Except US law officials can't do anything about the sites in Russia or Singapore.
What makes you think the Russian or Singaporean authorities would be any less "co-operative" than the Norwegian authorities? Certainly Singapore, unless they wanted to wind up as the 51st state of the US...
The issue was that this law grants the executive branch the power to dictate which sites are viewable and which sites are censored. If the governer of Pennsylvania wanted to censor Slashdot, s/he could wait for some anonymous coward to post ASCII art child porn, and use it as an excuse to blacklist Slashdot for some indefinate period of time.
They might engineer rather than simply wait. Also unless the people adding to such a list are very closely watched they probably don't need a real incident in the first place.
Furthermore, when dealing with freedom of speech, history has shown, time and time again, that the government is happy to censor anything that is unpopular.
It need not be "unpopular", anything which could show that government ( and its members and friends) in a bad light tends to be consdered "fair game". Look at hor Robert Mugabe was ready to fight his own "war on terror" as soon as GW Bush used the term...
Perhaps it would be possible to use some VERY sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm, but, like spam filtering, you're never gonna block 100% of the bad stuff while letting 100% of the good stuff through.
Problem is that nothing exists outside of science fiction even capable of doing a half decent job of this. I can't even see the obvious examples (from RAH and Tribune Entertainment) being that interested in the task.
Maybe even the FBI raiding the place (obviously not feasible if located outside the US).
Probably perfectly feasable in more places than not, though subsitute CIA or tipped off local law enforcement for the FBI. If US authorities can have someone arrested thousands of miles away for a computer program (which wasn't even illegal where it was written) they can certainly do the same for "child porn". Though the risk here is that some other country might consider the likes of Britney Spears "child porn".
This would be odd. The legal theory that allows child pornography to be banned (while adult pornography cannot) is
The reason that "simulated child pornography", which includes adult actors pretending to be children, cartoons and CGI, is considered to be just as illegal as actual "child pornography". Is that the PTB feel it would be too difficult to actually prosecute cases where this was a possible defence.
No, I believe it's illegal to have adult actors pretend to be children having sex.
This might be the case if the subject matter is actually called a "porn film". But a "mainstream film" such as "The Fly II" dosn't appear covered by any such law.
Is the definition of 'child porn' in terms of the age of consent?
Even this was the rule both ages of consent and ages of majority vary widely between different parts of the world. They have also changed over time. An obvious example is the question of if "Romeo and Juliet" is "child porn". Let alone what standards should apply when you get something like the Ocampa in Star Trek Voyager. (Probably Paramount is big enough to get any rules bent/ignored.)
These laptops only have a restore-CD to put XP back and usually have only 1 restore option: XP for the entire drive.
These kind of restore CD's arn't actually such a new idea.
I'm sure Microsoft 'encourages' vendors to not distribute real XP install CD's with computers. This is a very nasty way of discouraging people from trying an alternative.
This is old news, Microsoft's claim is that a proper install disk encourages piracy... Of course any real pirates have no problem getting hold of unlocked installs.
On the desktop, it's a bit different. Most people will just use what came preloaded.
However in many cases what they get put in front of them is what their IT services department preloaded. What the OEM might or might not have shipped is irrelevent.
We've bought 10 Dell servers to run SuSE and I bet we're not alone.
Normally there is no point paying people like Dell to install Linux for you anyway because they don't set it up how you want it.
I'd say that most of the time the customer is anything other than either an individual or a very small corporate entity. The "there is little point paying them to set it up, because they won't do it right anyway" argument applies regardless of the OS. Wonder how many OEM preloades are overwritten without even being used once....
If you don't understand the difference between a fire marshall making such rules and a co-exhibitor complaining, perhaps you weren't paying attention in first grade--in the playground, where people learn such stuff.
More important is that it wasn't simply a "co-exhibitor" it was one in direct competition with the exhibitor they complained about. Which should at least make people highly cynical about the motivation for the complaint.
If Sony has a bunch of games to play, its not fair to the other exhibitors trying to sell actual products.
If one exhibitor has a product which is more popular then is it "fair" to the other exhibitors?
CeBit doesn't strike me as the type of place to sell games, but rather to get the market informed on new products coming out.
When did Sony's console and games cease to be a "product"
When you're fiddling with a Laptop, you're exploring what you can do with it so you can write a review of it later. It's not quite the same as killing time playing a game.
Without being a telepath how can you tell that person A "fiddling with a laptop" and person B "playing a game" don't have exctly the same motivation? Maybe the person with the laptop is "killing time".
Microsoft's business tactics are quite different from those entities. Can we really compare hardball business tactics with murder, terrorism and drug dealing in schools? I think we're losing perspective here.
Actually there isn't a clear dividing line. Remember that you don't have to kill anyone to intimidate them into doing what you want. Often a threat is sufficent, IIRC Microsoft did use threats against OEMs. Also some of Microsoft's methods of setting their product, including to schools, are very good parallels for people selling addictive drugs.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies have invested too much in Windows, or can't switch to !Windows because of other reasons.
Considering Microsoft deliberatly "kills off" support on its products after a fairly short period of time. Is "invested" exactly the best term. In many cases "addicted" might be more apt.
IT has gotten a free ride up to now because whenever people have said "but switching would be too expensive/risky", management has had to believe it.
Also consider that Microsoft wants to move towards a software rental model. Then you will be expected to switch when they decide. Not when its least inconvenient for your business.
Even putting aside the question of whether ANY clickwrap EULA license is valid, I don't think users should be afraid of enforcement of this.
Also remember that the person clicking the box and the person using the software may well not be the same. Indeed they may not even be both part of the same "corporate person".
We already know that there are whole clauses in licenses that are unenforcable - there are certain rights you can't give up in a contract,
Also it's a typical requirement that that all parties know who the other parties are. (Even if it's just at the level of "a customer in this shop", "A passenger on that plane", etc.)
The contract can't dictate whether you can use it with other people's software.. that's your own decision.
The concept of the EULA appears to deliberatly make things unclear by the claim that you don't own what you paid for. Which touches on a rather diverse set of laws.
As for the EULA: Have you ever tried reading through one of those?
It's quite possible that an actual "end user" will never actually see the EULA, especially where they are using a machine (provided by their employer or school) as part of their work or studies. Who is the "end user" in such a case? The indivudual or the corporate entity who own's the machine. If the latter what happens where the language of the EULA assumes an individual?
I've seen a MS EULA make a laywer's head spin (anecdotal: My company does quite a lot of business with law firms, and I asked a lawyer at one of them once to actually interprit their EULA for (I think it was) Win98).
Further, I think operating systems should be banned by law from forcing customers, through licensing constraints, to not use a competing product. NO operating system should have the right to license away the competition.
Such a law would be highly specific. Specific laws are generally bad laws since they are easy to find loopholes in and need constant tinkering to stay effective. e.g. consider what would happen in Microsoft were to start selling a "Computer Management System" with a "User Agreement". You'd need a law which refered to something like "Anything supplied with any product, claiming to invoke a contract between the user and the manuacturer." Remember good legal definitions will stand for hundreds, even thousands of years...
That there is something fundamentally wrong with software companies telling people what they can and cannot do with their machines.
Not just software companies. Having seen the software industry get away with it the music, film and TV industries want to "play" too.
I wonder when it was that MS went from being a distributer of software to being, well, a mafia-like organization.
It must have been before they started dodgy deals on OEM licencing.
If you think about it, this is how a a mob works.
When it comes to the US justice department they don't appear to have thought very hard. No attempts to use RICO against Microsoft and let the anti trust trial drag on for long enough as to be meaningless. Right now Microsoft see's itself as being able to write it's own law...
That's nonsense. VNC does not allow you to "setup a Windows box and have 50 Linux desktops connect to it"--VNC doesn't magically transform a single user Windows machine into a multiuser machine.
Actually you can make even Windows 9X work in a sort of multi user way. e.g. using such things as the SharedWare cards.
As far as Windows is concerned, VNC gives you the ability to remotely control a machine into which you are logged in, no more.
Claims that you can use VNC to turn Windows into some kind of thin client server abound, though never with anything resembling useful instructions. The only way I could even see this is possible would be on unix rather than Windows. That would be more complex than using g/k/xdm to manage remote X displays anyway. VNC is in effect "rconsole" for Windows machines...
Slashdot Mirror
Except US law officials can't do anything about the sites in Russia or Singapore.
What makes you think the Russian or Singaporean authorities would be any less "co-operative" than the Norwegian authorities? Certainly Singapore, unless they wanted to wind up as the 51st state of the US...
The issue was that this law grants the executive branch the power to dictate which sites are viewable and which sites are censored. If the governer of Pennsylvania wanted to censor Slashdot, s/he could wait for some anonymous coward to post ASCII art child porn, and use it as an excuse to blacklist Slashdot for some indefinate period of time.
They might engineer rather than simply wait. Also unless the people adding to such a list are very closely watched they probably don't need a real incident in the first place.
Furthermore, when dealing with freedom of speech, history has shown, time and time again, that the government is happy to censor anything that is unpopular.
It need not be "unpopular", anything which could show that government ( and its members and friends) in a bad light tends to be consdered "fair game". Look at hor Robert Mugabe was ready to fight his own "war on terror" as soon as GW Bush used the term...
Perhaps it would be possible to use some VERY sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm, but, like spam filtering, you're never gonna block 100% of the bad stuff while letting 100% of the good stuff through.
Problem is that nothing exists outside of science fiction even capable of doing a half decent job of this. I can't even see the obvious examples (from RAH and Tribune Entertainment) being that interested in the task.
Maybe even the FBI raiding the place (obviously not feasible if located outside the US).
Probably perfectly feasable in more places than not, though subsitute CIA or tipped off local law enforcement for the FBI. If US authorities can have someone arrested thousands of miles away for a computer program (which wasn't even illegal where it was written) they can certainly do the same for "child porn". Though the risk here is that some other country might consider the likes of Britney Spears "child porn".
This would be odd. The legal theory that allows child pornography to be banned (while adult pornography cannot) is
The reason that "simulated child pornography", which includes adult actors pretending to be children, cartoons and CGI, is considered to be just as illegal as actual "child pornography". Is that the PTB feel it would be too difficult to actually prosecute cases where this was a possible defence.
No, I believe it's illegal to have adult actors pretend to be children having sex.
This might be the case if the subject matter is actually called a "porn film". But a "mainstream film" such as "The Fly II" dosn't appear covered by any such law.
I guess I should turn my parents in for taking those snapshots of me running around in the backyard with no pants on when I was 2.
It isn't exactly unknown for this kind of thing to happen already. Especially in such things as a messy divorce.
Is the definition of 'child porn' in terms of the age of consent?
Even this was the rule both ages of consent and ages of majority vary widely between different parts of the world. They have also changed over time. An obvious example is the question of if "Romeo and Juliet" is "child porn". Let alone what standards should apply when you get something like the Ocampa in Star Trek Voyager. (Probably Paramount is big enough to get any rules bent/ignored.)
These laptops only have a restore-CD to put XP back and usually have only 1 restore option: XP for the entire drive.
These kind of restore CD's arn't actually such a new idea.
I'm sure Microsoft 'encourages' vendors to not distribute real XP install CD's with computers. This is a very nasty way of discouraging people from trying an alternative.
This is old news, Microsoft's claim is that a proper install disk encourages piracy... Of course any real pirates have no problem getting hold of unlocked installs.
On the desktop, it's a bit different. Most people will just use what came preloaded.
However in many cases what they get put in front of them is what their IT services department preloaded. What the OEM might or might not have shipped is irrelevent.
We've bought 10 Dell servers to run SuSE and I bet we're not alone.
Normally there is no point paying people like Dell to install Linux for you anyway because they don't set it up how you want it.
I'd say that most of the time the customer is anything other than either an individual or a very small corporate entity. The "there is little point paying them to set it up, because they won't do it right anyway" argument applies regardless of the OS.
Wonder how many OEM preloades are overwritten without even being used once....
Except the fact that it wasn't in Yale but in UK, that the rule wasn't in latin even though it was an ancient one.
Wouldn't be surprised it there are versions of this which refer to US universities. Most urban legands get a lot of "porting".
If you don't understand the difference between a fire marshall making such rules and a co-exhibitor complaining, perhaps you weren't paying attention in first grade--in the playground, where people learn such stuff.
More important is that it wasn't simply a "co-exhibitor" it was one in direct competition with the exhibitor they complained about. Which should at least make people highly cynical about the motivation for the complaint.
If Sony has a bunch of games to play, its not fair to the other exhibitors trying to sell actual products.
If one exhibitor has a product which is more popular then is it "fair" to the other exhibitors?
CeBit doesn't strike me as the type of place to sell games, but rather to get the market informed on new products coming out.
When did Sony's console and games cease to be a "product"
When you're fiddling with a Laptop, you're exploring what you can do with it so you can write a review of it later. It's not quite the same as killing time playing a game.
Without being a telepath how can you tell that person A "fiddling with a laptop" and person B "playing a game" don't have exctly the same motivation? Maybe the person with the laptop is "killing time".
Microsoft's business tactics are quite different from those entities. Can we really compare hardball business tactics with murder, terrorism and drug dealing in schools? I think we're losing perspective here.
Actually there isn't a clear dividing line. Remember that you don't have to kill anyone to intimidate them into doing what you want. Often a threat is sufficent, IIRC Microsoft did use threats against OEMs. Also some of Microsoft's methods of setting their product, including to schools, are very good parallels for people selling addictive drugs.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies have invested too much in Windows, or can't switch to !Windows because of other reasons.
Considering Microsoft deliberatly "kills off" support on its products after a fairly short period of time. Is "invested" exactly the best term. In many cases "addicted" might be more apt.
IT has gotten a free ride up to now because whenever people have said "but switching would be too expensive/risky", management has had to believe it.
Also consider that Microsoft wants to move towards a software rental model. Then you will be expected to switch when they decide. Not when its least inconvenient for your business.
Last time I checked it was illegal to transmit television over the internet.
How do you explain "webcams" then? What next burglars claiming "copyright infringment" to prevent CCTV footage being used against them?
By copying bitmaps of Microsoft icons, you are violating copyright law. Now you very well may have a fair use defense,
Being able to defend yourself would be rather easy since what you are doing here is "remote viewing" also known as "television".
Even putting aside the question of whether ANY clickwrap EULA license is valid, I don't think users should be afraid of enforcement of this.
Also remember that the person clicking the box and the person using the software may well not be the same. Indeed they may not even be both part of the same "corporate person".
We already know that there are whole clauses in licenses that are unenforcable - there are certain rights you can't give up in a contract,
Also it's a typical requirement that that all parties know who the other parties are. (Even if it's just at the level of "a customer in this shop", "A passenger on that plane", etc.)
The contract can't dictate whether you can use it with other people's software.. that's your own decision.
The concept of the EULA appears to deliberatly make things unclear by the claim that you don't own what you paid for. Which touches on a rather diverse set of laws.
As for the EULA: Have you ever tried reading through one of those?
It's quite possible that an actual "end user" will never actually see the EULA, especially where they are using a machine (provided by their employer or school) as part of their work or studies. Who is the "end user" in such a case? The indivudual or the corporate entity who own's the machine. If the latter what happens where the language of the EULA assumes an individual?
I've seen a MS EULA make a laywer's head spin (anecdotal: My company does quite a lot of business with law firms, and I asked a lawyer at one of them once to actually interprit their EULA for (I think it was) Win98).
Did the lawyer reach any conclusions?
Further, I think operating systems should be banned by law from forcing customers, through licensing constraints, to not use a competing product. NO operating system should have the right to license away the competition.
Such a law would be highly specific. Specific laws are generally bad laws since they are easy to find loopholes in and need constant tinkering to stay effective. e.g. consider what would happen in Microsoft were to start selling a "Computer Management System" with a "User Agreement".
You'd need a law which refered to something like "Anything supplied with any product, claiming to invoke a contract between the user and the manuacturer."
Remember good legal definitions will stand for hundreds, even thousands of years...
That there is something fundamentally wrong with software companies telling people what they can and cannot do with their machines.
Not just software companies. Having seen the software industry get away with it the music, film and TV industries want to "play" too.
I wonder when it was that MS went from being a distributer of software to being, well, a mafia-like organization.
It must have been before they started dodgy deals on OEM licencing.
If you think about it, this is how a a mob works.
When it comes to the US justice department they don't appear to have thought very hard. No attempts to use RICO against Microsoft and let the anti trust trial drag on for long enough as to be meaningless.
Right now Microsoft see's itself as being able to write it's own law...
That's nonsense. VNC does not allow you to "setup a Windows box and have 50 Linux desktops connect to it"--VNC doesn't magically transform a single user Windows machine into a multiuser machine.
Actually you can make even Windows 9X work in a sort of multi user way. e.g. using such things as the SharedWare cards.
As far as Windows is concerned, VNC gives you the ability to remotely control a machine into which you are logged in, no more.
Claims that you can use VNC to turn Windows into some kind of thin client server abound, though never with anything resembling useful instructions. The only way I could even see this is possible would be on unix rather than Windows. That would be more complex than using g/k/xdm to manage remote X displays anyway.
VNC is in effect "rconsole" for Windows machines...
What about pcANYWHERE? It's faster and more stable than Remote Desktop, Remote Control SMS, and VNC.
However VNC is free and multiplatform...