$18 is around, or slightly more, than the cost of most CD's these days. Why would anyone pay $18 for an album's worth of MP3's, which even at 192kbps are not as sharp as the real deal on CD?
The only way a pay service like this will fly at that price point would be to offer downloads in a lossless format. Of course, that means 60-70 megs per song but on broadband that's not a big deal.
If I can get the same quality audio as a CD and choose the 10 songs I want (vs. the 2 good / 8 bad song paradigm of most pre-packaged albumns) for $18 its probably not the worst deal ever given the marketplace (I will refrain from the obligitory ramblings about why CD's should not cost $18 given their production costs, etc.) It might even be worth it to throw in my own $25c CDR, store it some place (jewel box etc.) - i.e. make the whole thing nice like a store bought CD, but if it would really be worth it is a close call and unless there's really a clear advantage, the service will fall flat on its face.
I have to agree here. I don't think they need a seperate category for an actor in heavy makeup, but if an actor lends his abilities to motion-controlling a CGI character that ought to be worthy of its own category.
For that matter, they also ought to have a category for 'best digital character' for a completely CGI created character with no motion control or anything else. Of course the character could be voice acted but the award would only consider the visual aspects.
Given some of the other obscure (and often-times seemingly redundant) categories that the Academy has (including many which are, apparently, not even worthy of inclusion on the prime time awards broadcast) I don't think this is too much of a stretch.
"Does management burn the midnight oil alongside you, or does he work a 40-hour week?"
In my own case, I think the manager invented midnight oil for his own personal use. I suppose that's better than a manager who arrives promptly at 9 AM and leaves at exactly 5 PM if he / she is expecting the employees to work extra hours.
On the other hand, the notion that employees should work insane hours simply because management does too is a bit flawed. a) the manager's are better compensated than the employees - perhaps they *should* work more hours than the employees and b) there are plenty of other incredibly stupid actions I can think of (walking off of a high ledge, for example) that my manager might choose to take but that does not mean I should follow behind them lock-step and take the same actions too. I am not a lemming.
"First, current doctors had to do it way back when, so they see it as sort of "paying your dues".
This is no doubt one of the reasons. However, I was told by a med student friend of mine that the insane hours are largely designed to build up an ability to perform and think even under the most strenuous, exhausting circumstances. Personally, I think this is a good thing - I don't want my doctor screwing up when I go to see him or her just because they had a late night or had a fight with their SO. Considering that doctors do get very well compensated for what is for them an admitedly sucky 3-5 years later on in their careers makes it more or less acceptable, I would say, yes?
"Secondly, there's an artificial shortage of new doctors being produced. Admission to medical schools is severly limited, for what seems to be no good reason other than to keep doctor's salaries high (at least that's my cynical view on things)."
I would tend to disagree here. While it may be possible to teach many people to be good doctors who might not otherwise qualify for med school admission, the current standards ensure that those who do become doctors a) really want to be doctors b) are the best and the brightest. Again, given the choice, I wouldn't want anyone who doesn't meet both of these qualifications treating me, and those who do meet them are very well compensated, so I think it all evens out.
I've seen the story about people looking for this. Just wondering, is it a key recoverable in that it might shed some light on what happened, or is it a key recoverable because its classified and NASA doesn't want it going to the wrong folks?
I wonder why (comm, spy) sats are not designed to dock with a small propellant containing vehicle that could be launched midway through the sats life to replenish propellant, since this seems to be one of the main limitting factors of sat. usefulness, and launching such a vehicle would probably cost a lot less than a whole new sat.
After all, the Russian's do something very similar with their Progress cargo ships that dock automatically with the ISS and had also done this with Mir before.
I have a small travel mouse from PCAlly - they also make the same thing for the Mac under the name MacAlly. The cool thing about it is that the entire shell is made out of the same type of clear plastic that Apple uses on the G4 towers, so the LED makes the whole thing glow red. Its a neat effect. It probably helps that they use a red circuit board as well, but it would be cool to see it glow blue:)
First, as far as good web sites to check out that will help you learn about electronic music, I recommend reading the message boards at the Global Underground Website as well as the message board at homeofmusic.com.
Most of the Global Underground albums are top notch, notably the ones from Sasha, Digweed, and Dave Seaman but the others are also very good. A lot of the Renaissance albums are also very good, especially Renaissance: Awakening. Finally, Sasha and Digweed's Northern Exposure series are all must haves.
Beyond that, it depends exactly what types of electronic music you like (experiment to find out), but other CD's / Artists I'd recommend: the Nude Dimensions series (deep house), Leftfield, Underworld, LTJ Bukem, BT (Brian Transeau).
Try out Soulseek - its got a Napster like client that allows you to build a buddy-list and you can specify exactly how many uploads you'll allow at any given time to the buddy-list members and how many to everyone else.
If there was a format similar to DVD but more analagous to the way CD albums are packaged, you'd have a format like DVD only each DVD would include 10-12 movies (only 1 or 2 that you actually wanted to see) and cost 10-12 times as much as a current DVD (so more like $200 instead of $20) - No one would buy these, either.
On the flip side, if there were an audio format packaged in a way that was analagous to DVD's, you'd have CD's with just the one or two good tracks on them, the video for the song and maybe even an interview with the artist, and they'd cost maybe $3, I suspect consumers would nab them up in droves. The funny thing is that we almost have this, they're called CD singles, only they don't cost $3, they cost often $7-8, and the available selection primarily corresponds to the mindless dribble that gets programmed on most FM radio stations by the corporate drones at Clearchannel and their ilk.
Any industry that doesn't listen to the "gripes" (as Mr. Urie stated) of its customers ought to consider a) how long it will be before it simply has no customers, griping or otherwise and b) Why it would, in turn, expect its customers to give darn about its own gripes - after all, who needs whom more?
Now, granted, no one can blame Urie for being upset - while he and his cohorts were busy ignoring customer "gripes", others who have paid attention (read: Shawn Fanning etc.) have empowered Urie's customers to do something about it since he himself was unwilling to do so.
More ominously for Mr. Urie, I think, is that at the same time an unintended side effect has been that all his competition has been empowered - by this I mean the small unsigned bands (who, until now, have been forced to adopt a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude towards the record labels and their dubious policies) are now achieving previously unheard of levels of promotion and public awareness.
In fact, I would not be at all suprised if the next Napster or AudioGalaxy is created by a group of artists who are willingly providing their own works for free or for a small fee - the only thing they'll need to achieve critical mass is enough artists, who, by all rights, should eventually figure out who they're better off with, each other or the record labels.
AG is effectively dead even at this moment (EVERY song has the infamous "X" logo next to it instead of the satellite dish.
But the crux of the settlement is that in order for AG to let you download a song, they supposedly have to be given explicit permission by the copyright owner to allow the song to be traded through AG - whereas before, they had a model where it was up to the copyright holder to instruct them to block the song.
Bottom line then is that AG may once again become a good resource for well known material from popular bands (as someone might bother to let them trade this stuff for some type of fee), it will never again be a good resource for obscure stuff - old songs from less popular band's back catalogs, live radio appearances etc. - the copyright holders will never bother to give AG permission to allow that stuff to be swapped. In the end the Big Brother that is the RIAA and their DMCA cronies have dealt yet another serious blow to the rest of us todayt.
This is a brilliant idea - if some local non-profit / pledge drive oriented stations (like KCRW here in LA) partnered with these guys to bring subscribers some type of solicitation free listening on their stations they'd really be on to something... IMHO a lot of these non-profit stations are vastly superior to commercial radio but every few months they do a pledge drive and listening to them can get almost unbearable...
The bottom line with the success of these services will be a) Is the content actually good, where they'll play a song even if it isn't on a major label or performed by Brittney Spears, or am I going to have to listen to the same 75 songs programmed by mindless corporate drones over and over like I have to do on FM today? b) If they actually get part 'a' right, will they last long enough financially for word of mouth to help them achieve critical mass?
On a technical note, does anyone know the capacity of these systems in terms of the number of seperate channels they can offer?
Ok, I know that there is a great legislative tradition in this country of attaching riders to Bills. None-the-less, is anyone else as disgusted as I am by the RIAA's attempt to take advantage of our reaction to the senseless killing of ~5000 innocent civilians (not to mention ~5000 of their customers) by attempting to couple their own self-serving interests with Congress's reaction to this atrocity?
"It's important to not only let other people air their views..." Ummm, they aired their "views" when they attacked us, and they've been doing it constantly in the month since. When someone's views call for your destruction, the killing of your own innocent civilians wherever they can, and they've made good on those threats in the past, how much more should we listen to them?
"...but to listen and respond in kind" I'd say we've now responded in kind, at least a little bit.
I simply ask this question - if a (massive) pre-emptive military strike could have prevented Sept. 11, and you were President, would you have hesitated even for a split second to give the order?
Several months ago, there was a thread on Slashdot concerning the anti-DMCA efforts of a certain Virginian (or West Virginian) congressman which prompted me to write my national representitives urging them to work with this congressman to repeal DMCA.
Below is the response I received from my congressman (Howard Berman, Democrat, 26th District of California) re: my letter. I also sent the same letter that prompted this reply to our Senators Fienstein and Boxer, but never received replies.
Dear (Me):
Thank you for writing to express your concerns about the effect of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) on the fair use defense to copyright infringement. During the several years of debate and negotiation that preceded enactment of the DMCA, fair use was one of the most frequently discussed issues. As a result, the DMCA contains a number of provisions to ensure that it does not adversely affect fair use.
First, the DMCA does not change the law with regards to fair use. In fact, Section 1201(c) of the Copyright Act, as enacted by the DMCA, states: "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use under this title." (emphasis added.)
Second, the DMCA makes a distinction between unauthorized copying and unauthorized access. Since copying a work may be a fair use of that work under certain circumstances, the act of circumvention is only prohibited in the area of gaining unauthorized access to copyrighted materials. Further, the DMCA makes illegal only those devices that are "primarily designed" to circumvent technologies preventing access to or copying of copyrighted works, or those that have "only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent" such technologies. These limitted prohibitions on certain devices in no way impair an individual's ability to assert a fair use defense to copyright infringement. In addition, a variety of exemptions where created, including exemptions for reverse engineering, security testing, encryption research, and certain uses by libraries and schools.
Perhaps most importantly, in response to fair use concerns, the DMCA establishes a mechanism allow the Library of Congress to create further exemptions to the circumvention prohibition if it adversely affects non-infringing uses, including fair use. The Library of Congress recently completed a two year study on the affects of the DMCA on non-infringing uses - a study for which hundreds of schools, libraries and others provided comments and testimony. The Library of Congress found an adverse effect on non-infringing uses in only two very narrow circumstances, and as authorized by the DMCA, the Library of Congress suspended the prohibitions of the DMCA in these two circumstances. The Library of Congress will repeat this study every two years, and, if it finds adverse effects on fair use, is authorized by the DMCA to create further exemptions to the prohibitions on circumvention.
You also raised concerns about the recent decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the DeCSS case. I believe the court's decesion was correct on both legal, and more importantly, policy grounds. The court clearly found, after reviewing all the facts, that DeCSS was primarily designed to circumvent the CSS encryption on DVD movies in order to allow the unauthorized copying and distribution of these movies. Based on the copious contrary admissions of the creators of DeCSS, the court rejected their belated attempts to argue that DeCSS was primarily designed to allow users to play CSS-protected DVDs on computers with Linux operating systems. If the DeCSS developers simply wanted to enable the playing of DVDs on a Linus-operated system, they could have sought a license from the CSS licensing authority and turned their prodigious programming talents to developing a Linux player. In fact, the CSS licensing authority, which is required by its own rules to offer non-discriminatory licenses, has now licensed a group to create a Linux player for CSS-protected DVDs.
The purpose of the DMCA was to benefit consumers by increasing the availability of copyrighted works in digital form. The DMCA recognized that increased availability would not occur unless copyrighted works could be adequately protected, but also went to great lengths to ensure that these protections to not restrict the ability to make fair use of such works. I believe that the DMCA achieves this goal. I appreciate hearing your views on the topic. Please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
HOWARD L. BERMAN
Member of Congress
While I am impressed by my congressman's (or, perhaps, a member of his staff) familiarity with the technologies and the issues involved, his position of course is highly dissapointing. Since the copyright holders seem to be able to freely determine "authorized" and "unauthorized" uses - it seems to this observer that things that should be considered "fair use" can simply get dumped into the "unauthorized" bucket by the copyright holders (a clear case of the fox gaurding the hen house if ever there was one), which, IMHO, is exactly what CSS does.
The problem with your analogy is that a firearms instructor does not endorse the assasination of the president. He doesn't provde the student with the weapon, pay for his plane ticket to Washington etc. If he did, the least he'd be guilty of under our domestic laws is accessory to murder. More likely, guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
If, as you suggest, those who receive training from Bin Laden's organization who then go out and spread terror are our enemies, then this man is providing aid and comfort to our enemies. In fact, without Bin Laden, many of these people would be guilty of no more than 'thought crimes' as you call them due to their inability to translate their thoughts into actions.
In any case, Mr. Bin Laden is not protected by the first amendment or the rest of our constitution. If you wish to extend to him such protection, then I ask you for God's sake why?
In fact, I ask everyone, if we could kill Bin Laden today without harming any other persons, or we could wait to bring him to justice during which time we reasonably believed he was immenently going to kill one, two, or hundreds of more innocent civilians, would anyone seriously hesitate to order his death immediately if it was within their power and to hell with his 'fair trial'?
I can't thing of a much better way to collectively give these terrorists the symbolic finger than what's reported in this article over at Yahoo - structural repairs to the USS Cole have been completed and she's been relaunched into the water. They couldn't sink this ship and they'll never, ever sink our spirits.
This link at the Washington Post relates the story of two people on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania conveying to loved ones that they intended to try and overpower the hijackers before they were able to carry out their plans. If these people even tried what they were talking about, even if it wasn't the cause of the apparently pre-mature crash, IMHO they are true heros.
I think you have some good ideas (especially recording sounds from the cabin as well as the cockpit if the plane is put in emergency mode - in fact, technology exists today where video could be used too, especially in the cockpit).
Unfortunately, isolating the cockpit in this way is something that is a) probably impossible or cost prohibitive to retrofit into existing planes and b) probably prohibitive from a design standpoint to add to new planes (and even if not, today's planes will be flying for years).
I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that at least some airlines can land on autopilot at airports with the correct types of radio beacons on the runway. If a pilot puts a plane into 'emergency' mode, the plane would head immediately to the nearest designated emergency airport along its route and land. Manual control inputs would be locked out. In this scenario, a plane could be taken over by terrorists who could initiate a hostage situation, but they could no longer control the plane's destination.
Perhaps I should have stated more explicity - prior acts + stated intentions to commit more acts are equivelant to a reasonable expectation that in the future such acts will be committed. Therefore, we should strike Bin Laden with impunity.
How much evidence do you need before you use deadly force to prevent someone from attacking you, or do you just let them attack you and sort it out later?
"These are all absurd reactions. If you don't have a concrete reason for retaliation and specific goals for what you expect that retaliation to accomplish, then you are just lashing out against your fears."
Again, its not retaliation, its pre-emption against future acts of terror. That is what "retaliation" will accomplish, by removing those who would commit these acts from the equation.
Look, there is no rigid 'algorithm' to this - its easy to dismiss someone's rationale by taking that rationale to an extremity - we've got to use our heads on a case by case basis. China is not going to attack Taiwan. Everyone who owns a gun will not go out and kill someone. Osama Bin Laden, on the other hand, has killed (or had people killed on his behalf) and has made strong indications that he'd like to do so again. There is (as far as we know) strong evidence to support this. Does this man have the right to a fair trial before we kill him, especially if killing him now will prevent future deaths? NO. He is not a US citizen, and is not himself present in our territory. He is not protected by the constitution or our laws, yet he represents a severe danger to our very lives. We have the power to stop him now, and if we don't we'll probably suffer the consequences for not doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, Starbuck was the womanizer
I thought Starbuck was the coffee?
$18 is around, or slightly more, than the cost of most CD's these days. Why would anyone pay $18 for an album's worth of MP3's, which even at 192kbps are not as sharp as the real deal on CD?
The only way a pay service like this will fly at that price point would be to offer downloads in a lossless format. Of course, that means 60-70 megs per song but on broadband that's not a big deal.
If I can get the same quality audio as a CD and choose the 10 songs I want (vs. the 2 good / 8 bad song paradigm of most pre-packaged albumns) for $18 its probably not the worst deal ever given the marketplace (I will refrain from the obligitory ramblings about why CD's should not cost $18 given their production costs, etc.) It might even be worth it to throw in my own $25c CDR, store it some place (jewel box etc.) - i.e. make the whole thing nice like a store bought CD, but if it would really be worth it is a close call and unless there's really a clear advantage, the service will fall flat on its face.
For that matter, they also ought to have a category for 'best digital character' for a completely CGI created character with no motion control or anything else. Of course the character could be voice acted but the award would only consider the visual aspects.
Given some of the other obscure (and often-times seemingly redundant) categories that the Academy has (including many which are, apparently, not even worthy of inclusion on the prime time awards broadcast) I don't think this is too much of a stretch.
In my own case, I think the manager invented midnight oil for his own personal use. I suppose that's better than a manager who arrives promptly at 9 AM and leaves at exactly 5 PM if he / she is expecting the employees to work extra hours.
On the other hand, the notion that employees should work insane hours simply because management does too is a bit flawed. a) the manager's are better compensated than the employees - perhaps they *should* work more hours than the employees and b) there are plenty of other incredibly stupid actions I can think of (walking off of a high ledge, for example) that my manager might choose to take but that does not mean I should follow behind them lock-step and take the same actions too. I am not a lemming.
This is no doubt one of the reasons. However, I was told by a med student friend of mine that the insane hours are largely designed to build up an ability to perform and think even under the most strenuous, exhausting circumstances. Personally, I think this is a good thing - I don't want my doctor screwing up when I go to see him or her just because they had a late night or had a fight with their SO. Considering that doctors do get very well compensated for what is for them an admitedly sucky 3-5 years later on in their careers makes it more or less acceptable, I would say, yes?
"Secondly, there's an artificial shortage of new doctors being produced. Admission to medical schools is severly limited, for what seems to be no good reason other than to keep doctor's salaries high (at least that's my cynical view on things)."
I would tend to disagree here. While it may be possible to teach many people to be good doctors who might not otherwise qualify for med school admission, the current standards ensure that those who do become doctors a) really want to be doctors b) are the best and the brightest. Again, given the choice, I wouldn't want anyone who doesn't meet both of these qualifications treating me, and those who do meet them are very well compensated, so I think it all evens out.
I've seen the story about people looking for this. Just wondering, is it a key recoverable in that it might shed some light on what happened, or is it a key recoverable because its classified and NASA doesn't want it going to the wrong folks?
I wonder why (comm, spy) sats are not designed to dock with a small propellant containing vehicle that could be launched midway through the sats life to replenish propellant, since this seems to be one of the main limitting factors of sat. usefulness, and launching such a vehicle would probably cost a lot less than a whole new sat.
After all, the Russian's do something very similar with their Progress cargo ships that dock automatically with the ISS and had also done this with Mir before.
Or does it remind anyone else of the interigation droid from Star Wars - especially if painted black?
"And now, your highness, we will discuss the location of your secret rebel base."
I have a small travel mouse from PCAlly - they also make the same thing for the Mac under the name MacAlly. The cool thing about it is that the entire shell is made out of the same type of clear plastic that Apple uses on the G4 towers, so the LED makes the whole thing glow red. Its a neat effect. It probably helps that they use a red circuit board as well, but it would be cool to see it glow blue :)
First, as far as good web sites to check out that will help you learn about electronic music, I recommend reading the message boards at the Global Underground Website as well as the message board at homeofmusic.com.
Most of the Global Underground albums are top notch, notably the ones from Sasha, Digweed, and Dave Seaman but the others are also very good. A lot of the Renaissance albums are also very good, especially Renaissance: Awakening. Finally, Sasha and Digweed's Northern Exposure series are all must haves.
Beyond that, it depends exactly what types of electronic music you like (experiment to find out), but other CD's / Artists I'd recommend: the Nude Dimensions series (deep house), Leftfield, Underworld, LTJ Bukem, BT (Brian Transeau).
Hope this is of some help!
Try out Soulseek - its got a Napster like client that allows you to build a buddy-list and you can specify exactly how many uploads you'll allow at any given time to the buddy-list members and how many to everyone else.
If there was a format similar to DVD but more analagous to the way CD albums are packaged, you'd have a format like DVD only each DVD would include 10-12 movies (only 1 or 2 that you actually wanted to see) and cost 10-12 times as much as a current DVD (so more like $200 instead of $20) - No one would buy these, either.
On the flip side, if there were an audio format packaged in a way that was analagous to DVD's, you'd have CD's with just the one or two good tracks on them, the video for the song and maybe even an interview with the artist, and they'd cost maybe $3, I suspect consumers would nab them up in droves. The funny thing is that we almost have this, they're called CD singles, only they don't cost $3, they cost often $7-8, and the available selection primarily corresponds to the mindless dribble that gets programmed on most FM radio stations by the corporate drones at Clearchannel and their ilk.
Any industry that doesn't listen to the "gripes" (as Mr. Urie stated) of its customers ought to consider a) how long it will be before it simply has no customers, griping or otherwise and b) Why it would, in turn, expect its customers to give darn about its own gripes - after all, who needs whom more?
Now, granted, no one can blame Urie for being upset - while he and his cohorts were busy ignoring customer "gripes", others who have paid attention (read: Shawn Fanning etc.) have empowered Urie's customers to do something about it since he himself was unwilling to do so.
More ominously for Mr. Urie, I think, is that at the same time an unintended side effect has been that all his competition has been empowered - by this I mean the small unsigned bands (who, until now, have been forced to adopt a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude towards the record labels and their dubious policies) are now achieving previously unheard of levels of promotion and public awareness.
In fact, I would not be at all suprised if the next Napster or AudioGalaxy is created by a group of artists who are willingly providing their own works for free or for a small fee - the only thing they'll need to achieve critical mass is enough artists, who, by all rights, should eventually figure out who they're better off with, each other or the record labels.
But the crux of the settlement is that in order for AG to let you download a song, they supposedly have to be given explicit permission by the copyright owner to allow the song to be traded through AG - whereas before, they had a model where it was up to the copyright holder to instruct them to block the song.
Bottom line then is that AG may once again become a good resource for well known material from popular bands (as someone might bother to let them trade this stuff for some type of fee), it will never again be a good resource for obscure stuff - old songs from less popular band's back catalogs, live radio appearances etc. - the copyright holders will never bother to give AG permission to allow that stuff to be swapped. In the end the Big Brother that is the RIAA and their DMCA cronies have dealt yet another serious blow to the rest of us todayt.
Uh,size matters not - probably easier to grab one object (however large) than two seperate ones...
This is a brilliant idea - if some local non-profit / pledge drive oriented stations (like KCRW here in LA) partnered with these guys to bring subscribers some type of solicitation free listening on their stations they'd really be on to something... IMHO a lot of these non-profit stations are vastly superior to commercial radio but every few months they do a pledge drive and listening to them can get almost unbearable...
On a technical note, does anyone know the capacity of these systems in terms of the number of seperate channels they can offer?
So does this mean you can connect the iPod to a Linux box, copy MP3's to it, and use it on the go, no Mac required?
Ok, I know that there is a great legislative tradition in this country of attaching riders to Bills. None-the-less, is anyone else as disgusted as I am by the RIAA's attempt to take advantage of our reaction to the senseless killing of ~5000 innocent civilians (not to mention ~5000 of their customers) by attempting to couple their own self-serving interests with Congress's reaction to this atrocity?
"It's important to not only let other people air their views..." Ummm, they aired their "views" when they attacked us, and they've been doing it constantly in the month since. When someone's views call for your destruction, the killing of your own innocent civilians wherever they can, and they've made good on those threats in the past, how much more should we listen to them?
"...but to listen and respond in kind" I'd say we've now responded in kind, at least a little bit.
I simply ask this question - if a (massive) pre-emptive military strike could have prevented Sept. 11, and you were President, would you have hesitated even for a split second to give the order?
Several months ago, there was a thread on Slashdot concerning the anti-DMCA efforts of a certain Virginian (or West Virginian) congressman which prompted me to write my national representitives urging them to work with this congressman to repeal DMCA.
Below is the response I received from my congressman (Howard Berman, Democrat, 26th District of California) re: my letter. I also sent the same letter that prompted this reply to our Senators Fienstein and Boxer, but never received replies.
Dear (Me):
Thank you for writing to express your concerns about the effect of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) on the fair use defense to copyright infringement. During the several years of debate and negotiation that preceded enactment of the DMCA, fair use was one of the most frequently discussed issues. As a result, the DMCA contains a number of provisions to ensure that it does not adversely affect fair use.
First, the DMCA does not change the law with regards to fair use. In fact, Section 1201(c) of the Copyright Act, as enacted by the DMCA, states: "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use under this title." (emphasis added.)
Second, the DMCA makes a distinction between unauthorized copying and unauthorized access. Since copying a work may be a fair use of that work under certain circumstances, the act of circumvention is only prohibited in the area of gaining unauthorized access to copyrighted materials. Further, the DMCA makes illegal only those devices that are "primarily designed" to circumvent technologies preventing access to or copying of copyrighted works, or those that have "only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent" such technologies. These limitted prohibitions on certain devices in no way impair an individual's ability to assert a fair use defense to copyright infringement. In addition, a variety of exemptions where created, including exemptions for reverse engineering, security testing, encryption research, and certain uses by libraries and schools.
Perhaps most importantly, in response to fair use concerns, the DMCA establishes a mechanism allow the Library of Congress to create further exemptions to the circumvention prohibition if it adversely affects non-infringing uses, including fair use. The Library of Congress recently completed a two year study on the affects of the DMCA on non-infringing uses - a study for which hundreds of schools, libraries and others provided comments and testimony. The Library of Congress found an adverse effect on non-infringing uses in only two very narrow circumstances, and as authorized by the DMCA, the Library of Congress suspended the prohibitions of the DMCA in these two circumstances. The Library of Congress will repeat this study every two years, and, if it finds adverse effects on fair use, is authorized by the DMCA to create further exemptions to the prohibitions on circumvention.
You also raised concerns about the recent decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in the DeCSS case. I believe the court's decesion was correct on both legal, and more importantly, policy grounds. The court clearly found, after reviewing all the facts, that DeCSS was primarily designed to circumvent the CSS encryption on DVD movies in order to allow the unauthorized copying and distribution of these movies. Based on the copious contrary admissions of the creators of DeCSS, the court rejected their belated attempts to argue that DeCSS was primarily designed to allow users to play CSS-protected DVDs on computers with Linux operating systems. If the DeCSS developers simply wanted to enable the playing of DVDs on a Linus-operated system, they could have sought a license from the CSS licensing authority and turned their prodigious programming talents to developing a Linux player. In fact, the CSS licensing authority, which is required by its own rules to offer non-discriminatory licenses, has now licensed a group to create a Linux player for CSS-protected DVDs.
The purpose of the DMCA was to benefit consumers by increasing the availability of copyrighted works in digital form. The DMCA recognized that increased availability would not occur unless copyrighted works could be adequately protected, but also went to great lengths to ensure that these protections to not restrict the ability to make fair use of such works. I believe that the DMCA achieves this goal. I appreciate hearing your views on the topic. Please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
HOWARD L. BERMAN
Member of Congress
While I am impressed by my congressman's (or, perhaps, a member of his staff) familiarity with the technologies and the issues involved, his position of course is highly dissapointing. Since the copyright holders seem to be able to freely determine "authorized" and "unauthorized" uses - it seems to this observer that things that should be considered "fair use" can simply get dumped into the "unauthorized" bucket by the copyright holders (a clear case of the fox gaurding the hen house if ever there was one), which, IMHO, is exactly what CSS does.
The problem with your analogy is that a firearms instructor does not endorse the assasination of the president. He doesn't provde the student with the weapon, pay for his plane ticket to Washington etc. If he did, the least he'd be guilty of under our domestic laws is accessory to murder. More likely, guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.
If, as you suggest, those who receive training from Bin Laden's organization who then go out and spread terror are our enemies, then this man is providing aid and comfort to our enemies. In fact, without Bin Laden, many of these people would be guilty of no more than 'thought crimes' as you call them due to their inability to translate their thoughts into actions.
In any case, Mr. Bin Laden is not protected by the first amendment or the rest of our constitution. If you wish to extend to him such protection, then I ask you for God's sake why?
In fact, I ask everyone, if we could kill Bin Laden today without harming any other persons, or we could wait to bring him to justice during which time we reasonably believed he was immenently going to kill one, two, or hundreds of more innocent civilians, would anyone seriously hesitate to order his death immediately if it was within their power and to hell with his 'fair trial'?
I can't thing of a much better way to collectively give these terrorists the symbolic finger than what's reported in this article over at Yahoo - structural repairs to the USS Cole have been completed and she's been relaunched into the water. They couldn't sink this ship and they'll never, ever sink our spirits.
This link at the Washington Post relates the story of two people on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania conveying to loved ones that they intended to try and overpower the hijackers before they were able to carry out their plans. If these people even tried what they were talking about, even if it wasn't the cause of the apparently pre-mature crash, IMHO they are true heros.
I think you have some good ideas (especially recording sounds from the cabin as well as the cockpit if the plane is put in emergency mode - in fact, technology exists today where video could be used too, especially in the cockpit).
Unfortunately, isolating the cockpit in this way is something that is a) probably impossible or cost prohibitive to retrofit into existing planes and b) probably prohibitive from a design standpoint to add to new planes (and even if not, today's planes will be flying for years).
I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that at least some airlines can land on autopilot at airports with the correct types of radio beacons on the runway. If a pilot puts a plane into 'emergency' mode, the plane would head immediately to the nearest designated emergency airport along its route and land. Manual control inputs would be locked out. In this scenario, a plane could be taken over by terrorists who could initiate a hostage situation, but they could no longer control the plane's destination.
Perhaps I should have stated more explicity - prior acts + stated intentions to commit more acts are equivelant to a reasonable expectation that in the future such acts will be committed. Therefore, we should strike Bin Laden with impunity.
How much evidence do you need before you use deadly force to prevent someone from attacking you, or do you just let them attack you and sort it out later?
"These are all absurd reactions. If you don't have a concrete reason for retaliation and specific goals for what you expect that retaliation to accomplish, then you are just lashing out against your fears."
Again, its not retaliation, its pre-emption against future acts of terror. That is what "retaliation" will accomplish, by removing those who would commit these acts from the equation.
Look, there is no rigid 'algorithm' to this - its easy to dismiss someone's rationale by taking that rationale to an extremity - we've got to use our heads on a case by case basis. China is not going to attack Taiwan. Everyone who owns a gun will not go out and kill someone. Osama Bin Laden, on the other hand, has killed (or had people killed on his behalf) and has made strong indications that he'd like to do so again. There is (as far as we know) strong evidence to support this. Does this man have the right to a fair trial before we kill him, especially if killing him now will prevent future deaths? NO. He is not a US citizen, and is not himself present in our territory. He is not protected by the constitution or our laws, yet he represents a severe danger to our very lives. We have the power to stop him now, and if we don't we'll probably suffer the consequences for not doing so.