The reason companies pull this kind of crap is that they have to pay the insurance premiums. It's not about the employee missing work, it's about the medical costs. Every high-risk employee they can screen out becomes somebody else's problem. Health insurance should not be a point of contention between employee and employer.
From this point forward Napster will be little more than an R&D lab for the recording industry, which now seems to have legal license to force Napster to install whatever copy protection widgets they want to field test. The RIAA couldn't ask for a better development platform to further their own schemes. Sean, I admire you immensely and I hate to say this, but Napster is completely in the hands of the Dark Side now. It's time to push that big red button and get the hell out.
Good points about trademark protection in general. The public tends not to understand the legal necessity of demonstrating the intent to protect a mark. Fortunately, some of us do understand the difference between doing that and suing a political candidate for $15 million. That's why my wife and I and a number of our friends cut up our MasterCards.
As interruption-based advertising gains popularity, we will start seeing browser plug-ins that can detect some sort of signature in the ads and mute them, maybe displaying some alternative content of your choice, while convincing the server that you have viewed the ads. I wonder on what grounds the advertising industry will sue the developers... copyright infringement? How about fraud? All they would have to do is stick a license agreement on the front of the content, which the muteware will be violating by lying to the server. Maybe we'll even get a DCIA (Digital Content Integrity Act) making it illegal to distribute software that alters content on the clent side.
The makers of Galaxy Quest put up a fake fan site, which I still think is just part of the fun. But who knows, maybe they were actually trying to fool people.
Obscene phone calls are illegal, but you can
ANSWER a call any way you like. Transmitting an
obscene or offensive reply over a phone line to someone who has called YOU has never been a crime. As in, "No thanks, I don't need another credit card, but I would really like you to blow me." So how does this change when the two people at the ends of the connection put computers between them and the line? I don't think it does.
Would there be a rationale for censorship if the legal system regarded the Internet as a vast network of wires connecting pairs of endpoints, which it is, rather than as a vast, open landscape littered with giant billboards, which it isn't?
On the other hand, what would have happened if, say 20 years ago, a few bored people decided to start answering their home phones with lewd sexual dialog, or by explaining how to make nitroglycerine. Eventually kids would have learned about these numbers and started called them from school. I wonder if the phone companies would then have been sued for failing to screen the content of those calls, and if we would now have things like V-chips built into our phones?
In a related article
astronomers say that as many as 300 billion black holes may have once dominated the early universe. I'm not challenging this statement, but where did they go? I always thought that black-hole-ness was pretty much the end of the line for any chunk of matter. Shouldn't they still be there?
As a former owner of several thousand shares of Iridium stock, I can give an illustration of how bankruptcy works. It works like this: you walk into Burger King and put a penny on the counter, then you go across the street to McDonalds and take 50 Big Macs out of their freezer. That's how bankruptcy works.
Through the bankruptcy mechanism, somebody can pay somebody else (I'm not sure who) $25 million, and suddenly own all the assets that you and thousands of other stockholders used to own and never agreed to sell. I'm glad the satellites are still up there doing some good rather than being ditched, but a free phone would be nice, or maybe a thank you card.
Never heard a complaint about Macrovision signal quality? Read on, MacDuff.
I have played DOZENS of Macrovision tapes on two different VCRs made by different manufacturers, and the picture invariably shudders and shakes for the first few minutes of EVERY SINGLE ONE. Regular tapes play fine. Don't tell me to clean the heads, rewind the tapes a few times or adjust the tracking. Been there, done that.
On the other hand, tapes I record from cable play great. So now you have heard a complaint about Macrovision picture quality, okay?
Having ren-ren-ren-ren-ren-ren-rented VHS tapes pro-pro-pro-pro-protected by Mac-mac-mac-mac-mac-macrovision, I shud-ud-ud-ud-ud-ud-ud-udder to think what their aud-aud-aud-aud-aud-audio protection will sou-sou-sou-sou-sou-sound li-li-li-li-li-li-like.
I would only pay for online content that is unavailable for free. I sort of bristle at the term "people who do content as a hobby" to describe noncommercial content. "Publicly generated content" would be a better term. I favor letting commercial interests fend for themselves, and providing a certain amount of publicly owned, publicly available hardware, with load-sensitive automatic mirroring that makes the most popular content most accessible. In other words a PBS that actually is Public.
Yeah, maybe the kid had the legal right to publicly ridicule his vice principal on the Internet. But if I have a legal right to walk back and forth in front of my neighbor's house carrying a picture of his mom having sex with a donkey, wouldn't I still be kind of a butthole for doing it?
Suppose I did do exactly that, and my neighbor understandably got pissed off, and did something an understandably pissed off person might do, like kick my ass. Then the ACLU lawyers would heroically swoop in and get me $10,000 for my rights being violated, collecting a snappy $52,000 for their own trouble. It's kind of hard to tell who the good guys are any more.
Sometimes I think the First Amendment should read, "You have the right to act like a dickhead."
Sean Fanning is a very cool guy who did a phenomenal thing that will go down in history. He and Napster will both be remembered a lot longer than Hillary Rosen and the faceless suits who probably think they have defeated file sharing. They haven't. What Ankarino Lara said a couple weeks ago on ZDNet is true. Napster users are not going to be fanatically loyal to Napster or Sean Fanning and go along with whatever kind of blackmail is arranged. Most of us won't be paying the RIAA one cent thru Napster fees. We will simply go somewhere else, and there will be plenty of places to go.
Thank you Sean. It would have been really cool if Napster had prevailed in court. It would have been really cool if Jimi Hendrix had lived another 20 years. We deal.
Beyond its technical minimalism (location shooting only, no added props, no added lighting, hand-held camera only...) the Vow even limits content (no murders, weapons or "genre" films) and prohibits the director even getting credit for the work. Yet, ironically, there are some rules even they forgot to include:
11. No smoking.
12. No tattoos.
13. Martinis are to be shaken, not stirred.
14. No tag lines (Arnold: I'll be back"; Keanu: "Whoa").
15. Film crew must be nude from the waist up.
16. No animal products.
17. No peanut butter anywhere except on bread.
18. No "The making of..." documentaries; the production process itself may be filmed for insurance purposes only.
19. Farts must not be edited out.
20. Only actual space aliens may appear as space aliens, but they may be costumed or made up as different races of space aliens.
We would live in a better world if these rules were applied universally to both the film and game industries, especially the one about the peanut butter.
Years ago when the first so-called "test tube baby" was born, the media went ga-ga for awhile, but predictably lost interest after it was obvious that this was just an ordinary, boring infant, without antennas or telekinetic powers.
Cloned humans will have all the emotions and personal idiosyncracies you and I do, and will probably react the way most of us would if a drooling bunch of media twits treat them like a sideshow.
Well score one for your ego. You could also use Lynx forever I guess, but there's not much incentive for hundreds of thousands of web programmers to accommodate your eccentricity.
To take a contrary point of view, the promise of an era of free information may involve a loss of privacy for all of us, but it might be worth it. Protecting our private information presents the same challenges as protecting copyrighted information, and I think it involves the same principles. You want to control some information you think you own, but somebody else wants to distribute it for their own purposes. Doesn't that sound a little like Napster?
Protecting privacy can't be done with technology, it can only be done with lawyers. I would rather see the legal climate lean away from privileged information and more toward free information of all sorts. Giving up more privacy in exchange for more free stuff is a good exchange.
Besides, the idea that web surfing is a private act is an illusion. It only seems that way because you can do it in a dark room by yourself. But the web isn't in your living room, it's Out There. If you want privacy, use email. If you want to take a stroll down Madison Avenue, surf the web, and don't be surprised if somebody takes your picture.
Perhaps a website with 10,000 people's credit card numbers would have no positive economic value, but a database of 10,000 people's buying histories would have obvious positive economic value. Advertisers have been buying each other's mailing lists for decades. They would probably argue that more efficiently targeted advertising dollars ultimately benefits the consumer, since the cost of advertising is built into the price of everything. It's easy to rationalize your own point of view. Obviously "private" information can be every bit as valuable as intellectual property, and that's why people interested in using it are being as clever as people interested in free music, for example.
People may choose to view the issue of information control through different lenses, but the technical challenges to individuals trying to control their private information are the same ones facing publishers trying to control the works they own. Recent history simply doesn't support the view that either group will succeed. Haggling over unenforceable legal concepts is pointless. Establishing unenforceable laws does nothing but make people feel righteous, which I suppose might have therapeutic value, but its main value is probably to the multibillion dollar litigation industry. I'd prefer that my tax dollars be spent elsewhere.
Isn't the issue of protecting personal data the same issue as protecting copyrighted data? Apart from the David and Goliath thing, which is purely perceptual, how are the two issues different? It seems a bit hypocritical to trade music on Napster and then get all bent out of shape about other people using cookies and web bugs. I'm not talking about legalities, I'm talking about the basic nature of both issues: somebody has some information they think should be under their control, and somebody else with a different opinion does something out of control with it.
It seems to me that legal and technical attempts to hide or protect personal data will run into the same problems as copyright protection. They just won't work. So can we just grow up and take the bitter with the sweet? Free music, free software and free information in general are great things. But if somebody else's information isn't sacred, why should mine be? I don't see why surfing the web should be any different from walking down the street in broad daylight. We're used to the idea that it's different, because we can do it in a dark room, seemingly away from prying eyes. But if that turns out not to be the case, well there goes the neighborhood, but that's just progress. Live with it and quit whining.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like mundane Crowd Control plans to me, not sinister Attack Plans.
The reason companies pull this kind of crap is that they have to pay the insurance premiums. It's not about the employee missing work, it's about the medical costs. Every high-risk employee they can screen out becomes somebody else's problem. Health insurance should not be a point of contention between employee and employer.
It's a step forward for the copyright ownership industry, not for the artists.
From this point forward Napster will be little more than an R&D lab for the recording industry, which now seems to have legal license to force Napster to install whatever copy protection widgets they want to field test. The RIAA couldn't ask for a better development platform to further their own schemes. Sean, I admire you immensely and I hate to say this, but Napster is completely in the hands of the Dark Side now. It's time to push that big red button and get the hell out.
Two relatively recent Supreme Court decisions which upheld parody and satire as forms of free speech:
Hustler Magazine, Inc. vs. Rev. Jerry Falwell, over a satirical account of Falwell's first sexual experience (with his mother).
2 Live Crew vs. Acuff-Rose Music, over a parody of the Roy Orbison song, "Pretty Woman."
Good points about trademark protection in general. The public tends not to understand the legal necessity of demonstrating the intent to protect a mark. Fortunately, some of us do understand the difference between doing that and suing a political candidate for $15 million. That's why my wife and I and a number of our friends cut up our MasterCards.
yeah, it reads like teenage dialog written by a 40-year-old.
As interruption-based advertising gains popularity, we will start seeing browser plug-ins that can detect some sort of signature in the ads and mute them, maybe displaying some alternative content of your choice, while convincing the server that you have viewed the ads. I wonder on what grounds the advertising industry will sue the developers... copyright infringement? How about fraud? All they would have to do is stick a license agreement on the front of the content, which the muteware will be violating by lying to the server. Maybe we'll even get a DCIA (Digital Content Integrity Act) making it illegal to distribute software that alters content on the clent side.
Any bets?
The makers of Galaxy Quest put up a fake fan site, which I still think is just part of the fun. But who knows, maybe they were actually trying to fool people.
Obscene phone calls are illegal, but you can ANSWER a call any way you like. Transmitting an obscene or offensive reply over a phone line to someone who has called YOU has never been a crime. As in, "No thanks, I don't need another credit card, but I would really like you to blow me." So how does this change when the two people at the ends of the connection put computers between them and the line? I don't think it does.
Would there be a rationale for censorship if the legal system regarded the Internet as a vast network of wires connecting pairs of endpoints, which it is, rather than as a vast, open landscape littered with giant billboards, which it isn't?
On the other hand, what would have happened if, say 20 years ago, a few bored people decided to start answering their home phones with lewd sexual dialog, or by explaining how to make nitroglycerine. Eventually kids would have learned about these numbers and started called them from school. I wonder if the phone companies would then have been sued for failing to screen the content of those calls, and if we would now have things like V-chips built into our phones?
In a related article astronomers say that as many as 300 billion black holes may have once dominated the early universe. I'm not challenging this statement, but where did they go? I always thought that black-hole-ness was pretty much the end of the line for any chunk of matter. Shouldn't they still be there?
As a former owner of several thousand shares of Iridium stock, I can give an illustration of how bankruptcy works. It works like this: you walk into Burger King and put a penny on the counter, then you go across the street to McDonalds and take 50 Big Macs out of their freezer. That's how bankruptcy works.
Through the bankruptcy mechanism, somebody can pay somebody else (I'm not sure who) $25 million, and suddenly own all the assets that you and thousands of other stockholders used to own and never agreed to sell. I'm glad the satellites are still up there doing some good rather than being ditched, but a free phone would be nice, or maybe a thank you card.
about EVERYTHING. If you've ever met the man you know his emotional state has 2 levels: full-tilt and unconscious.
Never heard a complaint about Macrovision signal quality? Read on, MacDuff.
I have played DOZENS of Macrovision tapes on two different VCRs made by different manufacturers, and the picture invariably shudders and shakes for the first few minutes of EVERY SINGLE ONE. Regular tapes play fine. Don't tell me to clean the heads, rewind the tapes a few times or adjust the tracking. Been there, done that.
On the other hand, tapes I record from cable play great. So now you have heard a complaint about Macrovision picture quality, okay?
Having ren-ren-ren-ren-ren-ren-rented VHS tapes pro-pro-pro-pro-protected by Mac-mac-mac-mac-mac-macrovision, I shud-ud-ud-ud-ud-ud-ud-udder to think what their aud-aud-aud-aud-aud-audio protection will sou-sou-sou-sou-sou-sound li-li-li-li-li-li-like.
Is /. running a score-bot or something? What jackass rated this off-topic piece of crap "1:Interesting" ???
I would only pay for online content that is unavailable for free. I sort of bristle at the term "people who do content as a hobby" to describe noncommercial content. "Publicly generated content" would be a better term. I favor letting commercial interests fend for themselves, and providing a certain amount of publicly owned, publicly available hardware, with load-sensitive automatic mirroring that makes the most popular content most accessible. In other words a PBS that actually is Public.
Yeah, maybe the kid had the legal right to publicly ridicule his vice principal on the Internet. But if I have a legal right to walk back and forth in front of my neighbor's house carrying a picture of his mom having sex with a donkey, wouldn't I still be kind of a butthole for doing it?
Suppose I did do exactly that, and my neighbor understandably got pissed off, and did something an understandably pissed off person might do, like kick my ass. Then the ACLU lawyers would heroically swoop in and get me $10,000 for my rights being violated, collecting a snappy $52,000 for their own trouble. It's kind of hard to tell who the good guys are any more.
Sometimes I think the First Amendment should read, "You have the right to act like a dickhead."
Sean Fanning is a very cool guy who did a phenomenal thing that will go down in history. He and Napster will both be remembered a lot longer than Hillary Rosen and the faceless suits who probably think they have defeated file sharing. They haven't. What Ankarino Lara said a couple weeks ago on ZDNet is true. Napster users are not going to be fanatically loyal to Napster or Sean Fanning and go along with whatever kind of blackmail is arranged. Most of us won't be paying the RIAA one cent thru Napster fees. We will simply go somewhere else, and there will be plenty of places to go.
Thank you Sean. It would have been really cool if Napster had prevailed in court. It would have been really cool if Jimi Hendrix had lived another 20 years. We deal.
Beyond its technical minimalism (location shooting only, no added props, no added lighting, hand-held camera only...) the Vow even limits content (no murders, weapons or "genre" films) and prohibits the director even getting credit for the work. Yet, ironically, there are some rules even they forgot to include:
11. No smoking.12. No tattoos.
13. Martinis are to be shaken, not stirred.
14. No tag lines (Arnold: I'll be back"; Keanu: "Whoa").
15. Film crew must be nude from the waist up.
16. No animal products.
17. No peanut butter anywhere except on bread.
18. No "The making of..." documentaries; the production process itself may be filmed for insurance purposes only.
19. Farts must not be edited out.
20. Only actual space aliens may appear as space aliens, but they may be costumed or made up as different races of space aliens.
We would live in a better world if these rules were applied universally to both the film and game industries, especially the one about the peanut butter.
Years ago when the first so-called "test tube baby" was born, the media went ga-ga for awhile, but predictably lost interest after it was obvious that this was just an ordinary, boring infant, without antennas or telekinetic powers. Cloned humans will have all the emotions and personal idiosyncracies you and I do, and will probably react the way most of us would if a drooling bunch of media twits treat them like a sideshow.
Well score one for your ego. You could also use Lynx forever I guess, but there's not much incentive for hundreds of thousands of web programmers to accommodate your eccentricity.
To take a contrary point of view, the promise of an era of free information may involve a loss of privacy for all of us, but it might be worth it. Protecting our private information presents the same challenges as protecting copyrighted information, and I think it involves the same principles. You want to control some information you think you own, but somebody else wants to distribute it for their own purposes. Doesn't that sound a little like Napster?
Protecting privacy can't be done with technology, it can only be done with lawyers. I would rather see the legal climate lean away from privileged information and more toward free information of all sorts. Giving up more privacy in exchange for more free stuff is a good exchange.
Besides, the idea that web surfing is a private act is an illusion. It only seems that way because you can do it in a dark room by yourself. But the web isn't in your living room, it's Out There. If you want privacy, use email. If you want to take a stroll down Madison Avenue, surf the web, and don't be surprised if somebody takes your picture.
Perhaps a website with 10,000 people's credit card numbers would have no positive economic value, but a database of 10,000 people's buying histories would have obvious positive economic value. Advertisers have been buying each other's mailing lists for decades. They would probably argue that more efficiently targeted advertising dollars ultimately benefits the consumer, since the cost of advertising is built into the price of everything. It's easy to rationalize your own point of view. Obviously "private" information can be every bit as valuable as intellectual property, and that's why people interested in using it are being as clever as people interested in free music, for example.
People may choose to view the issue of information control through different lenses, but the technical challenges to individuals trying to control their private information are the same ones facing publishers trying to control the works they own. Recent history simply doesn't support the view that either group will succeed. Haggling over unenforceable legal concepts is pointless. Establishing unenforceable laws does nothing but make people feel righteous, which I suppose might have therapeutic value, but its main value is probably to the multibillion dollar litigation industry. I'd prefer that my tax dollars be spent elsewhere.
Isn't the issue of protecting personal data the same issue as protecting copyrighted data? Apart from the David and Goliath thing, which is purely perceptual, how are the two issues different? It seems a bit hypocritical to trade music on Napster and then get all bent out of shape about other people using cookies and web bugs. I'm not talking about legalities, I'm talking about the basic nature of both issues: somebody has some information they think should be under their control, and somebody else with a different opinion does something out of control with it.
It seems to me that legal and technical attempts to hide or protect personal data will run into the same problems as copyright protection. They just won't work. So can we just grow up and take the bitter with the sweet? Free music, free software and free information in general are great things. But if somebody else's information isn't sacred, why should mine be? I don't see why surfing the web should be any different from walking down the street in broad daylight. We're used to the idea that it's different, because we can do it in a dark room, seemingly away from prying eyes. But if that turns out not to be the case, well there goes the neighborhood, but that's just progress. Live with it and quit whining.