Actually, you can go around saying the police kill small children and perform public sexual acts with donuts all you want. They are a part of the government, and it's not possible to slander the government. It's political speech.
Now, if you said officer so-and-so killed small children and performed public sexual acts with a donut, you can be liable for slander...
Also, Slander and libel in the United States are NOT criminal acts... The injured person can sue you CIVILLY for money damages, but you cannot be jailed for libel or slander.
"Actually, they can only legally keep the equipment if he they deem the equipment was used to commit a felony"
Which they won't be able to in this case. Their "felony" charge is the most laughably stupid charge I've ever seen. In fact, he can't even be convicted of a misdemeanor.
BTW, in NH, does someone have to be indicted to be charged with a felony? That is the case in many states. I dont see that happening. In fact, I don't even see a court ACCEPTING this case at all unless:
1. The judge is extremely corrupt or stupid.
2. The judge is extremely power mad.
3. The judge is an ex-cop
4. The judge takes the case basically so that he can get the police in question in his courtroom, collect the evidence, sanction them so that THEY can be prosecuted.
And now for an "obscene" statement about the Salem police:
Only a bunch of stupid ass corrupt motherfuckers would arrest a 19 year old for putting up an anti-cop website... In fact, the actions of the Salem police prove, in fact, that whatever allegations or basis he had for PUTTING up such a website have been PROVEN!!!!
They'd have to get this case in front of a very corrupt or ignorant judge for it to stick. This of course, is possible, as there are many Judge Kaplans out there, especially at the state and county level.
To have any hope of success, the cops better have a LOT more evidence of what they are charging than is in the story. The Supreme Court's obscenity ruling is EXTREMELY narrow, and I don't think there is any way to meet their criteria for obscenity with political speech. The Supremes have even ruled that police can't arrest you for flipping them off... Someone is on very shaky ground here, and it ain't the defendant.
How can you possibly miscuse your OWN computer system? He isn't even accused of hacking anything. He used images from a government website for purposes of parody and political speech on his own site.
The real criminal here is everyone involved in handling his arrest and incarceration...
Yes there are. In this case it's in the Constitution itself. A police department is a government agency, and thus, the right of petition, and the first amendment, just to name two, clearly cover this.
Because such a parody is POLITICAL speech, there isn't even any way that he could have libeled or slandered them. There is no truth in advertising laws for political speech, otherwise lots of candidates would be doing prison time.
A crime and major felonies have been comitted here... by the POLICE.
What the hell IS this? The police have no authority to define obscenity.. There is no possible way a website mocking them could pass the Supreme Court's obscenity standard.
For one thing, mocking the police department is POLITICAL speech, which will clearly fall under the first amendment.
What is chilling, is what others have brought up. The damage to this person has already been done, having already been arrested and thrown in jail. What I hope happens is that he gets himself a tank of lawyer sharks and go after the police department with lawsuits asking for damages in the $500 million range.
The police department has clearly abused it's authority to comitt an illegal act. All involved in the arrest and incarceration need to do serious prison time.
Tell that to the guy who wrote DeCSS. He didn't break any laws in Norway (they don't have DMCA), yet his own country bent over and took it in the ass from the MPAA enforcement wing of the FBI.
Later, the authorities in Norway admitted that they had been duped.
I am an American, but I don't belive American law is world law... Especially unconstitutional statutory laws like the DMCA.
Not only is it OS dependant, but it's file system dependant.
However, as I pointed out in the original./ discussion on this subject, this could hurt Linux badly in two ways.
1. First off, it is doubtful that CPRM could be implimented in Linux, in such a way as to be compatible with the GPL (which means whatever it is that makes CPRM work would have to be open source).
2. Rogue judges like Judge "MPAA stooge" Kaplan could rule Linux an illegal cirvumvention device. I know the DMCA says that tools intended for other uses CAN circumvent. BUT, Kaplan ruled DeCSS illegal even though the AUTHOR and many others stated on the record that it was intended to allow the creation of a Linux DVD player.
"I wonder if more feedback like this will influence their actions..."
I don't know if it would. You wrote a very reasoned response, though it may be better to mail it to them, since I doubt anyone above level F marketdrones ever read website feedback forms.
That sort of feedback IS what we need to give IBM and every HD mandufacturer. All it will take to break CPRM is to convince one company to not play the game, or to sell non-defective (CPRM free) hard drives.
This really is a case where the whole industry HAS to play ball for this to succeed. If only one or two manufacturers impliment CPRM, they could find themselves out on the proverbial ledge, while their competition is busy taking over their market share.
I shudder to think what will happen in a year or two, at the rate things are merging, when we only have 2-3 hard drive makers, instead of 6-7 like we have now... Competition is how you keep this kind of anti-consumer crap from suceeding in the market.
"This sounds alot like Intel's Processor ID scheme on the early PII's... I remember reading last week that alot of manufacturers we considering making this an *optional* feature (much the same as being able to disable Intel's ID...)"
True, and this is exactly what Intel ended up doing. They made it optional, and you could disable it in the BIOS. Much to the marketers chagrin, it ended up disabled mostly by default, and ceased to be an issue.
However, had the AMD Athlon (which doesn't have the P3 serial number "feature") not become so popular, I could have seen companies like Microsoft REQUIRING you to enable it (or worse, their installers enabling it for you) to run their applications.
Intel dropped the serial number in the Pentium 4, BTW.
While it's nice that the outrage among us techies bout CPRM has apparently been noticed, making it "optional" is not accaptable.
It does not need to be in there at all. If it is, even if "optional" that will still give the MPAA/RIAA and unscrupulous software vendors the ability to REQUIRE you have it or enable it for their software/media, that you BOUGHT to work.
I really believe the way to beat CPRM to death is to drive home the point that it breaks the ability to use imaging programs like Ghost. How many enterprises right now are using Ghost to maintain and deploy PC's? Tons. Breaking it with CPRM hard drives will cost firms tons and tons of money spent in needless manual setup/maitenance on individual PC's.
Wired has become as lame as any Ziff-Davis corporate type publication. I used to love that magazine, it was THE shit back in 1995. But now it's just another corporate spin machine that favors the advertisers in the "story" content, the business model that made ZD the Borg of computer publishing.
Even though 2.4.0 was late, it was NEVER vaporware. It was out there for you to get months ago if you wanted it. It's simply not possible for an open source project like the Kernel to BE vaporware.
Take `Doze for example. I don't see Wired or ZD calling Whistler vaporware, even though 95% of everyone can't get ahold of it to see it, much less run it. And you know it will be released late, or full of bugs. Probably both.
Any government arrogant enough to think that they can block EVERYTHING is delusional.
Only a communist totalitarian government, that is so in love with itself, and drunk on it's own invincibility could possibly think they can do what the Chineese are attempting.
All I need to see to reinforce my conservative, individualist beliefs in Western Civilization is stuff like this. You see, we don't need to HIDE everything from our citizens to keep them from discovering what bill of goods Mao sold them.
At least, for now... Unfortunately, the USA is sliding towards such a system, and is besides China, the biggest enemy of free speech on the internet right now. I hope things change. Because I know for a fact, when the jackboots start rounding up the free thinkers with the "wrong" ideas, I'll be one of them.
"It's more likely to be only 700 million years (better get all your affairs in order quickly =). Here's a link explaining why."
This is true, but it's possible that there will still be life on Earth up until the Sun boils away the oceans entirely (which will happen around 3 billion AD).
In 3 billion years, the Sun will be 50% brighter than it is today.
"The galactic "collision" might mean Sol ends up in the Andromeda galaxy instead of the Milky Way, but that's about it, since galaxies are mostly empty space.
"
I remember reading somewhere that the odds are 1 in 100,000 that Earth will be ejected from the Solar system during the collision, before Sol passes far enough into the Red Giant stage to burn Earth to a crisp.
Problem is, the Earth will end up a frozen ice ball. But I suppose it IS statistically possible (very long odds) that it could be captured by another star, and orbit at a comfortable distance.
"if your hyperdrive is fast enough. my rough guess suggests it'd have to be a good couple of orders of magnitude faster than light to meet your schedule..."
I think it will be possible to go infinitely fast once a hyperdrive is built. Remember the./ story a few months back, where scientists have already built a machine and proven that the speed of light can be exceeded? I think hyperdrive technology will exist within 200 years.
"if your hyperdrive is cheap enough. what if your hyperdrive requires the equivalent of the entire world's manufacturing capability for years at a time to build?"
True, that is possible. But then, in 1945, an electronic computer took up a whole building, and cost the resources of a nation at war to built. 55 years later, there are computers small enough to wear on your wrist.
"if there isn't already someone there. especially someone very territorial. with bigger guns..."
If that was the case, Earth would have already been invaded. Any starfaring race in our galaxy would either have to be secretive and peaceful, or very distant from us.
"if cheap, portable method for making worlds habitable is available. north america wouldn't've been very popular if you had to bring your own air, water and dirt..."
Sol is an ordinary Class G2 star. There are millions of them in this galaxy alone. Earth is an average sized planet. We've already detected huge Jupiter like supergiant planets, and those systems probably have smaller terrestrial sized planets orbiting closer in (and they are far too small to observe from Earth).
Mine. Pure conjecture. As for 3,000, I predict we will have had hyperdrive for 800+ years. Remember, we settled North America in far less time, with a LOT smaller population.
I don't mean that we will be on EVERY planet, but that humans will spread out in enough places to be the majority species of the Milky Way.
What I can't at all fathom is when a "galactic empire" will be founded, and when Earth will cease to be the capital.
Keep in mind that the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda far before Sol becomes a RG, so all bets are off after then.
Come on... I fired up my old `286 after Y2K, I'd owned it since 1990. It worked fine, although it was underpowered. It knew what the date was.
99.9999999% of the Y2K scare was a SCAM. After all, the 3rd world countries that were USING old `286 and `386 hardware didn't have problems.
I submit that the Y2K scam is RESPONSIBLE for the current tech market slump. Money was spent that companies didn't have, on stuff they didn't need. So today they don't have any to spend on new stuff they DO need.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm tempted to do this myself. Let them come to Raleigh, NC and play gestapo with me.
Anyone have a mirror of the site in question?
Actually, you can go around saying the police kill small children and perform public sexual acts with donuts all you want. They are a part of the government, and it's not possible to slander the government. It's political speech.
Now, if you said officer so-and-so killed small children and performed public sexual acts with a donut, you can be liable for slander...
Also, Slander and libel in the United States are NOT criminal acts... The injured person can sue you CIVILLY for money damages, but you cannot be jailed for libel or slander.
"Actually, they can only legally keep the equipment if he they deem the equipment was used to commit a felony"
Which they won't be able to in this case. Their "felony" charge is the most laughably stupid charge I've ever seen. In fact, he can't even be convicted of a misdemeanor.
BTW, in NH, does someone have to be indicted to be charged with a felony? That is the case in many states. I dont see that happening. In fact, I don't even see a court ACCEPTING this case at all unless:
1. The judge is extremely corrupt or stupid.
2. The judge is extremely power mad.
3. The judge is an ex-cop
4. The judge takes the case basically so that he can get the police in question in his courtroom, collect the evidence, sanction them so that THEY can be prosecuted.
You can't slander the government. Political speech is protected by the Constitution.
All the more reason to encrypt everything.
And now for an "obscene" statement about the Salem police:
Only a bunch of stupid ass corrupt motherfuckers would arrest a 19 year old for putting up an anti-cop website... In fact, the actions of the Salem police prove, in fact, that whatever allegations or basis he had for PUTTING up such a website have been PROVEN!!!!
They'd have to get this case in front of a very corrupt or ignorant judge for it to stick. This of course, is possible, as there are many Judge Kaplans out there, especially at the state and county level.
To have any hope of success, the cops better have a LOT more evidence of what they are charging than is in the story. The Supreme Court's obscenity ruling is EXTREMELY narrow, and I don't think there is any way to meet their criteria for obscenity with political speech. The Supremes have even ruled that police can't arrest you for flipping them off... Someone is on very shaky ground here, and it ain't the defendant.
How can you possibly miscuse your OWN computer system? He isn't even accused of hacking anything. He used images from a government website for purposes of parody and political speech on his own site.
The real criminal here is everyone involved in handling his arrest and incarceration...
Yes there are. In this case it's in the Constitution itself. A police department is a government agency, and thus, the right of petition, and the first amendment, just to name two, clearly cover this.
Because such a parody is POLITICAL speech, there isn't even any way that he could have libeled or slandered them. There is no truth in advertising laws for political speech, otherwise lots of candidates would be doing prison time.
A crime and major felonies have been comitted here... by the POLICE.
What the hell IS this? The police have no authority to define obscenity.. There is no possible way a website mocking them could pass the Supreme Court's obscenity standard.
For one thing, mocking the police department is POLITICAL speech, which will clearly fall under the first amendment.
What is chilling, is what others have brought up. The damage to this person has already been done, having already been arrested and thrown in jail. What I hope happens is that he gets himself a tank of lawyer sharks and go after the police department with lawsuits asking for damages in the $500 million range.
The police department has clearly abused it's authority to comitt an illegal act. All involved in the arrest and incarceration need to do serious prison time.
IT is a way for Amazon to be profitable and for Apple to have more than 5% of the market again.
:)
Obviously this would require something huge and innovative that would seem impossible today.
Another guess...
IT is a copy protection scheme for audio and video that cannot be broken
Tell that to the guy who wrote DeCSS. He didn't break any laws in Norway (they don't have DMCA), yet his own country bent over and took it in the ass from the MPAA enforcement wing of the FBI.
Later, the authorities in Norway admitted that they had been duped.
I am an American, but I don't belive American law is world law... Especially unconstitutional statutory laws like the DMCA.
Better not tell you now...
I say July 2, 2002
Not only is it OS dependant, but it's file system dependant.
./ discussion on this subject, this could hurt Linux badly in two ways.
However, as I pointed out in the original
1. First off, it is doubtful that CPRM could be implimented in Linux, in such a way as to be compatible with the GPL (which means whatever it is that makes CPRM work would have to be open source).
2. Rogue judges like Judge "MPAA stooge" Kaplan could rule Linux an illegal cirvumvention device. I know the DMCA says that tools intended for other uses CAN circumvent. BUT, Kaplan ruled DeCSS illegal even though the AUTHOR and many others stated on the record that it was intended to allow the creation of a Linux DVD player.
"I wonder if more feedback like this will influence their actions..."
I don't know if it would. You wrote a very reasoned response, though it may be better to mail it to them, since I doubt anyone above level F marketdrones ever read website feedback forms.
That sort of feedback IS what we need to give IBM and every HD mandufacturer. All it will take to break CPRM is to convince one company to not play the game, or to sell non-defective (CPRM free) hard drives.
This really is a case where the whole industry HAS to play ball for this to succeed. If only one or two manufacturers impliment CPRM, they could find themselves out on the proverbial ledge, while their competition is busy taking over their market share.
I shudder to think what will happen in a year or two, at the rate things are merging, when we only have 2-3 hard drive makers, instead of 6-7 like we have now... Competition is how you keep this kind of anti-consumer crap from suceeding in the market.
"This sounds alot like Intel's Processor ID scheme on the early PII's... I remember reading last week that alot of manufacturers we considering making this an *optional* feature (much the same as being able to disable Intel's ID...)"
True, and this is exactly what Intel ended up doing. They made it optional, and you could disable it in the BIOS. Much to the marketers chagrin, it ended up disabled mostly by default, and ceased to be an issue.
However, had the AMD Athlon (which doesn't have the P3 serial number "feature") not become so popular, I could have seen companies like Microsoft REQUIRING you to enable it (or worse, their installers enabling it for you) to run their applications.
Intel dropped the serial number in the Pentium 4, BTW.
While it's nice that the outrage among us techies bout CPRM has apparently been noticed, making it "optional" is not accaptable.
It does not need to be in there at all. If it is, even if "optional" that will still give the MPAA/RIAA and unscrupulous software vendors the ability to REQUIRE you have it or enable it for their software/media, that you BOUGHT to work.
I really believe the way to beat CPRM to death is to drive home the point that it breaks the ability to use imaging programs like Ghost. How many enterprises right now are using Ghost to maintain and deploy PC's? Tons. Breaking it with CPRM hard drives will cost firms tons and tons of money spent in needless manual setup/maitenance on individual PC's.
Wired has become as lame as any Ziff-Davis corporate type publication. I used to love that magazine, it was THE shit back in 1995. But now it's just another corporate spin machine that favors the advertisers in the "story" content, the business model that made ZD the Borg of computer publishing.
Even though 2.4.0 was late, it was NEVER vaporware. It was out there for you to get months ago if you wanted it. It's simply not possible for an open source project like the Kernel to BE vaporware.
Take `Doze for example. I don't see Wired or ZD calling Whistler vaporware, even though 95% of everyone can't get ahold of it to see it, much less run it. And you know it will be released late, or full of bugs. Probably both.
Any government arrogant enough to think that they can block EVERYTHING is delusional.
Only a communist totalitarian government, that is so in love with itself, and drunk on it's own invincibility could possibly think they can do what the Chineese are attempting.
All I need to see to reinforce my conservative, individualist beliefs in Western Civilization is stuff like this. You see, we don't need to HIDE everything from our citizens to keep them from discovering what bill of goods Mao sold them.
At least, for now... Unfortunately, the USA is sliding towards such a system, and is besides China, the biggest enemy of free speech on the internet right now. I hope things change. Because I know for a fact, when the jackboots start rounding up the free thinkers with the "wrong" ideas, I'll be one of them.
Your obligations to Sprint: Pay us on time, do not offend us in ANY way.
Sprint's obligation to you, the customer:
None.
"It's more likely to be only 700 million years (better get all your affairs in order quickly =). Here's a link explaining why."
This is true, but it's possible that there will still be life on Earth up until the Sun boils away the oceans entirely (which will happen around 3 billion AD).
In 3 billion years, the Sun will be 50% brighter than it is today.
"The galactic "collision" might mean Sol ends up in the Andromeda galaxy instead of the Milky Way, but that's about it, since galaxies are mostly empty space.
"
I remember reading somewhere that the odds are 1 in 100,000 that Earth will be ejected from the Solar system during the collision, before Sol passes far enough into the Red Giant stage to burn Earth to a crisp.
Problem is, the Earth will end up a frozen ice ball. But I suppose it IS statistically possible (very long odds) that it could be captured by another star, and orbit at a comfortable distance.
"if your hyperdrive is fast enough. my rough guess suggests it'd have to be a good couple of orders of magnitude faster than light to meet your schedule..."
./ story a few months back, where scientists have already built a machine and proven that the speed of light can be exceeded? I think hyperdrive technology will exist within 200 years.
I think it will be possible to go infinitely fast once a hyperdrive is built. Remember the
"if your hyperdrive is cheap enough. what if your hyperdrive requires the equivalent of the entire world's manufacturing capability for years at a time to build?"
True, that is possible. But then, in 1945, an electronic computer took up a whole building, and cost the resources of a nation at war to built. 55 years later, there are computers small enough to wear on your wrist.
"if there isn't already someone there. especially someone very territorial. with bigger guns..."
If that was the case, Earth would have already been invaded. Any starfaring race in our galaxy would either have to be secretive and peaceful, or very distant from us.
"if cheap, portable method for making worlds habitable is available. north america wouldn't've been very popular if you had to bring your own air, water and dirt..."
Sol is an ordinary Class G2 star. There are millions of them in this galaxy alone. Earth is an average sized planet. We've already detected huge Jupiter like supergiant planets, and those systems probably have smaller terrestrial sized planets orbiting closer in (and they are far too small to observe from Earth).
Mine. Pure conjecture. As for 3,000, I predict we will have had hyperdrive for 800+ years. Remember, we settled North America in far less time, with a LOT smaller population.
I don't mean that we will be on EVERY planet, but that humans will spread out in enough places to be the majority species of the Milky Way.
What I can't at all fathom is when a "galactic empire" will be founded, and when Earth will cease to be the capital.
Keep in mind that the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda far before Sol becomes a RG, so all bets are off after then.
2020... We land on Mars
2030
2090... Human settlements on the Moon, Mars, Jovian and saturn moons.
2150... First attempt to travel to Alpha Centauri.
2160... Hyperdrive invented.
3000... Humans dominate galaxy.
3,000,000,000 Earth uninhabitable because of increase in solar luminosity.
5,000,000,000 All life on Earth dead because Sol is becoming a Red Giant.
Come on... I fired up my old `286 after Y2K, I'd owned it since 1990. It worked fine, although it was underpowered. It knew what the date was.
99.9999999% of the Y2K scare was a SCAM. After all, the 3rd world countries that were USING old `286 and `386 hardware didn't have problems.
I submit that the Y2K scam is RESPONSIBLE for the current tech market slump. Money was spent that companies didn't have, on stuff they didn't need. So today they don't have any to spend on new stuff they DO need.