Those are nearly the exact words that I was about to post. I am so happy that the contibutions I've made to EFF recently have in some small way helped make this document possible.
It's a very well written brief, and as legal briefs go, fairly easy to read.
Josh then gets tutored by a Fields Medal winner (and resents it), gets mental health counseling from a washed up math genius now working as a professor at a local community college, and then he falls in love with a Harvard student whom he gives up his promising math career to chase after.
What distinguishes napster (and now gnutellas) from other file sharing/distributing apparati is that it is so easy to use that any kid with AOL can and does use it! The RIAA doesn't know how to use, let alone care about, some random IRC client with a gig of music flies on it, because thousands, not millions of people access it.
NO, what distinguishes Napster was the recording industry's ability to fight it. They chose a weak and obvious target, fight it, win, and ultimately end up with legal precedent on their side.
This is EXACTLY why the MPAA went after 2600 in the DeCSS case. Easy target. It's a hacker site for cryin' out loud... despite what we all know, the courts were going to rule against 2600 despite the merits of the case. Same thing... choose an easy target, establish legal precedent, and use that precedent to win against more worthy opponents.
It's sickening that this is how our court system works...
Another way is to start voting congressmen out of office who voted for things like DMCA
That would be nearly all of them. It was passed via a non-registered (if that's the right term) hand vote. I've been trying to find out who voted for it and who didn't, but it looks like it was nearly unanimous.
I honestly don't think that P2P software is the problem. I think that the music industry in particular should NOT get all hot and bothered about the software for sharing (insert file type here) files or the files themselves, rather, target the applications that create the files
This would put the RIAA in the same situation the MPAA was against the Betamax. It would be easy enough to say that such software does indeed have "significant non-infringing uses". I have dozens of CD-Rs full of.mp3s ripped from CDs that I OWN. I use them to listen to music that I BOUGHT in a more convenient way for me... on my laptop... on my PC... etc. I'm going to build a dedicated.mp3 PC for my home stereo system.
All of those things fall under FAIR USE and the recording industry would be absolutely foolish to fight them.
.mp3 is just a file format that uses audio compression. Going after the applications that create those files would be like going after Adobe Acrobat because someone scanned in a copyrighted book and distributed it in.pdf format.
To rephrase the question -- would you rather that a hyperadvanced alien species give you a device that could communicate faster than light? Or would you rather they give you the physics breakthroughs that explains how to build such a device.
That depends. Is it illegal under the DMCA to reverse engineer the device?
The DMCA in the US is simply our way of complying with a WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) treaty. Specifically, we're talking about the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996.
Expect more WIPO member countries to generate their own laws to comply with this.
-S
Re:If you like Far Side, then try Dr. Fun!
on
Web-Based Comics
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· Score: 1
Any comic that routinely features head in a vat jokes is A-OK in my book!
Destroying ourselves... same problem, new means.
on
Spidergoats
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· Score: 2
We used to think that we were going to destroy our species with nuclear bombs... maybe some still do. We ARE going to destroy ourselves, but it won't be with a big boom. In our rush to play around with what's possible, some little genetically altered critter will get out the lab and the human species as we know it will shortly thereafter cease to exist.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, and maybe I don't understand the technology enough, but I've just got to believe that screwing around with nature like this can only end up with dire consequences.
I've written letters to my congressmen about the DMCA (as EVERYONE here should, not just emails, but actually paper letters). I got only one response and that was from Senator John Kerry.
In his letter, he wrote, "... court rulings will, to a large extent, determine the strength of this law."
It angers me to no end to know that our congress knowingly passed an overly broad law in order to satisfy an international treaty, but have left it to the courts to figure out what it means. Shouldn't they know what it means and understand the consequences BEFORE they pass it?
Remember that the DMCA was written to comply with the WIPO Copyright Treaty. In an effort to kiss the asses of foreign governments and multi-national corporations with huge donation pockets, the DMCA was passed by a unanimous vote (it was actually a hand vote, so there's no record, but I've seen the word unanimous used).
Well it seems that in this setup Napster is acting as the facilitator of the transaction by linking Bob and Alice up, assuming Bob and Alice are both subscribers. Then Napster records the transaction and gives some money to the appropriate record company.
This doesn't seem a whole lot different from record stores being the "middle man". They act as the facilitator between the record company and the end buyer.
When the stuff you trade flows freely, everybody benefits
Except of course those who spent time to write the music, bought instruments on which to play it on, payed to have it recorded, payed to have it mixed, and payed to have it mastered. How are they benefiting from this free flow of information?
People seem perfectly happy to pay $40/month for crappy cable TV. I'm sure some segment of the population would be willing to fork over some similar amount of money for unlimited music of their choice.
Maybe they should setup a tier system. For $10/month, you get 2 albums. For $20 you get 5, and for $30 you get unlimited.
A subscription based service is where the industry is headed. It must. The big issues they'll have to solve are with artist compensation.
I buy probably 5-6 CDs per month, sometimes less, sometimes more, but in the end a price like $30/month would be worth it to me. The added inconvenience would be worth the exposure to a greater selection of music.
There's no way I could burn an entire collection. New music is released much too quickly. Yes, I'd like to go back into old catalogs. There's a lot of music I'd like to check out, but my rate of CD buying doesn't really allow it. This would.
The quality of MP3's can easily match that of CD's by selecting a higher bit rate. I think 192 is good enough for CD quality if not 256 is. Cover Art is another thing
Listening on PC speakers, maybe. But even at high bitrates,.mp3 is NOT CD quality. The idea here is that this grows beyond the PC. My point was that I'd be OK with it, but I'm going to want to move those files OFF my PC. That means creating 44KHz/16Bit/Stereo.wav files and burning them to CD..mp3 (or any 10x lossy compression scheme is NOT up to the challenge of sounding as good as CD quality.
I've got a high-bandwidth connection... I'd be happy to download 500M or so if it meant the sound quality was good.
Why would you download songs you already have? Wouldn't it be easier and quicker just to rip them to.mp3 format... and that way, you have complete control over the quality settings rather than letting some guy out there decide for you.
Does this move ammount to sanctioning of Napster by the music industry ala the DAT tax.
I have no desire to rip off the music industry or the artists, who IMO have every right to charge whatever the heck the like for CDs (as I have every right to buy them or not buy them at a given price... it's not like we're talking about essentials of life here).
I'd actually prefer that the music indstry just get its act together and start a subscription based music download service. Maybe $30/month for unlimited downloads, or something like that. If the quality was good enough (ie, MUCH better than MP3), and if other goodies like cover art, etc were also downloadable, I'd sign up in a minute. Even at that price, it would save me a ton of money over what I spend now on CDs.
I was a junior in high school... a cocky know-it-all like everyone else at that age. We were in the middle of mid-term exams, and I didn't have an exam that afternoon.
So while hanging around with my friends and waiting for one of their moms to pick us up and take us home, I said "I'm going to go home and watch the space shuttle blow up. It's bound to happen sooner or later.". I don't know what possessed me to say that.... maybe because I knew that Murphy's Laws eventually catch up to everybody and everything.
And of course we all know what happened. That I'd predicted it hours before was the subject of much conversation the next day, and of course I felt like a complete ass for not taking the lives of the astronauts more seriously the day before.
And sadly this will happen again. Eventually. Maybe not with a shuttle... maybe on some other mission. But this is outrageously complex engineering. There will be mistakes. And despite our best efforts, it will eventually cost lives again. Atheletes can be killed in competition. Race car drivers can be killed on the track. You might get hit by a bus on your way to work tomorrow. But the key is to learn from our mistakes and keep going.
In the end, there was nothing wrong with the current voting machines. The problem was with the voters. Rather than spend millions on this, why not spend a small percentage of that on a public awareness campain to educate voters to not be so stupid in the future.
Here are some items to be presented in this campain...
- Voting is an awesome responsibility. Don't take it lightly.
- When you get a sample ballot in the mail, read it, don't ignore it. If you don't understand something on it, you should ask the local elections department. You have plenty of time to do this BEFORE the election. Don't wait until you're in the booth.
- Don't complain about the percentage of "undervotes" in your county after the election when the percentage was really no different than is has been in other past elections. You have the right to raise these issues with the local election department BEFORE the election.
- Know where the polling place is. Go there BEFORE the election so you know where it is. If you're unable or unwilling to drive or otherwise transport yourself, just ask for help. There are MANY volunteers willing to help get people to the polling place.
- DO NOT make decisions on whether or not to vote, or who to vote for, based on exit polls and news reports. Those reports can be flawed.
There. Drive these points into the minds of voters and save millions on updating equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
Those are nearly the exact words that I was about to post. I am so happy that the contibutions I've made to EFF recently have in some small way helped make this document possible.
It's a very well written brief, and as legal briefs go, fairly easy to read.
Score one for the good guys.
-S
Josh then gets tutored by a Fields Medal winner (and resents it), gets mental health counseling from a washed up math genius now working as a professor at a local community college, and then he falls in love with a Harvard student whom he gives up his promising math career to chase after.
-S
NO, what distinguishes Napster was the recording industry's ability to fight it. They chose a weak and obvious target, fight it, win, and ultimately end up with legal precedent on their side.
This is EXACTLY why the MPAA went after 2600 in the DeCSS case. Easy target. It's a hacker site for cryin' out loud... despite what we all know, the courts were going to rule against 2600 despite the merits of the case. Same thing... choose an easy target, establish legal precedent, and use that precedent to win against more worthy opponents.
It's sickening that this is how our court system works...
-S
That would be nearly all of them. It was passed via a non-registered (if that's the right term) hand vote. I've been trying to find out who voted for it and who didn't, but it looks like it was nearly unanimous.
Sigh...
-S
This would put the RIAA in the same situation the MPAA was against the Betamax. It would be easy enough to say that such software does indeed have "significant non-infringing uses". I have dozens of CD-Rs full of .mp3s ripped from CDs that I OWN. I use them to listen to music that I BOUGHT in a more convenient way for me... on my laptop... on my PC... etc. I'm going to build a dedicated .mp3 PC for my home stereo system.
All of those things fall under FAIR USE and the recording industry would be absolutely foolish to fight them.
.mp3 is just a file format that uses audio compression. Going after the applications that create those files would be like going after Adobe Acrobat because someone scanned in a copyrighted book and distributed it in .pdf format.
-S
You say that as if it's a bad thing. Gridlock is good. It means that the politicians aren't messing things up.
If only we'd had total gridlock when the DMCA was voted on...
-S
Doctor Fun 010306
-S
That depends. Is it illegal under the DMCA to reverse engineer the device?
-S
There is a significant amount of information at the EFF DMCA page.
Expect more WIPO member countries to generate their own laws to comply with this.
-S
Any comic that routinely features head in a vat jokes is A-OK in my book!
We used to think that we were going to destroy our species with nuclear bombs... maybe some still do. We ARE going to destroy ourselves, but it won't be with a big boom. In our rush to play around with what's possible, some little genetically altered critter will get out the lab and the human species as we know it will shortly thereafter cease to exist.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, and maybe I don't understand the technology enough, but I've just got to believe that screwing around with nature like this can only end up with dire consequences.
Someone please tell me I'm wrong...
-S
I've written letters to my congressmen about the DMCA (as EVERYONE here should, not just emails, but actually paper letters). I got only one response and that was from Senator John Kerry.
In his letter, he wrote, "... court rulings will, to a large extent, determine the strength of this law."
It angers me to no end to know that our congress knowingly passed an overly broad law in order to satisfy an international treaty, but have left it to the courts to figure out what it means. Shouldn't they know what it means and understand the consequences BEFORE they pass it?
Remember that the DMCA was written to comply with the WIPO Copyright Treaty. In an effort to kiss the asses of foreign governments and multi-national corporations with huge donation pockets, the DMCA was passed by a unanimous vote (it was actually a hand vote, so there's no record, but I've seen the word unanimous used).
-Steve
Uh, dood... like radio stations like pay royalties and stuff to, uh, like record companies. K dood?
Well it seems that in this setup Napster is acting as the facilitator of the transaction by linking Bob and Alice up, assuming Bob and Alice are both subscribers. Then Napster records the transaction and gives some money to the appropriate record company.
This doesn't seem a whole lot different from record stores being the "middle man". They act as the facilitator between the record company and the end buyer.
-S
Except of course those who spent time to write the music, bought instruments on which to play it on, payed to have it recorded, payed to have it mixed, and payed to have it mastered. How are they benefiting from this free flow of information?
-S
People seem perfectly happy to pay $40/month for crappy cable TV. I'm sure some segment of the population would be willing to fork over some similar amount of money for unlimited music of their choice.
Maybe they should setup a tier system. For $10/month, you get 2 albums. For $20 you get 5, and for $30 you get unlimited.
A subscription based service is where the industry is headed. It must. The big issues they'll have to solve are with artist compensation.
-S
I buy probably 5-6 CDs per month, sometimes less, sometimes more, but in the end a price like $30/month would be worth it to me. The added inconvenience would be worth the exposure to a greater selection of music.
There's no way I could burn an entire collection. New music is released much too quickly. Yes, I'd like to go back into old catalogs. There's a lot of music I'd like to check out, but my rate of CD buying doesn't really allow it. This would.
-S
Listening on PC speakers, maybe. But even at high bitrates, .mp3 is NOT CD quality. The idea here is that this grows beyond the PC. My point was that I'd be OK with it, but I'm going to want to move those files OFF my PC. That means creating 44KHz/16Bit/Stereo .wav files and burning them to CD. .mp3 (or any 10x lossy compression scheme is NOT up to the challenge of sounding as good as CD quality.
I've got a high-bandwidth connection... I'd be happy to download 500M or so if it meant the sound quality was good.
-S
Why would you download songs you already have? Wouldn't it be easier and quicker just to rip them to .mp3 format... and that way, you have complete control over the quality settings rather than letting some guy out there decide for you.
-S
Does this move ammount to sanctioning of Napster by the music industry ala the DAT tax.
I have no desire to rip off the music industry or the artists, who IMO have every right to charge whatever the heck the like for CDs (as I have every right to buy them or not buy them at a given price... it's not like we're talking about essentials of life here).
I'd actually prefer that the music indstry just get its act together and start a subscription based music download service. Maybe $30/month for unlimited downloads, or something like that. If the quality was good enough (ie, MUCH better than MP3), and if other goodies like cover art, etc were also downloadable, I'd sign up in a minute. Even at that price, it would save me a ton of money over what I spend now on CDs.
-S
I was a junior in high school... a cocky know-it-all like everyone else at that age. We were in the middle of mid-term exams, and I didn't have an exam that afternoon.
So while hanging around with my friends and waiting for one of their moms to pick us up and take us home, I said "I'm going to go home and watch the space shuttle blow up. It's bound to happen sooner or later.". I don't know what possessed me to say that.... maybe because I knew that Murphy's Laws eventually catch up to everybody and everything.
And of course we all know what happened. That I'd predicted it hours before was the subject of much conversation the next day, and of course I felt like a complete ass for not taking the lives of the astronauts more seriously the day before.
And sadly this will happen again. Eventually. Maybe not with a shuttle... maybe on some other mission. But this is outrageously complex engineering. There will be mistakes. And despite our best efforts, it will eventually cost lives again. Atheletes can be killed in competition. Race car drivers can be killed on the track. You might get hit by a bus on your way to work tomorrow. But the key is to learn from our mistakes and keep going.
-S
Any staticians care to check this...
The article mentioned 4 problems in a bundle of 6056 wires. That's 1 in 1514.
Assuming there's actually 3028 redundant pairs, the chances of hitting one of the redundant wires of the one you've hit before is 3 in 6055.
So the odds of hitting a redundant pair is 1 in 5,238,440.
-S
In the end, there was nothing wrong with the current voting machines. The problem was with the voters. Rather than spend millions on this, why not spend a small percentage of that on a public awareness campain to educate voters to not be so stupid in the future.
Here are some items to be presented in this campain...
- Voting is an awesome responsibility. Don't take it lightly.
- When you get a sample ballot in the mail, read it, don't ignore it. If you don't understand something on it, you should ask the local elections department. You have plenty of time to do this BEFORE the election. Don't wait until you're in the booth.
- Don't complain about the percentage of "undervotes" in your county after the election when the percentage was really no different than is has been in other past elections. You have the right to raise these issues with the local election department BEFORE the election.
- Know where the polling place is. Go there BEFORE the election so you know where it is. If you're unable or unwilling to drive or otherwise transport yourself, just ask for help. There are MANY volunteers willing to help get people to the polling place.
- DO NOT make decisions on whether or not to vote, or who to vote for, based on exit polls and news reports. Those reports can be flawed.
There. Drive these points into the minds of voters and save millions on updating equipment.
-S
What they should be doing is working on maximizing quality, not minimizing size.
The goal should not be 128kbps quality in 64kbps. It should be 44KHz/16 bit quality (or even better yet, 96Khz/24bit quality) in a manageable size.
-S
Using this technology, I should be able to make it to work in about 0.2 seconds!
-S