Sure, if the assistant principle had somehow shutdown the web site this might be justified, but he did not. He merely punished the student for violating the rules of the school, which to my mind is within his rights.
Why do you think a principal is entitled to punish a student for legal behavior committed off school grounds?
Was the web site downloadable on school PCs? If so, this is no different than a student being suspended for distributing an obscene parody pamphlet, or running down the halls yelling obscene things about the assistant principle.
If the principal didn't want the pages to be accessible on school PCs, then it's up to him to figure out how to block it using the censorware programs that school officials and Congressmen are so enamored of. It's not the same as running through the school shouting obscene things or distributing obscene pamphlets because:
It's not obscene, and therefore is constitutionally protected;
It's conducted off-campus and is therefore outside the legitimate authority of school officials;
Nobody who doesn't want to read it is forced to do so.
Freedom of speech is certainly sacrosanct, but...
If you feel the need to have a "but" in there, then you don't really think it's sacrosanct.
this boy's freedom of speech was not violated - he did not have to take down his web site (though he may have of his own accord).
I.e. "You're free to say anything you want, but don't complain when the government punishes you for doing so." How exactly is that freedom?
In the same way, you have every right to put up an independent parody web site criticizing your employer, but don't expect to keep your job when they find out.
Public schools are not the same as private employers. Employers are generally free to violate your constitutional rights as they see fit (with some restrictions, like firing for physical disabilities). But public schools are government institutions, teachers and principals are government employees, and therefore they are held liable when they violate your constitutional rights.
Securing copyright to the author? It won't. The author is SOL if he loses the original. (For an example, read John Gilmore's rant where he mentions that Sony's MiniDisc recorder's assumption that all analog music is copyrighted means he can't copy his own recording of his brother's wedding.) An external authority won't unlock it for you? If you have the time and money to pursue it legally, you can do so--but that's only an option for the most successful authors.
Limited terms? We won't have that either. We don't have it now...do CSS and Macrovision stop working on DVDs when the copyright expires? Of course not. And considering that copyright protection now lasts for generations, it's unlikely the DVDs will even be playable by the time copyright expires--assuming that Congress doesn't keep extending it.
Fair use? It won't happen. The FCC is requiring digital TVs to support copy protection, meaning they're taking away your right to time-shift even though the Supreme Court has affirmed that right. (How come nobody's suing the government for this?)
Lawrence Lessig is right--code is law. In passing the DMCA, Congress has essentially relinquished its constitutional mandate to oversee copyright law, and given up that authority to content producers themselves. The entertainment industry is free to determine whatever copyright policies they want, to create software to support them, and to usurp your rights. The DMCA's ban on circumvention gives them that power.
Poorer high-risk individuals would not be insured, and they would eventually need charity to pay their bills if they succumb to one of these genetic diseases. In such a society, with far fewer taxes, it would be much more common to donate money to charities and community organizations.
The current tax structure provides direct incentives for charity by allowing donations to be tax-deductible. Sharply cutting or eliminating taxes would remove that incentive. And when someone who objects to paying a few dollars extra in premiums to cover people at risk of genetic illness implies that charity would provide sufficient coverage if only taxes were lower, he's either being naive or disingenuous.
If you can predict it but the insurance company cannot (or is prohibited by law from doing so), then you can exploit the insurance company's ignorance. If this happens often enough, then the insurance company cannot make money, and goes out of business.
Insurance companies have existed for ages offering coverages for tons of diseases without the ability to genetically screen applicants, and they're not going out of business. They don't need to genetically discriminate. Denying them the ability to do so wouldn't pose a competitive threat to their business model--it would simply preserve the status quo, an environment that they've adapted to and that they prosper in.
If it cannot understand the risk (because it's prohibited from certain actions), then it must charge more for the insurance. Guess who pays this cost? Yep, all insurance customers do.
Exactly. All of us do. You don't have a one-on-one relationship with an insurer, where they bet that you personally will pay more in premiums than they pay out on your behalf. The risk is spread amongst a large pool of insured people. We all pay premiums, and our payments cover the claims of others. Sooner or later we'll be making our own claim, and others will pay for us. That's the whole point of insurance--to pool financial resources to cover present costs, while providing coverage to everyone who pays for it.
Keep this in mind: nobody is genetically perfect, and nobody is immortal. We all get sick, we all die, and many of us rack up some substantial bills in the process. Some diseases can be tested for genetically, and some can't. Who are you to insist that your premiums be lowered at the expense of others just because the insurance company hasn't figured out what's wrong with you?
The GPL says, "You can only use this code if you give up control of your own code to the GPL community." It places a limitation on how that code can be used!
Depends on how you define "control". Nobody forces you to release anything; if your code is for personal or internal business use, then you don't have to share it with anyone else no matter how much GPL stuff you've used. Nobody takes ownership of your code away from you. Nobody tells you you can't sell your software (although nobody has to pay you to use it). All it does is require you to grant others the same right to use any GPL-derived code you release as others granted you. <sarcasm>Yeah, that's such an onerous imposition on you.</sarcasm>
No, the GPL is concerned with forcing open other code. It is concerned with telling me that I can can't use GPL code unless I am willing to GPL my entire application. So I have a choice: release under GPL, or reinvent the wheel. I've done both, myself, but I really don't like the choice, either be forced to release GPL because I have no other option, or take the inefficient route of rewriting code I could have reused.
Third option--use code libraries from a non-GPL source such as a vendor of proprietary software. The license might place explicit limits on you like letting you use it only on one computer at a time, or forcing you to use it only in accordance with a specific API instead of giving you free rein to use as you see fit. It might force you to pay royalties for applications you distribute. It might even terminate your license if you say bad things about the vendor. But hey, if that suits your definition of "freedom" better than the GPL, then have a blast.
(This is the viral nature that you deny; you claim it keeps software in the OSS community. What, if MS incorporates BSD code it will suddenly disappear from millions of computers?
Of course not. It's much more insidious than that. Consider the case of Kerberos. The product of years of research and development, it was released by MIT under a license that allows it to be used, copied, modified, and distributed without limitations. Microsoft took that and stuck it into Win2K, adding proprietary extensions that break compatibility with other Kerberos implementations. Details of the extensions are available from Microsoft, but under a license that allows the information to be used only for analyzing the security of the extensions and expressly prohibits its use for reverse-engineering compatibility.
Do you think this is right?
Who controls your computer--you, or some corporation that wants only to suck money out of your wallet and will provide the lowest level of quality sufficient to keep the money coming in?
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think a principal is entitled to punish a student for legal behavior committed off school grounds?
If the principal didn't want the pages to be accessible on school PCs, then it's up to him to figure out how to block it using the censorware programs that school officials and Congressmen are so enamored of. It's not the same as running through the school shouting obscene things or distributing obscene pamphlets because:
If you feel the need to have a "but" in there, then you don't really think it's sacrosanct.
I.e. "You're free to say anything you want, but don't complain when the government punishes you for doing so." How exactly is that freedom?
Public schools are not the same as private employers. Employers are generally free to violate your constitutional rights as they see fit (with some restrictions, like firing for physical disabilities). But public schools are government institutions, teachers and principals are government employees, and therefore they are held liable when they violate your constitutional rights.
Securing copyright to the author? It won't. The author is SOL if he loses the original. (For an example, read John Gilmore's rant where he mentions that Sony's MiniDisc recorder's assumption that all analog music is copyrighted means he can't copy his own recording of his brother's wedding.) An external authority won't unlock it for you? If you have the time and money to pursue it legally, you can do so--but that's only an option for the most successful authors.
Limited terms? We won't have that either. We don't have it now...do CSS and Macrovision stop working on DVDs when the copyright expires? Of course not. And considering that copyright protection now lasts for generations, it's unlikely the DVDs will even be playable by the time copyright expires--assuming that Congress doesn't keep extending it.
Fair use? It won't happen. The FCC is requiring digital TVs to support copy protection, meaning they're taking away your right to time-shift even though the Supreme Court has affirmed that right. (How come nobody's suing the government for this?)
Lawrence Lessig is right--code is law. In passing the DMCA, Congress has essentially relinquished its constitutional mandate to oversee copyright law, and given up that authority to content producers themselves. The entertainment industry is free to determine whatever copyright policies they want, to create software to support them, and to usurp your rights. The DMCA's ban on circumvention gives them that power.
The current tax structure provides direct incentives for charity by allowing donations to be tax-deductible. Sharply cutting or eliminating taxes would remove that incentive. And when someone who objects to paying a few dollars extra in premiums to cover people at risk of genetic illness implies that charity would provide sufficient coverage if only taxes were lower, he's either being naive or disingenuous.
Insurance companies have existed for ages offering coverages for tons of diseases without the ability to genetically screen applicants, and they're not going out of business. They don't need to genetically discriminate. Denying them the ability to do so wouldn't pose a competitive threat to their business model--it would simply preserve the status quo, an environment that they've adapted to and that they prosper in.
Exactly. All of us do. You don't have a one-on-one relationship with an insurer, where they bet that you personally will pay more in premiums than they pay out on your behalf. The risk is spread amongst a large pool of insured people. We all pay premiums, and our payments cover the claims of others. Sooner or later we'll be making our own claim, and others will pay for us. That's the whole point of insurance--to pool financial resources to cover present costs, while providing coverage to everyone who pays for it.
Keep this in mind: nobody is genetically perfect, and nobody is immortal. We all get sick, we all die, and many of us rack up some substantial bills in the process. Some diseases can be tested for genetically, and some can't. Who are you to insist that your premiums be lowered at the expense of others just because the insurance company hasn't figured out what's wrong with you?
Do you think this is right?
Who controls your computer--you, or some corporation that wants only to suck money out of your wallet and will provide the lowest level of quality sufficient to keep the money coming in?