The United States feels that it is in its citizen's interests to protect the copyrights created by US citizens and marketed by a multi-billion dollar industry. Not only may the industry collapse, leaving thousands without jobs, but with the availability of cheap music artists lose their incentive to create.
Is there actually much proof that current copyright laws encourage "artists" to produce? Especially given that most of the profits generated by creative works tend to go elsewhere than the creative talent responsible for them. Ditto the current music and motion picture industry. Trying to protect the status quo could easily be at best worthless at worst actually against the interests of the majority of the US people.
Actually, it is not simply an hyperbole.
There are many kinds of war, including political and economical wars.
Not all wars are military ones.
Not even the current US Government would be daft enough to get into a regular military attack on Russia (MAD still applies). Even a covert military attack is risky without absolute assurance that none of the terrorists could be tracked back to Langley. What's odd is how the likes of Sweden appear to be "giving up without a fight", even though the US is hardly in a fit state to take on any more "wars".
It's scary how far the US is willing to go to pressure other countries into changing their laws to suit US interests. I can almost imagine the US going to war with other countries that "don't have the same copyright laws as us".
You probably don't need to imagine too hard, considering that one of the things the US did in Iraq was to rewritw copyright law to be "Big Business Friendly".
The reason you would prefer not to reinstall the OS on a compromised system is because you don't want to go through and reinstall all of the customer's third party applications, including, but not limited to, games, finance software, office suite, music/video apps, and all the rest that may or may not need serials.
As well as these things typically also needing media... May or not be in their default configuration and may well be sensitive about order of installation.
While I agree that it would be neat for it to reload it's own cleaning supplies and unloads it's waste, I think it would be way too expensive. It seems like that would be a whole other robot.
It would be considerably less complex than something which has to move around. Probably the most difficult part of the engineering would be any electrical connections for data/charging. Since these would need precise alignment and protection from moisture.
Finally, someone is going to have to refil and empty _that_ beast.
Assuming you have indoor plumbing the only refilling needed would be for the detergent/perfume. Waste water goes into the "grey water" drain, clean water comes from the usual supply. The only issue with the latter is that it might make more sense to captured rainwater than drinking water.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
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This is not new. Thomas Jefferson and the Founders knew this when they put the (now) dreaded "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" in the Constitution.
In my view, the "reversing protection" part of DMCA is unconstitutional just by looking at the "limited Times" part. There is nothing "limited" by CSS, AACS, HDMI, HDCP, and whatever contorted vision they have for controling the content. Just like Dubya's domestic spying may be technically legal, it is against the spirit of the law. And no matter how many ways they find to distort and convolute the constitution, it is still there.
Jefferson and Co probably understood "limited times" to mean "something shorter than a human lifetime" too... However what appears to be more relevent to the original article is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" when modern copyright (and patent) laws can end up doing the opposite.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
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However, I'd like to ask a simple question. If the networks can no longer count on people watching at least some ads, how are they to pay for content? The day most people have "auto-commercial-skip" is the day advertisers stop paying to be a part of the program.
You still get billboard ads, ads in print media (even inserts which are nothing but advertisments). The idea that the number of people viewing a television ad had a close corrolation with the number of people viewing actual television content was daft even 30-40 years ago.
At that point, the networks would have to charge the consumers directly.
At which point there is a big "risk" that viewers will try to deal directly with production companies.
I'm not saying it's theft or agreeing with any of the other comments made by those companies, but you need to put down emotion and maybe start coming up with reasonable alternative business models if you want to see devices like this suceed.
Of course the companies complaining are being perfectly calm, rational and unemotional...
Re:Where are the bunkers to protect Citizens ?
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Relax, patent and trademark officials take shelter in "Ark B".
I'm not saying that smuggling a fission device into the states would be trivial, but it wouldn't be the hardest thing ever accomplished either. Once in you just need to drive it to its destination. You shuouldn't need to be nearby to detonate but if you do then suicide bombers are hardly new.
The non suicide option requires the driver to park the truck and get away. The suicide option simply requires the driver to get the truck as close as possible to the target. The former has far more risks of discovery than the latter.
Re:This is why DRM will work
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Given the choice, the customer would buy the "better" product. The "better" product, for the customer, would of course be the one that offers him more liberty.
Now, devices that do that will vanish from the market because their companies are sued into oblivion. Result: Only crap can survive.
Or you create a black market. Instead of the people selling the stuff people actually want getting sued out of existance they end up in what amounts to a civil war with the police. Where both sides have deep enough pockets to keep buying weapons.
Re:Proof we are not a democracy
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Democracy is the problem. Your vote is useless because everyone else ends up voting for the person out of two they hate the least. Elections are won based on what the general public thinks of the opposition. Real issues are lost behind a cloud of misdirection from both sides. Plus the media, who are being fed lots of money, are feeding the public with propaganda which alters the way they will vote.
This list of problems is due to a specific implimentation of government structure. Many of which have more to do with how candidates are nominated, how electors are registered, how votes are tabulated than people actually voting. Even other federal republics which elect candidates for fixed terms tend to lack things such as two very similar large national political parties.
But what's better than democracy? A benevolent dictator would be cool, but they are pretty rare... imagine how hard it would be not to be corrupted by the RIAA/MPAA.
Even if you avoid that, a generic problem with dictatorships (and tyranies) is that they tend to be very bad at any kind of transfer of power.
Maybe it's best to keep it the way, and fight to take our rights back whenever we get the chance. Any better suggestions?
Stronger regional and local government might be a good starting point. Maybe as a long term aim getting the US Federal government to look more like the EU Parliment in terms of political parties. e.g. both houses of Congress to have at least 20-30 political parties well represented.
Re:The late great Mancur Olson
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In an ideal world, the various Federal Agencies would counterbalance such interests, because they, being nominated by people elected on a broader basis, will have it in their interests to represent the country as a whole. However, special interests are ingenious and find ways through, and this only works by fits and starts.
Or these interests end up infiltrating the entity which is ment to be regulating them...
It can be done. Thatcher did it in the UK.
Thatcher isn't really a good example of this, if anything she's an example of the opposite. Venezuela under Hugo Chávez is a far better example. Especially given that Venezuela, like the US, is federal republic.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Sure is, and they're trying to solve it.
Playing at being King Canute is unlikely to solve anything.
Look at it this way - for the people working in those companies, it is their job to get you to watch TV and more specifically watch those ads They will pursue all means that they think are ethical/legal and probably some that they don't.
The problem with the latter is the way in which corporations are not exactly treated as people. i.e. they don't get jailed or subject to bail conditions when accused of breaking the law.
But it's their job, and you can hardly blame them for doing it any more than they can blame you for flipping burgers at the local Mickey Ds (or whatever your country has - but I live in Switzerland at the moment, and even these guys have the golden arches).
The difference is that "Mickey Ds" dosn't appear to be incapable of changing their menu or even their pricing structure.
We're getting back to copyright issue, I think - it's their content, according to current copyright law, and they think they grant you a very specific use - to watch it on your TV. You, on the other hand, think that once they broadcast the content to you, it's yours to do with as you please. In this case, the law would appear to disagree with you. Until and unless a majority of people within the US share your view, which will not happen until you can share it without cussing and sounding like a fool, then US law will continue to protect the interests of those TV networks.
If you went and asked you would probably find that even if a majority of viewers did not think that way the number who did would be likely to vastly outnumber those TV networks.
Easy.. Said terrorist creates fake web page claiming dousing your car's interior with gasoline while smoking cigarettes increases fuel mileage. Said terrorists then spams millions and millions of people with link to the page. 99.9999% of the recipients are smart enough to realize that dousing your car with gasoline is very dangerous, the other people's cars go boom.
But the important question is if those who's cars go boom could qualify for a Darwin award or not:)
Indeed it is. It's possible that swedish law considers just about anything. However, I have yet to see any evidence that swedish law is different and does permit sites such as The Pirate Bay.
Why should the default be that something is (or should be) illegal?
But the question is: For how long will it stay legal? We (Sweden) have government elections in September so until then things will stay the same, but I'm wondering how soon after that the laws will change.
Depends who wins the election dosn't it... Maybe you'll get a bunch of patriots who will tell foreign associations where to stick it!
IANAL, but United States law has a provision that states you are "innocent until proven guilty". The onus is on the accuser to gather sufficient evidence to prove your guilt.
The US looks very good on paper. But the acuall practice does not always appear to follow this route, with this being rather more relevent than how things "should" happen.
The US organisations (*AA) had gone to the White House, to ask the White House to get something done about those evil Pirate Bay guys. The White House talked to the Swedish government.
A delegation from Swedish Justice Department, Attorney General and police (or various types of the sort) went to the US and talked to the Americans. When they came back, they concluded that they had shaky legal grounds upon which to take action (this had been looked into closely by the Swedish Attorney General's office earlier), and they told the government so.
Upon which they were ordered by the relevant Swedish minister of [something or other] to take action anyway. So they did.
Conspiracy++?
Sounds more like "High Treason". Since a member of the Swedish government apparently went out of their way to put the interests of foreigners over those of Swedes.
As far as school busses go, large vehicles are vastly safer than small vehicles in almost all kinds of crashes, so seat belts help much less. You will note that other busses, trains, etc. don't have seat belts either.
There are other effects at work here than just the utility of adding seat belts. Otherwise they wouldn't be fitted to airliners...
It's also about forcing people to be safe, and not allowing them to take risks.
The problem is that this kind of approach doomed to failure. Everyone has an optimal level of percieved safety. Try to make cars feel "too safe" for their drivers and they will compensate by driving recklessly. If you want to make cars safer the best way is to make them feel less safe to drivers.
Even if they implemented the system, and figured they did have enough space to store it all, couldn't everybody just start sending and receiving garbage 24 hours a day in order to clog the system.
This kind of technique would work best if the "garbage" isn't obviously junk. The point of this form of steganography is to make it difficult for third parties to work out what is "signal" and what is "noise". e.g. encrypt everything, using random keys for most of the messages, though you might still need some out of band signalling to identify which messages are "signal".
Considering that more email is generated every year then snail mail;
A lot of it "spam". But no doubt those people the US Government pays to think up daft conspiracy theories will claim that there are all these nasty people hiding secret messages in spam...
Well, the problem with numbers is that the Gubornment will continue to say things like "We have stopped $_x terrorist attacks since we began $_y survielance program. We cannot elaborate on the specific incidents, in the interest of national security. But trust us, it is true, and we are winning thanks to our citizense."
As stated by people who wouldn't know truth if it walked up to them naked and punched them on the nose.
My grandmother is a naturalized American citizen. I talked to her for several hours a few weeks ago. I was amazed to hear her say that she does not care if the Gooberment listens in on her conversations.
In practice it won't be just "the Government" it will be a package deal including anyone they trust and who sucessfully spys on them. Whilst she might trust the US Government does she also trust every other government, corporation and "Mafia" on the planet?
Slashdot Mirror
The United States feels that it is in its citizen's interests to protect the copyrights created by US citizens and marketed by a multi-billion dollar industry. Not only may the industry collapse, leaving thousands without jobs, but with the availability of cheap music artists lose their incentive to create.
Is there actually much proof that current copyright laws encourage "artists" to produce? Especially given that most of the profits generated by creative works tend to go elsewhere than the creative talent responsible for them. Ditto the current music and motion picture industry.
Trying to protect the status quo could easily be at best worthless at worst actually against the interests of the majority of the US people.
Actually, it is not simply an hyperbole. There are many kinds of war, including political and economical wars. Not all wars are military ones.
Not even the current US Government would be daft enough to get into a regular military attack on Russia (MAD still applies). Even a covert military attack is risky without absolute assurance that none of the terrorists could be tracked back to Langley.
What's odd is how the likes of Sweden appear to be "giving up without a fight", even though the US is hardly in a fit state to take on any more "wars".
It's scary how far the US is willing to go to pressure other countries into changing their laws to suit US interests. I can almost imagine the US going to war with other countries that "don't have the same copyright laws as us".
You probably don't need to imagine too hard, considering that one of the things the US did in Iraq was to rewritw copyright law to be "Big Business Friendly".
The reason you would prefer not to reinstall the OS on a compromised system is because you don't want to go through and reinstall all of the customer's third party applications, including, but not limited to, games, finance software, office suite, music/video apps, and all the rest that may or may not need serials.
As well as these things typically also needing media... May or not be in their default configuration and may well be sensitive about order of installation.
While I agree that it would be neat for it to reload it's own cleaning supplies and unloads it's waste, I think it would be way too expensive. It seems like that would be a whole other robot.
It would be considerably less complex than something which has to move around. Probably the most difficult part of the engineering would be any electrical connections for data/charging. Since these would need precise alignment and protection from moisture.
Finally, someone is going to have to refil and empty _that_ beast.
Assuming you have indoor plumbing the only refilling needed would be for the detergent/perfume. Waste water goes into the "grey water" drain, clean water comes from the usual supply. The only issue with the latter is that it might make more sense to captured rainwater than drinking water.
This is not new. Thomas Jefferson and the Founders knew this when they put the (now) dreaded "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" in the Constitution.
In my view, the "reversing protection" part of DMCA is unconstitutional just by looking at the "limited Times" part. There is nothing "limited" by CSS, AACS, HDMI, HDCP, and whatever contorted vision they have for controling the content. Just like Dubya's domestic spying may be technically legal, it is against the spirit of the law. And no matter how many ways they find to distort and convolute the constitution, it is still there.
Jefferson and Co probably understood "limited times" to mean "something shorter than a human lifetime" too...
However what appears to be more relevent to the original article is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" when modern copyright (and patent) laws can end up doing the opposite.
However, I'd like to ask a simple question. If the networks can no longer count on people watching at least some ads, how are they to pay for content? The day most people have "auto-commercial-skip" is the day advertisers stop paying to be a part of the program.
You still get billboard ads, ads in print media (even inserts which are nothing but advertisments). The idea that the number of people viewing a television ad had a close corrolation with the number of people viewing actual television content was daft even 30-40 years ago.
At that point, the networks would have to charge the consumers directly.
At which point there is a big "risk" that viewers will try to deal directly with production companies.
I'm not saying it's theft or agreeing with any of the other comments made by those companies, but you need to put down emotion and maybe start coming up with reasonable alternative business models if you want to see devices like this suceed.
Of course the companies complaining are being perfectly calm, rational and unemotional...
Relax, patent and trademark officials take shelter in "Ark B".
Is FEMA in there too?
I'm not saying that smuggling a fission device into the states would be trivial, but it wouldn't be the hardest thing ever accomplished either. Once in you just need to drive it to its destination. You shuouldn't need to be nearby to detonate but if you do then suicide bombers are hardly new.
The non suicide option requires the driver to park the truck and get away. The suicide option simply requires the driver to get the truck as close as possible to the target.
The former has far more risks of discovery than the latter.
Given the choice, the customer would buy the "better" product. The "better" product, for the customer, would of course be the one that offers him more liberty.
Now, devices that do that will vanish from the market because their companies are sued into oblivion. Result: Only crap can survive.
Or you create a black market. Instead of the people selling the stuff people actually want getting sued out of existance they end up in what amounts to a civil war with the police. Where both sides have deep enough pockets to keep buying weapons.
Democracy is the problem. Your vote is useless because everyone else ends up voting for the person out of two they hate the least. Elections are won based on what the general public thinks of the opposition. Real issues are lost behind a cloud of misdirection from both sides. Plus the media, who are being fed lots of money, are feeding the public with propaganda which alters the way they will vote.
This list of problems is due to a specific implimentation of government structure. Many of which have more to do with how candidates are nominated, how electors are registered, how votes are tabulated than people actually voting. Even other federal republics which elect candidates for fixed terms tend to lack things such as two very similar large national political parties.
But what's better than democracy? A benevolent dictator would be cool, but they are pretty rare... imagine how hard it would be not to be corrupted by the RIAA/MPAA.
Even if you avoid that, a generic problem with dictatorships (and tyranies) is that they tend to be very bad at any kind of transfer of power.
Maybe it's best to keep it the way, and fight to take our rights back whenever we get the chance. Any better suggestions?
Stronger regional and local government might be a good starting point. Maybe as a long term aim getting the US Federal government to look more like the EU Parliment in terms of political parties. e.g. both houses of Congress to have at least 20-30 political parties well represented.
In an ideal world, the various Federal Agencies would counterbalance such interests, because they, being nominated by people elected on a broader basis, will have it in their interests to represent the country as a whole. However, special interests are ingenious and find ways through, and this only works by fits and starts.
Or these interests end up infiltrating the entity which is ment to be regulating them...
It can be done. Thatcher did it in the UK.
Thatcher isn't really a good example of this, if anything she's an example of the opposite. Venezuela under Hugo Chávez is a far better example. Especially given that Venezuela, like the US, is federal republic.
Sure is, and they're trying to solve it.
Playing at being King Canute is unlikely to solve anything.
Look at it this way - for the people working in those companies, it is their job to get you to watch TV and more specifically watch those ads They will pursue all means that they think are ethical/legal and probably some that they don't.
The problem with the latter is the way in which corporations are not exactly treated as people. i.e. they don't get jailed or subject to bail conditions when accused of breaking the law.
But it's their job, and you can hardly blame them for doing it any more than they can blame you for flipping burgers at the local Mickey Ds (or whatever your country has - but I live in Switzerland at the moment, and even these guys have the golden arches).
The difference is that "Mickey Ds" dosn't appear to be incapable of changing their menu or even their pricing structure.
We're getting back to copyright issue, I think - it's their content, according to current copyright law, and they think they grant you a very specific use - to watch it on your TV. You, on the other hand, think that once they broadcast the content to you, it's yours to do with as you please. In this case, the law would appear to disagree with you. Until and unless a majority of people within the US share your view, which will not happen until you can share it without cussing and sounding like a fool, then US law will continue to protect the interests of those TV networks.
If you went and asked you would probably find that even if a majority of viewers did not think that way the number who did would be likely to vastly outnumber those TV networks.
Easy.. Said terrorist creates fake web page claiming dousing your car's interior with gasoline while smoking cigarettes increases fuel mileage. Said terrorists then spams millions and millions of people with link to the page. 99.9999% of the recipients are smart enough to realize that dousing your car with gasoline is very dangerous, the other people's cars go boom.
:)
But the important question is if those who's cars go boom could qualify for a Darwin award or not
But conspiracy is the direct cause of terrorism. Very rarely is there terrorism without some specific, premeditated thought on the subject.
It's more often the method . The likes of Ted Kaczynski tend to be the exception rather than the rule amongst terrorists.
Indeed it is. It's possible that swedish law considers just about anything. However, I have yet to see any evidence that swedish law is different and does permit sites such as The Pirate Bay.
Why should the default be that something is (or should be) illegal?
But the question is: For how long will it stay legal? We (Sweden) have government elections in September so until then things will stay the same, but I'm wondering how soon after that the laws will change.
Depends who wins the election dosn't it... Maybe you'll get a bunch of patriots who will tell foreign associations where to stick it!
IANAL, but United States law has a provision that states you are "innocent until proven guilty". The onus is on the accuser to gather sufficient evidence to prove your guilt.
The US looks very good on paper. But the acuall practice does not always appear to follow this route, with this being rather more relevent than how things "should" happen.
The US organisations (*AA) had gone to the White House, to ask the White House to get something done about those evil Pirate Bay guys. The White House talked to the Swedish government.
A delegation from Swedish Justice Department, Attorney General and police (or various types of the sort) went to the US and talked to the Americans. When they came back, they concluded that they had shaky legal grounds upon which to take action (this had been looked into closely by the Swedish Attorney General's office earlier), and they told the government so.
Upon which they were ordered by the relevant Swedish minister of [something or other] to take action anyway. So they did.
Conspiracy++?
Sounds more like "High Treason". Since a member of the Swedish government apparently went out of their way to put the interests of foreigners over those of Swedes.
If you try to use U-238, your bomb is not going to do a damn thing except create a loud bang with no other results when you set off the explosives.
Actually you'd have what is known as a "dirty bomb".
As far as school busses go, large vehicles are vastly safer than small vehicles in almost all kinds of crashes, so seat belts help much less. You will note that other busses, trains, etc. don't have seat belts either.
There are other effects at work here than just the utility of adding seat belts. Otherwise they wouldn't be fitted to airliners...
It's also about forcing people to be safe, and not allowing them to take risks.
The problem is that this kind of approach doomed to failure. Everyone has an optimal level of percieved safety. Try to make cars feel "too safe" for their drivers and they will compensate by driving recklessly. If you want to make cars safer the best way is to make them feel less safe to drivers.
Even if they implemented the system, and figured they did have enough space to store it all, couldn't everybody just start sending and receiving garbage 24 hours a day in order to clog the system.
This kind of technique would work best if the "garbage" isn't obviously junk. The point of this form of steganography is to make it difficult for third parties to work out what is "signal" and what is "noise". e.g. encrypt everything, using random keys for most of the messages, though you might still need some out of band signalling to identify which messages are "signal".
Considering that more email is generated every year then snail mail;
A lot of it "spam". But no doubt those people the US Government pays to think up daft conspiracy theories will claim that there are all these nasty people hiding secret messages in spam...
Well, the problem with numbers is that the Gubornment will continue to say things like "We have stopped $_x terrorist attacks since we began $_y survielance program. We cannot elaborate on the specific incidents, in the interest of national security. But trust us, it is true, and we are winning thanks to our citizense."
As stated by people who wouldn't know truth if it walked up to them naked and punched them on the nose.
My grandmother is a naturalized American citizen. I talked to her for several hours a few weeks ago. I was amazed to hear her say that she does not care if the Gooberment listens in on her conversations.
In practice it won't be just "the Government" it will be a package deal including anyone they trust and who sucessfully spys on them. Whilst she might trust the US Government does she also trust every other government, corporation and "Mafia" on the planet?