and she's got a blog. (and hates that term. I'm not fond of it myself.) And this item may come in very handy for her grad school paper on how libraries and librarians are changing with technical evolution. so, uh, thanks.
I've never been prouder (more proud?) to live in Madison than I am now. Last night the city council voted to passed the "Resolution to Defend the Bill of Rights and Civil Liberties," which removes the city and its services and subordinates from participating in the PATRIOT Act. Seventeen of the twenty alders voted in favor of the resolution, two voted against it, and one (the hard-right conservative who's been lightening up lately) abstained.
This is what an effective local democracy gives you: people who implement what you think and feel in the local legislative body. Considering that our city council has a near-majority of Greens/ Progressives, I can't wait until we get a true majority on board. Really good stuff (and a hell of a lot of work!) may start to happen.
Speaking of local democracy, there's a conference on that very subject coming up next month. Community Power 2002 will be bringing in people from England, Brazil, Santa Barbara CA, Pennsylvania, and Hartford CT to talk about their experiences with l.d. We'll be planning for it here in our county, and possibly other communities if we get enough people from another place to do it. Should be good!
Siva Vaidhyanathan, whom I interviewed for Slashdot (uncut text of the interview is available over here), debated Fritz Attaway of the MPAA (not the RIAA) for NPR's Justice Talking. That debate is...hearable?... over here.
I've laughed a bit as I've read some of the trolls on here, and shaken my head at the more serious comments that suggest decent people that have a very misconstrued concept of what IMC is about.
The people that I know in my local Indymedia are all very much in favor of democritizing things. This includes government, media, and trade. (Lately I've been thinking that democracy is a more radical concept than most realize...)
Indymedia was founded around the time of the 1999 WTO protests, which were pro-democratic as much as ore more than they were anti-capitalist. (FTAA and NAFTA are rather the opposite, anti-democratic, pro-capitalist.)
Just so you get a feel of what's actually on an IMC, here's some of what was on madison.indymedia.org today:
- Madison City Council Considering Section 8 Housing Ordinance Tonight - Digital Rights Management Begins Creeping Into Windows Software, Audio CDs (my article; summary of Slashdot, the Register, eWeek, other sources) - UW Madison Students Defeat Attempt To Oust Progressive Campus Leaders - My Summer Vacation as a Delegate at the AFL-CIO Convention
The stories such as these that get featured in the center column are usually of relatively high quality, of local interest, and linked to a longer article. Since joining the Madison IMC I've become one of the center column editors, although I never edit any articles that people have submitted. That goes against our ethics.
We strive for accuracy, passion, and truth. Not ratings or advertising dollars.
Why on earth would financial companies ask IM companies to cooperate? Are they suddenly finding their brokers and back-room deal makers suddenly IMing all the time? Wouldn't they have banned such behavior from their intranets and extranets?
Sounds to me like they want to make the IM companies easier to acquire. (How you can build a company on something as nebulous as IMing is beyond me.)
How many people can throw $1 million at something? No one I know can do that. Throwing a big lump of money at something is not democracy.
BTW, I'm all for restraining out-of-control copyright law, and grateful that we now have a significant chunk of change. But it is not democratic for one person to affect something. If we were really in a democracy, we would have been able to more directly have a say in this before things like the DMCA and SSSCA crept in to existence. And technically, we did -- our senators and representatives are supposed to represent us, but often times, they represent the corporations (and a few individuals) who give them -- or more likely, their party -- campaign contributions.
For the RIAA to buy off a senator (i.e. Hollings) makes the government into of a plutocracy -- rule by the rich. And so much of it is what I call a petrolcracy - he who controls the oil controls much more. But I digress...
Oh, last: that $1M didn't go to the American government. Duke Univ. law school != the American government. Neither of which are democratic.
I'd say we were 60% of the way there. We had decent GUIs (Gnome, KDE (which was really starting to rock when I left)), Netatalk for AppleTalk, Mac-on-Linux (hard to configure but quite good; perhaps a bit faster than the native Mac OS 9?) plus the usual assortment of OSS servers and applications.
When NeXT aquired Apple, I knew something big was going to happen. Years of speculating as to what would happen if Jobs came back to Apple was answered: first the iMac. Then OS X, which at first didn't look too hot.
When 10.1 came out, though, they got me back on the Apple wagon in full effect. Killing cloning was one step. If they hadn't made OS X, and that hadn't become as good as it is, I might not have ever come back.
But they did go to Unix. OS X gives me everything I love about Unix -- the stability, multitasking and multiprocessing from hell, and vi -- and melds it with the Mac in ways I never thought possible. The Mac's back, baby, and so much better than ever, ever before!
Now only if it were free...;-)
But... here I am! I think differently about many, many things. Software's just one of them. (Politics being the other big one. Progressive, non-Democrat activists such as myself may seem to the world much like Linux users did to the rest of the world in 1997. But more on that later. And not here.)
anyway... No, OS X is not 100% open or free, but it's close enough that I'm pretty comfortable with it. (Sorry, RMS.)
Is it just me, or did the price on the 17" iMac increase by $100?
(OH GAWD NO NOT $100 OH THAT'S BLOODY LARCENY OH THE PAIN OH MY GAWD NOOOOO.... sorry...;-) I just realized that it is kind of ridiculous to be screaming bloody murder over a $100 price drop when they've cut the prices on their other machines and introduced rocking PMG4s.;-)
'less they're talking about the Common Gateway Interface. that could do it... blow a security hole right through it. If Hollywood lived in 1995 on the Internet time scale anyway. which they don't.
nah, it'll effect Hollywood, but it sure the hell won't kill it.
-- haaz, digging out his Thin Man video tapes now.
Bush "morally and ethically correct"?
on
WorldCom Fraud Doubles
·
· Score: 4, Informative
If getting business after business bailed out at taxpayer expense qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
If being AWOL during your time in the National Guard (which coincided with the Vietnam War) qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
If killing more people in Afghanistan than were killed in the World Trade Center qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
If getting in the White House by winning a lawsuit after depriving thousands of their right to vote, qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
Research the Bush family a little bit. Find out about Laura Bush's homicide via hit and run. Notice what agency G.W.H. Bush headed in the 1970s. Find out where Prescott Bush got his money from. Look at how much the Carlyle Group and Halliburton have received as a result of the W.'s war. See if you still think they're qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct."
Does anyone remember the old Apple II game Snack Attack? I surprised and delighted my dad on his 6oth birthday by making Snack Attack run on the Apple II emulator. Soon we were dueling each other, just like it was 1982 all over again! The grin on his face was unbelievable.. kinda like the grin on mine as I recall it!
ANYway, is there a port of this one? I thought of writing a GPL port of it, but I can't program to save my life...;-)
Siva Vaidhyanathan interviewed on Slashdot
on
Copyright as Cudgel
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I had the pleasure of interviewing Siva Vaidhyanathan, which appeared on this very site. And I just posted the full, uncut version over here. It's a few pages longer than what was posted here.
Good luck at NYU, Siva!
-- haaz
ps - haaz.net is temporarily down.
Now that I'm not a sysadmin, all I can say is...
on
Sysadmin Day. Yay.
·
· Score: 2
hall-eh-freakin'-lou-yuh!
Aside from my home system and a friend's system, I'm no longer one for a whole network of ungrateful users. Or bosses. Hooray for that alone! And the friend is getting smart about running his own system. So yay again.
-- haaz, who doesn't miss being a sysadmin one bit.
I would not be surprised if most people do not know what the sardonically named USA Patriot Act does. Here's a brief rundown:
Permits the government to label groups as "terrorist" without proof or procedural safeguards.
Expands agents' authority to secretly enter homes and offices during criminal investigations and search, take photos, and download computer files.
Allows the FBI wide latitude to wiretap and spy on activists' phones, faxes, and e-mails.
Provides for indefinite detention of noncitizens.
It's bad. For the record, I agree with what's been said in the higher moderated comments about the U.S. becoming a police state. It is.
And we are not at war.
Except for the war on the Constitution. That's more real than their war on drugs, or terrorism.
anyway... A few cities, Portland, Oregon, Denver, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, are opposing the PATRIOT Act. Others haven't officially done so but are refusing to participate in the screenings their police departments have been asked to do. People are standing up to this and seeing it for the unconstitutional nightmare that it is.
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him!"
- George W. Bush, September 13, 2001
(how'd he know who was responsible so soon, hmm? hmm....)
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
Siva Vaidhyanathan on Slashdot
on
H2K2 Wrapup
·
· Score: 2
Siva Vaidhyanathan appeared on Slashdot before: I intervied him about his book Copyrights and Wrongs. The interview is over here.
I just had a major realization today. Or at least I think I did.
Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) intensely-disliked-by-Slashdotters bill, the SSSCA/CBDTPA, would require all devices/gizmos to ship with "digital rights management" chips (i.e. the Fritz chip in TCPA). So, then, the SSSCA would be bringing MS Palladium much closer to fruition by making computers and gizmos ship with TCPA! I think that's right, right? holy...
I did an interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan on the SSSCA/CBDTPA, and we talked about how it would really really hurt open source. But it wasn't until today that I realized Palladium, TCPA, and the SSSCA/CBDTPA were intimately connected. Holy fuck! is this stuff tied up together!
Having a plutocratic government is bad enough. This is 1000 times worse. For me anyway. And I suspect it is for you, too.
In recent weeks I have written six articles for madison.indymedia.org, the local chapter of the Independent Media Center. IMC is "a collective of media activists involved in radio, television, publishing, and much more." As someone on here pointed out, they have a strong left/radical "bias," which is the direct opposite of what's on CNN/Faux News. (And rapidly the rest of the mainstream media. [insert rant here])
The biggest difference is not the "spin" of many of its reports, but the fact that it is run and written by people who want to become the media, be the media. It's a really freaking cool thing, if you ask me. It's got old school punk music's DIY attitude, and unlike so much mainstream media, it will actually tell you what's going on. (Compare the coverage of the recent U.S. Conference of Mayors here in Madison if you need proof.)
Yes, some people within it have the "obligatory" anti-corporate attitude, but really, this is real news made by real people. It's good. Check it out!
Now I wish I hadn't snipped what Siva said about the Sonny Bono Act from the interview we did! Here it is:
JH: "In your book, you refer to the DMCA as an example of what you call a "thick" copyright law. Can you explain the difference between "thick" copyright law and a "thin" law?"
SV: "...One way to measure the thickness of a copyright law is to look at the duration of protection. If works enter the public domain before an author's life expectancy expires, then it's a thin and democratic system. If the duration of copyright protection is absurdly long and potentially indefinite, then it's way too thick.
"JH: And the DMCA does this?
"SV: Not exactly. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which added 20 years to almost all active copyrights, does this. The Copyright Act of 1976 did this as well, but it took people a while to complain about it. Before THE 1976 ACT, copyright terms were for a fixed amouNt of time: 28 years per term, renewable once. Since the 1976 act, the term has been life of the author plus 50 years, and now 70 years. The Supreme Court will hear a case in the fall about the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Act. And many of us on the public interest side of copyright debates are hoping that the justices revert to the first principles of American copyright: that copyright is meant to promote creativity and expression, not retard it. Copyright has become corrupted to such a degree that it's now an instrument of censorship, as Dmitri Sklyarov and Edward Felten can tell you."
-- haaz, who will think twice before snipped for brevity's sake.
"We should give the system time to correct itself...but...
time is money... money is power... power corrupts...
therefore, by waiting we are corrupting them even more..."
Don't wait -- act!
Help fight for campaign finance reform on the state and local level.
Join an independent political party that's working for this and other progressive reforms
Write your Congressmen! It's an old old line, but it really makes a difference. Hand-written letters are 100 times more effective!
A republican democracy such as the American system is ineffective unless we participate in it. That's one reason why ours (America's) has suffered so much over the past 20+ years.
>The injunction handed down on >December 17, 1991 forced Biz Markie's hit album, >"I Need a Haircut," off the shelves for including >a sample of Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)."
I believe that Siva has specifically referred to that case at his coloquims (sp.)? and book signings. You are right on, Isaac!
A friendly debate: Which book is a better read: Lessig's Code or Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs? We're not looking at the specifics of the content -- Code being about the regulation of cyberspace -- but their readability. I will take no offense at those who give Code the nod.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
and she's got a blog. (and hates that term. I'm not fond of it myself.) And this item may come in very handy for her grad school paper on how libraries and librarians are changing with technical evolution. so, uh, thanks.
I've never been prouder (more proud?) to live in Madison than I am now. Last night the city council voted to passed the "Resolution to Defend the Bill of Rights and Civil Liberties," which removes the city and its services and subordinates from participating in the PATRIOT Act. Seventeen of the twenty alders voted in favor of the resolution, two voted against it, and one (the hard-right conservative who's been lightening up lately) abstained.
This is what an effective local democracy gives you: people who implement what you think and feel in the local legislative body. Considering that our city council has a near-majority of Greens/ Progressives, I can't wait until we get a true majority on board. Really good stuff (and a hell of a lot of work!) may start to happen.
Speaking of local democracy, there's a conference on that very subject coming up next month. Community Power 2002 will be bringing in people from England, Brazil, Santa Barbara CA, Pennsylvania, and Hartford CT to talk about their experiences with l.d. We'll be planning for it here in our county, and possibly other communities if we get enough people from another place to do it. Should be good!
Siva Vaidhyanathan, whom I interviewed for Slashdot (uncut text of the interview is available over here), debated Fritz Attaway of the MPAA (not the RIAA) for NPR's Justice Talking. That debate is ...hearable?... over here .
Enjoy.
I've laughed a bit as I've read some of the trolls on here, and shaken my head at the more serious comments that suggest decent people that have a very misconstrued concept of what IMC is about.
The people that I know in my local Indymedia are all very much in favor of democritizing things. This includes government, media, and trade. (Lately I've been thinking that democracy is a more radical concept than most realize...)
Indymedia was founded around the time of the 1999 WTO protests, which were pro-democratic as much as ore more than they were anti-capitalist. (FTAA and NAFTA are rather the opposite, anti-democratic, pro-capitalist.)
Just so you get a feel of what's actually on an IMC, here's some of what was on madison.indymedia.org today:
- Madison City Council Considering Section 8 Housing Ordinance Tonight
- Digital Rights Management Begins Creeping Into Windows Software, Audio CDs (my article; summary of Slashdot, the Register, eWeek, other sources)
- UW Madison Students Defeat Attempt To Oust Progressive Campus Leaders
- My Summer Vacation as a Delegate at the AFL-CIO Convention
The stories such as these that get featured in the center column are usually of relatively high quality, of local interest, and linked to a longer article. Since joining the Madison IMC I've become one of the center column editors, although I never edit any articles that people have submitted. That goes against our ethics.
We strive for accuracy, passion, and truth. Not ratings or advertising dollars.
Why on earth would financial companies ask IM companies to cooperate? Are they suddenly finding their brokers and back-room deal makers suddenly IMing all the time? Wouldn't they have banned such behavior from their intranets and extranets?
Sounds to me like they want to make the IM companies easier to acquire. (How you can build a company on something as nebulous as IMing is beyond me.)
How many people can throw $1 million at something? No one I know can do that. Throwing a big lump of money at something is not democracy.
BTW, I'm all for restraining out-of-control copyright law, and grateful that we now have a significant chunk of change. But it is not democratic for one person to affect something. If we were really in a democracy, we would have been able to more directly have a say in this before things like the DMCA and SSSCA crept in to existence. And technically, we did -- our senators and representatives are supposed to represent us, but often times, they represent the corporations (and a few individuals) who give them -- or more likely, their party -- campaign contributions.
For the RIAA to buy off a senator (i.e. Hollings) makes the government into of a plutocracy -- rule by the rich. And so much of it is what I call a petrolcracy - he who controls the oil controls much more. But I digress...
Oh, last: that $1M didn't go to the American government. Duke Univ. law school != the American government. Neither of which are democratic.
...which was to fuse Unix and the Mac.
;-)
I'd say we were 60% of the way there. We had decent GUIs (Gnome, KDE (which was really starting to rock when I left)), Netatalk for AppleTalk, Mac-on-Linux (hard to configure but quite good; perhaps a bit faster than the native Mac OS 9?) plus the usual assortment of OSS servers and applications.
When NeXT aquired Apple, I knew something big was going to happen. Years of speculating as to what would happen if Jobs came back to Apple was answered: first the iMac. Then OS X, which at first didn't look too hot.
When 10.1 came out, though, they got me back on the Apple wagon in full effect. Killing cloning was one step. If they hadn't made OS X, and that hadn't become as good as it is, I might not have ever come back.
But they did go to Unix. OS X gives me everything I love about Unix -- the stability, multitasking and multiprocessing from hell, and vi -- and melds it with the Mac in ways I never thought possible. The Mac's back, baby, and so much better than ever, ever before!
Now only if it were free...
But... here I am! I think differently about many, many things. Software's just one of them. (Politics being the other big one. Progressive, non-Democrat activists such as myself may seem to the world much like Linux users did to the rest of the world in 1997. But more on that later. And not here.)
anyway... No, OS X is not 100% open or free, but it's close enough that I'm pretty comfortable with it. (Sorry, RMS.)
And, Apple isn't behind TCPA. [shudder]
Is it just me, or did the price on the 17" iMac increase by $100?
;-) I just realized that it is kind of ridiculous to be screaming bloody murder over a $100 price drop when they've cut the prices on their other machines and introduced rocking PMG4s. ;-)
(OH GAWD NO NOT $100 OH THAT'S BLOODY LARCENY OH THE PAIN OH MY GAWD NOOOOO.... sorry...
the VCR didn't do it.
Joe McCarthy didn't do it.
the DVR won't do it.
how TF could CGI do it?
'less they're talking about the Common Gateway Interface. that could do it... blow a security hole right through it. If Hollywood lived in 1995 on the Internet time scale anyway. which they don't.
nah, it'll effect Hollywood, but it sure the hell won't kill it.
-- haaz, digging out his Thin Man video tapes now.
If getting business after business bailed out at taxpayer expense qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
If being AWOL during your time in the National Guard (which coincided with the Vietnam War) qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
If killing more people in Afghanistan than were killed in the World Trade Center qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
If getting in the White House by winning a lawsuit after depriving thousands of their right to vote, qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct," I guess Bush is.
Research the Bush family a little bit. Find out about Laura Bush's homicide via hit and run. Notice what agency G.W.H. Bush headed in the 1970s. Find out where Prescott Bush got his money from. Look at how much the Carlyle Group and Halliburton have received as a result of the W.'s war. See if you still think they're qualifies you as being "morally and ethically correct."
pesky Madisonians, always coming up with crazy stuff like this. you gotta hate us. ;-)
-- haaz, who is pretty sure he'll never come up with anything resembling this. (and lives in Madison.)
http://www.berighteous.com/euphoria/2a.html
One of the screen shots looks a *lot* like the first level from the Apple II version of it.
Does anyone remember the old Apple II game Snack Attack? I surprised and delighted my dad on his 6oth birthday by making Snack Attack run on the Apple II emulator. Soon we were dueling each other, just like it was 1982 all over again! The grin on his face was unbelievable.. kinda like the grin on mine as I recall it!
;-)
ANYway, is there a port of this one? I thought of writing a GPL port of it, but I can't program to save my life...
I had the pleasure of interviewing Siva Vaidhyanathan, which appeared on this very site. And I just posted the full, uncut version over here. It's a few pages longer than what was posted here.
Good luck at NYU, Siva!
-- haaz
ps - haaz.net is temporarily down.
hall-eh-freakin'-lou-yuh!
Aside from my home system and a friend's system, I'm no longer one for a whole network of ungrateful users. Or bosses. Hooray for that alone! And the friend is getting smart about running his own system. So yay again.
-- haaz, who doesn't miss being a sysadmin one bit.
Permits the government to label groups as "terrorist" without proof or procedural safeguards.
Expands agents' authority to secretly enter homes and offices during criminal investigations and search, take photos, and download computer files.
Allows the FBI wide latitude to wiretap and spy on activists' phones, faxes, and e-mails.
Provides for indefinite detention of noncitizens.
It's bad. For the record, I agree with what's been said in the higher moderated comments about the U.S. becoming a police state. It is.
And we are not at war.
Except for the war on the Constitution. That's more real than their war on drugs, or terrorism.
anyway... A few cities, Portland, Oregon, Denver, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, are opposing the PATRIOT Act. Others haven't officially done so but are refusing to participate in the screenings their police departments have been asked to do. People are standing up to this and seeing it for the unconstitutional nightmare that it is.
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him!"
- George W. Bush, September 13, 2001
(how'd he know who was responsible so soon, hmm? hmm....)
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
Siva Vaidhyanathan appeared on Slashdot before: I intervied him about his book Copyrights and Wrongs. The interview is over here.
I just had a major realization today. Or at least I think I did.
Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) intensely-disliked-by-Slashdotters bill, the SSSCA/CBDTPA, would require all devices/gizmos to ship with "digital rights management" chips (i.e. the Fritz chip in TCPA). So, then, the SSSCA would be bringing MS Palladium much closer to fruition by making computers and gizmos ship with TCPA! I think that's right, right? holy...
I did an interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan on the SSSCA/CBDTPA, and we talked about how it would really really hurt open source. But it wasn't until today that I realized Palladium, TCPA, and the SSSCA/CBDTPA were intimately connected. Holy fuck! is this stuff tied up together!
Having a plutocratic government is bad enough. This is 1000 times worse. For me anyway. And I suspect it is for you, too.
Green, and not with envy or illness,
-- haaz.
In recent weeks I have written six articles for madison.indymedia.org, the local chapter of the Independent Media Center. IMC is "a collective of media activists involved in radio, television, publishing, and much more." As someone on here pointed out, they have a strong left/radical "bias," which is the direct opposite of what's on CNN/Faux News. (And rapidly the rest of the mainstream media. [insert rant here])
The biggest difference is not the "spin" of many of its reports, but the fact that it is run and written by people who want to become the media, be the media. It's a really freaking cool thing, if you ask me. It's got old school punk music's DIY attitude, and unlike so much mainstream media, it will actually tell you what's going on. (Compare the coverage of the recent U.S. Conference of Mayors here in Madison if you need proof.)
Yes, some people within it have the "obligatory" anti-corporate attitude, but really, this is real news made by real people. It's good. Check it out!
Unless it favors the Big Six media, that is.
"Their Man in Washington: Big media have an ally in new FCC chair Michael Powell.
National Public Radio's legal magazine show Justice Talking has just released the show in which MPAA attorney Fritz Attaway debates the virtures of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity. The show was recorded on March 4 in Philadelphia and is available in RealPlayer format and is archived here.
Now I wish I hadn't snipped what Siva said about the Sonny Bono Act from the interview we did! Here it is:
JH: "In your book, you refer to the DMCA as an example of what you call a "thick" copyright law. Can you explain the difference between "thick" copyright law and a "thin" law?"
SV: "...One way to measure the thickness of a copyright law is to look at the duration of protection. If works enter the public domain before an author's life expectancy expires, then it's a thin and democratic system. If the duration of copyright protection is absurdly long and potentially indefinite, then it's way too thick.
"JH: And the DMCA does this?
"SV: Not exactly. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which added 20 years to almost all active copyrights, does this. The Copyright Act of 1976 did this as well, but it took people a while to complain about it. Before THE 1976 ACT, copyright terms were for a fixed amouNt of time: 28 years per term, renewable once. Since the 1976 act, the term has been life of the author plus 50 years, and now 70 years. The Supreme Court will hear a case in the fall about the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Act. And many of us on the public interest side of copyright debates are hoping that the justices revert to the first principles of American copyright: that copyright is meant to promote creativity and expression, not retard it. Copyright has become corrupted to such a degree that it's now an instrument of censorship, as Dmitri Sklyarov and Edward Felten can tell you."
-- haaz, who will think twice before snipped for brevity's sake.
time is money...
money is power...
power corrupts...
therefore, by waiting we are corrupting them even more..."
Don't wait -- act!
A republican democracy such as the American system is ineffective unless we participate in it. That's one reason why ours (America's) has suffered so much over the past 20+ years.
Isaac wrote:
>The injunction handed down on
>December 17, 1991 forced Biz Markie's hit album,
>"I Need a Haircut," off the shelves for including >a sample of Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)."
I believe that Siva has specifically referred to that case at his coloquims (sp.)? and book signings. You are right on, Isaac!
Fellow /.ers,
;-)
A friendly debate: Which book is a better read: Lessig's Code or Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs? We're not looking at the specifics of the content -- Code being about the regulation of cyberspace -- but their readability. I will take no offense at those who give Code the nod.