That would be a great idea until you are pulled over for a speeding ticket or something, and the cop just happens to look over your breath sensor system and finds its been disabled, and you are hit with a big fine, demerit points on your license, and much, much higher insurance premiums.
Just ask anyone whose been caught with a rader detector in a state where they're illegal. BIG fines!
It's damned expensive if you have to lay your own cables to people's homes. But if the cables are there, it is relatively cheap. Just sign up with a larger service provider like Sprint, BBN, etc. and lease whatever you need to provide the necessary bandwidth to the clients (a couple of T3 lines, for instance), and then most of the costs are in hiring a few administrators and service personnel.
That's why it's important that whomever gets the monopoly to lay cables, doesn't then get a monopoly on service.
What's really broken is the fact that most broadband providers have a virtual monopoly. Back in the days of 56K modems, ISPs were a dime a dozen, and if you were dropped by one, it was no big deal to sign up with another. This situation has changed drastically now that people are dependent on broadband access. DSL is not available everywhere which means many people are dependent on cable modems for broadband, and in most cities there is only one choice of provider.
I'm not saying cable companies should be forced to allow competitors to use their lines, but we should be careful that when fiber optics are installed, that whichever company is given the government granted monopoly to dig trenches on public land to lay cables, that this company must, in return, allow other ISPs to hook up to the other end, giving consumers choice. Then if you are dropped by one, it's no big deal to sign up with another.
No, but he might have paid attention to the Canadian election that took place in a single night, Nov. 27, while the US was still trying to decide what a dimpled chad signified, and whether a full recount was really worth it.
Well, the difference was the Canadian election wasn't nearly as close as the U.S. election. In fact, it wasn't close at all.
The problem with the U.S. election was, as John Allen Paulos pointed out, the margin of victory was smaller than the margin of error. Of course, the margin of error was larger than it needed to be because of the use of obsolete voting machines. Hence, the introduction of this computer voting system. The idea is to make the margin of error smaller, so close elections like the last are handled better.
Sure, and that's why it might have a chance of working. Security through obscurity has never worked for DRM, so an open published standard will force them to do it right. No 40 bit keys, or software based encryption running on an untrusted CPU!
A better angle would be to get into federal courts on a First Amendment issue rather than a jurisdictional one. Pavlovich is just rereporting work done by others. There is precedent for First Amendment protection here.
On jurisdictional arguments, the federal courts have always leaned heavily in favor of state's rights, as in Calder vs. Jones for instance, the case cited in the opinion.
The posting didn't have links to any background material, so all I know about the Audrey is what little there is on 3Com's website.
I just have a few questions. What exactly is meant by a hack here? Are those screen shots supposed to be coming from some other Audrey that someone has hacked into? If they are taken from the console of the "hacked" system, I'm not sure what they prove. I have root access on my Dell desktop computer running Red Hat Linux 7.1, and I didn't need to do any hacking at all!
Can someone provide some links to some background material so I can understand what the Audrey is, and what this hack allows someone to do?
I'm not very familiar with what constitutes conspiracy or aiding and abetting.
Well, for starters, the accused must have been aware of or instigated the plan to commit the specific crime. In other words, Sklyarov must have known that his employer planned to sell the program in the U.S. as he wrote it or afterwards, somehow participated in or assisted the sales, since the only alleged crime here is the sale of the software in the U.S.
Again, could you please explain the relevence of the fact that he holds the copyright to the code.
But there is some evidence that he was involved in a conspiracy to sell the product, to US citizens living in the US, using a US company.
And what is this evidence precisely? Evidently you know something the rest of us don't.
Then idiot boy decided he was going to come to the US and shove it in their faces. That's why idiot boy is now in jail.
Odd, I thought the talk was at Def Con, not the FBI. And I thought the company he worked for stopped selling the program in the U.S. before he came over.
From *this* page http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/20010707_ complaint.html in the last paragraph, the reason why *he* was picked up is because he is listed as the copyright holder of the software.
I just reread the DMCA and I see no mention of it being a crime to be the copyright holder of a circumvention device. Manufacture is illegal, but this was done in Russia, and traficking is illegal, but this was done by his employer. What does his ownership of the copyright have to do with anything?
Not true. I'm sure the Russian Embassy would be more than happy to issue him a new passport.
Although I don't think he should be in jail, and I hope he gets bail, frankly I do think he would be a strong flight risk. Heck, if it were me, I'd be out the the country faster than you can finish reading this com
DMCA isn't (or shouldn't be) Skylarov's problem. He's Russian, not American, and he didn't vote for the politicians who passed DMCA. Sacrificing him to fight it is just plain wrong.
That's one of the two good reasons why Dmitry isn't a good test case. The other is that as a Russian national, he will most likely be denied bail as a flight risk. No American would be jailed over such a thing. If this were an American, he would have been bailed out the afternoon of the arrest, and if found guilty would have been given a small fine on a first offence.
Even if you think Dmitry broke the law and deserves some kind of punishment, jail time, even awaiting trial, is way out of proportion to the "offence".
Re:Men are the targets of these witchhunts.
on
Roasting Sacred Cows
·
· Score: 1
The climate in the UK is very hostile towards men. In fact, British Airways has an official policy of not seating young children next to men when children fly alone. This is discrimination and stereotyping of men - could you imagine if blacks were treated this way?
Err, this sounds more like discrimination against women. With this policy, if you're a woman, it is now twice as likely as it was before that you will have to sit next to a child.
You are right that the DMCA is flawed and should be tested in court. But this is a very bad case to test it with. Why? Because Sklyarov is a foreign national and thus will not likely get bail as he is a flight risk, and this case could take months to prepare. As a result he will spend a lot of time in jail even if the law is thrown out.
If this were an American, he would probably would have been released on bail the afternoon of his arrest. Even if you don't agree with what Sklyarov did and like the DMCA, do you really think jail time is the correct remedy?
I think actually what they want is profitable COMPANIES. Strange that they are blaming the Internet for their inability to make a profit.
You hit the nail right on the head there. The whole premise of the article, stated in the opening paragraph is that the Internet went bust, and is somehow dead or dying. Several dot.coms did indeed go bust as they were built on questionable business models. (Spend as much as we want, we'll recoup it all with advertising.) True many dot.coms went bust, and that resulted in a certain amount of unemployment in the IT sector, but the Internet is alive and well and growing every day.
So I must say, I disagree with the basic premise of the article. That said, however, it does make some good points about the Internet with its dumb network, smart terminal model, as perhaps not being the best mechanism for content delivery. I tend to agree. Perhaps we will see two networks in the future: the existing open Internet, and a more intelligent network for broadband digital content delivery. Then we could have the best of both worlds.
while the rest of us simply make a small patch to cdparanoia and continue ripping away
Would that work? I understood that this couldn't be done in software since CD-ROM drives don't return the ECC codes when doing digital audio extraction. If I'm wrong, that's great news, a simple patch to ripping software should fix the problem. Does anyone out there know enough about CD-ROM DAE to authoritatively answer this question?
I don't know how many times this has to be repeated, but here goes again:
Fair use is a defence, not an offence.
If you excerpt a copyrighted work for review or academic purposes and are charged with copyright violation, you can invoke a fair use defence. Fair use puts no burden on manufacturers or publishers to release works for which this copying is easy or even possible. Heck, I can write a novel and lock it in a safe so no one can see it. Am I violating your fair use rights?
Don't get me wrong, I oppose these copy protection schemes as much as the next guy. But Sony is not violating your fair use rights. They have no obligation to make copying easy for you.
From what I gather about what has been released, software can only "do it" if it can read all the raw data off of the CD meaning both the audio data and the correction data.
...
They don't usually return the error correction bits so that software can analyze the sectors and fix them.
You're absolutely correct! I read the CDFreak article and I'm not convinced of anything at all! It sounds like they managed to get the audio data without the CD-ROM drive constantly complaining of errors, but they don't say anything about interpolating over the clicks, pops, and noise added by the Macrovision process. Unless they have a technique for recovering the ECC codes and syncing it with the data in their.WAV files they haven't bypassed the technique. Unless they left a lot of important stuff out of their article, I don't think they really bypassed the Macrovision.
As has been posted before, this is a hardware, not a software issue. Having new drivers or ripping software will not help if your CD-ROM drive doesn't return ECC codes in DAE mode, and I know of none that do.
Unfortunately, cracking the copy protection is the wrong solution to this non-sense. The correct solution would be for consumers to reject the CDs like Divx.
Ah, but therein lies the problem. The record companies are not identifying the CDs that have this protection. So they don't leave open a way for consumers to reject them. Also, many CD stores don't let you return opened merchandise unless it is defective, and if it plays on a CD player, but won't rip, I doubt many such stores would consider that defective. CDs were made to be played, you see, not ripped. The fact that we can all rip CDs is really sort of an accident resulting from the fact that computers use a CD-ROM drive with the same type of physical media as audio CDs. It was never the design of record companies.
I must admit, I don't have the CD myself, but I did see a title mentioned on Slashdot. I think it was the most recent Charlie Pride CD. I don't know the actual title, but it you do a search on Charlie Pride in any music catalog, I think it is the most recent one.
The premise of this story is the Dmitri Sklyarov story has received very little attention from the press, but I don't agree.
I don't have the links handy, but there was a New York Times (print) article on the situation, also posted on the web, as well as several articles on CNN.com. Even the free Dmitry protests were covered, at least by CNN.com but elsewhere I think.
Given that this isn't exactly a murder/rape situation, I think the story has been very well covered. A lot of people read the New York Times. What kind of coverage do you want exactly?
And there could be other laws involved too, such as California's Trade Secret laws. (See the Califonia DeCSS case, for instance.)
So just because Carl isn't bound by that specific contract doesn't leave him in the free and clear. There may be other state/local or even federal laws that come into play. I'd consult with a lawyer before releasing anyone's secrets to the press.
Slashdot Mirror
Just ask anyone whose been caught with a rader detector in a state where they're illegal. BIG fines!
That's why it's important that whomever gets the monopoly to lay cables, doesn't then get a monopoly on service.
What's really broken is the fact that most broadband providers have a virtual monopoly. Back in the days of 56K modems, ISPs were a dime a dozen, and if you were dropped by one, it was no big deal to sign up with another. This situation has changed drastically now that people are dependent on broadband access. DSL is not available everywhere which means many people are dependent on cable modems for broadband, and in most cities there is only one choice of provider.
I'm not saying cable companies should be forced to allow competitors to use their lines, but we should be careful that when fiber optics are installed, that whichever company is given the government granted monopoly to dig trenches on public land to lay cables, that this company must, in return, allow other ISPs to hook up to the other end, giving consumers choice. Then if you are dropped by one, it's no big deal to sign up with another.
Well, the difference was the Canadian election wasn't nearly as close as the U.S. election. In fact, it wasn't close at all.
The problem with the U.S. election was, as John Allen Paulos pointed out, the margin of victory was smaller than the margin of error. Of course, the margin of error was larger than it needed to be because of the use of obsolete voting machines. Hence, the introduction of this computer voting system. The idea is to make the margin of error smaller, so close elections like the last are handled better.
Sure, and that's why it might have a chance of working. Security through obscurity has never worked for DRM, so an open published standard will force them to do it right. No 40 bit keys, or software based encryption running on an untrusted CPU!
On jurisdictional arguments, the federal courts have always leaned heavily in favor of state's rights, as in Calder vs. Jones for instance, the case cited in the opinion.
And furthermore, I know of no U.S. law against linking to child porn sites. Can you provide a reference?
I just have a few questions. What exactly is meant by a hack here? Are those screen shots supposed to be coming from some other Audrey that someone has hacked into? If they are taken from the console of the "hacked" system, I'm not sure what they prove. I have root access on my Dell desktop computer running Red Hat Linux 7.1, and I didn't need to do any hacking at all!
Can someone provide some links to some background material so I can understand what the Audrey is, and what this hack allows someone to do?
Well, for starters, the accused must have been aware of or instigated the plan to commit the specific crime. In other words, Sklyarov must have known that his employer planned to sell the program in the U.S. as he wrote it or afterwards, somehow participated in or assisted the sales, since the only alleged crime here is the sale of the software in the U.S.
Again, could you please explain the relevence of the fact that he holds the copyright to the code.
Why can't you eat the liver?
And what is this evidence precisely? Evidently you know something the rest of us don't.
Then idiot boy decided he was going to come to the US and shove it in their faces. That's why idiot boy is now in jail.
Odd, I thought the talk was at Def Con, not the FBI. And I thought the company he worked for stopped selling the program in the U.S. before he came over.
I just reread the DMCA and I see no mention of it being a crime to be the copyright holder of a circumvention device. Manufacture is illegal, but this was done in Russia, and traficking is illegal, but this was done by his employer. What does his ownership of the copyright have to do with anything?
Although I don't think he should be in jail, and I hope he gets bail, frankly I do think he would be a strong flight risk. Heck, if it were me, I'd be out the the country faster than you can finish reading this com
That's one of the two good reasons why Dmitry isn't a good test case. The other is that as a Russian national, he will most likely be denied bail as a flight risk. No American would be jailed over such a thing. If this were an American, he would have been bailed out the afternoon of the arrest, and if found guilty would have been given a small fine on a first offence.
Even if you think Dmitry broke the law and deserves some kind of punishment, jail time, even awaiting trial, is way out of proportion to the "offence".
Err, this sounds more like discrimination against women. With this policy, if you're a woman, it is now twice as likely as it was before that you will have to sit next to a child.
If this were an American, he would probably would have been released on bail the afternoon of his arrest. Even if you don't agree with what Sklyarov did and like the DMCA, do you really think jail time is the correct remedy?
You hit the nail right on the head there. The whole premise of the article, stated in the opening paragraph is that the Internet went bust, and is somehow dead or dying. Several dot.coms did indeed go bust as they were built on questionable business models. (Spend as much as we want, we'll recoup it all with advertising.) True many dot.coms went bust, and that resulted in a certain amount of unemployment in the IT sector, but the Internet is alive and well and growing every day.
So I must say, I disagree with the basic premise of the article. That said, however, it does make some good points about the Internet with its dumb network, smart terminal model, as perhaps not being the best mechanism for content delivery. I tend to agree. Perhaps we will see two networks in the future: the existing open Internet, and a more intelligent network for broadband digital content delivery. Then we could have the best of both worlds.
Would that work? I understood that this couldn't be done in software since CD-ROM drives don't return the ECC codes when doing digital audio extraction. If I'm wrong, that's great news, a simple patch to ripping software should fix the problem. Does anyone out there know enough about CD-ROM DAE to authoritatively answer this question?
Fair use is a defence, not an offence.
If you excerpt a copyrighted work for review or academic purposes and are charged with copyright violation, you can invoke a fair use defence. Fair use puts no burden on manufacturers or publishers to release works for which this copying is easy or even possible. Heck, I can write a novel and lock it in a safe so no one can see it. Am I violating your fair use rights?
Don't get me wrong, I oppose these copy protection schemes as much as the next guy. But Sony is not violating your fair use rights. They have no obligation to make copying easy for you.
Hmmm. I seem to remember a lot of people saying exactly the same thing about the DMCA...
They don't usually return the error correction bits so that software can analyze the sectors and fix them.
You're absolutely correct! I read the CDFreak article and I'm not convinced of anything at all! It sounds like they managed to get the audio data without the CD-ROM drive constantly complaining of errors, but they don't say anything about interpolating over the clicks, pops, and noise added by the Macrovision process. Unless they have a technique for recovering the ECC codes and syncing it with the data in their .WAV files they haven't bypassed the technique. Unless they left a lot of important stuff out of their article, I don't think they really bypassed the Macrovision.
As has been posted before, this is a hardware, not a software issue. Having new drivers or ripping software will not help if your CD-ROM drive doesn't return ECC codes in DAE mode, and I know of none that do.
Ah, but therein lies the problem. The record companies are not identifying the CDs that have this protection. So they don't leave open a way for consumers to reject them. Also, many CD stores don't let you return opened merchandise unless it is defective, and if it plays on a CD player, but won't rip, I doubt many such stores would consider that defective. CDs were made to be played, you see, not ripped. The fact that we can all rip CDs is really sort of an accident resulting from the fact that computers use a CD-ROM drive with the same type of physical media as audio CDs. It was never the design of record companies.
I don't have the links handy, but there was a New York Times (print) article on the situation, also posted on the web, as well as several articles on CNN.com. Even the free Dmitry protests were covered, at least by CNN.com but elsewhere I think.
Given that this isn't exactly a murder/rape situation, I think the story has been very well covered. A lot of people read the New York Times. What kind of coverage do you want exactly?
So just because Carl isn't bound by that specific contract doesn't leave him in the free and clear. There may be other state/local or even federal laws that come into play. I'd consult with a lawyer before releasing anyone's secrets to the press.