Yup, it's there. I missed it the first time I went through, because it's in little light-blue letters at the bottom of the page, and my browser window wasn't sized big enough.
I think Katz's point was simply that a major network should take more responsibility for its actions, especially a network that throws so much criticism towards others who display similar behavior. Placing a warning on that website is probably all that is required of CBS legally, but as a "family channel", they could probably seek to avoid putting this footage where any kid could get to it with their dad's Goldpass account. Note that I don't have kids, and I'm not particularly invested in this issue, but I do see what Katz is trying to say, so don't knock him just cause he's Katz.
I wonder if this increase in brand recognition comes at a significant cost to the site that sponsors the ads, in terms of reader satisfaction and return rate.
You're right. DeCSS just came to mind because I was thinking of the decoder. Set-top boxes will need technology "equivalent to DeCSS"-- that is, something that decrypts scrambled content. Only, legal.
Yes, you can use Flash (a lot of people don't even have it) or ActiveX. Now what do you think the choice is going to be for those web designers and users? For a company that was just declared a monopoly, MS isn't trying very hard to clean up their reputation. Do you think this'll come up in court?
Not to mention that ActiveX security leaves a little to be desired.
And all of you will say Napster was a Good Thing, but I say Napster brought the end of the Good Thing. The free ride is over my friends.
The reason Napster came to pass was simply that the record companies were too damn terrified of the Internet already that they failed to offer a comparable service. I can tell you that with a fair degree of certainty, as I worked for a company that did DRM work long before I'd heard of Napster. The record companies were already doing lots of testing back then, but they couldn't get the nerve to trust any system with their content. Napster just gave a name to their fears.
Essentially, I see this as a way for cable/content providers to force their will on the set-top box manufacturers, in much the same way as they did to the DVD makers. Beginning next year (I believe), set-top boxes will be sold at stores like Best Buy, as an attempt to prevent cable companies from having complete control over this segment of the market. Unfortunately, if set-top box manufacturers are forced to license technology equivalent to DeCSS, they may lose some autonomy right back to the cable companies. This is where I see these tactics going in the short run.
In the longer run, I think their aim is primarily towards the HDTV and high-quality digital markets. HDTV is still a few years from being practical for more than a few channels, especially over standard cable networks. But perhaps offering higher quality via the digital connection may be a selling point for the cable companies, if they could get away with it. In any case, with DVDs taking over from videotapes, and services like Tivo going into the cable headend, most consumers may choose not to own analog recording technology in a few years.
So I doubt they [russia] can get involved in a new arms race.
Why would the need to get involved in an arms race? They have more than enough missiles already. Russia can make things very unpleasant for us, if they want to (or more realistically, if their government collapses and becomes something more aggressive.)
We could, of course, simply take advantage of the fact that we're strong and they're poor and... I don't know. Nuke 'em? Invade 'em? Get real. Russia's not going away, and they're not going to lose their ability to make us unhappy if they decide to. We can't just ignore them.
And what are the potential effects Moscow (and surrounding areas) face if this system is ever used? Certainly beats being blown up, but probably not by that much.
How much could a terrorist accomplish by turning our financial district into a wasteland, say around 11:30 AM on a busy tuesday? I'm certain it would be more useful to them than turning the entirety of Pearl Harbor into glass.
It's also worth noting that in addition to funding these tests, the US gov't has severely scaled back funds sent to track nuclear warheads in what used to be the USSR.
The real problem is not that this may pass. The real problem isn't even specifically IP laws. I think the real problem is simply that some people are thinking about taking their business concerns into the grade-school cirruculum. That's an ugly, ugly development. It's not entirely without precedent, but it could well be the beginning of a much more serious trend.
How many napsteroids are reporting themselves to the copyright holder and the local police each time they copy something?
In a sense, all of them. The download figures that the RIAA took into court came from somewhere. Generally this "somewhere" was Napster's own records. So, the copyright holders knew about the downloads, and the court system also knew.
Note that civil disobedience doesn't necessary mean walking into the police station and giving them your name, address and Social Security number.
I presume there'll be some reporting on both the transmitting and receiving end. This makes it slightly more difficult to swap unauthorized songs unless everyone gets the modified client.
And let's face it. Napster's just not interesting enough to spend the programming time on. There are better ways to exchange music, without the hassle of distributing a tool that might end up "banned" under the DMCA. And even if you did manage to get enough people using it to make Napster useful again, the resulting ruckus would probably shut them down.
It only becomes an issue when they are a monopoly, which I believe they are not.
Unfortunately, two different courts would disagree with you there. And most of these judges are not Slashdot types-- they've previously shown support for Microsoft. Perhaps if you saw the same evidence they did, you might change your mind?
Some people feel that the best way to counter all this carbon going into the air (mostly in the form of CO2) is to use some kind of machine to extract atmospheric carbon. Fortunately, such machines already exist. They are called trees. It appears that John Denver had the solution to global warming figured out before anybody ever heard of it.
Yes, but the number of trees doesn't seem to be increasing-- or at least, not enough to reverse the increases in atmospheric CO2. The most practical extraction solutions I've heard don't involve trees-- instead, they revolve around carbon sequestration through the dumping of rotting crop-residue into the oceans or stimulating ocean algae growth.
It's all a little bit questionable-- if we're going to address the question, we should ask ourselves whether we want to try something completely untested such as artificial carbon sequestration (with all of the potential side effects), or maybe just look for alternative energy sources; wind power could provide enormous quantities of electricity if we simply encouraged it and allowed market forces to improve the technology (as the Europeans have begun to.) And it would reduce our dependence on a resource that we really shouldn't be dependent on, for economic reasons as well as the environmental ones.
AI was a bomb at the box office because it was a bad movie.
Amen. But Jurassic Park III is coming out soon, so just hang in there...
There are a lot of nooks and crannies of this nation where DSL is not available, so that could be one reason for the requirement. Another reason might be that DSL is considered a different class of broadband service, one that is intended to cater more to business than to individuals. While we all know that DSL does cater to individuals, it has some fundamental limits to the number of people it can serve in the near future.
If everybody in America wanted broadband tomorrow, the cable modem companies would be the clear winners. Perhaps the FCC is trying to insure that both DSL and Cable Modem service have some form of Open Access built into them, just in case one doesn't make it (it's a lot easier requiring it now than later on.)
Today it's used to find people who have already committed crimes, and it's only located in one city. Inevitably, the networks will be linked, and even unrecognized faces will be archived. Imagine how useful this tool could be for police: a cop could sit down at a terminal in the station, put in a name or a picture of the suspect, and with no legwork take out a detailed list of every single action that individual has taken over the last three to five years. Plot it on a map, or just watch the video.
But the possibility for abuse is tremendous. Nobody could hide from that kind of surveillance; the KGB could only dream of being able to watch people like that. Of course non-criminals have nothing to hide, so why shouldn't the government trace their movements, right? Just as long as you're not a closeted gay, or a political dissident, or cheating on your wife, you've got no reason to worry about people watching your movements.
Do you grasp how this changes the level of privacy in citizens' lives? Of course you have no guarantee of privacy when you're in public, but you do have a certain expectation of anonymity; it's the nature of the world today. Cops on the street can watch you, but no cop can watch every single person on the street. If the government or a private citizen wanted to follow individual citizens around in public, they could, but if they decided to do it 24/7 without justification, you can bet our courts would have a problem with it. It's just too invasive.
And that's what a fully implemented, linked surveillance network is. It's a cop following you around everywhere you go. Even if that information never leaks into the private domain, it simply changes our relationship with our government. We (and our courts) would not stand for constant, overt surveillance today, so I can't think of any reason we'd accept covert surveillance tomorrow. The only reason that this will be allowed to happen is that people are ignorant of the true capability of this technology. By the time we do become aware of it, it'll be a fait accompli, and our concept of anonymity will be irreversibly changed.
Oh, and as these systems become more prevalent, I could see a state- or country-wide network of these being constructed.
Or they might cross-reference and store even non-matching faces. Imagine being able to input a photo or even an artists' reconstruction into a computer and get a complete listing of every single place the suspect has been in the last few years, no matter where in the country he/she went? Technically, I can't help thinking that it's an awfully cool thing, and I assume most cops would agree. Unfortunately, as a citizen it scares the crap out of me. Imagine if someone could access years of your history in a few seconds without leaving their seat? I don't think we need to go down this road.
This is not just about putting cameras on the street corner!
This is about a computerized facial recognition system that will be used to automatically match video to faces in a database. This technology, whether constitutionally authorized or not, is ENTIRELY different from placing cops on the street. It's also potentially worse than anything Orwell envisioned. Let's face it, the scenario outlined in 1984 could never have encompassed more than a small percentage of the population. The USSR, even at during its most brutal Stalinist periods was never able to bug or surveil more than a fraction of the populace.
This technology gives the government the potential ability to monitor the comings and goings of every single American who travels through a public space. This seriously changes the balance of power between the people and their government, even if the people don't yet realize what's going to happen as this technology matures (and I say this as a certainty. This tech will become ubiquitous and will be used for significantly more than it is today, unless we do something about it.)
You may be right that our constitution gives us no precise guarantee of privacy in a "public" space. It does, however, give us certain intangible guarantees to liberty, which this technology may seriously undermine.
The natural (knee-jerk?) reaction to this kind of story seems to be negative: I don't want someone, especially the government, watching me, etc, etc.
As far as I can see, the knee-jerk reaction is the one you just had. Most people in this country probably say "hey, cameras on the street'll reduce crime." What's the matter with those damn liberals?
The ACLU made themselves a dirty word. They have spent too much time fighting absurd claims. Seems like they have a tendency to go too far. Turns people off.
I've never seen the ACLU associate with something like this.
The ACLU associates with tons of stuff like this. Just go check out their website. They're not popular because they take on unpopular causes-- unpopular, but just and important. Look at it this way-- probably 85+% of the people in this Florida town think that putting cameras around town is a great idea. Stops crime, right? They're not concerned about the potential for abuse, or the threat to privacy. So if the ACLU were to walk in there and try to do something about it, they'd just muddy their name even more (those damn interfering liberals!)
By the same token, plenty of people think that property forfeiture law is great. Takes property away from those damn drug dealers. They don't realize that the seizure laws make a mockery of the constitution (relying on archaic English law), and will eventually be used against them (ie Giuliani siezing drunk drivers' cars, even if the car belonged to somebody else.) But the ACLU does something about this, and conservatives accuse them of protecting drug dealers. Get over it.
Ah, so you mean we should do to them what we've done to the cigarette manufacturers? Slap a fine/tax on Microsoft that will simply be passed on to their customers, who will still buy MS products regardless of the extra cost, because they have so little choice? And then Microsoft can go on with business as usual, but this time the government will be so dependent on the revenue that they won't want to hurt MS's profits...
The executive branch controls the justice dept, so when they remove all of the experienced lawyers from a case, the case can tend to suffer. This probably wasn't the deciding factor in today's decision, but it will have an effect when the case goes back to a lower court.
The Executive also nominates the judges. In this case, I believe many of the judges were nominated under Bush Sr. or Reagan, so although this executive branch has no particular influence over them now, presidents with similar ideologies-- possibly similar DNA-- appointed them, and that's a big favor to do for somebody. Finally, don't forget that someday Bush or a successor may get to appoint somebody to the Supreme Court-- that's certainly incentive to play nice.
On the other hand, defending the breakup order will require further legal argument, correct? And if the DOJ isn't willing to work quite as hard as they did the last time around, you can't count on a breakup. Anything less than a breakup is no punishment at all; there's no financial penalty that will seriously affect Microsoft.
Each telecom laid plenty of extra dark fiber, to be sure, but they also assumed that a much larger portion of what they laid would be utilized, and this would pay the debt created by the build-out, in addition to the maintenance. Unfortunately, they assumed wrong, partly due to the fact that all of the telcos built their networks at the same time. Now they don't have enough money to pay for the massive last-mile upgrades that will make all of that fiber worth something, so it'll sit dark for much longer than it was supposed to.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Katz's point was simply that a major network should take more responsibility for its actions, especially a network that throws so much criticism towards others who display similar behavior. Placing a warning on that website is probably all that is required of CBS legally, but as a "family channel", they could probably seek to avoid putting this footage where any kid could get to it with their dad's Goldpass account. Note that I don't have kids, and I'm not particularly invested in this issue, but I do see what Katz is trying to say, so don't knock him just cause he's Katz.
I wonder if this increase in brand recognition comes at a significant cost to the site that sponsors the ads, in terms of reader satisfaction and return rate.
You're right. DeCSS just came to mind because I was thinking of the decoder. Set-top boxes will need technology "equivalent to DeCSS"-- that is, something that decrypts scrambled content. Only, legal.
Yes, you can use Flash (a lot of people don't even have it) or ActiveX. Now what do you think the choice is going to be for those web designers and users? For a company that was just declared a monopoly, MS isn't trying very hard to clean up their reputation. Do you think this'll come up in court?
Not to mention that ActiveX security leaves a little to be desired.
The reason Napster came to pass was simply that the record companies were too damn terrified of the Internet already that they failed to offer a comparable service. I can tell you that with a fair degree of certainty, as I worked for a company that did DRM work long before I'd heard of Napster. The record companies were already doing lots of testing back then, but they couldn't get the nerve to trust any system with their content. Napster just gave a name to their fears.
In the longer run, I think their aim is primarily towards the HDTV and high-quality digital markets. HDTV is still a few years from being practical for more than a few channels, especially over standard cable networks. But perhaps offering higher quality via the digital connection may be a selling point for the cable companies, if they could get away with it. In any case, with DVDs taking over from videotapes, and services like Tivo going into the cable headend, most consumers may choose not to own analog recording technology in a few years.
If these weapons are used outside of the atmosphere, how can the ABM treaty guarantee that this shield is only protecting Moscow?
Why would the need to get involved in an arms race? They have more than enough missiles already. Russia can make things very unpleasant for us, if they want to (or more realistically, if their government collapses and becomes something more aggressive.)
We could, of course, simply take advantage of the fact that we're strong and they're poor and... I don't know. Nuke 'em? Invade 'em? Get real. Russia's not going away, and they're not going to lose their ability to make us unhappy if they decide to. We can't just ignore them.
And what are the potential effects Moscow (and surrounding areas) face if this system is ever used? Certainly beats being blown up, but probably not by that much.
How much could a terrorist accomplish by turning our financial district into a wasteland, say around 11:30 AM on a busy tuesday? I'm certain it would be more useful to them than turning the entirety of Pearl Harbor into glass.
Time to move out of New York?
The real problem is not that this may pass. The real problem isn't even specifically IP laws. I think the real problem is simply that some people are thinking about taking their business concerns into the grade-school cirruculum. That's an ugly, ugly development. It's not entirely without precedent, but it could well be the beginning of a much more serious trend.
In a sense, all of them. The download figures that the RIAA took into court came from somewhere. Generally this "somewhere" was Napster's own records. So, the copyright holders knew about the downloads, and the court system also knew.
Note that civil disobedience doesn't necessary mean walking into the police station and giving them your name, address and Social Security number.
And let's face it. Napster's just not interesting enough to spend the programming time on. There are better ways to exchange music, without the hassle of distributing a tool that might end up "banned" under the DMCA. And even if you did manage to get enough people using it to make Napster useful again, the resulting ruckus would probably shut them down.
Unfortunately, two different courts would disagree with you there. And most of these judges are not Slashdot types-- they've previously shown support for Microsoft. Perhaps if you saw the same evidence they did, you might change your mind?
Yes, but the number of trees doesn't seem to be increasing-- or at least, not enough to reverse the increases in atmospheric CO2. The most practical extraction solutions I've heard don't involve trees-- instead, they revolve around carbon sequestration through the dumping of rotting crop-residue into the oceans or stimulating ocean algae growth.
It's all a little bit questionable-- if we're going to address the question, we should ask ourselves whether we want to try something completely untested such as artificial carbon sequestration (with all of the potential side effects), or maybe just look for alternative energy sources; wind power could provide enormous quantities of electricity if we simply encouraged it and allowed market forces to improve the technology (as the Europeans have begun to.) And it would reduce our dependence on a resource that we really shouldn't be dependent on, for economic reasons as well as the environmental ones.
AI was a bomb at the box office because it was a bad movie.
Amen. But Jurassic Park III is coming out soon, so just hang in there...
If everybody in America wanted broadband tomorrow, the cable modem companies would be the clear winners. Perhaps the FCC is trying to insure that both DSL and Cable Modem service have some form of Open Access built into them, just in case one doesn't make it (it's a lot easier requiring it now than later on.)
But the possibility for abuse is tremendous. Nobody could hide from that kind of surveillance; the KGB could only dream of being able to watch people like that. Of course non-criminals have nothing to hide, so why shouldn't the government trace their movements, right? Just as long as you're not a closeted gay, or a political dissident, or cheating on your wife, you've got no reason to worry about people watching your movements.
Do you grasp how this changes the level of privacy in citizens' lives? Of course you have no guarantee of privacy when you're in public, but you do have a certain expectation of anonymity; it's the nature of the world today. Cops on the street can watch you, but no cop can watch every single person on the street. If the government or a private citizen wanted to follow individual citizens around in public, they could, but if they decided to do it 24/7 without justification, you can bet our courts would have a problem with it. It's just too invasive.
And that's what a fully implemented, linked surveillance network is. It's a cop following you around everywhere you go. Even if that information never leaks into the private domain, it simply changes our relationship with our government. We (and our courts) would not stand for constant, overt surveillance today, so I can't think of any reason we'd accept covert surveillance tomorrow. The only reason that this will be allowed to happen is that people are ignorant of the true capability of this technology. By the time we do become aware of it, it'll be a fait accompli, and our concept of anonymity will be irreversibly changed.
Or they might cross-reference and store even non-matching faces. Imagine being able to input a photo or even an artists' reconstruction into a computer and get a complete listing of every single place the suspect has been in the last few years, no matter where in the country he/she went? Technically, I can't help thinking that it's an awfully cool thing, and I assume most cops would agree. Unfortunately, as a citizen it scares the crap out of me. Imagine if someone could access years of your history in a few seconds without leaving their seat? I don't think we need to go down this road.
This is about a computerized facial recognition system that will be used to automatically match video to faces in a database. This technology, whether constitutionally authorized or not, is ENTIRELY different from placing cops on the street. It's also potentially worse than anything Orwell envisioned. Let's face it, the scenario outlined in 1984 could never have encompassed more than a small percentage of the population. The USSR, even at during its most brutal Stalinist periods was never able to bug or surveil more than a fraction of the populace.
This technology gives the government the potential ability to monitor the comings and goings of every single American who travels through a public space. This seriously changes the balance of power between the people and their government, even if the people don't yet realize what's going to happen as this technology matures (and I say this as a certainty. This tech will become ubiquitous and will be used for significantly more than it is today, unless we do something about it.)
You may be right that our constitution gives us no precise guarantee of privacy in a "public" space. It does, however, give us certain intangible guarantees to liberty, which this technology may seriously undermine.
The natural (knee-jerk?) reaction to this kind of story seems to be negative: I don't want someone, especially the government, watching me, etc, etc.
As far as I can see, the knee-jerk reaction is the one you just had. Most people in this country probably say "hey, cameras on the street'll reduce crime." What's the matter with those damn liberals?
The ACLU associates with tons of stuff like this. Just go check out their website. They're not popular because they take on unpopular causes-- unpopular, but just and important. Look at it this way-- probably 85+% of the people in this Florida town think that putting cameras around town is a great idea. Stops crime, right? They're not concerned about the potential for abuse, or the threat to privacy. So if the ACLU were to walk in there and try to do something about it, they'd just muddy their name even more (those damn interfering liberals!)
By the same token, plenty of people think that property forfeiture law is great. Takes property away from those damn drug dealers. They don't realize that the seizure laws make a mockery of the constitution (relying on archaic English law), and will eventually be used against them (ie Giuliani siezing drunk drivers' cars, even if the car belonged to somebody else.) But the ACLU does something about this, and conservatives accuse them of protecting drug dealers. Get over it.
Ah, so you mean we should do to them what we've done to the cigarette manufacturers? Slap a fine/tax on Microsoft that will simply be passed on to their customers, who will still buy MS products regardless of the extra cost, because they have so little choice? And then Microsoft can go on with business as usual, but this time the government will be so dependent on the revenue that they won't want to hurt MS's profits...
The Executive also nominates the judges. In this case, I believe many of the judges were nominated under Bush Sr. or Reagan, so although this executive branch has no particular influence over them now, presidents with similar ideologies-- possibly similar DNA-- appointed them, and that's a big favor to do for somebody. Finally, don't forget that someday Bush or a successor may get to appoint somebody to the Supreme Court-- that's certainly incentive to play nice.
On the other hand, defending the breakup order will require further legal argument, correct? And if the DOJ isn't willing to work quite as hard as they did the last time around, you can't count on a breakup. Anything less than a breakup is no punishment at all; there's no financial penalty that will seriously affect Microsoft.
Each telecom laid plenty of extra dark fiber, to be sure, but they also assumed that a much larger portion of what they laid would be utilized, and this would pay the debt created by the build-out, in addition to the maintenance. Unfortunately, they assumed wrong, partly due to the fact that all of the telcos built their networks at the same time. Now they don't have enough money to pay for the massive last-mile upgrades that will make all of that fiber worth something, so it'll sit dark for much longer than it was supposed to.