That's the million dollar question. Wars are like herpes. There is no cure, and when they break out the first priority is to beat them into remission. No one "wins."
The outcome of a war is always bad. We need to work on prevention and control.
I will predict the winner of the World Series, for any year up through 2006. Looks like the White Sox had a 96% chance of winning in 2005. I'm not gaming the numbers, I swear. I've got a perfect system for retroactive "prediction."
I think the key word in that statute is "intercept." Intercept, as I read it, means you are not the intended party or able to hear it otherwise. It means you are spying on a private conversation.
Basically, the officers were claiming that the person holding the camera was "intercepting" a conversation narrowly defined, by them, as intended only for the driver of the car, and not intended for the passenger who was sitting right next to him.
Which is ludicrous, because even hearing it would be an "interception" under that specious reasoning. This isn't an anti-eavesdropping statute, it's an anti-spying law. Beyond that, it is impossible for them to prove that the driver didn't request that his friend tape the incident before the officers approached the car.
So they were just looking for an excuse to drag this guy in, because they didn't like it and he was being sneaky about it. He was probably charged at the station after a quick panicked realization that they had no grounds for arrest. I hope they get a censure for their misconduct. The Pennsylvania code is normal, the cops are, if the report is accurate, guilty of malfeasance.
In any event, it's time to update the Carlisle training manual.
Either that, or next time I go to a convenience store or "big-box" retailer I'm going to demand that they turn off their cameras because they don't have my permission.
As far as I understand, the law says you have to be notified of recording. Otherwise, if it's your life, and it's happening to you, you can tape it.
You can't publish it without consent, but you (or your approved surrogate) sure as heck can record it. These cops were out of line.
Selling counterfeit goods in a mass market is a real felony violation called infringement for personal gain. It carried a jail sentence decades before the DMCA ruined copyright law. This is exactly the kind of crime that needs to be busted up by the cops, and I don't care that the RIAA was the one who tipped them off.
Way to go RIAA. Keep doing your job to protect your members' interests.
The rent-a-cop raids are atrocious, but they have nothing to do with a sensible raid seizing "50,000 items worth about $758,000." That kind of infringement is wrong. I hope the people who ran the market enjoy their cell.
A tip-off on fake CDs is that they will have 20 to 24 tracks each Interesting. That description fits many of the classical music CD's I own. I had no idea Sony and EMI were piracy groups.
When will it end? Hopefully, sometime shortly after the sun goes nova. Of course, federal law will require that all company communications be stored in "nova proof" boxes, for the children, before we all burn.
Cool. You were just being colorful. I had hoped so.
I think you're right. They're drowning in their own sense of privilege. I honestly think we're at the point where we can no longer even guarantee the incentives that copyright (and other IP law) provide, and are going to tighten down ("police state") until society can no longer stand it, and then comes your "revolution."
The revolution is alternatives and new business models. New incentives and the death of those who cling to the old, hopefully without violence. I hope a 12-year-old getting sued is the worst that comes of it.
Steve Jobs, for his own reasons, has fired the shot heard round the world in his deal with EMI. Other's are doing so with Creative Commons and copyleft. Hopefully, the purge and rebirth in the mold of these trends will be bearable.
It's like the whole of intellectual creation is saying: "Pardon us for the inconvenience." Like end product of the Enlightenment is on pause, waiting for its next careful step into a bold unknown.
Look, that was a very interesting reply, but you didn't really read mine if you must ask this:
In the great Slashdot spirit of car analogies, I'll also ask you to imagine road without legislation.
Bzzt! Why? Here's what I said before:
More legislation is absolutely going to be necessary (emph. added)
I can't be any clearer.
But for crying out loud, your hyperbole (and apparent fear) seems to have taken this discussion off the deep end. I'll just pray that you are joking when you suggest that the only way to implement law and regulation is in a...
3. Police State phase
Holy crap.
"Wild West" seemed specious, but "Police state" is a very dangerous way to describe simple "law and order."
Couldn't we have a "guilds, taxes, and licensure" phase instead?
I am fine with law. What I am against is hysteria. The Internet is not a safe and happy place because the world is not a safe and happy place, and you'd better get used to that.
Beyond that, even with laws, we still have to put locks on our houses, and the computer equivalent is what will stop most of the fears that you presented. Laws cannot allay fear. Laws do not prevent crime. Basic security measures do.
Do you think laws stop crime? I think they allow us to punish people who commit crimes. Which means that the real deterrent to crime is the enforcement agencies, not the legislation itself. You have to catch people and you have to try them and punish them. That's how it works. We're going to have to hire a lot of very technically savvy people to enforce such laws, we're a long way off from training them, and the tools such agents would employ are inchoate at best.
Simply putting a lot of law on the books will not help that. We'd have to mobilize thousands of new enforcement agents, we'd have to train lawyers to deal with computer crime, and, the most daunting of all, we'd have to find at least one judge who understands technology issues. That's what your deterrent plan would entail.
Antivirus programs, etc., for the near and foreseeable future, make a lot more sense.
There is such a vast and coherent spectrum of legislative powers that can be brought to bear without a "Police State" being implemented. We don't need that. We don't have to have the whole of society RFID implanted to keep them from doing antisocial things, and we don't need to take similar measures with computer systems.
Besides, safety is never worth a police state, and police states are proven to never be safeor stable. The trains did not run on time in Mussolini's Italy. You may as well call it the "abuse of power and terror phase."
If you are not joking about this, then you have accepted, and argued, that we need a "police state" in your previous post, because you are uncomfortable with the Internet. That's just crazy. If that is the case, you should just unplug your computer and go do something else. Your life will be better without it if you are that terrified.
Seems 100% accurate to me, just a little short on the details and context. Plenty of folks know some juicy tales of paper tape and Aiken labs.
But what can you do? He was dead on right about the future of the home computer, and he made that future, or broke it, depending on who you ask. He is a brilliant businessman.
I'm sorry. I've got a few people confused here by not using proper terminology.
I used the term "ROOT" because I didn't want to specifically mention Microsoft (MS). The machines that default to the user running at ROOT privileges by default are *all* Windows machines, and the proper term is, of course, "Administrator privileges."
To me, it's just running as ROOT. Sorry to cause confusion. I thought I had thoroughly insinuated I was talking about MS.
It's not a EULA. There is no licensure. There isn't anything to agree to, either, other than copyright law in general or their TOS/AUP if you're a subscriber. No license. No agreement.
It's simply a 189-word boilerplate statement about their commitment to copyright, and a statement of policy.
In the first paragraph, however, is the stand-out offer:
We therefore allow you to excerpt up to 500 words of an article for your personal use. This excerpt may be posted in your or another's blog or site, provided that it is accompanied by a link to the page on which the original article appears.
The way I read that is that HBR Online grants anyone who clicks "I accept" up to 500 words of limited personal republication rights, which is rights to exactly 500 more words than any other copyrighted publication. They simply ask that you link the full article in return.
Or you could accept no republication rights at all. Your choice.
So far from being a EULA, it's a concession. HBR Online is going to accept that small bloggers can't really use a "fair use" defense and is going to give them, beyond "fair use" coverage, limited rights in return for a link back. That is a good deal at a good price.
All I can say to HBR is, "Thank you." After a brief bit of reading I happily clicked "I accept."
Legislation isn't out of the question, it just has to be applied with discipline. The internet is in its "wild west" phase right now, but as can be seen in USA itself, this is not a phase that lasts forever.
I understand your analogy, but isn't it a bit specious? Did you ever fear being gunned down like a dog while running your shell account?;^)
I think we all need to tone down the hyperbole. It's the only way we're going to be able to come up with measured solutions. More legislation is absolutely going to be necessary, but it needs to be carefully considered, not applied in fear and haste like the self-appointed judge/jury/executioners of the "Wild West."
That disciplined application of law you want isn't going to happen while we discuss the issues in these terms.
No one nor any process needs to be "eradicated." "Amended," that's a good word.
--
Toro
Crisis? What crisis? I stopped at page one.
on
How to Save the Internet
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The only crisis I see regarding the Internet is that a large percentage of its users and networks implement a fundamentally insecure operating system, and the overwhelming majority of the client side users that run that operating system do so as ROOT, because that was the default install.
That's a garbage in/garbage out (GIGO) proposal for the Internet.
Otherwise, I think the Internet can handle it. It is carefully maintained and I think we'll even solve the looming address space problem. It doesn't need "saving" from anything but predatory last mile carrier profiteer rail barons who want to choke it off at the access points for profit.
So, Mr. Zittrain, your basic premise is flawed.
Here's a brief for a future article: The crisis is not with the *Inter*net, it is with the networks themselves that are internetworked. They're not secure. That's a local crisis, on a user by user and network by network basis. No change to the Internet or its protocols can fix it. GIGO.
Discuss.
If that was what your article eventually discussed, I apologize for my prejudice, but I couldn't get past your "Chicken Little" premises and foregone conclusion that "the Internet" is somehow in the crisis you described.
If you want to look for possible legal issues, they would be set forth in whatever license accompanies the iTunes program or the DRM itself.
When you purchase anything with DRM encumbrance, you are not just buying a copy of content, you are also agreeing to whatever software license comes with the software that allows you to access that content, and sometimes to a license activated by the DRM itself, as to which access programs (and uses therein) are "authorized."
So if your playback/burning program and/or the DRM itself comes with an agreement with a clause that, for instance, says you can transfer to the CD for "playback purposes only," step 3 becomes illegal. Once DRM is involved, you only have the rights that have been granted to you by your software agreement with iTunes.
As far as DMCA goes, however, that doesn't sound like infringing circumvention to me, if that's what you mean. It's simply that if you accept DRM encumbered products, you are voluntarily agreeing to a license, and that license is almost always a good deal stricter than copyright law. I am therefore less enthusiastic about iTunes.
IANAL
-- Toro "You may be involved in a Faustian contract if..."
Besides, when I claimed "they didn't put that kind of effort into the main story line," I meant MAIN STORY LINE. Not backstory to the main story. I felt the detail of the backstory for the "necrophilia" comment that you just related was NOT present in the actual primary campaign.
Outside of the books, in dialogue and in deeds. You know, the ACTUAL story. The game.;^)
(To be fair, it's really a very *tiny* part of an otherwise pretty good game)
Oh, I see. Bethesda wrote an enormous backstory about an ancillary character in order to explain her sudden interest in discussing necrophilia with a complete stranger.
Too bad they didn't put that kind of effort into the main story line.;^)
Slashdot Mirror
Finding out that not all viruses cause "sickness," and that the RNA injection of "friendly" viruses is a source of evolutionary change.
I'm guessing a lot of the "human genome" is *airborne*.
--
Toro
Can statistics predict what will cause a war?
That's the million dollar question. Wars are like herpes. There is no cure, and when they break out the first priority is to beat them into remission. No one "wins."
The outcome of a war is always bad. We need to work on prevention and control.
--
Toro
From the wiki article on "sungazing":
[Khwaja Shamsuddin Azeemi] cautions against doing sungazing for prolonged periods as this could lead to mental health problems.Alternatively, the mental health problems could be causing sungazing for prolonged periods of time.
We're not sure which.
-- ToroI will predict the winner of the World Series, for any year up through 2006. Looks like the White Sox had a 96% chance of winning in 2005. I'm not gaming the numbers, I swear. I've got a perfect system for retroactive "prediction."
John Edward has a better act, Ms. Sullivan.
--
Toro
I think the key word in that statute is "intercept." Intercept, as I read it, means you are not the intended party or able to hear it otherwise. It means you are spying on a private conversation.
Basically, the officers were claiming that the person holding the camera was "intercepting" a conversation narrowly defined, by them, as intended only for the driver of the car, and not intended for the passenger who was sitting right next to him.
Which is ludicrous, because even hearing it would be an "interception" under that specious reasoning. This isn't an anti-eavesdropping statute, it's an anti-spying law. Beyond that, it is impossible for them to prove that the driver didn't request that his friend tape the incident before the officers approached the car.
So they were just looking for an excuse to drag this guy in, because they didn't like it and he was being sneaky about it. He was probably charged at the station after a quick panicked realization that they had no grounds for arrest. I hope they get a censure for their misconduct. The Pennsylvania code is normal, the cops are, if the report is accurate, guilty of malfeasance.
In any event, it's time to update the Carlisle training manual.
--
Toro
Either that, or next time I go to a convenience store or "big-box" retailer I'm going to demand that they turn off their cameras because they don't have my permission.
As far as I understand, the law says you have to be notified of recording. Otherwise, if it's your life, and it's happening to you, you can tape it.
You can't publish it without consent, but you (or your approved surrogate) sure as heck can record it. These cops were out of line.
IANAL.
--
Toro
I'm just going to add to the chorus here:
Selling counterfeit goods in a mass market is a real felony violation called infringement for personal gain. It carried a jail sentence decades before the DMCA ruined copyright law. This is exactly the kind of crime that needs to be busted up by the cops, and I don't care that the RIAA was the one who tipped them off.
Way to go RIAA. Keep doing your job to protect your members' interests.
The rent-a-cop raids are atrocious, but they have nothing to do with a sensible raid seizing "50,000 items worth about $758,000." That kind of infringement is wrong. I hope the people who ran the market enjoy their cell.
--
Toro
--
Toro
Death and taxes, meet your new friend: paperwork.
--
Toro
Cool. You were just being colorful. I had hoped so.
I think you're right. They're drowning in their own sense of privilege. I honestly think we're at the point where we can no longer even guarantee the incentives that copyright (and other IP law) provide, and are going to tighten down ("police state") until society can no longer stand it, and then comes your "revolution."
The revolution is alternatives and new business models. New incentives and the death of those who cling to the old, hopefully without violence. I hope a 12-year-old getting sued is the worst that comes of it.
Steve Jobs, for his own reasons, has fired the shot heard round the world in his deal with EMI. Other's are doing so with Creative Commons and copyleft. Hopefully, the purge and rebirth in the mold of these trends will be bearable.
It's like the whole of intellectual creation is saying: "Pardon us for the inconvenience." Like end product of the Enlightenment is on pause, waiting for its next careful step into a bold unknown.
--
Toro
LOL. I mean that.
;^)
And a wonderfully appropriate signature you have.
--
Toro
Look, that was a very interesting reply, but you didn't really read mine if you must ask this:
In the great Slashdot spirit of car analogies, I'll also ask you to imagine road without legislation.Bzzt! Why? Here's what I said before:
More legislation is absolutely going to be necessary (emph. added)I can't be any clearer.
But for crying out loud, your hyperbole (and apparent fear) seems to have taken this discussion off the deep end. I'll just pray that you are joking when you suggest that the only way to implement law and regulation is in a...
3. Police State phaseHoly crap.
"Wild West" seemed specious, but "Police state" is a very dangerous way to describe simple "law and order."
Couldn't we have a "guilds, taxes, and licensure" phase instead?
I am fine with law. What I am against is hysteria. The Internet is not a safe and happy place because the world is not a safe and happy place, and you'd better get used to that.
Beyond that, even with laws, we still have to put locks on our houses, and the computer equivalent is what will stop most of the fears that you presented. Laws cannot allay fear. Laws do not prevent crime. Basic security measures do.
Do you think laws stop crime? I think they allow us to punish people who commit crimes. Which means that the real deterrent to crime is the enforcement agencies, not the legislation itself. You have to catch people and you have to try them and punish them. That's how it works. We're going to have to hire a lot of very technically savvy people to enforce such laws, we're a long way off from training them, and the tools such agents would employ are inchoate at best.
Simply putting a lot of law on the books will not help that. We'd have to mobilize thousands of new enforcement agents, we'd have to train lawyers to deal with computer crime, and, the most daunting of all, we'd have to find at least one judge who understands technology issues. That's what your deterrent plan would entail.
Antivirus programs, etc., for the near and foreseeable future, make a lot more sense.
There is such a vast and coherent spectrum of legislative powers that can be brought to bear without a "Police State" being implemented. We don't need that. We don't have to have the whole of society RFID implanted to keep them from doing antisocial things, and we don't need to take similar measures with computer systems.
Besides, safety is never worth a police state, and police states are proven to never be safe or stable. The trains did not run on time in Mussolini's Italy. You may as well call it the "abuse of power and terror phase."
If you are not joking about this, then you have accepted, and argued, that we need a "police state" in your previous post, because you are uncomfortable with the Internet. That's just crazy. If that is the case, you should just unplug your computer and go do something else. Your life will be better without it if you are that terrified.
-- ToroI have but one thing to say to you, sir:
Romani ite domum!
-- ToroSeems 100% accurate to me, just a little short on the details and context. Plenty of folks know some juicy tales of paper tape and Aiken labs.
But what can you do? He was dead on right about the future of the home computer, and he made that future, or broke it, depending on who you ask. He is a brilliant businessman.
--
Toro
I'm sorry. I've got a few people confused here by not using proper terminology.
I used the term "ROOT" because I didn't want to specifically mention Microsoft (MS). The machines that default to the user running at ROOT privileges by default are *all* Windows machines, and the proper term is, of course, "Administrator privileges."
To me, it's just running as ROOT. Sorry to cause confusion. I thought I had thoroughly insinuated I was talking about MS.
--
Toro
It's not a EULA. There is no licensure. There isn't anything to agree to, either, other than copyright law in general or their TOS/AUP if you're a subscriber. No license. No agreement.
It's simply a 189-word boilerplate statement about their commitment to copyright, and a statement of policy.
In the first paragraph, however, is the stand-out offer:
We therefore allow you to excerpt up to 500 words of an article for your personal use. This excerpt may be posted in your or another's blog or site, provided that it is accompanied by a link to the page on which the original article appears.The way I read that is that HBR Online grants anyone who clicks "I accept" up to 500 words of limited personal republication rights, which is rights to exactly 500 more words than any other copyrighted publication. They simply ask that you link the full article in return.
Or you could accept no republication rights at all. Your choice.
So far from being a EULA, it's a concession. HBR Online is going to accept that small bloggers can't really use a "fair use" defense and is going to give them, beyond "fair use" coverage, limited rights in return for a link back. That is a good deal at a good price.
All I can say to HBR is, "Thank you." After a brief bit of reading I happily clicked "I accept."
Or as you said: "Openness. Right."
-- ToroSince "fuck you" is an idiomatic expletive that cannot be translated, I'm pretty sure they'd just say "Fuck you, Bill."
But the best way to say it is Apache ;^)
--
ToroI understand your analogy, but isn't it a bit specious? Did you ever fear being gunned down like a dog while running your shell account? ;^)
I think we all need to tone down the hyperbole. It's the only way we're going to be able to come up with measured solutions. More legislation is absolutely going to be necessary, but it needs to be carefully considered, not applied in fear and haste like the self-appointed judge/jury/executioners of the "Wild West."
That disciplined application of law you want isn't going to happen while we discuss the issues in these terms.
No one nor any process needs to be "eradicated." "Amended," that's a good word.
-- ToroThe only crisis I see regarding the Internet is that a large percentage of its users and networks implement a fundamentally insecure operating system, and the overwhelming majority of the client side users that run that operating system do so as ROOT, because that was the default install.
That's a garbage in/garbage out (GIGO) proposal for the Internet.
Otherwise, I think the Internet can handle it. It is carefully maintained and I think we'll even solve the looming address space problem. It doesn't need "saving" from anything but predatory last mile carrier profiteer rail barons who want to choke it off at the access points for profit.
So, Mr. Zittrain, your basic premise is flawed.
Here's a brief for a future article: The crisis is not with the *Inter*net, it is with the networks themselves that are internetworked. They're not secure. That's a local crisis, on a user by user and network by network basis. No change to the Internet or its protocols can fix it. GIGO.
Discuss.
If that was what your article eventually discussed, I apologize for my prejudice, but I couldn't get past your "Chicken Little" premises and foregone conclusion that "the Internet" is somehow in the crisis you described.
--
Toro
If you want to look for possible legal issues, they would be set forth in whatever license accompanies the iTunes program or the DRM itself.
When you purchase anything with DRM encumbrance, you are not just buying a copy of content, you are also agreeing to whatever software license comes with the software that allows you to access that content, and sometimes to a license activated by the DRM itself, as to which access programs (and uses therein) are "authorized."
So if your playback/burning program and/or the DRM itself comes with an agreement with a clause that, for instance, says you can transfer to the CD for "playback purposes only," step 3 becomes illegal. Once DRM is involved, you only have the rights that have been granted to you by your software agreement with iTunes.
As far as DMCA goes, however, that doesn't sound like infringing circumvention to me, if that's what you mean. It's simply that if you accept DRM encumbered products, you are voluntarily agreeing to a license, and that license is almost always a good deal stricter than copyright law. I am therefore less enthusiastic about iTunes.
IANAL
--
Toro
"You may be involved in a Faustian contract if..."
Read the in-game books? In that font?! ;^)
;^)
Besides, when I claimed "they didn't put that kind of effort into the main story line," I meant MAIN STORY LINE. Not backstory to the main story. I felt the detail of the backstory for the "necrophilia" comment that you just related was NOT present in the actual primary campaign.
Outside of the books, in dialogue and in deeds. You know, the ACTUAL story. The game.
(To be fair, it's really a very *tiny* part of an otherwise pretty good game)
--
Toro
c:/windows/ehome/ehribjob.exe \OCURNregister
When I first read this, I thought someone was making a joke.
What does that stand for? "E-Home Return on Investment 'bjob?'"
Is corporate fellatio now a command line process?
--
Toro
Oh, I see. Bethesda wrote an enormous backstory about an ancillary character in order to explain her sudden interest in discussing necrophilia with a complete stranger.
;^)
Too bad they didn't put that kind of effort into the main story line.
--
Toro
The Skingrad potions master starts asking weird questions about necrophilia for no apparent reason. Boy is that ever creepy.
--
Toro
Man sues (company) because he can't understand the EULA!
They could use this case as precedent!
-- Toro