>Hmmm, can't read that article without giving up 10 bucks or going to a library, so I'll just have to fall back on never having heard such things from any doctor
Mind you, Twitter, I'm certainly not concerned with changing your mind. It's clear you'll stick with what you believe (backed up by a meaningless selection of anecdotal experience with the "Doctors [you] know") despite any argument I might make. I bother to reply at all simply on the off chance someone with an open mind will drill down into this. I'd like them to be exposed to a full range of points of view.
>Why is it so important to you?
It's important to me because the illegalization of marijuana was pushed hastily through Congress by a federal cop with an axe to grind and with little but racist and innacurate yellow journalism to support it, without review by the medical community (who at that time included marijuana as part of their official formulary), over the protests of the hemp-based fiber and oil seed industries (who were lied to and told marijuana prohibition would not illegalize their legitimate, minimally psychoactive crops), by representatives who were completely uneducated about the various properties and uses of the plant cannabis sativa, and that's no way for a free country to make laws. It's important to me because marijuana prohibition is the cornerstone of the war on drugs, which every year spends huge amounts of money and puts many non-violent offenders in jail, and is a huge source of corruption in governments and police forces worldwide, and yet has given us a world where drugs are cheaper, purer and more available than when marijuana, cocaine and opium could be had at the local pharmacy. It's important to me because this inneffective punitive system of drug control has effectively blocked the exploration of harm reduction techniques such as treatment, addictive maintenance and needle exchange, resulting in a world with more junkies, more drug-related crime and violence, and more AIDS. It's important to me because there is a fundmental injustice in criminalizing the recreational behavior of one group of people when there is no functional difference between getting stoned and getting drunk (except that in my limited, anecdotal experience, drunks are more likely to get mean, violent, and belligerent), and injustice should not be institutionalized in a free society. It's important to me because, despite your scientific survey of having not been told by your doctor pals, I have personally known very sick people who found relief and improved health in marijauna, and limited and anecdotal though this experience may be, I have yet to see a convincing argument that there is a compelling social benefit in prohibition that justifies that these sick people have been made criminals for doing something that helps them deal with their sickness.
I'm not a member of a racial minority, Twitter, but I oppose racial discrimination because I understand that the principles of fairness and justice are important even though the specific case may not effect me personally. You, on the other hand, clearly believe that there is no need for you to bother educating yourself or drawing an opinion beyond what the status quo has spoon fed you about a topic unless its negative impact has a direct effect on you. Congratulations, Twitter - the USA couldn't be what it is (and what it's becoming) without people like you.
>Computers, unbeknownst to some, have no intelligence.
Well that depends on your definition of intelligence, doesn't it? A Scientific materialist might argue that intelligence is just memory and processing capability, and so a computer merely has a very rudimentary intelligence
>Essentially, even with a perfect map of how to win every chess game in every situation - which is not possible in any case,
Really? I would have thought that there is a finite though exceptionally large number of possible chess games, although many end in draws. A computer could conceivably be programmed to deduce every possible game (?). The presence of a "thinking" opponent is irrelevant - because chess is dictated by rules there are still a finite number of possible moves in any given situation. What is your basis for saying chess is not a trivial game/problem? (Not just being the devil's advocate here, I'm curious if this statement has been compellingly demonstrated)
>A computer can't choose, it can only calculate
And what makes you think YOU can choose? Your brain is made up of chemicals which obey the laws of thermodynamics, presumably - don't tell me you believe in some mystical/metaphysical hoodoo in your mind that allows you to alter the laws of physics and thus choose one chemical conformation (thought) over another?!
>Deep Blue won iirc 3 our of the 6 games played, and drew 1 (in the rematch)
Kasparove won one, Deep Blue won two, and there were three draws. I'm of the opinion that the human intervention protest was sour grapes on Kasparov's part. It was not quite the overwhelming victory some state but it wasn't trivial either.
Timothy, if you're really willing to make book 2-1 in favor of the machine drop me a line, I might be interested in a gentleman's wager. Seriously, though - The reality is that to this day, machines have a fairly poor record against humans. We all assume that eventually they will be fast enough and able to think far enough ahead and be programmed up with enough sure -win scenarios from the thousands of recorded matches that they are essentially unbeatable - but the assumption many seem to be making that this point has come and gone is highly debatable, the Kasparov rematch notwithstanding. It's worth remembering that the majority of those games ended in a draw. It seems perhaps that the highest pinnacle of chess computing has mainly served to cancel the human advantage of creative nonlinear thought and reduce chess to a sort of rich man's tic tac toe.
And in the end its worth remembering that for now, at least, machines are still just intermediaries. Chess is not a strong AI problem, although playing like a human (as opposed to as well as/better than a human) might be. Kasparov wasn't just going against a machine, he was going against decades of IBM technological advancement, half a dozen engineers and an International Grandmaster (Joel Benjamin, part of the IBM development team). All told I think he did pretty well. But I'd bet in this match the CPU gets its clock cleaned.
While I don't condone the attacking tone of this post you are responding to I would reccomend to you the article: Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D., "Federal Foolishness and Marijuana," New England Journal of Medicine, January 30, 1997, Volume 336, Number 5, p. 366; here in one of the most respected journals of medicine you will find that there is increasing frustration with the federal jihad against marijuana. Unfortunately the federal government is more greatly empowered to "beat up" on doctors than doctors are to "beat up" on the DEA. It would be nice if you would educate yourself on the full range of opinions available on a topic before shooting your mouth off.
Garbage. Marijuana has strongly supported medical benefits that have yet to be reproduced by synthetic pharmacology. Despite the campaign of misinformation about these benefits millions of people seek medical relief from marijuana on a regular basis: it is unfortunate that they are forced to be criminals as a result. Marijuana also has legitimate religious uses; although this defense is misused by some, the Rastifarian religion is well established historically and has certainly been around a lot longer than the internet.
But set those aside while I attack your basic premise: your argument against license puts use of mind-altering substance under the same category as sex with minors, drunk driving, and speeding. The difference is that there has never been a succesful attempt to demonstrate a compelling social harm resulting from marijuana use. It has in fact been convincingly argued that the negative social consequences of drug prohibition far outweigh the potential gains even if prohibition were succesful, which it is not. Not allowing adults to choose whether they prefer a little smoke versus a bottle of beer for recreation is one thing. Refusing to allow the distribution of clean needles even when it has been repeatedly proven that it slows the transmission of AIDS, a compelling social benefit, and has no impact on drug use (junkies shoot up whether they can get clean needles or not) is quite another. But we get it forced down our throats in one package.
Twitter, I apreciate what you are trying to say but I cannot agree. The bureaucracies of status quo power will ALWAYS attempt to trivialize the liberties that they seek to retract while inflating the potential dangers of their abuse. You need to decide whether you value liberty or only the liberties you personally choose to exercise. You would also do well to educate yourself about the real costs and values of the "War on Drugs". A great many liberties unrelated to one's choice of "recreation" have been lost in the name of this lost cause.
One could argue that for most the internet is merely a "recreation." Don't be surprised when that argument is used to strip away your right to a free voice. You can choose not to speak up when someone's freedom is taken away because they choose a liberty that you don't value. Don't be surprised if there is noone left to speak up when they come for you.
...and that's legislation. Sure, businesses want something geared more towards commerce than communication, and why wouldn't they? They should design and pay for it. But you may have noticed business doesn't like to pay for things it can con citizens into paying for through taxation.
The danger is in the regulation of the internet. What the business/government alliance will attempt is to regulate the internet via the FCC probably as if it were a broadcast technology. At that point it could be made illegal to have an independent presence on the internet except in little for-the-public preserved zoos of the public access cable variety.
How will they do this? With the economic threats of piracy and hacking (viruses, worms, site hacking), and with the social threat of terrorism and dangers to "the children." Think the argument that it hasn't destroyed society yet will stave this rhetoric off? Marijuana has been illegal for 70 years in the USA despite a 5000 year history of civilized pharmacological use with no sign of significant negative social impact. Why do we maintain a costly, inneffective and pointless prohibition? Why, it's for "the children."
Keep a close eye on the government, kids, because they're going to try to steal the internet and give it away same as they stole the digital television spectrum and sold it for chump change in campaign donations from the teevee giants. And we'll all grumble on slashdot (as plug-pullin' day fast approaches) that our beloved dumb-pipe internet ISN'T a broadcast technology, it's a private one-one communication network and all communications over it should be protected just like a telephone conversation. Well it won't make a damn bit of difference any more than the DMCA being a crappy piece of unconstitutional legislation could keep Sklyarov from getting arrested.
All I can say is when the time comes we better be prepared to do a hell of a lot better job than we did when faced with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Great comment, but you're missing my meaning. The DMCA is a law passed within the USA's system. It may be illegal or unconstitutional but until it is proven so within the same system it is legally enforceable. Federal Authorities are thus obligated to enforce it by their mandate to uphold the USAs laws. The only condition the FBI had to meet was that it believed it had probable cause that he was distributing an alleged circumvention device as defined by the DMCA: that is sufficient justification for them to arrest him. (Of course this is an idealization in reality there are always political motivations unrelated to justice in the police actions of the Feds).
Now, I fully support and affirm your points on civil disobedience. But you must recognize that if you are going to take the civil disobedience trip, going to jail is one of the potential prices. In this age of the easy disobedience of DeCSS t-shirts that reality might seem remote. It wasn't remote to Henry David Thoreau, who you cite in your cited post on the why DMCA isn't a law. He went to jail for civil disobedience. It certainly wasn't remote to American revoloutionaries, who faced not just improsonment but death due to their resistance to the crown.
My argument is that you can only make the case that the FBI shouldn't have arrested him based on an argument that they could not have had probable cause etc. etc. see paragraph 1 above. You can argue that the law never should have existed in the first place but that's a whole other jurisdiction.
Finally, man, if you're going to go around usin them big words you might as well strive for maximum accuracy and call this oligrachy what it really is: a plutocracy
Whether you like it or not, DMCA is law and until it is overturned violations against it must be enforced by federal authorities. Any assertion that takes the faults of the DMCA as its basis is pointless and counterproductive: it isn't the FBI's job to determine the constitutional validity of congressional law. More to the point we won't get this law overturned by avoiding/evading legal battles: quite the opposite. If noone goes to jail this thing will never be subjected to the legal challenges that are vitally necessary to overturn it.
The question of whether there was probable cause that Sklyarov was personally responsible for distribution of an alleged circumvention device at the time of his arrest is certainly beyond my legal expertise and I suspect that most people who are stating an opinion on the subject are equally clueless.
That being said, the main reason this man should be released is that the supposed injured party and original source of the complaint, Adobe, has withdrawn its complaint and expressed its desire that Sklyarov be released. Yes, yes, someone will say, you don't need to take the "victim's" desires/feelings into account for there to be a crime. But it helps. We have enough serious criminals that need to be in jail without filling cells with people like Sklyarov.
The real story here is why Sklyarov is sitting in jail still at all, not being indicted, not having a bail hearing. I suspect the simple answer is the FBI is trying to figure out what to do with him that will not A)further embarrass them in the middle of their most shameful year in recent memory or B)wind up getting the DMCA thrown out of the law books on appeal. Headline: Russian Hacker Brings Down Landmark Intellectual Property Law. Nice one, Feds.
But ourselves. All the talk is fine and well but the problem is almost nobody even THINKS aobut IP issues. So the laws get worked out between the politicians who have made a career of convincing us that they are the only choices we have for representation and the monied interests who have cleaned up by convincing us they're the only game in town.
And so as Balinares astutely points out, we have a situation of a large group of consumers freely giving a chunk of their income to a record label or software corporation or movie studio, who give us a product that they "produced" (that must be the most abused concept in IP) by handing a small percentage of what they got from us last week to artists and crafters who have freely signed away their rights to ownership or significant income from the products of their labor.
What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong is that its all free. Sputter sputter yeah, but... But nothing. We make these choices and we pay for them.
Any abstract discussion of intellectual property is moot because of a simple fact: The price of freedom is ETERNAL VIGILANCE. A good constitution won't purchase your freedom. Better IP laws won't preserve your freedom. The reasons our freedoms are being abused is because we are lazy. Sony or M$ or Time-Warner-AOL offers us a sugary snack in the palm of their sickly hands and we eat it right up. The USA political machine offers us two bought-and-paid for suits in the most money-saturated presidential election of all times and we obediently fight each other over which stay-the-course status quo asshole will fuck the average citizen further into the ground for the next four years. We deserve what we're getting. Even among those of us who know better most cannot be roused to write a letter, boycott a product, or even vote.
On a personal note, since colon cancer runs in my family, and I'm consequently looking at regular colonoscopy after age 45 or so, this kind of thing is completely welcome. Nothin' nice about the old-fashioned way of doin' this stuff. By the time I hit my 40s they'll be routinely putting 'em in hot dogs without even asking permission. That'll be $17.50 sir, and by the way, you should really get that polyp checked
They had a blurb about this in Wired months ago. It came out in Nature well over a year ago. And yeah, yeah, yeah - so it's FDA approved now. Big f'n deal. But hey - here's a web link with some nasty pictures:
If you are a musician who self-publishes or publishes through an indie label: it is officially time to start enclosing a little throwaway card in your self-produced and/or indie produced/distributed music CDs. Look, I've even written some helpful text that is (C) J. Hamlow 2001 but which I hereby license unlimited use in any and every capacity by anyone free of charge -change it, make it better, spread it around and spread the word:
"Thank you for buying this audio CD. You should be aware that in an attempt to increase profits, compact discs are now being released by major record labels which have been engineered to limit your ability to use and enjoy your personal music collection. These CDs may interfere with the legal translation of audio files into formats such as MP3s, legal CD-CD copying for back-up purposes, may not play correctly on all of your CD players, and may even damage your audio or computer equipment when played. Because these CDs are not necessarily identified as different from a fully functional CD, you may inadvertently purchase one. If you do so, we urge you to return the defective CD for a full refund of the purchase price. In the meantime, please rest assured that this CD is fully functional for all the modes of playback you expect from your audio CD collection. Thank you again for your purchase."
If you are a musician who self-publishes or publishes through an indie labek: it is officially time to start enclosing a little throwaway card in your self-produced and/or indie produced/distributed music CDs. Look, I've even written some helpful text that is (C) J. Hamlow 2001 but which I hereby license unlimited use in any and every capacity by anyone free of charge -change it, make it better, spread it around and spread the word:
"Thank you for buying this audio CD. You should be aware that in an attempt to increase profits, compact discs are now being released by major record labels which have been engineered to limit your ability to use and enjoy your personal music collection. These CDs may interfere with the legal translation of audio files into formats such as MP3s, legal CD-CD copying for back-up purposes, may not play correctly on all of your CD players, and may even damage your audio or computer equipment when played. Because these CDs are not necessarily identified as different from a fully functional CD, you may inadvertently purchase one. If you do so, we urge you to return the defective CD for a full refund of the purchase price. In the meantime, please rest assured that this CD is fully functional for all the modes of playback you expect from your audio CD collection. Thank you again for your purchase."
What it boils down to is that there are an order of magnitude more consumer audio CD players out there than consumer CD-ROMS, CD Burners, and CD-RW drives hooked up computers combined - and a LOT of people who have a CD drive in their computer don't have a clue what it is capable of. It's easy to think the range of techknowledge you get on Slashdot is the norm, when 45K people will respond to a stupid joke survey about the SirCam virus and weak servers are instantly shut down by the volume of traffic when Slashdot links to a story - but the reality is quite the opposite: even the relatively technostupid like myself stand head and shoulders above the average consumer, who is only vaguely aware that stuff like this even exists.
At best, Napster had a couple million users on simultaneously at any given moment - whereas CBS managed to get some 30 million to watch Survivor at the same time. If Macrovision were to round their return percentage figures off to the nearest tenth it would probably be sufficient to make all those returning due to unrippability dissapear. They also probably picked a CD that was unlikely to go over with techies very well, the better to slow down discovery. After all, they want to put the best possible spin on a fairly trivial protection scheme - remember, they could give a rats ass about end-users, their real targets, their consumers, are record companies.
Interesting question - if you fail to label the CD in any way, how is one to say they have encountered an "encryption method" (for which the creation of a "circumvention device" is a violation of the DMCA) rather than a "stupidly fucked up CD," for which the creation of a "repair technology" is simply the perogative of the discerning consumer.
Gets into interesting territory: in general, I know, an ignorance of the law does not preclude one from being prosecuted for breaking it ("gee officer, that's a COCA bush?! And here I thought I was makin' SALT down in my basement" will not get you off the hook), although it may be considered in sentencing (as long as you're not facing a mandatory minimum, natch)... Yet this seems to be a case where ignorance could justifiably be grounds for questioning whether the law even applies. Are these CDs really "encrypted" in the first place? Bollocks, I say - they just have a bunch of junk on them. Teaching your computer to ignore bad data on a CD is hardly decryption.
I think Macrovision is well aware of all this. They were floating them to find out a)how long it takes the story to break b)how big of a public stink about it would occur and c)how long it would take for audiophiles and compunerds to come up with a fix for the problem.
Answers:
a: practically instantaneously
b: only among a sadly tiny cadre of the technological intelligentsia
c: not long at all. Thank you for playing, better luck next time!
If they had probable cause they wouldn't be doing the mailing campaign; they would just bring the hammer down.
There's no reason to believe this is any different from the BSA mailings featured a while ago: They're fishing. No crime in sending a nasty letter, no legal fees or protracted court battle. I suspect the direct mail piece will essentially say: we know you're up to something, ya no-good dirty pirate, but if you go ahead and subscribe to our service right away we won't bother to investigate you...
If, as the article suggests, they've had patchy success prosecuting the big middlemen operations, how the hell likely are they to succeed in running down the a million diffuse and unfederated end-users? Far as I know class action suits only go one way, and this ain't it, meaning they'd have to prosecute each user individually, and what are they likely to get? A back bill for a few years' service at best? Tell me it could come even close to covering the staggering legal fees.
They're just beating the bushes, hoping to scare some people into subscribing. Note that in the final analysis, they don't gain anything if a pirate simply gives up on stealing the signal. They either need to get retroactive compensation or get them to sign up.
Take a look at the stock graph in the article: that's your whole story. Just trying to prop up sagging revenue. The real question is... just how did they get those lists of names? If they were part of a separate case, under what jurisdiction were those names released to DirecTeeVee?
1) What he did was more akin to publishing instructions on how one might, if they were so inclined, crack the safe that Coca-Cola's secret formula was kept in. The DMCA IS something new because it makes it illegal to create the POTENTIAL to infringe copyright. And that is very dangerous ground indeed.
2) Even allowing your imperfect analogy, consider the reverse-engineering issue. Say I take a coke and run it through the gas chromatograph and come up with a formula that's equivalent: I strongly suspect that to win a hefty lawsuit Coke would have to convincingly demonstrate that my publication of their trade secrets had caused a loss in revenue - thus would the damages be determined.
There is a term for arresting someone because you think they are going to cause a crime: it's called prior restraint and it's unconstitutional. That is just one of the reasons why the DMCA IS something new and SHOULD be thrown out.
I must first say, there isn't a word in this dumb-ass article that hasn't been done to death elsewhere in Slashdot. DMCA is bad, arresting Russian programmers is bad, jeezus look what happened to Felten, chilling effects on freedom. I understand that the editors of Slashdot have some kind of perverse longing to publish every word this man writes but shouldn't he be accountable to add something original to the dialog?!
Now that that's off my chest... Laws is laws and it's far from unusual for the FBI or other Feds to try out a tactic, whether its bugging a mafia son's keyboard or arresting a foreign programmer (just to make up a couple purely hypothetical examples) just to float the idea and see how it plays in court. But my question for anyone with a little real legal knowledge is, why has no bail been set? When is he going to be indicted before a grand jury? How the hell long can they keep him in that Las Vegas jail without, you know, doing something definite? Since we routinely let murderers and rapists out on the street on unjustifiably puny bails, what exactly is the danger of letting this guy out on bail while they figure out how embarassing/politically damaging it's potentially going if they wind up getting the DMCA overturned and have to apologize to Russia for detaining their citizens unjustly in the same fiscal year as it becomes clear that the FBI is basically a lending library for sensitive information and expensive gadgets? Are they afraid he's going to write some really bad code? Can't they just hold his passport if they're afraid he'll leave the country? What the hell are they up to?
Technically it is not theft. But it's still copyright infringement and that means it is still a crime. So what exactly is your point? Mr. Flamebait may make his statment in a rude, nasty, and loaded manner but his point is sound. Musicians who get screwed by the labels have no more cause to complain than a burger flipper at MacDonalds who didn't pay attention to his job application. Jeeze! I only make minimum wage? I don't have an ownership stake in the franchise?
As long as this discussion focuses on trying to make copyright infringement against the major labels legal no ground will be gained and nothing will change. What we need to be talking about is using these technological advances to allow organized artists, small independent labels and enlightened consumers to circumvent the RIAA and major labels entirely. There are plenty of people already doing this. Buy their stuff if you don't like the way things are run.
More to the point, it begs the question - car sized when it hit the atmosphere? WHich it likely was - and as the article says probably nothing much hit the earth. The difference between something the size of a car hitting the atmosphere and something the size of a car by the time it reaches the earth is HUGE.
This is unsurprising, since a car-sized metor would have basically blown up a good size chunk of whatever county it landed in, not just scorched a cornfield.
Actually, for that matter if you read the original story it was saying baseball sized or thereabouts. If anything was the size of a car, maybe the fireball was, but that says next to nothing about the size of the actual meteor.
Believe me, when a car-sized meteor hits a populated area you won't need to go to Slashdot to hear the story.
On one hand, my first inclination is burden of proof, innocent until proven guilty
BUT...
There is something to the claim that without some latitude, piracy will eventually become unstoppable and it will have a negative effect on the bottom line of people who have a justifiable claim on revenue from the replication/ distribution of intellectual property.
Where does the line get drawn? How do we safeguard a place for private communication on the internet (which I hold very dear) while safeguarding the rights of copyright holders, not ALL of whom are rapacious corporations?
We've allowed business to run the net. Well, business loves business and in this day and age the customer isn't always right. People talk about Freenet, to be honest I don't know a hell of a lot about it. Maybe I should. Is that the answer?
Serious questions and I'd certainly welcome any serious replies (although I've pretty much crossed the Slashdot attention threshhold). I was being a bit of a troll in my initial responses but as a lover of liberty who also believes in my right to have some limited exclusive rights to profit by my creative endeavors, I do find the situation a bit of a conundrum.
I don't see any indication in this article that people's rights are being infringed. From what I read, they are hiring people to troll the internet for specific copyrighted works that are being made publically available through file-sharing software. This is illegal copyright infringement. An ISP has every right to choose to yank service on someone who is demonstrably using that service to engage in illegal activities.
I may be wrong - if people who are only privately "sharing" their music with themselves - i.e. using the internet to access their own collection remotely - then their rights ARE being infringed and that must be fought. But that isn't what this article says. ANd this says nothing about your right to rip your CDs. As far as I can tell the RIAA isn't even trying to fight that legally - they'll just try to make it technologically impossible, which is their perogative. At THAT point we enter the realm of the DMCA, where our rights are certainly being violated and which needs to be constitutionally challenged in a big way.
Read the f-in article. What's happening here is, copyright holders are hiring people to troll publically available resources looking for PARTICULAR COPYRIGHTED WORKS and when they find them, they go after the dumbass who is basically saying "hey I'm illegally distributing Bruce Springsteen's catalog right here!"
This is entirely legal and justifiable, and a situation I, for one, am more than happy to live with. Of course, if people keep scrambling and screaming and scheming to preserve their right to illegally distribute other peoples' copyrighted works to strangers, we are ever more likely to see the inevitable corporate takeover of the internet by mega-publishing/infrastructure monsters like AOL/Time-Warner/Roadrunner/AT&T/Amazon.com(okay I'm speculating) and the next thing you know, every packet you send gets sniffed by a supercomputer. "Oh my god, you're violating my civil rights!" You protest. "There are no civil rights within the constraints of a comercially owned communications infrastructure. Didn't you read the click-through agreement when you signed on?"
Of course we MUST fight tooth and nail to protect privacy and legal file-trading on the internet. Protesting legal actions to discourage copyright piracy is NOT the way to do this.
Slashdot Mirror
Mind you, Twitter, I'm certainly not concerned with changing your mind. It's clear you'll stick with what you believe (backed up by a meaningless selection of anecdotal experience with the "Doctors [you] know") despite any argument I might make. I bother to reply at all simply on the off chance someone with an open mind will drill down into this. I'd like them to be exposed to a full range of points of view.
>Why is it so important to you?
It's important to me because the illegalization of marijuana was pushed hastily through Congress by a federal cop with an axe to grind and with little but racist and innacurate yellow journalism to support it, without review by the medical community (who at that time included marijuana as part of their official formulary), over the protests of the hemp-based fiber and oil seed industries (who were lied to and told marijuana prohibition would not illegalize their legitimate, minimally psychoactive crops), by representatives who were completely uneducated about the various properties and uses of the plant cannabis sativa, and that's no way for a free country to make laws. It's important to me because marijuana prohibition is the cornerstone of the war on drugs, which every year spends huge amounts of money and puts many non-violent offenders in jail, and is a huge source of corruption in governments and police forces worldwide, and yet has given us a world where drugs are cheaper, purer and more available than when marijuana, cocaine and opium could be had at the local pharmacy. It's important to me because this inneffective punitive system of drug control has effectively blocked the exploration of harm reduction techniques such as treatment, addictive maintenance and needle exchange, resulting in a world with more junkies, more drug-related crime and violence, and more AIDS. It's important to me because there is a fundmental injustice in criminalizing the recreational behavior of one group of people when there is no functional difference between getting stoned and getting drunk (except that in my limited, anecdotal experience, drunks are more likely to get mean, violent, and belligerent), and injustice should not be institutionalized in a free society. It's important to me because, despite your scientific survey of having not been told by your doctor pals, I have personally known very sick people who found relief and improved health in marijauna, and limited and anecdotal though this experience may be, I have yet to see a convincing argument that there is a compelling social benefit in prohibition that justifies that these sick people have been made criminals for doing something that helps them deal with their sickness.
I'm not a member of a racial minority, Twitter, but I oppose racial discrimination because I understand that the principles of fairness and justice are important even though the specific case may not effect me personally. You, on the other hand, clearly believe that there is no need for you to bother educating yourself or drawing an opinion beyond what the status quo has spoon fed you about a topic unless its negative impact has a direct effect on you. Congratulations, Twitter - the USA couldn't be what it is (and what it's becoming) without people like you.
Well that depends on your definition of intelligence, doesn't it? A Scientific materialist might argue that intelligence is just memory and processing capability, and so a computer merely has a very rudimentary intelligence
>Essentially, even with a perfect map of how to win every chess game in every situation - which is not possible in any case,
Really? I would have thought that there is a finite though exceptionally large number of possible chess games, although many end in draws. A computer could conceivably be programmed to deduce every possible game (?). The presence of a "thinking" opponent is irrelevant - because chess is dictated by rules there are still a finite number of possible moves in any given situation. What is your basis for saying chess is not a trivial game/problem? (Not just being the devil's advocate here, I'm curious if this statement has been compellingly demonstrated)
>A computer can't choose, it can only calculate
And what makes you think YOU can choose? Your brain is made up of chemicals which obey the laws of thermodynamics, presumably - don't tell me you believe in some mystical/metaphysical hoodoo in your mind that allows you to alter the laws of physics and thus choose one chemical conformation (thought) over another?!
>Deep Blue won iirc 3 our of the 6 games played, and drew 1 (in the rematch)
Kasparove won one, Deep Blue won two, and there were three draws. I'm of the opinion that the human intervention protest was sour grapes on Kasparov's part. It was not quite the overwhelming victory some state but it wasn't trivial either.
And in the end its worth remembering that for now, at least, machines are still just intermediaries. Chess is not a strong AI problem, although playing like a human (as opposed to as well as/better than a human) might be. Kasparov wasn't just going against a machine, he was going against decades of IBM technological advancement, half a dozen engineers and an International Grandmaster (Joel Benjamin, part of the IBM development team). All told I think he did pretty well. But I'd bet in this match the CPU gets its clock cleaned.
While I don't condone the attacking tone of this post you are responding to I would reccomend to you the article: Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D., "Federal Foolishness and Marijuana," New England Journal of Medicine, January 30, 1997, Volume 336, Number 5, p. 366; here in one of the most respected journals of medicine you will find that there is increasing frustration with the federal jihad against marijuana. Unfortunately the federal government is more greatly empowered to "beat up" on doctors than doctors are to "beat up" on the DEA. It would be nice if you would educate yourself on the full range of opinions available on a topic before shooting your mouth off.
But set those aside while I attack your basic premise: your argument against license puts use of mind-altering substance under the same category as sex with minors, drunk driving, and speeding. The difference is that there has never been a succesful attempt to demonstrate a compelling social harm resulting from marijuana use. It has in fact been convincingly argued that the negative social consequences of drug prohibition far outweigh the potential gains even if prohibition were succesful, which it is not. Not allowing adults to choose whether they prefer a little smoke versus a bottle of beer for recreation is one thing. Refusing to allow the distribution of clean needles even when it has been repeatedly proven that it slows the transmission of AIDS, a compelling social benefit, and has no impact on drug use (junkies shoot up whether they can get clean needles or not) is quite another. But we get it forced down our throats in one package.
Twitter, I apreciate what you are trying to say but I cannot agree. The bureaucracies of status quo power will ALWAYS attempt to trivialize the liberties that they seek to retract while inflating the potential dangers of their abuse. You need to decide whether you value liberty or only the liberties you personally choose to exercise. You would also do well to educate yourself about the real costs and values of the "War on Drugs". A great many liberties unrelated to one's choice of "recreation" have been lost in the name of this lost cause.
One could argue that for most the internet is merely a "recreation." Don't be surprised when that argument is used to strip away your right to a free voice. You can choose not to speak up when someone's freedom is taken away because they choose a liberty that you don't value. Don't be surprised if there is noone left to speak up when they come for you.
The danger is in the regulation of the internet. What the business/government alliance will attempt is to regulate the internet via the FCC probably as if it were a broadcast technology. At that point it could be made illegal to have an independent presence on the internet except in little for-the-public preserved zoos of the public access cable variety.
How will they do this? With the economic threats of piracy and hacking (viruses, worms, site hacking), and with the social threat of terrorism and dangers to "the children." Think the argument that it hasn't destroyed society yet will stave this rhetoric off? Marijuana has been illegal for 70 years in the USA despite a 5000 year history of civilized pharmacological use with no sign of significant negative social impact. Why do we maintain a costly, inneffective and pointless prohibition? Why, it's for "the children."
Keep a close eye on the government, kids, because they're going to try to steal the internet and give it away same as they stole the digital television spectrum and sold it for chump change in campaign donations from the teevee giants. And we'll all grumble on slashdot (as plug-pullin' day fast approaches) that our beloved dumb-pipe internet ISN'T a broadcast technology, it's a private one-one communication network and all communications over it should be protected just like a telephone conversation. Well it won't make a damn bit of difference any more than the DMCA being a crappy piece of unconstitutional legislation could keep Sklyarov from getting arrested.
All I can say is when the time comes we better be prepared to do a hell of a lot better job than we did when faced with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Now, I fully support and affirm your points on civil disobedience. But you must recognize that if you are going to take the civil disobedience trip, going to jail is one of the potential prices. In this age of the easy disobedience of DeCSS t-shirts that reality might seem remote. It wasn't remote to Henry David Thoreau, who you cite in your cited post on the why DMCA isn't a law. He went to jail for civil disobedience. It certainly wasn't remote to American revoloutionaries, who faced not just improsonment but death due to their resistance to the crown.
My argument is that you can only make the case that the FBI shouldn't have arrested him based on an argument that they could not have had probable cause etc. etc. see paragraph 1 above. You can argue that the law never should have existed in the first place but that's a whole other jurisdiction.
Finally, man, if you're going to go around usin them big words you might as well strive for maximum accuracy and call this oligrachy what it really is: a plutocracy
"Bauer landed both Zebra and the Petawatt laser through personal contacts"
DAMN I know the wrong kind of people...
The question of whether there was probable cause that Sklyarov was personally responsible for distribution of an alleged circumvention device at the time of his arrest is certainly beyond my legal expertise and I suspect that most people who are stating an opinion on the subject are equally clueless.
That being said, the main reason this man should be released is that the supposed injured party and original source of the complaint, Adobe, has withdrawn its complaint and expressed its desire that Sklyarov be released. Yes, yes, someone will say, you don't need to take the "victim's" desires/feelings into account for there to be a crime. But it helps. We have enough serious criminals that need to be in jail without filling cells with people like Sklyarov.
The real story here is why Sklyarov is sitting in jail still at all, not being indicted, not having a bail hearing. I suspect the simple answer is the FBI is trying to figure out what to do with him that will not A)further embarrass them in the middle of their most shameful year in recent memory or B)wind up getting the DMCA thrown out of the law books on appeal. Headline: Russian Hacker Brings Down Landmark Intellectual Property Law. Nice one, Feds.
And so as Balinares astutely points out, we have a situation of a large group of consumers freely giving a chunk of their income to a record label or software corporation or movie studio, who give us a product that they "produced" (that must be the most abused concept in IP) by handing a small percentage of what they got from us last week to artists and crafters who have freely signed away their rights to ownership or significant income from the products of their labor.
What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong is that its all free. Sputter sputter yeah, but... But nothing. We make these choices and we pay for them.
Any abstract discussion of intellectual property is moot because of a simple fact: The price of freedom is ETERNAL VIGILANCE. A good constitution won't purchase your freedom. Better IP laws won't preserve your freedom. The reasons our freedoms are being abused is because we are lazy. Sony or M$ or Time-Warner-AOL offers us a sugary snack in the palm of their sickly hands and we eat it right up. The USA political machine offers us two bought-and-paid for suits in the most money-saturated presidential election of all times and we obediently fight each other over which stay-the-course status quo asshole will fuck the average citizen further into the ground for the next four years. We deserve what we're getting. Even among those of us who know better most cannot be roused to write a letter, boycott a product, or even vote.
http://www.givenimaging.com/usa/given_news_detail. asp?id=6
Ah, but you've seen one colon...
On a personal note, since colon cancer runs in my family, and I'm consequently looking at regular colonoscopy after age 45 or so, this kind of thing is completely welcome. Nothin' nice about the old-fashioned way of doin' this stuff. By the time I hit my 40s they'll be routinely putting 'em in hot dogs without even asking permission. That'll be $17.50 sir, and by the way, you should really get that polyp checked
http://www.givenimaging.com/usa/given_news_detail. asp?id=6
"Thank you for buying this audio CD. You should be aware that in an attempt to increase profits, compact discs are now being released by major record labels which have been engineered to limit your ability to use and enjoy your personal music collection. These CDs may interfere with the legal translation of audio files into formats such as MP3s, legal CD-CD copying for back-up purposes, may not play correctly on all of your CD players, and may even damage your audio or computer equipment when played. Because these CDs are not necessarily identified as different from a fully functional CD, you may inadvertently purchase one. If you do so, we urge you to return the defective CD for a full refund of the purchase price. In the meantime, please rest assured that this CD is fully functional for all the modes of playback you expect from your audio CD collection. Thank you again for your purchase."
If you are a musician who self-publishes or publishes through an indie labek: it is officially time to start enclosing a little throwaway card in your self-produced and/or indie produced/distributed music CDs. Look, I've even written some helpful text that is (C) J. Hamlow 2001 but which I hereby license unlimited use in any and every capacity by anyone free of charge -change it, make it better, spread it around and spread the word: "Thank you for buying this audio CD. You should be aware that in an attempt to increase profits, compact discs are now being released by major record labels which have been engineered to limit your ability to use and enjoy your personal music collection. These CDs may interfere with the legal translation of audio files into formats such as MP3s, legal CD-CD copying for back-up purposes, may not play correctly on all of your CD players, and may even damage your audio or computer equipment when played. Because these CDs are not necessarily identified as different from a fully functional CD, you may inadvertently purchase one. If you do so, we urge you to return the defective CD for a full refund of the purchase price. In the meantime, please rest assured that this CD is fully functional for all the modes of playback you expect from your audio CD collection. Thank you again for your purchase."
At best, Napster had a couple million users on simultaneously at any given moment - whereas CBS managed to get some 30 million to watch Survivor at the same time. If Macrovision were to round their return percentage figures off to the nearest tenth it would probably be sufficient to make all those returning due to unrippability dissapear. They also probably picked a CD that was unlikely to go over with techies very well, the better to slow down discovery. After all, they want to put the best possible spin on a fairly trivial protection scheme - remember, they could give a rats ass about end-users, their real targets, their consumers, are record companies.
Gets into interesting territory: in general, I know, an ignorance of the law does not preclude one from being prosecuted for breaking it ("gee officer, that's a COCA bush?! And here I thought I was makin' SALT down in my basement" will not get you off the hook), although it may be considered in sentencing (as long as you're not facing a mandatory minimum, natch)... Yet this seems to be a case where ignorance could justifiably be grounds for questioning whether the law even applies. Are these CDs really "encrypted" in the first place? Bollocks, I say - they just have a bunch of junk on them. Teaching your computer to ignore bad data on a CD is hardly decryption.
I think Macrovision is well aware of all this. They were floating them to find out a)how long it takes the story to break b)how big of a public stink about it would occur and c)how long it would take for audiophiles and compunerds to come up with a fix for the problem.
Answers:
a: practically instantaneously
b: only among a sadly tiny cadre of the technological intelligentsia c: not long at all. Thank you for playing, better luck next time!
There's no reason to believe this is any different from the BSA mailings featured a while ago: They're fishing. No crime in sending a nasty letter, no legal fees or protracted court battle. I suspect the direct mail piece will essentially say: we know you're up to something, ya no-good dirty pirate, but if you go ahead and subscribe to our service right away we won't bother to investigate you...
If, as the article suggests, they've had patchy success prosecuting the big middlemen operations, how the hell likely are they to succeed in running down the a million diffuse and unfederated end-users? Far as I know class action suits only go one way, and this ain't it, meaning they'd have to prosecute each user individually, and what are they likely to get? A back bill for a few years' service at best? Tell me it could come even close to covering the staggering legal fees.
They're just beating the bushes, hoping to scare some people into subscribing. Note that in the final analysis, they don't gain anything if a pirate simply gives up on stealing the signal. They either need to get retroactive compensation or get them to sign up.
Take a look at the stock graph in the article: that's your whole story. Just trying to prop up sagging revenue. The real question is... just how did they get those lists of names? If they were part of a separate case, under what jurisdiction were those names released to DirecTeeVee?
2) Even allowing your imperfect analogy, consider the reverse-engineering issue. Say I take a coke and run it through the gas chromatograph and come up with a formula that's equivalent: I strongly suspect that to win a hefty lawsuit Coke would have to convincingly demonstrate that my publication of their trade secrets had caused a loss in revenue - thus would the damages be determined.
There is a term for arresting someone because you think they are going to cause a crime: it's called prior restraint and it's unconstitutional. That is just one of the reasons why the DMCA IS something new and SHOULD be thrown out.
Now that that's off my chest... Laws is laws and it's far from unusual for the FBI or other Feds to try out a tactic, whether its bugging a mafia son's keyboard or arresting a foreign programmer (just to make up a couple purely hypothetical examples) just to float the idea and see how it plays in court. But my question for anyone with a little real legal knowledge is, why has no bail been set? When is he going to be indicted before a grand jury? How the hell long can they keep him in that Las Vegas jail without, you know, doing something definite? Since we routinely let murderers and rapists out on the street on unjustifiably puny bails, what exactly is the danger of letting this guy out on bail while they figure out how embarassing/politically damaging it's potentially going if they wind up getting the DMCA overturned and have to apologize to Russia for detaining their citizens unjustly in the same fiscal year as it becomes clear that the FBI is basically a lending library for sensitive information and expensive gadgets? Are they afraid he's going to write some really bad code? Can't they just hold his passport if they're afraid he'll leave the country? What the hell are they up to?
As long as this discussion focuses on trying to make copyright infringement against the major labels legal no ground will be gained and nothing will change. What we need to be talking about is using these technological advances to allow organized artists, small independent labels and enlightened consumers to circumvent the RIAA and major labels entirely. There are plenty of people already doing this. Buy their stuff if you don't like the way things are run.
More to the point, it begs the question - car sized when it hit the atmosphere? WHich it likely was - and as the article says probably nothing much hit the earth. The difference between something the size of a car hitting the atmosphere and something the size of a car by the time it reaches the earth is HUGE.
Actually, for that matter if you read the original story it was saying baseball sized or thereabouts. If anything was the size of a car, maybe the fireball was, but that says next to nothing about the size of the actual meteor.
Believe me, when a car-sized meteor hits a populated area you won't need to go to Slashdot to hear the story.
What are the solutions?
On one hand, my first inclination is burden of proof, innocent until proven guilty
BUT...
There is something to the claim that without some latitude, piracy will eventually become unstoppable and it will have a negative effect on the bottom line of people who have a justifiable claim on revenue from the replication/ distribution of intellectual property.
Where does the line get drawn? How do we safeguard a place for private communication on the internet (which I hold very dear) while safeguarding the rights of copyright holders, not ALL of whom are rapacious corporations?
We've allowed business to run the net. Well, business loves business and in this day and age the customer isn't always right. People talk about Freenet, to be honest I don't know a hell of a lot about it. Maybe I should. Is that the answer?
Serious questions and I'd certainly welcome any serious replies (although I've pretty much crossed the Slashdot attention threshhold). I was being a bit of a troll in my initial responses but as a lover of liberty who also believes in my right to have some limited exclusive rights to profit by my creative endeavors, I do find the situation a bit of a conundrum.
I may be wrong - if people who are only privately "sharing" their music with themselves - i.e. using the internet to access their own collection remotely - then their rights ARE being infringed and that must be fought. But that isn't what this article says. ANd this says nothing about your right to rip your CDs. As far as I can tell the RIAA isn't even trying to fight that legally - they'll just try to make it technologically impossible, which is their perogative. At THAT point we enter the realm of the DMCA, where our rights are certainly being violated and which needs to be constitutionally challenged in a big way.
This is entirely legal and justifiable, and a situation I, for one, am more than happy to live with. Of course, if people keep scrambling and screaming and scheming to preserve their right to illegally distribute other peoples' copyrighted works to strangers, we are ever more likely to see the inevitable corporate takeover of the internet by mega-publishing/infrastructure monsters like AOL/Time-Warner/Roadrunner/AT&T/Amazon.com(okay I'm speculating) and the next thing you know, every packet you send gets sniffed by a supercomputer. "Oh my god, you're violating my civil rights!" You protest. "There are no civil rights within the constraints of a comercially owned communications infrastructure. Didn't you read the click-through agreement when you signed on?"
Of course we MUST fight tooth and nail to protect privacy and legal file-trading on the internet. Protesting legal actions to discourage copyright piracy is NOT the way to do this.