Even though it was mentioned in one of the posts in this thread, I did know that. It's not like I've been living in a cave, even though my mother would ask me to wipe my feet, before I leave my apartment.
1) He doesn't have any facial give-aways 2) He doesn't have any other physical give-aways 3) His voice can't give him away, as it's the same boring/dreary robot-voice
Combine this with his no-doubt impressive math-skills, he'd only need very little time adjusting his game to the other players give-aways.
Plus he can always distract his oponents by talking physics;-)
You went to school in Denmark?
on
PVR For Linux
·
· Score: 2
Cause that is just how I remember school.
I got yelled at by my math teacher, when we were learning how to multiply (which I had known how to do for a couple of years). I got a simple equation, something like 8 x 27.
I solved it like this:
8x30=240 - 8x3=24 ------------- 8x27=216
This is _still_ how I do most multiplications in my head. Do I have to mention, that my kindergarten teacher said something like "DO YOU WANT TO READ TO THE CLASS!!!?!?!", when I mentioned, that she read a word out wrong or something (can't remember that incident, but I've heard it from my parents and a parent to one of the kids I went to school with).
No, I doubt I'm Mensa material, but that doesn't mean, that I should have been given the same mundane tasks as average kids. Society wants to help out the "weak" kids; here's a clue-by-four: Intelligent kids are also weak kids.
Well, the equvilant of a TiVO in Denmark (actually I've only seen one), labeled as a Hard Drive Recorder, costs around 1,500 US$ (no, there are supposed to be two zeros in that price, that's why I put the komma in as well).
I'm not sure what the mentioned setup would cost, but even paying your local geek 100 US$ to set it up for you, you'd still have 1,400 US$ to go. Of course, the end result wouldn't have the same "nice" design, but still.
All things considered, there is the option of being a passenger in a car, and I don't really know why it's important to pull over to the side, when the passenger needs to make a call or say, browse the web to find a local map...
If you based your findings of the previous poster being "a pretentious fucktard" and "a narrow-minded little SOD that has some major issues dealing with reality" your statements may carry some more weight.
Basicly that is what is called "an argument" as opposed to what you did, which is called "a claim" or in less polite terms "having your head up your ass".
Yes, I'm off topic and I honestly don't care - I just hate people who don't present arguments.
If this guy figured it out, don't you think there's at least a moderate chance, that some |33 h@x0r figured it out as well?
By going public, and as a neat bonus having/. place the story on the front page, Nicholas Weaver is essentially forcing the people behind Brilliant Digital to fix their security problems ASAP.
If they chose not to do anything, Brilliant can't claim, that they didn't know about it, if/when some |33 h@x0r hijacks 2 million computers and wreaks havoc on every single US government site just for fun, and they will (at the very least should) be held accountable as aiding and abetting terrorist activities, by not fixing the problems when they had the chance.
Security through obscurity is like not telling the world about AIDS. There's no cure for AIDS, so there's no need to tell people to be carefull, because that would not cure AIDS.
Reflections on Brilliant Digital: Single Points of Internet 0wnership by Nicholas Weaver nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
Any attacker who can control 100,000 machines is a major force on the internet, while someone with a million or more is currently unstoppable: able to launch massively diffuse DDOS attacks, perform needle in a hayfield searches, and commit all sorts of other mayhem. We already understand how worms could be used to gain control of so many machines. Yet the recent revelation that Brilliant Digital Media has bundled a small trojan with KaZaA has underscored another means by which an attacker could gain control of so many machines: poorly secured automatic updaters. If an attacker can distribute his own code as an update, he can take control of millions of machines.
Brilliant Digital plans to create Altnet, a distributed, "secure" network of clients to harness the unused storage, bandwidth, and computation residing on the machines of users across the country, in a manner which prevents the clients from altering or even reading the information. An entertaining if horribly flawed business model [1], except for the means they have selected to build their network.
Brilliant Digital bundled an officially allowed, small trojan program with KaZaA which periodically connects back to their servers and downloads an update (eventually the Altnet P2P software). This trojan is now incredibly widespread: during the week of March 25th, KaZaA and the bundled trojan were downloaded 2.6 million times from CNet alone!
With such a massive misunderstanding of security in their proposed business model, one has to wonder whether their already implemented security in their trojan is any better. There are a few questions which someone could disassemble the binary to answer:
Are the server addresses hardcoded or is DNS lookup used? If DNS lookups is used, the attacker only needs to hijack the DNS name, not take over the update server, to present a fake server to the rest of the world. Does the distributed trojan use SSL to authenticate the server or simply go by name or IP address? If there is no authentication, then it is very straightforward for the attacker to masquerade as the server without attacking the server itself. Is there any additional code signing, beyond authenticating the server, when downloading a new module? If there is no additional code signing, only control of the server is required. If there is code signing, an attack on Brilliant Digital's internal network is probably necessary in order to obtain the private keys. Is there any notice to the user on the part of the trojan, or will it only be contained within the larger Altnet program? Users are so conditioned to click "OK" that even a user message is probably not a significant barrier for an attacker, especially if the attacker can create the message. How secure are Brilliant Digital's servers and internal networks? For they now represent a single, critical target on the internet: Any attacker who can take control of the server and successfully push a program out to the already distributed trojan can now control many millions of machines.
There are plenty of other potential targets, beyond the obvious windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Everquest claims over 300,000 active players, with over 90,000 simultaneous users. Blizzard had 1,000,000 customers in the first 3 weeks of Diablo II's release connecting to Battlenet (their matchmaker and automatic update system). An attack which compromises and coops the automatic update system for such a game could easily get the 100,000 to 1M vulnerable machines in a short period of time.
Any program which connects back to the server to gain updates should be scrutinized very heavily, for as program becomes widespread, the update server and mechanisms become highly attractive targets for attack. Each new program with an automatic update feature is a new point where an attacker can gain control of a huge number of machines.
This is worse when update protocols don't authenticate the downloaded code. Such protocols are highly vulnerable to attack, as an attacker only needs to gain control of the update server. If the protocol doesn't even authenticate the server, then a DNS hijacking may be sufficient!
As for Brilliant Digital, their horribly flawed business plan shows a grave misunderstanding of security, which must not be repeated by others in the future. Since their proposed business can't possibly work, they should both protect themselves from legal liability, as well as the rest of the internet from the results of a single attack, by producing a program on their update server which removes all traces of their trojan.
[1] Their model is full of flaws. Secure, secret storage on distributed machines is possible but generally useless: the real advantage of distributed storage is gained by distributed searching, which requires decrypting the data for most meaningful searches. At the same time, disk is getting cheaper: $13,000 buys a 3u high,.75TB, RAID-5, hot swappable, turnkey storage appliance. It is even cheaper when built from components.
Secure, secret computation, where the clients don't gain information about the task they are performing, is effectively intractable except for very specific problems. To believe that untrusted clients could not gain information about the problems being completed is a ridiculous notion.
Finally, their model of distributed content serving is laughable since the HTTP protocols do not support file authentication. There is nothing which prevents a misbehaving client from only serving banner advertisements which say "Brilliant Digital and Doubleclick Can Bite My Shiny Metal Ass".
As such, all three proposed usages: Secure and secret storage, secure and secret computation, and secure content delivery, are all inherently flawed.
Having spent a considerable amount of time reading the danish copyright law, alot more time than I'd like to admit, I'm quite sure that I'm allowed to do so - allow me to quote (and translate) the apropriate paragraph of the law:
URL: http://www.kum.dk/dk/con-37_STD_2298.htm
12. Af et offentliggjort værk må enhver fremstille eller lade fremstille enkelte eksemplarer til sin private brug. Sådanne eksemplarer må ikke udnyttes på anden måde. Stk. 2. Bestemmelsen i stk. 1 giver ikke ret til at [...] 3) fremstille eksemplarer af edb-programmer i digitaliseret form, 4) fremstille eksemplarer i digital form af databaser, når eksemplarfremstillingen sker på grundlag af en gengivelse af databasen i digital form, eller 5) fremstille enkelte eksemplarer i digital form af andre værker, medmindre det udelukkende sker til personlig brug for fremstilleren eller dennes husstand. Stk. 3. Bestemmelsen i stk. 1 giver ikke ret til at benytte fremmed medhjælp ved eksemplarfremstillingen, når der er tale om
1) musikværker, 2) filmværker, [...] Stk. 4. Bestemmelsen i stk. 1 giver ikke brugeren ret til ved eksemplarfremstilling af musikværker og filmværker at anvende teknisk udstyr, der er stillet til rådighed for almenheden på biblioteker, i forretningslokaler eller på andre offentligt tilgængelige steder.
English translation (Danish is my maternal language, but I'm pretty good at English, if I must say so myself:-)
12. From a published work anyone may create or have created single examples for their own private usage. Such examples can not be used in any other way. Part 2. Part 1 does not allow the following: [...] 3) creation of examples of computer-programmes in digitalized form, 4) creation of examples in digital form of databases, when the creation is based on a replication of the database in digital form, or [note - I have no idea what that's for] 5) creation of single examples in digital form of other works, unless it is exclusively for personal use for the creator or said creators household. Part 3. Part 1 does not allow the usage of foreign help in creation, when the work is
1) music, 3) movie/film, [...] Part 4. Part 1 does not allow the user, when creating a copy of music and movies/films, to use technical equipment made available to the public at libraries, in buisnesses or other public areas.
12 is the interesting paragraph, as it's the only one that deals with personal usage.
Now - in no part of this paragraph (nor any other place in the law) does it state, that I can not make a copy of my own copies. I can NOT let people, that are not part of my household use the copies I make, for any reason. If I let my friend make a copy of my copy, I'm breaking the law, but if I make a copy of an original album, that I borrowed at the library, I can make a gazillion copies of my copy, as long as I don't let people outside my household use the copy.
Like I said - I've read, reread and read the danish copyright law many, many times. I've had a talk (along with a delegation from StopCopyDAN, for which I was the spokesperson) with the (now former) Danish Minister of Culture in the summer of 2001 (August 16, 14:00 to be precise, although that meeting was postponed aprox 30 mins) about the subject of levies on blank medias in Denmark. I've had a meeting with the Danish Parliments Committie of Culture two weeks later (that was August 29, at 9:30 if my memory serves me corret) about the same subject, as I discussed with the Minister of Culture. At the latter meeting the delegation I was heading (also from StopCopyDAN) handed over almost 30,000 signatures protesting the levies.
Now, I'm am not a lawyer, but unless the Minister of Culture and her civil servants are completely off track with regards to copyright law in Denmark, along with the entire Comitie of Culture, then I CAN infact make copies of my own copies (provided that my first copy was obtained lawfully).
Put that in your hat and smoke it.
Next time you go trolling, try to back your claims up with facts:-)
Well... her music anyway, 'cause to call Celine Dion "massive" would be like calling Calista Flockheart "healthy slim"...
Anyway back to my point. I can stand up to massive amounts of Celine Dions music; I can do this for two reasons: 1) By concentrating, I can shut out almost any specific source of noise/sound 2) By using my aforementioned super power of concentration, I am also able to bring up mental images of my four favorite women (no, Celine isn't one of them) going at it in a, shall we say, fashion that leaves nothing to the imagination - though that is actually what is going on. I've tried sneaking Selma Hyak (#5 on my list) in as well, but then it goes totally screwy - I think there's a kernel panic in there somewhere...
3) Last but not least, I actually like some of her music:-)
In Denmark (where I'm from) it is perfectly legal for me to have digital copies of every single cd-album ever published - even if I don't own a single album.
Why?
Because the copyright law in Denmark allows me to make copies of original works - no matter who owns them. If I wanted to, I could walk down to the local library, borrow a copy of every album they have in store, go home, rip them onto my computer and return the albums - without breaking any laws in Denmark.
I can even take the copies, burn them onto CDs, and play them where ever I want to (just not to loudly, or I'll have to pay KODA/IFPI for playing music in public - stupid law). The only thing I can't do is give the copies to anyone not living with me. I can't give them as gifts, I can lend them to friends etc. But other than that, I can do just about everything I want to.
Now - I can't download music off most P2P networks, because then I'd be copying an illegal copy, and I'm not allowed to do that. But hey - I can just walk down to the local library and check out their CDs...
I have to agree 100% with you on that one. Writing books for 20 cents a page is likely to give you a VERY expensive and useless book, and usually results in books that are, as a teacher of mine once described such a book, "about as usefull as toilet paper and far less comfortable".
Putting his money where his mouth is, he himself writes the book used in his classes. Being a fairly open minded guy and not some greedy dumbass, his book costs about as much as you are willing to pay for it - namely the price of downloading it off his webpage, or simply reading it online, as he continuously updates the book.
That's how it's supposed to be - teachers shouldn't be bleeding students for money for crappy material just because they can - especially not when other knowledgable people are willing to characterize their efforts as "about as usefull as toilet paper and far less comfortable".
Slashdot Mirror
"wenn Sie glücklich sind und Sie es kennen, sprechen Sie Deutsches!"
... wenn sie Deutsches spreches, und Sie glücklich sind, und sie es kennen, was denn?
... hehe :-)
Hmm
Nein, ich habe kein deutch geschreiben die letzten sechs yahre
Of course there's no picture of Data. The picture was taken with an old-school holographic camera, and everybody knows they only pick up holograms.
Stolen from some one here at slashdot:
"Your superior intelect is no match for our puny weapons."
It's a shame really.
Even though it was mentioned in one of the posts in this thread, I did know that. It's not like I've been living in a cave, even though my mother would ask me to wipe my feet, before I leave my apartment.
That would be a pretty nasty give-away, so it doesn't fit in the list I gave.
And this is why Hawkings would rule at poker.
;-)
1) He doesn't have any facial give-aways
2) He doesn't have any other physical give-aways
3) His voice can't give him away, as it's the same boring/dreary robot-voice
Combine this with his no-doubt impressive math-skills, he'd only need very little time adjusting his game to the other players give-aways.
Plus he can always distract his oponents by talking physics
Cause that is just how I remember school.
I got yelled at by my math teacher, when we were learning how to multiply (which I had known how to do for a couple of years). I got a simple equation, something like 8 x 27.
I solved it like this:
8x30=240
-
8x3=24
-------------
8x27=216
This is _still_ how I do most multiplications in my head. Do I have to mention, that my kindergarten teacher said something like "DO YOU WANT TO READ TO THE CLASS!!!?!?!", when I mentioned, that she read a word out wrong or something (can't remember that incident, but I've heard it from my parents and a parent to one of the kids I went to school with).
No, I doubt I'm Mensa material, but that doesn't mean, that I should have been given the same mundane tasks as average kids. Society wants to help out the "weak" kids; here's a clue-by-four: Intelligent kids are also weak kids.
Well, the equvilant of a TiVO in Denmark (actually I've only seen one), labeled as a Hard Drive Recorder, costs around 1,500 US$ (no, there are supposed to be two zeros in that price, that's why I put the komma in as well).
I'm not sure what the mentioned setup would cost, but even paying your local geek 100 US$ to set it up for you, you'd still have 1,400 US$ to go. Of course, the end result wouldn't have the same "nice" design, but still.
At least your argument is impeccable ... :-)
So you don't have to clean up after yourself?
Televisions blamed for emitting large doses of electromagnetic waves called "photons".
Film at 11
Well unless you're using a battery powered television, either you've invented wireless power or you're not using a wireless television ...
Slashdot uses MySQL and yet it fails to become slashdotted - they even managed to keep it up and running, well - going, on September 11.
How can that be, when MySQL is obviously a piece of crap, as you so intelligently pointed out?
All things considered, there is the option of being a passenger in a car, and I don't really know why it's important to pull over to the side, when the passenger needs to make a call or say, browse the web to find a local map...
DOH!
I'm just so used to using add-filters and not surfing with pictures (Opera) that I just assumed, that it would get slashdotted.
"Everyone knows, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of u and mption."
If you based your findings of the previous poster being "a pretentious fucktard" and "a narrow-minded little SOD that has some major issues dealing with reality" your statements may carry some more weight.
Basicly that is what is called "an argument" as opposed to what you did, which is called "a claim" or in less polite terms "having your head up your ass".
Yes, I'm off topic and I honestly don't care - I just hate people who don't present arguments.
So you want security through obscurity?
/. place the story on the front page, Nicholas Weaver is essentially forcing the people behind Brilliant Digital to fix their security problems ASAP.
If this guy figured it out, don't you think there's at least a moderate chance, that some |33 h@x0r figured it out as well?
By going public, and as a neat bonus having
If they chose not to do anything, Brilliant can't claim, that they didn't know about it, if/when some |33 h@x0r hijacks 2 million computers and wreaks havoc on every single US government site just for fun, and they will (at the very least should) be held accountable as aiding and abetting terrorist activities, by not fixing the problems when they had the chance.
Security through obscurity is like not telling the world about AIDS. There's no cure for AIDS, so there's no need to tell people to be carefull, because that would not cure AIDS.
Reflections on Brilliant Digital:
.75TB, RAID-5, hot swappable, turnkey storage appliance. It is even cheaper when built from components.
Single Points of Internet 0wnership
by
Nicholas Weaver
nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
Any attacker who can control 100,000 machines is a major force on the internet, while someone with a million or more is currently unstoppable: able to launch massively diffuse DDOS attacks, perform needle in a hayfield searches, and commit all sorts of other mayhem. We already understand how worms could be used to gain control of so many machines. Yet the recent revelation that Brilliant Digital Media has bundled a small trojan with KaZaA has underscored another means by which an attacker could gain control of so many machines: poorly secured automatic updaters. If an attacker can distribute his own code as an update, he can take control of millions of machines.
Brilliant Digital plans to create Altnet, a distributed, "secure" network of clients to harness the unused storage, bandwidth, and computation residing on the machines of users across the country, in a manner which prevents the clients from altering or even reading the information. An entertaining if horribly flawed business model [1], except for the means they have selected to build their network.
Brilliant Digital bundled an officially allowed, small trojan program with KaZaA which periodically connects back to their servers and downloads an update (eventually the Altnet P2P software). This trojan is now incredibly widespread: during the week of March 25th, KaZaA and the bundled trojan were downloaded 2.6 million times from CNet alone!
With such a massive misunderstanding of security in their proposed business model, one has to wonder whether their already implemented security in their trojan is any better. There are a few questions which someone could disassemble the binary to answer:
Are the server addresses hardcoded or is DNS lookup used? If DNS lookups is used, the attacker only needs to hijack the DNS name, not take over the update server, to present a fake server to the rest of the world.
Does the distributed trojan use SSL to authenticate the server or simply go by name or IP address? If there is no authentication, then it is very straightforward for the attacker to masquerade as the server without attacking the server itself.
Is there any additional code signing, beyond authenticating the server, when downloading a new module? If there is no additional code signing, only control of the server is required. If there is code signing, an attack on Brilliant Digital's internal network is probably necessary in order to obtain the private keys.
Is there any notice to the user on the part of the trojan, or will it only be contained within the larger Altnet program? Users are so conditioned to click "OK" that even a user message is probably not a significant barrier for an attacker, especially if the attacker can create the message.
How secure are Brilliant Digital's servers and internal networks? For they now represent a single, critical target on the internet: Any attacker who can take control of the server and successfully push a program out to the already distributed trojan can now control many millions of machines.
There are plenty of other potential targets, beyond the obvious windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Everquest claims over 300,000 active players, with over 90,000 simultaneous users. Blizzard had 1,000,000 customers in the first 3 weeks of Diablo II's release connecting to Battlenet (their matchmaker and automatic update system). An attack which compromises and coops the automatic update system for such a game could easily get the 100,000 to 1M vulnerable machines in a short period of time.
Any program which connects back to the server to gain updates should be scrutinized very heavily, for as program becomes widespread, the update server and mechanisms become highly attractive targets for attack. Each new program with an automatic update feature is a new point where an attacker can gain control of a huge number of machines.
This is worse when update protocols don't authenticate the downloaded code. Such protocols are highly vulnerable to attack, as an attacker only needs to gain control of the update server. If the protocol doesn't even authenticate the server, then a DNS hijacking may be sufficient!
As for Brilliant Digital, their horribly flawed business plan shows a grave misunderstanding of security, which must not be repeated by others in the future. Since their proposed business can't possibly work, they should both protect themselves from legal liability, as well as the rest of the internet from the results of a single attack, by producing a program on their update server which removes all traces of their trojan.
[1] Their model is full of flaws. Secure, secret storage on distributed machines is possible but generally useless: the real advantage of distributed storage is gained by distributed searching, which requires decrypting the data for most meaningful searches. At the same time, disk is getting cheaper: $13,000 buys a 3u high,
Secure, secret computation, where the clients don't gain information about the task they are performing, is effectively intractable except for very specific problems. To believe that untrusted clients could not gain information about the problems being completed is a ridiculous notion.
Finally, their model of distributed content serving is laughable since the HTTP protocols do not support file authentication. There is nothing which prevents a misbehaving client from only serving banner advertisements which say "Brilliant Digital and Doubleclick Can Bite My Shiny Metal Ass".
As such, all three proposed usages: Secure and secret storage, secure and secret computation, and secure content delivery, are all inherently flawed.
My God. A 10 year-old died of cancer? From smoking cigarettes? And this 10 year-old fathered a son before dying?
"You obviously don't know Newfies" - Judi Dench as Agnis Hamm in "The Shipping News".
Don't use ugly letters like 'y', 'k', or 'z', especially at the beginning or end of the domain.
;-)
.dk is an official TLD for the "danish" part of the web.
Thank you for telling us, that our TLD is ugly.
Go suck on my.dk
Who are the #1-#4 women? (mainly because I want to see how you misspell them)
;-)
:-)
#1: Sarha Micehlel Gelar (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
#2: Sania Twine (Shania Twain)
#3: Kyli Minoge (Kylie Minogue)
#4: My soon-to-be former neighbour (but I'm not telling you her name
#5: Selma Hyak (Salma Hayek)
But - in my fantasies they all react to "honey"
Having spent a considerable amount of time reading the danish copyright law, alot more time than I'd like to admit, I'm quite sure that I'm allowed to do so - allow me to quote (and translate) the apropriate paragraph of the law:
:-)
:-)
URL: http://www.kum.dk/dk/con-37_STD_2298.htm
12. Af et offentliggjort værk må enhver fremstille eller lade fremstille enkelte eksemplarer til sin private brug. Sådanne eksemplarer må ikke udnyttes på anden måde.
Stk. 2. Bestemmelsen i stk. 1 giver ikke ret til at
[...]
3) fremstille eksemplarer af edb-programmer i digitaliseret form,
4) fremstille eksemplarer i digital form af databaser, når eksemplarfremstillingen sker på grundlag af en gengivelse af databasen i digital form, eller
5) fremstille enkelte eksemplarer i digital form af andre værker, medmindre det udelukkende sker til personlig brug for fremstilleren eller dennes husstand.
Stk. 3. Bestemmelsen i stk. 1 giver ikke ret til at benytte fremmed medhjælp ved eksemplarfremstillingen, når der er tale om
1) musikværker,
2) filmværker,
[...]
Stk. 4. Bestemmelsen i stk. 1 giver ikke brugeren ret til ved eksemplarfremstilling af musikværker og filmværker at anvende teknisk udstyr, der er stillet til rådighed for almenheden på biblioteker, i forretningslokaler eller på andre offentligt tilgængelige steder.
English translation (Danish is my maternal language, but I'm pretty good at English, if I must say so myself
12. From a published work anyone may create or have created single examples for their own private usage. Such examples can not be used in any other way.
Part 2. Part 1 does not allow the following:
[...]
3) creation of examples of computer-programmes in digitalized form,
4) creation of examples in digital form of databases, when the creation is based on a replication of the database in digital form, or [note - I have no idea what that's for]
5) creation of single examples in digital form of other works, unless it is exclusively for personal use for the creator or said creators household.
Part 3. Part 1 does not allow the usage of foreign help in creation, when the work is
1) music,
3) movie/film,
[...]
Part 4. Part 1 does not allow the user, when creating a copy of music and movies/films, to use technical equipment made available to the public at libraries, in buisnesses or other public areas.
12 is the interesting paragraph, as it's the only one that deals with personal usage.
Now - in no part of this paragraph (nor any other place in the law) does it state, that I can not make a copy of my own copies. I can NOT let people, that are not part of my household use the copies I make, for any reason. If I let my friend make a copy of my copy, I'm breaking the law, but if I make a copy of an original album, that I borrowed at the library, I can make a gazillion copies of my copy, as long as I don't let people outside my household use the copy.
Like I said - I've read, reread and read the danish copyright law many, many times. I've had a talk (along with a delegation from StopCopyDAN, for which I was the spokesperson) with the (now former) Danish Minister of Culture in the summer of 2001 (August 16, 14:00 to be precise, although that meeting was postponed aprox 30 mins) about the subject of levies on blank medias in Denmark. I've had a meeting with the Danish Parliments Committie of Culture two weeks later (that was August 29, at 9:30 if my memory serves me corret) about the same subject, as I discussed with the Minister of Culture. At the latter meeting the delegation I was heading (also from StopCopyDAN) handed over almost 30,000 signatures protesting the levies.
Now, I'm am not a lawyer, but unless the Minister of Culture and her civil servants are completely off track with regards to copyright law in Denmark, along with the entire Comitie of Culture, then I CAN infact make copies of my own copies (provided that my first copy was obtained lawfully).
Put that in your hat and smoke it.
Next time you go trolling, try to back your claims up with facts
You were owned by
Martin Schou
Well ... her music anyway, 'cause to call Celine Dion "massive" would be like calling Calista Flockheart "healthy slim" ...
...
:-)
Anyway back to my point. I can stand up to massive amounts of Celine Dions music; I can do this for two reasons:
1) By concentrating, I can shut out almost any specific source of noise/sound
2) By using my aforementioned super power of concentration, I am also able to bring up mental images of my four favorite women (no, Celine isn't one of them) going at it in a, shall we say, fashion that leaves nothing to the imagination - though that is actually what is going on. I've tried sneaking Selma Hyak (#5 on my list) in as well, but then it goes totally screwy - I think there's a kernel panic in there somewhere
3) Last but not least, I actually like some of her music
In Denmark (where I'm from) it is perfectly legal for me to have digital copies of every single cd-album ever published - even if I don't own a single album.
...
Why?
Because the copyright law in Denmark allows me to make copies of original works - no matter who owns them. If I wanted to, I could walk down to the local library, borrow a copy of every album they have in store, go home, rip them onto my computer and return the albums - without breaking any laws in Denmark.
I can even take the copies, burn them onto CDs, and play them where ever I want to (just not to loudly, or I'll have to pay KODA/IFPI for playing music in public - stupid law). The only thing I can't do is give the copies to anyone not living with me. I can't give them as gifts, I can lend them to friends etc. But other than that, I can do just about everything I want to.
Now - I can't download music off most P2P networks, because then I'd be copying an illegal copy, and I'm not allowed to do that. But hey - I can just walk down to the local library and check out their CDs
How's that for fair use?
I have to agree 100% with you on that one. Writing books for 20 cents a page is likely to give you a VERY expensive and useless book, and usually results in books that are, as a teacher of mine once described such a book, "about as usefull as toilet paper and far less comfortable".
:-)
Putting his money where his mouth is, he himself writes the book used in his classes. Being a fairly open minded guy and not some greedy dumbass, his book costs about as much as you are willing to pay for it - namely the price of downloading it off his webpage, or simply reading it online, as he continuously updates the book.
That's how it's supposed to be - teachers shouldn't be bleeding students for money for crappy material just because they can - especially not when other knowledgable people are willing to characterize their efforts as "about as usefull as toilet paper and far less comfortable".
Man I miss that teacher