Several American cities have filed suit against gun manufacturers for marketing an unsafe product. Some of the manufacturers have settled by making concessions on things like trigger locks.
If you think copyright law is a bad thing (Disclaimer: I don't), then try to get the law changed. Don't just break the law and wait for someone else to change it for you.
Copyright is not a binary thing -- either on or off. There is a lot of gray area as to what constitutes fair use, and what rights copyright holders can restrict the public from having. It's not about whether copyright is good or bad -- it's about where the copyright holder's rights end and fair use begins.
This distinction is not trivial. It is probably one of the most important issues that we have to resolve as we enter the networked world.
The question of what constitutes fair use will not be answered until it is asked -- i.e., until it is raised by events on the ground. Napster raises these issues in ways that were probably inevitable. Is it legal for me to have friends over to listen to my new Metallica CD (leaving aside for the moment whether doing so will allow me to keep my friends)? I think most of us would say yes. So how does that right translate to "virtual" space? Can I let them listen to a copy of it? Can I stream it? Maybe I can and maybe I can't, but the question will not be answered until I try and someone else challenges me on it.
Also, Napster does have legitmate, lawful uses. Should it be shut down or otherwise hindered to prevent the unlawful uses it also enables? Again, this issue is not just restricted to Napster; it applies to many other technologies that have emerged in the last few years and will emerge in those to come. Remember: RIAA tried to prevent Diamond Multimedia from selling the Rio for similar reasons.
It's not about being "for" or "against" copyright law, though the RIAA would probably like the issue framed that way. It's about what kind of copyright law we want to have, and what kind of solutions we can come up with to resolve the fuzzy bits. The Napster case is part of the national conversation that we are having to try to settle the issue.
I suppose someone is going try to make a arbitrary music writing program based on this info , no?
It may have already happened. It would explain the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the Backstreet Boys better than any other scenario I can think of.
What a great idea! This could be a whole genre in itself, like classic gaming! Think of the possibilities:
Software that slows your computer down so you can see what it would have been like to run Unreal on a 286;
Mailing lists with aficionados of poor reception advising each other of the exact settings to use to make cable reception on popular models of television look like the signal is coming into a bent coathanger jammed into the back of the TV;
Petitioning supermarkets and other grocery stores to be open only from 9-5, like in the old days.
IIRC, the book was Applied Cryptography, and could be exported as long as it didn't include the floppies with the source in it. The export regs said that the encryption algorithm was only a munition if it was in "machine-readable" form. So people overseas just bought the book without the floppies and typed in the source code themselves.
So if I am not mistaken, the issue actually had to do with the language of the export regulations and therefore wouldn't apply here.
There was also a t-shirt angle to this one. Joel Furr had a short Perl algorithm converted to barcode (and therefore made machine-readable) and put on t-shirts, which he sold only to those who would provide notarized statements that they would not export the shirts. He applied for an export license with something to the effect of: "the algorithm is printed in barcode form on a high-quality, all-cotton 'Beefy-T', so in addition to being machine-readable, it's also machine-washable."
There were also stories about people who got the barcode tattooed onto themselves, thus making them unexportable munitions under the export regulations. Don't know if any of these were true.
I think we should pass a law prohibiting politicians and members of the government from discussing or promoting laws which contradict, restrict, or attempt to invalidate constitutional rights.
Absolutely! We must immediately pass a law outlawing the discussion of laws that restrict free speech. Also, we should make it illegal for more than 2 Congressmen to convene if we have a well-founded fear that they intend to erode our freedom of assembly. And the media should be prohibited from giving coverage to lawmakers who seek to weaken the freedom of the press.
We must defend our rights! The price of liberty is everybody else's liberty!
Perhaps a model like this could be packaged as an off-the-shelf (or almost off-the-shelf) solution for other underserved areas. I'm thinking mostly of developing countries. A model that was built expressly to be easily replicable could be made available to anyone who wanted to set up an ISP in an underserved area. This would bring costs and risks down for potential entrepreneurs; a critical factor in low-income areas.
Perhaps Geekcorps or a similar initiative could take on such a project.
I am an international development professional by trade. I am currently living and working in Egypt on a project not related to information technology.
While I understand that things like Internet access for developing countries may seem frivolous in the face of other very real and very pressing needs, there is sound theory behind it and I believe it is a critical piece of the international development puzzle today.
First of all, nobody is suggesting that we wire developing countries to the exclusion of other interventions. Geekcorps and similar initiatives do not exist in a development/aid vacuum; there are many other organizations working on other worthy projects in a wide variety of areas.
While starvation must of course be addressed when it occurs, it is not sufficient to simply hand out bags of food. Over the last several decades we have seen repeated cycles of starvation in the Horn of Africa which have not been alleviated in the long term - many argue they have been exacerbated - by the mass distribution of food and seeds. We need to look at what causes famine in order to end the cycle. And we can trace many of the complex, intertwined causes of famine back to general poor economic health.
Similarly, we see war and civil instability in many developing countries, and we really have no proven methodologies to end such conflicts once they have started. If we are to prevent them in the first place, we must look to their root causes, and again economics is high on the list.
It's early days yet, but the way that commerce is conducted has already been turned upside-down by information technology and other recent developments in globalization. This trend offers both great perils and great opportunities for the developing world. Developing countries shut out of the IT revolution risk falling even further by the wayside of the global economy. Not only will non-wired countries be locked out of the new economy, but they risk having their old standby exports priced out of the market by more efficient, wired producers. At the same time, this technology twists comparative advantage into new and exciting shapes, and developing countries with even a modest information infrastructure may be able to broaden the base of their economies and compete worldwide in sectors and geographical areas that were completely closed to them before.
Is IT a magic bullet that will end starvation and war? Of course not - there's no such thing. But it is a very important part of a larger equation of economic development that is our best hope of alleviating these and many of the other problems that face developing countries.
These initiatives are serious, they are very badly needed, and they deserve to be supported.
Slashdot Mirror
Several American cities have filed suit against gun manufacturers for marketing an unsafe product. Some of the manufacturers have settled by making concessions on things like trigger locks.
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Yeah. Slashdot is all about getting up and shouting, "Microsoft sucks."
So let's get back to business.
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Er, two weeks?
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Copyright is not a binary thing -- either on or off. There is a lot of gray area as to what constitutes fair use, and what rights copyright holders can restrict the public from having. It's not about whether copyright is good or bad -- it's about where the copyright holder's rights end and fair use begins.
This distinction is not trivial. It is probably one of the most important issues that we have to resolve as we enter the networked world.
The question of what constitutes fair use will not be answered until it is asked -- i.e., until it is raised by events on the ground. Napster raises these issues in ways that were probably inevitable. Is it legal for me to have friends over to listen to my new Metallica CD (leaving aside for the moment whether doing so will allow me to keep my friends)? I think most of us would say yes. So how does that right translate to "virtual" space? Can I let them listen to a copy of it? Can I stream it? Maybe I can and maybe I can't, but the question will not be answered until I try and someone else challenges me on it.
Also, Napster does have legitmate, lawful uses. Should it be shut down or otherwise hindered to prevent the unlawful uses it also enables? Again, this issue is not just restricted to Napster; it applies to many other technologies that have emerged in the last few years and will emerge in those to come. Remember: RIAA tried to prevent Diamond Multimedia from selling the Rio for similar reasons.
It's not about being "for" or "against" copyright law, though the RIAA would probably like the issue framed that way. It's about what kind of copyright law we want to have, and what kind of solutions we can come up with to resolve the fuzzy bits. The Napster case is part of the national conversation that we are having to try to settle the issue.
-
It may have already happened. It would explain the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the Backstreet Boys better than any other scenario I can think of.
-
What a great idea! This could be a whole genre in itself, like classic gaming! Think of the possibilities:
Software that slows your computer down so you can see what it would have been like to run Unreal on a 286;
Mailing lists with aficionados of poor reception advising each other of the exact settings to use to make cable reception on popular models of television look like the signal is coming into a bent coathanger jammed into the back of the TV;
Petitioning supermarkets and other grocery stores to be open only from 9-5, like in the old days.
The possibilities are limitless!
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I believe it's a 'gaggle' of geeks.
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IIRC, the book was Applied Cryptography, and could be exported as long as it didn't include the floppies with the source in it. The export regs said that the encryption algorithm was only a munition if it was in "machine-readable" form. So people overseas just bought the book without the floppies and typed in the source code themselves.
So if I am not mistaken, the issue actually had to do with the language of the export regulations and therefore wouldn't apply here.
There was also a t-shirt angle to this one. Joel Furr had a short Perl algorithm converted to barcode (and therefore made machine-readable) and put on t-shirts, which he sold only to those who would provide notarized statements that they would not export the shirts. He applied for an export license with something to the effect of: "the algorithm is printed in barcode form on a high-quality, all-cotton 'Beefy-T', so in addition to being machine-readable, it's also machine-washable."
There were also stories about people who got the barcode tattooed onto themselves, thus making them unexportable munitions under the export regulations. Don't know if any of these were true.
-
Absolutely! We must immediately pass a law outlawing the discussion of laws that restrict free speech. Also, we should make it illegal for more than 2 Congressmen to convene if we have a well-founded fear that they intend to erode our freedom of assembly. And the media should be prohibited from giving coverage to lawmakers who seek to weaken the freedom of the press.
We must defend our rights! The price of liberty is everybody else's liberty!
-
Well, they are trying to compete with Windows.
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Perhaps a model like this could be packaged as an off-the-shelf (or almost off-the-shelf) solution for other underserved areas. I'm thinking mostly of developing countries. A model that was built expressly to be easily replicable could be made available to anyone who wanted to set up an ISP in an underserved area. This would bring costs and risks down for potential entrepreneurs; a critical factor in low-income areas.
Perhaps Geekcorps or a similar initiative could take on such a project.
I'm confused -- you want to ban an organization because you feel they are not defending civil rights vigorously enough?
I am an international development professional by trade. I am currently living and working in Egypt on a project not related to information technology.
While I understand that things like Internet access for developing countries may seem frivolous in the face of other very real and very pressing needs, there is sound theory behind it and I believe it is a critical piece of the international development puzzle today.
First of all, nobody is suggesting that we wire developing countries to the exclusion of other interventions. Geekcorps and similar initiatives do not exist in a development/aid vacuum; there are many other organizations working on other worthy projects in a wide variety of areas.
While starvation must of course be addressed when it occurs, it is not sufficient to simply hand out bags of food. Over the last several decades we have seen repeated cycles of starvation in the Horn of Africa which have not been alleviated in the long term - many argue they have been exacerbated - by the mass distribution of food and seeds. We need to look at what causes famine in order to end the cycle. And we can trace many of the complex, intertwined causes of famine back to general poor economic health.
Similarly, we see war and civil instability in many developing countries, and we really have no proven methodologies to end such conflicts once they have started. If we are to prevent them in the first place, we must look to their root causes, and again economics is high on the list.
It's early days yet, but the way that commerce is conducted has already been turned upside-down by information technology and other recent developments in globalization. This trend offers both great perils and great opportunities for the developing world. Developing countries shut out of the IT revolution risk falling even further by the wayside of the global economy. Not only will non-wired countries be locked out of the new economy, but they risk having their old standby exports priced out of the market by more efficient, wired producers. At the same time, this technology twists comparative advantage into new and exciting shapes, and developing countries with even a modest information infrastructure may be able to broaden the base of their economies and compete worldwide in sectors and geographical areas that were completely closed to them before.
Is IT a magic bullet that will end starvation and war? Of course not - there's no such thing. But it is a very important part of a larger equation of economic development that is our best hope of alleviating these and many of the other problems that face developing countries.
These initiatives are serious, they are very badly needed, and they deserve to be supported.
- Rob