Funny, i don't see any claims that George W. Bush told anyone to do anything. Typical Slashdot bias.
Yes, but... We live in a bureaucratic democracy. We can't elect every official who works in our name, but we do elect the folks who appoint and oversee them. When a government agency makes a major decision like this, responsibility falls on the guy who we elected (*ahem*). If this is not a decision that Bush agreed with, it wouldn't have happened.
The Bush administration cannot be let off the hook because it didn't specifically order this action. Those who are now running the case at the DOJ were appointed by this administration's officials, with the tacit agreement of the president. When a decision is reached on a high-profile case, it had damn better have happened with the President's knowledge and consent. To mince words and convince yourself of anything different is to say that our president is not in responsible for, or in control of his people. Now, we cut GWB a lot of slack, but I don't think this one slipped by him.
I am aware that it all ends in tears anyway: no-one lives over 110 years and anyway, by 80, half of us have Alzheimers
Of course, imagine what 50 or 60 years of intensive medical research might do for this situation. By 2050 or so, lifespans might average 140 years and Alzheimers might be a thing of the past. Wouldn't do to die of a heart attack in 2035, would it?
The only safe way is to say it is a life at fertilization.
How about death? When does that occur? It could happen when the heart stops (the old definition), but noawadays we routinely revive people with this condition. It could happen when the body can't breath on its own, but again, we can revive people after putting them on a respirator. Then there's brain death, but we don't really understand this. Does a lack of response mean a person is truly dead? Sometimes they come back. We just don't know.
If we were to be on the safe side, I suppose we'd keep people on respirators forever, never knowing when to pull the plug. Forget about organ donation. It's a tough issue, and being on the "safe" side is rarely the answer. Besides, just because tradition states that life begins at conception, who knows if that's correct? Life could begin at each sperm and egg waiting to be fertilized.
Yeah, right. Poor land lines, are you kidding ? France have had the first fully digital land network, the first "pre internet" (like personal TTYs, for everyone). I assume Germany public land network is not that bad, too.
Yup. But they aren't cheap. Does the German network still charge for local calls by the minute?
Besides, in many of the countries you are talking about, a cell phone is cheaper than a land line, which isn't the case in the US yet
This is absolutely true. Having travelled in northern Africa, where a huge number of people have mobile phones simply because there's no decent alternative, it's hard to blame our lower adoption rates on our technology.
I also feel that 3G is an expensive boondoggle; an attempt to race into a solution with technology and applications that aren't ready for it. It's a little bit like the Japanese adoption of the (now obsolete) analog HDTV standard. Yes, they got there first, and yes it was a big waste of money.
I believe that most 3G applications will be better served by smaller 802.11 type digital networks. There's a lot of work to be done before these networks will be practical for wide-scale deployment (particularly in the areas of routing and real-time communications). But having seen the estimated costs for deploying ("traditional") 3G networks in the US (in urban areas only, forget about the country), I can't help thinking that this is another area where a bit of American creativity could (will?) give us an end-run around the rest of the world's early start (woo-hoo, Stars and Stripes forever.) That's not necessarily a great thing-- we need a little bit more organization in this country. But we usually muddle through anyhow.
Digital phones are also cellular. Cellular technology refers to a system where the landscape is divided into multiple "cells", each with a separate transmitter. I wasn't aware that we'd found a non-cellular approach to the problem, even with 3G. It's also worth pointing out that this country is a lot bigger and less dense than Europe. In some places, it's just not practical to run digital service, let alone 3G.
Of course, if it's just a question of terminology... Would you feel more advanced if we called our phones "mobiles"?
Read the story! New York is listed as one of the states where Aerie want to buy the infrastructure.
Read my post! I quoted a line from the story, the one that made it sound as if service in California was the priority. The fact that they said California would be ready in as little as a month makes me suspect that New York is going to take a bit longer.
However, the creation or prolonging of one human life does not justify the destruction of another.
Excellent point, if you make the assumption that an embryo is a human life. And that's a hell of an assumption to make. It's a major flaw in the debate-- we've been talked into making this assumption without giving it five minutes worth of serious thought. And it doesn't take much more than that to see how quickly the notion falls apart.
An embryo certainly doesn't meet any of the common criteria for human life. It doesn't have a heart or a brain, it doesn't feel pain. I already mentioned the twinning problem. This wasn't some justification, it was simply a thought experiment. What if an embryo can be twinned into thirty-two different people, naturally or otherwise. If you destroy that embryo, are you killing thirty-two human lives? Are those thirty-two twins all individual human lives, and in that case,
does that mean that a human life is more than a little package of DNA with potential?
What is this little thing, anyway? At one point it was one of a million sperm cells, most of which die "horrible" deaths, and one of a similar number of egg cells. Each of those cells had potential to create human life, if some extremely unlikely things had happened to them. Similarly, an embryo has the potential to become human life if a bunch of extremely unlikely things happen to it. When the egg and sperm met, why did they cease to be expendable at precisely this point? Similarly, after a few weeks an embryo ceases to be twinnable, and begins to differentiate and become more than a simple bearer of genetic information. Why do we pick discrete points and decide at one point it's nature and at another it's murder? Does that seem arbitrary? And I don't see much in the slippery-slope argument. Do you believe absolutism is the only thing standing between us and Nazi-style experimentation?
Potential is a weak argument. Any sex cell has potential, but we don't and can't protect every one. An embryo has almost unlimited potential, or none at all, and it cares just about as much as my fingernail. Suffering is no argument at all-- there is none. So how can you liken an embryo to a living human being when they have so many fundamental differences? How can you jump directly to a discussion of life/death ethics when you haven't even convincingly demonstrated that a human life is at stake?
Perhaps we should rephrase your statement as follows: "The creation or prolonging of one human life does not justify preventing the creation of another." Does that sound so godawful or unethical to you? We have to figure out which question to ask before we start making judgments.
I hate to say this so bluntly, but the basis for the religious view in this issue doesn't seem to be about protecting life, it seems to be more about protecting procreation. IVF is ok in this view because it makes babies. And babies are good, sweet and innocent (and if they're our babies, that means there'll be more people like us in the world.) Even if some embryos get destroyed, it's justified by the baby-making. And extras must be created, this is the only way the process can ever be feasable. We live in a world where having kids is viewed by some as a blessing, even if the parents know that each new baby is at a terrible risk of having some terrible genetic disease.
I think before we start making this an issue of life vs. death, we have to acknowledge that much of the reasoning behind the debate comes from this angle. We live in a country that has no problem executing human beings in byzantine ways even when there's a chance of their being innocent. We turn gunshot wound patients away at the emergency-room door. But we're outraged at the prospect of killing a tiny collection of cells? Cells that have absolutely no intention of becoming a human being without being placed directly into a womb and fed exactly the right chemicals. It boggles the mind how much more concerned with these blobs of cells we are than with living, breating human beings.
And I don't buy the, "well, they were going to be gotten rid of anyway" argument. Just because someone else was going to kill your neighbor down the street if you didn't doesn't mean it's ok for you to go ahead and do it
First of all, I'm glad you actually addressed this issue. George Bush somehow neglected to tell America what happens to the leftover IVF embryos not used for research, nor did he express his disgust at the number of "potential" human beings created simply to be tossed in the incinerator. It surprises me that we can so easily tolerate the "mass-murder" that is in-vitro while at the same time being so outraged over the small number of embryos that are used for research.
As far as your not buying the argument, well, what is there to say? Drawing analogies between living humans and a couple of cells in a test tube (cells that will never be allowed to come to term and aren't capable of suffering) is truly a futile intellectual exercise. The embryos are being created, they are being destroyed for IVF. All of this is tolerated even by the right-to-life crowd because it's part of the process of creating life. But embryo research could also have that potential. The potential to save lives that already exist, and are capable of suffering, should be more of a justification than the "artificial" creation of lives that nature wouldn't allow. I suppose it's also worth noting that embroys can be twinned and twinned... So if I destroy one embryo am I guilty of killing one person or all of the "potential" people that embryo might have produced?
Proponents of stem cell research instist that only embryonic stem cells will do, and don't want to be bothered with researching the viability of stems cells taken from adults or the placenta and/or umbilical cord of new-born babies
This is just a gross simplification. Many, many researchers are working in these areas. Believe me, as clever as they are, the media did not invent the notion of using the placenta or umbilical cord to gather stem cells. If you're reading about it, that means that somebody is out there doing the research. Even if non-embryo sources worked as well as embryo sources, halting all research in order to refocus on new ways to harvest stem cells could waste years. During that time, a lot of (real) people could die. Are those lives worth less than the "lives" of a few cells? And how much farther does this go? Should we worry about every reproductive cell our body loses, every sperm cell or egg?
The truth is, the American people are being taken for a ride by a few people with some very interesting ideas. Ask people on the street what they think about stem cell research and you'll get a lot of concern about the destruction of embryos. Ask the same people how they feel about IVF and they'll tell you that helping parents have babies is a good thing. Tell them that embryos get thrown away in the process too, it'll be the first time many of these people have heard about it. A lot of the remainder will justify it with the "creation of life" argument. Given the opportunity for some independent thought, most people won't equate the destruction of early embryos with murder. On the other hand, tell them that evil scientists are creating little babies for spare parts, and these people will freak-- provided the "right" people say it enough.
I do not consider cloning or embryonic stem cell research to be worthwhile so we are doing OK.
Personally, I didn't consider Penicillin to be worthwhile to medical science. I also though solid-state electronics was a big waste of time. We had perfectly good tubes, and Sulfa drugs were very promising, right?
which would enable it to turn on service in California and Colorado as soon as within 30 days, according to a source close to the case.
This is great! Unless you live in New York, of course, which doesn't seem to be high on anyone's list... Too bad. Manhattan seemed like such a good place for a wireless net like Ricochet, being so small and dense. Although I can't imagine what Metricom had to pay to get their equipment onto the telephone poles out here.
If the US were accusing him of complicity in distributing the thing, then they might have a case. But the fact is, he's accused of creating it. It'll be fairly easy to demonstrate that he did not create it with the express intention of selling it in the USA, so there's not much there for the DOJ to accuse him of, following your argument.
If he'd broken the law while he was in the country, then you'd be absolutely right. However, he's actually charged with creating the software. Nobody claims he did this inside of the USA's borders-- even the FBI stipulates that he did it in Russia. So if he's not charged with breaking any US laws while inside of the US, then why is he in jail??
I wrote a book. It's legal where I live. Somebody else distributed it in a byzantine country where free speech is restricted. Who's responsible? Me, or the citizen who broke the laws of their own country?
This will fall by the wayside like eBooks for sale. Mp3s will be pirated and the consumers will save their dollars for CDs.
Not a chance. eBooks are lousy. You have to read them on a computer screen (or expensive PDA.) Most eBook platforms won't allow you to print the commercial books, and even if you could you'd still end up with a big pile of paper that you'd eventually throw away.
Digital sound files are much, much more convenient. Yes, MP3 files at lower (under 256kb) bitrates don't sound so great. But you'll find that even at this level, the quality difference isn't noticed by a huge number of listeners. Look at all of the people who put up with Cassette tapes for years. And for those who do care, higher bitrates aren't that expensive (bandwidthwise) nowadays, and there are better alternatives to MP3. Ask a serious audiophile how he/she feels about the CD and you'll get an earful. In any case, audiophiles make up less than 1 percent of the population.
You can listen to digital soundfiles on your PC, on a portable device, or you can toss them on a CDR. Personally, I hate CDs. I have an entire piece of furniture in my apartment devoted to my girlfriend's CDs, many of which we rarely listen to. What a colossal waste of space, not to mention money (those prized CDs have the resale value of old cheese.) We need CDs about as much as we need old-fashioned icehouses to keep our food cold.
I understand the draw, though. CDs cater to the natural human desire to posess. We may posess nothing more than a few cents worth of plastic and paper, but it makes us feel wealthier. Particularly if that soon-to-be-filling-a-landfill junk cost us the equivalent of an afternoon at a minimum wage job. Our "rituals" are just something we develop to deal with the price and limitations of traditional media.
Isn't there a good chance that there are more comments? Did anyone stop to think that the comments/list itself might be moderated?
I think every single person who's thought about it has considered this possibility. Hence the disbelief at the tiny number of comments, when so many people must have posted.
Any idea how this list was moderated? Provide some information and I'll love you for it.
We cared enough to generate 100 posts on Slashdot. I for one wrote a comment, and I'll bet at least 10 other people did. So the rest of the world was only capable of generating 20 comments? Seems a bit broken to me. Seems like a single University's faculty could generate 30 comments if they'd been explicitly notified.
Companies are made up of people. Those people also have a right to free speech.
Who suggested taking that right away from them? Of course, the bags of cash they give to politicians, on the other hand... Those could probably go. Unless you're of the "bags of cash" == "free speech" mindset.
Sklyarov wrote the software that brakes the copy protection for a commercial company, and got paid for doing it. He had to know they were going to sell it
That's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? The DMCA is an American law, and therefore applies to Americans and not Russians on Russian soil. End of story. If Dmitri had created it on American soil he would have broken the law. If he had personally distributed it on American soil, he would have broken the law. But intent is utterly irrelevant when discussing a non-crime, which is what his creation of the software was.
Put it this way. We can't retroactively prosecute the guy who invented and first consumed synthetic LSD, because no matter what his intent, it wasn't a crime to posess or distribute the substance at that time. And thank god for that, or we'd always be worried about breaking some law that doesn't exist yet. Similarly, Iran can't prosecute non-Iranian citizens for breaking Iranian laws outside of Iran (and when the Ayatollah has attempted to do so in his way, it brought world condemnation.) This is the way things should be, and to try and flip it around is dangerous and illegal. If you want to prosecute somebody, it would have to be ElComSoft (and don't imagine that I'm condoning that either, but for other reasons.) I believe that the DMCA is an illegal law, but it is a law nonetheless, which means it must be applied just like all other laws... that is: legally.
It's perfectly legal for me to plug in the Linksys router/switch/access point and share the connection with my laptop. So if my neighbor points his Linksys card at me and starts leeching bandwidth, am I violating it?
Don't some AUPs have anti-NAT clauses? This seems like it would make a violation out of the situation you described above (not that it would be enforceable.) My cable-modem provider charges per IP address, and although I haven't looked closely at their fine print lately, it would surprise me if they didn't have some sort of prohibition on "routers" that could interpreted as applicable to NAT boxes.
Back then, the baby bells wanted to get in on the LD game as it was very profitable. Now it isn't and they could care less about.
This isn't exactly true. LD is still profitable (prices may have even hit bottom), but even if that weren't the case, it will almost always be profitable for the RBOCs. When an LD carrier connects a call, the RBOCs on each end of a long distance call generally get a couple of cents per minute. If a customer is paying between 7 and 10 cents/min for their long distance, this means that a big percentage of the money is going to the RBOCs. If you're AT&T, that means you're only keeping maybe 5 or 6 cents per minute (which is why they've been so desperate to get into the local phone market, to avoid paying the RBOCs.)
On the other hand, if you're an RBOC offering LD, a long distance call becomes enormously profitable (especially if you're the local service provider on both ends of the connection.) A company like Verizon only has to pay what it really costs to provide the local lines, which makes the whole prospect much more attractive. If the LD call is a state-to-state call within their own network, it probably doesn't cost much more to run the long-distance connection themselves than it does to pipe it into AT&T's network. That means they can charge a competitive LD rate and pocket the difference.
Of course, the Telecommunications Act was supposed to balance this by opening local markets to other companies, but look at the disaster that's been. Both 3rd party DSL and local telephone service are examples of how easy it is for the phone company to make business impossible. If AT&T or Covad wants to offer some sort of local service, they have to go to Verizon et al. on hands and knees, hoping their customers'll get something approaching timely service. If Verizon wants to offer Long Distance, they don't need to beg.
effectively convincing judges and law enforcement officials that Ferguson should be liable>
If the prosecution could prove that Ferguson was directly involved in the "illegal" attack, thats true. Otherwise, he would probably be protected by the DMCA protections for people performing "encryption research". Even if their success does encourage similar "illegal" attacks, the researcher is (presumably) protected. There are several requirements for the research protection, one being that the researcher notifies the company, another being that they act in good faith. It's reasonable to say that Ferguson has done these things at this point.
PS Here's a pointer to the DMCA text (although a search on Findlaw will probably get you there as well. For those who haven't read it, it's quite a trip. Remember that this document might well be copyrighted as well!)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but... We live in a bureaucratic democracy. We can't elect every official who works in our name, but we do elect the folks who appoint and oversee them. When a government agency makes a major decision like this, responsibility falls on the guy who we elected (*ahem*). If this is not a decision that Bush agreed with, it wouldn't have happened.
The Bush administration cannot be let off the hook because it didn't specifically order this action. Those who are now running the case at the DOJ were appointed by this administration's officials, with the tacit agreement of the president. When a decision is reached on a high-profile case, it had damn better have happened with the President's knowledge and consent. To mince words and convince yourself of anything different is to say that our president is not in responsible for, or in control of his people. Now, we cut GWB a lot of slack, but I don't think this one slipped by him.
Of course, imagine what 50 or 60 years of intensive medical research might do for this situation. By 2050 or so, lifespans might average 140 years and Alzheimers might be a thing of the past. Wouldn't do to die of a heart attack in 2035, would it?
How about death? When does that occur? It could happen when the heart stops (the old definition), but noawadays we routinely revive people with this condition. It could happen when the body can't breath on its own, but again, we can revive people after putting them on a respirator. Then there's brain death, but we don't really understand this. Does a lack of response mean a person is truly dead? Sometimes they come back. We just don't know.
If we were to be on the safe side, I suppose we'd keep people on respirators forever, never knowing when to pull the plug. Forget about organ donation. It's a tough issue, and being on the "safe" side is rarely the answer. Besides, just because tradition states that life begins at conception, who knows if that's correct? Life could begin at each sperm and egg waiting to be fertilized.
Yup. But they aren't cheap. Does the German network still charge for local calls by the minute?
It'll be great. But it ain't gonna be cheap. You'd be better off if somebody wired your town with 802.11.
This is absolutely true. Having travelled in northern Africa, where a huge number of people have mobile phones simply because there's no decent alternative, it's hard to blame our lower adoption rates on our technology.
I also feel that 3G is an expensive boondoggle; an attempt to race into a solution with technology and applications that aren't ready for it. It's a little bit like the Japanese adoption of the (now obsolete) analog HDTV standard. Yes, they got there first, and yes it was a big waste of money.
I believe that most 3G applications will be better served by smaller 802.11 type digital networks. There's a lot of work to be done before these networks will be practical for wide-scale deployment (particularly in the areas of routing and real-time communications). But having seen the estimated costs for deploying ("traditional") 3G networks in the US (in urban areas only, forget about the country), I can't help thinking that this is another area where a bit of American creativity could (will?) give us an end-run around the rest of the world's early start (woo-hoo, Stars and Stripes forever.) That's not necessarily a great thing-- we need a little bit more organization in this country. But we usually muddle through anyhow.
Of course, if it's just a question of terminology... Would you feel more advanced if we called our phones "mobiles"?
Yep. And considering how many legal safeguards there are protecting you from bad credit reporting, imagine how bad Passport could get?
Read my post! I quoted a line from the story, the one that made it sound as if service in California was the priority. The fact that they said California would be ready in as little as a month makes me suspect that New York is going to take a bit longer.
Excellent point, if you make the assumption that an embryo is a human life. And that's a hell of an assumption to make. It's a major flaw in the debate-- we've been talked into making this assumption without giving it five minutes worth of serious thought. And it doesn't take much more than that to see how quickly the notion falls apart.
An embryo certainly doesn't meet any of the common criteria for human life. It doesn't have a heart or a brain, it doesn't feel pain. I already mentioned the twinning problem. This wasn't some justification, it was simply a thought experiment. What if an embryo can be twinned into thirty-two different people, naturally or otherwise. If you destroy that embryo, are you killing thirty-two human lives? Are those thirty-two twins all individual human lives, and in that case, does that mean that a human life is more than a little package of DNA with potential?
What is this little thing, anyway? At one point it was one of a million sperm cells, most of which die "horrible" deaths, and one of a similar number of egg cells. Each of those cells had potential to create human life, if some extremely unlikely things had happened to them. Similarly, an embryo has the potential to become human life if a bunch of extremely unlikely things happen to it. When the egg and sperm met, why did they cease to be expendable at precisely this point? Similarly, after a few weeks an embryo ceases to be twinnable, and begins to differentiate and become more than a simple bearer of genetic information. Why do we pick discrete points and decide at one point it's nature and at another it's murder? Does that seem arbitrary? And I don't see much in the slippery-slope argument. Do you believe absolutism is the only thing standing between us and Nazi-style experimentation?
Potential is a weak argument. Any sex cell has potential, but we don't and can't protect every one. An embryo has almost unlimited potential, or none at all, and it cares just about as much as my fingernail. Suffering is no argument at all-- there is none. So how can you liken an embryo to a living human being when they have so many fundamental differences? How can you jump directly to a discussion of life/death ethics when you haven't even convincingly demonstrated that a human life is at stake?
Perhaps we should rephrase your statement as follows: "The creation or prolonging of one human life does not justify preventing the creation of another." Does that sound so godawful or unethical to you? We have to figure out which question to ask before we start making judgments.
I think before we start making this an issue of life vs. death, we have to acknowledge that much of the reasoning behind the debate comes from this angle. We live in a country that has no problem executing human beings in byzantine ways even when there's a chance of their being innocent. We turn gunshot wound patients away at the emergency-room door. But we're outraged at the prospect of killing a tiny collection of cells? Cells that have absolutely no intention of becoming a human being without being placed directly into a womb and fed exactly the right chemicals. It boggles the mind how much more concerned with these blobs of cells we are than with living, breating human beings.
First of all, I'm glad you actually addressed this issue. George Bush somehow neglected to tell America what happens to the leftover IVF embryos not used for research, nor did he express his disgust at the number of "potential" human beings created simply to be tossed in the incinerator. It surprises me that we can so easily tolerate the "mass-murder" that is in-vitro while at the same time being so outraged over the small number of embryos that are used for research.
As far as your not buying the argument, well, what is there to say? Drawing analogies between living humans and a couple of cells in a test tube (cells that will never be allowed to come to term and aren't capable of suffering) is truly a futile intellectual exercise. The embryos are being created, they are being destroyed for IVF. All of this is tolerated even by the right-to-life crowd because it's part of the process of creating life. But embryo research could also have that potential. The potential to save lives that already exist, and are capable of suffering, should be more of a justification than the "artificial" creation of lives that nature wouldn't allow. I suppose it's also worth noting that embroys can be twinned and twinned... So if I destroy one embryo am I guilty of killing one person or all of the "potential" people that embryo might have produced?
Proponents of stem cell research instist that only embryonic stem cells will do, and don't want to be bothered with researching the viability of stems cells taken from adults or the placenta and/or umbilical cord of new-born babies
This is just a gross simplification. Many, many researchers are working in these areas. Believe me, as clever as they are, the media did not invent the notion of using the placenta or umbilical cord to gather stem cells. If you're reading about it, that means that somebody is out there doing the research. Even if non-embryo sources worked as well as embryo sources, halting all research in order to refocus on new ways to harvest stem cells could waste years. During that time, a lot of (real) people could die. Are those lives worth less than the "lives" of a few cells? And how much farther does this go? Should we worry about every reproductive cell our body loses, every sperm cell or egg?
The truth is, the American people are being taken for a ride by a few people with some very interesting ideas. Ask people on the street what they think about stem cell research and you'll get a lot of concern about the destruction of embryos. Ask the same people how they feel about IVF and they'll tell you that helping parents have babies is a good thing. Tell them that embryos get thrown away in the process too, it'll be the first time many of these people have heard about it. A lot of the remainder will justify it with the "creation of life" argument. Given the opportunity for some independent thought, most people won't equate the destruction of early embryos with murder. On the other hand, tell them that evil scientists are creating little babies for spare parts, and these people will freak-- provided the "right" people say it enough.
Personally, I didn't consider Penicillin to be worthwhile to medical science. I also though solid-state electronics was a big waste of time. We had perfectly good tubes, and Sulfa drugs were very promising, right?
This is great! Unless you live in New York, of course, which doesn't seem to be high on anyone's list... Too bad. Manhattan seemed like such a good place for a wireless net like Ricochet, being so small and dense. Although I can't imagine what Metricom had to pay to get their equipment onto the telephone poles out here.
If the US were accusing him of complicity in distributing the thing, then they might have a case. But the fact is, he's accused of creating it. It'll be fairly easy to demonstrate that he did not create it with the express intention of selling it in the USA, so there's not much there for the DOJ to accuse him of, following your argument.
If he'd broken the law while he was in the country, then you'd be absolutely right. However, he's actually charged with creating the software. Nobody claims he did this inside of the USA's borders-- even the FBI stipulates that he did it in Russia. So if he's not charged with breaking any US laws while inside of the US, then why is he in jail??
I wrote a book. It's legal where I live. Somebody else distributed it in a byzantine country where free speech is restricted. Who's responsible? Me, or the citizen who broke the laws of their own country?
Ignore the hideous first amendment violations.
Not a chance. eBooks are lousy. You have to read them on a computer screen (or expensive PDA.) Most eBook platforms won't allow you to print the commercial books, and even if you could you'd still end up with a big pile of paper that you'd eventually throw away.
Digital sound files are much, much more convenient. Yes, MP3 files at lower (under 256kb) bitrates don't sound so great. But you'll find that even at this level, the quality difference isn't noticed by a huge number of listeners. Look at all of the people who put up with Cassette tapes for years. And for those who do care, higher bitrates aren't that expensive (bandwidthwise) nowadays, and there are better alternatives to MP3. Ask a serious audiophile how he/she feels about the CD and you'll get an earful. In any case, audiophiles make up less than 1 percent of the population.
You can listen to digital soundfiles on your PC, on a portable device, or you can toss them on a CDR. Personally, I hate CDs. I have an entire piece of furniture in my apartment devoted to my girlfriend's CDs, many of which we rarely listen to. What a colossal waste of space, not to mention money (those prized CDs have the resale value of old cheese.) We need CDs about as much as we need old-fashioned icehouses to keep our food cold.
I understand the draw, though. CDs cater to the natural human desire to posess. We may posess nothing more than a few cents worth of plastic and paper, but it makes us feel wealthier. Particularly if that soon-to-be-filling-a-landfill junk cost us the equivalent of an afternoon at a minimum wage job. Our "rituals" are just something we develop to deal with the price and limitations of traditional media.
Yes, this cleared everything up for me.... ??
Isn't there a good chance that there are more comments? Did anyone stop to think that the comments/list itself might be moderated?
I think every single person who's thought about it has considered this possibility. Hence the disbelief at the tiny number of comments, when so many people must have posted.
Any idea how this list was moderated? Provide some information and I'll love you for it.
We cared enough to generate 100 posts on Slashdot. I for one wrote a comment, and I'll bet at least 10 other people did. So the rest of the world was only capable of generating 20 comments? Seems a bit broken to me. Seems like a single University's faculty could generate 30 comments if they'd been explicitly notified.
Who suggested taking that right away from them? Of course, the bags of cash they give to politicians, on the other hand... Those could probably go. Unless you're of the "bags of cash" == "free speech" mindset.
Sklyarov wrote the software that brakes the copy protection for a commercial company, and got paid for doing it. He had to know they were going to sell it
That's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? The DMCA is an American law, and therefore applies to Americans and not Russians on Russian soil. End of story. If Dmitri had created it on American soil he would have broken the law. If he had personally distributed it on American soil, he would have broken the law. But intent is utterly irrelevant when discussing a non-crime, which is what his creation of the software was.
Put it this way. We can't retroactively prosecute the guy who invented and first consumed synthetic LSD, because no matter what his intent, it wasn't a crime to posess or distribute the substance at that time. And thank god for that, or we'd always be worried about breaking some law that doesn't exist yet. Similarly, Iran can't prosecute non-Iranian citizens for breaking Iranian laws outside of Iran (and when the Ayatollah has attempted to do so in his way, it brought world condemnation.) This is the way things should be, and to try and flip it around is dangerous and illegal. If you want to prosecute somebody, it would have to be ElComSoft (and don't imagine that I'm condoning that either, but for other reasons.) I believe that the DMCA is an illegal law, but it is a law nonetheless, which means it must be applied just like all other laws... that is: legally.
Don't some AUPs have anti-NAT clauses? This seems like it would make a violation out of the situation you described above (not that it would be enforceable.) My cable-modem provider charges per IP address, and although I haven't looked closely at their fine print lately, it would surprise me if they didn't have some sort of prohibition on "routers" that could interpreted as applicable to NAT boxes.
This isn't exactly true. LD is still profitable (prices may have even hit bottom), but even if that weren't the case, it will almost always be profitable for the RBOCs. When an LD carrier connects a call, the RBOCs on each end of a long distance call generally get a couple of cents per minute. If a customer is paying between 7 and 10 cents/min for their long distance, this means that a big percentage of the money is going to the RBOCs. If you're AT&T, that means you're only keeping maybe 5 or 6 cents per minute (which is why they've been so desperate to get into the local phone market, to avoid paying the RBOCs.)
On the other hand, if you're an RBOC offering LD, a long distance call becomes enormously profitable (especially if you're the local service provider on both ends of the connection.) A company like Verizon only has to pay what it really costs to provide the local lines, which makes the whole prospect much more attractive. If the LD call is a state-to-state call within their own network, it probably doesn't cost much more to run the long-distance connection themselves than it does to pipe it into AT&T's network. That means they can charge a competitive LD rate and pocket the difference.
Of course, the Telecommunications Act was supposed to balance this by opening local markets to other companies, but look at the disaster that's been. Both 3rd party DSL and local telephone service are examples of how easy it is for the phone company to make business impossible. If AT&T or Covad wants to offer some sort of local service, they have to go to Verizon et al. on hands and knees, hoping their customers'll get something approaching timely service. If Verizon wants to offer Long Distance, they don't need to beg.
If the prosecution could prove that Ferguson was directly involved in the "illegal" attack, thats true. Otherwise, he would probably be protected by the DMCA protections for people performing "encryption research". Even if their success does encourage similar "illegal" attacks, the researcher is (presumably) protected. There are several requirements for the research protection, one being that the researcher notifies the company, another being that they act in good faith. It's reasonable to say that Ferguson has done these things at this point.
PS Here's a pointer to the DMCA text (although a search on Findlaw will probably get you there as well. For those who haven't read it, it's quite a trip. Remember that this document might well be copyrighted as well!)