and be willing to air your company's lackluster security in the court of law, and of public opinion.
See the recent articles on the RIAA/SDMI's threatened lawsuits if you want some idea how much corporations really care about being humiliated (over their lackluster security.)
It is a matter of Federal Law that you're allowed to receive any radio waves you want. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily give you the right to listen to them... Gotta love the law.
Such a lawsuit would be an interesting hodgepodge. There would probably be cases of Satellite-TV piracy referred to, along with some of the new industrial-strength anti-hacking laws (do the old "wire" laws apply to wireless networks?) Maybe copyright violations?
They can be. One of the techniques in the process being regulated is "artificial twinning" in which an embryo is cloned several times. The resulting embryos can be carried to term at the same time or at different times (just like with common household in vitro fertilization.)
If you could manipulate the DNA enough to simply grow an organ-- or some cells, at least-- would that be unethical?
How about if you could grow a brainless clone, through the same process? It's pretty disgusting, but would a brainless clone really be a human being? That's a tricky one...
There is no basis for the widespread concept that clones are monsters to be feared or used for our selfish purposes.
Well, there are already cases in which young identical twins are required to give bone-marrow or organs to their sibling. I suppose this would be a similar case of "using for selfish purposes."
Re:Gotta love governments who don't understand tec
on
Send out the Clones?
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· Score: 1
Although I am arguing on a slippery slope here, if cloning *DOES* get approved somewhere for humans, what rights would a clone have?
They'd be human beings. The only right they wouldn't have, apparently, is the right to enter the United States!
Watch that one go down in legal flames if it's ever tested...
Re:Gotta love governments who don't understand tec
on
Send out the Clones?
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· Score: 1
And yet they take no steps to prevent the massive-overcreation of embryos inherent in the in-vitro fertilization process (and their subsequent destruction.) Because that makes families... And their constituents would decapitate them if they made it harder for nice, hardworking people to have lots of babies.
I'm a bit dubious about a permanent ban on cloning, but a medium term moratorium seems like a very reasonable precaution.
While your reasons are very good ones, this is not the reasoning our government is using. As evidence, those in charge are not limiting themselves simply to the prevention of full-scale human cloning, they're now taking steps to ban (or is it continue the ban?) on Federal stem-cell research.
Every year we spend not pursuing this research results in a large number of dead or very sick people. And the only reason for the decision is so single-celled embryos won't be destroyed for "moral" reasons... Of course, they will still be destroyed, as the fertility clinics who supply the embryos will now simply dispose of them.
Actually we will probably be able to get all the stem cells (and other cells for that matter) we might need from our own fat so no need for clones in that respect.
It's not certain that this is actually true. Scientists aren't sure that they'll be able to get the same results from fat stem-cells (which may not be completely undifferentiated, as far as I understand.) That's why they want to continue embryo research; they're not simply out to get their jollies playing with baby Timmy.
It should also be pointed out that the UK and private companies are plunging ahead with this research, and that the embryos used in stem-cell research (leftovers from fertilization clinics) will now simply be incinerated instead.
Twins are the result of either: a) Two eggs were released this month, and both of them are now impregnated, or b) (more rare), one egg is impregnated and then splits, resulting in identical twins. HOWEVER: From the moment they split, twins develop differently, live differently.
And identical twins are different from clones... how exactly? Cloned embryos will "develop differently, live differently" just like identical twins.
Now, there's evidence that cloning techniques have some serious bugs in them, and cloned embryos have genetic flaws... But that's a whole 'nother story.
And I suppose that all phones would be owned by Bell and merely leased to us?
Hmm. My girlfriend's (fairly new) Motorola cellphone recently stopped working, and when she went back to Sprint to get it fixed, they told her that the warranty (provided by Sprint, not Motorola) allowed them to replace it with any phone of similar value. So she now has an ugly looking Samsung (which does work, I give it that.) Just to point out that aspects of many people's phones are still somewhat under the control of the provider.
These people don't work for the RIAA, so the RIAA can't take away their jobs. If their employers threatened them, then you should be up in arms about that.
Although threatening someone with the force of law can sometimes be coercion it almost certainly is not in this case. The letter was a standard cease and desist letter. If you get such a letter and believe you are doing nothing wrong, you are free to keep doing it
The reason Felten and his colleagues withdrew the paper was because they felt that there was a serious chance of a lawsuit from the RIAA, and that some of the authors did not have the resources or felt that their employers did not want the legal exposure they would have been subject to, should the RIAA have sued.
So you see, you are not exactly free to keep doing something if you cannot afford the costs of defending yourself, or if your employer tells you not to because they are concerned about the impact of litigation. Now, I know for a fact that many private research employees don't have carte-blanche to publish anything they want (I am one), especially if it was worked on during company time. If their employers say "don't publish", it's likely that they have no recourse, and their employers might legally be able to terminate them even if paper is published over their objections (or they might be able to block the publication.) So the decision is not in their hands, and they really can't do anything about it.
It is not clear that the DMCA is even applicable in this case, and now the matter will never be decided, that was the CHOICE of the authors and their attorneys.
As I understand, Felten intends to publish the paper anyway, after removing the names of those people whose employers did not wish them to be part of the effort. At least, I hope so.
Although threatening someone with the force of law can sometimes be coercion it almost certainly is not in this case. The letter was a standard cease and desist letter.
I'm sorry, I don't understand your response. You stipulate that threatening someone with the force of law can be a tool of coercion, but you're asserting that in this case it's not-- simply because the instrument of the threat was only a cease-and-desist letter? The letter quite explicitly threatens a lawsuit if said activities are continued, so I'm not sure what your point is. If someone threatens you to get you to do something, it's certainly possible that you're being coerced-- regardless of whether the threat arrives on a cease-and-desist or wrapped around a brick tossed through your window. And the fact that the action threatened hasn't been carried out yet does not make it any less coercive.
Companies need to realize there's nothing more "useful" then what people want something for
Sure, except that the initial models are probably going to cost a lot of dough. The kind of dough that only corporations and the military are going to be willing to spend. As the technology develops and they can get the price down, of course they'll race it into the consumer market.
Why on earth would you expect no congressional action in the next 20 years?
I think 20 years (ok, maybe 10) is about the span of time it will take for Internet access to become a universal and required part of our lives. Until it is that important, I don't think Congress is going to be willing to seriously regulate it. Barring another great depression (and I don't know if that would do it), I just don't see the large incumbent service providers doing anything but aggregating over the coming years. Antitrust regulation is weaker than ever, even if it did apply to oligopolies-- and I'm not sure if we'll be able to turn our mentality around in that time.
which means that there will be a new (or different than expected) set of winners and losers, and both groups, as usual, have every incentive to try and manipulate the legislative and regulatory climate to strengthen their interests.
And they will fight, but I don't see a war of manipulation actually encouraging Congress to fatally clamp down on either side, particularly not the side that's already on top. The truth is, it's probably a lot cheaper for the "losers" to simply merge with their opposition, rather than trying to convince Congress to be their white night. You'll see lots of regulation allowing carriers to control larger and larger portions of the market (look at the TV networks and cable companies.)
Now, it might not be an easy matter to get any particular bill passed, but I can't really go with any prediction that there will be no change in the laws or regulations governing communications
Of course not. I wasn't speaking literally. There'll be lots of changes in regulations. Heck, there are changes practically every week. What I don't think we'll see is a spate of new regulation, or laws preventing consolidation and insuring competition. That's yesterday's news.
The DMCA doesn't cover security research! This is an opportunity for a young lawyer (does Princeton also have a good law school?) to make a great case that just might break the DMCA
Unfortunately, that argument wouldn't really challenge the DMCA at all. If a lawyer argues that Felten was within the bounds of the DMCA, the best that could happen is that the RIAA would lose the case, and maybe have to pay costs. It might even wind up strengthening the DMCA.
If I ask you to do something, and threaten to take away your job, home and all of your posessions (and I've demonstrated that I've got the means and the will to do it), how is that not coercion?
Would it be possible to translated and/or publish this paper in a country with a saner legal framework?
Well, there's really no point in doing that, as the paper is available online. Translating it into Spanish and publishing it in Cuba would hardly be much of an improvement.
Which makes it even more galling! The RIAA knows that the paper is not a secret, and has already been released to the whole word. Therefore, by going after Felten they're not really trying to prevent someone from using the techniques described, they're simply trying to intimidate academics. There's no other explanation than that, and I'm really really sorry that Professor Felten let them get away with it. I understand that he has other people to consider, but it will be miserable if these actions are allowed to stand.
Go away? Nah. But DSL seems to be the steamroller right now. Even AT&T, which incidentally is a much larger cable company than TW Cable, is refocusing their business on DSL because they haven't done as well as they expected with their cable modems. And yes, it does baffle the mind.
It looks a lot like the industry's heading back to 1983. Of course, rather than a single carrier nationwide, we'll all have a single local company (local, as in eastern/southern/western US) that carries all of our local and long-distance Internet access, with even more limited regulation and a lot less choice. A lucky few of us might have two carriers to choose from, neither of which will compete very aggressively, and neither of which will give us a choice of ISP (ie long-distance carrier.)
It's sad, as the opening of the long distance market to competition (which could never have occurred without government regulation) clearly revolutionized the industry, and made it clear not only that single-carrier services are grossly inefficient, but that sometimes competition needs government's help to survive.
Deregulation advocates irritate me with their insistence that the free-market will provide. If the free-market could do so, we never would have had $1+/min long distance charges. We're going to see the same sort of overpricing on Internet access, as competition dwindles.
Of course, some argue that DSL with Internet access is effectively long-distance, and the bells should have been required to fully open their market before being allowed to become an ISP. Unless the baby bells are limiting themselves solely to providing the lines, they are essentially offering a long-distance service.
This may seem like a technicality, but as Internet access gradually becomes more important than long-distance, the baby bells have carved themselves out a very profitable niche-- and don't expect Congress to enact any new regulations anytime in the next 20 years.
The patent office has consistently had a 3-4 year backlog of applications. File a patent today and you probably won't see anything from it til 2004 at the earliest.
It could have something to do with the multitude of frivolous patents being filed on anything and everything by corporations... Although you'd think the PO's "don't read 'em, just approve 'em" policy would at least partially counter that.
Absolutely. And considering that the PO is about three years out now, there are 3 whole years of unpublished patent applications just waiting to bite you on the ass.
It's a pretty hostile environment to start a business in. It's scary to think you can come up with a neat idea, spend millions over years to build something out of it, and then find out someone else owns your idea. And there's nothing you could have done to avoid the situation in the first place.
Finally, someone builds a system with existing, well established hardware and software, that accomplishes the task of integrating all these components seamlessly, with an easy to use interface
Actually, all you really need is a set of really good (and readable) user-interface guidelines for designing TV-based applications, sort of like the Mac interface guidelines. A library of standard layout tools for displaying menus/pop-up boxes/program grids, and handling text input via a remote etc. would make it easy to follow the guidelines and make usable apps.
This would really just be another graphical shell. You might include standard APIs for all sorts of video and audio playback, along with a bunch of driver code. Within that framework, it would be very easy to get cool TV-based apps up and running (without reinventing the wheel each time.) Eventually when the hardware starts to catch up, this would be a viable choice for any set-top box manufacturer. A linux-based shell, with a large library of portable applications might be really attractive to them.
The question is: exactly how did they download the data without looking at it? Recursive FTP starting at the top-level directory? Or did they poke around 'til they saw things that looked interesting? One could argue that the poking around would be a violation.
This is all aside from the international angle-- I'm not sure how that plays out. I guess no matter how you look at the data, if you're viewing it from a computer in the US you're technically copying it into the country, even if it only lives in RAM for a few seconds. This sort of wild argument has often been used against "hackers" in order to convict them of theft.
Of course it's not, and nobody said it was. But even in a gentleman's agreement, you can agree to be bound by the rules.
I'm not saying that Patrick should collect the money, I am saying that Mike is an idiot for agreeing to Patrick's request. When he saw that request, what could he possibly have been thinking? It seems that he was either asleep at the switch, or he deliberately neglected to inform Patrick of the limitations of the challenge. Patrick for his part did not try to sneak this by, he was very up front about it from the start.
Mike does profess to have some knowledge of these issues, enough to issue the challenge, so it was really up to him to define the rules in such a way that obvious data-hiding techniques were excluded (they weren't, if you read the article.) It seemed odd that Mike would agree to the request, and then seem stunned by the fact that Patrick actually went ahead and generated multiple files (to the point that Mike refused to even download them.)
Slashdot Mirror
See the recent articles on the RIAA/SDMI's threatened lawsuits if you want some idea how much corporations really care about being humiliated (over their lackluster security.)
Such a lawsuit would be an interesting hodgepodge. There would probably be cases of Satellite-TV piracy referred to, along with some of the new industrial-strength anti-hacking laws (do the old "wire" laws apply to wireless networks?) Maybe copyright violations?
They can be. One of the techniques in the process being regulated is "artificial twinning" in which an embryo is cloned several times. The resulting embryos can be carried to term at the same time or at different times (just like with common household in vitro fertilization.)
How about if you could grow a brainless clone, through the same process? It's pretty disgusting, but would a brainless clone really be a human being? That's a tricky one...
There is no basis for the widespread concept that clones are monsters to be feared or used for our selfish purposes.
Well, there are already cases in which young identical twins are required to give bone-marrow or organs to their sibling. I suppose this would be a similar case of "using for selfish purposes."
They'd be human beings. The only right they wouldn't have, apparently, is the right to enter the United States!
Watch that one go down in legal flames if it's ever tested...
And yet they take no steps to prevent the massive-overcreation of embryos inherent in the in-vitro fertilization process (and their subsequent destruction.) Because that makes families... And their constituents would decapitate them if they made it harder for nice, hardworking people to have lots of babies.
While your reasons are very good ones, this is not the reasoning our government is using. As evidence, those in charge are not limiting themselves simply to the prevention of full-scale human cloning, they're now taking steps to ban (or is it continue the ban?) on Federal stem-cell research.
Every year we spend not pursuing this research results in a large number of dead or very sick people. And the only reason for the decision is so single-celled embryos won't be destroyed for "moral" reasons... Of course, they will still be destroyed, as the fertility clinics who supply the embryos will now simply dispose of them.
It's not certain that this is actually true. Scientists aren't sure that they'll be able to get the same results from fat stem-cells (which may not be completely undifferentiated, as far as I understand.) That's why they want to continue embryo research; they're not simply out to get their jollies playing with baby Timmy.
It should also be pointed out that the UK and private companies are plunging ahead with this research, and that the embryos used in stem-cell research (leftovers from fertilization clinics) will now simply be incinerated instead.
It does strike me that Congress may have been watching too many sci-fi flics. Or at least, the bad ones with Arnie.
And identical twins are different from clones... how exactly? Cloned embryos will "develop differently, live differently" just like identical twins.
Now, there's evidence that cloning techniques have some serious bugs in them, and cloned embryos have genetic flaws... But that's a whole 'nother story.
Hmm. My girlfriend's (fairly new) Motorola cellphone recently stopped working, and when she went back to Sprint to get it fixed, they told her that the warranty (provided by Sprint, not Motorola) allowed them to replace it with any phone of similar value. So she now has an ugly looking Samsung (which does work, I give it that.) Just to point out that aspects of many people's phones are still somewhat under the control of the provider.
Although threatening someone with the force of law can sometimes be coercion it almost certainly is not in this case. The letter was a standard cease and desist letter. If you get such a letter and believe you are doing nothing wrong, you are free to keep doing it
The reason Felten and his colleagues withdrew the paper was because they felt that there was a serious chance of a lawsuit from the RIAA, and that some of the authors did not have the resources or felt that their employers did not want the legal exposure they would have been subject to, should the RIAA have sued.
So you see, you are not exactly free to keep doing something if you cannot afford the costs of defending yourself, or if your employer tells you not to because they are concerned about the impact of litigation. Now, I know for a fact that many private research employees don't have carte-blanche to publish anything they want (I am one), especially if it was worked on during company time. If their employers say "don't publish", it's likely that they have no recourse, and their employers might legally be able to terminate them even if paper is published over their objections (or they might be able to block the publication.) So the decision is not in their hands, and they really can't do anything about it.
It is not clear that the DMCA is even applicable in this case, and now the matter will never be decided, that was the CHOICE of the authors and their attorneys.
As I understand, Felten intends to publish the paper anyway, after removing the names of those people whose employers did not wish them to be part of the effort. At least, I hope so.
Although threatening someone with the force of law can sometimes be coercion it almost certainly is not in this case. The letter was a standard cease and desist letter.
I'm sorry, I don't understand your response. You stipulate that threatening someone with the force of law can be a tool of coercion, but you're asserting that in this case it's not-- simply because the instrument of the threat was only a cease-and-desist letter? The letter quite explicitly threatens a lawsuit if said activities are continued, so I'm not sure what your point is. If someone threatens you to get you to do something, it's certainly possible that you're being coerced-- regardless of whether the threat arrives on a cease-and-desist or wrapped around a brick tossed through your window. And the fact that the action threatened hasn't been carried out yet does not make it any less coercive.
Sure, except that the initial models are probably going to cost a lot of dough. The kind of dough that only corporations and the military are going to be willing to spend. As the technology develops and they can get the price down, of course they'll race it into the consumer market.
I think 20 years (ok, maybe 10) is about the span of time it will take for Internet access to become a universal and required part of our lives. Until it is that important, I don't think Congress is going to be willing to seriously regulate it. Barring another great depression (and I don't know if that would do it), I just don't see the large incumbent service providers doing anything but aggregating over the coming years. Antitrust regulation is weaker than ever, even if it did apply to oligopolies-- and I'm not sure if we'll be able to turn our mentality around in that time.
which means that there will be a new (or different than expected) set of winners and losers, and both groups, as usual, have every incentive to try and manipulate the legislative and regulatory climate to strengthen their interests.
And they will fight, but I don't see a war of manipulation actually encouraging Congress to fatally clamp down on either side, particularly not the side that's already on top. The truth is, it's probably a lot cheaper for the "losers" to simply merge with their opposition, rather than trying to convince Congress to be their white night. You'll see lots of regulation allowing carriers to control larger and larger portions of the market (look at the TV networks and cable companies.)
Now, it might not be an easy matter to get any particular bill passed, but I can't really go with any prediction that there will be no change in the laws or regulations governing communications
Of course not. I wasn't speaking literally. There'll be lots of changes in regulations. Heck, there are changes practically every week. What I don't think we'll see is a spate of new regulation, or laws preventing consolidation and insuring competition. That's yesterday's news.
Unfortunately, that argument wouldn't really challenge the DMCA at all. If a lawyer argues that Felten was within the bounds of the DMCA, the best that could happen is that the RIAA would lose the case, and maybe have to pay costs. It might even wind up strengthening the DMCA.
Answer? It is.
Well, there's really no point in doing that, as the paper is available online. Translating it into Spanish and publishing it in Cuba would hardly be much of an improvement.
Which makes it even more galling! The RIAA knows that the paper is not a secret, and has already been released to the whole word. Therefore, by going after Felten they're not really trying to prevent someone from using the techniques described, they're simply trying to intimidate academics. There's no other explanation than that, and I'm really really sorry that Professor Felten let them get away with it. I understand that he has other people to consider, but it will be miserable if these actions are allowed to stand.
Go away? Nah. But DSL seems to be the steamroller right now. Even AT&T, which incidentally is a much larger cable company than TW Cable, is refocusing their business on DSL because they haven't done as well as they expected with their cable modems. And yes, it does baffle the mind.
It's sad, as the opening of the long distance market to competition (which could never have occurred without government regulation) clearly revolutionized the industry, and made it clear not only that single-carrier services are grossly inefficient, but that sometimes competition needs government's help to survive.
Deregulation advocates irritate me with their insistence that the free-market will provide. If the free-market could do so, we never would have had $1+/min long distance charges. We're going to see the same sort of overpricing on Internet access, as competition dwindles.
This may seem like a technicality, but as Internet access gradually becomes more important than long-distance, the baby bells have carved themselves out a very profitable niche-- and don't expect Congress to enact any new regulations anytime in the next 20 years.
It could have something to do with the multitude of frivolous patents being filed on anything and everything by corporations... Although you'd think the PO's "don't read 'em, just approve 'em" policy would at least partially counter that.
It's a pretty hostile environment to start a business in. It's scary to think you can come up with a neat idea, spend millions over years to build something out of it, and then find out someone else owns your idea. And there's nothing you could have done to avoid the situation in the first place.
Actually, all you really need is a set of really good (and readable) user-interface guidelines for designing TV-based applications, sort of like the Mac interface guidelines. A library of standard layout tools for displaying menus/pop-up boxes/program grids, and handling text input via a remote etc. would make it easy to follow the guidelines and make usable apps.
This would really just be another graphical shell. You might include standard APIs for all sorts of video and audio playback, along with a bunch of driver code. Within that framework, it would be very easy to get cool TV-based apps up and running (without reinventing the wheel each time.) Eventually when the hardware starts to catch up, this would be a viable choice for any set-top box manufacturer. A linux-based shell, with a large library of portable applications might be really attractive to them.
This is all aside from the international angle-- I'm not sure how that plays out. I guess no matter how you look at the data, if you're viewing it from a computer in the US you're technically copying it into the country, even if it only lives in RAM for a few seconds. This sort of wild argument has often been used against "hackers" in order to convict them of theft.
Of course it's not, and nobody said it was. But even in a gentleman's agreement, you can agree to be bound by the rules.
I'm not saying that Patrick should collect the money, I am saying that Mike is an idiot for agreeing to Patrick's request. When he saw that request, what could he possibly have been thinking? It seems that he was either asleep at the switch, or he deliberately neglected to inform Patrick of the limitations of the challenge. Patrick for his part did not try to sneak this by, he was very up front about it from the start.
Mike does profess to have some knowledge of these issues, enough to issue the challenge, so it was really up to him to define the rules in such a way that obvious data-hiding techniques were excluded (they weren't, if you read the article.) It seemed odd that Mike would agree to the request, and then seem stunned by the fact that Patrick actually went ahead and generated multiple files (to the point that Mike refused to even download them.)