I don't think you understand the question. My account is not anonymous if my ISP knows who I am.
Then, no, I do not think that you should have an an anonymous account any more than you should have an anonymous cell phone number. The provider should know who you are so that they can provide the information to parties that wish to file civil or criminal cases against you.
Bullshit. I am entitled to due process whenever my life, liberty, or property is being taken from me.
Nothing is being "taken" from you. A potential litigant is simply getting the information that he/she needs in order to allow a court to decide if you violated a state's spam laws.
Further, it violates the ISP's right to not be unreasonably searched.
It's not a search nor is it "unreasonable." It is simply compelling them to reveal the identity of customers who violate the law.
Refuse to give out my name and address to whom? I can certainly refuse to give out my name and address to the person with whom I got into an accident. As for whether or not I can refuse to give the police officer my name and address without a warrant being aquired or an arrest being made, I'm not completely sure of the law. I suggest you show it to me before you make such a statement.
Well, since I've already made the statement, I cannot retroactively show you the law, but I'll do so now since you seem unfamiliar with your legal responsibilities as a motorist.
Article II, Code of Virginia, Section 46.2-894. Duty of driver to stop, etc., in event of a crash involving injury or death or damage to attended property. - The driver of any vehicle involved in a accident in which a person is killed or injured or in which an attended vehicle or other attended property is damaged shall immediately stop as close to the scene of the crash as possible without obstructing traffic and
report his name, address, driver's license number, and vehicle registration number forthwith to the State Police or local law-enforcement agency, to the person struck and injured if such person appears to be capable of understanding and retaining the information, or to the driver or some other occupant of the vehicle collided with or to the custodian of other damaged property.
I'm reasonably certain that most states have similar laws.
IN any case, there is probable cause that you were involved in an accident.
And in the analogous case, there is probable cause because you sent spam.
Yes, until they send spam with them. Then the accounts stop being anonymous and the ISP turns over the contact information for the responsible party. The key is who has the originating IP address, not the e-mail address.
Merely requiring that someone "provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit" is not due process.
I really thought you understood the law better than that. You are not entitled to "due process" except in a legal proceeding. The due process part comes in when the spammer is sued and he gets his chance to defend himself in a court.
To use an analogy, if you get into a traffic accident, you cannot refuse to give out your name and address because you have not been given "due process."
No, I want to make anonymous spam (commercial) e-mail illegal. There is no reason for a legitimate business advertising their goods or services should do so anonymously by spamming people.
Do you actually know the identity of the person spamming you?
The laws should require that ISPs provide you with any and all contact information for the person assigned the IP address from where the spam originated (provided that you can provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit). I'm sick of complaining to ISPs and having them say "pay $150 to get a subpeona and then we'll tell you who spammed you -- *if* we even know."
What a wonderfully coherent, intelligent, reasoned response!
In answer to your question, I'm a rational human being who recognizes that laws are tightening constantly. I understand that there are special interest groups who push for laws that are in their best interests, but not in the best interest of the public. For a good example, look at the DMCA. Look at the law being considered that would make it legal for the RIAA and MPAA to hack P2P services with no judge, jury, or court order.
You go right on living in your fantasy world where no one passes laws that hurt you, but I'll deal with reality. And the reality is that, if the FCC saw fit to limit RF interference, laws are likely to be passed if homebuilt computers regularly exceed those limits.
It still doesn't make sense to go after the ISP, no more so than it does to sue telcos for the actions of telemarketters. Making the ISP responsible will have a chilling effect on Ohio's internet services, and that could only hurt the state's technology sector.
Not knowing the specifics of the law, I can only comment on the concept generally. If an ISP is complicit, they should be held responsible. If they write "pink contracts" and don't shut off spammers when they receive complaints, they should be legally liable. Suppose you complained to the telephone company about harassing phone calls and they refused to do anything about it. Wouldn't you feel that they should have some legal liability?
Nice "save the children" hot-button press though.
I chose that example because keeping cigarettes and alcohol away from minors is something that society, as a whole, is behind -- even if it means that Kwik-E-Mart loses potential customers. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass about children. I don't have them, find them annoying, and wish that the parents would keep them at home. I frequently choose expensive restaurants so that I can enjoy my meal without being surrounded by the hordes of unleashed children that run screaming through the aisles of lesser establishments. Besides, stopping spam has little to do with protecting children.
isn't this in itself more concerning than any number of unwarranted e-mails?
No. When cigarettes can cause a life-long addiction, cancer, emphysema, and death, the last thing you want is to risk having children decide to start smoking before they are young enough to understand the risks.
Alcohol is an issue because of the number of vehicular deaths caused by drunk driving. I don't trust an 18 year old to drink responsibly and I'm not willing to put society at risk so that high-school seniors can have keg parties.
It's really idiotic for us to even allow people to start smoking given what we now know about the health effects. You can talk all you want about personal freedom and responsibility, but people who live with smokers have a much higher incidence of respiratory illness, too. If cigarettes were just invented today, there would be zero chance that anyone would be allowed to sell them. Congress should pass a law banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone who is not 18 at the time of the bill's passage. It's time to say "enough" and keep people from taking up this stupid, offensive, and dangerous habit.
I think I'll exercise my right to free speech by scratching a message into the paint on your car. Certainly you would rather pay to have your car painted occasionally than give up a cherished right like free speech!
I have spent hours setting up filters, blocking domains, blocking IP blocks, setting up complex forwarding schemes, maintaining lists of trusted senders and domains, etc.. I have purchased spam filtering software and, more importantly, spent what could have been billable time configuring it. And I still have spams that get through occasionally and every now and then I bounce a legitimate message. No, spammers don't have a right to put me through that.
Free Speech means that you have a right to express yourself at your own expense, not mine. That's why junk faxes are illegal (47 USC 227).
I think we can all agree that spam is annoying but this is absurd.
No, we cannot all agree that "this is absurd."
No harm is done to the user so why should they have the right to sue?
So who do you think pays your ISP for the bandwidth, storage, and additional mail server horsepower necessary to handle the influx of spam? Hint: The person paying is staring at your screen right now! Spammers try to say that the cost per spam is small and, while that's true, if I could steal one penny from every person in the United States, I'd never have to work again.
If the maximum amount was $1 per spam, no one would sue and the law would do nothing to decrease spam. The fine is set high to make the law work and to discourage spam.
This serves to making their Spam-friendly ISPs uncompetitive, which ultimately only hurts the state.
What a tragedy! Spam-friendly ISPs being forced out of business in Utah/Ohio. This is almost as bad as laws that make kiddie-porn-friendly ISPs uncompetitive. Imagine the revenue loss!
When society finds something unacceptable (in this case, spam) and enacts laws to reduce it, there is an understanding that those who make a living from it will be financially harmed. Ohio convenience stores would have a competitive advantage if they could legally sell alcohol and tobacco products to minors. That doesn't mean that Ohio should make it legal.
Sometimes the good of society outweighs the financial interests of corporations.
I am a Ham (Callsign W7MB if you care) and in my experience, more often than not, it is the device recieving the interferance that is the problem.
In this case, the HAM that was paid a visit by the FCC was using a kilowatt through a high-gain antenna to talk 15 miles. That's far in excess of the power necessary to establish and maintain radio contact at that distance on that terrain.
My $3000, highly specialised Ham Radio system is causing interferance? or... (2) Your $150, Mass produced TV is recieving stuff it wasn't meant to?
HAM radio gear is expensive because it is not mass-produced, therefore, the cost has more to do with the quantity than the quality. By the way, you don't want to start playing the "look how much it costs" game with me. My speakers alone cost more money than your entire HAM radio rig.
And when did logic enter into this? Consider the Bush claim that the sale of drugs imported from South America and sold by kids on the street was funding Al-Qaeda.
And we have laws making murder illegal, but it doesn't stop Congress from passing a new law every time there is a school shooting, does it?
While the FCC has regulations dealing with interference, it does not mean that the Congress won't see fit to pass other legislation if they deem the existing regulations to be unenforceable.
I liked your theory better when you used to predict a SWAT team of FCC agents swarming a Senator's apartment to fix his poor TV reception...;-)
Considering that the FCC dispatches RF sniffing vans to find sources of interference, it's not so far-fetched. In fact, I know a ham that was paid a visit by the FCC after his rig was determined to be the source of interference.
I certainly wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the government to crack down on home built PCs. They make up an extremely small sliver of the market, and Dell and particularly Microsoft very likely do not see them as a threat.
It's not just home-built PCs. It's PCs upgraded at home, too. It's PCs built by the two and three person screwdriver shops. That's a lot of PCs and you underestimate the greed of both Dell and Microsoft if you think that they would happily give up that market.
I know I've said this before, but the real danger I see from this kind of thing is legislation that will purportedly "protect the public" from RF interference.
I'll try to be brief:
Q. How would the legislation work? A. It would ban the sale of PC componentry to people not licensed by the FCC to produce personal computers.
Q. Who would want this? A. Microsoft and the big computer makers.
Q. Why would those companies be in favor of such legislation? A. Microsoft would want it because almost every brand-name PC sold comes with a new Windows license for which Microsoft is paid. If a consumer can upgrade his PC with a new motherboard, CPU, hard drive, etc., Microsoft does not sell another license. The Dells and Compaqs of the world would want it because it would put screwdriver shops out of business as well as forcing consumers to buy new PCs rather than upgrading older ones.
Q. What makes you think Congress would pass such a law? A. Because Microsoft, Dell, Compaq, etc. have tremendous lobbying power. They would spend whatever it took to get such a law passed if they thought they could succeed.
Q. Why would the American public tolerate it? A. Because case modders and all people who build their own computers would be referred to as "computer hackers" on the floors of Congress and in the press. The lobbyists would convince (through television and newspaper coverage) the American public that passing the legislation would result in crystal-clear TV reception, interference-free cell phone calls, and reduced incidence of brain cancer. George Bush would probably get on TV and claim that profits from the sale of generic PC clones were being used to fund Al-Qaeda and that cutting off the flow of parts to build these systems was striking a blow against terrorism.
And thus would be passed the "Digital Pollution Reduction Act of 2003."
I actually like your rants thing, so I'm not going to bother arguing with you.
Thank you for the compliment, but feel free to disagree -- loudly if you want.
And the bar manager couldn't give a flying fook about ugly chicks getting stroppy if there's a bunch of models making guys hang in their bar all night and get drunk in a failed attempt to pull women way out of their league.
It might go over great for a few days, but once the regulars realized that the paid models had driven out every woman with whom they ever had a chance to score, it would be a different story. If you are going to a bar to pick up women, will you go to one filled with paid, probably attached, actresses trying to sell phones or to one with available women looking for men?
"Ugly" is all relative. A reasonably attractive woman in her mid 30's may decide that she doesn't want to compete with a bunch of 21-25 year old professional models.
Yes, no bar owner would want attractive girls in their bar enticing men in... ever heard of 'girls drink free' nights?
Many bars frown on prostitution and this is not a great leap from that. No bar wants their male patrons getting pissed off because the attractive women at the bar were just trying to hustle them. Nor does the bar want "normal" women deciding that the competition is too stiff -- when the "competition" is actually just hotties planted by Sony/Ericsson to sell phones.
If a restaurant, bar, or other private firm posts a "no soliciting" notice, the people engaged in this deceptive ploy might be hauled off for trespassing. Alternatively, the owner could take Sony/Ericsson to court and demand a fee for using his/her establishment to advertise their products.
It seems that Sentator Biden started this mess by introducing this legislation.
And Republican technical wizards such as Senator Strom Thurmond quickly jumped on the bandwagon, so don't try to paint this as some kind of "Democrats are evil" thing.
Just look at the intrusive spying that Ashcroft and his colleagues have put into place since 9/11 and you'll see that Democratic initiatives on DRM are hardly the biggest concern we face.
If you vote for an activist/expanding government, you get some laws you won't like and, quite possibly, some which will harm you.
And you will get some laws that you do like and, quite possibly, some which will help you. I like laws to reduce pollution, make corporate officers accountable, and those that make fraudulent and deceptive advertising illegal, to name just three examples. I think laws banning the sale of tobacco to minors are good. I like laws against animal cruelty. I think that making junk faxes illegal was a good thing. I just don't subscribe to the "government is bad" theory that seems so popular among the Timothy McVeigh types.
In fact I'd rather it handle as little as possible. Give me sound cards with hardware mixing and 3d channels. Give me 2d/3d accelerated video cards. Give me hardware video/ audio encoders/decoders. Give me a raid 5 card with onboard cpu and ram. Give me an ethernet card with it's own tcp/ip stack.
And give you liquid nitrogen to cool all of the CPUs in your system. Some of what you say makes great sense (3D accelerated audio and video), but things like RAID cards with their own CPUs and RAM, and Ethernet cards with their own TCP stacks, just drive up the cost of PCs for little gain. For example, RAID cards with their own cacheing do not often make sense. Money is better spent on more RAM for the computer which can be utilized by the OS for cache. It's a lot faster to get cached data out of local RAM than it is to get it across a PCI bus. TCP/IP stacks built into Ethernet cards limit what the system can do from a firewalling perspective.
Where is firewire is much more complex... there's a reason video equipment uses it...
The reason is that the vendors had no other choice at the time. USB 1.1 was only capable of 12mbps, so that was clearly not an alternative.
I don't have some kind of hatred of Firewire and I would like to see it become something like a hard drive interface to replace SCSI, but USB 2.0 support in Linux is very valuable while Firewire is less so. I have noticed no small number of Firewire peripherals being closed out while USB 2.0 products are becoming more popular.
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Then, no, I do not think that you should have an an anonymous account any more than you should have an anonymous cell phone number. The provider should know who you are so that they can provide the information to parties that wish to file civil or criminal cases against you.
Bullshit. I am entitled to due process whenever my life, liberty, or property is being taken from me.
Nothing is being "taken" from you. A potential litigant is simply getting the information that he/she needs in order to allow a court to decide if you violated a state's spam laws.
Further, it violates the ISP's right to not be unreasonably searched.
It's not a search nor is it "unreasonable." It is simply compelling them to reveal the identity of customers who violate the law.
Refuse to give out my name and address to whom? I can certainly refuse to give out my name and address to the person with whom I got into an accident. As for whether or not I can refuse to give the police officer my name and address without a warrant being aquired or an arrest being made, I'm not completely sure of the law. I suggest you show it to me before you make such a statement.
Well, since I've already made the statement, I cannot retroactively show you the law, but I'll do so now since you seem unfamiliar with your legal responsibilities as a motorist. I'm reasonably certain that most states have similar laws.
IN any case, there is probable cause that you were involved in an accident.
And in the analogous case, there is probable cause because you sent spam.
I don't know about you, but most of the spam I get originates from non-US servers
No, it originates at U.S.-based IP addresses that then connect to open relays in other countries. It's the origination IP that counts.
Can people have anonymous email accounts or not?
Yes, until they send spam with them. Then the accounts stop being anonymous and the ISP turns over the contact information for the responsible party. The key is who has the originating IP address, not the e-mail address.
Merely requiring that someone "provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit" is not due process.
I really thought you understood the law better than that. You are not entitled to "due process" except in a legal proceeding. The due process part comes in when the spammer is sued and he gets his chance to defend himself in a court.
To use an analogy, if you get into a traffic accident, you cannot refuse to give out your name and address because you have not been given "due process."
So you want to make anonymous email illegal?
No, I want to make anonymous spam (commercial) e-mail illegal. There is no reason for a legitimate business advertising their goods or services should do so anonymously by spamming people.
Do you actually know the identity of the person spamming you?
The laws should require that ISPs provide you with any and all contact information for the person assigned the IP address from where the spam originated (provided that you can provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit). I'm sick of complaining to ISPs and having them say "pay $150 to get a subpeona and then we'll tell you who spammed you -- *if* we even know."
What are you, schitzophrenic? Don't be an idiot.
What a wonderfully coherent, intelligent, reasoned response!
In answer to your question, I'm a rational human being who recognizes that laws are tightening constantly. I understand that there are special interest groups who push for laws that are in their best interests, but not in the best interest of the public. For a good example, look at the DMCA. Look at the law being considered that would make it legal for the RIAA and MPAA to hack P2P services with no judge, jury, or court order.
You go right on living in your fantasy world where no one passes laws that hurt you, but I'll deal with reality. And the reality is that, if the FCC saw fit to limit RF interference, laws are likely to be passed if homebuilt computers regularly exceed those limits.
It still doesn't make sense to go after the ISP, no more so than it does to sue telcos for the actions of telemarketters. Making the ISP responsible will have a chilling effect on Ohio's internet services, and that could only hurt the state's technology sector.
Not knowing the specifics of the law, I can only comment on the concept generally. If an ISP is complicit, they should be held responsible. If they write "pink contracts" and don't shut off spammers when they receive complaints, they should be legally liable. Suppose you complained to the telephone company about harassing phone calls and they refused to do anything about it. Wouldn't you feel that they should have some legal liability?
Nice "save the children" hot-button press though.
I chose that example because keeping cigarettes and alcohol away from minors is something that society, as a whole, is behind -- even if it means that Kwik-E-Mart loses potential customers. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass about children. I don't have them, find them annoying, and wish that the parents would keep them at home. I frequently choose expensive restaurants so that I can enjoy my meal without being surrounded by the hordes of unleashed children that run screaming through the aisles of lesser establishments. Besides, stopping spam has little to do with protecting children.
isn't this in itself more concerning than any number of unwarranted e-mails?
No. When cigarettes can cause a life-long addiction, cancer, emphysema, and death, the last thing you want is to risk having children decide to start smoking before they are young enough to understand the risks.
Alcohol is an issue because of the number of vehicular deaths caused by drunk driving. I don't trust an 18 year old to drink responsibly and I'm not willing to put society at risk so that high-school seniors can have keg parties.
It's really idiotic for us to even allow people to start smoking given what we now know about the health effects. You can talk all you want about personal freedom and responsibility, but people who live with smokers have a much higher incidence of respiratory illness, too. If cigarettes were just invented today, there would be zero chance that anyone would be allowed to sell them. Congress should pass a law banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone who is not 18 at the time of the bill's passage. It's time to say "enough" and keep people from taking up this stupid, offensive, and dangerous habit.
I think I'll exercise my right to free speech by scratching a message into the paint on your car. Certainly you would rather pay to have your car painted occasionally than give up a cherished right like free speech!
I have spent hours setting up filters, blocking domains, blocking IP blocks, setting up complex forwarding schemes, maintaining lists of trusted senders and domains, etc.. I have purchased spam filtering software and, more importantly, spent what could have been billable time configuring it. And I still have spams that get through occasionally and every now and then I bounce a legitimate message. No, spammers don't have a right to put me through that.
Free Speech means that you have a right to express yourself at your own expense, not mine. That's why junk faxes are illegal (47 USC 227).
I think we can all agree that spam is annoying but this is absurd.
No, we cannot all agree that "this is absurd."
No harm is done to the user so why should they have the right to sue?
So who do you think pays your ISP for the bandwidth, storage, and additional mail server horsepower necessary to handle the influx of spam? Hint: The person paying is staring at your screen right now! Spammers try to say that the cost per spam is small and, while that's true, if I could steal one penny from every person in the United States, I'd never have to work again.
If the maximum amount was $1 per spam, no one would sue and the law would do nothing to decrease spam. The fine is set high to make the law work and to discourage spam.
This serves to making their Spam-friendly ISPs uncompetitive, which ultimately only hurts the state.
What a tragedy! Spam-friendly ISPs being forced out of business in Utah/Ohio. This is almost as bad as laws that make kiddie-porn-friendly ISPs uncompetitive. Imagine the revenue loss!
When society finds something unacceptable (in this case, spam) and enacts laws to reduce it, there is an understanding that those who make a living from it will be financially harmed. Ohio convenience stores would have a competitive advantage if they could legally sell alcohol and tobacco products to minors. That doesn't mean that Ohio should make it legal.
Sometimes the good of society outweighs the financial interests of corporations.
I am a Ham (Callsign W7MB if you care) and in my experience, more often than not, it is the device recieving the interferance that is the problem.
In this case, the HAM that was paid a visit by the FCC was using a kilowatt through a high-gain antenna to talk 15 miles. That's far in excess of the power necessary to establish and maintain radio contact at that distance on that terrain.
My $3000, highly specialised Ham Radio system is causing interferance? or... (2) Your $150, Mass produced TV is recieving stuff it wasn't meant to?
HAM radio gear is expensive because it is not mass-produced, therefore, the cost has more to do with the quantity than the quality. By the way, you don't want to start playing the "look how much it costs" game with me. My speakers alone cost more money than your entire HAM radio rig.
Yeah, Osama could really use that $2.50/box
And when did logic enter into this? Consider the Bush claim that the sale of drugs imported from South America and sold by kids on the street was funding Al-Qaeda.
We have this legislation now.
And we have laws making murder illegal, but it doesn't stop Congress from passing a new law every time there is a school shooting, does it?
While the FCC has regulations dealing with interference, it does not mean that the Congress won't see fit to pass other legislation if they deem the existing regulations to be unenforceable.
I liked your theory better when you used to predict a SWAT team of FCC agents swarming a Senator's apartment to fix his poor TV reception... ;-)
Considering that the FCC dispatches RF sniffing vans to find sources of interference, it's not so far-fetched. In fact, I know a ham that was paid a visit by the FCC after his rig was determined to be the source of interference.
I certainly wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the government to crack down on home built PCs. They make up an extremely small sliver of the market, and Dell and particularly Microsoft very likely do not see them as a threat.
It's not just home-built PCs. It's PCs upgraded at home, too. It's PCs built by the two and three person screwdriver shops. That's a lot of PCs and you underestimate the greed of both Dell and Microsoft if you think that they would happily give up that market.
It's not a joke. Just a prediction/fear.
I know I've said this before, but the real danger I see from this kind of thing is legislation that will purportedly "protect the public" from RF interference.
I'll try to be brief:
Q. How would the legislation work?
A. It would ban the sale of PC componentry to people not licensed by the FCC to produce personal computers.
Q. Who would want this?
A. Microsoft and the big computer makers.
Q. Why would those companies be in favor of such legislation?
A. Microsoft would want it because almost every brand-name PC sold comes with a new Windows license for which Microsoft is paid. If a consumer can upgrade his PC with a new motherboard, CPU, hard drive, etc., Microsoft does not sell another license. The Dells and Compaqs of the world would want it because it would put screwdriver shops out of business as well as forcing consumers to buy new PCs rather than upgrading older ones.
Q. What makes you think Congress would pass such a law?
A. Because Microsoft, Dell, Compaq, etc. have tremendous lobbying power. They would spend whatever it took to get such a law passed if they thought they could succeed.
Q. Why would the American public tolerate it?
A. Because case modders and all people who build their own computers would be referred to as "computer hackers" on the floors of Congress and in the press. The lobbyists would convince (through television and newspaper coverage) the American public that passing the legislation would result in crystal-clear TV reception, interference-free cell phone calls, and reduced incidence of brain cancer. George Bush would probably get on TV and claim that profits from the sale of generic PC clones were being used to fund Al-Qaeda and that cutting off the flow of parts to build these systems was striking a blow against terrorism.
And thus would be passed the "Digital Pollution Reduction Act of 2003."
I actually like your rants thing, so I'm not going to bother arguing with you.
Thank you for the compliment, but feel free to disagree -- loudly if you want.
And the bar manager couldn't give a flying fook about ugly chicks getting stroppy if there's a bunch of models making guys hang in their bar all night and get drunk in a failed attempt to pull women way out of their league.
It might go over great for a few days, but once the regulars realized that the paid models had driven out every woman with whom they ever had a chance to score, it would be a different story. If you are going to a bar to pick up women, will you go to one filled with paid, probably attached, actresses trying to sell phones or to one with available women looking for men?
"Ugly" is all relative. A reasonably attractive woman in her mid 30's may decide that she doesn't want to compete with a bunch of 21-25 year old professional models.
Yes, no bar owner would want attractive girls in their bar enticing men in... ever heard of 'girls drink free' nights?
Many bars frown on prostitution and this is not a great leap from that. No bar wants their male patrons getting pissed off because the attractive women at the bar were just trying to hustle them. Nor does the bar want "normal" women deciding that the competition is too stiff -- when the "competition" is actually just hotties planted by Sony/Ericsson to sell phones.
If a restaurant, bar, or other private firm posts a "no soliciting" notice, the people engaged in this deceptive ploy might be hauled off for trespassing. Alternatively, the owner could take Sony/Ericsson to court and demand a fee for using his/her establishment to advertise their products.
It seems that Sentator Biden started this mess by introducing this legislation.
And Republican technical wizards such as Senator Strom Thurmond quickly jumped on the bandwagon, so don't try to paint this as some kind of "Democrats are evil" thing.
Just look at the intrusive spying that Ashcroft and his colleagues have put into place since 9/11 and you'll see that Democratic initiatives on DRM are hardly the biggest concern we face.
If you vote for an activist/expanding government, you get some laws you won't like and, quite possibly, some which will harm you.
And you will get some laws that you do like and, quite possibly, some which will help you. I like laws to reduce pollution, make corporate officers accountable, and those that make fraudulent and deceptive advertising illegal, to name just three examples. I think laws banning the sale of tobacco to minors are good. I like laws against animal cruelty. I think that making junk faxes illegal was a good thing. I just don't subscribe to the "government is bad" theory that seems so popular among the Timothy McVeigh types.
Hmmm...does that mean that if there are 4 people on an island and 3 of them vote to kill the 4th one, that the murder of the 4th one is ok.
Sounds like Texas under former Gov. George W. Bush.
Again a DEMOCRAT senator whom 'believes in free speech' wants to restrict your civil liberties.
If only you believed in reading the article, you would have found that the bill has 13 cosponsors including the following Republicans:
Sen Allen, George - R - VA
Sen DeWine, Michael - R - OH
Sen Hatch, Orrin G. - R - UT
Sen Smith, Gordon - R - OR
Sen Thurmond, Strom - R - SC
I guess you get what you vote for.
Not always. Bush is President despite getting half a million fewer votes than Gore.
In fact I'd rather it handle as little as possible. Give me sound cards with hardware mixing and 3d channels. Give me 2d/3d accelerated video cards. Give me hardware video/ audio encoders/decoders. Give me a raid 5 card with onboard cpu and ram. Give me an ethernet card with it's own tcp/ip stack.
And give you liquid nitrogen to cool all of the CPUs in your system. Some of what you say makes great sense (3D accelerated audio and video), but things like RAID cards with their own CPUs and RAM, and Ethernet cards with their own TCP stacks, just drive up the cost of PCs for little gain. For example, RAID cards with their own cacheing do not often make sense. Money is better spent on more RAM for the computer which can be utilized by the OS for cache. It's a lot faster to get cached data out of local RAM than it is to get it across a PCI bus. TCP/IP stacks built into Ethernet cards limit what the system can do from a firewalling perspective.
Where is firewire is much more complex... there's a reason video equipment uses it...
The reason is that the vendors had no other choice at the time. USB 1.1 was only capable of 12mbps, so that was clearly not an alternative.
I don't have some kind of hatred of Firewire and I would like to see it become something like a hard drive interface to replace SCSI, but USB 2.0 support in Linux is very valuable while Firewire is less so. I have noticed no small number of Firewire peripherals being closed out while USB 2.0 products are becoming more popular.