I would like to point out that nowhere in the article is it mentioned who is responsible or who benefitted from the votes in question. Everyone pointing fingers can shove them up your arses. It's all political BS.
Why do you presume that "benefit" must have a value in votes?
If I were planning to use any mechanism to rig an election, the very first thing I would do is a calibration run (and possibly several) to ensure that the mechanism I was planning to use was effective, ensure I hadn't overlooked any aspects of the system, and ensure that no one would notice the rigging, or that if they did notice, that I could explain-away the problems as 'technical glitches'. Failing that, I'd want to make sure it didn't get traced back to me, so that i could correct the problems and try again.
I'm wondering if the thought has occurred to anyone else that the 'anomolies' we're seeing today are not intended to produce a certain election outcome, but rather to produce confidence that a certain election outcome could be gained at some point in the future?
And why wasn't the machine verified to be cleared prior to the election beginning?
I'm not trying to be a smartass here, but stop for a minute and think: How exactly does one go about verifying that a machine is "cleared"? I've built computers, from the ground up, component-by-component, gate-by-gate, under circumstances where I had every motivation to ensure that a particular register is always 'set' or 'cleared' when I wanted it to be, and even I wouldn't place more faith in my infallibility as a programmer than I would place into a one-second glance into an empty ballot box.
If a bunch of paper ballots were filled out before election day...
...then they would have shown up when the election officials opened the ballot box and showed it as empty before the voting began.
...or dumped in a river...
...then the seal on the ballot box would have been broken and the only record of what it had contained would be the public counting of the paper ballots we all witnessed shortly after the precinct closed.
I have a better question: If we've agreed to start at "electronic voting machine" how can you get to "fraudulent and corrupt" without going through "errors in an audit log"? And if "errors in an audit log" aren't enough to convince you to throw-out the results, what actually would convince you? What kind of gold standard are you looking for?
Until we find the club with the victim's blood and hair on it, we don't have a crime, much less a case.
You have misunderstood the New Republican definition of crime: Until the jury returns a guilty verdict, and all appeals have been exhausted, it simply can't be considered a crime.
...and then only if we've already given-up on changing the law.
Makes me wonder if any Copyright Holders who have authorized the distribution of their material through p2p can get a class-action lawsuit going against the [MP|RI]AA for illegal restraint of trade.
After all, they did just shut down a distributiuon channel for legitimate publishing in their overbroad sweep.
Damn trolls. Must not reply. Must not feed them. Must not reply. Replying...
Whoooo! Fresh meat! Eighty-two pages of hearty PDF, and slathered with footnotes; just as I like it.
BTW: I'm not a troll, I'm an Ogre. Like an onion, you know? Oh nevermind...
My first impression is that your paper suffers from a perceptional bias. There is a definite bias toward seeing digital content artifacts as being predominantly comprised of mass market content, which is to say content created by a class we call authors and produced for the purpose of commercial consumption. The proverbial "Brittney Spears MP3" would fall into this class. From what I've read to this point, there's little focus in your paper on the treatment of anything outside this class.
I'd consider that deficiency to be worth addressing in itself.
Not a fault of yours, but I would expect such a bias from anyone who has made the study of Intellectual Property and Copyright a professional focus. Perhaps you can benefit from an analysis by a troll.
There's no reason why high quality blogs and news sources, or even political and cooking websites, shouldn't be funded under the same system...
Much of the content on the internet is composed of digital content artifacts which were not created for commercial reasons, and although clearly authored by someone, were not created by Authors in the traditional Copyright sense. Among these, for example, would be Slashdot replies, although those probably don't qualify as "high quality" content. It's not clear that any VMRS could ever be efficient enough to interoperate with the creation of this kind of content without necessarily impeding it. I'm not sure it would be worth my trouble to register as an author for the kind of financial return a VMRS would offer to mere slashdot posters, unless it were necessary to keep Delilah from registering in my stead to game the system. I'd probably just exit the market instead.
...in proportion to the amount they get used/appreciated.
Demand does not always equal value, (2.A.1, pp96-97) unless defined as such. While I'm unable to offer an alternative, I think you underestimate the detrimental effect a VMRS might suffer from inappropriately compensating popular but not particularly valuable content. (think: kiddee porn.)
Additionally, there are vast classes of Internet traffic which should not be considered digital content artifacts (think routing table updates, ICMP queries, etc) and that which straddles the line (RTP snippets of a VoIP conversation, etc). And while a tax based on bandwidth might seem intuitive to someone who only sees the Internet as a string of free MP3's, those of us who work down in the bowels of the Internet ("Under the bridge", if you will) tend to see things differently.
I do like your proposal of allowing consumers to "vote" their content preferences, but without further analysis, it seems impossibly flawed. I can provide further analysis to your email-address-of-record, if you'd like, but I believe it's beyond the scope for this thread.
Software development is a hard case...
Agreed. Perhaps it too is beyond the scope of this discussion. But the Internet has a tendency to act as a slippery slope for many things. And solution which cannot serve for all kinds of digital content artifacts is at best incomplete.
If such a law permitted you to distribute any software without regard for licensing terms...
A license is a private agreement between parties. I don't think you are proposing to make licensing (or private agreements between parties) illegal, so it's difficult to understand what you're proposing.
I suspect that if companies did not have the stick of copyright and patent law to beat up their competitors with, then they would naturally migrate to free software models, because anything else costs more and accomplishes little - once the secret gets out anyway (and it will, in the networked world), you've lost your only advantage and might as well migrate.
While I won't argue about whether a trade secret (such as software source) can be kept forever, I do question the wisdom of creating a system which is dependent on the theft of trade secrets for proper functioning. Business will always seek out advantageous markets. Currently, copyright law creates a very advantageous monopoly for intellectual property-based businesses. That is what was intended when the copyright monopoly was instituted. If that monopoly is removed, such businesses are likely to seek other means of maintaining their monopoly. I susdpect we'd see much more content subject to DRM. ("copy the DRM-protected file as much as you want, but you don't get to play it without a licen$e key...") much stronger licensing terms (no access to source, even by employees, without thorough background checks, bonding, and such) and much stiffer penalties sought against those who reveal trade secrets. We're already seeing these kinds of behaviors from Microsoft, where the latest releases of Windows are
relatively easy to burn onto a CDR, but you still need an activation key to keep the software running, development of drivers will require developers to register, and agree to licensing terms, and even the hardware (Secure Computing) will enforce these licenses.
Perhaps you will forgive me, but I just can't trust your suspicions in this case.
What about the now-legal option of commencing to download free music?
This would only be a benefit to people who:
Have an interest in downloading music (or other content).
Have the capability to download that content. Pretty much excludes people without broadband.
Want music that is not currently legal for them to download today.
I'd argue that's not a large enough group to justify taxing everybody, but let's run with it anyway. Wouldn't this just accellerate the move among traditional publishers toward even more restrictive DRM?
Some will argue that all DRM can be broken, but there is also precedent in the DMCA for laws prohibiting such acts. I hope you're not advocating that such actions would be considered legal.
The only losers would be people who want a net connection but have no interest in any cultural works whatsoever.
Like people who only use the Internet for email and instant messaging. For buying and selling on Ebay, or through other sites. For blogging. Or the proverbial Web-cam-to-the-grandkids. Or catching up on the news. Or discussing technology, cooking, politics, or shoelaces. Or software development.
In other words, geeks like us?
Or those wierdo's who create their own music, movies, etc. and publish them on the web for free, or currently have an acceptable (to them) means of selling their creations without going through the RIAA. Are you really trying to kill off their attempts to build a new business model? What are you, some sort of RIAA plant or something?;-)
Or are you one of those (perhaps rightly called) pirates who only sees the Internet as your personal source for stolen music and movies. It might surprise you to learn it wasn't actually built for that reason.
As an artist, you can self-publish on the 'net, and if the system is designed right you'll get payed in proportion to your popularity.
There is no discussion of any mechanism to assess which works are being shared, assign popularity, allow artists to register, collect fees, etc. You're not thinking straight. You're just dreaming. Heck, you're not even dreaming straight.
So now, artists have to register their works, someone has to somehow assess the 'popularity' of a work that anyone is allowed to freely share, and somehow the money just magically gets returned to the artist. What's to prevent someone from gaming the system with a bot net? If I transcode your song to a lower bitrate, do you still get the money, or do I, or do we split?
Remember also that if they distributed the code in any country where the law enforced the GPL, they'd have to comply.
USA_Uber_Hacker develops a new web app, publishes it under GPL.
The French subsidiary (only one employee) of StolenSoftware, Inc strips the attribution and license language re-publishes it as Public Domain on p2p.
StolenSoftware, Inc (Global) grabs the (now public domain) source, and off we go.
Then perhaps that means that some of the tax money will necessarily have to be redistributed back to those who created the software.
So who gets this money, Linus or Stallman? Would those affected be propping-up Red Hat's bottom line, or Suse? Could I, as the lone purveyor of LynxUserAbroadUselessLinux demand a cut? After all, I can claim my stuff is being shared just as much as anyone else?
I highly doubt that anyone using the internet would not be taking advantage of a fair amount of the things that are being indirectly funded.
Go download any one song over dial-up and come back here with that argument when you're finished. I can pull-down about 100Mb in a 12 hour period, if the remote server is cooperating, and I'm fairly typical. Do you really think I'd be "taking advantage of a fair amount of the things that are being indirectly funded"?
But deputies, both from the ruling conservatives and the opposition Socialists, threw the planned law off course at the end of December by adding amendments that would legalize file-sharing in exchange for a fee to cover a licensing charge.
Understand the mechanics here: If engineered wrong this will simply translate into a tax on internet access for everyone under French jurisdiction, which would be paid to businesses big enough to claim they represent content creators and nothing paid to the actual content creators themselves.
For people who currently observe the law and do not download at all (or only download stuff the copyright owner has given away), this is a tax with no return.
It weakens the rights of authors and hands tax money to the publishers.
But follow me further, if you will: What happens if something like GPL'd software gets included in the definition of content that right now we think will only include songs and music? Would a French company be allowed to re-distribute GPL'd software in violation of the terms of the GPL by claiming this law frees them of the constraints of copyright?
Compulsory licenses are a threat to the Free Culture movement. Copyright is not the problem, copyright violators are the problem.
Can this right-of-way be revoked at the local government level?
It depends on who has jurisdiction. If we're talking about state roads, it's likely the state. County roads are maintained by the county. If you live in a private subdivision, with roads and such privately built and maintained, it may even be your homeowners association.
And despite the Republican Revolution battle cry of less government we've seen the Federal Government taking back more and more power from the States. The FCC now claime some jurisdiction over Internet telephony where prior to 1996 even land line phones were entirely the responsibility of the respective States.
Also, is it legal for me to run some CAT-5 to my neighbors house, and for him to do the same with his neighbor?
Of course. You'll need to comply with National Electric Code safety regulations and such, but for the most part what you do with your own private property is your own business. It's not a big deal if you live in an apartment complex or sardine housing development, but there are still a significant number of people who's next-door neighbor would be unable or unwilling to cooperate. My two next-door neighbors are about a quarter mile down the road on the right and more than a mile down the road (and quite literally in the next county) on the left. Have you priced out the cost of a mile or so of CAT-5, the poles to elevate it (or conduit and trenching cost) and monthly maintenance? A wireless solution makes more sense, but then you're limited to either a) purchasing spectrum (a lot like purchasing land, expect that it's a whole lot more expensive, and you don't actually get anything in return) or using unlicensed spectrum (WiFi). Of course, if you use unlicensed spectrum and your competitor
knocks you off the network, you have no recourse.
...and then use public streets/poles to "peer" together.
You can lease access to the poles from whatever agency is responsible for them under whatever rules are applicable, even as a private individual, provided there's space on the poles to lease. Again, you'd have to pay someone to run the wires (or become qualified to do so yourself) and pay a monthly fee for their maintenance. You'd pay about the same for DWDM fiber as you would for CAT-5, so it would make sense to use the "biggest" pipe you could get and get as many people as possible to share the pipe, but it could be done.
Why yes, you too could become a hated local cable company.
But then you find yourself facing the dilemma: "Do we spend $350,000 to run a fiber 5 miles down the road to some farmhouse just so Joe Goatherd will pay us $12 a month instead of someone else?"
It's called the Last Mile problem. If you've found a solution we've never heard of, we're all ears.
If the FCC did their job properly, then us Slashdotters wouldn't hate them!
Well, obviously neither you nor I voted to put the current administration and congressmen into office, but we must accept that our fellow countrymen did so. Somebody must really like having these jokers in office; it sure ain't me.
It's sad, really, but I must admit: this happened on my watch.
If you can encrypt your stream then your ISP has no real clue what it is.
It's not going to be "treat everything as gold unless we know it's lead" but rather "treat everything as lead until we know it's gold"
If you pay, it means you get the privlege of having your RTP packets treated to a better QOS than the rest. If you don't pay, you get to fight over bandwidth with everyone else, whether your packets contain encrypted RTP that is indistinguishable from noise, or an unencrypted slashdot post (which, incidentally also is indistinguishable from noise...)
A lot of people would start thinking about using smaller carriers that aren't trying to pull this BS, some companies like Google might create their own carrier if needed, and mesh networking would no doubt get a large push from this kind of thing.
You haven't thought this through. Any form of telecommunications (coommunication across distance) requires the bits to travel either on private property or on public property.
On private property, the owner can impose exactly these kinds of tarriffs.
On public property, tarriffs can be imposed only through public agreement (which means they wouldn't be) but that 'network neutrality' must be enforced, and that means a regulated network.
A mesh network relies on both wireless sprectrum (public, FCC regulated) and private equipment. I'm not sure there's a solution there.
As long as we refuse to allow regulation of the Internet, we're screwed.
If we allow regulation, and it's regulation crafted by the networking companies, we're equally screwed.
This really does start by re-taking the Government from the corporate lobbyists and incumbent politicians. I didn't meant to come here and hi-jack a technology thread for a political post, but somethimes that's just where the road leads.
It seems to me that this level of discrimination should automatically cancel their status as a common carrier...
Common Carrier, per FCC rule, only applies to voiceband channels less than 64Kbps. You can have all the Common Carrier you want, so long as you go back to Dial-up.
Telecommunications companies don't like Common Carrier restrictions. They agreed to them, years ago, because the Public offered them something in return which they would have been fools to pass up: access to public rights-of-way. (Public. That's right. Stuff you owned that got handed over to Private Companies by the Government; that's a tax. In return, you got the Internet. Fair deal?)
We (the People) could impose Common Carrier rules on broadband providers using public right-of-way facilities through a simple FCC rule change. Companies which own their entire network could still discriminate as they want (as would you, as the owner of all the ethernet in your house) but companies running packets through FCC-controlled spectrum (that's everything) or along public rights-of-way (poles, underground cables along roads, etc) would be required to follow the same rules the phone companies have had to follow for 150 years.
Will that happen? Never. Too many slash dotters who still can't think past the FCC is part of the Government, and everything the Government does is bad, so there's no way I'm going to let the FCC impose their laws on my beloved Internet...
Now, where did I put my remote control and bag of quarters?
I'm willing to bet that Microsoft would oppose it as well, since they're getting more and more into internet applications.
Don't count on it. The other companies you mention (Google, Ebay, Amazon, etc.) are all edge providers, meaning when you're doing business with them, you're using the internet as a pipe. When you're going to Amazon.com, you couldn't care less who's passing your packets along, so long as they get there. Similarly, they couldn't care less which browser (if any) you're using, so long as you're entering your credit card number and clicking "buy".
Microsoft's strategy, on the other hand, is to own the terminal you use to get access to the pipe. You are right, they don't really case who owns that pipe, but they want to make sure that every time you go on-line to play a game, you're using your Xbox Live subscription, every time you sell on ebay, you're using a browser you bought from them, paying for a support subscription from them, identifying yourself with a Microsotf owned and maintained Passport, and (if they have their way) if you want to watch high-definition television through IPTV, you've bought a set-top-box with a Windows-CE license sticker on the side.
A law firm wants little robots that bill endlessly and don't question the status quo.
Of course they do. But a law firm client wants to hire a law firm that understands not only the strengths and weaknesses of their client's own position, but also the strengths and weaknesses of their client's opponent's position.
This incident tells us much about the blind-spot this particular firm has chosen to create for itself. If I were to find myself in litigation against a plantiff represented by them, it would surely factor into my strategic decisions.
And that translates into a reason for potential clients of this firm to go elsewhere.
It's the risk one takes when one chooses to build a clock.
This is exactly what the RIAA dinosaurs want. Make you pay them for the right to download music other people created and are giving away for free.
That's what this is about. They want to be able to raise the distribution cost for the independent music producer and have the extra profits go to themselves.
And of course all you slashdot freeloaders who are only interested in being able to download the latest Brittney Spears mp3 for free are going to sign-up for this in droves.
This is what Lessig means when he says that the dinosaurs of the past will always try to preserve their place in the future.
We'll see this in Congress next. It will become law. And the prospect of Free Culture that the Internet once promised will be dead forever.
And perhaps, just perhaps, there were warrants granted on the domestic numbers (they did get thousands of warrants, after all). You don't know, and neither do I... and that's all I'm trying to say.
Don't know what?. That calls were tapped but warrants not issued?
But we do know that (or know it as much as we can say to know it based on the President's admission of such; if the President is misleading us in this then of course we would be being mislead) calls were tapped but warrants neither sought nor issued based on the President's admission of such. That's not at issue.
At issue is whether the Constitution dissolves when Congress declares war. If it does, then the President (who would at that point no longer be President) is as free to ignore the Fourth Amendment as anyone else is. If it does not, then the President remains bound, and [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The entire Administration argument turns on the definition of reasonable. The Administration claims, in effect, that it is reasonable for the government to conduct these kinds of searches in time of war.
On the surface, this might itself seem a reasonable argument. But among Constitutional scholars and lawmakers this issue of the definition of reasonableness in the Fourth is a well understood, well visited issue.
Our Constitution vests the power of interpreting the law in the Judiciary (not the Executive) branch. The Constitution provides for the Legislative branch to create laws to guide the judiciary in it's interpretation. The Courts have already spoken on this issue. (For a full analysis, read the ALCU brief [PDF Warning] yourself.) In a nutshell, when Congress makes clear in statute how reasonable is to be interpreted (as it did with FISA) the President must abide.
The Administration seems to be claiming that it is only bound by the language of the Constitution itself; that any law made by Congress cannot affect the Executive branch, and therefore FISA has no standing.
Now maybe they're wrong (in which case Bush should be impeached) or maybe they're right (and Federal law does not apply to them). In either case, there should at least be an independent investigation to determine who's right.
Of course if Bush is right, then having the Supreme Court confirm it is just a waste of time, since the Judicial Branch would have no more power over the President that the Legislative branch has.
I would ask you to consider a hypothetical question, though:
Suppose the Supreme Court affirms Bush's authority in exactly the way he claims it should. Then suppose some future Congress, under circumstances it deems warranted, sees it prudent to grant some future President an authorization to go to War.
(One might imagine a scenario where a charismatic but clearly insane psuedo-Hitler gains office on a "Let's Nuke France" platform and, upon taking the Oath, France issues a Statement of Policy expressing a desire for Regime Change in the US.)
Suppose such a Congress, mindful of the Courts decision but for reasons it deems warranted, sees it prudent to restrict that future President's power to engage in certain activities during the prosecution of a War to defend the Nation. (We might imagine such restricted activities might include evesdropping of the kind currently being discussed, but imagine the issue was to be treated more broadly, for example Congress wants to grant the President the power to wage war against the enemy France, but not allow an invasion of neutral Belgium in the process.) W
But if you call the drug dealer to make a drug deal, it can. So what's your point?
My point was that it's incorrect to say that if you call a [suspected] drug dealer your call cam be [legally] monitored. It can't. That was my point.
Saying 'a call can be [legally] monitored if you call a drug dealer who is being [legally] monitored' is different than saying 'a call can be [legally] monitored if you call a drug dealer who is being [legally] monitored' if you're calling to make a drug deal. It's like the difference between saying 'the State can [legally] execute you' and saying 'the State can [legally] execute you for treason.
In both cases, the former statement is true only when the special circumstances are considered. Neglecting to mention the special circumstances, then building an argument dependent on the existence of the special circumstances you've neglected to mention is false, disingenuous, and misleading. It's the kind of statement which is likely to be employed either by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, or by someone who does but who is trying to employ falshoods and misleading information to make a fallicious argument seem pursuasive to those who don't understand the true situation.
Rolling it up into the larger topic, it's like the difference between saying 'invasion of privacy is allowed under the Fourth Amendment' and saying 'invasion of privacy is allowed under the Fourth Amendment when a warrant has been issued'.
It's a minor point, I'd admit, if you don't care about the truth. Is that like saying it's a minor point?
If you happen to talk on the phone with a drug dealer who is being monitored, you're legally also monitored.
This is not correct. If the warrant authorizes the tap for a drug investigation, and you call him for help with your homework, your conversation cannot legally be monitored.
If a drug suspicion warrant allows a tap on the phone of a suspected drug dealer, and you call him for help in an embezzelment scheme, that information cannot legally be monitored.
Please get a more up-to-date definition of tapping, or accept mine as a free gift.
A communication tap has nothing to do with putting in place the infrastructure by which means information can be extracted from a channel. Those rules are entirely different, and no one (to the best of my knowledge) is even bringing that up. It's irrelevant to the discussion.
The tap which the Constitution prohibits all branches of U.S. government from practicing against the People involves the extraction of information (a search) or a capture and denial of the delivery of information (a seizure).
In laymans terms, there's no law prohibiting the government from putting a phone butt on your grandmother's line. (although that's not how it's done anymore) but they can't listen in
So, yes, technically speaking if they have the capability to extract information out of a foreign telephone, and it happens to get called by a U.S. Citizen, they can't listen in. They don't need a court order to "connect the wires" and they can retain (record) but not share, the information for up to 72 hours while they determine it isn't a U. S. citizen, or ask FISA to authorize it anyway (likely on the basis of "Well, this guy called our suspect...").
Your phone was not being tapped when you called from Ohio to Wisconsin to wish your grandmother a happy birthday.
With all due respect, you have no basis to make that claim.
The Administration has always chosen it's words particularly carefully when describing (or failing to describe) the scope of the operations. We have been led to believe that evesdropping was limited to cases where at least one portion of the communication circuit was extraterritorial, and at least one person was a "party of interest" but that does not rule-out the (hypothetical) case you describe.
Show me the route list, linkset, and CALEA profile for every leg of the call and then I'll believe you, for that one call. Or, if you won't show it to me, send it to the FISA court; I'll trust them.
But, from what I hear, the specific numbers targetted were to and from terrorist's cell phones found in caves in Afganistan and the numbers that they had stored in them. Is that really so bad?
Then perhaps you haven't been listening?
If this were true, it would raise the question of how many domestic telephone numbers those cave-extracted cell phones containes, and why FISA would have a problem granting court orders in those cases.
What I am proposing is that government is not necessary for all those things you claim it is.
I'm sensing you and I may have different definitions of what a "government" is. It's a rather nebulous term so such a misunderstanding is perhaps excusable.
One way to characterize "government" (and the way I'm guessing you are seeing things: please correct me if I'm off base) is by it's power to tax, it's power to make laws (and compel people to obey them), to form armies for common defense, etc.
I tend to define a "government" more broadly to include the system by which any society capable of ensuring the passing of technological artifacts to subsequent generations maintains it's order. This would include everything from the aboriginal tribal system of elders and shaman through the more familiar totalitarian state and representative democracy. It would therefore include such things as neighborhood watch associations, Church assemblies, and quite probably Fred Flintstone's Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes as well. It notably excludes systems in which all participants are directly related biologically (simple family units) even though such systems clearly demonstrate these traits, because biological-only systems are predominant in nature and thus offer only uninteresting cases.
Using (what I believe to be) your definition, you seem to be proposing that it's possible for people to "just get along", cooperate in producing projects of benefit to all, obey agreed-upon rules (as opposed to laws) of their own accord, etc. While I admit the theorhetical possibility that a group of people might be able to accomplish that, I'd feel strongly that the burden of proof should be upon you.
Thoreau was writing in the context of a historical accident: a newly "discovered" and vast nation with seemingly unlimited resources, but was himself simply demonstrating a deeper truth. We're all happy when we can get what we need with little or no struggle. And when the resources are plentiful and the opposition weak, life is good.
But, as Thoreau points out, life begins to suck when you become the opposition, and when others fail to see the same values you do.
While no one is coerced to do so, working along with your fellow man is highly advantageous...
No argument there.
...and man as a social creature will naturally form communities.
But there's the rub. If we exclude humans, every other organism on this planet is geared toward gene-survival, Darwin's survival of the fittest. There is no evidence to suggest that humans are different biologically, plenty of evidence to suggest that they are greatly similar biologically, and an insurmountable avalanche of evidence that we can escape Darwin's trap and cooperate in ways which are not goverend by Kipling's Law of the Jungle.. The various civilizations we've built stand a testament to that.
But claiming that man will "naturally form communities" is a stretch. There is no evidence that any other species (with a couple billion years to crack the problem) ever rose above kill or be killed. We don't know that humans, left to their own devices, will always form cooperative communities, although we do know that humans, left to their own devices, who don't form cooperative communities don't leave much behind for us to study.
The only model we have of how to keep homo-sapient alive as a species involves forming those communities. And the only communities which have had any sort of permanence (if you can call a mere 4000 years permanence) are the ones in which some form of governance has played a role.
Now maybe you're right, and we will eventually discover the essence that seperates civilized creatures from the uncivilized jungle. A
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you presume that "benefit" must have a value in votes?
If I were planning to use any mechanism to rig an election, the very first thing I would do is a calibration run (and possibly several) to ensure that the mechanism I was planning to use was effective, ensure I hadn't overlooked any aspects of the system, and ensure that no one would notice the rigging, or that if they did notice, that I could explain-away the problems as 'technical glitches'. Failing that, I'd want to make sure it didn't get traced back to me, so that i could correct the problems and try again.
I'm wondering if the thought has occurred to anyone else that the 'anomolies' we're seeing today are not intended to produce a certain election outcome, but rather to produce confidence that a certain election outcome could be gained at some point in the future?
I'm not trying to be a smartass here, but stop for a minute and think: How exactly does one go about verifying that a machine is "cleared"? I've built computers, from the ground up, component-by-component, gate-by-gate, under circumstances where I had every motivation to ensure that a particular register is always 'set' or 'cleared' when I wanted it to be, and even I wouldn't place more faith in my infallibility as a programmer than I would place into a one-second glance into an empty ballot box.
I have a better question: If we've agreed to start at "electronic voting machine" how can you get to "fraudulent and corrupt" without going through "errors in an audit log"? And if "errors in an audit log" aren't enough to convince you to throw-out the results, what actually would convince you? What kind of gold standard are you looking for?
You have misunderstood the New Republican definition of crime: Until the jury returns a guilty verdict, and all appeals have been exhausted, it simply can't be considered a crime.
After all, they did just shut down a distributiuon channel for legitimate publishing in their overbroad sweep.
For the record (since slashdot sigs are mutable) the referenced link is: http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v18/18Har vJLTech085.pdf
Whoooo! Fresh meat! Eighty-two pages of hearty PDF, and slathered with footnotes; just as I like it.
BTW: I'm not a troll, I'm an Ogre. Like an onion, you know? Oh nevermind...
My first impression is that your paper suffers from a perceptional bias. There is a definite bias toward seeing digital content artifacts as being predominantly comprised of mass market content, which is to say content created by a class we call authors and produced for the purpose of commercial consumption. The proverbial "Brittney Spears MP3" would fall into this class. From what I've read to this point, there's little focus in your paper on the treatment of anything outside this class.
I'd consider that deficiency to be worth addressing in itself.
Not a fault of yours, but I would expect such a bias from anyone who has made the study of Intellectual Property and Copyright a professional focus. Perhaps you can benefit from an analysis by a troll.
Much of the content on the internet is composed of digital content artifacts which were not created for commercial reasons, and although clearly authored by someone, were not created by Authors in the traditional Copyright sense. Among these, for example, would be Slashdot replies, although those probably don't qualify as "high quality" content. It's not clear that any VMRS could ever be efficient enough to interoperate with the creation of this kind of content without necessarily impeding it. I'm not sure it would be worth my trouble to register as an author for the kind of financial return a VMRS would offer to mere slashdot posters, unless it were necessary to keep Delilah from registering in my stead to game the system. I'd probably just exit the market instead.
Demand does not always equal value, (2.A.1, pp96-97) unless defined as such. While I'm unable to offer an alternative, I think you underestimate the detrimental effect a VMRS might suffer from inappropriately compensating popular but not particularly valuable content. (think: kiddee porn.)
Additionally, there are vast classes of Internet traffic which should not be considered digital content artifacts (think routing table updates, ICMP queries, etc) and that which straddles the line (RTP snippets of a VoIP conversation, etc). And while a tax based on bandwidth might seem intuitive to someone who only sees the Internet as a string of free MP3's, those of us who work down in the bowels of the Internet ("Under the bridge", if you will) tend to see things differently.
I do like your proposal of allowing consumers to "vote" their content preferences, but without further analysis, it seems impossibly flawed. I can provide further analysis to your email-address-of-record, if you'd like, but I believe it's beyond the scope for this thread.
Agreed. Perhaps it too is beyond the scope of this discussion. But the Internet has a tendency to act as a slippery slope for many things. And solution which cannot serve for all kinds of digital content artifacts is at best incomplete.
A license is a private agreement between parties. I don't think you are proposing to make licensing (or private agreements between parties) illegal, so it's difficult to understand what you're proposing.
While I won't argue about whether a trade secret (such as software source) can be kept forever, I do question the wisdom of creating a system which is dependent on the theft of trade secrets for proper functioning. Business will always seek out advantageous markets. Currently, copyright law creates a very advantageous monopoly for intellectual property-based businesses. That is what was intended when the copyright monopoly was instituted. If that monopoly is removed, such businesses are likely to seek other means of maintaining their monopoly. I susdpect we'd see much more content subject to DRM. ("copy the DRM-protected file as much as you want, but you don't get to play it without a licen$e key...") much stronger licensing terms (no access to source, even by employees, without thorough background checks, bonding, and such) and much stiffer penalties sought against those who reveal trade secrets. We're already seeing these kinds of behaviors from Microsoft, where the latest releases of Windows are relatively easy to burn onto a CDR, but you still need an activation key to keep the software running, development of drivers will require developers to register, and agree to licensing terms, and even the hardware (Secure Computing) will enforce these licenses.
Perhaps you will forgive me, but I just can't trust your suspicions in this case.
This would only be a benefit to people who:
I'd argue that's not a large enough group to justify taxing everybody, but let's run with it anyway. Wouldn't this just accellerate the move among traditional publishers toward even more restrictive DRM?
Some will argue that all DRM can be broken, but there is also precedent in the DMCA for laws prohibiting such acts. I hope you're not advocating that such actions would be considered legal.
Like people who only use the Internet for email and instant messaging. For buying and selling on Ebay, or through other sites. For blogging. Or the proverbial Web-cam-to-the-grandkids. Or catching up on the news. Or discussing technology, cooking, politics, or shoelaces. Or software development.
In other words, geeks like us?
Or those wierdo's who create their own music, movies, etc. and publish them on the web for free, or currently have an acceptable (to them) means of selling their creations without going through the RIAA. Are you really trying to kill off their attempts to build a new business model? What are you, some sort of RIAA plant or something? ;-)
Or are you one of those (perhaps rightly called) pirates who only sees the Internet as your personal source for stolen music and movies. It might surprise you to learn it wasn't actually built for that reason.
There is no discussion of any mechanism to assess which works are being shared, assign popularity, allow artists to register, collect fees, etc. You're not thinking straight. You're just dreaming. Heck, you're not even dreaming straight.
So now, artists have to register their works, someone has to somehow assess the 'popularity' of a work that anyone is allowed to freely share, and somehow the money just magically gets returned to the artist. What's to prevent someone from gaming the system with a bot net? If I transcode your song to a lower bitrate, do you still get the money, or do I, or do we split?
USA_Uber_Hacker develops a new web app, publishes it under GPL.
The French subsidiary (only one employee) of StolenSoftware, Inc strips the attribution and license language re-publishes it as Public Domain on p2p.
StolenSoftware, Inc (Global) grabs the (now public domain) source, and off we go.
So who gets this money, Linus or Stallman? Would those affected be propping-up Red Hat's bottom line, or Suse? Could I, as the lone purveyor of LynxUserAbroadUselessLinux demand a cut? After all, I can claim my stuff is being shared just as much as anyone else?
Go download any one song over dial-up and come back here with that argument when you're finished. I can pull-down about 100Mb in a 12 hour period, if the remote server is cooperating, and I'm fairly typical. Do you really think I'd be "taking advantage of a fair amount of the things that are being indirectly funded"?
Understand the mechanics here: If engineered wrong this will simply translate into a tax on internet access for everyone under French jurisdiction, which would be paid to businesses big enough to claim they represent content creators and nothing paid to the actual content creators themselves.
For people who currently observe the law and do not download at all (or only download stuff the copyright owner has given away), this is a tax with no return.
It weakens the rights of authors and hands tax money to the publishers.
But follow me further, if you will: What happens if something like GPL'd software gets included in the definition of content that right now we think will only include songs and music? Would a French company be allowed to re-distribute GPL'd software in violation of the terms of the GPL by claiming this law frees them of the constraints of copyright?
Compulsory licenses are a threat to the Free Culture movement. Copyright is not the problem, copyright violators are the problem.
It depends on who has jurisdiction. If we're talking about state roads, it's likely the state. County roads are maintained by the county. If you live in a private subdivision, with roads and such privately built and maintained, it may even be your homeowners association.
And despite the Republican Revolution battle cry of less government we've seen the Federal Government taking back more and more power from the States. The FCC now claime some jurisdiction over Internet telephony where prior to 1996 even land line phones were entirely the responsibility of the respective States.
Of course. You'll need to comply with National Electric Code safety regulations and such, but for the most part what you do with your own private property is your own business. It's not a big deal if you live in an apartment complex or sardine housing development, but there are still a significant number of people who's next-door neighbor would be unable or unwilling to cooperate. My two next-door neighbors are about a quarter mile down the road on the right and more than a mile down the road (and quite literally in the next county) on the left. Have you priced out the cost of a mile or so of CAT-5, the poles to elevate it (or conduit and trenching cost) and monthly maintenance? A wireless solution makes more sense, but then you're limited to either a) purchasing spectrum (a lot like purchasing land, expect that it's a whole lot more expensive, and you don't actually get anything in return) or using unlicensed spectrum (WiFi). Of course, if you use unlicensed spectrum and your competitor knocks you off the network, you have no recourse.
You can lease access to the poles from whatever agency is responsible for them under whatever rules are applicable, even as a private individual, provided there's space on the poles to lease. Again, you'd have to pay someone to run the wires (or become qualified to do so yourself) and pay a monthly fee for their maintenance. You'd pay about the same for DWDM fiber as you would for CAT-5, so it would make sense to use the "biggest" pipe you could get and get as many people as possible to share the pipe, but it could be done.
Why yes, you too could become a hated local cable company.
But then you find yourself facing the dilemma: "Do we spend $350,000 to run a fiber 5 miles down the road to some farmhouse just so Joe Goatherd will pay us $12 a month instead of someone else?"
It's called the Last Mile problem. If you've found a solution we've never heard of, we're all ears.
Well, obviously neither you nor I voted to put the current administration and congressmen into office, but we must accept that our fellow countrymen did so. Somebody must really like having these jokers in office; it sure ain't me.
It's sad, really, but I must admit: this happened on my watch.
It's not going to be "treat everything as gold unless we know it's lead" but rather "treat everything as lead until we know it's gold"
If you pay, it means you get the privlege of having your RTP packets treated to a better QOS than the rest. If you don't pay, you get to fight over bandwidth with everyone else, whether your packets contain encrypted RTP that is indistinguishable from noise, or an unencrypted slashdot post (which, incidentally also is indistinguishable from noise...)
You haven't thought this through. Any form of telecommunications (coommunication across distance) requires the bits to travel either on private property or on public property.
On private property, the owner can impose exactly these kinds of tarriffs.
On public property, tarriffs can be imposed only through public agreement (which means they wouldn't be) but that 'network neutrality' must be enforced, and that means a regulated network.
A mesh network relies on both wireless sprectrum (public, FCC regulated) and private equipment. I'm not sure there's a solution there.
As long as we refuse to allow regulation of the Internet, we're screwed.
If we allow regulation, and it's regulation crafted by the networking companies, we're equally screwed.
This really does start by re-taking the Government from the corporate lobbyists and incumbent politicians. I didn't meant to come here and hi-jack a technology thread for a political post, but somethimes that's just where the road leads.
Common Carrier, per FCC rule, only applies to voiceband channels less than 64Kbps. You can have all the Common Carrier you want, so long as you go back to Dial-up.
Telecommunications companies don't like Common Carrier restrictions. They agreed to them, years ago, because the Public offered them something in return which they would have been fools to pass up: access to public rights-of-way. (Public. That's right. Stuff you owned that got handed over to Private Companies by the Government; that's a tax. In return, you got the Internet. Fair deal?)
We (the People) could impose Common Carrier rules on broadband providers using public right-of-way facilities through a simple FCC rule change. Companies which own their entire network could still discriminate as they want (as would you, as the owner of all the ethernet in your house) but companies running packets through FCC-controlled spectrum (that's everything) or along public rights-of-way (poles, underground cables along roads, etc) would be required to follow the same rules the phone companies have had to follow for 150 years.
Will that happen? Never. Too many slash dotters who still can't think past the FCC is part of the Government, and everything the Government does is bad, so there's no way I'm going to let the FCC impose their laws on my beloved Internet...
Now, where did I put my remote control and bag of quarters?
Don't count on it. The other companies you mention (Google, Ebay, Amazon, etc.) are all edge providers, meaning when you're doing business with them, you're using the internet as a pipe. When you're going to Amazon.com, you couldn't care less who's passing your packets along, so long as they get there. Similarly, they couldn't care less which browser (if any) you're using, so long as you're entering your credit card number and clicking "buy".
Microsoft's strategy, on the other hand, is to own the terminal you use to get access to the pipe. You are right, they don't really case who owns that pipe, but they want to make sure that every time you go on-line to play a game, you're using your Xbox Live subscription, every time you sell on ebay, you're using a browser you bought from them, paying for a support subscription from them, identifying yourself with a Microsotf owned and maintained Passport, and (if they have their way) if you want to watch high-definition television through IPTV, you've bought a set-top-box with a Windows-CE license sticker on the side.
Of course they do. But a law firm client wants to hire a law firm that understands not only the strengths and weaknesses of their client's own position, but also the strengths and weaknesses of their client's opponent's position.
This incident tells us much about the blind-spot this particular firm has chosen to create for itself. If I were to find myself in litigation against a plantiff represented by them, it would surely factor into my strategic decisions.
And that translates into a reason for potential clients of this firm to go elsewhere.
It's the risk one takes when one chooses to build a clock.
That's what this is about. They want to be able to raise the distribution cost for the independent music producer and have the extra profits go to themselves.
And of course all you slashdot freeloaders who are only interested in being able to download the latest Brittney Spears mp3 for free are going to sign-up for this in droves.
This is what Lessig means when he says that the dinosaurs of the past will always try to preserve their place in the future.
We'll see this in Congress next. It will become law. And the prospect of Free Culture that the Internet once promised will be dead forever.
Don't know what?. That calls were tapped but warrants not issued?
But we do know that (or know it as much as we can say to know it based on the President's admission of such; if the President is misleading us in this then of course we would be being mislead) calls were tapped but warrants neither sought nor issued based on the President's admission of such. That's not at issue.
At issue is whether the Constitution dissolves when Congress declares war. If it does, then the President (who would at that point no longer be President) is as free to ignore the Fourth Amendment as anyone else is. If it does not, then the President remains bound, and [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The entire Administration argument turns on the definition of reasonable. The Administration claims, in effect, that it is reasonable for the government to conduct these kinds of searches in time of war.
On the surface, this might itself seem a reasonable argument. But among Constitutional scholars and lawmakers this issue of the definition of reasonableness in the Fourth is a well understood, well visited issue.
Our Constitution vests the power of interpreting the law in the Judiciary (not the Executive) branch. The Constitution provides for the Legislative branch to create laws to guide the judiciary in it's interpretation. The Courts have already spoken on this issue. (For a full analysis, read the ALCU brief [PDF Warning] yourself.) In a nutshell, when Congress makes clear in statute how reasonable is to be interpreted (as it did with FISA) the President must abide.
The Administration seems to be claiming that it is only bound by the language of the Constitution itself; that any law made by Congress cannot affect the Executive branch, and therefore FISA has no standing.
Now maybe they're wrong (in which case Bush should be impeached) or maybe they're right (and Federal law does not apply to them). In either case, there should at least be an independent investigation to determine who's right.
Of course if Bush is right, then having the Supreme Court confirm it is just a waste of time, since the Judicial Branch would have no more power over the President that the Legislative branch has.
I would ask you to consider a hypothetical question, though:
Suppose the Supreme Court affirms Bush's authority in exactly the way he claims it should. Then suppose some future Congress, under circumstances it deems warranted, sees it prudent to grant some future President an authorization to go to War.
(One might imagine a scenario where a charismatic but clearly insane psuedo-Hitler gains office on a "Let's Nuke France" platform and, upon taking the Oath, France issues a Statement of Policy expressing a desire for Regime Change in the US.)
Suppose such a Congress, mindful of the Courts decision but for reasons it deems warranted, sees it prudent to restrict that future President's power to engage in certain activities during the prosecution of a War to defend the Nation. (We might imagine such restricted activities might include evesdropping of the kind currently being discussed, but imagine the issue was to be treated more broadly, for example Congress wants to grant the President the power to wage war against the enemy France, but not allow an invasion of neutral Belgium in the process.) W
My point was that it's incorrect to say that if you call a [suspected] drug dealer your call cam be [legally] monitored. It can't. That was my point.
Saying 'a call can be [legally] monitored if you call a drug dealer who is being [legally] monitored' is different than saying 'a call can be [legally] monitored if you call a drug dealer who is being [legally] monitored' if you're calling to make a drug deal. It's like the difference between saying 'the State can [legally] execute you' and saying 'the State can [legally] execute you for treason.
In both cases, the former statement is true only when the special circumstances are considered. Neglecting to mention the special circumstances, then building an argument dependent on the existence of the special circumstances you've neglected to mention is false, disingenuous, and misleading. It's the kind of statement which is likely to be employed either by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, or by someone who does but who is trying to employ falshoods and misleading information to make a fallicious argument seem pursuasive to those who don't understand the true situation.
Rolling it up into the larger topic, it's like the difference between saying 'invasion of privacy is allowed under the Fourth Amendment' and saying 'invasion of privacy is allowed under the Fourth Amendment when a warrant has been issued'.
It's a minor point, I'd admit, if you don't care about the truth. Is that like saying it's a minor point?
This is not correct. If the warrant authorizes the tap for a drug investigation, and you call him for help with your homework, your conversation cannot legally be monitored.
If a drug suspicion warrant allows a tap on the phone of a suspected drug dealer, and you call him for help in an embezzelment scheme, that information cannot legally be monitored.
Yeah, that's really wwhat the courts have ruled.
Please get a more up-to-date definition of tapping, or accept mine as a free gift.
A communication tap has nothing to do with putting in place the infrastructure by which means information can be extracted from a channel. Those rules are entirely different, and no one (to the best of my knowledge) is even bringing that up. It's irrelevant to the discussion.
The tap which the Constitution prohibits all branches of U.S. government from practicing against the People involves the extraction of information (a search) or a capture and denial of the delivery of information (a seizure).
In laymans terms, there's no law prohibiting the government from putting a phone butt on your grandmother's line. (although that's not how it's done anymore) but they can't listen in So, yes, technically speaking if they have the capability to extract information out of a foreign telephone, and it happens to get called by a U.S. Citizen, they can't listen in. They don't need a court order to "connect the wires" and they can retain (record) but not share, the information for up to 72 hours while they determine it isn't a U. S. citizen, or ask FISA to authorize it anyway (likely on the basis of "Well, this guy called our suspect...").
With all due respect, you have no basis to make that claim.
The Administration has always chosen it's words particularly carefully when describing (or failing to describe) the scope of the operations. We have been led to believe that evesdropping was limited to cases where at least one portion of the communication circuit was extraterritorial, and at least one person was a "party of interest" but that does not rule-out the (hypothetical) case you describe.
Show me the route list, linkset, and CALEA profile for every leg of the call and then I'll believe you, for that one call. Or, if you won't show it to me, send it to the FISA court; I'll trust them.
Then perhaps you haven't been listening?
If this were true, it would raise the question of how many domestic telephone numbers those cave-extracted cell phones containes, and why FISA would have a problem granting court orders in those cases.
Shhhh! You've just given away the Bush Administration definition of illegal:
I'm sensing you and I may have different definitions of what a "government" is. It's a rather nebulous term so such a misunderstanding is perhaps excusable.
One way to characterize "government" (and the way I'm guessing you are seeing things: please correct me if I'm off base) is by it's power to tax, it's power to make laws (and compel people to obey them), to form armies for common defense, etc.
I tend to define a "government" more broadly to include the system by which any society capable of ensuring the passing of technological artifacts to subsequent generations maintains it's order. This would include everything from the aboriginal tribal system of elders and shaman through the more familiar totalitarian state and representative democracy. It would therefore include such things as neighborhood watch associations, Church assemblies, and quite probably Fred Flintstone's Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes as well. It notably excludes systems in which all participants are directly related biologically (simple family units) even though such systems clearly demonstrate these traits, because biological-only systems are predominant in nature and thus offer only uninteresting cases.
Using (what I believe to be) your definition, you seem to be proposing that it's possible for people to "just get along", cooperate in producing projects of benefit to all, obey agreed-upon rules (as opposed to laws) of their own accord, etc. While I admit the theorhetical possibility that a group of people might be able to accomplish that, I'd feel strongly that the burden of proof should be upon you.
Thoreau was writing in the context of a historical accident: a newly "discovered" and vast nation with seemingly unlimited resources, but was himself simply demonstrating a deeper truth. We're all happy when we can get what we need with little or no struggle. And when the resources are plentiful and the opposition weak, life is good.
But, as Thoreau points out, life begins to suck when you become the opposition, and when others fail to see the same values you do.
No argument there.
But there's the rub. If we exclude humans, every other organism on this planet is geared toward gene-survival, Darwin's survival of the fittest. There is no evidence to suggest that humans are different biologically, plenty of evidence to suggest that they are greatly similar biologically, and an insurmountable avalanche of evidence that we can escape Darwin's trap and cooperate in ways which are not goverend by Kipling's Law of the Jungle.. The various civilizations we've built stand a testament to that.
But claiming that man will "naturally form communities" is a stretch. There is no evidence that any other species (with a couple billion years to crack the problem) ever rose above kill or be killed. We don't know that humans, left to their own devices, will always form cooperative communities, although we do know that humans, left to their own devices, who don't form cooperative communities don't leave much behind for us to study.
The only model we have of how to keep homo-sapient alive as a species involves forming those communities. And the only communities which have had any sort of permanence (if you can call a mere 4000 years permanence) are the ones in which some form of governance has played a role.
Now maybe you're right, and we will eventually discover the essence that seperates civilized creatures from the uncivilized jungle. A