Spammers have taken people to court for blacklisting and won. Unfortunately. With the funds and the firms the RIAA has at its disposal, they might just be able to win such a case.
Worse, the RIAA can win the publicity war faster than the legal one. They could begin by telling the ISP's users that they will be prohibited from accessing any legal music so long as they stay with their ISP. And that's just where the FUD starts.
yoda on licenses
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Take license to send email to people I know? Now, matters are worse.
The most amazing math revelation I ever had was how math was invented to describe and talk about phenomena that we had no way to discuss before. I didn't get that until I studied the invention of what we now call "Calculus" by Newton and Leibniz.
Our math, the math we know, isn't fundamental. The logical concepts and universal laws it attempts to describe are fundamental. It is quite possible to describe the same phenomenon with two different maths.
I feel sorry for those who will never get enough math to see that. But then again, there are plenty of truths _I_ will never see.:(
The technology [now mandated by the FCC] would identify programs that broadcasters do not want consumers to copy without first paying a fee.
What programming do you suppose broadcasters will not want us to pay a fee for? Surely, all movies and first-run TV dramas and sitcoms will be fee-added. (Otherwise, you might skip the ads or archive.)
Music videos? Same story as movies.
Game shows? Same story as first-run TV. They live by their ads.
Re-runs? Probably fee-added. (Otherwise, you might skip the movies and first run shows in favor of re-runs.)
So what's left? The news and the shopping networks. Maybe talk shows. Basically, just the stuff that no one records now anyway. So much for the notion that only "select shows" will be restricted.
The technology [now mandated by the FCC] would identify programs that broadcasters do not want consumers to copy without first paying a fee.
Of course they want us to pay a fee. And we don't want to pay it.
However, they have no right to force us to accept their mechanism for payment. They can only sell their programming on the terms we agree to pay. In fact, since we (theoretically) control the government, we actually have the right to tell them they can't force us to accept their mechanism for payment.
"It is not legal to make a copy of a DVD now. Everything people are doing legally today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow," says Valenti.
Taken without context, Valenti's statement is just plain wrong. Let's go through it one more time, for all the recording execs who are just joining the class.
Copying a DVD can be legal (as far as copyright law is concerned) depending on how you use it. We call it "fair use." Technologically prohibiting all copying, therefore, prevents DVD owners from exercising some of their legal rights.
Perhaps Valenti's quote has been taken out of context (he appears to have been talking about making and distributing multiple copies). But, he may also have been revealing a vision of the future. "Everything people are doing [that recording companies approve of] today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow [and nothing else]."
If there is no long-term contract requiring New Orleans to buy Microsoft for more than the next 10 years or so, seems OK to me given New Orleans' present predicament. (Why 10 years? Because nothing as big as New Orleans can afford to change information infrastructures any faster than that anyway.)
Homeland, Motherland, Fatherland. I, too, have been disturbed by this phrase entering the American lexicon.
One should be careful about taking action to protect a land. Better that you should take action to protect your neighbors. At least then you know who you're fighting for.
Jondar wrote: What I would like the goverments to do is to define open fileformats/protocols and only accept/buy software which supports these formats 100%.
robinjo wrote: Problem is that the government doesn't always have the expertise to build those fileformats and protocols.
We have to keep government's role down to government's competence level. File formats are better decided by standards bodies.
Government needs to stick to requirements. Even those are dangerous enough. It's very easy to write requirements that narrow the government's choices to one vendor. And the vendors encourage this. Go figure.
The reason they dont cost less is you are STILL PAYING for windows - and Dell still pays microsoft for that computer! I kid you not!
Could we have some proof please? It seems equally likely that Dell simply wants to avoid an accusation from Microsoft that Dell is encouraging piracy. So, Dell makes the prices the same and keeps the $65.
Let's have some proof about who's keeping this $65.
Re:Impact on the environment (and the ground)
on
Going Up?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The energy gained by the falling cable will be at most its gravitational potential energy, which is within a factor of two of conventional high explosives (per unit weight).
There is also rotational energy to deal with, but I don't think this will elevate the total energy out of the range you're discussing.
As an aside, in terms of force on impact, the F=dP/dt, or the change in momentum when the cable strikes the surface. This is why the dorce imparted is so much worse than merely the weight of the cable.
"Deriving the answer to what does the volume litres do? by use of the multiplication property of equality is left as an exercise to the reader."
In any event, don't blame me if the Sweetheart Cup Company of Owings Mills, Maryland denominates the volume of all its cups in ounces. If Deignan's Law doesn't suit you, you'll just have to buy your cups from a vendor to whom it doesn't apply.;)
You've hit it on the head. The question of retroactive extensions of copyright for works already created is before the U.S. Supreme Court right now. It won't be argued until sometime after the court reconvenes in October and a decision could be as late as the end of the court's next term in June 2003.
That's right. It's called First Sale Doctrine. Once the copyright holder has sold you a copy, you own the copy. You can do pretty much whatever you want with it. If you decide to use the pages of a novel you've purchased to wallpaper your bathroom, the author (and the corporation who own him/her) are pretty much out of luck.
Unlike most of Europe, the U.S. does not base copyright on the moral rights of authors, but on promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. An entirely different theory.
When someone compares MS Windows and Linux, it should be a comparison of how many PCs have windows as OS and how many have Linux as the OS.
Yes, or if you like dollar figures, calculate the amount of money saved by customers who installed Linux against what they would have been forced to pay had they installed M$.
(price of windows + services)*(number of new linux installs) - (amount spent on linux services) = (surplus to customers)
Bruce Sterling proclaimed: Have you ever seen a cathedral? Cathedrals are medieval religious centers where people do penance and take vows of poverty. They worship relics of the holy dead in there. Microsoft is a commercial software company. It's the commercial software company. It's got to be about the least cathedral-like structure known to humankind.
I thought the question was, "have you ever built a cathedral?" Now, even Eric Raymond wasn't particularly clear about this, but going back to his first presentation of the analogy, the cathedral was the software, not the place where the software was created. (Of course, the problem is that when Raymond discussed the bazaar, he equated the bazaar to the open source community, not to a piece of software.)
It seems to me that working for Microsoft building Windows XP must be a great deal like working for the Church building a cathedral that the Church will then require every member to use on pain of torture by copyright law.
Eric S. Raymond wrote: But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed that the most important software . . . needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time.
Linus Torvalds's style of development - release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity - came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here - rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches . . . out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.
The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work, and work well, came as a distinct shock. As I learned my way around, I worked hard not just at individual projects, but also at trying to understand why the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders.
From the article, I read a report recently showing that in the heyday of Napster, if record companies had agreed to charge just a nickel a download, they would have been splitting $500,000 a day, 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year.
Which comes to $183 million/year. Does that sound like a lot of money to you? Sounds like a lot of money to me. Truth is, it's a drop in the bucket to these guys.
The $183 mil/year, if accurate, would have amounted to about 0.5% of annual revenue for these guys. No wonder they turned down that deal. No wonder that as greedy companies they're looking for a higher price / different business model. These companies are not going to do what's right. They are not going to do what's reasonable. They are going to do what makes the most money.
That leaves us only two choices. Force the record companies to charge a lower price (by legislation or whatever) or buy from some one else (e.g. direct from artists).
From Berman-Coble: 514. Remedies for infringement: use of technologies to prevent infringement of copyrighted works on peer-to-peer computer networks (a) IN GENERAL.--Notwithstanding any State or Federal statute or other law,...
Pre-empting state law is part of what Berman-Coble intends. They'll claim their authority comes from commerce clause and copyright clause powers.
From the U.S. Constitution: Art. I Sec. 8: The Congress shall have power . . . To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states . . . ; To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; . .."
"Under section 9a of the Victorian Summary Offences Act (1966), 'a person must not gain access to, or enter, a computer system or part of a computer system without lawful authority to do so'. The penalty if convicted is up to six months' jail."
A. Are we sure that RIAA, etc. would be violating this Australian law by DoSing a file sharer in Australia? -- Here's the scenario: 1. RIAA goon searches for title of copyrighted work. 2. File sharers, including one in Australia, happily and consentually transmit search results. 3. RIAA goon reads search results. 4. RIAA goon requests download of file from the Australian. 5. Australian happily and consentually sends it. 6. RIAA goon listens to it; determines it is the copyrighted work. 7. RIAA goon DoSes the Australian file-sharer. -- Where in there did the RIAA goon "gain access to, or enter, a computer system"?
Hey, I think this proposed U.S. bill stinks, but I'm not sure the Australian law is adequate protection against it.
B. If the Australian law does protect file sharers in Australia, that's great, but it would do nothing to protect file sharers in the U.S., which is the only target of the proposed bill anyway. Isn't it relatively simple for the RIAA goon to check the IPs he's planning to DoS and then only pound the ones that reside in the U.S.? And, anyone (residing anywhere) who shares files off a machine in the U.S. is acting in the U.S. and is subject to U.S. law (or lawlessness).
Any state I've dealt with has a Non-Driver's ID already.
Of course they do. However, more than a trivial number of merchants refuse to accept these IDs despite state-endorsement. Perhaps the solution to their ignorance is an education campaign, but given the number of merchants, banks, etc. who persist in demanding SSNs despite the law against it, it's unlikely they're going to change their tune.
Though, I'm not sure a national ID would fix that problem.
Slashdot Mirror
too soon this story
will have more pointless comments
than any other
Spammers have taken people to court for blacklisting and won. Unfortunately. With the funds and the firms the RIAA has at its disposal, they might just be able to win such a case.
Worse, the RIAA can win the publicity war faster than the legal one. They could begin by telling the ISP's users that they will be prohibited from accessing any legal music so long as they stay with their ISP. And that's just where the FUD starts.
Take license to send
email to people I know?
Now, matters are worse.
Yes, I'm OT. So sue me.
:(
The most amazing math revelation I ever had was how math was invented to describe and talk about phenomena that we had no way to discuss before. I didn't get that until I studied the invention of what we now call "Calculus" by Newton and Leibniz.
Our math, the math we know, isn't fundamental. The logical concepts and universal laws it attempts to describe are fundamental. It is quite possible to describe the same phenomenon with two different maths.
I feel sorry for those who will never get enough math to see that. But then again, there are plenty of truths _I_ will never see.
The technology [now mandated by the FCC] would identify programs that broadcasters do not want consumers to copy without first paying a fee.
What programming do you suppose broadcasters will not want us to pay a fee for? Surely, all movies and first-run TV dramas and sitcoms will be fee-added. (Otherwise, you might skip the ads or archive.)
Music videos? Same story as movies.
Game shows? Same story as first-run TV. They live by their ads.
Re-runs? Probably fee-added. (Otherwise, you might skip the movies and first run shows in favor of re-runs.)
So what's left? The news and the shopping networks. Maybe talk shows. Basically, just the stuff that no one records now anyway. So much for the notion that only "select shows" will be restricted.
The technology [now mandated by the FCC] would identify programs that broadcasters do not want consumers to copy without first paying a fee.
Of course they want us to pay a fee. And we don't want to pay it.
However, they have no right to force us to accept their mechanism for payment. They can only sell their programming on the terms we agree to pay. In fact, since we (theoretically) control the government, we actually have the right to tell them they can't force us to accept their mechanism for payment.
"It is not legal to make a copy of a DVD now. Everything people are doing legally today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow," says Valenti.
Taken without context, Valenti's statement is just plain wrong. Let's go through it one more time, for all the recording execs who are just joining the class.
Copying a DVD can be legal (as far as copyright law is concerned) depending on how you use it. We call it "fair use." Technologically prohibiting all copying, therefore, prevents DVD owners from exercising some of their legal rights.
Perhaps Valenti's quote has been taken out of context (he appears to have been talking about making and distributing multiple copies). But, he may also have been revealing a vision of the future. "Everything people are doing [that recording companies approve of] today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow [and nothing else]."
I infer that avoiding a bidding process assists the mayor in avoiding the power of the entrenched/corrupt interests.
Nevertheless, the notion that the city can undertake an obligation today to buy software later, but not need to bid out the contract is bogus.
If there is no long-term contract requiring New Orleans to buy Microsoft for more than the next 10 years or so, seems OK to me given New Orleans' present predicament. (Why 10 years? Because nothing as big as New Orleans can afford to change information infrastructures any faster than that anyway.)
Homeland, Motherland, Fatherland. I, too, have been disturbed by this phrase entering the American lexicon.
One should be careful about taking action to protect a land. Better that you should take action to protect your neighbors. At least then you know who you're fighting for.
Yup: Jar Jar's the hands-down winner.
What's more, how could anyone pick Wesley over Nelix? Or Deanna Troi? "I sense great confusion, Captain."
Jondar wrote: What I would like the goverments to do is to define open fileformats/protocols and only accept/buy software which supports these formats 100%.
robinjo wrote: Problem is that the government doesn't always have the expertise to build those fileformats and protocols.
We have to keep government's role down to government's competence level. File formats are better decided by standards bodies.
Government needs to stick to requirements. Even those are dangerous enough. It's very easy to write requirements that narrow the government's choices to one vendor. And the vendors encourage this. Go figure.
The reason they dont cost less is you are STILL PAYING for windows - and Dell still pays microsoft for that computer! I kid you not!
Could we have some proof please? It seems equally likely that Dell simply wants to avoid an accusation from Microsoft that Dell is encouraging piracy. So, Dell makes the prices the same and keeps the $65.
Let's have some proof about who's keeping this $65.
The energy gained by the falling cable will be at most its gravitational potential energy, which is within a factor of two of conventional high explosives (per unit weight).
There is also rotational energy to deal with, but I don't think this will elevate the total energy out of the range you're discussing.
As an aside, in terms of force on impact, the F=dP/dt, or the change in momentum when the cable strikes the surface. This is why the dorce imparted is so much worse than merely the weight of the cable.
Oh, fsck me! Yet again, same story, three days later.
2002-08-08 12:51:44 Jet Contrails Alter Diurnal Temperature Cycle (science,news) (rejected)
Oh well. It happens.
Again. And again. And again.
"Deriving the answer to what does the volume litres do? by use of the multiplication property of equality is left as an exercise to the reader."
;)
In any event, don't blame me if the Sweetheart Cup Company of Owings Mills, Maryland denominates the volume of all its cups in ounces. If Deignan's Law doesn't suit you, you'll just have to buy your cups from a vendor to whom it doesn't apply.
(Thanks, I needed that. Grin.)
You've hit it on the head. The question of retroactive extensions of copyright for works already created is before the U.S. Supreme Court right now. It won't be argued until sometime after the court reconvenes in October and a decision could be as late as the end of the court's next term in June 2003.
The volume in ounces of a "large" disposable beverage cup will double every 10 years. ;)
That's right. It's called First Sale Doctrine. Once the copyright holder has sold you a copy, you own the copy. You can do pretty much whatever you want with it. If you decide to use the pages of a novel you've purchased to wallpaper your bathroom, the author (and the corporation who own him/her) are pretty much out of luck.
Unlike most of Europe, the U.S. does not base copyright on the moral rights of authors, but on promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. An entirely different theory.
When someone compares MS Windows and Linux, it should be a comparison of how many PCs have windows as OS and how many have Linux as the OS.
Yes, or if you like dollar figures, calculate the amount of money saved by customers who installed Linux against what they would have been forced to pay had they installed M$.
(price of windows + services)*(number of new linux installs) - (amount spent on linux services) = (surplus to customers)
Bruce Sterling proclaimed: Have you ever seen a cathedral? Cathedrals are medieval religious centers where people do penance and take vows of poverty. They worship relics of the holy dead in there. Microsoft is a commercial software company. It's the commercial software company. It's got to be about the least cathedral-like structure known to humankind.
I thought the question was, "have you ever built a cathedral?" Now, even Eric Raymond wasn't particularly clear about this, but going back to his first presentation of the analogy, the cathedral was the software, not the place where the software was created. (Of course, the problem is that when Raymond discussed the bazaar, he equated the bazaar to the open source community, not to a piece of software.)
It seems to me that working for Microsoft building Windows XP must be a great deal like working for the Church building a cathedral that the Church will then require every member to use on pain of torture by copyright law.
Eric S. Raymond wrote: But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed that the most important software . . . needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time.
Linus Torvalds's style of development - release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity - came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here - rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches . . . out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.
The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work, and work well, came as a distinct shock. As I learned my way around, I worked hard not just at individual projects, but also at trying to understand why the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders.
From the article, I read a report recently showing that in the heyday of Napster, if record companies had agreed to charge just a nickel a download, they would have been splitting $500,000 a day, 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year.
Which comes to $183 million/year. Does that sound like a lot of money to you? Sounds like a lot of money to me. Truth is, it's a drop in the bucket to these guys.
Annual revenue for recorded music in the United States is $14 billion; worldwide it's $38 billion.
The $183 mil/year, if accurate, would have amounted to about 0.5% of annual revenue for these guys. No wonder they turned down that deal. No wonder that as greedy companies they're looking for a higher price / different business model. These companies are not going to do what's right. They are not going to do what's reasonable. They are going to do what makes the most money.
That leaves us only two choices. Force the record companies to charge a lower price (by legislation or whatever) or buy from some one else (e.g. direct from artists).
From Berman-Coble: 514. Remedies for infringement: use of technologies to prevent infringement of copyrighted works on peer-to-peer computer networks (a) IN GENERAL.--Notwithstanding any State or Federal statute or other law, ...
."
Pre-empting state law is part of what Berman-Coble intends. They'll claim their authority comes from commerce clause and copyright clause powers.
From the U.S. Constitution: Art. I Sec. 8: The Congress shall have power . . . To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states . . . ; To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; . .
"Under section 9a of the Victorian Summary Offences Act (1966), 'a person must not gain access to, or enter, a computer system or part of a computer system without lawful authority to do so'. The penalty if convicted is up to six months' jail."
A. Are we sure that RIAA, etc. would be violating this Australian law by DoSing a file sharer in Australia? -- Here's the scenario: 1. RIAA goon searches for title of copyrighted work. 2. File sharers, including one in Australia, happily and consentually transmit search results. 3. RIAA goon reads search results. 4. RIAA goon requests download of file from the Australian. 5. Australian happily and consentually sends it. 6. RIAA goon listens to it; determines it is the copyrighted work. 7. RIAA goon DoSes the Australian file-sharer. -- Where in there did the RIAA goon "gain access to, or enter, a computer system"?
Hey, I think this proposed U.S. bill stinks, but I'm not sure the Australian law is adequate protection against it.
B. If the Australian law does protect file sharers in Australia, that's great, but it would do nothing to protect file sharers in the U.S., which is the only target of the proposed bill anyway. Isn't it relatively simple for the RIAA goon to check the IPs he's planning to DoS and then only pound the ones that reside in the U.S.? And, anyone (residing anywhere) who shares files off a machine in the U.S. is acting in the U.S. and is subject to U.S. law (or lawlessness).
Berman's bill is bad, bad news.
Any state I've dealt with has a Non-Driver's ID already.
Of course they do. However, more than a trivial number of merchants refuse to accept these IDs despite state-endorsement. Perhaps the solution to their ignorance is an education campaign, but given the number of merchants, banks, etc. who persist in demanding SSNs despite the law against it, it's unlikely they're going to change their tune.
Though, I'm not sure a national ID would fix that problem.