You think it would survive? Take a look at Napster. That old client can still be used to connect to various non-Napster.com servers, but how many people still use it? If no one is developing, fixing or improving the client (i.e., since it is a closed-source binary), it will eventually fizzle out. What would most likely save the network is something like giFT, however.
When are people going to realize that if you try to build a business around giving away other peoples work that first youre going to get sued, and if that doesnt work, theyre just going to try and buy you out?
Decentralized, head-less networks like Gnutella or Freenet are, once again, the only way to make sure this doesnt happen. KazaA may have a decentralized network but there still is the one authority distributing the client; if they go down, eventually the network they created will disintegrate. With Gnutella or Freenet, there’s no one to sue worth their time (individual users?), and no one to buy out at all.
Liberal, Conservative, does not matter. People pushing their ideologies on any side tend to want to censor material they find offensive or detrimental to their ideology. To anyone who thinks the leftist ideology is more free: remember Communism is considered on the left (and in practice has always turned out to be complete totalitarianism), and Nineteen Eighty-Four was about an English Socialist system out of control.
Ive wondered about this also one of the reasons* we have representative government is because its infeasable to get everyone together to vote on laws on a daily basis, but something like the Internet (or a secured version thereof, or just secure protocols on top) would allow everyone to participate. We wouldnt need representative democracy anymore, a direct democracy would actually work. Wed still need some group to propose the laws, like the legislature does now, but everyone could vote on them.
You say failing that we can have a good old fashioned coup, but if you remember, most significant changes to governments have come about as a result of coups détat or other forms of revolutions. It would probably take another revolution to get the government cleaned up these congressmen wont even vote for term limits or soft-money bans, do you think theyd vote themselves out of existence?
* Dont tell me that we have a representative system because our representatives are more responsible, or educated, or level-headed about lawmaking than the general populace the crap that went on when they passed the Patriot Act shoots that theory down. Congress passes laws just as irrationally as the unwashed masses would; the Courts are responsible for making sure bad laws dont stand.
Like it or not, privacy is not a fundamental provision of the Consititution.
No, but it can be inferred from the third, fourth and ninth Amendments (and probably bits and pieces of five and six). The third Amendment has been interpreted to mean that people have a right not be under constant surveillance by law enforcement. The fourth Amendment, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, should be obvious. And the ninth Amendment is the one that says, basically, that just because the constitution only protects certain enumerated (spelled-out) rights does not mean the people do not have other ones, that arent explicitly forbidden elsewhere.
If you place your messages in the public domain (which is what you do whenever you send an E-mail over the Internet), don't be surprised when it is screened, read, etc., by either the government or anyone who happens to own the router that your message passes through.
Sending email is no more placing messages in the public domain than using the postal system is. Placing messages in a public forum (e.g., Usenet, Slashdot, etc.) would be, however. Simply because email is sent plaintext through a bunch of third-party routing servers does not mean it is public, no more than postal mail being handled by a dozen different postal workers, makes postal mail public.
There is a general mistrust of government in general in this forum, which is sad. While I agree that the size and scope of government should be kept to a minimum, we should be able to trust the elected officials in a republican system, since we choose who our representatives will be. And we should certainly trust the executive branch (the ones actually screening the public E-mails) to do what they need to enforce the laws our elected representatives pass. If they aren't, then the people should vote accordingly for representatives that will fix the problem.
Yeah, youre right, the people should. They should be able to trust the government, and should vote accordingly when the government betrays its ideals. Unfortunately, youre describing a functional constitutionaldemocratic-republic, not the United States, here.
[Law enforcement officials] are only concerned for the information that will help them protect the public from criminals.
The problem is what, exactly, gets defined as criminal.
At the very least, it would probably make the person using it look guilty. The kind of If youve got nothing to hide, why are you hiding it from us in the first place? kind of mentality.
Do you think that a country where the government monitors its people so much either does not (or will not, in the near future) have laws making encryption illegal? If you want to keep your people from doing whatever, it sort of helps to eliminate any methods they may have to cover their tracks.
When laws are passed that practically allow the FBI to print their own warrants, the protection that requiring a warrant offers sort of evaporates. The reason that requiring a warrant has (previously) been thought of as sufficient protection is because the cops need quite a bit of evidence to convince a judge to grant them a warrant. If they can get a warrant anytime they want, how is this any better than them legally surveilling you anytime they want or all the time, anyway?
No you see, the court decided the best way to stop the illegal KaZaa downloads is by preventing people from downloading the one file theyre already sure to have which the people didnt even download using KaZaa in the first place.
In related news, the DEA has decided to step up the drug war by arresting dealers after they have completed selling their entire lot, and the FBI has put out an arrest warrant on Egyptian national Muhammad Atta and revoked his passport in an effort to prevent the September 11, 2001 bombings from actually happening.
So, basically, this copy-restriction stuff of theirs has been found to cause audible defects, break the fast-forward/rewind/skip controls, entirely break some tracks, and confuse the CD player when its trying to change tracks. In other words, theyre releasing completely defective media because it might stop people from ripping the audio off of it. Maybe they should just snap the CDs in half before they sell them. That would surely prevent people from ripping them!
I actually mentioned that in one of my other posts; it was being challenged in court as far as I can remember, on the grounds that legal codes belong in the public domain.
Yeah, thats more or less what I thought. The government does, however, place much of that work into the public domain, take a look at the CIA World Fact Book, for example.
(OT) Are you trying to use UTF8 there in your post? Instead of quotes I see a mess (a-circumflex/euro/oe-ligature for the openquote, a-circumflex/euro/box for the closequote). If you were cut-and-pasting my quote symbols, I spell out the HTML entities (“ for example); I dont actually type them in. UTF8 will not go through well since the Content-Type of the page is not set to understand multibyte characters. Instead of one unified 24-bit character I see three octets all interpreted as individual 8-bit characters.
Slashdot Mirror
Katz established correlation (which he even said) but not causation. Even the dimmest debater knows that correlation does not necessarily amount to causation.
You think it would survive? Take a look at Napster. That old client can still be used to connect to various non-Napster.com servers, but how many people still use it? If no one is developing, fixing or improving the client (i.e., since it is a closed-source binary), it will eventually fizzle out. What would most likely save the network is something like giFT, however.
When are people going to realize that if you try to build a business around giving away other peoples work that first youre going to get sued, and if that doesnt work, theyre just going to try and buy you out?
Decentralized, head-less networks like Gnutella or Freenet are, once again, the only way to make sure this doesnt happen. KazaA may have a decentralized network but there still is the one authority distributing the client; if they go down, eventually the network they created will disintegrate. With Gnutella or Freenet, there’s no one to sue worth their time (individual users?), and no one to buy out at all.
Liberal, Conservative, does not matter. People pushing their ideologies on any side tend to want to censor material they find offensive or detrimental to their ideology. To anyone who thinks the leftist ideology is more free: remember Communism is considered on the left (and in practice has always turned out to be complete totalitarianism), and Nineteen Eighty-Four was about an English Socialist system out of control.
Huh.
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out was accepted, while Xfree86 4.2.0 out and Xfree86 4.2.0 out. were not. Looks like they just dont like lowercase or periods.
I talk about surveillance issues, you throw murdering tens of millions back. Is there a Chinese equivalent to Godwins Law?
Ive wondered about this also one of the reasons* we have representative government is because its infeasable to get everyone together to vote on laws on a daily basis, but something like the Internet (or a secured version thereof, or just secure protocols on top) would allow everyone to participate. We wouldnt need representative democracy anymore, a direct democracy would actually work. Wed still need some group to propose the laws, like the legislature does now, but everyone could vote on them.
You say failing that we can have a good old fashioned coup, but if you remember, most significant changes to governments have come about as a result of coups détat or other forms of revolutions. It would probably take another revolution to get the government cleaned up these congressmen wont even vote for term limits or soft-money bans, do you think theyd vote themselves out of existence?
* Dont tell me that we have a representative system because our representatives are more responsible, or educated, or level-headed about lawmaking than the general populace the crap that went on when they passed the Patriot Act shoots that theory down. Congress passes laws just as irrationally as the unwashed masses would; the Courts are responsible for making sure bad laws dont stand.
Yes, its unsuitable, and its inappropriate and unthinkable and unconscionable and and wont somebody please think of the children!?!?
American Telephone & Telegraph Broadband Internet?
Like it or not, privacy is not a fundamental provision of the Consititution.
No, but it can be inferred from the third, fourth and ninth Amendments (and probably bits and pieces of five and six). The third Amendment has been interpreted to mean that people have a right not be under constant surveillance by law enforcement. The fourth Amendment, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, should be obvious. And the ninth Amendment is the one that says, basically, that just because the constitution only protects certain enumerated (spelled-out) rights does not mean the people do not have other ones, that arent explicitly forbidden elsewhere.
If you place your messages in the public domain (which is what you do whenever you send an E-mail over the Internet), don't be surprised when it is screened, read, etc., by either the government or anyone who happens to own the router that your message passes through.
Sending email is no more placing messages in the public domain than using the postal system is. Placing messages in a public forum (e.g., Usenet, Slashdot, etc.) would be, however. Simply because email is sent plaintext through a bunch of third-party routing servers does not mean it is public, no more than postal mail being handled by a dozen different postal workers, makes postal mail public.
There is a general mistrust of government in general in this forum, which is sad. While I agree that the size and scope of government should be kept to a minimum, we should be able to trust the elected officials in a republican system, since we choose who our representatives will be. And we should certainly trust the executive branch (the ones actually screening the public E-mails) to do what they need to enforce the laws our elected representatives pass. If they aren't, then the people should vote accordingly for representatives that will fix the problem.
Yeah, youre right, the people should. They should be able to trust the government, and should vote accordingly when the government betrays its ideals. Unfortunately, youre describing a functional constitutionaldemocratic-republic, not the United States, here.
[Law enforcement officials] are only concerned for the information that will help them protect the public from criminals.
The problem is what, exactly, gets defined as criminal.
Supported mail clients? Dammit, its POP. See, I can do it myself:
USER jraxis
PASS foobar
LIST
RETR 1
DELE 1
RETR 2
DELE 2
QUIT
I can do SMTP too!
</sarcasm>
Quilting patterns. People fighting over quilting patterns. Is it only me, or does this read like some parody of the RIAAMP3 issues?
At the very least, it would probably make the person using it look guilty. The kind of If youve got nothing to hide, why are you hiding it from us in the first place? kind of mentality.
Do you think that a country where the government monitors its people so much either does not (or will not, in the near future) have laws making encryption illegal? If you want to keep your people from doing whatever, it sort of helps to eliminate any methods they may have to cover their tracks.
When laws are passed that practically allow the FBI to print their own warrants, the protection that requiring a warrant offers sort of evaporates. The reason that requiring a warrant has (previously) been thought of as sufficient protection is because the cops need quite a bit of evidence to convince a judge to grant them a warrant. If they can get a warrant anytime they want, how is this any better than them legally surveilling you anytime they want or all the time, anyway?
No you see, the court decided the best way to stop the illegal KaZaa downloads is by preventing people from downloading the one file theyre already sure to have which the people didnt even download using KaZaa in the first place.
In related news, the DEA has decided to step up the drug war by arresting dealers after they have completed selling their entire lot, and the FBI has put out an arrest warrant on Egyptian national Muhammad Atta and revoked his passport in an effort to prevent the September 11, 2001 bombings from actually happening.
iiiFad? Youre probably infringing on some Apple trademark with that.
Well, it worked so well for DeCSS, didnt it? Didnt it?
So, basically, this copy-restriction stuff of theirs has been found to cause audible defects, break the fast-forward/rewind/skip controls, entirely break some tracks, and confuse the CD player when its trying to change tracks. In other words, theyre releasing completely defective media because it might stop people from ripping the audio off of it. Maybe they should just snap the CDs in half before they sell them. That would surely prevent people from ripping them!
The Open Source Initiative: Approved Licenses
What, like this?
Maybe crackers could be protected under the whistleblower laws we already have in place in the U.S. for people who rat out internal corporate crimes.
I actually mentioned that in one of my other posts; it was being challenged in court as far as I can remember, on the grounds that legal codes belong in the public domain.
Yeah, thats more or less what I thought. The government does, however, place much of that work into the public domain, take a look at the CIA World Fact Book, for example.
(OT) Are you trying to use UTF8 there in your post? Instead of quotes I see a mess (a-circumflex/euro/oe-ligature for the openquote, a-circumflex/euro/box for the closequote). If you were cut-and-pasting my quote symbols, I spell out the HTML entities (“ for example); I dont actually type them in. UTF8 will not go through well since the Content-Type of the page is not set to understand multibyte characters. Instead of one unified 24-bit character I see three octets all interpreted as individual 8-bit characters.