Cultural issues also contribute to the problem. Many spammers in Asia say they do not understand why spam is a problem. "It's a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer," said Zhao Peng, owner of a computer store in Hong Kong.
Cultural homogeny is one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet. Sure, in much of Asia, it's traditionally a sign of respect to give an individual a hard copy of your business card. But that in itself is just the most recent evolution of a long tradition of formalised introductions and determining of relative position, and there's no reason to believe that spam will continue to be tolerated by users there (assuming this claim is true) once the novelty value wears off.
I'll go out on a limb to suggest that while UCE within Asia is perhaps currently viewed as synonymous with a business card, given time, when it is viewed in its own light (rather than as just being considered analogous to a traditional activity), it will be viewed with the same contempt and hatred that the rest of the world already has for it.
I'll draw a parallel with email in general in the US and Europe. For those coming late to the party, many early (80's and early 90's, and by the way, I was a Prestel user in the 80's, using my ZX Spectrum and breeze block modem) home and business users of email initially tended to treat it as a letter, starting with "Dear Bob", and taking care with spelling and punctuation. (Don't confuse this with academic users or l33t h4x0rz coming to the medium with a fair idea of what it was and why they wanted it). It took a while to evolve in popular consciousness into more of a informal and disposable post-it note or phone call analog, although really it's in a category all of its own.
So while it's easy for us to scoff in disbelief at the naievete of Asian users now, let's not forget those Dear Bob days. Global consensus will take a while to arrive. And lest we get too high and mighty, it might very well involve a shift in our perceptions as well.
You see, the thing that really bugs me about spam is that it's so moronic and illiterate. "!!!MAKE $$$ FAST!!!" it shrieks, and "you have, nothign to loose!". Call me strange, but if I were (ever, in theory) to receive a small, literate and polite spam that didn't lie about remove options or oversell itself, it just advertised a product, then I'd be far less inclined to spamcop it. The idea of a "business card" type spam is far less loathesome to me than yet another two hundred line "THIS IS NOT A PIRIMID SKAM!!!!!" monstrosity.
On the other end, if many of those domains are in the Orbz [orbz.org] or other blacklists, maybe just using those would be better
Do the reading. Despite the shrieking tone of the article, what we are talking about here is Spamhaus blacklisting China Telecom, not "all Asian ISP's". That's the entire story. And Spamhaus themselves suggest that their list should be used in conjunction with an open relay list.
I am discussing with my employer the option of blocking [...] all of Road Runner
To me, the story here isn't that Spamhaus list China Telecomm, but that they don't also list Roadrunner, who give exactly the same "It didn't originate from us" lie to any abuse report. Any ideas?
frustrated sysadmins in the West are responding to a torrent of Asian spam by simply refusing all e-mail from that part of the world [says Slashdot]
Anti-spam activists confirm that a growing number of beleaguered systems administrators are now blocking all e-mail originating from Asia from their systems [says the article]
Bollocks, says anyone reading it with a critical eye. There are no references or sources for this sweeping "all Asian email" statement. The single reference is to Spamhaus which implements selective listing of domains that persistently generate or carry spam and decline to respond to spam reports. Most of their listed ISP's are currently US based. There is specific mention of two Chinese ISP's, and none from any other Asian nation.
To make a story out of this, you have to cite metrics. The fact that Spamhaus are currently blacklisting China Telecomm no more proves that "the west" is blocking "the east" than a story about anyone temporarily blacklisting AOL (again) proves that there is some mass move to block "the west".
Without giving metrics, you're just providing anecdotes. Persuasive anecdotes, sure, that probably appeal to our personal experiences, but those are the most dangerous kind, because they stop you looking for the real story and asking the real questions.
The real question here isn't "Why do Spamhaus currently blacklist China Telecomm?" but "Why don't Spamhaus currently blacklist Roadrunner?" or any of another half dozen ignorant ISP's that deny that they are injecting spam even in the face of unequivocable header evidence. Perhaps we in the "west" (sweeping-generalisations-r-us) could go about cleaning up our own house before we go gunning for those coming late to the party.
I'm not aware of any case where copyright law (in America) is not unified over different mediums
Sorry, I was referring to UK law, on the assumption that US law would have similar cases, but I'm not really sure. The Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (UK) has a special case for software. Plus images of artifacts are a minefield in any jurisdiction.
Copyright is not a "thing" though -- and can't be bought or sold
You're right that many authors grant strictly limited rights with reversion terms, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from selling all rights and assigning the copyright to someone else. A lot of non-fiction is sold lock, stock and barrel, and not all of it as work for hire. Off the top of my head, pulp movie scripts are often sold complete. Even if the contract stipulates royalties, that's part of the payment for the rights, not a lingering non-corporeal aspect of the rights themselves.
you can't sign a piece of paper that says "I did not write this, Bertlesmann AG, is the true originator of this work."
You don't have to. One of the effects of the UK CDPA is to clarify that an author can assert the moral right to be identified as the creator of a work, while the full or partial copyright is assigned to someone else. In the US, AFAIK, there's nothing except common sense, habit and contract negotiations that even obliges rights owners to identify the original author.
an individual should be entitled to rewards for his entire lifetime
Why?
It's not a frivilous question. Creators can produce work for hire, and copyrights can be bought and sold. Copyright is a "thing", a commodity that can be traded like any other. There's no reason to end / extend it to match the creator's lifetime. What if they sell rights for forty years with a reversion clause, then die five minutes later? How long do the purchaser's rights last? Forty years? Twenty years past the creator's death? Their own lifetime plus twenty? The lifetime of their corporation?
Copyright law is in a big old mess as it is, what with work for hire and corporate ownership screwing up the notion of when it should expire. Then there's the convoluted issue of copyrights of images of artifacts (see how many claims of copyright you can find for images of the Bayeux tapestry, for example). Copyright laws need to be simplified and unified.
First, copy rights in all media need to be unified. That means no distinction between music, still pictures, moving pictures, images of art (interpretive or otherwise), or text. One law for all.
Second, one law for all needs to be applied to the rights. Copyright is a "thing". It can be bought and sold. Duration should not depend on who owns the rights. The clock should start ticking the moment the work is created, and it should stop after a fixed time, regardless of who owns the rights at that time.
Third, shorter terms. Twenty years is reasonable. Yes, that would punish some creators, but the vast majority of work is forgotten within twenty years. We're talking about punishing a small minority, admittedly the people who make the very best content.
But isn't the best content exactly the sort that should be entering the public domain?
There's an argument to be made that if you shorten terms, cynical creators might deliberately produce content that's designed to be disposable and not last the test of time. I refer you to my earlier point: we're already swamped with mediocre, disposable content. The best people will continue to create the best content for the best reason of all: because they want to, not because they think that they'll still be raking in royalties in fifty years time.
Incidentally, I'm an author. And I still think 20 years is a reasonable duration. Five years is a good run for most books. Translations in other territories can extend that, but, hey, a translation is an interpretive derivation; it's only common sense courtesy among publishers that ensures that most authors are paid for translations right now!
I've thought this through, by the way. If I write a book that's good enough to be remembered in 20 years time, and if Hollywood decides to make a $500 million film of it and to not pay me a penny for it, then I could live with that. The one right I would want to retain would be the right to be credited as the original author. If I can't leverage that publicity to make a killing on the chat show circuit, or to sell a new bunch of books, then that's nobody's fault but my own.
Capitalism is the best system available for the short term allocation of resources, but I believe we need to rethink parts of it if we are going to have better long term goals and plans
I'd argue that quick entry into the public domain actually empowers the best form of competition based capitalism.
Once a work is in the public domain, the ex-right holder is still free to sell it, but now they have to compete with other sellers, or with the very real possibility that we can spend time rather than money to source the content ourselves. If you don't like the content (a book, say), you can change it and release your own version, either free, or package it nicely and try and sell it yourself.
I'm all for limited time exclusive rights, but there's no reason for them to be over twenty years. The only interminable right I'd retain is the right to be credited as the original author.
Look at it this way. If there's still enough interest in my work after twenty years that other people want to sell or adapt it, then that actually buys me mindshare, and adds to my personal value. If Hollywood wants to make a film out of a book that I wrote 20 years earlier, good luck to them. I get my name in lights, and it's hey-ho and off to the chat circuit, or (cynically enterprising of me) slam out a couple of ghost written quickes and cash in.
Let's bear in mind that copyright and all intellectual property for that matter is an artificial and relatively recent "right", and the primary purpose is to get work into the public domain.
Isn't this about another group of people [who sell public domain content] that thinks it needs to make a profit
Well sure, but why is that a bad thing? It's like open source; if you can collate and package up freely available content and distribute it at a price that makes it attractive to me, then we both win. Everybody comes away smiling, we're both enriched (monetarily or culturally), and as a neat byproduct, if you sell me (e.g.) a book and I don't like the ending, I can re-write it and sell my alternative version, or even give it away for that matter. It's the epitome of the free market: people choosing to buy because they want to, not because their choice is to buy or to do without.
I guess my question is, in the fight against bad laws, do the ends justify the means if we're to score a trule moral victory in court
I'd argue that the motiviation doesn't matter, only the result. We have a lot of bad laws that emerged from good intentions, remember. Let's turn the tables for a change.
So, we're looking for people with more money than sense, who don't give a damn what they pay for transportation, or how effective it as, as long as it buys them something that nobody else has. Candidates?
i'd rather hit delete a few times per day (i don't get more than 10 spam mails a day) and know the internet is still relatively free
Yes, and I'm sure most spammers consider themselves gleaming champions of freedom rather than slimy freeloading leeches.
Incidentally, do you consider that it's fine for companies to send unsolicited porn snail mail to anyone (including children)? With packaging saying "Porn for Joe Sixpack"? And make Joe pay (time/money/resources) to receive and deal with it? If not, explain why it's OK to do that with email.
Yes, that's right. If you haven't seen it, some poor mad fool got in a canard nosed "glider" that had been bodged up in day, and reached about 20mph and 15 feet before releasing the tow line. The "glider" went in a direction that could charitably be described as "not quite a plummet". He walked away. Then did it again, only faster. And again, reaching about 30mph. This is pretty much comparable with the speeds and energies in the Wright brother's creation.
The remote plane was an interesting one. It actually flew, in a very nearly controlled fashion. OK, it was built with modern scrap, but it was scrap, and it was built in a day.
I'm kind of wondering why the people building the replica airplanes feel the need to have human pilots in them. Remote control or even an expert system might do nicely if safety is a concern.
I hope none of the replica teams crack up... there's enough aviation hysteria these days, without a "reenactment" generating more bad press
Any reason it has to have a live pilot? How about a crash test dummy and some remote controls?
Or (even better) how about an onboard or offboard expert system? There's a nice limited set of variables to work on: height 0 - 3 metres, speed as fast as you can manage, go in a straight line, don't make a crater when you land. Seems like an ideal application.
Usually I'd say that you should always make it exactly as it was, but in this case lives would be at stake if you followed that approach
Any reason it has to have a live pilot? How about a crash test dummy and some remote controls?
Or (even better) how about an onboard or offboard expert system? There's a nice limited set of variables to work on: height 0 - 3 metres, speed as fast as you can manage, go in a straight line. Seems like an ideal application.
some teams have already produced the flyer, they just can't get it to fly. And they have NO IDEA how the Wright Bros. were able to get the original one off the ground
I heard they glued a bunch of bumblebees to the wings...
that important discussions have to take place between only two people at a time, so there is plausible deniability and nothing to subpoena
Here's an anecdote to back that up. I used to work for a company that did CGI, mostly for games. They were informed by a man-who-knew-a-man that Paramount needed some CGI for a some Star Trek game. Tiny problem:
Paramount are savagely protective of their IP.
They are pathologically opposed to licensing any reproduction of their IP, in even the most limited form. They especially do not want to give even temporary licenses to little "wannabe" subcontractors.
To protect their trademarks, they have to be seen to be prosecuting any violations.
So, farcically, the whole thing was carried out by cryptic phone calls (from home numbers, more often than not) or face to face. No email, nothing in writing, no hard requirements, no direct references to any contract, expressed or implied, on the phone, in case the other side was recording it. Paramount needed plausible deniability that they even knew my employer was producing this stuff, as they would have to be seen to prosecute them, even though they (as represented by a middle manager) were informally soliciting the work.
So my employer put about a man year of work into producing a test sequence based on a guess of what Paramount might want (made for some happy animators, mind you), then it was taken by hand to Paramount to be viewed by a mid level peon, without even so much as a record of the appointment or meeting.
My employer lost the "bid". It was made clear to them (face to face) that they should under no circumstances account for the work as being to do with Paramount or Star Trek. They gambled a man year of work, lost, and then had to scam their own shareholders by cooking the books to cover it up.
With my hand on my heart, this is the honest truth. It's probably not even the whole truth, I only heard the stuff that got filtered through our bid manager.
So, yes, even legitimate businesses have a desire for self destructing messages. I won't say a "need", because the whole process was a farce. But just because it's dumb doesn't mean they aren't begging for it like a drunk soaped up cheerleader in a post-football shower (sorry, I just needed to get the bad taste out of my head).
offload your shows to your PC and then serve them back to the ReplayTV4000 with your PC masquerading as another ReplayTV4000 on your local network
Wow, imagine a ReplayTV cluster of, er... Beowulf nodes...
Sorry, I appear to have wandered into the wrong joke.
Re:This still won't work!
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Peek-a-Boo(ty)
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· Score: 2
the only way to connect to a Peek-A-Booty network is word-of-mouth, which is horribly ineffective
Bear in mind that you'll also have to find out about and then get Peek-a-Booty in the first place. If you can do that, chances are you'll be able to find a list of nodes as well. Once this is up and running, a Google search and some patience should get you settled in.
I completely agree that it's not easy, that there is no magic technical solution, and that even using Peek-A-Booty may be risky for people in some areas.
The thing is: what's the alternative? Accept the firewalling? Use non-SSL public proxies that leave your traffic visible? Peek-a-Booty is one solution. What's your alternative?
Spooky prediction
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Peek-a-Boo(ty)
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The Great Rogerborgio will make a spooky prediction. When Peek-a-Booty 1.0 reaches 100,000 downloads, a story will break that the client contains a hostile trojan that lets "evil hackers" take control of your machine, impersonate you, steal your credit card details, and screw your shrieking girlfriend in the ass while you watch helplessly, tears of frustration streaming down your shocked, betrayed face.
The story will be submitted by a "credible group of anonymous white hat hackers" and run - unquestioned - by BBC Online and - slightly questioned, at best - by Reuturs, and every other online news source will pick it up from there and spread it as gospel truth.
It will not be true. It will be Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, pure and simple. Many interested parties will want Peek-a-Booty to fail. In fact, there are so many - governmental and industrial - that even the Great Rogerborgio cannot peer through the mists of time sharply enough to determine the culprit.
But it will happen. And remember, you read it here first.
Re:Good for some, nightmare for others
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Peek-a-Boo(ty)
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· Score: 3, Insightful
On the good side: China [...] to keep spreadin' the news that "Information good."
Er, good side: USA. To find DeCSS or similar tools without fear of prosecution, for example, or to keep spreadin' the news that "Censorship bad, even when it's done by a (heh) democratically (heh heh) elected (heh heh heh) administration."
as a Security Manager in a bank who's sometimes asked to go find out if person XYZ has been accessing nakedhairyeyebrowedcheerleaders.com, I can see how this utility might make it impossible for me to do my job
Depends on what your job is. If your job is to protect the bank from liability, anonymised browsing allows you to state with certainty "Nobody can link us or our employees with porn surfing. Not us, not nobody."
If you've been tasked with catching a known baddie in the act (perhaps at preteenlolitas.com), then you've got keyloggers, machine caches (they don't have admin access, right?) or just drop VNC on their machine and catch them with their pants down, so to speak.
I appreciate your concerns, but really, wouldn't it actually make your job easier if users showed a little courtesy and consideration, and stopped waving their dodgy surfing habits in your face (so to speak)?
I don't think anyone should be wondering if Al Qeida (or Iraq or Iran or the Taliban) will follow the Geneva Conventions; we know they don't
And so, clearly, we shouldn't either. Yes, yes, schoolyard logic, very persuasive, very self perpetuating.
We could be placing captured terrorists into penthouses at Trump Plaza; Al Qeida will still treat any captured Americans as cruely as they can imagine.
Ah, I see. So because it's (theoretically) likely that some Taliban and Al Quieda people might treat US prisoners badly (if they had any), we should punish other (alleged) Taliban and Al Quieda members by treating them harshly. Sure, that makes sense, at the brain stem level.
only an anti-American troll would think that terrorists are anything but illegal combatants
Mmm, if you like. And everyone who opposed the McCarthy witch hunts was a commie pinko bastard. Or was that a bleeding heart liberal? No, that was Vietnam. I dunno what people who opposed the Gulf War were called, but they were wrong anyway, because we won that one, seeing as how we defended the Kuwaiti peoples' liberty by putting the old dictatorship back in power, and we only had to drop about a zillion unexploded cluster munitions and DUP rounds on their country to do it. And killing 5,000 Iraqi children a month with sanctions that block water purifiers and antibiotics is a small price to pay to keep the peace in that region. Those reactionary fools at UNICEF don't agree, but what do they know about the cost of freedom?
They don't wear insignia
... that we recognize...
they target civilains
Some of them did, but those that did are dead.
and they don't respond to a chain of command
So who exactly do we have locked up then, and for what reason? The men giving orders that you claim are being ignored? The men actually targetting civilians? No, wait, those men are dead. Have we locked up cunning and ruthless criminal masterminds? Or J. Random AK toting Afghan? Given that US "intelligence" couldn't predict or stop September 11th, nor can they find bin Laden or Omar now, what's more likely?
Don't get me wrong. The murderers who carried out September 11th were evil cold hearted sons of bitches, and I would personally shove angry scorpions up their asses.
But I can't, because they're dead.
So who are we taking our revenge on? And it is revenge. There is no chance that the Camp X ray detainees will be given a fair trial, or any kind of trial, nor access to legal advice, or due process, or the basic human rights that we tout so loudly, but seem to care about so little when applied to non-US citizens, who we can presumably find guilty until proven innocent.
Try thinking about it this way. You're J. Patriotic American. You don't know squat about US foreign policy, nor about anything outside of the US, you just know that USA is A-OK. One day you look up and see about a bzillion guys wearing wierd foreign clothes and carrying AK's parachuting from the sky. Well hell, you might be in civvies, but you're packing heat, and you're a red blooded patriot. Bang! Kapow! Die, filthy foreign invaders, desecrating clean American soil with your undemocratic boots! Uh oh, out of ammo. Next thing you know, you're cuffed and blindfolded, flown halfway round the world, had your head shaved, clapped in irons, had a bag tied over your head, and put in an open pen surrounded by razor wire. Foreigners shout bewildering orders at you, and occasionally one turns up and screams in broken English "You are illegal combatant! Where is your leader? We never let you go! Give us your leader!"
OK, big guy. Prove your innocence. or explain why that treatment would be OK, because you personally have no right to defend yourself, your family or your country from a foreign invader because other US citizens pissed off the invaders.
And to get vaguely back on topic. Sure, it's neat to have a new super weapon. It makes us feel big and safe. But I have to wonder if it would cost us less in the long term (in money, if not in face) to remove the need for by just saying sorry, and then keep saying sorry over and over and over each time we suffer civilian casualties, casualties which are coming anyway no matter how much we spend on super weapons.
You can blow people apart with laser weapons, according to international law, but you can't blind them. It is indeed a strange world we live in
Not really. The Geneva Convention is indeed designed to make war hard. Maiming and crippling is much more efficient than killing, as it puts a huge strain on your enemy's economy. But follow that argument, and you soon realise that chemical and biological weapons are the most efficient of all. You'l notice that this is the method of attack that we most fear will be used against ourselves.
And so the Geneva Convention lays down the ways that civilised people should kill each other. It's ludicruous, it's horrendous, but it's entirely sensible.
And as others have pointed out here and elsewhere, the Geneva Convention is only as binding as we make it. We can ignore it, but if we do, we declare ourselves to be uncivilised, and should expect to be put down like barbaric rabid dogs. If that sounds like harsh rhetoric, it's pretty much the language that's coming out of Washington right now. "They started it," is a pretty poor schoolyard grade excuse for acting like animals, and if anyone is any doubt that the US government is bothering to conform with the Geneva Convention, they should really do some reading.
Laser gunships are a neat toy and all, but I don't think they're going to solve our major problem, which is that a couple of billion people really don't like our foreign policies, specifically our passion for spending billions of dollars on projecting power across the globe. Weapons like this necessitate their own use. Hey ho.
digital projection will remove a lot of the variables involved in projection,
Thanks for the superb and informative post. It's always fascinating to hear a skilled craftsman explain some of the hard work behind the magic.
I have to ask... aren't you a little concerned that one of the variables that might be removed is the projectionist? A little investment in a LAN and some remote control and viewing hardware and software, and one person could handle several screens at once, right? Or at least, it might look that way to a theatre chain looking for cost savings.
If the loser has to pay the other's attorney's fees, then people will settle even sooner because the amount of money they could lose is significantly higher
Unless they think they'll win. This article is about a company buckling even though they had prior art. If they've presented that to the litigants, and the litigants have gone ahead anyway, then the suit is essentially frivilous, and the litigants really should be punished as much as possible for bringing it.
Remember, we're talking about predatory misuse of patents here, where usually the defendant can show prior art if they think it's worth sticking out to the bitter end. Shortening the case right down would help with that.
Incidentally, I didn't make it clear that it's not court time that matters, it's case time. If the court hears arguments for four hours, then adjourns for two weeks to let both parties prepare two hour rebuttals, that's only eight hours of court time, but it tends to add four full weeks of billable lawyer time for the parties. So cram it into one day. If you don't prepare enough to rebutt on the spot, tough. A civil case is "balance of probabilities", remember, it's not the all-or-nothing of a criminal case. If you're clearly in the right, you should be able to show that quickly and without being tied up in side issues or having to go away and come up some clever legalese to torpedo your opponent's arguments.
What happens if you were working on implementing an idea, but someone else comes out and uses your patent, and they destroy your market. Ie. you have a patent on a widget. Joe Bob reads your patent and starts selling the widgets, and everyone who wants a widget has already bought one. Now you sue Joe Bob, and he can't sell them any more. What are you going to do with your $30 million dollar widget factory?
Supply the market that Joe Bob has kindly created for you. He's actually done you a favour. Pay him money for access to his client base. Alternatively, license Joe Bob to continue supplying the market (he's invested to do so, and will be eager to settle now). I'm absolutely not in favour of using patents to kill ideas, just that if you're not using your patent, you shouldn't be able to be awarded damages as though you have been.
That Amazon ended up licensing the InTouch patent just shows how stupid the whole thing is
Which demonstrates the clarity of corporate thinking in contrast to our muddy old fashioned notions of "right" and "wrong". From my experiences of talking to my employer's legal department, here's how corporates involved in litigation think:
How much will I have to pay if I choose to to win this suit?
How much will I have to pay if I don't choose to win this suit?
That's it. That's the only consideration. If the cost of paying lawyers to win the case is more than the cost of paying the litigant, it won't be fought, and no precedent will be set. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Note that in a case where both parties have limited access to resources, it really is the ability and willingness to spend that decides the verdict. When one party runs out of money or blinks, the case is settled.
A step towards helping this would be if the courts took an example from (e.g.) English courts, where it's much more usual for the loser to pay both sides' legal costs. This generally requires a countersuit in the US, except in a few well defined cases, like when you can prove breach of registered copyright (yes, that's right, if someone steals your unregistered copyrighted work, you have to pay to prove they did it, then all that happens is that a court tells them to stop [and if they don't, you have to bring another suit]. You don't typically get a sizable award, not even your legal costs).
Second, courts could stop awarding randomly huge amounts of damages to successful litigants. As with unregistered copyright, they could simply say "Stop it" to the losing party, and let both sides pay their lawyers and weep over how stupid they were to let it get to court in the first place. There's an argument that punishing the transgressor is necessary to make an example, but we have swung too far, to the point where people are using the courts as a primary means of income (not just at a corporate level over patents and IP, some people make a good living through personal injury suits)
Third (an important adjuct) we could trim the crap out of our legal system and translate it from Lawyerese. It's no coincidence that about 50% of both Senate and Congress are members of the American Bar Association. Separation of powers my ass, US law is written by lawyers for lawyers. What we need is a system where neither defendant or litigant needs a lawyer, and a streamlined process that forces both parties to stick to the primary evidence by giving a fixed amount of time to present whatever evidence and arguments they want (without interruption), then a fixed time to rebutt their opponents. This often happens in an ad hoc fashion in lower courts dealing with minor issues, but there is no reason why it shouldn't apply at all levels of civil litigation which considers "balance of probability" rather than "beyond all resonable doubt". If you can't make your case in two hours (without interruption), you can't make it at all and are just stalling to bleed your opponent and to inflate the perceived important of your arguments relative to his.
Whew. There we are. I firmly believe that patents aren't the problem. Sure, it's farcical that the USPTO is funded through granting patents, but I don't believe that's the real problem. The problem is that it costs a lot of money to defend a patent suit, and we give ludicruous awards to the winner based on theoretical damages. Chances are that the defendant has more to lose and will blink first and settle. As we've seen again and again, we now have a new breed of company that exists solely to file speculative patents, sit tight until someone else implements them, then sue on the basis that they could have made X amount of money if they'd bothered to implement their own idea.
Simple enough answer: you didn't implement the idea, you don't get damages. You can stop people from using your idea, and you can negotiate to license or sell it, but what you can't do is negotiate using the threat of an insanely huge lawsuit. If you want to stop OmniMegaCorp from using your idea, find a pro bono lawyer, sue, win, get your legal costs awarded, and let them come to you offering to pay you a fair amount. If the implementor thinks they've got prior art, they have less to lose by fighting it to the end, and having your patent invalidated. We really do need to encourage both sides to see a case through to the end by lowering the risks, and I'd be willing to put tax dollars into the courts to make that happen, because I know that every time a company buckles under and agrees to license an idiotic patent, those costs will eventually be passed on to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Cultural homogeny is one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet. Sure, in much of Asia, it's traditionally a sign of respect to give an individual a hard copy of your business card. But that in itself is just the most recent evolution of a long tradition of formalised introductions and determining of relative position, and there's no reason to believe that spam will continue to be tolerated by users there (assuming this claim is true) once the novelty value wears off.
I'll go out on a limb to suggest that while UCE within Asia is perhaps currently viewed as synonymous with a business card, given time, when it is viewed in its own light (rather than as just being considered analogous to a traditional activity), it will be viewed with the same contempt and hatred that the rest of the world already has for it.
I'll draw a parallel with email in general in the US and Europe. For those coming late to the party, many early (80's and early 90's, and by the way, I was a Prestel user in the 80's, using my ZX Spectrum and breeze block modem) home and business users of email initially tended to treat it as a letter, starting with "Dear Bob", and taking care with spelling and punctuation. (Don't confuse this with academic users or l33t h4x0rz coming to the medium with a fair idea of what it was and why they wanted it). It took a while to evolve in popular consciousness into more of a informal and disposable post-it note or phone call analog, although really it's in a category all of its own.
So while it's easy for us to scoff in disbelief at the naievete of Asian users now, let's not forget those Dear Bob days. Global consensus will take a while to arrive. And lest we get too high and mighty, it might very well involve a shift in our perceptions as well.
You see, the thing that really bugs me about spam is that it's so moronic and illiterate. "!!!MAKE $$$ FAST!!!" it shrieks, and "you have, nothign to loose!". Call me strange, but if I were (ever, in theory) to receive a small, literate and polite spam that didn't lie about remove options or oversell itself, it just advertised a product, then I'd be far less inclined to spamcop it. The idea of a "business card" type spam is far less loathesome to me than yet another two hundred line "THIS IS NOT A PIRIMID SKAM!!!!!" monstrosity.
Do the reading. Despite the shrieking tone of the article, what we are talking about here is Spamhaus blacklisting China Telecom, not "all Asian ISP's". That's the entire story. And Spamhaus themselves suggest that their list should be used in conjunction with an open relay list.
To me, the story here isn't that Spamhaus list China Telecomm, but that they don't also list Roadrunner, who give exactly the same "It didn't originate from us" lie to any abuse report. Any ideas?
- frustrated sysadmins in the West are responding to a torrent of Asian spam by simply refusing all e-mail from that part of the world [says Slashdot]
Anti-spam activists confirm that a growing number of beleaguered systems administrators are now blocking all e-mail originating from Asia from their systems [says the article]Bollocks, says anyone reading it with a critical eye. There are no references or sources for this sweeping "all Asian email" statement. The single reference is to Spamhaus which implements selective listing of domains that persistently generate or carry spam and decline to respond to spam reports. Most of their listed ISP's are currently US based. There is specific mention of two Chinese ISP's, and none from any other Asian nation.
To make a story out of this, you have to cite metrics. The fact that Spamhaus are currently blacklisting China Telecomm no more proves that "the west" is blocking "the east" than a story about anyone temporarily blacklisting AOL (again) proves that there is some mass move to block "the west".
Without giving metrics, you're just providing anecdotes. Persuasive anecdotes, sure, that probably appeal to our personal experiences, but those are the most dangerous kind, because they stop you looking for the real story and asking the real questions.
The real question here isn't "Why do Spamhaus currently blacklist China Telecomm?" but "Why don't Spamhaus currently blacklist Roadrunner?" or any of another half dozen ignorant ISP's that deny that they are injecting spam even in the face of unequivocable header evidence. Perhaps we in the "west" (sweeping-generalisations-r-us) could go about cleaning up our own house before we go gunning for those coming late to the party.
Sorry, I was referring to UK law, on the assumption that US law would have similar cases, but I'm not really sure. The Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (UK) has a special case for software. Plus images of artifacts are a minefield in any jurisdiction.
You're right that many authors grant strictly limited rights with reversion terms, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from selling all rights and assigning the copyright to someone else. A lot of non-fiction is sold lock, stock and barrel, and not all of it as work for hire. Off the top of my head, pulp movie scripts are often sold complete. Even if the contract stipulates royalties, that's part of the payment for the rights, not a lingering non-corporeal aspect of the rights themselves.
You don't have to. One of the effects of the UK CDPA is to clarify that an author can assert the moral right to be identified as the creator of a work, while the full or partial copyright is assigned to someone else. In the US, AFAIK, there's nothing except common sense, habit and contract negotiations that even obliges rights owners to identify the original author.
Examples that I have to hand:
Why?
It's not a frivilous question. Creators can produce work for hire, and copyrights can be bought and sold. Copyright is a "thing", a commodity that can be traded like any other. There's no reason to end / extend it to match the creator's lifetime. What if they sell rights for forty years with a reversion clause, then die five minutes later? How long do the purchaser's rights last? Forty years? Twenty years past the creator's death? Their own lifetime plus twenty? The lifetime of their corporation?
Copyright law is in a big old mess as it is, what with work for hire and corporate ownership screwing up the notion of when it should expire. Then there's the convoluted issue of copyrights of images of artifacts (see how many claims of copyright you can find for images of the Bayeux tapestry, for example). Copyright laws need to be simplified and unified.
First, copy rights in all media need to be unified. That means no distinction between music, still pictures, moving pictures, images of art (interpretive or otherwise), or text. One law for all.
Second, one law for all needs to be applied to the rights. Copyright is a "thing". It can be bought and sold. Duration should not depend on who owns the rights. The clock should start ticking the moment the work is created, and it should stop after a fixed time, regardless of who owns the rights at that time.
Third, shorter terms. Twenty years is reasonable. Yes, that would punish some creators, but the vast majority of work is forgotten within twenty years. We're talking about punishing a small minority, admittedly the people who make the very best content.
But isn't the best content exactly the sort that should be entering the public domain?
There's an argument to be made that if you shorten terms, cynical creators might deliberately produce content that's designed to be disposable and not last the test of time. I refer you to my earlier point: we're already swamped with mediocre, disposable content. The best people will continue to create the best content for the best reason of all: because they want to, not because they think that they'll still be raking in royalties in fifty years time.
Incidentally, I'm an author. And I still think 20 years is a reasonable duration. Five years is a good run for most books. Translations in other territories can extend that, but, hey, a translation is an interpretive derivation; it's only common sense courtesy among publishers that ensures that most authors are paid for translations right now!
I've thought this through, by the way. If I write a book that's good enough to be remembered in 20 years time, and if Hollywood decides to make a $500 million film of it and to not pay me a penny for it, then I could live with that. The one right I would want to retain would be the right to be credited as the original author. If I can't leverage that publicity to make a killing on the chat show circuit, or to sell a new bunch of books, then that's nobody's fault but my own.
I'd argue that quick entry into the public domain actually empowers the best form of competition based capitalism.
Once a work is in the public domain, the ex-right holder is still free to sell it, but now they have to compete with other sellers, or with the very real possibility that we can spend time rather than money to source the content ourselves. If you don't like the content (a book, say), you can change it and release your own version, either free, or package it nicely and try and sell it yourself.
I'm all for limited time exclusive rights, but there's no reason for them to be over twenty years. The only interminable right I'd retain is the right to be credited as the original author.
Look at it this way. If there's still enough interest in my work after twenty years that other people want to sell or adapt it, then that actually buys me mindshare, and adds to my personal value. If Hollywood wants to make a film out of a book that I wrote 20 years earlier, good luck to them. I get my name in lights, and it's hey-ho and off to the chat circuit, or (cynically enterprising of me) slam out a couple of ghost written quickes and cash in.
Let's bear in mind that copyright and all intellectual property for that matter is an artificial and relatively recent "right", and the primary purpose is to get work into the public domain.
Well sure, but why is that a bad thing? It's like open source; if you can collate and package up freely available content and distribute it at a price that makes it attractive to me, then we both win. Everybody comes away smiling, we're both enriched (monetarily or culturally), and as a neat byproduct, if you sell me (e.g.) a book and I don't like the ending, I can re-write it and sell my alternative version, or even give it away for that matter. It's the epitome of the free market: people choosing to buy because they want to, not because their choice is to buy or to do without.
I'd argue that the motiviation doesn't matter, only the result. We have a lot of bad laws that emerged from good intentions, remember. Let's turn the tables for a change.
Oooh, no, he'll wait until it looks like being a success, then either buy the company, or make a clone and give it away until he's killed Segway.
Not funny, I concede, but probably accurate.
So, we're looking for people with more money than sense, who don't give a damn what they pay for transportation, or how effective it as, as long as it buys them something that nobody else has. Candidates?
I give up. Who's number 3?
Yes, and I'm sure most spammers consider themselves gleaming champions of freedom rather than slimy freeloading leeches.
Incidentally, do you consider that it's fine for companies to send unsolicited porn snail mail to anyone (including children)? With packaging saying "Porn for Joe Sixpack"? And make Joe pay (time/money/resources) to receive and deal with it? If not, explain why it's OK to do that with email.
As an aside, bear in mind that Scrapheap Challenge (the original UK name and format for Junkyard Wars) has already seen teams build and fly:
Yes, that's right. If you haven't seen it, some poor mad fool got in a canard nosed "glider" that had been bodged up in day, and reached about 20mph and 15 feet before releasing the tow line. The "glider" went in a direction that could charitably be described as "not quite a plummet". He walked away. Then did it again, only faster. And again, reaching about 30mph. This is pretty much comparable with the speeds and energies in the Wright brother's creation.
The remote plane was an interesting one. It actually flew, in a very nearly controlled fashion. OK, it was built with modern scrap, but it was scrap, and it was built in a day.
I'm kind of wondering why the people building the replica airplanes feel the need to have human pilots in them. Remote control or even an expert system might do nicely if safety is a concern.
Any reason it has to have a live pilot? How about a crash test dummy and some remote controls?
Or (even better) how about an onboard or offboard expert system? There's a nice limited set of variables to work on: height 0 - 3 metres, speed as fast as you can manage, go in a straight line, don't make a crater when you land. Seems like an ideal application.
Any reason it has to have a live pilot? How about a crash test dummy and some remote controls?
Or (even better) how about an onboard or offboard expert system? There's a nice limited set of variables to work on: height 0 - 3 metres, speed as fast as you can manage, go in a straight line. Seems like an ideal application.
I heard they glued a bunch of bumblebees to the wings...
Here's an anecdote to back that up. I used to work for a company that did CGI, mostly for games. They were informed by a man-who-knew-a-man that Paramount needed some CGI for a some Star Trek game. Tiny problem:
So, farcically, the whole thing was carried out by cryptic phone calls (from home numbers, more often than not) or face to face. No email, nothing in writing, no hard requirements, no direct references to any contract, expressed or implied, on the phone, in case the other side was recording it. Paramount needed plausible deniability that they even knew my employer was producing this stuff, as they would have to be seen to prosecute them, even though they (as represented by a middle manager) were informally soliciting the work.
So my employer put about a man year of work into producing a test sequence based on a guess of what Paramount might want (made for some happy animators, mind you), then it was taken by hand to Paramount to be viewed by a mid level peon, without even so much as a record of the appointment or meeting.
My employer lost the "bid". It was made clear to them (face to face) that they should under no circumstances account for the work as being to do with Paramount or Star Trek. They gambled a man year of work, lost, and then had to scam their own shareholders by cooking the books to cover it up.
With my hand on my heart, this is the honest truth. It's probably not even the whole truth, I only heard the stuff that got filtered through our bid manager.
So, yes, even legitimate businesses have a desire for self destructing messages. I won't say a "need", because the whole process was a farce. But just because it's dumb doesn't mean they aren't begging for it like a drunk soaped up cheerleader in a post-football shower (sorry, I just needed to get the bad taste out of my head).
Wow, imagine a ReplayTV cluster of, er... Beowulf nodes...
Sorry, I appear to have wandered into the wrong joke.
Bear in mind that you'll also have to find out about and then get Peek-a-Booty in the first place. If you can do that, chances are you'll be able to find a list of nodes as well. Once this is up and running, a Google search and some patience should get you settled in.
I completely agree that it's not easy, that there is no magic technical solution, and that even using Peek-A-Booty may be risky for people in some areas.
The thing is: what's the alternative? Accept the firewalling? Use non-SSL public proxies that leave your traffic visible? Peek-a-Booty is one solution. What's your alternative?
The Great Rogerborgio will make a spooky prediction. When Peek-a-Booty 1.0 reaches 100,000 downloads, a story will break that the client contains a hostile trojan that lets "evil hackers" take control of your machine, impersonate you, steal your credit card details, and screw your shrieking girlfriend in the ass while you watch helplessly, tears of frustration streaming down your shocked, betrayed face.
The story will be submitted by a "credible group of anonymous white hat hackers" and run - unquestioned - by BBC Online and - slightly questioned, at best - by Reuturs, and every other online news source will pick it up from there and spread it as gospel truth.
It will not be true. It will be Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, pure and simple. Many interested parties will want Peek-a-Booty to fail. In fact, there are so many - governmental and industrial - that even the Great Rogerborgio cannot peer through the mists of time sharply enough to determine the culprit.
But it will happen. And remember, you read it here first.
Er, good side: USA. To find DeCSS or similar tools without fear of prosecution, for example, or to keep spreadin' the news that "Censorship bad, even when it's done by a (heh) democratically (heh heh) elected (heh heh heh) administration."
Depends on what your job is. If your job is to protect the bank from liability, anonymised browsing allows you to state with certainty "Nobody can link us or our employees with porn surfing. Not us, not nobody."
If you've been tasked with catching a known baddie in the act (perhaps at preteenlolitas.com), then you've got keyloggers, machine caches (they don't have admin access, right?) or just drop VNC on their machine and catch them with their pants down, so to speak.
I appreciate your concerns, but really, wouldn't it actually make your job easier if users showed a little courtesy and consideration, and stopped waving their dodgy surfing habits in your face (so to speak)?
And so, clearly, we shouldn't either. Yes, yes, schoolyard logic, very persuasive, very self perpetuating.
Ah, I see. So because it's (theoretically) likely that some Taliban and Al Quieda people might treat US prisoners badly (if they had any), we should punish other (alleged) Taliban and Al Quieda members by treating them harshly. Sure, that makes sense, at the brain stem level.
Mmm, if you like. And everyone who opposed the McCarthy witch hunts was a commie pinko bastard. Or was that a bleeding heart liberal? No, that was Vietnam. I dunno what people who opposed the Gulf War were called, but they were wrong anyway, because we won that one, seeing as how we defended the Kuwaiti peoples' liberty by putting the old dictatorship back in power, and we only had to drop about a zillion unexploded cluster munitions and DUP rounds on their country to do it. And killing 5,000 Iraqi children a month with sanctions that block water purifiers and antibiotics is a small price to pay to keep the peace in that region. Those reactionary fools at UNICEF don't agree, but what do they know about the cost of freedom?
... that we recognize...
Some of them did, but those that did are dead.
So who exactly do we have locked up then, and for what reason? The men giving orders that you claim are being ignored? The men actually targetting civilians? No, wait, those men are dead. Have we locked up cunning and ruthless criminal masterminds? Or J. Random AK toting Afghan? Given that US "intelligence" couldn't predict or stop September 11th, nor can they find bin Laden or Omar now, what's more likely?
Don't get me wrong. The murderers who carried out September 11th were evil cold hearted sons of bitches, and I would personally shove angry scorpions up their asses.
But I can't, because they're dead.
So who are we taking our revenge on? And it is revenge. There is no chance that the Camp X ray detainees will be given a fair trial, or any kind of trial, nor access to legal advice, or due process, or the basic human rights that we tout so loudly, but seem to care about so little when applied to non-US citizens, who we can presumably find guilty until proven innocent.
Try thinking about it this way. You're J. Patriotic American. You don't know squat about US foreign policy, nor about anything outside of the US, you just know that USA is A-OK. One day you look up and see about a bzillion guys wearing wierd foreign clothes and carrying AK's parachuting from the sky. Well hell, you might be in civvies, but you're packing heat, and you're a red blooded patriot. Bang! Kapow! Die, filthy foreign invaders, desecrating clean American soil with your undemocratic boots! Uh oh, out of ammo. Next thing you know, you're cuffed and blindfolded, flown halfway round the world, had your head shaved, clapped in irons, had a bag tied over your head, and put in an open pen surrounded by razor wire. Foreigners shout bewildering orders at you, and occasionally one turns up and screams in broken English "You are illegal combatant! Where is your leader? We never let you go! Give us your leader!"
OK, big guy. Prove your innocence. or explain why that treatment would be OK, because you personally have no right to defend yourself, your family or your country from a foreign invader because other US citizens pissed off the invaders.
And to get vaguely back on topic. Sure, it's neat to have a new super weapon. It makes us feel big and safe. But I have to wonder if it would cost us less in the long term (in money, if not in face) to remove the need for by just saying sorry, and then keep saying sorry over and over and over each time we suffer civilian casualties, casualties which are coming anyway no matter how much we spend on super weapons.
Not really. The Geneva Convention is indeed designed to make war hard. Maiming and crippling is much more efficient than killing, as it puts a huge strain on your enemy's economy. But follow that argument, and you soon realise that chemical and biological weapons are the most efficient of all. You'l notice that this is the method of attack that we most fear will be used against ourselves.
And so the Geneva Convention lays down the ways that civilised people should kill each other. It's ludicruous, it's horrendous, but it's entirely sensible.
And as others have pointed out here and elsewhere, the Geneva Convention is only as binding as we make it. We can ignore it, but if we do, we declare ourselves to be uncivilised, and should expect to be put down like barbaric rabid dogs. If that sounds like harsh rhetoric, it's pretty much the language that's coming out of Washington right now. "They started it," is a pretty poor schoolyard grade excuse for acting like animals, and if anyone is any doubt that the US government is bothering to conform with the Geneva Convention, they should really do some reading.
Laser gunships are a neat toy and all, but I don't think they're going to solve our major problem, which is that a couple of billion people really don't like our foreign policies, specifically our passion for spending billions of dollars on projecting power across the globe. Weapons like this necessitate their own use. Hey ho.
Thanks for the superb and informative post. It's always fascinating to hear a skilled craftsman explain some of the hard work behind the magic.
I have to ask... aren't you a little concerned that one of the variables that might be removed is the projectionist? A little investment in a LAN and some remote control and viewing hardware and software, and one person could handle several screens at once, right? Or at least, it might look that way to a theatre chain looking for cost savings.
Unless they think they'll win. This article is about a company buckling even though they had prior art. If they've presented that to the litigants, and the litigants have gone ahead anyway, then the suit is essentially frivilous, and the litigants really should be punished as much as possible for bringing it.
Remember, we're talking about predatory misuse of patents here, where usually the defendant can show prior art if they think it's worth sticking out to the bitter end. Shortening the case right down would help with that.
Incidentally, I didn't make it clear that it's not court time that matters, it's case time. If the court hears arguments for four hours, then adjourns for two weeks to let both parties prepare two hour rebuttals, that's only eight hours of court time, but it tends to add four full weeks of billable lawyer time for the parties. So cram it into one day. If you don't prepare enough to rebutt on the spot, tough. A civil case is "balance of probabilities", remember, it's not the all-or-nothing of a criminal case. If you're clearly in the right, you should be able to show that quickly and without being tied up in side issues or having to go away and come up some clever legalese to torpedo your opponent's arguments.
Supply the market that Joe Bob has kindly created for you. He's actually done you a favour. Pay him money for access to his client base. Alternatively, license Joe Bob to continue supplying the market (he's invested to do so, and will be eager to settle now). I'm absolutely not in favour of using patents to kill ideas, just that if you're not using your patent, you shouldn't be able to be awarded damages as though you have been.
Which demonstrates the clarity of corporate thinking in contrast to our muddy old fashioned notions of "right" and "wrong". From my experiences of talking to my employer's legal department, here's how corporates involved in litigation think:
That's it. That's the only consideration. If the cost of paying lawyers to win the case is more than the cost of paying the litigant, it won't be fought, and no precedent will be set. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Note that in a case where both parties have limited access to resources, it really is the ability and willingness to spend that decides the verdict. When one party runs out of money or blinks, the case is settled.
A step towards helping this would be if the courts took an example from (e.g.) English courts, where it's much more usual for the loser to pay both sides' legal costs. This generally requires a countersuit in the US, except in a few well defined cases, like when you can prove breach of registered copyright (yes, that's right, if someone steals your unregistered copyrighted work, you have to pay to prove they did it, then all that happens is that a court tells them to stop [and if they don't, you have to bring another suit]. You don't typically get a sizable award, not even your legal costs).
Second, courts could stop awarding randomly huge amounts of damages to successful litigants. As with unregistered copyright, they could simply say "Stop it" to the losing party, and let both sides pay their lawyers and weep over how stupid they were to let it get to court in the first place. There's an argument that punishing the transgressor is necessary to make an example, but we have swung too far, to the point where people are using the courts as a primary means of income (not just at a corporate level over patents and IP, some people make a good living through personal injury suits)
Third (an important adjuct) we could trim the crap out of our legal system and translate it from Lawyerese. It's no coincidence that about 50% of both Senate and Congress are members of the American Bar Association. Separation of powers my ass, US law is written by lawyers for lawyers. What we need is a system where neither defendant or litigant needs a lawyer, and a streamlined process that forces both parties to stick to the primary evidence by giving a fixed amount of time to present whatever evidence and arguments they want (without interruption), then a fixed time to rebutt their opponents. This often happens in an ad hoc fashion in lower courts dealing with minor issues, but there is no reason why it shouldn't apply at all levels of civil litigation which considers "balance of probability" rather than "beyond all resonable doubt". If you can't make your case in two hours (without interruption), you can't make it at all and are just stalling to bleed your opponent and to inflate the perceived important of your arguments relative to his.
Whew. There we are. I firmly believe that patents aren't the problem. Sure, it's farcical that the USPTO is funded through granting patents, but I don't believe that's the real problem. The problem is that it costs a lot of money to defend a patent suit, and we give ludicruous awards to the winner based on theoretical damages. Chances are that the defendant has more to lose and will blink first and settle. As we've seen again and again, we now have a new breed of company that exists solely to file speculative patents, sit tight until someone else implements them, then sue on the basis that they could have made X amount of money if they'd bothered to implement their own idea.
Simple enough answer: you didn't implement the idea, you don't get damages. You can stop people from using your idea, and you can negotiate to license or sell it, but what you can't do is negotiate using the threat of an insanely huge lawsuit. If you want to stop OmniMegaCorp from using your idea, find a pro bono lawyer, sue, win, get your legal costs awarded, and let them come to you offering to pay you a fair amount. If the implementor thinks they've got prior art, they have less to lose by fighting it to the end, and having your patent invalidated. We really do need to encourage both sides to see a case through to the end by lowering the risks, and I'd be willing to put tax dollars into the courts to make that happen, because I know that every time a company buckles under and agrees to license an idiotic patent, those costs will eventually be passed on to me.
Does that sound insane?