Just as RedHat is also trying to profit by selling a product that is largely the work of people that are in no way connected with RedHat.
In that respect, I don't think anything that Contentville is doing is wrong.
The only thing I think they *are* doing wrong is charging such an outrageous price for what amounts to an indexing service. But they are providing a service, and are entitled to make a profit from it.
No, I'm pretty sure the contracts would be a per-item (in this case, per-DVD) deal.
Consider software licences: There are probably hundreds of them. Never mind the fact that 90% of them are similar to Microsoft's EULA. Just because most software says you can't make copies and distribute them to your friends does not mean they all do. Clearly, one cant be expected to "know" the details of one just because most of the others look the same.
Now consider the case of VCR's. Clearly, 99% of the stuff out there on VHS can't be copied/distributed freely. But what about my home movies? I made them, and I can choose the licencing. I choose to allow anyone to copy and distribute them in as they see fit. And I can (hypotheticly, of course) shrink-wrap them and sell them.
So now what? Well, what if many people started doing the same? It would get to be like the current state of software. Many, many, licences.
The same is true for audio CD's (or songs in general). Now I know the whole idea of people wanting to buy home-brew movies is far fetched, but look at what's been happening with artists and freely distributable MP3's. It's very much starting to look like what free/open-Source software has done to the software industry.
Damn, I've strayed from my original point...
Look... Let's imagine a world where, like software, audio (songs in particular) come under licences like the GPL. Now imagine that 95% of music was freely distributable, the other 5% distributed under the terms similar to those of your typical Metallica CD. Do you think we would see the irrational arguments of the RIAA and MPAA trying to restrict technology? We certainly wouldn't have Audio CD burners that only take CD-R's that have had an extra "piracy-tax" added to their cost. We wouldn't have high-school administrators that send students to detention for passing around CD-R's (under the assumption that it contains pirated audio or software). Napster would never have been challenged.
My point is that the general population would not make the assumption that content that is shared must have been pirated. We wouldn't be restricting people's rights if 95% of the stuff out there was legally sharable.
So why should it be any different if 95% of this stuff *is* under restrictive licences? It should be the burden of the licence holder to go after those who pirate their material. We shouldn't have these restrictive laws, such as the Audio-CD "tax", and electronics companies that are coerced into designing artifical limitations to their products, all under the assumptions that:
1) the general public doesn't produce anything of value.
2) only the record companies produce content
3) record company content is "protected" by licences that disallow free distribution
Therefor:
a) Most copying is illegal.
b) If someone is copying content they legally own, tough! They will still be hindered by the restrictions the media companies put in place.
You see the problem? If not, re-read (b). The media companies don't care if a few innocent consumers get screwed. It's all to protect their empire, right? But I find the thought of restricting the masses, under the *assumption* that they will misbehave, elitest. It sucks that the media companies feel this way, but it is their right. However, it is not the right of the government to restrict freedoms of the masses under the *assumption* that they are going to do wrong. Really, the government isn't supposed to *assume* anything but innocence. That's why you have to prove guilt.
Anyway, I've digressed quite a ways from my original point.
My point is that each case (each individual DVD) could concievably have it's own licence, and to assume that one DVD has a particular licence just because 95% of the DVD's out there have similar licences is very much like those high-school administrators punishing students for passing around burned CDs, under the assumption that they are commiting piracy. The CD's very well could have been Debian CDs.
It truly saddens me that there is such a distorted view of of the republican agenda floating around Slashdot.
The general agenda for the republican party is much in line with the libratarian agenda: freedom for the individual, and protection *from* government. The problem with the republican party seems to be the influence from the "bible belt".
Let me clarify that point a little: There's nothing wrong with being a born-again bible-thumper. It's just that there is an outspoken group of them in the republican party
who don't particularly care for the libritarian-leaning feelings in the republican party. Dispite that element, it is my belief that the Republican party is much more likely to defend freedom of speach, as well as the rest of The Constitution, than are the Democrats.
Yep. Let's get rid of AIM. It'll be faster still. And Quake. Definately has to go. And Gnutella, and FTP and IRC (only pirates use those things...). Hurray! My internet connection has never been this fast.
It's not even a question of the good outweighing the bad; if I'm producing "widgets", and 90% of widget use is illegal, I should still not be held liable. It is up to the user of those widgets to use them in a legal manner. If those "widgets" are being used illegally, it may be easier for law enforcement to just shut down my production, but that would trample my rights to produce them. If the law enforcement agencies want to stop the crime, they will have to go after the widget abusers themselves. Those who value security over freedom will lose both and deserve neither. Sure it's tougher to enforce laws that way. Tough.
Code most certainly *IS* a form of expression. You are making the *common mistake* of assuming that by "expression", as it pertains to the first amendment, is only concerned with *artistic* expression. Thankfully, the first amentment protects expression of *facts* as well. While we could debate for days about whether code is (or can be) creative or not (I believe it can), it is not relevant to this discussion. Anyone who has ever read a book dealing with the computer sciences knows that code (pseudo-code, C code, etc) most certainly is a form of factual expression.
No, we *should* be getting freaked - pissed actually - about every last little thing like this. If we do, maybe there is some hope that we could stop this type of nonsense. I am truly disappointed that anyone on this forum would suggest, as you have, that companies in this (and any industry) will do bad things to the consumers, so we should just expect, and accept it. And if all this is true, nVidia *has* been harming consumers by manipulating (and even attempting to manipulate) the sites that consumers go to for *independent* reviews.
This type of stuff should be reported... needs to be reported, as, quite frankly these sites are the only way to judge the hardware/software before we by it.
You suggest we that we review these things ourselves? HOW?! After we have purchased them and run them with applications under out own control? "Boy this TNT2's frame rate is kind of low compared to the Voodoo3's, which I bought last week. Guess I'm out $150 bucks. Sucks to be me!"
Folks, it *is* time to get pissed about this stuff. If a business is unethical *tell the world*. Embarrass them. Keep them honest.
I'll answer it... Tough! It's better to let a guilty suspect go than to trample the rights of the innocent. Personally, I think we need to just make sure that the data gathered is rendered meaningless through ubiquitous encryption
Couldn't agree more. But don't forget, the FBI as lobbied long and hard to get encryption restriced and/or outlawed. If the FBI had their way, all your communications would be tappable, without a warrant or court order, you would never have to be notified about the tapping, and you couldn't take measures (like encryption) to keep your communications private.
Sorry. Technical solutions to political problems are very, very rare. After all, that's why they are political problems and not technical. Technology may open new ways to solve social and political problems, but it does not solve them by itself.
Technical solutions to political problems are rare? Right, but rarely do technical people try to solve political problems. Political solutions to technical problems are also rare, but the difference is that (especially as of late), politicians are *trying* to solve technical problems. Of course, their solutions are poorly thought out (since you can't solve a thechnical problem without understanding the technology), and often their solutions make things worse.
That second sentence should read: It seems to me the the purpose (or one of this purposes) of the project is to pretty-much nullify laws which are wrong, put created with the best of intentions.
Gotta disagree with you there. It seems to me that the purpose (or one of the purposes) of this project is to pretty-much nullify laws that which were wrong, but put created with the best of intentions. Like the philosophy page said, a proper government would exist for the sole purpose of enforcing rights (basic human rights), and nothing else. Everything above and beyond this (like the redistribution of wealth) is done "with good intentions", but is evil in nature (since any law above and beyond those *enforcing* basic human rights is ultimately *eroding* basic human rights).
In short, the project seems to be aimed at removing the existing good-intentions which pave the road to hell, not adding more to it.
Yeah, in the fifties, one could buy a good house in the suburbs for about half one's anual salary. Now, you have to save for years to put a down payment on a house, with a morgage that won't be paid off until you are retired. Of course, by then you will probably be in a different house, so you never really did own the first, did you?
I agree. There are alot of public school teachers and administrators who just don't care enough. Often times, they will punish the victim, or more commonly, everyone*, rather than deal with the problem student.
But often times the teachers/administrators hands are tied. Believe it or not, at one time students who broke the rules (severely or repeatedly) were suspended from school. Now schools don't commonly do that because many parents get bent out of shape. "My son would NEVER do that!" "How dare you deny my child an education!" (despite the fact that what he/she was doing resulted in disrupting the education of the rest of the class).
My office-mate has tells me horror stories about his wife (a music teacher in a public school). Apparently, her school has a policy where the first time a student does something wrong, they can not be punished, only warned. Last month, while she was writing something on the board, one of the students said "F**k you, B***h". When she turned around to confront the student, he said "You can't do anything. You have to give me a warning". And he was right. Her hands were tied.
* Did you every wonder why a every high school student must get a "bathroom-pass"? This rediculous idea comes about because mabye 2-3% of the students who ask to go to the bathroom would probably go off and do somethig else. Solution? Make everyone suffer!
The regular maintainers work on this. It is commonplace for chages made in the development branch (currently 2.3.x) to be "rolled" back into the stable branch (currently 2.2.x). Generally, only those changes that have been in 2.3.x for a while, and are considered "safe" will ever see 2.2.x. Bug fixes just get merged in, since they don't shake things up too badly. New functionality (read: drivers) will probably be marked experimental.
Just the GPL'd stuff. However, were they were to modify program X, and program X was GPL'd, they must release their modifications under the GPL, (and hence, provide sources).
You seem to be missing the point. You're talking about freedom of speach as a right *granted by a government* (or recognized by a government).
One of the fundamental ideals of Freenet is that freedom of speach is a *human right*.
This is an important distinction. A right granted by a government is just that: granted by govenment. If you live in a democracy, this means a right granted by your fellow citizens (the population at large). If you live in a monarcy, it is a right granted by the ruling family. These are more like priviledges than rights. And they can be taken away. A human right, by contrast, is independent of any govenment (or organization). If you believe in God, it means a right granted by God to the individual. If don't, it is a right granted to you by virtue of the fact that you simply exist.
In the United States Constitution, freedom of speach is presented as a *human right*. In fact, the entire Bill of Rights is presented this way. The Constitution doesn't grant any rights. Instead, it recognizes rights that you already have *(hman rights). It basicly says: The United States officially recognises the following human rights:...
Back to the point, Freenet is designed to enforce freedom of (anonymous) speach *as a human right*. So you are correct when you suggest that using it for anonymous-free-speach could be illegal under some governments. That's the point.
Now before anyone starts bitching about the US trying to enforce it's beliefs on others, I remind you: this program (freenet) is not connected with the US government (in fact, the very idea of freenet probably scares the hell out of many government folks). It just happens that the authors-of and contributers-to Freenet happen to have the same beliefs as led to the US Constitution (or at least the parts concerning the First amendment).
They don't have to reverse-engineer anything. Since the distributed version is GPLed, it can't be revoked.
What Mattel CAN do is come up with a new license, and produce new versions of CPhack under their own terms. But the previous (GPLed) version is beyond their reach.
This is sort of like what happened with SSH. SSH version 2 came out under a more restrictive license. So OpenSSH ios based off of SSH1. The software was forked.
'course, Mattel won't likely be supporting their branch...
Wrong. The DATABASE would be copywrited, but not the method to decrypt it. They can distribute a method to decrypt the database, provided they do not provide the decrypted database itself (which they haven't).
Ahh, but Gnutella IS general purpose. It's basicly (uless I am mistaken) creates a distributed network with other GNUtella processes wich act as a big ftp-like server, with an FTP-like client built in. This is no worse, and no more inherently illegal or immoral, than a "bank" of Windows shared drives.
Exactly. The point is that free speach shouldn't put your life in peril in the first place. Anonymous free speach helps to protect peole in this regard. You shouldn't have to risk your life to say something which may be unpopular.
Since or`ther posters have addressed the "where to find more information" question, i'll pass on it.
But one thing about your post concerns me. You say that you don't trust Mediaone to protect you from script kiddies. I would take that a step further: It is not their job to protect you from script-kiddies, it's yours. MediaOne's job is to provide you with a fat pipe. What you do with it is up to you (within their acceptable-use policy).
Unfortunately, most users expect their ISP to protect them, which is a nearly impossible task, (unless you WANT them to sniff all traffic going to your machine).
Naw. If Microsoft's history is any indication, by the time this thing is released, prople will be donating 1Ghz Processors and 4Gb hard Drives to charity.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as RedHat is also trying to profit by selling a product that is largely the work of people that are in no way connected with RedHat.
In that respect, I don't think anything that Contentville is doing is wrong.
The only thing I think they *are* doing wrong is charging such an outrageous price for what amounts to an indexing service. But they are providing a service, and are entitled to make a profit from it.
But isn't this the way the GPL works? RedHat can sell your GPL'd software, at a profit, without ever notifying you, or paying you.
I suppose the difference is that RedHat, per terms of the GPL, also provides a free copy of the same item they sell, where as Contentville doesn't.
No, but it would require that Contentville also provide the thesis (or a link to the thesis) for free).
No, I'm pretty sure the contracts would be a per-item (in this case, per-DVD) deal.
Consider software licences: There are probably hundreds of them. Never mind the fact that 90% of them are similar to Microsoft's EULA. Just because most software says you can't make copies and distribute them to your friends does not mean they all do. Clearly, one cant be expected to "know" the details of one just because most of the others look the same.
Now consider the case of VCR's. Clearly, 99% of the stuff out there on VHS can't be copied/distributed freely. But what about my home movies? I made them, and I can choose the licencing. I choose to allow anyone to copy and distribute them in as they see fit. And I can (hypotheticly, of course) shrink-wrap them and sell them.
So now what? Well, what if many people started doing the same? It would get to be like the current state of software. Many, many, licences.
The same is true for audio CD's (or songs in general). Now I know the whole idea of people wanting to buy home-brew movies is far fetched, but look at what's been happening with artists and freely distributable MP3's. It's very much starting to look like what free/open-Source software has done to the software industry.
Damn, I've strayed from my original point...
Look... Let's imagine a world where, like software, audio (songs in particular) come under licences like the GPL. Now imagine that 95% of music was freely distributable, the other 5% distributed under the terms similar to those of your typical Metallica CD. Do you think we would see the irrational arguments of the RIAA and MPAA trying to restrict technology? We certainly wouldn't have Audio CD burners that only take CD-R's that have had an extra "piracy-tax" added to their cost. We wouldn't have high-school administrators that send students to detention for passing around CD-R's (under the assumption that it contains pirated audio or software). Napster would never have been challenged.
My point is that the general population would not make the assumption that content that is shared must have been pirated. We wouldn't be restricting people's rights if 95% of the stuff out there was legally sharable.
So why should it be any different if 95% of this stuff *is* under restrictive licences? It should be the burden of the licence holder to go after those who pirate their material. We shouldn't have these restrictive laws, such as the Audio-CD "tax", and electronics companies that are coerced into designing artifical limitations to their products, all under the assumptions that:
1) the general public doesn't produce anything of value.
2) only the record companies produce content
3) record company content is "protected" by licences that disallow free distribution
Therefor:
a) Most copying is illegal.
b) If someone is copying content they legally own, tough! They will still be hindered by the restrictions the media companies put in place.
You see the problem? If not, re-read (b). The media companies don't care if a few innocent consumers get screwed. It's all to protect their empire, right? But I find the thought of restricting the masses, under the *assumption* that they will misbehave, elitest. It sucks that the media companies feel this way, but it is their right. However, it is not the right of the government to restrict freedoms of the masses under the *assumption* that they are going to do wrong. Really, the government isn't supposed to *assume* anything but innocence. That's why you have to prove guilt.
Anyway, I've digressed quite a ways from my original point.
My point is that each case (each individual DVD) could concievably have it's own licence, and to assume that one DVD has a particular licence just because 95% of the DVD's out there have similar licences is very much like those high-school administrators punishing students for passing around burned CDs, under the assumption that they are commiting piracy. The CD's very well could have been Debian CDs.
And the democrats are any better?
It truly saddens me that there is such a distorted view of of the republican agenda floating around Slashdot.
The general agenda for the republican party is much in line with the libratarian agenda: freedom for the individual, and protection *from* government. The problem with the republican party seems to be the influence from the "bible belt".
Let me clarify that point a little: There's nothing wrong with being a born-again bible-thumper. It's just that there is an outspoken group of them in the republican party
who don't particularly care for the libritarian-leaning feelings in the republican party. Dispite that element, it is my belief that the Republican party is much more likely to defend freedom of speach, as well as the rest of The Constitution, than are the Democrats.
Yep.
Let's get rid of AIM. It'll be faster still.
And Quake. Definately has to go. And Gnutella, and FTP and IRC (only pirates use those things...). Hurray! My internet connection has never been this fast.
'Course, now all I can do is shop online....
It's not even a question of the good outweighing the bad; if I'm producing "widgets", and 90% of widget use is illegal, I should still not be held liable. It is up to the user of those widgets to use them in a legal manner.
If those "widgets" are being used illegally, it may be easier for law enforcement to just shut down my production, but that would trample my rights to produce them. If the law enforcement agencies want to stop the crime, they will have to go after the widget abusers themselves.
Those who value security over freedom will lose both and deserve neither. Sure it's tougher to enforce laws that way. Tough.
Code most certainly *IS* a form of expression.
You are making the *common mistake* of assuming that by "expression", as it pertains to the first amendment, is only concerned with *artistic* expression. Thankfully, the first amentment protects expression of *facts* as well.
While we could debate for days about whether code is (or can be) creative or not (I believe it can), it is not relevant to this discussion.
Anyone who has ever read a book dealing with the computer sciences knows that code (pseudo-code, C code, etc) most certainly is a form of factual expression.
No, we *should* be getting freaked - pissed actually - about every last little thing like this. If we do, maybe there is some hope that we could stop this type of nonsense. I am truly disappointed that anyone on this forum would suggest, as you have, that companies in this (and any industry) will do bad things to the consumers, so we should just expect, and accept it. And if all this is true, nVidia *has* been harming consumers by manipulating (and even attempting to manipulate) the sites that consumers go to for *independent* reviews.
... needs to be reported, as, quite frankly these sites are the only way to judge the hardware/software before we by it.
This type of stuff should be reported
You suggest we that we review these things ourselves? HOW?! After we have purchased them and run them with applications under out own control? "Boy this TNT2's frame rate is kind of low compared to the Voodoo3's, which I bought last week. Guess I'm out $150 bucks. Sucks to be me!"
Folks, it *is* time to get pissed about this stuff. If a business is unethical *tell the world*. Embarrass them. Keep them honest.
I'll answer it... Tough!
It's better to let a guilty suspect go than to trample the rights of the innocent.
Personally, I think we need to just make sure that the data gathered is rendered meaningless through ubiquitous encryption
Couldn't agree more. But don't forget, the FBI as lobbied long and hard to get encryption restriced and/or outlawed. If the FBI had their way, all your communications would be tappable, without a warrant or court order, you would never have to be notified about the tapping, and you couldn't take measures (like encryption) to keep your communications private.
Sorry. Technical solutions to political problems are very, very rare. After all, that's why they are political problems and not technical. Technology may open new ways to solve social and political problems, but it does not solve them by itself.
Technical solutions to political problems are rare?
Right, but rarely do technical people try to solve political problems.
Political solutions to technical problems are also rare, but the difference is that (especially as of late), politicians are *trying* to solve technical problems. Of course, their solutions are poorly thought out (since you can't solve a thechnical problem without understanding the technology), and often their solutions make things worse.
That second sentence should read:
It seems to me the the purpose (or one of this purposes) of the project is to pretty-much nullify laws which are wrong, put created with the best of intentions.
Gotta use thet preview button!
Gotta disagree with you there. It seems to me that the purpose (or one of the purposes) of this project is to pretty-much nullify laws that which were wrong, but put created with the best of intentions.
Like the philosophy page said, a proper government would exist for the sole purpose of enforcing rights (basic human rights), and nothing else. Everything above and beyond this (like the redistribution of wealth) is done "with good intentions", but is evil in nature (since any law above and beyond those *enforcing* basic human rights is ultimately *eroding* basic human rights).
In short, the project seems to be aimed at removing the existing good-intentions which pave the road to hell, not adding more to it.
Yeah, in the fifties, one could buy a good house in the suburbs for about half one's anual salary.
Now, you have to save for years to put a down payment on a house, with a morgage that won't be paid off until you are retired.
Of course, by then you will probably be in a different house, so you never really did own the first, did you?
I agree. There are alot of public school teachers and administrators who just don't care enough. Often times, they will punish the victim, or more commonly, everyone*, rather than deal with the problem student.
But often times the teachers/administrators hands are tied. Believe it or not, at one time students who broke the rules (severely or repeatedly) were suspended from school. Now schools don't commonly do that because many parents get bent out of shape. "My son would NEVER do that!" "How dare you deny my child an education!" (despite the fact that what he/she was doing resulted in disrupting the education of the rest of the class).
My office-mate has tells me horror stories about his wife (a music teacher in a public school). Apparently, her school has a policy where the first time a student does something wrong, they can not be punished, only warned. Last month, while she was writing something on the board, one of the students said "F**k you, B***h". When she turned around to confront the student, he said "You can't do anything. You have to give me a warning". And he was right. Her hands were tied.
* Did you every wonder why a every high school student must get a "bathroom-pass"? This rediculous idea comes about because mabye 2-3% of the students who ask to go to the bathroom would probably go off and do somethig else. Solution? Make everyone suffer!
The regular maintainers work on this. It is commonplace for chages made in the development branch (currently 2.3.x) to be "rolled" back into the stable branch (currently 2.2.x). Generally, only those changes that have been in 2.3.x for a while, and are considered "safe" will ever see 2.2.x. Bug fixes just get merged in, since they don't shake things up too badly. New functionality (read: drivers) will probably be marked experimental.
Just the GPL'd stuff. However, were they were to modify program X, and program X was GPL'd, they must release their modifications under the GPL, (and hence, provide sources).
You seem to be missing the point. You're talking about freedom of speach
...
as a right *granted by a government* (or recognized by a government).
One of the fundamental ideals of Freenet is that freedom of speach is a
*human right*.
This is an important distinction. A right granted by a government is just
that: granted by govenment. If you live in a democracy, this means a right
granted by your fellow citizens (the population at large). If you live in
a monarcy, it is a right granted by the ruling family. These are more
like priviledges than rights. And they can be taken away. A human right,
by contrast, is independent of any govenment (or organization). If you
believe in God, it means a right granted by God to the individual. If
don't, it is a right granted to you by virtue of the fact that you simply
exist.
In the United States Constitution, freedom of speach is presented as a
*human right*. In fact, the entire Bill of Rights is presented this way.
The Constitution doesn't grant any rights. Instead, it recognizes rights
that you already have *(hman rights). It basicly says: The United States
officially recognises the following human rights:
Back to the point, Freenet is designed to enforce freedom of (anonymous)
speach *as a human right*. So you are correct when you suggest that using
it for anonymous-free-speach could be illegal under some governments.
That's the point.
Now before anyone starts bitching about the US trying to enforce it's
beliefs on others, I remind you: this program (freenet) is not connected
with the US government (in fact, the very idea of freenet probably scares
the hell out of many government folks). It just happens that the
authors-of and contributers-to Freenet happen to have the same beliefs as
led to the US Constitution (or at least the parts concerning the First
amendment).
They don't have to reverse-engineer anything. Since the distributed version is GPLed, it can't be revoked.
What Mattel CAN do is come up with a new license, and produce new versions of CPhack under their own terms. But the previous (GPLed) version is beyond their reach.
This is sort of like what happened with SSH. SSH version 2 came out under a more restrictive license. So OpenSSH ios based off of SSH1. The software was forked.
'course, Mattel won't likely be supporting their branch...
great...
I had a bunch of people standing behind me at work. I blindly followed link.
Quite embarassing, really...
Wrong. The DATABASE would be copywrited, but not the method to decrypt it. They can distribute a method to decrypt the database, provided they do not provide the decrypted database itself (which they haven't).
Ahh, but Gnutella IS general purpose. It's basicly (uless I am mistaken) creates a distributed network with other GNUtella processes wich act as a big ftp-like server, with an FTP-like client built in. This is no worse, and no more inherently illegal or immoral, than a "bank" of Windows shared drives.
Exactly. The point is that free speach shouldn't put your life in peril in the first place. Anonymous free speach helps to protect peole in this regard. You shouldn't have to risk your life to say something which may be unpopular.
Since or`ther posters have addressed the "where to find more information" question, i'll pass on it.
But one thing about your post concerns me. You say that you don't trust Mediaone to protect you from script kiddies. I would take that a step further: It is not their job to protect you from script-kiddies, it's yours. MediaOne's job is to provide you with a fat pipe. What you do with it is up to you (within their acceptable-use policy).
Unfortunately, most users expect their ISP to protect them, which is a nearly impossible task, (unless you WANT them to sniff all traffic going to your machine).
Naw. If Microsoft's history is any indication, by the time this thing is released, prople will be donating 1Ghz Processors and 4Gb hard Drives to charity.