A more accurate analogy would have them slapping "edited to remove socio-political expose" stickers on the side
OK, I'll give you that. How about "Edited for general consumption"?
Oh, and also "they" are the tiny shoestring operation (Cleanflicks), and "you" are Microsoft (Hollywood) -- your entire analogy hinges on the editing people being powerful enough to displace the "untainted" copies in the marketplace, which simply isn't happening here.
If you go back and read the point that I end on, you might see why I chose to present it this way. I'll spell it out: don't cheer on the little guy, if by doing so you help to set a precedent that the big guy can exploit.
They can simply buy your rights away from you, even if you don't want to sell.
What rights are those? If you don't want someone cutting up your movie, and possibly reselling it, don't sell them a copy. That goes whether "them" is Joe Blow or Microsoft.
How do you know that they won't cut and resell it until you've sold it to them? You ask every purchaser? OK, what's to stop them lying about their intentions? Nothing. So what's the mechanism that protects you from this? Why, it's copyright law.
commercial editing and duplication
What duplication? You seem to be talking about situations that do not exist.
They'll be making copies of a single edited master. That's duplication. Do you need it explained further?
What more "compelling reasons" can you add for having broadband that aren't there already?
Games? Already there, as is the incentive to switch to get ping times down. I don't see anything new and compelling coming out that absolutely requires broadband.
Audio? Streaming non-demand audio is already there (I'm listening to BBC Radio 4 as I type), and there are demand (request/playlist) streamed services. Sure, the current commercial offerings of download-and-store music suck donkey dong, but the P2P services are mature. I don't see anything new and compelling arriving, unless the big music labels open up their entire catalogues as $1 per track uncrippled mp3's (not in my lifetime, I think).
Download or stream-on-demand movies? Well, last time I checked the alt.binaries groups, pretty much everything that I demanded was already there. As for streaming, if you're getting your broadband over cable, then it makes no sense to stream a jerky little image to your 17" monitor when you could stream a smooth one to your 32" TV. In the middle ground, we seemed to be underwhelmed by the crippled 24-hour offerings that were touted here a couple of weeks back, so again we're holding our breath for uncrippled high quality download-and-store movies. But based on recent history, and with Palladium looming, I don't see the studios caving on that one.
If we're holding our breath and waiting for large distributors offering things that Joe Consumer will find genuinely tempting then we're going to go pretty blue in the face. And this content is already available, if you know where to look.
I suppose that it comes down to whether ISP's have the nerve to advertise broadband for the purposes of P2P or usenet leeching. I reckon not, but you never know.
Disclaimer: I actually don't use broadband for leeching, unless you count the occasional porn clip. I like it because it gives me immediate and constant access from my LAN, fast downloading of sources and applications, and I can (e.g.) use my linux gateway to ssh-proxy web traffic from work and bypass my employer's insane web filtering. I'm sure many readers here will be doing similar, but remember that we're not representative. Why - really - does Joe need broadband to read his AOL-mail?
Let's imagine that you've just made a small film on a shoestring budget. For the sake of argument, let's say that it's a biting socio-political expose of the corruption in industry and goverment.
Now here comes Microsoft. They buy copies of your film, redact the parts that they don't like, and release them with your name on it, and slap on little "Edited to remove adult themes" stickers.
If they have the marketing muscle to make their version more readily available than yours (and they do), then they can de facto change what you said. Sure, if they're buying a copy of your original every time they sell a redacted version then you make money, but perhaps that wasn't your intention. By bringing money into it - whether you ask for it or not - they also paint you as a whore ("We've already established what you are, now we're just discussing price"). They can simply buy your rights away from you, even if you don't want to sell.
That's perhaps an extreme example, although you can take it further (what if they start adding scenes?). But it illustrates the limits of fair use rather nicely. While I'm fiercely in favour of individual fair use, I do not believe that fair use covers commercial editing and duplication, simply because allowing it for arguably good intentions opens it up to abuse for rather henious ones as well.
RPC2 (aka RCE) is a software solution that relies on the menu system on the player being run before the tracks are played. Part of the DVD-video standard specifies that players must respect unskippable track flags. Disney abused that to force long previews, the Feds use it to show the "Federal Offence" copyright bluster, RCE uses it to force the menu.
However, players can ignore the flags. This utility lets you skip the menus completely and just play the tracks. Similarly, some dedicated players ignore the standard and allow you to simply select tracks to play, bypassing the RCE menu completely.
why is this pathetic? Simusid Hawke,
Level 42 Armsman
I'd taunt you, but you've taken all the sport out of it.
If you're not getting it, then the hint is that signing yourself "Level 42 Armsman" is a pretty good contradiction of your own assertions. Let me remind you:
Yes, this is a game, but no it does NOT substitute for real life. We are not detatched from reality.
I'd recommend that your stop spreading your game persona to "real life" (as far as Slashdot counts in that respect). Doing so is a good indication that you are indeed detached from the reality perceived by people outside your game.
Back in the day, when I was hacking netrek, I had a damn good go at writing a learning robot client, using a genetic algorithm.
I failed, along with every other developer that tried it. I failed because while the game is composed of simple concepts - speed, turn, weapons, tractors, transporters - the emergent strategic complexity is way beyond an artificial player.
The robot could win dogfights, but while it won the battle, the opposing humans were winning the war. It could never figure out or negotiate strategies. Even if I had got it to play a good strategy, the human opponents would have just found a better one, as they have done again and again when playing each other.
That emergent complexity and strategic depth is what makes netrek such a great game, even today. As a simple rule, if you can write an AI that can beat a human, then you've got a game that's strategically limited, like chess, rather than one where strategy must be a flexible concept, like go.
we'll start having laws ignoring the constitution and restricting our right as individuals to keep and bear arms
I'm assuming that this is irony, but you must be aware that the "militia" preamble seriously fucks the 2nd amendment, and that the current interpretation is that individual people have no right to keep and bear arms, only that some nebulous "the people" have this right, so long as they don't actually try and exercise it to form an effective militia, of course.
I'm wondering if our best bet is to form a religion based on uncrippled processors. I mean, that's not really any more screwed up than Scientology, right?
How about a house with sensors on the outside walls, and the projectors on the inside?
Whoa there, let's not give Herr Ashcroft ideas. Imagine the sensors on the inside and the projectors on the outside. After all, only the guilty have something to hide, right?
Your response has nothing to do with the parent
post.
A copy of a thing is not the thing. This is not "stolen goods" but "copied information". Stealing a physical item is a criminal act. Making a copy is (perhaps) a breach of copyright, leading to the possibility being sued as a civil action. The DMCA criminalises breaking copy prevention mechanisms to allow copying, but once it's out there as a divx, it's civil.
Some - not all, but some - of us really truly believe that copyright law has been reversed so that it now punishes creators and consumers for the benefit of the very publishers that it was intended to restrict. Given that, and given that it's getting worse rather than better, the only response is civil disobedience. Sticking it to the man, if you like.
Ooh no, you flunk the test. Causing damage is an effect, not the purpose.
The purpose of lockpicking tools isn't to enable housebreaking and theft, even though their sole use is to exploit a hole in lock technology. That's an effect, it's one possible use. They can also be used to open locks for the owner, or (relevant to this situation) to test or demonstrate the vulnerability of a lock, and to ensure that it's been fixed so as not to be vulnerable.
Your gripe boils down to this: you don't have a white hat use for this tool, so you think nobody should be allowed to have it. Well huzzah, let's put locksmiths out of business, disarm the police, and oblige sysadmins to use telnet as their sole port scanning and intrusion checking tool. Assuming that you've ever used telnet, I mean.
There's a big difference between banning the information and suggesting that a large news site does not post it on its front page
Who talked about banning it? Not me. As I very clearly said, trusted users such as librarians and teachers can get information on how to make copies or extracts of DVD's. It's perfectly legal. It's just that nobody knows how to find out where to get the information.
You see the parallel? If you obfuscate information enough to keep it out of the hands of a handful of bad people that are actively seeking it out then you put it effectively beyond the reach of good people.
That's an abstract argument of principles though. On this particular forum, posting the link is only de facto harmful if there are more bad people than good people reading it. That's a pretty hefty assumption to make.
Yea, if somebody invented a simple way to nuke the world with easily aquired tools [...] Imagine what the world would become if dangerous knowledge was placed in the hands of you people.
Look around you. You're living in that world right now.
Were the twin towers nuked? Were they hit with biological weapons?
Why not? The knowledge is out there, easily available to anyone that wants to look.
So post your Slashdot password [and] a copy of your SSN, your mother's maiden name, your home and work phone numbers. Include the names and ages of your children, please
If you can find the places where this information already exists e.g. whois records for the domains I own, and the web sites hosted on them, then you're most welcome to redistribute or link to them.
(Because it's not like anybody will read the article before spouting off):
Residential broadband prices are rising rather than falling.
There are 15 ISP for every 100,000 diallup customers, but only 2 ISPs for every 100,000 broadband customers.
Broadband ISPs are 95% owned by cable and phone companies (directly or indirectly).
Copper and cable are poor long term solutions, but there's no incentive to put in fiber-to-the-door.
Instead of trust-busting, the FCC has gone for "deregulation", which has just allowed the Baby Bells to deny their capacity to other providers.
To synopsize the synopsis, we've screwed regarding broadband. But then, anyone that's been keeping even a casual eye on broadband for the past couple of years already knew that. The Baby Bell shutout this year was just the last nail in the coffin.
How many of you posting or modding this up also support the free exchange of ideas, including how to back up or media shift a DVD, or extract a portion for review?
You think there's a difference? Bullshit. Your argument is "raise the cost of entry to put off casual abusers". How is that different from the argument that (e.g.) librarians or teachers can gain access to knowledge to let them make copies or extracts from a DVD, if they know exactly who to ask and how to ask them?
That's the trouble with the free exchange of ideas. It's easy to pay lip service until you see something that you don't like being made freely available, at which point the prissy voice gets put on and cries of "Well, that's just irresponsible!" get made. One more step down that line, and you'll be exhorting us to think of the children.
One issue, one standard. The issue here is the free and frank and convenient exchange of knowledge, including knowledge that you don't want people to have. Pick a position.
Re:Oh that's very responsible of you, SlashDot
on
Microsoft News Update
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But to link directly to the crash-windows-in-one-easy-step binary? That's just plain irresponsible.
Why?
Why is Slashdot responsible for the vulnerability that allows this?
Why is Slashdot responsible for the actions of users that choose to download and try this out?
You seem to have a very strange understanding of responsibility, albeit one that's rather popular in Redmond and Washington at the moment.
If you're just worrying about covering your behind, extent to "Nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft" and then to "Nobody ever got sacked for clicking through default Microsoft licenses."
I actually think that people should get sacked for doing this if they compromise their business for the sake of avoiding raising a thorny issue, but it's not going to happen in our lifetime.
That's so mid/late 90's. Have you read a tech sector contract recently? If I leave my company, I have to pay them back for any training that I received in the previous year. I kid you not.
On the other hand, that's completely theoretical. We have no training budget, and we aren't allowed even an hour a week for peer training ("If you think training's that important, do it on your own time", quoth my boss).
That we could have a Doom3 section? It seems that we're getting an article every couple of days, and I'm getting pretty tired of seeing previews plastered over the front page. I mean, I want to play Doom3, but I'm prepared to actually, you know, wait for it.
Note to those looking for staying power: the 1974 game Empire is still being played and developed today as Netrek. The name has changed, the Klingons are back, the graphics and sound have improved and the galaxy has been shrunk to make for fast, intense games, but the essential gameplay is unchanged. 28 years and counting.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, in the time it took you to tell us that you were going to switch from Win2K, you could have got it half done.
I appreciate the sentiment, but how about you get back to us after you've done it, and tell us how you're liking it in *nix world?
OK, I'll give you that. How about "Edited for general consumption"?
If you go back and read the point that I end on, you might see why I chose to present it this way. I'll spell it out: don't cheer on the little guy, if by doing so you help to set a precedent that the big guy can exploit.
- They can simply buy your rights away from you, even if you don't want to sell.
What rights are those? If you don't want someone cutting up your movie, and possibly reselling it, don't sell them a copy. That goes whether "them" is Joe Blow or Microsoft.How do you know that they won't cut and resell it until you've sold it to them? You ask every purchaser? OK, what's to stop them lying about their intentions? Nothing. So what's the mechanism that protects you from this? Why, it's copyright law.
- commercial editing and duplication
What duplication? You seem to be talking about situations that do not exist.They'll be making copies of a single edited master. That's duplication. Do you need it explained further?
What more "compelling reasons" can you add for having broadband that aren't there already?
Games? Already there, as is the incentive to switch to get ping times down. I don't see anything new and compelling coming out that absolutely requires broadband.
Audio? Streaming non-demand audio is already there (I'm listening to BBC Radio 4 as I type), and there are demand (request/playlist) streamed services. Sure, the current commercial offerings of download-and-store music suck donkey dong, but the P2P services are mature. I don't see anything new and compelling arriving, unless the big music labels open up their entire catalogues as $1 per track uncrippled mp3's (not in my lifetime, I think).
Download or stream-on-demand movies? Well, last time I checked the alt.binaries groups, pretty much everything that I demanded was already there. As for streaming, if you're getting your broadband over cable, then it makes no sense to stream a jerky little image to your 17" monitor when you could stream a smooth one to your 32" TV. In the middle ground, we seemed to be underwhelmed by the crippled 24-hour offerings that were touted here a couple of weeks back, so again we're holding our breath for uncrippled high quality download-and-store movies. But based on recent history, and with Palladium looming, I don't see the studios caving on that one.
If we're holding our breath and waiting for large distributors offering things that Joe Consumer will find genuinely tempting then we're going to go pretty blue in the face. And this content is already available, if you know where to look.
I suppose that it comes down to whether ISP's have the nerve to advertise broadband for the purposes of P2P or usenet leeching. I reckon not, but you never know.
Disclaimer: I actually don't use broadband for leeching, unless you count the occasional porn clip. I like it because it gives me immediate and constant access from my LAN, fast downloading of sources and applications, and I can (e.g.) use my linux gateway to ssh-proxy web traffic from work and bypass my employer's insane web filtering. I'm sure many readers here will be doing similar, but remember that we're not representative. Why - really - does Joe need broadband to read his AOL-mail?
Let's imagine that you've just made a small film on a shoestring budget. For the sake of argument, let's say that it's a biting socio-political expose of the corruption in industry and goverment.
Now here comes Microsoft. They buy copies of your film, redact the parts that they don't like, and release them with your name on it, and slap on little "Edited to remove adult themes" stickers.
If they have the marketing muscle to make their version more readily available than yours (and they do), then they can de facto change what you said. Sure, if they're buying a copy of your original every time they sell a redacted version then you make money, but perhaps that wasn't your intention. By bringing money into it - whether you ask for it or not - they also paint you as a whore ("We've already established what you are, now we're just discussing price"). They can simply buy your rights away from you, even if you don't want to sell.
That's perhaps an extreme example, although you can take it further (what if they start adding scenes?). But it illustrates the limits of fair use rather nicely. While I'm fiercely in favour of individual fair use, I do not believe that fair use covers commercial editing and duplication, simply because allowing it for arguably good intentions opens it up to abuse for rather henious ones as well.
RPC2 (aka RCE) is a software solution that relies on the menu system on the player being run before the tracks are played. Part of the DVD-video standard specifies that players must respect unskippable track flags. Disney abused that to force long previews, the Feds use it to show the "Federal Offence" copyright bluster, RCE uses it to force the menu.
However, players can ignore the flags. This utility lets you skip the menus completely and just play the tracks. Similarly, some dedicated players ignore the standard and allow you to simply select tracks to play, bypassing the RCE menu completely.
If they do that, then they'll be stealing from the rights holders (to use the label's parlance).
Artists != labels
I'd taunt you, but you've taken all the sport out of it.
If you're not getting it, then the hint is that signing yourself "Level 42 Armsman" is a pretty good contradiction of your own assertions. Let me remind you:
I'd recommend that your stop spreading your game persona to "real life" (as far as Slashdot counts in that respect). Doing so is a good indication that you are indeed detached from the reality perceived by people outside your game.
Hey, I've won Excellent karma in the Slashdot game. Lend me $50. I'm good for it. You can trust the karma.
Back in the day, when I was hacking netrek, I had a damn good go at writing a learning robot client, using a genetic algorithm.
I failed, along with every other developer that tried it. I failed because while the game is composed of simple concepts - speed, turn, weapons, tractors, transporters - the emergent strategic complexity is way beyond an artificial player.
The robot could win dogfights, but while it won the battle, the opposing humans were winning the war. It could never figure out or negotiate strategies. Even if I had got it to play a good strategy, the human opponents would have just found a better one, as they have done again and again when playing each other.
That emergent complexity and strategic depth is what makes netrek such a great game, even today. As a simple rule, if you can write an AI that can beat a human, then you've got a game that's strategically limited, like chess, rather than one where strategy must be a flexible concept, like go.
I'm assuming that this is irony, but you must be aware that the "militia" preamble seriously fucks the 2nd amendment, and that the current interpretation is that individual people have no right to keep and bear arms, only that some nebulous "the people" have this right, so long as they don't actually try and exercise it to form an effective militia, of course.
I'm wondering if our best bet is to form a religion based on uncrippled processors. I mean, that's not really any more screwed up than Scientology, right?
Whoa there, let's not give Herr Ashcroft ideas. Imagine the sensors on the inside and the projectors on the outside. After all, only the guilty have something to hide, right?
Bullshit like unsubstantiated hyperbolic reporting? I fully agree.
Seriously, if you can find and verify a full copy of this thing out there in the wild, please feel free to report the user's IP to the RIAA.
Until then, how about you don't just jump on the "Oh my god! This sort of thing must stop!" bandwagon.
Ok, with you so far.
Ooh no, you flunk the test. Causing damage is an effect, not the purpose.
The purpose of lockpicking tools isn't to enable housebreaking and theft, even though their sole use is to exploit a hole in lock technology. That's an effect, it's one possible use. They can also be used to open locks for the owner, or (relevant to this situation) to test or demonstrate the vulnerability of a lock, and to ensure that it's been fixed so as not to be vulnerable.
Your gripe boils down to this: you don't have a white hat use for this tool, so you think nobody should be allowed to have it. Well huzzah, let's put locksmiths out of business, disarm the police, and oblige sysadmins to use telnet as their sole port scanning and intrusion checking tool. Assuming that you've ever used telnet, I mean.
Who talked about banning it? Not me. As I very clearly said, trusted users such as librarians and teachers can get information on how to make copies or extracts of DVD's. It's perfectly legal. It's just that nobody knows how to find out where to get the information.
You see the parallel? If you obfuscate information enough to keep it out of the hands of a handful of bad people that are actively seeking it out then you put it effectively beyond the reach of good people.
That's an abstract argument of principles though. On this particular forum, posting the link is only de facto harmful if there are more bad people than good people reading it. That's a pretty hefty assumption to make.
Look around you. You're living in that world right now.
Were the twin towers nuked? Were they hit with biological weapons?
Why not? The knowledge is out there, easily available to anyone that wants to look.
If you can find the places where this information already exists e.g. whois records for the domains I own, and the web sites hosted on them, then you're most welcome to redistribute or link to them.
To synopsize the synopsis, we've screwed regarding broadband. But then, anyone that's been keeping even a casual eye on broadband for the past couple of years already knew that. The Baby Bell shutout this year was just the last nail in the coffin.
About posting a link to an exploit tool?
How many of you posting or modding this up also support the free exchange of ideas, including how to back up or media shift a DVD, or extract a portion for review?
You think there's a difference? Bullshit. Your argument is "raise the cost of entry to put off casual abusers". How is that different from the argument that (e.g.) librarians or teachers can gain access to knowledge to let them make copies or extracts from a DVD, if they know exactly who to ask and how to ask them?
That's the trouble with the free exchange of ideas. It's easy to pay lip service until you see something that you don't like being made freely available, at which point the prissy voice gets put on and cries of "Well, that's just irresponsible!" get made. One more step down that line, and you'll be exhorting us to think of the children.
One issue, one standard. The issue here is the free and frank and convenient exchange of knowledge, including knowledge that you don't want people to have. Pick a position.
Why?
Why is Slashdot responsible for the vulnerability that allows this?
Why is Slashdot responsible for the actions of users that choose to download and try this out?
You seem to have a very strange understanding of responsibility, albeit one that's rather popular in Redmond and Washington at the moment.
"Nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM"
If you're just worrying about covering your behind, extent to "Nobody ever got sacked for buying Microsoft" and then to "Nobody ever got sacked for clicking through default Microsoft licenses."
I actually think that people should get sacked for doing this if they compromise their business for the sake of avoiding raising a thorny issue, but it's not going to happen in our lifetime.
That's so mid/late 90's. Have you read a tech sector contract recently? If I leave my company, I have to pay them back for any training that I received in the previous year. I kid you not.
On the other hand, that's completely theoretical. We have no training budget, and we aren't allowed even an hour a week for peer training ("If you think training's that important, do it on your own time", quoth my boss).
That we could have a Doom3 section? It seems that we're getting an article every couple of days, and I'm getting pretty tired of seeing previews plastered over the front page. I mean, I want to play Doom3, but I'm prepared to actually, you know, wait for it.
You mean a commercial company that's paying the rent by distinctively re-packaging a free OS has distinctively re-packaged the OS again?
If you don't like what Red Hat's doing, then use the power of the almighty buck to reward another distro.
Note to those looking for staying power: the 1974 game Empire is still being played and developed today as Netrek. The name has changed, the Klingons are back, the graphics and sound have improved and the galaxy has been shrunk to make for fast, intense games, but the essential gameplay is unchanged. 28 years and counting.