First it was the DMCA, then SOPA and PIPA. Now it looks like Europe is likewise adopting the model of taking down content based on claims of infringement/illegality rather than actual infringement or illegality. From TFA: "This could be combined with a ‘notice and take down’ system under which law enforcement agencies would assess flagged web pages and forward take down notices to ISPs if the content is believed to contravene national laws."
There's also a major flaw in this plan: Crowdsourcing is only as good as your crowd, which in this case is likely to consist mostly of idiots.
The US Federal Government seizes websites on claims of copyright and trademark infringement, congress proposes bills (SOPA and PROTECT-IP) that force American ISPs to block websites accused of such infringement, and now we hear that Ireland wants to force ISPs to block alleged "pirate" websites? Is this all just coincidence, or is there a coordinated effort afoot to impose these kinds of restrictions on as many sovereign nations as possible?
The whole point of a restraining order is to prohibit harassing behavior without tossing the culprit in jail.
I have no problem with an order that prohibits harassing behavior, but a blog post is not by itself a form of harassment. Given the First Amendment protects the content of people's speech, the restraining order against this man should only address his behavior.
Carefully toeing the line of what your restraining order will let you do is a good way to get a 500 page restraining order where you have to ask the permission of the court to fart.
By "carefully toeing the line" I presume you mean "not actually violating the restraining order"?
The man should be punished for harassing his ex-girlfriend. Depriving him of his First Amendment rights, however, should not be part of that punishment.
How the fuck is this trampling on free speech? It is clearly speech that is NOT covered as political or in the public interest
How the hell did you get modded "insightful"? Speech need not be "political" or "in the public interest" to be worthy of protection under the First Amendment.
. What it's going to allow them to do is take down access to sites like The Pirate Bay that are "dedicated" (this word appears a lot in the wikipedia article) to copyright infringement. It's not going to be used to take down legitimate sites.
Who gets to define which sites are legitimate and which are not?
Keep in mind that SOPA allows for websites to be blocked and denied financial support without so much as a trial. If there's any doubt about a website's involvement in copyright infringement, a trial would resolve that. Under SOPA, however, the government no longer has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a website is guilty of infringement. This makes it a great deal easier for either the government or copyright holders to shut down allegedly infringing websites, the website having little or no opportunity to establish its innocence.
Would YouTube still exist had SOPA been in effect when Viacom decided YouTube was guilty of copyright infringement?
Is Carrier IQ collecting data from customers without their knowledge? Does the FBI have warrants granting them access to those customers' data? If the answer to the former is yes and the answer to the latter is no, what we have is quite literally a warrantless wiretap. It's just that the wiretapping is being carried out by a different party than the one that's supposed to get a warrant.
"Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized dozens of domain names as part of Operation in Our Sites. Among them was DaJaz1.com, a site from which Special Agent Andrew Reynolds said he'd downloaded pirated music."
This is what happens when domains are seized on the basis of mere accusations. Instead of the government having to prove that a website's operators are guilty of copyright infringement, the claim alone is enough for the feds to seize a domain that will only be returned either as a gesture of "good will" or if the website's operators can prove they are innocent of that which they haven't been formally accused. Those responsible for such a policy should be ashamed of themselves and their perversion of justice.
Normal users have lived with the crapware infested mess that is "general PCs" for years, and they HATE IT. They want something better, and walled gardens are that thing.
The "something better" people want is not walled gardens as such, but platforms that aren't subject to crapware infestations. Walled gardens no doubt provide some defense against crapware, but I don't think they provide the best defense and besides have other problems one should take into account before saying they're the better approach. I don't want closed systems. I want secure systems.
General use PCs have proven to become virus/worms/problem infested in the hands of "normal" users..
But they don't have to be. It's possible to design an operating system so it's reasonably secure without mandating a "walled garden" approach. A platform that's only secure when software distribution is tightly controlled is properly called insecure.
If the goal is to prevent worms and viruses, let's design a platform that's secure rather than one that is closed.
Does the court really have the authority to force "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" to remove these domain names from their respective websites? It seems like too broad a target for an injunction, but perhaps I'm mistaken?
Just to clarify, I am assuming such orders would not apply to companies outside the US. The question is whether or not the court has the authority to force all US-based search engines and all US-based social media websites to block the domains in question. That the judge thinks he does have the authority is very troubling.
Does the court really have the authority to force "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" to remove these domain names from their respective websites? It seems like too broad a target for an injunction, but perhaps I'm mistaken?
Is it censorship to not look at things I don't want to and now allow them to be seen by people using equipment I have authority over?
If you're asking "Is it censorship to not look at things I don't want to?", the answer is no. If you're asking "Is it censorship to not allow them to be seen by people using equipment I have authority over?", the answer is yes.
I'm sorry, but writing this off as "bad patent" will do nothing by hurt any claims that the system is broken.
Not necessarily. Taking GPS coordinates and using them to retrieve location-specific information is nothing more than an obvious application of GPS technology. Whether or not the patent is enforceable would therefore depend on whether or not the particular method covered by the patent is obvious.
Assuming the patent is enforceable, one could still make the argument that allowing such patents does nothing to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, in which case it's a perfect example of why the patent system is broken.
Would it really hurt to follow standard practices and explain what the acronym is the first time it's used?
Sorry about that. I assumed a tech-savvy crowd like Slashdot would be at least somewhat familiar with the bill in question, but I guess there's so much content on the Internet these days that what once would have been common knowledge online is now lost in the noise. It also doesn't help that SOPA and its counterpart in the Senate are known by two other names: the "E-PARASITE Act" and the "PROTECT IP Act", which no doubt serves to dilute people's attention.
The second link does state that SOPA stands for "Stop Online Piracy Act", but then Slashdotters often don't read anything beyond the summary. I suppose the bright side is that people looking for what SOPA stands for might end up learning more about it through their efforts.
If someone wants to sell by distance into a particular jurisdiction, it is perfectly reasonable to expect them to adhere to that jurisdiction's laws.
Not necessarily. In the United States, only the Federal Government may regulate interstate commerce and therefore only they may impose upon retailers the burden of collecting taxes on items sent out of state. As such, it is not at all reasonable to expect online retailers to adhere to non-local, non-Federal tax laws.
It would be a different story if the law were Federal (as the one being proposed), but I don't want any such law if abiding by it becomes as complex as having to deal with all the different tax laws currently in place across the United States. Fix that first or I'll never accept the supposed fairness of a national sales tax.
And it certainly is a retailer's responsibility to pay taxes on the items it sells, so I'm not sure what you mean by your claim.
Sales tax is owed by the customer and collected and remitted to the state by the retailer.
Retailers that don't collect taxes for other states are not evading taxes; They're simply not collecting them on behalf of the government.
From what I've heard you're saying it's better to tax the poor more because you'll also tax the rich more.
No. I'm saying the poor shouldn't have a greater burden than the rich. Sales taxes create such a burden (relative to income), which is why I oppose them.
I'm also not proposing a flat tax. I have no problem with the insanely rich paying a greater portion of their income than the poor.
It's only seems a more significant burden because they are trying to do something a local retailer is not: sell in more than one market. A local store that opens a few branch locations also has to deal with the same thing.
It doesn't matter how many branch locations there are. The point is that while the burden to each locally-managed branch location is to deal with local taxes and only local taxes, the burden to online retailers would be to deal with the tax laws of each and every jurisdiction they ship to. Given the nature of mail-order businesses is to ship to as many places as possible, it would indeed be a greater burden on them than to local branches and their parent companies.
I'm just saying the state sales taxes should be applied evenly to everyone who sells in those states.
Keep in mind it's not a retailer's responsibility to pay taxes on the items it sells. That is the buyer's responsibility, and no state has the right to impose the burden of tax collection upon those retailers who have no physical presence in that state. Should the Federal Government impose such a burden, the burden to online retailers should ideally be no greater than the burden to those who run local businesses.
Since the existence on loopholes in inevitable with income taxes but pretty difficult/ineffective with sales taxes, yes it is.
Except that not all loopholes are inevitable, and those that remain don't necessarily make the system inferior. A tax on bubble gum sales has fewer loopholes than a tax on people's income, but only an idiot would think the bubble gum tax is superior because of it.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
It's really quite simple: Rich people spend less in proportion to their income than do poor people. As such, sales taxes are a greater burden on the poor than the rich.
I hope you're not falling for the logical fallacy that the Poor & Middle-Classes paying the vast majority of the taxes is a bad thing.
I fail to see how this has anything at all to do with any kind of logical fallacy, but in any case it's not at all what I'm saying. I'm thinking in terms of individual contributors rather than the collective contributions of entire classes of people.
Bold assumption you make there. It completely ignores all of the income-tax deductions/loop-holes that allow "the rich" to artificially lower their gross income to those of the middle-class. I know from personal experience that someone who makes almost double then me is able to get his adjustable gross income lower than me because he can take deductions and itemize his taxes and I cannot.
The existence of loopholes is not a point in favor of sales tax, but rather a problem that needs addressing. The sentence you quoted was in reference to the fact that taxes from retail sales constitute less of a rich person's total income than the total income of those who aren't rich. Rich people with small bank accounts and lots of toys are an exception to this, but those are not the kinds of rich people I am talking about when I say that sales taxes affect the rich least of all.
This hasn't happened up to now mainly because of concern over merchants being able to successfully know and apply all the tax rules in every jurisdiction they sell in. But that's always been a requirement of doing business in a locality, it shouldn't stop now;
The need "to know and apply all the sales tax rules in every jurisdiction" is a much more significant burden to online retailers than it is to local ones. Local retailers, regardless of who owns them, are run by people local to the state, meaning each retail location need only be familiar with the laws in effect at that location. Online business will generally ship anywhere within the US, significantly complicating things for the single entity whose job it is to deal with all the different sales tax laws.
If the Federal Government wants a national sales tax, let them come up with a tax scheme that is at least as simple as that of the European Union.
Slashdot Mirror
First it was the DMCA, then SOPA and PIPA. Now it looks like Europe is likewise adopting the model of taking down content based on claims of infringement/illegality rather than actual infringement or illegality. From TFA: "This could be combined with a ‘notice and take down’ system under which law enforcement agencies would assess flagged web pages and forward take down notices to ISPs if the content is believed to contravene national laws."
There's also a major flaw in this plan: Crowdsourcing is only as good as your crowd, which in this case is likely to consist mostly of idiots.
The US Federal Government seizes websites on claims of copyright and trademark infringement, congress proposes bills (SOPA and PROTECT-IP) that force American ISPs to block websites accused of such infringement, and now we hear that Ireland wants to force ISPs to block alleged "pirate" websites? Is this all just coincidence, or is there a coordinated effort afoot to impose these kinds of restrictions on as many sovereign nations as possible?
I have no problem with an order that prohibits harassing behavior, but a blog post is not by itself a form of harassment. Given the First Amendment protects the content of people's speech, the restraining order against this man should only address his behavior.
By "carefully toeing the line" I presume you mean "not actually violating the restraining order"?
The man should be punished for harassing his ex-girlfriend. Depriving him of his First Amendment rights, however, should not be part of that punishment.
How the hell did you get modded "insightful"? Speech need not be "political" or "in the public interest" to be worthy of protection under the First Amendment.
Who gets to define which sites are legitimate and which are not?
Keep in mind that SOPA allows for websites to be blocked and denied financial support without so much as a trial. If there's any doubt about a website's involvement in copyright infringement, a trial would resolve that. Under SOPA, however, the government no longer has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a website is guilty of infringement. This makes it a great deal easier for either the government or copyright holders to shut down allegedly infringing websites, the website having little or no opportunity to establish its innocence.
Would YouTube still exist had SOPA been in effect when Viacom decided YouTube was guilty of copyright infringement?
Is Carrier IQ collecting data from customers without their knowledge? Does the FBI have warrants granting them access to those customers' data? If the answer to the former is yes and the answer to the latter is no, what we have is quite literally a warrantless wiretap. It's just that the wiretapping is being carried out by a different party than the one that's supposed to get a warrant.
One of your o's fell off, which proves your point.
This is what happens when domains are seized on the basis of mere accusations. Instead of the government having to prove that a website's operators are guilty of copyright infringement, the claim alone is enough for the feds to seize a domain that will only be returned either as a gesture of "good will" or if the website's operators can prove they are innocent of that which they haven't been formally accused. Those responsible for such a policy should be ashamed of themselves and their perversion of justice.
The "something better" people want is not walled gardens as such, but platforms that aren't subject to crapware infestations. Walled gardens no doubt provide some defense against crapware, but I don't think they provide the best defense and besides have other problems one should take into account before saying they're the better approach. I don't want closed systems. I want secure systems.
But they don't have to be. It's possible to design an operating system so it's reasonably secure without mandating a "walled garden" approach. A platform that's only secure when software distribution is tightly controlled is properly called insecure .
If the goal is to prevent worms and viruses, let's design a platform that's secure rather than one that is closed.
Just to clarify, I am assuming such orders would not apply to companies outside the US. The question is whether or not the court has the authority to force all US-based search engines and all US-based social media websites to block the domains in question. That the judge thinks he does have the authority is very troubling.
Does the court really have the authority to force "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" to remove these domain names from their respective websites? It seems like too broad a target for an injunction, but perhaps I'm mistaken?
If you're asking "Is it censorship to not look at things I don't want to?", the answer is no.
If you're asking "Is it censorship to not allow them to be seen by people using equipment I have authority over?", the answer is yes.
So little problem, in fact, that parents have been prosecuted for innocent pictures of their naked children.
Or to put it another way: it's not as simple as you think it is.
Not necessarily. Taking GPS coordinates and using them to retrieve location-specific information is nothing more than an obvious application of GPS technology. Whether or not the patent is enforceable would therefore depend on whether or not the particular method covered by the patent is obvious.
Assuming the patent is enforceable, one could still make the argument that allowing such patents does nothing to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, in which case it's a perfect example of why the patent system is broken.
It also doesn't make it non-obvious. Remember the criterion is that it be non-obvious to somebody skilled in the field, like Carmack.
Sorry about that. I assumed a tech-savvy crowd like Slashdot would be at least somewhat familiar with the bill in question, but I guess there's so much content on the Internet these days that what once would have been common knowledge online is now lost in the noise. It also doesn't help that SOPA and its counterpart in the Senate are known by two other names: the "E-PARASITE Act" and the "PROTECT IP Act", which no doubt serves to dilute people's attention.
The second link does state that SOPA stands for "Stop Online Piracy Act", but then Slashdotters often don't read anything beyond the summary. I suppose the bright side is that people looking for what SOPA stands for might end up learning more about it through their efforts.
Not necessarily. In the United States, only the Federal Government may regulate interstate commerce and therefore only they may impose upon retailers the burden of collecting taxes on items sent out of state. As such, it is not at all reasonable to expect online retailers to adhere to non-local, non-Federal tax laws.
It would be a different story if the law were Federal (as the one being proposed), but I don't want any such law if abiding by it becomes as complex as having to deal with all the different tax laws currently in place across the United States. Fix that first or I'll never accept the supposed fairness of a national sales tax.
Sales tax is owed by the customer and collected and remitted to the state by the retailer.
Retailers that don't collect taxes for other states are not evading taxes; They're simply not collecting them on behalf of the government.
No. I'm saying the poor shouldn't have a greater burden than the rich. Sales taxes create such a burden (relative to income), which is why I oppose them.
I'm also not proposing a flat tax. I have no problem with the insanely rich paying a greater portion of their income than the poor.
It doesn't matter how many branch locations there are. The point is that while the burden to each locally-managed branch location is to deal with local taxes and only local taxes, the burden to online retailers would be to deal with the tax laws of each and every jurisdiction they ship to. Given the nature of mail-order businesses is to ship to as many places as possible, it would indeed be a greater burden on them than to local branches and their parent companies.
Keep in mind it's not a retailer's responsibility to pay taxes on the items it sells. That is the buyer's responsibility, and no state has the right to impose the burden of tax collection upon those retailers who have no physical presence in that state. Should the Federal Government impose such a burden, the burden to online retailers should ideally be no greater than the burden to those who run local businesses.
Except that not all loopholes are inevitable, and those that remain don't necessarily make the system inferior. A tax on bubble gum sales has fewer loopholes than a tax on people's income, but only an idiot would think the bubble gum tax is superior because of it.
It's really quite simple: Rich people spend less in proportion to their income than do poor people. As such, sales taxes are a greater burden on the poor than the rich.
I fail to see how this has anything at all to do with any kind of logical fallacy, but in any case it's not at all what I'm saying. I'm thinking in terms of individual contributors rather than the collective contributions of entire classes of people.
The existence of loopholes is not a point in favor of sales tax, but rather a problem that needs addressing. The sentence you quoted was in reference to the fact that taxes from retail sales constitute less of a rich person's total income than the total income of those who aren't rich. Rich people with small bank accounts and lots of toys are an exception to this, but those are not the kinds of rich people I am talking about when I say that sales taxes affect the rich least of all.
That's the first time I've seen it described that way.
Since when? Relative to how much they make, sales taxes affect the rich least of all.
Except for the ones that are taxed.
Is that a fact or a supposition?
The need "to know and apply all the sales tax rules in every jurisdiction" is a much more significant burden to online retailers than it is to local ones. Local retailers, regardless of who owns them, are run by people local to the state, meaning each retail location need only be familiar with the laws in effect at that location. Online business will generally ship anywhere within the US, significantly complicating things for the single entity whose job it is to deal with all the different sales tax laws.
If the Federal Government wants a national sales tax, let them come up with a tax scheme that is at least as simple as that of the European Union.