The commonly perceived reality that you OWN software that you buy IS reality.
Well, I don't know what's reality to you, but to me reality is something physical. Laws are not reality: they are (agreed to and enforced) rules of interaction between people. They are not reality.
You currently own the software you buy.
No, you don't. You get a license to use it.
Of course, ownership is a complicated thing by itself. "Property" basically means a bunch of rights, and this bunch can look different: it's not a yes or no question. You do get some rights when you buy software, but these rights are less than outright ownership.
You're also wrong, the GPL imposes no more restrictions that an unlicensed program.
I'm not comparing GPL to unlicensed use (which is basically illegal, anyway). I am comparing GPL to public domain and, of course, GPL imposed more restrictions than public domain.
My terms are correct and if you disagree, you're just proving that you're either wrong, or pedantic.
Where does it say that in the law? The anti-circumvention portion, which I quoted from, specifically says that it is not illegal to circumvent protection measures,
Read more of DMCA. The portion that you are quoting basically says that the Librarian of Congress can designate certain "class of works" and/or certain persons as exempt from DMCA. Whether he will do so and what "class of works" that may be is not clear at all. However, the DMCA itself very clearly prohibits circumvention of protection devices regardless of whether the intended use of the protected material is copyright-infringing or not.
The claim is that you get a license to use the product. Reality does not match the claim
Unfortunately, the 'reality' you are talking about is nothing but perception, a generally held view of how things work. As such, it could be more or less easily changed, and there could (would?) be a lot of marketing dollars thrown at exactly this task.
To give an example, think about property-seizing laws. There is that general perception (what you would call a reality) that one must be guilty of some crime in order to be punished (mens rea, and all that). Bzzzt, wrong. You pick up a hitchiker, get stopped by cops, the cops find a bag of grass in the hitchiker's pocket -- your car will get confiscated. This is clearly contrary to what most people think should be just and proper, and still these laws are still on the books and I am unaware of any serious effort to repeal them.
the GPL adds rights by specifying conditions where duplication may be accepted. You're always allowed to give someone else more rights...
Sorry, you are wrong. It is impossible to add rights -- you cannot give more than you have. You can transfer all the rights that you have, but you cannot grant additional rights because you don't have them to grant. Giving somebody a subset of your rights is easy and standard, but giving more is impossible.
[hurriedly pulling on asbestos underwear] That's why the most free code is public domain code. Yes, its derivatives can be made non-free, but the code itself is as free as it gets. GPL most certainly does impose restrictions on its licensees and for all the talk about these restrictions being for the greater good, they are restrictions nonetheless.
In other words, Lessig was wrong, the DMCA does not prohibit fair use.
Lessig is right. DMCA does not prohibit fair use. But (and this is a really big BUT) DMCA does prohibit unauthorized access for whatever purpose, be it fair use or not.
Think about some beer in a fridge. You can drink the beer -- no problem, it's legal. However, opening the fridge happens to be illegal. No, nobody is trying to keep you from drinking that beer, no, no, you have full rights to this beer, it's all yours -- you just can't open the fridge.
I'd really like to know how we can get a clear, concise, understandable explanation out to the public that will motivate them!
I am of rather low opinion of American public (there is a very good description of it in Gibson's Idoru) and don't think we'll be able to make it care.
However, a campaign on the basis of "Even when you buy it, it's not yours" could push the button of a lot of people. There is a strong feeling that if you bought something, it's yours to do with anything you please -- and DMCA breaks this.
Sega got into the market before PSII or Dolphin, but at the cost of technological inferiority. Given that PSII is highly likely to kick Dreamcast's ass, Sega needs to do something -- anything -- to lock in gamers before the PSII is released in the US.
I doubt the plan is good anyway. A lot of people will get the Dreamcast and then get PSII when it comes out. Then they'll be left with $22/mo bills for a year and a half for the priviledge of connecting their unused hardware. That ought to generate a lot of bad feelings towards Sega.
Of course, as Sega is exiting the console business, it's not like it would care a great deal... Kaa
Re:DeCSS & CPHack aren't illegal until October!
on
'Battling Censorware'
·
· Score: 2
Cracks maybe legal until October (does it really make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?), but what is already illegal is to distribute tools for circumventing protection devices.
It's like you can still use a debugger (until October, at least -- grab your chance), but you cannot buy it, you cannot sell it, you cannot put it on your site.
I like running IE 5 - it has a tendency not to crash my system like Netscape.
If Netscape crashes your system, you should have been quicker to change systems than to change browsers. An OS that crashes due to a problem with a user-level application should be named I-N-E-X-C-U-S-A-B-L-E.
Disliking Microsoft is not a good reason to like Netscape. Netscape, as a matter of fact, sucks. Besides, although I am not the original poster, I would like to point out that Netscape does crash X running on top of my Debian Linux with admirable regularity. So should I change systems, as you recommend?
The most interesting thing will come in several months when the Judge will issue his ruling on the remedies (as in, shall we break Microsoft up?). That, of course, will be followed by years of appeals, etc.
So all people who are waiting for Microsoft to implode can exhale now and continue breathing for quite a while.
rely on having root access on bunches of machines also try to spoof the originating address of the command packets so that tracing the attack becomes a much more difficult propisition.
Well, there is a big difference between making a DDOS impossible and making it easier to catch the people behind it.
But even that aside, if you have root access on bunch of machines, it's trivial to route your command packets through some of these machines, arranging at the same time for them to forget that they ever saw anything resembling a command packet. If a couple of these machines are public servers, you do get very high security -- again, without using any spoofed packets.
Once address spoofing is eliminated, all DDOSes that I know of will be eliminated.
You don't know of many DDOSes, do you?
First of all, non-smurf-type attacks are not going to be affected. Let's say I have control over 10,000 machines (worm, virus, whatever). If I tell all of them to start demanding something big (preferably, a fat dynamic page) from web server couple of times a second, that web server will be dead in very short order. No spoofing anywhere here.
Second, even smurf-type attacks use local subnet broadcast address, and in many cases the spoofed ICMP packet will never go through a router (it was generated already on the inside).
So, yes, rejecting spoofed packets will help. No, it will not stop DDOS attacks completely.
Kaa
Re:"Good Times" wasn't a hoax
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
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· Score: 1
The famous "Good Times" virus wasn't a hoax. There really was a virus, transmitted by email,
There is even a special word for such a thing: it's called a meme
Kaa
Re:Should we be celebrating hoax's?
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
·
· Score: 2
It is precisely these hoax's that are worrying some folks and giving those people that want to regulate the internet some ammunition. I'm not saying we should dismiss them entirely but lauding them as wonderful forms of humour seems to just be asking for more trouble to me.
Oh, yeah??!? I take it that any form of irony, sarcasm or leg-pulling on the Internet should be now verboten just in case "some folks" get upset and will close the Internet down? And I should probably start wearing a three-piece suit with a sober and responsible dark tie to work, so that some folks wouldn't get the wrong impression? You'd probably want me to start using expressions like "would you be so kind as to" and "I cannot even start express my undying gratitude and appreciation to you"? And, let me guess, you don't like the word "fuck", do you?
Well, tell you what, sport. These "some folks" can fuck off. Yes, I actually used a naughty word on the Internet -- in case you didn't hear, they can FUCK OFF. And as to you, some thinking about the meaning of the word 'freedom' will probably do you good.
People have an innate preference to share with others when it benefits them.
People have an innate preference to do all kind of stuff when it benefits them. I don't see what's so special about sharing (in this context).
I think I have a much lower opinion of human nature than you do.
IMHO, people follow their instincts. Most intellectual property laws follow against people's instincts
Don't mistake your instincts for the people's instincts. You are not typical at all and your viewpoint is the minority viewpoint. I may not agree with specific IP laws, but I think that at least the concept of IP follows natural instincts pretty well (besides, I can derive most of IP from the freedom of contract).
So, in the end, producing Intellectual Property isn't going to make any money. All jobs will be service jobs
Oh, yeah? That's a major reality check failure. Maybe you'd like the world to work this way (though I can't imagine why), but it's not going to happen.
I've looked at the article and it looked like the classic CYA exercise. Somebody poked the chief of USPTO, so he woke up and automatically said "Yes, sure, we will very carefully consider... we'll make a study... we understand your concerns... we will re-examine... we..." As far as I am concerned this is just a bunch of hot air emanating from a bureacratic asshole (you shouldn't hold your breath, but might want to hold your nose). Treat it accordingly.
But if a tree falls on the Internet, and there's no members of Congress there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Well, if there are some gnu around that see the falling tree and stampede, and some zebras see the gnu and start to run, and some Thompson's gazelles join the crowd, pretty soon there'll be a thundering herd. And the thundering herd sound is one that congresscritters tend to hear well (not as well as the sound of money dropping into their coffers, of course, but still well).
A particularly interesting piece is an off-the-cuff comment at the end of the article which says that free licenses are generally held to be revokable.
If true, this has huge consequences for the GPL and other open source licenses. I am sure FSF tried its best to make the license non-revokable, but it's up to courts to decide whether this effort succeeded. If there were to be a ruling that the copyright holder can revoke an open-source license granted previously -- oh, boy!
Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality in physics.
Agreed. However, two points:
(1) The new (relativity + quantum) physics allows many more interesting things to happen as compared to old Newtonian physics. The world "became" more complex, more interesting, and in a sense more open. This has implications for spirituality.
(2) The famous one-electron-two-paths (or Schrodinger's cat) problem. If you pick the Copenhagen interpretation, there is that "observer" figure and the consciousness of that observer seems to mean something. If you pick the multiple-worlds interpretation, the fact that we live in a contiuously forking universe with billions of almost-the-same copies of everybody is a major statement for spirituality that it has to deal with.
Spirituality may not apply to physics, but physics certainly gives philosophers things (or non-things) to think about.
It's Pascal's wager: whether there is a God or not, I am able to see great and consistent results from believing in him
There are at least two major problems with Pascal's wager:
(1) It tell you nothing about which god (or gods) should you belive in.
(2) It, essentially, says that from a cost-benefit analysis point of view believing in God is good deal. However, deciding to believe is not the same as believing, plus I don't think that belief for reasons of personal gain qualifies as "true belief" in most religions.
Lessig is a very smart guy and very capable of expressing himself. He is worth reading.
The summary of his article (IMHO):
(1) There ain't no such thing as "no regulation". Regulation is not just laws, but also (social) norms and technological feasability. Realtime Blackhole List is regulation. Setting the router to reject obviously spoofed packets is regulation. Not-building pro-surveillance features into 'net protocols is also regulation ('cause it effectively regulates ability to do surveillance).
(2) Regulation is not necessarily bad, especially in a monopolistic or near-monopolistic situation. If they could, don't you think Baby Bells would have started to charge you $9.99 per minute for data calls to other ISPs and $0.09 per minute for calls to its own ISP? They couldn't because of regulation. The point is: sometimes regulation leads to more choice, not less. And more choice is good.
(3) One of the reasons for the 'net's success is that the network is dumb. All it does is shuffle IP packets. All the intelligence resides at ends, with the users. This may seem natural to Slashdotters, but other ways are certainly possible and phone companies, for example, would much rather have an "intelligent" network (which provides services that they can charge for) than a dumb commodity network. See also George Gilder and his ideas about "dark fiber".
Lessig argues that the dumbness of the network was a major factor in the success of the Internet (in particular, it avoided specializing the network for some particular use). His point is that we should do the same with broadband: keep the network dumb and freely accessible at the ends. If necessary, regulate to keep it that way.
I am not a big fan of regulation at all, and I certainly trust the government much less than Lessig does, but his arguments are certainly food for thought.
Slashdot Mirror
The commonly perceived reality that you OWN software that you buy IS reality.
Well, I don't know what's reality to you, but to me reality is something physical. Laws are not reality: they are (agreed to and enforced) rules of interaction between people. They are not reality.
You currently own the software you buy.
No, you don't. You get a license to use it.
Of course, ownership is a complicated thing by itself. "Property" basically means a bunch of rights, and this bunch can look different: it's not a yes or no question. You do get some rights when you buy software, but these rights are less than outright ownership.
You're also wrong, the GPL imposes no more restrictions that an unlicensed program.
I'm not comparing GPL to unlicensed use (which is basically illegal, anyway). I am comparing GPL to public domain and, of course, GPL imposed more restrictions than public domain.
My terms are correct and if you disagree, you're just proving that you're either wrong, or pedantic.
Ah, I see.
Kaa
That would be considered unlawful seizure of your property
:-)
Remember, you don't buy beer -- you rent it
Kaa
Ooh, I now have groupies following me across the Slashdot landscape!..
Listen, oh unworthy one! Attend to my posts diligently and in time even you may attain sentience. Thus spake Kaa.
Kaa
Where does it say that in the law? The anti-circumvention portion, which I quoted from, specifically says that it is not illegal to circumvent protection measures,
Read more of DMCA. The portion that you are quoting basically says that the Librarian of Congress can designate certain "class of works" and/or certain persons as exempt from DMCA. Whether he will do so and what "class of works" that may be is not clear at all. However, the DMCA itself very clearly prohibits circumvention of protection devices regardless of whether the intended use of the protected material is copyright-infringing or not.
Kaa
The claim is that you get a license to use the product. Reality does not match the claim
Unfortunately, the 'reality' you are talking about is nothing but perception, a generally held view of how things work. As such, it could be more or less easily changed, and there could (would?) be a lot of marketing dollars thrown at exactly this task.
To give an example, think about property-seizing laws. There is that general perception (what you would call a reality) that one must be guilty of some crime in order to be punished (mens rea, and all that). Bzzzt, wrong. You pick up a hitchiker, get stopped by cops, the cops find a bag of grass in the hitchiker's pocket -- your car will get confiscated. This is clearly contrary to what most people think should be just and proper, and still these laws are still on the books and I am unaware of any serious effort to repeal them.
the GPL adds rights by specifying conditions where duplication may be accepted. You're always allowed to give someone else more rights...
Sorry, you are wrong. It is impossible to add rights -- you cannot give more than you have. You can transfer all the rights that you have, but you cannot grant additional rights because you don't have them to grant. Giving somebody a subset of your rights is easy and standard, but giving more is impossible.
[hurriedly pulling on asbestos underwear] That's why the most free code is public domain code. Yes, its derivatives can be made non-free, but the code itself is as free as it gets. GPL most certainly does impose restrictions on its licensees and for all the talk about these restrictions being for the greater good, they are restrictions nonetheless.
Kaa
In other words, Lessig was wrong, the DMCA does not prohibit fair use.
Lessig is right. DMCA does not prohibit fair use. But (and this is a really big BUT) DMCA does prohibit unauthorized access for whatever purpose, be it fair use or not.
Think about some beer in a fridge. You can drink the beer -- no problem, it's legal. However, opening the fridge happens to be illegal. No, nobody is trying to keep you from drinking that beer, no, no, you have full rights to this beer, it's all yours -- you just can't open the fridge.
Kaa
I'd really like to know how we can get a clear, concise, understandable explanation out to the public that will motivate them!
I am of rather low opinion of American public (there is a very good description of it in Gibson's Idoru) and don't think we'll be able to make it care.
However, a campaign on the basis of "Even when you buy it, it's not yours" could push the button of a lot of people. There is a strong feeling that if you bought something, it's yours to do with anything you please -- and DMCA breaks this.
Kaa
Sega got into the market before PSII or Dolphin, but at the cost of technological inferiority. Given that PSII is highly likely to kick Dreamcast's ass, Sega needs to do something -- anything -- to lock in gamers before the PSII is released in the US.
I doubt the plan is good anyway. A lot of people will get the Dreamcast and then get PSII when it comes out. Then they'll be left with $22/mo bills for a year and a half for the priviledge of connecting their unused hardware. That ought to generate a lot of bad feelings towards Sega.
Of course, as Sega is exiting the console business, it's not like it would care a great deal...
Kaa
Cracks maybe legal until October (does it really make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?), but what is already illegal is to distribute tools for circumventing protection devices.
It's like you can still use a debugger (until October, at least -- grab your chance), but you cannot buy it, you cannot sell it, you cannot put it on your site.
Kaa
I like running IE 5 - it has a tendency not to crash my system like Netscape.
If Netscape crashes your system, you should have been quicker to change systems than to change browsers. An OS that crashes due to a problem with a user-level application should be named I-N-E-X-C-U-S-A-B-L-E.
Disliking Microsoft is not a good reason to like Netscape. Netscape, as a matter of fact, sucks. Besides, although I am not the original poster, I would like to point out that Netscape does crash X running on top of my Debian Linux with admirable regularity. So should I change systems, as you recommend?
Kaa
Yawn. Everything is as expected.
The most interesting thing will come in several months when the Judge will issue his ruling on the remedies (as in, shall we break Microsoft up?). That, of course, will be followed by years of appeals, etc.
So all people who are waiting for Microsoft to implode can exhale now and continue breathing for quite a while.
Kaa
rely on having root access on bunches of machines also try to spoof the originating address of the command packets so that tracing the attack becomes a much more difficult propisition.
Well, there is a big difference between making a DDOS impossible and making it easier to catch the people behind it.
But even that aside, if you have root access on bunch of machines, it's trivial to route your command packets through some of these machines, arranging at the same time for them to forget that they ever saw anything resembling a command packet. If a couple of these machines are public servers, you do get very high security -- again, without using any spoofed packets.
Kaa
Once address spoofing is eliminated, all DDOSes that I know of will be eliminated.
You don't know of many DDOSes, do you?
First of all, non-smurf-type attacks are not going to be affected. Let's say I have control over 10,000 machines (worm, virus, whatever). If I tell all of them to start demanding something big (preferably, a fat dynamic page) from web server couple of times a second, that web server will be dead in very short order. No spoofing anywhere here.
Second, even smurf-type attacks use local subnet broadcast address, and in many cases the spoofed ICMP packet will never go through a router (it was generated already on the inside).
So, yes, rejecting spoofed packets will help. No, it will not stop DDOS attacks completely.
Kaa
The famous "Good Times" virus wasn't a hoax. There really was a virus, transmitted by email,
There is even a special word for such a thing: it's called a meme
Kaa
It is precisely these hoax's that are worrying some folks and giving those people that want to regulate the internet some ammunition. I'm not saying we should dismiss them entirely but lauding them as wonderful forms of humour seems to just be asking for more trouble to me.
Oh, yeah??!? I take it that any form of irony, sarcasm or leg-pulling on the Internet should be now verboten just in case "some folks" get upset and will close the Internet down? And I should probably start wearing a three-piece suit with a sober and responsible dark tie to work, so that some folks wouldn't get the wrong impression? You'd probably want me to start using expressions like "would you be so kind as to" and "I cannot even start express my undying gratitude and appreciation to you"? And, let me guess, you don't like the word "fuck", do you?
Well, tell you what, sport. These "some folks" can fuck off. Yes, I actually used a naughty word on the Internet -- in case you didn't hear, they can FUCK OFF. And as to you, some thinking about the meaning of the word 'freedom' will probably do you good.
Kaa
Anybody knows whether he got disgusted with the whole thing or was pushed out?
Kaa
People have an innate preference to share with others when it benefits them.
People have an innate preference to do all kind of stuff when it benefits them. I don't see what's so special about sharing (in this context).
I think I have a much lower opinion of human nature than you do.
IMHO, people follow their instincts. Most intellectual property laws follow against people's instincts
Don't mistake your instincts for the people's instincts. You are not typical at all and your viewpoint is the minority viewpoint. I may not agree with specific IP laws, but I think that at least the concept of IP follows natural instincts pretty well (besides, I can derive most of IP from the freedom of contract).
So, in the end, producing Intellectual Property isn't going to make any money. All jobs will be service jobs
Oh, yeah? That's a major reality check failure. Maybe you'd like the world to work this way (though I can't imagine why), but it's not going to happen.
Kaa
I've looked at the article and it looked like the classic CYA exercise. Somebody poked the chief of USPTO, so he woke up and automatically said "Yes, sure, we will very carefully consider... we'll make a study... we understand your concerns... we will re-examine... we..." As far as I am concerned this is just a bunch of hot air emanating from a bureacratic asshole (you shouldn't hold your breath, but might want to hold your nose). Treat it accordingly.
Kaa
But if a tree falls on the Internet, and there's no members of Congress there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Well, if there are some gnu around that see the falling tree and stampede, and some zebras see the gnu and start to run, and some Thompson's gazelles join the crowd, pretty soon there'll be a thundering herd. And the thundering herd sound is one that congresscritters tend to hear well (not as well as the sound of money dropping into their coffers, of course, but still well).
Kaa
A particularly interesting piece is an off-the-cuff comment at the end of the article which says that free licenses are generally held to be revokable.
If true, this has huge consequences for the GPL and other open source licenses. I am sure FSF tried its best to make the license non-revokable, but it's up to courts to decide whether this effort succeeded. If there were to be a ruling that the copyright holder can revoke an open-source license granted previously -- oh, boy!
Kaa
You can't reject a theory because it doesn't answer all of your questions.
I'm not rejecting any theories. I am just pointing out that Pascal's Wager does not present a convincing argument for belief in God (or gods).
Kaa
Sorry to disappoint you but, no, there isn't any hidden spirituality in physics.
Agreed. However, two points:
(1) The new (relativity + quantum) physics allows many more interesting things to happen as compared to old Newtonian physics. The world "became" more complex, more interesting, and in a sense more open. This has implications for spirituality.
(2) The famous one-electron-two-paths (or Schrodinger's cat) problem. If you pick the Copenhagen interpretation, there is that "observer" figure and the consciousness of that observer seems to mean something. If you pick the multiple-worlds interpretation, the fact that we live in a contiuously forking universe with billions of almost-the-same copies of everybody is a major statement for spirituality that it has to deal with.
Spirituality may not apply to physics, but physics certainly gives philosophers things (or non-things) to think about.
Kaa
It's Pascal's wager: whether there is a God or not, I am able to see great and consistent results from believing in him
There are at least two major problems with Pascal's wager:
(1) It tell you nothing about which god (or gods) should you belive in.
(2) It, essentially, says that from a cost-benefit analysis point of view believing in God is good deal. However, deciding to believe is not the same as believing, plus I don't think that belief for reasons of personal gain qualifies as "true belief" in most religions.
Kaa
Lessig is a very smart guy and very capable of expressing himself. He is worth reading.
The summary of his article (IMHO):
(1) There ain't no such thing as "no regulation". Regulation is not just laws, but also (social) norms and technological feasability. Realtime Blackhole List is regulation. Setting the router to reject obviously spoofed packets is regulation. Not-building pro-surveillance features into 'net protocols is also regulation ('cause it effectively regulates ability to do surveillance).
(2) Regulation is not necessarily bad, especially in a monopolistic or near-monopolistic situation. If they could, don't you think Baby Bells would have started to charge you $9.99 per minute for data calls to other ISPs and $0.09 per minute for calls to its own ISP? They couldn't because of regulation. The point is: sometimes regulation leads to more choice, not less. And more choice is good.
(3) One of the reasons for the 'net's success is that the network is dumb. All it does is shuffle IP packets. All the intelligence resides at ends, with the users. This may seem natural to Slashdotters, but other ways are certainly possible and phone companies, for example, would much rather have an "intelligent" network (which provides services that they can charge for) than a dumb commodity network. See also George Gilder and his ideas about "dark fiber".
Lessig argues that the dumbness of the network was a major factor in the success of the Internet (in particular, it avoided specializing the network for some particular use). His point is that we should do the same with broadband: keep the network dumb and freely accessible at the ends. If necessary, regulate to keep it that way.
I am not a big fan of regulation at all, and I certainly trust the government much less than Lessig does, but his arguments are certainly food for thought.
Kaa
f I hear it again I'm going to puke.
Heh. I'd like to see the moderator to whom this piece of data was "informative".
Kaa