Hardcore porn keeps a lot of voices from being heard; it's not a liberation thing for the viewer or the viewed.
Say what?!
I hope you can justify your bold statement. Personally, I think you're drinking the "victimization" Kool-Ade. Please, please, explain what the hell you mean when you say this? Having know people in the "adult-entertainment industry", I'd have to say your premises are fatally flawed.
Besides which, what business is it of yours what people choose to say or do or watch or make in private?
What you haven't explained, though, is why the FTC should be worried. What about this deal is anticompetitive?
I am not qualified to make such a determination, nor am I necessarily opposed to this merger, but I can think certain aspects bear scrutiny.
TimeWarner has a dominant position in a number of media niches, including television news (through the CNN family), newsmagazines (Time), movie and music publishing, etc. ad nauseam. While I don't recall if they're the largest cable operator in the nation (sounds right, though), I do know they serve the largest markets (NYC, LA). They already own a cable ISP (RoadRunner).
After this merger, they'll own the largest ISP in the nation, AND the Netscape browser. (Blah blah Mozilla blah - Mozilla may be open source, but Mozilla isn't Navigator. They'll have the exclusive rights to the Netscape name, and the attendant mindshare.)
This is an unheard of level of vertical integration, and can (likely, will) be used to lock competitive content out of their network. RoadRunner's TOS already includes restrictions on viewing more than 10 minutes of streaming video from anyone but "RoadRunner content partners".
The closest historical analogue to this situation comes from the days when Hollywood studios had a collective lock on the exhibition market - all of the theatres were studio owned, in order to have the right to exhibit films produced by the studios. At that time, not only did this keep competitors out of the exhibition market, but it kept competitors out of the content market; There were no independent films to speak of, as they couldn't be exhibited in studio-owned theatres. This situation also led, naturally, to price fixing, as studios could deny access to the exhibition market anyone wishing to compete by selling tickets at a lower price; studio-owned distributors would simply refuse to service these competitors.
Ultimately, the studios were forced to divest themselves of their theatres as a result of (surprise!) anti-trust action, in the so-called "Paramount Decrees".
I think the parallels here are fairly obvious.
-Isaac
More information about the Paramount Decrees (and more analysis of vertical integration in media) here and here.
The merger itself - I may have missed this, but this is all pending FTC approval, right? I have a feeling that there may resistance from the FTC *AND* shareholders in this. So nothing's written in stone yet.
I suspect this will be approved w/ nary a squeak from the FTC, and deafening applause from shareholders. What gov't agency is gonna challenge CNN to a showdown? Who's got more clout, the "altruistic, customer-focused" megacorp, or the "evil, interfering" gov't. The dominant meme in American politics today is that the government can do no right. Which is exactly what the AOLTurnerTimeWarners of the world want.
The merger itself - I may have missed this, but this is all pending FTC approval, right? I have a feeling that there may resistance from the FTC *AND* shareholders in this. So nothing's written in stone yet.
I suspect this will be approved w/ nary a squeak from the FTC, and deafening applause from shareholders. What gov't agency is gonna challenge CNN to a showdown? Who's got more clout, the "altruistic, customer-focused" megacorp, or the "evil, interfering" gov't. The dominant meme in American politics today is that the government can do no right. Which is exactly what the AOLTurnerTimeWarners of the world want.
The title of his book - _The_Limits_of_Privacy_ - is a pretty good indicator whence he's coming from. Having read it, I think he's either intellectually sloppy or a shill. Statist to the core.
The chapter on encryption is particularly enlightening. Pretty infuriating stuff, and not in the good "makes-you-think" way, but rather the "is-this-fellow-being-deliberately-obtuse-or-does- he-fail-to-grasp-the-fundamental-issues- involved" sort of way. Rather apropos that he's teaching political science in the heart of DC.
Seems odd how the world today is embroiled in lawsuit after lawsuit. There is no real solution anymore on anything other than to sue other party involved and hope for the best."
Of course. When the Legislative and Executive branches are coopted, the sole remaining (legal) remedy is petitioning the Judiciary for redress of grievances. These days, that's all that stands between this country and a "capitalist paradise" like Singapore.
This is why I mistrust tort-reform measures. Who's interests are represented by Congress? Who's job is it to pass legislation? Worried yet?
You will not find the spin you want from the TimeWarnerTurners, ABCDisneys, and Viacoms of the world because they are precisely the people behind the DVD consortium. They are content producers on a mammoth scale, and they control the major news outlets. Conflict of interest? Sure, but you'll never see THAT reported.
This doesn't excuse the Washington Post or NPR getting it wrong (given that they're both quasi-independent newsgathering organizations, not owned by the same parent companies as the large studios), but how often do you see them seriously take a different viewpoint on a given story vis-a-vis CNN or ABCNews or MSNBC?
That's why I come to/. so regularly - even the narrow demographic it attracts provides a greater spectrum of opinion (via the comments) than one EVER sees from the traditional "media outlets" (hence the term, OUTLET).
I wonder what Noam Chomsky would have to say about this...
Skip these two papfests and check out Almodovar's latest, if it's playing in your town. (It's been out here in NYC for several weeks, so some prints likely have filtered out to the rest of the States. In Europe, it may or may not be easier to find.) Now THAT's a movie.
Don't want to spoil it with a lengthy review; I find I enjoy movies better when I don't know too much about them first. Suffice it to say, that the title (which might imply some sort of Woody Allen nebbish) is a bit misleading. No Oedipus complex here.
Oliver Stone gets a big miss from me on this latest effort.
Five posts, and no content other than bitching at Nathan.
Hmm...
If you don't like the article, feel free not to read or respond to it. Slashdot is not required to genuflect to your editorial desires (nor mine), regardless of how often you post, or how high your Karma is.
Now, to add a little RELEVANT content, the article linked to in this story IS interesting, if a little obvious (Red Hat making moves to penetrate the Chinese market). Certainly, it's enough to qualify as newsworthy to someone.
Yes, the "China's Official OS" bit is bogus, but at least Nathan linked to the/. article on the subject, which is CHOCK FULL of comments explaining exactly how bogus it is.
Fine, so this article might better be titled "Red Hat adopts Red Caps". And, as others in here have pointed out, the "one billion communists" wording might have been better, but at least I got some actual news (Red Hat's opening of a Chinese office) out of Nathan's article. All I got from your posts was bile.
Subverting the process with external systems...
on
WTO + SDMI = NWO
·
· Score: 4
While I share the author's pessimism over the direction of global government, especially WRT filtering, I think there is room for hope based on the following:
As the scale of corporations/governments gets bigger, the cracks get bigger - that is, more people and ideas slip through them, and fall out of reach. (The rise of free software, the distribution of MP3s, and the WTO protests are but the most obvious examples.)
Those cracks, which corporations/governments might wish to fill in, are the expansion joints that make their existence on such a scale possible. To fill them in is to ensure collapse (a la the USSR).
At some point, the system will self-correct in one of a few possible ways:
Mammals marginalize the dinosaurs. (Compare the computer industry in the pre-PC age vs. today.)
The leaders of the hierarchical system marginalize themselves. (That is, the decisions they make alienate a large majority of the people, who turn their backs on them. See Robespierre at the end of the Terror, or the Russian Revolution, or the American, or for that matter, the decline of Nike over the past few years.)
The system recognizes its fissures for what they are (an essential strain-relief mechanism), and gives up on attempting to seal them.
Of course, the downside of this view is in recognizing that many people and ideas will get crushed by the system, unfairly and brutally, before things improve. Things may not get better for a long time either (a new Dark Ages, where wealth and access to tools of knowledge are increasingly restricted to a proportionally smaller slice of the population, is a distinct possibility - see tightening of IP protections, restrictions on "heretical" communications (e.g. encryption)), but ultimately, this too shall pass.
It's just that prior to this whole Internet thing, news of an individual being silenced never spread very far. Online, an individual can reach the world (or at least the richest, most influential part of it) at a very low cost - something that has never been possible before. It's possible to bring light to these cases that the mainstream national/international media would never have picked up before.
This is why the powers that be (and I don't just mean the gov't) fight so violently to control it.
You have given up your anonymity, not your privacy.
The two are separate concepts. For example, your medical records are private but not anonymous. And someone distributing a "hidden cam" video of you violates your privacy even though you remain anonymous.
Wrong on both counts.
You should have read the fine print on the form you signed to get health insurance, which essentially gives your insurers (and anyone they choose to share it with) full access to your medical records.
Likewise, there are no laws prohibiting video-only surveilance in the USA. There are laws that state your likeness can't be used for commercial purposes without your permission, but that's not the same thing, and is a property, rather than privacy protection. It doesn't give you the right to compensation, for example, if your image appears in a news photograph.
There is virtually no privacy protection in this country, beyond the (mostly gutted) Fourth Amendment.
The great thing about the internet is that there is room for corporate swine AND small-time crackpots, as well as Joe Sixpack & family.
Companies like AOL and MS may be trying to kill the URL (see Internet Keywords) as a way to restrict people's net experience to the corporate world, but they can never totally succeed because of the net's open architecture. (Yes, MS may wish they had the power to close this loophole, but they don't.)
Countries, including the USA, will try regulating the net. Some may succeed, on a small scale for a short time, but over the long run, they will have to give it up because it's ultimately bad for business. (See Singapore for a sterling example.)
Yes, the domain name battle is already lost to those with more money and lawyers, but who cares, really? Any CONTENT you may wish to find is still available, and that's the important thing.
Low-cost, content-agnostic web hosting is out there, and available in many parts of the world, such that national content-restrictions (such as the new US legislation criminalizing LINKING to information about scheduled drugs) can be subverted. It may not be bandwidth-agnostic (a popular pr0n site will still cost you some bucks to host), but that's life, and was true well before lawmakers started nosing around.
I used to think the internet was on the decline b/c of commercial interests; I now realize that every time one popular hangout is coopted/overloaded (usenet, eternal September), more spring up in different forms. (Slashdot being a great example, even though it is in mid-life already.)
The internet, unlike the physical world, doesn't have a limited amount of real-estate, (I know, theoretically it does, but it's incomprehensibly vast compared to what we see today.) and for that reason alone, I firmly believe the 'net is what you make of it.
It's interesting to see all these comments here defending employers who show no interest in the safety of their workplaces, beyond that which is required by law.
To them I say "wait until it happens to you, or someone you care about!"
In my last job, I worked crazy hours in poor conditions, ergonimically. Was my employer willing to provide an ergonomic keyboard, a monitor stand, or even a wrist-rest? Hell no, they wouldn't even supply a mouse pad! Within a very short time, this took its toll in the form of ulnar neuritis/hyperextension. Fortunately, their health plan at the time covered specialist care, and I was able to get treatment (physical therapy) for this condition.
I ended up leaving this employer recently, for a number of reasons (this uncaring attitude among them) - a week before I left, they ditched this health plan (too many people were filing similar claims) for one that had much more limited coverage of such care. Like virtually none.
I can see some of you smugly nodding your heads. "Aha," you think to yourselves, "he's proved my point - no need to require more of employers, as this chap was able to find himself a better job!"
Bollocks. My new employer's health plan, like most plans out there, don't cover any condition for which I have been treated in the last six months - namely my neuritis. I have my ergonomic keyboard (that I brought from home), and some stretching exercises which help, but I can't get any further treatment for my condition - all I can do is hope it doesn't flare up again, or too badly.
It's a glaring omission from current regs that if I lose my arm in dangerous machinery in a workplace, my employer has some responsibility (unless I'm a fscking idiot, and it was my fault), but if I lose the use of my arm from banging away at a keyboard when my employer wouldn't provide a wristwrest, or a suitable desk, or whatever, they can tell me to pound sand with very little fear of retribution.
The opposition to requiring employers to consider ergonomics and RSI is similar to the same sort of crass opposition to workplace safety regulations in the early part of this century. "Oh, it'll cost too much - God forbid the CEO only makes 300 times the wage of the average drone instead of the national average of 419x. Guess they'll have to close the factory instead."
Your creating of a valuable artistic work may entitle you to compensation for it (should you demand it), but it should not guarantee them to you in perpetuity, as has been the trend in recent legislation (by extending the protections by 20 years every 10). The only thing this insures is that your work is lost to history, because noone has the right to publish or exhibit it, should you or your pimp/media-conglom lose interest in the same. (See abandonware)
Encumbering the flow of ideas, not over the short term as an incentive to produce them, but forever, will drag humanity into a new dark age over the long term as it not only makes synthesis more difficult, it provides no incentive to produce anything new.
Give-back is essential.
Judicial system is the last hope.
on
Copyright!
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· Score: 1
I think you're preaching to the choir here.
The problem, as I see it, is that elected officials can't afford to turn their backs on corporate campaign contributors.
What legislator (or presidential candidate) is going to oppose copyright extension? Not only are the proponents of such legislation huge campaign donors, but they also provide the very advertising space the candidates want to buy!
Such a system guarantees that the interests of the IP barons will be protected abover nearly all else. Barring a complete rework of the electoral process (including campaign finance), this will not change. (And perversely, those in power have the most to lose if the system were to change, hence they've no interest in pursuing this course.)
At this point, with elected officials completely co-opted, the only hope for sanity rests in the appointed members of the judicial system, who are the only people who can afford to turn away from the Disneys of the world (without worry of retribution at the next election when Disney/GE/whomever will throw money at an opposition candidate to oust the incumbent).
And, of course, there are limits to what the judicial system can accomplish - it is merely reactive in nature. Existing laws can be struck down, but new regulations can not be drafted in the courtroom, except where existing law authorizes this explicitly (i.e. sentencing, antitrust remedies, etc).
Private universities can legally place restrictions on students who wish to distribute class notes, but I believe public universities are on shaky legal ground. (IANAL, however) Course notes, as has been observed, are not direct transcriptions of faculty lectures, but the interpretations of the individual student; copyright protection should certainly not apply.
UCLA is clearly playing dirty pool to protect their own course-notes racket, but I also think they drink their own kool-aid on the issue of faculty lectures being protected IP.
The attitude expressed by Asst. Provost Sandbrook ("The issue here is faculty control over what's going on inside and outside of the classroom.") bespeaks a remarkable arrogance on his part - the fact that he believes the faculty should retain control of student behaviour and the free exchange of information outside of their fiefdom? Pathetic.
It also bears noting that Universities expect students to take the knowledge they have gleaned, and use it (at some level) to make a living. I would argue that these students are doing just that, and are showing some quick thinking to boot.
Does Mr. Sandbrook really expect that some other college professor at another university is going to poach their curricula by way of buying notes off a website?
I, as a potential user of such a system, am much more concerned about what happens to the information on the server (i.e. your) end. I don't know who the operators are, how my data is handled, and who's reading it. That worries me much more than someone trying to crack my username/passphrase.
I'm not sure additional layers of authentication (beyond username/password) are necessary. I would, however, assign passwords/phrases to users, rather than letting them pick their own, to keep Joe Slobot from picking 12345 as his p/w.
As an aside, expending so much effort to ensure privacy here seems like a moot point - anyone with health insurance in the USA basically signs away all privacy righs, where their medical records are concerned - it's boilerplate on every application of every insurer in the country, and one has no control over this data once it's in their hands.
The market is vastly different, and changing so rapidly. As someone worded earlier,
the punishment has to be dealt soon, because in 5 years, Microsoft may no longer have a true monopoly. Well, isn't this a stronger case to leave this market alone... and that it will eventually situate itself for the better?
I think this is shortsighted. Microsoft is buying their way into every market they can. Cable systems, long distance, online music, etc. etc. etc.
They already have a lock on the office app market (witness the exorbitant prices they're charging, the 90+% market share, and the fact that you simply can't buy most of the apps unbundled from Office), which hasn't even been mentioned in most of this coverage. They've won the so-called browser war. (Netscape/Mozilla are in stasis - they won't die, but are unlikely to increase their market share significantly, unless AOL ditches IE.)
And online music - just read today about the RioPort/MS joint venture. Best quote in the article:
"To content providers it means that they don't want to be locked into one specific format, and if you look at the RioPort's Web site, there is a wide selection available in Windows Media Audio," said Lorraine Comstock, RioPort's director of corporate marketing.
Make no mistake about it - Microsoft is doing everything they can to ensure that they become the toll-collector of the digital age. They want a piece of everything; its executives have made public statements to this effect. 5 years down the road, Microsoft's Windows monopoly will be nearly irrelevant (but will probably still exist, barring an implemented remedy) because they will have already established themselves as the gatekeeper in a dozen other markets. THAT, I believe, is the reason why swift action is imperative.
I watched "face the nation" last Sunday, While on the issue of Microsoft antitrust, the REpublican senate from Utah has a tougher attitude towards MS then the Democrat from NY.
Like the subject line says, Novell Inc. is based in Orem, Utah. IIRC, so was the late Wordperfect, Inc.
Something worth pointing out here is that the DOJ needs to bring this case to a satisfactory conclusion before our next president takes power.
A quick search for soft-money contributions on opensecrets.org shows $331,100 in Microsoft contributions to party-affiliated organizations over the past ~8 months alone. (73% of this total ($241,100) to Republicans.) This is in an off-year, with the elections a year away and doesn't include contributions made now or in the past to any individual campaign (Gorton) And of course, we've all read the article about MS lobbying to cut funding for anti-trust actions.
I suspect that a key element in Microsoft's strategy is to delay this process until the after the next president is inaugurated. If a Republican gets into office, the Attorney General and DOJ leadership will be replaced, presumably by more "business-friendly" characters, perhaps less inclined to pursue this matter.
I don't think the Supreme Court's conservative nature really matters much - When it comes down to it, they're all quite smart and capable of reason (well, except for Thomas, who basically votes w/ Scalia and rarely writes any opinions of his own.)
However, if the new Atty. General or DOJ procedurally drops the matter, there's nothing the court can do.
They were LESS liable for the behaviour of their students BEFORE they started snooping. Now that they've set a precedent of editorial control over content on their network, they will have to keep monitoring for and removing copyright violations (or potential violations, or libel, or obscenity, or any other forbidden-speech-du-jour) from now on.
Actually, a very easy way to track the dissemination of a given document is to insert small typos, formatting changes, minor changes in wording, etc.
Some of it might get obliterated by later reformatting, but chances are at least one of the "tags" will survive. In a long document, it's unlikely that a random transcription error will occur twice in exactly the same place, so it's a pretty reliable method.
Another variation on this theme is filling out slightly different spellings of one's name on various forms, and then tracking the dissemination of your info through the junkmail you recieve.
Slashdot Mirror
Say what?!
I hope you can justify your bold statement. Personally, I think you're drinking the "victimization" Kool-Ade. Please, please, explain what the hell you mean when you say this? Having know people in the "adult-entertainment industry", I'd have to say your premises are fatally flawed.
Besides which, what business is it of yours what people choose to say or do or watch or make in private?
-Isaac
I am not qualified to make such a determination, nor am I necessarily opposed to this merger, but I can think certain aspects bear scrutiny.
TimeWarner has a dominant position in a number of media niches, including television news (through the CNN family), newsmagazines (Time), movie and music publishing, etc. ad nauseam. While I don't recall if they're the largest cable operator in the nation (sounds right, though), I do know they serve the largest markets (NYC, LA). They already own a cable ISP (RoadRunner).
After this merger, they'll own the largest ISP in the nation, AND the Netscape browser. (Blah blah Mozilla blah - Mozilla may be open source, but Mozilla isn't Navigator. They'll have the exclusive rights to the Netscape name, and the attendant mindshare.)
This is an unheard of level of vertical integration, and can (likely, will) be used to lock competitive content out of their network. RoadRunner's TOS already includes restrictions on viewing more than 10 minutes of streaming video from anyone but "RoadRunner content partners".
The closest historical analogue to this situation comes from the days when Hollywood studios had a collective lock on the exhibition market - all of the theatres were studio owned, in order to have the right to exhibit films produced by the studios. At that time, not only did this keep competitors out of the exhibition market, but it kept competitors out of the content market; There were no independent films to speak of, as they couldn't be exhibited in studio-owned theatres. This situation also led, naturally, to price fixing, as studios could deny access to the exhibition market anyone wishing to compete by selling tickets at a lower price; studio-owned distributors would simply refuse to service these competitors.
Ultimately, the studios were forced to divest themselves of their theatres as a result of (surprise!) anti-trust action, in the so-called "Paramount Decrees".
I think the parallels here are fairly obvious.
-Isaac
More information about the Paramount Decrees (and more analysis of vertical integration in media) here and here.
I suspect this will be approved w/ nary a squeak from the FTC, and deafening applause from shareholders. What gov't agency is gonna challenge CNN to a showdown? Who's got more clout, the "altruistic, customer-focused" megacorp, or the "evil, interfering" gov't. The dominant meme in American politics today is that the government can do no right. Which is exactly what the AOLTurnerTimeWarners of the world want.
-Isaac
I suspect this will be approved w/ nary a squeak from the FTC, and deafening applause from shareholders. What gov't agency is gonna challenge CNN to a showdown? Who's got more clout, the "altruistic, customer-focused" megacorp, or the "evil, interfering" gov't. The dominant meme in American politics today is that the government can do no right. Which is exactly what the AOLTurnerTimeWarners of the world want.
-Isaac
The title of his book - _The_Limits_of_Privacy_ - is a pretty good indicator whence he's coming from. Having read it, I think he's either intellectually sloppy or a shill. Statist to the core.
- he-fail-to-grasp-the-fundamental-issues- involved" sort of way. Rather apropos that he's teaching political science in the heart of DC.
The chapter on encryption is particularly enlightening. Pretty infuriating stuff, and not in the good "makes-you-think" way, but rather the "is-this-fellow-being-deliberately-obtuse-or-does
-Isaac
Oh gawd yes! Mobile 500mw transmitter, with RDS spoofing. Handsfree mic, so yr not so obvious when talking to the guy in front of you.
That's even better than the "LED scrolling sign in the windscreen" idea!
-Isaac
Of course. When the Legislative and Executive branches are coopted, the sole remaining (legal) remedy is petitioning the Judiciary for redress of grievances. These days, that's all that stands between this country and a "capitalist paradise" like Singapore.
This is why I mistrust tort-reform measures. Who's interests are represented by Congress? Who's job is it to pass legislation? Worried yet?
-Isaac
You will not find the spin you want from the TimeWarnerTurners, ABCDisneys, and Viacoms of the world because they are precisely the people behind the DVD consortium. They are content producers on a mammoth scale, and they control the major news outlets. Conflict of interest? Sure, but you'll never see THAT reported.
/. so regularly - even the narrow demographic it attracts provides a greater spectrum of opinion (via the comments) than one EVER sees from the traditional "media outlets" (hence the term, OUTLET).
This doesn't excuse the Washington Post or NPR getting it wrong (given that they're both quasi-independent newsgathering organizations, not owned by the same parent companies as the large studios), but how often do you see them seriously take a different viewpoint on a given story vis-a-vis CNN or ABCNews or MSNBC?
That's why I come to
I wonder what Noam Chomsky would have to say about this...
-Isaac
How about this:
Skip these two papfests and check out Almodovar's latest, if it's playing in your town. (It's been out here in NYC for several weeks, so some prints likely have filtered out to the rest of the States. In Europe, it may or may not be easier to find.) Now THAT's a movie.
Don't want to spoil it with a lengthy review; I find I enjoy movies better when I don't know too much about them first. Suffice it to say, that the title (which might imply some sort of Woody Allen nebbish) is a bit misleading. No Oedipus complex here.
Oliver Stone gets a big miss from me on this latest effort.
-Isaac
Five posts, and no content other than bitching at
/. article on the subject, which is CHOCK FULL of comments explaining exactly how bogus it is.
Nathan.
Hmm...
If you don't like the article, feel free not to read or respond to it. Slashdot is not required to genuflect to your editorial desires (nor mine), regardless of how often you post, or how high your Karma is.
Now, to add a little RELEVANT content, the article linked to in this story IS interesting, if a little obvious (Red Hat making moves to penetrate the Chinese market). Certainly, it's enough to qualify as newsworthy to someone.
Yes, the "China's Official OS" bit is bogus, but at least Nathan linked to the
Fine, so this article might better be titled "Red Hat adopts Red Caps". And, as others in here have pointed out, the "one billion communists" wording might have been better, but at least I got some actual news (Red Hat's opening of a Chinese office) out of Nathan's article. All I got from your posts was bile.
-Isaac
...empty of course. eMpTy-Vee.
So apropos, and right under our noses to boot.
-Isaac
Of course, the downside of this view is in recognizing that many people and ideas will get crushed by the system, unfairly and brutally, before things improve. Things may not get better for a long time either (a new Dark Ages, where wealth and access to tools of knowledge are increasingly restricted to a proportionally smaller slice of the population, is a distinct possibility - see tightening of IP protections, restrictions on "heretical" communications (e.g. encryption)), but ultimately, this too shall pass.
-Isaac
It's just that prior to this whole Internet thing, news of an individual being silenced never spread very far. Online, an individual can reach the world (or at least the richest, most influential part of it) at a very low cost - something that has never been possible before. It's possible to bring light to these cases that the mainstream national/international media would never have picked up before.
This is why the powers that be (and I don't just mean the gov't) fight so violently to control it.
-Isaac
Wrong on both counts.
You should have read the fine print on the form you signed to get health insurance, which essentially gives your insurers (and anyone they choose to share it with) full access to your medical records.
Likewise, there are no laws prohibiting video-only surveilance in the USA. There are laws that state your likeness can't be used for commercial purposes without your permission, but that's not the same thing, and is a property, rather than privacy protection. It doesn't give you the right to compensation, for example, if your image appears in a news photograph.
There is virtually no privacy protection in this country, beyond the (mostly gutted) Fourth Amendment.
-Isaac
The great thing about the internet is that there is room for corporate swine AND small-time crackpots, as well as Joe Sixpack & family.
Companies like AOL and MS may be trying to kill the URL (see Internet Keywords) as a way to restrict people's net experience to the corporate world, but they can never totally succeed because of the net's open architecture. (Yes, MS may wish they had the power to close this loophole, but they don't.)
Countries, including the USA, will try regulating the net. Some may succeed, on a small scale for a short time, but over the long run, they will have to give it up because it's ultimately bad for business. (See Singapore for a sterling example.)
Yes, the domain name battle is already lost to those with more money and lawyers, but who cares, really? Any CONTENT you may wish to find is still available, and that's the important thing.
Low-cost, content-agnostic web hosting is out there, and available in many parts of the world, such that national content-restrictions (such as the new US legislation criminalizing LINKING to information about scheduled drugs) can be subverted. It may not be bandwidth-agnostic (a popular pr0n site will still cost you some bucks to host), but that's life, and was true well before lawmakers started nosing around.
I used to think the internet was on the decline b/c of commercial interests; I now realize that every time one popular hangout is coopted/overloaded (usenet, eternal September), more spring up in different forms. (Slashdot being a great example, even though it is in mid-life already.)
The internet, unlike the physical world, doesn't have a limited amount of real-estate, (I know, theoretically it does, but it's incomprehensibly vast compared to what we see today.) and for that reason alone, I firmly believe the 'net is what you make of it.
-Isaac
It's interesting to see all these comments here defending employers who show no interest in the safety of their workplaces, beyond that which is required by law.
To them I say "wait until it happens to you, or someone you care about!"
In my last job, I worked crazy hours in poor conditions, ergonimically. Was my employer willing to provide an ergonomic keyboard, a monitor stand, or even a wrist-rest? Hell no, they wouldn't even supply a mouse pad! Within a very short time, this took its toll in the form of ulnar neuritis/hyperextension. Fortunately, their health plan at the time covered specialist care, and I was able to get treatment (physical therapy) for this condition.
I ended up leaving this employer recently, for a number of reasons (this uncaring attitude among them) - a week before I left, they ditched this health plan (too many people were filing similar claims) for one that had much more limited coverage of such care. Like virtually none.
I can see some of you smugly nodding your heads. "Aha," you think to yourselves, "he's proved my point - no need to require more of employers, as this chap was able to find himself a better job!"
Bollocks. My new employer's health plan, like most plans out there, don't cover any condition for which I have been treated in the last six months - namely my neuritis. I have my ergonomic keyboard (that I brought from home), and some stretching exercises which help, but I can't get any further treatment for my condition - all I can do is hope it doesn't flare up again, or too badly.
It's a glaring omission from current regs that if I lose my arm in dangerous machinery in a workplace, my employer has some responsibility (unless I'm a fscking idiot, and it was my fault), but if I lose the use of my arm from banging away at a keyboard when my employer wouldn't provide a wristwrest, or a suitable desk, or whatever, they can tell me to pound sand with very little fear of retribution.
The opposition to requiring employers to consider ergonomics and RSI is similar to the same sort of crass opposition to workplace safety regulations in the early part of this century. "Oh, it'll cost too much - God forbid the CEO only makes 300 times the wage of the average drone instead of the national average of 419x. Guess they'll have to close the factory instead."
Fsck that.
-Isaac
Yes, "give-back"!
Your creating of a valuable artistic work may entitle you to compensation for it (should you demand it), but it should not guarantee them to you in perpetuity, as has been the trend in recent legislation (by extending the protections by 20 years every 10). The only thing this insures is that your work is lost to history, because noone has the right to publish or exhibit it, should you or your pimp/media-conglom lose interest in the same. (See abandonware)
Encumbering the flow of ideas, not over the short term as an incentive to produce them, but forever, will drag humanity into a new dark age over the long term as it not only makes synthesis more difficult, it provides no incentive to produce anything new.
Give-back is essential.
I think you're preaching to the choir here.
The problem, as I see it, is that elected officials can't afford to turn their backs on corporate campaign contributors.
What legislator (or presidential candidate) is going to oppose copyright extension? Not only are the proponents of such legislation huge campaign donors, but they also provide the very advertising space the candidates want to buy!
Such a system guarantees that the interests of the IP barons will be protected abover nearly all else. Barring a complete rework of the electoral process (including campaign finance), this will not change. (And perversely, those in power have the most to lose if the system were to change, hence they've no interest in pursuing this course.)
At this point, with elected officials completely co-opted, the only hope for sanity rests in the appointed members of the judicial system, who are the only people who can afford to turn away from the Disneys of the world (without worry of retribution at the next election when Disney/GE/whomever will throw money at an opposition candidate to oust the incumbent).
And, of course, there are limits to what the judicial system can accomplish - it is merely reactive in nature. Existing laws can be struck down, but new regulations can not be drafted in the courtroom, except where existing law authorizes this explicitly (i.e. sentencing, antitrust remedies, etc).
IANAL, of course, but I'm not optimistic.
Private universities can legally place restrictions on students who wish to distribute class notes, but I believe public universities are on shaky legal ground. (IANAL, however) Course notes, as has been observed, are not direct transcriptions of faculty lectures, but the interpretations of the individual student; copyright protection should certainly not apply.
UCLA is clearly playing dirty pool to protect their own course-notes racket, but I also think they drink their own kool-aid on the issue of faculty lectures being protected IP.
The attitude expressed by Asst. Provost Sandbrook ("The issue here is faculty control over what's going on inside and outside of the classroom.") bespeaks a remarkable arrogance on his part - the fact that he believes the faculty should retain control of student behaviour and the free exchange of information outside of their fiefdom? Pathetic.
It also bears noting that Universities expect students to take the knowledge they have gleaned, and use it (at some level) to make a living. I would argue that these students are doing just that, and are showing some quick thinking to boot.
Does Mr. Sandbrook really expect that some other college professor at another university is going to poach their curricula by way of buying notes off a website?
I, as a potential user of such a system, am much more concerned about what happens to the information on the server (i.e. your) end. I don't know who the operators are, how my data is handled, and who's reading it. That worries me much more than someone trying to crack my username/passphrase.
I'm not sure additional layers of authentication (beyond username/password) are necessary. I would, however, assign passwords/phrases to users, rather than letting them pick their own, to keep Joe Slobot from picking 12345 as his p/w.
As an aside, expending so much effort to ensure privacy here seems like a moot point - anyone with health insurance in the USA basically signs away all privacy righs, where their medical records are concerned - it's boilerplate on every application of every insurer in the country, and one has no control over this data once it's in their hands.
I think this is shortsighted. Microsoft is buying their way into every market they can. Cable systems, long distance, online music, etc. etc. etc.
They already have a lock on the office app market (witness the exorbitant prices they're charging, the 90+% market share, and the fact that you simply can't buy most of the apps unbundled from Office), which hasn't even been mentioned in most of this coverage. They've won the so-called browser war. (Netscape/Mozilla are in stasis - they won't die, but are unlikely to increase their market share significantly, unless AOL ditches IE.)
And online music - just read today about the RioPort/MS joint venture. Best quote in the article:
Make no mistake about it - Microsoft is doing everything they can to ensure that they become the toll-collector of the digital age. They want a piece of everything; its executives have made public statements to this effect. 5 years down the road, Microsoft's Windows monopoly will be nearly irrelevant (but will probably still exist, barring an implemented remedy) because they will have already established themselves as the gatekeeper in a dozen other markets. THAT, I believe, is the reason why swift action is imperative.
Something worth pointing out here is that the DOJ needs to bring this case to a satisfactory conclusion before our next president takes power.
A quick search for soft-money contributions on opensecrets.org shows $331,100 in Microsoft contributions to party-affiliated organizations over the past ~8 months alone. (73% of this total ($241,100) to Republicans.) This is in an off-year, with the elections a year away and doesn't include contributions made now or in the past to any individual campaign (Gorton) And of course, we've all read the article about MS lobbying to cut funding for anti-trust actions.
I suspect that a key element in Microsoft's strategy is to delay this process until the after the next president is inaugurated. If a Republican gets into office, the Attorney General and DOJ leadership will be replaced, presumably by more "business-friendly" characters, perhaps less inclined to pursue this matter.
I don't think the Supreme Court's conservative nature really matters much - When it comes down to it, they're all quite smart and capable of reason (well, except for Thomas, who basically votes w/ Scalia and rarely writes any opinions of his own.)
However, if the new Atty. General or DOJ procedurally drops the matter, there's nothing the court can do.
They were LESS liable for the behaviour of their students BEFORE they started snooping. Now that they've set a precedent of editorial control over content on their network, they will have to keep monitoring for and removing copyright violations (or potential violations, or libel, or obscenity, or any other forbidden-speech-du-jour) from now on.
Which is exactly what the RIAA wants, methinks.
Some of it might get obliterated by later reformatting, but chances are at least one of the "tags" will survive. In a long document, it's unlikely that a random transcription error will occur twice in exactly the same place, so it's a pretty reliable method.
Another variation on this theme is filling out slightly different spellings of one's name on various forms, and then tracking the dissemination of your info through the junkmail you recieve.