Open civil disobediance only works when you have a no-brainer issue that many people will sympathize with. Open civil disobediance, as was done by ML King, works by pressuring public officials to change the law, by turning public opinion against them.
The fact of the matter is that intellectual property issues don't get air time. They don't get on TV, don't get on the O'Reilly factor or on the McClaughlin Group -- too abstract and complicated for the typical tiny American mind to deal with. Most people are dumb(think of how dumb the avg. person is; then think that probably half of the people are dumber).
What I'm advocating is not necessarily "sneaky" disobediance. It's just disobediance not in the public's eye. Individuals shouldn't go out of their way to get media attention on specific acts of copyright violations. If this is the strategy, you won't get many recruits. What we will do is try to get some attention collectively as a group in a general sense. As a group -- or individually anonymously -- say that we IP laws are wrong and that we violate them. Saying that we as a group violate IP laws doesn't create significant risk for any members, as it refers to no specific act.
Civil disobediance done with attempts to avoid imprisonment does work. It worked rather well for prohibition. Prohibition was ignored by almost everyone, and it was thus doomed from the start. So what we need to do is to create risk minimal ways for people to disobey IP laws(i.e., P2P services). When the risk to disobeying IP is minimal, there is little impediment to doing so. Many people will start disobeying the IP laws, and they will inevitably crumble.
id software encourages Quake modding, they realize it adds value to the product and have written the EULA to allow it (as I understand). They only draw the line at the Quake executable.
Int that case, they still don't offer consumers what should be their right -- to modify and obtain modifications for THEIR property as they see fit. Why shouldn't consumers have the right to modify their executable, or easily obtain a modification?
Laws against prostitution were, I believe, originally designed to control the spread of disease. This is still a reason for them to exist.
Actually, by illegalizing it you prevent any effective regulation, thus encourage the spread of disease. If it were legal, services would have safety regulations and few would risk going to an illegal service when there was a legal alternative available. Irrelevant of "disease spreading" it only affects those who VOLUNTARILY choose to be involved with prostitution or prostitutes. Their choice. No one has the right to tell me what to do or not to do with my body. If I get a disease from that, my fault.
So you're in favor of exposing young children to second-hand somke? I really don't see how the first item on your list belongs on it.
It's not that that I'm in favor of doing such. I don't smoke myself, nor have I ever. It's that I don't think we should be telling parents what to do in their own homes(within reasonable extents). More than that, its not really about what I personally support. It's about draconian scare-tactics used in propaganda ads to get people to change their behavior. This one isn't so much of a scare tactic as a guilt-trip tactic. I don't smoke, but, standing up for the rights of those who DO smoke, they don't need to be put through a guilt-trip in their own home.
I can see your point in that this particular add -- the "Lets take it outside" anti-smoking ad -- isn't as draconian as the others on the list. Nevertheless, it employs a similarly underlying mechanism: get people to do what you want by manipulating their minds, either with fear or guilt.
Here's a general strategy to deal with the overzealous "intellectual property"(more appropriately, idea enslavement) views that the government, corporations, and private "information owners" take.
1. Copy all such useful things to your hard drive -- the files, and the website.
2. Redistribute these files on Kazaa, LimeWire, Usenet, the Internet, etc etc.
3. Repost these files on to-the-point(no graphics) websites using servers in countries which do not respect copyrights.
4. Pursue any other viable means to liberate information and to better give consumers the RIGHT to obtain maximal utlity out of the products THEY own. Inform people about THEIR right to have access to backup copies, to modify/tweak their software, and to offer such modifications/tweaks to the public. Inform people that this right -- say, for example, to publish a texture "patch" for Quake -- which they take for granted, is something companies are trying to eliminate.
This is, in short, a non-traditional civil disobediance approach. No, we are not doing this in public, and letting the police come and arrest us and beat us down. For one thing, we should not have to be treated so horribly for simply exercising OUR rights; for another, that type of approach only works when you have an issue which is simple, and which the vast majority of the public can easily sympathize with(i.e., like segregation). If the issue is too complicated, such as is intellectual property, the general public will not be able to sympathize.
So our approach is use civil disobediance in an anonymous manner. No, we will not be wrongfully scapegoated for doing this. This form of civil disobediance will bring down the laws, ultimately, by making them infeasible and non-workable. If enough people disobey a law, it will go away. Prime example is the ill-informed "prohibition" law. Examples of laws that will eventually go away due to mssive disregard of them and disobediance of them include laws against sodomy, laws against prostitution, laws against stripping, laws against milder drugs such as pot, laws against abortion, laws against assisted-suicide, and laws which enslave information.
I believe the point of the accusation is that ATI is making "optimizations" to Quake to taint any reviewing process based on benchmarking to their favor. It is commonly known that Quake is used as a benchmark to test how "fast" graphics cards are. Thus, the accusation is that they are making drivers specifically designed to make them look better in any benchmarking reviews, though their product might not be any better in any other games. Quake is used as a benchmarking program, assuming that -- in general -- if graphics card A can run Quake faster than graphics card B, it can run most games faster.
So, basically, it is alleged that what ATI is doing is cheating on the benchmarking reviews of graphics cards which use Quake.
That said, let me say there is nothing wrong with putting options in a driver to optimize it for a specific popular game. However, such options should NOT hinder performance in other games, or should be optional ad-ins for the user if they do. Nevertheless, the fact that ATI had not told the CONSUMERS and PRODUCT REVIEWERS that it put in such Quake-specific optimizations suggests that they were doing so solely to look better in reviews. To me, this seems like a case of FRAUD.
However, if there are also built-in optimizations for other popular games, other popular programs, then this is NOT a fraud but an attempt by ATI to make their hardware work well with a variety of programs.
There is nothing wrong with optimizing the software(drivers) to get a bit more performance out of a companies own hardware. In fact, this is a GOOD thing. It means that consumers get a better product at no additional cost(as drivers are free, and the hardware would work better).
But again, if they're doing it just to look good on reviews, its fraud. Clearly, there needs to be some kind of investigation: simply put, at the moment, we don't have enough information to determine whether ATI was acting fraudulently, trying to make its product better with a variety of programs, or misguidedly trying to make their hardware better for one game at the expense of many others.
This reeks of the same type of brain-washing employed by the Nazi's in WWII: "Do what WE WANT, or else SUFFER."
It is similar to ads put out by various interest groups, such as:
1. Those ads which try to tell parents they shouldn't smoke in their own home if they have kids(the "Lets take it outside ads").
2. The add which showed a black man being dragged behind a truck and said that "because GW Bush doesn't support 'hate crimes legislation' he is just as bad as the KKK racists who dragged that man to his death."
3. The cabletheft ads: "Cabletheft: its a crime." These are the ads that feature a young girl telling the viewers "daddy says we get cable by that magic box" and then show a policeman coming up to the door and arresting the father, and him being sent off to jail.
4. The "insurance fraud" ads which show a couple of bruisers in jail, remarking on why they got there, and then some skinny guy saying he frauded insurance companies. Then the add proceeds to show the bruiser inmates getting upset because "he was the one who made their insurance companies raise their rates." The punchline is: "Insurance fraud: its a crime." The implication is that this man spends his days in jail being raped up the ass and beaten by the two ruffs.
These type of propaganda adds -- and now propaganda cartoons -- are sickening. The idea is to persuade adults to do as the interest group wants by striking terror into them in most cases.
In the case of this cartoon, its even worse: they're targetting children. They want to brainwash children into accepting *their* viewpoints. This is an attempt by the RIAA/MPAA to sway the younger generations from their natural tendancies to trade information freely, towards the RIAA/MPAA's nazi views, overriding the proper right of parents to morally educate their children.
In short, this is the RIAA/MPAA doing the same thing to OUR children that Hitler did to the children of Germany. Children were brainwashed, and used as tools against their parents.
The EFF's point is that IF an ISP chooses to employ SPAM-blocking methods, without their clients consent, then it is wrong for them to block out any mail that is NOT SPAM.
"The anti-Junk FAX law passed the constitutionality test. I don't see why extending it to be anti-Junk E-mail would have done any worse. The exact same private-property rights are involved, something that spammers (and the EFF, apparently) seem to have no interest in recognizing."
Actually, no, the issues are slightly different, though in theory your point is correct. The only way for most users to communicate with others on the internet via e-mail is through ISP's. SPAM blocking methods proposed by MAPS and other strongarm tactics punish entire ISP's and all of their clients for the acts of a few SPAMers. The anti-Junk fax mail laws do not punish the phone company or its clients becaues a few clients use that service to fax SPAM. The anti-Junk e-mail law would do so. If you want to deal with SPAMers, deal with them -- their ISP's and that ISP's other clients aren't responsible for their actions. An ISP is not responsible for the actions of those who use its service; not any more than AT&T is responsible for how people use its phone lines. Furthermore, what makes these ISP-strongarm tactics worse is that, as someone mentioned elsewhere, SPAMers simply hop to another ISP if one ISP identifies them and terminates their subscription.
I am strongly against SPAM -- as I said before, the right to freedom of speach DOES NOT imply the right to force other's to listen. Indeed, forcing others to listen eliminates one's own right to freedom of speach necessarily. Furthemore, the right to free speach does not imply the right to use someone else as your mouthpiece -- in this case, the ISP -- at their great detriment, without fair compensation(SPAMers clearly do not compensate the ISP's involved for how much they cost them). However, the right to free speach does require a complementary right to the freedom of the right to choose whether or not to listen, and how to listen. SPAMers deny ISP clients the right to choose whether or not to listen, thus deny their own right to freedom of speach.
What I support is a system where SPAMers have to seek affirmative acceptance before SPAMing people. Of course, enforcing such -- as I've already said -- is impractical. But many large corporations who employ SPAMers will comply because they have much to lose if they don't.
Let me start out by defining what SPAM is: SPAM is any message sent out to a large group of recipients who did not specifically request such a message.
Now, let me define what freedom of speach is -- freedom of speach means that one person has the right to say anything he so desires AND that it is possible that others can listen to his speach. As a necessary correlary and clarification to this, a persons speach is NOT free unless ONLY each "end-listener" individual is the one deciding whether or not to receive that speach.
For example, if a person gets up on a park and begins making speaking. People may listen to him, or they may not, in every sense of the word: they may "hear" him but ignore him(tune him out); they may hear him and pay attention to him, thinking about what he's saying; they may hear his speach and decide they disagree with it so much that they must leave at once and listen to it no more; etc.
In such a situation, the person speaking has free speach: he has the freedom to choose whether or not to speak, he may say what he pleases, and people have the opportunity to listen to him. Furthermore, in such a situation, the "audience" -- the people actively listening, tuning him out, or leaving -- have another kind of freedom: the freedom to choose whether or not to listen. They have the right to freedom of listening. This right implies that they can choose to listen or not to listen, or anything in between.
Now, let us consider two alterations to this model: (1) In which the speaker is "prohibited" from speaking by some means; (2) In which the audience is prohibited from their freedom of choice to listen or not to listen. [To speak or not to speak, to listen or not to listen, that is the question!] I think it will be clear from considering each of these cases that the right to freedom of speach and the right to freadom of listening are dependant on one another: you cannot have one without the other. I think it will also be clear the the right to freedom of speach means not only the right to decide exactly what to say, but the right to decide if one wants to speak or not in the first place; as will it be clear that the right to freedom of listening means not only the right to decide whether or not to listen, but also the right to decide how to listen or how not to listen.
So, let us start with case (1): In which the speaker is somehow prohibited from speaking, or prevented from speaking meaningfully. Let us say that a (wo)man walks to the center of a park and starts speaking about how much (s)he hates the United States. Perhaps as a part of her speach, she takes a flag and rips it up, or burns it. Now, as the US government is a primarily filled with narrow minded self-righteous eccentrics, it is only natural that those in the government would notice and somehow stop her from speaking. The method is largely irrelevant in relation to freedom of speach(though some methods, such as physical beating, may violate the right to body as well as the right to freedom of speach). In such a case, that persons right to freedom of speach would clearly have been violated. But less clear a fact, is that the rights of the entire public to freedom of listening has also been violated. By oppressing the right of that person to speak, the government has thus oppressed the right of the entire applicable public to choose whether or not to listen.
This is a case in which a speaker was prevented from speaking. There are also possible cases in which the speaker would be prevented from choosing not to speak, thus his right to freedom of speach being violated(in such a case, it should be noted that forced testimony under oath at a court room violates the right to freedom of speach, as it prevents one from effectively choosing not to speak). There is yet another case in which an individuals right to freedom of speach is violated because he allowed to speak, but forced to "modify" his speach from what he would like to say: this is called censorship. In all such cases, not only is the speakers right to freedom of speach violated, but so is the everyone else's right to freedom of listening.
On to case (2): In which the audience is prevented from choosing whether or not to listen. Let us consider the same case, in which a (wo)man in a park walks to the center of the park and proceeds to give a speach critical of the US government. Now, in this case, instead of violating her right to freedom of speach, the audience's right to freedom of listening is violated. Perhaps the all memhers of the audience are draggedf away from the speaker; perhaps they're killed; perhaps a sound-proof booth is put around the speaker so that no one in the audience can hear him; etc. In any case, the audiences right to choose whether or not to listen has been violated. Or perhaps their right to choose *how* to listen or *how* not to listen has been violated. In either case, eliminating the audience's right to decide if/how to listen or not to listen, eliminates the speakers right to decide if/how to speak or not speak.
Now, I believe it is quite clear that the right to freedom of speach and the right to freedom of listening are in fact inseparable, and perhaps are in-and-of-themselves the same right. They may also be considered a subclass of the right to freedom of thought: after all, it is impossible to have freedom of thought if one does not have the freedom to choose if/how to expose or not expose him/her-self to free speach.
There is one sub-case where a speaker may use some means to force an audience to listen to him via some means. In such a case, the audience does not have freedom of listening, thus the speaker can not possibly have freedom of speach. If an audience does not have the effective option to decide whether or not to listen and how to or not to listen, how can a speaker have the right to freedom of speach? After all, freedom of speach requires that there be recipients who are free to decide whether or not to "receive" speach, and how to or how not to "receive" it. If some entity forces the audience to "receive" speach in a specific way, that speach has been robbed of its qualities of freedom of speach. A more clear case may be such as when the government brainwashes people into thinking that certain organizations messages are "evil": obviously, in such cases, the organizations rights to freedom of speach have been violated. Similarly, the same is true when a speaking entity forces the audience to listen: in such case, he robs himself of the true right to freedom of speach. Such is what government officials do by forcing people to listen to them on public TV when they interrupt common shows; such is what dictators do when they force people to attend party rallies; such is what judges do when they force people to listen to them at hearings; and such is what SPAMers do when they force people to listen to their advertisements.
Now, lets talk specifically about SPAMers. If they practiced business as they would prefer to -- which would include forcing people to read their messages and giving people no option or way to avoid getting their messages -- they would not have freedom of speach. What they would have would be power over the listeners: power over the listeners does not imply, and indeed cannot be coupled with, freedom of speach.
What about ths issue from the SPAMee's side, the person who is being SPAMed? Well, their right to freedom of listening has been violated, as they are receiving a message whether or not they want to receive it. Thus, the SPAMers right to freedom of speach has also been violated: in this case, as a direct result of the SPAMers actions and methods.
Now, what about the situation from the ISP's side of the issue? From an ISP's point of view, SPAM -- bulk messages sent out which many users do not want to receive nor have they solicited -- is a costly parasite on their infrastructure. Indeed, SPAMers can be said to be stealing bandwidth and storage space from the ISP. They are also indeed stealing bandwidth and storage space from the end-user(who must use much andwidth to download graphic SPAM). Thus, they are costing the ISP money, and indirectly costing the end-user money(the ISP partially or completely compensates for SPAM by simply charging its customers higher rates). Thus, in effect, SPAMers don't really "steal" from ISP's, but rather from their customers, who are being charged higher rates to compensate. Of course, SPAMers do in some ways violate the rights of ISP's, which I will not go into(i.e., undue negative impressions of ISP's by their customers). However, let us assume that for the most part, the cost of SPAM is entirely burdened by both the SPAMer and the SPAMee.
So, it is clear the the SPAM system is an odd kind of paradox, in that it is LESS THAN a zero sum game. Not only does SPAM cost the SPAMee, but also the SPAMer(as explained beforehand, it costs the SPAMer the right to freedom of speach by costing the SPAMee the right to freedom of listening).
So, what is the solution to SPAM? To identify the solution, I believe I must offer one further bit of clarification regarding the problem: By denying the SPAMee the right to freedom of listening, the SPAMer has denied himself the right to freedom of speach. In other words, true and meaningful choice has been taken out of both sides of the equation: taken away from the SPAMer and the SPAMee. The solution is obviosly to put CHOICE back on the both sides of the equation.
So, how do we put choice back on both sides of the equation? How do we give the SPAMer the right to freedom of speach, and the "SPAMee" freedom of listening? Let us start from the SPAMee's side.
The SPAMee needs to have the right to choose whether or not to listen to SPAMers' messages, and how to listen. This can be done by providing the SPAMee with end-user tools which allow him to screen, and by allowing the ISP to selectively reduce SPAM at its level at the request of customers(that is, the ISP would screen out SPAM at its level for customers who indicate they desire such, bu not for those who don't; this would save the ISP both space and bandwidth). In a simple case, the ISP could set up two server systems -- one for willing SPAM recipients, and one for those who don't want to receive it. In this way, the ISP would save bandwidht, space -- and thus money -- on the server system where they were allowed to filter. Of course, ISP's would have to develop filtering systems which would be maximally effective, and produce the least possible false positives on for SPAM identification. Customers would have to be informed of the efficiency and accuracy of the corporations system. As one last consideration from the SPAMees side, the SPAMee should also have the right to request individual SPAMers not to e-mail him, to globally make such a request. A central database listing the e-mails of all users who do not want SPAM could be set up, so SPAMers could avoid sending it to such users. Of course, enforcement of such a system would be difficult if not impossible, but some means to allow "voluntary" cooperation on the part of the SPAMer would be useful.
Now, lets consider it from the SPAMers side of things. The SPAMers needs to realize that saying something LOUDER does not mean it will be received any better, and that violating the audience's right to freedom of listening violates their right to freedom of speach. The SPAMers must be taught that few non-willing recipients of SPAM are influenced by it in any positive way that would make them agree with the SPAMers POV or likely to buy the SPAMers product. Of course, convincing the SPAMers to cooperate will not be possible based on a libertarian argument alone. SPAMers do not care about their "rights" so to speak: they care about trying to get people to do what they want -- in other words, power and the rewards(money) that come from it. So they must be taught by us that they do not convince people to buy their products by blasting them with tacky e-mails. The reason advertisement on TV works is because people have a choice about whether or not to listen to it. If TV contained nothing but advertisements, people would never watch it. In other words -- an essnetial feature of the success of TV adds is that people don't have to watch them, and that they're not the only thing on. People can change the channel, or turn the TV off, or "wait" them out. In other words, though TV ads are what support the TV system, they are not mandatory for the audience, nor do they take up many minutes. The SPAMing systme of advertisement in e-mail ignores all of these wise adages that were smartly developed in the TV industry. SPAMers try to in effect "take away the right to change the channel" and they send out so much SPAM that -- without filteriong -- 99% of an individuals e-mail would be SPAM and not meaningful communication.
Simply put, SPAMers have to be taught their current model for SPAM advertisement does not work -- or works very ineffectively. For one thing, SPAM takes a lot of work to read. Its not something a listener can passively absorb like a TV commercial. SPAM messages have to be read, and this is an active process, which reduces eliminates effectiveness of the add.
Of course, a large criticism of traditional advertising is that it "drones" ideas into the passive listeners mind. This is essentially correct of TV advertisements and any add: they're set up to subliminally "drone" an idea into a persons head, whether or not that person want to accept it. Of course, this is to some extend the aim of ALL communication -- to sway people over to your viewpoint. In this particlar point, the fault lies not with the speaker(i.e., politicians, or "TV ad"), but with the listener, for his or her passive acceptance. Listeners must be taught to be active listeners.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the right to freedom of speach and the right to freedom of listening are in inseparable, interdependant, undividable, and perhaps even one right. One cannot be intact unless the other is intact. These two dimerize rights may in their totality be a large part of what it takes to have freedom of thought(of course, one needs to have other things to have freedom of thought, such as the right to life: after all, how can one have freedom of thought, if one is dead?). That said, it is clear that SPAMers not only violate the rights of SPAMees by forcing them to receive e-mail, but also their own rights. It is also clear that ISP's which block SPAMers and by doing such inadvertantly block legitimate mail, not only violate the right of the SPAMer to freedom of speach, but also the rights of their customers to the freedom to listen. Finally, it is also clear that when a SPAMers sends an unsolicited e-mail to a person who does not want it, that that SPAMer is stealing money, time, and bandwidth from that end-user. The solution to this problem is to give all parties the freedom of choice, without giving them the power to deny the other parties(and thus themselves) the freedom of choice.
Look, irrelevant of the so called "motivation" for why people publish information on security vulnerabilities, exploits, or detailed guides -- which is impossible to factually discern -- people should be free to publish such, online or in magazines. If I want to publish a specific program which exploits MS' OS, I should be able to do so. If I want to say how to exploit MS' OS, I should be able to do so. I I want to explain how the exploit works, or a particular security flaw, I should be able to do so.
MS or the government should not be able to limit MY freedom of speech. A weakness is there, whether I say so or not, and someone will figure out how to exploit it whether I say so or not. Might as well "open-source" it so it can be dealt with by security experts who have an interest in it.
Just because my security exploit CAN be used for malicious means does not mean I should be prevented from publishing it. This is the same as the DeCSS argument -- just because something CAN be used for so called "illegal" purposes doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Now, lets be clear -- when there is a bug in the program, a security hole that can be exploited, etc., the fault is completely with the developer, whether that developer be MS or Linus Torvelds(LOL, I almost wrote Linus Pauling: of the Linus', who do you think is more brilliant?).
MS should stop whining because people expose their screw-ups. What this really amounts to is they don't want hard criticism. Now, is publishing a specific exploit necessary for criticism? No, it is not. A criticism of a security hole can be published without an accompanying exploit of that hole. However, a specific exploit published adds validity to the security criticism.
Now there are two good things about the anti-terrorism act:
1. It prevents the RIAA/MPAA from being judge/jurty/executionar and destroying OUR networks or our computers, and imposes severe penalties for such. Unfortunately, it also imposes severe pentalties on individual hackers for minor offenses less serious than a traffic infraction.
2. The government has not gained the right to violate OUR right to privacy/anonymity by forcing us all to use backdoors on our encryption. The same type of thing can be said to be true of anonymity: anonymizing services also won't, by extension, be forced to give the government a backdoor entrance.
On the other hand, unfortunately, there are some troubling concerns with this bill in terms of search & seizure & warrants.
I believe this bill has language in it that would make a warrant granted in one state to tap someone applicable in another. This violates the sovereignty of individual states. If the government wants a nation-wide warrant to tap someone, they should go to federal court.
The other troubling feature of this bill is that it allows the government to legitimately spy on every website we're visiting, and gives them the right to tap into more of our communications without a warrant from a judge.
If the government wants to have the right to tap into OUR communications, they should have to go to a court and get a warrant. If they go to a state court, the warrant should be applicable only in that state; if a federal court, then throughout the nation.
I have no problem with the government monitoring/tappign the online activity of people who'm one could reasonably believe are criminals(i.e., mobsters like John Gotti Jr). However, they should have to go to a court, and at that court, a public defender should be there to defend the accused's rights(the public defendant would simply make the case against a tap, based on available knowledge, without informing the accused that he was being considered for a wire tap -- if the accused were informed, it would be pointless).
So, what about Sen. Judd Gregg? Well, I'll give him credit for recognizing the validity of keeping encryption strong. It is obvious that when he initially called for a ban on backdoorless encryption, he was ignorant of encryption issues and caveats. Now, it is clear that he is more informed and realizes that his formerly proposed idea would not solve any problems, and would violate civil liberties. Of course, he did not say he was ignorant -- no one wants to say they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.
That said, there are two reasons why politicians propose such laws which flagrantly violate civil liberties and solve no problems: (1) They were ignorant of the issues; (2) They simply did not care, and were bought off by some powerful organization(i.e., BSA, RIAA, MPAA, AAA, MS, etc).
If the reason why politiians propose such laws is that they were ignorant of the issues -- as most all of them are on issues of science, intellectual property, and computer technology -- that can be solved by educating them. If the problem is that they did not care and were bought off, that could be solved by: a. Not re-electing them; b. Launching a publicity campaign agaisnt them.
Of course, sometimes the reason why politicians are "ignorant of issues" is because they've been educated by self-interested lobby groups like the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/AAA/MS. These groups are large and rich, and it is natural for politicians to listen to them. In order to counteract that, we need to make politicians aware of the flaws of the positions of such groups, and the utterly self-interested nature of such groups. Any time any of these groups talks about "rights" or "benefitting the public" its bullshit. They have no concern for the public, only their bottom line; as for rights, the only rights they're concerned about are their own(i.e., the RIAA/MPAA seem to support their right to put out sexually explicit movies/songs even if these may reach kids[a right I support], but seem to think that freedom of speech is irrelevant when it comes to linking to a website with DeCSS on it, or sharing files).
#1. The RIAA/MPAA etc are not law enforcement agencies. They have no right to take direct action against any individual without going to a court. The idea that because some copyright holder THINKS someone else is violating his copyright, he can clog an entire network is absurd and dangerous. What if he's wrong? Inevitably, such efforts to identify "copyrighted files" being traded will more often be wrong than right. Even so, what if they're right about the "trading of copyrighted material"? That doesn't give them the right to violate MY computer or MY system, or OUR network of communications. P2P neworks are in effect little different from a LAN at an office(except slower). The office has the right to maintain that LAN without people destroying or hindering it from the outside. Why? Because they paid for it, set it up, and are currently using it as their method of communiation, etc. In the same way, WE have the right to operate on our "LAN" -- which in this case is a P2P network -- without it being hacked.
#2. At least those nut cases in our government had the good sense not to encorporate this into their already grievant anti-terrorism bill. The bill is an assault on almost all of the civil liberties we should hold dear.
#3. Prevention. Of course, just as we are able to trade copyright files whether the law says so or not, and are effectively immune to consequence due to the massivity of the internet; so are copyright holders able to violate our rights, whether or not the law says so. Congress and the Senate may outlaw such attempts at DoS attacks on PUBLIC networks(which is what P2P effectively is), but that will not stop them from acting. On the internet, irrelevant of how hard the govenrment may try, it is difficult if not impossible to delegate responsibility, or to place blame for a particular action. This is not because there is no trail of logs/records to follow, but rather the opposite: there are so many that making sense out of it is impossible, unless they know exactly what they are looking for.
So, government laws cannot stop copyright owners from doing DoS attacks on OUR networks. What can stop them? Obviously, US.
LimeWire, the only program I use to trade files, already has several features that may be able to effectively eliminate such DoS attacks. Here are my suggestions for features to battle DoS attacks(these, of course, would all have to be automated):
1. Blocking greedy users. You may block people from downloading files, if they are not offering more than a certain number of files. Perhaps it would also be good to be able to determine the average size of the files people are offering, and also have other parameters.
2. Blocking repetivie requests. Block a user from downloading from you if he tries to download many things from you at once, or tries to download the same file repetively.
3. Block users from downloading who are downloading at very slow rates. Create a preference for who gets the download priority: people with low pings and large bandwidths, who are downloading quickly, would get the download.
4. Limit the amount of upload bandwidth you will devote to any user downloading files. Also "limit" the number of files one user can simulaneously download from you. That is, allow a user to download as many files from you as he wishes, as long as there are no other requests; when other requests some in, start limiting the number of uploads per user). The idea here is to prevent one person from hogging all of your upload bandwidth. Also, DO NOT limit the number of uploads at any given time: if you limit the number of uploads to say 1, then one user may be downloading a file, and only using up 50% of your upload bandwidth; the other 50% is wasted if anyone else wants to download from you. The idea here is that if say 20 users want to download from you, ALL of your upload bandwidth will be used, and spread between them accordingly, such as to minimize the overall time for ALL of them to get what they want.
5. Going back to setting priorities on which users get the upload. If one user starts downloading a file, and another user comes on who could download that file before the first user, priority is given to the other user. The goal here is overall utility, not "fairness"(i.e., first come not necessarily first serve). Each uploading node "wants" to get one user done uploading as quickly as possible and then offer upload to the next requester.
6. Setting up a system for dynamically identifying users who are clogging the system(DoSers) -- or contributing to clogging the system -- and blocking them. Obviously, anyone can clog the system an inordinant amount, depending on his or her bandwidth and certain conditions. However, users that perhaps over a half an hour display behaviour which indicates they are DoSers(or having that effect) can be blocked.
7. As explanation for #6, let me say that clearly, any user who has been determined to say have a 500Kbps bandwidth and is using say 1500 bytes of bandwidth to download each of say 341 files, that person is clearly intending to clo the system. That user should be dynamically put on a list of users who are intentionally clogging the system, and blocked from downloading, so long as that behavior continues. Obviously, if everyone blocks him/her, (s)he won't be able to continue any behavior; but one should be able to set up a system which will determine what kind of behavior that person is attempting to do, and then keeping the person on the ban list if they attempt to continue the DoSing behavior, but removing them from the list if they don't continue.
8. As another way of establishing #6, here's a simple system. Consider a user who has 2.048kbps of bandwidth. Now, that user should obviously be allowed to download enough files to fill up his/her entire downloading bandwidth.
Obviously, we wouldn't want a person with 4000Mbps of bandwidth "filling up" their bandwidth -- so, depending on the situation, there should be a limi to how much "informaation" any one user can download at any one time. This is very important. As the RIAA and MPAA can afford to get access to high bandwidth "modems" -- i.e., T3 lines, OC12's, etc -- they could use that to download huge amounts of information and prevent anyone else from utlizing it.
The overall idea is that at any given time there must be a "net uploading bandwidth" on the entire P2P network, so to speak. Now, each file-requesting user should have approximately equal access to that "bandwidth", unless of course they're a DoSer. After all, you want to get the maximum number of files(of average size) to people as you can.
9. A general way to increase the speed of a P2P network. At any given time, a person with a very large uploading bandwidth may not be using any of that uploading bandwidth to give his files to the public, while a person with a very small uploading bandwidth may be using all of his bandwidth to give files to the public. Now, wouldn't it make sense if the person with the large uploading bandwidth could automatically download highly-requested files from the person with the small bandwidth, and offer them himself? What this would effectively amount to is users automatically downloading high-traffic files when they log into a P2P network(that is, if they aren't using their downloading bandwidth to download files of their choice), placing those files into a temporary folder whose contents are to be offered to the public. This would increase the redundancy of the system, thus giving each individual downloader more options for places to download from, thus making things faster. Of course, this option would be optional to the individual user -- no one would "have" to download a certain number of files from other people upon logging on, but such would rather be an option they could check or uncheck. Also, perhaps this option would be something which they'd like to modify -- they may want to devote a certain amount of HD space on their computer to this, depending on how much space they have. With that space, they may want to place in there all files of one type, or all large files, or all small ones, etc etc. In short, there could be many parameters for files a person automatically downloads from another and offers for uploading in his temporary upload folder.
10. Back to blocking greedy users. Obviously, a person who devotes less size in MB of files to this "cache upload file set"(that is, downloads less MB in memory for this purpose) is somewhat "greedy", depending on how much less he devotes than the average; also obviously, a person who devotes more is somewhat benevolent, depending on how much more he devotes than the average. Individual users may want to block download requests from users defined as "greedy" by this standard.
The idea here is to eliminate reduce parasitic behavior on the P2P system. Users who do not offer files but download them are somewhat parasitic(after all, it costs little ot offer files, as most people don't need upload space anyways). Users who hog all sorts of download offers(DoSers) are also parasitic and greedy, as they prevent others from utilizing that bandwidth. Users who do not offer "redundant downloads" of high-demand files are also somewhat parasitic.
The idea here is that the P2P system works best when everyone is contributing as much as possible: when everyone is contributign their own files, offering lots of their upload space, and contributing redundant offers of "high-demand files".
11. More on dealing with greedy users. Another functional definition of an easy user is one who gets on a P2P network, downloads stuff, and then immediately gets off. Obviously, users who stay on P2P networks less time are greedier, and those who stay on it more are more benevolent. This because a user staying on a network a long time keeps his "node" open to the public longer. Even after a user has gotten what he desires from a P2P network, what hindrance does it do him to stay on longer? After all, most bandwidth used on internet surfing is downloading not uploading bandwidth. What harm does it do to an individual user to always leave his P2P program open, always having his files available, except in cases where he's gaming? After all, most internet browing is downloading stuff, and other computer activities do not require internet bandwidth(i.e., it doesn't hinder you while using your word processor to also have the P2P program open). A "minimal" version of the P2P program should be set up, so as that the user can go into "inactive mode" in which as little P2P program information is loaded on the RAM as possible: only that relating to uploading information to other users. This would further reduce the "cost" any user pays for leaving his P2P program open continuously.
12. In other words, the P2P system is a "symbiotic" system. Users who are more benevolent should somehow be rewarded in how much they can get. Benevolence in this case does not simply mean offering most of their upload bandwidth, but also offering many files. After all, what good is it if they're offering all of their upload space, but only offering one file, which isn't too popular? Automated protocols should be set up in LimeWire or other P2P programs which reward the most benevolent users, and repriment the most greedy ones. (all of this, of course, would depend on the majority of P2P users selecting these options in their Options boxes).
THE POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP:
The system I have described for eliminating greedy users, dealing with DoSers, and overall optimizing the P2P network effectively sets up a positive feedback loop. Benevolent users are rewarded for their benevolence by having more access, and greedy useres are punished by having less. Thus, users are discouraged from being greedy(offering nothing, while taking alot), but encouraged to be benevolent(offering alot). This results in a continual reinforcement of "benevolence" which feeds onto itself: users act more benevolent because it gives them greater access, and this eventually leads to a higher "average benevolence level". Then it starts all over again, users again being encouraged to act more benevolent than the average level. It should be noted that this results in an "increased standard of download speed" for everyone, no just the benevolent users(note, benevolent would be relative, and always an more "difficult" status to obtain). Even greedy users would benefit from this sytem, because the motivation for increased benevolence results in more redundancy, more upload bandwidth, and less cloggers/DoSers. More redundancy means that more users will be offering the exact same file: thus, any particular user who wants to download that file would likely download it faster, as his program could automatically compare the different sources and determine which one would result in the fastest download time for him. As users offering more bandwidth are more benevolent, users would obviously be encouraged to offer more bandwidth.
Finally, it should be noted that this system is a creates MAJOR incentives for individual users to contribute to actively UNDERMINING a creators so called "right" to control information. As this positive-feedback benevolence loop will tend to increase the number of files users will offer, and the amount of bandwidth they devote to offering that information, it will encourage users to OFFER more informaion that "creators" have claimed to have the right to control. That is, users will not only be encouraged to take advantage of others offering "copyrighted" information, but also encouraged to offer copyrighted information themselves.
This system could greatly undermine the attempts of organizations such as the RIAA/MPAA/AAA(Authors Association of America) to control information. After all, people would be encouraged to -- out of an interest for their own interests -- distribute information. Thus, this would turn many people into what the RIAA/MPAA/AAA calls "pirates". I prefer to think of them as Information Liberators, because that's what they're doing -- liberating informaion from the control of the information Nazi's(the RIAA/MPAA/AAA aren't the kind of Nazi's who want to burn books, they're the kind who want to prevent books from being read). Now, furthermore, as this system would turn the vast majority of internet users into Information Liberators, it would also change their feelings about "intellectual property". Note, "intellectual property" is a shortened euphemism for what it really is -- the enslavement of information to be controled by a few information-Nazi's.
I was listening to this idea on TV -- at first, I was really skeptical. I mean, making US citizens carry around ID cards that they have to have with them at all times! That's like a nazi/communist thing.
But, ID cards as proposed would be voluntary for registered US citizens. That is, you and I, as US citizens, can choose to have an ID card or not to have one. However, they would be mandatory for any aliens/foreign visitors to the US. That is, someone coming from would have to have an ID card. This is OK. After all, these people are not US citizens. The United States is not responsible for upholding the "rights" of anyone other than US citizens.
This event is tragic and I hope whoever caused it is discovered and brought to justice, to be trialed for his/her actions.
However, I hope this does not turn into some witchhunt, where everyone who says anything negative, criticizing, hostile, or even hateful towards the US government is automatically assumed to be some kind of conspiring terrorist, and denied his or her rights.
Re:A simple solution that most people overlook...
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RIAA To Target CD-R
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LOL, that is a load of BS. If your using a computer, your assuredly supporting some greedy corporation. Wearing clothes? Those come from corporations too -- unless you an Amish asshole who churns butter and spins your own yarn to make clothes. The simple fact is, all the materials we need for living can be traced back to some greedy corporation, and even if they can't, the corporation they came from surely used products from some greedy corporation.
Now, it is perfectly possible to support a company's good products, as you see them, by buying them, and at the same time protest that same companies immoral behaviour. You don't have to do an all-or-nothing deal. For example, it is possible to praise an individual, say Bobby Fischer, for being a brilliant and dedicated chess player -- but that does not mean that you praise his vices(in this case, anti-semitism).
Please, you are full of shit. The company publicized the information on how to make the drug -- that's called a patent. The company has NO authority over the government of Brazil. Brazil's government is sovereign over itself, and answerable only to the people of Brazil. The only interests of that govenment are the people of Brazil.
Now, its absurd to say that any company is going to go out of business b/c a few government's refuse to pay them and make their drugs w/o paying. Drug companies make 10 - 100X the initial R&D cost. In fact, the R&D investment is earned back within a year -- usually 6 months. There is no reason why the company needs 10-100X the R&D cost. There is a perfectly good reason to continue developing with only a 1.5X net profit. Also, companies WILL continue to operate even if they are LOSING money, and are in the hole. Take basic economics, fool. Companies may continue doing business even when they are losing money/in debt because going OUT of business would be even MORE costly. That is, if they continue doing business for 5 years, they will lose say 10 million dollars, but if they declare bankrupcy they will lose 20 million dollars. So they continue doing business, until they lose less money by declaring bankrupty -- quite a while.
You are so full of shit. Libertarianism means you believe in individual rights. Now it is perfectly clear that nothing violates individual rights MORE than intellectual property laws -- they prevent individuals from sharing information and prevent them from using publicized information to manufacture a drug that could help them. In short, intellectual property laws VIOLATE the right to freedom of speech -- as they restrain us from sharing information and VIOLATE the right to freedom of action. That is, patent laws would prevent me, as an HIV victim(for example) from using the information published in a patent to produce a drug that could prevent the HIV from becoming active.
You clearly know nothing of libertarianism. I suggest you read a book called "Information Libertaion" -- a true libertarian book. Here's the url for it:
Look, the lives of the people who are saved are far more important than the fucking profit made by drug companies. Drug companies ALWAYS recapture the R&D cost if their drug is worth shit, and if its worth something, they always make a profit, so hence their is motivation to develop. What drug companies want is to make 100 times the R&D cost. Now, drug companies to NOT need to make 100X the cost of R&D to be motivated to product cures. In fact, 1.5X or 2X is more than enough.
For those of you not familiar with simple economics, be aware that just because a company is not making a profit -- or maybe if its losing money -- does not mean it stops making its product. In fact, companies will continue to operate and innovate when they are LOSING money, because the cost of going out of business would be greater than the cost of continuing business. That is, if they went out of business, they would lose even more money than they would if they continued business. Hence, they continue operating.
Now, Brazil has NO obligation whatsoever to consider the IP "rights" of corporations. Their ONLY obligation is to consider what is best for their citizens. Nor does Brazil have any reason or obligation to obey international law or international agreements if it finds these to be at the expense of its citizens. International laws are a violation of the sovereignty of the people of nations anyways.
That said, other governments should and may do the same thing when they deem it necessary, including the US government. Remember, the GOVERNMENT and NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS donate LARGE sums of money to corporations. We should either demand that they make their products freely available to the government, or with-hold funding. The money of the US taxpayers -- PUBLIC MONEY -- should not go towards making a privatized resource.
Finally, let me state that though Brazil's decision is right, their implementation of it is flawed. Brazil needs to accumulate a vast storage of many different HIV-inhibiting/destroying drugs. They then need to treat their patients with all of them simultaneously. This may seem rather calculating but it is necessary. No one "cure" or "blocking mechanism" for HIV will work. HIV is a virus and it evolves rapidly. Any given drug to destroy HIV will destroy maybe 99.99% of HIV viroid particles, but there will always be a few left. So you need to use different drugs simulatneously. there may be billions of HIV viroids within an infected individual, all of them slightly different and mutated, some which have mutations which make them more immune to drugs. You need to treat the patient with enough drugs so that it is improbable that even ONE HIV viroid will be resistant. This means accumulating 10, 20, 30, or even up to a 100 different treatments and using them all at once.
Fuck DirectX and OpenGL -- both of them fucking suck for Descent 3 and alot of other games. I have a GeForce 2 GTS card using DX8 for Descent 3, and people who have a fucking Voodoo 4 get better fps under Descent 3 than I do. Why? Because they use the Glide API. Glide is a faster API than either DirectX or OpenGL. Now that Nvidia has acquired the 3D card portion of 3dfx, its about fucking time they included Glide support in their driver releases for their god damned cards.
Look, the purpose of ADA is to prevent people with disabilities from being discriminated against when the job they're applying for does not require the faculty they're disabled in. The purpose of the ADA is not to make it so that a blind person can get a job as a taxi-cab driver, or so that a deaf person can get a job as a translator, or so that a person with tendinitis can get/keep a job as a typist. I mean, come on, what's next -- are fat women going to try to sue a strip club, claiming discrimination, because the club won't hire them?
I don't think that Bush caved into the "right wing" religious nut-cases of the Republican party. I think that this is what he believes. I also happen to like GWB, because I believe he will do what he believes is right. However, as a scientist and an enlightened atheist, I strongly disagree.
There is no debate over whether these embryo's are life -- they are life. A bacterium is a living organism, though small, unaware, and primitive. Similarly, so is an embryo.
The real question is not when "life" begins -- there is nothing special about life, we squash bugs every day -- but when personhood begins. I think that it is absurd to say that this little protoplasm of cells deserves the status of a person, or any rights whatsoever.
As it deserves no rights, we need not worry about any absurd moral delemnas of using embryo's for research. This is just moral hair-splitting, really a bunchof bullshit. But even if you believe that it is a person, so what? All of these embryo's that were not implanted in women are going to die anyways -- so why not use them for research?
As I said before, I happen to like President Bush, and agree with him on many issues. However, there are many issues I disagree with him on. This is one of those issues. I think the curent decision is a major set-back to science, and backwards religious thinking. Religion has no place in politics, and I think the only way to justify such a decision is via religion. The religion of one man should not be forced on other's.
On the other hand, there are now techniques via which to turn a normal adult cell into an embryonic stem cell, and techniques via which to make one stem cell go on replicating indefinately, via turning on telomerase. This may provide a solution for the problem from the limited number of cells we can do research on.
Again, I like GW Bush, and think he did what he thought was right. However, I disagree with him. The only justification for such a position is a religious one, and religion has no place hindering the progress of science.
Again, I will respond point for point to your argument, as I believe that is the best way to achieve clarity, and not ramble on pointlessly as some people seem to do when they feel strongly about an issue. Please respond if you will, but if not, I felt it important to clarify a few things about my original statement.
But first, let me point out that my post is not based on my opinion or my philosophy, it was based on my educated analysis of the relevant legal framework. I didn't make that stuff up. I looked it all up and checked it before I wrote it down. I learned quite a bit of it in law school.
Yes, I realize that. However, I believe some of your legal analysis is either open to different interpretation -- i.e., the debate between loose and strict constructionalism of the constitution -- or misses the point. Aside from that, simply because something is in or not in the law, has nothing to do with whether it is right/wrong. In half of the US States, it is illegal for two consenting individuals to engage in anything other than missionary sex. This is clearly an ass-backwards law, which has no possible justification, other than in the mind of a religious fanatic. Until about half-way through last century, "separate was equal" in the eyes of the US Suprme Court and the law. Again, clearly no justification for such, other than in the mind of a racial fanatic. In Nazi Germany, it was acceptable to kill a Jewish person for no reason other than that he was a Jew -- indeed, it was even officially recognized as the officially "right" thing to do by the government. Simply put, just because something is the law, does not make it right, and just because something isn't the law, doesn't make it wrong. Laws are made by greedy, philandering, adultering, lying, cheating men, not by gods.
From a philosophical viewpoint, distinguishing ideas and their expressions might be difficult...[but, legally] the distinction between an idea and its expression is clear.
Perhaps so, for the moment. But there is clearly an alternate interpretation of law in which the distinction would dissapear completely. Now, just because something has been so in the past, and is now, does not mean that it will always be. For years, the US Supreme Court immorally agreed with racists that "African Americans were only 2/3rds of a person" and that "every man" did not include women, and so on and so forth. Then, one day, they woke up, and realized that such statements were little different than Hitler's holocaust.
The court's decision ordered Napster to block copyrighted songs. Napster's solution might block a lot of other stuff besides copyrighted material, but that is Napster's fault, not the court's.
Well, indeed it IS the courts fault. The court just recently ordered that "blocking 99% of all infringing files is not good enough " In other words, they ordered Napster to stop 100% of all illegal activity on their system. The ONLY way to achieve perfect fidelity is to use draconian Hitlatarian measures. Period. You want to stop all murder? Fine, put cameras on every corner of this nation, put police on every street corner, deem that the punishment of murder be torture, turn this country into fucking Big Brotherland...then you will MIGHT have stopped all murders from occuring. Similarly, cyber-draconian measures must be applied to stop 99% of any form of "cybercrime". It is not Napster's fault. The only way to do what the court asked was to use draconian tactics, which prevent the sharing of non-copyrighted files. It is not Napster's fault that the such is the only way to do it. That is the only way to achieve such, and it is the only way that perfect prevention will ever be achieved, if it is even possible. Now, what is Napster's fault is that they rolled over on this decision, and bent to the will of the rich music industry, instead of fighting on to the Supreme Court. Now, their service is useless crap.
There might be something to your argument that Napster is a form of assembly, but I doubt that any form of assembly, if it facilitated infringement of copyright, would be protected by the First Amendment.
The right to freedom of assembly is a constitutional(or rather, amdendment-to-constitutional) right. Intellectual property laws are just laws. They aren't in the constitution, or any of the amendments. Now, as I hold it to be, the Constitution is the supreme law and all other laws must bend to it. So how is it that the "right" to "own the expression of ideas"(more accurately, the right to own ideas) somehow supercedes the right to freedom of assembly? Furthermore, the you can not accurately say that the reason people get on Gnutella is to share copyrighted materials. There are many reasons why people get on Gnutella, sharing "copyrighted materials" being only one of them: sharing pictures, sharing patches, sharing documents, sharing parodies, sharing pornography(probably the most predominant reason), and on and on and on. So to state that we can nullify the right to assembly in this case because there is no specific purpose of assembly. If you say that we can stop assembly just because some people in that assembly use such assembly as an opportunity to organize illegal activities, well, then, we better stop these fucking senators and congressment from meeting in Washington.
[M]obs are dangerous to the public welfare [and] the need to protect the mob's collective right of assembly is outweighed."
First of all, to compare Gnutella to a mob is absurd. It is absurd -- or at least unprovable -- to say that the majority of people get on Gnutella to "illegally" trade copyrighted material. I say absurd because, as I said before, the most predominant activity on Gnutella is clearly the trading of pornography, most of which does not involve copyrighted material. You want proof of that? Get LimeWire or BearShare. Type in "Britney Spears," probably the most popular artist now a-days. Then type in (in an OR fashion) "Lesbians". I gaurentee you you'll find more search results for the latter. Now, you might say, "but there are many other artists other than Britney Spears". Yes, there are, but there are only 100 or so of them that are major. Even combining all of them together, you wouldn't get more results than for a general pornography search.
As far as you're concerned you are buying a CD and the right to obtain maximum utility from that CD? I am sorry to disappoint you, but there is not a court in the U.S. that would find the license under which you buy a CD to be invalid. Just because you think it is invalid, doesn't make it invalid. If you don't agree to the license, don't buy
Yes, as far as I'm concerned, buying a CD means I can do whatever I will with it so long as I don't redistribute the original CD's contents. This is based on an underlying principle behind the Constitutional Rights and any other Rights granted to citizens under any just form of government: that an individual can do whatever they want, so long as it does not cause significant harm to any other individual. In private, how can my modifying a piece of software harm the developers? If I publish that modification as a tweak, that doesn't even cause significant harm to the developer. Firstly, most such modifications fix something the developer fucked up. Secondly, those that might, such as the "Advanced E-Book Processor"(AEP), and that can actually be seen to harm the developer are still covered as the expression of an idea. Not only that, but it is not clear that they will cause harm, nor that everyone will use them to cause harm. The AEP allows owners of E-books to copy them, print them, etc etc. Now, while some owners might redistribute, so what? Owners of E-books have fair use rights, which includes backup copying, and alternate methods of viewing. Furthermore, just because something can cause harm to the developers doesn't mean banning it is justified. In the same sense that protection-cracks can cause harm producers, so can Xerox copying machines. Haven't illegalized them, have we? Just because something harms a rich powerful interest or can do so doesn't mean we should illegalize it. MP3s and MP4s "aid in the distribution of pirated material" so lets ban them? Clearly absurd. Knives/guns can be used to kill, so lets ban them? Also absurd(also unconstitutional under the right to bear arms). If we start banning everything that CAN BE used to cause harm, we'd best go back to the stone ages.
If you don't agree to the license, don't buy. As for software licenses, you are close to a major legal debate: are those licenses valid if you must agree to them after opening the product? The problem with your position is that most courts throughout the country have rejected it. In most cases, shrinkwrap licenses, as they are called, have been upheld when challenged.
Your first sentence is impossible to abide by. You can't possible know what the software license is before buying it, so you can't be expected to "not buy it if you don't agree to the license". As for the shrinkwrapping issue, there is no valid justification behind rejecting the argument that such a license, which must be agreed to, is valid. If you must agree to a license after opening the product(that license not being made available to you before opening the product), then it is no different than a conract signed at gunpoint. In this case, the gunpoint being the loss of the money spent on the product. Also, just because "most courts" uphold it does not mean that it is legally, or ethically, justified. Courts have upheld ass-backwards laws throughout all of history: they have been tools of racism, bigotry, hatred, sexism, and injustice. Separate is equal; Blacks are only 2/3rds persons; Women are not persons; Jews are not persons; Alternative consentual sex between adults is not ok(though this is only enforced against homosexuals); oh, need I forget, all the women convicted by courts as being witches?; etc. These are all positions that the courts have upheld. All of them absolutely unjustified and invalid, just as is the DMCA, and current intellectual property law, which no longer promotes progress(as it is supposed to, via the constitution). Again, just because something is law or the current interpretation of law, does not justify it.
If you tweak or write a patch for a software program for your own private use, that again is arguably fair use.
I'm glad you at least agree to that much, and wouldn't have corporations spying in our own homes to prevent us from modifying their programs. While we're on fair use, I would like to make a few statements about fair use. Fair use should be a right, which is CLEARLY defined. People should know exactly what they can and can't do. In general, all this argument over "interpretations of laws" shows just how poorly written, and how injust, they are. People have the right to know exactly what their law demands of them, in clear terms. I believe there is a constitutional clause which declares that a law is unconstitutional if it is ambiguous. Any law or right(whatever) that is being toddled back and forth between judges and lawyers, is clearly ambiguous and unfair to the people -- as they know not what it expects of them.
But if you make that patch or tweak available for download on the internet, and especially if you charge people for it, you are probably walking right out of the fair use area (although I don't think that specific issue has been decided by any court yet).
Why should such not be covered by fair use? After all, I'm not redistributing the AUTHORS work, I'm distributing MY work, which improves upon the author's work. For software, a patch/tweak I distribute does not deprive the developers of their priviledges, but only helps other users who have the same problem I do. Now, as for your statement that "no court has declared such yet" this is a prime example of how our law is fucked up. So, because of our ass-backwards law, no one really knows if it is OK or NOT -- indeed, at the moment, it is NEITHER, as there is no ruling on it, and it is clearly ambiguous. Now, what's going to happen is that some hacker who made a patch for Descent 3 or some other game and put it on the internet, thinking this was fine, as there's been nothing saying it isn't fine, is going to be sued. So, he gets sued, and then some court retroactively decides that what he was doing wasn't covered under fair use. This is a violation of the grandfather principle. Its no different than instituting a law today which makes, say, owning a gun illegal, and then prosecuting everyone over the past 50 years who had a gun. The difference, of course, is that you're prosecuting someone retroactively via an interpretation of a law. Why should some poor schmuck have to suffer the consequences for something that until brought to court, wasn't even illegal, as there was no interpretation on it. Now, what I propose to solve this is to change our system so as to make it like that in Germany. Any law or interpretation can be brought to the Supreme Court for interpretation when there is NOT an actual case on the line -- in other words, when no one's life depends on it. A sort of "theoretical" challenged to a law/interpretation.
Now, the bottom line of my response. Well, there is no bottom line. But I suppose the most important point of my point is regarding the clarity of law, and the hypocritical reverse-application of a law. Laws need to be clear -- so that only one interpretation is possible by a sane person. Laws which are not even clear to legal experts are clearly not justified. Also, laws should be clear to NORMAL -- and even DUMB -- citizens. None of that fancy pretentious bullshit language. No shalls, no thous, none of that British bullshit. Just terse Orwellian language -- the best expression of something is that which is firstly the clearest, and secondly the briefest. That is, the briefest clear explanation is the best. Furthermore, we should not apply a newly-created interpretation of a law to an individual who violated that "interpretation" before it was validated.
The purpose of copyright laws is to provide authors property rights in their original works. Ideas and facts are not protected by copyright. Thus, the copyright law protects freedom of speech by allowing free dissemination of ideas and facts.
I believe you are trying to say that the ideas themselves are not copyrighted, but only the expression of the ideas. An expression of an idea is an idea in and of itself -- it is an idea of how to express an idea. For example, there is this idea called gravity, and right now there are three reasonable other ideas through which to express this idea of gravity: Newton's laws of gravity, Einstein's theory of gravitation, and quantum gravitation. Hence, in preventing people from sharing the expression of an idea, you are preventing people from sharing an idea, in that: (a) the expression of an idea is an idea itself (b) preventing people from sharing the expression of an idea also prevents them from sharing that idea itself, as different expressions of one idea can allow one to grasp the entirity of an idea.
Exchanging mp3s via Napster (assuming that both parties don't already own a non-infringing copy of the work) is not free speech. The exchange in that situation is of a copyright-protected work. The technology used by Napster has not been outlawed. Napster has been prevented from continuing to infringe the copyrights of thousands of artists. Your right of free speech has not been abridged, because you can still exchange all the facts and ideas via peer-to-peer sharing that you like.
Exchanging MP3s via Napster is indeed free speech. But more than that, using Napster/Gnutella is a mode of freedom of association. Hindering that mode by putting restrictions on it that effectively make it useless, as the court has done, is violating our right to freedom fo assembly. Oh, and our rights to free speech definately have been abridged by the Napster decision: it is no longer possible to share parodies of copyrighted songs(songs that use the same background music, and twisted lyrics), nor is it possible to distribute files on Napster that are titled similarly to copyrighted music. These files we certainly do have a right to exchange, and preventing such is violating our right to freedom of speech.
The Supreme Court has found that these amendments create a penumbra of privacy rights...Privacy is not an essential right--we don't really have any privacy rights at all."
Hence, as the Suprme Court decided such, we do have the right to privacy. The Suprme Court also ruled at one time that "all men" included women and black people. Now, as for your statement that privacy is not an essential rigth -- yes it is. Just because it is not explicitly stated in the US constitution/amendments, or not recognized adequately, does not mean it is not an essential right. The people in China being slaughtered like dogs for protesting against the Chinese government still have the right to life: just because the Chinese government does not recognize their right to life, does not mean that such a right does not exist.
I'm sure that you are aware that when you buy a software program, you are actually buying the license to use that program. If that license prevents you from reengineering that program, then if you do, the licensee can sue you for breach of contract.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm buying that CD, and the right to obtain maximum utility from that CD. Just because something is in a license which I supposedly agreed to does not mean it is valid. I may sign a contract that makes me a slave -- that isn't a valid contract, because it violates my rights. In the same sense, a contract on software that prevents me from doing what I will with it on my own private computer is void. The contract can not be enforced, and to enforce such a contract would be a violation of my rights to privacy(i.e., they would have to spy on me in my home to know if I violated the contract). And to enforce the contract would be a violation of my property rights, as they would have to either (1) come into MY house and prevent me from doing so or (2) steal MY CD which I had paid for. Furthermore, I would like to argue that all software license are void, as they can NOT be read until before one has ripped open the CD box, and you can not return a piece of software because you don't agree to the license. It is no different than a contract signed at gunpoint.
You do own your CDs and DVDs in the same sense as you own a book.
Nonsense, I was referring to my ability to modify a book so as to better suit my purposes(i.e., a USEFUL, not superficial modification; namely, a modification to the material of the book). In the same sense that I may rip out useless blank pages, copyright pages, remove the book cover, underline certain passages, and even modify others, in a book, so as to make it more useful to me, so should I have the right to do to a piece of software installed on my computer: modify it to make it more useful to me. I am talking about modifying the actual content, not the physical thing itself. In the case of a book, by modifying the content, I am actually modifying the physical book -- the two go hand in hand. Not so in the case of a CD. But the same modification of the content is still my right. Now, let me point out an inconsistency in your ridiculous argument. You state that "you have the right to do anything you want with the physical ojbect, but you are limited as to what you can do with the content". Well, that is an oxymoronic statement. If you modify the CD physically, you modify its content. For example, if I had the right equipment and expertice, I could directly modify the CD's data via only physical manipulations. This is a modifcation to the object itself. Now, if I can do this direct physical modification, it is idiotic to say that I can not do a more indirect modificatioin(i.e., reverse engineering/tweaking the program on my computer).
Before I move on, let me point out one more thing -- I OWN my computer's hard drive, hence have the right to do whatever the hell I want to with the data on that drive(locally; that is, this right is absolute so long as it is localized to my hard drive). You can not tell me what I can and can not do with my own data on my own hard drive -- that is a violation of my property rights.
Final, you're right to swing your fist does not end at my face. If you take a swing at me, even if you don't hit me and even if you only intend to scare me, I can sue you for assault and you can be prosecuted for criminal assault (note that assault, in legal terms, refers to threatened or creating an apprhension of harmful physical contact, but battery means actual harmful phsyical contact). I am afraid to tell you that you can't go around taking swings at people and deliberately missing them with impunity.
I assume that you were joking, but in case you weren't, let me clarify. The old adage about fist swining is a metaphor, not meant to be taken literally. Let me translate it into something more philosophically clear: I have the right to do whatever the fuck I want so long as it does not significantly harm others. Now, in the case of me modifying software on my computer to make it more useful, and then maybe distributing it on the internet -- I believe this is known as a patch or tweak -- this does NOT cause any significant harm to the creators of that software. Certainly, what I do on my own private computer, confined to that computer, can not be construed to cause them ANY harm -- so they have NO right to stop me from doing it. As for distributing patches and whatnot, it can not cause them harm that is significant enough to justify eliminating my right to freedom of speech.
The same is true for tools like DeCSS. It is not clear that it will cause them harm, and even if it does, that harm would not be significant enough to justify violating MY rights to freedom of speech, or the DeCSS author's rights. Nor would it justify violating the rights of those who simply wanted DeCSS to exercise their fair use rights.
I would also like to make not of the fact that there is NO constitutional right to intellectual property, nor is their any amendments respecting intellectual property. I would also like to state that the constitution clearly states that IP laws established were to be ONLY so for the greater good of promoting progress. IP laws as they now exist hinder laws by hindering the free flow of ideas -- such as programming code DeCSS, or the "Advanced E-Book Processor" -- and are thus unconstitutional.
Typical response of the idiot who's been brainwashed by a lifetime of intellectual property propaganda. You haven't robbed the record stores of anything -- if their music is that crappy that you don't even think it worthy to go out and buy a "best" quality copy of it, you wouldn't have bought it anyways. People who download hundreds of songs wouldn't have gone out to buy them in the first place.
Protecting the bottom line of the recording/movie/software industries does not justify violating our rights to (1) Free speech (2) Freedom to gather in assembly(freedom of association) (3) Privacy (4) Fair use (5) Liberty to do what we will in general. That you can not deny US OUR RIGHTS to protect the bottom line of the industries is covered in the 9th amendment, that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Namely, the industry can not use their priviledge to control ideas as a justification for violating our rights.
(1) Free speech. The Napster decision, the DeCSS decision, the corporate movement against P2P, all violate our right to free speech. Should you and I want to, we have the right to directly link our computers and share whatever information we want to with one another. Just because we *can* do this to share copyrighted material, does not justify denying us this right. People can get together in private parties to plan murder and scams, but that doesn't mean that the government is justified in stopping people from talking to one another. Napster/KaZaa/Gnutella/etc are all basically mediums of free speech. We have the right to speek freely to one another, and the right to share with eachother our entire hard drives(as Limewire allows you to do by specifying all file types and all folders).
(2) Freedom of association. This brings me to freedom of association. By banning programs like Napster and Gnutella(which I believe the industry will try to ban under the DMCA) violates our right to freedom of association. You can not possibly say we have the right to freely associate if we can not do it through the medium of our choice, or in the mode of our choice.
(3) Privacy. This ties in with freedom of association and freedom of speech. Privacy is an essential right: we have the right to privately(or anomyously) associate with eachother and speak freely. This is precisely what the industry is against -- because true privacy undermines their ability to exert their will on us. The industries efforts to try to eliminate all privacy from the internet -- via "net watchers," "spyware," and trying to blackball ISPs into revealing our identity -- are not justified by their priviledge to copyright/patent. Note, I say PRIVILEDGE, not right. There is no right to own an idea. The constitution says that congress may pass intellectual property laws solely for the sake of promoting progress: they are not by any means a right. Note, that while the constitution was amended and added to by the amendments, there has never been an amendment stating that you have the "right to own ideas".
(4) Fair use. If I buy a software program, audio CD, or DVD, I should be able to do whatever I desire with it, so long as I don't redistribute it in its entirity. I have the right to modify, tweak, disassemble, hack, etc, the CD/DVD/program. You can understand this to be my right in the same sense that its my right to have any form of consentual sex I desire with my partner: its covered under the 10th amendments, which states that the powers not delegated to the US by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved...to the people. Nothing in the constitution says the government may act to stop me from performing a private act which harms no one else, which is precisely what hacking my CD/DVD/software is. When I buy a CD/DVD/program, I should own in at least the same sense that I own a book: I should have the right to use it any way I desire, to take notes on the side pages(so to speak), to modify it(so to speak), to analyze it to understand how it works.
(5) Liberty to do what I will in general. Namely, I have the right to swing my fist as far as your face. The equally important antithesis to this is that the movie industry nor the govenment may not deny or hinder our rights, as afforementioned, to protect their "priviledges". Not anymore than I can go around shooting everyone around me in public, to "protect myself". After all, any of those strangers COULD be planning on or about to kill me. The government may not violate MY rights, nor the rights of the public in general[as was done by the DMCA], simply because SOME people MAY be doing things which violate the "priviledge" of the industry to "control ideas".
Please, what kind of "top 50" list is this? they mentioned freaking DukeNukem and Quake -- blatent take offs of Doom -- but left out the best vehicular shooter game of all time, Descent? Descent is hands down a much more revolutionary and realistic game than its land-bound counterparts Doom, Quake, and DukeNukem. Why do I say that? Well, first of all Descent took the first person shooter genre and turned it upside down on its head -- literally. Secondly, Descent's graphics were revolutionary for the time: it was really the only game at the time that really looked 3D. Not to mention, the AI in Descent I(and the rest of the series) is arguably superior to any AI in any other 1st person shooter games. Most impressive, though, is the very realistic perception of physics in the Descent series: when you bump into something, it FEELS like you've bumped into it. Unlike in Duke Nukem or Doom or Quake, where when you bump into something, the legs of the character keep on moving, and it feels like you've just hita squishy force-field or something.
And also, where is Tomb Raider? Tomb Raider was also a revolutionary game, though buggy. It really pulled you in, because you felt like you were actually on some archeological dig.
Slashdot Mirror
Open civil disobediance only works when you have a no-brainer issue that many people will sympathize with. Open civil disobediance, as was done by ML King, works by pressuring public officials to change the law, by turning public opinion against them.
The fact of the matter is that intellectual property issues don't get air time. They don't get on TV, don't get on the O'Reilly factor or on the McClaughlin Group -- too abstract and complicated for the typical tiny American mind to deal with. Most people are dumb(think of how dumb the avg. person is; then think that probably half of the people are dumber).
What I'm advocating is not necessarily "sneaky" disobediance. It's just disobediance not in the public's eye. Individuals shouldn't go out of their way to get media attention on specific acts of copyright violations. If this is the strategy, you won't get many recruits. What we will do is try to get some attention collectively as a group in a general sense. As a group -- or individually anonymously -- say that we IP laws are wrong and that we violate them. Saying that we as a group violate IP laws doesn't create significant risk for any members, as it refers to no specific act.
Civil disobediance done with attempts to avoid imprisonment does work. It worked rather well for prohibition. Prohibition was ignored by almost everyone, and it was thus doomed from the start. So what we need to do is to create risk minimal ways for people to disobey IP laws(i.e., P2P services). When the risk to disobeying IP is minimal, there is little impediment to doing so. Many people will start disobeying the IP laws, and they will inevitably crumble.
id software encourages Quake modding, they realize it adds value to the product and have written the EULA to allow it (as I understand). They only draw the line at the Quake executable.
Int that case, they still don't offer consumers what should be their right -- to modify and obtain modifications for THEIR property as they see fit. Why shouldn't consumers have the right to modify their executable, or easily obtain a modification?
Laws against prostitution were, I believe, originally designed to control the spread of disease. This is still a reason for them to exist.
Actually, by illegalizing it you prevent any effective regulation, thus encourage the spread of disease. If it were legal, services would have safety regulations and few would risk going to an illegal service when there was a legal alternative available. Irrelevant of "disease spreading" it only affects those who VOLUNTARILY choose to be involved with prostitution or prostitutes. Their choice. No one has the right to tell me what to do or not to do with my body. If I get a disease from that, my fault.
In response to:
So you're in favor of exposing young children to second-hand somke? I really don't see how the first item on your list belongs on it.
It's not that that I'm in favor of doing such. I don't smoke myself, nor have I ever. It's that I don't think we should be telling parents what to do in their own homes(within reasonable extents). More than that, its not really about what I personally support. It's about draconian scare-tactics used in propaganda ads to get people to change their behavior. This one isn't so much of a scare tactic as a guilt-trip tactic. I don't smoke, but, standing up for the rights of those who DO smoke, they don't need to be put through a guilt-trip in their own home. I can see your point in that this particular add -- the "Lets take it outside" anti-smoking ad -- isn't as draconian as the others on the list. Nevertheless, it employs a similarly underlying mechanism: get people to do what you want by manipulating their minds, either with fear or guilt.
Here's a general strategy to deal with the overzealous "intellectual property"(more appropriately, idea enslavement) views that the government, corporations, and private "information owners" take.
1. Copy all such useful things to your hard drive -- the files, and the website.
2. Redistribute these files on Kazaa, LimeWire, Usenet, the Internet, etc etc.
3. Repost these files on to-the-point(no graphics) websites using servers in countries which do not respect copyrights.
4. Pursue any other viable means to liberate information and to better give consumers the RIGHT to obtain maximal utlity out of the products THEY own. Inform people about THEIR right to have access to backup copies, to modify/tweak their software, and to offer such modifications/tweaks to the public. Inform people that this right -- say, for example, to publish a texture "patch" for Quake -- which they take for granted, is something companies are trying to eliminate.
This is, in short, a non-traditional civil disobediance approach. No, we are not doing this in public, and letting the police come and arrest us and beat us down. For one thing, we should not have to be treated so horribly for simply exercising OUR rights; for another, that type of approach only works when you have an issue which is simple, and which the vast majority of the public can easily sympathize with(i.e., like segregation). If the issue is too complicated, such as is intellectual property, the general public will not be able to sympathize.
So our approach is use civil disobediance in an anonymous manner. No, we will not be wrongfully scapegoated for doing this. This form of civil disobediance will bring down the laws, ultimately, by making them infeasible and non-workable. If enough people disobey a law, it will go away. Prime example is the ill-informed "prohibition" law. Examples of laws that will eventually go away due to mssive disregard of them and disobediance of them include laws against sodomy, laws against prostitution, laws against stripping, laws against milder drugs such as pot, laws against abortion, laws against assisted-suicide, and laws which enslave information.
I believe the point of the accusation is that ATI is making "optimizations" to Quake to taint any reviewing process based on benchmarking to their favor. It is commonly known that Quake is used as a benchmark to test how "fast" graphics cards are. Thus, the accusation is that they are making drivers specifically designed to make them look better in any benchmarking reviews, though their product might not be any better in any other games. Quake is used as a benchmarking program, assuming that -- in general -- if graphics card A can run Quake faster than graphics card B, it can run most games faster.
So, basically, it is alleged that what ATI is doing is cheating on the benchmarking reviews of graphics cards which use Quake.
That said, let me say there is nothing wrong with putting options in a driver to optimize it for a specific popular game. However, such options should NOT hinder performance in other games, or should be optional ad-ins for the user if they do. Nevertheless, the fact that ATI had not told the CONSUMERS and PRODUCT REVIEWERS that it put in such Quake-specific optimizations suggests that they were doing so solely to look better in reviews. To me, this seems like a case of FRAUD.
However, if there are also built-in optimizations for other popular games, other popular programs, then this is NOT a fraud but an attempt by ATI to make their hardware work well with a variety of programs.
There is nothing wrong with optimizing the software(drivers) to get a bit more performance out of a companies own hardware. In fact, this is a GOOD thing. It means that consumers get a better product at no additional cost(as drivers are free, and the hardware would work better).
But again, if they're doing it just to look good on reviews, its fraud. Clearly, there needs to be some kind of investigation: simply put, at the moment, we don't have enough information to determine whether ATI was acting fraudulently, trying to make its product better with a variety of programs, or misguidedly trying to make their hardware better for one game at the expense of many others.
This reeks of the same type of brain-washing employed by the Nazi's in WWII: "Do what WE WANT, or else SUFFER."
It is similar to ads put out by various interest groups, such as:
1. Those ads which try to tell parents they shouldn't smoke in their own home if they have kids(the "Lets take it outside ads").
2. The add which showed a black man being dragged behind a truck and said that "because GW Bush doesn't support 'hate crimes legislation' he is just as bad as the KKK racists who dragged that man to his death."
3. The cabletheft ads: "Cabletheft: its a crime." These are the ads that feature a young girl telling the viewers "daddy says we get cable by that magic box" and then show a policeman coming up to the door and arresting the father, and him being sent off to jail.
4. The "insurance fraud" ads which show a couple of bruisers in jail, remarking on why they got there, and then some skinny guy saying he frauded insurance companies. Then the add proceeds to show the bruiser inmates getting upset because "he was the one who made their insurance companies raise their rates." The punchline is: "Insurance fraud: its a crime." The implication is that this man spends his days in jail being raped up the ass and beaten by the two ruffs.
These type of propaganda adds -- and now propaganda cartoons -- are sickening. The idea is to persuade adults to do as the interest group wants by striking terror into them in most cases.
In the case of this cartoon, its even worse: they're targetting children. They want to brainwash children into accepting *their* viewpoints. This is an attempt by the RIAA/MPAA to sway the younger generations from their natural tendancies to trade information freely, towards the RIAA/MPAA's nazi views, overriding the proper right of parents to morally educate their children.
In short, this is the RIAA/MPAA doing the same thing to OUR children that Hitler did to the children of Germany. Children were brainwashed, and used as tools against their parents.
The EFF's point is that IF an ISP chooses to employ SPAM-blocking methods, without their clients consent, then it is wrong for them to block out any mail that is NOT SPAM.
"The anti-Junk FAX law passed the constitutionality test. I don't see why extending it to be anti-Junk E-mail would have done any worse. The exact same private-property rights are involved, something that spammers (and the EFF, apparently) seem to have no interest in recognizing."
Actually, no, the issues are slightly different, though in theory your point is correct. The only way for most users to communicate with others on the internet via e-mail is through ISP's. SPAM blocking methods proposed by MAPS and other strongarm tactics punish entire ISP's and all of their clients for the acts of a few SPAMers. The anti-Junk fax mail laws do not punish the phone company or its clients becaues a few clients use that service to fax SPAM. The anti-Junk e-mail law would do so. If you want to deal with SPAMers, deal with them -- their ISP's and that ISP's other clients aren't responsible for their actions. An ISP is not responsible for the actions of those who use its service; not any more than AT&T is responsible for how people use its phone lines. Furthermore, what makes these ISP-strongarm tactics worse is that, as someone mentioned elsewhere, SPAMers simply hop to another ISP if one ISP identifies them and terminates their subscription.
I am strongly against SPAM -- as I said before, the right to freedom of speach DOES NOT imply the right to force other's to listen. Indeed, forcing others to listen eliminates one's own right to freedom of speach necessarily. Furthemore, the right to free speach does not imply the right to use someone else as your mouthpiece -- in this case, the ISP -- at their great detriment, without fair compensation(SPAMers clearly do not compensate the ISP's involved for how much they cost them). However, the right to free speach does require a complementary right to the freedom of the right to choose whether or not to listen, and how to listen. SPAMers deny ISP clients the right to choose whether or not to listen, thus deny their own right to freedom of speach.
What I support is a system where SPAMers have to seek affirmative acceptance before SPAMing people. Of course, enforcing such -- as I've already said -- is impractical. But many large corporations who employ SPAMers will comply because they have much to lose if they don't.
Let me start out by defining what SPAM is: SPAM is any message sent out to a large group of recipients who did not specifically request such a message.
Now, let me define what freedom of speach is -- freedom of speach means that one person has the right to say anything he so desires AND that it is possible that others can listen to his speach. As a necessary correlary and clarification to this, a persons speach is NOT free unless ONLY each "end-listener" individual is the one deciding whether or not to receive that speach.
For example, if a person gets up on a park and begins making speaking. People may listen to him, or they may not, in every sense of the word: they may "hear" him but ignore him(tune him out); they may hear him and pay attention to him, thinking about what he's saying; they may hear his speach and decide they disagree with it so much that they must leave at once and listen to it no more; etc.
In such a situation, the person speaking has free speach: he has the freedom to choose whether or not to speak, he may say what he pleases, and people have the opportunity to listen to him. Furthermore, in such a situation, the "audience" -- the people actively listening, tuning him out, or leaving -- have another kind of freedom: the freedom to choose whether or not to listen. They have the right to freedom of listening. This right implies that they can choose to listen or not to listen, or anything in between.
Now, let us consider two alterations to this model: (1) In which the speaker is "prohibited" from speaking by some means; (2) In which the audience is prohibited from their freedom of choice to listen or not to listen. [To speak or not to speak, to listen or not to listen, that is the question!] I think it will be clear from considering each of these cases that the right to freedom of speach and the right to freadom of listening are dependant on one another: you cannot have one without the other. I think it will also be clear the the right to freedom of speach means not only the right to decide exactly what to say, but the right to decide if one wants to speak or not in the first place; as will it be clear that the right to freedom of listening means not only the right to decide whether or not to listen, but also the right to decide how to listen or how not to listen.
So, let us start with case (1): In which the speaker is somehow prohibited from speaking, or prevented from speaking meaningfully. Let us say that a (wo)man walks to the center of a park and starts speaking about how much (s)he hates the United States. Perhaps as a part of her speach, she takes a flag and rips it up, or burns it. Now, as the US government is a primarily filled with narrow minded self-righteous eccentrics, it is only natural that those in the government would notice and somehow stop her from speaking. The method is largely irrelevant in relation to freedom of speach(though some methods, such as physical beating, may violate the right to body as well as the right to freedom of speach). In such a case, that persons right to freedom of speach would clearly have been violated. But less clear a fact, is that the rights of the entire public to freedom of listening has also been violated. By oppressing the right of that person to speak, the government has thus oppressed the right of the entire applicable public to choose whether or not to listen.
This is a case in which a speaker was prevented from speaking. There are also possible cases in which the speaker would be prevented from choosing not to speak, thus his right to freedom of speach being violated(in such a case, it should be noted that forced testimony under oath at a court room violates the right to freedom of speach, as it prevents one from effectively choosing not to speak). There is yet another case in which an individuals right to freedom of speach is violated because he allowed to speak, but forced to "modify" his speach from what he would like to say: this is called censorship. In all such cases, not only is the speakers right to freedom of speach violated, but so is the everyone else's right to freedom of listening.
On to case (2): In which the audience is prevented from choosing whether or not to listen. Let us consider the same case, in which a (wo)man in a park walks to the center of the park and proceeds to give a speach critical of the US government. Now, in this case, instead of violating her right to freedom of speach, the audience's right to freedom of listening is violated. Perhaps the all memhers of the audience are draggedf away from the speaker; perhaps they're killed; perhaps a sound-proof booth is put around the speaker so that no one in the audience can hear him; etc. In any case, the audiences right to choose whether or not to listen has been violated. Or perhaps their right to choose *how* to listen or *how* not to listen has been violated. In either case, eliminating the audience's right to decide if/how to listen or not to listen, eliminates the speakers right to decide if/how to speak or not speak.
Now, I believe it is quite clear that the right to freedom of speach and the right to freedom of listening are in fact inseparable, and perhaps are in-and-of-themselves the same right. They may also be considered a subclass of the right to freedom of thought: after all, it is impossible to have freedom of thought if one does not have the freedom to choose if/how to expose or not expose him/her-self to free speach.
There is one sub-case where a speaker may use some means to force an audience to listen to him via some means. In such a case, the audience does not have freedom of listening, thus the speaker can not possibly have freedom of speach. If an audience does not have the effective option to decide whether or not to listen and how to or not to listen, how can a speaker have the right to freedom of speach? After all, freedom of speach requires that there be recipients who are free to decide whether or not to "receive" speach, and how to or how not to "receive" it. If some entity forces the audience to "receive" speach in a specific way, that speach has been robbed of its qualities of freedom of speach. A more clear case may be such as when the government brainwashes people into thinking that certain organizations messages are "evil": obviously, in such cases, the organizations rights to freedom of speach have been violated. Similarly, the same is true when a speaking entity forces the audience to listen: in such case, he robs himself of the true right to freedom of speach. Such is what government officials do by forcing people to listen to them on public TV when they interrupt common shows; such is what dictators do when they force people to attend party rallies; such is what judges do when they force people to listen to them at hearings; and such is what SPAMers do when they force people to listen to their advertisements.
Now, lets talk specifically about SPAMers. If they practiced business as they would prefer to -- which would include forcing people to read their messages and giving people no option or way to avoid getting their messages -- they would not have freedom of speach. What they would have would be power over the listeners: power over the listeners does not imply, and indeed cannot be coupled with, freedom of speach.
What about ths issue from the SPAMee's side, the person who is being SPAMed? Well, their right to freedom of listening has been violated, as they are receiving a message whether or not they want to receive it. Thus, the SPAMers right to freedom of speach has also been violated: in this case, as a direct result of the SPAMers actions and methods.
Now, what about the situation from the ISP's side of the issue? From an ISP's point of view, SPAM -- bulk messages sent out which many users do not want to receive nor have they solicited -- is a costly parasite on their infrastructure. Indeed, SPAMers can be said to be stealing bandwidth and storage space from the ISP. They are also indeed stealing bandwidth and storage space from the end-user(who must use much andwidth to download graphic SPAM). Thus, they are costing the ISP money, and indirectly costing the end-user money(the ISP partially or completely compensates for SPAM by simply charging its customers higher rates). Thus, in effect, SPAMers don't really "steal" from ISP's, but rather from their customers, who are being charged higher rates to compensate. Of course, SPAMers do in some ways violate the rights of ISP's, which I will not go into(i.e., undue negative impressions of ISP's by their customers). However, let us assume that for the most part, the cost of SPAM is entirely burdened by both the SPAMer and the SPAMee.
So, it is clear the the SPAM system is an odd kind of paradox, in that it is LESS THAN a zero sum game. Not only does SPAM cost the SPAMee, but also the SPAMer(as explained beforehand, it costs the SPAMer the right to freedom of speach by costing the SPAMee the right to freedom of listening).
So, what is the solution to SPAM? To identify the solution, I believe I must offer one further bit of clarification regarding the problem: By denying the SPAMee the right to freedom of listening, the SPAMer has denied himself the right to freedom of speach. In other words, true and meaningful choice has been taken out of both sides of the equation: taken away from the SPAMer and the SPAMee. The solution is obviosly to put CHOICE back on the both sides of the equation.
So, how do we put choice back on both sides of the equation? How do we give the SPAMer the right to freedom of speach, and the "SPAMee" freedom of listening? Let us start from the SPAMee's side.
The SPAMee needs to have the right to choose whether or not to listen to SPAMers' messages, and how to listen. This can be done by providing the SPAMee with end-user tools which allow him to screen, and by allowing the ISP to selectively reduce SPAM at its level at the request of customers(that is, the ISP would screen out SPAM at its level for customers who indicate they desire such, bu not for those who don't; this would save the ISP both space and bandwidth). In a simple case, the ISP could set up two server systems -- one for willing SPAM recipients, and one for those who don't want to receive it. In this way, the ISP would save bandwidht, space -- and thus money -- on the server system where they were allowed to filter. Of course, ISP's would have to develop filtering systems which would be maximally effective, and produce the least possible false positives on for SPAM identification. Customers would have to be informed of the efficiency and accuracy of the corporations system. As one last consideration from the SPAMees side, the SPAMee should also have the right to request individual SPAMers not to e-mail him, to globally make such a request. A central database listing the e-mails of all users who do not want SPAM could be set up, so SPAMers could avoid sending it to such users. Of course, enforcement of such a system would be difficult if not impossible, but some means to allow "voluntary" cooperation on the part of the SPAMer would be useful.
Now, lets consider it from the SPAMers side of things. The SPAMers needs to realize that saying something LOUDER does not mean it will be received any better, and that violating the audience's right to freedom of listening violates their right to freedom of speach. The SPAMers must be taught that few non-willing recipients of SPAM are influenced by it in any positive way that would make them agree with the SPAMers POV or likely to buy the SPAMers product. Of course, convincing the SPAMers to cooperate will not be possible based on a libertarian argument alone. SPAMers do not care about their "rights" so to speak: they care about trying to get people to do what they want -- in other words, power and the rewards(money) that come from it. So they must be taught by us that they do not convince people to buy their products by blasting them with tacky e-mails. The reason advertisement on TV works is because people have a choice about whether or not to listen to it. If TV contained nothing but advertisements, people would never watch it. In other words -- an essnetial feature of the success of TV adds is that people don't have to watch them, and that they're not the only thing on. People can change the channel, or turn the TV off, or "wait" them out. In other words, though TV ads are what support the TV system, they are not mandatory for the audience, nor do they take up many minutes. The SPAMing systme of advertisement in e-mail ignores all of these wise adages that were smartly developed in the TV industry. SPAMers try to in effect "take away the right to change the channel" and they send out so much SPAM that -- without filteriong -- 99% of an individuals e-mail would be SPAM and not meaningful communication.
Simply put, SPAMers have to be taught their current model for SPAM advertisement does not work -- or works very ineffectively. For one thing, SPAM takes a lot of work to read. Its not something a listener can passively absorb like a TV commercial. SPAM messages have to be read, and this is an active process, which reduces eliminates effectiveness of the add.
Of course, a large criticism of traditional advertising is that it "drones" ideas into the passive listeners mind. This is essentially correct of TV advertisements and any add: they're set up to subliminally "drone" an idea into a persons head, whether or not that person want to accept it. Of course, this is to some extend the aim of ALL communication -- to sway people over to your viewpoint. In this particlar point, the fault lies not with the speaker(i.e., politicians, or "TV ad"), but with the listener, for his or her passive acceptance. Listeners must be taught to be active listeners.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the right to freedom of speach and the right to freedom of listening are in inseparable, interdependant, undividable, and perhaps even one right. One cannot be intact unless the other is intact. These two dimerize rights may in their totality be a large part of what it takes to have freedom of thought(of course, one needs to have other things to have freedom of thought, such as the right to life: after all, how can one have freedom of thought, if one is dead?). That said, it is clear that SPAMers not only violate the rights of SPAMees by forcing them to receive e-mail, but also their own rights. It is also clear that ISP's which block SPAMers and by doing such inadvertantly block legitimate mail, not only violate the right of the SPAMer to freedom of speach, but also the rights of their customers to the freedom to listen. Finally, it is also clear that when a SPAMers sends an unsolicited e-mail to a person who does not want it, that that SPAMer is stealing money, time, and bandwidth from that end-user. The solution to this problem is to give all parties the freedom of choice, without giving them the power to deny the other parties(and thus themselves) the freedom of choice.
Look, irrelevant of the so called "motivation" for why people publish information on security vulnerabilities, exploits, or detailed guides -- which is impossible to factually discern -- people should be free to publish such, online or in magazines. If I want to publish a specific program which exploits MS' OS, I should be able to do so. If I want to say how to exploit MS' OS, I should be able to do so. I I want to explain how the exploit works, or a particular security flaw, I should be able to do so.
MS or the government should not be able to limit MY freedom of speech. A weakness is there, whether I say so or not, and someone will figure out how to exploit it whether I say so or not. Might as well "open-source" it so it can be dealt with by security experts who have an interest in it.
Just because my security exploit CAN be used for malicious means does not mean I should be prevented from publishing it. This is the same as the DeCSS argument -- just because something CAN be used for so called "illegal" purposes doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Now, lets be clear -- when there is a bug in the program, a security hole that can be exploited, etc., the fault is completely with the developer, whether that developer be MS or Linus Torvelds(LOL, I almost wrote Linus Pauling: of the Linus', who do you think is more brilliant?).
MS should stop whining because people expose their screw-ups. What this really amounts to is they don't want hard criticism. Now, is publishing a specific exploit necessary for criticism? No, it is not. A criticism of a security hole can be published without an accompanying exploit of that hole. However, a specific exploit published adds validity to the security criticism.
Now there are two good things about the anti-terrorism act:
1. It prevents the RIAA/MPAA from being judge/jurty/executionar and destroying OUR networks or our computers, and imposes severe penalties for such. Unfortunately, it also imposes severe pentalties on individual hackers for minor offenses less serious than a traffic infraction.
2. The government has not gained the right to violate OUR right to privacy/anonymity by forcing us all to use backdoors on our encryption. The same type of thing can be said to be true of anonymity: anonymizing services also won't, by extension, be forced to give the government a backdoor entrance.
On the other hand, unfortunately, there are some troubling concerns with this bill in terms of search & seizure & warrants.
I believe this bill has language in it that would make a warrant granted in one state to tap someone applicable in another. This violates the sovereignty of individual states. If the government wants a nation-wide warrant to tap someone, they should go to federal court.
The other troubling feature of this bill is that it allows the government to legitimately spy on every website we're visiting, and gives them the right to tap into more of our communications without a warrant from a judge.
If the government wants to have the right to tap into OUR communications, they should have to go to a court and get a warrant. If they go to a state court, the warrant should be applicable only in that state; if a federal court, then throughout the nation.
I have no problem with the government monitoring/tappign the online activity of people who'm one could reasonably believe are criminals(i.e., mobsters like John Gotti Jr). However, they should have to go to a court, and at that court, a public defender should be there to defend the accused's rights(the public defendant would simply make the case against a tap, based on available knowledge, without informing the accused that he was being considered for a wire tap -- if the accused were informed, it would be pointless).
So, what about Sen. Judd Gregg? Well, I'll give him credit for recognizing the validity of keeping encryption strong. It is obvious that when he initially called for a ban on backdoorless encryption, he was ignorant of encryption issues and caveats. Now, it is clear that he is more informed and realizes that his formerly proposed idea would not solve any problems, and would violate civil liberties. Of course, he did not say he was ignorant -- no one wants to say they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.
That said, there are two reasons why politicians propose such laws which flagrantly violate civil liberties and solve no problems: (1) They were ignorant of the issues; (2) They simply did not care, and were bought off by some powerful organization(i.e., BSA, RIAA, MPAA, AAA, MS, etc).
If the reason why politiians propose such laws is that they were ignorant of the issues -- as most all of them are on issues of science, intellectual property, and computer technology -- that can be solved by educating them. If the problem is that they did not care and were bought off, that could be solved by: a. Not re-electing them; b. Launching a publicity campaign agaisnt them.
Of course, sometimes the reason why politicians are "ignorant of issues" is because they've been educated by self-interested lobby groups like the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/AAA/MS. These groups are large and rich, and it is natural for politicians to listen to them. In order to counteract that, we need to make politicians aware of the flaws of the positions of such groups, and the utterly self-interested nature of such groups. Any time any of these groups talks about "rights" or "benefitting the public" its bullshit. They have no concern for the public, only their bottom line; as for rights, the only rights they're concerned about are their own(i.e., the RIAA/MPAA seem to support their right to put out sexually explicit movies/songs even if these may reach kids[a right I support], but seem to think that freedom of speech is irrelevant when it comes to linking to a website with DeCSS on it, or sharing files).
Ok, here are my comments.
#1. The RIAA/MPAA etc are not law enforcement agencies. They have no right to take direct action against any individual without going to a court. The idea that because some copyright holder THINKS someone else is violating his copyright, he can clog an entire network is absurd and dangerous. What if he's wrong? Inevitably, such efforts to identify "copyrighted files" being traded will more often be wrong than right. Even so, what if they're right about the "trading of copyrighted material"? That doesn't give them the right to violate MY computer or MY system, or OUR network of communications. P2P neworks are in effect little different from a LAN at an office(except slower). The office has the right to maintain that LAN without people destroying or hindering it from the outside. Why? Because they paid for it, set it up, and are currently using it as their method of communiation, etc. In the same way, WE have the right to operate on our "LAN" -- which in this case is a P2P network -- without it being hacked.
#2. At least those nut cases in our government had the good sense not to encorporate this into their already grievant anti-terrorism bill. The bill is an assault on almost all of the civil liberties we should hold dear.
#3. Prevention. Of course, just as we are able to trade copyright files whether the law says so or not, and are effectively immune to consequence due to the massivity of the internet; so are copyright holders able to violate our rights, whether or not the law says so. Congress and the Senate may outlaw such attempts at DoS attacks on PUBLIC networks(which is what P2P effectively is), but that will not stop them from acting. On the internet, irrelevant of how hard the govenrment may try, it is difficult if not impossible to delegate responsibility, or to place blame for a particular action. This is not because there is no trail of logs/records to follow, but rather the opposite: there are so many that making sense out of it is impossible, unless they know exactly what they are looking for.
So, government laws cannot stop copyright owners from doing DoS attacks on OUR networks. What can stop them? Obviously, US.
LimeWire, the only program I use to trade files, already has several features that may be able to effectively eliminate such DoS attacks. Here are my suggestions for features to battle DoS attacks(these, of course, would all have to be automated):
1. Blocking greedy users. You may block people from downloading files, if they are not offering more than a certain number of files. Perhaps it would also be good to be able to determine the average size of the files people are offering, and also have other parameters.
2. Blocking repetivie requests. Block a user from downloading from you if he tries to download many things from you at once, or tries to download the same file repetively.
3. Block users from downloading who are downloading at very slow rates. Create a preference for who gets the download priority: people with low pings and large bandwidths, who are downloading quickly, would get the download.
4. Limit the amount of upload bandwidth you will devote to any user downloading files. Also "limit" the number of files one user can simulaneously download from you. That is, allow a user to download as many files from you as he wishes, as long as there are no other requests; when other requests some in, start limiting the number of uploads per user). The idea here is to prevent one person from hogging all of your upload bandwidth. Also, DO NOT limit the number of uploads at any given time: if you limit the number of uploads to say 1, then one user may be downloading a file, and only using up 50% of your upload bandwidth; the other 50% is wasted if anyone else wants to download from you. The idea here is that if say 20 users want to download from you, ALL of your upload bandwidth will be used, and spread between them accordingly, such as to minimize the overall time for ALL of them to get what they want.
5. Going back to setting priorities on which users get the upload. If one user starts downloading a file, and another user comes on who could download that file before the first user, priority is given to the other user. The goal here is overall utility, not "fairness"(i.e., first come not necessarily first serve). Each uploading node "wants" to get one user done uploading as quickly as possible and then offer upload to the next requester.
6. Setting up a system for dynamically identifying users who are clogging the system(DoSers) -- or contributing to clogging the system -- and blocking them. Obviously, anyone can clog the system an inordinant amount, depending on his or her bandwidth and certain conditions. However, users that perhaps over a half an hour display behaviour which indicates they are DoSers(or having that effect) can be blocked.
7. As explanation for #6, let me say that clearly, any user who has been determined to say have a 500Kbps bandwidth and is using say 1500 bytes of bandwidth to download each of say 341 files, that person is clearly intending to clo the system. That user should be dynamically put on a list of users who are intentionally clogging the system, and blocked from downloading, so long as that behavior continues. Obviously, if everyone blocks him/her, (s)he won't be able to continue any behavior; but one should be able to set up a system which will determine what kind of behavior that person is attempting to do, and then keeping the person on the ban list if they attempt to continue the DoSing behavior, but removing them from the list if they don't continue.
8. As another way of establishing #6, here's a simple system. Consider a user who has 2.048kbps of bandwidth. Now, that user should obviously be allowed to download enough files to fill up his/her entire downloading bandwidth.
Obviously, we wouldn't want a person with 4000Mbps of bandwidth "filling up" their bandwidth -- so, depending on the situation, there should be a limi to how much "informaation" any one user can download at any one time. This is very important. As the RIAA and MPAA can afford to get access to high bandwidth "modems" -- i.e., T3 lines, OC12's, etc -- they could use that to download huge amounts of information and prevent anyone else from utlizing it.
The overall idea is that at any given time there must be a "net uploading bandwidth" on the entire P2P network, so to speak. Now, each file-requesting user should have approximately equal access to that "bandwidth", unless of course they're a DoSer. After all, you want to get the maximum number of files(of average size) to people as you can.
9. A general way to increase the speed of a P2P network. At any given time, a person with a very large uploading bandwidth may not be using any of that uploading bandwidth to give his files to the public, while a person with a very small uploading bandwidth may be using all of his bandwidth to give files to the public. Now, wouldn't it make sense if the person with the large uploading bandwidth could automatically download highly-requested files from the person with the small bandwidth, and offer them himself? What this would effectively amount to is users automatically downloading high-traffic files when they log into a P2P network(that is, if they aren't using their downloading bandwidth to download files of their choice), placing those files into a temporary folder whose contents are to be offered to the public. This would increase the redundancy of the system, thus giving each individual downloader more options for places to download from, thus making things faster. Of course, this option would be optional to the individual user -- no one would "have" to download a certain number of files from other people upon logging on, but such would rather be an option they could check or uncheck. Also, perhaps this option would be something which they'd like to modify -- they may want to devote a certain amount of HD space on their computer to this, depending on how much space they have. With that space, they may want to place in there all files of one type, or all large files, or all small ones, etc etc. In short, there could be many parameters for files a person automatically downloads from another and offers for uploading in his temporary upload folder.
10. Back to blocking greedy users. Obviously, a person who devotes less size in MB of files to this "cache upload file set"(that is, downloads less MB in memory for this purpose) is somewhat "greedy", depending on how much less he devotes than the average; also obviously, a person who devotes more is somewhat benevolent, depending on how much more he devotes than the average. Individual users may want to block download requests from users defined as "greedy" by this standard.
The idea here is to eliminate reduce parasitic behavior on the P2P system. Users who do not offer files but download them are somewhat parasitic(after all, it costs little ot offer files, as most people don't need upload space anyways). Users who hog all sorts of download offers(DoSers) are also parasitic and greedy, as they prevent others from utilizing that bandwidth. Users who do not offer "redundant downloads" of high-demand files are also somewhat parasitic.
The idea here is that the P2P system works best when everyone is contributing as much as possible: when everyone is contributign their own files, offering lots of their upload space, and contributing redundant offers of "high-demand files".
11. More on dealing with greedy users. Another functional definition of an easy user is one who gets on a P2P network, downloads stuff, and then immediately gets off. Obviously, users who stay on P2P networks less time are greedier, and those who stay on it more are more benevolent. This because a user staying on a network a long time keeps his "node" open to the public longer. Even after a user has gotten what he desires from a P2P network, what hindrance does it do him to stay on longer? After all, most bandwidth used on internet surfing is downloading not uploading bandwidth. What harm does it do to an individual user to always leave his P2P program open, always having his files available, except in cases where he's gaming? After all, most internet browing is downloading stuff, and other computer activities do not require internet bandwidth(i.e., it doesn't hinder you while using your word processor to also have the P2P program open). A "minimal" version of the P2P program should be set up, so as that the user can go into "inactive mode" in which as little P2P program information is loaded on the RAM as possible: only that relating to uploading information to other users. This would further reduce the "cost" any user pays for leaving his P2P program open continuously.
12. In other words, the P2P system is a "symbiotic" system. Users who are more benevolent should somehow be rewarded in how much they can get. Benevolence in this case does not simply mean offering most of their upload bandwidth, but also offering many files. After all, what good is it if they're offering all of their upload space, but only offering one file, which isn't too popular? Automated protocols should be set up in LimeWire or other P2P programs which reward the most benevolent users, and repriment the most greedy ones. (all of this, of course, would depend on the majority of P2P users selecting these options in their Options boxes).
THE POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP:
The system I have described for eliminating greedy users, dealing with DoSers, and overall optimizing the P2P network effectively sets up a positive feedback loop. Benevolent users are rewarded for their benevolence by having more access, and greedy useres are punished by having less. Thus, users are discouraged from being greedy(offering nothing, while taking alot), but encouraged to be benevolent(offering alot). This results in a continual reinforcement of "benevolence" which feeds onto itself: users act more benevolent because it gives them greater access, and this eventually leads to a higher "average benevolence level". Then it starts all over again, users again being encouraged to act more benevolent than the average level. It should be noted that this results in an "increased standard of download speed" for everyone, no just the benevolent users(note, benevolent would be relative, and always an more "difficult" status to obtain). Even greedy users would benefit from this sytem, because the motivation for increased benevolence results in more redundancy, more upload bandwidth, and less cloggers/DoSers. More redundancy means that more users will be offering the exact same file: thus, any particular user who wants to download that file would likely download it faster, as his program could automatically compare the different sources and determine which one would result in the fastest download time for him. As users offering more bandwidth are more benevolent, users would obviously be encouraged to offer more bandwidth.
Finally, it should be noted that this system is a creates MAJOR incentives for individual users to contribute to actively UNDERMINING a creators so called "right" to control information. As this positive-feedback benevolence loop will tend to increase the number of files users will offer, and the amount of bandwidth they devote to offering that information, it will encourage users to OFFER more informaion that "creators" have claimed to have the right to control. That is, users will not only be encouraged to take advantage of others offering "copyrighted" information, but also encouraged to offer copyrighted information themselves.
This system could greatly undermine the attempts of organizations such as the RIAA/MPAA/AAA(Authors Association of America) to control information. After all, people would be encouraged to -- out of an interest for their own interests -- distribute information. Thus, this would turn many people into what the RIAA/MPAA/AAA calls "pirates". I prefer to think of them as Information Liberators, because that's what they're doing -- liberating informaion from the control of the information Nazi's(the RIAA/MPAA/AAA aren't the kind of Nazi's who want to burn books, they're the kind who want to prevent books from being read). Now, furthermore, as this system would turn the vast majority of internet users into Information Liberators, it would also change their feelings about "intellectual property". Note, "intellectual property" is a shortened euphemism for what it really is -- the enslavement of information to be controled by a few information-Nazi's.
I was listening to this idea on TV -- at first, I was really skeptical. I mean, making US citizens carry around ID cards that they have to have with them at all times! That's like a nazi/communist thing.
But, ID cards as proposed would be voluntary for registered US citizens. That is, you and I, as US citizens, can choose to have an ID card or not to have one. However, they would be mandatory for any aliens/foreign visitors to the US. That is, someone coming from would have to have an ID card. This is OK. After all, these people are not US citizens. The United States is not responsible for upholding the "rights" of anyone other than US citizens.
This event is tragic and I hope whoever caused it is discovered and brought to justice, to be trialed for his/her actions.
However, I hope this does not turn into some witchhunt, where everyone who says anything negative, criticizing, hostile, or even hateful towards the US government is automatically assumed to be some kind of conspiring terrorist, and denied his or her rights.
LOL, that is a load of BS. If your using a computer, your assuredly supporting some greedy corporation. Wearing clothes? Those come from corporations too -- unless you an Amish asshole who churns butter and spins your own yarn to make clothes. The simple fact is, all the materials we need for living can be traced back to some greedy corporation, and even if they can't, the corporation they came from surely used products from some greedy corporation.
Now, it is perfectly possible to support a company's good products, as you see them, by buying them, and at the same time protest that same companies immoral behaviour. You don't have to do an all-or-nothing deal. For example, it is possible to praise an individual, say Bobby Fischer, for being a brilliant and dedicated chess player -- but that does not mean that you praise his vices(in this case, anti-semitism).
Please, you are full of shit. The company publicized the information on how to make the drug -- that's called a patent. The company has NO authority over the government of Brazil. Brazil's government is sovereign over itself, and answerable only to the people of Brazil. The only interests of that govenment are the people of Brazil.
Now, its absurd to say that any company is going to go out of business b/c a few government's refuse to pay them and make their drugs w/o paying. Drug companies make 10 - 100X the initial R&D cost. In fact, the R&D investment is earned back within a year -- usually 6 months. There is no reason why the company needs 10-100X the R&D cost. There is a perfectly good reason to continue developing with only a 1.5X net profit. Also, companies WILL continue to operate even if they are LOSING money, and are in the hole. Take basic economics, fool. Companies may continue doing business even when they are losing money/in debt because going OUT of business would be even MORE costly. That is, if they continue doing business for 5 years, they will lose say 10 million dollars, but if they declare bankrupcy they will lose 20 million dollars. So they continue doing business, until they lose less money by declaring bankrupty -- quite a while.
You are so full of shit. Libertarianism means you believe in individual rights. Now it is perfectly clear that nothing violates individual rights MORE than intellectual property laws -- they prevent individuals from sharing information and prevent them from using publicized information to manufacture a drug that could help them. In short, intellectual property laws VIOLATE the right to freedom of speech -- as they restrain us from sharing information and VIOLATE the right to freedom of action. That is, patent laws would prevent me, as an HIV victim(for example) from using the information published in a patent to produce a drug that could prevent the HIV from becoming active.
l /
You clearly know nothing of libertarianism. I suggest you read a book called "Information Libertaion" -- a true libertarian book. Here's the url for it:
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/98i
Look, the lives of the people who are saved are far more important than the fucking profit made by drug companies. Drug companies ALWAYS recapture the R&D cost if their drug is worth shit, and if its worth something, they always make a profit, so hence their is motivation to develop. What drug companies want is to make 100 times the R&D cost. Now, drug companies to NOT need to make 100X the cost of R&D to be motivated to product cures. In fact, 1.5X or 2X is more than enough.
For those of you not familiar with simple economics, be aware that just because a company is not making a profit -- or maybe if its losing money -- does not mean it stops making its product. In fact, companies will continue to operate and innovate when they are LOSING money, because the cost of going out of business would be greater than the cost of continuing business. That is, if they went out of business, they would lose even more money than they would if they continued business. Hence, they continue operating.
Now, Brazil has NO obligation whatsoever to consider the IP "rights" of corporations. Their ONLY obligation is to consider what is best for their citizens. Nor does Brazil have any reason or obligation to obey international law or international agreements if it finds these to be at the expense of its citizens. International laws are a violation of the sovereignty of the people of nations anyways.
That said, other governments should and may do the same thing when they deem it necessary, including the US government. Remember, the GOVERNMENT and NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS donate LARGE sums of money to corporations. We should either demand that they make their products freely available to the government, or with-hold funding. The money of the US taxpayers -- PUBLIC MONEY -- should not go towards making a privatized resource.
Finally, let me state that though Brazil's decision is right, their implementation of it is flawed. Brazil needs to accumulate a vast storage of many different HIV-inhibiting/destroying drugs. They then need to treat their patients with all of them simultaneously. This may seem rather calculating but it is necessary. No one "cure" or "blocking mechanism" for HIV will work. HIV is a virus and it evolves rapidly. Any given drug to destroy HIV will destroy maybe 99.99% of HIV viroid particles, but there will always be a few left. So you need to use different drugs simulatneously. there may be billions of HIV viroids within an infected individual, all of them slightly different and mutated, some which have mutations which make them more immune to drugs. You need to treat the patient with enough drugs so that it is improbable that even ONE HIV viroid will be resistant. This means accumulating 10, 20, 30, or even up to a 100 different treatments and using them all at once.
Fuck DirectX and OpenGL -- both of them fucking suck for Descent 3 and alot of other games. I have a GeForce 2 GTS card using DX8 for Descent 3, and people who have a fucking Voodoo 4 get better fps under Descent 3 than I do. Why? Because they use the Glide API. Glide is a faster API than either DirectX or OpenGL. Now that Nvidia has acquired the 3D card portion of 3dfx, its about fucking time they included Glide support in their driver releases for their god damned cards.
Look, the purpose of ADA is to prevent people with disabilities from being discriminated against when the job they're applying for does not require the faculty they're disabled in. The purpose of the ADA is not to make it so that a blind person can get a job as a taxi-cab driver, or so that a deaf person can get a job as a translator, or so that a person with tendinitis can get/keep a job as a typist. I mean, come on, what's next -- are fat women going to try to sue a strip club, claiming discrimination, because the club won't hire them?
I don't think that Bush caved into the "right wing" religious nut-cases of the Republican party. I think that this is what he believes. I also happen to like GWB, because I believe he will do what he believes is right. However, as a scientist and an enlightened atheist, I strongly disagree.
There is no debate over whether these embryo's are life -- they are life. A bacterium is a living organism, though small, unaware, and primitive. Similarly, so is an embryo.
The real question is not when "life" begins -- there is nothing special about life, we squash bugs every day -- but when personhood begins. I think that it is absurd to say that this little protoplasm of cells deserves the status of a person, or any rights whatsoever.
As it deserves no rights, we need not worry about any absurd moral delemnas of using embryo's for research. This is just moral hair-splitting, really a bunchof bullshit. But even if you believe that it is a person, so what? All of these embryo's that were not implanted in women are going to die anyways -- so why not use them for research?
As I said before, I happen to like President Bush, and agree with him on many issues. However, there are many issues I disagree with him on. This is one of those issues. I think the curent decision is a major set-back to science, and backwards religious thinking. Religion has no place in politics, and I think the only way to justify such a decision is via religion. The religion of one man should not be forced on other's.
On the other hand, there are now techniques via which to turn a normal adult cell into an embryonic stem cell, and techniques via which to make one stem cell go on replicating indefinately, via turning on telomerase. This may provide a solution for the problem from the limited number of cells we can do research on.
Again, I like GW Bush, and think he did what he thought was right. However, I disagree with him. The only justification for such a position is a religious one, and religion has no place hindering the progress of science.
Yes, I realize that. However, I believe some of your legal analysis is either open to different interpretation -- i.e., the debate between loose and strict constructionalism of the constitution -- or misses the point. Aside from that, simply because something is in or not in the law, has nothing to do with whether it is right/wrong. In half of the US States, it is illegal for two consenting individuals to engage in anything other than missionary sex. This is clearly an ass-backwards law, which has no possible justification, other than in the mind of a religious fanatic. Until about half-way through last century, "separate was equal" in the eyes of the US Suprme Court and the law. Again, clearly no justification for such, other than in the mind of a racial fanatic. In Nazi Germany, it was acceptable to kill a Jewish person for no reason other than that he was a Jew -- indeed, it was even officially recognized as the officially "right" thing to do by the government. Simply put, just because something is the law, does not make it right, and just because something isn't the law, doesn't make it wrong. Laws are made by greedy, philandering, adultering, lying, cheating men, not by gods.
Perhaps so, for the moment. But there is clearly an alternate interpretation of law in which the distinction would dissapear completely. Now, just because something has been so in the past, and is now, does not mean that it will always be. For years, the US Supreme Court immorally agreed with racists that "African Americans were only 2/3rds of a person" and that "every man" did not include women, and so on and so forth. Then, one day, they woke up, and realized that such statements were little different than Hitler's holocaust.
Well, indeed it IS the courts fault. The court just recently ordered that "blocking 99% of all infringing files is not good enough " In other words, they ordered Napster to stop 100% of all illegal activity on their system. The ONLY way to achieve perfect fidelity is to use draconian Hitlatarian measures. Period. You want to stop all murder? Fine, put cameras on every corner of this nation, put police on every street corner, deem that the punishment of murder be torture, turn this country into fucking Big Brotherland...then you will MIGHT have stopped all murders from occuring. Similarly, cyber-draconian measures must be applied to stop 99% of any form of "cybercrime". It is not Napster's fault. The only way to do what the court asked was to use draconian tactics, which prevent the sharing of non-copyrighted files. It is not Napster's fault that the such is the only way to do it. That is the only way to achieve such, and it is the only way that perfect prevention will ever be achieved, if it is even possible. Now, what is Napster's fault is that they rolled over on this decision, and bent to the will of the rich music industry, instead of fighting on to the Supreme Court. Now, their service is useless crap.
The right to freedom of assembly is a constitutional(or rather, amdendment-to-constitutional) right. Intellectual property laws are just laws. They aren't in the constitution, or any of the amendments. Now, as I hold it to be, the Constitution is the supreme law and all other laws must bend to it. So how is it that the "right" to "own the expression of ideas"(more accurately, the right to own ideas) somehow supercedes the right to freedom of assembly? Furthermore, the you can not accurately say that the reason people get on Gnutella is to share copyrighted materials. There are many reasons why people get on Gnutella, sharing "copyrighted materials" being only one of them: sharing pictures, sharing patches, sharing documents, sharing parodies, sharing pornography(probably the most predominant reason), and on and on and on. So to state that we can nullify the right to assembly in this case because there is no specific purpose of assembly. If you say that we can stop assembly just because some people in that assembly use such assembly as an opportunity to organize illegal activities, well, then, we better stop these fucking senators and congressment from meeting in Washington.
First of all, to compare Gnutella to a mob is absurd. It is absurd -- or at least unprovable -- to say that the majority of people get on Gnutella to "illegally" trade copyrighted material. I say absurd because, as I said before, the most predominant activity on Gnutella is clearly the trading of pornography, most of which does not involve copyrighted material. You want proof of that? Get LimeWire or BearShare. Type in "Britney Spears," probably the most popular artist now a-days. Then type in (in an OR fashion) "Lesbians". I gaurentee you you'll find more search results for the latter. Now, you might say, "but there are many other artists other than Britney Spears". Yes, there are, but there are only 100 or so of them that are major. Even combining all of them together, you wouldn't get more results than for a general pornography search.
Yes, as far as I'm concerned, buying a CD means I can do whatever I will with it so long as I don't redistribute the original CD's contents. This is based on an underlying principle behind the Constitutional Rights and any other Rights granted to citizens under any just form of government: that an individual can do whatever they want, so long as it does not cause significant harm to any other individual. In private, how can my modifying a piece of software harm the developers? If I publish that modification as a tweak, that doesn't even cause significant harm to the developer. Firstly, most such modifications fix something the developer fucked up. Secondly, those that might, such as the "Advanced E-Book Processor"(AEP), and that can actually be seen to harm the developer are still covered as the expression of an idea. Not only that, but it is not clear that they will cause harm, nor that everyone will use them to cause harm. The AEP allows owners of E-books to copy them, print them, etc etc. Now, while some owners might redistribute, so what? Owners of E-books have fair use rights, which includes backup copying, and alternate methods of viewing. Furthermore, just because something can cause harm to the developers doesn't mean banning it is justified. In the same sense that protection-cracks can cause harm producers, so can Xerox copying machines. Haven't illegalized them, have we? Just because something harms a rich powerful interest or can do so doesn't mean we should illegalize it. MP3s and MP4s "aid in the distribution of pirated material" so lets ban them? Clearly absurd. Knives/guns can be used to kill, so lets ban them? Also absurd(also unconstitutional under the right to bear arms). If we start banning everything that CAN BE used to cause harm, we'd best go back to the stone ages.
Your first sentence is impossible to abide by. You can't possible know what the software license is before buying it, so you can't be expected to "not buy it if you don't agree to the license". As for the shrinkwrapping issue, there is no valid justification behind rejecting the argument that such a license, which must be agreed to, is valid. If you must agree to a license after opening the product(that license not being made available to you before opening the product), then it is no different than a conract signed at gunpoint. In this case, the gunpoint being the loss of the money spent on the product. Also, just because "most courts" uphold it does not mean that it is legally, or ethically, justified. Courts have upheld ass-backwards laws throughout all of history: they have been tools of racism, bigotry, hatred, sexism, and injustice. Separate is equal; Blacks are only 2/3rds persons; Women are not persons; Jews are not persons; Alternative consentual sex between adults is not ok(though this is only enforced against homosexuals); oh, need I forget, all the women convicted by courts as being witches?; etc. These are all positions that the courts have upheld. All of them absolutely unjustified and invalid, just as is the DMCA, and current intellectual property law, which no longer promotes progress(as it is supposed to, via the constitution). Again, just because something is law or the current interpretation of law, does not justify it.
I'm glad you at least agree to that much, and wouldn't have corporations spying in our own homes to prevent us from modifying their programs. While we're on fair use, I would like to make a few statements about fair use. Fair use should be a right, which is CLEARLY defined. People should know exactly what they can and can't do. In general, all this argument over "interpretations of laws" shows just how poorly written, and how injust, they are. People have the right to know exactly what their law demands of them, in clear terms. I believe there is a constitutional clause which declares that a law is unconstitutional if it is ambiguous. Any law or right(whatever) that is being toddled back and forth between judges and lawyers, is clearly ambiguous and unfair to the people -- as they know not what it expects of them.
Why should such not be covered by fair use? After all, I'm not redistributing the AUTHORS work, I'm distributing MY work, which improves upon the author's work. For software, a patch/tweak I distribute does not deprive the developers of their priviledges, but only helps other users who have the same problem I do. Now, as for your statement that "no court has declared such yet" this is a prime example of how our law is fucked up. So, because of our ass-backwards law, no one really knows if it is OK or NOT -- indeed, at the moment, it is NEITHER, as there is no ruling on it, and it is clearly ambiguous. Now, what's going to happen is that some hacker who made a patch for Descent 3 or some other game and put it on the internet, thinking this was fine, as there's been nothing saying it isn't fine, is going to be sued. So, he gets sued, and then some court retroactively decides that what he was doing wasn't covered under fair use. This is a violation of the grandfather principle. Its no different than instituting a law today which makes, say, owning a gun illegal, and then prosecuting everyone over the past 50 years who had a gun. The difference, of course, is that you're prosecuting someone retroactively via an interpretation of a law. Why should some poor schmuck have to suffer the consequences for something that until brought to court, wasn't even illegal, as there was no interpretation on it. Now, what I propose to solve this is to change our system so as to make it like that in Germany. Any law or interpretation can be brought to the Supreme Court for interpretation when there is NOT an actual case on the line -- in other words, when no one's life depends on it. A sort of "theoretical" challenged to a law/interpretation.
Now, the bottom line of my response. Well, there is no bottom line. But I suppose the most important point of my point is regarding the clarity of law, and the hypocritical reverse-application of a law. Laws need to be clear -- so that only one interpretation is possible by a sane person. Laws which are not even clear to legal experts are clearly not justified. Also, laws should be clear to NORMAL -- and even DUMB -- citizens. None of that fancy pretentious bullshit language. No shalls, no thous, none of that British bullshit. Just terse Orwellian language -- the best expression of something is that which is firstly the clearest, and secondly the briefest. That is, the briefest clear explanation is the best. Furthermore, we should not apply a newly-created interpretation of a law to an individual who violated that "interpretation" before it was validated.
Exchanging MP3s via Napster is indeed free speech. But more than that, using Napster/Gnutella is a mode of freedom of association. Hindering that mode by putting restrictions on it that effectively make it useless, as the court has done, is violating our right to freedom fo assembly. Oh, and our rights to free speech definately have been abridged by the Napster decision: it is no longer possible to share parodies of copyrighted songs(songs that use the same background music, and twisted lyrics), nor is it possible to distribute files on Napster that are titled similarly to copyrighted music. These files we certainly do have a right to exchange, and preventing such is violating our right to freedom of speech.
Hence, as the Suprme Court decided such, we do have the right to privacy. The Suprme Court also ruled at one time that "all men" included women and black people. Now, as for your statement that privacy is not an essential rigth -- yes it is. Just because it is not explicitly stated in the US constitution/amendments, or not recognized adequately, does not mean it is not an essential right. The people in China being slaughtered like dogs for protesting against the Chinese government still have the right to life: just because the Chinese government does not recognize their right to life, does not mean that such a right does not exist.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm buying that CD, and the right to obtain maximum utility from that CD. Just because something is in a license which I supposedly agreed to does not mean it is valid. I may sign a contract that makes me a slave -- that isn't a valid contract, because it violates my rights. In the same sense, a contract on software that prevents me from doing what I will with it on my own private computer is void. The contract can not be enforced, and to enforce such a contract would be a violation of my rights to privacy(i.e., they would have to spy on me in my home to know if I violated the contract). And to enforce the contract would be a violation of my property rights, as they would have to either (1) come into MY house and prevent me from doing so or (2) steal MY CD which I had paid for. Furthermore, I would like to argue that all software license are void, as they can NOT be read until before one has ripped open the CD box, and you can not return a piece of software because you don't agree to the license. It is no different than a contract signed at gunpoint.
Nonsense, I was referring to my ability to modify a book so as to better suit my purposes(i.e., a USEFUL, not superficial modification; namely, a modification to the material of the book). In the same sense that I may rip out useless blank pages, copyright pages, remove the book cover, underline certain passages, and even modify others, in a book, so as to make it more useful to me, so should I have the right to do to a piece of software installed on my computer: modify it to make it more useful to me. I am talking about modifying the actual content, not the physical thing itself. In the case of a book, by modifying the content, I am actually modifying the physical book -- the two go hand in hand. Not so in the case of a CD. But the same modification of the content is still my right. Now, let me point out an inconsistency in your ridiculous argument. You state that "you have the right to do anything you want with the physical ojbect, but you are limited as to what you can do with the content". Well, that is an oxymoronic statement. If you modify the CD physically, you modify its content. For example, if I had the right equipment and expertice, I could directly modify the CD's data via only physical manipulations. This is a modifcation to the object itself. Now, if I can do this direct physical modification, it is idiotic to say that I can not do a more indirect modificatioin(i.e., reverse engineering/tweaking the program on my computer).
Before I move on, let me point out one more thing -- I OWN my computer's hard drive, hence have the right to do whatever the hell I want to with the data on that drive(locally; that is, this right is absolute so long as it is localized to my hard drive). You can not tell me what I can and can not do with my own data on my own hard drive -- that is a violation of my property rights.
I assume that you were joking, but in case you weren't, let me clarify. The old adage about fist swining is a metaphor, not meant to be taken literally. Let me translate it into something more philosophically clear: I have the right to do whatever the fuck I want so long as it does not significantly harm others. Now, in the case of me modifying software on my computer to make it more useful, and then maybe distributing it on the internet -- I believe this is known as a patch or tweak -- this does NOT cause any significant harm to the creators of that software. Certainly, what I do on my own private computer, confined to that computer, can not be construed to cause them ANY harm -- so they have NO right to stop me from doing it. As for distributing patches and whatnot, it can not cause them harm that is significant enough to justify eliminating my right to freedom of speech.
The same is true for tools like DeCSS. It is not clear that it will cause them harm, and even if it does, that harm would not be significant enough to justify violating MY rights to freedom of speech, or the DeCSS author's rights. Nor would it justify violating the rights of those who simply wanted DeCSS to exercise their fair use rights.
I would also like to make not of the fact that there is NO constitutional right to intellectual property, nor is their any amendments respecting intellectual property. I would also like to state that the constitution clearly states that IP laws established were to be ONLY so for the greater good of promoting progress. IP laws as they now exist hinder laws by hindering the free flow of ideas -- such as programming code DeCSS, or the "Advanced E-Book Processor" -- and are thus unconstitutional.
Typical response of the idiot who's been brainwashed by a lifetime of intellectual property propaganda. You haven't robbed the record stores of anything -- if their music is that crappy that you don't even think it worthy to go out and buy a "best" quality copy of it, you wouldn't have bought it anyways. People who download hundreds of songs wouldn't have gone out to buy them in the first place.
Protecting the bottom line of the recording/movie/software industries does not justify violating our rights to (1) Free speech (2) Freedom to gather in assembly(freedom of association) (3) Privacy (4) Fair use (5) Liberty to do what we will in general. That you can not deny US OUR RIGHTS to protect the bottom line of the industries is covered in the 9th amendment, that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Namely, the industry can not use their priviledge to control ideas as a justification for violating our rights.
(1) Free speech. The Napster decision, the DeCSS decision, the corporate movement against P2P, all violate our right to free speech. Should you and I want to, we have the right to directly link our computers and share whatever information we want to with one another. Just because we *can* do this to share copyrighted material, does not justify denying us this right. People can get together in private parties to plan murder and scams, but that doesn't mean that the government is justified in stopping people from talking to one another. Napster/KaZaa/Gnutella/etc are all basically mediums of free speech. We have the right to speek freely to one another, and the right to share with eachother our entire hard drives(as Limewire allows you to do by specifying all file types and all folders).
(2) Freedom of association. This brings me to freedom of association. By banning programs like Napster and Gnutella(which I believe the industry will try to ban under the DMCA) violates our right to freedom of association. You can not possibly say we have the right to freely associate if we can not do it through the medium of our choice, or in the mode of our choice.
(3) Privacy. This ties in with freedom of association and freedom of speech. Privacy is an essential right: we have the right to privately(or anomyously) associate with eachother and speak freely. This is precisely what the industry is against -- because true privacy undermines their ability to exert their will on us. The industries efforts to try to eliminate all privacy from the internet -- via "net watchers," "spyware," and trying to blackball ISPs into revealing our identity -- are not justified by their priviledge to copyright/patent. Note, I say PRIVILEDGE, not right. There is no right to own an idea. The constitution says that congress may pass intellectual property laws solely for the sake of promoting progress: they are not by any means a right. Note, that while the constitution was amended and added to by the amendments, there has never been an amendment stating that you have the "right to own ideas".
(4) Fair use. If I buy a software program, audio CD, or DVD, I should be able to do whatever I desire with it, so long as I don't redistribute it in its entirity. I have the right to modify, tweak, disassemble, hack, etc, the CD/DVD/program. You can understand this to be my right in the same sense that its my right to have any form of consentual sex I desire with my partner: its covered under the 10th amendments, which states that the powers not delegated to the US by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved...to the people. Nothing in the constitution says the government may act to stop me from performing a private act which harms no one else, which is precisely what hacking my CD/DVD/software is. When I buy a CD/DVD/program, I should own in at least the same sense that I own a book: I should have the right to use it any way I desire, to take notes on the side pages(so to speak), to modify it(so to speak), to analyze it to understand how it works.
(5) Liberty to do what I will in general. Namely, I have the right to swing my fist as far as your face. The equally important antithesis to this is that the movie industry nor the govenment may not deny or hinder our rights, as afforementioned, to protect their "priviledges". Not anymore than I can go around shooting everyone around me in public, to "protect myself". After all, any of those strangers COULD be planning on or about to kill me. The government may not violate MY rights, nor the rights of the public in general[as was done by the DMCA], simply because SOME people MAY be doing things which violate the "priviledge" of the industry to "control ideas".
Please, what kind of "top 50" list is this? they mentioned freaking DukeNukem and Quake -- blatent take offs of Doom -- but left out the best vehicular shooter game of all time, Descent? Descent is hands down a much more revolutionary and realistic game than its land-bound counterparts Doom, Quake, and DukeNukem. Why do I say that? Well, first of all Descent took the first person shooter genre and turned it upside down on its head -- literally. Secondly, Descent's graphics were revolutionary for the time: it was really the only game at the time that really looked 3D. Not to mention, the AI in Descent I(and the rest of the series) is arguably superior to any AI in any other 1st person shooter games. Most impressive, though, is the very realistic perception of physics in the Descent series: when you bump into something, it FEELS like you've bumped into it. Unlike in Duke Nukem or Doom or Quake, where when you bump into something, the legs of the character keep on moving, and it feels like you've just hita squishy force-field or something.
And also, where is Tomb Raider? Tomb Raider was also a revolutionary game, though buggy. It really pulled you in, because you felt like you were actually on some archeological dig.