You point out so-called victimless crimes (or perhaps those crimes where victims are dehumaninzed--such as the corporations who own the IP that you're stealing) is a concern.
#1: Corporations aren't human to begin with, so how can they possibly be "dehumanized"?
True, it doesn't make it illegal to skip commercials, but it's awfully close. What it says is that it's not not illegal to skip commercials or create a software program that will do so. Given current attitudes toward copyright this amounts to a prohibition of devices meant to allow this (remember TiVo and the controversy over its "commercial skip" feature?)
Please also consider the fact that Slashdot posters aren't the only people to interpret the law in the manner in which you object. Senator John McCain, for example, said that: "Americans have been recording TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for 30 years. Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for behavior they've been engaged in for more than a quarter century?"
Isn't it funny how it's always the other people who are unable to stop themselves before anything actually happens? It's always about those other more weak-minded individuals, but never really about ourselves.
All your story shows is that you're able to associate related stimuli. You see yourself in the driver's seet and you associate it with your experiences as a GTA player.
There are times when I've felt like driving a monster truck over the cars in front of me... surely those Monster Truck rallies should be made off-limits to impressionable children.
Let me get this straight. Nobody has the right to question your parenting skills, yet somehow you have the right to tell society what to do when you can't be bothered to be there to make those parenting decisions?
"If that is the case then why don't we just remove the age requirements for buying alcohol and cigarettes, driving, voting, and gambling?"
How about the fact that violent video games are nothing at all like alcohol (which gets you drunk), cigarettes (which cause cancer), driving (which can have people killed), voting (where kids become tools for their parents political preferences) or gambling (which can make people poor)? I could make the same ridiculous comparison about anything else that is ever sold to kids, since there are always parents that do not approve of something their kids have access to.
Fine, they are acting on behalf of the parents on the assumption that they might not approve of it. They're still making the decision in place of the parents whenever the parents can't be bothered to supervise their supposedly immature children.
They are deciding not to sell the game to your children on the assumption that the parents don't approve of it. In other words, they are acting on behalf of the parents on the assumption that the parents do not approve of it. That why I ask whether it's up to them to make that decision (or, like 10% of the stores, make the opposite decision). If the parents won't do anything about it, then why should the stores?
"But is it up to you to decide that for my children?"
You might as well ask whether it's up to the store to decide that for my children, for your children and for everybody else's children. How do you reconcile the fact that these kids are allowed to roam around the mall unsupervised with the notion that they're not old enough to choose for themselves what games they want to play? Indeed, is it the stores responsibility not to sell a game to a kid whose parents didn't care enough to accompany them?
I doubt they will do so through product activation. Instead, they will refuse to release any patches for Windows products that have reached their "End Of Life". Does your copy of Windows XP contain a bug that allows hackers to run arbitrary code on your computer? Tough luck! Once XP reaches its end of life you won't be able to download a patch for it. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they removed existing patches from circulation once Windows XP reaches its End of Life.
"I guess you do not know that Mein Kampf is not illegal in Germany, eh?"
Yes it is, if the book is unedited. Only edited versions of the book are permitted, and only if you are "really interested":
Late last year, controversy erupted in Germany over Amazon.com shipping copies of Mein Kampf to people in Germany. Prodded by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, Minister of Justice Hereto Däubler-Gmelin sent letters to Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com asking the booksellers to put a halt to sales of the book to people in Germany. Amazon.com agreed to ban such sales -- even though some people might have legitimate scholarly (or journalistic) reasons to want the book.
As a German Justice Ministry spokesman explained at the time: "If you go to a bookshop, the bookseller can have a look at you and decide if you are really interested, like if you are a student. It's not the book that's forbidden, it's selling it to everyone. If you sell it through the Internet, you don't know who wants to buy the book; you give it to everybody, and that's forbidden."
"The point is, you can buy Mein Kampf as a person being interested in historical events," she said. "There are versions of Mein Kampf that are edited, containing remarks explaining the things. But you can't buy the version having been sold during World War II. It's a criminal offense to sell in a non-edited version. In Germany, the only versions are edited versions. They are not the original copies.
"It's a criminal offense to sell it to persons who are interested in Nazi things and symbols. It's a problem of the different standards. I know that Mein Kampf is sold in the U.S., but it can't be sold here. The Internet makes it possible for everyone to get it. So you have to talk about standards and find a way of dealing with it."
So much for primary sources. Like I said, what you get is an edited view of things, and that's not good.
They do teach you history in Europe, but that's not quite the problem. In countries where primary sources of information such as Mein Kampf are illegal people are forced to reach conclusions from looking at secondary sources.
While there's no denying that Hitler was a villain, it is dangerous to rely on pre-digested analyses of Nazi philosophy. How will you guard yourselves against convincing arguments for twisted policies if all you know is that people like Hitler are worthy of contempt?
You shouldn't worry about the kinds of attitudes that are easily identified as prejudiced; worry instead about those prejudiced attitudes that seem [i]prima facie[/i] benign. The words "know your enemy" are among the wisest words ever spoken.
Exactly. There's no such thing as a hash function that doesn't produce collisions (assuming the data is allowed to grow longer than the checksum). All you need to do to produce a collision is to append a sequence of bytes that's longer than the resulting hash; it may take a very long time to discover a collision, but it's certainly possible to produce one regardless of the algorithm. It is not a problem unless you know how to produce a collision quickly enough to become practical.
The only way hackers can check passwords quickly enough to matter is if they manage to obtain access to the file that contains the checksums for the users' passwords. In Linux, at least, this is/etc/shadow, which can only be accessed by root. If a hacker has access to the files owned by root then you have much bigger problems than a hacker trying to guess at users' passwords.
"For example, Brohn said, some high definition television monitors are designed to be driven by computers, and in such instances, the work should be done by a certified television and radio technician to ensure that the expensive equipment is not damaged, Brohn said."
Oh please! If you're opening up the monitor in order to repair it then its clear that the licensing requirement applies, but if you're fixing computer equipment or attaching some cables to a monitor then you shouldn't need a license from the Radio and Television Technicians Board.
It's like the buggy whip manufacturers bitching about the sale of horseless carriages. Just get over it and don't expect the world to protect you from obsolescence.
As far as I'm concerned they're out of their jurisdiction, but that's something only a judge can determine. Everybody here is celebrating the FCC's decision, but to me this is just another hint at the fact that the FCC is attempting to regulate copying through their broadcast flag mandate.
I'd like to think that it's the job of Congress and not the FCC to regulate copying. Why is this an important distinction? Because congresspeople are elected, but FCC officials are appointed!
I hope this is not an excuse for the FCC to regulate the Internet. Would use of the public airwaves give them an excuse to regulate the Internet the way they regulate television and radio?
What I'd like to see is for email communications between buyers and sellers to be eliminated in favor of an ebay-internal communications system. All communications would be public and attached to the feedback system, giving people a much better idea of what's really going on "behind the scenes" for any particular feedback item. The only information kept private would be things like shipping addresses, email adresses and other sensitive information (it would be a violation of the rules to use these fields for anything other than their intended purpose).
If the ads are confusingly similar to the trademark then the party to blame should be the people who drafted the ad, but not Google. On the other hand, if the ads do not cause confusion then AdWords for competing products should be regarded as a legitimate form of advertising, like a company placing a big ad in a phonebook page that also contains his competitor's phone number.
Meanwhile, people's ability to access certain pages on library terminals is restricted by law. Children who cannot afford computers and internet service in their homes are the ones to suffer most as they're forced to deal with a second-class Internet
I think the problem is not so much with the wiretapping itself, which they can already do by installing a packet sniffer onto any of the systems between client and host, but with the requirement that ISPs bend over backwards to provide the FBI with easy access to people's communications. According to this story, the law could go so far as to require software makers to build back doors into server software. Can you imagine what would happen to P2P apps like Freenet if developers were required to introduce back doors into the code?
According to one of the stories in the write up, "legal experts said the 85-page filing includes language that could be interpreted as forcing companies to build back doors into everything from instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) programs to Microsoft's Xbox Live game service. The introduction of new services that did not support a back door for police would be outlawed, and companies would be given 15 months to make sure that existing services comply." If these experts are right then CALEA could certainly lead to mandatory backdoors in any kind of server software which facilitates communication between third parties (relative to the host). Stuff like Instant Messaging and P2P servers are the most likely candidates for such draconian measures.
I totally agree with you. Trusted computing does not benefit users as much as it benefits software manufacturers who wish to impose draconian restrictions over our use of software and media. Frankly, with stuff like DRM, the DMCA and now the FBI's attempt at forcing server software to include wiretapping capabilities, I fear for the future of free and unrestricted access to computing technology.
Slashdot Mirror
#2: Skipping commercials is not stealing.
It does NOT make it illegal to skip commercials.
True, it doesn't make it illegal to skip commercials, but it's awfully close. What it says is that it's not not illegal to skip commercials or create a software program that will do so. Given current attitudes toward copyright this amounts to a prohibition of devices meant to allow this (remember TiVo and the controversy over its "commercial skip" feature?)
Please also consider the fact that Slashdot posters aren't the only people to interpret the law in the manner in which you object. Senator John McCain, for example, said that: "Americans have been recording TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for 30 years. Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for behavior they've been engaged in for more than a quarter century?"
Isn't it funny how it's always the other people who are unable to stop themselves before anything actually happens? It's always about those other more weak-minded individuals, but never really about ourselves.
All your story shows is that you're able to associate related stimuli. You see yourself in the driver's seet and you associate it with your experiences as a GTA player.
There are times when I've felt like driving a monster truck over the cars in front of me... surely those Monster Truck rallies should be made off-limits to impressionable children.
Let me get this straight. Nobody has the right to question your parenting skills, yet somehow you have the right to tell society what to do when you can't be bothered to be there to make those parenting decisions?
You can't watch your kids 24/7, so naturally it is up to society to protect your children from the things you feel are not appropriate for them?
"If that is the case then why don't we just remove the age requirements for buying alcohol and cigarettes, driving, voting, and gambling?"
How about the fact that violent video games are nothing at all like alcohol (which gets you drunk), cigarettes (which cause cancer), driving (which can have people killed), voting (where kids become tools for their parents political preferences) or gambling (which can make people poor)? I could make the same ridiculous comparison about anything else that is ever sold to kids, since there are always parents that do not approve of something their kids have access to.
Fine, they are acting on behalf of the parents on the assumption that they might not approve of it. They're still making the decision in place of the parents whenever the parents can't be bothered to supervise their supposedly immature children.
They are deciding not to sell the game to your children on the assumption that the parents don't approve of it. In other words, they are acting on behalf of the parents on the assumption that the parents do not approve of it. That why I ask whether it's up to them to make that decision (or, like 10% of the stores, make the opposite decision). If the parents won't do anything about it, then why should the stores?
I totally agree with you. See my post for some additional comments along this line.
"But is it up to you to decide that for my children?"
You might as well ask whether it's up to the store to decide that for my children, for your children and for everybody else's children. How do you reconcile the fact that these kids are allowed to roam around the mall unsupervised with the notion that they're not old enough to choose for themselves what games they want to play? Indeed, is it the stores responsibility not to sell a game to a kid whose parents didn't care enough to accompany them?
I doubt they will do so through product activation. Instead, they will refuse to release any patches for Windows products that have reached their "End Of Life". Does your copy of Windows XP contain a bug that allows hackers to run arbitrary code on your computer? Tough luck! Once XP reaches its end of life you won't be able to download a patch for it. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they removed existing patches from circulation once Windows XP reaches its End of Life.
Yes it is, if the book is unedited. Only edited versions of the book are permitted, and only if you are "really interested":
So much for primary sources. Like I said, what you get is an edited view of things, and that's not good.
They do teach you history in Europe, but that's not quite the problem. In countries where primary sources of information such as Mein Kampf are illegal people are forced to reach conclusions from looking at secondary sources.
While there's no denying that Hitler was a villain, it is dangerous to rely on pre-digested analyses of Nazi philosophy. How will you guard yourselves against convincing arguments for twisted policies if all you know is that people like Hitler are worthy of contempt?
You shouldn't worry about the kinds of attitudes that are easily identified as prejudiced; worry instead about those prejudiced attitudes that seem [i]prima facie[/i] benign. The words "know your enemy" are among the wisest words ever spoken.
Exactly. There's no such thing as a hash function that doesn't produce collisions (assuming the data is allowed to grow longer than the checksum). All you need to do to produce a collision is to append a sequence of bytes that's longer than the resulting hash; it may take a very long time to discover a collision, but it's certainly possible to produce one regardless of the algorithm. It is not a problem unless you know how to produce a collision quickly enough to become practical.
The only way hackers can check passwords quickly enough to matter is if they manage to obtain access to the file that contains the checksums for the users' passwords. In Linux, at least, this is /etc/shadow, which can only be accessed by root. If a hacker has access to the files owned by root then you have much bigger problems than a hacker trying to guess at users' passwords.
It's like the buggy whip manufacturers bitching about the sale of horseless carriages. Just get over it and don't expect the world to protect you from obsolescence.
As far as I'm concerned they're out of their jurisdiction, but that's something only a judge can determine. Everybody here is celebrating the FCC's decision, but to me this is just another hint at the fact that the FCC is attempting to regulate copying through their broadcast flag mandate.
I'd like to think that it's the job of Congress and not the FCC to regulate copying. Why is this an important distinction? Because congresspeople are elected, but FCC officials are appointed!
You can't go wrong with the Canon XL-1. It's not water resistant, but I'm sure you can get a water-resistant/water-proof housing for it.
I hope this is not an excuse for the FCC to regulate the Internet. Would use of the public airwaves give them an excuse to regulate the Internet the way they regulate television and radio?
What I'd like to see is for email communications between buyers and sellers to be eliminated in favor of an ebay-internal communications system. All communications would be public and attached to the feedback system, giving people a much better idea of what's really going on "behind the scenes" for any particular feedback item. The only information kept private would be things like shipping addresses, email adresses and other sensitive information (it would be a violation of the rules to use these fields for anything other than their intended purpose).
If the ads are confusingly similar to the trademark then the party to blame should be the people who drafted the ad, but not Google. On the other hand, if the ads do not cause confusion then AdWords for competing products should be regarded as a legitimate form of advertising, like a company placing a big ad in a phonebook page that also contains his competitor's phone number.
Meanwhile, people's ability to access certain pages on library terminals is restricted by law. Children who cannot afford computers and internet service in their homes are the ones to suffer most as they're forced to deal with a second-class Internet
I think the problem is not so much with the wiretapping itself, which they can already do by installing a packet sniffer onto any of the systems between client and host, but with the requirement that ISPs bend over backwards to provide the FBI with easy access to people's communications. According to this story, the law could go so far as to require software makers to build back doors into server software. Can you imagine what would happen to P2P apps like Freenet if developers were required to introduce back doors into the code?
According to one of the stories in the write up, "legal experts said the 85-page filing includes language that could be interpreted as forcing companies to build back doors into everything from instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) programs to Microsoft's Xbox Live game service. The introduction of new services that did not support a back door for police would be outlawed, and companies would be given 15 months to make sure that existing services comply." If these experts are right then CALEA could certainly lead to mandatory backdoors in any kind of server software which facilitates communication between third parties (relative to the host). Stuff like Instant Messaging and P2P servers are the most likely candidates for such draconian measures.
I totally agree with you. Trusted computing does not benefit users as much as it benefits software manufacturers who wish to impose draconian restrictions over our use of software and media. Frankly, with stuff like DRM, the DMCA and now the FBI's attempt at forcing server software to include wiretapping capabilities, I fear for the future of free and unrestricted access to computing technology.