... there is the "capable of repitition but evading adjudication" doctrine. Strictly speaking, this doctrine states is applied in "mootness" cases where the defendant claims there is no case or controversy under Article III of the Constitution because the events that otherwise would give rise to the claim are concluded and thus the "controversy" between the parties if finally finished and there is nothing for the Court to act upon. In situations like these, the capable of repitition doctrine is invoked by federal Courts to state that they will in fact act upon the case because to hold otherwise would result in a string of like actions, short in duration, which are incapable of being addressed by the Courts.
I also have not yet read the brief, but I expect the mootness argument to be hanging in the wings given its Article III roots and the apparent desire of the RIAA to pull out every trick in the bag to stop to what appears to be the strongest (and possibly successful) attempt to invalidate the RIAA's favorite statute. Here's rooting for Prof. Felten.
Wrong, oh Anonymous Retard. The TITLE is about the state of encryption today. The DISCUSSION includes other relevant items - especially since Ashcroft's efforts are specifically mentioned in the article post.
People seem to be taking my first post (fp? -- nah...) as advocating for NO regulation. I AM NOT. I agree with you (and have said so in another post in this thread) that the focus must be on ACTIONS. That is what the entire body of criminal law does.
As for the right to be secure in your person - that means from having your person searched and seized (arrested) by the Gov't. It is not a right to be free from crime.
I cannot take the space to go into detail, but one of the central goals of criminal law is to deter - thus effectively legislating away bad acts before they are prevented. Also, it is to incapacitate - to take those people out of society who do bad acts so they can do no future harm.
As for respecting the Constitution . . . I took an oath to uphold the Constitution on several occasions, most recently as an attorney. Respect it? I fight to keep it a living document every day.
Apparently you yourself have lost one of the finer points of my post: Not that regulation is bad, but that focusing efforts on regulation of THINGS, instead of regulating people's CONDUCT (which is the entire body of criminal law) you waste resources on activities that do not have a direct effect on the source of the problems.
It is a little like taking cough syrup to clear up your cough from emphysema. The cough may go away for a little while, but it will be back - and worse.
What I am stating is this: Anything can be a weapon. Outlaw encryption, then terrorists will find another tool (assuming the law makes it so difficult to obtain encryption devices that it is impractical to do so). Outlaw that second tool, they will find a third. It will be a never-ending spiral of feel-good legislation that does NOTHING to stop the problem and has the collateral effect of hindering progress in areas that contribute to society.
By focusing on the PEOPLE USING THE TOOLS, you get to the root of the problem. Eliminate the problem at its source by bringing these people to meaningful justice, and it will not matter what their tools of choice are - you will have eliminated the problem, not the symptom.
Remember - if terrorists followed laws, we wouldn't have to worry about them.
Better examples? You have GOT to be kidding me!!!!
Airplanes, telephones and comm. equip., knives and boxcutters ALL played parts in terrorism -- or have you been blissfully unaware of events in NYC and DC these past 2.5 weeks? I don't believe the terrorists there BOUGHT the airplanes they crashed.
Dynamite - can be easily stolen from many construction sites. Plastic explosives, although more difficult to obtain, can still be gotten. As for fertilizer chemicals, I have never heard of a law restricting their sale. Remember Oklahoma City and the now-defunct Timothy McVeigh?
You have COMPLETELY missed the whole point of the post - the focus must be on the people, not on the objects. ANYTHING can be a weapon.
You show me a world where terrorists follow the "laws" you state control access to these "weapons," and I'll show you a world without terrorism.
Of course encryption is a "tool of terrorism." It falls squarely into the same category as other tools:
Airplanes;
Dynamite;
Plastic Explosives;
Fertilizer chemicals;
Telephones and other communication equipment;
Knives; and
Boxcutters.
Concentrate on the terrorists and not on their tools. Starting down the road of outlawing inanimate objects that can be used for multiple purposes is the beginning of an ultimately unfulfilling and unsatisfying journey.
I share that same reservation. I freely admit that this suggestion is merely a beginning. However, I believe it is a good one. To actually implement this, many more user requirements and specs are needed. For example, I fully expect any email from me unsigned except for my email nick (Compulawyer) to be largely ignored. However, I doubt email signed by FirstName LastName would receive the same treatment, despite the nick.
Another reservation I have is that because of the free-wheeling discussion here on Slashdot, many people have become accustomed to firing off comments that they may wish to retract later because stated in the heat of discussion. I would suggest a means to prevent that. I'm thinking along the lines of a non-Anonymous, delayed delivery mail system with a chance to retract (perhaps a message - do you REALLY want to send this? after an appropriate delay with a response required before the mail is sent).
The whole point of this is to make it easier for Slashdotters to easily be able to make their voices heard. Spam and flame mail are problems, but Congressional Reps represent flamemailers too.
I have long advocated for those in the technical community to get more involved with legislative activities. I regularly receive email from the Tech Law Journal as a way of keeping tabs on legislative developments.
Lawmakers do not understand technology - especially the social implications of technology. Correspondingly, techies often do not understand the legislative process. Good laws will only result if both groups work together -- techies must educate their Congressional Reps.
I am invoking my +1 posting privilege here for the first time ever because I believe this is IMPORTANT - Michael "Codetalker" Obersnel has a fantastic idea here and my hat is off to Cliff for posting this. I'm really excited about this idea. I hope it goes further.
As we know, there is no shortage of opinions on Slashdot. I can tell you that although sometimes very effective, Political Action Committees (PACs) have a LOT of drawbacks. First, there is the neverending myriad of laws and regulations controlling fundraising, political contributions, etc. Second is staffing. Third is financing.
My feeling is that although PACs command some attention, sincere letters from constituents weigh far more heavily.
My humble suggestion is to create a place on Slashdot where members can readily find the names/addresses/email adresses/phone numbers of the Representatives and Senators in Congreess who vote on these issues. Of course, key members on the right committees (like Technology) should be prominently displayed.
A well-categorized list of these elected officials with the ability to fire off an email while surfing (a/k/a a mailto: link) would promote discourse directly with those to whom we have given the decision-making ability.
I agree. OS X would be my first choice. However, I rant and rave about M$ trying to impose their way of computing on me, so I am not about to do the same. If someone prefers Linux with KDE or GNOME to OS X, and that's what works best for them, that's fine with me.
...with the 1.6 GHz, 64-bit G5 PowerPC processor due out in January or February, and you have a VERY formidable machine.
Remember too that SuSE and some others have PowerPC versions of Linux for these boxes as well. Imagine Linux on this? Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Interesting idea with one slight problem: it is unconstitutional.
Article I section 8 of the US Constitution gives Congress the right to grant authors exclusive rights to their works for limited durations. An infinitely renewable copyright (although probably not practically so because of the exponentially increasing costs) would be impermissible.
If you wonder why copyright durations are so long (and why the copyrights on some key Walt Disney characters didn't run out a couple of years ago as scheduled) then ask Sonny Bono (The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act). But to ask, you'll have to read the legislative history of the Act. I don't think he is still commenting.
When I saw the/. summary, I was concerned. Then I read the license. A true jurisdiction provision states that any disputes must be litigated in a specified forum (usually the home city/state of the company that wrote the license). Such provisions can be extremely burdensone, even to the pint where under the right circumstances, courts will refuse to enfore such provisions.
Thankfully, the X.Net license does not do this. What it has is a Choice of Law provision which is drastically different. It specifies that no matter where a dispute is litigated, the court must apply California state law and United States (federal) law.
I can see where this could potentially lead to problems, however -- courts generally (especially state courts)don't like to have to use another state's laws in their own courtrooms. Also, what happens if California decides to enact the UCITA?
All in all, the X.Net license is a model of simplicity and clarity.
As an Anonymous Coward, I can see that you have done NO investigation of your comments or you would have found out that I DID investigate this. You also would have found out that I share the views of many attorneys: that is is unethical to place clauses in contracts that are unenforceable or that the client has no intention of enforcing merely because the client hopes for collateral effects, i.e., the mere presence of the words in the contract implies that it is proper for those words to be there.
In addition, it is absolutely absurd for a company to sell a product and then try to control how it is used (assuming of course it is not being used in a dangerous fashion - case in point: warnings about removing safety devices from power tools, etc.). In my view as an intellectual property attorney, a software engineer, and a consumer, I think that if a company wants to avoid criticism about its products, then it should make good products. It is irrelevant that those products happen to be intangible and protected by IP rights.
You should hope you never get into an IP battle - people who steal IP are thieves, plain and simple. Same as a pursesnatcher, just with a bigger purse.
As an intellectual property attorney, I can only say that this is the most disgusting and repugnant use of intellectual property rights I have ever seen.
It seems to me that on top of wasting bandwidth and other resources, this technique would serve as an immediate spur to write more sophisticated worms. For example, the term "timeout function" immediately springs to mind....
IMHO, this war will be fought in the streets worldwide. The CIA, FBI, DOJ, and even the local cops on YOUR streets are going to be integral parts. My only hope is that it does not change the American way of life. Civil liberties are basic freedoms that those before us fought and died to protect. To throw them away in the face of a short term threat would be a grave injustice to not only American Ideals, but also a slap in the face to those who fought to protect those ideals.
Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson:
A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.
The term "submarine patent" applies to a patent whose application was filed and then allowed to lie dormant in processing at the PTO for an extended period of time (many years) and then is reactivated by the inventor and finally issues from the PTO. This is a problem because other inventors later come up with the same concept and may even file patent applications themselves. When the submarine patent finally issues, there are infringers already up and running with products in the marketplace. Due to changes in the Patent laws, these types of patents are no longer possible. (Do a search for Jerome Lemelson - the King of the Submarine Patent if you want to know more - his is a facinating story).
What is being alleged here is a type of fraud/unfair competition. The crux of the claim is that it is unfair for a company to propose its technology be adopted as an industry standard without discloising that it has patents or patent applications on file. If adopted as the standard, the others in the industry will automatically infringe. Options at that point: concede the market to the patent holder, redesign the product so it deviates from the standard set by the industry, or pay a royalty to the patent holder.
To the extent that patents have already issued they are public record, as noted in another post. But currently the law is in flux. The general rule is that until a patent issues, the application and all materials submitted to the PTO is confidential. (The confidentiality allows companies who cannot get patents to still protect the way they do business under trade secret law.) There is a group of applications that fall into this category. However, since the passage of the AIPA (American Inventors Protection Act) and some other tweaks to the law, there is now a publication requirement - applications are published 18 months after filing.
So - in my humble legal opinion, it is unfair for a company participating in standards-setting not to disclose that it has patent applications pending, but as for issued patents, companies should be aware of what their competitors are doing. Especially if it is a public record.
Shake your head - I want to make sure nothing is in there. This is the most twisted and convoluted reading of a piece of text I have ever seen.
Despite your comments, Article V is the HEART of the NATO treaty - it is the mutual aid and cooperation agreement of the member countries. The details are spelled out in other documents.
The second paragraph is not the "real" meaning - it is merely the mechanics of informing our allies of an attack and starting the mutual assistance procedures.
Don't forget -- this treaty was created in 1949 -- in the days before 24 hour instantaneous information access.
North Atlantic Treaty
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I believe the full text of the treaty (including Article 5) is here
Or copy and paste: http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm
Although the site says the liability concerns are with the "warranty" exemptions and the GPL, I suspect that these proffered reasons, although valid in and of themselves, are not the primary reasons for this move.
Generally, the warranty provisions with which a software maker must be concerned are these three:
Express Warranties - any factual statement the manufacturer makes about the quality/features of the product;
Implied Warranty of Merchantability - implied by law warranty that the software is of "fair average quality"; and
Implied Warranty of Fitness for a Particular Purpose -- implied by law when a manufacturer supplies software that it represents is adequate or designed for a particular use or need.
Generally, the 2 implied warranties can be disclaimed by reciting the magic disclaimer words. (NOTE: I AM a lawyer and this is NOT legal advice to ANYONE - thus I am not reprinting the magic words here so no one can rely on any supposed "advice" they may claim I am giving.)
What I suspect is happening here (and this is close to pure conjecture) is that the company is spooked by recent lawsuits (i.e. - Napster, DeCSS, Felton, et al.) and decided that it would take the safe route rather than be accused of providing a tool to infringe copyrights in authored works.
Of course this is my opinion alone and is based on current events in the legal world combined with the statements on the Broadcast 2000 website. I may be completely wrong about this. Only the people at Broadcast 2000 can say for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
I also have not yet read the brief, but I expect the mootness argument to be hanging in the wings given its Article III roots and the apparent desire of the RIAA to pull out every trick in the bag to stop to what appears to be the strongest (and possibly successful) attempt to invalidate the RIAA's favorite statute. Here's rooting for Prof. Felten.
Wrong, oh Anonymous Retard. The TITLE is about the state of encryption today. The DISCUSSION includes other relevant items - especially since Ashcroft's efforts are specifically mentioned in the article post.
As for the right to be secure in your person - that means from having your person searched and seized (arrested) by the Gov't. It is not a right to be free from crime.
I cannot take the space to go into detail, but one of the central goals of criminal law is to deter - thus effectively legislating away bad acts before they are prevented. Also, it is to incapacitate - to take those people out of society who do bad acts so they can do no future harm.
As for respecting the Constitution . . . I took an oath to uphold the Constitution on several occasions, most recently as an attorney. Respect it? I fight to keep it a living document every day.
It is a little like taking cough syrup to clear up your cough from emphysema. The cough may go away for a little while, but it will be back - and worse.
By focusing on the PEOPLE USING THE TOOLS, you get to the root of the problem. Eliminate the problem at its source by bringing these people to meaningful justice, and it will not matter what their tools of choice are - you will have eliminated the problem, not the symptom.
Remember - if terrorists followed laws, we wouldn't have to worry about them.
Airplanes, telephones and comm. equip., knives and boxcutters ALL played parts in terrorism -- or have you been blissfully unaware of events in NYC and DC these past 2.5 weeks? I don't believe the terrorists there BOUGHT the airplanes they crashed.
Dynamite - can be easily stolen from many construction sites. Plastic explosives, although more difficult to obtain, can still be gotten. As for fertilizer chemicals, I have never heard of a law restricting their sale. Remember Oklahoma City and the now-defunct Timothy McVeigh?
You have COMPLETELY missed the whole point of the post - the focus must be on the people, not on the objects. ANYTHING can be a weapon.
You show me a world where terrorists follow the "laws" you state control access to these "weapons," and I'll show you a world without terrorism.
Of course encryption is a "tool of terrorism." It falls squarely into the same category as other tools:
Concentrate on the terrorists and not on their tools. Starting down the road of outlawing inanimate objects that can be used for multiple purposes is the beginning of an ultimately unfulfilling and unsatisfying journey.
Ok - I'll be big enough to say it first -- I screwed up with the +1 and accidentally ended up modding myself down in the previous post. Duh. Sorry.
Another reservation I have is that because of the free-wheeling discussion here on Slashdot, many people have become accustomed to firing off comments that they may wish to retract later because stated in the heat of discussion. I would suggest a means to prevent that. I'm thinking along the lines of a non-Anonymous, delayed delivery mail system with a chance to retract (perhaps a message - do you REALLY want to send this? after an appropriate delay with a response required before the mail is sent).
The whole point of this is to make it easier for Slashdotters to easily be able to make their voices heard. Spam and flame mail are problems, but Congressional Reps represent flamemailers too.
I have long advocated for those in the technical community to get more involved with legislative activities. I regularly receive email from the Tech Law Journal as a way of keeping tabs on legislative developments.
Lawmakers do not understand technology - especially the social implications of technology. Correspondingly, techies often do not understand the legislative process. Good laws will only result if both groups work together -- techies must educate their Congressional Reps.
I am invoking my +1 posting privilege here for the first time ever because I believe this is IMPORTANT - Michael "Codetalker" Obersnel has a fantastic idea here and my hat is off to Cliff for posting this. I'm really excited about this idea. I hope it goes further.
My feeling is that although PACs command some attention, sincere letters from constituents weigh far more heavily.
My humble suggestion is to create a place on Slashdot where members can readily find the names/addresses/email adresses/phone numbers of the Representatives and Senators in Congreess who vote on these issues. Of course, key members on the right committees (like Technology) should be prominently displayed.
A well-categorized list of these elected officials with the ability to fire off an email while surfing (a/k/a a mailto: link) would promote discourse directly with those to whom we have given the decision-making ability.
I agree. OS X would be my first choice. However, I rant and rave about M$ trying to impose their way of computing on me, so I am not about to do the same. If someone prefers Linux with KDE or GNOME to OS X, and that's what works best for them, that's fine with me.
Well, the source code is available for PPC Linux, so I would think in the worst case scenario, you could compile your own.
Remember too that SuSE and some others have PowerPC versions of Linux for these boxes as well. Imagine Linux on this? Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
This is now my favorite clip on the Internet. All I want to know is when the entire movie is going to be released in Lego-vision.
Article I section 8 of the US Constitution gives Congress the right to grant authors exclusive rights to their works for limited durations. An infinitely renewable copyright (although probably not practically so because of the exponentially increasing costs) would be impermissible.
If you wonder why copyright durations are so long (and why the copyrights on some key Walt Disney characters didn't run out a couple of years ago as scheduled) then ask Sonny Bono (The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act). But to ask, you'll have to read the legislative history of the Act. I don't think he is still commenting.
Thankfully, the X.Net license does not do this. What it has is a Choice of Law provision which is drastically different. It specifies that no matter where a dispute is litigated, the court must apply California state law and United States (federal) law.
I can see where this could potentially lead to problems, however -- courts generally (especially state courts)don't like to have to use another state's laws in their own courtrooms. Also, what happens if California decides to enact the UCITA?
All in all, the X.Net license is a model of simplicity and clarity.
In addition, it is absolutely absurd for a company to sell a product and then try to control how it is used (assuming of course it is not being used in a dangerous fashion - case in point: warnings about removing safety devices from power tools, etc.). In my view as an intellectual property attorney, a software engineer, and a consumer, I think that if a company wants to avoid criticism about its products, then it should make good products. It is irrelevant that those products happen to be intangible and protected by IP rights.
You should hope you never get into an IP battle - people who steal IP are thieves, plain and simple. Same as a pursesnatcher, just with a bigger purse.
As an intellectual property attorney, I can only say that this is the most disgusting and repugnant use of intellectual property rights I have ever seen.
It seems to me that on top of wasting bandwidth and other resources, this technique would serve as an immediate spur to write more sophisticated worms. For example, the term "timeout function" immediately springs to mind....
Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson:
A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.
Giving credit where due - I rediscovered this quote at Freedom & Liberty Quotes.
What is being alleged here is a type of fraud/unfair competition. The crux of the claim is that it is unfair for a company to propose its technology be adopted as an industry standard without discloising that it has patents or patent applications on file. If adopted as the standard, the others in the industry will automatically infringe. Options at that point: concede the market to the patent holder, redesign the product so it deviates from the standard set by the industry, or pay a royalty to the patent holder.
To the extent that patents have already issued they are public record, as noted in another post. But currently the law is in flux. The general rule is that until a patent issues, the application and all materials submitted to the PTO is confidential. (The confidentiality allows companies who cannot get patents to still protect the way they do business under trade secret law.) There is a group of applications that fall into this category. However, since the passage of the AIPA (American Inventors Protection Act) and some other tweaks to the law, there is now a publication requirement - applications are published 18 months after filing.
So - in my humble legal opinion, it is unfair for a company participating in standards-setting not to disclose that it has patent applications pending, but as for issued patents, companies should be aware of what their competitors are doing. Especially if it is a public record.
Despite your comments, Article V is the HEART of the NATO treaty - it is the mutual aid and cooperation agreement of the member countries. The details are spelled out in other documents.
The second paragraph is not the "real" meaning - it is merely the mechanics of informing our allies of an attack and starting the mutual assistance procedures.
Don't forget -- this treaty was created in 1949 -- in the days before 24 hour instantaneous information access.
Or copy and paste: http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm
Generally, the warranty provisions with which a software maker must be concerned are these three:
Generally, the 2 implied warranties can be disclaimed by reciting the magic disclaimer words. (NOTE: I AM a lawyer and this is NOT legal advice to ANYONE - thus I am not reprinting the magic words here so no one can rely on any supposed "advice" they may claim I am giving.)
What I suspect is happening here (and this is close to pure conjecture) is that the company is spooked by recent lawsuits (i.e. - Napster, DeCSS, Felton, et al.) and decided that it would take the safe route rather than be accused of providing a tool to infringe copyrights in authored works.
Of course this is my opinion alone and is based on current events in the legal world combined with the statements on the Broadcast 2000 website. I may be completely wrong about this. Only the people at Broadcast 2000 can say for sure.
I couldn't agree more that HTML has become the presentation layer - see my other post. Data formatting is for XML.