I'll take four hours installing GNU/Linux over four hours trying to recover from the latest virus invasion on my Windows system any day. Really. How many people do you know that run Windows who haven't had some terrible corruption issue from spyware, viruses, worms, etc?
This four freedoms discussion is more interesting if we're talking about whether to use Photoshop on Mac OS X over the GIMP or whether we're comparing Oracle on some proprietary Unix over postgresql or mysql on GNU/Linux.
That link is hardly free of bias. Unlike you, I did get most of the answers "right". But they're so obviously tainted that one has to wonder what value they add to an already difficult discussion.
No. I'm referring how "intellectual property rights" interfere with existing property rights and my right to contribute my own labor to whatever endeavor I choose. Copyright law is not about "taking" someone else's labor. It is about preventing me from using my own property and labor as I see fit.
I don't think that does much to help protect the temporary files stored in/tmp, does it? The problem is files in/tmp with the wrong permissions as I understand it. Which, if we're really being paranoid, the files shouldn't even be in/tmp in the first place, because even exposing the knowledge that there is a file is a security lapse (if you can `ls/tmp` you can see that there is a file, even if you can't read it).
Frankly I think the third warning is mostly hype. On many multi-user machines and even multi-system LANs, simply using a tool like tcpdump is going to expose a lot of web traffic to anyone who wants to listen. But because there are ways to be paranoid in such situations, the browser shouldn't casually discard your efforts at security.
That might not be a bad approach. The whole idea of there being a "one true entry" is flawed--and Wiki does have revision history to help limit the sense that "this is it", but it's relatively opaque for the casual user. For the tool to be effective it needs to help users understand and manage the problem, which is that anyone can edit an entry at any time. I was thinking more like Slashdot's friends and foes lists, though.
The problem here isn't many eyes. The problem is that only one version at a time displays--so while the correct information may have been there once, it may not be there now. What is missing is a way to "trust" certain editors, or at least to "distrust" certain editors, and see the articles with only trusted edits, or without distrusted edits. Another nice option would be some sort of display similar to CVS blame, showing the whole article with x number of recent edits displayed inline with color coding or other mechanism to track who added what when.
Worst that can happen is ~/bin and ~/lib getting infected
Be imaginative. If they can infect anything in ~ then they can also delete anything your user ID has write permission on (so unless you backup nightly you stand to lose a few days worth of email or work). They could also modify things like.xinitrc (how often do you look at that? probably not very often I would guess). They could modify.bashrc (i.e. to alias all of your normal shell commands to trojans running out of a hidden directory three layers down inside a normal hidden directory--how often do you go poking around in the bowels of.mozilla?). Anyone of those options provides them with a way to watch for the almighty su command and capture the password, and blam there goes your whole system. Or they could take advantage of local root exploits.
Even without all of this plenty of damage can be done just with user access. It doesn't take root to run spambots, servers (except on certain ports), rifle through my files for something interesting, etc etc. How about if they manage to get user access on the system of someone who works on very interesting software and they trojan that?
Running Linux is not, and never has been a cure-all for security concerns. Software will never replace the process of taking care around security issues (although software can be assistive in taking such care). Still, Linux wins on security not because it is naturally better but because it is free software. When you have the source you are not at the mercy of $corporation to get the problem fixed.
If it's not free (as in speech) software why would I want to try it when I already know and love the GIMP? Does it do anything the GIMP doesn't, other than install easily on newer Microsoft Windows machines?
Since the restrictions in the case of a DVD player result from patent law and the restrictions in the case of the movies result from copyright law, comparing the two is really dumb. I'm going to choose to blame the intellectual fraud known as "intellectual property" for your inability or unwillingness to differentiate the two.
The point here that I don't get is: if the DVD plays fine in a DVD player, why would my computer have trouble playing it? DVDs are already chock full of DRM BS. They are usually encrypted with CSS and typically contain region codes to prevent international use. Thankfully we can avoid them both at this time. I consider both CSS and region coding to be an abrogation of my rights as a consumer. Fair Use is a right, not a privilege, and any DRM scheme that defeats it ought to be outlawed, not protected by law. Copyright law already makes it illegal to distribute copies without authorization, so why are we layering laws on top of that. Stick to the crime here. Anything more restrictive than that violates the First Amendment. Imagine a law banning books that promote racial discrimination--discrimination is illegal, so why not make books promote it illegal too?
"Intellectual property" can be a fraud without copyright being illegitimate. "Intellectual property" is a catch-all phrase that confounds several separate and distinct concepts into a single muddled idea and then attempts to shoehorn in existing thinking about real property by using confusing terminology. It may actually be in the public's interest to temporarily grant exclusive rights related to the copying of a work to that work's author(s) in order to stimulate development of those works. And this is the stated purpose of copyright in the U.S. Constitution.
But you seem to want to engage in muddled thinking, even to the point where you end up equating copying something with stealing something ("taking" you said-- salt, specifically). I am saying that the "taking" analogy does not belong here. Shoplifting is "taking", copying is "making". There is a substantial difference, both in the underlying real actions and in terms of the law and morality. It disturbs me to see the penalties for copying becoming more like those for shoplifting. In fact, we may be seeing the start of a world in which copying is punished more severely than actual stealing of physical goods.
And while I'm flattered by the attention, attempting to go after me personally rather than stick to the issues is distracting... But to one of your points, given the current legal environment, those of us who wish to share creative works more freely would do well to use "share and share alike" licenses when we have that opportunity (which are not any type of "intellectual property," a license is permission to use a restricted work in additional ways that the legal defaults don't allow), not only to encourage sharing but to protect ourselves from the possibility that our own work would be used against us.
If you still want to call that hypocrisy, fine, but it still doesn't change the assumptions on which I base my argument or the logic I use to reach my conclusions. Especially since I'm not rejecting copyright entirely, but rather this notion of "intellectual property".
To me these issues seem important because they become about who owns culture, art, and even this discourse itself. Do I think people who create works of art should have a way to feed their families? Of course I do. But at the cost of my own freedom of expression? No. And this is my concern. This is why I tend to support those artists who encourage sharing and those organizations that create free (as in speech) software.
I mostly agree, except that the transactions may not be HTTP-based. We are already used to www.*.com, ftp.*.com, smtp.*.com, etc. So really it should be mobile.*.com, toaster.*.com, etc. I know the third level used to indicate a specific server, but there was often a one-to-one relationship between the server as shown in the URL and the protocol it used. These days the host is almost always virtual (either a single machine serving lots of domains and sub-domains or a clutser of machines serving a single domain or both) so it's even less of an issue, just map the mobile.*.com address to the right port on the server.
I can understand *.jobs within the current setup, but I think it's stupid too. What jobs? If it's a specific company, polity, organization or whatever, they should just use jobs.*.com, jobs.*.gov, jobs.*.org. If it's a site devoted to job listings from various sources, that is either a commercial service (like monster.com) or a non-profit or government service (imagine a monster.org).
Nice dark fantasy, but drugs are a black market good that are illegal to obtain at any price, hence there is no way to stimulate supply except to raise the prices on drugs until sellers are willing to break the law (their profits offset their assumed risks). The only price competition in the drug market is with other illegal drug sellers (and perhaps a handful of legal substitutes like alcohol). With bootlegs, the goods are available legally, so there is an automatic limit to how much an illegal seller can charge since the bootlegs are direct competitors with the legal copies.
Our real concern here should not be whether the jackbooted thugs are coming for the makers of bootleg CDs, but whether there will eventually be a erosion on fair use. We are already seeing some of that when it comes to things like sampling, parodies, etc. The only bootlegs that will persist in a "war on copying" are those works that would be illegal to sell at any price. Other than that, my own desire to make copies goes away pretty quickly when the risks are higher than the retail price of the work in question.
My mistake. Thank you for your patience. I scanned the article rather quickly, which says the outcome of the case was codified in the 1976 law, missing the earlier reference to the correct date.
To duplicate another's labors has always been ethically suspect
No. It hasn't. Pretending that another's labors were your own work has always been suspect (i.e. plagiarism). Copying them, especially deriving from them, have not. As I understand it most of Aesop's fables, Shakespeare's plays, and many Disney movies "duplicate" another labors. Are you whining about that being stealing? I can almost buy the idea that exact duplicates are unethical, but current copyright law puts heavy limits on derivation and reinterpretation as well. This is why using words like "stealing" or even "taking" is so annoying (and I never feigned personal insult, I'm not taking this personally, duh). We need to be very specific about what acts are moral or legal and not sit around and use overly broad terms like "intellectual property" to mean as divergent things as copyright, patent, trademark, and even trade secrets, and then start using misleading terms like "stealing" when referring to duplication.
I'm not missing the point. jschottm had a very good point about supporting media outlets that don't screw their customers. No argument there.
But jschottm also wanted to play the morality card and confuse the issue with loaded words. OP wasn't on any moral high horse, so the reference to Ghandi was something of a non-sequitor. Finally, there is a substantial and real difference between stealing salt and making copies of a movie. Calling something "taking" that is not "taking" is an attempt to subvert the very discussion by changing the meaning of the words midstream. Doubleplusungood.
Don't pretend you're on some kind of moral high ground. Ghandi didn't take British salt, he made his own.
Even the law refers to the act under discussion as "copying" rather than "stealing" for a reason--so it would be conducive to the discussion if you would stick to the more accurate terms already in use and not the loaded terms that a small group of corporations are attempting to push into use. And if you want to talk about moral high ground show me one moral code in all of recorded history that even took a stance on this intellectual fraud known as "intellectual property". You can't do it. Why? Because without the act now known as "piracy" we wouldn't even have a recorded history.
Copyright law does not have any language regarding intent that I'm aware of. Anyway, if you are using BitTorrent to download copyright restricted works, I can't imagine how that's going to engender any sympathy on the part of your local judge or jury. There is already a prevailing feeling (among the people I talk to, anyway) that even downloading is not morally acceptable.
In this case, it would be wise to simply not use BitTorrent for sharing copyright restricted works without permission from the person or organization that has the copyright for the work. BT was never intended to anonymize users or be a one-way stream. The BT application works best when users share data and client and tracker software can accurately detect which IP is doing what. If no one shared while using BT, the whole process would be no more efficient than a simple HTTP or FTP transfer. Anonymity would interfere with the tit-for-tat algorithm that throttles upload and download to different clients depending on their own sharing practices.
Personally I'm done using BT for "sharing" copyrighted works. Too bad for the MPAA and RIAA, really. My latest discovery via P2P was "Penn and Teller's Bullshit!" After viewing several episodes downloaded via BT, I went out and bought the DVD set of the first season. A $45 purchase I would have never made otherwise. Oh well, there's still USENET.:)
Or for the same price I could just get cable and subscribe to a few premium channels and record all this stuff directly to digital (for now). You'd think the MPAA would learn from the RIAA and move quickly to get direct digital distribution going. I'd pay $2 for a commercial-free 1/2 hour show and $4 for hour shows. $5 or $6 for a movie. Skip all the useless DVD packaging. Of course, the files will need to be at least as good quality as the rips out there, and playable on GNU/Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take four hours installing GNU/Linux over four hours trying to recover from the latest virus invasion on my Windows system any day. Really. How many people do you know that run Windows who haven't had some terrible corruption issue from spyware, viruses, worms, etc?
This four freedoms discussion is more interesting if we're talking about whether to use Photoshop on Mac OS X over the GIMP or whether we're comparing Oracle on some proprietary Unix over postgresql or mysql on GNU/Linux.
That link is hardly free of bias. Unlike you, I did get most of the answers "right". But they're so obviously tainted that one has to wonder what value they add to an already difficult discussion.
No. I'm referring how "intellectual property rights" interfere with existing property rights and my right to contribute my own labor to whatever endeavor I choose. Copyright law is not about "taking" someone else's labor. It is about preventing me from using my own property and labor as I see fit.
I don't think that does much to help protect the temporary files stored in /tmp, does it? The problem is files in /tmp with the wrong permissions as I understand it. Which, if we're really being paranoid, the files shouldn't even be in /tmp in the first place, because even exposing the knowledge that there is a file is a security lapse (if you can `ls /tmp` you can see that there is a file, even if you can't read it).
Frankly I think the third warning is mostly hype. On many multi-user machines and even multi-system LANs, simply using a tool like tcpdump is going to expose a lot of web traffic to anyone who wants to listen. But because there are ways to be paranoid in such situations, the browser shouldn't casually discard your efforts at security.
what gives you the right to the labor of another man?
what gives another man the right to prevent me from using my own property and my own labor to make a copy of something I came to possess lawfully?
they could sell people their own piss if they wanted to.
Spoken like someone who's seen a movie made in the last few years. Although I probably would have used a different excretion, the idea is the same.
That might not be a bad approach. The whole idea of there being a "one true entry" is flawed--and Wiki does have revision history to help limit the sense that "this is it", but it's relatively opaque for the casual user. For the tool to be effective it needs to help users understand and manage the problem, which is that anyone can edit an entry at any time. I was thinking more like Slashdot's friends and foes lists, though.
The problem here isn't many eyes. The problem is that only one version at a time displays--so while the correct information may have been there once, it may not be there now. What is missing is a way to "trust" certain editors, or at least to "distrust" certain editors, and see the articles with only trusted edits, or without distrusted edits. Another nice option would be some sort of display similar to CVS blame, showing the whole article with x number of recent edits displayed inline with color coding or other mechanism to track who added what when.
Worst that can happen is ~/bin and ~/lib getting infected
.xinitrc (how often do you look at that? probably not very often I would guess). They could modify .bashrc (i.e. to alias all of your normal shell commands to trojans running out of a hidden directory three layers down inside a normal hidden directory--how often do you go poking around in the bowels of .mozilla?). Anyone of those options provides them with a way to watch for the almighty su command and capture the password, and blam there goes your whole system. Or they could take advantage of local root exploits.
Be imaginative. If they can infect anything in ~ then they can also delete anything your user ID has write permission on (so unless you backup nightly you stand to lose a few days worth of email or work). They could also modify things like
Even without all of this plenty of damage can be done just with user access. It doesn't take root to run spambots, servers (except on certain ports), rifle through my files for something interesting, etc etc. How about if they manage to get user access on the system of someone who works on very interesting software and they trojan that?
Running Linux is not, and never has been a cure-all for security concerns. Software will never replace the process of taking care around security issues (although software can be assistive in taking such care). Still, Linux wins on security not because it is naturally better but because it is free software. When you have the source you are not at the mercy of $corporation to get the problem fixed.
No. That would be a serious violation of the first amendment to the Constitution. In fact, I can check that book out from my local library if I want.
Nice troll.
If it's not free (as in speech) software why would I want to try it when I already know and love the GIMP? Does it do anything the GIMP doesn't, other than install easily on newer Microsoft Windows machines?
Since the restrictions in the case of a DVD player result from patent law and the restrictions in the case of the movies result from copyright law, comparing the two is really dumb. I'm going to choose to blame the intellectual fraud known as "intellectual property" for your inability or unwillingness to differentiate the two.
The point here that I don't get is: if the DVD plays fine in a DVD player, why would my computer have trouble playing it? DVDs are already chock full of DRM BS. They are usually encrypted with CSS and typically contain region codes to prevent international use. Thankfully we can avoid them both at this time. I consider both CSS and region coding to be an abrogation of my rights as a consumer. Fair Use is a right, not a privilege, and any DRM scheme that defeats it ought to be outlawed, not protected by law. Copyright law already makes it illegal to distribute copies without authorization, so why are we layering laws on top of that. Stick to the crime here. Anything more restrictive than that violates the First Amendment. Imagine a law banning books that promote racial discrimination--discrimination is illegal, so why not make books promote it illegal too?
Spoken like someone who has never actually tried to weave a basket. ;)
"Intellectual property" can be a fraud without copyright being illegitimate. "Intellectual property" is a catch-all phrase that confounds several separate and distinct concepts into a single muddled idea and then attempts to shoehorn in existing thinking about real property by using confusing terminology. It may actually be in the public's interest to temporarily grant exclusive rights related to the copying of a work to that work's author(s) in order to stimulate development of those works. And this is the stated purpose of copyright in the U.S. Constitution.
But you seem to want to engage in muddled thinking, even to the point where you end up equating copying something with stealing something ("taking" you said-- salt, specifically). I am saying that the "taking" analogy does not belong here. Shoplifting is "taking", copying is "making". There is a substantial difference, both in the underlying real actions and in terms of the law and morality. It disturbs me to see the penalties for copying becoming more like those for shoplifting. In fact, we may be seeing the start of a world in which copying is punished more severely than actual stealing of physical goods.
And while I'm flattered by the attention, attempting to go after me personally rather than stick to the issues is distracting... But to one of your points, given the current legal environment, those of us who wish to share creative works more freely would do well to use "share and share alike" licenses when we have that opportunity (which are not any type of "intellectual property," a license is permission to use a restricted work in additional ways that the legal defaults don't allow), not only to encourage sharing but to protect ourselves from the possibility that our own work would be used against us.
If you still want to call that hypocrisy, fine, but it still doesn't change the assumptions on which I base my argument or the logic I use to reach my conclusions. Especially since I'm not rejecting copyright entirely, but rather this notion of "intellectual property".
To me these issues seem important because they become about who owns culture, art, and even this discourse itself. Do I think people who create works of art should have a way to feed their families? Of course I do. But at the cost of my own freedom of expression? No. And this is my concern. This is why I tend to support those artists who encourage sharing and those organizations that create free (as in speech) software.
I mostly agree, except that the transactions may not be HTTP-based. We are already used to www.*.com, ftp.*.com, smtp.*.com, etc. So really it should be mobile.*.com, toaster.*.com, etc. I know the third level used to indicate a specific server, but there was often a one-to-one relationship between the server as shown in the URL and the protocol it used. These days the host is almost always virtual (either a single machine serving lots of domains and sub-domains or a clutser of machines serving a single domain or both) so it's even less of an issue, just map the mobile.*.com address to the right port on the server.
I can understand *.jobs within the current setup, but I think it's stupid too. What jobs? If it's a specific company, polity, organization or whatever, they should just use jobs.*.com, jobs.*.gov, jobs.*.org. If it's a site devoted to job listings from various sources, that is either a commercial service (like monster.com) or a non-profit or government service (imagine a monster.org).
Nice dark fantasy, but drugs are a black market good that are illegal to obtain at any price, hence there is no way to stimulate supply except to raise the prices on drugs until sellers are willing to break the law (their profits offset their assumed risks). The only price competition in the drug market is with other illegal drug sellers (and perhaps a handful of legal substitutes like alcohol). With bootlegs, the goods are available legally, so there is an automatic limit to how much an illegal seller can charge since the bootlegs are direct competitors with the legal copies.
Our real concern here should not be whether the jackbooted thugs are coming for the makers of bootleg CDs, but whether there will eventually be a erosion on fair use. We are already seeing some of that when it comes to things like sampling, parodies, etc. The only bootlegs that will persist in a "war on copying" are those works that would be illegal to sell at any price. Other than that, my own desire to make copies goes away pretty quickly when the risks are higher than the retail price of the work in question.
My mistake. Thank you for your patience. I scanned the article rather quickly, which says the outcome of the case was codified in the 1976 law, missing the earlier reference to the correct date.
To duplicate another's labors has always been ethically suspect
No. It hasn't. Pretending that another's labors were your own work has always been suspect (i.e. plagiarism). Copying them, especially deriving from them, have not. As I understand it most of Aesop's fables, Shakespeare's plays, and many Disney movies "duplicate" another labors. Are you whining about that being stealing? I can almost buy the idea that exact duplicates are unethical, but current copyright law puts heavy limits on derivation and reinterpretation as well. This is why using words like "stealing" or even "taking" is so annoying (and I never feigned personal insult, I'm not taking this personally, duh). We need to be very specific about what acts are moral or legal and not sit around and use overly broad terms like "intellectual property" to mean as divergent things as copyright, patent, trademark, and even trade secrets, and then start using misleading terms like "stealing" when referring to duplication.
Folsom is from 1976. Relatively modern when one is talking about recorded history.
I'm not missing the point. jschottm had a very good point about supporting media outlets that don't screw their customers. No argument there.
But jschottm also wanted to play the morality card and confuse the issue with loaded words. OP wasn't on any moral high horse, so the reference to Ghandi was something of a non-sequitor. Finally, there is a substantial and real difference between stealing salt and making copies of a movie. Calling something "taking" that is not "taking" is an attempt to subvert the very discussion by changing the meaning of the words midstream. Doubleplusungood.
Don't pretend you're on some kind of moral high ground. Ghandi didn't take British salt, he made his own.
Even the law refers to the act under discussion as "copying" rather than "stealing" for a reason--so it would be conducive to the discussion if you would stick to the more accurate terms already in use and not the loaded terms that a small group of corporations are attempting to push into use. And if you want to talk about moral high ground show me one moral code in all of recorded history that even took a stance on this intellectual fraud known as "intellectual property". You can't do it. Why? Because without the act now known as "piracy" we wouldn't even have a recorded history.
And if you borrow the movie from the library and drink water (which is better for you anyway)... ~$1. For the popcorn. :)
Exactly. That's what the RIAA did when their members actually cut the number and quality of new releases a few years ago.
Copyright law does not have any language regarding intent that I'm aware of. Anyway, if you are using BitTorrent to download copyright restricted works, I can't imagine how that's going to engender any sympathy on the part of your local judge or jury. There is already a prevailing feeling (among the people I talk to, anyway) that even downloading is not morally acceptable.
In this case, it would be wise to simply not use BitTorrent for sharing copyright restricted works without permission from the person or organization that has the copyright for the work. BT was never intended to anonymize users or be a one-way stream. The BT application works best when users share data and client and tracker software can accurately detect which IP is doing what. If no one shared while using BT, the whole process would be no more efficient than a simple HTTP or FTP transfer. Anonymity would interfere with the tit-for-tat algorithm that throttles upload and download to different clients depending on their own sharing practices.
Personally I'm done using BT for "sharing" copyrighted works. Too bad for the MPAA and RIAA, really. My latest discovery via P2P was "Penn and Teller's Bullshit!" After viewing several episodes downloaded via BT, I went out and bought the DVD set of the first season. A $45 purchase I would have never made otherwise. Oh well, there's still USENET. :)
Or for the same price I could just get cable and subscribe to a few premium channels and record all this stuff directly to digital (for now). You'd think the MPAA would learn from the RIAA and move quickly to get direct digital distribution going. I'd pay $2 for a commercial-free 1/2 hour show and $4 for hour shows. $5 or $6 for a movie. Skip all the useless DVD packaging. Of course, the files will need to be at least as good quality as the rips out there, and playable on GNU/Linux.