, the Gendarme', which not only has automatic weapons, but also armored cars (virtually infantry fighting vehicles) and a paratrooper unit.
When I went to Spain for the World's Fair, parked outside the walls was a white armored car with a black turret, armed with a machine gun. Was it from the Army? No; emblazioned on it's side was POLIZEI. (I beleive that is the spelling of 'police' in Spanish. My apologies, it has been some time.)
Especially after Kent State, it will be very rare that you find military forces involved in the enforcement of domestic laws in the United States, and you will certainly not see armed and armored vehicles being normally used in law enforcement. (Again, there are rare exceptions, like the LAPD APC that gets toasted in Die Hard. =) That, however, and most metro police armored units, are not armed. Another exception was when National Guard units were deployed during the LA riots, but -- and this is unbelievable -- they weren't even issued ammunition at first!)
Actually the article is well-written, covering all the bases, although it neglects to say how we're all expected to bend over while our fair use of stuff we paid for is taken away from us.
We will all bend over, because the average John Q. Public has no idea that the RIAA is doing this.
Nor does he care. Let's face the facts, here: Your average person just buys a CD. They don't have a burner at home, they might have a 5- or 6-disk carrycase for their favorite albums of the moment which they can bring into the car (if they even HAVE a car CD player) or to work. Fair use? To the average music CD consumer, they're getting their fair use out of it, playing it wherever they want.
Your average person has never heard of the DMCA. He has probably never even heard of the riaa before the Napster case, and has an imperfect understanding of what it is. And your average person will not have even heard of copy-protection on CDs, and likely never will learn. Why? Because that's outside their world.
We live in a world of packets and Perl, of Unix and USB, of code and SOAP and SMB. We speak a language that most users find incomprehensible -- not because they're dumb or clueless, but because it's not in their world. Talk with an economist or a biochemist, and I'm sure they'll make utterances you can't even begin to grasp. It's the same way with most users and anything to do with computers.
And just like only doctors and medical researchers might be up on the latest discussions of bioethics and medical legistlation, so too are we going to be the ones (perhaps the only ones) most in touch with Internet legislation and "Your Rights Online."
There is startlingly little chance of changing peoples' views about this. They have their concerns and their worries. It does not matter to them if CDs are copy protected -- they weren't going to be even thinking of copying a CD anyway. Make a copy of a CD onto another CD? Bizzare! Amazing! And, frankly, frightening. In trying to educate most users you are dealing with an inordinate but (make no mistake) very, very real fear of technology. It's annoying to us, it's frustrating, to hear a user whine about how they don't like using computers; would you believe, I had one user get "very upset" when I had to drag her (almost kicking and screaming) from her Novell client MS-DOS v5.2 running IPX and NETX, and WordPerfect 5.1, onto a Windows 98SE bells-and-whistles running on a TCP/IP Win2KS network? (Then again, I'd be kicking and screaming, too.) (And, ironically, the one thing that made the transition less painful... was that she discovered the MS Office Assistant cat, Links.)
We have very far to go indeed before Joe Average and his sister are even remotely concerned about what the {RI|MP}AA are doing to our rights. Education is important, but when it comes down to it, you cannot teach those who are unwilling -- in, through fear, incapable -- of learning.
I don't know how most people feel about Salon. They have the occasional flamebait article that proves amusing (like David Brin's whine about how George Lucas is anti-democracy and how Joseph Campbell is a sophomore anthro student) but most of their stuff is just plain... well, I didn't really have the word for it until someone here on Slashdot found it was mostly "literary masturbation." My apologies to the slashdotter who posted that article, I would have liked to have bookmarked it but now I can't find it.
Salon is the Vanity Fair of the net, written by people who have a very high opinion of themselves. It's the one-sided equivalent of a stereotypical authors' party, all the guests trying to one-up one another with words. Look at the quality of what their writers put out, mostly in the category of sweeping generalizations.
For example, "All geeks live alternative lifestyles! Look at all the wild, kinky stuff geeks do! Even Richard Stallman lives alternatively!"
*sigh* I think we all remember that article. (Frankly, that was more about Richard Stallman than I ever wanted to know.) Okay, fine, some geeks living in the Valley/SanFran area live alternatively, and, sure, some geeks outside of that area have "alternative lifestyles," but, geez... ALL geeks aren't bisexual, polyamorous fetishists!
(Mind you, there's nothing wrong with any or all of the above. But most of the people in the alternative lifestyle community I know of take joy in the diversity of interests: "YKIOKIJNMK," or "Your Kink Is OK It'S Just Not My Kink" is a fairly common phrase. Put another way, if we all shared the same alternative lifestyles, it would be pretty damn boring... and what the hell would we be alternative TO, at that point?)
Or the other Salon gem -- this one kills me. I believe it was Vernor Vinge who presented a polite, opinion-based article about how the government should be involved with the moderation of speech on the Internet. It doesn't matter *why*. I disagree strongly with it and his reasoning, but, he had an opinion, and if you can find the article, it's well worth a read. Vinge is erudite and interesting, no matter what he's writing. The point is, however, that Salon published his article. Predictably enough, Salon then got innundated with several virtual tons of e-mail, most of them at least partly flammable if not incendiary. The upshot: Vinge's editor writes an article blasting his own author for his opinions! How's that for a stab in the back? Why the heck did Salon allow the article -- an opinion piece, not a news item -- if the editor so strenuously disliked it?
I guess what I'm saying is... Salon wants to charge subscription in lieu of banner ads? Fine by me, just don't expect me to pay them. And I find it hard to see why anyone would, BUT... YKIOKIJNMK. Anyone who wants to pay to read Salon is welcome to it. =)
Apologies for not being able to provide any links to the articles mentioned above. I tried to search for them but they were awfully elusive.
Well, it may be in their interest, but in a sense it is enlightened self-interest.
Even if it's only this one little battle that AOL-TimeWarner join us in, in the ongoing struggle for free speech on the net, and even if they were just trying to cut down the work their legal departments have to do, I would welcome their amicus brief. Granted, it's as a strange ally to have what is arguably the biggest mistake the US Federal Trade Commission ever allowed to happen. But I think this is a Good Thing for the net as a whole.
Something more to think about. Remember when the first of the anonymous e-mail systems went down the tubes? I speak of course of anon.penet.fi. It got torpedoed by Scientology who took umbrage at the anonymous posting of one of its members. If AOL's brief is accepted by judges for deciding of online defamation cases, we may actually have an end to such and similar cases.
(Yes, I know that Scientology got it's warrant by saying that it was copyrighted material. However, a court, with the belief that anonymous posting is a valid means of free speech, may be a little more reluctant, and look a little more carefully, at the issues the next time a hard-hitter comes up to them with a demand that an ISP turn over meatdata about a user.)
The important thing is, even if AOL is recommending 'closer looks' at "cybersmear" (what a bloody awful word!) cases before revealing anonymous posters' meatdata, that's a step in the right direction, and it is certainly a very good step.
And now... the flames! Lemmie get my s'mores out first, they always taste better roasted. =)
So as long as the Canadian never sets foot in the US, he's totally immune to the United States civil-justice system.
Be careful! IANAL, but you can be certain that any country that the US trades with will have a trade agreement with the US, which carefully lays out issues such as copyright/trademark infringement, tarriffs, acceptable imports/exports, etc.
Make note of that. Copyrights are an integral part of modern trade, and intellectual property is considered a tradable commodity, and since it can be traded between nations (import/export) trade agreements have to be able to cover it.
The guy might be Canadian, but the Canadian government and the RCMP will be happy to take him down if the government is served with 'sufficient evidence' by US concerns (i.e. the Ratcrabs Illicitly Aggreiving Artists) that he's breaking copyright law.
I hope it doesn't come to that, but look what happened in Norway, not at all that long ago....
Third, Sealand's independence has, to some extent, recognized by British courts.
Sorry to pick nits with this, but this isn't entirely accurate.
The Principality of Sealand is so-called because of an archaic British law saying that no man could be persecuted for supporting a prince. I don't know how this would stand up in a court of law, but that was the reasoning at the start.
Second, the British courts have NOT recognized Sealand. In the case where they were brought to court, it was for various tax issues. What the courts said, was that they were not qualified to try Sealand's people and that it was a case for the Foreign Office. There's a subtle but great distinction here. British courts cannot just up and recognize sovereignity. What they did do, however, was recognize that the law was ambiguous enough that the possibility existed that Sealand COULD be its own nation. So far the British government has not challenged this in the UN or the World Court (if that's even something the World Court handles.)
Actually, I had a similar problem. At first I tried to hook my DVD player through my VCR, and that didn't work because some DVDs would have wierdo image problems. I thought it was my TV or my player or something. Then I RTFM and it mentioned that it was a security thing, screwing with the analog signal. The nice folks at Radio Smack suggested an RF Rectifier (I think that's what it was; it's a small box, about 4 inches by two inches by one inch (you folks accross the Pond can do your own conversions for this one, sorry.;) )) and now it works nicely. However, I have not yet tried to -record- a VHS tape from a DVD. I should try that at some point.
By the way, anyone know where to find non-Region/chipped players, or has the MPAA sued the stuffing out of anyone offering them?
Something struck me as I was reading one of the earlier posts, and it seemed ver important to the issue of quantum computing. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle basically says (in a nutshell) that the measurement of a particle will change the state of that particle. (I believe that's the upshot of being able to measure state or location, but not both. Physicists on the board, please correct me if I'm wrong!)
That brought up the concern to me, then, of how quibits are supposed to be read. If I have 0x0BADBABE stored in a quantum memory register, and I use any means of reading that register, then either the location or the state is going to change of the quibits. Since one can't very well have registers flying all over the place not knowing where they are, (and if they are caged by buckyballs as mentioned in the article, then they won't be going anywhere) that would mean the state changes, making it useless. In fact, this sort of puts the kibosh on quantum computing completely.
So why are top researchers putting so much time and energy into this field? What am I missing?
"Here lies Carl Macek, died while trying to make a Robotech video. Man, he must have really f***ed up."
Not sure where that's from, but it seemed appropriate. =)
Most non-otaku don't realize that Robotech was three series: Superdimensional Fortress Macross, Superdimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. All were done by the same animation house, but Macross and Southern Cross were actually designed by the same guy. He also did a third "Superdimensional" series, Orguss, which is also out on tape. (Makes you wonder why Macek just didn't pick up all three of the Superdim. series and glom THEM together. We should count ourselves lucky....)
We can at least take courage in the fact that not all of the citizens of the US are sheeple, and that people CAN make their voice heard.
Remember this, folks. People complaining made this happen. There's still hope for us in other causes. Being silent wouldn't have made this happen. Only by making nooise did this get stopped.
Though, I do have to wonder, will they be doing this anyway, on the sly?
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you go onto a MU*, in which case it jumps up to, oh, what is it these days, 30-40% or so? =)
From the start of genetic engineering for food crops, we should have seen that corporations would start to patent genes. We should have realized that just making the human genome public domain would not be enough. This decision is only for a food crop today, but it will set the standard for future court cases.
Don't think it can happen? With this decision, I see it as much more likely than any sort of legal and bioethical issues revolving round human cloning.I would be very interested in hearing discussion from bioethics students and philosophers. We are rapidly entering a point in time, if we have not already passed said point, when to merely be able to do a thing is not enough reason to actually do that thing.
So... what now? Unlike politicians, whom we have passing rapport with anyways, research companies are beyond our reach. We cannot picket them, we cannot blast them verbally, we cannot do anything to stop them. Beyond those doors, God Money is what dictates what happens.
That leaves us with the legistlatures of our respective countries. The governments must be made aware of the ethical horror which is threatening us. For make no mistake, we are verily threatened. This is not an SF ethics-thriller, this is not a grade-B horror film, this is real. The genes are real, the people are real, and the future... the future is all too frighteningly real.
The United States is actually rather palatial as far as armed police go. Yes, in quite a few metropolitan areas, the police have shotguns in the cars; in some of these, the shotguns are in racks in the front of the car.
However, there is an important point to be made: the United States does not have a national police force, it does not have a police force that is paramilitary in nature and equipment. (SWAT/response teams are the exception, but they are a part of most major police departments, and not the department itself.)
Some European countries, actually, have even scarier things. France has a national, paramilitary police force, the Gendarme', which not only has automatic weapons, but also armored cars (virtually infantry fighting vehicles) and a paratrooper unit.
When I went to Spain for the World's Fair, parked outside the walls was a white armored car with a black turret, armed with a machine gun. Was it from the Army? No; emblazioned on it's side was POLIZEI. (I beleive that is the spelling of 'police' in Spanish. My apologies, it has been some time.)
Especially after Kent State, it will be very rare that you find military forces involved in the enforcement of domestic laws in the United States, and you will certainly not see armed and armored vehicles being normally used in law enforcement. (Again, there are rare exceptions, like the LAPD APC that gets toasted in Die Hard. =) That, however, and most metro police armored units, are not armed. Another exception was when National Guard units were deployed during the LA riots, but -- and this is unbelievable -- they weren't even issued ammunition at first!)
Corrections are, of course, welcome. =)
We will all bend over, because the average John Q. Public has no idea that the RIAA is doing this.
Nor does he care. Let's face the facts, here: Your average person just buys a CD. They don't have a burner at home, they might have a 5- or 6-disk carrycase for their favorite albums of the moment which they can bring into the car (if they even HAVE a car CD player) or to work. Fair use? To the average music CD consumer, they're getting their fair use out of it, playing it wherever they want.
Your average person has never heard of the DMCA. He has probably never even heard of the riaa before the Napster case, and has an imperfect understanding of what it is. And your average person will not have even heard of copy-protection on CDs, and likely never will learn. Why? Because that's outside their world.
We live in a world of packets and Perl, of Unix and USB, of code and SOAP and SMB. We speak a language that most users find incomprehensible -- not because they're dumb or clueless, but because it's not in their world. Talk with an economist or a biochemist, and I'm sure they'll make utterances you can't even begin to grasp. It's the same way with most users and anything to do with computers.
And just like only doctors and medical researchers might be up on the latest discussions of bioethics and medical legistlation, so too are we going to be the ones (perhaps the only ones) most in touch with Internet legislation and "Your Rights Online."
There is startlingly little chance of changing peoples' views about this. They have their concerns and their worries. It does not matter to them if CDs are copy protected -- they weren't going to be even thinking of copying a CD anyway. Make a copy of a CD onto another CD? Bizzare! Amazing! And, frankly, frightening. In trying to educate most users you are dealing with an inordinate but (make no mistake) very, very real fear of technology. It's annoying to us, it's frustrating, to hear a user whine about how they don't like using computers; would you believe, I had one user get "very upset" when I had to drag her (almost kicking and screaming) from her Novell client MS-DOS v5.2 running IPX and NETX, and WordPerfect 5.1, onto a Windows 98SE bells-and-whistles running on a TCP/IP Win2KS network? (Then again, I'd be kicking and screaming, too.) (And, ironically, the one thing that made the transition less painful... was that she discovered the MS Office Assistant cat, Links.)
We have very far to go indeed before Joe Average and his sister are even remotely concerned about what the {RI|MP}AA are doing to our rights. Education is important, but when it comes down to it, you cannot teach those who are unwilling -- in, through fear, incapable -- of learning.
I don't know how most people feel about Salon. They have the occasional flamebait article that proves amusing (like David Brin's whine about how George Lucas is anti-democracy and how Joseph Campbell is a sophomore anthro student) but most of their stuff is just plain... well, I didn't really have the word for it until someone here on Slashdot found it was mostly "literary masturbation." My apologies to the slashdotter who posted that article, I would have liked to have bookmarked it but now I can't find it. Salon is the Vanity Fair of the net, written by people who have a very high opinion of themselves. It's the one-sided equivalent of a stereotypical authors' party, all the guests trying to one-up one another with words. Look at the quality of what their writers put out, mostly in the category of sweeping generalizations. For example, "All geeks live alternative lifestyles! Look at all the wild, kinky stuff geeks do! Even Richard Stallman lives alternatively!" *sigh* I think we all remember that article. (Frankly, that was more about Richard Stallman than I ever wanted to know.) Okay, fine, some geeks living in the Valley/SanFran area live alternatively, and, sure, some geeks outside of that area have "alternative lifestyles," but, geez... ALL geeks aren't bisexual, polyamorous fetishists! (Mind you, there's nothing wrong with any or all of the above. But most of the people in the alternative lifestyle community I know of take joy in the diversity of interests: "YKIOKIJNMK," or "Your Kink Is OK It'S Just Not My Kink" is a fairly common phrase. Put another way, if we all shared the same alternative lifestyles, it would be pretty damn boring... and what the hell would we be alternative TO, at that point?) Or the other Salon gem -- this one kills me. I believe it was Vernor Vinge who presented a polite, opinion-based article about how the government should be involved with the moderation of speech on the Internet. It doesn't matter *why*. I disagree strongly with it and his reasoning, but, he had an opinion, and if you can find the article, it's well worth a read. Vinge is erudite and interesting, no matter what he's writing. The point is, however, that Salon published his article. Predictably enough, Salon then got innundated with several virtual tons of e-mail, most of them at least partly flammable if not incendiary. The upshot: Vinge's editor writes an article blasting his own author for his opinions! How's that for a stab in the back? Why the heck did Salon allow the article -- an opinion piece, not a news item -- if the editor so strenuously disliked it? I guess what I'm saying is... Salon wants to charge subscription in lieu of banner ads? Fine by me, just don't expect me to pay them. And I find it hard to see why anyone would, BUT... YKIOKIJNMK. Anyone who wants to pay to read Salon is welcome to it. =) Apologies for not being able to provide any links to the articles mentioned above. I tried to search for them but they were awfully elusive.
Even if it's only this one little battle that AOL-TimeWarner join us in, in the ongoing struggle for free speech on the net, and even if they were just trying to cut down the work their legal departments have to do, I would welcome their amicus brief. Granted, it's as a strange ally to have what is arguably the biggest mistake the US Federal Trade Commission ever allowed to happen. But I think this is a Good Thing for the net as a whole.
Something more to think about. Remember when the first of the anonymous e-mail systems went down the tubes? I speak of course of anon.penet.fi. It got torpedoed by Scientology who took umbrage at the anonymous posting of one of its members. If AOL's brief is accepted by judges for deciding of online defamation cases, we may actually have an end to such and similar cases.
(Yes, I know that Scientology got it's warrant by saying that it was copyrighted material. However, a court, with the belief that anonymous posting is a valid means of free speech, may be a little more reluctant, and look a little more carefully, at the issues the next time a hard-hitter comes up to them with a demand that an ISP turn over meatdata about a user.)
The important thing is, even if AOL is recommending 'closer looks' at "cybersmear" (what a bloody awful word!) cases before revealing anonymous posters' meatdata, that's a step in the right direction, and it is certainly a very good step.
And now... the flames! Lemmie get my s'mores out first, they always taste better roasted. =)
Be careful! IANAL, but you can be certain that any country that the US trades with will have a trade agreement with the US, which carefully lays out issues such as copyright/trademark infringement, tarriffs, acceptable imports/exports, etc.
Make note of that. Copyrights are an integral part of modern trade, and intellectual property is considered a tradable commodity, and since it can be traded between nations (import/export) trade agreements have to be able to cover it.
The guy might be Canadian, but the Canadian government and the RCMP will be happy to take him down if the government is served with 'sufficient evidence' by US concerns (i.e. the Ratcrabs Illicitly Aggreiving Artists) that he's breaking copyright law.
I hope it doesn't come to that, but look what happened in Norway, not at all that long ago....
Sorry to pick nits with this, but this isn't entirely accurate.
The Principality of Sealand is so-called because of an archaic British law saying that no man could be persecuted for supporting a prince. I don't know how this would stand up in a court of law, but that was the reasoning at the start.
Second, the British courts have NOT recognized Sealand. In the case where they were brought to court, it was for various tax issues. What the courts said, was that they were not qualified to try Sealand's people and that it was a case for the Foreign Office. There's a subtle but great distinction here. British courts cannot just up and recognize sovereignity. What they did do, however, was recognize that the law was ambiguous enough that the possibility existed that Sealand COULD be its own nation. So far the British government has not challenged this in the UN or the World Court (if that's even something the World Court handles.)
By the way, anyone know where to find non-Region/chipped players, or has the MPAA sued the stuffing out of anyone offering them?
I knew I was probably getting something mixed up, but I had no clue what. I am now enclued. ;) Thank you to all who answered my questions!
That brought up the concern to me, then, of how quibits are supposed to be read. If I have 0x0BADBABE stored in a quantum memory register, and I use any means of reading that register, then either the location or the state is going to change of the quibits. Since one can't very well have registers flying all over the place not knowing where they are, (and if they are caged by buckyballs as mentioned in the article, then they won't be going anywhere) that would mean the state changes, making it useless. In fact, this sort of puts the kibosh on quantum computing completely.
So why are top researchers putting so much time and energy into this field? What am I missing?
Not sure where that's from, but it seemed appropriate. =)
Most non-otaku don't realize that Robotech was three series: Superdimensional Fortress Macross, Superdimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. All were done by the same animation house, but Macross and Southern Cross were actually designed by the same guy. He also did a third "Superdimensional" series, Orguss, which is also out on tape. (Makes you wonder why Macek just didn't pick up all three of the Superdim. series and glom THEM together. We should count ourselves lucky....)
We can at least take courage in the fact that not all of the citizens of the US are sheeple, and that people CAN make their voice heard. Remember this, folks. People complaining made this happen. There's still hope for us in other causes. Being silent wouldn't have made this happen. Only by making nooise did this get stopped. Though, I do have to wonder, will they be doing this anyway, on the sly?