Well, assuming it is a government plot, you can look at this two ways:
1) Either M$ colluded with the Government in orchestrating the break-in. Very unlikely.
or
2) The government did it on their own in order to further their own agenda. Who better to go after than the most powerful software firm. If you can get the big software players over to your side, then the rest of the smaller software companies will more easily succumb to political pressure to grease the wheels of government intrusiveness into people's lives. Afterall, "we the government are the good guys, we are trying to protect your business. Please help us spy on your customers in order to protect you."
Now New Zealand is following suit with their own cyber-snoop laws orchestrated by none other than the FBI. NZ's law will make it a crime to encrypt information, even accidentally, and refuse to give over the keys to it. Even if you lost them! Refusal to do so will land you in prison for 5 years! This same law is mandating that all ISP's keep complete dossiers on all their customers for at least 40 days!
Am I the only one around here who finds the timing and announcement of this break-in happens to conincide with the timing of both the International Anti-Cyber-Crime Treaty and the anti-hacker bill going through congress? Common folks, this is exactly the ammunition the law enforcement community needs in order to shove down our throats increasing draconian surveillance and criminal laws that strip away what remains of a tattered constitution.
The timing of this reminds me of the DoS attacks earlier this year which them prompted Congress to increase the federal governments escalation of cracking down on so called 'hackers'.
D.A.R.E. is a failure becuase it relies on slanted truths, propoganda, biased reporting and outright lies. Because of this offensive tact that D.A.R.E. has perpetrated on our youth, drug abuse is still rampant. Why? Because D.A.R.E. refuse to acknowledge that a large segment of kids will try drugs no matter what, and that giving them the facts without muddying it with all the preachy bullshit and moralistic crap thrown into it might actually work. Because of this D.A.R.E. still refuses to see that like anything there is a fine line between use and abuse. Every kid I know who once smokes pot after being brainwashed by D.A.R.E. comes away realizing that all the things that they were told about it were outright lies. They then feel betrayed, and any trust they may have had towards law enforcement and authority goes right out the window.
And becuase trust has been betrayed, the problem is compounded because now the kids are more willing to try more addictive and drugs and in dangerous quantities, ignoring what might have been factual information, leaving more kids more addicted and abusing drugs than before had they been given factual information in the first place!
I have no problem with causality - it is all around us. But this begs the whole question - from whence is casuality originate? In other words it may appear that we agree afterall. Early on thids debate I reduced this entire argument down to one of two possibilities. Either we have a first cause which spontanteous erupted out of infinte probablistic nothingness, or there has always been causality forever back and forever forward - no beginning and no ending. Otherwise if there was a beginning, it must be asked what starteed the whole thing in the first place? Why anything at all?
If you know of a third way, I would be very enlightened to hear it.:-)
You have missed the entire point of this argument. Of course in this universe all those rules apply and your are absolutely correct. But we are not talking about this universe in isolation. Since the debate is focusing on where this unverse came from, and how did it orginate, then we must conjecture about rules outside the arbitray laws of physics that exists in this universe.
Ah yes, but there is one inescapable fact - We exist.
So this either leaves with two possible explanations:
Something, not Void, has always existed. There was no beginning and there is no end. This is incredibly heady shit to contemplate and will make your head explode with the implications of it. More importantly the subjective things we call time supposed was created at the singularity called the big bang/. One possible explanation of this is that time did not exist before this. If time does not exist, there concepts like beginning and ending do not exist.
Another possible explanation. Is that there was absolutely nothing, less than void, less than nothing (i.e nothing only has meaning if you have something). And in this eternal never-beginning and never-ending void, something happened, unremarkable in every way. Its only significance was that it was a differnence that made a difference. Afterall it was something to give itself meaning from the Void that is nothing.
The state od politics in this country since I first voted back in 1984 has always made me puke. The political process, the electoral college is a total sham and completely corrupt. It makes me sick. The voting process is no longer where you stand and what you believe in in. It is not a pro-active, it is defensive. Its no longer who I'm voting for, but who I'm voting against.
I have now lived long enough to see the horrendous results of Reagans and Bushes Republiucan Regime. Under them we got the Drug War and it's devastating result on our precious constitution. Under them we also saw a drmatic escaltion of military coups and campaigns around the world, killing hundreds of thousans of innocent people in the name of 'freedom fighters'.
Under this same regime we saw the economy stumble on real wages plummet.
Under Clinton we have seen the same incroachment of out liberties through travesties like the DMCA, CArnivore, and the suspension of Habeus Corpus. But also under Clinton we have enjoyed the longest economic boom in decades, and a real increase in real wages.
So who am I going to vote for? Well I would like to vote for Harry Browne or someone of his ilk, but he has a ices chance in hell of winning. I dislike intensely both Gore and Bush. Especially Bush in that he is against a women's right to choose, and he likes to see innocent people die on death row.
So as much as I can't stand the guy, I'm voting for Gore.
A simple theory perhaps, but a theory that is backed up by the likes od Stephen Hawking, Lee Smolin. The irony of this theory is that its completely common sense in that it is the only theory that makes sense without depending on a an outside supernatural diety whose own existence and origins can be questioned - Who made god? And who made him?
Since all these figures in the larger multiverse are ultimately arbitrary, that means that all possible numbers will be played out. Sure of all the possibilities, our particular universe is improbable, but when an essentially infinite number of possibilities is playing out all the time, then that means that the chance of our type of universe popping into existence is extremely high.
To use an anology, the odds of getting a royal flush on any one play of the cars is extremely rare. But what if we were looking at a super-set of card games that were being played a billion times a second. In that scenario, like our universe, a royal flush of spades will be popping up all the time.
I think you're right. And this whole thing has got me thinking. Imagine a world in which reverse engineering is considered a crime assuming those who consider themselves infringed have the legal leverage to sue you civilly and/or prosecute you criminally.
Since such a framework would obviously stifle innovation almost totally, this means that those ad-hoc collection of individuals and organizations who create the equivalent of an open-law and open-source will over time beat all those propietary products in the market place.
Jim, I really like where you are going with all this, and I wish you the best of luck in your development efforts. I wanted to add that if the value of Mojo is left to its own guises the decentralized market of users will determine what its worth - "Hey dude, I'll give you twenty bucks for those 35 mojo's you have."
Given enough time Mojo will stabilize on a price the market is willing to bear - making it a true totally decentralized non-state issued currency. The potential of this is incredibly liberating, and I am totally exicited about it. This is great news folks!
Wikki - Your just plain wrong. The reason this idea is far superior to Napster and especially Gnutella is the fact that Mojo Nation has built-in incentive to share. The tragedy that is the Gnutella Commons, is that less than 1% of the people using it account for over 50% of the files shared. That means that most of the people are leaching off the system. With Mojo Nation, the more you share the more you get in return. Such a system will encourage a tremedous growth of the commons and is sure to see a massive proliferation of high quality material in no time.
Yes, Child Pornography is bad, very bad, but this should not be a reason to condemn technologies that may or may not be used to facilitate it. That is the crux of my argument, and why I get so tired of hearing about increasingly draconian laws and surviellance and big brother to stop so called pedophiles and terrorists.
"Innocent until proven guilty."
At least thats how it was supposed to work.
Re:Negative people on slashdot.
on
IRC Improvements
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· Score: 2
I get sick and tired of people constantly waving "kiddie porn" as a reason to give up all our rights. "You can't have privacy, you can't have P2P file sharing, you can't use the internet, and you can't access porn among consenting adults. Why? Becuase you might be a child pornographer!"
(sarcasm)
Hell, lets outlaw cars! They can be used to conduct bank robberies and kidnappings! Lets outlaw cameras! They can be used by to take pictures of naked children!".
Lets outlaw freedom! It can be used to do al sorts of heinous acts!
You make a very good point - standards are incredibly beneficial. But they also have a dark side - stagnation. With an open-source standard this is less of a problem, but with too much centralized or propiertary control such stardards become locked in with little outside influence. I think the least disagreeable solution would to be have all standards open-sourced like mp3 is.
I agree with you r-jae - this is by far the stupidest analysis I have ever had the displeasure of reading. This professor should consider another line of work.
I will respond to this long paper with an equally short response:
1) Competition, assuming there is any, always drives prices down. Always has, and always will. All of the incredibly convulted analysis to the contrary is pure hogwash and pseudo-economic masturbation.
2) Competition, inexorably produces better software. Since no one company would have a stranglehold on innovation, consumers will inevitably lead towards the better product assuming no single company, as in the case of Micro$oft, is allowed to crush their enemies through collusion, strong-arm tactics, bullying, marketing propoganda and illegal activity.
We should all remember the famous last words of Bill Gates, "I don't recall."
I have only one question regarding PGP, Why oh why haven't they integrated this into a common easy to use email client - like Eudora, Netscape Communicator, or Mozilla? Whyt not an integrated encryprion scheme put into every email client sold on the shelves? A product so easy to use that everyone including computer illeterate grandma can start using 4096 bit encrpytion? A program so easy that the average joe simply uses it as he has always done, without necessarily understanding how or why it works the way it does?
Why oh why must PGP remain in the shadows for only the nerdiest of the nerd or the most paranoid of the paranoid? Why oh why can't someone finally integrate strong encrpytion into everyday products?
Totally! Perhaps that is why Bruce Sterling is of the first-generation of cyberpunk writers - the ones with enough angst to fill a Hindenberg. Thank god for the second generation of cyber- authors like Neal Stephenson and Greg Egan.
Don't you guys realize this guy is being totally felicitous? Not only his he making comments on where things could end up if people like Bill Gates has his way with his.NET strategy, but also the horrific brainwashing capabilities that come when laws like the DMCA and UCITA make it illegal to re-create history. After all history is stored on some medium, and any storage could be outlawed through the leasing paradigm being pushed by Corprations like Microsoft. Worse, already the recording and motion picture industries are trying to overturn the 1982 Home Recording Act . And now the FCC is requiring copyright protection chips be placed in all digital televisions. These technologies give them the power to re-write history to suit their agenda. Play this out over the next 20 years, and people will start believing that what they have now is the best, as the history of anything else will be erased.
Yes, but now they are trying to have that decision overruled! Soon you will only be able to watch exactly what they want you to watch, and even have the gall to charge you for it! Ve Vill Kontrol the Vertical and ze Horizontal. Sometime in the near future:
Warning, coporate subject A-3451 is in violation of copyright law in sector 7 grid 9. Send an anti-pirate dispatch immediately
Its really sad when a Richard Stalman's Satire "The Right to Read" becomes closer to reality every day. He was wrong about one thing though. Its happening a lot quicker than even he predicted
Software is unlimited, or at least a lot more unlimited than this apparently shortsighted book book points out. Over the next 10 years, genetic and evolutionary programming methods will take over where human 'formal' logic programs cannot. According to the creator of Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram, nearly everything is a form of computation. The Earth's complex biosphere is a perfect example that extremely computations are possible. There is no fundmental mathematical reason why software cannot emulate the same degree od complexity.
You so make some very good points which have given me pause. But in 3 months on Slashdot, this is the first time I 'spammed' it. And I'm still not feeling that much regret. I have posted this letter once per thread 4 seperate times when DeCSS came up. Only once in all that time, did this letter receive even a single reply or a moderation above +2. And the glaringly obvious reason why is these threads become so large so quickly is that almost everyone misses the trees for the forest (i.e moderation does not always work).
Even worse, our Slashdot Editors are obvious overloaded becuase so many incredibly well written posts and stories by me and several other regular slashdot patrons continually get there submissions rejected. Why? From where I'm sitting its pure apathy, plain and simple. The majority are all too willing to complain about the encroachment on their freedom but are doing little to mobilize this community to action. Why?
It is my strong feeling that of all the letters I have ever written this is by far the best - and I make no apologies for that conceit. Everyone, including a couple of editors at Wired Magazine were deeply impressed with my letter, enough to pass it around their offices. Yet here on Slashdot its gets lost in the sauce. I therefore felt it was worth the risk of both my reputation and karma to get it out to as many eyeballs as possible, so they will have a chance to use it as their own. I feel the issues are substantially more important than my reputation and the annoyance of those people who actually did see it more than once, as miraculous as that is.
Obviously I don't care about my Karma, nor do I care about people stealing, editing or cutting this letter up to suit there purposes. I do however care that people who care about these issues see this letter and take the oppurtunity to use it as their own. If I have to be a loser to accomplish that, then I hope that I am the biggest loser on the site.
I wrote and hard-copied and sent this letter to all my congressmen over 2 weeks ago. Please Steal this letter from me and use as your own! Send it to everyone you know for them in turn to send to every congressmen on the hill!
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge
Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
I wrote and hard-copied and sent this letter to all my congressmen over 2 weeks ago. Please Steal this letter from me and use as your own! Send it to everyone you know for them in turn to send to every congressmen on the hill!
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge
Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, assuming it is a government plot, you can look at this two ways:
1) Either M$ colluded with the Government in orchestrating the break-in. Very unlikely.
or
2) The government did it on their own in order to further their own agenda. Who better to go after than the most powerful software firm. If you can get the big software players over to your side, then the rest of the smaller software companies will more easily succumb to political pressure to grease the wheels of government intrusiveness into people's lives. Afterall, "we the government are the good guys, we are trying to protect your business. Please help us spy on your customers in order to protect you."
Now New Zealand is following suit with their own cyber-snoop laws orchestrated by none other than the FBI. NZ's law will make it a crime to encrypt information, even accidentally, and refuse to give over the keys to it. Even if you lost them! Refusal to do so will land you in prison for 5 years! This same law is mandating that all ISP's keep complete dossiers on all their customers for at least 40 days!
Am I the only one around here who finds the timing and announcement of this break-in happens to conincide with the timing of both the International Anti-Cyber-Crime Treaty and the anti-hacker bill going through congress? Common folks, this is exactly the ammunition the law enforcement community needs in order to shove down our throats increasing draconian surveillance and criminal laws that strip away what remains of a tattered constitution.
The timing of this reminds me of the DoS attacks earlier this year which them prompted Congress to increase the federal governments escalation of cracking down on so called 'hackers'.
D.A.R.E. is a failure becuase it relies on slanted truths, propoganda, biased reporting and outright lies. Because of this offensive tact that D.A.R.E. has perpetrated on our youth, drug abuse is still rampant. Why? Because D.A.R.E. refuse to acknowledge that a large segment of kids will try drugs no matter what, and that giving them the facts without muddying it with all the preachy bullshit and moralistic crap thrown into it might actually work. Because of this D.A.R.E. still refuses to see that like anything there is a fine line between use and abuse. Every kid I know who once smokes pot after being brainwashed by D.A.R.E. comes away realizing that all the things that they were told about it were outright lies. They then feel betrayed, and any trust they may have had towards law enforcement and authority goes right out the window.
And becuase trust has been betrayed, the problem is compounded because now the kids are more willing to try more addictive and drugs and in dangerous quantities, ignoring what might have been factual information, leaving more kids more addicted and abusing drugs than before had they been given factual information in the first place!
If you know of a third way, I would be very enlightened to hear it. :-)
So this either leaves with two possible explanations:
Something, not Void, has always existed. There was no beginning and there is no end. This is incredibly heady shit to contemplate and will make your head explode with the implications of it. More importantly the subjective things we call time supposed was created at the singularity called the big bang/. One possible explanation of this is that time did not exist before this. If time does not exist, there concepts like beginning and ending do not exist.
Another possible explanation. Is that there was absolutely nothing, less than void, less than nothing (i.e nothing only has meaning if you have something). And in this eternal never-beginning and never-ending void, something happened, unremarkable in every way. Its only significance was that it was a differnence that made a difference. Afterall it was something to give itself meaning from the Void that is nothing.
All of these are pretty weird but inescapable.
I have now lived long enough to see the horrendous results of Reagans and Bushes Republiucan Regime. Under them we got the Drug War and it's devastating result on our precious constitution. Under them we also saw a drmatic escaltion of military coups and campaigns around the world, killing hundreds of thousans of innocent people in the name of 'freedom fighters'.
Under this same regime we saw the economy stumble on real wages plummet.
Under Clinton we have seen the same incroachment of out liberties through travesties like the DMCA, CArnivore, and the suspension of Habeus Corpus. But also under Clinton we have enjoyed the longest economic boom in decades, and a real increase in real wages.
So who am I going to vote for? Well I would like to vote for Harry Browne or someone of his ilk, but he has a ices chance in hell of winning. I dislike intensely both Gore and Bush. Especially Bush in that he is against a women's right to choose, and he likes to see innocent people die on death row.
So as much as I can't stand the guy, I'm voting for Gore.
Since all these figures in the larger multiverse are ultimately arbitrary, that means that all possible numbers will be played out. Sure of all the possibilities, our particular universe is improbable, but when an essentially infinite number of possibilities is playing out all the time, then that means that the chance of our type of universe popping into existence is extremely high.
To use an anology, the odds of getting a royal flush on any one play of the cars is extremely rare. But what if we were looking at a super-set of card games that were being played a billion times a second. In that scenario, like our universe, a royal flush of spades will be popping up all the time.
I think you're right. And this whole thing has got me thinking. Imagine a world in which reverse engineering is considered a crime assuming those who consider themselves infringed have the legal leverage to sue you civilly and/or prosecute you criminally.
Since such a framework would obviously stifle innovation almost totally, this means that those ad-hoc collection of individuals and organizations who create the equivalent of an open-law and open-source will over time beat all those propietary products in the market place.
Given enough time Mojo will stabilize on a price the market is willing to bear - making it a true totally decentralized non-state issued currency. The potential of this is incredibly liberating, and I am totally exicited about it. This is great news folks!
Wikki - Your just plain wrong. The reason this idea is far superior to Napster and especially Gnutella is the fact that Mojo Nation has built-in incentive to share. The tragedy that is the Gnutella Commons, is that less than 1% of the people using it account for over 50% of the files shared. That means that most of the people are leaching off the system. With Mojo Nation, the more you share the more you get in return. Such a system will encourage a tremedous growth of the commons and is sure to see a massive proliferation of high quality material in no time.
"Innocent until proven guilty."
At least thats how it was supposed to work.
I get sick and tired of people constantly waving "kiddie porn" as a reason to give up all our rights. "You can't have privacy, you can't have P2P file sharing, you can't use the internet, and you can't access porn among consenting adults. Why? Becuase you might be a child pornographer!"
(sarcasm)
Hell, lets outlaw cars! They can be used to conduct bank robberies and kidnappings! Lets outlaw cameras! They can be used by to take pictures of naked children!".
Lets outlaw freedom! It can be used to do al sorts of heinous acts!
(/sarcasm)
You make a very good point - standards are incredibly beneficial. But they also have a dark side - stagnation. With an open-source standard this is less of a problem, but with too much centralized or propiertary control such stardards become locked in with little outside influence. I think the least disagreeable solution would to be have all standards open-sourced like mp3 is.
I agree with you r-jae - this is by far the stupidest analysis I have ever had the displeasure of reading. This professor should consider another line of work.
I will respond to this long paper with an equally short response:
1) Competition, assuming there is any, always drives prices down. Always has, and always will. All of the incredibly convulted analysis to the contrary is pure hogwash and pseudo-economic masturbation.
2) Competition, inexorably produces better software. Since no one company would have a stranglehold on innovation, consumers will inevitably lead towards the better product assuming no single company, as in the case of Micro$oft, is allowed to crush their enemies through collusion, strong-arm tactics, bullying, marketing propoganda and illegal activity.
We should all remember the famous last words of Bill Gates, "I don't recall."
Real Intelligence beats artificial stupidity.
I have only one question regarding PGP, Why oh why haven't they integrated this into a common easy to use email client - like Eudora, Netscape Communicator, or Mozilla? Whyt not an integrated encryprion scheme put into every email client sold on the shelves? A product so easy to use that everyone including computer illeterate grandma can start using 4096 bit encrpytion? A program so easy that the average joe simply uses it as he has always done, without necessarily understanding how or why it works the way it does?
Why oh why must PGP remain in the shadows for only the nerdiest of the nerd or the most paranoid of the paranoid? Why oh why can't someone finally integrate strong encrpytion into everyday products?
Don't you guys realize this guy is being totally felicitous? Not only his he making comments on where things could end up if people like Bill Gates has his way with his .NET strategy, but also the horrific brainwashing capabilities that come when laws like the DMCA and UCITA make it illegal to re-create history. After all history is stored on some medium, and any storage could be outlawed through the leasing paradigm being pushed by Corprations like Microsoft. Worse, already the recording and motion picture industries are trying to overturn the 1982 Home Recording Act . And now the FCC is requiring copyright protection chips be placed in all digital televisions. These technologies give them the power to re-write history to suit their agenda. Play this out over the next 20 years, and people will start believing that what they have now is the best, as the history of anything else will be erased.
Yes, but now they are trying to have that decision overruled! Soon you will only be able to watch exactly what they want you to watch, and even have the gall to charge you for it! Ve Vill Kontrol the Vertical and ze Horizontal. Sometime in the near future:
Warning, coporate subject A-3451 is in violation of copyright law in sector 7 grid 9. Send an anti-pirate dispatch immediately
Its really sad when a Richard Stalman's Satire "The Right to Read" becomes closer to reality every day. He was wrong about one thing though. Its happening a lot quicker than even he predicted
Intellectual Property is Theft!
Software is unlimited, or at least a lot more unlimited than this apparently shortsighted book book points out. Over the next 10 years, genetic and evolutionary programming methods will take over where human 'formal' logic programs cannot. According to the creator of Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram, nearly everything is a form of computation. The Earth's complex biosphere is a perfect example that extremely computations are possible. There is no fundmental mathematical reason why software cannot emulate the same degree od complexity.
You so make some very good points which have given me pause. But in 3 months on Slashdot, this is the first time I 'spammed' it. And I'm still not feeling that much regret. I have posted this letter once per thread 4 seperate times when DeCSS came up. Only once in all that time, did this letter receive even a single reply or a moderation above +2. And the glaringly obvious reason why is these threads become so large so quickly is that almost everyone misses the trees for the forest (i.e moderation does not always work).
Even worse, our Slashdot Editors are obvious overloaded becuase so many incredibly well written posts and stories by me and several other regular slashdot patrons continually get there submissions rejected. Why? From where I'm sitting its pure apathy, plain and simple. The majority are all too willing to complain about the encroachment on their freedom but are doing little to mobilize this community to action. Why?
It is my strong feeling that of all the letters I have ever written this is by far the best - and I make no apologies for that conceit. Everyone, including a couple of editors at Wired Magazine were deeply impressed with my letter, enough to pass it around their offices. Yet here on Slashdot its gets lost in the sauce. I therefore felt it was worth the risk of both my reputation and karma to get it out to as many eyeballs as possible, so they will have a chance to use it as their own. I feel the issues are substantially more important than my reputation and the annoyance of those people who actually did see it more than once, as miraculous as that is.
Obviously I don't care about my Karma, nor do I care about people stealing, editing or cutting this letter up to suit there purposes. I do however care that people who care about these issues see this letter and take the oppurtunity to use it as their own. If I have to be a loser to accomplish that, then I hope that I am the biggest loser on the site.
I wrote and hard-copied and sent this letter to all my congressmen over 2 weeks ago. Please Steal this letter from me and use as your own! Send it to everyone you know for them in turn to send to every congressmen on the hill!
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Respectfully Yours,
I wrote and hard-copied and sent this letter to all my congressmen over 2 weeks ago. Please Steal this letter from me and use as your own! Send it to everyone you know for them in turn to send to every congressmen on the hill!
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Respectfully Yours,