We all know that when GW was asked what his favorite book was, he replied that he couldn't remember any. But has he possibly read Othello or the Odyssey, great classic works that conservatives love? For the past 400 years kids have been handed a play about a guy who abuses and suffocates his wife. Did I mention that he's the hero? For several millenia we've shoved the Odyssey down kid's throats, complete with it's graphic description of pools of blood from all the dead when Odysseus returns home. How is anything on the internet more violence-provoking than imagining these scenes for yourself?
Oh yeah, contrary to what the media tells us, violent crime has declined dramatically in the last decade, at least that's what the FBI's stats say. Is this the internet's fault too?
Because the Internet is one of the most governmentally resistant entities in history, aside from the Church. So, by analogy, if the Government is a 'vaccine for a virus', then the Internet is Ebola, and the vaccine is as impotent as Al Gore in the playboy Mansion at midnight.
I don't think it is. As the paper and many other sources explain there are only a couple major name servers (13?). If the govt really wanted (or multiple govts) they could force all those servers to remove a domain. Currently, the only way I can lose a claim on a domain is if a trademark holder wins an arbitration. It isn't much of a stretch to think that I could lose a domain name for expressing unpopular/"offensive" ideas. It's all a question of what ICANN's arbitration says.
That being said, ISPs take down web/FTP sites all the time for various things - porn, piracy, general offensiveness, etc. This isn't directly related, but it shows the internet is not resistant to people in power making decisions. A cease and desist lawsuit or a criminal charge is very effective in changing the content of the web. A recent US Congress bill would have required ISPs to maintain a list of gambling websites and block them.
A smart alternative to lawsuits is the Mojo idea: locate in the Caymans or the Isle of Man. Since these states make most of their money thumbing their nose at international conventions, a cease and desist order sent to an offshore website means absolutely nothing. The only way these guys can get shut down is by ICANN (Methinks, maybe wrong) so it really does matter what the heck ICANN does.
What disinction is there between a "right" to do something and a "defense" against being held liable for doing something? If I say something extremely unpopular and someone tries to sue me for it or the govt tries to charge me, I assert my 1st ammdt rights as my defense.
Additionally, the US Supreme Court has held copyright law would unfairly check the First Ammendment were it not for fair use exemptions, so we do have fair use rights. I'm too lazy to waste time digging up an actual decision (that would require Lexis access too).
I don't know if the problem here is nolstagia. I think the problem is that we ignore that games are creative works. A good creative work which is not good by current technical standards is still good. Some of the special effects in the old Star Wars movies are horrible. But the classic movies are still much more satisfying to watch than the new one.
The same applies to video games. I've been playing some old favorites with NES/SNES emulators (I of course possess a legal copy and am merely asserting my fair use rights) and they aren't less fun than some of my "new classic" favorites, like Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, and yes, the Quake series. A well created-game is still good, even if it is only at 320x240 resolution, can only have 8 moving objects, etc.
Does anybody else miss the old side scrollers, Contra, MegaMan, Super Mario and all? 3-D engines really seem to have killed this genre off.
Historically, colonists don't come back. It was prohibitively expensive for colonists to the New World, etc to come home. People have been willing to accept that in the past, they probably will in the future too...
I am writing to inform you that your icon for patent-related stories violates several of my
recent patents. The food-manipulation tools in question were last displayed here
Specifically, the icon displays a Mult-Tined Food Transfer Device (MTFTD), which is marketed under the trade name "fork". It also contains a Hemispherical Manipulator Food Transfer Device (HMFTD), trade name "spoon". The icon claims that these patents are pending, but in fact they have already been granted.I ask that you also cease displaying the Food Cleaving Implement (FCI) which is patent pending.
Your infringing use of these icons has adverse consequences to my intellectual property. Significant revenue is lost due to your failure to pay $100 for each public display of these food-manipulation tools. Your use of these food manipulation tools is frequently accompanied by stories claiming that such a patent may be ridiculous. This dilutes the value of my patent further as others may fail to pay the necessary $100 fee to publicly display food-manipulation tools to which I own all rights.
The longer you continue to display these food-manipulation tools the longer damages will accrue. Please promptly cease and desist such use. If you have any questions, or would instead prefer to pay the necessary licensing fees, please contact my attorney at bigmeanlawyer@random_company.com
1. The company and presumably the servers are located in the Caymans. This is where you take your semi-legal operation to avoid legal issues. I often thought Napster might pack up and set sail if things don't work out in court. These guys are doing so preemptively.
2. These guys want to build strong crypto in. Unlike gnutella, it will be hard to go after the big sharers. Not impossible, but the return on investment is low - I could probably find lots of anonymous crypto-protected file sharers, then serve each and every one cease and desist orders, but this is not going to becost-effective.
3. Mandatory sharing means that everyone on the network will be a target of legal action. Mass disobedience is difficult/impossible to punish. If all 30 million Napster users become big nodes, that's 30 mil people to C&D and/or arrest.
4. Finally, Napster's non-commercial defense might not hold up, so in the worst case Napster will be at least as easy to shut down.
The process has already begun. The recording industry understands the benefits to record companies, artists and consumers alike and have for some time embraced the idea of combining both new technology and the creative process.
Benfits to consumers, yes. Artists, yes, if we can ever figure out a way to pay a reasonable price for online music. But, in a world where I can download music, there's no need for an RIAA. In very possible future, I can pay a buck or two directly to an artist for downloading their music (or pay an intermediary dotcom that can't really skim more than a couple pennies off). There's no place in this future for the record companies - their function as a physical distributor, marketeer, etc. will be obsolete, like middlemen often find themselves. Remember, the record company adds no value to the music. All they do is distribute it. They know cheaper, non-physical methods will replace them.
I've been thinking about some of the recent legistlation regarding software, etc. that is just boneheaded - Sonny Bono, the DMCA, business method patents, H1-B visas. All of them (except patents, which we can thank the courts for) passed through Congress by overwhelming margins with little to no real discussion.
It seems that IT folks are way too tuned out of conventional politics. In other industries/areas of interest, the little guys are well represented by unions, interest groups, grassroots organizations, etc. We're so down on politics that we forget that the process can be influenced. The Free Software Foundation, the EFF, et al. are pathetic weaklings compared to the AFL-CIO, NRA, NAACP, Sierra Club, Christian Coalition, you name it. This is despite the fact that IT people have money to throw at their special interest groups, relative to your average Joe.
Imagine if Detroit lobbied for a bill to bring in thousands of foreign workers and then pay them substandard wages. It might pass, but not with out a big fight. And H1-B visas make far more sense the DMCA, Sonny Bono, and trivial patents.
Slashdotters often reflect the view "both parties are evil, they'll all pull this crap and I will vote for Nader/Buchanan/Harry Brown". Unfortunately, the last major party to be displaced was the Whig Party. Due to our electoral system in this country, you gotta vote Republican or Dem. (Durverger's law: Single representative districting always results in 2 parties. Multiple represenation results in many parties. One of the few concepts poli sci's have the balls to call a "law".)
But the existing parties are subject to influence/lobbying/grassroot action and are not total corporate whores. Prior to the 70's corporations claimed a "right to pollute" because otherwise the world would end, we'd all end up starving because any environmental laws would choke off business, and who was the government had no right to claim the air should belong to everybody and you can't misuse it. See any parallels?
Ok, now go tell your Congresspeople to vote for this public comment bill on patents, toss some money at the EFF, and I'll cease ranting. (I knew that poli sci minor could come in handy someday.)
Actually, this is a very good idea. The patent office is really underfunded (don't remember stats or URL, but read it somewhere, just take my word for it) and there's no way any patent examiner can check the whole web (or even a representative chunk of it) for examples of the idea in use.
This bill would allow anybody to do research on whether an idea is in use or obvious. To use the Amazon example, you find a site that used one-click before the patent was requested and then you email the URL to the PTO, they get enough emails and decide the patent is invalid before it even issued. Alternatively, you send them a database systems textbook and highlight the pages on querying a database....
In a nutshell, Amazon is storing some data about a customer and then querying it. I believe this process is described in most introductory computer science texts and programming books.
Many "stupid patents" cover manufacturing processes like the infamous "the McDonald's fry package is patented" claim. Most likely, the folding and gluing process and/or the appropriate hardware is patented. This means that if you reverse-engineer the fry package you can't use the same method/equipment.
/.'ers don't get this because we don't make packages, (I know somebody who does, he filled me in). But we do make software, and we know that accessing a file when someone clicks something != novel.
I hate to sound paranoid, but is Microsoft hedging for a Bush victory/Republican Congress in the fall?
Assuming that the appeals court rules there are serious procedural errors (procedural, not substantive) a new trial would be ordered and the whole dang process starts over....
Would the Bush Administration instruct its DOJ to pursue this case? Would the antitrust section be funded enough to take this behemoth through years of litigation? If I were an antitrust chief with the kind of budget corporate enforcement types get under the (historically) GOP, maybe I would be very inclined to settle?
Of course, no matter what, the case will continue into the next presidency. But if a new trial is ordered right after Bush became, this would provide an excellent opportunity for the DOJ to say, "well, we're gonna give up/settle". (Remember, the folks who make these decisions aren't GS or SES, they're political appointees.)
The MS case is probably the biggest legal decision this court that the tech industry will have for at least a decade. Given that antitrust cases tend to wind on forever, this is still a quick pace.
In a fair court, by a fair judge who listened to months of evidence, and asked questions of both sides (did you follow the case day by day on cnet like I did?) they were found guilty of criminal conduct that violates the laws of this land.
While I'm inclined to agree with the district court's decision, I don't know if we can really characterize the trial as fair. A judge who reads anti-MS books in his spare time? No hearings at all on the penalty? Wow, if this were some guy charged with murder, we'd all be complaining that his rights were violated even if it was obvious he did it.
Slashdot Mirror
We all know that when GW was asked what his favorite book was, he replied that he couldn't remember any. But has he possibly read Othello or the Odyssey, great classic works that conservatives love? For the past 400 years kids have been handed a play about a guy who abuses and suffocates his wife. Did I mention that he's the hero? For several millenia we've shoved the Odyssey down kid's throats, complete with it's graphic description of pools of blood from all the dead when Odysseus returns home. How is anything on the internet more violence-provoking than imagining these scenes for yourself?
Oh yeah, contrary to what the media tells us, violent crime has declined dramatically in the last decade, at least that's what the FBI's stats say. Is this the internet's fault too?
Because the Internet is one of the most governmentally resistant entities in history, aside from the Church. So, by analogy, if the Government is a 'vaccine for a virus', then the Internet is Ebola, and the vaccine is as impotent as Al Gore in the playboy Mansion at midnight.
I don't think it is. As the paper and many other sources explain there are only a couple major name servers (13?). If the govt really wanted (or multiple govts) they could force all those servers to remove a domain. Currently, the only way I can lose a claim on a domain is if a trademark holder wins an arbitration. It isn't much of a stretch to think that I could lose a domain name for expressing unpopular/"offensive" ideas. It's all a question of what ICANN's arbitration says.
That being said, ISPs take down web/FTP sites all the time for various things - porn, piracy, general offensiveness, etc. This isn't directly related, but it shows the internet is not resistant to people in power making decisions. A cease and desist lawsuit or a criminal charge is very effective in changing the content of the web. A recent US Congress bill would have required ISPs to maintain a list of gambling websites and block them.
A smart alternative to lawsuits is the Mojo idea: locate in the Caymans or the Isle of Man. Since these states make most of their money thumbing their nose at international conventions, a cease and desist order sent to an offshore website means absolutely nothing. The only way these guys can get shut down is by ICANN (Methinks, maybe wrong) so it really does matter what the heck ICANN does.
What disinction is there between a "right" to do something and a "defense" against being held liable for doing something? If I say something extremely unpopular and someone tries to sue me for it or the govt tries to charge me, I assert my 1st ammdt rights as my defense.
Additionally, the US Supreme Court has held copyright law would unfairly check the First Ammendment were it not for fair use exemptions, so we do have fair use rights. I'm too lazy to waste time digging up an actual decision (that would require Lexis access too).
I don't know if the problem here is nolstagia. I think the problem is that we ignore that games are creative works. A good creative work which is not good by current technical standards is still good. Some of the special effects in the old Star Wars movies are horrible. But the classic movies are still much more satisfying to watch than the new one.
The same applies to video games. I've been playing some old favorites with NES/SNES emulators (I of course possess a legal copy and am merely asserting my fair use rights) and they aren't less fun than some of my "new classic" favorites, like Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, and yes, the Quake series. A well created-game is still good, even if it is only at 320x240 resolution, can only have 8 moving objects, etc.
Does anybody else miss the old side scrollers, Contra, MegaMan, Super Mario and all? 3-D engines really seem to have killed this genre off.
Historically, colonists don't come back. It was prohibitively expensive for colonists to the New World, etc to come home. People have been willing to accept that in the past, they probably will in the future too...
To whom it may concern:
I am writing to inform you that your icon for patent-related stories violates several of my recent patents. The food-manipulation tools in question were last displayed here
Specifically, the icon displays a Mult-Tined Food Transfer Device (MTFTD), which is marketed under the trade name "fork". It also contains a Hemispherical Manipulator Food Transfer Device (HMFTD), trade name "spoon". The icon claims that these patents are pending, but in fact they have already been granted.I ask that you also cease displaying the Food Cleaving Implement (FCI) which is patent pending.
Your infringing use of these icons has adverse consequences to my intellectual property. Significant revenue is lost due to your failure to pay $100 for each public display of these food-manipulation tools. Your use of these food manipulation tools is frequently accompanied by stories claiming that such a patent may be ridiculous. This dilutes the value of my patent further as others may fail to pay the necessary $100 fee to publicly display food-manipulation tools to which I own all rights.
The longer you continue to display these food-manipulation tools the longer damages will accrue. Please promptly cease and desist such use. If you have any questions, or would instead prefer to pay the necessary licensing fees, please contact my attorney at bigmeanlawyer@random_company.com
It will probably be harder to shut down:
1. The company and presumably the servers are located in the Caymans. This is where you take your semi-legal operation to avoid legal issues. I often thought Napster might pack up and set sail if things don't work out in court. These guys are doing so preemptively.
2. These guys want to build strong crypto in. Unlike gnutella, it will be hard to go after the big sharers. Not impossible, but the return on investment is low - I could probably find lots of anonymous crypto-protected file sharers, then serve each and every one cease and desist orders, but this is not going to becost-effective.
3. Mandatory sharing means that everyone on the network will be a target of legal action. Mass disobedience is difficult/impossible to punish. If all 30 million Napster users become big nodes, that's 30 mil people to C&D and/or arrest.
4. Finally, Napster's non-commercial defense might not hold up, so in the worst case Napster will be at least as easy to shut down.
The process has already begun. The recording industry understands the benefits to record companies, artists and consumers alike and have for some time embraced the idea of combining both new technology and the creative process.
Benfits to consumers, yes. Artists, yes, if we can ever figure out a way to pay a reasonable price for online music. But, in a world where I can download music, there's no need for an RIAA. In very possible future, I can pay a buck or two directly to an artist for downloading their music (or pay an intermediary dotcom that can't really skim more than a couple pennies off). There's no place in this future for the record companies - their function as a physical distributor, marketeer, etc. will be obsolete, like middlemen often find themselves. Remember, the record company adds no value to the music. All they do is distribute it. They know cheaper, non-physical methods will replace them.
I've been thinking about some of the recent legistlation regarding software, etc. that is just boneheaded - Sonny Bono, the DMCA, business method patents, H1-B visas. All of them (except patents, which we can thank the courts for) passed through Congress by overwhelming margins with little to no real discussion.
It seems that IT folks are way too tuned out of conventional politics. In other industries/areas of interest, the little guys are well represented by unions, interest groups, grassroots organizations, etc. We're so down on politics that we forget that the process can be influenced. The Free Software Foundation, the EFF, et al. are pathetic weaklings compared to the AFL-CIO, NRA, NAACP, Sierra Club, Christian Coalition, you name it. This is despite the fact that IT people have money to throw at their special interest groups, relative to your average Joe.
Imagine if Detroit lobbied for a bill to bring in thousands of foreign workers and then pay them substandard wages. It might pass, but not with out a big fight. And H1-B visas make far more sense the DMCA, Sonny Bono, and trivial patents.
Slashdotters often reflect the view "both parties are evil, they'll all pull this crap and I will vote for Nader/Buchanan/Harry Brown". Unfortunately, the last major party to be displaced was the Whig Party. Due to our electoral system in this country, you gotta vote Republican or Dem. (Durverger's law: Single representative districting always results in 2 parties. Multiple represenation results in many parties. One of the few concepts poli sci's have the balls to call a "law".)
But the existing parties are subject to influence/lobbying/grassroot action and are not total corporate whores. Prior to the 70's corporations claimed a "right to pollute" because otherwise the world would end, we'd all end up starving because any environmental laws would choke off business, and who was the government had no right to claim the air should belong to everybody and you can't misuse it. See any parallels?
Ok, now go tell your Congresspeople to vote for this public comment bill on patents, toss some money at the EFF, and I'll cease ranting. (I knew that poli sci minor could come in handy someday.)
Actually, this is a very good idea. The patent office is really underfunded (don't remember stats or URL, but read it somewhere, just take my word for it) and there's no way any patent examiner can check the whole web (or even a representative chunk of it) for examples of the idea in use. This bill would allow anybody to do research on whether an idea is in use or obvious. To use the Amazon example, you find a site that used one-click before the patent was requested and then you email the URL to the PTO, they get enough emails and decide the patent is invalid before it even issued. Alternatively, you send them a database systems textbook and highlight the pages on querying a database....
In a nutshell, Amazon is storing some data about a customer and then querying it. I believe this process is described in most introductory computer science texts and programming books.
Many "stupid patents" cover manufacturing processes like the infamous "the McDonald's fry package is patented" claim. Most likely, the folding and gluing process and/or the appropriate hardware is patented. This means that if you reverse-engineer the fry package you can't use the same method/equipment.
/.'ers don't get this because we don't make packages, (I know somebody who does, he filled me in). But we do make software, and we know that accessing a file when someone clicks something != novel.
I hate to sound paranoid, but is Microsoft hedging for a Bush victory/Republican Congress in the fall? Assuming that the appeals court rules there are serious procedural errors (procedural, not substantive) a new trial would be ordered and the whole dang process starts over.... Would the Bush Administration instruct its DOJ to pursue this case? Would the antitrust section be funded enough to take this behemoth through years of litigation? If I were an antitrust chief with the kind of budget corporate enforcement types get under the (historically) GOP, maybe I would be very inclined to settle? Of course, no matter what, the case will continue into the next presidency. But if a new trial is ordered right after Bush became, this would provide an excellent opportunity for the DOJ to say, "well, we're gonna give up/settle". (Remember, the folks who make these decisions aren't GS or SES, they're political appointees.)
The MS case is probably the biggest legal decision this court that the tech industry will have for at least a decade. Given that antitrust cases tend to wind on forever, this is still a quick pace.
In a fair court, by a fair judge who listened to months of evidence, and asked questions of both sides (did you follow the case day by day on cnet like I did?) they were found guilty of criminal conduct that violates the laws of this land.
While I'm inclined to agree with the district court's decision, I don't know if we can really characterize the trial as fair. A judge who reads anti-MS books in his spare time? No hearings at all on the penalty? Wow, if this were some guy charged with murder, we'd all be complaining that his rights were violated even if it was obvious he did it.