I think that's largely semantics. Whether they "steal" or "copy" it, anyone who takes my idea potentially deprives me of gain I would otherwise have received from exploitation of that idea.
This potential gain only exists because of IP law. Without it, there's nothing to steal. That's what makes it artificial.
No, they aren't. But all those other programmers are in it for the money.
Sorry. I was trolling a bit. My point was that people would still create, just not for money. It would, of course, be much less in quantity. How it would affect quality on the other hand is a different discussion.
We can agree that IP laws and copyright length have been unfairly extended in violation of the intent of the legislation.
That's what I mean about it being artificial: we can redefine it any way we see fit. Somewhere there is a model which benefits the consumer while still being an incentive to create.
The theft of my idea deprives me of potential benefit and gain as the sole owner of the idea.
Without IP law, there can be no theft of an idea. Ideas can only be copied. No one can deprive you of an idea. Any potential benefit and gain from being sole owner of an idea exists solely because of IP laws.
An author has a right to attempt to sell his book, thereby dreving value from it.
Nobody's saying otherwise.
Copyright protects that right. Lack of copyright negates that right and deprives authors of the financial potential of their work.
Copyright creates the monopoly under which the author will derive the most profit. It inflates the value of the idea by creating an artifical scarcity.
I think your argument that property has no existence outside the law to be specious,
I didn't say that property has no existence outside the law. I said that intellectual property has no existence outside the law. Ideas are abstract. They have no physical components. You cannot be deprived of an idea by someone taking it from you. Your house, your clothes, your car and your computer are all physical objects. You could be deprived of any one of them by someone taking them even if stealing wasn't against the law. They are property. Ideas are no more property than dreams, thoughts and emotions.
The primary impact on society would be a tremendous reduction in "creative" activity as every author, musician, developer, etc., who depends on the revenue generated from their work moves on to something else.
So I guess all these free software programmers are in it for the money?
You assume that I am in favor of obliterating intellectual property laws completely. I never said any such thing. I understand that there must be incentives for creators to create. But how does society benefit from a copyright that exists for 70 after the author's death? Why should a program have protection for 95 years when it will be outdated in 3? Why should Disney, who made 90% of their money from works in the public domain, be profiting from that work without returning anything to the public domain? IP laws are incredibly lopsided in favor of the IP rights holder (and how often is this the actual creator of the work?).
My suggestions are to shorten the term of copyrights, repeal the DMCA and add a clause to copyright law stating that if the method you choose to copy-protect your work prevents fair use, then you lose your copyright protection.
If someone steals your car, you are without that car and however much you paid for it regardless of whether or not there is a law against theft. A car is very real property independent of the law. If you have an idea, and somebody else uses that idea, you still have that idea to use as you wish. You have lost nothing. There is no property without the law.
What makes writing a book profitable is the law that says that no one can make money from the contents of that book without your permission, for which you are compensated. Without copyright law, the physical book you hold in your hand is yours, but the copies somone else makes of it aren't and don't make your book any less valuable since you can still use the book you have. The only "loss" of value is the loss of income from having a monopoly on the content of the book afforded to you by copyright law. If there was no law, there would be no property. Intellectual property is as artificial as corporations are. They only exist as concepts and can be made to go away very easily.
We use this construct to encourage people to create. We want people to create so society can benefit from their creations. If the license is too restrictive, society doesn't benefit from the creations and the construct ceases to be useful. Because this construct is artificial, it can be changed and should be so that society benefits from it rather than just a few individuals.
Intellectual Property is an artificial construct designed to give people an incentive to create in a capitalist society.
If you spend a lot of time building a machine to do work, that machine has value. If someone takes that machine, or you give it away, you can't use that machine anymore. If someone takes your plans for that machine and builds a second one, your original machine loses no value. What does not have any value as a commodity is the idea (eg the plans) for the machine.
If you write a program to do work, that program has value. If someone copies that program, you are still able to use that program so you have lost no value that the program itself had. There is no commodity value to the idea (eg source-code or copyable binaries) of the program because anyone can get it without de-valueing the original.
Enter copyrights and patents. We have placed an artificial value on the idea of the work. Now, before the masses start screaming "communist", I realize that the society we live in requires some kind of incentive to create these ideas so we give the creators a monopoly. But it is an artificial construct which has gotten way out of hand. The laws favor the creators way too much and the consumers way too little.
People need and expect -- and have every right to expect -- to derive revenue from the work they do.
Simply because people have made money at something in the past does not entitle them to be profitable at it in the future. This is the very thing the RIAA is trying to do and we give them no end of criticism for it.
Shrinkwrap licenses are unreasonable. Copyright laws are unreasonable. Patent laws are unreasonable. They need fixing. I'm not suggesting that we throw them out completely. There is a middle ground somewhere that will protect the consumer's rights while still allowing the creators to make a living doing it. I guess it's the consequences of a digital world that we only see two alternatives: all or nothing.
When these laws get fixed some people are going suddenly be in a position where they aren't making as much money as they were before, programmers included. Adapt or die. There's no law that says I have to suffer just so you can feed your family.
warn you if you are doing something wrong or dangerous.
"Your honor, the plaintiff suffered severe injuries to his hand and fingers when the defendants product failed to warn him of swinging the hammer at that velocity in such close proximity to his hand."
If any system needs to be open for inspection, it's this one.
Closed systems can be verified by comparing the input to the output. But US voting system is based on anonymous votes. There is no way to verify that the output correctly matches the input. The internal operations have to be open to inspection. The only other choice is to forego anonymous voting so that if there is a discrepancy, it can be reconciled. But there's a dozen reasons why that's not a good idea.
So? I pay for my mailboxes etc. mailbox. Mailboxes etc pays for the handling and storage fees for my mail. That doesn't mean that someone sending me a letter is stealing from me.
I never said spammers were stealing from me. I said spam costs me money that I don't want to pay and don't think I should have to. Someone sending a letter to your mailboxes etc. box is also costing you money, but it's money you're willing to pay for the service and it's less likely to get abused because it also costs the sender of the mail money. The analogy doesn't hold. Remove the cost barrier on sending junk mail and I'll bet you see a whole lot more of it, possibly to the point where you'd complain about it.
Both you and your ISP are making voluntary decisions to connect to the internet, so it must be in your own best interests to do so.
Your point being what? If I don't want spam I should just not get email? Because my connection to the internet is beneficial overall then I can't complain about or try to change the parts I don't like? Love it or leave it? What are you trying to say?
WTF are you talking about? I don't pay anything for incoming emails, do you?
I pay for my ISP service, my ISP pays for it's bandwidth and the equipment to carry it. They get paid for that by my subscription. The spammer pays them NOT ONE FUCKING DIME. So yes, I pay for my email and hence their advertising. If your internet connection is free, more power to you. Mine isn't.
And to you. You voluntarily agree to use that ISP. No one is forcing you to.
And when it stops being beneficial to me, I will stop using them. Who said anything about being forced to use them?
No, the ISPs have the right to sue those who violate their contracts. There's no need for the FBI to get involved.
Who said anything about getting the FBI involved? I'm not even talking about legislation. I'm talking about not pretending that spam is a valid form of advertising simply because it's an advertisement for a political candidate rather than a commercial product.
And what if no other phone company offered the option of declining the charges? You don't have that option in email.
The spammers.
Oh, they do, do they? Where's my check?
Look, my ISP is voluntarily entering into every peering agreement it makes. If that peering agreement is costing them more in bandwidth then it is bringing them in revenues, then they should drop the agreement.
That's kind of the point. This agreement is beneficial to my ISP, its subscribers, the ISP's it makes the agreement with and its subscribers. But we should let spammers abuse that agreement and trash the whole system? Just because it can be abused does not mean it should be.
<sarcasm>Yeah, exactly, that's what I said.</sarcasm>
Now I suppose you'll start telling me how much damage to the planet would be caused if all the spam we're getting was printed on paper while conveniently ignoring the fact that there would be much less spam if the spammers had to pay for it.
Just because it's envrionmentally friendly doesn't make it right. Why should I have to pay for their advertising just because it's more environmentally friendly? Television ads and radio spots don't waste paper either but I don't have to pay for them.
Like I said the first time, when they're paying for it, they can do it all they like.
Don't use an over simplified metaphor to prove me wrong. It means you missed the point. (apologies to whoever said that first.)
Politicians have a duty to inform the public - email is an excellent, cost effective, environmentally friendly way to do this. Drop your SPAM IS EVIL mindset for 2 seconds and see the wider picture.
So, if a political candidate calls you collect to ask you to vote for him, it's okay? What if you couldn't refuse the charges?
First of all, see the wider picture yourself and realize that campaign emails are not "informing the public" but are advertisements.
Secondly, the problem with spam is that it costs the receiver money[1] as opposed to most other media where it only costs the sender. When spammers advertisements don't cost me any money, then I'll be content to set up my filters and let them have at it.
Television ads don't cost me money. Direct mail doesn't cost me money. Radio spots don't cost me money. Until you can say the same thing about email ads, stop comparing them.
[1] For the few who haven't heard this before: Even if you pay monthly for unlimited access, it still cost you money. Your ISP has to pay for the extra bandwidth and equipment to handle the traffic. One guess who gets to pay for that in terms of higher access fees.
I remember reading someplace that the Communications Act of 1934 made it legal to receive any signal that was broadcast. I may be wrong, and I know most (if not all) of the Communications Act of 1934 has been superceded, but the point is, we need someone, somewhere to make a ruling that says if you are publishing information on the Web and not preventing deep links through technical means, then it is legal to link to those pages directly.
All the arguments showing how deep linking can be abused are flawed. They are the same arguments that the media companies used when lobbying for the DMCA. "It could be used to steal content, therefore it should be illegal." "Deep linking might be used to slander somone so it should be illegal".
There are technical means of stopping people from entering your website except through the front door. If you don't want deep linking, then use steps to prevent it. Otherwise, we are going to assume that it's okay.
You could also do it this way without having to modify any code, and it would work for most mail readers.
Set up two mail aliases that process email through the filter. One for spam, one for good mail. Keep separate folders for good mail and spam (I do anyway). Before you empty them, forward the contents to the appoprate alias. Some mail readers may be able to automate this for you.
But these numbers are not misleading, because that is the approach I'm advocating: filter each user's mail based on the spam and nonspam mail he receives.
If "sex" and "sexy" are equally likely to show up in good mail as they are in spam, the filter will rate them closer to neutral and they won't be a deciding factor anymore.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Simply requiring that spam be cleverly designed should get rid of 99% of spammers.
Re:Right, And this part truly makes my blood boil!
on
Meet the Spammers
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· Score: 1
The same argument applies if you purchase a magazine...
a) I payed to see something, making my time in the theatre into money. They are taking my 1) time, and 2) money. It could also be argued that they are taking up my 'storage space' or memory in my head (hey its one arguement against spam on your computer, harddrive usage).
You are getting something in return for your money. You're seeing the movie or reading the magazine. If the entire movie was one advertisement after another, you wouldn't go see it. The memory in your head doesn't cost you any money. Spam gives you nothing in return for your money.
b) I didn't ask for it, nor did I 'sign up' for it.
If you really didn't want to see it, you could decide not to see the movie. If enough people did this, the product placement ads would disappear. It would no longer be profitable to put them in there.
c) It may be offensive to me. I may be a pacifist, and hate the army. This isn't quite the same as a child being exposed to porn, but what if I don't want my child exposed to violence, but the Scooby Doo movie has an Army ad at the begining?
You don't have a fundamental right to not be offended.
The big picture you're missing is that there is a barrier to entry for product placement and ads before the movie. The companies doing the advertising have to pay to get those ads in there. You also get the benefit (especially in the case of a magazine) of the ads offsetting the cost to you. You don't pay as much but you have to put up with a couple of ads.
Spam has neither of these benefits associated with it. Anyone with a $20 dialup account can send thousands of emails and it doesn't cost any more than if he sent two. It also doesn't reduce the cost of my internet access. In fact, because my ISP has to purchase additional equipment to handle the traffic, my costs go up.
The barrier to entry doesn't exist for the person who pays the spammer either. If they won't pay that much, the spammers lower their prices. They can cut their prices incredibly low because it doesn't cost them much. If nobody will pay $100 for a stolen CD player, the thief sells it for $50, or $30, or $10. It didn't cost him anything so there's no loss.
Spam is no different than telemarketers calling collect except you can't refuse the charges.
The thing is, the consumer can determine what level of quality they want. Thats why I am opposed to the UCITA and software liability in general.
This is exactly right. I would like software companies (both free and proprietary) to offer warranties on their products, but I don't want the government to step in and require them to. I want to be able to make the decision on how important the warranty is myself.
If product liability is made mandatory for the software industry, the only people who are going to make money are the lawyers.
And it's for good reason: 2.5 is NOT closer to 3 than to 2.
This is only true in the very specific case where there are no digits to the right of the digit your using to round. 2.59 is certainly closer to 3 than it is to 2, but by your reasoning, 2 should be the result of the rounding operation. In fact, if the digit to the right of the rounding point is 5, it's going to be closer to the higher digit than the lower except in the very rare case that the number you are rounding is exactly equal to the number truncated after the 5. If your numbers are only being rounded off by one decimal place consistently, you may want to re-evaluate why you're rounding them off.
For the record, I learned 0 through 4 round down, 5 through 9 round up. Half go down and half go up. Zero is included because very often there are non-zero digits to the right of the zero you care about.
ObPeeve: People who insist that "about 10 inches" is "25.4 centimeters".
What might be even more effective is going into the store, picking up the box (preferably for something expensive) and asking the cashier / salesman what their return policy is on opened software (usually no returns). Explain to them, or preferably a manager, that you are not buying the software because you can't examine the EULA and the store is removing your recourse if you don't agree with it.
The same can be done for software purchased online.
Retailers tend to be a lot more receptive to your demands if they don't already have your money.
If enough people do this, the retailers will either have to start accepting opened software packages for refund, or they will have to pressure the manufacturers to print the EULA on the outside of the box.
Radio has already done this for me and a lot of people I know. The last good radio station in my area got corporatized about a year ago so now they all suck. I stopped listening.
For some reason the content industry is under the impression that we're all going to stand in line to pay $30 to buy "Weekend with Bernie V" or $20 for Brittan'Sync's latest claptrap regardless of how crippled it is.
They can legislate our fair use rights away all they want, but they can't make us buy it. Most people aren't music or movie fanatics. It's only entertainment, after all, and people will find other ways to amuse themselves if DVDs and CDs become more hassle than they're worth.
When I was about 4 years old I broke my arm jumping off my bunkbed pretending to be superman.
And where were your parents while you were doing this?
The facts that pornography is immoral, offensive to women in that it treats them solely as sex objects, offensive to the viewer in that it implies that their only means of sexual gratification is through watching others(in other words, they lack the social skills to build a relationship and have a healthy sex life, instead they must rely on pictures/movies to satisfy their sex drive), are also important to consider.
s/facts/my opinion
If one person likes watching, and other people like being watched, who's getting hurt here?
It absolutely astounds me that people can believe whole-heartedly that because it offends them, it should offend everyone.
For the record, I think 99% of the porn out there is crap. It's more comical than erotic and does very little for me. But that's my opinion. I'm certainly not going to begrudge someone else liking it since it doesn't affect me in the least.
Where are the studies showing that pornography is harmful to children?
Because copyrights protect information that is released publicly. The owner of the copyright doesn't care that you have the information, he just wants to get paid for it.
Private information is meant never to be public. The owner doesn't want you to have the information at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's largely semantics. Whether they "steal" or "copy" it, anyone who takes my idea potentially deprives me of gain I would otherwise have received from exploitation of that idea.
This potential gain only exists because of IP law. Without it, there's nothing to steal. That's what makes it artificial.
No, they aren't. But all those other programmers are in it for the money.
Sorry. I was trolling a bit. My point was that people would still create, just not for money. It would, of course, be much less in quantity. How it would affect quality on the other hand is a different discussion.
We can agree that IP laws and copyright length have been unfairly extended in violation of the intent of the legislation.
That's what I mean about it being artificial: we can redefine it any way we see fit. Somewhere there is a model which benefits the consumer while still being an incentive to create.
The theft of my idea deprives me of potential benefit and gain as the sole owner of the idea.
Without IP law, there can be no theft of an idea. Ideas can only be copied. No one can deprive you of an idea. Any potential benefit and gain from being sole owner of an idea exists solely because of IP laws.
An author has a right to attempt to sell his book, thereby dreving value from it.
Nobody's saying otherwise.
Copyright protects that right. Lack of copyright negates that right and deprives authors of the financial potential of their work.
Copyright creates the monopoly under which the author will derive the most profit. It inflates the value of the idea by creating an artifical scarcity.
I think your argument that property has no existence outside the law to be specious,
I didn't say that property has no existence outside the law. I said that intellectual property has no existence outside the law. Ideas are abstract. They have no physical components. You cannot be deprived of an idea by someone taking it from you. Your house, your clothes, your car and your computer are all physical objects. You could be deprived of any one of them by someone taking them even if stealing wasn't against the law. They are property. Ideas are no more property than dreams, thoughts and emotions.
The primary impact on society would be a tremendous reduction in "creative" activity as every author, musician, developer, etc., who depends on the revenue generated from their work moves on to something else.
So I guess all these free software programmers are in it for the money?
You assume that I am in favor of obliterating intellectual property laws completely. I never said any such thing. I understand that there must be incentives for creators to create. But how does society benefit from a copyright that exists for 70 after the author's death? Why should a program have protection for 95 years when it will be outdated in 3? Why should Disney, who made 90% of their money from works in the public domain, be profiting from that work without returning anything to the public domain? IP laws are incredibly lopsided in favor of the IP rights holder (and how often is this the actual creator of the work?).
My suggestions are to shorten the term of copyrights, repeal the DMCA and add a clause to copyright law stating that if the method you choose to copy-protect your work prevents fair use, then you lose your copyright protection.
If someone steals your car, you are without that car and however much you paid for it regardless of whether or not there is a law against theft. A car is very real property independent of the law. If you have an idea, and somebody else uses that idea, you still have that idea to use as you wish. You have lost nothing. There is no property without the law.
What makes writing a book profitable is the law that says that no one can make money from the contents of that book without your permission, for which you are compensated. Without copyright law, the physical book you hold in your hand is yours, but the copies somone else makes of it aren't and don't make your book any less valuable since you can still use the book you have. The only "loss" of value is the loss of income from having a monopoly on the content of the book afforded to you by copyright law. If there was no law, there would be no property. Intellectual property is as artificial as corporations are. They only exist as concepts and can be made to go away very easily.
We use this construct to encourage people to create. We want people to create so society can benefit from their creations. If the license is too restrictive, society doesn't benefit from the creations and the construct ceases to be useful. Because this construct is artificial, it can be changed and should be so that society benefits from it rather than just a few individuals.
Intellectual Property is an artificial construct designed to give people an incentive to create in a capitalist society.
If you spend a lot of time building a machine to do work, that machine has value. If someone takes that machine, or you give it away, you can't use that machine anymore. If someone takes your plans for that machine and builds a second one, your original machine loses no value. What does not have any value as a commodity is the idea (eg the plans) for the machine.
If you write a program to do work, that program has value. If someone copies that program, you are still able to use that program so you have lost no value that the program itself had. There is no commodity value to the idea (eg source-code or copyable binaries) of the program because anyone can get it without de-valueing the original.
Enter copyrights and patents. We have placed an artificial value on the idea of the work. Now, before the masses start screaming "communist", I realize that the society we live in requires some kind of incentive to create these ideas so we give the creators a monopoly. But it is an artificial construct which has gotten way out of hand. The laws favor the creators way too much and the consumers way too little.
People need and expect -- and have every right to expect -- to derive revenue from the work they do.
Simply because people have made money at something in the past does not entitle them to be profitable at it in the future. This is the very thing the RIAA is trying to do and we give them no end of criticism for it.
Shrinkwrap licenses are unreasonable. Copyright laws are unreasonable. Patent laws are unreasonable. They need fixing. I'm not suggesting that we throw them out completely. There is a middle ground somewhere that will protect the consumer's rights while still allowing the creators to make a living doing it. I guess it's the consequences of a digital world that we only see two alternatives: all or nothing.
When these laws get fixed some people are going suddenly be in a position where they aren't making as much money as they were before, programmers included. Adapt or die. There's no law that says I have to suffer just so you can feed your family.
So let me get this straight. Since the U.S. was the first to land there, we own the moon?
Not quite: see Outer Space Treaty. Pay particular attention to Article VI.
TransOrbital, Inc. is a US company which gives the US government jurisdiction.
warn you if you are doing something wrong or dangerous.
"Your honor, the plaintiff suffered severe injuries to his hand and fingers when the defendants product failed to warn him of swinging the hammer at that velocity in such close proximity to his hand."
If any system needs to be open for inspection, it's this one.
Closed systems can be verified by comparing the input to the output. But US voting system is based on anonymous votes. There is no way to verify that the output correctly matches the input. The internal operations have to be open to inspection. The only other choice is to forego anonymous voting so that if there is a discrepancy, it can be reconciled. But there's a dozen reasons why that's not a good idea.
So? I pay for my mailboxes etc. mailbox. Mailboxes etc pays for the handling and storage fees for my mail. That doesn't mean that someone sending me a letter is stealing from me.
I never said spammers were stealing from me. I said spam costs me money that I don't want to pay and don't think I should have to. Someone sending a letter to your mailboxes etc. box is also costing you money, but it's money you're willing to pay for the service and it's less likely to get abused because it also costs the sender of the mail money. The analogy doesn't hold. Remove the cost barrier on sending junk mail and I'll bet you see a whole lot more of it, possibly to the point where you'd complain about it.
Both you and your ISP are making voluntary decisions to connect to the internet, so it must be in your own best interests to do so.
Your point being what? If I don't want spam I should just not get email? Because my connection to the internet is beneficial overall then I can't complain about or try to change the parts I don't like? Love it or leave it? What are you trying to say?
WTF are you talking about? I don't pay anything for incoming emails, do you?
I pay for my ISP service, my ISP pays for it's bandwidth and the equipment to carry it. They get paid for that by my subscription. The spammer pays them NOT ONE FUCKING DIME. So yes, I pay for my email and hence their advertising. If your internet connection is free, more power to you. Mine isn't.
And to you. You voluntarily agree to use that ISP. No one is forcing you to.
And when it stops being beneficial to me, I will stop using them. Who said anything about being forced to use them?
No, the ISPs have the right to sue those who violate their contracts. There's no need for the FBI to get involved.
Who said anything about getting the FBI involved? I'm not even talking about legislation. I'm talking about not pretending that spam is a valid form of advertising simply because it's an advertisement for a political candidate rather than a commercial product.
Then you should get a new phone company.
And what if no other phone company offered the option of declining the charges? You don't have that option in email.
The spammers.
Oh, they do, do they? Where's my check?
Look, my ISP is voluntarily entering into every peering agreement it makes. If that peering agreement is costing them more in bandwidth then it is bringing them in revenues, then they should drop the agreement.
That's kind of the point. This agreement is beneficial to my ISP, its subscribers, the ISP's it makes the agreement with and its subscribers. But we should let spammers abuse that agreement and trash the whole system? Just because it can be abused does not mean it should be.
<sarcasm>Yeah, exactly, that's what I said.</sarcasm>
Now I suppose you'll start telling me how much damage to the planet would be caused if all the spam we're getting was printed on paper while conveniently ignoring the fact that there would be much less spam if the spammers had to pay for it.
Just because it's envrionmentally friendly doesn't make it right. Why should I have to pay for their advertising just because it's more environmentally friendly? Television ads and radio spots don't waste paper either but I don't have to pay for them.
Like I said the first time, when they're paying for it, they can do it all they like.
Don't use an over simplified metaphor to prove me wrong. It means you missed the point. (apologies to whoever said that first.)
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Pursuant to Bill HR69, this email conforms with Bill HR69 by mentioning Bill HR69.
Politicians have a duty to inform the public - email is an excellent, cost effective, environmentally friendly way to do this. Drop your SPAM IS EVIL mindset for 2 seconds and see the wider picture.
So, if a political candidate calls you collect to ask you to vote for him, it's okay? What if you couldn't refuse the charges?
First of all, see the wider picture yourself and realize that campaign emails are not "informing the public" but are advertisements.
Secondly, the problem with spam is that it costs the receiver money[1] as opposed to most other media where it only costs the sender. When spammers advertisements don't cost me any money, then I'll be content to set up my filters and let them have at it.
Television ads don't cost me money. Direct mail doesn't cost me money. Radio spots don't cost me money. Until you can say the same thing about email ads, stop comparing them.
[1] For the few who haven't heard this before: Even if you pay monthly for unlimited access, it still cost you money. Your ISP has to pay for the extra bandwidth and equipment to handle the traffic. One guess who gets to pay for that in terms of higher access fees.
I remember reading someplace that the Communications Act of 1934 made it legal to receive any signal that was broadcast. I may be wrong, and I know most (if not all) of the Communications Act of 1934 has been superceded, but the point is, we need someone, somewhere to make a ruling that says if you are publishing information on the Web and not preventing deep links through technical means, then it is legal to link to those pages directly.
All the arguments showing how deep linking can be abused are flawed. They are the same arguments that the media companies used when lobbying for the DMCA. "It could be used to steal content, therefore it should be illegal." "Deep linking might be used to slander somone so it should be illegal".
There are technical means of stopping people from entering your website except through the front door. If you don't want deep linking, then use steps to prevent it. Otherwise, we are going to assume that it's okay.
Ya gotta fight FUD with FUD
No. You fight FUD with the truth. But simply calling something "FUD" because it instills fear, uncertainty and doubt doesn't make it FUD.
In the EFF's case, the FUD is true, and the DMCA is something people should be fear, be uncertain of, and doubt.
You could also do it this way without having to modify any code, and it would work for most mail readers.
Set up two mail aliases that process email through the filter. One for spam, one for good mail. Keep separate folders for good mail and spam (I do anyway). Before you empty them, forward the contents to the appoprate alias. Some mail readers may be able to automate this for you.
Also from the article:
But these numbers are not misleading, because that is the approach I'm advocating: filter each user's mail based on the spam and nonspam mail he receives.
If "sex" and "sexy" are equally likely to show up in good mail as they are in spam, the filter will rate them closer to neutral and they won't be a deciding factor anymore.
but it'll be more cleverly designed
Ding ding ding ding <points at nose>.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Simply requiring that spam be cleverly designed should get rid of 99% of spammers.
The same argument applies if you purchase a magazine...
a) I payed to see something, making my time in the theatre into money. They are taking my 1) time, and 2) money. It could also be argued that they are taking up my 'storage space' or memory in my head (hey its one arguement against spam on your computer, harddrive usage).
You are getting something in return for your money. You're seeing the movie or reading the magazine. If the entire movie was one advertisement after another, you wouldn't go see it. The memory in your head doesn't cost you any money. Spam gives you nothing in return for your money.
b) I didn't ask for it, nor did I 'sign up' for it.
If you really didn't want to see it, you could decide not to see the movie. If enough people did this, the product placement ads would disappear. It would no longer be profitable to put them in there.
c) It may be offensive to me. I may be a pacifist, and hate the army. This isn't quite the same as a child being exposed to porn, but what if I don't want my child exposed to violence, but the Scooby Doo movie has an Army ad at the begining?
You don't have a fundamental right to not be offended.
The big picture you're missing is that there is a barrier to entry for product placement and ads before the movie. The companies doing the advertising have to pay to get those ads in there. You also get the benefit (especially in the case of a magazine) of the ads offsetting the cost to you. You don't pay as much but you have to put up with a couple of ads.
Spam has neither of these benefits associated with it. Anyone with a $20 dialup account can send thousands of emails and it doesn't cost any more than if he sent two. It also doesn't reduce the cost of my internet access. In fact, because my ISP has to purchase additional equipment to handle the traffic, my costs go up.
The barrier to entry doesn't exist for the person who pays the spammer either. If they won't pay that much, the spammers lower their prices. They can cut their prices incredibly low because it doesn't cost them much. If nobody will pay $100 for a stolen CD player, the thief sells it for $50, or $30, or $10. It didn't cost him anything so there's no loss.
Spam is no different than telemarketers calling collect except you can't refuse the charges.
The thing is, the consumer can determine what level of quality they want. Thats why I am opposed to the UCITA and software liability in general.
This is exactly right. I would like software companies (both free and proprietary) to offer warranties on their products, but I don't want the government to step in and require them to. I want to be able to make the decision on how important the warranty is myself.
If product liability is made mandatory for the software industry, the only people who are going to make money are the lawyers.
And it's for good reason: 2.5 is NOT closer to 3 than to 2.
This is only true in the very specific case where there are no digits to the right of the digit your using to round. 2.59 is certainly closer to 3 than it is to 2, but by your reasoning, 2 should be the result of the rounding operation. In fact, if the digit to the right of the rounding point is 5, it's going to be closer to the higher digit than the lower except in the very rare case that the number you are rounding is exactly equal to the number truncated after the 5. If your numbers are only being rounded off by one decimal place consistently, you may want to re-evaluate why you're rounding them off.
For the record, I learned 0 through 4 round down, 5 through 9 round up. Half go down and half go up. Zero is included because very often there are non-zero digits to the right of the zero you care about.
ObPeeve: People who insist that "about 10 inches" is "25.4 centimeters".
What might be even more effective is going into the store, picking up the box (preferably for something expensive) and asking the cashier / salesman what their return policy is on opened software (usually no returns). Explain to them, or preferably a manager, that you are not buying the software because you can't examine the EULA and the store is removing your recourse if you don't agree with it.
The same can be done for software purchased online.
Retailers tend to be a lot more receptive to your demands if they don't already have your money.
If enough people do this, the retailers will either have to start accepting opened software packages for refund, or they will have to pressure the manufacturers to print the EULA on the outside of the box.
Radio has already done this for me and a lot of people I know. The last good radio station in my area got corporatized about a year ago so now they all suck. I stopped listening.
For some reason the content industry is under the impression that we're all going to stand in line to pay $30 to buy "Weekend with Bernie V" or $20 for Brittan'Sync's latest claptrap regardless of how crippled it is.
They can legislate our fair use rights away all they want, but they can't make us buy it. Most people aren't music or movie fanatics. It's only entertainment, after all, and people will find other ways to amuse themselves if DVDs and CDs become more hassle than they're worth.
When I was about 4 years old I broke my arm jumping off my bunkbed pretending to be superman.
And where were your parents while you were doing this?
The facts that pornography is immoral, offensive to women in that it treats them solely as sex objects, offensive to the viewer in that it implies that their only means of sexual gratification is through watching others(in other words, they lack the social skills to build a relationship and have a healthy sex life, instead they must rely on pictures/movies to satisfy their sex drive), are also important to consider.
s/facts/my opinion
If one person likes watching, and other people like being watched, who's getting hurt here?
It absolutely astounds me that people can believe whole-heartedly that because it offends them, it should offend everyone.
For the record, I think 99% of the porn out there is crap. It's more comical than erotic and does very little for me. But that's my opinion. I'm certainly not going to begrudge someone else liking it since it doesn't affect me in the least.
Where are the studies showing that pornography is harmful to children?
Because copyrights protect information that is released publicly. The owner of the copyright doesn't care that you have the information, he just wants to get paid for it.
Private information is meant never to be public. The owner doesn't want you to have the information at all.