They also complained that it was too hard to file separate John Doe suits instead of bundling a thousand unrelated cases into one motion. They want to combat piracy, but they don't want exert any effort doing it. The RIAA is the angry but lazy couch potato of Big Content.
The part that the RIAA wanted with SOPA. The ability to just say "Hey, you, website! We hereby accuse you of piracy." and have the site shut down. See simple? No way that could possibly go wrong by, oh say, companies abusing it to shut down competitors or businesses they simply didn't like.
It's not whether you have it or don't have it, but whether you are willing to put down money for it and whether the money you are willing to put down is what the seller is asking. Suppose you were willing to purchase Photoshop for $100 but Adobe won't sell it to you for less than $500. If you go out and pirate it, your action is not a lost sale. Absent any pirated copies of Photoshop, you wouldn't have plunked down $500 for it. Perhaps you'd have gone with Paint Shop Pro for $100 or GIMP for free, but you wouldn't have given Adobe your money. (In an odd way, your pirating could be a "lost sale" for one of Adobe's competitors, but only in the most abstract sense.) However, if you would have been willing to pay Adobe's price for Photoshop, but decided to save that cash and pirate the software instead, then your actions would validly be a lost sale.
The problem is that many content owners see pirates and think "these are all lost sales." In reality, some are lost sales and some aren't. Furthermore, some use piracy as a "trial version." If they like the pirated version, they'll pay for the non-pirated version in order to give money to the creator of the product. For these people, piracy actually increases purchases because they might not have bought the item had they not had the "trial version" via piracy.
Sadly, he's now pushing the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, one provision of which would require all providers to keep a log of customer IP addresses linked to their information (name, address, phone, credit card/bank account, etc) for up to one year. Critics charged that this is a backdoor way of tracking the online movements of people. And, of course, politicians who vote against this will be painted as "pro-child porn."
I don't think it's so much that the Democrats took over the GOP, but that the religious right has. The GOP candidates, except for Ron Paul, seem to think that laws should be made based on religious views. Santorum really scares me with some of his talk about banning abortion even in cases of life of the mother (he thinks it's an "excuse") and banning contraception. For the latter, he would leave it's legality "up to the states." Translation, you'd have states where posessing a condom would be a crime even if you were married and simply didn't want another child. Is it any wonder that the Duggars support him? (For the record, I'm religious - Jewish - but don't feel the need to force my religious views on anyone. I want my politicians to be religiously neutral.)
I wish there were more Ron Paul-style GOP members. I might actually vote Republican then. As it stands, I vote Democrat because I agree with them more. Not 100%, but more than with the usual Republican offerings. Maybe Ron Paul and other classic small government Republicans should leave the GOP and form a new centrist party. A good centrist party would quickly pull voters from the Republicans and Democrats. (Precisely why both parties would make sure said centrist party never happens.)
Us: "Ha! We burned all the oil so now our planet is worthless to you." Aliens, grinning evilly with all three of their mouths: "Oh well. I guess we'll have to use our organic carbon extraction devices instead. Know of any life forms that use carbon that we can toss into it?"
And setting up an antenna is the easy part. How are you going to decode the transmissions by an alien civilization?
That was always the part that I thought would be the biggest hurdle to detecting whether a signal came from intelligent alien life. Even assuming that we had our antennas pointed in the right direction at the right time, the alien signals would be in a completely alien language, encoded using a completely alien algorithm, and possibly even compressed using an alien compression routine. If I were to present you with twenty files, nineteen of which were gibberish and one of which was real, would you be able to tell the real signal even if I didn't tell you which compression routine was used, which encoding schema was used, and which language the audio was in in the first place?
Sadly, there are times when I think our politicians have a race like that going on. I don't know who's winning but I know the citizens of the countries are the ones who are losing!
Welcome privacy advocates to the Accused of Being A Terrorist While Doing Nothing Wrong Club. Take a seat over there next to the Photographers (because terrorists will really cart around a DSLR and tripod in their terrifying terroristic travels).
I thought the problem of politicians signing stuff before they read it was limited to the US Congress. Looks like it's a global phenomenon. Could you imagine if other people did that?
Pharmacist: "Yes, those drugs I dispensed killed people. I probably should have read the labels so I didn't give people the wrong dose or pills." (Said while handing a customer Viagra instead of antibiotics.)
Surgeon: "How was I to know that the patient didn't need a quadruple amputation? I didn't get a chance to read his chart before starting the surgery. Next patient! Pass the hacksaw!"
Air Traffic Controller: "Sure, a few planes collided in my airspace. It's not like it's my fault. I had no way of knowing that was going to happen when I instructed them to land without reading what was on the tracking computer. Ok, flights 54321, 31415, and 424242. You're all clear to land on runway (rolls dice) 5."
I've got to agree. Especially when the entertainment industry is claiming "We need you to do X to save our industry from losing money/jobs." If the money/jobs they are losing is more than offset by the money/jobs that the technology industry gains by not doing X, then the economic argument for X is lessened.
True, but if I used "Jason Levine" on Twitter, I'd wind up giving out other contextual information (approximate area I live in, for instance) that would narrow the search. With just "Jason Levine", though, you're right that I'm lost in a crowd of Jason Levine's. In fact, I just did a Google search on my name and the first entry actually relating to me is on the second page towards the end - A link to my Slashdot comments page.
Honestly, that's how I often feel about the Democrat party. I'm a Democrat not because I believe (politically) in what every Democrat says 100%, but because I believe in some of what they say and disagree more often with Republicans. If a real centrist third party were to emerge, I think they would give the Democrats and Republicans a run for their money. (Which is why both parties will work to prevent this from happening.)
SmartCap version 1 just reads how tired you are. SmartCap version 2 senses the subjects you are thinking about. SmartCap version 3 with new Employee Thought Enforcement Collar can give the employee a mild shock if the employee's thoughts veer off of approved topics. Your workers' productivity will improve dramatically once you can restrict their thoughts to only work-based activities!
Some people use their real names and locations on Twitter. This makes it easier (though not exact) to figure out who they really are. I'm with you, though. I don't give out my real name or exact location on Twitter. (My Slashdot account is from a time when I did use my real name. If I could retroactively change it, I would. Yes, I could create a new account with my pseudonym, but I'm lazy.;-) )
So *THAT* is why we need such long copyright terms! To prevent foreign nationals from coming to our shores, digging up long-dead celebrities and re-enacting Weekend At Bernie's with them! Now that I understand it, I'm totally for extremely long copyrights! Let's extend them to a thousand years!!!
Kind of like when the TSA seizes those liquid containers from passengers because they might be explosives... and then they throw them into a trash bin. If I had a liquid that I thought might be explosive, I wouldn't be casually chucking it into the nearest trash can!
To a degree, yes. Let's say there was a Presidential candidate whose personal religious view was that it was his mission in life to convert everyone to his religion no matter what the method. This person's religious views would be completely up for criticism. However, let's say this candidate belonged to a religious movement and some other pastor, in some other church, in some other state, but in the same movement, stated that it was his mission in life to convert everyone to his religion no matter what the method. Should the candidate be criticized for this pastor's views? Should the candidate be forced to quit his religion or else? Or would it be ok for him to simply state that, while they "officially" belong to the same religious group, they don't share the same religious views?
Exactly. If they allowed the $7,000 Kalidescape to exist, the next model would be a $2,000 version. Then, someone would make a $999 version and another company would lower the cost to $500. Eventually, you'd be able to pick up one of these devices for $100 and everyone would buy one. Then, they'd start buying tons of DVDs to rip on their devices and it would kill the industry the exact same way that the VCR killed them.
For an industry that keeps being "killed" by new technology, they certainly seem to stay around. You know what that means, don't you? The MPAA are zombies!!!
I think they'd sell more DVDs/Blu-Rays if they allowed people to rip them. Yes, some people would buy a copy, rip it, and then sell it on the used market. Most people, though, would buy it, rip it to their device, and then put the disc away as a backup. I'd love to be able to select from a digital list of the movies I have ripped from legally purchased discs and then play the movie. This would let me actually watch the movies I own instead of fumbling through piles of DVD boxes to find just the right movie. It would also let me allow my kids to play movies at their own whim since they're too young to handle DVDs.
I'm not going the share the rip out and I'm not going to sell the DVD without deleting my rip so I don't see why it isn't fair use for me to rip my legally purchased DVD to play on other devices!
Yeah, the border officers going from Canada to the US can have some "issues." One day, while visiting my brother-in-law in Buffalo, we went to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. When our trip was over, we went back through border security. We were all piled in our mini-van. My wife, our two sons, my brother-in-law, his wife, and me. The officer looked at our papers, asked us a few questions about where we were from, and then seemlessly said: "And which one of you wasn't born in the US." We were silent for a second as we all tried to process this question. Nothing we had said or did indicated that any of us wasn't born in the US. Finally, we replied that none of us were born outside of the US. The guy handed our papers back and we went on our way.
It was just such an "out there" question. I can't see a terrorist falling for that. "Where were you born?" "Pakistan... I mean, Kansas! Rats, foiled by the clever American border agent!"
1) The TSA keeps claiming we need these new and more intrusive security programs to catch terrorists. Yet, they haven't caught any.
2) There really isn't any way to test the deterrent claim. Yes, you could have some random airports reduce security on the line to pre-911 levels. (Don't announce it and rotate daily which airports have these security reductions.) Then, you could test which flights had more instances of terrorist attacks. However, if the deterrent of the enhanced security is true, it would apply to the dropped security lines as well since the terrorists wouldn't know ahead of time which airports to target. In short, it's untestable unless you announce the reduced security airports ahead of time and nobody would authorize that.
BTW, they might not have let terrorists get on board with a weapon, but there are plenty of instances of the TSA missing weapons. A quick Google search found an instance a couple of weeks ago of them missing a weapon in a carry-on bag. ( http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/Plane-Left-Gate-With-Gun-on-Board-DFW-Airport-Says-011812#ixzz1jr0xQJdZ ) By the time they realized the issue, the woman was gone. She was apprehended 90 minutes later. What if this was a terrorist instead of a little old lady, though? I just don't see the reasoning behind removing shoes and ditching all liquid above X ounces (in the trash can, no less.... if it was an explosion risk, I wouldn't toss it there!!!) when they have trouble with simple things like guns.
I don't think it is worthwhile to catch every terrorist any more than it is worthwhile to catch every speeder or jaywalker.
I think this is a big problem with many issues. The government tries to catch every terrorist. If one slips through, they are afraid that the people will cry out "Why were you so concerned about protecting our liberties instead of deploying the Ultra-See-You-Naked-And-Give-You-Cancer Terrorist Detection Machines?!!!!" Then, they fear, they will be tossed out of office in favor of someone willing to deploy the USYNAGYCTDMs.
Meanwhile, in the copyright world, the music/movie industry are obsessed with stopping all piracy. They are convinced that every pirate that they don't stop will rob millions of dollars from their pockets each and every day.* So the government puts more restrictive (though not effective) security measures in place because "better safe than sorry" and the music/movie industry lobbies for more stringent (and big media tilted) copyright laws to get every single pirate to stop.
The problem is that something will always slip by the system. A clever terrorist will always slip through. A clever pirate will always find a way to obtain music/movies without paying the requested price. You can't stop these people. We need to just accept that a certain amount of "bad things" happen. We need to find a way to stop the vast majority of it with as little impact on honest, law abiding citizens as possible.
In the case of pirates, this means providing easily available, reasonable cost digital options. The more people with these options, the less people will pirate. Yes, some people would always pirate, but those people would be in the vast minority. In the case of terrorists, pre-911 airport security for passengers, random scanning of checked bags, and locked/reinforced cockpit doors (with instructions to land ASAP should something happen, ignoring any passengers getting killed in the back) would solve 99% of all terrorist attacks.
* Don't think that I'm equating piracy to terrorism. It's more the response of the government to terrorists and the response of the music/movie industry to pirates that I'm equating.
The problem is that opting out of the radiation dosing machines means opting into the government authorized groping line. And if you don't like that option, you are either kicked out of the airport (if you are a politician) or arrested for not cooperating with the TSA (for everyone else).
But at least all of these TSA measures have caught tons of terrorists right. *checks the Terrorists Caught By The TSA counter* *sees it reading zero* Oh, wait... Never mind.
Slashdot Mirror
They also complained that it was too hard to file separate John Doe suits instead of bundling a thousand unrelated cases into one motion. They want to combat piracy, but they don't want exert any effort doing it. The RIAA is the angry but lazy couch potato of Big Content.
The part that the RIAA wanted with SOPA. The ability to just say "Hey, you, website! We hereby accuse you of piracy." and have the site shut down. See simple? No way that could possibly go wrong by, oh say, companies abusing it to shut down competitors or businesses they simply didn't like.
It's not whether you have it or don't have it, but whether you are willing to put down money for it and whether the money you are willing to put down is what the seller is asking. Suppose you were willing to purchase Photoshop for $100 but Adobe won't sell it to you for less than $500. If you go out and pirate it, your action is not a lost sale. Absent any pirated copies of Photoshop, you wouldn't have plunked down $500 for it. Perhaps you'd have gone with Paint Shop Pro for $100 or GIMP for free, but you wouldn't have given Adobe your money. (In an odd way, your pirating could be a "lost sale" for one of Adobe's competitors, but only in the most abstract sense.) However, if you would have been willing to pay Adobe's price for Photoshop, but decided to save that cash and pirate the software instead, then your actions would validly be a lost sale.
The problem is that many content owners see pirates and think "these are all lost sales." In reality, some are lost sales and some aren't. Furthermore, some use piracy as a "trial version." If they like the pirated version, they'll pay for the non-pirated version in order to give money to the creator of the product. For these people, piracy actually increases purchases because they might not have bought the item had they not had the "trial version" via piracy.
Sadly, he's now pushing the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, one provision of which would require all providers to keep a log of customer IP addresses linked to their information (name, address, phone, credit card/bank account, etc) for up to one year. Critics charged that this is a backdoor way of tracking the online movements of people. And, of course, politicians who vote against this will be painted as "pro-child porn."
I don't think it's so much that the Democrats took over the GOP, but that the religious right has. The GOP candidates, except for Ron Paul, seem to think that laws should be made based on religious views. Santorum really scares me with some of his talk about banning abortion even in cases of life of the mother (he thinks it's an "excuse") and banning contraception. For the latter, he would leave it's legality "up to the states." Translation, you'd have states where posessing a condom would be a crime even if you were married and simply didn't want another child. Is it any wonder that the Duggars support him? (For the record, I'm religious - Jewish - but don't feel the need to force my religious views on anyone. I want my politicians to be religiously neutral.)
I wish there were more Ron Paul-style GOP members. I might actually vote Republican then. As it stands, I vote Democrat because I agree with them more. Not 100%, but more than with the usual Republican offerings. Maybe Ron Paul and other classic small government Republicans should leave the GOP and form a new centrist party. A good centrist party would quickly pull voters from the Republicans and Democrats. (Precisely why both parties would make sure said centrist party never happens.)
Us: "Ha! We burned all the oil so now our planet is worthless to you."
Aliens, grinning evilly with all three of their mouths: "Oh well. I guess we'll have to use our organic carbon extraction devices instead. Know of any life forms that use carbon that we can toss into it?"
That was always the part that I thought would be the biggest hurdle to detecting whether a signal came from intelligent alien life. Even assuming that we had our antennas pointed in the right direction at the right time, the alien signals would be in a completely alien language, encoded using a completely alien algorithm, and possibly even compressed using an alien compression routine. If I were to present you with twenty files, nineteen of which were gibberish and one of which was real, would you be able to tell the real signal even if I didn't tell you which compression routine was used, which encoding schema was used, and which language the audio was in in the first place?
Sadly, there are times when I think our politicians have a race like that going on. I don't know who's winning but I know the citizens of the countries are the ones who are losing!
Welcome privacy advocates to the Accused of Being A Terrorist While Doing Nothing Wrong Club. Take a seat over there next to the Photographers (because terrorists will really cart around a DSLR and tripod in their terrifying terroristic travels).
I thought the problem of politicians signing stuff before they read it was limited to the US Congress. Looks like it's a global phenomenon. Could you imagine if other people did that?
Pharmacist: "Yes, those drugs I dispensed killed people. I probably should have read the labels so I didn't give people the wrong dose or pills." (Said while handing a customer Viagra instead of antibiotics.)
Surgeon: "How was I to know that the patient didn't need a quadruple amputation? I didn't get a chance to read his chart before starting the surgery. Next patient! Pass the hacksaw!"
Air Traffic Controller: "Sure, a few planes collided in my airspace. It's not like it's my fault. I had no way of knowing that was going to happen when I instructed them to land without reading what was on the tracking computer. Ok, flights 54321, 31415, and 424242. You're all clear to land on runway (rolls dice) 5."
I've got to agree. Especially when the entertainment industry is claiming "We need you to do X to save our industry from losing money/jobs." If the money/jobs they are losing is more than offset by the money/jobs that the technology industry gains by not doing X, then the economic argument for X is lessened.
True, but if I used "Jason Levine" on Twitter, I'd wind up giving out other contextual information (approximate area I live in, for instance) that would narrow the search. With just "Jason Levine", though, you're right that I'm lost in a crowd of Jason Levine's. In fact, I just did a Google search on my name and the first entry actually relating to me is on the second page towards the end - A link to my Slashdot comments page.
Honestly, that's how I often feel about the Democrat party. I'm a Democrat not because I believe (politically) in what every Democrat says 100%, but because I believe in some of what they say and disagree more often with Republicans. If a real centrist third party were to emerge, I think they would give the Democrats and Republicans a run for their money. (Which is why both parties will work to prevent this from happening.)
SmartCap version 1 just reads how tired you are. SmartCap version 2 senses the subjects you are thinking about. SmartCap version 3 with new Employee Thought Enforcement Collar can give the employee a mild shock if the employee's thoughts veer off of approved topics. Your workers' productivity will improve dramatically once you can restrict their thoughts to only work-based activities!
Some people use their real names and locations on Twitter. This makes it easier (though not exact) to figure out who they really are. I'm with you, though. I don't give out my real name or exact location on Twitter. (My Slashdot account is from a time when I did use my real name. If I could retroactively change it, I would. Yes, I could create a new account with my pseudonym, but I'm lazy. ;-) )
So his "top secret, yet tweeted" plan was:
Step 1: Dig Up Marylin Monroe to turn her into a zombie
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Destroy America
In other news, the Underwear Gnomes are now under investigation by DHS.
So *THAT* is why we need such long copyright terms! To prevent foreign nationals from coming to our shores, digging up long-dead celebrities and re-enacting Weekend At Bernie's with them! Now that I understand it, I'm totally for extremely long copyrights! Let's extend them to a thousand years!!!
Kind of like when the TSA seizes those liquid containers from passengers because they might be explosives... and then they throw them into a trash bin. If I had a liquid that I thought might be explosive, I wouldn't be casually chucking it into the nearest trash can!
To a degree, yes. Let's say there was a Presidential candidate whose personal religious view was that it was his mission in life to convert everyone to his religion no matter what the method. This person's religious views would be completely up for criticism. However, let's say this candidate belonged to a religious movement and some other pastor, in some other church, in some other state, but in the same movement, stated that it was his mission in life to convert everyone to his religion no matter what the method. Should the candidate be criticized for this pastor's views? Should the candidate be forced to quit his religion or else? Or would it be ok for him to simply state that, while they "officially" belong to the same religious group, they don't share the same religious views?
Exactly. If they allowed the $7,000 Kalidescape to exist, the next model would be a $2,000 version. Then, someone would make a $999 version and another company would lower the cost to $500. Eventually, you'd be able to pick up one of these devices for $100 and everyone would buy one. Then, they'd start buying tons of DVDs to rip on their devices and it would kill the industry the exact same way that the VCR killed them.
For an industry that keeps being "killed" by new technology, they certainly seem to stay around. You know what that means, don't you? The MPAA are zombies!!!
I think they'd sell more DVDs/Blu-Rays if they allowed people to rip them. Yes, some people would buy a copy, rip it, and then sell it on the used market. Most people, though, would buy it, rip it to their device, and then put the disc away as a backup. I'd love to be able to select from a digital list of the movies I have ripped from legally purchased discs and then play the movie. This would let me actually watch the movies I own instead of fumbling through piles of DVD boxes to find just the right movie. It would also let me allow my kids to play movies at their own whim since they're too young to handle DVDs.
I'm not going the share the rip out and I'm not going to sell the DVD without deleting my rip so I don't see why it isn't fair use for me to rip my legally purchased DVD to play on other devices!
Yeah, the border officers going from Canada to the US can have some "issues." One day, while visiting my brother-in-law in Buffalo, we went to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. When our trip was over, we went back through border security. We were all piled in our mini-van. My wife, our two sons, my brother-in-law, his wife, and me. The officer looked at our papers, asked us a few questions about where we were from, and then seemlessly said: "And which one of you wasn't born in the US." We were silent for a second as we all tried to process this question. Nothing we had said or did indicated that any of us wasn't born in the US. Finally, we replied that none of us were born outside of the US. The guy handed our papers back and we went on our way.
It was just such an "out there" question. I can't see a terrorist falling for that. "Where were you born?" "Pakistan... I mean, Kansas! Rats, foiled by the clever American border agent!"
There are two problems with the deterrent claim:
1) The TSA keeps claiming we need these new and more intrusive security programs to catch terrorists. Yet, they haven't caught any.
2) There really isn't any way to test the deterrent claim. Yes, you could have some random airports reduce security on the line to pre-911 levels. (Don't announce it and rotate daily which airports have these security reductions.) Then, you could test which flights had more instances of terrorist attacks. However, if the deterrent of the enhanced security is true, it would apply to the dropped security lines as well since the terrorists wouldn't know ahead of time which airports to target. In short, it's untestable unless you announce the reduced security airports ahead of time and nobody would authorize that.
BTW, they might not have let terrorists get on board with a weapon, but there are plenty of instances of the TSA missing weapons. A quick Google search found an instance a couple of weeks ago of them missing a weapon in a carry-on bag. ( http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/Plane-Left-Gate-With-Gun-on-Board-DFW-Airport-Says-011812#ixzz1jr0xQJdZ ) By the time they realized the issue, the woman was gone. She was apprehended 90 minutes later. What if this was a terrorist instead of a little old lady, though? I just don't see the reasoning behind removing shoes and ditching all liquid above X ounces (in the trash can, no less.... if it was an explosion risk, I wouldn't toss it there!!!) when they have trouble with simple things like guns.
I think this is a big problem with many issues. The government tries to catch every terrorist. If one slips through, they are afraid that the people will cry out "Why were you so concerned about protecting our liberties instead of deploying the Ultra-See-You-Naked-And-Give-You-Cancer Terrorist Detection Machines?!!!!" Then, they fear, they will be tossed out of office in favor of someone willing to deploy the USYNAGYCTDMs.
Meanwhile, in the copyright world, the music/movie industry are obsessed with stopping all piracy. They are convinced that every pirate that they don't stop will rob millions of dollars from their pockets each and every day.* So the government puts more restrictive (though not effective) security measures in place because "better safe than sorry" and the music/movie industry lobbies for more stringent (and big media tilted) copyright laws to get every single pirate to stop.
The problem is that something will always slip by the system. A clever terrorist will always slip through. A clever pirate will always find a way to obtain music/movies without paying the requested price. You can't stop these people. We need to just accept that a certain amount of "bad things" happen. We need to find a way to stop the vast majority of it with as little impact on honest, law abiding citizens as possible.
In the case of pirates, this means providing easily available, reasonable cost digital options. The more people with these options, the less people will pirate. Yes, some people would always pirate, but those people would be in the vast minority. In the case of terrorists, pre-911 airport security for passengers, random scanning of checked bags, and locked/reinforced cockpit doors (with instructions to land ASAP should something happen, ignoring any passengers getting killed in the back) would solve 99% of all terrorist attacks.
* Don't think that I'm equating piracy to terrorism. It's more the response of the government to terrorists and the response of the music/movie industry to pirates that I'm equating.
The problem is that opting out of the radiation dosing machines means opting into the government authorized groping line. And if you don't like that option, you are either kicked out of the airport (if you are a politician) or arrested for not cooperating with the TSA (for everyone else).
But at least all of these TSA measures have caught tons of terrorists right. *checks the Terrorists Caught By The TSA counter* *sees it reading zero* Oh, wait... Never mind.