Don't automatically assume that Supreme Court justices appointed by Bush will side with him on all issues. Justices have a tendency to be a bit more centrist, because they HAVE to be to get through the approval process.
And once they are installed on the court, they no longer have ANY allegiance to the person who picked them, because the same person has no power to remove them.
Remember, there are only three ways for spot on the bench to change hands: retirement, impeachment, or death. Simply going against the wishes of the prez who nominated you isn't enough.
I think history bears out the "surprise" decisions of the court... however I'm not at work and can't really research examples worth citing presently.
Congratulations on an extensive post covering an author's position without mentioning a single thing this person has written. Is this position presented in a paper? A book? A web site?
Please tell us so we can read these things for ourselves, and remember the Reading Rainbow refrain (paraphrased): "We shouldn't have to take your word for it."
The results of this study contradict years of short-sighted, phobic reports to the contrary, but you probably won't see them on the front pages of your local paper, or see the study leading the evening news.
This won't make front pages, because the media will "bury" it, because there are far more important things out there to report. A look at my local paper mentions increasing building demolitions due to a population decline, Gore's first visit to my state in the campaign, ad spending by local candidates, and an insurance surplus for public employees.
In other words, things the general public might actually give a damn about.
If stupidity, hysteria and ignorance were crimes, lots of journalists and polticians would be calling lawyers about now.
If they were... you'd be writing from Shawshank right now. (Speaking of which, is that prison still operating?)
Any chance you could report on something, anything, without trying to vilify everyone who opposes you?
Take the Federalist Papers... written by no less than three different people, all using the pseudonym "Publius."
Re:Hacking the Legal System
on
Anonymity
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· Score: 1
It depends.
If a "reasonable" person could believe that your billboard was correct, then you could be sued for libel in the United States (see the Falwell vs. Hustler decision).
Free speech, as much as a lot of people hate to admit, is NOT a boundless right.
In what was one of the most memorable quotes to come out of that media experiment called Survivor: "In my hood, that's what we call a sore loser." - Gervase
I never understood the appeal of alchemy. If people could convert lead into gold, wouldn't the supply of gold skyrocket, thereby negatively impacting the price of gold until it was about as cheap as lead?
Is it me, or has Microsft permanently tainted the word "innovation"? As another/.er's sig points out, you can tell how desperate they are by how many times they say the word "innovate"...
The definition of innovator from one of my sociology books: "One who achieves legitimate ends (fame, wealth) through illegitimate means." This definition dates back to well before Gates ever dropped out of Harvard.
So not only has MS not "tainted" the word innovation, it's 100% correct in using it. Just not the way it thinks.
This is exactly what I said about the notion that someone hack into sony.com as a result of that VP's crazy Napster comments...
While I wouldn't be surprised if someone does it, and would get a chuckle out of it, the mainstream media will immediately paint the people creating this worm, even if it has no malicious behavior whatsoever will paint the authors as big bad scary hackers, thereby making the entire DeCSS/Napster/whatever movement look like a bunch of scruffy-faced anarchistic teens who need to be put it line.
As soon as it is released into the wild, hackers (not crackers) will pounce on it and find out how to defeat it.
I don't doubt it for a second. But you (unwittingly) make an interesting point in that sentence which I'll get to in a second.
The protection systems will become more and more invasive until at some point the industry groups propose something completely ludicrous, even to laypeople...and then they'll be shot down.
The problem is that there's a very good chance such a thing WON'T get shut down... and you've already stated the reason yourself. You felt it necessary to distinguish between hackers and crackers. The problem is that 99% of "laypeople" don't know the difference, and don't particularly care. If this sort of "cold war" thing you've proposed really starts escalating, the mainstream media will pick it up and inevitably paint the hackers as evil, malicious people who are trying to subvert the system. (Just look at coverage of the DeCSS case.) Then laypeople might just be willing to go with something "ludicrous" if the threat of hackers/crackers/whatever the media calls them can be even slightly reduced.
My greatest fear isn't that someone will hack sony.com... actually, I'm expecting it to happen within the next 24 hours.
My greatest fear is that the site will get hacked and the mainstream media will pick it up, thereby 1)Spreading this moron's message worldwide and 2)Making the people opposing Sony look like the "big bad scary hackers," like they do every single time the word "hack" is mentioned.
I wasn't particularly inclined to buy a PS2 anyway. As if I have enough time to play the Dreamcast I have now... I wasn't going to pay $300 for the thing since I 1)Already have enough games and 2)already have a DVD player.
This certainly doesn't make me any more inclined to buy one... in fact, from now on I think I'll be buying all my PSX games used just to keep Sony from getting any more of my money.
I find it disconcerting that my favorite band (Rage Against the Machine), which has openly admitted they don't mind people distributing their music for free through Napster or other means, is on Epic Records, owned by Sony.
I believe this only shows how increasingly out of touch record companies can get with some of its artists... While the band (who actually made the music) doesn't mind me downloading their music, the company who distributes it is threatening to do everything in their power to protect their "revenue stream."
Kill Napster and we will replace it with a new way of sharing files 5 minutes later.
I've said it before (though maybe not here) so I'll say it again: Napster is the whipping boy for the record companies because it's a corporation, with money, that the record companies can sue. Enterprising techies don't need corporations to trade their files. I need not list the options, I'm sure most of the people reading this are familiar with them.
Sorry, was that protect 'musicians rights to have a say in what is done with their art', or protect 'that revenue stream' - I couldn't quite hear.
Short answer: Touche.
Long answer: The record companies haven't given a damn about the artists for a while. Not necessarily a new revelation, but a correct one. When was the last time you (general sense) ever heard a band say they LIKED their record company, except immediately after receiving a massive contract?
While this may seem like a heavily Draconian method, the question is: what else can they realistcally do to curb piracy?
Perhaps push a format for digital music encryption that allows them to directly make money off the Internet instead of developing a knee-jerk "kill 'em all" reaction.
It's like Michael Eisner said (and I'm paraphrasing)... "If you make it cheap and easy enough for people to get their entertainment legitimately, they will."
It's their market, their industry, their product... hence they should have control of its distribution and selling.
It should be the property of the artists, not the record company. Unfortunately, this isn't how the industry really works. And as for being "their market," they only have as much of a market as we, the consumers, want them to have. We stop buying, they stop making, no market.
Call it what you like, but Napster and its kin amount to theft of intellectual property. This theft will probably cost record companies billions in the coming years, and force them to raise prices to survive like they are doing right now.
Or as I said before, they could actually try inventive ways of profiting from this phenomenon instead of mainting their "we must sell more CDs/anything that causes us to sell less CDs must be destroyed" tunnel vision.
Sony is taking drastic measures because Napster is a sincere threat to them.
Unfortunately, by the time they actually realized this, the Internet file-sharing phenomenon expanded way beyond Napster.
They're not hacking your computer, they're merely making a deal with ISP's to prevent piracy.
I don't know, saying "We will firewall it at your PC" sounds a bit too close to hacking for my tastes. (Yes, I realize it isn't, but it's still very scary that some corporation who I'm not giving a cent to gets the ability to have direct prior restraint over what I can do with my PC.)
I'm sorry if the Napster kiddies will be forced to return to asking Mom and Dad for money to buy their music instead of stealing it, but that's how laissez faire capitalism works. You will appreciate it when you grow up and perform a viable service in exchange for an income.
I regret to inform you that plenty of people who "perform a viable service in exchange for an income" use Napster, and not just "kiddies." I, for example, am in the journalism business (not as a reporter, so everybody relax), which I certainly like to think is a viable service. And I get paid for it. And I use Napster. So please watch who you're calling a "kiddie."
Nobody should deny you of your income, so why do you feel inspired to deprive hard working record companies and artists of their justified income?
And how much money do you think the artist actually gets from an average CD purchase? Major artists get maybe $1 at most.
Yes, Napster's primary function is the theft of intellectual property. But does that justify a corporation (not even the government, but a corporation) being able to prevent adults from accessing sites/information/whatever they don't like? I certainly hope not. America's legal history of media law (with the possible exception of the Pentagon Papers case) points to "Make whatever you want, access whatever you want, but if violates criminal or civil laws, you'll have to answer for it." Sony, which last time I checked is not a lawmaking body, has deluded itself into thinking it can change this to "Access whatever you want unless we don't want you to, then you can't access it." This scares me, as I certainly hope it does many others.
Don't get me wrong - I still see DeCSS as both a matter of free speech and a valid tool with legal uses, and I do not want to see it lose these court battles, but I do think there is a need to be completely honest here - DeCSS can be a tool for piracy - as well as slashdot needing some devil's advocates to express the dissenting opinion now and then.
I don't think anyone would disagree that DeCSS definitely has uses in DVD piracy.
However, the judge's (IMO, incorrect) belief that DVD piracy using DeCSS/DivX is going to destroy the DVD industry fails to account for a few things:
The files, while a fraction of the size of.vob files on DVD, are still large enough that your average dialup user isn't going to bother trying to download them.
The video and audio are markedly decreased in quality. (Granted, this is getting better, but I can still tell a lot of difference between real DVDs and DivX encoded files.)
The "extras" that make DVDs so much fun are usually missing from rips. (Last I checked, none of the pirated versions of The Matrix floating around had the alternate audio tracks, or the bullet-time feature, or etc. etc. Then again, I haven't checked in a while.)
In other words, I'd still much rather put down the $15-$25 for a good DVD than mess with downloading pirated stuff.
Do you believe the judge gave any sort of weight to the original use of DeCSS (allowing people to play the DVDs they already LEGALLY own on other OSs) or focused only on the piracy aspect?
Do you believe the judge had adequate technical knowledge of how DVD piracy on the Internet actually works? (i.e. Files are still large enough to keep dialup people from downloading, video and audio quality are markedly reduced, extras are "stripped") Do you think if he realized this he wouldn't have considered DeCSS as much of a threat (which it isn't) to the movie industry as he did?
Slashdot Mirror
And once they are installed on the court, they no longer have ANY allegiance to the person who picked them, because the same person has no power to remove them.
Remember, there are only three ways for spot on the bench to change hands: retirement, impeachment, or death. Simply going against the wishes of the prez who nominated you isn't enough.
I think history bears out the "surprise" decisions of the court... however I'm not at work and can't really research examples worth citing presently.
And please note that people who write and want to be taken seriously usually do include the titles of the works they're citing.
Please tell us so we can read these things for ourselves, and remember the Reading Rainbow refrain (paraphrased): "We shouldn't have to take your word for it."
This won't make front pages, because the media will "bury" it, because there are far more important things out there to report. A look at my local paper mentions increasing building demolitions due to a population decline, Gore's first visit to my state in the campaign, ad spending by local candidates, and an insurance surplus for public employees.
In other words, things the general public might actually give a damn about.
If stupidity, hysteria and ignorance were crimes, lots of journalists and polticians would be calling lawyers about now.
If they were... you'd be writing from Shawshank right now. (Speaking of which, is that prison still operating?)
Any chance you could report on something, anything, without trying to vilify everyone who opposes you?
For those of you who give a good damn what the AP has to say about anything. (The same people who say axe is an unacceptable substitute for ax.)
Take the Federalist Papers... written by no less than three different people, all using the pseudonym "Publius."
If a "reasonable" person could believe that your billboard was correct, then you could be sued for libel in the United States (see the Falwell vs. Hustler decision).
Free speech, as much as a lot of people hate to admit, is NOT a boundless right.
In what was one of the most memorable quotes to come out of that media experiment called Survivor: "In my hood, that's what we call a sore loser." - Gervase
I never understood the appeal of alchemy. If people could convert lead into gold, wouldn't the supply of gold skyrocket, thereby negatively impacting the price of gold until it was about as cheap as lead?
The definition of innovator from one of my sociology books: "One who achieves legitimate ends (fame, wealth) through illegitimate means." This definition dates back to well before Gates ever dropped out of Harvard.
So not only has MS not "tainted" the word innovation, it's 100% correct in using it. Just not the way it thinks.
One more good reason to actually look at the preview.
This is exactly what I said about the notion that someone hack into sony.com as a result of that VP's crazy Napster comments... While I wouldn't be surprised if someone does it, and would get a chuckle out of it, the mainstream media will immediately paint the people creating this worm, even if it has no malicious behavior whatsoever will paint the authors as big bad scary hackers, thereby making the entire DeCSS/Napster/whatever movement look like a bunch of scruffy-faced anarchistic teens who need to be put it line.
I don't doubt it for a second. But you (unwittingly) make an interesting point in that sentence which I'll get to in a second.
The protection systems will become more and more invasive until at some point the industry groups propose something completely ludicrous, even to laypeople...and then they'll be shot down.
The problem is that there's a very good chance such a thing WON'T get shut down... and you've already stated the reason yourself. You felt it necessary to distinguish between hackers and crackers. The problem is that 99% of "laypeople" don't know the difference, and don't particularly care. If this sort of "cold war" thing you've proposed really starts escalating, the mainstream media will pick it up and inevitably paint the hackers as evil, malicious people who are trying to subvert the system. (Just look at coverage of the DeCSS case.) Then laypeople might just be willing to go with something "ludicrous" if the threat of hackers/crackers/whatever the media calls them can be even slightly reduced.
My greatest fear is that the site will get hacked and the mainstream media will pick it up, thereby 1)Spreading this moron's message worldwide and 2)Making the people opposing Sony look like the "big bad scary hackers," like they do every single time the word "hack" is mentioned.
Epic
550
Work
C2
Sony Classical
Legacy
Sony Music Nashville
Sony Wonder
Sony Music Video (SMV)
According to Sony's site, that's all of them.
This certainly doesn't make me any more inclined to buy one... in fact, from now on I think I'll be buying all my PSX games used just to keep Sony from getting any more of my money.
I believe this only shows how increasingly out of touch record companies can get with some of its artists... While the band (who actually made the music) doesn't mind me downloading their music, the company who distributes it is threatening to do everything in their power to protect their "revenue stream."
I've said it before (though maybe not here) so I'll say it again: Napster is the whipping boy for the record companies because it's a corporation, with money, that the record companies can sue. Enterprising techies don't need corporations to trade their files. I need not list the options, I'm sure most of the people reading this are familiar with them.
Sorry, was that protect 'musicians rights to have a say in what is done with their art', or protect 'that revenue stream' - I couldn't quite hear.
Short answer: Touche.
Long answer: The record companies haven't given a damn about the artists for a while. Not necessarily a new revelation, but a correct one. When was the last time you (general sense) ever heard a band say they LIKED their record company, except immediately after receiving a massive contract?
Perhaps push a format for digital music encryption that allows them to directly make money off the Internet instead of developing a knee-jerk "kill 'em all" reaction.
It's like Michael Eisner said (and I'm paraphrasing)... "If you make it cheap and easy enough for people to get their entertainment legitimately, they will."
It's their market, their industry, their product... hence they should have control of its distribution and selling.
It should be the property of the artists, not the record company. Unfortunately, this isn't how the industry really works. And as for being "their market," they only have as much of a market as we, the consumers, want them to have. We stop buying, they stop making, no market.
Call it what you like, but Napster and its kin amount to theft of intellectual property. This theft will probably cost record companies billions in the coming years, and force them to raise prices to survive like they are doing right now.
Or as I said before, they could actually try inventive ways of profiting from this phenomenon instead of mainting their "we must sell more CDs/anything that causes us to sell less CDs must be destroyed" tunnel vision.
Sony is taking drastic measures because Napster is a sincere threat to them.
Unfortunately, by the time they actually realized this, the Internet file-sharing phenomenon expanded way beyond Napster.
They're not hacking your computer, they're merely making a deal with ISP's to prevent piracy.
I don't know, saying "We will firewall it at your PC" sounds a bit too close to hacking for my tastes. (Yes, I realize it isn't, but it's still very scary that some corporation who I'm not giving a cent to gets the ability to have direct prior restraint over what I can do with my PC.)
I'm sorry if the Napster kiddies will be forced to return to asking Mom and Dad for money to buy their music instead of stealing it, but that's how laissez faire capitalism works. You will appreciate it when you grow up and perform a viable service in exchange for an income.
I regret to inform you that plenty of people who "perform a viable service in exchange for an income" use Napster, and not just "kiddies." I, for example, am in the journalism business (not as a reporter, so everybody relax), which I certainly like to think is a viable service. And I get paid for it. And I use Napster. So please watch who you're calling a "kiddie."
Nobody should deny you of your income, so why do you feel inspired to deprive hard working record companies and artists of their justified income?
And how much money do you think the artist actually gets from an average CD purchase? Major artists get maybe $1 at most.
Yes, Napster's primary function is the theft of intellectual property. But does that justify a corporation (not even the government, but a corporation) being able to prevent adults from accessing sites/information/whatever they don't like? I certainly hope not. America's legal history of media law (with the possible exception of the Pentagon Papers case) points to "Make whatever you want, access whatever you want, but if violates criminal or civil laws, you'll have to answer for it." Sony, which last time I checked is not a lawmaking body, has deluded itself into thinking it can change this to "Access whatever you want unless we don't want you to, then you can't access it." This scares me, as I certainly hope it does many others.
Don't get me wrong - I still see DeCSS as both a matter of free speech and a valid tool with legal uses, and I do not want to see it lose these court battles, but I do think there is a need to be completely honest here - DeCSS can be a tool for piracy - as well as slashdot needing some devil's advocates to express the dissenting opinion now and then. I don't think anyone would disagree that DeCSS definitely has uses in DVD piracy. However, the judge's (IMO, incorrect) belief that DVD piracy using DeCSS/DivX is going to destroy the DVD industry fails to account for a few things: The files, while a fraction of the size of .vob files on DVD, are still large enough that your average dialup user isn't going to bother trying to download them.
The video and audio are markedly decreased in quality. (Granted, this is getting better, but I can still tell a lot of difference between real DVDs and DivX encoded files.)
The "extras" that make DVDs so much fun are usually missing from rips. (Last I checked, none of the pirated versions of The Matrix floating around had the alternate audio tracks, or the bullet-time feature, or etc. etc. Then again, I haven't checked in a while.)
In other words, I'd still much rather put down the $15-$25 for a good DVD than mess with downloading pirated stuff.
Do you believe the judge had adequate technical knowledge of how DVD piracy on the Internet actually works? (i.e. Files are still large enough to keep dialup people from downloading, video and audio quality are markedly reduced, extras are "stripped") Do you think if he realized this he wouldn't have considered DeCSS as much of a threat (which it isn't) to the movie industry as he did?